Felt Like Writing in Hindi

अर्थ, काम, देह सब नश्वर है|
रूह को छूने वाला ही इश्वर है||
वो अतुल है, पावन है, वो पृथक है|
उसका मर्म, उसका ही जीवन सार्थक है||

पृथ्वी और अम्बर का अजब नाता है|
रूह की गहरायी शायद दर्शाता है||
आत्म का अस्तित्व तू ही है|
खुशी, चंचलता, हर्ष रूही है||

तेरा हर लफ्ज़ ज़िन्दगी के नए मायने सिखाता है|
करुणामयी पलकों को जैसे प्रेम से सहलाता है||
सरलता, सुमति, सौंदर्य का तू संगम है|
माया से मुक्त, तू ही खुशी, तू ही ग़म है||

The Flipside of Reincarnation!

From Terry Pratchett's 'Mort', fourth book in the Discworld Series:

'Yes, but, you see, I have what you might call a season ticket,' the abbot explained.

Light dawned on Mort, but very slowly.

'Oh,' he said, 'I've read about this. Reincarnation, yes?'

That's the word. Fifty-three times so far. Or fifty-four.'

Binky looked up as they approached and gave a short neigh of recognition when the abbot
patted his nose. Mort mounted up and helped the abbot up behind him.

'It must be very interesting,' he said, as Binky climbed away from the temple. On the absolute
scale of small talk this comment must rate minus quite a lot, but Mort couldn't think of anything
better.

'No, it mustn't,' said the abbot. 'You think it must be because you believe I can remember all my
lives, but of course I can't. Not while I'm alive, anyway.'

'I hadn't thought of that,' Mort conceded.

'Imagine toilet training fifty times.'

'Nothing to look back on, I imagine,' said Mort.

Keeping The Flame Alive

"You know, it's like the difference between a sonnet and blank verse. Marriage gives my life structure, and this way it's always two people on my side."

It's an interesting take on marriage, reproduced from here on Meenkashi Reddy Madhavan's blog. The words belong to Shakti Bhatt, an editor who worked at Random House India, Brackett Books and more, and died suddenly on 31st March 2007, an untimely death at 27, a shock to all her friends and acquaintances alike.

I came to know of her just today because the inaugural Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize shortlist for debut novels is out. A blog created and run remembrance has continued since her demise, and though sporadically now, it is still active. In the aftermath of the tragedy, the blog, and her dreams, witness a contribution, directly or indirectly, from a major part of the publishing industry and it is heartening to see that. I didn't know her then, I was just getting to know the publishing world in early 2007, but I might have met her briefly had luck wanted it, but I didn't know of her existence till today.

Yet, what's important and what's comforting is that friends remember and acknowledge her, that a project (the First Book prize) that was conceived has seen the light of day and that the passion, the vigour has not diminished with the passage of time.

I will not go into what a great person she was, for one, because I knew her not, and secondly because the others have done a much better job of it on this blog. Go read.

Paulo da Costa: Magic Realism and Metafiction

I was reading a short story 'Turn The Page' by Paulo da Costa (Luso-Canadian author) and it really struck me as something brilliant, the idea at least. I've come across metafictional works before but this seemed different (rest assured, it isn't a marketing pitch for a Bollywood movie). The story itself is a part of a collection 'New Writing 14' published by British Council in association with Granta, so I'm not sure if you'll be able to find it elsewhere, but the idea is as follows:

The book starts with two characters who have been abandoned by the writer. They have to look for their own destinies, figure out their role in the scheme of things. They sleep at night and when the male character gets up, he realizes that the female character has been 'deleted' from the script. He wonders how it would have been in the pre-computer era when they would either be together because there wasn't an option, or simply be torn apart. Today, through cut-copy-paste mechanisms, their characters, their lives could be modified. He moves out of the 'white room with paper-thin walls' and is thrown in the 'real world' where his quest for an identity begins. He constantly wonders if his author has abandoned him for good, or if his story has been told earlier and he is just following the script, or if this exploration, this abandonment is his story, so he really hasn't been abandoned (sorry for using 'abandon' so many times, I just can't seem to abandon it! :P). Beyond that it gets into the usual realm of the meaning of his life, his purpose in this world, etc. etc. as he takes a more material shape from a nebulous, rather ephemeral existence and ultimately ends with him being slashed by red lines by the editor.

