Mush’s Comeuppance

I have no guilt in admitting that for a long time I was in awe of Gen Pervez Musharraf. I thought of him as a cool chap, not withstanding our mandatory neighbor bashing. After a spate of hard-nosed, wily politicians on either sides of the divide, who usually have a cloaked axe to grind, here we had a guy -- refreshingly candid -- who could deliver. Always thinking out-of-box, a catch phrase he made incredibly popular on his first visit to India, the commando was endearing. With his Mouser pistol firmly in the holster, grip always showing, and a military air, he would charm the media. The US swore by him. Pakistan’s economy began to steady. Peace with India, despite the oh-so-usual irritants, looked like a real possibility.

Ruling Pakistan is always an arduous task. The country simply does not have a democratic culture. Whenever democrats feel close to real power in that country, they have turned autocrats. Bhutto senior is a case in point. Recently, Nawaz won by landslides but soon slid to autocratic ways. No wonder the all-powerful Pakistani military has played an influential role in mainstream politics throughout Pakistan's history with military presidents ruling from 1958–69 (Gen Ayub Khan), 1969-71 (Gen Yahya Khan), 1977–88 (Gen Zia) and from 1999 onwards (Gen Musharraf). That’s roughly 32 years. Successive civilian governments in Pakistan have had to either eat crow or play second fiddle to its army. In our generation, Gen Mush has been the face of Pakistan and its army.

Until recently. How times change? And so swiftly. Musharraf is now a much reviled person in his country. If there were any popularity ratings in Pakistan, as there are in the US, he would fare lower than Bush Jr., his best buddy. But Crawford Ranch seems a long distance from Army House, Rawalpindi. Bronx cheered from the left and right, Mush has been cornered. The Islamists are out there to have his scalp. How Al-Zawahiri would love to see Mush skinned alive! Politicians across the spectrum – from Nawaz’s Muslim League N to Bhutto’s PPP – would like to see his back. Add to the chorus -- the plucky, retaliative CJ of Pakistan, a dodgy gentleman with dyed hair, who is passing order after order against the Gen in a pickle.

Mush must be licking his wounds. I wonder who the heck advised him to remove the CJ? That’s when it all began. Power misused is like a pet serpent that can lunge at you! The Gen set his own declension. Now even Mohterma Bhutto, despite a clandestine deal with the Gen – who once called her names – is bargaining hard. Nawaz seems set to return from exile. Adding to Mush’s woes are: Hold your breath -- the huge advocates lobby, the mad-mullah’s association, a former playboy cricketer-turned-politician, radical Pakistani media who think he is too close to the US, rightwing US media who opine he is not doing too much to fight terror, an angry judiciary, pro-Pakistan leaders in Kashmir who feel he betrayed them, tribal leaders because he’s tough on them, US presidential hopefuls because he’s not too tough in the border areas, the dreaded elusive Al-Qaeda, displaced Lal masjid students because he violated their den. Poor Mush.

The next few weeks are going to be snappy for Mush. He may have to quit as army chief. He may have to sleep with the enemy. He may even have to abdicate. He may well have a surprise in store. Only time will tell. Till then, it is going to be Hobson's choice for the dishy Gen. Let’s hope he swims through.

Sameer

Chak De

Rarely does one come across a movie being made in India which blends sportsmanship, redemption and patriotism in just the right puckle. Frankly, I don’t think too much of our Bollywood because more-often-than-not the content is pretty pedestrian. Then there comes a flick which breaks free of the stereotype: No running betwixt the trees, no dialogue-baazi and no clutter. Simple story-telling. Done powerfully by some exceptionally talented actors. Shamit Amin is a brilliant film-maker. SRK doesn’t really need to be cheered. He remains, if I have my druthers, the King.

I won’t spoil the party for those who are yet to watch it. I won’t touch on the storyline. I was not scheduled to, neither had I planned to catch the movie, but I am glad an unexpected, split-second decision entirely changed my opinion about the game of hockey. Chak de is a very fine movie. Perhaps one of the best ever made on sports in India.

Chak de – I think it is a war-cry, slang for do it – is crisp, topical, sensitive and full of verve. The humor is unceasing. The actors are your neighborhood gals. And then there is the cerebral, stubbled Shahrukh. Who needs an item song!

For those of you who like their facts in figures:
Cost of the movie: 20 crore; Earnings first week: 20 crore.

Sameer

Why the haste?

Take away India, and Britain would become a second-rate power.
Lord Curzon

As India and Pakistan prepare to clink glasses on the 60th anniversary of their respective independences, a little galling detail juts out. Although it won’t quite spoil the party, it intrigues me. What was the urgent need to fast-forward the partition of British India? Why was the country midwifed recklessly over lunch, like the newborns won’t survive another day? Why did Lord Louis Mountbatten – uncle of Queen Elizabeth II’s hubby, Prince Phillip – allow the partition in such supreme haste? Even if Nehru and Jinnah wanted it quick. Mountbatten’s daughter, Pamela Hicks says her dad thought partition was a crazy, unworkable idea. So! So he better make haste.

In the process, Mountbatten advanced independence by a good nine months from June 1948 to August 1947. Partition happened. Pakistan was created at the midnight of Aug 14 and India on Aug 15, 1947. In the ensuing confusion, more than ten million people were uprooted. A million others perished.

