Are reviewers/critics eunuchs?

In his diary, Outlook's editor Vinod Mehta talks about British (food) critic A.A. Gill who has the reputation of being a slasher. He writes:

Gill says people often ask him that since he claims to know so much about food, why doesn’t he open a restaurant. He answers with a borrowed quote: "Critics are like eunuchs in a harem—they know how it is done, they’ve seen it done every day, but they are unable to do it themselves." Gill adds: "That’s smart but not quite right. Critics may well be like eunuchs in a harem who know how it is done—but having seen it done every day, they just don’t fancy having it done to them."

So, are reviewers or critics eunuchs?

Or, as referred to by Bollywood director Farah Khan, are film critics "retards"?

(Reference: During the 'word association' segment of one of those 'rapid fire' things on Koffee With Karan not so long ago the host tossed this word out: Critics.
Pat came the answer, from guest Farah Khan: 'Retards'.)

Is criticism the last resort of the creative failures? If you can't do, teach, goes the saying. If you can't do, criticise. Can this be said about critics?

Quickly, let me say, I don't buy this line of argument. Like anybody else, critics work in a line, with some knowledge, some hindsight and foresight. And anybody who has this ability can be a critic--on his blog or in the column inches of the mainstream media if he/she can convince the powers that be that he/she can do the job. Or in the adda or on the beramda of one's own's house.

But is it that simple? I want to look at this debate more closely.

In any creative business, there are many parties involved. On the one hand, there are the creators of products (a film, a novel or a meal, for example) and their marketers and distributors; on the other, there are consumers (who consume the products for a pay or fee). In between, there is the media and its practitioners. They review the products (a film, a novel or a gadget), on the basis of their knowledge and taste (and some other factors that vary from individual to individual), and signal to the consumer whether the product is good or bad (in their opinion).

Or, as Charles Taylor put it in a 1999 Salon article, critics often act as the hype filters:

We don't need critics to tell us how we feel, or how to feel. But bouncing your own reactions off of a critic's can sometimes help you explain why you feel the way you do about movies. Critics have long been the only independent voice standing between moviegoers and the millions of dollars (today, hundreds of millions) studios use to promote movies. Like any advertisers out to push their product, studio publicists campaign to control public perception; that's one of the reasons for the current emphasis on the business side of movies, the blurring of the line between journalism and publicity. Movie journalism has become more and more dictated by hype.

However, in the age of instant communication (TV, internet and blogs), people are increasingly questioning the validity of this go-between tribe's existence and judgement on products. Anybody with a blog can now review a book or a film. And even some of the professionals have taken to the internet to publish their views (reviews).

Now, when a product receives unkind reviews, who does the creator blame? Where do they see vested interests sabotaging their creation? Where do they see well-known critics settling scores with the creators? Of course, they blame the mainstream media critics because what they say still matters.

Some think that certain reviewers are not knowledgeable enough to comment on their work. They question their credentials and get personal (if the reviewer gets personal), and all this tamasha goes on in the cyberspace with hundreds of people chipping in with their supportive or critical views. Fair enough for a democtaric medium like the inernet.

But this raises some interesting questions. How should a work of art (a product) be reviewed? Who should review it? And, sometimes, even the creator getting in the way, suggesting, after the fact, how it should have been reviewed. In case of a film, for example, how valid is the reviewer's criticism.

I'm writing this in the context of the debate that started with Anurag Kashyap's latest release, No Smoking. Hands down, NS is the most debated Indian film in the recent years (just look at the sheer number of posts and responses from Anurag and his readers at Passion For Cinema or at Rediff.com).

Khalid Mohammad, a well-known critic and a filmmaker himself, rubbished NS in his review in a national daily. Anurag, in anger, retaliated in these words on his blog:

Sitting in rome reading the extreme reactions and reviews.. I don’t mind taran’s review for he in his seven lives would not have understood why someone would like to make a film like this.. Khalid reviewed me and not the film and from his review all i can say is neither has he read “Quitter’s inc” nor has he seen “cat’s eye”.. he just read the comments on PFC.. and i will say to him is , “Chutiye tu retire ho ja , tera time khatam.”

The debate has also licked the two most recent commercial releases, Farah Khan's Om Shanti Om and Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Saawariya. Unlike the latter, the former received favourable reviews and trade pundits gave it a thumbs up. In defence, filmmaker Karan Johar paid a glowing tribute to Bhansali.

On this issue, a guest blogger has this to say on PFC:

Both the directors of NS & SAAWARIYA are miffed with reviewers and really disappointed with audiences..Whatsoever their genuine reasons may be regarding some of the reviewers who could be biased but both have given generalized and sweeping statements denouncing the reviewers and lamenting the dumbing down of audience tastes..I beg to differ.

I have high regards for both the directors’ capabilities..But the issue is not about talent, vision, knowledge and skills..The issue is much deeper and affects many others in Bollywood..Both have refused somehow to accept the fate of their movies..Anuraag Kashyap(AK) has still shown some courage to come down from where- he –smoked- a –classic- mild after getting the first reactions in papers and electronic media and has gingerly accepted people’s verdict but his stance is still rebellious..He has his reasons to justify himself..And he has gone on record saying henceforth he will make movies(apart from what he is his personal agenda) that even a toddler can understand..He wants to hold a mirror to the audiences and not pander to them..Fair enough..But who decides whether audience wants a mirror or a mirage?And how one can force them to see in the mirror?.. Moreover in AK’s acceptance of audience verdict one senses ( at least I do) a taste of bitterness.

On the other side Sanjay Leela Bhansali(SLB) has lots of difficulty in coming down from his arrogant pedestal..He has a kind of paranoia..He thinks his movie has been sabotaged by the reviewers..And first time people did not go to watch it only because of the reviews...

Anyway, back to the original issue. Are we seeing something changing through this debate and online chatter?

There are signs. If you think this is just an Indian issue, think again. On the larger questions of film criticism, the debate is getting global. Here's a report from Variety:

Back in March, British film historian and Guardian blogger Ronald Bergan launched a withering attack on the state of contemporary film criticism.
In a blog entry titled "What every film critic must know," Bergan complained that modern film criticism was far too subjective and not nearly analytical enough.

"Most reviewers deal primarily with the content of a film rather than the style because they don't have the necessary knowledge to do so," Bergan wrote. "This leads me to believe that film critics should have some formal education in their subject, such as a degree in film studies."

So, what are your thoughts on this? Or as the Salon piece's blurb put it, in a culture increasingly driven by hype, who matters more? The critic or you?

PS: Great minds (or wicked minds?) think alike (wink, wink). Just spotted this on rediff.com. Columnist Bolly Woods poses some more questions on the film criticism debate. Here are the relevant excerpts:

...last night I watched Ratatouille for a second time, and the words of food critic Anton Ego (in the cultivated, cultured accents of Peter O'Toole) jumped out at me. Remember?

"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little; yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read.

"But the bitter truth we critics must face is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so."

That segment in the film raised a whole heap of questions about critics and criticism -- questions I hope you can, and will, answer: What value do you place on film criticism? Do reviews help you decide which movies to watch, and which to avoid? Has a critic ever influenced you in favour of, or against, a film, and/or its maker? Has a critic ever enhanced your understanding/appreciation of a particular film?

A little break and some short notes

I got lucky to get a few days of break from work. Apart from writing some long-committed pieces, also got a chance to see a few movies. Some I have been wanting to see for quite a while now, others I saw on the insistence of family and friends. The following are not film reviews; I am just recording my impressions as I tend be quite forgetful.

I will start with Ekachai Uekrongtham's Pleasure Factory. This film, shot in Singapore's red light district Geylang, had made it to the Cannes recently. Though the reviews had not been encouraging, I wanted to see it any way. I was pleasantly surprised to see quite a few people in the theatre on a week day afternoon screeing, and the good thing was that, except for a few chuckles in the beginning, they behaved quite well. They kept quiet throughtout the screening. Not sure if they had fallen asleep but some even clapped when the film ended.

The film was shot digitally, that too at night, so it showed on the screen which was visually not pleasant. The camerawork is less than professional even though perhaps the attempt was to get a documentary feel to the product. There is hardly any story (the narrative is incoherent with a few storylines going from somewhere to no where). The actors, whatever little they were allowed to do, apart from taking their clothes off and shedding tears, have acquitted themselves honorably. Some scenes seem to have been spliced in as an after thought. Characters suddenly begin to speak to someone out of the frame in a mockumentary fashion. There are long streches of bared bodied gymnastics and silences and reveries (without thought bubbles), that is sometimes artistic but mostly boring. If the director had meant to tell the story of Geylang as a visual poem, then its poetry does not sing nor does it touch the soul of the viewer.

