L'Affair Sourav and the Frog Dance Man

After watching the natak and the tamasha of the last month over first the ouster of Jaggi Dalmiya, second the ascendency of Sharad Pawar, third almost Kreon-like usurption of chairmanship by Kiran More, fourth the carefully orchestrated press conferences opened with unseeming regularity, akin to the Minardis coming out for early qualifying in Formula-1, by Niranjan Shah followed by the Medea-like pronouncements of Kiran More, fifth the ease with which Greg Chappell slipping into the Chanakya-seat of politics left vacant by John Wright, am not amused, bemused, surprised and shocked (not necessarily in that order) at the treatment meted out to Sourav 'Dada' Ganguly.

Let me throw in my bit of contribution to the nostalgic singing of the halcyon days of The Prince of Bengal and the apocalypse that he did not forsee, coming from the Frog Prince of 1992 World Cup Kiran More. In fact, I am a bit let down, if at all, by Sourav for not forseeing things of the future. The pedigreed man that he is, Ganguly must have actually dealt the Coup de Grace by refuting the offer in the team in the first place, after having just the other day proved he is a match-winning bowler, then going on to score the hundred and then showing he still is the unofficial King Arthur of Indian Captaincy. Let tongues wag that Sourav's record as the most successful Indian Captain hides behind the fact that he won against meeker teams; let tails sprite themselves up in air that his centuries and big scores have come against weaker teams. Still, why didn't the others score. Why did no other captain succeed where he did? The same was said of Azhar. Sometimes I think Sachin is a better politician or at least a diplomat. He is adept at the art of projecting himself as a sentimental victim worthy to empthaise with. Poor Sourav was the faithful Kumbhakarna to Ravan Dalmiya while Sachin is the eternally smart low-key Vibhishina who takes refuge with the alternate power-brokers. Of course, he has resurrected himself as the virtuous Ram who tugs at the heart-strings of every mother and mother's son of Bharath. Let's not get sidetracked in sentiments or extended metaphors. The fact of the matter is, from the 1992 Frog Dance days to the 2005 Chairmanship time, More has carefully moved from chiaroscuros and bas reliefs to digitised anime. He has rightfully served reminder of his street-fighting doughtiness that was evidenced first against Javed Miandad on 4th March 1992 when India met Pakistan for the first time in a World Cup match in Australia. Of course, Javed and Imran's tigers had the last laugh by lifting the coveted trophy.

Again, to get some facts right. 1989... India-Pakistan series in Pakistan. First ODI, Pak beats India in a curtailed match. ODI 2 washed out. ODI 3 washed out, ODI 4 Pak wins the series 2-0. And three people made their debuts then. Very forgettable. A young Tendulkar and not too old Salil Ankola and Vivek Razdan. Of course, after a banging 5-wkt haul test debut, Razdan faded and Ankola hung around for a while in and out thanks to his Sonu Nigam looks. I don't find much difference between a singer who looks good and wants to act and a cricketer who looks good and wants to bowl. And what of the eternal pet Ajit Agarkar. Where does he hail from, dearie? But what we are missing here is... the Mumbai factor never ceased its continuum in Indian cricket. Only by a steady progression it has become a Maharashtrian factor, thanks to the Rashtriya passion - the Sena - Rashtriya - Bhartiya combine that brought back Maharashtra and Mumbai back in contention in the national scheme of things when their cricketing roots slept for a while. It has been a while any serious cricketer of repute has come from that part of the world. And to think that not only have Tamilnadu been meted out bad treatment at the national level of selection, but also Delhi has carefully been kept at bay. Of course, Tamilnadu is anyway on the Bay... and they have to carefully deal with Delhi, being the centre that can hold. One look at the Delhi-Mumbai encounters can tell you the story as much as Mumbai-TN duels, which comparatively are far and few. We have anyway our own TN-Karnataka skirmishes to deal with. So Razdan went out. Coincidentally, Vivek grew up with the MRF Pace Foundation in TN and studied at Guru Nanak College before graduating to play for India Pistons in the TNCA First Division League. So... too many connections that only make logical his dumping. Of course, all these had nothing to play in his non-playing. But back to More and more Maharashtra...

