randomised keyboards

So I was doing some netbanking this morning and discovered that the virtual keyboard, which is usually the standard issue Qwerty, had suddenly become a random one.

I stuck my face close to the screen, searched they keyboard and picked out the first letter of my password. 

The keyboard randomised its letters and numbers. And this happened with each keystroke.

I mean, I understand it's a great idea for security reasons (or so I imagine? I someone going to tell me it's all rubbish?) but it's a pain in the retina to try and figure out where each letter and number is every time. This particular password didn't have any capitals otherwise I'm sure I'd have discovered more difficulties. 

*

Speaking of eye trouble, I have decided that one reason I have written so little this year is because I cannot read my notes. 

I write 'em well enough, but when I write, my handwriting tends to be frugal and cramped, as if I were running out of paper and no more forests were available for pulping into papyrus.

End result: I can't make out what the heck I was saying, so I don't bother looking at notes once I've done making them. And it's not as if my mental retentive powers have compensated or anything. 

All this means that if I can't read my notes, I can't write.

(Or so I tell myself).

not the King Doof Gang

Yesterday, as I was getting extra milk, I saw the road outside the All New! Cop Shop! in Jubilee Hills swarming with OB vans. Grocery stores are hotbeds of gossip, so of course I asked what the fuss was about. I expected nothing less than some breaking news Telangana development or the busting of some pre-Diwali terror plot (as a friend said on Twitter, how can anyone tell there's a blast when so many crackers are being burst?)

Turns out it was a bunch of kids with no driving license and plenty of time and eggs. "VIP children," is how the guy handing me the milk put it.

One neighbour is delighted. Someone threw a rock at his car the other night and the cops refused to register a compliant because he had parked his car on the road. But hey - the King Doofs are still on the loose. Expect more excitement in the days to come.

(Sigh. Yes, quiet festival time, this. Happy Deepavali to you guys too.)

"mysterious adventures in the country of language"

France's left-wing Liberation newspaper suggests Hollywood may be better off if Godard stays away from the ceremony. "Godard's speeches have become mysterious adventures in the country of language," it says. "It would be interesting to measure their effects on the American public."

So apparently Godard's got the letter telling him he's being given an honorary Oscar, but he won't say anything except a thank you to inquisitive reporters. His partner asks, "Would you go all that way just for a bit of metal?"

Apparently many people would, absurd though it sounds when she puts it that way.

Actually, they should send someone over like they did with Ray. Maybe Isabelle Huppert - with Uncle Oscar. And while JLG refuses to so much as twitch the curtains to see what's happening outside, they chould have Herzog follow Huppert around the house, filming the attempt to give the man his statuette. Herzog can whisper confidentially to the camera as Huppert stalks around and yells incomprehensible obscenities at the blank windows; maybe Depardieu can make a short appearance just to play the violin in Herzog's face and Herzog can turn around, pull out a gun and threaten to shoot Depardieu or himself, before being overcome with nostalgia. Godard can then put up cut out signs in his window telling people to kindly fuck off.

All this can then be screened at the Oscars to a standing ovation.

in the nature of the beast

Writers/filmmakers/people who publicise their work* through their blogs/twitter accounts/facebook pages appear to use the medium less as an aggregator and more as a selective filter that lets in only the praise and keeps out the criticism.

This is only natural I suppose.

But I'm more fascinated by the phenomenon of linking to reviews at all. It assumes on the part of the consumer 1) laziness; 2) an inability to make up one's mind without help; 3) a willingness to be directed.

Also fascinated by what this says about the author**.

__

* Specifically, reviews. Information about availability/ readings/performances/exhibitions are different beasts.

**Here I'm distinguishing between the person who created said material -film, book, music album, painting - and the person in charge of disseminating information about it. It's when they're the same person and that things become really interesting.

Calendar

Does anyone know how calendars are made? I don't mean the basic, workaday one where you know what day is a Saturday or a Sunday and where the important holidays are. I mean the Kalnirnays and the Panchangams and the Murugan calendar that lots of South Indian homes have, where you tear off one page a day and can't go back to last week to check something, because the paper's thin and has been crushed and discarded the moment the new day's revealed.

Today's calendar page on one of those Murugans says There Will Be Rain*.

I want to know how they knew. Presumably they made this calendar last year some time in November or thereabouts. Sure, they can figure out the status of the moon, eclipses and Rahu Kalams. But how do they know it will rain one these particular days several months in advance?

*There is.

