On squeezed middle, occupy and bunga bunga

It seems the Oxford English Dictionary has chosen ‘squeezed middle’ as word of the year. Of course there’s the desirable kind of squeezed middle, that almost everyone in the upper middle aspires to, but the squeezed middle in the OED is sterner stuff. It refers to British Labour party politician Ed Miliband’s “term for those seen as bearing the brunt of government tax burdens whilst having the least with which to relieve it”.

Maybe the British take their taxes seriously. Here in India, of course, it’s a bit of a joke, haha. Only 33.5 million people of our 1.21 billion pay any personal income tax at all, according to data quoted by our Minister of State for Finance SS Palanimanickam in Parliament in August.  That’s 2.77 per cent of the population. If you’re bearing the brunt of taxes, like me, you should be wondering why and looking for ways to get out of bearing this brunt. Try unemployment, or a brief holiday in Tihar jail in the company of many rich and famous personalities, or both.

Some among the 2.77 per cent of us here are ‘squeezed’, and comprise the 'squeezed middle', which raises a very important question: where, in a body, is the middle located? My knowledge of biology and mathematics caused me to suspect that the middle would be sort of halfway up from the bottom...a little above waist level, generally speaking. Of course this is rubbish. In India, as we’ve been hearing expert commissions say for a few years now, somewhere between 37 and 77 percent of the population live on less than Rs 20 a day. The difference between those two percentages is about half a billion people, but hey, no one said statistics is a precise science, or that we know how to count beyond 99,999, except for tax and bribe purposes. Besides, how would we have Important Meetings without some proper sounding numbers? What would the Planning Commission do?

Even their poverty line, pegged at Rs 32 per person per day in urban areas, leaves about 30 or 40 or 50 percent of the population below the said line. Your guess on exact numbers is as good as mine, which is as good as the Planning Commission’s, because actually no one in this country knows the correct answer to this question. They ought to make it the Rs 5 crore question in Kaun Banega Crorepati and wait for the right answer.

So what I was saying is that the squeezed middle here is a part of the 2.77 per cent who pay tax. These are folks who spend at least Rs 100 a day overall, or Rs 3,000 a month each, which makes them rich compared to the poor sods who get by on Rs 32 a day. The squeezed middle is actually near the top! About ear level, I’d say.

Meanwhile a survey by a ‘wealth prospecting’ agency called Wealth X reported last month that 8,200 Really Rich People own more than 50 per cent of India’s total wealth. These are folks who own a minimum of Rs 150 crore each. They’re at the top, and the middle has to be below the top, so again, the squeezed middle is about ear level.

It’s a very thin squeezed middle, so we can safely say that in India’s gargantuan body, there’s very little between the ears.

Perhaps that is also the condition of the Oxford English Dictionary. They had stronger contenders for the global word of the year in English, but chose the one they did.

Occupy, as in ‘Occupy Wall Street’, was among the contenders. There’s plenty more force in that one. The spirit of 'occupy' is moving people and buffeting governments around the world. It’s the genuine angst that fed into the Arab Spring – remember it started with a street vendor’s self-immolation in Tunisia. His last words before he set himself on fire were reported to be, “How do you expect me to make a living?”

He was maddened by poverty and corruption after he’d had his wares confiscated by the municipal authorities.

Think of how many times a day such things happen in India. The municipal truck that comes by and steals away the street vendor’s good until he or she pays a bribe to recover it...you’ve probably seen it happen at some point. The municipal guys, like the beat cops, are from the 'squeezed middle'. They're fighting the Arab Spring, and the Occupy.

Occupy is a meaningful word around the world. 

So is another of the contenders that lost out. I refer here to ‘bunga bunga’, meaning parties of the sort former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is world-famous for having. These involve several bare-naked ladies and quality intoxicants.

Now that’s a word with clear appeal all around the planet. Forget Wall Street...who in the squeezed middle wouldn't wish to occupy, or shall we say, squeeze into, Berlusconi's villa?

The beauty of faith and the wisdom of doubt

There’s a new study out in the latest issue of the journal Nature that says people are overconfident because it has evolutionary benefits. The study’s authors have stated, with confidence, that in the evolutionary scheme of things, in all competitive situations where there is doubt about the outcome of a contest, overconfidence is the best strategy.
I always take ‘studies’ with a pinch of salt. Given the right funding, I can confidently state that a study can prove anything. I’ve read studies that ‘prove’ that moderate drinking is good and bad, that vegetarianism is good and bad, that this food or that food makes us fat, or doesn’t, and so on.
Why, there are even studies that say human beings are responsible for global warming, and others that confidently say this is all hot air!
It seems to me that a lot of researchers are having a lot of fun proving everything and their opposites. I hope someone will fund me to study this hypothesis.
There may be something to this overconfidence study, though.
The key point in favour of overconfidence is that it propels people to attempt feats they would otherwise give up on even before starting. It makes people attempt the barely possible, and even the impossible. In many instances they perish in the attempt. In some, they succeed, and thereby make history.
The grandest stories of human achievement and endeavor are made of such stuff. If the adventurers and explorers of yore had not given in to overconfidence, they wouldn’t have pointed their rickety wooden ships at the open and uncharted seas, and set sail, guided by instinct and the stars.
That they did worked to their favour, and arguably, to ours.
A similar spirit, buoyed with a faith in divine powers, inspired and enabled our ancestors to build the great structures they did. It seems incredible to imagine that the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids, and all the great cathedrals of Europe were built before machines as we know them had been invented. They were all made with human and animal labour, and the most basic tools.

Today we have so much by way of technology, but nowhere in the world do we see marvels of architecture like the ones of old. In India, especially, we only see variations of ugliness and mediocrity.

A part of the failing is because of lack of vision and imagination. A part is due to lack of the kind of royal purses that enabled those ventures. And a part is probably due to lack of that spirit of overconfidence, and an erosion of faith.
Anyone who so much as suggested building a new Taj Mahal in today’s day and age would be laughed at as mad, find NGOs campaigning against them for wastage of money, and wake up to find the Income Tax and CBI at their doors.
We live in practical times. Our thoughts are of taxes and hikes, not earth and heaven.
Even practical people, however, tend to suffer from a particular delusion that affects the majority of humankind.
It is well known that most people think they are right all the time. Psychologists have been noting this for years. They even have a word for it. It’s called ‘overestimation’.
Overestimation applies especially to beliefs. We all tend to believe that our views and values are the most correct, or the theories we subscribe to, the best.
This is where overconfidence can start to go seriously wrong. It’s one thing to build a Taj Mahal or set sail upon an unknown sea. It’s another to embark upon a witch hunt.
The people who wanted to burn Galileo Galilei at the stake (he was let off but spent his remaining life in house arrest) were probably good folks with firm conviction. They truly believed the earth was the centre of the universe, and decided that Galileo, who said the sun was the centre, was a heretic. Galileo made his own position worse by supporting his fellow scientist Nicholas Copernicus’ view that the earth moves around the sun.
In the event, it turned out that the folks who had such confidence in their beliefs - the same people who built the magnificent cathedrals and palaces of Florence, and supported artists from Michelangelo down - were wrong. 
And so it goes. Even today, most of the troubles in the world are on account of people’s certainty that they are right.
The worst examples of this can be seen in fundamentalists of all hues.
For example, Osama bin Laden was a good man in his own way. He followed a certain code of conduct and fought for it in his own way.
His problem was that he believed only his way was right, and every other way was wrong. He was prepared to kill or die for it.
That didn’t do the world, or him, much good.
There may be great value in confidence and overconfidence, but there is at least equal merit in doubt.