However, I liked the symbolism in the movie. Of beautiful fish trapped in an acquarium like the fair-skinned, tarted-up girls trapped in the flesh trade. Of vending machines symolizing the flesh market with humans as cans of flavoured drink ready to satisfy your thirst for a coin.

My disapointment stemmed not from the fact that it was "amateurish in design and look" or the story was "maladroitly assembled" but from the lack of any meat in the film. I had hoped that I would emerge from the theatre with some insights on the sex trade and what fuelled it. Perhaps the filmmaker had nothing to say on this in the first place.

During the break, my long time wish to see Kevin MacDonald's The Last King of Scotland was also fulfilled. This marvellous film, based on a novel, deservedly got Forest Whitaker (playing Uganda's dictator Idi Amin) the best actor Academy Award in 2006. The film keeps a taut focus on the relationship between a chamelion-like Amin and playboy doctor Nicholas Garrigan (played by the talented James McAvoy), without going deeper into the politics of mass killings and Amin's dictatorial regime. This film makes it to my all time favourites list.

I also watched Gautam Ghosh's Yatra. I don't know if many are even aware of this film which highlihts the dichotomy between fact and fiction, between imagination and reality, between witing a story and turning it into cinema; at the same time, the film makes a great comment on the marginalisation of literature (and of moral values) in this age of commercially sponsored film and TV. Nana Patekar, playing the lead as an award-winning writer, has given a subdued yet impressive performance. The dialogues by Rashid Iqbal are amazingly witty or caustic in a literary way. If you are a writer, you should watch this film.

I also watched Farah Khan's Om Shanti Om on its second day of release. The theatre was packed and it seemed people lived every moment of the movie. Short of dancing in the aisles, people clapped and laughed with the antics of Shah Rukh Khan.

In one sentence, the film is a tribute to the Hindi film industry and celebrates whatever Bollywood means and stands for. Farah's film even cocks a snock at Hollywood through the villainous character of Mike (Arjun Rampal).

My wife loved the movie's madness and I was oaky with it. But the film reminded me of the movies of Mr Bachchan in the 1980s (and the hysteria they created among the masses), films that were especially created for him by his pet directors, showcasing his variegated talent in a larger than life way. After that Mr Bachchan's films began to flop. I hope SRK watches out and keeps making films like Chak De. For a detailed take on this film, read Deepika's post here.

A remarkable debut

I had reviewed Tan Twan Eng's novel The Gift of Rain when I had interviewed him. It appeared in India Se (Nov 2007). Here's the full version:

The Gift of Rain
By Tan Twan Eng
Myrmidion, S$34.95

This year’s Man Booker Prize long list surprised many Booker watchers as established literary names were sidestepped to make way for new literary talents. Tan Twan Eng with his The Gift of Rain was one of them, about whom or whose debut novel hardly anyone had heard before.

Twan, a lawyer by profession, had struggled to find a publisher for his novel through his agent; but all that agony paid off with the Booker nomination.

Though the novel did not make it to the Booker shortlist, it immediately grabbed the attention of readers the world over and made it to the Amazon.com’s best seller list. Impressive for a little known work of fiction by a Malaysian writer!

And after reading it, I am asking why didn’t it make to the shortlist? I sincerely thought it was deserving of going further.

The novel is set in the Second World War time of Penang, then under British Malaya. The story is narrated by the novel’s protagonist Philip Hutton, a half-Chinese, half-English young man. Though in the novel’s opening scene, we meet a much older Philip who welcomes an old Japanese lady to his house, and the meeting leads to the opening of the floodgates of his memory.

As the masterful narrative unfolds, we are taken around Penang with a cast of exceptionally etched out characters who stay with us long after we have finished reading the last sentence. In the novel, the mystical Penang, with all its geography, architecture, beaches, temples, rainforests, sounds and smells, itself comes across as a solid character.

In the heart of the narrative lies the friendship between the 16-year old Philip and a much older Japanese diplomat, Hayato Endo, who comes to Penang with a special mission. The friendship flourishes into the relationship of master and disciple when Philip starts learning aikido from Endo.

Like all relationships in life, this too exacts a price and both Philip and Endo have to pay that price in a manner that can only haunt and overwhelm the reader. The values of love and friendship and the steadfast courage in the face of betrayal and barbarism -- all such human conditions have been deeply and marvelously explored in the mesmerizing weave of a narrative.

Twan not just impresses you with his wisdom and grace in writing, it is his powerful sense of aesthetic description and acute observation, in splendidly crafted metaphors and epithets that make you sit up and intensely enjoy the work. Sample this: “It was a balmy night, the sea giving off a metallic sheen, the sky starless, an unending sheet of black velvet.” Almost every paragraph is embellished with such beautifully chiseled sentences.

Once you start reading, Twan’s words will fascinate you. It is his writing power that has turned the story of a friendship into sort of a mythic narrative. This is definitely one of the most powerful debuts in recent years which makes a lot of contemporary fiction seem incredibly shallow in comparison.

A gifted writer

I had interviewed Malaysian novelist, Tan Twan Eng, sometime ago for India Se. I am reproducing the full interview here for your reading pleasure. Hope you enjoy reading it.

You are a lawyer by profession. How did you decide to become a writer? Were you inspired by some other writers or you genuinely felt that you had something to express?

I’ve always wanted to be a writer since I began reading children’s books at the age of four or five, without realising how difficult it is to write. But as I grew older I became aware that it’s almost impossible to make a living from it, and so I decided to read Law when the time came to choose a career. I don’t regret it, because it’s given me an awareness of the importance of writing with clarity, and it’s made me a more disciplined writer. As I used to be an intellectual property lawyer, it’s also been useful whenever I have to read the publisher’s contracts.

Some of the books I’ve read were so awful that I often told myself, ‘I can do much better than this.’ But I was also galvanised into action by some writers who took my breath away with their writing: Salman Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro, Andre Brink, Edmund White, Anthony Burgess, Vladimir Nabokov. Reading these authors made me realise how unlimited, varied and vibrant the world of the imagination could be.

When did you start to think of writing The Gift of Rain? What motivations were at work?

I started to seriously think of writing a book when I was doing my Masters in Shipping Law in Cape Town, in 2003. At that point I had in mind of writing a massive history of Malaya and Malaysia from the late 18th century to present day. I soon realised I had taken on a heavy load and became dispirited about ever completing it. Then one day I decided I would take two of the minor characters from this work and write a much shorter novel about them. I told myself if I could finish this shorter novel, it would give me a strong boost of confidence to tackle the larger work. To my surprise this originally shorter novel which became The Gift of Rain soon grew to the size it is now.

In many ways, The Gift of Rain is a testament to the island of Penang, to what is fast disappearing: the beautiful and elaborate architecture from the 1900s, which combined Anglo-Indian elements with local Malay and Peranakan and Chinese influences. Such a combination has resulted in buildings which are unique and which should be protected – shophouses, schools, mansions, townhouses and municipal buildings. Unfortunately, they are being torn down to make way for modern apartment blocks, shopping malls and coffee shops.

I wanted to record the old way of life in Penang before it all faded away, to capture that wonderful, nostalgic atmosphere that is found only on this island.

As I’m interested in the meeting of Western and Eastern thoughts and philosophies, The Gift of Rain is also an exploration of these issues – I wanted to see how different and yet similar they are.

But most of all, I wanted to tell a strong, emotionally-resonant story that would remain lodged in the reader’s memory for the rest of his or her life.

Did you always imagine setting your novel in the Second World War era? And, was it a difficult novel to write as it deals with a historical time period?

There was never any question that The Gift of Rain would be set around and during the Second World War. It is such a fertile period for a writer: the world was changing, painfully, with great uncertainty and chaos. Something of the old order was coming to an end, and no one then knew what was going to replace it.

It wasn’t a difficult novel to write from that aspect. I’ve always been a history buff and I’ve been collecting books on that era since I was a teenager. I know my history and it was merely a question of going back to the materials to reconfirm a particular fact.

As I was living in South Africa at that time and most of my books were in Malaysia, I owe my mother a debt of gratitude for her patience in answering my questions I’d sent via email. I often asked her to get a particular book from my shelf, open it to a particular chapter, and tell me if I had gotten a name or a date correct.

