Colonialism : The Dawn

Neither East Nor West looks at the ways in which colonial imperialism continues to function today through new forms of globalisation.

Neither East Nor West: Postcolonial Essays on Literature, Culture and Religion, edited by Kerstin W. Shands, Sweden: Sodertorns Hogskola, 2008, p. 186, price not stated.



Edward Said’s Orientalism squarely established that the world inhabited by academics certainly knew of its two-fold division into East and West. Whereas the West was propped up by its innovativeness, advancement, adulthood and scientific temper, its other, by default, acquired connotations of imitativeness, sluggishness, childhood and sorcery. The West led and the East lagged. Unfortunately, this view has endured. Needless to say, the West is the centre to the rest of the world because the belief systems it engendered during the Enlightenment phase created permanent divisions between the West and the rest.

Such a view was built up and aided by an industry of unselfconscious writing and representation, some sympathetic, some vitriolic. Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe teaches Friday to call him Master and in one stroke, polarises the world into civilised and primitive. Crusoe’s imaginings of the savagery of the inhabitants of the place he finds himself shipwrecked have continued to date in the cinematic representation of Tom Hanks in “The Castaway” or much earlier in “The Blue Lagoon” and many other films. More seriously, Marx’s infamous papers on British rule in India consider colonialism to be the “unconscious tool of history in bringing about . . . revolution”. Said’s Culture and Imperialism, in fact, gives us a veritable list of novels, opera, and other cultural artefacts which define the pattern of relationships between the Western world and its overseas territories. Connecting Conrad and Jane Austen with this enterprise, Said holds them culpable of depicting native peoples as “marginally visible” and “people without History”.

Cultural negotiations

This kind of geographical diversity provides the matrix for cross-cultural exchange both at the mundane and the sublime levels, which is what Neither East nor West intends to uncover through a series of conference essays on the subject. At a juncture when the world can no longer be encapsulated into Said’s water tight contexts, the contributors explore the ways in which postcolonialism has been “developing and diversifying in several ways”. Postcolonial subversion has taken many forms: either its literary manifestation includes overt resistance through an emphasis on nativism or it charts an ambiguous terrain where the contributions of colonialism cannot be overstated. Postcolonialism has acquired a whole new range of meanings today and moved from its focus on imperial control to neo-colonialism. Colonialism is really an anachronistic term for capital expansion, and so it comes as no surprise that capital expansion in global terms is often conflated with globalisation. Among its many connotations as highlighted by several contributors, one interpretation stands out in the contemporary milieu — that postcolonialism has less significance in connoting “after colonialism” than in emphasising the persistence of it in terms of a continuing imperialism. With the new imperialism of the superpowers, it seems that colonialism has never been done away with. Postcolonial Studies thus becomes an ever bigger discipline than originally envisaged as colonialism had never been a metaphor for oppression in such a gargantuan manner.

Kerstin Shands’ Introduction charts the theoretical trajectory of the marginalised, peppering it with names of dozens of postcolonial commentators from Helen Tiffin, John McLeod and Moore-Gilbert to Aijaz Ahmad, Dirlik, Loomba, Appiah and Graham Huggan. Even the views of Hardt and Negri on the borderlessness of contemporary nations are roped in. In short, the editor sweeps in the many facets of postcolonialism — language, nation, translation, globality — in the effort to make the book comprehensive.

Postcolonial Studies is placed in a particular predicament today: it purports to be a liberatory practice but it is complicit with new hegemonies. Part of the problem arises from the inability of this discipline to step outside its textual parameters. Postcolonial theory, by addressing representation and the relations between centre and periphery, loses its historical-material reality and begins to exist in theory only. The significance of the Third World is thus well-nigh lost in service to “high theory”. Postcolonialism and postcoloniality are themselves not unproblematic terms any longer, as the editor points out, because they originated in the Western academy even as they purport to give a voice to the underprivileged non-Western people. So it is that postcolonial studies, postcolonial intellectuals and postcolonial identity have become global in their conceptualisation. Yet postcolonialism is a necessary intervention in the dominant discourse of European humanism which continues into contemporary globalism.

Diverse perspectives

Within such a terrain, the various articles here present perspectives ranging from the space of the marginalised in both the South African Andre Brink and the Bengali Mahasweta Devi to the 19 century Oriya novel and its counterpart in England; from the significance of the Man Booker Prize and the “disproportionate emphasis on India” to a rather oft-trodden analysis of identity crisis in the figure of Naipaul’s Mohun Biswas; from a caricature of the “Mohammed cartoons” by the Western media and the unexplained hostility towards Muslims to a celebration of Arabo-Islamic literature and culture, especially among women scholars who are sidelined in similar ways as alien and inferior. Though wide-ranging in its formulation, the compilation is limited in its originality and insights.

Lights, Camera, Sivaji

A fascinating sketch of Sivaji Ganesan’s rise in Tamil films and his varying fortunes later in politics.

Sivaji Ganesan: Profile of an Icon, S. Theodore Baskaran, Wisdom Tree Publication, p.106, price not stated.



