RIP Allen J Mendonca

It was when I was twelve or thirteen, I think. I wanted nothing more than to be a journalist. An investigative journalist, if I was lucky.

And there were a few inspiring people behind that ambition. No, Barkha Dutt wasn’t really one of them. Maya Sharma and Jennifer Arul could have been, but seemed rather regionally restricted. Sreenivasan Jain was a major one.

But I didn’t really like journalism on a national level for some reason. And this was when Times of India was entering the Bangalore market, and was marketing itself as the newspaper that could read the pulse of Bangalore just as well as the nadi astrologers of Vaideeswaran Kovil were reputed to. And having a piece or two published in Offspring [the school section of ToI, which we were introduced to through Newspaper In Education] made sure I was a ToI loyalist back then. I read every word of every article back then.

And the city-specific reporting captured my heart. It really felt like this is what I wanted to do… I’d religiously go through each column. Some names stood out more than the others. HS Balram was too serious for my taste.

And so it was Allen J Mendonca, in his avatar as Chief Reporter of the Times of India, who proved to be a major inspiration for me.

His writing style was a tad quirky, quite informal, his bylines hard-hitting. His movie reviews were a treat. His sprinkling of Kannada words in what would otherwise be an elitist newspaper article made it all the more endearing to me.

At first, I was content just reading newspaper and watching news channels, but when we got our dial-up connection, I acquired a bit more nerve.

I first mailed Sreenivasan Jain, a long garrulous mail describing how awesome I find him on TV, how I admire his ability to ask the right questions, how insightful I thought him to be. [Back then, his email ID was available in the newspaper, or when he wrote a column for The Week... not like now, when we had to really HUNT for his email ID when we wanted to contact him for something related to Engineer, NITK's Techfest]. And all I got was a one-line reply, in SMS lingo. End of an infatuation. I’d had it with television reporters.

I don’t know exactly why I mailed Allen Mendonca… other than maybe I imagined he was a nicer person not prone to SMS lingo and incredibly more loquacious, and… the name sounded like he’d be quite a looker. But it remains that I did, and got a nice reply to all that I’d asked him. I don’t remember the exact contents of that mail, but I’d asked him about how you go about being a journo, what do you need to study in college, and…. that ONE question. Did he think I had it in me to be a journo.Of course, the answer to that one was that I was too little and I had it in me to become anything I wanted. But oh, the inspiration that one provided back then!

The exchanges continued. I’d been on a holiday to Coorg, and going through the guestbook, I discovered he had holidayed at the same estate bungalow I was staying in, just two months before! Boy, did that put a smile on my face! And his detailed description of the estate and all that it offered, and how well he’d enjoyed the whole deal – the walking trails, the books in the library about the history of Coorg, the ponds, the coffee plantations…. I’d previously been rather sulky throughout the holiday, but just reading that made me realize I was missing out on stuff. And I instantly cheered up!

I wrote to him mentioning this, nicely omitting my sulkiness from the whole story, and right after, he began feeling like some friendly uncle. I stretched my boldness far enough to send him samples of my childish verse… and he actually went through fifty lines of my random thoughts, and said it was rather good. Was I on top of the world or was I on top of the world. And he said I should write more often, and needed to ‘develop a style of my own’, which would come by regular writing.

Not very long after that, he stopped responding. I consoled myself saying he was probably undercover on some story, or was incredibly busy, or some such thing. Besides, his stories stopped appearing in ToI.

And then he replied from a different mail ID, after almost months together, saying he’d quit ToI, over some disagreement with his bosses, about political favors and exposes or some such thing… I don’t remember the details. He said he was writing a book, and that he’d send over an invite for me and my family for the opening.

We stopped corresponding after that, given that I was grappling with increasingly challenging academics, swimming practice, emotional upheaval on shifting my house to seemingly the middle of nowhere, ego tussles, multiple crushes, and similar stuff.

When I was in the tenth, or eleventh, I saw a news article about his book coming out. “He didn’t invite me as promised”, I sulked. There was an interview of his on RadioCity, where he was just as upbeat, funny and full of life as I’d thought he would be..  and I wondered if I should mail him…. but stopped short of hitting send, wondering if he would still remember me, or reply, or anything at all.

I got over wanting to be a journo, thanks to the JEE dream, and quit mailing people I hadn’t met in person thanks to all those newspaper articles about some weirdo trapping kids…. basically, just switched tracks. And I saw less and less of news about Allen [Oh yes, he'd said I needn't address him as Mr. Mendonca, and Allen would do, and I used to feel a thrill whenever I typed "Dear Allen"]… given that the Times wouldn’t mention him for all the world, and my not reading the Asian Age or Vijay Times.

My opinions of other journalists might have changed, my opinion of ToI has certainly changed, but of Allen, nope…. whenever I came across any reference to him, I still get the image of a lively man who peps up his radio interview with stories about his ‘three weddings’, who had a very vivid, visual way of writing, and who was one of those down-to-earth people who still bothered enough to humour an awestruck little girl, correspond regularly with her, and actually give her feedback on her writing.

