Little Bengal

There was a front-page article on The Telegraph the day before yesterday (link) on a panel of economists which questioned the current state government's "hands-off" land policy and populist schemes (including promotion of small and micro-industries). The panel included India's chief economic adviser and rather pointedly talked about the 'fetish' for small and the elevation of smallness that permeates Bengal. Let's leave aside for the moment the fact that economists are subject to biases and political motives themselves (which becomes pertinent in light of the state elections scheduled next year and the fact that the current national government (and part of the state opposition) has a much-touted industrial development plank), I wonder to myself about the price development really demands. 

I have been home for a week now and I like the fact that the air is cooler and cleaner, the pace is unhurried (comparatively) and there's usually a lake within walking distance. I will probably go stir-crazy in the next three days and I dislike the fact that there's a fucking queue for everything and the fact is that I can't really imagine enjoying the general convenience of things that I do have in Bombay, in Calcutta. People leave the city, nay the state, for opportunities and that's a sad indictment of what has come to pass in what I really believe is one of the best bits of the country in terms of pure potential. People comfortable with a mediocre existence and fostering modest expectations, easily herded and kept content in a nation of sheep. It is easier to manage expectations when such expectations are tempered by ignorance, of not knowing what is possible and what is to be demanded as a right. When the basics are withheld and compromises are made daily, you don't really expect or feel that you deserve more or indeed that there can be more. What we are developing (yes, developing is so the wrong word) is a state where people are being made to accept that aspirations are wrong, hopes are unwarranted and that progress is a filthy four letter word. A medieval mindset that parleys narrow fears of religion into electoral gains in such a short-sighted manner needs to be questioned and changed and if necessary, uprooted.

Anyway, not really my point. And not a fight I really want any part of. Its just such a shame that any economic and social change depends on political will and patronage. I think democracy makes it so, power to the people and all that. But maybe we, as people, can only define ourselves by what our forefathers had accepted and decreed themselves. We accept roles, as parents and as children, as plebs and as middle-class. And so it goes on, a non-life of setting and meeting middling non-expectations, passed in the dull and comforting opiate daze of ignorance and smugness. And this post was originally meant to be about the things that make Bengal unique and interesting and that could probably highlight what it actually can promote and develop and at the same time retain its identity and yet not remain in its current position as one of the has-beens in the Indian context. I think most of those things will keep for another day and another post. 

In my week at home, I encountered a few things that I think lie rather low in a non-Bengali's awareness scales. They are rather cultural, even folk-ish in nature and they piqued my interest now, even if I have known about them since forever basically. Things like baul-music which I recollect from my daytime travel in the local trains. Curious half-sanyasi, half-beggars, the baul musicians would board the trains with their ektaras (and often with khartals and manjiris) and sing songs of Lalon-fakir while they collected their alms. Numinous yet gratifyingly earthy, mystical and curiously non-denominational, I was reminded of it during a three-day festival of folk music that happened too close by to ignore. It was rustic and simple and honest and painfully charming for the half an hour I was there. Apparently, Tagore was greatly influenced by them and you can probably find signs of the baul-culture in his songs and in Shantiniketan as well.


Then there is kirtan that I caught a few surprisingly rousing performances of (on TV and yes I wasn't looking for it) and there was a chhau performance that I missed at Princep ghat. These things, the intangible cultural heritage of the state needs to be showcased and appreciated better. We got some things, pretty baubles, intricate masterpieces and these are things to be proud of, even if they aren't really enough to stake entire futures on.

I want to get into sanskrit literature - I need to find out some suggestions and some accessible translations. 
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Peace and hope.