In his book, Sivaji Ganesan: Profile of an Icon, Theodore Baskaran takes you on a fascinating journey. A 10-year-old boy smitten by theatre runs away to join a drama company. Young actors were treated like bonded labour and thrashed if they did not remember their lines. Can you imagine walking 60 km, all the way from Palakkad to Pollachi, because he did not have the money even for a bus ticket? Sivaji suffered a life of penury at a young age, refusing to get into any other profession save the one he was obsessed with.

It was when he acted in Annadurai’s “Sivaji Kanda Indhu Rajyam” as Sivaji that he was christened Sivaji Ganesan, a name given by Periyar who was impressed with his performance. The author tells us that he continued his links with stage even after his successful foray into films. He founded his own drama troupe called Sivaji Nataka Manram and staged plays in different cities, sometimes using them as fund raisers for deserving causes. Some of his plays like “Thanga Padakkam” and “Vietnam Veedu” were made into films.

After intensive training in all aspects of theatre, Ganesan moved to films, morphing into a colossus that strode the screen. “Parasakthi” in 1952 broke all records and Ganesan won accolades with his “new wave” acting and body language which defied old conventions. The dialogue was written by Karunanidhi who used it to aim barbs at the Government.

Larger than life

Whenever Sivaji Ganesan acted in a film, his presence became larger than life, dwarfing the director and other actors. Masterpieces, like “Pasa Malar”, “Vietnam Veedu” and “Navarathri” (in which the versatile actor played nine roles), ushered in an era of lengthy rhetoric and the script writer had scope to play with flowery language,

Sivaji Films was born in 1956 and produced successful films like “Puthiya Parvai”, “Vietnam Veedu” and “Pava Mannippu”, and even today the company is managed by his son Ram Kumar. Despite his proximity to the DMK party, Ganesan was slowly sidelined, and MGR was promoted instead. Deeply hurt, he withdrew into a shell, when Director Bhimsingh took him to Tirupathi to provide what turned out to be a welcome diversion. This move sealed Ganesan’s fate and he was considered to have “betrayed the party’s rational ideology”. Kamaraj influenced him to join the Congress party which he did finally in 1961.

Ganesan worked three shifts a day, often living in the studios. He was unmindful of the strain, and this probably caused a deterioration in health. Baskaran talks of Ganesan’s vigorous campaigning for the Congress. He tried his best to bring the Kamaraj and Indira Gandhi factions together, and he did so, finally. He floated a new party and canvassed for the Janata Dal, but was soon to realise that politics was not his cup of tea.

Awards and politics

Ganesan was an honest and plainspoken man who lived by his ideals. The National Award which he rightly deserved eluded him because of his political stance. When the Best Supporting Actor for “Thevar Magan” was offered to him in 1994, he turned down the award He was given the Dada Saheb Phalke award in 1997, but what he valued most was the Best Actor Award in 1960 at Cairo. When the Government of India wished to bestow on Ganesan the Best Actor Award, he turned it down, because he felt it was merely a gesture which came too late and the action was fraught with political overtones. In 1995, the French Government conferred on Ganesan the title Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Letters. The book is a must buy for all Sivaji fans and those who wish to know more of him.

Journey to the End of the World

Troyanov’s reconstruction of the life of Burton is more an investigation of the curious spirit that was idealised but perhaps never fully accepted by contemporary society.



In 1842, round about the time Alfred Tennyson, still be to be knighted, was publishing “Ulysses” to universal acclaim as the portrait of the ideal man of his age, a man cast pretty much in the mythical mould was stepping off the ship in Bombay. Richard Burton had left behind a chequered career at Oxford, having apparently celebrated his expulsion by driving his horse and carriage over the college’s flowerbeds, and believed that India would help consummate his passion “to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield”.

One-and-a-half centuries later, yet another writer with wanderlust in his soul and multiple languages on his tongue-tip has resurrected the man the world now remembers largely as the translator of the Arabian Nights. Biographical fiction is not the easiest of literary forms, but it’s tough to imagine Iliya Troyanov — born in Bulgaria, refugee in West Germany, Kenya-bred — did not recognise a kindred soul in Burton.

Flair for languages

From that uneventful landing in Bombay, Burton went on to chart an unprecedented career in the East India Company — unprecedented not so much in terms of what he achieved by way of command and decoration, but what he didn’t. An inborn flair for languages, honed by childhood stints in France and Italy, flowered in multilingual India and Burton picked up Marathi, Hindi and Gujarati in quick succession; an attempt to pick up monkeyspeak from a roomful of imprisoned primates, however, came to naught.

The streak of maverick, coupled with his linguistic skills, made Burton a shoo-in for a spy: From Baroda, he was sent to Sindh where, in between the painfully prosaic job of surveying land, he disappeared for days on end in local garb under the alias of Mirza Abdullah to determine the leaks and holes in British intelligence. The trail led to a brothel housing only men and boys, which was apparently frequented by red-coated officers who could not always keep their mouths shut.

