tantu-jaal

Dining with dons

2012-01-22T18:26:00.000+05:30

Nearly three weeks into my stay in Cambridge I've made the discovery that once things are going smoothly, weekends tend to be slightly dull. But only in a relative sense, i.e. compared to Bombay. Cambridge actually comes alive on Saturday morning, with hordes of tourists walking around, one saying to the other "that college we just passed was St John's" and the other replying "What? Where?". By 4 PM it starts to get dark, shops close at 6 and then there is a relative lull as people disappear off the streets. Around 11 PM they emerge again, having used the intervening five hours to become well and truly drunk, and hang out on the street (below my window, alas) engaging in rowdy behaviour until the early hours.

I had decided this Saturday would be my night to take the plunge - by dressing up and dining at the Hall at Trinity (as a Visiting Fellow I can do this whenever I like with advance notice) without any known person to keep me company. Before this I attended an organ concert at the neighbouring King's College, whose chapel is the size of a few dozen cathedrals. These concerts are open to the public and free - and last for just 45 minutes, which is about as long as one can sit inside a dimly-lit and freezing cold church, however spectacular. The attendance was sparse (I wonder what it will be like when really huge hordes of tourists arrive in summer!), everyone was a tourist and most could not care less about music.

The concert opened with a Bach Sonata (BWV 530, if you must know) and this is not anything like the only Bach organ piece I know well - the Toccata and Fugue in D minor, which fairly blasts gusts of wind out of gigantic organ pipes. This Sonata by contrast was muted and subtle, at times barely audible, with the smaller slightly squeaky pipes doing much of the work. The tourists (all English/European/American) were bored and chatted through this, which was distracting. Then came excerpts from "La Nativite du Seigneur" by the French 20th century composer Messiaen. His music is rather abstract and the first three excerpts were interesting but slightly hard for me to grasp at first hearing, though I did detect evidence of Messiaen's varied influences ranging from birdsong to Indonesian gamelan. These pieces also were muted and mostly made use of the small squeaky organ pipes. By this time the tourists were walking out. But then came the finale "Dieu parmi nous" and now that God was in the picture, the story changed as it inevitably must. There was a great deal of huffing and puffing by the monstrous pipes, which gave forth huge gusts of sound that swirled and resonated and reverberated around the enormous chapel. I swear you could almost see it, and it seemed to go on even after the music had stopped.

This part of the evening was easy. How would I deal with Trinity? I lunch there regularly but dinner is a much more serious business and I'd only done this once before, in the company of friends. Recalling what I had been taught, I walked into the parlour, a wee bit self-conscious in my pin-striped suit, admired the nicely burning coal fire (only it's not - I've been informed it's a gas fire burning over fake glowing coals), nodded at everyone (there were only two people there) and helped myself to a pre-dinner glass of Gewurztraminer. Then I settled down in an armchair and read the International Herald Tribune, waiting for the dinner call. Just as I was beginning to fear it would be a very quiet evening, who should walk into the parlour but Amartya Sen, accompanied by another distinguished economist, Luigi Pasinetti. I introduced myself and soon found myself accompanying them to the Hall. Here we stood behind our chairs, a gong was struck and Prof. Sen (as a former Master of Trinity) along with the Vice-Master recited alternate lines of the following:

A. Oculi omnium in te sperant Domine:
B. Et tu das escam illis in tempore.
A. Aperis tu manum tuam,
B. Et imples omne animal benedictione.

For those who don't know Latin, this means "thanks, God, for the incredibly tender grilled breast of goose that we are about to get, making this one of the best Trinity meals I've had so far". We then sat down and the conversation, as well as the 1998 vintage red wine, flowed pleasurably. It's not often I get to dine with someone I admire so much! I also sensed that Prof. Sen welcomed the opportunity to chat a little about India. I asked him for his take on the Anna Hazare business and and he said "well if you're a fan then you're going to be disappointed by my answer". So in the end we sort of agreed, though we didn't come to a conclusion on whether that movement had now run out of steam (he seemed to think so) or that it will rise again because it resonates with the middle-class (which was my view). Later we also talked about Sonia Gandhi where again we agreed on basics (he thinks well of her, as do I) but differed on how important had been the role of her Italian background (my view: growing up in the Euro-left bastion of Torino, a city deeply influenced by Antonio Gramsci who studied there and the economist Piero Sraffa who was born there, had a major impact on her thinking. Prof. Sen's view: that she became what she is by intelligently studying and understanding the situation in which she found herself. Actually both views could be correct, so again we did not really disagree). Prof. Sen did mention, by the way that he was introduced to Sonia-ji right here in Trinity College, on The Ave (the road with moss-covered trees that featured in a previous posting on my blog), by her then boyfriend Rajiv Gandhi.

Subsequently, over the rhubarb crumble and custard, I conversed with the person on my left, a genial professor of biology who among other things is Director of the Museum of Zoology in Cambridge. He cordially invited me to visit this museum. This happens a lot - at a previous High Table meal I had met the very kind Dean of the Chapel at Trinity, who invited me to attend Choral Evensong. Sometimes I feel I owe an invitation to these people in return. Since I'm co-organising a 6-month research programme on String Theory at the Isaac Newton Institute, I could of course invite these worthy Dons to see the Institute. But all they would find is a bunch of people sitting around drinking coffee. Perhaps I could pass it off as another kind of zoological museum...

Web of darkness

2012-01-18T16:53:00.002+05:30

Pretty much every James Bond movie since the beginning of time has been about villains out to take control of the world. The villains usually do this by manufacturing a bomb with blue flashing lights all over it and a sign saying "Warning: This bomb will bring about the end of the world". They are foiled at the last minute by an immaculately dressed Bond floating/sailing/driving/flying/bungee jumping into the heart of the mess. But the problem with these movies, entertaining as they are, is the basic premise that someone would be able to "take control of the world".

Now that's all changed. Unknown to a lot of people outside the US (I was also only dimly aware until yesterday) there is an ongoing attempt to take over the internet. Which, in case you haven't yet realised, would be exactly the same thing as taking over the world. This awful piece of villainy is to be perpetrated using a bill called SOPA currently being pushed in the USA. As a result Wikipedia, a place I consider my second home, is offline today in protest (and therefore the link in the previous sentence is not to the Wikipedia entry on SOPA but to a video on the website of The Guardian). More precisely, English-language Wikipedia is offline though French, Italian and even Hindi Wikipedia are very much around. Please go check for yourself by following this link if you speak French and this one if you speak Hindi.

I can't tell you much about the consequences of SOPA, but can highly recommend this recent article from The Guardian. Meanwhile, if things get too bad then avid supporters of freedom of speech may consider getting into Onion Routing. Oops, you can't read about it on Wikipedia today. Try again tomorrow.

Bustle in my hedgerow

2012-01-17T00:50:00.001+05:30

Two weeks since I got to Cambridge, the world has turned upside-down, twice. Strictly from my personal point of view. The first week started unpromisingly with lost baggage, failure to open a bank account, and a sniffly cold. Then, just as things were looking up again, I had a literally shattering experience - I dropped my Samsung smartphone and cracked its "unbreakable" gorilla-glass front. In the second week, by contrast, all is bliss (except for the poor phone, which is on its way to Samsung India for repairs). Britain is back to being Britain.

That is to say, sometimes cold and rainy, and sometimes even colder and sunny. I seriously envy them their weather - the mere fact that they have it, while we in India don't (for us, one day = the next day in most places at most times of year). On sunny days in the countryside (well Cambridge isn't quite countryside, but it's a five minute walk from there) the birds are twittering, rabbits scampering and a few hardy berries and winter flowers busy growing. Frost covers the fields like a fine sprinkle of icing sugar. Moss likewise coats tree trunks, making them look like gigantic "hara-bhara" kababs. (I'll admit it's dinnertime and I'm getting hungry.)

Moss-covered tree trunks on The Avenue, Trinity College

Meanwhile, and this is a key point about Britain, the hedges are tidy. One could not imagine Britain without its tidy hedges. All Britons are trained from birth to trim hedges, but since they spend evenings at the pub and mornings suffering a hangover, they must be doing this just after midnight. Because I've never seen anyone actually trimming a hedge. And yet the evidence is unmistakable. Like the 91 GeV peak that dramatically signalled the Z-boson, the trimmed hedges are convincing evidence that Britons crawl out of their homes in the dead of night, gardening shears in hand.

So important indeed are hedges to the national culture that the British rock band Led Zeppelin, on an album whose lyrics mostly went "gonna make you sweat, gonna make you groove", felt constrained to invoke their beloved countryside with lines like "if there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now" and "in a tree by the brook, there's a songbird that sings". Now although songbirds are aplenty, there has never - ever - been the slightest bustle in any hedgerow I've seen. But that must be because I don't walk around just after midnight.

Each morning I cross the Great Court of Trinity College, followed by a half-dozen pairs of watchful eyes under bowler hats, all of whom simultaneously nod and say "good morning" whenever |x-y| < 1.5 metres. Of course Trinity has more than just hedges. Its Great Court is a rectangle made up of dissimilar buildings all mysteriously flowing into each other to form an incredibly harmonious scene. The only slight touch of discord is the chapel. Too long to fit in the Court, it therefore - almost literally - smashes its way past the Porter's Lodge and comes to rest on Trinity Street. Where I can observe it if I thrust my head out of my window. Newton's lodgings were at this intersection point and if he had ever, during his long years at Trinity, come running out onto the street naked except for a ridiculous wig shouting "Eureka" (or more likely "Natura valde simplex est et sibi consona") I would have seen him. Had I been here at the time, of course. As it is, I only get to see drunken people brawling at the spot.

And so to the question everyone has been wanting to ask. What about British food? What about it, indeed. Just as "tidy" sums up the countryside, "stodgy" sums up the food. Just think of the word "pudding". Say it over and over, slowly. Doesn't it sound like something leaden that will sit on your stomach all night and induce nightmares? Well that's true enough, but puddings are actually the best part of British food. What one needs to worry about are things like pies and stews drowned in the legendary and eternally mysterious "brown sauce".

They do try to be adventurous. At the Trinity dining hall (about which more another time) they recently served Thai Green Curry. I'm not colour blind and I could tell right away it wasn't green. I tasted it and discovered they had left out the crucial ingredient. To paraphrase Cambridge's most famous local band, Pink Floyd: "If you don't put in chillies, you can't make Thai Curry. How can you make Thai Curry if you don't put in chillies?". I'll try telling that to the bowler hats tomorrow, but my days of walking through Great Court may end sooner than expected.

And there's another part of Cambridge where the Gown ends and the Town begins. There you find rows of shops called "Al Amin" and "Curry Queen" and "Al-Casbah". Most of these are run by Bangladeshi ex-auto-rickshaw-drivers. They sit in the back counting their profits as gownless Brits pop in (I LOVE this phrase! Pop in. Pop in. Pop in. You try it now.) The customers eat the hottest curries ever and drink themselves silly. Then the good Bangladeshis go home where, presumably, a civilised Bengali meal awaits them. After that they sleep well and don't even bother to trim the hedges. I can understand.

Lenin and the Indian press

2011-12-22T23:07:00.000+05:30

Today a reader posted this comment on my most recent posting about hygiene:

Hi Sunil,

I hope you don't mind if I raise a point unrelated to this blog post. Perhaps you are aware of the fact that Times of India is one of the biggest culprits in the paid news scandal. Here are two links that you may find interesting.

www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2011/feb/20/press-freedom-india

www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/sainath/article2523649.ece

I have seen you referring to ToI articles in multiple blog posts, and this comment was prompted by such an observation. (However, I don't mean to say that we should be boycotting ToI.)

Regards.
Sayan

By its own admission this comment is unrelated to hygiene (except quite distantly) but relates to concerns I've raised on this blog in the past and to some thoughts that have been forming in my mind of late. So I thought it's a good idea to quote it here to open the discussion.

The Guardian link above dates from February 2011 and recounts a "sting" operation on the Times of India group. The stinger, posing as the PR person for a private company, asked a company called Medianet owned by Bennett Coleman (who are also the owners of the Times of India) to help him buy coverage of his company's party in the Delhi Times. Medianet agreed to do so for a fee and said it could be dressed up as a news story if celebrities were present. It also offered help with purchasing celebrities.

The other link, from The Hindu, is an article by the respected journalist P. Sainath (about whom I've briefly blogged here in the past). It concerns a different paid news scandal, involving the former Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Ashok Chavan, and Marathi newspapers Maharastra Times and Lokmat (the former being the Marathi version of Times of India and therefore belonging again to our friends Bennett Coleman). These worthy journals, among others, carried full pages of articles purporting to be news items that lavished praise on the CM ahead of elections. Sometimes identical articles appeared in different newspapers. Often the page was entirely free of explicit advertisements, contrary to usual practice.

Now the CM's own financial declarations show no payment having been made to these papers. So either the press was being generous to the politician from the goodness of its heart (and rival papers were somehow producing identical articles), or else a cozy deal had been reached between the press and politicians. To investigate this question the Press Council of India formed a sub-committee that produced a report from whose preamble I quote:

The reader of the publication ... is deceived into believing that what is essentially an advertisement is in fact, independently produced news content. By not officially declaring the expenditure incurred on planting "paid news" items, the candidate standing for election violates the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961 ... Finally, by not accounting for the money received from candidates, the concerned media company or its representatives are violating the provisions of the Companies Act, 1956 as well as the Income Tax Act, 1961.

The Election Commission of India tried to probe this case but Mr Chavan fought back with a court case seeking to prevent them. This case was dismissed recently by the Delhi High Court. The Press Council sub-committee's report, by its own admission based on a lot of circumstantial evidence, was sought to be buried by the Council which replaced it with a censored summary of its own. But recently the Central Information Commission has ordered the PCI to publish the full 71-page report of the Sub-Committee and you can find this (along with the shorter censored Council report) on this page. Besides describing the cases I've referred to above, the long report also names certain private companies (Videocon, Kinetic Motors and Gillette among others) that are suspected to have paid newspapers/TV channels to have their products favourably described in a "news" segment. The full report is worth reading though the reliance on circumstantial evidence is something of a disappointment, as they themselves admit:

Though the phenomenon of widespread practice of "paid news" has been verbally confirmed and vindicated by politicians and campaign managers of political parties, there is no recorded documentation that would firmly establish that there has been exchange of money between media houses/advertisement agents/journalists and politicians/political parties. The problem in establishing the practice of "paid news" is simply one of obtaining hard proof or conclusive evidence.

If you take the above story together with past incidents such as the Niira Radia scandal (about which I blogged a year ago) in which the unethical behaviour of major mediapersons Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi was umasked in their own voice in wiretapped telephone recordings, then a rather ugly picture emerges of the Indian press. However clearly it's a very divided house. I'm proud to note that the PCI report mentions the late journalist Ajit Bhattacharjea, who was married to my Masi these last many years, as an example of someone who has consistently pushed for better press ethics.

Today Ms Dutt and Mr Sanghvi have received no punishment and are totally rehabilitated, unlike some of the business people and politicians they seem to have facilitated. Companies like Medianet will perhaps continue to sell news pages and celebrities to private companies. At some level I wonder if the readership even cares. Lenin would have been pleased, for he once said: The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses.

They're doing a good job.

The hygiene challenge

2011-12-17T23:15:00.000+05:30

During a recent vacation, which offered time to muse and ponder, I found myself becoming more and more fascinated by the subject of good hygiene and its opposite, public filth. It started in Agra where I had to wait over an hour in a queue to enter the grounds of the Taj Mahal, in a narrow lane surrounded by choked sewers, cow dung and flies. A huge goat in a blue sweater (I'm not making this up, see below) stood at the entrance of a jewellery shop the whole time, decorating it with a shower of turd pellets which seemed to bother no one but myself.

By the time I was admitted to the relatively spotless grounds of the Taj, I was in no mood to appreciate the symmetry and tranquillity of Shah Jahan's monument to love. So I started to ponder over root causes. What are the reasons why India is so hygienically challenged? Government or people? Urban or rural? Modern or ancient? Is religion a cause of the problem or does it help? Poverty must be relevant, but exactly to what extent? How do we compare with other countries (or regions of other countries) where the economic situation is comparable?

I recalled that on my return to India about 28 years ago, I was assured by a few eminent members of the chattering classes that India was a "slovenly country" and I was making a mistake coming back to it. From then until today I've heard that type of distanced criticism about India a number of times and it is frustrating, since lots of tongue-clicking is not an answer to any problem. Nor is the standard explanation of the chatterati for every problem in India: that it's somehow down to corrupt or apathetic politicians. I've started to think, more and more, that the most interesting answers lie in other directions, and that the chatterers about whom I'm being so uncharitable are an important part of the problem. But more about that later.

Over the last couple of days I've spent some time surfing the net on the topic of India's hygiene problem. But there seems to be very little available in the nature of information or analysis. The standard search results tend to consist of "reports" making content-free statements like "India is the filthiest country in the world". A good example of what I mean is found in this article. It breathlessly announces that "According to the latest Global Hygiene Home Truths Study 2010, conducted across eight countries, India has topped most of the categories that reveal high contamination levels." It continues with this gem: "Dirt levels of refrigerators for world stood at 46 per cent, while India registered 70 per cent. Kitchen table dirt levels for world were 36 per cent compared to 75 per cent for India".

This seems to be a shining example of bad science. Most Indians don't have refrigerators or kitchen tables, so the "India" here really means middle-class India. Even if you suspend that particular objection, the concepts used and numbers presented are pathetically ill-defined (are they really making the comical claim that Indian kitchen tables are three-quarters dirt, whatever that is, and only one-quarter granite or wood??). So then I tried to head for the website of the Global Hygiene Council, the originators of this weird survey. It turns out that the Council is sponsored by Reckitt Benckiser, better known as the folks who make Dettol and a bunch of household cleaning products. At once it becomes clear why this survey focuses on kitchen tables and has all the makings of a "scare the middle-class" article. The good old profit motive.

A somewhat more informative recent report from the Times of India quotes India's rural development minister Jairam Ramesh on the subject of hygiene. A couple of years ago Mr Ramesh, then the environment minister, had famously said "if there was a Nobel Prize for dirt and filth, India would win it hands down". In the recent report, referring to the figures that 58% of India' s population, as against 4% of China's, practices open defecation, he remarked: "I consider these numbers a matter of great anguish and shame. We must make sanitation a political campaign like Gandhiji did. Kerala, Sikkim, Maharashtra, Haryana and Himachal are doing well but other states have to pick up significantly." He then promises to focus on "nirmal gram abhiyan" (which translates as "clean village campaign") and informs us that it has already worked well in 25,000 villages in India but needs to be extended to the remaining 600,000 villages.

Googling "nirmal gram abhiyan" leads to this page of Guidelines which is quite informative. For the first time I am seeing some analysis and some offered solutions. One of the observations in these Guidelines is that:

"Thepractice of open defecation is reinforced by traditional behaviour patterns andlack of awareness about the health threats posed by it. At the same time, thereis little awareness about the potential health and consequent economic benefitsof sanitation facilities... The safe disposal of solid and liquid waste isnot accorded priority at either the family or community level. There is noplanned effort in rural schools to inculcate good hygienic habits in children."

Then it starts to get a little polemical, and I sort of enjoy that when it comes from the GOI even if I don't agree with all that they say. Here is how it continues:

"One of the principal, though unstated, reasons why peoplehave not come forward to join any sanitation-related movement is because itlacks social prestige (this may be due to caste, age-old beliefs, taboos and practices).The upper strata of society have not concerned themselves with this issue at all. They have preferredinvolvement in the national-literacy programme; the immunization programme; thefamily welfare programme; the girl child; the non-conventional energyprogramme; the welfare of the disabled; afforestation; environmentalpollution (not related to sanitation) such as air and river water pollution;and now, the latest craze is to join the awareness campaign on AIDS.

An equally important reason is that the construction oflatrines involves a monetary expense. People would prefer to utilize theirmoney to satisfy other felt needs, such as consumer goods.

In the circumstances, there is an urgent need for awareness-creation forfelt-need and demand generation for sanitary latrines- the link betweensanitation, health and safe drinking water needs to be emphasized, andcommunity participation ensured for the sustainability of the behaviour-changein the community."

Now all this is at one level quite irritating, the sarkar attempting to malign everyone except itself: Rich people want to work for celebrity-rich issues like AIDS while the poor spend all their money on mobile phones instead of toilets. And so on. But this is no different from the way the "upper strata of society" spends all its time trying to malign the government. And at least unlike the chatterers, the government has a fairly detailed action plan, including a list of target areas in the first phase, that you can read about by following the link above.

Once you get over the irritation, there is some content in the criticisms. While India's very poorest clearly can afford nothing except some occasional food, there is an enormous section of our society that is still quite poor but has a little spending money, who do not consider sanitation worth spending on - for example giving far higher priority to clothes, rituals and marriage celebrations. It is this class and their attitudes that one would like to see compared with, say, comparably poor people in Vietnam or Thailand. I strongly suspect people in the latter two countries perform better than us on hygiene indicators (and spend less on rituals and weddings) and I'm not speaking of capital cities but the hinterland where people are still genuinely poor.

Likewise the Indian urban middle class has tended to shun the hygiene issue as a problem of "other people". While criticising the proliferation of slums in cities as due to "politicians and their vote banks", we have tended to ignore that the people living in slums are after all fellow Indians seeking honest work and deserve a clean place to live. Not to mention the obvious fact that they are indispensable as labour in our homes, where they wash dishes for example. So even if middle-class people had no altruistic feelings, they could have shown some enlightened self-interest in ensuring that the people who work in their homes live in a hygienic environment.

Finally there is the elephant in the room, tangentially alluded to in the Guidelines I quoted above: the role of religion. The caste system has made us, forgive my bluntness, incapable of taking responsibility for our own shit. Or our garbage. Places of worship should convey to their followers a sense of responsibility for personal and social cleanliness, and I suspect that in India they fail miserably in this, particularly the social aspect. The notion of ritual cleanliness, fundamental in our country, makes things worse: people are deluded into believing they are keeping themselves clean when they are not.

If our temples (and schools) taught hygiene and nothing else, they would make a valuable contribution to society and we would not have so many sporadic garbage dumps comfortably sitting in backyards. Unfortunately this photograph, which I took in Jodhpur a few days ago, is not encouraging.

Ode to the Delhi Metro

2011-11-04T17:25:00.004+05:30

(with apologies to P.B. Shelley etc)

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert
That from Delhi airport, or near it
Makest a rapid start
Amidst profuse strains of beeping alarms.

Faster still and soon,
From the earth thou springest,
Into the smog of Dhaula Kuan;
Through grey surroundings thou wingest,
And gleaming still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the silvery lightning
Of the sunken tunnel,
Over which the crowds are frightening,
Thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

Keen as are the blue dots
Above the doors front and rear,
Whose intense lamp tells us
How far on our way we are,
Until we hardly see, we feel that we are there.

All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
Declaiming in Hindi and English
From an unseen cloud
"Watch the gap 'tween train and tracks", indeed we should.

Who thou art we know not;
What is most like thee?
Not the squalid subway trains
Of Paris, New York, London
Narrow, decrepit and, on warm days, smelly.

Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Is the bilingual pleasure
That in your final announcement's found,
Ham is samay New Delhi station pahunch rahe hain!

Teach me half the gladness
That thou, o train, must know;
Such harmonious madness
From my journey shall flow,
The world should travel then, as I am traveling now.

Sporting chance?

2011-10-30T13:32:00.003+05:30

Sports and religion are two fields of human activity where absurd statements seem to pass unchallenged a lot. Actually there are a few prominent people who challenge statements made on behalf of religion: Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are prime examples, quite different from each other too. But when it comes to sports I don't know of any prominent critics, so I'll just have to try my own hand.

The present posting is inspired by this article wherein Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton says he accepts the risks of racing. Commenting on the recent deaths of Dan Wheldon and Marco Simoncelli in racing accidents, he admits this is on the minds of the fraternity as the Grand Prix starts in Delhi and then comes out with the following gem:

"But you have got to do what you do because you love it. It is a sacrifice and a risk that we all take. No one wants to be in those situations but, for me, if I was to pass away, I cannot imagine a better way, personally. I have always said if I was going to go, then in a racing car would be the way to do it. It is what I love."

This statement may not appear absurd to people and it certainly doesn't appear to have invoked a chorus of condemnation. But imagine the same thing said by a modern-day version of Timothy Leary who liked experimenting with mind-altering drugs: "If I was going to go, then high on LSD would be the way to do it. It is what I love". What an outcry there would be!

In fact you don't have to imagine it - music legends Michael Jackson and Amy Winehouse died prematurely because of their excessive dependence on drugs (and alcohol in the latter case) and in the popular view their deaths are far from glorified.But if Mr Hamilton's comment is appropriate then we must reconsider. Presumably MJ and AW were doing what they loved. There is plenty of evidence that the success of their art was correlated with their wild abuse of chemicals. Without heroin there would have been no Amy Winehouse album "Back to Black", recently judged the biggest selling album in the UK in the 21st century. I've listened to it a lot and it's a truly brilliant work: depressing and deranged but original, powerful and intelligent. Comparison with a Van Gogh painting would not be out of place.

It's obviously not my point that musicians or other artists are right to fry their brains and die at 27 like Amy or 50 like MJ. But why is it OK, even noble somehow, to get in a machine and spin round a racetrack like a maniac and occasionally collide, spin out of control and die? Wheldon was 33 and Simoncelli a mere 24. Compare their short lives to that of drug guru Timothy Leary who not only experimented with drugs during the heady 1960's but urged others to take them. He was imprisoned and even called "the most dangerous man in America" (by the most dangerous man in America at the time, Richard Nixon). Yet he lived until the ripe age of 76 and even inspired a nice song, "Legend of a Mind", by the Moody Blues. It makes you wonder.

They are like that only

2011-10-30T10:11:00.003+05:30

Readers of my blog will know that "profiling" (racial, ethnic and other) is a form of injustice that disturbs me considerably. I blogged about a recent incident here.

Over the years I realised that my strong distaste for profiling was not universally shared. A decade ago I spent a year at Princeton, starting a couple of weeks after the 9/11 attacks, and read with dismay as numerous incidents of profiling unfolded, some leading to deaths and others merely to absurd situations like this one (on balance though, I have to say that the number of such incidents was extremely modest in post 9/11 USA compared to say the anti-Sikh and anti-Muslim pogroms in India). But when I sought to raise the issue at the lunch table in Princeton, a very respected physicist shocked me by saying that a few people being wrongly profiled was quite natural and acceptable in the prevailing situation.

Since then I've encountered this sort of "tolerance" of injustice on a surprising number of occasions. What disturbs me is not that it exists but that it can be found among people who are (or believe they are) well-meaning liberals. These people may themselves bear no ill-will toward the community being profiled, but for some reason are willing to express opinions that end up encouraging the biases of others far less liberal than themselves.

Which brings me to the topic. Recently the Vice-Chancellor of Hyderabad Central University ended up in a confrontation with students at his university who hail from the North-East of India. According to the reports, it started with a couple of incidents of alcohol-fueled violence on campus, in which some students from the North-East were implicated. Thereupon the VC is said to have convened a meeting of faculty members from the same region and "informed them that the university administration would carry out a series of reform measures to curb consumption of alcohol and drugs on campus and that he would "start" with the northeastern community." (the quote is from this Times of India article). This led to considerable resentment from the students, and accusations of racial profiling. In particular an association of students from the North-East pointed out during their protest that other non-North-Eastern students had been involved in the drinking incidents that provoked the row. They also complained that they themselves were constantly being profiled by students around them ("are you cooking dog meat?" etc) and the VC's action would only make things worse.

I waited several days before blogging about this, hoping that it would all somehow turn out to be a mistake and that the VC, someone I know well and who moreover blogs at this site, had never actually said what he was accused of saying: that he wanted to "start with the northeastern community". But though there has been a creditably profuse apology, which seems to have been accepted by the students concerned, there has in fact been no denial of the original accusation, neither in the press nor on the VC's blog. So I assume that he did decide to address this problem by "starting" with the NE students.

Which leads to a lot of possibilities, all very unsavoury and all taking place anyway. When riots take place or there are bomb attacks, the tendency is to "start with the Muslims". This demonises a whole community, some believe rightfully. The questions that rarely gets prominence are: (i) when placing human beings into categories, are we exercising objective choices or indulging in knee-jerk reactions? (ii) when singling out a category of human beings for reform, what message do we send to those members already completely innocent of the charge?, (iii) what is gained by focusing on entire communities rather than individuals?

To illustrate my points: about (i), one could well argue that terrorist attacks today are motivated by religious fundamentalism, so instead of drawing a bracket around Muslims, one could more appropriately draw it around religious fundamentalists of all hues. This is not to say one should actually do this -- even among religious fundamentalists, only very few are motivated to actually commit violence. The question should in fact be turned around: by bracketing very general categories ("North-Easterners", "Muslims" etc) one includes so many irrelevant people in the net that the real culprits can easily slip out of it. On point (ii), we have for years been seeing the effect of profiling on Kashmiri youth, who find they are all considered "suspected terrorists" and, not at all surprisingly, have reacted with a profound hatred for the Indian state.

There are other forms of profiling not based on ethnicity or religion. Some years ago I had a heated argument with a close friend (and reader of this blog). The issue at hand was an accusation of gender-based discrimination by a female faculty member against the Director of her institution. I had asked my friend if she knew the facts of the case, and my friend responded that though she did not have any hard evidence, she was inclined to believe the accusations because gender-based discrimination in academia was extremely common.

Now on the latter point, I heartily agree with my friend. The problem of gender-based discrimination in Indian academia is huge and its existence is almost totally denied even today (ironically a lot of it is based on profiling, e.g. "why admit girl students for an advanced degree when they'll just get married and stay home in the end"). Nevertheless, using this as "evidence" against the Director in a gender discrimination case amounts to profiling. While it may be good fun to profile Directors, it's not right.

Nor is it right when Directors - and VC's - resort to profiling. Moreover it's not constructive or helpful in any situation. So my advice to VC's is, when you feel the urge to place a community within brackets, Just Say No.

Fine and dreary

2011-10-06T13:36:00.011+05:30

There's a BBC weather report that still sticks in my mind though I viewed it at least a decade ago. That year the monsoon was showing signs of failing in and around Bombay. July had been largely sunny with very little precipitation and if it didn't rain soon, the city's water supply would be in a lot of trouble. During that stressful period I turned on my TV to see a cheerful BBC weather-person wave her hands airily (why do they always wave their hands airily?) in the direction of Bombay on the map, and say "the weather in the West of India is fine". I felt like screaming: "it's not fine you dummy!!!".

She was using a word that, in Britain, is synonymous with "sunny". The Oxford English Dictionary offers "bright and clear" as one of the meanings of "fine", but the word originates from Latin via Old French and its original meaning is "of very high quality". It's only British weather that establishes a connection between the two meanings.

What I wonder is, why don't weather-people stick to words that have a well-defined scientific meaning (e.g. "sunny") rather than those which include a value judgement, like "fine" (and while they're taking my advice, could they please stop waving their hands as if they're swatting gigantic Finnish mosquitoes!!).

My memory of the incident above was revived by a new and highly loaded adjective that's started appearing on my Android smartphone of late. Accuweather.com, from where it loads its weather report, describes Bombay's weather today as "dreary". This offended me instantly. Bombay can be hot and humid, and today it's rather hot and quite humid. That's typical October weather and it comes as a slight relief after all the rain we've been having.

Is it dreary? Look at the photo, taken from my window a few minutes ago, and then at the OED's account of the origin of "dreary":

Old English drēorig ‘gory, cruel’, also ‘melancholy’, from drēor ‘gore’, of Germanic origin; related to German traurig 'sorrowful'

The photo certainly doesn't look melancholy to me, in fact it never gets melancholy around here. As for sorrowful... I can think of sorrowful German and English cities (Potsdam and Durham come to mind right away), but I'm sure their weather reports never say "dreary", even when it is.

Anyhow I expect this problem will go away in the next few decades once India becomes a dominant global power and wrests control of the weather reports. If I'm still alive, I'll be composing this report for Vancouver in mid-summer: "damp and chilly, major risk of depression, travel advisory in effect"...

