Shallow Linguistics

One can thank heavens when the man of the masses, Noam Chomsky, refuses to be swayed by the Twitter snobbery. The usual Chomskyan fans would have expected a roar of approval with fervent locutions from the intellectual honcho, but he is neither impressionable nor snobbish to surrender himself to such pseudo-intellect. Lifestyle gurus are pimping touting Twitter as a linguistic breakthrough. According to their pompous theories, Twitter induces creativity by forcing people to write within 140 characters; apparently, it will also render literature obsolete. As usual, lifestyle gurus are using chicanery to influence masses.

On Twitter, a person asked Madhu Trehan on her experience as a journalist during the emergency in the nineteen-seventies. She replied that it was not possible to describe that in 140 characters, and advised him to read books thereof. That sums it: everything doesn’t either “suck” or “rock”; there are layers of details, far from the reach of stunted messages.

Make no mistake, this isn’t criticism of the social networking website. Twitter serves as a good platform for sharing headlines and staying in accord with current events, but it only works at a superficial level. It’s like a trailer, not a feature film. It’s not a linguistic phenomenon. Life is far more complex to be diminished to the fleeting limits of Twitter. Imagine Noam Chomsky’s disquisitions being condensed to mere tweets. How would a superficial-level tweet entail the niceties, the intricacies, the celebrated Chomskyan reasoning and corroboration of facts in just 140 characters?

Meet Dawood Ibrahim’s Rabid Dog: Abu Azmi

Quote, unquote Abu Azmi: “Dawood Ibrahim is not a terrorist.”

Finally the beans are getting spilled out of the bag. It is not a secret that Fascist honchos (like Abu Azmi, RSS or Khap Panchayat) can get away with anything in this country. They have a cult following by impressionable masses and, most importantly, blessings of intellectual community. In a country where people’s sentiments get hurt over trifles, Abu Azmi not only stands up for the country’s nemesis with pomp, but also chastises those who oppose him.

For years Dawood’s rabid dogs like Abu Azmi have used snobbery to defend him by foisting indoctrinations like “if you don’t like him, you are racist”, “if you don’t support him, you are not cool” etc. Ibrahim’s brother carries out his illicit trades in India, while rest of the country watches passively like couch potatoes. Moreover, the spineless western countries — that usually throw fits over soaring immigration — distribute visas to his family like prasad, allowing this canker to strengthen his grasp all over the globe.

Abu Azmi also has hot pants for rapists. He blames women for getting raped; he calls for a strict moral code for women, yet our great intellectual honchos say nothing. This Tartuffe considers himself an authority of morals but has no qualms about the ageing pervert’s lecherous lifestyle of getting laid by a virgin every night. Snobbery sells after all.

‘Headhunters’ — Rearing Its Ugly Head

Original Title: Hodejegerne (2011)

The effete bellyacher, which we are supposed to endure as the protagonist, is embarrassed of its height (and perhaps “size”); the milksop has oodles of inferiority complex because its wife, Diana, is too good for it; it is also equivocal to her desire for procreation, which we are to sympathetically ascribe to its various dysfunctions. In a quick shift of scene, it is copulating with another woman (Lotte), whom it only treats as an object of concupiscence. It exploits and dismisses her as per its sick needs, yet the over-sensitive moral gurus raise no qualms over the pervert’s glorifications. We are supposed to accept, with compassion, that it behaves this way because of its inferiority complexes.

The director, Mortel Tyldum, instantly gets in the tempo. True to the title, he conducts an interview that examines the importance of reputation. We get a sense of profundity in the beginning. But in self-contradictory moral panic, Tyldum looses his clarity. The stench of putrid innards, packaged as an art thief, goes to rob a painting from a house. In a ludicrous change-of-heart moment, it sees children from the window and decides to have children; consequently, it abandons the robbery. But instead of absconding, it makes a phone-call to its wife to break the “good news”, right there. So, as per the director, procreation is the key to perpetual redemption.

