Dream Ink

Urdu poet Shaharyar passes away

2012-02-14T11:23:00.003+08:00

Seene mein jalan aankhon mein tufaan saa kyon hain?
is shahar mein har shakhs pareshaan saa kyon hain?

These immortal lines, from the Hindi film Gaman, were born out of the pen of Aligarh-based Urdu poet and scholar, Shaharyar. Most lovers of Hindustani ghazals will remember his lyrics from the film, Umrao Jaan.

Dil chiiz kya hai aap merii jaan liiji'e
bas ek baar mera kahaa...maan liiji'e

Every time you see Madam Rekha in a Bollywood awards show, the above lines from Umrao Jaan are played in the background. These lines have become a signature, a shorthand for Rekha.

Well, the man behind these lines, the Jnanpith Award winning poet Prof. A. M. K. Shaharyar has passed away. I heard of his demise via Twitter this morning. The famous poet was 76 and was reportedly suffering from cancer. He is survived by a daughter and two sons.

Though Shaharyar Saheb was not as prolific as Javed Akhtar Saheb and Gulzar Saheb in film lyrics writing, his lyrics for films like Umrao Jan, Gaman and Fasle, are enough proof that he was a master of the genre.

Born in Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, Prof. Shaharyar studied in Aligarh Muslim University, also my alma mater. He became a lecturer in the Urdu department in 1966 and rose through the ranks to assume the post of the department's chairman. He edited the Urdu literary journal, Fikr-o-Nazar. He retired from his job in 1996.

Shaharyar’s first poetic collection was ‘Ism-e-Azam’, published in 1965. It was followed by the publication of another anthology ‘Satwan Dar’ in 1969. I remember translating into English one of the poems from his fourth collection ‘Khwab Ka Dar Band Hai’ (1985). I have lost a copy of the same but it (my translation) was published in a literary journal in Aligarh. During my time in Aligarh, I also once had the opportunity of hearing him speak on Iqbal. He was a very erudite man and the legend was that his house had wall-to-wall bookshelves. He probably owned the richest private library in Aligarh.

For many festivalwallas, contemporary Urdu poetry begins and ends with Janab Javed Akhtar Saheb and Gulzar Saheb (no offense to them; I love them too). But Shaharyar Saheb was in a league of his own. It would be sad not to remember the contributions of this giant of modern Urdu poetry today, especially in an age when we are ready to shed tears for foreign musicians like Whitney Houston who died a victim of drug abuse. I know we live in a globalised world but let us not forget our own.

Rest in peace, dear Shaharyar Saheb.

Why can't Singapore filmmakers make The Descendents?

2012-01-30T20:42:00.000+08:00

Last night while I was watching Alexander Payne's The Descendents (2011) in Cathay Orchard, I was thinking: why can't filmmakers in Singapore make a film like this?

Now, there is a reason why this thought crossed my mind.

The Descendents is a small-scale film set in the islands of Hawaii. In the film, a land baron (George Clooney) tries to re-connect with his two daughters after his wife suffers an accident and goes into a coma. Like his last film, Sideways, Payne's new film is also about relationships and is based on a novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings.

Geographically speaking, the plot of the film revolves around two Hawaiian islands, Oahu and Kauai. The main city, as shown in the film, like Singapore, has highrise buildings, hotels and resorts. Singapore also has many neighboring islands. Developing property in parts of these islands is one of the main activities of economic growth.

The Descendents is a little, heartwarming comedy, and given its setting, a story like this could have been easily recreated in Singapore or Hong Kong. However, I have not seen a beautiful film like this, based on relationships, made in Singapore or Hong Kong. Most of the films coming from this part of the world are either heartlander comedies, gangster-cop films or horror films or films made with an eye for international awards. I wonder why?

The Nabokov Interviews

2011-12-25T07:25:00.000+08:00

"I think like a genius,I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child," thus begins Nabokov's Strong Opinions. It is a book of interviews collected by Nabokov himself--a selection made out of forty interviews in several languages.

Nabokov was very conscious of his speech, which is evident from the opening line. He says in an interview: "I have always been a wretched speaker. My vocabulary dwells deep in my mind and needs paper to wriggle out into the physical zone. Spontaneous eloquence seems to me a miracle. I have rewritten -- often several times -- every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasures."

Beautiful, isn't it? When I first read these statements, my spine tingled with joy.

Whether it was delivering a lecture, or having a telephonic conversation ("my hemmings or hawings") or chit-chatting with people in a party, Nabokov was never off guard or casual about anything. "At parties, if I attempt to entertain people with a good story," he explains, "I have to go back to every other sentence for oral erasures and inserts. Even the dream I describe to my wife across the breakfast table is only a first draft."

To interview such a man was never a straightforward affair (Imagine Nabokov's discomfort in today's world of letters -- hopping from studio to television studio to promote one of his books, or to speak in a literary festival! Actually, he did once appear in a TV interview in London but that too was rehearsed and Nabokov had his notes in front of him, so he could neither stare at the camera nor leer at the questioner--thus appearing squirming and avoiding the camera). Instead, Nabokov insisted on receiving questions in advance and always carefully composed his responses. Anyone who wanted to interview him had to agree to three conditions: The questions had to be sent in writing, answered by him in writing, and reproduced verbatim.

Come to think of this process in our age of email interviews. It works perfectly well, saving each party the disgrace and heartburn of suffering a misquote, or mixing authentic responses with the artificial colour of human interest.

It was not that Nabokov did not enjoy giving interviews. He rather did. "My fiction allows me so seldom the occasion to air my private views that I rather welcome, now and then, the questions put to me in sudden spates by charming, courteous, intelligent visitors," he says. Or see what he says on another occasion: "The luxury of speaking on one theme--oneself--is a sensation not to be despised. But the result is sometimes puzzling."

In his first interview, given at the time of Lolita's film premiere, Nabokov describes himself as a person without public appeal (that is, he was boring as a celebrity): "I have never been drunk in my life. I never use school boy words of four letters. I have never worked in an office or a coal mine. I have never belonged to any club or group. No creed or school has had any influence on me whatsoever. Nothing bores me more than political novels and the literature of the social intent."

Nabokov was never interested in literary fashions, movements or schools. He was interested only in the individual artist. So, while Robbe-Grillet was a great French writer to him, he considered the "anti-novel" a banal and phony commercial label.

To him, a work of art was for an individual, and was of no social importance at all. "What makes a work of fiction safe from larvae and rust is not social importance but its art, only its art," he says.

Nabokov could not type and wrote everything in longhand, on index cards. He refused to show an interviewer a sample of his rough drafts. "Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts," was his reply. "It is like passing around samples of one's sputum."

Nabokov, who lived in Europe as a Russian immigre and then moved over to America and spent his last days in Europe again, maintained that the nationality of a worthwhile writer is of secondary importance. "The writer's art is his real passport," he says.

Art is never simple

"A creative writer must study carefully the works of his rivals, including the Almighty," he says. "Imagination without knowledge leads no farther than the backyard of primitive art, the child's scrawl on the fence, and the crank's message in the marketplace. Art is never simple. Art at its greatest is fantastically deceitful and complex."

Many of us suffer from the disease of forgetability. So did Nabokov. His other failings as a writer included, in his own words, "lack of spontaneity; the nuisance of parallel thoughts, second thoughts; inability to express myself properly in any language unless I compose every damned sentence in my bath, in my mind, at my desk."

Nabokov had a bleak and "changeless as an old gray oak" political creed, classical to the point of triteness: "Freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of art. The social or economic structure of the ideal state is of little concern to me. My desires are modest. Portraits of the head of the government should not exceed a postage stamp in size. No torture and no executions. No music, except coming through earphones or played in theatres." By the way, Nabokov had no ear for music, a shortcoming he deplored bitterly.

Aspects of good reading

To Nabokov, a good reading involved not the heart, but the mind and the spine--yours, not the book's. The heart is a stupid reader, he says. "Ladies and gentlemen, the tingle in the spine really tells you what the author felt and wished you to feel," he used to tell his students.

And he hated yarns spliced with social comments. "The middlebrow or the upper Philistine cannot get rid of the furtive feeling that a book, to be great, must deal in great ideas."

He detested the so-called "powerful novels"--full of commonplace obscenities and torrents of dialogue. When a publisher sent him a book to read, he would first check for the amount of dialogue in it. "If it looks too abundant or too sustained, I shut the book with a bang, and ban it from my bed."

On writers

Nabokov's favourite writers, he once told an interviewer, were Robbe-Grillet and Borges: "How freely and gratefully one breathes in their marvelous labyrinths!I love their lucidity of thought, the purity and poetry, the mirage in the mirror."

He once described Dostoevski as a cheap sensationalist, clumsy and vulgar. He said that Russians who loved Dostoevski venerate him as a mystic and not as an artist. He disliked intensely The Karamazov Brothers and the ghastly Crime and Punishment. "He was a prophet, a claptrap journalist and a slapdash comedian," he says. "...His sensitive murderers and soulful prostitutes are not to be endured for one moment --by this reader anyway."

This more or less mirrors my own attitude to Dostoevski whom I admire but find some of his books too dense to get through. I want a powerful story but it has to be well told, distilled and condensed. Where is the mot juste in his writing?

He considered Anna Karenin the supreme masterpiece of nineteenth-century literature, closely followed by The Death of Ivan Illyich. War and Peace, he says, was written for that amorphic and limp creature known as 'the general reader,' and more specifically for the young.

He considered Hemingway and Conrad 'writers of books for boys'. "Hemingway certainly is the better of the two," he says. He loved his "The Killers" and found the famous fish story superb. While I personally love Hemingway, I could never connect with Conrad's prose. "I cannot abide Conrad's souvenir-shop style, bottled ships and shell necklaces of romanticist cliches," says Nabokov. "In mentality and emotion, both (Hem and Conrad) are hopelessly juvenile."

What he read between the ages of 10-15: Wells, Poe, Browning, Keats, Falubert, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Alexander Blok. "By the age of 14 or 15, I had read or re-read all Tolstoy in Russian, all Shakespeare in English and all Flubert in French --besides hundreds of other books," he writes. But at another level, his heroes were Scarlet Pimpernel, Phileas Fogg, and Sherlock Holmes.

What he read between the ages of 20-40: Houseman, Rupert Brooke, Norman Douglas, Bergson, Joyce, Proust, and Pushkin. Of these top favs, several - Poe, Jules Verne, Orczy, Conan Doylem and Rupert Brooke - lost the glamour and thrill for him in later age.

He read some of his coevals such as "the not quite first rate Eliot" and "definitely second rate Pound" late in life--and remained completely indifferent to them. He could not understand why anybody should bother about them. He hated Freud and called him a charlatan. "Let the credulous and vulgar continue to believe that all mental woes can be cured by a daily application of old Greek myths to their private parts," he says. "I really do not care."

Late in his life, he still loved Melville, and liked Hawthorne and Emerson. His feelings towards James were rather complicated.
However, many accepted authors simply did not exist for him: "Their names are engraved on empty graves, their books are dummies, they are complete nonentities insofar as my taste in reading is concerned. Brecht, Faulkner, Camus, many others mean absolutely nothing to me." Same dislike goes for Mann, Dreiser and D H Lawrence.

Nabokov complained against the general attitude in English to pass the word 'genius' around rather generously. In Russian, genius is applied to a very small number of writers such as Shakespeare, Milton, Pushkin and Tolstoy. Turgenev and Chekhov were mere talents. He felt appalled at seeing genius applied to any important storyteller, such as Maupassant or Maugham. "Genius still means to me ... a unique, dazzling gift, the genius of James Joyce, not the talent of Henry James," he says.

Writing for Nabokov was a blend of dejection and high spirits, a torture and a pastime--but he never expected it to be a source of income. Rather he dreamt of a career in lepidoptera.

"If I am told I am a bad poet, I smile; but if told I am a poor scholar, I reach for my heaviest dictionary," he says in an essay, Reply to my Critics. In these interviews, Nabokov is much more interesting than he claims he is not, and as the book's blurb says, in these interviews, letters and articles, Nabokov is as engaging, challenging and caustic as anything he ever wrote.

Faulkner and the purity of exactitude

2011-12-22T17:44:00.001+08:00

In my last post, I wrote about my friend Fang Yih, and in that post I had mentioned him as Pynchonian. When he learned of this description of him on my blog, he said I should have marked him as Faulknerian. In fact, he adores both Pynchon and Faulkner (I am yet to start on Pynchon, as I am still reading works of his teacher, Nabokov) and of course, Naipaul, whom both of us admire. Only last night I was reading some passages from Naipaul's The Mystic Masseur to my daughter and I was loving the comedy of the whole thing: it is always a pleasure to read the early Naipaul.

The year is coming to end and I wanted to write something on Faulkner after having read some of his essays and lectures which are available in a beautiful volume titled William Faulkner: Essays, Speeches and Public Letters (edited by James Meriwether, The Modern Library, New York).

The volume opens with Faulkner's essay on Sherwood Anderson, which is in fact an appreciation of one master by another. It is a brilliant sketch and is so evocatively written. You just have to read it to know what I mean by it. I just loved it.

In his later life, Anderson disconnected himself from his family just to focus on his writing--which was sort of an anti-Kafkaesque move.

Faulkner says that Anderson worked so laboriously and tediously and indefatigably at everything he wrote as if he said to himself: This anyway will, shall, must be invulnerable. He writes: "It was as though he wrote not even out of the consuming unsleeping appeaseless thirst for glory for which any normal artist would destroy his aged mother, but for what to him was more important and urgent: not even for mere truth, but for purity, the exactitude of purity."

The exactitude of purity (is it the same is mot jouste?) or the purity of exactitude - I love this expression - it has a sentimental value for me. I first read this phrase in an essay by Carver and he was perhaps referring to this essay by Faulkner which I was lucky enough to have stumbled upon. It was this attempt for exactitude that sometimes made Anderson fumble (often, inviting ridicule). It became his defining style. The writing had to be first rate for him. Nothing else mattered.

One of the great things Faulkner learned from Anderson, besides the exactitude of purity, is that - to be a writer, one has first got to be what he is, what he was born. "You had only to remember what you were," he writes.

"You have to have somewhere to start from: then you begin to learn," Anderson told Faulkner. "It don't matter where it was, just so you remember it and aint ashamed of it."

"... Watch and listen and try to understand; and, even if you can't understand, believe."

That I think turned out to be a great advice for Faulkner as he brought his own country, his patch of land in the vast America, Mississippi, to life on the pages of his fiction. It is another matter that Nabokov dismisses Faulkner's works as corncobian.

Freedom and privacy

Among other things, Faulkner championed freedom and privacy. "Man's hope is in man's freedom," he said once addressing the youth of Japan. These two ideals--freedom for all and privacy for each individual--are still our ideals and seem in greater danger of disappearing today than ever before. He believed that liberty and freedom (which is necessary to exist for a writer to practice his craft) are not given to man as a free gift but as a right and a responsibility to be earned if he deserves it, is worthy of it, and is willing to work for it by means of courage and sacrifice , and to defend it always.

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Faulkner spoke against the malaise of fear--fear that can kill freedom, fear that can undeniably kill a writer. If a writer wants to write of the heart, not of the glands, he must teach himself "that the basest of all things is to be afraid, and teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed--love and hounor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labours under a curse."

A Moveable Feast

2011-12-15T17:56:00.000+08:00

One of my favorite reads this year has been Hemingway's A Moveable Feast. This book has been on my work desk for several weeks now and every time my colleague and friend Fang Yih sees it, he throws it into the dustbin. He is one of those Hemingway haters. "If he had to write such condensed and pared down prose, why didn't he try poetry?" That's his main grouse against Hemingway. I understand the nature of his complaint and smile away while retrieving the copy from the dustbin. "Perhaps, this is the only good book he ever wrote," Fang Yih admits grudgingly. He is a Pynchonian.

I had read some of Hemingway's stories earlier in the year: I had liked his Nick Adam stories. I haven't paid any serious attention to his novels yet. I had loved The Old Man and the Sea when I had read it some years ago. Nabokov liked his story, The Killers, more than anything else he ever wrote.

Yet, there are many who don't like Hemingway. One of my editor friends, after reading some of my stories that I wrote this year, said one or two stories in my collection read like journalism. Hemingway, in this book, says the same about some of Chekov's stories. So, in hindsight, I take my friend's comment as a compliment. Every story one writes can't be great. Some stories do get shaped up like journalism, even though the attempt is to avoid that effect.

Hemingway in Paris

Hemingway had started writing this book in 1957 and the book was published posthumously in 1964. The book records Hemingway's years in Paris during the 1920s. Then, he was starting up as a young and struggling writer; to begin with, he was stationed in Paris as a correspondent for the Toronto Star. At that time, Braque, Picasso, Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and Scott Fitzgerald were the shining stars in Paris. Hemingway got to meet and befriend some of these legendary figures. Some chapters in this book tell stories of these legends.

One of the funniest chapters in the book is about Hemingway's travel with Fitzgerald. It is an amazing story in itself, and reveals the character of both the personalities.

In the beginning of the book, when Hemingway meets Gertrude Stein, he comes back with the feeling that he had to be cured of two things: his youth and his love for his wife. He believed work could cure anything and he worked hard to cure himself of these two things. Stein also advised him to buy pictures instead of clothes (to put the money to better use).

Hemingway was poor but he and his wife never thought of themselves as poor. They never accepted it ("We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other). But he knew in his heart that "the one who is doing his work and getting satisfaction from it is not the one the poverty bothers."

During their meetings, Stein and Hemingway often discussed writers and writing. Stein advised him not to read Huxley. "Huxley is a dead man. Can't you see he is dead?" she told him. "You should only read what is truly good and what is frankly bad." Huxley wrote inflated trash, she said.

Hemingway said he liked D H Lawrence, especially his short story, The Prussian Officer. Stein said she couldn't read his novels. "He's impossible, pathetic, and preposterous"--that was her judgment. "He writes like a sick man." She admired Sherwood Andersen, never as a writer, but as a person--a warm and kind person.

Books, hunger, writing

In those days, Hemingway had no money to buy books. He borrowed books from Shakespeare and Company, the bookstore of Sylvia Beach. Some of the books he mentions borrowing from her are Turgenev's A Sportsman's Sketches, D H Lawrence's Sons and Lovers (perhaps), and Constance Garnett edition of War and Peace, and The Gambler and Other Stories by Dostoyevsky.

In "Hunger was good discipline", Hemingway says all the paintings (in a museum) were sharpened and clearer and more beautiful if you were belly-empty, hollow-hungry. "Hunger is good discipline and you learn from it," he writes.

When Hemingway quit journalism, getting money was a problem. "When I stopped doing newspaper work I was sure the stories were going to be published. But every one I sent out came back."

One day Hemingway tells his woes to Sylvia. He feels ashamed about talking over this matter. "Don't you know all writers ever talk about is their troubles?" Sylvia tells him to comfort him.

Hemingway talks about his stories, Up in Michigan (Stein thought it was inaccrochable), and Out of Season. The real end of the latter story was that the old man in it hangs himself. Hemingway had omitted that ending based on his new theory, that "you could omit anything if you knew that you omitted and that the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood".

In a chapter on Ford Maddox Ford, Hemingway does not portray a rosy picture of the writer (he had been through very bad domestic troubles). The two are drinking and a poet named Belloc passes by. Ford cuts him. "Tell me why one cuts people," Hemingway asks. "A gentleman," Ford explained,"will always cut a cad."