Unlike Ulysses, the adventure won Burton no kudos: Instead, it made him a suspect in the eyes of the Company — how could he know the truth of the situation if he had not partaken of the forbidden fruit himself? — and effectively stymied his India career. Not so his pioneering spirit, though: Burton would go on to become one of the first Westerners to do the Haj and explore the interiors of East Africa in an effort to find the source of the Nile, the Victorian equivalent of today’s race to launch the first commercial flight to space.

Troyanov’s intricately constructed, densely imagined reconstruction of the life of Burton is less biography, really, and more an investigation of the curious spirit that was idealised but perhaps never fully accepted by contemporary society. Just as the passing of the ages has morphed Ulysses from the perfect man to the flawed protagonist who abandoned wife and son to feed his own selfish desires, so Burton has come full circle — from questionable “native-lover” to a distillation of the best of the Western intellect: a thirst for knowledge, an openness to the “other” and an ability to view both with equanimity.

Interesting intersection

In view of current world scenarios, the intersection between Islam and the outsider is particularly remarkable. Hailing from a culture which subscribes to “force” as the ultimate way to impose one’s will, Burton spends years perfecting his Muslim persona, even undergoing circumcision. “If I assume somebody else’s identity,” he says at one point, “then I can feel what it’s like to be him.”

It’s not that simple, of course, as his teacher tells him (“Fasting is not the same as starving.”). But the hunger to understand that which has always been on the other side of the divide is genuine, the sympathy is unwavering. Troyanov helps the cause further by being completely matter-of-fact about the drama in Burton’s life; instead of making it read like a thriller, he treats his subject’s life like a philosophical treatise.

Distanced perspective

In each of the three sections of the book, Troyanov uses a double narrative device: An omniscient view of Burton’s own reality, which rarely attempts to explain the mind, and a narrator at a remove, who superimposes his own interpretation on the situation. Perhaps intentionally, the effect is rather distancing. Burton remains an enigma till the end, though the prism through which he is viewed changes. The Collector of Worlds, fluently translated by William Hobson, is one of those books that yields rich pickings over repeated readings.

Meet your Mentor

Randy Pausch’s last lecture taught many to seize the day and live life to its fullest.

The Last Lecture; Randy Pausch and Jeffrey Zaslow, Hodder & Stoughton, £7.99.



The last lecture, “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”, by Randy Pausch is intended for his children when, on growing up, they realised how much their father cared for them and loved them. Expanded into a book including ways to realise one’s dreams and living life to the hilt, it would give them a clear picture of their father when they were old enough to respond to such an inspiring lecture. The decision was to not tell the children of the fatal disease their father was suffering from. Let it wait till the end when the little ones would be able to comprehend the meaning of the death of their father. This was the unconditional decision taken by Randy Pausch.

If you were going to die, ‘what wisdom would you try to impart to the world knowing it was your last chance?’ The tradition at Carnegie Mallon is to invite their faculty to give an annual lecture in a series called ‘Journeys’ in which they speak of their views on life and what they feel is most important in their lives. But for Randy Pausch, Professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, it was literally the last as he had been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer and had only a few more months to live. The hypothetical question had turned into a real one for him.

Initial nervousness

He was edgy at first to appear before a learned audience and seemed to lack the confidence to give a lecture based on a real life situation. “There was a definite sense,” Pausch remarked in a recent interview before his death, “when I put that talk together, to use another football expression, you know, I wanted to leave it all on the field. . . . If I thought it was important, it’s in there. I played in football games where you walk off the field and the scoreboard didn’t end up the way you wanted. But you knew that you really did give it all. And the other team was too strong. Yeah, I’m not going to beat the cancer. I tried really hard … but sometimes you’re just not going to beat the thing…I wanted to walk off the stage and say anything I thought was important, I had my hour.” His courage and leadership are obvious in his world view.

Friends from around the world flew in to hear him. And what seemed to be a difficult task, turned into a vibrant and funny discourse on childhood memories and the desire to live life to its fullest while the going is good, a recipe of turning our dreams into reality. And this is what Pausch had to say about his three children: “I just hope that they have passion for things, and I’m sure they will. I’m sure their mother will instil that in them. And whatever they see of me in direct memories and indirect memories, uh, will send that signal. Because if they have passion for things, then I’m happy for whatever they have passion for.”

Many have begun to rediscover their lives and those who had given up hope or their love of a pastime have regained their lost passion after hearing the lecture. What was encouraging was the focus of his lecture on his many dreams and the invincibility of his spirit not to give up in the face of obstacles: “You may not agree with the list but I was there. … Being in zero gravity, playing in the National Football League, authoring an article in the World Book Encyclopedia -- I guess you can tell the nerds early. …. I wanted to be one of the guys who won the big stuffed animals in the amusement park.” Having almost failed to make it to Brown University, he persisted against what seemed to be a ‘brick wall’: “The brick walls are there for a reason,” he said during his lecture. “The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.” It was with a similar perseverance that Pausch persisted in pursuing Jai Glasgow until she gave in to his marriage proposal. In the circumstances of the approaching calamity for wife and three children, he endeavoured every day to ensure that his family can bear the approaching loss with all its strength.

