It is when mediocrity aims for excellence and for lack of obvious talent or inclination, assumes the cloak of supremacy by mocking others as mediocre that smoke starts erupting from one’s ears. Don’t ask me what in the world made me watch “Koffee with Karan”. It must have been this ex-colleague of mine who mocks it all the time but nevertheless doesn’t miss a single episode (perhaps because he gets enough ammunition from it to mock all Indians, by extrapolation naturally, in front of me). Or perhaps it was the boring, pouring Saturday evening when the only other refuge would have to be the packed shopping malls of the great sale. I chose to blame it all though on my curiosity to watch the man of words- Javed Akthar and the woman whose substance has been touted over and again by our media (oh God indeed!)- Shabana Azmi tackling the monster of cliché- Mr. k..k..k..kkkkk Johar (his use of phrases like “do you all..” is just stupendously smoke evoking, need I say?).
Before we move on though, Disclaimer #1) I am not against feminists, nor against people of any gender who wear ethnic stuff and imagine themselves to be the torch bearers for the rest of the masses simply because they can talk what they want and yet get away with it with no practical impact what so ever (are you thinking Shoba De? don’t even go there).What I am against is pretention. And that has been bestowed in abundance by some quirk of fate to all three of the people on the set. So I kind of knew that I would be enraged by the end of the show when I sat down with my coffee to watch it (why watch it you ask? I was curious if I would catch Koffee Karan drinking from his mug of whatever-he-has-in-it. Okay?).
Disclaimer #2) Let me also clarify what I mean by pretension. This is an art form that all of us possess inherent talent for and most of us practice in our daily lives to a certain extent. However, like say lying to your spouse about the cost of your 20th pair of shoes or feeling greedy about the 5th Samosa, this can only be tolerated to an extent. Each one has his way of looking at the limits for tolerance but once a person tries to emulate this image of him/her that has been conceived and nurtured by self, I draw the line. Or the media bred monsters who lecture us on everything that they don’t believe in would have made the “normal” among us extinct.
You ask what’s my grouse? First things first. I was absolutely stunned by KJ’s question – “Sometimes has the presence of mediocrity ever upset you?” (don’t even get into the grammar part of it OK? Just accept it that most of the Bollywood stars speak pidgin and not English). But what followed was even better. 'Well I was doing a special appearance. It was a three-day part and I went on the sets and he was a south Indian film director who was ready with the scene. I told him, I need to ask you a couple of questions and he said fine. So he said “Madam, she’s mad!”, so I said, ‘What madness does she suffer from? Is it psychosis, is it schizophrenia, is it neurosis?’ and as I asked every question I saw him becoming paler and paler and he looked completely shocked and he said, “Madam, just play filmi-mad!” So I said, “What does that mean?” and he said, “It means nothing madam. It only means that you laugh HA HA HA HA and then start crying! That is filmi-mad”.
Ma’am we all know you have a degree in psychology but then it must be your failing memory that made you list cause (schizophrenia) and effect (psychosis) as two different “kinds of madness”. And where exactly was your aversion for mediocrity when you do a three day stint in a south Indian movie? I guess the lure of south Indian bucks made you temporarily inane to mediocrity. I have some advice for you – absolutely free of cost – just one south Indian to a north Indian - If you want to be seen as an intellectual, you need to:
1) Have some grey matter
2) Use it and not just imagine that you are using it
3) Be consistent in your attitude to life (it is either paisa or non-mediocre art ma’am not a path that leads to either as it suits you)
4) Stop changing your opinions every two seconds (to one of those pseudo-intellectual questions: What would you do if you could ask Sonia Gandhi to change one policy or something on those lines, she first answered that she would demand that slums shouldn’t be evacuated without providing alternative accommodations for the slum dwellers. And ten minutes later, she wanted to “change” her answer to –I would like to have the right to information/freedom of speech or some such s***t)
5) Stop pretending to be what you are not (intellectual)
I am pretty sure once you take this path of enlightenment; you shall find your goal – that of evading mediocrity. In the meanwhile, perhaps you can perhaps remind your man of words some of the stunning poetry that Gulzar has bestowed Indian cinema with – poetry with real emotions and real words and not recycling of a vocabulary of less than a 1000 words – ishq, mohobbat, zindgagi, dil, pyar, et al (no matter how much you adore the Americans, this is simply not an area which would beg emulation!). Because for the life of me, I cannot understand how he aspires to have written not a “tujhse naaraz nahin zindagi”, “mera kuch saaman” or “o saathi re” (and a zillion others) of Gulzar but a “beedi jalayle”?!
Oh, can I add to the list?
6) Aspire for greatness and you might even reach somewhere close. Otherwise, you will continue to generate smoke from the ears of one woman who at one point in her life (sadly) had thought of you as a sensible person
7) Read Indian history
8) Phew!
Saturday, 31 May 2008
Thursday, 22 May 2008
My take on the global food crisis
I have been away for a while so might as well start with what has been catching widespread attention in the media (the great gender versus race debate not withstanding) -Global food crisis. I have been racking my brains and trying with my short sight to divine between the lines of the famous and the infamous but haven’t yet figured out if there is a shortage of food worldwide or not. Don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to prove the World Bank wrong- I do believe that global food prices have risen 83 percent in the last three years and I better believe that there is an acute shortage of rice in this part of the world. V and I made two trips to little India in the past week to get one bag of rice for twice the usual price. Yes, we have started witnessing the much talked about rationing and hoarding of grains. The part that I haven’t figured out yet is whether we are in a situation where in the world demand for food has already surpassed the production yet, have we reached the Malthusian line yet?
