Othello in a T shirt

AMIT Budhiraja and Rinku Sachdeva had everything: good jobs, a nice flat, money to splurge, and a future that beckoned with promise. Or at least that was what the world thought. It is now obvious they were leading tormented inner lives before Amit killed her and hanged himself on Sunday.


The media will cover their tragedy extensively because they worked in the high profile sectors of software and finance. People will say wise things, such as, “What purpose did Amit achieve with this murder and suicide?” and “It only shows what life really is like behind all the IT glamour.”


Amit’s case is similar to that of Gururaj Kishore, also a techie, who killed his girlfriend Tanya because he thought she had become intimate with other men. He stabbed her repeatedly and dumped her body in the ghats near Sakleshpur last year. He was arrested a day after the crime, and is now in jail. So, are young people in the IT sector more likely to commit ‘crimes of passion’ than their counterparts elsewhere?


It is possible that jobs in the new “flat world” (Friedman’s coinage, to suggest the collapse of barriers and the levelling out of opportunities) extract more out of the young, ruin their balance, and drive them to desperation. It is possible that new job descriptions and super smart managers nudge young people along the path to overachievement, and self-destruction. Conservative India may look down upon, and secretly envy, the “permissive” abandon of the new workspace, but do these murders really show the dark side of our American-inspired IT dream?

Just a day before the Infosys employee smothered his wife with a pillow, a man stabbed a friend to death because he had sprayed Holi colours on his wife and behaved indecently with her. This happened in a working class neighbourhood in southern Bangalore, and among people who worked as painters
and carpenters. So what has “IT culture” to do with what happened to Amit and Rinku? It could happen anywhere. And it could happen to anyone.


Perhaps great writers, more than anyone else, can help us glimpse the complex psychological intrigues that go into the making of such crimes. The story of Othello, for instance, shows what ensues when a man is consumed by suspicion, jealousy and rage. The wily Iago, unhappy for professional reasons, fuels Othello’s doubts and incites him to kill his beloved wife Desdemona. Othello, initially justifies his action, but when he realises he has wronged an innocent woman, pierces himself with a dagger and kills himself with her body in his arms. (We know very little about what happened inside the minds of Amit and Rinku, but the verifiable details of their last moments echo the sad climax of Othello).


Othello is a black general in the Venetian army and Desdemona the daughter of a white senator. Shakespeare's keen eye grasped the subtle strands that weave a tragic story. Some writers saw in the play a lesson for white women who fell in love with black, Muslim men. Salman Rushdie interprets Desdemona's murder as a despicable, misguided “honour killing”. The police will tell us what they can piece together of the Amit-Rinku story, but will anyone ever know what really
precipitated the end? Failure of marriage? Frustration? Loneliness in a relationship? Shock of betrayal? Incompatibility?

Some couples cope with these, and even recover. Some are damaged beyond repair, but accept their fate and move on. A few go mad. That’s when the wreckage of love hits the headlines.

MiD DAY, 25 March 2008

A day with S P Balu

One afternoon, three years ago, I got a call from ETV, asking me if I'd like to be a judge on a popular music show hosted by S P Balasubramanyam.

I wasn't sure how I'd do it, but I was flattered, and agreed. A programme executive called me up and asked me for my profile. I dabble in many things, so I mumbled about this and that, unsure what I should say. I was vaguely familiar with the format of the show, but had never got around to watching it in full, and was very nervous.

S P turned out a very gentle host. He calmed my nerves and made me feel important. The sets were huge and glitzy, and they had cameras swinging from tall cranes. I was suddenly in the middle of all this showbiz action, sitting next to a legend who'd sung some 39,000 movie songs in five languages. I was also sharing the jury honours with Vidyabhushana, the swamiji who had returned from sanyas to marry and become a fulltime singer.

The singers were confident and sang well, but what was most impressive was the way S P conducted the show. His mother tongue is Telugu, and he hardly gets to speak Kannada when he's not on this show, yet he handled the language with aplomb. And his charisma was unbelievable: he knew how to point to the contestants' flaws without hurting them, how to highlight their strong points and encourage them to do better, how to talk to the live audience and get them to cheer the singers…

And his knowledge of songs, composers and lyricists was enyclopaedic. He referred to songs in other languages that came to his mind when he heard something, he spoke about the ragas they were based on, he discussed diction. Overall, here was one host who knew everything there was to know about the subject of his show, and he was superbly articulate. Caleb, the bass guitarist who accompanies S P everywhere, later told me he runs similar shows in Telugu and Tamil, and switches from one language to another without a glitch.

