Interview with Hoshang Merchant: Published today in The Hindu’s Sunday Magazine
UNIVERSE OF VERSE
Read the official online version here.
One of the most daring and important voices of contemporary Indian poetry, Hoshang Merchant (b.1947) has published 20 books of poetry in 20 years from the Writer’s Workshop, Kolkota. Other notable books include Flower to Flame (Rupa, 1990), Yaraana: Gay Stories from India (Penguin, 1999), Forbidden Sex/Text (Routledge, 2009).
His translation of Jameela Nishat’s Urdu poems was published by Sahitya Akademi (2008). He is presently a Professor of Poetry and Gay Studies at the Hyderabad University where he has taught since 1987. He holds a Ph.D. (for his dissertation on Anais Nin) from Purdue University where he was one of the founders of Gay Liberation.
Travelling all over the world, he studied Buddhism at Dharmashala, and Sufism in Iran and Palestine. He was in Chennai recently to kick start the Poetry with Prakriti festival. Excerpts from an interview:
Can or should poets give interviews since the Buddha says there is no personality?
Yes, there is no personality. I’ll tell you my own example and of Miohaux (French). I thought to become a Buddhist; I danced instead but went back to poetry. Not Buddhist poetry, like the fourth Dalai Lama’s… I have few possessions, but I couldn’t be a Buddha because I thought too much to be some One.
Henri Michaux did not want his poetry canonised, he wouldn’t even allow himself to be photographed. He was happy the Dalai Lama saw his photo; “Now I am in the Dalai Lama’s mind.” As he lay dying, he talked to his nurse of travel. When she started to give him oxygen, “No! Let me keep travelling,” he said.
What is the aim of your poetry?
Even gay poetry’s aim is NOT to change legislation. “To come out into an objectless view/Which is the true aim of all poetry,” is a definition I use in my poems. “Objectless” does not mean “not objective,” because anyway the lyric is a subjective art.
It means that poets have no axes to grind. Their objective is the poem itself. However we poets have to ‘abstract’ our experience to fit it to the reader’s experience. We all share the same space/time. Some great poets make their own space and their times. It comes as a surprise to know Whitman, Melville and Dickinson were gay. We do not know them as gay poems but as Transcendentalists even after 150 years. This transcendence is a poem.
To paraphrase Dickinson “to make a prairie/It takes fancy, a clover and a bee/Fancy alone will do/If bees are few.”
Why do you equate Dalits with gays?
Because gays, like women, are gender-Dalits. Also, there are gay Dalits who refuse to be identified for social reasons. Both are oppressed groups. I understand forms of oppression differ. But oppression is oppression. For politics we need coalitions (not only LGBT but also women and Dalits). Gays have to stop oppressing women. Some women who oppress gays have to stop doing that. Ditto for Dalits. To divide minorities and prevent them from coming together in a common platform is just another male heterosexists’ ploy to preserve their power.
My struggle is unimportant unless it also opens up a possibility for generalised liberation and living.
Are you before your time for India?
No! The poet is always of his/her time. It is the others who are behind.
Is writing a political act?
No. But if you say you’re not political that means you side with the establishment. If you want to change your heart, mind and body then that’s politics.To say sex is a private matter is to pretend sex is about love only and not also an exploitative.
Why do you travel so much?
I travel to get new identities. And to write about them. It is how kids ‘enjoy getting lost’. It reminds me that personality is not solid. In a new land people don’t know you, you can become whatever you want!
What is the audience reaction to you? How does your audacity sit with them?
Mine is not a moral universe. But it is a formally beautiful universe of verse. If I affront them I also beg their indulgence. And, mostly, I get it!
Review of Nirupama Subramanian’s Keep the Change (published in today’s New Indian Express)
A COSMETIC CHANGE IN THE CLEAVAGE
(Read official version here)
At the start of the novel, 26-year-old B Damayanthi hasn’t done a single silly thing that she regrets. At the end of the novel, she has moved from the repressive atmosphere of her home in one of the many Amman Kovil Streets in Chennai to the fast-paced corporate world of a multinational company in Mumbai, and she still hasn’t done a single thing that my great-grandmother would regret. Narrated in epistolatory format, this is the story of a girl who loves to read Cosmopolitan and watch Sex and the City, but whose dreary existence offers no prospect of adventure.
The over-used trope of parents desperately bridegroom-hunting allows the author to portray Tam-Brahm society as though it is eternally freeze-framed in time. There is the typical mother who suspects the maid’s cleanliness levels; the manglik dosh, the 52 advertisements in newspaper matrimonials and the insistence on matching caste and vegetarianism and horoscopes; and of course, the stingy NRI maapillai from California. Her migration helps Damayanthi escape the monotony of girl-seeing ceremonies.
Moving to Mumbai, Damayanthi undergoes a total makeover. How much does this change on the outside change her as a person, I ask. Nirupama says the change in hairstyle-makeup-wardrobe comes from an effort to fit in. “She wants to be somebody she is not, and she thinks she can do that, but towards the end she realises that such change is pretty much cosmetic. So the real change is not external, but internal, when she finally becomes comfortable with who she really is.”
