You Know I'm No Good

The first time I heard Amy Winehouse, it was her heart-wrenching lament Back To Black. What I noticed was the pain, which came floating gently through her rich, smooth caressing voice like a memory. The voice was mesmeric, quiet but deeply strong in its warmth, its need to tell you what’s hurting her, insistent but careful, like someone you just met at the bar, the jukebox has Duke Ellington on, she looks at you from under her smile and her mascara and you see a pervasive hurt softly lying over her. And she’s quietly, nostalgically telling you why.

It’s that voice that gets you, whether it’s the laconic obstinacy she displays in Rehab, the passive aggression of Me And Mr. Jones, the silent apology of You Know I’m No Good or the hopeless resignation of Back To Black. The whole album is the lament of a broken heart, and her genius shines through like a beacon through the darkened, fogged recesses of her raw, seared mind. Along with producer Mark Ronson she shook off her jazz influences that drove her first album Frank, and went deeper inside her, into soul; she brought back the grace of a forgotten time, when men were men and women were beautiful. It brings you to mind of a gentle evening, you sitting in a warm, dim room, a glass of bourbon in your hand and the soul of Motown running through your soul. One of the most evolved neo-soul album of recent times, it sees Winehouse adapt to R&B format with aplomb, combining emotion with a non-threatening, evocative, smooth-as-old-pain sound.

But they say that those that burn bright burn fast, and Winehouse shone like a supernova on speed. As she shone through her music, her heartbreak refused to find a catharsis and remained within her, spreading its insidious tendrils through her psyche. She was still only 23 when Back To Black came out. A fragile mind that sought release through rebellion and expression was forced to exorcise the pain that she built up carefully, powering her art as it destroyed her life. Drug abuse consumed her health and her performances, making her increasingly unreliable and weird. Other than a single which she contributed to Quincy Jones’ 2010 album, she had brought out no new music since Back To Black, and for 5 years her life spiraled out of control, taking her from zenith of adulation, acclaim and success back into the darkness of despair.

In the end she wasn’t strong enough to resist herself. Like Robert Johnson and all the rest of them, she died at 27. Like them, she shouldn’t have. But like them, she had to. As she said herself:

I cheated myself,
Like I knew I would,
I told you I was trouble,
You know that I'm no good.

Knowing You

This is going to be a long one, a sort of ramble. A few days ago my mate and I were talking about how people process information about other people. You know. When you meet someone new, how do you interact with them, fit them into the scheme of things, understand them enough to be able to focus a certain behavioural pattern towards them.

She thought that we only understand people in ‘chunks’ – bits and pieces of data that we collect from the other person’s choice of words, gestures, tone of voice, body language etc. And since we are dealing with discrete ‘chunks’ of data, we can never be sure how spot on our analysis of the other person is.

I agree – one can never be spot on about how one reads people. This is inherent in the way you process information about other people. You, like every human being, create a template about how to analyse another person. This template is created and constantly enhanced by your experiences. So these templates are unique to you, because all the influences upon you that shaped you will be unique. What you have experienced, the things that have shaped your life, personality, values and behaviour patterns will be different – glaringly or subtly – from everyone else. That is what makes you you, and not someone else. We always try to read patterns and understand the other in our own, personal, unique language.

So you create a format, a protocol, to run that script on, based on how you look at the world, your values and morals. This is the template within which you fit the bits and pieces – the ‘chunks’, as it were – of data you get from someone else and try make some sense of it, break it down into recognizable patterns, get an idea of the flow of that pattern. It’s like solving a jigsaw puzzle.

Yes, we generalise, because things like that fit into a pattern first. It's like looking for a word that begins with 't' in the 't' section in the dictionary. It’s a way of narrowing down the search for identity, to figure out which board this jigsaw puzzle goes on to. Is the person a man or a woman? Indian or foreign? Rich or poor? Educated or not? And so on. But that doesn't mean we stop there. Once that overall pattern is identified, then we analyse the intricacies and varieties and differences within. We then fit the more complex, subtler ‘chunks’ within that larger frame. The devil, they say, is in the details.

