Fame vs anonymity

An up-and-coming movie actor told one of our reporters he had received an official invitation but hadn't gone to watch the IPL matches for fear of being mobbed.

He's acted in a dozen films, and it is possible a handful of Kannada film buffs would have recognised him, but it was a bit presumptuous of him to believe he would be hounded by the fashionable crowd that treads into the VIP enclosure of the cricket stadium. His "fear" sounded like wishful thinking. Or PR.

Anonymity, and the ignominy of not being invited to a glitzy event, is something the actor dreaded. It later turned out the IPL had sent no invitations to the Kannada movie industry. An embarrassed Charu Sharma, who handles Royal Challengers Bangalore's media relations, told our reporter that mistake would be corrected, and invitations sent out to the Kannada stars. As we all know, the league is banking heavily on support from the celluloid world.

"The gulf between the information we proclaim and the information we know to be true is often vast," write Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner, in their witty book Freakonomics. They paraphrase it with journalistic ease: "…we say one thing and do another." Our movie star actually wanted attention, but he told us he needed anonymity!

Freakonomics talks entertainingly about what the academic would call behavioural economics, and provides well-argued, statistics-supported answers to questions such as "Why do drug dealers live with their mothers?" and "How can your name affect how well you do in life?" Its take on anonymity and fame, like everything else in the book, is dazzlingly insightful.

Yesterday, our senior reporter Savie Karnel brought in another story about a girl who had come down from Assam to work in Bangalore, and how her boyfriend had harassed her and broken her spirit. He regularly took her money, thrashed her, stalked her, and drilled into her she couldn't do a thing as he knew the cops. The girl believed she had no hope since she was an anonymous "outsider" while her boyfriend was a Bangalorean.

Migrants from villages and small towns believe big cities liberate them from settings where everyone knows everyone, and worse, everyone knows what everyone is doing. But then, in situations like the girl's, the same anonymity turns into a huge handicap.

To understand the need for nuanced degrees of anonymity and familiarity, you must read the fascinating study on dating websites that Levitt and Dubner talk about. They estimate that in a year, some 40 million Americans "swap intimate truths about themselves with complete strangers." The study, conducted by two economists and a psychologist, found, among other things, that 28 per cent of the women claimed they were blonde. Since that number exceeded the national average of blondes, Levitt and Dubner conclude it indicates "a lot of dyeing, or lying, or both."

The study also found that not posting a photo was a sure way of failing on a dating site. "A low-income, poorly educated, unhappily employed, not very attractive, slightly overweight, and balding man who posts his photo stands a better chance of gleaning some e-mails than a man who says he makes $200,000, and is deadly handsome, and doesn't post a photo," the book observes.

I cannot claim any personal knowledge of impersonation and subterfuge, but I can tell you what happened when I started writing under a girl pseudonym some years ago. I had hit upon the attractive name of O Priya, inspired by an Ilaiyaraja song, and held forth on many music-related matters in the magazine section of the daily I then worked for.

As luck would have it, a Bengali gentleman started calling up the office asking to meet O Priya. My colleagues fobbed him off a couple of times, but he was persistent, and they threw up their hands and put him on to me. It turned out his intentions were completely honourable: he wanted O Priya to write about his wife, who had just opened a music school in Bangalore. I wrote about the school, and he was appeased, but my article appeared without a byline. And to my indescribable relief, he gave up the idea of meeting the gorgeous Ms O Priya!

29 April 2008

Three swingers and a poll

Last week, as Karnataka’s big parties announced the names of their candidates for next month’s elections, ticket aspirants waited anxiously to see who had made it and who hadn’t.

And as you may already know, those whose names didn’t figure on those lists have started sulking and throwing tantrums. Simultaneously, criminals and policemen are donning khadi and getting into one or the other of the state's three major parties.

All of which is good entertainment, and of course the election season is always a good time for connoisseurs of drama. To add to the excitement, star campaigners are descending from all over India to do their bit for their parties.

Arun Jaitley of the BJP was in Bangalore last week. He made a suave presentation at the Taj West End to a gathering of journalists, who’d received invitations the previous day from velvet-voiced PR girls. (I was unlucky and got a call from a sober male voice).