Honest doubt is what makes science possible. It enables questioning of strongly held beliefs, and allows for modification of those beliefs over time. In science, a theory is true only until it is proved false, or partially true. That happens with even the best of theories. For example, Newton’s theory of gravitation was held to be universally true, until Einstein’s came along.

The scientific way has brought us far. It has made life much, much better for most of humankind. It has literally brought us from darkness into light.
Yet there are unintended consequences.
The scientific worldview has diminished faith. A consequence of this is that it has diminished nearly all human endeavor to the utilitarian.
Our natural reflex now is to reduce all activity to accounts of profit and loss. We only do things for comfort and material gain.
And so we are left with a world that has all the beauty and grandeur of a balance sheet.

9/11: The long shadow in South Asia

Today is 9/11. It’s a date charged with meaning and history. Few of us who were old enough to remember the day will ever forget what we were doing when the two hijacked planes hit the twin towers in New York a decade ago. 

I used to work for India Today newsmagazine at the time. I remember hearing of the first plane hitting the towers, and heading towards the TV a floor below to see it. By the time I got there the second plane had hit. My hair stood on end, because I realised this could not be coincidence. 

Half an hour later, the Pentagon took a hit. The US president was rushed to a bomb shelter somewhere because the Americans realised they were under attack from an unidentified foe. They scrambled their fighter jets, but the jets didn’t really know what to shoot at.

In days that followed, it became clear that the attacks had been coordinated by a group named Al Qaeda, and the name of Osama bin Laden became synonymous with terrorism throughout the world.

In the decade that followed, a lot happened. The Americans invaded Afghanistan and found themselves battling Mujahideen forces they had helped arm and train. Pakistan was quickly drawn into the conflict, and had to choose between supporting the Americans or going to war against them, and possibly India. General Pervez Musharraf quickly decided that this was a losing proposition, and so Pakistan began a painful turnaround to confront its former protégés, including the Taliban, which was then in government in Kabul.

The Americans and their western allies have managed to knock the Taliban out of government. They eventually killed Osama bin Laden too, only a few months ago. They have used targeted assassination of key figures as part of the strategy to eliminate terror attacks directed against them. 

However, Afghanistan remains a mess, and its president Hamid Karzai is by all accounts little more than the mayor of Kabul. His control does not extend beyond the borders of the capital. The American plans to withdraw from Afghanistan have come to nought. They are stuck there in an expensive and apparently endless conflict, much as the Russians before them.

The American decision to stay on for another decade in Afghanistan may have come as something of a surprise to the Taliban. 

Friends visiting from there had mentioned that the Taliban were already wondering if China would be the next to attack them. They had written off the Americans as goners.

The Americans on their part were keen to depart, because they figured they could continue the war through drones and cruise missiles. No one can actually run a government in Kabul, or Baghdad, or anywhere else, unless they have the military hardware to stop cruise missiles and drones. 

The calculation was simple: the Taliban could either strike a deal with them, and share power in Afghanistan, or continue the fight and stew.

The Taliban have apparently chosen to stew, and keep the Americans in the pot with them. 

The other folks who feel the heat from this conflict are the Pakistanis, and to a lesser extent, the Indians. Pakistan suffers more than we do because they are the frontline state in this conflict. They’ve had a proper war going on in various parts of their country these last 10 years. Their internal convulsions from this war are continuing.

Both India and Pakistan have suffered grievously from terrorism. Yet there is an element of irony in the terror tragedies that befell Pakistan. 

Their military headquarters were attacked, a naval base in Karachi was attacked, the Marriott hotel in Islamabad was attacked, to name only a few. The attackers in every instance had earlier found shelter, and even support, from elements in the Pakistani state establishment.

A lot of the monsters they created have turned on them now. And yet, elements in the Pakistani state continue to harbour and protect many of these characters. The raid that got Osama proved this beyond any reasonable doubt.

Pakistani hawks keep their pet terrorists in their protection as weapons to be used as and when needed. Osama, of course, was also a blank cheque because in the name of the ‘war on terror’ the Pakistanis got billions of dollars from the Americans. 

The weapons are used to ensure that Pakistan has leverage in bargaining with India or Afghanistan or the US.

The strategic goals of Pakistan are at odds with those of the other countries. India will not give them all of Kashmir, however much they may want it. Nor will the Afghans and Americans give Pakistan’s cronies the keys to Kabul. 

The Pakistani state is therefore going to find itself in a bind as long as it continues to desire what it cannot realistically expect to get. 

Terrorism has escaped from the camps and spread through the country. The genie is out of the bottle, and will not hesitate to bite the hand that fed it.

India, which is a close neighbour, suffers along because of the conflicting ambitions of Pakistani hardliners. The problem for India is Kashmir. Indian ‘nationalists’ and Pakistani hawks both demand the entire state for themselves. Kashmiris from the valley generally demand freedom, azadi. They have a strong sense of a unique history and identity separate from that of India or Pakistan.

The situation is complicated because the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir was not ethnically homogenous. There’s Jammu, with its largely Hindu Dogra population, the valley of Kashmir with its Kashmiri Muslim population, and Ladakh with its Tibetan Buddhist population. 

On the other side of the Line of Control, too, there are various peoples in the Pakistani administered part of Kashmir and in Gilgit-Baltiststan. Jats, Rajputs and various tribal groups speaking different languages live in those areas. 

It is unlikely that all of these peoples would choose to live under the rule of Kashmiris from the valley. The demand for a united and independent Kashmir must take this fact into account. Kashmiris have to recognise that Jammu & Kashmir is also a mini India in itself.

