After The Thin Man
The Arkadin-Tintin Connection
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Last year I was re-watching Orson Welles’ “Mr. Arkadin” aka “The Confidential Report”, one of his later (1955), maddening, wandering-in-Europe movies full of little imperfections, gaps in continuity & miscasting. Fortunately, it is also brilliant in concept, ideas & surprisingly, considering the difficulty he was having in pulling resources together at that time, craft.
Time Out’s capsule review goes:
“Mr Arkadin assumed an equivalent patina of myth and legend to that cultivated by its central character, non-naturalistically posited somewhere between Kane and God. Arkadin is the powerful financier who employs his own researcher to piece together his apparently forgotten past, to find a shabby Rosebud to dramatise his by-now bored puppeteering. Flamboyantly melodramatic, it’s a playfully egocentric display of egocentrism and a magician’s perverse revelation of his own trickery. Failure or not, it’s irresistible.”
God Playing God - Welles as Arkadin as Welles
For the record, my theory is that Welles, always the playful jester, created Arkadin as an avatar of Charles Foster Kane, if things hadn’t turned out so bad for him. He even has a Xanadu-like house & casts his wife Paola Mori as his daughter (!). And like Susan Alexander Kane, she is spectacularly bad at her art.
But back to the title. I was reading in the liner notes, rather booklet, inside Criterion’s lavishly produced 3-disc edition of Arkadin about the origins of the character. A few years back I had bought a collection of Orson Welles’ radio showswhere I found one of the episodes from 1952, further adventures of Harry Lime from the Third Man movie, was essentially an early version of Mr. A. So, like the way-over-his-head Guy Van Stratten of the movie, I was also searching for the murky origins of Mr. Arkadin. In the liner notes, according to Maurice Bessy, who wrote (or ghostwrote, or stole the writing credit for, depending on who you believe) the tie-in novel of the movie:
Arkadin was based on Basil Zaharoff… Born, according to his own conflicting accounts, in 1849, 1850 & 1851, in Odessa & Constantinople, Zaharoff was a wealthy, charming & sinister arms merchant, whose biographies carry such melodramatic subtitles as Peddler Of Death, High Priest Of War, &, shades of Harry Lime, Mystery Man of Europe.He transacted many of clandestine operations Van Stratten ascribes to Arkadin, such as secretly selling weapons to both sides of international conflicts, & buried his past under masks & myths… A few years before his transformation into Arkadin, Zaharoff also provided the original for the character of Basil Bazarov, who circles the globe in his private plane for Korrupt Arms GMBH, in the 1945 Tintin comic adventure ‘The Broken Ear’.
Aha, Tintin! Broken Ear! This was familiar territory. I vaguely recalled the character & quickly took out my trusted bound volume of Tintin adventures. In the two panels that I have scanned below, one can see Zaharoff/Bazarov’s business practice (which I am sure still survives in some form, at least in the Iron Man movie if nowhere else) & his private plane, which however he doesn’t pilot himself, unlike Mr. Arkadin.
The Korrupt Mr. Bazarov
Bazarov detentes between San Theodoros & Nuevo-Rico
“The Broken Ear is set in a fictional South American dictatorship, San Theodoros. However, it uses this setting to depict political issues that were important in the 1930s.
The mutually disastrous conflict between San Theodoros and the neighbouring state of Nuevo-Rico is called the “Gran Chapo War”, a reference to the Gran Chaco War of 1932 to 1935 between Bolivia and Paraguay (“Gran Chapo” is a pun on the French term “grand chapeau”, meaning “big hat”). Oil companies born from the Standard Oil and the Shell Oil company provoked that war (the Standard-derived companies backing Bolivia, Shell backing Paraguay) in order to get their hands on prospected oil fields. This view is reflected in the shady businessman Trickler who tries to bribe Tintin and, when that fails, resorts to attempted murder and false evidence to get rid of him. In another parallel, the Chapo plains, just like the real Chaco, turn out not to have oil after all.
The arms dealer Basil Bazarov, who sells weapons to both sides, is based on the real life Basil Zaharoff. In the English translation, he works for ‘Korrupt Arms’, a pun on ‘corrupt’, but also on Krupp, the German arms manufacturers. When a member of an airport groundcrew remarks that Bazarov has a private plane it is no idle comment. Air travel in the 1930s was in its infancy and extremely expensive and only the very wealthy (such as an arms dealer like Bazarov) could have afforded such a luxury as their own aircraft.”
