‘Freedoms once granted will not be relinquished without a fight. The lesson applies as well to the politics of family as country [1. Ousting of Gorbachev, 2. antipathy of Viet, Baghdad veterans, 3. Fatwa on Rushdie etc.]. The parents who grant privileges or enforces rules erratically invites rebelliousness by unwittingly establishing freedoms for the child.’ – Influencing by Cialdini

Imagine Kapil Sibal admonishing the citizens of India for calling him a bad parent once in a while. I don’t remember a moment in my childhood when I didn’t think ill of my parents when I was forced to do my homework, or they cut my play hours for being a brat.

‘From now on you get to play for an hour lesser than your usual play hour.’ Imagine your mother saying that to you. How does that make you feel? Want to run away? However your mother never did that and never will a mother do that, because it won’t work. A parent is smarter than that. If Kapil Parent Sibal is about to get tough, who and how shall he/she be affected most?

First and foremost hate in social media might not be used by people without strictest affiliations with competitors. For instance a group or an individual might circulate or publish something loathsome only when he wants to influence more against the parent. An individual reaction has to identify and trigger HATE in the audience to generate sympathy for the cause; ‘HATE’ itself being the easiest of tools that is universally used. Who then would be the ones most affected?

1. Political Agents

2. Media writers with affiliations.

3. Harmless Signal boosters (who are sitting aplenty as facebook and twitter users).

We can always argue that true thinkers don’t have to be offensive, they are neutral. However if we go back to ‘Edward Bernays’ and his classical PR and Propaganda, what good is neutral thinking and publication unless it can provoke people for good or bad? People after all need some of it, everyday, at office (gossips about Mrs. Khandenwal), at home (how the neighbor’s daughter eloped)…and that’s where it ends. We need some of it everyday, to cull our appetite. More of ‘Crime Patrol’s are occupying prime time along side laughter shows, the only two things we miss and need the most. (I wonder the impact that free media would have had on the extremity of Ku-Klux Clan.)

The question then is can our Kapil Parent Sibal successfully create the vacuum? It seems he might need to have the power of ‘Durga’ and the might of ‘Shiva’ to censor all such content. Unless he can cut out facebook, twitter and to that matter internet access all together, children will find some new Swiss Bank to park their money and thoughts. He will have to punish countless children who carry the urge to spit on his spic white coat just because they are not supposed to. How bad can children get with parents who have been asked not to fish in their parent’s pockets, not fiddle with the cell phone and laptop? More often than not the cell phone ends up in the bucket full of water, and the keyboard malfunctions when you are working late night on your presentation.

What do we expect then if the ‘ban’ happens?

-Rebellion and more creativity. Parent Sibal can ‘ban’ content on facebook and twitter but he can’t stop the avatars that are around the corner. He can’t even surmise the forms and shapes. Things I can think off right away are:

1. Parent Sibal having multiple names in the cyber world so ‘ban crawlers’ can’t catch them

2. Employment for the cyber police team, Z-category online bodyguards.

3. More shoe throwing drills. (Sadly we fail to differentiate between bad weather and the weatherman)

4. God save those who share their names with Parent Sibal.

Since all carry ‘RIP’ one day… (Here lies a parent who always had good intentions).

In my span of life I learn how to ignore and stack in the box all the things that make me feel good, give me pleasure, my most wonderful moments, and one fine day as I am growing up, that box gets shipped and dropped off at Krakozhia. I might have time to hunt for the box on a vacation but what about the moments of crisis in life, small and big, when I need to access the box the most? It is very similar to driving on a busy Monday and blindly throwing the keys to your car off beyond the perimeter. You could go look for the keys on a holiday, but on a Monday with ten deadlines on the hilt and boss’/client’s face shimmering on your shades?

I had a participant in my workshop who is brilliant with his career and has been a star in academics, but has nightmares whenever he is left with himself. He can’t not have something to keep his mind busy, lest the nightmare come back as a day-mare. Over the years the horror has flourished and consummated around all his nerves like the vines slowly spreading around a fences. A few years back an oil tanker in his neighborhood caught fire with a fire cracker rocket (on a Diwali night) and he thinks that it was his rocket that did it. The driver was heroic in pulling the death ball out of the neighborhood in full speed and eventually he was charred to death. This young man who can’t stop feeling guilty, hears the driver shrieking even during his waking hours. One can only imagine what his nights must be like. He has had hoards of ‘pandits’ counseling him to make offerings, wear stones, visit more temples, and he has done all that, and he still is where he started, with the death cries. His big box shipped to Krakozhia as well? Leaving him cringing and wriggling?

