Brainplay on the Blank Screen

All the greatest neuroscientists are searching in the wrong place. Most of them want to be on TV and they know the only way to do so is to put together some study of how a criminal’s brain works. You take the fucking amygdala and simulate some chemical imbalance in it and voila, you have discovered the serial-killing gene.

If you don’t get a criminal willing to get her head screwed (I am not gender-biased), you choose a cockroach. You know, how a constipated cockroach lying on its back and scratching its belly still has the smarts to foretell a nuclear attack and protect its family – that kind of thing. Gets TRPs. From constipated humans lying on their… You get the picture.

But exactly between the criminal and the cockroach lies one creature that can unlock the mysteries hidden in the innermost layers of the brain and help us understand the complexities of thought, behaviour and character. A creature seldom considered worth studying due to reasonable doubts about the possession of the said brain. A creature so secretive and so apparently imbecilic that it has escaped the radars of science and students of simple life forms for centuries.

It is the writer.

By all appearances, writing is a spontaneous activity, less intellectually demanding than even crapping (where you must know which one is the bidet). It must flow out with minimum thrust, I mean, the writing must. But it never does. You can feel it there, you know it is descending and you wanted it out last minute. You have other things to do. But it has no respect for your time and just hangs in there.

Anything that frustrating should be fascinating to scientists. It is surprising, then, that there are more researchers studying the fluid dynamics of faeces than the torrential verbosity of a writer. I don’t think Oxbridge would object to diverting some of their research funding from one discipline to the other. So why this discrimination?

***

Writers can be classified into 24 groups. They go to sleep and wake up at all times of the day and it makes sense to divide them into sections by the hour. To keep our research simple, let us choose the smallest group among them – those who wake up at 6 a.m.

If you are one of the writers in this group, what do you do on a typical day?

You wake up after a nightmare in which the editor with the bad breath (they all have, but this one has a bad attitude too) phoned you to ask when you plan to file your writing. The word “plan” is sarcasm because he meant you don’t have one. You could smell his tonsillitis on your earpiece and you could almost tell he was jerking off your misery. So you resolve to finish the bloody stuff today and get the narcissistic pig off your back.

6:10 a.m.

You watch the computer doing its morning ablutions before the desktop loads. Since you are a born loser, there is every type of garbage on your system from Ubuntu to the 40th cloud-computing application. When all is done, you open the word processor. The blank page is a little overwhelming. So you immediately open the Internet browser.

You sign in to Facebook, just to check if you have got any overnight likes and comments. Twenty minutes pass by before you realize you haven’t. You click like on a few feel-good posters, argue with and lose a friend over some political question, impart wisdom on things you have absolutely no idea about and you are out of FB before they can say Zynga. But the clock shows 90 minutes have elapsed.

7:40 a.m.

Check email, daily news, Wikipedia, a Ted talk perhaps and the latest viral song on YouTube. Children stir back to life and you realize you haven’t brushed your teeth. You beat the kids to the washbasin. One thing leads to another and you are out of the bathroom much later, freshened up like a daisy and ready for a big day of writing.

You tell yourself that you will definitely start writing immediately after breakfast.

9:30 a.m.

Indeed, there have been some comments on Facebook. You check the shit on FB as well as in the email notifications. You browse aimlessly, trying to get into the mood for writing. “The first word is the problem, the next 9,999 just follow,” you tell yourself.

11 a.m.

To de-stress, you watch some candid videos on YouTube. You make a few phone calls to friends and call centres — the latter because your wife has just given you a list of loose ends you forgot to tie up. The landline is dead, the air-conditioner/heater is getting noisier, water is leaking in the closet, such stuff.

A few calls to customer-support centres both frustrate and enliven a writer’s day. While they may not have understood your problems, much less solved it, they have let you know that there are people dumber than you. You feel like the typical Indian man who, on reading that Indian penis lengths ranked 110th out of 113 nationalities, felt sympathy for the men in those three countries.

12:30 p.m.

Back to the computer. The blank screen seems to be telling you something but you ignore it. You have just realized that you have forgotten the passwords for some of your bank accounts and subscription services. You decide to log in to all of them once, just to check if what you remember are indeed the latest passwords.

You end up locking two accounts. More calls to customer-support centres to get them unlocked. Of course, the intricacies of a lost password go over their cephalic accessories. The accounts remain locked and you give up for the moment. You tell yourself you will get back to them later.

2:00 p.m.

Lunch. You tell yourself a little sleep won’t harm and may even spur creative thoughts. It might even help ease the stress of the morning.

4:00 p.m.

You get up groggy and more dishevelled than you care to admit. The children are back from school and are generally making a racket. You tell them to shut up because you want to concentrate and write. They give you the what-the-fuck-did-you-do-since-morning look before going away.

One word, just one, appears on the creative side of your brain. At last, you know that you have begun to write. It will get increasingly easy from now on (for you, not the readers). You have found the fountainhead. The stream is about to gush forth. You sit up and get ready to immerse yourself in the writing.

Ting tong. Buzzer on the door. Mr. Plumber appear with all the tools usually reserved for the serial killer. He has come to fix your leak. His appearance is the fruit of your morning’s labour on the phone. The only problem is that this guy won’t shut up and do his job. He asks a million questions and blames you for causing a flood before starting to mend the pipe. Your mind struggles to flip back and forth between a misbehaving toilet and the most seminal work of your lifetime since the conception of your children.

You come back to the computer only to realize that all that creativity bursting forth before the plumber’s arrival has leaked away during the encounter. You desperately scratch your head to get it back, fail, and revert to Internet browsing.

6.00 p.m.

The better-half and the kids want to go shopping. You know that a stroll around the block would clear your mind. Fresh air didn’t kill anyone. You agree to go out with them.

6:30 p.m.

You have just gotten into the bus and touched in your pass when the Torrent begins. Suddenly, your compelling thoughts form themselves into compelling words, sentences and paragraphs. They just flow like you are born to write. This is what magnum opuses are made of. The turn of phrase you have been waiting a week for, the logic of argument that you gave up developing, the exact word you wanted to place, and the punch line of your lifetime, all coming flooding in at once.