In your scheme of things, you are the most important person in your life. You see everyone else through your own template, and that judgement is very personally yours. And yes, it can never be spot on. But sometimes people interest you to the extent that you try to see that other person through their template, their point of view, their frame of reference. You try to understand them as they do themselves, to get an idea of who they think they are. This is called various things: empathy, compassion, friendship, bonding, love.

Mostly, and especially to the strong hearted, someone looking at you through their own frame didn’t matter much: it was their own subjective judgement on you, and that is mostly irrelevant. But when someone shows an interest in knowing you as you know you, then things change. Then suddenly it matters what the other person sees, how they think you think of yourself. You need to make them aware of the true picture you see of yourself, because as far as you’re concerned, that is the real you. And you don’t want them to get the wrong picture, or the wrong angle, or the wrong lighting, and make assessments accordingly. You want them to see how you see yourself. And that is important.

Is that sort of knowing – that intimate, in-depth understanding of another person – possible? Probably not; no one can see what you see of yourself, not completely. Your own view is something only you will know, because however much you try, someone can never get inside your head completely (unless you're in that mindbogglingly surreal movie Being John Malkovich). But there are degrees in knowing. How much do you know yourself? It’s more about what someone else knows about you, not how much. Quality over quantity. If someone else knows the things that matter, the things that make you you, then that’s a consummation devoutly to be wish’d. So yes, inasmuch as someone knowing the real you means knowing the essential stuff that makes you you, it’s possible. It’ll take a lifetime of effort though.

But more than anything else, it’s the attempt, the reaching out that really matters, isn’t it?

The Joga Bonito Is Dead

The Copa America, the premier continental football championship of South America, will conclude on Sunday. Did you know? I didn’t think so. Do you care? Not very much.

Till a few years ago I would have been blue in the face screaming about how nobody’s paying attention to the Copa, everyone’s so bloody Europe fixated, nobody really likes football any more. After all, the two most exciting teams in the world – Brazil and Argentina – are from there. As are two-time World Cup winners Uruguay, now enjoying a resurrection with Diego Forlan and Luis Suarez, and perennial dark horses Colombia. And we all know how the South Americans play football. Just look at Messi.

So when I heard that Neo Sports had actually gone to all the trouble of buying the rights, not advertising it at all and bringing the championship to us, I went out and bought a round for everyone. There would be hard tackles and fights, beautiful plays, great dribbles, amazing passes, fantastic skill. This would be joga bonito. The Beautiful Game.

Three matches in, I raised a toast to and played a requiem to the death of South American football. I wanted my money back.

First, the duds. Brazil and Argentina played football like they were on pot. Loose passing, uninspired playmaking, insipid attempts at goal and total lack of footballing commitment was only matched by the hype and the complaints. The two giants won one match out of the four each they played, drew three and went out ignominiously in penalties. And now we have a final between 15 time winners Uruguay and a team that has reached the final not having won a match: Paraguay drew all their matches and got through on penalties twice. Not very bonito, really.

Such was the story of the entire tournament, and I raised a toast to and played a requiem to the death of South American football. The beautiful game of Pele and Garrincha, the super skills of Maradona and Romario, the flair of Jairzinho and the elegance of Rivelino and Kempes, the predatory instincts of Zico and Ronaldo, the vision of Tostao, Socrates, Valderrama and Riquelme – they’re all gone. Gone too are the driving runs through the middle, the little backheels, the stepovers, nutmegs, floating crosses and driving volleys.

The South Americans are now Europeans – at least in their football. With so many of their players either already entrenched in the major European leagues or definitely dreaming of heading there, the style of football has now become standardised. Nobody wants to play the beautiful game any more. O joga bonito is dead, long live o joga feio.

Except FC Barcelona. If ever the beautiful game still lives on, it’s at the Nou Camp. Huzzah for Pep and his merry men.

Crow from Poe

I must admit that I got had today. Twice. I am shamefaced, but I shall tell all.

First, I responded to a comment on my friend Priti’s post on Facebook; she’d written about how Andheri’s population was now equal to that of Ireland, and someone else came along saying that Mumbai’s population was half of the US’. I couldn’t fathom this; “what a douche!” I exclaimed, and then spit on my hands, girded my loins and got about searching the demographic data for the USA, Bombay, Andheri and the drunks. Yeah, that means you, Irish. Bloated with self-worth, I went ahead and put the data on the site, being nasty about it as well.

