Nakedness

Nakedness, or the bare skin, is like the innocence of a child. A child, say three years old, is not at all aware of its actions, or the consequences of its actions. The actions can make him "Awww, so cute" or "What a brat!" -- depending on your interpretation of its behaviour.

The bare skin, similarly, can assume many forms. On the pages of Playboy, it becomes erotic. On the bathing ghats of Haridwar, it might assume a holy glow. On the operation table, it is as lifeless as a piece of cloth. In a Page-3 party, it stands for glamour. On a fly-infested pavement, it becomes synoymous with poverty and pity. In the bedroom, it blends into the rest of the wooden furniture -- at least eventually.

But there are occasions when bare skin can make your heart leap out. In most of these cases, however, the skin gets covered even before the brain could send appropriate signals down the spine. The accidental -- or incidental -- dropping of the pallu. The hitching up of the saree while the beauty on the opposite berth is blissfully asleep. The woman in skirt sitting carelessly cross-legged. And, in the 21st century, the peeping butt cleavage (there is one thing I still can't figure: why do these babes keep pulling their top down to cover the cleavage? Is that a way of saying, "Look, I don't intend showing it, but what to do, my jeans is so low." Sadly, all the women I fancy either wear long tops or jeans that aren't low-waisted).

Once upon a time I lived in a house where the opposite flat, a floor below mine, was occupied by a middle-aged couple. I don't know what they did during the day, but in the nights, they sat in front of the TV most of the time. Their window offered only a below-the-waist view. I had never noticed them for years till one evening I stood by my window, smoking a cigarette. I almost burnt myself when I noticed their window: the nightie hiked well above a plump, fair pair of thighs. The garment was so high that she could have been wearing just a panty. She kept crossing and uncrossing her legs, the cocktail of lights from the TV reflecting on her milky skin, and I didn't even realise when my cigarette had turned into a stick of ash which was ready to crumble and fall off any moment.

A man's mind works strangely. He may not be so much turned on by the sight of a woman in a bikini as he would be by the sight of a saree or a nightie hitching up to the bikini line. Even though the amount of skin on display is the same. I guess it is the principle of prohibition. When you are not supposed to watch something, but happen to watch it accidentally, the pleasure is doubled, perhaps trebled.

Soon I had an army of friends trooping in every evening, and my window would become a trench. Lights would be turned off and about half a dozen people would kneel and take positions. All respectable people -- fellow journalists, theatre artists, a doctor, a civil engineer. And all for just a glimpse of a pair of bare thighs. If the same woman were to be sitting naked in my room, most of these people probably would have excused themselves. That's the irony about nakedness.

The subject of nakedness came to my mind when I had a long chat, over MSN messenger, with a friend-cum-fellow blogger-cum-fellow journalist. I will call her 'T'. She was narrating a story about how she had once lost her clothes to the sea at the Kovalam beach. "I was almost hauled up for indecent exposure by this cop," she said. But I wondered, wearing a bikini in Kovalam did not amount to indecent exposure. That was when 'T' added, to my total horror: "I had taken the bikini off as well. I just like the feel of water, you see. I can even jump into sewer water as long as it is water."

Perhaps the sea was horny that afternoon, and it took her bikini away. And there she was, trying to use the waves as a curtain. But a Mallu cop had noticed her by now, and he started walking towards her ('T' is a Mallu as well). The two had an argument in Malayalam. The cop thundered: how could she! She thundered back: what could she do! "All this while, he kept looking at me in the eyes," she told me rather gleefully.

I asked her: "Did you not try to cover yourself -- at least with your hands?" Her reply shocked me again: "Every part of the body has a role to play. So what do I cover, and what do I leave out?" Anyway, to cut the story short, the cop quickly went off in search of her friends who had wandered off, and one of those friends lent her his shirt.

Once I got over the shock, I wondered: what am I doing in Chennai, writing silly essays and blogging? I should have been in the Kerala police, and I should have been the constable on duty at Kovalam that afternoon. Are you listening 'T'? I wonder whether I should be scandalised at having you as a friend. Or proud. Or simply glad.

Uncle Moon At 60

The Madras of today might be synonymous with technology, but in a quiet street in the city’s Ekkatuthangal area, a bunch of people are busy packaging the timeless, ‘once-upon-a-time’ era which has a king and a queen who go on to live happily ever after.

It’s the era our childhood belongs to, and when I say ‘our’, I mean you, me or anybody in the age group 18 to 80. Ask your grandfather if he has heard of Chandamama: chances are he would have even read it, if not read its stories out — to your father, that is.

For three generations of Indians, Chandamama and Childhood have gone hand in hand. Over the years, Superman and Spiderman might have elbowed out the valiant kings and princes in the imagination of pre-teen minds, but Chandamama manages to hold its fort as it approaches its 60th year.

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Writing: A Personal Journey

The other day, a publisher, at my request, sent me the latest edition of The Economist Style Guide. It's a gem, but the cost is ridiculous (the previous edition was Rs 195, the new Rs 250), and can be found hidden away in the 'Reference' rack of any big bookstore -- if anyone cares to look for it, that is.

Over the years, the Economist Style Guide, like many of my books, has become more of a possession than reference/reading material. I rarely pull it off the shelf and bother to spend time with it. But when the latest edition arrived, I went through the pages randomly, more for the smell of the fresh ink that emanates from between every new book. For no particular reason, my eyes fell on an entry under 'U':

underprivileged Since a privilege is a special favour or advantage, it is by definition not something to which everyone is entitled. So 'underprivileged', by implying the right to privileges for all, is not just ugly jargon but also nonsense.

I panicked. Did I ever use the word in my copies? Did I ever use it in my blog? I could not recall, but I certainly had come across the word in copies that had been handed to me for editing and I never pointed it out. And how could I when I did not know myself? Shouldn't I be ashamed?

As a matter of fact, I should be. And I am. After all, it is the sense of shame that keeps me on the right track. I can announce the shame with a sense of pride because I know fellow journalists who would have said: "Big deal! It happens. Even the Economist makes mistakes." Or, worse, "Even I was wondering if we should say 'underprivileged'. But I had a headache that day so I let it pass." Or, even worse, "Of course there is a word called 'underprivileged'! I saw it the other day. Wait a second, where is the dictionary..."

It may work elsewhere, but in writing, you can't cheat, especially when something has been committed to print (or online, for that matter, assuming you don't have the option of re-editing). If a vigilant reader points out, you will have no option but to clean your vomit, unless you are shameless enough to retort: "You know what, I never wrote that. Those guys on the desk always muck around with my copy."

I don't know how good or bad a writer I am. If I am bad, there are reasons for it. I grew up in the Hindi heartland speaking no other language but Hindi (except for Bengali at home). Even though I wrote in English, my thoughts were processed in Hindi. As a result, I would find myself tongue-tied in the middle of 'English' conversations. This, in spite of the nuns making us clean the playground if we were caught speaking Hindi.

And if I seem to be having a way with words, that could be because I grew up with every single magazine that existed during the 70's and 80's. Many of them no longer exist -- Sunday, Onlooker, Mirror, Probe, Illustrated Weekly. Many of them still do: India Today, Society, Savvy, Cine Blitz, Stardust, Femina, Filmfare. The knowledge of sex and 'female-related matters' came primarily from women's magazines, Manorama and Grihashobha. Then there was the magazine that came only for me: Chandamama.

If you put the contents of all these magazines into a blender and turn the knob on, a 'Ganga Mail' type of blog is likely to flow out of the nozzle. That is what you find on this blog -- a bit of this, a bit of that. If someone has a good word, it warms my heart. If someone criticises it, well, never mind, there is always the next time.

