Think perspective

(Published in Business Standard on November 3, 2012)

Earlier this week, when every reporter in the US was leaning into the wind in New York to yell into the camera about Sandy the Hurricane, a French friend put up a Facebook update about how oh yeah, Sandy the Hurricane had actually ripped through the Caribbean before it arrived at the hallowed shores of New York. At about the same time, a Canadian friend wrote an update about how Sandy the Hurricane was shortly going to cross the US border in Maine into Canada. Those reporters had almost nothing to say about Sandy’s effect on Haiti or on Saskatchwan, though it’s also true that Saskatchwan is a difficult name to yell into the camera. Anyway, the point is that the US has a long shadow, and if you happen to live in it, the sad truth is, um, who are you, again?

But then, most of us react to world events in this manner of an overworked air traffic controller. If it’s not in my airspace, it’s not my problem. When it does hit my airspace, it’s a matter of life and death, it’s an apocalypse, it’s a crisis the like of which you haven’t seen. The only way this is going to get sorted is if we give it our undivided attention.

Kids are like this a lot. When they find themselves unsatisfied by the attention they’re getting, they will do what it takes to get a more acceptable quota. My two-year-old niece recently ratted out her four-year-old brother (who hadn’t drunk his milk) to get her parents’ full attention. It was a bit of a shocker, though at the same time I was kind of thrilled to see her turn into a tiny little cute-as-a-button Machiavelli.

Perspective—the notion that your experience is only one tiny section of a much longer, much more varied, much more interesting thread—is an affliction that mind-boggling numbers of people remain quite safe from all the way through their lives. Nothing steals emotional pitch from a situation like taking a look at someone else’s situation, which takes some effort, and kind of puts you in your place, which isn’t always the place you would have chosen, and is therefore not a popular move.

But if you have made peace with the idea that you’re about as significant as a boil on the butt of a blue whale which itself is the boil on the butt of a tiny little intergalactic bacterium and so on, and are actually eager to maintain your grip on that fact, there’s a whole world out there to help you do it. A failsafe way to gain perspective is to listen to other people.

That’s what I’m doing currently in Goa, at a vast hotel that looks like a little village with pointy roofs—I keep expecting a (well-heeled) druid to pop out any minute. As I write this, just before the first session of the Think festival, Goa is cloudy and damp from the skirt hem of cyclone Neelam, the hotel grounds are filling with speakers and listeners (collectively and a little lamely known as ‘Thinkers’), and from Friday morning, for three days, I get to sit in a hall and listen to people talk about their experiences from all walks of life, from music to journalism to diplomacy to technology. I think of it like health food, or vitamin supplements, for the mind.

It remains to be seen how good the line-up is, but anyone who likes TED Talks is likely to enjoy this. I’ll let you know how it went—watch this space.

Thank you, internet, from a sheng nu

(Published in Business Standard on October 20, 2012)

One of the great perks of tuning into the news, recently, was watching anchors try to say ‘Pussy Riot’. I remember, two years ago, tuning in to watch them try to say ‘Eyjafjallajökull’, but ‘Pussy Riot’ is way more fun. They can’t repurpose their snigger instincts into indulgent smiles about young punk-rocker collectives with weird names (wotchergonnado), since it’s a story about hot young women getting tossed into one of Russia’s very serious clinks. So they struggle with all kinds of syllable stress tricks to help them keep a straight face. Puh-SEE-RYE-t. POO-see Write. PuZY Right. And (from NDTV) Pussy-uh, Riot-uh. No, there’s just no good way to say it without sounding idiotic.

But then, there’s been a lot of weird woman-related stuff on the news and internet recently. During the second US Presidential debate, challenger Mitt Romney told a story about trying to find qualified female candidates to induct into his Massachusetts cabinet, in the course of which he offered an ill-constructed sentence about his aides coming up with “binders full of women”. If we examine our hearts we all know what he meant, but the internet, where bombast goes to have its pants removed, embraced the meme, throttled it to death, and is probably still jumping merrily up and down on its corpse. Good for the internet.