We are supposed to root for this pantywaist dissembler, which despite having a fling with Lotte, gets in a moral rage when it stumbles upon its wife’s cell-phone at Clas Grave’s (played effortlessly by Nikolaj Coaster-Waldau) house. We are to cheer for this ungainly rapscallion that obdurately refuses to take its dying crony to hospital. Of course, the director expects us to embrace the “shades of grey”, yet he gets moralistic with an utterly cheesy, saccharine sweet climax, accentuated by Diana’s pot belly.

Aksel Hennie is obviously an awful miscast. How could someone so ineffectual, with the appeal of coughed-up phlegm, be entrusted with this role: perhaps as a mascot to ward-off the evil eye? When it opens its mouth, you expect — at your impartial best — a grotesque, cartoonish voice. But you hear grating recitals of a bellyacher, trying to sound like a tough guy. But it’s just a lion of sand, a kick away from getting scattered.

In an attempt to evince its breed, this faecal sausage disguised as an actor, threatens to dismiss Clas Greve and render him unemployable. Its persona as an intimidating corporate magnate is a giggle. It gets downright laughable when the director tries to pass this rickety eyesore as a John Rambo and a James Bond-archetype who wrestles out of every peril laid out for him — herein a faecal sausage that refuses to flush down.

Still Waters Run Deep

In an empty arena, from an unspecified duration before the contest, a pugilist contemplates in solitude, getting acquainted to the ambience, envisaging success. It is a scene from a video-game, with soft music in the background. One year later, the player enters the empty arena and reposes, savouring success — though this scene wasn’t in the game. Such moments are profound, serene and meditative. 

At Cricinfo, writers described the best and the worst of cricket in 2012, Sidharth Monga chose something different:

It was a warm Adelaide afternoon. Australia had completed a 4-0 whitewash of India hours ago. The stumps had been taken out, the volunteers had finished cleaning the ground, the broadcasters had moved out with their equipment. Anyone with any sense had left Adelaide Oval, except for the lazier journalists. And the Australian team. Every now and then an Australian player would come out of the dressing room to take telephone calls and then go back in. A year ago they were hammered all over on their own grounds by England; they were now staying back to celebrate the end of a remarkable series. 

Four hours after the last wicket was taken, Peter Siddle came out to an empty ground, still in his whites. He went to the top of his run-up at the Cathedral End and bounded in without a ball in hand. With the same intensity with which he bowls in Tests, Siddle went through a delivery, turned, appealed to an imaginary umpire, and then celebrated an imaginary wicket. What joy.

[Source: Cricinfo]

Intellectuals Can Dance

Do intellectuals condone honour killings? Is peer pressure the key to curb social tribulations?

Often when confronted with social issues like honour killings, intellectuals tend to equivocate or digress.

Why is it that they diligently excoriate political matters, bewail sufferings in distant corners in their moralistic discourses and yet brush the carnage of honour killings under the carpet?

Intellectuals may not be able to make sweeping changes in international politics; they may not be able to emancipate the oppressed but they can drastically curb social ills by wielding their didactic prowess. It’s a big waste of influence. Are intellectuals more concerned about protecting their “vote bank”, a chunk of which comes from perpetrators and apologists of honour killings? Or do they really underestimate themselves?

In symposiums, theorists proffer ways to curb teens’ violence and other social tribulations. The discussions are full of platitudes emphasising the role of parents and teachers. They fail to recognise the two key factors that influence people: peer pressure and snobbery. After all, diamond cuts diamond. Advocacy from parents and schools isn’t enough. It has to go beyond that. As bizarre as it my seem, the elixir lies in indoctrination through peers, MTV, media and intellectuals. If parents or teachers try to influence them, they would be snubbed as “preachy” or “boring”. But if their peers and “popular” kids do the same, they would have a much better chance of acceptance. The onus is on media and intellectuals to scout such popular teenagers from various groups — making sure they have horses for courses — and mould them into brainwashing their respective clans.

Media plays a vital part in shaping people’s opinions. If they can post cheesy articles describing the shopping habits of nitpicky six-year-olds, if they can write about their utopian state, Youngistaan’s objection to Lata Mangeshkar’s usage of Twitter, they can also blend in interviews from their hip-and-happening contemporaries, lambasting violence and drug addiction. That way the message comes across from right sources without being construed as didactic.

