Indian Writing

Amitava Kumar sends me this link to what he had planned to say while introducing Salman Rushdie at Vassar this week:

About twenty-five years ago, with the publication of Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie met with the reception usually accorded to Hindi film heroes… I guess I would be speaking for a lot of readers, particularly in those parts of the planet that used to be called the Third World, who saw Mr Rushdie as having fought and won against, and made an ally of, the English language, the alien language that had come to us with our colonial rulers. Mr Rushdie has had to fight many other battles since; he has made many friends and enemies; and we (I’m speaking as an Indian here) we, as his readers and as writers, have followed his actions, his songs, his mannerisms, and even when we have chosen not to follow him into the sunset, we’ve always had to define ourselves, and our rebellions, against this image we have had of him, looking down at us from giant billboards at each street-corner of our past.

One of Mr Rushdie’s most heroic struggles has been the one with a cleric who put a price on this writer’s head. Well—as our honored guest has himself remarked, of the two adversaries, only one has lived to tell the tale.

Except that Amitava didn’t get to say it, for reasons that he explains in his post:

Salman Rushdie came to Vassar College earlier this week to deliver a lecture for the Class of 2010 – but made it clear to the organizers that he would cancel if I was involved in his visit. I had earlier been asked to introduce him, and then, well, I was disinvited.

But why didn’t Rushdie want to meet him, wonders Amitava: could it be because of articles like this?

I’m disappointed. Rushdie’s negativity is apparently in a trunk in storage, but clearly his ego hasn’t been packed away. I’m no longer surprised that Fay Weldon accused him of living among the poseurs.

(Pic: Haroun and the Sea of Stories, via)

Update: This comment by SR (or someone claiming to be him) on Amitava’s post says that he didn’t threaten to cancel, he just didn’t want to share a stage with Amitava. Yeah, that explains it all.

To this great and beautiful animal who, after years of walking the streets of Mumbai begging for food, was injured in an accident near Chembur this week. She was hit by a water tanker. She died yesterday.

Journalist and blogger Annie Zaidi has this cover story in Frontline about manual scavenging. The practice is rooted in caste:

“Martin [Macwan] describes in detail some traditional practices designed to keep bhangis in their place,” writes [Mari MarcelThekkekara], explaining the bhangi women’s routine of begging for food every day along with their children. “Appropriate behaviour has to be learned. The correct tone, the suitably humble stance, the posture of the supplicant. The bhangi mother has to ensure, to teach her children that they must never, ever, even accidentally, touch the upper-caste person…”

From Thottiyute Makan (”Scavenger’s Son”) by Thakazhi Sivasankaran Pillai:

The midwife said:

“Here, hold the child.”

Chudalamuthu’s hand froze. An old woman who came out, said:

“You must give 10 chakras before taking the child.”

Chudalamuthu came back with ten chakras. But he was fearful of taking the child in his hands. He was a Thotti. He had to hold the child with the hands that cleared toilet-filth!

Yet he had to do it. He held out his hand and took the child. And gave it back immediately.

Chudalamuthu had never felt such an aversion at being a Thotti as he did that day. That baby might have also been feeling the aversion. Can it know the stink? A Thotti stinks even if he takes a bath. Will the child have problems because I touched it? He should grow up without touching a Thotti. Even so, when he gave the child to other hands, Chudalamuthu felt like holding him again.

Also see this and this, at The Other India, and this post, from Annie’s blog:

If their mothers don’t induct them into scavenging, their mothers-in-law do. Or their husbands do. If their husbands are also scavengers, they will often work together. For instance, the man, using a stick, will un-clog the gutter into which the shit is flushed. The woman will pick it up and carry it in baskets.

The filthiest task is left to the woman, wherever possible.

To think that we let it happen.

I remember Mary Oliver’s poem:

In Singapore, in the airport,
a darkness was ripped from my eyes.
In the women’s restroom, one compartment stood open.
A woman knelt there, washing something
in the white bowl.