Pakistan’s demand for all of Kashmir is even more untenable. India cannot, and is not, going to hand Kashmir over, and that should be apparent by now. Nor does the Kashmiri demand for azadi translate into Pakistani rule. Freedom is presumably not the same as bondage under a different master. 

India is the status quoist power in the equation. The Indian government and people would, in all likelihood, settle for a peaceful and democratic administration in the part of Jammu and Kashmir now under Indian control. 

The only dispute here is over the extent of autonomy, and that is negotiable, as long as it stops short of secession. 

An honourable solution can be found that would end or diminish terror attacks in India, and the painful conflict in Kashmir, if all sides back away from their maximalist positions. 

Sarkari style

I wonder if there is a word for fear of government offices. Google doesn’t seem to know, which probably means there isn’t. However, since this is a common condition that surely afflicts a vast number of people in India, I would like to suggest a term. In departure from the tradition of Greek and Latin roots, we could call it Sarkarophobia.
I suffer from Sarkarophobia. This is strange considering my father worked all his life for the government, and I grew up making occasional visits to his office. This was in the days before computers made their appearance on desks, so files and paperweights and cups of tea were the only objects on desks. It all seemed very innocuous.
The scary nature of the files and paperweights became clear to me much later.
I began to discover the true power and weight of these things when I came to Delhi and bought a third-hand car. I needed a driving license, so I went to the regional transport office (RTO) to apply for one. I was immediately confronted by an army of touts. Walking past these persistent individuals, I tried to find the right forms, but had to ask several people before I was even able to find the right counter to collect this from. There was a rugby scrimmage going on around it. This is not a sport I fancy, but a man must do what a man must do. I entered the fray, and eventually emerged with the form.
It demanded certain things of me that I did not possess, such as proof of residence. I did not have a ration card. I use a mobile phone and had no landline, so the phone bill was not valid proof. The electricity bills were in the landlord’s name, not mine. My rent agreement, while apparently a legal document on stamp paper, was not recognised as proof of residence.
So I did a Kafkaesque run, up and down the building from counter to pillar to post. I took two days off from work to do this and even enlisted the help of a journalist who covered the ministry of surface transport. All to no avail.
Eventually, I had to throw in the towel. I simply could not prove to the honest folks at the RTO that I actually lived in Delhi. Why this should be so important escaped me, since any driving license is valid for all of India. They would be testing me to see if I could drive, so why did it matter what address my electricity bill came to, as long as I was an Indian citizen? I had a passport to prove that!
I eventually got a driving license from my home state, Meghalaya. I have been using it to drive it in Delhi for the last 10 years. The authorities have no problem with that.
I had similar difficulty in proving I live here when I tried to change the address on my passport. I went to the passport office once, saw the scrimmage, and ran away. I went back a second time, with greater resolve, but had to go back because the queue was too long and I had work to do. I went back a third time, bright and early and very determined. The officials were on strike.
Finally, I decided the straight and narrow was not the best path to be on in these complicated times. So I got an agent. The chap took an advance and my documents, but even he couldn’t do the trick. I didn’t have a ration card or voter ID from Delhi.
The whole business has left me bitter and a little befuddled. I don’t understand: if I already have a valid passport, doesn’t it mean I am a citizen of this country? If I am, then why do I need some dodgy document to be able to merely submit my passport form? There is police verification of the current address anyway! So what’s the point of that nonsense about electricity bills and so on?
Truly, the Sarkar has a mind of its own. Or perhaps it has none at all.

99 Things to do Before the Apocalypse

by Samrat X

The world’s imminent demise has been predicted by all sorts of people down the ages, and by now there’s quite a menu of options to how it could end. Would you like to get knocked off by an asteroid or comet, sink under rising seas as polar ice caps melt due to global warming, or freeze as the next ice age comes upon us, or get sucked into a black hole created in a nuclear experiment? At a pinch, if none of this works, we could always blow ourselves to clouds of vapour in a nuclear war.

The day this will happen is well known. Please mark it on your calendars: December 21, 2012. By now you’ve surely heard of the ancient Mayan prediction that the world will end on that day.

There is, therefore, so much to do, and so little time. To make sure I don’t miss out on anything really important, I’m putting together a list of 99 Things to Do Before the Apocalypse.

For starters, I’ve quit my job and started traveling. Heck, if this world and everything on it including me is going to end up, er, ended up, I want to see it before it pops. What a waste of a world and a life it would be to die without knowing what the world I lived on is like.

Secondly, I’ve decided to spend more quality time with people I like and care about. If life is short it would be wise to spend the time in good company.

Third, I’ve decided to live without fear…to live like I’m dying. Far too often the choices we make are dictated by absurd worries. We then live pained lives trying to convince ourselves we’ve averted a disaster, or even half hoping the worst will actually occur, because we made life choices worrying it might. It’s a bit like sleeping under the bed every night because you’re afraid an earthquake might strike.

Well, buildings do need to be designed to resist earthquakes. That makes sense. Lives, however, cannot yet be designed to avert death. That is a certainty every human is born with. In other words, in the context of human life, the worst will definitely happen. The best design for a good life therefore is one that is not cut unduly short, and allows for time well spent.

Individual ideas of what constitutes time well spent may vary. However there are some things essentially human that people across time and space seem to cherish.

A good meal is one. Good sleep is another. Loving relationships come next. Time spent in creative work or work that contributes to the social good would also count for something. If you’re spending too much of your time of life on other stuff, you’re probably making a mistake. You may not get that now. It will strike you when apocalypse comes, which could be tomorrow or a year and something from now.

It is likely that in the end this doomsday prediction will prove to be as false as all the ones that have come before it. That’s great. We humans need to be reminded of apocalypse from time to time to get some perspective into our lives.

That sales figure, that assignment, that crotchety boss, that lovers’ tiff, that ego tussle…you know what? It’s probably not that important.

This is the first of my columns for DNA

Who needs Valentine’s Day?

If you’re single and attractive, every day can be Valentine’s Day. If you’re in a stable relationship, the day holds expectation but no real thrill

Are you single this Valentine’s Day? Do those red heart shaped toys everywhere look like they’ve been put up to mock you? Are you seeing only thorns in the roses being peddled? Dear friend, as the Border Roads Organisation says, fikar not. Don’t fret. You may be single but you are not alone. There are a few million of us with you, and a few million who would happily return to our ranks if only that was easier to do. This love day business is just a galumphing capitalist marketing thingamajig, and it’s worth many crores. Money can’t buy you love but it does buy the soft toy makers Mercs.

So don’t worry about V day. For starters, you need to realize that if you’re single, every day is Valentine’s Day. Just fill your heart with love and spend the day, and maybe the night, with whoever you’re feeling the love for. As long as you don’t end up hurting anyone, including yourself, doing this, it’s perfectly cool. If it’s likely to mess up your life, avoid. A mess is easy to make and hard to clear up, you know.