Christopher Beaumont is daintily called one of the few people who knew the real truth about partition. He was a key figure in the partition of India. Beaumont was private secretary to the senior British judge, Sir Cyril Radcliffe, who was chairman of the Indo-Pakistan Boundary Commission. In short, the trusted inside-man in a team that was given a pencil – sharpened one – but no eraser and an assignment: Go out there in the plains of India and draw the consecrated line. The good Englishmen eventually drew the line, on a rather simple rag of map. The etchings, needless to add, still draw blood 60 years later. Some lines are too sharp to be blurred by time.

The viceroy, Mountbatten, must take the blame - though not the sole blame - for the massacres in the Punjab in which between 500,000 to a million -- men, women and children – perished, Beaumont says in his memoirs. Isn’t it strange that independence was declared prior to the actual partition and it was left to the new governments of India and Pakistan to keep public order! The infant governments clearly hadn’t anticipated the magnitude of mass-migration, mass-murders and the subsequent unrest. They flunked to control the mayhem. “The handover of power was done too quickly’’, Beaumont adds. The partition resulted in arguably the largest mass migration of peoples the world has ever seen. Mountbatten’s reactions to the bloody aftermath of partition were, according to his biographer, Philip Ziegler “at his most shallow”.

The British Military intelligence knew that the situation could take an ugly turn. Aware of this, Field Marshall Auchinlek -- Commander of Chief in India -- had wanted to keep British troops in India -- temporarily -- after Independence, but was over-ridden by Mountbatten. At any level, it was not a smooth transfer of power, as the Clement Atlee government in London wanted. With a royal megalomaniac at helm, who dismissed concerns from his own staff and other British experts far more knowledgeable than him about Indian communal tensions and politics, the bloodshed was inevitable.

So our guys who went out to draw those lines took some time. Exasperated, Mountbatten gave them a six-week deadline. “The trouble was that Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs were an integrated population so that it was impossible to make a frontier without widespread dislocation,” Beaumont writes. While still at job – with no final boundaries, no clear demarcations of what belonged to whom – India was cut into two. The Indo-Pakistan Boundary Commission guys were so distraught that they refused compensation for their work.

The rest, they say, is history. Most historians agree that Mountbatten cajoled Radcliffe into making compromises in the border crafting. Beaumont remained an honest guy until his end in 2002, dubbing both Radcliffe and Mountbatten discredited. Mountbatten was blown up in an IRA bomb at his summer home in Mullaghmore, Ireland in 1979.

The British legacy remains -- despite the trains and roads they bequeathed us – that of a hasty retreat. An inexplicable haste that led to widespread misery, murder, marauding. The aftershocks still continue.

On the eve of India and Pakistan’s 60th annev. Cheers.

Sameer

Karl Rove is gone

He was the alter ego of George Bush II. His shadow. The brain behind his political strategy. The man most vehemently protected by the White House in wake of the countless scandals and dirty odd jobs he did for them. He was portly but that didn't matter. He was the aide-de-camp to the most doltishly powerful man in the world. The Prez hugged him tight, last night, as he bade good-bye to a great friend. White house interns in their pink polka-dotted dresses must have sobbed, at least, a few of them. There goes the electrifying line. The Axis. The incredible colleague. I am happy, another conspirator exits.

Karl Rove is the third to leave. After Wolfowitz and Rummy. Ah, old boy Wolf was a sheer disgrace at the World Bank. He tried to give an out-of-turn raise to his Muslim girlfriend, and was done for. As for Rumsfeld – who often used to confuse journalists with his vocab peddling – he is busy denying things that he always knew and endorsed. Last heard, a week back, he denied a cover-up and rejected personal blame -- in the public deceptions that followed Army Ranger Pat Tillman's friendly-fire death in Afghanistan in 2004 – before questioning by a House committee.

Coming back to Karl -- the dancer who surprised the media with an impromptu jig to a hip hop tune at the annual dinner for TV and radio correspondents in Washington this year: He was some performer. His closeness to George Bush II was famed. Always an inner circle guy, an influential electoral strategist, he brought the Republican party lasting dominance by bringing Protestant evangelicals and Hispanic Catholics together under the amorphous banner of "moral values" through their shared antipathy to – stuff like -- abortion, as Guardian puts it.

Then came the tumble. The downfall was swift and disgraceful. Rove was in complete know and perhaps hand to the sacking of eight federal prosecutors by the attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, a move seen largely as politically motivated. Mr Gonzales admitted he had had conversations on at least two occasions with Mr Rove about the sacking of a prosecutor in New Mexico. Rove could have been hauled but Bush used his executive privilege to prevent his man Friday from testifying at investigative hearings on the Capitol Hill. They grill you bad there, Bush knows.

Like a true wily old Republican, Rove went on to slyly reveal the identity of CIA operative, Valerie Plame, to a journalist Robert Novak. Rove had long insisted he was not responsible -- for the leaking of the identity of Plame, an undercover CIA spy – an act that was unlawful and could have landed him in some serious trouble. What followed was a three-year investigation, a 30-month jail sentence for the vice-presidential aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby and a huge embarrassment to the Bush establishment. Rove, by then, the all-important in charge of White House policy, got off.

