Dipanjan's Random Muses

Gandhi, Bose, GOI Act (1935)

2009-04-12T09:25:00.000-07:00

My dear Subhas Babu,
[This was very formal which was unusual for Gandhi-Bose communication]
"I must dictate this letter as I am willfully blind. Whilst I am dictating this, Maulana Sahib, Nalini Babu, and Ghanashyamdas are listening. We had an exhaustive discussion over the Bengal ministry. I am more than ever convinced that we should not aim at ousting the Ministry. We shall gain nothing by a reshuffle; and probably, we shall lose much by including Congressmen in the Ministry. I feel, therefore, that the best way of securing comparative purity of administration and a continuation of a settled programme and policy would be to aim at having all the reforms we desire, carried out by the present Ministry. Nalini Babu should come out, as he says he would, on a real issue being raised and the decision being taken by the Ministry against the interests of the country. His retirement from the Ministry would then be dignified and wholly justified. I understand that so far as the amendment of Municipal Law is concerned, separate electorate for the Scheduled Class is given up. There is still insistence on separate electorate for Mussalmans. I don't know whether opposition should be taken to the breaking point. If the Mussalman opinion is solid in favour of separation, I think it would be wisdom to satisfy them. I would not like them to carry the point in the teeth of the Congress opposition. It would then be a point against the Congress."

-- Mahatma Gandhi (21 December, 1938)

Background: Under the provincial constitution imposed on Bengal by Government of India act 1935, Bengali Hindus were permanently debarred from exercising any political power in their province.

250 seats in Bengal Legislative Assembly were apportioned as follows -

1) 117 for Muslims of Bengal elected by only Muslim electorate.
2) 48 for any resident of Bengal elected by general franchise.
3) 30 for persons belonging to Hindu "Scheduled" castes - certain castes regarded as "depressed", elected by general franchise.
4) 19 seats for representatives of industries, commerce, elected by their electorate.
5) 11 seats for Europeans, persons of British origin temporarily residing in Bengal, elected by their electorate.
6) 8 for labor, chosen by a labor electorate
7) 5 for landowners, chosen by their special electorate
8) 3 for Anglo-Indians, chosen by their special electorate
9) 2 for Indian Christians, chosen by their special electorate
10) 2 for Universities
11) 2 for women
12) 2 for Muslim women
13) 1 for Anglo-Indian women

As a result of this act, Bengali Hindus were eligible to compete in 117 (250 - 117 - 11 - 2 - 2 - 1) seats at most, to be elected by general franchise. Even among these 117 seats, 30 were reserved for scheduled castes, quite arbitrarily picked. On the other hand, Bengali Muslims could contest 203 seats (117 + 48 + 19 + 8 + 5 + 2 + 2 + 2), 117 of which were to be elected by a Muslim electorate. Based on 1931 census numbers, Muslim population in Bengal was anywhere between 52-54%, which clearly did not justify the numerical distribution of 203-117, even if one were to accept the underlying premise of communal and casteist electorate. British community of Bengal was given 4% of seats in Assembly when their population was not above 0.0004%. In reality, the position of the Hindus was even worse than what this unfair statute implies. They did not win 117 seats they were eligible for. Besides, some of the winners, from both "high" as well as "scheduled" castes joined with Muslims against the general Hindu group, including Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, finance minister in Huq-League ministry formed in 1937, whose resignation, or lack thereof, was the subject of Gandhi's letter to Bose.

In the elections of 1937 based on the provisions of GOI act of 1935, Congress still emerged as the largest party in the legislative assembly, followed by Muslim League and Krishak-Praja-Party. Bengali Muslim votes were almost evenly split between all-India Muslim League, which in Bengal was the party of upper-class Muslims, and Fazlul Huq's Krishak-Praja-Party (KPP), which was the party of peasants and tenants. Because of the electoral system described above, a coalition system was inevitable. Huq first approached the Congress, but all-India Congress was unwilling to co-operate with any other party in provinces where they did not have absolute majority. That forced Huq to join forces with League to form a coalition ministry, and eventually the focus of KPP-Muslim League coalition shifted from socio-economic reforms to communal issues.

Congress refusal to make a special case for Bengal was a mistake. Because of the numerical distribution, it was impossible for Congress to win absolute majority in Bengal any time in near future. Huq's strong power base among Muslim peasants would have been the ideal platform for Congress to stay in touch with Bengali Muslim masses, which, as an opposition party, they failed to do over the next few years. In Assam, Congress did decide to share power in a coalition provincial government. [to be continued ...]

Source: Thy Hand, Great Anarch! by Nirad C Chaudhury -- Chapter - Politics in Bengal (1937-38)

Pakistan's Taliban Generation - a BBC dispatch

2009-03-21T14:41:00.001-07:00

What stands out is how nonchalant the kids are about violence and death.

Cramer vs Cramer

2009-03-14T02:20:00.000-07:00

Class dismissed in Swat Valley

2009-02-28T15:59:00.000-08:00

And Swat might be just the beginning.

Kill Dil: Vol. 1

2009-02-18T15:24:00.000-08:00

Darjeeling Unlimited

2008-04-04T23:22:00.001-07:00

Peter Sarstedt was born in New Delhi, to Albert and Coral Sarstedt, both in the civil service, in what was still a British possession in 1942. The following year, his parents moved the family to Kurseong near Darjeeling. Did Anderson know this bit of trivia before deciding to give Sarstedt's 1969 UK chart topper "Where do you go to (My Lovely)" a rebirth in The Darjeeling Limited's graceful prequel Hotel Chevalier?

Unlikely, but not impossible.

Could Anderson predict that his eclectic use of Ray's musical scores and widely publicized references to The Darjeeling Limited as a tribute to Ray -- and to Renoir who during the shooting of The River in India met Ray and encouraged him to make films -- would inevitably attract critical comparisons contrasting Anderson's clinically detached deadpan irony with Ray's empathetic humanism?

Very likely.

A. O. Scott (NYT):

But humanism lies either beyond his grasp or outside the range of his interests. His stated debt to “The River,” Jean Renoir’s film about Indian village life, and his use of music from the films of Satyajit Ray represent both an earnest tribute to those filmmakers and an admission of his own limitations. They were great directors because they extended the capacity of the art form to comprehend the world that exists. He is an intriguing and amusing director because he tirelessly elaborates on a world of his own making.

Robert Davis (Errata):

Anderson bluntly ties the ceremony to the father's funeral using a jarring flashback that feels like a scene from Reservoir Dogs, a film that's probably closer kin to The Darjeeling Limited, with its color-coded characters, eclectic music, and slo-mo strides, than the films of Satyajit Ray or Jean Renoir that Anderson cites as inspiration.

Predictable, and a little unfortunate. Imitation might be the sincerest form of flattery, but it is definitely not the most artistic expression of inspiration. And how uneasy lied the head that wears the (somewhat reductionist) humanist crown?

At least a little.

An auteurist look at Ray filmography might not quickly reveal the fact that eight out of his first eleven films were faithful adaptations of works by three great turn-of-the-century humanist Bengali writers -- Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), Tarashankar Bandopadhyay (1898-1971) and Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay (1894-1950) -- who were a generation or three older than Ray. Apu trilogy, Jalsaghar, Teen Kanya and Charulata created Ray's legacy, and even today, especially in west, he is primarily remembered for a set of films that spoke of a world Ray had very little first hand experience of. Kanchanjangha, a real-time narrative set in Darjeeling and Ray's first film based on his own script, was greeted with a coldness typical of Darjeeling winters. Pensive detached Monisha, eccentric bird-watcher Jagadish, narcissistic Indranath, Ashok of humble background but of not-so-humble demeanor, and the upper-middle class milieu of elite Bengalis vacationing in a hill station and speaking Bangla with a liberal sprinkling of English, were not easily reducible to universal archetypes. Ray also drew significant flak at home for his portrayal of Apu in segments of Aparajito and Apur Sansar which were perceived to be cold and detached, a departure from the original.

Darjeeling, the backdrop of Feludar goyendagiri, a short mystery, also witnessed the debut of Ray's legendary detective Feluda. With the help of Feluda's dry wit, sarcasm and cynicism, eccentric Professor Shanku's exploits, brilliant translations of Lear and Carroll on the pages of Sandesh inspired by Sukumar Ray's genes and his absurdist universe, idiosyncrasies of numerous single middle-aged outsider male protagonists, distinctly unique but similarly quirky, in dozens of short stories including the one on which Agantuk, Ray's last film, is based, Ray created a reflexive creative world of his own, cherishing and defying the boundaries of genres with equal glee, a world at least as far removed from Tagore's and Bibhutibhushan's as from Anderson's.

More troubling is the subtle insinuation of racism in Jonah Weiner's Slate attack piece - Unbearable Whitenes:

Rita isn't a character so much as a familiar type: the mysterious, exotic, dark-skinned beauty. Jack hardly exchanges a word with her, but, reeling from a bad breakup, he begins pestering her to leave her Sikh boyfriend, convinced for no good reason that she can turn his life around.

That paragraph perfectly describes Hari's attitude and feelings towards Duli, tribal "Miss India" in Aranyer Dinratri. Assuming Weiner would not find Aranyer Dinratri and Ray equally obnoxious, isn't he expressing a double standard which simultaneously forces white man's historic burden to become a contemporary white man's guilt as well as a brown man's privilege?

Going back to Davis who correctly notes a void at the core of the film:

Anderson is too ironically deadpan to embrace any sudden transformations in his characters, so they don't seem remarkably changed by [an event by a river], which effectively reduces it to a plot point with an emotional patina, rendered impotent by a filmmaker who seems to think that he can compensate for the emptiness at his film's core just by pulling away from sentimentality. He's trying to fill one void with another.

The river event might be impotent which is partially the point, but the void is powerfully resonant of what is absent.

Write-offs

2008-04-01T14:25:00.000-07:00

UBS. Deutsche.

In another press release,

Treasury Department to Backstop Markets

APRIL 1,2008 (NEWS SERVICE) Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced today that the Working Group on Financial Markets has determined that Treasury will step in whenever the S&P Index drops below 1320.

“We can’t have Wall Street bankers shoulder all the responsibility for keeping their bonuses intact,” he said. “The great American system is in a position to guarantee profits and the federal government will absorb all losses incurred by the top one per cent of the population by income,” he concluded.

Moral Hazard

2008-03-18T09:55:00.000-07:00

"Thank you for calling Buy-a-Bank," said an e-mail from a long-time reader.

"Please listen carefully as our menu items have changed.

For Mandarin, press 1.

For Arabic, press 2.

For takeover of Bear Stearns, press 3.

For Lehman Brothers, press 4.

For any monoline insurer, press 5.

To purchase residual assets of defunct hedge funds, please stay on the line and an operator will assist you."

[link]

Obama, minorities, macaca

2008-02-07T11:56:00.001-08:00

In 25 California counties, Obama did better than his state number (42.3%), and in 33 counties, he did worse. According to 2006 census data, California's racial demographics are as follows:

WB (white, non hispanic + black) = 49.8%
AH (asian + hispanic) = 48.3%.

In ALL 25 counties where Obama did better than his state average, AH population is less than 48.3% of county population. There is not a single exception.

(Descending order of Obama's vote%)(Click on chart for full-size version)

Top three in terms of AH proportion are San Francisco (Obama=52.1, AH=46.2), Alameda (Obama=50.7, AH=45.8) and San Mateo (Obama=43.5, AH=46.6). Out of those three, SF and Alameda stand out. Obama's number in San Mateo is not that different from state average, and he did lose that county even though he did better than state average. Interestingly, SF's Asian-Hispanic breakdown is 32-14, but it is more even in Alameda (24-21) and San Mateo (23-23). Bottom ten of the 33 counties where Obama did worse than his state average are all AH-heavy -- to be more precise, H-heavy -- except Tehama. Alpine county, the only CA county with significant (20.8%) American Indian or Alaskan native population, seems to have liked Obama, though.

(Descending order of Obama's vote%)(Click on chart for full-size version)

On the other side, dejected talk radio luminaries were heard ruminating on Macacagate and what could have happened if only George Allen -- the great uniter of security hawks, evangelists and fiscal conservatives -- was allowed to run. Words and phrases such as "set-up", "ridiculous accusation" and "taken down early" dominated the discussions.

India - Always in my head

2008-01-13T00:23:00.000-08:00

After returning from Los Angeles Olympics 1984, shooter Soma Dutta wrote a series of articles about her experiences. One article was titled "India-ta kothay"? (Where is India?) Apparently, inside the Village, she was asked that question quite a few times by American journalists and volunteers, much to her chagrin and astonishment. How could someone not know about the seventh largest and the second most populous country in the world unless, of course, they learned their list of countries from the Olympic medal tally?

I have never faced that particular question as a follow-up to the deceptively complex "where are you from?", but even as late as in mid-late 90s, and especially in Pacific Northwest, I had to distinguish India from West Indies and Indians from native Americans several times since older Americans, in particular, sometimes followed up with "East Indies, not West, right?" or "so you are an East Indian?" I used to find those references anachronistic and a little amusing. Having been living in bay area for the last seven years and recently been chastised a few times by a follow-up of "of course, which part?", now I usually reply "Calcutta" to meet a blank stare sometimes, and at other times, having to end up explaining that it is neither in north India nor in south. Bay area is atypical, but I do travel quite a bit all over the country and it seems some progress is being made. India is in.

During last weekend's ABC/Facebook presidential debate hosted by Charlie Gibson, India showed up several times which was a little unusual. US political debates are not particularly known for their focus on countries not named Mexico or OPEC. Not that any of the serious -- with all due respect to Ron Paul's incredible Internet blitz campaign, his chances of winning the republican nomination is not much higher than that of any random atheist transgendered lesbian black woman -- candidates is an isolationist, but there is widespread consensus and very little to argue about the relationships between US and other major countries. We should, therefore, probably take notice when India becomes an exception, not once but four times. After all, one of these debaters will become No. 44 in less than a year, and what contexts bring India to the foreground of his -- or her -- thought processes are perhaps significant.

During the republican debate, Ron Paul's first reference to India was in the context of increasing health care costs forcing Americans to travel to India to get heart surgeries done. Even after the travel and hotel expenses, the costs are lower in some cases. Paul is not supporting more government intervention in health care. He is speaking against government money printing and deficit spending that he thinks are responsible for triggering inflation in health care costs which would have been lower otherwise. India, in this context, is an alternative provider of high-quality critical health care services at a much lower cost.

Second reference to India in that debate did involve oil. Gibson's contention was India along with China and other emerging economies were going to compete with US for oil and consequently, increasing global demand and consumption of oil would push gas prices higher, probably much higher. No republican candidate disagreed with his premise. Supply-side concerns about oil have been commonplace, but increasingly apparent fear about competitive global demand for oil challenging US consumer spending, and open expression of that fear in public forums are fairly recent.

During the democratic debate, it was Senator Clinton who brought up India for the first time when asked about how she was going to handle re-energized and re-constituted Al Qaida leadership in Western Pakistan and more specifically, the possibilities of them acquiring nuclear weapons. While discussing the importance of precluding any reactions against India by taking Pakistani government into confidence before launching intelligence-based actions against Al Qaida, Clinton used a particularly astute phrase "inherent paranoia about India in the region of Pakistan". Unfortunately, there was no follow-up discussion on whether stoking or quelling that paranoia was more in line with US national interest. In answering the same question, Richardson clearly stated that $11B assistance given to Musharraf to fight terrorism was used to fight against India and was basically stolen.

The last reference to India was also made by Richardson who followed up on his oft-repeated and disputed claim that US was 29th in the world in maths and sciences by saying that India and China are more competitive as they graduate many more times engineers than US does. Even if we disregard per-capita statistics and the quality of graduates, the number seems inflated, although his main point about the need to increase investments in research to stay competitive in a global economy holds.

To summarize, India is consuming a lot of oil, providing relatively inexpensive critical health care services to US citizens, suffering from USA's misguided Pakistan policy and might face a catastrophe in future if Al Qaida leadership in Pakistan is not dealt with intelligently, and is going to be a competitive threat by graduating more engineers than US. Thankfully, not much anti-outsourcing rhetoric and smear campaign tactics.

Atrocious Umpiring

2008-01-06T01:30:00.001-08:00

Helicopter Blinks: Part 2

2007-11-09T01:41:00.001-08:00

Helicopter looked distinctly nervous. Soaring gold and oil tickers were very appropriate. Apparently traders in the Pit at the CBOT in Chicago were cheering Ron Paul when he spoke.

ভারতচরিতমানস : সুবর্ণরেখা -- সঞ্জয় মুখোপাধ্যায়

2007-11-03T23:17:00.000-07:00

Please click here to install Avro for Bangla fonts

ঊৎস-- অন্যান্য ও ঋত্বিকতন্ত্র : সঞ্জয় মুখোপাধ্যায় (প্রকাশনাঃ চলচ্ছবি, কলকাতা, ২১ মে, ২০০৫)

'সুবর্ণরেখা' ছবিটির দিকে তাকালে একথা বুঝতে আজ আর সংকটের সম্মুখীন হতে হয় না; আজ স্পষ্টই বোঝা যায় ঋত্বিক ঘটকের পক্ষে এই ছবি ইতিহাসের সঙ্গে তাঁর নিজস্ব চুক্তিপত্র | সুবর্ণরেখা দেখার পর আমার কেবলই মনে পড়ে রেমব্রান্টের 'রাতের পাহারা' (১৭৪২) | ওই ছবির তিমিরঘন প্রত্যাশা, মুখাবয়বের সচকিত অভিব্যক্তি ছাড়িয়ে যা আরো বড়ো প্রশ্ন নির্মাণ করে তা পটে একটি বালিকার উপস্থিতি | পটস্থ এই বালিকা তবে কে? সে যে ইতিহাস এ কথা বোঝার জন্য পৃথিবীকে বেশ কিছুদিন ধৈর্য ধরতে হয়েছে । ঋত্বিক 'সুবর্ণরেখা'য় অনুরূপ পরীক্ষাই সম্পন্ন করেন । বেশ্যালয়ে যে কন্ঠস্বর দেববাণীর মতো ভেসে আসে সেই 'হে রাম' এক অলৌকিক, একসট্রাডায়জেটিক কথন, প্রায় ডেলফিক ওর‌্যাকলপ্রতিম যা সময়ের স্বাক্ষর । বস্তুত, ঋত্বিক ঘটক 'সুবর্ণরেখা'য় আর একবার ভারত আবিষ্কারের ঝুঁকি নিয়েছেন । স্টেশনে অভিরাম যখন মরণোন্মুখ বাগদী বঊটির মুখে মা'র পরিচয়প্ত্র খুঁজে পায় তখন আমরা বুঝতে পারি অন্যদিক থেকে, অপরদিক থেকে ঋত্বিক প্রণয়ন করছেন অন্ত্যজের রামায়ণ ।

একে আধুনিক দলিত রাজনীতির সংযোজনী বলা যাবে না; বরং চূড়ান্ত বিস্ময়ে উপলব্ধি করি যে ঋত্বিক জাতীয় মহাকাব্যটিকে আর্যাবর্তের সীমা পার করিয়ে দিতে চাইছেন । ইতিহাসের উৎসবিন্দু তাঁর জানা নেই, কিন্তু অপসৃয়মান পদচিহ্ন অনুসরণ করে সময়ের জরায়ূতে প্রবেশের গাঢ় আকাঙ্খা আছে । 'একমাত্র সত্যজিৎ রায়'- নামের ছোটো আলোচনায় ঋত্বিক সত্যজিতের প্রতি আমর্ম শ্রদ্ধাজ্ঞাপন করেও 'পথের পাঁচালী' ও 'অপুর সংসারে'র অন্তিম পর্যায় সম্পর্কে নিজের অসন্তোষ গোপন রাখেন নি । তিনি লেখেন - 'আর সেই মারাত্মক শেষ পঙক্তিটি -- "অপু নিশ্চিন্তিপুর ছাড়িয়া যায় নাই । সে আবার ফিরিয়া আসিয়াছে ।" বইয়ের প্রাণবস্তু বোধহয় এখানেই ছিল ।' বস্তুত, এই মন্তব্য ঋত্বিকমানসে ইতিহাসের গঠন সম্পর্কে সবচেয়ে গুরুত্বপূর্ণ আলোরেখা । তিনি পারেন না সত্যজিতের মতো নিবিড় আস্তিক্যে দীক্ষিত হয়ে ইতিহাসের সরলরৈখিক অগ্রসরণকে মেনে নিতে, সে অর্থে আমি একটু সাহস করেই বলব তিনি হয়তো 'প্রগতি'-বিষয়ক ধারণাতেও সময় বিশেষে আস্থা রাখেন না বরং আমাদের চেতনাকে আমূল প্রশ্নবিদ্ধ করেন । 'মানুষ চূর্ণিল যবে নিজ মর্ত্য সীমা' - 'সুবর্ণরেখা'র সেই মহেন্দ্রক্ষণ তাঁকে আশাশীল করে নি কারখানার ভেতরে; বরং ফুকো প্রমুখ ইউরোপীয় মহাজনদের কাছে হাত না পেতেই তিনি গ্যাগারিনের রূপকে বিজ্ঞানের জয়যাত্রাকে ছুড়ে ফেলেছেন চুল্লীর প্রহরে । আমি বলব ঋত্বিক এত দ্ব্যর্থহীনভাবে আমাদের জ্ঞানের সঞ্চার পথটিকে আর কোনো ছবিতে বিদ্রূপ ও পরীক্ষা করেন নি । তাঁর সব ছবিতেই শিকড়ে ফিরে যাবার টান আছে, কিন্তু মহাপ্রস্থানের পরে স্বর্গারোহণ পর্বে মাতৃভাষা ও মাতৃভূমির প্রতি চেতনার এত তীব্র জ্যা-বদ্ধ টান আর কোথাও নেই ।

'সুবর্ণরেখা' প্রসঙ্গে বারে বারে মনে হয় কী চক্ষুহীনই আমরা ছিলাম । ঋত্বিক বাস্তুহারা কলোনীর নিতান্ত স্থানিক ও কালিক বিপর্যয়কে গান্ধী-প্রয়াণের ঐতিহাসিক নক্ষত্র পতনের সংঘাতে জুড়ে দিয়ে আসলে অবতরণ করতে চান এক পুরাণকথার পৃথিবীতে যেখানে বৃদ্ধটি টাইরিয়াসের মতো সংস্কৃত বিলাপোক্তি উচ্চারণ করে যায় । 'সুবর্ণরেখা' সমস্ত আখ্যান জুড়েই সময়ের দুটি স্তরকে কাছে ডেকেছে । আমাদের চোখে দেখা কিশোরীটি কখন যে মীরাবাঈতে রূপান্তরিত হয়েছে, এক বৃদ্ধের সান্তনাবাক্য কিভাবে দূরাগত আকাশবাণীর মতো গম্ভীর হয়ে গেছে,কীভাবে সহস্র নরকমন্থনের পর আমাদের গীতা, ঊপনিষদ-ব্যবহৃত মিথ্যার মতো অলীক সান্তনা তা যাঁরা 'ওয়েস্টল্যান্ড' পড়েন বা 'লা দলচে ভিতা' দেখেন তাঁরা আগেও অনুমান করতে পেরেছিলেন । কিন্তু আরো গভীরভাবে যা মনে হয় তা হল এই চলচ্চিত্রের মতন একটা আধুনিক যন্ত্রনির্ভর শাস্ত্র ও পাশ্চাত্য সংস্কৃতির উত্তরাধিকার নিয়ে এই প্রথম ঋত্বিক দীপ্ত ব্রাহ্মণের মতো প্রত্যাঘাত হানলেন । অধীত জ্ঞান এবং দৃষ্ট অভিজ্ঞতা দিয়েই 'সুবর্ণরেখা' চলচ্চিত্রে তিনি আমাদের ইউরোপীয় আধুনিকতা বিষয়ক-ধারণাকে 'প্রাদেশিকতা' মুক্ত করেছেন । বলা চলে 'সুবর্ণরেখা'উত্তর ঔপনিবেশিকতার আবহে আমাদের ইতিহাসের নবনির্মাণ । গার্সিয়া মার্কেজ স্বদেশে ছড়িয়ে থাকা সময়ের টুকরোগুলো কী বিচিত্র বিন্যাসেই না সাজিয়ে এঁকে রাখতে চেয়েছেন স্বদেশের মানচিত্র, ভূগোলের প্রতিলিপি, আত্মার বিবরণী ! পথনির্দেশিকা তার নেই, তাকে মায়া বাস্তবের আশ্রয় নিতে হয়েছে । উপরন্তু উপনিবেশবাদ লাতিন আমেরিকাতে শরীরের সংস্থানও প্রায়ই হরণ করেছে । ঋত্বিকের অতিচেতনা হয়তো মতাদর্শে ভিন্ন বলেই ছিন্ন খঞ্জনীর মতো বাংলার নদী মাঠ ভাঁটাফুলে এখনো খুঁজে পায় শুশ্রুষার ধব্বনি । তাঁর ছবি প্রত্যেকটি বিশ্বাসযোগ্য শংসিত বাস্তবতার দ্বারা নিষিক্ত নয় কিন্তু কুরুক্ষেত্রের যুদ্ধে অর্জুন যে চলচ্চিত্রীয় চোখ দিয়ে বিশ্বরূপ দর্শন করেছিল তেমনই কোনো চেতনার সৌজন্যে দেখতে পায় নদীর পাড়ে আর বস্তীর আঙিনায় ক্লেদ, কোলাহল, রক্ত, ও গ্লানির শেষে আত্মা স্নান করে উঠেছে । 'সুবর্ণরেখা' ভারতীয় ইতিহাসকে কুমারীত্ব ফিরিয়ে দিয়েছে, বক্তব্যের দিক থেকে নয়, ভাষার দিক থেকেও । এই ছবির ছিন্ন পুঁথির অংশগুলি দেখলে তাই মনে হয় কৃত্তিবাসের মতন ' ভাষাপথ খননি স্ববলে ' ঋত্বিক ঘটক চলচ্চিত্র শাস্ত্রকে আমাদের মননে ও মৃত্তিকায় সম্ভব করলেন । দুর্ভাগ্য চল্লিশ বছর আগে এ কথা বলার লোক ছিল না । (২০০৩)

Missing the Maharathis?