Cabinet of Curiosities

I thought some of you might have fun submitting to this:


Cabinets of curiosities (also known as Wunderkammer, Cabinets of Wonder, or Wonder-rooms) were encyclopedic collections of types of objects whose categorical boundaries were various. Modern terminology would categorize the objects included as belonging to natural history (sometimes faked), geology, ethnography, archaeology, religious or historical relics, works of art (including cabinet paintings) and antiquities. — From Wikipedia

The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities, edited by Ann and me, will be published by HarperCollins in 2011. Plans are for an oversized laminated-boards format.

A loose sequel to The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases—among other honors, a Hugo Award and World Fantasy Award finalist—this new anthology ramps up both the art and the storytelling, with full-page art, the delights of eccentric front and end matter, “exhibit” descriptions, and a core formed of full-on short stories. (The book will be dedicated to Kage Baker, who contributed to the first volume.)

Contributors will include Mike Mignola, Greg Broadmore, China Mieville, Holly Black, Naomi Novik, Minister Faust, Alan Moore, Cherie Priest, Michael Moorcock, Tad Williams, Jake Von Slatt, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Jeffrey Ford, Gio Clairval, Garth Nix, Stepan Chapman, Michael Cisco, Will Hindmarch, Ekaterina Sedia, Reza Negarestani, Lev Grossman, Ted Chiang, Carrie Vaughn, Kelly Barnhill, Helen Oyemi, and several more. John Coulthart will be doing a lot of art for, with additional work by Jake von Slatt, Eric Orchard, Yishan Lee, Eric Schaller, and others.

Unfortunately, the specific nature of the fiction being commissioned doesn’t allow us to have a standard open reading period.

HOWEVER, we are having an open reading period, starting today, for a micro-fiction section in the back of the anthology, which will consist of a list, with descriptions, of items from Dr. Lambshead cabinet that are not described in the stories. Here are the rules.

(1) Entries should take this form:

ITEM NAME. Description. – Your Name

For example:
TESLA’S SHINBONE. Preserved in amber, this electricity-producing relic from the famous eccentric scientist was first acquired by Dr. Lambshead in 1945 while on a trip to London. Etc. Etc. Etc. – Jeff VanderMeer

(2) Entries must be no longer than 100 to 150 words, and posted in the comments section of this post. They do not have to mention Dr. Lambshead specifically. They should be PG13, tops.

(3) You must include your email address in the appropriate comment field when you post so we can contact you if we would like to publish your entry.

Deadline 7 September 2010. Other caveats on Jeff Vandermeer's blog.

Two Minutes Older: Games People Play

Many friends were in ecstasies when Viswanathan Anand recently won against Topalov to remain World Chess Champion and I suppose it was a famous victory. But I have to confess, I don’t get chess. It might have something to do with how badly I play it – my inclination is always to kill everything on the board off in the most bloodthirsty way so that the game can end as quickly as possible and I can return to reading.

Calling chess just another board game is, for the enthusiast or the fanatic, a sacrilege on par with calling the Mahabharata a family feud. As with that other epic battle, some might say of chess as a game, ‘What is not found here is found nowhere.’

I don’t know. As far as I can tell a board game – yes, even chess - is a piece of cardboard, cloth or plastic, a few pieces and several complicated rules. Sometimes, when my friendless, hobbled monarch is being chased all over the board and my mind is full of vengeful thoughts, I want to meet the creator of the game in some dark alley. All that this tells me about human nature is that it hates to be thwarted.

What kind of a perverse mind comes up with board games?

Recently I had the chance to find out. A friend, who has long wanted to quit his job as investment banker and do something creative, has always met with the sort of fragile, tentative encouragement that is reserved for people who are sitting on a narrow ledge outside a window on the 33^rd floor of a building. At one time he claimed he wanted to design video games. I recalled the time I wanted to be a world-famous flamenco dancer and muttered a mental ‘yeah, right!’

It turns out that this friend, while he may not have designed the next Grant Theft Auto, had certainly acted upon his intentions. As he unpacked a box that once contained visiting cards, he told me about the board game he had created.

It was – what else? – a battle. Each player got a certain number of cards that gave her certain powers. The ‘board’ was a series of face-down l-shaped pieces that each player had to turn up before playing. There were up to four dies, and various ways in which to use them and the cards to play the game.

The rules were incredibly complex, but as with all board games, they became clearer as we began to play. ‘How long did it take you to do all this?’ I asked.