You feel special, you feel creative and you feel on the top of the world. No one, but you, could have come up with this.

You also feel stupid. You don’t have a computer to type that mass of wonderful writing into. You don’t even have a pen and paper to jot down a few points. All you have is two shopping bags and a busload of distractions.

You just want to get back to home and keyboard. You go through the mechanical routine of shopping and eating out even as you repeat your lines incessantly in your mind. Your wife and children must think you weird and easily distracted, but they keep quiet because it works to their advantage on a shopping expedition.

9:30 p.m.

You can’t wait to coax the computer back from sleep as soon as you come home. The blank screen looks much less intimidating, almost friendly. You tell your family off, shut the door to the room and sit up for a long and fulfilling writing session. All the stored energy is waiting to be released. You are ready to organize and express all the beautiful thoughts that came to you so easily this evening. Oh what a phrase! What a line! What a metaphor! What wordplay!

Oh, What the fuck!

9:31 p.m.

It’s all gone.

Marugelara, O Raghava!

In the kneel-down world of romantic love, it is still rare, and special, to have a woman propose to a man.

The love of a gent is often like a stampede of elephants – a torrent of passion and action. A fleeing pachyderm doesn’t have time or a face to lose. But a woman likes to keep her desires, like the rest of her life, secreted in her heart, all nuanced and layered. She often lets the man mouth the covenant first, if only as a way to bind him to a lifelong disownment of his polygamist genes.

So, when a woman decides to stop the clueless man in his tracks and tell him of her love, she commits an extraordinary act of bravery. How strong her commitment must be, how determined her will to be with him, that she overcomes the natural inhibitions of her gender, risks rejection and pops the question!

It is even more special when the woman happens to be sensitive, self-assured and blessed with an exquisite taste. She proposes in such a way that leaves the man speechless in admiration and readily compliant. He obeys her instructions like a pet, basking in the glory of her love and just thankful for life. There are no second thoughts.

Here is a song of one such love. The granddaughter of an ultra-conservative Brahmin desires a Dalit who is also mad about her. He isn’t saying it though, for he knows his odds. Their confluence won’t just shock the old man; it will be the death of him. The community will wean her away and banish her into an unwanted marriage and him to the boondocks. Their romance will leave nothing more than a shared scar for life. It is best not to propose for it will be accepted. And the inevitable chain of pain will follow.

That was the man. But when did taboo stop any woman?

It is not just that she proposes to him, but the manner in which she does it. She chooses a two-Century old song sung by Saint Tyagaraja in praise of Lord Rama, strips it of its worshipful essence and repacks it with her own longing for her man.

“Marugelara,” she sings, “Must you still evade me?” The words that the Bard of Tanjavur used to entice the Lord and describe his limitless devotion to Him suddenly become the expression of a lustful love in the more temporal milieu of a caste-worshipping society. In a few notes, a song of prayer transforms into poetry of desire.

“Must you still evade me, my dear, must you?

“You may be beyond the grasp of the Universe; the sun and the nectar-cool moon may be just your two eyes; but still, must you evade me?

“You are everything; and everything is you. I know it by now;
I searched within me; And I found you;
You suffuse my thoughts; I have abandoned everything for you;
Come rescue me from my loneliness

“Must you still evade me, my dear, must you?”

And how does she propose? A handful of flowers are all that she needs. With words unspoken, she leads a quiet exchange of vows with those little blooms. Her joy in receiving his acceptance stands as a sweet testimony to the fact that when man can’t handle a thing, he should let the woman dictate.

The only thing sweeter than proposing like this — is to be proposed like this.

—

(Movie: Saptapadi (1971) – Telugu – Actress: Bhamidipati Sabitha – Voice: S. Janaki – Director: K Viswanath (who also gave us Shankarabharanam and Sagara Sangamam)

Who Am I?

Last week was the third time in my life I came unhinged.

One brutal summer day in 1988, I woke up to find that I could no longer believe in God. And I was terrified. All around me was a beautiful Tamil Brahmin family that considered the absence of sacred marks on the forehead an extreme form of atheism and often castigated the perpetrator. Which had never been me. For, I had been a faultless believer who left no real estate above the waist unadorned.

Perhaps I overdid it. The excess dose of Vitamin G began to show its side effects. I vomited at the mention of the Lord. I experienced mild to intense fever in the presence of believers. The profuseness of my sweat came to be directly proportional to my proximity to a divine image.

Yet I wasn’t worried about how my family would react to my new-found atheism. Truth be told, my parents shrugged it off.

My fear was about my identity. The loss of faith set me free from the shackles of commercialized religion but also robbed me of a sense of belonging. Suddenly, my loving family and my dearest friends were thrown across an impenetrable wall and I was lonely. I could not be in their place; neither could they be in mine.

Exactly 10 years later, also in the month of May, I lost my second identity. I had grown up to be a patriotic Indian. I believed it was the greatest country on Earth and could do no wrong. Above all, I believed my country held equality and dignity of the individual above everything.

Project Shakti, the explosive tests of five nuclear bombs, butchered that notion. I realized Hindutva had taken India to a point from which there was no turning back. I correctly figured that the tests were less about a geopolitical posturing vis-à-vis our neighbours, but more about giving India a militant Hindu identity. The message was clear: you must either be Hindu or militant to be part of the new India. Alternatively, you can choose to be a second-class citizen, provided you behave.

The India I knew and loved was dead. Despite warnings of overreaction, I abandoned my conventional patriotism. I haven’t got it back till this day.

On the lonely road that stretched beyond the loss of my two identities, I retained a third and final one: that of being a Tamil.

Of the world’s six classical languages – Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Old Chinese, Hebrew and Tamil – only my language is still spoken in its pristine form. There is no other language on this planet that can boast of a two-millennia-old literature and a modern Facebook-compliant vocabulary, both intelligible to a middle-school kid. Genetic research has shown that Tamil Nadu has been inhabited for 50,000 years and that the direct descendants of those early settlers are living amongst us today. That, ladies and gentlemen, is my identity.

Or is it? For long, I had wanted to know my deep ancestry. I wasn’t satisfied with the few thousand years that history and literature would let me trace back. Archaeology has failed to pry open the past beyond the Dawn of Civilization.