2007-10-26T23:48:00.000-07:00

Much ado about Maharathis. Should they stay or should they go? As CricInfo puts it: Is Indian cricket better off without the Big Three - Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Sourav Ganguly? Unfortunately, the ensuing discussions often generate more heat than light. However, a couple of questions can probably be answered without triggering fistfights or allegations of parochialism. 1) Shall we miss watching them bat? Yes, most certainly. 2) Without them, are we going to win significantly fewer ODIs? Probably not.

As any diligent reader of mutual fund disclosures knows, past performance does not predict future results. But it is difficult to argue that maharathis, at the twilight of their careers, will be missed much when their absence seems to have made very little impact on India's win ratio until now.

An admittedly crude measure of an individual's indispensability is to compare his team's win ratios with and without him in the team. After all, who among us does not remember telling ourselves -- "I will see how they win without me" -- after being dropped from a team? So a curious mind might wonder how India performed when a Sachin was rested, a Rahul was injured, or a Sourav sidelined. As always, StatsGuru obliges.

The "With" columns show the stats for matches in which the batsman was a part of the team, and the "Without" columns show the corresponding numbers for all the matches he missed during his entire career span. The difference in the winning percentages is the MissHim™ factor. Tendulkar's absence has adversely impacted India, albeit marginally. And quite surprisingly -- at least to me -- India has won at a significantly higher rate without Dravid and Ganguly than with them. In the context of tens of thousands of runs the big three have scored, one might have expected a more noticeable effect of their absence on results.

Some of the arguments against the usefulness of this measure are easy to foresee. The number of "Without" matches is much smaller compared to the "With" matches. Moreover, the distribution of "minnow/non-minnow" opposition, home/away factor, inconsequential matches, relative team strengths could conceivably be different between the two sets especially because layoffs triggered by an injury -- or a Chappell -- tend to happen in bursts. Regardless, I would argue that over a long career, MissHim™ index has some statistical significance as to how strongly a player's presence influences match results. The numbers for greatest one-day batsmen from other countries seem to support this notion.

All of them have positive MissHim™ values. The top five batsmen with the highest numbers are Ponting, Gilchrist, Richards, Symonds and Inzamam. Intuitively we do recognize those names as big match-winners and big-match performers. Interestingly, Yuvraj has a MissHim™ factor of 20.89, second only to Ponting, and undoubtedly Yuvraj is a proven match-winner in his own rights.

So there might actually be something more to MissHim™ than just being an entertaining, but useless, index of the complex interplay between individual brilliance and match result, that is the game of cricket.

Purono sei diner katha

2007-10-22T23:09:00.001-07:00

here is my nephew. very smart.
(turns her head away from devi and faces nephew)
she is very smart too. from iit, going to grad school now.
oh, hi
hi.

(one week later)
email: shubho bijoya. sorry for not replying to your email. have been totally swamped with mid-terms. before coming to us, my parents told me to focus on studies and not waste time on internet and emails, so please do not send me any further emails. (translation: (you are not hot) or (i have a boyfriend) or both. altavista me to find out.)

*******

local bengali club is organizing a cultural program on pujo weekend.
yeah, i know.
what are you going to do?
sing.
what, eagles?
no, a nazrulgeeti.
i am impressed.

*******

wow, i did not expect so many people.
still it's not quite the same.
girls are prettier.
but the spirit is not there.
whatever, i am hungry. what are we going to eat? phuchkas sucked.
only fish. only fish.
yeah, you have been talking about it for months, but where is it?
somewhere in shivaji park, but i don't remember the number. let's walk.
(after an hour)
wish we could look it up on our cellphone.

*******

what would marx say about pujo? just another opiate?

the religious aspect of it, yes, most certainly. rest is just circus.

but for five days at least, ordinary poor people look genuinely happy, don't they?

i am not sure how many of them are really happy and how many are just going through the motions. they have no reasons to be happy. pujo is merely a diversion that entrenches brahmin-bourgeois power structure by sublimating pent-up anger and frustration of the proletariat.

but public pujos are sarbojonin, universal. doesn't that help to bridge class and caste differences?
not in our current societal framework and it's not truly sarbojonin either. if you look at paras and clubs carefully, they have clear socio-economic and caste alignments.

but within each para, there is variation,too, and they do celebrate together -- socially, culturally.
not muslims. and that culture you are talking about is bankrupt. what to celebrate - hindi film songs? anyways, you are coming to the party stall on main road, right? we have a large book collection this time and we are going to show battleship potemkin on ashTomi morning at gano bhabon.

not the stall, too many old people. will drop by for the film though.

*******

what's our strategy?

well, we can just park our asses here at shibaji sporting mandap and wait all night.

but they may not come.

are you crazy? free khichuri, bose-a(N)ko results, jalsa. ashtomi is the big night. everyone will be here.

what if they go to one of the pandals on main road first and then get stuck?

hmmm... let's split then. you wait here. I'll take my cycle and go north. As soon as I see them, I will be back.

don't take the main road on your way back.

are you crazy? only shortcuts.

it would be so cool if we could carry phones with us.

get real. for two years we have been waiting for a home line and you are dreaming of mobile phones.

*******

how many new dresses this year?
eleven.

eleven! for five nights? and your ma was saying she may not even let you go out on shashThi night.

yeah, she thinks the real pujo starts only on saptomi. but silly, what about mornings and I always save two. one for lokkhipujo. another for kalipujo.

ah.

what about you?

let's see, we are going to kolkata on saptomi, on ashTomi, we are cycling all the way to ...

i was asking about new clothes.

oh, three shirts, two full pants. no more half pants.

only two?

yeah, but six possible combinations should take care of five nights.

geek! so you are coming to our place for bhaiph(N)oTa, right?

why? i am not your brother.

but you don't have a sister.

who needs a sister?

Helicopter Blinks

2007-09-20T15:37:00.001-07:00

A remarkable exchange, but the helicopter needs to work on its poker face.

Sept. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez instructed Petroleos de Venezuela SA, the state oil company, to convert its investment accounts from dollars to euros and Asian currencies to reduce risk. [link]

Sept. 20 (Telegraph.co.uk) -- Fears of dollar collapse as Saudis take fright. [link]

Sept. 20 (Marketwatch) -- Crude futures rally past $83 to another record. [link]

Sept. 20 (Marketwatch) -- Canadian Dollar Trades Equal to U.S. for First Time Since 1976. [link]

Sept. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Gold Rises to 27-Year High on Weak Dollar, Inflation Concerns. [link]

Sept. 20 (Investmentnews)-- Euro all time high against the dollar. [link]

Scary Movies

2007-09-05T23:19:00.000-07:00

Be scared, very scared.

Scary Movie "The Original" -- Like where is like USA such as in a map? Starring Little Miss South Carolina.

Scary Movie 2 -- We are not monkeys!!! Starring Hunchback, Brownbee and Tanretardo.

If you think the sequel does not live up to the original, take a look at this recent gallop poll. These three stooges are true representatives and leaders of their people and not some fringe outliers.

Scary Movie 3 -- Bail us out please! Starring Jim Cramer, the intern at Kramerica Industries aka WWW™ (WallStreet Workers Welfare).

Helicopter Ben listened.

Partition of India: Part Two

2007-08-30T18:33:00.000-07:00

On 2nd April, 1947, in his personal report at the completion of his first week in office, Mountbatten painted a very gloomy picture. The Cabinet was fiercely divided along communal lines with two major parties having irreconcilable differences. The entire country, especially Punjab, N.W.F.P, Bihar, Calcutta, Bombay, U.P and parts of Delhi, were reeling from riots and communal tension.

Sikhs in Punjab, as a retaliation for the atrocities committed on them in the districts of Attock, Rawalpindi, and Jhelum since March 5, 1947, were planning on seizing the major irrigation centres. In his next weekly report on the 9th of April, Mountbatten pondered over a general election in Punjab, but concluded that it was not going to solve anything and governor's rule under section 93 was to continue. That decision was triggered by Punjab governor Sir E.M. Jenkins' detailed analysis dated 4th April, 1947 where he concluded that out of 175 seats in Punjab, 90 were Muslim certainties, 82 non-Muslim certainties and 3 were uncertain. Therefore, in an election, the Muslim League would have a very slim majority and consequently their government was going to be extremely unstable. The last line of Jenkins' report was ominous.

..."A Muslim Ministry now would mean instant civil war". (The Transfer of Power, Volume 10, Page 119)

In spite of the doom and gloom around him, for a while Mountbatten tried to keep an open mind about the possibilities of transferring power to an unified India, but time was the biggest concern as June 1948 deadline was non-negotiable. From the notes of Viceroy's Staff Meeting on April 11, 1947: [Mountbatten Papers, Page 190 of The Transfer of Power, Volume 10]

..." The Viceroy said that it had always been and would remain his main desire to hand over power to an unified India with a strong centre. The next best to this would be to hand over to an unified India with a weak centre -- such as was envisaged in the Cabinet Mission plan."

For a brief period, the "Gandhi plan" -- a scheme supporting an All-India Jinnah government -- seemed promising even though it had been proposed by Gandhi without consulting Nehru, Patel and other major Congress leaders. The outline of the plan was: (Transfer of Power, Volume 10, Page 140)

..." Outline of a scheme for an Interim Government pending Transfer of Power.

1. Mr. Jinnah to be given the option of forming a Cabinet.

2. The selection of the Cabinet is left entirely to Mr. Jinnah. The members may be all Moslems, or all non-Moslems, or they may be representatives of all classes and creeds of the Indian people.

3. Mr. Jinnah must stipulate, on behalf of the League or of any other partes represented in the Cabinet formed by him that, so far as he or they are concerned, they will do their utmost to preserve peace throughout India.

4. There shall be no National Guards or any other form of private army.

5. Within the framework hereof Mr Jinnah will be perfectly free to present for acceptance a scheme of Pakistan, even before the transfer of power, provided, however, that he is successful in his appeal to reason and not to the force of arms which he abjures for all time for this purpose. Thus, there will be no compulsion in this matter over a Province or part thereof.

6. In the Assembly the Congress has a decisive majority. But the Congress shall never use that majority against the League policy simply because of its identification with the League, but will give its hearty support to every measure brought forward by the League Government, provided that it is in the interest of the whole of India. Whether it is in such interest or not shall be decided by Lord Mountbatten as a man and not in his representative capacity.

7. If Mr Jinnah rejects this offer, the same offer to be made mutatis mutandis to Congress."

Discussed between Gandhi and Mountbatten without involving any other major Congress leaders, this proposal drew a very sharp critique from Mr. V.P. Menon, Mountbatten's political advisor. In a letter dated April 4, 1947, he pointed out that the plan was not practical because on several occasions in the past, similar plans had been rejected by Jinnah. As an example, he cited Jinnah's success in persuading League leadership not to accept Lord Linlithgow's offer for participation in Central Government in August, 1940. Also with a Congress majority in Central Legislature, the League government would be powerless and Mountbatten would have to be deeply involved in party politics to break gridlocks. He further argued --

(Transfer of Power, Volume 10, Page 124)

..."7. According to Gandhi's proposal, Jinnah is at liberty to plan for Pakistan and even to put his plans into effect provided that he is successful in appealing to reason and does not use force. This is asking for the impossible. If Jinnah could persuade the Sikhs and the Hindus of the Punjab and the Hindus of Bengal to join

Pakistan, he would automatically get his Pakistan without joining the Interim Government in dubious terms. On the other hand, if Jinnah still persists in his scheme of separation, he will be giving his case away by entering the Central Government. This was the main motive which induced him to keep out of the Central Government in the past"...

... "10. It is suggested that if Jinnah rejects the offer the same offer is to be made mutatis mutandis to the Congress. It should be borne in mind that all the factors that have been mentioned as working to the disadvantage of Jinnah will for the same reason work to the advantage of the Congress. H.E's main task is to find a solution to the present deadlock between the League and the Congress. It is no solution to suggest that power should be transferred to the Congress to the exclusion of the Muslim League. If the proposition were as simple as that, it would have been solved long ago."...

In spite of V.P. Menon's detailed arguments and conviction that League would not accept this plan,

and Krishna Menon's assertion that at that point it was even beyond Gandhi to convince Nehru, Patel and other major Congress leaders, Mountabatten was hopeful during a follow-up meeting with Jinnah.

(Mountbatten papers: Viceroy's interview No. 42. Transfer of Power, Volume 10, Page 124)

..."I told him that I regarded it as a very great tragedy that he should be trying to force me to give up the idea of a united India. I painted a picture of the greatness that India could achieve -- four hundred million people of different races and creeds, all bound together by a central Union Government, with all the economic strength that would accrue to them from increased industrialization, playing a great part in world affairs as the most progressive single country in the Far East.

I finally said that I found that the present Interim Coalition Government was every day working better and in a more co-operative spirit; and that it was a day-dream of mine to be able to put the Central Government under the Prime Ministership of Mr. Jinnah himself.

He said that nothing would have given him greater pleasure than to have seen such unity, and he entirely agreed that it was indeed tragic that the behavior of the Hindus had made it impossible for the Muslims to share in this.

Some 35 minutes later, Mr. Jinnah who had not referred previously to my personal remark about him, suddenly made a reference out of the blue to the fact that I had wanted him to be the Prime Minister. There is no doubt that that it had greatly tickled his vanity, and that he had kept turning over the proposition in his mind.

Mr. Gandhi's famous scheme may yet go through on the pure vanity of Mr. Jinnah!" ...

(to be continued)

Partition of India: Part One

2007-08-24T08:39:00.000-07:00

The Transfer of Power 1942-47 is a treasure trove. Free from hind sight and biases, this collection of documents from India Office Records during the period January 1, 1942 - August 15, 1947, meticulously edited by Irish historian and professor Nicholas Mansergh, is as close to a no-spin zone as it gets. I will publish some interesting excerpts hoping the readers will check out the original documents.

The Transfer of Power : Volume X (22 March - 30 May 1947) (page 159-160)

Record of Interview between Rear-Admiral Viscount Mountbatten of Burma and Mr. Jinnah (Mountbatten Papers. Viceroy's interview No. 41 -- April 8, 1947)

... "I tried once more to bring him back to the Cabinet Mission plan, but he was absolutely adamant that it was useless to resurrect a plan which could only have been tried if the utmost goodwill had prevailed between all parties in 1946, and which now was foredoomed to failure.
I invited Mr. Jinnah to put forward his arguments for partition. He recited the classic ones.

I then pointed out that his remarks applied also to the partition of the Punjab and Bengal, and that by sheer logic if I accepted his arguments in the case of India as a whole, I had also to apply them in the case of these two Provinces.
Whilst admitting my logic, he expressed himself most upset at my trying to give him a "moth eaten" Pakistan. He said that this demand for partitioning the Punjab and Bengal was a bluff on the part of Congress to try and frighten him off Pakistan. He was not to be frightened off so easily; and he would be sorry if I were taken in by the Congress bluff.
I replied "I would not be taken in; because if I agreed to such partition, it would be on your able advocacy; but I could not of course allow your theories to stop short at the Provinces."

He was most distressed, and said that it would greatly weaken his Pakistan, and appealed to me not to destroy the unity of Bengal and the Punjab, which had national characteristics in common: common history, common ways of life; and where the Hindus have stronger feelings as Bengalis or Punjabis than they have as members of the Congress.
I said I was impressed by his arguments; and was therefore beginning to revise my ideas about any partition anywhere in India; since any argument that he produced for not agreeing to partition within the Punjab and Bengal applied with even greater force to India as a whole. For if he was to insist on the partition of India, he would be breaking up a great sub-continent of numerous nations, which could live together in peace and harmony; who could, united, play a great role in the world; but who divided, would not even rank as a second-class Power. The more so since he evidently intended to destroy even the mere vestiges that remained of the Indian army, after the passing of this morning's budget proposals for the armed forces and the likelihood of the withdrawal of all British officers by June 1948.

I am afraid I drove the old gentleman quite mad, because whichever way his argument went I always pursued it to a stage beyond which he did not wish it to go" ...

(to be continued)

Two Daughters

2007-08-18T20:46:00.000-07:00

While Indian bowlers are recovering from their periodic AABNAB stress syndromes triggered by yet another traumatic -- also rather stupid and gutless, if you ask me -- no-confidence vote, non-cricketers keep wondering why they do not even get invited to any wedding parties. They are like the widows whose shadows would spell a curse on auspicious weddings to sponsors, endorsements or fanfare. Silently slipping under all radars, Dola Banerjee has become a world champion and Koneru Humpy is on the verge of becoming the second woman after Judit Polgar to achieve super-grandmasterdom. Like lovers spurned, they are used to feeling ignored. But it must still hurt a little.

Hurt which Manipuri ace archer and warrior princess Chitrangada who had been raised as a man experienced when Arjuna turned her advances down on the pretext of asceticism. In reality, he was just not that into her. At least not until she went to Madana's Makeover consulting firm and transformed herself. Immediately after Dola lamented in a 2005 TOI interview that in spite of winning tons of international medals and ranking in top five of the world, no archer had won the Arjuna award in over a decade, she finally got her man. It is indeed hard to determine whether interviewing with TOI is a more humiliating experience than taking help of Madana. But the fact that someone does read TOI is reassuring and all is fair in love and war. Yes, even a decision to move from Baranagore to Jharkhand.

Or hurt that Mondodari must have felt when Ravana ran after Sita. Was Ravana, a brilliant and brave man, also a patzer? Did he feel emasculated when in spite of possessing a massively parallel 10-CPU system, he lost to his wife who had invented the most beautiful game? Was the epic war that followed merely his attempt to regain his wife's respect? We will never know. Humpy was not raised as a man, but she has always enjoyed beating men over chess boards. With no woman, except Judit, left in the world who can give her a decent fight, she does not have much of an option either. And it is not something that is entirely new to her. In 2002, she became the youngest woman to win "men's" GM title and she did that right after winning the national "boys" under-14 title.

Yes, I am aware of the third daughter who is sneaking into top 30. But unlike Monimalika, she has not been deprived of global fame. Quite the contrary. Even the lethargic, but ever amorous Arjuna discovered her a year before he found time for a fellow-archer. With looks and attitude that Madana's Makeover can only dream of and a very wicked forehand, she, unlike our bowlers, archers and pawn-pushers, is giving our batsmen a run for their money.

Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Bowling for Valentine

2007-08-01T20:30:00.000-07:00

Bowlers don't get no love. Their bridesmaid dresses are more worn out than 79-over old balls reeling from 305-2. It's a good thing they become used to apathy early in their lives. Remember that neighborhood kid who by his cockiness alone could walk into any Australian team? That he did not do so was only because his fielding skills were sub-Rhodesian -- non-existent, to be more precise. He never really bothered to learn how to field, forget bowling, and his arrogance was Chappells' envy, but neighbors' pride because he possessed para's most precious possession: its only cricket bat.

That of course gave him exclusive rights to pick his team, open batting, Graciously veto umpiring decisions and go home with his bat in the middle of a very tense game just because he felt like it. You do need a ball and a group of hapless boys who can supply and throw that ball to get a game going, but like everywhere else in life, economics set the rules in gully cricket. A good cricket bat was at least 20 times more expensive than a cambis (canvas), rubber or rubber deuce ball. Leather and cork balls, and the accessories they necessitated were luxuries that a para with one cricket bat could hardly afford. 20 was the operative number, and it still is. 20 wickets that India needs to win a test match.

It does not happen too often especially when the team ventures out of pitches that on the third day suddenly become very friendly to dust bowls. Admittedly, away-win ratios are getting minor facelifts in the new millennium, but miles to go before they start thinking of competing with Sensex slopes.

Even after recent improvements, the ratios are consistently poor and that fact alone makes each of those away wins famously cherished and celebrated.

Australia: Except the two victories against an Australian side severely depleted by Packer invasion in 1977-78. However, it is quite remarkable that Bedi and Chandrasekhar claimed 29 of the 40 wickets in those two tests. As if to compensate for the hollowness of those two wins, the other two are nothing but miracles. Remembered more for the Gavaskar-Lillie episode, Melbourne test in 1981 witnessed exceptional bowling performance from Kapil, Doshi and Ghavri. MoM? Viswanath, of course.

In Adelaide 2003, inconsistent and mediocre throughout his career, Ajit Agarkar with a match figure of 8-160 and an incredible second innings figure of 6-41, for once, lived up to his promise and left us pondering on what-ifs. Kumble pitched in with six wickets as well. Both were eclipsed by MoM Dravid's batting, of course.