Past time chronicles

I am happy to report that I am home for the holidays. Home now means a specific location, it means family and an address. I don’t think of the city as my home really, I have been gone quite a while. The longest period at a stretch I have ever spent in the city is three years, during my graduation and I have been away, save for the occasional visits, for much longer, more than ten years. But I still quite like this city of faded yet undoubted charms. There is a need to recharge and renew at the end of the year, an year that’s almost done with and I am here to do just that. Not a noteworthy year really, time spent doing uninspiring work with little spared for enjoyment and learning. I would be at a loss to describe the things that were different this year from the last. Not exactly a perfect state of affairs, is it? But the weather is thankfully cool now, with the hint of a fog in the nights and sweaters brought out from storage. I like the winter, always have, the sun bright and warm and delightful in the mornings where it manages to find skin. A delightful contrast to the tents you make at night under sprawling blankets while you read books on the e-device of your choice (brother gave this for a birthday, a proper surprise and a gift I was extremely glad for). And breakfast was cakes and oranges to go with the time of the year. So yes, I am content today.

I have been trying to read again. I find it difficult to work up the energy and the enthusiasm at the end of the day or at the end of a work week to do a deep-dive into a book or a lengthy article. You end up barely glancing through the newspapers, ignorant of even the most important things, unaware and stupid and shallow. I hate it. Hate everything that people seem to be accept as inevitable, even as I learn to accept them as inevitable myself. I understand that there are other ways of processing information these days, through snippets on social media, snatched conversations around the water cooler and jingoistic peddlers of unadulterated nonsense. I feel like running away from it all most days. I read a few books these past weeks, one on Tintin and Herge, which I will talk about in greater detail later, then there have been a couple of others on basic maths and a Michael Lewis book. Also found a great site (WaitbutWhy) which is premised on an idea that I would have been so proud to come up with and execute. So the intention is to keep the reading habit going and trying to find other things that are somewhat fulfilling and trying to find the time to do those things. Things need to be changed, quickly and with decision. It is a fool’s errand to look for satisfaction and contentment in activities that preclude creativity and inhibit originality. Spending twelve hour workdays trying to manage insane workloads involving inane activities is not my idea of any kind of life, let alone a perfect one.

There isn’t enough time now to spend on useless things. I am past thirty and am pretty sure I will not be one of those people who are active and vigorous even when they are sixty. I am reluctant to waste time these days on undeserved and unwarranted politeness and pretenses. I hate arguments, if only because they require me to spend time and energy that I am loathe to. The same really goes for all my interactions, if not interesting, I prefer them to be non-confrontational and non-demanding and short. I do make allowances if my interest is piqued though. Its the only thing that really counts, am I better or at least not lesser, because of the time I spent. Was anything of minimal value created? Is it something I will remember, even subliminally, five minutes later? I can’t remember the last time I wanted to linger over a chat, when I was excited and challenged over the conversational gambits that signal furtive interest and a shared excitement (I am discounting the incredibly rare times I get drunk these days and even then I get excited about topics and imagined interests from others that I usually forget the next day). I would rather curl up with a good book and a cup of tea. Or maybe I would write something non-angst-y or paint a bold sketch in black. I would rather cook a perfectly nice meal for myself than have a tortured and banal conversation. I could travel, take the weekends to nearby places and walk a bit. I would like to do that. The family has been about town a bit this weekend, we visited Princep ghat and the Dakshineshwar Kali-bari and it was good to get out and see a bit of the history here.

The year is nearly gone now. The change gathers pace. We live in such great times, incredible times. Radically different world perspectives are developing. We shouldn’t be happy choosing to be on the sidelines, waiting for the dices to be rolled and finding out where our fates land. This has been a crazy year for the world, the rise of religious fanaticism on a world-wide basis to levels unseen since the crusades which led to large-scale human migrations, development of religious states for the first time in living memory, eradication of major diseases in the poorest countries, legalization of same-sex marriages (and subsequent setbacks too), technology developing to help realize the dream of interplanetary travel etc. We are in the cusp of so many paradigm-shifting changes and the world that’s coming into definition now is going to be unrecognizable from the one we grew up in. We need to lay down our markers and choose our battles and ideals. Isn’t it going to be a shame if we didn’t do what we should have done, could have done. Ain’t nobody judging us but ourselves. Nobody else holding us back either (yes yes, all this psyching up is for my benefit alone).

