Hats and whimsy

The new Airtel advertisement. I mostly always find myself completely disenchanted by popular phenomena..but I found myself unable to stop thinking about this ad in particular and what it signifies. A. I hum it quite a lot, which is great for the brand because clearly that’s the plan..to get people humming the song and talking about it etc. B. I feel so deviously sarcastic and jaded with it, that its starting to get amusing now. Not, I presume, the right attitude for a post on something that has become so sensationally popular. But well..we can’t all like the same things (thank goodness for that!!)

So we roll over to channel after channel with the same song being played out and a bunch of delightfully happy youngsters parade their youth (in all its brash un-craven glory) before us. They sing, they dance, they swear foul words at each other, they bail each other out from jail time, copy in exams and generally do things that – apparently – most youngsters do nowadays. Have always been doing (something that I realized  in a rather alarming manner, when I realized that even people in their 30s were addicted to this song and dance routine). How splendid for them all!! How even more splendid for those who conceived this idea!! To have these kids narrate experiences that’re supposedly “typical” of one’s college years. Nostalgic much?

Yeah..I don’t think so. I’m nearly 27 years old (which makes me roughly 7-10 years older than the generation being portrayed in the ad) and yet a few years younger to a large group of people who’re devouring the ad as if it has the capacity to turn back time and return them to their youth.

I don’t understand it. Was I the only one who went to college and never got arrested and had to be bailed out? Was I the only one who abhorred copying during examinations (was infact so single-minded and focused while writing my exams, that copying never even figured anywhere on the mind’s horizon)? Was I the only one who spent 5 awesome years in college learning wonderful things about Psychology and Philosophy and French and actually reveled in being a good student? It can’t have been..because I made friends for life, in college. They’re few (unlike the kids in the ad whose brains are getting fried trying to remember the names of all their “friends”..those poor kids)..but they’re my “friends”. Not acquaintances. But friends.

We spent our years in college laughing and quoting P.G. Wodehouse, studying Freud and Kant and gathering knowledge about everything from rock and roll to world history and fashion to French dinner etiquette. We learnt our wines and our French verb conjugations. We spent our time listening to the genius that are The Beatles and Oasis and Don Mclean and Simon & Garfunkel and Pink Floyd etc. We watched Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn and we tap danced to drunken glory on a terrace garden.  We watched movies and tried to come up with our own casting couches for when we’d be old and rich and turning Mario Puzo’s ‘Fools Die’ into a movie. We discussed the songs and poetry of Bob Dylan and Dylan Thomas respectively. We read everything from Ayn Rand to Thomas Harris and we discussed Objectivism and psychopathy with equal madness (I say “madness” because there was frenzied life and purpose to those discussions). We didn’t ever have to be bailed from the gaol and we didn’t waste precious time trying to remember the names of people who didn’t matter to us. If we didn’t remember their names, they probably weren’t important enough..and they were NOT our friends. 

I realize we were soaked in nostalgia for an entirely different time..and things are very different for youngsters nowadays. But I can’t help but think..didn’t others (besides my few friends) from my generation not have a college experience anything like mine? Were things really so different outside of my pretty pink bubble? Was the bubble really so impenetrable..both ways? Have things really changed so much and so drastically in the 6 years that I’ve left college? Its scary in a way because it makes me seem much more weird than I like to believe I am (and I do believe I’m quite tremendously weird!!).

We often think of ourselves as products of our generation..and then something comes along (quite naturally) and it points out (quite harshly) that you’re not!! That you’re not and cannot be typecast into this generation or that. That you as a person cannot align yourself with either this or that point of view. Its amusing yes..but not overly so. I don’t know if that’s a good thing. I really don’t.

After winning the 1st two sets against Jo Wilfred Tsonga, Federer lost the quarterfinal match in a fashion that I wouldn’t have been able to withstand. I went off to sleep after he lost his serve in the 3rd set. It was just past 7 or 8pm Indian time..too early to call it a night. I huffed a bit, annoyed at Federer for having lost the momentum that he’d clearly gained by winning a near-perfect tiebreak in the previous set. I dozed off believing he would win. I woke up 2 hours later, crying hysterically. I didn’t know why I was crying. I hadn’t dreamed any unpleasant dreams or thought of anything particularly sad. I was alarmed and confused. I sat in front of my laptop and I saw a message my close friend had sent me a while ago, while I was asleep: “he lost”. 

Many have tried to analyze the fall of the game’s most graceful player, in the past week alone. Some even seem to think that their tennis-viewing days are numbered, if Federer retires soon or keeps losing in earlier rounds. I tried to bypass all the discussion and argument. I even watched the men’s final without even a modicum of bitter feelings towards either Djokovic or Nadal (an accomplishment for me).

Competition is the essence of all sport, but some people transcend competition. Their perfection surpasses their sporting adversaries and then vies with little 9 year old hearts and wiser 26 year old ones to allow them to be worshiped for more than their art. They ought to be worshiped for their being. They DO. But more importantly, they ARE. Perfect specimens in a flawed world.

Filed under: Stories/tales ]]> http://transiberian.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/my-love-affair-with-a-genius-or-two-part-4-the-end/feed/ 0 snehakhale http://transiberian.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/my-love-affair-with-a-genius-or-two-part-3/ http://transiberian.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/my-love-affair-with-a-genius-or-two-part-3/#comments Fri, 08 Jul 2011 00:33:36 +0000 Sneha Khale http://transiberian.wordpress.com/?p=675 Continue reading →]]> Her art (she was often referred to as a ballerina on court) was tennis. I never aspired to be a tennis player. Among the many sports which I’m terrible at, tennis would rank right up there with beach volleyball as a sport where I’ve been at the venue and held the equipment, but never attempted to play (I’ve been on tennis courts and beaches and I’ve held a tennis racquet and a volleyball!!). But my love and respect and admiration for Steffi went beyond her game. I admired her as a person.