And then, to my utter chagrin, the dude who made that comment and Priti herself patiently told me that it was a joke; “Do v really understand sarcasm??” he asked. I was left with that slight buzzing in the ear that is the tolling of the shame bell.

And then I did it again.

Through the offices of my friend Bahulekar, I came across the mind-blowing website: http://christwire.org. It comes across as an ultra-rightwing Christian that espouses all sorts of fundaentalist ideology: homophobia, anti-feminism, racism, denunciation of Barack Obama, Eddie Veder, Portal 2 and everything – yes, everything – else. The articles are badly written and researched and make the most outrageous claims, stuff that you thought people might be thinking but would shocked to see actually on the Web.

So I thought I’d landed a landmine to write about and dismiss peremptorily. And I proceeded to do so. But a little bird that doesn’t like the shame bell tolling told me to try and Google it. I did. And the bell tolled for me again.

Which is why I came upon this little gem called Poe’s Law. Basically this witer called Nathan Poe posited that it was bloody difficult to tell the difference between genuinely intolerant and rightwing viewpoints and those that parody them. It works both ways: like I did by mistaking satire for the Real McCoy and when satirical sites are mistaken by douchebags for actual rightwing propaganda. The Web is all aflutter with instances of this (but you gotta get off this blog and look for them yourself, you lazy tub o’lard). I am merely the most recent victim.

And so, for all that I try to write funny stuff, I went all “Life is stern and life is earnest” on that site. I got had. Bloody bugger!

Troy v1.1

I finally finished the Æneid yesterday. It’s been a labour of love and general boredom and I’ve finally managed to plough through it to the end.

First, it’s about this bloke called Æneas, a Trojan prince, Hector’s cousin, who survives the sack of Troy and takes the survivors on a trip to Italy where he is destined to start a new civilisation – which will eventually become Rome. Unfortunately, he incurs the wrath of Juno the queen of Olympus and a total bad-ass bitch, and she gets it into her mind to make him sleep with the fishes. So along the way through the machinations of Juno, Æneas and his Trojans get waylaid, battered by storms, lost, found, laid, cause a queen’s death, then land in Italy and try to take over. To which the aboriginal Italins say, “Bugger this!” and have at him for taking their lands away. Or something. Anyway, there’s this great big battle in the end and Mezentius the atheist and his son Lausus the not-so-atheist-as-all-that and a whole bunch of people get killed and the old king surrenders and gives Æneas his daughter’s hand in marriage and unto half his kingdom. And so was born Rome. Nobody said it was born in a day either.

Now, nobody likes a rollicking tale of gods and magic swords and prophecies and monsters being chained to rocks to be eaten by ravenous virgins more than I do (which is why I learnt quite a bit of Elven language Quenya from the Lord of the Rings), but this one’s a bit contrived, to say the least. This was because the Æneid was commissioned by Emperor Augustus, the first emperor of Rome, and it was seen as an attempt to deify the Roman imperial line by making them all descended from Æneas, a demi-god whose mother was Venus. So Æneas is a “pious” and “righteous” hero, someone who is guided by a pre-ordained fate, an inexorable rope around his neck drawing him to his destiny. Much, as it were, like the emperors of Rome.

This is the whole bugger-up for me: the story moves forward entirely on the whims and fancies of the various gods. Heroes are heroes if they are allowed to be by the gods. Humans follow the orders the gods give, and if they transgress they’re turned into a spider or something. So our man is driven hither and thither by various storms, tempests and other distractions raised by Juno (Away team). But his mum Venus (Home team) comes to his rescue every now and then when he’s a bit under the cosh, and rushes to Papa Jupiter to Make Mother Stop. And Jupiter keeps figuring out which side he wants to be on, and which woman will sodomise him less for it. So basically, all the humans do is run errands for the gods. It’s all a bit messed up that way.

