Bhopal's Angel

(The full-on Indra Sinha interview. The Mirror carries the abridged version. Enjoy!)

I have known Indra for many years, and feel proud to be called his friend. Not just because he’s an immensely gifted writer, but also because Indra cares. For us. Even as we locals look away from all the screw-ups that go on in our own backyard, here’s an Indian born Brit who’s spent his life fighting for the cause of Bhopal’s gas attack victims. He’s written award winning ads to raise funds, he’s set up a free clinic for those affected by the tragedy, he writes provocative columns and blogs to mobilise opinion, and now he’s written a book on the subject. And quite deservedly, finds himself in the Booker shortlist for Animal’s People. I speak to the writer over e-mail, as he punches away his power thoughts from his villa in the South of France. A standing ovation for Indra Sinha, dear ladies and gentlemen. Because this Colaba boy stills worries about us, forty years after leaving the country.

It was courageous to give up the lucrative job in the ad biz, did you always know you'll make it as a book writer? The response to your first attempt, The Cybergypsies, wasn't very encouraging...

It was more courageous of Vickie (Indra’s wife). I was fed up with advertising, itching to quit. On my 45th birthday I took a piece of paper and a pencil and drafted my resignation. Then rang Vickie, read it to her and said, 'I've nothing else to go to. I want to write. There'll be no money. Shall I tear this up, or hand it in?' This can’t have been easy for her. As you know, Anil, at that time we had a big house in the country – daughter Tara had a horse – in fact you were with us when we bought it. But Vickie said, 'You're not happy. Hand it in. We'll manage somehow.' For that I will always be grateful. She is a pearl, I can’t speak too highly of her. We've had some tough times since, but a few years of austerity do wonders for one's values, and next year we’ll have been married thirty years.
The Cybergypsies was a fragmented, somewhat hallucinatory memoir of the pre-web net that flattened the perspective between fact and fantasy and treated both as equally real. My old chum Neil French said it was unreadable, but at a literary festival in Perth I heard it described as "Confessions of an English Opium Eater meets The Beach". So there.

As a copywriter, how much of your IQ - your Indian Quotient, crept into your ads?

Very little. I was working in London. Nothing I was doing had any connection with India. For years I had only two close Indian friends, Shreeram Vidyarthi from Books From India who appeared in The Cybergypsies as Pustaq Keet, and Sital Singh Maan who runs The Punjab restaurant in Covent Garden, where I’ve had the privilege of helping cook curried Christmas turkey for 30 people. I did feature Gandhiji in a couple of ads, one for Amnesty and the other, bizarrely, for the British Army. Neither ran. I wrote a series of ads for Books from India. One was about Salman Rushdie's use of gaali in Shame. It concluded, "The saalaa deserves all the Booker prizes he can get."
These were isolated exercises in nostalgia. I was out of touch with India for years. It was not really until I became involved with the Bhopalis that it re-entered my life.

You've said that awards are the advertising industry's way of numbing itself against the knowledge that most of what it does is inherently worthless. What do you feel about the Booker?

Being nominated for the Booker assures a novel of being widely read and talked about. The focus is on the book more than the writer, and novels are a powerful force for good in the world – they entertain, delight, comfort, inspire and transform. What do ad awards achieve? After I left advertising, I burned my portfolio and threw away all the award trophies and framed certificates.

Do copywriters make better book writers? Do you feel that your years in advertising have made you a better book writer?

Quite a few ex-copywriters became successful novelists – Fay Weldon, Joseph Heller, Peter Carey, Salman Rushdie – but so have ex-sailors, teachers and priests. To write books, one has to think in long curves and at the same time imagine very deeply and in great detail. Having said this, my approach to advertising was that of a storyteller, I used to turn everything into stories. For Guinness I created a series of Sherlock Holmes tales in which the dark stout was always the clue. For example, a murderer left the imprint of his moustache in the creamy head. I later adapted one of these ads as a short story and entered it into a national Arthur Conan Doyle story competition. It won second prize.

Your long copy ads have often been called journalism, not advertising.

Another advertising question? Anil, you are obsessed. A page in a newspaper or a magazine is a paid-for blank white space into which you have the freedom to put whatever works best. Does it really matter what you call it? Neil French has proved over and over again that none of the supposedly essential elements of a press ad are actually needed. The gurus of advertising who say that people don’t read any more and that pictures work better than words are out of touch and simply wrong. I try to write as well as I can, and try not to manipulate the readers or insult their intelligence. Our Bhopal fundraising appeals run to 1,000 words each and not only pay for themselves, but for a dozen years have generated enough response to run a clinic. People think there is a formula, but there isn’t. It’s instinct and writing from the heart.

Khaufpur (the fictitious town in Animal’s People) has its own website. Is that a result of your years in advertising - a total communication package?

