Unaccustomed Earth

Book review: Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri, Random House India 2008, Rs. 450

I have just finished reading this book, and thought it might be as good an occasion as any other to pen down a review, seeing that so many blog-readers have been asking why I stopped writing reviews after just one.

As a rule I do not think very highly of the current crop of Indian writers in English – I find them too recherché at times, and clichéd at others, I feel they write too exclusively about NRIs for other NRIs, they take too little direct and involved interest in Mother India (probably because that doesn’t pay, as so many Indian writers in Indian languages have found out the hard way!), that they have too much sauce and too little substance, in contrast with the earlier generation, R. K. Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand, Anita Desai, Khushwant Singh, Naipaul et al, who had a lot to say, and knew how to say it simply yet impressively… I am, of course, willing to pay tribute where I feel it is due; I have spoken and written highly of such works as Rushdie’s Haroun and the sea of stories, Vikram Seth’s An Equal Music, and Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide. Jhumpa Lahiri did not strike me as great stuff with her first volume, The Interpreter of Maladies (despite the fact that I couldn’t help being both very surprised and very proud that it had won the Pulitzer, putting an Indian in the elite company of titans like Hemingway – God knows how that happened!) though I did feel she had promise, and might go on to surprise us pleasantly with works that kept getting better as she kept thinking, observing and polishing her art. Even in that first book, the story about 'Buri-ma' and the one called The Third and Final Continent struck me as very good and sincere writing as soon as I read them: here, I thought, was a fine writer in the making. Since then The Namesake has appeared on the market, made waves and won accolades: it has also been turned into a movie I can vouch is worth watching. Now I have this latest collection of short stories (for want of a better expression: they are not typical short stories, but rather ruminative essays/travelogues/partial autobiographies) on my table, and I can say with conviction that Ms. Lahiri has definitely lived up to my expectations. This is good if not excellent writing. Indeed, if only the Indian diaspora knew a good thing when they saw one (or rather, if enough of them read books at all – far too many of them, alas, are money-minded and ‘busy’ doctors, engineers and traders to think of higher things such as books), they would have left no stone unturned to ensure that this writer became a global celebrity as, for instance, so many Latin Americans have managed to become. I am proud when I hear that an Arun Netravali has become director of Bell Labs, a Vinod Khosla has financed Sun Microsystems or a Vikram Pandit has become CEO of Citibank, but an Indian author who is acknowledged as great worldwide, as Tolstoy was, and Marquez is, would please me infinitely more. Tolstoy and Tagore are remembered as no tycoon or technical man of their times is – that’s the way of the world!

Other than being keenly observant and sensitive as any writer on lives, lifestyles and manners should be, Jhumpa is admirable for the many different ways in which she has portrayed the human condition of Indians abroad (and their families back in India). She writes not only about lonely children trapped and struggling between two cultures, but about fathers and mothers, wives, sons, daughters, in-laws, family friends and colleagues, and how they cope, each in his or her own distinctive way – though with many common features too – and how so many lives are crushed by failure and misfortune, and how happiness occasionally blooms despite everything, even if it is fated to be transient. I found the sister being forced to throw out the alcoholic and criminally-irresponsible brother truly tragic, and the way Kaushik is taken out of Hema’s troubled love-life by the tsunami of December 2005 is wrenchingly neat. The mother’s lifelong secret crush on her father’s young colleague forces a sigh from many of us who are old enough to know, understand and forgive such things: it happens all the time inside India, too; the setting on alien soil only makes it more plausible, and more poignant. The way Amit deals with Megan, or Sang with Farouk might not make great stories, but it tells us that some Indians have managed to become so thoroughly Americanized that their problems and solutions no longer have anything very specially Indian about them, either in their follies or in their triumphs. Truly, a new sub-species of Indian has been breeding over the last half-century, and society and politics in both India and America would sooner or later have to engage seriously with them! It is something important for both countries to know, and Jhumpa Lahiri will be remembered for being among the first writers to point out the phenomenon.

I have been reading up on Jhumpa on the Net. It seems she is quite candid (and why shouldn’t she be?) about the strongly (though fragmentarily-) autobiographical element in her stories. The protagonist of The Third and Final Continent was supposedly modelled on her father, just as The Namesake reflects much of her own youthful agonizing over her difficult double name (it was originally Nilanjana Sudeshna) which made her so uneasy and guilty in the American milieu that she replaced it with the short one they called her by at home!

I have started liking her for a number of reasons. First, she writes good, correct Standard English devoid of mannerisms, currently ‘in’ slang, prolixity, excess of innuendos, fanciful ornamentation and over-use of Bangla words in italics, yet manages to be as elegant and expressive and impressive as she would like to be: all worshippers of cant, jargon, bombast and ‘Indlish’ (including the likes of Kiran Desai and some blog writers I know!) may please note. It doesn’t stop her from winning prizes, either: I find that a most reassuring thing about contemporary critics and readers alike. Second, she writes about things she knows, understands and empathises with, and (contrary to what I have been hearing some people saying – ‘She’s writing about the same sort of people and issues again and again!’), I believe that’s exactly what an honest person who wants to be a good writer should do. It’s nothing new, actually, only people have forgotten: Erich Maria Remarque went back again and again to the lives of the generations in Germany torn asunder by the First World War, and Dickens wrote only about the middle- and lower middle classes struggling, losing out and profiteering out of the Industrial Revolution raging like a hurricane through early 19th-century English society – and oh my God, what books they have left behind! So more power to Jhumpa’s elbow. Maybe though, she should write about other Indians in America, too: till date, she has focused too narrowly on Bengalis. And while some critics back in India have accused her of not portraying our NRIs in a sufficiently positive light (long ago Nargis accused Satyajit Ray of ‘showcasing India’s poverty' through Pather Panchali! Some people never learn…), I would rather say she should take off the kid gloves and start telling the truth more like it is; not just mention but criticize, or at least laugh at all the petty spites and jealousies and backbiting and one-upmanship and little cruelties and provincialism that make up and embitter so large a part of the collective lives of all Indians in the US of A. (baggage that has been carried over and intensified). Without that, we would have become at least as strong a force in American social and political life by now as the Jews and the Chinese have managed to become! It is essential for a writer who wants to be remembered to be bravely and unashamedly didactic.

As for all folks back here at home, I wish more and more parents in my country (and in my little one-horse town) would read these books. They would then begin to wonder whether it’s really not quite silly, despite all the material goodies on offer, to boast of one’s son having moved to ‘Umrica’. A few of us have always known that it’s not the same thing as going to paradise; now the likes of Jhumpa Lahiri are telling us all why not. May her tribe prosper.

P.S.: here’s one interesting link to an article about J.L.:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59256-2003Oct7?language=printer

Also, I read the following in wikipedia: “Upon its publication, Unaccustomed Earth achieved the rare distinction of debuting on The New York Times best seller list in the number 1 slot. New York Times Book Review editor Dwight Garner stated, ‘It’s hard to remember the last genuinely serious, well-written work of fiction – particularly a book of stories – that leapt straight to No. 1; it’s a powerful demonstration of Lahiri’s newfound commercial clout.’ ”

Finally, many thanks to young Abhishek Das, who has just finished class 10 with me, and who very kindly lent me the book to read. I was thrilled to bits to learn, too, that he has a mother who, despite being a doctor, has time to read books like this one. I wish her a long life of happy reading.

The blog writer looks back

Now that I have been blogging for two continuous years (and an enormous number of people, including lots of celebrities both in India and abroad are doing the same), let me look back and reflect upon the experience.

Many people now have access to reasonably fast internet connections (in India it started happening only about five years ago, but that’s not much behind the west), and there are lots of web services like blogger.com to provide the necessary technical support very cheaply or for free, so I suppose it is natural that all sorts of people would start writing diaries on the net. A couple of savvy old boys got me interested, I made a tentative beginning, it took some time before my blog (or weblog, to give it its original and already-almost-forgotten name) started drawing people’s attention (mostly my ex-students, but also some of their friends/mentors/relatives) and comments, and then I was hooked. Since July 2006 I have posted 60-plus articles on all sorts of subjects, from religion to Harry Potter to poetry to career counselling to humour to personal reminiscences, short and long, at the rate of about three posts a month in recent times. Till date the blog has been visited almost 15,000 times, counting the 4000+ plus that the previous sitemeter had logged before I accidentally uninstalled it (which I consider rather good for a provincial non-celebrity who refuses to make his blog look sexy), and on average each post draws about 20 comments. I have just installed a poll for people to tell me why they like it, and I got twelve votes within the first two days (do vote; or let me know by email that it’s not working). I get a lot of hate mail, too; the less said about it the better. I prefer to laugh it away as the price of fame (however modest that might be in my case)! I am also toying with the idea of linking my blog to a Google program called Adsense: they supposedly pay you every time someone clicks on your blog. The only thing that’s holding me back is the thought that my blog would be cluttered up with advertisements yet not make me any significant money, because it’s just not popular enough on the scale that Google is looking for. But it feels good to be able to stay in touch with lots of people whom I could never have otherwise chatted up with, home-bird that I am, and my interlocutors scattered around the world. So long live the internet: it was created with just my kind of person in mind! I have written a diary since I was seven, and continued the habit till I was almost thirty; now the net has got me back again, only this time there are scores (or maybe even hundreds) of others who are following my thoughts around, more or less keenly. I wish, though, that more people would get back more often with intelligent, informed and sympathetic comments.

