Pretend Friends & Post-Modernism

Pretend Friends & Post-Modernism


Beautiful Rachel Uchitel, of “I have NOT had an affair with Tiger Woods” fame, who started the avalanche of revelations on the ace golfer’s extra-marital activities, is a professional host, a “pretend friend”, as The Sunday Times’ Style Magazine puts it.

She works at several swish nightclubs in New York and is paid to network with wealthy high–rollers and draw them in. And she is also entitled to a percentage of their hefty spends and makes substantial cash tips from said high-rollers too. And all of this without sex or blackmail entering into it, necessarily, despite the steamy allegations made by the National Enquirer.

Because what Uchitel does, is smooth the way, so that the rich and famous have a good time, with or without publicity as desired. There are many others willing and able to mingle with the seriously wealthy. After all, Rachel’s clients include both married and unmarried oil-rich princes, stars of film, music and sports, as well as international billionaires of every description.

But Rachel’s work is not to be confused with that of an up-market escort service. It is a niche product yes, typical of the 21st century urge towards differentiation and fine-tuning. It is personalised public relations facilitation, an opposite gender night-club Jeeves.

Irrespective of whether Tiger’s marriage survives after wife Elin Nordegren and he return from their media avoiding cruise aboard their 155 ft. yacht Privacy; the entire scandal has elicited a different response so far.

The classic response would have involved high-priced celebrity lawyers, a big financial settlement, and a divorce. Instead, efforts are on to find a more up-to-date solution, recognising perhaps the temptations and pressures of international stardom and constant travel on the 33 year old champion.

Meanwhile, the billionaire world number one golfer ha s put his career on hold to try and save his marriage despite his multiple and publicly acknowledged “transgressions”. Tiger’s Swedish wife Elin, an evidently post-modern spouse, seems willing to give their marriage a chance, provided Tiger never travels on his golfing trips henceforth without her and their two children in tow.

In other words, a negotiated marriage, with new ground rules. Its been done before, also in the public glare, by former President Bill Clinton and current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for example.

But apart from the compromise and accommodation such negotiated continuance suggests, there is a subtle reworking of the concept of modernity afoot as well. This new view of modernity may well define not only personal affairs but world affairs too in the coming decade and beyond.

This new look modernity does not believe in refusing to acknowledge ground reality. It does not take the easy route to facile retribution, realising that it may lead to a justice of sorts but not a satisfying justice after all.

History shows the damage done by forced and unequal treaties, such as the Versailles Treaty that humiliated Germany after World War I, and sowed the seeds of Hitler’s ascendancy and an even more cataclysmic World War II.

So, to contain the destructive potential of the old eye-for-an eye justice, the new modernity attempts to look at available and residual options as dispassionately as possible with a view to improve matters, rather than settle scores.

We saw this principle operating at the Copenhagen Summit recently with President Obama personally barging into a meeting of the “BASIC” countries of India, China, South Africa and Brazil when they were on the brink of a walk-out, and emerging instead with an accord of sorts.

An accord that ignored heaps of other countries, less significant in climate control politics, including those in the EU and Japan. An accord that did not flounder on the rock of the now bypassed Kyoto Protocol reckoned to be the lodestone of climate negotiations.

And closer home, the move to allow more small states to be born is not necessarily the pestilence escaped from Pandora’s Box. It is patently unfair to have lop-sided development within larger states and do nothing to rectify things. The creation of Chattisgarh and Jharkhand and Uttarakhand has not been harmful to its inhabitants. And there is no cause to fear that further small states that may emerge out of an unwieldy Uttar Pradesh or a much neglected “Gorkhaland” will be bad for the cohesiveness of the Union.

Elsewhere, corporate bosses such as Mr. Ratan Tata, are calling for reform of land acquisition policies. What is the justice in underpaying poor people for land they are compulsorily required to hand over to the Government for the use of industry or infrastructure? Is it enough to hide behind the brook-no-opposition plea of “public purpose” when it robs the peasant and tribal of his wherewithal without adequate recompense?

It was alright for a colonial power with a different frame of reference, but clearly unfair for a republic where all citizens have been created constitutionally equal. India cannot be allowed to rob Bharat in the name of progress. In fact, greater equity in such matters will take the wind out of the sails of Maoists and other exploiters of the poor and their misery.

Post-modernism probably needs to come into the thinking on all our knotty issues. As an early advocate of compulsory voting myself I am delighted to find myself on the same page as a mass leader like Chief Minister Narendra Modi of Gujarat. He is as yet talking of local elections in Gujarat, but the beneficial arguments hold good at the national level too.

Perhaps this same post-modernist wind will cause the next decade to be marked by pragmatism rather than dogma both in the ruling combine and in the opposition. Mr. Nitin Gadkari, the new BJP Party Chief, a Brahmin himself, wants more Dalits and Muslims in the party. He also wants dissidents and the expelled to return to the fold.

This is a sign of bold post-modernist thinking likely to steer the BJP into new centrist and inclusive positions. At this rate, we can once again look at the future of the principal opposition party with hope, and confidence about its continued relevance to our collective future.

And the recent emphases of the Government, such as PSU performance and divestment, progress in security, diplomacy, reformist and military matters, unhampered by old axioms also owe more to a future post-modernist vision that the past.

(1,055 words)

22nd December 2009
Gautam Mukherjee

Appeared as Edit Page Leader on December 30th, 2009 in The Pioneer with same title as above. Also see online at www.dailypioneer.com on the day and archived under Columnists.