But where Virgil succeeds is in his characters, especially Æneas. The poem is a tale of this man’s struggle against his piety, his destiny and his emotions. He is a defeated prince when you first meet him, fighting as Troy is sacked. His despair at the defeat is matched by his determination to fulfill his prophecy to settle the survivors of Troy in a new land. Æneas is a man who is tied to his task to the cost of everything else. When he finds love in Carthage, he is ticked off by Jupiter; he abandons his lover and leaves, knowing that she would kill herself if he did. When the Italians force war upon him, he resists until no longer possible, blaming the gods for it. But he sacrifices everything he wants, all his own emotions and compassions and loves and needs in order to fulfill his destiny. And this takes a big emotional toll on him, revealed in the end where his raw anger explodes in the final single combat with his enemy. As the poem hurtles towards the end, you see Æneas revealed, the son of a god, the manifestation of vengeance, the crushed spirit of defeat reforged to rise again in glory. It is then that Æneas, and the Æneid, become and epic. It is the story of the man, not the games of the gods, that make this an epic.

Pyaarnama Packs a Punch

Last week at my friend Bedi’s place I caught Pyaar Ka Punchnama, minute-for-minute the year’s most enjoyable film so far.

Let me give you a piece of advice on watching this movie: do not watch it with your significant other. This may be advice that everyone and their security guard must have told you many times, but there’s a reason to it.

Every relationship is based on a carefully concocted edifice of lies. A relationship works because of all the little things that one does not tell one’s partner – all the little irritants, annoyances and niggles that flesh is heir to. The passion is kept alive when one keeps the ointment painstakingly fly-free. And this movie takes a 5k HMI light to the murky corners of romantic relationships.

The movie tells the tale of 3 young men who each manage to entangle themselves romantically with 3 young women. Each of them then embark on a dark and dreary voyage of self-flagellation and denigration – through the appropriate agents manifested in their girlfriends – before finally realising that relationships suck, or at any rate, they suck at relationships.

Pyaar Ka Punchnama also dares to bring out the way women act in a relationship. It’s all very well to be from Venus, but these women go all Klingon on the Martians. The constant logic-defying arguments, the little plays of emotional blackmail, the big twist of the Guilt knife in the guy’s gut – all things that every man has faced in life, at least once. So one dame starts living with her man, makes him forgo the boy-bonding and bromance that had made his life worth living and keeps him at home like her pet. Another one uses her smitten to get her work done at the office and then cosy up to her real boyfriend out of town while Office Boy gets her work done at home. The third meticulously places one foot in our man’s boat while still having one planted in her ex’s.

The stories are all well told, all relatable, all more or less true. It traces the differences in behaviour of the sexes through the eyes of men, and this time it’s not very funny. Which is the success of this film: it takes dark, bleak tales and turns them into black comedies. The director Luv Ranjan does a great job in making sure the characters are well-defined, the stories not only well-connected but flowing logically (or at least empirically) and keeps the ends apology- and happy-ending-free.

The performances are competent, except a couple of the women; the men manage to convey their haplessness and despair quite well, and the bro-bonding is peppy and effervescent. The direction is tight, the script makes sense and the humour is seamlessly weaved into the movie.

There are a couple of things that met the eye – forcefully:

1. Why does Chaudhary (Raayo Bhakirta) walk around in undies all the time? I mean, yeah, all that hostel-type bro-bonding guff is fine, but I live in a house with another 2 guys and I don’t walk around in my und… oh, actually I do, but they’re boxers, not briefs.

2. The “Kutta” song. I love it, it’s beautifully sung, self-deprecating and totally a kick in the teeth for girlfriends. And the lyrics are strange:

Gadhe ke poot, yahan mat moot
Gadhe ke poot, yahan mat moot
Sunn le baat tu meri nahin to
Teri maa ki chooo-dee.

3. The director seems to have a very large bone to pick with women in general; as Mika says in his interview, “(director) ki khaas baat yeh hai, bahut sadta hai ladkiyon se”. Must’ve been taken through the grinder, twisted over, taken through the grinder the other way. Poor guy.

To some, this is extremely misogynistic; how can you showcase women as evil, conniving bitches? Well, why not, if they behave like that some times? Also, it’s more about men not understanding how women function, how their minds work in ways different to men’s. Every guy goes through this rite of passage – the first relationship is where you learn the ropes, learn how to deal with guilt, emotional blackmail, the feeling that if this one leaves, I won’t get another one. I agree with all of it, except that in some women, one sees lighter shades of dark; some women are not the devil incarnate, raving succubi intent on vacuuming the self-respect of their men. Luv Ranjan fails to see the humanity hidden deep inside women. Maybe because it’s hidden so deep inside.