I was among those who sat at the hotel’s opulent banquet hall and heard the BJP stalwart’s eloquent briefing. He had facts and figures ready, and reeled out numbers without as much as glancing at his notes, but what was most striking was that he spoke no ideology at all. No Hindutva, no talk about fighting corruption or Congress misrule. All he said was that Karnataka should vote for stability.

Jaitley delivered his speech like a CEO at a board meeting, such was the corporate polish of the event. But then, come to think of it, this season could well mark the advent of elections without any ideological fervour. Also, the three big players have slept with one another in the last five years, and cannot really take the pativrata tone without sounding foolish. So if you were the pragmatic type, you would say, “Ah, good, no bullshit!”

But consider the tragedy. The Karnataka assembly has 224 seats, and since the last elections did not deliver a decisive mandate, the Congress, the JD(S) and the BJP were forced to share power — and the spoils. As everyone knows, they got into opportunistic alliances, praising their partners when together, and abusing them when the good times ran out.

In 1977, after Indira Gandhi lifted the Emergency and announced elections, the rest of India sent non-Congress leaders to Delhi as MPs but Karnataka went against the tide. Again in 1978, the state voted a Congress government to power.

But the Congress joy ride jerked to an end. In 1983, Karnataka got its first non-Congress government when the Janata Party took over with Ramakrishna Hegde at the helm. The ideologies of Jayaprakash Narayan, Rammanohar Lohia (and his Kannadiga ideologue Gopala Gowda), the CPM, and the RSS had come together to form an alliance to defeat a satiated and arrogant Congress. The Karnataka voter has thus always remained inscrutable, and unpredictable.

In 1984, after Rajiv Gandhi’s death, an emotional Karnataka sent 24 Congress MPs to Delhi out of 28. Hegde dissolved his government, owning moral responsibility for his party's poor performance, and called for elections right away. Voters stunned the nation by taking a U-turn and sending his Janata Party back to power at the Vidhana Soudha. In the process, the Karnataka electorate won for itself the reputation of being wise and discerning.

One of the heroes of that inspired anti-Congress movement was Deve Gowda, who you saw, these last four years, in the role of the shrewish wife in serial marriages with the Congress and the BJP. Yes, it has been a disgraceful fall, but he is again rubbing his hands in anticipating of a hung assembly, and looking forward to more fun and intrigue.

So friends, Kannadigas and countrymen, this is going to be a battle among three big parties, and it is a battle over the millions they can rake in from real estate and mining. Happy voting, and God save you!

An angry man called Jyoti

Obits are being written all over India for Jyoti Sanyal, the journalism guru who died in Kolkata last week. I had seen him every day for three years when he was in Bangalore, and for someone in his fifties, he looked young and fit. When I heard the news of his passing, I wondered how someone like him could have had a stroke. “It was his temper,” said C K Meena, who knew him closely as a colleague at Asian College of Journalism.

Meena (now a columnist for The Hindu), Vishweshwar Bhat (editor, Vijaya Karnataka) and I taught at ACJ when Jyoti was dean (1997-2000), and we often watched him rage against the ugly style that rules our English language newspapers. He certainly was an angry man, but the anger was more ideological than personal. He shouted at students who turned in clumsy copy, and flung insults that left them reeling. But a trainee just had to write one nicely worded story for him to fall in love with her (He mentored the boys with equal concern).

Jyoti blamed the bad English of the Indian newspapers on two influences. Indians, he believed, thought in their own tongues, and then translated their thoughts into English, which is why they don’t find expressions such as “I am having two brothers” wrong. Second, he was convinced the merchant language of the East India Company had overwhelmed Indians and left them incapable of clarity of thought and expression. Jyoti called it “baboo English” because it used “scraps of commercialese such as same/the same; the said letter; aforesaid letter; duly noted, and Kindly instead of please, and so on.”

When I first heard about Jyoti’s insistence on English that sounded like English and not like an Indian language, I thought he was one of those literal school-teacher types, obsessed with textbook correctness, and unable to look beyond it. I had discovered the kaleidoscopic beauty of Salman Rushdie’s prose, and had earlier enjoyed the bold Kannada-coloured English of Raja Rao’s novel Kanthapura, and arrived at the position that Indians writing in English ought not to feel apologetic about bringing in their own cadences and idioms into English. But I soon realised Jyoti was bristling against something else altogether, and at one point he acknowledged my argument that English would be enriched, and not impoverished, if we applied our native imagination to it.