No, I wanted to know my family tree all the way back to 70,000 years ago, when less than 10,000 of the species homo sapiens lived on the planet, that too just in one continent, Africa. I wanted to trace the migratory route that my early family took from the Savannah all the way to the Chennai cul-de-sac where I played rubber-ball cricket. I wanted an unbroken chain of heredity from the First Man to me. A paleo-paternity certificate, if you will.

Not that I am a fan of racial purity. Race is a product of civilization and is less than 10,000 years old. It cannot even begin to capture the expanse of human experience from the Ice Age when man first contemplated moving out of Africa.

I just wanted to know my place in the global family. If I could compare where I am today with the journey my early family took to reach here, I might learn important lessons. It could be an exciting story. If nothing, I will at least get a subject to blog about on a rainy London Sunday.

So I went back to the same scientific research that showed African nomads settled in Tamil Nadu 50,000 years ago. I paid through my nose to become a part of the Genographic Project of the National Geographic Society.

Within two weeks, I received my DNA test kit. I was instructed to robustly swab the inside of my cheeks and send the pleasant sample back to them.

The tests were based on Y Chromosomes, that part of the DNA passed from father to son. X Chromosomes get sliced and rearranged once in several generations and can’t be trusted to provide lineage information. The Y Chromosome, on the other hand, remains intact as it passes through the male line.

Every once in a while, the Y Chromosome acquires a genetic spelling mistake, which too, is passed on intact from father to son. These markers serve as records of heredity. By studying the markers, scientists placed me in specific groups of nomadic tribes and a chain of these markers revealed the entire route of my family’s journey.

(Click here to know more about the test and how to participate. The Y-Chromosome test is open only for men, but women can test their mitochondrial DNA for matrilineal heredity.)

Last week, scientists posted the results of my DNA test online. I opened it with trepidation.

As I began to read the account of my early family’s journey over 50,000 years and as my genetic footprint opened up, I was stunned. Impossible, I thought. My family couldn’t have taken that journey and landed up where I grew up. It was too fallacious, even for a truth.

Yet it was, a tall tale that my Y-Chromosome was spinning, giving me relatives I hadn’t expected to have and robbing me of those I thought of as my people.

It was a miracle that my ancestors made it to India at all. The tests told me that my early family had consciously avoided coming to India for as long as 30,000 years. They rejected four opportunities to go and live in the lush subtropical biome of the Subcontinent, rather preferring to go to the lifeless steppes of Eurasia and to as far as Spain across the punishing Ice-Age terrain of Europe.

Over the pre-Civilization period, four distinct waves of migration filled India to the brim with humanity. Inventive tribes thrived all over. But my family was not part of it. We were busy fighting the Neanderthal Man for survival somewhere in Europe.

My third identity had been blown to smithereens.

*     *     *

During the Ice Age, the polar caps sucked out a lot of moisture from the rest of the world. So, while the highlands in the extreme north and south were covered in ice, the tropics dried out. Desert spread through Sahara, pushing animal and man to the edge of existence. Sea levels decreased and water retreated 40 kilometres, cutting off fishing. Large hordes of animals died out. For a while, it looked as though species homo sapiens would vanish too.

And then a window of opportunity opened. The Ice Age temporarily retreated about 50,000 years ago. The Sahara became warmer and moister. As animals began to colonize new grazing and hunting ground, human beings inevitably followed. There was plenty to eat and the threat of extinction became a fading memory. The human race spread throughout Africa.

The common ancestor of every non-African man was born somewhere near Kenya or Ethiopia during this time. He had a genetic marker, a spelling mistake in the Y Chromosome, now labelled M168. As population increased, the search for new pastures intensified. It was then that some of his descendants dared to think the unthinkable. They decided to leave Africa once for all and see where they end up.

The first people to leave Africa took the coastal route towards the east. Their route took them to the south of India, where some settled, and to the rain forests of South East Asia where some others chose to stay back. The remaining group went all the way to Australia, making a short crossover across the sea, and became the aborigines.

Modern Tamils are directly linked by DNA to those earliest settlers in South India. Genegraphic’s Y Chromosome tests have found the missing link between the M168 man and Australian aborigines in Tamil Nadu’s Usilampatti village, serving as proof of that first journey. That also makes Tamils one of the world’s ancient peoples.

My family was not part of it. My ancestors stayed back in Africa for some time before crossing the Red Sea and moving inland into the Middle East. They probably liked red meat more than seafood. So, they chose a land route into the global wilderness and not the safe coastal route the early migrants had chosen. This also meant that the “very” elders in my family were moving away from India as early as 45,000 years ago.

The second noteworthy man in my lineage had the marker M89. He may have been born in North Africa or the Middle East. His descendants colonized the Arabian Peninsula and were hunting away to glory and making nightly love to their wives as if they were picnicking in the Garden of Eden. Until the scary turn of events.

The Ice Age returned. The expanding ice-scape around the poles led to severe drought in the middle world. Hunting game became rare and for once, my family thought of returning to Africa. But that door had been closed. The Sahara had been rendered a desert once more and was impassable. My ancestors had only two options. Stay in the semi-arid Middle East and slum it out, or migrate again in search of greener pastures.

One group booked its tickets to India almost at once. That land mass was untouched by the Ice Age and there was evidence of an earlier migration. So, a part of the M89 clan left Middle East and crossed the Persian Gulf towards the land of opportunity.

Again, my family didn’t join the caravan. They had other ideas. While a large section of the M89 tribe stayed back in the Middle East, my ancestors followed the great herds of buffalo, antelope and woolly mammoth into modern day Iran. They didn’t know at that time, but a round trip lasting as long as 25,000 years would bring my family back to Iran.

Their relentless lovemaking eventually led to another genetic spelling mistake, leading to the M9 Eurasian clan. My family was part of this new group. Being expert hunters with much improved tools, my ancestors followed the great herds eastward, across the super highway of the Steppes. Sure, it wasn’t as forested as the Subcontinent was but the game was irresistible.