Damayanthi’s internal thought processes always seem to revolve around what other people think. Why has Nirupama made her protagonist so susceptible to the threat of social perception? “Damayanthi is still figuring what is right and wrong for her. There is a conflict within her because of this. For example, she feels stealing ideas is wrong, that is her value and inherent belief. When a colleague tells her that lifting a summer trainee’s ideas is practice-sharing, she is caught between what she knows is inherently wrong, and what is needed for success in the corporate world. She learns that compromising on her values and core beliefs doesn’t lead to anything good. So, even though she is externally driven, the change comes about when she seeks to find out what makes sense to her.”
Bittersweet in her snide asides, but demure in her answers, Damayanthi leads a parallel life in her head. Why? Nirupama says that it comes out of conditioning: being asked to remain quiet, being ordered not to laugh loudly in public. “Some girls learn to break out, to rebel. Some like Damayanthi are stuck in two places because mentally they are rebels but externally they are conformists. Only later on does she realise that it is okay to speak her mind.”
Damayanthi does more than speak her mind in those letters. Savour this description of a secretary: “Veronica looked like a pampered poodle on a bad fur day. She was wearing a tight little black skirt well about her knees and a low cut semi-transparent blouse in a curious lilac shade. I could almost see her lungs through it. She also wore matching plastic lilac earrings—Aiyo! I could see all the males come to life like a bunch of dogs on heat.”
As a consequence of such remarks, characters in the novel turn out to be crass caricatures: Balki is the Tamil Brahmin bachelor; Jimmy Daruwalla the platonic friend; CG. the morose and dismal intellectual; Sonya Sood the leggy size-zero Punjabi lass and Rahul, the charming rake with a girlfriend in every metro.
Quite expectedly, there is a love triangle (involving said Mr Rake and Ms Size-zero and Our Heroine). Of course, crossing the boundary (read: premarital sex) is something that good girls from good homes never dream of. Yet Our Heroine is just about to do it; she’s drunk and on the couch and the virile handsome hero is unbuttoning her blouse. Imagine the feverish anticipation. Phone rings. Amma tells her about Paati’s hospitalisation. Mood and scene and action ruined alright, but please remember to applaud for Damayanthi who retains her virginity because of such divine intervention.
Finally, something on the author’s attempts to sneak bits of Tamilish into the text: everyone gets married like this only, there’s talk of big-big qualifications and short-short clothes, and stuff being sooooo difficult. But even Tamil films no longer carry dialogues about a girl glowing like a 1000-watt bulb when a man says she looks pretty. Aiyo, when was the last time anybody heard that line?
is it that she becomes me?
confused. . .
First published in The New Indian Express. Official weblink is here.
When it was first published in 1945, Yashpal’s novel Divya created a furore because of its unconventional portrayal of women and their quest for independence. Although it is tame enough for our times, the book remains enigmatic as ever since it sets out by envisioning the prostitute as a liberated woman. Set in a time-period when the clash between Buddhism and Brahminism was at its peak, the novel probes the roots of slavery and the plight of women, thus providing insight into the personal and political nature of bondage.
Born in a Brahmin family, the enchanting Divya is the great-granddaughter of the Chief Justice of the Republic of Madra. She falls in love with Prithusen, the son of a former slave, who is also the best swordsman in the kingdom. As in works of fiction (and unlike in almost all of real life), pregnancy follows a single night of love-making, and Divya hides the signs of a new life growing inside her as she awaits the return of Prithusen. He emerges successful in the war, and in warding off the Brahmins who seek to annex the Sagal territory, but spurns Divya on the advice of his father who is keen to get him married to Seero, granddaughter of the President of the Republic, since that would ensure him a better place in the echelons of power.
Her pregnancy, which should have possibly been an occasion for celebration becomes the cause for censure, and Divya leaves the kingdom. Unable to come to terms with that shame, her great-grandfather dies. Sold to a slave trader, she becomes a wet-nurse, and later, flees in order to join the monastic order, but they refuse to allow her since she does not have a father, husband, son or master who can grant her permission. Saved by the generous courtesan Devi Ratnapraba, she’s rescued from slavery of one kind, and inducted into slavery of another.
In her new avatar as the dancer Anshumala, her fame is unparalleled. However, she also realises that merely by becoming the mistress of her own body, a woman cannot become the mistress of her destiny. She returns to Sagal on the invitation of her former guru Devi Mallika, but is once again ostracised by caste society. Rudhradhir, the Brahmin who has now taken over the kingdom asks her to be his wife, arguing that a high-born girl can never be the state’s chief courtesan. Divya turns down his offer. Prithusen, now a Bhikku offers to take her into the monastic order, but she refuses to enter it too, and the novel ends in a conventional manner.
