The Long Walk Home

Should we let the Taj Mahal collapse? Join the debate now!

2012-02-01T12:39:00.000+08:00

Like the Abu Simbel temples of Egypt, should Taj Mahal be physically relocated in order to save it?

Wanted: A Virtual Marketing Intern

2012-01-30T12:32:00.002+08:00

I'm looking for someone to work on a Marketing project for the launch of my third book, an upcoming thriller titled The Taj Conspiracy. Listed below is some information to help you identify if you'd be right for the project.

1. Author Bio

Manreet Sodhi Someshwar trained as an engineer, graduated from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, and worked in marketing, advertising and consulting. An award-winning writer (Commonwealth Broadcasting Association) and copywriter (Creative Abby), her articles have appeared in the New York Times, International Herald Tribune, South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) and several Indian newspapers. She is a popular blogger as well.

Her debut novel, Earning the Laundry Stripes, released in 2006 to critical acclaim with India Today calling it 'an enjoyable tale of a sassy girl's headlong race up the corporate ladder...' Her second novel, The Long Walk Home, published in 2009, has garnered acclaim and hit bestseller lists. Legendary poet-lyricist Gulzar has called it 'a narrative of pain that knows no borders'. Khushwant Singh has hailed manreet as 'a star on the literary horizon'.

Visit her online at http://www.facebook.com/ManreetSodhiSomeshwar

2. Synopsis of The Taj Conspiracy

On her return to India Mehrunisa Khosa starts work with her godfather, an eminent Taj Mahal scholar. One night she discovers the body of the Taj supervisor and the Quranic calligraphy on the tomb of Queen Mumtaz altered to suggest a Hindu origin of Taj Mahal. That urban legend around the Taj had always existed. Now, though, someone was conspiring to make it come true.

In a series of suspenseful twists and turns, the action traverses from the serene splendour of Taj Mahal to the virulent warrens of Taj Ganj in Agra, from intrigue-laden corridors of delhi to snowy Himalayan hideouts as Islamic militants plan an attack on Taj, a right-wing Hindu party ratchets up its anti-Muslim agenda by discrediting the Taj, and the police and CBI scramble to solve the conspiracy.

Will Mehrunisa be able to overcome a prejudiced police, battle her inner demon, and enter the mind of a twisted conspirator in order to save Taj Mahal?

3. Job requirements

- research (largely internet based, some telephone calls within India)

- generating a workable database from the above said research

- using the database to book speaking engagements for the author during her book tour

- a few other things to assist with the above

- 2-4 month project window starting ASAP (this would probably require an hour of work per day, or 5-7 hours per week)

4. Ideal candidate

You can be located anywhere in India but must be

- young, enthusiastic, preferably a student

- net-savvy, a thick hide with a capacity for slog

- able to work independently and responsibly

5. What is in it for you?

- A chance to gain insights into the Publishing industry

- Work with an author and earn a referral

- Earn some extra money working from your home / hostel

If you're interested please email me at manreetsomeshwar@gmail.com with a one-para bio and another para on why you are ideal for this project.

Book review: Arundhati Roy's Walking With The Comrades

2012-01-27T14:11:00.001+08:00

This review appeared in the Sunday Post of the South China Morning Post, 22 January 2012.

Walking with the Comrades

by Arundhati Roy

Penguin Books

3 stars

Manreet Sodhi Someshwar

In the blockbuster science fiction film Avatar humans have destroyed earth because of their unbridled capitalism. The over-populated and resource-depleted planet is besieged by natural cataclysms and man-made disasters, in the wake of which humans are scouring outer space for resources. In Pandora, an earth-like moon, they discover unobtanium, a precious source of energy supply that they seek. Here’s the rub. Pandora is the home of a humanoid species called Na’vi who live in a giant tree that sits on a vast store of unobtanium. To mine this resource humans will have to battle the Na’vi, destroy their way of life and upset the ecological balance on Pandora. Unless stopped, they’ll end up wrecking Pandora just as they have done the earth.

The enormous success of Avatar can be partially explained by our ambivalence about climate change and global warming: is our modern lifestyle wrecking the earth and leading us to doomsday? Are we fated to live in an urban ghetto, heavily militarized and devoid of flora and fauna – a “dying world”, as a character in Avatar says, where humans have “killed their mother”?

In Walking with the Comrades Arundhati Roy tackles the question head on. She spends time with the Maoist guerillas in the forests where they are battling Indian security forces, documents their armed resistance and raises the question: will global capitalism tolerate any societies existing outside of its realm of control?

In a globalising world one question has been raised with increasing frequency: is capitalism compatible with sustainable development? A one-line summary of the movie Avatar, it is a debate of considerable significance as our world population approaches 7 billion – can our environment take the strain of an ever-expanding economy and people?

Walking with the Comrades is a collection of three essays published over time in the Indian news weekly Outlook. In the first, Mr. Chidambram’s War, Roy takes us to south Orissa, a state locked in battle between tribals called Kondh and the Indian government. P. Chidambram is India’s home minister and “CEO of the war”. In a scene that seems lifted from Avatar the Kondhs worship the low flat-topped hills of their home as living deities. The same hills, however, contain vast deposits of bauxite, which one of the biggest mining corporations in the world want to mine. Financial value of the bauxite deposits of Orissa is 2.27 trillion dollars (twice India’s gross domestic product, at 2004 prices).

“Thirteen tones of rock and stone yield one tonne of bauxite. The ‘Red Mud’ in these stilling ponds is the toxic residue produced by the refining process in which bauxite is turned to aluminium.” Roy documents the devastation that mining would bring to south Orissa. “If the flat-topped hills are destroyed, the forests that clothe them will be destroyed too. So will the rivers and streams that flow out of them and irrigate the plains below. So will the Kondh.” The tribals believe that if they do not fight for their land, they’ll be annihilated. They have taken up arms and the Indian Government has announced Operation Green Hunt, a war against the ‘Maoist’ rebels headquartered in the jungles of central India.

So, who are the Maoists really? Roy answers this question in the second essay, Walking with the Comrades, which gives the book its title as well. Through a secret rendezvous in Dantewada, Chattisgarh, Roy is led into an area controlled by the Maoists. “It’s the epicenter of a war. It’s an upside-down, inside-out town. There the villages are empty, but the forest is full of people. The police wear plain clothes and the rebels wear uniforms”.

The Maoists are members of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), one of the several descendents of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), which led the 1969 Naxalite uprising in the Indian state of West Bengal. The Maoists adhere to violence believing it to be the only way to redress the innate structural inequality of India. In their current avatar, the Maoist insurrection has spread through the mineral-rich forests of central India, which are “homeland to millions of India’s tribal people, dreamland to the corporate world”.

In Dantewada Roy learns first hand of the war being fought between a government paramilitary force and “ordinary villagers armed with traditional weapons, backed by a superbly organized, hugely motivated Maoist guerilla fighting force with an extraordinary and violent history of armed rebellion”.

Over several days of trudging through the forest during day and sleeping in makeshift beds at night, Roy meets several members of the guerilla group. Lal Salaam Kaamrid is the universal greeting: Red Salute Comrade. The comrades show her a deserted school building constructed like three octagons attached to each other like a honeycomb, to enable the police to fire in all directions. She learns the history of the resistance movement, how uniting the people has improved their bargaining power with corporates that operate out of the region, beedi makers, paper mills, the Forest Department. They are governed by an elaborate structure of Janatana Sarkars (people’s governments) and “the organizing principles come from the Chinese revolution and the national liberation struggle in Vietnam”.

Trickledown Revolution, the third essay takes a swipe at trickledown economics that propounds that economic benefits provided by government to businesses and the wealthy will benefit poorer members of society by improving the economy as a whole. Capitalists advocate that better technology and efficiency would lead to use of fewer resources even while increasing economic output. However, that central tenet of capitalism has come under fire in the face of rising inequality, dwindling social mobility and a denuding environment. In India it has resulted in a growth in armed uprising. “In Orissa, for instance, there are a number of diverse struggles being waged by unarmed resistance movements that often have sharp differences with each other. And yet, between them all, they have managed to temporarily stop some major corporations from being able to proceed with their projects”.

India’s experiment with capitalism is two decades old and its concomitant track record with sustainable development has been unreliable. During the construction of one of its biggest dams, the Sardar Sarovar Dam in Gujarat, every single thing that was protested against has happened. Displaced people have not been rehabilitated, canals have not been built, and most of the water is being guzzled by cities and big industry.

The insurrection in the Indian tribal heartland poses a challenge to the government as it questions what constitutes progress and development. An award-winning writer, Roy has taken up the cause of the militant tribals with passion. Her publisher, Penguin, in a display of aggrandizement, describes her work as “full of earth-shattering revelations”.

Several publications in India have been documenting this story. Roy's voice is an important addition to this debate. It would help if she could tone down the shrillness, avoid hyperbole and repetition, and use the considerable power of her pen to get both sides to the table.

Avatar might have ended with an all-out war that ended with a Na'vi victory, but that was on Pandora. We are on Earth, and need to find the right balance to survive.

A Writer is a Pugilist First! The Help and its lessons for writers

2012-01-20T10:50:00.001+08:00

Book review: The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Recently I read The Help by Kathryn Stockett and came away gloriously satisfied. It is, in the finest sense of the term, a good old-fashioned read: a full-length novel (444 pages), an authentic setting, a cast of fully-realized characters, an engaging story with a heart.

This debut novel is set in Jackson, Mississippi, in southern USA in 1962 - a time when racial tensions run high and the dreaded KKK string up black men who even dare look a white woman in the eye.

Of course, the white households run on black help - men who work in the plantations and yards outside and women, in starched white uniforms, who cook, clean, polish, launder and manage white babies inside. The white men keep busy as plantation owners or corporate executives and the white women keep busier with bridge parties and charity balls.

The story revolves around three women: Aibileen, a black maid who lost her own son and is raising her seventeenth white child; Minny, another black maid, younger than Aibileen, mother of five children, a legendary cook, and feisty as a southern sun; and Skeeter, a 22-year-old white woman who has returned to Jackson after graduating, with ambitions to become a writer - if only her mother would stop getting her hitched to a man.

Skeeter, unhappy with the shabby manner in which her best friends - now married and running their own households - treat their black house maids, grieving the loss of the elderly maid who'd raised her since she was a baby, and searching for a riveting topic upon which to write and grab the attention of a senior editor in New York city, has a lightbulb moment: to give voice to Mammy.

Mammy was the black maid in the popular southern story, Gone With the Wind. Skeeter argues that nobody asked the devoted Mammy what she felt, and perhaps it was worthwhile examining what lay behind the stereotype? She broaches the idea to Aibileen who, predictably, shudders at the prospect. It is, after all, the era of the KKK.

So, which way will the pendulum swing? No spoiler here - read and discover for yourself! Rest assured, you'll be amply rewarded with hours of pleasure.

I cannot resist adding here that The Help also has help for aspiring writers and those working hard to get published. The book has been an incredible success - a New York Times bestseller for several months, it has sold five million copies! Followed swiftly by a film adaptation. Gulp!

But it didn't happen overnight. Kathryn Stockett had 60 rejections, turned down by as many literary agents. However, over those five years she wrote, edited, re-wrote the manuscript, refusing to give up.

A writer, I believe, is first and foremost a pugilist, who, after every knock, gets up and goes for it again. Ms Stockett got lucky with the 61st. However, as her editor Amy Einhorn - who runs her own imprint Amy Einhorn Books under Putnam - states, the book needed a complete overhaul and she accepted it only after the writer agreed to her conditions. Which meant,

a) it was back to the writing table for Ms Stockett

b) there was an editor who was doing her job, which is making a good manuscript great through the very essential skill of editing.

To Kill a Mockingbird is an all time classic. Yet, how many know that the manuscript was thoroughly overhauled by its editor and is practically unrecognizable from the final book? There was a time when editors did their job. Publishing has changed vastly since then. Most publishing houses, especially in India, want a fully-finished manuscript that is ready to roll off a printing press.

So, what are you doing on that floor? Get up, master the editing skill and add it to your arsenal of punches. And while we are at it: Do you have a broken nose to show for your endeavours?!

As Aibileen would say, in her lovely dulcet lingo, "There aint no writer without no pugilist first".

A 10-point primer on the Rushdie debate – for those who need help battling the right-wing loonies of our land

2012-01-18T22:01:00.002+08:00

Rushdie does not need a visa to visit India – He is a PIO (Person of Indian Origin).

Satanic Verses was banned in 1988. Since then Rushdie has visited India 5 times – the timing of his previous visits likely didn’t sync with election time in India.

Rushdie has not been charged with any criminality in any court in India. Those who claim that he is liable for prosecution under IPC are spreading a falsehood. IPC 298 is against hate crime. A fiction writer who has written an allegory cannot be charged under the same. Overarching it all is that Rushdie is guaranteed freedom of speech under the Indian Constitution.

When a work of fiction hurts the religious sensibilities of some people they need to

First, develop a thicker skin
Failing which, protest through proper channels – write to a newspaper, present their case on TV (preferably without subjecting us to a deafening tirade), stage peaceful protests, seek legal recourse …

If a work of fiction can upset the great and glorious religions of our world, we need to re-examine those religions and our faith in them. Hussain painting Hindu goddesses in nude or Rushdie denigrating Islam through Satanic Verses is a matter of interpretation. How does a book meant to be read in private or a painting displayed in a home offend some folks? And even if it is offensive, it is not a crime.

Cultures progress by inculcating and fostering debate, a vigorous spirit of enquiry and granting space to individual voices. Otherwise they go moribund. We might claim Mera Bharat Mahaan but the truth is that in India we do not guarantee the fundamental rights of citizens. The British Government spent millions on Rushdie’s protection while our politicos are busy hiding behind ‘people’s sentiments’.

A healthy dose of skepticism – to what extent is the brouhaha over Rushdie’s presence at a litfest (which he attended in its inaugural 2007 session as well) manufactured by incompetent leaders looking for an emotional topic to rally their vote bank?

Let’s turn the tables. What has the Darul Uloom Deoband seminary done to improve the lot of Muslims in India? When did they last raise their voice to improve education and provide more jobs? Is an English language writer’s trip home of more relevance than rising unemployment and illiteracy afflicting the Muslims of India?

It is easy to rant and rave – offering Rs 1 Lac to any one who will hurl a shoe at Rushdie requires a primal brain. Thinking requires us to exercise our pre-frontal, clarify our position and examine the opponent’s stand – if that’s too much exercise for the grey cells, then we are strawmen who need to have brains put inside our heads.

Finally, it is silence which allowed the Nazi takeover of Europe. Silence is dangerous when it shrinks the space for debate and dissent. It creates the wasteland of Saudi Arabia. As Elie Wiesel says: “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.” Take a stand, now.

Of Lohri and its good ole Robin Hood

2012-01-13T19:42:00.001+08:00

Happy Lohri folks! On the occasion of my bestest most favourite festival, am reposting an old Lohri post - enjoy with some nutty gachak :)

There are few pleasures in life that can compare with huddling around a bonfire on a chilly winter’s evening, munching on sesame seed-coated jaggery sweets, singing hoary songs, warming hands above the flames and testing how close the toe can really get to the burning logs without singeing one's socks!

That was how it seemed to me as a child, and now, twice-removed in time and space, the remembered pleasure still holds.

It arrived yearly on Lohri and now that I live outside Punjab its one festival I miss sorely. Lohri is all about bonfire bonhomie, gachak and gup, mungfali and mazaak. The day would start with a round of the neighbours for gathering out trove of treats for which we would lustily render Dullah Bhatti. Most of us kids knew the tune and some garbled lyrics and yet we delivered a virtuoso rendition for we ended up with full bags! The evening’s bonfire was followed by saag and makki roti – a meal I have always been partial to, unlike my brother with his unavoury comparisons of mustard greens with offal. Now that I am a mother I realize it is also a practical device for bringing children, high on all those sweets, down to earth.

The best Lohri was one where we were celebrating a new wedding or a first-born since such an occasion would warrant some serious singers in the gathering. Jugni was a perennial favourite, especially as it lends itself to raucous chorus from those in the gathering who don’t possess a blessed set of vocal chords. I remember one Lohri where an uncle gifted with a silvery voice and reputed for his rendition of Heer got so carried away that he would not stop singing the high pitched mournful song that is usually reserved for occasions other than Lohri. In time the gathering was in tears, the men weeping into their drinks and it took a forceful grand aunt to hustle the teary men into shape when she rapped the dholi and got the Bhangra beat going. It was after all a celebration of a new bride’s first pregnancy and what were the men getting soulful about?

Lohri marks the end of winter and the harvest of Rabi crop in Punjab. When we grow up in one place we take our traditions and customs for granted. I saw the harvested fields, the yards with blazing bonfires, the gathering of family and friends and I assimilated that it was a time of celebration, of being thankful, of Agni and Dullah Bhatti, and having a jolly good time in good ole Punjabi style.

But I have been out of Des long enough for my daughter to have grown up in Hong Kong – how then do I convey to her what Lohri is? Forced to articulate what is in my bones I turned to introspection, recollection, and meditation at that fount of omniscience, Google.

As I cohered my thoughts I learnt that Dullah Bhatti, that ubiquitous hero of our Lohri songs was quite a Robin Hood figure. I also gleaned a lesson on the secular fabric of Punjab. Bhatti was a Muslim who rescued a Hindu girl, adopted her and married her to a Hindu boy. Since there was no priest around to chant the hymns required to solemnize the marriage, Dullah lit a fire and composed an impromptu song. Sunder mundriye, tera kaun vichara, Dullah Bhatti wala oye, Dulleh ne teeh viahi oye, ser shakar payi! The bride and groom took the mandatory rounds of the fire as Dullah rendered his self-composition where he spoke of marrying his daughter and gifting her a kilo of sugar!

I love the story. Of course there are several versions of this tale – take your pick – but what is integral to each telling is the secular, chivalrous and joyful character of its hero, an archetype the average Punjabi lionizes.

The reason we light the bonfire is not only because it kills the chill on a winter’s evening – practical! – but also on 13 January the sun begins its northward journey – uttarayan – and winter officially ends. The worship of Sun is intrinsically linked to the Indus Valley, a custom more ancient than the Rig Veda from which comes the Gayatri mantra, the revered verse in praise of the Sun.

Armed with a compelling narrative, I initiate my daughter into the varied charms of Lohri. I tell her about my experience of Lohri as a child, of Dullah Bhatti, the Indian Robin Hood, our Halloweeny tradition of gathering sweets minus the scary masks, the offering and subsequent sharing of gachak with the blazing Agni. Blithely I render Jugni as well in my not so melodious voice, and teach her the chorus. And since Lohri is a good day to ask for blessings, on our way back from my daughter’s horse riding lesson, we stop at the Gurudwara.

She tucks into the pershad greedily, has a question about the keertan – is it always sung or can it be recited – and we walk back home, she skipping ahead of me, helped no doubt by the rich sweet she has relished. I walk behind, her school bag on my shoulder as a crisp Hong Kong winter day is morphing into evening. I see the bonfire in my mind and smile, happy with our singular celebration of Lohri.

Review: The Rivered Earth by Vikram Seth

2012-01-09T12:27:00.001+08:00

This review first appeared in the South China Morning Post on 1 January 2012.

The Rivered Earth

by Vikram Seth

Vikram Seth was between books when he decided to write libretti. Most writers would be content with leisurely lunches but Seth, who describes himself as indolent by nature, chose to write 4 texts for 4 musical performances to be conducted over 4 years. A mix of original work and translation, they draw from three cultures – Chinese, Indian, European – and are set to music by the composer Alec Roth.

