A twelvefold path to Famedom aka Arundhati Roy's celebrity status

Of late, life is beginning to get a little hmm…stagnant. Work has been a bit slow and all the adrenaline rush that I seem to get nowadays is from running up the stairs. Rather expected- because when one is despairing endlessly for an incomprehensible degree () in an obscure field, one is too preoccupied with life’s miseries and unfairness to care about personal ambition. Once the degree lands in ones hand though, one has nothing much to be miserable about. But then, together with the lack of abject despair, comes annihilation of all illusions of fame and glory that had driven one into the dreaded path of a graduate student’s life. So one gloomy Sunday afternoon, my personal counselor, Lord and master gave me the mantra of re-birth. I have been told that I should re-look at my aspirations, re-evaluate my goals in life and re-chart my life plan. That and the soporific aftermath of a scrumptious meal prepared by the Lord and master set me thinking.

I know I want to be famous and I don’t want to wait too long. Opportunely, that very day, I chanced upon one of the most reputed voices that represent the spirit of those fortunate millions among us who do not think before they speak. Case in point: Arundhati Roy. Instantly, everything fell in place. I decided to look into the path to success and fame she had taken as my inspiration. What of science you say? Well, that’s MORE exotic than being a half-graduate of architecture isn’t it? Although me having received my degree as opposed to her bohemian skew of having forsaken it midway might act against me. Nevertheless, I made a game plan and it goes like this.

Step # 1 of passageway to glory – Take the most controversial film of your day and “thoda twist karo”. Rules – none. Just use patronizing, cynical and mocking tone and talk about “the state”. If possible, add a few “C” words. In her case, she thought that Sekhar Kapoor “misrepresented” Phoolan devi . Get all the free publicity that you can ever muster. Trust me, in the long run, this will do you so well, you will actually gloat about it in later times I swear!

Step # 2 of passageway to glory –Be photographed with contemporary icons of Indian writers in English the likes of Rushdie and Anita Desai before your first work gets published. Look here for the date of the photograph (May 30, 1997) and here for the date of first publication (9th June, 1997) Make waves with the highest advance ever offered for a book by someone who had no claim to literary fame before (save the phenomenal advance). In short, know your market and your media well.

Step # 3 of passageway to glory – Write your little autobiography embellished with the most “playing to the firang” themes of child molest, forbidden romance between a “lower caste” guy and an “upper caste” woman, death of a child and subsequent guilt and of course the quintessential backdrop of communism. And you might just get lucky and win the Booker (1997) for the one work of fiction that you have graced humanity with, despite what anyone might think about your book. It greatly helps that you are Indian woman who is not a hopeless Hindu (what about me then, you ask? I can always claim to be an agnostic, can I not?)!

Step # 4 of passageway to glory – Immediately after you win the booker prize announce that you might never write fiction again, that you are exhausted and that you have "nothing more to give". I bet I will love this part – After all, I haven’t known much of pepper creepers and rattle snakes that rub themselves on rocks! Continue giving interviews and talk about how people keep comparing you to famous writers (In her case, “It's not just Rushdie that I'm compared to. There's Garcia-Marquez, Joyce...and Faulkner. Yes, I'm compared to Faulkner the most. But I've never read Faulkner before!” )

Step # 5 of passageway to glory – Take to an “NGO” issue and no matter whether you truly understand the implications of say, building a dam, or not; just scream your throat off and man- will the world stand up and listen! Come on, you have just won the booker! Doesn’t matter what the environmentalists think of the publicity you give them – they must be knocking mad!

Step # 6 of passageway to glory – Get involved in every issue that grabs headlines. Scream. Believe in nothing but your language. Hate everything under the sun – globalization, war, nuclear weapons, dams, privatization, fundamentalism (but only the non-obvious types, someone who bombs the Indian parliament is not a terrorist for heaven’s sake, don’t you know?!), George Bush, Indian government. Scream.

