Monday, September 7
The Hour of Imagination
About the news in the twenty four hours after the disappearance of YSR's helicopter; I read all the papers that morning and the piece wrote itself.
"... But most of all, an aviation accident provides a few breath-holding hours between the loss of contact and the proof of death, during which all speculation is valid, and the most awesome possible version of the story gets told.
In the present case, it went something like this: Naxals lie in wait in the Nagarjuna Sagar-Srisailam Reserve, a "Maoist hotbed" (IANS). With information about the CM's flight path, they mount an ambush from treetop positions along an elevated ridge. Taking down YSR would be the first in a series of critical strikes, which would include Sonia Gandhi and P Chidambaram. Alternatively, they will take YSR hostage (ET).
Unsteady in heavy rain and zero visibility, the ancient Bell 430 noses up to the ridge at a low speed. Using a tip from their copy of "Guerilla Air Defense: Anti-aircraft weapons and techniques for guerilla forces," the Maoists target the whizzing blades with light arms fire, which riccochets into the engine and the machinery of the helicopter (Mid-Day)..."
Continued at The Hoot...
"... But most of all, an aviation accident provides a few breath-holding hours between the loss of contact and the proof of death, during which all speculation is valid, and the most awesome possible version of the story gets told.In the present case, it went something like this: Naxals lie in wait in the Nagarjuna Sagar-Srisailam Reserve, a "Maoist hotbed" (IANS). With information about the CM's flight path, they mount an ambush from treetop positions along an elevated ridge. Taking down YSR would be the first in a series of critical strikes, which would include Sonia Gandhi and P Chidambaram. Alternatively, they will take YSR hostage (ET).
Unsteady in heavy rain and zero visibility, the ancient Bell 430 noses up to the ridge at a low speed. Using a tip from their copy of "Guerilla Air Defense: Anti-aircraft weapons and techniques for guerilla forces," the Maoists target the whizzing blades with light arms fire, which riccochets into the engine and the machinery of the helicopter (Mid-Day)..."
Continued at The Hoot...
Sunday, September 6
The News in Blues
Since the beta-release of the Hindu's new website, it's been widely observed* that every newspaper's website redesign seems engineered to make it look more or less like the Guardian. As far as I can tell, Tehelka was an early and less rigorous adopter; the HT website was more respectful of the source material (note how the titles are dichromatic); the Indian Express used a cloning machine; now the Hindu website, up since August 15, has also been grown from Guardian DNA.
There are a couple of design factors at work in this mimicry: layout and spacing, identical headline fonts (eerie: tab quickly between the Guardian, the Hindu, the HT and the IE home pages and it's like Being John Malkovich). I'm most curious about the colour palatte and, most basically, the minimal range of blue shades that apparently code for news in the digital era. According to the debut announcement of the Hindu 2.0, their new design expresses the "core values of independence, authenticity, and credibility" while also being contemporary.
Here's a game, a litmus-text for the most hardcore of (lefty) online news consumers. Can you match the newspaper / visual element to its adopted shade of blue?
A. Hindu 2.0 header
B. Hindu 2.0 headlines
C. indianexpress.com headlines
D. hindustantimes.com headlines
E. Tehelka headerF. Comment is Free headlines
G. Guardian.co.uk text
H. Guardian.co.uk header
* To give credit, I received the observation first from Vivek Bharathan and then Gautam Bhan.
There are a couple of design factors at work in this mimicry: layout and spacing, identical headline fonts (eerie: tab quickly between the Guardian, the Hindu, the HT and the IE home pages and it's like Being John Malkovich). I'm most curious about the colour palatte and, most basically, the minimal range of blue shades that apparently code for news in the digital era. According to the debut announcement of the Hindu 2.0, their new design expresses the "core values of independence, authenticity, and credibility" while also being contemporary.
Here's a game, a litmus-text for the most hardcore of (lefty) online news consumers. Can you match the newspaper / visual element to its adopted shade of blue?
