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

A Death in the Ganj. The Death of the Dream that was The Ganj.

A Manifesto for McCluskiegunge

A Death in the Ganj, Konkana Sen Sharma’s debut as a director, is on Amazon Prime. It’s worth watching.

Featuring Mukul Sharma's iconic
blue Ambassador

It’s worth the time purely as a 70s nostalgia trip. 

The film is based on a short story by Konkana’s father Mukul Sharma - the the MS behind the Mind Sport column that used to appear in the Illustrated Weekly of India. 

It is about the Anglo-Indian community, like 36 Chowringhee Lane, Konkana’s mother Aparna Sen’s debut as a director (which remains the best movie ever made about Anglo-Indians). 

It prominently features a blue Ambassador, which is based on a blue Ambassador that Mukul Sharma owned during Konkana’s childhood. 

It involves an endless vacation where there is absolutely nothing to do except spend time with family members, and unspecified people who are sort of like family members, whether you want their company or not. Twenty first century vacations somehow don’t have those vast vacant spaces. 

But to me the most interesting thing about the movie is the setting – McCluskieganj – the settlement on the Chota Nagpur plateau which was meant to be a homeland for Anglo-Indians. The narrative arc of Death in the Ganj parallels the death of McCluskieganj itself.

The Anglo-Indians are (roughly) the children of British colonial officers who served in India and their Indian women. They were proud of their British roots, their (relatively) fair skin, and generally adopted their father’s names, religion and language.

Through the Raj, the Anglo-Indians remained a privileged class in Indian society. For example, an Anglo-Indian in the Indian Railways was paid more than a native officer of the same rank, but less than a white Britisher. They remained faithful to the Crown through the tumult of India’s freedom struggle. In their own eyes, they were “domiciled Europeans and 100% British”.

However, as the prospect of Indian independence became ever more plausible, and as the prospect of lakhs of Anglo-Indians being warmly welcomed “home” to England became ever less plausible, some amount of soul searching was perhaps inevitable.

Mr Ernest Timothy McCluskie of Park Street, Calcutta, a successful property broker and a member of the Bengal Legislative Council, responded to this historical moment by dreaming up McCluskiegunge. He found a land parcel of 10,000 acres that was watered by the Damodar and Jagriti Rivers and was connected by train to Calcutta. He leased this land in perpetuity from the Raja of Ratu, named this development after himself, and invited Anglo-Indians from across India to buy property here.

Mr McCluskie’s vision was much bigger than just a property deal.

McCluskiegunge was packaged as a clarion call to heroic adventure (see advert/ manifesto above), an exhortation to vigorous Anglo-Indian youth to shed their lethargy and bring civilization to the virgin forests of Chota Nagpur, sort of like American pioneers or Zionist kibbutzim. This could be read as a sacred duty, as McCluskiegunge was a “mulk” for Anglo-Indians, a promised land of their own.

If “mulk” is a self-consciously Urdu word (Hyderabad was ruled by the Nizam ul Mulk), the McCluskiegunge advert/ manifesto even more explicitly references Pakistan, “We see in McCluskiegunge the beginnings of what the Moslems call Pakistan but we call Anglo-India. A place in India where we can foregather and mix freely.”

And for a while, this dream worked. For a while, the forests of Chota Nagpur became Chota England. Spacious bungalows, tiger hunting, afternoon tea parties, ballroom dancing, piano music – McCluskiegunge had it all, everything the Anglo-Indians wanted, everything except jobs. There never was a reason why the kind of jobs vigorous young Anglo-Indians might want to do would migrate to The Ganj, and in the absence of those vital jobs, the Ganj went into a spiral of decline. Like Salman Rushdie’s Peccavistan, McCluskiegunge was incompletely imagined.

By the 70s it already was a quixotic museum piece, a parable about the dangers of putting ethnic purity above just-rub-along pragmatism. Today, with only twenty odd Anglo-Indian families left in The Ganj, it’s not clear if its unique Anglo-Indian flavour will even live on.

There is something distinctly illiberal about the idea of a “mulk” for Anglo-Indians, a pure ethnically clean homeland for a chosen people, far away from the cheek-by-jowl diversity and chaos of India’s great cities. So why does Konkana Sen Sharma, a strident liberal, show The Ganj in sympathetic light?

It feels a bit like Joan Baez singing “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”.

Once an idea is completely defeated, the idea and its champions acquire a sepia-toned sweetness. Liberals respond to the underdog, or the tragic-loser status that the defeated now have, rather than the ideas the underdogs once championed.