‘Oh, not long – a couple of weeks,’ my friend replied carelessly and I was speechless with admiration.

In a couple of weeks he had not only thought up the game and its levels of play and rules, but had also hand-made every piece of the game: the dies out of play-doh; the l-shaped, piece-meal board; the playing cards; the pieces (painted-over Scrabble tiles. Now that was sacrilege).

The rules were still being worked out as we played. We tried out different rules to see what would happen to the game. Would it make it too easy? Could the difficulty be split up into another level of play? I felt like the person who made sure there was a duster handy while Einstein was at work.

A few days after that, I happened to read about another bunch of people who spent their genius on inventing board games. Apparently, at an Anglo-Dutch board game conference, two days are reserved for a special event: odds and ends from other board games are all put into a kitty and randomly handed out to participants, who have to invent a new game with every bit of what they’ve been dealt, and make it work (or play) well.

When I told my friend about this, he was thrilled. I imagined his eyes glazing over with ambition and beautiful dreams, and left him to it. Geekiness is its own reward.

I may not have changed my mind entirely about playing board games, but I am beginning to see the adrenalising effects of inventing them. I’m even hoping my friend manages to market his game some day.


(An edited version of this in Zeitgeist, the Saturday edition of The New Indian Express.)

From the Bestiary: The Cliché-headed Blurb-backed Monster

 [Image]

The blurb-backed monster made its debut here. In the last few days, s/he's grown heads made of clichés.

Please feed the monster in the comments*: lay out natural environment, food, enemies and so on.

Previous peeves include the use of phrases such as ROTFLMAO, but you'll just have to search, since I haven't tagged all posts.

Talking of peeves, my recent bugbears include 'relentless' and 'endless'. I only have to glimpse these two words to switch off - in most cases, it's a complete shut-down; but sometimes, if I like the writer, it's a temporary blackout that lasts a page (unless I really, really like the writer, in which case I can recover myself after about a paragraph or so).

Did I ever say I how discovered Serafini? Oh yes, I did.

__

*Let's make our bestiaries interactive. Maybe I can sell it to Facebook.

Name calling

No, this is not a blinding obvious word-play on Khan, I promise.

This is about American Idol last night. Did anybody else rotfltao (ok, not so extreme; maybe just cackling in between other thoughts) when this girl called Didi Benami came up to sing?

(No, I don't remember what she wore or sang, or whether she was any good. How does any of that matter? She is memorable only for her awesome name).

I'm putting this name down in my dairy for use at some point somewhere. As Dr. Zhivago said, 'it's a gift.'

Unhappy Hipsters

Weird, self-possessed girls, a double-bicycle dangling like an exclamation point, a distraught house owner being reassured, a pink (very pink) womb...

...you'll find them all at Unhappy Hipsters.

Go, go, go!

(But come back when there's something here, huh?)

[Via a friend on FB]

Catch [insert new number]

Last night at a party, I met a newly-wed couple. They did the sensible thing and had a registered wedding, and this is apparently what happened:

Before they got their certificate, they had to put up photographs of the wedding up on a board in the Registrar's office.

"Why the photgraphs?" I asked.

"For proof."

"So you guys got married in some other way and also got a registered wedding?"

"No no - it was only a registered wedding."

"But the registrar presided, right?"

"Yes."

"Wait. So you had to prove to the registrar that he married you off?"

"Um... yes."

*

Of course, it would have been much better if the building in which they'd got married was one in which photography wasn't allowed but I'm guessing they haven't thought of that one yet.

This is not a tag. It is also not an origami pelican.

In fact, I am not going to name twenty-five (25!) writers whose work has influenced mine. First because I don't consider that I have enough 'work' to claim influence; second, I mean seriously - 25 fucking writers?! No way.

In any case, how to detect influence? I'm a weather vane like that and if I talk to you long enough I'll begin to sound like you and in that case everything I've ever read influences me.

Finally, what about what one sees or hears? What if the biggest influence in my writing was the films of, say, Bresson (note to self: watch again A Man Escaped) or Buñuel?

Besides, I don't think I could tag 25 people and have them remain friends.

Sorry Aditi. (But y'all should totally read Aditi's blog).

*

Talking about what this post is not, I was chatting with Black Mamba yesterday and the subject of submissions and rejection slips came up. From there we moved by easy stages to origami pelicans*. I admitted to being puzzled. BM reminded me of this essay by Naeem Murr in Poetry that I have blogged about. Apparently it had not only starlings and monobrows and cancer of the left ventricle (fiction has to be specific, Murr says), it also has origami pelicans.

