A meeting with Sai Baba, 32 years ago

In 1979, as a 11 year-old boy, I first saw Sai Baba, in person, at the Sai Baba Headquarters in Bombay.
It was on the extensive grounds of what was called, Dharmakshetra, as the Headquarters was named.
My father, mother, and two brothers had come in around 1 pm to the vast shamiana. Though the Darshan was only to be at 5 pm, people had come in from the morning, and there was a vast sea of humanity, singing bhajans.
As time went on, the crowd kept increasing, and the excitement grew.
It was a very different and unique kind of excitement: the excitement that, at 5 pm, you would actually see God in person.
The bhajans kept increasing in tempo, and people started singing them full throatedly.
After 5 pm, everybody's attention was on the stretch of road down which Sai Baba would come in his Black Mercedes.
When he finally came, at 5.30 pm, everybody held their breath, as the Black Mercedes stopped, and there was a glimpse of an orange robe, and Sai Baba came out.
A collective sound, half gasp, half roar went through the crowd, as people strained to see him.
Some people folded their hands in veneration, and others put their hands up, palms facing Baba's direction, as though to catch the rays of holiness coming from him.
Goose pimples erupted through me, and I watched him, rapt in attention.
Sai Baba pulled up a little bit of his robe with one hand, so that it would not snag, and delicately walked through the walkways built through the crowd. Wherever he went, people in the front rows reached out to him. Sometimes he talked to them, sometimes wrote on the slip of paper they showed to him, and sometimes he took the petitions people gave him. He would hand over the petitions to orderlies coming behind him, hunched over lest they block people's view of Baba.
Occasionally, he would materialize Vibhuti, and distribute it in the crowd.
There must have been a crowd of 50,000 there, and every pair of eyes followed Baba, as he walked down the length of the shamiana.
Baba would, once in while, move his hand in circular motion, as though in wonderment at God's creation, or Maya.
Finally, he went up to the podium, and delivered a speech in Telugu, which was translated into English by an interpreter. The speech was about being good, about the need to pray to God, and about the transience of earthly life. He never referred to himself as God or talked about his miracles.
After the speech, he sat on a throne-like chair, watching us, as we sang Bhajans.
There was a sense of being his children, a sense of perfect safety and fulfillment.
When he left, there was a feeling of loss, a sense of 'what are we going to do with the rest of our life".
The kind of feeling you would get if you had actually seen God, and spent an hour with him, and then he went away.
In the ultimate analysis, Sai Baba may or may not have been a fraud or fake, but the emotions we felt, our devotion was genuine.
Perhaps, ultimately that's what matters.
What's more, I  believe that every single person who was in that crowd of 50,000 in 1981 would have   succumbed to the belief that he was divine: the electric atmosphere, the hours of singing, and the way Baba was showcased ensured that.
If you have not seen Baba in the flesh, at his darshans, you will not understand the phenomenon......

Stumbling on to Anish Kapoor in a natural setting

In February, like so many Delhiites, I went to the National Gallery of Modern Art, to see the famous modernist sculptor, Anish Kapoor's work. Like so many others, I found the circular mirrors, and the black spaces boring, and wondered what the fuss was all about. Well, last week found me taking a walk in Kensington Gardens in South London, and I stumbled onto this giant mirror in the park:

Ducks were pecking at it, and it looked absolutely stunning in its setting, amidst verdant English turf and a crystal clear pond. There were no placards saying who the sculptor was, or what the work was titled. Unmistakebly Anish Kapoor, I thought. When I went back and googled it, sure enough, it was "Sky Mirror" by Anish Kapoor, unveiled four years back. Of such stuff are serendipitious discoveries made, I thought....

"South Indian Vegetarians Paradise" ???

