Ruskin Bond

Booked and How

“I have enjoyed a fairly long life, and in my time I must have read close to ten thousand books. Many were forgettable, and have been forgotten. I have also written a few- some forgettable! Now as I enter my eighties I still read when the light is good and my easy chair well cushioned “ Ruskin Bond

Come May and my attention veers towards the Indian Bond – Ruskin Bond ( He turned 81 on 19^th May, 2015) and his inimitable writing, a testament to his timeless appeal. His prolific writing has kept us engaged year after year (and film adaptations of his books like the utterly absorbing Blue Umbrella). A book cover in sea green strokes lauding a reader’s dream of a comfy chair in a quiet corner surrounded by a leafy plant or two, a pile of favourite reads, a furry canine curled up under the chair, and a title in muted red  -  ‘Love among the Bookshelves’ released last year. It became identifiable in its own right as it straddles the genres of memoir writing and anthology both in one book. An unsurprising feat indeed given the writer’s repertoire.

Right in the beginning, he puts all speculations at rest by disclosing that the book is not about any torrid clandestine love affair among the bookshelves but his lifelong romance with the printed word, a loneliness, depressive-driven engagement  with books and authors which fermented into sparkling wine of flowing words that continues unabated. “As a boy reading was my religion. It helped me to discover my soul. Later writing helped me to record its journey.” He hails the short story saying that when time and changing fads absorb and consume many fine writers of long fiction, short story gets picked up by anthologies and  may get selected again and again and thus have a long life keeping the author alive and vibrant long after he is gone.

A forest officer’s hoard of books in a rest house in the jungle, amidst a hunting party with guns, dense foliage and shadows of lurking animals became his first date with the treasure house, catapulting him on a long road of classics, ghost stories, crime fiction, comics and the short stories. Every chapter in two parts is a peek first into his anecdotal personal story of growing up in a boarding school in Shimla, Dehradun, and later  Channel Islands and London; followed by an interface with an author and an excerpt from one of his books. There are the usual suspects among his favourites - Dickens, Wodehouse and Maugham but also some others not so famous but precious like Bates and Jeffries.

Amongst Wodehouse’ great comic creations (Jeeves and Bertie Wooster, Lord Emsworth, Mr Milliner, the Drones club), Ukridge was one of Wodehouse’s most delightful creations in his earlier works (Wodehouse lived a long  life beginning with Queen Victoria’s reign, through Edward VII, George V, George VI and Queen Elizabeth II). A scamster with endless streams of making a fortune with despairing outcomes, he endeared himself to the growing-up Bond in school who turned to him through a disastrous climate of ‘quarrelling parents, disapproving relatives and censorious schoolmates.’ An excerpt from Love among the Chickens takes the reader through a never-never land of eternal sunshine, eccentric men and supercilious businessmen, to Wodehouse the master of comical refrain in impeccable English prose.

When in a lighter mood, he would browse through his favourite comic collection. Superheroes ruled the roost but his inclination towards British comic publications, like Beano, The Dandy and Champion assuage many a guilty reader’s heart directing him to plain fun for fun‘s sake (the breakthroughs like Maus, and Kari today completely subvert that feeling establishing the comic world as a rare must-visit genre of reading).

H.E. Bates’ short story collections which were then serialized in the The Strand magazine, never failed to amaze him. Bond’s long pursuit of short story (five hundred stories to Bates six hundred) can be attributed in part to his admiration of Bates art. His long story about Alexander and his love for the countryside in some way definitely sowed the seeds for Bond’s passion for nature. An excerpt from Great Uncle Crow authenticates the impression it must have had on a young mind of Bond’s disposition (Bond compares the tenderness and beauty of his writing to a Renoir painting).

“Today, teachers and parents and the world at large complain that the reading habit is dying out, that youngsters don’t read, that no one wants books. Well, all I can say is that they never did. If reading is a minority pastime today, it was even more so sixty years ago. And there was no television, then, no internet, no Facebook, no DVD players, none of the distractions we blame today for the decline in the reading habit.”  Reading the above passage in the book was a revelation to me and food for thought at our next Goa Writers meet.

