A Writer's People by V S Naipaul

"All my life I have had to think about ways of looking and how they alter the configuration of the world." With this prologue, Naipaul starts his book, A Writer's People: Ways of Looking and Feeling (Picador, 2007).

The book contains five essays that deal with many figures, mostly literary ones. There is an essay on Mahatma Gandhi, the only non-literary figure in this collection, which is the most fascinating chapter of the book. But Gandhi too was a writer. His autobiography, with its simplicity, directness and naked honesty, has greatly impressed Naipaul.

In the book's first chapter, The worm in the bud, Naipaul discusses his early days in Trinidad and how he became aware of Trinidadian writing and writers: Derek Walcott, Edgar Mittelholzer, Samuel Selvon, and his own father, Sreepersad.

Early on, Naipaul had realised the literary barrenness and lack of culture in Trinidad; he was in sixth standard when this precocious student understood the futility of a career in writing in the small place: "As always in these in colonial places, there were little reading and writing groups here and there, now and then: harmless pools of vanity that came and went and didn't add up to anything like an organised or solid literary or cultural life." Naturally, he needed to get away from the smallness of a place like Trinidad.

To have come from a small island like Trinidad, without the human wealth of Ibsen's Norway, there seemed to be nothing but a literary cul-se-sac for writers from Naipaul's Trinidad. "Small places with simple economies bred small people with simple destinies," he writes.

Spiritual emptiness

Walcott had become a local figure--his poetry was appreciated in his home island. But the local figure had to endure a kind of humiliation. He was tormented by his job on the local Sunday paper: "It would have been humiliating for him to be bossed around by people he saw as his inferiors."

Naipaul talks of a spiritual emptiness that poets such as Walcott had to face in the island. "The spiritual emptiness was a problem for everyone from the plantation territories who wanted to write," he says. "Many were destroyed or silenced by it."

Walcott found his own way around that emptiness. How? "He began to fit his island material to older, foreign work. He might take an old Spanish play, say, and re-work it as a local play: Shakespeare's method."

Naipaul does not approve of this borrowing. "It is the better and truer part of the labour of a writer from a new place to work out what his material is, to wring substance from the unwritten-about and unregarded local scene," he says.

International success was not coming soon to Walcott. He had exhausted the first flush of his talent by singing praises of the spiritual emptiness of the place. He had been promising for too damn long. He needed a job; he had become ordinary. To Naipaul, if you are a writer or a poet and you are in need of a job, you are ordinary.

A writer lives principally for his writing

In the same essay, Naipaul writes about other Trinidadian writers. Edgar Mittelholzer was a mulatto, and wrote a well-regarded novel, A Morning at the Office. Later in life, he set himself on fire in London, like a Buddhist monk in Vietnam. Naipaul thought he was a dedicated writer and his self-immolation was shocking for him.

Samuel Selvon was a Trinidadian writer. In 1951, he published his first novel, A Brighter Sun. "It is hard to be the first with any kind of writing, and Selvon in this book burnt up his simple material," Naipaul comments. In far-off London, Selvon lost touch with his material. He became wordy and absurd: "The prosiness, piety and self-regard were intolerable."

On Naipaul's own father, Sreepersad, he says that he damaged his material when he tried to fit it to what he thought of as a story: the trick ending, say. "In fact," he writes, "if he could have taken a step back, he would have seen that there were more things to write about...but probably that step back into the bad colonial setting would have caused him pain, and pain was something he didn't wish to face in his writing."

An English way of look

The book's second chapter is on Naipaul's friendship with novelist Anthony Powell.

He begins the chapter thus: "He was fifty-two, at the peak of his reputation, and I was twenty-five and awkward, poor in London, with one book published. For a reason I couldn't understand--there was every kind of difference between us--he offered his friendship."

Naipaul was not particularly impressed with Powell's novels. He thought they were extraordinary failures in many respects. He thought his writing didn't undermine his subjects--a hallmark of good writing.

But he cherished his friendship with Powell. Powell was the editor of Punch and he had loved Naipaul's first novel. On this Naipaul says: "It turned out that he had not only sent the book out for review; he had read it. This was more than I expected. He then said something which I thought very wise...He said that, whatever its flaws, a writer's first novel had a lyrical quality which the writer would never again recapture." In this literary judgment, Naipaul found a depth of civilization.

He appreciated Powell's (Tony) good nature, the absence of malice in him. "I had longed to get away from the easy malice of the small place I grew up in, where all judgments were moralistic and hateful and corrupting, the judgments of gossip," he writes. "But so far I hadn't been lucky in England." He had found people in the University and at BBC mean and provincial for the most part.

In his essay, Naipaul wonders why Powell wrote and why he had got started on the writing life and why he had stayed (many start, few stay), and whether there was a true need. "His writing didn't seem to come out of need," he writes. "He seemed to have risked nothing...Unlike Greene and Orwell and Waugh at no stage did he go to meet the world. His conviction was that his world was enough."

There is a lesson for the young writers here. How many of you go out to meet the world?

Overliterate societies have their own snares, Naipaul says. By 1930s, when Tony was beginning, very little about the great European societies (Dickens's England, Tolstoy's Russia and Balzac's France) had been left unsaid. "These societies," Naipaul observes, "had been diminished for various reasons -- war, revolution; and the world around these once unchallenged societies had grown steadily larger." Then Naipaul makes a very acute observation. He says: "A society's unspoken theme is always itself; it has an idea where it stands in the world. A diminished society couldn't be written about in the old way, of social comment."

Books do not live if they are not original, he says. If you do what has been done before, your book is not going to survive. It is hard to be the first (Naipaul's father's problem). It is possibly harder to come near the end. That was Tony's challenge.

In his later life, like Waugh, Tony moved to the English countryside--it was like withdrawal from life. To live in the English countryside, he says, was to be sheltered and creatively to die.

Looking and not seeing: The Indian way

The third chapter of the book is about the Indian way of looking. Mark his words: he says looking but not seeing. The chapter mainly dwells on three writers: an Indian indentured labourer, Rahman Khan's autobiography, Jeevan Prakash (The Light of Life)--Rahman was a teacher of Hindu scriptures and a labourer in Surinam; Gandhi and Nehru. He describes Gandhi through the eyes of Aldous Huxley. He talks about Gandhi's years in London and his various experiments with food and so on.

He sees Gandhi's journey (through England and South Africa) akin to that of Bhuddha's--a spiritual journey. Gandhi's rebellion was not of the European kind. "The theme of rebellion is one of the great themes of Western European literature," he writes. "The true modern novel arises when the rebel, the man apart, feels himself strong enough to take on the established order, and when that order is fluid enough to make room for him." Gandhi's rebellion starts with small, manageable political aims but as his vision widens, the nature of his rebellion grows.

Disparate ways

This chapter is on Flaubert and his novel Salammbo, a retelling of the rebellion of mercenaries in Carthage, the tale extracted from the work of the Greek historian Polybius (200-118 BC). Naipaul admires Falubert's style in Madame Bovary, but is not impressed with his accomplishment in Salammbo. In Madame Bovary, Naipaul notes, the language is plain and clean and brief. "The elegance and the drama lay in the spare, unexpected detail...this was what caught at the reader." This was prose that had to be read slowly, he says.

Bovary was grey, Salammbo purple. Naipaul thus contrasts the two novels: "It seems quite another writer--someone coarser, steeped in nineteenth-century orientalism and melodrama--who, five years later, published Salammbo."

Naipaul sees the novel's failure as an indication of Falubert's over-ambitiousness. "Ambition makes a writer reach beyond what he has achieved," he remarks.

In passing, Naipaul strikes at Flaubert's publicity-seeking nature: "He was an early self-publicist. He wished people to know that his writing didn't come easily, like Balzac's. It took time, and was original."

India again: the Mahatma and after

The last chapter has many curious characters: Gandhi, Vinobha Bhave (he calls him a foolish man), and Nirad C. Chaudhuri.

He considers the early part of Chaudhuri's Autobiography brilliant but when it comes to scholarship, he meets Naipaul's disapproval, even scorn. "He was no scholar," Naipaul says of the Bengali intellectual.

It is the last three pages of the novel that interested me in a great way. They deal with the contemporary writing scene in India. "Sixty years after independence that problem (fitting one civilization to another) is still there," he says. "India has no autonomous intellectual life...now they look away from India for ultimate fulfilment. They look in the main to Britain and the United States...That's where the better jobs are, where Indians are well thought of, and that is where people of a certain level wish to live and marry--and make cookies and shovel snow off the pavement in winter--and educate their children."

Naipaul makes some valid criticisms of the new Indian writing that has emerged from, especially, the Indian Diaspora:

1. These novels are by and large autobiographical, family stories with daddyji and mamaji, and nanee and chacha, against a backdrop of extended Indian families. Each extended family produces a writer. "One writer, one book: it may not build a literature, but it is a system that allows new writers and new families to come up all the time."

