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The New Indian Express

Saturday, August 14, 2010 multiverse 7


zeitgeist
When
Your Saturday
youre the
Magazine
centre of
the universe
By Bryony Gordon
Practically
Marzipan
A
few weeks ago, I received an anony-
mous letter: Dear Bryony Gordon,
Has it EVER occurred to you that
Aishwarya Subramanian there are other people in the world who
MATTER, as well as you? You make yourself
SOUND like the most self-obsessed, drunken

Popular
egoist that there has ever been Try to
accept that you are one of the lucky ones,
with a job, and a half-pretty face For heav-

tunes of en's sake try to be less self-absorbed.


A half-pretty face? What does that mean?
Does one part resemble Quasimodo, the

a shared other a reasonably inoffensive girl next


door? I threw the letter in the air, loudly pro-

culture
tested to my colleagues, and then after
about half an hour of checking my half-
pretty face for the non-pretty bits (the begin-
nings of crows feet! A double chin when I

R
ecently in a bar I have no- lower my head to my chest!) conceded
ticed something strange. In that perhaps the reader had a point. You
the bars of my youth, there know. That maybe I could, from time to time,
was a general trend towards the appear a little self-absorbed.
playing of classic songs I mention this so that I can write 160-odd
things that were old enough that words about myself before reluctantly mov-
everyone present who could ing on to the subject of somebody else, who
legally drink was old enough to has somehow managed to be even more of a
have heard hundreds of times. I narcissist. Andrew Cohen is an American
don't know if that was why those journalist who writes for the website Poli-
particular songs were played tics Daily. He mostly does pieces about law.
perhaps the people in charge of But last weekend, he published a post which
deciding these things just hap- started: The great love of my life marries
pened to like them more. today and I am not the groom. I had my
Yet more and more the songs I chance, a few years ago, but did not realise
am hearing seem to be the songs until too late how fleeting my moment with
of my youth. A tune will start to her was meant to be. Whether it was my
play, it will sound vaguely famil- fault or hers, and, lets face it, it was prob-
iar, and the next thing you know ably mine, I will wonder always about the
I am singing along to something I life I might have had with the most loving
never knew I knew; frequently a and loveable woman I have ever known.
song that I would have disliked as
a teenager.
I'm particularly worried by this You really have to read it.
trend because I've had a couple of
experiences recently where I've
illustration: Mr Cohen writes over 1,000
turned on the TV or radio and on
tuhin chakraborty
excruciatingly syrupy
a classic prog ramme have
found once again the sort of thing
words about this ex of
I grew up listening to, or avoided his, though he could have
listening to. What really alarms
me is this: what do actual old peo-
said it in five: She had a
ple listen to? I'm still in my twen- lucky escape.

Mediaeval medicine
ties; if classic music is now to and buried up to the waist if male and up to
the chest if female. Stones bigger than peb- You really have to read it. Mr Cohen writes
bles, but not big enough to kill quickly with over 1,000 excruciatingly syrupy words about
one or two hits, are thrown by volunteers(!?). this ex of his, though he could have said it in
More and more the

for the adulterers


If the person can get out and run away, then five: She had a lucky escape. This is a post
songs I am hearing they are freed, which is obviously more like- about him dressed up as an ode to her, his af-
ly for a man than a woman. It can take from fection seemingly stemming mostly from the
seem to be the songs twenty minutes to more than an hour until fact that no woman before or since ever made
of my youth. A tune the person is battered to death.
According to the Hadith, the stories of the
me feel as desired, needed, beloved, appreci-
ated as she did.
will start to play, it will Prophet from which Islamic scholars draw Cohen says that he still loves her, and al-
sound vaguely familiar, Countries disagree as to what acts justify severe inferences, Mohammed ordered stoning in a
number of cases of adultery. He didnt seem
ways will. Some might think thats sweet; I
think its selfish, and slightly creepy. There
and the next thing punishment. Iran uses death by stoning to punish, not to recognize any discrepancy in severity is, I am sure, a time and a place for belatedly
you know I am between the crime and its punishment. He declaring your undying love I just don't

singing along serial murder or child rape or treason, but adultery kindly allowed a pregnant woman who had
committed adultery to bear her child first,
think the time is your exs wedding day, or
that the place is a website read by hundreds
wean him, and then be killed by stoning. of thousands of people. Isnt it the online