Not only is his box at Krakozhia, his immediate casket of poison doesn’t let him breathe. What is aberrant at this point of time is the possibility of building a box even out of this casket. Great personalities get shaped during moments of crisis, the crucible. A common man can have spurts of inspiration from fleeting incidences around him, this man has the potential of being inspired for a lifetime. The only difference is what he sleeps in, the casket or the box…

There is no human who doesn’t have beautiful moments in his life. There is no human whose life is not poetry in the midst of carbon (ink) which otherwise has the potential of wiping the planet out with an overdose.

Now, let me stop and ask myself again when I am upset, am I building a box or a casket? And please for life’s sake let me get my box back from Krakozhia. It’s too painful to waste my life not celebrating.

What seems to be a stretch in the second half is more of an entry for the audience from a perspective that was half outside to more inside into Caden Cotard. By the time the movie was close to the finish line, I as an audience could feel Caden, his frustration, my frequency touched the best of resonance.

If I can describe what my feeling as an audience was,

‘I felt what it must be like to be completely helpless. What it must be like when you are feeble, old and can’t change one rut of a thing that has gone sour. You can feel sorry for things forty years back, but you can’t do anything. And it gets even worse when your physical self starts failing you. And at one point of time you indeed are playing out your script, bereft of the world around you.’ … “click…NOW DIE”

I have today and as I share what it feels like I want you recall your moments.

If your work is like mine it might bring you across people from different walks in an office. Some tall, some short, some sneaky, some polite, some brash, some polished to the hilt. You can overcome most encounters, but one… a person who is not ready to listen. Of course it also talks about how I might not have been able to reach him, or rather speak his language. However that doesn’t take away the fact that I feel miserable at the end. Even if you accept the other person for who he is, you still feel miserable.

The question is where does it come from? While some people that you meet for the first time might sound very polite and collaborate positively in a conversation, there is this other kind as well. So why does the second kind arise? What’s the need in the second category as a person or as a situation to not be the contributor or a facilitator, especially if you are meeting on his turf?

Here are a few reasons with the possibility that he/she might across as such a person at this specific situation. There is no reason to generalize.

1. He might be one of the olden kinds where he wants to test your mettle before he lets you inside his circle or considers you worth what you claim to be

2. He might criticize you at every utterance, judging how you respond

3. He has his own standards of measuring people

When you have been working for an organization for a very long time you might lock yourself in that perspective. The perspective itself might seem to be very enlightening from the subject’s point of view (POV), however it can very often be a trap or the formula to being stuck in that cycle for an infinite time where every morning you appreciate your POV with your peers and every evening you feel heavy under the burden.

Very often I come across people who are so full with their work that they fail to notice anything else, a new idea or even a pothole right infront of them. If you too have such people around who:

1. Refuse to listen and gabble their own song

2. Expect people to laugh at their jokes

3. Expect people to appreciate the intellectual remark they just made

I expect you to feel miserable. At the same time please don’t make this misery a habit.

Sometime back I had a very young participant in my workshop whose boss threatened him on day ten when he displayed some innovative colors at his job.

‘I will make your life miserable and fu** your career while you are around here.’

Now he had real reasons for misery. He is still working at the same organization and has a good relationship with the boss. He got moved to a new team as well. And mind you he hasn’t gotten over the misery, he discovered that it was mere fiction.

Sometimes we feel miserable because that’s what we see at that point of time, the intent on the other person’s part to make me feel miserable. However I might be proven wrong in the long run. 

Thing about your ragging days (if you had any) and the kind of buddies you made out of the bunch you ragged you.

The other person has his own realities, please don’t make misery your definition for him. Sit and think beyond the misery, about him, about his realities if that person indeed is so important.

As I still feel miserable after the meeting I just discover that the person I met is also responsible for recruitment, meanings all new hires have gone through him. And if that has worked for ten years, then his small test definitely is a measure on whether or not you can align as a service provider/vendor, and most important, as a human being, even before you sell your products. And from his POV he is doing an excellent job.