Here are a few discoveries I have made as a regular blogger:

1) Net penetration in India is still abysmally low (especially if you compare with the degree of penetration that fridges, mobiles, motorcycles and TV have achieved). That’s one genuine reason why many people cannot keep in touch even if they might wish to; 2) most people who visit don’t read closely and with understanding, which I can make out from the average time spent by any visitor after clicking on to my homepage, as my sitemeter informs me; 3) few people have the time, energy and opportunity to write long and serious comments (yet a lot of them apparently have enough of all three to write abuse); 4) Most net users are young people (and naturally ill-informed and having little experience of real life, which they try pathetically to cover up with an arrogant attitude); the comments would have been, I think, far richer, more frequent and more varied if people of my generation and older had logged on in large numbers, but they don’t (why, I wonder? They are quite comfortable with all kinds of other gadgets like cars and mobiles and iPods and microwave ovens, as I can see all around me. And of course very few of them are genuinely busy as they claim: otherwise so many fathers and mothers could not have waited patiently outside my gate for their children at my tuition day after day, year after year. And they always have time enough for their gossip-circles, clubs, parties and every wedding in town – oh, and by the way, I have checked out for years and years that these parents as a rule don’t read newspapers either). I have been an oddball in all sorts of ways, now I have found out yet another! 5) Few bloggers read others’ blogs. Westerners, in particular, don’t as a rule read blogs by Indians. So, alas, the Net is not really succeeding in forging a global village inspired by mutual knowledge, respect and understanding – not, at least, as yet. 6) The most traffic is drawn by blogs with a lot of pictures/cartoons (especially of the porn/soft porn variety), or those offering fashion tips and updates on the latest gimmicks and gizmos on the market (‘Boys’ Toys’, as Discovery Channel called them), not those discussing serious grown-up stuff (like, say, politics – unless it’s all about mudslinging – economic affairs, philosophy, literature, art, high-level science or charity). Says a lot about mankind, doesn’t it? 7) Hurry, pretence and bad manners give wrong impressions very quickly, and turn people off – it does to me, and I am sure a lot of other decent people react the same way. Too many people have this silly notion that on the Net you can pretend to be whoever you like, and be as rude and brusque as you like, and lie as much as you like, and nobody will find out, and nobody will mind if they do find out (that includes current and ex-students of mine who say the kind of rude things – often unthinkingly – to me over the net which they wouldn’t dream of doing face to face). So this is a reply to a question put to me by Rupam Mukherjee recently: it is indeed difficult to have genuine conversations (leading up to genuine and good relationships) over the Net. But we mustn’t give up trying too easily, must we? 8) people these days are so not well-read, yet they have neither any shame about it, nor fear that they might fall by the wayside (I said in one of my posts in my orkut community that ‘leaders are readers’), nor stop to think that they owe a well-read and much older man the courtesy of at least reading up a few things before they start shooting their mouths off at him, even though they hardly know what they are talking about (a little boy doing physics, who by his own admission has read virtually nothing but physics – not a word of whole libraries on theology, metaphysics, epistemology, semantics, logic, dialectics, history, you name it – presumes to tell me that I don’t know the difference between causality and determinism, when an hour’s face-to-face discussion would have convinced him that I have forgotten more about the subject than he in all probability will ever learn!!! Talk about empty vessels). I contrast this (alas, now all too common) type with the Upanishads categorically specifying humility in front of superior wisdom as an absolute essential for the progress of learning, Socrates declaring that the only thing he was sure about was that he wasn’t sure about anything, Newton comparing himself with a child collecting pebbles on the seashore, Russell saying that the highest hallmark of civilization is always remembering that I may be wrong, and Steve Jobs urging the young to ‘stay hungry, stay foolish’. What lesson does the contrast teach me about today’s ‘educated’ people? I know now why so many wise folks sneeringly refer to doing a PhD as ‘phudding’ (Many of these will soon be bringing over their kids to my tuitions, and resent it that I deal so dismissively with them!)

You will notice that there is only one entry under the label ‘Books and Movies’ so far. A few people – keen readers and serious movie watchers themselves – have asked why I haven’t written many more essays of the same sort. Just look at the number of comments (and check out Abhirup’s experience after writing an ‘evaluation’ of a good movie by clicking on the link called ‘Thoughts of an idiosyncratic mind’ given here under the heading ‘I frequently visit…’) and you will understand why. The hardest thing to find in today’s world is people who can think and feel, and books and movies call for thinking and feeling in a very serious and sustained fashion. I wish my blog could draw such rare people to me: that would create a community I could cherish. I keep getting the depressing feeling that we are drowning in an ocean of philistinism, a world full of people with money in their pockets, degrees galore under their belts, and nothing (other than technical manuals and the grossest of basic instincts – greed, sloth, vanity, envy, spite) in their heads!

One more thing. Do visit the blogs of a few of our celebrities – compare those of Shah Rukh Khan and Amitabh Bachchan, for instance. Just find out what ‘turns SRK on’. What does it say about his personal culture, and that of his family? And if these be our cultural leaders/icons, can there be any doubt that we as a nation are going to the dogs?

On the whole, the net reflects the world as it is in microcosm, except for the fact that is still populated too heavily by the young, uninformed (in all matters other than the purely technical – my daughter picks up the tricks of using every new gadget I buy much faster than I do, and I use her youth to advantage, but that is not a reason I respect her for! She’ll have to accomplish much bigger things first), irresponsible and fancy-free, and that people take more liberties there than they generally do in real life. Maybe things will get better with the passage of time, as net users age and mature and learn some good things (such as manners – vastly harder to pick up than software code!) the hard way.

Despite the disappointments and unpleasantries, my own experience hasn’t been too bad on the whole. I have got back in touch with a lot of good people – sometimes even been happily surprised that they remember, care and listen still – and I keep getting very nice comments and requests and suggestions for more, and thanks for putting me in touch with other interesting blogs/websites (it also amuses me to see that some people – nominally adult and supposedly employed, even in government! – go to great lengths and waste their precious time just to tell me they don’t like me). A lot of people who for one reason or another won’t write comments have assured me by email, over the phone or face to face that they eagerly keep track of whatever I am writing, and I mustn’t stop. Some (including current pupils of both sexes) have told me that reading all those posts – ‘What sort of person am I?’ in particular – has helped them to know me much better than they otherwise could have, and they are glad they took the trouble. So I have decided to carry on blogging for some more time. Someday, maybe, the blog is going to become an important adjunct to my tuitions. Meanwhile, here’s wishing more power to both admirers and detractors. I only wish the latter would write some sense. Even invective is welcome, if only it is informed, relevant and flavoured with wit (and of course, on my blog, I decide what is and what is not – that’s elementary, isn’t it? Some people are so intellectually-challenged that they have trouble understanding even that much!). Otherwise, as Professor Dumbledore told the house elves, you can call me a barmy old codger if you like: if that says anything at all, it’s only about you, and I’d much rather not know! Nature abhors a vacuum; so empty minds quite naturally fill up with nonsense and filth. Not something you ought to exhibit to the whole wide world.

[P.S.: My daughter very kindly took a few minutes out of her busy schedule to draw the Happy Birthday cartoon for the blog on top of this post]

One more thing, July 08: Do look up Stotra's comment after this blogpost!

Values, prices, incomes...

#A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing: Oscar Wilde.

#A sentimentalist is one who knows the value of everything and the price of nothing (I’ve forgotten who said that, but I think it fits in rather well here!)Okay: that’s enough for one blogpost, I guess. There have been more than 1400 visits since I wrote that last one, and I have spoken with several hundred; knowing the way the word spreads, I am satisfied that several thousand people around the world now know about what’s been happening, and so I can move on (which of course does NOT mean that I shall either forgive or forget: hereafter I shall always be cold and curt with ex-Durgapur Xaverians unless they are nice people already close to me. ‘Guilty until proved innocent’! Hard luck for the good guys. Blame it on all those who have cheesed me off with their wanton lies, vulgarity and ingratitude.

Let me get back to civilized discourse again. I want to muse over the question of ‘value’ and ‘price’ here for a bit. Those who are by training economists, political scientists, historians, sociologists or psychologists might take a special interest in the subject, although the things I am going to muse about touch everybody’s lives, so any thinking man or woman (that automatically eliminates 95% of orkuters and techno-geeks, it goes without saying) might read on.

How do we value things we want and buy? That is an incredibly serious question, because the vast majority of us live by always selling and buying things (unless we are begging, stealing, looting, cheating, or living off inheritances, lottery winnings and pensions; a remarkably large fraction of mankind does live like that actually!) – whether it be some sort of ‘good’ (from food to liquor to steel, power, fancy clothes, cars, decorative handicraft or whatever) or services (as barbers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, detectives, wine-tasters, film critics, even some bureaucrats…). Some of us earn vast fortunes, some only a pittance; some have long and steady incomes, some see their livelihoods vanish in the twinkling of an eye (such as when a sportsman inexplicably loses form). Some enjoy a small or large degree of social esteem through their livelihoods (surgeons, barristers, filmstars), some are always sneered at or ignored, even if they are making socially-useful and large enough livings – shopkeepers, eatery owners, musicians (except the five-star variety), for instance; you can yourself think of many more. So how do people and their products get valued? And why is it always so unfair and uncertain? Why should Shah Rukh Khan make hundreds of times more than a good doctor, and 10,000 times more than a soldier guarding our borders painstakingly and at great risk to his life? Why do astrologers and cricketers do so much better in one country than in another; why do painters make so much in one era and software programmers in another; why does it ‘pay’ much more to be a fashion model posing for underwear (even if you are a highschool dropout) than to be a schoolteacher with a university degree who dresses decently doing a gruelling, thankless job day in and day out supposedly ‘building the nation’s future’? Why does an average hooker make only a bare and undignified living, while her cleverer sisters who do virtually the same thing on the silver screen bring in the moolah by the sackfuls? Why does Baba Ramdev become a celebrity tycoon doing the same stuff that old Koley-sir has done at least as sincerely in my little town all his life, and got nothing for it?