O
encompass the tunes of my gen- Even when the people of the region wanted equivalent of standing up when the vicar
eration, has everything pre-1980 n a scale of bad things you to punish an adulterous couple by painting asks if anybody knows of a reason that these
been locked away somewhere? can do, Im not sure where I their faces black and parading them through two people shouldnt be joined together?
What is it like, if you're in your would put adultery. Is it more the town facing backwards on a donkey, Mo- Almost everyone has an Andrew Cohen in
fifties or sixties, to tune into a evil to exchange bodily fluids hammed ordered the couple stoned to death their life a former lover who retrospec-
show for old songs and find your- with a person other than the instead. The story ends with this telling tively decides you are the one, usually
self listening to a boy band? I one youre married to, or sur- detail: the man bent his body to shield the around the time you happen to meet some-
can't help thinking that it's ter- reptitiously pass gas on a crowded elevator? A Fine Line woman as the rocks were hurled. one new. It is mildly satisfying, if a little
ribly cruel. Is it better to cheat on your spouse or cheat Other religions have shown more compas- irritating. I remember one man calling to
I'm not sure why this is happen- at cards? I cant decide. In Canada, adultery sion for those having difficulty with monog- tell me that nobody would ever love me the
ing. I suppose there's scope for is not a punishable offence. We are lucky. We amy. The Hindu gods have such complicated way he did, the only reasonable response to
pontificating about how time had a cool prime minister who said, There Gitanjali Kolanad love lives that adultery doesnt always figure which was: Then why did you snog that
moves faster in the modern world is no place for the state in the bedrooms of is a Toronto-based dancer, as a no-no. The Jewish god did want to pun- Swedish girl behind my back?
(here one is expected to throw in the nation. ish adultery with stoning, but the Jewish Cohens magnum opus is, he says, a wedding
a few buzzwords about the infor- Countries, like religions, disagree as to
choreographer and writer. rabbis so hedged his commandment with gift. The present I humbly send her today is
mation age, the pace of modern what acts justify severe punishment. In gitakolanad@yahoo.ca procedural restrictions that he couldnt get this column; this public note this worldly
life, and Twitter) so that things China you can be killed by firing squad or his way. The Christian god wisely said Let absolution from any guilt or sadness she felt
that would have taken a few dec- lethal injection for tax fraud, killing pandas he who is without sin cast the first stone, between the time she said no to me and the
ades to become classics in the or stealing cultural relics. Singapore has a and that put a stop to the proceedings. time she said yes to him. No one ought to have
past are now obsolete within a mandatory death penalty for drug smuggling. I tried to watch a YouTube video of an to carry that with them into a marriage.
couple of years. Perhaps even India has the death penalty too, by hanging, actual stoning, but I couldnt bring myself to How incredibly generous of him to offer
people my age who would have but only in exceptional cases. Iran uses death do it. Instead I watched the Monty Python her a column he was probably paid to write;
still been thought of as young a by stoning to punish, not serial murder, not sketch. In typical Monty Python fashion, a column in which he kindly allows her to
decade ago are now considered child rape, not treason, but adultery. things go awry, and the man who ordered the move on with her life. From one self-ab-
past it. Or it could be far simpler On the scale of bad things you can do to stoning gets stoned instead. sorbed columnist to another, might I suggest
my generation are now adults people who do bad things, stoning has got to Mina Ahadi, a human rights activist, said that next time, he opts for a canteen of cut-
with independent incomes and so be at the high end, in between decapitation there are at least 12, and up to 50 women in lery from the wedding list?
we make up a large proportion of and being trampled by wild elephants. The danger of being put to death by stoning
the clientele of bars or the con- person being so punished is put into a sack in Iran. The Daily Telegraph
sumers of TV and radio. It makes
sense to play the songs we know.
