Journalists covering a tragic event are often swept with the flow of other people’s emotions, often mediated by an overdose of messages crafted to overwhelm. It’s often challenging, in such situations, to locate the true colour of your emotions, and to draw that elusive line in the shifting sand between what you feel and what you are expected to feel. Inevitably, though, a journalist may choose to play the story as he or she wants the reader to feel it. If that amounts to betrayal — of the subjects in the story, the true nature of emotion, and of the real truth thereof — the writer shall forever be haunted by it.
Nine years after I wrote the 9/11 stories I was assigned, I revisited them in my head. And here’s what I wrote on Yahoo! India (where I now work):
Even in death, Hemant Puttur gifted prosperity
Puttur, the town in southwestern Karnataka after which 9/11 victim Hemant Puttur took his name, now boasts a welcome arch, shopping mall and community hall in his name. He gave even in death.
What 9/11? Barely three years since 26/11, we have forgotten Salaskar, Karkare, Kamte and Unnikrishnan. For us, terror attacks are only stories. In 2002, when I spoke to the father of 9/11 victim and Wipro employee Shreyas Ranganath, he reminded me of that chilling truth. I feel no different today.
Whatever it took to step out of their fathers’ long shadows, the Beatles’ sons have now risen. But will they come together (right now) and repeat that great journey across the universe?
Julian Lennon (left) with stepmother Yoko Ono and father John Lennon (LIFE image archive)
During the Beatles’ epic breakup in 1969, Julian Lennon was caught in a different crossfire. John Lennon’s son from his marriage to Cynthia Powell and the eldest of the Beatles progeny, John Charles Julian Lennon was born in 1963 just as the Fab Four poised to leap across the universe. His parents, high-school sweethearts, had married unceremoniously after Cynthia became pregnant. Wary of jeopardising the Beatles’ boy band image, manager Brian Epstein forced Lennon to keep his marriage quiet.
Beatlemania blew the Lennons apart. While Cynthia tolerated her husband’s extramarital dalliances, there was one she could not stave away.
“She was persistent and she didn’t give up,” Cynthia said of Japanese avant-garde musician Yoko Ono. Returning from a sojourn she found an unapologetic Lennon with Ono, who had “borrowed” her bathrobe.
Caught in the midst of his parents’ divorce, Julian shuttled between homes. It was clearly a period of inexorable sadness for young Julian, and one that scarred him permanently. Paul McCartney, possessed of avuncular tenderness, comforted the boy by singing “Hey Jules.” Renamed, the song entered the Beatles’ catalogue and became one of their greatest hits. Many years later, Lennon lauded “Hey Jude” as one of McCartney’s finest compositions, though all the while he had imagined that it was written for him and Ono.
May Pang, John Lennon's companion during his "Lost Weekend"
Lennon and Ono married in 1969 and their relationship became a scratching post for modernists of all stripes. The fab couple moved to New York in 1971, cutting Julian out of the family album. In 1973, John separated briefly from Ono and fell into an eventful 18-month relationship with her production coordinator May Pang; Lennon later described it as his “Lost Weekend”. Pang, who subsequently wrote two memoirs about this period of her life, encouraged John to reconnect with his estranged son, who then lived in England.
Eleven-year-old Julian spent Christmas with his father. They made music: the credit “starring Julian Lennon on drums and Dad on piano and vocals” appeared on Walls and Bridges (1974), notable for the only No 1 hit of Lennon’s solo career.
Things fell apart when Lennon and Ono reunited abruptly. And fruitfully, it would seem, for in 1975, Sean Taro Ono Lennon was born. This time Lennon overcompensated as father and house-husband, enjoying a near-permanent hiatus from music to lavish attention on his newborn son.
After Lennon was murdered in 1980, Julian was effectively cast away from his dad’s estate. Sixteen years later he paid £55,000 at an auction for his father’s memorabilia, among which were the recording notes to “Hey Jude”.
Julian Lennon 1985 tour (source: an0nym0n0us/ Flickr)
In 1984, Julian Lennon burst on the charts with Valotte. Nominated for a Best New Artist Grammy in 1985, the album produced two Top 10 hits and sold 1.5 million copies worldwide – the biggest success enjoyed by a next-generation Beatle. His next, The Secret Value of Daydreaming (1986), sold over 500,000 copies in the US.