This is a dangerous and slippery slope. Ideas have a life of their own. I’m sure Joan Baez never imagined that white supremacists waving the Confederate flag would storm the US Capitol in the twenty first century.

So, is that likely to happen in India? Are the contemporary avatars of Mr Ernest Timothy McCluskie going to rise up and demand the creation/ restoration of their “mulk”?

Probably not. Because so many of them have emigrated.

Frank Anthony (who shares a name with India’s most celebrated Anglo-Indian parliamentarian) estimates that about 50% of the Anglo-Indian population have emigrated to Canada, Australia or England. Compare that to the ~15% emigration rates from Goa and the ~100% emigration rates of the Keralite Jews.

The remaining 50% are still very much here, embedded in every major Indian city, contributing to the tapestry of Indian life, but very far away from The Ganj that hasn’t quite died yet but is clearly fading away.

The emigration of India's Jews: the diaspora becomes a diaspora once again

A Keralite King Receives Jewish Refugees 

The Jews came to India in 70AD.

They came in their most forsaken hour, when Jerusalem had fallen to Emperor Vespasian’s son Titus, when their Second Temple had been destroyed and desecrated, when God’s chosen people were being slaughtered in the streets by merciless Roman legions, they came to India.

In India, they found a new home. The Jews lived here in peace and prosperity, worshipped their chosen God, retained their distinctive customs and identity, won honour from the local kings (the Mattancheri synagogue in Cochin shares a wall with the Maharaja’s palace).

And then they left. 

After two thousand years on these shores, the Jews started going “home” to the land of their forefathers when Israel was created in 1948. Today, there aren't enough young Jews who still live in Cochin for its storied synagogue to conduct religious services.

These Jews had a choice. Their hand was not forced, they faced no famines, no pogroms, no trains filled with mutilated corpses, no extreme conditions. They obviously had no lived experience of their ancient homeland. Yet, almost all of them chose to leave. Unlike the Goans who were presented with a similar choice and chose to stay.

Why? The simplest answer is money. Israel has always been a richer country than Portugal, but that answer feels incomplete. The income gap between Portugal and Israel (see chart below) doesn’t feel big enough to explain a difference in emigration rates of ~15% vs. ~100%.

The ideal of Israel - a brotherhood of the devout, dedicating their lives to their sacred motherland, working shoulder to shoulder to make the desert bloom (I was brought up on Leon Uris’ Exodus) – may have offered something more uplifting than the Salazar dictatorship.

But the longer I think about it the more drawn to the circular logic of emigration (or for that matter, most human behaviour). 

More Indian Jews emigrated because many Indian Jews had already emigrated. There was nothing to stay for, nothing left to be a part of. Fewer Goans emigrated because only a few Goans had emigrated. Goa still felt like home.

What next? The Indian diaspora in Israel aren’t coming home to India anytime soon. But do they still feel a connection with India? Is there a kernel of goodwill, understanding and respect for us over in Israel? Maybe there is.

I was cheered up inordinately by this picture (downloaded from the BBC). It shows Israeli Jews of Indian origin wearing whites, sporting the Indian cricket team's ODI colours.

Members of the Indian diaspora in Israel
Wearing the colours of the Indian cricket team

Next stop for the IPL: CSK fan club events in Tel Aviv and Haifa?

Whistle Podu, Israel!

Do Goans really want to become Portuguese citizens?

Mario Miranda's Goa

Suppose people from a poor third world country were given the option of being citizens of a rich first world country. Would they take it? Or leave it?

As a rule, people from poor third world countries don’t have the option of acquiring first world citizenship, so this remains a mostly theoretical question. Goa is an exception to this rule.

Goans who were Portuguese subjects before 1961, when India liberated Goa from the Salazar dictatorship, can choose to take a Portuguese passport. Their children and grandchildren can make the same choice. In effect, Goans who can trace their roots to colonial times can choose to be EU citizens.

How many of them have taken the option? My best estimate is about 15%.

I did a small poll of friends and family to guess this number among people I thought had enough context to hazard a guess. The range of guesstimates ranged from <1% to >80%. People like us don’t have an intuitive sense for a natural emigration rate.

My 15% estimate is a “soft” number because (surprisingly) there doesn’t seem to be any authoritative public data on this process. Google doesn’t throw up any crisp, credible results. Here is how I pieced together the estimate:

The most frequently quoted number in the press is that there are about 70,000 Goan-origin Portuguese citizens resident in Portugal, another 30,000 in the UK (as EU citizens before Brexit), and about 50,000 living in India (presumably on OCI visas). Adding these numbers up, it seems that about 150,000 Goans have opted for Portuguese citizenship.

