Hong Kong steps onto the international literary stage

While Singaporeans/Malaysians keep sqabbling over Singlish/Minglish vs Queen's English, Hong Kong has been taking great strides in the literary arena.

The IHT reports: "...Hong Kong becomes home to a new international literary prize and to the relaunched Asia Literary Review. Major overseas publishers and agents, meanwhile, have been making regular visits or setting up operations in this area.

"The fear that Hong Kong would lose its English-language heritage after the 1997 handover from British to Chinese rule now seems misplaced...

"At the same time, greater China is playing an increasingly important role on the international literary scene. More Asians are learning English and buying more foreign books. Meanwhile, American and British publishers are becoming more interested in Asian writers, particularly young Chinese ones, whose works have the potential to sell well in the West.

Hong Kong is working hard to position itself in the middle of this potentially booming book trade. Last week Man Investments announced it would sponsor a new Hong Kong-based literary prize starting in the autumn of 2007 - its only literary prize aside from the two prestigious Booker awards. According to a news release, judges will read unpublished English-language works looking for "new Asian literature to be brought to the attention of English-reading audiences around the world."



Singapore is also trying its best to promote the reading/writing culture through lietarary festivals, etc. However, there seems to be shortage of talent, which is strange. Singapore's libraries are so well stocked and all kinds of books and writing opportunities are available. Sadly, for example, this year no writer could be found worthy of the annual NUS-FASS and TOPH Writing Fellowship.

The writing fellowship had made a brilliant start in its inaugural fellow, playwright Huzir Sulaiman, and the award-giving authorities feel that his accomplishments both accurately reflect the aims and spirit of this fellowship, as well as stand to benefit the literary scene in Singapore as a whole. This year, despite an encouraging number of submissions, the judges did not feel that there was an applicant who could fulfill the aims of the fellowship.

Citizen Coetzee

J M Coetzee is one of my favourite writers. I have recently finished reading two of his novels, Youth, and Disgrace, and have fallen in love with his sparse yet powerful writing style. Though I had read his The Life and Times of Michael K years ago, I can still recall the intensity of the experience of reading that novel and the kind of impact it had on me.

His superb novel, Disgrace ends at a situation where the disgraced protagonist, David, a former professor, is at a loss in a socio-politically changed South Africa, and as you read on the novel, you feel such pain, lonliness and purposelessness in life along with the main characters. But then, as he suggests to his daughter somewhere in the story, why doesn't she migrate to the Netherlands (?); he is ready to pay for all her expenses, and all that. And you think that why doesn't David act on his own advice--why doesn't he migrate to somewhere else if his life has so hopelessly fallen apart in SA?



Well, that's how the story ends. Now, interestingly, news is that the South African writer of Disgrace has shifted his base to Australia. He has become an Australian citizen.

He says in a report: "I did not leave South Africa because I had to," he said. "In fact I didn't so much leave South Africa — a country with which I retain strong emotional ties — as come to Australia."

Coetzee, an honorary research fellow in the English department at the University of Adelaide and the first author to twice win the Booker Prize, first visited Australia in 1991 and fell in love with Adelaide.

"I was attracted by the free and generous spirit of the people, by the beauty of the land itself and — when I first saw Adelaide — by the grace of the city," he said.

A few interesting articles

Here I am just bunching together some of the interesting articles/news items that I have read recently:


Shalimar the Clown wins Hutch Crossword Book Award

Salman Rushdie's Shalimar the Clown had a reason to smile when it won the Hutch Crossword Book Award 2005 for English Fiction. On March 21, Krishna Sobti, who wrote The Heart Has Its Reasons, and translators Reema Anand and Meenakshi Swami won the award in the Indian Language Fiction Translation category. Suketu Mehta's Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found won in a newly introduced category for English Non-Fiction.

Literary Novels Going Straight to Paperback

Even critically acclaimed literary novels often have a short shelf life in hardcover, with one-half to three-quarters of the books shipped to stores often being returned to the publisher, unsold.

That has a growing number of publishing companies, from smaller houses like Grove/Atlantic to giants like Random House, adopting a different business model, offering books by lesser-known authors only as "paperback originals," forgoing the higher profits afforded by publishing a book in hardcover for a chance at attracting more buyers and a more sustained shelf life.