That it is not an easy question with pat and indubitable answers will be evident enough to those who have read the interminable debates of the great ancient Roman jurists, or the enormous mental gymnastics performed by no less an intellectual titan from medieval times than Thomas Aquinas to figure out what may be called a ‘just price’, or the vast and futile effort of Karl Marx to define or give a sufficiently rigorous proof of his ‘labour theory’ of value (see Paul Sweezy, The Theory of Capitalist Development … I said this post is not meant for nerds with nothing but algorithms in their heads, didn’t I?). Economists in the so-called ‘neoclassical’ tradition (the tribe which has dominated the field since the late-19th century, ever since they learnt the pretty tools of the calculus and matrix algebra, and who have been having a field day ever since computers were commandeered in their service to crunch very sophisticated mathematical models with which they can make molehills out of mountains) have skirted the issue by saying that things get valued according to the interaction of supply and demand in the market (a very clever but cynical representative of that tribe, Paul Samuelson of MIT, once said “teach a parrot to say ‘supply and demand’ and you will have made an economist out of him”). Given initial endowments (how much money and power the players – both consumers and producers – are starting the game with), technology and availability of natural resources, they insist, prices will settle at a ‘fair’ level in a utopian situation they love to call ‘long run general equilibrium’ (I call it utopian advisedly, though I am simply too tired to go into all the arcane math involved which I swallowed two decades ago, and I don’t want to bore the lay reader here with proofs): fair in the sense that producers earn no more than ‘normal’ profits (the minimum that will keep them in business), workers get paid according to their productivity (not quite – the pundits talk about ‘marginal revenue product’, which is not the same thing exactly, but for the purpose of this essay I shall avoid the nitpicking…), and consumers don’t get cheated either, because they have to pay only what it ‘costs’ (I repeat, I am not talking like a pundit, though there’s much more to it than meets the eye here: professionals, please bear with me).

When it is pointed out to them that 1) all this applies only to ‘long run equilibrium’, which can never be shown to happen at any given moment in real time (besides, the doyen of all 20th-century economists has said 'in the long run we are all dead'!), 2) mathematically it can be proved to happen only under a set of absurdly restrictive assumptions about the kind of ‘reality’ (in terms of the nature of markets and properties of the algebraic functions) involved, and 3) even then, they cannot avoid acknowledging that initial rich-poor differences (which are usually due to highly unjust historical/geographical conditions – such as being born the son of a poor tribal in rural India, or being a well-connected citizen of one of those few countries endowed with most of the oil reserves of the world – upon which the players have no control) greatly determine who gets how highly paid, and so under the system the rich-poor gap is bound to get ever wider, statistically speaking, so the system itself is grossly unfair under the best of assumptions … well, they hem, and haw, and skirt the issue, and mutter among themselves that you are not a nice person if you bring up such rude questions in polite company (barring a few oddballs like Hazel Henderson and Amartya Sen and Md. Yunus, mainstream economists are all like that! - that's what my most beloved economist, John Kenneth Galbraith of Harvard fame, used to laugh about: see, for example, Economics and the Public Purpose). Professional economists as a rule come from middle-class or affluent backgrounds and are never in their own lives bothered by poverty, so questions relating to poverty and all related miseries are unfashionable with them, and besides, do not ‘pay’ (as being a high-class consultant with businesses like Morgan Stanley or Citibank, or an adviser to a prime minister pays. This dismaying realization, by the way, was the most fundamental reason why I quit economics, despite knowing I could have a very paying career in it, having been a topper in a reputed university and in touch with several Nobel Prize winners once upon a time!)

So if the philosophers and economists cannot answer me, and yet the question keeps vexing me (it vexes me much more today, halfway through my life, than it did as a college student long ago), whom do I turn to? Big businessmen, showmen and politicians don’t care – they are too busy firefighting and profiteering in the real world to bother – the nerds are of no help, because the question itself doesn’t make sense to them; the average layman habitually talks through his hat, or tries to push his pet prejudice (like the theory of the parent or guru or political party he has always sworn by) down my throat, and makes me sick. But why do such incredible differences in values and prices occur, and persist? Why should a building contractor make much more money than a scholar (say an astronomer or a historian)? Why should a great French or Spanish writer be lionized around the world, while a great Bengali writer dies in obscure poverty? Why should a call-centre ‘executive’ have the privilege of being snooty because she makes more money than, say, someone like Ramkinkar Baij or Bismillah Khan (a matter of greater/rarer ‘talent’?!) I need to understand, and I am having a hard job of it.

A great deal depends upon luck (kismet, karma, whatever you call it): this much I know. Babe Ruth would probably have gone abegging in India, as Sachin would have done if he had been born in China. Cricketers in India can aspire to be millionaires; not so hockey players, but nobody can persuade me that cricketing needs more talent, or that that kind of talent is much rarer than hockey, hence much costlier! You might get trained in a profession that had seemed very pedestrian and unpromising and wake up one day to find that demand has gone through the roof, and people are falling over themselves to make you rich (feng shui advisers and cyber hackers are cases in point): how big a fortune you make will depend then only on how hard, fast and long you can work. A person with the innate talent for being a great software programmer might have starved in the 19th century, as a medieval artist who was so brilliant at calligraphy and illuminating manuscripts that he was courted by kings might starve today. That is a thought that might sober me up if I grow too vain about my ‘accomplishments’: I myself, a private tutor coaching youngsters in English, would barely make a living in England, and perhaps become a (dollar-) millionaire in Japan! A lot depends on a particular feature of ‘talent’ which is a combination of drive, total ruthlessness and derring-do. My wide study of the lives of great entrepreneurs has convinced me about that: they find or create niche markets for themselves, get a monopoly on those markets, and make vast fortunes as long as the sun shines, regardless of how many people they are ruining and impoverishing in the process, or how much harm they are doing to the natural and social environments (think of Microsoft’s business strategy, or that of the Colombian drug cartels, or those who have become rich as Croesus with contracts to mow down huge tracts of the Brazilian rainforest). Much depends on government fiat too; witness the hefty pay hike given to all babus by the Sixth Pay Commission in India recently: their salaries are definitely not determined primarily by ‘market forces’ in any country, and look, every public sector bank clerk in India can afford to buy a car today, which was unimaginable even a decade ago! A lot of people don’t even make much money quickly, they make their piles simply by slogging on for donkey’s years – Warren Buffett is a famous contemporary case in point, but I know hundreds of people who have done the same thing, albeit on a much smaller scale. On the other hand, the lot of a landless agricultural labourer in India was miserable a hundred years ago, and it continues to be miserable today, though I know enough such people personally to assert that I have seen far more decency and culture and even skill among them than I see in the average I.T.-‘expert’. All this I know, and yet… there’s something that I cannot put my finger upon, but it keeps bothering me. Can anybody help?

Why do some people make so much more money than some others, nice people, hardworking people (even in officially ‘egalitarian’ countries such as the erstwhile Soviet Union and contemporary China)? What haven’t I learnt yet? What career counsel should I give my own daughter, besides telling her to hone her language and math skills, widen her GK, work hard, be patient, take calculated risks every now and then, always keep her eyes open - and pray?

P.S.: Would some kind and clever reader please email me an appropriate cartoon to go with this blogpost (something darkly satirical, like the Calvin and Hobbes strips?)

I wish I had resigned sooner.

Orkut recently suggested I might wish to visit certain communities, including one called St. Xavier’s School, Durgapur. Out of a mild curiosity I did look up some of the discussions on the forum. Here’s a link to one of the threads where many old boys have been chatting up on some of their ex-teachers:

http://www.orkut.co.in/CommMsgs.aspx?cmm=58333&tid=2427235200363965200

And now, here are a few things I noticed:

1. Very few of these people can write three correct English sentences in a row free of spelling mistakes. In my day they would have been dismissed as unfortunate illiterates: these days of course they fancy themselves as both educated and gentlemen, seeing that so many of them have become, or are in the process of becoming, you got it – doctors and engineers.

2. They tag themselves as ‘Masters of Tomorrow’, though to the best of my knowledge no Xaverian from Durgapur (including humble me) has ever done, or even dreams of doing, anything positive that will put his name on the first page of a national newspaper. Any comments from all the budding Einsteins, Tagores, Sachins and Steve Jobs-es whom I haven’t met?

3. While criticizing lots of things about their school, hardly anybody has offered any sensible and constructive ideas about improving it, leave alone suggesting that they actually do something about it. Even while praising some teachers (such as the erstwhile physics teacher Mrs. Malini Ramdas, with whom I was on friendly terms), they cannot think of saying anything beyond ‘she was my favourite teacher… she made physics look easy’. That’s coherence and articulateness for you.