The compelling writer with an austere, without frills, unsentimental style –  Somerset Maugham introduced Bond to adult fiction. His book Cakes and Ale, a thinly veiled portrait of Thomas Hardy and his effervescent wife Rosie, was a rage with the older boys in the dormitories of his school. He says that it appeals to him still with its freshness and zeal. But the writer to take away the trophy for the umpteenth times is Charles Dickens. “In a wonderful voice he could, by turn be Micawber, or Sam Weller, or Scrooge, or Marley’s ghost. What a face is his to meet in a drawing room! It has the life and soul in it of fifty human beings.” Reading David Copperfield, he decided emphatically that he was going to be a writer. “And in a single-minded determined, Dickensian sort of way, I became one, for whom literature was religion.”  

An excerpt chosen by Bond from The Story of My Heart by Richard Jeffries in the end makes the book what it is - Love among the Bookshelves. A book that can help a human being discover his soul, its vastness and unity with all that exists and does not exist – the visible and invisible world. Where time and space is meaningless and stardust, the oceans, sky, earth and a blade of grass coalesce and flow together as one stream. And this well thumbed book copy now 50 years old, held together by Sellotape and adhesives still lives with him talking to him and being a friend forever and ever. 

 

Tagore's Legacy

                                                    Lasting Legacy

Centuries go by and handprints of certain souls remain etched in the hearts of generations to come. They are those whose legacy was inherited by people of a region, and then, when it could not be contained in a narrow realm, it overflowed and spread to landscapes beyond boundaries irrespective of geography and rotation of the earth.

Italian is one of the most beautiful languages in the world. It resonates and resounds with rhythms of the mesmerising Florentine vernacular, embellished and personally affected by the great Florentine poet Dante Alighieri. Europe in the olden times was a confusion of varied Latin dialects which gradually morphed into English, French, Spanish, Portuguese.....organically.  The dialect of the most powerful city became the language of the whole country. But Italy was a different story altogether. It remained fragmented for a long time divided between different power structures, and it was only in 1861 that it was unified. Hence myriad dialects (mutually incomprehensible between cities) thrived within the population and only as late as the sixteenth century, a few intellectuals got together to sort out the absurd language dilemma. A brilliant stroke of insight and they decided to hark back to the fourteenth century Florence, wherein Dante when composing the Divine Comedy had irrefutably derided the elite Latin (privilege of the educated aristocratic) to write his tale of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven  in the vernacular Florentine  tongue of the streets and luminous contemporaries like Boccaccio and Petrarch.

The legacy of the Italian language spoken today is not Roman, Venetian, or even purely Florentine. It is  Dantean.  Perfectly ordained and embellished by one of Western civilization’s greatest poets, an artistic pedigree par excellence. “The Divine Comedy is in triple rhyme – a chain of rhymes with each rhyme repeating three times every five lines, imparting the Florentine vernacular a cascading rhythm which lives in the tumbling poetic cadences spoken by Italian cabdrivers, barbers, pedestrians, delivery boys and administrators even today,” says the writer Elizabeth Gilbert.  

Just as Dante’s legacy lives on in the very fabric of his land and globally, so does Rabindra Sangeet  sough through the green landscape of trees and reeds and rushes of Bengal, India and the rest of the world. Today as I write this piece, verses of Gitanjali and Rabindra Sangeet flow through valleys and hills of our undulating land and interweave the planetary revolution of the earth in the Milky Way to mark Rabindranath Tagore’s 154th anniversary. Calcutta, known for its bohemian tastes, artistry and music, culturally rests on a bedrock of the legacy of Shantiniketan  and Gurudev’s  music and poems sung and rejoiced by people in the streets, workhouses and shanties.

Readings of Tagore’s poems evoke flowers, mountains, the sky, sunrises and sunsets, boat rides and water and lead many to the verdict that he was a naturalist poet.  The latter per se would have the tenets of romantic poetry of Wordsworth and Shelley. But Tagore’s mission was beyond the mere rapture of earthly beauty. He was a seeker who felt the divine touch and omnipotent presence through creation and nature. Living life embroiled in its vicissitudes, his quest for God is a spiritual awakening strengthened by a humble yet determined resolve to see Him in all his glory. His playing field was the study of the Vedas and Upanishads, and his poems reflect the essence of his reflections and ruminations of these sacred texts. In the symphony being orchestrated by the elements of nature in praise of the divine force, paradoxically he himself is so meager and small.