The West expects a certain kind of writing or certain elements in a work of fiction from writers coming from the East. Did this consideration cross your mind while you were penning your novel?
No, I wrote with a wonderful lack of self-imposed restrictions. That’s always the case with a first novel, I feel, this total freedom – beginner-writers have no awareness of the rules they may be breaking, and that’s when truly original and exciting art is created. I was aware that there were certain aspects of lifestyle or custom which I had to explain to a reader who is unfamiliar with this part of the world, and I had to find a balance to ensure that my clarifications would not be tedious to a reader who is completely familiar with the East. This was the hardest part of writing The Gift of Rain, finding this balance.

There is also a strong element of subversion to The Gift of Rain – One of my goals when I began writing was to subvert the expectations of readers, especially readers in Asia, who’ve grown up with the same plot-structures in story-telling as I have.

Being a first time novelist, how was the journey from writing to publication to Booker nomination? Did you feel overly frustrated or overly elated at any point of time?

The Gift of Rain encountered difficulties in obtaining a publisher. The major publishing houses sent back positive comments (barring one or two which said it was dull and boring!) but the editorial teams had to get feedback from the sales teams, and quite often it was these sales teams which said The Gift of Rain would be difficult to market. I became doubtful if it’d ever be published and here credit must go to my agent, who’s an amazing woman. She’s been in the business for 20 years and she’s always been unwavering in her faith. “Don’t worry,” she’d always tell me. “I’ve never been wrong. It’ll be published.” In the meantime she told me to start work on my second novel. It’s funny, because on the day the nominations were announced, my agent had phone calls from publishers saying, “You were right!” I was glad that her faith in me had been paid off, had been vindicated.

Did you ever imagine that your debut work will make it to the Booker Long list? How did you feel when you got the news?

I never imagined it would make it to the Man Booker Long List, although like many authors I had hopes of that happening! Which author doesn’t? When I was informed that The Gift of Rain was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, I was naturally stunned, elated and also fearful. I was fearful of the sudden focus of attention to my novel, I was fearful of the weight of expectation this would bring. But I was also grateful that The Gift of Rain would now be taken to a larger, worldwide audience of discerning book-lovers. It had been doing well even in the two months before the announcement of the Longlist, when it went all the way up to No. 41 on the amazon.co.uk bestseller list. Since then it’s been hovering in the Top 100, occasionally falling to the 500s. But with the news of the longlisting the sales have risen tremendously. It’s now going to be translated into Italian, Greek, and, surprisingly, Serbian.

It was also an incredible honour to be on the Longlist together with established authors like Ian McEwan. In fact the publisher is the youngest publisher ever to have a novel nominated in the history of the Booker Prize. The first thing I did was to send an email to thank my agent for her support.

I was not at home the night the announcement was issued but when I got back and checked my e-mail, I had a slew of mails from my agent and publisher. They had kindly put “CONGRATULATIONS!” on the subject heading. And since I wasn’t expecting a baby at that stage, I knew I had been nominated before I even opened the mails. For the first time in my life I could not fall asleep that night. Quite bizarre, actually. So at 3 a.m. I decided to get up from bed and begin answering the emails which had come in from friends and family.

A few years back, it was Tash Aw in the Booker long list. This year, it’s you. Do you think it is a sign that Malaysians writing in English have started to make their mark?

I think Tash Aw’s Booker nomination was in 2004 or 2005, wasn’t it? But yes, I think it’s a sign that Malaysians are starting to make their mark in the literary world. It’s exciting, but we face such strong competition from writers around the world. Especially India! Which regularly produces writers of impressive calibre.

What’s your next project going to be? Another novel or a collection of short stories?

My next project will be a novel set in Malaya after the war. I am just starting to write some short stories. It’s difficult for me to write short stories since I hardly ever read them. I prefer the extended relationship and commitment a novel requires!

Aside from writing, I will be speaking at the Singapore Writers’ Festival in December this year, the Perth Writers’ Festival early next year, and also the Asian Man Booker Festival in Hong Kong thereafter. I enjoy these festivals because I get to listen to feedback from readers of The Gift of Rain from so many places.

Impressions from a reading

I had been looking forward to Rana Dasgupta's reading ever since Deepika had informed me about it. Rana too was kind enough to drop me an email reminding me of the event. There was no way I could have given it a miss, even though I was working on that day.

Why was I interested in Rana Dasgupta?

To be frank, I have not read his debut novel, Tokyo Cancelled except in snatches. Like many other good novels, it lies unread in my list of must-read novels.

Was it the celebrity value then? The star power of a novelist? Maybe not. The star power of a novelist, seeing and listening to a writer about whom one had only read in the media and talked amongst friends, has got diluted over the years. He is among the dozens of young novelists that India produces on a regular basis year after year. He is not a Naipaul or a Rushdie, with many works and numerous awards under his belt. He has so far written only one novel. So why was I interested?

Rana is not a run of the mill author, I believed instinctively (unlike so many other young Indian writers crowding the scene today), that's why. I carried this impression after reading some of his pieces that appeared in newspapers and are available on his blog. Chucking a well-paying marketing job and globe-trotting lifestyle for the dead calm of a writerly life in Delhi is a gutsy decision for anyone to take. Rana had done that, and that impresses me most about him. "To decide to become a writer was an arrogant decision," he said during the one hour plus talk. There it is. I like this kind of stuff, when a writer says these kind of things, because when one talks like that, one knows that here is a man who understands what it means to be a writer, to decide to be a writer which comes with a certain obligation to the calling. That kind of seriousness in a writer is what impresses me most.

It took Naipaul five books to writer whenceupon he became sure of the fact that he had actually become a writer. To believe that you have become a writer, that you are a writer, is a big leap of faith. It is not a hollow pronouncement. It comes with certain givens that you have to respect and live with. That is very important to realise and I believed Rana was that kind of a Writer, a writer with a capital W.

Whatever passages Rana read from his forthcoming novel, tentatively called "Half Life" (a term taken from atomic physics, bears no connection to Naipaul's Half a Life), were mesmerising to say the least. In the reading, a retired, over 100-years-old, nearly blind methusaleh in Bulgaria takes in the view of the city from his window. The tapestry of images and sounds that Rana has woven is marvellous and reminded me of the prose of Borges, Marquez and Coetzee. It was sheer pleasure to hear him read those passages.

During the talk, peppered with innocuous yet perceptive questions from some of the students, Rana talked about many things. Why he decided to settle down in Delhi (love, conversations with a set of creatively-inclined friends), why did he name his novel Tokyo Cancelled (he didn't and it could have been NY Cancelled or London Cancelled but he wanted to shift the focus to an Asian setting for his tale of globalisation), how cinematic images inform his sense of setting a scene in his works (he mentioned a little known movie that showed New York's highways and bridges completely empty of people or vehicles, I forgot the name of the film), how he admires the short stories of Roald Dahl (when a kid asked him about his fav children's author) and what he was trying to do in his next novel (Half Life), due out in early 2009.

For a view from the other side of the table, read Deepika Shetty's post on the event. You will enjoy reading it.

On Bergman

There is this saying in Hindi: Yeh moonh aur masoor ki daal!

I was reminded of it when I saw my interview on Ingmar Bergman in Sarah Buck's column in Academia. More than anything else, it was an honour to talk about Bergman who will be remembered as one of the towering figures in international cinema.

You can read the interview here.

If you have something to say about it, please drop me a line.

Bollywood Hollywired!

A few years ago, India's crossover queen Aishwarya Rai made it to the cover of the Time magazine. In India, it was then considered a nod to Bollywood's emerging international clout.

But recently, when Newsweek put Ronnie Screwala, a relatively newcomer Bollywood producer, on its cover, it signalled the marking of a new faultline in the world of entertainment business. More than a nod, it was a screaming acknowledgement that Bollywood had remarkably arrived on the international entertainment scene. It was time Hollywood, the world's richest and most influential film industry, took its minuscule contender, Bollywood, the world's largest producer of films, seriously!

On the other side, the news has brought a fresh bout of enthusiasm and excitement to Bollywood's upcoming directors, especially those who do not belong to the established film production houses such as Yashraj Films (Run by veteran filmmaker Yash Chopra and his son Aditya Chopra who produced India's biggest blockbuster ever, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge), Dharma Productions (of Karan Johar of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Kahbhi Khushi Kabhi Gham fame) or Factory (of filmmaker Ramgopal Varma, the maker of hits such as Satya and Sarkar), just to name a few.

Emerging Bollywood writer and director Anurag Kashyap (Black Friday, 2007; No Smoking, 2007) cried on his blog: "Believe me, there is going to be a change in order in this Hindi film industry. There definitely is a new wave, I have seen it coming, the world is also seeing it which is why Ronnie Screwwala is on the cover of NEWSWEEK and not Aishwarya Rai or Yashraj or Amitabh Bachchan."