You are very insistent on the advertising connection. But the answer is no, it’s a result of years spent editing Bhopal campaign websites and knowing the impact the internet can have if you get it right, witness the Yes Men. I was very keen that Animal’s People – phew, at last I can mention my book – should be read as a novel in its own right, and not as a vehicle for Bhopal campaigning. This is one reason why the city in the novel is called Khaufpur, not Bhopal. A city like Khaufpur should naturally have its own website, which would be a place where people could find out more about the novel. It also gives the opportunity for Animal to create a little bit of humour and mischief.

Do you think we Indians don't care enough for what happens in our own backyard? You have shown more commitment to Bhopal than the whole lot of us out here.

There are plenty of Indians who never get any praise or acknowledgement, working hard on behalf of poor and oppressed people. I can think of dozens of people in Bhopal, in other badly polluted places like Cuddalore and northern Kerala, those who are working with tribal people whose lands are being forcibly snatched by big business and its political friends. There are thousands of quiet heroes, working for little or no money and without the slightest recognition. No one gives them awards or prizes, yet still they carry on.

Would it be correct to say that your life has turned out rather like Rushdie's, you have followed his career in almost every single way, except for the fatwa and Padma Lakshmi?

Why do you say that? Is it because we both grew up in Bombay, both went to Cathedral school, both were at public schools in England, both read English Literature at Cambridge, both went into advertising as copywriters, both worked at Ogilvy & Mather, both worked with the same art director, Garry Horner, on the same Fresh Cream Cakes account? We differ in that Mr Rushdie claims to have written the slogan ‘Naughty but Nice’ and I do not. Also, I have not won a Booker Prize, did not suffer a fatwa, have no friends among the jet-set and society hostesses don’t seem to have my number. I admire Salman Rushdie’s work immensely. Midnight’s Children is an utterly brilliant book, but I don’t want to write like him. People must find their own voices.

Do you think the language in Animal’s People is too raw for the Booker judges? That it could come in the way in the final judging?

No one knows what is in the mind of the Booker judges, but the fact that they have twice chosen Animal's People, and that it’s in their top six out of 128 novels – must mean that so far at least they’ve coped with Animal's foul tongue. Animal’s People is up against five novels of great strength and beauty. Personally I can't wait to read Darkman's. Having admired Camus's use of the second person in La Chute, I am interested to see how The Reluctant Fundamentalist handles its subtleties. I am a huge fan of Ian McEwan's and read everything he writes. The Gathering is surely an elegant piece of writing and Mr Pip sounds irresistible. Given such formidable competition, it won't be something as trivial as bad language that stops Animal’s People from winning.

Animal's People. Would I be right in calling it your most effective long copy ad for Bhopal?

You are straight back to advertising. Dammit Anil, I would really hate to think of a novel in that way. The novel isn’t some carefully planned and meticulously worked out campaign. It’s a story. To write it at all, I had to let go of Bhopal, forget its history and its twenty years of intertangled issues. This is why Khaufpur came into being. I imagined it in almost obsessive detail, so much so that when I went to Bhopal after the writing was finished, I was surprised to find things not where I expected – I'd been living in Khaufpur too long. The characters are everything – them and their Khaufpuri sense of humour. Animal leapt to life in my mind and immediately began abusing me. How can you, who’ve never been hungry or homeless, or had to shit on railway tracks, write about our lives? The solution was Animal, you talk, I’ll record.

Do you honestly believe victims of the gas tragedy will ever get justice?

What is justice? What justice for the dead? What justice for someone who has already spent twenty three years barely able to breathe, living on compensation that works out at seven rupees a day? What justice for kids born brain damaged or deformed, whose lives are blighted before they take their first breath? ‘Rights. Law. Justice. These words sound the same in my mouth as in yours but they don’t mean the same. Zafar says such words are like shadows the moon makes in the Kampani’s factory, always changing shape. On that night it was poison, now it’s words that are choking us.’ (Animal, speaking in the novel.)

You said the Indian politicians have betrayed their own people…

How much of a list do you want? Making a deal with Union Carbide that caused its share price to jump for joy? Keeping back half the money for over a decade? Ending all studies into the medical impact of the gas leak? Not making Union Carbide clean up its factory before it left Bhopal? Not pursuing the extradition of Carbide boss Warren Anderson? Giving no support in the ongoing US case about the poisoning of 26,000 people by chemicals leaking from the abandoned factory? Ignoring a Supreme Court of India order to provide clean water to the poisoned communities? Beating up women and children who dared to ask why nothing had been done? Allowing Dow Chemical to trade in India even though Dow refuses to produce its 100% subsidiary Union Carbide in the Bhopal court? Doing a deal with Dow to buy Union Carbide’s METEOR technology – a deal that had to be called off when Bhopal supporters exposed it? Permitting Dow to market as safe in India, a pesticide, Dursban, that is banned for domestic use in the USA? Failing to take action against Dow after it was revealed that Dow had systematically bribed Indian officials for years? As we speak, the politicians are conspiring with Dow to make an out-of-court deal that frees it of its legal liabilities, all for tainted US dollars. Meanwhile people are still forced to drink poisoned water, children are still being born damaged. What part of this cannot be called betrayal?

