Resolutely Unresolved

They say New Year's Resolutions always fly out the window once the first week of Jan slips away along with the fuzzy furry feeling that all's well with the world in the new year and as the last of the champagne sticks to the roof of your mouth like an old shoe clamped under the bed, you wonder.... Since it's now the 13th of January, I wondered if I could come up with at least ten seemingly universal resolutions that stuck.

1. Let's watch we eat- Yup, watch yourself sneak an extra piece of full fat ham and an unspeakable forkfull of sinful chocolate goodness. Tick!

2. Let's work out more- Oh this one is a classic one, innit? After 10 kms or 10 days, whichever comes earlier, please see Point 1, above. Tick!

3. Let's do more charity- Absolutely. Throw out (err....donate) perfectly good pairs of shoes (soooo last year, babe!) and spend double the amount on new ones. Tick!

4. Call that friend you've been meaning to call- You did and you lunched with her and then went back to your other 'real friends' to gossip about how fat she is and how sallow her skin is and how pathetic her dress sense is and OMG, lunch was a nightmare, girls! Tick!

5. Focus on my career- This is a big one for most of us. Yes, really, focus focus focus. Come on now, stop staring out the window, don't spend 4 hours a day texting and don't spend half the morning on Facebook telling people about the colour of your bra. Focus! Tick, anyone?

6. Read better books- Do let's trudge to the latest bookstore and browse through the classics where you're met with a pimply faced attendant who thinks Alice in Wonderland is a children's book. Really? Well, then can't be bothered with that. But the new Vogue looks good. As do empty headed tales of Generation Y exclusively speaking Hinglish. Tick anyone?

7. Travel more- Oh lovely. Now if only I could get an alphabetised list of where all the shopping festivals are, where the celebs hang out and what's the latest 'It' destination, I'll just grab my passport, shall I? Tick anyone?

8. I'll learn something new- I've always wanted to learn how to play the violin. Ooh yoga, that's meant to be sooooo cool and trendy, babe. What about salsa dancing? Oodles of fun, yeah! But it's so time-consuming! Tick anyone?

9. Thinking positive- So done with the negativity! Read 'The Secret' and listen to Deepak Chopra's advice! And take an Art of Living class! I'm so down with that. Now if only I wasn't surrounded by such bitchy, negative people! Tick anyone?

10. New Year Resolutions are stupid- Really people, how can you be so childish? Nothing changes! It's all humbug. Seriously, pass me the ham sandwich and the beer. And shut the bloody door on your way out. Tick everyone?

The Big Little Bookshop

I must confess. I like the idea of a big climate-controlled bookstore with its tantalising coffees and wafting smell of brownies. But I hate who I turn into when I enter one. Somehow, the big bad bookstore (and now I know I sound like Meg Ryan from 'You've got mail') takes you towards the idea of purchase rather than the idea of reading. Sure they have comfy armchairs where presumably you can sink in and read. But do you actually read? Do you rather flip the pages and hope you look intellectual enough or do you sit there reading a magazine while you wait for a mate to turn up so you can head towards the cafe section? Be honest.

Returning to the idea of the small bookshop, it is telling indeed that they have survived. It's indicative of the way the global economy has gone belly-up, hasn't it? Borders has gone into receivership and please do allow me a sadistic smile here (they sucked at the book business) and Amazon is like a prostitute- you check in, you click, you do the deed and button down and exit immediately- so that leaves us with what? Us refers to real book lovers, real readers and real connoisseurs of the fine but slightly lost art of real reading. I mean, the real smell of old leather bindings, the climactic crackle of a virginal book spine, the soft, sexy rustle of a thumb turning a page, the rhythmic tapping of a nail against a hardcover while pondering the meaning of the title, the real satisfaction of peeling away money in the pursuit of real knowledge. I mean that kind of real. Not the kind that buys the latest Salman Rushdie because one ought to or the latest A.S. Byatt because 'Good lord she's won something and I need to have a glance at it' or worse, the type that trawls through best-seller lists and then decides where to slap down twenty-five quid.

When I read stories of the small bookshop making a reappearance, whether in Bombay, London or Madrid or even Tehran, I feel a warm, molten, chocolatey feeling inside. As I see people hunched in tiny spaces between bookshelves, really reading, smiling a little to themselves, I feel relieved. We are not extinct!! Huzzah!

