Anabhigna Shakuntala: A Review in The Hindu

Another play, another review. This was a play I rather enjoyed. There was an interesting storyline and some good music. Read the review of the Kannada play Anabhigna Shakuntala here or see below. 

What is more tragic than friendship turning into love? So wonders Kali, in the days before he becomes Kalidasa, the celebrated jewel of Raja Bhoja’s court. Sitting by the mountains of Kashmir, the orphan Kali wonders how he could bring himself to be in love with Mallika, his childhood friend, his companion while roaming the hills. ‘She is me, how then can I be in love with her?’ his monologue maintains.

This is the story of Kalidasa, his loves, his travails, his inspirations. While writing Anabhigna Shakuntala, playwright K Y Narayanaswamy employs sufficient poetic license to draw out a tale of speculative fiction, speaking of Kali, before he attains his suffix. The actors of Prasanga theatre group, under the direction of Prakash P Shetty, translate well the imaginations of the poet’s life onto the stage, be it the unrequited love that Mallika feels for him or the vengeful arrogance of the haughty princess that leads to his imprisonment or his own longing for the beautiful angel he meets one full moon night in his beloved Kashmir.

Anabhigna Shakuntala is not about Shakuntala and her journey to be united with the forgetful King Dushyanta. That though is the premise the sutradhar wants to work with, when news arrives that Kalidasa the poet has been murdered when he was reading the play Shakuntala to a large gathering. A woman has been accused of and arrested for the crime. The sutradhar, in a bid to understand what really happened, attempts to talk to the woman accused of the murder. Two other women arrive at the scene. What transpires there is an intriguing narrative of Kali in different stage of his life.

As each of the three women talk of how and at what stage they loved Kali the wonderful poet, the other side of the stage heads into flashback mode. With smart play of lighting, stories from the past and their repercussions on the present are revealed. All along, the probable contexts under which Kalidasa must have written his celebrated works are speculated upon. There are subtle applications of Shakuntala’s despair to the author’s own life. The ring that was Shakuntala’s husband’s token of love is weaved into Kalidasa asking his lover for her ring, something to remember her by. Like in his play, the ring in his life creates much havoc and tragedy. It is his longing, his misery, his yearning for his land and his love that inspires him to create his plays and poems. These creations leave a trail of jealousy, revenge and politics behind.

Anabhigna Shakuntala’s jewel on the crown is the music by Narayana Raichur. Each song enhances the complex ideas and emotions of human lives.  All the boxes for dance, drama, romance, tragedy, comedy and the rest of the navarasas are quickly checked off. What emerges is an intriguing, entertaining performance by the Prasanga team.

On the Bengaluru Karaga: Written for The New Indian Express

I was at Bengaluru Karaga recently. And wrote about it for The New Indian Express. An edited version of the story was published here today. Read it here below.

With a population of ten million and some more, Bangalore, not yet officially Bengaluru, is a sprawling metropolis with glass façade high rise buildings, many symbols of new money and the chaos that comes with the job description of being a city. Yet, if you peer behind the sanitized campuses of MNCs, there are plenty of vestiges of the small town Bangalore used to be, before it suddenly found itself to be a city and didn’t know what to do with that novel idea. There are plenty of lanes too narrow for a man pushing a bicycle to pass through, labyrinths of roads and precariously placed old houses above shops which require you leave your footwear outside.

It is in these lanes that Bangalore continues to exist as if somehow time has never moved on. It is in these lanes every year at the famous Bengaluru karaga that a village fair wakes up with a yawn for a few days before and after the first full moon of the first month of the Hindu calendar. There are cheap toys and joy rides, snacks served with dirty hands and fake jewelry, plenty of noisy children, harassed mothers and entourages of extended families. There are bright lights, some neon signs sneak in here and there as well, it is still the city, after all. There are fortune telling robots and shiny paper swords. There are chants that rent the still balmy evening air. Taking this opportune distraction, the street hawker demands an extra rupee for the balloon that the little girl has set her heart on. There is haggling but the parents have other things to see and do before the crowds bulge some more, so they grudgingly give the hawker that extra rupee.

There will be, over the all night procession, some lakhs of people overflowing into the narrow lanes of Thigalarapet, Sunkalpet and the other old ‘petes’ (towns) of Bangalore. Yet the famous Bengaluru karaga never shakes off its small town look and smell and feel. This is a side of Bangalore that is comfortable with itself.

The Bengaluru karaga is famously amongst the oldest community festivals in the city, pretty much up there with the famed Mysore Dasara, though not perhaps as international as the latter. It is lead by the Thigala community; descendents as per legend from an army of Veerakumaras that Mahabharata’s Draupadi is said to have created to destroy a demon. The community has historically been known to be gardeners from Tamil Nadu who were invited during Hyder Ali’s time to help lay out the gardens at Lal Bagh in Bangalore.

In a retelling of the feminine narrative, a man, in a role that has come to him hereditarily, dresses up like a woman, complete with an overflowing jasmine headgear and a mangal-sutra and walks the night in procession; for that night, after weeks of penitence and rituals, he embodies Goddess Draupadi. “The procession first goes to Mastan saab dargah and then to the temples in the area, following the route of the original precincts of Kempegowda’s Fort. While the karaga carrier is always from the Thigala community, the other duties of the festival belong to other castes,” says Chalakari Narayana Swamy, spokesperson at the Dharmarayaswamy Temple, where the festival is held.

Forty-three year old C M Lokesh carried the karaga for the fourth time running this year. His turn comes every alternative year. “During the year, I go and do many rituals at the Dharmarayaswamy Temple every day. For six months of the year before the karaga, I live in a purified room within the temple and can go home only to see my two young children,” he says. On the night of the karaga, he dresses up in a saree, embodying Draupadi. After that night, his wife gets her husband back. “We are chosen by the community for our abilities,” he adds, refusing to elaborate further. The rest of his time is spent in running a printing press in neighbouring Nagarathpet.