Step # 7 of passageway to glory - And when people tell you are muddled up, tell them that while you are entitled to your opinions and can scream them off India’s rooftop to let the whole world know about the ugliness of the system. Surely, no one who condemns you or your arguments can possibly be 1) morally conscious 2) right 3) intellectual 4) non-bigoted and hence no one but you has any claim to expressing ones opinions on everything under the sun. When people tell you that your opinions are not informed, are shallow and are even factually incorrect, you say.... “Oh, I didn’t make that mistake, it was just wrong sources that I quoted from?” And btw, you should also claim that they are all jealous of you – because, who knows, they might be thinking that you are just "some pretty woman who wrote a book." (In all honesty, I don’t know how I could muster any courage to say that- me who cannot even look into the mirror without wincing. But hey, you have to do what you have to do. Collarbones or no collarbones).

Step #8 of passageway to glory – Take up every prize that comes your way no matter that one of them is sponsored by a government that is a key ally of the US (Australia) in its war against terror about whichyou just cannot and will not stop screaming. Scream and refuse to take the desi awards though because, it stands for the Indian government.

Step # 9 of passageway to glory –Scream that you want to go to jail. Talk about egalitarianism but when you actually are jailed, pay the fine rather than spend the time in jail with others who have been arrested together with you for the “cause”

Step # 10 of passageway to glory – While you are screaming, do keep a watch on the media in the west to which you play. You should always gain their attention, no matter what. You may cry and rant and rave and give out oodles of information about how the establishment is out to get you jailed, when all you have done is to defy the supreme court of your country. Remember the mantra -India is a land of horrendous creatures with caste system and nuclear bombs. They are jealous of me. They are afraid of me. I am too clever for them. I have too much money. I look too beautiful. I can’t substantiate many of my rants against the bloody establishment. They hate me. Oh they hate me because…India is a land of horrendous creatures with caste system and nuclear bombs.. .

Step # 11 of passageway to glory – Announce that you will write fiction again, after all.

Step # 12 of passageway to glory – If no one stands up and takes notice of your re-entry into fiction, scream. Take up the most controversial matter of the time. Remember the mantra? Remember the mantra -India is a land of horrendous creatures with caste system and nuclear bombs. Add a new horror this time around - the hindutva movement ( Even the hardcore paki-philes have been driven to cry out for freedom from India into Pakistan simply by the Hindus, who else?)

By now, you would have no chouice but to have made it to the headlines of a thousand newspapers/websites. Millions will applaud your courage and vision. And you will be a woman, my daughter! While I try my newfound 12-fold path to glory, you guys check these out..

Royisms: handy quotes to famedom

“No, I don't feel responsibility because that's such a boring word”

“I thought, thank God the BJP is corrupt, thank God someone’s taken money, imagine if they had been incorruptible, only ideological, it would have been so much more frightening. To me, pristine ideological battles are really more frightening“

"When NATO bombed Yugoslavia, a tiger in the Belgrade zoo got so terrified that it started eating its own limbs. The people of the Narmada valley will soon start eating their own limbs” htm
“If you live in America or Europe it is almost impossible to really believe that another world is possible. Over there, anybody who talks about life beyond capitalism is part of a freak show, they’re just considered nuts and weirdos, going through teenage angst”

“I went there and became a mad molecule floating around”

“…Purana Qila, which is the Old Fort, which houses the Delhi zoo. And it was really from there that — and, of course, it wasn’t a public meeting. It was the caged animals and some caged CEOs that he addressed. And then he went to Hyderabad, and I think he met a buffalo there, some special kind of buffalo..”

“I was the worst thing a girl could be: thin, black, and clever”

And finally, the killer stroke!

“I don't see a great difference between The God of Small Things and my works of nonfiction. As I keep saying, fiction is truth. I think fiction is the truest thing there ever was. My whole effort now is to remove that distinction”

My wish list for India’s 61st Independence Day

I wish

· That there is no dearth of food, shelter and relationships in all our one billion lives.

