happenstance

Two Poems in Pyrta

2011-12-21T11:34:00.000+05:30

In the winter issue of pyrta, one of the finest journals of poetry in India, are two poems by me and lots of poems by lots of other absolutely wonderful writers.

The poems are below.

Clean-Up

Shall we talk of spaces?
If I leave, will you notice
That there is more space in this world?
I want your memory of me
To fill you up and empty you.
When you cry, I want you to wonder
If the tears are mine or yours
(They will be mine).

I want you to keep every trace I left behind –
The coughed-up phlegm, the clipped toenail ends,
The peeled gas stove skin.
I want to be couched in your love-songs
Like tacky metaphors.
I want you to stare out of train windows
Agonising over women who look like me,
Mapping the shape of my mouth on the fogged glass,
Mourning the moles and crevices on my body,
Missing them more than you miss me.

Sometimes, I worry
That if my chest were to split open
And blood to squirt out of my marrow,
You would simply wash the cushions
With your dirty laundry.
I want to be more than a stubborn stain
That your drycleaner will soak in alcohol.

When my eyeballs are crystallised for the blind,
I fear that you will not recognise them
In the sockets of the men you meet.
You will make a stranger out of me yet.

Will you pick out pieces of my flesh from a wreckage
Without gloves on your hands
And not santise your hands afterward?
Will you taste my ashes after I am cremated
And remember the caffeine-and-rum taste of my tongue?
Will you catalogue the endless shapes
That the tea-leaves form in my teacup,
Divining my future?
No. I think you will open the dishwasher.

Forget cigarette stubs and tea leaves
And tempests in teapots.
Will you evaporate my sweat from the sofa?
Will you rinse away my spit from the sink?
Will you vacuum my fallen hairs from the carpet?
Will you deodorise my scent from our bed?

What will you do?
Will you sluice me out of your life
With your dishwashers and vacuum cleaners
And into the drainage system where dirty things go?

Or will you keep my picture
On the refrigerator?

Scarface

Watch the geometry of my anger:
This blank white canvas,
That chord that breaks into unseen tributaries,
These diagonals that stave off without edges.
There are no circles, squares and hexagons,
There are no closed figures.
Mathematically speaking, I am open, mutable,
I have a beginning and an end.
Topographically speaking, I am formless,
An unpaid custodian of an unknown legacy.
My face is a library of scars that seethe with stories,
Windy, sharp breath
That feels like thunderclaps of metal and memory.
This metal is fresh and cold and hard,
Devoid of rust, untouched by fire.

I want these stories to cloud over your joys.
Never be happy.
Never smile.
Never dance in the rain.
Never feel joy without witnessing the oasis of my sorrows.
Let my tragedies annul your desires.
Be kidnapped by hate, seduced by revenge.
Don’t have children.
Don’t bring them into this world.
Instead, produce an anger like mine
And incubate it for years.
Never rip its umbilical cord.
Let it glide across your anatomy
And poison your dreams.

These words are not poems,
They are daggers in the shapes of commas and full-stops.
Don’t call me victim. I hate that word.
Don’t pity me until you have suffered like me.
I’d rather languish in impermanence
Than be remembered for this.

There are a thousand ways
In which I can be free,
But I have mixed ketchup with freedom
(And when I say ketchup, I mean blood)
And the sauce of that mix
Gives me more solace than forgiveness.

I am not so broken that I cannot be fixed,
I can be sold in a second-hand shop
At half price.
But I’d rather dance on skulls
And find a scale of measurement for pain.

I too long to be anchored in sweetness
And encircled by that thing that you call love.
But I am not one for circles
(And I hate squares).
How do I forget
The stories of my scars?

(c) Manasi Subramaniam

Our Lady of Alice Bhatti

2011-12-06T10:13:00.003+05:30

This review first appeared in The Asian Review of Books.

Mohammed Hanif’s clever, fast-paced and relentlessly sarcastic second book deserves to be judged purely on its own merit. But it never will be. A book like A Case of Exploding Mangoes is a hard act to follow, and Our Lady of Alice Bhatti cannot help but suffer the injustice of unwelcome comparison, thanks to the expectations that inevitably accompany such a sparkling debut, and it cannot help paling in that comparison.

Alice Bhatti is a story of miracles—miraculous loves, miraculous births and miraculous deaths—largely set in the Sacred Heart Hospital for All Ailments in Karachi, where the eponymous heroine returns, after a brief interlude in prison, to take up a position as Senior Nurse. Alice begins an unlikely love affair with Teddy Butt, a trigger-happy muscle-builder (“Junior Mr. Faisalabad”) who roams the halls of the hospital, but it is a relationship doomed from the start.

Hanif writes protagonists who are easy to fall in love with. Alice Bhatti, who is almost always referred to by her full name, is tough, weary and by no means an underdog—which, of course, is not to say that she is never the victim. She fights back compulsively: she bludgeons a malpractising surgeon who attempts to frame her for his carelessness, attacks overzealous Muslim classmates at nursing school who petition against “pornographic” anatomical charts and, in the book’s most harrowing and gratifying section, slashes the penis of her rapist with a razor that appears to be in her pockets for just such purposes. This streak of fearless righteousness is both brilliant and richly rewarding.

She conforms as much as she fights, though: "… she walks around little puddles when she can easily leap over them; she thinks any act that involves stretching her legs might send the wrong signal… She never eats in public. Putting something in your mouth is surely an invitation for someone to shove something horrible down your throat."

In sharp contrast, Teddy is an aspirant to the Gentleman’s Squad, an unlisted operation of the Karachi police force. He dislikes violence, but is frequently courted by trouble: one of the most powerful passages in the book is a description of a three-day riot accidentally set off by a frustrated, love-struck Teddy. He is frequently foolish, easily misled and in possession of a child-like charm that belies his thuggish exterior. His distaste for militancy is so strong that his role in the G Squad is largely that of a clean-up guy: “Basically, he only provides valet parking for the angels of death.”

The story is colourfully supported by such eccentric characters as Joseph Bhatti, Alice’s father who cleans drains and cures stomach ailments, Noor, Alice’s naive young friend from prison, and Sister Hina Alvi, the head nurse and Alice’s unexpected supporter. While he exists only in the framework of the main plot, it is Noor who is the most fully-realised of all the characters in this vivid, searing book. His relationships with Alice Bhatti, with Teddy Butt and especially with his blind dying mother Zainaba are all compellingly developed.

Several agendas are crammed almost forcefully into the telling of Alice Bhatti’s story—religion, caste, politics, sainthood and the state of the health-care industry—so much so that the book seems to be more about broadcasting this laundry list of problems than the plot. What stands out, though, is the gender discourse: Hanif’s caustic portrayal of a misogynistic society hits hard and cuts very deep.

He also dauntlessly engages with the resigned anger of the Catholic choohras of Pakistan: “Choohras were here before everything,” Joseph Bhatti tells his daughter, “Choohras were here before the Sacred was built, before Yassoo was resurrected, before Muslas came on their horses, even before Hindus decided they were too exalted to clean up their own shit. And when all of this is finished, Choohras will still be here.” To which Alice Bhatti’s response is sharp and telling: “Yes, when everything is finished, Choohras will still be here. And cockroaches too.”

The style is impertinent and pointedly profane, teeming insistently with metaphors that manage to be simultaneously unsentimental and evocative: “Teddy Butt can see all the way up between her legs where a few wiry hairs jut out of her white panties. He feels a mixture of disgust and desire, like a devout person who is hungry but can't decide whether the fare on offer is halal or not.” Still, the book doesn’t achieve the careless irreverence or comic brilliance that characterised A Case of Exploding Mangoes.

Nor does it have the fine cohesiveness that held Exploding Mangoes together. Several seemingly important plot lines are opened but never explored. We are told early in the book, for example, that Alice Bhatti can look at people and prophesy their deaths, but this skill of hers, if indeed it exists, is never again referred to. The result is chaotic and unreliable. Equally, the end feels rushed, and the concluding plot device contrived. It is a book that fully intends to end with a bang, yet only manages a whimper.

The Karachi that Hanif paints—peopled with memorable characters and telling exchanges—is the real takeaway from this unusual book.

As Though She Were Sleeping

2011-09-29T13:24:00.001+05:30

An edited version of this review appeared in The Asian Review of Books.

Postmodernist fiction tends to be suspicious of populist scholarship, seeking alternates in the unreliability of individual memory and collective conscience. The strength and, indeed, the fallibility of first-hand experience make us necessary curators of everyday history. As Though She Were Sleeping by Elias Khoury (translated from the Arabic by Humphrey Davies) is a work that seeks to make just such borderless transgressions.

The book stands on the precipices of magic realism and the stream of consciousness. It is divided into three sections that chronicle three nights in the life of its protagonist, Meelya. The three nights are spent in a hospital bed in Jaffa in December 1947, just before the birth of Meelya’s child, and each night deals with fragmented dreams and recollections that the reader must piece together. Meelya is born in Beirut and moves to Nazareth in 1946 when she marries Mansour, a Palestinian. The move from Nazareth to Jaffa, where charged political tensions between the European Jewish settlers and the dispossessed Palestinians have already resulted in the death of Mansour’s brother, sparks off a series of intensely mythic visions in Meelya’s sleep.

The book is non-linear and repetitive - a twice-edged sword. Stories are played out over and over again, encircling Meelya’s moments of slumber and wakefulness with sharp new recollections that texture her existing, often disjointed, memories. Through a process of constant reinvention and expansion, the stories shift and crystallise slowly, sometimes even displacing earlier versions of themselves. What emerges is a dense layering of complex detail. Each time Meelya harks back to an incident, additional information is revealed, knotted up in the unclear divisions between the real and the unreal. Pointedly ambiguous, the book lays its stories out on a hybrid plane that suffuses dream and reality on the one hand and past and present on the other.

The ambiguity endows the book with a vagueness that is best described by the author when Meelya tries to explain her dreams to Mansour: “She tried to tell him the story and it came out in no particular order, so he understood nothing… She’d skate from one word to another, or from one word to a series of images, and then be unable to recover the end of the string that they call the story’s beginning. Her string had no end; she told stories like someone winding string, and would keep going without being able to tie things one to another.”

Khoury’s often purposeless ramblings are, in fact, like many strings left hanging loosely in the air, as though the author just let himself go completely without controlling the flow of interior discourse. Often, it is control that is sorely lacking in the new proponents of the genre, when compared to their precursors (I’m thinking of Joyce, Garcia and Borges, two of whom, like Khoury, I have only read in translation).

Khoury’s text is heavy with religious imagery that lends further indistinctness to his characters. Where the book is problematic, though, is not in its intentional ambiguity, but in the simple aspect of readability. There are several chunks of long-winded text, especially in the second and third parts, that simply do not contribute to plot progression and are characterised by little more than the indulgence of laboured description. When the formless gives way to the structureless, literature begins to tread dangerous grounds and the decoding process can be disorienting and tedious.

Contemporary surrealism necessitates allegory and, in this case, political discourse. Meelya’s persistent stupor is both an escape and an affliction. She finds herself overwhelmingly affected by the tragedies of life within the Palestinian state and the formation of Israel (which coincides with the birth of her child). She becomes so dependent on her dream-world that she is unable to step back into reality at all. Ultimately, her escape needs to be a return to reality. Through her dreams, she investigates the past, foretells the future and often entirely misses the present, as though it is far easier for her to pilot herself in such a world than in her own. Indeed, that is what all fiction is about.

Sorry, But I'm Reading a Good Book

2011-09-08T12:58:00.000+05:30

In recent times, I have noticed in myself a habitual reluctance to admit that the reason I am preoccupied is often a very good book. Somehow, it feels like an unreasonable and even shoddy excuse, one that I should be apologetic about or, better yet, should shamefully mask with the pretense of more acceptable engagements. What is it about the things that we pursue solely for personal pleasure that makes us feel that they ought to be suspended easily, especially in favour of things that involve other people?

It is as though these deeply personal acts have been so greatly devalued that it becomes socially objectionable or even offensive to place a priority on them over people. But how is it possibly insulting when someone would, on one particular evening, rather spend time watching a great film, reading a great book or listening to great music than in great company? These are momentary preferences and not lifetime choices (in most cases). More importantly, the comparison is hardly distasteful.

This is, of course, not to say that one can survive solely on personally achieved intellectual stimulation or entertainment (because one can't). What happens, though, is that we sometimes find ourselves with books that we simply cannot put away and films that beg to be watched. Yet, “I’ll call you back, I’m reading a good book,” and “I can’t meet you for dinner tonight because I have plans to watch a great film on DVD,” are socially unacceptable. They come loaded with suggestions of uncommunicativeness and misanthropy, if not just plain rudeness. But we are made of sterner stuff, aren’t we? Surely we will not be rendered incapable of conversation and familiarity simply because we are sometimes comfortable without them.

In the admittedly valid argument that the great evils of the internet age have made its users reclusive and introverted, an equally relevant argument for independent self-fulfillment and personal space has somehow been entirely discounted.

Beautiful Thing

2011-08-16T10:58:00.000+05:30

An edited version of this review appeared in The Asian Review of Books.

Note: I received an "uncorrected proof copy" of the book intended for review purposes only. All quotations are from this copy and may have been altered in subsequent editions.

Through peepholes and conversations, Sonia Faleiro grants her reader a piercing insight into Bombay’s dance bars, particularly through one beautiful bar dancer called Leela. Beautiful Thing, a work of narrative non-fiction, is a portrait and a chronicle. The book is written in two parts -- one that covers January 2005, a time when dance bars in Bombay were prolific and lucrative, and one that covers September 2005, after the Maharashtra government’s abrupt decision, in a misguided attempt at ‘morality’, to shut down its dance bars, suddenly rendering around 75,000 women unemployed.

At the very start of the book, Faleiro deftly tosses her reader straight into what the book subtitles as "the secret world of Bombay’s dance bars" without introduction or initiation. It is a subculture that is brutal and glamourous in equal parts - and glamourous only because, frequented by gangsters, policemen and beautiful women and propelled by sex, alcohol and money, it is a scene so reminiscent of ‘item number’ sequences in Indian cinema.

By Faleiro’s account, the industry is simultaneously mercenary and excessive, generous both in reward and punishment. It is a sector that converts a service into a product, objectifying beauty and commodifying sex appeal. Circumscribed by multiple pay-offs, bribes and middlemen, the bar dancer, on whose skill the entire industry thrives, is ultimately only a small part of a composite hierarchical structure. Its nature is directly exploitative, but it is this commerce that allows a girl like Leela to find a profession outside sex work (and often make more money than in professions that are perceivably more ‘respectable’).

Early in the book, Faleiro delivers an incisive and brilliant portrayal of her relationship with Leela: "Leela wanted only to be heard. And the best way to accomplish that, she knew, was not to change the subject if the subject was her. So our often one-sided relationship may be characterized thus: I called Leela. She ‘missed-called’ me." But unmistakably, Sonia Faleiro is Leela’s friend. She comes to care for Leela, to respect her and to cherish their layered and unusual, if one-sided, relationship. And while that might make the author a biased storyteller, the reading experience is all the richer for it.

Leela is mired in several complex love-hate relationships - with her mother, Apsara, who is "fat" and "simple", with her best friend Priya, who is “bootiful”, with her lover and employer, Purushottam Shetty, and with her surrogate mother, a beguiling hijra named Masti Muskaan (formerly Krishna). But the people who really fill her days and nights are her "kustomers", the men who desire her and abuse her, who spoil her and cheat her, who chase her and discard her, all in the same breath.

For all her feisty pride and independence, Leela is desperately lonely and dreams of being married or going abroad. She is optimistic and cynical in turns, resigned to her "fate", but determined to make something of herself. She tells Sonia, "Every life has its benefits. I make money and money gives me something my mother never had. Azaadi. Freedom. And if I have to dance for men so I can have it, okay then, I will dance for men." Still, Leela considers herself a "barwali" (bar woman) more than a "dhandewali" (working woman).

In the second part, the book turns murkier. Unemployment, disease and sudden poverty render Leela and her former colleagues more vulnerable than ever before. The new law ruptures Leela’s financial independence and her spirit, but never her courage. Faleiro obligingly takes the book to an open end, giving us one last, unforgettable glimpse of Leela’s dance with hope and fate - her nakhra.

Through dance bars, red light districts, bacchanalian pilgrimages, hospital HIV wards and brothels, the book snakes through a Bombay that many have heard of, but few have seen. Faleiro lovingly records these moments with a wisdom endowed by immediacy and memory, unafraid to step into her story as a character, but also unwilling to become central to it. She is rather like that sensitive bartender one always hopes to run into. She listens sympathetically, reserves judgement and mixes that odd cocktail of subjectivity and objectivity.

Faleiro’s tone is remarkably confessional - about everything. Her propensity for detail is nicely complemented by her deeply personal style of storytelling. She has the skill of a novelist, the intimacy of a conversationalist and the scrutinising eye of a journalist. Most of all, she is unfailingly tender.

What proves to be irksome, though, is the jarring patois that she attempts to replicate in direct speech - "kustomer", "bootiful", "hensum", "bijniss", "wedge" (vegetarian - it took this reader a few moments to figure this one out!). The use of pidgin in an otherwise respectful book borders both on kitsch and mockery.

Aside from this, Faleiro manages to steer clear of tawdry sensationalism in this vivid book. It is disturbing, but never uneasy; dramatic, but never shocking. Since much of the world is seen through the author’s eyes, her sense of understanding and appreciation is somehow transferred to the reader; we may never fully be able to empathise with Leela, but this knowledge grants us momentary cognition. We are never allowed to transgress from viewer to voyeur, and this, perhaps, is Faleiro’s greatest accomplishment.

The Cloud Messenger

2011-07-01T11:25:00.000+05:30

A slightly edited version of this review appeared in The Asian Review of Books.

The Cloud Messenger by Aamer Hussein is one of those rare books whose cover -- an exquisite work of art, design and typography -- is as stunning as the pages within. It is far more telling than the blurb and, indeed, far more inviting. We are very much in the age of beautiful book design, but even in such an age where custom stales infinite variety, we must pause to gasp at the sheer brilliance of this book cover.

Then, there is the evocative title. We are as clouds – a generation plagued by indecision and restlessness, ever moving, never belonging; light, wispy and carelessly in transition. This gorgeous, precipitous cloudburst of a novel takes its name from a poem in Sanskrit by Kalidasa, Meghadootham (which literally translates to ‘the cloud messenger’). But where Kalidasa’s poem is about a longing for home and beloved, Hussein’s book is more of a search, a restless, feverish wanderer’s search, for these things.

The book begins by describing the childhood of Mehran, its protagonist, in Karachi and Indore in a series of fond recollections. Mehran’s erudite, artistic family fills his days with music and poetry. Perhaps as a direct consequence of this, later, in London, Mehran quits a potentially lucrative career in finance to study Urdu and Farsi – and to fall in love. The narrative progression into adulthood becomes more personal, charting relationships and journeys. His life crumbles in many ways and blooms in other ways and the tone grows profoundly melancholy, telling tales of tragedy wrought out of inertia and a deep sense of wistfulness, rather than catastrophe or heartbreak.

The book’s narrative twists between the third and the first person, making Mehran a narrator and a hero in alternate turns. In the third person, the author is a chronicler, recounting Mehran’s story with the matter-of-fact tone of conversational familiarity. But when he slips into the more confidential, less expansive first person, the words overflow with feeling and momentous sentiment. Just as intricately, the novel seems to flit from autobiography to fiction (the author candidly admits in his final note, that the novel is ‘the story of some of the paths (he) might have taken’), from one space in time to another, from the present tense to the past tense and even from one language to another.

Much like the poetry that Mehran gives himself to, Hussein’s writing is lyrical and graceful, snatching hungrily at all that is fine in the languages we speak; it is a delicate intermingling of many languages, many memories and many loves, allowing the loveliness of one to wash easily over another; it weaves poetry into a sequence of events that would be insufferably prosaic without the sympathetic sensuousness of the way they are told; but its brilliance is truest and most terrible in its description of places and the nomad’s agitated and rootless drifting from one to another.

Mehran is never as easily torn between people as places. He coasts from city to city – Karachi, Indore, London, Rome, Delhi – and wretchedly misses a place as soon as he leaves it. The narrator writes: ‘His life in that rainless place of his birth was filled with a longing for rainy places: but now that he lives in a city where it rains all year, he dreams of the desert and the sea, and the smell of warm raindrops on wet earth. He wants another, redder moon, longer days in winter, and in summer an early, flagrant sunset.’

The people who wrench his love are mirrored in these places. The mysterious, unattainable Riccarda, whom he loves violently, is defined by Rome (‘I remember Riccarda well, wandering around the streets of Rome in cotton trousers, her hair windblown, her lips and skin unpainted.’) and London (‘whenever Riccarda was in town, I discovered a city I had hardly charted, hidden within the London I thought I knew well.’) Equally, Marco, Mehran’s companion in wanderlust and sometime friend, is defined by their time in Delhi (‘Over the next few days (in Delhi) he took me to places and showed me things I wouldn’t have seen without him’). But the strongest, most volatile relationship is with the broken woman Marvi, a drifter as itinerant and rootless as Mehran himself. ‘I spend my life longing for the place I’m not in, but when I go back I never fit,’ she tells Mehran and he deeply echoes the sentiment.

Especially during the university years, the book is also a tender critical discourse on literature and all that it has come to mean to those of us who still cling, often desperately, to the eloquence of tongues that came before us. This is as much a mystic Sufi style retelling of a wanderer’s journey as a pastoral European style classicist’s romantic remembrances of lost loves. In yet another poignant parallel to the literature that Mehran reads, the author mingles the two to create a grammar of his own.

Mehran’s limited perspective never allows any of the other characters in the novel to ever fully develop or come into their own. What drives the novel forward is neither plot nor characterisation, but the skill of storytelling. This is a slow book, lacking urgency in dialogue and plot progression, and acutely invested in individual moments and peculiar details. Here again, it is like a journey through clouds – quiet, fleeting, interspersed with events that seem unrelated and memories that seem extravagant, and still only a passing fancy.

No review does as much justice to this book as its title – or its cover.

Changing, Changeling

2011-06-20T11:58:00.003+05:30

From the forthcoming publication ‘Be Inspired: Personal Accounts from Women Agents of Change’ produced by the Commonwealth Foundation, here is a note from me, a half-poem, if you will. It is called 'You Changed Me'. Read it here.

The publication contains pieces from four women. Do read the other three wonderful pieces as well. Anuradha Kumar writes about Shama Futehally, a writer of rare grace. Barbara Jenkins, in a profoundly moving note, writes about the woman who made her. Terri-Ann Green writes about a small story that turns out to be a big idea.

The Commonwealth theme for 2011 is 'Women as Agents of Change'.

Beijing Blues and Reds

2011-06-02T23:45:00.003+05:30

One week into our Chinese sojourn, we find ourselves in the city of Beijing, wandering through hopelessly enormous crowds. Up in the muggy sky, we only see smog, although occasionally a red flag will flutter into our line of vision. Down below, there are beardless young soldiers carrying artillery and marching up Tian'anmen Square without any particular intent. Ahead of us, the Forbidden City sprawls, its small gates hiding its almost inconceivable hugeness.

Everywhere, we are overwhelmed by the city's fullness. It is like a heavy-handed drink that will not let us forget how fiercely it consumes us, how easily it glides down our throats and yet how hotly it sits in the pits of our stomachs.

People come at us from everywhere. It is easy to lose sight of each other, to get lost among the crowds that pour out of the subway entrances in droves. Young art students approach us. Won't we walk down the road to take a look at an exhibit? Pretty young things tap our shoulders shyly. Won't we let them practise their English speaking skills on us? Dozens of touts shove brochures into our hands. Don't we want the best possible discount to go to the Great Wall? School kids gather around us. Won't we take photographs with them?

But no. We want none of these things. We have been told not to trust anyone, not even to talk to anyone. We look straight ahead and refuse to be drawn into conversation. Our foreignness is both our weakness and our strength.

The prodigious crowds are so fast-paced and charged that the city has an appearance of coldness. But in places like the Altar of Heaven, a vast Taoist temple, we are surprised by another side of the city. Groups of elderly citizens gather together to play Mahjong or Chinese Checkers. Young parents bring their children in prams and walk the gardens together. Couples take up cozy spots by the Ming ruins. And everywhere, even in the most crowded of spots, we see people of all ages standing together practising Qigong or Tai-Chi. It is as though time moves slowly in some places to make up for its speed elsewhere.

The wind exhausts us. We clutch our wind-breakers to our bodies as we walk around the Bird's Nest Stadium, an elegant but somewhat confusing structure that, to us, encapsulates perfectly the bizarre elegance and structured madness of this country. At the vast and labyrinthine Summer Palace, we are almost blown away by the ceaseless winds. The dust in the air finds its way into our hair and eyes and fingernails and, eventually, into our memories of the city.

It is also a self-congratulatory city. Its signboards throw out powerful adjectives that describe the wonders they represent. 'Beautiful Gate of Summer Palace', the sign boards inform us, or 'Extraordinary Pool of Autumnal Moonlight' or even 'Best Pagoda'. Just outside a rest area is a signboard that says 'Scenic Rest Spot'. It hurts us that they do not trust our judgement of beauty or our taste in rest areas. We plough on.

In the Forbidden City, each hall has a name that qualifies it. We enter through the Gate of Supreme Harmony into the Hall of Military Eminence. To our right is the Hall of Literary Glory. The Palace of Heavenly Purity and the Hall of Mental Cultivation are ahead of us. Further down is the Palace of Tranquil Longevity. These names and titles are imposing and amusing in equal parts.

We enter early in the morning and, through the six hours that we spend there, we get lost at least six times. Again and again, the grandeur and extravagance fills us with awe, and, after a while, we do not mind getting lost. In the evening, just as the sun begins to set, we end up at the Imperial Garden to exit through the Gate of Divine Might. Somehow, perhaps because of who we are and where we come from, we begin to understand the ostentation of these titles. It is all part of the country's aesthetic of drama and opulence. And it feels right.

But the next day, on the long drive up to Mutianyu, from where we will climb the Great Wall, we look out of our windows with apprehension. Will the wall be everything that we were told it would be? Or is 'great' just another one of the adjectives that this country is far too generous with? We are afraid of being disappointed, afraid too that we have become cynical.

And then, something magical happens. We go up the hill and stand at Fortress Number 6 of the Great Wall and suddenly, there, right in front of us and right behind us, the wall stretches... infinitely. We cannot see where it begins or ends, we cannot fathom its length, and we cannot even begin to to come to terms with its scope. Standing there, we no longer feel committed to a moment in time or space. Instead, we are pulled into a blinding series of possibilities. The moment, like the wall itself, is limitless. And it is breathtaking.

We begin an arduous trek along the wall, counting fortresses as we go along. Every step we take along the steep and precipitous edges of the wall echoes our amazement. We cannot stop feeling awed. And we do not want to. In some absurd way, this day defines us, it defines this journey that we have taken into China, all that we wanted from it and all that we didn't expect from it. Everything about this country is methodical; yet, at times like this, we find ourselves repeatedly surprised and delighted by the moments of flawed beauty that suddenly come upon us. It is imperfect and wonderful.

Our days in Beijing are tiring, filled with people and places in great volumes. In the nights, we make green tea, put our feet up and try to remember the things we did through the day, wondering why even though each day seems so long this trip feels so short.

And now, I think you should read this.

Because I Can't Help It

2011-03-09T13:56:00.003+05:30

Yesterday, someone said to me, 'Happy Women's Day. Do you believe in all that?' And of course, there really isn't anything to believe in or disbelieve in. Women's Day, whatever it signifies, certainly isn't a philosophy or a religion. And neither is feminism. These aren't ideologies that you make a voluntary choice to believe in or support. They are far simpler - they are about who you are and very little else.

The question about Women's Day (Is it patronising? Is it relevant) is far more portent. But asking me to believe in it or disbelieve in it is like asking me to believe or disbelieve in May Day.

I get mildly worked up when I speak to girls and women who shy away from the feminist movement, who decry it or talk about how it's 'overdone' or 'totally unnecessary'. For me, this is the equivalent of rubbishing patriotism. When countless people who have struggled and fought to get you to where you are and to give you the rights that you consider to be basic, you have a responsibility to the movement. The women's liberation movements of the world have made a lot of things possible, but they've only just begun - and the understanding of where we are, where we were and even where we want to be is incredibly important in the context, not of feminism, but of an everyday reality.

So don't say you're not a feminist. As long as you're a woman, you're certainly a feminist. As long as you want to be safe and feel safe, as long as you want to be treated respectfully and as long as you want your work to be judged objectively, you can't help being a feminist. As long as you want to feel comfortable and confident about who you are and as long as you want to be free of judgement, as long as portrayals of your sex upset or offend you, as long as you don't like the way you're looked at or touched, you can't help being a feminist.

And if you're a man who wants and feels these things, you're still a feminist and we love you for it.

In that regard, here are some things for you to read and watch and listen to - a crash course, if you will. I'm asking you very, very seriously to take the time to do this.

I'll start you off light with a video clip with Judi Dench and Daniel Craig reprising their roles as M and Agent 007 in a very sharp Women's Day message. Watch here.

The very wonderful Annie Zaidi writes about how women's lives have changed in India over generations and why that's important. Read here.

Dean Spade writes about, among other things, women, queerness and polyamoury. It's a long but very interesting and thought-provoking read. I recommend it highly. Read it here.

The Times of India published a depressing report on sexual violence and gender inequality in India. It will make you squirm. Read it here. Related to that, read a report from Time on much the same subject in South Africa here.

I'm pulling out a very old post from the incisive and brilliant Nisha Susan on why Indian men are still boys published in Tehelka here.

Listen to this interview with eighty-year-old Nawal El Saadawi, an amazing and adorable revolutionary from Egypt here (via madhuri567).

A few months ago, the very discerning Nilanjana Roy wrote for The New York Times on ambitions and reality for working women in India. Read the piece here. Also read her darkly funny guide for women in and about the Indian city here and her very important-to-read post on the oft-used term 'eve-teasing' ('Because I'm not Eve, and because this isn't teasing') here.

As for me, I'm currently reading: The Women's Room by Marilyn French and I'm being drawn deeper into its complexities each moment.

127 Hours: A Rant

2011-03-03T17:48:00.000+05:30

Can we please talk about how ridiculous and irresponsible it was of Aron Ralston to have undertook a dangerous hike without informing anyone of his plans or his whereabouts and without carrying a communication device with him? Can we stop glorifying what he did as heroism and, instead, look at his story as an example of exactly the kind of capricious and careless behaviour that travellers (especially adventure travellers) are, and should be, advised against? Why is no one addressing the issue of safety or the onus of the hiker responsibility code? Or are we simply confusing a sense of vainglorious defiance with temerity and courage?

