Indian Writing

Yes of course we must celebrate Bandra. If we can get there, that is. I spent an hour and a quarter getting there to meet Nalini Jones who has just published a book of short stories based on Bandra. So when I decided to see the play “Jazz,” based on Goan jazz musicians (researched by Naresh Fernandes) I left an hour earlier, only to find the entire area had suffered a power failure. We milled around in the dark, with everyone remarkably good-natured about it all. The play could only begin an hour later than scheduled.

Traffic and power cuts are all in a day’s work. What’s surprising was to find Bandra described online, as a “small Catholic town in rural India.” (Introduction to interview with Knopf editor Carol Janeway), and “a Catholic town in India” elsewhere. And there was Amit Chaudhuri, for whom there can be no excuse, putting his foot in it again. “Nalini Jones,” he says in a review, “writes about the marginal community of Christians in Bombay and the neighbourhoods in which they live.

To the outsider, these seem to possess a fabled calm, but the insider knows they are in many ways on the brink of dissolution.” I don’t know whether Chaudhuri means Christians are on the brink of dissolution, or the neighbourhoods in which they live are.

Does Chaudhuri see himself as the insider who knows?

Email from Zubaan Books:

On FRIDAY 7th December
Please join us to celebrate the launch of Anjum Hasan’s brilliant debut novel, set in Shillong, Lunatic in My Head, published by Zubaan and Penguin Books India. The author will be in conversation with Siddhartha Deb, author of Surface and Point of Return.
All are welcome, but seating is limited, so do come early and join us for tea from 6:30 onwards, at The Attic (above The Shop), 36 Regal Building, Sansad Marg (Parliament Street), New Delhi 110 001.
And if you’d like to order the book, you can do so via our website.

On Saturday 8th December
Zubaan is co-hosting a discussion about Masculinities and Literature, entitled Let’s Talk Men. Panellists: Rana Dasgupta, Anjum Hasan, Mukul Kesavan and Geetanjali Shree.
Venue: ML Bhartia Auditorium, Alliance Francaise, 72 Lodi Estate, New Delhi
Time: 6:00pm
For more information about this, and the other events during this week, click here or call 91-11-46057340, or 41640681

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Email from PEN All-India Centre:

THE PEN ALL-INDIA CENTRE announces a new monthly feature, “Spiritlevel@PEN” - a forum for the critical yet sympathetic discussion of the questions of philosophy, religion, spirituality, mystical quest and the many dimensions of being that lie beyond the rigid binary of belief vs rationalism. The inaugural edition of Spiritlevel@PEN hosts THE VENERABLE LHAKDOR-LA speaking on ‘Faith and Reason in the Dharma’

Date: 13 December 2007 (Thursday)
Time: 6.15 pm
Place: Theosophy Hall (3rd floor), 40 New Marine Lines, Churchgate, Mumbai 400 020

The Venerable Lhakdor-la is the former official translator of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and is the author and translator of numerous books. In 2000, he was appointed a member of the Advisory Board of the Institute of Tibetan Classics, Montreal ; from 2002, he has been Honorary Professor at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver , Canada. The Ven. Lhakdor-la will be introduced by ASPI MISTRY, member, Executive Committee of the PEN All-India Centre and President of the Dharma Rain Centre.

This piece in The Hindu about defending the reviled:

“Come on, why should lawyers defend someone who is so ‘obviously guilty’?”

Although this may sound like self-serving lawyer-talk, the question of guilt, “obvious” or otherwise, is for the court and not for the lawyer — or for the press…