The New York Times Tries Its Hand At Saree

Uh-oh, New York Times, where did you come across this peddler-of-inane-drivel of a writer? Calling him a reporter/journalist makes you look woefully inadequate as a newspaper of some chops. Do you have no Indian on your international/editorial desk who gave a look over to this piece before it appeared in all its ignorant uninformed biased bigotry on your esteemed pages? First, some facts: 

1. The saree is not Hindu — My Punjabi mother wore it to work and parties; my Kannadiga mother-in-law wears it even as her nightdress; the Keralite sisters at my Catholic school wore sarees, with flowers in their crinkly hair; my Maharashtrian bai bustled through my house, cooking-cleaning-laundering, dressed in her saree… I can continue endlessly but you’re getting the picture, hopefully? Let me break it down for you: My mother is Sikh, my mother-in-law is Hindu, my Keralite sisters were Christian. Gotcha!

2. The saree is not nationalist — Heck, the saree is a garment as old as our civilization, give or take a few centuries, considering we’re several millennia old. And yes, we are one of the two (alongside China, albeit that market is steadily substituting its traditional clothes for Western apparel) oldest continuous civilizations of the world, which means our great-great-great-whatever grandmothers have worn the saree as do we, even our very young daughters — we have the concept of a half-saree, too. Surprise!

3. The saree has nothing to do with Mr Modi — The Prime Minister of India is doing many things, as elected leaders are wont to do, but the last I looked he was neither wearing a saree, nor promoting the wearing of one. And why would he? Indian women work in sarees, party in them, even jog in them! What? You haven’t seen Milind Soman’s mum jogging beside her handsome son?! Haw!

I could go on but let’s admit, dear NYT, you goofed up, big time. Time to shed those blinkers, say sorry, and meet some real Indians. You might end up losing those biases — how bad can that be? — and I promise, the six-yard garment might flummox you but one of us can teach you how to drape it. How elegant (informed, international, effective) will you appear then!

Brexit & Throwback Thursday!

Once upon a time there was a swampy island where 50% of the people had barely enough to survive: just the clothes on their back, gruel for the one meal a day, some shelter. In a nutshell, life was Dickensian. Desperate merchants begged the queen for a royal charter to go trade with that jewel of the east, India. In 1609, William Hawkins arrived in the court of emperor Jahangir with the gift of a bolt of broadcloth. Broadcloth, yes. In a Mughal court awash with silks and jewels. A lesser man might have quailed but the English were canny grocers who recognized a great bargain: with nothing to lose, save broadcloth, there was everything to be gained.

Over the next 350 odd years, with their presence never exceeding 100,000, the English were able to control the Indian subcontinent with one sole aim: to loot it. Of course, they had local help in this enterprise from like-minded Indian grocer type Jagat Seths and traitors such as Mir Jafar. That loot enabled little England to become Great Britain.

Cut to present. Britain is part of the EU, which means other white folks from all over Europe can find their way to the island and undercut the resident white English. Immigrants, you see, are always hungry - remember William Hawkins and his merchants? Yesterday, June 23, 2016, the English cried their way out of union with EU. Yes sir, we are drawing up the bridge and talking to you no more. We are reclaiming our old days of glory. Throwback Thursday, for sure!

Except, as your great poet - the prefix is justified in this case - Tennyson said: the old order changeth yielding place to new. You may want to return to the swampy isle of 1600 Tudors but there ain't no jewel waiting to be looted. You see, India is still struggling from being looted over 350 years. And we are still compiling the rather extensive list of reparations. Meanwhile, you'll realise soon, what with the pound plunging, the Kohinoor will only take you so far. Don't despair - may I suggest the cuppa that cheers? So English, right? But hurry up, my dears. The Chinese are expected any moment with their reparations list. There, there …

A Chinese PLA soldier to an American intellectual - the journey of Ha Jin

An interview with Ha Jin, the multi-award-winning Chinese-American writer. I had the good fortune to meet him when he visited Hong Kong, and this interview was subsequently published in the South China Morning Post.