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For the books I want to mention today -

1. Tintin: Herge and his creation by Harry Thompson (http://www.amazon.in/dp/0340564628) - Tintin forms a significant part of the childhood of Bongs of a certain age, including me. I have read the books (most of them certainly) in a variety of formats. The Bengali translations that were serialized in Anandamela (the bi-weekly magazine), the soft cover editions from Mammoth and Methuen which I got on birthdays from Diyama or rented from the local library or the hardback ones in the school library which collected four stories apiece. It was my earliest introduction to foreign lands and foreign people (along with books by Enid Blyton) and I guess I got my start in reading from these books. I had kind of been out of touch with Tintin, apart from the Spielberg movie obviously and then I happened on this book (though I still felt foolishly arrogant if there was a Tintin related question in a quiz). Lucidly written with sections named after the various books in the order they were written (Red Rackham’s Treasure following The Secret of The Unicorn, for example), the writer narrates the life of Herge with the backdrop of the books and the world war and charts his growth as an illustrator and as a storyteller. I am re-drawn to the stories after all this years and have found great joy in searching out the panels that Thompson refers to in the book and re-reading the entire thing ultimately with the backdrop of the book.
2. The Big Short by Michael Lewis (http://www.amazon.in/dp/0141043539) - I had read Liar’s Poker (which is kind of a mandatory MBA read) and Moneyball (after watching the Brad Pitt movie) and I had liked them. The financial world he describes is familiar enough to not be too off-putting and its high-finance enough that it plays into your fantasies. So with the new movie coming up (no idea if its out in India yet) I decided to read the book. The book doesn’t really break new ground in terms of what we now know about the 2008 financial crisis but it does introduce you to real life characters who predicted and profited from the meltdown. What the book does provide in terms of its message is the fact that a lot of transactions and entire financial systems in fact, are predicated on questionable judgment and incomplete understanding of the risks involved.

Apart from the above, I would definitely recommend checking out Here’s looking at Euclid by Alex Bellos (http://www.amazon.in/dp/1416588280). Its a beautiful book on a beautiful subject. There is a bit of history in it, never a bad thing. I read it over a month’s worth of weekends. It made me remember why I loved maths in the first place and makes me want to reconnect. So, gotta make the time for it now. And I really want to read The Hero with a Thousand Faces next.

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I haven’t really been listening to songs much. Here are a few that I think I have been listening to recently -

1. Zero 7 - Destiny - So bright and so fresh and so the aughts. And it has Sia in it (she’s undoubtedly got vocal chops). Easy listening.

2. U2 - The First Time - a big fan of U2 (I haven’t really mentioned that before, have I?). Nobody does big sound as well as them and I still remember the goosebumps I got when I first played Joshua Tree on the home stereo-deck (I was young but the experience was no less honest). This is one of their songs that I get the lyrics wrong to and everytime it makes a different sort of sense to me. A quiet song building to a wailing harmony at the end. Perfect.

3. X Ambassadors - Love Song Drug Song - a new band. Haven’t really heard too much of them apart from this. They can’t even be called a one-hit wonder seeing as I don’t think even this song counts as much of a hit. However this is such an awesome song with stripped vocals, easy rhythm and a sax solo at the end that I need to put the song here.

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So that’s pretty much it. I did watch Episode VII: The Force Awakens with the rest of humanity. Star Wars and George Lucas and Disney are all going to make a shitload of money. JJ Abrams did an acceptable job of maintaining a familiar/comfortable plot-line whilst setting up the trilogy. No standout new characters for me (BB-8 doesn’t count) though I have hopes that the Poe Dameron character will turn out to be more interesting.

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There was a Communist plenum in Calcutta today.