A. Hindu 2.0 headerB. Hindu 2.0 headlines
C. indianexpress.com headlines
D. hindustantimes.com headlines
E. Tehelka headerF. Comment is Free headlines
G. Guardian.co.uk text
H. Guardian.co.uk header
For a bonus round, identify the newspaper website that employs these shades on the right (hint: its from a less parochial set).
(answers in Comments)
What I'm curious about is why the internet breeds colour conformity when the newspapers are so distinctive on the paper-page. Of course, you could find a hundred answers in neuroscience, developmental psychology and the sociology of colour: I'm more curious about what it says about the virtualization of the Indian newspaper (a more specific problem in sociology). Why didn't the Hindu feel it could carry forward the comforting powder-blue palette of the Hindu 1.0 (which I'll always fondly remember as Hinduonnet)? And doesn't the dull ochre field of the IE's Sunday header deserve a single pixel of online commemoration?
* To give credit, I received the observation first from Vivek Bharathan and then Gautam Bhan.
Tuesday, June 2
Lakshman Seth and the Sheriff of Nandigram
Beauty is all about the details, and these beautiful election results keep parading out new details for our appreciation. What I'm currently delighted about is the voters of Tamluk in West Bengal despatching their Communist MP, Lakshman Seth.
Seth has been in the Lok Sabha since 1998, stashing away the crores and adding fortifications to his eerie headquarters in Haldia. People say he did a good job of developing the Haldia port. Sure enough, if the business of America is business, then the industriousness of Lakshman Seth is directed purely towards industrialization. How come? Seth is also Chairman of the Haldia Development Authority. He allegedly gets a cut out of every industrial operation on his turf (what we dissertation-writers call ‘rent-seeking’). There’s a theory that this is why Nandigram was chosen as the site for the Salim plant, and why the resistance was so bitterly punished when the siege fell...
Continued at Kafila...
Seth has been in the Lok Sabha since 1998, stashing away the crores and adding fortifications to his eerie headquarters in Haldia. People say he did a good job of developing the Haldia port. Sure enough, if the business of America is business, then the industriousness of Lakshman Seth is directed purely towards industrialization. How come? Seth is also Chairman of the Haldia Development Authority. He allegedly gets a cut out of every industrial operation on his turf (what we dissertation-writers call ‘rent-seeking’). There’s a theory that this is why Nandigram was chosen as the site for the Salim plant, and why the resistance was so bitterly punished when the siege fell...
Continued at Kafila...
Friday, May 1
Ferozious and the Fake Degrees
An astonishing revelation about that whirling enigma, Firoz Varun Gandhi -- at the very peak of his national notoriety for giving vicious speeches during campaign rallies.As he began his self-fashioning as the hero of suppressed Hindu rage, there was a lot of chatter in the Indian media about how this contradicted with his earlier image as an urbane, London-educated, poetry-minded young gentleman (when he was Feroze). His degrees from SOAS and LSE, which were mentioned in every biographical sketch that appeared in the media, were the real curiousities. To his sympathizers, they were evidence that his political views, although crudely expressed, were basically reasonable, because he was so well educated; to his detractors, they were signs of just how craven and insincere he was, as his political personality was so much at odds with his intellectual background.
This contradiction made me curious, too, so I was following the LSE-SOAS statement -- this one -- closely. In correspondence with faculty and with sources in Delhi, I noticed a lot of dissonance about his college education. Everyone seemed to only be aware of it from everyone else. Even the subjects of his degrees were described inconsistently. I probed further and eventually received separate messages from LSE and SOAS that he did not have the degrees he claimed at all. Soon after, we firmed up the facts and ran the story in the Indian Express.
Outlook asked me to write a piece on how I got the proof together.
