Desicritics Category: Culture: Essay

Fly To The Top Of The World

Deepak Maini — Mon, 1 Mar 2010 18:39:56 EST

And there never was an apple, in Adam’s opinion,
that wasn’t worth the trouble you got into from eating it.
-Neil Gaiman

I’m working in Philadelphia these days and it seems that there is always a reason for the snow to fall here. One week twenty inches of it piled up on the streets and I gingerly walked on it with my feet making dull slushy sound, careful not to trip. But that’s for later. I don’t really hate snow, not really, and hate is a particularly strong word to start with, so why use it? I just strongly dislike snow. And Philly is just another city, one more with tall buildings and narrow streets.

I instead want to talk about my latest travel to Philadelphia, the one that saw me ride in a cab whose driver talked on an iPhone to someone named Tandia, veering off and turning sharply, holding the wheel with only one hand. On most of the cab rides I’ve taken in the last several months, the cab driver has unmistakably talked to someone on the phone. It can be argued that that’s their source of entertainment while they transport people who move in and out of their cab in a jiffy, but all niceties aside one thing that I am hugely concerned with on these rides is my goddamn fucking life. An expensive life it is and I don’t want some Tandia to take it, that too by making an undramatic phone call from god-knows-where. Talking about god, experiences such as this inspire me to start believing in Him. Sitting on the edge of the seat, hands clasped, eyes pinched, face pale, hoping that god whom I had so conveniently denied existence until then might save me this last time from Tandia’s wrath.

Before the cab ride I was squeezed into a window seat a few thousand feet above the ground on a Delta flight. Flights emphasize the fine line between life and death. I’ve so often lend my thoughts to the fragility of human life, how a 40-mph car crash, a fall from a third floor window (I live on the third floor in Atlanta), or too many hours spend at work doing mindless shit, or too much drinking followed by loud singing in a shower, which leads to your slipping on a bar of soap and hitting your head on the edge of the tub and bleeding to death, can end your life without even giving you a chance to say final goodbyes to three or four people you know as friends –lonely you. It’s just this feeling of helplessness that makes flights exciting to me. I feel like Alice in Wonderland where at every step there is a revelation.

Every time I take a flight I’m reminded of my body’s weakness, its dependence on technology to work flawlessly or all will be over all too fast. I’m also reminded of how infrequently, and yet uncannily, things go wrong. Every day we are on roads where a slight misjudgment can short-circuit the circuit of your life, but we don’t really think about it while we are going out to the same pool joint to drink beer and shoot some pool or going to the nearby fast-food joint to get another of those sandwiches that taste like someone used them as a seat cushion on her car. We just live and many times to see our eightieth birthday. It’s amazing.

A particularly definitive moment on flights is when the plane makes its initial ascent and the ground pulls away and the plane bucks to one side turning and climbing up as I feel heady from increased gravity. It’s just majestic. Too many things happen at the same time and the world I know is quickly reduced to dots and soft fluffy clouds. At these times I admire the vast landscape below me, the dimensions of the earth suddenly observable from those heights, and partake in my hobby of looking into the distance. A wise man once said, All religions will pass, but this will remain: simply sitting in a chair and looking in the distance. I firmly believe in his words and have taken to sitting by the window in my room for hours and looking into the distance, at nature and at people whose unknown lives never fail to make my throat dry.

There are other regular features of flying that work to appease both my body and soul, which include the drumming sound of the engines and the occasional jitters that induce moments of lulling sleep.

This last trip, though, had something else to catch my attention. Soon after I took my window seat a man, a man with a severely creased face, hair white and short, came limping to take the middle seat. No reason for me to me annoyed. Then a flight attendant followed him to hand over a plastic bag full of ice to him. I peeked over Christopher Moore’s novel The Stupidest Angel—my first by him—I had so excitedly started reading. After placing the ice-pack on his right foot, the man started scuffling with his seat trying to backpush it into submission but the seat didn’t budge a goddamn centimeter. I giggled, hidden behind the pages. Around the same time, the guy had his right index finger searching for a treasure inside his nose. I mean, not to sound judgmental here, every man and woman at some time during the day gets troubled with boogers obstructing the air passage in the nose and tries to pry them out – and I do it too but always in the privacy of a bathroom. But when this man didn’t take his finger out for a few minutes straight, I had doubts taking root in my mind: either his boogers were made of steel or he had a raccoon wriggle up his nose that he was unsuccessfully trying to pull out. But that wasn’t annoying either. Nor was his attempt every few minutes to first reach for his neck, scratch it for a while and then furtively move onto his nose, once again at it, trying to take out the Rock of Gibraltar he had by mistake snuffed with his coke in the morning. It was all right. It was all right that the old man worked at his nose as if he were working on his PhD. If someone wants to pick his nose, who the fuck am I to deny him his choice?