Some more screenshots from Arkadin are here:
The Life Of The Party, The Ogre’s Castle, Mask Behind The Mask, The Angry Man, The Last Flight
DDLJ
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Daniel Day-Lewis ki Jai! May he win his second Best Actor Oscar (after My Left Foot in 1990) in a few hours. He deserves it, in his towering, glowering majesty. And yet, I didn’t find There Will Be Blood isn’t as bloody good as (almost) every critic calls it.I went in with expectations gushing out of me like, ummm… oil from one of Daniel Plainview’s (Day-Lewis) wells. After a promising start in a mine that sets up the time, place and Plainview’s essential characteristics, the movie meanders along for over two hours, till it is all rushed up in the end with a revelation that changes everything in the movie and a finale in a bowling alley that is rightly the subject of a thousand parodies. In that sense it reminded me of another gorgeous film that lost me in its character development – the Coen brothers’ The Man Who Wasn’t There from 2004. So Plainview is a mean ole’ SOB who gets what he wants - family, friendship and finer emotions be damned. He doesn’t trust anyone, and doesn’t seem to have a friend in the world, just like any other cute and cuddly capitalist from the turn of the (19th) century. But right through the movie, I get the impression that, like Plainview’s oil wells, there is something simmering under the surface that is hidden carefully behind his clearly enunciated dialogues and well groomed moustache. I wish some of that came out more evenly, and not just in those intense scenes with his son (Dillon Freasier), ‘half-brother’ (Kevin J O’Connor) and his preacher/ faith-healer rival (Paul Dano). Compared to Plainview, they both look so insignificant and meagre, one wonders off the bat as to why he doesn’t just swat them off. Only his business rivals, like some of his fellow wildcatters and the representatives from Standard Oil look like they could stand up to him, but they barely register. Daniel Plainview, we hardly knew ye.There is, of course, a lot to admire in TWBB. Paul Thomas Anderson is an exciting director. Magnolia is the movie most similar to TWBB, with a patriarch (Jason Robards) and a motivational speaker (brilliantly played by Tom Cruise) and underlying biblical and gothic references. He seems to have drawn heavily from the Hollywood movie mythos, with the first scene eerily reminscent of The Treasure of Sierra Madre and the final few scenes of Plainview in his sepulchral house an obvious homage to Citizen Kane, that other American megalomaniac. Stroheim’s Greed and Polanski’s Chinatown are two other references mentioned in articles, but I can’t vouch for them. Anderson and production designer Jack Fisk (who worked in all the Terence Malick movies) get the look and feel of those times perfectly, for this is a movie very much of a when and a where, and sitting in an empty multiplex (I was the only one in the weeknight 10pm show) I could smell the dust and taste the slimy oil. Almost matching Day-Lewis in a difficult role is Little Miss Sunshine’s silent brother, Paul Dano. But just as it was difficult to accept Jack The Ripper’s claim in the Hughes brothers’ 2001 movie version of ‘From Hell’ that “One day men will look back and say that I gave birth to the twentieth century”, it requires some work to extrapolate the twin obsessions of religious fundamentalism and rapacious industry that has largely defined twentieth century America, as various fans of the movie have pointed out, from 158 minutes of There Will Be Blood. Though thanks to Daniel Day-Lewis, Anderson and his crew come to a whisker’s length. And for that, Day-Lewis deserves his statuette tonight.
Punted & Shunted!
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Like a lot of other cricket fans, I too followed the sad unravelling of the Indian team’s fortunes in the second test against Australia at Sydney last night. In the rush of justified condemnation against the umpiring standards in this test, it would be remiss not to comment on our brittle and unpredictable cricket. Yuvraj Singh, who had a goodish tour of Australia the last time, and Wasim Jaffar, who scored a couple of half centuries in England & a century in South Africa last year, have left their runs behind in India. There seems to be a good strategy against Tendulkar, despite his 154 n.o. in the first innings at Sydney. We are susceptible to second innings pressure, especially on foreign soil (though we did stave off defeat at Lords last year). We flag easily whenever decisions go against us, as it did with Symonds in the first innings. When we do get lives, as Rahul Dravid, Jaffer & Yuvraj did in the first test, due to no-balls &/or umpiring errors, we leave legitimately soon after, being the good guests that we invariably are.
