Atal Behari Vajpayee, please meet Cliff Richard: a fellow bachelor boy from Lucknow

Vajpayee mural in Lucknow

Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee was unquestionably one of Lucknow’s greatest citizens. 

Vajpayee was a freedom fighter, poet, orator, and diplomat. The late Prime Minister represented Lucknow with distinction in the Lok Sabha for three decades. He was a statesman who could work for peace with Pakistan even while decisively defeating them on the Kargil battlefield. His term as India’s Prime Minister is still remembered as a time of unprecedented progress and prosperity. 

Lucknow is justly proud of Bharat Ratna Atal Behari. 

The City of Lucknow honoured him with a giant mural.

The City of Lucknow also honoured Sir Cliff Richard with a similar mural.

Cliff Richard mural in Lucknow

While Sir Cliff is not generally associated with Lucknavi tehzeeb, he was born at King George’s hospital in Lucknow. His Anglo-Indian parents worked for the colonial Indian Railways. They were based in Dehra Dun at the time. They came down to Lucknow for looking for better maternity care. Cliff Richard's family later moved to Calcutta and emigrated to the UK in 1948, when Cliff was eight years old. 

So, what do Cliff Richard and Atal Behari Vajpayee have in common? If their murals were to come to life, would they find anything to talk about?

Maybe they could talk about being bachelor boys. 

One of Sir Cliff's greatest hits is "Bachelor Boy". The song goes: 

“Son, you are a bachelor Boy

And that’s the way to stay

Son, you’ll be a bachelor boy

Until your dying day.”

Sir Cliff, being a man of integrity, lived by his own advice. He dated many charming ladies, including Sue Barker a tennis player and former French Open singles champion. But he has remained a bachelor (at least until his eightieth birthday).

Atalji was a bachelor too. 

The way Vajpayee put it "main kunwar hoon par brahmachari nahin" (I'm single but not celibate). 

Sir Cliff might relate. They might just have something to talk about. 

Though I doubt if even Sir Cliff’s persuasion could get Atalji to do the dance steps from the Bachelor Boy video (click here to watch). Those immortal moves can belong to one and only one of the Lakhnavi bachelor boys.

Summer Holiday - the album featuring Bachelor Boy

Did Don McLean anticipate the 2020 Biden-Trump election?

I was reflecting on the weirdness of Donald Trump refusing to concede to Joe Biden and the words that came to mind, unbidden, were:

“The players tried to take the field 

the marching band refused to yield…”

From Don McLean’s American Pie.

Could Don McLean have foreseen this moment fifty years ago? 

Sort of like Nostradamus foresaw moments in the future? I’m only half kidding. 

American Pie is so different from, and so much better than, the rest of Don McLean’s work that it is easy to imagine that the song was written by a higher force that just expressed itself through Don McLean when he was in an altered mind-state, sort of like the state Samuel Taylor Coleridge was in when he wrote Kubla Khan.

Victory to Kamala Harris! Or...Jaye Jaye He Mahishasura Mardhini Ramyaka Pardhini Shailasute!

 

See the picture above? 

Meena Harris (Kamala Harris’ sister Maya’s daughter) tweeted it a few weeks ago. 

It has to be my favourite image from the just concluded US presidential election. It’s a crazy, whacky, light-hearted juxtaposition of the Mahishasura Mardini Stottram with the rough and tumble of electoral politics, just what the doctor ordered to lighten the mood at a time when both religion and politics feel awfully serious. 

Unfortunately, Meena Harris had to take this off Twitter because it "offended Hindus”. 

I find that odd. I am a Hindu and I see nothing offensive in the image. So, I’m recirculating the image now with a little explanation on how this image can be an access-point to deeper Hindu ideas like advaita, karma yoga and bhakti. 

Consider advaita, the idea that divinity is latent within each of us, that the purpose of life is to give expression to the divine within. In this context, Kamala Harris could be seen as giving expression to the power of Maa-Durga, the divinity who lives within her. 