· That all of us, who belong to the land by dint of ancestry, birth, love or merely by affiliation, learn to see beyond the immediate ‘now’ of time. May we see beyond the wounds of a hundred years ago and arrogance of the current economic surge; beyond the age when India dominated the world’s trade into the future that will be of our own making, on our terms.

· That we live, work, prosper and play beyond the boundaries of caste, religion and region while respecting them and that we all are treated equally in the name of law regardless of caste, religion and region.

· That while we prosper from the land of 'snake charmers' into a land of a billion opportunities, we retain our ability to chose our lifestyle; that no corporate gurus or fashion mongers tell us how to eat/live/dress/walk/live and die.

· That we hold our heads high and speak out our mind without fear of offense to any power and yet we retain our warmth in our dealings with other countries.

· That our media which uses 95-99% of its print/visual space to ask the “why” question and only the remaining to the “how” question, reverses its trend.

· That the current generation of thugs/thieves/scam mongers/ film or television stars/ wastrels who make a career out of politics stay out of it for at least five generations (after which, it would be welcome to have someone who could provide us with some entertainment on the Loksabha floor like ahem.. a certain governor in the US). I wish the same minds that help MNC’s make billions of money come together to help us reap the true benefits of democracy.

· That we learn to teach our kids to follow their dreams and not ours and we may have many Bindres

. That people like me (thanks to the very Indian education system that we can’t stop cribbing about) who have secured a slightly better lifestyle than most others back home in India don’t forget to give back.

Who better than Tagore to articulate the wish?

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake

Happy Independence Day, dear fellow Indians.

Pleasurable pain

Since the time I discovered one of the most touching voices I have ever heard , I have spent countless evenings letting his velvety voice caress the wounds that I have carried (self-inflicted or otherwise)-to the point of addiction. Who would blame me once they know what Jagjit Singh voice can do to one’s soul? Last evening his voice revealed to me anew the pleasure in re-visiting some moments from the past. This one, a ghazal true to its form (apart from the form and meter of poetry, one specialty of the ghazal is its subject- invariably, unrequited love) is written by Nida Fazli -remember Hosh walon ko khabar kya in Sarfarosh? Rarely do lyrics, melody and rendition come together this way to break your heart. Listen to magic from a new compilation -Audio biography.

Yun to guzar raha hai har ik pal khushi ke sath,
Phir bhi koi kami si hai kyun jindgi ke sath.

Each moment that passes flits with happiness
Why then does life feel a little incomplete?

Rishte wafaein dosti sab kuch to pass hai,
Kya baat hai pata nahi, dil kyun udass hai,
Har lamha hai haseen, nayi dilkashi ke sath
Phir bhi koi kami si hai kyun jindgi ke sath.

Kindred, intimacy and friendship, I do have them all
I know not the reason for this melancholy of my heart
Every moment entices with novelty and beauty
Why then does life feel a little incomplete?

Chahat bhi hai sukun bhi hai, dilbari bhi hai,
Aankhon mein khawab bhi hai, labon par hasin bhi hai
Dil ko nahi hai koi shikayat , kisi ke sath
Phir bhi koi kami si hai kyun jindgi ke sath.

Serenity, Desire and a fascination for life, I have;
These eyes do dream and these lips do smile
And my heart holds no grievance against another
Why then does life feel a little incomplete?

Socha tha jaisa waisa hi jeevan to hai magar,
ab aur kis talaash mein bechain hai nazar,
Kudrat bhi meharbaan hai dariya dili ke sath,
Phir bhi koi kami si hai kyun jindgi ke sath.

The vision I had of life is what it turned out to be
What makes my gaze restless then?
Nature has been as compassionate as it is magnanimous,
Why then does life feel a little incomplete?

