Cheers! Beer mug and metal bowl

Vijay Mallya’s number, anyone?

Indian media heaved a sigh of relief when Vijay Mallya added a pocket watch that froze at 10.10, a steel-rimmed spectacle, a pair of frayed sandals and a supper bowl to his many brands of beverages, fleet of airlines, team of global cricketers, herd of racehorses and the sword of Tipu Sultan. Ever since James Otis, who had collected the Mahatma Gandhi memorabilia, handed it over to Antiqorum auction house in New York, anchors had been kept on tenterhooks. The welcome twist came on March 6.

National honor was saved and how. The pieces of history now belonged to India. The metal bowl clinked on the beer mug. Three Cheers to Kingfisher! Get the number of the ‘King of Good Times’.

There was an element of poetic justice though. Bacchus finally had his say. Big money saved the day for a nation, which had been praying hard not to lose the memorabilia which might perhaps remind it of the old man who preached peace and non-violence. Did he also advocate for Prohibition and village republics? Guess so. Anyway, village drinks have been prohibited. Breweries are no cottage industry.

The nation may no longer take Gandhi seriously. But his name sells. So the poll-ready Congress party jumped the gun to claim that its government had worked with Mallya to stop the artifacts going to some other lesser patriots or worse, firangis. Mallya said he acted on his own, but was ready to hand over the auctioned items to the government. The $390-million-worth beverage baron embodies the national spirit. He had proved it in 2003, brandishing the sword of Tipu Sultan auctioned from London.

While waiting for Mallya’s number, let’s keep the message ready: Since Mallya is a national hero at a cost of $1.8 million, he is in an enviable position to get the government to the talking table. He has a case to present on behalf of his patrons, the faceless mouths that guzzle down his countless brews. The ceaseless revenue generators are compelled to go on leave on October 2, when Mallya’s beneficiary was born in 1869. If you happen to be in Kerala, that’s a double whammy since October 1 is also a dry day.

Speaking of the dry days on every first day of the month, this is not the first time when we got a taste of the poetic justice. It’s an irony of history that our defence minister A K Antony had to look after the military canteens from where we smuggle out liquor bottles to mock the first-day prohibition imposed by him as Kerala chief minister in 1995. With all Gandhian garb, Antony couldn’t deprive his jawans their evening pegs. The army even beats Malayalis as a community when it comes to boozing.

So the system wants some people to get rich brewing (their money is good for politics) and some people to get high drinking (their money is good for governance). The lure of the money is hard to resist. But it makes every possible effort to harass the guzzlers, the financiers of governments. A hit of alcohol can seriously boost any accusation. A beat policeman can make anything out of a drunk man.

Finally: “Dear Dr Mallya, congrats on your new possessions. Before you give it to the govt, let’s get something in return. We have been cursing Gandhi on his birthdays that are also dry days. If the govt truly wants to honour Gandhi they shouldn’t stop us from drinking on October 2. The original intention of promoting desi daru on that day doesn’t work. People get foreign liquor (Indian made, indeed) from bar windows and army canteens. So let’s celebrate Gandhi’s birthday. After all you bought back the specs that helped him see the new India. – Yours tipsily”

…Message sent…

Fugitive factory

Former chief minister of Kerala E K Nayanar gets a non-bailable arrest warrant on February 10, 2009 for a road blockade around Thriruvananthapuram district collectorate on September 12, 2002. Nobody had told the magistrate that the most popular politician in the state died on May 19, 2004.

The legal system can be comical as well as cruel. It made the late leader – who was chief minister till 2001 – posthumously absconding. Nayanar the satirist would have loved the irony.

Going by court records, many of the political activists are fugitives. Some of them go on to become ministers and receive salutes by the same policemen who are supposed to track them to their hideouts. The accused never knew they have been accused of anything. Either the court messenger didn’t give the summons to the local policeman or the policeman didn’t serve the summons on the accused.

If a television reporter could get an Ahmedabad magistrate to issue warrants against the then President A P J Abdul Kalam and the then Chief Justice of India V N Khare at a cost of Rs 40,000 in January 2004, the policemen are doing the same to unsuspecting citizens across the country by sitting on summons.

They fail to serve the summons to the accused and return it to the court, which in turn, issues an arrest warrant against the ‘evader’. An archaic system of recording address – district, taluk, village and other obscure revenue subdivisions – contributes to the confusion. The pin code efficiency of the postal system is yet to catch up with judiciary in India.

