My Son

Lusty cries, gleeful smiles,
Laughs filled with laughter.

Translucent skin & Chubby limbs,
Tiny fingers knotted into fists!

As I gaze at this marvel of God's creation,
I feel my heart bursting with love.

A love so pure,
Filled with the wanting to care,
wanting to hold close,
wanting to protect.

Is it blood that bonds us?
Is it nature?
Is the answer blended in the twists of time?
Does one have to find answers?
Or go along and thank God,
Savor the joys that an angel brings to the home?

Saurav Ganguly's Shirt . . .

In the times of renewed Indo-Pak rivalry on the Cricket Field, an old piece of yarn . . .

This is the story of my life. . .

Once a successful, admired and well traveled shirt, I am now old, arthritic and coming apart at the seams. I have seen it all - success, fame, women, the world. And I saw it all with my master, Saurav Ganguly, HRH Prince of Calcutta.
My origins were humble; I was born in a mill in Ludhiana. Well, if one examined it deeply, it was not exactly a humble coming into the world, for I and my 299 siblings were created for the exclusive use of the Royal family of the country, The Indian Cricket Team. Our upbringing, if one could call it that, was uneventful, and then one fine day we were packed into cardboard boxes and our journey into the wide world began. As we flew eastward, my excited brothers and sisters wagered bets on who in the Royalty they would serve during the coming months. I had no such anxiety, leaving it to fate and his sidekick, destiny to decide on whom, I would belong to.

Some days later, I and three of my older brothers were parted from the rabble, and handed over to one of the members of the Royal family. Wrapped in cellophane and cardboard, it was difficult to find out which of the Royalty had got us. My brothers argued amongst themselves, they would not talk to meas I was one of the youngest in the family, and swore fiercely that theywould rather pop their buttons, then have the physio or the manager inherit us. I was nervous and couldn’t sleep the night before the match and stuffed my ears with cotton wool to stop hearing the bickering of my brothers. In the morning, ignoring my brothers, hands grabbed me roughly and tearing the wraps open, threw me onto the bed.

As I lay on back, I was overcome with emotion, looking at the bare-bodied person who was toweling himself vigorously. Tears flowed down my cheeks, in happiness, in pride and most of all in worship! Saurav Ganguly, the Prince of Calcutta, the King of the Indian Cricket Team had chosen me as his Shirt, his raiment, his protection from the elements of the wicked world!!

Saurav loved me. He took me everywhere for the next three months, we traveled, we partied and we played some Cricket. Saurav took good care of me, he insisted on my being clean, berating several house-keeping lads at various hotels when I was not. He never dived or tumbled around on the field when I was with him, though I did get a few grass stains occasionally when he lost his footing. His leadership blossomed under me and he reached heights of fame and fortune, with me around. It was a happy and peaceful existence for a while and then the most unbelievable thing happened.

Everybody has a defining moment, the acme, the zenith, in life and mine came one summer evening in London at the holy ground of Cricket, Lords. I was sitting comfortably around my Master’s shoulders in the late evening sunlight, as two young lads were batting, parsimonious Knights to my Master’s Princely lavishness. My Master seemed tense, kept leaning forward with his eyes focused on the middle of the ground and chewing on the beads around his neck. Suddenly, letting out a roar like the tiger he was, he jumped to his feet, tore me of his back and started twirling me around his head, all the while screaming like someone in the grips of dementia!

Dizzy, though I was with the helicopter rotor-like revolutions, the feeling I had was one of dying and going to heaven! Without a doubt, I was Famous, theSalvadore Dali of clothing, the envy of all shirts. The whole enclosure, the whole stadium and the whole Cricket playing world knew me. I wasphotographed a million times, reams were written about me, my pictures were plastered on all the leading newspapers in the world and for a while I was a permanent fixture on several television networks’ prime time entertainment! My Master, My Lord, My Prince had transformed me from a good shirt to a great one!

Though there were other happy times, it never came close to that evening in London, and then my master started using my services less and less. I couldn’t fault him because I was getting old, graying and arthritis was creeping into my joints. Finally, he gave me to the bellboy at the Maurya Sheraton in New Delhi and though treated abysmally by this slothful character, I did not have a bath after leaving my Master and was finally employed as a rag to shine shoes, my mind was at rest. I had my moment in the golden rays of the Sun. I was a Famous Shirt for a while and I had served Royalty, not a privilege made available to every shirt.

Now, as I await death, lying in a pile of garbage with one hand amputated and gaping holes in my once, proud body, I wonder where and what my Master, HRH Prince Saurav Ganguly is doing and I remember Thomas Gray’s famous line

‘The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day. . . '

Casablanca - The Movie

You must remember this
A kiss is still a kiss
A sigh is just a sigh
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by
Dooley Wilson(1942)

Everybody is doing reviews of recent movies and waxing eloquent on themes, cinematography and music, et al. Hence, I thought I would go back in time and reminiscence on one of the finest movies of all time – Casablanca.

