April 11, 2010 · 12:28 am

Article: Remains of the Day

JERASH Where touristy souks and the sprawling cultural centre of the Roman Decapolis of Gerasa, complete with amphitheatres, temples and baths, happily co-exist

Walking into the ruins at Jerash feels a little like tumbling down the rabbit hole with Alice.

One moment you’re in a grossly commercial, touristy souk at the heart of modern-day Jerash, the next, you’ve been transported to 1 AD, to the unexpectedly sprawling cultural centre of the Roman Decapolis of Gerasa, complete with amphitheatres, temples, baths and more.

Rightly touted as one of the largest, most well-preserved ruins of a Greco-Roman city, the remains of Gerasa are remarkable in more ways than one. The sheer size is mind-boggling — we plan to spend an hour there, expecting to saunter casually through a cluster of old buildings. Instead, we end up trekking for close to four hours in the mid-day heat through ancient, colonnaded main roads, the smooth stones of which still bear the marks of chariot wheels that travelled over them thousands of years ago.

On either side, the towering columns bear beautiful Greco-Roman carvings, as do the stone water troughs placed at regular intervals (for those hard-working chariot horses). So does the ornate fountain and intricately-worked Nymphaeum (a monument to water nymphs) we pass along the way. We climb up and perch, almost dizzy, at the topmost seats of the soaring Southern Theatre, and listen in fascination to the old Jordanian bagpipers at the smaller Northern Theatre.

We stand and marvel at the gorgeous Oval Forum, surrounded by tall columns, once the bustling marketplace of the city. We go up the endless steps to the beautiful temple of Artemis at the highest point of Jerash, past its palatial portico and up to the sanctum sanctorum, as our guide fills our ears with stories of the mighty goddess of the hunt.

This is no museum; Jerash is one of those rare locations where history comes alive vividly. As you walk down those uneven stone pathways between rolling, grassy plains, you can see the city as it must have been thousands of years ago, a thriving, wealthy trade hub that flourished between the first and third century AD. You can almost hear the horse-drawn chariots clatter over the stone streets; the hawkers selling their wares at the the main street; the clamour of toga-clad men filling the forums during political debates…

Perhaps the most striking aspect is how well-preserved the city is — buildings, roads and all. The story goes that Gerasa, which was one of a confederation of 10 cities of the Roman Empire known as the Decapolis, was buried in sand for centuries, accounting for how well it seems to have withstood the ravages of time.

Indeed, Jerash was little more than a sleepy village for the longest time; the magnificent city under the sand was rediscovered only in 1806 by German traveller Ulrich Jasper Seetzen. Excavations and painstaking preservation work continues to this day, and, little by little, Gerasa reappears from its hiding spot. What remains is, however, mostly the cultural and administrative centre; the area where most of the houses were was mostly destroyed, it is said, in a series of earthquakes that rocked the city in the Eighth Century AD.

Our final stop is the majestic temple of Zeus, and we pause to look down upon the sprawling grass-and-stone vista — the grand oval of columns that is the Forum, the main street, the arches and amphitheatres — that somehow survived those quakes and still stands magically in the midst of the thriving modern city of Jerash. And, we’re just grateful we took that tumble down into this historical wonderland.

FACTFILE

* Getting to Jerash is easy. Just an hour’s drive away from Amman, the capital city of Jordan, it is reachable via road by car or by bus.

* Make sure you give yourself enough time to explore these ruins and the small museums within — at least half-a-day is recommended.

* Carry plenty of water and wear comfortable shoes — there aren’t many rest stops once you’re in the midst of the ruins.

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April 11, 2010 · 12:19 am

How to… do girl talk

1. The first lesson in girl talk is multi-tasking. Girls came up with the idea of walk-and-talk long before the cellular company did. Also watch-TV-and-talk, cook-and-talk, dress-and-talk, shop-and-talk… you get the drift.

2. You also need to be able to follow multiple conversation threads at once. Any topic introduced before a girl-gang can — and will — branch into at least five related / random conversations within 10.9 seconds. And, good luck attempting to trace the conversation back to its root even a minute later (A Bulgarian professor of discrete mathematics reportedly spent his entire career unsuccessfully trying to find an algorithm for the madness.)