How many Goans had the option?

Goa is tiny. Its population today is only about 1.5 million. This number includes migrants from the rest of India who settled in Goa after 1961, who are not eligible for a Portuguese passport.

The population of Goa in 1961 was just under 600,000. If that eligible population grew at a rate of ~1% per annum, about a 1 million would be eligible.

Taken together, it seems about 15% of eligible Goans chose EU citizenship. Or, 85% of those who could have moved from the third world to the first world chose to stay! My own guess was that at least 30% eligible Goans would have taken the EU passport because of the size-of-the-prize.

What is the size-of-the-prize these Goans are choosing not to take?

The chart below shows that trajectory of India and Portugal’s per capita GDP in today’s USD from 1961 onwards (sourced from the World Bank…btw, I love this online data visualization tool!).

At the time the Salazar dictatorship was thrown out of India, emigrating to Portugal was not that attractive. Portugal's per capita GDP was at USD 360 in today’s money. Portugal was basically just another third world dictatorship that happened to be in Europe.

However, after democracy was established in 1974, after Portugal joined the EU in 1986, income skyrocketed. Today Portuguese incomes are about USD 23,000 compared to Indian incomes of about USD 2,000.

Looking at the average Indian's income may be misleading. Goa is much more prosperous than the rest of India. Goa's per capita income is about USD 6000. After adjusting for purchasing power parity, that might mean emigration doubles real income rather than increasing it 10X. 

In general, demand for emigration vs. income follows an S shaped curve (first S shaped curve in the diagram). The promise of doubling income, off a relatively high base, clearly isn't enough to prompt a mass migration of the comfortably-off.

Migration is all about S shaped curves

Culture must also be a factor. Goans are stereotypically laid-back. They might care less about the extra income than other Indians. Most Goans don’t speak Portuguese. I can imagine that the psychic cost of learning a new language to gain a foothold in a new home must be daunting.

Perhaps the biggest factor limiting emigration is that many Goans have chosen to stay home.

This is certainly the most emotionally resonant factor for me, as a Tam Bram from Mylapore, Madras. I’d attended a school reunion in Chennai (nee Madras) a few years ago when only 2 out of the 75 science students from my class showed up. The rest were abroad. The large concentrations were in California, Texas and New Jersey. Another Tam Bram friend I was discussing this phenomenon with told me about his classmates from IIT-Roorkee. He is the only one, out of about fifty, who is still in India.

These people are not emigrating because of economic necessity. The quality of life they would have experienced in India was always going to be okay. A big part of the reason they emigrate is because others like them are also emigrating (this is the second S shaped curve on the diagram).

I guess that if enough people-like-us leave home, home doesn’t quite feel like home anymore. I guess its good that enough Goans are staying at home for Goa to still feel like Goa.

Paul Fernandes' Goa

Batting in the pink ball test at Motera should have been like batting against Kumble or Underwood. It was a test of traditional technique

Jonny Bairstow
Ducks in both innings @ Motera

India just beat England in the Motera test in under two days. What happened?

Having watched replays and commentaries over the weekend (because the live cricket is over), my takeaway is that bad batting happened.

Digging a little deeper…

Joe Root gave us the most cogent explanation for why the pink ball used in Ahmedabad behaved differently from the traditional red ball.
 
The pink ball seam is harder and therefore stands prouder. The thicker lacquer surface means the ball comes off the pitch more quickly, especially when the ball lands on the lacquer surface rather than on the seam. The ball also spins more or less depending on whether it lands on the seam or on the surface. This doesn’t mean that there is more spin on the pitch, or that it is two-paced. It does means there is more variation in the spin, and more variation in the pace at which the ball reaches the bat.
 
There is nothing specifically Indian/ sub-continental about this extra variation.
 
This is similar to how a ball would behave on a traditionally English “sticky wicket” drying off after summer rain. Derek “Deadly” Underwood would have reveled in the conditions at Motera.

"Deadly" Derek Underwood 
Would have loved bowling at Motera 

How did good batsmen counter this variation? With classic traditional technique.
 
Traditional batting technique was meant to deal with uncertainty. Well-schooled batsmen got right down to the pitch of the ball, got low, “smelt” the ball, kept their bat just in front of their front pad, played with a straight bat, through the line, into the V, smothered the spin on a good length, and scored big off long-hops that sat up to be thumped or half-volleys that never got the chance to deviate. Cutting off the stumps, sweeping on a length, hitting against the spin and playing from the crease - all behaviours that assume low uncertainty - were all considered bad batting.
 