Not long ago, a student leader had faced revenue recovery proceedings by a local court. SFI’s then president Sindhu Joy and her comrades, forever in news for their numerous agitations in front of the state secretariat, were declared ‘absconding’ by the court. Call it laziness or laxity. But top cops aver that the force is prompt. Only there are too many warrants and too few to execute it.

But when it comes to arresting and accusing people, the police work overtime. They call it combing. Years ago, a plumber accused with a petty offence was introduced before the magistrate in Aluva. The magistrate, who fortunately followed the proceedings and asked the accused in private about any complaint against the police, was told that the man was nabbed a fortnight ago. He had come from Idukki in search of a job to raise money for his daughter’s marriage. The police took him in from the bus stand “under suspicious circumstances.” The plumber’s pipe range was a potential “housebreak implement”. “My daughter was supposed to get married by now. I don’t know what happened,” he said.

A serious case of abuse of power. The policeman on combing duty finds a “suspicious-looking” man in a bus stand. He takes him in. Fine. But he is supposed to present him before a magistrate within 24 hours. The cop, however, decides not to register the arrest and forgets about the “criminal”. Despite the detainee’s pleas, the police put off the case. Finally he verifies the address given by the plumber and confirms it, keeping him in illegal detention all these time. A fit case for taking action against the cops. But the plumber, anxious to return to his worried family, pleads the magistrate not to. The magistrate knows better. The policemen had enough scope to avenge the victim under another pretext.

Our cops may look tough, but on closer look they are as naughty as any teenage prankster. They raise the dead to hang them. They proclaim the living as dead. They make ministers absconders. They make little girls bandits. Of course, you need an eye for humour to appreciate their efforts.

A group of student activists, accused of ‘destruction of public property’ during a street agitation in Kochi a few years ago, was bewildered when they got a copy of the chargesheet. None of them has heard the name of the first accused. Anyway, they needed to find him if they were to be let on bail. The search finally ended in a city hotel, where the first accused has been working as a waiter.

The youth, hailing from a remote village, had gone to the university centre in the college on that fateful day to enquire about a law course. Inexperienced, he found himself at the centre of the melee. Since law was blind, its keepers acted deaf to his explanations. The law students were surprised to hear the waiter giving them tips on conducting the case. The wannabe law student has learned his lessons.

No wonder cops are second only to cancer on the villain’s list in our movies.

Moral cops: recruitment open

February 14: Red roses, poem cards, teddy bears, ice-cream scoops, champagne, pecking, kissing, smooching, tickling, chasing, swearing, beating, kicking. In short: Goose pimples and black eyes. And empty pockets of course.

There are people who organize their love life by the calendar. And there are people who vent their frustration by the calendar. There’s a third category too: merchants who crowd the calendar with a day for every customer to spend his/her money. These super salesmen can be forgiven. They also help the twin sisters selling roses on Bangalore’s Brigade Road.

The day after Valentine’s Day, lovers have memories and shop owners and restaurateurs the money. “There pas kya hai?” let’s ask Bal Thackeray and Pramod Muthalik. “Mere pas sanskriti hai,” they might chorus. Thank all the gods that the culture they are talking about remains with them. Let them keep it. Otherwise, we would have been a nation of test-tube babies, born out of love.

An endless love of one’s culture unites Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolph Hitler, Tackeray and Muthalik. They have another thing in common – a constipated look. Culture or constipation, fascism or frustration, these men make it a point to make life hell for their fellow-beings. Luckily the Shiv-Ram Sena chiefs are not military geniuses like their European counterparts.

Social psychologists still speculate over the impact of the missing testicle of Hitler and the atrophied penis of Napoleon on the course of world history. How better off would Karnataka’s lovebirds be had Muthalik found love at an appropriate age, some wonder. Union minister Renuka Chowdhary says he doesn’t know how to respect women because he is not married.

The bald man who formed an obscure outfit called Ram Sena is just a symbol. But where did so many (or so few) flock to his single-point agenda – “protection of our culture”. (It’s assumed that Indian culture doesn’t require its practitioners to beat up girls.) Frustration runs deep in society. Anybody can tap it.

Osama bin Laden, the terrorist without a constipated look, would be tapping it. The rapist-terrorists, who banned love and lust in Kashmir Valley, and their recruiters in Kerala and Karnataka would be tapping it. Even Prakash Karat and Mulayam Singh Yadav would be tapping it. Though Muthalik lacks the magnitude and finesse of these tappers, how long can he wait and watch. After all, he is a fan of the “revolutionary sadhwi” Pragya Singh Thakur, who masterminded the Malegaon blasts.