This trajectory of a woman’s life is used to explore the social maladies prevalent in India at that time. As a revolutionary freedom fighter, Yashpal subtly and shrewdly argues for the necessity for transcending caste divisions and empowering women. Even though it is envisaged for personal purposes, this urgent yearning for an egalitarian society by one sensual, spirited woman enables Divya to assume a realness which is neither maudlin or superficial. Such a nuanced construction renders the novel eminently readable.
Interview with Leela Samson and review of her book on Rukmini Devi in today’s New Indian Express
PORTRAIT OF A REVOLUTIONARY (Read the official online version here)
Rukmini Devi always stood out: as a child who spoke up against corporal punishment, a large-eyed girl with a long line of admirers, and as somebody who silently defied social conventions. Leela Samson’s biography of the dancer and social activist brings out her radical side as well.
Rukmini’s childhood was shaped by her father who disapproved of crudity and lewdness, a Brahmin attracted to Buddhism, a traditionalist who sympathised with women who suffered from Hindu orthodoxy. He pledged his support to social reform and that led to his association with the Theosophical Society.
Samson revisits this period gracefully in Rukmini Devi: A Life, pointing out not just the highlights of the Society, but also telling the reader about the controversies that the fledging movement had to face on foreign soil. The social activism and intervention of the Theosophists — in diverse ways, such as taking up the cause of labour unions and textile workers or providing education to the depressed classes — is brought out diligently. Likewise, she takes pains to tell in parallel the story of J Krishnamurthy — his indoctrination, involvement and later estrangement from the Theosophists.
Her father’s deep connections with the Theosophical Society led to a love affair and, in a move that shocked traditionalists and scandalised liberals, 16-year-old Rukmini married 41-year-old George Sydney Arundale, an English aristocrat and vital figure among Theosophists. Severely criticised by the newspapers of the day, the storm over such a cross-cultural marriage subsided over time, and Rukmini and Arundale soon went to work for Annie Besant at Adyar.
A European tour shortly thereafter altered their lives irrevocably. At 22, she accompanied her husband to Australia, where he was general secretary of its unit of the Theosophical Society. She travelled with him all over Europe and the United States. Back in India, she was consecrated as Rukmini Devi by Annie Besant.
Her long-term association with Anna Pavlova kindled her interest in dance. In 1932, for the first time, Rukmini watched the Pandanallur sisters perform. She fell in love with it, and she yearned to learn it too.
Refused the tutelage of the dance-doyen Meenakshisundaram Pillai at first, she began learning form from Gowri Ammal, a devadasi who served in the Kapaleshwar temple. Later, convinced of her genuine commitment, Meenakshisundaram came to Chennai to teach Rukmini. She became the first Brahmin woman to learn the Sadir, even as members of her community had signed and circulated a pledge never to witness a Sadir performance and also discourage others from doing so.
Rukmini Devi gave her first public performance in 1935, hardly two years after she had started learning. Two years later, she had established an academy to teach dance with just ‘one tree, one pupil and one teacher’, which is Kalakshetra, one of India’s premier dance-schools.
She was a revolutionary woman: in her first performance at the Natarajar temple in Chidambaram she chose to dance Varugalaamo ayya, a composition identifying with Dalit devotee-martyr Nandanar who was killed in his day for seeking entry into the portals of the same temple.
Samson’s devotion to history ensures that Chennai — with its political climate, cultural heritage and zeal for reform — comes across as another character in Rukmini Devi’s life. She tracks the story of how Rukmini Devi single-handedly strengthened Kalakshetra after a fallout with the Theosophical Society. These anecdotes of how she struggled through the litigation, or how she silently managed cancer, bring out her susceptible, human side.
~~~~
INTERVIEW WITH LEELA SAMSON
You outline hardly half-a-dozen instances of having personally interacted with Rukmini Devi. Why did you push yourself into the shadows? Isn’t it unusual for a biography?
It is an obvious answer for anybody who knew Rukmini Devi. With a personality like her, you are in the shadows. She was a powerful individual, a complete person. There was a sizeable age difference between us; besides, she was a guru and I was a shishya, actually quite low in the hierarchy of shishyas. Writing about a guru is not easy, and when the guru is someone like Rukmini Devi, it becomes very difficult. When you write about a life that encompasses so many things, you really don’t have space for anybody else.
Rukmini Devi was a strong and radical woman; so, how difficult was it for you to also write about her vulnerability?
I think one has to face reality. She had her weak moments. All of us are human, nobody is a saint. She was not a good judge of people and often entrusted the wrong person with the job. On the other hand, for the kind of work she was doing, it was all right to have one or many faults, since the work was so much more important than anything else.
You don’t let the controversies between the Theosophical Society and Rukmini Devi turn into a mudslinging match. What helped you in this concise and eloquent choreography of the text?
I don’t think it was a mudslinging match, but there was a lot of bad blood over it. She wasn’t always right. You could even say she was legally wrong. This was her baby, she created it, she put down every stone — how could anybody come and take it away from her? That was the sentiment that guided her.