But I would like to say a few things about critics, since I am on 'writing' trip. Very rarely, out here, is the criticism constructive. It is usually aimed at demolishing you. One criticism that my writing frequently draws -- from the same set of people -- is that it is too "flaky", "masala", "non-serious." For them, I don't do the serious kind of writing. For them, the benchmark is the editorial page of Hindu. But at the same time, they miss the facing, op-ed page, which is usually filled with serious yet breezy articles from Guardian or New York Times.

I hope my critics read this post, for I am going to explain to them a few things about writing, once and for all, pointwise:

1. There is nothing called "serious" or "non-serious" writing. A piece of writing can either be "readable" or "unreadable". Yes, there is a variety of writing that is called "pompous", the Hindu edit page type, where the writers talk at the reader instead of talking to the reader.

2. I am more obsessed with the craft than the content. Your content might be first class, but if your presentation is boring, if you constantly refer to the thesaurus to replace words like 'theft' with 'heist' just to sound self-important, if you start with a convoluted sentence just to show that your command over English is far superior than others, chances are nobody will read you beyond a sentence. But if you know the craft, you can make a story out of a thesis.

3. The fact that you read me in the first place is a victory. You read me because it requires no effort, and it requires no effort because I work hard at it. What takes you precisely 5 minutes to read often takes me 5 hours to write -- 3 of which go into the first three paras. If that shows what a poor writer I am, so be it.

4. Your criticism doesn't stick because every moment I am criticising myself. Every time I read stuff I had written two days ago, I hang my head in shame: "How could I?" But I can't delete what is already printed. And in the blog I don't delete old posts just out of respect for the labour I had put in.

5. If -- instead of criticising for the sake of criticising -- you take a scalpel and edit my copy, sharpen my sentences, I would acknowledge you as a true critic and not someone who doesn't like my face or is just jealous of me. (I am so tempted to put a 'wink' smiley here, but my posts are out of bound for smileys.)

Independence Day Thoughts

Woke up on the morning of Independence Day, wanting to laze around and go through the books I bought the evening before after spending a fortune:

1. Reporting, by David Remnick, the editor of New Yorker.

2. From Our Correspondent, a compilation of dispatches from BBC reporters.

3. Maximum City, by Suketu Mehta.

4. Sahara, a journey by Michael Palin.

5. The City of Falling Angels, an account of Venice by John Berendt.

6. Newsweek and Economist magazines.

But destiny seemed to have hatched a conspiracy at the stroke of midnight. When I woke up, my wife sprang a surprise on me. It was intended to be a pleasant surprise: she had bought tickets for KANK, that is Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna. Imagine being dragged out of home at 9.30 in the morning, that too on a holiday!

Served her right for inflicting the torture on me: while in all Hindi movies, married people who stray, as in people who commit adultery, meet with an horrible end; in KANK, an adulterous pair goes on to live happily ever after. So adultery has finally got the approval of Bollywood! Wow! I mean if Shah Rukh Khan can, why can't I? Are you listening, wifey dear? I know what you will say. You will say, "If Rani Mukherjee can, why can't I Mr Ghosh?"

Such warnings don't work for me. I mean I have always had people who keep saying: "You think you can do whatever you want to? What if your wife/girlfriend does the same?" My answer has been the same: If a woman wants to indulge in adultery, she will, irrespective of her partner's behaviour. Nothing on earth can stop her. So why lose sleep over it?

Back to KANK. I can understand people taking great pains to make such grand movies. But what I can't understand is people waiting for such movies to be released -- as if it's a huge event of national importance -- and wasting so much of time and space discussing it. My verdict on KANK:

1. Karan Johar has lost it. A father urging his daughter to run behind a train that is just moving out of the station and grab the hand of her lover is understandable; but a man asking his adulterous wife to rush to the station so that she can unite with her lover (Indian term is "paramour") is a bit too dramatic. Too too dramatic.

2. What was Amitabh Bachchan doing in the movie? Making an ass of himself?

3. I will remember the movie, if at all, only because of Rani Mukherjee. She looked gorgeous as she played out the emotions of an unhappily married woman who finds liberation in the arms of another man. She is just too good.

Three Enemies Who Ruined My Game

I have a fetish for nostalgia, but this column isn't inspired by it. If anything, it is driven by a sense of despair that grips you when a bunch of people conspire to ruin your happiness. It is like going to an old-world restaurant for years and years, and then one day the restaurant is pulled out and a shopping mall springs up in its place. Shoppers will come in hordes, but a handful of people will always mourn the restaurant. In the same way, I mourn cricket.

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Madras Day

The self-appointed custodians of Chennai's heritage and culture are a busy lot these days. The term 'self-important' is not meant to be sarcastic or derogatory here: I mean someone has to take it upon himself or herself to keep the identity of a city alive, especially when ministers/government officials are concerned about what they can extract from a city rather than what they can contribute. Oh yes, they do contribute -- in the form of hideous statues. Like our present chief minister Karunanidhi.

Karunanidhi is now an old man who has clearly lost his marbles. First he installed he statue of Sivaji Ganesan at the Marina, putting him on par with Gandhi. (Sixty years from now, the life-size cutouts of various Tamil heroes put up by vendors on the sands could dot the Marina as bronze statues). Then he said no tax (or very little tax) for movies with pure Tamil names. Then he drastically cut the registration fee for people changing their names into classical Tamil (wonder why he doesn't lead by example and drop his Sanskrit name). Tomorrow, he could promise a free colour TV for those changing their names into classical Tamil. If that happens, I have already thought of a name for myself: Sakthivel. I could sell the TV to stock my bar.

Oh no, that was a long digression. I was talking about how the custodians of Chennai are a busy lot these days. They are preparing very seriously for Chennai Day -- or is it Madras Day? -- which falls on August 20. I guess the celebrations have come a little too soon because only last year, they had celebrated 365 years of Madras. Celebrating 365 days is fine, but to celebrate 365 years? -- but then, you don't expect the custodians to wait for another 35 years, do you?

That reminds me, when Madras turns 400, I will be 70. Where will I be then? I wish I could know, but you certainly won't catch me speaking at a seminar in Taj Conemarra or Taj Coromandel reminiscing my years in Madras. I hate seminars, and also people who attend or speak at seminars. My job is to write, and if things go the way I want, I would have, by then, written the most exciting book on Chennai -- part-Naipaul, part-Theroux, part-Bill Bryson, part-Henry Miller. Till that happens, it would suffice to reproduce what I wrote last year, on the occasion of 365 years of Madras:

A city is no different from a human being. It wakes up at the crack of dawn, stretches lazily and sets about its chores. It works during the day, enjoys in the evening and retires to bed at night. It has its good qualities and its flaws, as well as its eccentricities. And like all humans, it also has a heart and a soul. And its moods.

Sometimes it behaves like a pampering mother and sometimes like a sulking wife. At times it gives you a cold stare like a stranger and at other times it embraces you like an old friend. Only that a city has an infinite lifespan. The people who live in it are incidental: they come and go. But the city goes on. Like Chennai.

The Chennai that we know was born in 1639 as a strip of beach three miles long and one mile wide — acquired from the governors of Poonamallee by two East India Company employees, Francis Day and Andrew Cogan. That makes the city 365 years old. During this period it contributed to the history of modern India in different capacities — as the seat of the British power in the South, as the capital of the entire South India, as the venue of some defining political movements and, of course, as the capital of Tamil Nadu.

But what has survived the political changes, and is still flourishing, is the culture — something that accords Chennai its unique place. Idli-sambar, Bharatanatyam, Carnatic music... these are things you can happily take out of Chennai, but you can never take Chennai out of them.

It’s also a city awash with colour: walls in the entire city are wrapped in posters while gigantic cinema billboards unseen anywhere else in the country tower over prominent junctions. And in the nights it’s not uncommon to pass by illuminated larger-than-life cutouts of gods and goddesses and also of politicians. It’s only here that politicians enjoy the status of gods.