Ezra Pound

"Ezra Pound was always a good friend and he was always doing things for people," Hemingway writes. He associated with Pound's movement called Bel Esprit to raise money to free T S Eliot from his bank job so that he could write poetry. Eliot got freed but the movement died soon after.

Pound and Hemingway naturally liked to discuss writers. Hemingway had read Gogol, Tungenev, Tolstoi and Chekov. He had been advised to read Katherine Mansfield in Toronto but after reading Chekov, he felt her writing to be artificial and near-beer. "It was better to drink water. But Chekov was not water except for the clarity." Hemingway was puzzled by Dostoyevsky who wrote so "unbelievably badly" and yet made you feel so deeply. Dostoyevsky seemed to be anti- mot juste. Ezra said he never read the "Rooshians". "Keep to the French," he advised. "You've plenty to learn there."

The next chapter that follows is how he broke up his friendship with Stein. The rift led him to conclude that "there is not much future in men being friends with great women although it can be pleasant enough before it gets better or worse, and there is even less future with truly ambitious women writers." The break left him so shaken that he could not make friends again truly, neither in his heart nor in his head. "When you cannot make friends any more in your head is the worst," he says.

The last chapters are on Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. They are full of insight. But I would like to close this review with a quote from Hem's poet friend, Evan Shipman, who truly did not care if his poems were ever published--he felt that it should remain a mystery.

"We need more true mystery in our lives, Hem," he once told Hemingway. "The completely unambitious writer and the really good unpublished poem are the things we lack most at this time. There is, of course, the problem of sustenance."

It sounds so true even hundred years later--now in our time when we are living almost naked lives. If the multitude of talentless poets and writers heeded this advice, we would be spared the unbearable trash that is thrown at us each year. It forces us to look back and reach for the gems of the past to survive the brazen assaults. The only difference, between then and now, is not that of the problem of sustenance but of vanity.

And after that there is only travel...

2011-12-05T12:33:00.001+08:00

(Warning: Content not suitable for minors)

Perhaps I had mentioned Roberto Bolano's book The Insufferable Gaucho in one of my previous posts. Apart from the story, Alvaro Rousselot's Journey, that I loved, there is an essay in this book that had many marvelous thoughts in it. The essay is called Literature + Illness = Illness. It is dedicated to Bolano's friend the hepatologist, Dr. Victor Vargas. The essay has many sub-topics such as Illness and public speaking, Illness and freedom, Illness and height and so on. The most facilitating sub-chapter is one entitled, Illness and French poetry.

He quotes one of Mallarme's poems from Brise marine:

The flesh is sad--and I've read every book.
O to esacpe--to get away. Birds look
as though they're drunk for unknown spray and skies.

Then Bolano goes on to analyse the poem. "What did Mallarme mean when he said that the flesh was sad and that he'd read all the books? That he'd had his fill of reading and of having sex? That beyond a certain point, every book we read and every act of carnal knowledge is a repetition? And after that there is only travel? That f...g and reading are boring in the end, and that travel is the only way out?"

Then he tries to answer the question posed by Mallarme: "I think Mallarme is taking about illness, about the battle between illness and health: two totalitarian states, or powers if you prefer. I think he is talking about illness tricked out in the rags of boredom."

Under Illness and travel, Bolano writes: "...But it all catches up with you. Children. Books. Illness. The voyage comes to an end."

He then goes over to Baudelaire and quotes some of his lines: Once we have burned our brains out, we can plunge/to Hell or Heaven--any abyss will do--/deep in the Unknown to find the new!

Bolano says: "Rimbaud clearly understood, since he plunged with equal ferver into reading, sex, and travel, only to discover and accept, with a diamond-like lucidity, that writing doesn't matter at all."

Reading, writing, sex, travel--Bolano understands--resemble each other, and all that, is a mirage: there is only the desert and from time to time the remote, degrading lights of oasis.

Even though we feel tired of all the above acts, we have no choice but to go on. Bolano says: "We have to go on exploring sex, books, and travel, although we know that they lead us to the abyss, which, as it happens, is the only place where the antidote (to the illness of boredom) can be found."

Dev Anand

2011-12-05T12:32:00.001+08:00

I got the news of Dev Anand Saheb's passing away on Facebook yesterday. I saw a friend's status on FB and it contained that dreadful news. It was a grey afternoon and I had taken my daughter out for swimming. The pool was closed because of the rains and the static due to the thunders. We waited for close to two hours and then headed back home.

En route, we decided to stop by for coffee and that's when I told my wife about Dev Saheb's death. He lived a great and respectable life and passed away in peace, she said. How many people get to lead that kind of life? Indeed. Dev Saheb was a lucky man. He enjoyed a lifetime of stardom, being showered with love from lovers of Hindi cinema. He died in his sleep. He was in London for medical check up. He was 88.

I awoke late to the chrisma of Dev Saheb. As a kid, I grew up worshiping the angry young man persona of Amitabh Bachchan. Those were the pre-television days and even to get to watch a Bachchan movie standing up in a hot, jam-packed, and dilapidated cinema hall was a ticket to the heaven. In those days, names like those of Dev Anand, Dilip Kumar and Raj Kumar sounded boring. For me, they were stars who had faded away. I had difficulty believing that young Indian women found them worthy of swooning over!

Once, one of my uncles took me to watch one of Dev Saheb's hit movies. It was Johny Mera Naam. Hmm, not bad, I thought. Later on, I watched Guide. I liked it, more so because it was based on R K Narayan's story. Narayan had many complaints against Dev Saheb but that is another story. I also liked Dev Saheb's work in Kala Bazaar and Taxi Driver. I saw many of these gems while researching for a documentary with my friend and mentor Amir Ullah Khan and Professor Bibek Debroy (Indian Economic Transition through Bollywood Eyes).

As I watched more of his movies, I realised what had happened with him. His performance in some of his earlier films were great because he had not developed his trade mark Dev Anand Style. Later on, he had become a caricature of himself. This happened to many other good actors of Hindi cinema--they got trapped in their trade mark styles: names like Raaj Kumar, Dharmendra, Shatrughan Sinha, even Bachchan Saheb, come to my mind.

Though I had great respect for him, Dev Saheb seemed to have wasted his talent on films unworthy of his attention. He could have been like Clint Eastwood. Eastwood, even at 81, directs excellent films (Gran Torino, Million Dollar Baby, Invictus, to name a few). In his later career, Dev Saheb produced and directed many films, but not a single one is memorable (such as Awwal Number, Main Solah Baras Ki, Love at Times Square). Someone should have stopped him.

However, this does not make him any less great. Long before, he had earned his place in people's heart. I love him for his energy, for his capacity to go on, no matter what. And I will always remember him for the song, Har fikr to dhuyen me udata chala gaya. This is one of my favorite songs, besides the one from Gurudutt Saheb's Pyaasa: Yeh Duniya agar mil bhi jaye toh kya hai.

Dev Saheb, whenever fikr and taraddud surround me, I reach out for that stick and take a drag and sing along with you: Maein Zindagi Ka Saath Nibhata Chala Gaya/Har Fikar Ko Dhuen Mein Udata Chala Gaya

Dev Saheb, wherever you are, rest in peace. We will always love you.

The terror of being a poor Muslim in India

2011-11-16T12:04:00.001+08:00

Jimmy the terrorist by Omair Ahmad
Hamish Hamilton, 2010; Rs. 350

Reviewed by Zafar Anjum

Novelist Omair Ahmad has chosen a misleading title for his third work of fiction, Jimmy the Terrorist. Jimmy, a lovingly anglicized version of Jamaal, is not an Islamist terrorist, plotting revenge in a post 9/11 world. As such, Jimmy the Terrorist is not about Islamist terrorism. It is about the terror of being a Muslim in India.

Well, make that a ‘poor’ Muslim in India. Omair brings up the class issue in his narrative, so the main protagonist Jamaal’s being ‘poor’ is quite pertinent here and must be taken note of. And Jamaal’s poverty is not the typical kind of poverty associated with the majority of Muslims and low caste Indians. His father is a teacher, he has a roof over his head, he studies at Moazzamabad’s most venerable school, St. Jude’s—only he doesn’t have the kind of expensive shoes and shirts and pocket money that his other ‘Hindu’ classmates have. Jamaal is ‘that’ kind of poor. He is middle-class poor—that’s where young Indian Muslim terrorists purportedly come from. The category of lower class Muslims—the ones who live in slums—is the fount of gangsters in India, the type you see in Bollywood films.

When the novel begins with a geographical and historical map-making of Moazzamabad in Uttar Pradesh, a certain kind of expectation builds up. Maybe it is because of the kind of news we have been receiving in the last few years—the stories of Indian police branding innocent young Muslim boys as terrorists and killing them for awards and trophies. When Omair evokes Moazzamabad and Rasoolpur, we hope to read about a sample biography of one of the terrorist boys from Azamgarh. I thought Jimmy the Terrorist would do for fiction what Tehelka does for non-fiction in India. At the same time, I was worried that the novelist would do what he is not supposed to do—bringing the news.

I was wrong.

Omair exceeds my expectations. He goes into India’s heart of darkness (actually he comes from there) and returns with a tale that reflects the reality of Indian Muslims today. His tale is ordinary, even deceptively simple in its plotting and narration but in its bosom is the picture of India’s underbelly and how it perceives its existence in a climate of Hinduvta-based politics.

The story is so plain that if I were a neocon reviewer, drawing a fat salary from one of the American think-tanks, I would have dismissed the book in a few sentences. Why make a fuss over a dead Muslim boy in a god-forsaken small town in Uttar Pradesh? Look at the numbers in Afghanistan and Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims have died. And wait! The number of deaths would be even more spectacular after the folly of revolutions in the Middle East. So, why care about Jimmy—I would have said.

Yet, the story Omair wants to share with us is important. And he does it with a simplicity which is hard to achieve, especially in setting up a story in the backdrop of India’s communal politics. Omair pulls the challenge off with ease and dexterity. Through his two main characters, Rafiq and his son Jamaal, the novelist brings into sharp relief the Muslim alienation in India today that has developed over two generations since Independence. The older protagonist, Rafiq, becomes an angry demagogue; the younger one, Jimmy, does not speak; he stores his anger until it explodes in a violent climax. Unlike his father, he lacks the safety valve of hate speech.

Omair shows that his two characters haven’t chosen their attitudes. Their circumstances have turned them into who they are. The story is precisely about this transformation in their nature. And the understanding of that mechanism that Omair brings to his reader is his main achievement in this novel.

When Rafiq, who aspired to be a poet and wanted acceptance in a local poetry circle, loses everything he so painstakingly has built over the years, he is forced to take a job at an Islamic school. Formerly a geography lecturer in a college, he is not sure how to go about his job interview. One of his friends teaches him the trick to land the job:

“Just be angry,” Haris said. “Rant and rave. Talk about the grand tragedies, about oppression, zulm, riots and murder. Grow your beard a little longer and miss no opportunity to raise your voice against the suffering of Muslims. It’s what the Mullahs do all the time.”

This cultivated anger gives Rafiq a sort of power that he never had and he carries this trick wherever he goes, to great success.

Jamaal, Rafiq’s son, on the other hand, grows pensive and inward-looking at St. Jude’s. “Being a winner requires more than just being first in a race: a victory is never quite that unless there are people who will acknowledge your triumph. It was the reason Jamaal never stood first in any of his exams.” At school, Jamaal also learns that there is a price to success, and the price isn’t simply hard work.

In the novel, Omair mentions many things: partition, communal riots, Sanjay Gandhi’s nasbandi programme, demolition of Babri Masjid and Advani’s Rath Yatra. But not once does he mention Pakistan. This omission is strange; or maybe it is a welcome relief for many Indian readers. But I wonder if the protagonists ever imagine what their fate would have been in Pakistan. Would they have fared better there?

Since Omair’s Jimmy the Terrorist has emerged out of a set of short stories, the seams have marked the narrative. More than half way through the book, one protagonist fades off and another protagonist takes over. If the story is about Jimmy, tell us Jimmy’s story—some readers might feel that way.

Even though the narrator’s voice in the novel is warm and mellifluous, it sometimes tires you. That is the other problem with the novel. Omair’s tendency to overexplain things slows down the narrative.

Jimmy the Terrorist is no Booker Prize material (here I humbly disagree with the novel’s publisher who had thought that it was Booker prize material)—it does not have the level of complexity and technical finesse of a great work of fiction but given the fact that the Chetan Bhagats are ruling the roost in India, it is encouraging to see young writers like Omair Ahmad trying their hand at serious fiction. Jimmy the Terrorist should be applauded for that daring itself.

This review was written in March and a version of it appeared in Indian Literature (published by Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi) in August 2011.

Paris on my mind

2011-11-15T16:37:00.001+08:00

For the last few weeks, Paris has been on my mind.

It all started with Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris. I had seen the movie on a plane en route to Shanghai. I had loved it for the sheer fact that it has characters that portray literary figures such as Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald. And Marion Cotillard--she is divine even though she is in a cameo in the movie. I had loved Hemingway's (played by Corey Stoll) macho dialogues. "No subject is terrible if the story is true, if the prose is clean and honest, and if it affirms courage and grace under pressure," says his character at one point in the film. I also loved the scene where Gil (Owen Wilson) asks Hemingway to read his novel. Papa says he hates it. "Why?" asks Gill, "You haven't even read it". "If it's bad, I'll hate it," says Papa. "If it's good, then I'll be envious and hate it even more. You don't want the opinion of another writer."

There are many such memorable scenes in that movie from the Paris of 1920s when Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, James Joyce, Piccasso, Ford Maddox Ford, Ezra Pound and Scott Fitzgerald, among others, enlivened the literary world of Paris.

I mentioned this, my love for Paris arising from the movie, to one of my friends in Paris and she invited me to visit the city in December. How sweet of her! Alas, I cannot make it as I may have to travel to India in connection with a book.

But ever since, almost anything I have touched has some Paris in it. Weired, isn't it?

One day I picked up this book from the library which I thought would have nothing to do with Paris. It is called The Insufferable Gaucho by Roberto Bolano. Now I have loved some of Bolano's works, not all of them.
In this book, there is a lovely essay, Literature + Illness = Illness but the story that I loved most in the collection is titled Alavaro Rousselot's Journey. It is about a lesser known Argentine novelist Alavaro Rousselot who takes a trip to Paris to hunt down a French filmmaker who he thought was his most ardent reader/follower and who had made his name by making films that had plots similar to the plots of novels that Alavaro had written earlier in his career. It is a beautiful story and it ends poignantly like all good stories should, touching you somewhere on the spine, to make it atingle (to borrow that Nabokovian phrase).

The next two books I picked up and read also had a lot of Paris in it. One is a book of interviews of Nabokov, selected by the great writer himself. He had spent parts of his youth in Berlin and Paris as an immigrant and he talks about seeing Joyce and Aleksei Tolstoy there. Joyce once even came to one of his talks that he was made to give at the last minute after a famous Eastern European writer failed to appear at a scheduled event.

The other book that I have been enjoying a great deal is A Moveable Feast by Hemingway. As you may know, this book is Hemingway's tribute to Paris and an elegy to the remarkable group of expats that formed the literary and artistic life of the Paris of the 1920s. In this book, I have loved the chapters on Scott and Zelda. His struggle to become a writer amid poverty should inspire all poor writers, like myself. It was strange to read how Hemingway treated poverty, exactly like me: "We did not think ever of ourselves as poor," he says. "We did not accept it. We thought we were superior people and other people that we looked down on and rightly mistrusted were rich." Reading Papa's words brought me some relief; only I do not believe in the inferior and superior bit, but I would certainly never respect anyone just because he/she is rich. Only two qualities - piety and knowledge - will generate awe in me for a person.

It was about Paris that Hemingway wrote to one of his friends in 1950: "If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast."

I know Paris has changed since Hemingway's time. But after reading so much about Paris and having watched so many great French films, why won't I wish to see Paris? I know it is a matter of time. At least, I hope so.

Dr. Susan Lim's search for justice

2011-11-10T18:15:00.002+08:00

In recent months, well-known Singapore surgeon Dr. Susan Lim has received enough media attention here and abroad in the wake of her run-in with the Singapore Medical Council (SMC). Last week, the judgment on her appeal against constituting a second disciplinary committee by the SMC was reserved.

SMC, whose job, among others, is to determine and regulate the conduct and ethics of registered medical practitioners in Singapore, wants to conduct a second disciplinary inquiry into the Ministry of Health's accusation against Dr. Lim that she overcharged a patient--the sister of the Brunei queen--over seven months in 2007. Her controversial medical bill, still unpaid, after discounts, stands at $12 million.

The first SMC disciplinary committee had to stand down after Dr. Lim's lawyers claimed it had per-judged the case (The New Paper, 11 Nov, 2011). Dr. Lim's lawyers want to exploit this 'standing down' of the first committee to avoid being further investigated. "It was illegal, improper and biased," said Dr. Lim's lawyer in the court of the SMC's disciplinary proceedings (The New Paper, 11 Nov, 2011). However, the SMC's lawyer insists that there is a case against Dr. Lim since there is no evidence of an agreement between the doctor and the patient of a fee agreement, and so the overcharging was unjustified. Who knows if this case leads to the standardization of fees by medical specialists in Singapore, just like Britain is contemplating legislation next year to curb excessive executive pay?

I had briefly written about this case before as it had caught my attention (a writer always keeps a lookout for interesting stories; Hemingway, when he was in Paris, loved to read crime stories in the scandal sheets). It sounds callous and heartless but that is how writers are.

Months later, upon reading my piece, one day I was invited to meet Dr. Susan Lim's team. They wanted to present the facts, their side of the story which was not sufficiently covered in the media, in front of me. I wondered why they would want to do that for an insignificant blogger like me? Maybe it was because of the questions that I had raised in my previous blog post.

One the one hand, I was curious; on the other, I was apprehensive, not sure about going for the meeting. A meeting meant an obligation to write a piece. Or may be not. But as is the case with me, I am too soft-hearted to say no to anyone. I also had to think of the possibility of any consequences of my writing about an ongoing case. Should I be afraid of anything? The moment I thought of that, of being afraid, I knew what I should do. I went right ahead to the meeting. Ideally, the whole country's media, and not just me, should have been called in to an open press conference for them to be presented with the facts of the case.

The meeting lasted more than an hour. It was a pleasant meeting. Like any corporate briefing, there also was a representative of a PR company present there. At the end of the meeting, he asked me to get in touch with him if I needed any more info. "Shop talk," I smiled and got out of the meeting venue.

A reputation collapses under the weight of newspaper headlines

After the meeting, I was thinking about the beleaguered surgeon and her staff (I don't know how many of them have already been retrenched because of lack of funds). What a price to pay for a royal engagement? One the one hand, Dr. Lim's image has been tarnished because of the heavy media coverage and the chatter in the blogosphere: she has been portrayed as a greedy profiteer, as if she were not a top surgeon but a buccaneer, prizing profit out of human misery (even though the 'misery' was royal in her case). On the other, she has lost her business. A medical practitioner of 30 years standing, Dr. Lim once (in 2007) led the largest surgical practice in Singapore with 33 staff at two clinics in two of Singapore's top private hospitals. Not long ago, according to her team, Dr. Lim's business was worth about 80 million dollars in valuation. Today, that business has gone kaput, bankrupt. Dr. Lim is a pioneering surgeon in Asia; she is a star speaker in conferences all over the world.

Imagine losing your business after achieving such great success, after climbing such great heights, and on top of that, being labelled a greedy person, a profiteer. And for what? According to her team, it was merely for going out of her way to treat the patient. She should have billed the patient every month. Then the issue of outstanding bills would not have arisen.