Then there was the internet video clip of Aussie PM, Julia Gillard, who gave the leader of the opposition a tongue-lashing to remember for the rest of his creepy, sexist life. The fact that Gillard was, at the time, lashing out in defence of her own political ally who had been accused of sexually harassing a colleague, might have robbed her message of a little something, but then again it wouldn’t be politics if it didn’t have a little politics in it. Unfortunately, the other Gillard video clip that’s spreading like a fungus is the lady walking along in Delhi and suddenly falling flat on her face on account of getting her heels stuck in the lawn. Hopefully people will lose interest in that one in a couple of years.

And just now someone pointed me to last week’s article in The New York Times, titled ‘China’s Leftover Women', which is all about the website of the All-China Women’s Federation, the state feminist agency of China. Unless the NYT writer has committed a fearsome act of cultural misunderstanding, it seems that Chinese state feminists’ big priority is getting everyone a husband.

The website uploads columns on the problems of being sheng nu, or ‘leftover women’. This category is defined as women who are over 27, educated, and single. The horror! The horror! Here’s a bit of the Chinese state feminist agency’s advice to the poor benighted sheng nu (paraphrased from the article’s excerpts): If you’re pretty, getting a dude should be a breeze, go forth with our blessings. Don’t be all ambitious about your career and wait until you’re too old and ugly for any guy to want you, because that’s going to happen, pal, and when it does, don’t come crying to us, because we warned you. And if you’re not pretty, think about a makeover.

I paid close attention to this story on account of being over 27, educated, and single, though my family and friends hotly contest ‘educated’. I cannot be accused of career ambition, but I’m still not looking for a husband, which means that, according to Chinese feminists, I’m just going to wait around like all of those other “yellowed pearls”, as the website poetically describes old hags. It looks as if I’m sunk. Oh me, oh my. Why wasn’t I told about this before? What will I do now?

As I said: the internet is usually good for a laugh.

Tango crack II

(Published in Business Standard on October 6, 2012)

I committed, a few weeks ago, to spending one column telling you what’s so great about tango. This is that column—partly because I meant to think up some other ideas, but didn’t have time now that I spend all my waking hours looking up YouTube videos of debates and news clips related to the US election. It beats me why I’m so interested in the US election. I suspect that CNN has somehow found a way to whisper into people’s ears as they sleep about how the US’s choice will impact us all.

Sometimes it also beats me why I’m so interested in tango—usually when my feet hurt and somebody is shouting at me for having missed their birthday/anniversary/bypass surgery because I was at tango. First, it’s hard as all hell. Think of it as having a list of seventeen things to do simultaneously, a list that changes every second, and that you must complete before tackling the next one, else you can’t proceed in time or space. Second, as a woman you’re mostly dancing in heels, which means you end up spending insane amounts of money on shoes, efficiently hurting both your wallet and your feet and back in one fell swoop. Thirdly, as I have noted before, it takes over your life in much the same way as having a baby does—all of a sudden, and completely. Fourth, you can dance for years and never really be any good at it. Fifth, did I mention the shoes?

But it’s worth all of that. Among the fascinations of tango is, of course, the fact that it’s a beautiful dance, to beautiful music, that can express everything from I-won-the-lottery-and-here-I-am- -about-on-a-yacht-in-the-Caribbean, to My-husband-won-the-lottery-and-ran-off-with-my-sister-and-now-I-sleep-on-the-subway-and-drink-a-lot. But equally interesting is the thing it does to your head.

Tango is a leader’s dance, in that the man (or person dancing the leader’s role) decides what to do, when to do it, and in which direction. The woman (or person dancing the follower’s role) follows, though she has a fair amount of space for musical interpretation. If, like me, you’re basically a tomboy control freak, your kneejerk reaction to the idea of being led is to stick out your chin, dig in your heels and say: Oh yeah? Make me. But you have to suck up this fact if you’re going to get anywhere.