Disgust argued in my stomach
and I felt, in my pocket, for my ticket.

A poem should always have birds in it.
Kingfishers, say, with their bold eyes and gaudy wings.
Rivers are pleasant, and of course trees.
A waterfall, or if that’s not possible, a fountain
rising and falling.
A person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.

When the woman turned I could not answer her face…

The whole thing here.

Somini Sengupta on Khushwant Singh’s novel Train to Pakistan, which has been republished by Roli. This 50th anniversary edition includes 66 incredible black-and-white photographs of the Partition period taken by Margaret Bourke-White.

The photographs are deeply disturbing. It’s hard, turning every page - but they need to be looked at. An estimated 12 to 14 million people had to migrate, over a million were killed, and some 75,000 women were abducted and subjected to sexual violence - and yet, for decades, there has only been a deafening silence about the tragedy (see Nandini Gooptu on the Indian Partition). These pictures are a reminder of the vast tragedy on both sides of a newly-drawn border.

“Babies were born along the way. People died along the way. Many of them simply dropped out of line from sheer weariness. Sometimes I saw children pulling at the arms and hands of a parent or grandparents, unable to comprehend those arms would never be able to carry them again.” - Margaret Bourke-White.

More photographs from Bourke-White’s record of the Partition here.

Twenty-one lions dying slowly in a Chandigarh zoo, victims of an experiment that went terribly wrong:

In the 1980s officials at the Chhatbir Zoo in Chandigarh, bred captive Asiatic lions with a pair of African circus animals, resulting in a hybrid species.

Within a few years it became obvious it had not worked.

The offspring found it hard to walk, let alone run, because their hind legs were weak. And by the mid 1990s the big cats — which live for up to 20 years in captivity — showed symptoms of failing immune systems.

But it wasn’t until 2000 that the breeding programme was ended, and the male lions given vasectomies, by which time the zoo had 70 to 80 such lions. Their number dwindled slowly, with disease killing some and some dying of wounds inflicted by other lions…

(Thanks, Sonia Hill, for emailing me about this report)

Babykillers at this Punjab abortion clinic used to dump the unwanted female foetuses into a pit:

Manual labourer Gulzar Singh is haunted by the day he exhumed baby foetuses from a pit outside an abortion clinic in one of the grisliest chapters in India’s fight against female feticide.

“Inside the well I found bones. Small ones. Little, little ones. There were some baby skulls too,” recalled Singh with a shudder.

Singh was ordered by police in early August to dig up pits on the grounds of a private hospital in Pattran, a small town in Punjab, which was suspected of operating an illegal abortion clinic….

Tethered to the end of a rope held by three of his friends, Singh was lowered towards the gruesome find but almost immediately shouted to be brought out.

“The smell was very foul,” he said. “Exhaust fans were used to blow out the toxic gases before I went in again.”

For the next several hours, Singh sent up buckets full of human remains, blood-stained gauzes and bandages, empty bottles of abortion-inducing medicines…

Susan Sontag:

Saturday:

awake at 7

Museum at 10:30

I. arrives at 1

coffee + lunch in Museum

3:00 “Trouble in Paradise”

4:30-5:15 coffee with I; talk

she comes with me in the cab to 118th St.

pick up David [Rieff, Sontag’s seven-year-old son]

drop I at 79th St - she is going to Alfred [Chester, author and literary critic]

I feed D + put him to bed

A calls to urge me to come to the party

I read the Listener - call Jack, Harriet - leave at 9:30

cab to 14th St - I buy tickets for [film director Kenneth] Anger film and Pirandello party - I leave - Times Sq

Bardot movie - home at 4

Ahhh.

Some of the names given to unwanted / unwelcome girl babies in some sections of Punjab/Haryana:

Kaafi ~ Enough

Bharpai ~ Paying the Penalty

Dhappan ~ A Full Stomach

Mariya ~ Deathly.

Badho ~ Excessive.

Bas Kar ~ Stop It.