According to her team, the doctor has been wrongly accused of having no fee agreement with the patient. But the agreement was only verbal--or so it was said. Their point is that Dr. Lim had been assured by the royal patient that Istana (The Royal Palace of Brunei) would take care of her fees and she should not worry about it. True to the promise, for six years, the doctor was paid her fees, whatever the amount, without any questions asked; but, once the patient passed away, the same kind of fees were deemed outrageous. According to her team, the Brunei government were appreciative of her services and only wanted a benchmark or justification from the Singapore authorities for standardizing fees.

Since the rest of her story is well-known, encapsulated here in this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaonTloTdzk) (brought to my notice by her team) and numerous press articles and blog entries, I will not go into much detail. As a writer and artist, I am only interested in the individual.

From the meeting, I emerged impressed by the fearlessness and perseverance of Dr. Lim's team. All they want is to get her name cleared.

Justice and Fearlessness: A Faulknerian quest

After the meeting with the doctor's team, I had been thinking of the controversial case. Why is it important for anyone but her? Why should anyone bother about what happens to her? She is not even an underdog! (It is simple human instinct to champion the underdog) She is well-set and is married to a rich banker. I have been wondering about all these questions when one afternoon, as if by serendipity, I came across a volume of American writer William Faulkner's Essays and Speeches in a library. Some of the Nobel prize winning writer's thoughts jumped at me, making immediate connection with my quest at hand as well as with numerous uprisings making headlines around the world.

In speech after speech, if Faulkner has emphasized on anything, it is fearlessness. In his Nobel prize acceptance speech in 1950, he said that the basest of all things is to be afraid. In 1951, addressing the graduating class of University High School, Oxford, Mississipi, he said: "What threatens us today is fear. Not the atom bomb, nor even fear of it...Our danger is not that. Our danger is the forces in the world today which are trying to use man's fear to rob him of his individuality, his soul, trying to reduce him to an unthinking mass by fear and bribery...because they themselves are baffled and afraid, afraid of, or incapable of, believing in man's capacity for courage and endurance and sacrifice."

In the same speech, Faulkner says: "It is not men in the mass who can and will save Man. It is Man himself, created in the image of God so that he shall have the power and the will to choose right from wrong, and so be able to save himself because he is worth saving;--Man, the individual, men and women, who will refuse always to be tricked and frightened or bribed into surrendering, not just the right but the duty too, to choose between justice and injustice, courage and cowardice, sacrifice and greed, pity and self...so never be afraid. Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion, against injustice and lying and greed."

Dr. Lim is fearless and is seeking justice for herself and her team. If she thinks she has a solid case, which she thinks she has, why can't she allow SMC to conduct another inquiry and prove her point? After all, SMC has the responsibility of regulating the conduct and ethics of registered medical practitioners in Singapore. If SMC does find something wrong in her case and passes a regulation which she might consider unfair, she still would have recourse to justice, won't she?

One can understand that her faith in the SMC is shaken after what happened in the first disciplinary committee. But my hope is that Singapore, having made its name on the back of championing hard work, fairness and justice, will give Dr. Lim a fair chance to clear her name.

What's wrong with Ra.One?

2011-11-10T11:20:00.003+08:00

Contrary to what the title of this post implies, there are many things right with Ra.One. It is an ambitious film, in terms of scale and budget. It is India's most expensive film to date. It introduces the superhero genre to the Indian audiences. For some, it even has moments of breathtaking special effects. And no matter what the naysayers say, the film has already recouped its cost (over Rs 125 crores, according to actor and producer Shahrukh Khan) from the trade.

Lead actor Shahrukh Khan and director Anubhav Sinha wanted to make a superhero film for (their) kids. Both wanted to pay a tribute to the dads of the world that they are cool too. The boxoffice says they have succeeded in their effort. Good. I am happy for these two brave dads.

A dad's reaction

I took my daughter to the theatre to watch Ra.One last week. She liked it. She had already got hooked on to the Chamak Challo song. For a six year old, the story and the effects would have been overwhelming.

Personally, I wanted to like the film. I had loved Shahrukh's My Name is Khan, though many of my friends didn't like it--I have a weakness for films or literature with ideas and social messages: a sure sign of mediocrity, and I know Nabokov would not approve of it: A work of art has no importance whatever to society; it is important only to the individual, he has said. But I know what you are thinking already. Are Bollywood films even works of art? Can Nabokov's standards be applied to Bollywood or even Hollywood films? It is not even debatable, I know, I know (with some exceptions again).

Apart from its timeliness and social relevance, I had liked My Name is Khan because it was smoothly written and Shahrukh's acting was consistent in the film (excepting one or two scenes, if I remember correctly). The credit also must go to the film's director Karan Johar and writer, Shibani Bhatija. That film, and many of Shahrukh's earlier films, had led me to believe that Shahrukh had a great script sense and no matter who he worked with, he would bring up the film to a level that would make it appear grounded and polished. His Don with Farhan Akhtar is another recent example.

With Ra.One unfortunately I did not feel so. Despite the special effects (and many would say "I have seen better" effects), the film has many blurs and blotches. The characters are not grounded enough and everything has a plastic feel to it. The film is too episodic in nature and the seams in the story are visible. The trick is to hide them.

My problem, in regard to Ra.One, is clearly with the story and the writing. I will not discuss Shahrukh's acting here: the performance has been more or less consistent except for the scene towards the end of the film where G.One tells Prateek (Armaan Verma) that he has to 'go'. There, he slips into the My Name is Khan mode of acting.

Now, look at the writing credits of Ra.One (source: IMDB):

David Benullo
Kanika Dhillon dialogue
Kanika Dhillon screenplay
Niranjan Iyengar dialogue
Shah Rukh Khan screenplay
Mushtaq Sheikh screenplay
Anubhav Sinha story

When many writers work on a project, the resulting product could go in any direction. Example: Scorsese's Gangs of New York. Even though the film was based on a book and four writers worked on it, the film failed to appeal to many Scorsese fans. I am afraid the same has happened in Ra.One's case.

Superhero films needn't be for children alone (Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight is an example). And even for a children's film, I found some dialogues in Ra.One distasteful. At the film's beginning, in the fantasy sequence, the Bruce Lee and his three sisters-- Iski Lee, Uski Lee and Sabki Lee-- joke was not only trite but subpar (It belongs to, maybe, an Anurag Kashyap film dealing with characters who are Mumbai's scum). That too from a kid like Prateek (he is dreaming out this sequence) who is studying in England? Will his jokes be like this? I doubt that. Also, the kid is perhaps a genius geek, even though all he does is play video games, argue with his father and listen to loud music by Michael Jackson. In the first half of the film, he is writing an essay on his father in his classroom (makes him a primary school kid?); in the second half of the film, he successfully assembles G.One at his home. What a leap for kid like him!

The other distasteful jokes were the kondom, kondom joke and the power yoga joke. These could have been weeded out at the script level.

Shahrukh's V.Shantaram-loving Shekhar Subramaniam character is also a hodgepodge, just like his plate of noodles and curd. Back in India, all we see about Shekhar is an empty house and two neighbours. What is his backstory, guys?

I know all these points do not matter, now that the film is a success. Like Hollywood's, Bollywood's biggies too know the box office game too well. As has been noted in a book on summer blockbusters (read Diwali or Eid here), these big budget films will work no matter what kind of writing they employ. My only request to the Shahrukh Khans of Bollywood is that, please, encourage good writing. It is sad that it does not matter but it should.

I am sure Shahrukh will make a sequel of Ra.One (called G.One?) and it too will become a huge hit at the boxoffice. When it comes to the cinemas, I know that I will bring my daughter to the theatre to see it. I know that she will like it too--she is just a child. But can Shahrukh make his writers work harder this time, so that a dad like me can enjoy the film with his daughter, without having to squirm in his seat. That is my only request to Shahrukh Khan and his team.

Bangkok Floods: News vs Facts

2011-10-24T18:08:00.001+08:00

If you have been following the news, you would get the impression that all of Bangkok has been flooded. Cars and apartment buildings are submerged in water. You can't walk in the streets. You would have to wade through waist-high water. The city, as far as civic life goes, is dead. The government has declared a state of emergency. And so on -- a litany of dreadful dross. That is the kind of depressing news you must be getting.

Trust me, it is far, far from the truth (well, the emergency thing is true but I hardly saw any soldier anywhere).

I am just back from Bangkok after nearly a week-long stay there and I did not see a single drop of flood water. I repeat, not a single drop of flood water--and I was in central Bangkok. It was warm and sunny and it did not rain at all during the six days of my stay in Bangkok.

Before I had started for the Thai capital, my friends had cautioned me. I had chosen a bad time to go to Thailand.

It reminded me of the last time I had visited Bangkok. Then too, the city was battling another national crisis. The red shirts and the yellow shirts were fighting it out on the streets of Bangkok. Malls were burnt down, people had been shot at. Army had been called in.

Like the last time, this time too, I ignored the warnings and went ahead with my plans. I come back with no regrets.

True, there are widespread floods in the plains and in the areas adjoining Bangkok, but the water is still outside the city. Areas like Pathum Thani have been inundated, which is like 25 kilometers away from the main city (locals have moved to shelters and expats have moved back to their countries for now). The water has since been coming closer to the city and the administration wants to use the city canals to drain off the water to the Gulf of Bangkok. Yesterday, the headline in a local daily said that flood water in Bangkok was expected in 4-5 days.

The government has said that the flood situation could continue for 4-6 weeks in the affected areas. If it does not rain, I don't see any major flooding in the Bangkok city.

During the time I was in Bangkok, I did not notice any flood water but I saw some signs of public panic. I put it down to public preparedness, a natural human instinct, in the face of an expected disaster.

In one of the stores Big C in downtown Bangkok, I went to buy bottled water. Most of it was gone. Only a handful of bottles were left on the shelves. Same was true of noodles (The Thais are fond of noodles, aren't they?).

My sister who lives in Bangkok reported something similar. Water and noodles were gone from the shelves at the store in Narathiwas where she shops. I checked for other items in the same store. There were many empty shelves and I noticed that some choice spices were also gone. My brother in law, who is an expert in disaster management, said that these stores are one of the biggest beneficiaries of the flood. Given the brisk sale and the resulting profits, one shopping store chain has even announced an IPO on the stock exchange. This is called business sense.

Another interesting story that I read in the papers was about some local residents who had parked their cars on a highway, fearing that flood waters might damage their vehicles. This kind of parking then caused anger among the motorists who use the highway. Apparently, all parking places have been opened to Thai citizens who can park their vehicles without paying fees.

In the flooded areas outside Bangkok, apparently some crocodiles had escaped the farms. The authorities had advised people to beat the waters with sticks to scare away the crocodiles. A zoo in the city reported that it was ready to move the animals to proper shelters following an emergency evacuation plan.

A city of sandbags

While I walked around the city, I noticed sandbags at the entrance of malls and other business establishments, especially banks and ATMs.

Other than this, the city seemed normal. It was business as usual everywhere. I saw the Thais and tourists enjoying their Phad Thai noodles and barbequed chicken and cat fish everywhere. The malls were open, tourists were buying fake Luis Vuitton bags and the pimps were peddling girls and sex shows in Patpong like nothing was happening outside the city.

Outside a mall. I saw a tent manned by uniformed people. They were there to collect donations for the flood victims. I saw packets of noodles and water bottles stacked up within the tent.

On my way to the Suvarnabhumi airport on Sunday, the freeway was devoid of much traffic. It was a shiny morning and the green farms around the airport looked beautiful. As I boarded the plane, I silently said a prayer for the City of Lost Angels. I flew with the foolish belief that calamity will not touch this great city. Foolish beliefs--sometimes that's all we have.

Job, Jobs and 'The Tree of Life'

2011-10-08T09:41:00.001+08:00

This Thursday (6 October) morning, I was on the bus to my office. I was surfing through the books section of The Guardian on my iPhone when I received an SMS from my colleague and publisher, Mark Hobson. "I'm hearing on the news that Steve Jobs is dead." The message shook me to the bone. I didn't know what to say. For a few seconds, I just held the phone in my palm. It lay there, cold. I knew that the cancer-stricken, frail-looking Steve Jobs, the darling of Apple's fans, might die in the next few years. But I didn't expect to receive the news of his death so soon. It was as shocking as Michael Jackson's sudden death or as Lady Diana's death in a freak accident many years ago. Only a day before, Mark had shared with me that iPhone 4S, and not the much-awaited iPhone 5, had been launched in the US. And the very next day, I am told that that the man who gave the world the iPod, the iPad and the iPhone was dead.

I checked the news in Google. It was true. Jobs was dead at 56. A rare form of pancreatic cancer had claimed his life. I checked my friends' status notes on Facebook. Many were mourning Jobs' death. "Oh, no!" I replied to Mark.

Death. It spares no one. As children, our elders told us: "Death is a certainty. If you remember death every day many times over, the chances are that you will not make grave mistakes in life. You'll not go astray."

I remembered Jobs' own words on death from his famous commencement speech delivered at Stanford: "No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life." (Stay hungry, stay foolish)

Jobs, probably the most iconic inventor of our times, was saying this about death--that death is "very likely the single best invention of Life". Such words could have come only from a deep understanding of life. Jobs was a man whom life had afforded a second inning, and in his speech, Jobs had acknowledged his search for self-knowledge in India when he was young and out of college. The son of a Syrian Muslim, raised by a Christian couple, had gone to India to seek peace and knowledge from Hindu sages and had died a Buddhist. Jobs' understanding of death--and in turn, of life--could have come only from the wanderings of such a bold and searching spirit that he possessed. That's why he could say to the Standford graduates: "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

I haven't heard any contemporary business leader speak so eloquently about death and about the courage to follow one's heart and live with its consequences.

When I reached office, I found my colleagues discussing Jobs' passing away. Jobs' death had made everyone sad.

The Tree of Life

In the evening, I was supposed to go to watch Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life. This was Malick's fifth film in a career spanning 40 years. The project was apparently in development for decades. Malick had been developing it as 'Q' and it was meant to be about the birth of the universe and the creation of life. After years of many false starts, the film was finally produced by the film's lead actor Brad Pitt. The film missed 2009 and 2010 release dates and was premiered in competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme d'Or. Robert De Niro, who was the head of the jury, said that the film fitted the bill for the prize.

Some of my screenwriting buddies had read rave reviews of the film and wanted to see it in a group. Eight of us marched into the theatre. The theatre soon filled up with people. Two middle-aged ladies sat next to me.

When I began watching the film, I suddenly realised that Malick's film fitted in squarely with the sombre mood of the day. The Tree of Life is about birth and death, about love and loss and coping with pain.

Both Malick and Jobs are great minds. Unlike Jobs, Malick is very reclusive: he refuses interviews, refuses being photographed. Even though it might sound ludicrous, I began to see (perhaps more now when I am writing this, in hindsight) some parallels between Malick's and Jobs' lives: both had Middle Eastern fathers (Malick's was an Assyrian Christian Lebanese immigrant), both dropped out of college (Jobs from Reed College and Malick from Magdalen College, Oxford), and both had a philosophical bent of mind (it sounds weird to use past tense for Malick)--Jobs was interested in Eastern philosophy, Malick in the Western. Malick even translated Heidegger's Vom Wesen des Grundes as The Essence of Reasons and taught philosophy at MIT before he turned to filmmaking.

Malick is a rare filmmaker in America: Hollywood that produces hundreds of soulless films every year, a filmmaker like Malick compensates that soullessness with his uniquely photographed films, which are more like poems in motion pictures. His films are deeply philosophical and metaphorical.

The Tree of Life opens with a quotation from the Book of Job, when God asks, "Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation ... while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?"

I saw this film as an adaptation of the story of Job from the holy Bible. Malick has set his film in the 1950s Texas, where he spent his own childhood. A large part of the film revolves around the childhood of Sean Penn's character and his two brothers and parents, played by Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain. One of the three brothers dies (perhaps in a war zone) when he is 19. The film is about Penn's childhood memories and Chastain's and Penn's coming to grips with the loss of the child (for plot and production derails, see this page).

Here, the Biblical Job is Pitt's character, Jack O'Brien (initials are J-O-B). In the Bible, Job was a man tested by God after Satan wagers Job only serves God because of His protection. After losing his wealth, family and health, Job would rather curse himself than God (from IMDB).

One of the most weird parts of the film is the almost half an hour long creation of the universe sequence which is breathtakingly photographed. I saw the two ladies sitting next to me giggling at this Malickian indulgence. Because of the film's quirky sequences, apparently in the US, some theaters set up signs that warned "moviegoers about the enigmatic and non-linear narrative of the movie - following some confused walkouts and refund demands in the opening weeks". I can understand this confusion and I do empathise with such viewers. Perhaps they did not want to follow the director's vision, who, with a godlike eye, shows us the dimensions of the universe and the powerful elements of nature (just as the Lord talks about them in the Bible in the Job chapter).

The Tree of Life is a work of art, a work of genius, and by the end of the film, I was speechless at the sheer ambition of the film. I felt as if I had read a great book of philosophy or a great and wise tale from Tolstoy. Some critics have compared the film to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. As a film, The Tree of Life seems to be able to transcend all boundaries and communicate to even filmgoers who might live on other planets. This is a truly cosmic film. The last scene of the film, about life after the Day of Resurrection, is one scene that I dreamed of filming as a filmmaker. Malick beat me to it.

Poor Sean Penn looked lost in the film, not sure of what was going on. "I didn’t at all find on the screen the emotion of the script, which is the most magnificent one that I’ve ever read," he said in an interview. "A clearer and more conventional narrative would have helped the film without, in my opinion, lessening its beauty and its impact. Frankly, I’m still trying to figure out what I’m doing there and what I was supposed to add in that context! What’s more, Terry himself never managed to explain it to me clearly."

When I came out of the theatre, I felt compelled to write about it on Facebook. I posted a status update. The film somehow lessened my pain of Jobs' death. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.

Singapore 'Borders' closed

2011-09-27T18:01:00.000+08:00

It is curtains for Borders in Singapore.

The only functional Borders outlet at Parkway Parade closed its door on Monday. For good.

Last Saturday, I made a trip to the bookstore. Books were being sold off at 70 per cent discount. I knew that all the good books would have gone by now. Still, I wanted to go to the bookstore one last time. So, I went. Like a pilgrim, I had to make that last journey.

As expected, there was a good crowd. Most of the books left in the store were crap. Yet, people thronged the shelves that had some stock left on them. Half the bookstore's shelves were without books. There were 'Out of Bound' signs to prevent the public from entering those spaces.

I spent more than an hour looking for books I could buy. I found a couple of novels and two books on screenplay writing worth buying. My daughter found two books that she wanted to buy. I waited for almost half an hour to make payment for my purchase. It was all very civil. When I paid for the books, the counter clerk looked me in the eye and said, "Thank you". If it were business as usual, she would have said, "See you again, sir." We both knew it was the last time. But there was nothing on her face. No smile, no sorry, no regret.

I stepped out of the store and looked at it one last time.

With Borders' closure, a chapter has ended for book-lovers in Singapore. I will miss a bookstore like Borders. I think it was not lack of customer support that killed the store. It was the rent. Singapore's escalating rent is killing many businesses, most of them small businesses. Selling books is not just business--it is more than that. Bookstores should be given the non-profit treatment, and every Mall should give discounts in the rental for bookstores. Bookstores are like parks in a city. What kind of ROI do we expect from them? If a bookstore goes, the loss is ours.