The pleasures of the single life are gradually being forgotten in today’s world. That’s a bit strange, given how relationships all around seem so fragile nowadays. Marriages collapse around us all the time. Relationships akin to marriage flounder before the vows. The world of those in relationships looks pretty from the outside, but is usually less cheery on the inside, teetering as it does between the extremes of stress and boredom.

Traditionally, the single life has been marked as the highest kind of life in many cultures and religions. The Buddha chose to leave his wife and child to seek enlightenment. Jesus Christ never married.

Even thinkers less divine have not been especially enamored of marriage and relationships. The great Greek philosopher Socrates was unhappily married. He had a good quip on the subject: “If you get a good wife, you’ll be happy. If you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher!” He became a philosopher.

His wife must have been quite a woman. Plato, Socrates’ most famous disciple, who is said to have had some kind of affair with her, turned gay. He then advocated the view that partners of opposite sex should mate without commitment or love in order to procreate. Do it only for the species was his motto.

Till the early years of the last century, the single life was seen as a most excellent one in many places. From London to Calcutta, life after work revolved around the club, which was usually a ‘gentleman’s club’. The other leisure activities for a gentleman were to play cricket, or go hunting or shooting. Marriage and relationships were concerns for women. Real men had better things to do even when they were not exploring unknown continents or killing hapless animals. On those occasions when they felt the need for female company, they would go to courtesans. That was the custom from Paris to Tokyo to Calcutta.

Now there’s thankfully much greater gender equality, and marriage and relationships have become equal concerns for men and women. That is a good thing but there are side effects. Men in general are more soppy and needy than they used to be, and women, having discovered the joys of freedom, are arguably less interested in marriage and stable relationships. As a result, the default relationship status message now for the modern woman and man is “it’s complicated”.

That’s because contemporary notions of relationships involve far too many expectations.

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “While the contemporary Western ideal of marriage involves a relationship of love, friendship, or companionship, marriage historically functioned primarily as an economic and political unit used to create kinship bonds, control inheritance, and share resources and labour.”

In the last 100 years, it’s gone from being a relationship with minimal expectations to one where even love, friendship and companionship are considered insufficient. The idea of a good romantic relationship, created by fiction, drama and poetry, is one where the lovers never cease to feel butterflies in their stomach when they are around one another. Small wonder then that these exciting relationships last the span of a butterfly’s life. Success is their death; the moment they achieve stability, the butterflies depart.

Down the ages, the lover and the husband, or wife, have always been different people.

Remember all those great love stories from around the world - Romeo and Juliet, Heer and Ranjha, Devdas and Paro? They were all tragedies. They ended very badly for the lovers.

All successful love stories end with “…and then they lived happily ever after”. No fairy tale except Shrek goes into the details of the “happily ever after”. Not much drama in, “they drank their tea, and ate their meals, and paid their bills, and remembered anniversaries, for the next 40 years”.

That’s why only new lovers in the first flush of love can be truly happy on Valentine’s Day. For those who have been in stable relationships for a long period of time, it’s another predictable – and hence unexciting - day. For those who’ve been married for a long time, it can be a bit of a bore and a bit of a chore. Both partners must play their appointed roles in the charade of expectations built by advertisements and card companies. They must buy the obligatory roses and gifts and dress up and do the usual ‘special’ things that have long ceased to be special. If the love is gone, the day can weigh heavily on the couple. If the love is still there, it’s probably not what it was initially. It’s more mature, deeper, companionable rather than incendiary.

That sort of love doesn’t need a special day.

Nor do singles who are at peace with themselves.

Samrat’s first novel, The Urban Jungle, was published by Penguin earlier this month

What not to do at a book launch

by Gouri Dange and others

(PS: for the vast majority of interested, interesting and graceful attendees at book launches, what you will read below is for your amusement, and not aimed at you at all.)

At the recent launch party at the Serpentine Gallery in London's Hyde Park for Jonathan Franzen's new novel, Freedom, someone snatched the novelist's glasses from his face and ran off – leaving behind a ransom note asking for $100,000 for their return.

This piece of news finally made me reach for my keyboard and type out a long overdue list - of things that attendees at a book launch are well-advised not to do. No doubt, making off with the writer’s glasses straight from his nose would head the list, but there are other torts and misdemeanours that people would do well not to indulge in.

This list is not just a compilation from my own experiences, but of the experiences of several writers and writer-friends.

First, when we send you the invitation, don’t immediately mail back querulously questioning a) the venue that we have chosen/ are stuck with b) the date that we have arrived at after much intricate planning c) the choice of personality who has agreed to read from and release the book. Of course it could have been at a better place, better time, better season, with a celeb who you particularly like... and we’re sorry for disappointing you on all scores, but we don’t conjure up book launches by twirling a tinsel wand, we put them together after mental, physical, social and financial contortions of the most fantastic kind. So shut up and tell us in time if you’re coming or not, is all that is expected of you.

We writers, forced to be our own marketers and PR persons, are constantly trying to find the fine line between sending you the invite well in advance so that you can plan to come, but not sending it so early that you will forget about it. So whatever day we choose to send you the invite, do not expect us to continue playing secretary to you. Do have the grace to mark the day on your own, in your own calendar/similar device, and don’t expect us to remind you closer to the time. Some of you tend to snap at us when we do remind you. We can’t seem to get it right on this score, so be a little kind and less imperious.

Another constant see-saw that we are trying to work is this: We writers-in-launch-mode realise that your Blackberry gags at attachments, so our anxiously designed elaborate e-invitations end up irritating you. This is why we put the gist – place, date, time – in the body copy of the text. Surely that is considerate enough? So desist from writing to us in an offhand way from your wretched devices instructing us to put it all on SMS format for you so that you can send it to your friends. We understand the good intention, but it’s a pain, and why don’t you do it for us if you really love us? As for jpeg, pdf, corel and other such formats, we would love to pander to your every whim about what format you would like the invitation in, but deal with it, whatever format we send you.

If you really do intend coming for the event, stop groaning about traffic and distances, and plan how you will get there. Keep the address with you – either on your phone or scribbled on your palm (the body part or the device), or on paper or in your head. Do not, and this bears repetition, do not call the writer an hour before (sometimes half hour, or 5 minutes, even) the event itself, and ask for directions. And really, this is just not the time to provide a fresh insight into how the venue and day is all wrong and that parking is such a bitch in your city, and all that jazz. We writers do not personally arrange for your city roads to be such a bitch on any given evening.

