Oxford!!!

*(More) photos, details should come at some point but right now I am overwhelmed, worried - essay due next week already and I haven't had a class yet!, and trying to figure out how the fuck this place works. Decentralization is not always good.
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St. Antony's College, Oxford

Onion Domes

So many months in Delhi and this time I still haven't made it to the old town. Many reasons - I have been in and out of town, it's been murderously hot, I've been too lazy. But it's ramzan now and the Jama Masjid's onion domes and the gorgeous old Delhi food are too tempting to resist. A trip should be made soon ... if only to update my photographs. This one is about 3 years old.

Discussing this freedom

The Times of India on 15^th August had an interview with M.F. Husain that talked about his recollections of 1947, independence, partition, his art and even ironically his own banishment from the country a few years ago following the brouhaha over his decades old painting of a naked Saraswati.

Over dinner later that evening this topic came up and I remarked how tragic it was that such a remarkable artist wasn't able to enter the country because of fear of arrest. Perhaps not surprisingly, I was told “Well yes, maybe, but he shouldn't have painted that.” “Why not? It was decades ago and it's hardly obscene.” At this point of course, the tired old rebuttal the one that I have heard time and time again was brought out – We keep tolerating such pictures. Why doesn't he paint Muhammad? The rules of Islam must be followed, but Hindu deities defiled?

Of course there are people who think this whole business is retarded, but they seem to me to be so small a minority as to be wholly invisible. Many of those who do agree that the situation is unfortunate, will often come out and say – but he shouldn't have painted that. The other more belligerent sort, of course, totally agree with the situation – would he ever dare to paint Muhammad naked?

Such spurious and ridiculous reasoning is most frustrating to say the least. For one those who do make these arguments refuse to reason. And they only helps illustrate how narrow, uninformed and chauvinistic a view they have of the religion they are seemingly protecting.

“It's not unusual or shocking to have a Hindu deity depicted nude,” I said, “So what is the big fuss? That a Muslim drew it?” “That's not the point. The thing is Hinduism has always been too liberal and that has only led to people further mocking and taking liberties with our idols. A stop has to be put somewhere. Do you think it's okay to have Lakshmi on your earrings¹ or slippers? Our idols will be commodified and abused like the Buddha and the Buddhists have never really had the strength to bother to object. On the other hand, look at the ruckus that was created after the Danish cartoon incident.”²

Excellent. So the solution is to become more fanatical, less “effeminate”. These arguments, based on such fallacious logic, are so troubling because it is almost a matter of pride now, seemingly, to become more violent and belligerent. I have always felt that Hinduism is wonderful in how it encompasses so many varied, often completely non mainstream traditions, never defining apostasy. A large reason, I guess, is that rather than being a religion dictated by a strict rule book or code, it was a collection of beliefs – of all those peoples who lived beyond the Sindh; the Hindus. The shaping of the religion as we view it today is still largely influenced by the British understanding and interpretation – their very definition of the religion. Perhaps then, it's just reaching the logical puritanical end now.

Indian art has always drawn from Hindu myths – fantastical, beautiful, sexual. And it's not only Khajarao that has erotic statues, almost every temple does – the voluptuous skimpily clad apsaras and goddesses are everywhere. Should these be covered up too – perhaps like the statues at the Vatican, with leaves? It's also terribly silly to equate Hindu and Islamic artistic traditions – they have their own styles and stories that have found representation. But the ignorance of Islamic art is striking. For one, this false notion of Muhammad having never being painted is really untrue³. He has. Miniatures, across Turkey, Iran and India, have often represented the most wondrous, often erotic of stories – Leyla Majnun, Shirin Khusrau, of unknown meeting lovers.⁴

About a year ago, I was attending a talk on Islamic Art at the Asian Civilization Museum in Singapore. The professor talked about the kind of contemporary Islamic art he had seen in recent year – of course, mostly ignored by the international media, but much talked about in the local news. He mentioned an Islamic scholar in Indonesia who had exhibited some controversial paintings recently including one of a veiled Muhammad surrounded by semi naked houris. There had been no protests – perhaps it was just as well that these shows got little attention outside the local media.

The moral outrage people feel on behalf of a religion continues to baffle me. In the case of Husain, I just find it ironic that people have taken the mantle of protecting religious idols against a man who probably knows more about Hindu scriptures and tales than these moral guardians could ever hope to. And yet its their voice that is always the loudest, their refusal to listen to the other side rock solid, their ignorance complete. Depressingly, these people are the ones who seem to always manage to get their way.