Ralston's tale of survival, as depicted in 127 Hours, appears to completely overlook the fact that he threw himself into this position because of his recklessness and sheer imprudence. Its reviewers refer to it as 'inspirational'. The character depicted in the movie seems sickeningly charming and demands your sympathy as he struggles through five days of being stuck between, as Ralston calls it, a rock and a hard place.

But I'm going to be ungenerous with my sympathy, thank-you-very-much. When someone jumps off a bridge without a rope around his waist and somehow manages to survive, you don't call him a hero. Because he's an idiot. And when a traveller is as irresponsible as Ralston was, I'm not interested in celebrating his arrogance.

I take travelling seriously. There are risks involved. And there are certain obligations you have to the people you care about and the people who care about you. You don't go on a hike on a whim without telling a soul about your plans or carrying a single communication device with you and expect to stay out of trouble. It's unfortunate that Mr. Ralston found himself in the situation he did, but it's entirely Mr. Ralston's fault that he wasn't rescued before further tragedy.

This is not the stuff that heroes are made of - and I'd hate to live in a world where it is.

Wolf Hall

2011-02-18T10:51:00.006+05:30

Sometime at the end of 2010, I read Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. I began with a reason as simple as curiosity. I wanted to see what Mantel had added to the already wide-ranging canon of literature devoted to the subject of Tudor history. By the time I embarked upon this book, I had already struggled with The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory, a book too steeped in distorted sympathy for my particular liking, and watched its movie rendition. I had also begun watching the acclaimed television series, The Tudors, in which Jonathan Rhys Meyers is very delectable (and that's all there is to be said about it). Years ago, I had watched and read A Man for All Seasons, which I thought beautiful and sensitive. During my MA, I did considerable research on Tudor history (although I really concentrated more on Elizabeth I than Henry VIII). Still, so much has been said of this period that I could not help wondering what Mantel could possibly have to add. As it turned out, a lot.

In her sweeping account of Thomas Cromwell’s life, Mantel somehow humanises a man we have loved to hate, a man who has hitherto been characterised in history, fiction, theatre and cinema as the manipulative, self-serving and ambitious engineer of the historic break-away of the English Church from Rome. The portrayal is sympathetic, persuasive and cunning. For me, this is historic fiction as it is defined: not a distortion of fact but an attribution of motivation to fact. The author weaves context into history, lacing her writing with sharp, witty dialogue and a tautness of prose. In the London Review of Books, Colin Burrows writes, 'The result is less a historical novel than an alternative history novel.' It is this and so much more.

Often, Mantel's writing borders on the tedious, populated too densely with description and obliqueness. This is particularly true in the cases of her laboured use of the present tense and her wicked and purposeful ambiguity with pronouns. And yet, paradoxically, the book is eminently readable. One cannot help laughing out loud at the irresistible wit that peppers the dialogue, so easy on the ears, so charming and vivid and undeniably sexy. Sometimes, amidst all the indelicate impudence, she is startlingly, staggeringly poetic.

Mantel has created her own syntax: it is as absurdly modern as her hero and as timeworn as the age he lived in, a gentle mix of contemporary verbiage and early-modern slang. The idiom it adheres to is one that is entirely her own. Mantel teases the reader incessantly with devilishly non-conformist rhetoric and her refusal to bow down to convention or stereotype and yet, sometimes does so, especially when she is least expected to.

The redemption of Cromwell is romantic, but still problematic. Her depiction of Cromwell as the man who heralded the English Reformation makes for a likely (and likeable) historical character, but often, Mantel pushes the point of his being an enlightened, almost modern, revolutionary. He is so sophisticated, so intelligent, so well ahead of his times, that it is hard to even place him in the context we must place him in. On one level, the novel simply seeks to fill in the blanks of a history written by victors; at the same time, it creates a pageantry of sometimes unbelievable political intrigue warped by extraordinary motivations. The book is a saucy drama made of history. In its characterisation, which depends on the astonishingly effective strategy of telling rather than showing, it is as manipulative as Cromwell himself is believed to be, playing on the modern reader's natural allegiance to reformation and enlightenment.

Still, the book is so arresting, encompassing drama with history, imagination with reality, sympathy with unsentimentality and originality with a wicked sense of pastiche, that the it becomes a vivid, compelling trial room, leaving the reader to judge Cromwell – and his entire gallery of contemporaries – plainly, personally and independently.

Seeing is Believing?

2010-05-10T17:15:00.003+05:30

The Cao Dai Holy See in the Tay Ninh district, about a hundred kilometres from Saigon, is an odd little shrine. There's little else to see in Tay Ninh, which means that the three-hour journey to the area is to be made solely to see the See. This is a deterrent, considering just how much there is to do in and around Saigon. But two things caught our interest when we perused the Eyewitness Guide's chapter on the Cao Dai Holy See - firstly, the religion communicates with holy spirits through seances; and secondly, Victor Hugo was one of the key proponents of the religion. Excited by these two facts, we decided to make the trip.

Cao Daiism proclaims itself 'the Great Religion of the Third Period of Revelation and Salvation' (I'm not kidding - that's what the name loosely translates to in Vietnamese). The religion is supposed to have begun with a covenant between man and god via the ever-reliable communication channel of the seance. The religion is also said to be a combination of the most salient features of all the major religions of the world. Our guide, a lovely man whose only flaw was a tendency to interrupt himself every three minutes to ask, 'Anyone wanna go toilet?', listed out the features of Cao Daiism drawn from other religions and also tried to convince us that most Hollywood stars are secretly followers of Cao Daiism. Incidentally, the Cao Daiists' pantheon of saints includes Pericles, Julius Caesar and Joan of Arc, all of whom, it would seem, were visited by the Cao Dai holy spirits.

Amidst conversation regarding restroom breaks and the secret fetishes of Hollywood at large, we were told several times over that the temple was an architectural masterpiece and that we would never see a structure as gorgeously constructed ever again. Let me tell you, it was not a masterpiece. It was a giant rectangular hall, not unlike the wedding halls that we see in India, with lots of colourful walls. Really.

As soon as we entered the Cao Dai Holy See, the first thing we saw was a giant painting of Sun-Yat-Sen, Victor Hugo and Nguyen Binh Khiem signing the covenant with god. And although I had no idea who the third guy was, I was excited.

After that, the place only got curiouser and curiouser. Moving past bright pink candy-striped pillars with green snakes coiled around them in a manner that was neither threatening nor aesthetically pleasing, we were told to climb up the stairs, into a gallery from where, in the most oddly voyeuristic gesture, we were allowed to take photographs of the monks praying below. Several members of the group of which we were a part determinedly stood among the monks and subjected them to a barrage of flashes and awkward portraiture with their cameras. The monks, true to their monkhood, paid absolutely no attention to them whatsoever.

The service was... colourful. Not to be outdone by the candy-striped pillars, the monks themselves were hierarchically colour-coded and seated on brightly-painted mosaic flooring. They screamed out verses and chants in an emotion that could only have been pure agony. We watched the proceedings with a mixture of fascination and uncertainty, for it was unlike anything we had seen before. Sadly, we were not allowed to see the actual 'See', which is a giant, omnipotent eye that sees everything.

After the service, we were herded out of the gallery and back into the main hall, where the monks continued to holler arbitrarily. After a few more nicely-timed photo-ops, we left the temple.

'Anyone wanna go toilet?' our guide asked us amiably as we climbed into our bus. And we smiled, gearing up for the three-hour journey back to Saigon.

How Saigon Feels

2010-04-08T17:59:00.003+05:30

Saigon feels like an old movie song - the kind that hums loudly, often obnoxiously, in the background, but makes its absence sorely felt during the rare silences.

It starts sort off sort of clumsily - mostly percussion and pipes attempting to begin with a bang - when the city drops you into an ocean of familiarity with its heat, its dust, its traffic and its absurd electrical lines and telephone poles running all over the city in all sorts of directions and constantly getting in the way of any possible view of any possible skyline. It doesn't just look like Asia - it feels comfortingly like Asia.

A high-pitched melody takes over - nauseating at first with its shrillness, but stubborn in its refusal to waver in pitch. Its notes, warbling undramatically, tease you into the city's underbelly - matchbox apartments, gorgeous colonial villas, roadside barbecues and pretty French cafes, all on the same stretch, entirely unaware, or perhaps uncaring, of the incongruity they are bathed in. The melody slows down - pitch unchanged, although you're used to its intensity by this point - to allow you to take it all in, but only long enough for you to take it all in.

Before you're ready, the pipes begin to blare incessantly, and you are jolted into the honking of city traffic. You find yourself surrounded by scooters and motorbikes - they come at you from all directions, each helmet more colourful than the last, and swerve graciously to avoid contact with you, helmets bobbing in acknowledgement of your mostly insignificant presence in their lives. As you wonder at how everything around you appears constantly to be on the move, you are jostled on to the pavement, where the elderly Vietnamese have drawn up red plastic chairs right outside their houses, to sit and watch the world go by. There is no newspaper or paperback in their hands that redeems their voyeurism. They are as unabashedly curious about the tourists that go by as the tourists are about this odd, odd city.

As the pipes end in a sudden, orchestrated moment of silence, an acoustic guitar takes over, but it sounds distant, as though something important is happening elsewhere and you haven't been invited. But you follow the sounds anyway. As you do, you walk past shirtless men, lying in cat-like comfort upon motorbikes, raising their eyebrows at you, asking if you need a ride somewhere, teenagers playing badminton adeptly with their feet instead of their hands, tiny all-purpose trolleys that sell cigarettes, noodle soup and rice wine and backpackers from all over the world, smiling at you because they're about as overwhelmed as you are.

Although you keep walking, you don't seem to be getting any closer to the music. But you can tell that it is at its loudest near the little French bistro in the park. Taking that as a sign, you pop in for reprieve from the relentless heat, a crepe and your first-ever taste of Vietnamese iced coffee. The coolness and the crepes are momentary - it is the coffee that takes over and entirely alters your understanding of Vietnam. It explodes in your mouth, literally bittersweet and just slightly chocolatey, and the music transforms quickly into a seductive harmony of jazz and soft rock. You can't hear the guitar at all anymore, but the sheer romance of having heard it has not left you, and it may never leave you.

You are carried away by the winds of the jazz and the chocolate, and you walk into the bustling market, where fifteen arms latch on to your shoulder to drag you away into fifteen different stalls. The only remnant of the jazz piece is a rumbling oboe that you suspect might just be inside your head. All else is drowned out by the heavy metal noise of the street and the colours that riot their way right into the palms of your hands.

The metal turns melancholy when you walk into the war museum: there is no melody, but the clanging drums sound sorrowful and the bass guitar jars painfully in memory. The museum is detailed and painstaking and will neither let you walk through it, nor let you leave. When you step out, alongside the crowd, your head filled with blurry images from inside, the crowd is with you and it is empathetic. It knows what you just walked through and it sways to the pan flute that fills these moments.

It is the Saigon River that finally gives you peace. The waters are eerily dark, but brimming with goodness and austerity. At the river, Saigon suddenly feels like a tall, august woman whose back is to you. She is singing, softly at first, then clearly and magnificently. You don't really understand the words, but the song seems to be filled with forgiveness and kindness. This is the music that Saigon wanted you to hear all along.

My cousin and I recently took a short vacation in South East Asia. This is the first of a series of travelogues about the trip.

Of Special Topics

2010-03-11T19:50:00.003+05:30

The past few months have been quietly bookish at my end. I vowed early this year that I would not be obsessed with finishing the books I begin - and it is a resolution that has helped me a good deal. I have been unafraid to set books aside halfway through. A year ago, I would have determinedly ploughed through the same books, reluctant to leave anything unfinished. But life's too short, I've realised. If I want to read all that I want to read, being picky is what will hold me in good stead.

With that, I shall recommend a book. Please read Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. Then, read it again to make sure you missed nothing - nothing! - in this hilarious, elaborate, unabashedly academic coming-of-age novel - part murder mystery, part teen romance and part family drama.

If you have read Nabokov's Lolita as obsessively as I did, if you have ever been as unsettled by Nabokov's plotline as I was and if you have ever found yourself languishing as deeply or revelling as gloriously in Nabokov's every turn of phrase as I did, you will definitely not fail to recognise its most salient aspects in Pessl's gorgeous debut.

While Pessl toys adroitly with a fresh and erudite literary technique - a technique that she invents and masters in one clear, graceful shot - this is only the framework for the novel. Her quirky style gets overzealous and even tiresome, but her characters stay strong and memorable, responding humanly and extraordinarily to Pessl's deft, lilting and engrossing plot twists. In particular, Pessl's version of Humbert Humbert, Gareth van Meer, is irresistible and tirelessly complex, his inner goodness endowing him with an endearing quality that the charmingly self-destructive H.H. could never achieve.

Structured like a course syllabus and brimming suffocatingly with bibliographical references and parenthetical annotations, several of them as unlikely as the novel's title, the book dances triumphantly through stylistic devices and techniques that are unsurprisingly academic in their roots. And just like in academia, one tends to brush past the drone of unhelpful references and clever little stylistic tricks in a tired, almost habituated, attempt to get to the heart of the matter.

Pessl's great advantage is that she can blame her every misdeed on her precocious young narrator, Blue van Meer - a very enjoyable cross between Lisa Simpson and, although I hate making this comparison, Juno MacGuff. By creating a character who takes over so completely, Pessl relinquishes control and extricates herself from the literary trapeze act that Blue performs. Every painfully constructed metaphor is Blue's doing; every improbable allusion is Blue's misunderstanding; every laboured phrase (and there are many!) is Blue's wearisome pedantry; and every pretentious parenthetical aside is Blue's unthinking literary exhibitionism. In Blue's cynical precocity, therefore, lie the novel's weakest and finest moments.

2009 in books

2009-12-21T19:30:00.010+05:30

I am particularly given to retrospection. This tendency has worn away with years and rain, but never so much that I cannot sit down in December to think about the books that have warmed my heart over the year. Amid joys, loves and brief interludes with sorrow, I soared with books through the year and allowed other people's words to frame my thoughts. I love how good literature moves me, particularly the way it insistently takes away from the discipline that the rest of my life is endowed with.

And with that, here is the very best of what I read in 2009:

Ramesh Menon's two-part Mahabharata. The quickest testimonial I can provide to this book is the fact that it took me two weeks to finish both volumes. Through long evening hours spent devouring the book, trying to catch a quick break at traffic lights to read a chapter, sleeping less to read more and refusing to eat dinner without the book for company, I raced through it, enjoying every moment. Although the book calls itself a 'modern rendering,' the gorgeousness in Menon's prose lies in his refusal to alter tone or content as a method of reinvention; his style of making the book contemporary seeps through in other ways - in his pace, his adroit plays with chronology and his clarity of progression. He indulges neither in didactic sermonising (a la C. Rajagopalachari) nor in unfiltered translation of linguistically distinct phraseology (a problem I repeatedly had with Kamala Subramanian's wonderful translation). He also does not patronise and condense (as R. K. Narayan sadly did) or allow style to overcome content as modern renderings have often done (Ashok Banker and Namita Gokhale, for example). He is clear about his sources and is careful to never allow his own reading to impose itself on the text he renders (as Pratibha Ray and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni have done in recent times).

Menon allows himself to be the tactful ambassador of information, playing diplomat at all times. Like Sanjaya who relays events faithfully to the blind king, Menon describes without bias. Yet, his sense of self in his writing is not questionable at all. He treads the middle ground carefully, lovingly and intelligently, evoking the reader's emotion with discreet, persuasive rhetoric. He has an uncompromising capacity to stand rooted in greyness, allowing no judgement to permeate colour into his terrain, while letting the landscape come alive in all the textures and shades his greys allow.

We lovers of mythology have a tendency to never be content; we insist on reading, re-reading and, more than anything else, retelling. We are always curious about nuance and suggestion, digging deeper, as though in memory and hearsay, for information that we did not receive the last time around. Our search for meaning is very telling of how seriously we take the legacy of myth in our personal histories and how probing we are with the familiar allegory. Often, we read with the mystifying, if entirely pathetic, hope that our saddest myths would have somehow altered themselves from the last time we read them. Therefore, I suspect that this will neither be the last time I read Menon's Mahabharata nor be the last rendition of the Mahabharata that I read.

In other news, this is the year that I read Divakaruni's The Palace of Illusions and Pratibha Ray's Yajnaseni. Neither has found a place on this list. I have also recently read Krishna: The Life and Song of the Blue God by Ramesh Menon, but I am yet to thoroughly digest it. In a fit of enthusiasm, I bought Menon's Ramayana, Bhagavata Purana, Siva Purana, Bhagavad Gita and Devi Bhagavatam. They remain unread for now. More on all of the above in later posts.

A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif. Joseph Heller's Yossarian meets Bryan Singer's Roger 'Verbal' Kint. I love a thrilling ride; I love when good novels grip me and I love even more when plots that confound me are tied together in the end. Hanif's A Case of Exploding Mangoes does just that. It begins as a round-up of suspects in the murder of Pakistani President General Zia and moves on to tell each suspect's tale with gruesome wit. The book is written partly from the perspective of a narrator so entirely unreliable that you love him more for his wretched incapacity for honesty and partly from the view of an irreverent third-person voice with a tongue-in-cheek omniscience that mocks its own veracity as much as the narrator's.

The sarcastic, often idiotic, Ali Shigri is the immensely attractive protagonist and lying storyteller who fills the pages of the book with his wicked charisma and biting laughter. Filled also with observant character sketches, absurd symbolism and magnificent eroticism, the novel traipses politics and polemics with impertinent abandon, caustically making every direct and indirect statement stand against hypocrisy. The author is quick to sharply expose the armchair intellectual pragmatism that fills the world he has lived in. Hanif does not shy away from slapstick in the midst of his sardonic humour; he liberally slathers his writing with a pointed immaturity that appears to be only for its own sake.

Are the political implications important? I'm never entirely sure. When Salman Rushdie wrote in Shame of a land that 'is and is not Pakistan' and when Kamila Shamsie wrote of a nameless city in In the City By the Sea, we enjoyed the obviousness of their self-imposed censorship. We loved that they wrote without seeming to write. Hanif, though, makes no such pretensions. He is unafraid to cite names, places and details - and that, being the more direct rebellion, is somehow a hazier satire, but also that much more serious and that much more hard-hitting.

That said, A Case of Exploding Mangoes is definitely one of the funniest books I have read in recent times. I recommend it very highly.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun. This is a fierce, beautiful novel, entirely alive and bursting with sensitivity. It is as vivid as it is subdued, sexy with understatement and violence. Adichie brings the focus right back to the plot, adamant in her refusal to waste time and space with anything that does not contribute to the moment. She is dissecting in her descriptions, but writes with a sharp, scalding empathy that cuts very deep. Her pathos is without sentiment; it rings with pain and remembrance. In her unflinching examination of lives touched by the Nigerian-Biafran war, she has a loving air of ownership that is careful to provide insight without judgement. It is the fullness of that love that lends this novel a stubborn clarity.

The book's characters are full of surprise, poignant with fresh, real emotion. As it goes back and forth in time, they come alive over and over again, as memorable for their struggles and failures as for their success stories. The author's masterful urgency with the book's overarching themes, whether she is writing about love, betrayal or war, moves the plot forward wholesomely and eloquently. This is an explosive, eventful and searing tribute to the Republic of Biafra. It is a story that must be read for its powerful, engrossing richness and the throbbing stories of the heartbreaking decade it spans.

As I read Half of a Yellow Sun, I was repeatedly reminded of Romesh Gunasekara's Reef because of the similarity of the situations the books describe. Several moments, particularly the many culinary interludes, filled me with a sense of deja vu. But as I progressed deeper into Adichie's book, I came to fully and acutely realise its own inexplicable potency, which makes the book so completely individual that Gunasekara suddenly stood very distant in memory and, definitely, fondness.

I first read the author's Purple Hibiscus in 2007, right after it won the Commonwealth First Book Award. I am very attracted to Adichie's writing. She has a way with words that, for me, is so reminiscent of J. M. Coetzee, especially in the way she is so matter-of-fact about emotion and immediacy. She has an extraordinary way of building plots around familiar moments and experiential beauty. I look forward to much, much more from Adichie. She has found a place among my favourite writers of all time. This year, I also read The Thing Around Your Neck, but more about that in another post.

I recommend all three of Adichie's books to anyone who loves good stories, good writing and that hot feeling in their stomachs when something touches them.

Cuckold by Kiran Nagarkar. This book came to me as a gift. Three people, whose opinions I value highly, recommended it to me enthusiastically. Reviews lavished praise on the book and it seemed to have an extraordinary premise. I was pretty excited, therefore, one uneventful weekend, to have a promising book to look forward to. Equally, I was disappointed that the book did not live up to the expectations that I had of it. Yet, it is here on this list of books I have loved reading in 2009. And that is the true paradox of my tumultuous experience with Kiran Nagarkar.

Through the three weeks that it took me to read the book (often, I wonder if I should always judge a book by how long it takes me), I had repeated trouble getting through Nagarkar's laboured way with words. His writing feels painfully forced and the book's edit reeks of haphazardness. More than anything else, the writing is uncontrolled and desperately in need of taming. It gives the definite impression that the writer has, at some point, lost himself midway into the story, even into each sentence, and gives up too early in the battle with all the tangled webs he weaves. The book's hero is a character to love and despise simultaneously, as endearing in his intelligence as he is frustrating in his stupidity. Thus it happens that the book opens with several bangs and ends with several whimpers.

Nagarkar's great redemption is in his way with tension and momentum, his persistent way of nagging the reader to keep reading despite innumerable let-downs. And the book's great redemption, perhaps the greater of the two, is its vast, sweeping story, its panoramic view and, particularly, all the gorgeous personal interactions knotted helplessly into it. This, really, is the book's most compelling aspect: the love story that humanises its context. Nagarkar's Cuckold has gone a long way in convincing the writer in me that sometimes, a story really can be far more interesting that its telling.

The S ecret Scripture by Sebastian Barry. When I first chanced upon this book, I hated its title. But I have come to realise that it is far worse to judge a book by its title than even its cover. It was only in November this year when I read an interview with Louise Doughty in The Hindu that I wondered if I should give this book a try. I was already disappointed with Adiga's book by this point and Doughty's assertion that she found Barry's much better when she was on the Booker panel piqued my curiosity. I went ahead and bought the book. And I am really glad I did.

I love the play of memory and history in literature. Modern fiction is known to toy with chronology and linearity; I love when literature extends this technique a little further to the juxtaposition of memory and history. I love the grand conglomeration of little strands of memories as they come together to form one big story, and I love when parallel histories, public and personal, converge in all their conflicts as an organic whole in neat storytelling. This is why I loved Barry's book. He pieces naturally fragmented remembrances together in a game of jigsaw between reader and writer, who must come together to find reality in the novel.

For Barry, memory is also history – but it is more personal and less politically relevant. He demands for the legacy of memory as an important aspect of public record through the poignant storytelling of Roseanne and the puzzled notations of Dr. Grene. Roseanne, in particular, for all her flawed recollections, is a raconteur to remember.

Other books I read this year and enjoyed a good deal are The Hours by Michael Cunningham, The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards, The Grasshopper's Run by Siddhartha Sarma, A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon and several more. There are others that I did not particularly feel enthusiastic about.

I am disappointed with my growing intolerance towards pulp fiction; in my youth, I enjoyed the occasional flirtation with writers of popular fiction, but when 2009 brought with it Paths of Glory by Jeffrey Archer and The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown, I found that I could not enjoy them as I think I once could have. I am afraid, in several ways, that this speaks very poorly of me as a reader. Still, I am glad to have tried and failed than to have stayed atop a lofty horse.

Any book-lover will tell you that at any given point of time she likes to be sure that she has not read at least a quarter of the books she owns. We do this to maintain the harmonic balance of the world. If we are ever to find ourselves struck by disaster - natural (What if an earthquake wipes out everything but my bookshelf and me?) or man-induced (What if all the books in the world are, one day, replaced by Kindle?) - we like to know that our reading for the next three months is taken care of by our calculated forethought.

With that preamble, therefore, on the cards (and bookshelves) for the coming months are The Book of Other People edited by Zadie Smith, The Pregnant King by Devdutt Pattanaik, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, The Accidental by Ali Smith and The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver. Suggestions are very welcome.

In further literary anticipation, I am insatiably curious to know what Amitav Ghosh will follow A Sea of Poppies with and, even more, I am impatient for 2013, which will bring Vikram Seth's A Suitable Girl with it.

Greetings and best wishes for the coming year. May it bring you more books and less television.

Bread-Butter-Jam

2009-12-04T19:24:00.000+05:30

Recently, a friend asked me to suggest my ten favourite JAM (Just A Minute) topics for an event he was hosting at a local college. I was promptly reminded of my JAMming days back during my undergraduate degree, when institutionally-hosted cultural events (in my case, JAM, more often than not) were usually a source of income for penniless students.

I have found that JAMming in India is very different from its original BBC version. In fact, it's a lot more fun and a lot funnier. It's far more a spectator sport than the BBC ever made it. I sometimes think it's a lot more competitive as well.

Here in Chennai, it's always been incredibly popular - and I know I speak for a lot of my peers when I say that we old-time JAMmers (and it scares me that I am already at the stage in my life where I reminisce fondly and call myself an old-timer) wish we still had JAMs to attend and participate in. Unlike most other college cultural activities (dances, music, quizzing, theatre etc.), JAM is something we have had to say a quiet farewell to. Sadly for me, it has even been three years since I moderated my last JAM at a school or a college. It is almost as though there is no place for JAM in the real world. And that's just sad.

In any case, these are the JAM topics I have had the most fun with (compiled with assistance from JAMming peers). I don't know who came up with them, but they've been around for a while and they have given me many laughs. And for some reason, these topics tend to be incredibly raunchy without ever seeming to be.

Five people were in a car feeling Happy. Then Happy got up and left.
A man died. As his soul ascended to heaven, it saw an eagle. The soul said, 'Ah, eagle.' The eagle said, 'Ah, soul.' (Go on, say it out loud.)
My girlfriend's left leg is Thanksgiving. Her right leg is Christmas. I love visiting her between holidays.
The Jack and Jill variations: (1) Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. God knows what happened there, they came back with a daughter. (2) Jack and Jill went up the hill to do some hanky panky. Little Jill forgot her pill and now there's little Frankie.
Children in the backseat cause accidents, and accidents in the backseat cause children.
Impotence is just nature's way of saying, 'No hard feelings.'
(This one is dreadful and chauvinistic, but it's pretty funny) Women are like KFC. Once you're done with the breasts and the thighs, all you have is a greasy box to put your bone in.
I'm a 53-year-old with an 18-year-old body... waiting for me in my hotel room.

And no, the above was not the list I gave my friend. I peppered that list nicely with some safe ones, including:

Backward poets talk in verse. (Inverse. Get it?)
Ruth jumped off my car. I drove on ruthlessly.
Ancient philosophers tend to babble on. (Babylon. Get it?)
The earth sucks, but at least we get a free trip around the sun.

I miss JAMming. All of my most annoying habits, including talking non-stop and correcting people's grammatical errors, came in useful during JAM sessions. Life's a little more boring without random competitive speaking events. My life's bread and butter now, but it used to be jam.

Whetstone-inside

2009-11-20T11:27:00.005+05:30

I'm never sure who's living inside me,
Who's loving whom inside me,
Or who's laughing at me
From inside me.
But I do know this -
And I know it so well
That it is not afraid to tug at my hair till it hurts -
There is something inside me
That has recently grown just a bit in size,
That's oddly shaped like a pear,
But behaves whetstone-like with my wants,
Sings Beatles songs in the night time
And smells of kahlua and rain,
That would, if it had to,
Let the whole world be damned
And damned again the next day
Simply to fulfil a wayward whim.
And sometimes, it scares me.
Even though it's pretty.

Swami and Friends

2009-10-13T11:35:00.004+05:30

I recently wrote an adaptation of R. K. Narayan’s Swami and Friends as a play. The play was a co-production between Landing Stage and The Madras Players. The first set of shows was performed at Sivagamy Pethachi Auditorium in Chennai last weekend (9, 10 and 11 October) to mark Narayan’s 103rd birth anniversary, which was on 10 October.

Four shows were performed to four full houses. The response has been nothing short of absolutely phenomenal. Droves of people were sent away without tickets everyday - not something I am used to doing! For hours after the show, people waited to meet the cast and crew and share their thoughts. Emails and calls have arrived in hundreds (from perfect strangers!), appreciating the efforts of the director and her team. A set of repeat shows is already being planned.

The idea to do Swami and Friends as a play was not mine. The director, Aruna Ganesh Ram, read the novel for the first time early this year. Four chapters into the novel, she called me and said, ‘I can visualise this as a play already. Let’s do this.’

To be honest, I was doubtful. Swami and Friends is a favourite of mine and has always been. But my immediate objections were three-fold.

Firstly, Narayan’s lilting style is descriptive. His narrative is gorgeous, studded with adjectives and a sense of irony. But it is a style may not lend itself to the stage, I reasoned. How is one to recreate the charm of his prose visually? Like Dickens or Austen, I was convinced that Narayan was meant to be read, not seen or even heard.

Secondly, the novel tends to be episodic, like several novels in the children’s bildungsroman genre. A broken structure that works in a novel can affect the linear and dramatic structure that theatre is endowed with. I was unsure.

Thirdly, Narayan lovers already have Malgudi and Swami in their mind’s eyes – I was not sure how accepting they would be of the Malgudi and Swami of my mind’s eye. Reading Narayan is often a deeply personal and individual experience. I find that it is difficult not to be drawn into his Malgudi. Every reader tends to have a personal map of the town and has mentally trod the path from Ellaman Street to the Sarayu through Nallappa’s grove. Readers have met Narayan’s quirky characters and have ideas about how they look and what they might say. Why would they accept my vision?

When I expressed these reservations to Aruna, she laughed them off. It would work, she said. She was right.

The writing process began. It began with reading the novel again and again and again until I knew it inside out. For me, like for many Narayan-lovers, the whole of Malgudi is a familiar terrain; setting scenes in Malgudi, therefore, was a comforting and intimate process. It was like setting scenes in a place that I grew up in.

My real challenge lay in translating paraphrased narrative to dialogue, for Narayan tends to be minimalist with direct speech. His remarkable characterisation came to my rescue here. Often, I would only have to close my eyes and allow myself to enter his Malgudi. Once there, words flowed freely for me – and though almost all the dialogue in the play is my own, not derived from Narayan, I did not have to struggle to capture the grammar of his characters.

Writing this adaptation sometimes felt like trying to cram as many chocolates as possible into my fist. The novel is so filled with wonderful moments that it was hard to decide what to keep and what not to keep. Often, it was even a question of how faithful to be to the text. I think I’ve struck a gentle sort of compromise with Narayan in this regard. I wrote this adaptation first as a reader, then as a writer.