 “The temple is unique too, for there aren’t many other places of worship in the country dedicated to one of the Pandavas,” Swamy continues. The festival and its origins are, like most things in the country, shrouded in the unwritten years of history. But banking on archaeological records and oral history, he estimates that the festival goes back over 500 years. “It is the oldest festival in the region and is instrumental in bringing together people from all castes, classes and communities,” he insists.

Buddhist antecedents?

Dr Taltaje Vasantakumara, a Buddhist scholar has proposed, rather controversially, that the festival might have Buddhist origins. “Dharma is a word that is at the base of Buddhism. The rituals and the act of karaga itself may have originated from the idea of dharma. Over time, thanks to the act of myth making, it got associated with Hinduism and attached to the epics to form a new history,” he says.

As with all community activities, the politics of religion isn’t too distant here either. But for a week or so, Bangalore slips back to how it started out once upon a time, a smallish town that used to be dazzled by the city lights.

Agam the Band: A Profile for The New Indian Express

The fish --gasp, gasping for breath-- is back in the water. And does it feel good or what!? The New Indian Express (TNIE) was where I started my career as a journalist. It was where I worked seven days a week for a long time so that I could take my weekly offs together and go home. It was, as anyone who has worked there will vouch for, the best place to work at. 

For a thousand stories in those years of working there, of being young(er) and passionate and curious and all that, it meant a lot to be asked to write for it again. So here I am, writing for one of India's finest newspapers.

*Touchwood* for all the beautiful days and wonderful things happening right now in life.

The first of the articles in TNIE is on Agam, one of my favourite bands. Here below is a version of the story. Alternatively, read the rather oddly titled (I thought) profile published in Sunday Express here.

Photo courtesy: Agam

You have expectations, however misplaced. When you wear black, have flowing hair and hit the drums with a head bang, strum the guitar with a certain panache or embrace the microphone on stage with a meant-to-melt-you voice, the clichés of the world nudge you towards having certain expectations from rockstars. These are performers after all; their subscription to clichés is part of the act. Or so you think. Finding the contrary, you are happily disappointed almost.

Agam is a Bangalore-based band consisting of seven Tamil-speaking (mostly) techies, that generic word that applies to anyone who works in a large IT company. There is Harish Sivaramakrishnan on vocals and violin, Ganesh Ram Nagarajan on drums and backing vocals, his brother Sivakumar Nagarajan on ethnic percussions, Swamy Seetharaman on keyboards- he is also the lyricist- T Praveen Kumar on lead guitar, Vignesh Lakshminarayanan on bass guitar and backing vocals and Jagadis Natarajan on rhythm guitar. Fusion is a sexy word to describe a new sound that cannot be strictly boxed under any one category. Agam doesn’t use ‘fusion’. They prefer to write Carnatic/Progressive/Rock on their website. An eclectic mix.

On stage they are rockstars, they have standard theatrics that comes with the rulebook. Off stage, they are the sorts who will invite you over to a jamming session in a small room on someone’s terrace and let you listen to the birth of a new song. The band members aren’t too sure how a song is born. “One of us might get a spark and we take it from there, says Harish Sivaramakrishnan. Akin to how they changed Malhar Jam completely for a Coke Studio session, Agam might play a song for a year a certain way and then change it. The final cut is one that all the seven men have to like and agree upon. “We are very clear about that,” Harish says.

In the course of a three-hour jamming session, Ganesh, or GNR as they call him, is helping Vignesh get the notes right. Not all of them are formally trained in music. It takes a while, each member has a way of understanding and remembering the counts; there is much unlearning that happens as well. The camaraderie is peppered with das and ras, in typical Madras street style. While they allow themselves micro breaks to rib each other, once the notes are hit, each has a look of concentration about them. This particular song is only just taking shape, they don’t have the lyrics yet, they are not sure how it will turn out. They don’t give themselves a deadline.

These new sounds will possibly become Agam’s 11^th song. Ten songs for a popular band isn’t a big repertoire but then they have been around for just 2.5 years. “As friends, as musicians though, we go back ten years. All the members are batch mates from college, colleagues or close friends and we all have, in our individual capacities, been writing music and strumming guitars for a long time,” explains Vignesh. “We became ‘Agam’ in July of 2010”, that is GNR clarifying.

Agam’s ten songs and their covers, which sometimes they work more for than for their original tracks, are much sought after in college fests, corporate shows and music festivals. Sometimes the band has to let good shows go, for their other professional lives might come in the way. But all of them insist that their bosses are immensely supportive. Music is not their main livelihood, and that makes letting a show go easier as well. With two of the band members based in Chennai, there are logistical issues, but music is a release, a passion and they always find a way to meet and jam often.

While for academic purposes they might all listen to all genres of music, their personal music players would each sound very different from the other. Harish is a huge ghazals fan, GNR will listen to just about anything, Vignesh will hum along to film songs, Indian Ocean and their other Indie ilk, Swami, the most socially conscious of them all, would prefer R&B, Praveen’s choices would mirror Harish’s, Shiva would be the hardcore Ilayaraja film music fan while Jagadis would be head banging to mellow death, trash metal -- higher volume of noise, as GNR teases.

2014 might see a second album, after The Inner Self Awakens, a self titled name in the sense that the word Agam means ‘the inner self’ in ancient Tamil. Their unique sound, classic Carnatic with progressive rock, will see a marked change in the next album, Harish speculates, “for we see ourselves moving toward true progressive metal while retaining the melody of our songs.” That philosophy will not change, they are certain, though like the song birthing process, they will not know what the final sounds will sound like.

Oh, also, this band is a foodie band. They eat out a lot.

Garbage Cityalli Beththale Manushya: A Review in The Hindu

Three weeks, three reviews, not bad, not bad at all! The other day I went to watch a Dario Fo adaptation. It wasn't very good. Dario Fo's The Accidental Death of an Anarchist, adapted into Kannada, was the very first play I had ever watched in my life, a long time ago, in Madikeri. This play, Garbage Cityalli Beththale Manushya, was adapted from Fo's One Was Nude, One Wore Tails. Read the review in The Hindu here or see below.