Varun responded to the IE article with a letter in which he finessed the status of his distance-study degree and make it seem valid to call it "from" LSE, although not "of" LSE. The letter is eye-wash. The Director of External Relations at LSE explained in an email:
"Degrees earned under the University of London's external programme are not degrees 'from' or 'sponsored by' LSE, nor are they 'taught according to [LSE's] own internal standards' (all these phrases are used in the articles). LSE provides high-quality academic direction to the provision of those University of London external programmes for which LSE has been designated so-called Lead College, but they are not LSE degrees. The only way to earn an LSE degree - or any other LSE qualification - is by studying physically at LSE in London.
Any claim that the LSE External Study office has described a degree earned under the University of London's external programme as a degree 'from' LSE can only be a misunderstanding or mistake by the reporter concerned."
Obviously, this level of clarification seemed to satisfy the journalistic world, and a stream of reports began to mention -- increasingly as if it were something they'd known all along -- that FVG lied about his degrees (here is an especially good one in India Today).
About charging him with perjury. The office of the public prosecutor in Allahabad has examined the situation and explained their conclusion to me:
"Undoubtedly, the averments in the writ petition, supported by a duly sworn affidavit, insofar as they pertain to the petitioner's educational qualifications, appear to be unauthenticated, and, in view of the statements by the concerned University authorities, they seem to actually be untrue. If this is the case, the provisions of sections 191 I.P.C., and 195 of the Cr.P.C., are attracted, and the delinquent deponent is open to prosecution."
ie, his case invites charges of perjury but public prosecutors have other things to pursue. Very reasonable, although it is sad that prominent politicians face no legal penalty for lying in Court.
Cartoon credit: the brilliant Sandeep Adhwaryu.
Sunday, February 1
No Parking
An excerpt of this was published in Time Out Delhi:
The night is too beautiful for thoughts of bloody revenge. I squeeze my eyes shut, try to cool my head of visions of neighborhood terrorism: Vernas and Sonatas being lifted into the sky on burning blossoms of dynamite, Accords and Civics (how ironic will those names seem then!) crumpling and flaming after I send lit cigarettes into their petrol tanks, the musical crack and tinkle of a crowbar entering a S-Class headlight, saloons going kaboom and sedans going blam.
Stop. Slow down. I can't give in to vengeance fantasies. I'm not a violent person - in fact I'm from South India, and since moving to Delhi, I have smugly defined myself in opposition to its driving culture of belligerence and threat. Those days may be over. I am standing over the violated body of my car, upon whose blue bonnet someone has pressed a key, and scratched out a broad, loopy, spiralling silver design. The message is clear enough: "My spot."
The Parking Wars have reached New Friends Colony. I was getting used to the low-intensity conflict of tyre deflation: jogging downstairs to the car with fourty minutes to reach Munirka, okay, but I'll have to step on it... and there she sits, two inches closer to the ground, wearing the queasy expression of a whale on the wrong side of the tide. You shriek. The girls down the street drop their badminton racquets and run indoors. The chowkidar who personally deflated your tyres that morning comes up to offer his consolations. You suffer from your moral wound for a few hours. After this is repeated a few times, it feels like a form of civic interaction. In milder times, neighbours asked you to turn down your music in the middle of a party; now they vandalize your property, but at least it is reversible vandalism.
If, however, you're messing with my paint job, there's no reason to believe in limits. Cars have all sorts of easily-fractured limbs -- side-view mirrors, antennae, windshield wipers -- and soft, fat fenders just begging for punishment. The neighborhood really isn't what it used to be.
Car vandalism is only a skin over the deep changes that parking scarcity has brought about in neighbourly relations. Legally, the parking space in front of a house is public property. Signs that say, "No Parking Here By Order of Police" are usually fiction. But when residents began to dismiss the public status of parking space, the police had better things to do than argue with resident professors and bureaucrats (retd.), and they came along quietly.
This annexation of public property into private ownership has an interesting flipside -- now, not to guard the space in front of your house is an act of broad philanthropy. Not exactly the same as converting your ancestral home into a school for the disabled, but with a whiff of the same antique noblesse oblige. Many times I have pulled up in front of old Mr Sinhas' home, and felt propelled by ancient rites of charity to shuffle forward and touch his feet.