AH: Melodramatic. But there were several interesting scenes in it. I want to tell you something about the shooting, because that was the very first picture I directed, and it was natural for me, I suppose, to have a sense of drama. So, at twenty minutes to eight on Saturday evening, I’m at the station in Munich, ready to leave for the location shooting in Italy. In the station, waiting for the train to start, I’m saying to myself, “This is your first picture.” Nowadays, when I leave a location, I have to go with a crew of a hundred and forty people. But then it was only the leading man, Miles Mander; cameraman, Baron Vintigmilia; and a young girl who was supposed to playa native woman who is drowned. There was also a news-reel cameraman, because we were going to do a ship-departure scene in Genoa. We were going to shoot the ship’s departure with one camera on the shore and another on the ship’s deck. And the ship was going to stop outside the harborto allow us to get the actors and the newsreelcameraman back to the dock to photographthe characters as they waved their farewells.The next scene was to be shot in San Remo. This scene has the native girl wading out to sea to commit suicide, and Levett, the villain in the story, is to rush out and make sure the girl is dead, by holding her head underwater. Thenhe’s to bring the body back to shore, saying, “1did my best to save her.”The following scenes take place at Lake Como,in the hotel of the Villa d’Este. Honeymoon,love scenes on the lake, beautiful romance, etc.My wife-to-be is there on the platform at Munichthat evening and we are talking together.She’s not coming with us. Her job-you know,she’s only as tall as that; she was twenty-fourthen-was to go to Cherbourg by herself to pickup the leading lady, who was coming in fromHollywood. She was Virginia Valli, a very bigstar at the time, Universal’s biggest-and whoplayed Patsy. My fiancee is to pick her up fromthe Aquitania at Cherbourg, take her to Paris,buy her a wardrobe there and then meet us atthe Villa d’Este. That’s all.The train is scheduled to leave at eight o’clock. It is now two minutes to eight. The actor, Miles Mander, says to me, “My God, I’ve left my makeup case in the taxi,” and he runs off.I shout out after him, “We’l! be at the Hotel Bristol, in Genoa. Take the train tomorrow night, because we’re shooting on Tuesday.” I should remind you that this was on Saturday evening, and we were to arrive in Genoa on Sunday morning to get ready for the shooting. It’s now eight, but the train hasn’t left. A few minutes go by. Eight-ten. The train begins to move. And suddenly there’s a great row at the barrier and 1 see Miles Mander leaping over the gate, with three railway officials chasing him down the platform. He had found his make-up case and just manages to hop into the last car. The first bit of film drama is over, but this is only the beginning! The train is now on its way. We have no one to handle the accounts and 1 must take care of them myself. The accounting is more important than the directing. I’m terribly concerned over the money. We are in sleepmg cars. As we reach the Austro-Italian border, Vintigmilia says, “Be very careful. We’re not to declare the camera. Otherwise, they will cbarge duty on every lens.” “What do you mean?”