The man has written a story that simply begs to be told and retold. I hope I have done it justice.

Review in The Hindu: here.

MPTF 2009: Reviews, Part II

2009-08-24T10:03:00.002+05:30

Three Reviews:

Citizen Josh on 14 August 2009 by Quixotic Projects from New York:

Citizen Josh is rife with interesting moments: there are moments of startling clarity that are surprisingly insightful; there are moments of genial good humour that provide bursts of relief and familiarity; there are moments of blunt straightforwardness that lull you into a warm sort of intimacy with the artiste on stage; most importantly, there are moments of poignancy that give you reassurance and disquiet simultaneously. Unfortunately, when all these little moments come together, the result falls painfully short of the expectations set by the individual moments.

Josh Kornbluth plays himself and describes a college thesis that he undertakes a little late in life. The thesis is the very monologue that the audience watches. Certainly, the thesis is not of an academic bent – and one does not expect it or even want it to be so. But it also provides no framework for any sort of theoretical, informed or intelligent discussion either. Indeed, it does not even seem to be bound coherently by any inclusive thematic concern. Rather, it seems a series of random events loosely interpolated with a smattering of humour thrown in for good measure, but without serving a larger purpose of any sort. The moments of clarity do little to contribute to the overall perspective – if such a perspective exists at all.

Published in part in The Hindu: here.

The Skeleton Woman on 15 August 2009 by Quaff Theatre from Mumbai:

If, inside every writer’s mind, there exists a space which serves to both cultivate and suffocate creativity, director Nayantara Kotian creates that space in The Skeleton Woman in ways that perhaps the words do not. By themselves, the words in the play are quirky and evocative, but often redundant; it is the directorial touch that transforms the play from what could easily have been the tedium of interior monologue to the arresting, conflict-ridden turmoil of interior dialogue. She creates levels, uses simple props and frequently pauses the play with startling visuals as though she is giving the audience time to digest it. Best of all, she recreates the temperamental and warped nature of the mind with the inspired and often uneasy music that the imagination is endowed with. Having created such a familiar ambience, she lets the play take its course gradually.

Yet, the plot is problematic. For the character of the writer, stories struggle to find an end. Almost mirroring the situation, the play speeds up to its end, conveniently copping out of showing the audience how exactly it got there. How does the writer find the courage, motivation and strength to finally finish his story? The play simply cuts to the final moments of his story, where the problem has been resolved, and one cannot help but wonder how and why the writer even gets there. It poses a problem and shows its resolution, but the journey is entirely missed.

Published in part in The Hindu: here.

Medea and its Double on 16 August 2009 by Seoul Factory for the Performing Arts from Korea:

The Medea of Euripides describes a conflict that reflects several struggles in human history – between the centre and the periphery, the occident and the orient, the self and the other, the coloniser and the colonised. It is full of startling dualities that teeter dangerously between being sharp binary polarities and more balanced dichotomies. In literary context, therefore, it makes perfect sense for Medea to have a ‘double’, for with every external struggle that the play espouses, an internal one needs treatment.

Seoul Factory’s rendition of the play also champions just such a struggle – between stylisation and realism, comedy and tragedy, the masculine and the feminine – in such a way that its ambiguity almost tends to border on an absurd inconsistency and, often, incomprehensibility. Had Limb sought to make his Medea accessible, he fails, because the play not only assumes a knowledge of wild Medea’s story and its interpretations, but also stubbornly refuses to contextualise Medea's angst, making her seem as wanton and depraved as the Corinthians thought she was.

The play’s greatest saving grace is its accompanying music that ranges from thunderous percussion to soft yodelling, creating moods with an ease that belies even the need for surtitles. Visually too, it is charming, alternating between the playful and the tempestuous in yet another swinging duality. But these are surface realities, while Medea calls for a deeper understanding.

Published in part in The Hindu: here.

Other Links:

The Metro Plus Theatre Festival (or MPTF): here.
My review of 2 plays at the MPTF 2009: here.

MPTF 2009: Reviews, Part I

2009-08-14T12:07:00.003+05:30

Two Reviews:

Antigone on 7 August 2009 by Motley from Mumbai:

Reading Anouilh’s Antigone, one usually tends to miss the blind Tiresias who marked Sophocles’ original. But in Motley’s rendition, one does not feel this lack at all. The blind prophet is ably replaced by an overarching prophetic vision of doom that hangs heavily over the play itself. For me, it was this that held the play together tautly, despite a tangled prosaic discourse. What is problematic about the play, though, is that its edit allows for such a wordy discourse, while doing away with so much more that contributes far more effectively to the profundity of the tragedy.

If it is art’s duty to hold a mirror up to its viewers, Antigone certainly did so with its cautious portrayal of the dilemma of leadership. ‘I am master under the law, not above the law,’ Creon declares self-righteously midway through the play. This self-same law that must balance individual justice and the greater good becomes the theme of Motley’s Antigone.

Anouilh tends to be sparing with stage directions and all credit must go to director Dubey for his interpretation that lends fluidity to the dramatic action across various theatrical levels on a minimalistic stage design. The visual is aesthetically held up with columns that play with light and stark colours. Ratna Shah as Antigone is remarkable in her portrayal of an essentially ambiguous character. Antigone has confused readers for centuries with her tendency to be both gentle and violent, but Shah’s rendition bears a translucence that makes these shifts both forgivable and credible. Yet, she is generous enough to play the occasional foil to Naseeruddin Shah’s disarming portrayal of a smooth-talking Creon’s transformation into a broken man who must deal repeatedly with personal tragedy. No raised voices mark their anger and no melodrama aids their anguish. For all the actors, including a whimsical Benjamin Gilani as the oddly interfering chorus, a sense of the play’s own power seems to have provided the quiet confidence to underplay their roles.

Anouilh’s adaptation seeks to make Greek tragedy accessible and ends with a postmodern notion of resignation, disaffection and the pain of continuity, represented by the three soldiers who continue to play cards despite the tragedy that has affected Thebes… and thus does Motley quietly hold up their mirror.

Hamlet the Clown Prince on 9 August 2009 by Cinematograph from Mumbai:

When a bunch of clowns get together to perform Shakespeare's Hamlet glibly in European gibberish, one can't be sure what to expect. Will it be Hamlet for Dummies or a heavier literary homily? It is neither.

'The play's the thing!' cries Hamlet. Only in the case of Hamlet the Clown Prince, it is a play within a play within a play - metadrama of metadrama. Thus it is that Cinematograph doubly probes layer within layer of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in a play that moves with clockwork precision.

In such an effort, particularly given the number of moments of pure slapstick that the play intersperses with its absurdist reading of Hamlet, it is easy to give in to the moment, play to the gallery and let go of the original lofty goals, but Cinematograph never does. Using metadrama’s ability to move in and out of the text to their best advantage, the actors seamlessly transition from high tragedy to licentious comedy with expert control, never letting either win that tug of war.

The result is endearing - and at times surprising.

Other Links:

The Metro Plus Theatre Festival (or MPTF): here.
My review of the MPTF 2006: here.
My review of the MPTF 2007: here.
My review of the first play at the MPTF 2008: here.
My review of 3 more plays at the MPTF 2008: here.
The Hindu Online edition of my review of Antigione: here.

Sixes

2009-07-31T13:57:00.003+05:30

I've always loved this. Six-word stories are very fun to read. They test your brevity and every word has a heavy burden to bear. They're also darkly funny and often heart-wrenching in many ways.

I gave it a shot. Here are my best:

Six six-word stories:

Friday night. Dinner. Table for one.

Brakes failed. I survived. She didn't.

'Heads.' 'Okay, you keep the kids.'

'Luke, I am your father.' 'Shit.'

Promise me you'll never marry again.

Opportunity knocked. No one was home.

Six six-word headlines:

Ten soldiers, one queen dead. Checkmate.

Artist pukes on canvas. Modern art.

Saree sale. One size fits all.

Servant and broomstick disappear. Witchcraft suspected.

Monkeys extinct. Darwin got it wrong.

Apocalypse now. Equestrian missing. Name: Kalki.

Chandni Chowk on a Sunday Evening

2009-05-19T18:56:00.002+05:30

First, a camouflage: charming, quaint.
Perception of beauty seems rather faint.
Beneath the veneer, a curious restraint.
Old Delhi is older than you'd think.

Hawkers and shops, all in a stack
Like a set of books placed back-to-back
Or soldiers all waiting for attack -
It hits you like a cold, strong drink.

A summer's day, blistering heat,
Wanderlust and madness in the street,
The shuffling sounds of searching feet -
They're looking for a missing link.

Roving eyes and groping hands,
The stench of desire as the day expands -
Crimes the city understands.
It loves and forgets with a wink.

Daylight moves to nighttime air -
The mosque rings out in evening prayer
At Chandni Chowk, the moonlit square.
Its heart is gold, though painted pink.

The Red Fort end, stately proud,
Quietly watching the evening crowd
That thinks in whispers but sings aloud.
The sounds of Delhi are out of sync.

The sweetness of a lassi cold
While you watch the city's story unfold,
Looking for a hand to hold.
Delhi writes with indelible ink.

Ghosts of midnight traipse about,
There's magic within and without:
It's screaming of a love devout.
Sadly, it's gone in a blink.

For Duffy: Valentine Variations

2009-05-04T16:58:00.004+05:30

Carol Ann Duffy was made Poet Laureate just last week. It is news that will alter many literary landscapes for several reasons. Not only is she the first woman to hold the post, she is also the first (known) bisexual to hold the post.

Duffy's delicious wickedness filled me with awe when I first encountered her in The World's Wife. But there was more to her than that, I discovered very soon in Feminine Gospels and Standing Female Nude. There was a warm kind of pathos in her writing that made me go back to her again and again. And while I still do love her for her humour, today, I love her mostly for her grace, her pathos, the beauty of her eroticism and the violence of her love.

In 2008, I attended her reading lecture at York. She was not what I imagined she would be. She signed my dusty copy of The World's Wife and smiled a little sadly when I told her that Mrs. Sisyphus was one of my favourites from the book.

Till today, although I have read much of her poetry, Valentine is my favourite. It makes me cry a little sometimes. And I can read it again and again. Please read it.

With all my love for Duffy, today I wrote two variations of the poem. A timid tribute, if you will.

Valentine Variations 1

Not a rosebud or a wedding ring.

I give you a fountain pen.
It is a teller of tales we may never live.
It promises memories
like the photos we take in the dark.

Here.
It will retell unhappy stories
like a historian.
It will make your fingers
A damp remembrance of us.

I am trying to be thoughtful.

Not a poem or a song.

I give you a fountain pen.
Its dark ink will haunt your writing,
insistent and pervasive
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its steely grip will wrench our secrets,
if you like.
Poisonous.
Its wetness will cling to your hands,
cling to your memories.

Valentine Variations 2

Not my heart or my soul.
I give you my tongue.
It is a lover, a tyrant and a friend.
It promises sweetness
like the endless warmth of pie in the morning.

Here.
It will traverse you through the night
like a disease.
It will make your ears
carriers of maddening messages.

I am trying to be patient.

Not gentle kisses or passionate loving.

I give you my tongue.
Its anger will frighten you,
violent and generous
as our love is,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its coarse meandering will stray away from you,
if you like.
Abiding.
Its nooks will cling to your insides,
cling to your own.

True Story

2009-03-23T17:06:00.002+05:30

Last week, at around 8 PM on a weekday, I was sitting in a (male) friend's car and we were driving down St. Mary's Road in Chennai. The windows were down since the weather was pleasant and in a moment of affectionate laughter, I leaned my head against my friend's shoulder. Exactly at that moment, a cop, who happened to have parked his bike on the road, caught sight of us and signalled for us to stop. Genuinely having no clue what the problem could possibly be (since we could not possibly have been driving faster than 40 kmph anyway), we pulled over to the side of the road. What follows is the conversation that ensued (loosely translated):

Cop: What do you think you're doing? Don't you know that you're in public?

Us: Is there a problem?

Cop: Your behaviour is indecent. Either fork over Rs. 5000 or come with me to the police station.

Us: Please tell us what we're doing that's wrong.

Cop: I'll call your parents if you don't pay the fine now.

Us: Please do. We have absolutely no objection.

Cop: No, no, this is not right. Such behaviour should occur behind closed doors. Give me the money now. I have the commissioner on the phone. I'll tell him what you're doing.

More conversation along the same lines took place. When we both refused to pay and invited him pleasantly to talk to our parents about our "public indecency", he insisted that he would take us to the police station. We agreed to go along, at which point, he kind-heartedly changed his mind and condescended to let us off at a mere Rs. 500. Being lawless bandits with no concern for public decency, we refused to pay this amount either. Finally, he gave up and let us go, his invitation to the police station and his desire to speak to our parents forgotten. A bit confused, we drove off, keeping a chaste three feet apart.

What is this city, where friends cannot be friends and lovers cannot be lovers and where integrity can be bought with money?

A Women's Day Message

2009-03-07T10:01:00.003+05:30

Take back the night, my friends -
Don't ever let them cloister.
The night for us never ends,
The world is our oyster.

Take back the night, my friends -
Live and be free to dance.
Live life in present tense -
Love, drink and romance.

Take back the night, my friends -
Let them see our strength.
Let them all make amends
For nights we lost at length.

Take back the night, my friends -
Wasn't it ours from the start?
Stand back in proud defense
And never stand apart.

Take back the night, my friends -
Reclaim all that's yours.
Open windows of common sense
And break down all the doors.

Take back the night, my friends -
For heroines yet unsung.
For women who'll step over the fence,
The night is always young!

Reference: Take back the night

A Valentine Message

2009-02-13T14:54:00.002+05:30

To the pubs, ho!
Let men and women meet,
Join their hands, make their plans
And whisper words sweet.

To the pubs, ho!
Let us all drink,
Let's feel a buzz just because
Our hearts and panties are pink.

To the pubs, ho!
Let us raise a toast
To Pramod Muthalik and all things phallic
And love him as our host.

To the pubs, ho!
Let's make love and noise,
Let's kiss today with public display
Of all our physical joys.

To the pubs, ho!
This one's for the ladies here.
Just grab a beer, call out a cheer
And refuse to live in fear.

References: Pramod Muthalik and Pink Panties

Withdrawal Symptoms

2009-01-29T18:07:00.004+05:30

On 27 November 2008, blogger Chyetanya Kunte wrote scathingly of NDTV's reportage on the Mumbai terror attacks. I'd link to his post here, but sadly it doesn't exist anymore, thanks to affirmative action taken by NDTV. What exactly transpired between the blogger and NDTV is not known, but it is clear that he was forced by NDTV to withdraw his post and issue an apology for it on his blog. Having done so, the blogger retreats into an equivocal silence on the subject.

Kunte's original post (although publicly unavailable, it can still be viewed on Google cache and by subscribers to his feed) is not particularly brilliant. It is probably not even accurate. He accuses Barkha Dutt of breaking "every rule of ethical journalism" without being clear either about the rules or their breaking. He describes her as an "idiot journalist" and goes on to tell her "to shut the f... up", which hardly seems ethical or mature in terms of argument. He goes so far as to say:

In fact, I am willing to believe that Hemant Karkare died because these channels showed him prepare (wear helmet, wear bullet-proof vest.) in excruciating detail live on television. And they in turn targeted him where he was unprotected. The brave officer succumbed to bullets in the neck.

He is unnecessarily melodramatic, opinionated and given to unwarranted descriptions. His arguments are neither compelling, nor do they appear well-researched. In fact, the post is hardly worth taking seriously - either by NDTV or by fellow bloggers. It is a mediocre and childish assault on the media, lacking both in merit of argument and in rhetoric. At best, it is to be read because of the important subject it deals with - media responsibility and lack thereof.

However, I do take issue with NDTV's response to Kunte's attack. While I find his views imbalanced and even unclear, I do think, on principle, that he has a right to these views. It is a blogger's prerogative to discuss the opinions he espouses, regardless of the merit of that opinion. As a charge of defamation, yes, perhaps Dutt has every right to respond with the threat of legal action - but from a far more human perspective, there is little justification for it. For one thing, has Dutt taken the trouble to make this threat to every journalist, blogger and media-person who has expressed such views? For another, does this mean that Dutt herself can and should be sued for every opinion that she has publicly stated? Dutt, who has repeatedly been commended for the fortitude of her journalism, is full of hypocrisy when she curtails a blogger's freedom of expression, a freedom that she demands in great richness for herself.

I am reminded of a case in 2006 of Erik Ringmar, a lecturer from the London School of Economics, whose blog sparked a fiery debate. His book, A Blogger's Manifesto, describes the story in great detail and with excruciating sarcasm. Perhaps Ringmar did go overboard in his response to the pink slip that he promptly received from the LSE, but the book discusses the blogger's rights at great length. NDTV would do well to read it.

On 4 December 2008, Dutt, clearly provoked by the onslaught of criticism against NDTV journalism, responded to bloggers, critics and fellow journalists on the NDTV website here. Her response is defensive, as it perhaps needed to be, but thorough. It is also very reasonable, carefully correct and does nothing to pick out individual attackers. Had she stopped there, her response to the situation would have been perceived as mature and level-headed.

Her current response, however, indicates insecurity, since she takes the trouble to take a small-time blogger with no real justification for his views seriously enough to threaten him with legal action. It shows small-mindedness, since she does not take the higher road and stop with her public response on the NDTV website. Most of all, it shows inconsistency, since she has not responded so violently to anyone but this blogger - perhaps because it is easiest to scare one small blogger into apologising.

In his post, Kunte cites a Wikipedia entry on Barkha Dutt that makes allegations similar to his (Should Dutt also sue Wikipedia, asks Patrix on his post. Also read: Retributions). Of course, as expected, the same entry on Wikipedia has recently been updated to include the current incident. Other bloggers too have risen in protest against the incident, presenting a united front against the forced withdrawal, describing NDTV's and Dutt's actions as "shameful" and "unethical". Rarely does one see the blogging community come together so vociferously to support a fellow-blogger. It is touching and heartening, to say the very least. I hope NDTV is reading.

Beedling Around the Bush

2008-12-15T17:31:00.003+05:30

Rowling's prequel was something of a teaser. Not the fun kind, though, because she said she's never going to write the actual complete prequel. So her prequel - which, essentially, is only an excerpt from a potential-but-never-to-be-realised prequel - lays the groundwork for questions that may never be answered. One lives in hope, though, that she will change her mind and deliver us the goods that we all know she wants to. In essence, one hopes for something a bit meatier than The Tales of Beedle the Bard. Indeed, one would have hoped, when one's hope for a complete prequel were cruelly shattered, at least for a book that is more telling of the histories that have been a part of one's life for so long, doing for the Harry Potter series what The Silmarillion did for the Lord of the Rings series - one would have even hoped, perhaps a bit unwisely, based on the epilogue to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, for a sequel. Either way, one would have hoped for relevance and substance - something that makes one form connects, however far-fetched, with the main series and laugh triumphantly when these connects are made and / or proved right. In essence, one would have hoped for Hogwarts: A History or The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts rather than The Tales of Beedle the Bard. After all, even as plot devices go, surely this is not the best one she has used.

But hopes are another thing altogether. And perhaps we'll come to them later. One's hopes are now officially pinned on this little book, which released on 4 December 2008 - and every Potter fan worth his bezoar pre-ordered his copy two months ago. It arrived. The book is here at last. It is surprisingly light. One's eyebrow is raised a bit. But one shrugs. Sometimes the print is just really small, one tells oneself. But it's not. The print is large. And there are illustrations. One feels cheated. The little cup of hopes is almost completely empty now. And since one prides oneself on having finished the last four Potter books in one sitting, one is determined to set aside a whole thirty minutes to finish this. Yes, a little determination can go a long way.

Having got off to this slightly negative start, one begins to read. The introduction is a let-down. For one thing, it is written by J. K. Rowling, which breaks the whole illusion of the book. It ought to have been written by Hermione Granger, in keeping with the whole metafiction objective. The introduction itself swerves undecidedly between the real and the fictitious worlds. Dumbledore's suspicions about the final story in the Tales, 'The Tale of the Three Brothers', will be known to those "familiar with the history of the most recent Wizarding war," says Rowling in her introduction, adding for good measure in parentheses, "everyone who has read all seven volumes on the life of Harry Potter, for instance". In the same paragraph, she recalls a private conversation, which can be known only to the omniscient narrator, between Harry and Dumbledore, describing the former as the "favourite and most famous pupil" of the latter. Again, several fictitious illusions are broken. Poor Granger, who takes the trouble to translate the texts from the ancient runes, gets no real voice in this book. The footnotes too would have been apt coming from her, particularly since she is Muggle-born.

The stories themselves are everything they ought to be - wizard fairytales. They function well as fairytales and as plot devices. They adhere to the fictitious system that Rowling herself has created with the seven books and serve as effective ambient structures. It is not difficult to believe, for example, that the Weasley siblings grew up with these stories either in the oral tradition or with some translated version, much like children in the western world grow up with the works of the Brothers Grimm. Indeed, it is interesting to note, from Dumbledore's ample commentary, that only condensed versions of these stories are passed on to wizard children, just as heavily edited versions of the original Western fairytales currently do the rounds among children. The stories are predictable, as fairytales are meant to be to modern readers, and well-written too, with a quiet wisdom that is in keeping with their nature.

This leaves the subject of Dumbledore's notes. I wouldn't call them notes, even, really. For the most part, they are self-indulgent pieces of utterly non-academic criticism. In fact, through these notes, even Rowling, almost as self-indulgent as Dumbledore, allows herself an unnecessary dig at Beatrix Potter, while Dumbledore makes the occasional crack about the Malfoy family, goes into rambing, anecdotal reminiscences and seems a bit more senilely self-important than usual. What his notes ultimately do achieve, however, is individual book history. Dumbledore traces the reception of each story and what that could possibly imply, which, in turn, is telling of the wizarding community itself. That, perhaps, is the most valuable thing about Dumbledore's wordy rambles.

Although not the expert on illustrations, I shall endeavour to mention them here nonetheless. Rowling's sketches are truly lovely. They lend character to the stories without taking from the reader's personal right to imagination. Rowling has been sensible to not overdo the illustrations, but to insert them merely as counterfoils to the text. This is necessary for a book such as this.

Like for every other self-respecting member of the Potter fan community, this book will now take its rightful place on my bookshelf right next to Quidditch Theough the Ages and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Right now, there is a large, visible gap on that shelf, though, waiting for the prequel that Rowling may never write.

In Wilderness we are Tamed

2008-11-05T15:42:00.006+05:30

They say there is a social commentary in Wilde that exposes Victorian hypocrisies, shallowness and pretentiousness. They say Wilde’s frothy wit arose from a deep-seated indignation against the superficial nature of the small-minded English upper classes of the time. And they say there is an overt homosexual discourse that pervades his work as a muted defiance against public persecution of sexual exploration and an assertion of, anachronistic as it may seem, gay pride, manifesting in dandyism, affectation and social bonding.

Well, that’s what they say.

But to me, when I shed the baggage of literary criticism, cultural materialism and new historicism, Wilde is, really, all about the fun. In the darkness of possibility in Lady Windermere’s Fan, in the richness of suggestion in Salome, in the largeness of depravity in An Ideal Husband and in the warmth of good-natured banter in The Importance of Being Earnest, there is no real commentary that seeps in to me as a reader; I would much rather marvel at the aphoristic wickedness and the pithy witticisms that come together like they fit together, and are parts that stand alone when they are not wholes, but so much more than the sum of the parts when they are whole.

It is important, too, from an actor's perspective, to be that objective and to discard the dominant reading for an opposition - to forget authorial intention and motivation, to hold a one-to-one conversation, sometimes a negotiation, with character, and to collaborate with the text as an agent to jointly create a meaning that could not have possibly existed until this collaboration: so unique must the output be, then.

In The Importance of Being Earnest, it is doubly so, because what you see is merely the icing on the cake. The brilliance of the play lies in the fact that there is so much ambiguity in whether there are any layers below the icing at all - and if there are, whether they can and should be explored. This is hardly to call it a dark comedy or anything as ominous as that; rather, it is to cast aspersions on the seeming lightness of comedy and to suggest - just suggest - that there is a density that is not apparent in the play at first glance, that the cake looks vanilla, but is really chocolate below the icing.

The play, deceptively, is not about a perfect existence and about pieces of a puzzle that fit together - neither is it, although it could be and desperately wants to be, about the lines that do, ultimately, make it what it is. To me, at the core of the play lies a demand to be taken more seriously than it usually is, to be viewed as a work of fiction outside of historical and social context, but not as foolish fun either. As a work of fiction, then, with plot device, rhetorical art and characters who can be delineated, it is both conventionally simple in its structure and unconventionally wicked in its style. So, as an insider in the process, it is imperative to coax the text to step out of those boundaries of convention and exist individually as a sly poke at what it self-consciously conforms to; that is, peel the onion and shed the tears.

To create the play, then, one must enter it and exist inside it; one must struggle to find internal justification for characterisation, rather than resorting to external explanations such as authorial intention; one must create and find refuge in a time-space continuum that is parallel to the real world, rather than seeking escapist solace in that other-worldly existence. Therefore, if to be a reader or an audience member is to be from the outside looking in, to be a director is to be on the inside looking out, and, harder still, to be an actor is to be on the inside looking further in - much further in than the ordinary eye can see.

The process of internalisation, if you will, makes for a cathartically self-exploratory experience; it probes as much as it mocks, and it demands a dispassionate sensibility that questions and answers in equal measures. The trick, really, is to do it in earnest.

Territorial History

2008-10-03T17:23:00.004+05:30

SPOILER ALERT

The History Boys is a marvel in translation of script to screenplay. It is a marvel too in storytelling and witty dialogue. But mostly, it is a marvel for how endearing it is to the ordinary viewer, how nostalgic it is for the England-returned and how telling it is to the history-buff, all three of which I am.

It is a tale of a group of intelligent young men applying to Oxford and Cambridge for undergraduate studies (the Oxbridge is an abolished examination for entrance to the two oldest universities in England) after completing their A-levels from an unnamed grammar school in Sheffield, Yorkshire, and their relationships with the three tutors who prep them for admission. It is a compelling tale of growing up, friendship, sexuality and, more than anything else, education. It goes far beyond Dead Poets Society and To Sir With Love in its inspection of student-teacher relationships. For one thing, relationship patterns are already in place when the film begins, and are not set as dramatic changes within the system consequent to a radical arrival. Two of the teachers in The History Boys, Hector and Mrs. Lintott, are already part of a linear structure when the film begins, and each shares an affectionate and somewhat close relationship with the boys. Young Irwin, appointed with the express duty of sending them all to Oxford or Cambridge, is the new arrival who exposes them to a very different learning mechanism. But the shift is not drastic; only equations change.

Thematically, there are several concerns. There is the pedophilic tendency of Hector, pandered to with laughing reluctance by the boys to contend with - the treatment of the tendency is problematic in the light of the man and his likeable nature. In the strain of sexuality come the mixed feelings of the young men. Dakin, clearly the most popular, intelligent and attractive of the lot, is adored by everyone - the young (in Posner, an adoring, insecure fellow student), the old (in Hector), the male (in Irwin) and the female (in Fiona, the headmaster's secretary) - while Dakin himself, although involved intimately with Fiona, finds himself having feelings for Irwin and quite unopposed to Hector's advances. There is also religion as an underlying concern: there are brief references to the mocking view that Akhtar, an Islamic student, has of Christianity, and the mixing up of Hinduism and Islam by the Christians; there is Scripps, a devout Christian, whose faith is equally mocked and Posner is a Jew whose religion is a matter of constant discussion, particularly coming to light during a discussion on the Holocaust. There is history and there is truth - and there is the question that is asked throughout the film: should the two be the same? The question is not answered, but the fact that it has been posed is enough movement in the right direction for the young men. There is the position of the woman - alluded to in Dakin's casually-voiced observations with regard to his sex life with Fiona ("it occurs to me," he remarks when the boys grimace about Hector's assaults on them, "that the lot of woman cannot be easy, who must suffer such inexpert fumblings, virtually on a daily basis."), brought to light later with Lintott's somewhat melodramatic response to the all-male perspective of history that the boys, along with Hector and Irwin, give her, and finally sealed with a charge of sexual assault against the headmaster. There are themes aplenty, certainly, and all equally probing.

It is the script that entrances me the most, along with the delivery of the dialogue. The film moves swiftly, and the infrequent pauses are poignant and very evocative. Stephen Campbell Moore as Irwin moves wonderfully from a reticent human being to an uncompromising tutor. But his prowess as an actor, while memorable, follows, albeit closely, that of Richard Griffiths who plays a very loving, very warm-hearted and very good-natured Hector, a man whose spirited zeal for well-rounded learning and classless education ovverides all other facets of his character. All the young men are very alive and full of energy as actors: particularly striking was Samuel Barnett who played a vulnerable, sweet-faced Posner. There is a scene between Hector and Posner that is particularly touching. They discuss poetry and its veiled significances: the actors are full of an unspoken sense of understanding that reveals itself in their eyes and the occasional tremor of their voices. Touching too is the unspoken chemistry between Irwin and Dakin and the mirthful metaphors that they shy behind until Dakin breaks the silence.

The film, set in Yorkshire in the 1980s, speaks directly to its viewer, with a relevance which belies, I think, its historical precision. The modern notion of drama and dialogue manifests itself in a contemporary style of rhetoric that pervades the film so entirely that its setting appears a bit incongruous. Therefore, while the dialogue strikes me as brilliant, it also strikes me as somewhat discordant. Within the framework of British cinema, the inclination for veiled homosexual discourse tends to get repetitive as well, after a point; it is time, I feel, to discuss other issues in the foreground, no matter how necessary these issues are to the background.

But there is brilliance and beauty in this film; there is a tangy sharpness to its portrayal of its themes and a tautness with which it delivers that portrayal. For that, it is to be watched, and watched again.

Dissertation Blues: An Apology to Acquaintances

2008-09-19T13:09:00.002+05:30

I apologise if Shakespeare was in every chat we’ve had,
Or if my talk of Aristotle drove you mad;
If I happened to compare your daily routine
To Falstaff’s gait or Hamlet’s bedroom scene;
If I used deconstruction in basic scrutiny
Or likened your unrest to King Henry’s mutiny;
If I discussed the politics of a Renaissance queen
Instead of asking you how you’ve been;
If I referenced your words with lengthy footnotes
Or spoke in sordid Shakespearean quotes;
If I crept away at dinner to jot down a thought
And never came back or simply forgot;
If every argument was a tavern brawl;
If I never remembered to return your call;
If I used ten words where one would suffice
Or spoke at length of a stylistic device;
If I peppered my emails with theoretical debate
About dramatic writers and the food they ate,
With random conjecture and unlikely hypothesis,
Greenblatt’s lectures and prolonged analysis;
If I awakened you at an unseemly hour
To drag you into my ivory tower,
To whine about my writer’s block
Or discuss a theory arrived ad hoc;
If King Lear’s madness became my own
And the cause for my rambles seemed unknown;
For all this and more I humbly apologise
And ask forgiveness with poetic device.
My thesis is done; it’s sent and gone –
It’s too late for it to be withdrawn!
I’m tired, relieved and longing for peace
And a frivolous life, a cathartic release.
Accept this with thanks and my sincere pleas
For dissertation blues is a well-known disease.