One thing that pisses you off about Bombay every time you visit?

The only thing that pisses me off about Bombay is that I’m never able to stay long enough.

Is this just?

In a strange way, I feel a bit sorry for Alistair Pereira. Sure, he needed to be punished, and I actually agree with a section of the junta that feels he ought to have got a lot more than three years. After all, he’s just 21, he’ll be out at the age of 24, and has more than ample time to refresh his life. Not something you can say about the families of the seven labourers he mowed down after driving sozzled.

The reason I feel sad for him is that a whole lot of us drive drunk in the city, and have been doing so for years. Years ago, on a New Year’s night, I was involved in a head-on collision with another car, whose driver was equally pissed drunk. After spending hours of the Big Night finger pointing inside a police station, we wished each other a great new year, and moved on. Back to driving drunk.

So, Alistair simply got unlucky, like in the roll of the die, he ran over people sleeping on a pavement, and now he must pay. And thanks to his misadventure, the laws have been tightened, the police patrolling has shot up, and incidents of drunk driving have gotten lowered if not totally eliminated (they will never come down to zero, there are still many who think they’ll get away with it).

And what goes further against Alistair is that he’s not a popular movie star, so no one’s crying foul. Imagine the media outrage had Salman Khan got a similar sentence (he still might!), all the Bollywoodians would collectively protest that the star is paying for his celeb status.

Bottomline: Given that the dude was simply following a norm on our streets, given that the youngster was only emulating the rest of us, given that he simply got unlucky, should not an alternative punishment have been dished out to him? Like, sponsor the lives of the families he destroyed, through a fixed sum every month, for the rest of his life? His sitting in jail will be of little use to the lives he irreversibly damaged, in fact he’ll be out soon.

So the judgment is unfair all round, I am hoping our law makers start thinking a bit differently when another Alistair incident happens on our roads.

The ticking in my arse

I am often called a total cynic by readers and friends, but I think in this instance, most die hard optimists will reluctantly agree with my highly negative view: I think we are heading for a huge disaster in the coming future, I think we are on a free fall to mass death and destruction.

The terrorists, helped and abetted by disgruntled locals, are toying around with us, I guess their delicious dilemma these days is which target to choose next. Much the way we discuss where to meet for a drink this weekend.

And in the democratic system we have, the two national parties have ensured our path to destruction is smoothened and ready for use by the agents of terror. The Congress and its allies will not do anything to smoke out people who provide a base to the foreign terrorists, as they consider the Muslim community to be a key vote bank, and they would never risk offending any innocent. In harder States like the US, UK and Israel, this consideration would not exist at all… even as you read this, in similar circumstances, they would be knocking on the doors of every suspect. I recall how the Brits used a battering ram to break open the doors of a popular mosque in London, because they thought it harboured terrorists. Signora Sonia would not even consider such an option.

And then we have the BJP and its allies, who began all the trouble in the first place when they inspired the demolition of the Babri mosque, and achieved great success in their vote garnering strategy: totally polarise the society, thus inflicting an irreversible rift between communities. How can there ever be unity in a divided India? The members of the minority community will forever feel alienated and bitter.

Bottomline: Either ways, we are screwed. One party wants to take no hard action, and the other is determined to cut us into parts. And the people who pay the price for this criminalised democracy is we, the condemned junta. As bombs explode up our arses when we go out to eat chaat or watch a movie. I don’t think anyone is asking if there’ll be a next attack. We are only wondering when and where the next explosion will be. All depends on where the dice drops on the board of terror.

Chak De blues

Here’s the reason I completely loved Chak De, and if you haven’t seen it yet, please do so: The lessons in organisational politics and leadership skills the film showcases. Forget for a moment it’s the game of hockey, and you’ll notice the same issues we deal with in organisations. The backstabbing, the plotting, the favouritism, the selfishness, the inability to work with others, the ego clashes… we see all that in our workplaces all the time. But sadly, what we don’t find is the sort of leader the coach plays, his commitment to the cause of the team, the fanatical urge to succeed, the courage to keep team ahead of oneself, the ability to slot the right workers for the right jobs, and then to motivate them… such leaders don’t exist in the corporate world.

I can well imagine if the coach had been the CEO of a company, what might have happened. He would have fed on their division and ruled, he would have covered his arse for the hockey association by bad mouthing the players, he would have sacked girls with ‘attitude problems’, he would have leaked stories to the media, promoted himself, and in the end, taken all the credit for the team’s success, and blamed them for failures. And perhaps even slept with some ambitious ones and promoted them out of line.

