Farrukh Dhondy

Mar 31, 2010
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Farrukh Dhondy

Carrom heads & babes butchered by time

“Never judge a book by its cover
A dog by its bark
Or a girl by her lover...”
From Kiss ki Kahani by Bachchoo

Mary Wakefield, deputy editor of the Spectator, the UK Tory weekly, marks in her journalistic Diary the moment when she stopped being addressed by her local butcher as “babe” and was instead addressed as “madam”. She remarks that this was a moment of realisation if not of deep devastation. Time has a wallet, as Shakespeare said (Troilus) wherein he keeps alms for oblivion. We are moved on by the great equaliser!

Stop looking busy, just get busy

“Why did you let the rest go free?
I am NOT the one!”
From Tapaas — a Detective Drama by Bachchoo

Cardinals from all over the world, the story goes, were gathered in the upper storey of St. Peter’s in the Vatican about to be joined by the Pope who was in his study. One of the cardinals looked out of the window across the deserted cobbles of St. Peter’s Square, closed that day to tourists and worshippers alike, and lo and behold! What does he see? He sees Jesus Christ crossing the Square with determined strides.

The Bombay Duck Eurosceptics

“Faith has to be its own reward
It seems to receive no other
The ‘faithful’ wields the murderer’s sword
And bombs his praying brother...”
From Proverbs of Piety by Bachchoo

Lenin observed that one capitalist swallows another and we on the Left saw that as a “bad thing”. It explained why the European Left regarded the enterprise of the European Union with suspicion. It was seen as a grand mechanism to facilitate the movement of capital and labour and thereby set back by a few paces the World Revolution.

The comedy of the colonised

“It went too soon, too soon
That age when cats fiddled
And cows jumped over the moon...”
From Tension Nahin Leneka by Bachchoo

On the strength of a few series of situation comedy for TV and the fact that I have written material for stand-up comics and parodists, I am invited to participate in a seminar on comedy at a German university. The particular department of the university has post-graduate students who learn through the medium of English and in the case of this seminar have chosen the option of what universities call “post-colonial” studies.

The spirit of fatwas past

“Bad verses
The readers’ curses,
Aphorisms
The soul’s prisms…”
From Curry Boli by Bachchoo

O tempora, O mores! All I ever got from defending Salman Rushdie’s right to write was a few seconds’ eternal notoriety on something called e-bay — or is it U-tube or Facelift — believe me I am bewildered when my children tell me that I am somewhere there.

A history forgotten by the victimised

Do the blind have need of beauty
Is it but a conceit of the eye?
Is it but the act of
blossoming
And even the rose must die?”
From Receipts for Deceits by Bachchoo

My first impression of Dhaka — collecting my bag from the airport baggage reclaim, with hundreds of men, three or four deep, jostling and nudging around the endless seeming line of carousels — was that it was Kolkata with beards.

Curzon’s ghost and other racist stuff

“O North is north and South is south
And never the twain shall meet
Which I suppose is just as well
Or mouths would be stuffed with feet...”

Murder in England’s eyes

“Oh wayfarer head South
Where the moustache speaks
Louder than the
mouth”
From Advices of Bachchoo

Snobbery, mulled and spiced

“This waking is the shortest day
The rest is timeless sleep —
There’s only one appointment
The living have to keep...”
From Curling Toes by Bachchoo

The e-Christmas started coming a week before the 25th, rather defeating the point of instant ethereal messaging. Written cards are harder to send. One has to choose the card that expresses your personality, pose or preoccupation, write out each name and try and remember if they are still married to or partnered with the same person, find the postal address and put it on the envelope and then go to the post office, queue up for an hour because the local shop has run out of stamps, stick the stamps and get to the box. Took me hours and cost lots.

Uncommon Presidents

“Poor cow
Pulls the plough
Poor horse
Whipped on the course
Poor tree
Rooted, unfree;
Poor earth
That gave us all birth...”
From Diseased Crocodiles by Bachchoo

Shenanigans in the Lok Sabha and the momentary paralysis of parliamentary rule have put the old debate about the form of democracy enshrined in the Indian Constitution back on the argumentative agenda. This time the debate can be heard at great distances from the select dining rooms of South Delhi’s chatterati.

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I want to begin with a little story that was told to me by a leading executive at Aptech. He was exercising in a gym with a lot of younger people.

Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen didn’t make the cut. Neither did Shaji Karun’s Piravi, which bagged 31 international awards.

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