Yes, that’s right: 2008. There are still three days left in the year, and I’m not rushing to think of the new year yet. One day at a time. Let’s enjoy the 29th. Then the 30th. And then, though it lies well in the future, the 31st.
When that’s done and dusted, we’ll think of what’s to come.
What I mean to say, in this atypically roundabout manner, is that I’m taking a break and going traveling in the next three days, and no blogging will be done in this time. I have done less blogging this month than I do in an average week, so perhaps that hardly requires notice. But I shall be back to my furious best next month, posting 184 times a day as the nation stays glued to my thoughts, and the 24-hour news channels compete to cover my life, some even plotting to get me into a well somehow.
But all that’s in the future. Meanwhile, you have fun. Be as debauched as you want; hold nothing back. This is your last chance to show 2008, which has inflicted downturns and terrorist attacks and Ghajini on you, who’s really in charge.
Posted by Amit Varma on 29 December, 2008 in
Personal
The Afghan chieftain looked older than his 60-odd years, and his bearded face bore the creases of a man burdened with duties as tribal patriarch and husband to four younger women. His visitor, a CIA officer, saw an opportunity, and reached into his bag for a small gift.
Four blue pills. Viagra.
“Take one of these. You’ll love it,” the officer said. Compliments of Uncle Sam.
The enticement worked. The officer, who described the encounter, returned four days later to an enthusiastic reception. The grinning chief offered up a bonanza of information about Taliban movements and supply routes—followed by a request for more pills.
For U.S. intelligence officials, this is how some crucial battles in Afghanistan are fought and won.
I can imagine what will happen if our intelligence networks hear of this. First, they will place a large order (with taxpayers’ money, of course) for many, many tons of Viagra. Then, just as field operatives are about to be handed strategic supplies, the chief of the bureau will raise a finger. “Wait,” he will say, “if these pills don’t work, or have side effects, they could turn out to be counterproductive for us. There is only way to make sure that they work as advertised.” He will pop a pill into his waiting mouth.
Ten minutes later, he will call his wife on her mobile phone, his hands vibrating with excitement as he holds his instrument.
“Darling,” he will say, “I am coming home in ten minutes. Be ready for me. Wear something nice.”
“Ok, I will wear my Patola sari. But why, what happened?”
The common explanation for why humans laugh is that laughing and smiling relieve stress. But this only leads to another question: Why do humans have such a disproportionate need for stress-relief? My own view is that we, unlike other animals, are conscious of the inevitability of death. That knowledge places such a terrible burden of fear on our nervous systems that evolution has provided us with a solution – a hyperactive funny bone. I am sure that, given the option, most of us would have preferred something more substantial − immortality, for instance! But we were not given such a choice. So, this is what we are stuck with: jokes, cartoons, comedians and cartoonists, in exchange for being conscious of our mortality.
Some years ago, neurologists in the UK discovered that smiling had such a beneficial effect on the human nervous system that even a false smile − that is, merely stretching the mouth with the corners turned up – could have the same positive effect on our nervous system as a real smile. This works even when we are feeling gloomy. The point here is that political cartooning is a serious business, one that has a seriously positive role to play in human society. This may also explain why those of us who are employed by newspapers to make other people chuckle are quite often grumpy and bad-tempered in real life. Unlike many of our readers and employers, we are unusually conscious of the nastier facts of life. Our job is to make people smile in the face of the things that make all of us cry − death, destruction, disasters and ugly politicians.
This makes a cartoonist similar to a lion tamer − or, as I would put it, a demon tamer. Our profession requires us to live with the demon of mortality chained to our drawing boards. And every morning, we give it a poke in the ribs, make it stand up on the dining table and sing a silly song for our readers. But the demon does not much like this treatment, so it snarls, claws at us, and in general reminds us that in the end it will win.
I’d blogged four years ago, in the context of cricket, about the phenomenon of false smiles changing the way we actually feel—but in the long run, it’s surely just a temporary palliative. That demon isn’t going anywhere.
On that note, because I like my readers so very much, let me leave you with this beautiful song:
This burst of productivity came about not due to our venerable MPs taking their jobs seriously, and suddenly becoming efficient, but because of the ‘din’ and ‘tumult’ in the house. As the ToI report puts it:
On Tuesday afternoon, when BJP MPs stormed the well rejecting the government’s statement on minority affairs minister AR Antulay’s demand that the shooting of ATS chief Hemant Karkare should be probed, the chair quickly took up pending legislation which had swelled to nine from the five listed at the start of the day.
[...]