Schmutwalk Reprise

There have been some interesting developments re: the Slut Walk business in India. As I was exhorting earlier, the organizers decided to walk the talk and take the campaign to the interior of India. They chose Bhopal, capital of Madhya Pradesh, which records the maximum rapes in the country.

So the day dawned bright and early, the air promising the dawn of a new national holiday. 5000 people had expresses support and promised to join the Charge of the Slut Brigade. The atmosphere was one of palpable anticipation of social upheaval.

But unfortunately, it was not to be. Most of the women who were to come didn’t get permission to do so from their parents. On account of this whole shebang was called the Besharmi Morcha in an admirable attempt to tale the capaign vernacular. Didn’t work; they shoulda still called it Slut Walk and explained that Slut was the English name for the goddess Lakshmi or something.

And even for those who did manage to stick some pillows under their sheets and shimmy down the drainpipe, there was stern admonishment from the organizers: “"Unlike Toronto, we advised women participants not to dress provocatively as it was against our culture," said Radhika Shingweker, a Delhi-based law student who organized Bhopal's Slut Walk. So we had a bunch of guys and a a couple of dames wearing decidedly un-slutty jeans and T-shirt… wait, what am I saying, in Bhopal, that’s like a lace thong and nipple stickers. So maybe they got it right after all.

So there you have it. A brave attempt, but nonetheless a lesson into how difficult it is to bring Western sensibilities and ideas and make them work in India. In the metros, this works much better, but the rest of India dances to a different beat, and the need is to understand that beat and hit that groove. Horses are needed for courses and right now they’re using Sheffield ponies to run the Derby.

Slum Bombay

Every now and then, one runs into some dude or dame who is militantly for or against something or other. Sachin Tendulkar fans, white supremacists, Marathi supremacists, homophobes who insist being gay is a disease and so on. People who start off being nice and middle-class, but as one probes deeper, or disagrees longer, they start getting a little hot under their collar, their voices go shrill, their tone nasty, their words lose coherence and they start spitting at you as they talk. You know the type.

And the worst are those who love Bombay. There is no city that has more dedicated defenders of the faith than this one. It’s like the bloody Saracens in Jerusalem, except nastier. Every city in the world is not as good enough as Bombay, there’s nothing wrong with it at all. Safe for women, public transport’s the cat’s whiskers, the rains are so beautiful! Hameen asto and all that guff.

Oh, and they have an especial contempt for “the Dalli”.

Ah well, I got something that will gladden a Bombayer’s (Mumbaikar? Bombayite? Bambaiyya? What the hell do they call themselves?) heart. In the recent census conducted by the government of India, it has been found that 78% of people in this city lives in slums. 78%! That’s 4 out of every 5 people in the city. And this is a city with more than 31 million people in it.

It’s an amazing fact, and when I first read it I felt a bit chuffed. I mean, they’re right, there’s no other city in the world where I am in the top 22% percent of the populace economically. I’m better of than any 4 other guys I might meet on the street. And this when I’m temporarily unemployed. Totally cool. Rah for poor people. Let there be more slums. Let them eat fruit cake.

And then, chasteningly, my brother told me that the people living in the slums may not necessarily be poorer than me. What with all the Slum Rehabilitation business and the unique way that the human brain is wired, it could be that under the paper thin mattresses they sleep on could be loads of lucre. Money just stashed away for a rainy day. Or not, actually, since every day is generally like that. Humbling. Now I live in a city where the slum-dwellers are richer than me. It never gets better.

There’s no point to this except my amazement at the census figure. I reel.

Slutwalk Schmutwalk

A few months ago some copper in Toronto, Canada, in the finest traditions of police spokesmen all around the world, carefully inserted his duty boots firmly into his mouth: at a campus safety session, he suggested that women could save themselves from being raped by avoiding dressing like ‘sluts’. Ooh.