For him, God is not in the reclusive haunts of a self-proclaimed saint. Rather, he seeks God in the stream of life, the toil of a farmer, the soil of the tiller

Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee! He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground and where the pathmaker is breaking stones. He is with them in sun and in shower, and his garment is covered with dust. Put of thy holy mantle and  like him, come down on the dusty soil!

The procrastination that besets us and enmeshes us, chaining us to our comfort zones and force of habit or belief, such that renewal ever lies postponed :

The song that I came to sing, remains unsung to this day.

I have spent my days in stringing and in unstringing my instrument.

The time has not come true, the words have not been rightly set; only there is the agony of wishing in my heart.

The blossom has not opened; only the wind is sighing by.

I have not seen his face, nor have I listened to his voice; only I have heard his gentle footsteps from the road before my house.

The livelong day has passed in spreading his seat on the floor; but the lamp has not been lit and I cannot ask him into my house.

I live in the hope of meeting with him; but this meeting is not yet.

In many a verse, he enunciates the bindings of our big egos and illusionary fears :

Obstinate are the trammels, but my heart aches when I try to break them.

Freedom is all I want, but to hope for it I feel ashamed.

I came out alone on my way to my tryst. But who is this that follows me in the silent dark?

I move aside to avoid his presence but I escape him not.

He makes the dust rise from the earth with his swagger; he adds his loud voice to every word that I utter.

He is my own little self, my lord, he knows no shame; but I am ashamed to come to thy door in his company.

And over and over again, he pinpoints our human failings and illusions wrought by ‘maya’ :

`Prisoner, tell me, who was it that wrought this unbreakable chain?'

`It was I,' said the prisoner, `who forged this chain very carefully. I thought my invincible power would hold the world captive leaving me in a freedom undisturbed. Thus night and day I worked at the chain with huge fires and cruel hard strokes. When at last the work was done and the links were complete and unbreakable, I found that it held me in its grip.'

He also took upon himself the mammoth task of translating Kabir Vani,  titled Songs of Kabir :

Santan jât na pûcho nirguniyân

  It is needless to ask of a saint the caste to which he belongs;
  For the priest, the warrior. the tradesman, and all the
    thirty-six castes, alike are seeking for God.
  It is but folly to ask what the caste of a saint may be;
  The barber has sought God, the washerwoman, and the carpenter—
  Even Raidas was a seeker after God.
  The Rishi Swapacha was a tanner by caste.
  Hindus and Moslems alike have achieved that End, where remains no
    mark of distinction.

Footprints left on the sands of time to wring subtle but unparalleled changes in the history of mankind. 

Teres'a Man and other Stories from Goa

                           Regional to Universal: Teresa’s Man and Other Stories from Goa                                                                            or

                                                       Local Flavour Triumphs

                                                                          or

                                                  Damodar Mauzo’s Hour of Triumph

                                                                       Or

                                                     Konkani Flavour goes Global

"When you want something the whole universe will conspire together to help you get it,” said Paulo Coelo. 

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. His book of short stories Teresa’s Man and Other Stories from Goa has been long listed for the prestigious international Frank O’Connor’s Short Story Award.  ‘Translation’ (a target of dialectics at literary festivals) has yet again served the purpose of taking regional writings (Konkani in this case) to a wide readership on a global platform.

Goa’s most-loved man of letters, true to his repute, has brought together a gamut of Konkani & English writers and readers under one platform - a feat in itself.  Great credit goes to Xavier Cota the translator, instrumental in this phenomenal story of triumph.

Teresa’s Man and other stories is a potpourri of realism, poetic myth, sadness, perception and gaiety.  Bhai’s art is kind but unsentimental, mocking but uncynical, profoundly Goan but distinctively individual.  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 (reminiscent of Malgudi Days by RK Narayan).