Lutyens and Rubenstein, a new little gem in Notting Hill. Simply Shakespeare, an almost undiscovered little shop in Calcutta. This is where you find real books, creatively displayed with minimal fuss but maximum impact. Most likely here you will also find an owner or manager who doesn't blink stupidly when you ask if he has the unedited version of Wasteland or C.S. Lewis' non-fiction work. He or she will wisely not only guide you to the correct shelf but will also recommend companion books or ask if you agree with the premise of the work, thereby generating a stimulating discussion and your quota of intellectual exercise for the day.

No, I do not mourn the demise of ugly superstores. I am Meg Ryan with my cause for the little bookshop around the corner except that I won't end up marrying the idiot who owns the big bookstore just because he's cute.

I doff my hat to the people who have the unmitigated courage to open a little bookshop in this troubled climate and do not pander by selling accompanying cartoon stickers of Spiderman as an incentive for children to read. I salute the parent who drags his child into the less glamorous arena of the little bookshop and trusts that the Mad Hatter's Tea Party will be sufficient to intrigue his child. And I definitely salute every writer who chooses to read at a small, real bookshop where the listening audience asks intelligent questions because they've actually read the book they're holding.

Peace, Fuzziness and Love

Now isn't this just terribly ironic? The Nobel Peace Prize has actually started a fight. Peace? Fight? Get it? I'm sure you do. Now I know that it seems quite the odd thing to award this apparently highly prestigious prize to a man who has just about started his job and frankly hasn't had enough time to produce any real results yet. Other than showing us he's a nice bloke really, with a slightly scary wife with a fondness for granny cardis. And showing us his pelvic moves on the Ellen DeGeneres Show and his wit and repartee on the Dave Letterman (vomit) Show.

Apparently, initiating a conciliatory move towards the Muslim world sent the Nobel committee suits in Scandinavian regions into a complete tizzy and they couldn't wait to hail-all the man who explicitly said that Muslims must not be seen as the Axis of Evil. Oh my! Fancy that? Can you believe it? Muslims are not to be shot deader than ducks at a royal weekend hunt just because a few guys crashed a few planes into a few buildings! Dear me, whatever would we have done had Obama not told us this?

Now I'm not a big follower or fan or loyalist of any prize that doesn't directly aid the arts (well, for obvious reasons) but like the rest of the world I've been slightly predisposed towards the grandness of the Nobel Peace Prize and while I think it's a tad incredulous to award this to a man whose efforts have yet to produce any tangible and long-lasting effect, I do think it's silly to start a war of words over something that's got the exact opposite intent.

My question is, whose world is going to tumble down if Obama takes the prize away? Better him than Henry Kissinger. Better him than Gaddafi. Better him than Berlusconi. And definitely better him than any monarch in any part of the world.

You might argue that it's politicised. Well what isn't? The very concept of peace talks and peace initiatives arises out of the need to clean up the messy politics and let ordinary folk live.

You might argue that he's not completely deserving of the honour yet. Well who would be, who would also be in a real position to make that 'yes we can' change if not the most powerful man in the world ? (And let's face it; as much as we hate the idea of one omnipotent man, we all know it's true so roll with it)

Let me give you a list of the Nobel Peace Laureates since just the 80s. Tell me if you remember any major achievement that changed the world as you know it from this list and no, you can't Google. (I make exceptions for the UNHCR, Medecins sans Frontieres and Mandela.)

Esquivel, IPKF, Myrdal and Robles, Desmond Tutu, Dalai Lama, Lech Walesa, Elie Wiesel, Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin, Aung San Suu Kyi, Gorbachev, Menchu Tum, De Klerk, Mandela, Oscar Arias Sanchez, Joseph Rotblat, Ximenes Belo, Jose Ramos-Horta, Jody Williams, John Hume, David Trimble, Wangari Maathai, Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan, Kim Dae-Jung, Shirin Ebadi, Mohammed El-Baradei, Mohammed Yunus, Al Gore, Martti Ahtisaari,
UN Peacekeeping Force

How many names do you recognise? How many concrete achievements do you see?

