Ball Points

Omar Abdullah

2011-12-30T17:05:00.000-08:00

From the GQ India archive: My interview with Omar Abdullah, the chief minister of Jammu & Kashmir, for the October 2009 cover story. It's also online here.

In the cockpit of his twin-turboprop Beechcraft Kingair 350, Captain Surender Katoch is becoming impatient. He turns to peer down the cabin from behind his gold-rimmed Ray-Ban aviators, looking vaguely disgusted. We’re supposed to be in the air already, but we’ve got stuck in a typical Delhi traffic jam.

“We’re number 13 in the VIP movement,” the 48-year-old Katoch tells us, raising his voice over the radio chatter. “Delhi is a bloody maddening place. Everyone is a VIP, that’s the problem.”

Right now, there aren’t any on this plane. Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and his wife of 15 years, Payal, have sensibly hung back at the terminal building, but the narrow eight-seater cabin is already pretty crowded. There’s Abdullah’s private secretary, Asgar Hussain (an enthusiastic, youthful looking, 37-year-old career bureaucrat), his security chief of 10 years, Mr Shabir (a silent, moustachioed slab of muscle in a safari suit, who looks like he could snap your arm with a discreet cough), photographer Farrokh Chothia, a couple of other anonymous secretaries and myself. Chothia and I are just along for the ride, here to accompany Abdullah to a polo match in a former war zone, the town of Dras in Kargil district, the coldest inhabited place in India.

Hussain has worked for plenty of Kashmiri politicians over the years, but, perhaps not surprisingly, he says he’s particularly keen on his current boss. “He’s very practical, intelligent and quick to make decisions,” he says. “Earlier chief ministers want to wait and watch, and wait and watch, and they can sometimes lose the essence of what’s happening.” The other thing he likes about working for the country’s youngest chief minister is that Abdullah “wants to go out rather than stay home”, and he rattles off an impressive list of outdoor activities, including white-water rafting, riding snowmobiles and cycling. “He’s a very good skier also,” effuses Hussain. “He skis in Gulmarg, and rides his Ducati.”

So, will he be riding a horse in the polo match today, too? “I don’t know,” says Hussain earnestly. “You never know with him – he might.”

As he speaks, a silver Ford Explorer draws up next to the plane, and Hussain quickly hops down the fold-out steps hinged into the fuselage. Out into the hazy August morning steps the 39-year old Abdullah, in a grey suit, white shirt and bright red tie, his cropped hair forming a sharp widow’s peak. Eyes hidden behind narrow rectangular sunglasses, he bears a weirdly nagging resemblance to the sinister Agent Smith from The Matrix.

We follow Hussain down the steps to greet him. Abdullah has been in Delhi for an internal security conference with the PM and state leaders from across the country. How was it? “All right. You can’t do much in a meeting of 30 chief ministers,” he says wryly. “The action is more on the sidelines; a word here, a nod there.” After Hussain’s action-man build-up, Abdullah seems low-key.

We settle into the plane’s butter-soft beige leather seats for take-off, but our wait in the VIP queue drags on even longer. “Every time the president or the PM flies, they close the airspace for 10 or 15 minutes,” says Abdullah. “That’s what this is about.” They’ve become well used to this routine, and the pleasures of travel by private plane. During the week, Payal and their two sons, Zamir and Zahir, are in Delhi, Abdullah is in Srinagar. One weekend he flies down, the next, she and the kids fly up. At last, we get clearance. We are headed first to Kargil, a two-hour flight at around 27,000 feet. Abdullah reaches behind the seat and produces a lunch hamper. He and Payal serve us coffee from a thermos, and pass cheese-and tomato and egg sandwiches around the cabin.

I ask what exactly the polo match we’re going to is all about. “It’s in honour of Lalit Suri, a man who invested heavily in Kashmir. It’s always good to promote normalcy in Jammu & Kashmir. This is the first time we’ve had ‘social polo’.” It’s also an attempt to boost tourism in a region still regarded by many as a war zone, an effort strongly supported by Abdullah’s government. The Lalit Suri Hospitality Group, a major hotel chain, has shipped in some top polo players from Delhi to the town of Dras in Kargil to play a local team. Polo has been a Drassi tradition for over 300 years. The slight snag for the Delhi players? Dras is over 10,000 feet above sea level. “I hope they’ve had time to acclimatize, or they’ll be falling off their horses.”

So, will he be riding today? Hussain, it turns out, will be disappointed. “I prefer things I can control,” Abdullah smiles. “Nine times out of 10, a motorbike will go where I tell it to go, but a horse, I’m not sure about.”

A new breed

Despite the political storms he’s weathered in Kashmir since his election, Abdullah has made good progress in boosting his popularity on the national stage. He is seen as an entirely new type of Indian politician – young, charismatic, well-educated, articulate in English, media-savvy, fluent in the language of business. In a landscape dominated by traditional netas whose outlooks mesh most tightly with India’s working-class majority, pinstripe-suited politicians like Abdullah, Sachin Pilot (who is married to Abdullah’s sister, Sarah), Milind Deora and Rahul Gandhi speak more to the aspirations and tastes of the middle and upper classes. During the run-up to his election in November 2008, Abdullah managed to generate a level of euphoria rarely seen among those kinds of voters. Some of his more excitable supporters even took to calling him “Kashmir’s Obama”.

That’s not a label that Abdullah feels particularly comfortable with. “Expectations are often too high and it has to be tempered by a dose of realism,” he says. “Sudden change doesn’t help. There’s a degree of resistance you have to work with.” And he doesn’t claim to see anything particularly unusual about the new breed of the Indian political animal. “It’s the same generational shift you’d see in any line of work. We’re not hamstrung by the baggage of Partition and colonialism. We’ve seen more of the world. The 70-year-olds started off at large public meetings, where you’d give a long discourse on every subject under the sun. People don’t have the patience now, which is what makes us more suited to the television era. We’re good at giving sound bites.”

He may be a new neta, but Abdullah still owes much to the old school: he is, after all, the scion of a democratic dynasty. In 2002, he effectively inherited the leadership of his party, the National Conference, from his father Farooq, who inherited it from hisfather, Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah, the party’s founder. Abdullah seems to accept this, without embarrassment, as a fact of Indian political life. He sees it as a tool, an advantage that enables him to make a difference. “The biggest thing in politics is name recognition,” he shrugs. But he admits he’s not especially keen on seeing a fourth generation of the dynasty. “I’m hoping they choose to do something different.”

I interrupt to ask how old his sons are, and he momentarily freezes. He looks at Payal.

“Don’t look at me,” she deadpans.“You should know.”

Abdullah is used to gruelling sessions in the state assembly, of course, and recovers swiftly. “Zamir is 12 in October,” he says smoothly, as if pulling the numbers off a policy brief. “Zahir is 10 and a half.”
I ask whom he turns to for advice, apart from his political advisors. “I talk to my dad – he has nothing to gain. I bounce ideas off Payal and get a refreshingly non-political reaction to what would normally be seen through a political prism.”

Does every decision end up being compromised by political considerations? “For the first four-and-a-half years of my government, I’d make the right decision. In the last year-and-a half, I’d probably go for the popular decision.”

I throw in a classic GQ question: What’s your biggest vice? Payal answers for him: “His mum is British, so he has that stiff upper lip. He’s very boring. He doesn’t dance – that’s his vice.”

Abdullah decides to concede this one: “I don’t dance,” he says, mock-embarrassed. “That’s my vice.”