2. Is this writing just old fashioned Indian boasting? he asks. Is it something new, a new awakening, or just a part of publishing culture in Britain and the US? "The question has to be asked," he insists, "because no national literature has ever been created like this, at such a remove, where the books are published by people outside, judged by people outside, and to a large extent read by people outside."

3. The new Indian writers, Naipaul claims, are trying to imitate other successful writers (after getting educated in the West). "They are not bursting with the wish to say anything," he writes. "They are guided in the main by imitation." Should they be Irish or German or should they indulge in wordplay (swipe at Rushdie?) or should they try magic realism? And I like this one: "Should they be like the late Raymond Carver and pretend they know nothing about anything?"

"This is where India begins to get lost. The writing school's India is like the writing school's America or Maoist China or Haiti."

Naipaul's judgment is final and it is harsh: "India has no means of judging. India is hard and materialist. What it knows best about Indian writers and books are their advances and their prizes. There is little discussion about the substance of a book or its literary quality or the point of view of the writer."

On the last point, I think Naipaul's views need not be as hidebound and pessimistic as they are. Things are changing in India. While the expat Indian writer is still accorded respect, homegrown writers of quality are emerging too. However, as in the West, there is no exclusive respect for the literary writer anymore. For if you can honour an ordinary hack just because he is on the bestseller list, what point is there in your honour for the literary type who has taken enormous risks with his life (and not just chucked his lucrative consulting or banking job). Perhaps, like your politicians and actors, you get the writers you deserve.

An angry poet

In Woody Allen's film Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), there is a very interesting scene (funny or serious? You decide) with a Spanish poet.

Juan (Javier Bardem) takes Vicky (Rebecca Hall) to meet his old father who lives all alone in a secluded house. When Vicky gets introduced to him, Juan tells her that his old man speaks only Spanish. "He is a poet," he says, stepping inside the house. "He believes that speaking in any other language will pollute his tongue."

Vicky is impressed with the old poet's attitude to maintain the purity of his tongue. She wants to read his work. "But he does not publish," Juan says.

"Why?"

"I'll explain to you later."

Vicky is perplexed. She can's understand why a poet like him would write the most beautiful lines in Spanish and then deny them to the world. By the way, Flaubert once wrote how nice it would be if an author's works could be published only after he was dead (that too only in a collected edition!).

In the next scene, we see Vicky and Juan walking in the compound of the house. "So, why doesn't your father publish his work?" Vicky asks him. "Why is he angry with the world?"

Juan says, "He is angry with the world because even after thousands of years of civilization, the world has not learned to love."

--

I loved this conversation in the film. The world has not learned to love. How true is that! This is serious humour. Like Tolstoy, Woody Allen reminds us that love is all we have in the world and yet we choose unhappiness (caused by pursuit of vanity or material things).

Love could be transient, true. The trick, as Juan says in the film, is to enjoy life, accepting it has no meaning whatsoever.

William Golding's initial struggles as a writer

Friday last week I was at Carrefour and in its book section there was this sale of books (I guess the same remainders that has got publishers in India worried about their future; what to do? Even Borders in the US has filed for bankruptcy!). In the sale, you could buy a book for eight dollars or buy three of them for twenty dollars. I had bought three books a day earlier (had to let go of a nice edition of a cookbook by Padmalakshmi; she had some fabulous portraits of herself in there), so I was just browsing at the stalls, hoping to find a hidden gem or maybe learn a thing or two before I went off and finally bought some bananas.

There was Jonathan Franzen's Freedom as well (yes, just for eight dollars!). I read a few passages and decided it was not a book for me (and I could borrow it from the library any way if I ever wanted to put myself through another Ulysses). I don't 'get' American novels, and thank God I'm not an American. Imagine the guilt of not being able to enjoy and be impressed with the great American novel, Freedom (as Time would have us believe). But I must clarify that just like Rushdie's, I love Franzen's non-fiction.

In the pile of books, there was a memoir by one of Norman Mailer's assistants (or was he a cook?). The book described how he was picked up by Mailer, how much he revered the man, his daily life, likes and dislikes, and so on. I realised that this book was also not for me. I have no plans to become famous or nasty or both. Flaubert had lost the desire to be famous after he had lost his sister and father. By God's grace I have a healthy clan and the desire to be famous has gone quietly, without any loss.

Allow me a little digression here. Two years ago when I shared with a fellow writer (quite senior to me) that I was suppressing my ego and letting go of my desires (including the one to be famous--it sounds so vain and foolish, doesn't it?), he looked at me aghast, as if I was denying myself some ice cream after a dinner in a desert summer. What's wrong if one wanted to be famous? he said. It demanded a long explanation and perhaps even a dive into metaphysics and religion (I wish he could understand this simple line from Pyaasa: Yeh duniya agar mil bhi jaye to kya hai!). I didn't want to explain anything to him, so I just smiled and let the matter pass.

Now, back to the book sale. Interestingly, during the search, I found this biography of William Golding--hardcover, in great condition. The moment my eyes fell on the book, I knew it would be in the library. So, there was no need for me to buy a personal copy. However, I looked at the book's contents. There was a chapter on his struggling years. I read it right there and found it very interesting. It is instructive for those who don't know the value of perseverance.

Lord of the Flies was Golding's publishing breakthrough. Before that novel was published, school teacher Golding had written two novels. Both were rejected by London publishers. His second novel was rejected by Jonathan Cape but the rejection had come with some comments. That's why Golding sent his Lord of the Flies (it had some other title then) manuscript to Jonathan Cape hoping they would like the new one. It was also rejected. Cape suggested Golding to show the manuscript to Andre Deutsch. He did but there too he faced rejection. He sent it to some more publishers in London but the result was always the same (Zindagi, chuka jo tu, haath mein sifar).

Golding then realised that maybe he needed an agent. He wrote to Brown Curtis. They rejected him. He wrote to some more agencies, all without any success.

When he sent the novel to Faber & Faber in 1953, a reader there put an R (rejected) on the manuscript along with a nasty remark on how the book was too dark. The book would have remained in the pile of rejections and unpublished if not for an Oxford gentleman, Charles Monteith.

Charles was only three months old at Faber (he is known to have discovered many great writers in his career). Charles picked up the tattered Golding manuscript from the pile of rejects and began to read it. He found it so interesting that he took it home. In the next editorial meeting he fought for the book. He succeeded and after a time met Golding. In his original version, Golding had opened the book with descriptions of a nuclear war. Charles wanted him to change it (he suggested some other changes too). Golding totally took out the nuclear war chapter. Finally, the book was published in 1954 to great success.

In this back story, Golding shows great persistence. Isn't it encouraging? It is very important for a writer to believe in his work and do whatever possible to get it published, unless you are Javier Bardem's father in Vicky Christina Barcelona but that is another story and I will write about it the next time.

Hollywood in the theatre of terror

In some recent Hollywood films, the good guys and the bad guys come from the same institutions, part of the US military or intelligence establishment. Is this a Freudian slip on the part of Hollywood? Is Hollywood trying to tell us something?

Look at some of the Hollywood releases in the recent past: A-Team, Losers, Salt and if you go a little back in time, Green Zone, Traitor, and Body of Lies. What do these films have in common? On the surface, they are action movies, about characters from the US military or intelligence agencies. But beneath the surface reality, there is even a deeper reality: the good guys and the bad guys in all these movies come from the same institutions, part of the US military or intelligence establishment. Is this a Freudian slip on the part of Hollywood? Or is this deliberate?

Freudian slip or not, this looks like a departure from the past. In the cold war days, there was a clear enemy—the communists. There are hundreds of films that have Russians and Vietnamese guerillas as villains. Anti-Nazi Second World War stories are a staple even today (Inglorious Basterds, Valkyrie). For a while, Japan was also cast in a villainous role because of its rise as an industrial competitor (Rising Sun, 1993).

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Russia, Hollywood’s villains changed. The former Russian agents would still pop up on the screen from time to Time (Golden Eye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough, Salt), but the villain increasingly came from Asia, especially the Middle East (True Lies, 1994; Executive Decision). There would also be scenes of North Korean and Chinese prisons (Spy Game).

Post 9/11, Hollywood’s focus has been on the War on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan. But increasingly, the recent trend of Hollywood actioners to have both the protagonist and the antagonist from the same establishment (related government agencies) makes one wonder. Is Hollywood trying to tell us something? Or is it a chink in the psychological armor of Hollywood, betraying the fractured moral landscape of America?

It can be argued that Hollywood is largely about make-believe and to try to understand the world or the American foreign policy through the prism of Hollywood is an erroneous exercise. But to see Hollywood and Pentagon without any umbilical cord will be naïve too. In fact, Pentagon has been known to keep close ties with Hollywood. It has helped in producing films such as Patton, The Green Berets, From Here to Eternity, Transformers, Pearl Harbor, Armageddon, Crimson Tide, Black Hawk Down, and Top Gun.

