A tale of two cities

This blog, to start with, is dedicated to one of the greatest ever Oriya composer and singer, Akshya Mohanty. Khoka Bhai, as he is popularly known, had a unique local flavor to almost all his songs. Not merely in the form of music, but also in the form of lyrics. His songs had this unique story telling capabilities, depicting places, events, festivities, people, families, values, society, and above all idiosyncrasies. All the above items featured in his songs extensively, as if each song is inspired from and brings into life one of these characters. I really cannot stop myself from drawing a parallel to R.K.Narayan and his Malgudi Days, for Khoka Bhai does the more difficult of task of giving life to his non-fictional city and characters through the medium of songs.

I always wanted to write a blog on one of Khoka Bhai songs, but it was never so compelling until I came across this particular one, “Raja Jhia Sange, Kari Thili Bhaba hai, Bhubaneswara ra hata re” ( Fell in love with the rich man’s daughter at the market place of Bhubaneswar). My Oriya friends would relate to it much betterJ, and certainly no marks to them for guessing the two cities in play. Cuttack has been the oldest city of the Orissa, and the commercial and administrative capital for nearly two centuries in the pre-independence era. It was only in 1964, that Bhubaneswar came into being the administrative capital, and the educated elites were the first to migrate from Cuttack to Bhubaneswar. Ever since, Bhubaneswar without the burden of heritage has continued to attract such educated pro-western elites not only from Cuttack, but from all over Orissa. Cuttack, at the same time, has owned up the burden of its heritage and continued to give away from its huge repository of rich Oriya culture. A statistical validation of this comes from the fact that, while Cuttack managed to produce numerous geniuses in the field of Oriya art and literature, Bhubaneswar has only made strides in its quest for westernization during the same period. Thus, was formed the classical Marxian hierarchy of classes, with Bhubaneswar playing the role of big bourgeois city and Cuttack the insignificant proletariat.

Numerous Khoka Bhai songs have revolved around Cuttack and its people, but this one particularly brings into fore the prevalent Marxian hierarchy and according to me makes the best possible satire, then and now. What makes it more beautiful, is that it takes the help of a mini love story to bring out the intricate inter-city class dynamics.

So the protagonist (like many of my friends from Cuttack) makes these trips to the Bhubaneswar (market places, temples, etc…..especially places highly frequented by young females and with a high probability of finding a female partner) and one fine day does come across his dream girl in the market place. And thus began the very transient affair with the rich man’s daughter. The transient nature of the affair is evident from the fact that it started in Bhubaneswar and lasted only till Telengapentha (located exactly midway of Bhubaneswar and Cuttack). Of course the love story graduated beyond the market place and moved to parks and temples. It even travelled beyond the city limits of Bhubaneswar, but unfortunately could never get close to Cuttack. The protagonist claims to be dumped midway by the young lady; midway is only a metaphor for the distance covered in love was hardly anything.

To begin with, the lady’s valuation of the man was nothing less than a gem. Subsequently, rationalization prevailed and SWOT analysis revealed that the man from Cuttack was nothing less than a Casanova. According to the theory, the Casanova takes the ultimate responsibility for the failure of any relationship. And it was no different for this man either, for he was accused of not being worthy of love. As per the lady, Casanova is a certain medical condition of the lower class, and it runs in the veins of all the youths of Cuttack. And our hero being from Cuttack, and no other fault of his, shares this medical condition which does not make him eligible for being in love with a “Rajdhani girl”.