This man More says Sourav was chosen for his all-round ability. Then why forego a bowler. And a lot of people know that Kaif is more a test-temperament cricketer than Yuvraj (which incidentally is Prince in the Indian language, though not of Kolkatta). And if the logic is Sourav played well, but we are looking to fill the opener slot and we don't want Sourav at No 6 because we have another Prince now, why not put him up the order? Oh! What will the world think if we put him as opener and drop Gambhir out of the 15 and Sourav out of the 11? After all, Sourav was India's captain, he is a seasoned-campaigner who cannot be put on reserve, but Gautam is just new to the game of dumping, he won't mind being thrown about! And what of Wasim Jaffer? Oh, he has scored tons of runs in the Ranji with an average of 89. So? You remember Raman Lamba, Bhaskar Pillai, Robin Singh... the list of people scoring tens of hundres of runs in a Ranji season is endless given the fact that the Mumbais and the Delhiites play in a weak section of the draw filled in numbers with Vidharba and Sourashtra or Himachal Pradesh and J&K. And after all, to refresh the memories of that eventful 1989 Indo-Pak series where Tendla made his debut, one Mr. Ajay Jadeja opened the innings and with unfailing consistency scored at 45% strike rate in the ODIs. If Gambhir gets out playing across the line early and Wasim Jafer than was dumped out because of his half-cocked batting style, how bad can Sourav the man who has scored the 4th highest aggregate in both forms of cricket be? And today because Jafer has lot of runs behind him the last two seasons, he is good eh? Then put Yere Goud in the middle order. He has been the hub of Railways' Ranji campaign the last 3 seasons successfully. Nope. Wasim Jafer, Sachin Tendulkar and Ajit Agarkar are from Mumbai, Sharad Pawar is Mumbai and More is Maharashtra...

Wow! Wah Huzoor More-ji... Then why bring Sourav back at all? There is a lot of lip-service in this deal. And let us not forget where Gautham Gambhir hails from nor which zone and state he plays for. But then, it is only logical. Virendar comes from thereabouts too! So how can there by more representations when these days, in the name of rota and allocation and quota and reservation and roulette, even huge international teams like Australia and S.Africa and England end up playing in Bikaner and Agartala and Kohima! Oh that? It is the Calibans getting back at Prosperos of the world. Post-colonialism Cricket. Lagaan-ing. Englishmen? How else can we beat them if we don't play their warm-up matches in areas that could warm the cockles of their intestines with bad food and cockroach rooms and bumpy roads? You see, Indians, am proud to say (because am bored with the cliche "I am ashamed to say"!), have low self-esteem, lower diplomacy, high sycophancy, higher lack of self-belief to go out and shoot straight.

A Little Digression. Have you noticed the planning Aussies do with their schedule? Very smart. Every series starts with a couple of diplomacy matches where they let couple of their sharp-shooters (on-field of course!) humiliate the visiting team before the latter gets acclimatised, then demoralise them with Pigeon-ing and Punt-ing (aka sledging with the help of Fourth Estate) and then play a couple of tests (where they really fight aggressively) and put some key players on either psychological or physical injury list. And then disrupt the Test match frame of mind and rhythm with an intrusive and tough-ball B&H Series... then get back to continue the Test Matches. They of course have such a depth of bench that they have different players for two different types of games, if required. Why won't they win with such careful orchestration and planning. Battles are won in the mind. And that is what brings us back to L'Affaire Sourav.

