Vanity Peak

Calamities occur even on the streets and people sometimes die, but it's not very often that they strike at 28,000 ft above the sea level with a journalist embedded among the victims.

This is what makes Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer a very unique and must-read book. On May 10, 1996, a thunderstorm broke on the upper heights of Mount Everest. Three different teams were in the middle of final ascent (`assault') to the summit, between 24,000 ft and 28,028 ft (the pinnacle). One of these teams was Indian, of Indo-Tibetan Border Police, but Krakauer devotes only a couple of pages to them, because they were ascending from the north -- Tibetan -- side and he wasn't eyewitness to their nightmare. But he was a part of the two other teams that were going up by South Cole route (Nepal side). He was there as a journalist-cum-mountaineer. A US magazine had funded his participation so that he could write about `commercialization' of Everest expeditions.

Both these south-side teams were commercially organised.  One was led by Rob Hall, the other by Scott Fischer. The teams consisted of `guides', expert mountaineers who had scaled Everest or other Himalayan summits many times and had a lot of experience; and `clients'. The selling point of the enterprise run by Hall and Fischer was if you have enough money and if you are reasonably fit, we would take you up to the highest point on the earth safely. You need not be  a mountaineering pro. One of the clients on Hall's team didn't even know well the primary techniques of climbing snow-clad slopes.

On May 10, many things went wrong. Ropes hadn't been fixed in advance, some people started late from camp 4. Both Scott and Hall had decided that every team member must `turn around ', that is, start the journey down back to the camp, at about 1 pm, because you are not supposed to remain above 26,000 ft for a long time. High altitude's thin air (oxygen level at the Everest peak is a third of that at the sea-level)  can cause deadly sicknesses including dementia. To turn around as per the schedule, even if you haven't made the summit and are prepared to trudge ahead,  is crucial. The oxygen in two canisters in the backpack was supposed to last only for fourteen hours. But this did not happen, perhaps because both leaders wanted as many `clients' as possible to reach the summit. To be able to take every client up there was a great advertisement for the company. But not following the self-imposed rule proved fatal. At the end of May 11, eight people were dead, some of them having reached the summit. Fate, of course, played a role: had the storm broken early, even those who had reached the summit in time might have perished.

To read this book is like watching a sci-fi horror film: you know from the beginning, from  the writer's tone, that calamity is going to strike at some point, but there would be survivors. The villain is the mountain. But hey, it didn't invite you to `assault' it. Krakauer seems to suggest, instead, that villain is the vanity which feeds the commercialization. You want to go up there not because `it is there', not because you are curious about the experience at 28,000 ft, but because you want to brag about the conquest after coming back to the earth.

I won't criticize the commercialization of mountaineering, or of any sport for that matter. If all I love is mountaineering, I must find a way to make money out of it (unless I am born rich). Allowance must be made for such human compulsions. 

Mad Men

Setting: A New York ad agency

Joan is a sexy `office manager', sharp-tongued, gifted with a huge bosom. Her sexuality doesn't embarrass her, she flaunts it. She uses it sometimes to manipulate men, sometimes to intimidate her female subordinates. 

But there is a young, handsome and cocky creative type, who is confident of his talent, and is working as free-lancer. He and other two guys in the creative department find this lady sexy but not intimidating. When she tries to exercise her authority, they aren't impressed. This is also out of ignorance, they do not know that in the past this lady used to sleep with one of the partners of the firm. So when she ticks them off for being unruly, they laugh it off. The young freelancer draws an obscene cartoon and sticks it on the wall of her office. 

She is incensed, she confronts them. "It is a very brave man who did this anonymously," she says. But the young cub isn't going to lose sleep over sarcasm.

Peggy, 25, is a senior member of the creative team. She has broken the glass ceiling to enter the creative department after starting out as a lowly secretary. Once she was under Joan, now she has a more respectable job, because Joan, at the end of the day, is the boss of secretarial pool, nothing more. 

Peggy too is incensed by the cartoon, and embarrassed, because the guy who drew it is from her team. She runs to her boss, creative director Don Draper. "He drew a pornographic cartoon," she tells Don. Don's reaction is cold -- Boys will be boys, he has said earlier. Now, instead of summoning the young fella and firing him, or at least blasting him and making him apologize to Joan, Don simply says to Peggy: Go and fire him. You are his senior. You have that authority.

Peggy, all of 25, is left stunned. But she does go out and tells the fellow to pack up this things and leave. 

Later, she meets Joan in the escalator, on the way home. Peggy has acted in solidarity with a fellow woman, and she wants Joan to know this: I fired him, she informs Joan. But Joan is far from grateful. Fine, so you showed them how important you are in the office, she responds archly.

This is from the first season of Mad Men,  currently being aired on Star World in India. The serial started in US in 2007, there it is in the sixth season. 

The curse of the successful soaps is that they become interminable for a long time. I don't know how gripping the sixth season of Mad Men is, but the first season here has me hooked. I am not a prolific TV watcher, and I haven't followed a single serial in the last many years. The last serial I watched every day was Swabhiman. 