WASTED EFFORT

The constricted lanes of old Bangalore’s Chikpet area had small hills of garbage a few months ago, that people going about their businesses skirted and skipped over. Perhaps now those reeking piles have been cleared and carted off to Mandur, a name that is passingly referred to in Garbage Cityalli Beththale Manushya. That is just one of the small handful of references that the play has to Bangalore’s rising stink in public places. This derived context apart, there isn’t anything that Garbage Cityalli… has to do with garbage in the city.

Instead it has a lot to do with nakedness, of the soul and of the body. Does clothes maketh a man or is his identity derived from his profession? Can you strip off the clothes and give them to another, thus changing what they do, who they are? In Dario Fo’s characteristic satirical style, the play attempts to induce some laughs, some philosophical musings while examining these questions of identity. But in the treatment of Fo’s One Was Nude, One Wore Tails, adapted to Kannada by Dr Prakash Garud, the performance ends up being just a layer above mediocre.

A garbage sweeper and his friend, who dispenses a bit of a philosopher while cleaning up a red light area discuss God, nothingness and everythingness in that nothingness and such like. The first sweeper finds himself having to deal with an naked ambassador who hides in his garbage box while escaping from his lover’s house. It is a minor inconvenience when his lover’s husband arrives and our ambassador is forced to make a dash for his top hat and jump from the balcony. He insists that he be taken home, promising the sweeper much money and a gold watch in return. The sweeper is more worried about the supervisor he might meet. A flower seller is wearing the ambassador’s tail coat, the sweeper struggles to get him to sell it, a prostitute is charmed by the sweeper when he in turn wears the tails and a policeman has to be talked out of arresting everyone involved. All these affairs are conducted with a bit of buffoonery, for the laughs.

The garbage box is rather charming, with fading vintage posters of Kannada films from the 80s and of some adult films adorning its sides. A trash can says BBMP and you are reminded thus, throughout the play, to place it mentally in this city. Bits of flying paper and flattened bottles are everywhere on the stage, helpful when the sweepers throw jibes at intelligent, educated audiences that don’t think twice of littering on the streets.

Garbage Cityalli… tries to follow a line of contemplation and questioning where you are want to mull over pretensions, the masks you wear, extending from the clothes you cover yourself with and of nakedness within and outside the soul. But at times it becomes a tad tedious to look beyond the rather mediocre acting and examine the philosophies of the narrative. Ganapathi Hegde, who co-directs the play with Dr Prakash Garud, plays the lovable, honest sweeper and easily steals the show. Dr Garud as the policeman is wonderful as a public servant who isn’t above minor transgressions. Some of the actors look like they cannot say their lines fast enough and be done with it, leaving it to the older warhorses to hold your attention. Music by Sathyanarayana Gundibail peps the play up in places. The theatre group Oddolaga from Hittalakai in Uttar Kannada district performs this play.

Malegalalli Madumagalu: A Review in The Hindu

My review of the play Malegalalli Madumagalu was published in the Friday Review supplement today. Read 'A Different Telling' on The Hindu website here or see below.

Instead of one sutradhar, there are different sets of Jogis, wandering minstrels who walk in from different parts of the stage to fill in the gaps for the audience. Instead of one linear plot, there are many parallel stories woven into intricate criss-cross patterns. Instead of one traditional proscenium, there are four tracts of land that recreate the villages, forests, rivers and huts of Malenadu, central Karnataka, from over a century ago. Instead of some characters, there are, reminiscent of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, many, many characters, someone’s sister, slave, wife or friend who all like and want to marry each other. It gets confusing in parts, more so if you haven’t read the 700-odd page novel. Yet there is enough romance, drama, betrayal, sacrifice, horror, humour, dance and music to hold your attention for nearly nine hours, coffee breaks included. The scale, the sheer ambition of it is what makes Malegalalli Madumagalu such an epic production in experimental theatre.

There is the ring, almost a silent leitmotif across the 50 scenes, making its appearance at crucial junctures in the storytelling to spell out a new twist, reveal another relationship or pass itself on to another set of Jogis. That is how C Basavalingaiah’s Malegalalli Madumagalu begins. Just when a group of them are about give up their tamburis into the River Tunga, for there are no audiences for their ancient stories anymore, travelling mendicants present them with a golden ring, eliciting a promise that they will tell that story to the world. One by one as the Jogis look into the circle of the ring, they see couples in love, they see religious animosity, they see the politics of the caste system. With their words and their song, they transport the audience to Megaravalli, Hulikallu, Lakkunda and Simbavi, non-descript villages in Malenadu if not for the complicated relationships that play out in the homes there.

Gutthi, the affable, a bit of a country bumpkin slave is on his way to win over Timmi, a bonded labourer in another rich man’s house. At his heels is his very lovable dog, Huliya, who doesn’t like it so much when it gets a leech in its ear in the middle of the rainforest. Along Gutthi’s way he meets the conniving Nagathe who pimps out her widowed daughter-in-law Nagakka to landlords so she can live well, beautiful Cauvery, other landlords and other slaves. Repeatedly, the play goes off on tangents to play out the lives and miseries and triumphs of these other characters.

Kuvempu’s magnum opus Malegalalli Madumagalu was adapted to stage by playwright K Y Narayanaswamy. No mean task, for the novel is a bundle of events and characters that are affected by social, religious and political changes that sweep through that region in that era. It took the maverick director C Basavalingaiah to translate it on such an ambitious scale.

Missionaries are making inroads into the villages and while those who are considering conversion are attracted to the equality and deliverance that the Christian god promises, they still won’t eat with the priest, for his origins are from an untouchable caste. Even the slave who serves him food will only drop rice from a considerable height, for the religious leader, though in white flowing robes, is still unclean. A bonded labourer is attracted to the new religion, yet shivers in fear when his wife, very cleverly, resorts to “being possessed by a spirit” to prevent their daughter being married off to a convert. No body understands the word ‘amen’, but the ‘beesekallu’ (the bicycle) that the priest rides delights them no end. The havoc that Christianity brings to traditional family structures and the struggle to reconcile its seeming liberalism with caste diktats serves for an underlying tension through the play.