Casablanca was made in 1942, and for a movie which has WWII as the backdrop, it is amazing how well the nuances and deep passions created by the War has been captured, as it must be kept in mind that the war had just entered its significant phase and with all the rumors floating in Hollywood, it must have been difficult to get an accurate picture of the situation in the war torn region.

The story is about Rick Blaine, a Nightclub owner and his love for Ilsa who is married to a prominent resistance leader. Acclaimed as one of the finest romantic movies of all times, what makes the movie a legend is the out-of-their-skins performances by all the leading characters in the film.

Humphrey Bogart, as Rick Blaine, is simply phenomenal. With a casual, languid grace and his nasal ‘here’s looking at you kid’, he has played probably the best role of his career. I watched his much touted ‘Maltese Falcon’ as well as ‘Key Largo’ and found him very ordinary in these films.
Ingrid Bergman, as Ilsa, is my alltime favorite movie character. The statuesque beauty and the long, long legs . . . whew! I have never watched any other movie of hers simply because I don’t want to spoil this incredible image which Casablanca has created of her.

Paul Henried is another actor from the movie that I haven’t seen more of. But he carries the role of the on-the-run Resistance leader with dignity and strength. There is a scene in the café, when a group of German Soldiers start singing the Sieg Heil, and he moves to the downcast French band and starts singing the Marseillaise, after which the whole café starts singing and drowns out the Germans. The strength and will of all the Resistance leaders across Europe simply oozes out of Henried (as Viktor Lazlo) in that sequence. One of the magical scenes from the movie and one which still makes me break out in goose pimples!

Each of the other characters are legendary – Conradt Veidt as the German Strasser, Sydney Greenstreet (with the fly swatter!!) and Peter Lorre have all played immortal roles. (Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre also acts with Bogie in Maltese Falcon). Claude Rains as Captain Renault plays the role of a Frenchman caught in the Vichy France period of subservience to the Germans masking a fierce patriotic spirit so well and his last scene of throwing the bottle of Vichy water into the dustbin is supremely disdainful.

Michael Curtiz directed the movie and one of the trends that he set in this unforgettable movie is a central black character – Sam, the Pianist. Dooley Wilson who plays Sam, was a popular blues/jazz singer who was made immortal with his song ‘As times go by’ and more with his sensitive acting. The song is a legend and covers of it was made by a host of latter day singers including people like Frank Sinatra.

If you haven’t watched the movie, do watch it; if you have, watch it again. Let in some Black and White magic traipsing through your day!!


Some Trivia that I picked up about the movie over the years

a. The line by Bogie ‘Of all the Gin Joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine’ was voted the Best Cinema Line of all time when a poll was made on the top ten lines uttered in movies. (Guess what made No. 2??? ‘My name is Bond, James Bond!’). I came across this a long time back, so it is pretty unauthenticated.
b. The plane in the last scene (as Ilsa and Viktor leave to Lisbon) is a plywood cutout and not a real plane. (This is documented . . . somewhere!!)
c. The line ‘Play it again, Sam’ is never mentioned in the Movie. The closest is ‘Play it once, Sam. For old times sake’ – Ilsa to Sam in the Café.
d. The Rick Blaine role was originally supposed to be played by Ronald Reagan. He dropped out at the last moment; Humphrey Bogart took the role and was transformed from a good actor to an immortal Legend!!!

George Bush : All My Sons

When I was growing up in Bangalore, a few of my well meaning friends roped me into an amateur production of Arthur Miller’s ‘All my sons’. My advent into the theatre world, I realized much later, was more due to a paucity of bodies, than because of my personality or histrionic abilities. Anyway, it was good fun; I was young, I had never heard of Arthur Miller before and all I remember of the miniscule part I was playing was having to empty an imaginary pipe several times on an imaginary tree before filling it with supposedly aromatic tobacco. The production finally never saw the light of day due to the various commitments of all the persons involved; the marriage and emigration to Australia of two of the cast also did not help matters. While my dreams of Broadway’s lights were fleeting, readings of the play and a subsequent interest in the works of Miller, left me with a lasting impression of the central character in the play.

Joe Keller, a pillar of American society and business, manufactures critical spare parts for American fighter planes taking part in the various cauldrons and infernos that was World War II. One of the many consignments being supplied to the War department contains parts which are seriously flawed. Business dynamics and exigencies of striking while the iron was hot ensure that this truth is camouflaged. Ultimately these flawed spare parts, sends spiraling to earth more American fighters than what squadrons of Japanese Zeros and German Messerschmitts could manage, including amongst them an aircraft piloted by our hero’s son. Joe Keller is arrested and later released. There is an emotional climax to the play, with someone, a daughter or another son I think, haranguing this man about his avarice and greed which leads to the death of his son as well as other fine young American soldiers. Final Act, Final Scene has Keller, climbing a staircase, brokenly muttering, “They were all my sons, they were all my sons”. A little later, a shot is heard from upstairs. Curtain falls. Much applause!