England: India's first win in England at Oval 1971 is rightly remembered for Chandrasekhar's magical spell: 18.1-3-38-6. Bedi and Venkat assisted well with 7 wickets between them in the match. Kapil's devils translated their 83 world cup and 85 B&H winning one-day performance into a couple of great test victories in 1986. English weather and wobbly batting made the pace quartet of Kapil-Binny-Madan-Chetan appear as deadly as Marshall-Holding-Garner-Roberts. Almost quite as incredibly, Kapil managed to win a MoM by edging past Vengsarkar, but I am sure his captaincy and 24 runs clinched it, not the five wickets he took. And Vengsarkar was not to be denied as he won MoM in the following test. Headingley, 2003. 628 runs with big three scoring big hundreds, but 20-wicket rule still applies. Kumble and Bhajji combined well to take 11 of them. And we all know what happens when you throw jelly beans at Zaheer.

South Africa: A historic win at Wanderers 2006. Zaheer-Sreesanth-VRV combined brilliantly and Sreesanth was unplayable in the first innings. His MoM was clinched by his break-dance spell though, not his swings. In the first innings, number eleven VRV's 27-ball 29 was inspirational, but who remembers that?

West Indies: Three of the four victories came in Port of Spin. Bedi-Pras-Venkat took 15/20 in 1971. Bedi-Chandra-Venkat claimed all 16 wickets that fell in 1976 in one of those very rare tests where the losing team's exceptionally sporting declaration proves the 20-wicket rule. April 2002 was all about pacers though. Khan-Nehra-Srinanth who at their peak -- as seen in 2003 World cup -- arguably formed India's most potent pace combination claimed 15/20. MoM? VVS Laxman, with 69 and 74 in a close game. Kumble and Bhajji combined well (12/20) in Kingston 2006 in another tight game.

Pakistan: Both victories came in the same series after a very long wait. Kumble dominated with 13/40, but he was brilliantly set up by Balaji-Pathan combo that promised so much before fizzling out. MoMs? Sehwag and Dravid.

And it is not just the test-winning performances abroad that are memorable. What is left in Indian cricket if we forget Binny's posterior, Tendulkar's Hero cup last over, Razdan's debut fifer, Chetan Sharma's last ball, Goel-Shivalkar's unfulfilled potential, Pathan's hat-trick, Doshi's late emergence, Shiva's early disappearance, Kumble's tenner and Sandhu's inswinger?

Show some love -- but no worries, they will keep delivering regardless.

Hard Eight

2007-07-06T20:21:00.000-07:00

I have been tagged by BongoP'o'ndit with the eight-random-facts meme. Hmm... eight, hard! I guess it could have been worse; it could have been an eight-femmes meme. And I should know better than to say no to an Aussie, so here we go.

1. "They have trivia nights on Tuesdays...which if you can muster a group of four people seem like a lot of fun. However, the bartender told me that this one group by the name of "the four fat Indians" always wins...which they did the night I was there. Oddly enough, they weren't fat at all but actually quite skinny."

Not too sure about the veracity of the last two words and always is a bit of a stretch, but as the founding member of the four fat Indians, I think I like this Yelp reviewer.

2. To continue on a trivial note, on one summer evening of 1990, at Moulali Yuba Kendra, Calcutta, I had my first encounter with a beautiful mind who was surrounded by a group of scrawny boy-cheerleaders and the first flickers of now-all-too-familiar halo. Both of us were still in our shorts and at the end of the inter-school quiz, we joined forces in blasting the quizmaster. In the last round, DBPC's straight was who was the youngest ever world chess champion. A sitter and Parnab promptly replied Kasparov. The quiz-master strangely said no and the bonus came to UGHS. Thinking he must have misheard, I wisely and slowly repeated Garry Kasparov -- as opposed to Anatoly Karpov, you see -- but the quizmaster negated me as well and announced the answer with a derisive smile: Mikhail Tal. Now as much as I always admired the attacking style of this brilliant man from Riga and his 1960 masterpiece, both Parnab and I were correctly confident that Kasparov had broken Tal's record in 1985. We tried but failed to convince the quiz-master who must have got his answer from an outdated source. I still believe that this experience was a pivotal moment in shaping the beautiful mind and inspiring its future creativity. Unfortunately, that was not our last encounter as we both ended up in JU.

3. Speaking of chess and Russians, in the last tournament I played seven years ago in Seattle, when I won -- to be honest, I was sandbagging because my USCF rating was nowhere close to my real strength as I did not grow up in US and had played very few USCF-rated matches since my arrival in 1997 -- my rating section, the American organizer while announcing the names of winners said: and I thought Russian last names were hard to pronounce.

4. On the subject of last names, have you ever wondered about the poet, novelist, bureaucrat and economist Anita Agnihotri -- how, with that last name, does she manage to write Bangla so well? Wonder no more and yes, your hunch is right. She is my cousin and grew up as a fellow-Chattopadhyay. In Mussoorie, she happened to meet this man during one of those IAS ~~dating~~ training sessions. This is precisely why more Bengali men need to join the cadre.

5. If you are tired of cursing Bill Gates every time your Windows crawls, or worse, BSODs -- it doesn't happen any more, right? -- and would like to diversify your cussing targets, you can use me. For a couple of years, I was part of the evil empire's core OS team and my sloppy, buggy and kludgy hacks are to be found in Windows 2000 and XP, and probably in Vista as well.

6. After leaving Microsoft in 2000, I interviewed with Google for an engineering position, cleared the phone interview and scheduled an on-site. Then inspired by immense laziness and misplaced wisdom -- search is a commodity and how can they beat the likes of msft, yhoo, alta vista etc. -- I did not pursue the opportunity and joined another start-up. My only consolation is that the odds were in favor of me botching the on-site as they were very selective. On the other hand, I used to be smart back then. To convince myself that the very painful what-if scenario was not realistic, I finally managed to interview at Google for a senior management role a few months ago and was quite promptly rejected.

7. Where do you go to drown your sorrow? My vote is for Vegas and all-night no-limits Texas-Hold'em. It is hard to get a more direct, visceral exposure to all-American greed. The last visit ended in a remarkable way. On the night before we were to leave, I sneaked out of the hotel room -- a little discretion was warranted as the previous two night-outs had not been quite productive -- and started playing. After a couple of hours and a horrible streak, I was down another 300 bucks and was about to call it a night. Then I drew an ace and 10, and the flop had two aces. Everyone folded except a big British guy who was apparently very drunk and playing really loose. He kept bidding and with a set of aces, I kept calling. I could lose only if he had the fourth ace and a higher kicker than 10 -- it was definitely worth a shot. The river had the third ace and then I knew, with a quad of aces, I couldn't lose. He went all in. I called. Turned out he had a pair of queens and a full house, so he could lose only if I had a pair of kings or the fourth ace. He thought the odds of that happening were low, went for it and lost. Except that he didn't quite lose. The dealer announced a bad beat jackpot and that was the first time a jackpot was hit in that casino this year. The total was worth about eight grand. The bad beat loser gets to keep the bulk of it -- about three grand -- and the rest is divided among the other players. The fat British guy started jumping up and down. The dealer was excited too. In five years of dealing cards, he never hit a jackpot before and got great tips that night.

8. I never drink while playing poker mainly because I like to remember the faces, the cards and the banter, not so much because my play suffers. My threshold is quite high. Over the years, I have developed my own version of BAC diagnosis tests -- the most famous being how long it takes me to blurt out 50 American states in alphabetical order. I used to be good with the alphabetical list of 22 Indian states as well which I memorised when I was six from a book I can still picture, but too many new states have been added since then. Can secession really overcome under-development and inequality, and even if it does, is it worth me having to re-order my list every year? I do not think so.

And now I sign the CTBT and refuse to spread this meme. Sometimes you just have to take a stand, even against a misguided Aussie.

The Lady And The Trump

2007-07-05T22:00:00.001-07:00

He walks a good walk and allows Trump to get near the second base, but can Giuliani sweet-talk and seduce the anti-gay pro-life base? Even though these are very early days, if talk radio is any indication -- and who can deny its importance after the whole immigration bill fiasco -- the base is still busy in debating Romney's electability and trying to figure out who this Fred Thompson guy really is. Not much love for Rudy yet, except when his gown is compared against Hillary's of course -- the visceral hatred of Hillary among the dittoheads has to be heard to believe.

Happy Birthday

2007-07-04T11:12:00.000-07:00

"... he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, & murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another"

This paragraph from Jefferson's original rough draught accusing the King of his involvement in the continuation of slave trade was removed by the Continental Congress from the final version, because not all delegates, most of whom, including Jefferson, were slaveholders themselves, could agree on the contention that slavery and slave trade did indeed violate the most sacred rights of life and liberty. Also remarkable is the sense of apprehension about the threats of slave revolts.

In a recent article, Hitchens who wrote a short biography of Jefferson a couple of years ago, however, focuses on the pairing of the phrases "infidel powers" and "Christian King", and the allusion therein to Barbary practice. Later in the article, he somewhat undermines historian Frank Lambert's assertion that it was free trade which drove America more than ideology -- a quarrel with Islam, tyranny, or terrorism -- when Hitchens goes on to claim that the motivation behind the Barbary wars was at least partially based on principle: an innate incompatibility between freedom and tyranny, and even though the nature of freedom is definitely not essentially Christian, the tyranny is predictably, though not necessarily incorrectly, linked to Islam as he quotes Abd Al-Rahman, Tripoli's ambassador, referring to Koran.

If this framing reminds you of his unrelenting support of Bush administration's Iraq policy, you are not alone. Jacob Weisberg, Slate's editor, on the other hand, reconsidered his position more than three years ago for two very simple reasons: deception and cost-benefit analysis.

An interview with Ritwik Kumar Ghatak (1975): Part 5

2007-06-27T21:23:00.000-07:00

(Continuing from Part 4)

Section 8: An artist's social and political responsibility

We are going through this nightmare (dipanjan:reference to emergency) now, but we are not really protesting it or standing up against it. What do you think?

What can I say? The situation is terrible and you do not even know the half of it. I have seen it all first hand -- too many times -- and I have all the contacts. But what can I do against it? I tried to do whatever little I could in different ways. I am not a politician, so I can not really mobilize people or organize anything. What I can do is not going to be of any use -- these problems can not be solved by art.

How do you think we can resist the spread of decadent culture? (apasanskriti)

First of all, I find the word apasanskriti absolutely detestable (dipanjan:typical usage of this Bengali word without an exact English equivalent implicates hedonism, in general, and the implied value judgment is not too far from moral policing). You can not really blame today's misguided youth individually for their nefarious activities. The whole society has been collapsing and now has reached such a stage that none of us knows how to stem the rot. You have to get to the root which is the economic reality of our class-based society. Young men and women are not finding any jobs -- there are seventy thousand unemployed engineering graduates in Calcutta alone -- and they have nothing else to do. So these boys are turning into hooligans and taking part in criminal activities -- what else can you expect? Moreover, the family system is breaking down. In the past, there used to be love or respect or something akin to that for one's parents. Now you can clearly see that those relations are decaying and that is part of the total collapse -- all humane relationships are getting wiped out. And this is how a society falls apart. So to do something against this at this point... well we can try and say what we should, but I do not think that is going to help much.

Can we not start a proletariat cultural movement similar to what IPTA started?

If you can put together a group of young boys and girls, it might be possible. Why not? But you need fresh blood - all of us have become very old and we are not that capable any more.

Somewhat related to this, in Jukti, Takko, aar Gappo, there is a sequence where you said "Independence of 1947! Pooh!". What is the significance of this line?

The significance lies in the fact that, by 1947, the British leaders were in a soup. They were in big big trouble. I am not sure how much you know, but I know exactly what happened. First of all, their whole economy collapsed because of war expenditures. Without the Americans, they would have been finished, "all those heroes" were finished -- Churchill et al. Then on the other side, they had to deal with the Subhash Bose situation which led to an intense uprising in entire country. I used to roam around the country back then. Even if I leave Bangladesh-I-mean-West-Bengal-I-mean-Bengal aside, the rest of the country especially Madhya Pradesh -- and I was in Madhya Pradesh back then, in Raipur and Nagpur -- was trembling with excitement. What Subhashbabu finally managed to accomplish is a different issue, but the reaction he generated among Indians, common men and women of India, was intense. They were really really mad at that time and then came the 42 Quit India movement. After that, the naval mutiny in Bombay followed by Air Force mutiny -- and no one even knows about that one because it was completely suppressed by the British. Overall the foundation of the British rule in India was shaking. If we could keep fighting, shouting and sacrificing a few more lives for a few more years, they would have been forced to leave India anyways. But the way our leaders made the deal -- a pact with Mountbatten to grab power -- betrayed the entire history of our national freedom struggle. "Gandhi was against it". But the "higher group of our national liberation struggle" could not wait any longer to put themselves in power. I have been talking -- shouting really -- about this betrayal all my life and I will keep doing that.

(dipanjan: In an interview with Leonard Mosley, Nehru said -- "we were tired men and we were getting on in years too. Few of us could stand the prospect of going to prison again - and if we had stood out for a united India as we wished it, prison obviously awaited us. We saw the fires burning in the Punjab and heard of the killings. The plan of Partition offered a way out and we took it. […] We expected that Partition would be temporary, that Pakistan was bound to come back to us."[The Last Days of British Raj, p-285]

Section 9: Shantiniketan, Rabindranath in national consciousness

We would like to know about your experiences at Shantiniketan.

Most of my significant and memorable experiences of Shantiniketan are associated with Ramkinkar Baij. You do not really need to write about our rowdy and drunken adventures and how we used to barely escape arrests.

(dipanjan:Ritwik's last unfinished documentary was on Ramkinkar and in a sad coincidence, Samaresh Basu's final unfinished -- and arguably his best -- novel Dekhi Nai Phire was also based on Ramkinkar's life)

Did you not have any personal contact with Rabindranath?

Rabindranath used to visit Amrakunja in the morning. His morning lectures -- I do not know why they have not been published yet -- were just incredible and so was his charismatic appearance, his magnetic presence. I can not really say anything more than that.

Were you part of his funeral procession?

On the day he died, I was in our house at Bakulbagan -- my sister used to be a student in Beltala Girls' School. There I heard that he had died. Immediately I started running and there was already a huge crowd. I joined them and followed them all the way.

How do you feel about his absence in our thoughts at the national level? What can progressive democratic culture still get from him?

Everything. I don't know if you remember, one of our comrades -- I will not name him -- "decried Rabindranath" and defamed him using the name "RabindraGupta" in a Marxist magazine. This happened during the Ranadive period. All of us were told not to (read him) and they used to call him names -- "bourgeois this and bourgeois that" -- in a disgusting way. I used to tutor an undergrad girl named Ila who was a sister of Shobha Sen. As soon as I mentioned "RabindraGupta", she just went berserk. Rabindranath is inside our blood, we can not go anywhere without him. No matter which aspect of art you talk about, he is right there. Just look at how that girl reacted -- Bengalis can not live without him. We should not even have to discuss this -- to any Bengali artist, any artist ... (he is extremely important)

But won't you admit that there is a tendency to deny him completely at many levels? Therefore, if you could show some examples from his works...?

I can show plenty. Right now, right here. I do not have any of his books with me, but I do not need books. However, having to convince people about Rabindranath by citing examples is extremely shameful and degrading. Rabindranath is Rabindranath -- perhaps there have been three or four artists of comparable greatness in world history. Just read Sabhyatar Sankat which he wrote just before his death and you will understand. The scoundrels who blaspheme him are absolutely worthless. Unto the last, there is one sentence which will be engraved in my mind -- "to lose faith in mankind is a sin" and therefore, I will not. He is saying that there has been every reason to lose faith, but he will not because it is a crime to do so. "The crisis in civilization" -- there is an English translation as well, just read it. What else can I say? Rabindranath is an ocean and I can not reduce him to a few words. So if you ever find any scum dissing him, tell them on my behalf that I would beat the crap out of them.

Section 10: Classical Music

Which classical musician has influenced you the most? And could you please share a few memories and anecdotes regarding him?

That person -- my guru who initiated me and taught me how to play Sarod -- was one crazy man. Quite a few years ago, he was living at Maihar since he was the court(darbari) musician of Maharaja of Maihar. I went there to direct a documentary on behalf of Sangeet Natak Akademi and then I learned a lot from him as I often used to listen to his reminiscences.

He ran away from home when he was eight. His teacher was his elder brother, Aftabuddin saheb -- a master flute player and a baul as well as a devotee of Kali. All this I heard from Allauddin saheb himself who used to open up to me because he loved me a lot. In his childhood, he used to study at a maktab and on his way, there was a Kali temple. A muslim boy, he was never allowed inside the temple and was often beaten up by Brahmin priests. At night, his elder brother used to tie his feet with ropes to a pole and one night, he ran away in spite of that.

After coming to Calcutta, he used to sleep at Nimtala Ghat and eventually managed to get a chance at Star theatre. That was around the time when prostitutes and call girls used to be the actresses. His job was to play flute and he used to get five rupees a month. Then he moved to Udaipur and tried to meet Wazir Khan -- the greatest Sarod player of his time. At first, Wazir Khan completely ignored him -- we are talking about a period that is one hundred years in the past, a different era altogether -- but ultimately he came up with a plan. He lied on the road in front of Wazir Khan's carriage and would not get up until Wazir Khan agreed to teach him. Back then music used to be a big secret, not easily obtainable. I do not know how much of that era you guys have seen, but I have seen a little bit.

Anyways Wazir Khan finally relented and said -- "all right, why don't you become my servant and do all my chores?" Allauddin then started doing all the housework and never even got to touch an instrument. After two years like that, Wazir Khan admitted that Allauddin deserved to be his disciple and the lessons started which went on for fourteen years. When Wazir Khan finally gave Allauddin Khan saheb the permission to play -- as you know, ostads need to give you explicit permission before you can perform anywhere, for example, my guru died before giving me the permission, so I have never played anywhere except in front of my wife and children and that too I have given up; I have given my Sarod away -- Khan saheb came back to his village in Brahmanbaria.

One day when he was practicing on the bank of Titas, he tried to help out a group of neighborhood boys in finding their ball inside a Masjid and in doing so, he fell down and broke his right arm. All the doctors had given up on fixing it as it was completely shattered, but he returned to Maihar and for days, just prayed to Chamunda Kali without eating or sleeping, and the arm gradually started to heal. I am just repeating what he told me. Anyways the arm was still badly injured and it was the right arm with which he played Sarod. He started relearning everything with his left hand and eventually became the best musician of India. His determination and mental strength were just incredible. I can keep talking about him for hours and it will never end because he is my guru and I am ... Ustad Haafiz Ali Khan is another great Sarod player. Vilayat is unparallel. When he is in mood, only Ali Akbar Khan at his best can probably match him. Ravi Shankar is more of a performer, but they are real musicians. Among the artists that are alive -- I am talking about the vocalists now -- I admire Bhimsen Joshi a lot.

Section 11: Film Society

There is a tendency among film society audience to only watch uncensored vulgar pornographic films. How can we resist this temptation and stop what has been hurting an important movement?

You can not really do anything because some of these rascals -- excuse my language --are only interested in that. And if they demand it, you will show those movies because you are thinking of getting some of your expenses back. "Film society has become another business". You need to "decry" this and loathe this completely, but you don't. This country is in a deep downward spiral. I am a drunk -- and I do not hide the fact; most people know quite well that I drink -- so leave me out of this, but you all need to be a lot more vocal and aggressive. You see, I -- and Satyajit as well -- do not go to watch your film society screenings any more because the films you are exhibiting can not be watched by gentlemen. I do not want to show them to my wife, my daughter. You will have to take up the fight. I can not. I have taken myself out of this. You know what is in my hand and that much I can do, but film society screenings and audience, you will have to...

We are asking you to help us understand why this is...

There is nothing to understand, or analyze. You just need to stop showing those films. What do you think you are doing?

What should be an alternate agenda of film societies then?

In addition to screening good films, you will need to organize discussions, workshops and seminars which can help to inculcate good taste. "That is all". But first, stop exhibiting those horrible films. It just does not make any sense. Primarily Mizoguchi, we need to get all the prints, then from Italy, France... Even in England, Lindsey (Anderson) is doing some good work. Tarkovsky from Russia, Wajda from Poland, Shirley Clarke from America -- "it will run for a year".

(Finis)

An interview with Ritwik Kumar Ghatak (1975): Part 4

2007-06-22T23:31:00.001-07:00

(Continuing from Part 3)

Section 5: Documentary Films

Could you share some of your thoughts on documentary films?

Generally speaking, documentary films have followed two primary trends. First influence is Robert Flaherty's work especially his portrayal of Eskimo life in Nanook of the North, and the second one is London's Film Centre's movement led by John Grierson. The entire world came to realize the power and potential of documentary films because of those two individuals. On one hand, you have Flaherty's Moana, Louisiana Story and Elephant Boy, and on the other British Film Board's Night Mail and Song of Ceylon. The great modern documentary directors who followed their footsteps also deserve our deepest respect.

Also what Leni Riefenstahl accomplished during Hitler's era is remarkable and indeed hard to match. Obviously we find her politics to be extremely repugnant, but her aesthetic abilities can not be denied. In spite of Hitler's mischiefs in 1936 during Berlin Olympics, the work she did with her team of 36 cameramen is outstanding and I do not think any other documentary filmmaker who has made a film of that scale in such an organized manner.

Have you followed any specific principles of making documentary films?

For me, the principle came out of a combination of Flaherty and Grierson's influences -- along the lines of what Basil Wright amazingly displayed in Song of Ceylon and Night Mail. I worship Wright.

You see, in order to shoot documentaries, you need a much stronger love for people. You can not accomplish anything otherwise. Most of you consider me to be a director of fictional feature films, but please analyze carefully and ask yourself the question whether I have ever done anything except expressing love for my people. Have any of my films been shot inside a studio?

To me, there is no difference between my features and my documentaries. I do not consider documentary films to be a separate art form -- they are documents of human life. If you strongly love your people, you can hardly distinguish between documentaries and features. I do not know a whole lot about documentary films even though I have made quite a few as I made those to make a living. I do not think I have the right attitude for making documentary films and I consider almost all of them to be failures. So it will be impudent to say anything more on this.

We immensely enjoyed your documentary Puruliar Chhau and we also noticed its very significant role in Jukti, Takko, Gappo. What lies behind your strong interest in Chhau dance form?

Chhau is significant because it expresses the depth and richness of Purulia's life. If you visit Purulia, the poorest district of West Bengal, and go inside its villages, you would see how deeply the villagers there love their art. When I mixed with them, I totally fell in love. On observing how passionately they love the dance form and how attentively they create the dance masks, I was completely stunned. My love for them made me crazy. I have worked there three times. The first documentary I made was for West Bengal government. After that, when Philip Pierrot came from Paris, I made another documentary in color for him and finally, I had to work really hard on this film (dipanjan:Jukti,Takko, aar Gappo's Chhau sequence).

The fact is there is always a vision of mother-image lurking in my head. One of my friends once told me -- "you have been devoured by the mother (archetype)". That is true -- I am always obsessed with the mother. If you notice carefully, raison d'être of the coda of the Chhau sequence is the mother complex.

Section 6: East Bengal (Bangladesh)

Please tell us about your experiences of shooting in Bangladesh.