They went on, until the confluence of three giant mountain ranges – the Himalayas, the Hindu Kush and the Tian Shan, blocked their way. At the Pamir Knot, the M9 clan split into three groups and continued their migration in different direction.

One group went to India. And as anyone watching my family over the previous 10,000 years would have guessed, we decided to go in the opposite direction, towards the north and beyond Hindu Kush. We rejected the idea of India for a third time.

More lovemaking. More spelling mistakes. About 35,000 years ago, a man was born in my family somewhere in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan or Southern Siberia with a marker called M45. He, too, was a lover of red meat and made sure his descendants perfected the art of hunting and filled their bellies regularly. The clan was forced to keep moving north as the expanding Ice Age led to reduced rainfall and drought-like conditions in the southern reaches.

To survive in these unforgiving parts, my family had to improvise. This is where they widened the scope of their creativity beyond family-making. They built shelters from animal hide and built larger weapons to hunt down the giant animals they encountered there. They began to use bones and wood to make weapon handles.

The new marker in my lineage at this point was M207. These guys had had enough of Central Asia. After all, they had developed sophisticated weapons and techniques to survive the harshest of climates. As the glaciers expanded, this clan moved westward making for Europe.

There was considerable debate within the group about the destination. One group wanted to go toward India and the other preferred Europe. It was not unlike the family discussions while planning modern-day vacations, but the stake was much higher. A wrong decision could wipe out the clan. After much debate and gnashing of teeth, the group split into two. One set of people took the road to India. Again, my family stayed with the dissenters and travelled to Europe.

A man born in this lineage some 30,000 years ago gave rise to the clan identified by the marker M173. They were the early Europeans. My family made rapid progress in its western journey. They encountered the Neanderthal Man who had lived in isolation for hundreds of thousands of years and quickly moved to decimate him.

My ancestors gave rise to what archaeologists identify as the Aurignacian culture. This era was distinguished by a great leap in technology. My clan’s tool kit expanded to include many more materials. New manufacturing techniques, standardisation of tools and woodworking were pursued.

About 20,000 years ago, climate intervened again. Massive sheets of ice closed the door behind my clan. They were forced to move south, towards Italy, Spain the Balkans.

It was not until 8,000 years later that the ice melted. But as soon as the terrain opened, my ancestors moved north again and recolonized the terrain they had left behind.

By this time, the human population had ballooned to a few million. My ancestors looked nothing like the medium brown-skinned Africans who left the Cradle of Humanity 30,000 years earlier. They had lost the skin pigment melanin and become paler. In the colder climes of Europe, they needed the white skin to synthesize Vitamin D. Yes, my ancestors were Caucasian.

About 10,000 years ago, a man of European origin (and not of the contemporary Central Asian stock) was born in the steppes of the Ukraine or Southern Russia. He carried the last spelling mistake in my lineage, the DNA marker M17.

His descendants made two great contributions to the world civilization. They were the fathers of the Indo-European family of languages, the single largest linguistic group in the world today. English and Sanskrit are among the languages that belong to this group, but not my mother tongue Tamil.

The gentlemen of the M17 brigade also domesticated the horse. With this, they could migrate to wherever they wanted at the speed of wind.

And where did they choose to go? Iran. It was an amazing turn of events. After staying away from four waves migration towards the Subcontinent, travelling across three continents and learning to survive at below-freezing temperatures, my family made a choice to return to the land they left behind 750 generations earlier.

There is plenty of evidence for their short hop from Iran to India, but we don’t know exactly when they made their entry. The stamp of their dominance and the reshaping of Indian culture their arrival entailed is there for all of us to see. From language to religion to our royal heritage, we owe much to the M17 clan.

* * *

And there ends my genetic odyssey, a singular concourse of fortuitous events with an unpredictable end.

Now the only task that remains is to make sense of my identity. Who am I?

I am not an original Tamil. That honour goes to the first wave of migrants who separated from the earliest clan, whom we know as M168, and carry the M130 marker like that guy in Usilampatti. Very few Dravidian people, even fewer Tamils, share my M17 marker.

I am not an original Indian. That honour goes to the M130 clan as well as the three other migrant groups that colonized the Subcontinent before the Dawn of Civilization. My family missed that bus.

Going purely by DNA evidence, 35 percent of Hindi-speaking men are my closest relatives. They are nearer to me in the genetic tree than 90 percent of Tamils. These North Indians have the same genetic history as me, but my family parted with them linguistically at some point. Tamil is my family’s adopted language.

Iranians are family too, but not all of them. Those Eastern Iranians with a distinct European lineage are my relatives, separated by fewer than 300 generations.

The Ukrainians and Southern Russians follow closely.

I should not forget to mention my extended family in the Czech Republic. About 40 percent of men there carry M17. This marker thrives in Spain, Italy and the Balkans too, making me a Mediterranean lounger that never was.

And then the big question: who are the people I am least related to?

Ah, the tyranny of the DNA. It turns out that I am the most distant from the M130 marker, which describes the earliest settlers in Tamil Nadu and the Australian aborigines. They were the ones that separated from my ancient family the earliest, about 45,000 years ago. The Usilampatti man, my fellow Tamil, is separated from me by 1,350 generations.

Does that make me sad? Hardly. I would have been saddened if the modern science of genetics were to reinforce age-old notions of racial purity and cultural isolationism. Instead, my test has added to increasing evidence that every man — and that means every woman too — is a mixture of multiple races and ethnicities.

In fact, the most successful humans are not the genetically isolated clans but those that briskly walked across continents, embraced new ways of life, adapted to various climates and mingled freely with new tribes.

Vile movements like Hindutva have contaminated history and archaeology to further their narrow views of the world, blurring the line between race and religion and using that confusing mass to affirm the superiority of one group over another. Genetics is our only hope to escape from their grasp.

DNA has proven that “Aryan” and “Dravidian” and many such labels are just that – labels. It is possible for one person to be many of them. We are not like leaves that grow on only one branch of a tree; we are like a bird’s nest that straddles on many. No one branch can support the nest alone; it is the balance between multiple branches that keeps the nest from falling.

I haven’t lost my third identity. I have only learnt that I am much more that just a Tamil.

I have gained a new super identity.