Shanghai

2011-09-15T13:11:00.002+08:00

This post is not about Dibakar Banerjee's upcoming film Shanghai, which is being shot in Kolkata. Though I must say, I am looking forward to watch that unusual film. I am told that it is adapted from a 1966 novel by Vassilis Vassilikos that inspired Costa Gavras to make Z, one of the most astute political films that I have seen so far. In adapting Z to an Indian setting, Dibakar has a great challenge on his hands. Will he live up to the expectations, especially of those who have seen Costa Gavras' film? Only time will tell. At this moment all I can do is to wish Dibakar good luck.

I had to put that note in because in future, people might stumble upon this blog post, taking it for a review or discussion of Dibakar's film. Sorry amigos! If you are here to read about the film, you are at the wrong place. Time to hit the back button, you know.

Anyway, talking of Shanghai, I happened to be there last week for three days. The visit was work-related, so I couldn't spend much time exploring the city. As such, my impressions of the city should only be considered sketchy and superficial. What I am going to share with you here is more about my journey to Shanghai than about the city of Shanghai itself.

Initially I was not sure if I was going to Shanghai at all but the visa came through. I had tried once before but was not lucky enough to get the visa (in that instance, the paperwork was not complete and so on; it's a long story). I was totally unprepared for the journey this time. This was one of those rare journeys which I undertook without reading anything about the city that I was visiting. I think there was some innocence about this unpreparedness, this ignorance. I took Shanghai as she revealed herself to me. I didn't go there with any fixed images, so I was neither overwhelmed nor underwhelmed when I stepped into Shanghai.

Before going to Shanghai, one of my colleagues had shown me pictures of his visit to the city nearly ten years ago. In his collection, there were pictures of skyscrapers, the famous Bund, and some Chinese temples. In the pictures, the sky looked muddy, overcast with smog. Only that image of a smog-laden Shanghai stayed with me. Avoid the beggars in Shanghai, my colleague warned me. There will be plenty of them and they will approach foreigners like you, he said. I noted his advice. From my Indian experience I knew how to avoid beggars, so I was not worried about encountering them.

The flight was normal: I read a book, watched a couple of movies (Midnight in Paris and Dum Maro Dum), ate my Moslem food and nodded off. When I landed at the Shanghai's Pudong International Airport, I found it impressive. It was sans frills but was massive in structure. Architecturally, it even looked beautiful from the outside. Only the smoking rooms are much smaller at the airport-each room cannot hold more than 7-8 people smoking simultaneously. And you wouldn't find Starbucks or Coffee Beans there. I noted that on my way back.

The Arabs and the Chinese

But first, let us check out the immigration queues that reminded me of India and Australia. It took us nearly half an hour to clear immigration. The same process does not take more than ten minutes in Singapore. Singapore-like briskness is unique to Singapore only, I guess. How does Singapore do it? Other countries should learn from the Lion City.

While waiting for clearance, I looked around. A signboard said the airport staff was committed to providing quick service to the passengers, without compromising on their duties. You should be attended to within 25 minutes -- that was the written commitment. Nearby there were huge signs saying things like, No Photography and Quiet (there was no 'please' after 'Quiet').

At the airport, I was struck by the number of foreigners queuing up at the immigration counters. I saw a surprisingly large number of Arabs and people of Middle Eastern origin waiting to enter the city. Outside the arrival hall, I saw many locals holding placards in Arabic to welcome their guests. Looks like the Arabs and the Chinese are doing brisk business.

Meeting Prasoon Joshi

One of the amazing things about journeys is that you never know who you are going to bump into. I had the good luck to meet the amazingly talented ad man and Bollywood lyricist, Prasoon Joshi at the airport. We were going to the same hotel to attend the same event in the same car, so we had a good conversation in Hindustani throughout the journey. It was such a pleasure to talk about India with Prasoon: he was sweet and forthcoming. We talked about India, his work with children in schools, his views on Anna Hazare and media's role in the Hazare movement, and so on.

Meanwhile, we kept looking out of the car. The temperature was around 26 degrees so it was quite pleasant. Outside, all we could see were rows after rows of cookie-cutter housing complexes and skyscrapers. There was nothing Chinese or even Asian about the view. We could well have been in some European country.

Where are the beggars in Shanghai?

Since I stayed close to an area where the Shanghai Expo is located, which is a little far from the main city centre, I could make sense of a few things only.

Shanghai's skies were still smog-laden but I found no beggars. Even when I travelled to the city centre, I found no beggars. In some old parts of the city, I could see only relatively poor people on bicycles or lugging things on tricycles.

Also, I did not see as many people on the street as I had expected to see. China being the most populous country in the world, you expect a horde everywhere. But it wasn't like that. That way, Singapore looks more crowded than Shanghai. I could see the public buses, made by Volvo, with reasonable number of passengers on them. This was unlike the public buses in Singapore, which are often overcrowded. I wanted to but I had no time to take the Shanghai metro even once.

Food is comparatively cheaper in China, except for coffee. Taxi is inexpensive. Foreign cigarettes are inexpensive, though it is difficult to find tobacco products (Family Marts don't sell them, nor do all the supermarkets). A taxi ride to a cigarette shop cost me around S$2 whereas a pack of Marlboro cost me a little over S$1. At the same shop, piles of pirated DVDs of latest Hollywood films were heaped outside the storefront. The storekeeper did not even try to hide his bootleg stuff. What does it tell about China's anti-piracy efforts?

For moving around with ease, you better have someone with you who can speak Mandarin. Taxi and shop keepers don't speak English. I was lucky to have someone with me who could speak the language.

Over two days, I could visit only two interesting places during my stay: one was the Bund, the other was an arts village kind of touristy place where you have Italian and French style cafes and many many shops selling clothes, nick-knacks, and art. I think it was Xintiandi, famous for its renovated shikumen lanes. The Bund was glorious at night, illuminated by lights of myriad hues giving the place a colorful and mesmeric, dream-like appearance. There were many people taking a stroll on the Bund. A young Chinese boy (though he was working as a salesman) came up to me and struck a conversation with me. Hailing from Jiangsu, he was with a group of young guys. This was his first visit to Shanghai. He wanted me to get photographed with his group members. I obliged.

I remember the boy, his energy, and his outgoing dare. He was learning English and wanted to make a career in sales, hoping to exploit his linguistic skills. "Can you speak Chinese?" he asked me. I nodded no. "One of my English teachers is from Singapore," he said. Maybe that's why he wondered if I knew Chinese. After the picture-taking, we went our own ways.

At the airport's smoking room, on my way back, I was looking for a light. On the wall there was this machine that had lighters embedded in it--the machine looked menacing to me. It looked like a mini-electrocution-er (not sure if this is even a proper word but what the hell!). The sign above the machine did not help either. Please Use Sparingly, it said. Sensing my discomfort, a young American chap offered me his lighter. "Thanks," I said. "How come you could bring in your lighter whereas mine was confiscated by security people?" I asked him. "I don't know," he said with a smile. We talked a little more. He was going to his hometown, Chicago. He taught English in China.

Indian and Chinese airports have at least two things in common: lighters are confiscated and queues at the immigration counters are long. I kept smiling to myself thinking about these similarities while I waited for my flight back to Singapore where I knew things would be fast and smooth.

The difference between taste and judgment

2011-08-31T16:12:00.000+08:00

We are very quick to pronounce our judgments on works of art: a book, a movie, a picture. I don't like this book. I love that movie. And so on. The point is, as long as we have a basic respect for a work of art, it is OK to express your opinion about it.

This and many other interesting points make Rick Gekoski's piece, It takes judgment, not taste, to pick a Booker winner, quite readable:

Claiming that something is right or wrong is generally regarded as more than mere opinion. Murder is wrong, being kind to old ladies is right: such conclusions are the result of first principles, argument and sustained consideration. If I prefer merlot to cabernet sauvignon, football to cricket, blondes to brunettes, spinach to mushrooms, that is a matter of taste, and I am under no obligation to defend my preference. But if I adore murdering, and am gratuitously beastly to old ladies, I am (in many ways) likely be called upon to defend myself.

Where does this leave us? With a clear distinction between matters of taste and matters of judgment. You like Mateus Rosé better than Château Pétrus? No problem. You think it is a better wine? You're wrong. You're clearly without the experience, palate, or discrimination to make such a judgment. As unfit as I would be to decide which sort of catalytic convertor to fit to my car. I simply don't know enough. This seems obvious, but increasingly such a position offends against the spirit of the times. Nobody is wrong these days. We are all "entitled to our opinion", and the notion that there is some gap between opinion and truth, assertion and argument, seems to be getting lost.

His final point:

You will have gathered by now that this is not about Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, or even John Banville, who merely provides its occasion. What is it about, then? Respect. For people, for texts, for the act of reading, and of talking about books and their authors. Implicit in this is John Stuart Mill's wise advice: it is easy enough to be grateful for friends who agree with you, but who we really need to value are our antagonists, for it is they who make us think harder, strive to refine and elucidate our judgments, making them (and ourselves) both clearer and better. I would love one day to argue publicly with Boyd Tonkin about The Sea. I think he was wrong. He thinks I was. Maybe one of us might actually change his mind?

Full text

Anna, fight moral corruption in India

2011-08-26T11:36:00.001+08:00

More important than wholesale and retail corruption is the third dimension of corruption—moral corruption—that has to be checked. Corruption can only be stopped if we are ready to suffer by not giving bribes. Indian citizens have to go through that painful phase.

By Zafar Anjum

In school we were taught that constant vigilance is the true price of democracy. For decades, we did not take this principle seriously. We allowed politicians, bureaucrats, and power brokers swindle billions of rupees from the public system decade after decade. We made a few noises from time to time and then we hurtled along the path of democracy with our heads bowed. We had a nation to build. Life was not easy anyway. The result of this half-century long lapse is today’s anti-corruption crusade by Gandhian activist, Anna Hazare and his team.

Corruption in India has reached its tipping point. People can’t take it any more.

Anna has been fasting for the introduction of the Jan Lokpal bill in parliament for 11 days now. Negotiations with the government have been blowing hot and cold. Both team Anna and the ruling Congress Party have stonewalled themselves. Everybody is looking for a closure. A 74-year old frail Anna’s life is at stake.

There is doubt if the government will concede to all of Anna’s demands. Even if it does, will it solve the widespread corruption in India? That is the question I want to raise.

Anna’s demand for the appointment of a Lokpal at the Centre, a new agency empowered to fight corruption among public servants, with sweeping powers over all government officials, the prime minister included, will create a bureaucratic monstrosity. Anna also wants to appoint Lokayuktas at the state level, with bureaucratic machinery to support them.

First, people who will be appointed in this bureaucratic set-up will again come from the same society that produces the corrupt police and administrative officers, politicians and clerks. How different will their morals be from their current counterparts? Second, even if they turn out to be honest, they will have to handle billions of complaints from 1.2 billion Indians. To sort out the complaints, they will have to work with other government bodies which are supposedly staffed with corrupt officials. How is this system going to work then?

Corruption happens because of two main reasons: one, absence of a stringent rule of law, and two, moral weakness in individuals (instances of corruption can arise from both greed and for need of money). A nation that has people with a strong moral fibre will not tinker with the institutions in place. That’s what India’s basic problem is today. No one is arguing that corrupt government servants should be spared a harsh crackdown. But crackdown alone will not solve the problem of corruption. In China too, there is visibly harsh punishment for corruption, yet cases of corruption keep getting unearthed. Therefore, alongside the struggle for Lokpal, Anna should focus his energies on building a mass movement to develop people with character.

This suggestion might sound a bit moralistic but if you think of it, why is it that India is in such a state today despite having all the institutions in place? The chalta hai attitude, the jugaad culture, the bribes for chai and paan has totally eaten into India’s moral fibre. Anna’s honesty, fearlessness and fighting spirit is an exception in today’s India. People might wear ‘I am Anna’ caps but are they, really?

Middle class morality

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh must be a baffled man at this time: India’s middle class has stood up against him. It is the same middle class that was midwifed by his financial reforms 20 years ago. This middle class has given him the epithet of Dhritrashtra—the blind king of Mahabharata who presided over the epic war, oblivious to the wrongdoing of his own people.

Manmohan Singh’s economic reforms were justified by invoking the trickle down theory. The theory was a Trojan horse to implant neo-liberalism. Today, the same theory is known as voodoo economics. Among the many things, India’s liberalisation has also created Indians with oversized ambitions and the gap between the haves and have-nots has only widened. Capitalism and neoliberal values have unleashed a fountain of aspirations in India. People will do anything to get by and get hold of shiny, material objects advertised on TV. The result is greed and moral decadence. No one wants to cut his coat according to his cloth. No one wants to live within his means, according to his station in life defined by his wage and profession. There is a rush to be seen with wealth, no matter how ill-gotten.

We are all in it

When we talk about corruption, we often refer to our politicians and bureaucrats, the big and small government servants. We have to bribe them for every little transaction—from getting a birth certificate to getting a passport. This corruption has been going on for ages: questioned but tolerated. Why? Because no one wants to suffer. We are all in a hurry to get our work done. There have even been demands to legalise bribe giving in India. It has been supported by respected entrepreneurs like Narayan Murthy, the former chairman of Infosys, one of India’s biggest outsourcing companies.

Former Infosys CEO, Nandan Nilekani, now chairman of the newly minted Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), has interesting terms to describe corruption in India: wholesale corruption (like the Commonwealth Games scam, the telecom scam) and retail corruption (corruption that occurs at the points of citizen-government official interaction).

Wholesale corruption can be checked by strong institutions that are already in place. If the Lokpal becomes a reality, it can certainly focus on weeding out wholesale corruption in India.

More difficult to tackle is retail corruption. There are 2.4 million government officials in India. How is one going to keep an eye on their activities? According to Nilekani, e-governance, transparent systems, and enabling electronic instruments such as Aadhaar (unique identity project that can help check corruption in the public distribution system) can help reduce retail corruption.

More important than these two, however, is the third dimension of corruption—moral corruption—that has to be checked. Corruption can only be stopped if we are ready to suffer by not giving bribes. Indian citizens have to go through that painful phase. And now that Anna has awakened the nation, there is no one better to do this job. That should be his next mission.

An updated version of this piece was published in Guernica Magazine, USA.

Kafka and Orwell on China: My first ebook of essays available online now

2011-06-05T10:21:00.005+08:00

Last month, Amazon.com announced that for the first time in history, the sales of ebooks have surpassed the sales of printed copies of books at the world's largest online retail store. I knew this was going to happen but it would happen so soon, the scales would tip in favour of ebooks so soon, that was a surprise. And what a pleasant surprise it was. Because, like in most other areas, the web has changed the game and has pushed the gatekeepers to the margins. This does not mean the end of mainstream publishers and agents. The structure of market-oriented publisher-agent complex (like the military-industrial complex) would not die anytime soon. As long as there is media, there will be celebrity makers and spin doctors. Editors are always important in this process but they are mostly faceless.

In this new scenario, the opportunity for writers like me (in terms of expressing myself, and not dreaming of minting millions) is immense: I can publish any book at any time, and share it with those who would be interested in reading it. I can publish long essays as ebooks and make them available to readers (Who the hell wants to read you? Good question. Answer is, I don't care. When Friedrich Nietzsche self-published Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he published only 40 copies and had difficulty selling them). I don't have to wait for the approval of the Grantas and New Yorkers of the world. Of course, they will keep publishing prestigious writers, but in an age when education is democratic and everyone is a writer and filmmaker, the game isn't the same anymore. As of commercial writers, many are already going down the ebooks route and doing very well.

Beyond the issue of accessibility is the other factor of class. I don't have the Oxbridge or Ivy League background nor any support from a network of movers and shakers of the publishing world. So, I am on my own. The kind of work I am doing and I want to do will not appeal to most publishers (unless they are enlightened enough). I don't see myself as a commercial writer. I write because I see injustice in the world and I see people being pushed in the path of disaster. I write because I can't sleep if I don't. Money has nothing to do with it (That's why I have a day job).

While my novel is still looking for a home (thanks to my hardworking agent), I thought I would collect my long pieces and essays as ebooks and make them available online (no one publishes long pieces of journalism in Asia, right?). I am happy to share with you that the first of my ebooks is available online now. It's titled
Kafka and Orwell on China: Essays on India and China. Since this was my first try, there might be some formatting issues but so far my readers have not complained. The ebook sells for US$1.99 (If you really want to buy it, try this code AN62L to avail of a 30 per cent discount until June 10). If you want to read it for free, write to me. I plan to put out more ebooks at Smashwords in the coming months.

Here is the description of my ebook:

This book contains four well-researched original essays that deal with India and China. In the opening essay, "The unmaking of the East—India and China in the age of globalisation", journalist Zafar Anjum examines the high-octane economic growth of India and China in the light of the wisdom of Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore. "The West would have us believe that post-globalisation, India and China are on a collision course in their race to develop themselves," writes Zafar. "Who should it bet on—that is the West’s dilemma. But the question for the East is this: whose race is it to lose?" In this essay, Zafar Anjum argues that the debate itself is wrongly framed and with some help from Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, whose 150th birth anniversary falls this year, argues that the race is deeper than it appears.

The second essay is about George Orwell’s reflections on the attitudes and interactions between the West and China over the centuries.

In the third essay, Zafar discusses Czech fabulist Franz Kafka who never set his foot in China, yet he wrote a masterpiece, The Great Wall of China. John Updike counts this story belonging at the summit of Kafka’s oeuvre. Zafar Anjum tries to examine what motivated the European genius and one of the most influential of 20th century writers to write a short story set in an unseen land.

In the fourth essay, Zafar wonders why India and China, two of the world’s oldest civilizations, are so near, yet so far from each other. Can Bollywood and other cinemas of India, ambassadors of India’s culture and emblems of our soft power, take India to the Chinese?

Richard Crasta

An interesting writer to explore at Smashwords is Richard Crasta (remember his famous novel, The Revised Kamasutra?). Please do look up both "Massage No Boom Boom" and "I Will Not Go The F**k to Sleep" on Smashwords. They seem to be absolutely fun, daring, original, and worth the money.

Crasta has been at Smashwords for a while now. He has some good advise to share with writers who want to try this route. "With both Smashwords and Amazon, you have to do your own publicity," he says. "Amazon is bigger and better organized, but Smashwords is much faster (uploads)."

Talking about your book is important too. "It is not enough if you just upload a book, it just sits there," he says. "A lot depends on such things as tags, reviews, keywords, and so on, and also on right book descriptions and categories, and also doing a lot of networking on the Net."

If you are a writer and you are planning such a move, let me know what you think. Any advice? If you are just a reader, tell me if you are going to read the sample chapters from ebooks or even buy them. Will be grateful. Thanks.

Three is company: Shobha De, Mukul Deva, and Meenakshi Reddy

2011-05-11T17:42:00.002+08:00

A candid report from the tenth India Se Literary Salon 2011

If anyone had any doubt about Shobha De’s popularity in Singapore, India Se’s 10th literary salon put it to rest for ever on 26 March. It was a Saturday afternoon and people voted with their feet—they preferred Shobha over siesta and thronged to the Singapore Recreation Club to enjoy her wit and benefit from her insights. Of course there were other attractions too. Indian thriller writer Mukul Deva was to unveil his latest novel, Tanzeem, and young writer Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan was to spice up the afternoon with her reading.

A gushing fan christened Shobha as the Sophia Loren of the East. In her welcome address, India Se’s CEO and editor-in-chief Shobha Tsering Bhalla said that every country is blessed with only one Shobha De, and she likened India’s Shobha De to USA’s Arianna Huffington (of The Huffington Post). What she meant was that Shobha De was not just a name—she signifies a tiger woman who is a combination of timeless beauty and ageless mind, and is the master of a fertile imagination with a killer attitude.