Good Heavens! If you want me to talk about shooting in Bangladesh, I will have to turn into a diplomat. It involves the political relation between the two countries and that is extremely "touchy". Specifically, if I say something bad about them, that will really hurt them and make the relationship even worse than what it is now. So I don't really want to talk about it. I can talk about "the good points" about Bangladesh and "not the bad points". The young actors and actresses there are simply incredible -- their vitality and energy are so intense as if they could die for you. Most of the technicians will work like crazy for you as well. In general, Bangladesh's people are extremely emotional and once they accept someone as their own, they will do anything for him or her. And if they do not like you, they will completely reject you. There is no point in talking about the equipments -- the situation is completely hopeless. Some of the stuff they have over there are exceptionally good and you won't find them in Calcutta, Bombay or Pune (dipanjan: Pune refers to FTII where, for a brief period, Ritwik was a visiting professor and vice-principal). However, the equipments have been so carelessly maintained that most of them are completely useless now and I had a really really hard time in fixing them. I turned into a mechanic -- what else could I do?

Was it because of a lack of knowledge or intentional?

Primarily a lack of knowledge. Also the tendency for taking bribes -- corruption, in general -- and finally complete sloppiness and carelessness. For example, one day we went to shoot at a place about 80 km from Dhaka. We prepared the sets and everything was ready to go. All of a sudden, one of my cameramen tells me -- "dada, this camera is not working; the shutter plate is not moving and I don't know what's wrong". Wasn't it the responsibility of the care-taker to test the camera at studio before getting it and all of us there? Anyways all the crew was there and we were spending so much money, so I had to do something. I finally opened the camera up and found that one pin inside the camera was tilted which was blocking the shutter-plate. I somehow fixed the pin and started shooting. Another day, at a place around 30 miles from Dhaka, we were shooting and I wanted 180 degrees, but the camera was stuck at 120. As you know, there are different types of cameras -- Arriflex type twos have variable shutters and the type ones have fixed shutters. So this cameraman comes to me and says -- "Dada, do you want to variate it? You can't do it; this is 120 with a fixed shutter". I said -- "Are you kidding? This is a type 2b, the best camera." So I open it up to see that it is completely "jammed" and then "I had to correct, then shoot". Problems like this! And the sound system? Horrible. Incredibly bad -- it falls apart as soon as you touch it. They have not taken proper care of anything. Anyways the people were fantastic. So this is the situation in Dhaka.

What is your reaction on MuktiJuddha -- the freedom struggle?

I was very excited about it. But now it seems exactly the opposite (of what I had expected) has happened. I don't think anyone else here has as much connection with Bangladesh as I have and that is mainly because I personally know them really well and have been close to so many of them. Most of those muktijoddhaa(freedom fighter) boys have turned into hooligans -- typical hooligans. Every house is full of sten guns, LMGs and revolvers. They have completely changed. Calcutta's newspapers do not publish these stories, but I go there often and I know this. The boys I used to love so much have become this. And the "good elements" among them are very frustrated -- "is this our freedom, is this what we fought for? did thirty lakh fighters die for this?" During the freedom struggle, there was so much excitement and optimism in the air when they fought against the Pak army. I was there and used to shoot in the middle of all that. And I go there now as well and see these two division -- on one hand, you have the ruffians and the hooligans, and on the other an absolute frustration and dejection.

Was the fact that you ended up shooting Titas while you were in Bangladesh just a coincidence?

No, not a coincidence at all. Bangladesh, as you know, is a riverine country and there are only two good Bengali novels on those rivers -- Manik Bandopadhyay's Padma Nadir Majhi and Adwaita Mallabarman's Titas Ekti Nadir Naam. The crux of the matter is Manikbabu's writing, as you know, is extremely sharp and precise. There is nothing one can say about him -- his writing is so restrained and he can express so much with so few words. However, he observes fishermen and their life from the perspective of a bhadrolok(middle-class gentleman). He can never really get into ... something does not just quite fit. Adwaita Mallabarman, on the other hand, is a Malo - a fisherman. He blah-blahs quite a bit -- there is a lot of redundancy -- but he has an insider's view because he is one of their own and his home is in that Gokarna village where I shot the film. He is the only graduate from that village -- among the Malos. So his writing on the joys and sorrows, the ups and downs of their lives penetrate a different depth altogether. One had to edit it significantly and I probably managed to do it, though I am not quite sure. I was very moved when I read Titas as it was first published around the same time when Adwaita died from TB. Since then I have been thinking about making a film out of it, but of course I could not enter Bangladesh when Ayub Khan was ruling it. As a communist, I had no hope of getting a visa and so I could not do it. At that time, a lot of people used to ask me to shoot the film here in West Bengal and that I could not accept. The river, the land, the boats and the faces -- you can not get them on this side of the border. So I have been thinking about Titas for a long time, since the beginning. My sister now lives in Kumilla, my twin sister. I was in Bangladesh as a state-guest in 1972, 21st February (dipanjan:bhasha dibas). Satyajit was with me as well. One day when I was at my sister's place, at the end of a cultural program, one young Muslim boy approached me and asked me why I was not filming Titas. And right there, I said yes and made up my mind. So it was not a coincidence; I have been thinking about it for a long time and when the opportunity came, I just grabbed it.

Section 7: Political Past, IPTA

Now I would like to ask you a few questions about your personal life. When and how did Marxism and politics start to attract you?

I started getting inclined to RSP when I was in the first year undergrad. Immediately after that, IPTA started to strongly influence me and those two events led me to study Marxism. Studying Marxist literature and writing on it went hand in hand with theatre acting -- around 1944-45, although I am not too sure about the exact dates now.

So you have been a part of IPTA since then?

Yes, I have been involved with IPTA since then. I was.

Around what time did you become part of the managing committee?

That was in 1948. I became the secretary in 1948 and quit in 1953.

Was that before the party was banned?

Yes, just a little before the ban.

Which of your plays were staged during those IPTA days? And who directed them?

I directed all of them. Among the plays, Jwala, Dalil -- Dalil was the first -- Officer and Bhanga Bandar are the only four I can recall at this moment.

sNaako?

Oh yes, sNaako. There are a few more, but I can not recall.

Do you want to say something about what moved you to write Jwala and Dalil?

Dalil? I came to Calcutta from Rajshahi in 1948. Well... let's not get into all that (dipanjan:partition). The crux of the matter is I was forced to come to Calcutta and bring my mother with me. And then I had to watch the plight of the "refugees". Well, I can not stand those words -- I squirm whenever I hear words such as "refugee", "asylum-seeker" . "Most...afffair". Anyways, so I wrote Dalil. Then I was the secretary of IPTA and also the director of Central Squad. Writing plays as well as directing and acting in them was a full-time job for me. One day P.C. Joshi -- he was in Allahabad then -- wrote a letter to me. Back then I used to live with my brother (Sejda) on Harish Mukherjee street. That was 1951 and there used to be a newspaper named "Indian Way" edited by P.C. Joshi. As you know, he was the general secretary (of CPI) prior to that and when B.T. Ranadive kicked him out, things became really bad for me and my wife. Anyways...damnit. There is no point in discussing all that -- kids of today do not know any of this and will not understand. So in that letter, PCJ told me to "take over the charge of Bengal" as a correspondent. Back then there was a big suicide wave (among the refugees) going on in Calcutta and I reported a series titled "Suicide Wave in Calcutta" on that sequence of thirty-one suicides. It became quite famous after it was published, but journalism and reporting did not quite satisfy me as I could not express my anger and frustration strongly enough -- I had not encroached films yet. So out of those characters in my report, I selected six and wrote the play Jwala which "is a documentary". I wrote the play and acted in it as well. I worked together with a lot of promising young boys and girls. It was on Calcutta at that time... now it is even more horrible, a complete nightmare. "At that time it was more or less a much better city".

Who else acted with you in Jwala?

Kali Banerjee, Gita Dey, Mamtaj, and there was another girl named Mamata...

Chattopadhyay?

Yes and there was another girl. And Gyanesh etc...

Wasn't Bijanbabu part of it then?

No, he was not. We are talking about 1951-52. After that I did not act for a while as well. And a long time after that one day Tiny Chatterjee who is now a director-general in All India Radio, got hold of me. I did direct Jwala for him, but did not participate -- my voice is not in it. Then my nephew Phalgu did it in Hindi for Patna radio. Phanishwar Renu who recently won the Rabindra award did the translation. His wife is a Bengali and he is from Munger as well, so he is almost a Bengali and knows the language well. Phanishwar and my nephew are neighbors and they have a theatre group. That translation was broadcast from Delhi radio as well. Anyways... let's not talk about it. Now it is all quite acceptable, back then "it was not taken in". It was very difficult to accept it, now things have become much more...

Long before Jwala, you once mentioned that you wanted to do Trishna?

Don't bug me, my dear. I am a drunk, let me just keep drinking.

Why are you not writing plays any more?

I don't want to. Look, I have no intention to write.

Well then, was your departure from IPTA voluntary?

Yes, absolutely.

Today (dipanjan:reference to Indian emergency 1975-77) we strongly feel the need for organizations such as IPTA and anti-fascist writers' guild. In spite of that need, similar organizations are not coming up...

What can I say? When the anti-fascist movement started, there was a strong group named PWA (progressive writers' association) and IPTA was born under the auspices of PWA. We slowly became regulars in both of those organizations which shared the same address -- 46, Dharmatala Street. We used to work together and back then it was extremely important for us to do so. I agree that we need similar organizations today. I strongly feel that because I am more or less well-connected to Delhi and I do see that the power structure there is again shaping up in a very fascist way. But I do not know the mindset of today's youth; I do not know how principled they are. If there are young boys and girls like that, then yes, I am absolutely sure they should do something similar especially if you look at what CIA etc. are doing in Delhi these days. I do not want to take any names -- and there are quite a few famous and powerful people who are involved in all this -- but I do know each and every one of them. So yes, there is no doubt that there is an urgent need for similar movements, but unfortunately except the Naxalites, today's youth do not seem to care much.

Aren't you becoming a little too sympathetic towards them?

To whom?

Naxalites?

Well, I am bound to be a little sympathetic.

Isn't that out of the order?

No, why so? I totally disagree with their politics, opinions and ideology, but their honesty? I can't help but respect that. I don't see anyone else. These young boys and girls -- I agree that they are completely misguided which I have shown in my film (dipanjan:Jukti, Takko aar Gappo) -- and their integrity have no parallel. They do not want anything for themselves. Shouldn't I respect that? I must.

Section 8: An artist's social and political responsibility

Usually artists are especially individualistic -- what do you think is the reason behind that?

An artist becoming extremely individualistic is probably not appropriate for this day and age. They probably need to become a little more ... conscious socially. But I don't quite get why today's artists get so angry and mad. I do not quite get it from my perspective. There is a question of being democratic and I do not think they are trying to be. I am roaming round the entire country and I notice these boys and girls and somehow on this point, they are not quite... etc.

Have you ever considered yourself to be individualistic?

Me? I have never even questioned it. I am individualistic, from the start to end. My individualism is a fact, but that should not be held against me or my work. "I am continuously individualistic". But miyaan, what does that have to do with anything? "Life is like that!" I have been part of a lot of trouble and mischief, but I have never ever harmed anyone. Don't you get it, miyaan?

How deeply an artist should be embedded into politics?

It is not a question merely for artists. In this society -- in this class-based society -- every individual must be completely saturated with politics. Not just artists, everyone. But that does not mean an artist should become a slogan monger. You can not become an artist with cheap slogans; an artist must work deep inside your senses and sensibilities. Politicians operate at a superficial level -- slogans, shouting, loud protests etc. -- but I do not think art survives when artists start doing the same.

Do you think artists have social responsibilities?

Absolutely. Anyone who avoids or claims to avoid social responsibility is also fulfilling some social responsibility by helping out the upper-class and ruling bastards. Everyone is definitely fulfilling some social responsibility.

So from this perspective, what is the primary responsibility of artists of our country?

To serve the men and women of our country. Moreover, the primary and the final responsibilities are exactly the same -- loving people, serving them and talking for them -- and that must be expressed in an artistic manner. That's all, but not slogan-mongering.

It is being observed that some artists are getting completely isolated from politics. What is behind that, or ...

They are not getting isolated from politics. I have already answered this. They are all taking a side, but are posing as -- "I am not committed". "One can not be non-committed. You are either for this or for that." So none of them are apolitical, they are just being deceptive and are harming people.

Thirty years ago, this commitment used to be much stronger among artists. It has weakened significantly since then and is becoming almost non-existent. What is your reaction?

I do have a strong reaction. They have been behaving in this way only because there is a growing tendency of finding short-cuts to becoming famous and successful. We were talking about this on our way here, right? In his essay on Shakuntala, Rabindranath while describing Kalidasa's era said -- "how time has somehow become lowly and wretched since then" -- and it is becoming progressively worse. In a way, our moral sense is decaying and everyone is becoming more irresponsible. These are symptoms of a decay leading to an eventual collapse. I think it is going to collapse completely, but at the same time I am positive that something new and strong will emerge out of that process. Maybe during my son's time or maybe during my grandson's. I do not think anything will happen in our lifetime. So you do not really need to group artists separately -- they are part of the whole process.

How much of the responsibility of this decay lies with the leftist political leaders?

They bear complete responsibility, but none of them is on the left anymore. All of them have moved to the right. So I am not sure who you are referring to as leftist political leaders. They do not even exist. The leaders' only concerns are to pocket more money for themselves and their cronies and how to get their names and pictures published on newspapers. No one cares about Indian people. So how do I even assign responsibilities to those leaders? As I said before, something might emerge out of some of the Naxalite kids...

Do you think in the recent past, say within last twenty years, there have been some mistakes made on the part of communist party and its leadership on the cultural front -- mistakes which led to this decay in commitment?

Of course, there have been huge mistakes as a result of which I quit the party. P.C. Joshi might have had a lot of faults, but he had a deep understanding of these issues. And he used to complaint to each comrade while these mistakes were being made. My wife Lakkhmi was a comrade and was the secretary of Shilong committee long long time ago. PCJ should have forgotten that, but that bastard -- he is almost dying -- wrote a letter to her a few days ago. Whenever I go to Delhi, he would invite me to his house. And it is not just for me or Lakkhmi, he would enquire individually about each and every comrade. He is the man who destroyed Gandhi in Allahabad conference. "Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was completely finished up by P.C. Joshi.". And that man was kicked out of the party by a clique -- I am not going to name the comrades -- of certain individuals. That was in 1948 August at Wellington Conference which was held at Wellington Square and named "Second Congress". The party leaders have switched off their responsibilities from then on and obviously there is no point in discussing how much they have screwed up.

(to be continued ...)

An interview with Ritwik Kumar Ghatak (1975): Part 3

2007-06-16T22:49:00.000-07:00

(Continuing from Part 2)

Section 3: Memories of Bimal Roy

In the early stage of your film career, you were involved with Bombay film industry. Would you like to talk about that experience a little bit?

Which aspects of the industry?

Specifically, we want to know about the experiences of working with Bimal Roy.

To talk about Bimal Roy, I must start by saying that that I worship him. How great a filmmaker he was is not that important to me. To me, the most significant part is his greatness as a human being. You see, my cousin (Rangada) Sudhish Ghatak brought him here from Dhaka as a third assistant. At that time I was a school student and knew next to nothing about films. Then Bimalda used to carry me and take me to New Theatres. Back then you could not get the doors opened easily and the gatekeepers were really strict about not letting anyone go near the sets. Not that it has changed much. Anyways, yes, I have worked with Bimalda. Then N.T. slowly fell apart. After that, Bimalda directed Tathapi at Bharatlakkhmi and I became his chief assistant. Bedeni was before that. Even before that, Bimalda moved out of his role as a cinematographer and became a director in Udayer Pathey which as you know, became sort of a cult hit. Bimalda groomed (dipanjan:he mentored Hrishikesh Mukherjee as well) me and used to love me immensely. It is up to you to discuss and criticize his work, but I know what kind of a person he was. Anjangarh after that etc. I used to travel around with Bimalda and worked extremely hard. That's all. He was a family friend, so what more can I say about him? Whatever I say will be "biased". To speak about him is to speak about our family, our own history.

How did Udayer Pathey help in turning contemporary Bengali film scene around?

If I must criticize, then...well...with Udayer Pathey, Bimalda extracted Bengali film out of the sinking depth it used to languish in. But if you listen to the dialogs today, they will sound ridiculous and sub-standard. That was done by Jyotirmoy who embellished the language to such an extent that it does not sound real. Bimalda could have done much better, for example, "with a small needle"...( chhoto chhNucher dwara)

"How can we fight against a monster such as poverty?" (daridryer moto doityo)

Yes, all that "rubbish". Absolutely rubbish. That was done by Jyotirmoy "rascal" who edited the script and added all the flourishes.

Why are you calling names?

(laughing) Miyaan, they are all my friends. They are all truly deprived folks.

Section 4: Indian films: motley topics

Could you talk a little bit about the trends and directions of Indian films during the long gap between Subarnarekha and Jukti Takko Gappo?

I can not do that. I do not watch (a lot of Indian) films. Whatever little I can say -- and it is gradually becoming more and more constrained and limited -- I have tried to do that in Jukti Takko Gappo. I do not have anything more to add.

Is there meaningful protest in contemporary Indian films?

First of all, it is not possible for me to say whether any Indian film has meaningful protest in it or not. As I said, I do not watch (a lot of) Indian films. And whatever little I hear from others, I think there is no protest at all. They want to take people in a completely different direction. I would request you to read Münsterberg -- I don't know if you have read his work -- Thoughts on Film. Nothing else compares with his work which supports "the dream factor" and has the last word on it -- the ultimate deception. No one here probably reads these books, but I do. I have to. I don't think anyone in our country has the courage to talk about protest. Only Mrinal Sen has tried a little, but I do not think any of his works has penetrated deep enough either. The primary objective of films -- not only just films, of any art -- is to portray contemporary misery and struggles of our countrymen. I don't know how much of that Mrinal has been able to express. Although I have no right to talk about this because all of them are my friends. But the fact remains that I can not name a single artist who has been able to do this in a significant way. I myself have not worked in a long time, so I don't think I should say any more than this.

In your opinion, what should be the principle behind FFC's loan schemes? Should new directors receive it, or should the veterans who have already done some good work be preferred?

I think there is a need for combining both. We must support the new kids and FFC must do whatever they can. "That is one part". But the older directors who want to do serious work need support as well. All of them have the same goal, so we can not discard any of them.

How is the current state of production in India hurting our films?

Production and distribution are not hurting us as much as exhibition is. You must become more aware about the film exhibition process. You must try to understand how filthy and broken the exhibition trade is in our country. I have talked about it a lot and tried to convince everyone starting from businessmen to bureaucrats. We need to manage the exhibition system better. You would not believe how depraved and crooked these people are and there is no point in talking about my experiences because nothing will come out of it. There are problems in distribution business too, but the situation is not as bad as the exhibition trade. They are murderers -- art and this and that in the end do not matter at all -- and they are destroying everything in the entire country.

Are you optimistic about the current state of Bengali films, from an artistic perspective?

That is a very difficult question. I really can not answer this in a direct manner. From what I know about Bengali films, I am positive that there are a lot of young boys and girls who want to work seriously. But no one will give them any work, or will pay them anything for their work. And unfortunately, we are in such a business that you need lakhs of rupees to do anything. We (the old-timers) can squeeze by somehow, by manipulating and scheming. "Somehow or other we manage". "But these kids" -- they can not. Do you get it? (laughing). I do not know who among them will emerge successfully out of this, but I do have a lot of hope because I have a natural confidence in future. I very strongly believe that one or more of these kids will do better work than me, but no one gives them a chance. They do not make enough to eat well. Come with me to the studio para (neighborhood) and you will see how deprived these kids are. I do not know how they will make films. But if one of them can manage to do it, they will go way past us and beat us all. All of us -- myself, Satyajit, Mrinal Sen -- will lose and I want to lose. I want them to do it.

Generally speaking, the diversity we see in foreign films is sadly absent in our films. What do you think about it?

I do not think there is a whole lot of difference between our films and their films, in general. But Mizoguchi, Ozu, Tarkovsky, Kakoyannis -- their films make me crazy. Leopoldo Torre Nilsson and Dreyer make me go nuts. I do not want to mention Kurosawa because I think he has become a sell-out now. Among the Italian directors, I respect Antonioni, Fellini especially, Visconti and Rossellini the most. But among all the living directors, Luis Buñuel is my greatest guru.

There were a few worthy fellows in Russia. Kozintsev has done some immortal work. Hamlet - can you believe it? And the last one I saw -- Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood -- drove me crazy. The face of the mother in the first scene -- I will never be able to forget that. His use of camera has made me think a lot. I have seen very few things as beautiful as his judicious use of slow motion.

I could say a lot more, but not in such a short time. In my whole goddamn life, I will never forget the scene in Buñuel's Viridiana where he satirizes Last Supper. A girl, the lead character, brings a bunch of rogues home and hosts a supper. All of a sudden, he fuses it together with the framing of Da Vinci's Last Supper and in a single shot, makes it crystal clear that the whole Roman Catholic dogma is bogus. "This is Buñuel". I do not think there is a greater artist living at present.

How much of the potential of applying music to Indian films has been realized, in your opinion?

The first film where the use of music moved me was Shantaram's Shakuntala (music by Vasant Desai) and then Kadambari (music by Hari Prasanna Das). Among Bengali films, I liked quite a few of Debakibabu's films. I enjoyed Pather Panchali's music a lot, but the theme music Ravi Shankar copied from a black American folk song named Swan's River. Other than that, his work in that film was excellent.

I do not watch a whole lot of Bengali and Hindi films, so I do not know what is currently happening and talking about my own films is impudent, of course. Still among my own films, the one which gave me most pleasure from a musical perspective is Komol Gandhar. Jyotirindra Moitra, my music director, soulfully used Bengal's - both West and East Bengal's -- classical and folk music. His work was so beautiful that I can watch this film with my eyes closed.

Could you say a few words about Pramathesh Barua's contribution to Bengali films?

Pramathesh opened Barua-Studio in 1928. Then he started New Theatres along with Mr. B.N.Sircar and started making films -- one after another. Some of them were absolutely brilliant in the context of his time. A few of his films were hits, a few bombed big time and that is inevitable in any artist's career. His greatest film is Grihadaha. I remember that on the third day of exhibition at Chitra theatre, the spectators tore the screen down. At that day and age, the montage he created to depict Achala's transition from town to village is incredible. He was the first in India to introduce the use of subjective camera. You will notice that when you watch Uttarayan. No one remembers these films any more. Everyone just thinks of his cheap sentimental films such as Mukti and Debdas. Now some pundits ridicule him by calling him Prince P.C. Barua. They should know better. In those days of closed-mindedness, he at least tried to do something different. We can never glorify ourselves by denying and making fun of our predecessors.

(to be continued ...)

An interview with Ritwik Kumar Ghatak (1975): Part 2

2007-05-18T19:00:00.000-07:00

(Continuing from Part 1)

Section 1: His own films

Have you started thinking about your next film?

Yes, I have thought a little bit about the subject. About a year and a half ago – or maybe a year, I am not sure, I was in the hospital then – I read in a newspaper that there was a girl named Bishnupriya in a village near Nabadwip. A bunch of wagon-breakers who have recently become neo-Congress – pipe guns etc. – started to chase the girl. Her only fault was that she was the daughter of a poor Brahmin and had no way of leaving the village. And she was beautiful. So the hoodlums – "supposed to be neo-Congress" – started to tease her. Ultimately they chased her into a corner near her house. Then the girl said “ok, let me get inside the house and put on a nice sari” and tried to run away through the back door, but the goons grabbed her, took her to the jungle "and they enjoyed her" – all five of them, in succession. Meanwhile a reporter from the newspaper Satyajug who is also from that village reached there. On hearing him coming, they poured kerosene on the girl’s body and finally killed her by setting her on fire. I will make a film on this story. I have instructed Lokesh Ghatak to write a script. This is a fact and has been published in newspapers – Satyajug did a big story on this.

