Tony Blair: from Prime Minister to Eastenders Scriptwriter

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0,11538,1602510,00.html

Blair surpasses himself once again, with the rhetorical skill of an Athenian sophist. The notion of a country, Iran having 'an attitude like that', as though Iran were a sulky teenager with a bad attitude towards parents, is brilliant. A metaphor seamlessly woven into the political hard talk of our world leaders. Iran is naughty naughty naughty. With countries being personified with having attitudes (not their leaders, but the country itself), how could we best represent Britain? As an angry parent? Perhaps a fat, indignant Godfather, gold chains drooping from its hairy chest, leaning back in a leather reclining chair shouting orders down a telephone while smoking its cigar... But that would be using metaphors to caricature politics, and wouldn't be rational.

The PM announces: "Anyone in Europe, knowing our history, when we hear such statements made about Israel, it makes us feel very angry," appealing to our European values to share his righteous indignation. Of course, as Britons, who could fail to be appalled. After all, Britain has the most honourable of histories in setting up the State of Israel. How on earth could its existence be criticized? With our portraits of Lawrence of Arabia proudly hung above our family hearth, we naturally support Mr. Blair in his moral crusade. The mere idea of cheating people out of their territories...? Disgraceful.

Following the reprimands with warnings of the full force of his British, Blair informed Iran (bear in mind the misbehaving teenager, faced up to with a wagging finger), that the 'world' will respond to such aggression. Of course, the 'world' (the Uzbek nomad tribes? Ecuadorian desert dwellers?) disapproves unanimously, like a Greek chorus, when the misbehaving Iranian says what he things openly. An Israeli political party basing its decisions on the bloody intentions drawn from a badly translated book of parables is, however, a grown-up country. Adults in politics, unlike their unruly, misbehaving neighbours.

This sort of rhetoric doesn’t even surprise the reporters who write it any more. That we should actually record and report the comments of a Prime Minister, talking about a country like a person, giving Iran a good old-fashioned telling off, doesn’t even seem funny. The comic genius of the Prime Minister is lost on our audience.

Let's take Tony's language the whole (third?) way. Let’s have a sitcom where, like in Medieval morality plays, the characters have placards round their necks telling us what they represent. Mr. Blair could have far more influence over politics than the creators of Big Brother, by just writing his statements in this format. We could have Iraq as a 14 year old girl with a Burkah thieving and lying to all the other characters, and the USA as the big healthy barman, serving out Budweiser in fatherly merriment, occasionally throwing misbehaving patrons out of the World Bar (United Nations Bar/ World Bank Pub / The Oil Rig and F14 pub… suggestions welcome).
Come to think of it, throw a placard onto each character, and Eastenders will do the job. From now on, who needs parliament. To discuss politics, bring on the Vic.

Bloody Buddha Bar

I was setting out for a walk yesterday afternoon when I noticed a new poster ad on the street. It was a photograph of a golden Buddha statue against a fond of red and yellow streaks of a darkly candlelit room with cushions and low wooden tables. It said (and I translate the German): coming soon, Stuttgart's first Buddha bar. Based on the famous Parisian Buddha Bar, situated on the most prestigious commercial high street, Avenue du Faubourg St-Honore, these trendy bars are slowly gaining the rest of Europe and the USA.

http://www.altes-schuetzenhaus.de/

I find the idea of this sort of bar fascinating. Not because it's inherently different from other bars, after all it's just another place to sit and drink alcohol, but because it needs the association with Buddha. Once again, religion slips unnoticed into our everyday lives to show that even though we think of ourselves as 'progressive' atheists, we secretly love our religion.

The concept of the Buddha bar fuses the spiritual with the practical. Religion while-u-wait. These dimly lit bars (like the minds of the people within them) have become the trendiest haunts of metropolian bourgeoisie. As they can often afford to set up in the most expensive commercial streets of capital cities like Paris, London, and now even smaller ones like Stuttgart, the owners are clearly confident that the recipe is effective. Sit a few statues of Buddha into your trendy trip-hop playing bar, and it becomes an indispensible pilgrimage for the trendy thirty-something middle class movers and shakers. The Canterbury Tales is Chaucer's account of the irreverant facetiousness of medieval pilgrimage, in which he denounces the hypocricy of the pilgrims' efforts to buy redemption. The poets of 2005 should write a poem to denounce the irreverance of unfaithful bar-crawlers who drink in these temples of consumerism without a care for the true meaning of their pilgrimage. True redemption for your sins of under-consumption can only be earned in the holiest of holy drinking dives: God speed the Buddha Bar.