A classically correct English batsman of an earlier generation, like Dennis Amiss, might have batted for hours at Motera. Sunny Gavaskar’s 96 against Pakistan in Bangalore was made in much more challenging conditions. Karnataka’s Brijesh Patel (long considered a better player of spin than even GR Vishwanath), or Tamil Nadu purists like V Sivaramakrishnan and TE Srinivasan would have been equipped to deal with the variation in both pace and speed. VVS Laxman, India’s fourth innings hero on so many occasions, would have done fine.
 
Today’s batsmen, our sixer-hitting reverse-sweeping galacticos, don’t seem to be equipped with these traditional virtues. Look at the way the top order batters got themselves out.
 
Kohli, Rahane and Foakes were out trying to cut length balls on the stumps. Anybody who has played Kumble could have told them that when the ball is turning just a bit and hurrying on to the stumps, playing horizontal bat shots is suicide.
 
Rohit Sharma and Jonny Bairstow were out sweeping for the length despite the line. Root was out LBW twice, rooted to his crease instead of either getting fully forward or back. Pant was out driving through the line of a ball that was just short of a drivable length. Shubman Gill was out trying to pull a short ball from well outside off. WTF?! 

Rohit Sharma was in charge, until he threw it away

It would be nice if our galacticos also learnt traditional batting, to supplement their sixer-hitting heroics.
 
There were also a surprisingly large number of good batters who missed straight balls. Zak Crawley (who played beautifully in the first innings) was bowled off the first ball he faced from Axar in the second. Pujara and Washington Sundar clean missed ordinary looking length balls from Leach and Root. This looks like batters aren’t sighting the pink ball, especially when they’re new to the crease.
 
That is not surprising. It takes literally years spent out in the middle for an international batter to train his vision to sight a cricket ball that’s dancing around in space. This training is cognitive more than optical. “Seeing the ball like a football” is a cognitive reality. It’s totally natural if a new colour tricks the eye/ mind, if it is harder to see a pink ball, and therefore impossible to “see the ball like a football”.
  
So where’s this going? What next? 

I think the Motera test is an argument for playing more pink ball cricket at the junior, domestic and limited over levels.
 
The ECB has mandated that each first-class county plays at least one pink ball game per year. If that doesn’t seem like a lot, here in India I don’t think any Ranji Trophy games use a pink ball. Without that experience, the next generation of players will also have to discover the pink ball only when they reach the international level.
 
If Root’s insight – that there is more uncertainty in the path of a pink ball than in either a red or white ball - is true, I especially like the idea of pink ball cricket in limited overs games. Test cricket is in perfectly good health (refer Brisbane 2021). Limited overs cricket needs to shift its balance of power to favour bowlers. Pink ball games might be a good way to do so.
 
Finally, from a purely parochial, partisan viewpoint, one positive thing that the “minefield” at Motera has resulted in is that the Poms are whingeing again.
 
Steve Waugh’s invincibles realised that the only way to beat India in India was by enforcing a strict no-whingeing rule. This was the discipline that enabled them to come back from the miracle of Kolkata in 2001, to conquer the final frontier in 2004.
 
During the first Chennai test I was a little worried that Root’s team had learnt from Waugh’s success, that they had trained their minds to enjoy playing in India. But now, with all the whingeing about the wicket, the umpires, the bio-bubble, the rotation policy, their Asian spinner Moeen Ali “choosing” to go home, etcetera, it feels a bit like the wheels are coming of the English bus.
 
England will now play the fourth and final test with both a series win and/ or a spot in the WTC finals out of reach. Are they proud enough to play with passion and purpose, in unquestionably tough conditions, when there is nothing except pride at stake? Or in other words, do they have the relentless intensity of Lloyd's Windies, Waugh's Aussies or Kohli's Indians? Let’s see.

The England Leadership Team
Do they have the hunger to fight on in the fourth test?

 

WandaVision: Another Retelling of Savitri-Satyavan

My family I are hooked on a TV miniseries called WandaVision. 

WandaVision is a part of the Marvel-verse - an alternative reality with many heroes and heroines who have amazing superpowers, whose narratives are all tangled together and sometimes inconsistent, where time and causality are fluid, where good characters sometimes discover the dark side within, but where the dividing line between good and evil is always discernible. 

Here is what I see going on in WandaVision. 