1I don't care either way. But really, to say Hinduism isn't commodified enough already is laugh worthy.

2Talking of the Danish Cartoon incident, the Yale University Press took an amazingly tragic decision to not publish those cartoons in the forthcoming book “The Cartoons That Shook the World”. Yale press also refrained from publishing any other illustrations of the prophet including, a drawing for a children’s book; an Ottoman print; and a sketch by the 19th-century artist Gustave Doré of Muhammad being tormented in Hell, an episode from Dante’s “Inferno” that has been depicted by Botticelli, Blake, Rodin and Dalí.

3The Hadiths in this case are less than clear and have been interpreted differently and applied unevenly by the different branches of Islam.

4At the Salar Jung Museum in Hyderabad, one among the excellent miniature collection was a painting of the naked Sarmad, perhaps my favourite Sufi. The Persian Armenian Sarmad came to India and in Sindh fell in such intense love with a Hindu boy that he renounced everything, including his clothes and walked the country side naked. Sarmad became a favourite of Dara Shikoh, but this friendship and his “heretical” behaviour proved costly once Aurangzed won the war of succession . Aurangzeb ordered Sarmad beheaded, but his poetry lives on and he is still celebrated at his mausoleum in Delhi as Sarmad Shaheed.

Two of a kind

??! is asking where everyone one is, given the land mark judgement. I found out in between a day spent rushing from one place to another, but was thrilled enough to let out a yelp of happiness in the coffee shop, while catching the news. My friend informs me, via her lawyer brother, that while the judgement was passed by the Delhi High Court it is applicable all over the country, till overturned by specific states. This (a) makes the verdict even more awesome and (b) makes me wonder if/ when/ where it will be overturned, though hopefully not at all, because the judgement was way too long coming. Also, fuck you to the mullahs, right wing hindutva types and general assholes who seem to populate discussion forums in this country and are decrying this. 

In Bombay

at the moment. Got here on the weekend for my dad's book launch which was on Monday. It went off totally fantastically and we are all terribly happy about that - being the first family event since my grandmother passed away so everyone wanted it to be a huge success. It was the first event to be held at the Taj's Crystal Ball Room since November and obviously it was a big event for the Taj staff as well, all of whom were lovely and really went out of their way to put up a great show. It was also the first time a lot of my family were going back to the hotel, since having been stuck there while having dinner on that 26th, so it was emotional for them too. I was sad to see the lovely old building barricaded the way it was, no longer as open and welcoming as it once was. In between all the rush, I slipped into the also newly reopened Sea Lounge for coffee and managed to meet Ratan Tata (who was launching the book) and be suitably excited about it all evening. I have been too busy being force fed all manner of things by my family to have done anything else. Photographs haven't been taken yet, (unless candids of Mr. Tata count), but I am here for another week or so, so that should be rectified.

My grandmother passed away four days ago. It was almost around the time I was boarding the flight back to Delhi, though my father didn't tell us about it then and I only found out on the way from the airport back home. It was possibly the most traumatic homecoming possible – I reached home at 3.30 in the morning, by 7.30 everyone was up getting ready for the cremation. My grandmom turned 85 in February and almost the whole family had come down for her birthday – the last photos of her are with a bouquet of eighty five yellow roses. When I spoke to her then she said she was waiting for me to come back and spend time at home over summer. Whenever I would come back to Delhi I would usually go straight from the airport to meet her and then go home...even as I was packing up before I flew I kept thinking, well I'll be reaching so late at night I'll only be able to meet dadi the next day. 

I didn't speak to her after I got through to Oxford, and I don't know why because I spoke to most of my other family members. Perhaps because I knew I would be home in a few days, perhaps because I knew my father was with her and would have told her, but the fact that I didn't has been killing me. My father's book which is out next month was dedicated to her and she never knew.

The whole family is here, together in grief as it were, and I don't think the absence has, therefore, hit us yet. Though it does rear its head – it's impossible to think of the house without her, to see her chair empty or to not have her phoning up everyday. She was a most extraordinary woman. Always graceful, always active, always kind. She was always so absorbed in things, so busy that it was impossible to believe that she could tire or even slow down. She published eleven poetry books amongst others. A few days after her death her publisher called to say her new book, a children's book, was about to published soon.