At the end of the day, as at its beginning, we are all Africans.

Lead Kindly Lead

Today, I complete 22 years in journalism. In this span, I have earned neither the glory of celebrity scribes nor the power and prestige of go-getters who decorate imprints in bold letters. I have made little money beyond what is needed for a comfortable, want-free existence and I have no pantheon of awards to display. I am at best a 4-point footnote in a fat volume on the history of world journalism, falling short of all the popular measures of success and visibility.
Yet, my career and life couldn’t have been more successful. After these many years, the spark of adventure that I felt on my first day in the profession is still alive and my yearning to tell a good story still intact. I fall in love with my job every day just as headlong as when I first flirted with it. I wake up every morning — sometimes mid-morning and sometimes the wee hours – saying a silent thanks to the clash of circumstances that made the choice for me.
And oh, what a journey it has been!
My byline has been published in every newspaper of consequence in the world; but that wasn’t always a good thing.  One day in 1993, I went to the Marina Beach in Chennai with a friend who treated me to a packet of flavoured chickpeas that we so lovingly call “sundal.” And he was more embarrassed than I was, to discover that the snack had been wrapped with pages of one of my stories. When this extraordinary coincidence was pointed out to the boy-vendor, he sheepishly explained that this particular magazine’s paper had just the right dimensions for a “sundal pottalam.”
Then there was the astrologer who didn’t know his future. In 1994, when the Shoemaker Levy 9 Comet was going to crash into Jupiter, all the beat reporters were talking to scientists and writing about the astronomical impact of the event. Being a beatless beast of burden, I had to think of a story idea that wouldn’t intrude into the their zonal privileges. Astrology was a natural choice. I spoke to a string of “jyothish mahamunis,” asking them about the zodiacal storm that the event was forecast to kick up. One particular seer gave me an appointment for the same afternoon, obviously excited about his own good luck in being interviewed by India’s largest business newspaper.
When I went to his house at the appointed hour, the gate and the main door were both open and the whole two-storey house dead silent. There was no answer to my several knocks. I entered tentatively, ready to be told off. A young man passed me from the house and into the street, without acknowledging my presence. A lady, with much of her saree’s edge covering her mouth, peeped out from upstairs only to nod to me and vanish.
And then, the sight I saw in the living room! A capacious gentleman, apparently out of breath, was stretched out on the floor with cotton in his nostrils and a feeble lamp on the starboard side. His toes had been joined in holy morbidity.
I was later told that the astrologer granted me the appointment, watered some plant, had lunch and lay down to rest. He never woke up from his siesta. His other appointment took precedence.
And that proved to be my first and last story involving astrology (though I often write stock-market analysis these days).
When a 19-year-old boy meets a girl of the same age to discuss sex, you would expect a steamy interaction of genetic impulses. When I met this girl in Arakkonam, we discussed her gang rape. Every single detail. She told me how her husband became friends with 10 riff-raffs to form a football team. How the entire team would descend on her house on Sundays for lunch. How the thugs often played offside with her, eyeing her voraciously. How she warned her husband of their intentions. How he ignored her. How she got news one late evening that her husband had been injured badly in the field. How she rushed there, leaving behind their toddler crying. How the news proved to be a trap. And how she was raped by ten people on the field in front of her husband.
Then, who can forget my meeting an assassin on May 21, 1991?
Haribabu, the photographer implicated in the killing of Rajiv Gandhi, the former prime minister of India, was en route to buy the deadly garland made of sandalwood shavings, when I and my dearest photographer-friend, S. Kumaresan, bumped into him. The location was Royapettah Clock Tower. The time was just after 3 p.m., seven hours before the assassination. Kumaresan introduced me to him, him to me, but it seemed as though Haribabu ended his weak handshake a bit too soon. Little did I suspect that my new acquaintance would be dead within hours, having fulfilled his part in the killing.
July 16, 2004. I was at a burnt-down building in Kumbakonam rummaging for the tell-tale signs of the terrible fire that had engulfed the place just hours earlier. One school bag caught my attention, for it was virtually untouched by the flames. In it were a lunch box (curd rice, predictably), a few textbooks and notebooks. There was also a receipt for the payment of school fees. The girl whose bag it was had paid for the entire year.
Eighty three children perished in that fire, including the girl with the fee receipt. The school had been built in violation of all safety rules. The owner had crammed hundreds of children on each floor to maximize his profits from running this “English-Medium” school. He had created an extra floor by covering the open terrace with thatched roof. His austerity extended to the mid-day meal kitchen too. He used a fire-wood stove. In the July heat of the Cauvery Delta, even a damp cloth can catch fire but he let dried-leaf roofs to hang above the fireplace. The children had no chance.
It was also the first and only time I cried after reporting a story. It would change me forever.
The death of children is the worst thing a journalist can be called to report on. And I had to do it again before the year 2004 was out. The Tsunami, of course!
Parents stood in a long queue that wound its way to a heap of little corpses. A bulldozer was on standby near a huge pit. A couple had to come forward, identify their child/children from the heap and move away to await further instructions. Once the deaths were documented, the bulldozer scooped the kids and put them in the pit. It also covered them with the soil. Burial over.
I stood there on the side, thinking of my three-year-old daughter back in my Bangalore home. For a moment, I couldn’t help thinking what if I were one of the parents here. I didn’t know if I could handle that.
Just then, I saw one of the kids being buried was not in soil-ravaged clothes, but in bright silk skirt and blouse. I was later told that her parents had made one last request to the bulldozer driver, pulled out their child from the heap, dressed her up in her most favourite dress and returned her to the heap.
That piece of journalism made me a better parent that day.
These days, as I lounge in the much gentler climes of financial-market journalism, I think of those countless people whose lives crossed mine in comic and in tragic circumstances. The assassin, the astrologer, the naked wife in the football field and the little faces that faded away behind a fire or bull-dozed soil.
It is for them that I am in journalism. My job is to tell their stories. If I can refocus away from my occasional but alternating bouts of hubris and self pity, and reinforce the belief that positions of power and fame don’t matter in this profession, but a commitment to stand by the underdog and be the voice to the voiceless, I would have succeeded.
Till death do us part.