In Paris, L.A. and now Stuttgart, Buddhism seems wholly adaptable to the world of the cosmopolitan drinker. A famous piss-up joint named after the prophet of moderation (who calls upon us to resist the aggressive impulses of the material world) doesn't even surprise us any more. But perhaps there is a reason for our lack of surprise. Perhaps the golden statue grinning at the barmaid with his suggestive squint doesn't shock us because our supposedly multicultural society is actually fundamentally (and fundamentalistically) Christian.

I would love to help set up a 'Jesus Bar' right next to Stuttgart's new chic cocktail-dive. I could borrow some old statues of from German churches and put them on a snow white background, so drinkers could experience the trendiness of their faith while-they-wait (purgatory?). I could adapt some 'lounge music' (there is a novel to be written on this term; it suggests that categories of music are determined by interior decor) to Gregorian chant or Sunday hymns. Since hip-hop is now fashionable (as long as the rappers only insult one another and not us), I could mix some fat tunes with 'Glory Glory Hallelujah' and serve 'Metatrons's Manhattan cocktail' or a 'Mount Sinai Special Sasparilla' to give that special biblical desert feel to my new bar. Perhaps hallogen halos for weekend hen nights? (alliteration is always good)

Having revisited the website, I find that there is a questionnaire in which the first lucky winners can win a New Year's trip to Bangkok. Without irony it asks:

WAS IST DIE BUDDHA LOUNGE?

	Ein Gummiboot
	Der Name des hawaiianischen Außenministers
	Der angesagteste Chillout Heaven in Stuttgart

Translation:

What is the Buddha lounge?

- A rubber boat (????????)
- The name of the hawaian foreign minister
- The coolest... (you got that bit)

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The Buddha Bar is a work of genius of modern marketing. It taps into the Zeitgeist of the 21st century, knowing that we want religion fed to us in trendy, expensive cocktails, provided it is not our religion. We can borrow the Gods of other faiths for the space of an evening to adorn our party with their novelty and coolness, a little like when black slaves were fashionable in London's Victorian parties. It is a hilarious example of how nonchalantly we accept the commercial enslavement of non-Western tradition, and still have the nerve to claim we are multicultural.

But come for a beer in my Jesus bar when it's set up, and I'll show you how to really raise hell.

Kaufland: The Land of the Buyer

On Monday evening I went to a suburb of Stuttgart to drop my wreck of a bike into the repair shop. When I was finished there, I went to do some shopping, and the nearest supermarket was called Kaufland. The name translates literally as 'Buying-land'. This conveys a lot more than just the idea of being able to buy a few groceries.

As one of the rare pedestrians to access Kaufland by way of the U-bahn (public transport), I approached the building from the back. The supermarket is a mythological presence; a Leviathan of social order which sits confidently over the suburb. It files consumers and goods into its floors, transcending their relationship as holy. To buy in Kaufland is a religious experience.

You enter in the ground floor, and pass a cafe, a bakery, a key-cutting shop. A little like the 'ghost Western town' in Eurodisney, Kaufland recreates the smalltown feel of a village, making you feel like you are experiencing shopping like a village dweller. The eager salespeople almost know your first name. They smile complicitly, knowing what you are about to experience.

Now that the initial 'homely feel' is established, the consumer can go on to explore the wonders of a multicultural world in the shop. Rows of aperitif 'Asia mix' rice snacks covered in Chinese characters are tightly stacked on white shelves. Because 'Asia mix' is quite definitely not an Asian product, the packaging requires a single large Chinese character. To further assimilate the Asianness of the product, the printed is red and imitates paintbrush strokes on a black background. Black and red are the colours of all things Asian in Kaufland. But why black and red? The contrast of these colours symbolises the simplicity, the convenient clarity of the Asian product, defined in the Western buyer's mind. While European or American snack packaging is adorned with a variety of colours, the Asian Mix is a trophy of simplicity and clever convenience. It supplements the yin-yang Ikea table (Sweden has appropriated Confucius) in creating a comforting atmosphere of Asian serenity in the living room.