When I came back from a trip to Switzerland a few years ago and was showing her the photos from the trip, she remarked about how things used to be when she was there in the seventies. It was a surprise to imagine her traveling around alone, but then again I guess, in all our egotism I don't think we ever really imagine our grand parents as being anything other than grand parents, of having a life other than the one we have seen them living. 

A few years ago I learnt about how she was jailed for a short while during Quit India, where she was on that stroke of midnight in 1947 – my great grandfather was the first Indian District Magistrate of Balia and she was at the official celebrations, the next day she left for her first teaching job in Dehradun. My grandmother taught political science at the Benares Hindu University for almost twenty five years, a Fulbright scholar she taught in the U.S for a while before moving to Delhi University, from where she retired.

In many ways, I always thought of her as a grand matriarch. My grandfather passed away when I was very young and it was always her at the head of the family. A couple of days ago my cousin remarked that she had always been such a feminist idol for her and I think that's true – she never changed her name after marriage and always lived completely on her own terms and for large stretches of her life, alone. In our family we are all grand daughters (and two great grand daughters) and for us she was a wonderful example. We all went to Haridwar for the immersion of the ashes and at one point the pandit asked where are the grandsons? My uncle simply said, there are none, we specialize in girls. It's true and she took a lot of pride in us (so many of her books are dedicated to us) and the fact that we are all so well educated – we are often referred to by our professions: the MBA, the journalist, the lawyer, the PhD student, the (soon to be) M.Phil student and the youngest one (who is still in school but meant for great things). Over the past few days that is what I have heard the most – from the most far flung relatives, people I haven't met in eons – just how proud she was of all of us, how she always talked about us the most. I know she was and in a small way that makes me proud.

About a year ago she was extremely unwell and in hospital for almost a month. She came out fighting, but ever since had been extremely weak. My mother said she had become like a wisp of cotton and had to be protected from even the slightest wind. She passed away quietly and gracefully in her sleep – when I saw her afterwards, I almost expected her to awake from her slumber any minute - and while the vacuum will always be there I am glad the end was peaceful.

Back - photos, links etc.

Back after almost a month on the road - with so many stories and close to 2000 photographs as memories. 

I got back a couple of days ago and went out and bought my new computer - a macbook! - and it has totally hogged my time when I should actually be doing other stuff - like packing. I have to wrap up five years of my life and some of it is already in boxes but just looking at everything around has me reeling. Most clothes, bags, shoes will be given away but its the books that are everywhere that are giving me a nightmare. And I have today and tomorrow to finish off all this - my mom is visiting me (it's the first time she has really, save a brief stop for graduation) but then I am off to Bali for about 8 days and then get back and leave for India immediately. Sigh, time. 

In the midst of all this, this blog also turned three sometime this month. I can't really believe what started as a lark has actually continued for so long - I haven't been writing much on books or movies over the past year because my reading habits suffered greatly at work but I have all summer and hope to rectify that. When I started off here I was just getting interested in photography and I think more than anything this blog has been a great platform to share photos and has helped me get better at it, too - or so I hope and think.

Meanwhile, while I was on the road there were a number of posts that just reiterated why I love blogistan so much. Things you must read. There were two conversations over at Chapati Mystery I followed every time I had access to the net - the conversation between Qalandar and Conrad Barwa on this post about Wendy Doniger's The Hindus - An Alternate History and Doniger's response here. (I read bits and pieces of the book a few months ago - a family friend in the publishing industry had sent over an advanced copy - before my uncle usurped it, but am itching to read the whole book). Also Sepoy's post on Anurag Kashyap's Gulaal led to an amazing and very informative conversation between Qalandar and Conrad Barwa again. Qalandar's reading and knowledge of movies always blows me away but this was just amazing - I had nothing remotely interesting to add to the conversation that was taking place and was just happy to sit back and read it. Qalandar's review of the movie here.

Over at Beth's blog Teju Cole had a wonderful guest post with photos on Italy, Angels in Winter. And The Cassandra Pages itself turned six, prompting a wonderful and introspective post from Beth herself. And finally, via Rahul, Matt Taibbi on what really happened/ is happening at AIG and the stinky details of the bail out.

To end, some photos. Lovely, peaceful Buddhas.