Unchahi ~ Unwanted.

53 minutes, Documentary film directed by Avinash Deshpande

At the Mahatma Gandhi Centennial Sindhu High School in Nagpur, 185 close-circuit television cameras track the movements of students, teachers and other staff through over a hundred classrooms, labs, staff rooms, and even empty corridors with motionless ceiling fans. All the cameras feed into a wall of television screens arranged in the school Principal’s office. From here, the Principal Deepak Bajaj monitors the classes, watches the staff, interrupts classes with all kinds of instructions, and generally keeps a watchful eye on his realm.

With the television screen as the interface between Principal and students, the school assembly becomes a virtual affair. The corridors remain empty while the classrooms are full of self-conscious students and silent teachers. Disembodied voices conduct the prayers, read the daily news bulletin and make announcements. Even during the day, whenever the Principal’s voice crackles through on the PA system, there is a small ritual: the students shuffle to their feet, he urges them to “sit down, sit down”, before addressing some innocuous queries to the class teacher, to which the teacher replies awkwardly. And as we listen to Bajaj’s plans for the future – to go up to 250 cameras, to have them connected to his house for 24-hour surveillance, to record and replay on will, and to be able to continue his surveillance from his laptop even while travelling – there’s something very creepy about the entire project.

With no voice-over, no narration, no background music, Deshpande’s direct, plain-vanilla approach nevertheless makes a searing comment on this philosophy of control. The camera moves silently across the school campus - watching the daily routines, the strange monotony of news bulletins, the complex emotions of a farewell ceremony, the unvoiced discomfort of the staff, and a pitifully sycophantic birthday song for a visiting School Board member.

Close to ten lakh rupees have been spent on the CCTV technology while the basic school infrastructure remains shabby, with peeling walls and cracked blackboards. Unsettlingly, the camera shows us a row of chained dogs, a human brain and heart stored in glass jars; and life-size plaster models of uniformed boys and girls inside glass cases. The camera lingers on the children at play, reminding us with a shock that these little tots are just like any children anywhere. Except that they are caught within this bizarre situation and being turned into one man’s vision of what “good citizens” should be. And that vision is straight out of George Orwell, complete with Big Brother watching everyone all the time.

Deshpande also filmed conversations with Vijay Tendulkar and psychiatrist Udayan Patel, but later decided not to include these. The film works powerfully without them, and without giving us the director’s views in so many words - letting us ask our own uncomfortable questions instead. What is behind this freaky urge to control? What are the implications of this kind of surveillance on the minds of young children? What kind of effect does it have on the morale of the teachers? What kind of parent wants surveillance cameras to make sure nothing “happens” because there are male students in the school? What kind of people will these children become in the future?

(In MM this week. Above image from Pink Floyd’s The Wall)

“When I was young, girls did not sit on chairs. Those who occupied chairs, and read the newspaper, were men. We sat on the floor to read and write. My eldest sister was considered very clever. The founder of the Hindu Elementary School, Headmaster Bantwal Raghunatharaya, had had a desk-bench made for my sister, perhaps to encourage other girls to follow her example. There was only one such desk-bench in the classroom. It was there even when I went to school, much to my pride. Everyone wanted to sit on it, but it was the class toppers who were given that special honour…

While the girls studied to whatever level they were permitted, and then got married, the boys went away to study to Mangalore or Madras. They used to come home for the holidays, and we felt they had attained heights we would never attain. We treated them with a mixture of fear and respect. My eldest brother studied literature, and became a lecturer in a college for a while. When he came home, it was as though all the English dramatists and poets came with him. In the eating room, he would recite from the English plays, and we would gaze at him open-mouthed. We couldn’t understand any of it from the words, but sought to make sense from his intonation and gestures. For a woman of the house to speak English was considered a mark of arrogance…”

Extract from Vaidehi’s introduction to Gulabi Talkies, the new Penguin translation of her short stories.