Sourav Ganguly brought back a team in disarray, a board in Macbethian shame of match-fixing thanks to the Three Witches (aka Cronje, Azhar and that bookie whose name I forget), a country desolate in the habit of sinking to the level of the lowest opposition. Let it be said that he established for India an unenviable record of losing the Finals of ODI serii! Don't matter. He created what you proudly today claim Team India, Sahara Parivar, the Pepsi Men in Blue, the Huddle-Bubble Hindustani spirit that Rahul "Agent Smith-look" Dravid has taken over. Of course, I have nothing against poor Rahul. But it is all Olympian... the plans. There is always a pattern to the destinies and cross-destinies in the Greek Mythology. From Zeus to Seuss, they are all macabre people. It used to be Dalmiya and Ganguly, it is now More and someone else... It used to be Wright and now it is Greg. Under Ganguly it used to be the Shiv Sundar Dases, Deep Das Guptas, Saba Karims... it is now the Gambhirs and Yuvrajs and JP Yadavs... All this points to one thing. We love to play our cricket off the field. After all, cricket these days is a mind-game. Ask John Buchanan, Bob Woolmer, Tom Moody... and then again ask also the Laxmans and Dinesh Kaarthicks and Venugopala Raos and the Badanis... Isn't this the land that made Shatranj ki Khiladi! And chess is politics (you ask the Russians about it!), politics is Congress, Sharad Pawar is (or was?) Congress... the next of kin to the Raj... but there is 'more' to this than meets the eye. Don't be surprised there is a little more at the ICC Meetings at Lords sooner than later. The true Macbeth is out there. A little medium at large. Beware the ides of March, for it all became apparent on that eventful day - 4th March and the juggernaut rolls, nought-ing even the jaggis of Indian cricket.

Quid Pro Quo... that is Life with a Big L

Ulysses
by Alfred Tennyson

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vest the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers;
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breath were life. Life piled on life
Were all to little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle-
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me-
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads- you and I are old;
Old age had yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in the old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal-temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Just feel wistful and done with the past. And to think that the past year has seen vicissitudes of time, as they say, and vexations of heart as well as stimulations of mind and to feel that it has been a full year (or a year-ful?) of newer people, newer experiences, newer sorrows... not bad. I have a rich vein of newer emotional curves to draw upon as I embark on a newer road - the road (I Have) not taken, as Frost may say! But what is happiness compared to sorrow. In Happiness We Forget Ourselves, we delight and the world delights with us. In Sorrow We learn. I would rather have sorrow than be happy. An Artist Needs Sorrow As An Alcoholic Needs Liquor. Without the pain and the sorrow and the anger and the fury and the jealousy and the burning envy, art cannot have power. There may be beauty in "emotions recollected in tranquility", as Wordsworth said; but it would end up like the Pre-Raphealite poetry. Read only as academic stuff. Put Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil, Buchner's Danton's Death, Suskind's Perfume, Lord Byron's flamboyant and Shelley's burning poetry and Sarah Kane's plays alongside your Pre-Raphealites and the Wordsworths and Keats and all those soft-puppies of art... you will see there is a greater passion in the former's aching urgency to capture the moment than the latter's measured pickings of painted metaphors and images.

Done with the past... though not content. A Ship Does Not Sail On Yesterday's Winds! I leave those paths I have tread and look forward to explore unchartered territories. I leave behind a Penelope who no more has use for me, who is through with me and has sought to leave in letter and spirit leaving behind mine own Telemachus! Yes, that is official and final too, the last couple of days have been horrid and it has come to a real head. I leave behind ... no am not too sure of that! And today someone asked me "if there was anyway he could have a Masquerade t-shirt". I said the only one I have is mine and he can have it. I would like to leave it with some good soul, for "Alas! what boots it with incessant care/To tend the homely slighted Shepherds trade,/And strictly meditate the thankles Muse,/Were it not better don as others use,/To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,/Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair?" as Milton states in his Lycidas! This is no maudlin post. It surviveth... even as the strong, in the words of Louis L'Amour, shall survive! It being the Spirit. But somethings do need to be spelt. And that is the true trade of Honesty with a capital H. Started with a quote, shall end with a quote... about Honesty by the big B, Billy Joel!