Pressured to fill his father’s place in the world, Julian caved. When the next three albums sank he took to drugs and sought respite in sculpture, cooking and concert photography – the last starting with half-brother Sean’s 2007 tour.
Sean Lennon (source: ChristineRenee.net/ Flickr)
Sean Lennon, who was five when his father died, grew up under his mother’s wing and with both hands in her fathomless pockets. Through childhood, he appeared on Ono’s albums and formed the band IMA to back her on Rising (1995). He starred in Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker video and co-wrote a song for Lenny Kravitz.
With Julian’s capricious career widen open before him as a “how not to” handbook, Sean ventured a careful choice of collaborations – first with the food-besotted pop band Cibo Matto, fronted by two Japanese women, and then with Adam Yauch of Beastie Boys, the punk band that owned the label Grand Royal Records. In 1998, the label released Sean’s Into the Sun. The album entered the US Top 200 but critics booed it out. He returned in 2006 with Friendly Fire which, a reviewer wrote, “fades away as it plays”.
Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger, his current project with precocious fashion model and longtime girlfriend Charlotte Kemp Muhl, engendered the eclectic album Acoustic Sessions in October 2010. In a throwback to his father’s experience, National Public Radio commented that Sean had “found his own voice — and the perfect songwriting partner — to produce his best work yet.”
Arguably the brightest spark born of Beatle loins is Zak Starkey, son of drummer Ringo Starr (real name Richard Starkey) and his first wife Maureen Cox (Ringo’s younger son Jason had a low-key musical career and several problems with the law). At eight, Zak found a mentor in godfather Keith Moon, the explosive and charismatic drummer of The Who (Moon died of an accidental drug overdose in 1978). After stints with the Icicle Works and his father’s All Starr Band, Starkey joined The Who on their Quadrophenia tour in 1996. Critics and bandmates hailed him as Moon’s worthy successor.
Zak Starkey (on drums) performs with The Who (source: Marian Izaguerri /Flickr)
In 2004, Starkey began working with Britpop heavyweights Oasis – his “most inspiring band”. After a four-year outing, which included work on studio albums Don’t Believe the Truth (2005) and Dig Out Your Soul (2007), Starkey returned to The Who and appeared with them as recently as 2010.
Now 45, Starkey has his tongue firmly in cheek whenever he comments on being a celebrity son. “I am not a rock‘n’roll star,” he once said. “I’m not famous… but I am a very successful musician.”
A measure of success also sought out Dhani Harrison, son of George Harrison and his Mexican second wife Olivia Arias. Named for the sixth and seventh notes of the Indian music scale, Dhani was born in 1978 before his parents were married (Harrison’s first wife Pattie Boyd later married Eric Clapton). Endowed with his father’s brooding brow and piercing dark eyes, Dhani played his first show with Harrison in Tokyo before 50,000 people. He also played a major part in his father’s posthumous album Brainwashed (2002), produced by Jeff Lynne, Harrison’s bandmate in the Traveling Wilburys.
After his father died of cancer in 2001 Dhani spent seven years tethering loose ends. “I don’t want to spend my whole career dealing with his work,” he remarked in an interview. “I want to go out and make my own stuff.”
In 2006, he joined Bob Dylan’s son Jakob to record John Lennon’s “Gimme Some Truth” for a tribute album. He also performed on two Traveling Wilburys tracks (credited as Ayrton Wilbury). Later that year, he started an indie rock band Thenewno2, with whom he released a debut album You Are Here (2009). Though the band has not met with chart success, it struck a deal with American video-game manufacturer Harmonix to include two songs on the wildly popular game The Beatles: Rock Band and another on its sequel.
In 2010, Dhani teamed up with singer-songwriters Ben Harper and Joseph Arthur for a side project called Fistful of Mercy.
James McCartney (source: stevenjgarner/ Flickr)
While none of the Beatles’ biological daughters (McCartney has three and Ringo one) took to music, the last son to crack his musical eggshell was James McCartney. Though he appeared on two of his father’s solo albums and his mother’s posthumous album Wide Prairie (Linda McCartney died of cancer in 1998), his musical career began effectively in 2010 when he previewed material from his EP Available Light, which released in September. Included is a warm-hearted cover of Neil Young’s “Old Man”, in which the young McCartney sings: “Old man, look at my life, I’m a lot like you were.”
