In Agra

Went to Agra on a holiday. The folks in Delhi smile indulgently when you tell them you went to Agra of all the places-it sounds quaint !

The beauty of Taj never fails to astonish me. Amongst the wonders of the world and the architectural masterpieces, it is the only one in the lists for its perfect beauty. The colosseum, the great wall of China or the pyramids are there for their size or other unique attributes. But the Taj exists possibly as the most beautiful monument in the world. It seems perfect in shape,symmetry,design and aesthetic appeal. It would have been even so much more wonderful when the marble would have been completely white and the inlay work was not damaged.

Contrast this with the city of Agra- filthy, chaotic and rough. The touts, the guides and the autowallahs treat fleecing the tourist as their divine right. I cannot even fathom how the poor foreigners would be getting taken for the ride of their lifetimes. The facilities outside the five stars are pathetic. The town boasts of only a Pizza Hut , a Dasaprakash and Zorba the Buddha restaurant where you could possibly eat. There are no coffee shops where tourists can spend their time. The result of all this is that many of them who could actually spend four days in Agra in seeing the Taj, the fort, Fatehpur Sikri and the other monuments prefer squeezing everything into a day. Fatehpur Sikri is actually worse than Agra in this - my car was stopped twice by local hoodlums to ask for money and the moment I reached the fort, I was surrounded by salesmen of all kinds.The government anyway is sleeping.

The stories about Taj are so intriguing. Shah Jahan's hair supposedly turned grey overnight after Mumtaz's death during childbirth. The hands of the builders were all chopped off so that they would not be able to repeat the construction anywhere. The bottom of the monument has tiny cells where apparently all the workers were kept after the Taj was built and they were not allowed to go outside. All of them died there.

Indian Art in the Stratosphere

In December 2002, my wife and I went to a gallery in Calcutta which claimed to be selling affordable art. I was always interested in Indian art and I had some knowledge about a few painters. The proprietor of the gallery recommended an ink on paper by Shyamal Dutta Ray. I had not even heard of him.But the owner seemed genuine and the painting was aesthetically good. We bought it for fifteen thousand rupees.

The art market boom was in its incipient stages then. Neville Tuli was just beginning to get some media space and there was some talk about Indian artists generating excitement in western art markets.

Then the interest in India began. The westerners interested in India began to buy Indian art. The non-resident Indians with wealth and some aesthetic interests reached a critical mass. The rich domestic Indians also saw art as a great status symbol. The market exploded. The prices today have reached absurd levels.

I got mail today from a gallery about a self-portrait by Paritosh Sen for one lac rupees and I had seen this piece being tagged at twelve thousand rupees a year and a half back.

But does anybody understand art barring a few pundits ? I cannot claim to say that I can identify great art even after visiting countless exhibitions and galleries. Some art hits you immediately with its power and beauty. But many great art remain incomprehensible and silent in their impact. Mona Lisa in Louvre would have probably been missed by many as a smallish and non-descript painting without its fame. The Shyamal Dutta Ray painting has been hanging in my house for the last four years (now worth a few lacs) but nobody, repeat nobody, has so far cast a second glance at it.

So it is only a status symbol and no rich household is complete without a piece by a well-known painter. It stays there as does the latest B & O music system. Who cares whether it is great or simply average or even bad ?

Timbuktu and Mali

Today, Timbuktu means a place from nowhere. It seems to be beyond the end of the known world. It is actually a town in Mali in West Africa. Mali is a poorly governed, impoverished country today. Thomas Friedman in his book discovers that ,even in Mali individuals have started using open-source software and to him it is almost like the final acceptance of the concept of open-source software. Naseruddin Shah fantasises of sending his wife to Timbuktu on his 25th marriage anniversary in Omkara.

But it was not like this six hundred years ago. Mali was then a country of fabled wealth. It was said that gold grew on trees in Mali. It was for about twenty years ruled by Mansa Musa (part of the Mansa family) when it reached the zenith of its glory. Mansa Musa undertook the Haj and went through Egypt. He distributed immense amount of riches wherever he went. Apparently, he gave away so much gold in Egypt that it caused inflation and the price of gold crashed by twenty five per cent.

The world-traveller of those days Ibn Battuta heard so many stories about the Mansa regime that he went to visit the kingdom. This is after he had visited many other countries including India. But even he was astonished by the scale of opulence and grandeur in the palaces.

Around 1360 AD the descendants of Mansa Musa were pitted in a terrible conflict with the descendants of his brother Mansa Suleyman and this led to the ultimate annihilation of the dynasty and the end of the glory for Mali.
This is the ruthless cycle of history. It changes everything.

Utter Rubbish

There was a time when I used to think that everything printed in the newspapers and magazines is the absolute truth. Growing up in remote places of Orissa,a copy of The Statesman or the Sunday magazine were items worth looking up to. Later, I joined a B-School which itself was written about in the press and for the first time I realised everything written is not true. But I gave the benefit of doubt to the media.

Working in the corporate sector also did not open my eyes to the bullshit perpetrated as news for a long time. But I was not sure about why they wrote what they wrote. Then I discovered the P.R.agencies. And I realised ,that may be fifty per cent of what is written in respectable newspapers could be trash handed over by the agencies. In fact,any article talking about the plans and expectations of a company or an industrialist or a politician is usually only that-plans of smart operators who know how to use the media.

I know of an industrialist, a rogue would be the better word,who appears on CNBC and speaks to ET about his future plans and anyone who knows him can bet his backside that they are a load of utter rubbish.

Why is this so? It is largely because journos with some exceptions get sucked into the -You scratch mine and I will scratch yours- cabal of politicians, businessmen and their bosses. And there are the usual issues of dal, roti and kids.It is the same situation for people who start off as honest bureaucrats. So in this country it is an open secret that several politicians have made thousands of crores but no newspaper or magazine has managed to investigate that. It is only left to Bollywood to talk about the issues with anonymous characters.

So what is the answer to this mainstream media malaise? Is it going to be the blogs? They can be powerful because they can be set up at no cost and hopefully it will give rise to some fearless individuals fighting for truth and justice.