Honesty is such a lonely word.
Everyone is so untrue.
Honesty is hardly ever heard.

Failed...

.........................Vacant shuttles
Weave the wind. I have no ghosts,
An old man in a draughty house
Under a windy knob.

After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
What’s not believed in, or if still believed,
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.

The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours. Think at last
We have not reached conclusion, when I
Stiffen in a rented house. Think at last
I have not made this show purposelessly
And it is not by any concitation
Of the backward devils
I would meet you upon this honestly.
I that was near your heart was removed therefrom
To lose beauty in terror, terror in inquisition.
I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it
Since what is kept must be adulterated?
I have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch:
How should I use them for your closer contact?
These with a thousand small deliberations
Protract the profit of their chilled delirium,
Excite the membrane, when the sense has cooled,
With pungent sauces, multiply variety
In a wilderness of mirrors. What will the spider do,
Suspend its operations, will the weevil
Delay?.............

--- Gerontion, T.S.Eliot

Today I really feel futile. I think my theatre has failed. I accept my failure. I have failed to create human beings and better people with my theatre. No matter how many actors or techies or artists have been created by me... I have failed to create a human being. I shall not do anymore work. One last solo piece in May. After that, I shall quit theatre. No more commitments. I am spiritually and technically out of Gowri's play. Probably I shall honor my commitment to those two roles. I am trying to get alternatives for myself. Have messaged concerned people to the effect. I disown myself from all those institutions. I go to sleep with a really heavy heart, succumbing to sleep because my eyelids droop and refuse to cooperate to keep open. Finis. :-((

Oh Captain, My Captain!

Awright, some easy, not so mind-blogging loud-thinking of things that amuse/bemuse/surmise/surprise me at the moment.

 

Oh Captain! My Captain - What do you expect? Walt Whitman? Nope. Dead Poets' Society Robin Williams? Search Me. Rahul Dravid, the man of the Indian Cricket at the moment? All out!

 

Nothing to do with Dravid nor Ponting! It just happened in the middle of my watching Ramana just yesterday. There's no stopping Captain Vijayakanth! He's determined to make himself seem theoretically eternal. Since one Late MGR started and succeeded, there has been no dearth of aspirants to Politics. One man who in Tamil tinseldom perhaps has kept away from the gutter and sewage of India, nevertheless uses nationalism and patriotism to commercial (seeming) success is 'Action King' Arjun. Now back to Vijayakanth. The heroine asks him a question about the Chief Secretary of Tamilnadu. The guy just has to name it. Instead, he goes on a statistical binge, putting on screen every bit of details from how many times a man copulates in Tamilnadu to how many women have reached menopause. May be exaggeration. But the statistics list runs something akin to that. And this is becoming a pattern so much that I guess Captain, as he is fondly self-styled and habitually alluded to by his fans, is using it as a campaign to show to the movie-manic vote-casters of TN politics that he has all the figures (does that include the 16 and 17 yr old 'of fair complexioned' clevage showing bimbos he casts against him?) in his finger tips, worthy enough to rule the Dravidian and other migrant population? (Off the topic, for statistical minded people, recent figures prove that 30% of the country is made up of migrant population). He did the same thing, if my memory serves right, in either Aezhai Jaadhi or Sethupathi IPS, where that infamous scene of spelling out the profits one can make from the noon-meal scheme's AN EGG PER CHILD for nutrition comes to mind. And you may have more to say than I do.