According to David Robb , former journalist for Daily Variety and The Hollywood Reporter and author of Operation Hollywood, there is often a quid-pro-quo agreement between the Pentagon and Hollywood studios. For making military-themed or war-themed movies, Hollywood needs Pentagon’s help to shoot on military locations or use military equipment—this is important as it saves cash for the producer.

This Hollywood-Pentagon relationship goes as far back as 1927 (The first Oscar-winning picture, Wings, was made with support from the US Air Force) and even today, says Robb, if a Hollywood producer has to get Pentagon’s assistance, he has to toe Pentagon’s line and show the military in a favorable light (submit five copies of the screenplay, accept their suggestions and changes, and get approval from them before release). In this sense, Hollywood is seen as an “aid in the retention and recruitment of (US military) personnel”. However, the flip side of this deal is that filmmakers have to make compromises in the storyline to suit the image of the US military establishment.

But all filmmakers are not ready to knowtow to the US military. Some of the best Hollywood war movies have been made without the forces’ help: Apocalypse Now, Platoon, MASH, Catch-22, Full Metal Jacket, Dr Strangelove, Three Kings. In recent times, anti-Iraq/Bush war movies such as Redacted, Rendition, Battle for Haditha, Stop Loss, In the Valley of Elah were also produced without the military’s help.

But of late, it looks like there is an open rebellion against the military in Hollywood. The only other plausible reason is that Hollywood is unable to find any other convincing villains but from the establishment. That’s why, even some of the not so serious movies are showing the villains from the establishment. They are depicted as rogue (such as double agent David Headley who was involved in the terror attacked on Mumbai). For example, in Joe Carnahan’s A-Team, an elite army team led by John “Hannibal” Smith (Liam Neeson) is imprisoned for a crime they did not commit in Iraq. The guy who frames them is a CIA agent (Patrick Wilson). In Sylvain White’s Losers, an elite United States Special Forces team sent into the Bolivian jungle on a search-and-destroy mission is presumably killed by their own mission commander. Phillip Noyce’s Salt fits into the cold war era spy thriller genre but it still has the enemy coming from within the CIA itself (though, for a twist, the rogue agent works for the Russians).

Similarly, in Green Zone, Traitor and Body of Lies—damage to US interest is shown to be done by an insider. In Green Zone, a movie inspired by the non-fiction 2006 book Imperial Life in the Emerald City by journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran, director Paul Greengrass shows that the lie that was fed to the US administration, and in turn the public, for Iraq’s having weapons of mass destruction came from an insider with other interests. Likewise, both Traitor and Body of Lies—the two films that powerfully handle themes of Islamic terrorism—highlight the bad apples within the US military establishment.

The question that begs asking is this: how come Hollywood is showing the fracture in the US defense establishment? How is this schizophrenia of moral polarity being allowed so unchecked?

Has mainstream Hollywood recently discovered its tongue, and the pleasures of freedom of expression? Or is it the case that Hollywood’s new heroes must ask tough questions and fight against the rot in their own midst. Perhaps in a post 9/11 net-savvy world, Hollywood can’t blatantly show the propaganda of the US military any more. The filmgoers are aware of the bungling of the US military: lies about the WMDs in Iraq, the Abu Ghraib episode, rendition, atrocities committed by troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, loss of American soldiers in the war zone and so on.

At a psychological level, Hollywood’s new heroes are also trying to sooth the guilt of ordinary Americans in whose name more than a million of people have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. If there are bad Americans who are causing pain in the world, there are good Americans too who take care of the bad ones. That seems to be the psychology at work in Hollywood.

Meanwhile, Pentagon is focusing on sci-fi movies aimed at younger audiences for military recruitment. So you will see more of War of the Worlds, Iron Man and Transformers in coming years.

Here is an Aljazeera documentary/discussion on Hollywood and the war machine with Oliver Stone, the eight times Academy Award-winning filmmaker; Michael Moore, the Academy Award-winning filmmaker; and Christopher Hedges, an author and the former Middle East bureau chief of the New York Times.

Telling a Singapore Story

In its November-December 2010 newsletter, INSTEP, the National Arts Council (Singapore) has profiled two of the 11 literary artists (whose projects have been) selected for support under the 2010 Arts Creation Fund scheme (Literary Arts). The details about the selected artists can be found here (click on the annex toward the end of the press release).

Other successful writers include Michele Koh (Baggage), Rosemary Charlotte (Dat Ting Dare), Ling Yang (Family Portrait), Alfian Bin Sa'at (Malay Sketches), Jeremy Jeyam Samuel (Macdonald House), Yeo Wei Wei (In the South), Lee Yew Leong (On a scale of 1 to Infinity), Jason Wee (By Thirds and Halves) and M. Balakrishnan (Bird Sanctum).

One of the two writers profiled in the newsletter is Lee Ju-Lyn, a 28 year old human resource executive who is working on a novella centered on the character Millie. Ju-Lyn's work is tentatively titled, Millie and Her Dreams.

The second profile is mine where I talk about my project, Singapore Decalogue, and what the ACF grant means to me.

Read the write-up on Ju-Lyn and me here.

Jaipur Literary Festival 2011

First thing, right up top, you should know about this post, before you read any further, is that I did not attend this year's Jaipur Literary Festival. In fact, I have never attended any of its past editions (is that the right word?). But, yes, I have been to Jaipur once, in winter, to attend a wedding, and what I have so far read and heard about the festival, to my own mind, given my experience with Jaipur, I feel qualified to write a few lines about it (and modesty be damned, certainly hold an opinion on it and give it an expression).

The literary festival at Jaipur has acquired a sheen of glamor over the years. It has become kind of a literary Cannes or Sundance, never mind the drumbeats and the bhangra. This year was special as one of my favourite writers, J M Coetzee, attended the festival. I have always associated him with the unglamorous side of the writerly life, the savouring of which is the true mark of a writer, a ceaseless media-shy literary warrior committed to inconspicuous consumption, a monk among the literary cheerleaders and exhibitionists. Now that he has broken my heart by appearing in public (I take consolation in the fact that he refused Q&As, declined interviews and read aloud only a short story in public, and thank God, did not smile even once) in Jaipur, my only hope now, this side of the Atlantic, remains in Aravind Adiga. But I read sometime ago that he had appeared in a lit fest in England (perhaps it was a lapse of judgment on this great writer's part). It seems there is no hope for me. I am running out of models and ideals who will not cave in to the pressures of the market or the temptations of taking a little jump in the puddle of celebrity. Ah, I know you are already pointing me toward J D Salinger and Thomas Pynchon but the problem is that my battered freighter is yet to reach one of the harbours of the New World.

That is one big reason, if you ask me, why I go back to the dead writers: Joyce, Kafka, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Dostoevsky. They can't come back from the dead to claim their share of the limelight under the neem tree (isn't that good news for the fame-seeking new writers?). Interred, far from the madding crowd, they are comfortable with their solitude and do not suffer from nervous breakdowns if denied the regular supply of the Ecstasy of the mass media. I go to them and drink in their company and learn to nurture my solitude from them and as advised by Rilke, look deep inside me (often to find an unfathomable shallowness, which I plumb with my artistic compass, resulting in a feeling of inadequacy and melancholy and many more unspeakable weaknesses that are ready to slip off my tongue like uncontrollable snakes).

So, to go back to the beginning (you can see I have the habit of running ahead of myself), the drumbeats of Jaipur Lit Fest reached my ears in Singapore. One of the discordant notes came from Hartosh Singh Bal who accused Sir William Dalrymple, of the hyphenated White-Mughals (the hyphen is mine), one of the festival's organisers, of acting like a burra sahib and enthusiastically collecting specimens of white writers for the festival, making Indians suffer from a colonial hangover even after 60 years of British colonial rule. What an injustice! Why should an Englishman be an arbiter of Indian literature at Jaipur? That was the complaint, and it implied that Indian writers still needed the patting and recognition from their erstwhile white masters to get into serious literary play in the akhada of literature. The gentlemen that he is, Sir Dalrymple, got back to his accuser by saying that the plaintiff was indulging in a well-known but less coveted sport of reverse-racism. “That piece felt little more than the literary equivalent of pouring shit through an immigrant’s letterbox,” Dalrymple said. Sir Dalrymple is ever so eloquent, don't you wonder?

In my opinion, both Sir and Singh have a point. Though I have great regard for Sir Dalrymple (we Indians have a great talent for veneration and we are always in search of demi-gods to applause and worship), perhaps he does not grasp the bigger picture of what is going on here. As Malcolm Bradbury wrote in one of his essays, the British society was tooled up, so to speak, for empire-building. The building has stopped and the Britisher has no real place to exercise his talent. After the British empire ceased to exist (now it is restricted to seeking lost glory in organising the Commonwealth games and bestowing Commmonwealth awards), the immediate vacuum in the British society was filled with the need to thrash up the former subjects -- on the British soil. It did not result in anything salubrious, except that it gave us Hanif Kureishi. This reminds me of the churning of the primordial elements, the heavens and the earth, that gave rise to Adam and Eve. Nature has this old habit of creating something beautiful, and mind you, irreverent, out of chaos.