Naturally, it did not stop there. People who live opposite a playground or a derelict building decided that, in these cases, their parking rights applied to both sides of the road. The spaces across the street had to belong to someone, obviously, now that the very notion of public property had fled. It is probably a matter of time before this arrangement produces its logical outcome, and we lay claim to the road itself. Where else is the fourth family car going to go?
Another logical outcome has already come about, namely that neighbours hate each others' guts. An gunpowdered atmosphere of tension and apprehension hangs over some of Delhi's most charming localities. It is necessary to view the professor living next door as a man capable of the blackest of deeds, a man out to seize the precious land that belongs to you and to your children. When he brings over a letter dropped in the wrong box, you must force out a handshake, the way Rabin shook the hand of Arafat. You still remember the arrival of his new white Innova, bridal in its fat pink ribbon, a car so grossly massive that from your balcony, it seemed to stretch the road as it passed down it, like a walnut passing down the gullet of a goose. There's been no peace since that day.
Delhi's residents bring 250,000 new cars in pink ribbons onto its roads every year. Already the point of total, motionless saturation seems to be in the visible future. Our parking problem makes clear the final futility of building flyovers and underpasses: streamlining traffic will not expand the spatial carrying capacity of roads. Delhi residents who use personal transport - cars or motorcycles - are still in the minority of commuters, but the percentage will tip over 50% soon, and cars will make up the largest part. If you're the kind of person who comforts herself about the troubles of today by imagining the catastrophes of tomorrow, have a slice of that. Quite soon, Delhi could become a city where parking is much less of a hassle -- compared to moving.
The night is too beautiful for thoughts of bloody revenge. I squeeze my eyes shut, try to cool my head of visions of neighborhood terrorism: Vernas and Sonatas being lifted into the sky on burning blossoms of dynamite, Accords and Civics (how ironic will those names seem then!) crumpling and flaming after I send lit cigarettes into their petrol tanks, the musical crack and tinkle of a crowbar entering a S-Class headlight, saloons going kaboom and sedans going blam.
Stop. Slow down. I can't give in to vengeance fantasies. I'm not a violent person - in fact I'm from South India, and since moving to Delhi, I have smugly defined myself in opposition to its driving culture of belligerence and threat. Those days may be over. I am standing over the violated body of my car, upon whose blue bonnet someone has pressed a key, and scratched out a broad, loopy, spiralling silver design. The message is clear enough: "My spot."
The Parking Wars have reached New Friends Colony. I was getting used to the low-intensity conflict of tyre deflation: jogging downstairs to the car with fourty minutes to reach Munirka, okay, but I'll have to step on it... and there she sits, two inches closer to the ground, wearing the queasy expression of a whale on the wrong side of the tide. You shriek. The girls down the street drop their badminton racquets and run indoors. The chowkidar who personally deflated your tyres that morning comes up to offer his consolations. You suffer from your moral wound for a few hours. After this is repeated a few times, it feels like a form of civic interaction. In milder times, neighbours asked you to turn down your music in the middle of a party; now they vandalize your property, but at least it is reversible vandalism.
If, however, you're messing with my paint job, there's no reason to believe in limits. Cars have all sorts of easily-fractured limbs -- side-view mirrors, antennae, windshield wipers -- and soft, fat fenders just begging for punishment. The neighborhood really isn't what it used to be.
Car vandalism is only a skin over the deep changes that parking scarcity has brought about in neighbourly relations. Legally, the parking space in front of a house is public property. Signs that say, "No Parking Here By Order of Police" are usually fiction. But when residents began to dismiss the public status of parking space, the police had better things to do than argue with resident professors and bureaucrats (retd.), and they came along quietly.
This annexation of public property into private ownership has an interesting flipside -- now, not to guard the space in front of your house is an act of broad philanthropy. Not exactly the same as converting your ancestral home into a school for the disabled, but with a whiff of the same antique noblesse oblige. Many times I have pulled up in front of old Mr Sinhas' home, and felt propelled by ancient rites of charity to shuffle forward and touch his feet.