Three Plays

2008-08-12T19:19:00.003+05:30

Three Plays at the Metro Plus Theatre Festival 2008.
Past editions: 2006, 2007 and A Midsummer Night's Dream in 2008.

The Whale on 7 August 2008 by Concrete Temple Theatre from New York

The Whale, as a one-man-show, worked because it showed the largeness of possibility given the limitations of the genre, but did not work entirely, because it was, unfortunately, quite incomprehensible for the most part. Carlo Adinolfi, the solo performer, donned various roles in this adaptation of Moby Dick and became the master storyteller of Melville's novel. Much like Ishmael, who was omniscient in the novel despite being a character in it, Adinolfi went through a gamut of emotions that belonged to more than just one character. A man very much in control of his body, he portrayed changes with physicality, voice and attitude, entering the psyche of a man possessed almost entirely by the story that his life comes to revolve around. He stepped effortlessly from character to character, making a sharp distinction particularly between the imploring Ishmael and the violent Ahab, but he did not possess the audacious bookish charm of Melville's young narrator who wins our hearts from the time he asks us to call him Ishmael. Clarity was initially a problem, but a problem that was resolved with time as the audience got more familiar with his Adinolfi's particular diction. The language and its delivery were laboured, though, making the subject itself seem more daunting than it really was. Beginning with a heavy-handed prelude, the play stepped into more conventional narrative patterns and ended once again with an overture – the actor began and ended the play with a pose that made for a striking visual image.

The production had straightforward but imaginative use of stage properties that gave as much authenticity to the characters as Adinolfi's own efforts did. Light changes were sharp and the shifts in scenes were swift; magnificent hues were used to depict the movement of time. The background score was eerie, even suspenseful, and the actor occasionally created his own sound effects. A white backdrop used as a makeshift sail made for some very interesting shadow-play. Given the personal nature of the delivery, however, the play is, perhaps, more suited to an intimate theatre.

Published in part in the Hindu Metro Plus Chennai Aug 9 2008.

The President is Coming on 8 August 2008 by Q Theatre Productions from Mumbai

The President is Coming raises one question from me above all else: Why should India's six top young achievers be portrayed as utter nincompoops? They are either bigots, fanatics, bimbettes, womanizers, avaricious mercenaries or America-obsessed sycophants. In a vaguely disillusioning process by Q Theatre Productions, the play informs us that the state of India is deplorable not because of the reasons we have all heard of over and over again but because of the selfish, narrow-minded attitudes and idiosyncrasies of what we always considered India's best resource - the people. In fact, the play suggests that if the cream of the crop is so despicable, then the rest of India must be in a sad state indeed.

It was a very well-done production, flowing seamlessly and artistically. It was carried out with great panache, especially the quick profile and spot lights, the interior monologues and the general spacing. It had excellent dramatic structure, particularly in terms of dialogue and conversation. The sets were simple and the usage of a scrim with a corresponding video projection for scenes in the inner office was innovative. The acting was flawless - each actor was precise in his own caricature, complete with accent and body language, though the stereotypes tended to be a bit over the top and perhaps even insulting. The humour was well-thought-out and the actors' comic timing was spot-on. The audience lapped up the region-specific jibes, laughing uproariously at both the slapstick and the cultural references. Yet it is the representation of Indian youth as small-minded and even foolish that I took offence to.

Published in part in the Hindu Metro Plus Aug 11 2008.

The Suit on 10 August 2008 by The Company from Chandigarh

The Suit, like the short story it was adapted from, is a think-piece. It surveys a concept that has been at the heart of literature for centuries: cuckoldry. It deals with the issue in much the same way that a seventeenth century Heywood tragedy (one particular tragedy leaps to mind) would, and still has the same impact. It dissects and magnifies relationships and explores the threads that bind two people together. The idea is powerful; sadly, the production itself was not. It got off to a disappointing start, sounding incredibly contrived in its depiction of the early morning rituals of a couple. The dialogues, which I can only assume were supposed to sound playful and winning, sounded trite and fake. The three actors had very little chemistry together and could not keep the momentum going.

The play used several interesting visuals and symbolic techniques: the actors often performed at different levels in the same vertical line and made very interesting use of the sets and the props. The play questioned the aesthetic principle of art that conventional performance tends to follow by showing unsettling visual images such as the lead actor stuffing his face, spitting out his food and finally throwing up, a bathing sequence and several changing sequences. It flitted between realistic and stylised movement, which was a bit unnerving, and made inconsistent use of the fourth wall. The lighting was moody and patchy, with a lot of rim and side lights that made for some unusual shadows. The live music lent an orchestral touch to the show, and it was, in fact, the flautist who charmingly opened the show with a lingering melody.

Overall, the play was certainly thought-provoking, but the credit goes to Can Themba's concept and plot and the director's delineation of the dramatic action, not to its actors or to the script itself and its dialogues.

Published in part in the Hindu Metro Plus Aug 12 2008.

The Fest Begins: A Midsummer Night's Dream

2008-08-04T13:41:00.008+05:30

Past editions: 2006 and 2007

The Metro Plus Theatre Fest is back in Chennai with the finest start it has had thus far. Yohangza's adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream on 1 August 2008 was a grand beginning and a glorious ode to theatre, the bard and much more. I have seen the play onstage 4 times so far: at the Alliance Francaise in Chennai by Masquerade in September 2005, at the YMCA theatre in Chennai by Tim Supple in April 2006, at the Globe Theatre in London by Jonathan Munby in June 2008 and at Sri Mutha Venkatasubba Rao Concert Hall in Chennai by Yohangza August 2008. Each production has meant something to me because the play itself means so much to me, and I have thrilled to each adaptation with sheer joy. It was with pure anticipation, therefore, that I walked into this particular production, ready to fall in love once again.

Yohangza's adaptation of the play was, firstly, a visual spectacle. All other aspects are secondary to its visual magnificence. One hardly knew what to watch as stylised choreography, tangential caricatures, energetic musicians and ongoing surtitles to the Korean dialogues demanded one's attention all at the same time, coming together as a unified whole in the glory and magic that such a text demands.

As adaptations go, this was fairly faithful to the primary plot of the original; the lovers stayed true to the characterisations of the original, while Shakespeare's Theseus, Hippolyta and Egeus were eliminated, and the fairies were brilliantly double-cast as the lovers themselves. The rude mechanicals, specifically Nick Bottom the weaver, and the sub-plot of the play-within-the-play were deftly replaced by a herb-collecting woman and her singing. Robin Goodfellow was played cleverly by a pair of impish brothers who displayed Puckish tendencies of mockery and laughter. But the finest alteration was also the play's greatest subversion: in a wicked reversal, it is the Dokkebi queen who tricks her husband, not the other way around.

The play used stylised movement that was both appealing and meaningful, accompanied precisely by thunderous beats; the choreography was varied and perfectly attuned to the play's live music of percussion and chimes. The actors stepped in and out of complex and co-dependent positions with an ease that can only come out of hard work and practice. Live singing added to the play's charm, as did the audience interaction and the variant entry and exit points. The sets were simple and skilful in its use of various physical levels of performance and minimal in its use of props. The lighting was extremely thorough, lighting brightly from the front and adding colours and moods using back-lights and washes in warm colours. Unobtrusive face-paint added to the magic of the play without taking from the facial expressions of the characters. And as though all of this were not enough, the actors won Chennai's hearts over completely by interspersing Tamil dialogues into the play and calling upon the fundamental requirements that the city will swear by: sambar sadam, thayir sadam and vadu maanga.

The play used quite a bit of slapstick as its humour mechanism: the movements included corporal and bodily comedy; dialogues were occasionally followed by extremely literal depictions (for example, when the character Ik goes back to Helena's famous demands to be treated as a spaniel, she accompanies this with a humourous impression of a barking dog); the fight sequence between the lovers involved physical comedy. The scenes between Dot and Duduri (the queen and her Puckish brothers) were outstanding in their physicality and the seamless interface of music and movement.

The play was a unique experience, to say the very least, and certainly a learning space. But the greatest testimony to the play was the unanimous and extended standing ovation that the play received as the actors took their lively curtain call.

Published in part in the Hindu Metro Plus Chennai, Aug 4 2008.

The Job Matrimonial

2008-07-23T10:48:00.003+05:30

Nothing in the world is as demoralising, time-consuming and, most importantly, expensive as the job-hunt. I have had quite a few over-the-table discussions over the year, negotiating everything from an unpaid internship in the most expensive city in the world to actual jobs that end with a pay-check (an experience that seems almost alien to this unpaid intern); four years of freelance work have paid several bills in the past, and I will gladly admit that I have led a more luxurious student life than your average student, thanks to part-time work; but there comes a time, I think, in every person's life when an actual full-time career seems inevitable and even desirable: that time usually comes when parents politely ask you to stop living off them. Thus begins the job-hunt.

Implicit in this hunt is a series of requirements that are not unlike the average matrimonial advert. The strays never get placed in either: the dark-skinned, "non-homely" ("homely", incidentally, is the most amusing requirement for Indian brides that I have ever come across - so much so that Wiktionary has defined it separately in the Indian context) girl is never asked for in a matrimonial and the Classifieds never list jobs for experts in Renaissance comedy. So, as you may imagine, the job-hunt has not exactly been easy for me.

Of course, I'm barely into it as yet, still hiding behind my MA thesis deadline of September 20, as I am a student till that date. But one does tire of researching Shakespeare's power discourse and deconstructing comic interventions all day long: so a half-hearted search ensued early this month for me, and I am reeling already in its aftermath. Hardest are the unusual questions that come up during these interviews: being niche areas, there are no standardised rules, skill-sets or qualifications; interviews tend to be long conversations about unlikely subjects; interviewers tend to turn up in a t-shirt and jogging shorts; and the questions, no matter how often I have to answer them, repeatedly baffle me in every form they take.

Students of literature sometimes sit together and try to come up with credible and relevant answers to the question "Why literature?". Believe me, we do. It is the same all over the world and no one knows how to answer the question. Popular responses and pre-meditated arguments include "I had a desire to experience and learn analysis patterns and close-reading in order to face the business world", "Literature truly reflects real life and helps us understand human psychology, don't you think?" and "I see Literature as a response to humanitarian crises, and I'm trying to understand them better". None of these responses are ever satisfactory; in fact, they're hardly ever true, even (No, we don't care about analytical skills, the human psyche or world crises as much as we do about words) - they are merely well-rehearsed responses to inevitable questions which, believe me, we do not know how to answer: we often do not even know the answers ourselves.

A fellow Renaissance scholar, a Spenserian at that, once said to me, deadpan as ever, "Investment banker. That's what I always say when people ask me what I want to be after an MA in the Renaissance. It shuts them up." Back during my undergraduate days, as we shuffled between Faulkner and Hemingway, I asked a classmate why she did the course, trying to gauge if I was alone in the existential crisis of the arts student, and she looked at me and said, without skipping a beat, "Didn't get into engineering. So... done with The Sound and the Fury yet?" And a wise lecturer once told me, as he bought me a cup of coffee to go with my discussions with him on restoration marriage laws, "You don't need a reason to do what it is you do, as long as you know that there is nothing else you would do, given a choice." The three exchanges have given me perspective, and I have, since, been clear on this, if nothing else: that I do not need to know the answer to "Why literature?". What I do need, though, is to formulate an answer to that question for these interviews - which I have now begun to do, and which every student of the liberal arts does at this stage. At least I am not alone.

The other heartrending question that comes up, couched usually in euphemisms, is: "How willing are you to do something you love if the pay is abysmal?" It is a hard decision to make, and every time you make it, your conviction wavers a little. One the one side of your scales is working in a literary field for love and fresh air; on the other side is the drudgery of technical-writing, content-editing and public relations which, while you know you can do it, will, in all likelihood lead you to a life of self-loathing despite hefty remuneration. You cannot weigh your options carefully enough, because there is something to be said, after all, for an actual livelihood. It makes you wonder why you feel that just because you have had an education in the liberal arts you are entitled to a job that you enjoy when few people actually do: at least you have had an education that you actually enjoyed, which is something that most engineering graduates cannot say for themselves.

The third painful question - and this one really takes the cake - is "Where do you see yourself five years from now?". How does someone who does not know where the next five days will take her answer that question? What long-term goals can a graduate with no short-term goals possess? Like the previous two questions, prospective employers expect you to have an answer to this one as well. They expect you to have thought this through and to have come to a decision about your life. By this point, you are reminded of similar conversations with your social circle and family members, all of whom think you should know what you have done, are doing and will do just because they seem to. They are all ticking columns off in their head and forming informed opinions about you, based on how you pass this test: it's almost like an online form that you fill out to apply for a loan or perhaps, as in the metaphor I resorted to earlier, create a social networking or matrimonial profile. But here's the first rule that literature teaches you, no matter what stage you are at: there's no right answer; sometimes, there isn't even a wrong answer.

From the West End to Broadway and Back Again

2008-07-03T17:01:00.001+05:30

One fine evening in London's barely-sprung spring, I trotted along, in good company, to watch The Importance of Being Earnest at the Vaudeville Theatre on the Strand. In general, I love the Strand and am indisposed to think ill of anything on the Strand. I love its proximity to some of London's most exciting parts - with South Bank on one end, Trafalgar Square on the other, a road leading directly to the gorgeousness that is Covent Garden and barely a stroll away from Holborn and the Royal Courts of Justice. And if it's theatre you seek, there's the Lyceum, the Vaudeville, the Adelphi, the Aldwych and several smaller venues. No, even Piccadilly Circus, with Leicester Square beckoning you on one end, Soho glinting at you wickedly from a corner and Oxford Street majestically eyeing you from the other end, is not as charming as the Strand.

In short, it is on account of the Strand's loveliness that I do not consider that evening a waste of my time and, more importantly, my dwindling resources, for the play was really nothing short of disastrous. Well, the sets were very well-done, indeed, though hardly imaginative at all, and the play was interestingly devised in three parts with two short breaks, rather than one long interval. But all said and done, no matter how brilliant the script it is (and it is very), no matter how authentic sets and costumes are and no matter how perfect all actors are with their lines, there's something to be said for sheer acting - which was where this play failed miserably and on all levels. What Judi Dench achieved in the film with merely her now-boring deadpan, an actress with the experience of Penelope Keith could not manage in this production. All actors were painfully low on energy and even volume - they seemed disinterested and bored with the characters they played. I cringed when some of my favourite witticisms - for, after all, that is all this play is sometimes, a collection of Wilde's witticisms in a comedy of errors and manners - were delivered like sermons, declaimed, even. While not even bad acting can take away the deliciousness of Worthing's first meeting with Lady Bracknell, there is so much that good acting, as in the case of Firth's brush with Dench in the film, could have done to it. No, the high point of my evening was a walk down the Strand, stopping at Tesco to pick up a sandwich, and munching it as I waited for the 139 to take me home.

Flying across the Atlantic to New York and Broadway did not, I'm afraid, restore my faith in theatre. It was an exciting revival of Boeing Boeing at Longacre Theatre that I ended up going to. And while the play was certainly very well done, with fantastic acting, spot-on timing and the utter wonder that is Mark Rylance, it was just not my kind of play. Slapstick, I think, tends to stop being funny when carried on too long, and that was my problem with the play. The profusion of gorgeous, semi-clad women was exciting for some, I gather, but the play carried little for me, other than the abundant energy of the actors and (it cannot be repeated enough) the wonder that is Mark Rylance. But the audience lapped it up that afternoon, screaming for more, anticipating so many jokes that I suspect it was not the first viewing for most members of the audience and laughing uproariously every time Kathryn Hahn's hips jutted out in her character's standard pose. Oh, there was energy, all right, and it flowed like magic from the audience to the cast and back again, culminating in a final dance that every member of the audience involuntarily tapped feet to. But I cannot help being astonished that such slapstick is so popular on Broadway.

Back across the Atlantic, to London once more, and to the more affordable, less hard-to-get-tickets-for West End, I spent my last evening watching Webber's and Rice's Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, a musical whose songs I have known and loved for almost four years now, since a spoof-pantomime of the original made its glamourous way to Chennai as the annual college production of Stella Maris College, in which a bearded yours truly played a very old and very forgetful Jacob. I went with two friends, one of whom shares my love for these songs and, indeed, sings them much better than I do. In sheer groupie-like enthusiasm, we arrived, once more at the Strand, at the Adelphi, to sing raucously with the cast and embarrass thoroughly the hapless third member of our trio. And, as we said as we walked out of the theatre, we would almost certainly have hated the play if we didn't happen to love it already. The sheer pointlessness of the plot and the randomness of its songs can be a bit unnerving to the first-time viewer. The songs, of course, are intoxicating and deliciously fun to sing along to. We even fell for Judah and oohed a little at the Pharoah. But I cannot imagine that it would have been half as fun if there were no fond memories to go with it.

And we have been dying to tell everyone else from our Stella Maris cast about our exciting little adventure. They'll be jealous. Yes, they will.

Globe-Trotting

2008-06-19T12:09:00.003+05:30

There is something to be said, I think, for the sheer magnificence of Shakespeare's Globe, even when unconnected to its history. Nothing prepares you for it - not the graphic descriptions in the copious tradition of new historicist analyses and not Shakespeare in Love, certainly, even with its numerous merits (and delicious fallacies). What takes your breath away, as you enter it, is how it surrounds you, envelops you, even, and leaves you aware of nothing but its omniscience. You forget, then, that it is a reconstruction, because when you turn towards the stage, you can see a young and personable Will Shakespeare (who will, in my head, forever look like alarmingly, albeit disarmingly, like Joseph Fiennes) and his players prancing about the stage, delivering miraculous words with miraculous ease. That was my first time - on the Globe tour.

My second time was even more magical. Like the peasant I suspect I might have been in Elizabethan England, I watched Dominic Dromgoole's production of King Lear with a standing ticket, standing for almost three hours in the Globe pit with my fellow groundlings, cheering uproariously and noisily and never afraid of not maintaining decorum, a rare phenomonon in polite England. We were fortunate enough to find space to stand right in front of the apron of the stage, from where, admittedly, we could often see up the skirts and kilts (or whatever they called men's skirts in Lear's time) of the actors, who did not really seem to care that we could do so. It got colder as the night progressed, but we had been warned beforehand that the plays would continue regardless of the weather. With clenched teeth, therefore, hugging our jackets and muttering "The show must go on" through chattering teeth, we watched the show huddled together, thrilling to Cornwall's brilliance and Lear's extraordinarily touching senility. The idea, as I could see it, was to present King Lear to us as Shakespeare might have done to a Renaissance audience: the use of stage space was imaginative and thorough; the creation of sound effects was distinctly visible and pointedly rustic; props and sets were beyond minimalistic - I loved it. That was the second time.

They say third time's the charm. But it isn't, really. There was a certain familiarity that mastered awe the third time I walked into Shakespeare's Globe, this time to watch my all-time favourite play, A Midsummer Night's Dream (Jonathan Munby's production). It was a matinee on a dazzlingly bright summer day, the Thames glistening gorgeously as we walked down Southbank amid joggers, couples, solitary reapers and - I kid you not - a group of possibly famous people and large amounts of video equipment from Twentieth Century Fox in a bankside section cordoned off and surrounded by security guards, to enter the Globe. The stewards handed out spiral paper hats to us groundlings as we marched in purposefully to stand for three hours, surrounded on all sides and at various levels by patrons who could afford to buy sitting tickets and watch the play in comfort, with roofs over their heads. But the only way, really, to watch a play in the Globe is to be a groundling and to experience the wonders of theatre in utter discomfort, to know that you are the true patron and it was for you that Shakespeare wrote and wrote again. At least that was what we told ourselves as we stood, fanning ourselves, shielding our eyes and heads from the sun, and laughing uncontrollably at a charming Bottom and a ludicrously middle-aged Puck, or making eyes at the little Indian boy (dressed, inexplicably, as Swamy Vivekananda). Familiarity was then put to rest by the Globe's wondrously adaptable milieu, even more so than the performance. Three hours and a bergomask later, we were out. And that was the third time.

With the Globe though, it is never going to be a last time. The theatre and its atmosphere seem to hold a capacity to enhance anything to theatrical genius. You could watch the most mediocre play at the Globe and still be transported; indeed, as Peter Quince says to Nick Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream, "Thou art translated".

How to Get a US Visa - A Step by Step Process

2008-05-11T20:44:00.004+05:30

The following steps are applicable to citizens of India temporarily residing in the UK with a student visa who wish to apply for a tourist visa to the USA:

You navigate through the annoying and poorly-designed website of the US Embassy in London to find the forms that are relevant to you and fill them in without any instructions or explanations as to how to answer ambiguous questions.
You call the US Embassy at the rate of £1.20 (Rs. 96) per minute to fix an appointment with them. The call takes approximately fifteen minutes, five of which will be taken up by you trying to explain to them how your surname is spelled.
You will be asked to transfer $130 (Rs. 5,330) to their account, but when you attempt to do so, they will spend another five minutes trying to figure out if you have stolen another person's bank details. Because you sound like a terrorist.
You will then be curtly informed that you will be ineligible for the interview if you have any cuts or bruises on your hands on the day of the interview, as they will need to take your fingerprints and store them. Just in case you do turn out to be a terrorist.
Once your appointment is fixed, they will assure you that you will receive an email in five minutes with details of your interview.
When, in 24 hours, you have not received the email and you contact the embassy again (at the same rate as before), they will spend five minutes trying to figure out if you are committing identity fraud (on account of you sounding like a terrorist) before they admit there is an error in their system and that they will send you the email now.
For the next three weeks, till the date of the interview, you will receive, on an average, around four emails per week about the things that you are not allowed to bring into the embassy (cell phones, jewellery, laptops and, for some reason, car keys). Because that's what terrorists use.
You will spend a few frantic days trying to find a place in the UK that actually prints photographs of the size specification that the US Embassy asks for, but as the UK specifications are very different, you will find none. After cursing the US loudly and attracting a lot of attention to yourself, you will somehow manage to get the photographs done at a local pharmacy.
On the date of the interview, you will arrive at the embassy in London with the required documentation, going past a travel office with a currency-converter booth outside it that flashes the sign, "Warning: US Dollars are in Recession".
After waiting in a queue for about an hour, you will be allowed into the embassy, but not before a security check during which they will ask you to take off your shoes and stockings and inspect them very carefully indeed. In case you're a terrorist.
You will, a little embarrassed, sit on a bench outside the embassy and put your stockings and pumps back on before entering.
You will wait two more hours inside the embassy before you are called forward to submit your documents, whereupon you will be told that your photographs are invalid because they cannot see both your ears fully. The ears indicate terrorist activity.
You will be asked to go to their own photo booth outside the embassy to take new photographs where your ears can be seen.
You will pay an exorbitant £5 (Rs. 400) per photograph, make sure that your ears can be seen in them and return to the embassy.
Once again, they will check your pumps and stockings, presumably for bombs.
You will once more wait two hours to submit your documentation.
You will then be taken to a waiting room, where video cameras will watch your every move, and, another two hours later, you will be called in to an interview.
The interviewer will eye you suspiciously from inside her enclosed counter, while you nervously explain the reasons for your visit (apparently "tourism" just doesn't cut it anymore).
Your fingerprints will be taken, as promised, and examined thoroughly.
Five tense minutes later, you will be told that your visa has been approved and you will have to pay £14 (Rs. 1120) to get your passport sent back to you via secure mail services (SMS).
SMS will have a briefing with you an hour later, in which they will tell you that you must stay at your residence until the passport is returned to you, and if you are unavailable to receive and sign for it, they will not deliver it again. Effectively, you will have no life for the next five days.
Grateful that your ordeal is almost over, you will tiredly return home to cancel all plans for the next five days.

An Archer Bereft of Arrows

2008-04-22T16:12:00.009+05:30

Where has Jeffrey Archer's style gone? There was once a punchy, witty style that dominated his work - a style that was likely to be his entirely, setting the mark for future writers of the genre. It was characterised by pithiness and a way of sounding intelligent without sounding like it was trying to. Chapters ended with one-liners that made you want to read on, and often you would finish a book in a single sitting. There was a wild and utterly extraordinary sense of the chase in his books, a delicious sense that the reader could only hang on to - and, of course, thoroughly enjoy the ride. What separated Archer's work from regular pulp fiction and popular thrillers was apparent right from the beginning - and Archer was never likely to let you forget it as he dished out cliff-hanger after unpredictable cliff-hanger. But then, those were the good old days... the days that ended with Sons of Fortune and have not returned as yet.

Certainly, Archer has his way with revenge-plots. His first novel, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less convinced us of that. Later novels like A Matter of Honour told us that he was a veritable master of the chase and novels like As the Crow Flies and The Prodigal Daughter told us that he was a modern day Dickens in the bildungsroman. He has certainly shown a knack for describing politics and international intrigue, as can be seen from First Among Equals. I am even inclined to disagree with critics who insist, albeit admiringly, that two-protagonist novels like Kane and Abel, The Fourth Estate and Sons of Fortune tell the same tale. I have found them unique and equally compelling. But for me, most of all, more than all of these sub-genres that I have found the Archer of the past to excel at, I will look at him as the Maupassant of the modern short story and the Saki of the modern twist. His short stories have defined him, for me at least, as one of the better story-tellers of our time.

If this has sounded more like an obituary and a tribute than anything else, that is because I have come to mourn the tragic loss of Archer's extraordinary prowess at the art of the story. Since the barely readable prison diaries and the less-than-impressive False Impression, I have been disillusioned with Archer's writing; but nothing came to be as strong (and, indeed, as lasting) a blow as Cat O'Nine Tales, in which, while I saw the return of Archer's inimitable style and even his finesse with pithy sentences, every story left me bored and wondering at the pointlessness of the tale itself. The twist that one comes to look for in Archer's short stories was not just less sharp and less surprising, it was often even entirely missing. Most short stories, sadly, had no real stories and I wondered then, as I wonder now, if Archer had no tales to tell anymore. What speaks most of the vast difference between this book and his earlier books is, quite simply, the fact that I cannot remember most of the stories in this collection, while I can still, with accuracy and enthusiasm, recall tales from all others.

Now, with A Prisoner of Birth, I mourn the loss of style, for Archer has now lost the one thing that he still had going for him. His deftness with success stories and his talent for creating characters who are wonderfully likeable are still with him, of course; and the agility with which he pursues revenge is even mildly reminiscent of the panache that carried his first novel, but there is still the style, which is, and must be, at the heart of a good story that is sorely missing. Yes, it certainly is a good story - but with Dumas to back him up, indeed, how wrong could he go? Archer intelligently makes contemporary the greatest revenge tale of all - The Count of Monte Cristo. He even sticks faithfully to the essence of the plot, making the few changes he makes seem forgivable. Indeed, a more loyal Mercedes and a younger Abbe Faria seem almost welcome changes. But all said and done, credit for the story cannot go to Archer, while blame for its rendering must.

Edmund Dantes is young Danny Cartwright, falsely accused of murdering his best friend and brother-in-law-to-be; the murderer is Spencer Craig, who temporarily fancied Danny's fiancee and plays Mondego to his Dantes; Craig's three friends are willing to commit perjury to protect Craig and themselves; Danny Cartwright, sentenced to Belmarsh, as inescapable as the Chateau d'If, becomes fast friends with his cell mates, Nick Moncrieff and Albert "Big Al" Crann. The rest, as they say, is history.

Archer's novel is ridden with cliches, allusions and entirely unnecessary litotes: Archer's character's never say anything, they always admit it; they never say nothing; they always make no comment; when the protagonist responds to a question about his identity with "I can be whoever you want me to be," the response elicits laughter and a pretty lady is won over; after watching The Importance of Being Earnest, as the character walks back home, Archer tells us that Danny Cartwright has begun to realise the importance of being Sir Nicholas Moncrieff; after watching A Woman of no Importance, when the protagonist breaks off a date, the lady retorts, that she is now a woman of no importance. The cliches continue and the litotes are almost painful. Meaningless adverbs follow almost every verb and sentences redundantly begin the same way.

When Nick Moncrieff, playing Henry Higgins to Cartwright's Eliza Doolittle, tells Danny Cartwright to avoid cliches at all costs, one can only laugh and wonder if Archer has begun to mock himself or has reached a point where he is no longer even aware of the path he is treading. He places absurd coincidences in the plot such as Nick Moncrieff, who just happens to be a millionaire and happens to leave his fortune to a stranger he barely knows, just happening to look exactly like Danny Cartwright.

Worst of all, I never thought I would see the day when an author of Archer's calibre would need to stoop to having to place clever allusions and arbitrary references into the text for no apparent reason: Archer casually incorporates a group called the Musketeers into the novel, perhaps to drive the Dumas point home hard enough; he has Danny Cartwright reading The Count of Monte Cristo and vowing to pull an Edmund Dantes on his villains; he freely quotes Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde and rides the cliche boat all the way to the Bible.

The book's blurb informs us of two important things: that this is Archer's most powerful novel since Kane and Abel and that the twist at the end will shock even the most ardent of Archer's fans. Let me inform the hapless reader that neither of these two promises is true and the second one is a real let-down, for I found that the ending was not a twist at all - and certainly cannot be called one considering Archer's past knack for the twist.

I am eager to admit, of course, that Archer's quiver was, at one point, indeed full of arrows; but I am as eager now to declare that the quiver has been emptied, and it certainly seems like his last few arrows have missed their mark entirely.

The Unpaid Intern's Photographic Guide to the Random Sights of London

2008-03-24T19:27:00.017+05:30

Platform Nine and Three Quarters at King's Cross Station.

The Cheers Club on Regent Street, where I spent a long and extremely sober night dancing with strangely friendly Spanish boys.

The Shakespeare's Head at Aldwych. I get that pubs' names are strange in general, but the Bard's head? Really?

The Punch & Judy Pub at Covent Garden. Always busy.

Lovecraft at Leicester Square.

The Crooked Surgeon at Leicester Square.

Soho's biggest sex shop.

The Charles Dickens Coffee House on Tavistock Street. Casual conversation heard outside: "You see that coffee shop, Johnny? That's where Dickens lives."

The Jack Horner on Tottenham Court Road.

Spamalot! on Shaftesbury Avenue. Since AD 932.

The Sherlock Holmes. Scarily expensive pub in Trafalgar Square.

The Ritz. One can only dream.

Ah, the good sea

2008-03-10T17:16:00.006+05:30

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety.