Being a hack with a hobbyist interest in music, I was a complete disaster on screen in contrast to the two luminaries with whom I sat, but I was tongue-tied for a different reason on a more recent FM radio show. The occasion was the release of an album for which I'd made the tunes, and the host, a girl who spoke incredibly fluent Kannada, asked me questions that had me stuttering for answers. I just wasn't able to quickly think up words for what I wanted to say. But she neither played the album nor did she want me and the other musicians on the show to speak particularly about the music.

She asked, "What qualities would you look for in a cow that comes to a beauty show?" It was Sankranti time, and of course the question was timely, but I am a city type, and just gaped for an answer. She spoke with high energy each time she went on air between the latest movie songs, and I shook her hand in genuine admiration at the end of it all.

You can't fake it if you are talking physics or astronomy or politics. But music? Ah, you can be a professional RJ and talk music day in and day out, and yet not say a thing about it!

Preta shabdam nasti

Once the 13-day death rituals are done, the priest helps the kartru (the one performing the rituals) bid a final goodbye to the departing relative.

The pinda (rice balls) is cut into three parts, and each is symbolically offered to the just dead soul, his father and grandfather, or, if the dead relative happens to be a woman, to her mother and grandmother.

Finally, the priest says, "Preta shabdam nasti". The dead soul is no longer an unappeased spirit (preta) that could haunt the family; it is released on its onward journey.

So it was for Subru yesterday.

Dead, with no ID card

Optimism is in the air. Chidambaram has just announced a budget that's making farmers, salaried people, and even captains of industry happy. Very rarely do you find such diverse groups nodding their appreciative heads in unison, but elections are around the corner, and our clever finance minister has waved a magic wand!

It may seem churlish, when the mood is so upbeat, to talk about death. But death was what my uncle was grappling with, and death was what he succumbed to last Sunday. I have no intentions of spoiling the general cheer, and will only talk about some aspects of the grim act of departing that may amuse you.


My uncle was 86 when he died. He was fit and active till he was 85. When he retired from HAL three decades ago, he looked a very handsome 30, and didn't sport those grey streaks many of us do by the time we are in our forties. He took regular walks, and could do difficult yogic postures, such as the mayurasana and shirsasana, till last year, when he had a heart attack.

Subru (short for Subramanyam) prided himself on his health, and believed he would live till he was at least a hundred. Just five days before he died, he was outraged that a nurse had called him grandpa. He scolded her a full 15 minutes for making that mistake.

He was also very proud of his English, and knew such words as "inveterate". I remember he once told someone not to go out in the sun. "You'll get skin affection," he warned. He had coined the word "vomission".

Subru had no children. Ten years ago, his wife lay on her deathbed, ravaged by diabetes, almost blind, and with a failed kidney. He believed every disease in the world could be cured with exercise, and Amritanjan. Which was why he did not pay much heed to what the doctors were telling him about her critical condition. He asked her to rub the pain balm wherever it hurt, and rationed a month's medicines to cover many months. He was very frugal, but I know some others who are more distinguished in that department.

Ten years ago, when his sister and mentally ill brother were bedridden and desperately needed attention, he was busy playing rummy and taking his regular walks. He knew bits of Sanskrit verses, and quoted one that said God takes care of orphans. He believed he would never be one. In the last two months of his life, Subru wasn't able to walk, but still felt it was beneath him to hold a walking stick.

He was in and out of hospital three times in the last six months, and each time he was hospitalised, I believed he would have someone to care for him round the clock. But, every hospital expected an attendant to stay with him, and that meant more work than having him at home.

For someone so frugal, he had done something unusual. He had booked himself his post-death ceremonies at an organisation called Aryavartha, and paid them a fee. I went to their office in Banashankari two days after he died, and they said they couldn't help unless I brought them the ID card they had issued him. Asking him where he's saved the little card is a little difficult, considering his present address, but Aryavartha steadfastly refused to look in their books.

So it looks like the one time uncle Subru spent some money generously is going to go in vain. Clerkdom reigns, and not just in government offices. And elsewhere, we have Chidambaram extolling the virtues of the private sector!

(MiD DAY, 3 March 2008)