My trip to the dark side

2011-10-03T23:13:00.013+05:30

Like many others of my generation, my computer life first started with DOS. Dave Barry's article about it, which you can read here, still brings back memories and is funny enough to reduce me to tears. I imported an IBM PC for my brother in 1984 and managed to get out of the customs hall at Bombay airport without paying a penny in bribes. Not only that, several customs officers slapped me cordially on the back as I left, saying "it's good that scientists like you are returning to the country". Those really were the days!

It was on another IBM PC running DOS, which Ashoke Sen had imported from the US, that we typed out this humongous paper, processed it in TeX - which took more than an hour (at roughly one minute per page) - and then printed the final version on a dot-matrix printer, which took an entire night. I still have a guilty conscience about the last part, since after the first twenty pages or so I went to bed, around 4 AM, and when I returned at 10 AM my co-authors were still cheerfully watching the printer make noises like a diseased crow and spit out a page every ten minutes.

Thankfully the DOS phase didn't last very long and pretty soon Linux came along (printers got better, too). I was among the first Linux users in India (you can read about this here) and it's shaped my world-view for a couple of decades now. Initially there was all this tension about whether a new installation would work at all and if so, how one could set the screen resolution and colours, get TeX and LaTeX running and install a printer. Ubuntu rendered all that trivial, so for the last few years things have been quite pleasant. I keep a dual-boot laptop with Ubuntu/Windows, the latter primarily so I can make Powerpoint files for popular talks (ppt is by far the best thing Micros**t have ever made).

Talking of laptops, three years ago I bought a Dell XPS 1330, which is a wonderful machine if you can get over its principal shortcoming - it gets hot enough to fry an omelette, and could even burn the little rivulets of melted cheese that usually leak out from my omelettes.That I'm using it even at this moment is due to my wise decision of purchasing a three-year service contract with Dell at the outset. To date, they have replaced the motherboard four times and the screen twice, each time because of overheating and all for free and without complaint. In fact, whenever I'm bored I just phone Dell and they instantly ship me a motherboard and screen (only joking). I think I'll suggest a small fridge instead, it would be cheaper for them.

Before this vaporises, I'd like a new laptop, and it's not going to be a Dell. So what's it going to be then? My requirements are that it should be fairly small (ideally a 13" screen), lightweight, reasonably powerful and have excellent battery life. Price is not a major issue. I expected there would be loads of such machines these days and I could pick and choose, but that isn't the case. Netbooks are light but of course don't do very much. The non-netbook laptops that you see in stores in Bombay are all inexpensive 15 to 17-inchers that weigh a ton. I learned on the net that my preferred category is called "business ultraportables" and visited many dozen websites over the last week. The Sony Vaio S-series, Samsung's new 900 Series and the Lenovo Thinkpad X220 all seemed like interesting possibilities, with Intel i3-i5-i7 processors and 2-4 GB of RAM. All would allow me my favourite Ubuntu/Windows dual-boot configuration. Then there was the Macbook Air, though some years ago it had given me the distinct impression of merely looking pretty and doing nothing much. Anyway I wanted my beloved Ubuntu and have never been attracted to Apple products or Mac OS.

Now as you'll see below, it's one thing to ask how these machines mutually compare, and another to ask how their sales people compare, and yet another to ask how their sales people in India compare! For the machine comparison, some reviews I located on the net said the Samsung 900 series laptops are serious MacBook Air competitors (both 11" and 13" varieties). Other reviews praise the Lenovo Thinkpad X220 to the skies. Yet others believe Sony Vaio's are the best because unlike the other ultraportables they have optical drives. I tried to buy each of these in turn.

I started with the Sony Vaio. My IT team assured me that although these used to have the reputation of being smart but overpriced, their current stuff was cheap and plasticky - and still overpriced, of course. They were able to borrow a brand new S-series model from the School of Mathematics for me to look at, and I have to say that "cheap and plasticky" described its appearance very well. It was also a shade heavy, somewhat over 2 kg. Now, some of the premium S-series laptops are said to be much more elegant (according to international reviews) but here's the rub - Sony India wouldn't actually show me anything, not even if I travelled to a shop of their choice. I could only get to see a given model if I bought it first.

Next came Samsung. Some reviews claimed it was the best competitor to the MBA in the market, and beautiful too, so I got my IT staff to phone their Bombay office. Turns out they don't visit interested businesses with a demo model - surprising given that their 13-incher carries a stiff price tag of a little over Rs 1,00,000 and is new on the market. Where can we see it then? Their reply was "Croma" - a chain of stores started by the Tatas where you can pay extra-high prices and enjoy rude service. I phoned Croma and was told (rudely! have to admire their predictability!!) that the branch I was asking about didn't carry this model. Where might I find it then? Oops too late, Croma hung up on me. Phoned Samsung. Which Croma branch in Bombay has your machine in stock? They asked for my name and phone number. I asked why this was a pre-condition to getting the desired information. They wouldn't budge. I declined to share my details and we had reached an impasse. So, no Samsung 900-series for me. The reviews did mention a poor battery life of two hours, so I didn't feel very bad.

Now it was Lenovo's turn. Like Sony Vaio, most of the models they market in India are obsolete elsewhere. But they do sell the Thinkpad X220 which is current and rather popular, and has impressive credentials. It has a 12.5" IPS screen (this is a relatively new LCD technology, IPS stands for "In-Plane Switching" and is supposed to be far superior to the TN or Twisted Nematic variety which offers a very narrow viewing angle). The 6-cell battery gives an amazing 8 hours of usage under actual test conditions. With a 9-cell battery and an optional "slice battery" base, this goes up to 23 hours. Clearly this is the laptop to have if you're planning to be shipwrecked! And it weighs just 1.6 kg.

So I called Lenovo's sales number at 1-800-425-3353 and got a recording in Kannada. Not sure what it said, but it definitely wasn't "swalpa adjust maadi", the only Kannada phrase I know. Twenty tries later I gave up and tried their Bombay office number. This answered with a voice menu that would not accept any inputs from me. Finally I called their Bangalore office and got a charming telephone operator who giggled when I recounted my adventures. She gave me the direct number of someone in Sales at their Bombay office, who I called immediately and - of course - he did not answer. For good measure I tried their customer service and it was consistently busy! Not reassuring.

Today came the final nail in the coffin - Lenovo India (contacted through resellers) reveal that they do not supply the highly rated IPS screen but only the NT. Moreover globally the IPS screen on the X220 turns out to have severe problems with image persistence (as 40 pages of complaints on this forum will attest). And the NT screen in a side-by-side comparison video with the IPS looks washed-out.

All this panicked me. In India there would be no replacement if I didn't like it. If I may permit myself a politically incorrect comment, in India a laptop, like a bride, is seen for the first time on the wedding day and thereafter is supposed to be for keeps!!

Having now run out of possibilities, I am going to take my friend Vishwanath's advice and go over to the dark side. The Macbook Air has the following plus points: (i) the same model is sold in India as everywhere else, (ii) it can be seen and handled at lots of shops, and frankly looks gorgeous, (iii) on the 13" version you can get an Intel i7 processor, 4 GB RAM and a 256 GB solid-state drive, (iv) it is slim bordering on anorexic and weighs just 1.3 kg. So all I have to do, really, is to give up Linux. I may be the first person to have moved over to the "fruit company" not just because of their product's dazzling looks, impressive build quality and clever advertising, but in large measure because of the combined crappiness of Sony Vaio, Samsung and Lenovo, particularly their Indian incarnations.

The price we pay

2011-09-18T22:23:00.005+05:30

Over the last few days following the Shoshana Hebshi incident (about which I wrote this blog) I've been musing over what, if anything, it teaches us.

Hebshi's own blog webpage provided a starting point for this train of thought. She has bravely kept her comments section unmoderated and her famous article now has more than 3000 comments. Trawling through them I found that a significant majority of them are fairly brief and say something like "As an American, I'm sorry and ashamed about what's happened". Many attempt to console Shoshana and some advise her to fight a legal case for wrongful detention. Many also point out that the US has changed for the worse since 9/11, becoming more of a police state and thereby handing a win to the terrorists. Some remark that the founding fathers of the United States would be turning over in their graves and quote Benjamin Franklin's resonant observation that "Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither".

However a rather significant percentage of comments on her blog (maybe one in four or even more) basically defend what happened, saying that the possibility of wrongful detention is the price everyone has to pay for increased security. Many of these people go on to say something like "America didn't start this, the terrorists started it on 9/11 and our government and security forces have reacted as well as they can". They cite the absence of major incidents in the US since 9/11 as "proof" that the security efforts are working well. Others add their fervent belief that the US only wants peace and has been unwillingly propelled into a warlike situation by evil external forces. These are the relatively polite commentators within this segment. Others are much more blunt and go out of their way to support profiling based on race and appearance, and some of these are explicitly abusive to Ms Hebshi.

So what do we learn at the end of everything? The premise that history started on 9/11 when warlike people attacked the hitherto peace-loving US will make a lot of history buffs gasp. Even the less grandiose theory that security efforts of the type recently undertaken on Shoshana and two nameless Indians make the US safer is rather dubious and can be, I feel, taken apart in a few lines (this kind of security is designed to convince the public that "things are being done" and has almost no relation to any meaningful thing actually being done. It's even been defended by saying this kind of action is "what the public wants to see", particularly surprising because the government is obliged to follow the Constitution rather than what people allegedly "want to see".) And yet, Americans are the most likely, I believe, of any people on earth to put a noble spin on the actions of their government and to ignore (or forget, or never bother to find out about) past history. Some of the most indefensible actions of their government abroad over a century, including military interventions, coups and assassinations, are generously sought to be defended (a professor in Princeton actually assured me that US foreign policy has always been sincerely in the best interests of the world at large!). And now apparently even the shrinking of human rights internally to the country is the "the price we pay" for security.

It's not my point that Americans are somehow dumb. The "idea of America" that has been communicated to its people over a long period, and occasionally modified at will by very clever politicans, is rather intoxicating and engaging. It enunciates the concept of a nation with a noble mission (under the watchful eye of an approving God) offering a dignified but strong and wrathful reply to outsiders bent on undermining this mission. Occasionally this story rings hollow in public (recall that during the Vietnam war a US major famously said 'It became necessary to destroy the town to save it,' (from Communism)) but for the most part it provides imagery that is seductive and easy to buy into.

Now this kind of ideology has been gaining ground in a part of India too for some time, and in the last few days it seems it has finally ripened. Almost exactly like Americans, Gujaratis have been seduced to put a noble spin on what their government and particularly their Chief Minister says and does. He has nourished on behalf of himself and his state the exact sense of nobility combined with victimhood that has made Americans focus on the (very genuine) positive aspects of their culture and society and ignore its occasionally destructive actions. As I've pointed out previously on this blog, Mr Modi is simultaneously a very competent administrator and a person whose credentials in respect to basic human rights are highly suspect (I must mention here that despite his recent attempts to imply the opposite, no court has yet exonerated him of some very serious charges).

One scenario that I think delights some people is that Mr Modi will take over India as a whole, maybe as soon as three years from now. From that day, if it comes, India will no doubt be infused with a seductive idea of its own nobility and unique mission under God. Far from criticising our government, as we now do daily, we will learn to spin its every action into a worthy one. The little sacrifices made by some of its (conveniently selected) citizens will be worth the price.

I can't resist pointing out that once this happens, we won't be entitled to criticise America any more...

Shock and awe

2011-09-15T11:56:00.002+05:30

This hasn't been reported too widely in the Indian press, but just a few days ago on September 11, three passengers on a commercial flight in the US (two of whom were apparently of Indian origin) were handcuffed and arrested from their seats upon landing and questioned in jail cells before being released without charges. Apparently this happened because the Indian passengers got up to use the toilets on the plane and a fellow-passenger reported that they were taking a suspiciously long time.

A beautiful blog account by the third arrested passenger, an American of mixed Saudi and Jewish decent called Shoshana Hebshi, describes her ordeal. It's titled "Shock and awe: Racially profiled and cuffed in Detroit". You should definitely read it here. The posting has already received over 2000 comments, many of which raise the issue of whether heightened threat-perception justifies what appears to be a constitutional violation (as per Wikipedia, the 4th amendment "guards against unreasonable searches and seizures, along with requiring any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause").

I simply couldn't read all 2000+ comments but just a few of them were sufficient to highlight the conflict here. Do Americans demand a liberal society and individual freedom and accept the risks this entails, or accept a monitored society with curtailed freedom in order to (possibly) reduce these risks? Opinions are sharply divided. I find it particularly fascinating that right-wingers, allegedly champions of individual liberty and government non-interference, are the ones who most strongly support random arrests and strip-searches as "the price one has to pay" to be secure.

The very same people oppose medical care being provided by the government to the poor and sick. Apparently in this case the "price one has to pay" is not worth paying? A particularly telling comment on this matter can be found in this article and video on the speech of presidential candidate Rick Perry, whose Tea-Party supporters recently cheered the idea that society should just let sick people die if they hadn't - for whatever reason - bought medical insurance.

I lived in the US during an era when right-wing activists were gunning down doctors who performed abortions - supposedly these were "pro-life" activists!! I realise I don't appreciate right-wing philosophy, but isn't it required to at least be internally consistent?

The prophet at home

2011-09-07T10:41:00.001+05:30

Yesterday was my father's 35th death anniversary. Time has somehow not managed to erase all the memories, and yesterday I could almost see him thumping the dining table (this happened a lot in his lifetime) and exclaiming "Therefore what??". This would be his usual reaction to any suggestive comment that lacked a clear and precise implication. He detested innuendo, among a lot of other things including humbug, flattery and dishonesty.

In his youth he had annoyed his parents with his characteristic bluntness. When partition was imminent, he had warned his father that the family should plan to liquidate its assets in Hyderabad (Sind) and move to what would become post-partition India. My grandfather reacted badly and failed to follow this advice, resulting in the loss of his property. Years later in 1958, by which time my parents were settled in Bombay and I was two, my father vented his resentment with uncharacteristic subtlety and indirectness in a small article for the Times of India. Disguised as a humour piece, it's titled "The prophet at home". I'm lucky to have the original clipping in my possession, with the date on the right side in my father's own handwriting. A scan is provided below (click to read). It says more about him than I possibly could, and I hope you enjoy it.

P.S. The son referred to in the article is not me but my elder brother.

The show must go on

2011-09-05T23:57:00.009+05:30

As today's cute Google Doodle reminds us, it's the birthday of the late Freddy Mercury, the flamboyant queen of the rock band Queen, a musician who changed the world and whose untimely passing affected me deeply. I'd assumed he had this effect on everyone, but recently I came across a colleague who had never heard of Freddy - so such people do exist! Whether you're one of them or not, you may want to read the Wikipedia entry linked above and then wade through each of the 15 Queen albums spanning over two decades. Or just read on.

I first heard the music of Queen when I went to the US as a graduate student in 1976. At the time they had a cult following and enjoyed the status of an "alternative" British hard rock band whose lead vocalist was flamboyant, outrageously effeminate and inclined to operatic outbursts. By then Queen had already released their masterwork, Bohemian Rhapsody, a song that successfully blended hard rock with opera, but it was too long and complex for the limited attention span of radio listeners and so remained restricted to connoisseurs. It surfaced every so often on WPLR 99.1 Classic Rock, my constant companion over five years at Stony Brook, which was among the few radio stations that dared to play longer and more complex songs. I came to enjoy Bohemian Rhapsody but it baffled me and I might not then have voted it one of the greatest rock songs ever (as I would today, without hesitation).

The lyrics are memorable, which means I can quote them from memory:

Is this the real life, is this just fantasy,
caught in a landslide, no escape from reality.

The singer goes on to recount his recent exploits:

Mamma, I just killed a man,
put a gun against his head,
pulled my trigger now he's dead,
Mamma, life had just begun,
and now I've gone and thrown it all away....

But then this storyline turns out to be allegorical: there's a staccato piano interlude and Freddy recites, in his trademark camp, operatic style:

I see a little silhouetto of a man,
Scaramouche, Scaramouche will you do the fandango

followed by cries of "Mamma mia", "Galileo", "Figaro" and remarkably "Bismillah, we will not let you go". Then it ends in a defiant blaze of hard rock, followed by a melancholy "nothing really matters to me" and the faint sound of a gong.

This "Bismillah" seems to be one of the few references in Freddie's music to his Eastern roots: he was an Indian Parsi after all, and studied at - where else - my school, St. Mary's, at Mazgaon in Bombay, before his parents migrated to England. The only other reference to Eastern/Persian roots that I can recall is the opening track, Mustapha, of Queen's 1978 album "Jazz" which mystifyingly begins "Ibrahim, Ibrahim, Allah Allah Allah will pray for you". Apparently the lyrics are a mix of Arabic and Farsi, besides English -- if you know all three languages you can judge for yourself here.

There was a fresh Persian connection after Freddie's death: apparently a compilation of Queen's hit songs was officially released in Iran in 2004. This collection included Bohemian Rhapsody but excluded the love songs (I can't imagine the Iranian censors swaying to the Elvis-like "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", and forget about "Fat Bottomed Girls"!!). Moreover the package contained Farsi translations of the lyrics, as well as an explanation of Bohemian Rhapsody: it's about a man who has accidentally killed someone and loses his soul to Shaitan (I assume the genuine Satan, not the US government...). Before he is executed he regains his soul from Satan by appealing to God with several "Bismillah"'s. I found it hard to believe this entire story about the release in Iran, but you can read a BBC report about it.

The year after I reached Stony Brook, Queen's status in America changed suddenly with the release of a pair of very short and powerful songs: "We Will Rock You" and "We Are The Champions". The foot-stomping rhythm of the first one quickly propelled it to the status of baseball anthem, and the second song, very moving and lyrical, fitted that theme perfectly... So then Queen became as American as peanut butter. But the songs are eternal and global: just today during a phone call, my friend Vishwanath sang me a short draft of "We Will Rock You" set by him to a Carnatic raga (Shree, apparently) and in my view this works very well too!

It's fair to say the other members of Queen were very important to the music, particularly Brian May about whom let me say a few words. To my knowledge he is the first and only rock guitarist to have a published paper in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society even before embarking on a stage career. Not only that, he completed his Ph.D. in astrophysics at Imperial College around the time I was visiting there, three years ago! That's not all that can be said about Brian: his guitar style was supremely original, and within Queen it also became an echo of Freddy's voice: fluid, bubbly, eloquent and occasionally hysterical. I do wish other astrophysicists I know sounded so good :-)

One of the two Queen songs that had the most powerful impact on me personally was "Play The Game":

Open up your mind and let me step inside
Rest your weary head and let your heart decide
It's so easy when you know the rules
It's so easy all you have to do
Is fall in love
Play the game

The other was "The Show Must Go On" which was written and performed when Freddie was seriously ill with AIDS. It has a haunting theme of optimism in the face of tragedy. Thinly disguised as the story of a stage musician putting on a brave face in a time of intense emotional heartbreak, it's obviously something a little different: the courageous, desperate outburst of a dying man. Opening with:

Empty spaces - what are we living for?
Abandoned places - I guess we know the score.
On and on, Does anybody know what we are looking for?

it touchingly reveals the internal turmoil of the singer:

Inside my heart is breaking,
My make-up may be flaking,
But my smile still stays on...

and closes with Freddy, our own Farrokh Bulsara, the Parsi kid from St. Mary's school with the protruding teeth, at the end of a short life lived to the full, screaming his lungs out:

I'll top the bill!
I'll overkill!
I have to find the will to carry on!
The show must go on...

See no politics, hear no politics

2011-08-30T12:36:00.002+05:30

Recent developments have strengthened my sense that Anna's movement is making a positive impact in the fight against corruption, even as I continue to have strong reservations about both the anti-democratic tone and the immediate goal (a strong unelected official). In particular I find myself agreeing with Aamir Khan, someone I've always respected, that there's nothing wrong with peaceful protest in a democracy. His suggestion to peacefully picket houses of MP's will also, I believe, cause the latter to appreciate the second word in "elected representatives". In this direction, I'm also strongly supporting the current demands of Team Anna to have a right to recall as well as a right to reject. These are both well within the ambit of democracy. Not surprisingly, the government is squirming at the thought while the opposition senses an opportunity.

Now for my worries. There has been an article circulating to the effect that Anna Hazare's methodology as applied by him in his "model village" Ralegaon Siddhi is heavy handed and undemocratic, as well as excessively tolerant towards caste-based discrimination. (Some of these accusations were also made about Mahatma Gandhi and in both cases they have a ring of truth.)

I'm particularly disturbed by Anna's reported view that it's OK to publicly flog drunkards in the village (according to the report he did the flogging himself) because, in his words "If you want change, it's sometimes necessary to be tough." Many including myself feel tough action is called for when men regularly get drunk and beat their wives and children instead of supporting them. However -- and this is one important way in which Gandhi differs from Hazare -- beating these men back simply cannot be the solution.

There are two more aspects of the Hazare agitation, more due to his supporters than himself, that worry me today. I think people need to take them seriously. One comes to mind in the light of actor Om Puri's recent rant describing politicians as "ganwars" (loosely translated as "village idiots"). A large proportion of urban India despises the rural base of politicians which they see as the root of the problem. If only we smart city people could run the country, goes the thinking, everything would be fine (in reality, I fear it would only be as fine as Satyam under Ramalinga Raju).

This urban-rural divide has occurred in recent memory in Thailand and torn it apart, for substantially similar reasons. Former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was popular with the rural poor and widely reputed to be corrupt, and the country saw violent confrontation on the streets between his supporters and those of businessman Sondhi Limthongkul. In the end elections were held and Shinawatra's daughter (note added later: I meant to say "sister") is in power. The analogy is incomplete because the Shinawatras are not any kind of villagers themselves, unlike the Laloo Prasad types at whom the Om Puri barb was presumably addressed. Clear the real issue is about the rural/urban origin not of the politician but of the people he or she represents. (Om Puri has repented and he's sensitive enough to understand he shouldn't have said it, but I'm sure the statement has already resonated with many).

I'll end by describing the second worrying aspect of the movement. This too is embodied by a superstar, none other than Lata Mangeshkar. Recently, India's current nightingale emitted the following tuneless tweet: "I don`t understand politics nor do I have an interest in it. But I feel, our country should be free from corruption, so I lend my support to the cause Anna Hazareji is fighting for". Anyone who claims to be uninterested in politics is deluded or lying -- politics permeates our life. And I wonder why it should be permissible to support a major national movement without understanding the basics of it. Thankfully, this lazy lady is counterbalanced by the energetic Aamir Khan who tells us he studied the different versions of the Lokpal Bill in detail before offering his opinion.

Anna, I will set you free

2011-08-18T22:40:00.005+05:30

It's rare for the Indian National Congress party to sing songs made famous by the Beatles, and if they have now suffered this fate they have only themselves to blame. Ignoring personal beauty (this is important) today's Anna perhaps resembles the girl of the Beatles song, who was once captivated by the singer but later asks him to set her free because someone else loves her more. In the present case the new lover corresponds to many millions of Indians who have been totally won over by Anna's charms. But cleverly, Anna doesn't ask to be set free, she simply refuses to eat. The Congress is left with no option but to sing "give back the ring to me and I will set you free" and one guesses they are now collectively wailing the lines of the chorus, which goes "What am I, what am I supposed to do? Oh oh oh oh oh oh".

But this is no three-minute song. It's at the same time the most deadly serious and hilariously comical thing to happen to India in decades. Indians very correctly want to be done with corruption, after all these years of being done in by it. But the proposed remedy - creating a "magical" position with virtually unlimited powers - seems to me at first sight to be disastrous. I'm not the only one to think so. A large number of serious people have observed that there is no magic wand to eliminate corruption, and an "ultimate authority" that supercedes the democratically elected sounds suspiciously like a dictator. My cousin Cheeta points out that an all-powerful Lokpal sounds suspiciously like what General Ayub Khan promised to be when martial law was declared in Pakistan in 1958 and he made himself President through a coup. In the beginning he was supposedly disgusted by the level of corruption and promised to cleanse his country of it, but eventually he was himself mired in accusations of corruption and nepotism and ended up rigging the 1965 presidential elections in his own favour.

So when a friend recently called to ask whether I would be joining a protest at Azad Maidan, I replied "I'm not a supporter of Anna Hazare". This friend was shocked at my lack of involvement. I didn't bother to remind him that, not so long ago, he (my friend, not Anna) had paid a bribe to try and get a job in a state-run organisation in Bombay. My pleas to him not to pay the bribe had gone unheeded at the time. This reinforces my concern about the present movement: should it be so easy for people who themselves indulge in corruption at the first opportunity to go around shaking their fists at elected politicians? When the list of people jumping on to this bandwagon includes rather suspicious businessmen and shady politicians (not to mention Varun Gandhi, in a class by himself) I feel this movement, even if its leaders are sincere, is pointing in the wrong direction. An emphasis on personal transformation and incremental change would seem to me more practical and ethically correct.

And yet, after the events of yesterday and today, I find my position a little shaky. Movements cannot be tailor-made, so the one that would be to my liking as I've described above may never happen. It might be more sensible to focus on what is actually happening and see if it has a chance to make some impact. And here I begin to see some rays of hope. The arrogant behaviour of the ruling party's most arrogant leaders has backfired and the Anna Hazare movement has got them on the run (they run mostly in circles, of course). Public enthusiasm and confidence, whose absence was always the main problem, is now growing exponentially. This cannot fail to spread some fear and alarm among corrupt sections of the government, bureaucracy, police and industry. In the prevailing atmosphere, even a small-time cop trying to make 50 rupees from a traffic violator might tremble at the thought of being reported or exposed. Conversely a citizen being forced to pay a bribe for what is rightfully theirs is sure to be more courageous and resist. A few incidents in this direction are already being reported. So I begin to think some good things could come out of this movement whether or not it achieves its stated goal.

Then again, I'm not totally sure. Abundant silliness is not the sole prerogative of the Congress party, but the birthright of all Indians. One wonders what to make of the blogs, emails and texts going round, most of them indicative of the infantile outlook of my fellow-countrymen even as these historic events play out. Here's one charming example posted in April:

Is relay news channels are supporting Anna Hazares protest and fighting against the Corruption then from tomorrow IPL matches are going to Start so ban publishing the news on this IPL matches because this may effect Nation wide protest and divert the issue of corruption.

And another:

let us citizens of India start no tax movement & non cooperative movement as gandhiji did. than and only than this government will undeerstnad. also this way our hard earned tax money will be saved.

Who could resist such a noble idea! But the one that finds most favour with me personally is an SMS that reads as follows:

My dear frnds. If all the black money comes back to India then-
Beer 8 Rs
Vodka 20 Rs
Whisky 35 Rs
Soda 1.25 Rs
At least now support ANNA!

Play it again, Shammi

2011-08-14T13:22:00.018+05:30

The actor Shammi Kapoor passed away early this morning, marking the end of an era of which I have some interesting memories. When I was four, my parents bought a flat on the third floor of a newly constructed apartment building, Blue Haven, in Bombay's Malabar Hill area. Shammi Kapoor bought flats 1 and 2, which came with an attached garden, on the ground floor of the same building. As a result I saw him quite often in my childhood.

Usually this was when he was about to drive off in one of his many foreign cars. I vividly remember his Ford Thunderbird coupé, which consisted of a few miles of engine followed by a relatively small passenger cabin with two gigantic (or so they seemed to me) beige leather bucket seats. It could barely make the turn up the steep curving driveway of Blue Haven. I never managed to enter this car, but was luckier with his Chevelle Malibu in which I managed to get a ride when his son Micky (as we knew him) drove it to Breach Candy, probably at the age of 15.

My parents were not Bollywood fans and so, paradoxically, though I knew our neighbour was a famous actor I had not actually seen any of his films. I would go to flats 1 and 2 to play with Micky (we are the same age) but never encountered his father except on special occasions like birthdays. Then in 1965 when I was 9, I was out somewhere and I remember my parents receiving some shocking news and taking me home in silence right away. Shammi Kapoor's wife, the charming Geeta Bali, had died of smallpox. Even before we reached home, municipal officers had arrived and we were all vaccinated against smallpox there and then.

The next day, standing on the staircase, I watched the coffin being taken out of the building. Thereafter Micky and his sister vanished for some time, and we heard they had been sent out of town to relatives for a while. Some years later Shammi Kapoor married the charming and elegant Neila Devi who had a brisk no-nonsense air about her and took over the task of rearing the children with evident affection and grace. She came from the princely family of Bhavnagar in Gujarat. I clearly remember once on her return from a foreign trip with her husband, Micky asked her if she had brought him the present she had promised to bring. She replied "I'm a Rajput, I always keep my promises."

Until her marriage Neila had been unconnected to Bollywood and had not seen Shammi Kapoor's movies! Shammi undertook to screen them for her at home on his 8mm projector. The kids in the building were invited, so I had the unique experience of watching such entertaining movies as "Dil Deke Dekho" and "Teesri Manzil" while the character dancing and singing and gyrating his hips on-screen was sitting right behind me. Around the same time Micky played a new song for me on the gramophone at his home, it was "badan pe sitaare lapete hue" from "Prince" and the movie was only released much later. Shammi Kapoor's songs were typically sung by legendary playback singer Mohammed Rafi, and I always associated the latter's voice with the former's face.

Two more memories from the 1970's are worth recounting. One day I answered the phone at home and a rather furious male voice asked for my mother. When I asked who was speaking, he said "Shammi Kapoor". It was unusual for him to call us, but it transpired that a lady living some floors above his flat had flung a bucketful of water onto his garden and drenched his guests. He was relying on my mother, whom he respected greatly, to sort things out. Another memory is of the time he came into the table-tennis room. This was just before he directed "Manoranjan" and he had become rather overweight. He asked if he could play with us and then, bulky as he was, roundly defeated all the kids of the building including myself.

In the early 1990's when I was no longer staying in the building, I learned from the papers that Shammi Kapoor had become an "internet guru". He was the first person I know of in India outside academia who talked so enthusiastically about the social possibilities of this novel phenomenon. It was typical of him to become fascinated with this at a time when others his age (notably including senior faculty members at TIFR!) were desperately trying to find reasons to ignore it.

One Bollywood film that I did manage to see soon after its release, in 1967, was "An Evening in Paris". In an iconic scene Shammi Kapoor, clad in an orange-striped bathrobe, dangles under a helicopter and sings "aasman se aaya farishta" to Sharmila Tagore while she is water-skiing. She responds with "You silly!" and "Don't be silly!", lines that - as some may recall - were a staple for heroines of 1960's Hindi films. Shammi remains undeterred by these accusations and, still singing, winches himself down from the helicopter onto a boat from where he approaches Ms Tagore and eventually bundles her into the helicopter. At this point she undergoes a surprising change of heart and admits that she loves him. Some will say it was the lure of a free helicopter ride, but I believe she had finally noticed that her suitor was "tall, athletic, lively, fair complexioned, green-eyed and with handsome features" (to quote Wikipedia).

Malice and/or incompetence

2011-08-11T11:19:00.001+05:30

I'm under some pressure from my brother and cousin to restart blogging, after a gap of around a month. Actually both of them have their own blogs, on which they've never posted anything -- which is a pity because both are eloquent and thoughtful people who love a good debate. So, with a faint hope that they will reciprocate, I'm now back to blogging and hope to be more regular.

Of late I've been fascinated by incompetence. It's hard to get away from this subject, obviously, but -- as a result of some trains of thought sparked off during conversations -- I've had the occasion to think a little about it.

When the 2G spectrum scam started to break, accompanied by the publication of the fascinating Niira Radia tapes, I found myself explaining the situation to non-resident Indian friends/relatives on two separate occasions. When I mentioned that A. Raja was accused of having defrauded the nation of 10 to the power 12 rupees through corruption, each of them independently asked whether it was clear that he was corrupt -- could he not have been just incompetent? They pointed out that when a new technology was involved, as well as a novel procedure such as auctioning spectrum, it was quite possible the the politician in charge simply didn't understand the issues well enough.

