Music sans Frontiers..

A disclaimer first. When I say `music’, I refer to Indian, ie Hindi film music up to the 70’s - and the other `light’ music that comprises ghazals, geet and the stuff that Coke Studio comes up with. So if you’re a purist, and sneer at this form of escapist entertainment, this post is not for you.

Mehdi Hasan’s death came as no surprise – he should have gone ten years ago. No human, certainly not one as great as this maestro, should have had to suffer so much. Watching him in obvious pain and misery, lying on a hospital bed with tears rolling down his cheeks was heart wrenching in the extreme.

But it brought to an end an era. Mehdi Hasan stood alone. Not Ghulam Ali, not Jagjit Singh nor anyone that followed came anywhere close. Just as Sidney Poitier paved the way for the likes of Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman, so too Mehdi Hasan  was the pioneer for a host of singers to follow.  But none could match his mastery of the medium, and certainly no one had the mellifluous if somewhat gravelly voice that was simply a gift of God!

The worst thing that partition did to us was that it robbed us of so much of the sheer joy that only music can bring. The least that Nehru and Patel could have done at the bargaining table was to insist of Jinnah that the only pre-condition they had was that Nur Jehan would remain in India! Sadly, the queen of melody migrated to Pakistan, and we lost out. An apocryphal story that did the rounds in the 70’s had Gen Zia exclaiming “You can have all of Kashmir, just give us Lata Mangeshkar!”  Lata is no doubt the nightingale of India, and Asha is anytime as good – but Nur Jehan was Nur Jehan - the malika-e-tarranum!

Our misfortune was worse confounded by the cussedness of the Indian government that simply refused to play any music from across the border on All India Radio! The only occasion we actually heard them was when they performed in India. But for every Abida Parveen who managed to come across, there were so many Tina Sahnis, Naiyarra Nurs and Tahira Syeds of whom we remained unaware!  Just listen to Malika Pukhraj and her daughter Tahira Syed sing Hafeez Jalandhari’s `Abhi toh main jawan hun’ in tandem, and you’re transported into a wonderland that no government has the right to deny you.

Indian film music of that era also gave us such sublime poetry – from the sheer genius of Sahir Ludhianvi to the magical moods of Kaifi Azmi – to the Hindi greats Shailendra and Neeraj. But what of Ahmed Faraz (if he had only written `Ranjish hi sahi’ and nothing else, his place in the hall of fame would still be guaranteed) and the maverick Ibn-e-Insha (Inshaji, utho ab kooch karo), sigh..

So when the lead guitarist of the Pakistani rock band `Strings’ plays `Saare jahaan se achcha Hindustan hamara’ on his guitar, or Gulzar writes

Ankhon ko koi visa nahin lagta

Sapnon ki sarhad koi nahin

Bandh aankhon se chala jata hun

Roz milne Mehdi Hasan se..

you can just hold back a tear and lament the wealth, the khazana that you have lost..

Bacon versus the Bishop of Winchester

What makes a complete man?

`Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man’ said Sir Francis Bacon, English author, courtier and philosopher (1561 - 1626).

William of Wykeham, the Bishop of Winchester (1324 - 1404) and the founder of Oxford, believed `Manners makyth man', which even today stand as the motto of Oxford.

I think I’ll go with Bacon. Reading is one habit I’m fortunate to have acquired, and which continues to be a source of such blessed comfort. I’ve passed it down to one of my kids, which is a 50% achievement – and if Sid and Sowmya finish the one Wodehouse that I have mandated for each of them, I guess I’ll be able to live with myself...

Books are a haven, an escape, an adventure – a gift you can open again and again. The idea of censorship and banning of books – and the extreme burning of books is, therefore, anathema to my senses, and vitiates the very idea of civilisation.  

The death of Ray Bradbury last week set me thinking. Basically a science fiction writer, he will best be remembered for his seminal work `Farenheit 451’. Bradbury talks of a society in which books are illegal. Farenheit 451, the title, refers to the temperature at which paper catches fire. A society that is so overwhelmed by television and short attention spans that books are seen as a threat to public safety and happiness. Books seen as dangerous and offensive to minority groups are burnt! 

The antithesis of a Utopian society is a dystopian one. It is a society marked by utter repression and control, in which suspicion and coercion are the norms. A dystopian society is one in which the state or a ruling oligarchy takes away the rights of its citizens for ‘their own good’.

In China, the banning of books is an ancient ritual.  Germany under the Nazis used to light bonfires of books written by Jewish authors. Iran, under Khomeini, passed a death sentence on Salman Rushdie for writing `The Satanic Verses’. The government of India has an abysmal record of kowtowing to religious extremists of all hues and shades and banning books.

