I find alternate histories great fun to read. They often try to correct some injustice, an impulse like John Lennon’s iconic song. Artistically, they achieve a most satisfying asymmetricity: close enough to what actually happened to twin reality, seen through a mind askew.

In the case of popular Bengali humorist Rajshekhar Basu, pen name Parashuram, who passed away in ‘60, his short story of what happened when Bengal colonized Britain is both a hysterical ancestor to Goodness Gracious Me and a dispiriting reminder of the fissures within India’s independence movement. Once again an artist tweaks in fiction those who escaped just desserts in real life. The story leaves me with an ashen taste even as I enjoy the Shakespearean reversals. It is the impotent shake of a thin intellectual fist.

‘The Scripture Read Backward’ was translated into English for Words Without Borders (thanks, blackmamba), a recent anthology with the gimmick that well-known authors would drag out of obscurity their favorite stories in languages other than English. Thank Amit Chaudhuri for this one. In the story, Britain is ruled by the mighty and paternalistic Indian government, and children vie to dress like civilized Bengalis. To this student of the British Raj, this mirror world has the joyful sting of first snowfall. Here’s reverse Macaulay, where Indian-written textbooks exhort the natives to uplift themselves out of their savagery. Here are competing newspapers, the resistance organ which sees the government as naked imperialists and the loyalist rag which believes it can do no wrong.

But Parashuram diagnoses the ills of the independence movement with particular bitterness. He pens Irishmen riven from their British neighbors due to ancient hatreds, unable to make common cause. Here are mirror princes, British royalty content to nosh on opium and sell their loyalty to the highest bidder. Here, most un-PC, is a feminist movement which demands its own liberation at a most inconvenient time. (One has to wonder what Parashuram’s wife had to say about this.) The story, short and pointed, is a time capsule of the issues of the day.

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Screw you, matrimonial site, for creating the most deceptive, ad network-mandated close button possible. It’s catty-corner to the standard location, the opposite of the standard color and as small as possible. For following me all over the Net if I’ve ever so much as breathed on the Times of India online. And for covering my favorite political blog in a shower of fake marigolds. Stuff it like Vijay Raaz.

A cousin who’s recently come to the U.S. tells me how he resolves his cable billing problems. He calls the cable company, which punts him to a translation Web site. The site connects him to a Hindi speaker who’s actually a Tamilian with a thick accent in Hindi. But the Tamilian understands my cousin’s Indian English and can fake a passable American accent. So the cousin speaks in Indian English, the translator speaks in American English, the cable rep listens, and then the whole thing reverses: one language, three paychecks.

In Bombay I used to have trouble with the customer service reps for Airtel and my ISPs. They could never understand my American English accent, and I feared my Indian English accent would seem fake and insulting over any length of time. I would explain the issue in Hindi, but their supervisors had banned them from replying in that language, because that would be logical. Instead they were forced to reply in English. This is how we got business done.

At the time it reminded me of the absurdity of speaking Hindi to impress uncles in America, who’d reply in English because they wanted you to know they were educated. Or turning up in a fancy kurta to a Delhi wedding reception, where invariably the other male guests would be in Western suits. Lately my cousin’s switched from Delhi business casual to cargo shorts. Half-pants aren’t a class marker in Silicon Valley, whereas exercising my Californian rights got me tossed out of private clubs in Calcutta and Bombay. (’Don’t you own a pair of pants?’ grumbled my hosts. It was the principle of the matter.)

In the Bay Area, an investor once turned up in sandals, old track pants, a ratty t-shirt peppered with holes and a shattered toenail wrapped in Scotch tape. He’d just parked a blue Ferrari at a coin-op meter.

Related post: ‘Speak English like James Bond’

[Putting up some of my recent columns; this one was for the Sunday Business Standard]

Many DVD-enthusiasts I know have begun wading in the vast ocean that goes by the generic name “World Cinema”, and one of the first things they discover is the Three Colours trilogy, made by the great Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski (whose films are as simple and direct as his first name is daunting). But of late, I've noticed a growing interest among friends in an earlier Kieslowski work: the 10-part Dekalog (The Decalogue), which was made as a series of television episodes in the late 1980s. The reason for this interest, apparently, is director Vishal Bharadwaj, who has repeatedly referred to Dekalog as being a huge influence on his career as a film-buff and filmmaker.