Sagarika Ghose was heard probing Muthalik about his “constituency”. The humble man, who reminded his detractors on TV that he “had the duty as a citizen”, wouldn’t know perhaps. The latest of the senas finds its foot soldiers with its barbaric agenda: ‘Ambush the pubs,’ and any boozer intimidated by the high costs and broad bouncers would barge in. ‘Kick out the boys,’ and any unsuccessful romeo would have his day. ‘Chase the girls,’ and any potential acid-attacker would join the party.

When even teenage boys have to resort to violence (or hidden mobile cameras) to satisfy their libido, why blame the potbellied men in khaki. They have been on the job before Thackeray or Muthalik were accused of moral policing. Despite all the pending cases and evading criminals, India’s police force (with special credit to Kerala Police) have been leaving no stone unturned to locate and sermonize young couples caught on beaches and parks. Sometimes they collect a small fee for the sermon. Some of them go on to give the terrified girl intimate lessons inside police chowkis.

Ram Sena is just echoing the official sentiments. Maybe the sainiks themselves, in their previous avatar, had been caught and brainwashed by the moralistic policemen. After attacking pubs in Mangalore and Bangalore, they have threatened to tie down with a mangal sutra any unmarried couple celebrating Valentine’s Day. Something knotty here. If they are marryable couples, why object to their togetherness. More over, if marriage is something any passing goon can solemnize, why such a fuzz about somebody’s marital status.

There’s hope. The Delhi High Court chided the policemen for registering a case of “indecency” against a married couple in the capital. It’s not a crime to kiss, finally. But there’s a catch. You must be married.

It’s a crime to love, it’s the time to hate. So be it, Justice Muthalik.

Who said death doesn't have stage sense?

With all the reality shows ruling the primetime waves, television channels were not ready for something like this. MN Vijayan, the professor who healed madness and Marxist deviation, died in front of reporters and cameramen at Thrissur Press Club on October 3. “Everybody is objecting to the language of Padhom. Our political debates are language debates. It was (Bernard) Shaw who said we need that language to be heard. First…,” the 77-year-old philosopher leaned against the chair, eyes rolled over and words unfinished. Minutes later, he was pronounced dead at a hospital. Cause: cardiac arrest.

Vijayan died in the line of duty, like Kenji Nagai, the 50-year-old Japanese photographer killed by the military junta in Yangon on September 27. Unlike Nagai, Vijayan didn’t leave behind any cruel killers. His was the most unnatural natural death in recent times. Like Nagai, whose untiring professional commitment was captured by another photographer, Vijayan was busy with his mission till the end. How would have the cultural critic reacted to his televised death?

Reactions to the demise were spontaneous. Hundreds of students and admirers poured in to his house in Kodungallur. Estranged comrades joined the mourning, but insisted the professor’s fights had been quixotic. But the words still echoed: “To say let’s all join and agitate is to say not to agitate. Nowhere in the world has such an agitation happened.” The razor-sharp eyes and the sharper brain were always on the lookout for aggressors. The life of MN Viayan was called resistance.

When he resigned as the editor of Deshabhimani weekly, a CPI(M) organ, Vijayan said resignation too was a political activity. Because he believed in his political visions with painful consistency throughout the 77 years, he died a happy man. Even minutes before he collapsed, he was smiling and putting together words to mount a fresh bout of attack on Kerala’s lauded decentralization regime, People’s Plan. The grass-roots experiment had an imperialist agenda, he believed.

Vijayan’s paths were unpredictable, but his reasoning was never uncertain. He defended the political killings in Kannur as resistance. He lambasted the official communist leadership for its neoliberal compromises. The magazine he edited, Paadhom, saw an imperialist agenda in the grouping of prostitutes and the writings of Arundhati Roy. Every time, he was surprisingly convincing in his arguments though his critics tried to portray him as a shadow fighter.

The man who overpowered cancer continued learning and teaching till the last breath. The young man with the silver mane stood out in a crowd of aged adolescents. Neither fear nor favour, guns nor roses can hamper the progress of will. As long as the gray matter lives, some people are invincible. Only death – as a pot of hemlock, a wooden cross, a speeding bullet or a contracted cardiac muscle – does part these prophets from their experiments with truth.