Here is an online translation of Gulabi Talkies (The Penguin collection has a different translation by Tejaswini Niranjana).

For International Literacy Day, I’ll point to two thoughts from Paolo Freire:

“To substitute monologue, slogans, and communiques for dialogue is to attempt to liberate the oppressed with the instruments of domestication.”

And:

Hope is a natural, possible, and necessary impetus in the context of our unfinishedness.

*****

And a poem by Brecht,

Questions From a Worker Who Reads

Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you will find the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?
And Babylon, many times demolished
Who raised it up so many times? In what houses
of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live?
Where, the evening that the Wall of China was finished
Did the masons go? Great Rome
Is full of triumphal arches. Who erected them? Over whom
Did the Caesars triumph? Had Byzantium, much praised in song
Only palaces for its inhabitants? Even in fabled Atlantis
The night the ocean engulfed it
The drowning still bawled for their slaves.

The young Alexander conquered India.
Was he alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls.
Did he not have even a cook with him?

Philip of Spain wept when his armada
Went down. Was he the only one to weep?
Frederick the Second won the Seven Year’s War. Who
Else won it?

Every page a victory.
Who cooked the feast for the victors?
Every ten years a great man?
Who paid the bill?

So many reports.
So many questions.

- Bertolt Brecht

Trans. M. Hamburger

Robert Jensen on the current conception of masculinity, and why it’s time to jettison it:

It’s hard to be a man; hard to live up to the demands that come with the dominant conception of masculinity, of the tough guy.

So, guys, I have an idea — maybe it’s time we stop trying. Maybe this masculinity thing is a bad deal, not just for women but for us.

We need to get rid of the whole idea of masculinity. It’s time to abandon the claim that there are certain psychological or social traits that inherently come with being biologically male. If we can get past that, we have a chance to create a better world for men and women.

The Legends of Pensam, by journalist, poet and former civil servant Mamang Dai, is an affecting work that intertwines myth, legend, history and memoir to record the life stories of the Adi tribe of Arunachal Pradesh. The stories, set in the beautiful Siang River Valley, are loosely structured around a family of Adis across several generations. The first story is about a “boy who fell from the sky”; at the end of the book, grown old, he sits with his granddaughter, peering through a pair of ancient binoculars. The intervening pages tell us what happened during these years and before them, harking back all the way to the Adi creation myths.

(more…)

Two interviews with Salman Rushdie. The Spiegel interview begins by calling him an expert on terror.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Rushdie, as an expert on terrorism you …

Rushdie: What gives me that honor? I don’t see myself as such at all.

SPIEGEL: Your book “Fury,” with its description of an America threatened by terrorism and published in spring 2001, was seen by many as prophetic — as more or less anticipating 9/11. Your most recent novel “Shalimar the Clown” describes how a circus performer from Kashmir is transformed into a terrorist. And for almost a decade your life was threatened by Iranian fanatics, with a price of $4 million on your head.

Rushdie: If you think that’s enough to qualify me as an expert on terrorism …

And in The Telegraph:

One thing that really gets him going is the odd but pervasive notion of Rushdie as a party dude to reckon with. While the reality may be very different, the enduring public perception of the post-fatwa Salman is of a gyrating daddio grooving away on dance floors across the capital and turning up to the opening of an envelope. What does he say to that?

“Oh go and look in your nearest envelope! You will not find me in it. I do not have a wardrobe full of lamé clothes at home, you know. I spend most of my life doing serious things. There are no shocks left to learn about me. In fact,” he says, warming to his theme, “the problem with my life is that you know the whole f—ing thing! You know all the bits that are true. Even the bits are not true, you think you know those, too.”

A hundred years ago in Transvaal, South Africa, satyagraha was born:

It began with a meeting at the Empire Theatre packed with Indian delegates protesting against the compulsory registration of Asians. Adopting the famous Fourth Resolution, the Indians solemnly resloved not to submit to the ordinance in the event of its becoming law, and to suffer all the penalties that may follow. That pledge was the beginning of Satyagraha. Tolstoy later observed, “The Transvaal struggle was the first attempt at applying the principle of Satyagraha to masses or bodies of men.”