Baskets of fruit and vegetable present their price, their essence, of which the colour and the shape are merely signs. Not only are they represented by their true (or in middle class vocabulary, monetary) value, but they also have a national identity. The apples are no longer just Granny Smiths or Jonagold. They are Italian or German. They declaim their belonging to a nation with nonchalant pride. We can purchase a little piece of Bavaria or Calabria with the apple, knowing which team we are supporting, like t-shirts at a football match.

Of course, the coffee is 'Italian' as well. The pilgrimage leads us to a stand where, unlike apples, coffee can usurp its nationality. Coffee plantations are rather scarce in Italy, but the Italian gradeur generously attributed to the African or Indian product, gives it its true appeal. After all, who would want to buy coffee that was merely African? While the Kenyans can grow, pick even brew, the Italians can drink in style. We are stylish as Italians in our coffee, clever and practical as Asians in our snacks, and earthy and provincial as Bavarian farmers in our apples. We have entered the Olympus of the consumer theogony.

Kaufland allows us to lose ourselves in the array of colours and lighting, the festival of sight and sound which sublimates grocery-shopping as the prayer of the 21st century. The bright packaging and glossy posters of Kaufland thrill and lull the consumer into accepting the fatality of his role. The combination of colour and meaning (a poster of a gleamingly blonde girl ecstatically munching an apple hung over the fruit baskets) is to the supermarket what the stained class window was once to the church. Tell the audience of the essential myths they are buying into, using the full technocrome colour spectrum to leave no space for thought.

The announcements are celebrations. Rejoice! the frozen pizzas, are only 2,99 euros a pack! The Good News is chanted with the jolly composure of the priest on Easter Sunday. All is alive and well. We can purchase in peace, in the knowledge that we are saved: our wallets (souls) will be spared.

The land of the buyer transcends shopping to the Olympus of Western living, but at a cost. We are pedestrians of an Eden which has its forbidden fruit. By all means we may look at the perfectly-stacked tomatoes and plums, but never taste... The cry of the fruit salesman in an outdoor market, brandishing a dripping slice of peach to prove its ripeness would be blasphemy here. The very sign of the fruit, its uniform shape (every supermarket tomato looks identical) is enough to gauge its goodness. It is good because it looks good, and because the supermarket says so. In fact, this law is so fundamental to the sublime buyer-comestible relationship that it doesn't even require a 'Do not taste the fruit' sign. Just as written law is not necessary in a church (it is conveyed by the incense, the dull music, the wealth of the ornaments...), we wouldn't even think of breaking the commandments of the supermarket. 'Thou shalt not taste', say the tidy boxes of oranges and all-season bananas, by the glaring halo of hallogen light they reflect.

In Kaufland, you can buy food, but you can also purchase your redemption. Whatever else people may think of you, you are a good, Democracy-fearing citizen for all to see. Whatever your sins, come to Kaufland, and you will come out a fuller, more complete consumer, prepared for another week in the spiritual desert of Western life.

girls don't ride bikes

The weather was surprisingly pleasant as we set off by jeep for the village of Gularia. While the floods refused to recede in the rest of the country, in UP, we were still having to brave the heat and dust. Wishing that it would rain would have, however, been a dangerous proposition, I was told. Gularia would get completely cut off from the rest of the world during the rains. The incidents of jeeps toppling over or getting stuck in knee-deep mud were one too many to take the chance of going there in such weather. So I was only too glad that the weather was good and that we were on our way to meet the mother-groups assisted up by Care, India in the village.


Let me tell you a little about Gularia. Among the cluster of villages in the vicinity of Hardoi, Gularia stands apart. It is perhaps the only village where people worry less about where the next meal is going to come from, and how the crop will survive from one season to the next. Gularia is inhabited by families who live a nomadic life. They are in the village for only a month or two in the whole year. During the rest of the year, they are away performing in Bijnor. Yes, this is the famous Nat Community we are talking about, where the mother, wife and daughter-in-law are all in the trade. My intent here is not to discuss their migratory pattern or to critique their lifestyle. All I wish to do here is to place before you what I saw and heard in the matter of a half hour in the newly built one-room primary school in Gularia where I waited until the mother-groups arrived. In retrospect that half hour felt like a crash course on how children are socialized and how they grow into their gender-specific roles.