I have read reports that quote the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) saying that the world cereal production was a record in 2007 and is expected to hit a new record in 2008. But as the world cereal consumption has been slightly faster than production for seven years, the world stocks have fallen to about 400 million tonnes. Ok that makes sense – we have low food stocks.
Why do we have low food stocks? That information too was not that difficult to come by. Apparently, higher income among the growing middle class of developing countries such as India and China has played a major role in generating a high demand for food. This piece of erudite information from the respectable President has been thoroughly derided by many scholars Indian and otherwise. Some of them went to uncover the “real” culprit – increased demand and enhanced subsidies (by the US who else) for bio-fuel raw materials such as – yes- wheat, maize, and palm oil! The lesser sensationalists among them have also pointed towards other causes for this rise in food prices: climate change (inducing change in rainfall patterns and in some cases such as Australia causing long periods of drought), falling dollar (commodities being priced in dollars, any fall in the dollar rate will increase prices), protective government policies (about 40 countries including India have curbed food exports to control domestic prices), speculation, falling productivity of the agriculture sector (diversification of agricultural lands, poor irrigation practices, diminishing returns from overused land) as well as high oil prices that make it expensive to use petroleum-based fertilizer, operate farm machinery or to transport agricultural products.
I have also read plenty of op-eds and the likes on the consequences of this global food crisis which have already led to riots in places like Haiti and Pakistan and will push almost one sixth of the world’s population below the poverty line. In short, if left alone this “silent Tsunami” is going to wreck havoc in every part of the world. Pretty scary prospect.
And yet, I haven’t yet read any analysis of what the current situation is in terms of demand and supply. I haven’t found for example anywhere that I tried to look an analysis of how much food stocks we have, how much are we expected to have to not fall below the Malthusian line of catastrophe. In other words, if say by next year we have persuaded the 40 odd counties to give up the export bans/duties and have managed to get Mr. Bush to slash bio-fuel subsidies, would we have sufficient for everyone to eat? I cannot for the life of me believe that no one has done that analysis. Clearly, someone did but no one is really interested. It goes on to say how information is managed in these supposedly utopian days of information sharing. Everyone is out to put the blame on each other and pontification seems to be the order of the day in the media of today.
Well, I have vented my bit of fury into the cyber world. I can still afford the rationed rice that we are able to buy here. Would that be enough then? What can we as individuals do to decrease the burden of increasing global prices? I think I can definitely and effectively prevent people that I can influence from hoarding. I can also restrict the amount of food that goes to the bin whether it is in my kitchen or in a restaurant. I can stop complaining about the rise in food prices because, I can afford to have two meals a day as opposed to millions in the world. I can certainly try raising awareness among some of my ignorant acquaintances who think the issue is “blown out of proportion by the media”.
Will that change the world? Perhaps not – but hell! Who would have predicted a couple of hundred years ago that the small change man made towards industrialization will lead to today’s situation of global warming? Remember, the butterfly effect?
I have read reports that quote the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) saying that the world cereal production was a record in 2007 and is expected to hit a new record in 2008. But as the world cereal consumption has been slightly faster than production for seven years, the world stocks have fallen to about 400 million tonnes. Ok that makes sense – we have low food stocks.
Why do we have low food stocks? That information too was not that difficult to come by. Apparently, higher income among the growing middle class of developing countries such as India and China has played a major role in generating a high demand for food. This piece of erudite information from the respectable President has been thoroughly derided by many scholars Indian and otherwise. Some of them went to uncover the “real” culprit – increased demand and enhanced subsidies (by the US who else) for bio-fuel raw materials such as – yes- wheat, maize, and palm oil! The lesser sensationalists among them have also pointed towards other causes for this rise in food prices: climate change (inducing change in rainfall patterns and in some cases such as Australia causing long periods of drought), falling dollar (commodities being priced in dollars, any fall in the dollar rate will increase prices), protective government policies (about 40 countries including India have curbed food exports to control domestic prices), speculation, falling productivity of the agriculture sector (diversification of agricultural lands, poor irrigation practices, diminishing returns from overused land) as well as high oil prices that make it expensive to use petroleum-based fertilizer, operate farm machinery or to transport agricultural products.
I have also read plenty of op-eds and the likes on the consequences of this global food crisis which have already led to riots in places like Haiti and Pakistan and will push almost one sixth of the world’s population below the poverty line. In short, if left alone this “silent Tsunami” is going to wreck havoc in every part of the world. Pretty scary prospect.
And yet, I haven’t yet read any analysis of what the current situation is in terms of demand and supply. I haven’t found for example anywhere that I tried to look an analysis of how much food stocks we have, how much are we expected to have to not fall below the Malthusian line of catastrophe. In other words, if say by next year we have persuaded the 40 odd counties to give up the export bans/duties and have managed to get Mr. Bush to slash bio-fuel subsidies, would we have sufficient for everyone to eat? I cannot for the life of me believe that no one has done that analysis. Clearly, someone did but no one is really interested. It goes on to say how information is managed in these supposedly utopian days of information sharing. Everyone is out to put the blame on each other and pontification seems to be the order of the day in the media of today.
Well, I have vented my bit of fury into the cyber world. I can still afford the rationed rice that we are able to buy here. Would that be enough then? What can we as individuals do to decrease the burden of increasing global prices? I think I can definitely and effectively prevent people that I can influence from hoarding. I can also restrict the amount of food that goes to the bin whether it is in my kitchen or in a restaurant. I can stop complaining about the rise in food prices because, I can afford to have two meals a day as opposed to millions in the world. I can certainly try raising awareness among some of my ignorant acquaintances who think the issue is “blown out of proportion by the media”.
Will that change the world? Perhaps not – but hell! Who would have predicted a couple of hundred years ago that the small change man made towards industrialization will lead to today’s situation of global warming? Remember, the butterfly effect?
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