B.E.S.T. & Worst

(Published in Time Out Magazine, April 2006)

Five rupees is a lot of money. Two weeks ago, I saved a lot of money when I rode ticket-less from Fountain to Cuffe Parade on bus number 138. 'Free hai, free hai!' the conductor said when I held out a tenner. What? Why? The conductor motioned me to move along. 'Ticket nai, free hai, free hai!' is all he would say. I sat down next to a middle-aged man. 'No ticket?' I asked delightedly. My fellow-passenger shrugged coldly. I looked around at the other deadpan faces. What was wrong with everyone? A free ride, in a city like this, was an occasion for joyous revelry!

As the bus pulled in at the next stop, I suppressed my chortles and watched the next lot of passengers clambering in, oblivious to the pleasant surprise awaiting them. A bumpkin-type became alarmed when the conductor refused to give him a ticket. Other passengers had to intervene and assure the panicky fellow that there really was no charge for this ride.

I looked out of the window. Our double-decker bus was now winding down Marine Drive. The city seemed more beautiful than usual. There was the sea glittering under the afternoon sun. I wanted to stick my head out and yell at passersby to hop on and enjoy this unprecedented gesture of municipal munificence.

The bus took a turn towards LIC. I restrained my over-excitement and tried to imagine some sane reason for this bonanza. Was the B.E.S.T. finally shutting shop? Was this free ride their swan song? Or had New Delhi taken mercy on Mumbai at last?

I looked around. The conductor was sitting in the opposite aisle, two seats behind me, enjoying the ride for once. This time I wouldn't take no for an answer. 'Free kayko hai?' I asked. My listless fellow passengers turned their heads perfunctorily. 'TV channel ney bhaadey pey liya,' the conductor replied. What channel? Which channel? The conductor named a popular Hindi TV channel and pointed to the front, where a twenty-something man was sitting in the seat behind the driver's. The chap was wearing a T-shirt and cap with the TV channel's logo. I knew that TV channel; was familiar with its imbecilic programs and its vociferous media campaigns. But this was a new low: bribing citizens with free bus rides in an attempt to earn our precious viewer-ship.

After the bus had pulled away from the Mantralaya stop, the TV channel stooge in T-shirt and cap stood up and addressed us passengers. He began talking about some soon-to-be-aired reality show. By then I had already rushed to the back of the moving bus. I stood on the exit platform for the rest of the journey, clutching a metal railing, swearing to get off, but never quite managing to.

Mumbai Spirit – R.I.P.

(Published in People Magazine, 1 December 2008, days after the Mumbai terror attacks)

My family’s first outing since bloody Wednesday was to a mall near our home. The place wasn’t as packed as other Saturday evenings. Yet, there were enough people around who, like us, needed the reassurance that normal life was still possible – something we’d begun to doubt since the mayhem began on Wednesday, and continued into Thursday, and even as we went to bed on Friday night, Saturday threatened to be no different (which, thankfully, it was). The food court, as usual, was the busiest place in the mall. As one looked on to the subdued crowd of couples, college students, and families with kids, one couldn’t help imagine what horror might ensue if someone rushed in and fired indiscriminately at the unsuspecting diners. Thoughts like these drain the joy from life. Yet, it is something we must live with from now on – with the probability of sudden and deadly intrusion into our most innocent and lovely moments.

The ‘spirit of Mumbai’ was first lauded during the floods of 2005. After the train blasts of 2006, it was exhumed, dusted like an old blanket, and waved about like a banner. Like some dependable old saint, the ‘spirit of Mumbai’ has repeatedly come to our rescue, calming our nerves, making us feel less stupid for allowing ourselves to be targeted and screwed-over and killed, again and again and again. Mumbai may be drowning, blasted out of its wits, and a sitting duck for every psychopath organization out to make its gruesome point, but at least we Mumbaikars have had the fortitude to keep working, to keep traveling and smiling no matter how many bodies we’ve had to step over to get to our destination. It’s no wonder that inept politicians and corrupt government officials have loved the ‘spirit of Mumbai’. Despite repeated instances of systemic corruption and official dereliction of duty, we’ve carried on, often without a choice, always with the cheerfulness of slaves.

Know what? This time the slaves are angry. They are truly, inconsolably, and immeasurably furious. And the god-damned spirit of Mumbai can shove it. While people like us were being systematically and cold-bloodedly butchered in other parts of our own city, the rest of us had to pack our lunches, pack into trains, and trudge to office, pretending like it was just another normal working day.

Past tragedies have made us experts of aftermaths. We know how to forget, how to move on. But this time, we were asked to do the impossible: we were told to disregard the evidence of our own senses. We could hear the gunshots and feel the explosions. We could see the plumes of smoke. We could smell the stench of rotting blood as we got off our trains. And every uniformed gun-toting policeman was a terrifying reminder of the battle unfolding just kilometers away.

