The best boxer in the world would probably last 10 seconds as a coherent mass of flesh in the ring with a silverback gorilla. The fastest swimmer in the world would be shredded meat in a race with a shark. And Usain Bolt at his fastest cannot outrun any of the big cats on open ground. As prolific and widespread as we think we are the total weight of ants on the Earth is greater than the total weight of humans on the Earth. Cockroaches will probably outlive whatever calamity befalls our race, from our own hands or through a twist of fate.

At some level, we know how puny and very destructible we are at an individual level. So when 200 foot monsters come roaring out of the deeps to eradicate every last one of us, the fairly neutral observer (if there is one) will most likely put money (if he or she is of the betting type) on the kaiju.

Pacific Rim is at one level purely a 10 year old  boy’s fantasy given 150 million dollars to work with and turned into a summer blockbuster. It works because nothing appeals more to the average 10 year old boy than wanton death and destruction, and giant robots. It works because at 10, before we become adults and after we have something resembling a functioning brain, we become very aware of how small, puny and utterly helpless we really are. As adults we forget about it as the cares of the world overtake us or deny it  as the imperatives of masculinity require. As infants it doesn’t really register.

So we make up our stories (perhaps the most uniquely human aspect of ourselves) where we are gigantic and all powerful, battling mosters just as gigantic and powerful as we are on equal terms (the pre-teen age is perhaps the last stage of our lives where our fears and terrors are more tangible than intangible). Guillermo Del Toro, bless his soul, has stayed true to his inner 10 year old self, and possibly helped some of us remember or rediscover.

Disaster movies of the scale and size of Pacific Rim perform two functions – classic catharsis where heroes and heroines much like ourselves face numerous challenges imposed upon them by cruel fate or global warming; and giving us the feeling that even in the face of total destruction, we’re not utterly helpless, that we can and sometime do find a way to survive.  Whether it’s planting a nuke on an asteroid/comet in space or building giant “arks” in the Himalayas, or as in the case of Pacific Rim, building monstrous, nuclear powered Jaegers with 40 foot flexi-blades operated by mind-melded pilots (still more plausible than the “virus” Jeff Goldblum created in “Independence Day”). These make us believe, as we want to, that we can “cancel the Apocalypse” as Idris Elba’s pre-battle  St.-Crispin’s-Day-type speech would have you believe.

In contrast to the superhero genre so pervasive these days, the hopes of humanity in “Pacific Rim” doesn’t rest on the shoulders of one or even a select few gifted individuals. The Jaeger programme involves much research, development and incremental improvement like a real world weapons systems and is not overly dependent on one person’s genius or superhuman ability. Jaegers and theirs pilots to some extent, affirm the other great human trait that is often ignored – the ability to communicate and cooperate.

Pacific Rim also works as a solid science fiction film in the good old fashioned Golden Age science fiction sense. Real science fiction is not just robots, lasers and spaceships but a story where the protagonists attempt to solve a problem applying scientific methods and scientific principles in a given situation. It can be worked into many genres – the adventure story, the detective story, and even, why not, romance. The problem, of how to stop the kaiju attacks, is cracked by scientists working on the problem through the course of movie and the internal physics of the movie seem to make sense and not utterly implausible. The heroes are not infallible super-men or -women but flawed and almost broken individuals doing what they can in difficult times.

Don’t look for much emotional depth though. It is hard to fit in drama in the middle of city smashing destruction on all fronts. And that’s not Del Toro’s intention anyway. Idris Elba is as close as we’ll get to a solid actor who, despite the fact that the script almost practically calls out for it, doesn’t ham and rage but gives the restrained performance of a man with the troubles of the world on his shoulder and much worse. Far more than even Charlie Hunnam and Rinko Kikuchi, the ostensible “leads” Elba is really the central character of the movie, the stable point around which the action and mayhem seems to proceed. The movie really rests on its epic Jaeger-kaiju battles and the few moments of backstory or emotional backdrop feel very much like filler.

A few words about the kaiju. No Ron Perlman is not one of them though is cameo is as delightful and enjoyable as anything Ron Perlman does these days. The kaiju are of course a tribute to Japanese anime but somehow possess a Lovecraftian feeling of being deep and abiding horrors that we cannot as humans, relate to in any human way. Whereas King Kong could appreciate beauty, and Godzilla was a creation of mankind’s, kaiju come out of a deep interdimensional portal with only the object of eradicating humanity as so much vermin to be cleared out of planet Earth. The CGI, I thought, captured that sense of unimaginable strangeness and alienness of the monsters. We cannot see them in any way but monsters.

If you want to give the inner 10 year old a chance to have a day out, Pacific Rim is the movie. In a season of rather dull and predictable summer blockbusters filled with sequels upon sequels or big name duds, Pacific Rim is a welcome change.

Cricket, the Board for Cricket Control in India and cricket fans are in a strange relationship triangle . I suppose love is definitely involved, but I won’t go so far as to call it a love triangle!

The BCCI is the (sole) guardian of cricket’s interests in India. BCCI organizes the cricket, selects the players, creates a fixture list and organizes games across the breadth of the country.

Cricket is many things to many fans. An escape, a drug, a love affair that has its ups and downs but never dies, a comforting presence, a memory of ages past, a thing of nationalistic pride, a source of entertainment and fun, or just a sport to be followed with fellow sports fans and create a community of like minded individuals.

Whatever their respective relationships to cricket, the BCCI and the fans have never enjoyed the best of relationships. To the fans, the BCCI is the bumbling, corrupt and incompetent monolith incapable of thinking about anything but money. To the BCCI, the fans are a fickle and dangerous mob who are like a bunch of petulant children constantly in need of amusement and mollification. Yet, the BCCI needs the fans. Cricket in India survives because of the passion of the fans.

And the fans need the BCCI. Where India is in the cricket world was not foreordained simply because of the opened up economy and the demographic dividend. The BCCI has done the hard work of spreading cricket to the smaller centres, created the wealth and infrastructure,  and stood up for India’s rightful position as the most important country in world cricket.

How should fans therefore relate to the BCCI and vice versa?

It is here that we find the problem of accountability.

Accountability, a word more often used in the context of businesses and the State within a specific framework of laws, poses problems when used in the context of a privately run and managed sports body and the fans of that sport who are not members of the sports body. Unlike with governments, cricket fans can’t vote the BCCI leadership out. Unlike with public companies, cricket fans can’t force the company to act as a a majority of shareholders want it to. Unlike with businesses we can’t just take our custom across the road because cricket is not a fungible commodity (whatever the economists among you may think!).

