The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys

 

"The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys" by Steve Winwood and his band Traffic is a perennial favourite of mine. Not a week goes by without me losing myself in its intricate soundscape and the lyrics, which magically change their meaning along with my mood and circumstances.

The song is a musical masterpiece with an elegantly restrained lushness of the number and intricate piano melodies leading to jazzy saxophone solos. 

A few decades ago, when I lived under the burden of twin tragedies, one very real and one through self-inflicted delusion, the song signified the themes of betrayal and loss with these lines ringing in my head long after the music stopped playing:

If I gave you everything that I owned

And asked for nothing in return

Would you do the same for me as I would for you

Or take me for a ride

And strip me of everything, including my pride

But spirit is something that no one destroys

And the sound that I'm hearing is only the sound of

The low spark of high-heeled boys (heeled boys)

As time passed, I healed and got busy with the humdrum of life; the song started speaking to me of the transactional nature of the world:

The percentage you're paying is too high priced

While you're living beyond all your means

And the man in the suit has just bought a new car

From the profit he's made on your dreams

But today, you just read that the man was shot dead

By a gun that didn't make any noise

But it wasn't the bullet that laid him to rest, was

The low spark of high-heeled boys

These days, with my life at an angle of repose, I find in the song a metaphysical spirit of quiet acceptance:

If you see something that looks like a star

And it's shooting up out of the ground

And your head is spinning from a loud guitar

And you just can't escape from the sound

Don't worry too much, it'll happen to you

We were children once, playing with toys

And that thing that you're hearing is only the sound of

The low spark of high-heeled boys

If you had just a minute to breathe

And they granted you one final wish

Would you ask for something like another chance

Or something sim'lar as this

Don't worry too much. It'll happen to you

As sure as your sorrows are joys

And the thing that disturbs you is only the sound of

The low spark of high-heeled boys

With the above three excerpts, I have reproduced the entire lyrics of the 11-minute song but in an order that is all mine. 

What does "Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys" mean?

It's a metaphor for the ups and downs of life.

However, many alternate readings exist among the song's legion of admirers. Two startling ones are as follows:

To some, the song is about drug culture and the relationships between users and suppliers. Low spark is an injection, and high-heeled boys are speedball, a mixture of cocaine and heroin!

To some others, the song expresses contempt for the glam-rock movement of the 1970s, which David Bowie and Marc Bolan led.  "Low spark" signifies the "low talent" of the glam-rockers, and "high-heel boys" allude to the self-feminization of Marc Bolan and David Bowie, who wore feminine clothing and makeup on stage.

To each his own.

I embed a YouTube video of the song here for you to enjoy.

Fall under its spell, and it's a gift that will keep giving.

Afterlife (with a little help from ChatGPT)

In a breathless eternity we exist,

Our minds poised on the lip of a chasm, dismissed.

Every thought, once resplendent, now a spectral tryst,

In the unending echo of a moment just missed.

In the shadow of death, we are unborn, unblest,

In the shutter-flash image, life's truths are undressed.

Our whispers immortalized in the ether's abyss,

A rehearsal of life in digital artifice.

In the carnival of memories, no rest,

In an afterlife sprawl where moments persist.

The echo of laughter, the trace of a kiss,

A million sunsets that the sun once kissed.

Yet, the curtain of death, its dark certainty, exists,

A final threshold where no light insists.

Does another realm beyond this abyss persist?

A new dawn, a new life, a new afterlife's tryst?

In the cold, silent void, will our essence subsist,

Or dissolve into stardust, lost in the mist?

Are we prisoners, trapped in life's parenthesis,

Or are we destined for a divine genesis?

Do we dance forever in this spectral twist,

Or does life truly begin when death we enlist?

We're trapped in the afterlife, in a timeless gist,

Each breath a plea, each heartbeat a wish.

Why I read

I spend about half my waking time reading.

