Who will write your obituary, Mr. Salinger??

Jerome David Salinger is no more...

Contemporary and competitor, Joh Updike predeceased him...

Now, the thing that immediately popped in my head mind when I heard of Salinger's death was not what the world will miss (because he hasn't written a book in the last half of his life and at 91, one wasn't really expecting anything from him at all), but who will write him a fitting obituary now that the rockstar of a literary/culture critic of all times is no more.

I am confused...I don't know who I like more...Updike or Salinger....I don't know what saddens me more...Salinger's death or the fact that every obituary (and there will be many) will repeat every boring cliche that every existed on the man (reclusive, cool, crazy, inspirer of assasination plots and the whole Mark Davuid Chapman-John Lennon reference etc etc etc) in the absence of Updike, who, if alive, would have produced a legend of an obituary..yet another thing to remember Salinger by, after Holden and the Glasses!!

That, however, is not to be for reasons as mundane as mortality....

But I remember reading a review of 'Franny and Zooey' a few years ago by Updike, which confirms the big loss I just talked about.

'Franny and Zooey' is a big favourite with me despite my contempt for precocious children which is exactly what this book is all about. But I guess the written word can change all of that, which is what Salinger is loved for...for turning phonies into heroes, idiots into icons!! :-)

Anyway, F & Z was panned by critics as a rich person's guide to raising children all wrong. Updike shared this view:

Salinger loves the Glasses more than God loves them. He loves them too exclusively. Their invention has become a hermitage for him. He loves them to the detriment of artistic moderation.

but ended the review on a note of respect and appreciation:

When all reservations have been entered, in the correctly unctuous and apprehensive tone, about the direction [Salinger] has taken, it remains to acknowledge that it is a direction, and that the refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one's obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all.

and the words which perfectly explain why I, like many others, love Salinger:

We live in a world, however, where the decisive deed may invite the holocaust, and Salinger's conviction that our inner lives greatly matter peculiarly qualifies him to sing of an America where, for most of us, there seems little to do but to feel. Introversion, perhaps, has been forced upon history; an age of nuance, of ambiguous gestures and psychological jockeying on a national and private scale, is upon us, and Salinger's intense attention to gesture and intonation help make him, among his contemporaries, a uniquely relevant literary artist.

Salinger had the rare ability to convert extraordinary feelings into ordinary words (incidentally, that's what all writers intend to do) and who could know it better than Updike!!

That Updike feeling is what I am going to miss when I read those factory-made obituaries about Salinger that I shall read starting later today.

Chalk and Cheese

Dr. Vijay Mallya and Anil Kumble just do not belong together...so didn't Mallya and Rahul Dravid...

As far as I am concerned, this is an absolute travesty!!

Strange Idols....

At the very beginning of this post, I should mention that it concerns a representative from a group of people I dislike with single-minded devotion. I have faced maximum rejections, not at the hands of employers or men but ….auto-rickshaw drivers.

The upside of this is that any auto rickshaw driver, who does not reject me, agrees to turn on the metre or is even reasonable in his demands and is not a lech appears GODLY to me.

I encountered such GODLINESS on my way to work this morning. Not only did the first auto driver agree to take me to my destination, he agreed to do so on my terms. If I remember correctly, his exact words were, “De dena madam, jo aap ko theek lagey”. To a hassled public commuter, this is pure, unadulterated sweetness!!

On the way, I took a look around the small vehicle and was slightly surprised not to find laminated Rs. 10 posters of skimply clad Bollywood actresses on both sides of the seat.
( I have noted that auto drivers prefer Kareena and Priyanka to the rest of them!!) Although these pictures officially offend me, I totally get it!! While searching for Kareena inside the auto, I spotted something rather odd but oddly reassuring.

On the mirror, there was not one, but two unevenly cut out (heart-shaped, if I might add) postcards of two unlikely heroes…..Ritesh Deshmukh and Rajpal Yadav.

Now, not only did I wonder why those pictures were up there and how, in God’s name do you get postcards of these fellows for a price?? (I am pretty sure they weren’t newspaper or magazine cut outs but an actual, 50 paise/ Re. 1 postcard), I decided to wonder aloud.

The answer I received was obvious in many ways yet it appeared to me as charming. He said, ‘Woh hasatey hain madam…unka chehra dekh ke din achha jaata hain’. My response to that was a dim, not so charming “Oh” (Not that I intended to discuss my sociological findings with him and appear even more stupid).

Today, I learnt to keep it simple, go back to the basics and I already feel good. What I did not learn, however, is where you can buy postcards of strange idols as I have some of my own!! :-)

Food for Thought: Globalisation and Androgyny

Heterosexual, Homosexual, Metrosexual, SNAGs (Sensitive New Age Guys), Retrosexual, Neosexual.....

Cross-dresser, Transvestite, Hermophrodite, Androgynous....

When girls go baggy and boys go skinny....

For every Audrey Hepburn and Aishwarya Rai, there is a Tilda Swinton and Charlotte Rampling (Strong yet sensual)

For every Hugh Jackman, there is a Justin Timberlake (with that falsetto voice and boys too can cry kinda' appeal).

An actress, Diane Keaton, whom I love just for her spontaneity on and off screen, starred in a movie titled Annie Hall in the early 1980s, where she iconised androgynous fashion as it is known today, wearing baggy pants, waistcoats, oversized shirts, neckties and fedora hats. She was consistently voted as the Worst Dressed Female for years for her conservative and rather 'eccentric' fashion sense. She never changed though. Today, international fashion swears by that look.

The importance of trends and buzzwords in our daily lives is overwhelming...Ah...the things I have to keep up with in this lifetime!! Having said that, the revival of androgyny continues to fascinate me in its impact on gender relations (not only in fashion but in the real world..inside our homes, at the workplace, in other informal social spaces etc) and someday, equipped with better knowledge on the subject and a live muse, I will seek to undertake detailed research on GLOBALISATION AND ANDROGYNY...SERIOUSLY!!