3. No girl talk, of course, is complete without The Giggle. Bursting into loud, high-pitched giggles in any milieu (classroom, corridor, mall, restaurant…) is unique to feminine group behaviour (much like going to the restroom in twos and threes). In other social situations, these same women might be heard laughing delicately, as mummy taught. Not when with the girl gang, though.

4. That brings us to the next big G in girl talk — Gossip. Everyone gossips, of course, men and women, the old, the young and the middle-aged. But girl gangs have it down to an art form. This is the only time you’ll hear silence fall over the group (depending on the degree on exclusivity, salaciousness, etc.) as voices drop to decibel levels a bat would strain to hear, and code language employed that would make an ex-KGB agent jealous.

5. And finally, the one that confounds men completely — confidences. Girls share secrets and personal feelings to a degree that most men can’t fathom. You don’t just discuss what happened; you thoroughly dissect how you felt, how you think the other person felt, how you think the other person thinks you think they felt, and so on. If you just read that last sentence and knew exactly what was meant, you are clearly a veteran of girl talk.

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March 17, 2010 · 12:58 pm

Interview with… William Barton

William Barton doesn’t just play the didgeridoo; he makes it sing like the kookaburra, he makes it hop like a kangaroo, he makes it dance like a hip-hop artiste, he makes it scratch like it was a DJ’s turntable.

The talented young didgeridoo player — considered one of Australia’s finest — was in Chennai recently for a special concert, ‘Songlines of Australia’, as part of his tour of India (including a performance at the Hockey World Cup in Delhi), organised by the Australia-India Council.

The concert might have been in the plush environs of the Asiana Hotel, but for an all-too-brief half-an-hour, Barton transported the audience to the rugged Australian bush, conjuring a vivid soundscape of its bird songs and of the wind rustling through its trees.

“The didgeridoo captures the raw resonance of the Australian outback through its deep tones,” he said during an interview earlier in the evening (there was plenty of time to spare since the concert started nearly two hours late). “It’s the branch of a tree that comes alive when you put your breath into it.”

The instrument has been an integral part of ceremonies of the native tribes of Australia for centuries, accompanying the ‘song man’ as he sang the ‘dream-time story’, the Aboriginal legends of the seasons and rituals. Barton carried on this storytelling tradition of the instrument during the performance, telling tales through the didgeridoo, and of the didgeridoo.

He told old-world stories by recreating the sounds of dingo dogs and kookaburras and of ‘papa, mama and baby joey kangaroos’ hopping (his free hand ‘animating’ the sounds with lively finger actions). And then, he segued seamlessly into very contemporary stories of hip-hop dancers (his fingers doing a little dance on the side) and an amazingly-creative piece on a ‘Hitchhiker’s Nightmare’, where the didgeridoo mimics the sound of vehicles whizzing by the hapless hitchhiker as he walks on and on and on…

“Songlines (the song-style of a particular family group) interconnected the different tribes in the old days; in the modern context, these songlines can connect us to the Western world,” said Barton, who has collaborated with jazz, heavy metal, hip hop, rock ‘n roll artistes as well as a number of the world’s leading philharmonic orchestras, and performed at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. “I’m passionate about connecting the world through the universal language of music.”

His own musical influences growing up in Mount Isa, Queensland, included everything from opera (his mother was a self-taught singer) to AC/DC (like any other head-banging teenage Aussie boy). But the greatest influence was his uncle, an elder of the Waanyi, Lardil and Kalkadunga tribes, who taught him to play the didgeridoo at the age of seven. He died when Barton was just 11, but his legacy lives on with the young man in his music, and in the 60-year-old didgeridoo that he keeps with him.

“In traditional law, when an elder passes away, his didgeridoo is broken up, but they let me keep it as a special case,” Barton said. “I don’t usually travel with it because it’s getting old, but I take it to special gigs — out on the Australian bush, to Carnegie Hall, the London Philharmonic, and now to India — so the history is captured in it.”

He told other traditional stories too — of how he learnt to make his own didgeridoo from his father, for instance: “The didgeridoo is hollowed out naturally by termites, so you go out into the bush, find the tree you need, cut it, remove the bark, then make a mouthpiece from beeswax — after tapping out the termites first, of course!”