Racing thoughts

Pretty late in the night. It's all right though. I can stay awake for a bit. 

The brain is strangely reluctant to shut down tonight, grasping at muted noises and faint lights. From the window on the 9th floor, you can look out pretty far. Not that you look that often, but now you have the time and the mood, so as to say, and you can look, if you wanted to. The leaves flutter in the semi-dark of a moonless city night but then quieten quickly as if ashamed to have broken the silence on this hot, muggy night. The sky is red at the lower edges as the lights from the streetlamps and the houses bleach into the darkness. And if you stare long enough and hard enough, you can make out the clouds churning ever so slowly in the distance, with a bit of menace. The patterns they make are hypnotic and bring to mind ink-drops dissolving into a glass of water (its the other way round really, like if you could figure out a way to dissolve a drop of water into a bottle of ink, but then you can't do that). Lives, muted in sleep, go on. In urban cages. You can't even see the stars.

The Bombay rains are never easy but I just can't wait for them to arrive this night. I could use a bit of rain.
 

It will be a short post tonight. I won't sleep for a bit. But I am thinking too loudly to write.

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Songs now. Trying to keep the selection a bit different this time around, including a couple of acoustic/ambient ones.

1. Mofro - Brighter Days

This song and indeed this band is by now an old favorite that I keep going back to. The vocals are unusual, JJ Grey has a very Southern voice (what I assume to be one from my familiarity with US tv shows, a very scientific assumption therefore). The spare guitar and drums and the piano that leads the intro all make for a very good song. It makes me hum along (and if you know me, that's a pretty rare thing).

2. Sublime - What I Got

A guilty pleasure. But such a beautiful rhythm. I challenge you to not feel your mood change for the better while this song is playing. A mish-mash of styles with white-rap and vinyl scratches to boot, this song is simply too good to not be heard.

3. Boards of Canada - Dayvan Cowboy

The first of our instrumental/ambient entries. I don't quite remember how I found this song. But I am incredibly glad I did. The video has a story in itself and the tonal shift at around 1:40 still gives me goosebumps. Play it and ignore all other noise. P.S. their entire catalogue is pretty good.

4. Aphex Twin - Xtal

Richard James is almost the founding father of all electronic music and this song is probably the one that started the EDM craze. And while I don't really know or care about the classifications, I do really like the headspace this song gets me into. The entire album (Selected Ambient Works 85-92) is amazing and any good listen would have to be punctuated with pauses as you try to figure out where exactly you have heard all the good bits before.

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You need to see Whiplash. If you don't care about jazz, you still need to. JK Simmons bloody deserved his Oscar.

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Happy Mother's Day

Of making things

There is something in the weather these days. The dog days of summer are a bit far away and it’s never a proper winter in Bombay anyway. It is not quite spring here either, not that I have ever seen it in the seven years here.

I remember the springs (the season and not a band) from when I was young. Perfectly golden sunshine in the afternoons sandwiched between the slightest tinges of cool breezes in the morning and in the night. They last for a month, maybe two. Starting a little after Saraswati pujo and continuing till the final exams – glorious days in which to cycle around the township and to stack up a pile of books in the balcony and read them till the sun went down. You could try growing a small garden inside medicine bottles and watch an ecosystem of ants and insects develop around them. You could gather the fertile clay from the river banks which have fed probably the oldest continuous civilization in the world and make little figurines with no feet and large heads and bake them inside the kiln of an old school kitchen heater. You could make a garrison of them and they would defend the garden against the threats that a child’s mind dreams up.

The world is generally a different and a more difficult place these days. That’s what I think anyway. There is more pressure to make your presence felt. To achieve, even if it is to achieve a sort of dull mediocrity measured on parameters of shallow success, meaningless pedigree and financial gains. People seem entitled to have opinions without really being qualified to have them; there is a lot less forgiveness and mercy (not a religious sentiment, though I believe that the one thing that recommends religion is it’s espousal of a quality of mercy in its followers) in their interactions and a shortsightedness and cruelty that comes from a casual disregard for the feelings of others. There is noise, so much of it. Updates and queries come at you from all directions, a restless urge to know the most banal and the most trivial forcing you towards wasting precious time on them. There is consequently less time for considering the worthy, what should be worthy.