Shobha Bhalla shared with her readers how India Se’s literary salons had started in 2007 when such events were scarce in Singapore celebrating Indian writing and Indian writers. She regretted that writers Advaita Kala and Chetan Bhagat could not make it to the conference—Kala had lost her passport and Bhagat was already booked for the day. Shobha promised her readers that a writing workshop would soon be held with Bhagat holding a masterclass for the wannabe writers (I’m tempted to ask: Aur kitne Bhagats? India ke liye ek kaafi nahi hai kya?).

Unveiling of Tanzeem

Dr. T C A Raghavan, Indian High Commissioner to Singapore, unveiled Tanzeem—Mukul Deva’s fourth and last novel in his bestselling terrorism series. The high commissioner expressed his appreciation for Indian writing in English and said how it had been crucial for raising India’s profile in the world.

Mukul, an ex-army officer, is known as the Tom Clancy of India. He is India’s first military thriller writer. He shared with the audience how his publishers, HarperCollins India, were skeptical about the success of a military thriller in the Indian market. But with his first novel’s success, he proved them wrong. Lashkar was sold out in about 35 days in India and has since gone into several reprints. After Lashkar’s success, the going became easier for Mukul. He handed over one novel each year to his publisher, that turned out to be bestsellers. “In that sense, I created a new market segment of military thrillers in India,” Mukul said.

“Lashkar happened because I was disturbed after the bomb blasts in Saojini Nagar market in Delhi,” Mukul said, going into the antecedents of his terrorism series. “Newspapers give such incidents their own spin. To bring out the truth, I could either write big boring scholarly books or I could explain terrorism through novels. I chose the medium of novels to expose terrorism.”

Writing in her blood

Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, the twenty something author of two novels, You are Here (Penguin) and Confessions of A Listmaniac (Scholastic), spoke about her blog, The Compulsive Confessor and how she had started her writing journey. Both her parents are writers so they understood when she wanted to become a writer too, she said. She couldn’t find her types of books on the bookshelves so she turned to writing those books for herself and for people of her age—and a changing India welcomed her books and she found a readership. Just like Shobha De and Mukul Deva, she too was not spared an epithet—a member of the audience called her India’s Sophie Kinsella. So it goes.

Reddy read two passages from her new novel, You are Here. The audience was clearly amused as one could hear giggles coming from the ranks of the audience.

Break the cage of age

Shobha De’s message to her readers was straightforward: break the cage of age. “We all need to be liberated from this cage,” she said. She was referring to ageism that she deals with in her book, Shobha at Sixty, which has gone on to become a huge success, beyond Shobha’s own expectations.

When Shobha had walked into the conference room, there were gasps from the members of the audience. And there was pin-drop silence—in appreciation—when Shobha read from her upcoming novel, Sethji. With this novel, Shobha had tried her hand at fiction after 15 years but from what she read, it was clear that she had improved on her craft.

Is Sethji’s character based on real life politician, asked a reader. Yes, it is, Shobha said, but thankfully, that monster is now dead.

“Guts and fearlessness are two main strengths of a writer,” she quipped in response to another question. And for a woman like herself, who is often pilloried from many corners, success is the best protection, she said.

A version of this report appeared in India Se magazine (May 2011 issue). You can read the report here.

Review: Bhog and Other Stories

2011-05-05T18:19:00.001+08:00

Bhog and Other Stories
By Ankur Betageri
Pilli Books, Bangaluru, 2010
Hardback, 108 pp., Rs. 260

In Ankur Betageri’s debut collection of short stories, Bhog and Other Stories, the last story, Malavika, is about a Bangalore-based materialistic girl. The eponymous character, Malavika, is befriended by the narrator—a writer and a friend of the young college-going student. The writer shows that Malavika is confused about life.

Once Malavika and the narrator go to a hospital to donate blood. The doctor does not allow Malavika to donate her blood because of her having a low count of red blood cells. Malavika turns sad at this rejection and the narrator reads her a poem to cheer her up. She cuts him off in the middle of the narration and tells him that he should publish books and seriously consider writing novels. The narrator muses: “Only when a person’s capacity is expressed in the form of a product or a service can one give it the value of money—only things having money value can have any value. I realized that this philosophy was behind all her talk and action.”

Moreover, Malavika advises the young poet to exercise ‘emotional discipline’, implying that one should express oneself at the right places only, where ‘the expression’ could be monetized. In this story, Ankur is alluding to the marketisation of feelings and their commoditized modes of expression in our world.

Later on in the story, Malavika seems to suffer from a nervous breakdown. She can’t understand her own suffering. She meets up with the narrator. “Look, there is a deep lack of love in this world,” he consoles her. “Like most people who have adjusted themselves to the dehumanizing conditions of the capitalistic system even you have lost the ability to love someone with all your heart; to accept someone with all your being. While a small portion of your brain shows a little love and sympathy, the rest of your brain becomes busy calculating like a businessman.”

“Feeling is not our weakness—it is a sign of our humanity,” the narrator reminds Malavika. Obliquely, perhaps Ankur wants to tell us all about our materialistic madness and paranoia—our undesirable sufferings, the postmodern crisis of meaning in life. And Ankur should know it—he has a Masters degree in clinical psychology.

Like Malavika, most of the stories in this collection are about the dilemmas of life that characters in cities and villages face, until a transforming moment comes in their lives that imparts them a rare insight. The characters, and through them the readers, woven by Ankur in these stories are rewarded with epiphanies that somehow lessen the burden of life, for life invested with meaning becomes less painful.

Psychology, philosophy, and ancient wisdom form the framework for the screen on which Ankur throws his beam of imaginary characters that fashion his curious world. The resulting tales sometimes take strange, allegorical forms and depending on her taste, a reader could find it interesting or boring. In essence, his stories demonstrate the fight between the spirit and the matter. In The Source of the Stream, a character thus summarizes the modern man: “Modern man … (is) nothing more than an animated corpse—he has become a zombie. He is spurious, narcissistic, shallow and this has forced him to become sensational, for he can be nothing else…Sensationalism is the artificial spirit of the dead age. And if no one wakes up from this slumber of cynicism there is the unthinkable possibility of forgetting the very presence of Spirit, the Spirit in which is found the depth of our true joys and sorrows.”

Insights flow from one story to another in this collection of 14 stories. But all stories are not realistic. There are some fantastic stories too such as Atmaram Harbhaji and The Armour. Atmaram Harbhaji is particularly interesting—the main character is a man who was born in five bits and was lovingly brought up in a sack by his mother. This is a tragicomic story with the dark shades of Kafka and the linguistic inventiveness of Rushdie.

Ankur’s piece de resistance in this collection is the title story—Bhog. The story has been told in an old-fashioned narrative style which slowly grows in its power. It’s about a poor old man who prepares for the Bhog celebrations. Bhog is a ritual festival celebrated on the first Saturday after Deepavali to mark improvement in the family’s affluence and prosperity.

The old man, the story’s protagonist, has nothing to celebrate actually but he has to live up to the expectations of the villagers. As he painstakingly hews a dead tree to make firewood for the celebrations, he is met with the news of the death of his family’s dog. He uses the wood to make a funeral pyre for his dog, instead for his Bhog celebration. He gives in to feelings at the cost of his perceived prestige in the village. The story somehow reminds us of Hemingway’s The Old Man and The Sea (the struggle between the fisherman Santiago and the giant marlin vs. the struggle between the old man and the date palm tree). The image of the old man hacking at the unyielding date palm tree reminds me of a scene in Anusha Razvi’s Peepli Live in which an emaciated old man digs soil in an open crater. Given the setting, I had the feeling that a story like should have come from the pen of Munshi Premchand—it is so powerful.

Bhog is the most accomplished story in this collection of many insightful stories. Though the stories here are of uneven quality and they could have been better edited, each one of them leaves you with a thought or an insight. Overall, Bhog and Other Stories could be a rewarding read for those readers who want more than mere entertainment in their reading material.

An edited version of this review appeared in The Financial World, Tehelka's sister publication dated 5 May.

Amis on Updike, Nabokov

2011-04-26T17:40:00.000+08:00

Updike's four studies

He said he had four studies in his house so we can imagine him writing a poem in one of his studies before breakfast, then in the next study writing a hundred pages of a novel, then in the afternoon he writes a long and brilliant essay for the New Yorker, and then in the fourth study he blurts out a couple of poems. John Updike must have been possessed of a purer energy than any writer since DH Lawrence.

I've seen it suggested that such prodigies suffer from an enviable condition called 'pressure on the cortex'. It's as if they have within them an underground spring which is always on the point of eruption. He has produced an enormous body of work. He is certainly one of the great American novelists of the 20th century.

Nabokov spoke like a child

Spontaneous eloquence seems to me a miracle," confessed Vladimir Nabokov in 1962. He took up the point more personally in his foreword to Strong Opinions (1973): "I have never delivered to my audience one scrap of information not prepared in typescript beforehand … My hemmings and hawings over the telephone cause long-distance callers to switch from their native English to pathetic French.

"At parties, if I attempt to entertain people with a good story, I have to go back to every other sentence for oral erasures and inserts … nobody should ask me to submit to an interview … It has been tried at least twice in the old days, and once a recording machine was present, and when the tape was rerun and I had finished laughing, I knew that never in my life would I repeat that sort of performance."

We sympathise. And most literary types, probably, would hope for inclusion somewhere or other on Nabokov's sliding scale: "I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child."

A world beyond pink laptops

2011-04-07T17:05:00.000+08:00

This is from my CIO Asia technology blog:

Women are seeking a world beyond pink laptops. They want a larger role to play in shaping the world through technology and leadership opportunities. They want a significant representation at the high table in government, civil society groups and corporations.

These were the impression I came back with after attending the opening night of 'Women leaders of New Asia'. The summit was held in Singapore by Asia Society, USA, between 31 March and 2 April.

Read the full blog post here.

Martin Amis: "The long read is a dying art"

2011-04-04T17:12:00.000+08:00

"You have to be slightly innocent to be a novelist. You can't have too much nous. It gets in the way, somehow," Amis says in an interview.

Amis says he fears "the long read is a dying art" – which isn't a fogeyish complaint, he adds, no doubt fearing another embroidered headline ("Amis: You're all dumbos"). "But there are so many claims on our attention. Very literate people admit they can't read books any more. And just as the literate brain is physically different to the illiterate brain, the digitally savvy brain is different again. It's a physiological change, not just a moral one."

A few weeks ago, Amis caused a stir when he made disparaging comments against children's writers (but to be fair, he is entitled to his views).

"People ask me if I ever thought of writing a children's book," Amis said, in a sideways excursion from a chat about John Self, the antihero of his 1984 novel Money. "I say, 'If I had a serious brain injury I might well write a children's book', but otherwise the idea of being conscious of who you're directing the story to is anathema to me, because, in my view, fiction is freedom and any restraints on that are intolerable."

Double Bill: The curious case of Dr. Susan Lim

2011-03-29T17:49:00.000+08:00

Doctors are usually mild-mannered people. They are service providers. They do their job and mind their business. Controversy is something they want to keep at an arm’s length.

If you follow the Singapore news, you will know of Dr. Susan Lim, one of Singapore’s path-breaking surgeons. Willy nilly, the top surgeon finds herself mired in controversy these days.

The doctor has asked the Singapore High Court to disallow a second disciplinary committee’s constitution by the Singapore Medical Council (SMC) to look into a grave charge on her. According to reports, she allegedly overcharged one of her royal patients (Penigran Anak Haja Damit) and billed the Burunei palace $24.8 million for breast cancer treatment between January and July 2007 just before the patient died. The council wants to investigate if the claims of mark ups and inflated bills made by the relatives of her patient, the deceased sister of the Queen of Brunei, are true.

Yesterday, the high court resumed hearings in her case. Dr. Lim was absent from the day long hearing but her lawyer explained how her invoices added up. The Straits Times reported today: “The SMC’s portrayal of Dr. Susan Lim marking up certain bills is false, mischievous and scandalous, her lawyer told the high court yesterday.”

Days in Paradise

From Europe on a skiing trip with her children, Dr. Lim tweeted: “Lessons in life go against the grain of doin good; never provide services even to a regular client without payment upfront; it can backfire.” (March 20)

If you know the background of her case, you will know what she is possibly alluding to.

Her next tweet is: Life is beautiful.

Is it? For her?

If you look at today’s newspaper’s headlines, you would wonder: What must be going on in her mind? Of course, she is rich. She has hired an expensive Queens Counsel, Ian Winter. Yet, moving between Moutiers to Courchevel, where she wants to enjoy the freshness of spring skiing, don’t the headlines from back home weigh her down?

What intrigues me is this: why did she bother to take on the establishment, the SMC and so on? Why does she want to fight back? Why does she want a judicial review?

Is she fighting for her reputation? If so, what’s wrong with that? A doctor’s reputation is all that she has. It is a delicate thing—takes a lifetime to build. One misstep and it is sullied. In today’s digital age, damage to one’s reputation stays for ever—a lifetime of embarrassment.

Is she fighting to get her millions back? The bills that, even after a fifty per cent discount, remains unpaid?

If that is the case, is it (to attempt to get one’s due back) a commercial dispute (between the doctor and the patient’s family) or is it a breach of medical propriety?

I think this question is at the heart of the matter.

Beyond the surface

The intense media coverage that this case has garnered—coupled with the fact that it affects Singapore’s image as a great destination for medical tourism—puts the onus back on the media. The media needs to get to the bottom of the matter.

Dr. Lim sounds very concerned when she tweets like this: “Let not an honest citizen be trampled upon by public authorities when their injustice and irregularities are exposed.”

What injustice? What irregularities?

If there are irregularities indeed, will the media uncover them? Dr. Lim is again skeptic: “the challenge to the media in reporting, is to delve deeper than merely scratching the surface and to report with substance and intellect.”

What is it that Dr. Lim wants the media to find out and expose? What’s beyond the surface? Is there something we have not seen yet?

Now that it has been revealed that the second SMC panel’s head was a rejected admirer of Dr. Lim and SMC’s rebuttal that its rule was not changed to target the beleaguered doctor, it would be interesting to see how the case moves forward and how does the media go after the proceedings. I think it is a great chance for the Singapore media to show its mettle.

What do you think? Which way will the case go? Will the institutions hold Singapore’s reputation of being a just and fair country? Will the media step up to the plate?

Autumn of the Matriarch

2011-03-10T19:16:00.002+08:00

Written by Stella Koon and directed by Glen Goei, Emily of Emerald Hill is one of those plays that stays with you long after you have left the theatre. Through Emily’s portrait, essayed by Ivan Heng with masterful ease, we witness an era long gone, now hidden in the fog of history.

This W!ld Rice tenth anniversary production, a solo performance, is set in the post-war Singapore. It tracks the life of Emily, an orphan, who gets married into a rich Peranakan family. As time passes, the family’s wealth grows and Emily, through her wit, charm and savoir faire, rises to become the matriarch of the family.

The structure of the play follows a chronological pattern and Emily’s past, her painful childhood, is evoked through flashbacks. Background score and stage lighting add powerful touches to the performance, taking the audience on a roller coaster ride through time and landscapes—from sunny Singapore to chilly Salisbury and back.

Ivan Heng pulls off the feisty lady’s part with such aplomb that you forget it is a play. He lives the character and becomes the character. He is Emily. Period. Such is the level of verisimilitude achieved by this thespian of Singapore theatre. On a playful note, Heng develops a rapport with the audience right at the outset when late comers get a chiding from him. Patrons in the front seat are startled in some scenes that involve audience participation—a hallmark of W!ld Rice’s productions. It always works—a theatrical conceit cinegoers can never imagine.

One of the ways in which Heng brings Emily’s character alive on stage is through the evocation of the fragrance of food and the feel of the parties that dominated the lives of the everything-British-loving rich of Singapore. The reason why Emily, a complex individual, captures everyone’s heart is because she knows how to glide through the barriers of class and cut through the confines of culture. Switching between languages with a dexterous appeal, she knows equally well how to talk to a school principal and how to chat up a fish seller in the market.

Emily’s power over the members of Emerald Hill is established through her controlling nature—her Achilles’ heel, that culminates into tragedies and disappointments for her in the autumn of her life.

Despite the glory and grandeur of Emerald Hill, Emily ends up an emotional pauper—the historical changes and personal defeats perplex her. She comes across as a person who has outlasted everything that she loved and cared for. In the end, she witnesses the crumbling down of a time and place that she had aspired to hold on to forever. But change is inevitable. Emily seems reluctant to accept the unsettling change around her.

Like his pretty Peranakan outfits, Ivan Heng shines in his role as Emily. All other departments—make up, costumes, sound, set design—beautifully compliment Heng’s performance, spellbinding the audience for nearly two hours without a trouble. For lovers of theatre, Heng’s solo act in Emily of Emerald Hill is a feat and a treat in this Twitterish age of short attention spans.

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A Writer's People by V S Naipaul

2011-02-26T18:14:00.002+08:00

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

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

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

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

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

Spiritual emptiness

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

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

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

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

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

A writer lives principally for his writing

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

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

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

An English way of look

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Looking and not seeing: The Indian way

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

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

Disparate ways

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

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

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

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

India again: the Mahatma and after

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An angry poet

2011-02-25T18:43:00.001+08:00

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

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

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

"Why?"

"I'll explain to you later."

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

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

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

--

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

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

William Golding's initial struggles as a writer

2011-02-19T22:58:00.003+08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hollywood in the theatre of terror

2011-02-06T21:54:00.003+08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Telling a Singapore Story

2011-01-31T17:29:00.000+08:00

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

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

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

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

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

Jaipur Literary Festival 2011

2011-01-29T13:37:00.004+08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Join Singapore writers for a night of crime

2011-01-28T17:28:00.000+08:00

Let's talk about 'Hush'

2011-01-26T15:31:00.004+08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Riddle of the Seventh Stone

2011-01-23T12:19:00.010+08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2011-01-16T16:48:00.000+08:00

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

2011-01-16T11:23:00.003+08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

Winners of Zee Cine Awards 2011

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

Best Actor

Jury: Hritik Roshan for Guzaarish

Popular: Shah Rukh Khan for My Name is Khan

Best Actor- Female

Jury: Aishwarya Rai Bachchan for Guzaarish

Popular: Vidya Balan for Ishq Kiya

Best Actor in Supporting Role

Arjun Rampal for Rajneeti

Best Actor-Female in Supporting Role

Prachi Desai for Once Upon a Time in Mumbai

Best Film

Jury: Udaan

Popular: Dabangg

Best Director

Jury: Vikram Aditya Motwani for Udaan

Popular: Karan Johar for My Name is Khan

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

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

2011-01-16T09:52:00.007+08:00

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

Bollywood frenzy

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

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

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

Press briefing before the show

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The red carpet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To be continued (Read Part 2 here)

Letters to a Young Novelist

2011-01-04T17:39:00.007+08:00

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

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

...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On writing techniques

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When conversations get leaked

2010-12-05T09:17:00.000+08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WikiLeaks’ Cablegate

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

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

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

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

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

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

The discreet charms of Berlin

2010-11-16T07:35:00.008+08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Indian media in the crosshairs of Bollywood

2010-11-13T08:22:00.008+08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crime and Erotica anthologies out

2010-11-11T05:09:00.007+08:00

Two new athologies, Crime Scene: Singapore - The best of Singapore crime fiction, and Best of Southeast Asian Erotica, both lovingly edited by Richard Lord and published by Monsoon Books, Singapore, are now out in the market.