The only annoying thing was the volume of his headphones, which had drowned out the coveted white noise of the engines. I didn’t know such a volume was even possible but the man was up to the task. I every so often stole glances at him trying to tell him through my eyes that the volume of his headphones was monumentally loud. But it just didn’t work. So much for my subtle ways.

Later on when the flight attendants doled out free snacks and I asked for some peanuts, the booger man volunteered to take the packet from the flight attendant since I was slightly beyond his reach and hand it over to me, losing his grip on the solitary napkin underneath the peanuts. To make up for the loss, he chose to give his napkin to me. I for the life of Jesus didn’t touch those peanuts or the napkin, fearful of catching his raccoon disease. The old man proceeded to purchasing two big bags of peanut M&Ms which he devoured with his bare hands in a devilish frenzy.

The rest of the flight was a bummer except for the landing, which always makes me wonder how a plane as big as I was on can land on its tires without losing balance. It just amazes me, the sheer speed with which the plane touches the ground and how the plane is decelerated to a comfortable taxing speed. The first impact of a touchdown is what I wait for on my flights.

So I am back in Philadelphia. I hardly have words to say about the city. Well, Philly is, it’s just cold; the city and the snow that covers it are the same to me: quietly foreign, cold, and mysterious.

Oh Calcutta!

a traveller — Tue, 2 Feb 2010 04:34:10 EST

When friends, particularly non-Bengali ones, visit Calcutta, I'm usually filled with feelings of jealousy. But when they come back with tales of Park Street, the best continental or Italian restaurants in the city, partying nights, or having luchi-aloo at Oh Calcutta (!!), I invariably feel like they're talking of a city I've never been to.

In all the years I've been to Calcutta, I've visited Park Street exactly twice, and the promised visit to Flurry's has never yet happened. Calcutta for me has always been about relatives and my mother's college haunts. Visits there tend to get restricted to the same beloved places.

It's about the pavements of Gariahat and the maze that is New Market. The Sardarji at the purse shop who always smiles in recognition when he sees the mother, remembering vociferous arguments and long-drawn negotiations in the years gone by. The rolls at Bedouins, the jhal-muri at Nandan. Convincing my grandmother to skip cooking a heavy Bengali meal for one day at least so we can take her to the Chinese shop at the corner - which we enjoy far more than any 5-star restaurant my uncle wants to take us to; I get that from her. Strolls down College Street, and cutlets at Coffee House. The tram rides where my uncle insists I sit in the Ladies section of the compartment, away from him and the brother - even though we three are the only passengers in the compartment. Riding the metro to Esplanade simply to ride up the escalator and come down again - it was the only station with an escalator in those days. Stopping to pick up Ujjaler chanachur on the way to the airport or the station, with the father looking grimly at his watch.

Visiting my mother's numerous relatives, all of whom exclaim how much I look like their niece - even though my mirror tells me I take after my father. Speaking on the phone with the numerous relatives I haven't been able to meet - and hearing in great detail every ailment they and their spouses have had in the past year. Hearing my grandmother's neighbours yell at each other from corner of their house to another - all of which can be heard through the open walls between the two houses. Going to her neighbour's house to visit Doctor Dadu and Didu - the elderly couple who've been in that house for as long as I can remember and who always manage to make me feel so loved, even though there is no blood connection between us.

I love Calcutta, I do. But more than four days there, and I'm yearning to get away from all the questions. But those four days are usually a little piece of heaven.

My grandmother moved last year from the tiny little house she's lived in for nearly three decades to a high-rise building. I haven't visited her there yet, and in some ways I'm dreading it. Calcutta with no music coming in from the neighbour's houses in the morning and the evening? What is that like?

The Writer In The Artist Spectrum

IdeaSmith — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 05:43:38 EST

I think all artists need an audience. This is everyone from musicians to sculptors to painters. Everyone who has ever expressed an idea in tangible form or otherwise has needed an audience. To those who disagree - if they didn't, then they'd just keep the idea in their own heads. There is an undeniable need in an artist for other people to experience their art. Art is after all, an interaction between the artist and the audience. It is absorbing impressions and communicating them to the universe outside.