And his music said the rest, as he played on the electric guitar (his ‘second musical voice’) and the didgeridoo simultaneously, heavy metal riffs and soulful intros somehow merging perfectly with the deep-throated percussive notes of the didgeridoo. Fusion with Indian music is up next on his to-do list, but we’ll have to wait until next time to hear him tell those stories.

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March 2, 2010 · 10:32 am

Article: To each his own (Interview with Mark Billingham and China Mieville)

A crime writer who’s also a stand-up comic; a fantasy fiction writer who’s also a left-wing political activist. Put them both together in a room and what do you get? A rapid-fire, roller coaster conversation on everything from avant-garde fiction to rakshasas and assorted monsters, the induction ceremony to Agatha Christie’s Detection Club to falling anvils in Tom & Jerry cartoons.

Best-selling crime novelist Mark Billingham and fantasy fiction writer China (his parents were hippies and named him after a popular Cockney slang term, in case you were wondering) Mieville from the U.K. were recently in Chennai as part of British Council’s Lit Sutra initiative. Lively, opinionated and articulate, the two quite literally talked up a storm, first during an interview at the British council and then again at the public event at Landmark.

At first glance, it would appear that they wouldn’t have much in common, but Billingham and Mieville quickly proved that to be untrue. Both exuded self-admittedly geeky enthusiasm for their particular genres of fiction, and a love (and a staunch fight-unto-death loyalty) for genre fiction in general.

Mark, for instance, said he was a ‘crazy collector’ of first edition American crime fiction, and took to interviewing writers and doing book reviews just so he could get free copies. “Seriously,” he said, straight-faced, “it was costing me a fortune. After a couple of years of that, I decided to try my hand at writing one myself.”

Giving up on the idea of a ‘comic-crime novel’ (“It’s rubbish”) the TV actor turned stand-up comic turned novelist created what would end up becoming his most famous character  – the country-music loving, world-weary D. I. Tom Thorne – in his very first novel Sleepyhead. “Crime writers use exactly the same tricks as comedians – the way the punchline is revealed is the same way a key piece of information, a clue, for instance, is revealed in a crime novel,” he said. “It’s all about timing.”

Mieville, on the other hand, quite simply never outgrew his childhood love for monsters, aliens and witches. “People often ask ‘what got you into it?’ and my answer to them is, ‘what got you out of it?’” he said, adding with a laugh, “I’m just more rigorous than they were.”

The two-time recipient of both the Arthur C. Clarke Award and British Fantasy Award admits to ‘cheerfully philistine piracy’ of mythologies the world over to create his awesome array of weird creatures, such as the half-man half-bird Garuda in Perdido Street Station. “Anglo-American fantasy draws on certain creatures – elves, dwarves and dragons – but what I wanted to do is take creatures from other mythologies, deliberately not concerning myself with their mythic resonance, and do something new with them,” he said.

At some point, the chat about their work – the filming of Billingham’s Thorne novels for TV, for instance, or how Mieville’s strong political leanings influence his writing – segued into a passionate discussion on how ‘despised’ genre fiction was amongst some readers in the U.S. and the U.K.

“There’s this general sense of literary fiction being ‘real fiction’ versus all the rest,” said Mieville.

“The problem is that literary fiction is judged by its very best, while genre fiction is judged by its very worst,” added Billingham. “It just isn’t a fair fight.”

Mieville, in fact, loves genre fiction so much that he once rashly claimed he wanted to write a book in every genre. “I blame the Internet – you say something once and it’s never forgotten,” he said ruefully. “But I am fascinated by the protocols of the different genres.”

That’s why for his latest book, a crime novel but set in his fantastical universe, The City and the city, he ensured that he was ‘absolutely faithful’ to the protocols of a police procedural. A crime novel without those protocols, according to Billingham, would be like a Western without a horse, a gun or a cowboy hat.

“In that sense, crime novels haven’t changed that much since Sherlock Holmes – detectives who have problems with booze, music and can’t seem to form relationships,” said Billingham. “But the protocols have changed in other ways, of course – back in the 1920s there were some preposterous rules such as ‘there can be only one secret passage’ and ‘no Chinamen’!”