MTV culture has a humungous influence on kids, which must be respected. There is a lot more to MTV than music: it’s about style, yuppie culture, interviews of trend followers who discuss their predilections and lifestyle. Imagine if an exponent of MTV generation talks against drug addiction, violence and labels them “not cool” and stigmatic, it would have a profound effect on the young viewers.

Religious scholars too can make a difference. With the amount of reverence they draw from hoi polloi, they certainly have it in them to render the ills verboten.

Intellectuals have a wide reach of followers from yuppies to hidebound traditionalists. Take for instance, Noam Chomsky: a well-respected human being, an invincible debater and an influential moral guru. If he morally instructed people against honour killings (or any social ill) using his critical analysis based on corroborated facts, he could turn it into a moral and intellectual anathema. Masses would follow the lead and defaulters would be ostracised.

It is time for the divergent influences of society to bury the hatchet and work together — using horses for courses is the key. After all there is a reason why Chomsky is considered the rider of people’s hearts.

Glorification of Mediocrity

Much has been hyped about the trend of Internet English. Lobbyists have called it a linguistic phenomenon, a boon to the linguistically underprivileged. 

Everything doesn’t either “suck” or “rock”.  A broader vocabulary isn’t detrimental to one’s knowledge. In the words of an eminent intellectual: “The day we stop learning, we stop living.” How can a blinkered, Philistine outlook boost a yuppie society’s intellectual capacity?

The Internet acronyms have become a part of our day-to-day correspondences. There is nothing revolutionary about it. Their usage doesn’t mandate departure from eloquence and propriety. It’s not Shiv Sena’s hidebound fundamentalist world, which has no room for coexistence. Contrary to the harbingers of lifestyle gurus, the so-called revolution will not render Charles Dickens’ literature incomprehensible after a couple of decades. 

The lobbies proffer theories that ascribe attention deficiency to intellectual superiority and long attention span to slow wit. No wonder why an advertisement touts impatience a virtue, the reason behind momentous discoveries.
 

The betoken revolution of Internet English is just a pseudo-intellectual propaganda by media and corporations to sell mediocrity and keep masses receptive to their inculcations.  Ultimately, it’s easy to excrete mediocrity and sell it for great profits. 

The ostensible rationale behind it is that it’s a godsend for promoting the language globally. In truth, those who intend to learn or at least have the know-how of English (or any language for that matter) would do so — with the same or greater effect — even without the aid of Internet English; novices did so for centuries. And for those who grew up speaking English, how could fine-tuning it be such a dreadfully arduous task? I was under the impression that only maths and science were considered difficult.

Returning Home With a Sigh of Relief

If a KP lost in the morning returns in the evening, he cannot be called a lost KP. Led astray by sly sympathisers, he upheld his uncompromising stance in a press-conference, staring down the barrel at an impending retirement. However, two days later, he walked back with penitence, retracting all his demands. But England Cricket Board shut the door on him.

South African media ethically stoked the controversy, asserting that Pietersen yearned for his original “home”. They conveniently ignored that years ago he had emigrated from the same “home” in protest of the quota system; they suitably disregarded his unequivocal apology, committing himself to real cricket.

People relished this opportunity to brew more gossip. When Chris Gayle rebelled against West Indies board, and in fact missed a year and a half of international cricket, nobody came up with snide remarks (whereas, Pietersen never missed a match on his own accord). Perhaps South African fans expected him to return to South Africa. Perhaps the fans from India — once the finest connoisseurs of world cricket and now jingoistic zombies — had developed delusions that he could defect to India and play IPL as a local player.

Eventually ten weeks later, after a series of dialogues in a “reintegration programme”, England Cricket Board opened the door for him.

Nevertheless, disappointed fans continue to spew cynical remarks following his reinstatement. It is a classic case of cognitive dissonance: now that there is nothing else to disparage, the fans contend that the English team is of no worth without him. Interesting remarks, considering that no other team has shown more dependence on one cricketer than India on Sachin Tendulkar.