No Slip or Gully: Meet India’s New Anti-Graft Chief

From the front page of Times of India dated April 27, 2018.

New Delhi – Veteran Rajya Sabha member and Chairman of Senior Citizens Rehabilitation Committee, Sachin Tendulkar, was today appointed the Executive Convenor of the Steering Committee for the Elimination of Corruption in India. His tenure will end in 2118 AD or when corruption gets eliminated in India, whichever is later.

The government denied speculation in a section of the media that the new job has been specifically designed keeping in mind Sachin Tendulkar’s unwillingness to retire from his current posts even though his Rajya Sabha term officially ended six months ago. 

“Shri Tendulkar has asked 150,000 questions, brought 45,000 private members bill, passed 20,000 laws single-handedly in the Rajya Sabha. He also passed 2,322 Lok Sabha bills even though he was never a member there. He has also made laws in Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan using his good offices. He doesn’t need anybody’s opinion on when he should retire,” said Mr. Harbhajan Singh, the UPA minister for spinning mills.

It may be remembered that Sachin Tendulkar made his Rajya Sabha debut in 2012 as a child prodigy. He used to practice 10 hours a day asking questions to evening revellers in Shivaji Park, Mumbai.

He was involved in a controversy during the visit of Australian Prime Minister Ricky Ponting, who said he considered Sachin an “inferior” lawmaker to Zimbabwe’s Eddo Brandes. “Eddy made laws that have made Zimbabwe a rich country. But Sachin’s laws have been ineffective, as India remains poor,” he had said.

Navjot Sidhu, Trustee for the Society of Linguistic Beauty, criticized Ponting for his “inebriated” comments saying, “Sachin is the Sun of Parliament. Nobody has a right to comment on him, much less bark at him.”

Bandra Bandstand sources say Sachin has accepted the nomination as the country’s anti-graft chief and will take charge as soon as he completes shooting commercials for Dabur Lal Dant Manjan and Kamaraj Patta Patti Underwear.

OPINION IS LIKE AN ASSHOLE. EVEN AAKAR PATEL HAS ONE.

It’s possible that Mr. Aakar Patel may consider my and other responses to the Nazi intellectualist stream of consciousness he let out the other day as a measure of success. He may bask in the glory of all the undeserved attention and may congratulate himself for provoking such an outcry, the yardstick mediocre journalists employ to measure impact. His publisher, Mint, may even put a positive spin on its poor judgement, as it always does, maintaining that it only encourages democratic debate.

But Mr. Patel and Mint, the following is not criticism. I will only try ever so gently to point out that you have stepped on shit. So that you may decide whether to wallow in or wipe out from your stray instep the fecal verbiage that went for a story under the title “Why is it better to live in the south.” Pity, not anger.

(Aside: Your headline should have been “Why It Is Better to…”, not “Is It”. You were making a statement, not asking a question.)

By way of introduction, I am from a Tambrahm family in Madras, a devout vegetarian boy with a passion for Carnatic music. I can multiply any two three-digit numbers in my head and am working on four-digit figures. Among other things, I like Macbeth, Great Expectations, Study in Scarlet, Beethovan’s Third Symphony Eroica, Panchali Sabadham and that part about Cressida’s betrayal of Troilus in Iliad. My knowledge of the world of crime isn’t entirely inconsequential. I can do technical analysis of the financial markets, read palms and discuss the Indus Valley script. I am a closeted poet in two languages.

In other words, I’m the stereotypical South Indian Renaissance Man who tries to excel in every subject, just like you thought. By any reckoning, I should have shared your article on Facebook titled ‘I told you so,’ and performed an archanai at the Mylapore Kapaleeswarar Temple in your name.

Except that I didn’t. It turns out I am not that gullible. I understand that you have friendly feelings towards my tribe and you would expect me to ha-ha your story and ho-ho it because it should please me to be praised.

It didn’t. Your article was a serious stereotype of both South Indians and North Indians, generously free of facts, and patronizing. It was also clichéd like the masala dosa in a Udupi restaurant.

So, you start by sympathizing with Padosan’s Mehmood, who appears to be your introduction to South Indians. Once you have lived in that part of India even for a day, you should know how off-key and far-fetched that representation was. But then, it was just a satire, after all.

Look closer, and it was the classically trained Manna Dey who gave his voice to Masterji, while it was the untrained voice of Kishore Kumar that Vidyapathi had to rely on. So who was at a disadvantage? As far as I can tell, the music is neither Hindustani nor Carnatic, but a popular blend of the two where each can express itself emphatically. It is not an aalap that Masterji resorts to but a very Madrasi aalapanai, a testimony to Manna Dey’s versatility. Oh yes, Guru and Master Pillai were both playing to their respective strengths. Sorry to disappoint you there.

But this is the least harmful error you have made in that article. When they chose the clichéd picture of M.S. Subbulakshmi to support your story, your editors didn’t realize that they were actually presenting an argument against it. They used that picture because MS is known and appreciated all over the country, including in the North. Who did MS owe that national popularity to? Hindi-belt brahmins like Jawaharlal Nehru who admired her in more than one way and that ultimate machine of North Indian power politics, the Congress Party, which promoted her relentlessly in the 1940s. If North Indians can’t appreciate South Indian music, how come she is so well regarded everywhere?

When you compare Carnatic music favourably with Hindustani music, you make two fatal errors.

First, you talk about how South Indian music is “written” and people can appreciate it better because there is a structure to it. By that reckoning, the poems of Rabindranath Tagore or the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci must be crap, given there are no rules on how to appreciate them. When did rules become important in art?

If anything, I would hold the vigorous application of rules to be the only minor weakness of Carnatic music. Hindustani music is 95 percent improvisation, whereas Carnatic is only 50 percent improvisation with the rest being performance of conformity. To that extent, the creative heights a Hindustani singer can soar to will be difficult for a Carnatic singer to reach because the latter cannot stray far away from the canon. The Pancharatna Kritis must be rendered in an authentic way, which also means that the opportunity for experimentation is rather low in them. Fancy a refrain different from “Samayaniki Thagu Maatalaadine” in “Sadhinchene”?

