Review of Yashpal’s Divya in today’s New Indian Express

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.

Another Interview

(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.

Two poems, and one review

For once, I will let my words do the talking

• Two of my poems (Straight Talk and Mrs.Sunshine)
• A review of Touch by Professor Jaydeep Sarangi

have appeared in MASCARA LITERARY REVIEW that’s published from Australia and edited by Boey Kim Cheng, Michelle Cahill and Adam Aitken.

Please stop over and read the review by Prof.Sarangi. It’s really the way I would love my poetry to be approached.(I can go on and on and on about the stuff I like in there, but then, I am not in a mood for spoilers)

Apart from the happiness of such a beautiful, beautiful review, I am also moved by the company that I find myself in. I have studied Keki Daruwallah’s poetry and short-stories at school. God! He is the *canon*. I can still reel off lines from his story, Love across the Salt Desert. I can smell the rainstorm building in the last lines of that short-story. And now, my poems appear alongside his, and I don’t know what to make of it, how to react really. And Michelle told me that he liked the review. I nearly swooned.

Sukrita Paul Kumar is another writer I am in awe of. She works among the homeless, and writes about a host of social issues through poetry. I always admire that.

Or take Geoff Page for instance. Last year, in August he was in Chennai. At the University of Madras, and I translated ten of his poems into English. And this year, I find my name beside his, but in a wholly different context. I don’t know whom to thank for all this happening to me. But thank you to the whole universe in that case. Things can never get any lovelier. I return to poetry like the way in which people return to an old lover, seeking the shoulder to cry on. This time, the sobbing shoulder has given me reasons to smile.

In Conversation With Rana Dasgupta

(First published in i.witness, The New Sunday Express on 26 April 2009. And I, as usual, was too caught up with too many things.. so I could not put it up.)

With an iron-fist-in-velvet-glove approach, Rana Dasgupta’s Solo is about people who had to live through painful and pointless political projects, says Meena Kandasamy. This place is chaotic,” Rana Dasgupta complains even before we settle down to talk about his latest novel, Solo. At Chennai’s Landmark bookstore, where his publishers have spared him for half an hour, little children run around us, and some staff are sweeping the bookstore. His observation is sharp, but cloaked in that soft voice, it could be mistaken for a compliment.

This iron-fist-in-velvet-glove approach pervades his writing. That is why, even though preservation of culture is an overarching theme in Solo, its dangers are accorded greater importance. “There is a difference between the attempts of an individual to find out what links their lives, and the attempts of a state or political party to impose a cultural homogeneity on people,” he says. “The protagonist in my book is in fact suffering at the hands of people in this category, and he’s forced into losing his culture in the name of a big political project.”

Speaking of “corrective history”, Dasgupta says 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, the 100-year-old Ulrich.”

In that sense, Solo is essentially an alternative history of what is called the Anglo-American century. “The 20th century is shown as the American century, but 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.” Is that why the protagonist Ulrich takes shelter in daydreams, the only redeeming feature of his life? “No, to me Ulrich is like a novelist. On one level, Solo is an examination of how elements of life become mutated into fiction.”

I wonder why Solo was not set in India, given that Dasgupta has told a universal story. “Are you worried that a honest novel about India would face too much criticism?” I ask He pins down the emergence of such criticism to a “particular kind of psychological sensitivity in India that ridiculously claims that there is no poverty or violence in the country.”

That leads to the inevitable question, whether he will write a novel set in India. Dasgupta says he is keen to do so, but it will be non-fiction since the reality of this country is complete in itself. “The reality is so stark and intense that just reporting on it, as it is, is enough.”

He points out that he wrote about Bulgaria in Solo because he was bored with big countries that were full of arrogance and self-importance.

Likewise, he wrote about a doomed man’s life because he was bored by the success stories that surrounded him.

Now I understand why he writes about people outside the social system, such as the gypsies. He says he finds them fascinating since they refuse to allow an “identity” to be given to them from outside.

