Amitava Ghosh on the “tamasha” literary festivals

A frequently heard argument in favour of book festivals is that they provide a venue for writers to meet the reading public. Although appealing, this argument is based on a flawed premise in that it assumes that attendance is equivalent to approbation.

This, however, according to Ghosh, is not really worth it.

Through the last century, the relationship between readers and writers was largely impersonal. The reader related in the first instance to a book, not to its writer; and writers, for their part, did not confront their audience directly in the manner of musicians, singers, actors and so on. This was, I think, one of the reasons why writers were able to take greater risks in hurling defiance at society at large.

The situation has changed dramatically in recent years. The internet, as I have good reason to know, has made it possible to subject writers to great pressure through mass-mailing campaigns. Face-to-face encounters add yet another dimension to this: to be called upon constantly to provide answers is inevitably to become answerable. If this process continues unchecked, its impact on the freedom of thought and expression may be greater than any explicit policy of repression.

The old, impersonal relationship was, in other words, also a form of protection, a first line of defence, not merely within public spaces but also within the writer’s own head.

Makes sense.

Despite the deployment of enormous resources neither Denmark nor Holland were able to prevent attacks upon artists under threat; in the US a woman who put up a website that was offensive to a religious group was quickly forced to go underground. These countries are heavily and efficiently policed: what are the chances that a country like India would be able to provide effective protection?

Whether the threats to the Jaipur festival were invented or real I am in no position to judge. But one has only to open a newspaper to know that certain situations in India are inherently combustible. What then would it have taken to ensure order in Jaipur and Kolkata? One battalion? Two? Or should festivals now invest in creating private security forces in the manner of mining companies? And what would this say about the relationship between writers and the public?

Such a Long Journey and India

Why Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey is a must-read for the Mumbaikar (and indeed for anyone interested in post independence Indian history)

On eating beef

And a time also arrived when Gustad himself shopped no more at Crawford Market, settling instead for whatever stringy bits of goat, cow or buffalo that the door-to-door goaswalla of Khodadad Building brought. By this time, he had lost touch with Malcolm and was spared embarrassing explanations about the tenuous, tangled connection between his desertion of Crawford Market and the sadhus’ nationwide protest against cow slaughter. It was easier to remain the silent, unknown apostate of beef.

On the subject of beef and cow slaughter, in case you haven’t read it till now, here’s Vikram Doctor’s fantastic piece.

On the Marathi Manoos agitation of the 60s and 70s

One day I had to take the train around eleven o’clock. You ever did that?

You know I never take the train

It’s the time of the dabbawallas. They are supposed to use only the luggage van, but some got in the passenger compartments. Jam-packed, and what a smell of sweat. Toba, toba! I began to feel something wet on my shirt. And guess what it was. A dabbawalla. Standing over me, holding the railing. It was falling from his naked armpit: tapuck-tapuck-tapuck, his sweat. I said nicely, “Please move a little, my shirt is wetting, meherbani.” But no kothaa, as if I was not there. Then my brain really went, I shouted, “You! Are you animal or human, look what you are doing!” I got up to show him the shirt and guess what he did. Just take a guess.

What?

Just turned and slipped into my seat! Insult to injury! What to do with such low class people? No manners, no sense, nothing. And you know who is responsible for this attitude – that bastard Shiv Sena leader who worships Hitler and Mussolini. He and his “Maharashtra for Maharashtrians” nonsense. They won’t stop till they have complete Maratha Raj.

…

Wait till the Marathas take over, then we will have real Gandoo Raj

On Nehru

But everyone knew that the war with China froze Jawaharlal Nehru’s heart, then broke it. He never recovered from what he perceived to be Chou-en Lai’s betrayal. The country’s beloved Panditji, everyone’s Chacha Nehru, the unflinching humanist, the great visionary, turned bitter and rancorous. From now on, he would brook no criticism, take no advice.

On bank nationalisation:

“Parsis were the kings of banking in those days. Such respect we used to get. Now the whole atmosphere only has been spoiled. Ever since that Indira nationalised the banks.”

Gustad topped up Dinshawji’s glas. “Nowhere in the world has nationalisation worked. What can you say to idiots?”

But all these quotations are the sidelights. They provide a large context. The real story is that of a Parsi community which once was a key stakeholder in the Bombay economy but is slowly seeing much of its influence and status wean away.

The women in the House of Cages peered outside to see if there was any sign of customers. To their dismay, nowadays the men preferred to listen to Peerbhoy Paanwalla and go home, rather than come inside.

Delicious Fiction

Came across this interesting piece in Pratham Books which features an article from the New Yorker about food in literature.

There are four kinds of food in books: food that is served by an author to characters who are not expected to taste it; food that is served by an author to characters in order to show who they are; food that an author cooks for characters in order to eat it with them; and, last (and most recent), food that an author cooks for characters but actually serves to the reader.

