Tendrils of happiness (h)air

“Nor is it an urban-versus-rural thing. Witness the bored village women who sit on their verandas with vacant, listless eyes. These same women transform into giggling teenagers when they go together for a bath in the river or during a break from the fields. It is all about time and place. Shakespeare’s “whining schoolboy, with his satchel and shiny morning face, creeping like snail unwilling to school” may apply to British schoolboys but bears no resemblance to the cheerful, fresh-faced, white-uniformed schoolkids who run up the slopes in Uttarakhand or Ooty.”

We need Mallu, Maadu, Sindhi and Sardarji jokes about our Constitution;

Shoba Narayan writes that we need make the:

• “….Constitution accessible, we not only help India’s future citizens know their rights and responsibilities, we also teach both the elite and the common man not to take its blessings for granted. The lofty ideals of the Indian republic are worth fighting for. They just need to trickle down from scholars to schoolchildren; from libraries to lounge bars; from educational institutions to no-name addas. The “Constitution is a living document”, as the government of India’s website says. Simplifying and popularizing it will mean no disrespect. Rather, it will lay the foundation for the people to understand and enact its tenets more faithfully than we are now doing.
• This is not hard to do. Karadi Tales can do a sing-along version of India’s first principles. Amar Chitra Katha can create an illustrated story of how our Constitution came to be. Pratham Books can commission a Constitution for Children series, fraught as it is with colourful characters set against a dramatic backdrop. Rajkumar Hirani could get over his 3 Idiots and write the Munna Bhai equivalent for the Constitution. Just as bumbling Munna contemporized the Mahatma’s message, a wise-cracking, fast-talking Koli fisherwoman can enact Gandhiji’s dream of an “untouchable woman president” on the big screen and popularize the tenets of this republic. We need Mallu, Maadu, Sindhi and Sardarji jokes about our Constitution; we need to get Robert and Mona Darling to banter about its issues; we need ad jingles that skew its message; we need saas-bahu serials that invoke its lines; we need college debates and reality shows based on it. We need our Constitution to speak to us. All it takes is a few celebrities to get the ball rolling. Instead of tatkal twittering and then blaming the media for taking his message out of context, minister Tharoor (who, I personally think, has had enough of being minister) can tweet about the Constitution rather than his calendar. Chetan Bhagat can write about the state of our republic after his 2 States. Our rich heritage of folk songs and street theatre can be used to make this important historical document come alive for its citizens.
• Consider Article 16, which talks about equality of opportunity. The rap version would be, “Yo Bro. You wanna job. You gotta job. Equal opportunity but social justice. Peace, man.” The rap version of Article 19 can dispense with the “notwithstanding” and other legal but necessary jargon and emphasize the basic rights of free speech, assembly, association and movement. For example, the folk version could be a catchy Asha Bhosle tune about a nation of talkers who move within the motherland and love to get together. Or some version thereof.”

“Economics is the wild card” and “The ascent of man has happened because of this continuous evolution”

Shoba Narayan The Good Life Column has interesting narrative that triggered me into think science is for The Good Life and the arts is for The Bad Life!!

But the latter is not necessary to be but its obvious now!

She writes:

• The arts are about imagery and storytelling; myth and mystique. The sciences are about the pursuit of truth. The truth is irrelevant to storytelling; and storytelling is anathema to fact-based science.
• It is not often that an object attracts equal attention of both artists and scientists. Atoms, for instance, fascinate scientists but are of little interest to poets. Ditto for global warming, biochemistry, epidemics and DNA, all of which made recent headlines in science journals, but scarcely made an appearance in the arts. Economics is the wild card as David Hare’s play, The Power of Yes, on the global financial crisis eloquently proves.

Then focuses on the holy moon.

Secondly in a recent interview the actor Kamal Haasan has said something which is not quite settled in the discipline of philosophy, economics and the law (the natural law).

So what did he said?

Are there particular political themes that you try to explore?

• I’m not a political commentator, but I’m very sure that we have not reached the “ism” that is the panacea for all evils. We may be the world’s largest democracy, but the democracy of ancient Greece, the republic of Rome, then later the founding of America—these are all different beasts. We are in the process of evolving systems: So, I ask why stick to it and make a dogma or a diktat out of it. When people dismiss an ideology, when they say, for example, “There goes communism”, I ask “Why?” Karl Marx has done his bit. It’s part of a continuous evolution. We are yet to arrive at the promised land, and I’m glad. The ascent of man has happened because of this continuous evolution, and not because of diktats that we believe are the final word. That is why you see me playing various parts: to find the logic in each argument. I’m only a spectator, not a legislator.

A road trip without a destination!

Shoba Narayan on our 62 Independence Day

• “The thing with freedom is that you have got to know what to do with it. Idiotic allusions to butterflies and rainbows aren’t enough.
• Independence means different things at different ages—crossing the street without holding an adult’s hand; going to a movie with a group of friends without adult supervision; the first school excursion without parents; going out with a forbidden male; leaving home for college; getting your own bank account and income; and onward till death. Every life stage confers with it some more independence—and dependence. Just ask a new parent, tied by umbilical cord to a diaper bag, what freedom is and they will answer—a potty-trained baby. Ask me what freedom is, and I will give you that most clichéd of answers. A road trip without a destination.”

The government is making criminals of all of us

There is a great article on winenomics and by Shoba Narayan. I am posting the full article here for record.