Once you have made it to the venue, we really do not want to hear about what a hard time you had getting there, how you had to ditch your car somewhere and hoof it, how you went to the wrong store, and how the cabbie didn’t give you change. On any other day we would have some mindspace for this – today, we don’t.

Once the event begins, it would be nice if you would switch off your phone, and also not keep a fake engaged look on your face while you jab at your phone keys. Really, we don’t want just your bodies there, we want your minds, such as they are, present and participating.

Do not bring your own book that you just published to our book launch and hawk it. It’s plain lousy manners. As for working the crowd with your business card, please...I mean really. Some of you also tend to ask questions in the interactive part of the reading/launch, that are only a verbal vehicle to tell people who you are and how you’re so good at what you do. Stop. Just stop. Go do it somewhere else.

Remember, it’s about the book. So questions about finances, advances, and other intricacies of the book business can perhaps be asked of us on our email ids, but certainly not at the book launch. You are more than welcome to ask and tell about what you liked or didn’t like about the book. But asking after the health of my wealth? No.

When it is time to buy your copy and get it signed from the writer, do not leak out of the door empty-handed. Maybe you don’t want to wait in line for a signed copy and that’s fine. But do buy a copy. Well this isn’t a hard and fast rule...but it would be nice if you’d buy one.

If you do come up to our table for a signed copy, do not use this time to catch up on your/our offspring, parents, pets. This is not the time. And this is certainly not the time to tell us about how you had to make elaborate parking/babysitting/office arrangements to be there. Present the book, have it signed, say nice things, and let the queue move.

At launches where there are things like salmon or oysters on toast served, kindly do not eat the tidbit and leave the toast behind. (This is a well-documented occurrence.) This causes the waiters to walk about with just the dry toast pieces on a platter, and less canny guests end up having to eat those; they then become moody and sulky and tend to leave without buying any books.

Do not walk up to us writers after the launch and ask things like “But where’s the media? No media?” This may come as a shock to you, but a) journos don’t show up for most launches – their story is usually that ‘evenings are hellish at the office’ b) you may have not read them, but we do have reviews and interviews out there; it’s just that you may not see a real live journalist at our readings/launches c) it really is more important for a book to have actual readers present than the media, whatever anyone tells you.

Lastly, if you did not attend our reading/launch, do not appear on gmail chat or SMS two days after the event saying ‘How did your thing go? It was when?’ The answer doesn’t really matter to you, and we both know it. Our fingers can tap out only that many things in one lifetime, and telling you ‘the launch was awesome’ or ‘missed you there’ or some such thing is a waste of taps, which we want to save for our actual writing.

Nobody ever finds the one...and everybody finds the one

A couple of years ago, I found myself dealing with a particularly strong round of parental pressure to marry and the simultaneous absence in my life of anyone with whom there seemed any prospect of a happy life together. As I contemplated the twin possibilities of lifelong singlehood on the one hand and a potentially unhappy marriage to someone my mother wheeled out on the other, my future looked bleak. In a moment of weakness – perhaps brought on by alcohol – I told a woman friend what I was going through.
Shaizia had been an ad film producer in Mumbai before giving it up to run a lodge and restaurant in a Tamil Nadu temple town called Thiruvannamalai. She joked about being the first Muslim woman saint in the place. Her experiences, and the difficulties she had been through, had made her wise. I trusted in her ability to give good advice.
But that day, she said something I had trouble believing. “It’s possible to love almost anyone”, she told me.
When we are in love, we believe that no one else can take the place of the loved one. There is, we believe, something unique about the person that makes us love them. In that state, we forgive – and even like - their flaws and idiosyncracies. Of course this honeymoon generally doesn't last, and the scales fall off our eyes. Love then experiences its true test. If it survives the test, we marry and perhaps procreate. If not, we pick up the pieces of our heart and look again.
Most of us do fall in love more than once in our lifetimes. Every individual on this planet is unique (hence that quip: you’re unique, just like everyone else). More than one of those unique individuals can – and usually does – appeal to us, at different times. In fact, in some life-complicating instances, more than one person may even appeal to us at the same time.
I’ve been in love a few times. None of them lasted, to my regret, but they were all beautiful relationships in their own different ways. Some were incomplete, some even unspoken. They were relationships that simmered under the surface, rich with the possibilities of what might have been.
Thinking back, I realise there is little in common in those women I loved. They were all very different people, from diverse backgrounds. Yes, they were all in a certain age band, they all had a decent education, and they were all attractive. But then, there must be at least a million women in this world of six billion people who fit those criteria.
I could possibly have fallen in love with any of them. It was other factors that had determined my choices in the end.
The first of these was availability. I had only ever fallen in love with women who suggested they might be available – not easily, perhaps, but the door wasn’t shut and bolted. These women had come into my life – and I into theirs – at times when we both seemed open to the idea of flirting and dating. Attraction had had the chance to express itself.
The second was proximity. A relationship could develop simply because the person was around to spend time with. I’ve had incredible bonding with at least one woman with whom no relationship ever happened because we were in different cities. Distance snuffed out the flames before they had a chance to spark romance. After endless long Gmail chats and phone conversations, we had moved on to date other people.
We truly grew to love those ‘other people’. The beginnings might have been guarded, and casual. Yet, in time, the relationships acquired a tenderness and affection that was special. The other people became the most important people in our lives. Of course it wasn’t always perfect – is anything ever – but it was special enough and rare enough.
I wasn’t really thinking of love when I entered this other relationship. It seemed like an interesting friendship, with vague possibilities of becoming something more. Yet, it grew to become an addiction. I had not set out to love her. I doubted there could be a relationship between us. Yet it happened, because I did not stop it from happening.
It’s easy enough, really, to fall in love, as long as one is not decided against it.

MIB to the rescue

The French and Belgians are considering banning it. The Australians might follow. The Saudis and Iranians are quite appreciative of it. And in our own India, there are all shades of opinion about it. Considering all the excitement this garment generates, you’d think the burqa is, well, the bikini.

The battle of the burqa — or more accurately, the naqab, which is the veil that covers the face — seems to be about a lot of things. It pits the ‘liberal’ West against the forces of orthodoxy in Islam. It pits feminists against male chauvinists. It pits a secularism that denies individuals the right to exhibit religious symbols in public against those who wish to wear such symbols on their faces.

At core, the issue is really simple. It’s about the freedom of adults to choose their wardrobes. If a person wishes to go about in a bikini, that’s her choice. If she wishes to go about in a burqa and naqab, that’s her choice too. No priest or government has any business telling individuals what clothes to wear.

Of course, priests and governments love to take themselves seriously. They love to exercise control. And they have power, of a sort, so defying them is not always easy.