Abdullah, with his confident, precise speech, each word weighed carefully for nuance, has the air of a man who has developed a strong sense of self-belief without letting it cloud his critical faculties. “I grasp what is being explained to me very quickly. I’m a pretty good judge of the people I come across and what it is they want. And I go with an instinctive reaction. I’ve found that when I trust my instincts then nine out of 10 times it’s right. The problem is that people can perceive being quick to decide as being arrogant. But if I can do something in five minutes, there’s no reason why I should do it differently.”

His snap decision on July 28 this year is a case in point. Without warning, Abdullah had been confronted in the J&K state assembly with allegations that he was involved in a long-running
sex trafficking and child abuse case. Abdullah instantly announced he would resign, an unexpected counterpunch that put his opponents on the back foot. “That was instinctive. I knew that if I was going to do my job as I wanted to do it, I’d have to take a stand. People complained that it was a conditional resignation – but why should I give an unconditional resignation when I haven’t done anything?”

It all seems a long way from Abdullah’s youthful intentions to stay out of politics, starting his career as a sales and marketing executive in the hospitality industry. “I really wasn’t enjoying what I was doing,” he says. “People ask me about my change of career, but all I’ve done is gone from selling hotel bookings to selling myself.”

The move felt natural. After all, he had spent his childhood absorbing the basics of a political role, living on the searing edges of his father’s megawatt limelight. It was something that his mother helped him prepare for, even though, he says, she never wanted him to go into politics. “My mum brought us up with the understanding that we were always going to be watched and commented on. We were always going to be judged.”

Dodging bullets

Abdullah tells the pilot to show us more of the landscape we’re passing over, and the plane obligingly banks steeply to the left. Through a plate-sized porthole window, he points out the wriggling switchback trail of the Rohtang Pass. To the right, we pass a series of jagged black-and-brown Himalayan peaks, veined with snow like the fat in cuts of meat. “The glaciers have receded a lot here in the last 10 years,” he says. The conversation turns to some of the environmental problems facing the area, the potential effects of global warming and threats to water security. Abdullah is well versed in the issues, especially the growing pressure on the cross-border sharing of fresh water.

Abdullah is bullish on the prospects for security in Jammu & Kashmir, a topic which is not just of political interest. “I’ve experienced about six or seven attacks,” he says. “The first one, in 2000, was a grenade tossed into a schoolyard just as I was leaving. The second was a rifle grenade, fired at our helicopter as we came in to land.”

After that, the exact order of what happened when gets a little vague. The shock of the attacks has long since worn off; he remembers them now more for what they taught him about managing security issues. “There was one where a land mine went off about 15 feet away, just as I was getting out of the car.” He recalls the unseemly scramble of security personnel after the blast, some of whom fired wildly into the air. “This is the problem with having multiple agencies in your security set-up. They tend to react in different ways.”

The last attempt on his life was in July 2007: a pair of rifle grenades fired at a house where he was meeting with party workers. I ask Payal how she feels about Abdullah taking a job that puts him so squarely in harm’s way. Doesn’t she feel like talking him out of it? “I have tried, many times,” she sighs, looking meaningfully at her husband.

“Don’t squint at me,” Abdullah gently chides her.

“I’m not squinting.”

“It is,” he turns to me, “the subject of a fair amount of discussion.”

Abdullah insists, however, that his personal security is in better shape than that of his predecessors. “There was a time when no CM of Jammu & Kashmir would have given an Independence Day speech without a bulletproof rostrum,” he says, referring to his speech in Srinagar three days earlier. “Now you can do that.” The wry smile acknowledges the meagre comfort in this sign of progress: I can talk inpublic without worrying too much that someone will try to kill me.

Lunar Polo

Around 11am, we touch down at Air Force Station Kargil, a dusty airstrip beneath a jagged range of brown mountains. The only other aircraft here are a Lalit Hospitality Group plane and the blue-and-white Bell 407 helicopter that will take us the remaining 60 kilometres to Dras. Local officials greet Abdullah and his wife with garlands,and escort them up a ragged red carpet for a brief cup of tea inside the terminalbuilding. The pale sky seems harshhere; the air too thin and too bright.

There isn’t room for all of us in the chopper, so Abdullah and Payal go on ahead for the first run. Captain Katoch, still protected by his aviators, takes it upon himself to point out the local sights. He gestures at the mountains. “Some of these ridges are theirs, some are ours. This whole area is within shelling range.” He points north-northeast to a triangular grey peak, hazy in the distance. “That’s a Pakistani forward observation post,” he says.

A Pakistani army officer waits there, ready to call in coordinates for artillery strikes. Katoch, an IAF pilot and the Director of J&K Aviation, wasn’t in Kargil for Operation Vijay Divas in ’99; his war was Sri Lanka. “Kargil was worth it,” he says. “Those guys had to be knocked off.”

After 30 minutes, the chopper is back and Katoch, Hussain and I set off on Abdullah’s trail, swiftly passing over the tin roofs and thin fir trees of Kargil, the shadows of the rotors filling the cabin with a cinematic blur. In the centre of the township sits the bright blue dome of a mosque; this is a predominantly Shia Muslim town, population around 1,20,000, with a sizeable Buddhist minority. Then we’re into a valley between the mountains, high over the fast flowing Suru River, which is bordered by tiny hamlets of mud and stone with roofs of bright orange – a local cottage industry produces dried apricots. The valley walls of cracked, barren rock are so close it seems we could almost reach out and touch them.

They open suddenly into a wide expanse of brown and green, and within moments we’re coming in to land. The journey that has taken us 15 minutes would take 90 minutes by road. Inscribed in fresh white paint on the side of a nearby mountain is a huge battalion insignia and the words: “TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF VIJAY DIVAS 1999-2009”. The summit of the snow-streaked Tiger Hill – site of the bitterest high-altitude combat of the Kargil War – looms 15,000 feet above, like a serrated knifepoint.

By the time we arrive, the polo match is halfway through: horses and riders thunder down the field, hooves scudding dirt for fast turns and hard swings at the ball. Despite the alien 10,000-foot altitude, the Delhi players seem unperturbed by the thin air, blocking often, driving hard into scuffles. Twock! The ball skips rapidly out of one tussle, running down the fi eld to be swept up neatly by a Delhi player in red and white; he gallops it back, knocking as he goes, to fire it square into the Drassi goal.

Cheers and applause erupt from spectators on both sides of the field, at the Vishwanathan Stadium in the heart of the sprawling Dras Indian Army camp. On one side sits a raised dais with seats and couches for local National Conference leaders, army officers and Lalit Suri Hospitality Group executives; on the other, a crowd of over 2,000 villagers – about a fifth of Dras’ population – sit above a low border of piled stones. There is a carnival atmosphere; today has been declared a public holiday in Dras so that the town can watch local players take on the Lalit Group’s Delhi visitors for the first-ever Lalit Suri Exhibition Polo. A chill wind is starting to kick up dust and tug at the canopy over the dais; clouds brood darkly overhead. Still, everyone looks happy.

The good mood of the proceedings goes hand-in-hand with a mild sense of the surreal; a bit like taking afternoon tea at the bottom of the Atlantic. Dras would be regarded as barely inhabitable by much of the world; the temperatures here can drop to below -45 Celsius in winter, when it is assailed by frequent snowstorms. The place seems to promise only a hardscrabble existence. The Vishwanathan Stadium stands at the centre of a stark amphitheatre of grey, implacable mountains, as indifferent to social polo as they are to war. Glance up at them, and it’s like a polo match on the moon.