Looking back, I still remember the great excitement about Enid Blyton’s books was partly due to her detailed descriptions of food – the well stocked picnic baskets of Billy-Bob, the tea parties in Faraway Tree, Noddy and Big Ears feasting at home, the supplies stocked by the Famous Five when they went on their adventures.

PG Wodehouse introduced us to the magnificent Anatole, stolen by Aunt Dahlia from Rosie Banks, wife of Bingo Little. Anatole, “God’s gift to the gastric juices” made such brilliant dishes like Cepes a la Rossini and Mignonettes a la creme d’ecrivesses. One did not have to see those plates, simply the names were enough to salivate.

On to Hercule Poirot, the aristocratic detective who has so many times walked into the elaborately laid dinner tables and found people lying in pools of blood or poisoned. In the story Four and Twenty Blackbirds, he uncovers a heinous crime simply by investigating why a man who could not digest suet pudding, blackberries and thick soup ordered exactly that – thick tomato soup, beefsteak and kidney pudding and blackberry tart on a Monday night. As it turned out … (okay if you haven’t read, I won’t spoil it for you)

And then food becomes a subject for diplomacy and power struggles. Robert Ludlum’s The Janson Directive has Paul Janson meeting Hungarian arms dealer Lakatos at the Palace Hotel in Miskolc. Lakatos suggests libamaj roston, the grilled goose liver and the brassoi aprepecsenye, braised pork. Janson however prefers the bakayi serteshus,pork in mushroom and cream sauce. The dinner is accompanied with a bottle of Egri Bikaver, ’82 with the cancelling the initial choice of Margaux ’98. The dinner ends in an ambush with Janson killing Lakatos and his guards.

Bakony Sertesragu

food that is served by an author to characters in order to show who they are

Annabel Richter orders “Water. Still. No Lime. Room Temperature.” She has just cycled to the Atlantic Hotel, driving Tommy Brue to dismay and immediate love.  (A Most Wanted Man, John Le Carre)

Ten Thousand!

“Ten Thousand bombs had landed on Beirut and I was waiting for George“

From the opening line to the last word, Rawi Hage’s De Niro’s Game makes the numeral 10,000 into a metaphor for chaos, infinity and action. It resounds through the novel as the protagonist lives through a civil war.

The story is nice but the use of the English language by a writer whose first two languages are Arabic and French is commendable. This is my favourite line:

I looked at the sky. It was covered with light signals from faraway planets bursting with gas and the happy bonfires of dead humans singing warriors’ songs in a landscape of burning rocks, and sending Morse code signals to ships steered by alcoholic captains into islands inhabited by sirens who sing in cabarets and offer up their salty sex organs that taste like the marinated fish of Sunday’s family gatherings after the families have endured the moralistic discourse of fat priests who douse congregations with incense spilled from the pendulum motion of their jerking hands, a motion that rocks like the swings in parks that are swamped with baby strollers pushed by Filipino nannies on temporary visas and with small paycheques that are transferred at Christmas to faraway families who live in huts by the sea and receive Morse code signals from those old creatures from astral space.

Whew! What a sentence.

Alf Laila – 1000 years worth of stories

Along with the Panchatantra, the Jataka Tales and many others narrated in Amar Chitra Katha, there were the Arabian Nights. I had a small pocket sized edition with a few illustrations and most of the stories were narrated in large font and within two pages. There were films and TV serials as well.

And then one day I picked up Richard Burton’s translated and annotated edition of the Tales from 1001 Arabian Nights. And it opened up the world of stories as never before. As Nilanjana Roy says,

Even today, to read the One Thousand and One Nights is to hear the voices of a hundred storytellers from across the centuries whisper in your year

And my specific experience of reading the Burton piece was that along with the stories (which by themselves were windows into the culture of the cradle of civilisation) the annotations served as a guide to the reader the way a Sherpa helps a mountaineer navigate through the Himalayas. Explanations of Arabic words along with their etymological journeys across the tribes; descriptions of the different great cities of Cairo, Baghdad, Damascus, etc;  insights into different traditions and sub-cultures of the people of that era; the Arabian Nights is not just plain tales but also a history book, a travel guide, a cultural compendium and a language teacher.

So news that a few people in Egypt want it to be banned sounded extremely preposterous to me, even funny.

I leave you with this footnote from the Tale of the Fisherman and the Jinni. The context is the Wazir carrying a fish to the cook and bidding her to fry. To which Burton annotates

Charming simplicity of manners when the Prime Minister carries the fish (shade of Vattel!) to the cookmaid. The “Gesta Romanorum” is nowhere more naive

Valerio Massimo Manfredi

For history buffs (which extends to reading alternative history novels or novels that explore open strands in history) Valerio Massimo Manfredi is well known. I recently picked up a stash of his works at a small bookshop in Bandra. Now, amidst all my other unread books, his Alexander trilogy awaits.