Amidst all this Chennai exudes warmth — something rarely found in the other metros. Bombay is too busy while Delhi loves to show off — every Delhiite thinks he or she is a nephew or niece of the Prime Minister. Calcutta, on the other hand, is too snooty — it never tires of celebrating itself.

As the celebrated British journalist, the late James Cameron, wrote in An Indian Summer: “...I have a sort of trust in Madras... It is an agreeable, rather boring place; it is the sort of place I would be if I were a town.” The accompanying impressions celebrate not only Chennai’s birth anniversary but also the trust Cameron has talked about. But hang on, whose anniversary are we celebrating — Chennai’s or Madras’? Now, what’s in a name! Thayir saadham tastes as good as curd rice.

Should We Hire Dr Watson?

James Watson, the man who co-discovered DNA, whipped up a storm a few years ago when he said, at a guest lecture, that dark-skinned people had a stronger sex drive. “That’s why you have Latin lovers. You’ve never heard of an English lover. Only English Patient,” the Nobel Laureate said, expounding on his theory that exposure to sunlight enhanced sex drive.

Now, sunlight is abundant in India. Does that mean Indians... tut-tut, let’s not talk about that. We Indians discuss such things only when nobody is around. But there’s one question which we cannot escape, and one wonders whether it has anything to do with Watson’s theory: why is India so unsafe for women?

According to WHO, every 54 minutes one woman is raped in our country. The Centre for Development of Women’s Studies hikes the figure to 42 rapes a day. And in most cases — 85 percent, according to a study — the rapist is known to the victims. What’s wrong with our men?

Ours is one of the few countries where women — if they are alone — don’t like to venture out after dark, because that’s when evil creatures creep out of their dens. Where else is it commonplace for a woman to be dragged into a car and raped by a bunch of men and then thrown out?

Daytime is no better. You will find them outside girls’ schools, women’s colleges, at bus-stops, inside the buses. They ‘pass comments’, they heckle, they whistle, they pinch bottoms, they nudge. And who are they? Ah, there are so many ways of describing them — loafers, rowdies, roadside Romeos, eve-teasers... Where else in the world do you hear these words more often, or hear them at all?

‘Roadside Romeo’ and ‘eve-teasing’ seem to be purely indigenous expressions. You don’t find them in the dictionary. You don’t find any of the Western papers using them. And ‘eve-teasing’ is so common that we don’t even capitalise the ‘E’, even though Eve is a proper noun. Eve-teasing is such a menace that worried police commissioners set up women cops in plain clothes to nab offenders.

And then there are offenders who are above the law — the VIPs and the semi-VIPs — whose misdeeds occasionally creep out of the closet into the newspaper columns and create sensation.

But there are millions of other deeds that go unnoticed — deeds of men who would like to keep their wives and daughters under lock but who, the moment they step out of their homes, eye the women on the street, their secretaries or the seat next to that woman. Women, for them, are purely sex objects.

Does it have anything to do with Watson’s theory? The sunlight is abundant, but the societies are closed, so is the extra drive being channelised into leching, raping and eve-teasing? Worth researching. Should we hire Dr Watson?

Blog Orwell

It is every blogger's dream to get 30-40 comments for his/her posts. Quite a few manage that: if is a different matter that a quarter of them consist of the obligatory Thank You's. But attracting 100-plus comments for a personal diary-type post can only be a fantasy. But a desi blogger has achieved that with a one-word post!

Ony July 23, a Mumbai-based blogger called Dilip D'Souza wrote just one word, "Goodbye", and stopped blogging. Today, August 10, when I chanced upon his blog, I saw 130 comments for the post! The initial comments are of the type, "Hey, how can you do that? Please come back." But they soon spin out of control and erupt into a full-fledged debate -- on issues ranging from Gujarat riots to Kashmir! And the debate is still going on and the comment box has been completely taken over by the readers of that blog.

Must check out the spectacle -- it could be entertaining and -- who knows -- even informing. By the time I waded through to the 130th comment, I felt as if I was in a fish market or in the Lok Sabha. As for the blog, it has achieved what it could not when it was live -- somewhat like George Orwell.

Woman's Night Out

Forget No. 1, Here's 5-Point Something on Bloggers

If laughter is good for health, then yesterday was one of the healthiest days of my life. The entire day I rolled on the floor laughing as I read one post after the other on the recent controversy over who is Chennai's (or is it India's?) no. 1 blogger. The no. 1 position apparently belongs to a certain Mr Kiruba Shankar, and there are some people who are disputing this, saying that Mr Shankar's posts are usually inane and that he uses his blog for self-promotion and so on.

But then, no. 1 is no.1, no matter who decides the ranking -- be it Technorati or Blogstreet or whatever. And to be honest, people out to attack Mr Shankar with sharpened knives are also seeking self-promotion by attacking him. They seem to be jealous of the number of hits that Mr Kiruba Shankar's blog gets every day or every month.

But believe me guys, 99 percent of amateur Indian -- or Chennai-based -- bloggers are not even aware of Mr Shankar or his blog or the controversy that is raging in blogosphere about his undisputed ranking. They write their stuff and go to sleep: they are too happy if their friends have read their blog and left a comment. And it is the amateur blogger who rules because there is nothing called professional blogger: in fact the word 'blogger' (or even 'blog') will be underlined with red the moment you type it on Microsoft Word. I am not aware if the dictionaries have incorporated the word(s) yet, but the spellchecker certainly hasn't.

But I do see the point the detractors of Mr Shankar are trying to make. Probably what they mean to say is, the quality of the posts is one thing, and the quantity of traffic it attracts is quite another. In other words, how can someone writing crap be the no. 1 blogger? Personally speaking, I have hardly read Mr Shankar's blog to be able to comment on the quality of his posts, but considering the number of hits he gets, there must be something about the posts.

Something. Now that something has always baffled me -- someone who is not even a year into blogging. What is that something? Alas, I am still trying to figure that out. Had I figured that early enough, I guess I would have been at the centre of the debate, and not Mr Kiruba Shankar. Ok, I am not going to take names anymore. Unethical, you see. Instead, I would offer you my honest opinion about blogging and bloggers. Take it or leave it (better still, link it. I want traffic, you see). So here I am, listing my opinion -- in points:

1. No self-respecting blogger ever starts a blog thinking about the traffic. The instant publication/uploading of a post is satisfactory enough. If someone strays into the blog and leaves a comment, that's a bonus.

2. Human beings are greedy: they are not happy with just the bonus. Just like workers in a textile mill, they want more. So they go to other blogs, leave 'intelligent' comments, and come back to write 'intelligent' posts. But I respect them. I respect their labour.

3. Some human beings behave as if they are the owners of the textile mill: throw a bone to the workers, and they will hungrily pounce on it. But since these mill owners don't have brains, they borrow the brains from elsewhere. So cut-and-paste from newspapers, from websites, from New York Times (not to mention Guardian!). And there you have a pompous post, as if the words sprouted from their brains! Good show, pals.

4. Sad fact of life: these textile mill owners happen to be some of the most popular 'bloggers'.

5. The mill workers, meanwhile, toil on, guided by the principle of Bhagwad Gita: "You do your job, the reward is not for you to seek." So every evening they activate their grey cells and fork 500 words out of them. The reward occasionally comes in the form of a comment or two. Even if it doesn't, they keep writing. That's the real blogger for you.

12-Point Something About Yoga

Going through the previous post, which I had written for my paper, I suddenly find myself meditating upon my four-year-long association with yoga. So many thoughts are crossing my mind -- some sacred, some not-so-sacred, some erotic, some mundane. I am sharing some of them with you, just like that:

1. My 'yogic' journey began in a posh gym in Chennai, where I paid a lot of money considering that the classes were only four days a week, one hour a day. For all practical purposes, it was like an aerobics class, where you merely followed the instructor for one hour without even knowing which asana you are doing. But I moved on after three months because I wanted to learn yoga properly. Why I lasted three months, well, two reasons for that: one, I rapidly lost weight and my fitness levels increased drastically; and two, there were plenty of women in the class. I was the only guy. Whenever I bent to touch my right toe, I could see half a dozen butts turned to the right. And when I turned left, another set of butts would be turned to the left. Too sad it lasted only three months: I could have easily squeezed in an hour everyday in that gym in spite of my pursuit of serious yoga. Anyway, you lose some, gain some!

