Notes from the Jaipur Literature Festival – Part 2

25 January 2013

On the second day of JLF 2013, I attended two sessions: one by Faramerz Dabhoiwala on The Origins of Sex and another by Jawed Akhtar on Bollywood and the National Narrative.

Faramerz Daboiwala on The Origins of Sex

Faramerz was in conversation with William Dalrymple. Dalrymple introduced the teacher at Oxford in most glowing terms and then took a back seat.

Faramerz made the following main points, in relation to his book, The Origins of Sex. The book was based on his PhD thesis and portrays the history of sexuality and sexual mores in the last two hundred years.

- Sexual revolution did not start in the 1960s. It started in 18th century England.

- Then, sex outside marriage was not acceptable at all; vigilante groups looked for any couple who indulged in extramarital sex and presented them to the courts. They were punished, flogged and paraded naked on streets. Listening to him, I began to realize how the West sees many Muslim societies today: two centuries ago, they weren’t any different from them (from what we see and hear about sexual crimes in the Arab or other Muslim societies).

- Aristocrats in England started demanding that they be allowed to have a private sex life separate from their public life.

- Courtesans were the first celebrities. They published memoirs and were scandal mongers. Their memoirs sold in large numbers making them money to survive in old age. They also blackmailed aristocrats and threatened to expose them in public.

- A famous courtesan (who is on the cover of Faramerz Dabhoiwala’s book) ordered her painting and published stamp sized prints for men to carry them in their watches (like today's cellphones)

- There were people who wrote books anonymously, published them and wrote glowing reviews of their own books. 

Javed Akhtar on Bollywood and National Narrative

Well-known lyricist and scriptwriter Javed Akhtar was in conversation with film historian Rachel Dwyer.

- Javed Akhtar said that when they (he and Salim) were writing scripts, they did not know that they were creating a phenomenon (The Angry Young Man of the 1970s). They were just writing good stories. Only in hindsight did they know that their works were path-breaking, and that they were defining a generation. What were their heroes rebelling against? Very minor things, like, they wanted to marry the girl of their choice; it was a rebellion against their parents. They did not touch any institution.

- Being a film lyricist, Javed Saheb dwelled heavily on the devolution of lyrics in Hindi cinema. He said that film songs earlier had tehzeeb (courtesy, a cultivated manner and civility) in them; now that etiquette is gone. In the past, even B-grade films' songs had a soul, poetry in their lines.

- You have to be kindhearted to say today's lyrics are poetry.

- We are also responsible for degeneration of our films and songs: Choli ke peeche kya hai (the suggestive but popular song from Subhash Ghai’s film, Khalnayak) was made by 9 people; who made it a hit? Who were the other 9 crore people? At homes, people proudly told me, he said, see my 8-yr old can dance so well on Choli ke peeche kya hai? What does that say about us as parents? Where are we going as a society? 

- Our Vocabulary has shrunk; proverbs have died; we have replaced them with poor language and some bad American words, not even proper English.

- Today's kids have less than half the vocabulary of their parents.

- Only the poor go to vernacular schools, so they use cheap language, it gets reflected in our cinema, giving it even more credibility.

- Good and bad films were always made: but in the past, most hits were good films; today, most hits are bad films. Show me a good film that has done a business of 200 crores?

- Some young filmmakers are making quality films today. It is good. (Examples: Farhan Akhtar, Zoya Akhtar)

- We had abandoned language and arts in the last 30-40 years. We wanted cars and fridges. Now today's generation takes them for granted. They want something else. They want arts, and literature, so (that’s why we see) this revival of arts and literature in India. 

- I am not pessimistic. In the next ten years, we will make even better films which will have better aesthetic quality.

Notes from the Jaipur Literature Festival – Part 1

[Random Shots: Journalist and novelist Tarun Tejpal interacting with his readers at the Jaipur Literature Festival 2013]

24 January 2013

On the first day, I attended three sessions: the Art of the Short Story, Ismat and Annie, and the Novel of the Future. I did not take any notes. I wrote down the following the next morning (from whatever I could remember). If some statements sound weird and don’t make sense to the readers, I take the blame for sloppiness and apologize in advance.