The reverse of what Bardbury has said is also true, which escaped the attention of Mr. Singh. The Indian society, especially the Indian middle class, was tooled up, so to speak, for empire-worshiping (I don't have to remind you of Macaulay's words, Mr. Singh, do I?). The empire is not there anymore, so the only place an educated Indian can bow his head is in front of the offsprings of the empire-builders. So, actually, both need each other to grow culturally, unless you want more Chetan Bhagats in India (no offense to Mr. Bhagat--I haven't read you any deeply than I have read Mark Twain or Faulker; so, you are in great company; therefore, please do not think of suing me).

Other interesting notes from the festival came from Coetzee, (yeah, what do you expect? I am a fan), and Orhan Pamuk. They spoke for writers writing in languages other than English and how they are often neglected by publishers and readers (and unless they win Nobel Prizes, they aren't even invited to festivals like Jaipur Lit Fest). My heart always beats for those who are unjustly neglected. So, Coetzee and Pamuk score big in my book for what they said in Jaipur.

Also, in his column, C P Surendran, complained of drunkards going around bashing poets and novelists, on minor excuses such as asking a lighter from a Sikh man. To him, I will say, take heart Mr Surendran. A time may come when gentlemen in the festival will shake off their pants altogether. Then we would know that Indian literature has overtaken British writing for good, and that the empire has struck its final, deathly blow.

In future, I am sure Japipur lit fest will grow and grow. My only worry is that with the kind of tamasha going around it, it also attracts wrong kind of people. Or maybe the festivalwalls should call it the Jaipur Cultural Festival. Then you can invite the qawwals and bhajan singers and body builders and their like to celebrate the cultural contribution of Bollywood song writers and cook book queens and dietitians; this should go well alongside the readings of and dialogues with eminent writers like Chimamanda Adichie and Junot Diaz.

Join Singapore writers for a night of crime

Let's talk about 'Hush'

Recently, Dileep Cherian of Manta Ray Comics sent me a link to review 'Hush' - the debut release of Manta Ray, an independent publisher of comics & graphic novels, based in Bangalore. 'Hush' was created by two NIDians, written by Pratheek Thomas and illustrated by Rajiv Eipe (a partner at Manta Ray).

When I looked at 'Hush', I found it quite impressive in terms of graphics and storytelling. I liked the visual element of the story. There are no dialogues which adds to the suspense of the story and forces the reader to engage with the visuals and 'get' the story. There is an element of interpretation involved here. The only weakness in this work of art is the ordinariness of the story's plot. It did engage me but did not surprise me.

Dileep says that with 'Hush', Manta Ray is attempting to push the medium of graphic story telling in India, and is consciously moving away from the traditional super-heroish cult.

* Hush is a graphic story, suggested for Mature Readers (18+)
* 'Hush' has no words in it, and hence no language barriers
* Black & White, 26 cms x 17 cms, 34 pages
* Two large size, colour posters by guest artists go along with the book inside
* MRP - Rs.195
* Publisher - Manta Ray Comics
* Distributor - Westland
* Now available in the metros and also you can also Buy it Flipkart.com.

Hush was also recently featured amongst '10 Classic Alternate Graphic Novels' on the Flipkart blog. Actually it is the only Indian book on that list.

This is the WIP website which offers glimpses of 'Hush': www.mantaraycomics.com

They also have a Facebook page, where you can go and explore a lot of behind-the scenes material.

Riddle of the Seventh Stone

We like ambition in people. In India, children at a very young age are often asked by doting relatives what they want to become when they grow up: a doctor, an engineer, a lawyer, a scientist, a pilot, or a business executive. Indian parents take great pride in showing off the precociousness of their offsprings when they are able to set an ambition for themselves and rattle it out with an impressive perspicacity in front of their relatives at weddings or dinner parties.

Recently, at a business lunch, a young Indian lady proudly said how her eight year old son knew exactly what he wanted to do in life. Between the lifting of forks and stirring of spoons, a contrast was drawn to the older generation of Indians who wasted almost half a lifetime in figuring out what they wanted to do with their lives and where they wanted to go (in Naipaul’s words, the clever ones went to the US and UK “to make cookies and shovel snow off the pavement in winter—and educate their children”). This attitudinal change, between the older generation and the new crop of Indians, is taken as a sign of India’s progress towards modernity.

The ambition of a person defines him. If it is quixotic, it becomes a source of entertainment for his friends and relatives. While they would cheer on Don Quixote in the pursuit of the nearly impossible ambition, they would snigger in the sleeves, waiting for the moment when Quixote puts his feet on a banana peel. When Quixote reaches within the striking distance of achieving success, their cheering would turn into a skeptical form of disapproval: ‘Is the goal worth all the trouble? Why is he even doing this?’ and so on. Once he enters the portal of success and steps into the hall of fame, the success would be conspiratorially begrudged and daggers of jealousy would come out in the open. That is more or less the trajectory of a person with an literary goal in India unless you happen to have gone to Oxford or Stanford, or at least, to Delhi’s St. Stephen’s College.

When I first came to know Monideepa Sahu through Francis Ford Coppola’ forum for writers, Zoetrope, she was a former banker looking for a future in writing. We soon became friends and exchanged emails (we still do), supporting each other in our literary journeys. Unlike me, Monideepa had gone to Delhi University’s Lady Shri Ram College and had studied literature. She displayed a good grasp of literature and had a sharp eye for nuanced writing. I always valued her feedback and suggestions and earned a friend in the process.

Over the years, Monideepa grew as a writer and had success with some stories published in journals outside India. More success followed with her stories getting into anthologies in India and Malaysia. When her novel was picked up by Zubaan, out of an open pitch competition at Kala Ghoda Festival in Mumbai, I was as genuinely excited as her. In the following months, I got to read some chapters of the novel and when the illustrations for the book were ready, she sent them to me for my feedback. When the book came out, I was sent a copy. Yet, out of her natural grace and goodness, Monideepa never asked me to review her book (I rarely review books for others). I took it upon myself to write a review of her novel voluntarily.

What I said about ambition and jealousy springing forth out of success with one’s ambition does not apply in Monideepa’s case. She deserves all the success that she has got and deserves more. Given the odds in her life, which I have been somewhat privy to, her achievement is praiseworthy. In this whole journey, from writerly frustration to success, I have never felt even a tiny tinge of jealousy or nurtured a speck of ill-will toward her. I am sure she will achieve more success with many books that she plans to write.

I don’t have much experience in reading or reviewing literature for children in English (except for the classics that I read in school, from Panchtantra to Aesope’s fables and Arabian Nights and so on). I didn’t know how to start this review (I hate false starts) so I thought a note on our literary friendship would be an apt beginning.

Also, the topic of ambition and ill-will seems pertinent in the discussion of her first novel, Riddle of the Seventh Stone. Rishabh the rat, the novel’s protagonist, magically metamorphoses into a human form and enters the realm of Indian childhood. In this new world, he has a similarly transformed spider companion Shashee, and human friends, Deepak and Leela and their grandparents. While Rishabh grapples with tough geometry lessons in school, he grows up to like the new world and solve its problems; he is also given the ambition to become a doctor. The character of an Indian child without acquiring an ambition would be like a fable without a moral lesson—a universally important element of literature for children or young adults.

The ill-will part, the menace in the story, comes from a property developer, the Shark, who, just like one of the thieves in Home Alone, has glinting titanium teeth. Monideepa sets up the conflict early on in the story. The Shark wants to takeover the shop of Deepak and Leela’s grandfather, Venkat, and turn it into a shopping mall. What follows, in terms of a plot, is a thriller-like account of how Rishabh thwarts the plans of the bad guy, and at the end of the tale, emerges as a winner. He discovers a treasure but his real prize is more than that, which comes with a moral lesson for all the characters in the novel.

Apart from its fascinating storyline and moral lessons (important achievements never come easily to anyone; We mustn’t allow sorrow and disappointment to darken our world, and so on), what drew me into the novel is Monideepa’s language. The narrator’s voice is adult-like, with a sharp eye for detail, and a playful display of a facility for describing tastes and senses (a gang of crickets playing Mozart’s symphonies, stale rotis stiffer than shoe uppers; dustbins overflowing with gourmet delights, and so on).

Monideepa evokes the city of Bangalore and its history and geography with a deceptive ease. But what I loved most in the novel is her use of metaphors and similes in the story which often comes from the point of a view of a vermin (a voice sweet as a carrot halwa, a girl’s eyes has been described as a pair of lovely burnt frying pans). She also shows interesting parallels between the human and the vermin world by using imaginative devices such as V-Mail (for Vermin Mail) and WWW (Wonderful Wide Web). What fun!

