The Accidental Impostor

Dr Sarwari, the personal physician of the Saudi Prince Naif, had just completed a detailed examination of the very military end of General Zia’s alimentary canal and declared it be a mere case of worms. ‘A Case of Exploding Mangoes’ was getting interesting.

The mild winter sun made a latticework of sparkling silver on the placid waters of the Diggi Palace pool. The Jaipur literature Festival was into its second day and the participants had retired for lunch. I was comfortably stretched out alongside the pool, merrily taking in Mohammed Hanif’s hilarious ‘fictional’ account of General Zia’s last days. For a few tranquil moments, it did seem as if ‘if there is paradise anywhere on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here’

The voice, when it did make itself heard, was very tentative, like the gentle perturbations set off by a piece of tile, lightly skimming over water.

“Sir, may I disturb you for a moment?” A comely young lady had appeared by my side.

“Whatever for?” I asked, not quite pleased to tear myself away from the shenanigans of Under Officer Ali Shigri.

“Sir, I’m from XYZ newspaper. I want to talk to you about your book. And about your  plans for the next book”, said the earnest rookie.

“My book? Oh, you mean this one?” I pointed to ‘A Case of …..’ in my hand. “Yes, very  nice book. I’d recommend it to everyone. And my next book? Maybe I’ll check out  Empires of the Indus”. 

I was delighted that young reporters were taking such interest the reading habits of the laity, even when the high priests of contemporary literature were present in such felicitous abundance.

“No, no sir, not this book. I want to talk about YOUR book, sir. The one that has been  made into a movie? The one about KBC? Hmm, what’s its name……….haan…..Slumdog  Millionaire! That one. I want to talk to you about your book Slumdog Millionaire”. Poor  darling, she couldn’t be faulted for not trying.

The penny dropped. So, this was simply a case of mistaken identity. Not a sterling example of a trailblazing hack’s abiding interest in the literary pulse of the aam aadmi.

“Young lady, Slumdog Millionaire is a film, not a book. And I’m not Vikas Swarup to talk  to you about Q&A. Can I go back to my book now, please?”

“You are not Vikas? Why? If you are not Vikas, what are you doing here?” she was quick  to recover and counter-attack. It seemed the poolside space was reserved for a certain  Vikas.

“No, I’m not Vikas. I’m not Vikas because I’m ABCDEF. And, what am I doing here? As you  may have noticed, I was reading a book till you came by” I answered, preparing to  reclaim my place by the poolside.

“That’s OK if you want to say you are not Vikas” she conceded grudgingly, not quite  willing to accept that she might have blundered. “But, who are you? A writer or a critic or  an academician? And are you a celebrity?” The in-your-face interrogation technique was most endearing.

“Well, I’m not a writer. I’m not a critic. I’m not an academician. And God forbid, I’m certainly not a celebrity. I’m just a layperson who reads a book now and then”.

I thought the emphatic disclaimer and my non-celebrity status would bring the impromptu interview to a welcome, if abrupt, conclusion. But little Miss Hack was made of sterner stuff. 

“But surely, you must be doing something for a living?” 

Now, be careful, sonny boy, and watch what you say, I told myself. This could get tricky.

“Yeah, I sure do something for a living. I work for the government”. That was  entirely true and utterly vague, I reasoned.

“But, what are you in the government?’ bleated the greenhorn.

“A soldier”, I gave in.

“A soldier, you say? What’s a soldier doing here, in a literary festival?” 

Professors and pimps, imps and impostors, scholars and scumbags, bards and beggars, clerks and clerics, radicals and rowdies, hawkers and hookers, any and all could be here but a starchy soldier? Nuts! She surely was not amused.  

“Why? Why not a soldier? You think soldiers can’t read and write? As a matter of fact, this book…..” I waved ‘A Case of …….’ vigorously in front of her face. “This book’s written by an air force officer. It’s a political satire.”

Well, okay, Mohammed Hanif was actually a former air force officer. Of the PAF. And he himself didn’t think much of his days in uniform. A tough and boring life, he called it. But my current discussion with the unrelenting scribe transcended petty service and national identities. It was now a matter of defending the fair name of the armed forces the world over. This was a gauntlet I simply had to pick up. 

“Aha, now I understand. You have been sent by the army to lookout for trouble and  report back, right?”, she gloated in her secret discovery. 

She was determined to extract a journalistic victory from the jaws of literary defeat, still hopeful of a scoop, the one interview that would launch her into the stratospheric orbits of celebrity journalism. Much like the Mick Jagger interview that may have kick-started the very colourful career of Sir Richard Branson. 

An army spook snooping around for seditious scholars and rhapsodic saboteurs! Wow, this could be much bigger than a fortuitous interview with a part-time writer. I could see she was thrilled by the potential for screaming headlines about skulduggery in Diggi Palace, plotting poets and thwarted coups.

“No, no”, I almost yelled. 

My God, this petite bundle of dynamite was forever running ahead of the script. I’d better clear matters before she went berserk with her vivid imagination.

“I’m here on a holiday, attending this purely in my private capacity. I am a simple spectator here, that’s all. It has nothing to do with the army. Or with celebrity authors, for that matter”. 

I thought I’d set the record straight for good.

“Simple spectator? Oh, yeah. And I’m the Cheshire Cat”, she snapped and walked away, quite obviously miffed at my reluctance to share what appeared to be a wickedly  delicious intrigue.

But I knew this was not the end of it. Sure enough, last Sunday, one of the papers carried the following story.

Only, the spiffy gent lounging by the pool in the pic accompanying the story is no exalted author of Q&A, as claimed by the caption. It’s your humble blogger.

Now, I’d better live up to that pic and write that blockbuster soon! 

