RAIN HAS NO MIND

Now I've a short story at writelit.com.

It's about a fake Indian guru who went berserk after he was dignosed to have been suffering from liver cancer.

MRINAL BOSE

ALAN MOORE's new approach to SEX

One of the reasons we started this was because we were sick of the approach to sex in the culture. It seemed to us unhealthy, unproductive, and unbeautiful. In countries like the U.S. and Great Britain, we exist in a wholly sexualized culture, where everything from cars to snack food are sold with a healthy slathering of sex to make them more commercially appealing. But if you're using sex to sell sneakers, then you're not just selling sneakers, you're selling sex as well, and you're contributing to the sexual temperature of society. You're going to get people who, unsurprisingly, become overheated in that kind of sexual environment, and if they attempt to assuage their desires by resorting to the widely available medium of pornography, they're going to have their moment of gratification, and then they're going to have a much longer period of self-loathing, disgust, shame and embarrassment. It's almost like a kind of a reverse Skinner-box experiment, where once the rat has pushed the lever and successfully received the food, then he gets the electric shock.

Read the interesting views by the authour of Lost Girls at

Alan Moore interview

MRINAL BOSE

Vijay Tendulkar interview

Terrorism is not always something that is against us. If it happens to be on our side, are we going to fight it?

Freeze the city

Mrinal Bose

7/11, MUMBAI

RDX, timer device, serial blasts. The familiar fare. In just 11 minutes they kill 200 (official estimate) and maim about one thousand.

How dastardly that this time they target the common man who were returning home after the day's work in packed trains!

But do recall a similar, but big in dimension, act: cluster bombs, war planes, and common men dying in hordes. Yes, you get it. It's Iraq, and who're responsible out there?

There's not much difference between George Bush-Tony Blair duo, and these terrorists. Both get 'high' after their their achieved mayhem. They have similar mindset, though different agendas.

The fact of the matter is that they are all assholes, and are out to screw the mankind and the civilization.

MRINAL BOSE

ANANDA PATAWARDHAN

"India has laid claims to be America's newest bride, largely through the omissions and commissions of the media. We're thrilled to be seen on the arms of George Bush Jn. It's called an arms deal."

CUCKOO'S CALL

A blog by V.Ramaswamy,a friend of mine. Some time ago, finding his interest and involvement in so many things, I suggested he be a columnist. He comes up with a blog instead.

For me, Ramaswamy is quite a complex - somewhat enigmatic too - character, and though I'be known him for over a year, I still find him difficult to define.

He's a businessman. I feel he has pucca business sense. But he's a great reader, and has extensive knowledge about books and authors. His literay taste and sense are quite amazing.

He's a poet.

He's a good translator.

He's a skilled editor. He's editing my novel now. And what he sometimes suggests really makes sense.

He claims he's a social planner. I don't quite get it, and practically suspect him on this.

Every now and then he visits different universities abroad, and delivers lectures on things like poverty in India.

I've heard he sings well.

Initially I thought he suffers from lack of focus, but now I think he's eclectic in character. A rare quality at this time.

But above all, he's a hugely experienced guy.

Try reading his blog. It might be a rewarding reading experience.
MRINAL BOSE

DOWN, DOWN ...

I've begun to be pissed off by the recent trends of Indian print media. Dailies have long been tabloidised, and you have a hard time finding the news that really matter. Recently, Sourav Ganguly, one of Bengal's holy cows, had his chain stolen by his house servant. And this item became the lead news in a premier daily of India!

Of course, infotainment rules. But why should I spend money for reading this kind of crap?

Serious weeklies are also going down the same route. OUTLOOK is the latest addition to this list. There have been change in fonts and formats, but you get less and less stuff for reading.

What has peeved me recently is its current marketing strategy. It's distributing "free" a life-style magazine launched by the house. But in reality, one has to shell out more bucks now because its price has gone up from fifteen to twenty. A novelty in marketing perhaps (they sell the new magazine without any extra effort) but why should I buy an extra magazine which I hate to read?

How funny that with the current issue, Outlook is giving a free CD of ten popular Hindi songs!

I smell a kind of bankruptcy in such selling moves. So, is it the time when you can't sell anything, however good, in a straight way? Or, has it become a fashion?

Whatever the case, I've decided to unsubcribe from OUTLOOK.

MRINAL BOSE

BENGAL ELECTION 2006

By any standard, it was a spectacular election: votes in five phases( extending over a month),central paramilitary forces guarding the booths, EC observers watching the vote process, and strict adherence to rules while checking the voters.

The election was, of course, free and fair, nobody complaining - perhaps first of its kind since independence. But it cost about one hundred crores of the Exchequer.

What was the result? The Left Front, whom the Election Commission seemed to teach a lesson, fared even better this time. It bagged 235 seats out of 293. Last election the number of won seats was 199.

