Dr Binayak Sen

I am deeply anguished that even after more than a year, a person like Dr Bianayak Sen continues to languish in a jail. Is is unbelievable that a person like him, who has spent his life working with the most marginalised rural groups in Chattisgarh through community health programmes has been labelled a "naxalite courier" and put into jail.

It was in May 2007 that Dr Mira Shiva had told me about it and I thought it was a mistake and that soon, courts will realise that this is only some kind of frame-up or cooked-up charges by persons irritated by Dr Binayak Sen's insistence on truth and human rights for every one including for persons killed in "encounters" and jailed as Naxalites.

 

I am aware that Naxalites say that they are fighting for the poor and oppressed, but in my experience, they are brutally violent and equally oppressive towards all those who do not believe in their ideology.

I personally do not believe in or even accept the Naxalite ideology and I completely reject their violence, yet I thought that what Binayak was doing is the only option for a doctor and should be conduct of all persons who live by their conscience - you have to ask for respect of law and respect of human rights for everyone.

Yet, in spite of knowing that this is a blatant lie, the state continues to insist that Binayak was not really a doctor, he was a Naxalite courier and treats him like a criminal. I hope that the highest authorities in India will take immediate action and free Binayak and ensure that he is given justice.

There is an article about Dr Binayak Sen in recent issue of Outlook. I hope all newspapers and journals will write about him and what he symbolises. If a person like him can be framed, jailed and denied justice, I shudder to think of what happens to common persons in India. The poor and marginalised tribals in India, what hope can they have for justice in India?

After the sunset: Roberto & Sonali story

Note September 2025: This post was originally written in May 2008. Since then I have kept on making changes in it, especially in terms of adding things. Over the years I have continued to collect a lot more information about Sonali-Rossellini story. I have also been in contact with Raja Dasgupta, Sonali's elder son, as well as with some of other persons from their families and friends.

 

I feel that all the books written on this theme are mostly about Roberto Rossellini while Sonali appears as a minor element in them, while her husband Harisadhan is completely missing. I am working on a book that looks at from the point of view of Sonali and her family, aiming to finalise it by 2026. For example, now I am aware that to be a child growing up in the Rossellini household was traumatic and most children of Roberto with his different women, including Sonali's children, had difficult lives.

 

For my book, I am looking for information about Sonali's life in Rome during 1990s and early 2000s - if you knew Sonali or her children and are willing to talk to me, do contact me. If you have any additional information about this story that you can share, send me an email at: sunil.deepak(at)gmail.com (substitute (at) with @ in the email) or contact me through Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, through the links in the column on the right.

 

Thanks for your collaboration.   

 

***

Introduction

 

I had heard in the past about the famous Italian film director Roberto Rossellini and his Indian wife, Sonali. But I hadn’t really thought about it in any way. It had all happened when I was a baby and I hadn’t even realised that at that time there was a big scandal about their affair.

 

Roberto Rossellini had become famous for his films in the 1940s. He would have been mostly forgotten by general public, had it not been for his affair with the Hollywood star Ingrid Bergman in early 1950s, which had made him an international celebrity. His affair with Bergman had created a big scandal because she was married and the mother of a small baby. Rossellini had gone to stay in their home as a guest and in the end run off with the woman.

 

Rossellini's affair with Sonali was similar - she was married and had small children, and her film-director husband, Harisadhan, hero-worshipped him as an idol. 

I rediscovered their story a few days ago when I read an article about the new book of Dileep Padgaonkar (Under her spell: Roberto Rossellini in India, Viking, 2008) at the Jabberwock blog, and read about the Roberto-Sonali love story. Jabberwock had written: “It was a relationship that caused an uproar in the Indian press at the time, Baburao Patel’s invective being only the most florid example of the many reports that appeared in newspapers and magazines. Eventually, Rossellini had to leave the country under duress... Perhaps Under her Spell is just a little too dry and restrained though, given that at the centre of this story is a tempestuous affair that complicated the lives of many people. We don't really learn that much about the Roberto-Sonali relationship, what drew them to each other and how the bond gradually deepened, and Padgaonkar is also reticent about their later years together.” 

Sonali-Rossellini Affair 

Reading the review of Padgaonkar's book, stimulated my curiosity so I looked around on internet for more information about this story. It had all happened in 1957. Roberto Rossellini had come to India in December 1956.