- Enobarbus to Lepidus, Antony and Cleopatra, Act II Scene II
Shakespeare, William

In England, there is beauty everywhere. The countryside is always picturesque and breathtaking, and that's good because I feel like Jane Austen, with her descriptions of the English landscape, has not let me down the way Enid Blyton, with her descriptions of English picnic baskets, has. There is a quality of woodsiness about England that endears itself to its visitor within minutes. There are flowers to be admired, lakes to stare dreamily at, gardens to walk through and hills that are alive even without the sound of music.

When you're surrounded by beauty everywhere, you tend to get accustomed to it - so accustomed, in fact, that sometimes you don't raise an eyebrow at a gorgeous view or make a mental note to describe the situation to someone when a duck walks up to you and tries to step on your boot. These things become unnervingly ordinary - even mundane. When a visitor gasps at the view that you have from your room, you feel guilty about not having stared at it long enough ever since you got used to it. When friends exclaim at a photograph, you realise that although your photography skills are unparalleled, it is the scene that you captured that they're exclaiming at - a scene that you didn't pay close enough attention to when you saw it in real life and not just a (brilliantly taken) photograph. But you can't help it. Custom has staled variety and familiarity has bred contempt.

Lots of little things get spoiled for you in this way: after the breathtaking beauty of the highest peak in the Lake District, you don't stop to admire the view every time you climb the little hillock that is Clifford's Tower; after the Westminster and the Yorkminster, you are less taken in by the extraordinary beauty of, say, Christ's Church at Oxford; after Hyde Park and the Museum Gardens, Regent's Park is just another long walk; after the Edinburgh Castle and Kensington Palace, Windsor Castle appears less magnificent; after Oxford and York, Eton is just a quaint little college. Certainly, it says something about the intrinsic beauty of these places that you are still astonished at their beauty after your response has been diminished by custom. But that doesn't alter the fact that you have begun to take extraordinary beauty for granted.

It is at times like this that places like Scarborough and Whitby come like a refreshing breath of air and make you see, all of a sudden, that it isn't just in England that you have taken things for granted. Scarborough is a beautiful seaside village in Yorkshire; a day-trip there one bitingly cold morning re-introduced me to something that was sorely missing from my life: the seaside. The sea has a certain quality to it that sets you free and makes you feel incredibly alive. Near Whitby is a little village called Robin Hood's Bay, a gorgeous seaside hamlet where you can hear the sea no matter where you are. Having lived near the beach all my life, having watched the waves lap up to my feet so often during the first twenty years of my life, it sometimes feels a little suffocating to not be able to smell the salt in the air or know from a whiff that it is going to rain in a few hours. What is irksome, though, is that you're not even aware of how deeply you love living near a beach until you are taken away from it and taken to a place where the sea, if you get to see it at all, generally meets rocks and not a gloriously long and sandy beach.

Scarborough and Robin Hood's Bay have reminded me of beauty; they have reminded me of the beach that I grew up near and took for granted; they have reminded me that just when you think custom has staled England's variety, England surprises you with another of her facets; they have reminded me of how the sea smells and sounds and how it feels against my bare foot; most importantly, they have reminded me to never ever take beauty for granted.

The UK annoys me because...

2008-02-24T07:31:00.001+05:30

Everyone is paranoid. The jar of peanut butter I bought last month has "Warning: May Contain Peanuts" on the cover.

Everything in the computer is sacred. When the accommodation system did not accept my key card, the receptionist insisted that my room did not exist. When I explained to him that I had lived there for the past six months though it was not on his computer, he looked scandalised. It was only when I dragged him to my room and showed him the door that he finally agreed that it was not a figment of my imagination.

Everyone is dependent on computers and calculators. When I told a cashier at a store that she gave me fifty pence more than she needed to, she looked at me incredulously and said, "Wow, are you a math student?"

I can't step out to meet a friend or take the trash out without bundling up in four layers. I think I may become a recluse just to avoid the effort of bundling up for ten minutes to go out for five minutes.

The BBC lies about the weather. The forecast has never been right. I suspect they hire fortune-tellers instead of meteorologists.

My post-colonial burden. I am officially tired of being asked why my English is so good even though I'm from India ("But I thought they spoke Indian in India!").

It's not Madras.

Why Juno Works

2008-02-10T19:30:00.000+05:30

Juno tells it like it is. That's what makes it really work. Right from its direct in medias res beginning, Juno decides to be painstakingly real. And the most real thing about Juno is Ellen Page, an actress so honest and so matter-of-fact about her character that I can only wonder if she is, in fact, everything she portrays. Juno works as a comedy, as a drama and as a romance; it makes you feel a bit grateful for the hope it creates in you, grateful that it's feel-good without making you feel cheesy about feeling good, grateful that it's a great film without an ending that depresses you. Juno works also because there are no obvious embellishments: Juno is the average kid - not a repressed genius, simultaneously battling poverty, evil parents, a bad neighbourhood and extreme social ostracism. Her averageness is appealing and genuine; in fact, it's what makes the film so great.

Young Juno MacGuff has discovered that she is pregnant. The idea of abortion does not appeal to her. She decides, instead, that she will give her child up for adoption. Enter: Vanessa and Mark Loring, the seemingly wonderful couple that cannot have children. Things seem perfect, but there turn out to be several little imperfections along the way. The movie describes how Juno deals with it all and how, as it often happens, these things just deal with themselves.

As coming-of-age tales go, Juno is less obvious and more thought-provoking than most. Teenage pregnancy has been done, of course, but it hasn't been done thus: without trauma, psychological distress and lessons to be learnt about the struggles of teen mothers and the criminals they inevitably bring into the world. Teenage love stories have been done too, but it is refreshing to watch a teen movie in which the most popular boy in school doesn't fall in love with the clever but misunderstood girl in glasses and braces (who morphs into a beautiful, popular girl by the end of the movie, replacing the hero's ex-girlfriend as prom queen). More importantly, there is no great transformation in Juno, no realisation that beauty is only skin-deep, no celebration of the underdog and no uplift of the downtrodden. And thankfully, it is not a satire either.

Ellen Page carries off the role of Juno with a certain familiar lethargy in her voice and astute humour in her person; her character is whimsical and endearing, with the unmistakable quality of over-smartness and sarcasm that you have seen several times before in several teenagers before. Michael Cera is excellent as the awkward and passive Paulie Bleeker, the young man who knocked Juno up. I wonder if it is a testament of Page's skills or Cera's that one can see why young Paulie Bleeker is so attractive to Juno, despite seeming so insipid individually. Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman as Vanessa and Mark Loring are sensitive and convincing in their portrayals. Garner is understated and all-smiles in her role; indeed, she reminds one of a young Julia Roberts. Bateman is so winsome and engaging as Mark that one tends to fall a little bit in love with him. Of course, with Bateman, one always does.

The film has excellent dialogue as well, particularly in the camaraderie that exists between Juno and her father and step-mother (played by J. K. Simmons and Alison Janney). There are several moments of infinite wisdom and understanding between father and daughter in the film: "Thanks for having me and my irresponsible child over your house," says Juno's father to the Lorings when they meet for the first time, and a quick look passes between them. Later in the movie, when a very pregnant Juno enters the room, he greets her warmly with "Hey there, big puffy version of Junebug!" Clearly, this is a relationship that involves a lot of love, humour and very little judgement.

The film moves well, without ever being too slow. Beginning with Juno's narrative voice and ending with it again, it is personal enough to be intimate, but detached enough to be objective. Particularly memorable is a visual image at the end of the movie when Paulie Bleeker visits Juno in the hospital: the understanding that exists between them becomes clear in the warmth they share. When the movie ends, it makes no happily-ever-after promises, but it lets you know, after a unique fashion of its own, that things are going to be okay.

Clearly, it's been a year for pregnant women: Knocked Up, Waitress and Juno have entered 2007 with their respective pro-life messages. But while the former two have been heartwarming and funny in their own ways, it is Juno that truly carries any weight with it, because it, like teenage pregnancy and teenage romance, is very real.

The Penniless Student's Photographic Guide to the Pubs, Bars, Inns and other Respected Establishments of York

2008-01-28T17:26:00.000+05:30

York's oldest licensed inn. And I love how it's spelt. Makes me want to get my paleography book out and annotate it.

One of the worst puns ever. Still kind of makes you laugh when you go past it, though.

I really wonder why they'd call it that. This is a local pub, by the way.

York's local Parish:

But when you enter, they want to know what drink you'll have.

In true Dickensian style:

The Sunday Telegraph does not lie.

And they say a living is hard to come by in this country. Apparently Simon Simpson butchers families for a living.

Really have no idea what this is. (Picture courtesy: Abhinav)

Yup. She lived here (Picture courtesy: Madhuri).

If this doesn't convince people, I don't know what will (Picture courtesy: Madhuri)!

And last, but not least, at a window on Thief Lane :

Trials, Tribulations and Triumphs: What I Did and Why and How in my First Three Months in the Land Without Sunshine

2008-01-14T10:56:00.000+05:30

Do you think he plans it all out or just makes it up as he goes along?

- Cutler Beckett's officer to Cutler Beckett about Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

I cooked. Every single day. Well, almost. I vacuumed and did my laundry as well, but those don't feel like achievements. I cooked pretty much all the cuisines I know: South Indian, North Indian, Chinese, Italian, Mexican, you name it. And believe me, I make a killer sambar. I had several non-Indians hankering after what they called my 'curry' (basically any subji / bhaji) and asking for recipes. Not only did this make me feel exotic, it also made me realise that I can survive without Saravana Bhavan. Although not for long, which is why I was found in Chennai in December.

I learnt how to drink tea like the English and wine like the English. How do the English drink tea and wine, you ask? In copious amounts.

I trekked. Yes, indeed; I went on a walk into the Dalby Forest in Yorkshire with the Outdoor Society of the University of York one bright Saturday and had a lovely time, despite my asthma acting up at inopportune moments. It was cold, wet and crazy... and the weather gods decided to send us the first hailstorm of the season for about fifteen minutes when we were in the middle of a rather large stretch of treeless land. But despite that, I had a lovely time.

I trekked. Again. And this time, it was a big trek. Again with the Outdoor Society, I went on a trek in the Lake District, where we bravely scaled several peaks, including the highest point in England, thank you very much, managing a whopping 18 km in a day. The most surreal moment of it all was when I was climbing a perfectly vertical stretch at the top of Red Pike: a few feet away from me, to the right, was a middle-aged woman climbing down the same stretch; we looked at each other and grinned; I was, at the moment, trying very hard not to look down (or, in fact, up); suddenly she used her free hand to tap me on the shoulder; I looked at her, a bit petrified, hoping she wasn't going to ask me to offer support; smiling disarmingly, she said, "Can you believe we're doing this for fun?"; and we both burst into laughter right there, not caring that we each had some very serious, very dangerous scrambling to do, and certainly not caring that we were making our respective groups wait for us.

I declaimed Shakespeare at the Globe Theatre, Coleridge at the Lake District and Auden at York. Could I be more pretentious?

I stayed awake all night studying. Believe it or not, I've never done that before in my life. Even though I was a CBSE student in school. For the first time ever, I deemed studying more important than sleep and stayed up to finish a paper. I think it's an achievement. Not that I'm ever going to do it again.

I discovered that little alleys in York are called snickelways, and that the one that I go through at least once a week is called the Whip-ma-Whop-ma Gate. Now if someone had said this to me before, I would have done a little jig every time I walked through the street. Now it's too cold to do that. It isn't, however, too cold to use the word snickelway in every other conversation, which is what I am endeavouring to do.

I got chased by cows and horses. Note the plural. I don't want to talk about it.

I went ice-skating, fell on my back several times, but always got right back up and foolishly persevered, taking the "If at first you don't succeed..." adage a tad more seriously than it was meant to be taken.

I lived alone. And that is a story in itself.

The Grand Opening

2007-12-30T12:26:00.000+05:30

Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.

- John Anthony Ciardi

One fine (well, about as fine as it gets in the UK, really) day in London, I spent about an hour at the Tate Modern Museum trying to find the basement exhibit, which several signs pointed to. There were crowds of people waiting to see it, long queues and several people (mostly Americans, I must add) with gigantic cameras hanging from their necks. We wandered about the basement for a while, trying to find the exhibit.

"Do you think these white walls represent the angst of existence?" I asked my friend. She, however, had more faith than me in contemporary art and insisted that we were in the wrong place. "For all you know," I added, "we could be looking at art right now and just not realising it." We plodded on, not wanting to look stupid, while various others in the room, with obviously finer minds than us, took notes and patted their chins with one end of their glasses.

We walked about the basement a bit more, and when we overheard people talking about the rejection of traditional perspective and the traumatic nature of experience, we, determined not to be outdone, also discussed the use of abstract expressionism as a representation of the negation of basic assumptions of trench warfare and punk haircuts.

Suddenly it dawned on me - and I am still particularly proud that it dawned on me first. I remembered reading about this somewhere, and suddenly all the pieces just fell together. The exhibit was, in fact, this gigantic crack on the floor. Obviously, it was representative of how the world is falling apart or the deconstruction of civilisation or something as imaginative as that. The crack on the floor spread elegantly from one end of the room to the other, occasionally dividing into branches (no doubt a symbol of our discord and violence). We, with our juvenile mindsets, took photographs of ourselves as though at the brink of an earthquake with dramatic expressions of panic on our faces and sent them to people we know who would enjoy the joke.

My favourite part of this story is the discovery that this crack in the floor is worth 300000 pounds. I wonder what the crack in my house ceiling is worth.

Things to do when I get back to India

2007-12-16T22:45:00.000+05:30

25 mugs of filter coffee a day.
Beach.
Rava dosai.
Stand in the sun and get six months' worth Vitamin D.
Paneer!
Not wear fourteen layers of clothing.
Vengaya sambar.
Drive car all over city!
Keerai masiyal.
Get haircut that doesn't cost 15 pounds.
Schepankazhangu roast.
Say sarcastic things in Tamil.
Dal Makhani.
Bargain with auto drivers.
Paruppu usli.
Sweat! (I can't even remember what that feels like anymore!)
Thayir saadam and avakka.

Written on 2 December

London, Baby! - Part III

2007-12-02T12:35:00.000+05:30

Note: This post does not contain the wanton escapades that were inevitably a part of my third four-day weekend in London. To hear more about those, please have five hundred pounds transferred to my bank account.

I arrived again in London, late on a Thursday night and was warmly received by a kind friend who put me up. Safe and warm in the very heart of London, reading London Times, the free newspaper that they give you on the tube, which had a feature, based on a scholarly survey, about how girls with the name Vanessa are easier to pick up than girls with the name Kate, I wondered what it is about London that keeps bringing me back. It isn't just how beautiful and historic and lively it is, although it is all that as well: but more than anything else, London makes me keenly aware that the world exists only for you to explore it; indeed, London epitomises that belief for me. And I keep going back.

On Friday morning, I was left to my own purposes, as most people that I know in London have classes and jobs and lives to get back to. I spent the morning walking through the gorgeous, gorgeous Hyde Park, where I stood unabashed and clicked photos at the Marble Arch, the Wellington Memorial and the Speaker's Corner, and the gorgeous, gorgeous St. James' Park, where the colours of autumn, ungreyed as yet by rain and winter, were on full, proud, magnanimous display, finally ending up at Buckingham Palace, where a practice session was being conducted of a parade for the arrival of the King of Saudi Arabia - because apparently, it's hard for a hundred soldiers to take half a step per minute till the crowds watching them begin to suffer from brain atrophy due to sheer boredom. Well, practice makes perfect.

Making my way through the royal horses, which are really so well-behaved it's a little disturbing, I walked down the beautiful South Bank pier, staring up at the Houses of Parliament, the Big Ben and Westminster Abbey, went into St. Margaret's Church, climbed up the Jewel Tower and learned all there is to know about the British Parliament. While we're on the subject, I would warn the unsuspecting tourist that the Jewel Tower isn't really as great as it is made out to be, so save those five pounds for something else.

I then walked down Whitehall, peered into Downing Street, because peering is all you can really do, walked through Horse Guards and the old war office, bought a sandwich for lunch and finally ended up at Trafalgar Square. At Trafalgar Square, I went into the National Art Gallery and spent a glorious hour, walking through the Medieval and Renaissance sections, delighting in the fact that I could recognise both names and paintings. Being time-bound, however, I left the gallery, making a mental note to return, and went to meet a friend with whom I walked about Piccadilly Circus until it was time to finally - finally! - do one of the things I have been dying to do since 1997: watch Lion King at the Lyceum Theatre!

What can I say about Lion King on broadway that hasn't been said already? It helps, I'm sure, that I bring the perspective of a person who has watched the movie a million times, knows the dialogues and songs by heart, and has dreamt about this day since she was a little girl in New York who couldn't get tickets to see the musical at the Minskoff Theatre. Unfortunately, that little girl was disappointed. She could not find the magic that she looked for. But the slightly less demanding person permeating the vestiges of that little girl loved the show for its music and the sets and its happy, happy songs. Lion King was three hours of good, solid theatre, and there is probably nothing quite like it for bringing a story about animals to the stage, but there will always be a part of me that will prefer the dvd.

On Saturday, another dream was realised. After walking through Leicester Square Gardens and taking photos of everything in sight, I went, with two fellow-fans to watch Spamalot at Palace Theatre. The thing about Spamalot, more than Spamalot itself, is really its atmosphere. When 1500 Python fans get together under one roof, the bonding that takes place is like no other. Bear in mind that these are 1500 people who have watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail more often than they have seen their own reflections in the mirror, and, therefore, know all the songs and dialogues by heart, and there is no way these people will allow Sir Lancelot to dance a lot without chipping in and singing along. Yessiree, whether it's the bright side of life that we're looking at or the braveness of Sir Robin that we're commending, we're not going to shut up. We will sing along, chorus "Ni!" joyfully, and proclaim our lack of deadness with conviction. Most importantly, we will cheer violently when God's feet come onstage, because, after all, John Cleese is God. Spamalot is one of the world's great life-affirming experiences because there are really only two types of people in the world when you think about it: Python fans and fools. And there were no fools in the audience that night.

After Spamalot, well, there was the euphoria during which I don't really remember what happened. I know that at some point in the evening, I walked down Islington to eat dinner at a Gallipolli restaurant with my cousin and my uncle, but pretty much everything else is blank, because I was floating on a Python-cloud, humming the Camelot song till I was politely asked to shut up. Later that night, I went to Soho with two friends and walked about for hours, both intimidated and exhilarated by the sordidness of it all. A tell-tale picture of me (grinning joyously) outside what declares itself to be Soho's biggest sex shop is currently doing the rounds among several people I know, but what is even more delightful is that that wasn't the most scandalous thing about the seedy underbelly of Soho where we found ourselves.

Well, to cut a long story short, we survived Saturday night to wake up bright and early on Sunday morning and head to the famous Camden town market - a huge Pondy Bazaar affair. We had a delightful time, rummaging through several tiny shops, all of which sold, amongst other things, expensive hats, expensive scarves and expensive t-shirts with dirty puns on them. Mid-afternoon found me on Liverpool Street, where I demanded lunch at a friend's place and spent several hours exchanging UK-tales with old friends. It must be mentioned here that providence had brought my friend's mother to London that weekend and she whipped up a fabulous South Indian meal for us. I will eternally be grateful for that day.

Early in the evening, I headed to Trafalgar Square with a brilliant, if tardy, young woman, to see the Mayor's Diwali celebrations. It was a disappointing entertainment show, with poor dances and worse music; there were several stalls selling Ayurvedic products, laddoos and subscriptions to bridal magazines; I was asked to join both the Yoga association and the Hindus-in-London association; free milk sweets were randomly distributed by volunteers; and there was a chaat stall with a mile-long queue. We were joined by more friends, and we four equally bored young women ultimately found ourselves spending the evening at the National Art Gallery, looking at the sections I hadn't seen the last time, and a special exhibition of paintings from Siena. We ended up missing the Mayor's speech and headed out for dinner, hating the London weather (which, incidentally, squashed any hopes we might have cherished for fireworks in the late evening sky) and wishing we were home instead, actually celebrating Diwali the way it should be celebrated.

The night, however, being still young, afforded a trip to the Victoria tube station to wave a friend off to Oxford, and a long, glorious walk down the South Bank Pier, loving the Big Ben madly by night and never wanting to forget the sight of its tall structure against the stars. It was the weather that finally prompted us to leave and return to warmer quarters.

Monday morning was bright and glorious: the sun suddenly sprang out as though it had been there all along, and made me fall in love even more with London by day. A trip was made to the large and charming Victoria and Albert Museum, where several hours were spent soaking in culture. We particularly enjoyed the Asia rooms, the ceramics and the sculptures. Later in the afternoon, we sat at the paddling pond in the gardens, ate sandwiches and felt intellectual.

And if I haven't impressed you enough yet, I hope this will do the trick: I then attended two classes at the London School of Economics - one on ethnography and participant observation and the other on gender theories of production and reproduction. Both classes were interesting, and both were lectures. At York, I only attend participatory seminars and group discussions; the lecture mode seemed suddenly disconcerting, but was definitely fun.

Later in the evening, I attended choral evensong at the Westminster Abbey, enjoying every bit of it - more because of how beautiful the abbey is than anything else. The Anglican evensong is very different from the kind I have experienced before. Even the Yorkminster evensong, which I have attended and enjoyed, was not as choral, or even as interactive, as the one at the Westminster. And best of all: there was the South Bank walk to look forward to once again after evensong.

Finally, it was time to say goodbye to London once more. Funnily enough, as I write this, I am packing for yet another four-day weekend in London. Yes, it's funny how London draws me to it in the most irresistible way. But I must confess that what I look forward to even more is the trip to London that I will make after this one: that's the trip that's taking me home.

Written on 29 November

In the Shambles...

2007-11-19T13:34:00.000+05:30

In the Shambles, you will come across several wood-shops; intrigued, you will enter them; you will be suddenly uplifted by the scent of fresh wood; a little heady, you will look around and see intricate chess pieces, owls and garden gnomes carved out of wood; you will admire how sweet and old-fashioned it all is, and suddenly you will see the entire cast of The Lord of the Rings carved in wood or the most absurd Samurai chess set or the signature guitar of Paul McCartney at a window; you will laugh a little at how unlikely it seems; eagerly, you will peer at the price; an hour later, your friends will find you wandering about the Shambles like a lunatic, muttering nonsense about wanting 250 pounds for a guitar that can fit into your pocket.

In the Shambles, you will find Mr. Sandwich, who will remind you a little of the "Soup Nazi" in a Seinfeld episode; you will enter his shop, which is about four feet by four feet (with Mr. Sandwich occupying two feet by four feet), after standing forty-five minutes in a queue that extends all the way down to Little Shambles; you will wipe the annoyed expression off your face because the last thing you want to do is offend Mr. Sandwich in any possible way; you will tell him you want sandwich number twenty-four in a clear, ringing monotone and he will nod perfunctorily at you before turning his back to you and making a sandwich that you cannot see him make; he will hand you the sandwich and hold out his hand; you will give him the exact amount you owe him, because you can't waste his time by asking for change; you will walk out with the most wonderful sandwich in the world in your hand and feel, all of a sudden, like the king of the world.

In the Shambles, you will find a coat-of-arms shop, where you may give them your surname; they will trace it back to the medieval age, find the coat-of-arms that went with the surname and make it for you in silk; unfortunately, when you ask them to trace a coat-of-arms for Subramaniam, they will look bewildered; when you insist that they search anyway, they will do so and come up with no results; when you look utterly crestfallen at the news, they will offer you makeshift surnames such as "Surrey" and "Shelton"; when you shake your head a little snobbishly at these names, they will hasten to inform you that these names belonged to great noblemen and lords; briefly, you will consider changing your name just so you can hang a coat-of-arms up on your walls; discreetly lowering their voices, they will tell you how much this costs; you will realise that you have to either sell your house or work as a taxi-driver in London for a year to have that much money; to preserve what little dignity you now have, you will leave the shop making arbitrary comments about how the Subramaniams too were royalty once.

In the Shambles, you will find what claims to be one of the oldest sweet shops in the country; you will peer in warily because you will know that there is no way you can afford sweets from the oldest sweet shop in the world unless you sell your kidney; to your delight, you will find that the sweets are actually priced reasonably; you will see big jars lined across all the walls with soft round balls in every colour possible; you will shyly ask for a hundred grams of the blue balls - just so you can, with a straight face, someday tell your friends that you once ate blue balls - and they will pack it up for you with ribbons; as you leave, you will be filled with the strangest feeling in the world: that you've lived in an Enid Blyton book for five glorious minutes.

Written on 6 November

Yorkshire Pudding

2007-11-05T01:15:00.000+05:30

I have officially been living in York for over a month now. It is time, I think, to reflect on the past month and the lessons learnt. But before you are subjected to an account of the trials and tribulations of having to eat one's own cooking everyday, let me paint the pretty picture of York for you so that you'll realise how the beauty of York makes up even for my poor cooking.

When I turned up at the University of York to move into my room, I discovered something that made me realise that somebody up there must love me at least a little bit: I have a lake-view room. Yes, a lake-view room. A lake-view room! The proverbial room with a view. Waking up in my room, therefore, is like waking up to a picture postcard. My window overlooks a huge lake and the silver bridge that connects Wentworth College to James College, and if you peer out just a little more, you'll see a huge tree that elegantly dips into the lake and makes for a deliciously eerie forest-look. It's a view you can stare at forever.

Unfortunately, this beauty comes at a price; and this is a fairly noisy price, because this also means that the damn ducks and geese (which, incidentally, can give the crows of Stella Maris a real run for their samosas!) create a racket every morning and won't let a poor, hard-working Literature student sleep beyond 8 am (which is usually when the sun begins to make its wary appearance). I've also discovered - the hard way, I must add - that leaving your window open involves the risk of having to clear up after an army of messy pigeons decides to have a party in your room. And the biggest price I pay is when, at 10 am, I give myself a two-hour deadline to finish a tedious treatise by Quintilian, and discover, at noon, that I have spent the past three hours staring out of my window, rather than reading about the art of rhetoric. Thus it is that I sit at seminars with my well-read classmates (who probably don't have a lake-view room) and look steadfastly at my shoelaces whilst a discussion is being conducted on Institutio Oratoria.

Having settled into my little room, I began to explore, of course, aided and abetted in the noisiest fashion possible by the ever-present ducks. The university campus, which, incidentally, has the highest duck-to-student ratio in the country, is beautiful, built around a magnificent lake with several stunning bridges across it. Around every corner is a garden or pasture or meadow. Right behind where I live is a little thicket that leads to the lacrosse fields. On another side is Walmgate Stray, a large area of open land where I have, many painful times, been accosted by angry cows. Beyond Walmgate Stray is the Quaker Cemetery and the huge and beautiful gardens that surround it. Fenced off from the gardens are the horses' meadows, where Shetland ponies eat hay and mind their own business till someone incredibly stupid decides to be adventurous, climb over the fence and take a shortcut to the cemetery gardens, in which case they will chase her and make neighing noises that frighten the living daylights out of her. Hypothetical situation, of course.

I live at Wentworth college, which is on one end of the campus, and have classes at Langwith college, which is somewhere in the middle of the campus, and a good fifteen-minute walk away. Beyond Langwith are the Vice-Chancellor's grounds, where you might often find me sitting under a bush, reading Quintilian and cursing my lake-view. Further down is what is imaginatively called "The Quiet Place", where the lake ends and the gorgeous Heslington gardens begin. This is a designated quiet area where students are not allowed to make any noise. Instead, the ducks and geese get together and create a racket, unhindered by students. A little wooden bridge here leads back to Langwith and Quintilian. On account of this diversion, I give myself a little extra time to get to class; if Quintilian is kept waiting, it is generally because of these gardens.

On the Langwith side of the University is the village and on the Wentworth side is the town. In my first two weeks at York, I acted like a perfectly obnoxious tourist, explored both and took photographs incessantly. I did all that when I should have been getting my bank account, buying my groceries, enrolling for classes and attending orientations. Thankfully, my mother was with me through the first week and ensured that I did not get myself massively into trouble.

In these early explorations, I found that when Lonely Planet said York was a walled city, it actually meant that York is a walled city. The city centre, outside of which are the University and most residential areas, is fortified on all sides, and you enter the city through gatehouses or bars. There are four main bars and several minor ones that lead into York, and you can climb up the bars, on to the walls and walk around the city on the walls. Which I did. Simply because I could.

Standing on the walls, I peered into the city, which is alive and bustling at all hours of the day because no one in York ever seems to work. But as I have said in an earlier post, down is never as great as up; so I peered up and drank in the glorious sight that is the Yorkminster. If, in the future, the Yorkminster is all that I ever remember about this year in the UK, I will consider it a year well-spent. Rivalling the Westminster in terms of beauty, the Yorkminster sort of makes you forget everything around you. I have, since then, spent many hours standing outside the Yorkminster and admiring its beauty from every angle.

In York, no building is permitted to be taller than the Yorkminster, and therefore, no matter where you are, you allow it to be your pole star and to guide you, in its reassuring way, out of the wrong left turn that you keep taking. Yes, I will admit that I got lost about thrice a day during my first few weeks in York (now it's only once each day), but getting lost in York is a bit of a bonus, because an extra half hour of walking only means an extra half hour of beauty, especially to those of us with no deadlines.

The Yorkminster has defined my nights, though, more often than it has defined my days. When lit up in pale yellow incandescent lights, the Yorkminster springs suddenly alive, grander and more loquacious than ever, beckoning you into its warm, inviting glow, sort of teasing you a little with its presence. If anything can make you forget the biting cold of your surroundings at night, it is this sight.

In my first week, I went for one of York's famous ghost-walks, where a man, covered almost entirely in blood, took us through the town in the middle of the night and introduced us to all its ghosts, making us do the most absurd things to invoke the ghosts and creating an atmosphere that was both hilarious and eerie at once.

Every October, York celebrates the end of the season with the Illuminating York festival, when the city is lit up in the nights, and various activities take place through the town. This year, amongst other things, the Yorkminster was lit up in various colours that follow the patterns of sounds made into microphones that hang in the area. As someone who walks to the Yorkminster in the middle of the night even when no such thing is happening, I turned up every night of the festival to stare unabashedly at the play of light; one night, I even struck up an exciting conversation with the lights-operator, who, no doubt, had got used to me being the last to leave, about the lights he used and his techniques. But despite the colourful pageantry of Illuminating York, I prefer the warm glow of the everynight Yorkminster and its intimate surroundings.

And if my nights have been about the Yorkminster, my days in the city have undoubtedly been about the Shambles, the tiny medieval street that has a story to tell you with every step you take. The Shambles is narrow, lined with cobblestone - cobblestone! - and has a way of packing a million things into a small amount of space. Little Shambles is its extension, a tiny yard that houses a market everyday where most things in the world are sold.