Or consider karma yoga, the idea that spiritual attainment is not the exclusive privilege of world-renouncing monks, that the divine can be fully realised by engaging wholeheartedly in worldly work. In this context, Kamala Harris could be seen fighting the good fight on the electoral battlefield, therefore getting ever closer to the divine by treading her chosen path as a karma yogi. 

Or consider bhakti, the mystic experience of oneness with the divine, unfettered by intellectualism or duty. To me personally, that is the association the image brings to mind most readily. The Mahisura Mardhini Stottram, which this image is riffing on, is one of my favourite prayers. I was brought up listening to it as a part of life’s ambient soundtrack. This stottram is typically set to a rhythmic, hypnotic beat (click here to listen) that lends itself to the immersive rapture of bhakti. 

The point (hopefully the now obvious point) is that there is nothing anti-Hindu about the picture above. It's not even anti-Trump. Caricature has always been (and should be) a part of politics.

So, let’s keep alive our sense of humour and sense of perspective and enjoy the jokey juxtaposition of the Mahishasura mardhini stottram with American politics. Let’s enjoy the fact that Kamala Harris will be the first person of Indian descent to ascend to the White House. And let’s trust that the Devi will manifest herself in Kamala, Maya, Meena, and in strong women everywhere, as the cycle of time turns and good times return.

Why we gamble on Deepavali

Goddess Lakshmi
Deepavali's Presiding Deity

It is Deepavali today. We’re going to play cards in the evening. We always have. It’s  a tradition.

How come? How did gambling, something generally frowned upon in Indian culture, become such an integral part of India’s biggest festival?

My father had an explanation for this seeming paradox. His funda was that gambling, risk taking, is essential to Deepavali because it is a festival of Lakshmi, the Goddess of wealth.

Lakshmi represents prosperity, plenty, abundance. Deepavali is an invocation to Lakshmi, an invitation to the Goddess to bring her cornucopia of goodness into the home. But Lakshmi can only come into a home which has space for Her. One has to make room for Lakshmi. And one makes space for Her by gambling, by taking a risk.

The symbolism is all about the work needed to create prosperity. All prosperity, all abundance, has always been created by risk-taking. Hunters going out on the savanna to spear bison, farmers planting a crop in anticipation of the monsoon, software engineers pooling their savings to fund a start-up, they are all taking risks; to create room for Goddess Lakshmi. 

No pain, no gain. You may want the risks to be small and the gains to be large. But if you never take a risk, you’ll never give the Goddess a chance to shower her blessings upon you.

Is this interpretation authentic? 

Hard to say. Google tells me that there is an ancient legend of Shiva and Parvati playing dice on Mount Kailash which gives divine sanction to gambling on Deepavali. 

But the beautiful thing about Hinduism being an open-source religion is that I can choose to believe my father’s interpretation without looking for institutional sanction. I like the interpretation. I choose to believe it. 

So, I’ll be playing teen patti and blackjack with my card-shark nephews at the family dining table this evening. 

Happy Deepavali blog readers. May the odds be ever in your favour. May the bets you take work out. May the effulgent Goddess Lakshmi inhabit your homes forever.

Shiva and Parvati playing dice

Discovering the Meaning of "Aagosh"

Do we have an English word for a mother’s shadow, for her presence, for the comfort derived from a mother physically being there? 

I don’t think we do.  

Maybe we should just import aagosh from Urdu to fill this gap. That is what aagosh means. 

Its sort of surprising that English doesn't yet have a word for aagosh. It's a universal experience. I'm sure my dog understands the idea behind aagosh perfectly.

BTW, I discovered this word in Priya Malik’s poem Main 2019 Mein 1999. Click here to watch her perform this piece, and notice the way in which she introduces a maternal tone into what is otherwise a romantic line. 

Why is the IPL so popular? Because it shows us the India we want to be.

IPL XIII Captains

I’m watching the IPL. Everybody is watching the IPL. I’m watching the IPL partly because everybody is watching the IPL. 

The IPL has gone from sport to entertainment to a shared Indian experience because it shows us the India we want to be. 