In The Rivered Earth Seth says, “the two halves of the phrase encompass the four texts, since the first begins with the image of the moon reflected in a great river, and the last ends with the image of the blue earth spinning through time and space”.

Seth and serendipity are closely linked. It was, after all, a chance encounter in a second-hand bookstore with the English translation of Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin that made him switch career track and write his own first novel in verse, Golden Gate, written entirely in Onegin stanzas.

But the versatile Seth is also a novelist, a memoirist, and a children’s writer. His most famous work is perhaps A Suitable Boy, which at 1349 pages is the longest novel in English literature in recent times.

Each libretto in this book is presented with a foreword that provides a backdrop for the particular work. Calligraphy by Seth, in Chinese, English, Hindi and Arabic, prefaces each text.

Apparently, the go-ahead for the project took so long that Seth had no time to write anything new for the first libretto. Serendipitiously, Seth had something on hand. In his twenties Seth lived in China for two years, studying at the Nanjing university, doing research in economics and demography and traveling around the country. During this time he also translated three Chinese poets, including Du Fu who lived in the eighth century. His translations of Du Fu, some of which Roth had set to music earlier, came in handy as Songs in Time of War, the first libretto.

Most of the poems are set during a terrible rebellion in the Tang dynasty, which caused vast devastation and famine. The poems are accessible and do what Seth says he seeks of poetry, that it should move you, make you think, and laugh. Poem 8, The Old Cypress Tree at the Temple of Zhu-ge Liang, is particularly poignant.

“Although its bitter heart is marred by swarms of ants,

Among its scented leaves bright phoenixes collect.

Men of high aims, who live obscure, do not despair.

The great are always paid in disuse and neglect.”

In Europe, which forms the setting for the second libretto, Shared Ground, Seth moves from the Tang Dynasty to the Stuarts, to Salisbury, England, to the very house where the idea of the book of libretti was first born. It was the house where the poet George Herbert had lived and died. Seth first encountered Herbert in a book of poetry belonging to his mother, requisitioned it, and thereafter dipped into it frequently. “Though I am neither Christian nor particularly religious, he (Herbert) has remained among my favourite poets”.

When Seth heard that Herbert’s house was on sale, he visited it on a whim, fell in love with it – that serendipity again! – and bought it. Seth’s one worry, however, was that his host might attempt to bully him into his philosophy or style. In a delightful poem titled Host he recounts:

“He’ll change my style.” “Well, but you could do worse

Than rent his rooms of verse.”

Joy came, and grief; love came, and loss; three years –

Tiles down; moles up; drought; flood.

Though far in time and faith, I share his tears,

His hearth, his ground, his mud;

Yet my host stands just out of mind and sight,

That I may sit and write.

After ranging over China and Europe Seth turned to India in 2008, which coincided with the 750^th anniversary of the consecration of the Salisbury Cathedral, where the work was to be performed. Looking for a theme at once grand and intimate he settled on all of human life and titled it The Traveller, at the suggestion of his composer. In Rig Veda, the ancient hymn to creation, he gleaned a structure for the libretto. To the four traditional stages of life in the Hindu scheme of things – childhood, youth, adulthood and old age – he added two more: those of the unborn and the dead. Suitable texts for the stages were taken from various Indian languages – Tamil, Hindi, Brajbhasha, Urdu, Bengali – and Seth wrote a short poem of his own to accompany the texts in each stage of life.

The tone of the poems reflects the various stages: undead-philosophical, child-playful, youth-passionate, adult-contemplative, old-reminiscent, dead-yielding.

The fourth and final libretto is titled Seven Elements. Having taken geography as inspiration for the first three Seth decided to include the aspect of time in the fourth. Here too he borrowed from the three cultures and came up with seven elements: four elements of the European tradition – earth, air, fire, water – to which he added the Indian element of space, and borrowed the Chinese elements of metal and wood. The result is seven poems.

The Rivered Earth sets up a challenge for a reviewer. It is text for a musical performance and yet, when presented in a book form, it is poetry. Should it be reviewed as a book of poems or as text that is to be sung to the accompaniment of music?

Seth himself provides the answer. One poem, Fire, was rejected by Roth as unfit for musical composition; he deemed it too literary, “fine as a poem, useless as text”. A stung Seth retreated and after copious amount of wine consumption came up with a second version.

The poems in this book pulse with emotion and speak clearly, never plainly. In a foreword Seth mentions how the Chinese have always turned to poetry when in need of solace. That, then, is the gift of The Rivered Earth.

Happy birthday Mirza Nosha!

2011-12-27T15:28:00.001+08:00

We holidayed recently in Western Australia’s wine region of Margaret River, an undulating land sprinkled with grape trees and contented cows grazing under an azure sky in which milky shape-shifting clouds bounced along as if giddy on Chardonnay vapours.

Old friends – a couple with two daughters – joined us from Mumbai and all together much fun was to be had as we biked along the beach, licked ice creams clean, chased sea gulls, petted alpacas, swam in the Indian Ocean, and between Cabernet and Shiraz, shared new confidences and renewed old ties.

During one of those conversations, the 15-year-old daughter of our friends remarked – with some amusement – that I tended to mention Ghalib with surprising regularity. Well, blame it on the wine, I quipped, but she set me thinking.

Ghalib is an old friend, courtesy of growing up in an Urdu-literate household located on the thin line that divides India from Pakistan, and like any good friend, he has offered the solace of his friendship on countless occasions. I am dismayed therefore when I realize that the younger generation has little acquaintance with the poet who is regarded as the Milton of Urdu language.

Returning to the conversation, I said I’m sure you’ve encountered Mirza on more occasions but remain unaware of it.

How so, she asked.

Because Ghalib’s oeuvre is so wide that he has opined on every conceivable topic under the sun. He is so much a part of our lexicon that the average Indian quotes him without being aware that she/he is spouting poetry.

I like to believe that at some point I can undertake a project that will make an entire younger generation of Indians appreciate the magic of Mirza Ghalib. (Mirza Nosha was a title bestowed on the poet by Bahadur Shah Zafar II.) Making them cognizant of the indelible imprint of his verse in our daily speech might be one way to go.

On the occasion of Ghalib’s 214^th birthday I am quoting below some shayrs that find frequent recurrence in Hindi …

On love:

Ishq par zor nahin yeh who aatish hai Ghalib

Jo lagaaye na lage aur bhujaaye na bhuje

Ishq ne Ghalib niqamma kar diya

Warna hum bhi aadmi they kaam ke

On relationships:

Har ek baat pe kehte ho tum ke tu kya hai?

Tumhin kaho ke yeh anaaze-e-guftagu kya hai?

Meharbaan hoke bula mujhe chaho jis waqt,

Main gaya waqt nahin ke phir aa bhi na sakun

On longing:

hazaaron khwahishain aisee ke har khwahish pe dam nikle,

Bahut nikle mere armaan lekin phir bhi kam nikle

Phir is dil ko bekaraari hai

Seena zoya-e-zakhm-e-kari hai

On God:

Na tha kuchch to khuda tha, kuch na hota to Khuda hota,

Duboya mujh ko hone ne, na hota main to kya hota?

On life:

Qaid-e-hayaat-o-band-e-gham asal mein dodno ek hain,

Maut se phele aadmi gham se nijaat paaye kyon

On being human:

Bas ki dushwaar hai har kaam ka aasaan hona

Aadmi ko bhi mayassar nahin insaan hona

Ghalib continues to be relevant: like today, he lived in a time of change and turbulence when the Mughal empire had ceded to British rule; he was a secularist in an era of religious foment; his philosophical take on God, faith, love, life, friendship continue to be a bellwether for those seeking a way to deal with life’s vicissitudes.

I shall relate an anecdote from the TV serial Mirza Ghalib directed by Gulzar. Mirza is enjoying some sweets when another Muslim remarks sarcastically:

“Diwali ki mithai kha rahe ho Mirza?”

Ghalib: “Barfi kha raha hoon. Barfi Hindu hai? Aur jalebi? Imarti? Ye kya hain?”

His inquisitive debating spirit is a trait we could all look to develop as we deal with a world that challenges us daily. As Ghalib himself said:

Hui muddat ke Ghalib mar gaya par yaad aata hai,

Woh har ek baat pe kehna ke yun hota to kya hota?

On that note, a very happy 2012 to all of you! May you discover the wit and vigour of Ghalib's shayari in the days to come.

Book Review: Noon by Aatish Taseer

2011-12-24T09:11:00.000+08:00

This review first appeared in the Asian Review of Books on 17 December 2011

Noon by Aatish Taseer

17 December 2011 — “Write what you know” is an oft-touted writing maxim that could apply to Aatish Taseer’s work, three books – two novels and one memoir – in three years, all of which pivot on a search for identity. However, in Taseer’s case, it could equally be a matter of writing what he doesn’t know for his books grapple with the gaps in his life. As the narrator Rehan Tabassum in his third book Noon says: “…if everyone has a book in them, mine cannot be that kind of book (with a beginning, middle and end). The gaps in my life were too many, the threads too few.”

Aatish Taseer was born to an Indian Sikh mother and a Pakistani Muslim father. Growing up in a pluralist India, estranged from his politician father, his first book Stranger to History is as the subtitle says, a son’s journey through Islamic lands. In The Temple-Goers, his first novel, he turns his gaze upon contemporary India and its rapacious society in the wake of the country’s economic boom. Noon, the third in the triptych, melds his partitioned halves with four disjointed stories, two each set in India and Pakistan.

We meet the narrator Rehan Tabassum in a train as he’s journeying to meet his estranged father for the first time. It is 2006, an earthquake has ruptured Kashmir and the Jhelum river has risen to flood villages in the valley.

The first of the four stories in Noon rewinds sixteen years when a young Rehan has returned with his mother from London and the single parent is trying to establish herself in Delhi. An ambitious lawyer, she searches for an apartment even as young Rehan resists—he enjoys being cosseted by his grandmother and a burglary in a classmate’s house ratchets his fear. The house-hunting travails lead to shared confidences. When Rehan queries about his absent father, his mother suggests he give him a kick when he meets him.

“He didn’t give us anything? No car? No house?”

“Not a tissue to wipe my face on.”

A second story starts off in the years before India’s economic liberalization and ends in 2002, by which time the erstwhile privileged elite had lost to the economic czars emerging in the wake of fiscal reforms. What is intended as an observation of a transforming society becomes a long-winded yarn with no fresh insights.

Taseer has received high praise from V. S. Naipaul, a writer whose work has also been shaped by a search for identity, and it is in the last two stories that Taseer’s scrutiny turns incisive. “Notes from a Burglary” is a tragicomic account of a theft in a Delhi farmhouse, whereupon the household staff is arraigned by a swarm of policemen who deploy their caste-related knowledge and an interrogation technique that involved a “studied mixture of boredom and cruelty” to psych out the burglar. Rehan, the son of the mistress of the farmhouse, and on a study break from the U.S.A., discovers contradictions within himself as police thrash the servants in search of answers and Rehan, though principally against it, is complicit in the act. “A protective screen of encoded privilege made injustice, and especially cruelty, of the most casual variety, appear always as the work of others.”

The final story, set in the country of his father, is an insightful romp into the treachery and politicking within a family that finds a parallel in the country at large. Taseer picks at the disingenuous lies that masquerade for political cause in Pakistan. A black and white picture of a self-immolation in a daily is headlined thus: “Youth sets himself ablaze on discovering his name has Sanskritic origins”.

Noon is book-ended by images of violence, a theme that runs through the stories that have been cobbled into a novel. However, to merit being called a full-fledged novel, this collection of interlinked short stories and novellas would need more threads, as Rehan would agree.

Muse and I, Staring down a Vacation

2011-12-15T12:55:00.003+08:00

Adios amigos, I’m off on a break,

This year, the Muse has been on my case,

I’ve convinced her its not a jailbreak -

End of year, we just need some space.

Wine - red, white and sparkling,

Coupled with seafood and salads divine,

Before the whale watching,

And after the swim with bottlenose dolphin.

My plan, even Mirza Nosha would endorse,

I point out to the Muse with alacrity!

My friend, she fixes me with a steely gaze,

Ghalib liked his wine French, and you, are going southerly.

Time to deploy good Gibran as I confess:

Let the winds of heaven blow between our togetherness.

So, for the nonce, she’s gone,

To whatever place Muses go, perhaps Saigon?

Not too far, you see, I can’t take the chance,

I need her around when I return from my holiday,

When copious amounts of wine have me in a trance,

Floundering at my desk on a writing day.

But that day is still a fortnight away,

A fortnight in which to hike and see some stalactite,

Little penguins, shark whale and manta ray,

Ahoy there, Muse, recharged, we'll resume the rewrite!

6th December, and a Second Exile

2011-12-11T18:45:00.001+08:00

6 December 2011 marked the 19th anniversary of the demolition of Babri Masjid. It is a day which is etched in my mind. I was a second-year student at IIM Calcutta and it was at dinner time in the Mess that we got the news that Babri Masjid had been demolished.

Remember this was pre-internet era, no FB or Twitter to disseminate those ugly images which we were to see later: goons in saffron headbands tearing at the ancient dome as the police stood by and watched.

Almost two decades on and nothing much has changed, the shame of the Babri Masjid demolition has got added to that heap where our shames are endlessly accumulated, where they languish knowing that justice in our country is a chimera as perpetrators walk off into the sun like cowboys while we Indians watch : 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom, 1991 Mumbai blasts, 2002 Godhra riots, 2007 Mumbai attacks...

As I mulled thus I stumbled across this nazm by Kaifi Azmi written in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition. Titled 'Doosra Banwas' it is a haunting tribute by a great poet where he gives voice to Ram, in whose name avowedly, the masjid was razed.

Doosra Banwas

Ram banwas sey jab laut key ghar mein aaye,
Yaad jangal bahut aaya jo nagar mein aaye,
Raqsey deewangee aangan mein jo dekha hoga,
6 December ko Shri Ram ney socha hoga,
Itney deewane kahan sey mere ghar mein aaye?

Jagmagate thhe jahan Ram key kadmon key nishan,
Pyaar ki kahkashan leti thhi angdayee jahan,
mod nafart key usee rah guzar mein aaye,
Dharm kya unka hai, kya zaat hai, ye jaanta kaun?
Ghar na jalta to unhen raat mein pehchanta kaun,
Ghar jalane ko mera, log jo mere ghar mein aaye,
Shakahari hain mere dost tumhare khanajar.

Tumne Babur kee taraf pheke thhe saare pathar,
Hai mere sar ki khata zakhm jo sar mein aaye,
Paun abhi Sarju mein Ram ney dhoye bhi na thhe,
Ke nazar aaye wahan khoon key gehre dhabbe,
Paun dhoye bina Sarju key kinare sey uthhe,
Ram yeh kehte hue apne dware se uthhe,
Rajdhani ki fiza aayi nahin raas mujhe,
6 December ko mila doosra banwas mujhe.

For those of you not entirely comfortable with Hindustani, I shall attempt a translation:

The Second Exile

When Ram returned home from his days of exile,
As he entered the city he remembered the jungle of his exile,
As he witnessed the dance of madness in his courtyard,
On the 6th of December the Lord Ram did regard,
From where did such madmen upon my house descend?

Where his footprints had lit the path of right,
Where the stars of love had shimmered their light,
A turn to hatred that same path took -
What is their religion, what's their caste, knows who?
Had my house not burnt would I've recognized them in the night,
Those men who came to my house in order to set it alight?
Vegetarian, my friend, are your daggers.

It was at Babur that you'd aimed your rocks,
It is my head's fault that it bleeds and balks,
In the Saryu Ram had barely washed his feet,
With bloody blotches the water was replete,
From the riverbank arose Ram without washing his feet,
Saying this from his home he did retreat:
The air of my capital city has turned vile,
6 of December I am sentenced to a second exile.

Bashi Bazouk, I'm Glad This Child Never Grows Up!

2011-12-08T11:15:00.002+08:00

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn

On Sunday we watched The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, and came away satiated. And yearning for more! How often does it happen that your child willingly, in an entirely un-premeditated fashion, runs a math problem through her head, comes up with an answer and seeks solace in it? Yes, solace? Well, this is how it happened....

There we are in the darkened hall of AMC cinemas at Pacific Place, our 3 D glasses glued to our eyes, following Tintin and Snowy dodge bullets and chase cars, our hands frozen in popcorn cartons, when my daughter urgently whispered to me: How much time since the movie started?

A quick glance at my wrist showed half an hour, which I promptly conveyed.

Good! Another 77 minutes to go!

There was a mix of relief and glee in her voice and I turned to gaze at her. In the darkness I saw her face alight with screen light, soaking in Tintin’s mad caper, Snowy’s energetic perambulations and Captain Haddock’s inebriated mutterings, as another minute rolled on in the comforting knowledge that many more would come before The End.

Perhaps, Mr Spielberg can consider a parallel career as a Math instructor? You know, weave in math problems for Tintin and Snowy to fathom as they sail across the sea to Bagaar? If Sakharine’s ship is sailing at x nautical mph and is y miles ahead then what speed does Tintin need to sail at in order to overtake him? Well, there are more Tintin adventures to come, and perhaps Mr Spielberg will live up to his Math teacher alter ego, and then there’s Professor Calculus!

One of the great joys of being a parent is to discover that moment when something you’ve loved as a child and since, is the very same thing your child begins to fall in love with too! The investigative reporter who’s never filed a single report and his white fox terrier have been sitting on our bookshelf for years, during which they’ve been brought down, read, laughed with, re-read - accounting on many days for the silly grins plastered on our faces.

Tintin in Tibet was my daughter’s gateway to the series and the scene set in India - where the Captain gets waylaid by a holy cow - is her absolute favourite. Now with the film and the sequels to follow, looks like our family love affair with Tintin is here to stay.

Spielberg is known in Hollywood as the child who never grew up and with Tintin this child has had a blast. Apparently, the director’s love affair with Tintin is decades old for he bought the movie rights in 1983 when the French reviews of Indiana Jones drew his attention to Tintin. Herge died before the two could meet but his widow proceeded with the deal. You can read more of this fascinating story here.

What I loved about the movie was how faithfully Spielberg and Peter Jackson (of the Lord of the Rings trilogy) have reproduced Herge’s illustrations for the big screen. (And for that I'll forgive him casting Daniel Craig in Sakharine's mould.) Apparently, during filming, Spielberg’s one question to himself was: Would Herge like it?

I came across this insightful article in Wired which explains how the animation team on Tintin tackled the challenge of converting flat, mid-century comic book characters to look 3 D for Tintin. Read it, and you’ll see for yourself the extent to which the sanctity of Herge’s work has been preserved.

I am sharing below one such illustration:

The sanctity of Herge's work has been retained in other ways as well: I am thrilled that in our politically correct world Captain Haddock has not been watered down lest he bother sensitive folks who may feel their children wilting under the blasts of the captain's Bashi Bazoukisms! No, Haddock is here, very much as the grumpy acerbic whiskey-swigging counterpart to Tintin's incredible heroism. And thank god for that!

There are folks in this world, you know, who find themselves in grumpy characters, whose heart of gold is encased in blistering barnacles, characters such as the good ole captain! Personally, while I adore young Tintin and his zeal, I identify much more with the emotional expletive-filled captain.

If you recall, Herge's Tintin barely shows a flicker on his face whereas Haddock's face is frequently contorted with some emotion, or pleasure! Plus, where else would you find such exquisite alliterative curses to rain down upon your enemies? O Captain Haddock, thou of the Squawking Popinjay fame!