For upcoming filmmakers like Anurag, entry of Hollywood symbolises the end of the tyranny of the status quo in Bollywood, for Bollywood's new blood wants an end of the dominance of the few "mom-and-pop" variety of filmmaking houses in the Hindi film industry.

Aiding them in this endeavour are the Hollywood studios. Bollywood filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt once said that Bollywood is connected to Hollywood by some invisible umbilical cord. He was talking in terms of Hollywood's influence on Bollywood. Well, in the new century, the umbilical cord is becoming increasingly visible. And there are some cold reasons for this.

Bollywood has been seeing domestic and foreign boom in its reach and revenues. In 2006, India's film business grossed about $2 billion, up from $1.5 billion in 2004, reported The Newsweek. Revenue will leap to more than $4 billion over the next five years, forecasts PricewaterhouseCoopers. Bollywood’s gain in the overseas market is stupendous. Some Indian producers are realizing up to 30% of their total earnings from the overseas market. In Europe, Bollywood has increasingly taken the centrestage, getting quite popular in Germany, Poland, Russia, and England. The USA, Canada and UK are the major export destinations. Other territories such as Japan, South Africa, Mauritius, Australia, New Zealand and the Middle East are fast becoming important markets for Indian films.

The game is getting global, the pie is increasing but Hollywood is not getting any of it.

For despite its presence for a long time, Hollywood could not increase its box office share in India's entertainment sector. In fact, Hollywood's market share on India's box office has been swinging between 5 and 8%. The only way it can increase its box office profits in India, they reckoned, is through financing Bollywood films. So, if you can't beat them, join them seems to be the idea behind this jockeying. That's why all these Hollywood giants are flocking to Bollywood.

But why now?

"Apart from the business angle which is the main angle," says Prakash Jha, a veteran Bollywood director and producer (Gangajal, 2001 and Apaharan, 2005), explaining the factors that is drawing Hollywood studios to Bollywood, "the Hollywood studios are also sort of trying to look at the consolidation of Indian production and distribution outlets, corporatisation and some kind of fiscal discipline. They are now surer of taking advantage of this."

With 11,000 domestic screens and millions of eager eyeballs, it is this whopping domestic and foreign success of Bollywood that is inspiring its filmmakers to thing big, think global. So, buyoed by Bollywood's success, when Indian filmmakers like Screwala start gunning for even Hollywood, the world takes note of them. It is remarkable that The Newsweek dubbed Indian film producer Ronnie Screwvala as "the front runner in the race to become Bollywood's Jack Warner—the man who began the transformation of parochial U.S. cinema into its modern global form." Screwvala, the man behind the super hit Rang De Basanti (2006), produced Mira Nair-directed The Namesake, and is now coproducing The Happening, a new sci-fi thriller directed by M. Night Shyamalan with a budget of $57 million. "Our ambition is to be a global Indian entertainment company—there's no reason we can't make big-budget Hollywood movies, too," Screwvala told The Newsweek.

Srewwala's rise has been spectacular. An impressed Disney has bought a 15 percent stake in his UTV for $14 million in 2006. UTV already has forged coproduction deals with Fox Searchlight and Sony Pictures, as well as with Will Smith's Overbrook Entertainment.

But other players are also getting into the game in a big way. Sony Picture was the first to step in and its first film Saawariya, directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali is releasing in November during Diwali. Viacom has inked a 50-50 joint venture deal with Raghav Bahl, head of Network 18. The venture, called Viacom 18, will produce and distribute TV shows, digital media and (eventually) 10 to 12 movies a year. Together, they have raised $112 million from a London Stock Exchange flotation. Also, three Indian studios held IPOs in London this year, raising a combined $220 million.

Before Viacom jumped into the fray, Disney made a deal with Yash Raj Films in June to take both companies into India's growing CGI animation business. The deal is to make one cartoon film budgeted at $4 million-$10 million each year.

The latest Hollywood studio to gamble on the Bollywood game is, as Variety recently reported, Warner Bros. It is backing its first India production, the action comedy Made in China, to be directed by Nikhil Advani. At a budget of US$12 million, it will be the most expensive Bollywood film yet.

So, where would Bollywood go from here? Will it affect the nature of Bollywood's narratives that is the hallmark of Hindi films? "I don't think the variety of films is likely to change very much," says Jha.

Will then Hollywood's entry in Bollywood shake up the established production houses in Mumbai?

Jha does not think so. "No, they will continue to dominate because most of the times these collaborations would be with these corporate houses. Sanjay Leela Bhansali is collaborating with Sony Pictures. He's got a brand which is acceptable to the western market. Yash Chopra is also collaborating with them for animation films and multiple products. So, collaborations with big Indian production houses are bound to happen."

Unlike Kashyap, Jha is not sure if Hollywood studios will promote new talent in Bollywood. "The new talent is getting promoted by the India corporate houses anyway," he told Today. "You are seeing Percept Pictures or Adlab Films or Reliance Entertainment are working both with tried hands and also the new hands. All kinds of films are being made because now there are possibilities of exhibiting these films in terms of limited shows in multiplexes. That was the sort of thing which was not available previously."

Agrees Gitesh Pandya, the editor of United States-based BoxofficeGuru.com and a film commentator on CNN: “As more companies from both countries tie up and make films together, we will probably see bigger and better films, especially if the projects involve the most talented filmmakers. New filmmakers will have more opportunities, but those who have been making films for generations will still have their place in the business.”

Whatever way the ball swings, it is great time for Bollywood filmmakers, for they would make hay (and some good movies too) while the sun shines. And most importantly, Bollywood might not barter its spicy grand narrative style for Hollywood’s money. Who can put it better than the king of Bollywood Shah Rukh Khan himself: “My point is I do not want your money. I want your knowledge and technology. I am glad Sony, Columbia and Warner are all here. I like the tie up Yashraj has done with Walt Disney for animation. You tell me how to do it and I will tell my own story. I would like to collaborate with scriptwriters from there. They speak the international language better than we do. I would like to learn that. But the story would be mine and I would shoot it the way I want to.” (Outlook, Oct 22).

An edited version of this article appeared in The Weekend Today (Oct 27).

The dark side of a shining India

These days, a political storm is blowing in India.

The recent Tehelka expose on the Post-Godhra riots in Gujarat is the reason behind this storm. In his editorial, Tehelka's editor Tarun Tejpal asks us to be afraid:

Of the many things that are uniquely appalling about Gujarat 2002, three are particularly disturbing. The first that the genocidal killings took place in the heart of urban India in an era of saturation media coverage — television, print, web — and not under the cloak of secrecy in an unreachable place. The second that the men who presided over the carnage were soon after elected to power not despite their crimes but seemingly precisely because of them (making a mockery of the idea of the inevitable morality of the collective). And finally — as TEHELKA’s investigation shows — the fact that there continues to be no trace of remorse, no sign of penitence for the blood-on-the-hands that — if Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky are to be believed — is supposed to haunt men to their very graves.

Like Germany and Italy once, Gujarat begs many questions. How do a non-militant people suddenly acquire a bloodthirsty instinct? Does affluence not diminish the impulse to savagery? Does education not diminish the impulse to bigotry? Do the much-vaunted tenets of classical Hinduism not diminish the impulse to cruelty? If tolerance and wisdom will not flourish in a garden of well-being and learning, in the very land of Mahatma Gandhi, then is there any hope for these things at all?

I also read this piece of news on NDTV.com, which is relevant, but not directly related to the political issue at hand. It is about the effectiveness of affirmative action in India or its lack thereof. I had first seen this information by the researchers of Princeton University who had written a letter in The Economist last week. Here's the news from NDTV:

The private sectors' refrain that affirmative action is good enough may not stand now. Fresh studies have proved that there is discrimination in employment.

It was subject of much dispute - many had been saying it, others contesting it. On Friday, a study was released by the Indian Institute of Dalit Studies in collaboration with Princeton University.

The study was conducted against 548 job advertisements with 4808 applicants over 66 weeks, across five metros.

It reveals that in fact a person's caste and religion could be a hindrance in getting a job, despite equal qualification.

The study says that a dalit had 60 per cent less chances of being called for an interview, and a Muslim had 30 per cent less, as against their higher caste peers.

I have many friends from India's minority community who work and live abroad and they don't want to go back to a 'shining' India so readily. You can see why. It is sad but true and I hope things change fast in my country so that people of all faiths feel safe and secure and participate in its historic moment of progress with equal measure.