Today we are bombarded by highly sophisticated propaganda from all sides. TV anchors rave and rant, so called activists spew dangerous nonsense while purporting to speak on behalf of citizens like you and me, and even in the printed word, considered viewpoints are losing out to the Chetan Bhagats! 

The protest against internet censorship by masked `activists’ is another matter. Kapil Sibal’s puerile attempts aside, the plain fact is that today it is well nigh impossible to try and block the internet where thousands of hours of video and terabytes of data are uploaded every minute! 

Do the protesters have a case at all? How much freedom of speech is ok? Would you allow a man to scream “Fire!” inside a crowded theatre as an extension of his freedom of speech? With freedom comes responsibility - no freedom can, therefore, be absolute.  

 PS. A word to the `Anonymous’ hackers - Guy Fawkes, whose mask has become the symbol of your protest — was never ever Anonymous.

The Angst of Aamir Khan..

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Of the Bollywood Khans, only Aamir has any pretence to an intellect. Of the others, Salman is basically an imbecile on steroids, and Shahrukh is no more than a performing monkey! Why then does Aamir’s well intentioned crusade on TV leave one rather cynical?

Satyam-eva-jayate (Truth-alone-triumphs) has seen four episodes by now, and is already beginning to drag. Despite Aamir’s copious tears (he’s paid a whopping Rs 4 crores to shed them every Sunday) the angst looks a bit put on, the outrage of the studio audience a tad staged, the solutions a bit too pat, and – as was the case of the `branded versus generic medicines’ debate – the issues too dangerously over simplified!

True, the show seems to have captured the public imagination, and apparently some somnolent state governments have stirred awake to issues that are certainly not novel.  

My problem lies in the over kill. The reactions of the studio audience are pitch perfect – from tears to shock to anger to disgust, it’s all too pat. The background score too is tailored to effectively reflect these emotions, and the live performance at the end of the show, meant to convey a `feel good’ factor, is too `Bollywood’.  In one episode, a winsome Sridevi sashayed on to the stage, and actually signed a pledge or a petition of sorts!

  

Heightened emotion makes for great television viewing. Cathartic revelations, shocking testimonies, interviews with experts, cutaways of a shocked or tearful studio audience, with the host himself sometimes wiping away a tear or covering his mouth or shaking his head in disbelief – all accompanied by a weepy background score. Great! But there’s the danger of the whole thing looking too `put on’, of a fictional element intruding into a non fictional show!

The other – and major – problem I have with the show is that it is blatantly and totally one sided! The `culprits’ have no say, no chance to offer a different perspective if not a defence. A husband or a doctor is painted jet black, and that’s it – surely if his side was given a hearing, things would appear more balanced! The show pillories its targets so relentlessly and ham-handedly, I for one was left with a feeling closer to fatigue rather than outrage.

Aamir Khan is being touted as India’s Oprah Winfrey, but in terms of impact it’s too early to say how much his show will actually achieve. None of what he projects is really news to his audience, nor is there a feeling that a workable solution to the problem is being offered!  The viewers, therefore, are left only slightly more sensitised to problems that are already quite familiar. Asking them to text in their answers to `Yes’ or `No’ questions that are so obviously loaded is, at best, infantile!

 Aamir Khan may be a star with a conscience, but maybe he’s pandering to a nation that mistakes its anxieties for a conscience!  

The Green Green Grass of Home...

After leaving the Army, I did a year’s stint in Iraq, setting up mobile communication towers in the immediate aftermath of the war.  During my interactions with the British Army troops, I was surprised to see their total apathy towards their homeland, and the fact that almost none of them chose `back home’ as a place to finally settle down. They were mostly reservists, and served in Iraq for only six months. This included a two week holiday which they could spend anywhere in the world. Most of them `paired up’ (seriously!), and flew off to exotic locales like Thailand, Bali or Philipines. Going back to Blighty to look up the family, or to re-connect in any way was unthinkable!

Having travelled a fair bit around the world, I cannot think of any place other than India, my beloved Poona, to come back to – chaotic traffic, noise, heat and dust notwithstanding. Be it howsoever humble, et al... 

Settling abroad? Not the best option certainly. American Born Confused Desis (ABCD’s) may sound harsh, but the confusion is very real. Sheena Iyengar, the acclaimed author of `The Art of Choosing’ describes it beautifully.  As the blind daughter of immigrant Sikhs to the US, she says she was always in a state of conflict.  "I had a dual identity — I was a Sikh at home, and an American at school. We are told at school 'Just pursue your dreams, do what you want'; that you get to decide what you can eat, what you get to wear, who you would marry. As a Sikh, I was taught the importance of doing your duty, doing what your parents, your God said".