The only option left to the cricket fan therefore is perhaps the Courts.

That path seemed closed by the judgment of the Supreme Court of India in Zee Telefilms v Union of India, a case that spawned the Indian Cricket League and indirectly, the Indian Premier League as well. The long and short of it is that Zee Telefilms which lost the bid to broadcast cricket in India to ESPN Star Sport challenged BCCI’s decision to cancel Zee Telefilm’s bid in the Supreme Court of India under Article 32 of the Constitution on the basis that BCCI’s decision was unconstitutional. This required a two step argument – 1) to show that BCCI was “state” as defined in Article 12 of the Constitution and 2) since it was “State” it was bound by the equality clause of Article 14 of the Constitution of India which has also been interpreted by the Courts to include a duty not to make arbitrary decisions. In a narrow 3-2 ruling the Supreme Court of India threw out Zee Telefilm’s case on the ground that BCCI was not “State” for the purposes of the Constitution. The majority ruled that since the BCCI was not government run, funded or controlled, or perform any governmental functions, it could not be State whereas the minority judgment analyzed the BCCI’s functions and found that it was in fact “State”.

The majority judgment is of course right. It had no choice but to apply a 7 judge Bench decision of the Supreme Court of India in Pradeep Kumar Biswas v Indian Institute of Chemical Biology which laid down the test to determine whether a given body is “State” or not for the purposes of Article 12. Broadly, the test the Supreme Court laid down in Pradeep Kumar Biswas relates to whether or not the body in question is created by a law (as opposed to created under a law), has law making powers itself and is performing functions that would otherwise be performed by the Government. The majority, on applying this test to the BCCI, found that it did not meet that test and therefore held that it was not “State” under Article 12 and Zee could therefore not approach the Supreme Court directly to seek enforcement of fundamental rights against the BCCI.

Yet, the door was not shut entirely against litigants aggrieved by the BCCI’s actions. A crucial passage in the majority judgment goes on to state,

 Be that as it may, it cannot be denied that the Board does discharge some duties like the selection of an Indian cricket team, controlling the activities of the players and others involved in the game of cricket. These activities can be said to be akin to public duties or State functions and if there is any violation of any constitutional or statutory obligation or rights of other citizens, the aggrieved party may not have a relief by way of a petition under Article 32. But that does not mean that the violator of such right would go scot-free merely because it or he is not a State. Under the Indian jurisprudence there is always a just remedy for violation of a right of a citizen. Though the remedy under Article 32 is not available, an aggrieved party can always seek a remedy under the ordinary course of law or by way of a writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution which is much wider than Article 32. (emphasis mine)

The implication is that anyone aggrieved with the BCCI can still approach the High Courts seeking relief under Article 226 for the violation of any legal right. It does not even need to be a fundamental right protected by the Constitution. Under Article 226, the powers of the High Court to give relief suitable to the facts of the case are much wider than the Supreme Court of India under Article 32.

As I’ve written before, this little door of opportunity was seized upon by the Kerala High Court to begin criminal proceedings under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1986 against officials of the Kerala Cricket Association for misuse of funds. The Supreme Court upheld this order relying precisely upon the above passage from Zee Telefilms.

The Supreme Court hasn’t yet categorically held that the BCCI is an “authority” for the purposes of Article 226. Yet, the Supreme Court has acknowledged that some of the functions carried on by the BCCI would mean that it could be treated as an “authority” for the purposes of Article 226 of the Constitution.

Theoretically, therefore, there is no bar preventing an aggrieved fan approaching the Constitutional Courts of India against the BCCI.The problem however is showing what legal right has been violated by the BCCI’s actions.  Obviously for regular civil disputes relating to contract, property, et al the civil courts can always be approached. For tax and competition law cases, the appropriate regulators have all been actively at the heels of the BCCI.  The difficulty is in showing how the average cricket fan of the country has a legal right to demand that the BCCI be run along certain lines.

One possible route to enforcing accountability is the Right to Information Act which can be applied to all “public authorities”. However, “public authorities” defined under Section 2(h) are only those bodies created by the Constitution, Central or State Laws or substantially controlled, funded and financed by the State or Central Government. The BCCI and respective state associations (except the Services Sports Control Board and the Railways Sports Promotion Board) clearly do not fall under these definitions. Only an amendment to the RTI Act, which brings sports associations which select national teams for that sport, irrespective of how such associations are constituted can bring the BCCI under this Act.

Of all the various “stakeholders” that the BCCI repeatedly harps about, the average cricket fan enjoying the game, either at the stadium or elsewhere is the one who has the least power in her dealings with the BCCI. Advertisers  and sponsors have the power to withdraw their sponsorship. The various constituent associations of the BCCI have the all important vote, and indirectly their members as well. Players, at least those on the State teams and the national enjoy the protections of a contract and a professional relationship with the Board. Perhaps more could be done to empower them, but surely they are nowhere near as voiceless as the ordinary fan.

In the darkest moments of despair, I wonder if all the talk about accountability is laughably silly when it comes to cricket and the BCCI. After all, to borrow a popular Marx-phorism, is the pusher “accountable” to the junkie? If the weed is good, if the highs are accessible and available, what does the junkie care beyond that and as long as the money pours in, and as long as the the law stays away, what does the pusher care? So sometimes there are turf wars, new druglords come and old ones fade away, as long as the goods are being delivered, what do the junkies care?

But I know I’m being unfair to the fan. The fan doesn’t need a metaphorical hit to get through the day. Junkies don’t spend hours debating the  relative merits of drugs or the technical excellence in the manufacture or worry about the future of the drug for that matter. To be sure there will always be the casual fan who’ll switch off and shift to something else occupy the time. But the cricket fan, the one on whose back the BCCI struts the world scene, dictates terms to Governments and poses itself as the envy of the cricket world cares, and cares deeply about the cricket.

Is it too much to expect the BCCI to acknowledge that fact once in a while at least?