Behind every successful oenophile is a bootlegger

Thu, Jul 9 2009. 8:37 PM IST

Indian wine is an orphan with an image problem. Unlike liquor, wine lacks a lobby. Wine lovers can protest all they want but there is no concerted effort by any coalition to make wine accessible to the masses

A recent headline on the Indian Wine Academy website caught my eye. “Death knell in Delhi for fine wine,” said an article by Subhash Arora, president of the academy and the Delhi Wine Club. While the jargon about transfer permits and “not being gazetted” can make your head swim, the fact is that the Delhi government has increased the excise duty on wines to 150-200%, making it, according to Arora, the second worst state in India in this regard, after Maharashtra.

This is a shame. More and more urban Indians are drinking wine, and I would argue, they should. Wine is as nice a social lubricant as the single malts my erstwhile editor swears by. Better, I would argue, for wine is good for you. The problem is that Indian wine is an orphan with an image problem. Unlike liquor, wine lacks a lobby. Wine lovers can protest all they want but there is no concerted effort by any coalition to make wine accessible to the masses.

We Bangaloreans take our tipple seriously. Whether it is a corporate launch on the lawns of the Taj West End, lunch at the Rogue Elephant, coffee at Koshy’s or drinks at Caperberry, the talk inevitably comes around to two things: rants against the 11.30pm closure of pubs and the state of Indian wines. Admittedly, this is a small, self-selected group, and some of this harks back to Bangalore’s “pub culture”, in which drinking was viewed with a benign, non-judgemental eye.

Bangaloreans—like the Goans—know how to hold a drink. All of which is ironic preamble to the fact that the one thing Bangalore lacks is decent wine at reasonable prices. Some local wines are good. Others, as epicurean Stanley Pinto says, “aren’t fit to strip paint with”. Pinto runs the Bangalore Black Tie—a group of foodies who dress in tuxedos and gowns and dine out once a month at city restaurants—and I am a member.

Last year, the local government imposed a “special additional fee” on not just imported wines but also non-Karnataka wines. This means that if I have to drink a Nashik wine, I have to cough up Rs300 more than you folks sitting in Mumbai. This means that a Yellow Tail Shiraz that sells for $5 (around Rs250) in the US costs three times as much here. Members of the Bangalore Wine Club have been up in arms over these price hikes, calling for a boycott of the local Grover Wines because Kapil Grover is part of the Karnataka Wine Board, which recommended taxing non-Karnataka wines. From the point of view of the Karnataka wineries, however, these price hikes are a tit-for-tat measure against the Maharashtra government and its seven-year-old protectionist policies. Last year, Karnataka returned the favour, at twice the rate that Maharashtra had imposed, and we, as consumers, suffered.

There are ways around this that mostly have to do with travelling abroad. Bringing the allowed two bottles of wine and then some when you come back from overseas trips is a good, if expensive, way to sustain your wine habit. But what if you don’t go abroad that much? I buy my wine at my neighbourhood store, Thom’s, where it is stored poorly. When I spend Rs1,500 on a wine and it turns out to be so-so, I cannot tell if it is the wine or the storage. Some say that the state’s godowns, where wines are stored between vineyards and retailers, are “criminally unprofessional”, that most wines are destroyed before they arrive at stores.

So I called Alok Chandra, co-founder of the Bangalore Wine Club, with one simple question: How can one get decent wine at reasonable prices in India and more specifically, Bangalore?

“Go to your friendly neighbourhood smuggler,” he retorted.

Say what? Did he really want to be quoted saying that, I asked.

“Why not?” said Chandra. “The government is making criminals of all of us.”

Pinto not only agreed with Chandra, he offered to give me the telephone numbers of three smugglers who would deliver French, Italian, Chilean and Australian wines to my home, at prices that “cock a snook at the idiot authorities”.

The problem is that the authorities don’t care. They sell about 5,000 cases of wine a year and 10 times that amount of liquor. Wine is—and is perceived as—elitist. Wine drinkers are a minority in India, and perceived as a wealthy one at that. So “tax the buster” seems to be the government’s approach.

Chandra buys his wines at Spar supermarket and Metro. Pinto suggested Peekay Wines at Crawford Market, Mumbai. I bought a Chateau d’Ori Merlot and Sauvignon Blanc for Rs322 each—lower than the Rs400 I pay for Kinwah, a new Karnataka winery. I also got the Tiger Hills Chardonnay I had been wanting for Rs520. Since they had a two-for-one offer on Vin Voulet, I got two bottles of red. All were satisfactory. All are finished. I am back to square one.

There is a glimmer of hope on the horizon. Two months ago, the Maharashtra government proposed to bring down the excise duty on out-of-state wines if Karnataka would reciprocate. Apparently, Karnataka didn’t reciprocate, for Delhi too has now raised the excise tax on wines.

Look, I know all this wine talk sounds pretentious at some level. I mean, who cares? It’s only wine, not world peace or the budget, you can say. Okay. Let me make a somewhat complicated argument. If state governments lower taxes, then wine will be accessible to more people and not just the elite. Perhaps this will make the man who drinks toddy or illicit arrack reach for wine instead. He will get his kick—and I know I am stretching here—except it will be healthier.

Shoba Narayan recently had a terrific 2005 Chilean Montes Alpha Cabernet Sauvignon at Italia restaurant in Bangalore. Write to her at thegoodlife@livemint.com

Article is here

• There is also news for importing used cars in India.

Children are great detectors of their life

Mokshamu galada,……

Quite nicely Shoba Narayan says “…as countless teachers (the good ones, anyway) prove every day, a legacy can also involve touching minds and hearts. To distil the idea to its simplest possible element, I would argue that you don’t even have to be a teacher to leave behind a legacy: You could be a homemaker like Prabha auntie”.

But sadly, teachers in Indian school, colleges and universities do all sort of thing except teaching. This whole situation may be one of great wonder of Indian democracy invention.