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRES AND CELLULOID ECONOMICS

I finally went ahead and did what many P3Ps would have done it on the sly but what the venerable Shobhaa De confessed to in the very public columns of a national daily.

 

I watched a pirated copy of Slumdog Millionaire. A few days before it rained Golden Globes. Some days before it gets officially released in India and possibly rakes in record-breaking collections.

 

Except for giving a fleeting sense of achievement on joining Shobhaa De in the ‘me too’ caucus, the film did little to excite.  Not that the film was bad in any way. Far from it. It was a perfectly entertaining film. And like any well-crafted work of cinematic art, it has its moments of sublime charm, its share of gut-wrenching scenes and its share of searing dialogues. But all these don’t really come together to make a truly memorable film. Nor are the performances of the lead actors in the danger of being reckoned as landmarks in the histrionic history of any wood, Holly, Bolly or even Lolly.

 

Let’s take our over-hyped re-invention artiste, Anil Kapoor. Donning the role of a TV show host so majestically essayed by Amitabh Bachchan in real life (KBC), Kapoor robs the character of every iota of dignity. Nobody may grudge an ageing actor his prejudices about the awareness quotient of a Chaiwala, but not even a national icon can get away with uncouth snobbery on a TV show. The repeated berating of Jamal as a teaboy and constant references to his lowly status by Prem, the host of the TV show, may have been scripted to highlight the chinks in Prem’s character, a man who enjoys the blind adulation of millions of Indians. But it only succeeds in adding unnecessary melodrama. And in an insane moment, Kapoor also lurches into a ludicrous jig, looking like an uninvited baraati in Chandni Chowk. Long after it’s gone off the air, what one remembers of KBC is not the names of the winners nor the questions but the amazing grace and humility with which Amitabh dealt with all the participants, their families and friends. Or is it somebody’s case that Prem’s character was modelled after the altogether different host of KBC2?  

 

Traversing a period of over a decade, the structure of the film does not lend itself to sustained linear progression. As a result, all actors end up doing what could be termed ‘significant cameos’, even as little Jamal sparkles in his role. AR Rahman could have got the Golden Globe and the Oscar for many of his film scores, but Slumdog Millionaire is certainly not one among them. His compositions for the film maybe classified as experimentation due to habit. The last song of the film, quite clearly an afterthought in due deference to the diktats of the Indian box-office remains just that. An afterthought.

 

So why’s there so much hoopla about the film? I’d hate to be a cynic but this smells like the Miss World/Universe days all over again. Remember the 1990s when the world suddenly woke up to the beauty quotient of India and we had a rash of beauty queens carrying the burden from Asia-Pacific to the Atlantic? In fact, it seemed as if all that was required to be crowned Miss World/Universe/Galaxy was to look adequately like a woman and wear a sash that said ‘India’. It was not much later that we learnt about the cosmetics industry’s not very altruistic role in placing India firmly on the beauty map of the world. The accolades for Slumdog Millionaire appear to be similarly market-driven. A tribute neither to the artistry nor to the artistes of the film but to the imperatives of the emerging global economic situation.

 

Now, that’d be a real pity!

The Terror of Truth

Thanks to AA Kasab and his band of deadly brothers, my nine-year old today boasts of vastly enhanced cognitive skills. Like she can tell a terrorist, when she sees one. Or so I thought. But last night, as she traversed the many channels on the TV between Pogo and Disney ,she seemed to linger for just that small fraction of a second. I then heard her mutter 'terrorist' as she rapidly punched the TV remote and moved on to Hannah Montana.I turned from my book with a start. Did she say 'terrorist'? I didn't remember hearing anything about a terrorist in the last newscast.

What was she watching, my little girl? 

They just showed the picture of a terrorist, she said. 

Where? 

In the news.

Right, flip back and let's see that again.

Another rapid punching of the remote took us to one of the 'your own' channels, breathlessly breaking news as usual.

There, that's the guy, she said, pointing at the beatific face being beamed on the TV. A face radiating gentle grace, troubled only by a pair of doleful eyes full of hurt innocence. I was horrified. That's no terrorist, honey, that's Mr Ramalinga Raju, the boss of Satyam. Well, OK, the former CEO of Satyam. 

Terrorist, my little girl said. 

If you say so,but why do you think he's a terrorist? 

Coz he's on all the news channels, dummy. 

But honey, Mr Ramalinga Raju's no terrorist. He's just a businessman fallen on bad times.

Terrorist,she reiterated with a finality that brooked no further argument and flipped back to Hannah Montana.

That got me wondering.

The papers said Kasab and company accounted for 183 lives and a loss of approximately Rs 4000 crores to the economy. Mr Raju, on the the other hand, stacks up with 53000 lives and Rs 7000 crores.And still counting. Kasab had no kinship with the people he killed, no prior acquaintance of the lives he destroyed. For the 53000 employees and possibly a couple of lakhs more people making up the families of the Satyam employees, Mr Raju was God. The lives that Mr Raju set about destroying are of those that feted him, saluted him, loved him, worshipped him. 

If terrorism is what terrorism does, then surely the fear that Mr Raju has engendered in thousands of Satyam employees and thousands more in the IT and ancillary industries and millions more in India and abroad qualifies to be termed as terrorism. 

But, whereas Kasab and his dead mates failed to get any lawyer even to make a token representation, news reports say many powerful people are vying to protect Mr Raju. My friends took to the streets denouncing Kasab and lighting candles. Same friends are posting facebook notes mourning the bad turn of events for a good man.

I write of Kasab, plain Kasab, with no appellations and no qualms. I am careful not to miss out the Mister in Mr Raju.    

I am terrified, to tell you the truth!