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Making Cat Calls
Mohammad bin Tughlaq had ruled over vast stretches and tracts of land that today constitute India. He was a great ruler who left behind a legacy. A legacy that is today most identifiable as an adjectival derivative of his name – Tughlaqesque. The word is too complex to have an exact synonym. Tughlaqesque would mean exotic, Quixotic, far-fetched, well-meaning, ill-conceived, arrogant, grandiose, all at the same time. It is also a word that can be routinely associated with India’s later-day rulers. Especially, the ones who have lorded over us since Independence.
There is one Tughlaqesque idea that is doing the rounds these days and the gullible Indian media has fallen flat for it – that of reintroducing the cheetah in India.
Seeing the cheetah in the Indian wild is any Indian wildlifer’s wet dream. It is something that sets our hearts aflutter. But let’s get real and see what this dream is all about.
The minister and his words
As the Nagas do, Swu shall they reap
Had he not become the leader of the dreaded insurrectionist organisation, he would probably have been serving in a mission. The last time that negotiations were held between the Indian government and Naga guerrillas in the late Sixties, playing a key role was a suave young man in his mid-30s. Another 30 summers later, the same man is set to play a bigger role in the current negotiations. Meet the soft-spoken, deeply-religious chairman of the underground National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), Isak Chishi Swu.
Memories of another death
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Sometime in the second half of the 1970s there was this frail boy who one fine morning fell heads over heels in love with cricket, a game he could not play by any measure. Because he could neither bat, nor bowl, or field. He loved the game, nonetheless. For its sheer grace than anything else, perhaps. The more he realised that he could not weild the willow or hurl the cherry, the more he grew passionate about the game.
He loved the game because of two players who used to be the favourite Sportsweek pin-up boys at the time – two of the Amarnath brothers – the stylish Surinder and the gritty Mohinder. He rooted for the former more than anyone else donning the India flannels. It was just because of him perhaps that he had begun loving the game that those days only gentlemen played.
A requiem for a friend
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I was feeling slightly restless – what, with having landed up like those incorrigible Virgos way ahead of time. My first official day as a journalist. I didn’t want to be late.
I sat on that uncomfortable so-called sofa in the crammed lobby of the Press Trust of India (PTI) regional office in Calcutta that rainy October morning of 1991. It didn’t quite dampen my spirits – whatever significant I do, it always seems to rain that day.
So, as it kept drizzling outside, my restlessness grew. Why the blazes am I the only one here to join as a trainee journalist? I was contemplating whether I should step outside for a smoke, when two young men appeared on the doorway.
Laurel and Hardy, I said to myself. They were almost so. One was lean, the other thickset. Well, almost. They were here as trainee journalists too, they told the receptionist, and were promptly directed towards me and asked to wait.
His grace
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As he, almost silently, parted the curtains and glided into the living room, it was for me as if the curtains had lifted and the show had begun.
Cinemar manush (the man from the films) was how I would refer to him as whenever I saw a picture of his anywhere, as a five-year-old. The man I had loved and loathed in Tapan Sinha’s cinematic adaptation of ‘The Prisoner of Zenda’ (Jhinder Bandi) . Ray’s actor. Charulata’s Amal. The original Bengali rock ‘n roll star, you would have known had you seen him twist opposite Tanuja in Teen Bhubaner Pare. This and more flashed through my mind in that moment, as I stood up to greet him.
Yes, I am (Salim Durrani)
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It was a dank wintry evening of November 1993 and we had had our fill of Bengali sweets. My girlfriend and I were stepping out of a confectioner’s in Gol Park when I noticed a lanky, slightly slouching, man on the pavement managing to fish out a cigarette from one of his overloaded trouser pockets. He had a weatherbeaten look about him. He lit the cigarette and let a disinterested gaze swoop over the teeming. He could do so, for he stood tall enough, albeit with that unmistakeable slouch. But the crowds did not notice him; in fact, no one did, except I.