BOT (build-operate-transfer) fantasy

After a week it is safer to write on Sivaji, the boss, the force, the lover, the reformer…. Movies are still full and fans are still dancing, but media has left the blockbuster to its fate. So no one can blame a review at this point of time of promoting the most hyped movie in Indian history. And a word of caution to the Rajnikanth fans: Don’t take offence. I am just another unaffiliated fan who couldn’t make it to the first show.

When a Tamil/Telugu movie, which was released in 16 theatres in Chennai, 40 in Hyderabad, 13 in Bangalore and four in Thiruvananthapuram, gave its Bollywood counterparts a run for their money and sparked off riots in distant countries, there is surely much more than hype and hysteria. A colossal budget, a reputed studio, a hitmaker director and more importantly, the most loved (and costliest) actor on Indian screen.

Sivaji, like any other superstar film, is meant for the first day. Watching it a week later, I the fan was disappointed. There was no earth-shattering introduction sequence, there was no trademark punch dialogue and there was no superstar (at least in the first half). The only one who could do justice to the larger-than-life image of Rajni was music director AR Rahman. Director Shankar and Rajni himself were shadows of their previous works.

If Shankar tried to refine the superstar by cutting out all the “punch dialogues” (Vivek who plays Sivaji’s uncle-sidekick bars him from oratory because every Tom, Dick and Harry in Tamil Nadu is belting out punch dialogues these days), he has not understood the phenomenon called Rajnikanth. More than goggles and gestures, cigarettes and slow motion, it is the dialogue delivery that made a Rajnikanth out of Sivaji Rao Gaekwad.

An NRI with a green card (antha ooru ration card) whose signature word is “cool” is the last thing that can hold the charisma of Rajnikanth. In a poorly scripted first half, Rajnikanth spends time bribing politicians/bureaucrats for setting up a university/hospital and wooing the fair Tamilselvi played by Shriya. He even takes a flight of fancy to a fair fairyland, where state-of-the-art graphics makes him a whiteman! (No comments.)

But thanks to the Great Indian Bureaucracy, Sivaji is back to Re 1. Now starts the real Rajnipadam with the toss of a coin gifted by the villain. “Poo vizhnuntha poopathai, thalai vizhuntha singapathai…” Sivaji chooses singapathai (the lion’s path). But in the end, end justifies the means. Sivaji the reformer swindles crores of black money from industrialists/politicians/bureaucrats and launders it into development projects.

The ruthless elimination of enemies (always public enemies) and mobilization of the public follow. Now, Rajni is again the invincible superstar who lords over the monstrous patterns of director Shankar and the magnificent sets of art director Thota Tharani. The charming style culminates in his avatar as MGR (MG Ravichandran, not Ramachandran). The energy was reserved till the end, when Rajni, and his fans, go berserk.

Why else do we go mad for a former bus conductor who lights cigarettes inside the mouth and stops bullets in the air? Rajni is a celebration of secular popular culture. Even Rajni, who deliberately makes public appearances in his real age and attitude, wants to run home the point that the Rajni is a product of popular fantasy. Rajesh, the auto driver who took me to the theatre, said: “Watch it though it’s disappointing. It’s like paying toll after a mega bridge is made. It has been made. Now we have to pay.” AVM studio builds it, operates it and then the road to fantasy is all ours.

Hammer to earthmover: reclamation as revolution

It was May 22, not Dec 31. It was a Tuesday, not Saturday. Still people were out in packs on Kochi’s Mahatma Gandhi Road. The usual promenaders – girls windowshopping and boys ogling at them – were outnumbered by the new spectators. They braved the summer sun to inspect the day’s work and took photos and videos of it on their mobile phones. Newsmen on camera and laymen on mobiles aired updates of the urban spectacle.

The spectacle was piles of rubble and disfigured buildings. Earthmovers had gone to rest until the next morning. And traders were busy removing signboards and pavements, which they suddenly realized, were jutting out to the public road. Gas cutters and pickaxes were doing overtime, for tomorrow earthmovers would be merciless.

The demolition drive along the primary arterial road in Kerala’s commercial capital was a cause for celebration. People thronged the roadside as if they were on a festival ground, gazing at reclaimed footpaths and a few side roads fenced in by big-time hoteliers and merchants. Nostalgic old-timers were looking for the lost paths of their city.

Elsewhere in the state, earthmovers were razing illegal constructions that had been choking lakes and rivers. Acres of government land recovered and forest saved. Everywhere, people cheered the demolition men. And the man who started it all, chief minister VS Achuthanandan, was an overnight hero despite his own comrades’ reservations.