Welcome to Dystopia

With the headlines in India raging about the swine flu and the machinations of a certain woman in the opposition there seems to be precious little coverage about something that's going to hit India like a tonne of flaming bricks in the coming year. Apart from three to four minute sporadic snippets each day about the situation, no one is addressing the elephant in the room. Drought. No rain. No food. Dying farmers. Dying animals. Yes the PM addressed the situation in a scant outline about what needs to be done. Are the farmers buying it? Afraid not. Have they received the benefits yet? Afraid not. Is this situation getting enough indepth coverage? Afraid not.

Why? Because blackmarketing pharmacists, panic over a pandemic that's claimed less than thirty lives nation-wide and mud-slinging political antics hold juicier value for an audience. Who cares about boring old farmers and their uncoiffed, unsophisticated opinions and their ugly sagging bulls and cows, right? So who cares if I don't get rice next year. I'll eat pasta. Imported. I'll buy a burger. Imported. Seriously, it's not a big deal. We have this shitty problem with the rain every year. Heard it all before.

No one is showing the abandonment. No one is showing the pictures of women shrieking and fleeing across desert lands to find one drop of water for their dying babies. No one is showing the slow collapse and eventual death of a hardy animal like a camel. Because it's not juicy. It's not interesting and it's not happening at your doorstep.

Here are some interesting statistics:

Swine flu in India- affected cities- 12
Drought affected districts in India- 161
Expected swine flu death toll- less than 100
Certain drought death toll- over 300,000

And who gets more coverage? Paranoid people with masks.

Welcome to dystopia. And you don't even know it.

And oh yeah, Happy Independence Day. Let me know if you find something worthy to crow about.

Let's face it; we like wars.

Now I know you're going to put on your pacifist poncho and hurl tomatoes at me for saying that. Well, thanks for the free fruit, people; it'll save me a penny.

But seriously, I will demonstrate that this is true. Some of us just like outright war. You know, the sort that's happening all over the world- rebel conflicts in African countries, unspeakable atrocities in Chechnya, Iraq and Afghanistan bearing the brunt of a few bad men, the Middle-Eastern conflict and the Indo-Pak tensions. You can hardly prove me wrong here.

But what about me, pipes up your thin reedy voice- yes you, the nature-loving, tree-hugging fruitarian, almost anorexic because you can't eat anything that can be murdered, waving your stick insect arms in protest. I'm not for war, you say. Ah but you are, you see. You're raging against non-vegetarians. You're raging against the fur coat industry. You're campaigning for the rights of spinach but you don't care about the lives of dairy farmers who lose their livelihood because nobody buys their milk anymore. So you're at war with someone in your own reedy little stick-insecty way.

And you, you purveyor of justice- the one who campaigns for clemency, for human rights, for fair treatment to prisoners, for the upholding of the Habeas Corpus writ. Now don't scowl and raise your Magna Carta at me, you thick-robed bespectacled geek. Your dash for Lady Justice is squashing my rights as a taxpayer not to hand over my money for the maintenance of unspeakable criminals who shake their babies to death, who plant bombs in my city, who swindle thousands like me of our hard-earned wages. And you're campaigning for that vermin's rights? You're warring against the ordinary citizens' rights with your clever words and your indecent spin on the law.

And what about you- you finely attired keepers of the faith? You claim you want peace, not war. You shake hands with rabbis and mullahs and bishops and pray for the serenity and wisdom of the world and yet you live in shameless luxury and determine if a raped girl should be forced to have a baby at risk to her own life, you disallow a devout woman to cover her head with a scarf if she so chooses, you call followers of other faiths kafirs and non-believing sinners, you weild your mighty money to subjugate and occupy the homes of a harrassed nation- all in the name of God. What a clever little bunch you are.

And what about you and me- we are so taken in with the everyday wars that we encounter when we spill onto the streets, in order to earn our living. We are wooed towards something and cautioned against another- phones, schools, medicines, clothes, entertainment, political views, nations, rights, duties and moralities. And we choose. We choose one over another, starting off little wars that will all come home to roost one day if they haven't already.

You're not a pacifist. You're as Machiavellian as I am. You love wars just as much as every other person on this planet. You just don't have the balls to admit you enjoy it. Comfort yourself, dear coward; neither do they.

A case of the fedups.