Monideepa’s first venture into the world of vermins and humans is a delightful read. If I as an adult couldn’t put down the novel, I am sure children and young adults would find it a most fascinating read.

Riddle of the Seventh Stone, by Monideepa Sahu, Delhi: Young Zubaan, 2010. The book can be ordered online from Flipkart, Indiaplaza, and Crossword within India.

12th Zee Cine Awards 2011, Singapore (Video commentary)

12th Zee Cine Awards 2011, Marina Bay Sands, Singapore (Part 2)

The least exciting part of the Zee Cine Awards 2011 was the show itself (seats were uncomfortable, and with 5000 people, most were so far away from the stage that they had to watch the action on big television screens). With both popular and jury awards to be given away, most star egos were going to be satisfied (also why the show was too long!). Of course, I was curious about the star performances (you might get lucky!) and Akshay’s anchoring.

The show was to start at 8 p.m. but it did not start until 9 p.m. The main anchors were Akshay and Sajid, who have worked together in films such as Heyy Baby and Houseful. Other supporting anchors were Neha Dhupia and Sophia.

Akshay can anchor—he proved that. But his teaming up with Sajid exactly didn’t make the sparks fly. I don’t know where the problem was but there were a couple of weaknesses in their hosting. The jokes were lame, the gags didn’t work (especially the one with Chunky Pandey) and the ‘jumping with joy’ (promo moments) idea was as hilarious as Houseful. The biggest issue was language. They should have used more English as this was a mixed audience but I guess they were more mindful of the TV show (the function was being taped as a show, with sponsorships and so on).

About the performances, Shahrukh’s performance rocked. He called Hrithik and Suzzane on to the stage and taught them how to be a happily married couple. He truly is a gifted entertainer. Aishwarya’s dance performance was not as spectacular as it could have been and Shatrughan Sinha, while receiving the lifetime achievement award, could have kept his speech short (and avoided jeers from the audience).

The much needed comic relief came from unexpected quarters—Priyanka Chopra. She performed skits based on all those films that were nominated in the best film category. She danced like Salman (Dabang) and acted like Emran Hashmi (Once Upon a Time in Mumbai). With her fake moustache on, she came quite close to looking like Emran. I enjoyed that.

As for the awards, I don’t have much to complain. I think the best films of 2010 were My Name is Khan, Peepli Live, Udaan and Dabang, and all of them won a lot of awards. Perhaps Peepli Live should have got many awards but we know why it didn’t (The Aamir Khan effect). The show ended around 1 a.m.—three hours late than the announced time but I guess no one was complaining.

Winners of Zee Cine Awards 2011

6 categories of which only a couple have jury as well as popular vote:


Best Actor

Jury: Hritik Roshan for Guzaarish

Popular: Shah Rukh Khan for My Name is Khan

Best Actor- Female

Jury: Aishwarya Rai Bachchan for Guzaarish

Popular: Vidya Balan for Ishq Kiya

Best Actor in Supporting Role

Arjun Rampal for Rajneeti

Best Actor-Female in Supporting Role

Prachi Desai for Once Upon a Time in Mumbai

Best Film

Jury: Udaan

Popular: Dabangg

Best Director

Jury: Vikram Aditya Motwani for Udaan

Popular: Karan Johar for My Name is Khan

Read the previous part, Part 1, of this awards coverage here

12th Zee Cine Awards 2011, Marina Bay Sands, Singapore (Part 1)

For the Indian Diaspora, sometimes Bollywood is the only answer to their spiritual emptiness. In the persona of the film stars, like Crusoe marooned in an island, they catch the glimpse of a ghost ship and sigh for their motherland.

Bollywood frenzy

When I heard about the 12th Zee Cine Awards to be held in Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands on 14 January 2011, I knew that the Indians from the island would be whipped into frenzy. I could not forget the IIFA Awards that were held here in 2004. It was such a hit that all tickets were sold out within hours of opening of the booking website.

The same happened with Zee Cine Awards. In a blink, all 5,000 tickets were snapped up and I heard people complaining that the show was sold out. The Business Times ran a story on this ticket frenzy, reporting that despite the expensiveness of the ticket (ranging from $197 to $1,000), people were willing to pay anything to get a chance to be a part of this gala evening. On mass demand, the organizers arranged for an extra 3,000 seats in an additional hall (Hall C, Sands Expo and Convention Centre) for a ticketed simulcast of the show. They were going for $40 a seat.

Just out of curiosity, I checked the availability of tickets on eBay. Some blokes were hawking the show tickets for two to five thousand dollars a piece. Whoever they were, they must be fans of Gordon Gekko.

Press briefing before the show

Zee Network and Marina Bay Sands Singapore had arranged a press briefing before the show. The briefing was to start at 4 p.m. but it didn’t kick off until about 4.30 p.m. Nearly one hundred journalists from Asia participated in it (I could hardly find anyone from the Indian press. I guess Zee wanted everything exclusive to itself for the Indian audiences).

Punit Goenka, CEO, Zee Enterprises and Michael A. Levin, President and Chief Operating Officer of Marina Bay Sands, spoke to the media for about half an hour. Welcoming Zee with their Bollywood awards show, Levin said that Marina Bay was proud to host this event, the Oscars of Indian cinema. Zee and Marina Bay Sands have been working together for a while for some of Zee’s TV programmes, but it is for the first time that Zee Cine Awards is being held in the Sands ballroom—Asia’s largest ballroom.

This is the 12th edition of the award, said Goenka. “This is the sixth time the award goes international,” said Goenka. It has gone to London, twice, and to Dubai and Mauritius before coming to Singapore.

When asked what the show will be about, he said that Zee Awards show is known for its star-studded extravagance. He reeled out names of stars such as Shahrukh Khan, Akshay Kumar, Priyanka Chopra, and Hrithik Roshan who were going to be a part of the show.

Giving the background of the award, he said that Zee Cine Awards is the only award of its kind that is based on jury and viewers’ choice. This year’s awards are based on five million audience votes, Goenka revealed.

Each year, Zee’s awards team prepares for the show for 12 months. “After today’s show ends, the team will start preparing for next year’s awards,” Goenka said.

Goenka emphasized that Zee Cine Awards’ specialty was its innovativeness. “Each year, we have something innovative,” he said. “This year we have superstar Akshay Kumar hosting the awards show and this is the first ever time he is doing this.”

Shobha Tsering Bhalla, editor and CEO of India Se magazine, asked why award shows like this always featured the same raft of stars such as Shahrukh Khan, Akshay Kumar, Priyanka Chopra, and so on? Why not thespians like Amir Khan who command a lot of respect and fan following all over the world?

“Amir is a dear friend of mine,” Goenka said, amused by the question. “His stand on award shows is well-known. He does not attend award shows. We ask him every year and ever year his answer is the same. When he changes he mind, we will be happy to have him in our show.”

The surprise trick-ending of the press briefing was Shahrukh Khan, who trotted into the media room, sending gasps from the members of the press. Everybody trooped in around the podium area. Luckily, I was right in the front so I got a close glimpse of the star: dark shades, a blue long-sleeve T-shirt, and faded denims.

I got to ask him the first question. What was he going to perform in the show and how were his new films, Don 2 and Ra.1, coming along? King Khan was in a sporting mood so gave a long-winded answer. He said he was going to perform Noor-e Khuda and Sajda from My Name is Khan. He also said that shooting on both his new films had progressed very well and he would be back in Malaysia in February and March to shoot for Don 2. I am sure that piece of news would be honey to his fans in Malaysia!

Shahrukh answered one more question about his kids (how he would love to bring them over to Singapore to learn a few things here) and then the press briefing was declared over. The next event on the cards was the Red Carpet.

The red carpet

After the press-briefing the journalists were escorted to the red carpet hold up area—it was on the same floor as that of the Sands Ballroom. A red carpet was laid in a U-shape on the corridor’s floor; it led off from a passage where Zee TV’s red carpet anchors stood in waiting, and tapered off into another passage that probably led to the Ballroom’s stage area.

The carpet was covered by transparent plastic. It had rained in the afternoon, so perhaps the organizers were taking care to keep the carpet unsoiled. Or was a standard practice? I had no idea.

There was time yet for the stars to arrive for the red carpet so I dashed out to quench my thirst at Fuse in Tower 2. That’s where I met some unhappy looking Indians who had their eyes fixed on the lift lobby. They were standing in the ‘star-gazing area’ to catch a glimpse of the stars. Did they see anyone so far? I asked a few of them. Nope, nothing yet, they said. They were holding cameras in their hands, ready for that lucky moment.