While in college, my best and I would have long discussions about how artists, their work and their personal lives, should be kept separate. How its only their art and the pleasure and satisfaction you derive from it that matters. We were very philosophical about it all. But the fact remains that some people go beyond your self-created barrier around their art and suck you into their personal world of perfection in such an astonishing way that you don’t resist. You don’t want to resist. You revel in the idea that perfection like that exists. That there are humans who’re brilliant at what they do, geniuses even, and are also good people. Call it pessimism or cynicism about the world we live in, but this perfection belongs to a rare species. They don’t come around too easy. Steffi Graf is one such specimen (I use the word with utmost reverence).

Over 17 years have passed by. I’m now in my mid-20s..no longer the blue-eyed child of my youth, inquisitive and precocious. Books and music and movies still mean the same to me as they did in 1994, in fact they mean a lot more. My guest list for the greatest celebrity after-party is still leaning heavily toward musicians and writers (albeit with a few more researchers and a much-wider variety of artists). It is their art that beckons me. It is their art that soothes me and astounds me. But 17 years after Steffi Graf changed something in my DNA, another person comes along and does the same. He tweaks it a little further.

To be continued..

In all the fuss and fury that is “adolescent hero-worship” or “lifelong respect and admiration”, the bottom line always remains: it is their works which touch you, your minds and hearts. I believe that Tolkien’s body of work is the greatest piece of art ever created. I still keep with me the NY Times article about Salinger’s death because I felt the pain of losing the man who created one of my favourite literary figures. I obsessively wished that Oasis would get back together after the band split, and I even-more-obsessively watch and follow every movie and/ or public appearance of Winona Ryder. I do it all because I love them, as artists.

But Steffi was different.

To be continued..

Steffi had won 5 of the last 6 Wimbledon titles and she was aiming for a 4th consecutive Championship that year. Everything was set for her to win it and restore order back in my distraught reel of sporting heroes (the protagonist and star of which was Steffi, ofcourse). I was raring to go too, having flushed out all the post-French Open unpleasantaries out of my head (which included a Sportstar spread on eventual winner Sanchez Vicario, dubbing her as “bunny” or “rabbit” for her scurrying skills. Ugh!! I would never again want a cuddly bunny, real or otherwise).

She lost. In the 1st round. On a court that is now dubbed “Champions Graveyard” aka Court No.2 (for the insane number of champions who’ve lost while playing on the court). What was a 5 time defending champion and world no.1 and top seed doing playing on anything other than Centre Court, I was too young to ponder over. But play she did..on that Court. Lose she did..to Lori McNeil.

Something in me changed that day. I’d never cried for or over or about a person I didn’t know personally. I’d never felt an overarching distress to read the newspapers the next day or watch the sports news etc. Nothing made sense to me. I didn’t know what went wrong with the one person I looked up to. Sportswriters and analysts debated whether that loss signified the end of the Graf-era. I remember articles littered with insights about her loss of interest in the game and how the great Steffi Graf now had things beyond tennis vying for her attention (men, fashion, music and movie stars etc. were quoted), how the competitive juices were just not flowing in her anymore with Seles out of the tennis circuit and Steffi clearly having established her supremacy with no visible challenger to her until then, how we might just be in line to witness a very premature retirement from tennis at age 25. Everyone seemed to agree that the losses were blimps on what can now arguably be termed the greatest tennis career ever. Everyone seemed to agree on another point: whether Graf needed tennis or not, the game needed her. I was dissatisfied with the explanations. They didn’t seem right enough.

To be continued..

Love and a Gypsy

Chic

So the whole world watched the wedding. Or so it seemed like. The whole of Britain descended upon The Mall and Buckingham Palace and Hyde Park. Or so it seemed like. For my fashion-and-detail-obsessed self, Catherine Middleton’s Alexander McQueen wedding dress with all its lacework detail and the story behind her tiara and jewellery were almost as enchanting as the stories I would read to myself at night when I was little. The 8-tiered cake done in the Joseph Lambeth technique and everything that the flowers used in the cake and in the bride’s bouquet represented, to William’s request to have the chocolate biscuit McVities cake at their reception and their newlywed titles and the history and the lore and everything associated with it was a whole lot of blue-blooded fun.

Commoners called the wedding magical. The media and the photographers called it surreal. A sea of 5,00,000 people lining a nearly-private street can do that to you!! Historians stated that the genius of the wedding was that it was not only a marriage between William and Catherine, but also between the past and the present, and between the people and the sovereign and other such complex matters. Well..questions of the monarchy’s survival and the inclusiveness and informality that the new guard seems to have brought with them, are all issues that can be pondered over on a rainy English day when you’re sipping on a hot cup o’ tea and trying to be posh and all that.

For me, as a television observer across continents, the highlight of the royal wedding had nothing to do with monarchy and the ceremony and the crowds etc. There were 2 tiny moments that defined everything that a marriage is: as Catherine Middleton was getting into the Rolls Royce to take her over to Westminster Abbey for the service, the 2 meter 70 centimeter long train of her wedding dress had to be carefully collected and handled by someone who would know how important the dress was to her. Her father did that job. He collected it and held it gently as he sat in the car right next to her. Father knows best!! But after the ceremony, as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge alighted from the Abbey to get into the 1902 State Landau carriage to carry them back to the Palace, the father was appropriately a fair distance away. Who held her hand and her bouquet and helped her in the carriage? William did.

The marriage was not just about the passing of the guard from old to new for the monarchy. It was about the passing of the guard from father to husband..and marriages are often just as simple as that!!