There were about 40 children in the age-group of 3 to 11 who were sitting huddled in different parts of the hexagonal red-brick construction. There was only one teacher for all these children. Alok Singh Rathore, who had accompanied me from the Care office in Lucknow, decided to talk to the youngest-looking lot. He went up to the blackboard and started drawing some pictures in chalk.


First, he drew what looked like a fish. He asked the children what it was, to which they responded in chorus, “Machhalee”. “What do you do with it?”, he then asked. “Pakaa kar khaatey hain”, they said. “Who catches the fish?” probed Mr. Rathore. “Papalog, bhai log…aadmi pakadat hain”, they said, matter-of-factly. “Auratein nahin pakadteen?” questioned Mr. Rathore. “Nahin” was the prompt response.


Second, he drew a cup, and asked to know what it was. “Gilaass hai” chorused the children. Mr. Rathore seemed satisfied with the answer when a little girl sitting in the front row confidently corrected, “Nahin, cup hai”. “Accha, to ismein kya peetey hain?” asked Mr. Rathore. “Chai, coffee, paani vagaira”, was the answer. “Kaun-kaun peetey hain?” “Sab peetey hain… mummuy papa, bhaiya, bacchey… sab”, replied several of them. Yes, now more and more children were beginning to participate in this rather unsual discussion. I am not sure if this was the nature of the discussion they had with their school teacher on a daily basis. To me, it certainly seemed like a fun way of doing a class on social learning. Getting back to the “cup/glass” story…as the children were discussing what all one can use the cup for, a little boy sitting towards the last row said in a faint voice, “Daaru bhi peetey hain ismein”. Not sure of what he had heard, Mr Rathore told the boy to speak up, and the boy repeated what he had said earlier. “Daaru bhi peetey hain ismein.” None of the other children tried to shut him up. They had probably not acquired the private/public blinkers that most of us seem to put on as we move towards adulthood, of what one should say and about what one should pretend it doesn’t exist.


Third, Mr. Rathore drew a shirt, and asked the children to say what it looked like. Happy to have been able to identify it, they promptly said, “yeh buskatt hai”. Mr. Rathore not having understood that what they were saying was “bush-shirt,” kept asking them to repeat what they were saying. At this point I couldn’t resist intervening and telling Mr. Rathore that they had rightly identified the picture on the board but were pronouncing it incorrectly. Once having understood what they were saying, he suggested they call it “kameez” if they found it difficult to pronounce “bu-sh-sh-irt”. But they happily continued to refer to it as “buskaat” in the subsequent questions that Mr. Rathore asked them… Mr. Rathore wanted to know who all wear shirts, to which the children replied “Aadmi log, ladkey”. “Kyon ladkiyaan kameez nahin pahanti?” asked Mr. Rathore. “Nahin humarey gaanv mein woh bushkatt nahin kurta pahanti hain,” said one girl. The strange thing was, she was herself wearing one of those “buskatts” she said girls didn’t wear in her village. When I pointed it out to her, she smiled sheepishly, and the class fell silent.


Mr. Rathore then drew a cycle on the blackboard. The children kept staring at the board, trying to figure out what it was that Mr. Rathore had drawn. Sure, it wasn’t the best picture one could have made of a cycle but it was alright. It had two wheels and a handle bars. But the children were silent even as Mr. Rathore prodded them to speak. Then one boy sitting in the second row said, “lekin aapki cycle mein to chain nahin hai…” and then another little one said, “haan iskee to chain utaree hui hai”. Ah ha, so that was why they hadn’t been speaking up, not because they hadn’t gauged it was a cycle but because there was something missing in it! A smile spread across Mr. Rathore’s face as he added the missing cycle chain to the picture, and asked, “Accha to bacchon cycle kaun chalaata hai?” “Ladkey, papa log”, they said. There was no doubt in their mind about who rode the bike in their village. “Kyon ladkiyaan nahin chalaateen?” asked Mr. Rathore. “Nahin, humaarey wahaan ladkiyaan nahin chalaa paateen.” When they were asked why girls were not able to ride bikes, one of the boys replied, “woh girr jaatee hain na, iss liyey”.