The procedure adopted on Tuesday was quite irregular as MPs complained that additional bills, pushed in as the supplementary list of business, were not circulated, while legislation was not discussed at all. In fact, amid the tremendous din in the House, it was barely possible to track which bill had been passed expect by keeping an eye on the minister rising in response to the chair.
Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, who had conducted proceedings since the morning, was absent when the House met at 2pm and, as was the case on Monday, deputy Speaker Charanjit Atwal simply ignored the tumult and went ahead with the legislative business. As it became apparent that the government was moving bill after bill, enraged Left MPs rushed to the chair in protest.
Left MPs NN Krishnadas and Sunil Khan gesticulated at the chair demanding that the proceedings be halted until they were hauled back by CPM deputy leader Mohammed Salim. The Left MPs then stood in a group and tore copies of the bills in their possession and flung them around in order to underline the mockery of parliamentary practice. All along, BJP MPs kept up a steady chorus of anti-Antulay slogans. Some Congress MPs were seen hurling their underwear at the BJP MPs while ululating furiously.
Okay, I made that last sentence up. But given what came before, is it not plausible?
Allow me to remind you here that the taxpayer pays Rs 26,000 for every minute of parliament. Makes you want to ululate, no?
As you know, my first novel “My Friend, Sancho” will be published by Hachette India in April 2009, and we’re getting it all together right now in terms of a final edit and production details. One of the areas I’m keen to get right is cover design. My publishers and I both felt that we needed a design that was different from the kind we see in our bookstores these days, and we thought of opening it up to a much larger pool of people than a publisher would usually have access to. And so, with the imagined sound of trumpets and applause in the background, Hachette India and India Uncut bring you:
The “My Friend, Sancho” Cover Design Competition
This is how it works: in the next few paragraphs, I shall share a synopsis of the book, and link to an excerpt that gives you a sense of the voice of the main character in the book. I shall also attach Hachette’s official design brief for the book. Based on that, you are invited to send in a cover design, or many if you want, for the book. If we choose to use one of them, you get Rs. 15,000 worth of Hachette books and cover credit.
(You may not have heard of Hachette before, but you would certainly have heard of many of the imprints it owns, such as Hodder, Orion, Octopus, Hamlyn, Little, Brown & Company, and Orbit. It’s the largest general books publisher in the UK, the second largest publisher in the world, and had more books in the New York Times bestseller list last year than any other publisher—so there’ll be much to choose from. Hachette has just launched in India, and “MFS” will be the first release of their local list. So if you win the prize, you will be bewildered by the choice of books available in their catalogues here.)
In case Hachette is unable to use any of the covers submitted, the first prize will not be awarded—but we will pick the design we like the most and award the designer Rs. 5000 worth of Hachette books, plus empanelment on Hachette’s roster of preferred designers. I’m hoping this doesn’t happen, and some kickass designs come in. Needless to say, I will carry all the designs I like on India Uncut, and link to the designer’s homepage wherever relevant.
And now, about the book: “My Friend, Sancho” is a love story set in Mumbai. Abir Ganguly, the protagonist, is a 23-year-old, cynical, wise-cracking journalist on the crime beat of a newspaper. He is asked by his editor to do a feature story on Mohammad Iqbal, a man killed in a police encounter. As research for the story, he meets Iqbal’s daughter, Muneeza. An unlikely friendship forms between them, but before it can become anything more, certain matters need closure.
The first chapter of the book is here (pdf link). It will give you a sense of the tone of the book, and the voice of the character. But the book develops into a love story, not the gritty thriller you might expect from that chapter.
My own brief: The cover I’m looking for should be one that reflects the playful, young tone of the book. It should attract attention from a distance without being loud or gaudy. It should be classy, so when you hold it, you feel like taking it home with you. It should be minimal—I hate clutter, and there shouldn’t be too many elements in there.
What images from the book can you use? Well, Abir and Muneeza have black coffee and iced tea together a couple of times, and those are possible images. They meet at the food court of a mall a few times—but I don’t fancy either of them being represented on the cover. There is also a talking lizard in the book, and he could make an appearance somewhere, perhaps curling onto the spine. Feel free to use something abstract—for now, I’m more interested in the feel being right than the image being representative.
Important point: This might be the first of a series of books, so you could begin with a design template that can be extended onto future books. One example in Indian bookstores is the series of Penguin hardbacks of Amitav Ghosh’s books—they’re clearly part of a series, they’re minimal, with just one strong visual for each cover, and they’re powerful. Of course, they’re grim and convey gravitas, where the covers for the Abir Ganguly books need to convey youth and playfulness, but they work well as a series.