What I read varies. I subscribe to two magazines and regularly read - The Economist and The New Yorker. I used to read India Today regularly, but of late, I only dip into it occasionally. In the morning, there is a superficial glance at The Times of India, The Economic Times and Mint

During the tumultuous Trump years, I ended up subscribing to the New York Times and Washington Post to keep up with the high drama of US Politics. The subscription continues as I find the long-form journalism in which the two papers invest pretty compelling.

But the bulk of my time is taken up by books. And unlike many avid readers, I have moved on from hard copy and now read primarily in the electronic mode and, over the past few years, increasingly as audiobooks.

A list of books I have completed reading in the last few months and also the list of books on my Kindle and Books apps and on my nightstand illustrates the range of my reading:

Books completed in the last three months:

• Lessons: A Novel by Ian McEwan
• Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
• The Free World: Art and Thought in The Cold War by Louis Menand
• Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology by Chris Miller
• The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid The Truth From Our Eyes by Donald Hoffman
• Checkout 19 by Claire-Louis Bennet
• The Passenger by Cormac Mccarthy

Books I am currently reading:

• Victory City by Salman Rushdie
• Nirmala by Munshi Premchand
• Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson
• Quantum Computing by Chris Bernhardt
• Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder
• Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising by Judith Williamson
• Semiotics the Basics by Daniel Chandler

Besides the above, there is a score of books that I have dipped into but hope to read sometime in the future actively. And dozens more sit on my devices or shelf that I have yet to crack.

For avid readers, the lists above may seem like a not-so-humble-brag. But many others might think it is a recipe for madness.

The question to them would be why a seemingly sane and functional guy reads so much and so widely.

More simply, the question is, why do I read?

I read because to read is to be all I can be - to let the multitudes in me breathe, think and dream. To read is to time-travel into the past and the future. To read is to live in many countries. To experience untold wealth and biting poverty. To read is to be a philosopher, a scientist, a poet, an astronaut and a vagabond.

Take just the books I have read recently or am currently reading.

I spent a week being a writer, living a life damaged by exploitation as a teenager, and finding redemption in forgiveness.

I spent a month experiencing the poetry of tennis and the depth of addiction.

I negated material reality and saw the faint outlines of an emergent physics that could marry the philosophical concepts of "Maya" and "Atma" to hard-nosed science.

I was a Gen Z prodigy with an argot that portends where 21st-century literature is going.

I experienced that the most profound form of grief is its own redemption. 

I struggle with the maths at the core of the next computing revolution.

I discover frontiers that can open up new vistas in my decades-old professional practice.

Therefore, the question is not why read but how can you not?

TV, movies, social media and the like are the shallows. They won't free you from being all that you can be. Instead, they bind you to somebody else's viewpoint. 

But then you may ask, doesn't reading hook you to the writer's viewpoint? No, I say. The very act of reading is to allow yourself to go beyond the written word to synthesize a new immersive reality that is partly your creation, like walking into a street that has been around for centuries but whose experience is all your own.

The medium is the message. So what gives the written word its magic? I don't know. Is it because it's the oldest form of preserved human expression? Has the millennia of use engendered an evolution in the human psyche that gives the written word its potency? 

Perhaps, a book or two out there ponder the above question. If so, those books will join my list soon enough.

In conclusion, let me answer a nagging question in the minds of some of you. If I read so much, when do I work and earn a living? 

Luckily I have chosen a profession where I get better at my work the more I read. However, it's a pity that the timekeepers do not recognize my reading as billable hours. And alas, neither does the taxman allow the fortune I spend on books as a write-off.

Wanted: A New Idea of India

 I am aware that hundreds, if not thousands, of my betters - philosophers, public intellectuals and general blowhards - have said volumes on "The Idea of India". However, as an ordinary Indian, in this 75th year of our independence, I feel encouraged to add my two bit. 

Imagination and ideas are central to human society. Humanity has progressed from being bands of powerless apes in the animal world to unchallenged rulers of all that survey mainly because of its unique ability to co-operate flexibly as groups of thousands, millions and even hundreds of millions.