Malegalalli Madumagalu is a brave production. The actors, many of them debutantes to the stage, are very good, though on opening night, there were some forgotten lines and some nervous missteps. The lighting left much to be desired and around 4 am, the narrative did begin to drag a wee bit. The sets are a treat to the eyes, but for the city skyline in the distance, they create an utterly convincing picture of a typical Malenadu landscape. Day 1 of the play had many little glitches that, hopefully, the team will iron out in the subsequent shows.

The play is on at Kalagrama till May 30, with the 9-hour performances starting at 8.30 pm on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays. Call 98400 48003 or 98865 40966. 

Images courtesy: G Suresh Kumar

Paying Tribute to PBS

Once upon a time, long, long ago, I met P B Sreenivos. I was a child and I like to imagine that my parents were buying me ice cream that evening in balmy (then) Madras. We were at the beautiful drive-in Woodlands Hotel, just off Mount Road. PBS was a regular there. A portly man behind the cash counter told my dad that the owner of the place was a huge fan of PBS and he was allowed to eat anything he wanted there for free. The man who was born with a golden voice came there everyday to eat a piece of sweetmeat and have a cup of coffee; as a diabetic, he wasn’t allowed to eat sweets at home. My parents went up and said hello to him.

This is how I remember this story. Maybe it is partly imagined memory from a faded evening some 20 years ago. But I do remember seeing him; he looked small, with that same crinkled face that I somehow imagine he always kept, even when he was younger. Did he crinkle his face along deep lines when he sang the romantics for Rajkumar? Why are voices as ethereal as his given shades of yellow and called golden? In retrospect, I wonder these things.

I am a PBS fan. In a loyalty contest, I would join his camp rather than side with Rajkumar, who gained popularity in later years and usurped PBS from his high-backed throne in playback singing kingdom. I am fan enough to be able to sing along most of his major Kannada songs. Yet, I was never fan enough to be aware that he sang in seven other languages; I never followed his career, so to speak. His most famous golden oldies were from my parents’ younger days, yet, the poetry of those lyrics and the mostly flawless manner in which he rendered them make those songs, clichéd as it may sound to say so, evergreen.

For me, the memory of PBS’ songs will be entrenched with my memories of watching films in the two derelict cinema halls of Madikeri. Before one of them was demolished and the other went Dolby sound and fancy, every show would begin with PBS singing Kodagina Kaveri, from the film Sharapanjara. The record was scratchy from overuse and would get stuck in places. That was the cue for people to lower themselves down gingerly on the broken seats and attempt to recline just so. P B Sreenivos’ voice was the precursor for our entry into the magic of the movies in those smoke-filled halls. I miss that song before every movie elsewhere now.

There are stories you want to write and there are stories you have to write. This was the former. A version of this story appeared in Talk magazine here.

Reviewing Mohsin Hamid's How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

You are already a Mohsin Hamid fan, a fan of his threadbare, no frills, no scented language style of writing. You have, for the first time ever, pre-ordered a book, his How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia. You have read about it elsewhere, on foreign newspaper sites and know that it uses the second person ‘you’ throughout the story. You remember that this style isn’t new, your other favoured author Chimananda Ngozi Adichie has used it in a short story. You think of Hamid’s cult second book, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, that you read first in a hotel room in the foothills of the Himalayas and marveled at the style until you were told by a friend that another author’s lesser known book predated that one in that style. You then read that another author, Omair Ahmed, and fall in love with his writing. You realize that Hamid’s prose isn’t always new inventions in the fiction world. But it is his minimalistic style that still envelops poetic notes if you happen to read a sentence aloud. That is what never fails to hold your attention.

By now you develop a little fatigue for writing as you. I go back to being me to tell you what happens to the unnamed ‘you’, the hero of Hamid’s brilliant new How to Get Filthy Rich…It is interestingly placed in terms of its classification of genre. It is a fiction narrated like a self help book. In what by now is Hamid’s much quoted quote, the book begins with how self help books are something of an oxymoron; “you read a self help book so someone who isn’t yourself can help you, that someone being the author.” For the rest of the pages, he goes on meticulously detailing everything that ‘you’ does to get rich, going back at the beginning of every chapter to talking about self help books, listing their qualities, calling them co-creative projects.

How to Get Filthy Rich…follows the life of ‘you’, a nameless, faceless person in a nameless village in a nameless country in Asia. You is sick when you first meet him in the book and is “huddled, shivering, on the packed earth under your mother’s cot one cold, dewy morning.” A series of chance events, in Asia you would blame fate for it, takes ‘you’ to the city, into a school, into college, into love. While there are no names for anybody, anything, you cannot help but place the story in rural Pakistan. Perhaps it is the author’s nationality that doesn’t let you imagine, co-create like Hamid calls it, any other country. Not even Bangladesh would fit the descriptions.

I find the chapter headings especially charming. In keeping with the tone of a self help book, Hamid calls attention to seemingly prosaic things like moving to the city, falling in love, rather advising not to, how to deal with idealists, politicians, bureaucrats and such like. Some are chillingly practical, you are told not to be an idealist yourself but lend support the ‘artists of war’, that’s the only direction to go up.

Our hero gets by selling expired goods with a non-expired sticker slapped on them. He gets by delivering pirated CDs. He briefly subscribes to fundamentalism because that funds his college education. His wealth comes from running a water packaging business. Along the way he finds himself the love of his life, marries someone else, has a son, loses everything and lives a full life by the time Hamid is done with him. The drama that follows his life is like a Bollywood theatrical that Asians could well relate to, it is a family saga, a story of grand love, sacrifice, revenge. But in Hamid’s language, there is masterful restraint that belies the theatrical to give you a story that seems completely new. He strips the novel of everything but the bare essentials, leaving you to fill in the details, letting you imagine and create your own book in the process.

In each of his three books, Hamid creates more a conceptual piece of art than just stopping at a good story. The story may not be unusual, any different from the dozens you have read, told or lived in, but in the manner of a Marquez book, it is for his brilliant reining in of language without succumbing to grand flourishes that make you want to return to his books again and again.