Yun to guzar raha hai har ik pal khushi ke sath,
Fhir bhi koi kami si hai kyun jindgi ke sath.

Each moment that passes flits with happiness
Why then does life feel a little incomplete?

How do you recognize an Indian?

Yes, it was yet another of those e-mails that claim to have comprehensively captured the essence of an Indian. But the check list (36 items on that list, mind you, so the guy who came up with it did have a sense of the relative complexity of the task) that got passed around in this morning’s e-mail irked me big time. And it didn’t help that this was a Monday morning. And that I ran out of milk and cereal and that the ATM machine was kaput and that all horrible things happen on Monday. So, I wrote this rebuttal. Let me know if any of you agree.

“…

Let me do this, if only because this is a soporific Monday afternoon and I can’t seem to be motivated to think about this week’s experiments. For every generalisation about India/Indians, there are a million exceptions (or more –remember although the Indians invented the concept of zero, algebra and geometry, they aren’t that keen on statistics).

Shashi Tharoor (former undersecretary general to the United Nations and a very well renowned author on India) said "India is more than a sum of its contradictions, any truism about India can be contradicted with another truism. There is no fixed stereotype”.

So let’s see how many of the following will hold true if we look not at the stereotyped immigrant Indian but at the cross section of Indians from across the country/globe.

1. Everything you eat is savored in garlic, onion and tomatoes – There are at least 40-50 million Jains and Brahmins in India for whom garlic and onions are forbidden. Most south Indian preparations have no tomatoes. But I swear that I will die if I have three consecutive meals without either one of them.

2. You try and reuse gift wrappers, gift boxes, and of course aluminum foil- I am trying to think of a exception beyond me but then, that’s tough. Besides, that’s what the entire world is doing at the moment – recycling. We were just doing it when it was terribly unfashionable too.

3. You are Always standing next to the two largest size suitcases at the Airport- It is true that Indians have a penchant for good things in life that includes food and dress in general. But there are 313 nomadic tribes in India that translates to about 60 million people who roam around with their entire set of belongings in a bag.

4. You arrive one or two hours late to a party - and think it's normal –It is imperative to arrive late to a party in most Asian cultures. Don’t mistake a Philippine for Indian based on this one!

5. You peel the stamps off letters that the Postal Service missed to stamp -This is the land of e-mails and web chats. Postal stamps? Lets see – that was ten years ago! See point 2

6. You recycle Wedding Gifts , Birthday Gifts and Anniversary Gifts- Wedding gifts, I agree -what do you do with 20 coffee flasks and 50 pressure cookers? But Birthday gifts? Is someone smoking grass?

7. You name your children in rhythms (example, Sita & Gita, Ram & Shyam, Kamini & Shamini.) - In bollywood films. Yes. In real life? Come on! You have to be a poet to name all 8 of your kids in words that rhyme. Remember 1 billion?

8. All your children have pet names, which sound nowhere close to their real names- this is true of Punjabis and Bengalis and suburban Americans-(firangs not the Indian immigrants) -honey, darling, sweetie etc!- as far as I know.

9. You take Indian snacks anywhere it says 'No Food Allowed' – most of us would love to. Which person who has grown up with at least a thousand choices for snacks wouldn’t when the only snacks you can buy at the movies is popcorn and taco and the rest that smell and taste of nothing but MSG?

10. You talk for an hour at the front door when leaving someone's house- Time goes around in cycles for most of us. This means that I can be standing at your door after lunch and who knows I might be invited back for dinner if I hang around long enough?

11. You load up the family car with as many people as possible - There was an ad for ambassador car in India. “Adjust kar le yaar”. The idea being -What’s a car for if it is not for people? You don’t pay to carry air do you?

12.You use plastic to cover anything new in your house whether it's the remote control, VCR, carpet or new couch – I cannot think of a single person I know who does this. Yet every novel written by/about immigrant Indians speaks of this. I wish I could sneak into Jhumpa Lahiri’s home to see if it is true.