“The German company told us to smuggle the camera through,” he tells me. When I ask him where the camera is, he tells me it’s under my bunk. As ‘lOll know, I’ve always been afraid of policemen and I begin to sweat. And now I am also informed that the ten thousand feet of unexposed stock in our baggage is not to be declared either. The customs men come into our compartment. Big suspense for me. They don’t find the camera, but they discover the film. And since we haven’t declared it, they confiscate it. So we land in Genoa the following morning with no film. And we spend the whole day trying to buy some. On Monday morning I decide to send the newsreel man to Milan to buy some raw stock from Kodak. And I’m still busy with the bookkeeping: lire to marks, marks to pounds -it’s all terribly confusing. The cameraman returns at noon, bringing with him twenty pounds’ worth of film. And now we are advised that the ten thousand feet of unexpos.ed film that had been confiscated at the border has arrived and I must pay the duty. So I’ve wasted twenty pounds, a very large amount in our small budget! We have barely enough money left for the shooting of the location scenes. On Tuesday the boat is scheduled to leave the dock at noon. It’s the Lloyd Prestino, a large ship that is on its way to South America. We have to rent a tugboat to go out of the harbor. That’s another ten pounds. Well, everything is finally settled. But at ten-thirty, when I take out my vvallet to tip the tugboat man, I find it’s empty. There isn’t a sou! Ten thousand lire gone! I run back to the hotel, look under the bed, everywhere. No sign of the money. I go to the police to report that someone must have entered my room while I was asleep. “It’s a good thing I didn’t wake up, or I might have been stabbed,” I think. I’m very miserable, but the work must go on. And in the excitement of directing my very first scene, I forget all about the loss of the money. But when the shooting’s over, I’m very depressed again. I borrow ten pounds from the cameraman and fifteen from the actor. Since this doesn’t cover our needs, I write a letter to London requesting an advance on my salary. I also compose another letter to the German company, in Munich, saying, “I may need a little more money.” But I don’t dare to mail this request, because they might say, “How do you know you may need more money so early?” So I only mail the letter to London. Then we go back to the Hotel Bristol, where we’re to have lunch before setting out for San Remo. After the meal, I go out in the street. And there is my cameraman, Vintigmilia, with the German girl who is to play the native who throws herself into the sea. With them is the newsreel operator, who has now completed his work and is about to return to Munich. The three of them are standing there, with their heads together, talking very solemnly. I go up to them and say, “Is anything wrong?” “Yes,” they answer. “The girl. She can’t go into the water.” I ask, “What do you mean, she can’t go into the water?” And they insist, saying, “That’s right, she can’t go into the water. You know …” Bewildered, I reply, “No, what do you mean?” So then and there, on the sidewalk, with people walking back and forth, the two cameramen tell me all about menstruation. I’ve never heard of it in my life! They go into great detail, and I listen very carefully to what they have to say. When they’re through with their explanation, I’m still cross. All I can think about is the money I’ve wasted in bringing the girl with us, all those lire and marks. Very irritated, I mutter, “Well, why couldn’t she have told us about it in Munich, three days ago?” Anyvvay, we ship her back with the cameraman and we proceed to Alassio. We manage to find another girl, but this one was somewhat plumper than her ailing predecessor and my leading man was unable to lift her. At each attempt to haul her out of the water, he lets her drop, to the delight of a hundred onlookers, who are howling with laughter. And just as he finally succeeds in carrying her out, a little old lady, who had been quietly gathering sea shells nearby, saunters right across our scene, staring straight into the camera!ext, we board the train, on our way to the Villa d’Este. And I’m very nervous because Virginia Valli, the Hollywood star, has just arrived. I can’t let her know that this is my first picture.

The first thing I say to my fiancee is, “Have you any money?” “No!” “But you had enough,” I point out. “Yes, but she brought another actress, Carmelita Geraghty. I tried to take them to the Hotel Westminster on the Rue de la Paix, but they insisted on the Claridge.” So I tell my fiancee all about my troubles. Eventually, we start the shooting and everything works out all right. In those days, of course, we shot moonlight scenes in the sun and we tinted the film blue. After each shot I’d turn back to my fiancee, asking, “Was it all right?” Only now do I work up the courage to send a cable to Munich saying that we need more money. Meanwhile, I have received the advance on my salary from London. The actor, being a very mean fellow, demands his money back. When I ask him why, he tells me that his tailor insists on being paid. Which wasn’t true,you know! And the suspense continues. I get some money from Munich, but am still fretting over the hotel bill, the rental of motorboats, and all sorts of incidentals. On the night before we’re to leave for Munich, I’m terribly nervous. You see, not only don’t I want the film star to know it’s my first picture, but I don’t want her to know that we’re short of money either-that we’re a very impoverished unit. So I do a really mean thing. I manage to twist the facts and put the whole blame on my fiancee, for bringing the extra girl. “Therefore,” I say, “you’ve got to borrow two hundred dollars from the star.” She tells the star some story and returns with the money, enabling me to pay the hotel bill and buy tickets for our sleepers. We are to change trains at Zurich, in Switzerland, to arrive in Munich the following day. At the station they make me pay for excess baggage because the two American girls have trunks this high! By now we’ve almost run out of money. I must begin my scheming again-always those damned accounts! And, as you know, I always make my fiancee do all the dirty work. I tell her to go and ask the two Americans whether they want to have dinner. And to our relief they reply that they won’t eat the food on these foreign trains; they have brought sand’wiches from the hotel. This means that the rest of us can afford to have dinner. I go back to my calculations and notice that in transferring lire into Swiss francs there is a loss of a few pennies. The train is late and there is a connection to make in Zurich. At nine P.M. we see a train moving out of the station: it’s our train! This means that we will haveto spend the night in Zurich. But there’s so littlemoney! Just then the train comes to a stop. Thesuspense is almost more than I can bear. Theporters rush up but I wave them away-too expensive-and I start to haul the bags myself. OnSwiss trains, as you know, the windows have noframes. The bottom of one of the suitcases hitsa window, and there is the loudest noise of fallingglass I’ve ever heard in my life!A railway official dashes up to us, saying, “Monsieur,this way please.”I’m taken to the office of the stationmaster,where I’m informed that the broken window willcost me thirty-five Swiss francs. So after payingfor that I landed in Munich with one pfennig.That was my first location shooting.