Each art form carries its own framework of the artist/audience interaction and I think we gravitate to art forms that fit our needs the best.

The visual arts, painting and sculpting and other related arts are at one end of the spectrum. The artists are usually recluses. They rarely interact with their audience during the creation of their art and their only communication is in the final product. How often do you see a painter or sculptor standing next to his or her work, willing to talk about it? These people are somewhat reclusive and in some cases even antisocial, preferring the least amount of conversation with their audience.

At the other end of the spectrum are the performing arts - music, dance, acting, oratory. The audience is crucial to the performance as the performer himself/herself. Ask anyone who has practiced these arts and they will tell you how important it is to relate to the audience, to get them involved and enjoying the performance. As a result I think these are also the arts that draw the more sociable artists of all. Immediate and constant interaction with other people is very important to the performer. I'll go so far to say that performers are the artists who need other people the most, during every minute of their performance. (For the after, that's true of all artists).

So where does writing fall on this spectrum? Are we the reclusive visual artists because we hide behind our smokescreen of words? Or are we the vivacious performers because we are constantly engaging and facilitating conversations?

I always thought of a writer as someone who lets you sit on his shoulder and view the world as he sees it. Or even better, he lets you in through a little door, into his mind and allows you to read what he thinks and understand what it is like to be him. In that sense, the writer is exactly in the middle. The visual artist is at one end, holding out his art at arm's length for you to see. The performer is the quicksilver, weaving himself around you to take on your form. The writer, in contrast to both the above, brings you into himself and allows you to experience the world as he does.

I have an interest as well as at least a little bit of talent in music as well as painting. I've performed on stage and I've won some recognition for my paintings. But writing is art that feels most like me.

Writers are the only other people who understand my alternating between being a social butterfly and an extreme recluse. That back-and-forth is the very essence of being a writer. Letting the whole world in and then shutting it all out - it's as natural as breathing for a writer. We have neither the stoic dignity of a visual artist who doesn't need another person till he has finished. And nor do we have the unwavering adaptability of a performer to dissolve into other people. We have a little bit of both and we oscillate, collecting material from the world around us, turning it over in ourselves, carrying other people inside our heads and then examining how we feel about that. The words, the thoughts are constantly shifting and shaping themselves and we chase after them with nets of language to convert them into stories for the next person to ride our minds.

Book Review: The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets

Vivek Sharma — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 07:02:14 EST

The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets, edited by Jeet Thayil, includes an eclectic, exciting and incredible anthology of poems by seventy-two poets from India and Indian diaspora. These voices that span the last fifty-five years includes works by all the major poets, (more familiar names) of Indian English including Nissim Ezekiel, Dom Moraes, Arun Kolatkar, Agha Shahid Ali, AK Ramanujan, Arvind Krishan Mehrotra, Adil Jussawala, Keki Daruwala, Jayanta Mahapatra, Kamla Das and R. Parthasarthy. The collection also includes many younger poets and and many upcoming voices including Vikram Seth, Jeet Thayil, Ravi Shankar, Meena Alexander, Rukmini Bhaya Nair, Kazim Ali, Daljit Nagra, among others. The voices bring forth influences and feelings excavated, collected, cultivated, imported, ingrained or extracted from a rich and varied landscape of Indian heritage, culture, philosophy, religion and echoing the daily chaos and beauty of Indian existence. Diversity in temperament and tastes, rich colors and varied textures, aroma of spices, shingle of bangles, Hindu and sufi mysticism, Kamasutra or censored sexuality, chutnified or dignified English, free verse and sonnets, and a grand tour of modern and ancient world is served in this collection. Voices that are of Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Parsis, Christians, Indians, Americans, Britishers, and World citizens versify such that each poem both represents the local, particular idioms, icons and ideas and transcends these in creating literature that is human, universal, eternal.