13. Your parents tell you not to care what your friends think, but they won't let you do certain things because of what the other 'Uncles and Aunties' will think– See point number 12

14. You buy and display crockery, which is never used, as it is for special occasions, which never happen – See point number 12

15. You have a vinyl tablecloth on your kitchen table – See point number 12

16. You use grocery bags to hold garbage – Again a single great truism about India is its inability to throw things away. This is why we attracted over centuries muck of all sorts from the Turks to the Hans to the firangs. We simply are unable to throw them away and so we “recycle” them- see where the English language got us for example. The best of the bookers belongs to an Indian-born who had simply recycled the language!

17. You keep leftover food in your fridge in as many numbers of bowls as possible – Another great truism but for the fact that about half of the billion odd people don’t own a refrigerator.

18. Your kitchen shelf is full of jars, varieties of bowls and plastic utensils (got free with purchase of other stuff) – because whoever has a kitchen, should use it to cook. And Indians in general don’t like to keep stuff in the condition in which it is bought. It is a great assault on our creativity you see.

19. You carry a stash of your own food whenever you travel (and travel means any car ride longer than 15 minutes) – see point number 9

20. You own a rice cooker or a pressure cooker -See point number 12

21. You fight over who pays the dinner bil-It is wrong. You see most people simply don’t understand the internal rules of an Indian society. You pretend to fight over the bill but ultimately, you know that the one with the loudest voice pays. So the fight is just to explore the aural and vocal capabilities of each other

22. You live with your parents and you are 40 years old. (And they prefer it that way) –All of us prefer to be spanked once in a while and who better to do it than your folks?

23. You don't use measuring cups when cooking- Measuring cups are for amateur cooks. Not for all those who a) don’t own a cup b) never cook in their lives c) know how to cook

24. You never learnt how to stand in a queue – One must know the spelling of a Q to be able to stand in it. It is absolutely imperative. One simply won’t stand in a Q if one doesn’t know how to spell it. Got it?

25. You can only travel if there are 5 persons at least to see you off or receive you whether you are traveling by bus, train or plane- Apart from the fact that about half of the billion odd among us have never taken the bus/train or the plane, this is absolutely true.

26. If she is NOT your daughter, you always take interest in knowing whose daughter has run with whose son and feel proud to spread it at the velocity of more than the speed of light –Makes me wonder if the one who has written this watches desperate housewives at all? Or any of the thousand other American soaps? Because, if one does, one needn’t even ask if this tendency of middle-aged women is limited to the subcontinent.

27. You only make long distance calls after 11 p.m – The era of STD/ISD booths was history some five years ago what with the boom in current operators. Last heard, India is the third largest market of tele-communications next to the USA and China. It costs –get this- one rupee per minute to make calls across India today. Incoming calls are no longer charged in India (they still are in the USA). 11 PM? Wake up!

28. If you don't live at home, when your parents call, they ask if you've eaten, even if it's midnight – Yes this is true in most cases unless 1) your mother never cooked when you lived with your parents 2) your parents are vegetarians and you don’t mind relishing all parts of either the sacred cow/forbidden pork or both 3) you have married outside your region/state/country

29. You call an older person you never met before Uncle or Aunty' – And so do Singaporeans, Japanese, Thai, and Chinese…

30. When your parents meet strangers and talk for a few minutes, you discover you're talking to a distant cousin – We all came out of Africa remember? And so we all are cousins –welcome to the universal cousin-hood!

31. Your parents don't realize phone connections to foreign countries have improved in the last two decades, and still scream at the top of their lungs when making foreign calls – You are talking of our great-grandfathers sir? Most Indian parents are comfortable using a cell phone/computer/google talk and skype too. I think you missed a point here. In general, Indians don’t believe in whispering. We are loud- now that would have been a truism, if there was one. Not “being loud on the phone”.