]]> http://www.criticaltwenties.in/lawthejudiciary/using-question-with-the-wolf-or-enforcing-accountability-from-the-bcci-with-the-law/feed 3 http://www.criticaltwenties.in/mediapopularculture/special-chabbis-2013 http://www.criticaltwenties.in/mediapopularculture/special-chabbis-2013#comments Mon, 11 Feb 2013 12:13:39 +0000 Alok http://www.criticaltwenties.in/?p=5340 In our daily lives, save for an infinitesimally small minority, we do mundane jobs that fill the bank account and the hours of the day. Our lives are lived out weekend to weekend until it is time to put up one’s feet and contemplate retirement. We reserve derring do, bravery, and nerve-shredding actions to the controlled realm of sports or the safety of fiction. The capacity to imagine alternate selves, to live lives we don’t, is perhaps a uniquely human trait. All fiction, be it literature, drama or cinema is escapist by definition. We are all seeking to escape from different things – our circumstances, our families, our jobs, our environment and fiction tells us there is an alternate (better?) world out there.

Special Chabbis takes this very human yearning and fleshes it out into easily Bollywood’s best “heist” film of all time. Very loosely based on real life incidents, it’s a story of four rather ordinary people who, using their wits and guts, outsmart the real thieves and thugs of our age – crooked netas and businessmen – posing as CBI cops or taxmen. The premise is as simple as it is brilliant; target someone who will never file a complaint and who’ll unhappily write it off as a business loss rather than explain the source of the income. It’s a modern day Robin Hood tale that appeals, at some level, to our sense of justice.

Where heist films in the past have contrived to add glamour and good looks (think Ocean’s 12 & 13, Bunty aur Babli, and ugh, the Dhoom movies) to a rather thin plot, Special Chabbis adds character and emotion to a rich and layered plot that gets its vice-like hold on you and doesn’t let go for two-and-a-half hours straight. Ajay (Akshay Kumar), Sharma (Anupam Kher), Iqbal (Kishore Kadam) and Joginder (Rajesh Sharma) are not supposed to be people you’ll necessarily remember for the rest of your life. In their “regular” lives they’re battling concerns that anyone can identify with – a seemingly doomed love affair, a daughter’s wedding, a nagging and demanding wife, or a large family to take care of.

Yet, once every two months or so, they get together, put on their costumes, forge documents, plot meticulously, and pull off a stunning caper against someone rich with lots to hide. Whatever else they may be, for those few days, they strut in immaculately pressed clothes, speak in clipped accents (dipping into the vernacular only when strictly required) and fearlessly slap people of any rank. Though set in pre-liberalization India, it’s the ultimate wish-fulfillment of post-2G India – break the corporate-government nexus with half a dozen well timed whacks on the faces of the smug bastards. Oh and also steal all their ill gotten gains in the process. (It’s obviously fantasy because in the era of round-tripping, tax havens and corporate structuring, no one actually keeps large bundles of cash in easy reach anymore. As certain tax officers found out recently.)

The “Special Chabbis” of the title comes from the twenty-six bright (and not-so-bright), (mostly) young men and women who sign up with the Gang of Four, believing them to be CBI officers, to help them with their biggest and last heist – robbing the biggest jewellery store in town (based on the real-life Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri Jewellers heist in Bombay). To be part of the Special Chabbis is a once-in-a-birth chance to be part of the CBI elite by going through an interview, a written test and a “practical” (which is, needless to say, the actual heist). When an ad says that the CBI is recruiting and is looking for someone – who just might be you – for action, adventure and adrenaline, wouldn’t you jump at the chance, brush up your CV, clean up your looks, and practice your best tough-guy/girl-naivete thinking it makes you look formidable?

Never mind that the actual CBI has actually laid out a trap for you.

(Obviously there’s a stunning twist ending which I’m not going to reveal here!)

*****

Neeraj Pandey, with Special Chabbis, joins the happily growing list of Indian directors who’re hitting that sweet spot between utterly crass commercial and the snooty inaccessible art-film circuit. A group of directors which includes Zoya Akhtar, Dibakar Bannerjee, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Anurag Kashyap, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, Gauri Shinde among others who thrive in the multiplex viewer market with tight scripts, well cast and directed films that don’t equate entertainment with dumbing down of content. May their tribe (and output) increase.

While Neeraj Pandey’s work so far consists of only two movies, “A Wednesday” and “Special Chabbis”, located as they are in two very different genres, they address the same theme; the common man fights back against a seemingly insurmountable enemy in his own little way, using his wits and superior intelligence, sometimes against the forces of the law which are supposed to do this in the first place. It is fantasy of course, asking us to imagine that somehow your everyday guy will be able to access cutting edge technology to beat the government or have the necessary intelligence gathering skills to plan an elaborate fake raid. Yet, it’s a fantasy firmly rooted in a reality – present day Bombay in the case of A Wednesday and 1980s India in Special Chabbis – that makes us suspend our disbelief enough to believe in it. (Neeraj Pandey’s 1980s India is also a hipster’s delight – sweater vests, typewriters, vintage Marutis and Lambrettas, all awash in an Instagram-esque sepia. )

*****

On the face of it Akshay Kumar seems obviously miscast among a lot of fine character actors. Yet one doesn’t actually mind since he seems to be back doing what is obviously his forte – comedy. Akshay Kumar is at his comedic best not when he’s trying to be funny (all his disastrously unfunny “funny movies”) but when he plays it straight allowing the situation and the circumstances to bring the laughs (Hera Pheri and his cameo in the otherwise idiotic Om Shanti Om). Here, there’s no slapstick, no weird bodily quirks, no linguistic deformity or any other contrived attempt at humour – he allows his body language, the situation and the dialogue to bring the humour out.

Anupam Kher, while hilariously miscast as the no-nonsense top cop in “A Wednesday”, returns to playing a somewhat hassled, on-the-verge-of-retirement-middle aged man caring for his ever-growing brood – in other words pretty much everything good that he has done in the last 15 years or so (Khosla ka Ghosla, Bend it Like Beckham, Speedy Singhs) Yet, give him the lines, give him his crew and his cream coloured bush-shirt and corduroy pants, and he suddenly becomes a no-nonsense government official of unimpeachable integrity and titanium strength testicular fortitude. (On a side note, it would be beyond brilliant if in a weird comic-type crossover, Sharma of Special Chabbis was actually Khosla of Khosla ka Ghosla!)

