The current dispensation is turning Jinnah’s two nation theory right. It’s natural they are from the right. On a day where we celebrate our inclusive constitutional rights. The margins get more distant by the day in Aurangabad to Una to Gurgaon, the commercial and administrative heart of India. I have not even mentioned Kupwara and Kohima yet. And non high school educated migrant workers get a discriminatory orange passport. So much for equal citizenship. Happy Republic Day.

The positive about Republic Day 2018, is the deepening of our relationship with the Nusantara. The negative is the marginalisation of many configurations on a day that we celebrate our flawed democracy. In 1950, granting voting rights to all citizens in a post colonial nation state scarred by partition, was audacious. A thought ahead of its time. Democracy though is not only about elections. It is not a chore. Rituals are moments to reassess and reflect on the journey. We are a nation where a group stalls discourse. This is democracy too. RK Nagar elections is also democracy.

Cow, Caste and Capitalism

Are totems

Of everyday life

Republic Day is an extended weekend

We hoist the flag

Sing the Anthem

Flutter flags

Purchased at the traffic signal

Haggled down to the paisa

With the homeless Street hawker

This is our democracy

Democracy is a packet of Biryani

We digest it easily

Debates are harder

BMKJ.

All the money in the world is a period classic ( early 1970’s again as the spotlight) on the attitude and dynamics of wealth with an oil billionaire Getty, and the kidnapping of his grandson in Rome. It has all the trappings of the times; 1948 Saudi Arabia and the Hejaz Railway, Playboy interviews, the heady leftist feel of Italy and ex CIA agent speaking Arabic to cut deals with Tribesmen. The volatility of the 1973 oil embargo features well here. The backdrop of gulf oil capitalism reaching San Francisco boardrooms via cobbled Rome and the English Countryside has a terrific sweep of Globalisation. The scenes capturing the smoking on the flights, which are not allowed now a days, is the symbolic vain of the 1970’s.

The political economy of artistic patronage with roots in tax evasion, with formation of charitable trusts is a highlight, with the Getty Family Museum in LA a remainder of the family wealth. Art and Artefacts don’t change like people, make them reliable, is what the dirty old man quipped in the movie, while cutting deals and corners to not pay his favourite grandson’s ransom even after one ear was chopped off as a warning by the kidnappers.

The actor who played billionaire Getty is brilliant with cocky confidence who washes his inner wear in a star hotel suite to save a tenner. The movie captures the zeitgeist of the era well, with the non aggressive cinematography, and the dialogue writing/screenplay winning the day. Historical context is the hero of the movie. A strong star cast with solid acting throughout the movie.

A must watch of a movie. The talented Mr. Ridley Scott has a winner.

Writing is a bodily action. The moment one focuses on the subject with the black document in front of oneself, it’s a communication between the writers thoughts and the voice trying to explain in the best possible manner. The flow is there sometimes, attempting to gush out at a ferocious velocity, screaming to express. Those are the good days.

The days when the mind, soul and body are not in sync, muscle memory and stock sentences take over the jog. It is like attending an early morning conference call on an empty stomach, fueled by a cuppa of americano. The deliverable or the report has to go to the client, and all creative juices are missing for the day. This is the usual status quo, when the aspirational writer dies, and the pragmatic scribe takes over.

The back, the head and the fingers all play a part in writing. Writing is not only cerebral, it is physical. Almost all writers including Murakami run, to keep fit or to clear the head.

Writing is a messy negotiation in the head; part indulgence, part content, part art and full performance of a textual kind, pleading to be read and appreciated. The format varies from a research paper to a consulting report to a mundane mail, but the mechanics of writing as a performance is consistent. Writing is the heart of intellectual life and it takes years of hard labor to write well, with flair and impact in equal measure. I have read my way to writing well to have been published in many arenas of note.

As you can observe, writing is a performance when you read the last line. It’s a sales pitch, of the soul.

#autoethnography #writing

Paradoxically, being trained in Sociology and Health Communication (by practice and research) makes me a better engineer and science communicator as an Environmental and Social Impact Practitioner. As Spivak says, liberal arts is the gym of the mind.

Modi ji started his re election campaign for 2019 today in Hindi with Sanskrit chanting and quotes from Rabindranath Tagore, and Buddha. The only difference was, it was in Davos. The annual celebration of the Global neoliberal elite, Davos is the space of the movers and shakers of the A players.

As SRK and Mukesh Ambani listened to Modi ji speak, while everyone else was plugged in to the translation headphones, there was a sense that the audience was the Hindi Heartland rather than the quaint ski town in Switzerland.