I fell in love with the idea of a character and/or characters being abandoned (again!) by the author and them trying to figure out their own lives. Would make for an interesting writing exercise, if nothing else. I realized that towards the end, the story had a more philosophical bent, but I missed that meaning, and would have to go back to again a few times to understand that. If I do, I'll share it with you.

I found an interview of da Costa here. Do visit the link. He talks about magic realism and how he has been compared to Allende, Marquez and the like. Also, his take on writing, the life of a writer, primarily after a million Creative Writing programs have cropped up in the past decade and how it has become even more difficult to break into mainstream publishing as they all flock to these programs (Creative Writing MFAs, but for Columbia and Iowa, have seen rather low publishing success, and even there it's more related to 'contacts' rather than creative brilliance - that's basically his point - it's forming a nexus that excludes more than it includes, and gives primacy to a certain sort of brilliance, often referred to as MFA Fiction as opposed to literary fiction or just fiction).

Maybe we could have our own Writing competition on this theme (of abandonment of a character by his/her/its progenitor) right here!

Fabricated Societal Needs

In yet another short story, titled 'My Mother Lived on a Farm in Africa' by Abdulrazak Gurnah, there appears the following two sentences:

In the day, she was expected to stay close to Aunt Amina, and wait for chores to be given to her. She understood it was really to keep an eye on her because she was fourteen and a girl.

It got me thinking, as usual. I've always been vaguely disturbed by the idea of keeping girls 'safe', forbidding them from going out late at night because they might end up being raped or molested, and generally being asked time and again to 'be careful'. Yes, the continued threat of something happening is disturbing, so is the mankind at large for propagating such fears, but what has disturbed me the most all through, with respect to this and any other similar situations, is that the girls are being asked to sit at home (or need to be watched, or carry device some sort of a defense mechanism or various other acts of safety that ones sees or hears about) because someone else might harm them. My issue has always been that why should they suffer for the actions of someone else.

I've always been told that yes, it sucks, but there isn't a way out. It's a necessary evil and precautions must be taken since there's no other way out. That argument would shut me up for the time being because it seemed to make sense, but it still rankled and left me unsatisfied. Reading that line got me started on the issue again, and suddenly I saw a solution, simple, obvious and crystal clear. I don't understand why such an obvious answer had eluded me (or the population in general) till now. It's infeasible but it's just.

If we realize that girls aren't safe in the vicinity of boys in certain places or at certain times, and their presence must be compartmentalized, so be it. But, if the concern is the girls' safety after all because of the untamed carnal instincts of the male population, why restrain girls from going out at night or to places that are unsafe. It should be guys who should be asked to stay at home because if they go out late at night, the world would become unsafe. In this world, the girls would roam free and live without care, stay at home or go out, as they wish and as their needs demand. Since it is the guys who propagate this dystopian outlook, they should be the ones suffering, not the ones they target.

Yes, it needs a radical change in societal needs and outlook for this to happen but isn't it fairer to all? Does it not serve the purpose as well?

It isn't? It's not!

Roy Robin's short story 'The Caretaker' ends with the following sentence:

'It isn't the responsibility,' my mother said. 'I mean it is, but it isn't just that.'

Good story, nice ending, but that isn't why I'm writing this post. After I finished reading it, I was replaying the last sentence in my mind over and over again, and I realized I would have never written it isn't just that. I'd have, instead, gone with it's not just that. Both are valid contractions, but I never thought such differences could exist.

I don't know why this is so, if it's just a personal thing, or has it got anything to do with 'Indian English' as compared to 'British English'. Thought it was an interesting observation nonetheless.