The Dras team, drawn from the best players among the town’s six teams, fight hard, and for a while it looks like they will hold the Lalit team to a 2-2 draw. But the Delhiites manage to break through once more, pulling off a 3-2 victory.

The townspeople are courteous in defeat, applauding heartily. “They’re being good hosts,” Jyotsna Suri tells Abdullah on the dais. “They let the visitors win.” She is Lalit Suri’s widow, and chair and managing director of the Lalit Suri Hospitality Group. The match is her baby, the first of a series of annual polo tournaments to attract tourists to the state. Abdullah, leaning back in his Agent Smith shades, breaks into a grin: just for today, everybody wins.

Somewhere along the way, Abdulla has changed for the event into traditional Ladakhi formalwear, a fl owing brown goncha tied with a green sash. As he steps down from the dais for the postmatch ceremony, you can see that it doesn’t quite go with his black brogues and blue polka-dot socks. The players dismount and line up side-by-side by a table with an impressive gold trophy. The suave, well-built Delhi victors, captained by polo professional Jai Shergill, tower over their wiry, ruddy-faced Drassi counterparts, who good-naturedly collect their awards from Abdullah and Suri. Shergill lifts up his trophy and gives it a passionate kiss.

Abdullah is invited to return to the dais to make a speech. He addresses them in Urdu, his voice booming across the field through a PA system. He thanks the Drassis for their support 10 years ago. “Once, this place was famous for war,” he says. “Now, it should be famous for sports like polo.” He says that past governments have not taken care of the area – but that will change. He wants the private sector to help develop it, and promises the creation of a local tourism development agency – this gets a loud cheer – plus a short list of improvements: computers in schools, electricity in every home, the technologies “needed for the 21st century”. As he speaks, the wind suddenly picks up, whipping up a large dust cloud from the polo field. Above his head, the canopy shakes violently.

He finishes with the mandatory list of thank-yous, before diving gamely into a decent-sized media scrum with assorted national and local news channels and papers. The first question everyone wants answered is: what will happen in the Shopian murders investigation? He assures CNN-IBN that “the chapter will not be closed” on the case, before deftly moving on to sunnier messages, like “corporate India has finally reached Dras” and “Dras is now on the map”. He hopes that in future years of the tournament, Manipuri players, even international polo players, will take part.

“And next time, will you get on a horse?” asks a young female reporter sternly, almost as if she feels a little cheated.

Abdullah looks momentarily at a loss for a positive answer.

“Er… I will seriously consider that possibility.”

An Open Letter to Bobby Jindal

2011-05-14T07:12:00.000-07:00

From the September 2010 issue of GQ India magazine:

Dear Governor Bobby Jindal,

Mind if we call you Piyush? Still can’t get used to the “Bobby” thing.

Hail from the motherland! Your cousins in the old country (that would be us) wanted to drop you a note on your extraordinary adventures in the New World.

We've been reading about you ever since you got elected, in 2007, as the first-ever Indian-American state governor. Wow, you were exciting. You’d been conceived in India, but you popped out on American soil like you’d crash-landed in a spaceship from Krypton. Ka-pow! You were a Rhodes scholar and a graduate of Oxford and Brown. Whoosh! At 24, you were running the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals like a Swiss watch. Zap! At 34, you were elected to Congress with 78 per cent of the vote. Bamm! At 36, you’d won the Louisiana governorship in a landslide.

As governor, you got a reputation for being tough on corruption and self-indulgent politicians. Hey, we started to think, we could use some of that. Maybe Piyush’s mum and dad should have done us a favour and stayed home.

People called you the Republican Obama; said you should have been McCain's running mate in 2008. One day, you could be President ofthe United States. You were young, cool and dynamic – and you were brown, baby.

And then you started to seem a bit weird.

It’s hard to pin down exactly when Bizarro Bobby first appeared. Was it February 2009, during the speech you gave in response to President Obama’s budget that was supposed to launch you as a Republican leader? You know, that speech in which you told Americans seven times that they could do anything (except hope a Republican federal government would spend money fixing the economy or deal successfully with a natural disaster).

Americans took part of your message to heart - they could do anything (except give your speech more than a 15 per cent approval rating). We admit, discovering that your oratorial skills make George W Bush sound eloquent was a bit of a blow. Even fellow conservatives called you “animatronic", “uninspired” and “cheesy”.

But we reckon some of your weirdness came more from other areas, like your belief that creationism should be taught in science class, that abortion should be illegal, that they should build a giant fence along the border to keep out the Mexicans, or, as you just signed into law a couple of months ago, that people in Louisiana should have the right to take guns into church.

We haven’t checked the Book of Matthew, Piyush, but we’re pretty sure it doesn’t say: “Whoever smites thee on thy right cheek, turn to him and blow the motherf***er’s brains out.”

But perhaps the weirdness goes back much further. Let’s face it: When a four-year-old child decides to call himself Bobby after a character he’s seen in a Seventies American sitcom called The Brady Bunch, it’s Cute. When he's still doing it at the age of 39, it’s weird.

Remember that if-only-you’d-stayed-in-India idea? In retrospect, we’d be happy to have bought the tickets.

God Bless America,
GQ India

Dear Next Mrs Mahajan

2010-07-31T08:38:00.000-07:00

Rahul Mahajan has allegedly beaten his reality TV wife Dimpy Ganguly (yes, she's called Dimpy, but that's no reason to beat her up). The fact that Rahul Mahajan is a popular figure in the first place speaks volumes about the mental state of Indian popular culture. "This has left us shocked. They had just got married. This was not expected," said Sameer Nair, CEO of NDTV Imagine, the channel that birthed this abomination. Au contraire, Mr Nair; many of us had imagined the horrors that might follow. Here's my Open Letter to the then-unknown Next Mrs Mahajan, published in GQ India's December 2009 issue.

Dear Next Mrs Rahul Mahajan

We thought we’d drop you a note, even though we have absolutely no idea who you are – you could be any one of the around 17,000 women who have applied to be contestants on Rahul Dulhaniya Le Jayega, the reality TV show that this month will find Rahul Mahajan his new wife.

We hear that women from all over the country and all walks of life have applied, from doctors to engineers and even prisoners in Bhopal Central Jail, including 25-year-old Seema, a convicted murderer, and Sunita, undertrial in a drug case. Sadly, the jail won’t let them out for TV appearances.

All the better for you, Next Mrs Mahajan – congratulations! Rahul’s quite a catch, isn’t he?

Now, don’t be nervous about the whole getting-married-on-TV thing. Rahul, we’re sure, will be a great source of comfort and reassurance – after all, he has a lot of experience in this area. In 2006, he married Shweta Singh even while he was in the middle of a massive media storm over that drug overdose and arrest for cocaine possession. Last year, he proposed to ex-gangster’s moll Monica Bedi live on Bigg Boss 2. The third time’s got to be the charm.

Just forget about the cameras – the most important thing is the authentic, loving bond that you and Rahul will have established over a series of high-TRP episodes. Once the cameras stop rolling, we’re sure Rahul will be a committed and adoring husband. Just look at his face – aren’t those squeezable little chipmunk cheeks just bursting with love? As he said so tenderly, in an NDTV Imagine press release: “I’m looking forward to finding my life partner with whom I can begin a new journey.”

OK, yes – his journey with Sweta turned out to be a short one. But we’re sure those stories about him beating her up were baseless exaggerations. After all, Sweta’s application for divorce, filed just 15 months after they tied the knot, was later agreed by mutual consent – so, really, Next Mrs Mahajan, nothing to worry about there.