Ha Jin is having a busy day. In Hong Kong for the Book Fair, he has been interacting with eager readers since the morning, and the afternoon is packed with interview slots. No wonder he looks tired. He greets me though with a pleasant smile, his face betraying none of the tedium he must be anticipating at having to regurgitate his thoughts. As we make small talk, his eyes – behind the large glasses – are alert and he laughs easily. “I have been conversing in Mandarin Chinese since morning,” he says, “and need to shift gears to talk in English with you.” His modesty is disarming. Ha Jin is a much-lauded writer, only the third American writer – along with Philip Roth and John Wideman – to have won the PEN/Faulkner award twice. This for a man who didn’t start to learn English until he was twenty-one years old!

The eldest of five children, Jin Xuefei (he took the pen name Ha Jin later) was ten when the Cultural Revolution started. His father was a Red Army officer, and his mother, a petty officer whose father owned a small parcel of land, was persecuted. At fourteen, he joined the army and served as an artilleryman along China's border with Russia and North Korea, then moved on to the more peaceful jobs of telegrapher and calligrapher. Today Ha Jin teaches at Boston University and lives in the suburbs; he became a U.S. citizen in 1997.

It has been quite a trajectory, I remark, from a soldier in the People’s Liberation Army in China to a celebrated American author. “I have been driven by a force beyond myself, by circumstances. Of course I was also fortunate to have made the right decisions at various moments in my life. But on the whole, I feel very lucky. In the Army there were many fellow soldiers, comrades, who were extremely smart but they never had the opportunity to develop themselves. There is, however,” he insists with a deprecatory laugh, “a lot of myth surrounding my learning of English!

“I taught myself English after I left the Army in 1976.” He had remained in the army for five years before leaving to work for a railroad company. “At that time a radio programme to teach English was broadcast daily. It was very basic, “There’s a chair. This is a table.” So I started to follow it. Then in 1977 when the Chinese Universities reopened after the Cultural Revolution I took English as a major.” The 21-year-old from Liaoning applied to Heilongjiang University where he got to read the recently unbanned works of Faulkner and Hemingway.

“I love Hemingway. When I was an undergrad in my junior year suddenly American literature became very popular. But at the time many of the books were not available. One book, The Old Man and the Sea, had a bilingual edition made just for the English students in China, so a lot of people knew that book. As a result, Chinese readers talked about Hemingway. In that story there's a fight between a man and a shark. You can conquer but not defeat a man. We were taught a lot of Marxist morals. But this kind of Hemingway American mentality, at least as expressed in that small novel, was fresh to the young people at the time, so we all somehow believed in it.” He went on to earn a master's in American literature from Shandong University, writing occasional poetry in Chinese, and then traveled to America to pursue a doctorate at Brandeis University.

The initial motivation to learn English though was prompted by an obscure desire to read a book by Friedrich Engels titled ‘The Living Conditions of the Working Class’. “It was the only English book I knew,” he shrugs, “and I thought some day I might be able to read the book in original.” It was another instance when the guiding hand of fate steered him to what would ultimately turn out to be his passion and vocation. So, did you manage to read the book, I query. “No!” Ha Jin laughs. “Never. I never read it. And I won’t read it now – I am kind of superstitious about it.”

In 1988 Ha Jin had completed work on his poetry manuscript, Between Silences, and was looking to return to China when fate interceded, again – this time in the form of the Tiananmen Square massacre. “I was in shock,” he says with a shake of his head. “I had served in the Chinese Army and we were taught to serve the people, not attack them. But now everything was reversed and I couldn’t reconcile. I sat glued to the TV. I was in a daze for weeks. Couldn’t function normally. Later my son arrived and I realized that he must be American.” A brief pause, before he resumes. “I saw the violence in the massacre served no purpose. There has been so much destruction in Chinese history that has served no purpose. It was as if there was a cycle and I wanted my son to get out of that. My immediate purpose was to make this new land his country. Which meant that I had to stay on.”