Adil Jussawalla, perhaps speaks for every Indian writer, who spend his lifetime pursuing poetry in a country, where there is little reward for bards writing in this 'phoren' language, and whose English poets, are yet to be welcomed in international circuits, where a bad translation from another language gets more audience, than original writing in English from a poet born in India/non-Western countries: "Bright sparks / on the international back-slapping circuit / are picking up prizes like static. // He's for the dark." Arundhati Subramaniam, in a poem titled "To the Welsh Critic Who Doesn't Find Me Identifiably Indian" provides a succinct portrayal of both Western prejudice about who they consider is Indian and what is not, and the frustration of an Indian writer seeking to speak in this language about his or her complex existence that is not bound by what textbook definition proclaims to be his or her territory or ideology. The anthology also includes essays by Jeet Thayil, Bruce King and Arvind Krishan Melhotra. These essays provide insight into the life and work of few of the famous poets as well as the state of/ regard for English poetry writing in India. Similarly there are poetic tributes to the likes of Nissim Ezekiel and Agha Shahid Ali by poets touched and transformed by their work, and other poems that stake claim on English as language of expression, exile, migration, longing, learning and spirituality .

"Considerthefemalebodyyourmost / Basictextanddontforgetitsslokas" suggests Rukmini Bhaya Nair, whereas "You are no plagiarist of dusk. / Nothing in the sky equals itself." writes Kazim Ali. At once, homage to a thirty century old tradition of Sanskrit verse form, shalokas, is made and in another poem, the limitlessness of possibilities is hinted at. The collection contains a large number of quotable lines, and startling sentences, each embedded in nicely sculpted lines and word images. Moreover, the collection includes works by poets who deserve way more attention than we have given them. Not many of us know of the poems by G. S. Sharat Chandra, who was once nominated for Pulitzer Prize. He writes: 'My good shoe has run away / with the tacks /of its slutty twin.' Similarly Agha Shahid Ali is quite unknown in India. He, like G. S. Sharat Chandra has a prize named after him (by University of Utah). Shahid was a Kashmiri-American poet, best known for his Ghazals in English. He was devoted to the cause, and taught many Americans that this form of verse is not merely about rhyming couplets, but about rendering a lament that stretches the personal grief, till it becomes an umbrella over everyone who reads the poems.The collection does not contain any of his Ghazals, but his accessibility and depth is reflected in these lines I often quote from 'Stationery', "The world is full of paper. / Write to me."

Works by Mamta Kalia, Leela Gandhi, Eunice de Souza, Kamla Das and others have an edge to them, a revolt against the Kaushalya-Sita-Sati-Savitri (ideal mother/housewife) image of Indian women, a celebration of contemporary movements in celebration of right and freedom of women. Eunice de Souza has lines like: " 'O Universal Lover / in a state of perpetual erection! / Let me too enter into / communion with the world / through thee.' " and others like: 'It pays to be a poet. / You don't have to pay prostitutes.' Leela says: "Our desire wanting we tried our love / and found it good enough without / this sex thing, this hip and lip thing. / Let other lovers sweat and grind, / our love's refined, raising virtues from necessity." In a poem titled Brat, Mamta Kalia, has a daughter say: "You, perhaps, were hardly proud / Of your creativity -- / Except for the comfort / That I looked like Papa / And not like the neighbour / Who shared our bathroom." While Vivek Narayanan celebrates the vamp from silver screen in "Three Elegies for Silk Smitha", Arun Kolatkar picks an "Ogress" from a poverty-striken street and describes her "has always been a kind / of an auxiliary mother, / semi-official nanny // and baby-bather-in-chief / to a whole chain of children / born to this street".

Reading the poems included in this collection helps us arrive at answers to our own quest in poetry, as well as in life. Jayanta Mahapatra, who is another pillar of Indian writing, usually keeps irony to minimum, but in a poem titled "The Quest" he says: "Even computers begin to understand our castes and prejudices. / The voluptuous figures of women in stone / only wish to save our feelings of love and freedom;" While Nagra and Ezekiel provide glimpses of Indian English, countless lines, similes, metaphors and allusions scattered throughout the book emphasize the "Indian" (in English).

Indian poets writing in English have had a few guiding lights in the subcontinent. The inimitable Nissim Ezekiel as a mentor, and the tireless P. Lal (Writers Workshop , Calcutta) as a publisher are two significant pillars. The anthology is a tribute to the lifelong struggles of these and other poets. Jeet has done a commendable job in compiling biographies, digging out unpublished and published poems from known and obscure sources and highlighting how poetry defies the artificial constraints and bounds of time, space, age, location and traditions. Philip Nikolayev, the editor of Fulcrum, who inspired the project, and everyone else who contributed to its completion deserve the gratitude of every Indian (especially of the poets). Other anthologies that deserve our gratitude include collections edited and/ or translated by AK Ramanujan and R. Parthasarthy.