As the forums got clogged with righteous Indian indignation, I was disturbed to see ethnic disparagements of Steve Bucknor, the West Indian umpire officiating this test, & the man responsible for the Symonds caught behind let off on the first day, and Andrew Symonds, who was himself the target of ugly taunting by sections of the Indian crowd when Australia toured India late last year. Sadly, while our so-called fans perpetuate the image of closet racism in India against darker skin, the Australian media go ahead their mission of bringing down visiting teams with their unique mental disintegration skills with the mix of subtlety and brazenness, as Ian Healy and Mike Slater does in the Channel 9 commentary box, or Ricky Ponting does with his high-minded and sanctimonious ad-nauseum upholding of the ‘spirit of the game’. That Symonds was declared man of the match, justified by looking at his scorecard but not when wondering what might have been if he was given out rightly by Bucknor in the first innings as he confessed after the first day, added salt to a wound that will take time to go away.
Fortunately, there were some voices of reason among the more experienced cricket writers in Australia. Mike Coward wrote in The Australian:
“Both captains need to remind their players of the collective responsibility to the series, the game and to the welfare of Test cricket which, pretty well to a man, they profess to love above all other forms of the game. If this is the case, they should publicly demonstrate their affection for it and play in a dignified manner and show greater respect.”
and later:
“While there is little to excuse the contretemps between Symonds and Harbhajan there can be no doubt that the poor umpiring of Bucknor and Benson dramatically affected the mood of the players and therefore the tenor of proceedings. While the Australians will emphatically demur, it was unjust that India lost. There is no doubt the rub was against India from the time Symonds was allowed a bonus 132 runs in the first innings. This was the moment that changed the course of the match.”
Meanwhile in the Sydney Morning Herald, Peter Roebuck was similarly, but more equivocally, disappointed:
” India have been dudded. No one with the slightest enthusiasm for cricket will take the least satisfaction from the victory secured by the local team in an SCG Test that entertained spectators, provided some excellent batting but left a sour taste in the mouth.
It was a match that will have been relished only by rabid nationalists and others for whom victory and vengeance are the sole reasons for playing sport. Truth to tell, the last day was as bad as the first. It was a rotten contest that singularly failed to elevate the spirit.”
Two incidents that reek of cricket trivia stood out the morning after when I went through the match reports like the ones above.
Anil Kumble’s comment at the end of the game that “Only one team was playing with the spirit of the game, that’s all I can say” was almost an echo of what Australian captain Bill Woodfull told England’s manager ‘Plum’ Warner after being hit on his chest by Harold Larwood during the Adelaide test of the infamous 1932-33 ‘Bodyline’ tour: I don’t want to see you, Mr Warner. There are two teams out there, one is playing cricket. The other is making no attempt to do so. The game is too good to be spoilt. It is time some people got out of it.”
India’s team manager yesterday was Chetan Chauhan, the erstwhile opening partner to Sunil Gavaskar who somewhat reluctantly walked off with Gavaskar during the Melbourne test of 1981. The provocation was a contentious LBW decision off Dennis Lillie which Gavaskar contended was an inside edge and Lillie with few choice words and gestures gave his side of the argument. The game finally continued, and Kapil Dev gave India a famous vistory taking 5 for 28. Meanwhile, Gavaskar continued fighting the good fight on TV, as reported widely in the Indian press, against what he has always maintained to be uniquely Australian boorishness (which unfortunately manifested last year in an ill-conceived, and rightly criticised, comment on the 2004 death of the David Hookes). Between the two openers, most people would still prefer Star’s Gavaskar over Channel 9′s Slater.
The former was a watershed event in cricket history, while the latter was the first public display of disaffection by an Indian team. Let us hope things don’t go further downhill, as rumors are flying around of the Indian team flying back home and Bucknor being replaced for the next test at Perth. To stand up and be counted when things don’t go your way, to fight a good fight when everyone seems against you, that’s what shows strength of character. The steely glint in Anil Kumble’s eyes, the unwillingness of a Dhoni or a Dravid not to give up even when not in the best of batting forms, the nervelessness of a Sachin Tendulkar batting with the tail, the sheer poetry of a Saurav Ganguly taking the fight to Australia despite his perceived ‘weakness’ against fast bowling, that’s what it is about being men among boys. And the ‘boys’ in this team have many men among them ready to be counted. Now is the time, and this is the place.
Prem Panicker and Great Bong fret & fume, rightly, in their blogs. The blood boils, but the head says to play with a straight bat through the V.
Ganesha, Krishna and Indra In Mooreistan
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While reading the first part of Alan Moore’s graphic novel Top 10 (2000-01), TM was pleasantly surprised to see that the West’s favorite Hindu deity, Ganesha, make a guest appearance.