Since China was ruled out, Ha Jin had to find a way to live in the US and earn a livelihood. “I had friends who had 2-3 books under their belt and I thought that if I continued to write, and managed to publish a couple more books, even I would get a job like that. Securing a decent permanent job was my immediate concern.” To extend his student visa, he applied to Boston University to learn creative writing – even though he had already completed his Ph. D. It was to be another in a series of happy coincidences for Ha Jin. Between Silences was published in 1990. Nine years later, Ha Jin’s first novel Waiting, about a Chinese doctor who keeps trying to divorce his wife so he can marry his sweetheart, won the National Book Award and PEN/Faulkner award. To date, Ha Jin has published three volumes of poetry, three collections of short stories and four novels.

Over this period of writing, the setting of his books has changed from the fictional Muji city on the Russian/Chinese border to Korea and finally the US. Of his novels, Waiting is set in China, the action in War Trash takes place in Korea, and A Free Life, his latest novel, is located firmly in the US. His novels, it appears, are mirroring the writer’s transition from China to America, from being a Chinese to becoming a Chinese-American.

“Yes and No. Every book for me is a departure. I am still in the process of being a certain kind of writer – I myself don’t know what kind. Therefore the changing of location is natural. Step after step, gradually, my fiction has come to be set in the US. But that doesn’t mean that I won’t set it in China again. Though,” he shrugs, “my major preoccupation currently is with the immigrant experience in the US.” A Free Life follows Chinese poet and intellectual Nan Wu, along with his wife, Pingping, on the rapid journey from tentative new immigrant to successful Atlanta restaurateur and homeowner to discontented U.S. citizen hungering for a more intellectual life.

Nan Wu, in his pursuit and achievement of the American dream, is perhaps a doppleganger for Ha Jin’s own experience, I suggest. “No,” he gives a decisive shake of his head. “I haven’t reached the American dream.” Yet there are several elements in the narrative of his latest novel that reflect Ha Jin own’s life. “You cannot separate the dance from the dancer,” Ha Jin concedes. The novel opens with Nan and Pingping traveling from Boston to San Francisco's airport to greet their young son, who had been living with his grandparents until the parents got settled – just as Ha Jin's son did in the 1980s, after Ha Jin and then his wife moved to America. Nan also struggles whether to write in English, becoming more facile with the language as he gets more Americanized. Nevertheless, his insecurity with expressing himself in English remains – a sense that Ha Jin shares acutely. In one of his poems, he sums up his ambiguous relationship with English thus: The English which I love but wish not to use.

“I think usually when a writer adopts another language there are a lot of motivations: necessity, ambition, estrangement. Estrangement is a big part of it, and I think that may be the reason why I wanted to leave China in my writing – contemporary China, that is – and write about the immigrant experience. On the other hand, it creates a kind of distance with China and enables me to write more objectively. Despite all that, I feel I won’t ever be at home in English – the question is how to use that to my advantage.”

On a wry laugh, he continues, “Writing is suffering. Nabokov said writing in English is a private tragedy. I couldn’t understand then, but now I do. Teaching oneself a language different from your first, gaining mastery over it – it involves a lot of disappointment and suffering. That is why I never encourage anyone to write in their second language.” Ha Jin frequently cites Conrad and Nabokov, two writers who come to English from other tongues, as his literary influences.

A question about success and its ramifications makes Ha Jin almost squirm. “I feel a lot of pressure. Every time, it gets harder. It is akin to a sprinter’s dash: he takes twelve seconds to do a hundred-meter dash, next time he wants to do it in eleven. Every time you want to do better. It is frustrating. But I have to do it. It is the way to live my life. Awards are not a motivation. At some point in the beginning, some awards were important – more for job security. After that a writer has to value his own work: you know how much you have succeeded or failed.”

When Ha Jin left China it was with the intention to return. However, he has never been back since. Despite the critical acclaim his books continue to be unavailable in mainland China. Waiting was published briefly before being withdrawn. No wonder the prodigal son’s relationship with China is ambivalent. “It makes me uncomfortable. When your books are banned, it is as if your children were banished – you feel unwelcome.”

