Philosophers and Littérateurs

I've observed that eminent thinkers are generally adept at using words to communicate their thoughts. I've also observed that renowned literary writers usually manifest a philosophical bent of mind in their writing. It appears to me, then, that philosophers and littérateurs have quite a bit in common inasmuch as they both draw on the combination of two key competencies: the power of ideation and command over language, in order to be successful. However, having pondered over this briefly, I see that there is at least one fundamental difference between those who are primarily thinkers and those who are primarily writers.

To philosophers, whose modus operandi typically involves engaging in discourse with other thinkers, language serves as a useful tool to explore ideas and examine concepts. To littérateurs, whose focus typically is on developing narrative that would engage readers, ideas and concepts serve as basic props that, when enriched by the embellishments of language, could tell a compelling story. The quintessential thinker is seized with the quest for sagacity in the process of contemplation, whereas the quintessential writer agonizes over the search for precision in the process of articulation. 

Philosophers delight in clarity of understanding, littérateurs in artistry of expression.

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Exercises in Sophistry: A Note to the BJP

Dear BJP,

I wish your party members (some of whom are eminent lawyers) would go attend a refresher course in logic. Perhaps that might teach them to steer clear of befuddling fallacies and bemusing absurdities. Such as, for example, the following line of reasoning, which ya'll have been shouting out from the rooftops over the last couple of days:

A. The CBI has been misused by the Congress to serve its own political agenda.
B. Sohrabuddin was a criminal and a terrorist.
C. Amit Shah is innocent of all crimes that he has been accused of.

A crash course in basic logic will tell you that premises A and B -- even if they're true (and I am not even challenging their veracity) -- are not sufficient grounds to derive conclusion C. So kindly do the nation a favour and let the investigation take its own course. And then take the CBI to court if you like. But till then, stop behaving like the Pakistani establishment. You remind me so much of the way they reacted on 26/11 and the way they've been brushing away the evidence against Hafiz Saeed et al. Same panic, same hysteria, same high-pitched rhetoric, same denial. But even so, the truth came out, didn't it?

And lastly, please don't waste the nation's time and money in Parliament today. Be a robust opposition and engage in good solid debate based on good solid reasoning, on all the issues that you need to be challenging the Congress-led UPA government on -- there are lots of them, and I fully support your demand for accountability on all those counts. Please, please, please do not stage a walk-out as you are wont to do, it achieves nothing.

Have a nice day!

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Effing the Ineffable

As this rather tumultuous week ends, it is heartening to see attempts at bringing the high and mighty to book:

• Amit Shah, Gujarat's Minister of State for Home, suspected of complicity in a fake encounter case, was chargesheeted and denied anticipatory bail. 

• M K Kaushik, Coach to the Indian women's hockey team, was exposed as a sexual predator.

• Salahuddin Ayub, Principal of an elite private residential school in Andhra Pradesh, accused of raping a girl student several times over a year, was taken to the cops.

Common thread: all 3 events occurred this week, and all 3 events involve individuals in commanding positions (in their own respective worlds) who could well have been abusing the meek and defenseless under their control -- the very people who looked up to them for protection and leadership. In each case, powerful friends and allies of the accused have tried (and are still trying, as we go into the next week) to suppress their (alleged) crimes and misdemeanours, obfuscate the core issue in each case and divert public scrutiny by hurling counter-accusations at plaintiffs and/or investigators. We can only hope that justice is done in each case. What happened this week was just the first step, in each of the 3 cases, in what may well turn out to be a thousand mile journey. As we all know, it is not easy to bring to book those who have friends in high places and consider themselves above the law

Alan Watts once said (albeit in a very different context): "I'm in the business of effing the ineffable." Let's hope the Indian justice system is in that business too. 

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While on vacation ...

Vacations are about being, not about doing. Work is about doing. Play is about doing.

The soul needs some time to come abreast of all that the mind and the body have been doing, at work and at play. That's what vacations are for - vacant spaces for the soul to catch its breath.

Being, not doing.