As a young rookie, age 22, hired by George Bush Sr, Rove was first assigned the rather petty job of handing over car keys to Bush Jr whenever he went to Washington. After a lifetime -- 35 years -- in servitude to a once-alcoholic, twice-stupid Prez, Rove finally found himself completely out of key.

Sam

Mistaken Man

It has all the makings of a Greek tragic tale by Phrynichus. Only that it is playing out in India. In the last few days the entire nation has been debating whether Judge Kode was right in sending one of India’s most popular film stars to prison for six long years, for possessing a gun. It looks like a very harsh, hard-nosed sentence and has left a majority of people divided and immensely sad. Though not a great Hindi movie buff, I felt very bad.

Sanjay Dutt is not your average film star. With a reputation of being a thorough, kind gentleman, he is son to the legendary Sunil Dutt -- an iconic star, parliamentarian, human rights activist, philanthropist and a hugely secular figure. His mom Nargis, a very successful actress in the 1970’s married Sunil Dutt in what is still called the ultimate fairy-tale love story. A Hindu-Muslim union in the 1958 India underlined the pluralistic ethos of good old days. And then suddenly tragedy struck!

Nargis died of cancer, only a few weeks before her favorite son Sanjay Dutt's debut film Rocky was released in 1981. Somewhere Sanjay -- of rock star looks, of high profile society, of distinguished pedigree -- lost it. His wife succumbed to tumor after a protract illness in US. Sanjay did drugs, mishandled relations, divorced his second wife, went to a rehab and famously rode around the bye-lanes of Bombay at night on his Harley. He was dubbed the original bad boy of Bollywood -- India’s dream film industry.

Everyone in media and the film industry will vouch for one thing though: At heart Sanjay Dutt is the golden guy of Indian cinema. Something that was not lost to even the tough, no-nonsense judge. Sanjay is humane. He is loving but unfortunately a little naïve. Perhaps his gullibility became his undoing. He bought a gun, one fine morning in 1993. Apparently for self-defence. The rest, they say, is history. According to the great Aristotle, "The change to bad fortune which he undergoes is not due to any moral defect or flaw, but a mistake of some kind.” He here denotes the Greek tragic hero.

Sanjay was arrested in1993 for procuring the gun from the underworld. The same gangsters blew Bombay up sometime later. He spent 16 months in jail. Again a first for any major Indian filmstar. His father’s ordeal to extricate him from the legal mess mellowed the star. Post jail, he was a reformed man. Modest and unpresuming than ever before, he delivered some of the biggest hits of his career. Sanjay’s stature rose. He was again a superstar. A brand. The corporate world wooed him. The media was flattering. There was a new female in his life. The sky was blue. Then again tragedy struck!

Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy, F. Scott Fitzgerald, the American writer, author of The Great Gatsby once said. Sanjay is one such bloke. While sending the gentle giant to jail with a stringent sentence, the judge was being a little too tough on him. Perhaps this is the underlying exactness of any tragic tale. Some would argue that the law is equal for all. But the moot point remains: Can we view criminal intent and a simple mistake with the same lens? Can we lump them together! The answer in any civilised society would be a big 'No'.

In hindsight, I reckon all of us make mistakes in life. To make a mistake is only an error in judgment. The highest form of self-respect is to admit our errors and make amends for them. I think Sanjay Dutt has already atoned for his mistakes.

I hope Dutt is given some relief by the Apex court. No more Greek tragedies for the kindly hero.

Sameer

The lonesome tree

Let's say that I was born in Kashmir, a little over twenty-seven autumns back. It was the season of fall, my folks tell me, and the countryside was strewn with light hues of crimson. It is that time of the year when the Oriental plane -- Chinar -- looks its best. Stark and naked, it sheds its rusty foliage. The crisp orange leaves cover the beauteous landscape like one continuous Oriental rug. Legend has it that plane is the tree of Hippocrates, under which Hippocrates taught medicine in ancient Greece during the Age of Pericles. Booune, as plane is locally called, has always been the emblem of Kashmir.

Reminds me of the poet-philosopher Sir Mohammad Iqbal – of Kashmiri ancestry -- who in his wistful style waxed eloquent about the valley:

Jis khaak ke zameer me ho aatish-e-chinar
Mumkin nahi ki sarad ho voh khaak-e-arjamand

The land that has in its conscience the spark of Chinar
Thy celestial dust won’t douse yet
[My Translation]

The romance with Chinar that started with the widely respected Iqbal has carried on. The lanky and erudite – loved and hated in equal parts – Kashmiri leader Sheikh Abdullah (Farooq Abdullah’s dad) called his autobiography ‘Aatish-e-Chinar’. The book bagged the 1988 Sahitya Academy award – India’s most outstanding literary achievement. Even a hugely repulsed bloke in Kashmir like Rushdie couldn’t resist it. He calls a central character in his latest book, Shalimar the Clown, Booune. Sir Salman, of Kashmiri ancestry knows the significance -- of the odd plane -- cannot be lost even in an era of hatred and intense heartache.

Poets and kings have admired the plane tree alike. The Mughal Emperor Akbar who annexed and visited the valley for the first time in 1579 fondly mentions Chinar in his memoir Akbar Nama. Booune is found mentioned in the 14th century mystic-poetess-princess Lal Ded’s saintly wakhs (poems).