Probably without knowing it, these people were following the suggestion of Napoleon Bonaparte, who is supposed to have said "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence". It's remarkable though that I've never ever heard a resident Indian suggest incompetence may have been involved in the 2G case, or any other. On the contrary, most people I talk to in India (and everyone I don't talk to) is certain that malice aforethought must be at the root of India's corruption scandals. As for the more complex possibility that some money is lost through corruption but a possibly larger amount through incompetence, this level of complexity seems too baffling for people to deal with.

Which is sad, because I think the complex answer is closest to the truth. Incompetence could be a far larger problem in India than corruption. Even if my estimates are false (for example suppose incompetence and corruption cause equal losses to the exchequer) it's critically important to examine the role of incompetence in a developing country like ours, as well as its possible remedies (for that matter, it's important to critically examine the role of corruption and its possible remedies, instead of getting hysterical about it one moment and participating in it the next moment as most middle-class Indians are apt to do).

There are many fascinating points to ponder, but on a working day I don't have time to start pondering them. Let me close this short posting with an observation that obsesses me these days. Incompetence is not a static property of a person. In fact everyone can better their competence level by simply making a conscious decision to do so, and following up on it. Whatever administrative incompetence I see around me (and sadly I see a whole lot) seems to persist for one or more of the following reasons:

(i) competence is not rewarded and incompetence is not objected to,
(ii) labelling someone as incompetent is used as a self-fulfilling prophecy,
(iii) people are neither advised nor helped to improve their competence through training,
(iv) for ego reasons, incompetent people in powerful positions will not accept their limitations or seek help from others.

In this, I believe India differs in a major way from the USA or Japan. Our people are surely just as smart, but theirs are encouraged and even helped to become more competent to the extent possible. In these countries incompetence is not confused for malice, which it isn't. And when an incompetent person becomes more competent by whatever means, the system happily adjusts to the new reality instead of insisting that the old labels remain on the person. In India, by contrast, we look the other way at the incompetence of powerful people (sadly this is often due to the Peter Principle and may not be completely remediable by training, even assuming powerful people would consent to be trained) but the incompetence of the lowly is assumed to be a permanent feature.

I wonder how much these differing world-views originate in religious differences that permeate culture. Interestingly the Wikipedia page on redemption in theology identifies the concept only within Buddhism, Christianity and Judaism. How does redemption play out in Hinduism and Islam, and does this affect our attitude towards incompetence in the workplace? That's your homework question.

Greek vignettes

2011-07-08T20:20:00.003+05:30

Vignette 1. I arrive from Bombay via Frankfurt at Eleftherios Venizelos airport in Athens and board a bus to the KTEL terminal in the city centre. No sooner have I placed my suitcase on the rack than I hear a voice call "Sunil!". I look up to see Chara Petridou, possibly my only Greek friend in Greece (other than Costis whose wedding I've come to attend). She has arrived from Thessaloniki to spend a weekend going to the theatre in Athens. I haven't seen her in a year and it's one of the most amazing coincidences that we should meet on the airport bus. It's just as well she recognised me, since I'm timid about these things and had I seen her first, I'd have simply thought "how similar all these Greeks look" and left it at that.

Vignette 2. A bunch of kids playing on bicycles at the Nafplio seafront. Their conversation goes roughly like this: "diphtheria metaphor parabola thesis antithesis diploma ichthyoid". I'm impressed with their erudition, but it turns out they are actually saying (in a language which is alas Greek to me): "let's ride as fast as we can and try to scare the American tourists!". This they do, with some success, but then one of the teenagers is careless and tumbles off his bike. His friends gather round to jeer at him. Still prone on the pavement, he raises a fist and shouts something very much like: "Eleftherios Venizelos"!

Vignette 3. An intriguing new marinade, perhaps? I'll let the picture speak for itself.

Yankee doodle, desi doodle

2011-06-10T15:21:00.009+05:30

Yesterday brought art into focus for me in two very different ways.

A young friend drew my attention to the Google Doodle of the day: a depiction of a guitar that can be strummed by moving your mouse over the strings, which vibrate alarmingly like real strings and acquire the colours of the Google logo. It's one of the neatest and most exciting web animations I've ever seen. On clicking a button you can put the Doodle into keyboard mode and play the strings with your computer keys. And on some versions of the Google site, the button becomes a "record" button and records your keyboard input, after which it gives you a URL to click that plays it back to you.

This Doodle celebrates the 96th birthday of the great Les Paul, musician and pioneer of the electric guitar. Without Les Paul the guitar solo that concludes Stairway to Heaven would never have existed, and I hope you'll take a few seconds off to contemplate that unbearably tragic possibility (for what it's worth, the guitar solo on Voodoo Chile would still have existed, being played on a Fender Stratocaster, so life would not have been entirely hopeless).

Of course the Les Paul Google Doodle is hardly a breakthrough. We've all seen electronic keyboards, as well as software that can convert your computer keyboard into a musical keyboard. The thing that impresses me about the Doodle, though, is how seamlessly it is integrated into one's browsing experience. You don't need to buy or install anything, just wander onto google.com and play a tune. And that's a metaphor for art: it's not necessary to buy it or pay for admission, art is everywhere and you just keep coming across it in your life (this is specially true in Bali!).

Now I want to mention, in the same breath as Google Doodles, the late M.F. Husain. An extraordinary genius, very rightly called "India's Picasso", he passed on yesterday at the age of 95. It's amazing how much news space is being dedicated to him (four entire pages of today's Times of India, though most of it is in the nature of "I once met Husain" articles). Oh and by the way I once met Husain! Sometime in 2000 I had gone with two colleagues to his Cuffe Parade residence to request him to do a painting for our forthcoming Strings 2001 conference. It was a rather cheeky request on our part (and we had not the slightest idea how to pay him if he asked). Of course he has a well-known attachment to TIFR, which he acknowledged, and in the end he simply agreed to do our painting. And then didn't do it. We tried to pursue him and then gave up. So that was that.

Many people will want to lynch me for saying this, but IMHO Husain was the quintessential doodler and this is why he shares space with Google in this blog posting. His Cuffe Parade residence, poky and unimpressive, had Husain Doodles just over the washbasin! His charcoal sketches, one of which hangs at TIFR, are incredibly tight compositions embodying a sophisticated level of form, structure, motion and symbolism, even as they were probably rendered in a dozen brushstrokes in as many minutes. Of course he also painted the humongous and cheekily Rajasthan-ish mural that hangs over the TIFR lobby, and this was no doodle but a labour of love performing during several barefooted months at TIFR. Still, the profound truth that I glean from Husain's life and work is that art is a natural part of life, not extraneous to it nor intended to be sequestered or shown off as a possession. If he nevertheless sold at astronomical prices and blew the money on a Bugatti, that's just his privilege for being such a genius. Long may he doodle all over the great webpage in the sky.

Eat, pray, love, smoke

2011-05-18T19:59:00.000+05:30

It's much more fun to make up one's own versions of history, as I've been doing ever since I got to Bali. The real story supposedly has to do with Balinese kings and their courtiers committing puputan -- ritual mass suicide -- in response to a Dutch onslaught (as who wouldn't, if the option was cold milk for lunch and pea soup for dinner?). But I like to imagine that it happened differently.

In version 1, Australians up in Perth were frightfully bored, as the nearest nightlife was over in Sydney. This was a 5-hour flight away, and was in any case full of more Australians. Then the Perthians, or whatever they call themselves, discovered that the fragrant isle of Bali was just 3 1/2 hours away. This island too had no nightlife but it was full of people called "Balinese" who wore flowers over their ears (and those are just the male Balinese!) and could be induced to do just about anything as long as it involved aesthetics and grace. The Balinese agreed to open restaurants and hotels where the hospitality was quiet and gracious, the food divine and the pricing modest. All they wanted in return was sufficient income to live a quiet and graceful life. This suited the Australians just fine. Although Bali soon became a province of Australia, a delicate fiction was maintained whereby it belonged to its nearest neighbour, Indonesia.

Story 2 goes like this. A chunk of India the size of a moderately large island got detached and drifted away. As it drifted, the new islanders took stock of the situation. "We're finally free of India!" exclaimed the first chieftain. "So let's now invent our own lifestyle". "OK", the other chieftains chorused, "where shall we start?". Some suggested abandoning the Hindu religion, but others said no, it had some nifty gods and in any case it was such a flexible religion that pretty much anything could be done under its banner. So they decided to abandon only the things they didn't like. Vegetarianism was the first to go. "Then the nearest available dosa will be in Malaysia" fretted one of them, but the others, who had never liked dosas anyway, promptly silenced him. They decided their diet would consist of rice, seafood, chicken, pork and beef, specially the last two. "Even on religious occasions?" asked the pro-dosa faction. "Specially on religious occasions" the others chorused, "and moreover we'll have a religious occasion every month, on full moon day". And so the national dish of Bali became "Babi Guling".

But the next brilliant idea would transform the island unrecognisably. "Let's give up spitting when we walk and honking when we drive", suggested a chieftain. At this, the others looked blank. "This is possible?" they asked. "Sure" the chieftain replied. "It will make our life infinitely more pleasant. Can you imagine dining by the roadside and being able to hear yourself talk?". The idea soon began to catch on. "If we don't spit, will we be more healthy and therefore able to smoke whenever we like?" another demanded. "Sure" came the answer, though what was actually said was "becik becik" since they now had their own language. Soon Bali was invaded by foreigners from every country, though primarily from the neighbouring ones. "Is your country like India?" the foreigners asked. "Becik becik", the Balinese replied, "except we don't spit anymore. We also don't honk, or cheat visitors, or play 20-20 cricket". "Lovely" said the foreigners and the number of tourists going to Bali per year grew to about one-half the number bound for India, despite the incredible disparity in size.

In version 3, Bali started out with a bunch of Balinese who already didn't spit, or honk, or cheat, or swear, or harbour any ambition to dominate the world. Their only ambition, if one can call it that, was to eat tasty, healthy fresh food in a quiet place. And wear flowers above their ears. Whenever possible they would work, patiently and quietly, emitting gentle smiles if disturbed and lighting up a cigarette every now and then. They prayed in the mornings, making neat little packages out of banana leaf and containing flowers and a little rice -- which was always first offered to a deity before being consumed at home. But then someone advised the disciplined Balinese how they could get rich. Being open-minded, they gradually started to adopt customs from neighbouring countries, such as "malls" and "go-go dancers". This brought in tourists and made them richer and richer. But they didn't know what to do with money, since they only needed it to eat, pray, love and smoke, and not too much was needed for all that. This led to runaway growth, with the Australians and other friendly neighbours dropping in and staying for months at a time, spending all their money and tiring themselves out by partying on the beach all night. Meanwhile the Balinese just went on eating and smoking and looking more and more relaxed.

Frog Porridge

2011-05-17T16:33:00.003+05:30

The food in Kuala Lumpur is wonderful, as long as you remember that over here "air" means "water" and "susu" means "milk"... I also saw the following dish advertised -- but did not actually try it!

A strange order

2011-05-10T13:22:00.010+05:30

I'm back to blogging after a hectic month and more. The proximate stimulus for my return is the recent Supreme Court interim judgement on the Babri Masjid case. The Supreme Court has wisely described the Allahabad High Court judgement of September 2010 as "a strange order". Blogging about it here on the day after that judgement, I had wondered if my late father -- who had once been a high court judge -- might have raised the following questions about it:

"Should an aggressive action lead to benefit for the aggressor in the form of a compromise? Are religious groupings the appropriate beneficiaries of a title suit when public interest is involved? And can the law opine on the birthplace of a god?"

The learned Supreme Court judges have so far not addressed these questions. All they've found strange about the High Court judgement is its idea of dividing the land into three portions: one to the Nirmohi Akhara (a Hindu group believing in no attachments, other than -- strangely -- to a piece of land where the Babri Masjid stood), one to the Waqf Board (an organisation constituted by Parliament to be in charge of Muslim holy places) and one to Lord Ram himself, in his current reincarnation as a "shapeless and formless" legal entity.

While so many people welcomed it as a "compromise", I had found the Allahabad High Court judgement bizarre from a legal and ethical perspective. The mosque was toppled in 1992 before the very eyes of the nation, following a vicious campaign led by L.K. Advani that collaterally damaged the fabric of this country and propelled the BJP to power. One would expect a judgement on this politically staged catastrophe to redress such a major legal violation, that took place in living memory, by restoring the status quo ante (or, given the warlike nature of the supposedly devout parties concerned, perhaps the status quo ante bellum).

Nothing of the sort was evident in the Allahabad High Court judgement, which on the contrary sought to twist religious sentiment into legal fact and thereby debase India to the level of the many nut-case theocracies populating the planet. (If you think I'm overstating the issue, please compare the Wikipedia definition of "theocracy": "a form of government in which a state is understood as governed by immediate divine guidance", with Justice Dharam Veer Sharma's description of the disputed land as "It is personified as the spirit of divine worshipped as birthplace of Lord Rama as a child.")

It's now up to the Supreme Court to remedy this. I have always had considerable faith in this court (even though it famously bent just a little to please Indira Gandhi) and I've always believed they would see through the fallacious and apparently motivated Allahabad High Court judgement. Yesterday they took the tiny step of describing the judgement as "strange" but a larger step will come. If, as I expect, they will attempt in some way to restore the status quo ante with respect to December 1992, the land will essentially go back to the Sunni Waqf Board. Then the BJP, which has actually welcomed the recent Supreme Court observation, will find itself all confused and lost, and will presumably have to save face by staging another agitation. Or even another vicious campaign (it's easy to guess who would lead it this time). Will India descend into the loony bin of religious fundamentalism all over again? Stay tuned.

Dark star

2011-03-30T15:08:00.008+05:30

Even as Indians gear up to watch the India-Pakistan match, nobly sacrificing their working day for this purpose, the secondary buzz in the press is about banning a book: "Great Soul", curiously subtitled "Mahatma Gandhi and his struggle with India" and authored by Joseph Lelyveld. The outrageous content of this book is, supposedly, that Gandhiji had a gay relationship with a German bodybuilder, Hermann Kallenbach, in South Africa.

This controversy raises a number of fascinating points. First, as with any other controversy or event, the Indian press rarely does any research on issues but just keeps parroting what it has been fed, even while a rank amateur (like myself) equipped with nothing more than an internet browser, can unearth a lot more information. The book in question is not believed to have made the specific allegation above, at least not directly. The hullabaloo has arisen from a rather different direction: an opportunistic review of the book by right-wing historian Andrew Roberts. A direct quote from the review, which can be found here, is very revealing:

" "Great Soul" also obligingly gives readers more than enough information to discern that he was a sexual weirdo, a political incompetent and a fanatical faddist—one who was often downright cruel to those around him. Gandhi was therefore the archetypal 20th-century progressive intellectual, professing his love for mankind as a concept while actually despising people as individuals."

In case you missed it, Robertsji is attempting to trash progressive intellectuals in general, and of course Gandhiji in particular. If you re-read the quote above you will note how he is careful to say the Lelyveld book merely provides "information to discern..", an honest admission that the tasteless adjectives "sexual weirdo", "political incompetent" etc are the handiwork of Roberts himself, who has converted his book review into a polemic motivated by his own far-right world-view. In fact the Gandhi-trashing is part of a much larger Robertsian canvas of re-configured history: Indians would have achieved self-rule sooner without Gandhi, who managed to constantly "irritate and frustrate" Jinnah; Gandhi's Quit India campaign was "designed to hinder the war effort" and had it been successful, would have led to Japanese genocide of Indians; ultimately India got independence not because of anything Gandhi did, but because the "near-bankrupt British led by the anti-imperialist Clement Attlee desperately wanted to leave India anyhow".

It is within this luridly Raj-nostalgic repainting of history that Roberts pulls out a bunch of personal material about Gandhi, including -- but not limited to -- the supposed gay relationship. And actually within the tiny portion of the article that actually reviews the book, he accuses Mr. Lelyveld of "making labored excuses for him [Gandhi] at every turn of this nonetheless well-researched and well-written book". So Lelyveld is hardly the villain here.

All the above made me rather more curious about Andrew Roberts and some browsing led me to a fascinating article about him by journalist Johann Hari titled "The Dark Side of Andrew Roberts". Hari tells us that Roberts is a staunch defender not just of the British Raj but of white supremacy in general and specifically of the Jalianwala Bagh massacre. The Wikipedia entry on Roberts mentions that he supported the war in Iraq and the war against "Islamofascism", describing the latter as a World War in which yet again "the English-speaking peoples find themselves in the forefront of protecting civilization".

So I, at least, find it rather easy to dismiss Robertsji. But what about Gandhiji? Was he really as Roberts claims, a racist, a fanatical faddist, a sexual weirdo, a "ceaseless self-promoter" and also a bisexual? And here the going gets tricky. Whatever one may think of the accuser, there is something in these comments and the accompanying quotes that makes one ponder. The easiest charge to dispose of is the one about being bi, or gay. Let's assume it's exactly true as claimed -- but then so what? There was no element of coercion in it and the relationship -- whatever it was -- seems to have been consensual and satisfying (there is of course the issue of Gandhi possibly being unfaithful to his spouse, but this is also involved in some of the other "sexual weirdo" charges that I find more worrying). So attempts currently under way -- specially by the Congress party -- to suppress/ban the book on the rationale that the "gay" references are demeaning, are particularly misguided.

So then here's the worrying part. Did he refer to black South Africans in these terms: "Kaffirs are as a rule uncivilized"? Did he say about white rule "We believe as much in the purity of race as we think they do... We believe also that the white race in South Africa should be the predominating race"? Did he say to his 18-year-old grandniece Manu "We both may be killed by the Muslims, and must put our purity to the ultimate test, so that we know that we are offering the purest of sacrifices, and we should now both start sleeping naked."? And did he later defend this act by saying "If I don't let Manu sleep with me, though I regard it as essential that she should, wouldn't that be a sign of weakness in me?".

If the answer to all these questions is "yes", as I believe it probably is, then the nation must accept that the Great Soul was, in some measure, almost all the things that Roberts claims. Except "political incompetent", which was always the most absurd of the charges, though of course the main one from the point of view of Roberts.

So where does that leave us? I can't say. A great person can have many flaws, one supposes. But the Government of India will have a hard time saving Gandhiji's reputation from a bunch of unsavoury charges -- unless they decide to ban his own writings.

P.S. As for the book by Lelyveld, anyone really interested can download it to their PC from this link at amazon.com for a mere 15 dollars.

"Present regime... as part of the problem"

2011-02-27T13:54:00.001+05:30

Again I'm putting up a posting inspired by a comment on my previous one. This is my third article on corruption and I expect there will be more, since few issues are more fascinating or more relevant in India today.

The comment was from Cheeta, who wrote among other things:

"The entire system has been hijacked at the top by bandits, whose only morality is self-gain and whose only aim is to take more and yet more. We not only allowed these criminals to gain power but rewarded them with both high office and adulation. That's what really, really needs to be addressed: cleansing the system of these modern-day dakoos and recovering the loot. Alas, the present regime is not up to it. They're right there as part of the problem; not any portion of the solution."

Let's set this view off against my last two postings, wherein I argued that corruption is a participatory phenomenon on which all categories of the powerful conspire in various ways to preserve their power. In this connection I also pointed out that upper-middle-class views about corruption tend to sound distanced and helpless while in reality we are well-connected and privileged and we benefit, as a class, from corruption.

Now what I see in the above comment is a distanced write-off of the UPA government in India, and possibly, by implication, any other government that might be made up of similar people (this would include, say, a BJP-led government) and indeed the entire Indian political class. I would like to argue that such writing-off is not borne out by facts on the ground. Precisely in its "distancing" tone, such comments (which I hear on a daily basis) mistake the complex interplay of multiple forces carrying India into the future for a simple, linear narrative of greed and generic evil.

It would be hard to write a nuanced (and ultimately partial) defense of the present political class of India without taking a few hundred or a few thousand pages. So I'll try to make my basic case in a few relatively short points and leave the rest for further discussion.

1. Everyone agrees that development is what India needs. However the objective reality of India's vast size and diversity means that what constitutes development is itself open to enormous debate. Do we need large dams to irrigate farmland, or do we need to preserve the dwellings and livelihoods of people who -- after all -- are our own fellow citizens? Do we need rapid urbanisation or greater rural infrastructure? Do we need governmental control or privatisation? Is primary education more important or higher education? Within higher education should one emphasise universities or vocational courses?

The simple answers to the questions above are, in each case, "all of the above". But these are also the simplistic answers. How do we prioritise? Is it possible for a single right-thinking citizen like myself (or Cheeta) to prescribe the correct choices? Or does it take a combination of expert inputs, as well as pressure from different groups with competing interests? I believe it's certainly the latter. The UPA government has done a fair job in getting expert inputs and many of its leaders are impressive, scholarly folk who certainly know a lot more than I do about governance: P.Chidambaram, Jairam Ramesh and Prithviraj Chavan come to mind. How well the Prime Minister has handled the pressures of electoral politics is surely open to some debate -- however, I don't think that e.g. walking out of the coalition with DMK when the Raja issue started to surface was the "obviously best" choice, as people keep saying nowadays. A collapse of government would have an economic cost. How many percentage points of our economic growth should we be willing to sacrifice for such a noble act? I don't know the answer but it's not simple, and clearly the rich have the maximum luxury of contemplating this possibility without personal cost.

2. Despite everything, India is an emerging and powerful global presence and a lot of poor people are moving daily into a better standard of living. This is thanks to ALL factors involved: the business community, professionals and academics, farmers, labourers, the judiciary, bureaucrats and politicians... The fact that such an incredible diverse "team" could pull together over a long time is a miracle. Truly inept governance could have easily collapsed the understanding that makes all Indians -- on average -- work for India. That this isn't happening is remarkable when you consider that so many other countries are today on the brink of revolution/civil war/regime change (with devastating consequences for growth at least in the near term). I don't see why the Indian political class shouldn't get some credit for this stability.

Yes it's true that one shouldn't be given special credit for doing what one is supposed to do. But keep in mind that an important component of politics in most countries -- the highly educated class -- has in post-independence India largely seceded from politics. Politics is not a career they would themselves embark on or wish on their children. Indeed, far from working for India, the children of the most highly educated Indians simply migrate overseas. When an entire empowered class declines to shoulder any part of the burden of running the country, we ought to appreciate the people who are actually doing it.

3. A very specific point. The single most powerful blow against corruption in India today has not come from hand-wringing or even from an intelligent suggestion by middle-class people. It came from Sonia Gandhi's pet project of implementing the Right to Information act. We may remind ourselves what a landmark this has been by reading Price-Waterhouse Coopers' study on the RTI act, circa 2009. The Executive Summary is quite compact and well worth a read.

The Wikipedia entry on the RTI act also contains some useful historical background. Among other things it recalls that in the previous NDA-sponsored Freedom of Information Act, "there were no penalties for not complying with a request for information." So today's rigorous implementation of the act, which is seriously working, is entirely to the credit of the present government. You can read here about how the Adarsh and other housing scams were uncovered using this act.

In the RTI process some corrupt Congress politicians and allies have come out deservedly bloodied. Yet the government continutes to support the act, and the affected persons (Ashok Chavan onwards) have been sacked. Hardly the action of "bandits, whose only morality is self-gain".

For lack of space and expertise I won't discuss the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the National Knowledge Commission and the Unique Identification Authority of India.

I don't deny, of course, that everything could be better. Equally, it could all be worse.

Impact versus morality

2011-02-21T12:43:00.004+05:30

To Rahul and Neelima, thanks for raising a key point in your comments to my previous posting Ruining the land and thereby provoking this new posting.

The question essentially was: "is it as bad to give Rs 20 to a cop for `chai-paani' (a bribe) as to loot crores of rupees?" Indeed the two are not comparable in their impact on the nation. But if you're talking of impact, consider a different comparison. Economics not being a conservative system (in the physics sense) it is possible hypothetically for a person/government to loot crores and still deliver more to the country in terms of real benefits (health, employment, infrastructure, stable economy) than someone else who is scrupulously honest but -- out of either incompetence or apathy -- fails to carry out any development, thereby condemning the poor to a short and miserable life. So if the impact of corruption, rather than absolute morality, is the question, some of the crore-makers might have a defense. The question would become not: "did you loot crores?" but: "did you loot crores and still fail to deliver?". If you think about it, much of the buzz about the Commonwealth Games had this tone to it, since the organisers were perceived to be guilty of precisely the latter sin.

I'm deeply uncomfortable with such a morally relativist view, but I put it forward because it deserves discussion and because the poor have good reason to be less uncomfortable about it. In fact the upper and even middle class have the luxury to say "no corruption, even if that means no development" because that proportionately hurts them less than the most vulnerable sections.

If instead the discussion is about morality, then the monetary extent or impact of one's corruption does not matter so much. The question to determine the degree of corruption would now be on the lines of "if you are corrupt, did you actively seek to become so or did you merely give in to the opportunities for corruption available to you?". And here I believe most people actually do not seek to be corrupt, but at the same time most people who find themselves in a corrupt society tend to participate in the game without much reflection on rights and wrongs. A frighteningly large proportion of people I know (including young people) feel it's OK to fudge a travel claim or medical claim and pocket a few hundreds of rupees in cash. If the same people are put into a ministry, would they not pocket a few crores using the same philosophy?

Ruining the land

2011-02-19T17:24:00.002+05:30

The Kinks, a highly underrated British rock band, came out with a song called "Money and Corruption" in 1973, whose chorus goes as follows:

"Money and Corruption
Are ruining the land
Crooked politicians
Betray the working man,
Pocketing the profits
And treating us like sheep,
And we're tired of hearing promises
That we know they'll never keep."

The bandleader and composer of this song, Ray Davies, had not to my knowledge ever been to India. So it's safe to assume this song was written in reference to his own country. But now the lyrics appear to have been written specifically for India circa 2010-11.

For several months now, the middle-class in this country is in a tizzy about corruption and can't stop talking about it. With good reason apparently, for corruption is shameful, and it's obviously quite degrading to find one's entire country indulging in it. But after sitting through months of newspapers articles and coffee-table chat about the recent cases of corruption in India, I find myself more and more skeptical of the received wisdom, and would like to describe my skepticism here.

Richard Feynman once said: "You can know the name of [a] bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. You'll only know about humans in different places, and what they call the bird." I think it's the same with corruption. When you read different people's comments about it, you learn little about corruption but a lot about the people.

What I've been hearing from various friends, relatives and colleagues, and what I'm reading in the newspapers, purports to show we are all disgusted, and outraged, and shocked. But when I listen carefully to the words of the people in question (mostly Upper Middle Class) I find, behind the outrage, clear evidence of a guilty conscience. Virtually everyone in this class is a direct beneficiary of corruption in the form of black money (even though a Malabar Hill lady once assured me it was the paan-wallas who had all the black money!). Now this is basically tax money stolen from the government of India -- and the common excuse that "politicians would steal that money anyway" really amounts to a confession. The total amount of black money is estimated at up to 50 percent of GDP, which -- I assume -- makes the 2G spectrum scam look like a picnic in the woods.

The same class is also guilty of small and large actions that they undertake regularly and consciously to maintain their privileged position in society -- namely, bribing police and other officials. The excuse is that such corruption is necessary "to get things done". Since I have a fine-tuned antenna that warns me when I'm listening to humbug, I generally ask the following series of questions when a concrete incident comes up: "Were you actually asked for a bribe?", "If yes, did you try telling the official you don't pay bribes?", and "Was the bribe for something that the official was legally obliged to do anyway or for something illegal that you wanted the official to do especially for you?". The variety of responses is fascinating, but most often the respondent turns hostile and changes the subject to "That's how things are done around here" and "you don't know about the real world".

The two characteristics I get from this are: (i) distancing: "Corruption is a fact of life, I don't actively participate in it", (ii) helplessness: "I can't do anything but comply with corrupt people, see how vulnerable and disempowered I am/we are". This is fascinating because we are not talking about tribals in Bastar but owners of companies in Bombay, or journalists at NDTV, or -- dare I say it -- scientists at TIFR. "Distanced and helpless", rather than "connected and privileged"? Sure!

Each one has apparently excellent reasons for putting up these excuses, and in the end each one ends up blaming the one class of people we all rarely meet: politicians. Now due to the sheer weight of numbers, politicians in India are mostly elected by the poor. So the logical conclusion of this tirade against corruption appears to be that people in Malabar Hill are ultimately threatened and exploited by villagers and tribals (and paan-wallas). No one is foolish enough to say this, except the lady I referred to above. This Upper Middle Class world-view is so patently silly that it's only conveyed by winks and nudges.

Readers of this blog will point out that I appear to have missed the central issue. Not everyone is UMC, and surely common people (truly middle class, or working class, and truly not connected) do suffer because our politicians are in fact corrupt? Of course they do, and of course they are. But take a look at the standard newspapers and tell me how much space they devote to actual problems faced by (i) common people e.g. a labourer who wants to register a police complaint or get a document, (ii) government officials e.g. a young man or woman who would like to enrol in the police force but must pay a bribe for this and therefore is committed to travel down the slippery slope of corruption at the very outset.

Such stories and others like these might at least get us started on a serious discussion, involving questioning of the myriad methods that the powerful in every society use to maintain their power. Instead of the chest-thumping stuff that conveniently distances the speaker so that corruption is always someone else's fault.

Palace Towers over Terminus

2011-02-02T00:26:00.004+05:30

Yesterday and today there were protests by Colaba traders whose shops are located behind the Taj Hotel in Bombay. The lane there has been shut, for the most part, since Obama's visit here nearly three months ago. Security concerns, specifically a terrorist threat to the Taj, have been cited -- on New Year, Republic Day, and almost every other day since early November. The traders were suffering disastrous business losses due to the closure of this lane.

As I was happy to note this morning, the lane (which I can see from my living room window) has now been opened. But at the same time Police Commissioner Sanjeev Dayal has publicly advised the shopkeepers to "look beyond profits"! Certainly if anyone profited from this closure it's been the Taj, whose visitors have had a lot of space to park their cars. Basement parking at the Taj was closed following an earlier bomb attack in front of the Gateway of India and there doesn't seem to be any plan to reopen it.

Now it's true that the Taj suffered casualties, along with the Trident Hotel across on the other seafront, during the 26/11/2008 terrorist attacks, so one cannot be too complacent about a terrorist threat. But I just now thought to check out the numbers, and was surprised. According to this website, 31 people were killed at the Taj and 30 at the Trident. But another 58 persons - almost equal to the sum of the previous two numbers - were killed at CST station. Today there is massive security at the Taj, modest security at the Trident and (for all practical purposes) none whatsoever at CST. The hierarchy is worthy of note.

Over the last two years there's been a trend of VHPP's (Very High Profile People) insisting on staying at the Taj apparently to "express their solidarity". Besides Obama, the list includes former White House residents George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton. Not to mention the President of France (that short guy, I forget his name) and his attractive wife Carla.

In fact the trend to stay there started even before 2008. This puzzles me because there was a time - during my childhood - when all visiting heads of state would be put up at Raj Bhavan, the Governor's residence with a spectacular private beach and helipad in a classy Malabar Hill location. Why did everyone stop staying there and decide to risk the ugly decor, indifferent food and atrocious Husain mural at the Taj? I'm not sure when it started, but now it's an epidemic.

With all these visitors as well as the threats we keep hearing about, roads in these parts get closed all the time (for the Obamas it was nearly three full days, starting well before their arrival). So it's hardly surprising that Colaba residents and shopkeepers are tired of it. For now, the latter seem to have won the day. But the Police Commissioner's absurd request to them to sacrifice their profits for an elite hotel - that wouldn't let most of them in - leads me to worry that the barricades will soon go up again and privatisation of the road will resume.

"Select a bus, burn it and make sure the media knows"

2010-12-30T11:18:00.001+05:30

A new leak, this time from the tapped phones of Shiv Sena leaders Milind Narvekar and Neelam Gorhe, provides insight into the political strategising of this well-known political party. Planning a demonstration that took place in Pune last Monday, Narvekar told Gorhe:

“200 to 300 people should be deployed. Buses should be destroyed at Shivajinagar bus stand and Swargate bus stand. Destroy five State transport buses. That way traffic will be disturbed. Block the Mumbai Pune express way. Put two buses and two trucks on fire. In Shivajinagar, select a bus, burn it and make sure the media knows about it. But none of this should look orchestrated.”

