Finding Malgudi in the Mediterranean, with Victoria Hislop

Since I can’t physically holiday on the Mediterranean this summer, I’m doing the next best thing and reading about Mediterranean holiday locations.

I reread The Last Dance, by Victoria Hislop, a collection of short stories I’d picked up while travelling in Greece many years ago. I’m loving it. Because these vignettes of Greek village life could so easily have been set in RK Narayan’s Malgudi.

These are stories of a simple, happy people, living among friends and family members they have known for generations. They sometimes get into fracas with each other, but these frictions are quickly and happily resolved.

There is a story of the Malkis brothers who fight over an inherited street café, split it down the middle, but then make up and reunite. There is the story of Claire from Yorkshire, who is engaged to Andreas the Cypriot, who learns about her fiancé’s family and to feel at home in this place where it is really hot even at Christmas. The title story is about Theodoris, who shares a dance with his one true love on the night they both are getting married to others. Fortunately, this collection doesn’t feature any deeper tragedy or pathos.

Sometimes reality does intrude on this idyllic world. The anti-Euro Athens riots make an appearance in one story, sort of like the Indian independence movement makes an appearance in Swami and Friends. But for most part, this collection evokes a simple world that carries on despite these intrusions, like Tolkien’s Shire, or Asterix the Gaul’s indomitable village, or RK Narayan’s Malgudi.

“I am often asked, ‘Where is Malgudi?’” wrote RK Narayan in his introduction to Malgudi Days. “All I can say is it is imaginary and not to be found on any map…”. So, Malgudi can’t be found on a map of the Aegean. But it does have kindred spirits on those rocky islands.

From Malgudi Days

RK Narayan with his wife Rajam

Victoria Hislop with her husband Ian

Paul Kennedy's Book Cover - The Fine Art of Being Wrong

This has to be one of my favourite book covers of all time:

That illustration on the bottom right so crisply summarises how easy it is for erudite intellectuals to be completely wrong.

Paul Kennedy’s 700+ page magnum opus was published in 1987 (when I was in college). This was the year that Japan’s per capita GDP overtook the USA’s for the first time. This was months before the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, a couple of years before the Berlin Wall fell. 

The tectonic plates of history were shifting. Harvard’s learned Professor Kennedy had understood history’s tectonic forces and had foreseen the shift. 

I remember the buzz this book created when it came out. Being able to quote fluently from Paul Kennedy was the hallmark of the undergraduate intellectual, the ultimate kunji for fundae-baazi. I bought a fat paperback copy for over Rs 600, gamely ploughed through about 250 pages, and felt guilty for at least a decade as the remaining 450+ pages mocked me from my bookshelf.

And now it seems Professor Kennedy hadn't quite worked it all out.

The future didn’t belong to Japan after all.

To be fair to Prof Kennedy, he is a historian not a crystal-ball gazer. He didn't make any specific predictions in this book. And his forward-looking subsequent book Preparing for the Twenty First Century was so anodyne it couldn't be wrong.

But I still love that illustration of Japan rising!

Dear Marie Kondo, Please come to India and play Holi...

Marie Kondo, the Japanese decluttering guru, wearing a signature white dress

Dear Marie,

I love KonMari. Your world famous decluttering method has cleansed my life of meaningless tat. You have filled my life with thoughts and memories that Spark Joy. You have refreshed my senses and renewed my life-spirit, my chi. Thank you.

Marie Kondo meditating
wearing a signature white dress

I love that you always wear white.

Your New York Magazine profile reveals that “Marie Kondo has more in common with a snowflake than with the flesh-and-blood humans around her.” If you are manifesting the energy of a beautiful and unique snowflake, it is natural that your spirit finds expression in pristine white.

I love that you understand strategic marketing. As you explained while shopping at Anthropologie, New York, you always wear white because “It is a part of my brand…my image colour. It is easy to recognize me.”

I come from India. Like you, we Indians understand that objects are animated by spirits. We know that our own spirits are enhanced by honouring and celebrating the spirits that live within things. We understand that less is more. I’m sure KonMari will be a hit in India.