On Pakistani literature

Mohsin Hamid’s debut novel, the fantastic Moth Smoke, was my first introduction to Pakistani literature. From that discovery onward, I almost blindly pick up every book by every other author from that country. There must be something about the conflict and turmoil there that makes the country produce such brilliant literature. Most contemporary writers seem to follow a self help book of sorts. They are upper middle class, they have studied abroad for many years, worked other jobs, then returned to settle down in Lahore and write columns for Dawn or Friday Times or comment on Pakistani society for the world media.

Here is a list of personal favourites. By no means is this a comprehensive list. I do not include Saadat Hasan Manto for the sole reason that his stories are possibly too much of a work of genius to be anything but a standalone recommendation.

* The Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif: Dry humour, satire, oodles of sarcasm and fantastic storytelling. It would be very hard not to love this book. The book leads up to the plane crash that killed the former president of Pakistan, General Zia ul-Haq. A box of mangoes plays a very important role in the story. His second book, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti is another favourite. A third book called The Baloch Who is Not Missing and Others Who Are launched recently at the neighbour’s. Needless to say, I will be reading it when it launches here.

* The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid: A nameless Pakistani launches on a monologue with an American in a café and there emerges his reactions to 9/11, a slow building up of rage and aggression that completes a story that is sad, yet almost frightening. A short story called A Beheading, published in Granta, is another must read.

* In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Muenuddin: The handsome farmer who returned to live and farm in rural Pakistan after many years of being a lawyer abroad writes his novel in a sweeping, intricate manner. These are short stories, seemingly different. But there is one character who makes an appearance in each story and once you finish the book and sit back, you wonder if it was one large story after all.

* Intimacy by Hanif Kureishi: Though a British citizen, Kureishi has a Pakistani father and hence gets to be on this list. The short novel is said to be semi-autobiographical and talks of one man’s dilemma as he prepares to leave his wife and two sons.

* Faiz Ahmad Faiz: Just for the sheer wonder that is his poetry.

A version of this story appeared in Talk magazine here.

If you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you, it is yours. If it doesn't, it never was. 

Google tells me that this quote cannot be accurately attributed to anyone. Must be one of those old wives tales that permeated itself into girl talk and unsolicited advice sessions. But like every annoying cliche there is to the world, this is true too, isn't it? 
I would say so about writing for me, more on which I will write someday. 

Now the  theory is likely to be held to test again. Damn the truth behind these things.

In The Hindu: Writing about Malegalalli Madumagalu

Many, many exciting things are on the cards professionally. Lest I jinx it, I am trying to stop myself from grinning about it. For I notice that when I am smiling through my days for a considerable period of time, something bad always happens to rub the shine off. Yes, you do learn to be superstitious in life on occasions. 

Without preliminaries any further, here is me starting to write on theatre for The Hindu. As a student of journalism, I had very specific ambitions of working as the foreign correspondent from Pakistan for The Hindu. I grew up reading that newspaper and continue to subscribe to it.

Here is a review of a preview journalists were shown a few days ago, of the 9-hour long Kannada play Malegalalli Madumagalu, adapted from Kuvempu's magnum opus of the same name. Last night, I watched the whole play. More on that next Friday, after the review is published.

Here is Wandering Production in The Hindu Friday Review.

Calvin's dad: The world isn't fair, Calvin.
Calvin: I know dad, but why isn't it ever unfair in my favour?

Sums it up for me. Trust a six-year old to get it so right.

PBS...Will be Remembered

ಮಯ್ಯನೆ ಹಿಂಡಿ ನೊಂದರು ಕಬ್ಬು ಸಿಹಿಯ ಕೊಡುವುದು...
ತೇಯುತಲಿದ್ದರು ಗಂಧದ ಪರಿಮಳ ತುಂಬಿ ಬರುವುದು...
ತಾನೇ ಉರಿದರು ದೀಪವು ಮನೆಗೆ ಬೆಳಕ ತರುವುದು...
ದೀಪಾ...ಬೆಳಕ ತರುವುದು
ಆಡಿಸಿ ನೋಡು ಬೀಳಿಸಿ ನೋಡು ಉರುಳಿ ಹೋಗದು

(Mayyane HinDi Nondharu Kabbu Sihiya KoDuvudu...
Theyuthaliddharu Gandhadha Parimala Thumbi Baruvudu...
Thane Uridaru Deepavu Manege BeLaka Tharuvudu...
Deepaa...BeLaka Taruvudu
AaDisi NoDu BiLisi NoDu URuLi Hogadu)

Of all the fantastic songs P B Sreenivas has sung in a career that spanned over half a century, I remember this one today. In the context of things, I would have preferred to hum other lines. But then 'Nee Bandhu Nintaga', 'Baadi Hoda Belliyinda', 'Olave Jeevana Sakshatkara' and so many, so many others are equally laden with memories, stories and relevances.

PBS was my favourite singer. I met him once at the then Madras's elegant Woodlands Hotel, where the owner was his fan and had advised the staff to give PBS anything he wanted for free, every day. PBS came there then to eat sweets, which as a diabetic, he wasn't allowed at home. 

PBS will be remembered.

Amidst the Forest People in Town

There is something deeply intoxicating about drums. Perhaps it is that the dull thuds hark of ancient times when around the yellow fire the shaman invited spirits into his body to solve discords and cure illnesses and danced to please his ancestors. Or perhaps it is the monotony of repetition in those beats that puts you in a trance like state, which even seven days later, you only need let your eyes drift to hear the drums in your ears. Or perhaps it is that we simply cannot erase the primitive streak we all carry within, in spite of generations of ‘civilized’ lives. There is just something deeply intoxicating about the beat of drums, even when the drum is just an overturned plastic vessel or an empty kerosene can.

I have heard the tribals before, and imagined their sounds, their dances many times more. It was the promise of those drums and the lure of seeing what I imagined that drew me to the day-long tribal festival in my hometown Madikeri, Kodagu. The local station of the All India Radio, immensely popular in the hilly district for their inclusive programs from unheard of villages, organized Kadina Makkala Radio Habba, literally meaning the radio festival of the children of the forest last Wednesday, a full moon night, the Holi Hunnime.

