Rainy, lazy January evening

I have been forced to suspend my offline classes again after a continuous session of six months. I hope this won’t last very long.

It’s strange weather for January. The cold vanished a few days ago. Since yesterday the sky has been overcast. It started drizzling this afternoon, which turned into quite a shower as evening descended. Three hours later it is still drizzling. That, combined with the closure of markets, has left the streets silent and deserted. I hope the sun will come out tomorrow, and a strong chill return.

Having marked some homework and posted some lessons and exercises online, I am now left at a loose end. Been watching silly James Bond and Jason Bourne movies and listening to stories on YouTube; now I am trying Jai Bhim. A very important and much neglected issue: I wish they had made a better movie out of it. Some are born to deep delight, and some are born to endless night... that is probably more true about India than anywhere else on earth.

Oh, I forgot to mention this earlier: The Nutmeg’s Curse has turned me off Amitav Ghosh. He doth protest too much these days, and he is becoming something of a Luddite. Technology harnessed to commerce in the service of west-dominated capitalism has indeed done immeasurable harm to mankind and the environment, which calls for urgent and wide-ranging corrections, but a) he has forgotten that China and India have decided to follow the same path as the west now, so flogging that old dead horse doesn’t cut much ice any more, b) it is because of all the rich rewards of that same system that he is able to live the life he leads and write the kind of books he does for a worldwide audience, and c) he seems to be suggesting, though not in so many words, that going back to Stone Age minimalism will solve all our problems, which is a position too absurd even to waste time demolishing.

On the other hand, Madhulika Liddle’s Garden of Heaven charmed me. It is historical fiction based on Delhi over a two hundred year period, from the invasion of Muhammad Ghori to that of Timur, and she has promised three more books in a series, which I shall eagerly wait for. Her collaboration with her historian sister has borne very rich fruit!

As I have said before, I often re-visit some of my old posts. I recently looked up The world we are making for our children. It was written nearly fifteen years ago. How would you comment on it now?

All you who sleep tonight with lonely hearts, here’s love to you.

P.S., January 12: Corrigendum and apology after having watched Jai Bhim:

It was too important a film for me to have carped about the cinematic aspects. I am deeply ashamed that, informed as I consider myself to be, I had not heard of Justice Chandru till now. It takes my breath away to think that such men have been alive and working in my own lifetime. He is the sort of man that I would automatically stand up and bow to when he enters my room, and never address as anything less than 'Sir'. Maybe that is why India still works, and maybe there is hope for us yet. Do please listen to his interview here, and don't miss out a single word of it. 

I am glad I am writing this on Vivekananda's birthday. I am also thinking of Dr. Ambedkar.