I highly recommend this Bloodaxe anthology for its reach and range, and for a comprehensive and erudite introduction to Indian poetry in English. It includes most of the important poets born before 1975 (or as I jokingly tell myself, all poets older than me!), and provides exemplary poems about every imaginable theme and subject that poets and readers will remember and relish in years to come. I will close this review with another set of memorable lines from Ranjit Hoskote, who in a poem titled "Ghalib in the Winter of the Great Revolt" writes:

"The friend, with a spy at his shoulder, writes back: / When did you become a poet of adjectives / roosting in the rafters of a broken house? / Ghalib, the owl must hide in the tamarind for now, / but the genie of havoc will go on furlough soon. / You say your ink-well is empty, but your dry quill / still claws at the fibers of the heart."

Desi Sensibilities Kurbaan-ed

Somik Raha — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 17:11:58 EST

Last night, I watched Kurbaan with my wife at the Naz cinemas in Fremont, California. The experience made me reflect on several things, from desi attitudes to the film content.

While the film was playing, several people in the desi crowd around me kept pulling out their Blackberries to check their messages. The glow of their cellphone screen would distract me, and at one point, I reached out three rows in front to inform a lady that I could see the light she was emitting. There was a group in front making noises and cracking jokes. Unfortunately, I could not hear their jokes, only their laughter. I have watched films at Naz several times, and mostly in empty halls, so this kind of behavior hasn't come up. I've also watched films in American-owned theaters (like AMC and Century Cinemas), and the desis who come there are very well-behaved. How is it that the same desis behave so differently in a desi theater? What is our idea of home that we go out of control when we find something that feels like home, without regard to how our behavior affects others?

Then, there was this annoying phone that kept ringing loudly every 10 minutes. A mysterious gentleman in the last row wearing a white shirt would dart out to take the call and come back. As the movie progressed, and the full extent of the gore unfolded, my better half and myself cringed and had to shut our eyes. At that moment, I was aware that a few children in the theater had started crying and hugging their parents. Children!! What were they doing watching this A-rated film? I was shocked to see parents subjecting their kids to films like this (scenes of Saif stitching a gory bullet wound himself) and surprised that the theater had allowed it.

After the film was over, I walked over to the folks at the counter to express my concern. The gentleman there told me to talk to the manager and pointed to a man a few feet away. And surprise - this man was Mr. White Shirt, the one with the phone that kept going off every 10 minutes! I was so amused by now that with a big grin, I asked, "Do you realize this was an adult film? How is it that you allowed kids to watch it?" The man replies, "Oh, this is all OK. People watch such films with their kids all the time." I tried again, "I don't know how you mean this was OK? The kids were crying every time a disgusting scene came up. Didn't you hear it?" He started dodging, and I continued, "Weren't you the guy who kept answering the phone every ten minutes? What were you thinking? Do you realize how annoying that is?"

He had an answer, "Oh, I was receiving calls from people asking how the movie is, so I had to answer. That is why I was trying to watch the film."

I asked, "Are you the owner of this place?"

He replied, "Oh no, I am only the manager."

I said, "I'm not surprised. You would never do this if you were the owner."

At this point, he started dancing to a different tune. He said, "OK, now if someone calls, I will tell them, don't bring your children."

By this point my amusement had moved to incredulity. He still didn't get that it was illegal to allow children in like this, and it wasn't worth the money they'd make by allowing this. He was more interested in pacifying me than understanding and thinking about these issues. So, we left the conversation at this point.

What would happen if all the American theaters in the Bay Area start playing Desi movies? I would certainly take my business to a cleaner and more ethical theater, and one where the audience does not think it is their prerogative to have a group picnic at the expense of others who prefer silence. Maybe a smart entrepreneur will pick up on this and connect the desi distributors with the American theaters, so that we, the patrons, have freedom to choose.

Moving on to the content of the film itself, I found Kurbaan to be a shallow film which on the surface, promises much, but does its cause a great disservice by remaining only at the periphery. New York was a far better film (and it wasn't a great film either) in terms of taking the audience on a journey. In Kurbaan, the wrong people mouth the wrong dialogs. For instance, the terrorist is busy educating Americans about Islam, and talks of compassion, while plotting the murders of many innocents. What was the scriptwriter thinking?