This lively discussion spilled into the Landmark event, ‘Thrill of the Unknown’ with ease. Co-ordinator Shreekumar Varma simply had to sit back and watch as the two took off on another freewheeling –and very funny– chat on novels of the future (“Remixed-novels will become the norm.”— Mieville), the perils of too much research and nitpicking readers (“It’s a novel, not a train timetable.” – Billingham), a running joke on their dislike for Jeffrey Archer’s books, and much more, with plenty of time devoted to audience interaction.

After all, as they said at the interview, they were here for a conversation with Indian readers. And boy, what a conversation it was.

BOX:

You can read excerpts from Mark Billingham’s latest novel From the dead and China Mieville’s latest Kraken on Lit Sutra’s blog: http://www.litsutra.com/

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February 24, 2010 · 9:31 pm

Theyil kadais (Part One): Safari suits and such

There’s this little tailor shop in Adyar I pass on my way home from work everyday. It’s very poshly named Executive Men’s Tailor, and the tagline under it reads ‘Specialist in Safari and Suits’.

Now, it’s true that enterprising entrepreneurs in the the city often provide more than one service from little more than a potti kadai. Your neighbourhood Veena Medicals might both sell Cool Drinks from dusty old glass bottles with the requisite brightly coloured straws (you don’t see those venerable bottles as often any more. I miss them. Stupid new-fangled cans and plastic disposables) and be able to procure for you any medication you need, prescriptions be damned (‘I’ll have one packet Gems and one strip of Erithromycin, please’). Even so, a little theyil kadai claiming to be an expert in both organising safaris and stitching suits is something quite out of the ordinary, you’d agree (‘I’ll book you and your family on a Kenyan safari and throw in three lion-watching suits as part of the package’). Impressive.

Of course, it’s a tad more likely that the man is actually claiming to be a specialist in safari suits as well as other, lesser suits. Disappointing, yes, but that got me thinking about that slowly vanishing sartorial staple of the 70s and 80s in India — the safari suit. There was a time when the safari suit was an absolute must-have for the middle-class man of substance — the government official, the businessman, the school principal. Certainly they were a staple of our movie wardrobes. Every man-about-town owned one — I’m certain there’s a yellowing picture of my dad as a dapper 20-something MBA grad wearing one somewhere in the Family Chest of Bad Fashion Decisions (alongside the one of the tiger-print shirts). Every up-and-comer aspired to one.

Usually all in grey (various shades thereof) or in that awful shade of dark brown that was so popular for bell-bottoms, it was the all-body precursor of the cargo shorts (and you kids thought you were the first to come up with the idea that having a gazillion meaningless pockets was somehow cool). It also always had to be worn a couple of sizes too small — if your paunch wasn’t pressing comfortably against the middle button pre-lunch and actively struggling to break free post-lunch, you weren’t wearing it right (in fact, it is said that many a slim and willowy gentleman felt unworthy of the safari suit given his woefully inadequate mid-section. That resulted in the first and only instance in recorded history of the production of faux-paunches by a company in Bombay. They shut down following a lengthy legal battle with Bappi da who claimed the paunches were modeled on his). And finally, the safari suit was meant for longevity — the older and, of course, tighter your safari suit was, the greater its street cred in the halls of the government office you worked in.

Over the years, however, the star of the safari suit has waned. It’s become something of a joke amongst the chic set — it’s uncool, it’s only for the hopelessly fashion-challenged, they cry. But still the safari suit lingers, and not only in photo albums (right beside the bouffants and the long sideburns). In true old-school Indian style (where you never give up on anything, however patently it’s past its sell-by date, e.g. Lata Mangeshkar), a stubborn set of stuck-in-the-70s gentlemen hold on to their safari suits, whipping it out of the mothballs for that fancy family do or that important meeting. And presumably, if and when these valiant suits do give way, the gentlemen drop by to see Executive Men’s Tailor, Specialist in Safari and Suits. Because in other parts of the world, the safari suit may have become an almost-forgotten fad to be fondly remembered and even celebrated; in India, where the past and the present co-exist in (fairly) peaceful togetherness, it lives on proudly, as do the theyil kadais that specialise in them.

(PS: Would love to know the origins of the safari suit — any ideas? Does it have anything whatsoever to do with actual safaris? Did it evolve from the Shikari Shambu suits colonial-types wore while hunting in barbarian lands?)