Why are Hollywood movies so bad?

American film scholar Prof Ray Carney on the Hollywood system of filmmaking:

Why are Hollywood movies so bad? The best way to answer the question is simply to take you behind the scenes on a quick cook's tour of how movies are really made. I warn you. It's not a pretty picture.

The first thing you never want to forget about the movies in that–first , last and always–they are business deals put together to make a quick buck. To say the obvious, the goal is to take $7.50 out of as many pockets as possible. Everything is directed to that interest.

There was an interview in the last Saturday's Globe with Sydney Lumet that more or less sums up the current state of the art.

Lumet's comments are all the more telling in that they don't come from some wild-eyed radical, but from the ultimate Hollywood insider. Lumet has been making successful, money-making Hollywood movies for more than 40 years.

On the other hand, of course a Stalin movie would never really be made precisely because it would be controversial and would alienate blocks of viewers, and jeopardize profits.

What Hollywood is in favor of is not controversy, but pseudo-controversy. On the one hand, you want people to think that your movie is really new and different and controversial; but on the other, you don't want to actually create a disturbance. You don't want to force viewers really to have to think or to learn something. If you are dealing with politics in particular, the formula involves taking a topical issue–Watergate, Vietnam, the Holocaust–but making sure that it is situated at a certain distance from the average viewer's experience or knowledge.

Hollywood movies take our common-sense understandings and sell them back to us, with a slight change of clothes. It's a little like one of those MacDonald's Happy Meal promotions. You add a new spice or condiment or action figure to deep people's interest, but basically you give them the same fast food over and over again.

In terms of the production of these films, timidity is built into the system at every level. Movies originate as "deals"–business arrangements hashed out between producers, directors, writers, and a group of stars, in which the movie itself becomes an almost incidental after-thought: The real goal of each of the parties is to protect his or her financial interest, and to maximize the final product's "bankability."

In the service of doing that, the overriding goal is to secure a name star at any cost. When I talk to beginning directors, it's usually the first story they tell me: How they took their first script to a studio–sometimes a marvelous script–and were told the project could only get a green light if a particular "name" actor plays the lead–if Johnny Depp or Tom Hanks or Tom Cruise can be persuaded to do it–no matter how ludicrously inappropriate that particular choice might be for the role.

Then once a real "star" signs on to a production, the dynamics of the deal allow the star to demand as many rewrites as he or she wants until they are happy with the script.

If this interests you, you should read the entire article/talk script.

Bollywood, on the other hand, is not much different.

Bombay's hottest director Anurag Kashyap wrote this on Bollywood way back in 2004:

Things have changed for Indian cinema. Foreign funding is on its way here. Venture capitalists are squeezing in through the door. Everyone from Bandra to Jogeshwari is making the next 'crossover' film. (If that's not enough, now there's even a company called Crossover!) Everyone's speculating as to who's the tallest poppy in the field.

Do we really believe all of this? We certainly seem to. But then why are our films not working? Where is all the insane amount of money pumped into the industry going? Why is everybody adding mysterious alphabets to their names? When successful cinema is all about the beauty of the story being told, then why are Mr 'Numerology' Jumani and Sunita 'Tarot' Menon key decisive factors in the success of our films?

Furthermore, he adds something that instantly links up with the Hollywood scenario described above by Ray:

Every time I, as a filmmaker, go to a producer with my script, he asks me, before so much as laying a finger on the document, 'Who is the star?' Directors who don't have a single 'good' film (or a 'successful' one for that matter, as the two are not synonymous in this country) to their credit are heading corporates, taking decisions on how films should and shouldn't be made. They are so plum in their newfound job security that they don't take a decision until and unless it is everyone's decision. So that if they fail, everyone is responsible, not just them.

One head might roll. A bunch of heads generally gets a second chance!

Anurag's No Smoking is releasing today in India. Writes The Guardian: "While a slack pace, unsettled internal logic and a goofy subplot undo much of director Kashyap's hard work, the film has a slick look. If and when Bollywood does deliver a crossover hit, it's likely this film-maker will be behind it."

In a recent rediff.com interview, the Black Friday and No smoking director also blames the Indian film journalists for the poor film appreciation culture in India:

No journalist in India watches cinema, unlike film journalists abroad. Go to a film festival, you see so many journalists there.

Indian journalists don't watch cinema, they only cover gossip. That is why nobody has a clue about cinema. They don't even know what questions to ask. They ask the same questions: 'What is John doing? What is Ayesha doing?'

The problem with this country is its media that covers cinema. Our cinema is immature. Our media is very immature. Our critics are worse than our filmmakers. Our film journalism is the worst in the world. Barring a few critics, nobody has a clue what they are talking about.

This is exactly what I like about Carver's stories

From James Lasdun writing in The Guardian on the Raymond Carver's-widow-pressing-to-have-his unedited-stories-published controversy:

Like most people interested in the form, I was knocked out by these stories when I first read them, and I continue to reread them frequently with undiminished pleasure. I like their chaste preference of action, dialogue and curtly objective description, over the kind of ruminative authorial guff that blurs and sinks the work of so many other short story writers. I love the dead-on accuracy of what they choose to tell, and the uncompromising silence they maintain on what they choose not to. The image of a man sitting with the entire contents of his house out on the lawn becomes a totally fresh way of conveying the hurt of a broken marriage in Why Don't You Dance? About the marriage itself you learn nothing - but this too, this disciplined reticence, feeds its disturbing energies back into the situation.

Anne Enright, Mohsin Hamid and Rana Dasgupta

So, finally, the verdict is out. To the disappointment of many, Anne Enright's novel, The Gathering, has won this year's Booker:

Irish writer Anne Enright won the Man Booker fiction prize for "The Gathering," an uncompromising portrait of a troubled family that its author called the literary equivalent of a Hollywood weepie.

Enright had been considered a long-shot to take Britain's most prestigious, and contentious, literary trophy.

The prize, which carries a cheque for 50,000 pounds (US$100,000; ?75,000), was awarded during a ceremony last evening at London's medieval Guildhall.

She is the second Irish writer to win the prize in the past three years, after John Banville's "The Sea" in 2005.

"The Gathering" is a family epic set in England and Ireland, in which a brother's suicide prompts 39-year-old Veronica Hegarty to probe her family's troubled, tangled history.

Enright said people looking for a cheery read should not pick up her book.

Sharon has done a good job of collecting some interesting viewpoints, adding her own insights on this issue. Worth a read.

I can't offer my opinion on this (how am I feeling?) as I haven't read Enright's novel (but I would want to; her novel's theme appeals to me). But why to spoil her day? Three cheers for Enright!

A note from The Guardian:

Disappointed though he will doubtless be, Ian McEwan can at least take comfort from his incredibly healthy sales. On Chesil Beach is far outselling the other books on the shortlist combined (not to mention the surge of sales for Atonement in the wake of Joe Wright's film). Sales figures of the other books, by contrast, exemplify the tough climate for literary fiction in the marketplace - and Enright's book has so far shifted just 3,253 copies. The latest figures from Nielsen BookScan show that the McEwan has sold a total of 120,362; Nicola Barker's Darkmans, 11,097; Mister Pip, 5,170; Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist 4,425, and Indra Sinha's Animal's People 2,589.

Indians might be disappointed too as Indira Sinha's novel, Animal's People, was also on the shortlist. But I have no idea how many Indians were rooting for her. I read an interesting review of her work in The Time recently.

Coming back to the number of books sold from the Booker shortlist, here's an interesting thought. How can the sale of a book (a novel nominated for this year’s Booker) in UK and USA reflect the culture of those nations? Believe it or not, it is a study in contrast. The NYT did a story on this. Read it here:

WHEN Mohsin Hamid embarked on an 18-city book tour across the United States, he found readers receptive to his latest novel. It is the story of a young Pakistani Princeton graduate who feels empathy with America, but becomes so disillusioned by the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks that he packs up and returns home to the city of Lahore.

The response was so strong that Mr. Hamid, 36, with only one previous novel, sold close to 100,000 copies of "The Reluctant Fundamentalist", enough to propel the book, a work of more literary tone than popular flavor, onto the New York Times best-seller list last spring.

Now Mr. Hamid is the center of literary attention in Britain, where the novel is on the short list for the Man Booker Prize to be announced Tuesday.

But while his novel has received critical acclaim in Britain, home to nearly two million Muslims, the commercial reception has been cooler. In a country where people are worried about what has become known as "the enemy within", sales of a novel that speaks unnervingly to fear and disquiet about Muslims have yet to reach more than several thousand.

