Dousing India in Kerosene

In English, August, Upamanyu Chatterjee’s superb novel about a year in the life of a young Stephanian who has just joined the Civil Service, there is a revealing passage where the District Collector of Madna, Ravi Srivastava, refers to a sweaty underling of theirs as “just a promotee”. In the uniquely abstruse language of the Indian Adminstrative Service, a promotee is someone who joins the Service via promotion from one of the lower grades of the Administrative Services, usually State-level; an officer who has not cleared the much-hyped annual Civil Service exam but works his way up the ladder. It is testament to Chatterjee’s skill as a novelist that he is able to show through a single throwaway remark the sneering disregard officers of Srivastava’s ilk have for these junior officers. But, having come through the State ranks, often these junior officers are the ones who know the areas they serve best. Their knowledge of the minutiae of the political, social – and criminal – dynamic in an area can be of invaluable aid to the Collectors and Additional District Collectors who hop from posting to posting around the country. Additional Collector of Malegaon Yashwant Sonawane was one of these “promotees”.

“This matter will be taken very seriously. He was a very upright officer and this probe will continue until we take all the required action.” - P. Velarasu, District Collector, Malegaon.

Smack in the middle of that quote crops up another favourite word in the IAS lexicon, though their officers have less cause to use it: “upright”. From the use of this adjective, the astute reader will immediately understand that Sonawane, in contrast to the wide majority of his colleagues, was impeccably honest, dilligent and guided by such foolish values as patriotic pride and right and wrong. A look at his years in government reveals that Sonawane was all that and much more; it is open to conjecture, but it is just as likely that he was not only the most “upright” officer in Malegaon, but in all of Maharashtra.

By every account Sonawane was a truly remarkable man. Born into a poverty-line poor rural Dalit family, he managed after college to get himself a job as a clerk in the Mantralaya in 1988. In 1994 he cleared the state civil services exam, where he worked dutifully for fifteen years before being promoted to the IAS rank of Additional Collector in Malegaon.

Recognising that one of the major impediments to development in Malegaon was Hindu-Muslim tension, he worked hard to reduce the faultline, campaigning hard for a branch of Aligarh Muslim University to be set up there. He was also the driving force behind a plan to set up a unit of Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation there. If his life had not been so cruelly interrupted, he would have had the chance to do a great deal of good in one of India’s most troubled areas.

At the very least, Sonawane’s story should strike against those who oppose caste-based reservations in low-level government jobs (self-regarding elitists like Anish Trivedi, please note). Here was a man who worked himself up from penury to a position of undeniable influence by dint of hard work and honesty. He lost his life taking on a dangerous mafia because he was fighting for poor people’s right to government-subsidised kerosene. How easy it would have been for him to turn a blind eye and extend an open palm, as surely most of the other administrators, “promotee” or not, were in the area.

Sonawane believed he could alone wage a war against the venality of India. Yet we continue to laud a system when he has been proven so tragically wrong.

Review: Serious Men by Manu Joseph

One of the recurring themes debutante novelist Manu Joseph explores in Serious Men is the nature of marital love. He tells the story of two couples of vastly different backgrounds into whose conjugal lives the arrival of third parties threaten havoc. For the Dalit hero of the book, Ayyan Mani, it is his cherished son Adi who signposts the damping of his wife’s ardour; this is when Ayyan recognises the paucity of the life he has given Oja. For his boss Arvinda Acharya, an ancient pachyderm of a physicist who once almost won the Nobel Prize and now heads the Institute of Theory and Research, it is meeting the young, voluptuous astrobiologist Oparna Goshmaulik that throws into sharp relief his decades long union with his patient, loving wife Lavanya.

As the title indicates, it is not so much a story of the couples as it is of the two men, Ayyan and Acharya. And as the novel progresses, both these serious men embark on elaborate deceptions. Ayyan Mani, who defines his Dalit idenity through anti-Brahmanism, needs to prove to his wife that there is life beyond BDD, the tenement slum in which they live. So he teaches Adi, a lonely boy with a hearing disability, to blurt out words like ‘Fibonacci’ in class, and ask questions about Relativity as his peers learn about fractions. Through periodic, inspired, prods by Ayyan, the myth of the Dalit boy-genius spreads, and Ayyan and his wife’s stature in their community grows. Newspaper and TV reporters arrive in their slum, and his wife Oja once again begins to believe her husband is a man of worth.