Before I get there, I imagine it must be something akin to the Hornbill Festival in Nagaland every December, a government led congregation of different tribes strung together to bring in the tourists and attract the businesses that would keep these tourists happy. The thought seed might have been the same, but the Radio Habba is a celebration of pure joy, of being alive, of being able to appreciate being alive. The very many tribes of Kodagu have been brought together to showcase their dance and music forms, to interact with each other, with the non-tribals, to see the city. It is the first time ever that the tribes, spread far and wide in the forests and in deep set villages of the district have been brought together in one place. The habba is meant to be a noon to midnight celebration; the agenda lists stage performances before ending with dancing around three to four bonfires.

Three friends and I take ourselves to the Gandhi maidan, something of an open air stage in town. The heat is almost painful, it isn’t just a feeling alone that our skins are burning. The weather and how this can’t be a hill station keeps coming up in conversation throughout the sweltering afternoon. But the tribals of many colour, height and attire couldn’t be less bothered. The women are checking each other’s clothes, adjusting jewelry strung from wild berries around their necks. Men have bells on their feet, long sticks and cymbals in their hands and swirled lengths of cloth around their head. The Honey Bee liquour bottles are conveniently hidden behind the thatched huts almost daintily perched on the slope beside the stage.

There is an air of camaraderie hanging around each hut. One or two are made with green leaves and merges into the background. Others are brown and bigger, others low roofed. Groups from different tribes practice their song and dance routine inside, get their dresses ready. Everyone is nervous. It is only one group of Jenu Kurubas, traditionally honey gatherers, who slip in and out of their designated hut and break into impromptu dances throughout the day. These people instantly become our favourite. One of them wears different coloured feathers in her hair, necklaces of wild berries that I want too and a fancy belt of leaves and flowers around her waist. A slightly older woman is the Rastafarian of the group; she keeps her long mated hair hidden under a traditional flowing head cloth, until the bonfires lit up later in the night and she breaks free of the shackles of the headgear to dance with abandon round and round the fire.

The announcers of AIR, all local celebrities, introduce the groups; there are over 20 of them. They include the Jenu Kuruba, Betta Kuruba, Panjari Yerava, Pani Yerava, Devasoliga, Poomalekudiya, Tenmalekudiya, Kembatti, Medha, Kapala, Kodava and Arebashe tribes. Each perform a song and/or a dance. Almost every group is uncomfortable being on a stage; that is not how they sing to appease their deities or celebrate their marriages. Most don’t wait for a cue from the technicians to begin, they are anxious to finish their number and get off the stage.

There are songs for weddings, harvest songs, prayer songs and songs to abuse their Gods (a popular tribal festival in the district, when tribals abuse each other and their Gods in unspeakable terms – called Bunde habba). There is a man covered in black paint prancing about, for comic relief. On the side, there is a small exhibition of the baskets, prayer items and boxes they use, the wild fruits and vegetables they eat, the roots and nuts they use for medicines. There is Ummathat and Bolukhat, traditional dances of the Kodava women and men respectively, performed in a circle with slow, synchronized, warrior like movements for the men, graceful and reverential for the women.

The most commonly recognized song “Cauveramme devi thaaye…” telling the story of River Cauvery’s birth, interspersed with enquiries after visiting relatives and crops for the season take me back to school days when these were regular fixtures at every annual day function. There is the other characteristic Valaga recital, music slow and fast by turns that designs to send the dancer into a steady trance. When they take to the stage a second time, the full moon is up in the sky and members of the audience cannot resist breaking into the traditional dance steps to go with it. One from our little friends group, a Kodava, needs only a nudge before he joins the party too. 

Then the fires. Large logs are lit and small circles are formed. Different groups play for the cameras for a while, and then take their dance elsewhere, closer to their huts. Our favourite Jenu Kuruba group is still at it, with the same vigour, with the same infectious energy, unwavering for over several hours. The stage closes, the snack carts and candy pushcarts on the fringes begin to pack up. The bright full moon peeps through the tall trees and the air finally cools down. The tribals still don’t notice. Their wines, their plastic drums, their cymbals and the raging fire have transported them back to their forests. Heedless of the city people, unmindful of the town lights in the background, they raise the dust below their fast moving feet and dance round and round the fire. As we leave them to it, I for one cannot help but feel incredibly jealous.

A version of this story was published in Talk magazine here.

Magic Afternoon

What makes a place, a memory magical? I would say it is a combination of the company, the air, the coldness of the water running over your feet, the conversation, the slow afternoon, the breeze, the light nap, the bruise from the forest, the simple lunch, watching a blue butterfly flit about, seeing a row of fat white clouds lazy slide by, squinting against the afternoon sun that filters in through a golden coloured spider web, the stretching time, the little walk skipping over stones, making your own path, the cold drinks, the Edenic perfectness of it all. That's what makes this old beloved place magical with new loved memories.

Avril Storms

Oh well what do you know! Dreadful March went by and I am nearly intact. There were bad things, it was March after all, but nothing too devastating. Most near life changing things fell on the nicer, positive side of the coin.

-- A lovely trip to see a tribal festival in Madikeri happened with some very dear friends.
-- A lot of realizations on love and work and passions happened.
-- A book project got commissioned, to research and write text for a coffee table book on vintage postcards on Bangalore. (Yeah!!)
-- A lot of writing for an online magazine for a major water conservation campaign happened. Here and there, a lot of other writing happened.
-- An offer to write for The New Indian Express happened. (Fist in the air yeah! Where I started my career! Still the best place I have ever worked in. Joy joy!!)
-- A resignation from India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) happened. (Ma was nearly incredulous I lasted this long!) More on this soon, soon.

April started with a storm. I love storms. I don't relish them when applied over life but I suppose I would never find my inspirations, my drives, my miseries without them. Here is to the tempest of April and beyond.

Stormy Waters

I haven't seen a storm this size in this city. Back home in the hills, we have these every season. Ma used to say that this storm will leave only after destroying something. And destroy it did, it ripped things apart, fell trees, taken away frail roofs in its wake.