Top 10 is a fine example of that hoary American tv genre, the police precinct show (Homicide: Life On The Streets, Dragnet), crossed with sci-fi fantasy. In the words of the back and inside cover blurbs:
Imagine a city where every citizen, from poorest slum-dweller to corporate honcho, has unusual powers and abilities – not to mention an alter ego and costume. How would you police such a city? Join the unusual law force of Neopolis on their day-to-day rounds and find out!
The massive, multilayered city of Neopolis, built shortly after World War II, was designed as a home for the expanding population of science-heroes, heroines and villains that had ballooned into existence in the previous decade. Bringing these powered beings together solved some problems but created others, especially after the inevitable partnerships led to a surge in their numbers in the 1960s. By the 1980s, Neopolis had turned into a pressure cooker – under financed and overpopulated – that normal policing methods could never hope to contain.
In 1985 the city accepted jurisdiction by a police force covering many alternate Earths, headquartered on the world known as ‘Grand Central.’ Our own outpost of this network, Precinct Ten (known affectionately as Top 10), recruits its members from Neopolis and environs, working much like Earth’s other police precincts, with one major exception: like the citizens of the city, the officers of Top 10 have the abilities needed to deal with Neopolis’s exotic denizens.
Join a colorful collection of Top 10 officers as they investigate a variety of events, from traffic accidents to treachery, and face their greatest challenge: an attack inside the heart of precinct headquarters! Solving these crimes will lead to other worlds and deep into the hidden corruptions of Neopolis, in a finale you won’t soon forget.
Anyway, in issue 7 of the trade paperbacks, the cops go to the Godz Bar on Pike Street to investigate a homicide. The Godz Bar seems to be the place where Gods from all pantheons hang out, & we have two Indian Gods among the Norse, Egyptian, Chinese, Greek, Aztec & other deities. In one, Ganesha is quitely sitting in a bar and finishing his drink as the cops complete their inspection of the premises. A few pages later, Krishna is in the men’s room, grooming himself with his many hands. The dialogue is in a faux-Hindi script (Krishna: “Hey, give me a break. You think all us blue guys know each other? Jeez!)”. The reference is humorous and intelligent, and Hindus (like me) don’t need to feel insulted. Looks like this was too insubstantial for the AHAD folks to bother with, but more likely, they don’t read comic books.
In his mammoth Promethea series, Moore shows he is very familiar with Hindu philosophy. Both Krishna and Indra make an appearance in Book 4 (“Fatherland”), and there are references to Indra’s net (“This is Indra’s net. See, Indra, he’s the Hindu sky-god, okay? And his net, it’s this infinite mesh of gleaming beads…and in every single bead, all the other beads are reflected, along with the reflections that are in them, going on forever. So, like, every part completely and perfectly reflects the whole. That’s Indra’s net…”) and kundalini. TM is still trying to understand what Indra’s net is. Indradhanush (‘Indra’s bow’)refers to a rainbow, but that doesn’t seem to be what Boo Boo is referring to as she guides the two Prometheas through a Kabbalastic sephiroth. TM needs storytellers and mythmasters, so that he can look and sound intelligent when asked about Hindu references.
Promethea is impossibly dense and after the first volume there is barely a plot, but I soldiered on. Alas, I never really appreciated the deep religious discourses through the middle books, and stopped only to enjoy the clever wordplay and J H Williams III’s beautiful drawings and layouts. The scene above is a two page spread that I had to scan separately.
Look Out For “The Lookout”
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For the past month TM has been let loose again on the world of movies, and has been busy gobbling up, Godzilla-like, movies and TV shows on DVD and screen. Last night, the tired but happy DVD player accepted a disc from Blockbuster for “The Lookout“.
Ever since TM read the New York Times review of “The Lookout” during his enforced exile in Barbados earlier this year, he had been wanting to catch up with it when it came out on home video. As always, TM’s amazing sense of sniffing out movies stood him in good stead. Seriously.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt is Chris Pratt, high school hockey star and scion of a rich family who, driving without lights to impress his girlfriend on the way to prom night, is involved in an accident which kills his two other copassengers, maims his girlfriend and leaves him with a short-term memory loss. Not wanting to take his family’s help, perhaps hoping to expiate himself and atone for his guilt, he tries to get back on to his feet while working as a night janitor at a local farming bank and sharing accomodation with blind Jeff Daniels. That’s when he is befriended by the sinister Matthew Goode, who it turns out, wants his help to rob the bank.