Translation Of Books Into Malay Still Scant

Translation of books in foreign languages into Malay is still scant in the country compared to other countries, Deputy Education Minister Datuk Noh Omar said Wednesday.

V for Vendetta

Wachowky Brothers' V for Vendetta turned out to be a gripping fare. Though I am often wary of comic books making a meaningful transition to the screen (at least for me), this one scores well on this count. The film's message is so relevant, and comes loud and clear by the end of the movie. The blowing up of the British Parliament by the revolutionary (tagged 'terrorist' by the government and the media) V and his protege, Evey (Natalie Portman with a shaved head) clearly hints at the failure of parliamentary democracy in our age and how this form of governance has come to be hijacked by the wrongdoers. V says: "People should not be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people."

The hero is an idea, can be any face behind the mask--a creation of the monstrosity of the wrongdoers. V says: "Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. There is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof." I like that.

The best part of the film is V, played by Hugo Weaving (remember Agent Smith of Matrix?). James Purefoy was originally cast as V but left the project. Hugo Weaving was then brought in to take his place, after four weeks into the shooting. Apparently, he had a great time rubbing Portman's shaved head.

Portman and Stephen Fry are also good in the film. There is an interesting sequence in the film wherein Stephen Fry, the host of a TV talk show, shows how the terrorist and the Chancellor are the one and the same. The hints are very strong if seen in terms of contemporary politics. Vull varks to the Vachowsky vrothers vor this very valuable vork of celluloid viction.

Aamir Khan speaks out against the media

The courageous Aamir Khan, one of the finest Indian actors of our generation, has lashed out at the Indian media for their ever stooping standards of journalism. The recent issue of Tehelka runs a long interview with the actor (‘Mainstream media has become like film media 15 years ago,’April 1, 2006). It was time someone pointed these things out. However, it is sad that it had to come from an actor.

He points out issues like these: "Things that are headline news now used to be tidbits or half a page meant to be entertaining. Now that’s the main story while farmers dying are being pushed to small, unimportant sections".

"The media coverage of the Gujarat riots or Jessica Lall murder are definitely
positive examples. These are the issues they should be dealing with. Issues that deal with survival and life".

"'I watch Doordarshan for news now. You have background scores now in news channels to emphasise or create the mood or emotion behind a flood or earthquake. They have
background music for Chrissakes! It’s shocking. Next you’ll have dialogue writers and sfx!"

Read the full interview here.

Only last night I watched Aamir's latest release, Rang De Basanti. It is an impressive film: technically sound, with contemporary feel, and quite rooted. Only the ending was a little melodramatic, though the director has tried to excercise some restraint (I mean it could have been worse in somebody else's hands).

Brokeback Mountain

So, why did Brokeback Mountain finally lose out to Crash in the best picture category?

The writer of Brokeback Mountain, Annie Proulx (a) has a reason to offer:

"And rumour has it that Lions Gate inundated the academy voters with DVD copies of Trash - excuse me - Crash a few weeks before the ballot deadline. Next year we can look to the awards for controversial themes on the punishment of adulterers with a branding iron in the shape of the letter A, runaway slaves, and the debate over free silver."

In the same essay, she makes an interesting point about acting and how good acting is perceived by Hollywood:

"The prize, as expected, went to Philip Seymour Hoff-man for his brilliant portrayal of Capote, but in the months preceding the awards thing, there has been little discussion of acting styles and various approaches to character development by this year's nominees. Hollywood loves mimicry, the conversion of a film actor into the spittin' image of a once-living celeb. But which takes more skill, acting a person who strolled the boulevard a few decades ago and who left behind tapes, film, photographs, voice recordings and friends with strong memories, or the construction of characters from imagination and a few cold words on the page? I don't know. The subject never comes up. Cheers to David Strathairn, Joaquin Phoenix and Hoffman, but what about actors who start in the dark?"

Syriana

I had missed George Clooney's "Good Night and Good Luck" but luckily I was able to catch Stephen Gaghan's "Syriana" for which Clooney won the Best Supporting Actor Award at this year's Oscars, and proclaimed from the stage, "Thank God, we are so out of touch."

Thank God there are still Hollywood actors and filmmakers like Clooney who stay out of touch with the times and make films like Syriana.

Of course, I had seen the movie before the Oscars. Brokeback Mountain had to wait. Syriana was serios business.