Booune has been a lonesome witness to the vicissitudes of Kashmir’s fluctuating fortune and its prized possession by rulers of various stripe – cruel and benign: from the Buddhist ruler Asoka the Great, who founded the city of Srinagar in 250 BC to the various Hindu Kings, who followed him. From the mid-12th century Muslim blitzkrieg in Kashmir right upto harsh reign of the 19th century Dogra feudatories, Chinar perhaps remains the sole spectator to happenstance of everything Kashmiri.

In the olden times, the natives used to collect the plane leaves in heaps and transform them into charcoal for use in the Kangris (fire pots that Kashmiris fight the intense winter with). Not now! Not in the time of blowers and braziers. Not definitely in an age of guns. I think the romance is fading. Like everything Kashmiri, the Booune is fast dying. There was a time when every village and hamlet had scores of the graceful huge tree. Only 19,000 remain now. The systematic ruin of Kashmir seems to have pervaded onto its Chinars.

Az Jehangir Dame Naza Chi Justand
Ba Khahishi Dil Guft
Kashmir Diger Hech

On his deathbed, the 17th century Mughal Emperor of India, Jehangir was asked by his royal courtiers as to what he wished in the hereafter. With a heavy heart and in a feeble, dying voice, the poet-king replied: Nothing but a heaven as beautiful and soul refreshing as Kashmir.

Sameer

How We Celebrate Freedom

I watched the compelling documentary Jashn-e-Azadi [How We Celebrate Freedom] at the Osian Cine festival in New Delhi. The film is a powerful narrative about the last 18 years of Kashmir’s low intensity conflict – a glade of earth where the Indian elite once used to honeymoon en masse. With his intrepid style, Sanjay Kak seems to have stepped onto an uncomfortable territory. I think the film's chutzpah sets it apart. It subtly dissects the desolation and travails of a struggle, which is construed as sacred and star-crossed at the same time.

On a much personal level I could almost immediately identify with poignancy of the effort. Being a Kashmiri, it felt like an emotive roller coaster. The images came rushing back to me as I saw horrors -- known and unknown -- unfold on the screen, sitting alongside an elite audience at Delhi’s Siri Fort. It is kinda tough but there has been an emotional bitterness about this war era – which a non-Kashmiri may find hard to fathom. I don’t know what went wrong and where but that is precisely what the film is trying to convey. Sanjay has stitched related narratives and crocheted them together by the theme -- Azadi or Freedom.

The elusive Azadi! I have been in Kashmir during those difficult militancy years. I vividly recount the dreary nights. The gunshots. The screams. It was a pain with no end. Of watching parents with hapless eyes. Their children being dragged out of homes and killed in cold blood. The persecution. The wickedness of it all. And the quitetude. Jashn-e-Azadi rips open these closeted taboos. It attempts to zoom in on tears that routinely get consigned to dust of the dell. It follows the steps of a father, who visits the Martyr’s graveyard in Srinagar – only to forget his son’s grave.

Kak’s oeuvre is varicolored. His ritornelle leaves you touched. He is effortless in his coalescing of numerous fragments of the war in Kashmir – psychological scars, bruised souls, a poet's lament, the clowns’ hamming, dissident's spiel and the army's truculence. Sanjay talks to the miscellaneous Kashmiri. It must be hard being a sister and losing a brother in the bloody conflict and telling a film crew about how he died after all those years. In her limited vocabulary. Trying to seek a shy solace after years of anguish.

The film gives you no breather. The motif flickers swiftly. An old man tallying those killed in his village explains the sombre truth of Emperor Jehangir's Firdaus. A tourist’s cheer in the meadows of Gulmarg only adds to the idiom. As the poet Zarif croons in one of the film’s many frames:

I’ve lost the city of love I’d found,
What frenzy is this
My gaze has been silenced
What frenzy is this?

Jashn-e-Azadi is coming of age of independent documentary film making in India. Sanjay Kak is so much more real than the jingoistic crap that India's free media passes for. He showcases the innocence that incidentally got stolen in a little paradise, once wintry night in 1989.

And is still missing!

Sameer
July 2007, New Delhi

Rubbish Rowling

For once, I don't mean to demean the darling of kids -- JK Rowling -- the creator of the Potter series. I am amused at the hype. For I have come, with some regret, to this conclusion: her style is toxic. And this is Rowling's fault. I know that I am anticipating what the style of the latest book will be in advance of actually seeing it, but really, I don't think I'm going out on a limb here. Of course, if she has turned into a first-class writer with her forthcoming Potter book, I will happily, no, joyously, eat my words.

But until then, we have to swallow hers. And for all that she is gifted enough in devising popular scenarios, the words on the page are flat. I think it was Verlaine who said that he could never write a novel because he would have to write, at some point, something like "the count walked into the drawing-room" - not a scruple that can have bothered JK Rowling, who is happy enough writing the most pedestrian descriptive prose.

Here, from page 324 of The Order of the Phoenix, to give you a typical example, are six consecutive descriptions of the way people speak. "...said Snape maliciously," "... said Harry furiously", " ... he said glumly", "... said Hermione severely", "... said Ron indignantly", " ... said Hermione loftily". Do I need to explain why that is such second-rate writing?

If I do, then that means you're one of the many adults who don't have a problem with the retreat into infantilism that your willing immersion in the Potter books represents. It doesn't make you a bad or silly person. But if you have the patience to read it without noticing how plodding it is, then you are self-evidently someone on whom the possibilities of the English language are largely lost.