Ten thousand thundering typhoons, get me the next Tintin adventure in 3D, now!

The First of December

2011-12-01T13:09:00.004+08:00

A whiff of winter in the air,

It’s the first day of December, I’m aware -

Is the weather intimate with the calendar,

The way it’s announced the onset of winter?

We’re done with autumn, I know,

For the X’mas decorations are in full flow:

Tinsel and holly and glitter and red -

They’re signaling a birth and an end.

As each year, I wonder at this time:

Where exactly did it go, this year of mine?

A year in which I’d promised myself -

I’d finish a book, become a better mother, writer and wife.

The book is done, the rest is same ole myself...

A constant work in progress,

A year older, wiser - perhaps?

For I do know this much -

The wisdom of age has less to do with the passage of time,

It is, instead, what I did with that time.

Eventually, in the great crucible of life,

In that long walk home that we call life,

Love is the arbiter of all our acts.

Was I loved? Did I love well?

Did that sentence convey what I meant to say?

Shouldn’t I be more patient with my daughter every day?

If, at the end of a day of writing,

I still have nothing I’m happy with,

Surely, hubby can be spared forthwith,

My tetchy, grumpy hedgehogy-writerly being?

So, come December, I welcome you!

You’re my chance to renew, regrow and revise.

I am mine to make over and over -

End-of-year, you're my saviour!

Slapgate, Kolaveri, and A Conspiracy of Silence

2011-11-30T11:45:00.001+08:00

Slapgate stirred up India last week, with journos and politicos going kolaveri over the thappad from the Sardar that shook up Pawar. Then Anna joined the fray with his query: ek hi maara kya? As he clarified to irate journos, he was innocently enquiring after the health of his bete noire (the two have been at loggerheads in the state of Maharashtra for two decades now). Right!

The slap managed to accomplish something rare: unanimity amongst the political parties as each raced to condemn the Sardar. Non-violence was dug out and aired in public and encomiums sung for Pawar.

“The party has never supported violence. Sharad Pawar is a non-violent and a good human being.” – BJP leader Sushma Swaraj

“The guilty must be punished.” – Samajwadi party chief Mulayam Singh

“The act is unfortunate and condemnable and these things should not happen in a democracy.” – Congress spokesperson.

Sharad Pawar’s daughter Supriya Sule, an MP, urged party members to forget the incident.

The gall of the common man, an ordinary citizen, a transporter, to have taken his hand to the withering cheek of a Union minister. When will the ordinary citizens of India learn from their leaders:

To protest in a non-violent manner: “If Walmart attempts to open any shop anywhere then I will personally burn them down.” BJP leader Uma Bharti

To punish the guilty: Congress leaders implicated in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, BJP leaders implicated in the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992, Gujarat CM Narendra Modi implicated in the Godhra riots of 2002 are criminals who continue to be in power.

These things should not happen in a democracy: Each of the above was a pogrom organized by leaders on their own people, albeit on those of a different faith, in our sometimes-Nazi land of democratic India. Voter lists came handy in identifying victims, police was available to assist mobsters, witnesses and whistle-blowers were visited by the goon squad.

To forget the incident: Our politicos are men with diminished limbic system, to forget and move on is their defining mantra.

Oh stuff it, our leaders are telling us. The man who slapped, Harvinder Singh, is in Tihar jail, and we politicos are sharpening our knives over FDI. So long, political unity, now for the next scam.

And thus the cycle continues.

If remembering the past gives power to the future, our future is bleak. We are governed by men who do not remember, and a conspiracy of silence is how they compensate.

When Bodyguard becomes Saviour, and Singh is No More King, Time to Ask: Sadda Haq, Aithe Rakh

2011-11-21T12:54:00.004+08:00

Recently I received the sort of summons you dread when you live away from home. We are a typical expat family that has lived in rented apartments for all the years we’ve been working - home, therefore, is still the place I grew up in, the house my parents built, the four walls within which are ensconced the conspiracies of childhood, the place I have left behind so I can move ahead ...

My mother was abruptly hospitalized but due to the marvel of modern travel, I was by her hospital bedside within 12 hours. My mother is a force of nature, a person with tremendous will power, determination, capacity for hard work and that good ole Punjabi jigra. In my moments of deepest doubt, when I’ve needed to shore up my courage, I’ve closed my eyes and summoned her - and I know: with a mother like that, I’ve no business being a wuss.

And yet, parents, not even seemingly indomitable ones, are immune to the cycle of life. That day she was frail and I felt the baton pass as I realized that I had to, however inadequately, fill those shoes and mimic a courage I didn’t possess. I spent a week in the hospital arranging blood donors, tailing nurses, navigating hospital bureaucracy, procuring medicines, handling bedpans, feeding my mum - food, medicine, tonic, food - and as I zipped in-out of the hospital I encountered Salman Khan.

His brawny self draped in a tight-fitting suit, he was plastered against side walls, as the Bodyguard. The crumbling edifice of the Frances Newton Hospital, a venerable institution started by the American missionaries more than a century back, was in stark contrast to the glossy poster. FNH is the place where my siblings and I got our assorted childhood vaccinations, where my father convalesced after a heart attack, in whose chapel I prayed for his recovery, whose verdant lawns and brick walls were adjacent to my school, whose doctors saved my mother. And yet, the place is falling apart. Like the rest of Punjab.

It swarms with people - needy folks who travel from villages and the town itself because ‘Mishn Aspatal’ is a saviour. But their foreign aid has been cut, the government offers little assistance and, much like my mother, it echoes its former self. But, never mind, Salman Khan is there, the bouncer who is the new saviour of Punjab.

Lest anybody be in doubt, the aforesaid Bollywood film - in a general reflection on the state of us Indians - did exceedingly well at the BO and grossed gross revenues in the state of Punjab. While all Indians seem to be in need of escapist fare, the Punjabis seem to require it like oxygen.

Which is not surprising - the state is going down the drain. But since the deteriorating infrastructure means hardly any functioning drains, perhaps an accurate metaphor would be ‘getting polluted, filthy and stricken like the dying rivers which gave it its name’?

In my home town the pavements have disappeared. We have done the incredible - brought moon to Punjab as its residents navigate lunar surfaces to get from point A to B.

That Punjab isn’t the prosperous state it once was isn’t news any more. Mounting state debt (which has set the ruling SAD and the Opposition snarling at each other), falling agricultural incomes, mounting farmer suicides, rapidly poisoning water supply because of excessive use of pesticides, growing unemployment, degrading soil, and a declining sex ratio, are amongst its litany of woes.

No wonder the consumption of drugs has increased to a point where sociologists are labelling drug-addiction an epidemic in the state.

What do you do if you are a Punjabi youth, educated, with no job on hand? You escape reality - either through drugs or through Bollywood crap. And contend yourself with the tropes that Bollywood churns out for us: Singh is King! Really? Where?

As the state with the most precipitous decline in prosperity? Yes.
As the state that showed one of the largest fall in their economic freedom ratings? Yes.
As the state with one of the worst gender ratios? Yes

Does Bollywood address the above issues? No. It is happy singing Singh is king and having the Singhs swallow it whole.

No wonder Bollywood heroine Kareena Kapoor has quipped: “My fans love me in a desi avatar, in a traditional salwar kameez look.” Does she know that in the state of the traditional salwar kameez, her fans also like to kill their girls? According to Census 2011, the Child sex ratio of Punjab is 846 females per 1000 males.

Since we, the Punjabis and the nation alike, are so besotted with Bollywood, let’s turn to Rockstar, the movie which released recently. Its music has been well received and a song, Sadda Haq, has got some enthusiastic nods.

‘Sadda Haq’ is a traditional rousing cry of the embattled Punjabi. I remember when my sister and her classmates in Medical College went on strike and ‘Sadda Haq’ was their constant refrain. It is time for Punjabis to raise that refrain again.

Our political leaders - be it SAD, congress or any other bad politico - are choking us with their self-serving greed and rampant corruption. They learnt from the British how to divide and rule and they haven’t stopped since. During Partition, they drove the Muslims out; during Khalistan movement, it was the Hindu-Sikh divide. The sad Akali Dal wants to to be the party of the Sikhs and yet, for all their flowing whiskers, they don’t understand the principal tenet of Sikhism - Ek Onkar, the oneness of God. The Congress only wants to oppose the sad Akalis and stay afloat by keeping a foot each in the Hindu and Sikh boat.

Gulzar saab says he cannot forget the sight of bloody corpses being scraped off the tarmac in the aftermath of Partition. I grew up during the Khalistan movement and, like others who witnessed those times, came away scarred. Which is why I wrote The Long Walk Home - lest we forget. And yet, in Shining India and Declining Punjab, we seem to have merrily shrugged off our history as we careen in a downward spiral.

Enough!

The way I see it, we have a choice: we can choose to escape or we can complete the refrain.

Sadda Haq, Aithe Rakh.

It’s time we looked beyond the political play and demanded our right - the right to good governance.

One of the blood transfusions my mother received was from my husband - I sat by her bedside and watched his good South Indian Brahmin blood course drop by drop through her proud Punjabi Jat Sikh veins. When she recovered, my mother proclaimed that my husband had saved her. Very dramatic, but very Punjabi too.

The state of Punjab needs new blood too - its time we cast our prejudices aside and demand the same of our leaders. Whether we are Hindu or Sikh, we need good governance, political propaganda isn’t going to save us.

Seeking a Flying Carpet? Turn to a Good Ole Qawwali!

2011-11-10T11:14:00.001+08:00

On those days when the feeling sets in that "the world is too much with us" - in the inimitable words of Shakespeare - when ennui or boredom or nameless melancholia threatens to drown a perfectly reasonable day, I have a fail-safe avenue that I turn to: qawwali.

Qawwali, the song of the qawwal, qawwal who echos the qaul, qaul the word of god. And thus qawwali transports one to that magical realm which is the promise of all Sufi music. It is my very own flying carpet!

Growing up in the Indian subcontinent, on a steady diet of Bollywood and myriad musical traditions, it is difficult not to have some acquaintance with qawwali, the roots of which are Persian. Amir Khusrau, the versatile musical genius of 13th century, whose renditions are sung to this day - Chaap tilak sab cheeni re, anyone? - is credited with giving qawwali the form that it enjoys to this day.

In the 60s and 70s qawwali was so popular with Hindi filmgoers that every film invariably featured one. After the inevitable waning of the music it has seen a recent resurgence. Rockstar’s Kun faaya kun took me to some of my favourite Bollywood qawwalis. So, here goes...

Chaap tilak sab cheeni re

I have to begin with that queen of qawwalis: its 13th-century provenance, its singular popularity such that no singer worth their vocal chords in the subcontinent cannot not render it - Abida Parveen, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Sabri Brothers, Kailash Kher, even Lata Mangeshkar sang it for Main Tulsi Tere Aangan Ki - its de rigueur status at any Sufi concert or Mehfil-e-Sama, and its contemporary feel.

My favourite rendition is by Abida and I shall stray from the Bollywood version for this one.

Teri mehfil mein kismet aazma kar

Who hasn't heard of Mughal-e-Azam, the epic 1960 film which was the most expensive film, by far, and the highest grosser until Sholay came along? One of the 3 songs to be shot in technicolour in an otherwise B&W movie, watch it for the appeal of a raised brow, a lopsided smile and a gorgeous Madhubala.

Aye meri zohra jabeen

A very handsome Balraj Sahni as Lala Kedarnath serenading his wife Achala Sachdev in Waqt, 1965. A beautiful ode to a beloved in an old-world Peshawari ambience!

Sharma ke yeh kyon sab

An all-women's qawwali, amazing lyrics, and has Waheeda looked more radiant ever? From Chaudhvin Ka Chand, 1960

Tere dar pe aayan hoon

I have to admite, I am a Rishi fan but has there been a better Majnu? From Laila Majnu, 1979.

Yaari ha imaan mera yaar meri zindagi

It is different from the usual picturization of qawwali in Bollywood. Zanjeer, 1973, set Amitabh on the 'angry young man' path and in this qawwali the brooding friend is quizzed by Pran (who plays a reformed Pathan): teri hasi ki keemat kya hai ye bataa de tu?

Na to karvan ki talaash hai

Barsaat ki Raat, 1960. A qawwali competition between the sexes!

Hai agar dushman dushman zamana gham nahin

Ranbir might be the darlin' of today's generation but he has an illustrious legacy to live up to! Does anybody do romantic-feisty-aggrieved-dancing hero better than Rishi Kapoor. From the film Hum Kisise Kum Nahin, 1977.

Humein to loot liya

Sometimes, old truly is gold. From the film Al Hilal, 1958, this charming qawwali has men dancing like real men did - unselfconsciously - in the era before pelvic thrusting heros. A classic.

Piya Haji Ali

This haunting qawwali from Fiza, 2000, composed by A R Rahman, rounds up my list. Beautifully sung, it magically transports you to that realm of peace, which is the Sufiyana promise.

There are many many more qawwalis, so don't forget to log in and share your favourites too!

Also, I must hasten to mention that most qawwalis seem to have been sung by Manna Dey. Thank you Sir!

A Matter of Black and White

2011-11-07T10:35:00.001+08:00

Kis wal akheya wey Majnu nu,
O teri Laila disdi kaali wey!
Majnu ney jawaab ditta,
O teri akh na dekhan wali wey.

Je tu dekheyn meri akh naal
Teri surat na jaaye sambhaali wey!

Ved vi chitte te Quran vi chitti,
Vich siyahi rakh ditti kaali wey,
Ghulam Farid jitthe akhiyaan lagiyaan,
Otthe kya gori kya kaali we!

Artist Shri Vitthal Das Rathore

After a long time, I stumbled once again upon this gem of a poem when listening to Jagjit Singh. It is by Ghulam Farid, a prolific and popular Sufi poet whose poetry in Punjabi and Saraiki is woven so well into the Punjabi idiom that very often we quote him without being aware of it. Much as with Baba Bulleh Shah and Waris Shah.

What I find so appealing about this poem and the others by the Punjabi poets is that hidden in that apparent simplicity is a wealth of wisdom - to comprehend which one only needs an open mind. For those of you unfamiliar with Punjabi, let me attempt a translation.

Some context: The poem deals with the popular lovers Laila-Majnu where, as is well known, Laila was of a wheatish complexion. In a culture where beauty is often equated with fairness, the poet takes the popular trope of 'gori-chitti' beauty-benchmark and illustrates how beauty is everywhere - if only we were to open our mind.

Someone remarked to Majnu
Your Laila is dark complexioned!
Which Majnu did respond to,
Only because her beauty your eye hasn't fathomed.

If you could see Laila with my eyes,
Overawed, you'd change the way you apprise.

Ved and Quran are nothing but white sheet,
Which, the black ink upon them does complete,
Ghulam Farid, in matters of the heart,
The distinction between black and white falls apart.

Beautiful, isn't it?

Writers Who Reveal

2011-11-02T12:37:00.001+08:00

A friend sent me a link – Should writers be sexier than you? – and asked what I thought. Thought? This was no time to think, girl!

What I had to do was look up the hottest fashion photographer in HK, throw a saree on me like I was a gori who had no idea where the pallu was supposed to stay (on the shoulder, covering both the boobs if you please – I know the likes of Priyanka Chopra have made a single boob show in but hey, I ain’t a Bollywood actress, and I still need to dress in a manner that sends the right signals to my daughter), or imitate the writers in the article who looked like they were in the race to be the current dhak-dhak girl. Having accomplished that hot pic, I’d declare myself a sexy novelist, then sit back and watch my soaring sales that'd have Beyonce herself googling her new competitor.

Think I am bullshitting – read up on The Hot Authors project that, aghast at the prospect that writers are losing their place as cultural heroes, suggests they should start competing with pop culture stars on the same level. “Let’s promote novelists as sexy and fabulous. Insist that PEN award require a turn on the catwalk! Hold the National Book Awards on a sliver of sand populated by buxom models in horn-rimmed shades …”

Compete with pop culture? Heavens, what do they have in mind? Lady Gaga or Kim Kardashian?

So, it seems that now, as a writer, I have to preoccupy myself with foundation (other than that of storytelling), depth (of cleavage, not character), plot (not narrative but moves that shall get me on the ‘Hot Authors’ list), details (not those that flesh out my characters but of what constitutes ‘Hot’) and other such infernal notions that are meant to plague the world of pop artists, Bolly-Holly stars and reality TV divas.

Uh-hmmm… The fact that artists reflect the prevailing culture seems to have escaped their festering brains altogether. We live in a digital, 24x7, consumerist world, inundated with choices, where our attention spans are under perennial assault. An average book takes longer to consume than a pop song or a reality show. And looks have always had a premium in our culture but looks have nothing to do with what the artist creates. Rafael was decidedly the handsomer Renaissance artist but both Michelangelo and he created art that is feted to this day.

A writer, primped out in an LBD or a wet saree or 3-buttons open (what is the advice for male writers here? Oh yes, the Hot Authors Project shot a writer in his undies in a tub!) shall as quickly become a pop culture star as the average kid grows up to be Superman because he donned the costume with the red knickers.

Writing is not performance art. A writer’s work – book, poem, essay, blog, news report – is written in a solitary space and meant to be consumed by an individual. The product, in that sense, is truly one-on-one, a conversation the writer begins and the reader completes. The catwalk, the sandy beach strewn with buxom ladies, are all evoked in the mind by that black ink on white (or sepia as ipad allows). As are conjured blind assassins and blood meridians and midnight’s children and the wide Sargasso sea – the creation of which didn’t need for their writers to be good looking or sexy or hot. All they required of them was that they hunker down and tussle with their craft and not give up until they had produced the best work they could.

As Kafka said, a book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. Writers reveal with their souls.

Writing, I have always maintained, is like any other work, except you love what you do! But there is a price to be paid for that love: no monthly pay cheque, no gossip with colleagues at the water fountain or in the pantry, no external enforcer of discipline, no business-class airfare when traveling on work, no annual bonus to validate one’s self-worth.

But, we’ll live with the shortcomings. Just don’t bullshit us that how we look/dress/catwalk is more important than what we produce – our writing.

I learnt in B-school that bullet points are a great way to get the message across, even to dumb initiators of Hot Authors Project. So here:

Hot/sexy is in the eyes of the beholder
The playing field for a writer is not a catwalk, it is the 5-inch space between the ears
Writing is not performance art
In an age of consumerism, no writer, when they have to step out – whether for a litfest, or photo shoot, or book reading, or speaking engagement – fails to step up. All writers are keenly aware of the pressure to market themselves (the Publisher would shoot them otherwise). And on that note, most author photos are photoshopped fraud!
If that isn’t enough, imagine the writers you’d never have read because they weren’t hot enough: Dickens, Shakespeare, Ghalib, Iris Murdoch, Nabokov, Vonnegut, Doris Lessing…

If you are a writer, my advice: write the best book you can, and then market like crazy!

Vignettes From a Walk Along Paris' Right Bank

2011-10-27T13:38:00.001+08:00

"... it is possible to love a place like it is a person... a place is never just its physical coordinates, for its location is often in the heart. Thus, it can be carried around forever, and passed on to one's children, with all its lingering memories and wistful fragrances."

-- The Long Walk Home

Yup, I am quoting from my own book above, my second novel that is, where a character grapples with Partition. But that is also how I view places; a place is organic, it has pulse and rhythm and smell - much like a human being. And places speak for the people who come from them. For a California resident, a New Yorker is an alien and if you're in India, whether you are a Delhiite or a Mumbaikar can be a decoder for the entire You!