“I am like that,” he admits, “I refuse to be categorised.”

Review of Solo (Rana Dasgupta)

Publisher: HarperCollins India
Price: Rs.395
Pages: 357

In his critically acclaimed second novel that is dominating best-seller lists, Rana Dasgupta tells the story of a 100-year-old man who does not want the end of his life to be a mindless, meaningless falling-off.  Inspired and shaken by a newspaper report about the traumatic death of parrots who had preserved the lost tongue of a population that was wiped away, Ulrich decides to share his story, or at least the sections that he can still recollect. 

The conventional first movement of the novel, Life, set in the Bulgarian capital Sofia, starts in 1901 and gives the story of Ulrich, his parents, his passions, his friends, his professional and personal relationships and how he loses everything. His engineer father dies of humiliation, but not before he cripples the musical aspirations of his young son. The family’s failing fortunes snatch away the remotest possibility of Ulrich completing his education from the University of Berlin. His best-friend Boris is arrested on charges of sedition and executed for his communist beliefs. Ulrich marries Boris’ sister Magdalena and they give birth to a son, she however deserts him because he is unable to provide her with a suitable standard of living. His intellectual mother, Elizavita, is sent to a concentration camp. Post-retirement, he loses his eyesight trying to open a bottle of sulphuric acid in his shabby home laboratory.  

Though Ulrich isn’t the agent of much action—he’s a bookkeeper, who later works in a chemical factory—he is caught up in the big changes that are happening around him. The history of conflict-ridden Bulgaria besieged by war and communism, the social upheaval and uprisings, are presented in parallel through an ordinary person’s point of view. The novel traces the fall of the Ottoman empire, the Communists’ successful resistance of Fascist forces in 1944, and 45 years later, the fall of Communism. Such turbulent and tumultuous changes ruin Bulgaria—misguided Communists erase much of its heritage and the state-enforced prohibition of music drives it underground. Dasgupta also chronicles the environmental consequences of transforming Bulgaria into the chemical factory of Europe. This age of atrocity is followed by another, that of gangster-style capitalism, and as always, people invested with authority demonstrate the destructive side of their power. 

The panoramic, provocative first Movement, Life (with chapters named after chemical elements) is followed by the magic-realist second, Daydreams (that has chapters named after sea-creatures). Liberated from the constraints of history and geography in the astonishing and vibrant second half of the novel, Ulrich re-imagines the relics from his past and escapes his mundane existence through his daydreams where he is absolutely, incredibly free. 

Personalities like Kakha Sabedaze, who are only mentioned in passing in the first half of the book, are offered a much larger landscape to operate upon. This typical gangster-entrepreneur is glamorized by his arm-candy Khatuna, a pulp-fiction heroine who has the dare and drive to chase her dreams making adept use of any number of people in the process.  

Boris in his modern-day avatar, grows up in an abandoned town with only his grandmother for company, is discovered by a producer named Plastic, enraptures audiences around the world, signs deals with Universal, makes endless music and leads a jet-setting life as a global celebrity. Daydreams afford Ulrich the uncharacteristic boldness to dream up his lost son as Irakli, a perceptive poet and the muse of Boris. 

Ulrich, who has nothing to give away but failure, finds solace in the fact that all success stories—and here, he cites Albert Einstein who abandoned wife Mileva, his daughter and his schizophrenic son —are surrounded by failures. 

Surprisingly, the challenge of ambiguity between the surreal and the real engrosses the reader’s attention and one takes on the task of identifying the ingenious parallels between the 20th and 21st century versions: the burning violin, parrots who pull out their own feathers in trauma, people who take pride in their royal lineage, asphyxiation from carbon dioxide poisoning, the death of pets, the unrestrained Gypsy music, an Australia-shaped stain and so many more.  The novel’s eclectic mix of music and misery is fatally addictive. Solo , one of the most-energetic magic-realist novels that we have seen in recent times, should be definitely read not just for the brilliant story-telling, but also for the universal truths that it reflects and reiterates.