There was no guidance on what I chose to reveal, I went by instinct. I am not a confrontationist, but I say what has to be said even if it is not palatable. I spent a lot of time with both sides of the story and I feel that she should have been advised correctly through that. After all, artists are vulnerable.
Rukmini Devi is this true renaissance woman, an activist who took up social concerns that lay outside of dance. As her disciple, and as director of Kalakshetra, what do you think is the role that artists can play in today’s fragmented society?
The problem with being an artist is that you spend so much time correcting form, in becoming that perfect artist who can survive the market and say something with an element of truth. You don’t have time not just for society but also for yourself, for family, for a good marriage. Some people negotiate, but there’s an element of sacrifice. I know many artists who are activists inside. I think an artist can influence hugely. As an artist who has put her career on the backburner and made the institution my priority, I reach out to society. Making connections between all kinds of artists, bringing the sense of beauty of life into the lives of those who work and live on campus, these are things which ensure that art is taken to a larger spectrum.
You lament the fact that Rukmini Devi’s works haven’t been properly archived; what do you feel about the preservation of history?
We don’t have a sense of history in our country. Any other country would have written copious biographies. One of the things I have taken up very seriously is that we have to get the history of the institute and Rukmini Devi documented. We are about to start a museum — the history of Bharatanayam will run concurrently to her life because that century encompassed the struggle and the renaissance leading to the development of the dance form by Rukmini.
Everyone knows Rukmini Devi removed the erotic in her effort to sanitise Bharatanatyam, but you speak of how she worked against narastuti (the deification of individual patrons). Your biography doesn’t quite sing her praises, right?
If I did that, it would belittle her a little. She was very private. She never praised us if we danced well. It was never her way.
Your experience with writing this book?
I would rather do a kutcheri. There, I at least know what I have to do.
His first novel, Tokyo Cancelled (2005), an examination of the forces and experiences of globalization, was billed as a modern-day Canterbury Tales with stories narrated overnight by thirteen passengers held up at an airport. Tokyo Cancelled was short-listed for the 2005 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Dasgupta’s second novel, Solo, was released earlier in 2009. It is an epic tale of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries told from the perspective of a one hundred-year old Bulgarian man.
Meena - All over Solo, we have people trying to preserve the remnants of their culture. How important do you think is the preservation of culture? What about the dangers of such a project—a monolithic Hindutva that seeks to impose itself, or fundamentalist Islam that refuses to respect native traditions?
Rana – In a way, the book deals not so much with the idea of culture, as just the idea of preserving it. There is a difference between the attempts of an individual, to sort of, find out what links their lives, and the attempts of a state or political party to impose a cultural homogeneity on people. The character in my book is in fact suffering at the hands of people in this category. He’s being forced into losing his culture in the name of a big political project. I think the idea of culture is a very difficult one. For instance, it is assumed that we all know what our culture is. Most of us have constructed our culture—it’s fairly complex, it is not necessarily shared with people who live in the same place as us. So, I don’t see culture as a sort of organic and obvious thing. For my character, it is just an aspect of the self. It is how people tell their stories themselves. I was looking at how politics and times completely rips that language apart and deprives individuals of the ability to link various bits of their lives together.
Meena - Tokyo Cancelled was ultramodern, consisting of stories swapped in an international airport. Why do you have to take us to the 19th century in Solo? Is it to tell us that it was a better world?
Rana – Tokyo Cancelled had no historical depth of any sort and was very much in the contemporary moment. We didn’t know the stories of the parents or grandparents of any of the characters. They were just simple situations which didn’t have a past to them. After that I felt that I had to write about history. And I feel that the times we are living in, make sense only through history. I wanted to write a book in which the present is linked to a long past through the life of one character. I think there is some romance in the book about the time in which Ulrich is born. This romance for the 19th century is quite strong in me, for certain kind of incredible creativity in the European bourgeois culture of that time. So, one thing I wanted to do was to write a history against the Anglo-American version of 20th century. The 20th century is shown as the American century, with great progress and meaning and fulfillment, and I wanted to tell the story of people for whom the 20th century was quite meaningless, haphazard and full of pointless political projects that caused them quite a lot of pain. I think we are also used to the idea that the 21st century is a place of great doom and pessimism, but I wanted to find some kind of hope in the present moment. So, the second part of my book, also quite crazy and violent shows characters who are full of immense creativity. My main character ends his contemplation of the future with some kind of hope.
Meena - This is a successful book about a man who has met much failure. Was this a conscious decision?
Rana – I wrote about failure partly because I am surrounded by success stories all the time. I was bored by it. People are kind of obsessed with success in this country. It is never the reality for lots of people. The main pages in a newspaper are only about endless success, but tucked away in the small columns are news of people committing suicide. Writing about failure was also because I wanted to set myself a writing challenge—if you strip away success and events and achievement from a life, when you basically have to narrate one hundred years of duration, it makes you engage with the role of life itself, of what it means to just exist. I found that an interesting project for writing a novel.
Meena - Why did Ulrich have to be so unlucky even in love?