At that time, Roberto was 51 and Sonali was 29 years old. She was married to Harisadhan Dasgupta, a respected documentary film director, 33 years old at that time, who was a close friend and associate of Satyajit Roy. She had two children when this happened, her younger son Arjun was only a few months old.

The reports said that Sonali had arrived late one night at Taj Mahal hotel with her younger son in her arms.

 

Pandit Nehru, India’s prime minister at that time, who had invited Roberto to India for making a film, had helped the three of them to leave India for Rome, where they had got married and Roberto had legally adopted Sonali’s younger son. In India, Harisadhan Dasgupta had reacted by registering a police FIR for his missing wife. Later Roberto & Sonali had a daughter, Raffaella. Roberto died 20 years later, in 1977. 

Questions in My Mind 

The more information I found, the more intrigued I was. Sonali, Roberto, Harisadhan and their children, had all been part of deep emotional cyclone but I was most curious about Sonali. She had two sons, but she could take only one son with her. That must have been terrible for her as a mother. It must have been equally terrible for the son who was left with his father. Kind of Sophie’s choice, except that this was no fiction.

How did Harisadhan feel about his wife not just leaving him for another man, older man at that, taking their son with her? How did they settle it, since Sonali couldn’t have married Roberto without a proper divorce from Harisadan? And how could Roberto legally adopt Sonali’s younger son, without her ex-husband’s consent? So this means that after their escape from India, Sonali and Roberto must have been in contact with Harisadhan in some way.

I remember my first journey to Italy in late nineteen seventies. There were very few foreigners living in Italy, there were no Asian shops, no Bengali communities, few who spoke English. How did Sonali fit in there? 

Usually when lovers meet, they stand against the setting sun and it is supposed to end with “and they lived happy and content ever after...”, yet that is where marriages begin. So after the sunset, once the flash bulbs stopped, once the level of ho-ha lowered, how did Sonali feel? How did the young boy feel, once he grew up and realised he had a father and elder brother in India?

 

I could not find the answers to these questions on internet. Padgaonkar's book did not talk about these. So I decided to dig in deeper. 

Searching for Additional Information  

All these questions were going around in my head as I searched for answers. I could piece together many things because I could search in English and Italian, as well as some minor sources in Spanish and French that gave crucial information. This search was exclusively through internet.

 

I didn’t find much about the emotional part of this story and perhaps it is better that way since I can imagine that even after all these years, many of these memories must be still very painful for all those who are still alive. Roberto died in 1977. Harisadhan Dasgupta died in 1996 or around that. Sonali's son, Arjun/Gil died in 2008 and Sonali died in 2014. However, their other children are around and probably they carry the scars of this event.

Rossellini's Film-Work in India

In 1956, Ingrid Bergman had restarted work in Hollywood with films like Anastasia, for which she received an Oscar and probably her relationship with Roberto was in crisis.

According to Palmira, Roberto’s gardener’s wife, Ingrid was supposed to go to India, to join Roberto in 1957. Instead, she decided to do a film with Lars Schmidt, who later became her third husband, while Roberto came back from India with Sonali.

Roberto was in India for almost 11 months, refusing to look at famous monuments and rather preferring to take a non-exotic view of India, by looking at lives of common persons.

 

The Indian stay of Roberto led to two works, a documentary film “India – Matri Bhumi” (1959) and a TV mini-series “India vista da Rossellini” (India seen by Rossellini, 1959) broadcasted in Italy and France. The mini-series "India seen by Rossellini" broadcast in 10 episodes was produced jointly by India, Italy and France.

The episodes of the TV series were titled: India without myths, Bombay Gateway to India, Architecture & costumes of Bombay, Varsova, Towards the south, Lagoons of Malabar, Kerala, Hirakud dam on river Mahadi, Pandit Nehru & Animals in India.

“India – Matri Bhumi” was a film in 4 parts. The first part took a lyrical look at the daily life of a mahout (elephant handler). Part two was about an East Bengal refugee who is working on a dam and after the work is finished, he is relocated to another construction site. Part three was about an elderly person contemplating nature in a jungle and finally, part four is about a monkey owner dying from heat and the monkey looking for another owner. 