Whatever niggling reservations you may have, just put them aside and focus on the thought of the prestigious, well-connected family you’ll be marrying into: Rahul is the son of a powerful political leader. Alright, yes, there is a downside here too – the fact that his uncle Pravin shot his father to death is obviously disturbing and upsetting. But please don’t get the idea that there might be something dysfunctional about the family. Have a heart, Next Mrs Mahajan.

Anyway, we wish you a lifetime of love and happiness. Whoever you are, we’re sure you’ll be very nearly a perfect match for Rahul. The perfect matches, unfortunately, are all locked up in Bhopal Central Jail.

Happily ever after,
GQ India

Brain teaser

2010-05-07T07:46:00.000-07:00

Having now spent every day since January 5th 2010 renovating my brain - really, you should have seen the state of the place last year - it seems appropriate to blow the dust off this blog.

I now have an interesting new scar, punk hairdo and weird suntan, all from a prolonged run-in with a Chondroblastoma tumour that was drilling into my left temporal lobe with all the finesse of a BP oil platform. Then I was assaulted by a guy with a knife (fortunately he turned out to be a neurosurgeon) and was then baked daily in a Tomotherapy radiation machine that smelled like fried ear wax. For six weeks.

During all this, I've become a great admirer of Indian medical science. In Mumbai I've been fortunate enough to have been treated by the most tremendously capable, clever, skillful, motivated, caring and reasonably priced people I have ever encountered.

And I am now totally sick of them.

Be fair - it's now been over four months of them poking, scanning, slicing, bandaging, medicating, irradiating and saying "How are you feeling?". Having just finished the radiation therapy I'm really hoping never to have to spend time with any of them ever again. Which is not going to happen because I already have my next appointment for July 20.

Anyway, I would rather be telling you about some of the more interesting stuff you can be looking at on this blog, which includes some of the work I've been writing for Indian newspapers and magazines since my arrival in Mumbai in 2002. Let's start off with some open letters I've written for GQ.

Final Bow

2010-03-27T21:10:00.001-07:00

Language can unravel like an old curtain
From the bottom up.
But it can be a tricky job
To get the metaphors unfolded and left open
And unstitch adjectives from nouns
With all those leftover verbs tangled in a pile
Of comings and doings.
Some nouns rip out easily, though,
If you leave them for a while.
Especially the names.

But if you prefer, you can strike a match on the stubble on your temple,
And watch them all burn.

You’ll find the matches in that thing,
In that piece of wood beside what you still remember to be a bed.
In the place you call a hotel, because it begins with H and ends with L.

Words don’t glow before they turn black.
There are no eloquent farewells.
They just drop, in a panic.
Don’t bother looking for them
Or you’ll miss the others
Falling.

Ceasefire now

2006-08-02T02:46:00.000-07:00

The editors of Time Out Beirut and Time Out Tel Aviv give their takes on the war in Lebanon in the latest edition of Time Out Mumbai.

Please support this campaign urging for an immediate ceasefire.

You might also like to write an email to British Prime Minister Tony Blair telling him how morally bankrupt he is.

Prophecy, Amateurphecy

2006-07-20T07:56:00.000-07:00

It occurs to me that if Maheshji was wrong about Germany winning the world cup, then his other prophecy about me winning a journalism award is probably also up the spout.

Typical.

Ban to be lifted

2006-07-19T22:14:00.000-07:00

Manish Vij at Ultrabrown.com reports that the blog ban has finally been publicly addressed by the Indian government and will be reversed shortly. Apparently, it's all the ISPs' fault, not theirs.

R-i-ight.

Those terrorist-blogging scum

2006-07-19T21:19:00.000-07:00

More on the Indian blog ban from the Indian Express.

Apparently, the Ministry of Telecommunications wanted to ban a blog called princesskimberly.blogspot.com but was informed by its technical folks that single blogspot pages could not be blocked. The solution? Block every single blogspot site.

I think that's what's known as a nuclear response. But at least we can feel rest assured that the government has decided to stand firm in the face of terrorists who use the internet to communicate. An examination of princesskimberly.blogspot.com via the pkblogs proxy (at www.pkblogs.com/princesskimberly) reveals the truly evil nature of these terrorist-blogging scum.

Entitled 'Dreamer' (of what, we wonder? Taliban-style dictatorship for India, no doubt), the blog is orchestrated by a shadowy mastermind known only as "Kimi" (a barely concealed reference to SIMI - the Students' Islamic Movement of India) and is written in code, but is clearly designed to stoke religious hatred. In a post entitled "Who has the most boring life ever? I do!" 'Kimi' unleashes the following bigotry-filled screed:

So, yes.. My life is extremely boring! Nothing too exciting to post today.
The 2nd 1/2 of my spring break was a lot of fun.. I went and stayed w/
Stopher and his family in Houston. Went to Galveston to the beach and rode the ferry. Went to the rodeo and saw Pat Green. Then stood around at a family gathering that his mom's side of the family had. It was like a senior citizen convention. Break out the dominoes and pour some beer! Anyway, good times! I went back to Arlington on Sunday to eat dinner w/ Melbany.. IHOP.. yummy! :) Made it to class this week.. 2 days in a row. Go Kim! Anyway.. Nothing exciting happening now. I just got done kicking Stopher's ass at Solitaire Showdown. But when do I not? :) j/k. I've got a huge test to study for so I'm out!
Peace, Love, and Salsa.

"Spring break" is undoubtedly a reference to a secret meeting of like-minded terrorist scum, at a hidden location with the codename "Galveston". Kimi's instruction to "break out the dominoes and pour some beer!" is clearly an order to the terrorists to recover hidden caches of RDX explosive and AK-47s in preparation for "kicking Stopher's (India's) ass". And even a child can see that "Peace, Love and Salsa" is some sort of coded Islamist salutation along the lines of "Salaam Alekum".

Evil. Pure evil.

Thanks for defending us, Ministry of Telecommunications!

Plug socket II

2006-07-19T05:42:00.000-07:00

Have finally seen the pre-release version of the Time Out Mumbai & Goa city guide, which will be going on sale soon. It looks great!

Go on, buy it.

Blog block

2006-07-19T05:01:00.000-07:00

Access my blog via www.pkblogs.com/iainball.

I hope you can read my blog, cos I can't, unless I go through a proxy server like pkblogs.com. The Indian government has apparently instructed Indian ISPs to block access to all blogspot, geocities and typepad blogs in the aftermath of the July 11 blasts, in order to prevent terrorist groups like the Students' Islamic Movement of India from communicating. For reasons best known to them, the gray men have decided that SIMI can continue to use Wordpress or Livejournal blogs or, at a stretch, the telephone.

In other news, the Indian government has also banned chicken after intelligence emerged that known terrorists had eaten murgh biryani.

As far as I know, the (blog) ban has not been officially announced, nor is there any indication of how long it will remain in place.

Read more about the ban and how to get around it.

Indomitably indomitable

2006-07-15T01:35:00.001-07:00

Yikes. What a week.

I was safely tucked away here in Goa, but the serial blasts on July 11 (which have at the last count killed 185 people) had me scrambling to get through to friends in Bombay, relying on SMS cos the phone lines were jammed. Thankfully, all were safe and sound, with one only by a whisker - my Time Out co-worker Pravin, who was on one of the trains but fortunately in the wrong carriage. Or the right carriage, if you want to quibble. Or one of the right carriages, anyway. Dammit, you know what I'm trying to say. He's alive, that's the main thing.