Stephen Gaghan (winner of the Best Screenplay Academy Award for Traffic) presents a tightly woven political thriller, weaving together many personal stories into a jigsaw-puzzle sort of narrative structure, that unfolds against the intrigue of the global oil industry. There are four basic stories here. CIA operative (George Clooney) faces his own people turned against him, young oil broker (Matt Damon) falls prey to a family tragedy and becomes advisor to an idealistic Gulf prince (Prince Nair Al-Subaani played by Alexander Siddig). Corporate lawyer Jeffrey Wright "faces a moral dilemma as he finesses the questionable merger of two powerful U.S. oil companies," while in Persian Gulf, a disenfranchised Pakistani teenager (Mazhar Munir) gets brainwashed and becomes a suicide bomber. All the four stories come together to a powerful and literally explosive climax.

I especially liked the Prince Nair Al-Subaani's character who represents the forward-looking face of the Arab world but is decimated by the powerful Oil lobby. The question that comes to the viewer's mind is: Is oil wealth and democracy incompatible and if yes, then why? I guess the answer lies more in Washington than in the Gulf region. The film is highly recommended.

But is Clooney trying to scare the public by making such films? Christopher Dickey writing in The Newsweek thinks so. His essay "Age of Anxiety" on this theme is quite interesting. On Syriana he has this to say:

""Syriana," so self-consciously obscure that even I had trouble following it, is entirely a work of fiction. Never mind the titles that say it's based on the 2002 memoir, "See No Evil" (Crown), by former CIA agent Robert Baer. The intrigues surrounding Clooney's character take place in a fictional emirate that might be Saudi Arabia, but has a history a little like Qatar and a landscape that is, quite literally, Dubai, where much of it was filmed. Yet it's not about any of those places, in fact. It's about the United States, and it's the style that's important, not the substance. "Syriana" feels like many a spy film from the 1970s, when Watergate and Senate investigations into the American intelligence establishment created a pervasive sense that government was out to defend itself regardless of the cost to American civil liberties, human rights and common sense."

Some quotable quotes from Syriana:

"In this town, you're innocent until you're investigated."

On the Arab world: "You want to know what the business world thinks of you? We think a hundred years ago you were living out here in tents in the desert chopping each others heads off, and that's exactly where you're gonna be in another hundred. So yes, on behalf of my firm, I accept your money."

On Corruption: "Corruption ain't nothing more than government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulation. That's Milton Friedman. He got a goddamn Nobel Prize. We have laws against it precisely so we can get away with it. Corruption is our protection. Corruption is what keeps us safe and warm. Corruption is why you and I are prancing around here instead of fighting each other for scraps of meat out in the streets. Corruption is why we win."

Jarhead

A few weeks ago when I ventured into a local cineplex, I was not sure which film to watch. What I had in mind was Jim Carrey's Fun with Dick and Jane but when I saw the poster of Jarhead with the 'Directed by Sam Mendes' tag, I knew where I was headed for. I knew it was not going to be a fun film but I was ready for some thought-provoking fare.

I was rewarded. I was watching a war movie with hardly any war happening (yeah, there were some bombing shots and the hero, a trained sniper scout, yearns for some action but gets nary a chance). There is a moment when the action-hungry protagonists almost break down when they don't get an opportunity to 'kill' their enemies. That is as satirical as one could get.

Jake Gyllenhaal, playing Anthony Swofford, is brilliant. I was watching this guy for the first time, and was not even aware that he was playing the (co) lead in the much-admired Brokeback Mountain. Others such as Jamie Foxx and Peter Sargaasard have turned in admirable performances.

I loved Jake when he mouthed lines like these (off screen):

"Suggestive techniques for the marine to use in the avoidance of boredom and loneliness. Masturbation. Re-reading of letters from unfaithful wives and girlfriends. Cleaning your rifle. Further masturbation. Re-wiring Walkman. Arguing about religion and meaning of life. Discussing in detail, every women the marine has ever fucked. Debating differences, such as Cupban VS Mexican, Harleys VS Hondas, left VS right-handed masturbation. Further cleaning of rifle. Studying the mail order bride catalogue. Further masturbation. Planning a marine's first meal on return home. Imagining what a marine's girlfriend and her man Joey are doing in the alley or in a hotel bed."

More quotable quotes are here.