Looking back, Jyoti seems like a Naxal of the newspaper world, incensed not so much by personal injury as by the absence of a just system. And he carried himself around like an ideologue with his own idea of fashion, wearing oversized goggles, puffing away on a Wills Filter, and outfitted in jeans and cowboy-style zip-up boots.

When we published an obit for Jyoti in MiD DAY yesterday, we headlined it ‘Enemy of the cliché’. Ashish Mukherjee, the author, had almost ruined his chance of getting an ACJ seat when he said he wanted to become a journalist and fight for some great cause. Jyoti believed Ashish had “airy fairy” ideas about journalism, and decided to turn him away, but changed his mind at the last minute. Ashish came down from Delhi and and turned into one of Jyoti’s fervent disciples. He went back to work for Indian Express and CNN-IBN in that city.

Jyoti’s students now populate newspapers and TV channels across India, and are conscious they have the responsibility of carrying forward his crusade against shoddy writing. On their blog (http://acjbillboard.blogspot.com), they have been sharing stories about Jyoti. Elsewhere, Ravinder Kumar, editor of The Statesman when Jyoti wrote its style book, describes him as a man of style and great substance.

Here in MiD DAY, we bought copies of his book Indlish for all our journalists as soon as it hit the stands a year ago. We didn’t know it then, but our preference for it over The Economist Style Book had pleased Jyoti, and he had felt vindicated that a newspaper was trying to put his ideas into practice.

Jyoti didn’t teach me anything overtly, perhaps because he felt it would be indecorous to instruct a colleague, but I watched him at work, and picked up -- Ekalavya-like! -- writing and editing techniques that have proved invaluable in my journalistic career. I know this is belated, but thanks, Jyoti!

Giliyu panjaradolilla: A translation

Giliyu panjaradolilla (The parrot's no longer in the cage), by Purandaradasa, contemplates death with a bird metaphor. I haven't heard Karnatak classical musicians, or even Hindustani musicians, singing this composition. But B V Karanth, the theatre legend, made a lovely tune for this song, and it has a folksy lilt that makes it singable even to those not classically trained.

I attempt a translation:


The parrot's no longer in the cage.
The cage's suddenly bare, alas!

Sister, I took your word,
and got myself a little parrot.
When you weren't around
the cat snatched it and ran away.

The parrot that chanted Rama Rama,
the parrot with a soft body,
the parrot nurtured with love
is suddenly silent, alas!

It lived in a house with nine doors
and lots of people for company.
The pillar broke, the image fell
and it flew skywards, alas!

The parrot that played in the palm,
the parrot that danced on the wrist,
has flown away to be with
Ranga Purandara Vittala.

The parrot's no longer in the cage.
The cage's suddenly bare, alas!

Star gazing over Hogenakal

The Tamils are proud of the sound zha, as in Tamizhan. They believe no non-Tamil can get it right. Debates over phonetics used to break out at a newspaper office in Bangalore, where Tamils and Kannadigas worked in equal numbers. The Tamil proofreaders asked the Kannadigas to say "Vazhapazham!", certain that their colleagues would flunk the test. After a while, the Kannadigas arrived at a smart answer. They said, "Okay, before we try that, we'll give you a simpler test. Just say 'Gopi'!"

Now you may think this was no contest. But no! The Tamils invariably got one of the syllables wrong. They would say "Gobi" or "Kopi", much to the delight of the Kannadigas.

Thanks to Hogenakal, Kannadigas and Tamils again look like sworn enemies, but let it not be forgotten that they enjoy their share of fun and games. At the same time, spring from the same Dravidian roots, and but they have evolved into temperamentally dissimilar siblings.

In the movie industry, barely educated and real estate-enriched Kannada producers believe the best stories are manufactured in Tamil Nadu. They look out for hits in Tamil, and promptly import them into Kannada. But is it true that the Tamils write better stories? No, if you ask the Jnanpith awards committee. Kannada has won seven of these highly regarded literary awards, while Tamil has won just two. But the Tamils write better movie scripts. They know how to dramatise a story, how to exaggerate in a cinematic way, how to package it all with comedy, dialogue and song.