I can cite many songs where meaningful words are split meaninglessly to conform to the standards. And how good pronunciation is sacrificed at the altar of grammatical rendering. But there is a bigger shortcoming to this structure, which the younger generation is thankfully challenging and changing.

Traditionally, Carnatic musicians have had poorer voice culture than their Hindustani counterparts. You can get away with a grating voice, as long as your shruti is pure and bhava is perfect. In the bhakti-dominated milieu of Carnatic music, the pleasures of pure music sometimes take a backseat.

In Hindustani, both the secular leanings and the faculty of Taan make sure the excellence of the human voice is held in supreme importance. This is the biggest lesson modern-day singers like Bombay Jayashree have learnt from the Hindustani circuit and are using to conquer realms that the old school never ventured into.

While rules are one half of Carnatic music, creative freedom is the other half. If nothing else, please take back your assertion that music is produced in an “exact fashion” in the South. It’s not true.

Just like Hindustani, Carnatic music too operates on the basis of relative pitch. It has no absolute pitch (No rules, better appreciation – a truth contrary to what you believe). There is no A above Middle C. You choose where you want to start and take it from there. And the music flows not from the prescribed notes, but from the un-notated, purely subjective microtonal variations called Gamaka. People go to concerts to enjoy the unknown and the unpredictable and the untested. You can’t program that.

Finally, connoisseurs will tell you that the two streams of music are but two versions of the same music. To compare one favourably against the other is the virtue of the dilettante. I can assure you it’s outdated. And irritating.

If structure were the most desirable, we should abandon both streams of Indian music and listen to Western Classical, where it is all about authentic reproduction. Even the size of the hall and height of the ceiling are prescribed in that discipline. Can I expect an article from you on “Why it is better to live in Italy?”

Now, let us talk of southerners’ appreciation and I am going to play the Devil’s advocate here. For every true and committed fan of Carnatic music, there are three and a half oafs that go to the concert to show off the silk saree or eat in the Academy canteen. These Les Insufferables employ various techniques to attract attention – trying to tap on the lap loudly to keep rhythm, ‘tsk-tsk’ing too often, especially in the wrong places, and shooting on the phone-camera and sharing on the Net then and there (And occasionally writing newspaper articles). Please bury this myth that South Indians are invariably great listeners of music. They aren’t. Half of them are in it for the sex appeal, spoiling the experience for all the rest. Just check the numbers of genuine rasikas that are dropping out of concerts and embracing YouTube.

Another of our shortcomings is that we are typically isolationist. For decades, we have never tried to sing to “outsiders” and get them interested in our music. This isolationism is partly the reason why Hindustani music is better recognized globally than Carnatic music. Again, it is something that’s beginning to change but only because our musicians are learning from the North Indians.

My personal experience has been that North Indian music lovers are invariably eager to learn about Carnatic, as much as South Indians have shown a willingness to know about Hindustani. I have a friend, Shishir Prasad, from the land of another Prasad, Laloo Yadav. His knowledge of G. N. Balasubramaniam has evoked green envy in me many times. Authentic and unpretentious. So to counter your assertion, it is quite possible that South Indians don’t share their music as much as the North Indians do. Hence the “others” don’t know their art, while the Tambrahms have learnt from them.

And now to Mumbai, which you seem to think of as North India. I fancy it more as being in the western parts. Nevertheless, to accuse Mumbai of lacking an intellectual life only shows one isn’t moving in the right circles. A person like Tata Consultancy Chairman S. Ramadorai, a Tambrahm living in this bad city, thinks the atmosphere isn’t just culturally stimulating, but challenging. He can’t find enough time to engage in all the music and art that this city offers.

I haven’t seen the vigour of a Kala Ghoda festival or the richness of a National Centre for Performing Arts in many other cities. In which other city can you hope to do a rock festival or a literary event and expect to be sold out before the show? Marathi theatre, regardless of your sympathy, is actually thriving in its own circle. I hate Mumbai as a city to live in, but I disagree with your reasons for it.

You sound hilarious when you speak of the South Indian’s ability to speak another language. Every single Bengali and Gujarati I know speaks Hindi. Many Punjabis and Gujaratis in Mumbai speak good Marathi. Isn’t that multilingual? Cut back to Tamil Nadu and ask how many of us can speak Telugu, or Kannada, or Malayalam. Very, very few. My grandmother lived in Bangalore for 44 years without learning a single word of Kannada. Where do you get your facts from, an overactive gall bladder?

Let us talk tolerance now. I am sure you know that there are two branches of Brahmins – the Shaivite Ayyars and the Vaishnavite Ayyangars – in Tamil Nadu. Legend has it that when an Ayyar maami scolds her lazy husband, she often says, “Yenna, why are you stretched on the hall floor like an Ayyangar corpse – so dead and stinking?” Meanwhile, in the next house, the Ayyangar uncle calls out to his wife, “Yemma, why do you keep the house like a Shiva temple – unlit, damp and stuffy?”

The lack of open confrontation may not be the sign of tolerance. It may be the result of expediency. All that can change in a moment. Caste wars are the worst scourge in southern Tamil Nadu as it is in some other parts of southern India. I remember a news report when a shopkeeper was killed for not giving a 5 paise change, all in the name of caste pride.

My point in highlighting exceptions is that South Indians are no different from North Indians. We are not special. We deserve neither your Mehmood-like stereotype – bald and longhaired at the same time – nor effusive praise about our tolerance or intellectual capacity or musical nirvana. There are good and bad among us, just as there are good and bad in every part of the world. The same dullness of purpose that afflicts the Bimaru belt sweeps over the lower reaches of the Deccan Plateau. The same light of wisdom glows in us as does in you. We are the same, stupid.

Don’t regard us as some exotic exhibit but accept us for what we are. And we are you. We are Indians, not South Indians.

Thanks, but no thanks. We can do without your patronage.

Should Karunanidhi Retire from Politics Now?

Yes.

When my mother was born, he was already in politics. When I was born, he was the chief minister of Tamil Nadu. When my first daughter was born, he had just been voted out of his fourth term as chief minister. And when my second daughter was born, he came back to power. I would like my grandchildren to see some fresh faces in Tamil Nadu politics (desperate sigh).