In common with previous more publicised phone leaks, this does not qualitatively change what is generally known about the people involved, but does give a clearer picture of the callous attitude of our politicians towards public property and public welfare.

It's fairly obvious that the phone conversation was captured and leaked at the behest of the Nationalist Congress Party, which in terms of public behaviour often acts as Shiv Sena's alter ego (their friends the Sambhaji Brigade famously ransacked the Oriental Institute in Pune in 2004 and destroyed priceless manuscripts). The tussle between the Sena and the NCP, hard to follow in its minute details for anyone not clued in to Maharashtrian caste politics, has to do with the relative importance given to Brahmins and Marathas. It's perfectly possible that were the equations reversed and the Sena in power, the NCP or its friends would orchestrate the very same kind of activity described in the quote above. They would however be much more careful about getting caught -- the NCP head Sharad Pawar is a national leader of considerable clout, way ahead of his rivals in the Sena leadership.

What always baffles me is that politicians are able to get away labelling others "anti-national". What could be more anti-national than plotting the deliberate destruction of public property, inevitably involving the lives of citizens as collateral damage? What, after all, do terrorists do?

On the other side we have Dr Binayak Sen, not accused of having harmed a fly (and widely known to have treated huge numbers of tribals in need of medical aid) sentenced to life imprisonment for carrying letters. While I'm pretty sure a higher court will reduce or eliminate the harsh penalty on Dr Sen, I'm not so sure any court will impose any significant deterrent on the anti-national bus-burners.

Ding Dong Dell

2010-12-23T16:17:00.005+05:30

I've had a Dell laptop for a while and I really like it a lot. So when planning for a new desktop at home, I thought of going in for a Dell. They now offer an all-in-one desktop (like the one made famous by Mac) where the CPU is contained in the screen in a single unit, and from the website it seems both powerful and pretty. The 23-inch version, the Inspiron 2310, has an Intel i5 processor and seems to be just what I want.

The Dell India website lists prices for all their products except the all-in-ones, for which it advises the client to call the Dell India toll-free number. Which I did yesterday, and that's when my troubles started. First I got a gent who interrogated me sternly (name? serial number? last three years' tax returns? OK maybe I made up that last bit, but that was the tone of it). Then he asked me to hold, there was a brief spell of bad music and a sultry female voice whispered in my ear "Hello Sunil! This is Meena!!". I'm not making this up. I resisted the temptation to ask her when exactly we got on first-name terms, and got to my point. She didn't note the model number of the PC I was interested in, but simply promised to email me the price list for all Dell laptops and desktops.

When it arrived, the mail did not contain any information about the 2310. So I wrote back to gently point this out. I also gave her the link of the Dell India website where the model is described. This was her reply:

Sir,
To view the desktops available in india, you need to log on to the website www.dell.co.in. Also the models available with us are mentioned in the excel file.
Thanks
Regards
Meena

In other words, she was claiming the machine I was trying to buy did not exist in India! I phoned her and gave her a piece of my mind: my colleague recently bought one of these from Dell India, the website I was consulting was indeed that of Dell India etc. In response to which I got this mail:

Sir,
Can you please resend the mail containing the desktop details as due to some error in the system, the mail was automatically deleted.
Thanks
Regards
Meena

At this point I called Dell again, to ask if I could talk to anyone except Meena. Ended up with a similar interrogation guy who patiently heard my complaint ("I'm trying to buy your product but your employee says it doesn't exist!) and said he would transfer me. Thereafter I got a recorded message saying "Extension 0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0" after which it hung up on me. Back to square one.

At the next attempt I got someone who transferred me to Reena. Who transferred me to Shruti. Shruti told me the 2310 is not marketed directly by Dell but only by Dell retailers. When I started to hyperventilate, she passed me on to Deepa. "Deepa" I shrieked on the phone "do you have brains? Because I can't deal with one more Dell Dodo today. Please." Only, I didn't say any of this out loud.

Turned out, not only does Deepa have brains but she knows everything about the Dell 2310 including the rather arcane fact that it is "same thing as Dell 123 only". And that a consignment came in yesterday from Malaysia and I absolutely must buy one as soon as possible. It will be delivered in 5 days (I still remember the last time I heard that one from Dell India).

While I was musing over this conversation, Deepa called back. "I just want to know what you will use it for". I said I use it for music and video editing, music playback, stuff like that. She was relieved. "You're not going to resell it, are you?". I assured her I would not.

But on second thoughts, maybe I should. Wouldn't you pay double the price just to avoid dealing with Meena, Reena, Shruti, Deepa and three nameless male Nazis?

Niira Radia finds judiciary's corruption shocking

2010-12-22T13:16:00.001+05:30

Of late I find that the mainstream press very selectively decides what the rest of us find out or notice, and most people are simply too busy or lazy to fight that. Probably this has always been the case but with the Niira Radia tapes having tainted established journalists, the press is fighting back in a big way by suppressing everything about the tapes.

So if you, like me, receive the Hindustan Times or similar mindless mainstream publication, you might not have recently heard of retired Justice Vijender Jain. His appointment as Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court in 2006 was controversial, with the then President of India A.P.J. Abdul Kalam returning the appointment file after expressing reservations (prompted by dissenting views of other judges). He also brought this case to the attention of the Prime Minister Shri Manmohan Singh. Nevertheless the Collegium responsible for this appointment, comprising Chief Justice Y. K. Sabharwal, Justice K. G. Balakrishnan, and Justice B. N. Agrawal, returned the file reiterating their strong support for Justice Jain's appointment. The President was then constitutionally obliged to sign it. A nice clear article (The Hindu, December 2006) on the course of events can be found here.

All that was in 2006. Cut to the present, and visit this page in the current (December 27 2010) issue of Outlook magazine. The article features a partial transcript of a conversation between Niira Radia and Sunil Arora, the latter being a former Chairman of Air India and a serving bureaucrat. There is also a link to an mp3 file of the entire conversation, that you can download and hear with your morning tea instead of wasting your time on television. The key moment of the conversation is the statement by Mr Arora " I mean this litigant had paid Rs 9 crore to that high court judge in Delhi", followed at a later point by the revelation of the judge's identity: "Vijender Jain, naam bhi bataa deta hoon" (Vijender Jain, I'll even tell you the name).

Of course this is only Mr Arora's opinion so far, and the country is yet to find out whether the shocking accusation is true or not. But I personally find Ms Radia's own candid reactions to this revelation fascinating. To the first line she responds "Good God!". Later she says "My God!" (what a religious lady she must be..). But finally on being told the name, she lamely says "Haan, I know".

So for India's most prominent fixer, corruption in the higher judiciary is shocking even though the name of the (allegedly) corrupt judge is no surprise. For me, that says a lot.

Sorry seems to be the hardest word

2010-12-10T20:51:00.004+05:30

For a scientist or other academician, minor ethical misconduct is as easy to stumble into as running a red light while driving (go on, pretend you never did that). If you have a collaborator, how can you ever be sure he/she hasn't plagiarised something (maybe just a figure) in the part of the paper that he/she wrote? If you summarise previously published work, as all of us need to do, are you sure you're on the right side of the guidelines on appropriate paraphrasing? And for most people, the hardest of all is to avoid copying their own words from a previous paper. I believe many people don't even try to avoid that, but since copying one's previous paper in toto is illegal, I assume there's some limit to what fraction of it you can copy verbatim.

Now in the course of a few investigations into academic ethics, I've usually found that the initial offence was indeed some form of "minor ethical misconduct". But what was true in almost every case was the response of the person when the misconduct was brought to their notice: cover-up. The end result was that a relatively small offence blew up into a huge one.

Why don't people simply say sorry when caught? Not sure, but I suspect this is a particularly Indian "virtue", and it does have an explanation of a sort. In India, if you admit to a mistake it is seen as a sign of weakness. People simply assume your misdemeanour must be the tip of an iceberg. Admit you unthinkingly ended up with a hundred rupees that someone else deserved, and you'll promptly be accused of swindling a thousand. Or ten thousand. In any case, no one will forgive you after your confession. On the other hand if you issue stout denials for long enough then people start to give up on your case, and if you additionally have a powerful backer who defends you in public then you're more than likely to get away. Except in those rare situations when a serious investigation takes place.

The above point amplifies something I blogged about earlier, in this post. And of course it is widespread far beyond the ambit of academic ethics. Look at Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi. Neither said "I accept a journalist should not be a conduit for the affairs of a political party. While I'm within my rights to like a particular party, acting like a party member - as I did - amounts to conflict of interest and is journalistic malpractice. I apologise."

Either of them is free to take the above draft apology from my blog (with due attribution!) and sign it. But they've instead taken the brazen route, like the politicians and industrialists before them. As Elton John put it so well: "It's a sad, sad situation. And it's getting more and more absurd."

Taking away my toys

2010-12-08T08:43:00.000+05:30

When little children quarrel, things often end with one or both of them picking up their toys and going away. The friends of each little squabbler will leave along with him/her, loyalty being less of a principle than their desire to have continued access to the toys.

In what seems to me a new low in international diplomacy, a major Asian country whose name I won't reveal here (hint: it executes more people per year than the rest of the world combined, as per Amartya Sen) has decided to walk out of the forthcoming Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, referring to the rival gang of kids as "clowns". It has taken with itself most of its friends -- who realise clearly that if they don't go along, they may never get to play with those wonderful toys again.

The list of friends is amusing to browse: Russia, Kazakhstan, Colombia, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Serbia, Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Venezuela, the Philippines, Egypt, Sudan, Ukraine, Cuba and Morocco. How can the poor Norwegians run a credible peace prize ceremony in the absence of so many respected supporters of human rights, freedom and dignity!

For once I felt a patriotic thrill on reading Nobel Committee secretary Mr Lundestad's statement that " `important' countries such as India, South Africa, Brazil and Indonesia" would attend. All of these countries do have their own human rights issues, but given their constitutions, history and present leaders they can play a key constructive role in the struggle for human rights, a defining struggle of the 21st century.

I wish I had written that

2010-12-04T09:59:00.000+05:30

Once in a while one reads an article and feels "Oh, I wish I had written that". Well here's a nice example. Browsing the blogosphere for articles by/about P. Sainath, the very respected commentator on India's social problems, I found:

"P Sainath and Arundhati Roy – Why Is One The Nation’s Conscience, The Other The Bane?"

This article answers the question to my satisfaction. I'm glad that's out of the way, for me at least.

P.S. Rahul Siddharthan has written about Ms Roy on similar lines in this posting.

NDTV Bad Times

2010-12-02T23:45:00.008+05:30

For the last couple of weeks I've been rather busy finishing a longish review article on String Theory. Anyway I don't watch much TV, but when I do it's usually NDTV 24x7. And I read a newspaper, but only the one that gets delivered to my house which, thanks to some coupon scheme that I accepted without thinking, is the Hindustan Times.

Given that these were my main news sources it's no wonder that I recently ended up on Mars, sort of. The Wikileaks revelations went on day and night, as I learned from NDTV, HT and occasional glances at Yahoo! News, and I even found a few minutes to surf the net and blog about this topic over the last couple of days. But NDTV and HT simply did not do a complete story on the ongoing Indian Leak Mela.

I kept coming across mentions of a certain Niira Radia, but I didn't find time to sit down and figure out what exactly was going on with her. Then I learned that Ratan Tata had filed a case against the release of some tapes, which made me realise there must be some tapes. Next, I read Vir Sanghvi in last Sunday's HT ineptly defending himself against something. But what? Then yesterday Barkha Dutt on NDTV, while talking about Wikileaks, kept grinning foolishly and saying "ask me what it's like!!" What on earth did she mean?

Silly me. Yesterday I finished writing my article and this evening landed back from Mars and went on the internet to find out what was going on. In the process I snooped on several conversations that were intended to be private. You can snoop too, and I think you actually should. If you are worried about journalistic ethics, there's this article by Manu Joseph and this article by Hartosh Singh Bal, both on the website of Open Magazine, that argue eloquently why (i) these conversations deserve to be heard, and (ii) the Indian press has shamed itself by mostly suppressing the story. If you're convinced you have the moral right, and the bandwidth, then click on the audio links, or better move to Outlook Magazine's page on the 2G tapes which seems faster to me and offers mp3 files to download.

What emerges, for me, are two main points: (i) there was intense negotiation and lobbying between the Congress and the DMK after the 2009 elections, mostly about the latter party's desire for cabinet posts and ministerships, one of which involved a certain A. Raja becoming (again) the minister for telecommunications, (ii) some of the negotiations were conducted through Barkha Dutt (NDTV) and Vir Sanghvi (Hindustan Times). Point (ii) seems to explain why my main media outlets censored the whole story and I effectively remained on Mars all these days.

Now point (i) emerges as slightly unremarkable. Obviously there were negotiations, but what do we learn from snooping on them? To paraphrase something I quoted in my recent blog posting Leak Soup:

Karunanidhi is deaf! Alagiri is domineering! Kanimozhi is soft-spoken but persuasive! A. Raja was desperate to get telecom! The powerful lobbyist Niira Radia, employed by Tatas, Ambanis and DMK alike, is well-connected, pushy and slightly crude!

Big deal. No news here, I believe.

On the other hand two people whom I feel I know, Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi, stand exposed. I don't feel very sorry for Sanghvi, whose writing I always found quite superficial and self-gratifying. But I was an admirer of Barkha and I'm frankly shocked by what I heard. For me hearing is believing -- and it's reasonably apparent to me that the tapes are not doctored, that Barkha and Vir said everything they said and did everything they said they did.

The two journalists come out with some very damning quotes. Barkha to Niira Radia: "Oh God. So now what? What should I tell them? Tell me what should I tell them?" (referring to what the DMK, through Radia, wants Barkha to tell the Congress party leadership). Later Barkha says "everybody I know in the Congress was at the swearing in, so I haven’t been able to speak with the top guys, and now I just finished and I am going to make my set of calls.". So despite appearing to be an objective, unbiased journalist whom we all see on TV, she was actually behaving like a Congress party member. If the Hindutva brigade is after her now, she has only herself to blame.

Vir Sanghvi comes off worse. He appears in two sets of conversations, one about the tussle between Mukesh and Anil Ambani over natural gas, and the other inevitably about A. Raja. About Mukesh Ambani, Sanghvi says to Radia: "What kind of story do you want? Because this will go as Counterpoint, so it will be like most-most read, but it can’t seem too slanted, yet it is an ideal opportunity to get all the points across." About an interview that Ms Radia wants him to do of Mr Ambani, Sanghvi agrees that "it has to be fully scripted. I have to come in and do a run through with him before." And at some point Ms Radia tells him "I mean you’ll have to attack the judge here because the judge has, what he’s done, he’s given preference to an MoU." On the Congress-DMK matter Sanghvi indicates he "was supposed to meet Sonia today, but I’ve been stuck here. So, now it’s becoming tomorrow."

Mr Sanghvi's claim that he was saying all this just to extract information and that he never intended to write about the Ambani issue as he was being told to, or pass on requests from the DMK to the Congress leadership, is hogwash. To be convinced of that you do need to listen to the audio and not just read the transcript. You can also read Hartosh Singh Bal's article to which I linked above. It carefully analyses Sanghvi's Counterpoint column that appeared just after he promised Ms Radia what he would write, and correlates the two things. The final nail in the coffin is a taped conversation between Ms Radia and her colleague where they celebrate that Mr Sanghvi wrote exactly what they had told him to.

The mighty have fallen. Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi will never be the same again for me. On the other hand, as I indicated above, the Congress and even the DMK don't come out particularly damaged. They are doing what political parties always do, it's not pretty and in fact it's quite squalid, but the main point is we always knew that.

Surely you're joking, Mr Flanagan

2010-12-02T09:35:00.004+05:30

Tom Flanagan, a senior advisor and strategist to the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, said yesterday of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange: "I think Assange should be assassinated actually". He went on to say: "we should put out a contract and maybe use a drone or something". You can, and should, watch this on YouTube.

Of course he smiled when he said it, so it was probably a joke. But he refused to retract when offered a chance, saying instead "I'm feeling very manly today". Good to know that assassination threats come naturally to men.

I may not be the only one to notice the comparison, but a certain Vikram Buddhi is in a U.S. jail for the last four years for having allegedly issued death threats to George W. Bush (and others) on a website. Because it was a posting and not an interview, we don't know if Buddhi smiled (pun unintended) while writing it. But it's no one's case that he had any intention to cause harm, and the charges appear to be only about the threats.

The question is whether the state of Canada will offer Flanagan accommodation similar to that which the US has provided to Buddhi. Or will Flanagan be pardoned because it was only a joke and he's just a regular (manly) guy....?

Leak soup

2010-12-01T08:06:00.006+05:30

Recently I began to wonder why I've so drastically reduced my blogging. There seem to be two reasons. One is that many of the events on my mind are related to committees and other activities in which I'm required to observe confidentiality. The second is that a lot of my blogs express frustration about the way society is, but of late I've started to realise that frustration is harmful to one's own peace of mind. This is an issue I want to analyse for a while (why does one feel frustration or anger? what is anger really??).

But back to confidentiality. These are not the best of times for people who want their communications to be kept a secret. Wikileaks has published an extensive collection of cables sent by the US to various countries. According to the website, "Publishing improves transparency, and this transparency creates a better society for all people. Better scrutiny leads to reduced corruption and stronger democracies in all society's institutions, including government, corporations and other organisations." Sounds good to me! But not, evidently, to Sen. Joseph Lieberman (Conn.) who wants to shut down the website, nor to Rep. Peter King (N.Y.) who wants it declared a terrorist organization.

Mikkel Fishman writing in The Moderate Voice observes that there hasn't really been any earthshaking revelation from the recent spate of leaked cables, which have merely confirmed what we already know:

"President Sarkozy is thin skinned! PM Berlusconi is vain! The US is worried about Islamism rising in Turkey! Pakistan has a poor handling on its nuclear technology! Iran has been working with North Korea on missile technology! The US actually pressured Canada not to make a fuss about kidnapping and torturing one of its citizens that wasn’t actually a terrorist, and tried to get its CIA agents in another case to be let go! Did you know that the Queen is more respected than Prince Charles?"

This suggests the leaks will not have the claimed effect of damaging diplomatic relations between countries. BTW it is reported that Berlusconi laughed when he read them (but I'm sure Sarkozy didn't!!).

In short, the leaks may be embarrassing but hardly the stuff to bring the world as we know it down. Reading some of them, I feel I'm watching a reality show with Hilary Clinton, the Saudi royal family and Pakistan's ISI in the same house. Which actually brings me to my point: while I don't see much potential for harm in these leaks, I don't see much good coming out of them either. Are they going to make us question our prejudices, or our selfishness, or our futile quests for power (where by "us" I mean the human race)? Not really. Seeing the participants of a reality show clawing at each other physically and verbally hasn't made anyone less prone to similar violence against those who challenge them, as far as I know. The press and free-speech advocates (I count myself among the latter) are, for different reasons, having quite a ball. But just because it's fun doesn't really make it the major social change the world so desperately needs.

All this reminds me of Bertrand Russell's observation:

If we were all given by magic the power to read each other's thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be to dissolve all friendships.

I can't find on the web what Russell went on to say, but I remember reading it in his book long ago. His point is that after the "first effect" of dissolving friendships, the transparency of our thoughts to each other would re-make friendships in a better mould. We could not hide secrets, therefore there would be no mutual suspicion or doubt. Everything would be out there in the open. It would create a different and, he thought, better society.

If as it seems the Wikileaks cables have not damaged diplomatic relations then Russell is already wrong on point one. I would have hoped for him to be right, because then we could have looked forward to his second prediction coming true.

Crime and punishment

2010-11-21T14:45:00.007+05:30

The last month on India's political front has been dominated by scams: the Commonwealth Games, the Adarsh building scam and the telecommunications scam. These have brought about the short-term political demise of Messrs Kalmadi, Ashok Chavan and A. Raja respectively.

For a variety of reasons, I've spent some time recently reflecting on (and discussing with friends) the nature of wrongdoing and the purpose of punishment. The more I learn about the subject, the less comfortable I feel with the way we as a nation pursue allegations like the ones above. Let me try to list my reasons for discomfort.

(i) The press and public are pre-convinced of the guilt of the concerned parties in each of the cases. But, while there are specific and serious allegations in all the cases, there hasn't yet been a complete investigation of any of them. By the time this happens, a lot of people (and the media) will have lost interest.

(ii) In each case the concerned persons are out of office pending investigation. This would be a good thing if it conveyed the principle that a tainted official should voluntarily step aside till their name can be cleared, or otherwise. But none of the persons here were dismissed voluntarily. And even if their guilt is totally established in the future, it's possible - quite likely, in fact - that they will simply be kept out of the limelight for a while and then slowly rehabilitated.

(iii) In each of the cases, not only is guilt apparently "established" by the press and the public, but the presumed degree of guilt appears to be infinite, and therefore essentially on the same footing for all three persons. The slogan of the middle-class is that all politicians are utterly and irredeemably corrupt without limit.

The third point is my greatest source of discomfort. It is childish and ultimately self-defeating for us to clamber on the bandwagon of "all politicians are corrupt". There always have been some who are honest and upright, shouldn't we actually be highlighting them? As for the corrupt ones, this is a democracy and we have elected our politicians - so how did they get to be the way they are? It wouldn't have anything to do with us being the way we are, by any chance?

Some people will tell you it is the poor and uneducated who elect corrupt politicians, so the middle-class isn't to blame. Others will tell you corruption is really a politician-businessman nexus. Yet others will insist the blame devolves on the bureaucrats or "babus". In all these views, whoever is responsible for corruption, it isn't the middle class (which makes me suspect we could have found the culprit).

Now suppose M/s Kalmadi, Chavan and Raja in fact turn out to be guilty as charged. How effective will the current handling of their cases be in deterring others? Ashok Chavan may be no genius and seems totally lacking in the kind of imagination required to run a major state like Maharashtra. But his reputation has consistently been that of a reasonably honest and sincere Chief Minister, in a similar category as Sushil Kumar Shinde and in a totally different league from other predecessors like A.R. Antulay or Narayan Rane. If Chavan is guilty in the Adarsh scandal, all he's probably done is put in a word for a couple of his relatives to get a flat they don't deserve (something most middle-class Indians believe is the right thing to do). Admittedly this is far far below the standards required of a Chief Minister or indeed any politician. But it's not on par with having murder charges against you or being convicted of extortion. People with the latter charges pending or proven against them were, like Chavan, once shunted out of the way for a while but today they are still around as members in good standing of the ruling party.

So this is what really happens if you treat all politicians as equally (infinitely) corrupt: someone who commits murder or extortion and someone who puts in a word for their relatives is in the same boat. The action taken against them ends up being exactly the same, and over the person's life-time its impact is more symbolic than real.

This is not, I feel, a good message. It's up to us to find a more effective approach if we are to recover a lost moral compass. Such an approach will require us to believe there are both corrupt and non-corrupt politicians. Then we can try to define the degree of political punishment appropriate for the former class in proportion to the actual crime. It's not as easy as screaming for someone to be dismissed as soon as NDTV decides they should be, but it would be more correct and useful.

Karma Yoga

2010-10-06T12:15:00.005+05:30

Yesterday's newspapers carried the news that religious leaders in Ayodhya were planning to felicitate Justice Dharam Veer Sharma, retired judge of the Allahabad High Court, for his "historic verdict in favour of the Ram temple".

This led me to wonder. Hypothetically, if a judge on his last day of office were to deliver a resounding verdict in favour of a large corporation such as Vedanta or Monsanto, and if this corporation were to honour him for his historic verdict in their favour, I don't think it would look very nice. To be fair the corporation could do what it wanted but it would be the judge's responsibility to at least decline the invitation. He may also want to play down the very unpleasant suggestion that the verdict was correlated with pleasing one of the parties.

But of course religion is not business. Well... actually the Vatican has been involved in its share of financial scandals, so I probably meant to say that the Hindu religion is not business. And yet... this too leaves me with nagging doubts. As I write, I'm in the historic temple town of Puri, known for its legendary Jagannath temple. As a good Hindu I visited it some years ago and derived great spiritual joy and inspiration by viewing the idol of Lord Jagannath. But for me to get far enough to see the idol, a friend from this state who was accompanying me had to fight off a bunch of rapacious priests who had their eyes firmly on my money. Their aggression was quite frightening and I had briefly wondered if they would beat me up for making an unpaid visit.

So on this visit to Puri I decided to skip the temple. But wouldn't you know it, it's just landed squarely in the news. Today's newspaper carries the headline: "Priests fight at Jagannath Temple over donations". Apparently they ended up in a scuffle over who had rights to the money contributed by devotees. Thereafter, one of them gave the other one a bloody nose. Of course the spilt blood was promptly washed off and the temple ritually purified thereafter. So all is now well, or shall we say it's "business as usual"?

My father's voice

2010-10-01T08:42:00.007+05:30

One dark night in 1975, Indira Gandhi imposed a state of Emergency in India, arrested opposition leaders and censored the press. The next morning I awoke to find my father, censored newspaper in hand, telling my mother: "this is a very bad thing to have happened". My father was not given to understatement nor lacking in eloquence, so he must have been very upset at that moment to say so little and in such weak tones.

The events that unfolded, however, soon gave him back his booming voice. He was then a judge of the High Court at Bombay and he began to discover with a sinking feeling that his brother judges were taking rather divergent stances on the Emergency. An entire faction slowly began to describe themselves as "committed judges" -- committed to Mrs Gandhi and willing to adapt their judicial views to her mercurial whims. Another group, not so much a faction as a bunch of stubborn individuals (including my father naturally) dissociated itself from "commitment" and believed it was their duty to uphold the rule of law. A turning point came when one of my father's closest friends in the judiciary told him in sibilant tones "you must learn to bend with the times". My father was the kind who might break but would not bend. In the end he passed away just over a year later from a series of heart attacks. The betrayal of his best friend may have been a critical blow.

While it's a pity that he thereby missed the lifting of the Emergency and the restoration of democracy and the rule of law, he also missed some of our more egregious lurches as a nation later on. I missed his thoughtful and logical presence in 1992 when a huge fraction of "committed" middle-class people flirted with theocracy in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition. And today I feel sorry that he isn't sitting here, newspaper in hand, to opine about yesterday's judgement on the civil aspects of the land dispute in this case.

My father believed strictly in the rule of law, but always tried to apply it with a human face. On more than one occasion he strongly defended powerless individuals against mighty faceless giants, notably the government, but would make sure that his judgements were consistent with the letter and spirit of the law. He also detested obscurantism in any form. Yesterday's judgement might therefore have induced his razor-sharp mind to ask the following questions. Should an aggressive action lead to benefit for the aggressor in the form of a compromise? Are religious groupings the appropriate beneficiaries of a title suit when public interest is involved? And can the law opine on the birthplace of a god?

I'm not going to guess his answers on the first two questions, where complex legal issues might be involved (and a criminal case is still pending). But on the last question, I have a hunch about his reaction. The opinion of one of the judges yesterday (his last judicial action before retiring) was stated in these timeless words:

“the disputed site is the birthplace of Lord Ram. Place of birth is a juristic person and is a deity. It is personified as the spirit of divine worshipped as [the] birthplace of Lord Rama as a child. Spirit of divine ever remains present everywhere at all times for any one to invoke in any shape or form in accordance with his own aspirations and it can be shapeless and formless also.”

Even though poor grammar depressed him terribly, my guess is that my father would not have wept into his morning tea. It was poor logic that invariably infuriated him, so I believe he would have thumped his own head and shouted "Oh my God!".

Sarod parity

2010-09-12T22:58:00.008+05:30

Yesterday my friend Viplav came over to, as usual, exchange recordings of Hindustani music and chat about music. At some point he pulled out my copy of Raghu Rai's awesome photo collection "India's Great Masters" (you can -- and certainly should -- buy this book at your nearest bookshop or order it here). Flipping through it we came across a picture of the sarod maestro Allauddin Khan, father of the more widely known sarod player Ali Akbar Khan and teacher of (among others) the even more widely known sitarist Ravi Shankar. Viplav pointed out that Allauddin Khan was left-handed and therefore held his sarod with the gourd on his left side, which looks rather unusual once you notice it. I found this mildly amusing.

Now today I took a longish local train journey to the suburb of Vasai and carried with me a fascinating book called "The Lost World of Hindustani Music" by Kumar Prasad Mukherji, which deserves a blog article all on its own. While reading it on the train I came across a photo of Allauddin Khan and he was holding his sarod in the standard right-handed orientation! Quite a surprise. A closer look revealed that the disciples he was teaching (Ali Akbar and Ravi Shankar) appeared, instead, to be left-handed. Then the light dawned: the printer of the book had obviously inverted the negative! One imagines the late Kumar Prasad Mukherji, a fussy Bengali if ever there was one, would have been furious.

Now while all this was going on, a passenger boarded this train and sat down facing me. I was engrossed in my book but noticed that this person's fingers were playing "air tabla" on his knees, and quite professionally. I guessed he was a tabalchi (tabla player) though he looked more like a businessman. Evidently he in turn noticed my book because he soon leaned forward, pointed to the photo and asked "do you know what's special about this person?" I looked at him with cool confidence and said "he's left-handed". A rare pleasure when life actually hands you the answer just before it asks you the question!

My fellow passenger survived this tragic deflation and entertained me with conversation about tabla-playing all the way to my destination. By the way he turned out to be both a tabalchi and a businessman.

Bloodgate and other kinds of self-injury

2010-09-08T20:32:00.010+05:30

Recently a news item about a British doctor called Wendy Chapman came to my attention. This led me to discover the full story of "Bloodgate", a sports scandal in the UK. I'll briefly repeat it here because most people I've talked to in India have never heard about it (and nor had I). The full story is here.

The English rugby team Harlequins was playing against the Irish team Leinster in April 2009. A Harlequins player, Tom Williams, came off the field with blood streaming down his face in the last ten minutes of the game. Due to his injury, he was substituted by a fresh player. Only, it later turned out he wasn't injured at all. He had deliberately bitten a blood capsule (which he pulled out from his stocking where it was concealed, and put in his mouth) so that he could be sent off and a substitute put in his place, who might have a better chance of scoring in the last few minutes by virtue of not being exhausted.

On investigation, a number of skeletons tumbled out. This wasn't the first time Williams was doing this, only the first time he got caught. He had previously managed to get away with it four times. It then turned out that the Director of Rugby of the club, Dean Richards, had orchestrated the subterfuge and the club's physiotherapist Steph Brennan supplied the blood capsule to the player. Charles Jillings has had to resign as chairman of the Harlequins over accusations that he tried to cover up what happened, and Mark Evans, its chief executive, has also been accused of a part in the cover-up. Finally, and perhaps most shocking of all, Wendy Chapman, the team's doctor, was recently found guilty of having actually cut the lip of the player after he went off the field, to sustain his deception.

You'd think that after all this there would be punishments and recriminations all round, but no. Dr Chapman has been let off with a warning (remarkably her recent history of depression was upheld as a valid excuse for her action). The player Williams received a 12-month ban on playing which was later reduced to 4 months because he came clean. And Mark Evans came out with this astonishing piece of spin: "You would be incredibly naive to think (the Bloodgate stigma) will ever disappear completely. Things like that don't. They become part of history and, like good or bad seasons, are woven into the fabric of any club." In other words, things like this just happen.

Now I'll ask all my readers from the subcontinent the following question. Which one of Williams, Richards, Brennan, Jillings, Evans and Chapman is Pakistani? Or Indian? Or Bangladeshi? Hint: a very small number of them, namely zero. These are all true-blue Brits. They attempted to deceive in the ugliest way and most of them continue to spin the matter in every way except to admit it was a shame and a disgrace. (Wendy Chapman says she was "horrified" that she lied about the incident to the European Rugby Cup which carried out an earlier investigation. Horrified? We are horrified at what others do. Ashamed would be a somewhat better word for what we ourselves do).

And here's my point. From the above story we see that appalling scandals do take place in the British sports world, not necessarily involving a single subcontinental darkie, and the people concerned both get off lightly and spin the events by suggesting that they "just happen". But when it comes to the subcontinent, we indulge in a different kind of self-injury altogether. Three Pakistani players and a Croydon-born bookie of Pakistani origin indulge in spot-fixing and suddenly it's in our culture, our DNA even! Both Pakistanis and Indians (in a rare show of unity) seem almost delighted and falling over themselves to enjoy being tainted by this scandal.