Will there be a connection to Bishnupriya, the historical character?

Yes, naturally. Sri Chaitanya’s first wife was Lakshmipriya who died from a snake bite. Then he married her younger sister and only after that he became Sri Chaitanya Deb. And as you know, he did not have any parallel – there was no one anywhere near his stature in fifteenth-century Bengal. His second wife’s name was Bishnupriya. "And as luck would have it", another Bishnupriya from the same village gets murdered. No matter which village you go to, you can hear the folk song – "Sachi Mata go, aami juge juge hoi janomo dukhini". You will hear this in any village in Bengal. There will be a lot of cross references. I have given just a brief sketch to Lokesh, but he does not have all the details yet. You see, Naba Nyay had just been born in Bengal and Nabadwip was full of brilliant intellectuals. Not one, but in hundreds. All of them were highly educated and brilliant scholars. They used to sit by the river and then the debates and discussions would start to flow. Nimai Sannyasi was one of them. Smarta Raghu Mani was the last and the greatest smarto pandit – he had the last work on Smriti. I will inter-cut all of these – today’s life and that life – and put them side by side. We will have to write it well. Nyay, Naba Nyay – a huge contribution, only from Bengal. And it will touch on whatever is going on in contemporary India. That’s it. No point in talking more about it.

Have you ever thought of making films out of stories written by Bibhuti Bhushan Bandopadhyay and Manik Bandopadhyay?

I really want to film Chihna(dipanjan: a short story by Manik Bandopadhyay). Only if I can raise some money, because you know you need these businessmen. No one remembers Chihna any more, no one. I also want to do Putul Nacher Itikatha. I badly wanted to do Bibhuti babu’s Aranyak as well when it was being published in the periodical Prabasi, but someone else has already done it. And his Jatrabadal. Have you read it? It is a terrific story. I don’t know if I will ever be able to do it because these businessmen are the intermediaries and they always create problems. They will never get it.

Rabindranath?

I had finished a script on Rabi babu’s Chaturanga and then I started talking to producers. I got lucky and someone agreed to finance it as well – "one of the highest gentlemen in the film line". Bishnu Dey, the poet, settled everything for me because that man was a student of Bishnu Dey -- Hemen Ganguly. But ultimately I could not do it. I really really like Chaturanga. Almost all of Rabibabu’s novels are pretty horrible – I mean very affected, right? – but in Chaturanga, he really cracked it. Incredible. There are only four real Bangla novels and it is one of them. Chaturanga’s Jyatthamashai, Sribilas, Damini – unbelievable. So I started writing and the script was ready and then all of a sudden Hemenbabu dropped dead. What can we do?

What are the other three?

You mean in Bangla? Manikbabu’s Putul Nacher Itikatha, Rabibabu’s Chaturanga, Bankim Chandra’s Rajsingha – these are the true great novels -- real deal.

The fourth one?

Oh, Tarashankarda’s – another dead fellow – Ganadebata. That’s it. There is no other novel in Bangla literature. Everything else is crap – publishers still sell those and it all seems to be fine, but crap really. Stuff that women read after sending off their husbands to work or to the market. Just before their afternoon siestas, they take a pillow and those novels and then start to drowse off. That’s what we write nowadays and that’s what they are good for (laughing). Aranyak did not quite reach the level of those four. Too much forth. Great writing no doubt, but has an overflow of emotion. Those four are precise. Just perfect. From a writer’s perspective, there is nothing above them.

Do you want to talk a little about your filmmaking experiences – events that you cherished or hated?

There are tons of events and incidents like that. There is no point in talking about all that though. If you are working, those problems will always be there. What can I say about it? People who were with me and around me, they will talk about it. The final word is – to summarize – somehow I have survived. I survived (shouting).

Section 2: Inspirations

In the art of filmmaking, who have influenced or inspired you? And how those inspirations or influences have worked their way into your art?

It’s not just me, anyone in the world who is a serious artist, who has done any serious work in Bengal or elsewhere, anyone whose name you have heard -- each and every one of them is inspired by one individual and his name is Sergei Eisentein. We wouldn’t know “f” of filmmaking if Eisenstein were not there before us. He is our father. Godfather. When we were young, his writings, theses, and his films made us go nuts. And those were not easily available back then. We had to hide them and import them very carefully. This man Eisenstein -- and you can ask Satyajit Ray, too, and "he will admit that he is the father of us". From him, we learned how to cut – editing is the key to filmmaking. Then there is Pudovkin. He was here in 1949 and I was fortunate enough to meet him. Party instructed me to follow him, spend time with him and learn from him. Pudovkin told me something that is the basis of all of my education. He said: “films are not made, filmmaking does not make any sense – a film is built”. Brick by brick, exactly like building a house. That’s how you build films, by cutting one shot after another. It is built, not made. These two individuals and then there is Carl Dreyer. I watched his films in Pune long time ago. The Passion of Joan of Arc. I totally lost myself after watching that film. And there is another person who I must admit to be one of my gurus. Luis Buñuel. They are my true gurus. Oh, and Mizoguchi. After watching Ugetsu Monogatari, I was “staggered”, I mean I went completely crazy. That’s what a real film is! Everything I know about films, I have learned from these people.

Will you talk about a few of the greatest films that you have watched?

The greatest film – you want me to name it? Battleship Potemkin. There has not been a film which can top that. None. The Odessa Steps scene – no one will ever be able to shoot anything greater than that. Film is all about editing. Cutting, editing. The scissors are the films – when to throw away, after exactly how many frames. The whole film depends on that. No one has created anything greater than Battleship Potemkin.

Section 3: Challenges in Filmmaking and Film Criticism

In your experience, what has been the most difficult aspect of filmmaking and why?

In my experience, there is only one difficult aspect of filmmaking. Only one and nothing else. And that is financing. Raising money and managing it are the biggest challenges. After that, my workers, my technicians and my artists will give their lives to do one great work of art. But getting the money and managing it is the only hurdle. Nothing else.

Why is it so hard?

Our social structure, what else. If I must talk about it, I will have to start talking about Marxism. These rogues and bastards, they are hoarding all the cash and are taking part in all sorts of vulgarity and mischief. They are the real troublemakers. If we could switch off these black marketers, that would solve it. You see for yourself, eleven thousand crore "white" money is circulating in our country and there are thirty-three thousand crore rupees in the black market – almost the entire cash flow of our country is taking place in the black market.

In the context of film production?

No, I am not talking about just films –- our entire society, economy have been taken over by these black marketers and their money "from all sides". And even the government of India has admitted that. Today the true worth of one rupee, after a continuous decline, has fallen to -- and Chavan admitted it -- thirty-six paise. In reality, it is just twenty-five paise. The value of one rupee is twenty-five paise. People can’t eat because of inflation. This famine has completely exposed the entire system. What can I say? Films are nothing special. They are just a small piece in the whole puzzle.

In filming great literature, what kind of difficulties does an artist face?

Well, there has not been a whole lot of great literature in this country. If you want to make films out of whatever little there is, you must keep one thing in mind. Literature is one form of art and film is another. So when you are making a script out of literature, you can not just dumbly follow it. That’s not right. A film is primarily visual – a visual art. This has to be kept in mind. Sound is secondary. Yes, it is important, too. It can help to move the images forward. Literature on the other hand is meant for reading. When you are reading a great work of literature, you feel great joy -- something that is born out of your refined taste for words. But "film is a performing art". It is about seeing, hearing. There is a hell and heaven difference between the two. So you must change. If the writers get mad because of that – well, I have nothing to say. But the fact is they must realize that to translate from one medium to another and to make it work, you must make changes.

Do you think the gulf that we observe between artistic excellence and its comprehensibility to an average moviegoer is desirable as a whole?

No, no. There is no room for such silly questions.

Why do you say so? In spite of everything, you are doing some good work. But a majority of people are not getting it. In this situation, how can we try to bridge this gulf and make the communication happen? Shouldn’t we think about that – I mean we want the audience to start thinking and reflecting…

Primarily, I could not care less. First, I do not live my life based on who accepts my work and who does not. And secondly, these questions are worthless. Please ask sensible questions only.

What do you think about the role of a critic in understanding films? And here how the critics are…

The role of a critic is very important -- extremely important. Who is a critic? He is the bridge between a creative artist and audience. But we don’t have critics like that in our country. One or two that we had are selling out, too. Since the commercial papers and magazines have bought them out, they do not dare to write the truth any more. They have to obey orders all the time. And I can’t convince you how valuable criticism is. I won’t even try. You see, when George Bernard Shaw started to criticize English plays – he was not a playwright yet – the entire city of London was turned on its head. That is true writing! Here no one dares to write. There were a few who could do it. I know of a couple. Saroj Sengupta -- he used to write seriously. He was kicked out. And there is this other guy -- what’s his name, he’s in Anandabazar…

Jyotirmoy?

No, no, no.

N.K.G?

No, no, not N.K.G. Ah, that other guy. “Just now I am missing the name”. I will let you know if it comes back. "These are the only two critics". And Shyamlal who is now the editor of Times of India. He used to be a film critic. Then they moved him and made him an editor. He got a Padmashree or something like that this year. So these are the facts. In this country, no one respects critics. A few good men who want to do honest serious work and they are removed very fast. And what’s the point in talking about the rest? To criticize films, one must understand the medium first. Different aspects of films and the technical details need to be understood, right? Only they themselves can say how much of the process they really get. I am not going to comment on that. “I am not going to get involved in any trouble. But the point is that, I have understood this”. Ah!. That gentleman, I can’t recall the name. He is the best in India… from Anandabazar. Now he is with Desh and they don’t let him write anything.

Sebabrata?

No, no, not Sebabrata. Very strange! The way I miss certain names from time to time!

How important a medium film is in the context of cultural movements?

I think film is an extremely important medium. But where are we using it in such a way? You all know what’s going on. There is no point in discussing all this. In this country, film has become the crassest instrument of cheap entertainment. So, I am quite worried about future of films in this country. I have no idea what will happen in the future though.

As an industry, film is capital-intensive. So how much dissident can it really be?

Totally and absolutely. But it all depends on who are building the film. If an artist is fearless and not spineless, he or she can do anything. In their films, they can capture the struggles and plight of the entire universe. But what can we do if they don’t? And usually they don’t. That’s why our films have become so ridiculous.

(To be continued ...)

An interview with Ritwik Kumar Ghatak (1975): Part 1

2007-05-11T01:30:00.000-07:00

This long, insightful and passionate discussion with Prabir Sen is one of Ritwik's final interviews. I recently came across it in Ritwik Kumar Ghatak (edited by Atanu Pal, Banishilpa, 1988) -- a collection of Bangla essays and interviews. I have not seen an English version of this interview either in print or online, but it is quite possible that I have missed it especially because I have not read Rows and Rows of Fences yet. If anyone has come across this discussion in English and/or has copyrights concerns, please send me an email. It is almost impossible to translate Ritwik's pathos, passion and sense of humor, and I definitely do not have the necessary skills. To make matters worse, often during the interview, he poignantly switches to a bangal (Bangladeshi) dialect and that is impossible to convey in English. Also I have not changed the sentences and fragments within quotes as they were in English in the original interview. With all the disclaimers in place, here we go.

Section 1: His own films

Why do you make films?

Why films? Because I am totally crazy. I can not live without making films. Must not we do something? So I make these films. No other reason really.

When you prepare to make a film and choose subjects, what do you look for and look at?

People. I look at the struggle and misery of contemporary life. And try to say that “to the best of my ability”. My only concern is men and women of my country. I have nothing else. It does not matter whether my countrymen accept me or reject me. My only subject is my men and women. What else have I got?

What should be the primary objective of making films?

The primary objective of making films is to do good to mankind. If you do not do good to humanity, no art is a true work of art. Rabindranath said that art must be faithful to truth first and to beauty secondarily (dipanjan: reference to satyam and sundaram). This truth comes out of an artist’s own perceptions and meditations. Since truth is never everlasting and constant and as this world is always subjective and changing, everyone must arrive at their personal truth with their entire life’s deepest thoughts and understandings. One should accept that truth only after fully realizing it. Art is not a trivial thing.

What is more important to you in filming a story or novel? Literary value or the process of transformation to a different art form?

I do not see any distinction between the two. It’s all about different expressions of human life. Which medium I choose is not significant at all. Love of mankind is the only thing of any importance. The daily grind, mindless drudge work – is this life? If you must love, you must give it your all; love with all your heart. I don’t know if I have been able to do that.

Is there a deep-seated connection between Meghe Dhaka Tara, Subarnarekha and Komol Gandhar? If there is, could you elaborate please?

Of course there is an innate connection. "Meghe Dhaka Tara was completely my… in my subconscious affair. Komol Gandhar was a very conscious affair." My marriage to this woman is very closely tied to it. "And Subarnarekha is a very serious work". I had to work really hard on it, yes psychologically … "a work behind it". Not just physical hard labor, I had to slog very hard mentally to make it work. I don’t know if I was successful, but miyan, the fact of the matter is I slogged.

But the connection?

There is only one connection between these three. And that is the unification of two Bengals. I wanted to unite two Bengals. I love them both miyan… that’s what I am saying and that’s all I am going to say unto the last, until I die. I do not care (about anything)… I do not care about money. "I can fight that out. Ritwik Ghatak can do that out here and in Dhaka". Whoever wants to kick my butt, let them do it. I could not care less.

In most of your films, we can perceive the pain and suffering arising out of the division of Bengal. Has partition been particularly important in determining our current state?

Absolutely. And I have always been extremely against it. Even in my last film (dipanjan:Jukti, Takko Aar Gappo) I think I have attacked it. I am not part of any discussions about political unification. Because I don’t understand it and I don’t need any of it. But cultural unification (I am passionate about) – I have worked in both Bengals. And no one has done it more than me. No one here knows more about Bangladesh than me. The way I have stayed and worked there and what I have seen (dipanjan:reference to shooting Titas Ekti Nadir Naam in Bangladesh) among those bangali boys and girls – especially girls – in Bangladesh, no one else here can match that or has seen that. I will probably go there again after a few days (dipanjan: he never did) . But that’s not the point. The point is – and I have said it in my films – what provoked the strife between two Bengals "is a great betrayal". There is only one Bengal. If we try, we can reunite now on the basis of love and compassion that is always there. "And that has been partitioned completely in a rascal way". This is something very artificial and no one has the right to forgive it. Now historically twenty-five or twenty-seven years have passed. It has already been done , so you can’t help it blah blah. But the point is, culturally Bengalis can not be divided. One culture.

I remember you mentioning once that, in the last shot of Subarnarekha, when Binu’s uncle(mama) was talking to Binu about a new world, he was lying. In that context, you mentioned that we could not suggest new solutions as we were finished. If you really believe that, do you make films only for your own joy? But when we watch your films, we feel otherwise.

Right, right, both are correct. The truth is I am delighted after watching my films. Decoupled with enjoyment, there can be no art. But at the same time you can not forget about doing good to men. How are you going to do any work without love for human beings? You have to love like crazy if you want to create. Yes, that’s the other side of it. There is no contradiction between the two. Why shouldn't I love you while creating art? I don’t see an inherent contradiction.

In the context of Indian film history, all of your films stand out as exceptions. But even among them, Jukti, Takko Aar Gappo stands apart. What do you think?

I don’t have an opinion. This is totally up to others. I wanted to make films and I did it. Now you decide if those are of any value. How do I know? Never question (dipanjan:in the last paragraph of his review of Ajantrik, Rosenbaum touches on artistic intentionality) an artist about his work because “he is always biased”. There is no point in asking him. Like it or hate it, the reactions are your own. Some people will get pissed, some will be delighted. Why should that concern me?

But you have changed form in this film…

Every work of art is distinct. The form comes out of its theme, philosophy and reflections. I picked the form I felt right for its themes. So there is no point in asking about change in forms. Content dictated it.

Was it inevitable for you to portray the role of the protagonist?

Yes, I think so. Because I don’t think I saw anyone in Calcutta who could express the thoughts and words I was trying to communicate through that character. I know pretty much everyone… I mean those who act. None of them could do it. Similarly except Monidi (dipanjan:Tripti Mitra), no one could do the role of the wife. There are lots of actresses, but it’s the truth. Those two are the only serious roles – Monidi’s and mine – and if you are not an old (dipanjan:purono=old/ex?) communist, and if you have not come out of that struggle, it’s not possible for you to do those roles. You can force other actors to act, but that will be fake. I thought of Madhabi, but she could not grasp what I was trying to say. A single expression of Monidi, on the other hand, would always do the trick. It’s because we joined the communist party together and both of us left it around the same time, too. And both of us knew the unfortunate paths we had taken to reach this sad state in Bengal. So, no, I don’t think anyone else could have done it.

My Lenin. We did not get a chance to watch it, isn’t there a way?

That…there are a lot of problems. It’s about…all right…Morarji Desai. My Lenin was cleared by the censor board here and then I took it to Delhi. It was before Congress was divided. So I showed the film and the Polish cultural attaché went berserk. He understands Bangla very well. He was crazy about it and immediately started making plans of sending it to Poland, Czechoslovakia and Russia. Then I found out that Morarji Desai had sent a letter and Indira told me "Ritwik, this film is banned!" and I said "What nonsense! You must do something! Ridiculous!" Then Haksar sahib who is like a father figure to me – he used to love me immensely – and was the chief secretary then, took it to Morarji. Then this girl – what’s the name, oh yes, Nandini, now she is in Orissa – called me and said "Ritwik, what can I do? You go ahead and do whatever you want." Haksar sahib also came out of his room and started saying "Isi me koi garbar nehi hai, what’s wrong with it?" Then it started to sell in Russia and some other socialist countries wanted to buy it. With that money, I could have bought food for my family for a long period of time. But eventually Morarji did ban it. Anyways, Haksar and Nandini managed to give me about thirty thousand rupees and also a bad name. But at least I would be able to buy some drinks now which will piss my wife off. That’s all. "This is part of life, can’t be helped". I blew some of the money and then I came back, miyan, "fly back to Calcutta". To give a few bucks to my wife and to tell her - now for one month at least, don’t disturb me. "These are occupational hazards".

(To be continued ...)

One-Day Batting: Part 3

2007-03-26T23:30:00.000-07:00

Class is temporary. There definitely is a timeless quality to Tendulkar’s straight and off drives or Lara’s cuts and on drives, but none of those classy strokes can ultimately survive the ravages of time. Like Dravid’s soft-handed defensive pushes or Hayden’s baseball-style hard hits, those shots require footwork, hand-eye coordination and muscles as well. In baseball, 40 might well be the new 30, but does that also apply to someone who has already spent 1059 days of his life playing international cricket scoring a staggering 25515 runs –- 3345 more than the next batsman on the list, the other contender to the hotly contested title of greatest batsman of this generation, if not of all time –- in the process?

To complete the reversal of the cliché, form is permanent. No. Despite what hypermodern Ponting might say -- and I will not be surprised if he continues his current form until retirement and usurps the title so coveted by romantic Lara and modern Tendulkar just by the sheer magnitude of numbers -- this part of the reversal does not quite hold. Form, regardless of the exact combination of mental state and physical fitness it is derived from, is transient too. However, its significance is not.

Therefore, even though I did not have the printout of this spreadsheet handy until now, it was not very difficult to sense irrationality in the exuberance. Staring at cricinfo scorecards for hours and more importantly, ignoring most of the articles there, usually keep the expectations well-grounded. None of the weekend potluck addas, caffeinated water cooler conversations or even the inebriated pub prediction sessions with the eternally optimistic brigade convinced me of the same-bigfour-as-2003-with-Dhoni-Uthappa-stronger-than-Kaif-Mongia-and-a-more-mature-Yuvraj line of argument especially when Yuvraj was recovering from an injury and Dhoni was largely untested outside India. Pollyannas did concede that the fielding was definitely going to be worse and the bowling probably was not much better than 2003. However, the extra 20-30 runs scored by a stronger batting line-up will make up for it. Now if you compare the Top4 averages in the 50 and 25 matches going into the two world cups, the expectation should have been of 20-30 runs less than 2003, not more. But when did reason and logic win against hope and marketing?

And I was not totally immune from the delusion either. With New Zealand’s brilliant out-cricket and recent successes, and with Sri Lankan, Australian and South African top four batsmen enjoying superior forms relative to their Indian counterparts and perhaps even more importantly -– given how crucial confidence is to batting success -– relative to their own career averages, the top three slots looked beyond India’s reach. However, in the face of constant accusations of being a cynical Cassandra, I occasionally had to admit that, with an upset or two, there was an outside chance of India sneaking in to the semis as the fourth team and after that, to continue with the cliché theme, it was anybody’s world cup. That usually brought the cricket-addas to amicable conclusions. With hindsight, I clearly underestimated the risk of a single misstep in the new format and the strength of great Indian tradition of adjusting to opponents’ standards, just to keep things interesting. Although I must say the failure to match Bangladesh in any department of the game was unprecedented even by India’s standard.

To end on a more cheerful note, we’ll always have chess.With the money I saved by not betting on cricket, I will wager you did not know that Anand, for the first time in his incredible career, will be the number one chess player on FIDE’s next list to be released in a week. I bet you also missed the chess analogy in the description of three of the greatest batsmen ever – romantic, modern and hypermodern are three different schools of chess. If you are getting a little turned off by the geek-speak, feeling a little skeptical about taking pride in Anand and thereby reinforcing nerdy Indian stereotypes, fear not. If those pictures do not cheer you up, nothing will. Or maybe you just need a magic triggered by Murali’s doosras or a Lara century that will stop the three-peat.

Go brownz and blackz! Get the Aussies! Let the games begin!

Ishwar Chandra and Ishwar

2007-01-17T19:45:00.000-08:00

In an article entitled Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar published in Indian Opinion dated 16th of September, 1905, Mahatma Gandhi correctly attributes Bengal’s emerging political consciousness and its strong influence over the rest of India – the article was written against the backdrop of the first partition of Bengal and the consequent Swadeshi Andolan – to the spread of elementary and higher education. Then he goes on to briefly and admiringly describe Vidyasagar’s visionary role in that expansion of education particularly among women and poor, pioneering work in the creation of Bengali prose and tireless social activism leading to reforms such as legalizing remarriage of widows. The article is a short biographical sketch, one in a series of columns Gandhiji wrote to enlighten the readers about the great and famous, and is clearly not meant to be an insightful and comprehensive analysis of Vidyasagar’s life and work.