During the weekend, the city has little markets in every pocket, with musicians playing on the streets all day long, various street-performers (including Silver-Man, who disappeared into his silver clothes) and little old ladies who ask you if you want to read the Bible with them.

At some point, when you grow tired of the noisy bustle of the weekend market, you will veer towards the Yorkminster automatically; go a little further down and visit the Museum Gardens, where you will find the ruins of an old church, the Yorkshire Museum and a landscape that will take your breath away. Take the walking trail, and it will ultimately lead you to the Ouse bank walk, where you can see the white swans make their appearance. The Ouse bank walk, if you can ever tear yourself away from the gardens, will take you all the way down the river on a mossy, picturesque path to the famous railway museum of York. Famous, but boring, so let's move on.

I exhausted all these places in my first two weeks, but something about the city keeps bringing me back every so often. Since coming to York, I have spent a day in Leeds and a day in Bradford, but found little in either of the two places to compare with the charm that I associate with places like York and London. York is the sort of place you will always return to, because there's the nagging feeling at the back of your mind that though you've seen so much, you may still have seen only a small part of all that there is to see.

Written on 1 November

London, Baby! - Part II

2007-10-24T09:10:00.000+05:30

You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

- Samuel Johnson

Returning to London feels, in a sense, like doing what comes to you most naturally. When, in the United Kingdom, you have seen one place, you automatically want to return to London, because that is where the kingdom both begins and ends. So it was with warm hearts that we returned to a cold London, feeling at once like tourists and like residents, because that is just how London makes you feel.

We returned to London pretty late in the night from York and did what one does best in London - walk about the Monopoly board.

On a related note, transport in London (well, in the whole of the United Kingdom, really) is absurdly expensive. It's almost scary how much one ends up paying for a taxi, or even for the tube or the bus. My suggestion to you, if you are an Indian in the UK, is to forcefully get out of the habit of multiplying all costs into eighty and passing out when you realise that you've just paid Rs. 400 to travel a kilometre (or sometimes for a sandwich or the newspaper). On the upside, though, I now know that there's at least one well-paid profession I can look forward to in case my MA doesn't really work out.

The next morning took us to Oxford, that grand dame of education, where I met smarter academics than myself - one of whom took me around Oxford in a way that made me feel most at home. Oxford, surprisingly, is much smaller than its map would indicate. It was thus that we walked about Oxford in just half a day, going to such erudite places as Radcliffe's Camera, exhibitions on the story of Oxford, a walk through Christ's College (which, I am reliably informed, is the richest college of them all), an exhibition on Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio - 'Italy's Three Crowns' - at the Bodleian Library (a place that I have had several longing dreams of) and even a bookstore (since I never can resist these anywhere).

The streets of Oxford are lined with huge, beautiful and intimidatingly historic buildings, all of which look too important for low-life scum such as myself to venture into. It's all a bit daunting, really, and I think that's what makes Oxford so grand and awe-inspiring, and, more importantly, the sort of place one would aspire to no matter what stage of their life they are in. If that aspect serves to make a place like Oxford less approachable, and therefore scarier, then so be it, because no matter what the rest of Britain cries from rooftops about the intellectual snobbery of the older universities, you sort of know they are partly desirous of just such stature.

A late evening return to London inevitably means more walking, of course. So back to the old Monopoly board.

The next morning sort of de-romanticised the idea of walking about London for me, because it was cold, wet and rainy - exactly the sort of day one shouldn't be walking about in London. And yet, we did, because we had only three days in London, and, by Jove, we were determined to make the most of them.

So, in pouring rain, protected by trifling umbrellas that often turned inside out, one of which almost flew away with me holding on to it for dear life, stopping every so often only for hot soup or hot chocolate or hot coffee or anything hot, really, simply because it was hot, we headed to the Tower of London.

And, oh, there is a kind of magic woven about the Tower of London that cannot be described in words - it is a place that seems to have history simply pouring out of its walls, its cold stone walls. In the midst of the courtyard, all of a sudden, an actual story of the escape of two convicts from the tower jail was enacted in a hilarious and interactive fashion by local actors. Riotously, they walked us through the tower grounds, alternately preaching Catholicism to us and calling us knaves and curs. Really, that sort of thing is not done often enough nowadays; nobody goes about calling the other an idle immaterial skein of sleeve-silk or a green sarcenet flap for a sore eye or the tassel of a prodigal's purse (Thersites in Troilus and Cressida by Shakespeare) or at least good old-fashioned knaves and curs anymore. There was a time when insults had class.

The denouement of this tour was an exhibition on the Crown Jewels and, finally, the Crown Jewels themselves. So here's the plan: as soon as you read this, pack your bags and head to London, because what I think we need to do is get the Kohinoor diamond back as soon as possible. While we're at it, we can probably grab some of the others as well - you know, as interest. And don't breathe a word of this to anyone. I've come up with a brilliant break-in plan. Someone just remember to bring a fake diamond to replace the original with. Shush.

Next was an exhibition on the building of the tower bridge and its working. Now, I may not have studied engineering, but I certainly can appreciate a great engineering feat when I see one. The tower bridge is a breathtaking sight, and truly an engineering marvel. At the end of the exhibition are the Victorian Engine rooms, which are a tad complicated for a mere humanities student, but still impressive. But the greatest moment of all was the raising of the tower bridge to allow ships to pass through - that is the sort of moment that makes you acutely and painfully aware of how small you are and, indeed, how insignificant.

From the tower bridge, we went to St. Paul's Cathedral, since we only stood tentatively at its steps the last time. St. Paul's is not as large as I expected it to be, but is quite exquisite. One can spend several hours just standing in the cathedral and staring up at the paintings, frescoes and stained glasses in the dome. Below the cathedral is the crypt, which is actually a lot less fearsome than it sounds. In the crypt are the tombs of several of England's greats, and some lovely marble sculptures that sort of tower over you as you make your way through its claustrophobic passages.

But going below is never as delightful as going up in any sort of scenario in the world. So when we bravely climbed up the 407 steps of the spiral staircase that led to the Whispering Gallery, the Stone Gallery and the Golden Gallery, we were breathless for more reasons than one.

When we exited, we found, to our delight, that the sun had come out - because, as they say, if you don't like the weather in England, wait ten minutes. The weather made us enthusiastic for another walk - and so we walked across the gorgeous Millenium bridge, made of steel and shining with the dampness of the recent rains.

For a quick taste of royalty, we now headed to the Kensington Palace, where an exhibition of photographs of Princess Diana was taking place. The tour of Kensington Palace - which is really much, much prettier than the Buckingham Palace - was just a little more than an hour, and was quite informative. Kensington, probably every royal's favourite palace of all, has a certain air of warmth and intimacy about it, although it certainly is regal and huge as well. Still furnished beautifully on the inside, it has a most welcoming attitude, which is pretty much the last thing you would expect.

Walking out of Kensington Palace, one enters the sprawling gardens, which are quite as stunning as the palace itself, and certainly much more approachable. A walk through the gardens - past the lake where the waterfowl idly sun themselves, oblivious to all crowds - takes you out of the royal grounds with a sigh that makes you promise that you will return.

The evening was completed for me by what I looked forward to the most in London: a show at the West End. Yes, we watched The Phantom of the Opera at Her Majesty's Theatre, paying an obnoxious amount for seats at the very rear end of the theatre hall. But the location of the seats didn't really matter in the enormity of the show: instead, I found myself irrepressibly drawn to the performance for the way it all came together, for its sheer magnitude, and for the way it pierced through large numbers of people to speak to me, at the very last row, as though it were speaking only to me.

The next day was relatively sedate - involving a good deal of walking as usual. The evening took us back to the West End once more: to St. Martin's Theatre to watch Mousetrap - the 22,082nd show, to be exact. Unfortunately for me, I've read the short story version of the play, Three Blind Mice, and knew the ending. But despite that, I thoroughly enjoyed myself at the show - a show that some critics have found dull and obsolete lately, possibly because of certain qualities it possesses that I ascribe to tradition alone.

I do hope to watch more shows in London soon - particularly Spamalot, Wicked, Mary Poppins and Les Miserables. Oh, and The Fiddler on the Roof. And maybe Avenue Q. In the coming nine months, I certainly foresee theatre as my greatest reason for wanton expenditure.

Sunday was our last day in London, and we spent the morning in the most glorious way at the Globe Theatre. Starting with an exhibition in the basement and culminating with a tour of the theatre itself, Shakespeare's Globe spelt pure excitement for me. Unfortunately, the site of the original Globe is desecrated (yes, I know that's a strong word) now; but the new Globe is so beautiful - just as I had imagined it after watching the none-too-reliable Shakespeare in Love. To stand in the theatre is to be transported. When, at the end of the tour, I demanded if I could go on stage (the thought gives me thrills!), our tour guide grinned at me in a most indulgent way and said, "If you want to go on the stage, write to the casting director and audition. It's the only way."

If England is about great literature for me, it's about cricket to others. So, we went to the Lord's Stadium. Yes, I went too. It was quite nice, really. Our guide was a jolly chap. The story of the Ashes Trophy was interesting. And the whatever-you-call-it was quite nice and green as well. There. That's all I'm saying. Oh, and this: we walked past Abbey Road on our way to the stadium, and that was what made Lord's memorable for me.

The afternoon was spent walking around Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, the Big Ben, the Buckingham Palace and Hyde Park. Later in the evening, I met my pinkest friend and visited her rooms at the University College, and finally returned to our bed and breakfast to say tearful goodbyes to my father and my brother who were leaving for Chennai and New York respectively early the next morning.

Later in the morning, I said my temporary goodbye to London, as I departed for York. For me, London, is pretty high up on my list of places I'm in love with. I'm beginning to realise that travelling is all about falling in love - or a little bit in love - with the places that you visit, and leaving little portions of your heart all over the world. But what strengthens this belief for me the most is my absolute, certain knowledge that the central portion - and the largest portion, perhaps the very core, if the heart has a core at all - is usually at home.

Written on 18 October

Scotland, Ho!

2007-10-10T23:58:00.000+05:30

Tommy: Doesn't it make you proud to be Scottish?

Renton: It's shite being Scottish. We're the lowest of the low. The scum of the fuckin' earth. Most people hate the English. I don't. They're just wankers. We, on the other hand, are colonised by wankers. We can't even find a decent culture to be colonised by. It's a shite state of affairs to be in, Tommy, and no amount of fresh air is gonna' make any fuckin' difference.

- from the film Trainspotting

There are more sheep than people in Scotland. Really. In fact, there are more cars and cottages than people in Scotland. It doesn't make too much sense. And there aren't even that many sheep or cars or cottages in Scotland to begin with. So basically its this gigantic but incredibly beautiful land mass with very little to occupy it. Admittedly, a lot of space is taken up by ancient castles and palaces and manors that they charge you 10 pounds to enter - so don't worry too much about the economy of too little - but one does wonder once in a while who looks after all the sheep. They're pretty well-behaved and everything, and they're generally content to graze about the aforementioned gigantic but incredibly beautiful land mass, but who takes them home at night?

With that knowledgeable introduction to Scotland, I'm sure you all don't feel the need to purchase the Lonely Planet guide anymore. So I will quickly move into personal escapades.

Our journey to Scotland was fraught with adventures and difficulties. For one, my brother was stuck aboard a train to Edinburgh with seventy-five thousand pieces of luggage while the rest of us meandered about the Newcastle station in peaceful ignorance of the fact that the train doors were shut and we could not board the train. It was only when we heard the chugging of the engines and saw my brother's distraught head popping out of a window that we realised that we had missed our train - and that not only had we missed our train, but we had also left it up to one strapping young member of the family to disembark and unload seventy-five thousand pieces of luggage at Edinburgh from a train that stops at Edinburgh for about three-and-a-half seconds. After several frantic ISD calls, it was decided that we try our best to somehow meet at the Edinburgh station.

It was at this juncture that we realised that we actually needed to disembark at Kirkcaldy, the station after Edinburgh, because that was closer to the resort where we happened to have a timeshare (later we discovered that Markinch, the station after Kirkcaldy, is even closer). Several more ISD calls later, it came to our notice that the train my brother was on did not, in fact, go to Kirkcaldy, whereas the later train that my parents and I boarded did. The new plan was for my brother to unload the seventy-five thousand pieces of luggage at Edinburgh in the three-and-a-half seconds that it stopped there, wait for half an hour, and then load the seventy-five thousand pieces of luggage into our train to Kirkcaldy in the three-and-a-half seconds that our train stopped at Edinburgh.

I don't know how, but all went as planned.

From Kirkcaldy, we were taking no chances. We took a scarily expensive taxi to Kilconquar, the sleepy little seaside hamlet where we were staying. Once the seventy-five thousand pieces of luggage were safely deposited in our rooms we all heaved a sigh of relief and made sambar and rice for dinner, which made us all feel infinitely better.

Kilconquar turned out to be this exquisite series of villas and quaint cottages with stables and little walking trails with equally sleepy little seaside hamlets on either side. In fact, on the way from Kilconquar to Edinburgh is Lower Largo, Fife, where lie the origins of Alexander Selkirk, based on whose life Daniel Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe. In fact, there are little references, such as boards with directions to the Juan Fernandez islands, in this village - possibly because this is its sole claim to fame.

The downside in Scotland is that I was entirely cut off from the internet, as Kilconquar rarely wakes up to the rest of the world. Indeed, I wonder if Kilconquar is ever entirely aware that the rest of the world exists.

Waking up in Scotland was delightful, because when I looked out of the window, I saw horses peacefully trotting about. A pleasant change from the sheep, I must add. But Scotland is much, much colder than England, and each day is practically a battle against the cold. Bundled up in several layers, we braved a bus ride to Edinburgh to visit the castle.

The Edinburgh castle is a real beauty. The architecture is simply superb - not perfect like London's architecture, but a little rough around the edges. It looks like a genuine castle as well, complete with towers and little turrets and stone passages. When you look at it from the outside, all you can do is gasp, and wish a little, at the same time, that you were a part of the lineage. Scotland's Crown jewels were on display, as were the legs of all the Scottish men walking about in kilts. I don't know much about Scottish history (save what little Shakespeare's Macbeth can tell us), so the whole tour was good fun as well.

The sheer loveliness of the Edinburgh castle is the sort of thing that is likely to stay with you forever. You simply cannot ever forget your first view of such a place - it sort of defines all your memories of the place itself. Once I was regretfully informed that it was not possible to immediately set up residence at the castle, I sighed as the unrequited lover does, and moved on.

After walking about Edinburgh a bit more, visiting a few more touristy spots and looking into faces to see if I could spot Alexander McCall Smith, the day was done, for, after all, the United Kingdom shuts shop at 5 pm - a strange phenomenon for someone whose city comes alive in the evening.

The next day, we four strange creatures, bundled up as usual, trudged in pouring rain towards the village of Elie, where, we were told, a certain pub called the Station Buffet was playing the India-Pakistan 2020 finals. Two hours of walking against the wind and the rain led us to the right pub, where I demanded coffee as compensation for all my troubles. But then, the match turned out to be exciting - even for me! The various Scottish folk - who, for some reason, thought it productive to spend a Monday afternoon at the local pub, looked at us strangely, because cricket was not necessarily their cup of tea. It isn't mine, either, really, but I felt strangely patriotic in the last half hour of the match, and looked up from the paper I was reading. I suspect that the people at the pub rather hoped that we'd buy drinks for the house when we won - at least to make up for making them watch cricket for two hours - but the exchange rate rather discourages any such notion.

I then took a walk to the beach. And when I saw it - strangely cold and rocky and deserted - homesickness flooded me. The beaches are a large part of what defines Chennai for me. Scotland's beaches have practically nothing in common with Chennai's.

The walk back to Kilconquar was made infinitely more pleasant by the absence of rain, a different and more picturesque route through a cemetery and India's sweet victory. I traipsed away on another walk once we reached our cottage, chatted the horses up a little (now they all know my life history), and discovered a rather lonely little walking trail surrounded by gigantic trees all around. I ventured forth courageously, humming the lumberjack song to keep me company, and around half an hour later, had no idea where I was. But I plodded on nonetheless, hoping that all roads do indeed lead to Rome, and found myself another half hour later in the cemetery on the route from Elie to Kilconquar. So I said goodbye to the woods that had not killed me even though I sang to them, and rushed back to Kilconquar to tell my family I was alive and well. They did not seem ecstatic at the news.

Our final day in Scotland was cold and rainy once more. In fact, unless told otherwise, you would be right in assuming that all days in Scotland are cold and rainy. We hired a car and drove down to the Glen Livet factory to experience one of Scotland's famous whisky trails. I now know how the single malt whisky is made - and how it is different from blended whisky. At the end of the tour, our wickedly pretty French guide gave us all a glass of whisky to enjoy in the light of our newly-gained knowledge, and I - for the very first time in my life - took in three sips of whisky. Not just any whisky, mind you, it was Scotland's finest single-malt whisky. All the men on the tour then lingered on to talk to the pretty French guide. Oh, she used her powers well.

But what is a trip to Scotland if you have not looked for bright young Ness of the Loch? We drove on to Inverness to hunt for the monster, hoping she would make an appearance for us. But the Loch Ness is much like the agnostic's God: you don't know if she is there, but you keep looking for her nevertheless, and when you don't see her, you feel sort of reaffirmed in a strangely disappointing way.

Thus ended our visit to Scotland. The next morning, we left - this time from Markinch station, and all of us on the same train - and headed to York to confirm my accommodation, leave some of the luggage and basically take a look about the place. We left York considerably lighter, as far as luggage is concerned, and returned to London with about twenty-five thousand pieces of luggage and to breathe in London's glorious air once more. But that is another day's story.

Written on 1 October

London, Baby!

2007-09-27T03:55:00.000+05:30

I will admit that it was with a fair bit of trepidation that I entered Heathrow. On my way to the US in 1997, I threw up dramatically in Heathrow airport. Around three weeks later, on my way back home from the US, I threw up once again at the same place. By then, it had become redundant. I figured I was probably allergic to the place. This time, I feared the worst. But nothing happened. I am stronger than ever before! On that healthy note, I begin to describe my travels in the UK.

Yesterday was just one gigantic board game for me. Being in London is like playing Monopoly for a living. We travelled all over the board, starting from Regent Street and coming back to Regent Street. Only, Monopoly has cheated us a little bit. Most places seem a little far off in Monopoly. The heart of London is, in fact, rather small, and everything is fairly close by. It's utterly brilliant. I walked down Regent Street and suddenly found myself at Piccadilly Circus. I walked down a little more and suddenly found myself in Leicester Square. A little further down - Fleet Street, Baker's Street etc. There's even this pub called the Sherlock Holmes pub - done up like you would do it up in your imagination after reading the collected short stories.

All pubs in London have pretty strange names like "The Crooked Surgeon" or "The Porcupine's Head". It's strange, but weirdly gratifying. I looked about for a proper tavern a la Shakespeare and Marlowe, complete with brawls and everything, but there was none to be found. Apparently there's one near the Globe Theatre, so I'll check that out soon.

Piccadilly is beautiful. It's like the Times Square of London - neon lights and everything. There was a part of me that wondered why a country would call Piccadilly a circus when it's not a circus. But I reminded myself that I come from the country that calls T. Nagar an area when it's not an area. So that set my doubts at rest, and I enjoyed the beauty of Piccadilly by walking up and down the area a million and fifteen times, gaping about with equal astonishment each time.

Oh, and I also went to Soho - the red light area. It was filled with hidden strip clubs, sex shops and places that look like harems. I only walked about the area. I hope to explore it more carefully in the future - mainly because it was once a literary hub, hosting several intellectual greats. I think I could spend the rest of my life just walking around London and doing little else. It really is a walker's paradise. Damn expensive though. Must find that rich husband asap.

Moving on, we went on a boatride on the Thames. The Thames isn't really anymore beautiful than the Buckingham Canal back home. But it's surrounded by such stunning sights - including the all-male school that Daniel Radcliffe studied in, amongst other things - that the river doesn't really matter all that much. I stood on the pier and sang "Growltiger's Last Stand" loudly till my brother threatened to throw me in.

We rode past Buckingham Palace on the bus several times. It isn't really all that impressive - although the stables did look pretty nice. I really hope Windsor is better looking. If there is a fault at all that I can find with London's architecture and beauty, it is that it's fairly dismal - no brightness, no flamboyance; quite dreary, really. I did see this big bunch of punks with pink spikes running up the centre of their scalps, but I suspect that was a one-off occasion.

Later, we went to St. Paul's Cathedral, I stood on the steps and sang "Feed the Birds" loudly till my brother threatened to feed me to the birds. We didn't go in though, because we ran out of time. I'm saving Westminster Abbey, St. Pauls and the Big Ben for later. The Big Ben - which is actually the bell and not the clock, as every single person that I have talked about it to has been certain to inform me - is a fairly nice-looking fellow from the outside.

We saw all the bridges too; when we saw the London bridge, I contemplated singing "London Bridge is Falling Down" loudly, but better sense prevailed, and I stopped myself before further threats came flying my way. The tower bridge is the truly breathtaking one. The London bridge is a mediocre sight at best.

Time for a quick aside. Food is damn expensive here. What I wouldn't give for a good rava dosai now. English food is kind of stupid and tasteless. It is beyond my comprehension how Enid Blyton wrote a million books devoting every alternate chapter to the food her protagonists ate. And how stupid were we to actually believe her!

We reached King's Cross Station this morning because we're travelling to Edinburgh right now. I am on the train as I type this. No, I haven't been able to hack into the train's wireless network - my engineering brain is not that brilliant - but I am typing this on notepad so that I can publish it later. There's a little old lady next to me who's doing the crossword and I'm itching to tell her the answers she hasn't got, but I'd hate it if someone did that to me, so I'm controlling myself. A little further down, my father is reading this very exciting book called Diabetes Mellitus. I think it's a thriller.

At King's Cross, I hunted about for Platform Nine and Three Quarters and - get this! - I actually found it. They have this wall between platforms nine and ten with half a trolley sticking out. There's a board above it saying "Platform Nine and Three Quarters". I'm determined to begin hunting for the Leaky Cauldron sometime soon.

We reach Edinburgh today and spend about four days here. Then, we're back to London for a few more days, then Oxford and hopefully Stratford on Avon or the Lake District. Further updates later. The UK is strangely disarming and I miss home more than I can say, like a certain gnawing ache that I cannot seem to rid myself of. But whenever I begin to feel sorry for myself, I remind myself that I am in the land of my three great passions - Shakespeare, the Beatles and Hugh Grant.

Written on 22 September 2007

All Ye Who Visit this Blog

2007-09-03T16:48:00.000+05:30

Now might be a good time for me to open up a subject that I have been avoiding with myself for a long time. Ever since a certain trip to the British High Commission today, it seems too inevitable for me to avoid any longer. Just give me a few moments to drag my head out of the sands of wishful, wistful thinking and face reality.

(Long and painful silence)

I'm leaving for the UK on 20 September. After travelling around a bit in the UK, I commence my MA on 8 October in Renaissance Literature (1500-1700) at the University of York - a one-year full-time taught course. The university is in the city of York (yes, good guess) and the county of Yorkshire (oh, you're on a roll, aren't you?). I am told that it is the county that produced Geoffrey Boycott - a piece of information that doesn't excite me in the least.

Why am I doing an obscure course like this, you ask? Good question. I am not certain if I know the answer. But my logic is this: I'm following my instinct for now, because I don't see that I have an option: if I were to do something that I don't love, but which would offer me a future (the kind of future and security that people like me have been taught to work towards all our lives), it would most certainly drive me insane. So, after much soul-searching and introspection, I figured that I may as well take a gamble and do my MA in a subject that I deeply care about, and worry about my future later.

It looks, at this point, as though I will definitely return in a year. I cannot express in words how it breaks my heart to leave Chennai and everything that I have loved madly about Chennai these twenty years. There is something wildly seductive and inviting about independence; at the same time, I cannot help thinking of this city as my earliest and greatest love. It is with a good deal of heartache, therefore, that I will leave (hopefully to return in December for a short vacation). Indeed, I believe that the likelihood of returning in a year for good - probably to live like a pauper - is quite high.

This is not to say that I am not excited at the prospect of living abroad. I look forward to a good deal with anticipation and enthusiasm: shows that I hope to attend (theatre and music, particularly), living alone for the first time, and studying, for the first time, in a classroom full of people with a passion for their subject. It is ultimately passion, I think, that has tilted the scales for me in what was, otherwise, one of the toughest decisions I have ever made: a passion whose rarity drives me towards its object, especially in the light of recent revelations with a person who lives a routine that he despises only because passion is yet to consume him.

There are other things as well. The British landscape is bound to have a fairly profound effect on someone like me, who has grown up on Emily Bronte's description of the moors and Jane Austen's exclamations about England's beauty. Just the thought of visiting the Lake District or Stratford on Avon, of sitting in the Globe Theatre, of taking the Sherlock Holmes walk or braving the Jack the Ripper walk and of finally seeing the Big Ben live are enough to send thrills down my spine. And once the romantic in me is satisfied (perhaps after a few visits to Scarborough, humming Simon and Garfunkel), there is the delicious promise of life - the manic life that one reads about - in London, because even we romantics must live a little, you know.

There are, of course, the cons. As someone who wears sweaters and wind-cheaters in Chennai in December, I am told that I am in for a rather tough time in the UK - apparently, the sun neither rises nor sets in the UK. I am filled with fear at the very prospect. Similar sensations of dread envelop me when I contemplate food. It is hard enough being a vegetarian in Europe. Even harder is being a vegetarian who loves home-cooked South Indian saapaad and filter coffee. Hardest of all is being a vegetarian who loves home-cooked South Indian saapaad and filter coffee, but cannot cook for nuts. If, when I return, I am half my size, you will know why. And (sigh!) there is always the damn exchange rate to worry about.

There will certainly be updates here on the blog with regard to exploits in the UK, amongst other things, and I ask that you continue to watch this space. I harbour a hope that you will - in addition to the hope that I will now, finally, with the self-same passion that takes me across continents, master the British accent.

The Return of the Monster

2007-08-15T22:38:00.000+05:30

It is a hopeless endeavour to attract people to a theatre unless they can be first brought to believe that they will never get in.

CHARLES DICKENS, Nicholas Nickleby

Yes, indeed, the monster inside me has risen once more, timely as always. Edition One of the monster touched a few raw notes. As involved this year as I was last year, I shall see what I can do to restrain the monster.

The best play that I have ever had the honour of witnessing was Valley Song in last year's festival. I had hoped - possibly against hope - that something would top that this year. Unfortunately, nothing did. It remains the finest play I have ever seen. I have hope, however, that my travels this year will change that. But more about that later.

Like last year, this year began with the launch party at the Park. And unlike last year, this year's festival is only about the main twelve plays - no light-hearted evenings of supper theatre, no book releases. What I had hoped would be an addition this year was a series of seminars and discussions thrown open to the public, discussing theatre in general or the previous evening's play in particular. That did not happen. I had also hoped for the opportunity to meet and interact with theatre persons outside Chennai. In one small sense, that did happen with the workshop conducted by Pegasus Players from Chicago on 11 August - but my theatre-hungry soul demands more. Always more.

The Metro Plus Playwright Award is a welcome addition, of course. "Where is the playwright?" Anushka Ravishankar demanded, quite rightly, last year in Bring Down the House Lights: 50 Years of the Madras Players, a book written and compiled by P. C. Ramakrishna and released at the launch of last year's festival. The question echoed in the minds of several others. The Hindu has been kind enough to answer that question this year. And for that, writers in this country must be grateful.

Building on last year, there were four international plays in this year's festival - an indication of how much the festival is growing. Added to that were four Chennai plays and four non-Chennai plays. Certainly, there has been growth. Yet, I must wonder why it is that Chennai plays alone were not included in the season pass - and not why they were relegated to a smaller auditorium as others have wondered, prompting a response from The Hindu in a journal covering the festival. That I do not mind so much, since the smaller auditorium is so much more intimate; it is the season pass that irks me. As an ardent supporter of theatre in Chennai, I must wonder why the distinction is so clear.

Another change in this year's festival is the concept of citizen reviews. I have enjoyed this part - reading the reviews everyday, wondering at the vast differences in opinions, noticing the names that continue to appear in this section, thrilling to the knowledge that not only has theatre been watched, but that it has also been appraised by the discerning eyes of the people we play to in the first place. There is joy in knowing what a stranger thinks. And yes, I did write in - for the last play, Black with Equal by Masque from Mumbai. I did not write in for any of the other plays for a variety of reasons.

In the same vein came Wordplay, a journal created and distributed by the students of the Asian College of Journalism, covering the plays, taking stock of opinions and responses and interviewing the groups that participated in the festival. The editorials, in particular, were an interesting read. I wonder, though, how the organisers reacted to some of the more scathing comments that appeared in this journal. I recall a rather angry buzz from Chennai theatre groups about the words of an unnamed Pune playwright. You may also recall seeing yours truly in the journal twice.

The festival began on 2 August, with a name that is revered in Indian theatre circles. Ratan Thiyam's Nine Hills, One Valley was brilliant, to say the very least. I am a big fan of interesting techniques, which is why I loved this performance - for its play with sets and lights. The stage became nothing short of a visual spectacle, colours splashing about beautifully, each actor so familiar with his space that the production went on seamlessly from end to end.

The objection was raised, of course, about the language of the play. Unfortunately, the organisers did not deem it necessary to inform the hapless audience beforehand that the play would be in Manipuri. It was a handout given at the entrance that carried this vital piece of information and gave us a scene-by-scene account of what we were to expect. Not having arrived early enough to read the handout fully, I was apprehensive. But once the play began, I was bowled over by the way the play lent itself to its ambience, never wavering in ease or quality.

The second night of the festival was a double bill, beginning with To the Death of my Own Family by Awaken Productions from New York. I looked forward to this because it was going to be an Indian actress onstage, even if she was talking about an experience that has been done to death by various media all over the world. I am also rather fond of solo theatre performances, and I wondered if she would hold the audience with her performance and her theme. Well, she did hold the audience, but I found the performance a bit of a cliche. As she attempted to move from character to character while she told her story, I found Farah Bala weakening, becoming less convincing. I asked myself what it was that irked me in the way she played various characters, because the accents she used did vary and her body language did alter... but what works in theory does not always work in practice. Was it the redundant nature of the theme itself, I wondered. Perhaps it was that; but perhaps it was the assured ease with which the actress played her role, and perhaps it was the sudden vacant look that entered her, as though she herself had tuned out of her character. Can one perform a role so often that it becomes a mechanical act? With Farah Bala, it certainly seemed that way. Ultimately, the script did, as I said, hold my attention. But that is never enough.

The same night came Butter and Mashed Banana by Harami Theatre of Bangalore - very refreshing in its acting, script and techniques. Like its two predecessors, this too was a bare stage production, minimal in its usage of props. Its three actors used a white sheet and a pink bathtub to serve as accessories to the various settings they created; but they themselves were the greatest accessories of all to the larger picture, moving easily and comfortably from role to role, considering nothing too sacred to be mocked. I thoroughly enjoyed this piece, particularly its elements of satire - the kind of Indian satire I have rarely witnessed before: such theatre is original and heartening.