To Mr. Hamid, the contrast is telling of the difference between the United States, and its embrace of newcomers, and Europe, particularly Britain, where immigrants can forever, it seems, be made to feel like outsiders.

Finally, here's a call for a lit event in Singapore. My friend Deepika sends me this news. Please spread it far and wide and do attend if you happen to be in Singapore:

A READING BY RANA DASGUPTA
ON SATURDAY, 3rd NOVEMBER
FROM 3pm-4pm
AT LITTLE BALI, 9, LOCK ROAD, GILLMAN VILLAGE
PH: 6473-6763

An act of faith

To be a writer or an artist or a creater of anything with an aesthetic value attached to it is an act of faith. You just have to do it regardless of the result. You do it because you love doing it.

My conviction in this line of thought got reconfirmed when I read this account of a writer/journalist covering this year's Frankfurt Book Fair.

Carole Cadwalladr likens publishing to "a carnage", if I haven't misread it (doubts always linger in my head). Though the article makes a central reference to the crisis at the UK's literary agency, PFD, the general impression that an aspiring writer may get from it is one of lust, caution. I am using lust here in the sense of lust for getting published, as in a lust for life. Confusing? Forgive me if I sound so. Read it for yourself to see what I mean by saying this.

Carole writes in her report, 'It's carnage ...' Inside the genteel world of books:

Oh, the writers. What becomes abundantly clear from Frankfurt is that if you've got a book inside, it's really not a bad idea to keep it there. Why does anybody even want to be a writer? And I say that as one. Two weeks ago the BBC reported that it came top in a survey of the nation's dream jobs. I end up ranting about this at the Bloomsbury stand, and Alexandra Pringle, the editor-in-chief of Bloomsbury, rants with me.

'I know!' she says, 'It's mad. It's a horrible job. It doesn't pay well. It's lonely. It's depression-inducing. It's frustrating. There's no fun to be had. But everyone has a drive to be a writer. And everyone thinks they can do it.

'Whereas to be one is some sort of mental derangement! They're all bonkers. When my writers say I could earn more money at the till at Sainsbury's, I say, well go and do it. There's no point writing unless you feel that you have to do it. You have to really want to do it and to be prepared to suffer to do it. Or else you really might as well go and work on the till at Sainsbury.'

Are you hooked? Getting gooseflesh? Well, good. Then read on:

Patrick Janson-Smith, whom I find in the agents' centre looking rather gloomy, says: 'You look around and you think the world needs another book like it needs a hole in the head.' I know Patrick because he used to be the head of Transworld, and the publisher whose signature is on my contract. He's also one of the highest-profile publishers in recent years to jump ship and become an agent.

'If you're not in a three-for-two or Richard & Judy, forget it,' he says. 'There's no point. If you ask me, publishing is in a mess.'

Even in the last two years, he says, fiction has got tougher and tougher. 'The retail side, Borders and Tesco have squeezed them so much that they've become completely risk-averse. It really is all down to what sales and marketing think these days. And, frankly, there's no point even selling to a publisher if they can't get enthusiastic about it - you might as well chuck it in the bin.'

But you can't let it get to you. Or maybe here I mean me. Alexandra Pringle is right about the madness, I think. Fiction-writing is just not a logical thing to do, so you've got to either get on with it and not moan about it, or head off to Sainsbury's.

If you haven't read this piece, read it for refreshed instruction on this game or for some juicy snippets from the world of publishing. There are some good ones there.

And here's a piece of advice too: 'No writer should ever go to Frankfurt. It's soul-destroying. You see writers being traded like pork bellies.'

So the thing is, as Carole says, if you want to do something, do it for love. You can never fail, can you?

PS: Got this bit from Outlook. Hope it makes some sense to you, dovetailing the above post, as it did to me.

India-born Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People may have made it to the Booker shortlist, but a recent UK survey gives him a more dubious distinction. Sinha’s book about the Bhopal disaster is the slowest-selling novel on the Booker shortlist: it has sold only 1,189 copies, which won’t even get him into the Indian bestsellers’ list. But the good news: it’s sold five times better than before he got into the shortlist (231 copies).

You think you are an artist?

Do you care about Ingmar Bergman's work?

Even if you don't (or you don't care about cinema at all), here's something that the great Swedish filmmaker has said on the subject of art, films and craftsmanship, that should make every artist stop in his trail for a while and ask himself/herself some relevant questions:

On film and craftsmanship…what’s creativity?

My films involve good craftsmanship. I am conscientious, industrious and extremely careful. I do my work for everyday purposes and not for eternity; and my pride is the pride of a good craftsman.

Yet I know that what I tell myself is self-deception and an incessant anxiety calls out to me: What have you done that will endure? Is there a single metre in any one of your films that will mean something for the future, one single line, one single situation that is completely and absolutely real?

And with the sincere person's deep-rooted inclination to lie I must answer; I do not know, but I think so.

On art and worship

Regardless of my own beliefs and my own doubts, which are completely without importance in this connection, it is my opinion that art lost its creative urge the moment it was separated from worship. It severed the umbilical cord and lives its own sterile life, generating and degeneration itself. The individual has become the highest form and greatest bane of artistic creation. Creative unity and humble anonymity are forgotten and buried relics without significance or meaning. The smallest cuts and moral pains of the ego are examined under the microscope as if they were of eternal importance.

Thus we finally gather in one large pen, where we stand and bleat about our loneliness without listening to each other and without realising that we are smothering each other to death. The individualists stare into each other's eyes and yet deny the existence of each other, and cry out into the darkness without once receiving the healing power of communal happiness. We are so affected by our own walking in circles, so limited by our own anxiety that we can no longer distinguish between the true and the false, between the gangster's ideas and pure ideals.

If thus I am asked what I should like to be the general purpose for my films, I would reply that I want to be one of the artists in the cathedral on the great plain. I want to make a dragon's head, an angel or a devil - or perhaps a saint - out of stone. It does not matter which, it is the feeling of contentment that matters. Regardless whether I believe or not, regardless whether I am a Christian or not, I play my part at the collective building or cathedral. For I am an artist and a craftsman; and I know how to chisel stone into faces and figures.

I never need to concern myself about present opinion or the judgment of the posterity. I am a name which has not been recorded anywhere and which will disappear when I myself disappear; but a little part of me will live on in the triumphant masterwork of the anonymous craftsmen. A dragon, a devil, or perhaps a saint, it does not matter which.

For the latter quote, I think if you watch Bergman's video interview (below), he says he does not exactly see art and worship related with an umbilical cord but he still insists on the utilitarian objectives of cinema (art).

What Ails the Short Story?

Just as I was trying to absorb the sadness at the announcement of Silverfish New Writing's ceasing of publication, I stumbled across this piece on the state of short stories in the US by Stephen King.

In the beginning of the quote, King says something that I have been telling to anyone who cares to listen to me. I don't know anybody who reads short stories these days except for other writers, wannabe writers or critics. And has it affected the way short stories are being written these days? Yes, it has. Read what King has to say on this:

What’s not so good is that writers write for whatever audience is left. In too many cases, that audience happens to consist of other writers and would-be writers who are reading the various literary magazines (and The New Yorker, of course, the holy grail of the young fiction writer) not to be entertained but to get an idea of what sells there. And this kind of reading isn’t real reading, the kind where you just can’t wait to find out what happens next (think “Youth,” by Joseph Conrad, or “Big Blonde,” by Dorothy Parker). It’s more like copping-a-feel reading. There’s something yucky about it.

Last year, I read scores of stories that felt ... not quite dead on the page, I won’t go that far, but airless, somehow, and self-referring. These stories felt show-offy rather than entertaining, self-important rather than interesting, guarded and self-conscious rather than gloriously open, and worst of all, written for editors and teachers rather than for readers. The chief reason for all this, I think, is that bottom shelf. It’s tough for writers to write (and editors to edit) when faced with a shrinking audience. Once, in the days of the old Saturday Evening Post, short fiction was a stadium act; now it can barely fill a coffeehouse and often performs in the company of nothing more than an acoustic guitar and a mouth organ. If the stories felt airless, why not? When circulation falters, the air in the room gets stale.

September woes

I generally avoid writing about my personal life in my blog but this time I think it is too relevant to ignore. This will also help clarify, just in case, dear friends, you wondered why I wasn't updating my blog.

By the way, I admire the courage and frankness of those bloggers who write beautiful details about their personal life in their blogs. I am a little shy in these matters.

Is everything all right? It was not all right but now it is. Thank God.

My daughter Zara had joined a child care centre in late August and on the 4th day itself she came home with fever. We gave her paracetamol and the fever went away over the weekend. But it came back with a vengeance on Monday.