Rana – I think Ulrich survives a hundred years because he never really becomes entangled with anything. As the experience in the middle period of his life shows, your attachments are going to kill you, your attachments to political movements, your attachments to people. Ulrich basically survives because he is incompetent at making attachments. He doesn’t quite believe in himself to make the things work. After he turns blind, this character finds a new lease of life.
Meena – Daydreams are the only redeeming feature of this doomed man’s life. What do you think of old age? And isn’t daydreaming no country for old men?
Rana – To me, Ulrich is some kind of novelist. So, on one level, this novel is an examination of the relationship between what a novelist imagines and writes, and what their life is, and how elements of life become mutated into fiction. The daydreams here are fictions that are too coherent and directed to be daydreams. I think that old age is undervalued. I think it is difficult to grow old with all your faculties intact. Both my books have been interested with what wisdom means in the contemporary world, and wisdom is something that is associated with old age.
Meena – There are echoes of India in the Bulgaria that you have described. Your novel could have been about India instead. Or is it because you would have been criticized if you had penned a honest novel about India?
Rana – There is particular kind of psychological sensitivity in India to ridiculously claim that there is no poverty or violence in the country. Poverty and violence are absolutely legitimate subjects to write about. I still haven’t found a way of writing about this country. It’s a very, very complex place and it’s been written about very much. I would like to write about this country, and if I do, it will probably be non-fiction because I find that the reality of this country is itself complete. One doesn’t have to make it up. The reality is so stark and intense that just reporting on it, as it is, is kind of enough. Also, the last two countries I have lived in have been India and the US. And in a way, I am bored of big countries and their arrogance and their assumption that they are so unique. Both America and India have this very intensely and both are very self-absorbed. So, I wanted to write about a small country that I didn’t know much about.
Meena - There’s so much of reference to gypsies—they seem to be the only truly happy people in the Ulrich’s world.
Rana – Gypsies are interesting because they are the ones who cannot really be categorized. Even the Communists tried to lock the gypsies down and make them factory workers. They always remained somehow outside the social system and when the system crumbles one suddenly realizes that they are running all kinds of businesses and also producing the kind of music that became the anti-state sentiment. So, I suppose that they are fascinating in one respect, they are figures that are not pinned down and one cannot really define who they are: are they criminals, are they heroes. Both my books have figures who cross borders, who are never categorized, who refuse to allow an identity to be given to them from outside. There’s also a long history of romanticizing gypsies which is quite unfair. They have also had a terrible time in Europe—they are mentioned in connection with the Holocaust, they were also gassed along with the Jews.
Oh, I feel so humbled that my poetry does move people!
Nandhini Parthib writes in The New Indian Express (Expresso, 17.12.2009) “Indian poems are vivid, realistic and lyrical with a regional cadence to it, but many of them were trying too hard to appeal to the academic intellect they failed to talk to the aesthetic mind. But then I stumbled upon Meena Kandasamy’s Touch and it blew me away. I have never read anything this beautiful, real or fantastic in a really long time. Her words are so evocative, her language both passionate and earnest and her style and theme so grounded, understandable and at the same time lyrical. Poetry has never moved me this way before so if you want to reintroduce yourself to poetry or you want to start reading Indian poets, then start with Touch.”
And here’s something that I forgot to blog about (written by the same Nandhini Parthib). In this she introduces 10 Fresh faces from Chennai, and even as the list is impressive, I would like you to take a look coz I am there.. : )
Because, no one else in the world will come up such a careless edition of the Guide to Living. Today she had to take an important examination in her life. And here are some wonderful words of wisdom:
- (In response to my amma asking her about how she has prepared for the exam): Well, there was no point studying at the last minute mom, because that is called cramming and I am certainly not sure how nicely that would turn out. I am sure the last days before the exam are meant to be spent in relaxation. (Then my mom comes up with something about how she hasn’t seen my sis studying anything anytime and my sis goes): Mom, what’s the point of reading this stuff days before the exam. I am sure I cannot retain it in my memory for such a long time. So, her mantra of preparing for the exams: don’t study. Cool, except that I never had the guts to even think on these lines.
- Then, she came up with this caveat: Mom, do you think I will finish the exam in time.. By the time I shade my name into that bloody OMR sheet, I would have lost about a quarter hour. Other students get such a headstart compared to me. Don’t blame me for an incomplete answer sheet. You should have thought it through when you named me.
(An edited version of this interview appeared in the Indian Express North American. Sujeet Rajan interviewed me for the weekly. This came out about a month ago, but only today I was suitably lazy to do this job)
You write candidly of love and love-making; leaving windows open to the bedroom sometimes. If it is autobiographical, how difficult is it to tabulate emotions of love and love-making through poetry?
I am not sure it is always the bedroom window I leave open, for love, after all, happens everywhere. And again, I am going to keep the suspense and not own up or disown the possibility of my poems being autobiographical! I think poetry is best equipped to enclose some emotions and exhibit others, because writing of love/ love-making in prose would simply call for too many excruciating details, and in the most cautious of cases, it would require a great deal of aesthetic and choreography to get the damn scene right. And only rarely can such elaborate construction capture spontaneity, which is what love is all about.
