There is virtue in being boring. Which is why it can’t get that. Unlike what or who once used to not be.
We may have had trouble defining the previous decade, but the next must be really easy. Any that follows one where the mediocre got famous always is. Whatever one tries, one will suck at it. Because someone worse had tried it already.
Two mediocre books on this topic, written in this period, come to mind. Hence the proof.
Unless one is Hendrick Hertzberg, one cannot make a reasonable case for the raison d’être of government being “doing something” as opposed to “prevent the worst thing being done”. Political discourse at all levels, one could argue, is some variation of this dichotomy.
Independent India achieved that equilibrium by virtue of government inefficiency. The middle classes outside television studios get that instantly and rarely question it. Which is why, those within discuss Tharoor instead of wondering how their tax returns will be on my hands soon. This only gets uglier,
Mr. Gandhi rejected the grounds cited by them, arguing that the claim to privacy was not a universal right applicable to all humans in all circumstances. The Right to Information had been codified, and in a conflict between privacy claims and the Right to Information, the latter must prevail. He held that filing tax returns was a statutory obligation and must be treated as a public activity open to scrutiny. As a tax assessee had already provided information to the state as part of his or her legal duties, its disclosure to “another person cannot be construed as an unwarranted invasion of privacy of the individual.”
Spartacus never had these many people. Be prepared and stock up on K-Y Jelly, dear boys and girls.
Initiation rituals are sacred for a good reason. And year-end lists in the era of social media explain that better than most. People who have read less than ten books in the year feel compelled to come out with top 10 lists.
1996 is not even that far away. If John Edwards had died in 2009, one can be reasonably sure Amit Varma would have written an year end tribute. If Joe Liberman had, not so much. But Jack Kemp did and we did not hear at all from Amits. And Jack Kemp was not an obscure one-term senator from North Carolina who plagiarized random European communists to deliver one speech. He instead ran against a person who’d plagiarized better in 1988 and won the bid in 2008. Before that, he’d been a member of the House of Representatives for nearly two decades and a football star at the AFL (Okay, the NFL had him as a third string quaterback and dumped him. And he ended up lucky as bored millionaires decided to challenge the NFL just then). The point is, he had way more accomplishments than John Edwards or Sarah Palin. Kemp was also an anti-tax fiscal conservative who randomly spouted supply side economics he did not understand, the kind Amits claim to love anyway.
Web 2.0 makes initiation into most aspects ridiculously simple and my fear is, that takes the charm away for those who can actually charm. Eventually.
This domain expires in another 10 days. To renew it myself would be stupid.
Is there anyone else who wants this? Just in case.
Travel writing in the age of social media is like using an aavin paal cover after you can afford a condom in both economic and social terms. It’s not just gross, it defeats the fucking purpose. Both as an adjective and a verb.
The case of writing about Cities, possibly, is a little less annoying. However, if you need a reason other than it being home, you should merely read Peter Taylor’s ‘A Summons to Memphis’ and not bother.
Madras, like Nashville, is home.
Sajjad Lone contested in the 2009 Lok Sabha Elections from Baramulla-Kupwara. The idea, predictably, was hailed by the electronic media. Separatists contesting elections, we were told, is a sign of a maturing democracy; of which, everything apparently is.
In 1963, the Sixteenth Amendment of the Constitution was passed in Parliament. After the debacle of 1962, when China whooped India’s ass, the Congress government had decided that separatists were evil and their demands unpatriotic. CN Annadurai, in his inimitable style, argued that the Amendment was practically aimed at one person — namely him. And his demand for Dravida Nadu. The DMK was forced to drop the demand for a sovereign Dravida Nadu and has not raised it since for both practical and legal constraints.
I don’t know how good a campaigner Meera Sanyal is . Or how good her political communication is — from what I see on TV, it sucks. She is smug and has no charisma to back that up.
Then, there is another Independent. This time, from South Madras. Sarath Babu has fallen into the familiar trap of political idealism. However, the really favorable press he’s been getting, added with a political rhetoric that goes along ‘I know what hunger is’, makes it hard to ignore him.