An outpouring of incredible silliness by Sagarika Ghose in today's Hindustan Times, which you can read here, tells us breathlessly that "several cricketers have expressed the belief that dishonesty exists not just in Pakistan cricket, but in the very DNA of the subcontinent" and goes on to add "Ricky Ponting believes that the values of cricket are simply not upheld in certain cultures". She then goes on to extend the evidence of our tainted culture by appealing to the Commonwealth Games etc etc and having established a grand unified theory of subcontinental corruption, appeals to our worthy Prime Minister to slam the most corrupt people of our nation in a theatrical public event that will go down in history.

In case anyone is planning to misunderstand my point, it isn't that we should be soft on ourselves or complacent about any form of corruption. And it certainly isn't that we should try to put a positive spin on our scandals as the British rugby people did with theirs. My point is just that we need to respond to scandals with less of a propensity to self-hatred and self-injury. We should show more self-confidence and a far far better sense of balance and proportion. Corruption is bad wherever it happens, and it should be dealt with firmly, but please don't reach out and paint your own face and mine and that of entire countries and cultures with it. We need not accept the kind of rubbish that Ricky Ponting is supposed to have said (assuming he did say it), and still less should we, like Ms Ghose, get carried away with the delicious feeling of how bad we all are.

E-rain?

2010-09-01T10:16:00.003+05:30

I wonder if the monsoon particularly brings out the confused state of English in our land. This morning's Hindustan Times (or yesterday's DNA, I forget which) carried a picture of a lake that "overflew"!

But the prize goes to the Indian Meteorology Department, whose Monsoon Watch page informs us that "Significant amounts of rainfall (1 cm or more) during past 24 hours ending at 0830 hours IST are enclosed".

The Great Mathematics Bazaar II: Music lectures

2010-08-31T19:42:00.003+05:30

It came as an enormous (and pleasant) surprise when Prof. Raghunathan asked me, nearly a year ago, whether I would be willing to give a lecture or two on Indian classical music appreciation at the ICM. The idea would be to present some aspects of Indian culture to the participants, specially those from outside India, and to prepare them to some extent for the planned live concert. Accordingly I gave two lectures, one on Sunday August 22 and the second on Tuesday August 24. The vocal concert by Ustad Rashid Khan took place on August 25.

During my first lecture the sound and video (files embedded in my powerpoint presentation) worked well, and speaking in Hall 2 was a thrill since it was there that Vishwanathan Anand, a couple of days later, played simultaneous chess against 40 participants (apparently unmoved by the gratuitous questions about his Indian-ness or lack thereof).

The second lecture was held in the infinitely larger Hall 4, and like everything conducted there, was videotaped. Hall 4 was even more of a thrill given that I was on the stage where the President of India and the Fields medallists had stood a few days earlier, but for me the thrill quickly evaporated when the sound failed to work and some time was wasted getting things in order. The video of this session can be viewed by going to this page and selecting Part 3 under "24th Aug 10 Time 15:00 – 18:00 /Hall4" or you can download this flv file. Unfortunately due to the sound problem, by the end of an hour I was only 45 minutes into the talk. Since the video was programmed for an hour, it failed to capture the last 20 minutes (in which incidentally Pandit Kumar Gandharva features twice).

Now about the content of the talks. I was asked by the press unit there (= R. Ramachandran, better known as "Bajji") to send a writeup for the ICM daily newsletter, so I might as well reproduce that here.

Titled "A Mathematician's Guide to Hindustani Classical Music", this pair of talks on the musical tradition of North India has been put together specially for the ICM. The first talk presented a brief history of Indian music, which has its roots in religious chanting from Vedic times around 5000 BCE. The textbook "Natya Shastra " by Bharata, the basis for the Bharata Natyam dance form presented at the ICM on Friday, has some reference to this music, and more details including an embryonic concept of raga appear in Matanga's Brihaddeshi in the 8th century. By around the 11th century Persian and Arabic influences started to enrich the music and around this time the North and South Indian streams of music began to diverge. The present lectures focus exclusively on the North Indian or "Hindustani" tradition, which will be presented at the ICM in a live concert by Ustad Rashid Khan on Wednesday.

The nature of Hindustani music evolved during the 12th to 18th centuries, partly in response to the Bhakti movement in Hinduism, in which participatory and devotional love for the divine being (rather than formal worship of God as an idealised entity) became the principal theme. Another contributing factor was the patronage of the Mughal emperors. By the 18th century the "khayal" form of music was established. It remains an oral tradition even today, despite many books and treatises on the subject, some of which have established a rudimentary notation.

In the first of these talks, the notion of raga is introduced by playing short clips of pairs of performances, by different musicians, of the same raga. The common features between the members of a pair serve to illuminate the concept of the raga, even to a complete novice. A definition can then be built up through a series of successive approximations. In its barest form, a raga is a set of notes selected from the 12 notes of the musical scale. But then these notes must be combined into patterns following certain rules. One can emulate the definition of a topological space in mathematics by saying that a raga R={S,U,T} is a subset S of notes from the musical scale together with a collection U of subsets of S and a set T of rules for combining elements of U! But art is not mathematics, so we need to add an aesthetics clause: the rules for combination must give rise to desirable results and create an appropriate mood. It is this mood that lies at the heart of a raga, which some authors consider to be a "living entity" rather than a mere combination of proportions and form. Parallel to raga, the concept of tala (rhythm) is briefly developed.

In the second talk the notion of "gharanas" or schools of music is briefly introduced (parallels with mathematics are quite strong!) and video clips used to illustrate some of the instruments and show how they are played. This is followed by a description of the structure of a typical performance, the different types of movements (introductory, slow and fast) and the complementary role of compositions and variations. The bulk of the talk consists of audio and video clips of performances by some of the leading musicians of India (many of them sadly no more) illustrating different segments and features of a performance. In selected cases the lyrics and their significance are highlighted. The association of ragas with times of day and seasons is also briefly discussed. The talk closes with a short outline of the "lighter" forms: thumri, tappa and bhajan that are usually performed towards the end of a concert.

The Great Mathematics Bazaar

2010-08-30T11:34:00.003+05:30

I haven't blogged in exactly two months, the longest hiatus since I started. Not sure why. Now (under pressure from my brother!) I'm giving it another shot.

I just got back from the International Congress of Mathematicians at Hyderabad. That should give me plenty to write about! It's a long conference, all of 4+4 days with a day's break in between. And it's an enormous conference -- somewhere between 3000-4000 participants. It takes place once in four years and covers "all" areas of mathematics.

First the academics. Four young (under-40 is the rule) mathematicians received the prestigious Fields Medal. It was quite a thrill to be present as the medals were announced, and the awardees came on stage to receive them from the diminutive President of India, Her Excellency Smt. Pratibha Patil, shimmering in an exquisite silk sari. With each medal, a tug-of-war ensued as the recipient tried to take it from her hands, but she grimly held on to it and gestured with her head that they should face the camera! Only after the photo-op did she allow herself an impish smile and relinquish the medal to the winner.

There were other awards including the Chern, Gauss and Nevanlinna prizes.

The awards ceremony was followed by laudatory talks, by (who else) laudators, specially chosen, each of whom lectured on the work of an awardee. Unfortunately for the most part they were marred by (i) poor transparencies in microscopic fonts, (ii) halting and uncertain accounts of the work, (iii) super-technical accounts lacking in the big picture, (iv) all of the above. Later, however, the medallists themselves gave talks on their own work (every day after lunch) and these were by and large superb. Vietnamese Ngo Bau-Chau (I'm missing half a dozen accent marks that belong to his name) and Israeli Elon Lindenstrauss won the award for work that was "purely mathematical" in nature. But the work of the other two: Stas Smirnov, a Russian working in France, and Frenchman Cedric Villani -- the latter wearing fashionably long hair and what appeared to be a bouquet of red silk ribbons on the front of his shirt -- was motivated by rather straightforward problems in physics.

To get to the latter first: Villani studied the rate of increase of entropy and the approach to equilibrium predicted by the Boltzmann equation. He also illuminated the phenomenon of Landau damping and studied optimal transport theory. The last one is described as follows in the nicely written work profile that you can find here: "Suppose you have a bunch of mines and a bunch of factories, in different locations, with varying costs to move the ore from each particular mine to each particular factory. What is the cheapest way to transport the ore?" I find it wonderful that the highest level of mathematics today still deals with problems that are relatively simple to state.

Stas Smirnov proved the existence of the continuum limit of certain lattice models (models of systems like magnets where microscopic spins sit at each site of a discrete lattice and interact with their neighbours). Physicists of course use such a limit all the time without having any proof that it is rigorously defined. Smirnov spoke very engagingly about it and I felt I understood very clearly (at the time) what it was he had done, though not in any detail how exactly he had done it.

The work of Lindenstrauss too seemed fairly accessible at least in its motivations. Ergodic theory, the study of how dynamical systems do - or don't - go everywhere eventually, originates in celestial mechanics. Number theory deals, among other things, with how many integer solutions there are to a given polynomial equation or inequality. In finding a connection between the two branches of mathematics, he made major progress on Littlewood's conjecture: on how a pair of irrational numbers can be approximated by fractions in a correlated way.

That leaves only Ngo, whose work on the Fundamental Lemma of Langlands remained rather obscure to me despite his valiant attempts. I can only say here that the Langlands programme attempts to relate automorphic forms and number theory among a wide canvas of interconnections, and that Ngo proved what Langlands had thought would be a simple result (hence the name "Lemma") that turned out to defy attempts for decades.

Since this is getting rather long I shall end this instalment here. To make the next one interesting let me mention that I gave two invited talks at the ICM (and I have an "Invited Speaker" badge to prove it!). But they were not about mathematics, nor even physics. More on that soon.

Waka Waka

2010-06-29T21:34:00.002+05:30

The comedian Dave Barry once wrote about the difference between men and women in the following terms (I'm recalling this from memory so it's not an exact quote). When two men bump into each other by accident on the street, the result is this:

Man A: Watch where you're going!
Man B: No, YOU watch where you're going!
Man A: Oh yeah?
Man B: Oh yeah. I'll teach you.
(they fight)

In contrast when two women bump into each other, it goes like this:

Woman A: I'm sorry!
Woman B: No, I'm sorry, it was my fault.
Woman A: What nice shoes!
Woman B: I got them on sale.
(they go shopping together)

As a paradigm of competitive vs cooperative behaviour this is unbeatable. Somehow it came to my mind yesterday when I happened to see the amazing video of Shakira and the South African band Freshlyground performing the FIFA theme song "Waka Waka". It opens with a goalie gearing up and facing a penalty shot, then cutting to Shakira in a grass skirt, looking fresh and vivacious and singing the song with four African women dancing alongside. Then it goes back and forth between scenes of men colliding, stressing, shouting and weeping over football, and women joyously dancing together to this delicious rhythm.

I wondered why they didn't just drop the football scenes and have everybody dance instead. So much more cooperative! Imagine if instead of football championships they had huge festivals (in places like South Africa) where everyone would dance and sing together. I'm sure a lot of people would love the idea -- but of course, men wouldn't settle for it.

The worst of American and Indian cultures

2010-06-10T12:03:00.007+05:30

The recent judgement on the Bhopal gas disaster saddened many people including myself greatly. This disaster occurred during my first year in TIFR so its tragic aftermath has been a sort of constant through my entire career. Like so many other people, and mostly following the lead of the press, I've given it some attention in brief spurts but it's dropped off the radar for the rest of the time. Now the judgement has brought the issue back to centre-stage. Unfortunately it will fade again from the press and then from the lives of the rest of us who are not directly affected nor courageous enough to be activists.

Still I feel a few points are worth commenting on. First of all the judgement three days ago is merely the foregone conclusion of a trial for criminal negligence whose maximum sentence was two years. So the judgement can hardly be termed a "disappointment", given that this maximum sentence was handed out to all the accused. Now the reason for this low maximum sentence appears to be a 1996 decision of the Supreme Court that this case involved criminal negligence and not culpable homicide. This decision was based on their understanding of the law and without being a legal expert, I don't know how I can question it. Note that they did not "reduce the sentence" as is implied in current discussions, but merely stated what are -- and are not -- the valid charges.

The key question in this case, which no one seems to be asking, is why is two years the maximum sentence for criminal negligence? (when 7 years is the maximum penalty for eve-teasing!). It seems that the courts may be taking the rap for a failure by the law-makers. Other failures by the law-makers are of course quite visible in this case. Warren Anderson's quick repatriation in 1984 seems an obvious case of collusion and strongly suggests the Indian government at that time was anxious not to displease the US government, while the latter was anxious not to have its corporate honcho in a foreign (or domestic) jail whatever he might have done. The recent judgement eloquently blames "the synergy of the very worst of American and Indian cultures" and I couldn't agree more.

But all the talk today is about punishment. Despite its valuable role as a deterrent for the future, what possible benefit can punishment bring to victims who have lost their dear ones and their own health? Focusing excessively on this, it seems to me, results in a loss of focus on the one thing that even at this stage can help the sufferers: compensation. This issue was fundamentally lost over a decade ago when in 1989 the Indian government settled for a mere 470 million dollars in compensation from Union Carbide (compared with 350 million that Union Carbide offered on their own, and 3 billion that the Indian government claimed in its lawsuit). Why did they accept such a compromise? I don't know, but one can hardly blame the courts for it. What can be done today? Again I don't know, but baying for the offenders heads seems to be a distraction from this key issue.

There's one more relevant matter that's getting a minor fraction of the press coverage: cleaning up the site, from which contaminants are still leaking into the soil of Bhopal. Let's hope today's governments in both countries are stung by the judge's remark about "the worst of American and Indian cultures" and will effectively rehabilitate the site.

Boat attacks helicopters

2010-06-02T17:56:00.008+05:30

A newspaper magnate once said that "dog bites man" isn't newsworthy, but "man bites dog" -- that is news. We now have a similar situation in the brutal world of peace activism.

The New York Times (ever the beacon of responsible journalism) has raised a subtle point about the recent struggle on board the Mavi Marmara, a ship carrying humanitarian aid for the besieged people of the Gaza strip. In a recent article a certain Brian Stelter suggests that it is difficult to determine who was the aggressor in this conflict. The article in question starts "When Israeli commandos attacked the so-called Freedom Flotilla...", which appears to resolve the issue, but spin-doctoring must be hard work and evidently Mr Stelter forgot this line while writing the rest of the article. Instead he went on to say:

"But what is missing so far from the flotilla clips on both sides is context: it is difficult to establish the sequence of events or, more simply, to determine who attacked first."

How true. Without having been on the spot, how can we know whether Israeli helicopters attacked the boat, or the boat attacked the helicopters? It all boils down to plain conjecture. Of course we do know that peace activists are aggressive by nature and their boats are equipped James-Bond-like to make gigantic leaps into the air. So my guess is it was the latter that happened - the Israeli helicopters were snatched out of the air and slammed down on the boat, caught totally unawares while they thought they were safe in "international airspace".

One feels a pang of sympathy for the Israeli government, which despite being the victim has received criticisms ranging from "deeply concerned" to "terrible". Knowing how sensitive they and their army can be, is it fair or responsible to denounce them thus? What if they get depressed and discouraged as a result?

Research scholars and Dr Bhabha

2010-06-01T12:25:00.005+05:30

One realises one's age when every new occurrence brings back a memory. In this case, the occurrence was the Foundation Day lecture at TIFR this morning by His Excellency A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, former President of India. Dr Kalam started his talk by recalling how he had gone through a file at Rashtrapati Bhavan which documented an invitation from Dr Rajendra Prasad, first President of India, to Sir C.V. Raman to receive the Bharat Ratna award. In his reply Raman regretted he could not attend the award ceremony because he was guiding a Research Scholar whose thesis was due for submission. With this story Dr Kalam emphasised the importance of Research Scholars in the scheme of things, and deservedly won the hearts of those who were in the audience today (the rest of his talk was a fairly generic utopian vision of the future).

Now for the memory this brought back to me. A mere fourteen years ago, in the same auditorium, TIFR celebrated its Golden Jubilee with a glittering function that included the then chief minister, Manohar Joshi of the Shiv Sena, and the then union telecommunications minister Sukh Ram who released a postage stamp of TIFR. There were also speeches by TIFR Council Chairman J.J. Bhabha, younger brother of TIFR's late founder, and some other major figures. When about to enter the hall, I discovered that three entire batches of Research Scholars at TIFR were not allowed into the auditorium for the function, supposedly because of a lack of space. In protest I did not enter either, and watched the proceedings on closed-circuit TV in a lecture room.

Thereafter I penned a somewhat melodramatic missive to our late founder Dr Homi Bhabha and put it up on a notice board in the TIFR lobby. It was removed by the chief security officer who scolded me and warned me not to put it up again. Today he is retired (and moreover Manohar Joshi is in the political wilderness and Sukh Ram has been sentenced to three years in jail for corruption!!) so this may be a reasonable time to exhume the letter. I reproduce it below.

=========================================================

Dear Dr Bhabha

February 9, 1996

To:
Dr Homi J. Bhabha
c/o God
Heaven

Dear Dr Bhabha

I am writing to tell you about the Golden Jubilee celebration that took place at TIFR this evening. I did not enter the Auditorium, but watched the function from outside on closed-circuit TV. If they have closed-circuit TV in Heaven then you might have seen it yourself, but somehow I think you were not watching.

Dr Bhabha, this was a function on a grand scale. The elaborate arrangements would have impressed you. The dignitaries all looked suitably important and spoke with seriousness (except the Chief Minister, who looked bored but spoke with humour). And the audience contained all the important people in this Institute, in their finest clothes.

Some people were turned away at the door. They had invitation cards, so they thought that they were invited. Not so. There was a complex and subtle system to make sure that only the right people got through.

The cards came in three colours of envelope: white, blue and pink. This meant: big shot, medium shot and small shot. Then the white and pink envelopes were further divided into those with the Stamp and those without. (No, not the postage stamp, that was only worth 2 rupees! The Registrar's Rubber Stamp was priceless.) A foreign visitor to TIFR remarked that this looked like an elaborate caste system.

On a white envelope, the Stamp meant: Big Shot Plus Spouse. That went to Senior Professors, Heads of Sections and Chairmen of Committees, plus some people who did not fit in this list, but were known to be important just by virtue of their importance. It also went to hundreds of non-TIFR people, including army and navy top brass, who came with their spouses.

On the pink envelope, No Stamp meant: "You are invited, but you can't come in." It was actually a non-invitation. So these were the people who got turned away. I was standing near the door and watching their faces.

Who were these people, you might ask. The pink non-invitations were issued to second- and third-year Research Scholars, and later also to Visiting Fellows, after a protest on their behalf. They were also issued to some categories of non-academic staff. (There was still one lower category --- the first-year Research Scholars received NO invitations. They shared this privilege only with the daily-wage workers.)

In particular, Research Scholars and Visiting Fellows who have research publications at TIFR were turned away from the Auditorium. What made the Institute famous in the first place, Dr Bhabha? Sorry if I forget sometimes.

Of course, those who couldn't get in had the option to watch the ceremony outside on closed-circuit TV. But many Research Scholars chose to play cricket instead. Maybe they didn't care enough about the Institute, or maybe they were hiding hurt feelings. Who knows.

I chose not to enter the Auditorium, in sympathy with the non-invited persons. But I was very interested in the programme, and watched every detail on TV. Many of the speakers talked of the bright future of TIFR. They all said very kind words about you, Dr Bhabha. They showered generic praise on your achievements as a scientist, administrator, and man of culture. Your brother said something more precise: that you used to identify talented young persons, and give them the freedom and encouragement to become successful and eminent scientists. He asked a question: What would Dr Homi Bhabha have done if he had been here today?

At that moment a strange idea entered my head. I thought: maybe Dr Homi Bhabha, had he been here today, would have pointed out that the Research Scholars and Visiting Fellows are the future of the Institute. He might have suggested that their pink non-invitations were inappropriate. He might have insisted that the priorities be revised so that the Auditorium could accommodate the future leaders of Indian science. Perhaps he would even have politely asked senior members of the Institute to desist from bringing their families?

Maybe I am wrong, Dr Bhabha. Maybe you would have done something different. But your spirit was definitely not here today, even though most of the talk was about you. Frankly, I feel that the more we talk about you, the less we think for ourselves.

Yours sincerely,
Sunil Mukhi

=========================================================

Obsession

2010-05-30T17:13:00.005+05:30

A tragic news item today brought back some memories. A girl studying in an engineering college in Kelambakkam near Chennai was spotted by the college chairman (who happened to also be her relative) sitting next to a boy and - horrors - talking to him. He scolded her, whereupon she went to her hostel room and committed suicide by hanging herself.

The memory this brought back was of attending a summer school at IIT Madras in 1976. In those days, IIT's were nasty, forbidding places (at least the ones in Madras and Delhi). The organiser of our National Science Talent summer school, whom I'll call Prof. R, was a rude, obnoxious and overbearing person. Beyond all this, he had an obsession -- that boys and girls should not mingle under any circumstances. We were ordered to sit in separate halves of the class. This was unexpected and quite bizarre at least for those of us who had come from Bombay. We already knew our batchmates and since we had never received any warning about the dangers of opposite-sex fraternisation, we simply treated them as fellow students with a reckless disregard for gender.

Now what I remember particularly about Prof. R. is that his obsession for gender separation appeared to coincide with an obsession for one of the girls in the class. He would constantly try to talk to her, alone, and warn her about the dangers of fraternising with boys.

Cut to about six or seven years ago and a similar incident took place in Bombay. At this time no one (certainly in Bombay) would dare suggest that students be physically separated by gender in class. This is what happened instead: I was informed by a senior institute administrator that a certain girl was illegally staying in a boy's room in the hostel, that he (the administrator) had information that her modesty was in danger, and that in his view the authorities should raid the hostel room and "rescue" her. The entire story sounded to me quite fabricated. How did he have advance information about what was to happen to her? Apparently from a friend of the girl's parents. I then met this "family friend" who told me he had known the girl since she was a child, that she had fallen into "bad company", and that we needed to save her before something terrible happened. But to me, his tone betrayed a very questionable obsession about the girl.

The next step turned out pretty simple - I located the girl, gave her a very abbreviated version of the story and asked her if she was in any sort of trouble. She smiled brightly and said she wasn't, and that the boy she was visiting (not staying with) was her fiancé. They were soon to get married, their parents had met each other etc etc. She couldn't imagine what the problem was. Wishing I didn't have to do this, I had her call her father on my mobile and he confirmed her story. So what was this family friend getting all worked up about? (remember he had nearly brought about a raid to "rescue" her!) The young lady revealed a plausible reason. On her arrival in Bombay she had initially stayed with him (he lived alone) and had soon begun to feel uncomfortable with the way he looked at her and questioned her closely about her activities. So she moved out to her own lodgings. The "family friend" did not take this well and the above story was the result.

Back to the story I started with. Apparently the chairman of this engineering college in Kelambakkam discovered the girl was hanging out with boys when he surveyed CCTV footage of the students. I don't want to speculate on why he was surveying this footage and beyond the newspaper report I know nothing about this case, which presumably will be investigated. Let's hope it bears no analogy with the two cases I've described above.

Be stupid

2010-05-03T17:06:00.005+05:30

Finally, an ad campaign that I can enthusiastically endorse.

Yesterday, for reasons I can't quickly make up (possibly the heat and some wine I had at a lunch party) I ended up in a Bombay mall called "Palladium". Its highlight, if you can call it that, is the Diesel store, and this company's highlight, in turn, is an ad campaign called "Be Stupid". My boundless curiosity later led me to the online Diesel catalogue (by catalogue they don't mean something listing their products, but rather a 15 page advertising booklet) and I've helpfully extracted the basic principles of their campaign for my readers. The following are all verbatim quotes.

(i) Stupid, you see, is the relentless pursuit of a regret-free life.
(ii) Smart may have the brains, stupid has the balls.
(iii) Smart may have the authority, but stupid has one hell of a hangover.
(iv) To be stupid is to be brave. The stupid aren't afraid to fail.
(v) Stupid is the first guy who realised you could extract and synthesize the humble coca leaf into a fine, white powder.
(vi) Stupid means listening to your heart versus listening to your head.

As an indication of where the world is going, I think this is truly impressive. Of course some of this campaign isn't freely distributed in India, for example point (v) about cocaine, or the pictures in the catalogue of a girl trying to copulate with a phallic pillar.

So maybe we in India aren't completely ready to "be stupid"? Or maybe we are. I really did enter the Diesel store yesterday and here's what happened. A "chick" flounced over to me and smiled winningly. Considering the vile manners of mall employees in Bombay this was a bit of a plus. I smiled and asked her "what do you sell here?". Without a pause she replied "just about everything, except ourselves". I tottered like a leaf in a breeze and then tried the line I had prepared. "My friend and I aren't stupid, so is this store really for us?". Again there was no pause. "Well if you buy everything we want you to buy, by the end of it you'll feel pretty stupid."

Pausing only to read the price tag on a pair of cargo shorts (Rs 8,245/-), I left. But I can't help feeling I had met Diesel's only truly honest - and non-stupid - employee.

Flounder in the labyrinth

2010-04-21T14:01:00.004+05:30

Of late I have come to admire a columnist called Santosh Desai who writes for the Times of India. His column on Mondays is a general "social commentary" and shows a rare gift of perceptive analysis. He successfully avoids the trap of being too negative and trashing everyone, but occasionally circumstances cry out for widespread trashing and then he doesn't shy away from that either.

Now last Monday, writing on the IPL scandal (there must be more vulgar expansions of IPL than specks of ash in Europe's air these days) Desai had this to say about Member of Parliament Shashi Tharoor, a key player in the story. If you haven't heard of this gentleman (and/or you don't know what IPL is) then I suggest you skip to my previous blog posting about cucumber soup.

Here's Desai on Tharoor:

"He uses his words as he does his hair; his locks dance and glide sinuously at every camera lens, the charm of hair just that wee bit out of place. Like a too-skilled driver, his words often take him to the wrong places, so fond is he of his own driving. For someone to whom things always came easily, he has got it wrong astonishingly often. Tharoor represents the power of education that resolutely stays skin deep; if it went any deeper, the words would cease to flow so fluidly for they would be tempered with some self-doubt. As it stands, there is no stemming the flow, and he continues to flounder in the labyrinth of his own vocabulary."

In addition to being by far the best prose I've read in a newspaper in recent times, it's a devastatingly accurate depiction of its subject (the rest of the article is equally elegant and devastating). As if on cue, today's TOI reports Netaji Tharoor's latest flounderings in the labyrinth, in a statement to Parliament:

"Madam Speaker, my heart swells with pride for India, and Keralite blood throbs in my veins."

Surely these appalling lines would justify the withdrawal of any literary award he's ever received? But he needn't despair. All that swelling and throbbing could qualify him for the "Bad Sex in Fiction Award" of the Literary Review...

Cold cream of cucumber soup

2010-04-19T17:08:00.003+05:30

If it's hot where you are (and if you're in India this is very likely), here's a rather effective, if temporary, solution.

Assemble:
(i) Two or three cucumbers, peeled and grated.
(ii) A cup or two of chicken broth (dissolve chicken stock in water, boil, cool). If you're one of... "those", use vegetable stock.
(iii) Two cloves garlic, sprinkled with salt, chopped and then finely mashed with a knife. This is really good fun though it takes time. Salt is the key here.
(iv) A tablespoon of fresh coriander leaves, finely chopped.
(v) 50-100 g. cream, depending on your latest blood-test report.
(vi) A tablespoon of beaten yoghurt.

Mix in a bowl. Add salt and crushed black pepper. Do not add chillies and masala. I don't care if you're Indian, control yourself OK? This is a subtle dish.

Place in fridge for 3-4 hours. Depending on your fridge and the ambient temperature, consider placing in freezer for half an hour before serving. Serve with crunchy toast or crackers. Don't eat anything else. Divine!

New York Times explains it as "psychology"

2010-04-08T11:23:00.003+05:30

The NYT is often touted as an example of a "liberal" newspaper. Indeed it is supposedly hated by American right-wingers for its liberal views. Of course the paper has many different journalists and for this reason speaks in many different voices, which is generally a good thing. But on issues where "patriotism" is involved, it has a tendency to put subtle and dangerous spins on the news. An example I recall from the start of the war in Afghanistan (I was in Princeton at the time) was how the accidental bombing of a wedding party by American troops was presented: (i) on the day it happened the news was on the front page, presented as the bombing of dangerous insurgents, with a brief mention at the end - and almost in a tone of ridicule - that local Afghans claimed it was a wedding party, (ii) a week later it was revealed that it had indeed been a wedding party, but this revelation was concealed deep inside the newspaper in small print. And there was no "humanising" of the news, such as presenting names of the deceased or discussing their lives, such as is routinely done when things are the other way.

Today this newspaper has put a shocking and disgraceful spin on the "dead bastards" story about which I blogged a couple of days ago. In an article titled "Psychologists Explain Iraq Airstrike Video", the paper has attempted to "explain" the awful incident in psychological terms. The idea is that this is the way combat training is done, that it's natural for troops in a helicopter to mentally distance themselves and see people as potential threats (and cameras as assault weapons). And that the helicopter crew believed themselves to be in danger of being shot down. You keep reading the article and wait for some line like "of course all this does not justify the awful thing we saw in the video" and then you realise that this line is simply not there. A very dangerous piece of spin has been spun.

Interestingly the spin hasn't fooled a number of readers, including many Americans whom I would like to compliment. I'll quote a few of my favourite comments, the remaining (167 in all) you can read for yourself, and please feel free to add a few.

(i) Well, now that this behavior has been "explained", I'm sure everyone will feel much better about it now. Thank you NYT.

(ii) I am sure when devil goes to see a psychologist, he will get a logically sounding explanation of his mentality. It does not make the devil any less evil though.

(iii) We've been psychoanalyzed to death. Give it a rest. Sometimes a cigar - is just a cigar.

And spin is spin. Shame on NYT.

"Look at those dead bastards"

2010-04-06T13:55:00.003+05:30

I don't often blog about global politics, not because I'm uninterested or free of opinions but because I don't know what I can add to the discourse already out there. I do care about injustice, but the global scale and systematic nature of it has, at least in recent years, left me staggered and therefore virtually silent. Seven years ago I felt pressed to post an article on my website about the criminal invasion of Iraq by the United States. Although I was right about everything I wrote (you can read it here), the article is little more than an emotional outburst and I don't particularly recommend it. I haven't written anything on the subject since then.

But today I am chilled to the bone by something I just saw on the net and I would like all readers of this blog to see it. Maybe some already have and I hope the major news media in India pick it up (but it's not certain they will). I'm referring to a video taken in 2007 from a US helicopter gunship over a suburb of Baghdad. The crew of the helicopter opened fire, completely unprovoked, on a group of men that included two Reuters employees: a photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and a driver, Saeed Chmagh, 40. They killed everyone except Saeed who was badly wounded. When a van pulled up and two men got out to save Saeed, the helicopter opened fire again, wiping out the men as well as Saeed and injuring two terrified children in the van.

The classified US military video was leaked and released yesterday on the website wikileaks.org. An article in today's Guardian describes the video. To quote a few lines: "The lead helicopter, using the moniker Crazyhorse, opens fire. `Hahaha. I hit 'em," shouts one of the American crew. Another responds a little later: "Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards." The article goes on to say "The behaviour of the pilots is like a computer game." and that's absolutely true, as you'll see.

I suggest you start by reading the Guardian article, then go straight to wikileaks.org and spend a deeply disturbing 17 minutes and 47 seconds watching the video.

Sorry for asking

2010-04-02T09:15:00.004+05:30

An experience at an Irani restaurant next to Churchgate station recalled an amusing and somewhat negative side of this city. I wanted a cup of tea, but I dislike the sweet milky concoction one usually gets so I ordered the promising "Black tea (tea bag)" listed on the menu at 10 rupees. Then I asked if I could have a tiny amount of milk on the side, and was told very sternly: "It's black tea. If you want milk, you have to buy a full cup of milk". I decided to enjoy it black, with a twist of the lemon they supplied, but I did feel a teaspoon of milk would hardly have bankrupted them any more than the lemon.