In the IPL world identity doesn’t matter. Delhi-boy Virat Kohli lives in Mumbai and captains Bangalore. MS Dhoni, a Hindi-speaker from Ranchi, is now Chennai’s favourite son. Shreyas Iyer, a Tamil from Mumbai, captains the Delhi Capitals. Nobody cares. In the IPL world India is not fractured by caste, language, religion or ethnicity. In the IPL world India is one nation, Indians are one people.

In the IPL world India is the land of opportunity. T Natarajan from Chinnappampatti, TN, whose father worked as a daily wage coolie at a railway station, can win a multi-crore contract to bowl yorkers for Hyderabad. Yashasvi Jaiswal from Badhoi, UP, who once worked in a pani puri stall on Azad Maidan during the Ram Leela celebrations, can win a multi-crore contract to open the batting for Rajasthan. Rahul Tewatia can bounce back from his humiliations in the Ricky Ponting regime to become a swashbuckling match winner. Rookie mystery-spinner Varun Chakravarthy can demolish King MSD’s castle with a fizzing flipper, and can be rewarded for this insubordination with an India cap. In the IPL world dreams do come true.

Dwayne Bravo Chennai-style

In the IPL world, India is the world’s pre-eminent nation. When David Warner makes videos of his family wearing Indian clothes and dancing to Telugu songs, when Dwayne Bravo dresses in a veshti and calls Chennai his second home, when Sam Curran learns Tamil words to fit into the CSK gang, when Jonty Rhodes names his daughter India, they’re not mocking us. They’re telling us that they want to belong. 

In a way, celebrating the IPL is like celebrating Dussera. 

Dussera is based on the belief that good triumphs over evil. We know that that isn’t strictly, literally true. But we want it to be true. So we open our hearts, take part, believe, and therefore make the ideal of Dussera more true. 

In much the same way, we know the IPL world isn’t strictly, literally true. But we want it to be true. And by believing in the IPL world, by believing in an India that is united, an India that makes dreams come true, an India that is a big and much-loved presence on the world stage, we make that ideal of India more true.

So when Saurav Ganguly, now President of the BCCI, basking in the warm glow of TV viewership ratings that have climbed 30% off a high base, describes the IPL as "the best tournament in the world” nobody disagrees. All power to him. Let’s enjoy the final couple of weeks of IPL XIII (without sulking about the fact that CSK have already been knocked out). 

Dussera - celebrating the triumph of good over evil

"Asgard is not a place. Asgard is a people."

Surtur straddles the ruins of Asgard
as Thor and Hela face off

"Asgard is not a place. Asgard is a people."

But is it? 

Would Israel still be Israel if it were not in the holy land?

Would Hogwarts still be Hogwarts if it were rehoused in a steel and glass structure in London?

For context “Asgard is not a place. It’s a people” is from the Marvel movie Thor: Ragnarok! 

Thor (the most powerful hero in the universe) has used the demon Surtur to destroy his hometown Asgard. This will also destroy Hela (Thor’s evil sister) who derives her power from Asgard. 

Thor and his superhero friends rescue the people of Asgard from the collapsing city. They load them up into a spacecraft and ferry them off to a new life on a new planet. 

This collateral damage is worth it because as the all-father Odin explains to Thor “Asgard is not a place. It’s a people.” 

The all-father presents his argument as if it is obvious, as if it is self-evident that Asgard is its people. Hollywood clearly assumes that the trade-off is obvious, and Hollywood’s assumptions are a pretty good barometer of the zeitgeist. 

But stepping outside the Marvel-verse, is it really that obvious? Is it even sort of true at all?

There are plenty of real-life situations that parallel that of Asgard.

Consider the Maldives. The entire country is just about one meter above sea level. Most estimates are that the islands will be submerged by 2100. The people (about 500,000 people) could be relocated. But is it obvious to those people that the Maldives are not a place, but a people? 

Or Tehri - the ancient town on the banks of the sacred Baghirathi river - which was submerged under the Tehri dam? People were relocated. They lived. Were they OK?

Or Chernobyl. Its evacuee population was relocated to the purpose-built Soviet city of Slavutych (now in the Ukraine). Maybe these people were OK. Maybe Chernobyl was sort of soulless anyway.