I recently collected my copies from Phil Tatham, the immensely likebale publisher of Monsoon Books, who himself was manning the stall at a Christmas Bazaar at Goodwood Park Hotel. Though the books can be bought at bookstores such as Kinokuniya and Times Book Shop, if you happen to go to a Christmas Bazaar in the city state, chances are Monsoon Books would be there and you can buy the books at a discount. They are great gift ideas but obviously not for kids.

Books will soon also be available through Amazon.com. You can also buy them online at Monsoon Book's website.

About the anthologies

I have contributed to both the volumes--a big reason why I am writing about these two anthologies here.

But that is not the only reason.

Crime Scene: Singapore is unique because it is the first such anthology of crime fiction in Singapore. The book's blurb says: "As the Singapore police frequently remind us, low crime does not mean no crime. But the writers in this book remind us that low crime can definitely mean exciting, imaginative crime."

The collection has stories by Dawn Farnham, Pranav Joshi, Chris Mooney-Singh, Ng Yi-Sheng, Richard Lord and Carolyn Camoens, among others. So far I have only read Inspector Zhang Gets His Wish by Stephen Leather and I must tell you it is a great read, suspenseful and fun. By the way, Leather writes out of Bangkok and has apparently sold over 20 million books.

The erotica anthology, Best of Southeast Asian Erotica, has an enticing cover and the stories in it are, well, steamy. I have a story in the anthology called Closely Watched Dreams. It's about the impact of pornography on a marriage.

According to the book's blurb, many superstar writers/celebrities (obviously not me) have contributed to this volume. From Malaysia, there are Amir Muhammad, Lee Ee Leen, Amirul B Ruslan and Yusuf Martin, and from Singapore you have Christopher Taylor, Dawn Farnham, and Chris Mooney-Singh. Of course, there are others in the volume such as Stephen Leather, who has written his first erotica piece for this collection.

The editor of the anthologies, Richard Lord, is a veteran editor and writer. He is the author or co-author of 18 published books of fiction and non-fiction. Ten of his stories have been anthologised and he has edited more than a dozen books.

According to Richard, the anthologies will be launched and readings will be arranged in the next few weeks and months. I will keep you updated through my blog here.

Love and Lust in Singapore reviewed

2010-11-05T23:14:00.003+08:00

In her review of the anthology, Love and Lust in Singapore, in the Her World magazine, Niki Bruce observes:

The overall quality of the stories reflects the authors various backgrounds and cultural mores; you can tell who are the ex-journos and who are the poets from their differing writing styles.

As a collection, however, Love and Lust in Singapore is a little uneven. There are some quality pieces of writing but others are, at best, self-indulgent and at worst, puerile.

A topic like love and lust is something that unfortunately lends itself to excess. What is most off-putting is a rather colonialist thread running through a number of the stories written by the non-natives or ‘expats’.

Niki has this to say about my story in the anthology:

Zafar Anjum’s A Fraction of a Whore looks at the other end of the spectrum; an Indian import lies beside a whore worrying about how his parents would react if they knew how ruined his ‘golden future’ had become. But it’s the actions of the ‘whore’, showing simple humanity, that drag him from the edge of suicide.

That is a nice summary of my story but I am not sure if Niki likes it. I hope she does not consider it self-indulgent or puerile. Have you read it? What do you think about it?

My favourite stories in the collection are Dad Jeans and It's a Wonderful Like. Other stories in the anthology are quite enjoyable too.

Still the place for tourists

2010-11-05T22:59:00.001+08:00

This travel story of mine appeared in the China Daily recently:

Thailand's troubled politics may have put a damper on tourism, but the beach resort of Phuket stays committed to making visitors happy. Zafar Anjum samples its pleasures.

Kafka in Ayodhya (Part II)

2010-11-01T17:48:00.001+08:00

Read here the concluding part of my short story, Kafka in Ayodhya. (Published in The Star magazine, dated 29 October 2010)

Kafka in Ayodhya (a short story)

2010-10-23T09:07:00.002+08:00

Ever since the Ayodhya verdict of Sept 30 was announced, I wanted to respond to it in my own way. Then I thought: what would Kafka make of it? This case is 60 years old.

Over three nights, I wrote this first draft. The descriptions of Kafka, his life, his likes and dislikes are all authentic. But yes, he is long dead. Gregor in the story is Gregor Samsa, the dung-beetle protagonist of Kafka's most famous story, The Metamorphosis.

Read the first part here and tell me what you think of it: Kafka in Ayodhya
(Pls ignore the typos)

Love and Lust Live!

2010-10-14T20:15:00.004+08:00

I should have written this post at least two weeks ago but due to my preparations for Germany, I could not find the time to write about an excellent event that took place on Sept 30 at the Substation.

First of all it was my first visit to the Substation, an impressive arts venue on the Armenian Road. The second special reason was that the event was about the anthology, Love and Lust in Singapore, to which I too had contributed a story. Fellow writer Marc Checkley organised the event and it was fabulous to see some of the stories performed live in a cosy, laidback atmosphere, with wine glasses in hand.

Marc came up with this idea for a "steamy literary event" when he read some of the other stories in the anthology. And instead of organising a run of the mill "book store reading" event, he wanted to strike a different note. High Commissions of New Zealand and Australia chipped in with their support and the event was ready to go.

A total of six stories were performed: Dawn Farnham's I Got You Babe by Sharul Channa and Filial Piety by the show business veteran Koh Chieng Mun; Linda Collin's Dad Jeans by Lora Wilkinson; Felix Cheong's It's A Wonderful Lie by Paul Falzon; and Damyanti Ghosh's Peeping Toe by Rishi Budhrani. Marc performed his own story, Nasri.

All the performances were fantastic and enjoyable, with excellent audio-visual backdrops. The event was so successful that all tickets were sold out in advance. After the event, I don't think anyone went home without feeling a bit in love and a bit lusty. Full marks to Marc and his team for organising such a beautiful event.

Mario Vargas Llosa and the future of books

2010-10-14T20:03:00.003+08:00

I was in Germany when Mario Vargas Llosa was announced as this year's winner of Nobel Prize for Literature. Among the Latin American writers, after Marquez and Borges, he is my third favourite writer. I had loved his "Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter", inspired by his own experience of marrying his aunt. I bought his The Feast of the Goat and The War of the End of the World long ago but am yet to read them.

I came across this piece on Mario Vargas Llosa where he talks about the future of books. Those who worry about the future of books should read Jonathan Franzen's How to be Alone (the book). He shares his doubts on this theme but his reading is optimistic. Here, in this interview, Mario Vargas Llosa makes some very important points that go into the heart of literature and why we should value it:

"I think there is a danger that the technology will impoverish the contents of the book," he said.

"But this also depends on us: if we want literature to keep being what it has been, it is in our hands."

Vargas Llosa, who is teaching his philosophy of literature at Princeton University in New Jersey this semester, gave a vibrant defense of its continuing relevance.

"Reading has to be encouraged in the new generations, and young people especially have to be convinced that literature is not just knowledge, that literature is not just a way to acquire certain concepts or ideas, but is an extraordinary pleasure."

Good literature is "fundamental if we want to live in freedom in the future" because it creates citizens who are less easily manipulated by those in power.

"Nothing awakens the critical spirit in a society as much as good literature. That is why the first thing all dictatorial regimes do, not matter what their stripe, is impose censorship.

"They try to control what is the literary life because they see in the literary life the seeds of danger to power.

"And it's true: good literature, by awakening the critical spirit, creates citizens who are more difficult to manipulate than in a society without literature and without good books."

Are Asians congenitally dishonest?

2010-09-26T09:56:00.001+08:00

After the recent revelation of “spot-fixing” in the Pakistani cricket team, the question that was being debated on Indian TV channels was this: are we congenitally corrupt?

This is a question that ought to be asked by all Asians. Corruption sweeps across Asia like a disease. Just look at the cases of corruption in India and Pakistan. There are plenty of recent examples: Match-fixing scandals in Indian and Pakistani cricket teams, alleged tax evasion in the lucrative Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament, bungling in this year’s Delhi Commonwealth Games, alleged corruption in the allocation of 2G spectrums by India’s telecom ministry. Across the border, Pakistan’s Asif Zardari has been known as Mr. Ten Percent. This percentage might have gone up now that he is the President, according to his niece Fatima Bhutto .

With the exception of Singapore, all Asian countries are by and large corrupt. From the top level politicians to low level officials, dishonesty runs deep in our blood. From China to Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines, no country escapes the taint of corruption. Of course, this is borne out by the figures of Transparency International, the global anti-graft body. To get a sense of the spread of corruption, just look at the world map at the Transparency International’s website : as you move from East to West, the deep blue color fades to light blue, indicating less and less perception of corruption in the Western world.

Let us consider some specific figures: Transparency International puts India 84th on its corruption perception index with a 3.4-point rating, out of a best possible score of 10. For a contrast, look at New Zealand. It ranks first with 9.4 points. Singapore is 3rd with 9.2 points. Somalia is last on 1.1 points, which is more or less mirrored by Myanmar (1.4) in Asia. The index for China is 3.6, Malaysia 4.5, Thailand 3.4, Indonesia 2.8 and Philippines and Bangladesh are is 2.4 each.

If the water is too clean, there are no fish

Given their size, the incidence of corruption is more prominent in the case of the two Asian giants, India and China. Almost one-third of Indians are "utterly corrupt" and half are "borderline", said Pratyush Sinha, the former chief of India’s corruption watchdog, Central Vigilance Commission . India’s former Union Law Minister Shanti Bhushan recently told the Supreme Court that at least eight of the 16 chief justices of India (CJIs) were "definitely corrupt". It might sound ludicrous but one of the anecdotal explanations behind India’s ability to survive the 2009 global financial meltdown was that India had plenty of black money. According to one estimate, the Indian black money stashed away in Swiss banks and other accounts may be of the order of US$1.4 trillion.

The news from China is not good either. Corruption is consistently rated the number one concern by Chinese, ahead of pirated goods and pollution . Unlike India, because of its system of governance, there is often no report of corruption at the top of China’s political hierarchy. However, media reports abound in corruption scandals involving China’s government officials and businessmen. China's anti-corruption watchdog has said 106,000 officials were found guilty of corruption in 2009, an increase of 2.5 percent on the year before.

Not just officialdom, corruption also touches the business world of China. A moderate tolerance of corruption is a fact of doing business in China . People who do business there live by the proverb, “If the water is too clean, there are no fish.”

Interestingly, China at least has the image of cracking down on its corrupt businessmen and officials. A BBC report said that the number of government officials caught embezzling more than one million yuan ($146,000) in 2009 jumped by 19 per cent over the year. The government says the increase is due to better supervision of the problem. In September, China has ordered death penalty for food safety crimes (Today, Sep 17, 2010)—a much reported crime that caused deaths of infants and children in the last few years in the country.

In India, corruption is seen as part of ‘bad governance’, or accepted with a creative spin called the jugaad culture. Upright Indians who are against the culture of corruption give examples of China when it comes to dealing with corrupt officials. For instance, the former head of oil giant Sinopec, Chen Tonghai, was sentenced to death last year for taking nearly $30m in bribes. Many Indian commentators on TV demand China-style executions of corrupt Indian leaders and bureaucrats.

Why are we so corrupt?

All this is background. The main question that often gets lost in the discussion is why are we so corrupt whereas we blame the West to be materialistic?

India and China are two of the oldest civilizations in the world. Corruption would have existed in these cultures in one form or another but the levels it has reached now, when these countries are once again part of a historical boom, is alarming. This is a great comedown for a country like India whose official slogan is Satyamev Jayate—truth prevails.

Is it that the sudden economic boom has warped our minds? This can’t be entirely true as there has been a history of corruption and scandals in India, for example, even before the era of economic liberalization. So what explains this explosion of corruption?

“When we were growing up I remember if somebody was corrupt, they were generally looked down upon,” Sinha said about corruption in India. “There was at least some social stigma attached to it. That is gone. So there is greater social acceptance.”

In India today, it is agreed that the love of materialism has ripped apart the moral fibre of the country. Sinha said that in modern India “if somebody has a lot of money, he is respectable. Nobody questions by what means he has got the money.” What Sinha says is it in a way an expression of the Hindu attitude of fatalism, and acceptance of the fact that we are living in Kaliyug, the era of vice?

Similarly, in the older generation of Chinese, there is widespread anger at the ostentatious lifestyle enjoyed by some Communist Party officials, police chiefs and bosses of state-owned companies, according to the BBC’s Quentin Sommerville. Canadian journalist Jan Wong, who studied in China in the 1970s, reports in her book, Chinese Whispers (2009), about the attitude of the present day’s Chinese youth: “Now young people are different. They don’t want to enter the party. They just care about money. In the old days, we had a zhandou mubiao (a battle objective): ‘Serve the people’, ‘Everything for the revolution’. Now there is a spiritual crisis. People have no goal except to get rich.’

No goal except to get rich—that sounds true for the youth of all Asian countries today that have opened their doors to marketisation. But that still does not explain the high incidence of corruption.

The problem can’t be just materialism that has been parachuted in through the forces of globalisation. If it were so, the perception of corruption in the West would be higher too because we have always accused the West to be more materialistic than us.

The explanation, in my opinion, lies in the governance structure and the application of the rule of law. That’s why Singapore, despite being part of Asia, is a shining beacon, an exemplary corruption-free state where a police officer can be jailed for as petty a crime as stealing 70 dollar from a lost wallet (this is not even a case of bribery!) . Singapore is corruption-free and Singaporeans don’t accept corruption because the government is honest and rule of law is applied without discrimination. Also the fact that Singapore’s ministers and civil servants are well paid helps to check their corruptibility.

In the final analysis, I don’t think that Asians are congenitally corrupt. But when they see their top leaders, their civil servants and their society’s rich and famous getting away with loot and murder, they too learn to accept and practice dishonesty in life and business. In Asia, corruption is more of a survival tactic than an ingrained human trait, though if it remains unchecked, it will not only dampen a country’s economic prospects but will also lead to its spiritual suicide.

An edited version of this article appeared in The Daily Star, Dhaka (24 Sep, 2010).

Reading Orwell in Singapore

2010-09-25T19:47:00.001+08:00

Started this new blog today: Reading Orwell in Singapore.

Reading Orwell in Singapore is where I will keep posting my thoughts that will be triggered by reading and re-reading Orwell. A tribute to Orwell, it can also serve to like-minded writers as a manifesto, as a guiding post, as a lighthouse, and remind us how to live and ‘write without hope and without despair’ (that is from Isak Dinesen), and how to write ‘from within the whale’ (Orwell). This is not a political blog (that itself is a political attitude, Orwell will tell you that). If you have any thoughts on it or on Orwell or his works, you are welcome to broadcast them through this blog.

Sonya Chung on where she finds her characters

2010-09-22T17:51:00.001+08:00

Where do you find your characters? What inspires you to write?

People are so darn interesting and complex and strange; everyone has a story that is layered and mysterious and to some degree incomprehensible. Everyone is damaged and gifted. Everyone is ambivalent about everything. Everyone. So the work for me is not coming up with characters, but paring down and choosing from the crowd in my head. It’s the mystery and complexity that inspire me most -- what does this person’s life or situation mean? How do we make sense of all this weirdness in life? Chekhov is a touchstone for me, in that he didn’t worry too much about plot points; his primary goal was to show/render/reveal a life, a character, a moment -- as honestly as possible. Story, I think, is born from there.

'Love and Lust in Singapore' launched

2010-09-19T08:34:00.009+08:00

The steamy short stories anthology 'Love and Lust in Singapore' was launched yesterday @Earshot Cafe at the Arts House. Out of the three editors, Joseph Hoye could not attend. Caz Goodwin flew down from Australia for the event. So, Caz and Femke Tewari launched the book. More than fifty supporters of the project showed up.

In their intro, the editors said they were extremely happy with the project and the way it turned out from an idea to a book. The proceeds from the sale of the book will go to a local charity.

Dawn Farnham (with Marc Checkley) and Jacyntha England read parts of their stories to great applause.

Not all contributors to the anthology were in town. Damanyanti Ghosh came down from Malaysia. Apart from Dawn and Jacyntha, other writers who participated in the book launch were: Mary Byrns, Linda Collins, Marc Checkley, and myself. Writers were signing autographs on each other's copy of the book--and I found it to be the funniest part of the evening. I am not saying this in a snarky way, seriously.

Next up is a live event--Love and Lust Live!--on September 30, 7.30pm, Substation Theatre. The event will feature live performances by Koh Chieng Mun, Felix Cheong, Marc Checkley and others. This is a ticketed event ($20) which includes a selection of tapas, wine and drinks. Please RSVP io.creative@gmail.com if you are keen to attend.

Dabangg in Singapore

2010-09-11T01:16:00.006+08:00

Dabangg is an illustration of how Bollywood processes the filth, crime and corruption of India’s heartland into celluloid masti, and probably, into a blockbuster.

It is midnight and I am just back after watching Dabangg at Bombay Talkies on Beach Road. Thankfully I had bought my ticket one day in advance, so I did not have to stand in a long queue. The crowd reminded me of Om Shanti Om, and I am sure the movie is going to be as big a hit, if not bigger.

The threatre was houseful and people thoroughly enjoyed the movie: they clapped at Salman Khan’s entry in the film, and were making catcalls and whistling during the songs. I thought the days of Amitabh Bachchan’s magic were back—here was a mass hero in a mass entertainer.

What took Salman so long to recognize his niche? Comedy and action go together in Hindi films (and of course melodrama too, dollops of it) and if Salman had done films like this after Govinda’s exit from cinema to politics, Akshay Kumar wouldn’t have risen to the heights that he has. This is not to say that Akshay does not have his own goofy charisma.

Coming back to the movie, what people enjoyed above all were the dialogues. The dialogues work and even at serious moments they tickle you. However, I would have snipped off the fart jokes as they cheapen the character. Similarly, dancing on a mobile phone ring while fighting the goons looked like a bad idea to me.

Some critics, including Anupama Chopra, have said that the film hardly has a plot. That is a fair complaint but I guess the filmmakers were not bothered about plot. This is a character-driven film, and if people watch it (and there would be a sequel too, it seems), they would watch it for Chulbul Pandey (Salman). The film is out and out on Salman’s beefy shoulders and he has delivered it very well. There are a few moments where he seems a bit out of character but that does not make much of a difference. I am tempted to add one more thing: Salman, with his cockiness, moustache and Ray Bans, reminds me of Marcello Mastroianni (as Ferdinando Cefalù) in Divorce—Italian Style.

Sonakshi Sinha has made an impressive debut and she conveys a lot through her eyes and expressions. Mahie Gill has been underutilized and she remains a sidekick, not a second lead. Arbaz has tried his best—I could sense his sincerity in his role. But the problem is that his part has not been written well. His characterization is uneven (he can fight but he is dimwitted; he is strong but he cowers in front of his step-brother; he has a moral sense but he allows himself to be manipulated). Where is the depth in his character? He could have been like John Malkovich (as Lennie Small)in Of Mice and Men, but of course not that demented (I'm just giving you an idea). Malaika’s item number is so good it seems to come and go in a jiffy. So sad!

Sonu Sood is a good actor and he is in his Yuva avatar. But again his character falls short of the villainy that is required of him to match Salman's over the top herogiri. His character is not good enough a counterfoil to Salman’s—if that was done, the film’s level would have risen.

As for the plot, who cares about it in a masala movie? The public was lapping up Salman. I heard people clap when his body bulges in anger a la Hulk and his shirt flies off his body. The action is pure filmy, South India style. Some (girls/women) might find it a bit too much.