Naturally, it did not stop there. People who live opposite a playground or a derelict building decided that, in these cases, their parking rights applied to both sides of the road. The spaces across the street had to belong to someone, obviously, now that the very notion of public property had fled. It is probably a matter of time before this arrangement produces its logical outcome, and we lay claim to the road itself. Where else is the fourth family car going to go?
Another logical outcome has already come about, namely that neighbours hate each others' guts. An gunpowdered atmosphere of tension and apprehension hangs over some of Delhi's most charming localities. It is necessary to view the professor living next door as a man capable of the blackest of deeds, a man out to seize the precious land that belongs to you and to your children. When he brings over a letter dropped in the wrong box, you must force out a handshake, the way Rabin shook the hand of Arafat. You still remember the arrival of his new white Innova, bridal in its fat pink ribbon, a car so grossly massive that from your balcony, it seemed to stretch the road as it passed down it, like a walnut passing down the gullet of a goose. There's been no peace since that day.
Delhi's residents bring 250,000 new cars in pink ribbons onto its roads every year. Already the point of total, motionless saturation seems to be in the visible future. Our parking problem makes clear the final futility of building flyovers and underpasses: streamlining traffic will not expand the spatial carrying capacity of roads. Delhi residents who use personal transport - cars or motorcycles - are still in the minority of commuters, but the percentage will tip over 50% soon, and cars will make up the largest part. If you're the kind of person who comforts herself about the troubles of today by imagining the catastrophes of tomorrow, have a slice of that. Quite soon, Delhi could become a city where parking is much less of a hassle -- compared to moving.
Tuesday, December 2
Fight Over Terror
I've said before that when it comes to the BJP, you may dislike their style, but you must compliment their timing; it is always impeccable. That was in September, when the BJP National Executive Committee was meeting in Bangalore. On Friday the 12th they had announced that terrorism would be their main campaign plank in the General Elections; this was carried in the papers on Saturday, just in time for the five bomb blasts that went off in Delhi on Saturday evening.
This week's on-the-beat response is harder to put down to serendipity: in the Delhi edition of the November 28th issue, printed while gunmen were still executing guests in the hallways of the Taj Mahal Hotel, the BJP had the lightening-quick reflexes to run an advertisement. Not in Bombay, where people were presumably aware of the brutal terror striking at will. Only in the edition in Delhi, where voters were sorting out their thoughts on whom to check off in the Assembly elections the next morning
In a press conference the previous day, Advani had said, "This is an hour for all sections of society to sink their differences so that the nation stands up as one body," before adding, sotto voce, "Against Sheila Dixit."
Myself, I'm not sure why the incumbent government should be spared our anger: as much as we'd like to think we're busy standing up as one body, we're not actually doing much more than expressing our sense of devastation to each other. "Weak Government. Unwilling and Incapable": I can't disagree. I anticipate a great difference in how the UPA fights terror, and how the BJP will: the UPA never convicts anyone, while the BJP will never convict anyone who is actually guilty. The window to this new horizon in non-anti-terrorism is the reinstatement of POTA; expect to hear much about how it will enable police to legally do things that fail to catch terrorists, instead of illegally doing things that fail to catch terrorists.
The BJP's bold, decisive action -- I mean taking out the advertisement -- will not go unrewarded; they will probably win Delhi, in which case I wish them luck with the Commonwealth Games (the Delhi Assembly elections' equivalent to inheriting the Iraq War during a recession). They will also having one solid crowbar of an advantage over the Congress, when it comes to fighting terrorists: the Anti-Terrorism Squad at least has one case ready to close, with enough evidence to convict key operatives, and the numbers for the rest are probably on someone's cellphone around the office on Ashoka Road.