Ayyan Mani is a fascinating character, a poor Dalit with tremendous powers of observation and ready intelligence. His overwhelming desire, apart from creating a better life for his son than he had, is to be mistaken for a member of the middle class. So he drops his son to school in taxis he can barely afford, practices phrases in English, carefully reads everything he can get his hands on.

The genius of this book lies in the observation of people and the different worlds they build. One short scene between Ayyan and wife climbed beneath my skin, in a few lines forcing me to contemplate how we – the educated, assimilated rich – draw artificial, unseen lines, separating sophistication from vulgarity, tasteful from tawdry. Husband and wife are dressing for a function in their son’s school, and Oja wants to wear her shiniest sari and thickest gold chain. But Mani convinces her otherwise (‘Important does not mean gold any more.’) Then she says to him: “’You should wear that coat you have. You look like a hero in it.’ ‘No, no,’ he replies. ‘You are not supposed to wear a coat for something like this. You are supposed to look like you don’t care much.’

A little like the unparalleled Russian Mikhail Bulgakov, Joseph has the uncanny ability to mock those things “sophisticates” hold most dear. Science, high art, fine cuisine, literature, love; the things the educated world chooses to elevate to unnatural standing are picked apart time and again by his witty pen, and exposed, at their naked core, to be the hollow pursuits of people, not necessarily more noble or absurd than the activities of the peon who answers the phones, the journalist who writes stories for sale, the guard who covers the boss’s head with an umbrella as he scurries from his car in the rain.

Joseph is a fine political journalist (he is the Deputy Editor of Open Magazine) but this is his first novel, and I felt parts of the book began to drag, especially as he seeks to extract a nugget of philosophy out of the smallest things, such as the shape of an umbrella. It is the exposition of difference where he is strongest. Apart from the glaring material disparity between a Dalit peon and a near-Nobel winning physicist, Joseph also subtly and cleverly shows the difference their intellectual standing provides in their marriages. Ayyan is constantly relating to his wife information he has read and heard, so she could “marvel at a world so strange and at her man who knew so much.” Acharya, instead, has no longer any need to impress his wife. Years of achievement have taken care of that. Only once, when they are first married, is he as keen to dazzle as any man, and at their wedding pandaal he tells her something he has learned about the speed of light.

For a book at least notionally about science, some of the scientific thought is quite strange. Which near Nobel-winning physicist would seriously suggest that alien life could exist, impervious, in the dark vacuum of space, without the sustenance that a home like Earth can provide? Yet this construction is a reminder of the possibilities of fiction, where the only logic that must remain undisturbed is that of the narrative. Joseph is by no means a magical realist, yet his tale recognises that aligning the fictional world with the world we know is neither necessary nor even to be desired, no matter how much they resemble each other. In this book, physicists gaze out from their balconies at the stars and contemplate hot air balloons that will return to Earth with alien life forms. That is the world that Joseph must keep in balance, and he does so admirably.

2010: The Year of Complicit Corruption

(this piece appeared as the edit in The Sunday Guardian on 2 January)

2010 provided India with a multitude of options in which to define the decade to come. The decade just past was about creation of opportunity and extension of influence. We learnt, much to many of our surprise, that as India’s economic importance grew, the care with which the world addressed our concerns would also grow. No other country expanded its soft power as successfully as India did these ten years. The attention the world paid to both our folly and our triumph was notable because, finally, we were globally newsworthy. If that meant Suresh Kalmadi’s name found headlines in newspapers in every corner of the world, it also meant that Slate, perhaps the most popular magazine on the Web, could now happily devote a long editorial towards examining the enigmatic, Apocalyptic charisma of Rajnikanth.

Yet 2010 came to mean something quite different to the Indian public. This was the year of Complicit Corruption. We learnt, this time not to anyone’s surprise, that almost every avenue of influence in India was open to a most endemic form of subversion. If public outrage became the leitmotif of the year, it was not unjustified. Everywhere there was power there was skullduggery, and everywhere there was influence there was silent shenanigan. The Indian public was betrayed time and again by the people they had reposed their faith in.

