Snow

When I was young I believed that Coimbatore was the largest city I will ever see on my own in my life. The ‘on my own’ condition is because I have already seen Chennai and Kuala Lumpur as a kid thanks to my father. Life looked bleak. Unemployment ruled. A trip to Coimbatore across the Walayar border, one hour by road was a major event. We would watch English movies, which come to Coimbatore a bit earlier than they reached sleepy Palghat, eat Dosas in Annapoorna restaurant and take the night train back travelling ticketless. The Tamilians on the other hand would come to Palghat, loud and boisterous, booze to their heart’s content (those were days of prohibition in Tamil Nadu) see Malayalam movies which had some pretty hot stuff those days and go back. How uncomplicated life was! For someone with such modest aims in life, I haven’t done too badly. I have visited many countries, eaten in great restaurants (Wolfing down caviar and foie gras pretending they taste as good as pazham pori lest the hosts consider me impolite). That’s me- a small time country boy who did pretty well without deserving any of it.

But I haven’t seen snow. Twice when I alighted at Charles De Gaulle airport in France, the temperature was minus two degrees but I had missed snowfalls by one day. As I boarded the plane on Thanksgiving Day in Washington DC, my last question to my hosts was when it snows here. When I see fluffy clouds from the window of an aircraft, I imagine it is white snow covering me in its cool blanket. To someone who lived in years of dark monsoon rains and hot humid summers, snow was only in English movies. Or Hindi movies where Shammi Kapoor is rolling down the slope in Gulmarg hills, crazy gyrations and all, wooing a perky Mumtaz, who I am sure, must be hoping deep inside that he would just vanish into cold Himalayan air. But snow was always there in books- intertwined with great love stories, silent and deep. A very romantic thing- snow that is. There are birches, tall silver Oaks and poplars covered in the white substance. There is a humming in the ears as you walk with hands inside pockets, breath forming vapours in the air. You walk into a nice heated house where a log fire burns. You sit by the fireside and drink the golden liquid which warms your insides and fall asleep reading in the couch.

Back to reality… Last month I read a marvelous book by Iain Banks called Raw Spirit. Iain Banks is a Scottish writer of science fiction. But Raw spirit is a dream commission from a publisher to take a tour of the distilleries of Scotland, tasting various Scotch Whiskies and write about them. The book is about the quest for a perfect dram of whisky- the warm liquid that keeps the insides warm on a cold snowy evening. It was a trip to the distilleries in his huge car, tasting single malts of Islay like Laphroig to highland whiskies like Glenmorangie- all through the cold, damp, windy and snowy places in Scotland. You can imagine Banks, getting calls from old friends ‘are you sure you can do this task all by yourself? Do you need some help? How do you taste whisky and drive? Are you sure you don’t need an ole friend like me on the wheels?’ I envy him although my choice of poison these days is not whisky but Absolut Vodka once a week under the spotlight of harsh glares…So after having read all books by Ian Rankin, the other great Scotsman of crime fiction, I decide to read other books by Iain Banks. I pick up Wasp Factory, his first book. It is dark, horrible and I couldn’t guess that the same good natured, fun loving guy has written it. All about a hormonal experiment gone bad, carefully planned killing of little kids by other small kids etc. I can’t take it any more. I have sworn off Banks. He might be the brightest guy on earth with a great sense of humour. But no gory murders of little kids- I don’t have the stomach for it.
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I have been reading a lot about financial crises, recessions, meltdowns, run on banks etc. It is all part of an assignment I have to submit next week. The assignment turns out to be mediocre. But I came out with a better perspective. I know something about complex derivatives, the Scholes- Black model for valuing options, the Tulip mania of 1600s which was the mother of all financial crashes, the Great Depression years, how the IMF gave pretty crappy advice to countries reeling under Asian financial crisis etc. I have been reading Charles Morris, George Soros, Niall Ferguson and a lot of other writers on global finance. I might scrape through the course but it has revived an interest in things I have forgotten long ago.
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Talking about political entertainment, I had been watching the proceedings of Australian Parliament live. It was so disappointing. The grandeur of Indian Parliament is missing. In a small hall, the PM sits by a long table placed in front of the speaker, turning sideways to the benches and making his pitch. There is really no space for the Honourable Members to rush to the well, throw shoes & microphone stands and indulge in other antics. Australians get very little entertainment from their politics. All the politicians are rather neatly turned out, the men in boring suits and the women in nice dresses. They don’t have Swamis in loincloths, mullahs in skullcaps, guitarists in jeans (did you know we have one of them too?) and journalists in Rajasthani headgear. So at the visual level itself we score several points over Aussies- not to mention our total dominance in the variety of languages and the action we offer in conduct of Parliamentary business. If you watch the proceedings of Aussie Parliament live, you would nod off to sleep in no time. I found this brilliant piece by Manas Chakravarty in Mint. It is about entertainment deficit in Indian Politics. Try it…
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?sectionName=HomePage&id=b9da5964-fafb-402d-b037-34c853b65ee0&Headline=Entertainment+deficit