Interview with Vasugi V. Ganeshananthan

Vasugi (popularly, V.V.Ganeshananthan was in Chennai recently to promote her first novel, Love Marriage. I interviewed her on one of my most maddening days (don’t even ask me to elaborate). And this was the first time I was actually interviewing someone in my age-group (that can be quite unsettling: you have so much of respect for their work, but the desire to be a fan is at war with your desire to be a friend, so you end up being neither), so I am not sure how this interview has actually turned out.

This interview appeared in today’s The New Indian Express, i.witness. (I was unable to find a link on the Indian Express homepage. However do check up the e-paper if you want to be doubly sure of this!) Do read the novel, it’s lovely. The review might be carried here in a few more days. Sometimes, I feel this review should be read alongside the interview, just so that things are in context, and everything makes greater sense. 

The average writer shies away from politics. What made you choose such a political theme like war to tell a family’s story?

People’s personal lives are affected by politics in any country, and at any time. I was aiming for a certain level of realism, and people’s personal lives don’t exist in a vacuum removed from politics or the news. 

Why do so many varieties of marriage populate the book?

I have written about marriage partly as a metaphor for choice. A marriage can involve two people—or a person and an idea, or a person and a community, etc. Here, the range of marriages shows the range of choices. 

I was lured by the fragmented narratives, by chapters that are, sometimes, three sentences long. Why did you choose this literary technique?

No one learns the story of their family in strict chronological order. People learn about their families in fragments, in bits and pieces. The currency of the family story is the anecdote. 

Tamils in Sri Lanka often despair that the roots of the war lie in the cultural genocide that is being carried out against them. Is this one of the reasons why culture is accorded such a place of prominence in Love Marriage?

I never sat down and made a conscious decision about culture’s role in the story . The story is about what is important to the people within it. I was just thinking about them. That said, Yalini is certainly interested in exploring her family’s history and its meaning to her. 

Do you think you would have given your novel a much different ending if you had written it in these turbulent times?

I am sure I would have. I started writing the book before the tsunami, before 9/11. I didn’t put those bits in until much later. Even the militant uncle didn’t figure in the first draft of the novel. But the characters ended up being affected by the world around them, which makes sense. 

As a responsible journalist, who’s once been the Vice President of South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA), how do you think the global media views the Sri Lankan ethnic crisis?

I hesitate to identify the global media as some sort of collective, and to make generalisations about it. That said, right now, there is a lot more media coverage on the conflict than earlier, and hopefully that is helpful. Of course, it is also hard to get information in these difficult circumstances. I’d like to see more American news organisations putting resources into covering international news, but unfortunately , in this economy , many media organisations have been forced to cut back. It’s a critical time for this kind of coverage.

Signs of friction and fissures: A review of “Cutting for Stone”

 

Cutting for Stone
By Abraham Verghese
Publisher: Random House
Pages: 541
Price: Rs 595.

Marion Stone, son of Sister Mary Joseph, an Indian nurse-nun and Thomas Stone, a British surgeon tells the story of his life for the sake of his conjoined twin brother Shiva. Born in Missing Hospital in Addis Ababa where his parents worked, Marion and his twin come into this world as abandoned children: their mother died in childbirth, their father vanished without a trace. Brought up by two of the hospital’s doctors Hema and Ghosh (who eventually marry), the twins share a special bond with each other.

But growing up involves growing apart, and soon their relationship experiences the first signs of friction and fissures. A love triangle involving their childhood sweetheart Genet, and Shiva’s betrayal of Marion changes their lives forever. Genet is punished by having her clitoris cut off and her mother Rosina commits suicide soon after. Marion’s foster-mother Hema holds him responsible for the tragic course of events, and he refuses to even defend himself.