Sonali's Life in Italy 

Palmira, Roberto’s gardener’s wife said: “Sonali was more solitary compared to Ingrid. However friendship between Ingrid and Roberto remained. Even after their divorce, Ingrid came with her third husband Lars to the Rossellini villa. At that time, Roberto’s financial situation was not good and the villa had been indebted to the bank which had given credit to Roberto. Ingrid even asked Lars to buy that villa to help Roberto.”

 

Sonali was an aspiring actress when she had got married to Harisadhan Dasgupta. She had studied at Shantiniketan university and Bimal Roy was her mama (mother's brother). 

Conclusion

It was a love story between Rossellini and Sonali, with a happy ending, or so it would seem.

 

Yet, that happy ending was inextricably linked with pain and suffering for many of the protagonists. It would make for a wonderful novel, one of those melodramatic tomes that we feel are so unbelievable.

*****

Raiders of the lost Poppies

My friend Mariangela lives in Rimini.

 

A couple of weeks ago she was travelling to Asti and was going to pass thorugh Bologna. "Are there poppy flowers in Bologna?", she asked me in an email.

 

I read her email while I was in a conference in Genova. Shit, this year I had forgotten all about poppy flowers, I thought to myself! It is our old ritual. When she comes to see me in Bologna we go to look at them.

 

There used to be this old field near our house that would get full of red poppy flowers in April-May. I had been there with Mariangela. They mowed that field down two years ago and since then I hadn't ever seen large expanses of poppy flowers.

 

So I needed to go around and search for some poppy flowers before she came to see me.

 

Poppy or the Pappaverum Somniferum is supposed to be that plant that can be used to make opium. For getting opium you you need the milk of the ripe dry fruit. That is the reason, why you need a special permission to grow poppy plants in Italy. Some people say that to get opium you need another variety of poppy and not these common flowers that we have, that is why no one bothers with these. Perhaps you also need the hotter sun of equator. I am not sure about that but you can usually see the bright red poppy flowers along railway tracks and highways, where it grows as a weed, in our part of Italy.

The black poppy seeds are used commonly as decoration on bread and give off a lovely aroma. I am not sure if those can be recovered from these flowers, I usually buy them in Asian shops.

 

I am going to look for poppy flowers one of these days, I told myself. Finally, today was my the day of operation poppy-flowers.

I decided to go out beyond Ca' Bianca for my morning walk with our dog, Brando, to the part where there are some farm-houses.

 

He is getting old, our Brando, and likes to go over his usual walking routes and usually if I try to pull him in some new directions, he usually does his Angad ji show, pointing his feet and refusing to move. However, today I was in no mood to give in to him and kept on pulling him till he gave in.

 

And today no I-pod, no music to distract me, I decided. Nature demands proper attention or so, I thought. And so off we were. 

Different Kinds of Seeds

Just out of the house, and I got distracted by the Maple seeds. There were so many of them hanging from the tree almost like plastic butterflies. So I started looking around clicked the pictures of different looking seeds. Here are some examples. The maple seeds had wings like butterflies flying with acute angles.

 

In the next picture is what they call "albero falso di Giuda" or the 'false Jude's' tree, with dried beans like seeds. In autumn, these trees without any green leaves and only these dark brown seeds look slightly sinister, and make me think of Dracula myths. I also don't know why they call them false Jude and if there is a real Jude's tree as well?

 

I like the seeds of Lime trees with the strange wing that is pierced by the flowers. I have read of the subtle perfume of Lime but to me the flowers seem scentless.

Then I saw the Elm tree with round penny like wings holding a small seed in the middle, in the next picture. Though on the tree the seeds are bunched together like piles of pennies and it is not easy to make out the form of individual seed.

 

 

And Finally these rounded beans like seeds that look like jhumkas, rounded-bean like seeds that look like women's ear-rings. I don't know the name of this tree.

 

Roses

Then it was the turn of the roses. There were so many of them in the garden that we passed. Some of the housewives, going about their daily business of dusting and beating the carpets with sticks, looked at me with a suspicion as I tried to get a good angle to click their roses, but they were quickly mollified by the sight of Brando, who can look nice, cuddly and angelic when he is not busy barking at any rival dogs. There are already too many pictures on this post, so I am sparing you my roses-pics today.

Finally the Red Poppy-Flowers

Finally, I did find the poppy flowers finally just a little outside, on the road that goes along the wheat fields. There were not too many of them but enough for taking some pictures.