This is where the MIB should come in to zap those evil control freak aliens in our midst. MIB, short for Men In Burqas, would subvert the orthodoxies of both the governments and the priests simultaneously.

It would subvert the governments very directly, by defying the ban against the garment. It would also subvert the mullahs, because it challenges their use of the garment, which is to establish male control over women.

If men in all the places where the burqa is a contentious garment begin wearing it voluntarily in public, it makes a mockery of all the illiberal forces battling over it.

No God in Sight

Good Hindus believe a dip in the right river at the right spot on the right day resets their sin counter to zero. The Kumbh Mela has grown over thousands of years around this belief. Kumbh bathers believe they emerge from the river with freshly washed souls, and possibly places in heaven.

This year the Mahakumbh is in Haridwar in Uttarakhand till April 28. The river is of course the holy Ganga which is severely polluted like all our major rivers. The perfect spot is a stretch of about 100 m at a place called Har ki Pauri. The right days are 11 holy days, which come once every 12 years. However even among the holy days there is a hierarchy. This April 14 was Mesh Sankranti, the day of the final Shahi Snan, the holiest of holies.

Since there are 850 million Hindus in India, most desirous of clear consciences and heaven, the crowds of bathers on holy days can get rather overwhelming.

Delhi to Haridwar is 208 km. The drive took nine hours thanks to traffic jams. At the end of it, we were deposited in the middle of a jam somewhere on the outskirts of the Kumbh town. Crowds milled around everywhere, carrying bags and bundles on their heads, jostling to unknown destinations. We picked our burdens and joined the unending procession of souls.

It took us another two and a half hours of walking to get to the media centre near Har ki Pauri. It was past midnight when we reached. The officials had left. We had been told there were tents reserved for us, but couldn’t get any. We were homeless.

The HT photographer with whom I was travelling had bumped into a friend on the way. This gentleman suggested we try our luck in hotels. It seemed unlikely we would find a room; the roadsides were jammed with people sleeping wherever they could find space. But Mr Tyagi knew a hotelier, so we went.

Rs 1,200 room for Rs 10,000

It was a plain little hotel near the Ganga called Suryoday. There was one last 3-bed room available. The tariff on the board opposite the reception counter said Rs 1,200. The hotelier said he would give it to us because of his great friendship with Mr Tyagi, but it would cost Rs 10,000 a night. He wasn’t inclined to budge from this price; hotel rooms in the area were being taken for Rs 60,000 for four nights, he said.

Mr Tyagi called a couple of other hotels, and found this to be true. So, after some deliberation, we took the room. Both photographers had cameras and laptops with them. We were all carrying things we were afraid we’d lose. We couldn’t sleep on the pavement.

Over the next couple of days, the crowds increased. On April 14, about 14 million people took the Ganga dip in Haridwar, according to the Uttarakhand police. Haridwar town and district together have a population of 1.4 million. With more than 10 times its population in visitors, the entire town looked like Howrah railway station or Mumbai Central at rush hour.

Everywhere, crowds milled day and night, on their way for the holy dip. No one seemed to know the way. Everyone just walked where the flow took them. It was fine; all roads led to the holy dip. Occasionally, someone would stop, exhausted from the walk, and get shoved along by a waiting policeman blowing his whistle. Stopping was not allowed.

The only places one could stop for a brief bit were the roadside shops. There is an industry of spiritual supplements out there, with stalls selling everything from rudraksha beads to tridents.

Apart from these objects, Babas and Matajis of all hues peddle their brands of spirituality. They stare out of hoardings, selling a range of spiritual options. There’s Soham Baba, whose hoardings call for an end to global warming. And the sants of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, who predictably warn that Hinduism is under threat. And even Yogmata Keila Devi, who is a Japanese woman named Keiko Aikawa. Her cause is world peace.

They all have thousands of followers who crowd into their camps. It’s a bit like Pragati Maidan during the Auto Expo, with tents instead of permanent structures, and brands of Hinduism instead of car brands.

I could feel no spirituality in the surroundings. Not in the greedy hoteliers ripping off all comers for as much as they can. Not in the cycle rickshaw pullers, who demanded Rs 1,200 for a 6 km ride. Not in the priests on the ghats, promising pujas at heightened rates. Certainly not in the politicians on their VIP visits, pretending to wash away their myriad sins. Not even in the Naga sadhus who raced into the waters of the Ganga at Har ki Pauri for the Shahi Snan on April 14. It had been reduced to a media spectacle, because there were only the sadhus, hemmed in by rows of police, on one ghat. And facing them, a tower with the world’s media confined to it like animals in a pen, over an empty ghat from which the pilgrims had been forcibly evicted by the police.

And yet … it’s a great pilgrimage.

In our journey, we had become part of the flow of humanity, solitary souls lost in that great river as it coursed to its inevitable destination. Our possessions had become burdens we were forced to carry. Our companions had been chosen largely by fate. Some fellow travellers, we lost in the melee, and could not meet again for the rest of the journey. We encountered greed and corruption, but also the simple faith of the millions who undertook this terrible journey.

The Kumbh is a great pilgrimage, because it is a metaphor for human life.

A Montaigne essay

Of repentance

OTHERS form man; I only report him: and represent a particular one, ill fashioned enough, and whom, if I had to model him anew, I should certainly make something else than what he is: but that's past recalling. Now, though the features of my picture alter and change, 'tis not, however, unlike: the world eternally turns round; all things therein are incessantly moving, the earth, the rocks of Caucasus, and the pyramids of Egypt, both by the public motion and their own. Even constancy itself is no other but a slower and more languishing motion. I cannot fix my object; 'tis always tottering and reeling by a natural giddiness: I take it as it is at the instant I consider it; I do not paint its being, I paint its passage; not a passing from one age to another, or, as the people say, from seven to seven years, but from day to day, from minute to minute. I must accommodate my history to the hour: I may presently change, not only by fortune, but also by intention. 'Tis a counterpart of various and changeable accidents, and of irresolute imaginations, and, as it falls out, sometimes contrary: whether it be that I am then another self, or that I take subjects by other circumstances and considerations: so it is, that I may peradventure contradict myself, but, as Demades said, I never contradict the truth. Could my soul once take footing, I would not essay but resolve: but it is always learning and making trial.