32. You have bed sheets on your sofas so as to keep them from getting dirty – This is bang on. Also, we don’t use the same shoes that we walk on the roads, cafes, bars, toilets and whatever else with in our home and on our sofas and beds. Plus, Jhumpa Lahiri’s parents must have suffered from Xenophobia of firangs who don’t wash their hands after visiting the loo.

33. It's embarrassing if your wedding has less than 600 people – Get this straight. Most Indians are weak hearted and only get married once. Plus, how will you manage all those rituals by yourself? So, yes, this too is bang on.

34. All your Tupperware is stained with food color-It’s the fault of the Chinese. Can they not make steel Tupperware for heaven’s sake?

35. You have drinking glasses made of steel- So did the rest of the world when steel was a rage. And try breaking an Indian’s habit. Btw, it is fashionable to have wine glasses made of pewter, so please!

36. You have mastered the art of bargaining in shopping- I would have held on to this belief that Indians are great at bargaining had I never visited the south-east Asia. Now, I know, we are not the best. But admittedly, we are better than most. That is given that almost half of the one billion among us exist hand to mouth.

You needn’t look at all this to identify an Indian at all. There are two unifying qualities of all Indians – irrespective of which strata of the society we belong to which easily betray us in any company.

We are a bunch of nonconformists. And we love to argue.

So, there!

To be or not to be...doobe doobe dooo

It is impossible to remain sane for five years in this land of tiny women as an Indian woman who is not anorexic. Take it from me-I have seen it all. You can walk into a store even the most expensive, reputed, branded (and all such adjectives) one but the XL they carry would only fit your arms and not your waist. Total strangers can see a muffin your hand in the lift and start off pleasant conversation of how impossible it would be to “lose those pounds that these muffins give you”. It is generally accepted in this society to call a woman fat if she is a little more endowed than say the breadth and width of a mosquito bite. Of course, this has it perks. Like when one goes shopping in India or Europe and the salesgirls refuse to let one even touch the L size.

Unfortunately in today’s global village of a world, home is where the job is -I am doomed to live here. After careful deliberation for five years, I decided to lose weight in order to “fit in”. Since I have not been on a Sex and the City diet of blissful anorexia and because I simply can’t stand the lead actress in that series, and because V desperately needs his money to be spent, and because I have secret sadomasochistic fantasies, I signed up for a personal training program in a gym.
As expected, it is hell. Here is why:

1) My personal trainer, let’s call him GG, looks like a Greek god
2) GG has not an ounce of fat on his entire body
3) GG told me that my BMI and body fat (and what-ever-else that has ever been invented to make an overweight person feel miserable) are nothing but horrendous and almost hinted that he is very surprised I didn’t die a decade ago. This for paying him so much money that it hurts!
4) My muscles have not moved in three decades, what with me being teacher's pet and all in school - I could always get out of the "PT" class by smiling at our trainer and telling him about the latest quiz/essay writing/debate that I am attending and how important it is to sit in the library (that I would read totally unrelated fiction in the library is an aside only meant for trustworthy ears)
5) When my muscles refuse to move, GG shows me what his can actually do and that almost releases murderous/suicidal intentions in me depending on which time of the month that is.
6) I sprained my ankle on the first day when he made me stand on a- get this- wobbly ball, nothing less

If the training sessions are my practice for being in the place that is destined to be mine in the afterlife for all the innumerable sins I have committed in my life, the changing room is the antonym of seventh heaven. Loads of models and wannabe-models swarm the place and one should just see to believe the looks they give me and another Malay lady of decent proportions.

What keeps me going? I fantasize that if my sadomasochism does pay off, soon I will be on the other side of the death-by-skinny-model-looks-wall. If it doesn’t pay off, hell all these skinny people just don’t know how to enjoy life. I mean what’s life without chocolates, muffins, cheese, parathas and loads of carbohydrates? If this doesn’t work, I promise I will start a world-wide-counter-skinny movement. Watch out!