David Cameron goes Dutch?

Gezellig - space and people coming together in harmony, that special spirit of cosy fellowship that animates Dutch life - would be an excellent addition to the English language and to English speaking cultures. Maybe, but maybe not in the way I initially thought. When I first wrote about Gezellig, I assumed that the word that best describes Amsterdam would naturally be liberal (as opposed to Liberal). Having thought about it longer, I’m realizing that gezellig is in fact deeply conservative.

Gezellig cosiness implies a comfort with the status quo, the fellowship a comfort with people like us. A gezellig culture could easily be the culture of a smug, closed-minded, back-slapping clique. The liberal experience is necessarily edgy. It means making peace with the creative destruction wrought by liberal economic ideas, and connecting with the strange people and their unfamiliar customs that liberal social ideas inevitably bring into the mainstream.

About a year ago, until the world was hit by a recession, David Cameron’s Tories were making a strong and very articulate pitch for gezellig in British life. David Brooks, once protégé of William Buckley, wrote about this pitch in his New York Times column:

The central political debate of the 20th century was over the role of government. The right stood for individual freedom while the left stood for extending the role of the state. But the central debate of the 21st century is over quality of life. In this new debate, it is necessary for political leaders to talk about “the whole way we live our lives.”

The David Brooks column pointed me to this paper called On Fraternity, by Danny Kruger, a special advisor to David Cameron.

The title is well chosen. Take the French Revolution’s trinity of liberty, equality and fraternity. Liberty belongs to the right, equality to the left. This paper is a call to make fraternity Tory territory. And Kruger’s diagnosis of what ails Britain?

...Britain is suffering ‘social desertification’... a process that began in the 1980s as hundreds of local institutions... were swept away... small high-street grocers and bakers disappeared. Family-run pubs were subsumed into giant chains... this trend is apparent in the rates of family breakdown and the prevalence of drug addiction and violent, alcohol-fuelled crime; in the neglect of the old and the precocious sexuality of children; in the cult of vicarious narcissism which is ‘reality TV’; in the popular addiction to shopping as a means of self-definition, and in the astronomical scale of private debt which is necessary to maintain the shopping habit...

Everything Kruger doesn’t like is ongezellig, the opposite of gezellig. It’s all so unlike the halcyon past. Terrible isn’t it, old chap?

This blog isn’t about ask if the Thatcher-Blair decades saw the re-birth of British vitality, or guess the correct level of social cohesion needed for liberal institutions to take root. But hopefully, the conservative possibilities of gezellig are apparent.

By the way, lamenting the absence of gezellig is not the same thing as experiencing gezellig. Is it ongezellig to moan about the absence of gezellig?

Dev D

Re-interpreted classics can so easily go wrong. Like, say, The Thomas Crown Affair. Sorry, but nobody compares with Steve McQueen, certainly not Pierce Brosnan. Or Sabrina. Maybe Harrison Ford is in the same league as Humphrey Bogart, but poor Julie Ormond never had a chance of filling Audrey Hepburn’s shoes.

But sometimes it is worth the effort. Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet has to be one of the best movies ever, streets better than Franco Zeffirelli’s kitsch.

Dev D is closer to Romeo + Juliet than to Sabrina or the Thomas Crown Affair. It’s a value added take on Devdas.

The central story is what it always was – Dev finishes his education and returns home, meets his childhood sweetheart Paro, does not marry her, and descends to drinking and whoring as he slowly realizes the enormity of his error. The re-make is stylish, contemporary, edgy, unsentimental and fun to watch. Some reflections it prompted:

- Dev came home. Time slowed down, and kept slowing down. The days were hot, humid, still, sultry, endlessly long. Time hung heavy on Dev’s hands, until the mesmerizing slowness of time caused Dev to abandon good sense and judgment. When time slows down enough, it becomes an independent mind-warping character in any story. It’s the reason why films like Picnic at Hanging Rock work. When time slows down that much, any insanity becomes possible

- “Move on” has to be the world’s cheapest, least helpful advice. If moving on happens easily, it didn’t matter enough. Paro was an essential part of Dev, whether he knew it or not. Paro and Dev, they were meant to be. It was written. He was her lobster. Dev can’t move on and remain intact. The old Dev has to be dead, and well buried, before a new Dev can be conceived. The descent into darkness was a necessary passage of play, to clear the way for a possible rebirth

- Chandramukhi, played by a Tamil speaking French girl from Pondicherry called Kalki Koechlin, was a casting coup. She brings an unexpected sassiness and vulnerability to Chandramukhi, probably without having to act very much. But more than the acting, I love the possibilities her name opens up. Kalki is the avatar who ends Kaliyugam (कलयुग). Does Chandra similarly end Dev’s Kaliyugam? Who says Kalki was meant to be a man? And how different is Kaliyugam from the Islamic concept of jahiliya?