Muthuvel Dakshinamurthy (a.k.a ‘Kalaignar’ Karunanidhi) began his wily, scheming, corrupt, lustful, cinematic, persistent, sanguine, never-say-die political career in 1937 at the age of 13. He energetically fought the Congress Party when the rest of the country focused on the little matter of Independence.

The imposition of Hindi in the then Madras Presidency was the first political issue he fought against. Fighting against untouchability and suppression of women in Hindu (but not other) societies were some of the causes he championed. It is another matter that he abandoned those causes once he rose to prominence and focused exclusively on power and currency.

By 1947, Karunanidhi and his mentor CN Annadurai had developed political ambitions. The Independence that others had fought for and won had opened up new vistas of opportunity that the duo weren’t going to miss. But there was one problem. The leader of their sub-nationalist movement Dravidar Kazhagam, ‘Periyar’ EV Ramasamy Naicker, had called for August 15 to be observed as a Black Day. Ostensibly on a patriotic note, Anna and his thambi Karunanidhi disagreed with Periyar and parted ways.

In 1949, they started the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK)—at least, the first generation version of the party. It would go on to evolve into its 2G and 3G versions that we all know only too well about.

An early indication of what kind of a politician Karunanidhi will develop into came after a by-election that the DMK won against the ruling Congress in the 1950s. Party leaders who had contributed the most to the victory had assembled at the celebrations hoping Anna would praise their hard work.

To their horror, however, Anna presented a gold ring to Karunanidhi, who had played only a peripheral role, and lavishly praised him. Stunned, the leaders asked Anna in private to explain. He told them Karunanidhi had paid for the ring himself and had given it to him the previous night, requesting that the ring be presented to him at the ceremony. “You pay for the jewels and I will present them to you too,” Anna added.

Karunanidhi also had a colourful personal life. He is the only chief minister I know that has two wives. Given that my blog is meant for the entire family, I don’t want to discuss more of this aspect of the old man’s life here. You can read the late poet Kannadasan’s twin-volume autobiography in which Karunanidhi’s younger days are detailed.

Back to politics. Karunanidhi was not DMK’s first choice to be the successor for Anna. There were other illustrious, honest leaders who coveted the opportunity. But when Anna died in 1969, Karunanidhi pleaded with the party’s rising star and a heartthrob of Tamil film fans, MG Ramachandran, to support his candidature. Riding on MGR’s backing, Karunanidhi defeated the other contenders and became the chief minister in 1969.

But as soon as he was sworn in, Karunanidhi began sidelining MGR in the party. He was jealous of MGR’s popularity both within the party and across the state. So he denied MGR a Cabinet berth on the grounds that a busy actor would not be able to do justice to his ministerial duties. When MGR became a bitter critic of the chief minister, Karunanidhi suspended him from the party.

It is another matter that MGR formed his own party and grabbed power, never to lose to Karunanidhi till his death in 1987.

In 1976, Indira Gandhi dismissed the DMK government on corruption charges though the real reason might have been her Emergency-era paranoia against non-Congress chief ministers. She set up a panel called Sarkaria Commission to inquire into the charges. The panel defined Karunanidhi and his men as being ‘scientifically corrupt.’ It meant their corruption was systematic and left no trail.

Karunanidhi has this funny habit of giving gaali to Tamil voters every time they put him out of power. During the campaign, he would tell them they are the only ‘Gods’ he worshipped. But once they fix him, he would call them ‘beggars’, ‘numb creatures’ and ‘ingrates’.

In 1984, he was going to lose so desperately in the Assembly elections, that he used an old picture showing him in a happy chat with his (now) archenemy MGR to ask for votes. His argument was that MGR was bedridden in a hospital in the US and could not possibly govern the state. Despite that, the voters gave an overwhelming verdict in favour of the semi-conscious patient and routed Karunanidhi’s ilk.

He became the chief minister only after MGR died and the AIADMK had split. But then, Jayalalithaa was the new rising star and he couldn’t believe his own eyes. For a man who had engaged in political sparring with C Rajagopalachari, K Kamaraj, Bhaktavatsalam and MGR, a former actress 25 years his junior was a climb-down.

Given the feudal background of the DMK, Karunanidhi resorted to the only trick India’s male politicians have in their arsenal against powerful female rivals. He attacked Jayalalithaa personally and oversaw a clutch of sidekicks saying horrendous things. But she couldn’t be scared into submission. Jayalalithaa went on to become Tamil Nadu’s single-largest politician, and more popular than Karunanidhi even when out of power.

The one thing to recommend Karunanidhi for is his tenacity and an attitude that never gives up. Tamil voters have rejected his candidature for chief-ministership six times in the past 35 years. Not once did he lose hope. Never did he contemplate retirement. Swan songs written for Karunanidhi could fill a fat volume but he belied all of them.

Even now, he must already be thinking of the next step in his political journey. His unfinished agenda includes divvying up the wealth among his sons and daughters, firewall the party from a split after his death and make sure the investigation into the 2G scandal fizzles out. A million-war veteran, he is not going to let these minor ripples force him out of the water.

But then, why am I advocating his retirement?

The man is 86-years old and bound to a wheelchair. His son, MK Stalin virtually ran the show in the state. None of the party leaders look up to Karunanidhi anymore, either for ideological leadership or ‘practical’ decisions. They are busy falling into the Stalin camp or the rival MK Azhagiri camp headed by his other son.

Karunanidhi has lost control over his family and party a long ago. Even in 2009, when the DMK was negotiating with the Congress for Cabinet berths in the Centre, he was not informed of the details.

His fighting spirit hasn’t faded a bit, but his illness prevents him from taking action. He also doesn’t seem to understand the modern aspirations of the newest generations. His political plans don’t cater to their needs such as higher education, job creation, infrastructure or economic reforms. His old-style politics—marked by oratorical flourish and an economic policy revolving exclusively around freebies—cannot capture their imagination.

When the next elections are held in the state, he would be 91. The voters need a younger, more progressive, less divisive leader to take them into the new millennium. The 1937 anti-Hindi campaigner doesn’t fit the description.