The Radia tapes illuminated this most clearly. It came at the end of a year beset by scandal, yet what hurt the prevailing sentiment most was the callous, casual disregard that two of Indian media’s most trusted sentinels had for the Constitution and the role of the Fourth Estate. That the powers-to-be were for sale many people have long suspected. That those who had been tasked with bringing light to political misdeeds were equally complicit was a betrayal that became too much to bear. Traditional media, already a creaking behemoth in an age demanding nimble, reactive feet, was dealt a body blow by its own collusive tendencies. But Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi were only the manifest representations of a culture that has seeped into news media for years. Front page space and analysis is being purchased by telecom and oil companies and their proxies at the same time the features pages are being bought by art galleries, restaurants and nightclubs. The World Wide Web democratised the dissemination of information; 2010 was the year that much of India’s Web-savvy population decided they no longer needed to be preached to by charlatans.

Yet the media is only one theatre for our uniquely Indian way of conducting the affairs of state. Cricket, housing for war widows, the Commonwealth Games, black money in Swiss banks, Mining, telecom, even the sale of food in a desperately poor state like Uttar Pradesh: everything was available to be bought and sold in India by a gathering of fifteen percenters in khadi. Many people cite the personal probity of our Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, which even in this besmirched age has thankfully never been in doubt. Dr Singh has helped bring to pass some of the best policies India has, such as the RTI and the NREGA. Yet he sits at the helm of a system that cultivates corruption and underhandedness. Perhaps he feels it is too much for one person to revolutionise the way government works in India. But if he is honest with himself, he will know that such rampaging thievery is the most insidious virus in the country. And now, the people are watching.

Mining for Justice

The decision taken by the Pranab Mukherjee-led Group of Ministers to ensure mining corporations share 26% of their net annual profits with displaced locals is highly laudable. The mining sector in India is in urgent need of cleanup. In almost every resource-rich part of the country, mining mafias have emerged that have vice-like control over the extraction of natural resources. Much like in post-Soviet Russia, India’s vast quantities of mineral wealth have resulted in the creation of a group of mining “oligarchs”, leaders who have utilised their local influence to control the flow of natural resources, often working in connivance with major corporate entities. As these mining oligarchs have become richer, many have chosen to enter politics; in states like Karnataka and Jharkhand, the mining lobby has direct influence on who sits in the chief minister’s chair.

Corruption in the mining sector is a top-to-bottom affair. People within the mining industry insist they need to pay bribes to everyone involved, from the thekedaar who watches over the mine to the local police officer. In states like Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, a lot of the most resource-rich areas are under the control of the Naxals, who the oligarchs strike deals with. This is an important source of revenue for the Naxalite movement. The failure to reform the industry speaks of a lack of political will. It also helps fund what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called “the gravest threat to internal security.”

However, the decision has not found universal approval within government circles. It was attacked by the head of the Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, who said a 26% profit-sharing ratio would be a big disincentive for corporations looking to invest in the sector. Ahluwalia believes this will be an unwanted drain on companies just at the moment the mining sector is looking to expand its work in India. This is not an atypical decision from Ahluwalia, who seems to believe the role of the Planning Commission is to make life as easy as possible for major corporations, instead of focusing on the needs of the citizenry.

But if the government goes ahead with its plan – and with Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee backing it, it should have the legs – there are a series of pitfalls they will have to negotiate. The most important is to establish clear and firm guidelines for the delivery of this 26% of profit to locally displaced populations. In an industry already beset with corruption, this is not going to be easy. It is well-known that government rewards and subsidy systems in India are prone to hijack, with allocations only occasionally reaching intended recipients.

The second issue the government will have to fight is there is now a real incentive for mining companies to not declare their profits. While this is less likely in companies that export natural resources, because it becomes almost impossible to under-invoice, companies involved in selling resources domestically will see a direct benefit in under-declaring their profits. The government needs to set up a monitoring agency to make sure local populations are not being deprived of the share they have been promised.

Mukherjee’s scheme is an admirable one in theory. If it is implemented with the care needed, it could have a great impact on some of the poorest parts of India, even as it silences one of the key arguments the Naxalite movement uses.

Hear Ye, Hear Ye. Caesar Arriveth

(a shorter version of this piece appeared as the edit in the Sunday Guardian on 7th November)



In those distant times when a toga was standard attire for the dapper gentleman-about-town, and not solely the party accessory of choice in American undergraduate fraternities, the Caesar would occasionally leave behind the magnificent ramparts and towers of Rome and tour the dominions, where he could see firsthand what life and livelihood were really like in those scattered little dots that relied on his Great Benevolence.