This is the kind of prose that reasonably intelligent nine-year-olds consider pretty hot stuff, if they're producing it themselves; for a highly-educated woman like Rowling to knock out the same kind of material is, shall we say, somewhat disappointing. Children exposed to this kind of writing aren't learning anything new about words, or being stretched in any way; as Harold Bloom said, they're not going to be inspired to go off and read the Alice books, or any other enduring classic.

People go hoopla because they're delighted that Rowling has got children reading books - big, fat books without pictures at that. Can't argue with that: and maybe they will learn something about sheer reading stamina in the process. But it's all too easy. The popular writer whose style is most similar is, it suddenly occurs to me, Jeffrey Archer (all those dead adverbs). All that paper, all those trees felled, all those words ... surely Rowling could have chosen some better ones, or put them together in a more exciting way?

She has, in her grasp, the power to galvanise minds instead of reeling out cliché after cliché. Will The Deathly Hallows do this? I hope so. But I fear not.

In complete agreement with Nick Lezard!
Sameer

In your Soul

Lets dispel the foggy curtain
Lets stand in the light
not in the shadow
When will we stop playing these games?

You can cry sometimes
when something breaks inside
Tell me about the moments of fear
It is much easier to be afraid together

'And when cold winds rage outside
I'll send hot fire through you
Someday you may stop running between the shadows
In your soul

Sameer

Kashmir Pics

Attention plz: Wasy and me listening to the instructor before the 3 km rafting trek in Lidder

Reflection in the lake: Nagin Lake, Srinagar on a summer's day

Starry nights: You can't help give in to the stunning vastness of the night sky

Barnstorm Kashmir III

We need to find God and
He cannot be found in noise and restlessness.
God is the friend of silence. See how nature grows in silence;
see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence.
We need silence to be able to touch souls.
~ Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, better known as Mother Teresa

I have perhaps been in love with nature ever since I can remember. Apart from my closest friends and my immediate family, the only time I think of Kashmir is when I remember the riot of a million tipsy tulips in summers. I also miss the slow waltz of snowflakes in winters. Our trip to Kashmir -- this time – was packed with a nature trail.

On a particular crisp blue morning we set off for -- a car trek -- up the mountains of Pahalgam. The name Pahalgam is comprised of two Kashmiri words: Pahal – which means Shepherd – and gam – that stands for village. It has been a little virgin valley of herdsmen for centuries. Perched in the lap of burnt sienna mountains, this God’s glen is beautifully tucked away from the daily bustle of humankind.

We – my mates and me – played soulful music, stopped over to snaffle the roadside snacks and took turns to drive to the Southern most tip of Kashmir. Salus pulled over at a rather pictorial spot on our way. The Lidder river skirts along this secluded, anonymous place. The scent of the pine trees here is absolutely heady. A sudden blessed feeling engulfs you, as you take out your clothes for a quick dip in the brook. Petite pocks of the gentle breeze kindly tease your exposed toes, as does the glacier cold water of Lidder. At an altitude of nearly 7200 feet above sea level – Delhi, for example is only 706 feet above sea level -- you know that joy in comprehending is one of God's most beautiful gifts.

A lonely gun-wielding army man saw us throwing water at each other in the stream. I thought the gentleman was lost in his own private dreams. The sound of water hitting the formless little boulders makes you go soft in the heart. Must have been 22 degree C – at broad afternoon. A prompt smile flickered across his now-poetic, not-the-least soldierly face as we whizzed past. Proximity to nature, perhaps, does that to you. “Why don’t they withdraw troops from Kashmir now, Sam?” Raj asked nonchalantly. Who would wish to tear one-self from this place? I responded in chummy jest.

A quick decision over lunch hovered about what we do next. Rafting – was the unanimous choice. How friends think alike! Pahalgam is a rafter’s delight and even an amateur can catch a raft and glide down the rushing streams. The Lidder has excellent fishing beats for rainbow and brown trout. Imagine rafting in fish-filled waters. Ten people – two couples, two instructors and us – got into a raft. The swirling water in Lidder is especially suited for river rafting, the instructor told me. I wasn’t listening, for once.

Rafting is jollity. Like its ferocity there is also gentleness in Lidder. The beauty of the river is that at places it's so quite. The icy heights of the Himalayas are the source of some of India's mighty rivers. Fed by innumerable streams they race along tortuous boulder strewn beds, cutting deep gorges and breaking into silvery white rapids. Lidder flows through a myriad colours of rocky gorges, forests, flowers and high mountain villages. You just wish to go on. Fish plop as you raft.

We were asked to follow the instructor’s call – Get down – signifying: Jump to floor of the raft -- swiftly -- in case of a very strong current. This helps them negotiate the fast torrents, they explained. A subsequent – Get back – call would be a signal to get back to our places -- along borderline of the raft. Now both couples were a little scared – girls anyways are! – of the rapids. Taking a cue, Wasy -- with his sense of mischief clearly intact -- decided to add to their misery. Many times over he shouted – Get down -- and the poor folks would immediately jump to the floor. They mistook it for the instructor’s call. The instructors seemed to love the prank. It was so much fun.

Driving back on winding roads -- on a clear, starry sky – amid dense forests and pygmy villages with old chimneys happily piping out smoke is the stuff you can only doodle about in any big metropolis. At 706 feet.