My parents were going back to India on Sep 8 (after 4 months of their stay here) and the same day we had to hospitalise Zara. She had been running very high fever for more than 3 days and when there was no improvement after 3 days of medication, her doctor advised hospitalisation. She was on drip for 3 days and was discharged on the 4th.

Given Zara's condition, my parents wanted to stay on for one more week but the airline was unable to give next dates until October. So, I told them to go back to India anyway. My younger sister in India was to deliver a baby and her reports were not coming out well. So anxiety on both fronts.

Before Zara fell sick, my wife got a job with a firm. She had gone to office only for two days when Zara was hospitalised.

My parents were supposed to stay on until January or thereabouts so that they could take care of Zara. But they had this Hajj programme and also because of my sister's upcoming delivery, they could not stay any longer. So, there, man proposes and God disposes. This upset all our planning.

Both of us had to stay on in the hospital. Shabana could not go to office for the next one week. Now she has joined back and I have made an arrangement with my office to work from home. So these days, I've been fasting and working and babysitting Zara and it is all so very strenuous. Meanwhile, we had been searching for a maid and running from agency to agency. Last week we interviewed a Filipina maid and applied for the Govt's approval. Two days back, we finally got the maid, and things seems to be getting better now. From this Friday, I think I shall be able to resume normal work from my office.

That, is a long story, cut short for you. When I wrote to a friend about my September woes, he said: "That, as Alice says, is a long and sad tale. But no sympathies - these are pangs of fatherhood and I have been through them thrice. Insha Allah, all will be fine, as it usually is, but the mid course travails are really blood sucking."

If you are an experienced parent, I am sure you will say the same thing. But there are some lessons here for those who are not married or planning a child.

The Emperor of Narratives

Photo: Courtesy Lucy Cavender

David Davidar is a rare creature. You can count on your fingers the number of top-notch publishers who are also admired novelists in their own right. Mr Davidar, who is credited with the flourishing of Indian writing in English when he was the head of Penguin Books, India, now heads the same company in Canada.

Educated at Madras (now Chennai) and Harvard University, Mr Davidar, in 1985 became one of the founding members of Penguin in India where he edited or published authors like Kiran Desai, Arundhati Roy, Vikram Seth, Rohinton Mistry, Salman Rushdie, Suketu Mehta, William Dalrymple, Mohsin Hamid and Ramachandra Guha, among others. Now in Canada, he has been publishing authors like Philip Roth, Khaled Hosseini, John Le Carre, Alice Munro, Zadie Smith, and Hisham Matar, among others.

Mr Davidar’s first novel, The House of Blue Mangoes, was published in 2002. It was translated into 16 languages and was a New York Times Notable Book and a Book Sense Pick. His latest novel, The Solitude of Emperors, (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2007) has just come out. I managed to catch the busy writer-publisher for an interview sometime ago. Excerpts:


Your latest novel, The Emperor of Solitude, is on communalism in India. What prompted you to write a novel on this subject?

David Davidar: The main cause was, you know, that India, as I say at some point in the novel, is one of the longest running plural societies in the history of civilizations. Every religion, every race, creed, known to man, has lived in India for thousands and thousands of years. Every time fundamentalists, whether Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, try to disturb the piece, I think people who believe in the amity of nations, communities, all right thinking man, in whatever way they can, should protest and say it is not right or point it out in whatever way they can. So, I thought given the fact that journalists are doing the standard job in India and elsewhere to point out how wrong all this is, I figured out I will take a different approach and try and use the medium of fiction to express my views.

So, in a way, this novel is your protest against communalism?

DD: Ya, I think so. Absolutely!

Do you think communalism is still a major phenomenon in India?

DD: Well, it flares up from time to time. India is a very large country. From time to time, there are sort of riots in some parts of the country, inspired by religion or by caste, whatever the reason. So, I don't think it will ever go away. One has to be vigilant. I think despite the problem of the 1990s and the riots of Gujarat in 2002, the country is quite calm. But there is communal violence everywhere else in the world. Everywhere you look there is some incident or the other. And while the book takes place in India, I hope what I am trying to work through in the course of the narrative is of universal importance.

The protagonist of your novel Vijay comes from small town South India and goes to Bombay to work for a magazine. You also went to Bombay as a young journalist. Did your personal experience help you draw material for this work?

DD: Ya, ya. But it is not autobiographical in any way. I have never worked for a magazine called The Secularist, I have never witnessed a communal riot, but, yes, I was perfectly happy in the small town I was born in. It gave me some ideas, for sure.

Some of the scenes of rioting are so realistically written in your novel. Did you see anything like that personally or was it just research?

DD: Friends of mine lived through those dark days in Bombay. I talked to them. My closest friend who lives in Bombay who I have acknowledged in the back of the book, he and I spent many hours talking about those days, what he had witnesses and so on. So, ya, it is not based on first hand experience but second hand experience.

You wrote your first novel while you were still in India, and your second novel has come out while you are based in Canada. When did you start work on this novel?

DD: About 18 months ago.

That was relatively quick. Your first novel, The House of Blue Mangoes, took you about ten years to write, didn’t it?

DD: For the last one, I actually did the major work in two years. I started it and stopped in between. This one I just wrote it continuously.


You are also a busy publisher. How do you strike a balance between the two roles, as a writer and a publisher?

DD: Well, I work very early in the morning, between 4 to 6 every morning. But I am not sure that I will be able to keep it up.

Any plans to come back to India?

DD: I don't know. At some point in the future, maybe, depending on the opportunities, for sure. Ya, I mean, it is a very exciting part of the world. Definitely. I wouldn’t rule that out.

You as a publisher were instrumental in the flourishing of the Indian writing in English (IWE) while you were the head of Penguin Books, India. After you left the scene, many success stories have emerged. How do you see the future of IWE in the coming years?

DD: Oh, I think it will continue to flourish because I think it is only getting started, you know. I mean the people I worked with were the first generation of great writers after Indian Independence and onwards from there. I mean they were all born around the 50 and 60s and 70s. Now people born in the 80s, 90s, and even in the new century, who knows in which direction they will take the novel. Creative writing in general has an exciting future.

The Solitude of Emperors

Indian writing in English (IWE), however celebrated at home and abroad, rather than catching our eyes for the seriousness of theme and material often grabs our attention for its "tinsel glitter of celebrity."

Indian writing in the vernaculars, on the other hand, still gets loved, hated, discussed and fought over for dealing with an "aesthetics inseparable from questions of justice and equality."

Such an engagement, a legacy of India's Progressive Writers' Association, is at the heart of David Davidar's second novel, The Emperor of Solitude.

Like some of the socially conscious IWE novels of recent years, such as Sashi Tharoor's Riot, A Novel and Tabish Khair's Filming: A Love Story, The Emperor of Solitude takes us on a journey of India torn apart by the forces of communalism.

David Davidar has said that this novel is his protest against communalism, which in a way underpins the idea that the role of a writer as a partisan is still important and that writers should expose the ills of the society, just like journalists do, but with their own tools and in their own fashion.

The story is told through the eyes of Vijay, a South Indian small-town young man, who comes to Bombay in the early 1990s to work with a dedicated secularist, Rustom Sorabjee, the editor of a magazine, The Indian Secularist.

A young man with not great ambitions, Vijay's experience of meeting Sorabjee transforms him, making him conscious of the damage of communalism (mixing of religion and politics) in an otherwise great land of civilization where great leaders like Asoka, Akbar and Gandhi showed us how to reach out to people of all religions and races and how to live a life of peace and communal harmony.

Vijay witnesses the post-Babri Masjid Bombay riots and gets filled with horror. In the central part of the narrative, Sorabjee sends Vijay to Meham, a small tea town in the Nilgris to recover. There he meets Noah, a colourful character, a poet turned mad by the absolute demands of our world, and they become friends. By far, Noah's is the most interesting character in the entire novel. But even in Meham, communalism raises its ugly head. A Christian shrine, The Tower of God, becomes the object of political wrangling between the Christian community and a group of politically motivated Hindu right wingers. Tragedy follows which leaves Vijay further traumatised.

Running parallel to this story is a book within the novel, a book on India's ethos of secularism by Sorabjee. David has shared some great ideas on religion and life through the device of a book within a book.

Both through the main narrative and the book-within-the-book device, David's message of communal harmony comes through very clearly. It is just the kind of writing that one would locate at the heart of social change.

The Solitude of Emperors by David Davidar, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London, S$32.95

Diary of a bad year

Can't wait to read J M Coetzee's novel, Diary of a bad year.