 

One thing is certain, if we draft him into cricketing world (which is no different from politics anyway), he can at least make-up for the non-appearance or non-discussion of statistics on Doordarshan Live Coverages of Cricket India matches, if not replace Jaggi Dalmiya. Am sure I.M.Bindra would approve. At least our MAC Scorer and statistician who has been hailed as the best scorer and statistician would like to take Captain's help, when the PC conks out or Network fails! And now... when Captain comes can Youth be far behind? After all, there is none better than Captain (he has outdone Shivaji, MGR, NTR and Rajkumar) in terms of projecting his youthfulness, which requires a lot more megabytes with the inside info I have from the celluloid world, that I shall dedicate a whole blog to youthfulness and Tamil films! But, just remember Captain may soon lose that status to Aamir Khan (won't that guy ever age, asks my mother!). And who else... inspite of age, one guy always looks young and his voice sounds the same 16 yr old who burst upon Kiwis back in the 80s!

 

From Captain to so-called Higher Mortal - Sachin, who else!. Note, not Sachein... no Vijay! Even if Vijay is a component of Vijaykanth... and Vijay's movie of the Little Master's name has done 200 Days recently. Now, we all know how they make these movies run more than 100 Days, don't we? Anyway, I have a huge growse and you all Tendulkar fans out there are gonna hate me. I don't care, really. I mean... if the Team India is being built with 2007 World Cup in mind and Chappell  Dravid Bindra co. believe that non-performers must go out or unfit players must prove fitness... what makes Sachin special. He was special, no doubt. Like Sehwag was, Dhoni currently is... Lara was, Mark Waugh was, Kevin Pietersen and Flintoff are... and the list goes on! I adore Sachin when he is on song. But, have you ever noticed... Sachin is like Sunil Gavaskar, not in stature I mean. His centuries have never really positively contributed to India's WIN. On the other hand take Dravid or Ganguly. Dravid stays through, century or not, ensures things are settled. Ganguly's centuries have always been big ones (even if people say they come against smaller teams. I can refute that statistically). Sachin, to me, frankly speaking is over-adulated. He is just not a thorough-bred stayer. He cannot win matches single-handedly or take away a match off the opposition for a longer period like Lara does or Jayasuriya did. He probably did - but the occasions are far and few. And what has he done to stay in the team for the last two ODIs against Sri Lanka in the on-going series when after first two ODIs (a century and a above 50 something), he has drawn blanks? At home, we have this favourite analogy. When you play carrom after a very long time, the first couple strikes find incredible angles and pockets on the tee... but once you're warmed up, your mediocrity shows. Sachin is not SACHIN anymore. He may look young and sound young, but high time he quits decently and starts contributing in a different capacity. It is one thing to believe we have a few good years left, but to prove it with the same consistency as halcyon days is another thing. If you analyse Sachin's last 4 years you will see that in one part of the year he does 3 or 4 big scores, then through the rest of the year he totters around the whole series with just one big score and sub-average performances where the way he gets out are worse than Agarkar's... and due to those 4 big scores in a year, he does 1000 runs. And because he averages 1000 runs, the sub-average performance is clouded from our eyes. If he is special because he scores, then his failures must be graded by the same specialness too. We can't raise and lower the bar according to convenience. For some people standards of success or failure must be kept high because the nation has spent so much time, money, energy, drama, emotions on them. So, I feel Venu Rao and JP Yadav didn't even get enough chances to prove themselves. In the 3 innings he got to play, Venu did decent for someone new. How much did Sachin do when on debut? It took about 5 months for him to settle too. Because he was 16 and precocious, he was excused. By the same yardstick a lot of 16 and 17 year olds must be treated. And why not dump Yuvraj? Is he the Yuvraj of Indian Cricket? He hasn't done anything except crop his hair! He has not contributed with bat nor ball or field. So why haven't they dumped Yuvraj or Sachin? And Ajit Agarkar will stay in the team the next year because of 2 performances in this series. The big travesty! If blooding youth is the idea, why Agarkar? Zaheer has got laziness and attitude problems! Balaji is unfit, Nehra (as usual) is not well... so get them younger. If Sreesanth, why not others? Am sure there are 20 other pacers better than Agarkar at the moment. And who do they bring back at the expense of Venu Rao? Md. Kaif. Who hasn't done anything critical to Indian batting or bowling since those 2 or 3 centures. Seriously, I don't know much about JP Yadav. But Venu (with his bigger and heavier build) is as flash and livewire as Kaif or Yuvraj! Cricket and Films, I tell you, have truly replaced the two big national legacy - Religion and Politics... What else, when Cricket becomes religion and Films are breeding grounds for Politicians!