Every good heist film has a dogged representative of the law who, despite his many limitations (lack of imagination, foresight and charm) proves a formidable foe through sheer persistence and doggedness in never giving up the chase till the end. Manoj Bajpayee’s Waseem Khan is a CBI officer and all about what actual police work really is – doing the dull, obvious things until you get a breakthrough, and in the Indian context, the threat of torture to obtain information. He is, in some ways, the polar opposite of Tom Hanks’ Carl Hanratty in Catch Me if You Can - menacing, self-assured, and charismatic and yet, at the end of the day, a proper family man who gives his kid a joy-ride to the school bus and worries about paying his bills. He could easily be Sardar Khan’s less-lecherous long-lost brother, just on the right side of the law this time.

As with the leads, Pandey gets most of the casting of the supporting roles spot on – witness Tiku Talsania’s Porky Pig act as the  owner of the targeted jewelry store in Bombay. Jimmy Shergill, who always seems to have the burden of the world upon his shoulders anytime he’s required to carry a film, fits neatly into his small-ish role that though has him appearing throughout, though it gives him rather little to do on screen most of the time.

Like with “A Wednesday”, Neeraj Pandey has little space for women in Special Chabbis. In both films, they’re usually in the periphery or background – a side track to the main story about the tussle of wills between clever/devious men. Maybe it’s a serious flaw in his directorial ability and vision or perhaps he hasn’t yet found the right script with strong female characters. Either way, one hopes Special Chabbis turns out to be a runaway hit that allows him to do something slightly different just as well, the next time around.

Coda:

1. Actual raids are far depressing and less entertaining, as I’ve written before.

2. The real-life Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri Jewellers heist has never been solved.

]]> http://www.criticaltwenties.in/mediapopularculture/special-chabbis-2013/feed 5 http://www.criticaltwenties.in/sport/the-god-who-failed http://www.criticaltwenties.in/sport/the-god-who-failed#comments Fri, 16 Mar 2012 19:21:51 +0000 Alok http://www.criticaltwenties.in/?p=4660

I write this not to praise Tendulkar, but to denounce the hundred.

1. It has come in a game India  lost.

2. It was the cause of the loss (he scored too slowly).

3. It took the focus away from the rest of the team on the game itself.

4. The year long drama waiting for this hundred has clearly affected the man and the team negatively.

5.  It is no indicator of the form that he has been in of late (in Tests and ODIs).

6. The year long focus on the hundredth hundred has meant that we’ve not paid enough attention to the complete disarray the team is in right now. The disarray has happened in front of our eyes but very few eyes have been focused on the causes and solutions of the problem and far more have been obsessing over the hundredth hundred.

7. It is perhaps his most meaningless hundred (in both senses). It didn’t possess the boy-on-the-burning-deck grit of the 114 at Perth, the ferocious beauty (and utility) of the twin hundreds in Sharjah, the spine tingling relevance of the 100 at Chepauk post the Mumbai-terror-attack, the epic Greek-tragedy of the other Chennai hundred (and to a lesser extent the 175 in Hyderabad), the barrier breaking nature of the 200 or the sheer self-denial and strength of will that went into the 241 at Sydney.

All of these hundreds mean something to me and most others. When we tell our long-suffering descendants (yet another) Sachin story, it will be one of these.

Of the cuts and pulls on that Perth bunsen burner as boy barely taller than the stumps. Of the many barriers of pain he walked through under that wrenching Chennai sun to hold up a faltering batting lineup. Of the elevation we all felt when, for two days in Sharjah, he was the most invincible batsman on the face of the planet. Of the tears we wept with him at the emotional release of that hundred after the terror attacks.

As with all good devotees, I’m going to end up blaming the worshippers and not the deity.

We expected too much. We wanted a sign. We wanted affirmation of our own beliefs.

When they were not forthcoming, we raged, ranted and raved at the deity.

At the end of it all, the deity’s just a man. Flesh, blood, bone and sinew.

We refuse to believe that.

——

*I’m not using “God” here in the times of India headline sense, but from this DFW piece

They show that freedom of speech, even with reasonable restrictions, is at the sufferance of of the intolerant with no qualms of violence. They show that individual freedoms, far from being a Constitutional right, are treated as a function of State interest, or more precisely, the interests of the party in power. They show us that the commitment to freedom of speech and thought among our “liberal” elite is marked with pusillanimity and cowardice in the face of intimidation and threats. (Suhas’ post here says all of this, better).

One doesn’t like to speculate so freely, even on a forum as open as thus, but perhaps Prof. Dr. Vepa Partha Sarathi’s sad demise yesterday (25.01.2012) at the age of 96 is probably not unrelated to all of the above. If anything could break his strong heart (strengthened as it was by “the slings and arrows of fate”), this was possibly it. As a firm believer in the rule of law, a committed atheist, a lover of the arts (an artist himself), a man who loved his country and its founding ideals, he must have dearly felt the pain of watching his country succumb (once again) to the forces of obscurantism and intolerance. It perhaps hurt him just as bad to see 40,000 of India’s youth gathered at Jaipur, who probably shared most of his ideals, stand by and let it happen.

The biographical details of his life, while perhaps covering the major achievements in his career as a lawyer and academic do not, and possibly cannot, focus on the man himself. To us, his students at NALSAR, he will always be our “Vepa-sir” — easy going, a little hard of hearing perhaps, mentally sharp as a razor’s edge honed to the width of a molecule, with a memory that astounded us on a daily basis, and always full of good cheer and warmth. A firm believer in the uselessness of all testing and examination in the life of a student, it was impossible to dislike the man.

Yet, admirable as these qualities, these do not define him entirely.

Vepa-sir was a true polymath. Few scholars can claim to have authored a book on Ancient Indian Mathematics and Astronomy and a classic on the law of evidence, the transfer of property and the interpretation of statutes. Fewer still perhaps can claim felicity with the paint-brush or the ability to quote Gilbert & Sullivan operettas just as easily as Shakespeare; declaim from the King James Bible as easily as recite profoundly dirty limericks.

Yet, in the hands and minds of mere mortals being a polymath is a parlour trick — the ability to devote time to many different pursuits without attaining proficiency in any particular one (or as you say, “Jack of all trades, master of none”). Vepa went beyond being a mere polymath and could genuinely be called a true “Renaissance Man” – someone who respected individual freedoms, supported the pursuit of truth unburdened by religious dogma, and always brought a scientific and rational approach to the problems of humanity. As an atheist (or perhaps the more appropriate word is “rational unbeliever” for his atheism wasn’t tied merely to the traditions of Judeo-Christian & Islamic theology as the atheism of Dawkins’ and his fellow “neo-atheists’” is) he didn’t pour contempt and scorn for religions or the religious. He acknowledged the instrumental role of religion in the development and growth of civilization and was of the view that with the development of the scientific method, humanity had no need of calming superstitions that religions offered. His rationalist atheism was always worn lightly; never aggressively thrust in the face of a believer in an attempt to belittle or draw ridicule, but always propounded with a view to debate, urge, and enlighten his listeners.