The visit of the Emperor would cause huge excitement. The local chieftains and warlords (especially those not tainted by war widow housing scandals) clamoured for an audience with the Emperor. The roads, usually so shoddily built they would cave in if it rained two days in a row, would be especially reinforced; after all, the Imperial Chariot was a weighty beast, with shining spokes of gold and bulletproof windows certified by 50 Cent himself. It would not have done for the almighty Caesar’s chariot to fall through the surface, into the cesspool of muck and refuse that swirled under these poor Dominion-dwellers their entire lives.

The Imperial tours were important because this was the time when the largesse of Rome would be apportioned, and the chieftains would spend years and years fashioning for themselves begging bowls, which they would call by strange names, like SENSEX and BSE. They would shout loudly about how big their bowls had become over the last few years, and how big their bowls could be, if the Emperor, in his wisdom, decided to help them just a bit.

As it is with all men of Great Benevolence, the Emperor would play favourite, doling out his bounty with some care. How difficult it was to rule the entire world only he knew. And those quivering beards in the Senate of Rome would not allow him to do just as he pleased. Their messages would be passed on: Commodius would say: “The dark warriors of Sumeria have the thorium we need for our new nuclear-powered arrows. They must be kept happy. Give them some gold, and a new donkey cart.” Incantus would say: “but their enemies, the Assyrians, hold the key to the magical kingdom of Afpak. They are weak, but petulant. Give their king a bribe. Call it a military loan.” Then there were others, like Emmanuleus, who instead of giving advice would inexplicably leave to run for Mayor of Chicago.

Perhaps the strangest behaviour would be seen within one tiny subsection of society, the Drum Beaters. The Drum Beaters were a group who enjoyed suffixing scattered initials to their name to convey a sense of gravitas, as in, Msduttus NDTV, and Sagarikus CNNIBN, and Arnahiccupicicus TNOW, and their job was to assist the spread of information to the populace. Because debate in dominion society was always rough and ready, the vital qualification for this job was the ability to speak at the same decibel level as the trumpet of a baby elephant (the Romans had machines to measure these things); over the years, this ability to speak very loudly, and very fast, was confused with the ability to identify and solve all that ailed dominion life. Soon all the chieftains, policemen and warriors, even the best thinkers of the day, would go to their debates, and try and show everyone that they too could speak very loudly, and very fast.

Our studies show that the Emperor’s visit generated two easily identifiable reactions amongst these Drum Beaters. The more indulgent of the lot – let us call them the Liberal-Epicureans – would see the Emperor’s visit as a good chance to finally interact with someone of intellect, dignity, style and importance equal to their own. As the world watched, they would sit the Emperor and his wife down and smile knowingly, as if to say: “yes, if you can imagine, I live amongst these crude folk, who know not Sartre or Glenn Beck. It is a weary life we lead, you having to rule the entire world, me having to shout inanities incessantly.” And then, as an aside, “I came to your inauguration in Rome, you know. Did you see my NDTV van?”

The second type of Drum Beater was of the taskmaster variety, the Incautious Stoics, if you will. This people were self-acknowledged experts at the Harangue. The Emperor’s visit thus became a chance to ask why thousands of things had not been done. “Why have you given our neighbours flying chariots? And where is all the money that was promised us? And are you actually saying you won’t be solving that intractable self-determination/border dispute during your three day visit here? For shame.”

Dominion society was full of such characters. Such as the merchants, who when the Emperor visited, would quickly appliy their makeup, pull out the old leather boots & fishnet stockings and hit the streets with their finest “come here, big boy” looks. These merchants’ God, Commercius, was actually the Emperor’s poodle. If the Emperor was happy, Commercius would wag his fluffy tail, and these merchants could rest happy knowing their best Julia Roberts-in-Pretty Woman impressions were not going unnoticed.

All in all, it was a strange, mysterious time, shrouded in the mists of the past. There must be some lessons for us in the here and now, but for the life of me I can’t figure them out.

(My extensive research for this editorial involved finding a Youtube clip of that scene where Joauqin Phoenix returns to Rome in Gladiator. All complaints about the historical accuracy of the facts noted above should therefore be sent to: Ridley Scott, Director, Hollywood).

Censorship as a Political Instrument

(this piece appeared in The Sunday Guardian on 17th October)


There are certain leaders who have the ability to transform a political moment, to take a localised anger or dissatisfaction and convert it into a movement of real force. History remembers these people more than any other. Mahatma Gandhi managed it, as did his contemporary Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Hitler did it in 1934, and Churchill eight years later. Mayawati is now recognised as a more significant political force than her mentor Kanshi Ram, because she could convert Dalit dissatisfaction in Uttar Pradesh into lasting national political influence. L.K. Advani will be remembered as one who accomplished it, even as any number of pretenders, from Kalyan Singh to Varun Gandhi, will fade from memory.