 

So to politics, truly! What's politics without a bit of cricketing, if cricket can smack of politics? From Sachin and Solkar to Volcker... and Agarkar to Natwar and Iraq! And what does Andy say? "Oh you know, I just paid Surcharge. The main payment was Natwar's!" And is Natwar so dumb or the Press is screwing it up to highlight only those statements that could sell? The Press quotes Natwar saying "If Volcker doesn't know who I am, how can he accuse me?" Well Mr. Singh, Volcker only said he didn't know Natwar Singh was one of India's Ministers. True enough. I don't know which portfolio is going to change hands when. And I am an Indian who has seen 4 and half elections now. How daft can Natwar Singh become! Or is this the latest Sardarji joke? Oh let's see what Sonia-ji does. Food for Oil, India for Iraq... US for Everything. Perhaps one area where India and US are on even keel. Both in the same shit, shame scam!!

 

And finally... by the Sea... no, not to do with our abjection on the knees to the rains in Chennai. Did you know? The sea at Bessie Elliots Beach has receded by 50 mts. Now is that good or bad? I mean, has it gone back to where it was before tsunami or has it gone further? I am going to ask my friend Mr. Vincent D'Souza of the Adyar Times to do some fact-finding on this.

 

Nevertheless... the sea am talking is The Sea. By John Banville. The man who loves his words as much as he hates his critics. The man who famously said "Frankly, I am gratified to see myself vilified, and the jury being vilified," he said happily over lunch recently. "It cheers me up. I must have done something right to annoy so many people." It is being honest. But then again, this is becoming a habit. Remember Vernon God Little and its author who said "Now I can pay back my debts", when asked what he was going to do with the x-thousand pounds? I am still smarting from How The Hell Can They Give the Prize to Oscar and Belinda... and that was the previous millennium.

 

Gosh! This is getting disgustingly annoying too. The publishing committee, apparently, was disappointed with Banville's success because it was least popular and had only sold 3000+ copies prior to Booker announcement. And statistics show that the book now stands at 9000+ copies. I ask: if the idea behind choosing a Miss World/Atlas/Universe from one of the small-time countries in those respective paegents is (everyone knows it is true now!) to capture newer markets for the Loreals and Oriflames, then why not a non-descript book or unknown author or not so much a selling book. It helps the publishers. Fair is fair. It is commerce. And there are people cross at The Sea winning it because Saturday, a book by Ian McEwan, didn't even make it to the last 6 super-nominees and yet it is a hugely popular and highly selling box-office book! What logic is this? Is the box-office collection for a book or movie any indication for its quality? Again I come back to Kollywood. Where are you going to put the Rays, Rituparnos, Fellinis, Truffauxs, Eisensteins and others in comparison to Ghilli and Dhool and Sami? Poor Banville! Am on his side. And am yet to read the book. Doesn't matter, the world loves underdogs and so do I. But I can't yet get over the fact that the Indian press sucks. No originality, no pride, no backbone. These days they are incapable of getting origial ideas, original articles. Look at The Hindu. The Last Page is full of reprints from western media. If you read your NYT and Herald Tribune and Guardian Unlimited each evening, you know what will fill the back pages of The Hindu tomorrow. And Express and DC on Sundays. And they are still vilifying poor Pinter for being awarded the Nobel. Hey, he doesn't deserve Nobel, ok. In a positive sense. Left alone, he is better off. Don't make the man uncomfortable by recognising him suddenly after all these years for his Jew-ishness, for his love of cricket, for things in his life that have nothing to do with his writing. Schmucks, leave him alone.