I won’t say I agreed with him entirely. My own views on religion, deity and belief are perhaps more appropriate for another piece elsewhere, but suffice it to say that Vepa-sir was the epitome of the finest Indian traditions of debate and discussion that litter history and scripture, and to that extent, he taught me far more than he probably imagined he did.

Not least of all, he provided us with a role-model for a good (if not great) lawyer.

A good lawyer, according to Vepa-sir was not one who had just mastered the concepts of law, its practice and procedure, and its intricate jargon. All of those are of course necessary but definitely not sufficient to produce a good lawyer. A good lawyer had to be someone with more than a passing familiarity of literature, who appreciated the arts, who engaged freely in thoughtful debates, and engaged with the great public questions of the day. A lawyer was not just anyone with an opinion, but someone whose opinions are informed by facts, by an understanding of the issues, and by a willingness to listen to and appreciate the merits of another’s point of view. These, and these alone, stand out as the hallmark of a good lawyer.

To appreciate his idea of what it takes to be a good lawyer (or for that matter a good legal academic) read his best works; the Interpretation of Statutes and the Law of Evidence.

The first thing you’ll notice of course is the simple language. Simplicity and brevity far from being an absence of, is in fact evidence of, great understanding and wisdom. The most complex arguments on the Basic Structure Doctrine, Section 27 of the Evidence Act or the Golden Rule of Interpretation are presented with an unmistakeable clarity of thought.

Far too many of us in the daily drudgery of legal forms and practice fall prey to the sin of verbosity and prolixity (yes, irony fully intended). Monstrous, twisting clauses in contract and statute may look impressive and forbidding but make for poor application and enforcement of the law. So too are dense, indecipherable pleadings that one routinely comes across in court. Of course, simplicity is not simple, but that only heightens Vepa’s depth of learning and clarity of thought.

Reading his works one is also struck by the numerous and apt quotations on law and literature that fill his books. The intent is not so much to impress as to inform. Law, like literature, reflects and shapes society and individuals who come under its influence. Mere knowledge of law with no appreciation for literature makes for a lawyer ill equipped to understand the law itself and its purpose and role in society. In this respect, he follows the fine example of such luminaries as Chagla, Hidayatullah, Palkhivala and Krishna Iyer. His quotations range from the classic to the crass.

His books also unfailingly put forth his point of view; right or wrong. Whether it is on the correctness of the Basic Structure doctrine or the interpretation of Section 27, he makes it clear that he is no textbook writer churning out repeated editions of stale commentary for crammers and regurgitaters.

Unlike many academics in the field, he never shied away from a stiff debate with even the most ill-informed and barely articulate of his students. It didn’t matter that he had 70 years of experience at the Bar and you had none. Your views were received with just as much respect as perhaps the views of the Chief Justice of India’s did; never did he meet anyone with haughty dismissal or outright rejection by reference to his authority.

Most importantly perhaps from him I learnt that a good lawyer is also, inevitably, a good human being. Someone whose professional values sync entirely with his personal values; whose belief in the values of our Constitution isn’t worn merely within the premises of a court, or for the purposes of one’s own ends, but is the very basis of one’s life. In that perhaps, he left us a hard challenge, one that I fear I may not always be able to meet successfully. Or perhaps, the effort to meet the challenge is itself part of living a good life.

Vepa-sir lived by the one golden rule that he preached to us all, and which atheist or religious, we can all agree is essential to the functioning of any civilized society.

No, it is not the golden rule of statutory interpretation and has only vaguely to do with the law, but it goes:

“Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you“

Rest In Peace Vepa sir. Though you didn’t believe in a heaven, I do hope that you’re pleasantly surprised.

This time last year, Kim Jong Il, Muammar Gaddhafi and Hosni Mubarak were the most powerful men in their respective countries.

Anna Hazare was barely known outside the state of Maharashtra; Arvind Kejriwal probably not beyond his immediate family.

Justice Kapadia had just promised to cut down on judicial activism in favour of clearing the massive backlog of cases in the Supreme Court of India.

Most people couldn’t spell or even pronounce Kanimozhi.

How things change in 365 days.

Well ok, except for the last thing.

How do we make sense of these tectonic changes?

That these changes have been tectonic can’t be denied. The Lokpal debate and the 2G and Commonwealth Games scams and the Government’s response in tackling have fundamentally altered the way citizens view the institutions of State. It may not be evident to us now. After all, we still put up the same nonsense at Government offices, still have Parliament being repeatedly made a mockery of by its own legislators and feel the effects of ill thought out and poorly implemented policies. On the surface, nothing’s really changed. Or so it seems. But undeniably, and even the most ostrich of persons would not deny this, something has changed in the national discourse this year.

A simple answer in one word: corruption.

Or even more simply, the giving and taking of bribes by government servants for performing their functions.

It’s a partial answer and a very incomplete one at that. Corruption is about as old as the State. To repeat Chanakya’s oft-repeated quote: “…It is impossible to know when a fish moving in water is drinking it…” Yet, this saying offers us only a partial answer of what government is, and not what it ought to be.

Chanakya’s use of analogy was not just to state the obvious in an interesting manner, but to further a complex and nuanced argument. Corruption is almost a given in an institution such as the government, but that doesn’t mean no efforts should be made to minimize or eradicate it. Rather, Chanakya’s analogy was an attempt to uncover the nature of government itself that led it to corruption.

Government (like a corporation) essentially involves dealing with other people’s property and money. How you raise it, what you use it for and who gets what are the basics of governance and the answers differ on the basis of one’s ideology and the needs of a given time, but no Government can function without doing these two essential things; raising money and spending it.

So much for the “is”.

But Chanakya also answers the “ought”; government ought to mean spending the income wisely for the welfare of the people. For, as Chanakya states repeatedly, only in the welfare of the people lies the welfare of the King (or Government if you prefer). It seems obvious enough, yet only in restating and understanding the “ought” do we get to the heart of why corruption has become the issue it has now.