Director Frank is a scriptwriter with an impressive record (Dead Again, Out Of Sight, Get Shorty, Minority Report) and this is his debut. Not surprisingly, the script is crackling especially as it picks up speed in the second half during the planning and execution of the heist. There is a slow inevitability of Gordon-Levitt’s redemption, but which gets tinged with death and loss. Set in winter at a remote farming community, shot in deep sombre colors, the overhanging gloom never goes away. And Gordon-Levitt is excellent at depicting the burden of guilt that he carries. Frank’s screenplay also shows the comunity and connections a small town creates. Little portraits, like the bank manager Mr. Tuttle, the teller Mrs. Lange, the killer Bone or the loan officer Reuben, are pithy but complete for their small roles. Of the major characters, Matthew Goode gets most of Frank’s attention, and his relationship with Gordon-Levitt is what the movie is all about. There is a touch of David Mamet in the set up, as Goode sweet talks and seduces Gordon-Levitt. Isla Fisher is Gordon-Levitt’s newfound girlfriend, with a stage monicker of Luvlee Lemmons (she isn’t Punjabi), and her short presence denies a female counterpoint the movie’s all male principal cast needs. Similarly underwritten is Jeff Daniel’s role, as Gordon-Levitt’s blind housemate. Daniels has some great one-liners (at Thanksgiving in the Pratt family mansion, he gets off the car, sniffs and announces “I smell money.” and later on joshes an unimpressed young female relative – “What do you call a mushroom that goes to a bar and buys everyone a drink? Fungi”) and it would have been interesting to explore his character some more. He and Fisher share a great scene at his apartment, when he senses what she is after. Daniels has a lot of fun with his role - overbearing, funny, heartbreaking and randy - like he was in Noah Baumbach’s “The Squid And The Whale”. Investing more in him would have been worth the while.
But these are minor complaints. Gordon-Levitt scores again after the high-school noir “Brick“, another overlooked (but not as good) movie. The direction is assured and refreshingly old-school. Shadows of other movies can be seen in some dark corners – Memento (short term memory loss), The Last Picture Show (high school sports heroes in small towns) , Fargo (killers in the snow) – but the familiarity doesn’t turn into deja-vu.
With the recent successes of other screenwriters turned directors like Shane Black (“Kiss Kiss Bang Bang”) and Tony Gilroy (“Michael Clayton”), TM puts a ‘buy’ rating on Scott Frank.
Chris Pratt and his girlfriend Kelly feel the thrill, moments before the accident that will change his life forever.
Chris gets a new friend, Gary Spargo, as the bartender is about to stiff him over the change.
Pratt and Lewis (Jeff Daniels) apply for a loan for their restaurant “Lew’s Your Lunch”
Chris and Lewis have a ‘gimps day out’ at a local diner.
Indian Cricket Team’s Hotel Issues
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Sadly, The Guardian has started believing its own hype about English cricket. As I mentioned in my previous post, their media sledging continues to surprise me. In his comments on the first day of the second test at Nottingham, David Hopps takes an unkind dig at the Indian teams travel habits:
“That India’s pace-bowling trio could perform at all was something of a relief. Such were their complaints about the size of their Nottingham hotel rooms that one half expected them either to be psychologically broken or to run to the crease like hunchbacks. … Every touring team has a different priority for hotels. The Australians insist on a gymnasium, the Kiwis want a nice view and the Indians expect porters on hand at all times to carry their bags.”
And this is because of the team management complained about the hotel.
That’s rich coming from the worst travellers in the cricket world (yes, even worse than Australia). This might be an apocryphal story, since this was something I read in an English cricketer’s autobiography when I was a kid, but apparently Bob Willis, the 6ft 6in English fast bowler, in one of his tours of India (1981-82?) couldn’t sleep in the hotel bed since it was too small. I am sure the English press must have gone to town with it.
This portering business seems to fascinate our erstwhile rulers. Whenever Sourav Ganguly was the topic of discussion, the British media would gleefully point out how he expected junior cricketers to carry his kit bag. Maybe English porters are the best in class when it comes to carrying the brown man’s burden. They have watched others do it for a long time & mist have learnt the tricks.
The PERM Scam
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An article in The Times Of India late last month by Chidananda Rajghatta alerted me to this YouTube clip. It is a recording of the May 2007 immigration law seminar conducted by a Pittsburg-based law firm Cohen & Grigsby. Lou Dobbs also covered it on CNN with his usual sarcasm & venom. I am very familiar with this in my business immigration experience in the US.