On thinking about it, my first reaction is that this mean-spirited behaviour could not be connected with the Irani roots of the restaurant. I've spent time in Iran and it's hard to imagine a more gracious and hospitable society. So where does it come from? My guess is that this is a British legacy.

A memory begins to surface in support of this hypothesis. The scene: one morning in 1984 at a charming bed-and-breakfast in Brighton, where I was attending a particle physics conference. An American physicist sitting with me was only half-attentive as the suave owner recited the breakfast menu: "Orange juice or cereal and milk, and bacon and fried eggs or poached eggs, sir?". He responded "Yeah, I'll take the juice, cereal, poached eggs and bacon". The owner froze (or as P.G. Wodehouse memorably wrote in a different context: "Ice formed on the butler's upper slopes"). He bowed coldly and repeated "Orange juice OR cereal and milk, and bacon and fried eggs OR poached eggs, sir", his emphasis placing brackets and converting the menu into a well-formed Boolean expression.

From my position I could observe the kitchen. The wife cooked breakfast while the husband took orders (more accurately, gave orders). She would fry bacon and then eggs in the same pan. But if the order was for poached eggs then a different saucepan came into the picture and bacon could not - would not - be fried. What of the juice? Perhaps they thought it was not good for you to have citrus juice and milk with the same meal. Or they simply wanted to save money. Either way, observe the sheer rigidity of the owner's decisions and his refusal to entertain a customer's request. That's Britain for you, or it was in 1984.

Also in Oliver Twist's time. And presumably at all times in between? Remember Pink Floyd's famous line: "If you don't eat yer meat you can't have any pudding! How can you have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat!".

Indeed. Sorry I asked for a teaspoon of milk.

Bread, Aristotle and local savouries

2010-03-21T12:15:00.003+05:30

What I like most about Bombay is its ability to charm you when you're least expecting it. After a brief and predictably annoying Sunday-morning visit to Croma, the electronics chain run by the Tatas (company motto: "We will be rude AND charge higher prices, if you don't like it you can just get lost") I wandered over to my favourite bakery, Yazdani, nestled in a lane off Flora Fountain. I had always assumed it was closed on Sundays but this was the first time I thought to check -- and it was very much open. While buying my favourite seven-grain bread I overheard this fascinating conversation between three Parsis standing outside the shop. They were wearing traditional hats suggestive of a recent visit to the fire temple next door.

P1: Now tell me, when winter comes, why does it come all of a sudden on one particular day?
P2: Because that's when the sun, moon and earth are all in a straight line.
P3: No it's something else, I don't remember. But it was Aristotle who figured this out. Him, and all the ancient Greeks.
P2: Yes and he travelled all over the world to find out these things.
P1: I can bet you it wasn't Aristotle who travelled. He must have paid some poor mathematician to do the work for him.

Smiling to myself I wandered home with my precious beret-shaped seven-grain loaf. On reaching home I had the additional pleasing thought that I could (if I wished) buy a sextant, or astrolabe, or ancient wind-up gramophone, on the very road where I live. I don't expect to ever buy these things, but could I possibly adjust to living in a town (or area) where they aren't sold on every other street? I wonder.

My nephew Karun told me another story about a Parsi this morning. This one, let's call him P4, went to a movie theatre and demanded tickets for a recent Bollywood film called "Love, Sex aur Dhokha". Except that the confused Mr P4 thought the title was "Love, Sex aur Dhokla"! The staff at the ticket counter tried to explain his error but soon gave up and collapsed in splits.

I love this city.

Welcome to the MBA

2010-03-05T14:00:00.007+05:30

The recent headline "MNS to start Marathi Academy" will have drawn a few gasps of surprise. This political party, more widely known for its antipathy to non-Maharashtrians than for any great fondness for Marathi culture, has in the words of this press report "decided to set up a Marathi Bhasha Academy in Pune to promote the use of Marathi language and culture. Among other things, the academy will translate English literature into Marathi and Marathi writings into English." You should read the full report , but I'll quote a noteworthy comment from a party member who "wants Marathi to be a language of information like English. The party wants books on engineering, medical, architecture to be published in Marathi and encourage students to use them."

There will be cynics who will read bad intentions into this, but my take is positive. After all, the stated goals are entirely laudable. I think I'm not the only one who cringes when the software I'm installing offers me a choice of languages like Catalan, Hebrew or Norwegian (whose speakers taken together would barely fill Mumbai) but no Indian languages. So if Marathi actually becomes a language of information and is used routinely in computers, mobiles etc by Marathi speakers, it will set a welcome trend not just for the state but for all of India.

Admittedly, achieving such a status is a tall order. As an example, I assume a lot of Andhra-ites (prominent in the international software community) have been trying to make Telugu an information language but the impact of this has not yet been too visible. Still someone has to try, and we should hope they succeed.

The above development is also welcome for a political reason. What the various Senas have been doing since their inception is to cleverly tap into veins of negativity within segments of the Maharashtrian community. Talking to their sympathisers over the years I've detected a combination of frustration together with a sense of inferiority that easily converts into blind and typically self-defeating anger. But at the rate at which India is changing, I expect the inferiority is fading away and more confident generations are starting to emerge -- how could it be otherwise when our youth hear that we will be a leading economy in a mere twenty years?

I wonder whether the Maharashtrian echo of this growing national confidence is a growing distaste for the tokenism and petty violence that's made the Senas famous, and a desire to see some meaningful action on the ground. If there is such a trend then the Senas will be obliged to react and, having sacked their hired goons, recruit a new breed of young and motivated academics to set up organisations like the MBA and otherwise propagate the local language and culture (and, I very much hope, music).

Yes I realise the above is a utopian view. It's hard to believe the tigers will stop roaring and sit in front of their keyboards and terminals from now on. But even if there's a tiny trend, and the above news article suggests there is, it's very welcome indeed.

Tailpiece: Another political party, the NCP, which used to spend its time getting "objectionable" books banned and asking Interpol to arrest authors (see this article) has recently organised a cycle race to spread awareness about climate change (see this article).

In defence of mastery

2010-02-25T23:03:00.004+05:30

When something newsworthy happens, I often find myself reflecting on which of my favourite opinions it justifies. I suppose that's only human.

In the present case I have in mind Sachin Tendulkar's record-breaking double century in one-day cricket. The first thing it goes to prove, which hardly needed proving, is that Sachin is one amazing Manoos. Certain political parties may want to give up trying to teach him about Marathi asmita and try learning it from him instead. But this point is so trivial that I needn't have bothered to make it.

What interests me more is that Sachin's performance is a blow in favour of mastery in a particular field. As a scientist, I've been disturbed for some years by the growing obsession about breaking barriers between subjects, being inter-disciplinary, being a well-rounded individual and all that. These ideas are surely important. But I feel things can get out of hand if we ignore the other side of the coin -- that serious achievement requires concentration, knowledge, technique and depth.

Imagine, if Sachin's trainers had taken the view that in addition to cricket it was essential for him to know football, tennis, golf and chess. He simply wouldn't have been what he is - a person who single-mindedly focuses on what he does best. And that would have been humanity's loss.

Now in discussing academic curricula, syllabi, student intake etc in various institutes, I keep hearing that one has to focus on breadth of knowledge when selecting students, and then instil further breadth when training them. I'm not against this as long as it's feasible and helpful, but sometimes it seems to become a goal unto itself.

Recently a colleague, talking about his institution's undergrad admissions process, observed that "with the kind of breadth requirements we have, one wonders if Ramanujan, who only knew mathematics, would even get admission". That's basically my point, and I think Sachin's achievement validates it.

CMS at LHC in JHEP

2010-02-23T15:55:00.005+05:30

Nearly two weeks ago the first research paper was published by the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) collaboration at the LHC (Large Hadron Collider). The paper has the sort of snappy, headline-grabbing title we have all come to associate with high-energy physics experiments: "Transverse-momentum and pseudorapidity distributions of charged hadrons in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 0.9 and 2.36 TeV". It was submitted to the Journal of High Energy Physics and published by them here on February 10.

While the results of this paper are not earth-shaking (and still less earth-swallowing!), it's a landmark of sorts and has occasioned me a great deal of satisfaction for various reasons, which, this being my blog, I can share with you.

First a summary of the contents: the LHC scattered protons against protons (as will be its habit for many years to come) during its commissioning in December 2009. The CMS detector, a "cylindrical onion" in the eloquent words of its publicity team, measured charged particles emerging from the collisions during two 2-hour periods at this time. The beam had an energy of 0.9 TeV in the first part of the run and 2.36 TeV in the second part. The former measurements provided a useful confirmation of previous results while the latter represent the highest energy measurements at a collider to date. The paper says nothing about finding new particles, nor was this expected since the LHC will take a while to reach its planned energy of 14 TeV and more importantly its planned luminosity.

Here's one tiny reason why I'm gratified. Of the 2400 or so authors on this paper, I've taught three or four in the TIFR graduate school and elsewhere. This is perhaps no great achievement on my part but I'm entitled to feel mildly pleased. After all they might one day co-author a Nobel prize-winning paper (and the prize itself may go to the collaboration rather than just its boss?? Who knows, the world is a changing place.)

And yes, you read the number of authors right. The first 15 pages of this 35-page paper are a list of the authors' names and affiliations! So much for the days when we thought high-energy physics had gone too far by inflicting as many as 100 authors on us...

Here's a second and more serious reason to be happy. Publication of a paper indicates that the LHC is seriously back on track and working well, and so is the CMS detector. There's a long road ahead and I'm glad they finally seem to be on it.

On to the third reason. I'm delighted that they chose to publish in JHEP. I've been on the editorial board of JHEP since it started in 1997 and it's survived a number of critics: those who claimed an electronic journal was an un-refereed journal (these people were either deeply confused or lying, but they sat on major committees either way), those who said it was "just a string theory journal" and those who simply said an online journal wouldn't work. JHEP is short of perfect, and I hear complaints about it a lot, but in terms of impact factor it's become the leading journal in High Energy Physics and the decision by CMS to publish there is an affirmation of this role.

My fourth and last reason to be happy: the concluding lines of the paper are as follows: "Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited." JHEP's policy is that papers from subscribing institutions are Open Access and CERN is a subscribing institution. So from my point of view, the best things in life are still free.

Here's hoping this paper is the start of a history-making career for CMS and the LHC.

Book recommendation

2010-02-23T12:45:00.003+05:30

Ram Ramaswamy who runs the online bookshop Scholars without Borders, recently posted this book review on his blog.

I can testify from personal knowledge that the second half of the book, by Prof. Mukunda, is an excellent review of Lie groups, Lie algebras and representations. I attended his lectures on this topic in 1987 and enjoyed them greatly. The book can be purchased online from SWB ;-)

My mother and the changing world

2010-02-18T11:16:00.005+05:30

My mother, who passed away at the age of 84 on this day eight years ago, grew up in colonial India. Though not quite a freedom fighter, she was proud of the single night she had spent in jail for participating with fellow students in a protest against the British. She and my father were well-read and highly engaged with the world around them (at some point they were also highly engaged to each other... sorry, couldn't resist!).

Many years later, in the 1980's and 90's, she marvelled about the way the world had changed. She could hardly believe that Britain, in her childhood the world's most important country, had moved off to a corner of the global stage while the USA and the Soviet Union had taken over as world leaders. Then the Soviet Union fell, and so did the Berlin wall, and she was again amazed that these formerly unimaginable events could take place.

Another comment that stuck in my mind was her comment about the quality of Japanese goods. My father was a maniac for electronics (and modernity in general) and went to great trouble and expense to buy a Sony tape recorder in the early 1960's. On that occasion my mother recalled that, in her youth, "Made in Japan" had been a synonym for shoddy, cheap stuff, but now Japan had emerged as a key player in advanced technology.

Today, had she been around, she might have been amazed at the growing optimism that India is emerging from its backwardness and poverty and that "Made in India" may not forever have a negative connotation. I hope that this change continues in the right direction and that wherever she is, she is not only surprised but also happy about it.

Vignettes from the Intercity

2010-02-16T19:45:00.004+05:30

Every Monday morning I take the Intercity Express to Pune, where I teach an undergraduate course in Quantum Mechanics at IISER. On Tuesday evenings, I anti-commute. The train journey is extremely pleasant. Modern technology allows me to browse the net (I use Tata Photon +, which is generally very good but unfortunately works only as low-speed CDMA in Pune!). At this moment we are somewhere around Karjat and the net is fast.

Today's vignette: a young woman orders two cups of tea from the vendor on the train. As he is pouring the tea into paper cups, she starts to complain that she doesn't like the "malai" (clotted cream) floating on it. The vendor graciously offers to take the tea back. She foolishly tries to stack two full paper cups on each other, leading to a major spill. When she asks "how much" the vendor says, even more graciously, "how can I charge you when you haven't even drunk it?". Thereafter he vanishes and returns with malai-free tea for the lady.

A few minutes later I hear a passenger whining to the same vendor: How can you charge an odd amount like 23 rupees for an omelette? Who has 2 and 3 rupees' change these days? The vendor replies: Sir, I don't fix the rates. They are determined by the railways. But don't worry, I will give you change.

A few minutes later another passenger to the vendor: Why is it so freezing cold in here? The vendor (who doesn't handle the air-conditioning, obviously) replies: It's just been reduced sir. Passenger (whining tone): but why is it always so cold in here? Vendor: Maybe so that people buy more of my tea and coffee, sir (and he laughs lightly). The passenger laughs back.

Where do Indian Railways find such amazing people to work for them?

How to make a point

2010-02-01T07:53:00.004+05:30

When we don't like what someone is saying/thinking/propagating, particularly in the political sphere, we tend to shout at them. By "shouting" I don't necessarily mean raising one's voice, but it certainly indicates rising temper. People shout a lot on their blogs, and I've done far more than my share in the past.

But it's always greatly bothered me that anyone (myself included) should have to descend to the low level implied by "shouting" when there are better ways to make a point. As a nice recent example, I quote a dialogue from a blog maintained by a physicist called "Lubos". I won't link to his blog, which you're free to look for if you want, and I won't say more about him here precisely because it's hard for me to do so without shouting. In fact I suggest you don't visit his blog since you'll very likely end up shouting.

Instead (like me, on this occasion) try to appreciate that this particular debate has a clear winner, and it's not the one who shouted. Rather, it's another blogger called Eman, about whom I know nothing except for the admirable and even inspiring tone of her (or his) postings. The following exchange (I've corrected a few obvious typos but left others in) says it all. Please read.

-----------------------------

reader Eman said

Dear Dr.Lubos

Thank you for your blog. I have a comment about the following: "On the other hand, I do feel that the assassinations of their key nuclear folks could be the most human way to stop the nuclear threat coming from Iran". Do you think if Arab countries started targeting Israeli nuclear scientists, would the world justify what they are doing? As the western world see Iran as a threat, Arab countries share the same fearing regarding Israel? I don't see targeting scientists human at all.

My Regards

-----------------

Dear Eman,

Thanks for your comments. Well, I am not an Arab which might be the reason why I don't share the thinking you attribute to the Arabs but do share the thinking you attribute to the West. They're not "equally" valid. One of them is correct and the other one is wrong.

First, Israel probably has its nuclear weapons already. It's too late to target Israeli scientists.

Second, it's clearly not what the assertive Muslims want, anyway. Israel is dangerous for them by its very existence, because it shows that Allah doesn't have and can't have the control even over the Middle East, so He clearly can't control the world. They're bothered by the very existence of a state of a highly achieved nation - the Jews - and they want to remove it off the map. We've heard many of these things and continuing terrorist attacks at various places show that these are not just words.

This threat - especially from Iran - must be taken seriously because millions of lives could be at stake. 20th century nuclear technology in the hands of 1st-millenium-style religious bigots is simply a dangerous combination that must be prevented. It's being prevented by a combination of diplomacy and military decisions that could include bombing of the military sites in Iran and probably bigger ones in the future. This could bring some casualties. Assassinations of the individuals who actually do this research could be more human - a question would be whether it would be enough. It's surely not perfectly human, but there are no perfectly human solutions to certain big enough threats that Israel and the West is facing.

Cheers
LM

----------------
reader Eman said...

Hello Dr.Lubos
I think the west don't understand the arab world well. I am an Arab. Arabs is bothered from Israel, because it occupied an Arab Land. Israel has been established by expelling the natives (palestanians) out of their homeland. Before 1948 Israel was not on the map. There were only palestanians. I don't call for expelling jews from palestine, but a fair solution for Israeli people and palestanians. There are alot of Arab christians who share the same fearing towards Israel, they are not muslims to think they want God to control all the middle east. I don't hate jews, they are my human fellows. But I wouldn't at all support any kind of unjustice toward any race .

And what Israel is doing with palestanians is for sure unjustice.

Regards

Eman

----------------------

Dear Eman,

please try to learn how to spell "Palestinians" (which is nothing else than Arabs who live on the full territory of Israel).

Israel was not on the map in 1947 but only Jews were on the de facto (cultural and political) map in 1000 BC, 10 BC, 100 AD, and so on.

1948 is closer than the dates above - but all of them belong to the distant history. We live in 2010 and Israel surely IS on the map. Could you please kindly notice and stop assuming that it's not on the map and/or dreaming that it is not on the map?

I think it's very obvious that the existence of people like you in an alive form is a direct threat to the lives of millions of Jews who live in their old homeland.

Best wishes
Lubos

----------------------

reader Eman said

Thanks!

----------------------

Elephanta rocks

2010-01-26T17:07:00.003+05:30

It's at least a decade and probably more since I last visited the island of Elephanta off the coast of Bombay. Or rather, that statement was true until last Sunday when I visited again with a friend. A decade is a good period to compare things - had the island changed, had India changed, had I changed??

The answer to these questions is, in order: Yes, Yes, Yes. Changes all round resulted in my having a great time and also the occasion to muse about life.

Previously, the excursion to Elephanta involved dealing with (i) a huge mess at the Gateway of India, (ii) a wait of upto an hour for the boat, (iii) a trip on a noisy and overcrowded motor launch, (iv) touts and garbage at the other end. All this was worth it just to see a few caves with incredible late-Gupta/Silhara/Rashtrakuta period sculptures dating from the 7th to the 13th century, even if most were damaged from age and neglect and Portuguese rifle practice.

The Wikipedia entry on the caves still disapprovingly says: "The threats to Elephanta Caves include development pressures (mainly due to its location within the Mumbai harbor), unsustainable tourism and tourist facilities on the island, and poor management of the heritage monument."

So here's the surprise. Everything is better. The chaos at the Gateway resolved itself into a few ticket windows without much of a queue, quickly resulting in a pair of return tickets at Rs 120 each. The boat left instantly after we boarded it. On the upper deck (well they did charge us Rs 10 on the boat, probably illegally, to go upstairs), the plastic bucket seats were comfortable if not luxurious, there were just a dozen or so passengers and - remarkably - it was quite silent up there. Add to this the pleasant weather with a fresh breeze mitigating the bright sunshine even at noon, and the outbound trip was just heavenly.

That the boat should have improved over ten years isn't a great surprise. What is, is that the management of this public monument as well as crowd behaviour seemed to have improved considerably. Elephanta was virtually spotless. Yes I did see a few tourists jettison plastic bottles and used tickets, but they were in the minority. There were NO TOUTS, all trade having been organised into peacefully seated shopkeepers selling handicrafts, bottled water and freshly made (though overly salty) vada-paav. Not one person intruded themselves into my path with the catch-all greeting "YES???" with which Indian traders think they are going to attract tourists, something that happens to me all the time in Colaba where I live.

At the monuments, security was conscientious but not officious. Photography was allowed (the advent of mobile camera-phones means the old practice of charging for still photography is impractical and has wisely been abandoned). Security staff were friendly and intervened only when people actually tried to sit on the priceless sculptures (yes of course they did, this is still India for all the positive changes!!).

And what amazing sculptures they are - the famous Trimurti Sadasiva, the Ardhanariswara and the hulking though mostly damaged doorkeepers ("Dwarapalas") around the main Shivlinga.

But for me the most pleasant surprise was the crowd, largely made up of groups of Indian friends and families, both urban and rural though mostly the latter. They were not obtrusive, not aggressive (and not spitting!!!), taking photos, eating elaborate picnic meals in the designated picnic area, laughing a lot and generally having a wonderful time. There were also many foreign tourists, without the beleaguered look they normally wear in Colaba, relaxed and enjoying the weather and the history.

I close this review with a mention of the spotlessly clean - and free - public toilets. This isn't the India I grew up in. Thankfully.

Copyrights, copylefts, copywrongs...

2009-12-22T14:12:00.002+05:30

I recently got into a debate about copyrights with a favourite cousin. He, amazingly, had never heard of Bit Torrent (he lives in the US, could it be that the press there doesn't write about such things??) but when I tried to describe its brilliant concept, he assumed right away that this was merely a way to infringe copyrights and refused to listen. And he got worked up about musicians not being to earn a living because of music piracy. After all that, I thought I'd learn a little about music copyright from the internet.

I've often wondered about copyrights on recorded music, and one of the questions to which I've so far found no answer goes as follows. Let's say in 1975 I purchased an LP record of a Beatles album (this in fact did happen, many times over). Now suppose in 2009 I find myself unable to play the album because LP record players are difficult to access (I actually have a working one, but this is a hypothetical discussion). Having bought the album at one time, I believe I still have the right to personal use of the music and this right is distinct from ownership of the piece of plastic. Can I now legally implement my right by copying a CD from a friend (or enemy) onto my laptop? If someone has a clear answer (please no personal opinions or rants, just facts), they should let me know.

If you search for "music copyright" on Google, you first of all reach sites that advise you how to copyright your own compositions. Beyond those, you find several that purport to give you legal information about copyrights and their possible violation, but in practice end up warning you of dire consequences if you even dare to hum a song to your friends, forget copying anything onto your laptop. I assume many, if not all, these sites are sponsored in some way by the music industry. It takes more work to discover sites advocating modification of copyright laws and supporting some form of file-sharing. The website of the Swedish Pirate Party is one such and I'll come back to it below, but the first place I'd recommend the reader to go is The Economist's debate "Copyrights and Wrongs" from which I partially adapted the title of this post (under the doctrine of "fair use").

Here Harvard professor William Fisher argues for the proposition "This house believes that existing copyright laws do more harm than good." In brief his arguments can be summarised as follows: (i) copyrights last far too long to be justified by the authors' legitimate interests, e.g in the US several decades after the author's death, (ii) just about anything one writes/says/composes is automatically protected under copyright, (iii) it's hard to stop piracy in today's world, (iv) it's often impossible to trace the legitimate author and request permission under copyright, so free expression ends up being stifled.

Predictably Prof. Fisher was attacked on point (iii) for appearing to say that since violations are inevitable, the law is bad. His actual point appears to be that milder and fairer laws might elicit much better compliance.

The opposition view in this debate, in support of existing copyright laws, was provided by Prof. Justin Hughes of Cardozo Law College, New York. Going through his opening statement in response to Prof. Fisher's points, I was struck by how weak and disorganised it was. I won't bother to review it here but you can read it for yourself. Although I'm not particularly on his side, even I could have argued his case more convincingly.

Anyhow at the end, the Economist had a vote and Fisher's anti-copyright motion won hands down with 75 percent of the votes. One may question whether some of the votes were self-motivated ("if he's right then my illegal downloading becomes legal!"). But still, given that the Economist is hardly the Pirate Party and their readership is not quite Joe Six-Pack, it's quite striking that so many readers agree the laws need a change.

I personally feel that drastically reducing the duration of copyright as well as requiring authors who want copyright to explicitly register their work on a globally accessible database, are the very minimum changes called for in our times.

And what of the Pirate Party? The manifesto on their website "http://www.piratpartiet.se/international/english" says that they want to "fundamentally reform copyright law, get rid of the patent system, and ensure that citizens' rights to privacy are respected." I'll continue to quote from their website because they've stated their point of view quite eloquently, as well as economically: "The official aim of the copyright system has always been to find a balance in order to promote culture being created and spread. Today that balance has been completely lost, to a point where the copyright laws severely restrict the very thing they are supposed to promote. The Pirate Party wants to restore the balance in the copyright legislation." They go on to recommend that "A five years copyright term for commercial use is more than enough. Non-commercial use should be free from day one." Though this has not received much attention in India, the Pirate Party received 7% of the Swedish vote in the 2009 European Parliament elections and consequently has two Members of the European Parliament.

Although it's a completely distinct entity, the Pirate Party (as well as its name) originated from the website http://thepiratebay.org/ (go ahead and visit it, I don't think you can be drawn and quartered for doing that!) which claims to be the world's largest torrent server. On their "About" page you find the following rather defensively worded para: "Only torrent files are saved at the server. That means no copyrighted and/or illegal material are stored by us. It is therefore not possible to hold the people behind The Pirate Bay responsible for the material that is being spread using the tracker. Any complaints from copyright and/or lobby organizations will be ridiculed and published at the site." Undeterred, the Swedish police did indeed go after The Pirate Bay and in April 2009 its founders were held guilty in a Swedish court of assisting copyright infringement. They are presently in appeal.

In September 2007, emails allegedly leaked from Media Defender (an anti-piracy organisation) suggested that it was planning hacker attacks on Pirate Bay at the behest of its clients. In a case of the litigation boot being on the other foot, Pirate Bay then filed charges in Sweden against the venerable clients of Media Defender: 20th Century Fox, Sony, Universal, EMI et al. However the Wikipedia entry on Pirate Bay lamely ends with "the charges were not pursued" which leaves me a little baffled.

In an intriguing sidelight, open-source movement guru Richard Stallman argues in this article that the Pirate Party's proposal to abolish or reduce copyright would negatively impact copyleft. (Copyleft is when an author of free software retains copyright solely to use it "to defend freedom for every user" in Stallman's words.) In his very nice article he suggests some intermediate solutions and/or patches to Pirate Party's manifesto.

But back to the debate in The Economist, which as I've pointed out before, is not exactly Pirate Party. In his Closing Statements, Prof. Fisher opines thus: "Digital versions of works of all sorts (music, films, television shows, books, etc) should be subject to a blanket licensing system. People should be free to upload, download, reproduce, watch and listen to an unlimited number of such recordings. The owners of the copyrights in those recordings should be compensated, not through direct payments from consumers, but by being paid shares (in amounts proportional to the relative popularity of their creations) out of a pot of revenue. The money necessary to fill the pot and administer the system could be raised in either of two ways. First, national governments could tax internet service subscriptions and devices commonly used to store or play recordings. Alternatively, internet service providers and groups of copyright owners could negotiate voluntary collective licensing arrangements, which would specify the magnitude of the monthly fees that would be paid by the ISPs on behalf of their customers."

I find this a fascinating thought.

Marathi moments

2009-11-24T22:23:00.007+05:30

While the Thackerays and Azmis compete with each other to raise the dignity and stature of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly, I had a remarkably Marathi weekend and would like to report on some of its charming moments.

It started with my watching the play Sapadlelya Aathavani (literally, "Found Memories"). This play was originally written in English by Girish Karnad, then adapted in Marathi by Amruta More and staged by Satyadev Dubey last Friday at TIFR. Both Karnad and Dubey were in the audience (actually Dubey was staging a play of his own outside, but I'll come back to that later). I quite enjoyed the play and found the Marathi fairly easy to follow - Dubey had earlier assured us it was in simple Bombay Marathi ("after all what other Marathi do I know?" he dramatically exclaimed). In fact much of the dialogue consisted of "Really ग!" and "What do you keep doing in that cyber cafe?" which, technically, are not pure Marathi phrases.

The play is nice, and modern, but not a masterpiece. Consider that its co-producer Girish Patke described it as "a trite story of flawed family relationships". But the sisters Vidula and Hema make for a believable duo and their humorous antics, which turn into histrionics towards the end, are most entertaining. The play had one thing in common with a lot of Marathi (and Hindi) dramas - once the emotional pitch goes up and the characters start shrieking and sobbing, there seems no turning back. After ten minutes of this stuff the cast all have sore throats and their shrieks sound more and more comical. But at least in this play the tension abates in the last scene and the characters, not having found any clear resolution to their problems, dance a jig all over the stage.

A number of Bengalis (I use "Bengali" in its TIFR sense of "non-Maharashtrian") left after the first ten minutes, understandably since the play is wordy and hard to follow if you don't know the language. But many others stayed on and formed bunches in the audience around anyone who knew the language. This resulted in an annoying buzz as each twist of the plot got explained in a sequence of Marathi-Chinese whispers, but at least people did try to follow -- which was nice.

As for Mr Dubey, he decided to guard the doors of the auditorium to prevent people entering after the play had started. As there had been no warning about this (and the announced timings had shifted back and forth a bit) there were apparently several latecomers. After trying to shoo them away without too much success, the venerable Mr Dubey lost it and started casting aspersions (in Hindi) on the relationships of various TIFR members to their mothers and sisters! My only regret is that this piece of experimental and participatory theatre did not get filmed.

So, on to my second Marathi moment. Emboldened by my comprehension of the play, on the following evening I dug out my VCD's of the movie Sant Tukaram (if you're interested, here is an astounding website about Tukaram, though not actually about the movie). Any hopes I had of following the dialogue were dashed by the fact that (i) the Marathi of 1937 is not Satyadev Dubey's Marathi (and still less his Hindi, thankfully!), (ii) the sound quality was good for 1937, but no more than that. Fortunately the VCD's were subtitled and I also had a Maharashtrian friend on hand.

So about the movie itself -- now here was a masterpiece. The first thing I noticed was the truly outstanding quality of the music. Everyone sings, and sings brilliantly - Tukaram himself, the evil Salomalo, the vamp what's-her-name who tries to seduce Tuka but becomes his devotee. Maharashtrians understand and feel Indian music in a way that I find remarkable. Somewhat to my friend's astonishment, I sang along with the movie for two solid hours.

The acting too was brilliant in its own way. Vishnupant Paganis as Tukaram manages to stay on the right side of the fine line that separates an expression of devotional ecstasy from the goofy grin of a pot smoker. The good-vs-evil battle plays out with a constant increase of tension but (thankfully) no shrieking or sore throats. My only complaint about the movie is, did they have to make Mrs Tuka such a thick-head? I mean, living with him all those years she must surely have figured out that possessions are BAD and saintly behaviour is GOOD, no? But right until the bitter end when Tukaram flies up to heaven sitting astride a fluffy eagle toy, she just does NOT get it. Anyhow, the acting is wonderfully spontaneous and the directing very sure-footed and innovative, so the movie fully deserves its "Special Recognition" award at the Venice film festival.

To slightly elaborate on a theme above, I'm amazed at how Maharashtrians trump just about all of India when it comes to Hindustani music. After all, the major gharanas like Kirana, Gwalior, Jaipur and Agra are all from North India (eek!! Sena alert!!!), leaving only the infelicitously named Bhendi Bazaar gharana for Maharashtra (and that anyway is an offshoot of Agra as far as I know). But just about anyone who was anyone in Hindustani music, at least in the second half of the 20th century, either was Maharashtrian or lived in Maharashtra or both. And Marathi stage songs (natya sangeet), devotional music (abhang) and folk songs (bhaavgeet) are all steeped in this culture.

My Marathi moments weekend concluded with a morning concert on Sunday by Shruti Sadolikar-Katkar and Satyasheel Deshpande. No prizes for guessing which state they belong to! Not a Marathi word was actually spoken that day, but the music was totally Marathi in spirit and totally wonderful.

Cell phones and dry fruits

2009-11-10T14:32:00.002+05:30

The recent ban on prepaid cell phone services in Jammu and Kashmir has rightly annoyed people there. An Army spokesman has argued that ‘‘The terrorists are using prepaid phones to stay in touch with their handlers as it gives them easy ISD access’’. I'm sure that's true enough. But then, it's also true that during the 26/11 attacks in Bombay the terrorists needed a stock of dry fruits to sustain them in their rampage. So how come we don't hear about banning dry fruits?