As citizens, this “ought” is fundamental to why we part with our money to the Government (or perhaps our property for due compensation). The compact between Government and citizen should seem so obvious that it doesn’t need restating but it is a reflection of these times that this particular compact has to be restated. What the Lokpal Bill agitation and the Commonwealth and 2G Scam highlight are the very real threats this compact faces from corruption.

For people in their twenties and thirties, it would seem that this is the first time this has happened so.

Those with longer memories would know that the unearthing of massive corruption scandals is nothing new, nor the jailing of MPs, CMs and ministers. Not even judicial activism to fight corruption.

What’s changed this time is that where perhaps corruption was seen as an aberration to the norms of governance, the brazenness and the scale at which the Commonwealth Games and 2G scams were carried out would suggest that perhaps corruption has, far from being an anomaly in the system (to use a Matrix-ism) is in fact, the system itself. That there is no concept of public welfare anymore, and that the government exists to serve its clients – those who can pay the price and no others.

This loss of faith in government explains the agitation around the Lokpal Bill but also the land acquisition agitation in UP. Where the UP agitation was aimed at one particularly egregious misuse of governmental powers to openly benefit real estate developers at the expense of farm owners, the Lokpal agitation was sparked off mainly because it seemed that far from ensuring that a scam of the scale of the 2G scam or the Commonwealth scam never happened, the Government of the day tried to protect the corrupt through a weak and ineffective institution.

It’s easy to dismiss the “civil society” and Anna Hazare as a bunch of middle class busybodies who’ve been given undue importance thanks to a hyperactive “corporate” media.

It’s also demonstrably false.

The crowds streaming into Jantar Mantar and Ramlila Maidan in the middle of the year were not bused in and promised money and food (as many political rallies are wont to). You couldn’t classify and categorize them all under one neat socio-economic or religious label.
Yet, as if almost on cue, when Anna couldn’t “deliver” on the crowds (read “spectacle”) the media turned on him. Hardly the hallmark of a media driven campaign.

Still, what relevance does all of this have to the events of the past year in the law and the judiciary?

It has, I think, fundamentally changed the contours of the judicial activism debate. If one of the underlying premises of the institutional competence argument (as opposed to constitutional competence, more of which in a separate piece perhaps) is that government is capable of doing some things “better”, and therefore the Courts must not “meddle”, the actions of the government over the last year have called this assumption very much into question. The sorry saga of inaction, incompetence and just plain mendacity on the part of the government that was revealed in not just the mega scams but also in such issues as the right to food litigation, the black money litigation and the tax waivers for the F1 race. In the face of such a sorry state of affairs, the option is between institutional encroachment and complete and utter breakdown of the rule of law.

What has happened is that when the citizen’s faith in the government’s ability to act in the public welfare (as opposed to his or her individual welfare) itself stands questioned, the Court has, on the instance of such citizens stepped in to ensure that government acts in such a manner. In one sense, and this merits much more scrutiny than this post can possibly hope to provide, a very discernible shift is obvious in the manner in which the Supreme Court goes about its activism. No longer is activism about merely issuing writs and directions enforcing rights (howsoever defined, and yes I’m aware there’s nothing “mere” about enforcing rights, but bear with me) but also at ensuring that the government complies with its duties and obligations to the public at large.
Two very different cases, the Bellary Mining ban and the CVC case are possibly the best indicators of this (though a more comprehensive study would also include all the PILs not entertained at the threshold itself but this is not the place for it). The dominant discourse in the decisions is about protecting larger public interest and welfare in the face of State and Central Government failure to do the same. A State Government had failed to check the rampant illegal mining and ecological destruction of Bellary. The Central Government had cynically appointed an officer who faced a criminal charge of corruption as the head of the anti-corruption body. These were not instances of the Government choosing a good or bad course of action – it was a case of complete and total dereliction of duty that could not be justified with anything more than a bland ipse dixit.

In that sense, this year has probably set off a subtle yet significant shift in the Court’s understanding of its own role and the manner in which it articulates its role. Apart from being a defender of rights (fundamental, legal and constitutional) and upholder of the rule of law, it has also adopted the role of protector of the public welfare at large. Not that this is a new legal argument that is being made in Courts or that we are speaking of a new and hitherto unseen aspect of judicial review, but in terms of the Supreme Court’s role in the larger polity this is perhaps a significant (and not a few would say, welcome) shift that could take us down new and interesting paths in the history of the Indian judiciary.

Yet, this is no time for the Court to rest on its laurels (hard won though they may be). Although the battle against delays seems a Sisyphean labour at best, the spectre of large scale judicial corruption has never hung heavier over the judiciary. Though the cases of Soumitra Sen, PD Dinakaran and Nirmal Yadav came to light last year, serious action has only taken place this year.

It is no longer a case of black sheep here and there. There is a flock of dark fleece threatening to taint the whole judiciary. Indeed the illegal land allotment to judges, past and present, in Bangalore has exposed more than a few skeletons in closets. The distressing silence on the part of most of the judges involved has only fuelled further doubts about their integrity. The malaise Justice Markandeya Katju outlined with much anguish earlier this year with reference to Allahabad High Court threatens to engulf the entire upper judiciary if not stopped adequately. For the Court to retain its credibility as the foremost defender of the rule of law in this country, it must, to use a Biblical proverb, “remove the speck in its own eye.”

What does the New Year hold for us lawyers and the judiciary?

Definitely a new Chief Justice of India in September (Justice Altamas Kabir according to seniority). The Vodafone verdict, the Right to Education ruling and perhaps most importantly, the order deciding whether or not Home Minister P Chidambaram should be investigated in the 2G scam. The trial will of course continue in the Patiala House court in Delhi and we’ll all receive breathless reports of the proceedings from over-keen reporters some of whom may even have legal training!

The Lokpal Bill will probably be introduced once again in Parliament in April but no one really believes that the Government genuinely wants to tackle corruption at the highest levels. Parliament’s alleged “supremacy” already a hollow doctrine in Constitutional law, has been stripped of even more legitimacy in the light of today’s events.

As the old Chinese curse goes, we are living in interesting times. Despondence seems to be the national mood, despair a national pre-occupation and disappointment (for cricket fans and Sensex watchers alike) leaving a bitter aftertaste at the end of the year.

With all the bleakness above, perhaps I should end on a positive note.

As it turns out, the Mayans were wrong! The world won’t end in 2012.

Happy New Year to all!