Jai Maharashtra.

Airports are ‘Non Places’ in the words of French Anthropologist Marc Angie; where the location is a node of a circulatory system, of the veins of Globalisation. These places, mean trolleys where migrants from South Asia pack their dreams away. Photographer Natan Dir speaks in an interview:

“In a place like that, I experienced that people stopped paying attention to themselves, they don’t pretend to be anyone different, they come as they are. I had never realised that this was exactly what I felt when being in the underground; it was a human and real space for me. A place where everything is democratic. It doesn’t matter if somebody has more money, you’re all even.” [1]

The same sentiment is valid for an airport.

Reference:

1. http://www.gupmagazine.com/articles/notes-from-the-underground-an-interview-with-natan-dvir

The key making trade is a diminishing one, in this era of 3D printing and all things digital. The art of replicating the humble key to the home is a simple necessity, but it needs a specific skill set. This key making store nestled in a petrol station, opposite to the building I grew up in Al Khuwair, Muscat is a place I have seen growing up but never been into; having been into a key making store for my rented nest, is probably a sign of coming of age at least in this city of my childhood.

The master key maker, took ten minutes to replicate my key. He used a bench pencil sharpener type tool to shape the metal in a pre fabricated mould, then with a knife chiseled through the corners and edges. He was a lean spectacled man concealing this real age. He has been in Oman for 28-29 years and he comes originally from the famed Maratha Mandir Theatre area in Mumbai.

The Future of Work paradigm, might not survive the key making profession, as it is a traditional trade.

The objective of this article is to capture a declining trade, relegated to the margins in this digital era. A truly anti digital skill.

Cities are emotional landscapes

Especially Home

There is no home

Sans the nostalgia

Emotions of adolescence

Odors, scents, fragrances

Of the Shwarma shop

The Friday buzz in Ruwi

Hamriya is just maniacal

Now, food courts In Bawshar

Are filled with patrons

The exchanges bulge in the first week

All these rhythms are emotions

Which make home, home.

The Post, is an all star movie (Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks as lead actors as the owner of the paper and the editor respectively of its namesake The Washington Post) with Steven Spielberg helming the directorial mantle dealing with an issue of contemporary American History with the Dan Ellsberg ‘Pentagon Papers’ on the American war in Vietnam, and the cover up which kept young military soldiers fighting a losing conflict. Ellsberg book is stuff of myth, which has inspired generations of activists including writer Arundhati Roy and actor John Cussack (read their recent pithy book).

 

The movie genre, taps in to the new paper as a fountain head of democracy via the tropes of investigative journalism, bringing accountability to institutional power. The recent movie ‘Spotlight’ on the Boston Globe investigative team reporting on the child abuse scandal. The news room frames in the movie is almost frame to frame identical, and a reflection of the aesthetic vocabulary of the times.

 

The movie questions the cosy relationship between media owners/editors and the power elite and the role that media owners were playing in shaping the discourse in the pre digital era. Access to stories and in the power corridors is a negotiation between the media and the ruling elite; The Post and the Nixon Administration and now CNN and Trump Administration. The lens of the movie on the publication politics rather than on Dan Ellsberg and his activism, with whom the movie started.

 

The rivalry between the more popular New York Times and The Post is presented well, but in the event on the assault on the media, the two were on the same side in a legal battle.

 

Streep as the widower owner of the paper trying to raise funds through an IPO, in 1971 and the dance around commercial concerns and values of public service with the dilly dallying with publish or not to publish the scoop is an extraordinary fictional window of journalistic courage. Journalism used to be public service. Now it is paid news, apart from a couple of oasis of excellence, depending on paid subscribers.

 

A timely cinematic message very relevant for the Alt Facts/Post Truth era that we reside in. The movie however is produced by Anil Ambani’s Reliance Entertainment, an Indian Billionaire producing an American Journalism themed movie, on a newspaper owned by another billionaire, Mr Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon. The networks of Transnational Capitalism are unique, Amen.

 

The cinematography is sensitive, but not extraordinary. The aesthetics of the early 1970’s is depicted accurately, as if shot through a retro Instagram filter. The strength of the movie is the powerful acting of the crew, tempered rather than over the top. The dialogue delivery is the star of the film, at times understated and understandable. Nixon is pictured at the end of the movie ordering blockade of access to Washington Post after the publication of the incriminating evidence, while the water gate scandal is exploding at the same hour. Just brilliant. Take a bow Mr Spielberg.

 

A must watch for all J School students, writers, social scientists, historians and the public at large, interested in a vital episode of public discourse.