We don't tell novels, we tell short stories

The Short story: The Art of the Short Story panel had Nicholas Hogg, Richard Beard and Yiyun Li and Anjum Hasan was the moderator.

- Yiyun Li said show and tell is a wrong advice

- Bring the narrator back

- She said she represents only herself (not any group or community as a writer)

- Length in a story does not matter; she refused to reduce the length of a story just to get into The New Yorker

Anjum Hasan referred to the Chekhovian Little Man (mentioned Frank O'Connor's book on short stories)

- Why do you write short stories: The panelists said that one is able to explore other lives through short stories

- Short stories are great as a genre as they allow great room for experimentation (for example, the stories of Georges Perec)

The panelists were of the opinion that short story as a genre is not dying; it will live as long as there will be human beings. It is very natural for us—we don't tell novels, we tell short stories

Ismat and Annie

This session was about two famous Urdu fiction writers: Ismat Chughtai and Qurratulain Haider.

In this session, Javed Akhtar and Ameena Saiyid (head of OUP, Pakistan) were in conversation with Syed Shahid Mahdi.

Javed Akhtar: Both Ismat and Annie (Haider) were rebels in their own way. Annie was from an aristocratic background and was scholarly; if she was confident about something, she would put her foot down. Otherwise, she would say I don't know anything about it; tell me about it. She would quote from magazines and books. She would think in terms of centuries. 

Ismat was more from a middle class background. She was a fighter and was so dogged that even if she had said something wrong and she knew it, she would stick to her point. She thought in terms of mosaic, short stories.

In this session, Javed Saheb said some very interesting things about the Urdu and Hindi divide, which he considers an artificial divide. He said that what we commonly speak in India is Urdu or Hindustani. But what is people’s attitude? When do they think one is speaking Urdu and not Hindi? “Jab kah (baat) samajh me aaye toh who Hindi hai. Jab samajh me aana band ho jaye toh Urdu hai.” 

He exhorted people to learn Urdu if they wanted to enjoy the works of genii like Ismat and Annie. “Learning Urdu is not that difficult,” he said. “Learn the script. Don’t just look at the script and run away scared. Doosre ki galiyan hamesha tedhi medhi lagti hain.”

In the futuristic scenario, everybody is a writer, no one is reader

“The Novel of the Future” was a very interesting session. The participants were Howard Jacobson, Nadeem Aslam, Linda Grant, Zoe Heller and Lawrence Norfolk and the moderator was Anita Anand. Mohammad Hanif was supposed to be a part of the panel but he did not show up. Later on, I found out that he got his visa too late in the day and cancelled his plans to come to Jaipur.

The discussion opened with a reference to the famous Naipaulian claim that the novel is dead. Long ago Naipaul had declared that the novel is dead.

Nadeem Aslam: The novel's health is not exhausted in my study.  If you say the novel is exhausted, it means you are exhausted.

Howard Jacobson: Looking at the success of Fifty Shades (the trilogy by E L James), we are doomed. 

The problem is with readers, not novels

Everyone wants to write, not read

Meeting authors has replaced necessity to read

We need novels. It is an argument, not a single voice of dictatorship.

In the futuristic scenario, everybody is a writer, no one is reader.

Anna Karenina is a young adult novel.

Don't change your writing to suit the market; stick to your style, at any cost, and your audience will change

Zoe Heller: What is worrying is that kids are losing the art of reading long fiction; they have short attention spans.

What's happening in the US will happen in India too. The market for novels is shrinking in the US. The same will happen in India in the future even though right now the market here is expanding.

Howard: Don’t read novels for information. Novels have no information to provide.

Others

Someone asked: What about the novel in the e-form, with embedded video and all that jazz we could do with the form in a digital age? Answer: Novels will change—like a parachute, with trimmed strings. Will the parachute remain the same and will provide the same functionality if you trimmed it strings?

E-books are not same as the hard copy novels.

Nadeem: You don’t need video and music to be embedded in the novel’s pages. The words, the sentences, they should evoke the music and picture in your head.