Linguists. Others. Any opinions?

Games People Play

From the story "Independence" by Romesh Gunesekera in the collection New Writing 14, published by the British Council in association with Granta:

[T]hey were giggling over one of Nara's stories about snorting on the beach. 'I thought the Italians wanted to go snorkeling, so I took them down the south coast. How the hell was I to know...'

From Wordsworth's 'Lines Written in Early Spring'

To her fair works did nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.

Mistaken Identity / Star Power

If you are having a phone conversation and the person at the other end of the line says, "I was talking to Salman a few days ago and he has no plans of coming to India anytime this year," would you ever think that the person being referred to is Salman Rushdie, even if the conversation was in the context of a literary festival? Since when did Rushdie become Salman?

The Key to Friendship

From the story Artists and Models in the collection 'Delta of Venus' by Anais Nin:

'... Someone told me the delightful story of a crusader who had put a chastity belt on his wife and left the key in care of his best friend in case of his death. He had barely ridden away a few miles when he saw his friend riding furiously after him, calling out, "You gave me the wrong key!"...'

Gagging Rushdie

On the occasion of Midnight's Children winning the booker of Bookers, BBC has come up with this competition where the entire 672 page saga has to be retold in 67 words - yes, 67 words. Rushdie does have a way with words and language is his forte, but he also tends to overdo it at times. Can you cut out the gibberish and tell us the story of Salim Sinai in 67 meaningful words?

I'm thinking of Amiya right now. She has both the inclination and the talent to do it, and it helps that this book is one of her all time favourites. Go, girl!

The others may try too, of course.

Bound by Boundaries

Over the past couple of years, I've come across the phrase 'blurring of boundaries' a hundred times, with respect to literature (merging of genres, less high brow attitude to high vs low lit, acceptance of literature from various countries and cultures into the literary canon, etc.), films (lesser distinction between art and commercial cinema with the advent of multiplex culture, intertwined genres again, diaspora movies attempting to 'bridge' the gap between the East and the West), nations (globalization, the European Union, internet) etc.

The same is now being said about the sexual preferences of Indians - the LGBT pride parade being heralded as an example of how India, or at least Delhi, Bangalore and Calcutta are 'ready' for a change and are more understanding and accommodating of people with different orientations. The boundaries between the two extremes - male and female - being blurred by transgenders, hijras, et al. Such an open outlook may exist, or may not exist at the moment.

Yet, the boundaries still exist. And some are very difficult to erase. Relationships for example, and their nomenclature. We are so used to fitting every relation neatly into a category under a specific name. When a name does not exist, or multiple options present themselves, it creates problems. To quote from innumerable Hindi movies, what was the relationship between Lord Krishna and Radha. If we keep aside moral issues for a while, for the sake of hypothesis, if a father begets a daughter from his daughter, what relation gets primacy? Is father or grandfather more acceptable. Is mother or sister more prominent a link? How about the man's wife? What relation does she have with the newborn. This is a relatively simple and straightforward example. There exist a million such cases all around us (including the famous Khushwant Singh joke). As long we stick to the boundaries of definitions etched out long, long ago, we will run into problems - increasingly so as the society propels forward at breakneck speed.

Literally Confused!

I used to be pretty clear on the subject, but I've been confused for the past few days. Can anyone clarify for me the exact difference between pathetic fallacy and personification as literary devices?

And since we are at it, what exactly is a bathetic fall?

High on Haiku

Some attempts by yours truly. My motto is:

We shall invent new forms of pain, and then find ways of inflicting them upon the world.

1.
Dark, damp, humid night;
A drop trickles down the neck.
Red! Equality!

2.
House on fire, flames leap,
Smouldering, scorching, savage.
Intertwined bodies.

The word haiku reminds me of the 90s song 'Hai huku hai huku hai hai...'. :D Makes me want to write a haiku using that.