Such a positive attitude was conspicuous in his pioneering of the Entertainment Technology Centre and the Alice project (Alice is an innovative 3-D environment that teaches programming to young people through storytelling and interactive game-playing) at his university that began with a collaborative exercise by people from different disciplines coming together to create ‘virtual worlds’ as well as learn to work together honestly and with utmost respect for others’ ideas. It is now one of the most popular pursuits at the CMU with students unhesitatingly abiding in an environment of risk and innovation. Faced by a choice between the predictable or the uncertain, he asserts: “Go for the risk. It’s better to fail spectacularly then to pass along and do something which is mediocre.”

Unique experience

The lecture, which was hurriedly put together, has been rendered into a book where Pausch’s acumen and humour have combined to turn it into a concrete experience to be read by generations: “Putting words on paper, I’ve found, was a better way for me to share all the yearnings I have regarding my wife, children and other loved ones. I knew I couldn’t have gone into those subjects on stage without getting emotional.” Though the book is meant for his three children, millions now have read and heard the deeply moving and uplifting lecture around the world that has not only changed many lives, but has taught many to seize the day and live life to its fullest, especially for those who suffer from pancreatic cancer, medical research on which has made little headway in the past many years. To face the challenge, Pausch advises: ‘We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.’

Riot or Write ?

The English in these translated stories is supple and responsive to the many registers of Oriya.

The Other Side of Reason: Oriya Stories from the Edge; Himansu K. Mohaptara and Paul St-Pierre, eds. Grassroots, Rs. 195.



Good things, they say, come in small packages. This slim volume containing eight contemporary stories translated from Oriya and an elegant introduction proves how right they are.

Clear principles

Though Himansu Mohapatra (the editor who provides the introduction) denies that the collection is based in either thematic coherence or topicality, it is not a haphazard affair either. There are clear principles of selection at work. Thus ‘readability’, judged by the criteria of aesthetics (fine writing) as well as politics (social criticism), is a paramount consideration. The next is translatability into English, which requires, he stipulates, that the stories be able to ‘cut across cultural divides through the sheer force of their human content.’ And finally all the selections are stories ‘from the edge,’ by which he means they record the experience of the ‘other’, outside the ‘comfort zones of the middle class.’ As a non-Oriya reader who puts herself in the hands of the editor and translators, I found it to reassuring that these are representative texts, stories that emerge from and stand witness to their culture and times.

Two of the stories — “History” and “Fear” — are exclusively about this middle class. Two others — “The Picture Within” and “Window View” — bring in the ‘other’ — a tribal married couple, poor neighbourhood children — to disturb the middle class perspective. The remaining four stories are located emphatically beyond the pale of respectable society. The low life they represent may shock or move the implied middle-class reader, but those effects do not seem to be their primary purpose. Instead they are filled with purpose and meaning, the characters possess interiority and subjectivity, and their worlds exist without reference to any norm except their own. Of these, perhaps Paramita Satapathy’s “Ours by Love” and Giri Dandasena’s “Lefri’s Bonda” are betrayed by their sentimentality, in part because both authors seem to view submission to rape as woman’s sacrifice. Bijoy Pradhan’s “A Case of Unnatural Death” and K.K . Mohapatra’s “The Whore: A Love Story” are as unsentimental as they come: the first a gothic horror not meant for the squeamish, the second filled with bawdy humour and straight satire.

Despite the editor’s warning that the stories are ‘so locked into their respective little islands of space and time as to rule out the presence of a communicating door between them,’ it is tempting to trace motifs across them. I have mentioned the shared meaning of rape in two of the stories. I could not help comparing, either, the male paean to a woman’s breasts that comes at the end of “A Case of Unnatural Death” to the whore’s caustic satire of her male clients who “paw” her breasts “as though they’re mounds of dough or something” in ‘The Whore.’ It is perhaps this inter-textual commentary that makes me unable to accede to Mohaptra’s reading of the passage in the early story as a lyrical rhapsody reaching ‘metaphysical heights.’ Floating in the stream of consciousness of the constable Aniruddha when confronted with a female corpse crawling with worms, the passage seems instead to express the limits of his language, his inability to move beyond the banal moral implied in the contrast between (male) desire for the female body and the horror of decaying flesh, rather than an authorial intervention.

But these are matters for readers to discover and judge for themselves. Perhaps the detailed readings of each of the stories provided in the introduction might be redundant for this reason, though indeed they are full of helpful insights. If I have refrained from remarking on how brilliant the stories themselves are, it is because somehow the comment can come to seem subtly insulting, almost as if one is surprised to find these kinds of excellence in writing in the regional languages. If surprise there is it is not at the stories themselves, however, but at the conditions that must exist for such a dynamic literary culture to flourish. One wishes that the editor could have told us more about the little magazines, the critical community, the readership, the influences, and the institutions that promote contemporary Oriya literature. We are given helpful historical background, but not much by way of contemporary context.