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2. It has been something of an unprecedented year for the Supreme Court of India (pun intended!) with major decisions, important PILs and large scale retirements and appointments of judges. Over at livemint, Nikhil Kanekal takes a look back at the ten most important cases heard or decided by the Supreme Court of India in 2011. The PJ Thomas case finds mention of course, but it is a list more geared to the general reader than to the lawyer. http://www.livemint.com/2011/12/09011809/Supreme-Court-the-balancing-a.html

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3. The inner workings of Indian law firms are suddenly under scrutiny once again as the proposed merger of Fox Mandal and Little & Co. has ended in acrimony. For Fox Mandal, already struggling in the face of some mismanagement and the global economic downturn, this could not have come at a worse time. It is a good time perhaps to re-plug this full length article on Amarchand & Mangaldass & Suresh A Shroff & Co, perhaps India’s most well known and influential law in Forbes Indiaand the sibling rivalry that underpins the firm. http://business.in.com/article/boardroom/indias-biggest-in-law-amarchand-mangaldas/15382/0

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4. The Supreme Court’s monitoring of the implementation of the PDS scheme has made the headlines repeatedly this year, mostly for Governmental failure to tackle the problems adequately( remember the infamous 32 rupees a day affidavit?). The Food Security Bill, seeking to end the spectre of malnutrition and hunger among India’s poorest has been cleared by the Cabinet and will be introduced in the 2011 Winter Session of Parliament itself. It’s not without its critics such as Jean Dreze who’d written some time back about the structural problems with the Bill (as it stood then). http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article2042980.ece?homepage=true

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5. Insiders know that transfers of High Court judges these days in “public interest” is a polite euphemism for “Too many allegations of corruption, but not enough material to start proceedings.” So when Justice Mohinder Pal of the Punjab and Haryana High Court was transferred in “public interest”, the matter would have passed with a few nudges and winks in the Bar library and quickly forgotten. Except, Indian Express broke this story about the possible link between a controversial order passed by Justice Pal and his transfer. Stunningly, the Chief Justice of Punjab and Haryana High Court, Justice Ranjan Gogoi (a fine and outstanding judge who was destined for the Supreme Court this year but for a serious illness) has gone on record about the exact link between the order and the transfer. All hell naturally broke loose (both in the P&H High Court and the Gujarat High Court) and Animesh Sharma gives us a closer look at these events in Scandal Season”. http://mylaw.net/Article/Scandal_season/.

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2. Dahlia Lithwick takes aim at two controversial provisions of the National Defence Authorization Act as approved by the United States Senate that effectively allows indefinite detention of anyone in the US in military custody. A Presidential veto is likely but the “War on Terror” is once again taking the US down a dark and dangerous road. Read: “Military Police State“. Also, Shiv’s piece echoing some of Lithwick’s concerns on “us” and “them” and the language of terror is here.

3. The very conception of a lawyer in India is impossible without him or her wearing a gown and bands. Yet, the UK Supreme Court is doing away with the mandatory requirement of gowns and the wigs for lawyers appearing before it. In contrast, the Bombay High Court, after a recent incident, now requires litigants also to dress “soberly” and “modestly”. Dhananjaya Mahaptra explores this in “Dress code for litigants? Bombay high court believes so” Personally, I can’t see why the Supreme Court or the High Courts cannot do away with the Black Gown and Black coat requirement during summer months though some High Courts don’t require gowns during the summer months.

4. The Internet is ablaze with outrage over the entertainment industry promoted “Stop Online Piracy Act” or SOPA that threatens to cut off large chunks of the internet in the interests of stopping “piracy”. Naturally, the best take-down of the legislation has been done by supreme satirist Stephen Colbert (that’s pronounced Coal-bear for the uninitiated) in this video.

5….and finally, Parliament does not have the sole prerogative on law making or heated debate descending into name calling and wild personal allegations – apparently senior counsel of the Supreme Court are just as capable of the latter. For a vivid eyewitness account of Ram Jethmalani, Indira Jaising and Gopal Subramanium engaging in verbal duel (or is it a truel?) during a hearing, read “SC Brickbats“

At the batting crease is a lithe figure with golden curls tucked under a baggy green, ready in his stance, bat tapping on the pitch waiting impatiently for the bowler at the other end. At the other end, a slightly tubby figure with a brilliant blue patka who takes a few smooth steps between the umpire and the stumps and in a perfect, almost seamless action delivers a ball that spins in the air and gently curves into the batsman. The batsman flies out of the crease, and in less time than the blink of an eye, reaches the spot where the ball is about to land, bringing the bat down in a smooth curve making contact with the ball producing a sound akin to a champagne cork being popped, dispatching the ball into the cover boundary for a four, going down on one knee as he completes the stroke. The crowd go wild with delight and even the bowler stands applauding at the genius stroke play.

The lithe batsman is once again at the crease and the patka-bedecked bowler has the ball in his hands once again. Another smooth run up and, seemingly without any discernable change in his action, he releases the ball from seemingly the same spot as he did before; just like the ball that was dispatched to the boundary. Except, this is a little shorter but the batsmen spots it and adjusts, rocking back to get into position to cut the ball to the point fence. Except, he can’t as by the time the bat is even half way down the curve, the ball has taken the top of off stump at blistering pace that no one watching could have predicted of the bowler. It takes a few seconds for the batsman to realize he’s been had – the ball wasn’t as short and he should have been forward not back. He smiles as he tucks his bat under his arm and walks away to the pavilion giving an almost imperceptible nod to the bowler’s genius.*

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By the reckoning of any cricketing aesthete, Kimberly John Hughes and Bishan Singh Bedi count as the two most graceful and aesthetically brilliant players to have ever graced a cricket field. Apart from their aesthetic skills as cricketers, they share quite a few common attributes. Both came from, relatively speaking, cricketing backwaters (West Australia and Delhi/Punjab respectively) that over the course of their careers became cricketing powerhouses in their respective countries. Both were shy young men whom cricket helped to become gregarious outgoing men. Both were marked out for captaincy fairly early on in their careers. Both had enormous tussles with their respective administrations and figures of authority. Both made bitter enemies of colleagues and fellow teammates.

It is probably no surprise that two entirely fascinating biographies have been written about them by Christian Ryan and Suresh Menon respectively.