Professor Stephen Landsberg, the Armchair Economist, asked this question sharply and provocatively after hurricane Katrina. Back in 2005 the American government was planning to spend over $200 billion on New Orleans. The pre-Katrina population of the New Orleans metro region was, say, 1 million. That is $200,000 per individual, $800,000 for a family of four. Would people rather take the lump sum of  $800,000 and relocate to an American city of their choice? Or have the government spend $200 billion on their behalf rebuilding New Orleans? 

Landsberg’s point was the most people would rather take the $800,000 and move. It’s a good point, as long as the thing being destroyed is not sacred, as long as “Asgard is not a place. It’s a people.”

I guess it hinges on whether the place in question is sacred. 

I guess mighty Odin the all-father is well qualified to take that decision.

Ari Ben Cannan in The Promised Land of Israel 
From the movie Exodus
Starring Paul Newman

Freddy Mercury. A Paki? Or a Zanzibari?

Bohemian Rhapsody - the superb Freddy Mercury biopic which triggered this post

[Scene: Heathrow airport, 1970]

Baggage handlers are on the tarmac unloading suitcases from a plane.

A longhaired, buck toothed, leather jacketed handler pauses. He was distracted by an eye-catching striped bag covered with stickers that hinted at its travels around the world.

Handler 1: “Oi, you missed one, you Paki.”

Handler 2 (Farrokh Bulsara): “I’m not from Pakistan!”

These are his first words. Farrokh Bulsara, soon to become Freddy Mercury, announces himself in his (excellent) biopic Bohemian Rhapsody with “I’m not from Pakistan”.

So, where is he from? 

From Zanzibar. 

Except that that doesn’t actually answer any questions. Why was a middle class Parsi family in Zanzibar? What was Freddy Mercury's back-story?

It turns out that the Bulsara family's back-story parallels that of the Gujaratis who were expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin. 

Zanzibar was a British protectorate in the mid twentieth century. Bomi Bulsara, Farrokh’s dad, worked for the colonial government as an officer in the Zanzibar High Court. Farrokh was born in Stone Town, Zanzibar. The family were comfortably off. They lived in a spacious apartment (now a Freddy Mercury museum) and employed a live-in nanny. They sent their son to boarding school in India, to St. Peter's in Panchgani. This wasn’t unusual. Indian boarding schools were designed for the children of colonial officers stationed in far-flung outposts of the Empire.

The Bulsara family’s comfortable Zanzibari base dissolved along with the Empire. 

In 1963, the British Empire transferred power to the Sultan of Zanzibar, Jamshid bin Abdullah, who was to rule as a constitutional monarch. The Arab Sultan held power for less than a month. He was overthrown in the Zanzibar Revolution, led by a charismatic former brick-layer called John Okkelo. The Socialist Republic of Zanzibar and Pemba was declared.

An orgy of violence was unleashed. Arab and Indian minorities were targeted. A BBC story says 17,000 people (out of a population of about 250,000) were slaughtered on the streets. Genocide claims are still being debated. Those who could fled. 

Six months later, the Socialist Republic of Zanzibar and Pemba ceased to exist. It was merged with Tanganiyka to create Tanzania (a synthetic coined name). This was eight years before Idi Amin expelled Asians from Uganda.

The Bulsara family arrived in the UK in 1964 as refugees from this chaos. Freddy was 17 then.  

How did that tumultuous backdrop shape Freddy Mercury? 

Freddy didn’t talk much about politics or about his family’s heritage. We can only conjecture. My conjecture is that that Zanzibar taught him the truth of Jim Morrison’s immortal words at the end of Roadhouse Blues:

“..Alright! Alright! Alright!

Jim Morrison. Freddy's philosopher?

Hey, listen! Listen! 

Listen, man! listen, man!

I don't know how many you people believe in astrology...

Yeah, that's right...that's right, baby, I...I am a Sagittarius

The most philosophical of all the signs

But anyway, I don't believe in it

I think it's a bunch of bullshit, myself

But I tell you this, man, 

I tell you this,

I don't know what's gonna happen, man, 

But I wanna have my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames.

Alright!”

Farrokh Bulsara was a Virgo, not a Sagittarius. But it seems he came to the same philosophical conclusion as Jim Morrison: that it isn’t all about how long you live, that it is about how much life you live while you’re still alive. 