I would therefore like to invite you to India, to grace our shores with your presence and your business.

Please time your visit so you’re here in the spring. When you're here we must celebrate Holi together. You will find thoughts in Holi that both resonate with and build on KonMari.

Indian Actress Alia Bhatt
Started the day in spotless whites
Had fun playing Holi 

The night before Holi, we Indians collect the clutter that has built up in our homes, the objects that no longer Spark Joy. We burn these objects in a bonfire. The negative energies that were trapped in these joyless objects are released, cleansed by the Fire God Agni in the Holika Dahan. I’m sure you will enjoy this decluttering, this Indian oshoji.

The next morning, be sure to dress in your signature whites. Most of India will be wearing whites too. Those whites will remain pristine until we start to play Holi.

When the play starts you’ll be swirled away in a riot of colour, music, drink, food, heat and holy craziness, that replace the tired joyless spirits that were swept away the previous night with energetic, young, joyful spirits. These Holi spirits have a zest for life that won’t stop at a spark of joy, they will light up entire bonfires of joy.

Your whites will not, should not, be pristine by the end of the day. That is the point. To us, this balance between the night before and the morning after, between emptying out and filling up, is as natural as breathing out and then breathing in. It’s a part of the cycle of life.

Do bring your family along when you visit India. Your husband and daughters will love Holi.  

We look forward to seeing you in India soon. And to doing (big) business together,

Cheers,

Moonballs from Planet Earth

Aam Janata playing Holi

Veeru and Basanti at Holi in Sholay

Marie Kondo says "Namaste"
Hope to see you in India soon :)

If Rahul Dravid had discovered his inner "gunda" while he was the Indian captain...

This advert – showing Rahul Dravid as Indira Nagar ka Gunda – has totally made my weekend.

Rahul Dravid - Indira Nagar ka gunda

It also left me wondering what might have been if Rahul Dravid had discovered his inner gunda while he still was India’s captain.

Dravid’s window-smashing, cursing, bar-brawling side might have helped him push back and contain Greg Chappell’s bullying, thereby protecting the culture and spirit of his Indian team, and his own legacy as a captain.

Most cricket fans are familiar with the history:

Dravid’s captaincy was defined by the twin disasters of the Greg Chappell spat and the 2007 World Cup. Its impossible to avoid the sense that the two were linked.

Ganguly and Chappell

Ganguly and Chappell obviously hated each other. Other senior players like Tendulkar, Sehwag, Zaheer, Yuvraj and Bhajji have all come forward to say they felt insulted and alienated by Chappell. Dravid the captain was gentlemanly all around (including to Chappell). But he didn’t manage to heal the rifts or lift the team’s performance.

Dravid stepped down a few months after that 2007 World Cup humiliation.

At that time, he could have had the Indian captaincy for as long as he wanted. There were no serious challengers for the role. But after presiding over a poisonous dressing room for two years, and after having borne the brunt of the nation’s disappointment after the World Cup, he simply didn’t want the job anymore.

Later that year, MS Dhoni’s team won the T20 World Cup in South Africa, and the rest is (mostly happy) history.

Given the situation he was in, could Dravid have handled things more effectively?

Maybe Dravid could have dropped the genteel, educated, upper-middle-class, south Indian gentlemanliness that he grew up with. Maybe he could have found some inner mongrel that could tell a cricketing legend like Greg Chappell exactly where he got off. Maybe that would have saved his team and his captaincy. Sometimes leadership is about adopting postures or positions that are uncomfortable, that don’t come naturally.

It's sometimes effective to give this aggressive other who lives within a name. This alter ego can be called up into action when needed.

South African fast bowler Andre Nel became “Gunther the Mountain Boy” when he had the ball in his hand. 

Barack Obama called his anger translator alter ego Luther (click here for Obama and Luther’s hilarious performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2015). 

Maybe Dravid’s Luther can be called Virat.

Obama and his anger-translator Luther

Dravid and successor Virat

Dravid lets his bat do the talking