Sameer

Rainbow times

There is a beautiful land
Where all your dreams come true

Minutes mosey past me. Life looks like a compact rainbow. Or like a kind ice cream topped with brutish chocolate. It feels so varicolored. Fast and fake. A heavy moth comes and plops down on my heart. It takes off, circles around and sits again. An odd toad croaks in the hailing distance. Cars honk. Another day is gone.

How stupid modern mankind must be? I oft ask myself. How mercilessly we strive to work and get ourselves occupied only to let all our dreams -- with so much of beauty in them -- just slip by. We live a short life, after all. They say the doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.

Silly mechanical lives – laden with doors that open to cards and not to the gentle push. Walls that have dollars painted across their broadness, clocks that give us time zones of faraway latitudes. We feel internationalized, globalized. And tend to talk in funny accents and think we have mastered a universal language, which we don’t understand brass tacks about.

Whatever happened to nobility? To uniqueness. To love. To life. To friendship. A lovely poem I chanced across last night might make it a little axiomatic.

Red is the color of a lot of lollipops,
Orange is any orange on a tree.
Yellow's the color of a bag of lemon drops,
Green is a piece of seaweed in the sea.

Blue is the color of the sky in summertime
Indigo is a Siamese cat's eyes.
Violet's the color of a flow'r in wintertime.
These are the colors of the rainbow skies.

There is a beautiful land
Where all your dreams come true;
It's all tied up in a rainbow,
All shiny and new;
But it's not easy to find
No matter what you do.

It's not on top of a mountain
Or beneath the deep blue sea
Or in London zoo or in Timbuktoo,
Or in Timbuckthree.

And if you traveled the world
From China to Peru,
There's no beautiful land on the chart.
An explorer could not begin
To discover its origin
For the beautiful land is in your heart.


Sameer

Barnstorm Kashmir-II

The ghostly tales

Kingdom in a Lake. That is where we left last time. Human minds invariably get interested in such kooky poppycock. Suess, the American humorist gets it bang right when he says, I like nonsense; it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. So during this summer vacation -- back in the land of the unexplained -- every morning we would get up to hear the latest lowdown about Abdullah, the ghost in our neighbor’s newly built home. My sis would religiously narrate the Jinn’s slate of activities from the previous day. She would in turn get the dope straight from the horse’s mouth – that is – lady of the haunted house.

Anyone who visited my neighbors' home would ostensibly find his/her shoes/sandals/floaters instantly thrown out of the place. The Jinn – they named him Abdullah -- seemed to harbor some kind of a strong revulsion for the footwear, I was told. In my characteristic style, I tried to rubbish the supernatural claims till my neighbor himself confided in me about the strange paranormal occurrence. He even invited me to witness the spectacle – shoes flying off – which I politely declined. On a personal note, I am a little scared of these phantoms, which tease at will.

A significant part of our idle talk invariably used to center around Abdullah, the boot hater. My pals -- Wasy, Raj and Salus -- were all curious, like me for the latest ghostly update. Stories like the Jinn swinging doors at odd hours or digging up the lawn at midnight or talking in eerie voices continued to come. Frankly I’d get goose bumps. The last I’ve heard -- on phone -- is that Abdullah has started talking in some exotic language and he still continues to chuck shoes out of the beautiful one-storey house of my good neighbor.

Ever heard of a spick and span spook! Happens in Kashmir, only.

Sameer

Barnstorm Kashmir-I

A beautiful mizzle greeted me as I slowly ambled across the little distance from the Boeing to a pine wooded arrival lounge at the Srinagar airport. Must have been 1300 hours on June 2 but I had no ways to know. I didn’t have a watch on me and my cell was purposely switched off. It felt timeless, anyways. A curious look towards the wispy sky filled me with everything I had left behind – the famous nip in the air, blush of hollyhocks, the muted silhouette of the elderly mountains. It all came rushing back.

The rain wiper in -- my buddy -- Salus’ car was furiously clearing the view in front of us. An old world charm galloped ahead of us. Simple folks with fair skins. Old men with grey beards. Little children with angelic eyes. Shy damsels with lost eyes. Handsome hawkers shouting their wares. The tall popular trees lined on either side of the turnpike stood in their forever grace. Occasional army men manned the pockmarked road. Life is like a comely action-replay in the valley. This is Kashmir, I thought. Incredulously believable.

Expectedly people were sowing the rice crop. Hip to hip. In sing-song fashion. Heartening. And Day-2 was again rain. Though it stopped towards the afternoon, the north sky was tenderly overcast. A fiesta awaited us! Kashmir is rich in its gastronomic traditions. The food is fed to spoil you. Twenty-six courses minimum, as Rushdie subtly puts it in Shalimar, the Clown. You indulge in the mastery of the head-chef. You don’t even mind licking your fingers over and over again. It is a thousand calories raised to the power 26 but the crazy Atkins diet can take a guided walk on the greens. In the land of musk deer the senses run wild and you effortlessly absorb the assortment of spices, which give out an aroma to die for.

The local gossip never seems to stop. It comes in regular intervals and everyone seems to have it. With all business establishments closed by 5pm and markets completely shut by 7pm, the juicy gossip-factory is never short of the clothesline. Though you don’t quite relate to it, you still participate. The old wives tales. Familiar biases. Exaggerated accounts. Pauses. Effects. The theatricals. It is hilarious. The most common past time. Sample this: If you look at the Wular lake for a few minutes continuously, you develop suicidal tendencies. That is because the lake is mostly gloomy. It has an ancient kingdom already immersed in it.