4. I find it remarkable just how crude their sense of humour is in general, and how disgusting the things they find laughable: sniggering at this teacher’s breasts, for god’s sake, and about that unfortunate teacher’s uncomfortable habit of frequently and noisily clearing his throat; referring to some teachers (old enough to be their parents) by their first names, and distorting the names of others! Some people call me rude and offensive, but I wouldn’t dream of talking about my old teachers that way, and that too on a public forum, where everybody from those teachers themselves to my current teachers/employers/parents/spouse/children might be reading. I’m sure it says a great deal about both the cultural level and the I.Q.s of these creatures. I happen to know lots of maidservants, petty shopkeepers, rickshaw wallahs and coolies who are both far wiser and far more decent than they. I am going to draw the attention of many teachers of Xavier’s to this community, of course, and many parents I know, as I have already started doing with the several hundred pupils whom I currently teach; I know now what sort of creatures I should never dream of considering as a future son-in-law, and I am sure that the thousand-odd-visitors per month at my blog will have lots of things to say about it (I know perfectly well that much of it will be senseless abuse, but alas, it will be effort wasted; they will not be posted on my blog as comments). I have already written to a few favourite old boys about it, and I was dismayed to see the kind of lame half-hearted apologies/rationalisations they offered on behalf of their friends, or the way they argued that they were helpless: they believed that they neither had the time to lodge vehement protests against this sort of vulgarity, nor thought that they could make any difference.

5. I shall of course not deign to waste my time taking cognizance of the kind of foul garbage these creatures have spewed about me in particular, since I know that vulgar and cowardly morons cannot have ‘opinions’. However, I must put on record that the only regret I have in my life today is that I didn’t resign from this cesspool many years sooner (I resigned, yes, as I had resigned from two other jobs earlier in my life: nobody 'sacked' me or 'kicked me out' as so many folks delight themselves by imagining – by existing governmental rules no teacher in the position I was in can be dismissed unless he is caught red-handed stealing or assaulting somebody or some equally heinous crime. A copy of the signed receipt can be seen here . Click on the photo and enlarge for reading convenience). And, finally, that despite my well-known opinion about the man who has been headmaster for the last nine years, I must say that in this instance he is quite justified in saying everything he has lately said about ex-students: from what I have found out about the ex-students, I feel he has been very mild and self-restrained in expressing himself!

P.S.: June 14 - in the four days since the above was posted, this blog has been visited nearly 400 times already, and I have personally communicated a gist of the contents to several hundred people locally: current pupils, their parents, and some teachers. My purpose is served. The moderator of the said community on orkut has meanwhile seen it fit to remove some of the most disgusting comments there, but whatever still remains is quite sufficient to give people who had no idea a very good estimate of what kind of folks ex-Xaverians are. To help them a little further, I have published one or two poisonous comments I have received on this blog itself. I'm sure any unbiased reader will be both surprised and puzzled by the blind and intense rage that obviously lies behind such comments, especially when juxtaposed with the other kind, the supportive and sympathetic comments written by polite and sane old boys and girls (whom the whole tribe of abusers instantly dismiss as 'sycophants'. You can't speak well of anybody without being called a 'sycophant' these days: you are 'strong and civilised' only if you can rave and rant and vilify like drunks and madmen!)

Where does this rage come from, then? With some people whom I can recognise, I know the reasons well: this one was scolded in class for using a dirty word, that one had his answerscript seized and rejected for cheating, a third had not been admitted to my tuition, another had been told that he must not expect special favours because his father was so-and-so, or because he routinely scored 90%-plus marks in mathematics. The manner in which I had upbraided them obviously still rankles, sometimes more than a decade later (and I have a hunch that the ones who remained most timidly silent in class then are the most noisy and macho abusers on the net now!). But on the whole the biggest reason is that unlike any other teacher, I used to endlessly underscore the point that they could not expect me to call them successful and admirable merely if they became doctors and engineers somehow - they needed far higher and rarer qualities (like courage and charity, to name just two) to impress me. That put-down is something that lots of people never manage to get over!

True criticism is an art that must be preceded by great cultivation of mind. It should be sternly factual, rich with example, logically coherent, and entirely free of malice. Indeed, genuine criticism actually helps me to improve myself, and I am thankful to countless nice people who have done me that favour. Only those who have no real criticism to offer but burn with helpless anger and jealousy, and those who are simply too dull-witted to know the difference, confuse criticism with abuse. I can call anybody any names I like - abuse always bespeaks far more about me than about the man I am abusing! Thank you, all you abusers, for telling me and my numerous friends of all ages (including folks older than your parents, who used to have a different, better opinion of Xaverians earlier) what kind of folks you are. Go ahead and call me some more names! You haven't offered some good ones yet - greedy, lecherous, effeminate, ignorant, lazy, sycophantic... why not those too?

P.P.S., June 15: I just came across the following article on the Net courtesy gmail:

http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSL1313262220080613?feedType=RSS&feedName=oddlyEnoughNews&rpc=69

Though this is in connection with Facebook, the lesson therein (starting from the title itself) could be an eye-opener for a lot of culturally-challenged ex-Xaverians. So also, I daresay, the discussion on the following thread in my own community in orkut:

http://www.orkut.co.in/CommMsgs.aspx?cmm=28489813&tid=2520861478118570046&start=1

Final update, June 25: One current Xaverian has found the courage and felt the need to protest against the pervasive culture of indecency. See this link . I hope he gets the kind of encouragement he deserves. That can still persuade me that stupidity and vulgarity are not the hallmark of most Xaverians!

Addendum much later, March 13, 2018: Orkut itself is long defunct, thank God. But that does not detract one whit from the contents of this blogpost. Only (January 15, 2019): this post has lost all importance in my scheme of things. So don't waste your time visiting it. After my first three years of service there, that school became utterly insignificant in my life, and as I said, my only regret is that I wasted another whole decade there.

Global crises, websites of interest

This post may not have any direct connection with the subjects on which I have been lately requested to write: I shall ask all those good people to bear with me some more. It may also not be as coherent and incisive as my usual posts, because I have been rather distracted of late, and overworked, and half killed by the heat, and besides, a lot of thoughts have been rambling in my head, and it would take a very long post and too much time to get them organized into the kind of order I like. Nevertheless, I think the thoughts are important enough to jot down, and the interconnectedness will suggest itself to informed people who read closely enough.

Oil prices going through the roof, and human responsibility for global warming becoming almost irrefutable, and growing food scarcity, and China (now both the world’s leading producer of steel and biggest emitter of greenhouse gases) being rocked and embarrassed on the eve of the Olympic Games by violence both natural and human, and educated city-bred parents being suspected of killing their children to hide the skeletons in their own closets (the Aarushi Talwar incident) while hundreds of millions of supposedly educated young people keep themselves permanently anesthetized into believing that the world is fast ‘progressing’ because mobile phones keep getting snazzier yet cheaper, and new and ever more swanky shopping malls keep mushrooming all around them … what is really a wonder is that so many people still cannot see the connections (my old boys living in Calcutta have told me that power cuts have become far more frequent ever since a vast new power-guzzling mall came up in the south of the city)! When Meadows and Forrester of the Club of Rome wrote the Limits to Growth report in 1972 (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limits_to_Growth and other links available through Google) about the inevitable end of the endlessly high-growth economic orthodoxy that ruled the world, they were mostly pooh-poohed, even by scientists who were all agog over the Green Revolution and quite sure that they would keep finding ever new oil reserves forever, or at least believed that the predicted disaster was comfortably many generations away. When I commented in the mid-80s on that report in The Telegraph of Calcutta, lamenting that the “insane, half-conscious conspiracy between ignorance, greed, fecundity and technology” was sure to spell disaster for all mankind, few bothered, for India was then girding up her loins for the economic growth-leap that would catapult her into the world’s big league of producers and consumers (as she is now rapidly becoming), and any advice of slowing down was anathema to everybody. Even when some directors started making movies like Mad Max and Waterworld and The Day After Tomorrow, they were (perhaps with a little secret unease?) dismissed as doomsayers and panicmongers. Warnings were not heeded, because neither politicians nor economists nor the world’s ruling plutocrats could ‘afford’ to think of alternative paradigms, and far too many had in any case drugged themselves into hallucinating that technology would keep fixing all problems as they arose in the course of mankind’s pursuit of limitless material prosperity on a planet whose resources were essentially and unavoidably limited (Kenneth Boulding had coined the term 'spaceship earth': who cares to know today?).

What I see happening all around me would be funny if it were not infinitely sad. Parts of mankind are beginning to wake up suddenly to the vast and imminent danger ahead. As proof, Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth has become a runaway hit, R.K. Pachauri has been given a Nobel Prize, and all kinds of very unlikely people are waking up to the need to really think out of the box (not the way techies and management junkies mindlessly mouth that piece of jargon). In this context, I should like all of you to visit three sites listed below:

http://www.theElders.org/,
http://www.resurgence.org/, and
http://www.justfortheloveofit.org/

the contents speak for themselves.

I find it funny that even folks like the flamboyant billionaire businessman Richard Branson are now extolling the essential virtues of Gandhian philosophy:

see http://www.resurgence.org/magazine/article1-Legacy-of-the-Mahatma.html

Though a microscopic minority (including geniuses like Tagore and Einstein) thought in his own time that Gandhi had something of supreme importance to say, most (including ‘disciples’ like Nehru) thought he was hopelessly old-fashioned and out of touch. People like Schumacher (Small is Beautiful), Capra (The Turning Point) and Amlan Dutta (The Gandhian Way – a book I reviewed in 1987) tried to draw our attention, but failed almost hopelessly. Maybe mankind needs looming disaster to wake up? Or will it still be too little and too late? – Remember, last year was the first in recorded history when the Arctic Ocean was entirely ice-free in summer!