For all its quality, Dev D stopped short of being brilliant, mainly becaue of indiscipline. For instance, why does Dev generally hook off to the Himalayas and ride on a motorbike? Maybe the crew wanted a free holiday, and bullied the screenwriter into adding that Himalayan scene to the story. But still totally worth the watch. And worth buying the superb soundtrack.

Good Banter, Bad Sledging

My previous post on the English crowds booing Ricky Ponting drew some interesting feedback…thanks for the engagement. Some readers suggested that there is no such thing as good banter as opposed to bad sledging. That feedback provides me with a great segue to sledging stories that go back to the deified Dr WG Grace, the original Mr Cricket. I think these anecdotes make the point that on field banter can be funny, and can make the game richer.

- Once, when Dr WG Grace was given out, he refused to walk, and told the bowler “All these people have come to watch me bat, not to watch you bowl”. And the innings continued

- Charles Kortwright, bowling to Dr WG Grace in a county game, had dismissed him four or five times but had had his appeals turned down. Finally he knocked over two of the good doctor’s stumps. As the doctor turned towards the pavilion, Kortwright said “Surely you’re not going, Doctor? There is still one stump standing.”

- More recently, Ian Healy told Arjuna Ranatunga that he couldn’t have a runner for being too fat. And when Arjuna played cautiously off the back foot, Healy asked the bowler to put a Mars bar on the good length spot. Arjuna, the fatty, would surely lunge out of his crease to get the Mars bar

- Another keeper, Rod Marsh, asked the incoming batsman Ian Botham just as he was settling down into his stance: “So Both, how’s your wife? And my kids?”. Botham’s reply, “The wife’s fine, the kids are retarded”

- Merv Hughes had helpful words for Graham Thorpe who was playing and missing: “Read the back of your bat, mate. It has got instructions on it”

Marcus Trescothick, who retired from the international game because of mental health problems, says verbal abuse is “nothing to be worried about”. Justin Langer says sledging is a part of the fun, and that the only time he has seen sledging go beyond fun to being personal was between McGrath and Sarwan. Similarly, the Harbhajan – Symonds – Hayden altercations were no fun at all. A lot of the chat that happens is not funny. There clearly are lines that should never be crossed by either fans or players - like race, personal tragedy or physical handicap.

But in the balance, a game with no chat in the middle will be a poorer game. Trying to legislate away the verbal jousting and scatological self-expression in cricket, trying to turn Headingley into Henley, is just silly.

Boo Ponting - Part 2

I was at Trent Bridge earlier this week for the fifth ODI. I was observing the crowd intently when Ricky Ponting came out to bat. He was booed, loud and clear. But the more decent elements in the crowd were embarrassed enough to try and drown out the booing with cheering.

When Ponting finally walked off the pitch after a masterly match-winning century, the entire house rose to give him a standing ovation. Good show, Trent Bridge.

I believe the Trent Bridge crowd booed England yesterday, in the sixth ODI, for putting up such a limp performance. Interestinger and interestinger...

Raptor Rapture

England’s ancient cathedral spires are finding an exciting new twenty-first century purpose. They are excellent nesting sites for peregrine falcon. Handsome young falcon families are bringing glitz and glamour to cathedrals at Chichester, Derby, Lincoln and Worcester, having taken up residence in the spires.

This great story didn’t just happen. The first falcon couple to take up residence in Chichester cathedral did so in 2001, in a nesting box helpfully provided by the Sussex Ornithological Society. Since then 26 chicks have hatched in Chichester. The Derby falcons seem to be well marketed, getting the community involved in conservation, as evidenced by this video made by local six year olds.