The funny chitchat shall continue.

Sameer

Images from the Dell

Srinagar: A birds-eye view of the Dal lake and Srinagar city

Saffron vale: Raj -- 6ft2 -- and me in the crimson saffron meadows, South Kashmir

Threesome: Salus -- in buff -- me and Wasy near Phalgam, Kashmir

Quick dip: Salus sun-bathing after a dip in the glacier-cold waters of Lidder

Braveheart: Wasy makes a point atop a slippery boulder in Lidder, Countryside Kashmir

[click on the images for a bigger impact]

White Heat

Imagine being portaged from 77 F to 113 F in less than an hour. That is what happened to me a few days back and I am still trying to adjust to the rude reality. Being in Kashmir has its own advantages – you know that you are in the most enviable clime-zone in India and no matter what you’ll never have to use the AC in your car. The barn swallow gliding in a distance makes you feel -- for once -- flighty. As the plane slowly began its ascent, the chocolate and snow colored mountains appeared whispering to the blobby clouds. Look at those folks; they are going to be slowly sautéed in the plains.

I’ll write about my Kashmir sojourn in the days ahead. Good scoop can always wait. I first wish to share the bad poop. The winds -- they say -- bring in omens. As soon as the leggy airhostess threw open the airplane door, winds from hell blew in. I instantly knew we were in for an especially uncomfortable time. After all 25 C and 45 C is not exactly fair figuring. At my Delhi apartment, a notorious power cut welcomed us. No cold water in the refrigerator. Inverter with low battery. A quick glance at the morn newspaper confirmed my worst fears. 15 hour-cuts in the city. Anachronistic. I let out a hapless slack gasp.

I’ve jotted in some detail – in my earlier posts – the super aversion I harbor for the cruel heat. Indian summers suck. It is sweat, swear, and slow sauté. Though you may try, you just can’t beat it. Instead it beats the hell out of you. I just can’t fathom how people manage. It is one of the many things I don’t bother thinking about. You see blokes working under a scorching sun on half dug-up roads or selling pirated books at traffic signals in abominable afternoons or clung upon electric poles trying to fix or unfix a maze of wires. Still some sleep blissfully in one of the city parks' under -- little shade -- of an outgrown shrub. In 113 F. India confounds me, endlessly.

I am slowly attuning to the clime-change. The AC is working proper. The battery back up is firmly in place. The fridge has stockpiles of ice and juice and cold water in it. I don’t step out in the heat. My office hours are nicely aligned – and inversely proportional to – the temperature outside. The air-conditioning in the car is just fine. I conspired with my colleague Mehak to ask our management to increase the chill factor in the split AC in our office cabin. I don’t eat much outside. Not in this white heat!

Glad tidings to follow.

Sameer

Adieu pals

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.
~Henry David Thoreau, Poet and Philosopher 1817-1862

I abhor saying Good Byes. It breaks my heart. I hate to tear myself away from the smells I love, the joyful volumes of familiarity I snort, the crisp buzz of good pals. But there are times in life when you have to. It goes on like a golden brocard. Everyone chooses a way.
And even though we find our own place in the world, we all know that when the tears fall or the smile spreads across our face, we'll come to each other because no matter where this crazy world takes us, nothing will ever change so much to the point where we're not all still chums.

I am taking a sabbatical. For a little over one week. I am off to Kashmir – the overrated little dell. Though the place is beautiful, I don’t quite relate to the chicanery about its natives. At least, most of them. At another level I know I can’t unbelong to the place. It is home. It is close to nature. Waking up to the fragrance of a million Hyacinths in bloom is -- any day -- a better idea than opening your eyes to a hot-as-an-oven day in Delhi. And looking out at the woody-stemmed, twining leaflets of the scented violet flowers called Wisteria is like watering your sapped-out soul. Hauntingly calming too. After an exacting journalistic rigour, I reckon it comes as a welcome interlude.

It is also time for the local farmers to sow their rice. Every time I watch them, I find it breathtaking -- neat rows of assiduous men and women, hunched back, strewing little rice plants. They sing songs of love, joy and bounty together. Trousers tucked. Aloud. Hip to hip. Religion can squat at home, or hinge upon mosque knobs. When it comes to survival, co-existence often takes precedence. Little pleasing things continually fascinate me back home. Like the blue-necked cuckoos that just don’t stop purling. Vincent van Gogh once said, Keep your love of nature, for that is the true way to understand art more and more.

Still I felt a deep lump in the throat as I packed my bags this evening. I don’t know why we feel attached to -- Situations. Things. Events. Cavort. Laughter. Intimacy. Gazes. Rides. Friends. My head is slightly reeling. That may be a joint I took tiny drags of. The smoke often makes funny, irregular shapes, which make no sense. One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever comes to sit by it. Passersby see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on the way. Vincent would agree, I know.

I shall see you soon, mates.

Adieu.