Film director Peter Chan bought the film rights to Waiting – however, making the film seems to have literally become a case of waiting as the pre-production has taken years. “I don’t know what stage it is at now,” Ha Jin answers with a mystified look. “He has been working very hard on it. He wants to make it available to mainland audience.” There is a weighty pause, the mystified look deepens – I decide to venture in with a related question. Would Ha Jin look at writing the screenplay? He shakes his head, “I am not a scriptwriter,” before breaking into a guffaw. “I don’t think Chan wants me too involved!”

In A Free Life, Nan Wu wins a ticket to go to Beijing. In a book that seems to mirror Ha Jin’s immigrant experience, the return trip to homeland comes across as a case of wishful thinking. “Not exactly. China has changed and so have I. China has become a richer country, with a much higher living standard. But at the same time, a lot of things are not as good as before. Education is a big problem, environment is another major issue, and the landscape has changed entirely. People haven’t made effort in this direction.” 

The coordinator is cueing time-up – the next interviewer is in queue – and I squeeze in my last question: does he see himself writing a novel in Mandarin? “Having struggled to write in one language, then shifting tracks to write in another serves no purpose. My first language is Mandarin Chinese but I have only written small pieces in it, not a novel. It seems too difficult and life is too short,” he ends pragmatically.

It’ll be a Good Year, A Seer has So Ordained …

It’s that time of the year again: fir trees, white-green-plastic-flown from Norway; piped carols in stores; Santas at supermarkets; iridescent lighting on skyscraper facades. We’re spending Christmas in Hong Kong after several years and I am glad. It’s gorgeous at this time, the city dressed up to party! A ferry ride from Kowloon to HK island in the evening is a must do if you are here – the usually impressive HK skyline gets a twinkling-lights facelift. And then there are the fireworks!

It’s also the time for parties, meeting friends and catching up with family and therefore, invariably, time for copious conversation as well. So while you may want to brush up on your talking skills – I recommend How to have a Beautiful Mind by Edward De Bono – you might also like to have some shayrs up your sleeve, to be artfully slipped into chats as a sequitur, rhetoric, irony, metaphor, euphemism …

You know how it goes: pub and poetry, shayr and sharaab, Ghalib and ghazal!

Why Ghalib, you might ask? In the pantheon of poets you could summon anyone from Rumi to Faiz – this party is certainly one where the more the merrier – but Ghalib, like Shakespeare, has opined on every topic under the sun, from art to zephyr, bazeecha to zulmat. He has trawled through tulips and thorns, death and destruction, love and anguish, life and longing, and come up with shayrs that plumb our universal humanity. Ghalib has wit, passion, rhyme and meter and the ability to reveal the universe in two lines – pray why would you go elsewhere? As Ghalib himself said:

Hain aur bhi duniya mein shukhanwar bahut achhe,

Kahte hain ki Ghalib ka hai andaaze-bayaan aur.

Be there many poets in the world,

But Ghalib, it is said, has a diction that is singular.

Ghalib is handy, and how.       

Amongst the topics of conversation will likely feature the important events of 2010, farewell to the present year, and hopes and wishes for 2011.

Let’s start with the highlights of 2010: Haiti earthquake, Pakistan floods, Chilean miners, Dubai property crash, the PIGS Euro crisis, CWG scam, Tea Partiers, Assange and Cablegate, World Cup, Winter Olympics in Canada, eruption of Eyjafjallajokull and Mount Merapi, the BP oil spill, Nobel Peace Prize and China, the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, North Korea’s shelling of South, US-China currency tango …

Ghalib can be deployed with dexterity in any confabulation around the above topics. Witness:

• US-China interaction: Wen Jiabao could aptly tell Obama

Har ek baat pe kehte ho tum ki tu kya hai,

Tumhee kaho ki ye andaaze-guftagoo kya hai?

To everything that I say, your retort remains: Who are you?

Pray tell me, what kind of conversation is this?

Obama could in turn salvo the above shayr to the Tea Partyers!

• The scam masters of India; or Kalmadi, Raja & Inc.

Hazaaron khwaahishen aisi ke har khwahish pe dam nikle

Bahut nikle mere armaan, lekin phir bhi kam nikle.