However, a few paragraphs curiously stand out – not as much by throwing light on Vidyasagar’s mind as by hinting at Gandhiji’s own perceptions and preoccupations. First, the passages:

He was a Hindu, and a Brahmin too. But to him, Brahmin and Sudra, Hindu and Muslim, were all alike. [original]
Himself he led a very simple life. His dress consisted of a coarse dhoti, a shawl of similar kind to cover his body, and slippers. In that dress he used to call on Governors, and in the same dress he greeted the poor. He was really a fakir, a sannyasi or a yogi. [original]

Compare this with what Rabindranath writes in the first paragraph of his famous eulogy Vidyasagar Charita (1896) where he explains how the immense force of life directed Vidyasagar to humanism, and specifically not to Hinduism, parochialism or communalism. He continues:

When we discuss Vidyasagar’s life, what stands out is not that he was a great Bengali or a great Hindu but the fact that he was much bigger than that, he was truly a great human being (my translation)[original]

While Gandhiji presents Vidyasagar’s egalitarianism as a contrast to his Hindu Brahmin identity, Rabindranath seems reluctant to even attach that identity to Vidyasagar. And he does have reasons for that doubt.

Quite early in his life Vidyasagar fell out with Brahmo Samaj leaders most of whom were too rigid for him to work with and from then on he always maintained a respectable distance from both the Hindu revivalist and the Brahmo reformist camps. He concentrated on social reforms through legislation and education. In addition, he was extremely reticent about his personal religious beliefs and practices in his writings and conversations. In his long essay Vidyasagar ki nastik chhilen (Was Vidyasagar an atheist?), scholar Asit Kumar Bandyopadhyay regrets that reticence as he tries to answer the question he poses to himself. The accusation of atheism – or its variant suspicion that he secretly harbored faith in some form of Christianity – was often used by conservative Bengali kulin Brahmins to deride Vidyasagar who, in addition to successfully legalizing remarriage of widows, aggressively went after practices dear to the orthodox establishment such as polygamy and child marriage. So apart from natural curiosity, the question had practical relevance when Vidyasagar was alive.

On the basis of the limited and somewhat contradictory evidence that is available, Asit Bandyopadhyay concludes that even though it is obvious that none of the organized religions – Bankim-inspired Hindu revival, any of the three post-schism Brahmo Samaj groups or Christianity – held any attraction for Vidyasagar who was definitely against preaching and evangelizing organized religion in any form, it is not clear whether he denied the existence of god altogether or he accepted god in a very personalized way but did not want to influence others by talking about it. On one hand Vidyasagar often used to invoke the classic problem of evil and express skepticism about god and after-life in a self-mocking manner, on the other the following excerpt from Chandicharan Bandyopadhyay’s biography seems to indicate that Vidyasagar, in a conversation with a close friend, once did concede the existence of god in his typically self-deprecating and humorous style completely lost in translation:

“I do think that there is a god ruling this universe, but I do not understand why I need to follow a specific path and practice certain rituals to be in his good book and to go to heaven. I do not understand these things myself and I do not want to persuade others either. I am doing so many wrongs myself and am already carrying such a heavy load of sin (mocking reference to his reforms of orthodox Hindu practices). Should I risk running into further trouble by misleading others as well? I do not think I will do that. I try to follow the path which in my judgment is the best. If you insist, I will say I do not understand anything more than that.” (my translation) [original]

The first version of Bodhodoy, a Bengali textbook along the lines of Chambers' Rudiments of Knowledge, which Vidyasagar wrote for elementary school students did not have a chapter on religion. Moreover, the final chapter on Industry-Commerce-Society was an unexpected novelty as he went on extolling science, trade and commerce by describing how they can dramatically improve standard of living. Later in the second version of the book, when he added a small section on religion after repeated requests from his peers, friends and reviewers, the god he described was nirakar chaitanya swarup (formless consciousness). Whether he personally believed in that god or not is a question that researchers and biographers have always stumbled at.

Once during a visit to Vidyasagar's place and an exchange of ideas, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa urged him:

“The great work you are doing is good for your self as well. Nishkam Karma will refine your mind, will help you to love god and with that love, you will realize god. Take the next step. Once you find god, your need for other work will diminish.” (my translation) [original]

In response, Vidyasagar smiled and avoided a confrontation, but his lifelong work is a testimony to the fact that he was not too perturbed about taking that next step. His compassion and the belief that he could make positive changes in the lives of people around him through education and legislation were strong enough to keep him going. A true workaholic, he, as a principal, ran Sanskrit College for seven years like a capable and visionary leader with brave new ideas about changes in curriculum and teaching methods – preeminence of English language, science and other western theories, reform in examination systems, hiring and grooming great teachers such as Sir Surendranath Banerjee and a national mass education policy requiring teaching of three languages: the regional language, English and Sanskrit. After he resigned from the post of principal over a disagreement with his new British boss on autonomy and policies, like a true entrepreneur, he established one new college and a large number of elementary schools where only Indian professors and teachers were hired. As an integral part of implementing his vision, he also jumpstarted the development of Bengali language around the same time by writing Bengali books and by editing and publishing Bengali journals and periodicals.

Vidyasagar never religiously fetishized his simple clothes – it was more an expression of convenience, comfort and respect for clothes that his mother used to weave for him and on rare occasions, usually to make a point, he did switch to western clothes – or his austere lifestyle. He was a worldly man justifiably proud of his ability to make an independent living just by writing and editing Bengali books and his capacity to administer large educational institutions competently. In his indifference to the unknowable and in his distaste for a cult following and guru status, rationalist and pragmatic Vidyasagar stood, fought and died alone, far apart from his contemporaries. That is why the strongly religious connotation of Gandhiji’s descriptions, however respectful and well-intentioned, sounds a trifle misdirected.

Acknowledgement: Prosongo Bidyasagar - A collection of essays published in 1991 by Bongiyo Sakkhorata Prasar Samiti on 100th death anniversary of Vidyasagar.

One-Day Batting: Part 2

2006-11-26T18:11:00.000-08:00

As a nation mourns, professional parliamenterians act suitably outraged, and the cricinfo page for a lowly Ranji trophy match gets frantically loaded and refreshed on desi desktops across the world, it is time for me to take a second look at one-day batting numbers.

When I introduced the ground-breaking concept of batting productivity, I duly noted the dominance of Australians. Until Ponting and Gilchrist started to explode, Australian one-day batting, unlike the subcontinental or Caribbean counterpart, used to be more about solidity and consistency than flair and bursts of unpredicatable greatness. In order to get some quantitative support for our intuitive sense of predictability, I always wanted to take a look at the standard deviation of the scores of major batsmen and finally managed to excel it this weekend from cricinfo innings-by-innings data.

Here is a comparison of top ten -- selected by productivity and ranked by averages in the spreadsheet-- Indian and Australian batsmen. Yes, I am sad to see Kaif and Vengsarkar among the top ten -- Laxman and Manjrekar narrowly lost to them -- but the scarier fact is there are no other batsmen even in the reckoning except those twelve. The Australian list, on the other hand, is missing Boon, Border, Slater, Taylor, Moody, Hussey and Clark among others. But that is a different blog post.

(Click on the chart for a full-size version)

The average of Australian top ten is about ten percent greater than that of the Indian top ten - a number slightly higher than what I would have guessed. However, a lot more interesting is the fact that, in spite of their higher averages, the Australian batsmen do have a lower standard deviation than their Indian counterparts. As the means are different, we need to look at the coefficient of variation -- the ratio of standard deviation and mean -- expressed in percentage in the spreadsheet. The greater the coefficient of variation, the lower is the predictability. Higher average and lower standard deviation give Australian batsmen a significantly higher predictability.

The numbers do provide some support for our intuitive feelings about which batsmen are more consistent than others i.e. who are likely to match their expected scores. For example, Dravid is expectedly more reliable than Ganguly, Tendulkar or Sehwag, but perhaps surprisingly is not quite as predictable as Azhar or Jadeja was. On average, middle-order batsmen have lower standard deviations than the openers. This is expected as openers have more overs at their disposal to score a really big one from time to time. On the other hand, they are also a lot more likely to receive unplayable deliveries and face aggressive field settings resulting in a cheap dismissal. However, I think the comparison between the sets of Australian and Indian batsmen is a fair one as all batting positions are almost equally represented in the two sets which are also comparable mixes of batsmen from different time periods.

Apart from the batting order, another explanation of differences in standard deviations could be the playing style. If that is indeed the case, one would expect that to show up in career strike rates. The unpredictability of Gilchrist, Tendulkar or Symonds is at least partially a consequence of their aggressive batting style which invariably involves taking more risks, but it is less so for Ganguly, Sidhu, Mark Waugh or Kaif. Risk effectiveness -- the ratio of strikerate and coefficient of variation -- can be used as an indicator of how much of a batsman's inconsistency is a result of taking risks and can be excused beacuse of his high strikerates. One thing that stands out and might to some extent explain why Ganguly -- the batsman -- is such a polarizing figure among Indian cricket followers is the fact that his risk effectiveness, along with Sidhu's, is the lowest among this set of twenty batsmen even though his average is extremely high and he is at a very creditable twnetieth position in the all-time all-country productivity ranking which does take strike rate into account. It is the combination of a low career strike rate and a high variation in scores that possibly leads to heated arguments and selective memory about his one-day batting record. As an aside, the average strikerate of top ten Australian batsmen is about five percent greater than that of top ten Indian batsmen.

Finally, ceteris paribus, is it desirable to have a lower standard deviation in individual scores? I think so and I think it is so because of the importance of partnerships. When the variation of a team is high, chances of multiple batsmen firing in the same match is lower and that implies fewer big partnerships. As an example, Gilchrist and Ponting brilliancies are cherished a lot and outlier Bevan's incredible records are deservingly celebrated, but Martyn and Lehmann - with strike rates close to 80, very low standard deviations and very high 'risk effectiveness' numbers - and their partnerships with the likes of Gilchrist, Ponting and Bevan have not been any less significant to Australian dominance.

Two pictures

2006-11-06T00:00:00.000-08:00

1) Iraq: US coalition death toll

Total: 3075 ( source )

"I'm pleased with the progress we're making in Iraq" - Bush, November 5, 2006.

"We won't do body counts." - Tommy Franks.

Unofficial estimate of Iraqi deaths: 650,000 which is 1 in 40 Iraqis.

What have we got to show for this?

2) Corporate Profits and Workers' Compensations

(source)
There was some improvement during Clinton's second term. Just an observation. Don't know enough to claim a causation or even a correlation.

GOTV.

Schadenfreude - The Real Ted Haggard Please Stand Up

2006-11-05T16:40:00.000-08:00

I wish I could say I am feeling sorry about the downfall of the creepy, gay-bashing and pompous idiot who used to hold a weekly tele-conference with Bush and his cronies and was one of the main forces behind organizing the evangelist movement and bringing bible into everything -- starting from science curriculum in middle and high school to US middle-east policy. I hope this scandal does affect the evangelical turnout and the outcome of the Colorado ballot issue to ban same-sex marriage.

This is also the perfect excuse to revisit Dawkins's brilliant The Root Of All Evil - The God Delusion and watch Ted at his scarily ignorant-and-arrogant best.

The entire video deserves a (re)watch.

Greatest One-Day Batsmen

2006-11-04T17:33:00.000-08:00

Yesterday in the middle of my usual six-hours-a-day -- an exaggeration, but just barely so -- staring at cricinfo records, stats guru and old scorecards, I had a brainwave. I thought if I took the mean of batting average and the strikerate divided by two, that would give me an indication of true one-day batting greatness. Division by two is important as the top averages range between 35 and 50, but top strikerates range between 70 and 100.

The strength of this index which I lamely labeled productivity -- suggestions for a better name are most welcome -- is the fact that it is quite agnostic of the batting-order. The strikerates of the batsmen at the top of the order usually suffer a bit as they are supposed to be a little circumspect -- don't worry, Sehwag and Gilchrist do not read this blog -- and build a long innings. On the other hand, the batsmen lower down the order sacrifice their averages in search of quick runs. My index neutralises this.

After the required excelling, I discovered that the top three batsmen were Hussey, Pietersen and Dhoni with Clarke at number six. As great as they are, I fully respect the possibility that they would retain those positions when they retire, but frankly we have not seen enough of them. So I had to apply a filter of minimum 100 innings.

And now the table took a more expected look with the usual suspects popping up at the top -

A few interesting observations -
1) Nine out of top twenty-five batsmen are Australian. I am not disregarding Warne, McGrath and their brilliant out-cricket, but my hunch is this batting prowess contributed the most to their recent dominance of one-day cricket.

2) Four Indians made the cut - Tendulkar, Sehwag on the strength of his strikerate as his average is the lowest of top 25, Yuvraj and Ganguly respectively. Dravid comes at 39.

3) Graeme Smith and Flintoff barely missed the cut as they just fell short of 100 innings criterion.

4) With the current Champions trophy in mind, the most interesting revelation is the fact that three batsmen of the current West Indies team are in all-time top 11 - Sarwan, Lara and Gayle. For a long time, weak bowling and shabby out-cricket concealed this strength. Now that signs of improvements are becoming visible on both of those fronts, the batting strength with the help of home conditions could make them a strong contender in next year's world cup.

Update: A filter of minimum average of 35 has been applied and that takes Sehwag, Yuvraj and Jayasuriya out of the list. Lamb, Kirsten and Cronje take their places. Even though only two Indians are now left in the list, I feel better. As rightly pointed out in the comment section, Sehwag's average is unacceptably low.

Bari Theke Paliye (Runaway from home)

2006-08-12T17:12:00.000-07:00

In 1948, two years before Ritwik started working on the script of his first completed film Nagarik (The Citizen), he wrote a disquieting short story Parashpathar (Touchstone) that was published in the 11th September edition of Desh, the leading Bengali literary periodical, and was later included in its golden anniversary edition of best short story collection — Desh Subarnajayanti Galpo Sankalan.

Chandrakanta, the eccentric protagonist of the story, had become a disciple of a sadhu and from him, had learned the secret formula of MritaSanjibani — the ancient Ayurvedic medicine that can revive the dead which, in the context of the story, is to be interpreted metaphorically. Rest of his life was spent in pursuing odd jobs to save enough money so that he could travel across the subcontinent searching for each of the shrubs and herbs prescribed in the formula. He did not quite completely trust the formula, but he was incapable of giving up on the mission – his raison d’être – which predictably ends in a tragedy.

The formula also required the applicant of the medicine to sing a specific song, with compassion and in a specific tune, while applying the drug to the dead. In his conversations with Banarasilal, a famous exponent of classical Hindustani music and a visitor to a colliery in Madhya Pradesh where Chandrakanta was temporarily working as a contractor, Chandrakanta delves into all sorts of sounds – musical and incidental, natural and mechanical, consonant and dissonant — and the images and memories those sounds invoke in his brain. With the benefit of hind sight, this discussion anticipating the twenty-three year old writer’s future experiments with sounds, images and their dialectical relations becomes more fascinating and even instructive. It is also intriguing how closely Chandrakanta’s passion and his tragic end foreshadow Ritwik’s own future.

More to the point of this post, however, is the fact that Chandrakanta is a runaway. Born in a small village in Kumilla district of East Bengal (now Bangladesh), he ran away from his home and when asked by Banarasilal if he ever wanted to go back to his village some day, his response was just an unintelligible sound of uncertainty and pathos.

Shibram Chakraborty, whose novella Ritwik adapted for Bari Theke Paliye, had his own fair share of adventures. Born in an aristocratic family in the Chanchal region of Maldah, he ran away from home, took part in nationalist freedom struggle and went to jail. Later he was adored for his humorous stories – unique combination of laugh-out-loud and subtle humor — about Harshabardhan and Gobardhan, two immortal characters and also, to a lesser extent, for his autobiographical masterpiece Ishwar, Prithibi, Bhalobasa (God, Universe and Love) – a brilliant overlap of his personal and Bengal’s political journeys through the first half of the last century — which never quite got the recognition it deserved. His wordplays were magical and his sense of humor welcomed the ridiculous and the sublime with equal élan. A lifelong bachelor and an intensely private person, his mess hall habitat at Muktarambabu Street in North Calcutta and the extremely idiosyncratic and curious lifestyle were part of Bengali-lit folklore.

Kanchan of Bari theke Paliye, the film, however, is closer to Ritwik — who himself had run away from home a few times in his youth — than Shibram. The original set in a Calcutta where optimism and idealism still were the dominant forces had to be morphed quite a bit to fit with Ritwik’s view of Calcutta of fifties: a post-second-world-war, post-famine, post-riot and post-partition crumbling metropolis – cruel and apathetic. He was direct and precise about this in an essay entitled My Films:

In our boyhood we have seen a Bengal, whole and glorious. Rabindranath, with his towering genius, was at the height of his literary creativity, while Bengali literature was experiencing a fresh blossoming with the works of the Kallol group, and the national movement had spread wide and deep into schools and colleges and the spirit of the youth. Rural Bengal, still reveling in its fairy tales, panchalis, and its thirteen festivals in twelve months, throbbed with the hope of a new spurt of life. This was the world that was shattered by the War, the Famine, and when the Congress and the Muslim League brought disaster to the country and tore it into two to snatch for it a fragmented independence. Communal riots engulfed the country. The waters of the Ganga and the Padma flowed crimson with the blood of warring brothers. All this was part of the experience that happened around us. Our dreams faded away. We crashed on our faces, clinging to a crumbling Bengal, divested of all its glory.

What distinguishes Bari Theke Paliye from the rest of Ritwik's films is the additional layer of subjectivity introduced — the big city is observed with an outsider’s perspective, through the eyes of a village boy who fantasizes Calcutta, his El Dorado. How Kanchan’s initial wonder at the majestic spectacles of the city and his optimism for finding work and sending money to his mother are slowly transformed by a cruel and heartless city into disillusionment is the crux of the narrative. Ritwik accomplishes this subjectivity with the help of techniques like low angle shots accentuating Kanchan’s point-of-view and the tall high-rises of the city, special angles and long focus on 300 mm lens, intentional distortion of objects shot with his favorite 18 mm lens, using depth of focus to create a feeling of stasis in the shots of fast-moving vehicles and people, and transfer of recorded music at three times the original speed. [1]

The vignettes of the city — the railway tracks and the local trains that daily bring to the city an incredible number of commuters and homeless displaced people looking for a livelihood, iconic Howrah bridge: the gateway to Calcutta, maidan’s mounted police controlling football spectators at rampart, slums, ships at Princep’s ghat, cows and ambassadors keeping company, beggar mafia, hawkers, nostalgia-filled office adda, pickpockets, michhil (political rally), glowing advertisement boards at night and the dark alleys during the day, conjurers, day laborers, biyebari (wedding reception) dinner and post-dinner impromptu classical music jalsa, the gentlest of class warfare between English-snob city kids and the outsider village boy, and the fiercest of survival battles where homeless street dwellers, barely surviving, chase dogs away and scrape for biyebari leftover food in dustbins in a scene reminiscent of Bijan Bhattacharya’s epochal Nabanna – are filled with tension and Ritwik’s compositions are constantly clashing and colliding with each other.

Kanchan’s journey does have its moments of joy, compassion, friendship and even a touch of romance. His dream sequence about Mili and their alternately teasing and loving conversations are tender and sweet. The jump cut and the close-up of Mili’s face that immediately follow the scramble for leftover food cinematically try to wipe the inhumanity out of Kanchan’s memory. At Princep’s ghat when Kanchan confides in Mili his dreams of boarding a ship, one is reminded of Bibhutibhushan’s Aparajito — the Bengali novel intellectually and emotionally dearest to Ritwik – where Apu and Lila’s pet topic of discussion was Apu’s fantasy voyage to discover Atlantis. As an aside, Satyajit has not been forgiven for dropping the pivotal character of Lila out of Apu trilogy. In his defense, he did try to fit her in, but it did not work out for the lack of suitable child actors and also as a result of schedule conflicts with the only suitable actor he finally managed to find.

However, refugee Haridas’s love and empathy for Kanchan, the slum-dwelling mother who sees her runaway son in Kanchan and above all Mili and her parents’ affection merely delay the inevitable heartbreak – Kanchan’s painful question: ei sahore eto du:kkho keno (why so much sadness in this city?) – echoed in the day laborer’s assertion: kolkata sahor – dayamaya kuchhu nei, ja ghare chole ja (this is Calcutta, it does not care about anyone, go away, go back home), and symbolized in the death of a chil run down by a car, beautifully cross-referencing a Sukanta Bhattacharya poem about broken dreams.

Never the one to shy away from using the great mother archetype and integrating it with his conception of home, Ritwik presents three faces of Bengali mother – Kanchan’s mother in the village waiting for him to return, the slum-dwelling mother who works as a maid and keeps looking for his lost son and Mili’s upper-middle class urban mother who is very sick and is practically waiting for her death. In a couple of typically audacious and melodramatic sequences – one where a song about maternal love and nurture is being played on radio and listened to by both Kanchan’s mother in her village home, and Mili’s mother in Calcutta, on their transistor sets that link the two long shots, and another when Kanchan tries to save the slum-dwelling woman from arrest by claiming: o amar ma (she is my mother) – which very few could pull off, Ritwik unifies all three of them, their losses and longings.

The film ends on a hopeful note as Kanchan - unlike Chandrakanta, Haridas and countless others, displaced and marginalized – still has a home to return to where he is re-united with his mother, forever loving, and his father, finally trying to get out of the clutches of Chanakya’s guide to child-rearing. Calcutta, the touchstone, touches Kanchan(literally meaning gold), shatters a few of his fantasies and makes him wiser.

[1] Source for the information on lenses and the techniques mentioned is a Ritwik interview on page 51 of Bnadhan Sengupta’s Ritwik Chalachchitra Katha. First Edition, 2003.

The day the football died

2006-06-08T19:20:00.002-07:00

No, it did not happen in a day. The death has been a slow one. And no, globally the game of football is not dead in most places. It is doing better than ever. Alive and kicking. But Bengal's football and Bengali passion about it died in the eighties. An eyewitness account of that tragic death follows.

I am not quite sure what the opening scene of my nostalgic Bengali football film will be, but the soundtrack will definitely have the line: Mohun Bagan maatth theke Ajay Basu bolchhi (Ajay Basu speaking from Mohun Bagan football ground) somewhere in it. Even today that one line uttered in a resonant voice on Calcutta A station (Medium Wave: Frequency 657, Meters 456.6) from those pre-DoorDarsharn days evokes a lot of happy memories of excitement and apprehension. Even after DoorDarshan, with a logo
that uncannily resembles a football, had started broadcasting the major football matches and some friendly kid's rich dad had finally managed to purchase the first Sonodyne B&W TV set of the neighborhood, one had to fall back to good old All India Radio for the minor matches. That one line would also reveal everything you ever needed to know about a Bengali: religion (hint: not Mohammedan Sporting Club ground), on which side of a fateful 2216 kms line their grandparents grew up (hint: not East Bengal ground) and consequently the most important bit - their epicurean preferences. Life was simple back then. Bengali families with both ghoti and bangal members were not unheard of, but the frequency of such anomalies was as greatly exaggerated as reports of Mark Twain's death were. However, the reports of manslaughter and suicides in those hybrid families during and after a Mohun Bagan-East Bengal match were entirely accurate.