The show was to start at 8 p.m. so when I came back to the red carpet area around 7.20 p.m. stars had started to walk the red carpet. There was a crowd of journalists flanking the red carpet; some stood behind the line of journalists over a ramp to get a clear view. I squeezed myself at the head of the line where I could see the stars entering the corridor. Zee TV anchors, a boy with long hair and a girl in sari, stopped the stars for their soundbites before letting them walk on the carpet. Where I stood, there were TV crews from Malaysia, Reuters, and MediaCorp. A foreign crew was so well-prepared that a Chinese girl with a mike, the team’s anchor, carried cheat sheets with colour photos of stars with their names and she tried to match the face of every star who walked the carpet with photos on her sheet. What a painful guess work?

Up, close and personal, I could see almost all the stars, except Priyanka Chopra, walking the red carpet that evening: Deepika Padukone, Rishi and Neetu Kapoor, Shatrughan Sinha with his daughter Sonakshi, Boman Irani, Shahrukh Khan, Karan Johar, Aishwarya Rai, Hrithik Roshan and Suzanne, Arbaz Khan, Sonu Sood, Arjun Rampal and Mehar, Akshay Kumar and Sajid Khan, and so on. Barely anyone could recognize Aditya Roy Kapoor. The girl with the cheat sheet was confused on seeing him. Who is he? she asked. I recognized his face but I had forgotten his name.

The media went crazy when Shahrukh walked the red carpet. One of the lights of the Reuters crew (was it some other TV channel?) toppled over. Thankfully, it didn’t cause anyone any damage. A 938 Live reporter was walking up on the ramp, giving a live account of the stars sizzling on the red carpet.

I didn’t worry about missing out on Priyanka: I know how she looks like because I had seen her working when she was shooting for Krissh in Singapore. What I saw on the red carpet in about an hour were only a handful of stars (Bollywood is so big) but I must tell you that honestly I had never seen so many stars at such a close range before this evening. I am too old to be star-struck but it was great fun as an experience. What was most striking about them? Yes, they exuded charisma. They were all slickly dressed and they looked slimmer and handsomer than how they usually looked on the silver screen. Deepika has beautiful light eyes and Aishwarya is so heartbreakingly beautiful! I was wondering how Abhishek could fall asleep in the same bed with this legendary beauty? I hope he doesn’t turn into an insomniac.

To be continued (Read Part 2 here)

Letters to a Young Novelist

Happy New Year to all my friends! From some time, I have decided to blog less but blog well. The basic purpose of sharing interesting reading stuff is now being served by twitter (@zafaranjum) so I guess this move is justifiable. I will keep blogging; however, I will use this space more as a diary to share my own, more personal thoughts. Hope you understand and stay with me and share your thoughts with me as well.

The following is not a usual book review. I have tried to collect the main points from the book, so it is more of summary than a review. Enjoy!

...

In his delicious little book, Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa’s Letters to a Young Novelist (1997, Ariel/Planeta; translated from Spanish by Natasha Wimmer, 2002, Piacdor) a seasoned novelist (that is Mario himself) addresses an imaginary friend, a young novelist, who asks him for advice on becoming a writer.

In the first chapter, The Parable of the Tapeworm, Vargas remembers when he was fourteen or fifteen in Lima, aflame with the desire to become a writer but didn’t know what steps to take. At that time, he was dazzled by Faulkner, Hemingway, Malraux, Dos Passos, Camus and Sartre.

The young Mario wanted to write to these masters and seek their advice but he never had the courage. “I never dared,” he writes, “out of shyness or out of kind of defeatism—why write, if I know no one will deign to respond?—that so often thwarts the ambitions of young people in countries where literature means so little to most and survives on the margins of society as an almost underground activity.”

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? I like the sound of literature surviving on the margins of society. Sounds so very real.

Mario cautions the young writer right at the outset. He asks why does he want to write? If it’s for success and glory, then it’s a wrong choice. He writes: “There is no reason why you shouldn’t be successful, of course, but if you persevere in writing and publishing, you will soon discover that prizes, public acclaim, book sales, the social standing of a writer all have a sui generis appeal; they are extraordinarily arbitrary, sometimes stubbornly evading those who most deserve them while besieging and overwhelming those who merit them least. Which means that those who see success as their main goal will probably never realize their dreams; they are confusing literary ambition with a hunger for glory and for the financial gains that literature affords certain writers (very few of them).”

Mario says the defining characteristic of the literary vocation may be that those who possess it experience the exercise of their craft as its own best reward, much superior to anything they might gain from the fruits of their labour.

Mario goes on to makes two other important points in this opening chapter: One, those who become writers choose to become writers (this is as per Sartre’s philosophy); two, the game of literature is not innocuous. Fiction is a lie covering up a deep truth. It is the fruit of a deep dissatisfaction with real life, it is a source of discomfort and dissatisfaction. That’s why the Spanish Inquisition distrusted works of fiction and subjected them to strict censorship. Many governments in our contemporary world still do that

The literary vocation is not a hobby, a sport, a pleasant leisure-time activity, he warns. It’s an all encompassing, all excluding occupation, an urgent priority, a freely chosen servitude that turns its victims (its lucky victims) into slaves. He quotes Flaubert: “Writing is just another way of living.”

We often hear of genius novelists (Arundhati Roy?). Mario says that there are no novel writing prodigies: Talent or genius, at least not in novelists, does not spring to life full-fledged. Instead it becomes apparent at the end of many long years of discipline and perseverance. If you want to foster your literary genius, Mario advises you to read Flaubert’s correspondence, especially his letters to Louise Colet, and William S. Burroughs’ Junky.

On writing techniques

In the second chapter, Mario talks about the process of writing. He calls it a backward striptease. Also, he says that the novelist scavenges his own experience for raw material for stories—in a more abstract sense (Proust is the prime example).

We often talk about writers and their themes. Many writers have said this before and Mario says it here too: the novelist doesn’t choose his themes; he is chosen by them. Next what he says is also a well-known nugget of wisdom: a novelist has to write about what is there deep down in him and not on something that might sell (the bestseller lists are crowded with bad novelists). So, don’t shun your demons, young novelists.

The third chapter of this little book (136 pages) is on the Power of Persuasion. Mario reminds us that when a novel gives us the impression of self-sufficiency, of being freed from real life, of containing in itself everything it requires to exist, it has reached its maximum capacity for persuasion. Great works of fiction such as Moby Dick, Don Quixote and The Metamorphosis, succeed in creating this “illusion of autonomy”.

This autonomy in a novel is achieved through form and style which are matters of discussion in the following chapter. Mario says the success of a novel’s language depends on two qualities: its internal coherence (Molly Bloom’s monologue at the end of Ulysses) and its essentiality. Absence of essentiality, to Mario, is a style that makes a reader conscious of reading something alien and prevents us from experiencing the story along side its characters and sharing it with them. So a young novelist has to find his own coherent and essential style. To grow this kind of a rich style, they must read constantly. However, they should not try to copy the style of writers they admire by mechanical reproduction of the patterns and rhythms of their writing.

The next three chapters in the book focus on narrative techniques (points of view): the narrator and narrative space (spatial POV), time (temporal POV) and levels of reality (realistic/fantastic POV). Like different narrator-characters, time also works differently in fiction. Mario illustrates his temporal point of view through examples from Borges’ “The Secret Miracle”, Augusto Monterroso’s “The Dinosaur” (which he calls perhaps one of the world’s best shortest stories—“When he woke up, the dinosaur was still there.”), Sterne’s “Tristram Shandy”, Gunter Grass’ “Tin Drum”, Julio Cortazar’s “Hopscotch”, H G Wells’ “The Time Machine”, Adolfo Bioy Casares’ “The Celestial Plot” and Joyce’s “Ulysses”.

The chapter on levels of reality is one of the most interesting and insightful. In it, the novelist talks about real and fantastic worlds (examples come from Woolf, Joyce, Kafka, Proust, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Alejo Carpenter’s The Kingdom of this World). At the end of the chapter, Mario concludes: “This is the greatest triumph of technical skill in novel writing: to achieve invisibility, the ability to endow a story color, drama, subtlety, beauty and suggestive power so effectively that no reader even notices the story exists…he feels he is not reading but rather living a fiction…”

In the chapter 'Shifts and Qualitative Leaps', Mario discusses shifts in spatial (Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, and Joyce’s Ulysses) or temporal (D M Thomas’s The White Hotel) points of view in the narrative.

The writer explains that the term ‘qualitative leap’ has been borrowed from the Hegelian Dialectic. According to Hegel, quantitative accumulation triggers a leap in quality (like water turns into gas after reaching boiling point). In Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, the sudden change in the sex of the main character (from man to woman) causes the entire narrative to undergo a qualitative shift. But this is not true of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis as the story’s inciting incident occurs right at the beginning of the story, positioning the story in the realm of the fantastic. These shifts in a novel can strengthen or destroy its power of persuasion. At the end of this chapter, Mario makes a very interesting point quoting the great French-Belgian critic and essayist Roger Caillois. According to Caillois, true fantastic literature isn’t created deliberately; it isn’t the effort of a writer’s conscious effort. In Caillois’s opinion, true fantastic literature requires the spontaneous revelation of incredible, prodigious, fabulous, rationally inexplicable acts, unpremeditated and possibly even unnoticed by the author. In other words, Mario says, these fictions don’t tell fantastic stories; they themselves are fantastic.