Paris is one of my favourite places and because its Paris - that much feted City of Love - it is a world unto itself. So, any Parisian will tell you, whether you are from the Left Bank or the Right will speak volumes about you. The Right Bank is the traditional upper crust, where you find the big businesses and banks, along with the Louvre, Champs Elysses, Arc de Triomphe, Centre Pomipdou and others. Left Bank, on the southern side of the river Seine, meanwhile, is historically the boho hangout of legendary writers and artists - Picasso, Matisse, Hemingway - who lived in the more affordable part of the city.

With that as a backdrop, let's walk the Right Bank, shall we?!

Probably the most prestigious resident of the Right Bank, certainly for an artist: Musee du Louvre

I thought you couldn't snorkel in the Seine but clearly some folks can!

This is one American even the French like to flaunt: classic Pacino swigging cigar in place of George Washington.

The pavement vendors have interesting wares on offer - this is Paris, after all!

My daughter and I never, ever, miss any dog - this evoked a simultaneous sense of deja vu and wonder. We see such sights in India all the time where the homeless often make their home with man's best friend. The pups, mother and master were catching some Easter sunshine.

Shop after shop of postcards, vintage posters, rare books on the Quai du Louvre, enough to make up for the professed lack of bohemia in the Right Bank!

I mean to do a post on the Left Bank as well; meanwhile, au revoir!

2011-10-24T09:24:00.002+08:00

Our Lady of Alice Bhatti

by Mohammed Hanif

Random House

Manreet Sodhi Someshwar

Mohammed Hanif’s debut novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, surged him onto the literary firmament, brought him a Booker longlisting, and giddy proclamations of an exciting new voice from Pakistan. Mangoes was that rare thing – a distinctly different voice, wry, satirical, going determinedly against the grain of lush South Asian narratives – which took the mysterious death of General Zia, the President of Pakistan, and converted it into an intriguing examination of the spidery skeins of Pakistani society in the eighties under a corrupt army dictatorship.

Now Hanif is back with his second novel, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti, a book that the jacket cover describes as “written with savage humour and in sizzling prose, a tour de force”. Nothing wrong with that descriptor, picked as it is from a Rolodex of adulatory book blurbs, but it does little to convey the visceral makeup of the book, its simultaneous sense of déjà vu and wonder, its gritty texture and terrifying guts, its godforsaken world created by a God-fearing society.

The book is being described variously as a black comedy, a satire on the bleakness of Pakistan as it exists today. Indeed, it’ll make you sigh, it’ll make you laugh, but most of all, it’ll make you shake your head, especially if you’re a South Asian woman, as you wonder if Hanif leads a parallel life as a ventroloquist. Taking as his central protagonist a woman who is a poor Catholic choohra (a pejorative word for Christians in Pakistan) this male writer from a distinctly different class and strata of that society yanks us into the perverse world of Alice Bhatti, junior nurse and ex-resident of Borstal woman’s jail, penis-slasher and miracle-worker.

Alice Bhatti works at the Scared Heart Hospital for All Ailments, both nurse and institution try to get by, by masking their religious denomination in a Muslim-majority country. “Leave your firearms and faith at the gate, says another sign under a small wooden cross, slightly askew and not painted in a long time, in the hope that people will forget that it’s a Catholic establishment”.

Alice, whose “body is one of those miracles of malnourishment, which has resulted in a thin, brittle bone stucture with overgrown breasts”, is an untouchable hoping “for the only privilege that comes with being one, that people won’t touch her without her explicit permission”. She wears baggy clothes topped by a baggier white coat in the hope that men will not focus on her breasts; she also carries a Gillette razor in her uniform pocket.

Alice has learnt that cutting up women is a sport older than cricket but just as popular in her cricket-crazed nation and she doesn’t want to attract attention. “During her house job she worked in Accidents and Emergencies for six months and there was not a single day – not a single day – when she didn’t see a woman shot or hacked, strangled or suffocated, poisoned or burnt, hanged or buried alive”. Practical Alice wants to stick to her plan of anonymity, temper her feisty choohra self with a nondescript exterior but fate – or the men in her world – has other plans for her.

Enter Teddy Butt, Musla body builder, winner of the title of Junior Mr Faisalabad, police pimp, and honorary member of the Gentleman’s Squad – a group of “like-minded police officers, not really an entity commissioned by any law-enforcing authority”. Teddy is smitten by Alice and lurks around the Out Patients Department hoping to catch her alone. However, since his articulation extends only to cricket, he brings a Mauser to his declaration of love since “people always try to understand when their life depends on listening properly”.

What chance can such an improbable romantic pairing have in a country rife with Islamic fundamentalism, where blasphemy laws have been invoked with increasing impunity against the country’s minority Christian community? In a scene that foreshadows their future together, Teddy Butt rescues a clueless Alice who has been sent to the Charya Ward, their love taking root in a loony bin.

“Just remember it’s called a nuthouse and there’s a reason for that… the whole country is a nuthouse”. Hanif evokes Toba Tek Singh, a lunatic character in a famous eponymous short story on the sectarian Partition of the subcontinent by the Pakistani writer Saadat Hasan Manto. The story, synonymous as it is with Manto, has deep resonance in the region for its vivid illustration of its absurd ways – in an ironic turn of events Manto ended up in a mental asylum himself, admitted there by his family.

But it is not the inmates of Charya Ward alone who are lunatics – entire Karachi is teeming with nutty folks as Alice and Teddy get married on a nuclear submarine; a Christian sweeper cures ulcers through the use of candles and Musla prayers; a man who waxes his body lectures his wife on the appropriate length of her pubic hair – a grain of rice; the leader of the G-squad, enroute to assassinating a man, stops at a phone booth to give his daughter last-minute Math instructions; an apparently still-born baby comes miraculously alive; Sister Alice become our Lady of Alice Bhatti via a can of acid and a detour through the Burns ward …

The narrative itself moves back and forth in time without warning, which can leave the reader feeling gobsmacked, but the grimness of proceedings are leavened by a dry wit and an ironic voice.

Hanif has mentioned in interviews his amazement at the surprising response his first book evoked. Whenever he encountered senior retired folks – bureaucrats, military generals – they quizzed him on his sources because, they insisted, the novel couldn’t be closer to truth.

The author need have no such fear with Alice. When faced with bitter truth, it is a universal human response to deal with it through outright denial, or laughter. No wonder then that Our Lady of Alice Bhatti is being hailed as a black comedy when Hanif, in this coruscating work, is telling it as it is.

This review first appeared in the South China Morning Post on 23 October 2011

Amish Tripathi’s Shiva Trilogy and the Rise of Popular Fiction in India

2011-10-20T09:21:00.000+08:00

The Secret of the Nagas

Amish Tripathi

Tara Press, August 2011

The Immortals of Meluha

Amish Tripathi

Tara Press, February 2010

Once upon a time a blue-necked man descended from his home in Tibet with his warriors to a city in Indus valley in order to save it. Thus goes a popular folklore from Jammu and Kashmir, the northernmost state of India. In his bestselling Shiva trilogy, Amish Tripathi, an investment banker-turned-writer, transposes Lord Shiva of mythology into the valley of Srinagar, gives him a thoroughly modern makeover and brings him, cussing and swearing contemporaneously, into our present world.

Lord Shiva is a revered God in the Hindu trinity whose popularity is pan-Indian. Known as the Destroyer, he has a softer side to him as well: in his avatar as Nataraja, he can dance the bells off the ankles of the most proficient dancer. For a God, he is sufficiently layered: he puffs chillum, a pipe for smoking cannabis that the Rastafarians made popular in the West. He is also a superb warrior, skilled in the use of weapons and hand-to-hand combat, and a heroic leader of his people. To cut a long story short, Shiva was ready for a writer to spring him into the 21st century in his metrosexual avatar—Tripathi has done just that.

Book 1 of the Shiva trilogy, The Immortals of Meluha, has sold over 100,000 copies since its launch in 2010 and Book 2, the recently-released The Secret of the Nagas, is currently on the bestseller lists in India. In a market where less than half a decade ago English-language bestsellers were books that sold 5000 copies, the phenomenon of English-language fiction selling in the tens and hundreds of thousands has blown apart the glass ceiling for publishers.

The question naturally arises: what is Tripathi doing right?

To answer that question, let’s first get acquainted with a few facts. India is the third-largest publisher of English language books in the world after the U.S. and U.K. Traditionally, Indian writing in English (it even has its own acronym: IWE) has been synonymous with literary fiction, dominated by writers who have either won prestigious prizes such as the Booker, Pulitzer, Nobel—Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Kiran Desai, Jhumpa Lahiri, V.S. Naipaul, to name a few—or have been lauded by the West which has then lent them the badge of credibility-that-ensures-salability back home.

In 2005, this placid sea was to experience a tsunami when another investment banker published his coming-of-age story set in a prestigious Indian school. Five Point Someone by Chetan Bhagat shook the IWE publishing scene by selling several hundred thousand copies.

The lad-lit has since spawned a generation of people who have boring banker-type jobs by morning and are writing novels by night. The successful ones—like Tripathi—go on to quit their careers (Tripathi describes himself as a “boring banker turned happy author”) while the others are either promoting their newly-published novels or are tapping away at the keyboard en route to the novel they’re convinced they have in themselves.

Chetan Bhagat, of course, is responsible for setting off this torrent and continuing to contribute to it. He has published a total of four novels, three of which have been made into Bollywood films, and has landed himself a place in Time’s 2010 list of the 100 most influential people. Widely regarded as a youth icon, he writes for leading English and Hindi newspapers on issues dealing with youth and national development, and is a motivational speaker.

That is huge, and, for the young Indian reader carries far more heft than a Booker. In the hothouse of Indian academics, where exam scores of 100% may not be enough to ensure admission into a school of choice, writing is no more seen as the pursuit of a loser.Traditionally, a professional degree in medicine, law or engineering was seen a necessary pre-condition for success in life and love and the pursuit of art as vocation didn’t fall into the set of careers under consideration.

But writing now is cool and the new breed of writers, propelled by the burgeoning media and their own MBA-school personas, are cool people who give great interviews, conduct snazzy presentations, look good and deliver great sound bytes. The media loves them fortheir marketability.

And the young like them because they are aspirational even when telling their stories in a language they can easily comprehend. While critics have harped at the poor grammar and lack of sophisticated English used by the popular fiction writers—the influential daily Indian Express has labeled such writing “illiterature”—the writers themselves trumpet their writing style as a trump card. You could call it the Booker backlash.

They insist that they use language that their readers can relate to—a savvy point since their readers are young people for whom English is a second or third language. As several reading surveys have shown, most such readers read not for pleasure alone but to learn—in this case, learn the English language.

India has recently seen the 20th anniversary of the day when Manmohan Singh, current Prime Minister, then Finance Minister, proposed opening up the hitherto socialist economy. This measure set off an unprecedented period of economic growth lead by service outsourcing. In its wake, a new, upwardly-mobile, aspirational middle-class has arisen which is less interested in either traditional Indian fiction or that merely imported from or endorsed by the West and is instead lapping up stories which mirror their own changing experiences and aspirations.

* * *

Set in 1900 B.C., The Immortals of Meluha opens with Shiva being called upon by the Suryavanshis for help. Their utopian land faces twin threats: from a diminishing Saraswati river and devastating attacks from the Chandrawanshis. Their only hope is the ancient legend that has foretold the arrival of a saviour. Book 1 charts Shiva’s journey as the hopeful Suryavanshis, the reader, and Shiva himself deciphers if, indeed, his destiny is to be a hero.

Not much suspense there, since everyone knows Shiva in his exalted avatar of a God. To circumvent that Tripathi has created an engaging plot where the evil Nagas, an ostracized race of half-humans with extraordinary martial skills, constantly play the spoiler.

Tripathi’s book was rejected by several established publishers before he was taken on by a small print called Tara Press. While the big publishers were probably focused on the established model – sophisticated writing, epic family drama or immigrant angst – what they overlooked was that the story of a modern Shiva who uses words like “Damn”, woos the woman of his liking by breaking into dance like a Bollywood hero, relaxes by smoking cannabis, and spurns hierarchy, would connect with the young reader. After all, prize-winning books are often seen as part of the interior decoration in upscale households – a fact that the poet-lyricist Javed Akhtar bitterly recounted at the Jaipur literary festival.

As Tripathi triumphantly proclaimed in an interview, his best compliment came from a 12-year-old who emailed him saying that Shiva was no more just his grandmother’s god, he was the dude of Gods!

Gods have always had a very real presence in Indian homes. They are bathed frequently, offered fresh flowers, served the choicest dessert, ensconced in fragrant spaces, and actively consulted before any important occasion—be it an exam, a wedding or even a job interview. Tripathi’s magic was to make Lord Shiva speak to the bored young person who usually stands listless in front of the deity as daily prayers are said.

A rise in literacy (India has the world’s largest circulation of newspapers, even ahead of China) has also contributed to the burgeoning pop fiction sales. A recent survey by the National Book Trust estimated that India has 83 million regular readers between the ages of 13 and 35. Seventy-five percent of those readers read books at least once a week. Their favourite leisure activity, however, was watching TV.

Recently, a friend from the U.S. returned to his home in small-town India and got talking to the neighbours. A young boy, keen to impress the NRI (non-resident Indian), mentioned that he was preparing for his MBA entrance exams and for English he was reading Chetan Bhagat. A decade back, an Indian youth engaged in a similar pursuit would have mentioned Rushdie, Ghosh, Dickens or Shakespeare. It’s not all gloom though—the Bard continues to be popular. A readership survey by Tehelka, a leading weekly news magazine, showed that after Bhagat, Shakespeare is second most popular choice for readers.

Affordable price points are another propelling factor. The Tehelka survey showed that the young reader compares the price of a book to that of a cup of coffee, with popular books selling at less than two US dollars. In turn, publishers make money by volume. As any consumer goods marketer in India will confirm, the Indian consumer being price-sensitive in the fast moving consumer goods market (FMCG), and it’s largely a volume game.

* * *

As someone once said, all stories that could be told are contained in the great Indian narratives, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. Undoubtedly, 2000+ years of antiquity and an audience of a billion people have led to multiple retellings of the narratives.

Book 2, The Secret of the Nagas, takes us further on Shiva’s journey to divinity as he continues with the hunt for the sinister Naga who has killed his best friend Brahaspati and is stalking his wife Sati. This adventure takes him through the length and breadth of ancient India as the crown prince is murdered, the Vasudevs—Shiva’s philosophical guides—switch sides, and even the perfect empire is revealed to have a dark secret.

In this sequel, Shiva has matured in confidence, to the detriment of the delightful vulnerability and confusion he exhibited in Book 1. In his improved avatar, he is unassailable, impervious to hurt as he protects his followers unfailingly and allows for contradictory opinions to flourish—which renders this democratic superhero in Book 2 a less interesting protagonist. The narrative is also hampered by what appears to be the writer’s attempt to redress his plain language—the usage of words such as asphyxiating, chutzpah, gargantuan, plethora only serve to give the storytelling the texture of sandpaper.

However, there are rewards in store for the reader who plows on. In Hindu mythology Shiva and Ganesha share a prickly father-son relationship, the furious Shiva having cut off his son’s head once. In Book 2 the elephant-headed Ganesha provides one of the biggest surprises of the story in what is an ingenious interpretation of the benevolent God.

The romp ends predictably at a precipice as the reader is left in anticipation of Book 3 in the trilogy.

* * *

The extraordinary success of the Shiva trilogy owes something to the clever marketing drive undertaken by Tripathi who, as he has stated in several interviews, decided to deploy his MBA skills to promote the book. A sophisticated cover, a high-quality promotional video, and active marketing helped propel the book. Chapters of the book were available for digital download and in hard copies at book stores for free distribution. Tripathi also undertook book readings in smaller towns to engage with readers who live beyond metropolises.

The books are skillful page-turners and the action has a dizzyingly contemporary feel. Tripathi’s Shiva is into hell and damnation and it would be easy for a reader to forget that the story is taking place in 1900 B.C. When he encounters Sati, his future wife, he attempts to impress her with his sword-fighting skills but ends up making a hash of it. Here’s how he feels: “O bloody hell! What am I saying? I’m not going to impress her like this!”

The mostly-straightforward language keeps the narrative on track but does little to build atmosphere or evoke the ancient era. When Shiva enters the fortress city of Branga “…the buildings were superbly built and maintained, while their temples were lofty and grand.”

Philosophy is delivered in easily digestible bytes—it in fact was originally meant to be a philosophy book—and this melange of mythology and fantasy was written because, the writer has proclaimed, “Shiva chose him to write the story.”

Bollywood is not famed for literary adaptations. However, a scriptwriter-director friend divulged how the industry of late is keenly watching the fiction bestseller list. The idea being that if a book has sold over 100,000 copies it has an existing audience—which then provides a ready-made platform from which to catapult a film version of the story.

Even Hollywood seems to be in agreement: Creative Artists Agency has signed on Tripathi’s Shiva trilogy. Meanwhile, the rights to Chanakya’s Chant, another bestseller that features the ancient Indian Machiavelli as the central protagonist, have been bought by UTV Motion Pictures.

With his books being lapped up by Indian readers, Triphati has announced plans to write about the Mughal emperor Akbar; Manu, the Hindu progenitor of mankind; and his version of Ramayana and Mahabharata.

India has a legendary pantheon of Gods and a lengthy roster of historical figures that haven’t been subjected to much literary treatment. With the emergence of new genres in Indian publishing, and the success of Tripathi’s storytelling, we shall doubtless see them come in vogue as other writers emulate the formula.

It is not inconceivable that as India’s economy continues to grow aggressively, and average incomes rise, the emergence of new genres in Indian publishing and their adoption by overseas markets—Hollywood, foreign rights buyers—may end up influencing reading tastes elsewhere in the English-speaking world. And there’s no denying the relative robustness of Indian print publishing when seen in light of the well-publicized travails of the industry elsewhere.

What is undeniable is that the process begun by Chetan Bhagat has set off aHarry Potter-like phenomenon in Indian publishing. To better understand it, grab a pop-fiction title from the multitudes lining shelves in Indian bookstores and read it. You might just end up going Jai Ho!

This essay first appeared in the Asian Review of Books on 13 October 2011

What's Behind The Rise of Indian Pop Fiction?

2011-10-13T11:08:00.003+08:00

Have you read any of the following books:

- Chankaya's Chant

- The Immortals of Meluha

- The Secret of the Nagas

- Any of Chetan Bhagat's books

or wondered what is behind the sudden escalation in popularity of popular fiction in India?

My essay in the Asian Review of Books examines the rise of Indian pop-fiction through the lens of the bestselling Shiva Trilogy by Amish Tripathi. I shall be uploading the essay on my blog soon - meanwhile, read it at

Asian Review of Books

A preview:

Once upon a time a blue-necked man descended from his home in Tibet with his warriors to a city in Indus valley in order to save it. Thus goes a popular folklore from Jammu and Kashmir, the northernmost state of India. In his bestselling Shiva trilogy, Amish Tripathi, an investment banker-turned-writer, transposes Lord Shiva of mythology into the valley of Srinagar, gives him a thoroughly modern makeover and brings him, cussing and swearing contemporaneously, into our present world.

Book 1 of the Shiva trilogy, The Immortals of Meluha, has sold over 100,000 copies since its launch in 2010 and Book 2, the recently-released The Secret of the Nagas, is currently on the bestseller lists in India. In a market where less than half a decade ago English-language bestsellers were books that sold 5000 copies,the phenomenon of English-language fiction selling in the tens and hundreds of thousands has blown apart the glass ceiling for publishers.