Samy

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Comments have been de-acativated because I can't moderate them while I am away. Plz e-mail your bouquets/brickbacks

The Comely Life

Ek Saans reh gayee hai
Vo Be na toot jaye
The only gasp which remains
that too might snap

The reverse countdown has already triggered in my mind. Four days to go before I hop on a flight to felicity. Nature always thrills me. The rhapsody which raw leaves make with common hoopoes is more enchanting than all the din in our ipods. The puerile rustle of wind at your windowpane. The waltz of phantoms in the woods. Familiar tweedle of the long-tailed shrike. Plop of the fish. I just want to be there -- crash on my sack and dream. Dream the dreams, I cannot stroke. Imagine the hugs I cannot feel. Isn’t it so beautiful that we can almost do everything wacky – which we may never attempt in real life -- in our little fantasies?

I sipped lemon tea on the roof of India Today with pals today. The view of the majestic Connuaght Place was splendid. Despite the maddening humdrum and a flood of commercialization, the arcade still exudes an old world charm. It brings back memories of good old days when everything was so simple and uncomplicated. The sky over the place was stunning. There was a passel of grey clouds, which seemed to conspire with each other to block the Sun. Only a buttery salmon dot was visible. People paced about in the inner circle. I looked away.

Late in the night, reading something interesting, I wondered if I annoyed people. Though it is hard to tell in matters where one is himself a party. I recall of Charles Baudelaire, the French Poet of Decadent and Parnassian movements –- who wrote Les Fleurs du Mal (1857) – ‘The world only goes round by misunderstanding’. How true? In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.

Life. Too short. Gasps.

Sameer

May Queen

You don't have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight.
~ Barry Goldwater, American Politician and Senator (1909-1998)

It was a windswept evening. You don’t usually expect such an affable weather in May -- in Delhi -- India’s quintessential metropolis. It felt like a mellow reverie. There was light rain in the air, though it didn’t quite rain. You could smell the summer breeze. It wafted in the hair and softly promenaded on the shoulders. Twain, my favorite humorist, once remarked rather wryly, ‘Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get’. The company I had was primarily military. Uncalculatedly endearing too.

The annual May Queen beauty pageant -- organized by the Defence Services Officers’ Institute (DSIO) -- was a chick affair. A bevy of beauties sashayed past you, even as you clenched your glass tighter than ever. For a while, I thought I am dead – and this must be heaven. Fairies in a million different hues -- so many of them. Luckily, Sandy was at hand to assure me that we are very much alive. The guy, I must chip in, possesses heart of a child. 24-Carat.

A well-groomed swarm of lasses burned the ramp. The pageant rolled on past midnight. The chief of the Indian Air Force along with a host of top military officers sat perched in the first row. The famed army discipline was extant but gradually loosened towards the last benches. We sat – and you guessed it right – after the final benches. So, naturally there was no decorum. I met a couple of young army officers – my age -- and enjoyed a palsy chat with them. How I love the disposition of soldiers?

There is something about military that always excites me. Is it the decorousness, the valor, the uniform, the spunk – I cannot precisely say? As Horace waxes eloquent, it is courage, courage, courage, that raises the blood of life to crimson splendor. Amidst all the music, wine, gals, friends and berets around, I recalled to me -

Our God and soldier we alike adore
just at the brink of ruin not before
The danger past, both are alike requited
God is forgotten and the soldier slighted

The May Queen was declared to a deafening cheer. Frankly, none of us cared to know who the enterprising model was.

Sameer

Floundering About

Take away my trouble, take away my grief
Take away my heartache, in the night like a thief
Crazy Love -- Bob Dylan-Van Morrison, Moondance

We are too conditioned to do things that we are not supposed to do...or told not to do, or can do without doing, or should not do.
Friend :)

Time is a sly monster. It creeps in the dark and pounces on you when you think you have spotted your destination in a distance. As you try and amble across to reach the glow, which stands a-few-yards-away from you, it swoops on you. Swiftly. Wolfishly. Aided by a little sharp-teethed demon called destiny. The troubles and grief and heartache that Bob harps about in Moondance sit heavy on your stirred shoulders. You can’t hold many things in life! However dear.

It is well past midnight now. I think of a million things. A new species of birds called the gorgeted puffleg has been discovered by scientists in the wild. They say it has remained hidden from humanity -- for an eternity -- and it is green and violet. It also has an iridescent green plumage on its neck. Wonder why the poor bird had to appear now. Everyone will follow it now, in an effort to catenate its existence. Each flight of the poor bird will be observed. Why do some things have to appear to cause all this flutter, I ask no one in particular? Expectedly, I get no answers.

My mind is ajumble. You are conditioned to things and then you are not too conditioned. You drive in the middle of a May night. You chatter about the world, knowing that it is a hybrid world, a world of nostalgia. Only when it is too late, do we dream of the past and then our dreams incorporate everything we want to deny. Strange world. You can’t question it. Yet it offers answers at times, when we don’t expect them. And when you gather the courage to pose questions -- that nag you to the innards -- it gives breezy answers. You take it with a smile.

At the onset of his Indian conquest, standing amidst the wind and ice-swept hills of the great Hindu-Kush mountain range, Alexander the great – looking towards the vast Indian sub-continent -- is reported to have put his arm around his close companion Hephaestion and said ‘Do you think, my friend, we can do it’? The year was 326 BC, most historians agree. Hephaestion, who shared more than just friendship with the greatest warrior of all times, quietly whispered in Alexander’s ear: We must do the thing we think we cannot do.

sameer