Maybe that was flippant but it's also the point. Terrorists use a lot of modern facilities: cell phones, the internet, electricity... And it's quite true that banning all of these would greatly restrict their actions. Unfortunately it would also restrict normal life as we know it. This would be an unacceptable loss of quality of life, which is why none of these things is banned in, say, Bombay. A concrete example is the wireless router. This device is highly capable of being misused if not configured properly, and attempts and laws have been made to ensure routers are properly secured, but no one in their right minds would suggest Bombay should entirely do without wireless routers.

So finally, it's only people in outlying areas for whom the government considers such bans acceptable. In other words there's a "mainstream" India where normal life, business, personal freedom, entertainment and all that come first, and then a "border" India where instead the citizens are supposed to accept bans and inconveniences "for the sake of" this mainstream India. As a recipe to alienate everyone on our borders, it's truly inspired.

And that's only about cell phones. The disgraceful Armed Forces Special Powers Act allows the army the right to, among other things, shoot to kill based on mere suspicion that it is necessary to do so in order to "maintain the public order". For more details please read this article. This law is applicable in Assam, Manipur, Tripura, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Nagaland. Interestingly the residents of these states don't find it exciting to sacrifice their fundamental rights for the rest of us. I see their point.

You must look at our hotels

2009-10-19T21:57:00.004+05:30

Something I've always found interesting since my teenage years is the way the Indian upper/middle classes react to the poverty in their midst. I realise this is a serious topic that influences our economic system and there are people more qualified than me to discuss it. But here I only want to address a relatively superficial aspect, namely the discomfort of the middle-class person when the existence of poverty is forcefully brought to their attention. After all most of us, whatever we know intellectually, exist in a state of blissful denial at the emotional level otherwise it would be hard to live with our consciences at all.

The person who brings inconvenient facts to our attention is frequently a foreigner. Being extraneous to the system, foreigners can expose our hypocrisies quite easily. Moreover, people from continental Europe have been schooled on "liberty equality fraternity" and naturally find our social contrasts shocking. (This is not to deny they have their own underclass and their own hypocrisy, not to mention their murderous histories... the key point is that it's always easier to spot injustice when you're an outsider to the system). I remember an Italian friend and collaborator who visited me here in the 1980's remarking on the way labourers were made to pull handcarts, like beasts of burden. Till that moment I had never quite seen it that way, and afterwards I was unable to see it any other way.

Another recollection, this time from the 1970's, highlights the reaction of upper-class Indians. My mother was then working for an NGO that had sponsored the visits to India of a few teenagers from London. So she called them home for tea. This was an era when far less information had diffused globally than today, so these teenagers were naturally a little baffled by their experience of India. I don't remember anything specific they said, but their reaction evidently annoyed a lady friend of my mother's who happened to be over. This gentlewoman then gave them a lecture which in summary reduced to the following: "We have very fine hotels in India. You must look at our hotels. Go see the Taj. It's a very fine hotel. Appreciate the decor, the furniture. We have fine hotels." I realised then that she felt ashamed and repulsed by the squalor of her own city and was seeking solace in the make-believe world of the hotel which was everything (for her) that the street outside was not.

Which brings me to my point, not that there's a very precise one. Yesterday I watched an episode of "Paul Merton in India" on TV. I imagine it's the kind of show that this lady would have hated (except that she's now passed on to the great Taj Hotel in the sky). By now a few zillion travel programmes about India have already been made, so clearly Merton, a British comedian, was looking for something different. He must have figured out that if you come to India and hang out with "people like us" you will only get an extremely slanted and limited take on the country. So he looked for things that working-class and rural people do that urban upper-middle-class people would never do. This took him to the rat-worshipping Karni Mata temple in Bikaner and the Shivratri celebrations in Girnar, complete with naked sadhus and ganja.

But the strangest segment of this show is when Merton visits a private home in Delhi with a genuine (but non-functional) wide-body Airbus parked in the backyard. Here people who could never afford to fly pay a small fee to board a disused airplane, be strapped in their seats and enjoy an imaginary flight (supposedly those too poor to pay are taken on board for free). After it "takes off" the passengers are served snacks in packed boxes (Merton points out that the "airline food" is unfortunately all too realistic!). Soon thereafter, with poorly feigned panic in her voice, the "stewardess" announces that the plane is about to ditch in the sea whereupon the passengers, laughing and joking, cheerfully jump out the emergency exits and slide down chutes back to the reality of a Delhi backyard. Merton's cameraman beautifully captures the joy and elation of the crowd.

More fun than looking at furniture in the Taj Hotel, for sure.

Backslash backlash

2009-10-15T11:32:00.002+05:30

An article in the Times of India mentioned that Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World-Wide Web, has apologised for the unnecessary // required at the beginning of a URL. What baffled me was that the TOI article (and apparently Berners-Lee himself) referred to the / symbol as a "backslash". Surely it's a forward slash? A backslash would be \ (and if anyone has to apologise for that one, it would be Donald Knuth, the inventor of TeX).

The report widely quoted in Indian newspapers is from Asian News International (ANI) and starts: "Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the world-wide-web, has finally accepted that he could have created the web without the two backslashes, //, that Internet users often grumbled about."

However in the London Times article about the same statement, one finds: "What is the point of the two forward slashes that sit directly infront of the “www” in every internet website address?". Nice that someone tried to get it right. This doesn't exonerate Sir Tim though, for the article continues as follows: " “Boy, now people on the radio are calling it ‘backslash backslash’,” Sir Tim told his audience, even though he knows they are, in fact, forward slashes." Oh well.

War and Peace

2009-10-10T20:30:00.009+05:30

Yesterday we had a film screening of the anti-nuclear documentary film "War and Peace" at TIFR. Its director Anand Patwardhan was present and spoke about the film before and after the screening. He last came to TIFR many years ago to screen "Ram ke Naam", his documentary about the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation and the subsequent demolition of the Babri Masjid.

On this occasion as on the previous one, I was struck by a number of things. Patwardhan is by his own admission a "dissident" and an activist who speaks for the poor and the marginalised and against ethnic, religious and political divisions. He is one of the most eloquent of his kind and unlike a lot of dissident activists, I found him persuasive and was moved by his empathy and concern for humanity. He isn't content with the sort of government-bashing and industry-bashing that regretfully provides pre-fabricated speeches for a lot of other activists.

However he can be harsh (and who am I to complain about that?). In the question period, one of my colleagues challenged his claim that today wind energy generates more electricity in India than nuclear energy. But another colleague confirmed that the claim was correct and the first person quickly retracted. Now Patwardhan had caught his prey. His exact words to the challenger, as I recall them, were: "If I'm right about this, and you're a scientist, shouldn't you have known?". Ooooooo.... And yet, a valid point.

Now about the film. Patwardhan is a very talented documentary film-maker, truly outstanding in fact. His camera angles, editing, choice of subjects are superb. He has the unique and powerful ability to trash a person by pointing his camera at them, asking a simple question (or sometimes saying nothing) and letting them make bigger and bigger fools of themselves. My opinion of L.K. Advani was formed by seeing Ram ke Naam in the 90's. Using only his own words, the film made clear that he was a deeply divisive person who would willingly harm the nation for his own political agenda.

Advani doesn't feature in War and Peace but various other people manage to put their foot firmly in their mouths while Patwardhan's cameras are rolling. Pramod Mahajan speaking at an election rally, Pakistani and Indian fundamentalists addressing people or just talking to the camera, and a bunch of people including former Atomic Energy chiefs and also former President Abdul Kalam, all manage to come off as too obsessed with either sectarian agendas or delusions of grandeur to care about the common man and woman. All this was counterposed with moving impressions of villages and peasants affected by the Pokharan tests or by radiation from mines. While the big guns gave a poor impression, the peasants interviewed spoke wisely, thoughtfully and eloquently about their fate. The movie disturbed me deeply and I'm grateful for that.

One of the observations I found most convincing in the film (this is something I've always believed) is that to get people to fall into line with a political agenda, myths and stories have to be created and cultures have to be glorified on one side and defamed on the other. We are all familiar with the myth of the good, honest, God-fearing United States of America innocently working for its own betterment in a world full of deceitful, hostile countries that are jealous of its success or just wish to harm it for unknown reasons. I would guess most educated Indians have laughed at this sort of claim, but only when it comes to the USA. Patwardhan provides persuasive reasons to believe that exactly the same view of ourselves is being formed in middle-class India, and he calls it "nuclear nationalism".

I'm constantly horrified by how many young people fall for this sort of myth-making. Not less than three of them asked Patwardhan essentially the same question: nukes may be bad but, surrounded as we are by evil Pakistan and murderous China, what can poor innocent India possibly do but defend itself?

The best of times

2009-10-03T10:26:00.004+05:30

Today's newspaper reports that the Congress-NCP plans to start "Marathi language conservation fortnights" and the BJP-SS combine plans to have the best world literature translated into Marathi.

In a previous posting, I had suggested that:

"It might still be possible to do something that would charm and attract people to learn Marathi and appreciate its depth and beauty, its literature, its poetry..."

and I'm happy to find that all major parties have finally listened to me!

Of course the BJP-SS could not resist adding the demand for a law requiring celebration of Marathi Week each year. I don't find compulsion very pleasant but I'm gratified that they want to use legal compulsion rather than their knuckles. Other local parties aren't being so reticent and their threats to make us love Marathi or lose our teeth will make their supporters (and occasional fellow-travellers [link deleted]) happy.

Now one does hope that the translations planned by the BJP-SS combine are done by genuine litterateurs (there are plenty of them in this state) rather than party hacks. Otherwise we might end up with "ईट वास द बेस्ट ऑफ टाईम्स..."।

P.S. I know people think I exaggerate, but please come to Colaba and take a look at the wonderfully named बेस्ट टी कोल्ड्रींक आणि स्नेक बार (BEST tea coldreenk aani snack bar) at the bus station outside the Museum! The only Marathi word in this title is "aani" meaning "and". Are there no words in Marathi for tea and snacks?

You have the right to your opinion as long as you agree with us

2009-10-01T10:40:00.003+05:30

Two recent articles in the Guardian, this one and this one, confirm what we always knew about censorship in the Land Of The Free.

I find the following quote striking: "Almost 4,000 attempts to ban books have been recorded over the past eight years, though the ALA [American Library Association] believes the figure is a gross understatement. All cases are voluntarily reported, and many more are likely to go unrecorded, sometimes because librarians have been threatened with dismissal if they sound the alarm. Most would-be censors are parents concerned about their children's reading or members of religious groups."

On the other hand, the would-be censors don't tend to have much success in bringing about an official ban. That means the US at least ranks better than Gujarat in this domain.

Freude, freude!

2009-09-28T15:27:00.004+05:30

Last night I attended a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony by the Symphony Orchestra of India at the Jamshed Bhabha theatre in Bombay (it's notable that both brothers, Homi and Jamshed, have theatres named after them). Frankly I had not expected the performance would be great - but it was awesome. On this occasion the SOI (including all the extra members recruited for this demanding piece) came to 170 members, the large majority of whom are from Kazakhstan. I read somewhere that only 17 members are from India! That's globalisation for you.

The performance gave me goosebumps (and tears, I'm embarrassed to admit, during the intensely lyrical Adagio). The first movement was powerful and dramatic as expected, but not a complete triumph - the wind instruments were too subdued, for one thing. But in the second movement (the Scherzo) the winds got their wind back and the rendition was brilliant - by turns humorous, lyrical and just plain rock-'n-rolling! And the final "choral" movement was a life-changing experience even though I'd previously always winced at people shouting "Freude, freude" in public.

I don't know what it is about choral singing, it's always reminded me of my school in a depressing way. As of last night I think I'm over that. Better late than never!

I've recently befriended the SOI conductor Zane Dalal, who'll be conducting the Bhabha Centenary Symposium concert at TIFR in early December - of course, for us it will be a smaller SOI and a somewhat "lighter" concert. Yesterday he didn't conduct, that was done by a guest conductor (from, surprise surprise, Kazakhstan), but he did deliver an excellent and informative intro to the piece, talking over the din of people who couldn't find their seats or perhaps just enjoyed arguing with ushers.

Zane stressed the breaking of barriers that was a hallmark of the composition and of the period in which it was written. Schiller's "Ode to Joy", which is the text for the choral movement, stresses the universal nature of joy and the right of each individual to have it - an enlightening and at the time probably a revolutionary idea. To illustrate his point, Zane recited the following lines:

Wollust ward dem Wurm gegeben,
Und der Cherub steht vor Gott.

which means

Pleasure was to the worm given,
And the cherub stands before God.

My take is that if worms have a right to be happy, I too can go around yelling "Freude, Freude" on Colaba Causeway if I get the urge, and one day this may really happen.

P.S. The most incredible recording of Beethoven's Ninth I've heard is the one conducted by Ferenc Fricsay in 1958. It was the first ever stereo recording of the piece. The clarity of sound is superb and the performance... dazzling.

Baambay!

2009-09-04T15:36:00.002+05:30

My friend Vivek sent me this YouTube link to an amazing 8-minute documentary on Bombay. The film is notable as much for what it ignores (everything in between the very rich and the very poor) as for what it features. Also the patronising tone of the commentator is quite infuriating. Still, if you hang on till the end you get to see a nice panorama of Chowpatty from Malabar Hill. I remember enjoying a fairly similar view from Naaz cafe in the early 1960's.

Bad areas and bad boys

2009-09-04T14:47:00.003+05:30

Two stray conversations in recent times made me reflect yet again on the relentless and illogical nature of prejudice.

One of these conversations was about swine flu, which - a few weeks ago - was causing panic in my institute, as everywhere else in Bombay. When the topic of avoiding crowded areas came up, a senior administrator observed that this was particularly important in a certain "bad area" of town. His words "bad area" were code for "working-class area". I felt constrained to point out that swine flu had come to India through upper-class people returning from the US, and had begun to spread here through elite schools. So from the point of view of this particular epidemic, a "bad area" might be Malabar Hill rather than the rundown suburb to which he was referring.

The other conversation was with an acquaintance who had recently moved to the US. On my asking what life was like in the city where he lived, he said "there are some unsafe areas", then wrinkled his nose and added "black people", as if this barely needed saying.

Then today on the Guardian website I read this particularly stomach-turning story of how two brothers aged 12 and 10 sadistically tortured a pair of boys of a similar age nearly to death, in South Yorkshire, England. The identities of the torturers are being concealed by law, but I strongly suspect they were white (when it's otherwise, some "hint" is usually provided).

I also couldn't help but notice a link on that Guardian page to an article which starts "A Nazi sympathiser and paedophile who made nail bombs to attack black, Asian and Jewish people was jailed today for 16 years." and another to the murder of two-year-old James Bulger. In each case the criminals are white as can be.

My point is of course not to say that white people are generically evil or violent. I just wonder how incidents like the above make no dent on their spotless reputation, while the violent nature of black people is treated almost as a theorem. Just as swine flu gets blamed on Wadala rather than Malabar Hill.

Jaswant sings but book not to be banned!

2009-08-21T12:46:00.006+05:30

I'm basically an innocent when it comes to politics, innocence being defined as "I can't figure out why L.K. Advani and Jaswant Singh would both annoy their own party at different times by praising Jinnah." Still less do I understand why being pro-Jinnah does not seem to have created a bond between them and they remain enemies.

Not having read the books or heard the speeches of either of these worthies (other than Advani's inflammatory speeches during the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation which I've seen repeatedly on TV and video) I can't comment on their views. But what startled me today was an article in The Hindu titled "No ban on Jaswant’s book for now" informing us that Karnataka CM Yeddyurappa has magnanimously decided not to ban the book. "We have taken this decision" (of not banning the book) he is supposed to have said.

Since when was not banning a book a "decision"? And how low have we sunk that we countenance such talk over a minor intra-party fracas? Even knowing Mr N. Ram's fondness for censorship when it's convenient, I'm still appalled by the apologetic tone of The Hindu article -- they make it sound as if the Karnataka CM's non-censorship decision exemplifies his kind and generous nature!

Swine flu over the cuckoo's nest

2009-08-17T12:34:00.003+05:30

Swine flu suddenly grabs headlines in Bombay around 10 days ago. Schools are closed for several days, partly it seems due to a movement by a local political party (whose members understandably resent anyone being given an education). People start wearing masks on the street, even dirty handkerchiefs. I wonder how they continue to spit despite the masks (maybe there's a hole in the middle for that?), but India's oldest habit continues unabated. Antiviral drugs are stockpiled. Anyone who dares to sneeze is sent home (unlike in China where they are locked up instead).

And then comes the reversal. Suddenly we look around and notice that pretty much no one is dead. The papers tell us most of those who died of swine flu had other complications. We realise that people die of other kinds of flu, as well as malaria and other treatable diseases, on a regular basis. We now begin to hear that Tamiflu has side effects and its indiscriminate use may help the virus develop resistance. So it's not recommended other than for serious cases. What is recommended if you get a flu that might be swine flu? Umm, Crocin and bed rest.

When stupidity reigns, one clutches at the hope that someone somewhere is in command of the situation. But cuckoo behaviour about swine flu has been quite similar across countries and continents. In the UK, here is what Oxford University researchers had to say:

"... antivirals are not a "magic bullet" against flu, and ... resistance to the drug could develop, making it useless to fight any future and potentially more serious pandemic flu strain."

However, The Guardian informs us that:

"...ministers pressed ahead with a policy of mass prescription, fearing the public would not tolerate being told that the millions of doses of Tamiflu held by the state could not be used during a pandemic..."

In other words, we must give the masses something now, even if it will damage their long-term health prospects, because it's not politically expedient to do otherwise.

I can understand why politicians (in democracies) need to take this approach. It's a survival tactic. But one wishes the general public, guided by wise opinion-makers from the medical as well as journalistic professions, would learn not to trade long-term health for a short-term -- and illusory -- sense of security.

Goodbye to Gangubai

2009-07-21T19:00:00.006+05:30

The legendary Indian Classical singer Gangubai Hangal passed away this morning at the age of 96. Her passing is one more sorrowful step towards the end of an era which I was fortunate to experience in its final decades. This was an era where the grand art and tradition of Indian Classical ("Hindustani") music was practised by people of a certain calibre, dedication and - how else to say it - solidity. These were people for whom fame and money were by-products. Gangubai also pursued her career defying the prevailing prejudice against a woman pursuing a musical career (she may have been helped by the fact that her mother was herself a vocalist).

(The image above is a link to http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/mausam/artistpics/gangubai.jpg.)

I had the good fortune to attend several of her concerts during the 1980's and 90's. Two of them were at my alma mater St Xavier's College in Bombay. They have an open-air music festival in January which, on the final day, would continue through the night (I think this feature has recently been discontinued). I remember once hearing her sing Raga Chandrakauns under a brilliant moon around midnight. A magical experience. Another time, or perhaps on the same occasion, my friend Vishwanath and I were chatting at the side of the stage after her concert when she passed us on her way out. She sent a truly charming smile in our general direction, leaving each one of us convinced we had been the recipient.

Gangubai trained under the legendary Kirana Gharana musician Sawai Gandharva and was therefore the "guru-behen" of Bhimsen Joshi and Firoz Dastur among many others. She had a rather masculine voice which was instantly identifiable. Gangubai's daughter Krishna Hangal was also an excellent musician, with a more feminine voice that resonated like silver. Born when her mother was just 16, Krishna - who died five years ago at the age of 75 - was her constant companion at concerts and they came across more like sisters than like a mother-daughter duo.

The hallmark of Kirana singing is the purity of the note, and here I feel Gangubai excelled over all her peers. Strangely enough her concerts, and even studio recordings, tended to start on a meandering and very unpromising note. Her first "saa" (enunciation of the tonic of the scale) would be anything but precise, in fact it would wobble like a boat about to sink and one would wonder how things were going to go. But after a minute or so of this wobbling, the boat would slowly gather a bit of speed and steady itself. Her recital of the composition would bring out the words very affectionately (one of my favourites, in Raga Bhimpalasi, is the Sadarang composition "Garava harava daarungi main"). And now the steamship would gather more speed and start to really slice through the waves. Here the Kirana ambition would come to the fore and every "taan" would end on a high note with the sharpness of a titanium knife-edge.

Before hitting one of these notes Gangubai would, in a characteristic gesture, cup her left ear. Perhaps it helped her experience the resonance better. And now a particular event comes to mind. In the 1980's I had gone with Vishwanath and another friend, Aravinda, to Birla Matushri Sabhaghar, near Chowpatty, where Gangubai sang Raga Shuddh Kalyan. I recall we had dropped in on the concert spontaneously and without any advance planning. And once she really got going and started hitting the pure notes, the event happened. One palm over her left ear, she hit a note with such force that she surprised herself! Then she gave a sweet, childlike smile as if to say "did I really do that?". All three of us noticed it independently.

Now the wonderful smile is gone and another pure spirit lost to the world. Fortunately we are left with a number of her recordings, as well as this 79-minute youtube video (an error in the link has now been corrected).

God's unchanging word

2009-07-12T23:46:00.003+05:30

The following letter was supposedly written to right-wing talk show host Laura Schlessinger in the US some years ago and has apparently been circulating on the net ever since. It's reappeared in India in recent times thanks to the Section 377 ruling and the ensuing religious backlash. The letter is thought-provoking and plain hilarious. Its authorship is apparently unknown.

Before people get on my case, I'll grant that I seem to be giving Christianity a disproportionately hard time on this issue compared to other religions. All I can say in my defence is - what does one do when brilliant literature like the letter below is available...

Dear Dr. Laura:

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate. (After all, all things in the bible should be taken and followed as the literal law)

I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the specific laws and how to follow them.

a) When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odour for the Lord (Lev. 1:9). The problem is my neighbours. They claim the odour is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

b) I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

c) I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev. 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offence.

d) Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighbouring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

e) I have a neighbour who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?

f) A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?

g) Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?

h) Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev.19:27. How should they die?

i) I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

j) My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? (Lev.24:10-16) Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging. Your devoted disciple and adoring fan.

Bigots vs the Constitution of India

2009-07-11T10:06:00.004+05:30

I've always watched with amusement and exasperation when inter-religious conflicts play out in India. From my distant outpost, all religions are pretty loony about some issues. Then again, all are sources of comfort, guidance and even inspiration to their followers (here I'll include my ultra-rationalist, atheist self: Buddhist philosophy has been an important influence for me through most of my adult life, and I've also on occasion appreciated the "spiritual feeling" at places of worship of every religion).

The claim that religious practice is timeless (and comes down from God) is of course nonsensical. All religions have undergone significant - sometimes very major - shifts in their attitude and presentation over the ages. However, if one thing rarely changes with time, it's the inability of various religions to get along with each other. In a world where increasing numbers of young people are bound less to religion and more to Facebook and Twitter (these could turn into new religions given enough time!) one might expect existing religions to find common ground and seek to retain followers in their own self-interest. But that rarely happens.

Like the angry opponents of Martin Gardner's famous book "Fads and fallacies in the name of science", each of whom felt his own fad was fine but all the others were nonsense, each religious group will agree with prevailing criticisms of all other groups besides itself. I remember reading a letter in the Hindustan Times wherein a Christian lady from Bombay fulminated against Muslims for very generic practices (being "dirty", "fundamentalist", "uncooperative" etc). It was precisely at this time that poor Christian tribals in Orissa's Kandhamal district were being slaughtered in riots. That the Christian minority in India could be (and was being) accused of very similar things did not occur to this kind lady.

But, just as all nations, communities and religions will stand together if the earth is attacked by aliens, it's also true that religions can work out a temporary understanding when faced with a threat to their "values". Just consider the following quotes about feminism that I got off the net:

"...scripture declares that in the matters of authority and leadership men and women are not equal. God is the head of Christ, Christ is the head of man, and man is the head of woman..."

and

"Suggesting that egalitarianism can be Islamic ignores genetic differences in within gender. By challenging Islamic understanding from the Prophet Muhammad and the companions, it cannot be plausible to state Feminism can be Islamic,..."

Neither of these quotes are necessarily representative, but it's amusing how similar they are to each other. It may be that Muslim, Christian and other religious communities around the world have in the past actually banded together to oppose feminism, or even just equal gender rights, though this is not known to me in any detail and I would be interested to hear from readers about it. But there is a more recent example in India that is illuminating because it deals with a more focused issue.

This is the Delhi High Court's decision, last week, to strike down a line from Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. Thereby, homosexual acts between consenting adults are no longer illegal. What's fascinating about the judgement is not simply the one-line consequence, which was long overdue, but the way in which the liberal, humanist nature of the Indian Constitution has been highlighted by the judges.

And now that there is a cause to oppose, various religions in India are finding common ground. The Catholic Bishops' Conference of India, the Muslim Personal Law Board, the Sikh SGPC and Jain and Hindu organisations have come together on a common platform to oppose the recent legalisation of gay sex in India. Of course it isn't only the specific consequence of this specific judgement that that they truly oppose. All of them agree (though they will admit it only to varying degrees) that every liberal, humanist position threatens the stranglehold of their particular religion over its followers, by freeing people up to be themselves and make their own choices rather than be held to ransom by perceived (and usually invented) "social obligations".

I hate to point out the obvious, but no religious group in India would be comfortable if sexual practices between its own male priests were to be investigated, so it's a risky business going down the political road they are now travelling. I believe the reason they are doing it nevertheless has to do with female, rather than male, sexual practices. Any diversity in this sphere poses an obvious threat to the patriarchal system and I expect this threat will be targeted over the next few months.

While the law takes its course, I'd like to end this particular musing by reproducing a quote from the recent Section 377 judgement (the entire 105-page judgement can be read by following a link on the Wikipedia page).

If there is one constitutional tenet that can be said to be underlying theme of the Indian Constitution, it is that of 'inclusiveness'. This Court believes that Indian Constitution reflects this value deeply ingrained in Indian society, nurtured over several generations. The inclusiveness that Indian society traditionally displayed, literally in every aspect of life, is manifest in recognising a role in society for everyone. Those perceived by the majority as “deviants' or 'different' are not on that score excluded or ostracised.

Where society can display inclusiveness and understanding, such persons can be assured of a life of dignity and non-discrimination. This was the 'spirit behind the Resolution' of which Nehru spoke so passionately. In our view, Indian Constitutional law does not permit the statutory criminal law to be held captive by the popular misconceptions of who the LGBTs are. It cannot be forgotten that discrimination is antithesis of equality and that it is the recognition of equality which will foster the dignity of every individual.

In these lines the learned judges have laid down a standard and rationale for civil rights of every kind in India, and they have based this on the Indian Constitution. Religious bigots are welcome to fight the constitution, but I believe they will lose.

Ancient footprints and modern preprints

2009-06-30T22:46:00.007+05:30

"Oh the streets of Rome are filled with rubble,
Ancient footprints are everywhere"

These are the opening lines of Bob Dylan's "When I Paint My Masterpiece and, despite having no masterpieces in progress (and no skill at painting), I was haunted by these words all of last week. The occasion was Strings 2009, the annual String Theory conference, held this year at the "Angelicum" whose very impressive full name is "Pontificia Università San Tommaso d'Aquino".

Saint Thomas Aquinas was a famous theologian of the Dominican order, and this university named after him teaches Canon Law, Sacred Theology and Philosophy, so many will consider it perfectly appropriate that a String Theory conference should be held there! The analogy becomes more amusing if one examines the five precepts of St Thomas, which in brief are:

1. God is simple, without composition of parts.
2. God is perfect, lacking nothing.
3. God is infinite.
4. God is immutable, incapable of change on the levels of essence and character.
5. God is one, without diversification.

If I can permit myself a heresy that will offend both devout Catholics and devout String Theorists: take the above list and replace "God" by "String Theory" everywhere, and you get a charming caricature of what string theorists say about their subject, or at least what other people think string theorists say about their subject.

The surroundings at the Angelicum are beautiful - and the slightly uncomfortable seats are clearly part of the divine plan of making us concentrate on the lectures. But there were more elements to this divine plan that unfolded as the conference progressed.

For those who don't know, a scientific conference in this day and age typically consists of a speaker talking to the backs of several hundred laptops behind which members of the audience check their email, write papers, and occasionally chat with each other via Google Talk. Alas, the wi-fi in the hall simply failed to work. The organisers assured us they had paid for the connection but the $%*#@# (Italian curses) phone company simply wasn't doing their job. On the second day things had not changed one bit. Moreover, this being Rome, most hotels did not offer internet or charged heavily for it (judging from the ads, 6 Euros an hour is considered a "cheap" rate, though it's what most Indians pay for an entire month's internet connection!). I was lucky with my hotel, which had free wi-fi though it was very basic in other ways.

By lunchtime on Tuesday the conference wi-fi finally started working. But unknown to anyone, a new element of the divine plan was unfolding. Just as the afternoon session was getting ready to commence at 2:30 PM, the lights went out. For the next half hour people sat obediently in their seats (the wi-fi of course went away along with the power). Around 3 PM the organisers announced that the power could not be restored that day, so the entire afternoon session was cancelled - or rather postponed to Wednesday, which in the original schedule was to have been a half-day.

I know what you, the reader, are thinking at this point. Clearly the Swiss Guard at the Vatican had started shutting off power selectively to different parts of Rome! I tried to convince my colleagues of this -- but sadly, most had not seen, or read, or even heard of, Angels and Demons. So they looked at me very very strangely.

Anyhow people streamed out of the Angelicum and many went to see the Colosseum which was a short walk away. There, one had the opportunity to stand in a long line (as we had already got used to doing for tea and lunch each day) before entering. Of course once you were inside it was magical, specially if you could succeed in visualising it minus the few thousand tourists. An interesting historical fact about the Colosseum is that half a million humans and a million animals perished within it. Another fact, which I promise I am not making up, is that "Pope Sixtus V (1585–1590) planned to turn the building into a wool factory to provide employment for Rome's prostitutes, though this proposal fell through with his premature death". And a good thing too. How would it have looked if we had all said: "Lectures are cancelled so let's go to the wool factory and look at ex-prostitutes"?

From what I've written so far you may not get the impression that much physics got done, but in fact there were many excellent lectures at Strings 2009. Some of the most impressive ones were about superconductors, QCD, particle scattering and neutron stars. These are important issues for many "earthly" physicists and string theory provides one of the most exciting ways to tackle outstanding problems in these areas. See for example this article. I particularly enjoyed the talks on these subjects by Sean Hartnoll, Ofer Aharony, Juan Maldacena, Nima Arkani-Hamed, Zvi Bern and and Erik Verlinde, the first three of whom had visited my institute in Bombay last year for the Monsoon Workshop on String Theory.

This turn of events is fascinating. Despite the most advertised (and often ridiculed) motivation of String Theory as being a unified theory of all fundamental interactions, the last couple of years have seen an upsurge in its applications to other fields of physics. What's impressive is that the string theorists who work on these applications have taken on a different area of physics and come to know it thoroughly and deeply. For example it's clear that Sean Hartnoll knows superconductivity, conventional and otherwise, extremely well and his presentation was impressive for his simultaneous mastery over that as well as string theory. The same can be said for many others who spoke and yet others who didn't come to Strings 2009.

I begin to feel that if String Theory is like any religion at all, it's not Christianity but Hinduism, which gradually incorporates and ultimately swallows up anything interesting that's going on around it.

I shouldn't fail to mention that there were also many lectures at Strings 2009 on particle phenomenology as related to (or interpreted in) string theory. Clearly the forthcoming experiments at the LHC are on people's minds. I particularly enjoyed Michelangelo Mangano's talk on LHC physics (not relating it to string theory but just updating us on what the likely scenarios are) and found it wonderfully clear, cogent, optimistic and yet balanced.

But back to Rome. As Dylan says, "You can almost think that you're seein' double, On a cold, dark night on the Spanish Stairs". There weren't any cold dark nights, but given that tourists frequently sit on the Spanish Stairs and sing Bob Dylan songs, I can well understand why he was seeing double!

And some people did indeed paint their masterpiece in Rome, many times over. On my last day I got to see the Galleria Borghese, thanks to my dear friend Franco who made the required reservations for both of us. There I discovered (as I've discovered on previous visits to Rome many years ago) what stunning masterpieces had been painted by Caravaggio and Titian, and even more stunning statues sculpted by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. The latter started sculpting as a teenager and had a bunch of masterpieces done before he was 25, which should make the rest of us feel pretty rotten indeed. By the time I came out, my voice was almost as whiny as Uncle Bob's! But I felt deeply elevated and fortunate to have witnessed this sublime level of art.