I love origami pelicans and other paper wildlife.

And I miss the orgami pelicaniness in the blogs I read.

So here's the deal:

This is not a tag.

But it is a prompt to write the most outrageously funny, silly, weird, fun, unwistful, unangular, unagsty, chortly post ever.

Anyone, everyone who reads this blog and is weighed down by the burden of life and would like nothing more than it lay it down, here are your bootstraps:

Story, play, conversation, graphic/comic, poem, audio clip.

Write, link, I'll link back.

What? What else do you need? You have eight or nine words above. For other inspiration there's the Poet and her Amuse.

Make those paper pelicans fly, folks.

*

Black Mamba is writing love letters or something.

And Menaka Raman, who is drawing for a rainy day.

Falsie, in the meanwhile, is taking tentative bites. (btw, where did I say this had to be only visual? Not that I'm complaining, but I'm wondering what happened to Chotu-Motu's Mandarin classes.)

Here's Surabhi dreaming that she's painting John Abraham's face with yellow butterflies (it becomes more surreal when you realise that's it's the Amma Ariyen/ Odessa John Abraham).

If this is not a tag, what I get is not an origami camel. According to Dipali.

*You'll find it's a swan, BM.

okay, slumdog

So what's the fuss about, really?

Here's what I think:

1. Danny Boy is going to make one crawling through shit scene a signature of his ouvre; you just wait and watch. That's going to be his Hitchcock contribution to the world of cinema.
2. Not sure about this, because I may have imagined the whole thing, but did the guy pretending to be Amitabh Bachchan sign an autograph with his left hand? Is Aby a leftie? And I don't mean politically, of course.
3. So that chase through the slums. In case you weren't paying enough attention to the title, that crazy tilting camera has one shot of a mongrel curled up in the path, looking askance at this line of ragged kids being chased by cops.*
4. Those cuts away and away to show the size of the slum did nothing for me. Is this a fun chase sequence or a recce for Google Maps?
5. In fact, let's say it here and have done: the whole film did nothing for me. Not the characters, not the music, not the structure, nothing. I was bored.
6. Except when I was being indignant with those out-synch bits. How come no one's mentioned those yet? Or do they just take it for granted?
7. Not sure if the Hindi version would have worked better. I suspect it would but I'm not watching it again to find out.
8. You want feel good? Go watch Oye Lucky Lucky Oye.
9. Update: Not sure why I forgot to mention this: under the general heading of Opportunities Lost comes two versions of a dialogue Danny Boy didn't use from our Great Indian Tradition. This concerns a scene at the end, when Jamal finally meets Latika at VT and they kiss.

Version 1.

JAMAL sees LATIKA across a train. She turns and also sees him. JAMAL crosses the platform, across the tracks and climbs up to where LATIKA is. They fall into each others' arms and the camera begins to circle around them.

LATIKA (drumming her tiny fists on JAMAL's shoulder): I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! (whispers) I love you.

JAMAL kisses LATIKA.**

Version 2.

JAMAL sees LATIKA across a train. She turns and also sees him. JAMAL crosses the platform, across the tracks and climbs up to where LATIKA is. They fall into each others' arms and the camera begins to circle around them.

JAMAL: I love you.

LATIKA (drumming her tiny fists on JAMAL's shoulder): Kiss me, you fool!***

JAMAL kisses LATIKA.

Update 2: Here's Kiran David with a bottle of acid.

*For the best, the definitive chase sequence involving Bombay slums, watch Kashyap's Black Friday. That is a brilliant sequence, one that Danny Boy would have done well to have studied.

** Of course, this scenario is rather inexplicable, given the circumstances but that oughtn't to have discouraged Danny Boy, seeing as so much of the film already is.

***They actually went with this version but left out the crucial 'you fool'. Everyone knows millionaires are not fools.

Delhi

The cabbie begins to call for directions at 4.15am. Good job I've been up since 4. Even leaving at 5 the airport is an hour away. Turns out I'm the only one who's taken the three-hours-before-take-off notice seriously.

The good news is that this time I've taken along only one very small bag. For everyone who knows what my packing agonies are all about, this is an achievement.

The bad news is that because I'm carrying toothpaste (and cream and perfume and kajal and homeopathy) I have to check the bag in. The inhaler I'm allowed to keep out because I am carrying a prescription.