So this morning, when I came across this Churumuri post about his sudden, untimely demise, I was really shocked. I was also overcome with a whole lot of memories… surprisingly clear for ten-year-old memories that aren’t regularly thought about. Thinking back, I realize the ideal I was using to model my writing style was his – show don’t tell, local flavour, seeming stream of consciousness.  I’m amazed at how such small gestures had such a big impact on my thoughts, dreams and aspirations for such a long to come. Even when I wasn’t thinking of the correspondence with Allen, I used to think of how to ‘develop my own style’. Still do. That phrase has stayed with me for a long time. And will do for a long time to come.

Great Soul. May he rest in peace.

A little doubt in Bollywood Trivia

So Wiki informs me that Konkona Sen is the daughter of filmmaker Aparna Sen and science writer and journalist Mukul Sharma.

Now my doubt is this: Is this Mukul Sharma the same guy who used to write the column ‘Mindsport’ for the Sunday Times of India?

If this is so… Konkona Sen has a lot to live up to in my eyes.

Devil’s Advocacy on Moral Policing and the like

Yeah, Ram Sena etc etc is what inspired this post.

So basically, people are loth to be policed. Urbane Indians, most of all. At the slightest provocation, Times of India and their related concerns jump to ask “Who are THEY to tell us what to do and what not to do?”, and the P3Ps of Bangalore lend a chorus. I’m merely being matter-of-fact here.

I do not understand how adopting western culture has come to be seen as being more sophisticated and open-minded. Perhaps in the days when American clothes and food were a novelty, it made sense to envy the guy with the faded jeans. And his knowledge of American accents and the like was some rare knowledge. and his adoption of all of that culture was really being open-minded and experimentative.

But now every Senthil Arumugasamy wears denim. Every Kunjavva wears halter-neck tops. And pizzas and burgers are not experimental food anymore. So if you are speaking in a call-center accent now, you aren’t doing anything different from the 30K other people in Koramangala. Get over it, people.

And… alcohol. People wanting to get together and celebrate with alcohol, I can understand. But when an entire city can’t pass the evening without alcohol, something seems amiss.

The same socialite who will, with disgust, say that the laborer was stinking of alcohol will think nothing of socializing with equally drunk people of her own social class. Don’t give me the crap about these people being more cultured… Madesha gets drunk on IML and beats his wife, Adnan Sami gets drunk on scotch and beats his wife; I fail to see the difference.

And… why is it assumed that only Muthalik-like men have such attitudes towards women? I have seen men from very good families adopt the same patronizing ‘oh you’re a girl, you’ll get married soon why we should invest on you’ attitude. And you’d only be fooling yourself if you think there exist men who admire promiscuous – or rather, OPEN – women for what they are. The terminology might vary, but the attitude adopted is the same, irrespective of the social class they belong to, or the education levels.

There are men who think their wives shouldn’t go out and work in the garment factory. There are men who think their wives shouldn’t go out and pursue a career on Wall Street. There are men who are supportive of their wife’s vegetable patch in the acres of family farmland. There are men who educate their daughters beyond all limits. It has nothing to do with what syllabus you are taught, or how much money you have. It’s about what sort of women you’ve grown up seeing and what sort of men you’ve been influenced by.

I don’t get one thing. If you are open-minded, why do you get so irritated about folks who prefer not to be? Shouldn’t you be open enough to accept them too as a part of the world you live in?

Sometimes I wonder if people want all this ‘openness’ only for their own selfish ends? I mean, who wouldn’t want to say yes to a world where you could have sex and didn’t need accountability? Or where their alcoholism got a streak of legitimacy? Or where their laziness to follow rite and ritual got wider recognition as ‘rebellion’? Or their selfishness was seen to be inspired by Ayn Rand? I’ve begun to feel it’s not that people find an idealogy and then adapt to it, but find one which justifies their (sometimes unjustifiable) actions.

Now that the rant has been done about the ‘Oh, look! We are so open-minded!’ hypocrites, let’s get to the real post.

When any such moral-policing issue comes up, the first reaction we get is of “Who are they to police us? They need to understand this is how society evolves’.

But thinking more about this, and generalizing this argument, I wonder if everyone adopted this ‘understanding’ attitude, how society would progress. Three years back, I remember Tuna wrote something about Unreasonable Men and how they are the ones who give society its shape. If you are faced with a situation you do not like, do you just bend and give way?

And then there are those who say ‘Maybe their motives were fine, but their methods left a lot to be desired’. Yes, they were crudely ineffective. But so was Guevara. And the violence… well, Leftism talks of Force as the Midwife of Revolution. So, well, Ram Sena maybe fancied themselves Guevaras and Marxes?

Or maybe Stallman? Maybe Muthalik found that a lot was changing around him, and not all of it he felt good about. And he felt a divine call saying that no one was in as unique a position as him to be able to foment a revolution. And hence the creation of Rama Sene, a la the Free Software Foundation?

In which case I find the media associating these guys with a Right-Conservative party very amusing. Because Conservatives believe in slow change, not violent, bloody revolutions. Conservatives prefer to start with what we have and move slowly, but surely towards what we want to have. Conservatives believe in influencing the learning process, social policies, the thought of the common man, and not bringing about these changes by force, but by change in thought.

This post is Devil’s Advocacy, and is not necessarily my opinion. I would like these arguments countered, coz I want to know what I’m missing in constructing these. I would like logical flaws pointed out. I’m also having you know that any personal attack in the comments section will be promptly deleted.

And one last piece of information I ask for: Does social acceptance of drinking make the social evil of alcoholism better or worse?