Thanks Farrokh/ Freddy. For being a Paki, a Zanzibari, a Parsi, a Brit, a hero.

Farrokh Bulsara in Panchgani

Blog Rules

This blog is about everything except family and work.

This blog is not serious. This blog’s only intent is to amuse, engage, entertain.

This blog is not about my work. My work is serious. I will mostly steer away from work-related content. If I do touch on work-life, the views expressed here are strictly personal.

This blog is public. This blog is a third space. Comments are welcome. I will moderate comments to control spam and random rants.

This blog is mine. The content is mine. All copyrights belong to me (not to Google), unless I’m channeling content that is already owned by someone else.

This blog is not newsy. Pondering eternal, universal truths is more my style than keeping pace with contemporary news cycles.

This blog is alive. It will incarnate at midnight on The Night of the New Moon and stalk the streets of Mumbai meting out rough justice to those with impure hearts. Sort of. 

More specifically, this blog is a living document. It will change, it will grow. Nothing about it is defined apart from the basic rules of the road. I don’t know what it will develop into in this second coming. That is as it should be. 

Time lapse image of the North Star which shows how it does not change position.
Similarly, the Blog Rules on this post won't really change

Moonballs are Back!

Friends, Romans, countrymen, blog readers.

Rejoice! Moonballs are back!

Your correspondent has resolved to restart his beloved blog.

Yes, I've resolved to restart my blog before and not followed through. But this time the restart is for real. Blog posts will start flowing with reasonable frequency from this week on.

What happened? I celebrated a landmark birthday. Hundreds of friends got back in touch. Almost all these friends (now scattered all over the world and socially distancing) mentioned Moonballs from Planet Earth. They nudged/ cajoled/ hassled me to start writing again. I was touched. The nudging/ cajoling/ hassling worked.

And thus it is decreed that Moonballs will fly again.

Thankyou London Underground

The Tube is on strike today. Everybody's cursing (including me). Meaning, it's not a bad day to remember one of my favourite poems, an ode to the London Underground, which I discovered on the London Underground:

Here's to the gaps, the maps
And the elapse of a hundred and fifty years since that first
Steaming monster hurled
Through its Metropolitan Minotaur world.
To all the billiard ball-bottomed straps onto which I've hung.
And here's to the police office, who, when I was illegally
    busking outside Westminster Station, approached me and said,
'Do you know any Neil Young?'

St George the Dragon Slayer? Or St George the Lizard Eater?

St. George's Day Posters in London c. 2014

Is England’s patron Saint George a dragon slayer? Or a lizard eater?

The question is prompted by these posters promoting St. George's Day, prominently displayed across the metropolis, blessed by the Lord Mayor of London himself. The weapon the beast is impaled upon is, obviously, a table fork. In which case, the beast itself can’t be much bigger than a garden lizard. 

Do people eat lizards? Do heroes eat lizards?

Quite different from the way the dragon slayer was depicted in more heroic times….

St. George Slays the Dragon, by Raphael c. 1504

Wikileaks reveals…the importance of table manners

Julian Assange, photographed outside Ellingham Hall

Wikileaks has radically changed the way I see our world. Not the way I see war, liberty or the role of the state – a lot of the material Wikileaks leaked, was, frankly, unsurprising – but the way I see table manners. Wikileaks' leadership team retained what sanity they had, thanks to a regimen of strict table manners.

This thought comes from the excellent documentary We Steal Secrets: the Story of Wikileaks. In it, there is a period when the Wikileaks inner circle of about fifteen people are stuck in Ellingham Hall, Norfolk, on journalist Vaughn Smith’s country estate. They can’t leave Ellingham Hall; the MI6, CIA etc. are out to get them. So they’re stuck in the middle of nowhere, with just each other for company, united only by their distrust of the outside world, each day melting into the next, as weeks run into months which run into years.

How did they manage to keep things civilized? By enforcing very strict rules on table manners. Vaughn Smith and his housekeeper enforced strict table etiquette, three meals a day, for over five hundred days of maddening claustrophobia.