The publisher’s design brief is below, under the fold. It is entirely written by the dudes at Hachette, which I find important to point out, because I would never have the audacity to praise my own book. (Also, the blurbs are obviously a temporary filler.)
According to sources, there has been hectic lobbying over the past few weeks by some senior police officers keen to get a medal for 26/11. An additional commissioner of police attached to the Anti-Terrorism Squad and a zonal deputy police commissioner have managed to get recommendations for the President’s Police Medal for Gallantry (PPMG), the sources say.
The deputy commissioner has been claiming to be responsible for engaging the terrorists at The Taj till NSG commandos arrived. The additional commissioner, who claimed to be part of the team that was at The Oberoi, reportedly exchanged fire with the terrorists.
However, an IPS officer who fired at the terrorists has refused any award, saying that it was part of his duty and that his contribution didn’t deserve a gallantry medal.
The emphasis is mine—I like that last guy’s attitude. And really, instead of gallantry medals, wouldn’t those cops have been better served if they’d been given better training and better equipment to begin with?
While on the subject of equipment, check out this piece about “a group of young businessmen have raised Rs 30 lakh to buy 100 bulletproof vests that they plan to buy and donate to the Mumbai police.” They’ve applied to the home ministry for approval, as well as for an import duty waiver. (Why is there import duty on bullet-proof vests anyway? Hell, on anything?) And one of them has been quoted as saying:
We decided to procure the jackets ourselves since it would otherwise take the government a decade in procuring them.
Quite. But they have to get past the bullet-proof red tape first.
Bal Thackeray, it turns out, remembers the Emergency fondly—and wants another one.
This is the dude who once professed his admiration for Adolf Hitler (as did his nephew recently), so I’m not surprised.
And in more WTF news, Thackeray has written in an editorial in Saamna that Mohammad Ajmal Amir Kasab, the only 26/11 terrorist we managed to capture alive, should be “hanged to death hundred times.” Even I want Kasab to hang, after a trial and all that, but I’d be happy if it was done once. If the dude came back to life to be “hanged to death” again, rinse-and-repeat 99 times, I’d be somewhat perturbed.
If the immensely thorough Martin Beck was still active today, I imagine he might well have been involved in cases like this one:
Police in Finland believe they have caught a car thief from a DNA sample taken from a mosquito they noticed inside an abandoned vehicle.
Finding the car in Seinaejoki, north of Helsinki, police saw that the mosquito had recently sucked blood and decided to send the insect for analysis.
The DNA found from laboratory tests matched a man on the police register.
They arrested the guy, who claimed that he was “just hitch-hiking a lift with a man.” Right.
If I was writing a book of fiction involving a case like this, I wouldn’t make it so easy. In my book, the cops would find the mosquito, do the DNA test, match it with a former criminal on their database—and then find that he died five years ago. So how did the mosquito drink his blood? That would be a nice mystery to solve.
Hell, too many ideas, too little time. And there’s also this blog to maintain…
Manjula Padmanabhan does a reading of her novel, Escape, tomorrow at Crossword, and I will be in conversation with her at the event. She will read out a part of the book, after which we shall chat about the novel and her writing, followed by audience questions. If you are a fan of her work—and there is much to like --drop in tomorrow. The details:
Even if you can’t make it to the event, I recommend you pick up the book. It is set in a country of the future where all women have long been exterminated. The story stars a young girl named Meiji, who has been brought up in secret by three uncles, who run an enormous risk if they are discovered by the ruling generals. As Meiji approaches puberty, they keep her from adulthood by artificial means—but then realize that this is unfair to her, and she should be allowed to grow. Equally, her presence there is dangerous to both her and them. So they decide to let her blossom into a woman, and to send her away from this country, presumably to a place where women are natural. She is accompanied by her youngest uncle.
At one level, this is an adventure story of the journey these two make. At another, it is a coming-of-age story, as a young girl grows into adulthood without having the slightest clue of what it’s like to be to be a woman, both physically and emotionally. At the level I most enjoyed it, though, it is a love story, as her uncle, who hasn’t seen a woman for many years, tries to balance his desire for Meiji with his concern for her welfare.
I won’t give away any more—but be warned that if you start this book close to bedtime, you will be groggy in the morning, for it’s extremely hard to put down.
This character’s creator described him as “insufferable”, and called him a “detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep”. On August 6 1975, the New York Times carried his obituary, the only time it has thus honoured a fictional character. Who?
Posted by Amit Varma on 29 December, 2008 in
Personal