2. I begin my yoga session only after 11 in the morning -- a horrible time, but then, my writing begins only after 11 in the night.

3. My most favourite poses are the sarvangasana (shoulderstand), urdhva dhanurasana (wheel) and bakasana/kakasana (crane/crow). A recent addition to the favourites list is supta virasana (supine hero's pose): it is supposed to prevent blocking of arteries and keep your sexual organs healthy.

4. The pose I hate to do the most is paschimottasana (seated forward bend), so much so that I skip it most of the time, as a result of which, I am yet to achieve it. My loss -- and what a loss!

5. The cigarette I look forward to smoking the most is the one I light up after the yoga session.

6. For the last three years, I have been disappearing from time to time -- a week here and a week there -- to hide in some yoga ashram or the other. No alcohol there: you are automatically drunk on asana practice and the adrenalin it produces. And no Pancham either: you are high on the chants. You need a break from even Pancham, after all.

7. Collective chanting has tremendous power. It boosts your energy and at the same time, brings down your stress levels. Jaya Ganesha, Jaya Ganesha, Jaya Ganesha Paahimaam, Shree Ganesha Shree Ganesha Shree Ganesha Rakshamaam: the energy this chant infuses -- when sung in unison by people of various nationalities, religions and accents -- is to be felt to be believed.

8. Most yoga ashrams have strict rules, such as men and women not wearing sleeveless tops or shorts. But when Westerners run these ashrams -- which is usually the case -- the strictness is usually reduced to tokenism. During my stay in one of the ashrams in Rishikesh, I would often run into a Western saadhvi (renunciate). A gorgeous woman she was, and as per the ashram rules, she wore a white saree. But what was most obvious about her attire was the sexy, lacy white bra, which showed through her white, transparent blouse.

9. And then there was this most capitvating woman I had ever seen in my life. I noticed her during dinner on the first day of my stay in an ashram in South India: she was giving 'reiki' to her food -- face serene, eyes shut and palms stretched on top of her plate, she seemed to be saying a silent prayer. Later I realised that she wore silence as a necklace -- whether during the yoga class, or during the tea break under the banyan tree, or during the meals. And it was the silence that made me seek her. "If only men knew how painful periods are," she said in a heavy Italian accent when I first made conversation with her. A couple of mornings later, she was right opposite me during the yoga class. She wore a white kurta and salwar. But underneath the kurta, there was nothing: everytime we came to the plank pose, I caught a glimpse of the Italian nipples. And we came to the plank pose half a dozen times. But then, that was that -- she left the ashram soon after, giving her postal address in Rome. She said she did not believe in e-mailing.

10. Italian nipples are no different from their Indian counterpart.

11. I have never fully followed the rules of the ashrams I have stayed in. They primarily prohibit four things: smoking, drinking, doing drugs and sex. Well, I have never been into drugs. As for alcohol, I can happily do without it in the presence of other stimuli. But I have smoked in all the ashrams I have stayed in. In some ashrams, I smoked in the toilet and flushed the cigarette butts in the commode. In some other ashrams, where my room has been away from the smelling distance of the caretakers, I have smoked as usual, stubbing the cigarette in disposable coffee cups. And there are two kinds of smokes most enjoyable. I have already mentioned the pleasure of the post-yoga smoke. The other is post-coitus smoke.

12. Coitus is a form of yoga, to tell you the truth, because sex is a combination of yoga postures. Usually, the woman is in savasana (corpse pose) or the pavanmukta asana (wind-relieving pose), while the man alternates between chaturanga dandasana (push-up pose), adho mukha svanasana (downward facing dog) and urdhva mukha svanasana (upward facing dog). And for a man, it is sin to miss such a combination of asanas -- it stengthens every muscle of his, makes him flexible and gives him excellent cardio. That is why I never missed it, no matter which ashram I lived in or how strict it was about the conduct of its inmates.

Confessions Of An Aspiring Yogi

Eight years of living in Delhi had deprived this rice-eater of rice so much that when I came to Chennai and set up a kitchen for myself, I decided to pull out all the stops. Almost every dinner would be rice and boiled potatoes — steaming hot — with a spoonful of ghee, accompanied with some dal and boiled eggs. I hesitate to mention that the dinner was preceded by the sub-standard rum you get in Tamil Nadu.

Life went on like this for two whole years and then one morning when I woke up and looked in the mirror, I found Vijaykanth, the actor, staring back at me. I looked again: this time it was Mohan Lal’s face in the mirror. Many people — my mother included — would have seen it as a healthy sign, literally. But I alone knew how unhealthy I was.

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Aanewala Pal

Celebrating Kishore

Tomorrow, August 4, is Kishore Kumar's birthday. Here's a song from Gol Maal for all Kishore fans and fellow bloggers -- even those not into Hindi songs are bound to like it. Music: R.D. Burman (check out his signature trumpet!). Lyrics: Gulzar.

Here's also a toast to the good, old 70's! And this is one movie where Amol Palekar looks dashing.

What If Kris Srikkanth Drank?

Last Saturday, I found myself in the ballroom of the Taj Coromandel, standing in one corner and sipping Teacher's whisky. For an Indian with modest income who needs a few drinks every evening to make his mind work, Teacher's can only be had at someone else's expense. At presently I was having it at the expense of Teacher's.

It was not the alcohol alone that had brought a recluse like me out of his den. It was also the sexy black invite sent out by Teacher's: it boasted of some big names -- Subir Raha (former ONGC chairman), Narain Karthikeyan and shooter Anjali Bhagwat, singer Sonu Nigam and ITC's Yogi Deveshwar. These people, the card announced, had won the Teacher's Award for Achievement and Excellence. So I presumed that these people would be collecting their awards that night -- what an opportunity to see and -- perhaps meet -- the best and bright in their fields.

But they weren't there. The evening turned out to be only a celebration of the spirit of Achievement and Excellence, and the mode of celebration was a tete-a-tete between actor Boman Irani and former cricketer Kris Srikkanth. By the time I found this out, I was already two drinks down, so it didn't really matter. And when Teacher's is flowing and an elaborate dinner is waiting, even Srikkanth can be tolerable. So I poured a large drink and walked into the hall, hoping to concentrate on the alcohol while Srikkanth did what he can do best: talking.

Talk he did, but this time he unpacked a bag of anecdotes, most relating to the 1983 World Cup. He had a lot of say, and after he had finished, he returned to his table to join his family and lit up a cigarette. I am not going to reproduce everything that he said, but I shall give you the highlights:

"Before the 1983 World Cup, Sunny (Sunil Gavaskar) called me and asked if I would like to come to America. He said I could bring my wife too. I was newly married. But I asked him what about the World Cup. He said we could stop over in London and play the World Cup. That time we did not take the World Cup seriously; the odds against our winning was 1000-1." (Probably what he also meant to say was: Gavaskar had lost his captaincy to Kapil Dev, so he gave a damn about India's chances in the tournament.)

"Kapil Dev, according to me, was a true leader and achiever. In the World Cup, our opening match was against West Indies. He called the team and told us, 'If we can beat the West Indies once, we can beat them again.' He said this with the true Punjabi aggression. It infused us with positive energy. And we beat the West Indies." (Probably what he also meant to say was: Sunny was an asshole, Kapil was a true captain).

"But in the match against Zimbabwe, we were 17 for 5. And then comes this man, Kapil Dev. Anybody else would have given up, but our man hit 175 not out." (Probably what he meant to say was: We were all assholes to get out so cheaply against even Zimbabwe! Kapil was our saviour).