The idea of portraying a balanced view is noble, but care should have been given to association. The script in this film is very weak - a sequence of thrilling moments that don't add up. The powerhouse actors in it are unfortunately a victim of the script.

Naseeruddin Shah's Yun Hota To Kya Hotawas a much nicer film in the backdrop of 9/11, showing the lives of some people who died in the attacks. On the nature of terrorism in the context of India, the film Aamir is one of the best I've seen. The two actors who I think are much more sensible in the films they make are Shah Rukh and Aamir Khan. Shah Rukh is coming out with My name is Khan, and that leaves Aamir Khan - I would love to see his take on the subject.

The most remarkable film on the subject that I have seen so far is not from Bollywood or Hollywood - it is from Pakistan and called Khuda Key Liye. The director thought he'd be attacked after the film released, so he went underground, only to be pleasantly surprised when the film became a super hit in Pakistan, and also very well-received elsewhere.

From a 10,000 feet level, something remarkable is happening. If you look at all the films that have come out on understanding Muslims today, most of the ones that tend to be more balanced are from Indian cinema. Although the work is shoddy, the effort and intent is laudable, and something which India should get credit for. There isn't another film industry I know of where non-Muslim actors portray honorable Muslim roles with great pride, and make a statement about the discrimination happening in today's society. New York had Neil Nitin Mukesh in a good role, and Kurbaan had Vivek Oberoi in a similar vein.

I think India has a big role to play on account of its cinematic reach into mainstream societies around the world. With her pluralistic background, India can help citizens of this planet to reflect on these issues with compassion and logic.

How To Improve Your Traffic Life

Parv Kaushik — Sun, 8 Nov 2009 01:24:40 EST

There are scores of articles in the newspapers and magazines about how to improve your "love life" "married life" "work life" et al, but no one ever talks of improving your "traffic life"! You spend so much time in crawling traffic you are bound to lose your sanity a couple of times. Don't worry I'm not going to tell you to read self-help books in a traffic jam or to listen to Osho discourses neither will I tell you to make funny faces at each other.

Some say the best ways to defeat an enemy is to make him a friend. You cannot defeat the traffic so let it pass through you. Make it a friend. When you are stuck in a frustrating crawling traffic with a million other cars and bikes fighting for every inch of the road and the horns are blazing through your ears like loud speakers with Himesh songs think of everything as a DREAM.

Absurd as it may sound but you can try it. Think of the road, the jam, the horns, the pollution as a dream then everything will be transformed. Witness this dream, be an observer. Be a dreamer who has woven this dream and now silently witnesses it. Then everything will be more meaningful more creative more colourful. You have to forget everything else and be a witness to this dream and nothing else.

All tensions will fade away. All irritations will disappear. A new quality will come to the traffic around you. A new energy will arise within you. This is not any new energy arising but all he energy conserved which was leaking in worry of the traffic.

Then the auto-rickshaws will speak to you, the cars will talk and the humans stuck there will reveal their story. My dream is unique. Your's will be unique too. Everyone will have only his/her dream to witness. More the traffic the more opportunity to be lost in dreamland and relax your mind and soul.

Should Prostitution Be Legalised?

Parv Kaushik — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 08:21:32 EDT

The split second reaction to this statement to anyone's mind is - Yes, of course, why not? It has ad infinitum benefits for every party involved. The prostitutes can carry on their profession with dignity and legal licence. Harassment by policemen, pimps and customers can be significantly cut down. Prostitutes then can live with benefits from the government schemes and better health care through government hospitals. Government can in turn earn crores of money every year by putting a tax on the earnings of the prostitutes. Customers who are often duped by fraudulent pimps and fake rackets can get better return for what they pay for.

VOILA! All problems solved, legalise prostitution and here we have a perfectly just and fair society. Not to mention the happiness it will give to all the parties concerned. After all it will go on as it does in the dirty lanes of almost all cities and towns.

But there's a problem and that problem is my argument....

Have we stooped to such low levels in our society that we are ready to legalise the selling of the dignity of women and tax it for building our roads and infrastructure? Does not a woman have a right to dignity? Are we so insensitive now that all we see is profit and loss without any moral obligations? We should be working to put this horrible human shame in reverse gear but no we are ready to take it one step forward and tell the world~ Hey it's just fine.