Inference: Bengal has a left-leaning population, and it would not elect a rightist government even after twenty nine years of uninterrupted leftist rule. Something strange considering that the Marxists have undergone sea change during this long period,and they are now more pro-rich than pro-poor.

Of course, the rightists are in poor shape in this state. They have no solid organization, and are visible only around election time. Their leaders have also less credibility vis-a-vis the leftists.

So it's hard to say if the leftists have won on negative, rather than, positive votes in this election.
MRINAL BOSE

A DARK NIGHT'S PASSING

A novel by Naoya Shiga, a Japanese novelist, written mostly during the 1920s and completed only in 1937. Shiga's only full-length novel.

The protagonist, Kensaku, is a writer, and very sensitive and educated, with love for nature, art and local history. Unfortunately, he's also a troubled soul, being born out of an illegitimate union between his grandfather and his mother during his father's long stay abroad.

It was an open secret in the family and its close circles, but Kensaku knew about it only when he ineffectively tried to marry a girl of his choice from a family which was so intimate with his family.

The revelation comes as a shock, no doubt, but he rationalises the event, and can't hate his mother who died a long time ago. He simply shifts to a new house, and tries to live out his own way.

Then he marries. It proves to be a happy marriage, but once, when he was way from home, his wife Naoko, sleeps with her cousin, though under some compelling circumstances. Another big shock and crisis for Kensaku, and he decides to travel all by himself for a while.

While travelling in the mountains, he comes across a man who is wonderfully passionate about his wife who is kind of slut, and entertains many men at the same time.

Now, there might be a link among these three events, but there is no message as such. It's a very quiet novel, and the writer underplays it all in an amazing way. Life in the novel seems so much like the real life outside.

I've not read such a good novel in a long time.

MRINAL BOSE

WHY IS NO ONE TALKING ABOUT ...?

Why is no one talking about Anil Biswas?

Biswas has been in deep coma over the past five-six days following a massive cerebral attack, and is on life support now. The medical bulletin being issued by the nursing home where he's being treated describes his condition as "critical but stable". What does the phrase really connote? Does it hide anything?

Biswas was, and is still oficially, the general secretary of the CPI(M)- the party that has been in power in Bengal for as long as twenty nine years at a stretch.

Biswas was the main think-tank of the party, and built up the machination of ensuring victory in election term after term.He is only 62.

But why don't I hear people discuss his condition in public places? In trains, stations, in markets no one talks about him.

Is it apathy, or some studied reaction to an event that they think might bring about a change?

Dies it signal the slide of the Leftist regime in Bengal?
MRINAL BOSE

THE BUSH VISIT

India is known for hospitality to its vistors, but it's not welcoming George W. Bush anyway. There have been umpteen protest meetings, demonstrations, rallies across the country on the eve of, and during this visit. Even Mumbai, the commercial hub of the country, has been choked with massive rallies.

George Bush, go back is the domineering slogan. But there are other invectives as well.

Some samples:

George Bush is world's No 1 terrorist.

Bush is world's most wanted terrorist.

Bush is a mass-murderer, killer.

Bush, the war-criminal.

Bush is the leader of the most organised murder syndicate of the world.

Bush, the leader of imperialist globalisation.

Bush flu, not bird flu, threatens the world now.

Evidently, George Bush is the most hated man in India today.

But to be fair, not every Indian is anti-Bush. Monmohan Singh, the Prime Minister, for example, is a great admirer of Bush. So are Mr. Chidambaram and Indian upper middle class. Even a well-knowm columnist of a respected daily has this to say:

The Bush family is as elitist as they get in America.. President Bush attended Yale and Harvard Business School. Critics will of course make snide remarks that this was on account of his family connections. While that may help to
some extent, to be dismissive of his attendance to top-class academic establishments would arguably be oone more silly under-estimation of the man.

What an eulogy!

The columnist is JAITHIRTH RAO and the daily is THE INDIAN EXPRESS
MRINAL BOSE

YASUNARI KAWABATA

Over the past week, I had been reading THE LAKE by Kawabata, the 1968 Japanese laureate. "Compact and immense...hypnotic and shocking," says the blurb. But I was disappointed reading it. But blame me rather than the author for this experience.

A young man stalking beauties on the street must have been a daring topic in 1954 when Kawabata wrote it. No longer so. The erotica in the novel was of course shocking at that time, but by today's standard, it's simply rudimentary.

Gimpei, the protagonist, comes across as a pathetic, almost ludicrous creature.

How sad time has killed both the author and his work!

MRINAL BOSE

SUBIMAL MISRA

Kolkata book fair, arguably the largest book fare of the world, is now on. I buy and read Bengali authors around this time of the year as a tribute to Bengali language, my mother tongue, and in which I first published my first short story a long time ago. This year, in addition to buying books, I met Subimal Misra, a kind of icon writing in Bengali, after about three decades, thanks to my translator friend V. Ramaswamy.