Wanda and Vision are a loving wife and husband. They live an idyllic suburban life in 1950s America, with a Chevrolet, a Frigidaire, chicken dinners and nosy neighbours. 

But that charming reality is not as it seems. 

In another greater reality, Wanda and Vision were Avengers! They were warriors for good fighting against evil. In this Avengers reality, Vision was killed on the battlefield. 

Wanda refused to give up on her fallen partner. 

Wanda used her superpowers to bring Vision back from the dead. 

Wanda created an alternative reality in which she and Vision could be united once more. 

So, WandaVision is about a strong virtuous woman with superpowers who brings her husband back from the dead. Where have I heard that before? 

In another magical alternative universe. In the alternative reality of Indian mythology, where many heroes and heroines have amazing superpowers, whose narratives are all tangled together and sometimes inconsistent, where time and causality are fluid, where good characters sometimes discover the dark side within, but where the dividing line between good and evil is always discernible.

Wanda's story is basically the Savitri-Satyavan story. 

Savitri was also a strong virtuous woman with superpowers who brought her husband Satyavan back from the dead. 

Savitri’s superpowers were her intelligence and devotion. Wanda’s superpowers include telekinesis, energy manipulation and neuroelectric interfacing. Sure, there are differences between the two characters, and the telling of the two stories. But if the two heroines were to meet, they would have plenty in common to talk about.

Savitri negotiating with Yama in
Raja Ravi Verma's Painting

"Winning Takes Care of Everything". By Tiger Woods, Barack Obama and Bhagavan Sri Krishna

Tiger Woods on the importance of winning

How far does one go to win? 

As far as one possibly can. 

Most sportsmen would agree with Tiger Woods on that point. 

Win gracefully if that is your style. Win ugly if not. Test the edges of the rules. Win! 

This might stick in the throat of nice, well brought up, middle class boys like this blogger. But fair enough. Tiger Woods is a pro. He is playing hardball. So are his competitors. Maybe winning does take care of everything. For Tiger. 

How well does that generalize? 

Depends. 

On how well winning is defined. And on how well-defined the rules are. 

In most walks of life both winning and the rules of play are very loosely defined. 

Barack Obama with Tim Kaine
On the importance of winning

So how hard does one play? 

Public life is a sphere where hardball might be a bad idea, where the unwritten rules are more important than in sports, where winning doesn’t take care of everything. 

So, it was interesting to learn that Nobel Peace prize laurate ex-President Barack Obama endorses hardball. 

Apparently he told Tim Kaine, then candidate Hillary Clinton’s VP nominee “Tim, remember, this is no time to be a purist. You've got to keep a fascist out of the White House". 

Barack thinks that when the stakes are high, purity is less important than winning. 

This is not a recent question. 

Bhagavan Sri Krishna played hardball. 

Arjuna asked Bhagavan Sri Krishna about dharma at Kurukshetra. Bhagavan Sri Krishna replied with his actions. Whether it was forcing Karna to waste Indra’s Shakthi on Ghatothkacha, obscuring the sun with his Sudarshana-chakra so Arjuna could avenge Abhimanyu’s death, or orchestrating Yudhishthira’s only lie so Dhrishtadhyumna could kill Guru Dronacharya, Bhagavan Sri Krishna was willing to play hardball. The stakes were high enough to justify this. Winning mattered more than purity.

In contexts that are more important than sports, maybe winning doesn’t take care of everything. 

But winning does take care of a lot of things.

Bhagawan Sri Krishna with Arjuna
On the importance of winning

Question for Australia: is Bodyline Okay?

Pujara being hit a bodyline delivery from Pat Cummins

Is bodyline okay now?

Is anybody in the cricket media/ establishment even asking that question?

The Aussies were bowling bodyline. There is no other word for it. 

In the just concluded India-Australia series, the Aussie quick bowlers were clearly trying to hit and intimidate the batters. They targeted top order batsmen like Pujara, who took eleven bodyhits during his heroic resistance in Brisbane. They also targeted lower order batsmen like Shami, whose fractured arm deprived India of a pace spearhead.

Pujara's body-blows on the last day at Brisbane

Media coverage has been mainly about India's courage in braving this assault, not about whether this kind of assault was cricket in the first place.

The Aussie leadership behind this bodyline attack – Tim Paine and Justin Langer – are supposedly the clean-cut role-models who are creating a wholesome new culture, after the win-at-all-costs sandpaper-gate culture created by Steve Smith and Darren Lehmann. They have copped a lot of flak for sledging and losing, but not for bowling bodyline.