 

 

Disgusted dog

It was a lovely morning and our morning walk lasted almost one and half hour. Unfortunately Brando didn't appreciate it and seemed a bit annoyed at loosing his rhythm as I forced him to hold still while I clicked pictures of plants and flowers from different angles.

 

The return back to home after the poppy flowers was quick as Brando almost ran, understanding that I had completed my mission, pulling me along! If you think that he is too sweet or cute or small to pull people, you don't know him yet! (In the image below he is with my son)

*** 

 

 

Talking to Altaf Tyrewala

It was January 2008. We were in the north Italian city of Turin for a literature festival organised by an Italian literary foundation, Grinzane. There was a special session in this festival about India and thus many Indian authors were invited. I was there as an Indian blogger and had helped in deciding whom to invite. 

 

I had asked Altaf Tyrewala for an interview and finally we got around doing it during a bus journey as we were going out for some lunch. As we sat down in the bus and I was fumbling with my recorder, Altaf said that he hadn’t liked being presented as a “Muslim writer from India”. I agreed with him completely, I would hate to be called a “Hindu writer from India”. I had had some discussions with the organisers and I knew they did it to refute any charges of ignoring the writers from Indian minorities, but I guess that doesn’t make it any easier!

He said, "When outside they call me in this way it saddens me. It is not enough that in a nation a minority has to be made self-conscious, even outside the country they are ... they didn’t mention the religious background of any other writer." 

 

Lavanya Shankaran, who was sitting behind us didn’t realise that it was an interview and I was recording it and so she also joined in the conversation. I was very happy since the discussion was very stimulating and I was imagining that my recorder is recording her voice as well. Unfortunately that was not the case, I can only hear some of her words. I vaguely remember what she said but that is not enough to re-construct her part of dialogue and I regret that immensely.

Here are some excerpts from the transcript of that discussion-recording. The symbols are AT for Altaf Tyrewala and SD for me, Sunil Deepak. 

SD: Tell me about the kind of things you like to read? 

AT: I like reading something that has been stripped to the bare essentials. I am almost incapable of enduring descriptions, etc. Anything that assumes that I don’t know ... I read the internet, I try to remain clued in to the world. What I like to read is something that I can not access as an information. 

SD: You don’t see that as a contradiction, wanting to be a writer and yet wishing to express yourself in as few words as possible? 

AT: (laughs) Yes, absolutely. I think that it is extremely damaging to my career. I won’t be able to churn out books every year. But this is something that I have to deal with as a writer, it is my challenge. This conflicting instinct in me, to speak and not to speak, these are two powerful impulses in me. To keep quiet because whatever has to be said, has already been said, and the other side, even while wishing to keep quiet, to find things to say. 

SD: Writing is a creative expression and there are different ways of expressing creativity. Did you have to choose from different things you wanted to do or was writing the only thing that you wanted to do? 

AT: I have always wondered what it would be like to be a painter or a musician, but writing is something that goes beyond creative expression. It has become a way of life. It is not like an outburst of creative energy. I think that it is almost like it moulds your way of living. I am not a writer just when I am writing, I am a writer 24 hours a day. That is how I have found myself becoming. 

SD: You have written one book that has been published but may be you have written lot of other books that have not been published or that are still in your head. How do you decide what you are going to write and how long that process takes to actually come to do it? 

AT: (laughs) The first novel came out organically. I had this impulse to write, a deep desire and need to write. I was trying to understand how the conventional form of a novel would do justice to the kind of society and I kind of reality I grew up in and I realised that it wouldn’t and I had to innovate a new form. Terrifying though it was to write in a way that I had never read anything before, create a kind of structure that I had never seen before. What was your question? How long does it take... there is no telling, it can take months. Like the second novel is taking me more than 2 years to actually kick off. With the first novel I found a groove and once you find a groove ... I used to get a story done every two weeks and that was immensely satisfying. But I think that this incubation period is important, you have to wait to not to get carried away by a wrong thing o a notion that turns out to be false later on. I am just being patient and waiting ... when it comes you know it from the tips of your fingers, it is absolutely ... 

SD: When we were getting in the bus, you said something about your wife. Did she know you as a writer or as a person before you became ...? 

