Monthly Archive for March, 2005

One more superstar has been made. Yes made by India. One more cricketer dragged from obscurity into eternity by the sheer incompetence of the Indian cricketing machine. A Test we should have won in a canter has been saved. And Pakistan, paradoxically, after being outplayed for 4 days of a 5 day Test match have emerged as moral victors.

This is not the first time. Jimmy Adams padded his way to glory against India in the 90s and vanished into oblivion subsequently. Chandrapaul has not been able to consistently reproduce the form he shows, time and again, against India. Andy Flower deflowered the Indian spin machine Test after Test on Indian soil in Bradmanesque fashion and snatched respectable draws for Zimbabwe—-performances he never reproduced subsequently against other countries. One common thing between all these “made in India” labels—-all left-handers. Just to show we don’t discriminate add to this list a few right handers—Manzoor Elahi, Ricardo Powell….I can go on.

We have been equally profligate with bowlers—R.Price from Zimbabwe, Ronnie Irani and Pat Pocock, M. Whitney from Australia, Adeem Hafeez from Pakistan to name a few. It’s ok not to recognize these names—-they have been consigned to cricketing obscurity ever since their moment in the sunshine against us.

But our inability to win this Test is not just due to Kamran Akmal’s innings alone. It is due to the sheer bloody minded pursuance of personal goals by Sachin Tendulkar and Ganguly-Laxman’s inexplicable go-slow at a time when quick scoring should have been the order of the day. True that the Pakistanis bowled a negative line but that never prevents the Australians from scoring at a brisk pace. Sehwag said in an interview that it was the Indian thinktank’s decision to go slow—-considering the position India was in, I cannot fathom what could have been the rationale behind the pedestrian rate of scoring. It just did not make cricketing sense.

With half a day lost due to rain, didn’t it make sense for India to show some urgency? Wouldn’t sending Pathan and Balaji up the batting order have made some sense with Ganguly in “let-me-answer-my-critics-with-a-big-innings” mode and Sachin in “let’s-get-my-35th-century-team-goes-to-hell” mood? In passing what the hell has happened to Sachin ? Dravid’s declaring when Sachin was 194 apparently didn’t send the message to Sachin—–that there is no “I” in the word team.

I just cant believe India did this–surrender the initiative when we had everything going for us. The monstrosity of the folly has yet to sink in. I am flabbergasted, disappointed and angry.

So what was the Indian presence this year at the Oscars? We didn’t get nominated for best foreign film, Ash didn’t show up to present an award, “Little Terrorist” lost out in the short film category————–a washout like every other year….

But no wait—–we did pick up a big award….and it needed the sheer power of Kolkata’s brand equity as the dirtiest, the most hellish city in the world to pull it off. “Born Into Brothels” —a story about children born into brothels in Kolkata won Best Documentary trumping “Supersize Me”, a delightful take on America’s obsession with fast food, (which shows that malnutrition always wins over obesity when it comes to Oscars) must be one of the biggest successes of the Kolkata name.

So there it is folks—-you want an Oscar you come to Kolkata. Besides the brothels (when did Kolkata become famous for them anyways?) we have colonies of lepers, beggars, eunuchs and many other forms of low-life waiting eagerly to be made into Oscar-winning documentaries or to be salvaged for a Nobel Peace Prize and a beatification.

Of course you can still be a Roland Joffe who gets the formula dead right in “City of Joy” but makes a poor film and misses an Oscar. Yes “City of Joy” had everything going for it—-trams full of lepers, lecherous Indians, dirt , squalor and all the other little things that makes Kolkata special.

And the showstopper of them all….what you MUST have in your movie to get an Oscar/critical acclaim, the fundamental axiom on which everything stands—-it’s only the white man who cares for the poor souls. In City of Joy, the saviors are this band of white social workers with whom Patrick Swayze, the dirty-dancing Father Teresa, makes common cause with.

One of the most telling lines in the City of Joy comes when one of the “Indian” protagonists tell our white knight——-”Who are you to interfere in our country? These are our people and we can do with them as we like——-how is it your business?”

An amazing parallel with the line above and the pronouncements of the makers of “Born Into Brothels.” can be found in the article linked above to the Anandabazar Patrika. (Bengali) In this we learn that the makers of “Born Into Brothels” refused to give interviews to the Indian press ( we are free to exploit you but not talk to you) because “the Indian press and the common people of India would harm the subjects of the movie”.

So here’s the deal. Not only are we wickedly poor, we are too uncivilized to even recognize that and alleviate our plight. And that we are our own worst enemy.

Who sold this myth about Calcutta ? Who made money out of this image ? Did the makers of “Born Into Brothels” ? Nope.

It is Mother Teresa—-the single biggest reason why Calcutta will always be the city of lepers. It’s the Missionaries of Charity who have portrayed Calcutta in this false negative light to further their agenda and to brighten their halos at the city’s expense. There is no denying the work that Mother Teresa did but her motivations were far from saintly. And the media muscle that she exerted due to her links with the Vatican made sure that the good work that Indian charities did was never highlighted. Which was instrumental in perpetuating the myth that she is the ONLY God-sent savior of the souls trapped in the hell that is Calcutta.

The upshot of all this is that we as Calcuttans/Kolkatans are doomed to be citizens of a city that is synonymous with death, disease and depredation all around the world. And we need kindly foreign men and women to be saved from ourselves.

What’s Washington like? Well its like Calcutta, surrounded by beggars. The only difference is the beggars in Washington wear 1500 dollar suits and they don’t say please or thank you.

–Traffic

I rest my case.