 

PoMo, PoCo, PoStu...

These are the three ruling tenets of contemporary literature. I have been threatening myself to get to write something that would help clarify doubts and aspersions about Post Modernism, in which process I wanted to induct my flock to Post-Colonialism and Post-Structuralism without neither will this study be complete.

Post-Modernism, for starters, is not against Modernism as many people mis-conceive. Neither is PoMo a heir-apparent to Modernism. It does not continue what Modernism started. Now what did Modernism start? It started a proper protest against the Victorian values of art and the way things were strait-jacketed. When I say Victorian, I do not restrict it to 19th and turn of 20th century England, but the general conservative smugness that accompany a "within the parameter" created art.

In 1896, a French play went on stage and on its opening night was riot and strong incriminations from the "well-behaved" society of Parisian theatre watchers. The play? Ubu Roi. The playwright? Alfred Jarry. Now, what made it sacrilegious? The very opening words uttered on stage were "Merde! Merde!". And it is such an innocuous word these days - Merde: Shit!!! But you can relate to the amount of smugness that prevailed. And thus started the first attempt at Modernism truly. So Modernism is a proactive response to changing non-productive, complacent, conservative, orthodox values of how art must be. Modernism was not merely a form-based protest as many believe. Neither is its successor PoMo. If one thought the experiments with form and structure is what PoMo is all about, it is wrong. Simple example: how often we take a path of overt external manifestation to show our inner dissent, be it in food habits or resorting to vices or anything else you can conjure up, refusing to confirm ultimately? PoMo and its predecessor Modernism are precisely that.

While dealing with any -ism, one has to always remind oneself that they evolve contiguous with an era or a period in history, and is exemplified through arts, literature, music and other genres and projections of media. Nevertheless... this is the key to understanding... with moderation and without getting carried away by our aversion (which is largely a result of the non-comprehension or the lack of opportunity to comprehend the root of its evolution)... that -isms are schools of beliefs and as a natural extension have an ideology and a philosophical standpoint. So what could be the philosophy or idea behind PoMo, you ask? 

We need to trace its evolutionary history, which inevitably takes us to Modernism.

Modernism, I had already told you, is a protest form against Victorian values to art, literature etc. And when Modernism evolved, in its nascent stages during the 1910 to 1930, it largely was "high modernism" - perhaps as ivory tower-ish as the predecessor it was protesting against. There were no earth-shaking deviations or experiments in form. Even the Eliotean writings or those of Virginia Woolf, were still within a comprehensible structure. It protested subliminally and subversively by being "an insider". On the French side, it was more in the area of shock usages of vocabulary and metaphors and images. The French have always relied strongly on images and visuals than words, which may explain the trait. Getting back. Only with the advent of the early 30s, Modernism started breaking fresh grounds. By then, the tantrum throwing tween of Modernism had moved on to becoming a protesting adolescent who in time and given the laws of nature would evolve into a mature and discretionary and responsible literary -ismer of the 50s-60s. Thereby, we see the Hughes and Larkins and the late-TSEliots and Samuel Becketts, Ezra Pounds, e.e. cummings, James Joyces - not to mention the French Existential playwrights like Giradoux, Genet, et al - of the literary world producing mature works that have a settled structural deviation from the 19th century form, yet ideologically and philosophically a more searching frankness. All would have been well if these folks were able to keep it going.

Every generation needs its change. To establish what happened to Modernism and why PoMo was needed, I digress heavily. 

