Leopold Cafe: Back in business

I first heard it on BBC.  Nik Gowing,  winding up his take on Mumbai for the 1.30 p m news bullletin added as a footnote that Leopold Cafe was to re-open Sunday evening. Didn’t consider posting anything till I read Arun Shanbhag’s blog post,  saying he happened by the cafe  on Sunday morning and dropped in, noticing an open side-door.  Arun’s post carries a photo (presumably, an exclusive) of the cafe being readied for the re-opening. The photo by Mr Shanbhag reproduced here with the blogger’s permission.

At the cafe Arun ran into Keith Bradsher of The New York Times talking to Farzad, a partner in the cafe that has been in business since 1871 (that is correct).  Farzad told them two of his waiters were lost to  the terrorist attack.  Eight others, four of them foreigners,  in the restaurant were killed . Visitors would find a granede crater (of the size of a large organge, says Arun) under a table. The cafe owners have left it unfilled,  ’as a reminder of what we went through’.

As they left  the cafe Arun introduced himself to NYT reporter, and  captured in his camera  Mr Bradsher thumb-typing on his Blackberry an update for Lede, the NYT blog. 

A NYT report on citizen journalism refers to Arun’s blog posts/twitter feed on Mumbai attacks. The newspaper quotes him as saying,  he had not heard of the term citizen journalism till the other day, but Mr Shanbhag kept up his twitter feed/blog post because he felt “I had a responsibility to share my views with the outside world”. Mr Shanbhag, an assistant professor at Harvard medical School, is a Boston resident visiting Mumbai.

Footnote: Mr Shanbhag followed up his post with a  report around 4.30 p m Sunday, saying,  The Leopold Cafe “did” open briefly this morning, but apparently the crowds showed an excessive enthusiasm to get in and see the battle scars. The Owners could not get private security quick enough and the Police asked the owners to close shop. . . .

They battled for Mumbai

Those seeking to keep non-Maharashtrians out of Mumbai would do well to remember their contribution in battling terrorists at the Taj and elsewhere in Mumbai.  So says blogger Abraham Tharakan in a recent post. The point cannot be over-stressed; needs to be plugged in by other bloggers, the media, the chat-show hosts, and public-interest ad sponsors.

Maj. Sandeep Unnikrishnan, who truly needs no introduction to Mumbaikars, was Keralite raised in Bangalore; he had served in J & K, was stationed in Delhi; and gave his life for Mumbai.

Havildar Gajendar Singh who lost his life engaging a grenade-lobbing militant at Nariman House hailed from Dehradun.

Havildar Azad Singh, NSG, involved in the shoot-out that killed two terrorists at the Taj,  was no Mumbaikar. Nor was commando Rameswaran who took care of the third one gunned down at the Taj.  

The sight of a ravaged Taj wouldn’t let Mumbai people forget the terror attack, for months to come. What must be remembered as well is that among those who put their lives on the line for Mumbai were many who didn’t belong to Maharashtra.

Laptop is old hat

Laptop is old hat. Keith Bradsher of the New York Times  sent updates on the terror strike in Mumbai from his Blackberry. The newspaper correspondent had parked himself on a rooftop close to Nariman House.

Taking cover behind plastic water tank, to stay clear of  stray bullets, he wrote in a blog post that he found it convenient to keep an eye on Nariman House from his rooftop location and then draw back now and then  behind the water tank to thumb-type on his BlackBerry .  Bradsher’s BlackBerry updates appeared in NYT blog – Lede. The word, spelled this way, refers to the ‘lead’ sentence or paragraph in a newspaper story.

Blackberry came in handy for the gunmen holding out on the Taj , to keep tab on news reports on their strike. The naval chief told a news channel that their round-the-clock coverage picked up by militants impaired the commando operations. Even as he gave vent to his disapproval of 24×7 coverage – ‘it’s not a nice thing to do at this time’- there was cable TV blackout in Mumbai on Day Three.

Times Now anchor cried foul, and went on a rant about how Mumabaikars were being deprived of their right to instant information, while rest of the world was glued to 24×7 news channels.  Our electronic media has a way of exaggerating their self-importance. Admittedly, there is much to be said for round-the-clock news update at times such as this.

But then saturation coverage with repetitive visuals can become a 24×7 drag. Over-zeolous media had penchant for ‘breaking news’ with every gun-shot heard in the background. In the absence of much hard information coming their way, for hours together, news anchors fill in fallow air-time with snap analysis, their instant conclusions and  ’expert’ comments from in-house security gurus and retired intelligence officials. Talking  heads invited to the TV studio flog their pet peeves against the police, politicians, intellegence agencies and, generally, the establishment of the day.

News reporters outside the scene of action can be so insensitive as to harangue for bytes taumatised hotel guests rescued from terrorists and grieving families of those who couldn’t make it.  A media report on a scene outside the Trident said a few families of terrorist victims took exception to the paparazzi-style of media functioning and had a slanging match with some cameramen.