Must have been the same dynamic in colonial officer’s messes, and up in the tea plantations.

Agnieszka Radwanska endorses Cheesecake Factory: the return of real marketing

Aga Radwanska @ Wimbledon

Aga Raswanska now endorses Cheesecake Factory. 

Refreshingly, she actually likes the Cheesecake Factory. She isn't just endorsing a random brand because they paid her lots of money.

She has been writing about visits to Cheesecake Factory restaurants on her blog for a couple of years now. "Can you imagine we tried almost every kind of cheesecake there during Indian Wells and Miami? Well except one — peanut butter... because I don't really like peanut butter," she wrote. "It's very close to the hotel, which is dangerous, because we could end up going there every night. We went yesterday. Maybe we'll try to cut down to every second night.". The Cheesecake Factory marketing people picked up on this, and an endorsement deal resulted. 

This feels like what celebrity endorsements ought to be about: not cynical money-making by a "media property", but a well known person sharing her genuine enthusiasm for a brand.  

Aga Radwanska @ The Cheesecake Factory

What Yesterday, The Beatles' song, is really about

It isn’t a love song. It is about Paul McCartney's mother's death.

I found out from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, from this interview with Paul McCartney airing on NPR this week, in honour of the 50th anniversary of The Beatles’ conquest of America.

In the interview, Paul talks about how he lost his mother as a teenager. John Lennon also lost his mother at about the same age, and that shared experience of loss was a deep bond John and Paul shared. However, as working class lads from the North, they couldn’t talk about it. It just wasn’t done. It was put to Paul much later in life that Yesterday might be about his feelings when his mother died, and it dawned on Paul that that was probably true.

The song sounds different now, now that I know this interpretation. Still a great song. But different.

Satya Nadella: The Rorschach Ink Blot CEO

Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO

Since Satya Nadella’s appointment as Microsoft's CEO, my Facebook news feed and email inbox have been chock-a-block with stories about what Mr Nadella's success means.

Some think Satya Nadella’s success is a triumph for “Indian values, like empathy, patience and humility”. Others think it is “a slap in the face for the Indian system” (because Mr Nadella felt the need to emigrate to the USA); that it reflects the “failure of the IITs” (because such a prestigious tech job went to a guy from lowly Manipal University); that it is a triumph for the game of cricket  (because Satya learnt about leadership and teamwork as a cricket playing schoolboy in Hyderabad); that it reflects the greatness of Amercia (because you don’t have to be Bill Gates’ son to become CEO of Microsoft); that it reflects the failure of America (because homegrown talent lags so far behind educated, motivated immigrants); that it reflects the skills Mr. Nadella learnt at his family dinner table (his father was a senior IAS officer who served on India’s Planning Commission); etc. etc.

All these interpretations are have some basis in fact. But having absorbed all these interpretations, my conclusion is that Satya Nadella's success is a contemporary Rorschach Ink Blot test. Any observer’s interpretation tells you a lot about the observer's state of mind. It tells you little or nothing about the meaning of Mr Nadella’s success, because Mr. Nadella’s success doesn’t actually mean anything, beyond the very specific context of Microsoft’s executive team.

The human brain is amazingly good at seeing patterns, even when there aren’t any patterns to see.

"Hindostan is an Italy of Asiatic dimensions", Karl Marx, 1853

Karl Marx didn't have a whole lot to say about India, but this thought - likening India to an Asian Italy - is still fascinating. 

I know it from researching a debate way back when I was in college. It came back to mind this morning, reading Frank Bruni's oped piece in the New York times titled "Italy Breaks Your Heart". Bruni piece describes a country - ancient grandeur and contemporary political dysfunction, a "terrific" high-speed rail line and uncleared garbage on the streets of the capital city - that could be India, almost word for word.

My glass half full interpretation of that parallel: despite everything, Italy's per capita GDP at PPP is above $30,000. India is at about $3,900. Despite everything, things in India can still get a whole lot better.  

Hindostan, Asia's Italy

Italy, Europe's India

BTW...Karl Marx's article on India, in the New York Herald Tribune, is available here. Worth a read. Wish I'd had Google while researching debates back in college.