It took me several classes to stop resisting the basic premise, but as I discovered the skill and art of following, I realised that it is as lovely as it is difficult. You have few, but vital responsibilities: follow, don’t anticipate; connect to your partner to translate his energy into your movement; try and make every movement look good. Tango is about the only area in my life that is not gender-neutral, and I like it that way. Even tomboy control freaks must admit that there’s something deliciously pleasant about being taken care of, and they can allow themselves that luxury on the dance floor in a way that they can’t in the rest of their lives for reasons they haven’t completely worked out yet.

Leaders have it much worse, of course: they have to decide everything at every point, communicate their intentions to the followers, and navigate while doing so—all that, hopefully, to the music. As a follower you cannot but have some sympathy for your partner’s travails (until that inevitable moment when they lead your ass straight into the business end of a heel).

The addiction of tango, the greatest challenge, is ultimately the connection between leader and follower—seeing whether both dancers can understand each other and make it all work. Try it. You’ll end up getting shouted at too.

Democrips and Rebloodicans

(Published in Business Standard on September 22, 2014)

I love US presidential elections, those media-drunk carnivals of image manipulation.

First off, you’d better be good-looking, depending on what the definition of good-looking is at the time, Bogart or Clooney. I’d bet Jimmy Carter would have a hard time get elected today. This may mean the electorate is shallow, but at least it makes the whole show easier to watch. When you are yourself condemned to a regular audiovisual diet of unshaven, overweight, poorly-spoken Indian politicians brawling in Parliament, an experience about as edifying as being struck repeatedly in the head with a blunt object, you can hardly be blamed for feeling a little wistful about that.

Secondly, in godfearing America, you’d better be devout if you want to be Potus, so I’m not sure that a declared atheist like Jesse ‘The Body’ Ventura has a real chance at the top job if he decides to make a bid for it in 2016, despite the real appeal of an ex-pro wrestler in the Oval Office. I cannot but doff my hat to a man who titles his book about US politics Democrips and Rebloodicans, after the Los Angeles Crips and Bloods street gangs. Also, he seriously proposes that the Bush White House not only knew that 9/11 was going to happen, but that they actively wanted it to, which might well consign him to the lunatic fringe forever. Piers Morgan used the word ‘crackpot’ in an increasingly hostile and therefore increasingly enjoyable interview—especially since the audience seemed to be on Jesse’s side. Wild cards like Jesse are less electable, but they make interesting television.

Third, you’d better be very aware of cameras and mikes and leaks. Reagan was burned by it when he said, for a soundcheck: “My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.” Obama was burned by it when he told Russian president Medvedev that he’d have “more flexibility” on missile control after the 2012 election. Clinton was burned by a cigar and a very specific variety of leak. And Mitt Romney… well, to be fair, Mitt Romney was addressing a public gathering at the infamous fundraiser, so it’s not so much that he’s been burned than that his primary campaign tool seems to be taking a lit match to his own butt.

It’s been particularly entertaining to watch Mitt Romney undertake a kind of hideous slo-mo self-destruction with nothing but his own big mouth, an item he opens only to insert the 47 percent of his foot that feels entitled to be there. He’s so off-key that his own party is beginning to agree with John Heilemann, whose piece in New York magazine called him “completely craven” and described his candidacy as “serving no higher purpose than his ambition”.

The Republican party seems to be suffering from a version of the chaos and factionalism that plagued our own opposition party after UPA II came to power—a kind of psychic disintegration sparked by the great trauma of being out of power. The GOP has reacted by falling ever further apart. The NDA has reacted by refusing to speak and stomping out of rooms in an almighty sulk, and all but threatening to hold their breath until they turn blue, though why they think this would worry the electorate in the slightest beats me.

I can’t wait for the Presidential debates. With seven weeks to go it’s still a close election, but maybe at the debates Mitt will open his mouth even wider and shove the other 53 percent of his foot in there as well.