And then we had TV panel discussions, in between ‘breaking news’, on the burning issue of the day . Panelists on a Times Now show included film actors Farukh Sheik, Arjun Rampal and Sanjana Kapoor. They are entitled to their wisdom on how the nation should respond to terrorist attacks. But to have these Bollywood worthies holding forth on national security issues made an amusing spectacle. Another news channel had its prime-time anchor drawing viewers’attention to a blog post by Amitabh Bachchan, in which the actor gives us his sense of the situation caused by the terror strike in Mumbai.  NDTV viewers were informed that Amitabh, distressed by the developments, went to bed with a loaded revolver (licenced of course) put under his pillow. He had ‘a very disturbed’ sleep Wednesday night.

The front page

The front-page,  published decades apart, of two Mirrors, one from Britain and the other, Bangalore.

Britain’s Daily Mirror, dated May 17, 1960

Bangalore Mirror, dated November 23, 2008.

Some newspapers would do anything to attract attention – even publish a blank page. Provocation for this Bangalore Mirror front page was, presumably, to advertise the Indian Cricket League series starting in Bangalore on Sunday night. Those familiar with the  Emergency (1975-77) would recall how some newspapers those days sought to draw reader attention to the media censorship. They carried blank columns on their news pages, with editor’s note at the bottom saying the relevant news item had been withdrawn as its contents were censored by the authorities.

The note on the blank page of Sunday’s Bangalore Mirror reads..”We regret to inform you that today’s news has been withheld as India is under attack from the Pakistanis, Bangladesh”…and some such blah blah in reference to the much hyped cricket series.

The Daily Mirror image, scanned from from a book – At Your Peril – by Hugh Cudlipp, illustrates the British tabloid’s penchent for billboard headlines, designed to step up news-stand sales among train communters in a hurry. The headline related to the Big Four summit in Paris. Cudlipp, editor and a media celebrity in the 60s, wrote that the Mirror, top-selling British tabloid in those days, used vivid techniques to stimulate the interest of its predominently blue-collar readers in serious political matters.

Following the collapse of the summit (as USSR levelled spy charges against the US), the British tabloid, in its memo to Khruschev,  puts it, plainly  - Don’t be so bloody rude, Mr K ; who do you think you are? Stalin ? 

Dr Nayeem’s omission

I hold him guilty of omisssion.  Star of Mysore columnist Javeed Nayeem in his Friday  piece  wrote extensively about the Doctors’ Musical Nite, but  he made no  mention of Sarah, a local engineering student, who made her debut as stage singer at Kalamandira.

She rendered with eloquence a Latha Mangeshwar number from an old movie, Woh Kaun Thi  (Who was she ?) The show organisers, I gather, were impressed enough to ask her over for their next musical evening.  For a starter Sarah gave a promising performance. 

Woh kaun thi and why did the SoM columnist ignore her debut ?  Could it be because Sarah shares her last name with him? I believe  Sarah  to be a victim of her father’s sense of modesty.

Mysore’s medical community provides a forum in Geet Gatha Chal, to tap the musical talent of its members. Popularity of their concert was evident from the turnout at kalamandira. Not only was there a capacity crowd inside the 2,500-seat hall, there was an audience spill-over that packed the lobby as well.

The success of the show should set the medical fraternty  thinking about  showcasing their other talents, such as dance,  painting, and photography.

Networking with non-onliners

We stopped by at blogger Kalyani’s place in Ooty the other day on our way back to Mysore. We had been to Coonoor to vacate our apartment there. Coonoor had been our home before we shifted base to Mysore four years back.  We held on to our three-room abode on the hills this long, in the fond hope of returning there for occasional weekends with old friends. Such weekend visits to Coonoor didn’t materialise; and the idea of social get-togethers remained notional.

So we sold our flat to Ashika’s parents. Letting go of the place in Coonoor with which we had emotional attachment wasn’t easy. But then, during our recent visit we found Coonoor wasn’t the place we had moved into a decade back. We missed the familar faces we used to greet, meet or chat with on our door-steps.  Row houses of Tamilnadu Housing Board were designed for door-step chats and informal neighbourhood networking.

As it turned out,  most houses on our row have changed hands, leaving strangers for neighbours. Friends in the neighbourhood have moved out;a few, died. Socio-cultural environment that we had developed has vaporised into the Nilgiri mist.

A Coonoor neighbour and friend, Mr G V Raman, now spends more time in Coimbatore,  where his NRI son has built a house. He too plans to move out of Coonoor for good. “There is nothing here to hold me to this place,” he said.  Mr Raman happened to be in town during our recent Coonoor visit; and we went into a flash-back mode, remembering our days spent together in Coonoor. A fan of classic Hindi movies, Mr Raman summed up our current Coonoor scene with a haunting number from Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa – Bechade sabi bari bari.

At Kalyani’s place we ran into Mr Vittal Murthy, who maintains two establishments. Though he has had to move to Mysore for personal reasons Mr Murthy maintains his flat in Ooty, where he spent his entire working life; and where all his friends still are. The Murthy couple spend the summer in Ooty,  moving to Mysore during the monsoon and winter months.