Since I know from rather bitter experience that a lot of readers like to shoot their mouths, I would like to see evidence that anybody who comments on this has first taken the trouble to read the articles, books and website contents I have listed above. Otherwise, ask questions with an open mind, and be ready to mull over the answers, however strongly they trouble your prejudices. Nobody, for instance, who hasn’t read a single serious book on Gandhi (and doesn't want to, but is still quite sure that Gandhi was a fool) ought to comment here.

P.S.: I thought this post would be appropriate for World Environment Day.

Sports!

Gosh. I am overwhelmed to receive so many nice and thoughtful suggestions so soon: here and via email. I guess I have bitten off more than I can chew, so dear readers, don’t hold your breath to see me following up on the ideas you have offered! I promise to try and do justice to as many of them as I can in the weeks ahead, but I am slow and lazy, and the summer’s taking its toll, so it’s going to take some time.

Meanwhile, entertain yourselves with this priceless critique of Indian sports, sports officialdom and ‘sports lovers’ written by Mr. Suranjan Roy, learned and senior colleague of my friend Arani who works for Orient Longman Publishers. Many thanks to Mr. Roy for giving me permission to publicise his essay.

This is Olympic year, is it?

Hands up, everybody who knew the Olympics are just about two months away. Good for you! Indian sportsfans are not an oxymoron. A Brazilian, a Nigerian or a German, say, can, however, be excused for thinking that they are – what with India’s near-total absence from the podium of the world’s sports arenas. The lot of the Indian sports lover is hard, for we lose everything, or almost everything. It hurts to see the way sport is treated here.
The physical education teacher of a leading school in Park Circus did not know - till recently - about the Beijing Olympics (they start on 08.08.08, which makes it easy to remember), informs his students that the men’s 100 metres world record is a ridiculous 6:22:03 secs. (whatever that means! – blissfully unaware that no human has run faster than Jamaican Asafa Powell’s 9.74 secs.) and, despite claiming to be a rugby player, has not heard that actor Rahul Bose has played for the country. He is not unique. He epitomizes, in a fairly glaring way, the state of sports awareness in India, or the lack of it. This goes hand in hand with performance. Having followed sport for almost fifty years now, I take no pride in sticking my neck out and proclaiming that of all the major nations (excluding, that is, nations such as Liechtenstein and Tonga, - no slight intended), India is the poorest in sport.
I can visualise a horde making a dash in my direction, of the few who have taken me seriously so far, their eyes spewing venom: ‘What about cricket?’ they scream. Sorry, cricket does not count, for that game is played seriously by ten nations (the world athletics body has 212 members, more than the UN General Assembly!), four of them in South Asia, mostly no-hopers in other games, — and does not qualify as a major international sport. ‘But millions follow the game in India!’ they rant. Sorry, again. Numbers prove nothing. Ibsen had more than a point there when he said that the majority is always wrong. Now let me ask a question of the approaching pack: ‘Which was the last Ranji Trophy match you paid to watch – and how many of you have actually hit a cricket ball with the bat?’ I hear them shout, ‘ We watch international cricket!’ Fair enough. Sure, cricket is popular in India, a ‘religion’ (opium of the masses, more likely), and, hey!- we win sometimes - but by default, and for all the wrong reasons. I will revert to that later.
Sport can’t get bigger than the Olympics, particularly for individual sports such as athletics, gymnastics and swimming. All pretty basic physical activities – athletics, in fact, is the reason why the Olympics still go on, and how! What can be more natural than jumping, running and throwing? We do not lack talent – but Indian sports officialdom is a sick joke. For at least twenty years now the powers that be have been dishing out the same litany – ‘Our target is not the ABC (or XYZ) Games, where we are sending our players for the exposure and experience! Watch our boys and girls at the XYZ (or ABC) Games (eight to twelve years away) when they will shake the world!!’ It would be funny if it were not so sad. This may qualify for the longest lasting serial falsehood in the history of organised sport. The nation has been taken for a merry ride, fed largely on misinformation and no-information by our sports scribes. It has taken all this lying through the teeth lying down.(Meanwhile, get prepared for a blank Indian scorecard, again, this time in the Chinese capital – Dola Banerjee, prove me wrong by hitting the bull’s-eye in archery!) Has anyone ever been held answerable? Never. Because in the rotten clique of Indian sports officials and politicians, each is busy protecting the other’s back to perpetuate a conspiracy of silence- the aim being to get at the loaves and fishes of office. How else do you explain the endless reign of a politician, an ex-police chief and an official at the head of our football, hockey (till recently) and athletics bodies despite zero or no success? The euphoria of a win over an obscure Syrian outfit at home vanished with the thrashing from Lebanon- Lebanon, for god’s sake! –a tiny, war-ravaged nation which started playing football about fifty years after us. Both our men and women hockey players (the men used to reign when few nations played the game) failed to qualify for Beijing. Anju Bobby George’s success in the Paris worlds in 2003, plus a personal and national best at Athens in 2004, were achieved despite the system, on her own steam, and that of her coach-husband’s, so to speak; but her long leap of 6.83metres in 2004 has not been repeated, let alone bettered, in the almost four years since, and only a supreme optimist (like me!) can see her jumping seven metres in Beijing this year, the minimum distance necessary to be within sight of an Olympic medal. I will, however, keep my eyes peeled additionally for Renjith Maheshwari (17 metres-plus in the triple jump), Joseph Abraham (will he break 49.00 seconds in 400 m hurdles?), teenaged swim sensation Veerdhawal Khade (approaching 1: 50.00 s in the 200 free), our archers, shooters, badminton players, and the rest. But, frankly, there is not one sure-shot medal contender (let’s keep our fingers crossed about Dola, or even Rathore for a skeet repeat) – Paes and Bhupathi in the tennis doubles? No way, unless miracles become routine.

I'm back, with changes and requests.

I took a week's break and went off the Net. Now I am back at the keyboard once more. Regular visitors will notice that I have at last got around to labelling my older posts for easier access: just scroll down the right hand side and click on the label that seems interesting to you.

It is good to see that the visitor count keeps climbing steadily. At the same time, it is rather disappointing that so few people take the trouble to comment, or limit their comments to one-liners like 'that's hilarious!'. Twenty years ago, I quit journalism because although theoretically several hundred thousand people were reading my articles/stories every morning, the feedback I received was pathetic in terms of both quantity and quality: I found I got far more personal satisfaction from interacting closely with the couple of dozen students whom I tutored in those days. That, coupled with the fact that teaching paid me more than journalism even in those days, helped me to make up my mind to quit the latter for a full-time teaching career, and I have never regretted it.

However, I have always loved to read, think and write: so when the internet arrived and offered me the facility of putting down my thoughts on everything that interested me from the comfort of my own home as and when I liked (and had the time and energy to spare), I jumped at the opportunity. It's been almost two years since, and I have posted essays long and short on a wide diversity of subjects. I have received a considerable amount of irrelevant abuse, and I have even been plagiarised, but I have not got enough feedback to keep me happily engaged. So now I am requesting my readers (especially those who visit often, read attentively, and have the capacity to comment intelligently) to tell me whether I should carry on, and what sort of things they would like me to write about. Do send in your opinions here or email me at suvro.chatterjee@gmail.com.

I shall be most grateful for all sane and encouraging comments received.

(P.S.: A couple of nerds from one of the google discussion groups I consulted lately told me I need to 'spice up' my blog. I guess that means there ought to be glittering cartoons of Casper the friendly ghost and Spiderman flitting all over my homepage, and funny sounds every now and then, and animated pictures of the likes of Angelina Jolie and Bipasha Basu coyly undressing and one new raw joke every morning. Any comments on that?)

American rebuttal to John Cleese!

By the way, I am not sure whether John Cleese really wrote that 'open letter' or not: but let the post remain, because I enjoyed the humour, and I hope so will my readers. Now someone has just sent me a witty rebuttal to the former (without telling me who wrote it), and I am reproducing it below. Enjoy!