Roger Federer's Next Career: Doubles #1

Federer and Wawrinka. Olympic Gold medalists in 2008

Earlier this week, Roger Federer lost to Gael Monfils in the third round of the Shanghai Open, setting off a flurry of twittering among the Roger-ists. Many think their hero is better off retiring now, still close to the top, rather than fading away slowly and inelegantly.

On the flip side of the argument, Roger clearly still wants to show up and play, despite the indignities of his declining win:loss ratio. As a fan, surely this is something to be happy about. Surely Roger gives more to the world with a racquet in his hand than as another talking head on TV (like Boris Becker), or as an underwear manufacturing entrepreneur (like Bjorn Borg).   

Leander Paes, Grand Slam champion at 40

In that context, Moonballs from Planet Earth would like to propose a path that allows Roger, and fans like us, have it both ways: quit singles, focus on doubles.

Roger, 32, can realistically expect to play another decade of top flight doubles. Roger's classical style lends itself well to doubles. Leander Paes just demonstrated the longevity of doubles players by winning the US Open at 40.

Roger’s presence also gives a much needed injection of glamour to the doubles game. Doubles is the mainstay of amateur tennis. It is every bit as watchable as singles (refer Davis Cup), but still gets so little media coverage because it lacks narratives, lacks personalities. A bit of Federer stardust will help set that right. 

Moonwalking with Einstein. On why I blog, and take pictures

Just finished this excellent book called Moonwalking with Einstein, by Joshua Foer. Among its many pleasures was this passage, which feels close to the heart of what keeps me blogging, or taking photographs, for that matter:

Until relatively recently…people had only a few books – the Bible, an almanac, a devotional work or two – and they read them over and over again, usually aloud and in groups, so that a narrow range of traditional literature became deeply impressed on their consciousness.

But after the printing press appeared around 1440, things began gradually to change. In the first century after Gutenberg, it because possible for the first time, for people without great wealth to have a small library in their own homes...

Today, we read books “extensively”, without much in the way of sustained focus, and with rare exceptions, we read each book only once. We value quantity over quality of reading. We have no choice, if we want to keep up with the broader culture. Few of us make any serious effort to remember what we read…

We read and read and read, and forget and forget and forget. So why do we bother? Michael de Montaigne expressed the dilemma of extensive reading in the sixteenth century: “I leaf through books, I do not study them”, he wrote. “What I retain of them is something I no longer recognize as anyone else’s. It is only the material from which my judgment has profited, and the thoughts and ideas with which it has become imbued; the author, the place, the words, and other circumstances, I immediately forget.”

He goes on to explain how “to compensate a little for the treachery and weakness of my memory”, he adopted the habit of writing in the back of every book a short critical judgment, so as to have at least some general idea of that the tome was about and what he thought of it.

I know that works for me too. Synthesizing a thought on what a book, or movie, or trip was about, and writing it down, makes the experience itself richer, more memorable.

Joshua Foer

Gumption, not grit, is the key to success

This popular TED talk by ex-management-consultant Angela Lee Duckworth reports that the key to success, in academics and in life, is...ta dah...grit. Not talent, but fighting spirit and the resilience to battle on despite setbacks. This feels like a limp conclusion, because Ms Duckworth doesn't know where grit comes from.

Gumption might be a more useful word that grit in this context. It includes grit, and it also captures a little bit of where the grit comes from. Gumption includes enthusiasm, an amateur's passion, that fuels grit and therefore resilience. And gumption can be made.

I first met the word gumption during my first term in college, when I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance several times over (when I really should have been studying calculus). One of Pirsig's examples has stayed with me since: making your own motorcycle parts builds gumption. 

I'm still constantly on the lookout for that sort of gumption, for a quiet heartfelt enthusiasm that runs deeper than the "look at me, I've worked so hard, I'm so cool, I really deserve a raise/bonus/ promotion" rhythm that is so pervasive today. I like TED talks, but TED talks are actually a part of this "I'm so cool" culture.

BTW, I also found this picture of Pirsig and his son Chris on their legendary road trip across America...thanks guys.