England Cricket Board have only themselves to blame by not embracing the repentant cricketer, who despite going astray, chose the national team over club cricket. He made mistakes but he also had the courage to apologise in public. How many people would have the sincerity to do that? Besides, ECB isn’t impervious to mistakes. They were gullible enough to believe in Allen Stanford’s fraudulent scheme (click here for the story). He had proffered the same to a few other cricket boards (including BCCI) but only the impecunious West Indies and the gullible ECB fell for it. Not only that, ECB debased the heritage of Lord’s by letting the charlatan’s helicopter land on the ground, whence he flaunted a Perspex briefcase containing $20 million. It was a tawdry display of power and one of the most ignominious moments of English cricket. Sir Walter Hammond must have turned in his grave.

Cricket would have been the biggest casualty, if they had not resolved the dispute. Even the most loved teams in cricket — like Pakistan and West Indies — have had severer internal disputes. The tight spot that ECB are always in, they should never wash their dirty linen in public.

Sketchy Ruminations

PCB’s Fantasy
I wonder who thought of the name for Sialkot Stallions. They found a spot in the Champions League at last, though only to be eliminated from the qualifiers. Four teams from the IPL get a direct entry, while most of the teams have to qualify. Instead, why not just have a mini-IPL? Nevertheless, PCB’s fantasy of getting BCCI in sack isn’t far. In yet another incidence of disgraceful scheduling, the latter have squeeze in a short limited-over-only series for later this year. 

Super Over 
There is little doubt that ICC’s members have rocks in their head as Mike Hesson suggested.  In the tied T20 matches, the super over should come into play in knockout matches only (i.e. semi-finals, final); but here it’s used in every tie. Even in football, extra time or penalty shootouts are only exercised in knockout games; notwithstanding that scores are more likely to be levelled in footaball than in cricket, yet this rule is foolishly applicable for every T20 match.

Scullions Sack Ranatunga 
Twelve years after getting the Test status, Sri Lanka won the world cup in 1996, led by Arjuna Ranatunga. An astute leader and sometimes a sophist; he stood against prejudice, albeit a dubious claim, to defend his cricketers. He was the exponent of Sri Lankan superiority, often lionised as an Asian hero by jingoists. 

It turns out that BCCI’s arse-lickers, Sri Lankan cricket board, sacked the legendary Arjuna Ranatunga from a position in the board for speaking against IPL and BCCI. If someone of his stature isn’t indispensable, then no one is in BCCI’s world order.

BCCI Sena

The two agents, or henchmen, or pimps, or the Shiv Sainik archetypes who spread BCCI’s isms are Ravi Shastri and Harsha Bhogle.

Ravi Shastri is an embodiment of the drum-beating villain from the feted blockbuster, Agneepath. Like Kaancha Cheena he brainwashes the impressionable villagers (fans) to lynch Master Dinanath (anyone who opposes BCCI). Like an intolerant Shiv Sainik, he sees every disagreement from an outsider a menace to BCCI Sena. Anyone who stands up to BCCI is insinuated as India’s enemy. Anyone who questions BCCI’s policies is deemed jealous of IPL.

The bespectacled Harsha Bhogle has the semblance of a calm, innocuous geek. But there is something sinister about his aura and his cultic discourses of BCCI. He is like BCCI’s pimp. Sophistry is his strength to endorse BCCI’s views. He uses chicanery to solicit IPL to the gullible fans. He purports that playing less cricket is the way to save Test matches. It is a counter-intuitive idea, considering that in the year 2011 South Africa had played only one Test match until October. Australia and South Africa — the two best teams in the best of rivalries of modern cricket — played a two-Test series instead of the customary three, in one of the most disgraceful scheduling of cricket. Sri Lanka cancelled their tour of England in 2009 to play in IPL. This year they only held a short, two-match Test series against England in order to render themselves to IPL’s behest. And Mr. Bhogle thinks that fewer matches should be played. Is playing one Test in eight–ten months too much? 

He doesn’t have the courage to criticise the mishmash that one-day cricket has become. He doesn’t write a word against the excessive amount of one-day matches played between India and Sri Lanka, which have gone past ridiculous proportions: in the last four years, they have played forty-four ODIs against each other. The man who complains about too much cricket doesn’t have the nerve to say that IPL’s season stretches for too long. He doesn’t find the Champions League an unwanted addition to the jam-packed schedule, which has always been a dud despite the addition of four IPL teams. But Mr. Bhogle touts it as a successful and essential fixture. 