Visually and thematically speaking, there is little to link Bharadwaj’s recent films (the energetic Kaminey in particular) with Kieslowski’s work, but that’s one of the charming things about movie influences – they don’t have to be blindingly obvious, with clearly connecting dots and “Aha!” moments. (Is anyone else fed up of the repeated channeling of Tarantino and Guy Ritchie whenever Bhardwaj’s latest is discussed?) It’s a reminder that entirely disparate films and filmmaking styles can call out to each other across space and time.

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On the Daily Show tonight, Aasif Mandvi effervesced over the Chandrayaan mission which found water on the moon. His naked Indian triumphalism was simple reversal humor: he gloated over NASA providing tech support to ISRO and looked forward to complaining about immigrant American cab drivers in Delhi (’Where’d you learn to drive? Jersey?’) and badly-accented call center workers pretending to be Rajiv from Bangalore.

But look, it’s happening already. Bandra and areas in other cities are awash with foreigners who are economic migrants. Some were given the choice of losing their jobs in America or keeping them in India. In Bombay I met NRIs and second genners running outsourcing houses, but also a British makeup artist working in Bollywood and an American stock photographer filling the sudden need for photos of brown businesspeople on cell phones. Through friends I heard of an American linguist for Wikipedia going through the time-honored ritual of flat-hunting in Andheri and complaining about the lack of hot water. Strugglers all [citation needed].

I find Hollywood’s outcry around the arrest of Roman Polanski for child rape to be bizarre. We seem to carry the idea that celebrity forgives all. In the case of Maya Arulpragasam, lyrics glorifying suicide bombers are forgiven by her musical excellence and her standard-issue musician fuzzy-mindedness about politics. In her case, the argument goes, you can’t take her politics seriously because neither does she.

Except that she’s kept up a sustained effort to highlight the plight of Tamil Sri Lankans on TV shows, MySpace and her Twitter feed. I applaud this; she’s gotten smarter about focusing on atrocities by the Sri Lankan government rather than egging on the retaliatory killing of civilians.

In Polanski’s case, many entertainment luminaries including Salman Rushdie (thanks, Joolz), the government of France, and several of my friends on Facebook argue that the director has paid for his crime, and the incident is old. In any case the victim has both received a monetary settlement and publicly asked to make the matter go away. Well, fair enough; but let’s make that argument in a court of law, the same one Polanski skipped out on to start his life in France.

Polanski is accused of plying a 13-year-old with champagne and sedatives in a hot tub and raping her vaginally and anally over her terrified protests. Had that 13-year-old been your daughter, would you be satisfied with sentencing the director to time served, 42 days in jail, and dismissing the matter? The state has a significant interest in setting a deterrent against this crime, regardless of whether the victim now wants to press charges. It may still be that a judge, looking at the facts, decides the victim has received restitution, Polanski adequately punished and the case ought to be closed. But that determination must be made in the right setting, not the court of public opinion.

We weigh celebrity crimes against the good they’ve done in death penalty cases. History is rife with examples of good and abject evil coexisting in the same men. When the state weighs whether to execute someone, mitigating factors ought to be taken into account. They should also be considered in the sentencing phase of a rape trial. But no number of good films can justify the bypass that the lions of Hollywood now demand.

On one hand, the man artistically arranged flickering lights to nudge people’s neurons into a cascade of pleasure. On the other, he drugged someone’s daughter and fucked her up the ass. Let him face the consequences.

Update: Via Rahul and Prem Panicker comes this Orwell gem:

If Shakespeare returned to the earth to-morrow, and if it were found that his favourite recreation was raping little girls in railway carriages, we should not tell him to go ahead with it on the ground that he might write another King Lear…

It will be seen that what the defenders of Dali are claiming is a kind of benefit of clergy. The artist is to be exempt from the moral laws that are binding on ordinary people. Just pronounce the magic word “Art,” and everything is O.K…. It is also O.K. that Dali should batten on France for years… So long as you can paint well enough to pass the test, all shall be forgiven you. [Orwell]

Fox TV's musical-themed Glee has a character named Mr. Figgins played by Iqbal Theba who gets blackmailed for his Mumbai Air vascular embolism commercial.

Dev Benegal's "Road, Movie" had its world premiere last Friday at the Toronto International Film Festival. Benegal's "English, August" is a top-ranking Hindie flick of mine and I was stoked to see his latest offering. Once I found out that the director and the cast were coming to the show, I nearly died crushing.