Thousands of desires, each worth dying for,

Many a wish have I realized, yet I yearn for more.

• And the ennui and resignation of Indians is best summed by:

Raat din gardish mein hai saat asmaan,

Ho rahega kuchh na kuchh ghabrayen kya

Day and night the planets are in motion

Something will work out, why worry ourselves

• The dalliances of Messrs Berlusconi, Putin & Tharoor

Ishq ney Ghalib nikamma kar diyaa,

Warna hum bhi aadmi the kaam ke.

Love has rendered me useless Ghalib,

Otherwise I was a person of much worth.

• BP’s desperate attempts to mop the spill while the Gulf of Mexico perished

Chipak raha hai badan par lahu se pairaahan,

Hamaari jeb ko ab haajta-e-rafu kya hai?

The garment sticks to the body with my blood,

What use is it darning the collar now?

• PIGS countries tell the European Commission

Unke dekhe se jo aa jati hai munh par raunaq,

Who samajhte hain ki beemaar ka haal accha hai.

A smile lights my face when I sight her,

And they take it to mean all’s well with blighted me.

The Greeks could tell Merkel the same!

• Chilean miners

Zindagi apni jab is shakl sey guzari Ghalib,

Hum bhi kya yaad karenge ki khudaa rakhte they.

My life took such a turn Ghalib,

That I realized there is a God who shaped it thus.

So how was 2010 overall? Eventful, insightful, we won some, we lost some – a year like all the others! Time to bid farewell then, and ring in the new.

Hum ko maaloom hai jannat kee haqeeqat lekin,

Dil ke khush rakhney ko Ghalib ye khayaal achcha hai.

The realities of Heaven are known to us Ghalib,

But to beguile the heart, it is a good thought.

            And here’s a handy one for 2011:

Dekhiye paate ushaaq buton se kya faiz,

Ek Barahman ne kaha hai ke ye saal achha hai.

Let’s see what blessings the desirous get from the unresponsive ones,

A seer has ordained the year will be a good one.

December 27 marks Mirza Ghalib’s 213^th birthday. As a writer I am indebted to him for the manner in which he reveals himself anew with every fresh reading of his work. When I first encountered the following shayr –

Aate hain ghaib se yeh mazaamin khyaal mein

Ghalib sarir-e-khaama nawaae sarosh hai.

These thoughts, Ghalib, are heaven-sent,

My pen is the scribe of the voice of Gods.

– I took it to mean that Ghalib had claimed his writing was of a standard that was of the Gods. Not unusual for a man who was aware of his genius and entirely unaffected by false modesty. However, subsequent readings over the years have revealed to me another facet – one in which Ghalib states that he is a vessel for the divine discourse, channeling what he is receiving from the Heavens above. Remarkable humility, Mirza Nosha, for one who is regarded as the greatest Urdu poet. 

Salutations my friend on your birthday!

And to all my other friends, wishing you a Merry X’mas and a very Happy 2011. It’ll be a good year, a seer has so ordained …

The Multiculti Oil Opera, starring the Janus face of United States

Air and radio waves, undersea cables, printer’s ink have all been in a frenzy since 28 November 2010 when the website Wikileaks and five major newspapers published leaked United States diplomatic cables. The documents detailing correspondence between the US State Department and its diplomatic missions worldwide have laid bare the hitherto well-sheathed world of diplomacy to reveal one of intrigue, deception, games, and gossip.

The cables from the Riyadh desk alone would be sufficient to stage a psychedelic multi-star soap opera that crisscrosses the world at a thrillerish pace. Act I opens with a wealthy sheikh imploring his American patron to “cut off the head of the snake” which is their common enemy and is “unbalanced, crazy even” as he races to develop a nuclear weapon. Thereafter, the sheikh’s oleaginous neighbours join in chorus – the enemy “is Hitler” who “wants to restore the Persian empire”– and advise the Americans that “Iraq was unnecessary, Iran is necessary”.

In Act II, the enemy President finds the US “a country that is overstretched and in difficulty as a result of too many commitments” and commands that “Iran’s centrifuges are working day and night”.