It calls itself the "South Indian Vegetarians Paradise", proudly, on the illuminated board at the top.
As I lunched, for the twentieth year, at Sagar in Defence Colony, I reflected on how much change had come about, since I first went there in 1991.
The prices, of course: a Masala Dosa used to cost 12 rupees then, and it cost 75 rupees now.
It was possible to walk in anytime then, but now, especially on weekends, there is a long queue of people waiting to enter. And the single floor has now become three storeys.
Much of the rest is the same: the sambhar, the chutneys, all of that remains. They taste as good as they did twenty years back. Even the faded sunmica, the underfed south  Indian boys, all that is unchanged.
Ofcourse, they do not innovate here.
There is an entire range of South Indian food that is not reflected in Sagar.
The food they serve is the Udipi interpretation of South Indian food, mostly done by a single community, the Bunts (famously, Aishwariya Rai belongs to this community), and is about as authentic and representative of South Indian food as Chopsuey and Chowmein represents "Chinese" cuisine.
I guess I am as contemptuous of South Indian food served in the restaurants in Delhi as a Chinese guy who lands up in Delhi must be of the Chinese cuisine here (Vir Sanghvi christened it 'Sino-Ludhianvi" in those days when he used to write his own articles).
Why? Well, I know enough about atleast Tamilian vegetarian cuisine to know that there two dozen different sambhars in the cuisine, and I keep getting to eat the same one, the "raw coconut sambhar'. Where is the great "vatha Kozhambu"?, the King of Sambhars ? And where is the "Pavakai Pitla", the sambhar made from bitter gourd? Where is the glorius "Morkozhambu", sambhar made with curds?
Where is the "Adai", the multi-grain dosa, which every home in the south makes, once in a while?
Where is the humble "Mor-Mologai", the golden fried chilli, that accompanies curd rice?
Where are the avials, the porichai kootus, the thorans and the "mambazha patchadi"? Where is the "Baghara Baingan", and the "Bisi Bele Baath"? And where is the "Vella Payasam", kheer made with gur?
If Sagar wants to be authentic, they would have these items, commonly found at the tables in Kerala, Andhra Pradhesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
Instead, they have peddling the same boring stuff for 30 years, without any new items coming in, and, not surprisingly, most North Indians think they are getting to have genuine South Indian cuisine.
And, what gets my goat is the Rasam sham. Whereas Rasam is generally had with rice, they serve it here in Sagar in a tall glass with an Appalam, and a lot of North Indians really think that Rasam is an appetiser!!

I believe, that in a city full of Lebanese, Japanese, Goan, Korean, Thai, Sri Lankan, American, European, Italian and every-other-cuisine, it is a pity that there is no place which serves genuine South Indian cuisine, reflecting the range and diversity of the food, in an authentic ambience (which South Indian would want his sambhar in a little steel katori, as opposed to being poured out of a huge steel ladle??). Andhra Bhavan used to serve a good South Indian lunch, but sadly, their standards have gone down, even though their breakfast still remains a good option.

South Indian Vegetarians' Paradise? Nah!! More like a fool's paradise....
My search for true South Indian food in Delhi still continues, two decades after I settled here...

PS: I did not order Mineral Water there in the last twenty years, so please excuse me if I do not know if it is sold at MRP there, since some of my readers seem more bothered about the price of the water than the food...

Terracottah Warriors

It's an incredible story.

23 centuries back, an Emperor decides, at the age of 7, that when he is buried, he will be protected by an army of warriors, who will be buried with him.
Only, the warriors will be of fired clay, "terra-cottah".
And that, the facial characteristics of no two warriors will be the same: each will be a distinct individual.
Over the next forty years, 8,000 bigger-than-life size statues are fired in kilns, and each one is coloured beautifully.
There are horses, carriages, generals, and they are buried in tunnels around the tomb of the Emperor.
When the Emperor finally dies, the tomb is sealed, and so are the tunnels containing the terracota warriors, in 3rd Century BC. Oh yes, a final detail: there are rivers of mercury in the underground tunnels surrounding the tomb.
And also, the weapons the warriors have are real: and since they are chrome-plated (23 centuries before the discovery of chrome-plating by anyone else), the weapons will remain sharp, century after century, without rusting.
The tomb is discovered soon enough, but the soldiers lie buried for 23 centuries, till they are discovered in 1975.
The Emperor? Chinese, obviously, from the Qin Dynasty.

Well, two of those warriors are in Delhi, at the National Museum. For those of us who are not lucky enough to go to China, it is an awesome experience to come  face-to-face with the Terrocotta warriors. The link to the Exhibition timings etc is this (its on till March 20th):
http://www.delhievents.com/2011/02/of-ancient-china-art-exhibition-at.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+delhiupcoming+%28Delhi+Events+-+Weekly%29

Happy hunting!!

Breaking bread with bloodhounds.....the PM's breakfast with editors

I watched the Prime Minister's 'breakfast meeting' with 'senior' editors today on TV ( echoes of the Agra Summit, and Musharraf infamous breakfast meeting with editors, ofcourse, crossed my mind...)

Ordinarily, put any Prime Minister in a one-to-one interview with a journalist, and 99 times out of 100 he would come out well, because the journalist would be overawed, and would feel obliged, and also because on any given day, a Prime Minister generally has more information than a journo. And, it is not too difficult to "negotiate", and get to know the questions beforehand, and be prepared beforehand. Even some one as argumentative as David Frost was putty in Nixon hands, if one sees the documentary "Frost/Nixon".