The leaders of the cricket world - Gavaskar, Ganguly, Shane Warne, the Waugh twins, the Chappell brothers, England’s Michael Vaughn, thoughtful commentators like Harsha Bhogle – have had little or nothing to say about this tactic. The only murmurs of protest Google could find me are on niche Indian and Kiwi websites.

Michael Atherton seems to have brought up the appropriateness of bodyline in 2017, when Mitchell Johnson was peppering the English top order as well as bunnies like Jake Ball and Jimmy Anderson with short stuff. Steve Smith, then the pre-sandpaper-gate Australian captain, dismissed Atherton's view as "a bit over the top. No doubt, if they had the kind of pace that our bowlers can generate, they'd do the same thing."

Maybe bodyline is the new normal.

Maybe anyone who complains about bodyline is a wuss.

Maybe it is just naïve to expect professional cricketers to respect unwritten codes of conduct.

Maybe.

Mohammad Shami being hit by a bodyline delivery from Pat Cummins.
Shami was sent home with a fractured arm

Virat Kohli deserves credit for India’s amazing win in Australia

Team India at the Gabba with the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 

Victory at the Gabba! What an amazing win! What incredible attitude, spunk, guts and gumption!

Rishabh and Siraj celebrate

India’s amazing test series victory in Australia was achieved while India’s captain and best batsman - Virat Kohli - was away on paternity leave. So, for the past week my social media feed has been buzzing with snarky memes about how Team India is better off without superstar Kohli, or with TED talk style meditations on how “servant leaders” like Ajinkya Rahane are more effective than “alpha leaders” like Virat.

These memes are missing the point. Kohli deserves a ton of credit for this win.

Kohli’s biggest contribution to this moment was in making winning test series abroad India’s #1 priority.

In the later years of MS Dhoni’s captaincy that commitment was never clear. There was always a feeling that Dhoni’s test team were going through the motions rather than playing with belief, intent, or purpose. That sense of drift was obvious on the abysmal England tours of 2011 and 2014. It seemed obvious that MSD enjoyed limited overs cricket more than test matches. The fog never really lifted until Dhoni retired from test cricket.

At that time, it was easy to imagine that Indian cricket would become IPL-land, happy to have some T20 fun, but with no higher aspirations. With a different leader that could easily have happened.

Fortunately, Kohli never had any doubts that his ambition was to make India a great test team.

He brought in other leaders, like Ravi Shastri, who shared this vision. He committed to the workload of playing more tests, to the more arduous scheduling, to the fitness culture needed to maintain a pack of 8-10 genuine quick bowlers who could bowl with intensity after an entire day’s play in any conditions. Kohli prepped India's test team with away-wins in Sri Lanka and the West Indies, with home wins against New Zealand, South Africa England and Australia before setting out to conquer the final frontier – away wins in the SENA nations.

That prize almost eluded him. With a bit of luck India could have won in South Africa in 2017-18. We lost chasing fourth inning targets of 208 in Cape Town and 287 Pretoria. With a bit more luck India could have won in England in 2018. We lost chasing fourth inning targets of 195 in Birmingham and 245 in Southampton. Compare that with the 328 we hunted down against a better attack in Brisbane.

Mother Cricket finally smiled down on Kohli’s team when India finally beat Australia in Australia in 2018-19 for the first time in history. Captain Kohli’s noble quest hadn’t been in vain. The final frontier had been conquered.

If India had the resources to win again in Australia in 2020-21, it is in significant part because of Kohli’s legacy. There is nothing inevitable about having a team of young test players with the chutzpah to beat the Aussies in Australia. Kohli’s ambition, faith and patient team building set this win up.

The point is not to take anything away from the rest of the leadership group.

Most great achievements have many fathers. Rahane’s calm, Shastri’s mental toughness, even Bharat Arun’s tactical nous all contributed to this glorious moment. But leadership is about more than being the khadoos Maratha rock the rest of the team bat around, it is about more than being calm presence in the dressing room, it is more than making the smart field placings. Leadership is also about having a vision for what we will achieve together and having the resourcefulness and patience to develop a team to deliver on that vision. To that extent the leader who gave us the joy of Brisbane 2021 is the nappy-changing daddy Kohli.

Let there be no doubt that Virat has fire in his belly...

...even if he does have a softer side.

Note: I was surfing the web for pictures of Virat and Anushka with the daughter, who was born on the day India saved the Sydney test. The photos on the net right now are all stock images or fakes.