Kalyani’s social circle includes many such winter-migrants.  And Coimbatore is their preferred alternate address.  As a blogger, Kalyani has also forged a network of onliners.  Over lunch we mulled over the idea of connecting them with Kalyani’s social contacts who aren’t into online networking; and are not all that inclined to learn the ropes of Internet networking. The idea is to connect Kalyani’s contacts on parallel tracks,  by organising, once or twice a year, a weekend family gathering of the like-minded, at a mutually convenient venue – Kalyani thought of Masanagudi. Any thoughts on this ?

Id Milan: Let’s have more of Alfie

Snag with the speeches made at any public gathering is that they tend to go on, on and on. And at the end of the day, on reflection,  you find most speakers have said nothing that you hadn’t heard before.  For me the best part of Saturday’s ID Milan at St.Philomenas was when the master of ceremonies Dr Javeed Nayeem announced dinner.My suggestion for the next Id Milan : cut out the speeches. Let there be biriyani and more of Alfie’s music. Mrs Khuraishi who dropped us home, not inclined  to leave just yet, asked if we could stay on some more time  after dinner to listen to ghazal and soul-stirring songs from vintage movies. My wife readily agreed.  And we weren’t the only ones who lingered on after dinner to take  in more of the music.Singer Alfie, a classmate of Dr Nayeem, expressed his intention to form an association of ghazal-lovers in Mysore.  Such a move would, I am sure, further the  Anjuman-e-Hadeeqatul Adab  agenda – to promte Urdu and the Muslim culture.  Speaking of Alfie’s musical talent Dr Nayeem recalled that in their student days at St. Philomenas, they used to hold impromptu music sessions under a tree on the college campus , cutting classes.  Alfie’s proficency as a singer could be attributed to the missed physics and math classes.

If ghazal is integral to Muslim culture, biriyani is an inseparable part of their cusine.  An Id milan dinner without biriyani would be soda without scotch. Understandably, there was a queue at the non-veg buffet where biriyani was on offer. I opted for rumali-roti and veg section, if only because it was relatively less crowded.

Related posts: A glitzy Id meet
   A Sikh at his taavu’s Id milan.

America grows up

A few days before the poll novelist Maya Angelou was quoted in the media as saying, “if he (Obama) wins, it means my country has agreed to grow up”. America has since ’grown up’. What’s more,  the decisive mandate has given Americans reason to feel ten feet tall. As columnist Alexander Cockburn put it,  America is a country eager to stand tall once more in the eyes of other nations.  

In India and rest of the sceptical Third World, I belive,  Barack Obama has changed  the way see America. The Obama win made me feel the same way I did when Nelson Mandela was elected South Africa President.  David Frost anchoring the US election coverage for BBC put it in perspective  when he mentioned that not so long ago the blacks in the US couldn’t even get to vote. Today, a black has been elected President.

African-Americans who lived through the days when they were attacked for going to the poll were among the multi-racial multitude that turned out to hear the President-elect in Chicago on election night. Civil rights activist Rev. Jessie Jackson was moved to tears, as he stood there, in the crush of Obama enthusiasts. Another face in the crowd was celebrity  talk-show host Oprah Winfrey. The sight of such notables taking their pace in the crowd (I expected them to be on  stage) ought to have a humbling effect on our own busybodies who claim entitlement whereever they go. 

People fooled pollsters- they predicted a win, but not an  electoral  phenomenan .  The  Obama sweep meant that too many voters had dodged pollsters on their electoral preferences.  After the event, however,  we heard TV commentators saying what the poll reflected was “beyond belief and stranger than fiction”. It is reckoned that Obama has a larger mandate than any Democratic president-elect since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. 

In an earlier post, in July when the McCain-Obama race was getting closer I  referred to a  question that haunted the political minded in the US - ’what, if Obama gets elected’.  Dick Morris, former Clinton aide, had made it his political mission to educate people on why they shouldn’t vote Obama. He wrote a book – Fleeced – cautioning those falling for Obama-speak. 

There is no dearth of the likes of Dick Morris, waiting for Obama to take a mis-step or make a wrong move, so that they could write an  I-told-you sequal to Fleeced. Within hours of his victory speech in Chicago came the first salvo from Cockburn, the First Post columnist.  He wrote, “Obama has pledged, if elected president, to escalate the US war in Afghanistan; to  attack Pakistan’s sovereign territory if it obstructs any unilateral US mission to kill Osama bin Laden…A fresh start?”

Those familiar with Cockburn’s column don’t expect anything different from him.  But it doesn’t minimise the fact that Obama is in for a rough time; and his presidency would face critical scrutiny at every step of the way. And then, there is a sense of high expectations among the millions who got inspired by the man and his message.

Those close to him say that right through the campaign Obama kept asking them, “what, if I disappoint people”. The question, I guess, would keep haunting Obama during his presidency. As the first ever black president he has to be smarter than his critics and rivals; and has to work harder than anyone else in his position, in order to prove himself.

Obama made an impact during the campaign by transcending race.  America may have sent a resounding signal to rest of the world that it is ready for a black President. But the US is sill a long way from racial reconcilliation. What the Obama win has done is  pave the way for a public and open debate on unspoken racial fears and prejudices.  That Obama has happened in the US has given impetus to race relations and brought what many thought was a ‘mission implausible’ within the realms of possibility.