Astounding Human Stories!

Stephen Hawking, the brilliant cosmologist has intrigued the human world with groundbreaking theories on black holes and origin of the universe. What makes his life story extremely riveting is the pulsating life force inside a body severely affected by ALS for decades, churning out astronomical details and a family life with children and grandchildren. I was completely bowled over when I read his engagingly written biography by Kristine Larsen (a physicist and astronomer herself) a few years back. Larsen presents a candid and insightful portrait of Hawking’s personal and professional life in her book.  And then this week, I watched the film The Theory About Everything at the ongoing International Film Festival at INOX, Panjim. It is directed by James Marsh with spectacularly convincing performance by Eddie Redmayne  as Stephen Hawking and Felicity Jones in the role of his wife and love, Jane Hawking.  

The film is inspired by the memoir Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen by Jane Hawking. The writer comes across as an utterly committed,  passionate and determined homemaker, a rock behind the life and success of Hawking, the great physicist. A Ph.D. in Spanish Poetry, she writes candidly and sensitively about her 25 years of married life with Stephen Hawking. She evocatively paints the paradoxical picture of her ex- husband’s scientific breakthroughs, his rise to stardom and deterioration of his motor muscular activity affecting his physical abilities. The interwoven threads of a warm family life of fun and activity with three children, against the great odds of a chronically disabled father, add poignancy to the dramatic detailing. The lucid ramifications of the intricate black hole theory, and the ongoing synthesis of theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, provide clarity to a lay reader.

When books are adapted into films, the visual gives a concrete form to the print word but sometimes catapults it into a nameless abyss to the despair of a reader. Diehard fans of books may want to murder me, but I would say that particularly in this case, the movie does justice to the book. It is indeed astonishing to view their life together along with Hawking’s contribution to humanity. The camera is the storyteller as it stays and strays from Jane’s facial expressions and lived experience. Yet the man himself – Stephen’s mind mechanisms remain mysterious. Speaking through a voice box attached to a computer, bound helplessly to a wheelchair, he holds eminent personalities glued to their chairs with his enunciations on cosmology and quantum physics. The progressive deterioration of the body is contrasted with a spark in his eyes and wit and humor in his speech and thought. Its as if an incandescent effervescence holds him together. The dichotomy of fame and disease pervades each frame, a GREAT LESSON IN THE GREAT POWER OF LIFE FORCE WHICH HAS SUPERSEDED AND DEFIED ALL LOGIC AND SCIENCE. It makes one believe in a divine presence, though Hawking never puts it into so many clear words of faith or GOD.

If you missed seeing the movie, read the books , they are easily accessible through Flipkart or Amazon.

Ram Dass, Fierce Grace was another film at IFFI based on books by Richard Alpert. A Professor of psychology at Harvard, he is known for his experiments with LSD-25 in the 1960s  alongwith Timothy Leary and their book The Psychedelic Experience. The viewer is charmed by his sojourn to India, and complete absorption into the Eastern philosophy of karma and salvation, and his relationship with the Guru, Neem Karoli Baba, who gave him the name Ram Dass, servant of God. His study with Baba helped him evolve on a spiritual path. He surmises, “From a Hindu perspective, you are born as what you need to deal with, and if you just try and push it away, whatever it is, it's got you. I help people as a way to work on myself, and I work on myself to help people ... to me, that's what the emerging game is all about." What enthralled him most was not the fact that Baba had immense love in his heart for humanity – but in Baba’s presence, he seemed to be enveloped in love and felt love for everyone around him.  

Heir to a wealthy Jewish family estate, he accommodated people from all walks of life on his father’s sprawling golf lawns, swaying to the strains of Hare-Rama Hare Krishna. In 2013, Ram Dass released a memoir and summary of his teaching, Polishing the Mirror: How to Live from Your Spiritual Heart. All of 83 now, he feels blessed and purged of every doubt, fear and belief.  He said, "Now, I’m in my 80s ... Now, I am aging. I am approaching death. I’m getting closer to the end. ... Now, I really am ready to face the music all around me."

After a stroke in the last decade, which he perceived as a grace of God, he concluded that the hidden human qualities that had emerged in its aftermath in him would not have otherwise.  As such, each human soul has to go on, on a path of inclusiveness, accepting each experience with humble faith. He preaches on webcasts and founded the SEVA and Hanuman foundations of service to the poor and needy.

The viewer is astounded, watching his life’s trajectory - born just after the jazz age, into money and great academic excellence, indulging in drugs and psychedelic experiments to karmic Hindu philosophy, a long road to map. Been there, done that – and then to morph into a spiritual life, it is indeed intriguing to read and watch. What do we take from here?

