Doer and dreamer

Vikram Sarabhai: A Life  Amrita Shah  Penguin  220 pages

IT is astonishing that Vikram Sarabhai had only one mistress. With the amount of diverse thinking that he continuously did, how did his brain quieten to sleep without the help of ‘live’ sleeping pills?

A night out in Mumbai

LOW LIFE

When the party got over, it was past 1 am. There were no trains for Vashi in Navi Mumbai where I had to reach the two young women, Kavita and Rashmi, who were with me.

“I’ll show you Mumbai by night,” I said. They were excited. I told them to phone their parents that they’d be back in the morning and not to worry.

Ashtakanya saubhagyavati bhava

KARTIK Purnima was only a week away. Ajay was excited. Unfortunately, his mother and sister were excited too. And that was cause for much gloom.

One day, just one day in the year he got to stay out all night and have fun with his friends. And they had to bring in WOMEN!  Why? He moaned with friends and they shook their heads and clenched their fists in anger and frustration.

Dadi was dada of irreverence

LOW LIFE

ON International Women’s Day last week (see endnote), I played with memories of my illiterate grandmother Annapurna. She was the most irreverent person in my life. She became my coach as soon as I learned to walk and talk.

On the future of women’s gaalis

FREEWHEELING

BROODING about the origin, history and the future of gaalis is driving me nuts. I am overflowing with gaalis because the area of my interest is not gaalis in general, but gaalis used by women. That is uncharted territory.

Have we become deaf to noise?

FREEWHEELING

IMAGINE this near-future Mumbai scenario. A young couple is making love in their newly acquired MHADA lottery flat. But they are not fully nude. Both have their ears plugged and they convey “I love you!” and “Aaah! Aaaaah!” through their mobile phones.

Sibling rivalry

FREEWHEELING

MANY years ago, during an India-Pakistan cricket match in Mumbai, I got a pavement artist to paint this on a T-shirt:

Make LOVE!
Not WAR!
SCREW the Pakis!

I wore the T-shirt for two days. It provoked smiles in the Press Club and in crowded trains.

A musical ear to the future

FREEWHEELING

AS SOON as a baby is born it knows how to connect with its mother and suck milk. But if the baby hasn’t spent nine months in the womb and emerges early, it has problems. It doesn’t know how to suck and feed. It has other ailments as well.

Now musical therapy has been developed to help premature babies overcome their challenges. Not a bad medical idea. But it is very delayed care. Music therapy should begin soon after the baby is conceived.

Eye on the future

FREEWHEELING

MUMBAI is becoming spectacular. Even nursery and KG kids are now spectacled. Imagine a future Sachin Tendulkar wearing hi-tech goggles without which he can see the ball only when it is six inches from his face.

The future of money

FREEWHEELING

A couple of days after BEST raised bus fares, I paid Rs 7 for the three-stop journey from Handloom House near CST to the Museum. I could have walked that distance in ten minutes. My thoughts turned to the devaluation of the Indian rupee. I wondered when the same journey would cost Rs 500, or Rs 1,000, or Rs 10,000.

Science fiction, science fantasy and mythology

SCIENCE in the West is a consequence of the revolt against the bullying of the Christian Church. The Church said God created everything in a week and anyone who questions this Truth is a sinner who must be severely punished. This provoked the thinking types, who wondered how it all happened, when did it begin, why so many life forms were created, is Earth the centre of the universe, why does the apple fall, and so on. These mind games were originally undercover activities, but they produced geniuses like Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, and many more. Science became a respectable pursuit as the power of the Church declined.

Beyond the 9/11 wars

The 9/11 Wars  Jason Burke  Penguin  710 pages

ON 11 September 2001 Osama bin Laden’s jihadis blew up the Twin Towers in New York, killing 3,000 people. In the decade of 9/11 wars that followed, a million soldiers, policemen and civilians were killed or wounded, mostly in Muslim countries.

In the years before 9/11 America had invested billions of dollars in Afghan jihadis and in Pakistan to conduct a proxy war against the Soviet Union. After 9/11 America has spent hundreds of billions more to control Pakistan and eliminate the jihadis. Before 9/11 Washington chuckled; after 9/11 Moscow had a hearty laugh. International games are deadly funny.

Kama Sutra for the elderly

MY favourite sexually active senior is French writer Victor Hugo. He was so prolific that he was called Victor Nine-times-a-night Hugo. When he was in his 80s and making love to a housemaid, his grandson walked in. Hugo greeted him and said, “That’s what they call genius.”

Hugo was popular with the prostitutes of Paris. When he died the government gave the prostitutes a paid holiday so that they could attend his funeral. When Hugo was so busy horizontally, how did he get time to sit erect and write his many books? Hugo has given me aspirations for my 80s.

Subtle, sexy, successful

Ink in My Veins: A Life in Journalism
S Nihal Singh  Hay House India  308 pages

NIHAL Singh is a charming Sardarji, though he shed his turban and long hair when he was in his late teens. He was born in 1929 in a well-off family. Nihal wanted to be a doctor, but chose journalism instead. He started at the bottom as an unpaid trainee and rose to be the editor of four newspapers, three in India and one in Dubai. As a correspondent he met and interviewed dictators and feudal lords, presidents, prime ministers and other celebrities in India and abroad, and provides some good quotes.

He was buggered when he was a school kid.