'Jarhead' is based on former Marine Anthony Swofford's best-selling 2003 book about his pre-Desert Storm experiences in Saudi Arabia and about his experiences fighting in Kuwait. Filmed in the Imperial Valley in Southern California, which features conditions very similar to Iraq. Marines did use one of the local towns, Brawley, for training purposes due to similarities to Iraq. Interestingly, some desert scenes were also shot on a Universal sound stage with lights doubling as burning oil wells. The lights were later replaced with burning wells courtesy of ILM.

Why I love Woody Allen?

Call me whatever you want, but I can't stop loving Woody Allen. Why? His brand of humour (middlebrow?), full of people from the literary world, is hard to find anywhere else. That's why.

I loved this piece by PRADEEP SEBASTIAN in The Hindu Literary Supplement. He says on Allen:

"Some critics now see Allen as a middlebrow sensibility masquerading as highbrow. But that's exactly why we like Allen, that's why we relate to him more than any other intellectual comic. This middlebrow sensibility is the strongest connection we have with him. It's baffling why critics valorise the lowbrow and the highbrow while mocking the middlebrow."

"Many of us intellectual, sensitive, arty types are middlebrow in our tastes and middlebrow in our sensibility. Like Allen, we too regard high culture with awe. If we can't drink deeply from it, we want to at least partake of it, want it to rub off on us."

"But often the closest we come to it is a peek at it: surrounding ourselves with Penguin classics we've never read and will probably never get to read — at least not all of them. What we possess is a smattering, a sampling of culture: we seem to know what Kafkaesque means without having read too much of Kafka, and we catch up with the great classics via movie versions of Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, and Henry James. This, of course, is a caricature of the cultural aspirations of a middlebrow but that's what Woody Allen is all about. Allen won't be funny if this tension between the middlebrow and highbrow didn't exist."

Read the entire piece here to enjoy the discussion on "The Whore of Mensa" and "The Kugelmas Episode." Not to miss.

How do you write?

So how do you write? Standing up, sitting down, in the bathtub, on the back of your lover...

Here is an interesting article by diplomat-cum-novelist Navtej Sarna on the several odd ways of writing that famous writers have adopted from time to time. Some examples:

"Honore de Balzac would try and write 24 hours at a stretch and then take a five-hour break before starting over again. He consumed huge quantities of black coffee to beat fatigue and actually became a victim of caffeine poisoning at age 51. Alexander Dumas suffered from indigestion and the pain would wake him up in the small hours. He would then work on his writing desk till breakfast that usually consisted of a solitary apple under the Arc de Triomphe. His poetry would be written on yellow paper, fiction on blue and non-fiction on rose-coloured. Victor Hugo would give away all his clothes to his servant with instructions that he should not return until Hugo had completed his day's work. Ben Franklin and the author of Cyrano de Bergerac, Edmund Rostand, preferred to work in their bathtubs. Mark Twain and R. L. Stevenson could only write when lying down and Virginia Woolf, Thomas Wolfe and Lewis Carroll had to stand up to deliver. Thomas Wolfe, at least, who confessed to finding it easier to add 75,000 words than cut down 50,000 must have been very tired on finishing Look Homeward, Angel. D. H. Lawrence found stimulation in climbing mulberry trees in the nude. Voltaire used his lover's back as a writing desk."

"The poets, of course, had favourites of their own: Coleridge is said to have dreamt up the scene for "Kubla Khan" under the influence of opium; Eliott would revel in writing if he had a head cold; Poe liked to have his Siamese cat on his shoulder and Schiller liked sniffing at rotten apples every once in a while."

May I add one more from my side? Urdu poet Firaq Gorakhpuri used to write all naked in a room after getting drunk. Interesting, isn't it?

I do it like any normal pen pusher. What about you?

To become a writer you must embrace failure

Hell, no, I'm not saying this. Ha Jin is saying this. If I did, in the first place, you won't believe me. Some think I'm nuts any ways.

I came across this interview of Ha Jin just by chance. Here he makes an important point, and I have all along been bogged down by the feeling that he describes so well:

I read something you said in an online interview [at collectedstories.com] that intrigued me. Basically, you said that to become a writer you must embrace failure. What did you mean by that?