The parents are Indian, the children are American – if that isn’t a recipe for conflict, I don’t know what is! How many generations does it take for the transformation to be complete – for a Piyush to become a Bobby Jindal, for a Namrata Randhawa to become a Nikki Haley?

My nephews and nieces are abroad, and I’ve seen this confusion first hand. Quite naturally, the parents want to retain their Indian-ness, and pass it onto their children. Rohit and Sumi perform rituals and pujas in Seattle and Chicago which they never dreamed of at Poona. Amit and Nisha go to such great pains and harbour loads of patience to instill Indian values (as distinct from Hindu rituals, mind you) into Alisha and Neel.  But when they reach the stage, as they surely will when the kids grow up, and they will have to let go – where will the kids go? Is there a base, a safe haven to come back to, and if so, where is it??

The other day, I was on my way from Viman Nagar to FC Road. As we crossed Jehangir Hospital, I looked up and sighed wistfully `So this is where it all began..’ Barely a kilometer away, I crossed the ghat at Sangam bridge, `And this is where it will all end..’  The start point and end point stood fixed and unmoved. And in between lay a lifetime’s journey – meandering, maddening, and yet so intricately balanced..  Today, so rich in all my yesterdays, and tomorrow – well, tomorrow’s another day, another promise... 

The future, as Richard Church says, owes all to that past - as every graveyard shows...

Guzaara Nahin Hota!

The biggest attraction of being posted to Udhampur (and these were the pre satellite TV days), was the access one had to Pakistani television. The choice was between Doordarshan and PTV, and it was a one horse race really. All discussions centred around PTV serials, and mess functions were scheduled to make sure they didn’t clash with `Dhoop Kinaare’. Rahat Kazmi had our ladies weak in their knees, and Marina Khan was the heart throb of all young officers (my personal favourite was Anji, but that’s another story).  A small aside here – how can the Pakistani public, reared on such brilliant serials as `Waris’, `Dhoop Kinare’ and `Raat’ now lap up India’s saas-bahu baloney?

Anyway, one of the most heart warming programs I saw on PTV was a short story called `Guzaara Nahin Hota’. A middle class couple, let's call them the Ahmeds, over dinner discuss the problems of making ends meet – school fees, food prices going through the roof, how difficult it is to stretch the monthly pay packet to 30 days.. Ahmed shakes his head ruefully, and mutters `Guzaara nahin hota..’ . The next day, he runs into an old schoolmate of his, driving around in a plush car, and seemingly quite well off. They proceed  for a cup of coffee, and try and catch up on the different paths that they have taken in life. Ahmed is shocked when he hears the rich guy confide in him “Yaar, kya karein, guzaara nahin hota!”.  He talks of fuel prices, high maintenance costs, eating out etc... As Ahmed narrates this to his wife back home,  a simpleton from his village lands up at his doorstep – he has been told that he can expect a simple bed n breakfast at Ahmed’s house, as that’s the custom of the village. Reluctantly, Ahmed opens up his house to the simpleton – who is dirt poor, and obviously on hard days. But he seems blissfully unaware of the difference in their status, and is irritatingly cheerful about his lack of means. Surprised, Ahmed asks his `guest’ “Achcha batao, TUMHARA guzaara ho jata hai?”, to which the man responds “Bada sona guzaara ho jata hai ji!”. Seeing his host’s quizzical expression, he explains “Bookha main kabhi soya nahin, beemaar kabhi padha nahin, bachchay bilkul theek hain – bada sona guzaara ho jata hai!”

This afternoon, I had a plumber over to repair a leaking faucet. I was watching the England – West Indies test match in High definition. The plumber gazed in rapt admiration at my 55 inch LED TV and Home theatre, and asked me how much it cost. When I told him, he shook his head with a wry smile and replied that that was what his whole house in his village had cost him!

Face it. Mukesh Ambani has his `Antilla’, and my plumber has his hutment. We faujis lie somewhere in between, much closer to mother earth than to Ambani's hideous 27 storey monstrosity. There are just as many people above you on the ladder of `affluence’ as there are below you. You can look up and feel miserable or you can look down and feel elated.