"When Kapil came out to bat (in the same match), I was standing by a wall and watching the game. I was so nervous that I must have smoked 25 cigarettes. My wife, who was staying with relatives in London, had come to the stadium and she was now standing next to me. Once Kapil started hitting, the mood changed. P R Mansingh (the manager) was superstitious, he wanted each of us to stay wherever we were and not move. He thought our positions had brought good luck. So he would not allow me to move from the wall, even though I wanted to pee badly." (Mansingh was also present in that evening. He said he had subsequently asked Srikkanth's roommate, Roger Binny, to shift to his room, so that Srikkanth's wife could move in there.)

"I was so much out of form that I was dropped even from the Ranji team. One evening I was sitting with Laxman Sivaramakrishnan. I don't drink, but he was drinking, and he must have had five or six rounds of rum or whisky or whatever he was drinking. That's when I told him, 'Machaa, just wait, one day I will captain India! And I became the captain within a few years." (There is one thing I wonder about: What if Srikkanth wasn't a tetotaller? After a few drinks, would he have blabbered more? Or less?)

Where Do You Get Prostitutes in Madikeri? I Don't Know!

Looks like I am on the way to becoming another Henry Miller, provided Google can smell one's ideas. Three people were directed to my blog today when they Google-searched for the following:

"Stick to one woman";

"Where do we get prostitutes in Madikeri"; and

"Though my husband was in the room his boss asked me to remove my saree".

I hope these people found what they were searching for. As for becoming another Henry Miller, there is another reason for hope. We not only share the same zodiac sign but also the same birthday: 26 December.

Random Thought: Home Is Where Heart Is

The older you grow, the more your mind returns to the lost years of childhood. And the farther you go from the place you grew up in, and the longer you stay away, the more your heart yearns to return. The return might not be feasible or practical in reality, but the yearning is always there: Someday, I shall go back...

I am not saying this out of experience because I have never lived outside India long enough to crave for the sights and sounds and smells of my city -- even the traffic smoke and the noise. That way, India has unique sights, sounds and smells -- you can never mistake it for another country. Surfing channels, when you come across a Hindi or Tamil movie, you can instantly tell -- from the look of the screen -- whether it is from the 70's/80's or the present day. Similarly, if you catch a glimpse of India on a BBC documentary, you will never for a moment confuse it with Brazil or Pakistan even though the people look alike. That's the magic of India.

Anyway, back to the yearning. You can see it all over blogosphere. People living abroad -- in the US, in the UK, in the Southeast -- for months, for years, for decades, for generations, and yet in their private, non-working moments they are like the poet pining for his love. They are the people who, I think, love India with their heart and not their lips. And they do so because you can truly appreciate the value of something once you are away from it. That is why they get more agitated -- and active -- every time something hits India. People who aroused public opinion online in the aftermath of the Mumbai blasts were people living abroad. Indians living here, on the other hand, do nothing but to whine and blame 'the government' for every single thing except, maybe, erectile dysfunction.

It is heartening to see the interest NRI bloggers show in their roots: looked at from their eyes, India is not a bad country at all. And it isn't, believe me. But what is most heartening is to see the writings of Tamil NRI bloggers: it is as if they were never away. They are the electrons; while Madras is the nucleus. The electron always wants to merge with the nucleus and that's why it keeps rotating around the nucleus. And so the Tamilian, even if 13 hours away in time zone, keeps hovering around Madras. Culture is the invisible umbilical cord that is never snapped.

One doesn't have to cross oceans to feel the pull of the nucleus. I grew up by the Ganges in Kanpur, where I spent the initial 23 years of my life. In those 23 years, I must have been to the Ganga (as the river is popularly known) not even 23 times! -- even though the river flows just two kilometres away from my house. But now, sitting in Madras, I hear the call of the Ganga time and again. That's where I belong to, and I shall go there again, and again.

'Dangers of Blocked Ejaculation'

Once in a while, when I am screen sucking (that is sitting in front of the computer aimlessly), I go to the Statcounter to check the visitor activity on my blog. While most of the referring URLs are known to me, quite a few visitors are directed to my blog through random Google searches. The searches are usually of this type: 'Chennai + bars', 'Prostitutes in Chennai', 'Women with big breasts', 'Massage parlours in Delhi' and so on.

Today two people were directed to my blog after they Google-searched for the following:

'Jyothika with others in bed'; and

'The dangers of blocked ejaculation.'

Prachi

"Achchha tell me, should I grow my hair?

"Tell na, stop reading that paper! Look at me and tell me. Should I grow my hair?

"Ufff, I am sick of your answers, 'Yes', 'Hmmm', 'Fine'. Do you ever have an opinion? Now stop reading that paper, will you?

"Ok, tell me why I should not grow my hair? Give me one good reason. No, no, no, you are not touching me. First answer my question. And by the way, mister, you are not supposed to touch me. That was the deal!

"And don't you ever cut your nails?! Chhee! You don't even trim your moustache. Look at yourself in the mirror. You think you look very handsome? You look like Veerappan! There you go again! I told you no touching. Keep your promise like a gentleman.

"Give me also a fag, na. You know when did I last smoke? That night we went to Ghungroo. Light it for me, na. I can never light under a fan.

"Stupid, I asked you to light my cigarette and not to hold my hand. Besharam! -- shameless. Can't keep your hands off. Ya ya, don't flatter me now, I know my hands are soft and sexy. By the way, I like your hands. Big and manly. Will it hurt if I pull this hair?

"Ha, ha, ha, ha... That was your punishment for touching Prachi. What kind of a man are you? -- screaming just because I pulled a hair. OK, what do you want for dinner? Kuchh order karen? Or shall I cook? Hey mister, how about you cooking for a change?

"No, no, you are going to cook tonight. Or else you are going back hungry... What? Are you crazy? No way, you are not staying back! No, no, no, you are not staying back.

"Hey mister, don't mess around with Prachi... Keep your hand away.

"Nooooo, you are not going there. You are not going anywhere. That tickles, stupid. No, you are not going there... Be a good boy and go to the kitchen. Ok, you read the papers and I will cook. No, no, you are not going there... Ok, ok, put on the FM na, they must be playing Hindi songs now...

"God, I am listening to this song maybe after 10 years! Is that Asha or Lata? Hey mister, now don't take advantage of the song and start doing that to me. Told you, you are not going anywhere near there... Please na! If you promise to be a good boy I will give you a hug, thheek hai? But please keep your hands away. And what about dinner?

"I am feeling a little hungry... oh my God, it is 5.45! Hey mister, will you at least make some breakfast? I don't think there is bread. Will you get it when the shop opens? No, actually, I will send the watchman. You stay here, with me...

"What! Are you mad? No, you are not going to office today... Boss? To hell with him. Tell him you have fever. Or else I am going to show him these love bites and he will get a fever. What would you prefer, Mr Veerappan?"

Got a Light?

Multitasking in the washroom. Priceless!

Men And Sex

Men who treat women with great respect, men who recognise talents in women, men who acknowledge the minds of women rather than their curves -- they are men who can never stick to one woman. It is impossible for them to wake up with the same woman every morning and come back to her every evening -- day after day, year after year -- without a secret afternoon here or a clandestine night there.

S, my closest friend, keeps saying: "I think you suffer from some disease. How can someone be so obsessed with sex?!" He said that to me even last night. Maybe he doesn't want to acknowledge that everyone -- and that includes him as well -- is obsessed with sex. According to me, there are only two things that move the world -- fear and sex. The fear is about survival, about doing well in life, about doing better than others, about being comfortable in old age, and so on. And amid these fears, there is the perpetual need for physical gratification, and that's where sex comes in.

If there was no fear, human beings would be sitting at home, doing nothing. And if there were no sexual urges, they would still be sitting home, doing nothing. But fear stalks us every moment, and the sexual urge grips us every other moment.