Most of his novels, at least the ones I am reading / have read, are centred around ancient Rome and Greece. Pharaoh is set in modern times and eerily predates a 9/11 like incident. Another one Empire of Dragons (2005) does a Rome meets China, the two great Empires of those times.

These novels do stimulate many threads that one wants to investigate and study. For example, there was a regular trade from India and China to Greece and Rome. Artifacts from the Indus Valley sites also suggest the existence of maritime trade from Lothal. However, most conventional history narratives from the Roman  and Greek side have scant coverage on these lands. Herodotus’ was a major culprit in this with his ants-digging-the-sand-for-gold routines.This is an interest thread to follow as to why there was such fantasy oriented narratives.

Another thread that one can follow is those thousands of caravanserais along the Silk Route and other trade routes. Who set up these rest posts? How did some decide where to put tent? These caravanserais are more than just resting houses with clean drinking water. They were horse exchanges, markets, mail exchanges, banks and many other things. It would be fun to find out more.

Today’s Web Discovery : 21 November 2009

I’ll start today with some news features which caught the eye and interest.

Sandhya Jadhav graduating while in jail (DNA India):  This is the story of Sandhya, who in her self defence, killed the person who was trying to rape her. She was convicted for homicide and given a seven year sentence. While in jail, she learnt Marathi and then took the Sociology course from nearby Nagpur University. She has now graduated and has in fact been hired by Nagpur University as a clerk in the despatch department. Apparently she is the first woman prisoner to graduate while still in jail. A good story

$1 per annum salary – symbolism? (Economic Times): Vikram Pandit, the CEO of Citibank, has redesigned his annual salary. He will now be paid $1 per annum. On the other hand, his other executives have received significant increases in their compensation including various dividends. So what is this in aid of? Symbolism? Will it do anything to revive the ailing bank?

The Great Khali and Kasab (DNA India): The Great Khali had his bit to say about Kasab. He wants the fellow hanged. While he concedes that fair trial, justice, etc must be followed, in the end, he wants to see Kasab swinging. Why is this news story significant? Again from the one above, symbolism. The world is living on token gestures and speeches and stuff like that.

And now for something from arts and literature

Tim Burton Exhibition at the MOMA: The art that one is familiar with in his movies comes alive in this exhibition.

Steig Larsson, Millennium and Lisbeth Salander (Prospect Magazine): Those familiar with Larsson’s trilogy will enjoy this piece. Personally, this Millennium concept is really refreshing and for a non-Scandinavian, opens up a new geography and culture. There are some minuses – the length of all three books, the verbose descriptions (based on the English translations) and a bit of cliched / hackneyed characters. But the character of Lisbeth rocks – a person you hate and admire at the same time.

Origami Hats using currency notes (Boing Boing): Unusual hats. Keeping the image of the key personality in the currency note intact, we have different hats for different people.

I will finally close this with this blog post by my former professor at IIMB, S Sadagopan

500 million mobile subscribers in India (S Sadagopan):  Prof Sadagopan writes and I quote:

With Telecom likely to be the largest contributor to GDP and the creator of largest number of jobs in rural India soon, imaginative exploitation of the phenomenon can change the face of India. Mobile services, broadband, mobile e-mail and Internet are the next set of challenges. One hopes that government quickly clears the policy muddle that has been holding up 3G license; once again Government should not get greedy and look for huge “License fee”

500 million is more than the population of more than 80% of all the countries. Imagine the power of this connected community.

Book Review: My Friend Sancho

All this week, Amit Varma’s My Friend Sancho would be hitting stores across the country. It has already hit Mumbai and yours truly had the good fortune of picking up a copy (signed by the author, of course). You can catch up with Amit around the country. The schedule is on his blog

Cover Art of My Friend Sancho, Image Owner: The India Uncut Blog

Here’s my review (without any spoilers)

This book is recommended for the free and light writing style. The story is tight and short. There is no meandering and wastefulness. The language is open and accessible. No big words. No flaunting of one’s vocabulary. Not surprisingly, the writing style is consistent with the India Uncut style.

I have lost the reading habit over the last few years with all the heavy stuff I need to read at work. Reading long posts in blogs are extremely tiresome for me. This book addresses that problem. I finished the book in one sitting briefly interrupted for lunch.

It may be passed off as another pop fiction. But then, that’s what Amit aims for. I don’t think he really cares about it being a literary classic. Hell, I don’t think it should make into English language textbooks. But then, why not?

For fans of India Uncut, a short message (spoiler warning)

Many references to the author incorporated in the book. The repeated browsing by the protagonist of the India Uncut blog is a plug for the author’s own blog. Repeated oft. Can be after a point irritating. Other references include black coffee, visiting a large book store in a mall in Andheri, playing poker online and the Bongness.  References to a certain elite mailing list that Amit is part of including one on infant sacrifices.

Final Verdict

It was a good entertaining read. And it has triggered an appetite for more of the same.