As expected, Canada and the Emancipated World reacted with anger and soon we had hordes of concerned citizen up in arms and foaming at the mouth at this, terming it thinking of the most primitive level, casting blame on to the victim. Soon, in the spirit of the new age of creative activism, some women got together to organize the Slut Walk, where women dress in a decidedly lascivious manner – which I guess means garters and stocking and that stuff; I could never understand the sex appeal of wearing a lot of underwear – expressing their right to dress the way they want without having to fear the repercussions. Fair point. I should be free to live the way I want to without having to be blamed for getting assaulted by someone who doesn’t like my lifestyle.

Now, the Slut Walk, expectedly, became a rage across the world, and as with such things, eventually sank to the bottom and settled in Delhi. The India of Jessica Lall’s Candlelight Vigil had its interest piqued again: here was another meaningful issue take strolls on public roads for. And it's about women. After the tremendous success of the campaigns on breast cancer awareness (the one about women’s Facebook statuses being the colour of the their brassiere and the one that starts with “I like it on…” – which excreta-brained idiot came up with those? They’re not even intelligent.), another chance to strike a blow for Women’s Equality in India. Yabba Dabba and all.

India has one of the worst records of female abuse in the world – we treat our women like shit, we really do. So it stands to reason that there should be various attempts to lift the lives of these women from the deep dungeons we have flung them into. Again, a fair point.

My issue is, a Slut Walk is utterly useless and irrelevant to this process and does nothing for the real woman of India. It is a process espoused by and indulged in by a handful of already emancipated women living in the upper echelons of India’s Tier 1 metros. It exists at a superficial level and makes no sense to most of India – the large part of India where most of the excesses against women occur. The whole thing is directed at the wrong people. The clever people who came up with the idea also assume that most of our country has a well-developed sense of irony, as well as a moral compass that points at the same North as theirs does. The dudes who actually commit most of the rapes in the country don't get all this - the Slutwalk, the colour of bra, "I like it on...", the whole shebang - and therefore will never realise the shame of it. The guys who will understand this, who will get the irony, are those who are already educated, liberal and forward thinking. I'd like these dames to do this walk in Etawah. Or Patna. Or Madurai. Or any other town in India outside Delhi/Bombay/Bangalore. It's all very cool to do Facebook campaigns and send pink chaddis to bigots. But most people - those outside the purview of our stratum of society - don't get it, and never will.

Even the women in most of the country wouldn't take this sort of nonsense seriously. These are women who themselves have different ideas of morality and chastity – a lot of them prescribe to the way things are just as much as the men do. For them being a 'slut' is not cool; it goes against the grain of everything they have been conditioned to understand. This sort of behaviour would only make them more uncomfortable. There are thousands of Sheilas and Munnis out there who are mortified by the effect of the item numbers on them. Both the songs idolise slut-ness - how many women in B-town India and lower would be fine with that? This is just posturing by the so-called 'emancipated woman' of India. They're like people in the zoo who make faces at the gorilla through the bars. Let's see all these 'brave' women get into that cage and do the same. Bloody idiots - they think they're making a difference. They're only preaching to the converted.

This thing isn’t going to be fixed in a hurry. We need to think of processes that will last, that will make sense at an underlying level. We need to make sure we’re around for the long run, not for silly circuses like Slut Walks.

The Bigger They Are…

On the second day of the first Test between India and West Indies, the evening session was a battle of attrition, India were 50 and a bit and looking shaky. Virat Kohli and Rahul Dravid needed to capitalise on a 73 run lead the gormless West Indian batsmen had handed over, but ran into Fidel Edwards trying to justify his salary. And so Edwards directed bouncer after 90-mile bouncer at Kohli, who fended them off doing his famous impression of an epileptic string puppet. Ah. And then turned around to the glaring cherry bomber and blew him a kiss. A bleeding kiss! Edwards, mortified, blinked a couple of times, looked to his teammates for inspiration, found none and trudged back to his mark to go again.

I remember that because today I watched the famous Fire in Babylon, the movie that the West Indian cricket team was shown before they went out to play at the Kingston test. It was supposed to fire them up with a sense of history and purpose and give them a reason to play cricket again.