The question naturally arises: what is Tripathi doing right?

Jagjit Singh, a Friend For All Seasons

2011-10-11T14:05:00.001+08:00

Jagjit Singh or Ghazaljit Singh as Gulzar once called him - he should know for the two worked on several albums together and shared an easy camaraderie. Or Ghazal King, as he was popularly called, because, as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in his tribute to the maestro, he made ghazals accessible to everyone.

In the palimpsest that is India, ghazal arrived to its shores on ships that sailed from Persia, on horseback as marauders galloped down from central Asia, in the songs of mystics who roamed Hind in the wake of the conquerors. With the eclipse of Persian in the Mughal court, the ghazal of Rumi and Hafiz transitioned to a polyglot language which was birthed in the Indo-Persian-Arabic roiling on the subcontinent, Urdu.

Ghazal in India is supposed to have begun with Amir Khusrau in the thirteenth century and its golden period is the 18^th and 19^th centuries when luminaries like Mir, Dard, Ghalib, Momin and Zauq elevated this form of poetry.

For the uninitiated, ghazal is a short poem, rarely exceeding a dozen couplets in the same metre. It always opens with a rhyming couplet called matla which sets the mood and tone of the poem. The last couplet of the ghazal is called makta and often includes the pen-name of the poet and is usually more personal than general in its intent.

Also, though a ghazal is commonly understood to be a love poem, (in Arabic the word literally means talking to a woman) it deals with the whole spectrum of human experience. Ghalib has such a vast oeuvre that it is said there is hardly any situation or state of mind which he hasn’t rendered in his inimitable style. Which, in turn, explains why he is the most quoted of all Urdu poets.

For a whole generation of Indians Ghalib came alive when Jagjit Singh sang his ghazals for the eponymous TV serial directed by Gulzar in 1988. His mellifluous voice gave new life to Mirza Ghalib’s lyrics as entire India nodded and hummed to ‘Zulmat kade mein’, ‘Dil-e-nadaan tujhe’, ‘Bazeecha-e-atfal hai’, comprehending some of the lyrics and suspending incomprehension for the balance, as the voice and words alighted straight from the ears to the heart.

Jagjit Singh is rightly credited with reviving ghazals in India, with giving them a home again in Bollywood, and with filling our drawers and shelves with cassette tapes, then CDs, now ipods of his melodious renditions.

In my childhood I was surrounded by Mehdi Hassan and Begum Akhtar and in my adulthood I discovered Abida Parveen. But Jagjit Singh was a friend I made in adolescence, and since then he has remained a steadfast ally. He made the genius of Mirza Ghalib accessible to me; he molded the pain of being away from home by his rendition of Shiv Kumar Batalvi’s Birha da Sultan; he lifted ordinary Bollywood films with his magical singing; his rendition of Bahadur Shah Zafar’s ‘Meri tanhaiyon tum hi laga lo mujh ko seeney sey’ has provided a balm on many a sad day; his Punjabi tappe cheer me up; his teaming with wife Chitra a continual delight both to listen and to watch …

I have had the good fortune to attend some live performances of the maestro and the delight with which he rendered the ghazals was always palpable – it got the audience clapping hands and jigging shoulders while seated until, eventually, the tapping feet led to dancing in the aisles. For all lovers of Urdu poetry, of ghazals and ghazal-gayaki, he was our rockstar.

Now that he has passed into that great unknown, perhaps his journey will take him to a caravanserai where Rumi and Ghalib are in a mushaira and an enthralled audience is deep into wah-wahs, and Jagjit Singh will pick up the matla, and, with his trademark glint, will begin strumming the rhyming couplet, ta-nana-ta-nana-na-nana …

As for me, I shall always have the company of the friend I grew up with. Jagjit Singh is a friend for all seasons as he so beautifully extolled in Mirza Ghalib’s couplet,

Yeh kahaan ki dosti hai keh bane hain dost naasih,

Koi chaara saaz hota, koi ghamgusaar hota.

What use is this friendship where there is much advise,
O for a friend, who’ll share with me my sighs.

P.S. Note his trademark wit right at the beginning of the above video

Poochne Mein Kya Jaata Hai? Or how to make life jingalala!

2011-09-22T11:05:00.002+08:00

Recently I saw an ad that made me smile and shake my head, the way you do when you encounter something familiar in a refreshing new setting. More importantly, I remembered the name of the brand and spent the next few minutes explaining to my perplexed daughter why I was grinning so much. My daughter is growing up in Hong Kong, and like most NRI kids has a novice's grasp of Hindi-Punjabi; which means that nuances escape her :)

The people who made the ad - both the company and the advertising team - can reward themselves with a congratulatory pat on the back. I should know - I have worked in advertising - and this particular ad had delivered on several effectiveness parameters:

- Brand recall (I remembered the brand distinctly)

- Positive image (The ad used humour, which always engages)

- Eagerness to buy (Well, I was keen to see the other ads in the series, which means I was primed for more communication from the advertiser, which means I was getting there ...)

Best of all, for me, as an ex-advertising executive, the ad was built on consumer insight. The best ads always are, for that is how they worm their message into us without us even being aware of it. So, here, watch the ads below, enjoy, and let's see whether you've as much fun as I did!

TVC1

TVC 2

TVC3

Didja?!

Pooch dala toh life jingalala ... The ads are built on the simple premise of "ask, why not?", a rather Indian trait which is increasingly being rendered sterile in the new retail space opening up in India : shiny counters, spiffy salesmen, packaged deals, and fixed price?

Over summer in India I was trying to get a pre-paid card and checked several shops, each of which disappointed because the salesman sullenly dished out pre-paid cards, neatly wrapped up in their shiny cartons, and I'd to figure out for myself whether any of them answered my specific need.

In such a scenario the good ol' Desi habit/custom/practice of asking questions and always looking for a bargain is under threat. Tata Sky and its advertising team at Ogilvy have done a fab job with leveraging off this consumer insight and putting it at the forefront of its campaign. In fact, they have ratified the old Indian practice of negotiating-when-purchasing and issued a summons to go forth boldly: Poochne mein kya jaata hai?

Wadja think?

Indian ads are usually entertaining - so much so that whenever we return from an India trip my daughter knows several that she rattles off with glee! Any ads you liked lately - please share. After all, Poochne mein kya jaata hai?

He Dumped You? A Coping Plan ...

2011-09-19T14:21:00.013+08:00

A friend sent me an email asking for an advertisement I'd written last year for Femina. She needed it, she said, for another friend who was sleepwalking through her days after having been dumped. I felt sorry for that girl I don't know - we've all been there, haven't we?

So, I sent her that ad and decided to repost it on my blog. If you find a connect, share it ... And remind your friend to Yahoo! - because you always have other options.

P.S - A day after I wrote this blog post, I read the news of an IIMB student who committed suicide because her boyfriend dumped her on Facebook. It is such an unfortunate incident but the reality of life is that one does get dumped and social media is here to stay. Therefore, what we need is to educate our young people on how to cope with dumping and other frustrations that life tends to throw at us with dogged regularity.

My Louvre Top Ten

2011-09-16T11:25:00.007+08:00

"As I emerged from the porch of Santa Croce, I was seized with a fierce palpitation of the heart; the wellspring of life was dried up within me, and I walked in constant fear of falling to the ground."

No, the above is not taken out of a horror story, nor is it excerpted from my upcoming thriller - in fact, the narrator, though in Italy, is not even being pursued by anything remotely mafiosi... So, what is happening exactly?

The narrator is an author, Marie-Henrie Beyle, who recorded the above in his book Naples and Florence: A Journey from Milan to Reggio. It describes his reaction upon encountering Renaissance masterpieces in Florence in 1817. He wasn't alone. Rapid heartbeat, dizziness, confusion have been reported by innumerable people when exposed to art - it became so frequent that an Italian psychiatrist who observed and recorded several such cases termed it Stendhal Syndrome (Stendhal was the pen name of the sentient Marie-Henrie).

I can confess to having suffered a version of that syndrome during my own peregrinations in the Vatican museums and the Uffizi - when I came face to face with Michelangelo's Pieta, I had this overwhelming sense to kneel in front of it, much like I do in a Gurudwara ... so there, Stendhal, you aren't alone. However, since then I have developed my own prescription for dealing with the syndrome - checklists!

Over Easter we had a chance to visit the Louvre and since I am a believer in forewarned is forearmed, I had gone with my personal emollient in the eventuality that its treasures made me run like a headless chicken: Halt, Deep breathing, Course correction, Time for the checklist.

It doesn't help that Musee du Louvre is one of the largest museums in the world, the most visited art museum in the world, and a historic museum on account of it being the first public museum. Ahem! That first-time visitors to the Louvre will be overwhelmed is a given. Question is: how do you deal with it? Be selective, see the choicest ones, and believe firmly that life will not be so unfair as to not allow you another visit - mera number phir se aayega!

On that note, here's my Louvre Top Ten:

1. Portrait of Lisa Gheradini, known as Mona Lisa
Leonardo da Vinci
Location: Denon, 1st Floor - Painting (Italy)

You cannot not see the most famous painting in the world. My advice, see it and get it over with. Meeting Mona is a bit like encountering a celebrity in Chandni chowk - she's smaller than you thought, and before you can even begin to feast upon her, persistent elbowing from other anxious visitors will drown her in front of your eyes - crawl away.

2. The Wedding Feast at Cana
Paolo Caliari, known as Veronese
Location: Denon, 1st Floor - Painting (Italian)

Crawl, in fact, toward the opposite wall where all is quiet as a sea of people behind is focussed on Mona. You'll not be disappointed - it is the biggest painting in the Louvre, 22 feet high and 32 feet wide. The painting recounts the first miracle (when Jesus turned water to wine) and also recalls the Last Supper in its representation (Christ at the center of the table, the groom and bride relegated to the extreme left) - in one single stroke Veronese has illustrated Jesus's entire divinity.

3. The Death of the Virgin
Michelangelo Merisi, also known as Caravaggio
Location: Denon, 1st Floor - Painting (Italian)

Bias alert - this striking picture is one of my personal favourites. Caravaggio was a realist and his portrait of a dead Mary shows a mortal who, despite her holy self, was a woman. And yet, there is an intense spirituality to the harrowing scene of grief, which the painter coveys through his trademark use of chiaroscuro, the play of light against dark that Caravaggio pioneered.

4. The Fortune-Teller
Michelangelo Merisi, also known as Caravaggio
Location: Denon, 1st Floor - Painting (Italian)

Caravaggio's life was a humdinger - mixing with working-class people while being patronised by wealthy collectors and aristocrats. The blunt realities of everyday life lend an immediacy to his paintings such that even 500 years later they seem contemporary.

5. The Raft of the Medusa
Theodore Gericault
Location: Denon, 1st Floor - Painting (French)

Whilst in France's premier museum can't ignore the French painters, can we? And there are some brilliant works - The Raft is guaranteed to make you pause and study and feel, the despair, the panic, the utter helplessness of the group of people aboard the raft after their boat, the Medusa, sank. It is based on a true story wherein the survivors devoured the bodies of their dead companions to stay alive.

6. Liberty Guiding the People
Eugene Delacroix
Location: Denon, 1st Floor - Painting (French)

In this painting Delacroix relates his vision of the revolution that took place in Paris in 1830, an event he witnessed. The only woman in the scene dominates it completely - carrying a French flag, she represents the French republic. Why are her breasts bared? Er.. because she is French?! Jokes apart, since no woman would parade thus (true?!) she is unreal, and is an allegory, the artist's representation of an idea, the idea of liberty.

7. The Seated Scribe
2600-2350 BC, anonymous
Location: Sully, 1st Floor, Egyptian Antiquities

Sculpture time! The Seated Scribe is my ancient compatriot, a hoary scribbler seated cross-legged, a papyrus unrolled across his white loincloth, his missing brush poised to write. Believe you me, the scribe looks pretty real - his eyes looked deep into mine as I gazed at him in awe. His secret: those eyes are rock crystal set in copper!

8. The Winged Victory of Samothrace
Around 190 BC, Statue in Paros marble, Anonymous
Location: Denon, 1st Floor, Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities, Daru Staircase

The headless, armless sculpture represents the goddess, Victory, also called Nike. When she was found in 1863, the statue resembled a jigsaw puzzle, shattered as she was in more than a hundred pieces! After the statue was painfully reconstituted, she posed another problem: where to place her? At 10 feet tall, she weighs a few tons, requiring something strong to support her. Displayed on the recently built staircase, she is the only sculpture of her weight on the upper floors!

9. Aphrodite, known as Venus de Milo
Around 100 BC, marble, Anonymous
Location: Sully, Ground Floor, Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities

In the league tables of fame, Aphrodite ranks with Mona, and is invariably surrounded by trigger-happy visitors. Suffer them, she's worth it. She is of Greek provenance and it is believed that all later, Roman, representations of female beauty are modelled on Aphrodite - Venus is the Roman name for her, the Goddess of love. She was designed to be viewed from various angles and the fact that she is displayed in the middle of the room means you can quietly circumambulate her without disrupting others. Enjoy!

10. Slaves, Dying Slave and Rebel Slave
1513-1515, marble, Michelangelo Buonarroti
Location: Denon, Ground Floor, Sculpture (Italy)

Last but never the least, Michelangelo's slave sculptures. It is very rare to find sculptures by Michelangelo outside of Italy - most of them are still in places for which they were commissioned. These slaves were meant for Pope Julius II's tomb - however, with changing fortunes, they weren't accepted for the final monument and Michelangelo gave them to Roberto Strozzi, a friend living in France. They are an ambitious representation in delivering the shape of a body from the matter that once entrapped it.

After you're done pounding the corridors of Musee du Louvre, reward yourself to crisp Chardonnay and molten chocolate at Cafe Melion as you savour stunning views from the rooftop terrace.

Finally, the Louvre is too bountiful for any list to even attempt an iota of justice. Inshallah, life is long ...

An Ode to the Battle of Saragarhi

2011-09-09T11:33:00.002+08:00

12 September is Saragarhi day, the anniversary of the Battle of Saragarhi in 1897. It commemorates the day when a few good men withstood overwhelming odds, and forms an important chapter in British empire’s military history and Sikh history. The story is one of the eight stories on collective bravery published by UNESCO for children – the Battle of Thermopylae is another. All units of the Sikh Regiment celebrate it every year as the Regimental Battle Honours Day.

Inspired by Paul Revere’s Ride, the poem written by H.W. Longfellow to celebrate the American patriot, I’ve composed an ode to the Battle of Saragarhi.

An Ode to the Battle of Saragarhi

Listen my friends and you shall hear,

The story of a battle in the North West Frontier,

On the twelfth of September, in ninety seven;

Few men alive have any notion

Of that famous day and year.

In the rugged mountains of Hindu Kush,

Where sparkling snows marked the boundary of Hind,

Where the Great Maharaja Ranjit Singh

Crushed the Afghans and raised two forts,

To defend his land against future ambush.

Years later, the British on their westward conquest,

Stalled repeatedly by the belligerent North West,

In a bid to finesse the Pashtun pest,

Strengthened the forts and, to a rocky ridge that lay midway,

Added ramparts and a signaling tower – thus the Saragarhi Post was arrayed.

The simmering region was volatile as the tribes of Afridis and Orakzais

Banded afresh in battle against the British.

10,000 Pashtuns attacked the signaling Post, their war cries

Rent the cold mountain air as communication they set to demolish,

Between the two forts that were Saragarhi’s prize.

Lockhart and Gulistan – the British Army’s eyes,

The forts on western Hindu Kush stood in a steadfast gaze.

Snipping the nerve that linked them thus,

Would render ineffective the British modus –

Hapless they’d be as the Post of Saragarhi failed to apprise.

Under the starry night the Pathans crept up the mountainside,

Well acquainted with its rugged self,

Like a mother knows the face of her child.

Upon the tiny Post the strapping Pathans burst

As if the mighty Hindu Kush was offloading the snow it nursed.

Nine in the morning, and time for one last signal to be sent

To Col Haughton at Fort Lockhart of the deadly ascent –

Alas, the colonel says, he’s unable to send immediate help.

In those droneless days battles were fought man to man,

21 against 10,000 – what math could make the numbers add to a plan?

Outside is the roar of whistling wind and howling cries,

Inside the Post the men determine to battle to their demise,

Perhaps they feel a shudder down their spine, Or think of their families one last time…

A few good men, a contingent of twenty one Sikhs, who in the history of wartime,

Will never again be outnumbered by a ratio so cockeyed.

Under the heavy assault a portion of the picket falls,

Led by Havildar Ishar Singh the Sikhs stay on to resist.

The Afghan leaders send emissaries and entice with surrender calls –

Rebutted, they redouble their effort and renew the assault …

Blood stains stone and snow, as the crackle of gunfire in the air persists.

Ishar Singh orders his men to fall back,

While he attempts single-handedly to stave the attack.

As the sun starts to descend, it becomes clear

He has kept the Afghans at bay but they’ve grown the crack –

Finally, face-to-face the enemies stand, to grapple and wrestle and slash and hack.

As the Sikhs start to fall, one of them still holds the fort,

A true signalman, he’s been updating Colonel Laughton all along.

As the Pathans advance, Gurmukh Singh lets off a barrage amidst cries of bole so nihal, sat sri akal –

To those who recite the name of God with a true heart, victory comes afterall.

Thus in the devastated Post of Saragarhi, resounds unbeaten his regiment’s battle call …

The Pathans set fire to the Post and turn their attention to Gulistan Fort.

But they’ve been delayed too long. Night has arrived, their plans are athwart –

For the 21 Sikhs have engaged them in battle much too long …

Time in which reinforcements have arrived to make Gulistan strong.

Which goes on to survive, as do the British, but to Saragarhi the honour does truly belong.

The gallantry of Saragarhi reached the ears of the British Queen,

Her Parliament greeted its recountal with standing ovation, as bemused members queried:

21 men battle 10,000 – who could have foreseen?

The battle of Saragarhi has passed into dusty legend, the story has begun to recede,

But it speaks to the one willing to pay heed:

In the face of overwhelming might,

The fearlessness of a few good men will do just fine.

ÓManreet Sodhi Someshwar

Ganpati Bappa Moraya! and the spirit of Bal Gangadhar Tilak

2011-09-01T14:16:00.004+08:00

It was in that fount of Indian wisdom, that trove of its myriad myths and mysteries, Amar Chitra Katha, that I first encountered Ganpati Visarjan – the immersion of a Ganpati statue in the waters after the culmination of prayers.

The comic book I was reading was on Bal Gangadhar Tilak, a popular leader of the Indian freedom movement. It was Tilak who transformed the annual household celebration of Ganesh Chaturthi, the birthday of the elephant-headed Ganesh, into a public festival. He saw it as a way to unite Indians and mobilize them with nationalistic fervour needed to counter British rule. Subsequently, Ganpati, a popular pan-Indian deity, was transformed into the lavish spectacle of today: giant statues, massive puja pandals, processions of worshippers, and enthusiastic chants of Ganpati Bappa Moraya!

Much later, when I started work with Hindustan Unilever in Mumbai, I made my first acquaintance with the festival of Ganesh Chaturthi. As the sales manager in-charge of selling my company’s sabun-tel – experiences which subsequently birthed my debut novel, Earning the Laundry Stripes – in the warrens and gullies of Mumbai, it was inevitable that late August I’d find myself in front of Lalbaugcha Raja. My Parel-Lalbaug Distributor was absolutely insistent that we seek the prayers of the “emperor of Lalbaug”.