In post-Independence India, Shiv Sena leader Balasaheb Thackeray has managed this most adroitly. With little institutional support or party experience, he created a political platform for his unique ideology. The Shiv Sena plank combined a number of different concerns that many Maharashtrans felt in the 1960s, but these were buttressed by a series of anti-Constitutional demands (especially for religious and regional favouritism) that suited Thackeray’s personal, virulent antagonisms. His years in politics have been wildly successful, and Maharashtra has never been the same.

And so it falls upon the ambitious young Aditya Thackeray to enter this theatre of competitive chauvinism, and the weight of familial experience sits heavy. His father Uddhav, son of the Tiger, tried briefly to cleave the party from its roots, hoping to woo the middle-class Maharasthtran with a brand of parochialism untainted by the thuggish politics favoured until then. His singular failure, and uncle Raj’s ascendancy, has sent Aditya a potent signal: their brand of right-wing politics demands emotive symbolism, rhetoric, and a unified grassroots support that teeters on the precipice of violence and “retribution”.

If the youngest Thackeray goes on to become a force in Maharashtran politics, his campaign to have Rohinton Mistry’s Booker-nominated novel Such A Long Journey removed from the syllabus of Mumbai University will be remembered as his entry point. The problem, it seems, is Mistry’s less-than-flattering portrayal of the patriarch, of the Shiv Sena, of the Marathi manoos, and of Mumbai’s dabbawallas.

Yet history – and official and unofficial censorship has a long history in India – teaches us that content is immaterial. At times like this, too many columnists and literary analysts spend their time defending the content of these books. Poring over the offending texts reveals nothing, because in India, outrage can be manufactured over anything. Instead, look at the political circumstances surrounding these controversies. This is how we can counter such vigilantism.

The excising of Mistry’s book from the University syllabus is a means to an end –portraying Thackeray as a defender of manoos culture and his grandfather’s reputation – just as the banning of Rushdie’s Satanic Verses suited the political interests of important Muslim clerics and the ruling Congress party, and the 2004 banning of James Laine’s history of Shivaji helped bolster a floundering Maratha nationalist movement.

What sets this case apart from the two examples cited above is that this is not a case of government censorship. The vice-chancellor of Mumbai University has chosen to bow to the wishes of a 20-year old with a grandfather-complex. Yet, an important work of art is being held hostage by political forces, just as years ago M.F. Husain’s work was considered by some people to be offensive to Hindus. While no government deemed Husain’s work unacceptable, his work was not protected and his personal safety was not guaranteed.

Art is censored for a number of reasons in India. There are undefined parameters of propriety that it is expected to adhere to, protecting religious sentiment, community pride, the sanctity of the female, and so on. But it is a cause for real concern that in India censorship is used most dramatically – and loosely – when political gain is involved.

Thackeray’s trick is a success of spectacle. Like his grandfather and his uncle, he has managed to find the right conduit to establish his reactionary political credentials on the national stage. He will believe that his leadership of the Bhartiya Vidhyarthi Sena, and his political career, has now begun in earnest.

These attacks on works of art, whether mandated by government or self-appointed champions of Indian culture, should be viewed as cleverly planned instruments designed to extract political mileage, and not as individual attempts at harmonising cultural sentiments. What is really playing out in India is a battle between politics and art. And politics is winning.

How Ravi Shastri got his Yoooov Back

A piece I wrote in August or September last year for a friend's blog project. It's supposed to be humorous and stuff.

The summer is over. The signs are unmistakeable, at least here in Delhi, and they all seem to have to do with our roads. The avenues, underpasses and motorways of our city are waist-high with water, on either side decorated by broken trees and fallen electricity lines.

The conversion of our Ring Roads into Olympic-style swimming pools (not part of the Commonwealth Games project, I assure you) means that on top of every flyover there is a broken down taxi with a sad-looking driver pretending to fix it as a thousand curses are spat at him from the crawling traffic behind. (On a side note, has anyone else wondered who is building these taxis that always seem to make it up the flyover but are incapable of completing the simpler task of rolling down?) Us long-term Delhiwallas know it’s a good thing the monsoons leave the roads in an utter mess; without this we would never actually know when the summer was over. Since the rain doesn’t bring with it any drop in temperature, just converts the entire city into one massive sauna-spa, visitors tend to assume the heat here just goes on and on and on without ever reaching a conclusion. A bit like The Bold and The Beautiful. Or Hell.