Dabangg is not Kaminey or Omkara but it could have been. For that layered telling you need a Vishal Bhardwaj and a touch of expertise from Hollywood’s script gurus. Dabang is pure UP-bred and has no intellectual pretensions about it. It is shamelessly, and I would say, even boldly, a single screen film. That’s why it works even with a shoddy plot.

A pat on the back of debutant director Abhinav Kashyap who has done a great job in his very first film (If you disagree, try to direct a film and you will know what I mean). The kind of desi stylization that he brings to this small-town movie (Bunti Aur Bubbly was also great fun) is original. Now that is something in Bollywood, isn’t it?

Love and Lust in Singapore book launch

2010-09-08T17:21:00.005+08:00

Today I received copies of both Love and Lust in Singapore and Best of Southeast Asian Erotica (Monsoon Books)-- each volume has one of my short stories (A Fraction of a Whore in Love and Lust in Singapore, and Closely Watched Dreams in Best of Southeast Asian Erotica). Both volumes have stories by some well-known regional writers such as Dawn Farnham, Chris Moonis Singh and Felix Cheong. The book is already available at leading bookstores (such as Kinokuniya, as seen in the picture above; editor Femke Tewari at Kino, Orchard Road).

Love and Lust will be launched on Saturday 18 September at Earshot Cafe, The Arts House from 7.30pm. Please RSVP to femke.tewari@studiodutch.com if you want to attend.

There will be a live event too--Love and Lust Live!--on September 30, 7.30pm, Substation Theatre. The event will feature live performances by Koh Chieng Mun, Felix Cheong, Marc Checkley and others. This is a ticketed event ($20) which includes a selection of tapas, wine and drinks. Please RSVP io.creative@gmail.com if you are keen to attend.

Find your agent

2010-09-06T17:43:00.004+08:00

Delhi-based writer Abdullah Khan has penned this interesting piece (advice actually), Such a long journey, on the importance of finding a literary agent. He has mentioned me in the piece among more worthy writers such as Anees Salim and Vikas Swarup:

For a beginner, it is very important to understand the basics of ‘How to approach an agent'. “You should know whether a particular agent is right for your kind of work. An agent specialising in young adult fiction or romance will never take on a writer of ‘high-brow' literary fiction, even though it is well written. Further, you should follow the submission guidelines of the agent you are submitting to. For example, if an agent wants a query only at the first instance, sending sample chapters to him or her will certainly not help,” says Zafar Anjum, an author and journalist based in Singapore. He further adds, “An author should submit to an agent only a fully polished work. If there is an iota of doubt in the mind about the readiness of manuscript, I would like to advise him to avail the services of a good manuscript assessment agency. They will not only point out the loopholes in the plot but also take care of structure, grammar and give the manuscript a professional look.”

Twilight and the young adults

2010-09-05T21:30:00.002+08:00

Here is an interesting interview on the impact of Twilight type lit on the brains of Young Adults (How 'Twilight,' other dark fiction affect teen brains):

The trend for darkness and dystopia in children’s literature reflects concerns in the wider, adult world, Nikolajeva said. A hundred years ago, books for kids were dominated with stories about boys having adventures and girls finding husbands; then, from the 1950s to the 1970s, the themes were emerging sexuality and parental conflict.

Inside the teenage brain, synapses are breaking and reforming, and the chemistry keeps changing. Teenagers can’t make decisions in the same way adults can, Nikolajeva said, and she noted that authors, filmmakers and game developers have a moral obligation to make sure that their works contain some positive ethic.

The trend for darkness and dystopia in children’s literature reflects concerns in the wider, adult world, Nikolajeva said. A hundred years ago, books for kids were dominated with stories about boys having adventures and girls finding husbands; then, from the 1950s to the 1970s, the themes were emerging sexuality and parental conflict.

Inside the teenage brain, synapses are breaking and reforming, and the chemistry keeps changing. Teenagers can’t make decisions in the same way adults can, Nikolajeva said, and she noted that authors, filmmakers and game developers have a moral obligation to make sure that their works contain some positive ethic.

More

Gandhi's experiments in chastity

2010-09-04T18:35:00.002+08:00

From The Independent:

Eighteen-year-old Abha, the wife of Gandhi's grandnephew Kanu Gandhi, rejoined Gandhi's entourage in the run-up to independence in 1947 and by the end of August he was sleeping with both Manu and Abha at the same time.

When he was assassinated in January 1948, it was with Manu and Abha by his side. Despite her having been his constant companion in his last years, family members, tellingly, removed Manu from the scene. Gandhi had written to his son: "I have asked her to write about her sharing the bed with me," but the protectors of his image were eager to eliminate this element of the great leader's life. Devdas, Gandhi's son, accompanied Manu to Delhi station where he took the opportunity of instructing her to keep quiet.

Questioned in the 1970s, Sushila revealingly placed the elevation of this lifestyle to a brahmacharya experiment was a response to criticism of this behaviour. "Later on, when people started asking questions about his physical contact with women – with Manu, with Abha, with me – the idea of brahmacharya experiments was developed ... in the early days, there was no question of calling this a brahmacharya experiment." It seems that Gandhi lived as he wished, and only when challenged did he turn his own preferences into a cosmic system of rewards and benefits. Like many great men, Gandhi made up the rules as he went along.

While it was commonly discussed as damaging his reputation when he was alive, Gandhi's sexual behaviour was ignored for a long time after his death. It is only now that we can piece together information for a rounded picture of Gandhi's excessive self-belief in the power of his own sexuality. Tragically for him, he was already being sidelined by the politicians at the time of independence. The preservation of his vital fluid did not keep India intact, and it was the power-brokers of the Congress Party who negotiated the terms of India's freedom.

From Chandni Chowk to China

2010-09-03T17:33:00.004+08:00

I recently met Julia, a young Chinese girl, at a dinner party in Singapore. Julia told me that she had an Indian boyfriend and that she had recently visited Mumbai along with him. She had come back impressed with India’s colors, culture, and cuisine. That was not surprising. But then she told me something that struck me strongly: “We Chinese know so little about India. We are so close to each other as neighbors but we know so little about each other’s culture.”

Quite true, I thought. India and China may be trading partners, but culturally we know next to nothing about each other. I wondered if this gap could be bridged through cinema.

The Days of Awara and Caravan

I asked this question to Pallavi Aiyar, who has spent more than six years in China writing for the Hindu and the Indian Express. She was, at a time, the only Chinese-speaking Indian foreign correspondent based in China. Now based in Belgium, Aiyar has also served as advisor to the Confederation of Indian Industry on China-related issues.

In her book, Smoke and Mirrors: An Experience of China, Aiyar provides an account of her life in China. Before going there, she knew that Raj Kapoor’s films, especially Awara (1951), were well-known in many parts of the world, from Russia to Peru. But she didn’t know that the Chinese too loved that film and people of an older generation still remembered it. When I met her at a literary soiree in Singapore in July, she told me that even now some Chinese people knew “Abala Hoon” (“Awara Hoon,” the film’s title song) by heart.

“Film imports have always been controlled in China,” Aiyar explained. “In those days, Awara was perhaps considered socialist enough to be allowed a release in China.” The film was seen widely from the late 1950s till the late 1970s.

Another film that has stayed fresh in the memory of the Chinese people is the Jeetendra-Asha Parekh starrer, Caravan (1971). According to Aiyar, Caravan was shown in China only in the 1980s, after the end of the Cultural Revolution. People still have VHS copies of the film, she said.

But after Caravan, no Hindi film was released in China in the last century. After a gap of nearly three decades, Aamir Khan’s Lagaan became the first Indian movie to be released in China in 2002. At its release, Joe Zhang, an official from the Columbia Tri Star Film Distributors International said, “Continuing with its international success and now reaching here, Lagaan brings us a great chance to break the wrong idea that ‘good movies are the American ones.’”

Despite these films, the Chinese don’t know much about Indians. According to Aiyar, the Chinese think that India is a very crowded country (which it is) and all Indian women can sing and dance like Bollywood heroines (which they surely can’t)! She told me how she often gets requests from ordinary Chinese people to perform similar dances for them.

Hunger for India’s culture

Clearly, there is a hunger for Indian culture, including its song and dance, among the Chinese people. Perhaps they find Indian classical dance and music closer to their own cultural traditions like Chinese music and opera. Indian yoga is already a big hit in China.

I had a first-hand experience of this hunger for Indian cultural traditions when I used to help out at the India China Trade Centre (ICTC) around 2003-2004. Many musical troupes wanted to go to China and perform there but from the Chinese side, the demand would always be for those groups that could perform Indian classical singing and dancing.

If you turn the equation around, what kind of perception do Indians have of China and the Chinese? The most common perceptions are that China is a socialist country with an authoritarian regime, that China is the factory of the world and that it is way ahead of India in terms of infrastructure. Even the Indian Prime Minister talks about turning a city like Mumbai, not into London or New York or Tokyo, but into Shanghai. “Chinese cities have become sort of benchmarks for us now,” said Aiyar.

To a great extent, the assumptions that Indians have about China are correct, perhaps because of India’s free media and the culture of debate and discussion that prevails in most parts of India. But how much do Indians know about the Chinese people and their culture?

Aiyar sees a difference between how Indians and Westerners see China. For example, when a Westerner arrives in a city like Shanghai or Beijing, he is appalled by the unruly traffic on the road or the behavior of the Chinese drivers. When an Indian arrives, he is all praise for the Chinese drivers and their respect for traffic rules. Obviously, Indians see Chinese citizens as better behaved than Western visitors do. Aiyar herself finds much to admire in China, like the fact that low level workers in China, unlike their Indian counterparts, at least get to wear gloves while carrying out menial tasks such as carrying refuse or cleaning toilets. “That glove, a barrier between the dirt and the worker’s body, provides him with a modicum of dignity,” she says.

In terms of cinema, perhaps a section of Indians might be familiar with Chinese stars such as Jackie Chan and Chow Yun-Fat because of their action thrillers such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but beyond that, Indians know very little either of Chinese cinema or its other arts. Clearly, there is a great wall of cultural ignorance between the two countries.

When a film like Chandni Chowk to China (2009), Warner Brothers’ first Bollywood film, tried to cross over this great wall, it fell flat at the box office. So what is the way forward?

Slumdog Millionaire replaces Awara

Unfortunately, the current generation of Chinese youth is not interested in Indian films unlike the older generations. According to Aiyar, the young dig international cinema (particularly Hollywood and Korean films) and they approach Bollywood as exotica, as most in the West would do. The current generation of Chinese youth knows India more by Slumdog Millionaire than by Awara. In a situation like this, there clearly is a case for the Indian and Chinese governments to encourage each other’s films in their respective markets in a mood of cooperation and friendship.
Take the example of Singapore and China. In July 2010, the two countries signed nine agreements paving the way for industry collaborations ranging from financing, pre-production, production to distribution and marketing.

When a small country like Singapore can take steps in this direction, why can’t India?

And it’s not just the governments that ought to do something, although Indian ministers do have a duty to do more than just tweet or appear on TV. Trade bodies like the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and the ICTC can also pitch in and bring the film companies together to co-produce or get TV channels to share some television content. For the two countries to come closer, the youth of both countries have to become aware of each other’s cultures. One way to do this is through the exchange of students and cultural groups between the two countries on a large scale, to facilitate more interaction.

China maybe the factory of the world but India has a vibrant cultural scene, and for once, at least, China can be a net importer rather than an exporter in this arena. Knowing about each other will help India and China in the long run. If familiarity breeds contempt, ignorance breeds suspicion. In the case of India and China, I think a healthy contempt is better than layers of dangerous suspicion and mistrust.

This article was published in September 2010 issue of Khabar, Atlanta.

Maintaining your confidence

2010-09-02T17:30:00.002+08:00

Here is some great advice for writers (I guess for all types of writers) who have confidence issues (HOW SUCCESSFUL WRITERS KEEP UP THEIR CONFIDENCE):

Self-confidence is the single most essential ingredient an author needs to succeed, since good writing is never that quick or easy. To keep at it requires energy, discipline, and a sense of humor.

The most accomplished and productive writers I work with are able to sustain a level of assurance and optimism. And that's even when they're feeling blocked, burned out, and unappreciated.

It's admirable and a little amazing they're able to do this, since there's so much hard work and delayed gratification in writing a book.

I've worn two hats in my professional life - as an acquisitions and development editor and also as a licensed therapist specializing in crisis intervention. This has given me a useful perspective on what helps writers sustain their confidence during the often grueling marathon of producing a good book.

There are no universal cookie-cutter techniques writers can use to keep up their hopes and dreams. Each writer is unique, with an individual temperament, culture, and developmental process. But here are some general suggestions all writers can consider to help soldier through periods of doubt.

Stay connected

Withdrawal and isolation can be debilitating and reduce creative energy. Writers can work with other people doing research, brainstorming plot ideas, and building characters, but ultimately writing is a solitary occupation, with hours alone facing that blank screen or that big empty pad.

Consequently a conscious effort to reach out is the only way to prevent isolation and loneliness. Maintain contact with other people, loved ones, family, friends, and colleagues. You don't have to ask for help, just engage as much as possible in regular human relationships. Look for people who can make you laugh out loud. Get out of your head, get out of the house, go and talk to another person. You don't have to be alone. Repeat: you are not alone.

Boeing Boeing: This comedy is still hot

2010-08-12T13:20:00.001+08:00

Director Glen Goei’s Asian adaptation of French classical farce Boeing-Boeing (originally written by French playwright Marc Camoletti) has worn well. It was first performed in October 2002 at Jubilee Hall, Singapore and then reprised again in 2005 at Victoria Theatre.

In its third avatar, this Wild Rice Production lives up to its raunchy reputation, and going by the audience reaction, it is already a resounding success.

The original play’s English language adaptation, translated by Beverley Cross, was first staged in London in 1962. It had a dream run of a total of seven years. The play, when it moved across the Atlantic, became a Broadway success. In 1991, the play entered the Guinness Book of Records as the most performed French play throughout the world. Is this a play or a bottle of wine?

The theme of the play—a philandering young man’s well-planned shenanigans and trickery of being betrothed to three different air hostesses at the same time and the fun and complications that such a set up leads to—seems to be a bit old now, as social ethics around marriage and romantic love have loosened even in Asia. Still, the hilarity that such a comic plot ensures finds favour with the audiences even today. The situational comedy has been so popular that even Bollywood adapted it in 2005 as Garam Masala, and hit the box office jackpot.

There is no change in terms of characters in the play. Adrian Pang plays the heartthrob Bernard and his three leading ladies are Emma Yong, Wendy Kweh and Chermaine Ang who are air hostesses with JAL, SIA and Cathay Pacific. Adrian’s English friend Robert is Daniel York and his maid Minah is Siti Khalijah.

The play’s first act, as far as I am concerned, is rather dull, with all the introductions and setting up. But right from the second act, when Adrian’s plans start to come unstuck, the play changes gear and actors come alive with their performances. The audience was in splits. I don’t remember the members of audience having so much fun during a play.

In terms of choosing devices or adapting the play to an Asian setting, this is a job well done. Emotionally vulnerable Junko’s Japanese accent, the tigress-like Singaporean air-hostess with her eye on the billionaires, and the delicate heart and hot body of the Cathay girl—all add to the mix of a heady cocktail. Pang pulls off his role as a bragging bachelor, clever with ladies and is complemented by his pal, York. Equally important is the maid played by Khalijah who causes laughter whenever she opens her mouth. The new super jumbo and the volcanic ash in Europe update the narrative with twists that eviscerate Pang’s plans.

The downside, if any, is the play’s predictability for even a first time viewer like me. Except for a handful of social and political comments (there is a line on Singapore’s democracy and a few barbs at the inflow of foreign talent and how the fear of paying maintenance to divorced wives keeps the economy stable), there is not much to make you wonder here, and there is nothing to absorb beyond the obvious on the stage, which, as you can guess anyway, heads towards a predictable denouement. There are no thought-provoking or intellectually amusing Woody Allen type monologues. Every scene is an interaction and highly verbose. Still, it works and if you want to enjoy a pure and simple comedy, this is it for you.

Catch this play at the Drama Centre Theatre, NLB, 100 Victoria Street, from 4 August to 4 September.

Parenthood and writing

2010-08-02T17:47:00.003+08:00

There is a pram in the hallway! That prospect might scare many writers. Naipaul wanted children but never had one. Once he said, for a writer, a child born is equal to a book killed.

I am glad, in this article (The parent trap), as an example, Tracy Chevalier has answered this question exactly how I would have liked to answer it..."maybe what's in the pram – breathing, vulnerable life, hope, a present responsibility – is actually more important than good art. It might make us produce less art, but maybe it would be art with the future at its heart." (Frank Cottrell Boyce's words)

A few years ago, I decided that for me family comes first. Writing is secondary. Family cannot be allowed to suffer on account of writing. Even if it means courting failure, so be it. After all, isn't success the greatest enemy of promise? A balance is required. A writer, with his family, needs to form a truce of cooperation to create art. A lot of books in our age are unreadable because writers religiously write at least a book a year (a business model?) and don't have the time or inclination to raise a family or go and buy turnips. What kind of art will come from that kind of life? Lifeless, manufactured, arid...make your list.

I enjoyed reading this piece by Frank Cottrell Boyce on writing and parenthood:

For centuries, writers have sung the virtues of staying connected to the routine and the mundane. Real creativity should feel like a game, not a career. Having to hang out the washing or get up and make breakfast helps you remember that your "work" is actually fun. And for it to stay fun, you have to be unafraid of failure. It's very powerful to be surrounded by people who love you for something other than your work, who are unaware of the daily, painful fluctations of your reputation. I discovered recently that my youngest child thought I spent my days typing out more and more copies of my book Millions, so that everyone could have one.

Writing is a peculiar balancing act between freedom and discipline. Writers are free to spend their days doing whatever they like; but if they don't write, then they are not writers. They are on their own and so vulnerable to every distraction, whether that's drink or the Antiques Roadshow. Jonathan Franzen has said that "it is doubtful that anyone with an internet connection in his workplace is writing good fiction". Family is, of course, the most potent distraction, and probably the only distraction that makes you feel virtuous when you surrender to it.

Curfewed nights in Bangkok

2010-07-26T06:43:00.006+08:00

After landing in Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport, I remembered Bangkok’s old airport that I had once transited through. Compared to Suvarnabhumi, the old one had more character, a wicked charm. The new one was huge and awesome but it looked utilitarian.

We were received by my brother-in-law who works in a regional non-profit. His office was closed due to the political unrest.

Outside, Bangkok didn’t look like a curfewed city at all. Buses, cars and taxis plied on the road. Only the trains were out of service.

As we entered the city, I began to love it. Bangkok was sprawling and chaotic but it had a beauty about it. It was what I wished Delhi and Kolkata to be—clean and functional. Bangkok has a great road and expressway network and its river is, unlike Delhi’s Jumna, navigable. Later, from my sister’s 9th floor flat, I had a great view of the city. Unlike Singapore, Bangkok is not minutely designed and manicured but it exudes a spirit of independence, a sense of wild beauty.

By this time, I was told, the protestors had been flushed out of their protesting zone. The Red Shirts’ had set fire to Bangkok’s biggest mall, Siam Paragon. On the way from the airport, I had seen the charred skeleton of the mall. Only night curfew was imposed in the city. Bangkok’s other malls were open and it was business as usual, I was told.

Next day, we set out in the morning to see the floating market (Suaq Al nahr, said an Arabic sign) at Ratchaburi. We hired a taxi and it took us more than an hour to reach the place, over one hundred kilometers west of Bangkok. Taxi to and fro cost us 2000 bahts.