Anyway, now the usual media mania unfolds, and as always I find mind myself wondering how useful it all really is. A conscientious blogger would scour the web for links to highlight various recurring themes of the coverage and to give those living overseas an insight into how the Indian media has reacted to the blasts. I don't need to bother with all that, thanks to my patented In-Depth™Instant News Analyzer:

1) The spirit of Mumbai is indomitable.
2) Witnesses helped the victims, instead of running away, or stealing their wallets.
3) The disaster will be known as 7/11, even though it means November 7th in Indian usage and sounds like a convenience store chain.
4) Pakistan did it.
5) The government, police and intelligence services are crap.
7) The spirit of Mumbai is, in fact, indomitable.

One thing that occurred to me, as I pulled out my mobile to check everyone was okay, was that I already knew that several of my friends and acquaintances were perfectly fine, because they never, ever take the trains, for reasons I have outlined in a previous post, i.e. they are rich. The bombs were all on 1st class carriages - which makes this attack pinpointed at Mumbai's middle class. The city's real power brokers are never going to be harmed by these kinds of attacks, and I suspect that makes a major difference to how the authorities react to them, which is largely to do nothing and carry on like before. We are still waiting for convictions for the 1993 blasts for example, an astonishing 13 years later.

Hmmm.

My reaction to the blasts was more or less what I had felt after the London blasts of July 7 last year - shock, outrage, anger - except I had less of a sense that it had been a long time coming because of Tony Blair's decision to 'defend Britain' by invading a nation that had nothing to do with a terrorist attack that had happened in another nation.

I recall that a main feature of the media coverage of the London attacks was that the word 'stoic' suddenly got thrust back into the limelight after a lengthy period of relative obscurity. My friend Jason Read, the cynical old bastard, suggested to me that the much-vaunted 'stoicism' of Londoners at the time was actually just the long-suffering fatalism that they usually employ to cope with life in the Big Smoke, as in: "Terrorism? Oh, great. Fucking typical."

If you ask me, the indomitability of Mumbaikars is actually a cousin of the same trait - except that in addition to floods and sky-high rents they also have to put up with shitty infrastructure, the world's fifth-worst urban air pollution, lousy public services, and incompetent, corrupt and apathetic government. As appalling as the July 11 attacks have been in terms of loss of life, it has still not been as bad as the totally avoidable devastation of the July 26 floods last year, when 447 Mumbaikars died from collapsing walls, electrocution, drowning and disease. So Londoners really should try and cheer up a bit.

Still, if the media calls Mumbaikars 'indomitable' enough times maybe they'll feel better about all the bullshit they have to put up with.

Time Out Mumbai editor Naresh Fernandes also gets a bit annoyed with the 'indomitable' thing in a New York Times op-ed from July 12 that you can read here, but then decides it's probably appropriate after all, especially the day after the attacks.

By next week, though, I expect he will be sick to the back teeth of it.

2006-07-03T01:09:00.000-07:00

So England are out of the world cup. At the quarter-finals. On penalties.

Fucking typical.

I watched the game in Club Vasco in Panjim, surrounded by Portugal supporters. Here I downed increasingly desperate bottles of Kingfisher whilst being swatted on the head by a rabid Goan lady with a large Portuguese flag, which she waved non-stop whilst shouting “Super, yes, yes, super! Go, go, go, go, go, go! Super! Yes!” and generally doing a passable impersonation of Meg Ryan in that scene from When Harry Met Sally.

I suppose we should take it as a measure of the beneficience and general loveliness of Portuguese imperial rule (apart from that nasty episode with the Inquisition) that so many Goans continue to support Portugal with so much fervour. As my friend Vivek said, surveying the purple-adorned crowd sceptically, "Vasco de Gama would have been proud."

Anyway, I'm not bitter. Honest.

On Sunday, Shirin and I decided to forget about the World Cup and visit a few of the Hindu temples around Ponda. The first we visited was the Mangeshi Temple, where we met a very nice priest called Mahesh, who gave us a quick tour of the temple and pleasantly inquired after our occupations and various doings.

At one point, Maheshji and I found overselves left alone for a moment. He darted a quick look over his shoulder, presumably to check there weren’t any other priests around, and asked me: “So, who do you think is going to win the world cup now? I think it will be Germany.”

I agreed that Germany looked good enough to go all the way.

He nodded. “And who do you think is better, Maradonna or Pele?”

I considered the matter briefly. I said I thought that perhaps Pele was better.

Maheshji looked sceptical. “Yes, but that goal Maradonna scored against England was fantastic. He took on seven or eight English players before he scored. Pele never did anything like that. He was just a striker, really.”

I was forced to agree that Maradonna had a rare talent but then again in the very same match he had done that whole “Hand of God” thing.

“Yes,” agreed Maheshji, smiling beatifically. “But that was just silly.”

There the matter seemed to rest.

“So,” he said. “Germany, no?”

I confirmed that Germany would be my guess as well.

“I will pray for you,” said Maheshji, and then suddenly declared in a loud voice: “You will excel in your journalism!”

“Oh really?” I said, happy.

“Oh yes!” he said, taking one step back dramatically and pointing at me with an outstretched arm. “You will win an award!”

“Oh, that’s nice,” I said. “When will that be?”

“Before the end of 2007! I guarantee it!”

I thanked him. And, without stopping to say goodbye, Maheshji dashed back into the sanctum sanctorum. What a nice man.

At last, TOM hits the net

2006-06-27T06:01:00.000-07:00

It took a while, but Time Out Mumbai is finally online!

Plug socket

2006-06-27T04:54:00.000-07:00

What the hell was I thinking? I completely forgot to shamelessly plug my own movie.

It's called The Bus (you can watch it here) and was featured in last year's Super Shorts Film Festival in the mystery & horror category. It is the product of a collaboration between myself and the irrepressible musician and filmmaker Jason Read. You may recognise the enormously talented and outrageously good-looking actor in the lead role.

Unfortunately I wasn't in London last September so I missed the festival screenings, but I hear from Jason that it got a good reception. It was also screened earlier this year at the Mocha Film Club in Bandra, Bombay to a tumult of acclaim and adoration. At least, I think that's what it was. It was sort of hard to tell. Not really! They loved it.

Anyway, quit stalling, instantly direct your browser here to enjoy a clever and gripping story told in just two minutes and five seconds (about half of which is the credit sequence). Please be sure to leave your comments after viewing. Jason and I are open to any criticism which frankly and fearlessly expresses how much you loved it.

Panjim Page 3

2006-06-27T00:19:00.000-07:00

Time Out Mumbai music and dance editor Amit Gurbaxani is spotted stepping out of the famous Blooming Dales department store in fashionable Panjim. "I never shop anywhere else!" he told Page 3.

Thanks to Blooming Dales for making this news item possible with a large cheque.

Rice puddings

2006-06-20T20:52:00.000-07:00

The monsoon in Goa has yet to really kick off, despite a week of rain at the beginning of June. But there's now enough water in the paddy fields near my house to allow rice planting to begin. It's back-breaking work. The women in the photo were planting for hours in ankle-deep water, taking little bundles of rice plants and sticking them in the mud.

I thought I was going to get into a bit of trouble taking this photograph which, as well as being a perfectly respectable documentation of a traditional Goan agricultural practice, is also a frank and somewhat uncompromising photograph of a row of ladies' bottoms. Hence the plant in the foreground, which offered me a bit of cover for my dirty arse-ogling.

But I was rumbled when a passing gentleman warned the ladies that an unscrupulous fellow was taking pictures of them from behind. Oo-er, I thought, I'd better scarper sharpish, but the ladies merely turned, giggled and gave me a cheery wave.