Hanoi Blues

Hanoi is an assault on the senses. I spent a few hours here at the begining of the Vietnam leg of the trip while waiting for the night train to Danang but I didn't hit me as much then - maybe because things quiten down in the evening. But I think its mostly that I am making my way here after spending the last couple of days in Ninh Binh, which have to count as the most amazing, beautiful and peaceful I have had on the trip so far.

I wasn't even staying in the town - more like ten kilometers outside of it with the most amazing landscape outside - rice paddies galore with lime stone karsts abounding in the background. I saw more shades of green than I could care to name. I went motorbiking one day - my adorable motorbike driver spoke no English and I had to use more French than I have in years, but he was lovely and utterly amused that I wanted to stop everywhere to take pictures - I didn't take nearly enough (some three hundred or so), mostly because after a while it just seemed pointless and photos just couldn't capture anything, really. We made our way through back alleys of villages, riding on the soil boundaries that demarcate the paddy fields, to ponds where people were fishing for escargots. It was bliss. I didn't see another tourist for miles, I was the only one staying at my guesthouse and the only sounds I heard apart from the patter of rain and the rustle of the rice fields, were of the ocassional motorbike.

And now Hanoi is just noise and chaos and full of touts and American accents. I think I just need time to recover and I might like it, but if I could I would be on the next bus back.

Upcoming travels

I had mentioned earlier that I might be going to Chennai for - well that's not happening. Instead more interesting things are. I think I will be traveling a lot next month - well actually it's kicking off from this weekend itself - I am going here. Next weekend I am going to Thailand and from there Laos (though still working that out) and then after probably Vietnam and Indonesia, again.

Hapiness.

Speaking of Thailand, I never did put up very many pictures from my visit to Bangkok last year. Some here. And well, with some more to come hopefully.

44.

Praise song for the day.

Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each others'
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky;
A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin."

We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed;
words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of someone and then others who said,
"I need to see what's on the other side;

I know there's something better down the road."
We need to find a place where we are safe;
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

picked the cotton and the lettuce,
built brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign;
The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by Love thy neighbor as thy self,
others by first do no harm, or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national.
Love that casts a widening pool of light.
Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air,
anything can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp --

praise song for walking forward in that light.

- Elizabeth Alexander

Eh?

Apparently George W. Bush read 95 books last year. Isn't that a lot for someone who is famed for not liking books?

(The article in itself - about Obama's reading habbits is quite interesting.)

Happiness

Or, I got accepted to SOAS people!!! I am of course hugely happy and excited, especially since SOAS was (is?) one of my top choices. But I am mostly hugely relieved because now I don't have to spend the next two months worrying if I will get accepted anywhere at all. Though of course, I am still waiting for those results to come in before I take any final decision.
But also, SOAS is in London!! Squeeeee!!!!!

Mutlu yıllar

A bit belated, but still - new year wishes. Personally, I am just wishing (hoping, what have you) that 2009 is a more eventful and happier year than last. I don't really have much to show for 2008 - it was mostly rather mind numbingly dull. My reading has pretty much gone down the drain. I still have a stack of books that I bought and never got down to reading. Perhaps it is apt that my favourite book out of the few I read last year was Joseph O'Neill's Netherland. Saw a lot of movies - most of which I never wrote about. Anyway, my applications have all been submitted now. I had hoped that once they were done I would be a little less harried but the wait is immensely painful. I had an awful nightmare about the whole thing a few days back - silly, but still too scary a thought to relive.

The year will bring some change in scenery at any rate. I am shifting back to India - in all probability to Chennai for a few months with work, and then lets see. I haven't been in more than a decade and have only the haziest memories of the place - strangely enough I vividly remember Kodaikanal, Madurai and other places in Tamil Nadu - but I do hope to make the most of it. So, basically travel about and take photographs on the weekends. And I am looking forward to the food very much - if there's one thing I would be happy eating everyday for the rest of my life it would be sambhar, rice and chutney. Along with thoran, ideally.

I do however have to pack up - bag and baggage - and five years of stuff to wind up and shift countries isn't very pleasant. Just the thought of it is tiring but I have started sorting through stuff and will start sending my books - most of my stuff, really - soon. I am also traveling to Java later this month - the last few days have been reading up for that - and I am suitably excited. And apart from that the new year also got off to a surprisingly nice start - the people at the New Yorker sent me a 2009 diary (with my name embossed!!!) - causing much delight, since I hadn't actually ordered any such thing. (Just registered my hard drive.) Still, I am hoping its a good beginning to what will be a good year.