We have to join hands to put an end to this spectacular human tragedy. I cannot bear to live in a world where woman is a commodity to be brought and sold in a market. I cannot bear to see that my children or for that matters peers have prostitution as a career option. Have we become so thick skinned that we fail to see the plight of women being used as an object for satisfying desire and lust. Why are we so blind to see that a human being, a woman is reduced to an object and nothing more in this "business venture".

Any money earned by compromising the dignity of the women can never bring prosperity in a society. I want to live in a world that does not give an option of prostitution to a girl child. I want to live in a world without such evil tendencies in males to exploit women as an object. I want to live in a world that attacks the very root of pervertism in the society and in the minds of men.

Prostitution is a evil. We need to end it. We cannot afford to legalise and promote it.

Allen Mendonca - Gone Too Soon, Bangalore Will Miss You

Aaman Lamba — Fri, 2 Oct 2009 02:57:15 EDT

Bangalore is home to me like no other city can ever be. This is in large measure because I have lived here longer than anywhere else, but it is also because of the people and memories that are associated with it. It is not a large city, and I have a set pattern of places and familiar faces that I consider the map of Bangalore. This excludes large swathes of the landscape, and yet, these well-trodden paths are what one finds drawn back to, again and again.

Our home away from home, in many respects, in the venerable Koshy's restaurant, with its high ceilings, relaxed service, good food, and the general hubbub of people at all times of the day. Familiar faces mean there are many exchanged smiles, some in passing, others to sit and tarry at their table for a while.

One such familiar face has been that of Allen Mendonca, journalist and writer, as I knew him, but much more besides for everyone else. While I might have chosen a conventional career path, my love for writing has been engendered in large part by articles I wrote for the Times of India in the 1990s, some of which he edited, encouraged, and motivated me to write more. I knew of his love for music and his carefree, open nature. I also knew of the negativity this engendered among some people, a feeling he never reciprocated. We met him at Koshy's often with his wonderful wife Sandhya, and typically in the company of Ramjee Chandran and Radha Thomas, also dear friends, who run the Explocity group of magazines, with which Allen was associated in later years.

We decided to go to Koshy's last Saturday for lunch, and were delighted to see Radha, Ramjee, and Allen at a nearby table. We were greeted by the usual congenial smile from Allen and it was as if the whole room was filled with a warm happy feeling. It was to our shock and horror to read a tweet from @achitnis on Monday that Allen had passed away in his sleep that morning, after returning from a party.

I tend to associate myself with warm positive older men, and learn much from them. These surrogate father figures have taught me much, and despite the barely 14 years that separated me from Allen (he was barely 49), I would rank him at the forefront of these teachers.

Yesterday, at the funeral at St. Patrick's Church, the pews were filled to bursting, with many more people crowded outside in the light drizzle. The service was uplifting and filled with music, as Allen would have wanted it to be. The eulogies were reserved for the family, with his younger sister, Mavis, recalling anecdotes of her brother's good nature, She recounted how he had once given away a childhood bicycle of hers when she was in college, and explained to her that the Deccan Herald peon "needed it more." His tall young son, shouldered with much responsibility, acknowledged his father's life and wished he had more time to learn from him. He promised to keep his father's tropical garden going strong, and induced many a tear as he spoke, not least for me.

Sandhya Mendonca decided to 'be selfish', fittingly enough, and spoke last. She spoke of the man she had known and loved for 21 years, the 'first man she had ever danced with'. She spoke of his love for dancing, for music, for books, and of how he had encouraged her, being her 'editor, mentor, publisher, and much more.' She talked of how he had never been motivated by money, and yet how he had given everyone so much more - love, selfless dedication, and happiness. She took a sharp jab at 'certain people who tried to bring Allen down', and wanted them to know they had 'failed.' She asked us to honour Allen's legacy by paying it forward, by encouraging and motivating people to do their best, and putting in a good word at all turns.

Ramjee Chandran, Allen's colleague and friend for over 30 years, writes in his eulogy,

They say people are lucky to die in their sleep. They tell me Allen looked peaceful and he did not appear to have struggled. They say that passing on without pain only comes to those who are good at heart. Since none of us really knows what happens at the precise point when someone passes away, we can only believe what we can see. And we work that into our grief.

Even as I write this, my own words appear hollow to me, because I'm finding it hard to admit that Allen is gone.