Fine work

A final observation about the translations carried out by various hands but all overseen, apparently, by Paul St- Pierre. They are a pleasure to read, a far cry from the usual trial-and-error attempts of amateur hands that we have got used to in the local translation industry. The English language they work with is supple and responsive to the many registers of Oriya deployed in the stories, just sufficiently estranged from English idiom to convey the fact that they have been translated but not obtrusively so. Altogether it is a neat little book, free of typos and smart in appearance. It appears that Grassroots has already published an impressive number of translations from Oriya. This volume is a distinguished addition to their list.

Defining Reality

Pamela Manasi’s translation is both aesthetic and subtle.

Sunflowers of the Dark; Krishna Sobti, Translated from Hindi by Pamela Manasi, Katha, Rs.200




Krishna Sobti’s brilliance shines in each of her works. She not only picks themes of searing relevance to society, but also weaves them into compelling tales.

She evokes images in the mind with her descriptions, choice of metaphor and vocabulary. And keeps the reader engaged, at times wondering, at others guessing or hoping, or cringing, but never complacent.

But then that is what one expects from a masterful storyteller.

Sunflowers of the Dark (Surajmukhi Andhere Ke) is the story of Ratti, whose spirit is tortured by demons from her childhood.

Ahead of times

In this story, as in others, the author shows herself ahead of her times, handling themes that her generation preferred to ignore. Only recently has the official machinery of justice been forced to focus on a victim’s trauma and its long drawn aftermath. Even artists, particularly filmmakers, began to talk of the needs and desires of a woman not too long ago.

What stands in the way of Ratti’s fulfilment? Is it her fate, a cruel society, or her parents’ inability to help her heal?

All these perhaps, but most of all, Ratti’s own refusal (the word ‘stubborn’ comes up often in the story) to compromise with anything less than the truth renders her utterly lonely, yet unable to accept companionship.

In a world still largely male-oriented, those who write of a woman’s search for complete fulfilment are in danger of becoming cynics, or aggressive, or just plain clinical. But in Sobti’s Sunflowers…, one finds the unflinching presentation of reality suffused with compassion, and devoid of judgmental hostility.

The success of a creative work is partly the resonances it creates in the mind of one who peruses it. Here, the language is simple, the story simply strung together. It is not a novel with numerous threads coming together at remote points in time, hundreds of pages away from where they took off.

Tortuous journey

Within just a hundred pages, the author acquaints us with Ratti’s tortuous journey, her fighting spirit that refuses to kneel though it weeps, a spirit that does not allow her to dissimulate for the sake of assuaging the ego of her male friends. Yet its reflections are many.

And in this fine translation, Pamela Manasi does a difficult job aesthetically and subtly. By bringing out an English translation of yet another of Krishna Sobti’s works, Katha has performed a service to readers and fans of this doyenne among Hindi authors.

From Pulp to the Core

Showcasing a literature not found in bookstores or libraries.

The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction; Selected and Translated by Pritham K.Chakravarthy and edited by Rakesh Khanna; Blaft Publications Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, Rs. 195



In a move that is arguably fraught with risk and reminiscent of Cultural Studies debates, The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction showcases, with a passionate, sentimental fondness, a literature that thrives not in bookstores or libraries but in tea stalls and the backseats of school buses. This book assures readers with a soft corner for Tamil pulp that they don’t need to have their heads examined.

In a breezily written translator’s note, Pritham Chakravarthy traces the evolution of pulp fiction and the history of its readership. She makes a strong case for translating into English a body of texts that have enjoyed, unlike “high” literature, an active readership across caste and class groups. The selection ranges from “soft” romances to detective fiction. From Tamilvanan with his detective character Shankarlal to Pushpa Thangadorai’s narrative on the lives of prostitutes and Ramanichandran’s formulaic take on what makes a good wife, the anthology showcases an impressive range. In her translations, Pritham Chakravarthy has successfully managed to retain the idiom peculiar to pulp.

Variable quality

As for the stories themselves, they vary in quality and readability. Tamilvanan’s “Tokyo Rose” with its James Bond-like Shankarlal and Rajesh Kumar’s tightly crafted “Matchstick Number One” are good reads but some of the other fiction, “My Name is Kamala” by Pushpa Thangadorai and Ramanichandran’s “The Rich Woman” for instance, are disappointingly bland and lacking in sub-text.

Obviously, Tamil pulp like its counterparts from other parts of the world, is mostly written to fit a formula, notwithstanding the occasional attempts at experimentation. One is more or less able to anticipate how everything will eventually end. With this, perhaps, comes the guaranteed pleasure of an easy read. Plots race ahead at top speed, flat characters and inconsistencies (such as the illustration on the cover having nothing to do with the story) abound. Pritham Chakravarthy quotes from the guidelines laid out by Sudhandhira Sangu in a 1933 article titled “The Secret of Commercial Novel Writing”: “The title of the book should carry a woman’s name – and it should be a sexy one …Don’t worry about the story line….The story should begin with a murder… “You can make money only if you are able to titillate.”

Writing pulp fiction requires a certain kind of talent and stamina, a devil may care attitude and a sound understanding of what will sell.