And truly, when I watched it, I wanted to be there again, dancing to that rhythm, seeing 11 of the most hallowed cricketing talents ever to be produced strutting their hurt and pain and humiliation and subjugation and indignation on the cricket fields of the world, wrenching for themselves respect and dignity. It was like watching the Berlin wall come down, only much cooler. On account of it has black people in it. Black West Indian people. Nobody’s cooler than that.

It tells the story of how Clive Lloyd took a team suffering from physical battery and professional humiliation, went into the demented little laboratory inside his enormous head and came of out with what was essentially Death in Cricket Whites. It then charts the history of (unarguably) the greatest team in history. After getting creamed by the Aussies 5-1 in the 75 series, and being on the wrong end of the Lillee-Thommo Cricketball Massacre, Lloyd decided to join’em. He got together the most potent pace attack of the time – Roberts, Holding, Garner, Daniels, Croft – and pointed them at the world. The world blinked.

The first victims were the Indians. All square after the first three Tests, the Indians arrived at Sabina Park bouncing with intent and ran into the pace attack. It was painful to watch. Hell, it was painful to read about. And then the West Indians ran amok, doing what they willed for nigh on 20 years, pounding teams into the ground, winning practically everything – and doing it with a swagger and a glare.

Apart from the obvious cricketing talents, what stands out most in the words, voices and eyes of the players who made up that team was the sense of pride, of the realisation of their place not just in sporting culture, but in the struggle for dignity of black people across the world. The film ties up the rise of the West Indies to the rise of the Black Power movement, embodied by Smith and Carlos’ Black Power Salute in the 68 Olympics, Martin Luther King in the US, Mandela in South Africa and the rest of it. These people had taken cricket grounds as the battlefields for emancipation, and they were a beacon to the people of the Caribbean who had suffered the indignity of Babylon for too long.

It’s a brilliant movie, and for true fans of cricket, or even those who just watch Twatty 20, it’s a history lesson and inspiration all at once; it was like the “I have a dream speech” on steroids. But I thought showing it to the current West Indian team was rather counter productive: nothing would have demoralized those guys than to see a team that they can never be. The sense of inferiority and insufficiency that Darren Sammy and his men must have suffered must have been immense. No wonder they folded up. Pride and nostalgia is one thing, but that team was Poetic Justice with a leather ball. This is not.

PS: All Indians used to be happy about Sunil Gavaskar’s 13 centuries and 65 average against the West Indies; here was a little brown man staring down the famed pace attack. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Myth busted here.

So You Think You Can Dance

The once great city of Bombay continues its inexorable descent into a Cesspit State of Mind even as men dressed in uniform the colour of human excrement decide to become the arbiters of decent dancing in the city. This, following the raising of the age for drinking hard liquor to 25, banning women from serving in bars and restaurants after 9.30pm, forced shutting of hookah bars and the Thackeray Brigade trying to upset the screening of Karan Johar’s limp-wristed soft-on inducer My Name Is Khan last year, is another example of the relentless march towards the fifteenth century that self-appointed guardians of the city are propounding. Good fun.

Turns out, a bunch of young people were hanging at Oro in Malad (W), most of them call centre employees – that great mass of shredder-fodder that drives India towards a New Dawn and thing – who were letting up after a hard night’s work. Sadhu Mahesh Patil, DCP (Zone 11) of the Mumbai Police decided that this was not cricket and upped and landed up. There he was witness to the sort of decadence that got souls kicked out of the Fifth Circle of Hell. To quote an aghast Patil, “Someone was falling on the floor, someone was getting picked up and I perceived it as indecent so I decided to raid the place." A den of iniquity of there ever was one.

And so young Mahesh did only what was best: he ratted out the management and, just to make sure the message was splashed on the walls with the blood of outrage, picked up 70-odd youngsters from there, herded them to the Malad police station, sat them down on his knee and told them to behave themselves and not fall on the floor or get picked up, for that was the work of the devil and they would beget syphilis if they did. Reliable sources say he was wagging an admonishing finger at them.

And now the righteously indignant youth of the city is wagging a finger back at blameless Mahesh, though I don't think it's the same one he wagged. Some of them plan to file a PIL against him and the rest of the police. Others have got ahead of themselves and are approaching Maria Susairaj for an encore. This promises to go right to the wire. Beware Mahesh, the hordes are coming.