And that's because Allen was not the dying type. He was the living type. And he lived it well.
...
Those close to Allen would know that his swagger came not from boast, but from belief - a belief in humanity. He may have liked or loved people; or felt annoyed or even betrayed by people, but he never passed judgment on people. Allen believed that good or bad, we live our lives the best we can.

In the Buddha's Lotus Sutra, he speaks of the Boddhisatva Never Disparaging.

This monk, whatever persons he happened to meet, whether monks, nuns, Laymen or laywomen, would bow in obeisance to all of them and speak words of praise, saying, 'I have profound reverence for you, I would never dare treat you with disparaging and arrogance. Why? Because you are all practicing the bodhisattva way and are certain to attain Buddhahood.'(The Lotus Sutra, trans. Burton Watson, p. 267)

This description of the Boddhisatva Never Disparaging fits Allen Mendonca to a T. We are all trying to polish our lives, so they shine like mirrors. Maintaining a steadfast belief in people's goodness and dedication to cultivating this goodness in oneself and others epitomizes what Allen lived by, and is a beacon to us all. Let us make a determination to keep this legacy alive.

What Is Love? Part 2

Parv Kaushik — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 12:24:19 EDT

Isn't it that whenever you feel loved, confident and happy you 'expand' your spirit tends to go towards the infinite and there's no stopping this? Your chest swells and your head is high. On the contrary when you feel low, sad and unconfident, you tend to shrink as if shrinking to a point, a full stop. You feel heavy and have that sinking, shrinking feeling.

This was a random observation to ponder upon but the topic of discussion here is what i have already written about, and still the vastness and depth of the ocean commands a deeper introspection.

Love is a feeling in which we expand - we feel like the sky, the ocean, in short, infinite. We feel unlimited, all our limitations feel trivial before this. Love of parent for their child can only be quantified in terms of infinity, love for a freedom fighter for the country or the cause he's fighting for can never be gauged by instrument of any scale. Love is Infinity. Creativity is Infinity.

Love can never be conditioned and stopped. Love is a state of being it can never be a thing in which you can fall in or fall out. Love if you have tasted it can never really 'leave' you, it can never stop. It can never be a noun for you, it will always be a verb! Love than can never be objectified and quantified.

I honestly don't know what "true love" refers to. Love in itself is true. How can love be false? True Love is a tautology. Love can never be contained for anyone or anything. You can only love when you are overflowing with it. When you are full of love only then can you share your love with the Universe. Then even the world is not enough for your love.

I don't think love can be contained and reserved for a single person. You can share your love with anyone and everyone who comes in contact with you. You are like a flower with a fragrance who gives without expectations and hopes. Still it gives happiness and love to all those who come near it.

Love is a quality like a fragrance - keep it in your heart like that.

What Is Love?

Parv Kaushik — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:02:20 EDT

Love is the most exclusive commodity. Ask the value of it from a child in an orphanage. Ask the value of it from an ugly girl who was never been proposed on a Valentine's Day. Ask from a wife whose husband has all the time in the world for everything but is too busy for her. Ask the lonely kid in the class who's as good as an invisible child. Ask a heartbroken lover. Ask a couple who have no kids. Ask yourself. Ask anyone.

"All you need is love."

"Leave all for love."

A devotee may experience eternal bliss in his love for almighty but scratch the surface and you may find a person who has weathered storms and cyclones in his life. He has survived despite the scars and bruises and then the hunger of love drove him to God. Rabindranath Tagore said that you only live in the world when you love it. It is true. Only a man who has love in his heart and song on his lips can spread happiness. He can only make others happy and make them feel loved only when he is overflowing with love and happiness.

Love is the sole reason of our existence. Love is after all the supreme goal of one's life. Some of us love money, some love music, some love art, some love literature, some love sports, some love science, some love programming. The whole issue is to find the love in one's heart. What is this thing or stuff called love? Why do we drift towards it? Why this thirst for it? Why so much drama and trauma for it?

Why does the heart feel so empty without love? Why does existence seems so hollow and meaningless without it? Why is love beyond logic? Why does all logic fail here? Why is this elixir of life is so elusive? Why is it potent enough to make people kill each other? Is it love which makes us jealous, possessive and angry? Can it be? If love makes the world look beautiful why are people going insane with it?

All the flowery language and poetry of love stand in contrast with the stark reality of the real life implications it has on people.