They loved it. Phnarr-phnarr!

I did it for you, Amitabh... arrgghh!

2006-06-16T02:42:00.000-07:00

I'd be the first to say that I believe Bollywood mega-supa-dupastar Amitabh Bachchan's taxes to be in order. If he paid me to, obviously.

But that's just corrupt little old me. It seems that fanatical Bachchan fans don't need to be bribed to come to the defence of their hero's tax status. Especially if they also happen to be supporters of the Samajwadi Party.

The Big B isn't dodging taxes, they say. Of course not. And anyway, even if he is, it doesn't matter how expensive his sunglasses are - the government is only targeting him because he's now allied with the Samajwadi Party instead of his old pals the Congress.

Fair enough, Bachchan-bots. Stand up for what you believe in: The right of a free man to dodge his taxes in peace.

But - call me a crusty old cynic - I do think that offering to commit suicide unless the tax department leaves Bachchan alone is a teeny-weeny bit bonkers.

Not in India, though, where declarations of love and loyalty are considered insincere unless you pull out a gun and suggest that you are willing to blow your own brains out.

To be fair, Sushil Gaekwad and Ishu Sonkar didn't threaten to shoot themselves unless the taxmen backed off. No, no, no. They just suggested that they would set themselves on fire and jump off a water tower.

According to the report, the Allahabad police didn't confront the pair because they were worried it might provoke them to do "something drastic". After three hours they were persuaded to climb down and surrender peacefully to the police. They will now be charged with making a public nuisance.

Would it be heartless of me to suggest that next time we let them burn/fall to their deaths? The human gene pool will be so much better off.

It would? Oh dear.

Kinda blue. Ish.

2006-06-15T04:13:00.000-07:00

I got sick of the old look of my blog so I just tore it all out and started again. Just like that. Cos that's the kind of guy I am. A man of action, not words. Forceful. Decisive. Sexually Attractive.

Those of you who have been paying attention will have noticed that it used to be predominantly this colour:

I adore blue, but I'm trying to wean myself off it. In fact, until the age of 23 I refused to wear any colour other than blue. I had no time for green. Or brown. Colours like orange and yellow I laughed at. Red I also rejected, but at least I respected it. But a man cannot spend his entire life wearing only the colour blue. I understand that now.

Well, he can spend his entire life wearing only the colour blue but other people will start to remark on it after a few years or so. They will point him out as he passes on the street. "There goes the 'blue' man," they will snigger. And slowly but surely the drip-drip-drip of peer pressure and social convention will wear him down. That's what happened to me. Finally, I put on a red t-shirt, and I felt... normal. But I didn't like it.

I almost fell back into blue for good when I visited the Musee d'Art Moderne et d'Art Contemporain in Nice - which is very big on blue. They had this there:

I had a great time. I went into one gallery where there was a large white space the floor of which was totally covered in a deep, gorgeous royal blue poster paint. I can't remember the name of the artist [It was Yves Klein - thanks to Dan Chalwin for remembering]. It looked like the surface of the moon, except it was blue. I went nuts. It was like I was trying to eat up all that blue with my eyes. I couldn't get enough of it. I felt a tremendous urge to just throw myself into it.

Suddenly a security guard shouted at me. Without even realising it, I had climbed onto the top of the brass railing keeping viewers out of the installation.

Are there other people out there like this? Except maybe they go bonkers when they see particularly nice shades of red or green, or perhaps burnt sienna?

Oldspaper

2006-06-14T07:59:00.000-07:00

I'm getting increasingly annoyed with our newspaperwallah, Mr Murgaonkar. Every day he delivers the Bombay edition of the Indian Express sometime between 8 and 9pm. I mean, what is the point of that? I already know the news by then, and anyway I can't be bothered to read it - we're usually about to have dinner and then afterwards we chat and wash up and kill cockroaches and do other household tasks and then it's time to go to bed. I end up reading the paper the following morning at breakfast and try to pretend that it's new news - even though I've already known for at least 20 hours that, for example, Rahul Mahajan is a certified cokehead. Grrr.

I wouldn't mind, but sometimes Mr Murgaonkar doesn't deliver the paper at all, for reasons that are not clear, even to him. I tried asking him about it once and he just muttered that there weren't any newspapers that day or something. Ri-i-ght. You know, I wouldn't mind so much except that we hardly ever get a paper on a Sunday - which is the best day of the week for the Express and the only day that I would actually have time to sit down and and enjoy a paper.

Yesterday, he delivered a bill. I don't think he's bothered to deduct the price of the six copies of the paper we didn't receive (we've had a Sunday paper once in the last month).

Today, we got another note. I think I understand now. Mr Murgaonkar is holding our papers to ransom:

Dear Madam/Sir

Please give me Rs 1,000 only.

Please Madem
V.V. Urgent.
Alright, it doesn't actually explicitly say that harm will come to any copies of the Sunday Express unless we pay but I think you'll agree the implications of that note are clear.

Bastard.

Silly tool

2006-06-09T07:57:00.000-07:00

Thoughtful, enlightened political leadership - dontcha just love it? Take, for example, S C Jamir, the Governor of Goa, who yesterday gave a timely reminder to the good people of Goa of the danger of HIV/AIDS. According to Jamirji, tourism and cheap labour are the most common ways the disease can be transmitted. Funny, I thought it was unprotected sex and intravenous drug use - but maybe the governor was joking, as he has a nice line in double-entendres. Take for example, this quote from today's Navhind Times:

Goa is a very favourite tourist destination as well as provider of jobs to countless labourers who, while arriving in the state, may bring in many diseases along with their tools.

Nudge-nudge, guv?

Plumbing the depths

2006-01-26T02:38:00.000-08:00

Perhaps Mumbai's darkest, but most open, secret is that of so-called "encounter killings" - a euphemism for extra-judicial assassinations of criminals by officers of the Mumbai Police.

These have been going on since at least the 1980s, when the tactic was adopted to deal with Mumbai gangsters who were impervious to the corrupt criminal justice system. What good is a criminal prosecution when powerful, well-connected crooks can just buy their way out of trouble?

J Dey, who was a senior crime reporter with the Indian Express when I was working there (he's now moved on to the Hindustan Times), explained to me how it works. There's a list of targets, usually but not always violent criminals. In the past, a single extortion call has been enough to get you on the Mumbai cops' encounter wishlist.

When police get intelligence that a wanted man is at a particular location, they send a team to take him out. The execution is usually point-blank, performed by an "encounter specialist" like former plumber Daya Nayak (pictured above).

Then they plant a gun, fire a round into a wall to make it seem like the dead man shot first, and simply doctor the forensic reports to tie up with their account of the shooting. It's a nasty business. But, Dey argued, to clean up dirt you have to get dirty.

"It's difficult for these men, you don't know how difficult," Dey told me. "It takes a lot to kill people like this. A lot of them can't sleep afterwards."

No one knows how many executions have taken place over the years, but it is probably several thousand. Attempts to stop the practice have all been hamstrung by official denials and lack of evidence.

What helped was the Mumbai media, who rarely passed up a chance to celebrate the latest notches on the gunbelts of key encounter specialists. Cops like Sub Inspector Daya Nayak were feted as heroes and their running totals - Nayak killed 83 - were compared like cricketing scores. Nayak became the hero of several movies.

It was all just entertainment to an apathetic public who were glad the bad guys were getting their just desserts. "Due process" was another luxury that Mumbai simply could not afford.