Mad Men attracted me initially because is set in an ad agency. Also, it is a period drama; the times is 1960s. Markers of the period are woven beautifully in the script. There are women in the firm, but not above the rank of secretary, Peggy being a path-breaker.  Janitor of the escalator is the only black man in the building. When the men discuss the previous evening's historic fight between Muhammad Ali and Sonny Liston (1964), Don's secretary, an efficient hag (who has replaced his earlier secretary, young and cute, who quit after getting her heart broken by this incorrigible ladies man) says: If I want to see two Negroes fight, I would simply throw a dollar bill down from the window.  Homosexuals had better stay in the closet. Smoking is very much acceptable, the biggest account this agency has is a cigarette maker, and therefore the roguish boss of that company is tolerated. The word sexual harassment is yet to enter the corporate lexicon. Entanglement in Vietnam is looming on the horizon; Don is a veteran of the war that divided Korea. 

But for all this -- the setting and the period -- to work, good writing is necessary. Mad Men is an exceptionally well-written soap. I haven't seen this good writing in Hollywood films (though my exposure to Hollywood films is limited to what we get on HBO and Star Movies in India). The format allows the soap-writers a longer canvas to sketch out and fill out the characters and to paint myriad situations. Mad Men makes the best use of it. Watch it. 

Dogs and Cats

At 2.22 am

It's pouring (cats and dogs!)

In the streetlight-lit

Orange night

The first shower

Fifteen minutes of cool thunderstorm 

Dogs, sleepless guardians of streets in the sticky nights of May,

Would have scurried for cover under the shopfronts

Why it's not given to them, with their long thirsty tongues

To enjoy when water falls down from heaven?

The old watchman of my building

(Who sleeps soundly as I return home night after night)

Would be awake in his gate-side shack

Does thunderstorm scare him?

In the slums on the edge of creek

Growing alongside mangroves

Do children enjoy the first showers?

Come morning and there might be poodles

Under the trees in our compound, on the rain-washed concrete floor

The two cats who live with us

Dry: for they live inside; why, have your even seen a homeless cat?

Would be standing on the edge of the water 

Looking at  reflections of self. Dogs not in sight.

Stories From Pressure Cookers

The case presented by Maharashtra police in one of the terrorism investigations of recent times has collapsed; another looks highly suspect.

National Investigation Agency earlier this week filed charge-sheet in 2006 Malegaon blast case. Maharashtra police had arrested a few local Muslims, but it had to eat crow when Swami Aseemanand's confession revealed that it was the handiwork of a Hindu terrorist group. Those arrested earlier were innocent, now they are on bail. But what would make up for their lost years in jail? Also, they have alleged torture during the interrogation. What would compensate for that? They should get monetary compensation, and the police officers who cooked up the case must be punished. The Central government is contemplating an inquiry, yesterday's papers said.

The other case is Mumbai train bombing which preceded Malegaon blast. Police arrested 13 persons, but the probe had always looked doubtful. There was no smoking gun; police's initial theory was that these men packed explosives in pressure cookers and planted them on trains.

What possibly skewers the case against these men is mobile phone records. They show that these men, or at least their known mobile numbers, were not in the vicinity of the Churchgate station in south Mumbai at the time (where the bombs must have been planted). Police have countered this by saying that the accused must have left phones at home. But that is difficult to buy, because the blasts were coordinated, and the planters surely would have wanted to be in touch with each other. It is possible that the accused men used other mobile connections during the operation. But if they have confessed to everything else so conveniently, why not this detail of the operation? (All the `confessions' were retracted once the accused got out of the police custody.) 

A couple of years after the train bombing, Indian Mujahideen was discovered. The police officers had a slip of tongue during the press conference which announced the discovery of this new terror group: they said those arrested have also confessed to carrying out the 2006 train bombing. Then what about the men arrested in 2006?  

There is a joke about Mumbai police: How would they find a tiger? By looking for one? No. They would find a cat and beat it so much that it would confess, I am tiger! I admit!

  

But it's not my case that Mumbai police are a bunch of inefficient liar-sleuths. I am making a larger point.

Terror attack commonly takes the form of bomb explosion. Nowadays it is very easy to put together a bomb (so we read). It doesn't take a big group to plant a bomb; it can be done single-handed. So unless the planter is caught on CCTV camera, there would be no clue whatsoever for the police to work on.

But the pressure on them to find someone would be enormous. Media would blather about `intelligence failure'. What intelligence we are talking about? Do you expect them to monitor each and every phone call? Hack into every email account? Does ISI place recruitment advertisement (wanted: bombers. location: India)? And still they must find somebody. They find cats and make them confess to being tigers.

Give them a break. Or innocent would keep suffering. 

Khan in the North

Two must-read pieces on Pakistan elections.

1. Shekhar Gupta in Indian Express on Imran Khan's campaigning ways:

So, in one breath he (Imran) questions the masculinity of the Sharifs, and in the other, asks the brothers to put their hands on their hearts and say that they have been faithful to their wives. As for himself, he says, of course, that he never strayed even once, the moment he married. Of course, the music breaks out again, and the crowds go delirious savouring, perhaps, the thought of what he was upto before that, and after.  