Pirsig and his son Chris, motorbiking across America

The McKinsey Man plays tennis

Novak Djokovic in action

The New Yorker about Novak Djokovic:

"He was a McKinsey man, hitting his percentages. His approach was scientific. He brought to mind a diagram on the side of a workout machine, isolating the necessary muscles required for each stroke, and no more..."

So McKinsey Man is now a part of the English language. It means someone who puts in the precise amount of effort required to perform a specific task, and nothing more. Interesting. That is not quite how they describe it in books like The McKinsey Mind, though.

Should Mother Cricket have punished Michael Clarke for gallant/ stupid declaration?

Clarke and his team. Crushed? Or enough spirit left to learn?

I was in two minds yesterday, following the thrilling/ farcical denouement to the home Ashes. 

One part of me wanted to gods to reward Clarke for his gallant declaration. His spirit, his courage, his sense of adventure, kept the game alive right until the last ball. Most captains, at any level, would have settled for a draw. Surely that spirit deserves to be applauded, nurtured.

My less romantic side couldn't help thinking that Clarke's declaration wasn't gallant at all, it was merely stupid. Siddle, Harris, Faulkner and Lyon were never going to roll England over in one session of play. Even McGrath, Gillespie, Lee and Warne were highly unlikely to win this game. Clarke misjudged the situation. He was wildly over optimistic, and deserved to lose for his stupidity.

The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that my unromantic side is right. 

Clarke grew up in an invincible Aussie team. Somewhere deep inside he still thinks the Aussies are invincible. In reality, they're just an average team, with a losing habit. Clarke needs to teach his team to be hard to beat, before he can teach them to win. He has to do for Australia what Nasser Hussain once did for England. Until he realizes that that is his job, he is the wrong man to captain Australia. 

Clarke and umpire Dharmasena

As it turned out, Mother Cricket is more of a romantic than I am. She let Clarke off lightly with just a scare, with a bunch of boos rather than a crushing defeat. Looks like Mother Cricket wants to give Clarke a little more rope, to give him a chance to learn the art of Winning Ugly.

Pierre: the secret behind Novak Djokovic's mental toughness

Superstar Pierre Djokovic with his people

Novak Djokovic reveals the secret behind his mental toughness:

"When I lost to Nadal in that marathon match in Paris, I was feeling down, very, very disappointed in that moment. But when I came back to the house where we were staying, Pierre greeted me by jumping up at me, so pleased to see me. He put a smile back on my face."

...While playing at Wimbledon, Djokovic will steal precious moments walking with his girlfriend and Pierre in the park. ‘People stop to look at Pierre first,’ says Djokovic. ‘Then they see a beautiful woman with him and finally they see this guy who usually has a tennis racket in his hand. Pierre is the superstar here!’

Understanding Yudhishtira through his Shadow

Mahabharata: the game of dice

How could Yudhishtira have done what he did? How could noble King Dharmaputra have gambled away his kingdom, his brothers, his wife? Was it really Yudhishtira playing that fateful game of dice? Or, was it Yudhishtira’s Shadow?

The Shadow is a Jungian archetype. Having a Shadow is the inevitable consequence of having a Self. When the Self stands up in the light it naturally and inevitably casts a shadow, a distorted image of itself, that contains the less acknowledged, less developed, more vulnerable aspects of the personality.

I like to think Yudhishtira’s Shadow had taken over, uninvited, when the dice didn’t roll for him during that game. Yudhishtira still was a very young man then. He hadn’t yet found or tamed his Shadow. Yudhishtira finally harnessed his Shadow when he went into exile and became Kanka, teaching King Virata to play dice, thus finding the equilibrium needed to be a great king.

Shadow-puppet of King Yudhishtira

How did Rama, the other great king of Indian mythology, find and harness his Shadow? Did he find and harness his Shadow?

Every Self has a Shadow. But Rama’s Shadow is invisible, we don't know anything about it. Rama is flawless. He was born the perfect man, the maryada purushottam. He didn’t have to struggle to grow into the role, which, paradoxically, makes me less comfortable with Rama; like there is a Shadow out there that might emerge at a crucial moment and do something spectacularly daft.