Still a couple of days here at IFFI – we are all assimilating, reflecting, engaging ourselves.....

Kudos to World Cinema intertwined with Literature at our doorstep! Enjoy!

Book Launch with a Difference : Teresa’s Man and Other Stories from Goa

         Book Launch with a Difference :

                              Teresa’s Man and Other Stories from Goa

The book launch of Teresa’s Man and Other Stories from Goa written by Damodar Mauzo at Sunaparanta was a treat - a local home-launch riding on a wave of international recognition. In early October, the book was released at the Frankfurt Literary Festival, where Damodar Mauzo was invited to participate in the Frankfurt Book Fair (FBF) as part of a five-member Indian Writers’ delegation.

Goa’s most-loved man of letters, true to his repute, brought together a gamut of Konkani & English writers and readers under one platform - a feat in itself.  The speakers at the launch delved into the heart of the book at length. The audience got a good understanding of the various elements that went into the making of the book and the writer.

 I was delighted to be a part of the positive wave and ruminated on the phenomenon of ‘translation’ (a target of dialectics at literary festivals) which had yet again served the purpose of taking regional writings to a wide readership.  Damodar Mauzo joins the league of great writers like  RabindranathTagore (who was unknown outside his home till he was translated), Ananthamurthy, Orhan Pamuk, Haruki Murakami ..........in making local flavour a universal song of humanness.

 "When you want something the whole universe will conspire together to help you get it,” said Paulo Coelo.  Bhai’s(Damodar Mauzo) passion and perseverance has yielded fifteen books so far, which have been widely translated into English, French, Portuguese and other Indian languages.

Teresa’s Man and other stories is a potpourri of exact realism, poetic myth, sadness, perception and gaiety.  Bhai’s art is kind but unsentimental, mocking but uncynical, profoundly Goan but distinctively individual.  The substantial human nature embodied in the stories holds the reader enthralled.  An innate sense of irony coupled with a complete absence of pomposity and pretence is what makes Bhai a wonderful writer. He creates thoughtful fiction centred on serious moral concerns rooted in the Goan experience, but a universal human dimension makes it encompass the entire human condition.

A dichotomy of human emotion underlies the pieces Happy Birthday and Coinstav’s Cattle.  The former is an ironical portrayal of a range of emotions between parents and children.  It inherently exposes the destructive myth of normal and abnormal state of human beings and acceptance in human race.  Our children are our pride, love and joy - our showcase in society. But if due to an inherent lack, they are unable to perform to our expectations, our important sense of self makes us feel belittled and left out. A feeling of pure unconditional love is hence mixed with shame, lack, self consciousness and defeat; a dark and true element of human shallowness in relationships.

Bhai understands that the highest satisfaction may come from the reader’s growing recognition and understanding of the characters and their situations. The presentation of human beings or of human situations and the revelation of truth inherent in that human situation leads to a “gradual and slow illumination” of facts which is more satisfying than a manipulated perfectly worked out plot.  His stories in the book like The Cynic, She’s Dead, From the Mouth of Babes and  Sand Castles largely embody this aesthetics.

 So important is  character to fiction that one may approach the story by asking “Whose story is this ?”  Bhai’s domain of fiction is the world of credible human beings, amazingly diverse and varied. A writer presents his characters in two ways: by telling or by showing.  Bhai essentially tends to reveal his characters indirectly through thought, dialogue and action folded into the drama itself.  He very convincingly makes his characters speak “in character”. The Writer’s Tale and The Cynic are good examples of this craft.  Jayatha  and Baboy, are very forceful characters, which come to life dramatically through dialogue and action with others in the stories.

Bhai’s lifelikeness in his writings is credible and original. He uses symbols and imagery to add atmospheric verisimilitude to situations.

 “It is high noon. The sun, like a ruthless foe, is literally branding her body.  Below, the baked earth and above, the unrelenting orb of fire. The whole earth is engulfed in heat like a pie being baked in the oven.”

“The idol , the chovoth, the basket of sweets, firecrackers- all started fleeing away one by one!”

There are stories here in the book which may be termed as comedies of manner.  Bhai shows us what the characters are doing in such a way that we can understand why they are doing it. Out of the details of what they do and say, Bhai builds up the conflict and tensions. Misconceptions, Vighnaharta and Electoral Empowerment are stories which could be classified under this category.  Durga comes into her own and resolves the conflict in the end by exerting her will in Electoral Empowerment and Shanker in Vighnaharta  finds an  escape in a ritual thus bringing the comedy of manners  to an  ironical denouement.