I cite as example the Tamil film music industry. The 50s music had a different feel to it. People wanted musicals. The moment you ask someone their name, they would go on a High Octave singing. High art and artisans and practitioners dominated the industry. You had to be trained in music and dance to get to the industry. Then came the age of 60s where acting was evolving as a melodramatic art and people wanted what was to become the forerunner to the capering around duet routines. The actors were not necessarily singers. Synching started. It was also the period of social dramas. You could slowly see the drop in the statistics of historical films. They were semi-social semi-historical (more due to their period-ification through costumes) productions that almost became civil-war type films and social movies in the late 60s. And the music also changed. From the MKTs and PUChinnappas we moved to K.V.Mahadevans and R. Sudarsanams... we moved from Pattukottai Kalayanasundarams and Bharathiyars to Kannadasans and Vaalis... 

Later in the 70s - that unforgettable period of tacky and heavy color usage in costume, makeup and sets from '70 - '74 (the period when MGR and Sivaji Ganesan starred in all those bell-bottomed pants, 2 inch heeled shoes, orange and rose and pink and garish colored bobby-collared overcoats and safaris, and during which period the heroines looked like Cinderellas and Snow Whites being pimped with made-over Wigs) - the music became confusedly racy. This was truly the period - my icon music director - when M.S.Vishwanathan truly dominated. We will not discuss the legitimacy and the need for some of the tunes he composed. But the 60s MSV and the 70s MSV were definitely different until he lost out to the emerging thin Pannaipuram native with a guitar and bell-bottoms and 50-watt bulb curl of well-oiled hair on his forehead - the one who would go on to become the legend Ilayaraaja. 

Come mid-70s. A horde of people with artistic aspirations from the interior of Tamilnadu rushed to Chennai to make it their home. Bharatiraajas and Ilaayaraajas... - the music changed again... the Ilayaraja of 16 Vayadhinile (folk) and Priya (first digital recorded western tunes) gave way to the Ilayaraja of Dhalapathi, melody scoring over technology... and then came ROJA. And the music changed again... and so on and until now. 

Similarly with Modernism. Things had to change. An -ism had lived for 60 years as a form of protest. It doesn't deserve that long a period. No movement needs or can sustain anger and protest that long! So it was inevitable something had to happened. And Post-Modernism happened.

How? Meanwhile colonialism was getting a beating politically. The Raj world-over had to give way both politically as well as culturally, leading to a change in the weather conditions of creativity. Actually PoMo and PoCo happened simultaneously. Subtly they have been lapping the shorefront of the Modernist and Colonialist beaches of arts and politics since the mid-40s. Thankfully the fall of Nazis did not have major impact on this. Expressionism had taken care of it in Germany and Symbolism as well as Impressionism in France. Actually the German Expressionism in literature started in the 1820-30s through a revolutionary called Georg Büchner - that Büchner of Woyzeck and Danton's Death! 

Back to the beaches of arts and politics: that was perhaps one credit no one can take away from the Brits. But the structural changes have been emerging on the Continent and in Russia meanwhile. Hence PoStu (Post-Structuralism) had joined the race making it a tri-partite coalition to overshadow Modernism and its counterparts in economics, philosphy and politics.

By the 60s, as Elvis came, Beatles came, Reggae came, Marley came... PoMo, PoCo and PoStu had also arrived. And the rest is KAOS. Yes, if historification is not organised there would be chaos. And if a movement sets in without revolution, then the sudden realization that the backyard had somehow changed to present a picture that was not there when we went to sleep overwhelms us that there has to be chaos of the mental geography! And that is the state people still find themselves. And you are no different from them. The reason is: PoMo had advanced too much that it was difficult to find a starting point to catalogue it and put an inventory of things that constitute the cupboard called PoMo. As a result we find ourselves like Dorothy in Munchkinland. Too much sudden colour and too many details. The richness is overwhelming and the depth is staggering, of what is a PoMo work of art and what is not, that one suffers from a syndrome akin to being caught like a beggar in a Five-Star Champagne party of Mega-corporate figureheads!

Now, what are the probable constituents? Having provided what I intended to do, viz. open the doors to a lay reader of literature, I leave you with a wonderful link to Post-Modernism. Hope this helps dispel some doubts and stigma towards PoMo!