And if such leaders like Kabir Khan do exist, they would get knocked out sooner than later, labelled as being difficult to work with, and inconvenient.

They say cinema is all about escapism, and I sure agree. And it’s good to see the escapism with Chak De has gone beyond soulful love stories and expensive Karva Chauth songs. We now can escape into the arms of a leader who can only be imaginary.

AAAAIIIIIEEEEEE….

Two days back, a nameless, faceless, housemaid went diving down to her death from the 16th storey of a building in my neighbourhood. And the security guard who saw her body crash down like a piece of unwanted trash, heard the teen girl call out to her mother in her most desperate moment.

The routine happened. The society officer summoned the cops. Who met the maid’s masters. Some quick investigation was done. Rookie journos from the media landed up to earn their daily bread. The dead servant’s relations arrived, cried hysterically, cursed their luckless existence, and went back to their daily chores. And within hours, life was back to normal in the building. The master claims the maid climbed to clean the glass windows, tripped and fell, as simple as that. The cops seem to have accepted this as a fact, and soon the file will be closed.

What no one is asking is the one unanswered question: Why was the maid cleaning the glasses on the 16th storey of an apartment, whose owner had not fitted in grilles as a protection device? And if he hadn’t, why had he not given strict instructions to the maid that no cleaning will be down without adequate supervision? (I don’t think anyone is even considering the possibility that the maid may have actually been instructed to clean the glasses minus the protection… but that’s hard to prove in any case.) So clearly, a large part of the responsibility for the poor girl’s death must lie with the landlord, if for nothing else, then at least for recklessness.

However, this is India, life of a poor citizen counts for nothing. She’s already forgotten, and the building complex is right now busy planning the Independence Day celebrations. During which, members will belt out desh-bakhti songs, cheerfully wish each other, and then partake of the buffet lunch organised for the event.

No, I shall not be there. I never do participate in flat hoisting ceremonies. Not because I don’t respect the nation, but because I don’t respect the fact that we have built a nation where the life of an individual is measured by the price tag attached to her dead body.

Sorry, this is not the India of my dreams.

… But now for vertical integration

So, Sanjay Dutt is behind bars and all’s well with the world. Or is it? There are murmurs yet again about punishing the folks who committed atrocities during the riots that triggered the bomb blasts (as in Narendrabhai’s famous action/reaction principle). The Sri Krishna Commission report has been tabled and accepted, and it’s high time the State Government took some hard action so we know even if justice is delayed, it’s still unbiased. But this gutless government will only be provoked by mass morchas and agitations; else it will simply bury its head in the sand, as it does on all controversial matters. The deed of doing justice has to be larger than simply punishing the bombers and the rioters… we need to nail all the politicians and religious leaders who caused all this damage to begin with… the people who incited and energised goons into bringing down the Babri Masjid. It was THAT mother event which led to a chain reaction of other crimes, including the Bombay riots and blasts, and then the Gujarat riots. If we let these divisive, hate-mongering sharks get away with it, punishing a small fish like Sanjay Dutt will serve no purpose. So while Justice Kode may have done his job on Sanjay and the other Bombay bombers, the nation’s highest court needs to find a way to get the big villains of this saga. It is only then can we speak of true justice.

Kudos to Kode

(In case you missed this... wrote it today in the Mirror.)
People often forget our judges are human too, and are a part and parcel of the society we have created, and in which we live. And surely all the emotional hysteria and the huge media interest in the Sanjay Dutt case must have put the TADA judge under a degree of pressure. But yesterday, Justice Kode stood up for what is right; he neither let emotional pressure nor the star’s cult status come in the way of dispassionately following the law of the land. All those of you who think the sentence on our Munnabhai was too harsh, must remember that the crime against which Dutt was convicted was a very serious one too. Imagine if all those of us who get threatened begin to arm ourselves with weapons of mass destruction… we would be at war within the country. This is not only a landmark judgment in India’s legal history, it will serve as a great precedent for future trials which involve public heroes and stars. A whole lot of us who have interacted with Dutt (and that includes me) truly believe he is a lovable man, and is always kind and helpful. But the law simply cannot ignore a grave offence committed by a man who may now have been reformed. I don’t know if Sanjay will get a chance to read this piece, but if he does, this is what I would say to him: Much as though the punishment may seem hard, do remember, in your own way, you have helped push the envelope on justice in this country… a whole lot of ordinary people who were losing faith or had become cynical, will now have their faith restored. The politicians have badly let us down, the judiciary is the last hope of this nation, and we just cannot afford to lose that hope. You brought Bapu back into our lives with your cool film, now you are helping us believe in the law, even if you didn’t want it to turn out this way. Perhaps that’s the silver lining that will see you through the oncoming cloudy days.