Having grown up on a healthy diet of Bollywood movies, many of which reveled in the Mafiosi culture of Mumbai and hinted darkly at links between the underworld and various Ganpati pandals, I perspired profusely at the prospect of meeting one such Dark Lord of the netherworld.

Imagine my relief when I found myself at the foot of a gigantic statue, craning my neck at a 12-foot plaster idol of the elephant-headed god, his right arm raised in benediction! Lalbaugcha Raja was apparently one of the oldest and most famous of Ganpati idols, created by the same family of sculptors, who were into their third generation now. When Amitabh Bachchan was ill, my Distributor informed in a convivial whisper, Jaya had come here to worship. He was referring, presumably, to the time when the superstar was seriously injured during the shooting of the film Coolie and hospitalized.

Thereafter, for the eight years I was in Mumbai I heard and read about other celebrities who ended up visiting Lalbaugcha Raja: Sachin Tendulkar, the Bachchans, Nana Patekar, Govinda…

This year, 2011, too Lalbaugcha Raja is looking superb – I googled the image. Apparently, he is also getting protection and an insurance cover of Rs 14 crore in view of the triple blasts that rocked Mumbai in July 13.

Well, that’s good news, I think. I was in Mumbai during the time of the July blasts, having just left Dadar an hour before an explosion occurred. Anything that keeps people safe … And yet, I can’t deny that niggling sad worm that says that perhaps we also need to remember the spirit in which Tilak first proposed we celebrate Ganesh Chaturthi: the spirit of belonging and togetherness.

Ganpati Bappa Moraya, Moraya Re! That is the chant most heard during this festive time. As my Maharashtrian friends and colleagues taught me, it is an exhortation to the beloved deity, Ganpati, our father, to return speedily next year!

Even as we work towards security, we need to revitalize that spirit of harmony between all of us to ensure that Lalbuagcha Raja, Mumbai and India stay safe, year after year.

And what better time to do that than now when we’ve just celebrated Eid and plunged into Chaturthi! On that note, a very happy Ganesh Chaturthi!

Proactive author aims to encourage Nepali writers

2011-08-30T10:31:00.000+08:00

Recently, I profiled a Nepali writer-publisher, Sushma Joshi, for the South China Morning Post. Sushma is multi-talented and wears the hats of writer-filmmaker-publisher. Read the piece to know more about this crusading artist!

The piece, carried on 28 August 2011:

Mother Mary and Devi Ma - Sacred, yes; Women ...? Holy Guacamole!

2011-08-25T10:24:00.011+08:00

You can traipse down labyrinthine Louvre, look and linger, peer and ponder, gaze and gasp, for the treasures of the world’s first real public museum (it opened during the French Revolution in 1793) are numerous, varied in their delights, and, without doubt, entirely pleasing, but what if I told you there was one particular piece that would reach out and grab you as you passed? In fact, if I could flesh out that encounter, it’d either sock you in the gut or grab you by the neck and you’d find yourself within the scene, awestruck at what you beheld.

Intrigued?

It is a painting in the Italian Paintings section of the Louvre, a 3.69 x 2.45 m size with a subject – Virgin Mary – that has been oft painted. So what gives it its awesomeness?

Death of the Virgin is a monumental oil on canvas by Caravaggio, a painter who is perhaps as famous for his life as his art. The painting was commissioned by a papal lawyer to hang in his private chapel in the Carmelite church of Santa Maria della Scala in Rome. On completion, however, it was rejected by the monks who found it too real. Read real to mean shorn of sacred symbolism.

Under a red canopy Mary, still with rigor mortis, is unequivocally dead, her body bloated, feet bare, head lolling – it was rumoured that the model was a corpse recovered from the river Tiber! A thin, barely discernible white halo marks her as sacred, as the holy figure of worship. Obviously the monks were miffed. That was early seventeenth century, a period when the Catholic church used the medium of painting to spread its message. Church doctrine stated that the Virgin rose to heaven “body and soul” intact.

Caravaggio, however, was a painter whose work was based in dramatic realism – no cherubs hover as Mary, seated atop a cloud cushion, floats upwards to heaven (as depicted in The assumption of the Virgin by Guercino or Poussin). Instead the starkness of death is captured in all its harrowing reality in the painting. Even the mourners surrounding the corpse, who were supposedly the apostles, are not easily identifiable – indeed they seem as ordinary as the woman they are grieving. Caravaggio gives prime place in the painting to Mary Magdalene in anguished repose in the foreground. One of Jesus' most celebrated disciples, she is supposedly the first person to have seen him after he rose from the dead.

Perhaps because I am not a Catholic monk or because we live in the twenty-first century, what draws me to the painting are the very reasons that led to its rejection four hundred years back. The uncompromising realism of the scene, its intense and concentrated despair, the utter finality of death – these evoke such strong pathos and draw me into the painting.

For me, Mary in the painting is a real woman, a woman of flesh and blood despite the hallowed status to which the church has elevated her. Traditional religion has a knack for transforming real women into mystical lofty creatures who, once religion has claimed them, are fit only for worship. The things that make a woman woman are leached from her as she is cast in a sterile Goddess avatar – an avatar that doesn’t have sex (hence the Immaculate Conception), who becomes a mother without childbirth (Virgin), who doesn’t die (the Assumption) … Cast into the sacred, they are no more women.

In India this finds expression in the manner in which Hindu Goddesses are worshipped. Women aren’t allowed within temples during the period they are menstruating. However, the laws of biology would imply that the temple deity – the Goddess, be it Durga or Lakshmi or Kaali, would also have days when she was subject to the natural order of being a woman – in which case, is the deity to be cast in a separate room for those five days? Or her male worshippers aren’t to be permitted in her presence during that period?

Reality though is different - because the priests are men?

The famous Sabarimala temple in Kerala gets about 50 million devotees annually, predominantly male. It has honed the discrimination to a fine rule that disallows entry to women between the ages of 10-50, period. The story being that the temple deity, Ayyappan, was a celibate. Which means what? As I understand, celibacy means an abstention from marriage or sexual intercourse. So why would women worshipping in the temple be harmful? If the temple deity's avowed status is threatened by the mere presence of women, then perhaps we need to reconsider what we worship and why we worship it.

That could be the start of rejecting the discrimination against women which is institutionalized in religion.

Coming back to Death of the Virgin by Caravaggio. The painting was rescued by Charles I, Duke of Mantua, on the recommendation of another famous painter Peter Paul Rubens, and eventually landed with the French Royals.

No other painting renders as evocatively that Mary - Mother of God, Virgin Mary, Blessed Mary, Saint Mary - was a woman, and sainting her doesn’t mean a concomitant leaching of her womanhood. Mary, the mother of Christ, was an earthly woman.

In that sense, Caravaggio was a feminist.

To Stay Relevant Through Changing Times, Cultivate a Dil Jo Bachcha Hai Ji ...

2011-08-18T06:51:00.002+08:00

During my summer break in India I had a chance to talk to a class of 18-year-olds. I was there as a writer, talking to them about the writing process via my books. My second novel, The Long Walk Home, is historical fiction. It tells the story of Punjab’s twentieth-century history by refracting it through the life of one ordinary Punjabi gentleman.

That particular period is marked by several turbulent events which, in turn, provided me as a writer with intriguing plot points to wrestle with. The narrative arc begins with pre-partition and comes all the way to the present. However, facing a class of young people, all of them born after 1990, my challenge was how to engage them with my novel considering that by the time they were toddlers Punjab’s last watershed event in the separatist Khalistan movement had been laid to rest.

As I held up the book for them to see, my eyes fell on the back cover and the arabesque whirls and curlicues swam before me. These were from a blurb written by Gulzar for the book. My editor had seen it worthwhile to send the book to the legenday poet, lyricist, film-maker, in the hope that it would connect with him and win the book some advance praise.

I was to get lucky. Gulzar saab liked the book enough to want to write a shayr in its praise. It is his considerable genius that he took four lines to say what took me 400 pages. But, that's another story. Suffice to say that when I heard that he had written a shayr for the book, and would like to speak with the writer, I fair enough fell off my chair. Me? Speak with Gulzar? I stuttered to my editor. And he had mooted the idea?

Panickng, I turned to the one person whose counsel I rely upon when I'm bouncing off walls - hubby. He knew what this meant to me. Ever since he'd got to know me in management school he'd heard me hum, narrate, opine with some Urdu shayr or ghazal and he knew that in the pantheon of poets I revered were two men. It must have been a relief to him that one was dead and long gone, and the other was a living legend, a poet whose Bollywod lyrics the whole family had grown up with.

Hubby was not off the mark - in that commonly understood sense of family, Ghalib and Gulzar had breathed in my household the same air as did we siblings and our parents.

So, that frantic spring morning hubby told me to sit down, take some deep breaths, and write down the conversation I intended to have with Gulzar, blabbering not being an option. I did just that. However, after my nervousness decamped I realized I was speaking with a professional. Gulzar Saab was courteous, said he had liked the book and had written a shayr since, as a poet, that was the way he felt he could justify what he felt for it. However, his concern was whether I'd be okay with an Urdu shayr on the cover of my English novel - would it alienate my English readers?

I was gobsmacked, touched, and infinitely humbled. Here was a man widely regarded as India's greatest living poet and his concern was for how my book would be received by my English readers! When I managed to mumble that it would be my and the readers privilege, he said okay. Thereafter, he oversaw the design of the cover to ensure that the shayr, written in Urdu in his hand, and transliterated below, blended with the overall aesthetic.

That, to my mind, revealed more than anything else can, about a famous person. Humility, truly, is the mark of a genius.

The book was released and won critical acclaim and hit several bestseller lists. In its wake, I got a chance to meet with Gulzar saab. Right before the meeting I was seized with apprehension once again. It was a nebulous fear - what if my ideal was different from my construct of him? Every artist that we admire acquires a flesh and blood persona in our minds - it is spun out of their art that we have consumed, which we use to adorn them with characteristics and qualities we’ve encountered in their work. A gap, therefore, has to exist between what we have created in our imagination and what actually exists.

Gulzar saab had invited me to his beautiful bungalow on Pali Hill. Set back from the road, its sloping roof is nestled in lush greenery. I blogged about that interaction here. Suffice to say that in the first few minutes all my apprehensions slipped away. Gulzar saab is a genuinely warm person with an easy laugh and banter and as we discussed books and writing, I realized I was getting seriously lucky. The chance to meet an artist whose work I admire was translating simultaneously into the happenstance of engaging with an admirable person.

I crowned Gulzar saab my Ustad, the Urdu word to my mind a fitting descriptor for a mentor-cum-Guru.

So, returning to that balmy Bengaluru morning when I was facing forty pairs of curious eyes, I latched onto that flowing Urdu script. Surely, the girls could not be unaware of Gulzar?!

And I started by taking them through the book's synopsis and how it was summed up perfectly by a shayr from Gulzar. Did they know Gulzar, I asked. A round of head nodding, perky eyes, several smiles - but of course! I asked them which Gulzar song they remembered and the offerings ranged from the Osacr-winning Jai Ho to the youth anthem Dhen Te Nen to the lilting melodies of Aandhi and Mausam and – Goli maar bheje mein!

Needless to say, I had wind in my sails thereon!

A few days later I was in Mumbai where I went to meet Gulzar saab again. I narrated the incident and asked him how he had managed to stay so relevant. After all, he had begun his career five decades ago? (The first film for which he penned the lyrics was Kabuliwala in 1961). He gave a short laugh, grinned and said the reason was simple - he was a child at heart!

I sensed it as instinctively correct yet I could not break it down. Besides, my eight-year-old daughter had come along for the visit and Gulzar saab was enquiring about her school and the stuffed tiger she had brought along. Over sugarless tea we chatted about his current work - he is translating Tagore into Hindustani and English, both poetry and a short story collection for children. Many people aren't aware that Gulzar saab’s fondness for Bengali literature inspired him to learn the language.

I noticed a bust of Ghalib that had not been there during my previous visit. Gulzar saab mentioned that he had commissioned a sculptor from Sholapur to make a bust for Ghalib's home in Ballimaran in Chandni Chowk area of old Delhi. He has been at the forefront of a group of people engaged in attempting to free the old haveli of encroachers. Last year the bust was installed in Ghalib’s home which now houses a museum. Pleased with the result he’d requested another for his home.

I suggested I'd like a picture of him beside Ghalib but he said no, let it be of all three of us. So my daughter clicked a picture of me in the company of my two maestros.

Gulzar saab gifted my daughter a Buddha figurine and suggested she keep it on her study table where it would bless her. I updated him on my next book and its expected release in December. As Gulzar saab rummaged in his study for some book that he could gift Malvika we sighted a cushion in one corner where a dog was nestled. It was Pali, Gulzar saab's pug which had passed away. Pali was his faithful companion and that was where he bided his time as his master wrote at his desk daily. Now Pali's spirit was still in the study as the bronze cast of him snuggled in one corner.

Malvika was touched by the story - she loves all animals, above all dogs. It was time to say our byes. We petted Kalia, Gulzar saab’s other dog, and once outside, I asked my daughter if she had got bored. No, she shrugged, as she clutched the Buddha figurine and an aromatic candle she had got as gifts, I had a good time.

Well, I'd had a good time too. Come to think of it, I have always had a good time with Gulzar saab’s poetry… Be it Tere bina zindagi se koi shikwa to nahin, which had me scratching my head when I first heard it as a pre-teen; Tujh se naraaz nahin zindagi hairaan hun main, which has been like a balm in the face of life’s knocks; Jungle jungle pata chala hai, chaddi pahan ke phul khila hai, which makes me grin ear-to-ear even today; Kajra re, to which I’ve oft danced with my daughter; the lilting Dil to bachcha jai ji; the TV serial Mirza Ghalib which ensconced me into the fold of Ghalib; the wonderfully nuanced sketches of human relationships in Aandhi, Mausam, Masoom, Ijazat …

In the preamble to a song – Dil dhoondta hai phir wahi – from his film Mausam, Gulzar saab says:

misra Ghalib ka hai,

aur kaifiyat apni apni

The couplet is by Ghalib, and

each listener brings to it his own

Albeit a very prosaic translation but the essence is evident. And that, I think, is the reason Gulzar saab has stayed relevant through changing times – his poetry, that subliminal distillation of life’s experiences, speaks to each one of us.

Sach to yeh hai ki, geet Gulzar ka hai aur kaifiyat apni apni …

On that note, a very happy birthday Gulzar saab!

Hotpants to Headscarves - the Gamut of Sexism in Women's Sport

2011-08-10T09:37:00.001+08:00

Just as the Iranian women's soccer team was to begin a crucial Olympic qualifying match against Jordan, the team was dismissed by officials of FIFA, the international football association. Their fault? Headscarves. Apparently the tight headscarves the women wore to cover their hair violated FIFA's dress code. The ban was for safety reasons, a FIFA official went on to claim. Sufficiently gobsmacked, are you?

Women in Iran are mandated to cover their skin, almost entirely, and hair, in a strict interpretation of Shiite Islamic tenets. Consequently, female athletes have to adhere to this rule. Which they do. At the 11th Asian Karate Championship Games Iranian Karatekas - complete in their headscarves - bagged 1 gold and 2 silver medals. Iranian women have done the country proud in the fields of Karate and volleyball, while being noticeably absent from sports such as gymnastics and swimming.

In a country where women are already under constraints, a ruling such as FIFA's ban throttles the ambitions of women athletes looking to compete internationally. Exactly what did FIFA have in mind? Some sort of comeuppance against Ahmadinejad?

In another recent bizarre event fresh rules were mandated for women badminton players. To create a more "attractive presentation", the Badminton World Federation has decreed that women must wear skirts or dresses to play at the elite level. Such a dress code would make female players more feminine and appealing to fans and corporate sponsors. Right!

Did I miss a dress code memo for male players to enhance their attractiveness quotient? Male players, it seems, are required only to dress in "proper attire". No decree on how to sex up the men? No specs on shortness of the shorts, or the amount of hirsuteness allowed on legs and forearms? Or, does BWF blithely assume that men don't need concern themselves with such frivolities? In their case, perhaps, fans come to watch pure, innate talent only?

Rangsikitpho, deputy president of BWF, has said that he is surprised at the criticism. "TV ratings are down. We want them to look nicer on the courts" and not compete in oversize shorts and long pants and appear "baggy, almost like men". Wonder if he ever thought of sharing his sartorial views with Kobe Bryant?

The fact that FIFA should be behaving like a sartorial bully would not come as a surprise when readers are reminded that its President, Sepp Blatter, septically blattered that women soccer players should wear tighter shorts to promote a "more female aesthetic". Holy guacamole!

Sepp dear, perhaps you would also consider handing a copy of Playboy with each ticket sold to a women's soccer match? Hotpants ain't going to come to your rescue, dinosaur. Go stand in one corner of the football field, and while you are there, cover your privates - some women players might just decide on goal practice.

Nevertheless, the moot point is that women's bodies and clothes are fair game for men to arbitrate and adjudicate over. The government of Nicholas Sarkozy banned hijabs on women in France. I blogged about it here.

While hijab is often viewed through the lens of repression, the fact is that it is often a function of upbringing, tradition, culture, and, further, can be a question of choice. My mother grew up on a farm in rural Punjab, went to a boarding school for girls with her six siblings, worked as a teacher and retired as a school Principal. She usually wears a salwar kameez with a chunni / dupatta thrown over the shoulders. This chunni serves to cover her head when the need arises - visiting a gurudwara, meeting an elderly (male) relative, protection against the sun. Her grandmother's chunni was a chador which she wore like a wrap, her mother's chunni always covered her head, her daughter's is usually thrown on one shoulder, her grand daughter's is worn in the fashion of a scarf - that is the evolving journey of the chunni. This evolution is also a testimony to the changing mores of society, each generation finessing that piece of garment.

However, if it was decreed that a chunni cannot serve to cover the head like a headscarf, my mother's heart would skip a beat. As would mine. In its multifarious self the chunni is linked to issues of propriety, comfort, styling choice, tradition. As is the veil, hijab, headscarf.

There is no denying that in several cultures women are forced to drown in billowing cloth cages with slits for eyes - that is repression, we all understand and denounce. However, the assumption that burqa / veil / chador equates repression is false.

Take the case of Hissa Hilal. As the BBC reported, from beneath a veil, the Saudi woman set her conservative Arab homeland alight. The journalist, wife and mother of four children competed in 2010 in the Arab version of American Idol - only here they compete to be the best poet in a reality television programme called The Million Poets. Dressed in a traditional abaya, with slits for eyes, she recited her poetry which condemned hard-line Muslim clerics calling them "vicious in voice, barbaric, angry and blind". Televised across the Arab world, Hissa's poetry touched a chord with the masses. Of course, there were those who voiced death threats against her.

In her interview with BBC Hissa explained the apparent contradiction between her advocacy of women's rights while wearing a full veil.

"Covering my face is not because I am afraid of people. We live in a tribal society and otherwise my husband, my brother will be criticised by other men."

While her poetry is intended for a wide audience, the act of covering herself, she says, is out of understanding for her male relatives.

"I know they love me and they support me. It's a big sacrifice for them in such a society to let me go to the TV and talk to the media. I am hoping my daughters won't have to cover their faces and they'll live a better life," she said.

If being fully clothed is a sign of repression then flipping the argument would suggest that scanty clothes aren't. Yet, women in the oldest profession wear revealing clothes to solicit clients. Are prostitutes not repressed?