Of course, it’s not fashionable now to remember how MGR and M Karunanidhi faced poverty and discrimination much worse. Or how their story of artistic and political triumph is actually a change we have been handed over.
Change, by definition, is always sought. Never cherished.
Daniyal Mueenuddin’s depiction of feudal order in Pakistan will shock the young in this country. And, possibly, make some of the old feel unappreciated. At least my grandfather, had he been alive, would most certainly have said, ‘I told you so’. Maybe, readers from North India belonging to parts that still haven’t carried out land reform will identify themselves with Mueenuddin’s Pakistan in an entirely different plane.
Centered around a Zamindari type family, Daniyal Mueenuddin’s collection of short stories explores characters across the social spectrum. His portrayal of boredom amongst the rich is remarkable in its honesty. Though, one could argue, his characterization of the poor is sometimes simplistic and he does not lend them the care they deserve. As his land owning patriarch, Mr Harouni, Daniyal too seems to not be fully aware that the servants have a life outside of being servants. Their lives appear viewed from a Zamindar’s eye even when set in a first person narrative. However, the richness in detail and the author’s ability to weave an engaging tale makes the reader more forgiving.
A friend of mine tells me, Daniyal Mueenuddin’s gifted but sometimes not so taut prose is a function of Urdu. She believes Urdu is simply a better language when compared to most Indian ones. That may be true of Hindi. Or, Bengali, if Amitav Ghosh gets included[1]. However, when followed with Tobias Wolff, the difference is stark. In the other direction. Pleasures of a raw talented story teller compared with a master completely in control over writing technique.
[1] — I remembered the Englishman from Sea of Poppies who said something like ‘everyone with 2 acres of land calls himself a Raja’. That was probably the biggest foundation for a feudal structure. Then, Bengal became red.
Reasonable people understand fiction as a way of exploring life. Which explains why this category of people will not review Slumdog Millionaire. However, the obvious binary solution space of idiots who did and the rest who did not blurs a lot more when two accomplished story tellers are considered.
JM Coetzee and Philip Roth.
I do not know what it is that makes Roth American. His stories are set in Americana[1] but that is hardly a reason. So were Faulkner’s and Cheever’s and those never struck one as distinctly American. Maybe it’s his story arc that is simplistic or a world view that is self absorbed — not the characters’ but that of the author himself. Then there is the matter of prose, which is mostly very good and occasionally lazy. These are slips that most readers, and therefore I, forgive. What is jarring, I realized, is what she had nailed.
It’s not lazy prose but lazy fiction. Roth sometimes does not lend enough care to stay honest with all his characters. Like with Marcus Messner’s mother in Indignation. The otherwise wonderful book has the mother delivering a monologue of sorts to her son that is way beyond what a butcher’s wife would have said in the 50s. I was also let down a bit by the lazy prose in parts of Everyman that essentially stemmed from the author speaking for his characters.
Those two Roth books were separated in my reading order by JM Coetzee’s Slow Man. I’d agree this is not Coetzee’s best. Yet his command over lean prose made me realize something that Roth and therefore most American novelists lack. The matter-of-factness that is essential to lean prose is contributed to largely by the complexity of the society the author engages with. And grew up in. There is only so much a 300 year old society can mold a story teller into.
I loved Indignation despite Americana. It was my story, only set in a wrong place. I loved Slow Man even better. Made me want get a wife and procreate. Everyman made me worried about growing old before Slow Man had me planning for progeny. In all, women with money and a functioning uterus are invited.
[1] — I mean Americana to imply something slightly different from this. But you get that.
I do not understand South Bombay.
A banker wants to contest elections. In 2009. She’s running for national legislator promising local executive type action. And, there are bourgeois boys and girls from the Internets who want to support her.
Of course, the same people will also bemoan the way politics gets reduced to a power game when a Mulayam Singh Yadav does the same thing. Albeit, clad in a funny dress. Or, in a language and an accent they don’t think in.