But, for now at least, the encounter killing seems to have come to an end. The Crime Branch of the Mumbai Police which ran the encounter teams has been revealed to be riddled with corruption and gutted. The mafia is in disarray, and so the encounter specialists are no longer needed anyway.

Now, even the mighty Daya Nayak has been brought low. He's currently looking at a criminal prosecution after an investigation revealed that his assets vastly outweigh his income. It's alleged that he had collaborated with the underworld and - shock! - performed fake encounters.

Maybe he can go back to plumbing?

"Are you going to join the Army?"

2006-01-25T21:50:00.000-08:00

It's India's Republic Day today - celebrating the day the constitution came into effect in 1950 and India became a sovereign nation. It's marked with a huge parade in Delhi involving the cream of the armed forces and then various cultural displays from each state.

Been watching it on TV this morning on CNN-IBN and very quickly got irritated as hell with the coverage.

ANCHOR: Let's go now to Anjali in Nashik. Anjali, what's the importance of Republic Day to the schoolchildren you're indoctrinating - er, interviewing?

ANJALI: Let's ask them. (To schoolboy) Are you going to join the Army?

SCHOOLBOY: No, I think I'd like to join the Air Force.

ANJALI: Why?

SCHOOLBOY: Er... so I can fly in the sky.

ANJALI: (impatiently) And to serve your country?

SCHOOLBOY: Oh, yes. To serve the country too.

You get the general idea. And I don't mean to rain on the parade, but I can't help thinking there's something really tacky about showing off all those missiles and tanks. It's embarrassing. It feels like a big, national display of insecurity. I mean, look at the size of those missiles. Really.

As Freud might have said: "Sometimes an Agni intermediate-range ballistic missile is just an Agni intermediate-range ballistic missile. But mostly it's a big, fat phallic symbol."

Vanity publishing

2006-01-24T05:41:00.000-08:00

You know what, I like this picture (of me) so much I'm going to post it again.

So there.

Utter Ballocks

2006-01-24T03:39:00.000-08:00

A couple of issues ago, the editor of Time Out Mumbai, Mr Fernandes, received the following letter from a reader about my column, Ballocks:

Your columnist Iain Ball has never known a dull moment it seems. In a previous issue he wrote about getting punched in the face for requesting a light. Then there was the time he met a lunatic on the local train. In the latest one he's written about being solicited by a pimp. I love his column and never miss reading it but I have to wonder whether these things have actually happened to him or whether it's all cooked-up fodder.
Bandana Ghosh

Obviously, this letter raises a number of serious questions. Firstly, on the issue of whether or not I have known a dull moment, I distinctly remember a tedious half-hour in 1978 spent waiting for my mother to choose a Marks & Spencer's bra. I hope that clears that up.

Less contentiously, Ms Ghosh seems to suggest with the phrase "cooked-up fodder" that I merely invent the content of my columns from the comfort of my armchair, or other convenient seating arrangement. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Each Ballocks column is painstakingly hammered out from true-life experiences, moulded into a pleasing 500-word length, then airbrushed with puns, choice exaggeration, subtle embellishment and a smidgen of out-and-out bullshit. By the time it is printed, each column is guaranteed to be only 10 per cent fact-free, or your money back.

As for Ms Ghosh's professed love of my column, I can only, humbly reply: "I love you too, baby. Don't you go changing."

Anyway. For those of you who missed the pimp one, here it is (that means you, random blog-hopper).

“We’ve got Thai, Indonesian, Spanish, Chinese…” the woman was saying. I ignored her and started off up the road to my hotel. The road seemed steeper that it usually did, with a tendency to undulate in a disconcerting manner. And something was holding me back. It was my arm. I looked at my arm. It was in the hands of a short black woman who was saying, “…Italian, Japanese, Korean…” Some sort of menu. “Thanks, but I’ve just eaten,” I mumbled. It was true. In fact, I had just had some fabulous seabass grilled with rosemary, three glasses of white wine and two gin-and-absinthe cocktails, the last of which I was pretty sure had something to do with the ground’s new-found flexibility. I smiled vaguely at her and waited for my arm back. She laughed. “No,” she said. “Girls, darling, not food. Forty pounds for half an hour.” I explained that I’d just eaten and I really wasn’t in the mood. “Not in the mood?!” she gaped, and, just to make sure, gave my crotch a hearty squeeze.

It is a truth universally acknowledged by features editors with pages to fill that sex and food are just two ends of the same banana. Food can be sensual and exciting; so can sex. Sex can be soulless and messy; so is a McDonald’s Happy Meal. That’s a thousand-word story, easily. In fact, you could write a book about it, as indeed have hundreds of ex-features editors, with titles such as Food as Foreplay, Cooking to Hook Up, A Taste for Love, Win Her With Dinner, Cooking in the Nude (with a chapter on salads entitled “Love ’Em and Leaf ’Em”) and my favourite: Intercourses. The common message of these books is that a tasty, lovingly prepared meal in the right setting will leave you gasping for a good bonk. The tendency of London pimps to accost people coming out of restaurants leads me to think that they have been reading these kinds of books. I think it should be the other way around, but I suppose 101 Great Post-Coital Dinners just wouldn’t sell.

These books are for the coffee table rather than the kitchen table, but you’re unlikely to find them on any table in Mumbai. These US-published titles aren’t available, and seeing as you clearly have nothing better to do, I’ll tell you why. Mumbaikars already about the sex-and-food thing. They know all too well, and don’t want to be put off their dinners by a lot of randy sex talk. We all know that meat makes you horny – why else would non-vegetarians have so many kids? Same goes for garlic. And if you give a man a couple of beers he’ll turn into a rampaging sex beast. Everyone knows that. Mumbaikars don’t need books telling them how to spice up their love lives – that’s for sex-obsessed Westerners. What Mumbaikars need are books telling them how to spice them down, with titles like Food for Frigidity, Moral Mealtimes, Cooking Fully Dressed, Chaste Chaat and Celibacy Delicacies, each packed with recipes crafted to curb your unhealthy enthusiasm for sexual intimacy. Sadly, none of these books is currently available. But in the meantime, there’s always McDonald’s. Bon appetit!

Train strain

2006-01-24T03:23:00.000-08:00

Judging from the flood of comments posted here about my last column (that was self-deprecating irony, by the way, to save you the trouble) it's high time you got another one. Here's Ballocks from a November '05 issue of Time Out Mumbai.

It amazes me how many people are frightened of travelling by train in Mumbai. Usually, I've noticed, they have quite a lot of money. "Oo-ooh," quivered one, when I told her I commuted by train. "What’s it like?" I tried to allay her fears. "Well," I explained, "It’s like a series of wheeled boxes running along metal tracks." Actually, I didn’t say that. Instead I compared it to the London Underground. "It’s exactly the same," I said, "Except the trains work."

By and large, Mumbaikars can be proud of their suburban railway network. The only problem with it, really, is the Mumbaikars. I admit I have no idea what goes on in the ladies’ compartments. I like to think that women just sit there calmly synchronising their menstrual cycles. But if it’s anything like the general compartment then it’ll be a bit like that movie Altered States. In the movie, William Hurt turns into a maniacal proto-human after spending hours and hours in a sensory deprivation tank. In the general compartment, commuters turn into maniacal proto-humans after spending hours and hours with their noses in each other’s armpits. I can think of no other explanation for the behaviour of a man I met on the rush-hour fast to Borivali except, perhaps, that he was drunk out of his mind.

"This is India," he suggested to me, catching my eye through a forest of strap-hanging arms.

I agreed that India was indeed the country that we were currently in.