The fact that the Party's top saffron had been lacerating the ATS chief until the day before he was killed (lacerating him, specifically, for his team's alleged use of POTA-endorsed methods) is one of those perplexities that we will never understand, and will be vaguely uncomfortable about forever. What happens to his investigation of Abhinav Bharat is anybody's guess, although if anybody is guessing, "Will it continue to be pursued at an appropriate priority until convinctions are obtained?", let me talk to you for a minute, over here in the corner.
As for the remainder of terrorist activity -- and don't tell me you've never wondered how much would remain -- if the BJP is seeking a credible reputation as willing and capable fighters of terrorism (rather than as the party that always seems to gain from it), they need to put a professional to work on their anti-terror portfolio, which currently contains (1) POTA, (2) ending the life of Afzal Guru, if it means Rajnath Singh has to personally kneel on his throat, (3) linking people, through six-degrees of invented association, to the murder of Haren Pandya, (4) advertising below the fold.
In a press conference the previous day, Advani had said, "This is an hour for all sections of society to sink their differences so that the nation stands up as one body," before adding, sotto voce, "Against Sheila Dixit."
Myself, I'm not sure why the incumbent government should be spared our anger: as much as we'd like to think we're busy standing up as one body, we're not actually doing much more than expressing our sense of devastation to each other. "Weak Government. Unwilling and Incapable": I can't disagree. I anticipate a great difference in how the UPA fights terror, and how the BJP will: the UPA never convicts anyone, while the BJP will never convict anyone who is actually guilty. The window to this new horizon in non-anti-terrorism is the reinstatement of POTA; expect to hear much about how it will enable police to legally do things that fail to catch terrorists, instead of illegally doing things that fail to catch terrorists.
The BJP's bold, decisive action -- I mean taking out the advertisement -- will not go unrewarded; they will probably win Delhi, in which case I wish them luck with the Commonwealth Games (the Delhi Assembly elections' equivalent to inheriting the Iraq War during a recession). They will also having one solid crowbar of an advantage over the Congress, when it comes to fighting terrorists: the Anti-Terrorism Squad at least has one case ready to close, with enough evidence to convict key operatives, and the numbers for the rest are probably on someone's cellphone around the office on Ashoka Road.
The fact that the Party's top saffron had been lacerating the ATS chief until the day before he was killed (lacerating him, specifically, for his team's alleged use of POTA-endorsed methods) is one of those perplexities that we will never understand, and will be vaguely uncomfortable about forever. What happens to his investigation of Abhinav Bharat is anybody's guess, although if anybody is guessing, "Will it continue to be pursued at an appropriate priority until convinctions are obtained?", let me talk to you for a minute, over here in the corner.
As for the remainder of terrorist activity -- and don't tell me you've never wondered how much would remain -- if the BJP is seeking a credible reputation as willing and capable fighters of terrorism (rather than as the party that always seems to gain from it), they need to put a professional to work on their anti-terror portfolio, which currently contains (1) POTA, (2) ending the life of Afzal Guru, if it means Rajnath Singh has to personally kneel on his throat, (3) linking people, through six-degrees of invented association, to the murder of Haren Pandya, (4) advertising below the fold.
Tuesday, August 12
Trigger-Happy Times
Congratulations, Abhinav Bindra. India has won its first Olympic gold medal in an individual event. Field hockey used to be the only Olympic sport in which India was a contender, but this year the national team failed to even 
qualify. In the six Olympics prior, the hockey team hadn’t made it as far as the semi-finals. Now, it seems, Indians are finally good at something again: short-range shooting.
Which brings me to the second item on the front page of the broadsheets: police shot at unarmed protest-marchers in Kashmir, killing five people, including a member of the Hurriyat Conference. Eight more protestors have been shot dead today.
***
qualify. In the six Olympics prior, the hockey team hadn’t made it as far as the semi-finals. Now, it seems, Indians are finally good at something again: short-range shooting.Which brings me to the second item on the front page of the broadsheets: police shot at unarmed protest-marchers in Kashmir, killing five people, including a member of the Hurriyat Conference. Eight more protestors have been shot dead today.
Continued at Pass the Roti...