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February 21, 2010 · 1:15 pm

Book Recs: Cyrus Broacha’s ‘Karl, Aaj Aur Kal’

I picked the neon-green-and-red book a couple of weeks ago at Landmark before I’d heard or read anything about it. Its colouring and comic book-type cover caught my eye at first, but I ended up buying it for a very simple reason — I love good ol’ Cyrus and his oddball sense of humour. Always have.  (In the interest of full disclosure, it also didn’t hurt that the book cost about what you’d pay for coffee and a muffin (yum) at Barista. Still more expensive than Chetan Bhagat, of course, but then again, no painfully obvious typos and glaring grammatical boo-boos either).

Having finished the book, I can tell you that my reasoning was sound i.e.  if you’re a fan of the Cyrus Broacha brand of free-wheeling goofiness, you’ll enjoy ‘Karl, aaj aur kal’. This isn’t really a work of fiction in the traditional sense. I mean, there is a loose narrative structure about two friends Karl and Kunal (quite obviously based on Kunal Vijayakar) and how they met at school in Mumbai and went to college together, and so on. But if you’re looking for story, plot, etc., this isn’t the book for you. This is, quite simply, like having Cyrus stand before you and hold forth for a few hours on Parsi families and opera-loving fathers, St. Xavier’s College and the Mumbai theatre scene, Bollywood, politics and marriage. You can literally hear him stop to take a breath between the lines (he even informs you occasionally that he’s bored and moving on to something new).

Which means, like any other Cyrus monologue, you have absolutely brilliant moments that make you burst out laughing, like I did while reading it in the middle of a crowded coffee shop recently, and then there are the  over-the-top jokes that make you go ‘meh’ or the excessively rambly bits that you can thankfully skim over in book form. What makes it worth a read overall is that Cyrus’ voice comes across so clearly at all times — down-to-earth, authentic and real. No pretentiousness, no play-acting. There are a lot of Indian writers out there trying to be like someone else in their humour writing — Helen Fielding or God forbid, P.G. Wodehouse, and in the midst of it all Cyrus and ‘Karl, aaj aur kal’ is a breath of fresh air.

The best best bits of the book come towards the halfway point, when Karl and Kunal go to St. Xavier’s, join Pearl Padamsee’s theatre troupe and then go to NYU for a few weeks to study method acting (your impression of method acting as something serious and pseudo will forever be changed, I assure you). These portions work so well because there is a strong autobiographical element to them; you can hear Cyrus’ own experiences and involvement shine through in the midst of all the nuttiness . That makes them the most easy to relate to bits and therefore the funniest. The early part about their school days tends to sound a tad generic (porn and first kisses and such) though there are some priceless moments — like how the entire class goes around talking in fake Chinese accents after watching a Hong Kong flick in Karate class. The latter half, which can be loosely described as the Bollywood and the politics bit, gets increasingly silly and over-the-top (Karl becomes part of the ‘Pyjama Party’ and they were purple pyjamas with white nadas that indicate their strength and integrity or something) until it loses touch with reality altogether. The ending is annoyingly abrupt, like his publisher said, ‘bas, your time’s up’ and he stopped talking/writing (but the epilogue makes up for it somewhat.)

If you love Cyrus and you’re up for a good laugh, this is Rs. 195/- well spent. (Random House, Pg. 230)

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February 19, 2010 · 10:34 am

How to… Be a Pseudo Intellectual

1. It’s impossible to be a pseudo intellectual without this important ingredient – hot air. See when it comes to being pseudo, it’s not what you actually do (which is fairly negligible); it’s about what you say and how you say it. Being opinionated is a must, as is holding forth with authority on the latest award-winning smart-person type book / movie (actual reading/watching is optional). But at all times remember to be properly dismissive of popular culture (unless you’re using words such as ‘postmodern’ and ‘pastiche’ while discussing it).

2. Which brings us to the second-most essential ingredient – words. We’re not talking about just any words; these words must imbue your pontificating with precisely the right degree of pomposity (see what I did there?) without actually saying anything that can be pinned on you later. When in doubt, pepper your speech with big words that sound vaguely French or Italian. Skilful insertion of references to Foucault or Derrida never hurt either. And always keep up with the pseudo word-fads – for instance, ‘paradigm’ is so 1998.