Prolific

Most writers featured here are hugely prolific. Rajesh Kumar has published more than 1,250 novels, Ramanichandran, the romance writer is currently working on her 125th novel and the detective writer Pattukkottai Prabakar writes “non-stop, nearly twelve hours a day, taking only two breaks in the morning and afternoon for a cigarette and a cup of filter coffee”.

Even as I acknowledge the right to life of Tamil pulp, I have a quarrel to pick with its lack of meticulousness. Craft matters even if your readers are “low brow”. Unfortunately, we suffer from a dearth of good popular writing. Readers evolve and so should books.

Nativity

How important are regional languages in the rapidly transforming global village?



A collection of articles written over the course of a decade, this book reflects on the importance of the mother-tongue and argues for its continuing relevance in a world teeming with global and regional literatures. Insights into the workings of the market, transformations within political parties, the upheavals caused by rapid economic development, and liberalisation are linked to the trials and tribulations of local cultures striving to survive, if not succeed, in an increasingly unequal world.

One of the more arresting themes is the now familiar debate about disparate worlds inhabited by Indians writing in regional languages and in English.

Regional writers, Srinivasaraju reminds us, not only constitute an important segment of the intelligentsia but also have a foothold on the global literary scene. However their presence on the global literary scene is always mediated by western literary trends. This problem is surfacing in other non-English speaking countries such as Korea and Japan. Questions pertaining to the survival of local cultures are further complicated by the kinds of institutional support that is often extended by western powers.

Memorable anecdotes

For Srinivasaraju, the key to systemic continuity resides in the belief in one’s mother tongue and in one’s individuality. The book includes biographical sketches laced with memorable anecdotes. Girish Karnad’s penetrating gaze on the intrigue and ‘somewhat incestuous ways of the world of writers’ sets the tone. Srinivasaraju adds a glowing tribute to Shivarama Karanth, a polymath of uncommon breadth. Appraisals of Rajkumar, the Kannada actor, and P. Lankesh, the writer, highlight their zest for life. In an obituary for Fritz Bennewitz, who came to India with Brecht and chose to identify himself with the Third World, Srinivasaraju recounts how he understood the limitations of a developing economy and was frugal in his productions.

Moving from theatre to reality, as it were, Srinivasaraju writes about Bangalore; of its well-known landmarks, the land-locked water bodies that were ‘celebrated metaphors for serenity’, and discusses the planned township around tanks over 400 years old. He also offers interesting comparisons of Kannada and Hindi language cinema.

Symbiotic relationship

In another essay, Srinivasaraju studies the “symbiotic relationship between Kannada nationalism and the idea of a Hindu state or Hindutva”. He also discusses the antiquity of the Kannada language in relation to Tamil and Sanskrit. He explains how the Kannada identity is derived through the organic relationship that exists between Kodava, Konkani, Byari, Havyak and Kannada.

The mime plays, Phoenix and Four Other Mime Plays by Chi Srinivasaraju, were conceived of, and staged, during the years of the Emergency. As translator of his father’s plays, Sugata Srinivasaraju shows how these mime plays offered a protest and the “unseen and unheard silence” they witnessed itself emerged as a vital protagonist in the plays. These plays, translated in 2002, were particularly worth remembering in the aftermath of violence in Gujarat orchestrated by the BJP government.

Sugata Srinivasaraju leaves us with the thought that no language or country can afford to countenance separatist or egoistic tendencies; terms like parochialism and cosmopolitanism are outdated and have to be grappled with differently.

The Celebration called Life

Celebration of India, land and people.

Unsung; Anita Pratap and Mahesh Bhatt, Mahesh Bhatt Publishing, Price not mentioned.



Anita Pratap, the award winning journalist, and Mahesh Bhatt, photographer of international repute, teamed up to produce this elegant book focusing attention on 10 people who dedicated themselves to improving different dimensions of lives of people around them.

There are a number of common factors that bind these unknown heroes. They are all from humble origins and are apolitical and all self-motivated. In their lives they act out their own vision quest. And they go through life unhonoured and unsung, like the gems and flowers in Thomas Grey’s poem.

The authors pay their affecting acknowledgment to each one of them; “This book is tribute to the ordinary Indian citizens who have dedicated themselves to improving the lives of people around them. Their inner resources compensate for the lake of financial resources. They operate in the shadows, away from the glare and glitz of fame and fortune, to quietly fulfil their mission.”

Each chapter opens with a short note that contextualises with precision the work of the person written about.

Very readable

Anita Pratap’s stories around each person are very readable and dense. Sample this: “Some people are born with a mission. Others discover it along the way. A few develop it just about when others of their age are ready to retreat into seclusion, to spend their remaining days in contemplation and introspection, doing the little things of life that they were too busy to do earlier. Prof. Hasnath Mansur’s life demonstrates it is never too late to contribute to society.”

This is basically a book of photographs and the text supports the exquisite images. Bhatt captures, in black and white, the innocence of school children and the timeless beauty of the deciduous forest. His shots of the stark Ladakh landscape remind the viewer of works of Ansal Adams and Edward Weston.