Can you get any more pathetic than this? Try in the comments section.

From Alfred Tennyson's 'Maud'

There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate.
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
She is coming, my life, my fate;
The red rose cries, 'She is near, she is near;'
And the white rose weeps, 'She is late;'
The larkspur listens, 'I hear, I hear;'
And the lily whispers, 'I wait.


SO cute! :)

Poetic justice? Or pros(e)aic justice?

From Samit Basu's blog:

"...not even the worst excesses of Bollywood SFF filmmaking could match Lollywood's International Gorillay, the climax of which features arch-fiend Salman Rushdie being laser-skewered by four lightning-emitting flying Korans..."

Masti

I was going through a collection of essays, "Because I Have a Voice - Queer Politics in India" edited by Arvind Narrain and Gautam Bhan, and published by Yoda Press, and in the introduction to the book, the editors were discussing the scope of the word 'queer' - of relationships and sexualities that extend beyond those encompassed by the words gay, lesbian, bisexuals, transgenders, hijras, kothis etc. and at one point they said "Where do we draw the line between intimate friendships and queer relationships? How do we understand a concept such as masti - a term that refers to the sanctioned space for sexual activity between men - in our framework of sexual desire?"

I always knew that the word masti had sexual connotations but I had always presumed it to be a heterosexual one. I always find it interesting to see how words change meaning or grow to an umbrella term that comes to tolerate a lot more in meaning than just male homosexual activity, or simply sexual activity for that matter. I tried to google the word in a million combinations to find some references or the original meaning but the internet is cluttered with Bollywood and masti phrases clubbed together. Very annoying. Couldn't find a single relevant site.

An Ego Booster

Some ten months ago, I had done a book review of the six book Ramayana series written by Ashok Banker in a Harry-Potter-meets-Lord-of-the-Rings Science Fiction-Fanstasy genre for our campus newsletter, Vox Populi. The same, I had put up on my earlier blog here. Today, while browsing through Banker's website, I saw that a couple of days earlier, he acknowledged my review on his website and has reproduced it in full over there (without informing me, though. Edit: The review has been removed by him, probably after reading this post.). It might have been a little polite to drop me a comment on the blog, or an email, but even so, it made me happy. I really like that guy's writing and it's an honour for me that he liked the review (I presume he did, or else he wouldn't have posted it on his website).

Thinking of that, and rereading my review reminded me today that although I wasn't happy with his portrayal of Sita in the book in the sense that he is unable to create the character of a paragon of purity and chastity as we know Sita, but he did something really important. I realized that he created a woman of action. From the introductory scene onwards, Sita is shown to be a warrior princess, whose swordsmanship rivals the best in the business. She's fearless, witty, decisive in her actions, fleet-footed and nimble-minded, very different from the image of Sita that has been given to us over and over again, without compromising on her ideals. I liked that. I really liked that.

This thought led me to another one, that of the Taj Mahal. We have been brought up being told that it was built by Shah Jahan in the memory of Mumtaz Mahal to immortalize her. If so, why did he name it the Taj Mahal. Does it symbolize his eternal love for Mumtaz or his eternal love for Mumtaz. All it has done is put him in the history books and rendered him immortal. I, somehow, have always been uncomfortable and unsatisfied with the origin of the Taj Mahal and the explanations that have been provided to me thereof. On the contrary, I find a valid reason for Rama relinquishing Sita after he heard the washerman's comments. Banker is quiet on the issue. He said that he couldn't relate Rama's character to this incident (or something to that effect). I can. If Rama had kept Sita with him even after a seed of distrust had taken roots in the mind of his subjects, as the rumours grew, he would have become the bigger person, one who accepted Sita unconditionally, with her follies. Sita's purity would have been a matter of constant scrutiny with Rama rising above all debate. By sending Sita to the forest, Rama diverted the public's sympathy towards Sita, took all the blame upon himself, making sure that all the accusations ever made in the ages to come (which they continue to be till today), were hurled upon him and not his wife. He made Sita into a revered goddess while he himself stepped down the pedestal. This is not a religious interpretation of the story, it is an attempted literary analysis where the coherency of a character is maintained.