It's easier to see him than write about him and his work. He has changed enormously since I saw him last. In his early sixties, he looked just like an average Bengali bhdraloke with attendant niceties. But what struck me were his simplicity and unpretentiousness. He didn't seem to be a gifted talker, but when he talked, it was so easy and spontaneous, and you feel he was talking from heart without holding back anything. Sometimes he smiled - a kind of fatuous smile - but it only indicated his goodness and honesty, rare things in a writer these days.

He admitted his ignorance of computer and internet, having never used them. It was only through Ramaswamy that he had learnt that a website was selling his books. He felt rather surprised that he was being written about on the net. "I never network," he said sheepishly. "How would I get to know about it all? Besides, I've started forgetting these days. I can't remember anybody's name now."

What he actually does - he has been actually doing it for the past forty years - is write down his stuff sitting in his hole away from the madding city crowd. He lives in a rented one room and a half flat, most space of which is taken up by his fifteen thousand books. His wife and daughter live separately in another place, and they meet only on Saturdays. "It's an arrangement," he said with that smile, "so that we have no problem pursuing our own agendas." Her wife is a school teacher.

Misra has his fan following. When we were talking, many book fair visitors came up to him, offered their compliments and asked about his health. I found many buying his books. It was, indeed, a heart-lifting experience.

Subimal is a rare chronicler of our life and times, and has created a canon for his work. Like Elfrieda Jelinek's, his work is replete with erotica( to a naueating level sometimes) which he uses to convey his hard-hitting message. He's immensely readable too.

My good friend Ramaswamy is now translating Misra's stories. Though a non-Bengali, Ramaswamy has profound love for Bengali language and literature, and is intimately involved with Bengali culture. It's my hunch that Ramaswamy will catapult Misra to the centrestage of world literature with his brilliant translation.

MRINAL BOSE

HARUKI MURAKAMI

Read through "A Wild Sheep Chase" by Haruki Murakami over the past fortnight. Not a fat book, just about 353 pages, but I found myself reading it slowly, savouring its smart narrative, and an absurd but interesting storyline.

The sheep on a star over its back is certainly a metaphor. And Murakami builds almost a myth out of a man looking for it. What I like about the story is the world-view of the Rat, a writer, who could have been easily turned a rich and powerful man with the sheep inside him, but spurned it. Did he die of his own volition?

Murakami has modernist sensibilities, and can weave story in a very sensitive way.
MRINAL BOSE

BRAVO,ARUNDHATI!

It's not unnatural -indeed very characteristic of her -for Arundhati Roy that she has declined this year's Sahitya Akademi award. She says she can't accept the honour from an institution linked to the government whose policies she oppose.

"Even if you know what is going on, you can't help thinking India is the cool plcae now. Bollywood is 'in' and all of us have mobile phones. But it is almost as if the light is shining so brightly that you do not notice the darkness."

MRINAL BOSE
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SWAMI RAMDEV Vs BRINDA KARAT

Swami Ramdev, a yoga-guru, has been making waves for quite a while. Ramdev's own speciality is pranayam, a special breathing technique, with which he claims to have cured any diesease from bronchial asthma to hypertension to obesity to cancer.

His pranayam therapy has proved to be a smashing hit. His fans run into crores in India and abroad. Now he has ventured into his pharma house. And he's mixing freely human and animal bones in the medicine.

Marxist leader Brida Karat justifiably raised the question of ingredients in Ramdev's medicine after she collected some samples and had them tasted to find the bones. Surprisingly, she didn't get any leader to support her cause. Even some leaders from her own party opposed her stand, and openly stood by Ramdev.

So, what do you think of the scenario? It's a bit tricky to call Ramdev a fraud. But we can ask him two questions;

First, why did he launch his own pharmaceutical house when his pranayam was curing every disease?

Second, why did Swami Vivekanada who knew and practised all kinds of yoga -not only pranayam -die at the age of thirty nine?

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MARXISTS IN BENGAL

Marxists have changed in Bengal: you no longer recognize them from their attitude and perception. But they are a tightly organized body, and far too clever for the opposition to replace them.

On this Sunday there would be a huge meeting at Brigade - as the first shot for the general election to be held in April-May - and you can expect some ten lakhs or so from across the state would assemble to show their solidarity with the rulers.

The Marxists have already ruled Bengal uninterruptedly for about thirty years, and is perhaps heading for another five-year term.

Of couse, it's boring to get the same set of persons as ministers over and over again, but given the riff-raff opposition, you're left with no other alternative but to listen to their empty rhetoric and promises.
MRINAL BOSE