 

2. Mohammad Hanif in Guardian:

 

So in the post election Pakistan, Khan will rule the North and shoot down American drones while discussing Scandinavian social welfare model with the Taliban. Sharif will rule in Punjab and the Centre, try to do business with India and build more motorways all the while looking over his shoulders for generals looking at him....

 All this while I have been asking myself one question: can Imran be compared to Raj Thackeray? Both are charismatic, and both are taking on discredited establishment. Imran impacted these elections, but the winner was somebody else. Would Maharashtra voters, in 2014, go for MNS, or plump for Congress under Prithviraj Chavan's leadership, decimating NCP and Shiv Sena in the process? Does Flipcart sell crystall balls?

प्रेमाची गोष्ट: एक परीक्षण

पात्रे:

हिरो: अतुल कुलकर्णी. व्यवसाय पटकथा लेखक.  लग्न मोडायच्या बेतात. 

हिरॉईन: सागरिका घाटगे. "प्रथम पदार्पण". (पदार्पण प्रथमच नसते काय?  असो.)

व्यवसाय: सुंदर दिसणे. लग्न मोडायच्या बेतात. 

हिरोचा मित्र (स्वतः दिग्दर्शक सतीश राजवाडे). व्यवसाय: हिरोला सल्ले देणे व हिरोच्या आईच्या हातचे जेवण हादडणे. 

हिरोची आई: व्यवसाय: १. विधवा असणे २. स्वयंपाक करणे ३ मधून मधून हीरोचे डोके खाण्याचा अल्पसा प्रयत्न करणे.  

हिरॉईनची मैत्रीण: व्यवसाय: हिरॉईनला राहायला जागा पुरवणे व तिला सल्ले देणे.

हिरॉईनचा नवरा: नऊ डोकी गळून पडलेला व उजळ वर्णाचा रावण.  बहुतेक बँकेत कामाला असावा. व्यवसाय: मध्यंतरात एन्ट्री घेऊन हिरो व हिरॉईन यांच्या उमलत्या, अव्यक्त ई. ई. प्रेमाला दृष्ट लागू नये म्हणून वातावरणात माफक तणाव निर्माण करणे. 

हिरो मराठी पटकथा लेखक. त्याला स्वतःचे हजार चौरस फुटाचे ऑफिस थाटणे परवडते. शिवाय तो एक असिस्टंट हवा/हवी म्हणून जाहिरातही देतो. यावरून मराठी चित्रपटांना किती चांगले दिवस आले आहेत याची कल्पना यावी. असो.

 जाहिरात दिल्यावर ओळखा पाहू  कोण येते? हिरॉईन. शाब्बास! 

हिरो एक स्वतंत्र प्रेम-पट लिहितो आहे. हिरॉईनने ऑफिस आवरणे व कोफी करणे याव्यतिरिक्त त्याला लिखाणातही मदत करावी असे तो सुचवतो. 

हिरॉईन: मी? अरे मला साधे मनातले बोलताहि येत नाही! 

मी: हे खरेय. हिला खरोखरच मराठी बोलता येत नाही.

मग एक गाणे. 

मग हिरोच्या दुरावलेल्या बायकोची एन्ट्री. 

मग हिरॉईनच्या दुरावलेल्या नवर्याची (न बोलावताच) एन्ट्री 

तणाव. 

हिरो: (मित्राला) हे बघ, आमची फक्त मैत्री आहे. तुला वाटतेय तसे काही नाही. 

हिरॉईन: (मैत्रिणीला) …… (गाळलेल्या जागा वाचकांनी भराव्यात. )

गाणे. 

हिरो व हिरॉईन बरेच दिवस भेटत नाहीत

तणाव. हिरॉईनचा नवरा तिच्यावर हात उगारतो. (दुष्ट कुठला! आत्ता हिरो असता तर चांगला बदडून काढला असता. पण हिरो इथे नाहीये तेच बरे. तो अतुल कुलकर्णी आहे. अजय देवगण नाही. नवर्यानेच त्याला बदडून काढले तर?) हिरॉईन स्क्वेअर लेगवरच्या फिल्डरने च्युईंगगम खाता-खाता हात वर करून क्याच पकडावा तसा त्याचा हात पकडते. हा हा. पोपट!

गाणे. 

शेवटी: सुखांत. प्रेक्षक: च्यायला हे दोन तासांपूर्वीच दाखवता आले नसते का? आता मिठ्या मारा आणि   आम्हाला मोकळे करा. 

दी  एंड.    

      

It Accuses

The primary target of this piece in Caravan is Attorney General Gulam Vahanvati. But while talking about how his legal opinions on matters such as 2G allocation and CBI's case against Mulayam Singh Yadav were flawed, and how (therefore) his integrity is suspect, it makes a grave allegation about President Pranab Mukherjee.

The allegation is about Mukherjee's role in the decision on how Reliance Power, an Anil Ambani company, should use surplus coal from a mine allocated for its Sasan project. Whether the company should be allowed to use the surplus for another power plant, or whether it should go back to Coal India. 

If the President's office or he himself has issued any rebuttal, I am unaware. 

Read the piece.