But when a Prime Minister takes on two dozen editors, and that too, on live TV, group dynamics take over: they have to demonstrate to each other, and to the world, how leonine each one is, and how "independent" they are, and so, they proceed to outdo each other in aggression. After all, they have nothing to lose: all the suppressed anger at the humiliation each one get from his or her proprietor can be safely channeled and let out, in a heroic amount of indignation and independence. The Prime Minister (atleast not this one) is not going to order raids on their paper or channel, or cut off advertising.

That's what happened today: the Prime Minister was interrogated, and came off apologetic, eager to please, defensive, in front of a group of journalists who skewered him. Apart from the format of the interaction, the second problem, which anybody who is familiar with TV knows, is what kind of TV persona the subject has. Since the PM is not Ronald Reagan, with quick repartees, or Obama, with his made-for-TV eloquence, or even combative, the PR set-up, headed by Information Adviser, Harish Khare, should not gone in the first place for a televised event of this kind at all, in the first place.

But then, Harish Khare has been a press journalist, and after today's performance, it is clear that a newspaper journalist has no business to be Information Adviser in today's TV age. If Prime Ministers before had HK Dua or Baru or Ashok Tandon, it was because TV had still not achieved the kind of prominence it does today.

If the whole idea was to project the message that the Prime Minister and the government are in control, and to tell the government's side of the story, it did not work: it seemed at times that all the editors out there had come off straight from the daily 3 pm BJP briefing to grill the Prime Minister.

Not even Doordarshan was on the PM's side, with its  "senior" editor asking a question on, what else, corruption. Neelam Sharma is a TV presenter, with no reporting experience, and I wonder whose idea it was to send her to the "breakfast' meeting. A big number of anchors and presenters on DD News are still selected with zero journalism experience, with their looks being paramount, in the old-fashioned way, and boy, did it show....

All in all, a worthy successor to Musharraf's breakfast meeting.......

Is The Age of Writing Over?

We know the age of reading is over: reading, that is, as defined as "general reading, motivated by curiosity, for the pleasure of reading, without any specific benefit in mind'. We know it is over: a walk down Nai Sadak reveals that the famous Sunday Book Bazaar consists of little more than textbook guides, GRE workbooks, medical books, and Lonely Planet guidebooks. And what's more, despite the crowds at the Book fairs and the "great explosion of Indian writing in English", the younger generation now spends its leisure hours smsing each other, surfing social networking sites, watching reality shows on TV, and if they read at all, those books are likely to be technical manuals or textbooks.
The Age of Writing, too, seems to be at an end. Emails and Smses have ended the long, detailed inland letters we wrote to friends and relatives, and "u" for you, and 'b4" seems to be the cutting edge of spelling innovation amongst youth. SMS English has crept into emails and Facebook.
All this would not matter, if atleast our youth knew how to convey their meaning, even in such painfully amputated English. Everyday, in office, I find educated youth, with post-graduate degrees, and in responsible posts, writing shockingly poor English, in terrible constructions of words, which would have put a Second-standard student to shame a few years back.
The truth finally struck me: like the Viennese Waltz, or pencil moustaches, both general reading and writing are going to be extinct in a few years from now. Sad, but true. We are going to be a nation of data entry operators, and mechanics and technicians.......
PS: I asked my daughter, who is in the 10th standard, to name a single battle in Indian history. She did not know. Hopefully, I asked her, 'What about the Battle of Plassey?". She replied, "Well, I read about it last year, and now I do not remember what that was'.
And academically, she is amongst the top in her school. God help us!!

The Taslima Nasrin of Europe

That's the woman a lot of extremist Muslims across the world hate, and that's the cover of the book by her that I just finished reading.
So who is she? Well, if you can have a combination of Salman Rushdie, and of Taslima Nasreen, then you would get the picture.
She is the woman who, finally concluded that the problems Muslim women face finally stems from the Koran itself.
She also concluded that the Koran is just a book written by a human, not revelation from God, and that it sanctions violence against women by men.
She went vocal with her opinions, and has been in hiding ever since.
The book above makes for some compulsive reading, and I would recommend it for all those who want to think about issues such as multiculturism, and tolerance of physical abuse.
Ofcourse, we all know how many Hindu women get bashed up all the time by their husbands, and get compelled into marriages they do not want to get into, but what about the situation of women in our Muslim Community?
We would rethink the government's indifference to this issue if we were to read the book...