***
Outlook Traveller dispatched me to Paris for a week, to write about the city in the summer. I complained bitterly, but they insisted. The story - my first piece of travel writing, apart from Jaunpur - is the cover of their August issue.
Monday, May 26
The Dumbest Charade
Strange times: for the last week, Delhi has pulled a blanket of cool, rainy weather over its head, and seems to have fallen into a snooze -- but Bangalore is scorching hot with news: a new shiny airport, a new Saffron government and plenty of new newspapers to cover it all.
Because I didn't feel obsolete enough, writing for the print media, the Deccan Chronicle's launch campaign in Bangalore is a straight bullet to the heart:
What it says in the far corner is: "Less words, more news." As the blogger I stole this photo from points out, since when does knocking all the vowels out of words result in less words? There must be an answer to that, but it is probably wordless, so we will never know. People have been saying for several years that the Indian newspaper editor is dead or gone into hiding: now it looks like he has been rooted out and is about to be publicly drawn-and-quartered.
As for me, like a dinosaur sinking meditatively into a tar pit, I'm still mired in the notion that solid news requires more words than it gets at present -- and vowels, as well -- and still banging out bottomless stories like this one about the panchayat polls in Nandigram, the cover of the May 24th Tehelka.
Because I didn't feel obsolete enough, writing for the print media, the Deccan Chronicle's launch campaign in Bangalore is a straight bullet to the heart:
As for me, like a dinosaur sinking meditatively into a tar pit, I'm still mired in the notion that solid news requires more words than it gets at present -- and vowels, as well -- and still banging out bottomless stories like this one about the panchayat polls in Nandigram, the cover of the May 24th Tehelka.
Thursday, April 17
Tales from the Tar Pit
"Only in India," GB remarked as we watched the howling Tibet protest, "Can you make a film that is located in South Africa, with no black people, with Indians behaving like the worst stereotypes of white people, and an impoverished little white boy catching an apple core tossed away by Anil Kapoor..."
The protesters erupted in a deafening roar.
"... and, without a hint of irony, call the film 'Race'."
* * *
I'm browsing Gregory Rabassa's memoir, "If This Be Treason," which I found as a gift for a friend. Rabassa translated One Hundred Years of Solitude into English, and according to the blurb, Marquez is supposed to have said that his translation was superior to the original in Spanish. Hearing this kind of thing is a delight to me, as someone who has only ever read novels in one language. I hate hearing that I'm only getting a dull facsimile, as though it is a natural rule for a text to become warped and dessicated as it is brought into another language. I can easily imagine a great translator doing the opposite of manhandling it.
And imagine if Rabassa had translated his translation back into Spanish -- what a magnificent book we would be left with!
* * *
My story on the failure to clean up the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal and the toxic contamination of nearby drinking water is the cover of the April 9th Tehelka.
The black-and-whites that accompanied the story (Which the not-easily-pleased S. described as, "elegiac, poignant, beautiful... but they should be words to describe a Proulx short story, not a hard-hitting, nasty-truth story,") are by Sohrab Hura. On his website here, a few of the most moving images that did not make it into the magazine.
The protesters erupted in a deafening roar.
"... and, without a hint of irony, call the film 'Race'."
* * *
I'm browsing Gregory Rabassa's memoir, "If This Be Treason," which I found as a gift for a friend. Rabassa translated One Hundred Years of Solitude into English, and according to the blurb, Marquez is supposed to have said that his translation was superior to the original in Spanish. Hearing this kind of thing is a delight to me, as someone who has only ever read novels in one language. I hate hearing that I'm only getting a dull facsimile, as though it is a natural rule for a text to become warped and dessicated as it is brought into another language. I can easily imagine a great translator doing the opposite of manhandling it.
And imagine if Rabassa had translated his translation back into Spanish -- what a magnificent book we would be left with!
* * *
My story on the failure to clean up the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal and the toxic contamination of nearby drinking water is the cover of the April 9th Tehelka.
