Indian Writing

and liking it very much.

Email from PEN All-India:

Launch of MISTER BEHRAM AND OTHER PLAYS
by GIEVE PATEL

10 October 2008 (Friday)
7 pm
Crossword Bookstore, Kemp’s Corner

The volume Mister Behram and Other Plays, published by Seagull Books, Kolkata, brings together all his three plays, and also includes extensive interviews with Patel.

On the occasion of the launch of the book, Patel will join in a brief discussion of his work, with Arundhathi Subramaniam and Ranjit Hoskote.
The discussion will be followed by a reading of dramatic extracts from two of Patel’s plays, by eminent actors Sabira Merchant, Shernaz Patel, Roger Pereira, Nosherwan Jehangir and Rajit Kapur.

Gieve Patel’s plays explore difficult terrains in human relationships with power and grace. A poet’s delight in the use of language is everywhere evident. About the title play, Mister Behram, the critic Bruce King writes: “… there are rapid shifts in emotional levels, with words uncovering progressively deeper levels of feeling. The work is rich in themes, including self-deception of liberals, the mistreatment of women, the cunning of the underdog, and the sexual drives that find expression in social and political attitudes. This work suggests that the Indian English drama is likely to join the Indian English novel and poetry as worthy of international attention.” (World Literature Today). The late Dhiren Bhagat, writing about another of Patel’s plays in India Today, observed: “Quite possibly, Savaksa is the first great English play to be written by an Indian.”

THE FURTHER SHORE

A poetry reading on the occasion of an exhibition of paintings by Jehangir Sabavala

Poets: Mustansir Dalvi, Ranjit Hoskote, Jerry Pinto, Rohinton Daruwala, Arundhathi Subramaniam

Date: Wednesday, 8 October 2008
Time: 7 pm
Venue: Sakshi Gallery, Tanna House, 11A Nathalal Parekh Marg, Colaba, Mumbai

(email from PEN India)

Husain is the only artist in the country who has brought the world to us. That’s why I call him the hero of the art world. He’s like a godfather. But he had so much strength he could have done much more than he has in the visual arts. He’s been content with painting portraits of people. I criticise those weak works of his. But that does not matter when you look at the larger picture of his contribution to Indian art. Look at him, 94 years old and still going strong.

(In the Indian Express today)

I was first attracted by the lovely cover and then the excellent translation of Uday Prakash’s brilliant novel.

I liked it very much. It’s a Mumbai film - does the city so well, including the north-south commute, the cooperative society, the Malabar Hill in-laws.

Also the greed, obsessiveness, and desperation.

The tapping on the car window at traffic signals.

The lifetime it can take to move from a 1-BHK to a 2-BHK.

And the music by Indian Ocean so well integrated into the film, especially the song that plays during Rajat Kapoor’s bus ride.

Definitely one of the better films of the year. Good work, Jaideep Varma.

(Picture Movie Talkies)

From this superb collection edited by Jeet Thayil for Penguin India, this poem by Gopal Honnalgere (1942-2003):
(I can’t seem to get the text formatting quite right, sorry)

The Donkeys

maybe it’s a legend
I don’t remember his name
a tibetan poet sat and wrote
poems poems poems all his life
when he was eighty nine
and with a mirror-like bald
head approaching death
he had with him three
donkey-loads of poems
he wanted to give them away
to a prayer wheel turning monastery
he carried them on three hired donkeys
and began to walk thinking about life
it was a god-freezing winter
the old man started shivering
and couldn’t walk
he made a bonfire of
one of his donkey-loads of poems
and warmed himself sitting near the fire
when he was about to start on the journey
a thought came into his mind -
he saw the donkeys, recalling one of his poems
on donkeys, the donkeys too were shivering
he again made a bonfire
of his two remaining donkey-loads
and made the donkeys stand
around the fire in trinity

the critics say
a single unburnt line of his poetry
discovered by posterity
is enough to express all his perception
you
search
for the donkey
you
ride
on

Amitav Ghosh’s novel is on the Man Booker shortlist. More here.

Outlook describes the work of the 202 Engineer regiment, one of the Army units engaged in rescue and relief work in Madhepura in north Bihar:

Against impossible odds, the sappers worked round the clock, operating from a camp on the road between Saharsa town and Madhepura’s district headquarters, now inundated with nearly five feet of water. The army engineers would begin their day at 4 am, ready the boats, load them on to tractors and then head for the point where the land met the swirling waters…

As boats go out to the flooded villages, submerged electricity poles sometimes punched holes in the boats, which would be brought back and quickly repaired using handkerchiefs and M-seal…

When the day’s rescue operations are called off, stocktaking reveals that just four boats working non-stop for five hours have rescued 253 people, including 100 children. On one memorable day they managed to rescue nearly 200 children, some as young as six months old, trapped on the roof of the Durga Ma High School in Jodgaon village.

But read this.

This and this and this. Reliefweb page including appeals here.

Here is a map of the Bihar flood zones.

Some initiatives to help: Here and here and here. Save the Children has an appeal here. Oxfam page here.

Here is a blog on Bihar Flood Relief 2008. Another one is here. They have some suggestions about ways to help and materials that are needed. A Hindi blog here.

More efforts to help here and here. And here is an effort by a group of eunuchs in Ahmedabad.

Ways to help from Mumbai here.

Some pictures of the situation show the grim struggle to provide relief in the midst of the floods. More here.

Mutiny has some pictures here.

Karmayog’s Bihar floods page here.

As always, the above links are not endorsements but only indicative.

Finally, Pratap Bhanu Mehta asks some fundamental questions, including that of our relationship to the tragedy:

We were all a bit slow in recognising what a national calamity this has been. As more news has come in, public consciousness has risen from its slumber; and as always, there have been brave volunteers soldiering in the field against great odds. But the striking thing about our discourse is this. We often think of civil society as filling in for the failures of the state. It could be argued that in these cases the relationship is the opposite. As the credibility of the state erodes (literally), as its ability to stand in for public purpose diminishes and its ability to direct operations comes into question, civil society also falls into disarray. How does one constructively channel the reservoirs of sympathy and willingness to contribute on such occasions? Public willingness does not translate into public purpose without the mediating role of the state. In all likelihood, the systems that are in place will do some palliative relief work. But we will be discussing the same issues again, year after year as the same pictures of misery come in.