Right now I am talking as a man. I do not know what women will have to say about it. Most women I know say sex is not a priority. But then.

Now coming to my point that men who look beyond the breasts by going across the rib-cage and peeping into the mind are the men who can't stick to one woman. During my childhood in Kanpur, I have seen plenty of tongas or tangas -- horse-driven carts. I have never travelled in them, but I always noticed the horse -- he would have leather flaps on the sides of his eyes. The idea is to let the horse focus straight on the road and not get distracted by anything on the sides.

An average man, who does not seek much from life, dons these flaps the moment he get into a steady relationship -- marriage or otherwise. But a thinking man, while focusing ahead, also wants to know what's going on on the sides. On his front is Mrs Wife or Ms Girlfriend -- people he takes for granted; but the temptresses are on the sides. It would be a sin to miss them. There is Ms A, who is into your kind of music. There is Ms B, who punctures your ego by picking holes in your writing. Then Ms C, with a piercing gaze and a pointed nose and so aloof that you badly want to reach out to her. And of course, the Ms D -- the moment you see her you feel you have known her for ages and you even tell her so. Ms E, who turns you on because she is intelligent and has got the best butt in town... There are only 26 letters in the English alphabet, but that should be a sufficient number for a thinking man.

What is, then, the difference between a thinking man and a truck driver who stops by the brothel every night? There is a huge difference. The truck driver's quest for sex ends with ejaculation, whereas the thinking man can have multiple orgasms even without actual intercourse.

I don't know what spurred me to write this. Is it because I am happy that the blogs are unblocked? Or is it because I happened to read the following article in London's Telegraph?

Brilliant men always betray their wives

Einstein's affairs should surprise no one, says Desmond Morris. It is all in the genius's genes

So Albert Einstein did not, after all, spend all his waking hours chalking up complex symbols on a blackboard. According to letters newly released this week, he devoted quite a bit of it to chasing the ladies. And with considerable success.

To many, the idea of Einstein having 10 mistresses does not fit the classical image of the great, remote genius. Why was he wasting his valuable time with the exhausting business of conducting a string of illicit affairs - affairs that would cause havoc with his family life, damaging especially his relationship with his sons?

The answer is that he, like many other intensely creative men, was over-endowed with one of the human male's most characteristic qualities: the joy of risk-taking.

Every creative act, every new formula, every ground-breaking innovation, is an act of rebellion that may - if successful - destroy an old, existing concept. So every time a brilliant mind sees a new possibility, it is faced with a moment of supreme risk-taking.

The new formula, the new invention, may not work. It may turn out to be a disaster. But the man of genius - such as Einstein - has the courage to plough ahead, despite the dangers, both on and off the intellectual field.

Not that Einstein is by any means an isolated instance. Indeed, far from being the exception he is closer to the norm where great men and sex are concerned.

During a presidential visit to Britain, John F. Kennedy once shocked an elderly Harold Macmillan when he complained to him that if he didn't have sex with a woman every day he suffered from severe headaches.

Kennedy was insatiable and impatient. He was reported to make love with one eye on the clock and to be through with a girl as soon as he had had sex with her in three different ways. If possible, he preferred two girls at once and seduced almost every young woman he met, from starlets to socialites, secretaries to stewardesses. Oh yes, and not forgetting strippers.

But then the compulsion in dominant males to take the highest of risks - a compulsion that seems to be innate - is one that dates back to prehistoric times.

Our arboreal relatives, the monkeys, simply fled up into the high branches when danger threatened and, while feeding, all they had to confront was a fruit or a berry. But when our early ancestors came down to live on the ground, they had to give up scampering aloft to escape and also had to face dangerous competitors and prey when turning to meat-eating as a new way of life.

To become successful hunters required a new personality trait - bravery. If the primeval hunters were to survive as carnivores they had to be courageous and take serious risks. The females of the tribe were too important to expose to these dangers - their vital reproductive role ruled them out. But the males were expendable. If, inevitably, a few of them were killed, the others could easily maintain the reproductive rate of the still very small tribes. So it was the males who evolved into the pack-hunters who would become genetically programmed as risk-takers and whose job it was to bring home the bacon.

Today, going to the office or the factory, or working on the farm - the modern equivalents of the ancient hunt - are far less hazardous, but the deeply ingrained urge to take risks still remains. Proof of this comes from the fact that men today are much more accident-prone than women. Throughout life women are less likely than men to die of a violent accident. By the age of 30, males are 15 times more likely to die of an accident than females.

For special males - the most adventurous ones - there are two choices. Either they can engage in risk-taking of the physical kind - join the SAS, get launched into space, or trek to the South Pole -or they can explore new ideas, create new art forms or invent new technologies and thereby change the way we all live.

Men with brilliant minds, whose creativity brings them enormous success, sometimes find themselves in a curious situation. They are so highly rewarded by society for their achievements that they are unable to limit their curiosity to new problems in their special fields. It starts to spill over into other areas.

Novel sexual experiences, for instance, suddenly seem irresistible. It is not the mating act itself that is so important - that varies very little. It is the thrill of the chase and the excitement of a new conquest that drives them on. Once the conquest has been made, the novelty of the affair soon wears off and another chase is begun. Each illicit episode involves stealth and secrecy, tactics and strategy, and the terrifying risk of discovery, making it the perfect metaphor for the primeval hunt.

Aiding and abetting these erotic adventures is the fact that the fame, power and wealth that these especially brilliant men have received as rewards for their achievements make them very attractive figures to the opposite sex. They may have a face like an angry hippopotamus but, thanks to their high status, they somehow manage to ooze sex appeal, much to the disbelief and dismay of the handsome failures who carry out menial tasks for them.

The great philosopher Bertrand Russell, who for all his undeniable intellectual brilliance could never have bedded a woman on looks alone, was described as suffering from ''galloping satyriasis". He claimed he could not see a sexual partner as sexually attractive for more than a few years, after which he had to make a new conquest.

He had affairs with a long line of women, a few of whom he later married. They included a young secretary, an MP's wife, the daughter of a Chicago surgeon, a researcher, an actress, a suffragette, several teachers, the wife of a Cambridge lecturer and his children's governess.

His private life was described by one biographer as ''a chaos of serious affairs, secret trysts and emotional tightrope acts that constantly threatened... ruinous scandal''. This was risk-taking of the highest order.

Picasso was also a sexual glutton, described by a friend as being obsessed with sex. There was a long procession of women in and out of his life: Fernande and Eva, Olga and Marie-Therese, Dora and Françoise, Alice and Jacqueline, and many more. He was quoted as saying: ''There's nothing so similar to one poodle dog as another poodle dog, and that goes for women, too.''

Similarly, his great friend, Gauguin, abandoned his family and moved to Tahiti where he was able to indulge in his passion for sexual adventures by welcoming a different local girl into his hut each night. Sometimes, he had as many as three in one night. And he continued his sexual odyssey even after his body was visibly disintegrating from the syphilis that killed him.

That genius of the cinema, Charlie Chaplin, was an even more active sex addict, capable, he said, of ''six bouts a night''. Whenever he was bored he would set about seducing a girl. He had four wives (three of them teenagers) and an endless procession of mistresses, some of them alarmingly young. His greatest thrill was the prospect of deflowering a virgin. When one of his virgins became pregnant at 16 he was forced to marry her. That marriage lasted only two years, during which time he enjoyed the company of five mistresses.

As a young man he visited brothels, but later was attracted to talented and important women and managed to seduce a cousin of Winston Churchill's, the daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill, actresses Paulette Goddard, Mabel Normand and Pola Negri, and William Hearst's girl-friend Marion Davies. However, his sexual risk-taking eventually led to his downfall and he was driven out of America as a ''debaucher'', his legacy forever tarnished.