3. It isn’t just enough to talk right and use the right words – it’s also important to be seen talking at the right places. It’s absolutely essential for the serious pseudo intellectual to be at any cultural event that includes the word ‘avant-garde’ or barring that, ‘experimental’, in its title (art and theatre have particularly high pseudo-quotient). Here’s your rule of thumb – if you can’t really understand it, it’s perfect for you to hold forth on at the next party.

4. Ah parties, swanky, exclusive parties. This is the pseudo intellectual’s natural habitat. Members of the tribe can be observed clustered in groups trying to out-pseudo each other, generally over a glass of wine and tiny hors d’oeuvres with sufficiently obscure names and origins. Pay careful attention to your attire – smart-girl/boy glasses are an immeasurable asset to the newbie pseudo, as are artsy/smart-people clothes such as raw-silk kurtas or tweed jackets.

5. Finally, the secret ingredient that goes into the making of a bonafide pseudo intellectual is boredom. Always remember, displaying bright-eyed, bushy-tailed enthusiasm over anything is a big no-no. Once that studied veneer of world-weariness and been-there done-that ennui is in place, you, my friend, have arrived.

DIVYA KUMAR

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February 18, 2010 · 11:04 am

Article: Look who’s on the prowl

Phishers, scammers and spammers… cyber criminals are out to target people on social-networking sites. DIVYA KUMAR writes

Building a farm or joining the Mafia Wars on Facebook is just as much a part of your daily routine as checking your work email. Crappy movies, boring parties and bad break-ups are all fodder alike for acerbic Tweets. Pictures taken on your cellphone make it on your Orkut profile page at the speed of light, and padding your friends list is your favourite pastime.

Our lives today are increasingly submerged in social-networking websites, like millions others worldwide. In the last year, the number of Indian visitors to sites such as Facebook, Orkut, MySpace and Twitter increased by 51 per cent to 19 million (according to comScore’s 2009 report). And where people are, that’s where the phishers, scammers and spammers go.

“Social-networking sites have become one of the most popular targets for cyber criminals,” says David Freer, Vice President Consumer Business, Asia Pacific and Japan, of Symantec, calling 2009 the year of attacks against social-networking sites and their users. “These sites have a huge number of users (Facebook alone has 350 million), and cyber criminals have a fairly simple modus operandi – go where the people are.”

Amit Agarwal, one of India’s top tech bloggers and columnist agrees. “The threat is very real,” he says. “Often you read about these things but you don’t know the people affected, but this is actually happening, everyday.”

For instance, he describes a recent attack on Twitter, due to which passwords had to be reset on a few thousand accounts. “The attack took advantage of people’s innate laziness,” says the blogger. “Many of us use the same credentials – username and password – on multiple websites, which means that the guys at some questionable site you visited, let’s call it xyz.com, can now log on to your other accounts, such as Twitter.”

Once they have access to your account by any means, your entire contact list becomes vulnerable to spam, phishing or ‘drive-by download’ attacks through links or notifications that are sent out. “By their very nature, social networking sites are about a group of people who trust each other,” explains Freer. “If you get a request to look at photos on Facebook or click on shortened URL on Twitter from a friend, you tend to trust it automatically.”

Those links could take you to imposter sites that ask you to enter your credentials again (standard phishing), or more sneakily, simply take you to a site that silently download malware onto your system, i.e., the ‘drive-by download’. “Last year, this was the fastest growing form of attack – there were18 million drive-by download attacks in all of 2008; in 2009, we hit that number just between August and October,” says Freer.

The buzzword amongst experts for these attacks is ‘social engineering’ – using people’s behaviour patterns to target them for attacks. “The actual attacks are the same as what we’ve seen earlier, via email, etc., but the false sense of trust and security existing in social networks makes it easier for criminals to deceive,” says Na. Vijayashankar a.k.a. Naavi, cyber law and techno-legal consultant.

Third-party applications on websites such as Facebook – those fun games and other time-pass applications you add on – are also frequent offenders, exposing your system to malware embedded in the application itself or in the ad on the side of its webpage. “The bad applications are usually banned after a few reports from users, but on day one of the attack, no one will know. There are 500,000 applications on Facebook, for example; it’s just impossible for them to keep track of them all,” says Amit.

“A lot of these game apps involve money transactions, so they get your credit card details, and scams do happen,” says Tarun Shan, a 22-year-old student of Hindustan Engineering College, and an online entrepreneur. “People think these sites are so cool and just get so addicted, but they need to be careful.”