Note how the comments on YouTube to the first link degenerate in to racist name calling & xenophobia, usually harking back to some utopian economic idyll of peace, prosperity & ‘American’ness…
From the news article where I first read this:
“The developments (increased scrutiny on companies using L1 & H1 visas) came at a time when domestic public opinion is being roused against foreign workers with what Indian activists say are new scare tactics, including spread of a you tube video which shows a US law firm discussing at a seminar how to avoid hiring American workers in favour of foreign workers. The clip, which was posted by a US programmers guild, has outraged American workers. One of the responses to the you tube video advocated violence to drive home the
frustration felt by US workers.”
ToI’s links are a mile long, & their website is full of pop ups & spyware, so I am skipping the link to the full article.
Trash-talking Sourav
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Sourav Ganguly taking off his Blue India shirt at Lords after India won the NatWest Trophy in 2002 seems to have so enraged a whole generation of some English cricket-writers it may as well have been a sweaty red shirt waved to a (John) Bull. I found Lawrence Booth & Mike Selvey of The Guardian to be especially bristly when it comes to the ex-captain. I don’t much read the other broadsheets so I don’t know if they can write about him without lapsing into name calling. I do know for sure that “The Sunday Telegraph” can’t. Back in December of 2001 when England toured India it was their cricket correspondant, one Michael Henderson, who first called him Lord Snooty. (Henderson’s other alliterative appelation, Bengali Boor, didn’t seem to have caught on). To understand the rabid hatred for the British cricket writer for Sourav, this profile written by the esteemed Scyld Berry in that same tour would help set a context. Apparently it is Sourav’s general air of superiority that rankles the oh-so egalitarian Brits, especially Lancastrian team mates from his country stint the previous season. The breathtaking irony of the British press, of all countries, calling into question the ‘snootiness’ of someone from their erstwhile Raj boggles this mind. Among other things, it brings to mind what excellent uncomplaining tourists the English team has been in India. Incidentally, The Daily Telegraph at that time was owned by Lord Conrad Black, a paragon of corporate virtue.
Taking a leaf out of the Aussie book of grace & hospitality, “Lord Snooty” has been officially adopted by The Guardian as a daaknaam for Sourav (I personally prefer his real one, Maharaj). So Paul Weaver’s first day match report for the first test at Lord’s started with:
“There were times yesterday when India resembled a circus troupe. There was Dinesh Karthik And His Amazing Dropped Sitter, Lord Snooty (aka Sourav Ganguly) And His Incredible Dive Over The Ball not to mention RP Singh And His Mind Boggling Wides.”
And here is Rob Smythe in his Over By Over commentary of the second day’s play:
“41st over: India 113-3 (Jaffer 52, Ganguly 6) Jaffer, serenity on legs today, drives Panesar for a single. That exposes Ganguly for the first time – and he edges a big drive at his very first delivery from Panesar wide of the diving slip (Collingwood) and away for four. Snooty is a lucky Lord.”
Very classy, GU! You are giving Cricinfo a run for its money.
The Village Green Preservation Society
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Nothing like India touring England to get me back to my cricket loving best. The greenest of grounds, general halla bol among the overwhelming Karan Johar-watching Bhangra-dancing desi crowd, & a team that I love to see ground to dust. It is also Sourav Ganguly’s last series in England. Back in June 1996 when he made his debut century at Lords, I was at the Hotel Rajhans in Surajkund outside New Delhi starting my induction program at my first company. Sourav was a year junior to me at St. Xavier’s in Calcutta, & I was telling my roommate how he was now playing at Lords & I was trying to avoid dozing off at the conference room the next morning. I really want him to succeed, at least to prove that us old timers have some dum left in us.
The other thing I love about India in Enland is the excellent quality of journalism. The English papers have great writers (Mike Selvey, Derek Pringle, Christopher Martin-Jenkins et al) & they for some reason feel India is even worse than England. And they mostly hate Sourav. Mike Selvey has already got in to my bad books with this verdict on our team in The Guardian yesterday:
“… Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly and VVS Laxman … are starting to look long on aesthetics and shorter on substance. Tendulkar’s record against England is awesome but dismal at Lord’s, Ganguly has not scored a century of any consequence since he made 144 against Australia in Brisbane four years ago, while Laxman has become an old flirt, titillating but reluctant to go further these days.”
Please remind them how it was in Australia a few months back…