The pressure to show skin is also a form of repression. In India the current craze to be seen in western dresses has sparked a contagion of otherwise sensible women choosing to dress against their body type. Since when has squeezing into a bandage dress become a symbol of freedom?

A Kiwi friend told me that when she moved from her home in New Zealand to work in neighbouring Australia she discovered that for a woman to be considered attractive, a show of cleavage was de rigeur. Having grown up on a farm in a gender-egalitarian society she was shocked. However, when in Rome do as the Romans, and she taught herself to lower the neckline inch by inch!

It sure is an upside down world when a woman can be faulted for both headscarf and hotpant, veil and cleavage. Take your pick woman - it is your blessed choice.

Why gender inequality persists in India: It's the soil, sistah!

2011-08-05T13:13:00.003+08:00

Recently I came across an interesting article in The Economist which suggested that deep-seated attitudes to women might have something to do with agricultural practices! Surprised? The article cites a working paper by a pair of Harvard economists, Alberto Alesina and Nathan Nunn, and a UCLA business school professor, Paolo Giuliano.

The paper titled 'On the Origins of Gender Roles: Women and the Plough' states in its abstract that "We test the hypothesis that traditional agricultural practices inﬂuenced the historical gender division of labor and the evolution and persistence of gender norms."

In its introduction the paper elaborates:

Originally put forth by a Danish economist, Ester Boserup (1970), who hypothesised that gender role differences have their origins in different forms of agriculture practiced traditionally. In particular, Boserup identiﬁed important differences between shifting cultivation and plough cultivation.

Shifting cultivation, which uses hand-held tools like the hoe and the digging stick, is labor intensive and women actively participate in farm-work. Plough cultivation, by contrast, is much more capital intensive, using the plough to prepare the soil. Unlike the hoe or digging stick, the plough requires signiﬁcant upper body strength, grip strength, and burst of power, which are needed to either pull the plough or control the animal that pulls it. Because of these requirements, when plough agriculture is practiced, men have an advantage in farming relative to women.

Also reinforcing this gender-bias in ability is the fact that when the plough is used, there is less need for weeding, a task typically undertaken by women and children. In addition, child care, a task almost universally performed by women, is most compatible with activities that can be stopped and resumed easily and do not put children in danger. These are characteristics that are satisﬁed for hoe agriculture, but not for plough agriculture, particularly since large animals are typically used to pull the plough.

The result, according to Boserup, is that societies that traditionally practiced plough agriculture – rather than shifting cultivation – developed a specialization of production along gender lines. Men tended to work outside of the home in the ﬁelds, while women specialized in activities within the home.

This division of labor then generated norms about the appropriate role of women in society. Societies characterized by plough agriculture, and a resulting gender-based division of labor, developed the belief that the natural place for women is within the home. These cultural beliefs tend to persist even if the economy moves out of agriculture, affecting the participation of women on activities performed outside of the home, such as market employment, entrepreneurship, or participation in politics.

This is an intriguing hypothesis which seems intuitively correct too. Now, the working paper has validated it.

This study rings true for India, where the plough has been used in agriculture traditionally, and gender inequality is endemic. When in doubt, consult the Classics - in my case, Indian mythology. The plough, in fact, pops up in a couple of interesting places.

Remember Sita, wife of Rama? Her father, King Janaka, found her in a vessel at the head of a ploughshare as he ploughed his field. Woman in India, as in other agri-based traditions, is symbolic of fertility. It is the man, however, who owns the land and all that springs from it. Wicked!

In another tale from mythology, Balarama - literally the strong one, the elder brother of the more famous Krishna, is also known as Halayudha, carrier of the plough. Before he married his wife Revati, who was physically much larger than him, he used his plough to whittle her down to size! To this day there is a wedding tradition in parts of southern India where the yoke of a plough is touched to the bride's forehead. Any atavistic harkings here?

Of course, why certain regions prefer plough to hoe is a function of the soil, the weather, the crops available, the domesticity of animals, etc. Moral of the story? Bharatiye Naari, for your sorry fate blame the deep loamy Indian soil as against the shallow clay soil of Burundi. Why Burundi, you ask?

Because Burundi's female labour force participation (FLFP) is 90.5%, sistah! And FLFP favours gender equality, usually. Burundi, for instance, shows up in the list of least severe gender inequality by region.

It's the soil, sistah ...

Pakistan's Birkinned Brahmastra

2011-07-29T09:33:00.005+08:00

Ancient Indian texts mention the concept of Brahmastra, a weapon conceived by Brahma, the creator of the universe. So potent is it that once discharged, neither a counter attack nor any defense can stop it.

In colloquial terms it can imply deploying an emissary who is irresistible. Think Cleopatra within a rolled-up carpet!

On 27 July, Pakistan, eschewing its nuclear stockpile, launched a brahmastra against India - its winsome new foreign minister. 34-year-old Hina Rabbani Khar was in India to hold talks with her Indian counterpart, the 79-year-old S M Krishna. The foreign ministers of the nuclear-armed neighbours are holding their first talks in a year, hoping to resuscitate a peace process that was snuffed out by the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai.

The lone surviving gunman from that attack was a Pakistani national and India has directly blamed Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) for orchestrating the coordinated shooting and bombing attacks.

Lately, Pakistan has found itself facing recriminations from several directions.

The United States ferreted out Osama bin Laden from a villa in a military garrison town a short distance from the national capital Islamabad. Expectedly, relations between the two nations are at a record low. US is the largest source of bilateral aid to Pakistan and pressure is building to cut the high level of financial assistance.

India’s claims have received a recent validation. At hearings in a Chicago court in May 2011, David Headley, an operative of the Islamic militant outfit LeT, has confessed to the role of Pakistan’s spy agency in executing the terror strikes of 2008.

To add to Pakistan’s woes the FBI has identified that Ghulam Nabi Fai of the Kashmiri American Council was campaigning for self-determination in Kashmir at the direction of the ISI which provided him at least US$ 4 million to influence American policy on the issue.

Ahem!

If that weren’t enough the bomb blasts in Mumbai on 13 July have again renewed questions about Pakistan’s willingness to crackdown on militants on its soil. The coordinated rush-hour explosions in India’s financial capital shook the nation and set people hyperventilating on the foreign hand behind them. While the Indian Government has not assigned any blame preferring to let the investigation run its course, the implications for the proposed talks between the two nations looked dire.

Pakistan is, to use a cricketing terminology, on a sticky wicket.

In turn, Prime Minister Gilani has responded on front foot. He has rubbished Headley’s claims that he attended his father’s funeral, and dismissed Fai as belonging to “Indian Occupied Kashmir”. He reiterated that India and Pakistan had no option but to talk and claimed credit for the “no blame game” after the recent Mumbai attacks on account of his interactions with his Indian counterpart. Critically, barely a week before the crucial peace talks in India, he ended a five-month job vacancy by swearing in the nation’s first woman foreign minister, and also its youngest.

In a move that would have won the approval of Groucho Marx, Mr Gilani has shown that he has his principles, and if folks didn’t like them, he could demonstrate others.

If reports in the media are anything to go by, Mr Gilani’s brahmastra has paid off. The charm offensive is working as Indian media - vigilant as a pit bull - is gushing over the Foreign Minister. Her sartorial choices have been applauded, she has been described as “a perfect combination of beauty and brains” and her physical similarity to a Bollywood actress is being furiously discussed online.

“Pak Puts On Its Best Face” noted The Times of India, the biggest-selling English-language daily while a popular Mumbai tabloid remarked cheekily, “Pak bomb lands in India”, referring both to the history of wars between the countries and the strategic use of a brahmastra.

Indian media is agog with new CBMs expected in the wake of the talks. You’ll be forgiven for mistaking CBM as Comic Book Movie discussion - after all we have a running gag about how the two counterparts keep holding talks about future talks when they shall resolve the contentious issue of Kashmir. This time around there is hope that the infinite regress might yield something concrete as the two foreign ministers are expected to announce new confidence building measures (CBM).

Admittedly, the Pakistan Prime Minister’s brahmastra is working. Stay the course you have signaled, Mr Gilani. You’ve made a dubious India media, and by extension, public, believe that henceforth Pakistan shall make love, not war.

A Rare Achievement or Hot Air: Can One Book Be Both?

2011-07-25T17:12:00.003+08:00

Hot air beneath a layer of subcutaneous fat ... resurrects a Mumbai staple ... parcelling it in comically fustian prose

A funny yet deeply melancholic work ... is brilliant, and remarkably mature ... A rare achievement

The preceding two statements come from two separate reviews of the same book published recently. The book is written by an Indian (?), or, at least, a writer of Indian origin, revolves around an Indian city - Mumbai, and the two reviews come from two magazines - one Indian, the other not. (No prizes here for guessing which comes from which.)

I am not picking the statements out of context - the first is the lead into the review, the second the finale, and the complete reviews can be read in the links provided. What I am looking to do is to explore how one piece of writing can be viewed so differently by two very credible reviewers.

Writing is supposed to be universal - in which case, why such polarity?

The skeletal underpinning of all writing is alike, it is the dermis and the clothes the writer adds that provide the specific details that furnish us with a context. The dilemma, and consequent sacrifice, of Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities is instantly recognizable; the character who will sacrifice his life to preserve the lover of his beloved, the louche who hides within him the heart of gold has been seen in films and books before. And yet, Dickens' Sydney is unmistakably Dickens' Sydney: the British barrister who is bloody brilliant yet self-indulgent and self-deprecatory and whose redemption must lie in his own effacement - the ultimate tribute to the very English trait of stiff upper lip!

Must we then examine the process by which books are reviewed? Which begets the question: what is the purpose of a review?

A review is an evaluation; it is meant to provide its readers with a synopsis and critical analysis of the material at hand - be it book, movie, play - and leave the reader with a clear viewpoint of the reviewer and, therefore, his recommendation to go for it or ditch it.

But a review is also personal and subjective since a reviewer brings to the material his own perceptual filters. In fact, the best reviewers are highly opinionated - Roger Ebert, Michiko Kakutani - choosing to provoke, educate and entertain through forthright distillation.

And yet, there isn't any denying that reviews can be, and often are, compromised because of associations with publishers, writers and their agents. Or, in today's world especially, the marketing hype accompanying a new book can overwhelm a reviewer and cower into adhering to the trumpeted line. Just think of the last anticipated arrival on the book racks that was not heralded as brilliant, coruscating, masterly, compelling ... yawn ...

And then, there are times when the reviewer is plain lazy or has a deadline to meet. In come the Seven Deadly Stuffers - duds that are packed in with regularity to bolster a review.

Enough of reviewers, what about the writer? Is the book intended for a particular audience? Did the writer have some target group in mind?

Indian publishing is newly flush with writers who claim they aren't writing for a gora audience. Instead they are telling Desi stories intended for their country folk who are lapping them up. And the sales of such books support their claim, be it Chetan Bhagat or Amish Tripathi or Rashmi Bansal.

The flip side of the coin then is that writers such as Seth and Rushdie and Desai were writing for a western audience who are interested in the 'exotic' image of India, that of mangoes and hennaed hands and squalor. I don't agree with that view but the cover designs of fiction by Indian writers sold abroad tend to favour the 'exotic' look. And despite the saying, a book is judged by its cover. Hmm... biases, biases, biases ...

Which brings me back to where I started. By now, you'd have followed the links, read the reviews and figured that the book in question is Last Man in Tower, Aravind Adiga's second novel after his Booker win. My dilemma: should I read it? I wrote the post to sift through the conflicting arguments in my own head but am I any clearer? Dunno.

How we engage with a book is a function of who we are, which, in turn, is a function of the books we have read, the environment we've grown up in, etcetera. Adiga's first novel The White Tiger left me scratching my head at the collective wisdom of the Booker jury. Awarding the prize in 2008, Michael Portillo, the chair of the judges, said in praise of the book: "Does this book knock my socks off? And this did."

I have to admit though, Mr. Portillo, that I had to peel my socks off - blame Hong Kong's humidity. And in my subsequent review for the SCMP I said:

In the seventies a pair of Bollywood scriptwriters, drawing on the chaos of the times, created the character of an “angry young man”: a man raging against the avarice of an elitist system in which many are sacrificed to the whims of a few. The reputation of Amitabh Bachchan, the legendary Hindi film star, rests on his myriad portrayals of just such a defiant character. Thirty years hence, transported into the newly-chaotic India of a booming economy and rising economic divide, Balram Halwai is alas a feeble Xerox of the angry young man.

The White Tiger was described as a bracingly modern novel about the dark side of new India. Nonetheless, for any one looking to read about contemporary India's fetid underbelly, I'd recommend The Story of My Assassins by Tarun Tejpal.

Ultimately, what a book means to us has to do with whether it resonates with us. Does its narration strike a chord within, do the characters find a home in our soul, do their tears and laughter echo in our own lives? That, to my mind, is the test of any book.

Recently, Rupert Murdoch was attacked at a Parliament hearing by a pie thrower. Before the attack the man had tweeted: It is a far better thing I do now than I have ever done before.

He was harking to a quote from Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities when he goes to his death voicing, "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known".

Not for no reason does Dickens' novel published 150 years back still find resonance with people!

To round up this post, if any of you have read Last Man in Tower, please share your views with me. My promise: an open mind; My hope: for some resonance.

My Carmelite Tryst with DK Bose

2011-07-22T12:07:00.006+08:00

Mount Carmel College Bengaluru is on Palace Road and once you escape the traffic mayhem and enter its verdant grounds, there's peace inside. Of course, my definition of peace includes the hum of girls as they amble up the leafy path, dart down corridors, whisper in huddles and hover around the snack shop!

I was invited by the Media department of Mount Carmel to deliver a couple of talks to the girls on the Business of Books. The astute department head, Sahana Das, knows there is more to art than craft - hence 'Business'. I was happy but equal portions terrified - keeping a class of nineteen-year-olds engaged for two hours is a herculean task for a writer who can be found most days at her desk, hunched over a keyboard, with a blinking cursor and quietude for company!

But in a world where writing is increasingly mimicking performing arts, even hermetic writers must venture out and face the - music?! Kidding! But the challenge of entertaining and illuminating a batch of forty girls weighed on me as hubby drove me to Mount Carmel on a balmy Bengaluru morning. The air smelled of showers and petrol fumes and the radio belted out a summons to one DK Bose to, by God!, run for it.

Sahana Das had provided a clear mandate - inform the students about writing and publishing through my own experience of writing and publishing my two books and the upcoming one to be released in December 2011, Book 1 of a planned thriller trilogy - and I had the talk clearly structured in my mind. The crux though was the start - how do I grab, and hold, the attention of girls who were separated from me by an egregious ravine of approximately a quarter century. Gulp! I would be a performing Dino! Barney in his purple costume grinned at me but I determinedly shut him out. Then Maria from The Sound of Music surged, enthusiastically urging me, "Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start..." Heck, Maria, No! I wailed, I don't know WHAT the beginning is ...

However, I have always trusted my gut and as I sauntered up the path to the Media department, I put my faith in those trusted entrails, smiled broadly and faked sanguinity.

Next, I found myself in an air-conditioned room facing forty pairs of eyes - not all fully awake (it was the first session of the morning) and several mouths in various stages of suppressing yawns! Forewarned is forearmed, and my mind scurried for a suitable START.

Even as it did, the track from my morning car ride buzzed in my mind: Bhaag bhaag DK Bose, DK Bose, DK Bose, DK, bhaag ...

Right!

Clearly, scramming was not an option, so what was my mind/gut urging me to do?

And, in that instant, the lamp lit. I smiled, greeted the class and started with blessed DK Bose. I told the girls that when I was their age Aamir Khan had connected with us through the then-iconic song 'Papa kehte hain bada naam karega', and now, a generation later, he was serenading them with the current youth anthem 'Daddy mujh se bola tu galti hai meri ... Bhaag Bhaag DK Bose'. The two numbers told a story, a story of how things had changed and how much distance dreams had mapped since. When I was their age, no writer came to my class and spoke to us about how to be a writer - all we knew was Doctor, Engineer, BA. And yet, here they were, a class of forty who were choosing to be journalist, newscaster, corporate executive, TV host, writer ... As Calvin in all his wisdom said, It's a beautiful world out there, Hobbes ol' buddy, let's go explorin' - and, with that, I started to explore with them the world of writers and writing.

The rest of the talk just fell in place.

The girls sat up - DK Bose has that effect! - I was enthusiastic as I spent the next hour-and-a-half taking them into the world of writing through my own journey as a writer. This was followed by a half-hour of Q&A.

At the end of two hours, I was, to my surprise, not in the least exhausted (remember the performance art bit? I meant it!) Instead there was this feeling of energy, a charge, I guess, which can only come from those who are young, or young at heart. As for my performance, I think I did okay. If there were two things I wanted to leave the girls with, it was this:

- The best way to describe writing is the old-fashioned one: it is a calling. So write only if you hear the call. There are easier ways to earn a living otherwise

- Before you commit to a writer's life ask yourself this one question: Do I like my company? The answer counts because you'll be spending a lot of time with yourself

When the session ended, there was applause, a note of thanks, and - a stack of chocolates, ribbon-wrapped! It had been a while since such Temptations had come my way - Honey Apricot, Mint Crunch, Black Forest ...

Oh, and before I forget to add ...

- With being a writer comes the gift of small surprises that go a long way!

Spain in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara & Goya on a Mumbai pavement

2011-07-20T19:01:00.004+08:00

Hi there!

I have had a break from blogging as I indulged in some summer sacking back home in India, in balmy Bengaluru and muggy Mumbai :) But am back in humid Hong Kong, and the blog demands to be fed. So here goes ...

A sheet of rain is billowing outside my window. It obscures the green mountain and the white residential towers and its insistent pouring takes me back to Mumbai where monsoon is in full swing. I should know: I spent four hours in a car as we slithered from Lower Parel to Andheri, finally managing to arrive at a dinner well past the time for departure.

The hapless driver, on my persistent questioning, attributed it to a Friday evening, the 'munsoon', the bomb blasts... Ah yes, the bomb blasts. On 13 July three bombs had exploded in the city during the evening rush hour. They killed at least 21 people, injured several more and sent gems flying through the air in Zaveri Bazaar as diamond couriers scurried through the crowded street at end of day.

Mumbai has seen terror attacks before: in 2008, with more than ten coordinated shooting and bombing attacks across the city by terrorists who invaded from the sea; in 2006, with seven explosions in crowded commuter trains and stations.

"Yet again" was a common refrain that ran through Facebook statuses, Twitter messages, shrill media reporting, as Mumbaikars rolled their wrists in haplessness. As follows every such incident blame was bandied by all parties and passed around as if in a game of passing-the-parcel. We were told anew by the media that it was a case of Intelligence failure, Lack of stringent policing, India was a soft state, We are an easy target - and yet, did we learn anything new here?

You could blame the police but before you do that, put yourself in the shoes of an average policeman. Low salary, long work hours, your career at the mercy of politicos - what motivation would you have to hunt terror?

Amidst all the hot air the city went back to picking up the pieces - literally as even the diamonds scattered in Zaveri Bazaar were hunted for - and Mumbaikars resumed their daily grind. Enroute to a friend's place I passed Dadar, one street away from the blast site, and I saw a woman on the pavement - one of the several street dwellers - beading jasmine buds into fragrant hair danglers. Her mouth moved softly as if she was humming to herself, behind her a large poster of the highly-anticipated Bollywood flick Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara - set to release the following day - rose, and amidst the cacophony of shrieking horns and squealing tyres, she bent over her work, her fingers flying with alacrity.