The attack on Mumbai lasted long enough to make us despise our own resilience. If only we weren’t so well behaved; if only we weren’t so brave and hardworking and good. The whole of New York City stayed shut for days after 9/11. In most parts of Mumbai, life remained normal even during what is unimaginatively being called ‘India’s 9/11’. (Journalistic laziness has truly reached its nadir.)

People who claim that Mumbaikars have no choice but to get to work are underrating the affluence of our city. For every Dharavi-dwelling peon who would starve if he didn’t toil, there are at least a couple of moneyed merchants living in Breach Candy or Malabar Hill who could afford to live comfortably without ever getting out of their homes. It is on the shoulders of these affluent, privileged people – and make no mistake, there are hundreds of thousands of them in Mumbai – that the responsibility of our city’s well being truly lies. This time, by striking at the very playgrounds of rich Mumbai – the Taj Mahal Hotel and the Trident-Oberoi Hotel – the terrorists have embroiled the city’s high and mighty. These are people with contacts and financial muscle, and if they decide to, they can use their clout to force politicians to make this city safer not just for their own employees and business interests, but for all seventeen million of us.

The ‘spirit of Mumbai’ may as yet have a chance to break free from the stranglehold of cliché and to become an active force that can inspire the rest of the nation. Those of us directly unaffected ought to be no less enraged by the attack on our city. The important thing will be to keep our anger going until there are no further occasions when we must be praised for our so-called spirit.

Losing My Shine

(Published in Time Out Mumbai, June 2006)

Earlier this month, coinciding with the buzz surrounding the film Gangster, a national weekly commissions me to interview actor Shiney Ahuja, Gangster's hero number two. My attempt at conducting a scholarly email interview bombs. We schedule a face-to-face for a Monday evening.

After an hour's wait at a Lokhandwala coffee shop, Ahuja sends his car to pick me up. I assume we are going to his house. Thirty minutes later, the car pulls in at the entrance of In Orbit Mall, Malad. "Where is Shiney?" I ask the driver. "I don't know, I was asked to drop you here," the driver replies. I stumble out of the car amid armies of mall rats. It is past dinner time. I am tired and mildly terrified by the absurdity of the situation. Ahuja has stopped answering his phone.

Wanting nothing more to do with neurotic, perverse, and disrespectful Bollywood stars ever again, I decide to abandon the interview and to feed myself before my trek back home. On my way to a pizzeria on the third floor, I spot Ahuja emerging from the multiplex. He is lumbering through a crowd of men, women and children clamoring for autographs and photos. Despite the run-around I've been given, I introduce myself to someone in the actor's entourage to fulfil what I believe is a journalistic duty. Minutes later, I am back in Ahuja's car, conducting the interview en route to his Lokhandwala residence.

The actor is sorry for making me wait. The promotional event at the multiplex kept getting delayed. I learn that Ahuja's roles affect him – they make him vulnerable and moody. He is glad that Aamir Khan lent himself to the Narmada Bachao Andolan, but nothing worries Ahuja enough to want to make him raise his voice. He hopes someone will make a biopic on Mother Teresa someday, and his most frequently read book is Sanford Meisner on Acting.

I ask Ahuja what he thinks of Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi, Sudhir Mishra's Emergency-era masterpiece, in which Ahuja played the role of Vikram. "I get something new every time I see it. The film's like a novel," the actor says. Would he change anything about the film? "No, it's perfect," Ahuja says. I remind him of the confusing transitions between some scenes. He tells me I am missing the point. He launches into an animated analysis of HKA, and tells me things I hadn't noticed despite repeated viewings. When deconstructing a scene from the film, he re-enacts it precisely. Such recall is suggestive of a deeper connection to a role than that of a mere performer.

A week later, when I turn in my feature, the editor at the national weekly finds it unremarkable and refuses to publish it. I should have eaten the bloody pizza.

Spoiled Rotten

(Published in Time Out Mumbai, November 2006)

As if hauling us down to Germany for the Frankfurt Book Fair wasn’t generous enough, the National Book Trust of India (NBT) issued Business Class tickets to us writers. When my wife and I landed at Frankfurt, we were received by a striking young lady of Bengali descent – my ‘personal assistant’ – one of several German nationals appointed to escort us writers around the city and to ensure that we reached our scheduled readings on time.

A chauffeur-driven car drove us to Hotel Intercontinental, which was to be our address for the next two weeks. Our room on the seventh floor had a view of the River Main. I was warned by my PA that the mini-bar was out of bounds. For someone who thought he had forever bid goodbye to the corporate world and its concomitant perks, I was bewildered by the mere presence of the mini-bar, and the PA, and the plush hotel room. The bedside cabinet had a copy of the Bible and a book titled The Buddha’s Teachings (presumably to ward off pangs of guilt that might assail someone enjoying such luxury at public expense). I settled for the Buddha tome and its message of life as suffering.