Bhatt’s photography avoids gimmickry. The raw, candid images of Muslim women in Bangalore and the school children in Orissa record the spirit of our times. His images inspire and have the power of changing the common thinking of people

Dissonant notes

However, among his outstanding portraits of people, I found the low angle shot of Chinnappa striking a dissonant note. The legends for the photographs have been thoughtfully provided. But it is a misnomer to refer to the Gaur of Indian forests as bison. Gaur is, in fact, a wild ox and not a buffalo like the bison.

A few corporate institutions including Wipro, Infosys and Canara bank have supported this venture and evidently the money has been well utilised.

Book designing receives scant attention from publishers in India. Philip D’Souza has designed this book with such painstaking care that the form complements the content of the book.

Close attention has been paid to every aspect of the book…the lay out of photographs and the choice of fonts. It is a joy to hold this book in your hands and turn the pages.

The book is a celebration of India, people and the land.. It is an inspiring effort and demonstrates what can be achieved by photography.

Another Reformation

A work that celebrates the life of the multi-faceted Sir Syed Ahmad Khan.

Sir Syed Ahmad Khan: Vision And Mission; Edited by Shahabuddin Iraqi, Manohar,Rs.750.



Islam is all about ‘Ilm’, knowledge; not just of religion but the science of the times, as Prof Mushirul Hasan points out in the keynote address. In fact, the word ‘Quran’ itself is derived from qara’a which means to read. The Quran then is a collection to be read.

Many centuries before scientists came to terms with it, the Holy Quran had talked of scientific processes of the universe, the dawn of the day, the setting of the sun, even that the earth revolves around the sun. Unfortunately, in the 19th and 20th centuries, Muslims neglected this harmony between faith and reason. For instance, much before Keppler, the Quran stated, “And it is He Who created the night and the day, and the sun and the moon: All (the heavenly bodies) go along, each in its rounded path.”

Free enquiry

As obscurantism ruled, they slipped into the cesspool of learning by rote rather than enquiry, and everything was interpreted in a manner convenient to a patriarchal society. Until there came Sir Syed who sought to inculcate a spirit of scientific temper and free enquiry across the barriers of gender.

Widely given credit for founding the Mohammedan Anglo Oriental College, later to be Aligarh Muslim University, in 1875, Sir Syed was a master of many-layered approach and pluralism of thought. This book here is a compilation of 14 papers presented at an international seminar on the legendary socio-educational reformer, who saw no conflict between science and religion.

If on one side, Sir Syed Ahmad came up with a three-volume commentary on the Old and the New Testament, as pointed out by Gulfishan Khan, and Tafsir al-Quran, a seven-volume Urdu translation of the holy book till Surah 20, he was also largely responsible for pointing out the decline of our heritage monuments in Asarus Sanadid. Incidentally, this volume opens with S.M. Azizuddin Husain’s review of the book that Sir Syed first wrote in 1846, then revised seven years later. More than 150 years later, the same monuments in Delhi continue to be pillaged and plundered with impunity.

If Husain talks of Sir Syed’s contribution to history and Khan to religion, Shafey Kidwai, an academic of no mean scholarly accomplishments, throws light on Sir Syed’s lesser known forays into journalism. And along the way rubbishes some easy stereotypes with his lucid remarks and easy wit. A skilled practitioner of juxtaposition of parallel thoughts, Kidwai comes up with a few eye-openers. In the chapter on Sir Syed’s early journalistic endeavours, he points out that Syed Mohammad Khan, elder brother of Sir Syed, launched a weekly, Sayyidul Akhbar in 1837. It was “erroneously described by Margarita Barns as the first newspaper in Urdu”. Similarly, it is pointed out that the name of the paper had little to do with Sir Syed directly but all to do with his lineage.

It is here that Kidwai deserves more credit. Rather than slip into eulogy, he points out that Sayyidul Akhbar, rather than being a forum of a free discourse, was “regarded as the organ of the Sunnis, as sometimes the writings…were partial and bordered on polemics”.

Another notable and profound chapter comes from Tabir Kalam who points out the width of Sir Syed’s vision by reproducing his welcome address at the Indian Association of Lahore session. However, the book is not an uncritical appreciation. The keynote address gently reminds us that Sir Syed preferred almost everything Western. Nazir Ahmad, no mean institution himself, said rather satirically, “There is no dress in the world superior to the body’s nakedness. That is a dress which has no inside out.”

Minor quibbles

Then there is a blip in Khan’s essay. Khan calls Prophet Mohammed the founder of Islam, which is erroneous, considering Islam makes it an article of faith to believe in all the earlier prophets, starting with the first man on earth, Adam. Mohammed was the last of the prophets of Islam. Similarly, there are avoidable editing errors. Some of the essays could have been better edited, and mistakes of grammar easily removed with more careful scrutiny.

But these are small blemishes in what is otherwise a praiseworthy work. It tells us that there was more to Sir Syed than merely the college he founded. And he deserves greater attention than an annual recalling of his contribution on his birthday every October, as AMU, so religiously does.