This ability of humans to launch and sustain world-changing projects stems from a core human functionality - the ability to imagine an entity - an idea - that is little to do with physical reality and nurture and strengthen it as an integral part of the collective consciousness.

In this realm of core ideas that drive human civilization are the notions of God, Religion, Nation and Money.

At the subsequent level, every nation is bound together by an idea. 

The US, for example, achieved greatness based on its self-image of rugged individualism and meritocracy framed in a federal democracy. An idea that attracted the best worldwide, priming a virtuous cycle.

However, over the last decade or two, this idea of the US has begun to fade, resulting in a decline from being the world's hyper-economic, military and cultural power. 

The US needs to reinvent itself, and at the core of this reinvention will be forming a new idea that redefines its self-image.

Thus the defining idea, while being the engine that drives its society and its place in the world, cannot be static - it has to evolve with time.

Currently, politics mire the debate on the idea of India. At one end of the spectrum is the idea of India forged in the Independence struggle, Gandhian ideals and the trauma of the partition. An idea of India as a unique society that values pacifism and eschews materialism and consumerism. A simple living and high thinking paradigm contrast the West's power-seeking "greed is good" paradigm.

The idea of India as an ancient civilization is at the opposite end of the spectrum. Once a superpower that went through a passing phase of subjugation. Now beginning the reemerge as a powerful and rightful leader of the world.

To my mind, both the above ideas are anachronistic in that both are rooted in the past. Because, to young India, in a world of rapid change, even the past decade, let alone the past century or past millenniums are irrelevant.

India as a society needs to evolve and nurture an idea of itself that can power its future. 

This idea needs to be rooted in its potential, not its past. 

At the same time, this idea needs to be rooted in reality and not just a rhetorical shift from extolling a glorious future instead of a glorious past.

Furthermore, this idea should position India uniquely and not just as a me-too in the polity of nations. 

A nation of 1.3 billion people - nearly 18% of the world population- cannot but have an idea of its future without evoking world leadership in some area of human endeavour. We cannot be a nation perennially looking to catch up with others, 

India is a young country with a median age of 28.43 in 2020. However, the media age is growing at an annual rate of 2.15%; thus, by 2040, the median age will be above 40. 

It is today's young who should define the new idea of India. Therefore, this new idea of India has to be aspirational - an aspiration of leading the world in a focused set of essential areas.

Given the structure of the modern world, this shortlist of essential areas must come from the domains of science & technology or public welfare (health, education and social justice).

To my mind, global leadership in a chosen set of critical science & technology fields can yield the resources that, if appropriately husbanded, can impact public welfare.

However, a Government committee or even a set of bigwigs will not choose this new idea for India.

The new idea of India will need to bubble up from the grassroots and percolate through Indian society before it takes hold. But, for that to happen, the nature of public discourse and debate must change.

Today's public discourse in India is both toxic and petty. The politicians bicker, and the media megaphones the bickering. 

I believe that a handful of charismatic and articulate young Indians aided by a set of powerful mass and digital media can seed a new idea that galvanizes India. But unfortunately, these seeders cannot come from the political class though they would readily find the media platforms. That well is too poisoned. Political voices today start from a heavy trust deficit and are guaranteed vocal opposition from the get-go.

Perhaps somebody needs to "seed" the seeders, a "Star Chamber" of well-resourced well-wishers who will carefully identify them and give them the media platforms. 

To sum up, a debate around the idea of India cannot assume that it is an idée fixe. 

An idea of India should be the roadmap to the future and not just a relic of the past. 

A bunch of public intellectuals (let alone politicians) cannot decide on the idea of India. Instead, it is a powerful, evolving emanation from the grassroots that animates the entire society.

Moreover, such an animating idea of India is not just a nice thing to have but instead a critical ingredient for a vibrant, on-the-move nation. And the only role for the elite and the powerful is to provide the ecosystem to empower such emergence and get out of the way.