To the citizens of the United Kingdom:
We welcome your concern about our electoral process. It must be exciting for you to see a real republic in action, even if from a distance. As always we are amused by your quaint belief that you are actually a world power. You guys have a really hard time in accepting that the sun has set on the British Empire, don’t you?
Nevertheless, we regretfully have to reject your offer of intervention. After much deliberation, we have decided to continue our tradition as the longest running democratic republic. Perhaps you haven’t realized this yet, enamored as you are with your colonial past, but switching back to monarchy is in fact considered a backward step in today’s world.
We considered for a while annexing the British Isles as a part of the USA. It is not a bad idea, in the light of your indecision over joining a common European currency, your dissatisfaction and constant bickering with the European Union, and the utter faithfulness that Tony Blair demonstrated as long as he stayed in the office. But we finally decided against it, for two very good reasons: (1) Now that the seventh book of the Harry Potter series has been published, you hardly have anything to offer; (2) And therefore, we refuse to put up with an entire nation that’s soaked in beer and is forever whining about how great they used to be.
To help you rise from your current anachronistic status, we have compiled a series of helpful suggestions that we hope you understand and adopt.
1) Let us begin with your ‘aluminium’ example. Humphrey Davy, an Englishman, invented the name ‘aluminum’ (note the spelling) for the metal. However, in common usage the name evolved into ‘aluminium’ to match the naming conventions of other elements. In 1925, the United States decided to switch back to the original spelling and pronunciation of the word. And we can’t see what’s objectionable about that. Clearly you aren’t able to accept the fact that the usage of language varies from one country to another, depending upon the cultures and preferences of those countries. However, the good old days when you forced half the world to do what you did is long over, so learn to live with ‘aluminum’.
We may also add that we don’t want to be lectured on the pronunciation of that particular word, seeing that it was an American named Charles Martin Hall, alongwith a Frenchman called Paul Heroult, who developed the process of actually producing aluminum. You should thank us (and France), for without us, you would never have had that statue of the Angel of Christian Charity in London.
We, in turn, shall thank you for the Oxford Dictionary. It is an interesting collection, considering that over 10,000 of the words in the original edition were submitted by a crazy American Civil War veteran called Dr. William C. Minor.
2) We see absolutely no need to insert the ‘U’-s in such words as ‘color’ and ‘favor’, seeing that it makes no difference in the pronunciation, that writing an additional letter is not exactly a sign of greater intelligence, and that Ernest Hemingway won praise from Winston Churchill without writing the extra ‘U’-s. The same goes for the suggestion of replacing ‘ize’ with ‘ise’.
3) “Like” and “you know” are keywords used by American teens to gauge parental aggravation. We are not happy about the overuse of these words by our youth, but compared to the British “poppycock” and “I say, old bean”, we consider ourselves lucky. And any American who knows twenty-seven words is a scholar compared to the average Briton, who, by what we understand from our observations on football grounds and British TV serials, can barely proceed beyond “Hey-ya”, “F*** you” and “That rocks.” You aren’t exactly in a position to comment upon the intelligence level of other people, when polls published in your own newspapers routinely report that your youth know far more about David Beckham and Elton John that they do about Shakespeare and Faraday. It’s comforting to us, of course; our children at least know that Lincoln, Martin Luther King and Edison deserve more respect and importance than footballers, pop singers and models.
4) Should you decide to cancel July 4th, we feel obliged to warn you: you would most assuredly be found at every Redneck barbecue on the rotisserie with apples in your mouths. Trust us—you don’t want to mess with Americans when it comes to celebrating their national holiday.
5) You need to learn from Americans how to settle disputes and solve problems with the help of lawyers and therapists — that is, through legal and medical means, rather than through drunken brawls and fistfights in pubs and bars. From what The Times tell us, the London police had a busy time last year: they had to arrest more than 300 people, either for drunken fights in public or for driving under the influence of alcohol. Speaks volumes about the Britons’ regard for laws, too! So, do come over to America to see how much more effective, peaceful and civil lawsuits and therapist sessions are, compared to your method of breaking into a fight to settle scores. Perhaps this is a hangover of the practice of throwing gloves and challenging others to duel at the drop of a hat? Old habits die hard, after all!
P.S. Our lawyers are much like your barristers, only they get to keep a great deal more of their earnings, since we have no Queen to keep in the lap of luxury.
6) While we cannot, and will not, make excuses for the shootings in the college campuses of our country, we do wish to state quite emphatically that not all Americans go around with guns tucked into their belts. There are gun-control laws and organizations here. We do have our share of nutters, but then which country doesn’t? The BBC reports that gun crime rates between UK and the USA are narrowing rapidly, that since the beginning of 2008, there have been 70 shootings (with 22 deaths) in London alone, and that one is now six times more likely to be mugged in London than in New York. So, once again, heal thyself first.
7) Paying $6/US gallon will probably happen when our troops are withdrawn from the Middle East. Sadly, this would cause your gasoline costs to double, unless you can somehow figure out how to convert the oil-covered Thames River into petrol.
8) Those things which you call chips are cholesterol-soaked abominations, and are responsible for turning half of Britain into fattened pigs that dress and walk on hind legs (Dudley Dursley from the Harry Potter books is the standard British adolescent today; we congratulate J.K. Rowling for her utter honesty in depicting her countrymen). So, you need to learn to eat fries, light fluffy potato in crisp coating. These contain fat but are deemed far less harmful.
By the way, are you aware that British cuisine is now unanimously regarded as the worst in the world? The best restaurants in your country now are the ones that serve Indian and Chinese food. Learn a little cooking from the French, why don’t you?
9) If you truly want to enjoy beer, have it the American way: cold. The warm, insipid drink you call beer is actually ale, and the FDA have determined it to be unfit for human consumption. We are experimenting to see if we can use it as insecticide.
10) If you want Hollywood to cast English actors, provide us with people who know the difference between acting and buffoonery — or, to be more precise, the difference between sentient beings and puppets. The last great actor you sent us was Anthony Hopkins, and he is long past his prime. As for the guys who came to Hollywood thereafter, the less said the better. Ewan McGregor and Orlando Bloom can’t act to save their lives. Hugh Grant is so bad that he gives bad actors a bad name. Ralph Fiennes is good only when it comes to playing murderous psychos, and frankly, we are tired of seeing him snarling and stabbing and shooting. So unless you can provide us with another Hopkins (you have become such a decadent nation that we are not even expecting another Laurence Olivier), leave the job of casting to the men in Hollywood.
And speaking of cinema, would you kindly tell your directors to stop depicting all Americans as cowboys, Red Indians, gangsters and Beverley Hills billionaires? Our society is far more diverse and interesting than that. Diversity is a concept that we do not really expect you to understand, seeing that you employ skinhead gangs to hound the Asian and African immigrants out of UK. But we in the USA assimilate the immigrants, with the result that we are the most successful multicultural society in the world. If you want to see a proper representation of America on the celluloid, watch the recent Oscar-winner Crash. It offers a credible depiction of how America, despite occasional clashes and interracial tensions, has succeeded in becoming the melting pot of the world.
11) While we do call our Baseball tournament ‘World Series’, let us assure you that we are perfectly aware of the fact that this game is not played anywhere else in the world. Still, it is certainly a misnomer. But aren’t you guilty of the same? What, for example, is this nonsense about ‘Cricket World Cup’, when that game is played only by you and a few of your former colonies? The five biggest nations in the world—Russia, Canada, China, the USA, and Brazil—are not even aware of the existence of this game. And among the European nations, you alone play it. And still you insist on calling it ‘World Cup.’ Inferiority complex, anyone?
12) Stop advising us on football. We have outperformed you in that game for the last seven years, whether in the Olympics or at the World Cup. Instead of wasting time in trying to teach us football, pay attention to your national squad. And for Pete’s sake, throw out David Beckham. The guy is far better known for his tattoos, hairstyles and extra-marital affairs than for his skill with the ball. Realize how overrated he is, and then search for new players.
13) Stop playing rugby. There is no need for a sport that involves only punching, kicking and thrashing your opponents: we already have boxing, karate and wrestling for that.
14) “Please tell us who killed JFK. It’s driving us mad”—really? You are so interested in American affairs? Good for you, you should be. After all, JFK was a far more significant figure than Princess Diana, in investigating the circumstances of whose death your police wasted years and your newspapers wasted an outrageous amount of paper and ink.
15) We understand why you need the money you would have obtained from us if we had still been your colony: you have a useless royal family to feed and decorate. However, we are not going to pay you any money, and certainly not those ‘taxes’ which date back to 1776. After all, what use is your queen to us, apart from the inspiration she can possibly provide to San Francisco’s cross-dressing community with her ridiculous sense of fashion? So, continue to drain your own taxpayers to get the money for the queen and her bratty ‘princes’.

Thank you for your time and attention. You can now return to watching bad soap operas.
P.S. Regarding WWII: You’re welcome.

Don't be a teacher with a heart!

I deliberately started this day with posting a happy post, because the fact is that I have been living in agony over the last couple of weeks: red hot skewers driven through my innards couldn't have hurt any more - and this is NOT meant for dramatic effect; I have been operated upon without anesthesia.

One of my oldest and most beloved ex-students has let me know just how trivial our relationship always was. He will deny it vehemently, and shout from the rooftops that it's all my fault, I have completely and deliberately misunderstood him and his 'pure' and 'loving' and 'respectful' intentions. If he had just told me to 'f*** off' and get the hell out of his life, he would have been far more honest and no more hurtful. Four months have made him forget two decades, or rather, he has declared unequivocally that if he has to choose between what happened in those four months and what happened over the previous 19 years, he is prepared to forget the 19 years (when nobody even asked him to choose!). Oh, of course, if pushed to the wall, he will exercise all the casuistry at his command to try and convince me and everybody else that this is all an old man's delirium: I have taken umbrage over nothing at all, and it is he who has been really hurt, not me. It has taught me once and for all never to imagine that I have got to know someone well, and that when people say they love and respect you, they usually don't even believe themselves, so I should be all sorts of a fool if I believed them for a minute.

What I have decided to do, after this most distressing episode in my life, is to make up my mind, once and for all, that no pupil will ever be allowed to matter in my life again. They will come, take notes, pay their fees, never to be given a part of my heart, and to be instantly forgotten the moment they leave. There is a limit to how much undeserved pain a man must endure, and I have most certainly reached the end of my tether.