But then men with great talent or power, from Elvis Presley to Bill Clinton, Toulouse-Lautrec to John Prescott, will, it seems, more often than not put their careers or family lives in jeopardy in order to satisfy the primeval hunter's thrill. It is, sadly, simply a by-product of the human exploratory urge, and one of the prices we - and wives the world over - have to pay for being the most innovative species on the planet.

(Desmond Morris is author of 'Watching - Encounters with Humans and other Animals' )

Masala Media Goofs Up -- Big Time!

A boy and girl from Chennai get married last Christmas. It's a fairytale wedding, after which they e-mail some wedding pictures to their friends in India as well as abroad. A few months later, the nightmare: their picture is splashed by Tehelka, which identifies them as 'Dawood's daughter and Miandad's son'. Mumbai Mirror did the same last morning, and today, Times in Hyderabad has followed suit!

It's not just a goof-up. It is -- as some not-so-polite editors would call it -- a fuck up!

Life After Blockspot.com

Imagine this situation: a bunch of terrorists, after lobbing grenades on the motorcade of a VIP, take shelter in a multi-storey apartment. There are some 50 houses in the block, and over 200 people live there, and the terrorists are hiding somewhere among them. What do the security forces do? Their reaction would depend on how well-trained they are, but there is one thing they will certainly try to do: flush out the terrorists with minimum civilian casualties. And there is one thing they will certainly not do: blow up the whole building in order to kill a handful of terrorists.

But that’s how mindless the department of telecommunications – the government, in short – has been. In order to restrict a handful of ‘hate’ blogs, it has blocked all blogs under the Google-owned Blogspot, Typepad and Geocities. According to website of Business Standard newspaper: “(The Government) has asked Internet Service Providers to shut down some 20 'objectionable' websites and blogs. The order was received by the legal departments in some ISPs. The notice is believed to have gone out on Friday last week. The DoT is of the opinion that some of these sites were being used by banned organisations to transmit messages to their colleagues.”

It further said – and that’s the most noteworthy bit: “The sites that were asked to be blocked include hindunity.org and exposingtheleft.blogspot.com.” So could the move be political? The definition of “national interest”, after all, depends upon the ideology of the party in power. In hardcore communist regimes, a casual remark against the ideology can be branded as anti-national and become punishable. In fact, such regimes leave no scope for remarks or comments.

Remarks and comments indicate that you have a working mind, and in such regimes, your mind should work in no way other than prescribed by the authorities. That is why even a giant like Google had to kneel before the Chinese authorities to filter the search engine. And also in China, in certain provinces, internet users are greeted by online images of two cartoon-cops – they pop up just to remind you that they are watching.

Are we on the way to becoming another China? Now that might amount to stretching the paranoia a bit too far, because Indians have overthrown the mightiest of political parties and forces the moment they got onto the people’s nerves. They gave Indira Gandhi a taste of defeat just when she thought she was invincible. Vidya Charan Shukla, Indira Gandhi’s information and broadcasting minister, audaciously sought to gag the press during the Emergency. Since then, the same V C Shukla has been begging for media’s attention but no one has really cared. Rajiv Gandhi sought to bring a Defamation Bill but eventually had to make peace with the media.

These politicians never succeeded because Indians are fiercely protective about their freedom and freedom of expression. The two go hand in hand. What is the point in being a free citizen if you can’t speak your mind? OK, some lunatic might misuse this freedom to shower abuses on another religion – but you cannot use this exception to clamp down on the freedom of speech of the public in general.

But what I still can’t figure is that if the government wanted to shut down certain websites and blogsites, why should all the bloggers be made to suffer? Doesn’t the department of telecommunications have enough expertise to single out the blacklisted blogs and shut them, instead of blocking the entire blogdom? Or is it the typical babu mentality, where a bureaucrat (who has perhaps never even used his computer keyboard) receives orders to block certain blogs, and the bureaucrat, not willing to take chances, issues orders to block all blogs.

Unless you are a serious blogger yourself or are familiar with blogging, you wouldn’t even realise how frustrating it is. It has been two days now and I have not been able to open my own blog! Yes, my own blog, which contains all my creative and sentimental outpourings over the past one year. All these months I worked hard on it – giving it a certain look, a certain character, a certain shape. And then one fine morning I am not able to access it!

Imagine the plight of the people who have been blogging for years now and who have carved out an identity for themselves as blogger-journalists. Such bloggers are usually honest and well-meaning – and often they are the true conscience-keepers of the nation. I realised their usefulness during the recent Mumbai blasts, when several popular blogsites quickly combined blasts-related news and first-hand accounts and amateur videos to provide first-class coverage of the tragedy. Newspapers could not have provided such comprehensive coverage because they cannot update by the hour; and TV channels, even though they update every hour, are too engrossed in their own ‘exclusivity.’

What is worse is that the blogs blocked in India are accessible abroad. In other words, a friend can see my blog, www.bytheganges.blogspot.com, in the United States, but the creator of the blog, that is me, cannot access his own blog in India. And I know it is accessible in the US, or elsewhere abroad, because I get notified, on my email, every time someone posts a comment on my blog. What a farcical situation! Meanwhile, the intelligent Indian blogger has found a way out: while I am still writing this, my friend Paresh writes me an email saying “Try clicking on “www.pkblogs.com/bytheganges”. And lo behold, my blog is opening up on the computer screen. I am thumbing my nose at you, Mr Government!

But why this backdoor entry? I love my blog and I don’t write anything anti-national there. I better get direct access to it sooner than later. Or else it would be the beginning of a long fight, where I would be joining fellow bloggers against the gagging of freedom of expression. But I still hope that by Sunday (I am writing this column on Wednesday), the blocking of blogs would have passed off as a bad dream and bloggers, including me, would have returned to work.

If You Don't See Me Here...

The department of telecommunications -- the government, in short -- seems to have ordered internet service providers to block Blogpost and a few other blog hosts. The move is supposedly aimed at clamping hate sites and possibly preventing potential terrorists to use the blog as a medium of communication -- this is what I gather from whatever little I've read so far: there is no official explanation.

I am in a funny situation: while I can access my blog -- or any other Blogspot address -- from the office, I am unable to open it from home, where I do most of my blogging. Tomorrow, if the ISP at my office also decides to block Blogspot, then I would completely lose control over my blog. I don't know how long this is going to last -- or is it that I won't be able to see On The Ganga Mail page again? At the moment I feel like a father whose son has been picked up for interrogation by the police -- as it often happens in Kashmir and in the Northeast -- and who does not know if he will ever see the son again. I better retrieve my posts while I can still do it and save them in a file; and name the file as "When I stood By the Ganges."

People in India are unlikely to read this post, but those abroad -- I mean those who have been reading me -- could you please drop a line on my e-mail so that I can store your IDs?

Target the Real Terrorists

I had always treated the blog as an outlet for my drunken or sentimental ramblings: a stray thought crosses your mind and you develop it into a 500- or a 1000-word post, depending on how strongly you feel about a subject. Since I am a professional journalist, I keep hardcore journalism out of my blog because I reserve that for my paper. For me, the blog is a personal space where I can write stuff that I can't write for the paper.

But the fact that blogs can be a powerful -- and a parallel -- means of journalism hit me only after the recent Mumbai blasts. A newspaper can come out only the next morning, while our nascent news channels -- even though they update themselves on an hourly basis -- have their own 'exclusivity' to tom-tom about. But the blogger is honest -- he is the layman who has been in the middle of it: he has no axe to grind, he has nothing to hide, he has nothing to tom-tom. That is why you could find the best coverage of the Mumbai blasts in blogdom -- I feel sorry for people who missed out on it because of their ignorance about blogs.

Within hours of the blasts, Neha Viswanathan put together various bloggers' accounts of the tragedy -- a challenging task indeed; while another blogger, Bongopondit, exposed the hollowness of the New York Times correspondent's reportage of the blasts. Sites like Desipundit and Ultrabrown also put together several first-hand accounts of the carnage.