Is there scope for some cross cultural conservation learning here? There are a number of temple gopurams in South India which might serve as a nice home for falcons, or other revered raptors.

Echoes of गरुडा (garuda) and जटायू (jatayu)?

I'm Not There

Just watched I’m Not There, a movie about Bob Dylan’s life. Watch it. When you do,

What will you see my blue eyed sons?
What will you see my darling young ones?
You will see a highway of diamonds with nobody on it,
You will hear the song of a poet who died in the gutter,
You will meet one man who was wounded in love,
You will meet another man who was wounded in hatred.
You will know how it feels to be with the princess on the steeple and all the pretty people, amused at Napoleon in rags and the language that he used.
You will know how it feels to be on your own, like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone.

And you will struggle throughout the film to figure out what is going on and why, which is entirely appropriate for a movie about Dylan.

I’m Not There features six avatars of Bob Dylan, played by six different actors, set in different places and periods, beautifully shot in six different styles. The six actors playing Dylan don’t look like Dylan. The one who looks most like Dylan is Cate Blanchett, playing the stoned superstar who hangs out with the Beatles in London in 1966. Another avatar is a little black boy who travels around America in empty railway wagons, accompanied by his guitar, singing songs about the Depression. A third avatar features a folk singer singing political protest songs along with his Joan Baez-like girl friend. There really could have been many more avatars; there is no room for one featuring a middle class Jewish kid growing up in Hibbing, Minnesota.

The soundtrack is great. You will hear more than a trace of skipping reels of rhyme. Like Dylan songs, the movie floats along on a current of metaphor and imagery. It takes you on a trip upon a magic swirling ship, through the smoke rings of your mind, down the foggy ruins of time. Each scene feels rich with layered meaning, every shirt or jacket, every chance encounter and every throwaway phrase feels like an oblique reference to the god behind the avatars. I am glad I watched this film on DVD rather than at the movies. I had to pause multiple times to google up references. Is that girl meant to be Suze Rotolo? Or Sara Lownds? Both, it turns out.

Sure, it is fun to watch, especially for someone brought up with Dylan-lore. But how does it work as a movie? There is no obvious narrative tension. None of the avatar sub-plots have knots that need to be resolved.

Does this movie bust the theory, previously posited on this blog, that all great stories are built around somebody wanting something really badly, and having difficulty getting it? I thought it did, until I realized that the movie is not about the avatars but about Dylan himself.

Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you.
Forget the dead you’ve left, they will not follow you.
The vagabond who’s rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore.
Strike another match go start anew...

Dylan did strike another match and start anew, time and again. Leaving behind the orphan with his gun, crying like a fire in the sun. Yet just when the saints should be coming through, he settles into a new pattern, which becomes as limiting as the one he left. Maybe it ain’t over baby blue, until Bobby realizes that freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.

Freddy, meet Mac

Its a lazy, sunny Saturday afternoon. Went swimming with the kids in the morning, had upma for lunch. The rest of the family are settling into siestas. I am settling down in front of the telly, to watch Freddy Flintoff come out to bat in his last test innings, and reflecting that Flintoff is cricket's McEnroe.

Both Flintoff and McEnroe were unbelieveably gifted. They've treated us fans to some sheer magic: the Ashes in 2005, the Wimbledon finals in 1980 and 1981. Yet, especially when compared with their natural talent, both are underachievers.

Michael Atherton talks here about Flintoff's disappointing career stats. Flintoff averages 32.06 with the bat and 32.59 with the ball. The decimals show that his batting average is slightly lower than his bowling. To put that in perspective, Imran Khan averaged 37 with the bat and 22 with the ball. Botham averaged 33/28. Among Flintoff's contemporaries, Shaun Pollock comes in at 32/23. Flintoff's bowling average is about the same as Kallis; however, Kallis averages more than 50 with the bat.

Given how good Flintoff can be, especially with the ball, his returns are surprisingly meagre. Like McEnroe's seven grand slam titles.

Yet, the Flintoff we want to remember is not the Flintoff we see in the statistics, but the Flintoff who beat South Africa in 2003, who bowled this over at Edgbaston in 2005. Like the McEnroe in the mind is the one who beat Bjorn Borg in 1981.

So long, Freddy. Thanks for all the fun.