This oddly-titled film follows Vishnu (a gloriously dimpled Abhay Deol) as he runs away from his, like, totally uncool Atman Hair Oil inheritance, in a pick-up-truck-cum-cinema. Satish Kaushik is wonderful as the indispensable mechanic. He gives Deol a sprint for the lead and stole the show for me. Benegal's ode to silver magic deserves the "Cinema Paradiso" comparisons. Sitting in a cinema and watching shots of much-loved Hindi film songs being shown on a makeshift screen in a desert gave me goose bumps. I'mma also throw in "The Darjeeling Limited" as a peer film, if only because of the journey-to-self-discovery stylings and the perfectly saturated colours.

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In ‘06-’07 while living in Bombay I was entirely promiscuous about my movie choices, seeing anything and everything. I was young, I needed the funny; in polite company I will never admit to have seen mo’f'ing Ankahee.

But I did. Here are a few of my favorite songs from shitty movies. In a sense this is the story of most of Bollywood, an industry which churns out remarkably catchy hooks, effective personal trainers, gorgeous actors and absolutely crappy scripts.

‘Tumse Yoon Milenge’ from Ankahee (Unsaid):

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Exhibit A in great moments in concert artwork: LIVE OK PLEASE on Oct. 23.

The only time I ever see these names in Amrikan life is on the specialty tea board at the local café: Kalimpong (hello The Inheritance of Loss!). Assam Golden Tip. Darjeeling, of course. Sri Lanka Ratnapura.

It is still freaky how these people are required to memorize your face and order. The machinations of a BigCo are polluting pretty shiksa brains with my Assam Golden Tip

At a liquor superstore the other day I saw a gin made from Rangpur limes. Have gotten used to Bombay gin and India pale ale, but anything-dash- pur still jars. Beergaon and Whiskypur.

Related posts: Brews before hues, Teabagged, Building the pyramids, Boston tea party, Tealuxe, Tablas against teabags

A reply to Hartosh Singh Bal's piece "Oh, For a Book to Ban" on the Open magazine website last week:

Hartosh, I'm one of the authors on the list you provide — a list you judge as not to your reading taste even though you have evidently not bothered to read a page of the work of any. I thank you at least for citing your friend's "strong recommendation" of my book Arzee the Dwarf, but despite having got off lighter than the others — for which gesture I am ever in your debt, for we novelists are calculating creatures — I think there may be a few things I want to say in response.

You begin with the banning of Rushdie's Satanic Verses two decades ago and declare: "Today you would be hard put to find Indian fiction in English that anybody would want banned." The banning of Satanic Verses was, it is generally agreed today, a foolish and knee-jerk action by the Indian government, and India remains one of the few countries where it is still illegal to sell the book. Despite the hysteria and controversy surrounding the book upon its publication, no western government thought it fit to ban it.

So it surprises me that an act of such randomness on the part of a government (and whatever the debate about what governments can or can't do, it's generally agreed they're not very good when it comes to judging fiction) should for you become the litmus test for judging the ambition of contemporary fiction. Had the Indian government not banned Satanic Verses (and this could easily have been the case), the book would still have been as good or bad as it is. Only you would then have had to actually read it to have anything to say about it, while now you at least know it was banned, and therefore is good.

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An interesting passage in the leaked Gen. McChrystal report (plaintext) on how to win the Afghanistan war, a report which advises getting out from behind blast walls and protecting civilians:

By the dry phrase ‘encourage Pakistani countermeasures in Afghanistan or India,’ I assume the report means ’suicide attackers with assault rifles, grenades and truck bombs.’

Related posts: 8 years later, Retro ‘Express’, The yellow badge of courage

Ranjit Kapoor’s film Chintuji had a very low-key theatrical release earlier this month; almost predictably, it lasted only a week. This is sad, for Chintuji is a charming movie that deserved a bigger audience – and probably would have been appreciated by that bigger audience if it had got the right kind of publicity (I don’t think any of the major newspapers carried reviews). I watched it on Tata Sky’s “Showcase” yesterday, though I don’t know how long it will show on that channel either.

Chintuji is a couple of films in one. The better of these is a parable about small-town life in danger of being corrupted by the world outside. This isn't, of course, a new theme but it's done here with restraint and economy, right from the very compact opening scenes where we are introduced to the residents of a town called Halbahedi. They turn to the camera and speak with quiet pride about their town; they know they don’t have all the conveniences of modern life (they get electricity only eight out of 24 hours a day, the local newspaper is published only once a week) but things will gradually improve – and, after all, “baaki sab theek hai”. One of them pointedly says, “You city-dwellers think of us as a village, but we’re not, we’re a town.” It’s a beautiful, idyllic place and there’s even a small airplane landing strip nearby – so what if it isn’t technically theirs, being named for a larger, neighboring town called Trihalla?

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