Sunday Posts

As India approaches the 2014 General Election, and the prospect of a Fascist takeover becomes real, the grand old idea of India - that of a cosmopolitan nation - comes to the fore in sharp relief. This foundational idea of modern India, a nation that welcomed everyone and rejected no one, with an  identity to be conceived on the basis of inclusion rather than exclusivity, is the one up on the ballot paper, so to speak.  But this is a strange contest. Despite the fact that the idea of India is being contested upon, there is not a side standing for it. In the post-modern reality of Indian politics, the parties are jostling for positions on various other issues, ranging from India's pride to the battle against corruption, with various local and parochial issues lined up in between. The idea of India as conceived by the Founding Fathers and enshrined in its constitution is being represented, ironically as it must be, by the 'None of the Above' option on the ballot. Wh...

A strange thing is happening in India now, an admission that things have gone wrong. In a way, this has never happened before. This is also amazing, given how elitist the Indian administration really is: Most messages get screened off before it reaches Delhi. May be this is working this time as the message is coming from the global puppet masters, the big media honchos sitting in London and Washington, who have started mocking the Indian Prime Minister: The Indian government, while oblivious of the mood of its own people, surely knows that this is only a pre-cursor of what the bond traders and hedge funds will think. However, while it is easy to be pessimistic about the Indian government's motives, let us savour the moment: The Indian Government is thinking it has got it wrong, a first in its sixty years of history, and trying to do something about it! Indeed, this seems easy for anyone looking at it - was everything not going wrong in India for so long - but the fact that it ...

I am Indian, but I don't know India. That's an honest admission. I could have added - it is not possible to know India. It is so huge and diverse. The diversity is everywhere: India is the ultimate tower of babel, a modern day wonder of unification of languages, castes, religions and nationalities. But, then, I should not say it is not possible to know India, because there are some unifying principles. Vincent Smith, an Englishman who wrote a popular history of India, saw 'Unity in Diversity'. Others believed that you can always see India the way you want to see it. Yet others saw an ancient land, with eternal continuity, which is stirred by modernness but not yet greatly transformed. Whatever it is, it is complex. It is a rich mix of all varieties imaginable. It is a diverse geography, climate and people. The most common question I face is 'how is the weather in India?', to which I usually answer - it depends - leaving the enquirer perplexed. When the businessm...

When I picked up my phone this morning, I noticed I missed a call from a colleague of mine in Hyderabad. The call was oddly timed indeed - very early in the morning - and signified a sense of emergency. This was not one of those done by mistake for not being sensitive to time differences: I speak to this colleague almost on a daily basis, and he will know exactly what time is it. So, it must have been indeed an emergency. And, as I set myself to return the call, I had to glance over the day's news - just in case the office is not on fire and the whole computer system did not break down - and instantly knew what it was. Michael Jackson! I knew my colleague was a huge fan - and remained loyal through the years - and his untimely death, which saddened me as well, must have triggered his early morning condolence call. But, to my eye-popping surprise, the excitement was about Indian education sector, and not about Michael Jackson at all [and there was no fire]. Indian education has long...

I have finally seen Slumdog Millionaire as I am back to my movie times, long intercontinental flights. As I write this sitting in my favourite writing place, in the lounge at Dubai Airport, in the middle of the night, I must be honest in stating that parts of the movie was too graphic and painful to watch for me, and hence I skipped parts by channel switching between this beautiful movie and almost meaningless Quantum of Solace. But let me talk about Slumdog Millionaire. This is every bit as good as its Academy Awards [and other] honours suggest. Brilliant script and editing, some stellar performances, great music etc have already been mentioned in many other places. Dev Patel and Frieda Pinto surely are outstanding new faces and I am sure we will see more of them in the coming years. Irrfan Khan is very special, and he does a great cameo; so does Anil Kapoor. But I am no movie critic and will not pretend as one. I would rather return to my favourite subject - modern India. The star of...

Incredible India is a very good advertising campaign. It has great visuals and a simple message, it reaffirms the colours and the tunes and the great spectacles of India in an effective way. Indian government spends quite a bit of money, I am sure, as this is omnipresent in CNN and various other channels in the West, as well as a selection of high-end magazines. Country tourism ad-space is getting a bit crowded - I recall seeing ads for Pakistan [which, I initially thought, was a new version of Incredible India! ad] and Egypt [Egypt offers the Sun - specifically to British travellers, I suppose] on the same channels, apart from the regular inserts from Australians, Americans, Peruvians [Pack your six senses and come to Peru], Croatia [the Mediterranean as it once was], Greece et al . I have also recently noticed a new campaign in the newspapers in India, fronted by Aamir Khan, a very popular Bollywood actor. Indian tourism had a campaign running for a while - Atithi Debo bhobo ,...