And if my daughter ever becomes a teacher for her sins, I shall ask her to remember that her daddy warned her never to make the mistake of thinking that teachers really matter. Parents yes, spouses yes, children yes, maybe bosses and colleagues and neighbours even, but teachers, NEVER. She must do her work with all the honesty and sincerity at her command, but never forget that she is just doing it for a living, and she must never expect anything but fees from her students. It has taken me all of 27 years to realise that that is the only way a teacher can keep his sanity as well as humanity: I don't want my daughter to suffer like that. I won't wish what I am going through on my worst enemy.

I know now why my beloved Father Gilson did not pay the slightest heed to the boys upto class nine, taught magically the boys of class ten, and forgot them as soon as they passed ICSE. Wisdom does indeed come with nothing other than age, and painful experience. I made a terrible mistake to think that ex-students should be allowed to matter. Well, it won't happen again. I am a slow learner, but I learn my lessons well.

Smile for the day

A good friend has emailed the following ‘open letter’ to me. I found it so hilarious that I couldn’t stop myself from putting it up on my blog. I hope nobody serves a court notice to me for infringing the copyright law!
A Message from John Cleese - British comedian
"To the citizens of the United States of America:

In light of your failure in recent years to nominate competent candidates for President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately. Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas, which she does not fancy).

Your new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, will appoint a Governor for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded.

A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. You should look up 'revocation' in the Oxford English Dictionary.

2. Then look up aluminium, and nuclear, and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing them.

3. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'colour', 'favour' and 'neighbour.' Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters, and the suffix '-ize' will be replaced by the suffix '-ise'. Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (look up 'vocabulary').

4. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as 'like' and 'you know' is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as US English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell- checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of -ize.

5. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday.

6. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you're not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist, you are not grown up enough to handle a gun.

7. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. A permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

8. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.

9. The Former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline)-roughly $6/US gallon. Get used to it.

10. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.

11. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager. South African beer is also acceptable as they are pound for pound the greatest sporting Nationon earth and it can only be due to the beer. They are also part of British Commonwealth - see what it did for them. American brands will be referred to as Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine, so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.

12. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie Macdowell attempt English dialogue in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an experience akin to having one's ears removed with a cheese grater.

13. You will cease playing American football. There is only one kind of proper football; you call it soccer. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies). In the meantime don't try rugby - the South Africans and Kiwis will thrash you, the way they regularly thrash us.

14. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. You will learn cricket, and we will let you face the South Africans first totake the sting out of their deliveries.

15. You must tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us mad.

16. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due (backdated to 1776).

17. Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 pm with proper cups, with saucers, and never mugs, with high quality biscuits (cookies) and cakes; plus strawberries (with cream) when in season.

God save the Queen!"

Now if only the British themselves had not sunk to a third-rate nation best known for football hooligans, beer gangs, hyper-obese children and creatures who think that Princess Diana should be rated at par with Shakespeare, Newton and Churchill, how wonderful it would have been to see John Cleese’s dream come true!

orkut, anyone?

In the early days of the internet, I began to hear of like-minded people getting together to form networks of cyber-communities where they could share their thoughts, experiences, ideas and ideals. I had imagined that this was a major progressive step, which would greatly compensate for the kind of alienation and loneliness most people (especially quiet and shy and sensitive people) suffer from in contemporary life. Still, although some old boys suggested that I get into orkut (or Facebook, or something like that – such sites are now a dime a dozen) as far back as early 2006, I took the plunge only in February 2007. So it’s been a little more than a year now that I have had an orkut account.

As is my wont, when I do something, I do it as thoroughly and assiduously as I can. I wrote up a fairly detailed profile of myself, started my own community, logged on at least twice every day except when I was travelling or in hospital, visited several hundred communities, read up more than a thousand individual profiles, answered several thousand scraps, provided a link to my blog, started a few polls to find out what people were thinking… so now, when I sit back to retrospect, readers may be assured that I know what I am talking about, because I have done my homework.

On the plus-side, I have been able to get back in touch with a lot of folks, especially ex-students who are now scattered all over India and the world. Many of them sound glad about it, too. I have about 225 friends on orkut right now (the number keeps changing slightly every now and then, because some people drop off without notice, and some new people join up). Till date I think I have invited only three to become my friends here: all the rest requested to join. If I had not rejected numerous requests, that number would have been more than 500 by now. Of late I have become more finicky about adding to that list of friends, but more about that later. My community has grown to 150-plus members, and some people take part intelligently and frequently in the various debates on the forum – so that’s some cause for satisfaction too. Alas, this list of plus-es ends right here!

On the other hand, my grouches are far more numerous. Let me list them here for my own satisfaction:

1. As the demographics will show, the overwhelming majority of orkut members are very young: teenagers (including under-18s!) or people in their 20s. I would have had no problems with that – as a rule I have always enjoyed the company of the young – but for two factors: a near-total absence of grown-up people makes the discussions and interests very narrow and often juvenile, and alas, most young members seem to believe that orkut is meant only for sharing silly and vulgar jokes or scrapping your friends ‘hey … wassup?’ over and over again, and they all write wretchedly wrong and caricatured English (even those who I know are quite capable of doing better) under the illusion that that makes them ‘cool’, or that it is somehow necessary to stay on orkut!
2. Thousands of communities, so many of them dedicated to (or named after) great and clever men and women, or important issues – Sri Ramakrishna or Einstein or Harry Potter or nuclear physics or some favourite teacher or school – but they all peter out within a few weeks of launching, or degenerate into sharing advertisements about free wallpaper- and ringtone-downloads, or videos of some bimbo bathing! Apparently the typical orkuter holds one conviction very strongly: nothing must give his friends the idea that he is a knowledgeable person interested in sharing interesting and intelligent thoughts!
3. The typical orkuter also suffers from a massive inferiority complex, so she even saves all her scraps as a kind of trophy: see, she seems to be saying to the world, I have 17,563 scraps; am I not important? And if you look into the contents of all those scraps, …!
4. Nobody obeys basic rules, such as not posting obscene pictures, and despite all those warnings, the administrators do virtually nothing to discourage all the riffraff, fearing, I suppose, that the riffraff form such a huge majority of members that if they are all thrown out, the site won’t survive! Says something both about young mankind today as well as about Google’s pathetic desperation to make money at any cost, doesn’t it? Sergey Brin and Larry Page might make as many billions as they like, but I cannot respect them any longer. As I often tell my daughter, I won’t model in my underwear despite knowing that models are paid much more than teachers: that reflects a certain social sickness (like paying cricketers far more than soldiers, firemen, nurses, policemen and judges), with which I cannot compromise and still dare to call myself a gentleman.
5. Alas, so crude has orkut’s image become (and fear of addiction to it) that I can see even a lot of young people – nice, informed, clever people – are getting off, or refusing to join. The result is obvious: the density of vulgar and confused pinheads keeps increasing every day!
6. As I noted before, a lot of orkuters use the facility merely to send abusive scraps to folks like me. The only thing that achieves, of course, is that I get to know what sort of people they are, and instantly transfer them to my 'ignore user' list: you should see how big that list has become.
7. Most people who send me requests to join either cannot read, or don’t bother to: otherwise, given the contents of my profile, why should they send requests without the little self-introduction I have explicitly asked for? I have made a habit of rejecting such requests out of hand: on some days, I reject four or five at once.
8. From the profiles of hundreds of people, I have found a few common and highly distressing facts: lots of folks are absolutely clueless or incoherent about themselves! Either they write ‘I am cool, fun and sexy…’ (people call me rude and arrogant, yet I should die of shame to praise myself like that, and in slangy language too!), or rubbish like ‘it’s for you to find out’, or they simply copy and paste something that some poet wrote, imagining that that should serve as a self-description!... and all these are supposed to be educated people; they would get very angry if they were called ignorant and foolish!
9. I am still on orkut for two reasons only: to draw people’s attention to this blog, and for the sake of running my community, ‘The Good Life!’ (you will notice that I am not a member of any other community: I joined a few and quickly left out of disgust). Even the 150-odd membership strength of my community is highly misleading, because hardly a dozen participate regularly. If I am still on orkut despite all these grouches, it is because more than a hundred people have let me know that they visit my community (and/or read my blog) with keen interest even if they don’t – or cannot – write in, and a few good people have told me that if that many people are paying attention in a sustained manner even in this distracted and frenzied age, I should not suddenly go off the air.

But this much is for sure: the day I find there’s a better alternative to orkut, I am going to quit for good. Orkut’s been on the whole a big disappointment. Given the marvellous technology behind it, I guess it only bears out the Dalai Lama’s ironic observation about all of us living in an age when we have wonderful things to communicate with, and nothing to communicate!