Their near concupiscent cultism of BCCI squirts intolerance. Hitting the day entrenched in IPL porn dungeon, drunk with power, clad in saffron, playing percussion kartal blocks, Bhogle and Shastri continue to chant BCCI’s hymns.

A Streetcar Named IPL

May I use this platform to raise a rhetorical question: Is the Indian Premier League as popular as portrayed by BCCI?

They have craftily inculcated a suggestion: “If you are a cricket fan and you don’t support IPL or T20, you are anti-Indian.” This ploy is effective in manipulating the impressionable masses. For Indian fans in particular, the fear of being ostracised or branded as unpatriotic triggers an obligatory concession for IPL.

Do Indian fans really adore IPL? Inherently, Indians watch cricket to support their country rather than IPL’s franchises — it does not surpass international cricket. Can IPL match the buzz of Pakistan’s tour of India in 2005 or the 2011 World Cup? Surely IPL draws crowd to the stadiums but the television ratings have plunged in the last two seasons. Watching IPL matches at grounds is like a picnic for the spectators, for it’s a short T20 format; it’s an outing, a deviation from their dreary routines; it’s a use-and-throw, watch-and-forget entertainment for them, like an intercourse without foreplay with a streetwalker. Indians are losing interest in “real” cricket, let alone the vaudville of IPL. But BCCI and its agents continue to flaunt a story of success. At times they open gates to let the indolent, ticketless throng fill the stadium. The dearth of T20 international matches — except for the frequent world cups — can be imputed to depriving people of T20 cricket so that IPL remains the flagship brand. Repetition is the key: the agents, in the form of media and commentators, keep hammering IPL’s tremendous stature, till it permeates the psyche of the peer-pressured consumers.

BCCI’s scullions crow and snigger whenever a foreign cricketer chooses IPL over his country. If an Indian cricketer chose Big Bash or county cricket over India, would they extend the same tolerance?

Red Carpet Cricket

Saeed Ajmal’s surprising exclusion from ICC’s awards has incited vehement remonstrations from Pakistan Cricket Board and sympathisers. ICC’s awards are as important to cricket as Oscars are to cinema. The winners of the last year’s awards are crystal clear in our memories, just like the awards from the years before. I clearly remember how we all waited with bated breath after every nomination, only to exult or utter invectives thenceforth, depending on the outcome. Don’t we remember watching the news channels showing enthusiastic fans carousing and revelling on streets? Don’t we remember the ubiquitous Ravi Shastri’s encomium, filled with his signature expressions, in the leading newspapers? How can we forget the winners’ parade in an open-air omnibus, a la Shahrukh Khan’s team’s victory march in Kolkata? It was the ICC’s award that enchanted England’s win in the T20 World Cup, 2010. (For those struggling to keep up with the T20 world cups, yes, England are the defending champions in the upcoming world cup.) It was the award that rocketed Vinay Kumar’s “price” in the IPL auction and fetched M.S. Dhoni a multi-million-dollar deal.

In one of other ICC’s vagaries, Australia have descended to number ten, below Ireland and Bangladesh, in ICC’s T20 rankings. The ranking system appears to be over-simplistic; Ireland and Bangladesh have more victories than Australia but all their wins have come against associate nations (non-Test playing nations); whereas, Australia’s comparatively fewer victories have been against superior teams. Cricket Australia should take a leaf out of PCB’s book and threaten to boycott ICC until the rankings are annulled thereof, and they are ascended to a more respectable position; moreover, preferably higher than New Zealand.

Everybody’s Got a Price

Kapil Dev has at last sprawled himself for the mighty BCCI. Two months ago he said that he wasn’t accountable to BCCI and now he is calling it his “parent”. It took a few snubs, thwarts and eventually $270,000 for him to prostrate himself before the dogged authority.