Now here's a funny thing. The last verse of Dylan's song goes:

"I left Rome and landed in Brussels,
On a plane ride so bumpy that I almost cried."

And the nice coincidence is that I, your humble (ha ha!) blogger, also left Rome and landed in Brussels. But the plane ride wasn't bumpy in the least. Only, my baggage didn't make it.

Endonyms, exonyms, allonyms... what's in a nym?

2009-06-17T00:30:00.007+05:30

A comment about my previous posting led me to do a little study about names of cities and countries. I'd like to describe some of what I learned. More details can be found on this Wikipedia entry.

The name by which a city or country is referred to by the local population is called an "endonym" while the name used by others not native to the place is called an "exonym". As an example, "Firenze" is an endonym while "Florence" is an exonym for the same city used by the French and English. Examples of exonyms are abundant in Europe. Among the most interesting for me are two German cities: "München", known in Italy by its exonym "Monaco" (which means "monk") and "Aachen" whose Italian exonym is "Aquisgrana" (which comes from the original Roman name meaning "hot springs"). In both cases, the exonym conveys more accurately the history of the city than does the current endonym.

The city we call by its English exonym "Geneva" has the endonym Genève used by its mainly French-speaking residents. Its other names, "Genf" in German and "Ginevra" in Italian, might be called exonyms, but then German and Italian are official Swiss languages, so residents of Geneva who speak these languages can legitimately use "Genf" and "Ginevra" as endonyms. Thus a single city can have two or more endonyms. In this case the different endonyms are called "allonyms" of each other.

Another example of allonyms is "Bruxelles" (endonym used by French-speaking locals) and "Brussel" (endonym used by Flemish-speaking locals). Neither is pronounced the same way as "Brussels" which is the English exonym.

A nice example of allonyms closer to (my) home is "Mumbai" (Marathi endonym), "Bambai" (Hindi endonym) and "Bombay" (English endonym). While some might claim that the last one is an English exonym, English is one of India's official languages and there is a significant population in the city that uses it as a principal language. Therefore "Bombay" qualifies to be an endonym and is one of at least three allonyms for the city. This is in quite the same sense that Genf and Ginevra qualify as endonyms for Genève.

We spontaneously use exonyms all the time, for example English speakers refer to the country called "Zhōngguó" as China, and the city of "Krung Thep" as Bangkok. In my experience, English speakers tend to be particularly ignorant that they are using exonyms and often try to convince themselves and others that they are using the "correct" names, whatever that means. This is perhaps because of the very widespread (though hardly as overwhelming as some people imagine) use of English in the world today.

While the United Nations has studiously tried to encourage the exclusive use of endonyms, it has by its own admission found this very difficult, you can read about it here. To quote from this document: "Time has, however, shown that initial ambitious attempts to rapidly decrease the number of exonyms were over-optimistic and not possible to realise in the intended way. The reason would appear to be that many exonyms have become common words in a language and can be seen as part of the language’s cultural heritage."

In official situations the use of specific endonyms is sometimes required, but (in a democracy) there cannot be any restrictions on the use of different endonyms or exonyms in informal conversation, blogging, literature, art etc. This is particularly convenient for those contemplating a visit to Baile Átha Cliath!

Liveability

2009-06-10T23:09:00.006+05:30

The Economist has released one of those predictable surveys ranking cities in the world for their "liveability". I'm amazed how a supposedly scientific magazine can present "liveability" as some sort of objective criterion. It also seems rather pompous to label the report "The Economist Intelligence Unit's liveability survey February 2009" and on top of that they expect online readers to fork out 250 US dollars to access the full report! All I've read, therefore, is the free summary and that tells us the top ten and the bottom ten cities.

India doesn't make it at either end but as today's papers tell us, both Bombay and Delhi are way down there. Now my irritation at the above article and survey is certainly not due to an inflated sense of where my beloved Bombay should lie. But let me say a few words about the winners. Three Canadian cities make it to the top 10: Vancouver (1), Toronto (4) and Calgary (5). Calgary is most easily demolished, it's dull as a garbage heap and ugly to boot (unless you include nearby Banff, but that's another city altogether). In addition to my personal impression, I've known a couple of people who have served time there. Of course someone will say liveability is altogether a different thing from aesthetics and liveliness. But I wonder, I wonder...

Vancouver is better. I've been there a few times and spent a good six weeks living in the very heart of downtown overlooking Coal Harbour (prettier than it sounds) - in an eminently "liveable" glass building where, if you're not careful, your entire personal life can be made into a feature film by the folks next door. The building had a full-size indoor heated swimming pool (there's not much of a market in chilly, rainy Vancouver for open-air pools!), sauna, jacuzzi, gym.. In short, liveable. Problem is, I found it a shade dull. No one there mentioned a museum or an art gallery seriously worth visiting. Bars inevitably consisted of a few despondent people watching TV. There really wasn't much of a buzz on the streets.

And here's the final blow. The supermarkets there sold average Canadian imitations of French cheese! And the "pesto" there is made from cashew nuts instead of pine nuts and generic oil instead of olive oil! Did I say "liveable"??

OK, OK. I have a brother, a sister-in-law, a cousin, a cousin-in-law and four nephews in Vancouver so I have to be careful what I say. It's a lovely city and if I found it a wee bit dull, it's surely my own limitation.

So on to Melbourne which comes in at number 3. And this is where I begin to seriously wonder. The Economist claims its criteria for liveability are: stability, health care, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure. Somewhere in this list they must surely evaluate the ability to walk safely home from a train station at night. Good old Bombay comes out shining on that score. But in the last few weeks Melbourne's image has certainly taken a bashing. I'm not referring to the hyped version in the Indian media, who believe that every Aussie wants nothing more in life than to beat up an Indian, and that every Indian in Melbourne is an angel. I'm referring to the moderate Australian response to this situation, as typified by an article titled "Play fair, mate" by Aussie journalist Greg Sheridan reprinted in yesterday's Hindustan Times. Here is an extract, referring to Melbourne:

"All big cities around the world are struggling with a rise in urban violence, especially in the throes of the global recession. While I'm sure there has been a racial element in these attacks, there has also been an element of robbery pure and simple, and of random, big city violence".

Does it bother you that a city so casually described in these terms by a resident scribe ranks No.3 on the Economist's list for "liveability"?

Oh, I'm not convincing you? OK, then here's my next (and final) card. Please read the following excerpt from Wikipedia's article on the current swine flu outbreak:

As of June 6, Australia's second largest city, Melbourne, has been reported as the "swine flu capital of the world", with 1,011 cases in Victoria, mostly in Melbourne.

I think I'll settle for Bombay's liveability, or whatever that thing which I like over here is called. Oh, and the mangoes are just fabulous!

BEST, c'est le meilleur!

2009-06-08T20:55:00.002+05:30

If you're the owner of a flat that's been given out on rent, what you don't want to receive first thing in the morning is a phone call from the building manager informing you that the electric meter of the flat has burnt out. The call evoked visions of irate tenants, slow repair services and one or more wasted days. But that's not how things turned out at all.

For starters, my French tenant was more than understanding. He volunteered to leave work and return to the flat if that became necessary. His partner, a journalist, found herself trying to meet a deadline for an article without an internet connection and without even a fan in this sweltering weather -- so she went off to an air-conditioned cafe with wi-fi where she quietly got on with her work. And someone from the ever-impressive BEST (Bombay Electric Supply and Transport, with Bombay now replaced by "Brihanmumbai"), showed up at the building, took my mobile number from the manager and phoned to let me know they were working on the problem. By evening they had installed a brand new meter and hesitantly called again to ask if I could come to sign a document acknowledging the work. The man was genuinely sorry I had to leave my office for this! It took me ten minutes to get there, sign the document and slip him a 100-rupee note in gratitude (which he accepted gracefully after telling me it wasn't really necessary).

In another world, my tenants could have started off by screaming at me -- they're paying me so much and now no electricity! And the electric supply company could have been unreachable, then claimed it would take them a week to fix the problem, then gradually drawn me into a situation where a sizable "gift" had to be parted with before they would do anything. Happily, all that happened in a parallel universe unconnected to this one.

Well - this short posting is to publicly thank my tenants as well as the BEST. What can I say but "merci beaucoup, phaar aabhaari aahe!"

So that's why they couldn't find Bin Laden?

2009-05-29T14:25:00.004+05:30

I will start by reproducing verbatim a short report that appears in today's Hindustan Times (29 May, Mumbai edition) on page 11, first column. Titled "Into a very far, very big black hole", the report says in its entirety:

"Astronomers have used new data from the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton spaceborne observatory, to probe closer than ever to a supermassive black hole deep inside the core of a distant active galaxy. The galaxy - 1H0707-495 - was observed during four 48-hr-long orbits of XMM-Newton around Earth, starting in January 2008. The scientists are confident their work will one day make it possible to help police track down international criminals."

You read it right -- international criminals could be hiding "deep inside the core of a distant active galaxy". No wonder poor George W., a man of limited imagination, couldn't find Osama Bin Laden using his stupid terrestrial searches!

Now most of us have a hard time just getting to the moon. It's a mere 250,000 km away and the last time I tried going there, I got stuck in a traffic jam near Andheri. Getting to the centre of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, would require traversing 8 kiloparsecs, or in more common language, 250000000000000000 km. My poor Maruti Alto simply isn't up to it. And even it were, the centre of our galaxy is NOT where these dastardly "international criminals" are hiding! As per the above article they are in a "distant active galaxy". I don't know the distance involved offhand, but, to use a technical term borrowed from astronomers, it's "really really far".

The only way Osama Bin Laden could possibly have got there is by sitting inside a rocket ship travelling at very close to the speed of light. Of course even then he would currently be on his way there, scheduled to arrive in a million years or so -- always assuming the airport at 1H0707-495 does not, like Mumbai's Santacruz, suffer from phenomena like "traffic congestion" or the more currently fashionable "dog on the runway". What's scary, though, is that after another million years on a return flight he could arrive just as (relatively) youthful and sprightly as when he left, thanks to Special Relativity. So people who are worried about a repeat of 9/11 should watch their step on or around September 11, 2,002,001.

As with so many other mysteries, the one associated to the above article is easily dispelled. The Hindustan Times copy editor was not hallucinating on the latest designer drug. He or she simply forgot a basic rule of word processing: "after you cut, and before you paste, don't lose concentration". For, the article that follows this one is titled "Hair samples could help nab terrorists" and contains the useful information that a new laser tool can "read off", from a sample of hair, just what you've been eating and where you've been travelling. If you move the last sentence above to the end of that article, where it presumably originated, things start to make sense again.

So today, my falling hair probably reveals traces of mango chicken, while strands from Mr O.B. Laden's beard reveal... what? I have no idea, but whatever it is, I doubt it will be the variety of "Peshawari Naan" served at dhabas all over 1H0707-495.

Mango chicken

2009-05-24T21:33:00.006+05:30

I used to eat out a lot, mostly around South Bombay where I live. But in recent years I've become very disappointed with the fare available. The Indian food in this area lacks authenticity as well as imagination -- one can't get a decent dosa in all of South Bombay, Maharashtrian food is scarce here and the few Bengali restaurants are mostly atrocious oil-factories. Gujarati food does make the cut and is typically very good, but I can only wade into ghee (which I adore) so many times a year without totally risking my life. The other kind of food that's usually excellent here is Mangalorean-style seafood (and there's the added benefit that short-haired women, minorities etc are welcome to sample the fare - and even drink a gin and tonic on the side - without being attacked by Hindutva hooligans as they might be back in Mangalore...). One limitation though is that there's very little variation: fried fish, gassi, aapams and neer dosa is pretty much it. And in case your stomach resents being fed a kilo of green chillies in a single evening, as mine does, you can't do this too often either.

As for what is called "fine dining", this usually translates into "imitative Western or far-Eastern fare at high prices and low freshness levels". Recently at "All Stir Fry" near Regal Cinema I was astonished to find that my Kaukswe (a Burmese coconut curry, divine when made properly) was made from canned coconut milk. I can understand chefs in London having recourse to this shortcut, but in a city where coconuts grow on trees, it makes absolutely no sense. I couldn't find any decent Italian restaurants in South Bombay, and the Middle-Eastern-inspired "Moshe's" has caved in to popular demand so they put chillies in everything (totally unlike what would be done in the Middle East). Seafood in any South Bombay restaurant other than Mangalorean is liable to be stale and arguing with the waiter about that just raises one's blood pressure: "no sir it's absolutely fresh, we have a very good freezer...". Moreover, dinner in any of the "fine-dining" places can easily set you back a thousand rupees per head without drinks.

The solution, of course, is to cook at home. That is limited only by time available. However now the issue becomes, what to do when you've been eating the same or similar stuff for days and want a change?

This morning I had an epiphany of sorts and want to share it with my readers. The thing to do is make use of the freshest local ingredients, particularly whatever's in season. And what's in season in Bombay today is, unmistakably, mangoes. Luscious Alphonso (or "aphoos") mangoes, food of the gods. So I woke up today and said "I shall make mango chicken". Now this is not a completely original thought, I think I've once eaten something by that name many years ago. But I had no idea about a recipe, or even what the dish should look like, so I browsed the net and performed some variations on what I read, ignoring those recipes that called for more than a hundred ingredients and three days in the kitchen (why is it that those are the most common?). Luck was on my side and I've just enjoyed an incredibly delicious meal cooked in a jiffy.

So here comes the recipe.

Mango chicken

1 whole chicken, cut into about 12 pieces
Three tablespoons cornflour
Three tablespoons soy sauce, preferably a fragrant and not-extra-salty one like Kikkoman
About two tablespoons of freshly chopped garlic
Half a cube of chicken stock
Two tablespoons of wine (red or white, I used red today) or sherry or good vinegar.
One large and luscious food-of-the-gods Alphonso mango, ripe or nearly ripe

1. In a bowl, combine the cornflour with some salt and pepper (go easy on the salt as there will be salt in the stock and the soy sauce too). Put in all the chicken and shake till the pieces are coated well.
2. In a wide skillet heat a little vegetable oil, fry the chicken till well-browned on both sides. The chicken need not be cooked through but will have shrunk a bit by losing moisture and fat.
3. The melted fat will mix with the cooking oil forming a liquid called "arteriosclerosis". Invest in your future by pouring off all that oil and fat NOW. It will increase your life expectancy -- just think how many more mango chickens you can make by living longer! If you possess a turkey baster (basically a nose dropper expanded by a factor of 10) you can use that to drain off the fat.
4. Reduce heat, add the chopped garlic and stir. Once garlic has softened, add soy sauce and wine along with the chicken stock. Stir again.
5. Add chunks of luscious Alphonso mango. Chew the leftover skins. This divine mango is not to be wasted in ANY quantity!
6. Add half a cup of water to make a thin gravy. Mix well, cover and simmer gently till chicken is done. The mango will dissolve partially into the gravy but some lumps should remain.

If done right, the result should combine the sweetness of mango with the tart flavour of soy sauce and the totally irresistible flavour of fried chicken. Gorgeous. Eat with mushroom rice, here's a simple recipe:

1. Go to Koh Samui in Thailand, rent a motorbike, drive to Tesco Lotus supermarket and buy dried Shiitake mushrooms. Actually I'm sure they can be found in Crawford Market (in Marathi: "Kraaphoot Markit").
2. Warm a few mushrooms in water till they soften. Slice and mix with half-cooked, drained rice. Add the water in which the mushrooms were warmed, as well as a little vegetable stock. Cook till done.

OK, so let me know how it goes.

Time to gloat

2009-05-16T18:29:00.003+05:30

I haven't blogged in a number of days. One reason (not the only one) is that I didn't want to write about the elections, fearing to add myself to the list of fools who apparently can't even predict tomorrow's date correctly...

But now that it's over, I'm savouring every moment. In a few days India will go back to being the mess that I love to complain about, but today it is a country where democracy has triumphed and stability is more or less assured. Moreover, some people have got what they richly deserved and I wish to gloat about their forthcoming political demise.

Let's start with Mr L.K. Advani. Apparently few people have a clear memory of his divisive and mean-spirited rath yatra in 1990 and the ensuing Babri Masjid campaign that led to the loss of 2000 lives for absolutely no gain to the nation, but a definite electoral gain to the BJP. Even though I assume he didn't kill any of the 2000 people himself, I've always felt that Mr Advani personally was responsible for their deaths. On numerous occasions Mr Advani has placed party and political interest before that of the nation, most notably during the Mumbai 26/11 attacks when he launched a typically vicious verbal attack on the Indian government even as the attacks were taking place instead of having the decency to show some solidarity for the country's sake. I commented about this on my blog at the time. Mr Advani's impending exit is a source of great joy to me, though unfortunately the evil he did will outlive him.

On to Mr Prakash Karat. It's clear to everyone except, perhaps the CPM Politburo (and Mr N. Ram?) that even if his disagreement with Dr Singh on the 1-2-3 deal was genuine, he overplayed it because of a medieval mindset and also personal reasons (i.e. a monstrous ego). He got the Left to pull out from the government hoping that this would destabilise it, and he attacked the deal and the US with all the fervour of an Iranian mullah denouncing the "great Satan". His fears that any deal with the US government would harm India were rooted in the belief that India would always be an inferior partner incapable of defending its own interests. This is a view that an unlikely collection of people, including George W. Bush, Manmohan Singh, Barack Obama and last but not least myself, would disagree with.

One of the many pleasing consequences of yesterday's elections was that former speaker of parliament Somnath Chatterjee, expelled by Karat for refusing to step down when the Left quit the government, has now called for Karat's expulsion. Let's hope it happens. Among other potential leaders of the CPM I think Sitaram Yechury - for all his faults - is a much better person and clearer thinker than Karat, and I hope he will now become more powerful in his party and steer it in a saner direction.

Finally, some minor journalists who in 2004 savaged Sonia Gandhi for having the cheek to lead the Congress will need to take a long vacation, preferably in the Swat valley. The racist and other abuse heaped on her at the time by those people, lapped up by an insecure upper-middle-class, shocked me at the time. I still remember Anil Thakraney reproducing a children's tale in Italian in his daily column to show his contempt for Sonia-ji, as well as Tavleen Singh's venomous personal attack. It led me to hope Sonia would somehow show them up and it's now clear that she's done just that. Of course, if you're one of the people who feels Thakraney or Tavleen should lead the nation, please feel free to contact them in Swat.

Left is left and right is right?

2009-05-07T16:38:00.004+05:30

I rarely watch TV, but yesterday I ended up watching an NDTV programme about Rahul Gandhi's latest comments on keeping alliance options open. The programme seemed to have the sole purpose of stirring up excitement over this non-issue: fair enough perhaps, the media need something to occupy themselves with given that election results are still over a week away.

I found it amusing to compare the two veteran newspaper editors whom they interviewed on this programme: Shekhar Gupta of the Indian Express and N. Ram of The Hindu. Gupta is politically right-wing in the sense of being strongly pro-capitalist and anti-communist, while N. Ram is politically left-wing in the sense of exchanging pro and anti in the previous phrase. Remarkably they were in complete agreement on the present issue, both concluding that the Congress party is promiscuous and willing to ally with just about anyone except the BJP (of course you didn't need to be a veteran editor to realise this).

What struck me powerfully, though, was the difference in the way they made their point. N. Ram looked dour and sanctimonious and spoke in a venomous whisper -- as if he was the king cobra that a rabbit called Rahul Gandhi had stirred up from his sleep. Shekhar Gupta on the other hand came across as an affable, relaxed and humorous person who could examine politics dispassionately and make insightful observations about it. At the end both editors declared themselves pleasantly surprised that they were actually agreeing with each other, but N. Ram looked as if he had swallowed a bitter lemon while Gupta made his comment with a light-hearted chuckle.

Perhaps Mr Ram lightens up (and even chuckles) only when he goes to China to praise their excellent Tibet policy?

Holidays are for idiots

2009-05-01T10:21:00.003+05:30

Once more, Mumbaikars gave a vivid demonstration of their sense of priorities. A holiday was declared on April 30 so we could vote in the General Elections, but more than half of us did not vote. Strangely, the non-voters did not show up at their offices demanding they be allowed to work instead! All in all, it was a wonderful exhibition of the core Mumbaikar philosophy "I don't give a flying f..." (in Marathi: आय डोंट गिव अ फ्लाईंग फ...).

Why do we need to declare a holiday on election day? Wouldn't it be enough to offer employees two hours off on that day on strict condition that they actually vote? This would need to be demonstrated by showing up the next day with the tell-tale ink line on their left middle finger. Employees who claim they were unable to vote as their name did not appear on the voter list could be required to provide a cell-phone video of themselves arguing with an election officer.

Actually some private companies did give just a couple of hours, or adjust shifts, so it was -- as usual -- the sarkari sector that generously awarded the holiday.

For residents of the South Bombay constituency, the number of "idiots" was more than 50 percent, closer to 60 percent in fact. The papers went on and on about how it was a four-day weekend and people would naturally want to go on vacation, as if to suggest that the ones who stayed behind to vote were the true idiots. And I love the way well-meaning social groups pleaded with people to vote in the early morning before leaving for their vacations, as if to acknowledge that vacationing was the main priority and voting a mere side-issue.

There is however one positive outcome from all this. The next time people from Malabar Hill go around lighting candles at the Gateway of India and saying "we will never forget" (and creating traffic jams by parking their Toyotas all over the place), we can perhaps slap a few of them, not very hard but just hard enough to jog their memories.

Adventure sports - where failure was success

2009-04-19T20:47:00.013+05:30

All blog postings are ultimately about oneself, but this one will be explicitly so. It deals with my encounters with sports, and specifically adventure sports.

My sporting life at school was not merely a failure, it was nonexistent. I did not like a single game and avoided cricket, football, hockey and any other ghastly activity that the school would occasionally dream up, such as boxing. In Physical Training class a mutual hatred grew up between me and my teachers. It almost felt like a double life, being ridiculed and sometimes publicly humiliated at P.T., only to move on to the Maths (or English or History or any other) class where the teacher would be all sugar and honey to me and often use my example to ridicule the other boys. Well, it wasn't my fault, either way.

At home things were not much better. My uncles and cousins, with whom I would try to play basic lawn cricket, mocked me for my "slow reflexes". When intra-family matches were held, I got accustomed to the look of horror on the face of the captain who discovered I was to be on his team.

With this background, today at the age of 52 plus I look back on the last 15 years and am struck by the fact that, though I have still not attempted to play - or even watch - cricket, football, hockey or tennis (not to mention boxing!), I have tried out many of the major adventure sports, including (but not limited to) para-sailing, scuba diving, skiing, river rafting, volcano-climbing, snorkelling and -- this is the really adventurous one -- riding a 125cc motorbike on Koh Samui. And though this is not an "adventure sport" (is it a sport at all?), I also go to the gym regularly.

There's a lesson in this, perhaps several lessons. The obvious one is that my reflexes aren't that bad and I actually do love physical activity. Apparently I just don't like the ritualistic aspects of "spectator sports" and probably avoided them because I hated being under a spotlight and judged for my poor performance. But it's more complex than that. Despite the impressive list of adventure sports in which I've participated, I actually failed miserably at all of them -- sometimes more than one in a single day, as you'll see below! So, failure-aversion is apparently not the issue. In fact I'm rather "proud" of my failures at adventure sports and I maintain that I enjoyed all of them and would do them all again (except perhaps riding that bike on Koh Samui!!).

If you've read this far then you want to know the details of my failures. Poor you. Here they come.

First, about para-sailing, I lied. There isn't any such thing as success or failure in that particular sport, which - in my case - went by the following route: (i) go to Santa Barbara for a physics workshop, (ii) have a friend induce you to go para-sailing, (iii) pay 20 US dollars, (iv) get strapped into a parachute harness atop a speedboat, (v) watch bemused as the boat accelerates and the parachute starts to rise, obeying laws of physics, (vi) fight a growing feeling of panic at being high in the air with nothing (not even an aeroplane floor) below you. Once you get this far there's not much to do except enjoy it and hope your friend is getting good photos.

So now about scuba diving. This happened in Phuket in 2005. It works as follows: (i) in a foolish moment you ask your hotel to book you on a scuba diving trip, (ii) a jeep collects you in the morning. It's full of tense and generally unfriendly white folks, (iii) you are decanted onto a launch that serves a gigantic breakfast of eggs, bacon, ham, fruits and so on, (iv) you are lectured on scuba diving for about an hour, the key point apparently being that you should NOT BREATHE TOO SLOWLY, (v) you suddenly find you are at the edge of a moored boat wearing a 10kg oxygen cylinder on your back, flippers on your feet, a mask through which you can't see much and some plastic stuff between your teeth. You're also wearing a rubber outfit from which four different tubes protrude like tentacles from an octopus (quadrupus??). At this stage you are asked to JUMP IN THE WATER! Which is at least 15 metres deep. (vi) convinced that this is the last thing you'll ever do, you obey, (vii) now you are underwater and seeing groupers, butterfly fish, anemones, squid and star-shaped objects, (viii) however your instructor is unhappy about something and keeps gesturing to you underwater, (ix) after about 15 minutes, i.e. half-way into the dive, he drags you up out of the water and, in the open sea, starts shouting at you. Apparently I was breathing TOO FAST!!

If you're waiting for the story of how I failed twice in one day, here it comes. Venue: Pucón, Chile. The two popular adventure sports here are: climbing the neighbourhood volcano, called Villarica, and going river-rafting. I signed on for volcano climbing. No less an authority than Juan Maldacena had assured me it was an "easy four-hour climb". For him, I'm sure it was easy (as easy as discovering the AdS/CFT correspondence!). For me, the anxiety grew steadily as I was fitted out in some kind of climbing suit, made to wear bulky boots and carry an ice-pick. About three minutes into the trek I realised I was not made for this. At the same moment that the leader of the expedition was yelling at me for lagging behind, I took a decision, namely to call it off. Luckily the friend who was with me felt the same way. We walked away humiliated, and, after a beer at the hotel, signed on for river-rafting the same afternoon.

Now here was a sport, much like para-sailing, where you had to basically do nothing. As long as you stayed on the raft, with your feet anchored behind a safety rope, you were fine. We were given helmets and life jackets. And off we went. Now the photo record shows the following. As the boat successfully negotiated a Class IV rapid, the leader stood up and cheered for our success. BUT I AM NOT IN THE PHOTO! Not that I had exactly fallen out. What happened is that the upper half of my body fell out of the boat. My lower body remained on the boat, with my feet anchored behind the safety rope. So I negotiated the rapids with my head in the water and upside-down, a position that was not just uncomfortable and causing me to inhale water in lieu of oxygen, but downright dangerous as I could have smashed my head on the rocks. That didn't happen, of course.

I'm nearly at the end of the story now. Last week we went snorkelling on the island of Samui in Thailand. The sea was rough and I didn't last more than 15 minutes in the water. Saw about four yellow striped fish.

So now about that bike. You're thinking that riding a bike in Thailand is dangerous because Thai people dart in and out of the road and drive in a generally indisciplined and chaotic way. Bad guess. Maybe you were thinking about Indians! Thai people are very very disciplined for the most part and the roads are perfectly orderly. The problem is that Koh Samui has hills and they are very very very steep. The road leading to my hotel had segments that appeared to be at 45 degrees. So one could make it up the hill only at top speed. Anything less and your bike would slow down to a complete stop. Then you would have to offload your passenger and things would become easier. Except that coming to a complete stop on a 45 degree slope means your bike instantly starts to roll down...

The record is as follows (i) the first time, in broad daylight, we make it all the way up, (ii) the second time, in darkness, and with down-going traffic to avoid, I lurch from side to side, almost come to a stop and then zoom away leaving my passenger on the verge of falling off, his legs in the air..., (iii) the third time we are foiled by a little kid and three dogs. We slow down to avoid this crowd but the hill there is very steep, we slowly come to a halt, fall over sideways... and I have a 3-inch bruise on my leg. My friend got a "Samui Tattoo", a burn from the exhaust pipe of the bike.

I didn't describe my skiing experiences. Maybe another day. I think I've made my point though. Adventure sports are just the greatest fun there is, as long as you don't suffer from any illusions that you will succeed at them. As for reflexes, you should have seen how fast I returned that bike to the rental agency!!

In a blue mood

2009-04-03T23:00:00.004+05:30

The thing about KLM aircraft is that they are blue. Not just blue in parts, but solidly, obsessively, Dutchly (if I may) blue. And so are the crew, or at least their clothes.

Nothing wrong with blue per se, it's my favourite colour actually. But flying from Taipei to Bangkok today on an ancient decrepit blue KLM 747 aircraft staffed with ancient decrepit blue KLM staff brought home to me how the world is changing. I've already pointed it out on this blog before, but this put the lid on it. At a bargain-basement price of US $ 225 for the Bangkok-Taipei return ticket one can hardly complain, so this is probably not a complaint. But contrast today's KLM with any Far-Eastern airline (Singapore, Cathay, Malaysian, Thai, China Airlines..) and it's an out and out loser. Where the East has gracious service to go with gleaming equipment, the West increasingly offers surly, hostile crew members on its aging fleet of planes. Even the food looked sort of hostile. The seat cushions were falling off and when I pried under one of them looking for a misplaced spectacle case, I discovered a pair of earphones and a knife from some long bygone meal service lodged in the gaps. And Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport (and Taipei and Beijing and Osaka and Hongkong and...) all make the once-famous Schiphol airport look like Dharavi in comparison. (Note how I'm studiously avoiding all mention of Indian airports here!!).

On boarding the geriatric KLM plane I discovered that my "window seat" simply had a wall in place of a window! So I asked the stewardess to tell me when boarding was complete so I could change my seat. Incredibly, she said I should do so only after take-off, since the balance of the plane was important. I looked at her in disbelief. "I could unbalance a Boeing 747?" I asked, but she stuck to her guns and gave me a sort of decrepit, blue, hostile look (I desisted from telling her the joke about a Lot Polish aircraft having too many Poles in the left half-plane! Sorry, this one is only for people who've studied complex analysis!!).

Anyway the fact that I could potentially destabilise a KLM Boeing 747 just by changing my seat suggests that either I'm a lot fatter than I think, or the plane truly is as withered as it looks. I'm just hoping it's the latter.

Stinky tofu

2009-04-02T22:15:00.006+05:30

You think you've seen everything, but in these parts there's always a surprise lurking round the next corner. Last night our hosts took a bunch of us to the famous Feng Chia night market in Taichung. It's a bustling (and utterly clean and safe) open-air market selling mostly snacks, clothes and shoes. As we walked along, I noticed an unpleasant sewage smell and was surprised, given how incredibly clean and sanitary everything is over here. It turned out to be a stall advertising "stinky tofu" in Chinese and English (I presume the English is a literal translation of the Chinese). This unexpected food product is basically tofu (soybean curd), normally one of the most bland, nutritious and otherwise harmless ingredients of Chinese food. But then it's fermented in a special way. And then fried and covered in a spicy sauce largely to hide the fact that, once fermented, it really really really stinks.

I find it hard to describe the smell but it's largely like having a sealed sewer pipe suddenly opened and the gases blasted into your face. Evidently just for this reason, it's rather popular in these parts. One member of our group, a German physicist who had not previously given any indication of such rashness, actually bought himself a helping and I was brave enough to taste a large piece. Turned out it was relatively harmless to eat, most of the "kick" being in the smell, though while I was eating it a whiff would occasionally and without warning punch me in the nostrils.

Five minutes later I had forgotten about it, but on our way back to the car we encountered another stinky tofu stall and the smell quite literally came back to me. It almost made me feel like getting sick, but at the same slowly fascinated me with its complexity. Today when talking to a bunch of young Japanese scientists at the Particle Physics School where I'm lecturing, I discovered they were all fans of stinky tofu and had observations to make about its potency, one of them claiming that in Taipei it was detectable only upto 5 metres from the stall but at Taichung it was much stronger and tended to spread as far as 10 metres!

I don't know why I'm blogging about it, but I can't seem to get the smell out of my head. I feel a certain desire to experience it again despite knowing it won't be pleasant. Seems like a metaphor for so many things in life!!