The Tamils take their films seriously, and are so impressed by good deeds on screen that they do not hesitate to hand over their collective destiny to their celluloid heroes. The Kannadigas are a more sceptical lot. An Ambarish here and a 'Mukhyamantri' Chandru there may win a stray election, but will never be able to lead a party to power. Perhaps the only movie star who might have become chief minister of Karnataka was Rajkumar. His contemporary MGR rose without any serious challenge to take over the reins of Tamil Nadu, but Rajkumar remained unmoved by the temptations of electoral politics. Would Kannadigas have voted him to power had he entered the fray? We'll never know.

Since the Tamils consume their popular culture earnestly, they can also produce more extravagant films, flashier ads, and catchier songs. The Kannadigas challenge that assumption once in a while, and deliver big hits, but these don't make a mark beyond our borders. The Tamil film industry has an audience in many parts of India, Karnataka included, and abroad. Many Kannadigas are as familiar with Rajnikant and Vikram as they are with their own stars. (My Kannadiga aunts are big fans of Kamala Hassan and could ply you with endless Tamil movie trivia!). But, on the other hand, the Tamils steadfastly refuse to patronise Kannada films in Chennai.

To come back to where we began, and to generalise, the Tamil thrives on hyperbole, while the Kannadiga prefers understatement.

Kannadigas, at least the ones whose knowledge of Kannada extends beyond popular culture, believe they excel at literature. The best minds in Tamil writing seem to gravitate towards the Chennai movie industry, while the best in Kannada writing remain dismissive of popular movies. Can you imagine an Ananthamurthy or an Adiga writing a screenplay for Rajkumar or Ravichandran?

Tamil rhetoric, inspired by Dravidian politics, is wonderfully heady, as Rajnikant knows. And it's wholesome family entertainment to watch the stars come out on both sides and make grand speeches. But do you know any better about the Hogenakal row, now that you've enjoyed the tinsel spectacle? Someone tell us what it's all about, please.

Raag Anuraag: CD review

The difficult art of talking music

How do you explain a complex music to a lay listener? Well-known singer Parameshwar Hegde put his students to work on this challenge, and the result is Raag Anuraag, a two-CD introduction to Hindustani music.

The album opens with some comments on the nature of Indian music and quickly switches to short renderings of popular ragas. The sweet-voiced Amrita Rao sings a composition in raga Madhuvanti, and you soon get an explanation of how it is different from raga Patdeep and raga Bhimpalasi. Similarly, the CDs introduce other clusters of ragas with the help of compositions sung by Hegde's students.

The general observations soon give way to a more advanced discourse, and it looks like the collection assumes you are already an insider to the world of Indian classical music. Unless you know a fair bit of music terminology, you may not fully understand the commentary from this point. But the album still reaches out to the lay listener by connecting classical compositions with film songs.

For instance, you understand that Bahut din beete beete, sung by almost every Hindustani khayal musician, is based on raga Puriya Dhanasri, the same raga that Kannada film song Nambide ninna nada devateye (Sandhyaraga) employs. Similarly, the Lata Mangeshkar hit Rasik balma is used to illustrate raga Shuddh Kalyan.

Raag Anuraag shows how Hegde, a disciple of Pandit Chandrashekhar Puranikmath and Pandit Basavaraj Rajguru, has prepared scores of students committed to carrying on the tradition. An academy named after Hegde is quietly spreading the art in Bangalore, besides organising concerts by musicians from all over India.

If you've heard Hegde's music live, you will have heard most compositions featured in Raag Anuraag, and you might want to pick up the collection just to have them on your shelf. Also, Hegde's students show promise, and some are musically mature beyond their years. Raag Anuraag is not as ambitious as the multiple-CD Alaap (Times Music) or the three-cassette Music Today introduction to Hindustani music, but it still offers a quick peek into the treasures of a great tradition. But it would be unrealistic to expect Raag Anuraag, or any such introduction, to turn a newcomer to classical music into an instant connoisseur. That calls for some sustained listening, and some interaction with the more knowledgeable.

Hindustani music is a difficult art, but it needn't be esoteric and incomprehensible. It can be appreciated with some help, and it is heartening that Parameshwar Hegde Music Academy has taken upon itself the responsibility of reaching out to the curious lay listener.


Raag Anuraag
Rs 200
Parameshwar Hegde Music Academy, Bangalore
Phone 93412 48257