Now what is the connection between a character from a play and George Bush, great white christian leader and protector of the free world, you may ask? To answer that, one needs to go to this link on CNN’s home page (http://www.cnn.com/interactive/us/0409/list.us.casualties/frameset.exclude.html) which gives a list of American casualties in Iraq and also the history of American casualties in war since the War of Independence in the late 1700s. Looking at the Wars fought by the Americans in the last hundred years, some of them, World War II and Afghanistan, may be justified because of direct aggression on the United States. World War I, too could be excused as the United States was catapulted into the war after the American ocean liner Lusitania, was sunk by a U-Boat. All the other conflicts – Korea, Vietnam & Iraq – arguably, have no just cause either in the form of direct aggression on the United Sates’ sovereignty or any threat to its national security.
These casualty statistics are or were fine young men, maimed and killed in distant lands, many oceans and seas from their farms and their families and loved ones, not ‘fighting on the beaches or fighting in the fields or fighting on the hills’ to save their country, but dying for unknown causes. Did Truman and Johnson and the Bush senior and junior, ever think about the families, the wives and the children of these soldiers, before sending them off to their deaths? I guess the need of staying on top of the totem pole as the world’s super power justifies sending young men in the prime of their lives to early deaths. And what about the millions of, seemingly normal and rational, Americans that one sees supporting the war in Iraq? These people, in all probability, do not have family members dodging bullets of desperate insurgents. And chances are, they know nothing about what it means when a close family member dies.

When will the collective American conscience awaken and say “they were all my sons”? And will the day dawn, when George Bush dismantles his mighty war machinery and say “they are all my sons” and call an end to the killing?

Tony Blair : Saare Jahaan se achhan!

In the immediate aftermath of the euphoria of the Indian Nuclear tests, there was this scathing diatribe in the Outlook magazine by at that time recent Booker Prize winner Arundathi Roy about the unseemliness of the tests and how India, after the tests, had become an international pariah and how it made her ashamed to be an Indian. I felt completely crestfallen after reading this peroration by this daughter of Mary Roy, a proud and courageous woman who has battled the system time and again at her famous school, Corpus Christi in Kottayam, Kerala. My images of a triumphant Vajpayee, then Indian Prime Minister and of Abdul Kalam, current Indian President, at the testing site and the overwhelming feeling of pride were shattered by this four page scathing attack by Arundathi Roy, which was filled with outrage and scorn.

My faith was shaken. Are we, the Indian Nation, going to continue being consigned to the outer fringe of the Nations of the world as we have been for many decades? Would these tests, as one hoped, not propel the country into the leading Nations of the world? Would we be soon subjected to the ignominy of trade sanctions and other derogatory actions normally reserved for rogue Nations? Many years of discussions on NPT and CTBT and aligned stuff happened. But the doubts continued.

Last night, these fears were forever laid to rest. Tony Blair, not my favorite statesman by any stretch of imagination and a poodle personified, like so many caricaturists have continuously and appropriately referred to him, at a Banquet, repeatedly benchmarked India along with the US and China. True, the entire speech was a justification for the completely unjustified and incomprehensible toeing of the US line, much in excess of the normal sub-servient posture adopted by earlier leaders like Thatcher and Major. But what is now increasingly evident is that India is now talked about as a Global Power on par with the US and China. Even the discussions by the BBC newscasters immediately after Blair’s speech continuously, and respectfully I thought, referred to India as the optional alliance that Blair could look at along with the US and China.

It does not require only Tony Blair’s certification to realise India’s rising stature. The rush to the bandwagon by leading television networks and publications across the world only emphasizes this emerging fact. We are getting there. We are going to be amongst the most powerful nations in the world and it does not require a seat in the permanent council of the UN. It does not require self made ambassadors like Arundathi Roy. We are going to be saare jahaan se achhan!

Colors changing hues . . .

The Bougainvillea is all over the place in colors so brilliant that it hurts the eye.

I can still see her, like it happened yesterday. She is standing still, motionless, only her eyes moving as they follow me down the road. I keep turning around; looking at her, my bike negotiating the treacherous road of its own accord, till the clumps of bougainvillea shelters her from my view.

I did not know then, that I would never see her again. Nor did I know then that we would tread different paths; never to meet again. Not because it was destined, but because there were dusky eyes beckoning me. There was a soft willing body which I could not resist.

I guess there was deceit in my heart, lies on my lips, fire in my loins as I rode away. I guess I broke her heart. I must have destroyed her hopes and dreams. In all certainty I scarred her till the end of time. But did I know it? I don’t know, I honestly don’t know. I was young, the heart was strong, there was music in the air, the need for variety was strong and young, nubile, flesh available in plenty.

Then there were the soft, plaintive phone calls, whispered words in the night, letters written from the heart, blurred in hidden tears, talking about days around the languid lake, days filled with magic and music and days of frantic, inexperienced groping and ecstatic releases. But my heart was immune to the tears, to the pleas. I was testing new waters, hitherto unheard of musicians and everything merry in life was showcasing to me in a myriad of colors. I swept ahead, in a flurry of nameless faces and sweating bodies and soon forgot this apparition from the past.

Ten years has passed. Tinges of grey have started creeping around my temples and my children have started school. I wonder what she does these days. Does she think about me anymore? Am I worth thinking about?

And bougainvillea, in its varied hues is blooming all over the place.