AT: I was a poor graduate student in America when we met. We were studying together. She thinks that I completely misrepresented myself (laughs) because I turned out to be a writer. But because she has seen me before I was a writer, she is an immensely grounding presence in my life. It would have been so easy to float up in this writerly universe ..but she keeps on reminding me that don’t forget ... 

Lavanya Shanker: That is very wise thing you are saying... sensible, to keep your feet on the ground ..it is important that the spouse is not a writer otherwise ... writers are whackoos (laughs)... very difficult to have another writer in the house... 

AT: Or even an artist you know, it would be ... 

SD: What does it mean “deciding to become a writer”? Perhaps it would be different for a woman, but for a young person to say “I have decided to be a writer”, how would the society react? I think that in Italy people let you live your life, perhaps your parents would say something but they can’t interfere with your decisions. But in India? 

AT: I guess I was smart.. I had enough foresight to know that if I wanted to be a writer I had better do it fast. I couldn’t do it when I was 30 or 35, when real life has completely taken over. I was twenty two when I decided that I wanted to be a writer and I left my job and started writing full time. At that age, I got certain degree of indulgence from my parents. It was like even if I screw up, let’s say by 25-26 I can go back to work. They were willing to allow me this kind of window of opportunity. If this book hadn’t done fairly well, I probably would have been still working, gotten back to a 9 to 5 job. Plus, I took a loan to write, I approached a bank for a loan. 

SD (laughs) And how was that? What was their reaction in the bank? 

AT: I didn’t tell them that it was for writing. I said that I was starting an e-learning business with internet and I need the money. I used that to write for 3-4 years, used it as my pocket money. I knew it was a matter of time. You have to know deep down what you want and you have to go after it. 

(Note: The discussions after this point had more interventions of Lavanya Shankaran but from here onwards quality of recording is not good, so I have excluded this part from the transcription. 

AT: What I meant was that I can never have single moment of oblivion, of unconsciousness or not being analytical or not processing or not forcing myself to certain amount of insight on everything that I go through.. what comes first is the mad impulse to create and it is a mad energy that starts getting channelled and focused on the thin line of what it means to be a more mature writer.

When I started writing, I realised that my initial stories were mainly about myself and my experience of the world. Only when I wrote story upon story, I realised that I was just a small aspect of this larger universe out there.

And then it was up to me to place myself, to position myself in different circumstances in my head, fictionally, and to ask what if I was that or what if I was there and lend myself to different situations fictionally to understand what it would be like ... it was an exercise in some degree of compassion, to really feel what it is to be someone else. Not just think of what it would be to be someone else but to actually feel it.

*** 

SD: At this point our bus reached the venue and so the interview was interrupted! I am really sorry that the part about Lavanya are missing from this interview.   

A Lazy Sunday and the Cyclists

While taking out Brando for his morning walk I discovered that our social centre was holding a cyclist meet. They do it by turns. A group of cyclists, mostly men in their seventies, hosting these meetings, organise groups of volunteers who offer drinks, cakes and other refreshments to everyone.

 

Other groups of cyclists from near and far converge, enjoy refreshments and then all go out the explore the surrounding areas on their bicycles. Yesterday it was our local cyclists who were playing hosts and people came from as far as 150 km, around 1800 persons in all. Making cakes and refreshments for all of them must have been a huge affair, but I didn't hear anyone complaining.

 

 

Each group of cyclists was wearing their group-colours and logos, and they looked great. One fellow who came to rest near me, told me that he had a hip transplant last year and this was his first cycle trip after the surgery. They were mostly men and I think that it is wonderful way to keep friends and spend time together, because otherwise we men have big difficulties in keeping social relationships.

 

Even though sports allow men to have social relationships, I think that our relationships with our friends are different from those of women, in the sense we rarely if ever, talk about our fears, pains and emotions. I believe that we men need courses on how to share what matters most to us, instead of worrying about showing off that everything is fine and we are not vulnerable in any way.

 

 

*** 

Back from the walk I cooked some afghani chhole (chick-peas) and then made "panch phoren aloo" (potatoes). I had discovered the recipe on a food blog. Panch phoren is a mix of five spices used commonly in Bengal. I love some of these food blogs, they are really good at explaining recipes. Both chhole and aloo turned out to be quite good.

 

Then it was time to relax and watch "U, Me aur Hum", the first film of Ajay Devgan as a director.