I once attended a talk by the famous Hindi author, Narendra Kohli who has written another six book series on the Ramayana (sadly I haven't read those as yet) and he spoke on a similar issue. We all know that Lord Krishna had 16000 wives, and he has been a subject to constant ridicule (and envy) for his flirtatious nature and the excess of his paramours. What Kohli revealed was that not many know the story behind the secret to his 16000 wives (apart from Rukmini). These were all women who were captured by the asuras, raped and kept in captivity. Krishna went on a mission and rescued all of them. Being 'impure', these women were shunned by the society and no one accepted them in marriage. With no other alternative, they turned to their rescuer, Krishna, some with plea in their eyes, others with accusations. It was then that he decided to marry all of them to validate their place in the society and grant them the respect that they deserved. Yet, a sin had been committed with each one of them and that had to be paid for. By marrying them and liberating them from their misery, Krishna took the responsibility of those 16000 sins upon himself, and that is what he pays for till date by being ridicules by the common man unable to comprehend the immensity of his action.

It doesn't matter if it conforms with the actual epic or not, or if it comes under the purview of people's religious beliefs, but it is a valid interpretation and an interesting take on the whole issue. These two incidents always remind me not to judge in haste, and not to judge with incomplete information. There are always more reasons, more thoughts, more leading circumstances to any action or event than we can ever find out. That jigsaw will never be complete.

Creativity

There's a Ghazal by Jeet Thayil that I'm reproducing here. It's one of my favorite pieces of poetry, mainly because of the flow. It's such a pleasure reading this one aloud.

Listen! Someone’s saying a prayer in Malayalam.
He says there’s no word for ‘despair’ in Malayalam.

Sometimes at daybreak you sing a Gujarati garba.
At night you open your hair in Malayalam….

…Visitors are welcome in The School of Lost Tongues.
Someone’s endowed a high chair in Malayalam.

I greet you my ancestors, O scholars and linguists.
My father who recites Baudelaire in Malayalam.

Jeet, such drama with the scraps that you know.
Write a couplet, if you dare, in Malayalam.

Here's a link to a page with two short stories of Angela Carter. Both of them are rewrites of the 'Little Red Riding Hood'. I had read the first one a couple of years ago. While looking for it today, I came across the second rewrite, which is a little longer. Haven't yet read it but I can bet it's going to be as good and innovative as the first one.


If anyone's interested in a review of the linguistics in Amitava Ghosh's new book 'Sea of Poppies' by Jai Arjun Singh, it can be found here. Click here for Ghosh's full-length interview with Singh.

Bookslaps

As a second exercise in the Creative Writing course, we had to come up with the names of our top 10 books (thank god it wasn't coming up with good titles). I’ve tried to compile a list of the books that have made some sort of a lasting impression on me, but the problem is I cannot recall the names of so many books that I have read. It might have been easier if we were to make a list of top 10 books in each genre. There are loads of others books that I have immensely enjoyed but they’re not the top 10. My list is displayed in the panel on the right hand side. To this list, I must add two plays – Betrayal and The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter, and three short stories – Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway, The Dead by James Joyce and The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol.

These pieces of literature would constitute the best I’ve read, or at least the ones that I’ll remember for a long time, with the disclaimer that some of the works might have been left out simply because I couldn’t recall them.

Mat gave his own list of top 10 books. These were:

• The Hobbit – J R R Tolkien
• Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S Thompson
• The House at Pooh Corner – A A Milne
• Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
• The Cider House Rules – John Irving
• Flashman – George Macdonald Fraser
• The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho
• Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
• The Sandman – Neil Gaiman
• The Jungle Book – Rudyard Kipling

What are your top 5 books? Looking forward to interesting and unusual titles. See, this is how I make my reading lists. :)