Of course for the sports devotee, the surest sign the summer is over is that the Indian cricket team will conclude its well-deserved break, and once again they will be back on our screens. Yes, our heroes will return from summers spent in various forms of rest and relaxation. As far as I can tell from the media, the majority of our heroes have spent this summer posing in nipple-revealing Armani shirts for Delhi Times, Bombay Times, Jullunder Times, Cochin Times, and any other Times that will have them; a few have chosen to spend the time better getting to know various peripheral Bollywood actresses who might once have appeared in a film starring Fardeen Khan but are now ‘on hiatus’; one hero even flirted with the wrong side of the law, driving around a brand-new Hummer without license plates as if the Chandigarh police might fail to notice a shining new tank on their roads. But we forgive them all that, because it’s the summer, and boys will be boys. Now that the Champions Trophy is about to begin, Dhoni, Yuvraj, Harbhajan and the rest can get back to doing what they do best, back to the endeavour that has elevated them above the rest of us, back to the activity that has brought them fame and fortune beyond their wildest dreams: they’re all gearing up for a long new season of making Pepsi commercials. Ah, sorry, don’t know how that got in there. I meant, of course, that they will get back to batting, bowling and all the rest of that jazz, and we will love them once again for doing it better than we could.

Of course the return of the cricket signals the arrival of another, darker, phenomenon, one that over the last few years has crept unobtrusively into the game we love without as much as a ‘What the Hell?’. I am talking, of course, about The Return of the Curiously Accented Commentator. The Curiously Accented Commentator first rose to prominence during India’s victorious campaign at the 20-20 World Cup in South Africa, when the pencil-moustached former all-rounder Ravi Shastri began to repeatedly refer to six-hitting hero Yuvraj Singh as ’Yoooovraj Singh’, somewhat in the manner of a badly constipated Australian. Now anyone who has grown up in India knows that its pronounced Yuvraaj, as in the Hindi word for prince, but Shastri, having spent so much time between Englishmen, South Africans and Australians in the commentary box, began to speak as if he had just graduated from a finishing school situated on an island halfway between Cape Town and Sydney. Each time Yuvi would hit another six Shastri would add more ooo’s to his name, saying: ”Yoovraj won’t take that sort of bowling from Broad’, then ‘Yoooovraj has just cleared the boundary again.’ I’m sure this kindness endeared him to his cronies in the commentary box, after all there are not many people who will intentionally mispronounce words on national television, but for those of us watching in India, it just made him sound like a bit of a twit.

Of course Shastri was not the first commentator to suffer this affliction, just the first Indian. No, the Yuri Gagarin to Shastri’s Rakesh Sharma is the incomparable pacer Waqar Younis, who once spent two weeks playing county cricket in England, and consequently acquired such a strong twang that when he talks he sounds like he’s auditioning for a Guy Ritchie movie. A number of Pakistanis have followed suit, dropping in and out of a Cockney-Aussie-Saffer hybrid as if the dulcet tones of Lahore and Karachi had no place in the commentary box. But we are lucky, because the BCCI has decided to cut off ties with Pakistan, and no longer are we forced to hear the most luminous stars of Pakistani cricket speaking like London-based kebab shop owners. They could have taken a cue from the great West Indian fast bowler Michael Holding, who in his long career as a commentator has never once deviated from his standard practice of sounding like he is mumbling the lyrics to a Bob Marley song.

Even so, if amongst the Indian commentary contingent the Accent Phenomenon was restricted to Shastri you could perhaps ignore it, tell yourself ’it’s just one man’ and move on. But Ravi’s influence in the commentary box is ample. Slowly the disease has been spreading. One man particularly affected is the Tamil Nadu spinner L. Sivaramakrishnan. Now when Mr Sivaramakrishnan first appeared on our television screens he sounded like he was about to ask you if you wanted saambar with your dosa. I’m not making fun, but the man had a Tamil accent so thick you could use it to mend the sole of your shoes. Now from this same mouth you hear, ‘Yoovi’, ‘Seewag’, ‘Sashin’ and ‘Calcoota’, and all you can think is, what happened to that nice South Indian chap I used to know?