Common sense, it would appear, is the only real defence against these attacks (and an up-to-date anti-virus software on your system, of course). For instance, research shows that an alarming number of users on social-networking sites add people they don’t really know as friends. “Don’t get into a mad race to add more friends just for the sake of it,” says Naavi. “Use some sort of screening process when you get requests from people you don’t know.”

Be cautious about opening any weird links from people already on your friends list. “If you’re getting unusual messages from a friend, send them a note asking them about it,” says Freer. “And always be wary of short URLS which can mask malicious sites.”

And don’t be lazy – educate yourself. “Most of these websites are doing all they can to protect you, but you have to do your bit as well,” says Amit.

Top tips

1. Be wary of adding strangers to your friends list
2. Be careful while clicking on shortened URLs
3. Use strong passwords. Create different passwords for different accounts
4. Be cautious while using third-party applications and sharing private data with them
5. If you’re getting unusual messages from a friend, send her a note about them

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February 17, 2010 · 3:29 pm

To all the Divya Ks out there

Finally making my first post, nearly a year after creating the blog. I’d actually forgotten I’d created it at all and only remembered when wordpress told me my email id had already been used when I tried to register. This either meant that I’d already created a blog on wordpress or that there was some other blogging-inclined Divya K out there with the same email id, which is entirely possible considering the ridiculous frequency with which people mistakenly email me stuff meant for other Divya Ks (oh how many of them there are). HDFC persists in sending me poor Divya Vasudevan K’s bank statements every month, and superciliously informed me that I was imagining things when I tried to tell them about it. I personally make it a point to inform all the Divya Kesavans and Divya Kapoors who email themselves [me] their resumes, air ticket confirmations, office memos, etc. that I’m not them. Always feel very virtuous after I do it too. My little digital act of kindness for the day.

But I digress.

The point is, while it is possible that I’ve actually been somehow sharing my email id with a number of other Divya Ks (timeshare email ids?) because it’s just such a common combination of name and initial that the email provider couldn’t allot it to only one woman (or man, actually, but that’s a rant for another day), it isn’t probable. (I wonder about it on occasion, but since my email inbox has remained fairly unmolested in the four years that I’ve used it, I’ve decided it’s just me being paranoid). So that meant that I had in fact meandered over to wordpress while seized by one of my intermittent ‘I’m-going-to-become-a-blogger!!!’ urges and actually created one. And then *boing* a very, very faint bulbu went off somewhere in my antihistamine-fogged brain (it’s been a bad allergy winter. Any errors on this blog are attributable to Desloratadine until further notice) and I remembered vaguely having created one last March. See, one of my colleagues had very sweetly gifted another colleague a blog (with an apt domain name purchased for a year) for her birthday and that had sparked off one of the intermittent urges, etc.

So. (I’m certain no one is still reading at this point, but I’m going to persevere cos it’s my blog and I’ll ramble if I want to). Here I am, in February of the next year and I’m finally updating. (Please, don’t everybody break into applause at once). This update almost didn’t happen either. I started this morning in a fit of productive cheerfulness (it happens to me rarely, very rarely) and gave it up because I couldn’t think of anything to say. It started feeling like an article I didn’t have a lead sentence for and I gave it up for later. Then I remembered that this is for fun and it’s not in fact an article that needs to live up to any quality standard and all and I just let myself go once I got home at night (I’m sure you’re real glad I did, persevering reader who’s gotten this far.)

Anyhoo. This blog will be updated in future with bits and pieces from articles or additional information on ppl I meet/write about, book/movie recs, random observations about Chennai, etc. in the future. Or not. It depends on whether I actually remember that it exists at all in the future.

ETA: Look ma, no word count limit!! 😀

ETA: Must. stop. obsessively. editing. and. re-editing.

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February 13, 2010 · 10:50 am

Interview with… Madhav Chari

Pianist Madhav Chari talks about the spirit of jazz, linking his music to Indian philosophy and his experiential workshops. DIVYA KUMAR listens in

PHOTO: R. RAVINDRAN

If you go to meet jazz pianist Madhav Chari expecting to discuss just jazz or even just music, think again. With mind-whirling rapidity the conversation flows between cognitive science and colonialism, mathematics and anthropology, Indian philosophy and American academia, not to mention martial arts, dance and the Bhakti movement…

At one point, I have to ask him to stop briefly, so I can look back to the original list of questions I’d studiously prepared before the interview. But they seem rather limited — and limiting — now, so I decide to let the conversation take its course, just interjecting the odd query now and again.