Bhai takes simple narrative accounts in pieces From the Mouth of Babes and For Death Does Not Come, and creates plots with meaning and purpose.  The final product in both the stories culminates in profound wisdom and a pure strain of truthfulness.  Babu, the  babe (child as the image of God)  in the first story  leads his father Rajesh  to discover a simple, joyful truth in  sexuality and in the latter, the reader is elevated to a revelation both  powerful and profound -  that we are here  to play our roles to the hilt in both situations good and bad, till death does not come on its own to claim us.

The literary constructions have brevity and tautness, which lend unity and power to the writing. After the horrific experience of being caught on the road with a female passenger by the self appointed ruthless police on the day of the Bandh which had been called to protest against the discontinued usage of the mother tongue,  Dattaram, a bullet bike driver, gives vent to his feelings of anger and frustration.  Three powerful lines at the end of the story encompass the whole experience dramatically - “Dattaram’s eyes were bulging, he was speechless. Getting back on the bike, he started it. Finally finding his voice, he spat out: ‘This is our language! This is our culture!’ ”

 The first person narrative in The Cynic, The Writer’s Tale, Sand Castles and Vighnaharta adds credibility, immediacy and lifelikeness to the stories.  As readers, we come so close to the action that we begin to share the character’s perception of the world.  Bhai’s strategy of using the first person narrative here makes us abandon our own critical intelligence and escape into the character’s life. It is most effective in Sand Castles which ends on a poignant and illuminating note of the truth of life.  On the other hand, the third person narrative in the rest of the stories gives Bhai the freedom to act like an omniscient presence.  He skilfully enriches the plot as the third voice by navigating to spaces past and present in the characters’ lives.

The good yarn pleasure tales have a high quotient of readability.  Readers fascinated by the tales are unable to put it down until they are led to the climax and then the resolution of the piece.  If it is suspense which sustains The Writer’s Life, the title story is propelled by the play of emotions.  The interplay of subversive elements and pure innocence imparts readability to the first story and a flux of feelings do the same for Coinsanv’s Cattle.

A short story is, after all, not a transcription of life but a dramatization of it.  In the familiar and the real, a skilful writer weaves vivid and dramatic threads to transform the banal, clichéd and formulaic reality into a potent story.  Teresa’s Man then becomes a meaningful read, a ride through the unknown, yet known realms of human lives.

Short Story Workshop - St Francis Xavier School Siolim

C:\Users\Kanwalpreet.KANWAL\Documents\Nie - Appreciating Literature workshop for teachers

Indian Crime Fiction: The Missing Story

   Indian Crime Fiction: The Missing Story

                                                                               

Hard-boiled detective fiction has its roots in pulp fiction.  Pulp writers whose stories appeared in cheap paper magazines with glossy covers in the western world in the first half of  20^th century( Edgar Rice Burroughs; Ray Bradbury; Jackie Collins; Ian Fleming; Erle Stanley Gardner; H.P. Lovecraft; Mario Puzo; Jacqueline Susann) made it into the list of bestsellers of crime and science fiction with changing times and technology.  They are the inventors of the modern genres, such as, the western, the detective novel, the spy thriller, the science fiction, the horror, the legal thriller, the crime fiction and the erotic/romance novel.

They wrote fast paced, escapist, action-packed adventure, involving sensual femme fatales and mysterious thugs, corrupt police and bigger-than-life heroes in exotic places, for popular culture i.e. the man in a tea stall, the housewife with six children, the students and others travelling in buses and trains.  It was not aimed at the elite literati.  The language was lucid and plain and sometimes also incorporated slangs and expletives. The low price of the pulp magazine, coupled with easy exciting entertainment contributed to the success of the medium.  Along the way, it produced many iconic writers who transcended the genre by mastering basics of a pulsating page turning novel.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes’ skyrocketing appeal replaced the previous generation of writers followed by Agatha Christie's Poirot, and then PD James' Adam Dalgliesh.  Decades later, they still reign supreme in India.  But an ever thirsting hunt is on for a home-grown author to reclaim and take the genre of crime detective fiction to dizzying heights – to map the phenomenon once again, in our own country.