Perhaps Julian Lennon should have heeded the wisdom in those lines. Or perhaps he has eventually, for Everything Changes, his first studio album since Photograph Smile (1998), is scheduled for release this year.
Whatever it took to step out of their fathers’ long shadows, the Beatle sons have now risen. But will they ever break our hearts by coming together and playing on the same stage?
The Beatles (from left): Paul McCartney, George Harrison, John Lennon and Ringo Starr
First published in M magazine, July 2011 with a different set of photographs
While it’s not clear what pissed off the great G in the sky, something certainly did and caused Him to curse the human race to go forth, multiply and overburden the earth for millennia to come. Think of it, if it weren’t for that thunderclap of divine rage, the human race wouldn’t have engendered great game-changers. Like Sigmund Freud (who so complicated the notion of sin that some people argue if he was actually God). Or St Francis of Assisi (who, had he lived in our times, might have posed in the buff for a PETA calendar to atone for forbidden pet passions). Or Lawrence of Arabia (without whom we would never have had the Dubai Shopping Festival). Or Adolf Hitler (who obsessed about gassing the world). Or even Al Gore (who is obsessed with another gas)
When Eve sank her incisors into the forbidden apple, was she guilty of lust or greed?
That little misdemeanour in Eden has been so fussed about that the jury is out on what really got Jehovah’s goat (though according to my scattered reading of Genesis the livestock came later with Abraham’s fondness for sacrifices). Maybe he – pardon me, He – had a migraine. Maybe His tax returns were overdue. Whatever the blessed reason, it was woman He cursed for making the first move. And for that, feminists have never forgiven Him.
But let’s give the political correctness a rest, grab a beer and rake up the muck.
Why did Eve do it? Was it horticultural curiosity for what she imagined was a strange fruit concealed beneath Adam’s quivering fig-leaf (wait, that would technically be greed, or lust in a cunning masquerade)? Or was it an innocuous salivary seizure evoked by a bright, varnished Washington apple that had mysteriously slithered into Eden’s biggest supermarket by way of China (where it had received a colour-refreshing lethal injection)? Now, does that qualify as greed or gluttony?
Interestingly, neither Genesis nor any book of the Bible (if you discount a tentative shy in the Book of Proverbs) explicitly nails the cardinal sin that got humankind’s First Family evicted from Eden. The ecclesiastical plot thickens – the list as we know it was in fact drafted by a Greek monk in the fourth century (think Greek and monk in the same synaptic burst and we are doubtless nodding in homophobic empathy). Clearly, our man didn’t have to look far for inspiration. From a gigantic inventory, he whittled the Capital Vices down to vanity, sloth, gluttony, greed, wrath, envy and lust – all of which, if Dan Brown can be believed, the clergy practised religiously (perhaps that’s why they are known as the cardinal sins?).
Closer home the medieval Vedic brigade, true to character, preferred a more convoluted, elitist interpretation of sin. Certain vices, they contended, originated when the Creator, Brahma, broke wind. They also declared that demons, the official vice-presidents of the vices, dripped off the private parts of the gods, effectively hinting that all evil was the dark sludge from the factories of virtue. Whoa, what were these dudes smoking?
Just as our ancient lawmakers deflected the blame on Brahma for engendering the four primary castes from various body parts, they untethered their imaginations to dream up neat schemes to hoodwink the system and redeem evil points for life-changing deals.
The great rishis prescribed surprisingly worldly solutions for celestially induced evils. To release your mortal coil of negative energy, cleanse yourself with fire, water, or even a tree, they urged. It was a suggestion that the Western world heeded whole-heartedly. Today, the West has converted us to the annoying habit of sanitising our butts with paper. To the end that a single diarrhoeic American can, in six or seven shittings, clean up hectares of prime forest (which Malaysia and Indonesia have kindly volunteered to supply). I wonder if Al Gore, heeding the alarming inconvenience of this truth, has switched to water…
But I digress. We still have the mystery of Eve’s banishment to crack.
Let us, for the sake of argument and convenience, draw up a short-list of cardinal sins. Since envy and wrath don’t qualify, our final five contenders are vanity, sloth, gluttony, greed and lust. Now, which of these was the original sin?