The breakfast buffet was served at the hotel’s Signatures Veranda Restaurant from 6:30am to 10am – not enough time to sample the incredible variety of cheese, fruit juices, cereals, breads, eggs, preserves, cookies, meats, pan-cakes, waffles… One felt compelled to overeat if only to prevent wastage of such perfectly good food. As souvenirs for folks back home, I flicked as many mini-jars of honey and jam as my moral threshold would permit.

The best part about breakfast was pausing with a laden plate at the entrance of the dining area, while deciding whom to break bread with. Sahitya-Akademi-Award-winning novelist Amit Chaudhuri and his family, or the bilingual poet Dilip Chitre and his wife Viju? If I ate with Tamil poet Salma, would Telugu poets K Siva Reddy and Shahjahana feel snubbed? Would it be insolent of me – a first time novelist, and an English one, at that – to join Ajeet Cour or UR Ananthmurthy at their tables? And what could I possibly say to distinguished Hindi poet Gagan Gill (after I was dumb enough to ask on the first day if she was NBT director Nuzhat Hassan)?

The Indian government's hospitality stopped short of our clothes. When it came to laundry, the NBT put its foot down and refused to foot the bill. Unsure of how a request for a bucket might be perceived by Room Service, I complained of swollen feet that needed to be soaked in warm water. A vegetable crate was sent up half an hour later. My wife used the shampoo as detergent. By the time I was done draping our wet clothes all over the furniture, the room looked like something we were more used to. We kicked back on the impossibly soft bed, glad at having saved a little bit of our nation’s money.

On Vipassana

(Published in Time Out Mumbai, January 2008)

Dalit Voice deems it a Brahmanical conspiracy to brainwash innocent Dalits and kill their revolutionary zeal. It has a presence on every continent except Antarctica. People either flee it by day two, or they return for course upon course, year upon year. To those of us who've survived the grueling ten days, it would seem the world is fast splitting into two: those who have, and those who haven't been for a course in vipassana meditation "as taught by SN Goenka". This is an important disclaimer. More than 2,500 years have passed since vipassana, or insight meditation, was rediscovered by Gautama the Buddha. Since then, successive teachers have adapted the technique to suit their own era.

SN Goenka, a Marwari from Burma, offers vipassana for our digital times. At centers situated within the most idyllic natural surroundings, the technique is taught over ten days using Goenka's audio and video recordings. Wonder how the Buddha would've judged this employment of technology, given the violence inherent to the production of audio-video equipment and the electricity needed to power such equipment. Odd, too, that by relegating Assistant Teachers to mere manipulators of CD and DVD players, Goenka would chose to deny this ancient technique the immediacy it demands. But then, it wouldn't be "vipassana as taught by…"

Charges of excessive control and borderline cultishness aside, Goenka's vipassana centers are one of the few non-commercial options left in a severely compromised self-discovery market.

The courses are open to all and they are free the world over. That's ten days of free fresh vegetarian meals and comfortable shared or independent accommodation. With no access to newspapers, television, radio, magazines, or the internet, and a strict rule against the possession of cell-phones and reading books, a vipassana course is an entry into controlled wilderness.

The technique is easy to imbibe. Goenka's exhaustive recordings in English and Hindi guide students at every step of the way. A familiarity with Buddhist texts might make things less mystifying to new students, given the liberal references to metaphysical concepts such as 'sankhara' and 'anicca', as well as Goenka's frequent chanting of Suttas in a guttural Lama-like drone. This cultural baggage, thankfully, is not central to the technique.

It is to Goenka's eminent credit that in a time of Hindu resurgence, when it would have been expedient to align with the ethos of the majority, vipassana centers, especially in India, have preserved the universal non-communal appeal of the Buddha's teachings.

According to the international homepage of organizations offering vipassana under Goenka'a tutelage, the technique aims at the highest spiritual goals of total liberation and full enlightenment. Goenka calls vipassana The Art of Living. After experiencing the exquisite torture of addhittana that commences from day four, when students must remain immobile for upto an hour, old-timers prefer calling vipassana the Art of Suffering. And that, perhaps, is the most pertinent aspect of this ancient technique. As the ecological repurcussions of our consumerism become harder to dodge, vipassana might just be the skill we need to endure the discomforts of going green.

That leaves us with Dalit Voice and its grouse against Vipassana's neutralizing effects. As if the only good revolutionary is a frantic and single-minded one. Training in self-awareness and centredness is a revolution of the mind, be it Dalit, Muslim, Brahmin, Parsi... The results may not be as expected, but they are usually remembered for thousands of years.