The floating market is spread over an area of several kilometers, crisscrossed with canals. We hired a boat with a driver for 2000 bahts and spent nearly an hour in the market, buying things from local fruit sellers on boats. According to my wife, the experience would have been better but for the stinking water of the canal. Perhaps Western tourists, coming from sanitized places, would like that organic stink, I thought mischievously.

Next day was Sunday and we wanted to see the Grand Palace. We reached the area (that reminded me of colonial Delhi) after lunch but we were stopped at the main gate by authorities in civilian clothes. “The Palace will open at 3pm,” a burly official informed us. Since we were one hour early, the man advised us to visit Wat Po first and then come back to the palace. “We can’t, we just let our taxi go,” we protested. He hailed a tuk tuk for us and at an unbelievable fare of 20 bahts, he sent us for a ride to Wat Po and back.

At Wat Po, we admired the Reclining Buddha and took some pictures. Then the tuk tuk driver took us to an emporium of art and craft. The place had a great collection of gems and jewelry but what was most impressive was the courteous behaviour of the staff. We did some shopping there.

Finally, we returned to the Grand Palace. It was mind-blowing— sprawling, beautiful and magnificent. It offers a colourful vista of gold and silver, of shining spires, mosaic-rich columns and intricate murals. The afternoon being hot, we took a quick tour of the palace but actually to do justice to it, one needs to spend hours in the complex. Within the complex, the Wat Phra Keao, the temple of the Emerald Buddha, Chakri-Mahaprasad Hall and Amarindra Vinchai Hall are a must see for tourists.

We spent three nights in Bangkok, each night under curfew. But in the condo where we stayed, we never felt anything amiss. The city looked peaceful and calm and there were no rising columns of smoke to be seen in the skyline nor were there any wailing police sirens renting the air. But when we switched on the telly, we saw news about the unrest in Bangkok. It seemed so surreal—beyond the patina of calm was news of troublemakers that the television brought to people’s drawing rooms.

The condo, in the heart of Bangkok, eerily seemed like a Green Zone, with its swimming pool and tennis court on the fourth floor and salons, restaurants and massage parlours on the ground floor. So self-sufficient.

The night before we returned to Singapore, we had our first foot massage of the trip. I and my wife, sitting beside each other were being fawned over by the masseuses. We didn’t know that the foot massage would extend up to the upper thigh. On the flight back, my wife said: “The massage was good but next time we go for it, we must tell the masseuse not to move beyond the knees.”

I nodded with a smile in reply. I didn’t know when that next time would be. As we moved away from Bangkok, we hoped that complete peace would soon return to the city. This magnificent city, the city of Emerald Buddha, deserved it. And I also told myself that Bangkok was not an ordinary city: there was something about it that needed more exploration.

Back in Singapore, I remembered Bangkok as a girl to whom I had said only hello. I knew I needed to converse more with her.

Read the first part of this travel piece, Postcard from Phuket here.

Inception: Inside a Borgesian dream

2010-07-25T10:47:00.007+08:00

Chris Nolan’s Inception could well have been written by Argentinean short story writer and poet Borges, with inputs from Freud and Jung. Formatted as an edge of the seat thriller, this film is a surrealist meditation on the nature of time, of guilt and redemption, of a father-son relationship and of the origins of our motivations and desires. The story of a heist inside the brain of an individual has been told like a philosophical riddle with a sophistication which is the hallmark of Nolan’s work, as seen before in his earlier ventures Memento and The Dark Knight.

The film starts within a labyrinthine dream, in which the main characters keep plumbing up and down the many layers of dreamworld reality. The protagonist, Dom Cobb (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), is a dream-catcher, a superb manipulator of dreams. He is the world’s best extractor of trade secrets from industrial czars. He invades their dreams and steals the secrets from their subconscious.

At the start of the film, we see Cobb washed up on a sea shore. For a moment, I thought, hey, are we back in Shutter Island? I pinched myself. No, we are in a Nolan film. After the opening sequence, the film goes into a flashback or travels to a different layer of reality, whichever way you want to see it, where the story is set up: Cobb is given a challenge by a tycoon (Ken Watanabe) to implant an idea in his business rival’s son’s mind—an act of “inception”. Due to his own past, a guilt-ravaged Cobb accepts the job to invade the subconscious of Robert Fischer junior (Cillian Murphy)—his only way of getting back to his real world, where his two children await his arrival. Hmm, shades of Audrey Neffengger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife.

From that point on, begins Cobb’s hero’s journey along with a set of dream manipulators, assembled from various parts of the world. The film’s third act is the final sequence, the actual act of ‘inception’, when Nolan goes completely blockbuster. The subconscious of Robert Fischer junior is a snow capped rugged landscape, that could well have been from a James Bond film, with gunfire to match.

The film’s strongest point, after the brilliant idea of ‘inception’ of course, is Cobb’s character. DiCaprio is so believable in his role, focused, determined and emotionally vulnerable. And so is Marion Cotillard who plays DiCaprio’s wife. If you could distill red wine into a female form, it would take the shape of Marion. Her sensuous vitality, her love, her idea of to-die for romance, is the emotional pivot of the movie, which defines the level of Cobb’s guilt. However, Ariadne (Ellen Page), who plays a brilliant architect of dream world landscapes, seems a bit jarring in the film—a teen among the adults. Perhaps the Juno girl was penciled in to appeal to the teen audience (you know how Hollywood hedges its bets).

The film appealingly deals with concepts of time and the nature of the subconscious, the way we dream, and so on. The film works on the premise that dream-world time and real-world time act in a different calculus. Ten hours in real life can be equivalent to a week in our dreams. There is a sequence in the final act of the movie in which a van falls off a bridge and between the van’s skidding and hitting the water, time in the dream world stretches on and a lot happens there in those few seconds.

Clever, isn’t it? But this is not entirely a novel idea. In Gabriel Garcia’s Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, as Colonel Aureliano Buendia faces the firing squad, the whole history of his family flashes before his eyes. I also could not resist remembering Prophet Mohammad’s night journey to the heavens, as described in the Quran: In the 7th century, Muhammad (PBUH) riding the mythological steed Buraq, was taken to the various heavens, to meet first the earlier prophets, including Moses and Jesus, and then God. The Buraq then transported Muhammad back to Mecca. This journey was completed at the speed of light, and between his flight to heavens and back, in our world, it took him only a few seconds—an example of real time and cosmic time calculus.

Though the film was riveting, near the end, I was looking at my watch. I had the feeling that I was playing a video game where there are characters with clear psychological profiles, there are rules of the game, and there are different levels of gaming. I won’t be surprised if the movie, after its success, is followed by video games.

Also, if I were Nolan, I would have got rid of the mysterious dream-inducing suitcase (which The Economist calls a psychic Rube Goldberg contraption) that wires the dreamers up. Did you not hear of nanotechnology and mind control Nolan? Instead of Dileep Rao (Yusuf) playing a potion maker, the alchemist, I would have made him a neuro-architect. But never mind the wires. The audiences already love this movie (even in India, Inception became the number one at the box office, beating three new Bollywood releases).

In the end, for all you know, this movie is a crime thriller. It’s all about corporate espionage, an Italian job, but at a brain level. This is a bit of a disappointment for me. Has Hollywood got bored with saving the humanity or the aliens (as we saw in Avatar)? After all that hype, Nolan, you disappointed me but I am glad you tried. This is way better than The Transformers for my ticket price.

I loved the last scene, though. When Cobb is back with his family in the real world, he spins his totem. When the spinning stops, the film is cut to the end credits. I thought that Nolan was having a joke at our expense: suckers, this was the real world and now you go back to your phony, dream world, waiting outside the theatre for you.

As I exited the multiplex, I was wondering if we and our physical world, the universe, are really parts of a maya jaal, the Hindu concept of a web of deception, a mere dream inside the head of God. What if we just don’t exist in real reality? What if we are just projections of God’s imagination? It’s an idea worth exploring, isn’t it?

Postcard from Phuket

2010-07-24T21:50:00.004+08:00

[This is the first part of my Thailand travel notes]

A trip to Phuket and Bangkok was waiting to happen. I’ve been living in the South East Asian region for the last 5 years and yet I hadn’t travelled to these tourist clichés on the map of Thailand. Perhaps one main reason why I was not eager enough about visiting these places was their commonplaceness—everybody goes to Phuket and Thailand. From Singapore, going there is as clichéd as being a heterosexual.

I’ll give you an example. Just before I was to start for Phuket, one of my colleagues rubbed it in: “You are going to Phuket? Huh, I’ve been there twenty-five times!”

Got it?

Seriously, I guess one can’t beat the argument in the age of low cost airlines (just like you can’t beat tweeting and watching pirated DVDs—almost everybody is at it). As Naipaul has remarked, travel has become so plebian now. Tourism is so much part of our globalised lifestyle that anyone who saves a penny or two or owns the wondrous credit cards travels once or twice a year to arrogate to oneself the status of belonging to that global jet set that regularly rubs its bum on the leathery smallness of low cost short-haul flights.

So, when an opportunity (to attend a regional tech event which later on got cancelled) to visit Phuket and Bangkok arose in May this year, I said enough was enough. Even clichés needed to be struck out of my travel diary. Earnestly, tickets were booked one month in advance.

When the time to fly came, it suddenly didn’t seem like a good time to visit Thailand: The Red Shirts had been protesting against the present government in Bangkok for more than a week and one of their rogue generals had just been shot. Bangkok was under siege and the city was under partial curfew. To my chagrin, the tech event that I was supposed to attend shifted its venue from Phuket to Singapore. But I was in no mood to change my plans. Given this background, my colleagues were a bit suspicious of my sanity when they came to know that I was travelling to Thailand, and was not paying enough attention to the news.

And what was I thinking? Dude, what is the fun of travelling if it was not laced with a bit of danger? My philosophy is that travel mixed with a bit of a danger makes it an adventure. For me, the curfew and the protests did it. So, one sunny morning, off we went to Phuket on a Jet Star flight.

The Sea, The Sea

When the plane was about to land in Phuket International Airport, I looked down the window and the surface of the Andaman Sea that spread beneath us presented itself like an immobile expanse of boredom, a blue bedspread, rumpled as a grandmother’s creased cheeks.

At the immigration, the visa officer looked bored and stern. No swadika, no smile. Hello, is this Thailand, I wondered. Thankfully, visa was free (The Red Shirt’s troublemaking in Bangkok had hit tourist traffic throughout Thailand) and it straightaway meant a saving of 3000 bahts for me. I suddenly felt lucky and wallet-wise, marginally closer to Donald Trump (remember I am a journalist married to austerity, not a banker or a businessman). The queue at the immigration was small and it didn’t take much time to clear immigration and collect our luggage. I love the breeziness of small town airports!

Outside, it was a bit warm. A hotel taxi was waiting for us. The taxi driver was amiable. Once inside the air-conditioned cab, I asked him a few questions and he said a lot of yeses with smiling nods. It simply meant that the conversation was flowing in only one direction—mine. It took us forty-five minutes to reach our hotel which was near Patong Beach, fifteen kilometers west of Phuket town. The road to the town was in great condition which coursed through the hill-like greenery-filled landscape of the island. My wife felt a bit pukish but I and my daughter were okay. Sporadically, the road was flanked by single-storied houses, shops and business establishments. On the way, interestingly, I saw more mosques than temples.

We had reached the airport around nine in the morning and by the time we checked into the hotel, the first thing that demanded attention was our hunger pangs—a uniformly felt family experience. I changed into shorts and a T-shirt and came down from my hotel room to recce the area for food outlets. The whole place was infested with big and small inns and hotels and western style brasseries, coffee shops, restaurants, and hawker outlets. Given the heat and lack of choices, I settled for a pepperoni pizza and some fresh fruits and beat a hasty retreat to my hotel room. A little rest and then we ordered lunch. The lunch was standard Thai food from the hotel’s kitchen: the order was misunderstood, the chicken meat was harder than usual and the portions were, maybe, let’s put it this way, good enough for ladies but not sufficient for a grown up Indian male with a moderate to good appetite.

In the afternoon, we took a stroll on Ao Patong—a three kilometer stretch of sandy beach. Some Western tourists were relaxing on chaise lounges, barbecuing their bodies or sipping their drinks under colourful parasols, a book spread on their knees. Clichés I know but what do you expect on a beach? Young couples and surfers played with the waves in the shallow waters, their smiles and laughter adding mirth to the somber sea.

On the beach, my wife thought the Andaman Sea was a bit darkish and I quickly remembered its devastating tempestuousness during the Asian tsunami. Thousands had perished. I didn’t want to think about the tragedy, so I turned my attention to my four-year old daughter. She was the happiest: she loves the sea and the sand and she rolled about in it for a while. And I thought, children were usually happy because they had little memory. I bought a fresh coconut and we shared it “as a family,” the way my daughter loves to put it.

A thin and turbaned middle aged Muslim man, with a dark beard, sat on the sand behind me. He was with a young boy. They looked straight out of a madrasa. What were they doing on the beach, I wondered. Were they enjoying the dancing waves or were they there to soak in the pleasure of beach revelers, to be in commune with them, indulging in a vicarious pleasure? How would I know? “Where are you from?” he asked me. “From Singapore,” I said, adding a wan smile. Would he ask for money, I feared. The man did not talk much. He looked rather sad. I kept an eye on him. The man and the boy left in less than half an hour. I felt a sense of relief but I immediately questioned it: why did I feel relieved? The man had every right to be there (there was a Muslim cemetery bang opposite the beach); he was like everybody else except for his dress. He could even be one of the original inhabitants of the area (this being the South of Thailand), but now he looked more alien than others there. An oddity! The image burnished in my memory, headlined, an oddity.

A little later another man came. He was a Thai. “Where are you from?” The same question. I replied. He showed me a piece of paper. He was collecting funds for Tsunami victims. I had my doubts. He could be a fraud. I apologized and waved him off. It is easy to dismiss a request when you talk to a man from behind sunglasses.

In the evening, the lights came on and the streets magically came alive with people—in cars, in tuk tuks, on scooters, on foot. There were touts everywhere: men and women asking us to buy stuff, dine at sea food joints or get massages. Every few steps, a tuk tuk driver or his agent would offer us a ride. A mini truck passed by slowly, with young boys on board in shorts mocking a Muoy Thai sparring, advertising for a super championship match in town. There was music and noise everywhere, the sheer liveliness of a place that thrived with human interaction, energizing the participants and onlookers alike. And I thought, dude, where are the protesters? Where is the unrest? Later, I saw a story in the Phuket Post (30 April- 13 May): Phuket backs the PM. “More than a thousand Phuket people delivered a handwritten letter to Go Wichai at the Provincial Hall on 19 April (hoping)…that the letter will encourage PM Abhisit (Vejjajiva) and his party not to resign and dissolve parliament…” In short, the Phuketites were for business and for normalcy.

Taking in the festiveness, we walked up to Jung Ceylon, a modern shopping complex where all your StarBucks, MacDonalds and Carrefours are. I experienced an effusive sense of relief but at the same time was struck with a sense of smallness—what a little world of brands made my mental universe. “Daddy, I want to eat junk food,” my daughter whispered in my ears when she found herself magically transported into this mini Singapore. She craved for a Burger King meal and that’s what we bought her. Surely, a guilty pleasure. We did some shopping in Robinsons and Carrefour and grabbed our dinner in the Jung Ceylon’s food court, and that’s where I made my greatest discovery: an Indian food stall named Bismillah Kitchen.

Amid all kinds of Thai food represented there, I was glad to find Indian food represented too. Also, this was the only food joint that displayed a halal sign, indicating that their food was kosher. Coming from Singapore, we were spoiled as Singapore has hundreds of halal certified food stalls and eateries. The stall was being manned by a young Pakistani man, Hassan. We ordered our dishes in Urdu and felt quite at home. The microwave-heated food was miraculously delicious (rice, dal, potato with peas and a bowl of meat with gravy; the pudina chutney was amazing) and so inexpensive that I decided to come there for all our subsequent meals. A single Burger King meal cost us about 250 bahts--and here we were getting nearly home cooked food for the whole family for just about 200 bahts. It was unbelievable.

Over the next few meals, I got to know a little bit more about Hassan. He was from Punjab and instead of venturing to Dubai or London as most of his countrymen do, he moved to Thailand. “There are lots of opportunities here,” he said. He was happy to see someone from the subcontinent. “Saheb,” he said, “I hardly see any Pakistanis come here. They seldom get out of the country.” “True,” I said, “There are reasons for it”. Then we talked about politics. “What is sad is that in Pakistan, Muslims are killing each other because of politics,” he said. Hassan was not much educated but he knew what was going on in his country.

Changing the topic, I asked him, are there a lot of Muslims in Phuket? “Oh, yes,” he said, “and they are very strong.” How, I further pressed him. “They are strong in business and they have a lot of clout.” Perhaps that explained why I saw so many mosques in Phuket.

Then he complained about a neighbouring stall owner who sold Thai food: she sold both chicken and pork and yet had the temerity to brandish a halal sign on her stall to attract Muslim tourists. “How could she do it?” Hassan said. Are you going to complain to the authorities? “No,” he said, “But next time they come on inspection, they will take action against her.”

I promised Hassan that I would write about his food stall. He was thankful. On the last day, he gave a free treat to my daughter: Milkmaid poured over a hot parantha. “Yummy,” my daughter declared.

For our remaining days in Phuket, we avoided the tourist traps and did more of the same—walking around, shopping and more family bonding over food and siestas. We even gave the Phuket Fantasia, a nightly dinner buffet with a Las Vegas-style show, a miss. Each ticket costs around 1800 bahts.

The night before we moved over to Bangkok, I took a stroll down the Soi Bangla, Patong’s liveliest party zone. The road is flanked by drinking holes and was crowded with tourists and street performers. Amid pulsating music, I could see mostly Western tourists drinking beer in bars and young girls and ladyboys pole dancing for the patrons. Some touts tried to entice me to free sex shows that I refused with my polite nods. The market-like open air atmosphere on the Bangla Road gives one a totally different experience, unlike the closed door revelry of Singapore’s Duxton Hill or Hong Kong’s Wanchai district. Good for those who like this kind of stuff.

A shorter version of this travelogue was published in The Daily Star, Dhaka.

'Love and Lust in Singapore' cover

2010-07-22T13:23:00.003+08:00

The cover of 'Love and Lust in Singapore', which features one of my short stories, is out. It looks fabulous. The book should be in the bookstores by August/September 2010. Look out for it!

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The Death of the Indian Dream

2010-07-12T17:58:00.002+08:00

In a brief essay on India, Aravind Adiga gets into the heart of the matter:

... The 300 million or so Indians living in acute poverty are being crushed by inflation. If they thought washing the floors, driving the cars and cleaning the windows of the middle class would open the doors to a better life, they know now that they were wrong. With prices rising, their savings are being eaten away. Higher food and fuel prices are being driven by big changes in the global economy that look set to continue. Even the most cheerful optimist in the past decade has seen the huge divide between the haves and have-nots, but the hope has persisted that it would somehow go away. Inflation has set like cement into that divide, solidifying the gap between the two Indias. The future for the country is two futures: rosy and grim. Indian companies will buy more foreign businesses and more Indian children will starve. In economic terms, India has become neither the U.S. nor Sudan, but something in between — a Latin American republic with an entrenched class chasm. Higher levels of crime and social unrest are almost certain to follow. For years or decades to come, we will not be able to talk of one destiny for all the people of the country.