The more ambitious you are, the stronger the sense of failure, because there are so many [laughs] great books that have been written. When I was at Emory University I often taught a story by Kafka: “The Hunger Artist.” That story explains the psychology of a writer. Very often we write not because we want to achieve—maybe there was that desire, but so much has been accomplished. We can’t do anything better. On the other hand, you have to go on and continue.
That’s why I think some sense of failure is essential to a writer from the very beginning.

How true! Read the whole interview here in Agni.

Agni also has a terrific interview with late Saul Bellow. It is a must read.

One Night@Bollywood

Today I read in the ST that Chetan Bhagat's bestselling novel, One Night @ The Call Centre has been optioned for filming by Bollywood director Rohan Sippy. Great news for Chetan! Very few Indian filmmakers opt for making films out of modern novels and when they do, they hardly succeed in hitting the bull's eye. Anurag Mathur's all time bestseller The Inscrutible Americans was a box office (bo) dud as a movie. Dev Benegal had adapted Upamanyu Chatterjee's English, August with great elan and some bo success. Mira Nair is adapting Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake. Hope it does well.

But Chetan's news gives me a sense of deja vu. His first novel, Five Point Someone, was also rumoured to have been optioned for filming. But we are still waiting for the film...Any way, good luck Chetan!

The World is Not Against You

Sounds like the title of the next 007 movie, doesn't it?

But hey, it is just a word of advice. From Vikram Seth. To an aspiring writer. Mark Vender. The full line: "The world is not against you. It is only indifferent."

Read this ravishing rant on "getting published" (Hay Fever) in The Guardian. If you already have, read on ahead.

Indian writer Samit Basu (author of The Simoquin Prophecies and now The Manticore's Secret) commented on this aspect of the writerly life (stirred by The Sunday Times publishing saga) in an interesting article, Fishwrap. He wrote:

It’s an interesting question – despite the emergence of a generation of writers, artists and filmmakers in India who are perfectly content creating work for a growing and engaged audience without ‘explaining India’ being an overriding consideration, we still look to the West for validation, and not just in monetary terms. How justified is this outward-looking approach if the West is so insecure about its own ability to appreciate literature and the arts? For every Rupa Bajwa and Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi racking up impressive advances and literary awards worldwide, how many quality works of Indian literature are consigned to dustbins every time publishers and agents decide to clear up the slushpile? How many masterpieces never see the light of day because their writers aren’t sexy enough? How long will we have to wait before any art form (except film and music) finds a large enough market within the country for the sad state of affairs abroad not to be a factor in the lives of the artists concerned? When can we stop having our own literary scene messed up for us by people abroad and, instead, mess it up ourselves in our own special Indian way?

I guess there are no easy answers. It is the market, be it in India or Malaysia or Singapore, or anywhere, that decides everything--in the larger sense. Even books. Marketing is over-riding art, as it were. As Walt Whitman would have said: Poets are not in-charge here. It is the bankers and the manufacturers, the publishers and the marketers.

Last year, The Straits Time had brought out a special Saturday report on the publishing scene in Singapore. I guess Sharon Bakar had covered it in her blog. The gist of the story is that even in a small country like Singapore, there are a large number of writers (of all kinds) looking for publishers but there are very few of them who don't see any market for budding local writers. Many writers have, in desperation, turned to self-publishing, and almost all of them are yet to recover what they had invested in their dream ventures. Forget about profits!

Nothing surprising about it!

I guess in an age when most readers are aspiring writers, the barriers to publishing will rise higher up. And those who will get published may not be necessarily the best writers of our age, but those who persist and try on will surely make it one day. When the best of the lot will give up and turn to a more profitable business, the mediocres will sure have a chance. Let's stay optimistic then, even at the risk of sounding simplistic, even foolhardy. What do you say?

Kaleidoscope of Rhythms

Ustaad Zakir Hussain and the accompanying musicians held a riveting concert last Sunday in the Esplanade Concert Theatre. Singapore's President Nathan was also there to enjoy the show. Apart from the music, it was the Ustaad's sense of humour that had the audience in rapture.

My impressions of meeting with the Ustaad has been published by Malaysiakini. Read the piece here.

Two new articles

Here are two new articles:

Raising the Asian Flag: Asian filmmakers rebel against Hollywood

AMU at the Crossroads

Enjoy and send me your comments!

(Photograph: Zafar Anjum)

Meeting Ustaad Zakir Hussain

Ustaad Zakir Hussain is one of the most charismatic musicians of India. I had seen him act in movies, or playing the tabla on tv, or promoting Taj Mahal tea in commercials. But nothing beats the experience of meeting the man in person.