Hughes is really remembered for two wildly different things; his flashy and brilliant strokeplay that could tear bowling attacks apart in a matter of minutes, and the famous image of him breaking down in tears as he read out the announcement quitting as Australia’s Test captain. The two are not entirely unrelated, and Ryan’s story brings out very clearly a tale of a boy (a Peter Pan like figure, he never seems to “grow up”) who wanted to bat gloriously in a manner that would bring joy to the cricketers and to himself. Yet, his boyish enthusiasm and elan clashes discordantly with the dominant “Aussie way” of grit over clamour and never putting oneself above the team.

The prime villains in Christian’s narrative are those old bullies; Dennis Lillee and Rod Marsh (and to some extent, Ian Chappell). The casus belli being the appointment of Hughes as captain over the more deserving Marsh in 1982. A tiff that was perhaps exacerbated by the fact that Hughes never seemed to be one of the “blokes” who fit into the dominant ideas of manhood and masculinity that seemed to pervade in Australia’s cricketing culture then. Much as Hughes wanted to be liked and loved by all, he seemed to meet with nothing but open hostility from Lillee and Marsh, leading to such unsavoury sights as the fast bowler trying crack his captain’s skull with bouncers in the nets.

Ryan’s narrative is all the more remarkable since it has been pieced together almost entirely through “secondary evidence” as lawyers would call it. The protagonist and the antagonists, though reconciling and becoming good friends later in life, did not go on record with Hughes for the book. We get insights and accounts from other players in the squad, families, friends, and ghosted autobiographies. For all the talk of “for the team” and “the boys” we get an insight into those times when a team stands divided against itself, and what that can lead to. It is perhaps no surprise that all these events co-incided with “Packer’s Circus” and the lowest ebb of the Australian cricket team as a Test Playing nation. Perhaps Simon Katich’s near throttling of Michael Clarke over a silly tiff after losing the series to South Africa is probably was also a similar symptom.

We are left with a few questions unanswered at the end of the book. Under a more supportive captain (as Bedi found in Pataudi) and in a friendlier atmosphere would Hughes have blossomed into a modern great instead of becoming yet another instance of an attractive batsman whose claim to greatness is belied by his poor numbers? Or would he have continued to play in a cavalier fashion putting attractive play over “the team”. Skill and talent with bat he had aplenty as this innings and this innings will put beyond doubt, but did he have that oft spoken, yet nonetheless vital, quality: temperament. His record speaks for itself.

Bedi, on the other hand, entirely lived up to his potential and more, finishing as India’s highest wicket taker. No less than Don Bradman found Bedi the only left arm spinner who could keep the peerless Wilfred Rhodes company in the Hall of Greats. A classical off-spinner if there ever was one, even in grainy youtube videos, Bedi’s grace and beauty in action as he bowls takes your breath away. He mesmerized batsmen with his control and variations, depending on everything from the tip of his fingers to the position of his toes and everything in between to send down those subtle variations that would be just a little bit faster or a little slower or spin a little more or a fraction less than the previous ball without any obvious change in action.

Menon’s work is more in the nature of an authorized biography as it almost unabashedly presents Bedi’s view in all his battles. And Bedi’s had plenty of battles. From accusing John Lever of using Vaseline in India to get swing (and losing a lucrative county contract in the process) to being perhaps the only serious cricketer to continue to accuse Muttiah Muralidaran of “chucking”, Bedi’s never been afraid of speaking his mind on an issue and facing the consequences. Menon gives us the image of an uncompromising man who never compromised on the principles that underlie cricket (fairplay, sportsmanship and gentlemanly behaviour) even at the risk of defeat and censure. He never seemed to care if his decisions were popular or approved by India’s notoriously incompetent and insecure BCCI members – at least that’s what Menon wants us to believe.

On all points we only get one voice, Bedi’s. Did Bedi meet with resistance when he called off India’s innings early in protest against West Indies’ short pitched bowling? Did no one suggest wiser counsel when he accused Lever of ball tampering? We never know as only side of the story is spelt out. These silences leave the reader with a feeling of something missing as we see the fascinating portrait of a cricketer being drawn in words. Perhaps, as Cromwell told his portrait painter, Menon should have gone “warts and all”. Instead, even the slightest hint of acne is daubed over.

Ryan’s book is by far the better work. Not to belittle Menon’s work but in terms of the research on its main character, the story weaved around Hughes’ life and the writing style wise, Ryan far outstrips Menon.

Plus, it has pictures. Where “Golden Boy” is replete with black and white, and gorgeous techni-colour photos of Hughes in his pomp, “Bishan” is sadly bereft of everything but a single portrait of Bedi in his sixties. Perhaps it was the costs involved but Bishan seems like an infinitely poorer book (pun intended) for the absence of photos of its subject in action – an omission on par with a book on Michelangelo not having a single picture of the Sistine Chapel or David.

While Menon tries hard not to fall into the traditional Indian trap of turning autobiographies into hagiographies, the width of sources that Ryan uses and weaves into the narrative almost ensures that his biography is anything but. Menon’s Bedi is a Sikh warrior with a red leather ball who fights with honour, dignity and in the spirit of sportsmanship, even if he doesn’t win all his battles. Ryan’s Hughes is a complex and conflicted character who, much as he tried to bring joy to others with his cricket, saw himself steadily losing joy in playing cricket with some of his tempestuous teammates. Only one of these descriptions comes close to producing a true picture of the subject.

Yet, when we compare the players themselves emerging from these books, the similarities seem to outweigh the differences. Both were undoubtedly geniuses hell-bent on charting their own respective paths in life. Both refused to compromise on the art in favour of the grit. Bedi would not bowl flatter and faster to suit one day cricket and Hughes disdained the work of plodding strokelessly at the crease. Both careers came to a somewhat premature end. Bedi’s career ended at age 32 in Pakistan as the famous Quartet was torn apart by Pakistani batsmen and Hughes career ended at the age of 30 within a year of him giving up captaincy by a string of poor scores in 1984. Bedi’s running battles with the administrators were matched by Lillee and Marsh’s constant needling of Hughes. Yet, where Bedi lashed out and survived, Hughes did not.

However, where Bedi ended a full and varied career giving him a pride of place in India’s cricketing pantheon, Hughes’ career ended with far too many what-might-have-beens.

Bedi continues to be a popular, if controversial figure in Indian cricket; offering anecdotes, analysis and generous help to all comers.

Hughes is all but forgotten in Australia.

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*Apologies to Neville Cardus