Either way, it's wonderful. The
great thing about pop music (cue
amazing revelatory point) is that
it is popular. So even if you aren't
actually into a particular type of
music, you absorb some knowl-
edge of it simply by hearing it all
around you. It's annoying at the
Try fitting the sentiment of India into one word
W
time. Yet there's something amaz- inding up a discussion about the his- she got the family car out of the driveway were their home to the daughter and father just so
ing about that shared recognition tory of Indias Independence an all part of her Indian heritage. Still she just they did not catch the infection, the Indians
years later, when you're in the American techie friend asked me to could not make the connection. were all over them.
company of other people who you use one word to describe my country. Despite Everything in her life resonated India, yet Whats more the friends and acquaintances
may or may not know well. It's being a writer, I was speechless for once. I mean, she fought to subdue the Indian American iden- that helped came from the upper strata, upper-
fun (pop music lets you act as if how was I to describe a vivacious, culturally tity. The annual Indian pilgrimages that she middle economic group and even from the
it's all silly and frivolous and you diverse, economically steadfast, religiously di- termed her summer stints to India enabled her lower economic rung. They came packaged in
don't care about it) and it's a way vided, welcoming-of-strangers kind of country to embrace its cultural diversity and were wel- white (yes, Indians can be white!), black and
of admitting to a shared culture in one word. After much thought, I said senti- come opportunities to study Indian heritage, brown skin colours, were practising Muslims,
and past. mental. As he urged me to explain myself I was but she was yet to open her heart and mind Christians and Hindus and yet the barriers oft
And perhaps that's why we're at a loss for words once again. You see, India to fully. Last year though, she was astonished to talked about were virtually invisible.
so un-selfconscious now about me is not just a country but an experience. My notice that each visit had brought her to a point Back in the United States, she began to ob-
singing and enjoying songs we rescue came from surprising quarters; a teen- where she was more relaxed around Indians in serve Indians more closely. Less judgmental
would have hated to be associated aged desk kid who I thought had her head glued India than she was with the ABCD kids back now, she saw an extension of the same spirit
with in school. If that leads to a to the Hannah Montana show. home. she had experienced on her trip to India. Driv-
bunch of grown-ups sitting at a The teen had spent much of her early years That same trip, something else happened en to reclaim a lost heritage, she joined Hindi
table and singing (or shouting) trying to be more American than the Ameri- which changed her outlook to enable her to Silicon classes in addition to Telugu, accepted how and
out the chorus to ToyBox's Tar- can themselves to use her words. She dis- make her Indian connection. Her mother fell Tales why the shlokas her mum chants make sense
zan and Jane, surely it's a good counted all things Indian for fear of being cast seriously ill. It was then that she saw the Indian in a different realm, added Indian music to her
thing? out by her white friends. It rankled her when family machinery as I like to call it, work its IPod playlist, and even learned to take pride in
folks called her brownie for brown is a colour miracle. The young teen was blown away by the Farwa Imam Ali her brown skin! She had finally won indepen-
The writer is a student of English associated with people from India. She rebelled manner in which friends and relatives from all is a journalist based in the US. dence for her Indian identity. August 15, 1947 is
literature. She blogs at against joining Telugu and Bharatanatyam quarters descended to help. From carpooling silicontales@gmail.com no longer a date in history for her. It is a senti-
http://bluelullaby.blogspot.com. classes her mum entreated her to attend. Sure, for hospital trips, to rotating rosters for supply- ment. Try fitting sentiments in to one word she
bluelullaby@gmail.com yoga and the shlokas her mum chanted before ing food, performing prayer rituals, to opening challenged my techie friend. Touche!

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