But I loved the storm then. I love the storm now. I love the drama of its thunder, its lightning, its memory of once when the lightning came inside and struck a phone line in the living room.

Beyond the storm is a new-ity, a fresh earth, an innocence of a bird, a song, a breeze. How could I fear the storm when it always gave me a new day on the other side?

Introducing Vira!

Dogs are high maintenance. Dogs get very attached. Dogs demand a lot of time, a lot of attention. Dogs have short lives and always, always leave you with a broken heart. But dogs are like a grand love affair, they have a way of capturing your heart, making you their slave. After them, nothing remains the same, you can never remain the same. Their love is unconditional. Dogs are the only living beings that always love you more than you probably deserve. Like they say, you might not know how to love a dog, but a dog always knows how to love a human.

Yes, I LOVE dogs. They are very often much better than humans. I understand dogs better than humans, and them, me. As an only child, growing up, after a fight with ma, hugging a dog always stopped the tears. They have been family, never a pet. And a new addition to the family is Vira, a mongrel and something mix who is currently driving my other dog Blacky and the rest of the family up the walls with his energy and naughtiness.

Why Vira? Vira means brave in Kannada. At that time, I was thinking of my favourite yoga asana, Virabhadrasana and how I hadn't practiced it in a long time. Random as it was, the name clicked and stayed.

Dogs in my family are tremendously spoilt. Vira is well on his way to being the brat I never was.

Born: January 26, 2013

Breed: Mixed

Colour: Shades of black, biscuit and brown

Skills: Extremely energetic. Bites everything in sight. Borderline arrogant. Already adept at displaying the classic puppy eyes face to get away with bad behaviour. 

Reviewing Oath of the Vayuputras

I don't have a favourite genre in books, as a writer I feel that it is part of my job to read just about everything. I read two fantastic books which I will write about in another post, for now, this is about the books I read only to comment or write about. So Talk asked me if I would like to review Amish's final book in the trilogy. The 600-page long book took me about two days of reading, while commuting to work, during lunch hour and into late nights. My verdict? It is easily the most readable in the Shiva trilogy. A pity that you have to get through the first two to read the Oath of the Vayuputras.

Here is the review from Talk magazine.

And here below is the longer, unedited version of the review.
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In trilogies, is the subsequent book supposed to start off from the next sentence from where the previous book ended? I forget how trilogies are meant to be. The big fat The Oath of the Vayuputras by the other banker turned writer Amish begins that way. It has been a while since I finished his second installment in the re-imagined story of Shiva. So it takes me several pages before the story starts coming back to me, who is who, what just happened, everyone’s karma and what they are doing about it and all that. Problem number one – it seems like he has cut one very long book into three parts and bound them separately.

I have promised myself that I won’t nitpick on his populist writing, not so early on at least. But he makes it all too easy for me. I cannot help but notice the poor editing and find myself mentally correcting the grammar; I have a bit of the grammar Nazi in me. Amish has this rather annoying habit of italicizing Indian Hindu words like ‘prasad’, ‘darshan’ etc and giving their literal meaning, in italics again.  His books are releasing across the world, so that is clearly meant for those audiences. I find it ridiculous sometimes, like when the missile Pashupatiastra is explained literally as the weapon of the lord of the animals. But…nitpicking, nitpicking…I am trying very hard by now not to.

And then, Amish surprises me. Just when I am thinking I will have to groan through the book, the war—it is all about a war in this book—draws me in. Complicated strategies are discussed, battle lines are drawn, sides are taken, alliances forged. The next several hundred pages are only that, who will attack how and whom and from where. Bits about dharma and righteousness are thrown in every now and then, but if not such a racy read, The Oath of the Vayuputras would have been somewhat of a war manual, describing as it does tortoise formations, subvert attack tactics and such like. Shiva doesn’t swear as much as he does in the first two books. Though he continues to flirt with his wife Sati, the romance is kept to a very bare minimum; it is even a breather from long passages where every swordfight fought and every knife maneuver used by the war waging armies is detailed.

Shiva is the barbarian tribal from Tibet who migrates from the mountains and is reluctantly cast in the role of a living god. He is righteous and forgiving, an excellent dancer and fabulous singer even, but is no holds barred when it comes to destroying that which he knows is evil. He errs too, like a human; it is only 4,000 years after, in later times, that his “…descendants, in many ways unworthy…behold gods in what were great men of the past, for they believed that such great men couldn’t possibly have existed in reality.”

When I begin the book, I am determined to find its every fault. But Amish is miles better than the last time and I, almost grudgingly, pull up one notch higher my opinion of his writing. My expectations were never high brow to start with, yet the book is not half as bad as I had made up my mind it would be. It is a pity though that you have to suffer through the first two to get to what is the best of the Shiva trilogy.

Amish hints in the last sentence at what he might be writing about next; his publishers have already given him a million dollar advance, it is going to be another trilogy. What is it with him, Ashok Banker and the rest that they have to work through re-imaging the whole Indian mythology, I wonder. But then, you could argue that so did Uncle Pai.

Ends/

Postscript: I am helping out at The Alternative with a water conservation campaign they are doing. A lot of writing is happening there. Read the stories here. Do follow the magazine too, there are some amazing articles there on sustainability, environment, inclusivity and other sexy issues.

And another, and another... they all always let you down, huh!

A Tribute to Mills and Boon

My parents have bought me Mills and Boons when I was growing up; they are both very cool dudes like that. Plus they knew reverse psychology all too well with me. During the course of that phase, I read several dozen of them. A while ago, I wrote them a tribute. Last week, it got published in Talk magazine here. My friend Sajai there at the magazine is one of the very few copy editors I know who I feel safe giving my stories to. But like a mother's blind love for her baby, I cannot resist posting the original here too.
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Reader, I married him.

By the time Jane Eyre tells you, the reader, this, you are rooting for her and Mr Rochester, rooting for the strings of happiness Jane is trying to hold on to, rooting for love and companionship and all that. More than that all, through the lives of the unlikely couple, you root for the love story that we each secretly hope to be ours, even if not in the manner of Bollywood excesses.