I've got a case of the fedups. I've been trying to stay all positive, even reading silly books like Eat, Pray, Love (excellent substitute for inducing vomit in my very personal, absolutely minority opinion) and wondering what's happening all around. Friends tell me I'm just crabby because I don't like the monsoon. Some say I am sadder about Michael Jackson's death than I realise. And some think I'm generally disgusted with the shambles of the world we are living in. Now this is all true. I mean seriously, between Facebooking each other, writing random rants like this one, following macrobiotic diets to no avail, wasting money on really bad books, watching inane drivel in a movie theatre, reading trumped-up news with terrible grammatical errors and generally naffing off, what's the real deal these days?

When I was in London, I heard the same rants from friends. When I was in Geneva, even the Swiss jumped about like a large red tropical ant had eaten its way through their skisuit and was chomping on a wealthy bum. While I am in Bombay, I realise that the most exciting thing that people were talking about was a shoddy bridge connecting two parts of the city, with the worst emergency provisions I've ever seen in a so-called developed city. And I mean just lighting. Forget about accidents. Better to jump into the water and pray to an unhearing god.

All we seem to do is hear, talk, see, listen, explain, bitch and verify the same old shit. Politicians are crooked from the House of Commons in England to every house in India. Celebrities are dying of cancer or drug abuse and their funerals are nothing but hammy, showy, badly directed cheap television where even children aren't spared. Corruption ranges from charging a battery for 88p to government contracts handed out to unworthy sons-in-law. Google and Microsoft are at war again, as if there aren't enough wars to keep us busy and in danger until 2050 at least. Recession tales have become competitive- who's more screwed, you or I? The news channel are still worried about who is dating whom and is that his long-lost daughter? Oh no, wait, that's just Woody Allen again.

In the middle of this white noise, I am wondering, are books the last refuge? Are they really? Or are they becoming the same monster? Publishers will only publish already published famous authors because in this scary economic situation, new authors aren't a safe bet? Or will a new author bring down the aristocracy by writing a 'popular' book with very little literary life to it and yet win an astonishing prize? Shall we just stick with the classics? And yet, I walk into bookstores untiringly, only to find that people are really just there for the coffee and brownies. They are only there to 'pick up a gift for my friend's kid's birthday party' or only there because a popular socialite is 'doing a reading' of a book they haven't even read.

As I said, a case of the fedups. Where nothing seems to be worth writing about or doing or listening to. And if you are going to come up with some homily about life is beautiful or some such similar crap, spare me. As I said before, self-help writers make me vomit. And since when has it been politically incorrect to correctly identify the absence of genuine inspiration as just that?

Whatever happened to a good old-fashioned rant about the mediocrity of mankind and the accuracy of Thoreau?

The voice of India

The voice of India has announced that the Congress has won. The UPA government led by Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh is to continue for another 5 years. More importantly, the vicious beast of communalism upon whose back the losing BJP was riding has been mercilessly crushed by the very people whom they tried to incite against the minorities.

India, whether rich or poor, educated or illiterate, has realised that the reins of power cannot be handed over to someone who wishes to take India back to the dark ages. Who wishes to murder in the name of God and then like a child point a finger and say - but he started it first.

There are no saints here. All the parties, winners and losers alike, have all been tarnished with the brush of corruption and greed. All we are able to do is choose between the lesser of the two evils. And hope that the good work continues and the bad work lessens. Either way, the government has a lot of promises to fulfil and a lot of begging bowls to fill.

My only hope is that our hope isn't snuffed out by the overconfidence and the arrogance of victory. My hope is that this government raises the bar of expectation and then supersedes it. My cynical, experienced side says I'm asking for too much. My hopeful side, the one that dragged its behind in a blistering sun to vote for them, says maybe, just maybe....

Interesting sidebar.... Every major TV channel that broadcasts in India constantly covered the last 24 hours of the election. Except CNN international. They gave it as much importance as a namby pamby interview of Musharraf by Fareed Zakaria. Is this the American approach to 'bonding with the world's largest democracy?' Or do they think that the American elections are the only ones worth covering? Shame on CNN International. The BBC on the other hand, did a smart thing. They made the coverage so scintillating and well-positioned that most Indian viewers were hard pressed to choose between popular Indian channels and the BBC.

Well, the drama is almost over. It'll be back to murky business come Monday morning. Lord help us all.