My friend bought a BMW for the cost of a modest flat, I bought my Home Theatre for the cost of a modest car, so does one look up or down? If he has four times the `assets’ that I have, what does that translate into – does he have four pegs of single malt for every single peg that I down? Does he own four cars to my single Honda City? Does he have four houses to my one apartment? The truth is that beyond a point, the law of diminishing returns begins to apply quite rapidly. The hike in life style, if any, is only marginal. The vintage of the Single Malt may escalate from 12 to 21, the Absolut vodka may be replaced by Grey Goose or Belvedere, but that’s about it..

The secret is to gain a sense of perspective. Your Home Theatre may equal someone’s entire household, yet someone’s flashy limousine may equal your own. Should you be feeling large or small? Neither – just count your blessings.

If, like the poor man from the village, you never go to bed hungry, enjoy reasonable good health, and your kids are doing fine, then God has been kind, BADA SONA GUZAARA HO RAHA HAI!!

          

A rose by any other name - Samina responds...

Here is Samina Rizwan's charming response to my reference to her in my last post. Apart from being heart-warmingly delightful, it is a MUST READ for all Gen Next girls bent on hyphenated last names.. (Samina is a Pakistani friend, who heads Oracle's Middle East and N Africa region - she is currently based at Dubai) ..

 

Harish, Naming conventions amongst us South Asians remain yet more exasperating, although don’t make that claim before the Chinese, who surely outdo us in complexity.

My mother (Ammi) was named Zahoor (one of those names, like Krishna, carried by both men and women). Story goes she fell ill as a child and was renamed Roohina (the spiritual one). At school she was registered as Roohina Akhtar, her last name having nothing to do with her father's (Col Dr. Mohammad Sharif of the Indian Medical Corps) or her mother's (Badshah Begum). Her sisters had different last names, in fact not last names at all since `Zubeida Begum’ merely conveys something like Lady Zubeida, rather like Kaur establishes the gender. Thus did I come to begin life as Samina Akhtar, taking Ammi's last name, not my dad’s.

My Dadijan didnt get along with anyone, she was opinionated they say. I was her first grandchild, and a first girl in my dad's family of 5 boy siblings. Dadijan (whom I called Ammijan and my dad called Bey-ji), was ecstatic to have me (also unusual for a Punjabi village woman who typically abhors a girl child!), and called me "Ainie" or `my eyes’. To this day, in our village, I hear people calling after me "Ainie?" and I look around me for a little girl with that name. Anyway, I hated not being my father's daughter, so somewhere between 7 and 8 years of age, while re-registering at school yet again due to a posting, I took it upon myself to write my name as Samina Rafi. Ammi kept introducing me to teachers and sundry as Samina Akhtar but I knew better. The Rafi stuck, especially after I arrived at my real childhood home, the Convent of Jesus and Mary in Murree, I am told a replica of the same name school in Simla, and introduced myself to Mother Mary Andrew as Samina Rafi.

As Defence Attache to the US, we were the most `regular’ named people amongst the Pakistanis. We were `The Rafis’ now, Ammi having learnt her lesson and converted to Roohina Rafi and naming my younger siblings Haroon, Umar and Ayesha Rafi. Btw, there is a story to my dad’s name Rais Ahmed Rafi too which I shall tell later (no one in his family was a Rafi prior to his birth, and all his brothers were subsequently Rafi being named after him, not their father...STRANGENESS!).  Anyway, life name-wise was simple in the USA....and then I got married.

Rizwan was Raja Rizwanullah Khan. None of those were last names. I fretted over this aplenty, unbeknownst to all, since I was just `Amreeka returned’, where a last name would define you, only the social security number doing better. I asked Rizwan what I should call myself and he, taken aback, said "Samina!?". Then I asked "what is your last name?" and again he was taken aback "Do I need one? I am Raja Rizwanullah Khan - isnt that enough?" Rizwan was so adorably uncluttered in mind and heart, bless him.

Short short, I experimented with Samina Raja, Samina Rizwanullah, Samina Khan, even considered Samina Rafi but it was bad enough everyone in the Air Force referred to my husband as "Rafi's son in law", I didn’t want to stretch that one further. I arrived at Samina Rizwanullah, sounded perfect for a future political career, until I became employed by Oracle. At the time, the Balasubramaniams and Venkateshwarans of IT had not yet arrived, so Rizwanullah was terribly complex. I cut off the tail and redefined myself yet again - Samina Rizwan. My children had already arrived, at least the older two had, and their fate was sealed too after exasperated considerations of this or that version by me and characteristically calm responses from Razi "Yaar, Khan kar do, Rizwan kar do, Raja kar do...mere hi bachey hain!". Raja Taimur Khan, Andaleeb Rizwan. TK and Billu carry their own cross now - what to do with the Raja prefix!