And that is the clever sales pitch that always works, be it in a rom-com starring American sweethearts or in chick-lit or in the ultimate temples of romance, Mills and Boons.

I have no qualms whatsoever in admitting I read Mills and Boons (M&B) through my teens and through the idyllic conquer-the-world early 20s. On my Kindle device, I still keep a few handy, for long commutes and the lunch hour. After a long day at work, after a fight with mother, after a heavy book, there is no better feel-good than an M&B. Or even Silhouette. Or Harlequin. Or their other offspring. It is perhaps like what ice-cream is to most people, you don’t need a reason to have it; and it always makes you happy.

Apart from being the ice cream on a rainy day, to me, the M&B books have helped hone my writing skills as well, something I realized, like the proverbial bulb above my head, the other day when some of us were discussing the new phenomenon ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ (which I don’t think I will ever finish). The subject veered to romance novels in general and listening to each of us talk of how we discovered and came to be hooked to them, I realized my association went a wee bit deeper.

It was my school principal who, unwittingly of course, introduced me to M&B when I was in class 7. During a routine PTA meeting, mother complained to the principal that I read more novels and less of my textbooks, often staying up into the night. Madam principal asked me what I read and I told her; I don’t remember what my answer was. She then turned to my mother and said as long as I was not reading Mills and Boons, it was all right, given that I was not slacking in the academics anyway.

In the 1990s, we school girls were still of the kind that did not know of nor had access to such books. My interest was obviously piqued; there is no greater reason to do something than to be told not to do it. As if the universe was conspiring, I found a worn M&B in a sack of second hand books dad had bought for me from a distant land. Never having bothered with the name of the publishers on the cover before, The Stars on Fire or some such like was thus my very first M&B. I still remember the story of a young actress who comes as a replacement for another and the director, while thinking the worse of her for supposedly manipulating her way in, cannot help but fall in love with her. There is drama and heartbreak and fights before the mandatory happily-ever-after. In hindsight, I nearly giggle when I remember that it was quite a racy book to be reading at the age of 12!

I remember narrating the story to a friend whose parents were stricter about what she could read. Mine, bless them, having seen the folly of the principal and knowing the theory of reverse psychology all too well with me, let me be. From then on, I must have read several dozens of them; most of them one summer in high school that I spent in the city house of an aunt with access to a whole library dedicated to M&Bs!

As I began writing in several forms and at several places, the value of these soapy, theatrical novels came to the fore. A sunset in these novels is never just a sunset, it is always a golden caramel yellow light that bursts upon from behind the island, yet pales before the glow of the heroine’s face. A face that isn’t just beautiful but is likened to the moon and the sun and the sunset and to the flowers in the meadows. Over the top, yes of course. But no one is telling you it is literature.

In those initial years of reading them, what I perhaps skipped were parts that talked of history of an island (not always fictitious, mind you), of food and little phrases from the local dialects and of culture. Much later, while revisiting some old ones and picking up new titles, I used to be struck by what I could only think of as travel writing in those passages between the heroine’s blush and the hero’s show of all-maleness. I would not claim to have found inspiring sentences and quotable phrases in any of them; now that would be too farfetched. But in the two-three hours that it takes to read one of them, if you pay attention, there is a little bit of history, some intro to food and clothes and language and culture of turquoise beaches and emerald islands to be found in those pages.

There are Indian versions as well, which were launched with a much publicized competition where winners got their stories published by M&B India. I read one of the first few that came out, and stopped at that. We have our Bollywood for our unbelievables. In romance fiction, I find the unrelatable-ness of foreign characters with blond hair and the French accent better to ‘get’ than the dusky dude in a sherwani wooing his fair, lithe bride in a ghoonghat. But that is just me.

This thought process started with the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon for me. I have an e-book version that I thought I would read, just to see what the fuss was all about. But a few pages down, I gave up after the girl began blushing in every seventh sentence. It is supposed to have revived erotica, but if that book is erotica, it is snowing in Bangalore today. I stopped at a point when the heroine says of her blush, that she was the colour of the Communist Manifesto! That made me laugh, doubly so because I don’t think that was the writer’s intended reaction from her readers. But then I read somewhere that she is making one million pounds every week (!!) from the book now. That robs me of the amusement.

Apparently, M&B has come out with fan fiction for Fifty Shades… as well. I am not sure I want to read them. I like my clichés in my romance fiction. I like the emeralds and TDH men and the perfect stories. I might still skip over the sightseeing bits of the book, but like your vanilla ice-cream, plain and simple, there is nothing like a good, straightforward love story when real life gets bit of a bore. Plus I get to learn another way to describe sunset on a beach.

Ends/

The Ides of March

*Shudder* *Shudder* It is March again, that dreaded month when something always goes wrong, when I lose people or things. It is the month of life changing happenings, none of them pleasant, none that haven't left an indelible mark on me. I dread March. Be nice people, and help me break the curse. In the meantime, let me go bury my head in the sand and let March pass as quickly as one whole month can. 

Crystal Ball

Perhaps there are people who are content with their lot in life. I don't know any. I wouldn't want to be one such. Those of the people I know are restless, easily irritable, inspired, inspiring, maverick, artists, people who want to live and feel and burn. We are all constantly searching for something. Maybe a lot of us wouldn't want to find it, whatever it is that we are searching for, because then we would become content, and that would be death. We look for that which makes us want to live, to do what we want to do. 

You don't always know what you want to do, but sometimes, in the middle of something that you have to do, no matter how uninspiring, you get a glimpse of that little thing, a quick singe on the soul, a fire that burns and burns and makes you want to let yourself go. It is a glimpse of the devil, for you see what could be possible, for you see how you could and what would make you happy. It is a fire dance that will burn you slowly and reduce you to cinders. But for a magical, seductive second, you see into the misty glass bowl and see how it could be. 

Then there is no going back to the fireless, hurtless cocoon you flew out of, in pursuit of that seductive second of possibility.