**

Staying with A and L. I bring them a choice of two films. A chooses Happy Together. I'm happy to have Persepolis. On my second day there, we watch the film in the afternoon and L falls asleep. A prods him awake and he claims he was awake all the while. He proves this by asking intelligent questions about what's happening on screen.

**

These two days remind me that I haven't been out of Hyderabad since Kala Ghoda. That was an anxious time and frankly, so was the leaving this time. It brings back memories about that other time I had to get away and oddly enough, I find our circles converge* plentily.

I come back home having had the kind of break holidays are meant to be: free from anxiety and a place from where you can return to pick up all the baggage you left left behind and find that it's grown lighter in your absence.

**

Oh, and I had vast quantities of gajar juice.

Reading will be a separate post.



*JAP will no doubt say that I'm doing cryptic again over here.

'An Elephant with a Mozart Soul'

From a conversation between Errol Morris and Werner Herzog in The Believer:

WH: [...] And at the end, after having killed seven or eight or so coeds, hitchhikers, he killed his mother and put the severed head on the mantel and threw darts at it. And then there happened to be some leftover turkey in the fridge from Thanksgiving. And he called the lady next door, the neighbor, and asked—am I correct? Yeah, asked her if she would like to pick up the turkey leftovers, and she walks in and then he killed her as well, and put her in a closet. And then he fled in his mother’s car and crisscrossed the West until he ran out of money and ran out of gas. And in Pueblo, Colorado, he kept calling the police. [To Morris] You know better what happened there. I think they thought he was kind of gaga and didn’t believe him.
EM: He desperately tried to turn himself in to the police by making repeated phone calls from this phone booth. Now he would have had a cell phone. So I guess it’s easier now for serial killers to turn themselves in. And the police kept hanging up on him. They just—
WH: And he was down to his last quarter to make his last call, and then two detectives actually picked him up at this phone booth. I remember their names because they sound very German: Schmidt and Grubb. And Schmidt and Grubb took him to the police station, and what was smart of them was, they just randomly turned on a tape recorder and Kemper spoke for six hours, pretty much nonstop.

Via Linkastic which actually doesn't have the link! While you're there, do read the entire issue; it's a film special. Gah. You can't, obviously, because barring only this interview and another article, the rest is only for subscribers.

Previous post on Herzog.

Sank or Set Things I Know About Her

I've been tagged. According to Lekhni, this is supposed to be an easy one. Ha! What's easy about trawling through the archives and being made to choose one post over another. Go read 'em all, I say! You don't be lazy so I can be.

Sigh. Here goes. These are the rules:

Post 5 links to 5 of your previously written posts. The posts have to relate to the 5 key words given (family, friend, yourself, your love, anything you like). Tag 5 other friends to do this meme. Try to tag at least 2 new acquaintances (if not, your current blog buddies will do) so that you get to know them each a little bit better.

(Cut paste this when you're tagged, so you don't have to, you know, make it up as you go along and play chinese whispers with the tag. And everyone cheats with the number of posts, so don't let it worry you.)

Family: When my grandfather died.

Friends: I've just realised I don't do friends often. I quote people without their permission, yes, but I rarely talk about them. I mean, what if they've been downgraded to acquaintance? Would I still want to talk about - or even to - them? Clearly, I do. Of course, I like it better when friends do things for me. That's what friends are for: stealing stuff and being ready to take the fall.

Me? I just want to disappear, you know. Leave no traces.

What's the next one? Oh, yes: My Love. Er...like how? The love of my life? Person? Passion? What I love? I love Rafael Sabatini. The colour pink. (hell, I'd make the word itself pink if I could but they have some ridiculous excuses for the colour). I love hanging around and doing nothing, just watching the wheels.

Like (why are Hate and Adore treated like step sisters? I demand we expand the tag.) What a lukewarm word. What do I like? Watching films? Can one merely like watching cinema? God knows. Haneke. Kiarostami. The way what's memorable is often just a fleeting moment. Lizards.

Phew. That's enough, no? Now to get all sadistic.

Here are the people I tag:

Veena (who is going to find everything easy. She'll just have to find one Scenes from a Marriage post and it will have everything in it.)

Black Mamba (who'd better spill some deep dark secrets before she turns up here!)

Falstaff (I have visions of him trawling through his 700 odd posts to find the right ones for the tag. All this when he's busy.)

??! (No recipes. Not unless they involve humans you love. Oh, all right. Like will do. Oh - and about throwing prizes your way: will tags do?)

