The Kerala trip, which involved the better part of three days wandering around the fraught Kannur/Kasargode region and two days in Calicut indulging in the biriyanis of Paragon and Rahmath, was interesting in ways I hadn’t predicted. There’s a ‘great game’ being played out in the Kannur area — a deadly dangerous political game pitting the Left, led by the CPM stormtroopers, against what it perceives as the “encroachment” of the hard Hindutva sponsored by the RSS/BJP/VHP and allied organizations. It’s the sort of story that merits a deep dive, in the form of a series of essays — for which I have to make a longer trip, most likely in late November. So more on that later.
I’ve been spending the hours since my return trying to catch up on the news, and I notice that Gujarat is boiling over quite nicely. The sordid case of the Election Commission and poll dates; the political churning within parties and various communities and groupings; Narendra Modi in the midst of it all inaugurating ‘first of its kind’ schemes that are actually half-complete versions of schemes that have already been launched in various other parts of the country and the world; a bribery scandal involving the BJP trying to buy off Hardik Patel’s followers (nothing new there people, move on — there is a reason the Central government opposed in the Supreme Court a move to ensure that all political donations have to be identified by giver, and recorded)… Plenty of grist for the mill, but I’m still not done playing catch-up, so regular blogging will resume tomorrow second half after I’ve had time to digest all that has been happening.
Meanwhile, a PSA for those in Bangalore: the 6th edition of the Bangalore Literature Festival is this weekend. Here is the comprehensive list of speakers and performers, and this is the schedule. I’ll be there both days so if you are in Bangalore and do make it, come say hello. (And on Sunday morning, 10 AM, will be hosting a panel featuring Rahul Dravid and Rajdeep Sardesai, on the latter’s new book on cricket). I just read it, but will hold off on a review till the Sunday event is over).
While on books, my companion on the Kerala trip was William Finnegan’s latest, Cold New World. This review tells you what it is about. And for why it is a must-read for us here in India, here is an excerpt from Finnegan’s introduction:
My previous work as a reporter had been mostly in other countries, which may be why I started out with a set of relatively neat, received ideas about what I would find in this country under headings like race, class, poverty and the drug trade. My tidy ideas were upended, in any case, at every turn. American real life is rowdier, more disturbing, more charming than anything dreamt of in your or my philosophy.
This country was (and is) in a strange, even an unprecedented, condition. While the national economy has been growing, the economic prospects of most Americans has been dimming. For young people and males and those without advanced degrees == for, that is, the large majority of working Americans — real hourly wages have fallen significantly over the past twenty-four years. Even during the time since I began this book, a period marked economically by low inflation, one of the great bull markets in Wall Street history, and an unemployment rate that has reached, as I write, its lowest level in twenty-four years, the median household income has fallen and the national poverty rate has risen. What the triumphalism of most American business writing ignores is a frightening growth in the number of low-wage jobs. This growth has left 30 percent of the country’s workers earning too little to lift a family out of poverty. A new American class structure is being born — one that is harsher, in many ways, than the one it is replacing.
Anything above sound familiar? The book is a brilliantly written, scary portrait of a changing world, one in which it is increasingly difficult for Joe Citizen to find his moorings.
I’ll leave you with that thought and that recommendation, and see you back here tomorrow evening. Be well all.