I end on an anecdote. In Arabic, the word Samina means FAT, FERTILE. Although it is embarrassingly relevant to me in both instances, my mother did not intend to name me it. She meant to name me PRECIOUS, NAYAB - which is an Arabic word using the alphabet "the" not "se". Thamina is my name - Precious, Priceless, Valuable - that’s moi! Unfortunately, in Urdu, while I write it with a "the", the pronunciation remains more Hindi-like, 'se'. Now, in the Middle East, I invariably end up starting my talks and presentations with "Although my card says Samina, let me tell you my mother did love me and did not mean to say I would be fat.....my name is.....".

A rose etc... Touche!

A rose, by any other name...

Hindu marriage rituals conclude with the `Bidaai’ ceremony, in which the bride, as she leaves her parent’s house, tosses behind her shoulder, handfuls of grain (rice, mostly). This is meant to symbolise her `returning’ all the `ANN’ (grain) that she has partaken of in a household where she was basically merely a guest. My daughter, never much of a `rice person’, wondered if, in her case, it wouldn’t be more appropriate for her to toss legs of tandoori chicken instead!

Another appendage that newly married girls are expected to toss or leave behind them is their family name/last name. My generation did it without a murmur, but the present lot seems totally reluctant to let go. How will my facebook friends recognise me with the new name, is the refrain most commonly heard. I mean SERIOUSLY? The compromise, if one can call it that, is that most asinine of concoctions – the hyphenated last name! Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan, Madhuri Dixit-Nene!  Heaven and angels of mercy protect us!!   

But what can you say to a generation of feminists where Angelina Jolie insists she is an ACTOR, not an ACTRESS! Really?? And what of the scores of salivating hulks gleefully getting off on clips from `The Original Sin’ who will swear to the contrary?? But let’s leave that for another day..

Last names, family names, surnames, call them what you will, have an interesting diversity. Take the case of Pakistani cricketers.  Apparently, the first name of the father becomes the last name of the son. Consider. Nazar Mohamed’s son was Mudassar Nazar, Jehangir Khan’s son was Majid Jehangir. Remember the `Seamless Pakistani’ game suggested by Shashi Tharoor, which consists of seeing how many Pakistani cricketers' names one can string together so that the surname of one becomes the next player's first name, and so on, till you run out of possibilities. Tharoor came up with 11: Saqlain Mushtaq Mohammad Wasim Akram Raza Hasan Iqbal Qasim Umar Akmal. 

Col Qurban Muhammed’s daughter is Aasia Qurban, who is married to Zafar Mahmood Nadeem. While Aasia retains her last name of Qurban (as do all her 4 sisters!), her kids are Haider Zafar and Lamia Zafar. 

Samina’s case is even more interesting. The daughter of Air Cde Rais Rafi, she married Rizwanullah Khan, and became Samina Rizwan – now while her sons are Taimur Khan and Bilal Khan, her daughters are Andaleeb Rizwan and Sabine Rizwan!

South Indians, of course, are a law onto themselves. My good friend Joseph Mathew’s son is Mathew Joseph, and his grandson will again revert to Joseph Mathew!  Shyam and Satish are brothers, with Katathil and Rajeeva being their middle/last names. Now Shyam calls himself KR Shyam, whereas Satish calls himself S Rajeeva! The problem doesn’t end there – Shyam’s daughter is Sowmya Katathil, whereas Satish’s daughter is Sandhya Satish! Apparently, one can take one’s pick from your dad’s first name to his middle name to the name of your ancestral village! A true blue Keralite of course will have his entire postal address as part of his name!

In Maharashtra, ones father’s first name automatically becomes ones middle name – hence you have Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar, Sunil Manohar Gavaskar and, since I was born and bred in this great Maratha state, Harish Bararsilal Puri! My kids, to their everlasting chagrin, will always be Puja Harish Puri and Siddharth Harish Puri.  Of small mercy is the fact that they're not in Sri Lanka, where a certain left arm seamer goes by the name of Warnakulasuriya Patabendige Ushantha Joseph Chaminda Vaas!

Bongs, being Bongs, will spell Basu as B-A-S-U, but pronounce it as BOSHU! For them, Bandopadhyay equals Bannerjee, Chattopadhyay equals Chatterjee and Mukhopadhyay equals – you guessed it – Mukherjee!  But since these guys have gifted mankind the most heavenly of sweets in Mishti Doi and Nulen gur, I have long since forgiven them ALL their sins, the latest of which goes by the name of Mamata Banerjee (or is it Bandopadhyay?).

A rose by any other name, did you say, Shakespeare sahib??