Air India. Circa 1975.

From the pages of the New Yorker (14th July 1975 issue)

Older

Birthday Lights

Also, I was gifted the complete New Yorker portable hard drive. Every issue since 1925! Awesome-est gift ever!

It's over

The news was confirmed today once the Taj was rid of terrorists and the NSG took over the building. It's terribly heartbreaking - I know India hasn't been immune to bombs and terror but it's just such a shock to have people you know and love and respect being involved in it. My heart goes out to her husband and her two children.

This has been said before, but I really need to put it down here - I wish the media was more responsible. For what the shoving of cameras into the faces of people who were waiting in terror or who had lost their loved ones? Why the continuous close ups of the dead bodies in Nariman House? Can we have no respect for the dead? For those suffering?

As I write, the jingoism has already begun. I really don't see how the Congress will ever come back to power - as my dad has been saying almost like a broken record, this what you have when you have a government based on tribal politics and loyalty and no merit whatsoever. And there is no denying that this administration has been largely pathetic but the thought of the BJP coming back is terrible. I don't think anti-Pakistan rhetoric or a shift to right wing politics is even remotely useful - what will that ever solve? It's sad that the most common thing I have heard in the last few days is that the at least the US never suffered any attacks after 9/11 - that at least George W. dealt with toughness. What the US has lost in the wake of the draconian measures that government took will take years of fixing and has affected all of us.

Also, I wish Narendra Modi would shut the fuck up.

Have given up watching the coverage on television, mostly because I can't take it any more. My uncle, aunt, cousins were having dinner at the Taj when firing broke out. They were lucky and managed to get out in the first few hours. My old boss - she was editor of the publication I was interning with right out of school - was trapped in a corner room of the Taj. Last night I heard there had been no news from her since early that morning. Today they are saying she hasn't made it. We had exchanged emails just a few days back.

I am so sad and so, so angry.

...

I have been watching the news for nearly five hours now and the insanity of the whole thing still hasn't sunk in yet. I don't think I've been this close to being in tears in a really long time. Those were all my places dammit. My uncle used to live at NCPA for the longest time - that's the stretch of Bombay I know best. And the policemen whose names are flashing on the television - those are people I know too. My mom called up to say she couldn't watch the coverage anymore, saying she was going to try and sleep and asking me to pray for the people and for the Taj. "I don't want to wake up and see the dome gone."
I'm so tired and angry and frustrated. And I don't pray much, but I don't know what else to do.

Idiocy

"If Lord Hanuman can make Barack Obama victorious, why not me?"

- BJP candidate Vijay Jolly who is contesting against Delhi CM Sheila Dixit in the state elections

Bonus Update:

Even more idiocy (via K) - Batman sues Batman.

Batman has a new adversary: Batman.
The mayor of an oil-producing city in southeastern Turkey, which has the same name as the Caped Crusader, is suing helmer Christopher Nolan and Warner Bros. for royalties from mega-grosser "The Dark Knight."

Travels

Spent a few days last week travelling in Rajasthan. Was in Mewar - Delwara, Udaipur, Haldighati, Ranakpur, Kumbhalgarh, Chittaurgarh among other places. We easily drove 1000+ kilometres through the Aravallis. I have visited Udaipur and Chittaur before, but it's been almost 8 years since.

Took very many pictures - so many green doors!! I have any photos of green doors from just this trip to fill have a book or something. And also some of very red safa's. Should share some stories too. Had coffee with the Maharana of Udaipur - no story here except he came out of his palace to drop us to the car and the tourists outside went crazy taking pictures. Quite amusing. My sister was fairly kicked about this whole encounter only to have me throw some wet water on that by reminding her that he was basically a commoner now, so no big deal. Except you get to see these crazy ass palatial houses that are so stuffed with stuff (what else will they be stuffed with) that there's not one inch of empty space. Imagine living in a treasure chest - sort of cramped.

Should also tell of the most interesting museum celebrating Pratap Singh I visited in Haldighati. A full celebration of the Maharana as the first freedom fighter in India. (Really? What about Shivaji? Or am I wrong?). All complete with with Hindu imagery. Ah, nationalism. That's a story for another time, though, I am not making much sense now. That's what happens when you have all these stupid applications to fill up and SOP's to think about. And it's not even like I have managed to get much work done. Sucketh.