I think that Devgan can be great director of serious films. His handling of serious scenes is good and some of the scenes are like tear-gas, with a wonderful Kajol. I didn't like the first half of this film and though I liked the song "Maine to maanga tha.." and Kajol in it, I think that it was placed very badly in the film. Their young son has just risked dying and Devgan has probably come back from hospital, to see Kajol dancing in that scene was a kind of unreal and cruel.

This afternoon was our picnic time. We went to the park for a family walk. There the group of elderly persons had organised their food festival, so we couldn't stop ourselves from eating some nice greasy local piadina-bread with ham, salami, etc. The park is so lovely with all kind of flowers, so I took lot of pictures.

As we came back home, we are both tired and full. The idea of going out to eat Pizza was no longer appealing. May be another day, we consoled Marco. I am reading a book by Alexander McCall Smith about a Scottish philosopher. Going back to sofa and reading the book was a perfect way to end the beautiful Sunday.

 

*** 

Age and desirability

Note: If you don't like to read about men, especially older men like me, talking about women-girls as sex symbols, this post is not for you - please do not read it.

***

 

I was with a friend and we were talking about the most beautiful Italians. I told him about a blog post I had written some time ago about my favourite Italian sex symbols in which, I had put Alba Parietti and Sabrina Ferrilli in my top list.

 

"What?" he said horrified, "but they are old!!!"

"OK, I also had Monica Bellucci in that list", I added.

 

"She is also too old for this kind of thing now. You have to look for some one younger!" He insisted.

 

 "There are really hot east European babes", the bar man added helpfully, providing details about the contortions they can do in some porn videos.

 

"Those are not women, they are just meat. And anyway they are not Italian and we exclude porn stars from this classification", my friend clarified.

 

I should also add that the women, whom my friend called "too old", are at least 10-15 years younger to us.  

Anyway, this discussion created the idea of finding out who are the young women today who dominate the fantasies of men in Italy? And compared to my favourites Alba Parietti and Sabrina Ferrilli, how do they fare in my perception?

 

So there I was trying all kinds of combinations on Google to find out the top young models that Italians love today. Unsurprisingly, I found that there is no unanimity.

Actually quite a lot of them seem to root for Martina Colombari, born in 1975, she was Miss Italy in 1991 and is still considered as one of the best models here. In 2006, in a pool on the best Miss Italy of all times, she was number one.

She does look great but I don't think that she is that young, like my friend was insisting.

Many others think that Carla Bruni is the best Italian top model of all times. Born in 1967 and now married to the French president Sarkozy, however even Ms. Bruni is also not very young.

Two other names were mentioned on some websites - Marta Cecchetto and Federica Ridolfi. Ms. Ridolfi was in some recent list of top 100 most desirable women of the world compiled by Askmendotcom. 

Finally a group of Italian journalists asked to identify the woman they would like to see nude on a calendar, gave the maximum votes to Ilaria d'Amico, a TV presenter but their choice had not so much to do with age, as with the fact that Ms. Ilaria refuses to have top less or nude pictures (and we desire most what we can't have).

So in the end does it matter what year persons are born?

 

Anyway, I feel that desiring a person has much more to do with the perceived personality of the person than just measurements of breasts or hips, etc.

 

My wife keeps on saying that she finds Sean Connery, who must be seventy now, sexy. So there is hope for all of us, over the hill, but still somehow sexy and desirable, to the people who matter most to us!

 

And I will stick with my Ferrilli and Parietti, thank you.

***

Italian Election Candidates

It is election time in Italy. If I only could, I would vote for Zappatero.

 

The way his government has gone towards reforms is stuff for day-dreams in other countries where frustrated voters are sick of their governments that can't decide on anything. Like the law on people living together rather than getting married, including the same-sex couples that Zappatero could get through.

 

In Italy they started with a law called Dicos, then tried Pacos and in the end, gave up the idea because the centre parties that have strong catholic public image, felt that the law would discriminate against regular heterosexual families.

The way last Prodi government had been functioning was so frustrating with its thin majority. Every member of the coalition with a handful of parliament seats threatened to quit if they didn't like something. Mastella with his 3-4 parliament seats and Dini with two seats, did it so often. Mastella finally brought the government down and it came out that he had received assurances from the opposition leader Berlusconi about getting a minister seat in the new government. It was disgusting and the public disapproval against Mastella is so strong that he has finally decided to "retire".