In the chapter 'Chinese Boxes', Mario talks about the story within story technique (examples would be The Thousand and One Nights, Don Quixote, and Juan Carlos Onetti’s A Brief Life). What follows this is a very engaging chapter called 'The Hidden Fact', in which Mario discusses Hemingway’s technique of “leaving out of the central event of the story”. He calls it the “Hidden Fact” which the reader is supposed to uncover while reading the story. In his story “The Killers”, Hemingway does not tell the reader why the killers want to kill Swede Ole Anderson. In his The Sun Also Rises, the hidden information is the impotence of narrator Jake Barnes. The point that Mario wants to make is that a novel is just a part of a full story from which the novelist finds himself obliged to eliminate much information—that eliminated information plays a part in the story.

This beautiful book’s last chapter deals with a unique concept called Communications Vessels. Here, the novelist painstakingly explains what Communications Vessels are through the example of the episode of the agricultural fair in chapter 8 of the novel Madame Bovary. Other examples come from Faulkner’s The Wild Palms and Julio Cortazar’s Hopscotch. Mario thus defines ‘communication vessels’: “Two or more episodes that occur at different times, in different places, or on different levels of reality but are linked by the narrator so that their proximity or mingling causes them to modify each other, lending each, among other qualities, a different meaning, tone or symbolic value than they might have possessed if they were narrated separately.”

Mario’s little book is a great, breezy read, written in a playful and epistolary manner, that teaches new writers techniques of novel writing. The book’s simplicity should not fool anyone—it is pregnant with rich practical wisdom from one of the masters in the field of novel-writing.

Wrapping up the book, as a kind of a P.S., Mario advises young novelists to read some important critical works—Studies and Essays on Gongora by Damaso Alonso, To The Finland Station by Edmund Wilson (which is Aravind Adiga’s one of favourite books), Port Royal by Sainte-Beuve, and The Road to Xanadu by John Livingston Lowes. And like the sting in the tail, his last advice to the young novelist to is forget what he has learnt in the book. Just sit down and write, he says. Can there be any better advice for the young, fledgling writer?

When conversations get leaked

What lessons can we draw from Radiagate in India and WikiLeaks’ Cablegate?

While I was away in rural India, disconnected from the Internet and television, two major stories broke that I believe would have far-reaching ramifications on an ancient art—the art of conversation.

As technology is driving changes in all aspects of our lives, it will affect the art of conversation too. The way people talk, especially those with power, pelf and influence, will have to change in the age of a protean and ever-agile media. You never know who is eyeing you with a camcorder. In the age of cheap electronic surveillance systems, every bloke is a potential Sherlock.

In India, the Niira Radia tapes (called Radiagate by Indian newsmagazine Outlook) involving India’s major corporate leaders, journalists, politicians (including the controversial D. Raja of the alleged 2G scam) and a lobbyist, Niira Radia, took the Indian media by storm last week. These are recordings of 104 phone calls by Niira Radia, founder of Vaishnavi Communications, to various Indian power brokers.

Among others, the conversations between Radia and key media people in India, recorded at the behest of the Income Tax Department, exposed the rot in the corridors of power which are equally pounded by babus, netas, journalists, and wheelers and dealers of all hues to subvert democratic institutions and processes in a shameless manner.

In this case, the allegations against some senior journalists are that they are too close to lobbyists and that they acted as go-betweens for fixing political deals. At least one of the journalists involved in the affair, Burkha Dutt of NDTV, has protested against the insinuations of her corruptibility. Gullibility and error of judgment, yes, she says in her defence, but nothing more should be read in her conversations with Radia.

Writing in the Outlook, senior Indian journalist S. Nihal Singh commented: “Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the tapes’ content is not merely the chumminess of senior journalists with members of the corporate world but their willingness to be of service to individual politicians by lobbying for them with persons able to swing jobs” (Past Isn’t Perfect. But.).

When senior journalists were caught on tape throwing into thin air their professional distance with a lobbyist (who works for Ratan Tata and Mukesh Ambani), India’s mainstream media hesitated to cover the story. Some suspected a closing of ranks against a common enemy: the wide-eyed public, sections of which refuse to be dumbed-down despite the media’s constant efforts. ‘A crow doesn’t eat another crow’s meat,’ commented a politician on the media’s collusion to suppress the story.

It was due to people’s pressure through the social media (Twitter and Facebook) that forced the mainstream media to highlight the Niira tapes in their coverage. Soon, a miffed Ratan Tata moved the Supreme Court to restrain the media companies from publishing the tapes’ content as it violated his privacy. Tata, chairman of the Tata Group, warned in his petition that India is on the path to becoming a “banana republic”.

But was it the right move by a much respected corporate leader? A commentator said that by moving the Supreme Court to have these tapes removed would make many people feel that the Tatas have something to hide. He has got a point there, hasn’t he?

As the Radiagate discussion rages on in India’s television studios and people’s drawing rooms, the debate is focused on media ethics and the rising power of the social media. Mainstream media have realised that even though they would want to downplay a story to protect their ilk, social media will not sit tight and will ultimately force their hand.

WikiLeaks’ Cablegate

The other story, the latest release of hundreds of thousands of secret diplomatic cables by Wikileaks (dubbed as Cablegate), caused waves around the world’s diplomatic circles. Washington’s diplomats were aghast as their leaders’ unpalatable remarks and agendas were brought into the public domain. There was outrage in Iran and Pakistan and some tattling in Singapore over Minister Mentor Lee Kwan Yew’s remarks over the “psychopathic” North Koreans.

This is outrageous, screamed the mighty of the world. Is nothing sacrosanct anymore? they asked.

In an editorial, The New York Times said the world works on certain principles and following those principles makes our world safe and well-ordered (and less chaotic). In its view, the WikiLeaks’ co-founder Julian Assange (picture), now wanted by the Interpol, is an anarchist with little respect for those who run the world. In other words, Assange’s revelations challenge the world order and scuttle the power of those who guard it. Naturally, they would want this whistleblower’s back.

Yet nothing dramatic will come out of either Radiagate or Cablegate (Maybe Radia will lose her business and Assange will be arrested or assassinated). But, by and large, this too shall be forgotten. The moral standards of the world’s movers and shakers have sunk so low (what did you expect? you might well ask) that they can lie with impunity and defend themselves with a polished and aggressive cool once their faces are painted with studio make-up.

In the long run, perhaps, the Niira tapes in India and Assange’s leaks will teach one lesson to those who deal with power. Be cautious. Mind what you talk, how you talk and who you talk with. The lesson applies to corporate leaders too.

While I was reading stories about Radiagate and Cablegate in the media, I remembered what Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt once said controversially: Don’t do anything that you shouldn’t be doing. Though he was talking in the context of youngsters and their frank no-holds-barred approach to social media, his avuncular advice might be handy for grown ups too. The tape and the camera can be used to frame and beat the powerless but in the hands of the zealous, it can turn its lens back on the powerful. That, for me, is the main lesson of Radiagate and Cablegate.

The discreet charms of Berlin

As the KLM Airlines’ Boeing 737 descended through a bank of white cumulus approaching the Tegel airport in Berlin, the outskirts of a sprawling city began to reveal its green expanse. Windmills, gardens, beautifully manicured parcels of land, houses with colorful rooftops, welcomed my sight. It was a bright sunny day and I was ready to be captivated by the charms of Berlin.

After the plane landed at Tegel, it was a smooth check out. Tegel, compared to the airports in Singapore or Hong Kong, seemed like an airport from the past. The building is not very imposing and with its square-shaped glass windows with curved edges, it looks like a double-decker train necklacing an airfield. Berlin has two more airports but one of them has now been converted into a park. The other one is being modernized by the government.

I had already cleared immigration at Amsterdam, my first stop in a Schengen country in the European Union. In twenty minutes, I collected my checked-in luggage and I was out of the airport. I was in Berlin to attend a conference, so the conference organizers had sent me a limousine for pick up. The driver of the spacious VW limo was an English speaking Croat. We chatted throughout the half hour drive to my hotel in the Eastern part of Berlin.

I mentioned to the driver how green Berlin was. He perked up and said Berlin is one of the greenest cities in Europe, and is dotted with many parks (later, I was to learn that every tree in Berlin is counted and numbered). He mentioned the Tiergarten, Berlin’s Central Park, a great place to relax. It was established as the Prussian Royal Family’s private hunting ground.

I soon learnt that Berlin abounds in tree and Turks. It is the world’s fifth largest Turkish city—my guide jokingly told me.