Hunger, tycoons and little girls

A lot of ‘educated’ people (including, I fear, most of those who read this blog) will be surprised to hear that one of the most serious things that have been happening in the world lately is not the launch of some new video game or the defeat of Tiger Woods or some celebrity’s wardrobe malfunction or the inaugural preparations for the Beijing Olympics but that food prices (especially those of staple foodgrains like rice) have skyrocketed, causing alarm bells to start ringing in the highest places (not the sort of places where only Paris Hilton, BMWs and Louis Vuitton-type labels matter, though). Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank, has warned that more than 100 million people have been lately pushed down to starvation levels (that would include many tens of millions in India, it goes without saying, though the food riots have not yet started in this country). He has scorned the piffling and callous charitable efforts of world leaders, and asked them to ‘put their money where they mouths are’ (this was reported in The Telegraph from Kolkata on April 15: see page 3). Anyone who wishes to read up a bit on the dimensions of the crisis can click on the following link:

http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/apr/12guest2.htm

Wonder of wonders, who should be among the first to respond positively (even if no more than with a token) but George W. Bush, President of the United States, who has at once sanctioned $200 million out of a special food aid fund to help out the Third World countries most urgently in need. The UN’s World Food Programme has declared it needs a minimum of $500 million by May 1 to carry out its emergency-aid plan successfully. To put these figures in perspective, compare with the billion-dollar jewellery that the wives of a hundred tycoons together wear at any major party in any big metro in the world, the several billion dollars that Anil Ambani recently raised from the Indian share market in one day, and the nearly trillion dollars that the five richest countries of the world spend together on ‘defending’ themselves against one another every year (one billion is a thousand million, a trillion is a thousand billion). Tells us something about mankind, doesn’t it? Incidentally, my reading of history assures me that things were exactly like that when famines loomed in the time of the Buddha 2,500 years ago (read Tagore’s poem called Nagarlakshmi), and even as recently as in 1943 in India. Food for thought, for those who insist on believing there’s been a lot of ‘progress’ all around us. Obsessing with fashion, thrills and technology, especially when one and one’s parents have never known genuine deprivation, and feel quite sure they never will, is very conducive to forgetting the more unpleasant things about reality (this is in connection with my last post about really looking at the world). As some of my favourite pupils will understand, this is one of the major reasons why I look askance at studying science – at least, as we understand studying science in India. Of course, agronomy and public health engineering are important branches of science too, but only relatively poor performers go for them under compulsion, don’t they? The elite study computers and management. And they don’t waste time thinking about famines; famines don’t happen to ‘people like us’. Only, they get terribly upset if someone in their families accidentally gets killed or kidnapped by terrorists fighting for the least privileged – ‘why on earth should these wretched criminals target innocent people like us? What is the government doing? Shoot all the vermin!’ There has never been a bigger crime than a hungry man raising a fist or a gun against the most privileged (many of whom have never done a day’s honest work in their lives – think of Paris Hilton again, or even a typical government clerk grown fat on bribes and his even fatter wife and children, or the cybercoolie in Bangalore who spends more than half the day either on orkut or in a pub).

I hope some readers will realize I am not changing the context when I mention that I was thrilled when my daughter told me to read a story she had liked in a comic-strip book. The story is about a little girl in rural Karnataka who lived with her grandparents. Her grandmother, a hardworking, simple, god-fearing, traditional housewife, loved to hear the girl reading out a serialized story in a certain magazine, and waited with bated breath for the next instalment. Once the girl happened to be away from home for a few days; she returned to find her grandmother in tears, because she had not been able to read the latest issue of the magazine in her grandchild’s absence, and she was too ashamed to ask any neighbour to read it out for her. She begged her granddaughter to teach her how to read. She proved to be a very eager and diligent pupil despite her advanced age, and in no time at all she was capable of reading her favourite magazine all by herself. The young teacher was delighted and very proud of herself, not least because her grandmother did the unthinkable: touched her feet as the ageless Indian tradition requires the good and diligent student to do to acknowledge the debt that can never be repaid (no question about who is older here; today's parents please note!)

My daughter pointed out to me that the story had been written by Sudha Murthy. And I discovered not only that my 11-year old daughter had liked the story enough to draw my attention to it, but she knew quite a bit about Sudha Murthy too (which is more than what most of my ‘good students’ in class 10 and 12 can boast of): that she is not merely N. R. Narayan Murthy’s wife but a very accomplished scholar, teacher, manager, social worker and writer – a full and admirable woman in her own right, not merely a useless, expensive and vain ornament as most rich men’s wives are. We had a talk about the sort of people who ought to be respected, with or without money, and she seemed to understand perfectly well my lament that the real trouble with the world is that most of the money in the world is in the hands of the wrong people. I am beginning to have some hopes for my daughter. And I hope also that I have been able to hint at why famine-like situations should develop in a world of apparent plenty, and what sort of mindsets (rather than capital, technology and media gimmicks) are needed in large numbers in order to make a difference for the better.

(P.S., April 18: After reading the above post, Rajdeep, from Nagoya, Japan, sent in the following relevant and highly interesting link: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1725975,00.html

Thanks, Rajdeep.

April 19: By the way, doing a Google search with the keywords 'current world food crisis' will yield very interesting results!)

Look, for heaven's sake LOOK!

God gives men diverse opportunities to look at the world. Yet most of us sleepwalk through life, not noticing anything at all (though Robert Fulghum has declared in All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten that the most important word in the dictionary is LOOK!) You can test this by giving some people that childhood memory game, asking them to stare at a trayful of odds and ends for half a minute and then to write down as many items they can remember, or you can ask a companion who has walked down a busy road with you to describe in detail the looks and manners of some people she has noticed.

Unmindful as most of us are by birth, we are trained, in the name of education, to narrow our sights as we grow up, and take interest in fewer and fewer things. I can see this among the youngsters I deal with all the time: some of them were very clever and observant when I talked or played with them while they were in primary school, but already, by the time they get into my tuitions at the fag end of secondary school, they have become mentally deaf and dumb: waiting to scribble whatever notes their tutors dictate without critical examination and understanding, without question, to be crammed for examinations, for the sake of the all-important marks (these days parents can kill for marks, leave alone plead and bribe) and promptly forgotten. Oh, there were sluggish dullards in our time too, and I remember many such classmates, but it has spread like an epidemic over this last quarter century, so that even the ‘first boys’ I tutor these days are almost without exception devoid of curiosity and any real interest in anything at all – not even good literature, or good cinema, or even girls, for God’s sake (beyond the kind of interest that dogs take in bitches in the mating season, that is). I am not looking for a Sherlock Holmes or Bibhutibhushan’s Apu in every teenager, but to have to deal with anesthetized idiots day in, day out does take its toll as the years roll by. And just how dull these creatures have become can be checked out by anybody who is ready to take the trouble to compare the kinds of essays first boys wrote in my day with the stuff that they write now: I have been storing the best for more than 35 years – a large chunk of them a bequest from my old revered schoolteacher.

Even worse, children in the urban ‘educated’ middle class that I live in are being systematically trained to ignore all aspects of reality that don’t fit in with the rosy (and absurd) dreams that they hanker for. So they are always talking of billionaires (though their dads might earn beggarly salaries, and they don’t have the foggiest notion how hard a man must work, and how long, to make a few lakhs a year by strictly honest means) and burning with envy at people who zoom around on fancy motorbikes and flaunt snazzy cellphones, they drool over the glamour of a Shah Rukh Khan or a Sachin Tendulkar, and swoon over the fact that India (with 300 million plus living in absolutely wretched and hopeless poverty!) is adding half a dozen dollar billionaires every year – and at the same time imagining that becoming a Rs. 30-50,000 a month doctor or engineer means success and fame, happily oblivious of the fact that mere home-based private tutors like me make far more than that, and it is those doctors and engineers who queue up at our doors, and not the other way round! People see with their minds, not their eyes: what the mind screens out the eyes do not see.

These creatures can’t even see the plight, the drudgery, and the quiet heroism of countless people around them who are above the poverty line, but who slog night and day at very harsh, thankless and humiliating jobs night and day to keep their families heads above the water. There are at least 5 to 6 hundred million honest, nice and humble Indians who eke out a living like that: rickshaw pullers whose wives work as domestic helps, bus conductors, postmen, petty shopkeepers, small farmers, government clerks and police constables, private tutors (especially those who teach music or painting and suchlike) who have not seen spectacular financial success, door to door salesmen and women hawking everything from vacuum cleaners to insurance to packets of joss sticks, icecream vendors and phuchkawallahs … I could go on adding to the list forever. Somehow there has been established a silent but rigid middle class consensus that these people are not quite human, so they don’t deserve to be accorded the minimum human dignity, courtesy and sympathy. People slam doors on their faces when they come soliciting custom in the blazing midday heat of summer, their children learn from them to address rickshawpullers and greengrocers their fathers’ age with the Bengali pejorative tui, neither parents nor children ever pause to think that but for the grace of God they might have joined the ranks of those poor unfortunates, that such people might be as human characters far better than they (in terms of courage, kindness, honesty and philosophical maturity – as I have discovered by hobnobbing with a lot of maidservants and coolies and itinerant hawkers), and it never occurs to them that just because they are married to, or born of, successful doctors or low-level public sector employees with fairly fat paycheques and little work and responsibility, it does not give them the moral right to treat their hardworking fellow-men as scum, especially in an avowedly democratic country with a socialistic ideal enshrined in her Constitution! So stupid and vulgar are millions of my fellow middle class Indians that it never strikes them that if all those hardworking and hopeless millions had taken to violent crime instead, their lives and property would have been up for grabs, and this society would have dissolved in anarchy.

I could have gone on some more in this vein, but I shall desist after asking all visitors to read two books instead: The Great Indian Middle Class by Pawan Varma, and Everybody loves a good drought by P. Sainath. And maybe look up Barkha Dutt’s articles about some of the less pleasant aspects of contemporary Indian reality in The Hindusthan Times. That's a young woman I respect, and it is one of my greatest regrets that I could never sufficiently inspire any of my students, male or female, to become half as socially valuable.