So you can understand my fondness for Zappatero. The only problem is that he is too handsome. I am a little distrustful of the handsome public leaders. Just think of what Blair did, turning into wagging tail of Bush. Or what Bill Levinsky Clinton did. Thus if Zappatero first was good, Zappatero-bis may be too much. And then there is Nicholas Sarkozy, a post-modernist nightmare of a prime minister.

Anyway back to the Italian elections. Suddenly people seem distrustful of small parties and small leaders, each of whom gets a few seats and then tries to influence the government. At least I hope so, and that everyone would vote for a main party that can govern the country.

Where I live is called the "Red area of Bologna". Actually the whole city of Bologna has the reputation of being red, in the sense that it has been a stronghold of left-parties, for a long time with communists and later on with centre-left coalitions.

 

Now it is the new left, democratic party of Veltroni, that is the flavour of the season. Last year in October they held the primaries to choose their boss and this was a first in Italy, since usually parties choose their own leaders and don't ask people to vote and elect their leaders. More than 3 million persons voted for Veltroni. Since it is a red area, strong hold of left parties, all the election posters of Northern League, Christian Democrats and other right parties are missing from the billboards. Probably enthusiastic supporters go out in the night to take down all such posters.

Still some of the posters are really funny. Like this one from Northern League, that is the nationalist party of the north of Italy, that does not want immigrants. Their poster has a red Indian on it.

 

"The Red-Indians didn't have rules to control immigration and now they are forced to live in reserves, think about it" their poster says. But they were all European emigrants, I wanted to tell the Northern League leaders. Africans, Asians, they didn't kill civlisations and put people in reserve areas! But I don't think that he wants to listen. The poster is both funny and good-communication, and in the end, that is what matters.

Sex is another theme of elections that continues to surprise me. Not the puritanical Clinton-Levinsky kind of sex, it is more open and ribald. Like the Northern League famous for its "Lega c'è l'ha duro", meaning, "League has it hard" and is just going screw you.

Ms. Santanché, prime ministerial candidate of extreme right, snubbed by Berlusconi, reacted by saying "He wants me to give it to him but I am not, he can dream and die for it." Mr. Berlusconi himself, famous for putting his foot in his mouth every so often, has been trying to keep a check on himself this time. Last time he had announced that for the elections, for one month he was going to give up sex, implying that nearing seventy, he was still having it regularly and thus not too old to be a prime minister.

But it is the porno-stars who catch attention every time during elections. Ilona Staller & Moana Pozzi, both porno-stars were parliament members for the radical parties almost a decade ago. Both had scandalised for refusing to give up their wayward ways even after entering the parliament by continuing their work in hardcore porn, saying that it was their job and they had every right to go on with it. At least Moana was intelligent and able to speak articulately! Now we have Ms. Milly D'Abbraccio, another porn-star standing for the socialist party. Her poster in Rome has created some more scandal.

"Basta con queste facce da c...", the poster uses a common Italian proverb, "facce da culo" that means "ass-faces" and so in a poster showing her well rounded ass, Ms. D'Abbraccio says, "enough of ass-faced" parliamentarians, vote for a more beautiful face. Embarrassed, the socialist leaders, vain about their 114 year old history, were stuttering their explanations about the poster.

Veltroni and Prodi were in Bologna the other day. Veltroni has choosen the slogan of Barack Obama, "Si può fare", it can be done. Initially all surveys showed the predictions that Berlusconi was ahead by ten points. Now Veltroni is going around saying that he is the new thing in Italian politics, he is running alone, no arrangements with any party and he has been elected by the people and he is young, only 54. Berlusconi is dismissive.

 

Personally I liked the speech of Anna Finocchiaro, wearing the red cross-checked coat in this picture, along with Prodi and Veltroni. She was simple and effective and to have a woman prime minister won't be bad. But she is not in the race for the prime minister. Bersani, the other minister of Prodi government who was there for the meeting is admired for the series of liberalisation measures he was able to push through in spite of the protests by the different unions.

And this time PD, the Democratic party is proposing industrialists and professionals as candidates, not just union leaders and mechanics. So what will happen in the elections? We are all waiting to discover.

PS: Maybe Mayawati can ask for a ban on Zappatero? His name literally means Mochi or  a "shoe-maker".