We don’t spend time building things, developing them, learning to work with nature and materials. A nation of software developers and coders exists side by side with poor farmers eking out a livelihood from dirt, each ignorant and unmindful the other. And I understand that it must be so, an economic system that requires specialization and a world that’s grown so far away from the simple self-contained village economy. Doesn't really stop me from wishing for a simpler time while typing all this on a laptop made by a Japanese company in its manufacturing facilities in China using a platform that is spread the world over (its ownership by a corporation out of California is just another piece of redundant information). I find technology fascinating; it is endlessly wonderful how a physical world and its physical forces are finding new applications and new uses. It is just that with industrial manufacturing and miniaturization, so much of technology is just inaccessible now. It saddens me a bit, in a way humans being made redundant by this march of science, a redundancy of the human dexterity and individual innovation that was a hallmark of ours as a species. At the same time, I still think it’s just a matter of scale that makes the modern world a bit incomprehensible. You break it down to its basic bits and it is still understandable for the most part. You have to kind of accept that the world is too complicated in its totality and that there is a size beyond which it’s not really your world. It has an existence separate from you and you exist as a small, nay miniscule cog inside this giant machine which doesn't really need you to function.

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Onto the things I have been reading and listening and watching. I have been busy, that's a caveat. So most of what I have been reading have been things on the fly, articles and such, which you save to the trusty app and then get around to reading only later. But there have been some interesting things, so I will mention them here. Books first.

1. Understanding Comics - Scott McCloud (http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Comics-Invisible-Scott-McCloud/dp/006097625X)

Since I belong to the Nerdus eternus sub-genre of human beings, reading comics was de riguer and though I am a way bit older now, I continue to be fascinated by them as an art form and as a literary medium. They do ensure a jolly good time in most cases at least and you will never really convince me that Maus or Daytripper have lesser value than most Booker winners. So this book, in which McCloud explains the form of them and a bit of the history of them and the thought behind them and the art and what makes a gutter special (you gotta read the book to find out), is important. It's not florid or self-important. It is simple and thought provoking and endlessly interesting, at least to me.

2. The Periodic Table - Primo Levi (http://www.amazon.com/Periodic-Table-Primo-Levi/dp/0805210415)

A book that effortlessly blends chemistry and history. That's not a book I thought I would ever get to read. Short autobiographical stories that use science as a metaphor. Can't really recommend it enough. The language is concise (the original language of the book is Italian) and somehow in between the stories you come to realize the beauty of science and how it is really everything that is around us and how meanings can subtly extend from one part of life to another.

Songs next. Except that I can't really think of many songs. So I will give you a couple of my favorite Neil Young songs and a Sigur Rós song for variety.

1. Cortez the Killer - Neil Young

This is one of those songs I can listen to on loop for almost forever. The story, the sadness, the nostalgia. Pretty much perfect. Don't point out the historical inaccuracies. They don't matter and you would be an idiot to point them out.

2. Heart of Gold - Neil Young

Beautiful song. And because it is a live performance that demonstrates his charisma and talent quite perfectly. And again, it's a damn good song.

3. Njosnavelin (Untitled #4) - Sigur Rós

Don't ask me why I like this song. Not because I understand it.

So that's pretty much it. I watched a movie,71 (directed by debutant Yann Demange), about a British soldier stranded overnight in Belfast in 1971 (that where the title comes from). That period of history is called the Troubles and the movie is gripping and good. In case the history interests you, definitely suggested movies are In the name of the Father (1993) and also Bloody Sunday (2002, like the U2 song).

That is pretty much it.

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Three-oh