I propose a life ordinary and without lustre: 'tis all one; all moral philosophy may as well be applied to a common and private life, as to one of richer composition: every man carries the entire form of human condition. Authors communicate themselves to the people by some especial and extrinsic mark; I, the first of any, by my universal being; as Michel de Montaigne, not as a grammarian, a poet, or a lawyer. If the world find fault that I speak too much of myself, I find fault that they do not so much as think of themselves. But is it reason, that being so particular in my way of living, I should pretend to recommend myself to the public knowledge? And is it also reason that I should produce to the world, where art and handling have so much credit and authority, crude and simple effects of nature, and of a weak nature to boot? Is it not to build a wall without stone or brick, or some such thing, to write books without learning and without art? The fancies of music are carried on by art; mine by chance. I have this, at least, according to discipline, that never any man treated of a subject he better understood and knew, than I what I have undertaken, and that in this I am the most understanding man alive: secondly, that never any man penetrated farther into his matter, nor better and more distinctly sifted the parts and sequences of it, nor ever more exactly and fully arrived at the end he proposed to himself. To perfect it, I need bring nothing but fidelity to the work; and that is there, and the most pure and sincere that is anywhere to be found. I speak truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare; and I dare a little the more, as I grow older; for, methinks, custom allows to age more liberty of prating, and more indiscretion of talking of a man's self. That cannot fall out here, which I often see elsewhere, that the work and the artificer contradict one another: "Can a man of such sober conversation have written so foolish a book?" Or "Do so learned writings proceed from a man of so weak conversation?" He who talks at a very ordinary rate, and writes rare matter, 'tis to say that his capacity is borrowed and not his own. A learned man is not learned in all things: but a sufficient man is sufficient throughout, even to ignorance itself; here my book and I go hand in hand together. Elsewhere men may commend or censure the work, without reference to the workman; here they cannot: who touches the one, touches the other. He who shall judge of it without knowing him, will more wrong himself than me; he who does know him, gives me all the satisfaction I desire. I shall be happy beyond my desert, if I can obtain only thus much from the public approbation, as to make men of understanding perceive that I was capable of profiting by knowledge, had I had it; and that I deserved to have been assisted by a better memory.

(This is part of an essay by Michel de Montaigne, a 16th Century French philosopher)

Let the climate change if it must

For the longest time, I didn't know what to think on this whole climate change business. It seemed very important and exciting but it was also rather hard to tell where the truth lay. As a concerned citizen, someone who cares for trees and animals and the planet, I was inclined to side with the environmentalists. I had seen the beautiful hills of Northeast India being decimated. I knew that the song of the pines could no longer be heard in the towns there. We had mosquitoes, and traffic jams, and it was warmer, so people had fans in shops and even houses. All this was new, and definitely not nice.

The thinking got a little complicated because I also figured that the things causing the pollution are things I, for one, am not prepared to live without. I need my electricity. If it comes from polluting thermal plants, which 70 per cent of it in India does, well, too bad. I'm not giving up on bijli because of pollution far away.

I also need my car and plane. I've done my time in buses and traveled the breadth of the country unreserved on trains. I can afford a flight now, so I will take it.

If this is how I feel, it seems rather mean to deny others like me the right to a better life. The half a billion or so people in this country who live without electricity can't be faulted if they too want it. The morality on cars and planes may be a little more complicated, but surely, if someone gets an education, finds a job, and buys a car or planet ticket from his own hard earned money, there's nothing wrong with it?

So let the climate change if it has to. Technology will hopefully find a way, like it always has, to keep us ahead of doomsday scenarios like Malthus'. It's a risk we really can't avoid.

We can, however, ponder two statements. Gandhi once said the earth has enough for every man's need, but not every man's greed. Some years ago, I asked Amartya Sen about his thought on this, and he said, no one can curb the desire of people for a better life.

No terror without safe havens

Do you remember the pictures of Saddam Hussein when he was caught? The dictator who had caused three major wars and sent more than a million people to their deaths looked like a beggar. He lay on the ground, with a bloody mouth, disheveled. It was possible suddenly to feel pity even for him.

V Prabhakaran’s end was worse. The ‘tiger’ who had killed so many lay in the mud with half his head blown off.

The point of invoking those memories is to say that in the end, they were both ordinary mortals. Without the protection of their soldiers and their states – a temporary de facto one in Prabhakaran’s case - they were nothing.

That is the fact which leaders of some of the major insurgencies in India’s northeast are probably coming to terms with now. The United Liberation Front of Asom and the National Democratic Front of Bodoland have been feared forces in Assam. They derived a large part of their power from the fact that their leaders enjoyed safe haven in Bangladesh, out of reach of Indian forces.

Now that haven is gone, and suddenly, the leaders of both these groups find themselves in captivity. They are powerless and their groups are in disarray.

It only took a change in government policy in Dhaka to bring about the sudden change in conditions. The capture of ULFA chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa, which could not be achieved since 1979, was finally done in days, without military action.

There is now a window of opportunity for the Indian government to bring lasting peace to the northeast. The extremists who will never give up their delusions of grand homelands can be sidelined. The corrupt, who make a living out of terrorism, can be safely jailed. The moderates can be talked to, and heard.

A similar chance of peace might have emerged across South Asia if the government of Pakistan were to do what the Bangladesh government did. It is known and acknowledged by pretty much every government in the world that the leaderships of the Taliban, al Qaeda and Lashkar e Toiba are in Pakistan. Dawood Ibrahim has been known to live there for years.

Yet the United States is forced to send 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan and spend 30 billion more dollars because the Pakistanis won’t deliver five or six gents to them. India loses less; it is forced into a silly and pointless exercise of sending dossiers, and a much more useful and necessary exercise of getting its police and intelligence agencies in order.

The al Qaeda is in disarray. The Taliban is divided and on the run. Yet Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar remain sources of power, because they are protected by powerful interests in Pakistan. Their protectors retain them as bargaining chips and pawns, despite the risks to their own country.

President Obama’s Afghan strategy is likely to achieve little without real cooperation from Pakistan. Merely holding Afghanistan’s population centres will ensure status quo at best. Any lasting improvement will come only if the real powers in this game – those who protect Osama and his ilk – stop doing so. That would be real cooperation, and it would help stabilize all of South Asia.

This is not to say that all political violence in the region would end if Pakistan’s military changed its policy. The Maoists in India and Nepal, for example, would still be around. The desire of many Kashmiris for independence or more autonomy would still live on. Governments would still need to address legitimate political and social grievances.

But the random bomb blasts that kill innocent civilians might hopefully become a thing of the past.

Thief! Or, How the Net Stole my Time

It’s going to be a tearaway fast busy day at work. I look at the clock as I sit down before my computer, and log in to my mail to check for important messages. Must hurry, I’v got to get to work early. Oh, the first five messages are from Facebook! Nothing terribly important, of course, but it’ll only take a moment to see what they are about. Great, a friend request from a guy I haven’t met since college! That’s so wonderful. And an invitation to a friend’s book launch. Darn, I won’t be able to make it. I must let him know.

