Quietly Fades the Dada

When Krejza tumbled to the turf a few overs before tea, and the myopic, contacts-wearing Ganguly made his slow way back to the pavilion, a fan held out a placard that said "Even the Don scored a duck in his last innings."

The comparison might sound preposterous but Ganguly was as important to his generation in Indian cricket as Don was to his (and to all others succeeding).

Nobody who has seen him dance down the pitch to a spinner will grudge him his awkward and tentative pulls. Nobody who has seen the placement and timing on his sublime off-drives will grudge him his inability to follow the short ball all the way through with his eyes. And nobody who saw him ruffle the feathers on the green baggy cap in its own territory will grudge him his banian-clad antics blue jersey in hand.

Now that he will no more take the field as a batsman in Test cricket, post-mortem analyses will prove this and that, but even if he did not manage to end as he began, as his form in the series and the match promised, the moment surely is his. Even the Don faded quietly, and Dada, after all the kicking and the screaming before the series and all through his life, had to go for a first-ball duck, quietly, to heart-felt applause.

Berlin

Just back from Berlin, visiting a consumer electronics exhibition. A wonderful time it has been. The exhibition itself was great - all the major players with quite some eye-candy, and then the city.

We stayed near the Brandenburger Tor - the Brandenburg Gate - at the Kempinski Adlon, just on the eastern side of where the Berlin Wall stood. And the exhibition was on the western side. Managed to go round a bit, especially into the Eastern side - the Cathedral, the Historical Museum, the Jewish Quarter.

Went on a boat-ride the day before we had to leave. Started in the Eastern side, past the old lock and some of the old buildings. Past the Reichstag and the Chancellery and some of the modern buildings. Past bridges and picnic spots, parks and waterfront hotels.

On the way back, dropped in at an art and architecture bookshop. Spent some time walking down the Unter den Linden, the street that Frederick the Great built.

Went to Potsdam the next day. The Sans Soucci is grand and the Neues Palais grander. Huge grounds, delicate villas, and pure history. Managed to get into the Cecilienhof where the Potsdam Treaty was signed by the Big Three, just as they shut the door - no audioguide, but we managed to see the rooms at least, and the photographs.

Brilliant place - Berlin. Would love to return and take it slower that time.

Reality bites... and then chews you up

Reality never had it so good for itself before. But, before we start on our rant, a moment's silence for Shinjini, a schoolgirl paralysed by maybe too much of it.

Every other TV channel has decided that an infusion of life is what every middle-class living room needs. And religiously, reality in its different avatars, in the form of diamond-decked starlets and pan-chewing babus, has invaded our entertainment needs.

Gone are the days when entertainment was escape from reality. That is too shallow for us now. Now it is escape to reality, it seems. Even if reality means a production assistant waves away "intruders on the action." Even if reality means prying into the innards of a simple, functional being. The camera, it seems, is everywhere. And, reality is what is captured on it.

The trouble is that this is not just the latest fad that TV audiences are taking to. The game shows of a decade or two ago and the Saas-bahu soaps that are still popular, were clearly about something "outside," about people resembling us but somehow different. People wanted to be in on all that, but you were not in unless you were in the show itself.

Now we all are the show. Life is no longer sanitised by people wielding the megaphone. There is just the word 'Start' or whatever is the word that is in the beginning, and life just unfolds. We are brought ourselves and our neighbours, and our friends and our enemies all on a few square inches of the latest technology. Welcome to the Truman Show. Welcome to yourself.

The camera, in its long history has finally performed the impossible. Earlier there were allegations that it was opaque on the shooter's side - that things were left out. Now it has been silvered on the lens side, and it reflects what lies behind. Allegations that too much has been left on the scene.. well we were never asked to speak or forever be silent.

For all that TRPs and other intricate number-mongering yields, it is a simple fact, universally acknowledged, that a single reality TV show with simplistic idea or none, is simply in search of a prime spot top be vacated by other silly items like news and stuff.

We have our 24-hour news channels now - who watches them anyway but dull, old people. We have our multiplexes and for those who have no time to go there, we have our local pirate of the DVD ocean. We have our parks and beaches and centres of culture which we can get away to when we can arrange for the six-pack. What we need from TV right now is reality; we need life. And if it is live so much the better.

Unvarnished, unedited, untouched by the editorial scissors that snips out what the human condition expresses from its inmost being. Tears, smiles, shouts of joy and anger, emotions that each of us have felt, and will feel all the more now that we have seen them on TV, shown by people like us.

In the age of reason that we were supposed to be living in, less was supposed to be more. In the age of reality TV that we are living in more is less.

Forgotten springs

Where does a straight road lead to?
The end is in its beginning,
Only unseen, it forgets itself
On its way there, through ways and means
That twist and turn past good and bad,
Through means and ends that weave
Meanings and endings
Out of everyday tears and smiles.

A black dog barks in the empty night
Lined with trees that have already shed their leaves.
A stilling wind blows, then is forgotten
As the chill creeps in unbidden from out of sight.
Unnoticed rhymes in the wheeze of a motorcycle and
The tar almost melts, darker than the darkness of the night.

There is music in the breeze
That whispers of new beginnings
Past where the street of leafless trees
Ends.
And when night darks its way to the soul
Of man looking towards the setting life;
When man feels drawn from the world whole
That teems in its many-tongued strife;
Then the music of the breeze
Will bring back memories of forgotten things;
With its discordant harmonies
It will speak of a million Springs.

--Shyam.