I must confess that by the time I arrived at Music Academy on 4 August, I was on what I like to call a theatre high. I was certain I would love Dear Bapu, because anything to do with Gandhi or Nehru generally fascinates me. It's a weakness that I suspect most Indians have but hide. The letters between these two men were bound to be interesting if presented in the medium of theatre, I reasoned, when a sensible voice in my head cautioned me not to expect too much.

I turned out to be right. The letters were interesting, and I did find myself drawn into the evening's performance, thrilling unconsciously to the words written by my two heroes. Often, I would even bend low and attempt to concentrate on the words - and the words alone - without looking up. That's the sort of thing that one does at a reading, usually. It seemed natural for me to do so here because the play itself was nothing more than a reading. None of the three central characters moved at all, and they did, in fact, appear to be reading out. There was no real dramatic element in the play, other than the excellent modulation of the two male leads. The female lead was an absolute disappointment, fumbling constantly and bringing down the overall energy of the production. Yet, even with two very powerful readers onstage, I cannot consider Dear Bapu an actual performance. I do enjoy readings, as a matter of fact, but the fact is that I walked in expecting a play.

The second international play of this year's festival was Checkpoint: Three Strangely Normal Plays by Stages Theatre Group from Colombo. Rife with references to political and sociological experiences in Srilanka, the three plays were vastly experimental in nature. The first of the three was a monologue that, quite frankly, did not hold my attention at all. There was an element of melodrama in this piece, and the story was hardly interesting. It was the second piece that I enjoyed; the experiment really worked. Using a series of newspaper clippings, the play had arresting visual sequences that represented the content of the news items, but also had a way of choking one with, in one case, its innocence, and in another, its matter-of-fact interpretation. The idea really worked for me - and experimentation rarely appeals to someone like me to whom structure is so important.

The third play was the debut of the concept of Forum Theatre in Chennai. A simple scene was created and a crisis brought about. The director then asked the audience to resolve the crisis and come up with suggestions for the characters. The situation itself was too interesting to not have an explanation. Yet, it seemed as though the onus was on the audience, as though the responsibility of the resolution was shrugged off the shoulders of the creators of the crisis. Chennai responded warmly to this experiment, coming up with ideas that were dramatic and ideas that were pragmatic. It was when the audience stayed through three improvisations based on audience suggestion - well beyond Chennai's usual retiring time - that one saw how truly effective the concept was. We rose to the challenge with our usual brand of humour and extravagance... and if the group found too many elements of Hindi cinema in our suggestions, well that's just how we are as a people. The actors rose commendably to the occasion, but to me, it was like watching work in progress, like a regular rehearsal where actors try out various things just to see if they work. Who knew audiences would be interested in that.

I won't go into the Chennai plays now, being closely associated with them. Suffice it to say that I enjoyed myself. If I do talk about them, it won't be in this post.

The festival at the Music Academy began once more on 10 August, with the third international play - My Soul is a Witness by Pegasus Players from Chicago. Interestingly, this was one of the many bare stage productions of this festival. It must be that it is simpler to travel with fewer sets and to not have the pressure of erecting a structure on a new stage in around six hours that led so many groups to work with a bare stage this year. With exactly three props and five actors, this production took us through several years in the lives of several people, each donning new character with each scene depicted onstage. Like in Butter and Mashed Banana, the seamlessness appealed to me. Everything came together as a very concrete whole, and the production was extremely professional, earning the group the first standing ovation of the festival. Honesty compels me to add that I did not stand up - mostly because I still recall Valley Song too vividly to bestow that gesture on any other production; but I also found the style a little tedious, particularly when actors got too emotional onstage for me to believe in the otherwise distanced narration.

On 11 August, Pegasus Players conducted two workshops - one for beginners and one advanced. I would have liked to attend both, but other things occupied my time, so I chose to attend the second one alone. I enjoyed myself. The workshop involved introductory games, teamwork exercises and rhythm building.

The final international play at the festival was possibly also the most looked-forward to - Ristorante Immortale from Germany by Familie Floz. I was curious myself: the write-up had betrayed nothing. I was told it would be a silent play and that the actors would wear masks. I had no further information. So yes, I was apprehensive as well. The play began on a stupendously high note, and if anything is proof of the audience's involvement, it is the silence that emanated from the audience - a silence that took its roots in awe - matching the silence of the play itself. There was no recorded soundtrack either - only an organ that created music more beautiful than heard in the festival before and on organ player more exuberant than any other actor in the festival before.

As everyone knows, I am no great fan of slapstick. And the brand of humour in Ristorante Immortale can only be labelled slapstick. Yet, it was like watching a cartoon - perhaps Tom and Jerry - and enjoying it thoroughly as only cartoons can be enjoyed. I wondered, twenty minutes into the play, how long they would be able to keep this up without getting repetitive. To be perfectly honest, they did get repetitive, but I found that I did not mind so much. Indeed, I found myself looking up expectantly for those familiar moves. It was only with the particularly long last dance that I began to get a tad impatient.

I cannot discuss Ristorante Immortale without raving about its set. I was fascinated by the way the sets worked and I wondered excitedly how long they must have taken to set up. A more knowledgeable friend loftily informed me that they took about forty-five minutes and that the sets could be wrapped away into little boxes. I could barely breathe then for sheer excitement, because I love how sets transform a production and give it value. The sets were used quite brilliantly in this production - and it was mostly for this reason that I joined the crowd this time in its standing ovation.

The last play of the festival is usually regarded as a grand finale of sorts. And if the laughs that Black with Equal on 12 August raised is any measure of its success, then the play was indeed a success, lapped up by an audience that seemed to be starved of comedy - so starved in fact that no one seemed to mind that the humour was not dark as promised in several write ups and interviews that Kapadia offered and was, in fact, pure, unadulterated slapstick. The word that describes this show the most for me is 'undecided' - undecided whether the actors are to play it realistically or stylistically. To their credit, the actors achieved both objectives admirably. But I was left wondering whether I was even meant to believe what I was seeing - particularly when one actor sprang forth like a comic, exclaiming, "He's dead? But I wanted to kill him!" in a scene that had hitherto been played realistically. The play was undecided too when it came to the matter of props - what was to be mimed and what was to be shown onstage? While cups of tea and guns were shown onstage, blood and doors were mimed and imagined. I noticed the same with sound cues. While in the first scene, the doorbell was not heard, it sprang alive from the second scene.

The real hero of the play was Utkarsh Majumdar as Ramnik Patel, playing his role perfectly with humour, sympathy and vulnerability. That he often reminded me of people that I know is a testament to his moving portrayal. His scenes with his daughter-in-law in the play were, for me, the most real as well as the most humourous.

The lights, backdrops and techniques were quite interesting. The backdrop was stark, glowing luminescently in dim lighting. Perhaps it was intentional that most characters too were dressed in black or white, adding to the backdrop - but then often blending into it. Showing us perspectives of the room from various angles was a very interesting technique... perhaps it was only inevitable then that no matter which side the fourth wall was on, the actors would turn to face it. A confusing aspect - and I cannot, for the life of me, figure out whether it was intentional or not - was one member of the backstage who, after the interval, placed him/herself conveniently in front of a wing, wholly visible to the audience, watching the proceedings with interest and curiosity. I can only wonder what it meant. In the same way, I am left wondering at the ending as well - an earthquake was simulated (by hands that were visible to the audience), a gymnast in black entered enigmatically and left immediately, and one lead character made a concluding remark that was entirely unfathomable. For me, the actual conclusion of the play was when the community came together in candlelight, forging a bond in unlikely circumstances. To take that momentous scene further into ambiguity again makes the play uncertain for me... and that's why 'undecided' is the only word that I can use to describe Black with Equal.

And again I am left in a familiar sense of hunger for theatre - a renewed faith as well in its reach and its capacity, but mostly hunger for it.

A Few Questions. In Case Rowling Reads This.

2007-07-31T17:46:00.000+05:30

We did it, we bashed them, wee Potter’s the one,
And Voldy’s gone moldy, so now let’s have fun!

- Peeves, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J. K. Rowling

SPOILER WARNING: Contains details about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

What does J. K. Rowling have against her fans? Why did she have to ruin their lives forever by killing Fred Weasley? It wouldn't have mattered so much if it had been the one-eared George that she had polished off - it has always been obvious that Fred's the cooler, wittier one. Why would the wizarding world be interesting anymore without Fred Weasley? And for this - if for nothing else - I'm glad she's not going to dish out any more sequels.

The little things really mattered when it came to Rowling's characterisation of Fred Weasley... like when he invited Angelina to the Yule Ball, or when he chastised his sister for being your basic man-killer. To kill him so meaninglessly, and without any heroism at all, is just plain unfair.

A lasting tribute to Fred Weasley is the radio update he offered incognito; Rowling etched out everything Fred has ever been to us in these seven books with that sound byte: the kind of person you need to have around you in the face of both tragedy and happiness; the kind of person who thinks it is hilarious that you are the heir of Slytherin, and makes you feel better by marveling at the ludicrousness of the whole situation; the kind of person who welcomes an estranged brother back into the family with open arms and a joke. And so, for that radio update, I am grateful. But for the brutal murder, I feel the anger that I never felt at the deaths of Sirius Black or Albus Dumbledore.

Speaking of deaths, did Lupin and Tonks deserve no ceremony or glory? Why is it that we realise they are dead when Harry sees their bodies lying on a table? For what they have been to us - especially Lupin - their deaths, if they had to happen, could have been described, at the very least. I also wonder if they both had to be killed, leaving poor Teddy Lupin with no one but a concerned godfather in his life - not unlike Harry's own situation. Is this the history-repeats-itself angle of the series?

I shall have to read the book again, of course, because I read it in such a tearing hurry the first time. Having read it, I realise now that with every line that I impatiently skimmed past, I may have overlooked a few deaths, because that's how often Rowling has interspersed deaths into this last book. Sure, I understand that Rowling does not wish to offer us a sugar-coated ending: this much I understood even when Sirius died; but this is just an unfair shower of deaths.

An easy-way-out that I found Rowling take in the book was the whole concept of house-elf magic, which helps everyone escape from the jaws of Voldemort more than once. Surely this is something others in the wizarding world could have thought of and used in sticky situations. It seems like such a simple concept. Not only is the all-powerful Dobby able to apparate everyone out of the Malfoy mansion, he is also able to break the Fidelius charm and enter Bill's house easy as pie. Similarly, Kreacher too performs all sorts of miracles on the orders of both Regulus and Harry. Even if all this was some how believable, what I find a tad harder to digest is the final army of house elves at the battle of Hogwarts, led by good old Kreacher, who has altered into a good-hearted soul all of a sudden.

The hallows themselves, I thought, were a pretty interesting concept... but so easily found by Harry and co - especially considering that he actually inherits one of them. That Grindelwald sought them obsessively is, perhaps, an indication of the way they possess one; Harry's immunity to this temptation, as opposed to the weakness of even Dumbledore, is yet another situation where things are made easy for him.

Dumbledore's history is again a dicey point. Having built him up through six whole books, I find myself hugely let down by his history and his manipulative actions. I would not have expected the portrayal of Dumbledore to change so drastically in this last book. Admittedly, I have been apprehensive ever since the gleam of triumph in his eyes in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but when the two books that succeeded that gave no indication whatsoever of another side to Dumbledore, I lulled myself into a false sense of security. Perhaps that was Rowling's intention, but I find it a gigantic let-down.

All of this leads me to hope, however, that Rowling keeps her word about no more sequels to the series, but writes instead Hogwarts: A History and A History of Magic, to give us clearer perspectives of the world that is so fully formed in her head.

The idea of Harry being a Horcrux is something that has been hugely debated ever since Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince. That it happened is interesting. What is confusing now is that Voldemort's soul is now divided into eight parts, not seven, since Harry Potter is one among them. This seems to complicate things a little, because it can imply that anyone who kills is, perhaps, in danger of splitting his soul. And yet, when Voldemort kills Harry again, it is the Horcrux he kills, not Harry. Easy way out for Harry. This time from death.

Slytherin's locket is one of the more interesting Horcruxes, especially with its ability to possess and alter one's personality - not unlike the one ring to rule them all. Also interesting is the number of hands it has passed through - Regulus, Kreacher, Mundungus, Umbridge, Harry, Ron, Hermione. And yet, it was Ron alone that it possessed - the same Ron who magically managed to speak in Parseltongue and open the Chamber of Secrets in yet another easy route out taken by Rowling. Of the Horcruxes, I find it odd too that Voldemort never used anything that belonged to Gryffindor. Wouldn't it have been interesting if the sword was a Horcrux? One of the few things that can destroy a Horcrux is itself a Horcrux! A double measure against its destruction, which Voldemort could have thought of.

Rowling clearly has something against the next wizarding generation. Not only does she condemn poor Teddy Lupin to an orphaned life, she also punishes all the others with cruel names. Poor Albus Severus and Scorpius (Is Scorpius a boy or a girl, a good friend musingly asked me, because the book does not mention that at all...). How much they will be teased at Hogwarts. Poor James and Lily... they shall have to live with the knowledge that the people they were named after were married to each other. Their relationship as siblings is sure to be ruined forever.

The epilogue itself is a travesty... it's like she has been wanting to give in to the Danielle Steel in her for the longest time, and finally allowed herself to pour it all out in this last chapter. And the saddest part of all this is that while she told us who married whom and the names of their offspring, she didn't deem it important to tell us anything else about the lives of the characters we have known and loved for over a decade. Did any of our main trio become Aurors at all? And did Hermione Granger become Britain's first female Minister for Magic? Did Ginny Weasley or Harry Potter ever end up playing for the Chudley Cannons? And did Harry ever become the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts? And did Ronald Weasley (weakly, it must be admitted) join his brother George at their shop, replacing the one we all loved the most? And most importantly, who does become the new headmaster / headmistress at Hogwarts? The only person whose future career we are allowed a glimpse into is Neville Longbottom. That he replaced Pomona Sprout comes as no surprise to anyone who has followed the books closely... but then again, did he marry Luna Lovegood? Where Rowling has elaborated on the personal life, she has neglected the professional and vice versa. And thus is the last chapter the greatest travesty of them all.

Armchair Thoughts

2007-06-27T14:03:00.000+05:30

In the wake of Salman Rushdie's knighthood, Kiran Desai's Booker, Orhan Pamuk's Nobel and Kaavya Viswanathan's scandal - and I have blogged already about two (Pamuk and Viswanathan) of these four events - Easterners have become more conspicuous than ever in world literature. Of course, little needs to be said about Rushdie or Pamuk, neither of whom needed official recognition to be revered by the likes of readers such as yours truly; Kiran Desai, who has had the almost impossible burden of stepping out of the shadow of her magnificent mother and has succeeded remarkably, also needs little introduction; but in this profound realisation of the world's new-found appreciation of Eastern literature - especially the kind of literature that does not always describe pain and suffering - one begins to wonder what it is that makes some Eastern writers click while so many others fade away into painted backgrounds and the bottom racks of second-hand bookstores. And with the advent of the perhaps less renowned-in-scholarly-circles Khaled Hosseini - whose first book the connoisseurs loftily shunned as too "obvious", but readers gloriously rose to commend (including this reader who shed tears as she read it and promptly blogged about it), and whose second book has only recently hit the markets and is awaited by this reader, who wishes she were a writer, with a curiosity that can only be likened to impatience - one wonders once more what it is that "works" for these writers, and, in fact, why it works.

I have no solution, of course, but I hesitantly venture now to put forth my theory that the ones that work are the ones that make you think about your own philosophies. It seems somewhat rare for books from the Eastern world to be appreciated for their fast-paced action, their brilliant plot or the imaginary world they have created more than their symbolism or what they stand for. Instead, they are often think-pieces and mood-pieces that set down an ambience that you relate with, create circumstances that you've encountered and provide perspectives that you might not have earlier thought of. And - perhaps it is a coincidence - most books that have worked are the ones that are allegories in some way. And while we are only right to raise eyebrows at references to the "mystic East", perhaps we are also justified in taking pride in Eastern wisdom.

A Letter to an Editor

2007-06-02T16:15:00.000+05:30

This post is based on a letter that I did write to the Editor and the Readers' Editor of The Hindu, which did not get published or mentioned in the newspaper. I also did not receive a response of any sort. Therefore, I publish it here, on my blog, with absolutely no intention of malice whatsoever. I do, however, mean every single word.

This is with reference to the review of the film Marie Antoinette by Mr. R. Sudhish Kamath in The Friday Review dated 25 May 2007. I would like to raise a very serious objection to the review and its writer on the basis of its sexist generalisations.

Let me point out certain examples of uncharitably sexist writing from the review:

"This movie would be a straight man's nightmare."

This is a generalisation. The derogatory tone it takes also implies that homosexual men do not have good taste - well, not Mr. Kamath's taste. With what conviction can Mr. Kamath assert that only women and homosexual men would like a film that he himself has taken great pains to criticize on a public forum? Assuming that the film is, in fact, as poorly made as Mr. Kamath decrees, are we to understand that women and homosexual men do not possess the discernment to make that judgement? Does Mr. Kamath also fancy himself a spokesperson for the heterosexual male community?

"Hot pink, as the girls would call it. "

I find this an unnecessary interjection. Who are "the girls" that Mr. Kamath refers to? And why does he attribute a generally accepted shade of pink to women? Is identification of colour a purely feminine pursuit? Once again, the tone is condescending. If Mr. Kamath finds the colour distasteful, it is his opinion, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the girls that he casually refers to.

If, however, he does refer to a specific set of girls, which would account for the article in the sentence structure, then surely we, as readers of a newspaper that he publishes his review in, deserve an explanation in order to rid the sentence of ambiguity.

"Assuming only women would watch it, she pampers them with a sensory overdose"

Does this mean that women only like sensory excess? Mr. Kamath seems to imply that if the movie had, in fact, been made with men in mind, it would have been one of better quality. Does he feel that men are better viewers, judges and critics than women?

Mr. Kamath also takes the liberty of deciding Ms. Coppola's target audience. With his vast knowledge of Ms. Coppola's intentions and female psychology in general, Mr. Kamath takes it upon himself to inform unassuming readers of the reason behind the film's lavishness. What he makes, in fact, is a random assumption, in a weak attempt at wit. But in the process, he insults Ms. Coppola, a great filmmaker, and the women of the world. Does Mr. Kamath think that the critical acclaim the film has thus far won is entirely baseless? Does he think that all the critics who appreciated the film are fools, while it is Mr. Kamath, with his vastly superior intellect, who is clever enough to see the film for what it actually is?

"... costumes to make women wish period dressing was back in fashion"

Can Mr. Kamath not even compliment the costumes of a film without throwing in an insult to women for good measure? This, once again, is an unnecessary interjection. Mr. Kamath seems to believe that rudeness will substitute wit and precision in his review. If Mr. Kamath subscribes to the philosophy that even praise must be back-handed for it to be of any worth, surely it is his problem. My problem is with where he aims the philosophy and where he publicises it - in a well-circulated newspaper, Mr. Kamath insists on taking unnecessary digs at women and making uninformed judgement calls about artistes.

"... if you are a girl, you can concentrate on all the hairdos, the interiors, the minute details."

Mr. Kamath seems to feel that all women look for in a film are costumes, hair and decorations, thereby implying that women are more shallow than men, and that men seek more substance than women. With what authority does he make such generalisations?

Secondly, are these aspects of a film so unimportant that they must be mocked? How can a film ever be complete without the right costumes, makeup and accessories? Mr. Kamath imagines that these are little extras thrown in for women, and of no consequence to a film's overall holistic appeal.

"... this modern day chick-flick-interpretation may only find takers among women."

Having thoroughly ripped the film apart, how dare Mr. Kamath state once again only women would appreciate this film? Is this the only way he knows to put a film down? Does declaring that women will like a film make it any less worthy?

I sincerely believe that something must be done regarding the chauvinistic and insensitive statements that are to be found in this review and, in fact, a few other of Mr. Kamath's pieces of writing. He has no right to make such shocking generalisations. I also believe that he does not do justice to the film in this review, where unjust insinuations seem to form a large part.

I am aware that a film review is only one man's opinion of the film, but I think The Hindu should rethink the people whose opinions they publish in the newspaper. If this is the way Mr. Kamath reviews a film, how and why would we ever take his opinion seriously?

The Prophet Speaks

2007-05-19T11:12:00.000+05:30

Salman Rushdie: "Until the events of Volume 6, it was always made plain that Snape might have been an unlikable fellow but he was essentially one of the good guys. Dumbledore himself had always vouched for him. Now we are suddenly told that Snape is a villain and Dumbledore's killer. We cannot, or don't want to believe this. Our theory is that Snape is in fact, still a good guy, from which it follows that Dumbledore can't really be dead and that the death is a ruse cooked up between Dumbledore and Snape to put Voldemort off his guard so that when Harry and Voldemort come face to face, Harry may have more allies than he or Voldemort suspects. So, is Snape good or bad? In our opinion, everything follows from it."

J. K. Rowling: "Well, Salman, your opinion, I would say is, right. But I see that I need to be a little more explicit and say that Dumbledore is definitely dead. And I do know - I do know that there is an entire website out there that says - that's name is DumbledoreIsNotDead.com so umm, I'd imagine they're not pretty happy right now. But I think I need - you need - all of you need to move through the five stages of grief and I'm just helping you get past denial."

I think this whole affair is rather unfair. I feel like I've been cut a really raw deal. Rowling owes it to us to keep Dumbledore alive. Otherwise, she has just misled us through six books. And if she's planning to keep Dumbledore dead, she owes her fan world a gigantic apology. So she'd better send him zooming back in on Sirius Black's flying motorbike or Mr. Weasley's fascinating flying car - where, by the way, one drunken night, Fred Weasley tried to put moves on Madam Malkin - to inform us either that it was Aberforth who died or that the Philosopher's Stone was never really destroyed and that he took a swig of the elixir of life.

I will also go on strike if Rowling does not explain the gleam of triumph in Dumbledore's eyes in Book 4 when Harry told Dumbledore that Voldemort could touch him. It's been driving me crazy since the year 2000.

After giving us an unnecessary portkey in the triwizard cup, a return of the polyjuice potion with Crouch Jr. and the comeback of the animagus with Rita Skeeter, I'm sure Rowling is very inclined to use the horcrux concept again - I side with the scar theory, not the Sorting Hat theory. Now, if only Fawkes, Mrs. Norris and Crookshanks all turn out to be animagi, Malfoy turns out to be a metamorphmagus, Petunia turns out to be a squib, Ron and Myrtle fall in love, and Kreacher becomes the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, my wildest theories will have come true.

Unfortunately, even though I do dish out wild HP prophecies every so often, there's a sane part of me that insists that none of the above will happen, and that it will simply turn out that Harry realises he can fight Voldemort without Dumbledore, Ron and Hermione really get it on, and that Harry ultimately grows up to become the headmaster of Hogwarts. Oh and some sort of poetic justice for the Dursleys, of course.

Yet, at this juncture, I must remind the world that it was I who, at the end of Book 2, prophesied that it would work out between Harry and Ginny on the one hand and Ron and Hermione on the other, while the rest of the world insisted that the leading couple would be Harry and Hermione. And, in a non-romantic vein, I also predicted Sirius Black's death and that Snape would teach Defense against the Dark Arts. Admittedly, I did churn out theories about Narcissa Malfoy being an auror and Lily Potter being a death eater, their bodies being interchanged by James Potter and Lucius Malfoy to keep their kids happy, but hey, even Sybill Trelawney makes mistakes. But I do suggest that you all take my prophecies seriously. Someone should. I dispense wisdom very generously.

Also, I have it on very good authority from a very reliable source that Flitwick fancies Sprout and that Snape uses muggle Brylcreem. But a magician never reveals his tricks and a journalist never reveals her sources. So the nine-year-old who informed me of these two facts will remain very safe indeed.

Current mood: Dying to waste money on this book. And very tired of Rowling's diary.

Listlessness

2007-04-26T23:26:00.000+05:30

Am I allowed to be dejected that I haven't read most of the books on Time magazine's list of the 100 greatest books of the century and that the ones I have actually read I didn't like very much? Why is Wide Sargasso Sea on the list? And what is the great genius in Mrs. Dalloway that I seem to have missed out? How did Gone With the Wind get on the list? I will never understand how this list was made. Why is Judy Blume on the list when Roald Dahl is not? Why is Kerouac on a list of fiction? And the day I understand why Steinbeck is brilliant will also be the day that Hemingway doesn't put me to sleep, the day that Malamud's language makes sense in my head and the day that I go completely insane.

Not surprisingly, The Catcher in the Rye, Things Fall Apart and Catch-22 are on the list, all three of which I read, but did not get the significance of. I mean, I understand why they're average as far as novels go, but I don't understand how they altered the world. And I don't think I ever will.

I notice, also, that the only two Indians on the list are Rushdie and Naipaul. And they're not really Indian writers. I would have liked to see Amitav Ghosh, for example, or Tagore on the list. I think even Yann Martel deserves a place in there somewhere, as does Kamila Shamsie.

I'm very grateful, of course, that my taste isn't all that terrible. T he French Lieutenant's Woman and To Kill a Mockingbird are on my list and theirs, for example. And there is the occasional fantasy novel in the list that makes me glad. But overall, the current mood is dejection: something is rotten in the state of my mind.

I am determined to publish a list of my own someday. And it will be for people like me, who can only understand so much and can only appreciate so much; and who couldn't fathom James Joyce if their lives depended on it.

Young and Heroic

2007-04-17T18:08:00.000+05:30

I can never be the hero now. You have to be young and all that stuff. I used to be the hero.

- Michael Caine

Why is there some sort of romantic association attached to the notion of a youngster defeating older powers - especially if the youngster is innocent and pure-hearted, and finds it in himself to vanquish a much older and established evil? Yes, of course, it's the Harry Potter mania that's possessed me, and I'm wondering and speculating, like any hot-blooded fan, what's going to happen in the last book of the series. And I'm hoping against hope that Rowling won't let the millions of children who adore Potter down by being "realist" or "postmodernist".

In almost all fantasy stories, it takes a young protagonist to save the world from the clutches of an old and evil antagonist, whether it's the Pevensie kids who defeated the White Witch in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the relatively young Frodo Baggins who alone can resist the ring in The Fellowship of the Ring, or even David in the Bible who managed to slingshot Goliath out of the equation. I think it's something to do with hope. If an infant Harry Potter can defeat the greatest Dark Wizard of all time, anything is possible, isn't it? There's a certain sense of gratification that takes the reader over. It is almost as though the genre transcends fantasy and moves into motivation. Forget Dale Carnegie - it's fantasy you need to read - or watch - if you are to maintain any hope whatsoever about the big bad world.

There's something fascinating about most child protagonists. Very often, they're the kind that you can believe in. It's possibly something to do with their innocence, and their unaffected goodness. Or it is simply to do with the fact that Harry Potter wants to be good out of unadulterated warmth, unlike a Dumbledore who views goodness as a duty and is older, wiser, but somewhat tired and worn in his view; it is to do with the fact that Frodo Baggins does not desire power, unlike a Gandalf who does not place temptation in front of himself; it is to do with the simplicity of young Arthur who pulled the sword from the stone, when older and stronger men couldn't; it is to do with an Aladdin, who desired love instead of power from his all-powerful genie; and it is to do with the unflinching valour of a sixteen-year-old Abhimanyu who entered the Chakra Vyuha and made grown men tremble at his courage.

So while victory is often imminent to the child protagonist in fantasy - as I sincerely hope it will be for Harry Potter in his impending confrontation with the Dark Lord - there is more to it than that. There's something indeterminable about the child protagonist that makes him endearing, rather than just faceless and victorious. That's probably why we prefer young Haroun Khalifa to the Walrus in Haroun and the Sea of Stories or Dorothy to the Good Witch of the North in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It is, perhaps, even why Sirius Black and Aragorn, while not the most well-rounded of characters or even always the most victorious, are still everyone's favourites. And even if there is nothing heroic about the child protagonist, if that endearing quality exists, the child protagonist is bound to survive - like Lewis Carroll's Alice or like Scheherazade's Aladdin.

And, just when you least expect it, you find yourself crying at the defeat of the child protagonist, and when you read the book again, you always - always - hope the ending has changed. Because in fantasy, anything is possible.

Why doesn't poetry rhyme anymore?

2007-03-29T15:50:00.000+05:30

Why doesn't poetry rhyme anymore?
It was wonderful when it used to.
Nothing is as it was before
Or even as it is supposed to.

Before modernism crept in,
The iambic meter was followed.
Now all the poets have slept in
And rhyme schemes have all been swallowed.

Now poetry is just prose gone mad -
It's random and it makes no sense.
Post modernism makes me sad
And I miss the sonnet sequence.

Fowlesplay

2007-03-08T18:42:00.000+05:30

If there ever was a novel that must be read for its self-conscious take on everything that is to do with fiction itself, it must be The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles. And if it is to be read, for the reason mentioned above or for any other reason, it is also to be read again - just to be sure that everything that Fowles has said has been absorbed for future rumination. In this particular sense, Fowles is reminiscent of Maugham, who also has a way of placing a world of meaning with each statement, each gesture, each parenthetical aside. Yet, Fowles is different, because he is didactic where Maugham is subtle, and he is wicked where Maugham is gentle.

First, there is the paradox of time that the reader is benignly, but calculatedly, made aware of. The writer is of 1969, but his characters are of exactly a century before. This is not merely external information to aid one's reading of the text. It is part of the text itself, part of the commentary that Fowles is constantly making; the novel, as an organic whole, is aware of its precarious existence - that it belongs to a different time period than the one it lives and breathes in, a time period that is over and done with, and can therefore be discussed in terms of historical and sociological constructs. In a sense, Fowles is unabashedly diagnosing an era both with clinical detachment and with a specialist's interest.

What makes this fact more interesting is that the era that is subject to this physician's table is not just any era - it is Victorian England. And Victorian England is a veritable Spiritus Mundi of literary thought. Fowles takes reckless advantage of this and borrows freely, in his epigraphs, from Tennyson, Arnold, Hardy, Austen and other writers of the period, then, in a masterful stroke, quotes from mundane archives and sociological and medical reports that seem to have an equal bearing upon our knowledge of the period. The Victorian England he paints is neither the world of Dickens nor the world of Thackeray. It is written with the hindsight that neither of these writers could possibly have possessed. Fowles exploits his most obvious advantage - the fact that he knows what happened in the 1800s. He is a historian, who just happens to inscribe fiction into the history he writes.