From an artistic medium, what is best to express love: the written word, the spoken word, brush on the canvas, silence? Why?
I have done everything but paint. And well, you have left out something which I see as central to love: movement. As in dance, as in theater, and also as in all of language.
3. Is anything taboo for you to write about?
No. Except of course if someone asked me to write a poem of praise, that tends to make me nasty. 
5. You were displaced from home, from Chennai, for more than three months, having been invited to a writing residence program in Iowa. What has been the experience like?
I loved the time I spent in Iowa, and I also got to travel widely across the USA. The best part of the program was getting to meet these fabulous writers from other countries. The next best was the University library and the second-hand bookstores. My novel is about the Kilvenmani massacre, and surprisingly I completed most of the research while I was here, in a foreign nation. And lastly, I did write like crazy. I wrote the 50-odd poems that go into my second collection of poetry (Six Hours of Chastity).
6. How has the West influenced your writing during these last three months?
Nothing radical happened. And the subtle changes, if any, will have to be picked out by scholars or theorists, and even in that case, one never knows how accurate it is! I am always in a state of flux, so I do believe that coming here, and being footloose and fancy-free, would have changed me in some ways, and which would change the poetry in a sense.
7. If you were to write a poem based on the experience of your last three months, what would you write about?
I am too involved with the experience to verbalize it right away. There will be a diary at some point, and trust me, there will be love poems too.
8. You are an intrinsic part of the Dalit movement; an indelible, vociferous voice for the underprivileged in India. How do you reconcile yourself to a situation where you yourself live in a metropolitan city which is removed from the caste predicament for the most part, and now are in a developed world which has only academic interest in the problem?
I don’t think the Dalit movement is a rural movement, or that untouchability/ casteism does not exist in cities. The migration to the city does erase some identities even as it allows the scope for anonymity, but the Dalit remains a Dalit for the most part. The metropolitan cities are better suited for the Dalit movement’s growth and establishment because they allow for the Dalits to carry out democratic/ public agitations/ demonstrations without fear of a backlash, of being targetted and done-to-death and crushed by oppressor castes whose violent diktat operates much more freely in the villages. Coming to the second part of your question, yes, the developed world only has a superficial interest in these issues, which is quite disappointing. However, the struggle against caste should be waged only by those who have suffered because of it, and it should be supported by those who don’t believe in discrimination. I guess here the curiousity of the West could help since it actually brings things to the world’s attention. There’s another way of looking at it: the militant and political Dalit struggle (or even literature) has hardly been effectively theorized, or documented, so the academic interest emanating from this is certainly beneficial.
9. You write, commiserate with Tamils in Sri Lanka; is it emotional baggage for you now that crisis in Sri Lanka is no longer in the news with the Tamil Tigers gone?
The Sri Lanka crisis is now in the news in a way in which it has never been before. The US State Department’s report of what happened earlier this year in the war zone in which tens of thousands of Tamils were mercilessly bombed to death by the SL Govt., the Tamil Diaspora re-mandating their right to a homeland in the North-east, people all over the world being concerned about the three hundred thousand Tamils caught in concentration camps, Sri Lanka being the second-most unsafe country for journalists all over the world–these are issues of prime importance, irrespective of whether the media in the US, or India decides to highlight it or not. I take up a cause because I am involved with it, or I empathize for it, and not on the basis of the amount of media spotlight that it accrues. I guess the Tamil issue will always be an emotional baggage until we receive the right to a life of safety and security and self-determination. I trust that now is the time for humanitarian people all over the world to actually support the Tamil cause because things have never been worse.
10. Race, religion and caste come to play the most when elections are around the corner. In that respect the United States might not be much different from India. Emancipation apart, what needs to be done in India to remove barriers for equalization?
Yes, what you describe is the typical vote-bank scenario. I believe that equalization can come about only when the oppressors also decide that it is time for them to change, it is time for them to mend their ways. There is a possibility that such a change can come about through self-directed/ self-initiated efforts, but there are not enough pointers from history which lets us reinforce this belief. Those who seek to maintain the status quo, those who work against equalization and democratization, are known to change only when their own power is questioned and challenged. So, much of the responsibility for bringing about change lies in the hands of the oppressed people, since they have to continue their resilient struggle against oppression. If they resist the subjugation successfully, and if they manage to break out of it, then equalization will come about. It can never be beyond reach. What needs to be done in India is to encourage the freedom of the press, to bring out more stories of victimization and resistance to light, and to empower women without resorting to any cultural dogma. Anyone can observe that all systems of oppression ideally go hand-in-hand, so none of us can be free until all of us are free. For instance, I would like the feminist movement in India to really take up the ideology of annihilating the caste system not just because it is discriminatory and inhuman, but also because it is based on the control of a women’s sexuality (in order to keep the caste pedigree pure).