The black-and-whites that accompanied the story (Which the not-easily-pleased S. described as, "elegiac, poignant, beautiful... but they should be words to describe a Proulx short story, not a hard-hitting, nasty-truth story,") are by Sohrab Hura. On his website here, a few of the most moving images that did not make it into the magazine.Monday, February 18
Eyes in the Sky
Northrop Grumman, the aeronautics and weapons manufacturer, takes out a full backpage advertisement in the Indian Express. "The launch of a new era in battlespace dominance," it says about its E2-D Hawkeye recon aircraft, which possesses "a new generation of radar systems, integrated communications and cutting edge tools". Alright - but are we supposed to rush out and buy one, to assemble on the living room floor?I've never seen anything of this sort before: military manufacturers grabbing for eyeballs in the media. I'd understand if it were a newsletter for procurement agents and MoD senior bureaucrats, but I don't see how it profits NG to get the general public pepped up about 'battlespace dominance.'
It is, of course, hot news that India is among the "largest potential growth markets for defense products" - the unnerving phrase belongs to NG's President, John Brooks - and that hundreds of foreign arms manufacturers at this year's Defense Expo have been jostling for the honour of defending India's battlespace. "In for a billion, in for a trillion," as they say in the arms biz, and with India expressing interest in a private-public collaboration to develop ballistic missile defense, there is clearly much more juice in the can ($30 billion in the next five years, says the TOI). Moreover, NG has a competitive advantage in the homeland security sector, which is apparently expected to cost India $9.7 billion by 2016.
Still, we're not talking about consumer durables here - none of this seems to call for a public relations campaign by the Big Guns. I can't help thinking that NG's advertising isn't directed at sales at all, but at making friends with the newspapers. As Arindam Chaudhuri knows, nothing says quid pro quo like a full backpage ad.
* * *
The lingo of defense deals is full of brilliant artifice, beginning with the way arms manufacturers now righteously self-describe as "defense contractors" (because they provide products and services to militaries, different from providing weapons and weapons systems). My favourite is the MoD's use of "most capital intensive" - it makes "most expensive" sound like a good thing.
Wednesday, January 16
Notes from 2007
I've found a digital version of Bhagya da Lakshmi to play in the morning. In my song library, "Purandaradasa" now appears between "Puff Daddy feat. Ginuwine" and "Pussycat Dolls."
* * *
Went to Benares; love visiting the capitals of world religions for how profane they make me feel. At the Kashi Visvanath temple, surplus priests press through the desperate crowds, splashing milk in the eye of anyone who looks like they might need to be relieved of the maya of a hundred rupee note. Manikarnika Ghat, where they burn the dead, is one of the most engrossing places I have ever been. I have never before felt warmly towards the idea of an electric crematorium.
* * *
I heard that, within fourty-eight hours of being nominated President of the PPP, Bilawal Zardari updates his name on his Facebook profile to Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.
* * *
Speaking of people at Oxford, I have applied to Oxford. The online application asks you to choose the languages you speak from a list - but there are only twenty-five listed. "Hindi" and "Kannada" are absent, as are all the other Indian languages. Fortunately, "American" was an option. I marked myself as Fluent.
* * *
Went to Benares; love visiting the capitals of world religions for how profane they make me feel. At the Kashi Visvanath temple, surplus priests press through the desperate crowds, splashing milk in the eye of anyone who looks like they might need to be relieved of the maya of a hundred rupee note. Manikarnika Ghat, where they burn the dead, is one of the most engrossing places I have ever been. I have never before felt warmly towards the idea of an electric crematorium.
* * *
I heard that, within fourty-eight hours of being nominated President of the PPP, Bilawal Zardari updates his name on his Facebook profile to Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.
* * *
Speaking of people at Oxford, I have applied to Oxford. The online application asks you to choose the languages you speak from a list - but there are only twenty-five listed. "Hindi" and "Kannada" are absent, as are all the other Indian languages. Fortunately, "American" was an option. I marked myself as Fluent.