Jan 8. Sunday. Noon. I reached the New Age Indigo Bar in Boat Quay braving the incessant rain. Ustaad Zakir Hussain was to meet the presswallahs there. He was on his way to the USA where he was teaching music at the Princeton University.

The Ustaad is holding a major show "Kaleidoscope of Rhythms" (World Fusion Music) on Feb. 5, 2006 (7: 30 pm) at the Esplanade Concert Hall. The show will also feature percussionists and musicians such as Terry Bozzio, Giovanni Hidalgo, U Shrinivas (Mandolin), Fazal Qureshi (Tabla), Salim Merchant (Keyboard), Vijay Chauhan (Dholki), and Kala Ramnath (Violin).

The press meet was meant to brief the journos about the show. The turn out was good--who could resist the charm of Zakir Hussain, even on a rainy day.

From the moment he burst into the room (an informal setting of low laying Indian style furniture), Zakir Saheb took over the scene. After personally meeting everyone, he started talking about the gig and the musicians. His talk was so lively and so full of erudition, and at the same time, he was able to present his knowledge and his sense of Indian music in such a simple manner that I was thoroughly bewildered. He was articulate like a professor. No wonder he is teaching at an Ivy League university.

His talk ranged from his own musical inspirations to Bollywood and Hollywood music. I will write about it in a different piece. But from the discussion, I am sure the Feb gig in Singapore is going to be a mind-blowing experience. Those who cannot come to Singapore can catch the ensemble at Bombay and Dubai around the same time. Not to be missed. (Tickets are on sale through SISTIC Hotline and outlest islandwise)

Interest in Indian authors declining?

Meet novelist Vikram Chandra, after a long time, here. He is off with his beard now. He took many years to hit the bookstands again. His last book was a collection of short stories, Love and Longing in Bombay.

For his new novel, loosely based on the Bombay mafia, he got a million dollar advance and naturally hit the headlines.

In this interview, here answers at least two interesting questions:

Do you think that getting a huge advance puts pressure on a writer to "perform"?

I'm mostly done with the book, so in this case no. I'm very grateful but finally it is an external event I have to keep at a distance in the same way you maintain a distance from reviews or praise. Because your job finally is to imagine and you do your storytelling because you love to and want to. If it interferes with you sitting alone in front of the blank screen then it is damaging.

Despite there being many more Indians writing in English, why is there lesser interest in the West in Indian authors?

No, I don't think there is a real decline. May be they've just got over the initial bubble. The excitement that happened in the late 1990s with people in the West getting very excited and publishers pouring money into one or two books; that kind of artificial or frenzied bubble inevitably flattens out. I think what is happening now is that there is a constancy and at least I see in the United States more people than ever reading Indian authors.

For more, go to The Hindu website.

Patna Roughcut/Siddharth Chowdhury

These days, apart from Chetan Bhagat and Samit Basu, one more name is doing the rounds of the litblog world in India. The name is Siddharth Chowdhury. The cause: his debut novel, Patna Roughcut (Picador).

First about the novel. And I quote from Kolkata's The Telegraph:

Patna Roughcut (Picador, Rs 250) by Siddharth Chowdhury is about nothing in particular. Ritwik Ray is a small-time reporter in Patna, and recounts nostalgically his growing-up amid the Bengali diaspora in Patna colonies and Delhi University campuses. There is Harryda, his dreams in technicolour, Iladi who attained at 13 the wisdom “very few women attain even at menopause”. Then there are those typical years in college, full of love and idealism. And finally Mira Verma, who Ritwik meets again as wife of his professor. A rather tame start for a first novel.

Forget the last sentence. The book has received praise from reviewers such as Jabberwock and Hurree Babu. J wrote:

Patna Roughcut shows its hand early on; the very first paragraph of the book ends an overwrought analogy with the observation: "The poor shouldn’t dream. They can’t afford it." The remaining 180 pages are an illustration of this statement. Cynical though the idea is, it defines the lives of untold millions in this country - people who reach for greater intellect and "culture" and find that it destroys their pragmatism; that they are still unable to escape the vicious circle of their existence. Chowdhury’s achievement is that he filters this pessimistic worldview through a style that is tender, empathetic and even humorous when appropriate. This is crucial to the book’s success as a story of the aspirations and dashed hopes of young Indians caught between different worlds.