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Ceci n'est pas une pipe

Shashi Tharoor is no scam artist. He doesn't look like a scam artist, doesn't talk like a scam artist and doesn't walk like a scam artist. Scam artists are people like the boorishly crude Madhu Koda and the unctuously cunning Ramalinga Raju to name a few scamsters from recent times, and opportunistic stock market fraudsters like Harshad Mehta and Ketan Parekh from yesteryears. All from different walks of life, but hey -- you can never suppress true art in any sphere. The only thing Tharoor did that went horribly wrong was to try and help a friend of his get a sweet deal as a stock-holder in a business venture he was mentoring. Compare that with Raju, the founder of the IT giant he named Satyam, after the Sanskrit word for Truth, who overnight made it a one-word oxymoron by revealing the truth (or part of it) behind its financial position. A five thousand crore scam is a scam that people would consider to be of a respectable order of magnitude. Seventy something crores, that too in the form of 'paper money', and that too accruing over several years, is peanuts, even assuming that Tharoor was after the money (which I seriously doubt -- he is too much of what Bengalis call a 'bhadralok').

In any case, you may ask, what's wrong with trying to get a friend a sweet deal? Don't we all try to help our friends? The answer to that lies in a detailed analysis (which I am not going to get into in this post) of a scandal that has been dubbed Tharoorgate. In short, it started with him mentoring a bunch of entrepreneurs who won the bid for the Kochi franchise of the IPL, in the interests of promoting cricket in his home state of Kerala. And then Tharoor managed to squeeze in a plum position for his friend, with a sweet sweat equity deal in that enterprise. And so the friend, a lady friend as it happens, ended up with a pretty decent stake in the venture, with a great upside and almost no downside, in return for helping them with branding, marketing, event management and such. All of which said lady friend has proven expertise in and is well known for, we are told. (A bit ironic, if you ask me, that we need to be told that she's famous -- wouldn't we have heard of her already?)

And what a lady friend! The voluptuous MILF-like Sunanda Pushkar with her pouting lips and her coiffed hair qualifies to be the personification of Savita Bhabhi to any young Indian male or in fact any male. I can bet that if she were a frumpy blowsy matron, this scandal would've just blown over, assuming it took place at all. But then who are we kidding? Would she have been Tharoor's girlfriend if she were a fat, ugly, dowdy, curmudgeonly widow? Or if she were a man? Would Tharoor have worked his mentoring magic to do her (or him) a great big favor? These may be politically incorrect questions to raise, but you know the answers as well as I.

The media wasted no time in flashing pictures of Tharoor cavorting with Pushkar at art exhibitions and other social events, but the woman has remained mysteriously silent (except for issuing just a simple and short statement denying any wrong-doing and expressing outrage at being projected as a proxy for Tharoor on the board of the Kochi IPL franchisee). Either she doesn't have the balls to come out and face live news cameras, or the ever so gallant Mr Tharoor has played protector and ensured that she is shielded from such ignominy.

And that's how the luscious Ms Pushkar came to be Mr Tharoor's bete noire. For a mindset that requires men and women to sit in different sections of the hall in a wedding reception, the sex angle in this drama is a bit too much to take. She's an attractive young widow with a successful career and he's a dashing, much-accomplished man of the world, a Minister and member of the Indian parliament, twice married and now single and eligible. It's a bit imprudent of someone like him to gallivant with someone like her, and then use his good offices to promote her business, knowing what kind of a gallery of rogues he has walked into in his present job as minister and how thirsty they are for his blood. India's self-righteous right wing, already piqued by Tharoor's earlier misdemeanours and his ability to slip out of tight corners by leveraging his mastery over the art of nuanced articulation, pounced on the glib Mr Tharoor this time, grabbing him by the short and curly. The left joined in too, for good measure, looking for a good slug-fest and some more Congress-bashing.

The nation has other far more compelling issues before it at this time. Moreover when it comes to punishing the corrupt and the deviant, there are far bigger fish we should be frying than the soft-spoken, well-meaning Tharoor, whose biggest crime -- other than a few careless tweets he threw about in a cavalier fashion some time ago (which even a nobody like me has critically blogged about), is merely the fact that he's got a soft spot for attractive women and tries to help them out in their professional pursuits.

The only good thing this scandal has done is to blow open the lid on the Pandora's box that contains all the really murky goings-on behind the closed doors of the IPL, involving some real crooks. Hopefully, we will learn more as the various authorities proceed with their investigations. 

But Tharoor? Vraiment, ceci n'est pas une pipe!

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