“What we’re doing right now is jazz music,” says Madhav, halfway through, during an impassioned (there isn’t any other kind with Madhav) discussion on how jazz is freedom, but with form. “This conversation is not scripted. It’s loosely improvised but you’re still providing direction — that’s jazz music.”

And with that neat journalistic analogy for jazz, the free-flowing chat suddenly makes sense. After all, the essence of any conversation with Madhav Chari is jazz, the music form that grabbed him when he was a six-year-old in Kolkata and hasn’t let go since.

“What about it grabbed me I don’t know,” he muses. Maybe it was his father’s knowledge of jazz from the 1940s, when he saw the big bands of the era play while at The Lawrence School, Lovedale. Or, perhaps the family friend whom he used to watch improvising on the piano. “There was just an emotional connect. It’s like asking why the chocolate cake appealed to you… it’s hard to answer.”

He dismisses his training in Western classical piano as mere calisthenics. “Loosely speaking, yes, I’m trained in Western classical, in the sense that I did the gamut of exams, but it doesn’t mean anything,” he says. “That’s because we learn the music in a context where it wasn’t born, where that form of music isn’t a vibrant, living force, unlike in London, Moscow or Paris.”

This idea of absorbing music as a ‘living force’, of experiencing its spirit, is of intense importance to Madhav. That’s why he cherishes the time he spent in the U.S. at places such as New York or Chicago, where jazz still lives. There was the time, for instance, that he got to play with a local sax legend in Chicago while he was a Ph.D. student at the University of Illinois – Urbana Champaign (UIUC).

“The great pianist Tommy Flanagan, who had recorded with John Coltrane, was sitting in the audience… I saw him and my heart just skipped a beat,” he laughs. “But the music took me over and I forgot my stage fright, and in the end, he congratulated me and gave me his number in New York. These experiences were very important in my search as a jazz musician.”

After his studies, Madhav spent some time as part of the jazz scene in New York and a brief eight months in Toronto before returning to India in 2003 and settling in Chennai, where his parents live. These past seven years have been a period of a spiritual awakening for the pianist, and Indian philosophy has now become an integral part of his musical journey.

“I want to be a jazz musician who thoroughly understands the tradition of the music, but who’s also alive to the possibilities of his own consciousness and has linked himself with the mystical traditions of India,” he says, adding with a smile, “But I don’t play Hindustani music… I’ll be playing the blues.”

He’s also developed some very strong opinions (to put it mildly) on the Indian music scene — whether it’s local jazz or fusion. “I will go on record saying that in the last 40 years, not one musician in Mumbai — the leading jazz centre in India — has tapped the spirit of jazz,” he says emphatically. “They’ve tapped the form, but not the spirit. And that’s why I have a problem with fusion as well, because so much of it is technical and theoretical, with very little experiential insight.”

His own corporate workshops, which he now conducts with martial arts expert George Kurian, focus entirely on just that — the experiential. “We make people do music and martial arts exercises, and allow the gateways of the mind to open up,” Madhav says. “There’s hardly any talking, because I believe that in the modern Indian urban consciousness, language is a tremendous block to understanding. English has blocked our access to our own experiences — it’s a facet of colonialism.”

These beliefs are part of the reason why Madhav has connected with Chennai the way he has since 2003. “It’s not about it being conservative or liberal; it’s about it being open to experiences while being rooted in tradition,” he says of the city. “I’m not impressed by people telling me Bangalore is more hip or modern; modernity is actually old, based on where I want to go in a cosmic sense.”

KEYNOTES

He enjoys the writings of S.N. Balagangadhara, chair of the Comparative Science of Cultures Centre at Ghent University in Belgium, on Hindu philosophy and religion.

He loves the music of American jazz pianist ‘Bud’ Powell. Madhav’s most recent album ‘Parisian Thoroughfares’ is titled after a Powell composition.

He likes Mathematics, in which he has a Masters degree from Dartmouth University

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