"Look at these crowds," he continued. "What do you think?" I removed my nose from my neighbour’s armpit. "Well," I said. "It’s horrible, isn’t it?" "Yes," he nodded. "But we’re used to it. We’re happy."

"Really?" I asked doubtfully. "Oh yes," he said, so pleased with how our conversation was going that he invited me to his sister’s house in Bandra. I was also going to Bandra, I said, but had to decline. He didn’t seem to like this. He fell silent until a rush of crazed lunatics at Elphinstone Road left us squeezed next to each other on the other side of the compartment.

"I’m warning you," he said. "Be careful." This sounded ominous. I thought he was going to warn me not to turn down invitations to his sister’s house in Bandra, but he continued: "Let me give you some advice. I have 28 years’ experience. One guy does this" – he jammed one arm behind his head – "and then another guy does this" – he stuck his other arm in front of his face – "and then you’re fucked, I’m telling you, you’re fucked!" Another commuter told him to calm down. "I have 28 years’ experience," he spat. "You can take it or leave it."

I was about to assure him that I would certainly take it, whatever the hell it was, when the train came to a halt and he leapt to the open doorway, barricading the tide of frothing maniacs trying to get in. "Come on!" he yelled to me, "Get off the train!"

"But this is Dadar," I told him, my voice drowned by the angry roar gathering behind him. Hands pulled at his arms and legs. "What?" he said. "Get off!"

I tried again. "But this is Dadar!" I yelled. Struggling manfully, he disappeared in the torrent.

Still, I think he was happy. He’s used to it.

Television is bad for you

2006-01-22T05:31:00.000-08:00

Now listen here. I'm an extremely busy man and can't be expected to come up with original material for blogs at the drop of a hat. Instead, here is a column I wrote for Time Out Mumbai a few issues back, in case you missed it (I'm talking to you, the one person who has visited this blog. I know who you are).

I hate being on television. Actually, that’s a lie. I like being on
television, even though my occasional minute reviewing films on CNBC gets drowned in a 24/7 parade of fellow TV nobodies. What I really hate is the process. The trick to looking good on television, apparently, is to talk to the camera like it’s a friend. In fact, you have to charm it. You have to smile at it, flirt with it and generally give it the impression that, if you weren’t so busy being on television, you’d like nothing better than to take it out for an intimate candlelit dinner and, who knows, maybe breakfast as well.

This is trickier than it sounds. The camera gazes at you from its tripod with a dark, jaded eye that has seen it all and is thoroughly bored with it. It is operated by an unshaven man with a thousand-yard stare who has already recorded 38 segments since morning and can no longer remember his own name. Off to the left stands a producer who, if you’re lucky, will still have some sort of grip on who he is and what he’s supposed to be doing, which is to restrain himself from bludgeoning you to death with the camera when you stumble over the word “abominable” for the seventeenth time, whilst mildly suggesting, “Why not try that again?” with the kind of grin usually worn by people who have been dead for about eighty years.

A recipe for sub-sexual flirty banter it is not. When that demonic red light winks on I feel like a necrophiliac trying to fake an orgasm. So it was actually pretty convenient that the last time I was supposed to be on television, somebody punched me in the face instead.

This was outside the Jehangir Art Gallery, that cauldron of unrestrained violence, as I was getting ready for another agonising bout in front of the camera. I desperately needed to fortify myself with a cigarette and noticed a slim, 50-something man in a neatly-pressed shirt leaning against the gallery wall with a box of matches in his hand. “Excuse me,” I said politely, “Could I have a light please?”

When something hard and painful smacked me in the face I didn’t immediately associate it with what I had assumed was a middle-aged art lover until he started raving: “Asking me for a match!? You standing there with your fancy cigarette” – true; it cost four rupees – “asking me for a match!? Get your own fucking matches!”

Despite this perfectly satisfactory explanation I couldn’t think of anything to say but, “What did you punch me in the face for?” which I repeated several times whilst holding my nose. The question seemed to confuse him. “Because that’s the way it is,” he said eventually, but he didn’t sound very certain. I considered punching him back but he was clearly so barking mad that it would have been like punching a tree because a coconut fell on your head. One of my co-workers found a neat solution by attacking him with an umbrella until he ran away.

I was feeling thoroughly miserable until it became clear that I could now hardly be expected to record a TV segment and was sent home with murmurs of sympathy instead.

Note to producer: can we adopt this as standard practice from now on? It really will be less painful.

Er...

2006-01-22T05:18:00.000-08:00

Erm...

Okay so I haven't blogged. What is the bloody point of having a blog if you don't blog? None. So why am I blogging now, all of a sudden?

I am panicking. I have tons of work to do and terrible self-discipline (hence the non-blogging) and an awful, horrible deadline is approaching.

However, it will all be over by the end of March, by which point I promise faithfully to start an entirely new blog which will entertain, thrill, baffle, bemuse, befuddle, amuse, perplex, astound and, occasionally, induce mild nausea.

Unfortunately, I am not at liberty to reveal more at this time. All will be explained in Feb. I realise you must be agog with anticipation - all one of you, according to the site meter. Try nibbling on a piece of furniture to ease your frustration.

The Rising falls flat

2005-08-13T01:06:00.001-07:00

Just finished taping a review of The Rising for CNBC India. Should have known better, I suppose, but after three years of build-up it just doesn't live up to the hype. It's about an hour too long and filled with pointless song-and-dance sequences and tedious romantic subplots. Aamir Khan and Toby Stephens are great as the two friends who find themselves caught on opposite sides when the Mutiny (or First Indian War of Independence, as it's called here) breaks out, but the action sequences are just horribly limp. There's an opening battle scene set in Afghanistan that should have been balls-to-the-wall action but is so poorly choreographed it creates no excitement whatsoever. Worst of all is Amisha Patel as the widow who falls in love with Captain Gordon after he saves her from being burned to death in a sati ceremony. By the end of the film, you'll be wishing he just let her burn. Lagaan it most certainly ain't.
Still, it's not all bad: you can see me in it! For about 3 seconds.

My other career

2005-08-10T04:52:00.000-07:00

On Friday I'm heading out with a bunch of Time Out Mumbai folks to see Mangal Pandey - The Rising, the most expensive Bollywood movie ever made and easily the most eagerly anticipated film in India for years. I have a small part in the film as Colonel Wheeler - a moustacioued imperial bastard who stands there and looks, well, imperial. Alright - so it's not a big part but I'm sure if you hit the pause button you will be suitably impressed by my moustache. Not to mention my enormous hat:

I loved my three days filming The Rising and I've been thinking about looking for another Bollywood movie role - something with some actual lines and stuff - for ages. Yesterday evening I trudged unenthusiastically into a preview show of a TV documentary on Jinnah at the Nehru Centre and introduced myself to Dolly Thakore, the hostess. Our conversation went something like this:

Dolly: How long have you been living here, Iain?
Me: About two years.
Dolly: And how old are you?
Me: 34.
Dolly: I see. And can you ride a horse?

It turns out that Dolly is a casting director and is looking for a white actor for an unspecified role in an unspecified film. I assured her that I could ride a horse (well, I did, once. I even galloped. By mistake). She asked me to send her some photographs of myself.

And you know what? I think I will.

Snakes and ladders

2005-08-08T06:33:00.000-07:00

A new day, a new blog.

Got back from Britain on Sunday after a three-week orgy of cheese. I am now considerably fatter but hopefully a diet of dal and whiskey should return me to my svelte old self. I am knackered and the 24-hour euphoria of return has now toppled over into a mild depression. Oh fuck it. Here's a picture of me with a small snake.