The term, ‘satyagraha’ did not figure in the resolution that was passed. Gandhi, in his newspaper, Indian Opinion, later announced a small prize to be awarded to the reader who invented the best term to describe the struggle. Maganlal Gandhi had suggested the word ‘sadagraha’, meaning firmness in a good cause. Bapu corrected it to ‘satyagraha’, a combination of ‘satya,’ or love, and ‘agraha,’ or firmness/force. Gandhi explained that “Satyagraha is the force born of truth and love or non-violence and is based on self-help, self-sacrifice and faith in God. Satyagraha renounces all fear… Jail was the pilgrims’ goal for a Satyagrahi which brought their struggle to a triumphant end”. The Satyagraha movement in South Africa ended in 1914, after the passing of the Indian Relief Bill. At Johannesburg, Gandhi asserted that it was a struggle for the vindication of the great truth that all men are born free and equal.

The rest here.

More here.

Remember Neerja Bhanot, who died at the age of 22? As a flight attendant on Pan Am Flight 73 which was hijacked in 1986, she managed to save many, many others but tragically lost her life.

Nominations have been invited for the Neerja Bhanot Awards 2006.

There are two awards… The first award is given to an Indian woman who, when subjected to social injustice like dowry and desertion, faced the situation with guts and grit and then helped women in similar social distress.

The second award is given to a flight crew member, worldwide, who acts beyond the call of duty in a difficult situation.

More details here.

Five women in Bargarh, Orissa carried the dead body of a 70-year old woman to a burial ground and performed her last rites. This task is traditionally done by men. But for some reason the body had been lying unattended for over 24 hours - so the women decided to do it themselves.

A Teacher’s Poem

By Lisa Lauritzen.

I am a New York City public high school teacher
Do not look surprised.
Do not feel sorry for me.
Do not pity me.
Do not offer me your condolences.
Do not pat me on the back, shake my hand,
Cross yourself or speak of my bravery.
Do not ask me if I receive combat pay
Or wear a bulletproof vest.
Do not ask me when I plan to get a real job,
Apply to law school,
Or what my first career choice was.
Do not assume my head is in the clouds
And I have no grasp on reality.
Do not sympathize, empathize,
Or tell me about the job opening in your cousin’s business.
Do not suggest that I join the Peace Corps.
Do not ask if my parents were teachers.
Do not ask if my parents were hippies.
Do not assume that I am a saint, naive, innocent,
Searching for my childhood,
Living for summers off,
Home by 2:15,
Use a red pen,
Play the Lotto,
Wish for the glory days of the past
Or would rather teach in the suburbs where I could *really* teach….

The whole thing here.

U.R.Ananthamurthy in Rujuvathu:

It is necessary to understand what is stagnant and what is dynamic in the present-day religious system. The people who do understand are those who participate in movements against ‘untouchability’; in struggles for equality and equal respect to all human beings; who desire equality between countries; who believe that animals, birds and plants have as much right to live in this world as we do; and who believe that all these struggles are interconnected.

The whole thing here.

It happens once in twelve years.

The Neelakurinji has flowered in the Anaimalai Hills…

****

What She Said

Bigger than earth, certainly,
higher than the sky,
more unfathomable than the waters
is this love for this man

of the mountain slopes
where bees make rich honey
from the flowers of the kurinji
that has such black stalks.

- Teevakulattaar (Kuruntokai 3)

Trans. A.K.Ramanujan

From SKJ’s column in the MM today:

Is it just a coincidence that the acronyms of the two most significant films this year are very musical in sound? RDB also stands for Rahul Dev Burman. And take the ‘R’ out of LRM and we have the most melodious name in the history of Indian cinema.

