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.