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. 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 a  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.  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”

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. Shanker in Vighnaharta  finds an  escape in a ritual thus bringing the comedy of manners  to an  ironical denouement.

The literary constructions have brevity and tautness, which lend unity and power to the writing. 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!’ ”

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.

Book  born from the heartbelt of Konkani culture rides the wave to star power. Kudos!

Filomena's Journeys by Maria Aurora Couto

Unravelling Human Trajectories

  

  “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” Maya Angelou

Maria Aurora Couto, Goa’s daughter and Padma Shri awardee whose latest book Filomena’s Journeys has been shortlisted for the Crossword Book Award, is a pristine presence in Goa. Her quest, propelled by incessant coaxing by friends and a deep yearning to unearth answers for herself, led her to analyse personal trajectories of her family through the prism of social and cultural context of Goa’s milieu.  Writing a ‘no holds barred’ memoir of her parents, family and culture, searing through the veneer of a culture and lives lived (intimate and personal) must have taken immense courage, reflection, research and analysis. The writing evolved through a process of sifting, rummaging, rejecting and illuminating findings (at times, shocking) of the newspapers of the first half of 20^th century Goa, the Annuario and numerous conversations with family and friends. A mammoth journey undertaken by the writer with great sensitivity and empathy to unravel eponymous journeys, symbolic of every girl growing up in Portuguese Goa. A catharsis, cleansing by itself, deliverance, is anybody’s guess.

Couto’s mother Filomena Borges, reminiscent of the character of Heidi (a book by Johanna Spyri) in her childhood was a woman grounded by the harmony and camaraderie of an extended agricultural community. Life lessons assimilated from the vastness of nature, its vagaries and rootedness, timeless qualities; which seemed to have seeped into her persona, making her a woman of substance. Faced by adversity, she sought faith (nurtured on Saibin Mae church feasts, worship of St Filomena, obeisance to Goddess Kamakshi), family, neighbours and mundkars to bring up her seven children as a single mother in Goa and Karnataka. The expository writing on Filomena’s growing-up years and thereafter till she reached the ripe age of ninety transcending culture, language and geography is an engaging poetic rendition of love, homage and admiration, by Maria Couto.

Her father’s trajectory is another story. ‘Death changes the living forever’, says Coutu. Plagued by dogged memories of a ‘mercurial, conflicted father,’ Couto sought answers from the social, political, cultural mores of Goan society. The ubiquitous practice of keeping dark family secrets under wraps (a famous example which comes to mind is Bertrand Russell and his family history of madness) has been completely subverted by the writer. The closet is open and readers feel validated and inspired by what surfaces, because human stories remain the same across ages and boundaries.   

Antonio Caetano Francisco (Chico) a lusophone, led a pampered, leisured and pageantry lifestyle of the landed elite. He passionately sought fulfilment of an all-consuming desire to be an illustrious musician and master of ceremonies. His passion was cruelly thwarted when not recognized and legitimatized in his strata of society (the then page 3), which supported music as a coveted asset for the elite but not as a profession. Couto elucidates: “Society has unwritten codes, which in a sense diminish and potentially destroy the personality of individuals with originality, those who experience a sense of self that does not fit any conventional slot. Chico’s predicament led to isolation, perhaps a feeling of being trapped.  Unable to break away from this milieu, a half rebel, too sensitive, Chico found solace in ways that led him on a downward spiral.”

 A comparison to Catherine’s predicament in Wuthering Heights would be most appropriate.  Her wildness, too, was an outcome of the rejection of gender identity as defined by a bourgeois society of the 18^th century.  Catherine’s  was a women’s anguished voice which revolts; a haunting presence, always to remind of that which is denied to her and of what she actually wanted to be.  Couto’ s technique of a third person narrative seems to be a conscious decision, to distance herself and be more objective in her appraisal of the state of affairs.