Being a fellow Bihari, I was intrigued as I did not know much about Siddharth. I wanted to.

I could connect with his book's theme as well and it sounded even a little familiar. My own first novel, Of Seminal Fluids, covered the similar ground of dream and reality, though with much less demonstrable success. I will admit that.

So, bending to my curiosity, I searched about Siddharth. This is what I found out about him:

Born in Patna in 1974, Siddharth Chowdhury earned an M A in English literature from Hindu college, University of Delhi before drifting into publishing. His stories have been published in The Brown Critique, Debonair, The Asian Age, The Sunday Observer and the Tehelka Literary Review among other places. He lives in Delhi and works as an editor with the house of Manohar. He is presently working on a short novel.

The Week has this to say about Siddharth:

Of the dozens of Indian writers in English whose debut novels are scheduled for publication in 2005, the one most likely to make a splash is Siddharth Chowdhury. His publishers, Picador, cannot stop talking about their lucky catch. Even Pankaj Mishra, not known for effusive compliments, raved about Chowdhury’s earlier collection of short stories for its brilliance in capturing "the bittersweet irony of our compromised modernity". The novel Patna Blues is being hailed as even better.

Chowdhury describes his own work as "charting the socio-political landscape of Patna and Bihar from the 1950s to the 1990s". As the newspapers testify daily, Bihar’s socio-political landscape is indeed tumultuous, but no English novel has so far sought to capture it. Chowdhury does so through the eyes and experiences of three men and two women who grow up in Patna during these four decades. But the book, says Chowdhury, is also about "literature and art, and the role they play in defining our lives".

Not surprisingly, Chowdhury himself grew up in Patna, though he presently lives in Delhi where, until recently, he worked with a publishing company. He began writing at 19 ("Rather late," he says, "most writers seem to start at 10 or earlier") but was soon publishing short stories in Indian and foreign publications. His first collection of stories, Diksha at St Martins, appeared two years ago to immense praise.

Before Patna Roughcut, he debuted with a collection of short stories, Diksha at St Martin's (Srishti).

As a fellow writer I wish him all the best and do look forward to reading his novel.

Naipaul's 'disguised' book rejected by Agents/Publishers

I first read it in Kitabkhana, and it amused me no end.

You take a famous manuscript (book) by a famous writer and send it out to agents/publishers with an unknown name for their kind consideration. Chances are they will not only not recognize the content (even Booker prize-winning content!), they will even reject it with complete professional sanity. It was done before with perhaps a Thackery or Dickens novel. I don't remember exactly. The Sunday Times has done it again like a sting operation:

Top novels in disguise rejected by publishers

THERE is no greater award for a writer than the Nobel prize for literature. Five years ago the accolade went to VS Naipaul in recognition of his 50-year writing career.

Naipaul, born in Trinidad, also won the 1971 Booker prize (now the Man Booker) in Britain, where he has lived since 1950. It was awarded for In a Free State, his novel about displaced colonials on different continents.

Dennis Potter, the TV dramatist, praised its “lucid complexity”. He wrote: “Do not miss the exhilaration of catching one of our most accomplished writers reaching towards the full stretch of his talent.”

Surely the special qualities of such timeless prose would be recognised by today’s publishing industry? Surely a first-time novelist who matched the standard of Naipaul at his best would be snapped up?

The Sunday Times sent out the opening chapter of In a Free State to 20 agents and publishers to find out. Only the names of the author and main characters were changed.

None of the agents or publishers spotted the book’s true pedigree. And instead of experiencing Potter’s exhilaration, they all sent back polite rejections.

Laugh):

The box office heavyweight

I was all excited to see Peter Jackson's King Kong on the big screen (I had not seen the 1930's one) and when the sneak shows were announced, I bought a ticket and gleefully entered the movie-hall like a child.

King Kong! Oh, what a love triangle!

Peter Jackson has done a clever job. The film is a potent mixture of so many mise-en-scene seen earlier. It has Chicago (the struggle of an actress), Titanic (love blossoming on a ship), Jurassic Park (The island with the big lizards), and Godzilla (the big creature wreaking havoc in New York)--all rolled into a single snazzy package! The special effects are too good. The impact on the box office is, no wonder, gigantic.