Not an unusual situation for men though (being dumped and at the same time being accused of it), but what really complicates the situation for this gentleman is the underlying class dynamics of the two societies. Borrowing from a colloquial concept of ‘’political economy of love”, the city based political behavior is not surprising. Neither the initial assessment of the lady is incorrect, nor is the final judgment correct. They are nothing but merely love instincts superimposed on the real class structure.   Many years later, I myself grew up in the city of Bhubaneswar and would witness such politico-economical love behaviors in plenty in schools, colleges and workplaces.  Akshya Mohanty was clearly a man ahead of his times in his music and thought, and his songs would, still nevertheless cut across the entire Oriya civilization.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Du6lBqlM12k&noredirect=1

The Arousal Syndrome

“In society today, people are looking for more and finding better ways by which they can get aroused. In the good old days, man’s brain levels and hormonal levels were considered to be at a even keel throughout. He would have very little to do except work in fields and go home. In modern societies the constant stimulation we receive from the world draws us to any kind of arousal that is available to us.” Hey, hold on, this isn’t an article about the changing pattern of arousal stimuli over centuries, nor is it about finding more and better ways of arousal in our environment. This is about a certain event and its audience, who together supposedly put India on the global map. And the above lines are from a piece in Times of India, wherein a certain man of medicine ( a doctor in Mumbai) is trying to possibly explain the psychological reasons responsible for a huge turnout in the maiden F1 Grand Prix in the rape capital of India.

From a psychological view point, he says, the motor car is one of the few ways by which a human being can actually project his maleness through a machine. The everyday surges you can get by driving your motor bike or car aggressively, do makes you feel like a doer and imagining that you are in control. No doubt, the haves in India have found a new means to stay more in control through such fast moving and damn expensive machines. What is fresh in the mind is a certain Mohd. Azharuddin gifting his 19 year old son a 1000cc sports bike for Id-ul-fitr, and what followed was headlines for national news channels. There have been many such instances of aroused kids speeding their fast moving BMWs onto the pavement dwellers. Actually, these machines on Indian roads serve a dual purpose. Firstly, they do communicate the Marxian class consciousness of the haves to the have nots;  they control the powerful machine, the roads, the space and above all the fruits of production in this 9% GDP story. Secondly, as our doctor friend suggests that they take care of the modern day arousals (thus they know how to control their arousal as well).

Coming back to the primary issue of 95,000 people turning up for the grand event, making it a global success, how many were arousal led. According to this theory, arousal occurs whenever there is something new. The hormone of arousal is dopamine which is stimulated whenever there is any form of new arousal. Thus, Delhiites are looking for a dopamine rush when they come for such sports that are designed for a dopamine stimulation (as they say F1 has curves, both on and off the track). No doubt, exactly a year ago the same city hosted the largest sporting event in the form of Commonwealth Games, and quite obviously the games were not arousing enough. May be the F1 bosses who worked hard to sell the F1 dream (a mirage rather) to the Indian audience had a measure of this arousal syndrome of Delhiites, and that is why Delhi was chosen over other Indian cities.

For the tiny section of genuine F1 enthusiasts (not driven by the arousal and mostly non-Delhiite), who were easily outnumbered by the aroused species, it couldn’t get any bigger than this. But the aroused species is the one which made all the difference – both numerically and monetarily. It could afford to buy individual tickets to the race @ 8K – 12K (approximately 30K for a family of 4). And also came along dada, dadi, munna, munni, chachu, chichi and so on. Going by the sheer affordability of the tickets, this species is not common and the sport isn’t either. This species was also surprised to discover that  neither Vijay Mallya nor Karthikeyan were able to win the race, unlike the Indian cricket team which won the world cup in India a few months ago. The species was also happy about the fact that their staple diet was supplied at the venue at affordable prices (Chole Bature – Rs 250/-, Biryani – 450/-, etc.). They also concluded that, had the roads in Delhi been like the ones in the circuit, even they could clock 300 kmph in their Maruti variants. For once I was happy about cricket being a dumb sport vis-à-vis F1, and India being a one sport country. And thanks to the IPL, all our cricketing dopamine has been done away with.

Clearly this is an audience of excess and at another level it will make Incredible India more fascinating with all its wild contrasts and baffling contradictions. Here is a sport which is imported fully from the West, and here comes an audience fully home grown. Not surprisingly, the rape capital didn’t know exactly what to do with this new arousal, and rushed for a certain Lady Gaga show, for which the tickets were bought @ Rs 40,000/- per person.