CPI MP Panniyan Raveendran was heard saying that VS was playing Suresh Gopi, the actor who single-handedly burned down or bombed traitor-politicians, rogue cops and terrorists who manipulated them all. Though Panniyan has an axe to grind (his party office in Munnar was among the first constructions to be brought down), he was giving a realistic comment.

But was it the action that made the drive a thriller?

There was an evident spark of optimism after all these cynical days. Law was not an ass always. Despite all the bribes and red tapes, the great Indian bureaucracy was still an instrument of law. When political will and popular wish met, it has proven to be a red-letter day. It is the same spark that helps Suresh Gopis and other angry young men on screen collect at the box office.

Digest this: A resort in Wayanad, owned by the son of former director general of police KJ Joseph, deviated a river to form it into a swimming pool on its premises. A multi-storeyed resort in Munnar, owned by the wife of electricity board chief engineer BS Balakrishnan, was built on land exclusively leased to cultivate cardamom.

So when resorts across the state that have been choking the lifelines of the populace fall, what else could the people do other than cheer the earthmovers? Vembanad Lake, Kollam Lake, Periyar River, Kallayi River, Lakkidi River and so many streams have been reclaimed by encroachers including business leaders and media barons.

Back in Kochi, a city badly in need of public spaces despite its long shoreline, citizens were strolling down a road fenced in by a hotel to pave the way to its star sister and a canal filled up by a theatre to make a parking lot. Private was suddenly public. Observers have been striking parallels between the first communist government of Kerala and the present. VS government's actions may not match the land reforms of 1957, but there was something revolutionary in the air as people reclaimed public spaces as policemen watched.

The curious case of vanishing privacy

Hours after 24-year-old engineer Koushabi Layek was found murdered in a hotel room in Mumbai on May 14, scores of armchair detectives were on the job. They browsed through pages of personal data of the victim and her boyfriend, the suspect. Every friend of the duo was put to questions by the journalists, bloggers, browsers and of course, the police. Even before Manish Thakur, a navyman in Goa, was caught, online angry young men and women were on him. Worse, they had begun a trial.

Even murder has lost its privacy. Assuming the Manish Thakur who rented a hotel room with Koushambi in his name on May 12 and the Manish Thakur who features as an Orkut friend of Koushambi since January are the same, he left little to public imagination. The suspect had left too many leads on Orkut, “an online community that connects people through a network of trusted friends”. The site also provided the much-needed drama to the intrigue. Orkut brand of voyeurism was on print.

“hii this is manish here. hope u will find it interesting with me. all the best. only good friends are allowed thankx...,” Manish says about him in his Orkut profile. Koushambi gives an ironic testimonial: “Well, what to say about this sportive guy... He is really caring and loving guy... He is amazing, awesome and friendly. I neednot describe him as anyone close to him must surely be aware of his abilities. He is an all rounder.. Be it in the field of studies, sports or music. He is a champo...Don't u think so???”

Manish's scrapbook, full of abuses from people shocked over the murder, begins with two scraps from Koushambi welcoming him to the online community on Jan 2: “hi betu, welcome to orkut. thanks for updating d description. its nice to go thru it now.” Manish must have been working in Southern Naval Command, Kochi then. On February 10, he moved to Goa. A couple of months later, Manish writes to another friend: “hi this is manish from navy here remember me. i am koushambis -------” and so on.

Science fiction tells us of a future when past voices can be restored and recorded. This case has something akin to it. Scraps on Orkut are part of a lively conversation between friends, lost friends and wannabe friends. When Koushambi, Manish or any of their mutual friends were scrapping each other with a simple ‘hi’, little did they realize that they were saving their offline chat for a cop to peruse later. Orkutians are smart anyway. The fugitive had only two friends remaining on his list, including the deceased Koushambi.

If state was doing what peeping toms did on Orkut, laymen were doing a state on Orkut. Hate messages on Manish’s scrapbook were equaled only by the sympathies on Koushambi’s scrapbook. Communities sprang up for the victim and a single one defending the suspect. Sane voices were drowned in the commotion. You were either against the “devil” or for him. The verdict was given even before the charge sheet was read. But the police are definitely ahead with other possible scenarios.

What if the sailor’s lack of caution in executing the murder was deliberate? Manish, gave his true id at the hotel. He didn’t collect his sneakers while fleeing after the murder. He went straight to Goa, his camp where the police would first look for him. He went prepared for the murder, but he was not prepared for the cover-up. Police suggest there was a suicide pact between Koushambi and Manish, married with a kid. The colourful world of the web, however, has everything in black & white.