While it’s not clear what pissed off the great G in the sky, something certainly did and caused Him to curse the human race to go forth, multiply and overburden the earth for millennia to come. Think of it, if it weren’t for that thunderclap of divine rage, the human race wouldn’t have engendered great game-changers. Like Sigmund Freud (who so complicated the notion of sin that some people argue if he was actually God). Or St Francis of Assisi (who, had he lived in our times, might have posed in the buff for a PETA calendar to atone for forbidden pet passions). Or Lawrence of Arabia (without whom we would never have had the Dubai Shopping Festival). Or Adolf Hitler (who obsessed about gassing the world). Or even Al Gore (who is obsessed with another gas).
Back to poor Eve. I contend it was not greed, nor lust nor gluttony, that did her in. Spare a thought – how long can a woman stay cooped up in a honeymoon resort where the waiters are too polite, the unlimited buffets impossibly delicious, and the endless welcome drinks too refreshing? With a husband who, quite justifiably, imagined himself to be God’s gift to womankind. What’s a marriage made in heaven without something to whine about?
Ergo, it was ennui, the mother of all sins, that led Eve to look beyond Adam’s apple. And thus her tribe increased!
Every year was a similar story. Before the season’s first squirrel-felled mango smacked upon my head the resigned enlightenment that (thanks to gravity) I’d never be Superman, April embraced me with fresh pathogens to stymie my vacation plans. . . . → Read More: April Flu
At 31, Norah Jones is no-questions-asked sublime. Ten Grammys (and seven nominations) make her a formidable presence commercially. Also critically – even that curmudgeon Robert Christgau acquiesced: “What’s not to like?” Her versatility makes her a coveted collaborator to artists, genre no bar. And so, as we listened to album after album that Jones has served up since her not-quite-jazz-but-getting-there-in-a-hurry début Come Away With Me, which swept eight Grammys in 2003, we may have overlooked her off-road excursions. …Featuring fixes that jig-saw bit back in place. . . . → Read More: Norah Jones sang that?
What do you do when buffaloes mysteriously eat away your green cover? Hunt down the real thick-skinned culprits that wallow in public funds! . . . → Read More: City Zen – Phantom trees and hungry buffaloes
Going to college in the nineties, I was awestruck to learn that the guitarist for one of the most influential grunge bands of the time traced his roots to Kerala. As Mallus do, I established instant kinship with Kim Thayil, whom Rolling Stone magazine named the 100th greatest guitarist of all time. . . . → Read More: Before it was called grunge
Until the mid-eighties, our groceries came bagged in old newspapers. We brought home rice and sugar in packages emblazoned with last week’s headlines. Fish and meat were first wrapped in banana leaves and then with brown paper. Beer bottles were surreptitiously swathed in double-rolls of weekend editions. Steel tumblers clanged at the nearby restaurant, then not yet suffixed with Darshini. Weddings were messy affairs even then but stray dogs industriously polished off discarded meals while cows champed on leaf plates. Recycling waste used to be a tradition, until we turned a new leaf. . . . → Read More: City Zen – Does our city need plastic surgery?
Some old-timers fondly recall that much-reviled historic event, the Emergency, for a dictatorial government’s efficacy at enforcing law and order. “Trains ran on time, even criminals were shot at sight,” they reminisce with wistful pride. Sure, but why does a democratic society need a schoolmaster to rap its errant knuckles? . . . → Read More: City Zen – For a safer city, withdraw VIP security cover
“MONSOON IN Bangalore” is how Keith Richards recalls his first gig in India, where the Rolling Stones wrung out a cloudburst. That was April 2003 and those were mango showers. But for such libertine insouciance with facts, the memoir of the world’s most “elegantly wasted rock star” is a balloon of penetrating insight, smirky name-dropping, bitter bitching and bourbon-laced warmth, punctured with several needles.
At the Stones’ next show in Mumbai, I was not yet a fan. Keith Richards, older than my dad, with skull-ring, kohl-smeared eyes and eerie T-rex grin, did me in. Life reaffirms how Richards ogled at Mick Jagger’s Chuck Berry records on a train, how they traipsed London bars seeking out the blues, and how they were a crack song-writing duo for decades before Jagger made it “very difficult to be his friend.” How they shoplifted to afford drummer Charlie Watts. And how they played “American music to English people” before discovering that white Americans had not heard the blues. “The Stones’ greatest contribution was to turn American people back on to their own music,” he says.
![Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Cornelis_van_Haarlem_-_De_zondeval.jpg "Did she fake the Original Sin?")
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