Cheshire Cat (this one is such a long shot, I couldn't resist. Most likely he won't do it at all. If he does, it will be so cryptic it will be a pleasure to read. And once that's done, there's no saying it will stay put on the blog.)

A Glutton for Punishment

If you are one, head over to km's post where there's a carnival with curd and other questionable substances (not excluding the stuff that dreams are made on) and contribute your bit.

Or just go groan.

**

A propos of nothing, will someone please explain to me this business of ROTFL? Who does that? Not even Buster Keaton films make me actually roll all over the floor losing control over my bowels.

If it's supposed to indicate that on a scale of 1 to 10, something you just said comes close an excruciating 9, it still seems a bit excessive to me. I mean, imagine that you've just made a mildly funny remark and as reward are greeted by the sight of an adult getting off their chair and proceeding to roll around the floor in a paroxysm of mirth. How astonished would you be (on a scale of 1 to 10, of course)?

The Worst Hell There Is

Regret over opportunities lost.

The letter that he wrote?

Here it is.

Or rather, here it isn't.

But go read.

(but why Hyderabad? Why not Philly? Hanh? Philadelphia Cream Cheesy.)

Update: The worst hell there is, 2: two film tickets.

Good good! Hope other people are writing letters as well!

It's not about the money

Waiting for the Fassbinder film to begin, I sneak a glance at the guy sitting two seats away from me. He has his laptop open and is doing stuff on it. His phone rings. He answers, continuing to tap away on his laptop.

'Achcha I got a mail from some _____, ' he says to the person at the other end. 'He said, cheque de. What cheque de? Means what?'

Some explanation forthcoming from the other end.

'Oh ho. Shah Rukh Khan, aa? Chek De!'

And to his friend sitting next to him, 'Film anta. Chek De. Punjabi.'

Enlightenment dawns.

PS: You'd really have to know how Telugu works for this to be funny.

beyond absurd but who's laughing?

By now everyone knows that instead of cases being booked against the MIM in Hyderabad for issuing what could be construed as death threats, the police have instead booked a case against Taslima Nasreen under Section 153 (A) for 'promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, language etc'.

If I am not mistaken, this is the same Section under which a case against Chandramohan was booked.

I'd like to laugh it off like I did last time. I'd like to say, the thing to do is for everyone to go out a buy or borrow a copy of Shodh and read it. I'd like to believe this will shame the MIM and every element of every lunatic fringe into silence.

But of course we all know this a special kind of blindness, one born of the confidence that if one only acts, things will fall into place and the world will right itself again. It is analogous to the egregiousness of a Rang De Basanti (about which more in a couple of days) where a bunch of ill-informed layabouts believe they have only to commit murder and fess up for the light of revolution to be lit and for a tranformation to occur in the country.

Yeah, right.

Are we deluding ourselves into believing that the MIM and the 20 crore Muslims they claim to speak on behalf of has actually read even one book by Nasreen in its entirety, and been offended by it? Do we really believe that reading the books they claim cause offense is the answer to the intimidation they practice?

The MIM don't case about the books Nasreen writes. The Hindu Right doesn't care how Chandramohan depicts gods. Most of them won't recognise art if it came and sat on their faces.

They protest and fling furniture about because it suits their purpose to create a climate of fear. A climate where people like me will not tell everyone about a screening of Janshn-e-Azadi because we did not have a strategy in place to deal with the cops when they arrive. They do what they do because they know how willing the State is to side with them in supressing anything remotely controversial.

In all seriousness, I don't know what the answer is. I know it is nice to say things like 'not silence but more speech' or to believe that one has only to speak up every single time these things happen and all will eventually be well, but I don't feel so certain about that any more.

This is not to say that we shouldn't speak up; of course we must. But we also have to be aware that by the time the occasion comes for us to speak up, the event is usually past. We only react; we never find a way to allow ourselves the space where a Nasreen can release her book without mishap or where a film can be screened without being confiscated.

The whole country has protested the attack on Nasreen, including the newly elected Vice President of India. And yet the cops have registered a case against her (after, mind you, having treated her to lunch) while Owaisi and the other MLAs can be almost certain of getting away with their attacks and death threats.

What is clear is that we can no longer take for granted a space where one can speak as one likes. We know that these freedoms may exist in theory, but that in practice, they have been eroded to a point where they can be denied us even in theory. This is dangerous. And we are complacent because we are naive about how we imagine we can counter this.