Unlike a Georgette Heyer, for example, or a Timeri Murari, who also wrote fiction that is set in a certain historical time frame, or, to take the old example of Dickens whose Barnaby Rudge and A Tale of Two Cities are set during the Gordon Riots and the French Revolution respectively, Fowles does not merely present a story with a certain background - he presents the story with the collective knowledge that he has gained about all time periods including his own, with the perspective that modern studies have offered him, and with connective information about a time that is merely an elusive future to his own characters. It is thus that Fowles can apply Sartrean logic in a setting before Sartre or remark with wisdom on a Darwin who is entirely new and astonishing to his characters. It is thus also that there are references to computers and motion pictures in a time when they did not exist. He slips into his fiction wicked comments on the reigns of Disraeli and Gladstone, knowing what is to happen in each of their reigns and comparing the Victorian political scenario to its modern counterpart. But these allusions are not anachronisms; indeed, they are part of the technique of the narrator, and not of the narrative, both of which are individual and entirely separate entities.

Fowles is sensationally unique because of the freedom that he give his readers and his characters. And, like everything else in Fowles, there is a paradox here again. In the complex relationships that exist between reader and narrator, Fowles makes wild offers of freedom to the reader. But he cannot cease to be an entirely autonomous creator. And so, in his own way, he finds a compromise between the two - there is freedom, but there isn't. Now you see it, now you don't.

He creates, for himself, an assumed reader, whom he periodically addresses, as well as an assumed narrator who appears, every so often, in the novel itself. It is almost unfortunate that his assumed reader is not the actual reader, because the former makes him/herself a part of the narrative, asking intelligent questions, making insightful comments and subtly maneuvering the plot with powerful opinions and suggestions. In many ways Fowles seems to be telling the actual reader to ask more questions and to never take anything at face value, and he even places something as diffident as the novel's outcome in the reader's hand, or, in a sense, thrusting it in the reader's face, as if to say, "There it is, now you make the choice." And as the reader is further embroiled in the novel, the tone shifts dangerously to "Now make a choice, damn it!".

The freedom he offers his characters is even more dicey than that. They can choose - and how! - but there is the knowledge that we have that it is Fowles who finally chooses. The assumed narrator is, admittedly, a wily little boost to the author's ego. He becomes a character in the book, and is like a chameleon, a shape-shifter. He exists a little everywhere, and he is always watching. He exists both in the third and the first person, both as a strange little bearded man and as a prosperous Harold-Zidler-like impresario, both as a powerful puppet master and as a helpless passer-by, the very manifestation of the freedom paradox.

Fowles' characters are, perhaps, as cunning as Fowles himself, particularly with regard to the freedom he gives them. Each is strong enough to demand an ending to achieve his own ends. His characters are much like the stock characters of the classic romance a la Walter Scott - there is the youth, the fair lady and the dark lady, the eternal lovers' triangle. But where an Ivan Hoe chose - and was expected to choose - the fair lady, our young protagonist, Charles, undergoes an existentialist anxiety of freedom and choice. Three alternatives are then presented - the fair lady, and thereby Victorian Convention; the dark lady, and thereby Romantic non-conformity; final freedom from the two women, and thereby Modern rebirth and restructuring. Each of the three alternatives caters not just to the three types of readers, but also to the three main characters: each ending is centred around one of the three main characters - the fair lady, the dark lady and the youth respectively.

Most alluring, at least to me, is the language Fowles uses. It possesses a wicked, pernicious humour, so allusive that you may never be confident of understanding it entirely. Underlying the very serious nature of the novel is also a certain parody, a mockery of sorts. But there is also the fact that the novel makes the reader think about the philosophy he/she has thus far lived by and question a number of choices and their implications. And there is the delicious exploration of the rationalities and minds of characters and societies, all exposed and stripped down by the author's machinations.

So, I say read the book. Read the book for its philosophy; read it for its running commentary; read it for its powerful romance; read it for its wickedness; read it for its innovations. But most of all, read it because it is just asking to be read.

Quick Takes

2007-02-22T17:36:00.000+05:30

Cinema is a time-consuming first love in my life, a first love that still doesn't get as much time as it deserves in my life, because literature is just as demanding. So, it's only natural for me to converge the two every now and then and find cinema that is literature-inspired.

The Importance of Being Earnest. It's extraordinary how aphoristic Oscar Wilde's writing is. And the advantage of Wilde's aphorisms is how much wittier they are than Bacon's or even Shakespeare's. Aside from The Picture of Dorian Gray, this is probably the most characteristic of Wilde's works. My own favourite amongst his plays is Lady Windermere's Fan, possibly because it's less predictable than The Importance of Being Earnest. But in terms of brilliant dialogue, the latter has no competition.

The movie has a superb cast - Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, Dame Judi Dench, Reese Witherspoon and Frances O' Connor - all of whom are quite perfect for their roles. Both Everett and Firth are wonderfully melodramatic and staidly British at the same time. In the conversations between them, as Algy and Jack (or Ernest and Ernest), they share a resplendent camaraderie together. It is their pompousness that you must love, their overdone passion and their unsympathetic consciousness of their own charms.

"To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both looks like carelessness," is what Lady Bracknell informs Jack Worthing, played with incredible style by Colin Firth. I do declare that I'm almost beginning to like the man, despite my studied efforts not to.

The Importance of Being Earnest is, more than anything else, a bit of a parody. It mocks British aristocracy and substantiates it at the same time. That's Wilde's unique talent. When Gwendolen Fairfax and Cecily Worthing refuse to forgive their lovers simply because it's not fashionable to do so, you can only laugh at the absurdity. "In matters of utmost importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing," proclaims Gwendolen. Can you quite disagree?

Agatha. This is a movie that even Agatha Christie might have enjoyed. It's got a certain twist that she might have appreciated, a certain darkness that she might have found typical of her own style. It's a rather touching tribute to the writer, more because it portrays her as a warm, winning woman than as the pathetic creative genius that she is often made out to be. That's what I liked the most: the person, not the personality.

It's a tribute also because it is a story told the way Christie would have told it, with the images Christie would have lovingly created. One of my favourite literary anecdotes is the one about how Christie is so forgetful that she reads her own novels to find out who the murderer is. For me, this also is indicative of Christie's utter enjoyment of suspense and climax. Agatha would have been right up her alley. She would have enjoyed it even if she'd made it. And it almost seems like she did make it.

Vanessa Redgrave is beautiful as Agatha Christie, with sparkling eyes and the most endearing brand of shyness that I've ever seen. Her beauty is so physical, so wide-eyed and so sensitive that Agatha's entire personality exists merely in one look from Redgrave. Speaking of fine acting, the movie also stars Dustin Hoffman, still short as ever, but as American as can be. Both actors were larger than the screen, and engaging. Even Timothy Dalton, as the heartless Archibald Christie, seemed paltry in comparison.

Agatha is a movie with subtlety and panache. You can never quite tell what's going to happen next, and you're constantly second-guessing each character's actions and motivations. The anti-climax is incredibly exciting: you have just been shocked at the discovery that Agatha's motivation is not what you thought it was, but can anyone save her now? The movie has a way of creating ambience without wasting much time.

The end is extremely touching - both when Hoffman's character makes a sacrifice in his career as a journalist to help the woman he loves and also when Redgrave's character subverts that sacrifice and shows a strength that you hadn't seen in her before. It transforms, like some of Christie's novels, from a mystery to a romance.

White Oleander. I had expected the movie to be somewhat disturbing because of vague recollections of reviews that I'd read when it was first released. But it wasn't. It was intense enough, but somehow lacking in realism. It's a movie that failed to touch me, and I don't know why. I loved the way the growth of the two main characters and transition of their relationship from stage to stage took place - visibly, silently, unalterably. In spite of what I did like - and in spite of the heart-rendingly beautiful Michelle Pfeifer - I found that it was much less than I had expected. I don't know what precisely it is that I'd fault in the movie, but it's definitely not one that I'd recommend or go back to.

Ladies in Lavender. This movie is based on a short story by William J. Locke, a writer that I have never read. Set in Cornwall during the early 1990s, the movie is something of a period film. But that isn't the dominant feature, although it's a fact that shows up every now and then in the gorgeous landscape, in the styles of dressing and behaviour, and, most of all, in the brilliant representation of British pastoral life. What is most striking, however, is the starkness with which Judi Dench and Maggie Smith play their roles: both are fine actresses, but even finer in the way the generously complement each other, making the movie a spectacular team effort.

Movies based on short stories may not always work, particularly because short stories often record events and feelings rather than stories. I've noticed this phenomenon very often. It's very hard to put into words the actual plot of most short stories. While some like Saki have been able to deliver all elements of fiction with the short story, others like O. Henry have written wonderful short stories that lack a substantial plot. The quintessential example is Jeffrey Archer who's done both, and continues in the genre.

This particular short story did work as a movie; but the charge that it is insubstantial holds: like any short story, the movie has several angles to it, several loose ends that are not tied up, several unfinished stories.

Ladies in Lavender is an interesting watch, not just because of the acting. The background score is phenomenal and the cinematography splendid. More than these technical accomplishments, the movie portrays a sentiment that is somewhat novel and extremely touching. A pair of women who fall, in two very different ways, for one young boy seem, at first, almost disturbing. But the movie, thankfully, does not delve into the psychology of the issue. Instead, it is a narrative.

Another thing to be thankful for is the fact that this is not the issue that forms the crux of the story - the boy's musical abilities and his passion are the factors that take the story to a conclusive end. Small flirtations and jealousies become mere sub-plots.

Vagueness may just be a style of postmodern cinema, like it is a style of postmodern literature. It is the degree of vagueness that one needs to worry about. Ladies in Lavender isn't too alarming. That's why I say it's worth a shot.

Black, White and Shades of Red

2007-01-22T19:40:00.001+05:30

Writers who have either won the Nobel Prize for Literature or the Pulitzer Prize for fiction are generally notorious for being obscure until the respective nomination committees have hunted them out of the suffering nations that they are either writing about or out of. When such is the case so often, it’s particularly heartening when it’s Pamuk – prolific, diverse and endearing – who bags the Nobel in 2006. It isn’t just that the average reader can triumphantly boast of having heard of the writer before the Swedish Committee sends the press release out; it is also to do with the distinct relief at the readability of such an author’s works, because not everyone can appreciate the literary calibre of a Gao Xingjian or an Isaac Bashevis Singer and not everyone is quite the authority on post-colonial discourse. Pamuk, thankfully, sticks to good old fiction and the traditional elements of plot and character.

My Name is Red, the book that made Pamuk a familiar name even among the non-literary circles, is set in the late sixteenth century at the heart of the Ottoman Empire. Two miniaturists are found dead and the only clues to their murderer seem to lie in a series of paintings. The story is narrated by several characters in the first person, each offering unique points of view and each a storyteller and a bard in his / her own right. Pamuk is a veritable master of the art of indirect characterisation.

The finest analogy that Pamuk draws in the novel is meta-fictional. If the Islamic state disliked the use of European “perspective” in miniaturist art, Pamuk shows us the importance of perspective in literature by employing a number of characters as intensely personal narrators of a harrowing political story.

Also interspersed within the story are short allegorical narratives and innovative methods of interior duplication. Each character, acutely conscious that he has an audience, tells his own story, adding numerous others to serve as examples. My Name is Red holds within its covers a number of stories, many of them standing separately, unlinked either to the main story or to any other in the novel. Repeated allusions to the Koran and Islamic rituals and scriptures make the novel seem numinous, but without artificial exoticism or unnecessary appendages.

Pamuk’s imagery is also heartrendingly vivid, drawing painstakingly from artistic techniques and phraseology. In this novel, everything is to do with art and aesthetics, dealing rarely with the mundane. Art is the alternate universe of existence for Pamuk’s characters, all of whom seek solace in colour and beauty, all of whom transfer their passion to their art and their devotion to their craft.

Surprisingly, Pamuk is most compelling when he weaves his little romances. These are the intrigues that deal with the intricacies of human nature and enforce a psychological understanding of each character’s motivations. Every single one of Pamuk’s characters is in love: with art, with Islam, with women, with money, with fundamentalism, with politics, with the self. Love is the most concrete emotion that Pamuk writes about, and he writes about it in as direct a fashion as possible, linking the emotion causally to the actions and responses of his characters. Everything, including murder, is for love.

What Pamuk has achieved is a psychological thriller, a political expose, an anti-fundamentalist statement, a philosophy, a historical narrative, an artistic endeavour, a love story and a murder mystery, all rolled into one.

2006 in Books

2007-01-04T19:14:00.001+05:30

It's not been a great year as far as reading goes. And that isn't because of a dearth of books. Hardly that. But due to the lack of time and an excess of things to do, I've not read as widely as I would wish. But I've read with zeal. Sometimes, that counts.

Books that I've really enjoyed in 2006 (Please note that I'm skipping the books I've already written somewhat extensively about this year and that this list is in no particular order with regard to chronology or preference):

My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk. An especially fine day in my life was when I discovered that Pamuk won the Nobel Prize because it was also the first time that I had read a book by a Nobel laureate before he won the Nobel Prize. I was very kicked and felt particularly literary that day. I genuinely liked My Name is Red because of how easy Pamuk makes it for someone - anyone - to read what seems like intricately woven prose. The ornate nature of the language does not, in the very least, affect its readability. Instead, it adds to the ambience in a way that even pictures can't. The novel lends itself to flowery description, but retains a powerful plot and fascinating characterisation. The technique that Pamuk employs is brilliant, not just because of the technique itself, but because of how effortlessly Pamuk slips in and out of the minds of various different characters, and gives you a classic whodunnit at the end of the day. In fact, I enjoyed the novelty of the experience so much that I will soon begin to read Snow, which is currently on my bookshelf.

Two Lives by Vikram Seth. I make it my business to read Vikram Seth. I love his poetry. I worship The Golden Gate and A Suitable Boy. The only book of his that I did not like - and therefore did not promptly buy - is An Equal Music, which, despite its greatest merits, which included some fabulous contentions about Western classical music and the very conception of music itself, was, at several points, a sappy love story with an unhappy twist. But I forgave Vikram Seth when I read The Golden Gate. Today, having read Two Lives, I would buy An Equal Music out of sheer respect for the author. I would buy How Opal Mehta Got Wild, Got Kissed and Got a Life if he wrote it. That is how profoundly Two Lives moved me. The book has both the regular charm of Vikram Seth's naturally poetic prose as well as an extra ounce of personalisation that makes the book deeply poignant. He fluidly moves from topic to topic, making a veritable art out of digression. It is a conversation that he has with his reader, making arguments and countering the reader's viewpoints. There is very little that he deems too insignificant to describe in great detail to the reader. He ushers you into his life and makes you feel at home. Every so often, he even issues an invitation into his mind and lets you glimpse the processes and ideologies that have shaped him. Two Lives is a book that addresses several very important questions and makes you look at people and stories from various angles, giving you lessons in history and diaspora. It is a book that refuses, stoically, to be bound by conventions. Instead, it transgresses the boundaries of literary genres and seats itself at the throne, binding into itself all those parochial categories in one grand oevre. Best of all, it is eminently readable.

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Halfway through this book, I began to feel the oddest sort of satisfaction. It wasn't, as one would think, the triumph of having plowed thus far into the book, but the incredible delight at discovering how truly wonderful Dickens actually is. It was Nicholas Nickleby that threw me off track, around six years ago. I disliked it intensely and swore never to read Dickens again. I daresay I would even enjoy that book now, with whatever new aspects of readership that I have managed to gain these past six years. Be that as it may, I am determined to give his other great books a shot. In fact, I am determined to throw myself into Victorian fiction with a vengeance in 2007. Great Expectations is about as sensational as it gets. It is full of action and is constantly moving. Pip, the protagonist, is one of the dearest chaps in the world and the masochistic relationship he enters into with Estella is particularly realistic and - this is a compliment like none other - almost as frustratingly and ingeniously depicted as the relationship Maugham paints in Of Human Bondage. Pip's humour (I attribute it to Pip as Dickens enters his character's voice with such ease that the authorial persona sheds any kind of omniscient objectivity) is delightfully deadpan, which makes it that much more sardonic. Pip is possibly one of literature's best paragons of the bildungsroman genre. It is the story of the country mouse and the town mouse - throw in a pinch of the Industrial Revolution and a dash of the Capital Market - but with a twist that gives the country mouse a chance to adapt. The melodrama of Miss Havisham's death is possibly the weakest point of the novel, but everywhere else, it holds its own. When you know that Dickens had originally intended a different ending for the novel, you are glad that he decided to resort to the good old happy ending after all, because Pip just grows on you, and his happiness has begun to mean a great deal for you. That's when novel has done its job.

Broken Verses by Kamila Shamsie. Following Kartography, I couldn't help but pick this book up almost as soon as it was released. I was afraid, as I often am, that I would be sorely disappointed. But thank heaven for Shamsie's way with words, and the importance that she gives to the actual plot, unlike several other Post Modernist writers, South Asian writers and women writers. It was even strung together with more coherence than Kartography, and was two things that I have recently begun to appreciate: unexpectedly heartwarming and heartwarmingly unexpected. As in the case of her previous novel, the characters are a tad more complex than one would prefer, but Shamsie manages to add that dimension of reason and logic that makes even complex characterisation enjoyable and less reminiscent of James Joyce. And despite being so good with her narrative, plot and technique, where Shamsie really scores is dialogue. It's a delight to read the acerbic exchanges in the novel and to occasionally laugh out loud as well. You just want to meet these people in real life and to indulge in that kind of repartee. When it comes to dialogue, she is Oscar Wilde, but less flamboyant.

The The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith. In 2006, I read the first five books of the series. I'm hooked. I've warmed almost immediately to the simplicity of the books and the gentleness of their humour. They're not as thought-provoking as several critics have said; in fact, they're generally casual enough to be the kind of light mindless reading that you require when you're about to nod off. You don't have to think them through or ponder the underlying meaning. They're a lot of good fun and never ever taxing. One thought that did cross my mind, though, was how I would react to the novels if I were a resident of Botswana. Since the books, in several ways to me, represent a certain value system and a way of living that I have now begun to associate with Africa, I wonder if I would resent any sort of misrepresentation in the novels if I were a Motswana. After all, if I have staunch arguments to make against Orientalism, perhaps there exists a similar problem with these books that I cannot recognise, just as a non-Indian may not recognise Indianisation in a Vikram Chandra novel. These are post-colonial dilemmas that exist within most literary representations, particularly if the setting is the third world. But books, as they are, are entertainment value - occasionally adding to the knowledge quotient - and sometimes they need to be taken as just that. Even by a Literature student.

Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt. Shakespeare is alive and real and everything you had ever wished for, thanks to Greenblatt. The advantage with Greenblatt is that he does not just conjecture. He puts forth his evidence, traces the line of thought that he has taken and draws conclusions right in front of your eyes, leaving room for you to disagree and draw conclusions of your own. The other thing about the book is its references to the texts themselves as indications to Shakespeare's life, which is definitely a couple of steps further than most other historians and critics have gone. Greenblatt also creates a fine bubble around Stratford and London, drawing you right out of your 21st Century bedroom and mindset and transporting you swiftly into the atmosphere of Elizabethan England. At the end of the book, you still have several unanswered questions, and you still don't know if Shakespeare was, in fact, Shakespeare at all, but what the book does, aside from planting several more questions in your head, is give you an idea as to what circumstances the works of Shakespeare were created in. And that's almost half the battle, as far as the question of authorship is concerned.

Amongst the others, there were several that meant very little to me; I also read a great deal of non-fiction in the form of literary criticism, as every Literature student ought to, a personal favourite being The Labyrinth of Shakespeare's Sonnets, which categorically asserted, with textual evidence, that a sexually transmitted disease (possibly syphilis) was doing the rounds thanks to our three protagonists - Shakespeare, the Dark Lady and the Young Man. Another is Orientalism, which I finally managed to get my hands on, after two years of reading excerpts online. I continue to look for more books by Greenblatt, which, for some reason, are never available in local bookstores.

But while 2006 has not been a great year for reading, there are still some instances where I'd rather have experienced these books than a year of prolific reading.

Encore Performances

2006-12-25T10:59:00.000+05:30

How often do sequels work? They work even less when a book's sequel isn't even written by the book's author. It's an absurd phenomenon - I remember feeling violated when writers started writing Famous Five books after Blyton's death. It seemed obvious enough that the new books had none of the old Blyton charm (or even the old Blyton picnic baskets!) and I wondered why anyone would mess with what was already a damn good series.

It doesn't make for very great reading when the books in a series aren't all written by the same writer either - I remember vehemently disliking some books in the Three Investigators series and absolutely loving some others. Then again, though the Hardy Boys series and the Nancy Drew series had multiple writers, most of them seemed pretty similar (and equally boring).

But more relevantly at this point of time, I've read some dreadful sequels to some of the more famous classics. I recently finished reading Pemberley by Emma Tennant, sequel to Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, an all-time favourite of mine. All I need to do is think about how much Austen herself would have despised the book to note what a terrible sequel it is. Sequels make sense when there actually exists an indication in the previous book to the kind of events that the sequels depict. When a sequel dramatically alters characterisation and goes against everything that the author originally intended, it's a disservice. Austen never meant for Elizabeth to become an obsessive, whimpering housewife or for Bingley to turn out to be an adulterous rake. Both are transformations that negate every point that Austen made in Pride and Prejudice. (There are no spoiler warnings here because I would strongly advocate against the reading of this book.)

I also tried, ages ago, to read Heathcliff, a sequel of sorts to Wuthering Heights, only it depicted a story that was never told by Bronte. Like The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes, it's more about the missing years in Heathcliff's life that we don't know about. Unfortunately, I never got through the book. I couldn't make any sense of this pointed humanisation of Heathcliff. Unfortunately, it more or less just lacks consequence. It's a story that doesn't make much of a difference. While it's believable that this, in fact, is the life that Heathcliff lived in those missing years, does it really matter all that much? It cannot possibly alter the rest of Bronte's tale in any possible way, because Bronte has been smart and already told us what happens next. Besides, Bronte's pretty much even offered the plot, and only the narrative is left for Haire-Sargeant to take over. And the problem is both with the fact that she decides to take it over and with the way she takes it over.

I'm a child of New Historicism - of all the literary theories, that's the one I side with the most. That's why it makes sense to me when Austen comments on early Victorian society and fashions a story out of a woman who would be ridiculous today, but not when Tennant tries to do the same. That's why it makes sense when Bronte offers a sensational soap opera about hidden Victorian skeletons, but when anyone else goes into the story, it only seems like a Danielle Steel novel. And if, like the period film, you do your research and set out to own an era, a genre and a diction that doesn't belong to your time, it's acceptable - it's even commendable. But neither Tennant nor Haire-Sargeant have been able to enter Austen's or Bronte's language-specific styles and breathe out the kind of irony, romance or passion that is an intrinsic component of those styles.

Another book I tried to read is Scarlett. It's bad enough that Gone With the Wind is considered a literary masterpiece despite its most obvious flaws, but when it has a sequel that's even worse, it takes a lot to restore one's faith in good literature. Even Gone With the Wind has a certain bittersweet class to it that is ruined by the all-too-personal, almost-existential narrative technique adopted in Scarlett. Scarlett O'Hara is not the finest of heroines, as I've discussed in an earlier post, but to ruin Mitchell's creation of the fiery, passionate, ruthlessly ambitious American woman with this dreadful delving into every single action is almost a mockery. Scarlett is attractive to some because of Mitchell's directness and matter-of-fact approach. Why change the Scarlett we all love to hate by providing a reason for her attitude and character? Why bother to defend the character at all?

Quite honestly, if there were any untold tales in any of these novels, wouldn't their creators have told them? Why does it take a different writer from a different generation to inform us of twists that the authors originally never intended? As a literary genre, I think adaptations are great - which is why I love Ted Hughes' take on Ovid, even if not Ashok Banker's take on the Ramayana. But somehow, sequels like this get to me. It's like disfiguring someone else's baby, and that's just never a nice thing to do.

On Darkness

2006-11-25T22:29:00.002+05:30

Darkness falls even as I hear them call
At this mouse that's trapped in a world of men,
And I am left with nothing at all
But the steely grip of my fountain pen.

Darkness falls even as I hear them speak
Of the unspoken choice that belies its cause.
And if I listen, I fear not to hear what I seek:
We are bound not by codes nor by rules nor laws.

Darkness falls even as I notice the wound
And venture to hide the blows inside.
But the remnant scar that this blow harpooned
Only widened the fear that was far too wide.

Darkness falls even as our minds start to travel,
Though all that we own is contained in that sheaf.
And while the truth is loath to unravel,
We are bound not by sorrow nor by pain nor grief.

Darkness falls even as I try not to hear,
For it takes far too long for that wound to heal.
First it’s a sob, and then a lone tear
With guilt that I felt and tried not to feel.

Darkness falls even as the globe keeps spinning
For nothing changes within our grips.
But in that realm where we’ve all ceased winning,
We are bound not by hands nor by fingers nor their tips.

Darkness falls even as my steps recede,
And from somewhere within, there’s a warning bell,
For as my chances begin to gain speed,
There are too many tales for me to tell.

Darkness falls even as silence lulls,
Deafening against the stormy slope.
And though all I can hear is the beat of my pulse,
We are bound not by wish nor by dream nor hope.

Darkness falls even as I close my eyes
And try to remember the night-time dream.
But it takes many dreams to realize
That they’re almost never what they seem.

Darkness falls even as I begin to agree –
It is safer on that path than it is on mine;
In spite of the darkness, I have begun to see:
We are bound not by rope nor by thread nor twine.

Darkness falls even as the path grows dim;
We then retain sight through the light from our eyes.
And as we join hands, we begin a hymn
Louder still and stronger than the deafening sighs.

Darkness falls even as the path starts tapering:
The path that we chose without treading its sands.
And although I follow, unyielding, unwavering,
We are bound not by seas nor by mountains nor lands.

Darkness falls even as my lips are pursed,
Perhaps from the cold and the world's disdain.
But then I hear that this road is cursed,
And yet twice bless’d not by loss, but by gain.

Darkness falls even as we begin to change,
And it is good that we change together.
But still on that path, I find it strange,
We are bound not by leash nor by rein nor tether.

Darkness falls even as my heart is wrenched
By the truth of the words that cause us pain.
But in my sorrow, the others are drenched
By the stormy pitter-patter of this raucous rain.

Darkness falls even as the path disappears,
And what remains seems better than the worst.
And on that path where we heeded no fears,
We are bound not by passion nor by choice nor thirst.

Darkness falls even as I surrender,
Helpless against this ice-cold force.
Though letters can never quite replace the sender,
My voice is not heard through the shut doors.

Darkness falls even as we are about to let go
And allow our wisdom undo our wrongs.
And though our current is an almighty flow,
We are bound not by words nor by sonnets nor songs.

Darkness falls, even as light as remembered,
For after all, we never really forgot.
Light and darkness – evenly tempered –
Though still fully dark in that one sore spot.

Darkness falls even as it seems not too dark,
And surely, the hour doesn’t seem long past.
And where we held hands, there’s a solitary mark –
We are bound not by heart but by soul at last.

Mahatma

2006-11-03T22:03:00.000+05:30

Generations to come, it may be, will scarcely believe that such a one, as this, ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.

- Albert Einstein

Richard Attenborough's Gandhi. I will allow you to despise me for not having watched this film before. Condemn me, even. I deserve it. It's the kind of movie I would have fallen in love with at any age. As a rule, I am fairly partial to bio-pics. But this is more than that - it's almost an epic.

I'm currently reading The Life of Mahatma Gandhi, Louis Fischer's faithful biography, and I'm finding it a lot more interesting than Gandhi's own autobiography, The Story of my Experiments with Truth. Simply by virtue of being a secondhand account, Fischer's book seems less defensive than Gandhi's. Ironically, it achieves, without ceremony, what Gandhi sought to achieve with detailed analysis: the establishment of Gandhi's exacting virtue, his warm sense of humour, his forthright nature and his uncomplicated goodness. And since it is Fischer's research that substantiates the book, not Gandhi's own opinion, we're clearer than ever on the character of this Mahatma.

In a sense, that's what Attenborough has also done, the only difference being that he leaves out what neither Fischer not Gandhi have bothered to mask - Gandhi's faults and failures. It is only Fischer who remembers that Gandhi is only human, because Gandhi, who embraces enemies, is unforgiving of himself and makes no allowances for his own errors. What is poignant is how hard Gandhi tries, how much effort he puts into being good. And if that effort makes him any more human, it only makes him all the more endearing, because being good must be harder for those who have to try.

Then again, it is while reading his autobiography that you wonder if someone who claims purity and virtue and thinks a great deal of his own goodness can really be what he outwardly seems to be. There's the paradox of Gandhi. It's unnerving to have so many questions about a man who seems so damn uncomplicated.

Attenborough's Gandhi tells a story. It's a long narrative, profoundly gripping - and it's a success story. It's movie that makes you hold your breath, willing Gandhi to win every single time, hoping against hope that the partition does not take place (despite the fact that your ninth standard history textbook has categorically informed you otherwise), hoping that Godse will change his mind. Throughout, you're on Gandhi's side, never doubting his intentions, never mistrusting him, never disliking him. Attenborough is almost an opinion-shaper. He intelligently diverts your attention from Gandhi's abortive family life, from his intemperate stubbornness, the overkill of his superiority. Instead, he recounts every conquest almost lovingly, without amplifying details.

Through dialogue, Gandhi is made out to be a lovable man with a fine wit and an intelligent strategist with no hidden agenda. Yet, he is even seen as a naive man, as threadbare as the outfit that came to be associated with him. Was Gandhi really as unassuming as he is made out to be? For Attenborough, he is the picture of Eastern simplicity, a picture that would have annoyed my own post-colonial sensibilities regarding Eastern mysticism and spirituality had it not been a picture of Gandhi.

Attenborough succeeds because he moves from event to event with journalistic precision and an eye for details, rather than with the seamless art and sensitivity of a movie-maker, because as far as Gandhi is concerned, the story prevails, not the art form. Gandhi's own personality overrides any artistic touch that a director or a biographer can offer him; the story with no embellishments is more powerful than anything else.

Unlike several others that I know, I actually enjoyed Lilette Dubey's production of Pratap Sharma's Sammy in Chennai in February. So what if it was predictable? It's a story that is on the tongue of most Indians. How could it be anything but predictable? What grand revelation could be incorporated in the story of a household name? Sammy, like other works of art based on Gandhi, is powerful because of Gandhi - not because of the playwright. No creator can claim copyright over a story like that.

To me, it's a strangely new experience; everything I knew so far, I knew from Gandhi's autobiography, from history books, from the minimal knowledge that every Indian child is expected to have about the father of the nation. And now that I've discovered Attenborough's Gandhi and Fischer's Gandhi, I'm seeing things that I didn't earlier; and on seeing that he wasn't the being of perfection that childhood tales promised me he was, instead of being let down by the truth, I'm more enamoured than ever of the man.