The views on either side of the autobahn reminded me of Delhi—I was looking at an old city that had been bombed out during the Second World War, and did not have many skyscrapers (except in some sexier parts of the city), and was not as squeaky clean as modern cities such as Singapore. But in its own way, Berlin seemed to have used steel and bricks and mortar to patch itself up, without thinking much about the postmodern city aesthetics. Berlin’s every corner smelled of its rich history.

Berlin was in mid-autumn and pavements were littered with yellow leaves. Temperatures were around 12 degrees C. One hardly felt cold inside the buildings but once you stepped outside, you could feel the chill in the air.

Travelling in the city was easy—the city boasts of a great bus and train network, apart from taxis and bicycles that are so common on the streets. I could buy my S Bahn tickets from the hotel’s concierge. At the station, I didn’t find any gantries. All I had to do was to stamp my ticket at a machine and board the train. It’s that simple.

I had half a day to visit the historical sites of the city, so I decided to book an Insider Tours’ Famous Walk—a four hour walk through the main sites of Berlin. Just for 12 Euros (a decent meal at MacDonald’s costs you about 5 to 6 Euros). One has many different kinds of tours to choose from: Bike tours, Cruise and Walk Tours and I even saw an ad for motorized Segway tours.

My tour Guide David spoke excellent English. A thin and tall young man, David is a Swede. “I came to Germany six years ago and fell in love with this city,” he told us, a bunch of American and Australian tourists.

We started our tour from Hackescher Markt, just next to Alexanderplatz. The tour started with the Altes Museum and Berliner Dome and then we marched on to the Unter den Linden and Postdamer Platz—the most widely known boulevards in Germany. The city’s great historical sites are spread around this central artery of Berlin, this avenue “under the Linden trees”: The Royal Cathedral, Lustgarden, Museum Island, the Berlin War, Checkpoint Charlie, Hitler’s Bunker, the ruins of the SS and Gestapo Headquarters, Location of East Germany’s people’s uprising (June 17th, 1953), Babelplatz, Reichstag, Branderburg Gate and Pariser Platz.

The Branderburg Tor looks magnificent, a proud monument that had seen so many victors pass through it. Personally, I was fascinated by Babelplatz and the Memorial for the Murdered Jews. Babelplatz, right opposite the Humbildt University, was where the Nazis had burnt the books (On May 10, 1934, the Nazis burnt books by authors considered perverted or dangerous to the party). Now a stunning memorial lies underground beneath the spot where the book-burning (Bucherverbrennung) took place—a see-through square-shaped sealed white room with empty book shelves.

The other impressive spot is the Denkmal fur die ermordeten Juden Europas (Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe). At a stone’s throw from the Reichstag and Brandenburg Tor, this controversial memorial was designed by New York architect Peter Eisenmen. It is a field of 2,711 concrete pillars, all of different heights, slightly leaning off centre—all built on an undulating field of concrete slabs. Walking through this claustrophobia-evoking petrified field, I felt lost in a labyrinth—like a rat in a maze, sad and hopeless. But I could also see children playing over the slabs and young lovers patting each other in this gray stone field.

You come to a city with your own expectations; like unexplained dreams, you carry some of its images plucked off media you have been exposed to. When I was strolling around the streets of Berlin, I was looking for visuals from Jason Bourne movies or The Reader (a 2008 Berlin-based film adapted from the 1995 German novel of the same name by Bernhard Schlink). I found bits and parts of it here and there—the S-Bahn rides, walls with graffiti and 20th century housing blocks with interlocking internal courtyards. But to do justice to Berlin’s history, it is a city that, for its full revelation, demands time (there are over 160 museums in Berlin, including one dedicated to erotica). Unfortunately, I didn’t have that much time. So, I returned from Berlin promising myself a detailed tour in future with my family.

Indian media in the crosshairs of Bollywood

Though corruption in media is as old as media itself, several new Bollywood films are hauling the media over coals for their fast disappearing lack of ethics and dipping journalistic standards
--Zafar Anjum

Three recent Bollywood films, Rann, Knock Out and Peepli Live, have had Indian media in the crosshairs of their narratives. The picture that emerges out of this depiction is unflattering and underlines the erosion of ethics in the Indian media.

In the Ramgopal Varma-directed Rann, a principled media tycoon played by Amitabh Bachchan, represents the old values – the owner-editor who puts ethics above everything else. His young son represents the new values of the market where sensationalism and partisanship at any cost chases advertising rupees. The film's conflict is the father's fight with his own son to expose the truth.

Knock Out, directed by Mani Shankar, is a thriller about the black money stashed away by Indian politicians in secret Swiss bank accounts. The protagonist of the film, played by Sanjay Dutt, wants to bring back the billions of rupees to India. In a plot structure similar to Hollywood films such as Phone Booth (2002) and Liberty Stands Still (2002), the protagonist takes a media person (played by Kangna Ranaut) on the scene into confidence. He appeals to her patriotism, asking her to choose her duty to her country over her career.


There is a scene in the film where the director shows how politicians have a stronghold over media companies. Fearing public backlash in the face of an election, the politician villain, played by Gulshan Grover, tries to get the TV channels bury the news of the emerging scandal that involves his Swiss accounts.

Anusha Rizvi's Peepli Live is a blisteringly brave film. It holds no bars in exposing the lack of ethics in the Indian media. This film, which is India's official entry to the Oscars this year, takes a realistic dig at the media scene in India today.

After India's economic liberalisation, the country's media industry, especially the electronic media, took off and over the years, dozens of news channels have bloomed. But being a market economy, the bottomline-driven and ratings-led media companies have exchanged ethics for profit. Rizvi knows this world very well as she herself comes from a television news background.

On balance, along with the focus on media, Peepli Live also takes a sarcastic look at India's politicians and bureaucracy and shows how the country's grassroot democracy has been turned into a caricature. When Natha (Omkar Das Manikpuri), a poor farmer, decides to commit suicide because of his indebtedness, it becomes a major media story. The country's media pounces upon Natha mercilessly and twists and turns his story into a bizarre drama – all for the sake of ratings. The story gets to its lowest point when a Hindi TV newsman turns even the farmer's turd into a big story.

Maybe there is some exaggeration for the sake of drama in these films but the reality of Indian media is not very far from what these Bollywood films have shown. In his commentary, Cut-Rate Democracy (Outlook, November 1, 2010) veteran journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta writes: “In recent times corruption in the Indian media has gone way beyond individuals and specific media organisations – from 'planting' information and spinning views in lieu of favours received in cash or kind – to institutionalised and organised forms of corruption wherein newspapers and TV channels receive funds for publishing or broadcasting information that is sought to be disguised as 'news' – but are actually designed to favour particular individuals, corporate entities, representatives of political parties or cash-rich candidates contesting elections.”

Agrees former journalist Sumir Lal, who writes in his essay, “Why I quit the media” ((Outlook, November 1, 2010): “India's media barons are no longer in the news business, but news is unavoidable: after all, you do need something to fill the space between the ads, and must dupe enough consumers into picking up your 'newspaper' (or tuning in to your 'news' channel), else your real customers – advertisers – will not be interested. So 'news' today is sleight of hand: paid news by politicians, private treaties with advertisers, celebrity coverage for a fee, PR feeds masquerading as reportage, the business story slanted to serve the stockmarket, the deserving story not done.”

Lal's reading is frightening for anyone who wants to join the profession in India today. “With proprietors not interested in selling what good journalists produce, the crisis in India is not one of the media industry, but of the profession of journalism,” he says.


Unfortunately, this rot in the ethics of journalism is not limited to India alone. Recently, commenting on the American media, Singapore's Law and Home Affairs minister K Shanmugam said that while liberal theory holds that a fair and independent media checks the Government, keeping it honest - in reality, journalists are biased, media companies are profit-driven, ethics can be compromised by advertising dollars, and the media itself is not subject to any checks and balances (Today, November 6-7, 2010).

The minister makes some valid points. For example, in the US, only 32 percent of people have confidence in the quality and integrity of the media (according to a Gallop poll).

Another recent example of the media's irresponsibility was seen in the Manila Bus Hijacking of August 23. Like the Mumbai terror attacks, this hostage drama by a former police officer involving a tourist bus in the streets of Manila, sent the Philippine's media into a tizzy and chasing ratings over ethics, they seemingly jeopardized the entire police operation. Now broadcast networks in the Philippines are assessing their coverage of the hostage crisis in Manila amid criticism and there are proposals to curb media's freedom in similar incidents.

The loss of media's credibility, as highlighted by Bollywood, can be seen in two ways: either it is a lapse on the media's part that will be corrected over time, or cynically, this erosion of values is a natural corollary of marketisation.

But if media is to survive with its best traditions, it is time media companies do some soul-searching before it is too late and this fourth pillar of democracy crumbles for ever.

The article was published in The Daily Star, Dhaka, on Nov 12, 2010.