However, amongst all the Indian dances I should be very frank in admitting that I understand none. One amongst them does albeit arouses me from within; the dance form, Kathak. I don’t know the reason, perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I grew up in Lucknow and the sound of thumri rings sedative bells in my amygdala. Throw reasons out and what remains is the fact that I love the feet pounding on the ground. It’s highly erotic. During my journey at Banaras (4 years at ITBHU) I experienced the classical music and dance form to its very roots. I spent nights soaking the best of practitioners. I took me time to appreciate a horn before I saw the beauty of shehnai. Sarod, Jal Tarang I watched and bathed in the balm, night after night. One instrument steals my heart when it actually stops pounding and lets the instrument pound instead, the mridangam or pakhawaj. I would get a mental erection when I saw a Kathak dancer dance to tabla and pakhawaj with the vocals only putting me to a heavenly sleep. I would watch the legs in ghunghroo for hours and yet emerge from the slumber as if it never started.

My journey in USA exposed me to other dance forms and a whole lot of music. I like the energetic forms much more than the slower ones and felt as if ‘tap dancing’ was waiting for me to watch it and experience a similar meditative state; the movement of the feet again. I wouldn’t miss an opportunity to watch anybody’s feet tapping. Just the mention that somebody tap dances makes me fall in love with that person. Like I fell in love with my wife when we were courting; she mentioned ‘kathak’. It was only after marriage that I came to know that she took lessons as a six yr old kid. And now we make fun of it…still the fact that she is a part of it, even if for a fraction, makes me love her even more.

I must admit that I love women more in Kathak (no offence to Birju Maharajji who I have seen often at Banaras) and men in Tap Dance. I would infact take to farthest humane possibility; Mr. Tap Dance and Smt. Kathak will make a beautiful couple. I wonder what would come out of it. If I for one were watching them together, I might pass out in a celestial orgasm.

Here I will share my love with you in two forms,

1. Tap Dance by Nicholas Brothers, and

2. The Indian Kathak (from Shatranj ke Khiladi) and let you make a comparison for yourself. For me there are no differences, similarities are many and the biggest being my hypnotic state during either.

During the prelude, a lady in Bengali English pronounced an exuberant ornate for the performers, had she added a little more, I would have believed that that was what I had come for, it was already 7:45pm. She threw praises after praises for the performers and I wonder whether it is to really praise the performers or to make the audience realize how puny there lives has been. But she did cut it short, I have heard my professors do an even Herculean job at College at the appearance of an guest from the outside world. Like Shantaram visiting the Marathi village made a white man appear after 27 years and people could barely hold their curiosity. They had to touch him to feel him, if not with fingers, with their gazes.

The Bengali cludder finally seemed to  call a cease-fire at the possibility of the participants finally appearing on stage. Mamta (my wife) couldn’t help remarking ‘they make so much of noise’. ‘They do’ and so do most Indian communities, especially from the South…only that when Bengali cats are chiming, you seem to pick it up more. Most Bengalis will pronounce their words well and that certainly gets you eager. Once you steal a glance, you only get more curious. What a defense!!!

The play was more of an education (I certainly learnt a lot) than a theatrical master piece. I liked it and experienced my own highs, like the one when Gandhi was jailed and was fasting and Gurudev went to visit him while he was breaking his fast. The portrayal came to life and I certainly was transported. Suddenly the stage lights went off, Yes there was a power failure at the theater in Epicenter. Gurudev suddenly seemed not so sure about his speech during one pre-climax. It was a such a darkness for a second that Gurudev won’t have known if his beard had fallen off. The audience lights were turned on and the participants managed with the stark reality of an equivalent to oil lamps. It might have taken one full minute to restore the lights. The audio system was extremely poor, there was too much of pealing, echo and occasional failure for seconds. The participants were all wearing collar mikes.

Overall as much as I am glad to learn about the relationship between the Mahatma and Gurudev, I am disappointed with the facility at Epicenter. Compared to LTG, Sriram, Kamani and NSD theaters, I would want to kick Epicenter out of the league. Mamta came to her (Epicenter’s) rescue, she tried her best, but how can there be a blackout during a play? Imagine Big B making the monologue from King Lear and there is a blackout or Utpal Dutt delivering ‘Othello’ and there is a blackout, or Hema Malini dancing Durga and there is a blackout.