I too wrote a post which, fortunately, was cited by a few of these well-known bloggers/blogsites. But the unfortunate part is that not many readers agreed with my point of view that terrorism is a menace that can be fought not by force but only by looking into the cause that turns a human being into a terrorist. A couple of them expressed their disagreement in their comments to my post, a few people emailed me to say that they did not agree with me, and some condemned me over telephone. But I still hold to my view: No one is born a terrorist. That does not mean I support terrorism: bloody hell, the woman I married barely two months ago could have been one of the victims -- she happened to be in Bombay that evening.

The point is, when a state or a superpower perpetrates terrorism, no one notices it. The United States has perpetrated terrorism and violence in every conceivable corner of the world, but no one talks about its murderous ways. It supplied weapons to Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war, but today it is all set to get Saddam executed after a totally meaningless war: nobody has found the weapons of mass destruction. So who accounts for the lives of innocent Iraqis killed in the war? Saddam is facing a trial, but will anyone ever try George Bush for killing hundreds of people in a name of deadly weapons that were never found? So does killing of human beings amount to terrorism only when the killing is ordered/plotted by Muslims?

Today, Indians are condemning terrorism and calling for retaliatory action against the terrorists. BJP leader L K Advani has called for stringent anti-terrorism laws. But they are forgetting one basic thing: the terrorist is not a recognisable criminal like the legendary Gabbar Singh or the other dacoits they show in the Hindi movies. In the movies, you kill the dacoit and you kill his menace. But the terrorist is an unknown face: he could even be your neighbour. And most committed terrorists are often suicide bombers: they are people who kill themselves to kill others. Do you think even the strictest of anti-terrorism laws will deter them? An anti-terrorism law can only make lives miserable of people who are booked under mere suspicion. And it doesn't take much to be under the needle of suspicion: you only have to be a Muslim who happens to have dowloaded Google Earth just to see how the satellite images of your country look like.

And even in cases where acts of terrorism have had a definite face, nothing has been -- or could have been -- done to bring the perpretators to book. Dawood Ibrahim is said to be the mastermind of the 1993 Mumbai blasts, but he continues to be part of folklore. The LTTE killed Rajiv Gandhi, but Prabhakaran is now talking politics with India. And the DMK, which was sympathetic to the LTTE's cause -- the same sympathy which led to the Gujral government being pulled by the Congress in 1997 -- is today a very close ally of Rajiv's widow Sonia. Prabhakaran, by the way, was promoted by Rajiv Gandhi at one point; just as Bhindranwale, the mastermind of terrorism in Punjab, was promoted by Indira Gandhi to take on the Akali Dal. Indira Gandhi had to pay with her life.

End of the day, it all boils down to petty politics and politicians and their egos and ambitions and their insecurities. Politicians are the real face of terrorism. The terrorist who actually kills is a poor, faceless man, and the man who gets killed is also faceless and poor. They only end up being part of statistics. In a few days from now, after the public anger has fully subsided, Tuesday's blasts in Mumbai will silently become part of a continuing chronology. Life will go on.

Lessons From Bleeding Bombay

I have never been to Bombay. I have been there only once, to attend the launch of a Yana Gupta calendar, but since the stay lasted exactly 24 hours, I don't count it as a stay. Still in those 24 hours, I packed in as much as I could.

Immediately after I landed in the afternoon, I went to the Juhu Chowpatty. I instantly recognised it! -- so many memorable songs have been shot there, including Humko tumse ho gaya hai pyaar kya karen (Amar Akbar Anthony) and Koi ladki mujhe kal raat sapne mein mili thhi (Seeta Aur Geeta). The night was calendar launch -- the kind of party you see in movies.

The next morning I wanted to visit a friend in Cuffe Parade. My hotel was in Juhu. He told me that the most convenient thing to do would be to take a autorickshaw to the Bandra station and take a local train. I went to the Bandra station, bought a Rs 7 ticket and waited for the train. The train arrived. It was so packed that I did not have the nerve to get in: I mean it was physically impossible to get in! I sadly walked away: the images of Amol Palekar and Tina Munim romancing in Baaton Baaton Mein kept flashing in my mind. The train to me was like a long-lost girlfriend who I could recognise instantly but she had disappeared even before I could call out her name.

Outside the Bandra station, I walked up to a man who I had known for 25 years -- the good, old Bombay taxiwallah! Dozens of heroes -- and dozens of times -- have sought his help to chase the heroine or the villain or to simply go to work. He put the metre down and we set off. On the way, we crossed a stretch which I had known for -- once again -- 25 years! The Marine Drive.

That's the thing about Bombay: you don't have to go to the city to see it. Those into Hindi movies have grown up in it without even setting foot on it. That's why it hurts even a Bihari or a Bengali when tragedy strikes far-off Bombay. It is the surrogate hometown of every Hindi movie-watcher.

God knows how many Amol Palekars and Tina Munims must have been travelling on the local trains, engaged in homeward journey romance, when the blasts ripped through them this evening. While I write this, the toll is 135. It is bound to go up.

The dead died an undignified and cruel death. The families are mourning them. The wounded are lying in hospitals in bloodied clothes. And the rest of the country is watching in shock. The word 'shock' is actually an exaggeration here: it should be reserved only for people who are directly linked to the tragedy -- parents whose son is still missing, wife who lost her husband, and so on. A tragedy, no matter how morbid, never chills your bone till you are actually connected to it.

As I watched the news of the blasts on TV, my heart went out to people living in far-flung areas of India who have a relative or relatives in Bombay. Phone-lines are jammed: there is no way they can get to know if their people are safe. So they are posting messages on TV channels, saying things like: "Vishal, are you OK? Please call me at 98-whatever. We are worried." The anxiety would make relatives die a hundred deaths before they can establish contact with their near and dear ones in Bombay. And there are bound to be hundreds of people who won't be forunate enough to say: "Ah, I have finally got through to him (or her)!" They might have to search through mangled bodies. What a disturbing thought!

But what was more disturbing to me, as I sat watching TV, was the fact that these channels, while flashing messages of anxious relatives, were also hosting gasbags who connected the blasts to possible derailment of Indo-Pak ties and held forth on how India should eliminate terrorism (and terrorists) and so on. I don't know whether to blame the channels or the gasbags who, unfortunately, belong to my fraternity.

Bombaywallah's don't need lecturing, they need assurance. Maybe they don't need the assurance as well, for the city is known to bounce back after every tragedy. But I find it in bad taste to give the blasts a political or a foreign affairs angle. If anyone needs lecturing, it is the police, which failed to react swiftly to the blasts. It was left to Bombaywallahs to cart fellow citizens to the hospitals: and they did that with great efficiency.

Now there is bound to be a great deal of talk on terrorism. The Bombay blasts will merely become a part of chronology. But does anybody really care to look at what actually precipitates terrorism? Nobody is a born terrorist. And one man's terrorist can be another man's freedom fighter. Every terrorist has a cause, and unless you look into the cause, you cannot finish terrorism. If you kill one terrorist, seven other will be born. That is why West Asia will never be peaceful. India too will never be 100 percent peaceful unless Kashmiris are allowed their dignity and a say in deciding their own future.

For that matter, America is never ever going to feel safe again: in the name of fighting terrorism the superpower carried out the worst kind of terrorism, as a result of which the son of every Iraqi killed by US planes must have pledged to take revenge someday. And they will succeed someday because of one simple reason: the US soldier indulges in the act of terrorism merely on the orders of the politician -- he values his own life at the same time, while the potential terrorist is guided either by passion or deep sense of personal revenge and does not care about giving up his life. And once you stop caring whether you live or die, you can do anything. Any damn thing.Why, 9/11 is an example: a bunch of determined men crushed both the balls of America, the economic superpower.

India should learn from 9/11 before it loses too many people. Nothing, after all, is worth bloodied bodies.