Experiments have ranged from Tagore’s Feluda series (a Sherlockian pastiche) in Bangla, the Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp fiction, to the flourishing market of Surender Mohan Pathaks, Ved Prakash Sharmas and Amit Khans sold at A H Wheelers stands at railway stations.  A revolution in Hindi pulp fiction (begun in Meerut in 1960s) took the country on a cascading ride of the jasoosi upanyas.  A crime world inhabited by rakish secret agents, dames, outlandish plots, heists and eyeball grabbing titles. They were the dons of the Hindi belt with 100% stake in the book market. With 300 titles or more to each of their credit, their paperback books went in for a first print edition of a lakh. Some of their writings were also adapted to blockbuster Bollywood films. At the height of their booming markets with the advent of TV boom in the nineties, they lost their readership to soap-serials. Presently they only retain 15% of the book publishing market. Inspite of their staggering success in their heyday, their books were never hailed as bestsellers, neither were they interviewed on national print media till their books were translated into English by Sudarshan Purohit a few years back.  He translated Surender Mohan Pathak's success novels The 65 Lakh Heist and Daylight Robbery.   

It is this fetish for English language (so-called Indian snobbery) which Chetan Bhagat very craftily cashed on to in his foray into the book world.  He became an icon in a few years time, a feat which the Pathaks, and Sharmas aspired to, but could not achieve. Very quickly in his footsteps followed Amish Tripathi and Ashwin Sanghavi. Their subjects were everyday or mythical, in comprehensible English prose and appealed to the man on the street. Reading this class of fiction, the common man felt himself a part of the literate English speaking community of the milieu, it boosted his ego.

But the palpable Indian crime thriller still languishes and the hunt is on to find the legendary writer and spy duo that can fill the shoes of a Christie/Poirot.  Ashok Banker, one of the first Indian crime fiction novelists in English, feels that given a choice the Indian reader still prefers to pick a crime thriller written by a foreigner. “The detective figure is a largely western concept; a myth of supremacy featuring a white male figure, superior in strength and intellect to those around him, who will save the world or the day. A tradition inherited by the Americans from the British.”

But is it really an inherited genre?  Chanakya’s Arthashastra greatly intrigues British-origin journalist and writer Tarquin Hall, living in New Delhi for the last couple of years.  Married to an Indian, Hall is known for his books such as Salaam Brick Lane and The Elephant Graveyard.  His detective novel series, set in Delhi, features a private detective Vish Puri who operates out of Khan Market. He says he did a report on real-life Indian detectives in Delhi. One of the detectives' inspirations was Chanakya. “He was quite dismissive of British characters like Sherlock Holmes or James Bond, because Indians have been spies for over 3000 years. It was all laid out by Chanakya in the Arthashastra. If you read that, it talks about how to be a spy, how to spy on your subjects, neighbours and which disguises to use, how to infiltrate households, that sort of thing.  It's amazing stuff.” 

Ibne Saifi, the Urdu writer of undivided India, created the much admired Colonel Vinod, an exponent of suspense, mystery and adventure.  He inspired the Bollywood poet Javed Akhter to create larger than life characters for films.  His main works were the 125-book series Jasoos Dunya (The Spy World) and the 120-book Imran series. The first English translations of Ibne Safi's mystery novels began appearing in 2010, with The House of Fear from the Imraan Series, translated by Bilal Tanweer(he has been at GALF) and published by Random House India. Contrary to the debate on lost in translations, the very process is a milestone in realizing a global world.  Highbrow and popular literature from remote niches is accessible to the whole publishing world irrespective of communal and language boundaries.

Kalpana Swaminathan’s inspector Lalli and  Mukul Deva (Man with the Nostradamus touch, and The God of all things) noted for his spy-military thrillers on terrorism and action, have predominantly made inroads into the genre.  Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games  and Anita Nair’s Cut Like Wound, too have topped bestseller charts intermittently.  Zac O'Yeah, author of crime novels and a detective fiction columnist for Mint Lounge, says “Crime novels are like therapy; crime novels tell you something about how to survive in the big bad city with its everyday threats and traps. There are cultural aspects that make India different; a certain complexity in society, the family system in India is tighter, stronger. Detectives have to think more of their personal honor than a typical Western private eye, who lives outside the system as a loner. An Indian detective is more connected to his or her clan and the larger social concerns of family life. Then, there is non-violence, a strong tradition, and a belief in karma: a detective cannot just shoot anybody just like that, or he or she might be reborn as a cockroach in his/her next life.”

New entrant in the arena is Kulpreet Yadav, whom I met at the Readers Writers Festival 2014, at Kala Academy, Goa. He straddles two boats, the literary and popular writing. A retired Defence officer, he very candidly admitted that with his Andy Karan trilogy he aspires to excel in popular literature.

The case of the crime detective thriller is out and the jury has still to come in about the legendary Indian writer and spy duo to top the Indian noir!