In the midst of family melodrama, Verghese has portrayed how the social context of Ethiopia on the brink of a revolution affects the life of every character. Whether it is Marion’s harrowing experience with a man from the army, or Ghosh’s imprisonment, the skill of story-telling shines through. Genet’s proximity with Eritrean liberation fighters gets her involved in the hijack of an Ethiopian Airlines plane. As her close friend, Marion finds himself in the middle of a muddle not of his own making, and is left with no other option but to flee Ethiopia. Normalcy continues to elude this novel; Marion, as the intern in an understaffed Bronx hospital, gets to meet Thomas Stone, his biological father. He demands details of the letter that Sister Mary Joseph wrote to him on her dying day, but his father is as unaware of its existence as he is. Disappointed, he seeks out Genet (who has also sought refuge in America) and fulfils his promise of “losing his virginity” to her. In return he is infected by the deadly hepatitis virus. On the verge of death, his life depends on the generosity of two people whom he reviles the most: his twin-brother and his father. An astonishing climax is played out at the end of this epic saga. In terms of themes, Cutting for Stone shares a great deal with John Irving’s novels: a main character searching out an absent parent, severing and amputation of body parts, deadly accidents, prostitutes with STDs, and sexual relationships between young men and older women.

Though they lend a peculiar charm and impart wisdom, the many lengthy digressions hinder the narrative flow. One can also harbour valid objections to the representation of almost all African women as easily “available”. In this novel, such generalisation perpetuates an oppressive stereotype. Despite these limitations, this novel about suffering and healing, love and redemption succeeds in leaving an indelible impression.

Review of Indrajit Hazra’s novel The Bioscope Man

The Bioscope Man
By Indrajit Hazra
Publisher: Penguin
Pages: 308, Price: Rs 299

“The absence of parents is the first precondition for freedom,” Milan Kundera wrote in Life is Elsewhere. For Abani Chatterjee, born in the same year as the motion pictures, freedom arrives pretty early and pushes him on the road to fame. A mishap during a train journey turns his father into a hateful, broken man. To escape the tyranny of tending to her always inebriated husband, Abani’s mother Shabitri hoodwinks reality and starts faking a coma. As his father fades away and his self-willed mother enters a vegetative state, Abani starts living life on his own reckless terms.

As a teenager, he continues to urinate from the window and dig his nose in public. When he learns that he has been forced to drop out of school because of his father’s alleged nationalist credentials, he turns as stealthy as a house-cat and keeps slipping out of the Chatterjee household to discover Calcutta on his own. With the help of his enterprising uncle Shombunath Lahiri, he enters the world of moving pictures. And in the process enjoys a quick climb to the pinnacle of glory: boy caught pasting posters one moment, publicly adored poster-boy the next.

He starts as a projectionist’s assistant at the Alochhaya Theatre, graduates into being a prompter, and by a lucky twist of fate ends up playing the title-character of Prahalad Parameshwar. He subsequently essays the roles of Othello, Ram, Parasuram and Shivaji, and his silent movies lead to resounding success. He starts getting recognised in street corners and quaint cafes, and is nothing short of being a star.

Hazra successfully experiments with technique, so we find three interludes interspersing the narrative like the titles of the silent films: the stylised stories of Prahalad, Anandhamath and the Black Hole of Calcutta. These bioscopes starring Abani are instant hits with the masses because of their daring portrayal of intimacy and undercurrents of nationalist chic. Yet, he views freedom fighters as “criminals with ambition” and maintains his nonchalance towards nationalism even as various upheavals rock the subcontinent.

Here, brown men (teeming with Bengali pride) share a love-hate relationship with mems: Abani chooses corrosive satire to attack the shape-shifting Annie Besant, though he initially finds her “American” and desirable; Shombu Mama is infatuated with bioscope diva Faith Cooper; and Abani labours under the weight of his undeclared, one-sided love for his onscreen sweetheart Felicia Miller.

On hearing the news of Felicia being shipped to Australia by her disapproving father, Abani enters a trajectory towards ruin when he mistakenly enters a ladies’ restroom. The man with the “bioscope in his bones” falls from grace and spends a decade playing minor roles.