Calcutta football was not just about the three big clubs. Clubs like Aryans, George Telegraph, Eastern Railways, Port Trust, Tollygunge Agragami and Bally Protibha played a very important role in a vibrant football scene: grooming budding talent, providing jobs to footballers and coaches, stimulating fan following in villages, small towns and offices and snatching those occasional but all-important points from the big three. The Mohun Bagan-East Bengal League match, however, was the D-day - the unofficial final match in a round robin Calcutta League of twenty-odd teams. Quite often both of them would make it to the finals of national knockout tournaments like IFA Shield, Durand Cup, Rovers Cup and Federation Cup as well. Those were the days when streets of West Bengal suburbs and villages would be empty and stores would drop shutters hours before the match started. Flags were bought and Abir leftovers from Dol (Holi) were dug out in eager anticipation. During the match, one could hear the commentary in any part of a town even when they were not carrying a radio with them. In those pre-Jubo-Bharati-Krirangan days in Calcutta, more people would gather outside the Mohun Bagan and East Bengal Maidan grounds than what could fit inside the stadium. With pocket radios turned on at full volume and held right next to their eardrums, they would excitedly wait for those four magic letters: g-o-a-l. Which side scored that illusive goal would determine the price of Ilish and Chingri maachh for next several days. As George Bernard Shaw wisely noted, a Ghoti and his Fish are intricately tied. For me, a die-hard Mohun Bagan supporter but a closet Ilish fan, a Mohun Bagan victory brought with it the sweet bonus of Ganga's fresh Ilish at a bargain price.

Folklores of barefoot Mohun Bagan's incredible 1911 IFA shield triumph against the goras, exploits of Samad and Gostho Paul, legendary Mohammedan Sporting team of 1930s, FIFA's refusal to let barefoot Indian team take part in 1950 world cup, India's 1951 Asian Games gold, magic (I mean atrocities) of East Bengal's Panchapandab - Ahmed Khan, Venkatesh, Saleh, AppaRao and Dhanraj - in fifties and Shailen Manna's resolute defense against them, Chuni Goswami's brilliance in sixties, P K Banerjee-Chuni Goswami-Balaram-Journal Singh inspired Asian Games gold in 1962, the creditable fourth place finish in 1956 Olympics and Neville DeSouza's hat-trick, the bronze in 1970 Asiad aroused not only passion, but also a sense of pride and nationalism. Bengali fiction and non-fiction writing by the likes of amazingly gifted Moti Nandy in magazines like Khela, Khelar Asar, and Anandamela reinforced those folklores.

Unfortunately it all slowly fell apart in the eighties. It started with the live broadcast of world cup football and the introduction of Jawharlal Nehru Gold Cup . 1982 was the first world cup broadcast live by DoorDarshan and, in the middle of enjoying Zico's brilliance, Maradona's promise of future greatness, Rossi's opportunism and an epic France-West Germany semifinal - dawned a painfully sad realization: there was a very wide gulf between Calcutta Maidan and the best of world football. The reality was driven home more directly and ruthlessly in the Jawharlal Nehru Gold cup invitational tournament which also started in 1982. Studded with world-cupper studs like Buruchaga, Lazslo Kiss, Fischer, Mikhailichenko, Smolarek, Ramos - honored by a very respectful (WC) next to their names on DoorDarshan screens - those teams started to pummel our gods mercilessly. All of a sudden Bidesh Bose's run on the left wing, Surojit Sengupta's body swerves and the crosses from the right wing, Krishanu Dey's dribbles, Sishir Ghosh's headers and Prasun Banerjee's left-footed free-kicks lost their magic. And a year later, on the same Sonodyne set, we watched eleven Indians performing a new magic at Lord's and suddenly transforming a leisurely game of rich and elitist Indians into a national obsession. The world of Calcutta football was never quite the same again.

"To think of football as merely 22 hirelings kicking a ball is merely to say that a violin is wood and cat-gut, Hamlet so much ink and paper. It is conflict and art." - JB Priestly

True, but it is a game too - with a winner and a loser. It is not possible to get excited and passionate about a team that always loses, loses big and while losing, does not even look like playing the same game as the best in the business is playing. A Bengali did not have to shun his Ray and Ghatak when he discovered Truffaut and Buñuel. He could effortlessly switch between his Tagore and Eliot. But after watching the World Cup, Jawharlal Nehru Gold cup and Indian one-day cricket triumphs on the screens of DoorDarshan, he could never again find the same passion about football.

No, Baichung Bhutiya's brief stint at a third-tier Manchester Bury does not redeem anything. Any Mohun Bagani worth his salt knows that Chuni Goswami had an offer from Tottenham Hotspur in the 60s. He refused because Mohun Bagan back then was much stronger than the Spurs :-) and in Calcutta he was treated like a god - a god mightier than even the great Uttam Kumar. He was also a decent Ranji player, but never wanted to improve his cricket and make it to the national side because cricket was not important enough. So after breaking his knee while playing football, when a certain teenager decided to switch to cricket in late eighties - it was not only the best career move by a Bengali since Michael Madhusudan and Bankim Chandra gave up writing in English, it also epitomized the end of an era.

Olympic Medals and India

2006-05-27T00:20:00.000-07:00

Few people seem to care, but there is an Olympiad going on. Out of 150 countries participating, India is seeded second and is actually expected to win medals. As we all know, India and Olympic medals are not often used in the same sentence. If we forget about the glorious past of field hockey, the country of one billion people has managed to win exactly four individual medals in sixty years. So when an Indian team is seeded second out of 150 teams in an Olympic event not named Kabbadi, it calls for a celebration.

India is fielding its strongest team ever and it should improve on its best ever result of sixth-place finish at the last Olympiad. Their seeding is primarily driven by Anand's monstrous rating, but overall it is a very balanced team with Sasikiran on the second board, Harikrishna on the third and Suryashekhar the-other Ganguly on the fourth. The bench strength of Sandipan and D P Singh is a bit suspect though. I think Ganguly and Sasikiran hold the key. Both are aggressive and tactically very strong. The team will need quite a few 3.5-0.5 and 3-1 wins to finish among the medals. To do that Sasikiran and Ganguly will have to take some chances even with black.

Currently India is clubbed with four other teams at 12-16 in the ranking table, but it is early days yet and they are only two points behind the leaders - Russia and Armenia. There is enough time left to come back from that shocker of an opening round against Morocco. The extra two odd points lost there could, however, still cost them dearly. Germany, the sixth round opponent, is a very experienced side with two veterans - Jussopow and Graf. It should be a very interesting match tomorrow.

India has a very good chance of winning a medal in the women's section as well. They are the ninth seed and can definitely finish in top three if Koneru Humpy gets strong support from Swati Ghate, Harika Dronavalli and Mary Ann Gomes.

Chess Olympiad historically has not always attracted the top players and Anand himself skipped it for a long time. However, on reading his rediff interview immediately after the last Olympiad, one gets the impression that he badly wants India to win an Olympic medal. From a purely chess perspective, that is a bit surprising coming from a player who has twice won Chess Oscar ahead of Kasparov and has won every major tournament in the world. Olympic medals are not the topmost priority for the top chess players as they are not for the top tennis pros. I think Anand shares the frustration of Indian sports followers and realizes KD Singh Babu, Leander Paes, Karnam Malleshwari and Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore could use some company. If he can help India win the gold that eluded even those four great individuals, it would be the first time in 28 years that a country other than USSR (or former USSR) would come out on the top. It would also be the first time in 67 years that a non-Eastern-European country would win.

A great start for Anand at M-Tel Masters

2006-05-13T10:58:00.000-07:00

Anand beats Topalov in a quiet and precise anti-Marshall which suddenly exploded in the middle game. He is just one ELO point behind Topalov. With a great start at M-Tel Masters with two wins with black in the first two rounds, he has a very good chance of becoming the number one player in the world for the first time in his incredible career. Next game is with Kamsky who has been inconsistent since he woke up from his med-school induced chess hibernation.

A beautiful Anand cartoon by Chavdar Nikolov. A few more of his wonderful cartoons can be found at Chessbase .

Must See TV

2006-05-09T18:15:00.000-07:00

It is amazing how completely and precisely Stephen Colbert destroyed Bush Administration and its lapdog - the mainstream media in just 25 minutes. They are yanking it from all websites, YouTube included, citing copyright infringements. Before the C-Span partnership with Google collapses, please do yourself a favor and watch a classic performance . It is not perfect as he flubbed the glass-half-empty joke and the audition tape is a bit overcooked, but it sure is devastating. The nervous laughters and the squirming told us more about last six years of US history than all mainstream coverage combined.

Happy Birthday

2006-05-03T19:54:00.000-07:00

Every morning before the classes started at seven, we, a bunch of ten-twelve year olds, used to form two teams - Anandamela and Shuktara - and play an intense football match on the chhoto maatth (smaller ground). That used to be the highest point of our day. It was all downhill from there as, tired and deflated, we entered the imposing hundred and fifty year old building right next to the chhoto maatth.
Another day drifted away as we tried in vain to master Meghnadbadh, metamorphic rocks, Mendeleev’s periodic table, Mendel’s genetics, momentum conservation, Muhammad-bin-Tughlaq’s follies, mensuration and the English alphabet.

I always played for the Anandamela team as they were much stronger and it was an intellectual suicide to admit to subscribing to lowbrow Shuktara. Like some other intellectual elites in our school, I did secretly subscribe to Shuktara as well and was once caught red-handed when I was smiling at hNada-bhNoda and bNatul-the-great . The biggest problem, however, arose, during the best period of a Bengali year. Purchasing the Anandamela sharadiya pujabasrhiki (special festive number of a Bengali magazine published during Durga Puja) took care of my hunger for the latest exploits of Professor Shanku , but a certain Mr. Pradosh C. Mitter showed up only on the pages of Sandesh and Desh every alternate year.

One could not just buy the Sandesh pujabarshiki; it was available only to the year-long subscribers. Having never quite taken to the Lila Majumdar-inspired Sandesh genre of Bengali young adult fiction, the yearly subscription was too large a sum of money to spend for one Feluda story. The quality of detection it took to hunt down a Sandesh subscriber and borrow his book before it became available in public libraries was way more impressive than anything Feluda himself had ever displayed.

The years when Feluda graced the pages of Desh, things were even murkier. Unlike Anandamela, Shuktara and Sandesh, Desh was not targeted towards young adults. It is a literary periodical with content not deemed suitable for a boy in his pre-teen or early-teen. A lot of pestering, however, would usually get me a copy from my parents or their friends, but I had to promise to confine my eyes into the Feluda section of the book – the section that immediately followed a few more of Rabindranath’s unpublished letters (always wondered how those letters from a man long dead would magically pop up at the editor’s desk every year). It did not take me long to break the promise though. After gobbling up Feluda’s latest adventure in exactly 85 minutes, with a finger carefully inserted into a page of the Feluda story just in case I needed to go back to the permitted area to avoid suspicion, my gate-crashing into the world of serious and mature fiction began.

Not that Feluda stories were immature or trivial additions to the canon of Bengali literature. They nurtured, educated and entertained a generation: the wit, quirks and individualism of the characters, an infectious child-like curiosity about everything, an empathy for everyone including most of the villains, a vividly visual description of people and places with few precise words, the puzzles, riddles and the wordplays, a Hitchcockian talent to build and sustain suspense and the brilliant illustrations. The influences are more easily noticeable now – Conan Doyle, Sharadindu, Christie, Sukumar Ray (both chromosomal and creative), Woodhouse, Parashuram, Lewis Carroll, American film noir and many others. But what emerged out of these influences was distinctly original and a very interesting mix of Bengali and Western sensibilities and literary traditions.

No discussion of Feluda stories can be complete without a few words about the immortal character of pulp thriller writer Lalmohan Ganguly better known as Jatayu. Looking at him just as a comic relief is a huge mistake. The stories where Dr. Watson is absent and Holmes tries to recount himself are dry and almost boring. On the other hand, when Dr. Watson is on his own for a long stretch in The Hound of the Baskervilles, we do eagerly wait for Holmes to show up, but we never lose interest. Similarly, the recent ITV pilot proves that Lewis can hold his own, but imagining a Morse episode without Lewis is very painful. What Watson or Lewis very effectively does is to humanize their almost super-human companions. Their relation with the eccentric geniuses opens up the stories emotionally and transforms routine genre plots about crime, detection and punishment into something richer. Topshe, the teenage narrator of Feluda stories, is a proxy for the young readers; but it is Feluda’s friendship with Jatayu that is the lifeblood of the series. It is the bridge that connects Feluda’s dry wit and a somewhat detached and cynical worldview with Jatayu’s quintessential Bengaliness - fears, prejudices and insecurities in a warm and loving heart.

Satyajit Ray would have been 85 yesterday. He also made films .

Rahul Dravid - the greatest test batsman ever?

2006-03-17T16:34:00.000-08:00

If greatness is measured by consistent performance over a long period of time, one can't help but pondering on the following not-so-trivial record. Currently Rahul Dravid is the only test batsman to be in the top ten list for both average and the number of runs. He is ~~ninth (March 17, 2006)~~ sixth (July 4th, 2006) in both lists.

The top ten in the list of most runs are : Lara, Border, Waugh, Tendulkar, Gavaskar, Gooch, Miandad, Richards, Dravid and Stewart.

The top ten in the list of batting average are: Bradman, Pollock, Headley, Suttcliffe, Paynter, Barrington, Weekes, Hammond, Dravid and Sobers.

This is a tremendous achievement - one which seems to be a little under-appreciated in Indian cricket media. So a timely congratulations to the Indian captain on the verge of his hundredth test! This is even more timely because Ponting is breathing down his neck. He is eleventh on both lists.

I know arguments about the greatest test batsman are meaningless and futile - particularly when one is comparing different eras. Statistics can never measure greatness either. The title of this post is a hyperbole, but that can probably be excused on an important day in Indian captain's life.

Stephen Roach - Gini Index

2006-03-10T03:50:00.000-08:00

Morgan Stanley's Stephen Roach on globalization, economic growth and income distribution -

Globalization's new underclass

As always, he is insightful and lucid. The most interesting observation is the increase in China's Gini index from 30 to 45 during the biggest economic growth spurt world has ever seen - between the years 1990 and 2003. The disparity is not only in coastal urban incomes and inland rural incomes, as popularly believed. There is also increasing divergence in the distribution of urban incomes. This could easily lead to social unrest and political upheaval. Roach asserts that Chinese leadership is taking this very seriously as they should.

India's Gini Index is at 33. It will be interesting to track this number over the next few years as India tries to grow at 8-10% like China continuously did for so long.

Caché (Hidden)

2006-02-18T22:48:00.000-08:00

Caché has been widely analyzed over internet. Girish's post, Acquarello's review and comments on the Cinemarati thread Girish links to, Christopher Sharrett's review in Cineaste and Chiranjit's analysis are all excellent starting points.

It is probably too late for an extensive review sparkling with original insights. So continuing from my last post, I would just record a few more random thematic observations. I will ignore the form and techniques Haneke uses to accomplish his thematic goals. Haneke talks about it briefly in this interview.

What follows is full of spoilers, so please do not read this if you have not watched the film yet.

Systemic distortion of past(history)

pathological hatred

campaign of terror

he had truly no idea about the tapes

Bourgeois manners

Majid

brutal and racist

Pierrot

withdraws into his room, adorned with Eminem posters and other paraphernalia of the vapid, corporatized youth culture, offering a rebellion that is no rebellion at all

last post

Zidane

Kabyle

Majid's son

fraternity and nascent communication

Gasps

security

Class relations

Lenin

illegal

India

Gandhi

Haneke invites and provokes his audience to ask questions and to revisit their answers - to start a discourse within themselves and with others. From cursory browsing and googling, it appears that, with Caché, he is quite successful. Given the state of the distribution of foreign films in USA, a gross close to 2 million is not too shabby either. It is a shame that in spite of its strong per-theater numbers, Caché will not get a much wider distribution.

Haneke's optimism

2006-02-13T14:14:00.000-08:00

The second Blog-A-Thon at Girish's home is about Code Unknown .

I would like to add a few lines to Girish A's support of Haneke's optimism and humanism. It has been a while since I saw Code Unknown , but bits and pieces of it came back to me as I saw Caché a couple of weeks ago.

What strikes me as the most interesting part of Haneke's optimism is his idea that any meaningful discourse between classes or races, which in the western world often overlap, needs to be initiated by the young generation of the oppressed class and targeted to the young generation of the privileged class . Older characters of all classes(races) are almost pathologically incapable of any successful communication.

The restaurant scene is chronologically one of the last scenes as it clearly happens after the street encounter. It is interesting that even after that traumatic experience and after constantly being hassled by his family for "hanging out with white girls", Amadou has not given up and is dating a white girl. It is also interesting that they are talking about his father's harrowing experiences in colonial Mali. In Caché, Majid's son, after failing to extract Georges out of his glaciated denial, does not seem to have much trouble when he is talking to Georges's son in the last scene. During his futile attempt to engage Georges in a conversation, Majid's son mentioned that he had been brought up by his father at home - not in an orphanage where kids were taught to hate.

Both Amadou and Majid's son are familiar with the history of oppression and the class relations of the present. However, they are not full of self-pity like Majid is, nor do they share the superstition, paranoia and nostalgia of Amadou's parents. In their France, they are hoping for an outcome different from Majid's self-destruction or Amodou's father's return to Mali. They will have to take the initiative and start the dialogue to make that happen. The other side is not being taught history, has little first-hand experience of what had happened and has a lot more to lose. Haneke seems to be saying, at least to me, that he does not have any hope left in the middle-aged and older generation of the white European upper and middle class, but that is not the end of the world.

Update on FCB dollar reserve and interest rates

2005-10-22T12:27:00.000-07:00

The YOY growth of dollar holdings of FCBs has continued to diminish over the last 7-8 weeks and the interest rate marches on. Here is the updated chart (click on the chart for the full-size version).

Islamization of Bengal

2005-10-16T11:33:00.000-07:00

I just discovered that Richard Eaton's "The Rise Of Islam and The Bengal Frontier( 1204-1760)" is available online .

It is a fascinating book - solid historical research that is backed by facts and evidence, but at the same time very readable.

I used to struggle a lot trying to understand Islamization of East Bengal. Islam came to India from north-west. The capitals of Turk, Afghan and Mughal empires were in the north. Why would East Bengal be 70-80% Muslim when the first British census was recorded in 1872? Interestingly, the same census showed North India (excluding West Punjab) and West Bengal to have 20-25% Muslim population at most.

Immigration through land route theory clearly does not make sense as East Bengal can not be located any further from the entry point of Muslim immigrants and centers of Islamic empires. Also anthropological and blood-group evidence for a long time have conclusively refuted the idea that East Bengali rural Muslims are descendants of Muslim immigrants from Iran and Arab.

Challenged by both geography and science, early Muslim League leaders, amply supported by anti-Hindu British and "secular" "historians", came up with Islamization-as-social-liberation theory. The idea was lower-caste Hindus had been so oppressed by the Brahman tyranny that they joyously embraced egalitarian Islam as their saviour.

Clearly this was a lie unsupported by any historical evidence. The purpose of this lie was to legitimize the claim for a separate country to be governed by the aristocrat Indian Muslims most of whom were descendants from middle-east Muslim immigrants (ashrafs). The theory was supposed to unify urban elite Muslims with their poor rural peasant counterparts in their "common" goal of Pakistan. It worked because Gandhi-Nehru cabal of Congress was spineless and selfish. The cost of this big mistake was primarily borne by Bengalis, but it was their fault for not standing up to Congress leaders and reject two-nation theory. Subhash Bose did his bit until he was kicked out, but there was no one after him to continue the good fight with the likes of Fazlul Haq and other League leaders. We all know very well how united West Pakistan and East Pakistan cultures and causes turned out to be. The history of 70s massacres in East Pakistan and the gradual Talibanization of Bangladesh are too sad and painful to ponder on.

Debunking this theory is trivial and Eaton does an excellent job in his book. The crux of his logic is if hierarchical caste-based Brahman tyranny caused low-caste Hindus to convert and embrace Islam, it does not make any sense that it would be most prevalent in West Punjab and East Bengal - two regions farthest away from the centers of Hindu and Buddhist political, social and cultural base. The actual fact was that the tribes and communities inhabiting those regions were not integrated with Hindu and Buddhist social systems and thus were more vulnerable. Clearly the conversion did not help their situation a lot as most of them continued to perform the most menial and unrewarding of the tasks and remained wretchedly poor. Also the social egalitarian aspect of Islam is a modern post-reform afterthought. During the Islamic growth era, it has rarely, if ever, been emphasized on. The stress has always been on monotheism, separation of divine and human authority and of course the sword.

Two critical events happened simultaneously in seventeenth-century East Bengal. First, Mughals started to take direct political control over the region after winning a bloody struggle with the local Hindu kings, zamidars and also the remnants of Afghan sultanate. Secondly, the Ganges river system linked up with Padma increasing the fertility of land and agricultural productivity. It also enabled river transportation system and set up economic integration of East Bengal with West Bengal and rest of Mughal empire in India.

All this opened up economic opportunities and the Mughals started to transform jungles into arable land. The indigenous tribes like Rajbansi, Pod, Chandal, Kuch who used to inhabit those regions were very slightly exposed to Hindu Brahmanic or Buddhist culture and were easy prey for conversion. The bulk of Bengali Muslims are their descendants. They were poor back then and they have forever been poor. The conversions just helped the ashrafs to gain numerical strength and to legitimize Pakistan and Bangladesh, draining enormous resources away from India in general and suffocating West Bengal specifically.

The reaction of West Bengal leadership has been suicidal, but that's another blog entry.

World GDP Share

2005-09-19T22:20:00.000-07:00

Indian English media has recently been quite euphoric about the prospects of India becoming the next economic superpower. As with almost everything else in India, it was partially triggered by a western report - 2003 report on BRIC economies by Goldman Sachs.

At such an apparent historical inflection point, it is probably worth taking a step back and look at the patterns of global GDP share of major countries during last 500 years. (click on the chart for a full-size version)

It may be shocking to some people, but USA did not always have a 10 trillion dollar economy. It is probably not so surprising that the fall of India's share nicely corresponds with the rise of England's share. The fact that England started colonizing India precisly at that inflection point is of course a trivial coincidence. A significant chunk of East India Company's profits from India was invested in building the foundations of US economic growth as well.

Sadly India's curve did not change its trajectory immediately and dramatically after independence. Nehru's nightmarish socialist license-permit raj resulted in a chronic GDP growth of 3%. In economics literature, this is known as the "Hindu growth" which is simply outrageous. Apart from the fact that economic policies have nothing to do with religion, calling the output of his great policies "Hindu" would insult Nehru as he was decidedly very anti-Hindu. It is time to reclaim our history and use appropriate terminology. Henceforth the anemia of 1947-1980 will be known as the "Anti-Hindu Socialist Growth" and the plunders of British colonization between 1600-1947 will be known as the "Great Anglo-Christian Depression".

If I sounded skeptical about India and China's emergence out of colonialist, socialist and communist tyranny, that was not the intention. I am aware of the fundamental economic "revolution" that is currently happening in China. I have my doubts about what is happening in India and will ruminate on those later. Till then here are some very impressive statistics that highlight some of China's recent accomplishments.

Bay Area Inventory picking up quite a bit

2005-09-13T19:19:00.000-07:00

Southern California inventory had started to take off a couple of weeks ago. It looks like bay area is also following that pattern. Data for the charts are from realtor.com.
(Click on the chart for a full-size version).

Foreign Dollar Reserve and Interest Rate

2005-09-11T22:26:00.000-07:00

Almost everyone agrees that without the support of foreign central banks, interest rates would have been higher during the last couple of years. The chart shows the relation between YOY increase in foreign dollar reserve growth and 1 year CMT index.
(Click on the chart for a full-size version).

The sharp rise in the interest rate from low-2% level to mid-3% level corresponds to the peaking and subsequent fall of YOY increase in foreign dollar reserves. Note there were a couple of failed attempts and a resistance at low 2 levels. There probably is a correlation in the relative flattening of two lines immediately after the sharp change. It will be interesting to watch how Fed deals with decline in FCB purchases, impact of Katrina and oil shock all at the same time.