Do you get the point? The reclamation of a past heritage comes in these films with a musical footnote. It’s no coincidence that LM sang a lullaby in RDB. Rakeysh Mehra was adamant to have Lataji as part of his film…

Methinks Mr Jha is reading way too much into the acronyms. But it’s a good game nevertheless. You take the first K out of KANK and add an S and a T…

The fastest woman bowler in the world. First Indian woman to take 10 wickets in a Test match. Part of the team that won their first Test against England.

From a DNA interview:

Hailing from a small village, Chakdha, near Kolkata, Jhulan took to bowling because the boys would not let her bat. Today, batswomen around the world are cursing those boys…

On her 10-wicket haul:
It feels very nice. But the important thing is that India won. If I bowl well and the team loses, there is no point celebrating.

On her idol:
Glenn McGrath. Every day I dream of meeting him. It hasn’t come true so far! McGrath has amazing accuracy and maintains impeccable line and length. Like a bowling machine, he keeps bowling on the same spot all day along. I liked Javagal Srinath too.

On life in the fast lane:
I can clock up to 120kph. After our victory at Taunton the English captain, Caroline Edwards, came up to me and said, ‘You are the fastest bowler in the world.’ It felt really good.

“The King of Action meets the Queen of Words.”

This is how a billboard at Haji Ali advertises the new Rendezvous show where Simi Garewal will meet Jackie Chan.

According to Garewal,

“Jackie was wonderful. He didn’t hide anything, didn’t evade any question. He wasn’t ‘image-conscious’, in fact he spoke about aspects even more than I could have asked for. He revealed things that aren’t even there in his biography! Graciously, he was the one who knelt and thanked me!”

Rediff has this excerpt from the interview:

Simi: Your early childhood has become the stuff of legends. Right from the time when you were born.

Jackie: I was born in a poor family. My mum carried me for 12 months. When I was born, I was 12 and a half pounds. Big baby! Giant baby! My parents did not have enough money to pay the bill.

Simi: Because she had to have a caesarian operation.

Jackie: Yes. Am talking about 50 years ago. Those were big… big things for us. They were going to sell me to a British doctor.

Simi: So is it true that they had no money to pay for you so they were going to sell you?

Jackie: Yes! The doctor said. “Ok I want the baby! I’ll give you $120 then I’ll pay the bill.” A friend of my father said, “Charlie… No! That’s your only son. If you sell him, you might not have another one. Don’t do that” We borrowed money from our friends, so everyone gave $10, $10 and they paid the bill.

Amazing.

Picture Rediff.

Tom Cruise has apologised to Brooke Shields.

American actor Tom Cruise has apologised to Brooke Shields for criticising her use of antidepressant drugs while suffering postnatal depression after the birth of her first daughter. According to Shields, Cruise, a member of the Scientology cult which condemns the use of antidepressants, came to her house and apologised last Thursday.

‘He came over to my house and he gave me a heartfelt apology,’ Shields said on Friday on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. ‘And he apologised for bringing me into the whole thing and for everything that happened,’ she added. ‘Through it all I was so impressed with how heartfelt it was. And I didn’t feel at any time that I had to defend myself, nor did I feel that he was trying to convince me of anything, other than the fact that he was deeply sorry. And I accepted it.’

How convenient nice that he apologised just the night before Shields was to appear on the Jay Leno Show.

I had posted about Konkona a couple of days ago. That was before I discovered her Being Konkona interview on CNN-IBN, where Anuradha SenGupta asks her about her Mrs Iyer accent:

Anuradha SenGupta: Do you remember the accent that you had as Mrs Iyer in Mr & Mrs Iyer?

Konkona Sen Sharma: Yes, I do remember some of it. You know what happened to me after doing that film? I had to do a play in English and I kept talking in a South Indian accent. The accent stayed with me for a while.

It’s a fairly mediocre interview, on the whole, but the most irritating thing was this bit about the “South Indian accent”. It’s a Tamil accent she means, of course. The South is a big place, and diverse, and everyone doesn’t speak in one South Indian accent.