11. Do you agree with the quota system for the backward classes in government and educational institutions in India?
It is not for anyone to agree/disagree with the quota system, what people need to concentrate on is to ensure that all sections of society achieve real growth, and that no one is left behind and marginalized. I think the decision to extend the quota system for the backward classes (here i make a distinction from the Dalits) was taken because of their abysmal presence in both state-run educational and employment enterprises. We have to become a more tolerance and more inclusive society, and affirmative action is just one way of getting there.
12. Kamala Das backed your poetry; wrote a foreword to your debut collection of poems. Why does that mean so much to you? What do you like most about her poetry?
What Kamala Das said about my poetry meant so much to me because she is a woman who calls a spade a spade, she’s forthright and outspoken and doesn’t say things that she doesn’t mean. So, when such an authentic and genuine (not to mention accomplished and fiery) poet like her encourages your work, you just gain confidence in yourself, and you channel more efforts towards writing more, representing people more. I love her poetry, because she broke the barriers against Indian woman writing on troublesome/ taboo topics; at the core of everything, she was truth-seeking. Personally, I also adore her flamboyance, her fire.
13. How do you reconcile poetry with reality? Does imagination triumph?
My poetry is rooted in my reality: the reality of the Dalits fighting against caste-atrocities and violence of the oppressive forces who want to subjugate them, the reality of women who still have to fight to assert their equality and their rights, the reality of Tamils who have to express themselves in spite of the worst kind of threat to the freedom of expression, who have to struggle against systematic genocide in their own homeland. My poetry is a product of all my multiple, coexisting realities–right now, I don’t think I outsource my poetry to imagination.
(First published in The New Indian Express, 02 August 2009.)
Sam is poor, Sinhalese, and a servant in the Master’s River House. His only best friend is the owners’ dog Brutus. Sam is someone who can never figure out what a problem is, someone who doesn’t know why people cry. He has never learnt anything, not even how to write his name. He is a village idiot who doesn’t know what breasts are, but then, surprisingly, he knows about the Tamil militants.
Employing the first person narrative throughout the text, Sam’s Story succeeds in its attempt to imitate the raw, sparse prose style of Hemingway — the stark simplicity blends with the irreverence and dumbness of the protagonist, and the sudden shifts of action make for an aesthetic reading experience. But the story-telling embeds a clear-cut political agenda and is nowhere as remarkable as the superficially successful prose-style.
Sam’s Story, first published in 2001, painstakingly avoids even a single oblique reference to Tamil suffering on the island. Perhaps, it is left for us to infer that just as the stupid Sam is incapable of looking at reality, even to the minimum extent of noticing that Tamils are being discriminated against, people too refuse to accept that linguistic and racial chauvinism have wrought a climate of hatred on the island.
Most of the novel is a successful study in hate: the narrator prefixes everything about the Tamil language, people or culture with the word “stupid” and goes little beyond depicting Tamil people as those “who threw bombs and killed our soldiers and tried to divide our country”.
After more than 100 pages of a monotonous rant, we are privy to the picture on the other side, of how the Sri Lankan military is also a convoluted place to be. Perhaps, this is one way of striking a balance and attempting neutrality, although the damage is already done; no amount of salvaging can help the text.
The depiction of the brutalities of army life begin when Sam talks of his brother Jaya who’s killed-in-action, and his brother Madiya who deserts the armed forces. From this point forward, the book changes vastly in tone and treatment. Madiya, in his brief stopover at his home (after his desertion, and before going into hiding) explains the poverty draft and the meaninglessness of the war.
Against this backdrop, Jayawardene explores how poor people, bereft of all opportunities, send their children to war; and how they make do without food and medicine whereas a rich man’s dog gets immediate access to the best doctors and a stream of visitors inquiring about its health. He writes of this divided world where the political ‘punishment’ for a Sinhalase man campaigning for the Other Party involves being transferred to teach at a faraway Tamil school.
Sam’s lives his life in a climate of mutual hatred, and he instinctively distrusts the Tamil servants at River House. While Sam tolerates the housekeeper Janet, he resents the cook Leandro, who, with his talk of Eelam, divides the world into easy binaries — the people who are willing to kill (The Army) and the people who were willing to die (The Tigers).
Sam’s suspicion of Tamils extends to everybody: he thinks Velu, a servant in a nearby bungalow is a spy; and he doesn’t appreciate that Master’s son has found himself a Tamil girlfriend. The fatal climax, replete with a truck-bomb driving into a national bank, throws them all apart, and widens the rift to such an extent that any coming together seems fraught with impossibility.
Back from SFO, but I am not going to write anything here.. If I verbalize things too soon, I just guess it could end up being superficial… So, will instead just share two links (one is an interview, the other is a panel paper I read in Iowa)..
- This interview (by Dr.Ujjwal Jana appeared in Post-colonial Text. Feels like an impossible dream come true.. it’s a very, very prestigious place to be in.. and even more, this is my best (and most extensive) interview to date in which I address a lot of issues which are really, really important to me.. Pls. chk it out here.