I had read its first chapter in the NYRB sometime ago and I love the way Coetzee intertwines fiction and philosophy (political philosophy) in this novel. I have found very few writers who think exactly like I do and who care about things that I care about too (I hope I do not sound immodest in saying this). Coetzee is that writer who, as if, speaks for me, minus his penchant for probability that has never been a field of my interest.

Here's Christopher Tayler on Coetzee's fact-woven Diary of a Bad Year:

Unlike Life & Times of Michael K (1983) or Disgrace (1999), this isn't a book you'd press on someone new to this great writer. But it's much more than an exercise in letting off some steam inside a tricky fictional frame. Funnier than anything else he's written, if sometimes in a rather donnish way, it eventually becomes unexpectedly moving, offering surprises while avoiding a final thunderclap with the restraint that Coetzee's readers have learned to expect. The metafictional stuff is handled with more panache than it was in Slow Man, and the devices aimed at keeping the reader off balance work well. Towards the end of the book, Coetzee conveys absolute sincerity while scrupulously directing the reader's attention to the potentially fraudulent techniques he's using to convey it. Perhaps he's pulling a ladder up after himself, but you don't doubt that, as C puts it while discussing late Tolstoy, he's struggling in earnest with "the one question that truly engaged his soul: how to live".

And here's Boyd Tonkin's take on Coetzee's "late style" as exhibited in his latest novel, a work in the hybrid territory:

His latest novel (and it is one, in spite of all its formal games) puts the angry sage under scrutiny as it marks the further progress of Coetzee's bracingly bold "late style". Just as Edward Said proposed in his book of that name, Coetzee seems to be detaching himself step by step in a long "crisis of farewell" from the conventions of his genre. As in Elizabeth Costello and Slow Man, he edges away from fully-embodied fiction into hybrid territory where essays, fables and aphorisms bed down in the frame of an invented yarn.

As Diary of a Bad Year puts it, in relation to the ageing Tolstoy and similar late-stylists, "the texture of their prose becomes thinner, their treatment of character and action more schematic". Yet this depletion can also bring about "a liberation, a clearing of the mind to take on more important tasks".

Aini Aapa, Urdu fiction's Marquez, passes away

Qurratulain Hyder, one of Urdu literature's grandest writers, passed away on Monday night after prolonged illness. Unfortunately, the news came to my notice only today.

Hyder was lovingly known as Aini Aapa. She was a journalist and writer and she had worked with Khushwant Singh during his Illustrated Weekly of India days.

My first introduction to literature was through Urdu and Hyder's fiction, much before I had heard of Marquez and other Latin American writers, was one of the most potent to fire my imagination and love for stories. Her seminal work, Aag ka Dariya (River of Fire) is considered no less a work than Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. But I love her short stories and novelettes. Her Paanch Novelletes remains one of my favourite works of fiction.

When I was reading her works in my university days, I used to fantasize how fascinatingly they will lend themselves to beautiful films. I hope Indian filmmakers like Shyam Benegal, Muzaffar Ali and Rituparno Ghosh will take note of her works. They have amazing atmospherics in them.

Here's C.M Naim's appreciation of Hyder's work:

What counts, for her, is the human spirit and the relationships it generates and nurtures. That is where the linearity of time seems to curve into a spiral, urging us to recognize a past that never quite disappears. This, of course, may have a depressing side too: the more things change, the more they remain the same. What, then, is our choice as individuals? Here it may be worthwhile to recall the characteristically modest, even self-mocking, remarks that Hyder made in 1991 in her acceptance speech at the Jnanpith Award function: "My concern for civililzational values about which I continue writing may sound naive, wooly-headed and simplistic. But then, perhaps, I am like that little bird which foolishly puts up its claws, hoping that it will stop the sky from falling."

Here's Hirsh Sawhney on her work, Aag Ka Dariya:

The novel is defined by a dizzying array of parables, love stories, letters, dreams and diaries, but Hyder successfully weaves this fictional universe together with a cast of characters that's not only diverse but also most intriguing. Hari, a monk in post-Buddha India, lives in a land inhabited by architects who fled the ashes of Persepolis. Kamaluddin, a 15th-century Persian thinker, has met Muslims in Andalusia who wrote Spanish in the Arabic script. Gautam, an opportunistic employee of the Raj, ends up in the kingdom of Oudh, where Muslim rulers celebrated Hindu holidays.

The group rematerializes in various incarnations and eras, and the result is an enlightening portrait of the subcontinent, one that blurs the line between insider and outsider, Hindu and Muslim, and reveals the ceaseless cycles of greed and hate that disrupt the world's beauty. Hyder is my favourite kind of writer, one who spares nobody from her scrutiny, not the treaty-breaking English who "took away the glory and wealth of Hindustan" or the "anti-British leftists" who made "a bee-line for England, deserting the toiling masses for whom their hearts used to bleed."

She first published this book in 1959, 22 years before Midnight's Children bagged the booker. So why has no one in the west outside of academia or the pages of the literary journals ever heard of this one-time Fleet Street journalist?

And here's Rakhshanda Jalil's tribute to Hyder.

Hollywood goes to Bollywood

PATRICK FRATER writes in Variety:

Warner Bros. on Tuesday unveiled its first India production, the action comedy "Made in China," for which it will hold worldwide rights.
With the film -- helmed by Nikhil Advani ("Salaam-e-ishq") and produced by Indian shingles Ramesh Sippy Prods. and Orion Pictures --Warner joins Viacom, Sony and Disney in the accelerating Hollywood race to make movies in India.

Though Hollywood fare flourishes overseas, it accounts for a small percentage of the box office in India --the world's second most populous nation. For example, Hollywood fare accounted for 85% of Spain's B.O. in 2006 but only 8% in India.

Since more multiplexes mean the Indian B.O. pie is growing, Hollywood is determined to increase its share -- and rather than bringing Western influence into the movie biz, the plan is to get into the Bollywood game.

The Godfather chronicles

The Godfather, as is with so many others, remains one of my favourite movies. I have watched it many times, the first time on Doordarshan in my early 20s when I was in college, and later on on DVDs. This film always fascinates me: its setting, the actors, the tension, the colors, the cinematography...one could just go on.

But did the film have any impact on Indian cinema, and more so on the shaping of the Indian mafia? I didn't have much idea about it until I read this piece by Vir Sanghvi, whose columns I read regularly.

Here's Vir Sanghvi on the influence of Puzo/Coppola's Godfather on Indian cinema and the third world mafia but I like this part where he talks about the genesis of the novel and later on the film:

Contrary to what people believed at the time, despite being Italian, Puzo knew almost nothing about the mafia. He had heard the same gossip and stories as everybody else. So when he sat down to write, he invented an underworld based on honour and a sense of family. To make it seem authentic, he included a few apocryphal stories that were then current.

For instance, it was rumoured that Frank Sinatra had mafia connections, and that when his career was on the brink, the mob got him the co-starring role in From Here to Eternity that resurrected his fortunes. Puzo invented a Sinatra-like character and included the From Here to Eternity story, adding one dramatic flourish: When the studio boss refuses to cast the Sinatra character, the mafia guys behead his favourite horse and put its decapitated head in his bed.

Stories such as this one—which Puzo dreamt up from the top of his head—made the book seem even more authentic than it really was and it became a number one best-seller. By the time Paramount Pictures got around to filming it, the Italian- American community was filled with outrage and the studio agreed to delete the words “mafia” and “La Cosa Nostra" from the script.

Death of the small town

Pankaj Mishra on one of India's vanishing cultures:

Perhaps this dwindling of middle-class culture was inevitable, part of the price of "progress". A generation ago, my own parents and their peers had moved out of their restricted settings and taken up jobs in remote cities and towns. Their children are now scattered across India (and increasingly across the world). Besieged by the usual middle-class anxieties of jobs and careers, we lose touch, forgetting names and faces. Few people show up when some of these children get married or have their thread ceremonies. Deaths and funerals have turned into lonely, often desolate affairs. Two years ago, one of my uncles, who was afflicted with Alzheimer's, watched his wife bleed to death after an accident at his home in a Lucknow suburb - a fate unimaginable in the close-knit world of his childhood.

Of course, the destruction of old bonds of family and community and shared culture has been faster elsewhere, in Europe, America - even China... Still, it is hard today, 60 years after independence, not to see poignancy in the Nehruvian elite's tryst with destiny; to realise how little the makers of modern India knew of their suburban future: the high-rise apartment complexes in which they would die pining for a patch of weak wintry sun on a green lawn.