Finally, Mr. Rathore drew a fat elephant on the blackboard. Even before he had asked the children what it was, they gleefully replied, “yeh to haathi hai”. When they were asked if they had seen one, I thought they would say they’d seen one in the village fair or some place like that. But to my surprise they said, “haan, TV pey dekha hai”. “Us par baithey ho?” asked Mr. Rathore. “Bandar Baithta hai”, said a child. “lekin aap kabhi baithey ho?” asked Mr. Rathore. “Chidiya bhi baithtee hai”, said another. “aap baithey ho ki nahin?” “Haathi bacchon ko lekar jungle mein chalaa jaata hai…” and on and on they rambled, taking the story forward. However much he tried, Mr. Rathore was not able to bring their imagination back to the next picture on the blackboard. Children will be children after all!

My summer holiday essay

This summer I had a holiday. It was in Montenegro. Montenegro means 'Black mountain'. That is funny because the mountains in Montenegro are not black. They are covered with green trees and plants like the jungle.

We went there in a Smart car, and everybody looked at us as we drove into Herzeg Novi, from Croatia. Maybe they were looking at us because our car was nice and there weren't many nice cars there.

We stayed in a hotel by the sea which had a really good view. We ate lots of seafood because fish is fresh and good when you are by the sea. There weren't many beaches but people put out deck chairs and sat in them to get a tan. I got a tan.

When we wanted to go to the monastery in the north of Montenegro, we were stopped at a border and asked for our passports. It was a very small border, and we were the only car there. The man was dressed like a soldier and looked angry when he saw our passports. He asked for the car papers and took me into his office, which was like a big box. He talked loudly, saying 'Amerikanski' and showed us another border on the map, where we were supposed to cross. I didn't understand why we had to go to the other border and couldn't cross this one.

We drove away past a big car full of television sets. I don't think that car was stopped at all. Maybe the man dressed as a soldier forgot to ask them for their passports.

My holiday was fun because I got to lie in the sun and visit interesting places. I would like to go to Montenegro again.

Kissa UP Ka*

The only place I had been to in Uttar Pradesh was Agra. Yes, my visits to Uttar Pradesh were limited to the Taj Mahal, which I had seen at least a dozen times in the past fourteen years that I have lived in Delhi. As a child, every time there were relatives or friends who visited my family and wanted to see the Taj, I was sent along with them. So my understanding of Uttar Pradesh was restricted to what I had read about it in school and in the national dailies, and to rattling off what the local tourist guide would tell you about the Taj Mahal or the Agra Fort.

I realized that all that had to change if I had to do a good job at the doctoral thesis I am pursuing at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. The title of my thesis is ‘Women’s Movements in India and the Culture of Social Action’. The title does not reflect any direct connection with Uttar Pradesh. Okay, let me specify that I am studying the interaction between women’s movements in India and the twin-dialectics of political assertion of Dalits and the rise of Hindutva. Given that the assertion of Dalits and rise of Hindutva has emerged in a pronounced fashion in the North Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, I chose UP for carrying out my fieldwork for the thesis. Choosing UP was not that tough but I had no idea about contemporary women’s activism in Uttar Pradesh. All I knew were a couple of figures from the latest Human Development Report on the poor condition of women in the state. Once in India, rationalizing my lack of knowledge of UP by saying that it meant that as a researcher I had the required distance with the subject of study was simply not going to work.

Udaan, a residential camp for out of school adolescent girls, provided me the context I needed to make my first field visit to Uttar Pradesh, and to examine with my own eyes the conditions in which women live in parts of rural Uttar Pradesh. Care, India and Sarvodaya Ashram, Hardoi were happy to facilitate my visit on the condition that I would prepare a short note on my experience at Udaan. I clarify at the outset that I do not intend this piece of writing to be a crisply typed out report but a narration of a set of anecdotes that capture my experiences and observations of the days I spent interacting with the Udaan girls and teachers, and mother groups set up in neighboring villages.

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'Kissa UP ka' may be translated as 'anecdote(s) from UP'