- And this is the panel paper that I read at the Iowa City Public library. It’s called the woman with too many names… and deals with the many ways in which I relate to my name.. Haven’t done any personal writing in a long, long, long while…
More later… I am much more active on FB, so if you are curious, you know where to look.
- http://iwp.uiowa.edu/news/event-docs/2009/KANDASAMY_Meena_ICPL_name.pdf
This monday I got back from a helluva weekend at Pittsburgh (I was in about six events crammed into two and a half days) and I kept eating as if I was eating for a whole family. Like once every two hours. Here, in Iowa City, I starve most of the time. But compared to my Indian standards, I am doing great where the consumption of food is concerned. I guess seeing all the gleefully chubby Americans has done wonders to my body image. More on that bit later…
So what I did at Pittsburgh? Since I am not yet into a serious diary writing this blog should bear the brunt of my sudden confessional mode/mood. I read at Seton Hill on Thursday night (and on opening football night, we still managed to have a sizable audience), then on Friday afternoon I read to a very receptive, interactive, appreciative audience at the Duquesne university, and we rehearsed for the City of Asylum Jazz Poetry Concert with these big-names that made me faint at first. Imagine Geri Allen, Oliver Lake, Reggie Workman and Andrew Cryille… And there were big-name poets too: Khet Mar (Burma), Irakli Kakabadze (Georgian, very, very charming), Sohail Najm and Milos Djurjdjevic (Iran and Croatia and from the IWP, Iowa).. And then the concert happened, and although I was in such great company, I did manage to make a name for myself… Look for my space under the stars in this article in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette..
This was the poem that I read, and it is not about the Tamils, but about the fate of inter-caste lovers who are sometimes done to death..
The other was a love poem by Pakistani filmmaker Azeem Sajjad–and I read in both in Urdu (which is so musical) and in English.
What else? I was also part of a panel discussion on censorship and media freedom and I spoke about it in the context of women poets, as well as the trouble Tamil/ pro-Tamil journalists have been facing in Sri Lanka. That’s enough for now, will keep you posted when the interview is officially published.
Today, I finished writing a panel paper on naming–doing a personal take on my own names. Will post that online too, once I finish reading it tomorrow. Why did I ever start this post? Well, friends in the US (never knew so many guys from here knew me) have been asking me to join them for a cup of coffee. If only I could do that and more. But this excitement can be contained if I will reveal a rough version of my schedule and let’s see how it goes. If I am in your place and you are free and I am free, I am all yours. Really.
Here are the out of city things:
29 September to 3 October: San Francisco
5 November to 7 November: Chicago
11 November to 12 November: Washington D.C
13 November to 17 November: New York City
I am also thinking of making it to Michigan/ Colombia, so once again drop me a line, or wait for updates here. More later. And if you know me, and I haven’t written to you in a long, long while, don’t get mad at me. It is really not personal, and just that I am as inefficient as ever in managing my time especially when it comes to email, orkut and FB.
saying the Pledge of Allegiance some day, you can be sure that it is because of the libraries here (at least the University of Iowa’s Main Library). I am allowed to check out 500 books. At once.
Can it get any better? At all? God, I so love this place, this arrangement.
I know, I know, I haven’t come this side in two months nearly….
And far worse, as if hiding away from the blog was not enough, I have not even replied many of your email messages properly.. I am trying hard to get through the email… so bear with me… If all goes well, all unreplied mails for the last month will get replied by tomorrow… So, what’s happening to me? Nothing that anyone will believe, but then, where women are concerned, the unexpected always happens (it’s wilde, not me, fyi)..
- my Ph.D. is 90% done.. what’s not yet done is the final draft and the submission… It took a long time writing it, and now it is around 70000 words, and it is lovelier than I imagined..I fell ill in the middle of it (who wouldn’t if they spent all their nights writing the thesis, and all the days going to the university and handling a day job as well)… so.. why did I not push myself and submit the thesis? I am not around at the University, and I don’t want to be worrying about it when I am there… When I get back, I officially get it bound and signed and submit it..
- I am right now part of the University of Iowa’s prestigious International Writing Program.. Which means for the next three months, I will be a writer-in-residence at the University.. It is beyond my wildest dreams, so I am just thankful and happy this happened. I am reading at Pittsburgh, Iowa, Chicago, New York, Washington D.C. and couple of other cities as well, and all those details will be uploaded on this blog shortly. I came here on August 29th, and I am just settling in. Then again, there’s so much to write about since this is the first time I am alone, and on m own, but then that’s all for another day. Right now, I just want to concentrate on my work. Which is pretty difficult because the thesis still haunts me. I hope the hangover goes away fast. I am reading this Sunday, 4p.m. at the Prairie Lights Bookstore, and guess, after one reading, I might miraculously become more confident that I can write when I am here… More on all this later…
- What am I doing when I am here? When I am not giving readings and participating in panels that is? I am working on my novel, and my second collection of poetry, and wallowing in individuality.