Foreign reserve data for the charts came from Federal Reserve web site.

Katrina and Fed

2005-09-03T11:36:00.000-07:00

Katrina is a supply-side shock event. Oil and other prices will initially have to adjust upward as the aggregate demand remains almost the same and aggregate supply falls. Lowering the rates in this situation will increase the demand even further and prices will go even higher.

Also Katrina’s impact is temporary. Rate changes have long-term effects. Fed should stay the course and keep hiking until excess liquidity is squeezed out, bubbles burst and trade deficit starts shrinking. They should not let a temporary event again change macro-level plans as they did after 9/11.

However, bond market is clearly expecting an end soon. So the question is should Fed take that market expectation into account? If they go against what market wishes, there will be temporary instability which could be dangerous for extremely over-leveraged hedge funds and derivative market. To save them, Fed may take a temporary pause and talk more about the risks, inflationary possibilities and imbalances until the market expectation changes and bond and derivative players reposition themselves.

On top of that, there will be political pressure on Fed to “stimulate” economy and lower rates so that people feel better about their asset wealth and plummeting Bush ratings can recover a bit. 2002 decisions to lower rates and to avoid recession at any cost were more political than economic. Will there be a repeat?

If Fed does decide to pause, it will resume the downtrend of dollar and may even cause a significant correction. Dollar went down a bit last week. Falling dollar and the prospects of stagnant/falling interest rates will make the foreign central banks and foreign investors less interested in continuing to buy US debts. That had started to happen even before Katrina. Now the US government would have to borrow even more to fund the relief work. How long FCBs’ appetite for dollar and support of more US debts would last? Would they continue to care more about the well-being of US consumers than the future of their rapidly expanding and already huge dollar reserves?

Ghost of Netaji

2005-08-29T22:13:00.000-07:00

A good post by Atanu on Netaji, India's forgotten hero. It links to a very interesting article by N.S.Rajaram. I came across another interesting article on the same topic.

While growing up in West Bengal in 80s and 90s, one thing that bothered me quite a bit was politically how virulently anti-India and anti-center most Bengalis were. It was almost like another country inside India. The more I read about Indian and Bengali history in mainstream history books, less sense it made to me. Luminaries like Rammohan Roy, Vidyasagar, Bankim Chandra, Rabindranath, Vivekananda, Sarat Chandra, Aurobindo, Bipin Pal, Shyamaprasad Mukherjee, Ashutosh Mukherjee, Chittaranjan Das, Surendranath Banerjeee, Jagadish Bose, Subhas Bose always thought of themselves as Indians. They were national leaders first and Bengalis second. They were at the forefront of Indian nationalism.

It was a huge contrast to the communist-ruled West Bengal I was born and brought up in. Nirad C Chaudhuri's writing for the first time gave me some insight into how and when that transition had happened and what the root causes of the deep insecurity, distrust and hatred harbored by most Bengalis are. It goes back to Gandhi-Nehru's takeover of Indian National Congress, marginalization of Bengalis and indirect support of partition. Bengalis never quite recovered from that. Niradbabu was working as a secretary of Sarat Bose, Subhas Bose's elder brother, during those crucial years of Indian history. He had a front row view of how Gandhi-Nehru cabal destroyed the political careers of Bose brothers. That eventually ensured Fajlul Haque's meteoric ascent among Bengali Muslim farmers, Muslim League's exploitation of that, flawed plebescite of 1946, partition of 1947, West Bengal's endless downward spiral since then and creation of two failed states - Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Sir Niradbabu's autobiographies are must-reads for anyone interested in that transition.
The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian
Thy Hand, Great Anarch ! India 1921-1952

Leonard Gordon's recent biography of Subhas and Sarat Bose, Brothers against the Raj , is another excellent source.

Housing Bubble : The Big Illusion

2005-08-02T17:50:00.000-07:00

Irresponsible Lending
Lax Underwriting
Speculative Investing
Ownership Nonsense

Real Estate Bubble, Demand and Supply

2005-07-10T22:29:00.000-07:00

From today's SF chronicle,

"Housing bulls say home prices are soaring not because of a speculative bubble, but for a simple economic reason: Supply has not kept up with demand. ”

Increase in prices of houses is indeed caused by demand and supply imbalance. But the imbalance is not in the demand and supply of lands or houses. Nothing fundamentally has changed there recently. Lack of growth in population, wage, jobs, immigration and rents conclusively buries that argument.

The true imbalance is in the demand and supply of dollar-denominated assets and debt. With soaring trade surpluses, huge foreign investment, lack of domestic consumption and soaring personal savings, Asian demand for dollar assets and US debts has grown enermously in last 5-10 years. They need to buy “something” with their excess dollar and that “something” should not devalue dollar for two reasons -

a) weaker dollar is bad for their exports and consequently GDP growth

and probably even more importantly

b) the assets of central banks are mostly in dollars (dollar being the international standard), but most of their loans are in their local currencies. Should dollar weaken significantly against those currencies, their reserve will not be enough to maintain the fraction (Fractional reserve banking) necessary. It could trigger financial crisis in Asian banks.

The US federal deficit , though gigantic, and the treasury notes are not large enough to meet these demands. Securitized mortgage debts fill this void perfectly. Without the Asian demand for dollar assets, long-term rates would have been much higher by now and would already have bursted the bubble.

Any anti-bubble argument that does not look at US trade deficits, lack of real job growth, Asian demand for dollar assets keeping the long-term rates low is at best naive.

Real Estate Bubble, India, China, Oil

2005-07-06T01:48:00.000-07:00

Had the US real estate bubble burst happened instantaneously, overnight China would probably suffer a little bit more than India. China's domestic consumer spending is 42% of GDP and India's is about 65%. China mostly exports manufactured goods and US is its biggest export destination (about 23% of total exports). India is more of a service economy and its GDP on a percent basis depends less on its exports to USA.

I don't think hyper-inflationary recession is possible in US in today's globalized economy. Producer has lost pricing power and labor has lost negotiation power. In the impending deflationary recession, consumer spending will go down for sure and that will hurt Chinese manufacturing exporters. However, on the service side, we are just beginning to scratch the surface as far as service outsourcing goes. Companies will stand up in queues to send more jobs overseas in a recession. India will gain more from this than China.

However, compared to India, China has a lot more investment and dollar reserve, much better infrastructure and the advantages of dictatorship - no need to manage a coalition of diverging interests and think about winning the next election. Since the bubble burst and the resulting deflationary recession will be long drawn rather than instantaneous, Chinese leadership should have enough time to plan accordingly.

I worry more about US. If US is not able to create decent employment growth (excluding construction and mortgage banking sectors) and equity investment inflow when GDP is growing, what will happen when the bubble bursts and economy is in a recession?

With US in a recession, both China and India will have to focus on domestic growth which will require a lot of energy. So I do not see oil price going down much.

Sideways

2005-05-11T23:50:00.000-07:00

Watched "Sideways" last weekend. I liked it but it is too accepting of the stereotypes of successes and failures. The characters fail to see that they are the victims of artificial definitions of success and happiness that society perpetuates. That is probably realistic as we are not dealing with exceptional characters. However, the point is that there's no indication that Payne sees through those issues either, wants to see his audience think about them and denounce them in any way.

Miles (Paul Giamatti) , a talented and even potentially great writer, thinks he has something important to say but does not make any effort to connect to his students. He accepts the fact that he will be a loser if he remains a middle-school English teacher and will be successful only if some publishing executive, who couldn't care less about what he has to say, randomly decides to publish his first novel. He evaluates his life in terms of what society thinks it should be. In doing so he misses out on a great opportunity to "touch each and every one of his students", to paraphrase Dewey(Jack Black) in School Of Rock. His only hope for some redemption is to find an individual sensitive beautiful white woman who will "get" him.

Even the other characters are very familiar - sensitive woman who can appreciate the worth of a failed artist, the Asian woman who felt deceived when what she thought was real love ended up being a series of sexual encounters, a horny simpleton all-American middle-aged man who is looking for a good time but does not really have any guts to change his life in any meaningful way.

Payne does not really challenge or question the status quo which Linklater, to take a random example, relentlessly does in his films. Linklater consistently looks for those rare precious moments (Before sunrise, Before sunset) which make life meaningful and worth living. His "loser"s (Slackers, Dazed and confused) unapologetically look at life from a completely different perspective. Even in a mainstream film like School Of Rock he manages to shake the status quo. Sideways remains merely a collection of somewhat interesting, funny and quirky observations about the life of some characters who are almost stereotypical. It does not make us ponder over the American social and economic structures which create those characters and stereotypes. It would not have been bad in itself unless Payne seemed to be capable of a lot more and if the film was not hailed by a wide range of critics as the "best film of 2004".

My psychic connection with Tom Cruise

2005-05-08T02:24:00.000-07:00

This is getting really weird. If I find some actress hot, Tom will eventually get there. He is slow. It takes him a while, but he always finds his way. We can leave Nicole out of this discussion as Tom started to date her before puberty hit me. But ever since I discovered Penelope in Amenábar's fantastic Abre los ojos, I had a huge crush on her. Just for her I endured Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Blowout and Woman on Top. What happens next? Cameron Crowe has to make a stupid remake of that great film and has to cast Tom who of course pounces on the golden opportunity. I can't even hate Cameron for that. Almost Famous is close to my heart.

Time passes, life moves on, Penelope's natural innocent beauty disappears in search of the perfect Hollywood look and I stumble across Wonder Boys on a rainy Redmond afternoon after getting tired of adding bugs to Windows 2000 storage manager. It was a great little film, but more to the point Katie Holmes was hot. Obviously I had to start stalking her religiously and endure some real atrocities like Abandon, The Gift and Phone Booth. The Gift, however, totally redeems itself in a couple of seconds near the end of the film. Now 5 years and a few thousand Windows patches after, Tom seems to have found Katie. Don't be surprised if Tom starts dating Preity Zinta in 2010 and Ludivine Sagnier in 2015.

Jeopardy UTOC is heating up

2005-05-08T01:47:00.000-07:00

Quarter-final lineups starring "Elite 18" have been announced and the games will start next week. Whatever happens in the quarters and semis, one thing is for sure. Ken Jennings is going to have to work hard to make 2 million more. The next couple of rounds will be brutal and whoever survive those will be ready to throw a credible challenge to Ken who will show up in the finals without having to qualify. He could be a bit rusty as it has been a while since his record-breaking incredible stretch of 74 wins ended.

Now I will pick up my Nostradamus hat and make some random predictions. All of them are so good, it's impossibly hard to predict.

May 9: Steve Chernicoff vs. Brad Rutter vs. Michael Rooney
Very tough game. Both Michael and Steve are exceptional players, but not quite enough to stop Rutter I think. Rutter wins this one.

05/09: 1/1 - Got the result right, but it did not happen in the way I expected it to happen. Brad was in the third place going into FJ after missing a couple of DDs. However, he was the only one to get FJ right. That and some very strange wagering by MRooney saw him through.

May 10: Pam Mueller vs. Phil Yellman vs. Brian Moore
Brian is the favorite here. But I predict an upset by Pam from 2nd place going into FJ. Brian is a bit too aggressive in his DDs and the tougher material might go against his risky wagers.

Way to go Pam ! Got it right again. 2/2, not bad. Pam dominated the second half of the game after a slow start and the FJ category was probably her strongest.

May 11: Shane Whitlock vs. Grace Veach vs. Frank Spangenberg
Frank is the favorite, but Shane is my pick. I predict an upset, but very close call again.

Should have stuck to the favorite. Probably have underestimated Frank considering his run happened a while back and his tournament record is not that stellar. He proved me wrong. he seems to be stronger than ever.

May 12: John Cuthbertson vs. Robert Slaven vs. April McManus
Another really close call. On her current form, April should be able to win this.

Very close game. Great fight by April, but in the end John had a little bit extra. 2/4 so far not bad.

May 13: Matt Zielenski vs. Chris Miller vs. Lan Djang
Lan is tough, but Chris should win this.

Chris proved me right. Great Game. His buzzar skills are probably even better than Ken's. Now if Dan and Chris qualify for the final and somehow morph into human being, we have the killer knowledge base+ buzzer combo that can outKen Ken.

May 16: Jerome Vered vs. Dan Melia vs. Michael Daunt
Undoubtedly the toughest match. Dan should prevail though.

Just incredible. This was supposed to be a tough game. A lockout against Michael and Dan Melia must count as one of the greatest performances ever. If I were Ken, I would be a bit scared. Jerome all the way. On the prediction front, 3/6 is not too bad.

Jeopardy message board is a fun place. Quite a few of the UTOC players post regularly and share their experiences.

My follow-up post on the same thread

2005-04-18T21:56:00.000-07:00

HarryTuttle posted on the same thread.
"I'm surprised to learn french culture had this much influence in Bengal, and it's probably just because I don't know well enough the history of my own country. I can't remember the ties France had with India in the 19th century. I thought we had business with Africa and South East Asia mainly. Maybe through the british relationship."

My response:

Yes, the influence of France on Bengal and India is not well-known in the West. I think the primary reason for that is the fact that France was never a political force in India once the French East India Company was defeated by the British East India Company in the late 18th century.

A couple of relevant paragraphs from a web site -

"By the eighteenth century the French became the chief rivals of the English, although the struggle between the two competitors was destined to be brief. Starved and neglected by Paris, the French East India Company experienced great difficulty, while at the same time the British East India Company put down the roots of an empire. The leader of the French enterprise, Joseph Francois Dupleix (1697-1764), a man of extraordinary talent, was convinced that any European company dependent on the unstable Indian courts was in a precarious position. He therefore attempted to construct a system of Indian alliances under the French, but he had the bad fortune to be opposed by Robert Clive (1725-1774), a formidable adversary.

When the Seven Years' War broke out in Europe in 1756, with the French and the English on opposite sides, the nawab, or native ruler of Bengal, unsuccessfully tried to ally himself with the French. Clive then moved against the nawab. Events were decided by the Battle of Plassey on June 23, 1757. As a result of his victory, Clive was able to eliminate French influence, and the British no longer had European commercial rivals in India. It was fundamentally British sea power that helped to perpetuate British dominance in India during the mid-eighteenth century. ..."

Even after that the revolutionary Indian kings and political leaders who fought against the British were influenced by the French a lot. Tipu Sultan was an official member of the Jacobin Club. In West Bengal, there are cities like Chandernagore where you can still find traces of the short-lived French rule.

Though the trading and political ties (in a colonial context) between India and France never really took off, culturally it's a different story. I always wanted to research and trace the history of these cultural ties more closely, but have not been able to do that yet. However, the influence of French modern literature, symbolism and impressionist school of painting on modern Bengali literature and painting is well researched and documented.

I am not sure if there were strong cultural ties throughout the period between late 18th century (when the French lost to the British politically) and late 19th century when the Bengali cultural renaissance really started. It's possible that Bengalis re-discovered the French masters through English translations and then started learning French all over again. Most of the Bengali intellectual and cultural leaders were well-versed in French and quite a few them did a great job in translating major works of French literature in Bengali and making them widely available. I grew up reading Bengali translations of Maupassant, Hugo, Dumas, Zola, Flaubert, Baudelaire,Verleine and Rimbaud and remember quoting them extensively in my pretentious high-school Bengali essays. It has always been a much smaller world than we think :)

Post on Film Journey

2005-04-18T21:50:00.000-07:00

An interesting thread at Film Journey on: The River and Satyajit . I had to chime in.

Renoir has always been a very strong influence on Satyajit. In one interview Satyajit was pressed hard to pick just one director who had influenced him the most. He tried hard to avoid naming just one, but in the end said it had to to Renoir.

River's shooting in Bengal (1951) was a great learning opportunity for both Satyajit and his close friend Chidananda Dasgupta. Chidananda was the co-founder of Calcutta film club along with Satyajit. He is also the father of Aparna Sen who acted in Satyajit's Tin Kanya and Jana Aranya and who is also one of the leading contemporary Indian directors.

At the time of shooting of River, Satyajit was working for a British advertising company as a graphic artist and was devouring films of the world. The Calcutta film society he started with Chidananda in 1947 (the year of India's freedom from the British) was the first of its kind in India. Satyajit was greatly moved by both Rules Of The Game and De Sica's Bicycle thieves and started writing scripts based on some classic novels by Bibhuti Bhushan and Rabindranath.

At that time, Indian films in both Bollywood and Calcutta, with very few exceptions (Bimal Roy's Do Bigha Zamin etc.) were strictly confined to genres - social dramas, mythological films, patriotic films, romantic films. All the genres were formulaic and had to have loud melodrama and lots of song and dance routines (not that it has changed a whole lot).There was almost no awareness of film as an art at that point in India and he found it extremely challenging to raise money for Pather Panchali. So it was a daunting task for him to break the mold. He eventually had to pawn his wife's jewelries to raise money for Pather Panchali. His chance encounter with Renoir gave him a much needed boost and inspiration to take on the challenge. "River" will always have a place in the history of Bengali and Indian films for this reason alone.

French influence on Bollywood has been minimal and it's kind of beside the point. There has been some impact of neo-realism and new wave on a few Bollywood directors like Raj Kapoor, Bimol Roy, Mujaffar Ahmed and Sathyu. However, The Indian new wave that started in 70s in Hindi and other regional films were more influenced by Satyajit and Ritwik Ghatak's Bengali films than by the French and Italian. Satyajit and Ritwik started their careers around the same time in 50s and had deep respect for each other. Satyajit was not part of Bollywood (based in Bombay, Maharashtra which is on the west coast of India and Bengal is on the east coast) and never worked there.

He was born in Calcutta and grew up there, the capital of Bengal and the center of Bengali cultural and literary life. There was a very strong French influence on post-Rabindranath Bengali literature which at that point was known as "Adhunik Sahityo" (modern literature). Writers like Hugo, Verleine, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Apollinaire and the impressionist painters like the other Renoir, Manet, Monet and Pissaro had very strong following among Bengali writers and painters who shaped the sensibilities of the generation of Bengalis Satyajit belonged to. Kamal Kumar Majumdar, Satyajit's closest friend and a great Bengali writer, had a gigantic knowledge of French literature and culture. He, in fact, tried to write Bengali in French Syntax and used to think that the influence of the English language on the development of Bengali language has been disastrous. At the same time, Satyajit went to Tagore's school in Shantiniketan and was educated by eminent artists like Nandalal Bose. Tagore and Shantiniketan were more influenced by classical European humanism and English poets, not necessarily the late 19th century French masterpieces in arts and literature . But even Tagore had great respect for Romain Rolland who returned that admiration and introduced great Bengali and Indian thought leaders like Rabindranath, Vivekananda, Gandhi and Subhash Bose to Europe. French contribution to Bengali Renaissnace in the late 19th and early 20th century has been immense. There used to be a saying that every Bengali was first Bengali, then French and then Indian. Paris-style cafes were very popular and Satyajit found great lifelong friends like Kamal Majumdar, Banshi Chandra Gupta (his art-director) and Subrata Mitra (who filmed most of his early films) in those cafes. Among Bengalis, Satyajit is looked as an end-product (and one of the finest) of that Renaissance and sadly he is also the last figure.

A quick note about Satyajit's writings. I grew up on those. They are great :-). Equally influenced by Conan Doyle, Christie and Simonen, they jump started the mystery genre in Bengali literature which wasn't very popular before him. He wrote a lot of first-rate science fiction stories as well. He wanted to make a film based on one of those stories (Bankubabur Bandhu and the film was to be named The Alien). The rumor has always been that Spielberg got hold of the script when it was making rounds in Hollywood in search of a producer and ET was born. Although as far as I know, Spielberg has categorically denied it.

Satyajit's writings were targeted mostly for teenagers and young adults. He made a living out of those writings throughout his life as most of his films did not work in the box-office and he did not make films to make money. However, he always tried his hardest to reduce expenses and to at least break it even for independent producers who were taking as big an artistic risk as he was. By no means he was a great literary figure of Bengali literature, but he is definitely one of the most popular ones. His plots and characters are not naive mimics of Christie's, they fit right in with the Bengali middle-class milieu and are extremely popular among them. You can trust me on that one.

Congratulations to Harikrishna

2004-12-01T16:49:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Pendyala Harikrishna on winning the World Junior Chess Championship ! He is the second Indian to do it after Anand. He has been a GM for a while and is now 2600+. Actually it came as a surprise to me that he was still elligible for the World Junior Championship this year. Then I found out that he is still just 18 years young! I am glad that he recovered from a somewhat subdued performance in the Chess Olympiad. I hope he follows the footsteps of Anand and dominates the chess world for years to come. Along with Surya Sekhar Ganguly, Sasikiran and Konery Humpy, he is the brightest hope for Indian chess.

Arvind Aaron from Cochin

Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Soul

2004-12-01T13:08:00.000-08:00

I have been waiting for the release of the "Before Sunset" DVD for a while. I had read very good reviews of "Before Sunrise" but somehow never got a chance to see it when it came out 9 years ago. For the last couple of years it was in the back of my mind to watch them together after the release of the sequel. It was worth waiting for.

I am a fan of Eric Rohmer's "talkative" films. Yes, they are uneven and often they do not quite work. But I still love his films and admire his integrity. It is very refreshing to find a contemporary American director (Richard Linklater) to be so interested in meaningful human conversation - interaction of ideas and emotions, emergence and sharing of feeling. It's not an easy subject for the film medium. It's so easy to look and sound maudlin, pretentious or just silly. Somehow he managed to accomplish what the French New Wave masters would be proud of. At times it's almost magical. There are moments in "Before Sunset" where Jesse does not feel real and Ethan Hawk, the big Hollywood star, sort of takes over. But those moments are very few and far between and he does recover quickly and nicely. Julie Delpy's performance in both the films is simply amazing. Passage of 9 years has changed her character a lot, but after watching "Before Sunset" you would not believe that she could have grown up to become a different woman.

For an almost flawless film with a beautifully ambiguous and perfect ending, Celine's story about the NYC cop who shows up late and then goes out of his way to recommend that she should buy a gun because she was not in France sounded a little bit off-key. We have to stretch our imagination a little bit to believe that a professional American cop would behave like that when he is on duty. It comes across as pandering to the political leanings of the likely target audience in European and American art theatres. Complex subjects like violence, imperialism, war, environment and religion crop up often in their conversations as they should. Almost always the script and the performances manage to make the conversations perfectly credible like conversations you could have last night with one of your friends.

I have been thinking about Jesse's observation on souls . He thinks the human population explosion contradicts the concept of indivisibility of human souls. He does not mention it in the context of any specific system of belief. But from what I understand out of my limited reading and vague memories, immutability of human souls is a basic tenet of Hinduism and is discussed in some detail in Bhagavad Gita. I wonder if they tried to account for the population explosion by discussing generation of new souls or soul-division in a process akin to cell-division or one soul inhabiting multiple bodies. A related thought. I think a belief in body-soul duality is one of the more fundamental axioms in Hinduism. I happen to think consciousness is emergent and it cannot transcend our physical body. Does that in itself disqualify me as a Hindu if for the moment I ignore the fact that I do not believe in most of the other axioms either?

Note to self: Revisit Color Trilogy. It has been a while. Just for Julie Delpy if for no other reason.

James Berardinelli on "Before Sunrise"

Jonathan Rosenbaum on "Before Sunset"