In all fairness, he is entitled to avail the pecuniary benefits from BCCI when others in the fraternity are laughing their way to the bank. But what’s interesting is his sycophancy towards BCCI. The man who had threatened to go on a hunger strike unless the ostracised ICL (now defunct) cricketers were reinstated by BCCI  is now eulogising their double-chinned administrator, Srinivasan. He is the same man who always vehemently criticised BCCI; now he is crooning paternalistic hymns, his hands folded in obesiance, in front BCCI’s simulacrum and Srinivasan’s adorned picture. The old school locution happens to be true: “Everybody’s got a price”.

The Usual Scapegoats

The mob is back with cans of paraffin and lighters with the usual scapegoats tied on bamboo poles. Sanjay Manjrekar is the principal campaigner, gyrating around the scapegoats, screeching and chanting mumbo-jumbo, supported by his mob of news correspondents and a few quondam cricketers. His hair burnished with gel; impish eyes wide open, filled with Schadenfreude; mouth open and crooning; head swinging left and right; a flambeau in hand, drooling to burn the scapegoats like they were the witches of Salem.

There is nothing new in the scenario: whenever Indian batting line up fails in a series, Dravid or Laxman are picked as the scapegoats. Rahul Dravid is temporarily spared due to his excellent run on the tour of England, though he is the next to be lynched. In point of fact, the fiascos in England and Australia cannot be imputed to an individual. The team has lost because of a comprehensive batting failure. Gambhir has been patchy in the last two years and hasn’t scored a hundred thenceforth. Everybody’s favourite Sehwag — a brilliant batsman, nonetheless — has struggled outside of Asia since 2009 with a meagre average in twenties. The skipper Dhoni has been downright inconsistent in Test cricket for a long time. Yet the mob hasn’t uttered a word against them and singled him out as the culprit.

The same experts talked about grooming youngsters in place of Laxman when he was only twenty-eight years of age. Their paedophilic eye only saw his place in the team as a blockage for young talent like Kaif and Yuvraj. (It’s hard to imagine how they would have accommodated two players in place of one.) They cried for his exclusion when the entire middle-order failed in Sri Lanka in 2008, even though he had done better than the other stalwarts. And he went on to play memorable match-winning knocks both home and away in the subsequent years. The rants stopped and an ephemeral admiration grew when his runs continued to flow in 2010; the moment the flow stemmed, out came the cans of paraffin. 

After purging the scapegoats following the tour of Australia, the scene will shift to the dead-pan, flat pitches of India where the mob will eulogise the replacements’ red-painted buttocks. Eventually the frenzy will end when the most important tournament of the world begins in April. 

These Darn Outages

Near the twilight hour, I heard the sound of a plastic bucket flutter against a wall, thud of doors along with thunder. Within a few minutes, the inevitable outage struck. In this country, all it takes is some drizzle or a little current of air for an outage to befall my perfunctory existence. A big part of one’s lifetime is spent awaiting its resumption. Power thefts are still thriving despite the anti-corruption hysteria created by media and masses. Fortunately the prospects of the harrowing 2009 seem unlikely, at least in the near future.

In all fairness, after some introspection, retrospection, insight, hindsight — does an outage really impinge on the scheme of things? If all, it perhaps exacerbated the downturn — and did nothing else apart from that. It hardly matters. As a doubting Thomas would say, “A dark age without outage, would still be a dark age.”

Dull Cup

The mill of cricket, in yet another attempt to save ODI cricket, is just few hours away from generating another world cup — the fifth in four years. Media and ESPN are trying their best to promote it but it seems like a hollow, insipid world cup. Besides an overdose of cricket, especially world cups, the format of the 2011 world cup is incorrigibly stupid. Are the cricket authorities suffering from mental slavery and low self-esteem by reverting to the flawed set-up of the 1996 World Cup?  They are trying hard to emulate soccer but soccer is far more competitive than cricket and has thirty-two teams, of which most of them are capable of winning the title. Moreover, they have to go through several qualifying matches.  

The rules have been carefully designed to make sure that the top draws have an easy sailing in the round-robin phase. As a result, the first four weeks will have virtually meaningless matches. The real competition will only last for ten days i.e. from the quarter finals to the final. ICC’s Champions Trophy has a far more competitive format in comparsion.