As the lights came back, suddenly the audio system improved as well. I don’t know where the shark was hiding, perhaps it died in darkness. Mamta couldn’t sustain the overall play, there were moments of boredom. I got disconnected twice, but certainly I learnt a lot about the Mahatma’s zeal towards freedom of country and Gurudev’s zeal towards freedom of self expression.

While a few women must have been more tired than the others with frequent muffled guffaws, sometimes also demonstrated to establish that one indeed is not only able to understand what is going on, but appreciating it as well. It puts more of a pressure on the neighbors and rest of the audience to be an equal sport. It must encourage the participants as well, an occasional stroke of simian appreciation becomes a part of the script. The starch clad women clapped at the conclusion and all drafted a liking in unison.

‘Did you like it?’

‘Oh yes it was very good.’

‘Not just good, say very good.’

A mini Durga Puja evening comes to a conclusion as the women go back bereft of street food.

Stars: ***/*****

Here is the passage:

…For one cool, precious hour each morning after opened, and the floors had been cleaned, Leopold’s was an oasis of quiet in the struggling city. From then, until it closed at midnight, it was constantly crowded with visitors from a hundred countries, and many locals, both foreign and Indian, who came there from every part of the city to conduct their business. The business ranged from traffic in drugs, currencies, passports, gold, and sex, to the intangible but no less lucrative trade in influence—the unofficial system of bribes and favors by which man appointments, promotions, and contracts were facilitated in India.

Leopold’s was an unofficial free zone, scrupulously ignored by the otherwise efficient officers of the Colaba police station, directly across the busy street. Yet a peculiar dialectic applied to the relationships between upstairs and down, inside and outside the restaurant, and governed all of the business transacted there. Indian prostitutes, garlanded with ropes of jasmine flowers and plumply wrapped in bejeweled saris, were prohibited downstairs, and only accompanied customers to the upstairs bar. European prostitutes were only permitted to sit downstairs, attracting the interest of men who sat at other tables, or simply paused on the street outside Deals for drugs and other contraband were openly transacted a the tables, but the good could only be exchanged outside the bar. It was common enough to see buyer and seller reach agreement on price, walk outside to hand over money and goods, and then walk back inside to resume their places at a table. Even the bureaucrats and influence peddlers were bound by those unwritten rules: agreements reached in the dark booths of the upstairs bar could only be sealed, with handshakes and cash, on the pavement outside, so that no man could say he’d paid of received bribes within the walls of Leopold’s.

While the fine lines that divided and connected the legal and illegal were nowhere more elegantly drawn, they weren’t unique to the diverse society of Leopold’s. The traders in the street stalls outside sold counterfeits of Lacoste, Cardin, and Cartier with a certain impudent panache, the taxi drivers parked along the street accepted tips to tilt their mirrors away from the unlawful or forbidden acts that took place on the seats behind them, and a number of the cops who attended to their duties with diligence, at the station across the road, had paid hefty bribes for the privilege of that lucrative posting in the city center.

Sitting at Leopold’s, night after night, and listening to the conversations at the tables around me, I heard many foreigners and not a few Indians complain about the corruption that adhered to every aspect of public and commercial life in Bombay. My few weeks in the city had already shown me that those complaints were often fair, and often true. But there’s no nation uncorrupted. There’s no system that’s immune to the misuse of money. Privileged and powerful elites grease the wheels of their progress with kickbacks and campaign contributions in the noblest assemblies. And the rich, all over the world live longer and healthier lives that the poor. There is a difference between the dishonest bribe and the honest bribe, Didier Levy [often sat with the author at Leopold’s] once said to me. The dishonest bribe is the same in every country, but the honest bribe is India’s alone. I smiled when he said that, because I knew what he meant. India was open. India was honest. And I liked that from the first day. My instinct wasn’t to criticize. My instinct, in the city I was learning to love, was to observe, and become involved, and enjoy. I couldn’t know then that, in the months and years to come, my freedom and even my life would depend on the Indian willingness to tilt the mirror…

Here is a link to Leopold’s now, a very popular restaurant in the bustling Colaba: http://www.leopoldcafe.com/

Here is Leopold’s on wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Cafe

Gregory Roberts in an interview with The Sunday Tribune: http://www.tribuneindia.com/2005/20050417/spectrum/book5.htm