The Name is Personal

Avoid this one like the plague.

Chasing Harry Winston; Lauren Weisberger, Harper, Rs 195



There is no nice way of saying this. The book to borrow words from its own pages, is “deadly boring”, “irritatingly verbose” and a complete no-brainer. The only bright spot is the cover that has a parrot-green high-heeled shoe with a diamond ring. Chasing Harry Winston is a painful enterprise. Lauren Weisberger should have stopped when she became famous thanks to her earlier The Devil Wears Prada. Even there the fame is almost entirely Meryl Streep’s.

Cutting to the chase, this story is about “Three best friends. Two resolutions. One year to pull it off”. So says the synopsis. Emmy, Adriana and Leigh want to change their lives. Emmy vows to find a man on every continent for some no-strings fun, Adriana wants to hook herself a man who will put a five-carat diamond on her finger and Leigh remains undecided about what her resolution is. The men are all either “Impishly cute”, “delectable”,” muscled”, or “casually rumpled” and sometimes “utterly scrumptious”. When it is not men it is a pet parrot. Three whole tedious pages are devoted to the makeover of a pet parrot called Otis.

Obviously, whoever has marketed the book has had to use a lot of tricks. On the cover page, right on top, in big bold letters is “The Devil Wears Prada”. You almost miss the much smaller line that reads, “From the best selling author of”. The name of this book figures on the side, almost like an afterthought. Even the dubious words of praise on the back and the inside pages from journals like Company and Heat, are not for this one , but for …Prada.

A final word. The print is painfully small. You could well go blind before you finish the book; that is if you have not already died of boredom.

Dark Matters

A quick look at the Capital’s hoary past

Capital Vignettes; R.V. Smith, Rupa, Rs. 295.



Actually, writing about Delhi is no easy task. The city has been written about over and over again: paeans, dirges, historical recounts, sneak peeks into political shenanigans. Most of these accounts are eminently readable, even if some do tend to be superficial piffle. This reader is flummoxed at which category R.V. Smith’s stories of Delhi fall into.

Compilation of facts

A compilation of newspaper articles, Smith’s Delhi is the history-soaked city of old. Basically, it reads more as a compilation of interesting facts than atmosphere-soaked montages. Smith traces the tragic propensity of the Qutab Colonnade, linking it to present times with the killing of Jessica Lal. He tells us of the less-than-posh Patparganj’s battle-torn past, the pastoral origins of Dwarka, how Babur and Akbar were wont to come down to the banks of the Jamuna to sleep in their boats on hot nights. The piece on Old Ink Street and the story titled “Door to a Different High”, which tells of an opium house down an inconspicuous street in, of all places, Karol Bagh, are redeemers of this otherwise indifferent set of Delhi stories.

Editorial slips

Some sentences are awkwardly framed (including the liberal use of the word “negro”) and the odd typo does not help matters. Tony (no last name provided) has supplied some sketches, which unfortunately, add nothing. The reader is left with a nagging feeling that in the hands of a more adept wordsmith, backed by a competent editor, these tales would have truly come alive.

This slim volume doesn’t educate, much. It doesn’t entertain, much, either. Maybe it was just something the author needed to get out of his system?

A Word from the Third-World

A collection that will age gracefully

Third Word: Post-Socialist Poetry, edited by Lana Derkac and Thachom Poyil Rajeevan, Monsoon Editions, Rs. 200.



Third Word is a collection of “post-socialist” poetry from Albania, Slovenia, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Ukraine and Croatia, edited by Lana Derkac and Thacham Poyil Rajeevan, in an attractive volume by Monsoon Editions. But, as Raje evan warns, don’t expect an “academic chronology of post-socialist poetry”; this is quite an informal collection, which appears to have benefited from not being constricted by a too severe theming or timelining.

In his introduction (not without typos), Rajeevan describes these poems as “straightforward, unambiguous, with moorings in culture and society” and as voicing the political and historical dilemmas that the poets have lived with. Through the volume you can see that, in the rich images and connections the poets make between language, resistance and the forging of tools for a new world in the foundries of the word.

It’s impossible not to be stirred when one poet after another speaks of loss of language and meaning, of memory and home and by the way they teach themselves to use words, grammar, speech, the visual language of dream and nightmare to map a land as yet unformed, to measure and know a land where language must be seeded anew. You can’t but feel the life; the urge of the word, especially potent in the hands of poets determined to renew speech and language.

Almost every other poem in this collection has images of nature, of trees, of moss and wet, of forest, mists and wind and almost all are quick to transmit to the reader in equal portions both a sense of loss as well as of what else there is left in this world.

There are far too many poets and poems to make any kind of sensible analysis within this review, but my favourites were Primoz Cucnik, Iztok Osojnik, Xhevahir Spahiu, Tone Skrjanec, and actually many more! But the poems of Delimir Resicki were very disappointing. Except for one brilliant image: “Europe has a new nightgown”. Third Word, even with the errors that are far too many to leave without mention, is definitely a collection that will age gracefully!