The final act sees the Americans wanting to “engage” the enemy, a stance that makes its European and Arab allies skittish. They fear, in turn, that “the US is preparing to take commercial advantage of a new relationship with Iran” and might “strike a grand bargain without prior consultations”

Religious differences, deep distrust and disparate motives crackle through the narrative as the players dressed variously in jellabiya, thobe, suits, and head scarves shoot off their mouth, exchange surreptitious glances, spy covertly and woo overtly – a multiculti oil opera delivered for easy consumption in the globe’s first language, English.

The Finale closes the saga of greed and ambition on an ominous note as an oleaginous party intones: “Any culture that is patient and focused enough to spend years working on a single carpet is capable of waiting years and even decades to achieve its goals. The worry is not how much we know about Iran, but how much we don’t”.

Curtain Call. Thunderous applause. Ain’t it some?

FYI: Instalment 2 of the Multiculti Oil Opera is work-in-progress until Julian Assange decides to pull the plug, again, of the leaky US cauldron.

What! You can’t wait; the suspense is killing you?

Julian’s got Interpol, the Swedish Sergeants, the British Police, Mastercard, Paypal, even Amazon on his case as the US persists with arm-twisting its cronies worldwide to muzzle a man who has dared to speak. Haven’t you learnt anything from the Iranians – patience, focus, carpet-weaving, take your pick.

That the US is persecuting Julian Assange is in no doubt. As he said in his article, they are focusing on Wikileaks since it is young and small while the 5 established newspapers – The New York Times in US, Le Monde in France, The Guardian in Britain, Der Spiegel in Germany, El Pais in Spain – which published the cables as well are old and large.

Assange is not popular with the Americans. Look at the vitriol he has attracted. Sarah Palin has called him a “terrorist”. “The CIA should have already killed Julian Assange,” says John Hawkins on the Right Wing News site. William Kristol, former chief of staff to vice president Dan Quayle, asks, “Why can’t we use our various assets to harass, snatch or neutralize Julian Assange and his collaborators, wherever they are?”

Recently the US has also exhibited its particular brand of righteous rage with China over its treatment of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, Liu Xiaobo, who is a dissident under house arrest. China has barred Liu from attending the prize ceremony in Norway. In response US lawmakers have gone ballistic: "China should be ashamed and China should be embarrassed to be in the company of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and Burma." At the ceremony Speaker Nancy Pelosi will represent the US and her presence “would send a powerful message” to China’s democracy advocates.

However, the US’s shimmering avatar of Defender of Democracy & Human Rights has lost its sheen. A decade after 9/11 the world knows better and the world has moved on. If the cables reveal one thing, it is that the US practises a cloak and dagger diplomacy commanding its diplomats to spy on host nations and steal personal human material and information; arm twists allies like Sweden which hides from its Parliament that it shares intelligence with US; and ensures Britain fixes its Iraq enquiry to protect “US interests”.

And Wikileaks is just one source.

Naomi Klein in her brilliant book, Shock Doctrine, has already detailed how the US has historically used an overt model of capitalism and democracy to upend governments in pursuit of its own covert interests. Its playgrounds have included Pinochet’s coup in Chile in 1973, the Falklands War in 1982, the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Asian Financial crisis in 1997 and Hurricane Mitch in 1998. You can add Iraq and Afghanistan to the list.

On an Oprah Winfrey show post 9/11 a grieving American woman asked: Why did they hate us so much? It is a question the Americans and the US government and lawmakers need to ask of themselves as they quiver with outrage at China, calling it names, while simultaneously hounding a journalist who has used the same freedom of expression that they are espousing worldwide.

The world can see this disconnect, this schizophrenia, and its time the patient sat himself down for some soul searching. Introspection would help connect the dots. It could begin with A for Afghanistan.

The world does not hate the US. What should concern the US more is if its economic downslide and the simultaneous growth of BRIC will render the world indifferent to it. As the prescient Ghalib said: bekhudi besabab nahin Ghalib, kuch to hai jis ki pardadari hai.

The indifference is not without cause, Ghalib

There is a reason why the disconnect exists.