One day, out of the blue, he gets a call to work in an international production. He meets German director Fritz Lang, the man with the monocle, who is planning to do an “India film” on Sir William Jones, the Orientalist. Following a visit to Kalighat, Abani manages to convince Lang to do a film on Jones’ Sanskrit tutor Ramlochan Sharma instead.

He hopes that this bioscope will push him back into the waters to which he once belonged. What follows is a distinctively sad story about the longing for fame.

Hazra’s third novel is about every elemental idea that makes us melt: love and languages transgressing boundaries; films and the freedom struggle defining our identities. The inventive narration enables one to savour the teasing, tongue-in-cheek novel where no character can really resist fate.

For a work of fiction with the central theme of pretence and deception, The Bioscope Man is not only enchanting, but also remarkably authentic.

Published in the New Indian Express on Sunday

And if you find time, pls. read Hazra’s interview to Ipsit Mohapatra in the same issue here

My review of Advani’s biography

(This review of LK Advani’s My Country, My Life appeared in today’s The New Sunday Express)

A SHORT CUT TO THE BALLOT BOX

Those who claim that Advani’s biography is a calculated effort to shed his Hindu hardliner image haven’t read his 986-page book. He maintains that the Babri Masjid demolition is synonymous with Hindu awakening and the Ram Rath Yatra is the  “most transformational event of his political journey”. He labels December 6, 1992, “the saddest day of his life,” yet rejoices that no Indian politician has vowed to reconstruct the demolished structure. Likewise, his sympathy lies with Narendra Modi whom he feels is a ‘victim’ of villification. He pins down the state-sponsored carnage against Muslims to they-asked-for-it provocations and dismisses all accusations of genocide. This isn’t surprising, given that his first lesson in secularism, at the ripe old age of 21, was “not all Muslims are disloyal to India.”

To appreciate the book one should suspend judgment and memory, and offer ourselves the consolation that its intended audience is the ballot box. He rakes up the oh-so-emotive issue of Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origins, condemns cross border terrorism, beams with pride about our nuclear weapons arsenal and Kargil. He is honest when he admits that the India Shining campaign proved to be distastrous, and courageous when he stands up for Jinnah’s secular credentials. Advani is an Emergency-produced hero, so the sections targeting the dynastic leadership and flawed foreign policies of the Congress have an authenticity lacking in the rest of the biography.

This book shows Hindutva’s efforts to appropriate Dr. Ambedkar—the fiery leader who authored Riddles of Hinduism—and reduce him to a poster boy of the Sangh Parivar; so Advani (with all eyes on the Dalit votebank) quotes him to drive home a point against the Partition, to describe Ghazni’s raids on the Somnath temple, and to conveniently indicate that Dr.Ambedkar’s didn’t convert to Islam or Christianity because it “meant going away from the cultural soil of India.”

This biography has a multipersonality disorder, so it often assumes the role of a breathless catalogue of important names. Sometimes, it reads like a manifesto for the forthcoming elections. For a man waiting for the people’s mandate to become Prime Minister, the epilogue sadly doesn’t throw up his vision for the nation. It paints the picture of an eighty-year-old man finding directions for the future from Sri Aurobindo and Swami Vivekananda.

Read this book. It is lavish with words and economic with truth, so remember to read the newspapers too where you will find the rebuttals. Dr  Farooq Abdullah has disagreed that he traded power for Kashmir’s autonomy, Robert Blackwill has said he was at Harvard during the IC814 hijack rubbishing Advani’s claims of having called him. It isn’t free of gaffes either: It is not just the reference to a living Amritsar-based CPI leader as the late Satyapal Dang. Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were awarded capital punishment for killing J.P.Saunders, but the book tells us that it was because they bombed Delhi Assembly.

The monotonous narrative, devoid of the distancing that makes political biographies work, ensures that at end of the exercise the Loh Purush (Iron Man) has rusted away.

Official link here