I am sucker for the Lake Poets - blame a Convent school education - and in my mind floated Wordsworth from The Solitary Reaper. "I saw her singing at her work, and over the sickle bending, I listened, motionless and still... "

My car moved and the woman was lost to me. I encountered further billboards of ZNMD - its slickly styled actors beckoned and I made a mental note to watch the film. But the woman has stayed with me. Something about the quiet repose of that figure in the chaos of a turbulent city which is equal parts grit and glamour, sleaze and style, penury and plenty reminds me of a famous painting by Francisco de Goya.

The Colossus, or Panic is a painting in which a giant with clenched fists hovers over a landscape where panic-stricken people and animals are fleeing. At the bottom of the picture, in the midst of the chaos, a small donkey stands still. As people are hurrying away, he is very resolutely staying put. Is he frozen in terror? Or is it the stubborn nature of the beast? Or is it because he knows there is no escaping the giant?

I don't know what brought the image to my mind. Perhaps it was the fact that ZNMD is shot in Spain, the country of Goya? Perhaps it was the fortitude of that small animal facing the giant that had found resonance, in my mind, in the repose of the flower woman? Who can tell? The mind makes its connections and sends us spinning down so many alleys ...

But I do know why The Solitary Reaper played in my mind as I watched the woman with the jasmine buds. Wordsworth ended the poem thus:

"And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more."

With me, the music is mute but the image is vivid.

Weather in fiction, beyond the dark and stormy night …

2011-06-22T16:19:00.001+08:00

As I sit curled up in bed with a cup of coffee and the IHT, I watch the curtain of gauze shimmer and shake outside my window. It is a T3, a nascent stage of typhoon, and one of the best days to be inside, to enjoy a good read and contemplate the weather. Samosas and other Indian savouries surf in my mind – chana bhatoora would, of course, be just plain excellent, with a fistful of chopped onions and gleaming green chilli … ah! the delights of a rainy day.

Our brains are wired to build associations – new neural connections are created when we encounter something new as we use what we already know to understand what we do not know. If you grew up in India, it is almost certain that you associate rain with either of samosas or pakoras and chai. Which means that even in Hong Kong, my first thought on a typhoonyday is not of steaming dimsums or crispy spring rolls but the savouries I grew up with.

These associations are the same ones that writers leverage when they try to evoke in the reader a particular set of emotions without explicitly stating them. It is the cardinal rule of ‘Show, don’t tell’. And weather is one handy tool that writers and filmmakers leverage. It helps that the common associations of weather are universal. Consider:

Mist/fog – uncertainty

Rain – sorrow, depression, renewal

Sunshine – cheer, brightness, optimism

Thunder – ominous, fearful

Snow – purity, calm, deceptive

Pick up a Thomas Hardy and you’ll spend several pages reading a detailed description of the setting and the weather but in the age of motion pictures we have to be more efficient with the technique. If you are looking to evoke a particular mood for a scene, weather is one tool you can use succinctly. It can also be deployed for the entire length of the book or movie, as Roman Polanski did with his 2010 film, The Ghost Writer.

The film is based on a book by Robert Harris in which a ghost writer is hired to write the memoirs of a British prime minister. The troubled minister, under siege from his wife, the media, his party and the public, has shut himself off on the seclusion of an island off the US east coast. Since the film is a thriller with an overhang of suspense, Polanski uses the mist rolling up from the sea to create a shape-shifting ambience that awakens the viewer to the possibility that everything may not be as it seems. Apparently Polanski shot the film in Germany for its weather and isolation and it works wonderfully for the sense of foreboding that grips the viewer right from the beginning. As Ewan McGregor, who plays the un-named Ghost, said at the film’s debut : “Polanski uses the weather like another oppressive character in the film – it’s always raining, it’s always gray and damp.”

Wuthering Heights is another example where Emily Bronte uses stormy weather consistently to evoke the secrecy and dysfunction integral to the story. The setting – desolate moors – adds to the overall sense of doom as the oppressive weather conspires to keep the characters in doors, thus setting up the crucible from which they cannot escape.

I was reminded of a parallel recently as I read Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban with my daughter. As Harry prepares for a critical Quidditch match the weather gets more inclement with each passing day. Additionally, Harry’s anti-Dementor lessons are not going well and exams are upon them. All of which contributes to heat up the crucible.

In fact, writers can be rather upfront when bringing on the doom and gloom of howling wind and falling snow. Witness Rowling: “The day before the match, the winds reached howling point and the rain fell harder than ever. It was so dark inside the corridors and classrooms that extra torches and lanterns were lit.”

Sometimes, stating it is the simplest solution – thereafter the brain tacks on the associations that it has learnt over time.

Weather can also be used to indicate a significant change in the story. In the Harry Potter series Christmas falls in the middle of the school term, a time of icy wind and snow and escalating tension! This is invariably followed by Spring and Easter when things start acquiring a degree of clarity as the action hurtles to resolution.

Smilla’s Sense of Snow is one novel I’d recommend to anybody looking to learn how to use weather. In this novel by Peter Hoeg set in the icy harbours of Copenhagen and glacial Greenland, the various forms of snow – apparently the Inuit people have at least nine words to describe ‘snow’ – are used to conjure the mixed-race protagonist’s isolation, the stark terrain, and the overwhelming feeling of aloneness that shrouds the suspenseful narrative.

In my debut novel, Earning the Laundry Stripes, I used the heat and dust of upcountry India to convey the oppressive environment in which my protagonist Noor finds herself as the first woman in an all-boys sales club. The stifling heat adds another onerous layer as she battles the sectarian and macho world of sales and the boondocks.

One warning though: Avoid the Bulwer-Lytton test of purple prose which uses the infamous opening line, It was a dark and stormy night …, as an example.

So, next time you find yourself stuck while writing - When, oh, when will I finish the novel? - turn to the weather. Einstein said, “One need only think of the weather, in which case the prediction even for a few days ahead is impossible”. On that merry thought, do not despair – write daily and you’ll reach the goalpost; meanwhile, some spring or thunder might come in handy!

Meanwhile, do you have any favourite weather scenes you'd like to share? Write in. Cheers!

Meet the Author Event with FIPHK

2011-06-17T08:54:00.000+08:00

Hello Folks!

FIPHK (Forum of Indian Professionals in Hong Kong) is organizing a 'Meet the Author Event' with yours truly. If you are in town, do come along.

I'll discuss both my books, drop some dark hints about the upcoming one and the discussion will be adequately lubricated, I am informed, by a healthy dose of masala chai and samosas!

Details as follows in this note by FIPHK:

MEET the AUTHOR Event: Manreet Sodhi Someshwar

Fellow Literati,

You must have often pondered over the “left brain / right brain” dilemma:
Is it all about climbing the corporate ladder? Or is it about fulfilling your creative urges?

On Saturday 18 June 2011, at the FIPHK Literary Group hosts someone who has been there and done that

“Meet the Author – Manreet Sodhi Someshwar”

Come to find out:

• How a corporate executive transformed herself into an author, reviewer, speaker and literary host

• What it takes to be a reviewer and author spanning genres – short stories, historical fiction and now thrillers

• And the road ahead for any aspiring writer

Location
Time	Saturday, June 18 · 3:30pm - 6:00pm

Tandoor restaurant, 1/F Lyndhurst Tower No. 1 Lyndhurst Terrace Central, Hong Kong, China

Created By	Vikas Mehra

For	FIPHK Literary Group

La Rambla, Levitating Ganesha, and Lethal Desis – A Barcelona 101

2011-06-09T18:07:00.001+08:00

Barcelona, to me, was a sunny Mediterranean city that registered on my consciousness during the 1992 Summer Olympics. Thereafter, as the Spanish economy boomed it became the city to go to, the kind that attracts travel tips from the editors of Conde Nast Traveler.

All of which was very good until I stumbled upon a book called The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Now, I am a writer, and I love all things writerly – the smell of new books, the sound of old pages, the feel of a good pen as it waltzes over white, the strange new worlds that black ink transposes us to – and The Shadow is a very writerly novel.

At its heart is a book – rare, obscure – that falls into the hands of a boy who must protect it because someone is determinedly burning every copy of every book ever written by its author. It features a Cemetery of Forgotten Books – a capacious sanctuary where books are guarded from oblivion, a wise bookseller father, a boy who reads voraciously, and the city of Barcelona.

But the Barcelona of the book is set in the ‘50s, post the Spanish Civil War – a far cry from the sun-kissed widely-advertised Barca of today. The narrative traverses through the labyrinth of Barri Gotic (the nucleus of Old Barcelona) and down La Rambla, as mist rises from the Marina and engulfs the streets. It is a wonderful sprawling Gothic novel and I would recommend it to anybody looking for a book to lose themselves in. (If it helps, it is the highest selling Spanish novel after Don Quixote, and I reviewed its sequel here.) But best of all, it captures the spirit and skeleton of Barcelona better than any guidebook.

Because, even today, the best way to see the city is by strolling down the wide boulevard of La Rambla and careening off into the side alleys which spit you into the maze of the old quarter. Barcelona is at once ancient, medieval, Gothic and contemporary, and all of it can be discovered within a 2-mile radius!

So much so that tourist companies have come up with ‘The Shadow of The Wind Walking Tours’!

So you can imagine my excitement when we landed in Barcelona during Easter break. Especially considering my prior visa travail which I blogged about here, hubby was skeptical about the city that I had been slobbering over – not to mention that we were visiting from Pa-ree, that moveable feast!

We had deliberately chosen to stay in a hotel off La Rambla to ensure we wasted no time in cabs. La Rambla, a broad pedestrian boulevard flanked by narrow traffic lanes, runs down the length of Barcelona’s tourist hub, marks the southwest flank of the Barri Gotic, and is arguably the most famous Spanish street. It takes its name from a seasonal stream (raml in Arabic) that once ran here.

If you can withstand crowds, it is an excellent way to begin sampling Barcelona – throw yourself in and go with the flow. Start from Placa de Catalunya, named after a drinking fountain, a drink from which is rumoured to return you to Barcelona. Not a bad premise, but considering the swathe of pigeons that flock the fountain, you might just want to make a wish in your heart J Don’t get distracted by the stores all around – El Cortes Ingles, Barcelona’s Selfridges will be towering over you – there’ll be time for that later. This is also the place for celebration by fans when FC Barca wins, and the place to book and board the popular Bus Turistic for an open-top ride through the city.

Hang around, experience the place, then head southwards on La Rambla. If the UN had a bazaar it would be like this: multiple languages at once bouncing off hawker wares, flowers sellers, bird cages, fresh produce and intriguing buskers.

We saw several characters out of Pan’s Labyrinth, and … a levitating Ganesha! See it for yourself. Suffice to say he had a large audience and hubby’s mechanical engineering skills were challenged as he tried vainly to figure how the man was managing to stay afloat. I was happy to assign the mystery to the Goth character of the city.

And as we thus happily strolled down I overheard my mother tongue with all its lavish expletives – an excited Punjabi youth told another how they had beaten the Bengalis the previous night! Gulp! Even outside of India what identifies an Indian is our cantankerous interactions with our own countrymen. Now I have many Bengali friends and publishing is full of Bong editors but I have been aware of the strange Bong-Punj animosity. When I joined IIM Calcutta a Bong friend cheekily informed me of a popular expression: “Pagol na Punjabi”. Meaning, are you mad or simply Punjabi? Then he proceeded to add that ‘Punjabi’ was a euphemism for ‘Sardar’. And for an average Punjabi, a Bengali is at the dismal other end of the martial scale. So it shouldn’t surprise me to overhear that conversation a thousand miles from home. 1.2 billion of us are bound to show up through the cracks around the world and when we do, we are like this only!

Further on, we stumbled upon Miro’s mosaic. If I hadn’t been looking out for it, I’d have – like most other pedestrians – walked blithely over it, unaware that the famous painter had created a large circular tiled mosaic in the middle of La Rambla. Look for the Liceu metro and you’ll find it. One tile is signed by the artist and I was able to locate it!

What did Miro have in mind when he created the pavement mosaic? People trample over it, and every now and then someone notices it and pauses, or reaches it after scouring La Ramblas and gazes in awe … Either way, the mosaic is an integral part of the bustling boulevard.

Miro said, “Poetry and painting are done in the same way you make love; it’s an exchange of blood, a total embrace – without caution, without any thought of protecting yourself.”

Perhaps that explains why Miro put his art at the feet of the public.

I will continue this post in a series – Barca is too much of a good thing to squeeze into one blogpost. So watch out for the next one where I shall take you into the ancient heart of the city, the Barri Gotic. Meanwhile, if you figure the secret of the levitating Ganesha, do write in.

Cheers!

Is a Cool Chick Hot or a Hot Chick Cool? The Beauty Debate

2011-06-01T09:57:00.003+08:00

Beauty comes in many avatars – the smell of first rain, a bellyful of laugh, the patter of toddler feet, Michelangelo’s Pieta, Taj Mahal, mother’s face, the written word, a melodious ghazal – and yet, when the word is mentioned what springs to the minds of most people is female physical beauty. Since that aspect of beauty hogs the mind share, let’s address it first.

A young woman has a great time partying with her friends. Once back in her apartment, she heads straight to the bathroom where she puts a finger down her throat. Scraping it right in, she hits the gag spot. This wrenches her stomach and she throws up. So, she got to eat and drink copiously but she purged her body, and there’s no weight gain. Problem solved!

Or is it?

She is heading to bulimia nervosa, and while she’ll not gain weight she’ll gain myriad other ailments: eroded teeth, sore throat, ruptured esophagus, weakened heart muscle- what, you want me to stop! Okay, but know that bulimia is classified as a disorder.

Question is: how did she get into it?

Because she wants to be beautiful, and thin is in. Besides, if she didn’t starve herself, how would she fit into that ubiquitous bandage dress?

She is drowning in a sea of images, of long-legged high-heeled divas who have poured themselves into these skin-tight sheaths while she, in her flowing salwar kameez, has abruptly acquired the proportions of a tent.

Kareena Kapoor’s size 0. Bipasha’s yoga-sculpted body. Shilpa’s sexy figure. Katrina Kaif as the face of Indian Barbie. Ahem!

Our Prime Minister, when he was the Finance Minister in 1991, launched India into the age of economic liberalization. Since then we have opened our borders, become a tiger economy, and since any economy that grows at an 8% clip needs domestic consumption, we are consuming voraciously. As we joined a globalizing world what came in its wake was a relentless assault of images – images transplanted from the developed world to the developing as a marker of what we can aspire to.

And when Kate Moss is the iconic model to have graced the cover of Vogue a record 30 times you know what I mean. When rail-thin models whose spine could be felt through their stomachs define beauty, a herd of anxious women follow. Barbie, the cherished toy for all little girls in the new India, is so ridiculously proportioned that if scaled up to human size she would be unbalanced enough to topple over! Apparently the likelihood of a woman having Barbie’s shape is one in 100,000. For the rest, well, there is anorexia, bulimia, dieting, as they worship at the shrine of unachievable beauty.

How did we reach this point of killing ourselves to attain some beauty badge?

First, lets acknowledge to ourselves that the images we see are of models that are used to sell products. It is purely commercial. And over the years, the models have changed because of a changing fashion aesthetic that in turn is controlled by marketers, advertisers, stylists – people who run the beauty business. Consequently, images that sell everything from cars to cigarettes come to define beauty in that day and age.

Don’t believe me? See for yourself.

In the ‘60s Twiggy, with her androgynous looks, became the ideal mannequin for the mod looks of that decade. While the Russian Veruschka – once considered too tall, at more than six feet – played up her Valkyrie proportions by occasionally appearing in nothing but body paint. Modern times, eh!

In the ‘70s Iman, the stunning Somalian, became the exotic appeal. The ‘80s were all about glamour and Australian Elle Macpherson “The Body” defined it. Cindy Crawford, fresh-faced American, was symbolic of the pared-down minimalism of the ‘90s.

Then arrived Kate Moss – at five foot eight she was the antisupermodel whose arrival heralded the waif look. Which, in turn, spawned a legion of healthy women starving themselves to attain the Fellowship of Moss.

What does it tell us? In this obsessive pursuit of beauty are we missing something staring us in the face? That the idea of commercial beauty is constantly changing, at best, and shifty, at worst, as marketers have crossed continent/ethnicity/race in their search for the ‘look’ that’ll define the zeitgesit of the era and convey an impossible beauty.

No woman can live up to the ideal beauty, though many have died trying to do so. (Ironically, the universally admired beauty, Marilyn Monroe, is one.) That’s because supermodels, fashion models, catwalk models are not meant to be ‘pretty’ or beautiful. The requirement is for edgy, distinctive, non-traditional looks. Which can then be broadcast as some unattainable ideal of beauty. Which, statistically, is what it is!

And yet, as science will tell you, it is all so wrong. Because Beauty boils down to a simple average. Yes, average!

Research has illustrated a phenomenon called beauty-in-averageness in which a composite of faces – essentially an average of those faces – was more attractive than any of the faces individually. Which shows that we humans are attracted to average beauty more than individual beauty. An explanation for this is that averageness is a sign of health and fitness – a quality that attracts the opposite sex for successful breeding. Unusually protuberant eyes might clue a disease – and so signal the (low) value of a potential mate. And yet, a Smeagol-like face with bulging eyes is popular on current catwalks.

The world is a confusing place when white people prize mocha skin and the brown folks want fairness creams; when you are a curvy woman whose body is ideal for a sari but you want to pour yourself into a bandage dress; when you are a Chinese woman with radish legs and you’ll undergo torturous surgery to get European legs …

So, next time you doubt your beauty, stop and think. If you think you are average know that you are beautiful – you have science on your side. Not sufficient? A tad too dry for conviction?

Look at nature for inspiration. Does a rose desire to be more like a narcissus? Is a palm more attractive than a peepul? Is dusk more alluring than dawn? A full moon or a crescent? Each element is there and content in its beauty – no one’s faking it. If there’s one thing we can learn from nature, it is this: there is no beauty standard.

The moment we stop benchmarking ourselves against some given beauty-industry/fashion-magazine/Holly-Bollywood standard is the moment we can look at ourselves in the mirror and realize our own beauty. Confucius said: Everything has beauty; not everyone sees it. So how about sending some positive vibes to our self? Healthy skin, clean teeth, clear eyes, a wide smile, erect posture, wearing clothes that suit our body – 90% of beauty is covered there. And all of us can have it. Exercise, eating well and in moderation will keep us healthy and fit. Top it off with a quiet self-confidence.

Real beauty is within each of us and the moment we start believing that, it lights up our soul and our eyes and our face and becomes visible to all. And then it will extend to our work, our interactions with others, the way we live. Beauty is never skin deep – it is an extension of our very self. As Professor Denis Dutton says, prehistoric man was creating objects of beauty before we could even talk.

The first step to real beauty is choosing to be You – you with all your foibles and strengths. And then you’ll be surprised by what your self will reveal to you.

So, who will you be: Kat/Kate/Kareena-counterfeit. Or the authentic you? The choice is yours. Is a cool chick hot or a hot chick cool – for once, the chick shall decide!

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I wrote this blog post because I believe in the need for a passionate debate on the idea of beauty and how we use it to constrain ourselves. This also forms part of the ongoing debate on Beauty that Dove is running via its Yahoo! Dove Real Beauty Contest.

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Alternatively, if you are not an Indiblogger, you can click on the Facebook "Like" button and encourage readership.

Cheers!