So I log in to Facebook. There’s a funny status message from a pal asking who among us would make the best private detective. Everyone is nominating himself or herself, so I nominate myself as well. A couple of other status messages also demand action. There’s one saying “zeitgeist: raat bhar, aapki tweet aati rahi”. Haha. Zeitgeist: All night, your tweets kept coming. Wonder who that could be. Shashi Tharoor?

Reminds me, I must log in to Twitter and see what Twitter Minister has updated now. His tweets are often interesting. Today it’s about him speaking his first words in Parliament. “Alas, they were formulaic: I beg to lay papers on the table of the House”, the writer-diplomat-minister laments. Would have been more fun if he’d started with a quote from… Michael Jackson. For that matter, the Budget speech would have been more fun if Pranab da had quoted Michael Jackson.

There’s a tweet from New Scientist magazine as well. Monkeys have a memory for grammar, it says, but like the rest of us, they occasionally misuse apostrophes.

I guess that proves Darwin was right, finally. Now enough of creationism.

I quickly scan the rest of the Facebook and Twitter updates to see who’s doing what. Lucky sod, she’s in Scotland. Oh, that bastard is gloating about the Bangalore climate. And what’s that nincompoop doing with a hot babe in Manali? Life is so unfair.

Ah, a bit of useful info, finally. A geek friend has put up a link to how you can remote control your PC using email, Twitter or SMS. Wow. It seems you can actually turn your computer off or on, or log out from pretty much anywhere in the world, with just a tweet or SMS! All it takes is one free app.

Would I want to remote control my PC? What if something goes wrong and someone else takes over my PC via remote control? Hm. Let me think. Actually, let me Google. And Digg.

Oh, here it is. Some guy who calls himself Johan Marcus Guy has written that he got the instructions wrong, and now his PC is controlling him via Twitter and SMS.

“Just moments ago, my Windows sent me an SMS request to attack my dog with a golf club. I think he'll be fine, but he did sustain traumatic injuries.

This is not the main problem however, the emails are.

In the past three hours I've been made to buy 25 shipments of Viagra, and to look for hot grannies in my neighborhood. This has hurt my self-esteem, but it seems that Windows is a cruel mistress with no calculations for caring or the basic principles of love,” he writes.

Maybe I should stay away from this free remote control download. I don’t want my PC controlling me. Heck, no.

Oh no! What time is it? Damn, I’m late!

Zen and the art of Charlie Wilson's war

I'm not much of a TV fan, but once in a while it is quite pleasant to watch. A few days ago, finding myself at home with nothing much to do, I switched on the TV and flipped channels past Rakhi's swayamvar and suchlikes, stopping finally at the film Charlie Wilson's War on, I think, HBO.

It's a terrific film, and claims to be based on facts. It shows how one US Congressman may have influenced the course of history.

Congressman Charlie Wilson happened to spot on TV that the Afghan mujahideen were getting smashed by the Soviet Union because the Soviets had far better weapons. The mujahideen were fighting using a few WW II rifles while the Soviets had tanks and aircraft. So Wilson decides to lobby for more money and weapons for the mujahideen.

The rest is known. The mujahideen get their Stingers and their AKs and RPGs and eventually bleed the Soviet Union pretty much to death.

When the Soviets leave, the Congressman has a huge party. He asks CIA's station chief in Afghanistan why he doesn't look overjoyed. The guy narrates a Zen story. It goes something like this:

An old farmer had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit.

"Such bad luck," they said sympathetically.

"We'll see," the farmer replied.

The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses.

"How wonderful," the neighbors exclaimed.

"We'll see," replied the old man.

The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune.

"We'll see," answered the farmer.

The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son's leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out.

"We'll see" said the farmer.

Armchair activists and the struggle in Iran

I feel sorry for all the good natured armchair activist types. They rarely know what fight they are really fighting. Take the recent protests in Iran, for example. A lot of armchair activists around the world joined in support. They wrote Twitter messages and Facebook status updates, and some even went so far as to send forwards! They probably had the best of intentions, mostly, but it is quite likely that they were actually supporting one bunch of radical Shia against another.

In a report released today, the US think tank Stratfor has analysed the causes of the present unrest in Iran. Their analysis is that it is primarily a fight between the class of clergy that came to power after the Iranian revolution of 1979 and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who wants his own appointees in the ruling clergy. George Friedman writes that the focus of the current power struggle was not Mir Mousavi, a founding member of the Islamic Republican Party who was prime minister of Iran during its disastrous war with Iraq, but Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Here is part of what Startfor wrote:

Rafsanjani represents the class of clergy that came to power in 1979. He served as president from 1989-1997, but Ahmadinejad defeated him in 2005. Rafsanjani carries enormous clout within the system as head of the regime’s two most powerful institutions — the Expediency Council, which arbitrates between the Guardian Council and parliament, and the Assembly of Experts, whose powers include oversight of the supreme leader. Forbes has called him one of the wealthiest men in the world. Rafsanjani, in other words, remains at the heart of the post-1979 Iranian establishment.

Ahmadinejad expressly ran his recent presidential campaign against Rafsanjani, using the latter’s family’s vast wealth to discredit Rafsanjani along with many of the senior clerics who dominate the Iranian political scene. It was not the regime as such that he opposed, but the individuals who currently dominate it. Ahmadinejad wants to retain the regime, but he wants to repopulate the leadership councils with clerics who share his populist values and want to revive the ascetic foundations of the regime. The Iranian president constantly contrasts his own modest lifestyle with the opulence of the current religious leadership.

Recognizing the threat Ahmadinejad represented to him personally and to the clerical class he belongs to, Rafsanjani fired back at Ahmadinejad, accusing him of having wrecked the economy. At his side were other powerful members of the regime, including Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani, who has made no secret of his antipathy toward Ahmadinejad and whose family links to the Shiite holy city of Qom give him substantial leverage. The underlying issue was about the kind of people who ought to be leading the clerical establishment. The battlefield was economic: Ahmadinejad’s charges of financial corruption versus charges of economic mismanagement leveled by Rafsanjani and others.

When Ahmadinejad defeated Mir Hossein Mousavi on the night of the election, the clerical elite saw themselves in serious danger. The margin of victory Ahmadinejad claimed might have given him the political clout to challenge their position. Mousavi immediately claimed fraud, and Rafsanjani backed him up. Whatever the motives of those in the streets, the real action was a knife fight between Ahmadinejad and Rafsanjani.

This may not be the whole truth either, but since Startfor (www.stratfor.com) is not known as the ‘shadow CIA’ for nothing, presumably they know a little more than the rest of us.

So next time before you jump on to a bandwagon, look before you leap.