‘An apparition in pink tulle’ (Filomena) and Impagavel (an endearing epithet given by Filomena to the irrepressible, irresistible, incorrigible Chico), a striking couple; the twain could have met at intersections of kitchens (here was life they felt, throbbing, living, exciting), in their children’s future or the flame that they had lit between them when they met, but it was not to be. Couto says that the web of societal pressures, norms and expectations with a tumult of failures and success created a wave, wherein her mother strengthened by centuries of rural tradition rode the crests and troughs to triumph, but her father caught in a whirlpool of conventions drowned in a trough of passions and vanquished desires, never to surface again. As Thoreau said ‘Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them’.

The poignant rendering of this story of her parents is interspersed with delineations of Portuguese Goa; haunting lament of a Mando juxtaposed with the sonorous revelry of a choral composition. A mores so strong as to cast a lasting shadow on everything it perpetuated or extolled. She details the feudal lifestyle with sprinklings of warmth and prosperity (the passages on landscapes, harvests, church feasts, weddings and explorations of countryside are indeed pleasurable) with undercurrents of exploitation of mundkars by the bhatkaar class, the caste politics (Brahmins and Chardos and their power wars) with malignant agendas, the extravagant and flamboyant standards of living and the blind aping of western lifestyles. Maybe Couto is being prescriptive in her illuminations of society (as suggested by other critics) to unveil a leisured class and its underbelly of alcoholism and politics. She advocates an alternative life of mind to better the parameters of living in her society.

The interwoven wefts and warps of Hindu-Catholic faith is another engrossing ingredient of her rich tapestry. The demolition of the temples e.g. the temple of mother goddess Kamakshi in Raia and the process by which the converts invested the power of the goddess myth in the Virgin Mary- Nossa Senhora, Saibin Mae explains multiple church feasts in which people of both faiths pray at the same shrine (e.g. the recently concluded feast of the Church of The Lady of Milagres, Mapusa). The gay abandon of singing, dancing, sartorial indulgences is a feast to the senses, helping conjure an era of celebration and opulence.

Portuguese Catholicism is aptly contrasted with puritanical Protestant British Indian faith. The former revelled in lavish feasts resonating with a sensuousness of sound, light, colour, incense, whereas the latter marked austerity as the hallmark of all faith.  She quotes Alito Sequeira, the sociologist: ‘The Portuguese doctrine of the assimilados, the emphasis on the absorption of Goa and Goans into Portuguese culture and identity, and with the granting of Portuguese citizenship, the Goans began to think of themselves as Portuguese without relinquishing their Goan identity; ambivalent and highly complex state of affairs where they gave up the native traditions but clung to caste identities.’ The dichotomy of the process of Lusitanisation and preference for English language and education, too, is an intriguing revelation in the book.    

The focus shifts to the next generation (she and her siblings) in the last section, and the story comes full circle when Maria Aurora Couto relocates to Goa with her husband’s appointment as Planning Commissioner of liberated Goa to great fanfare and honour. A metaphysical connect here imbues the story with an epiphany, worth a read and Couto’s foray with civil protocol too strikes a sweet note.

Filomena’s refrain through troubled times ’Vamos a ver; deixe estar; esquec bai, tudo isto ha-de passer’ (let us see; let it be; forget it; all this will pass) providentially prevails. Peace and happiness reigns through the family and a liberated land and culture, a fairy tale with a happy ending. But then, aren’t we all living one? The human predicament, embodiment of a tale, full of sound and fury, wherein we strut and fret our lives on stage, which could change if we saw the bright light at the end of the dark tunnel which signifies everything! 

Literary Fests in India

Is India Reading ?

Reading habit in India has come of age, considering one lakh and a half footfalls at the Jaipur Literary Festival 2015.  Litfests in the country are the new genre of festivals gaining momentum over the last few years.  Every other city boasts of an art/lit fest,   Apeejay  Kolkatta Literary Festival, the Mussourie Writers’  Festival, the Hay Festival  and Bookaro, to name a few.  Is it a passing fad or a lasting phenomenon and has the common man become an avid reader?  These are questions which spring forth, but going by the mere 10000-sold mark for a book to become bestseller in India , the story needs to be  investigated.

I was a delegate at the Goa Art/Lit festival . Into its fifth year, the Intenationa l Center  Goa  was beehive of activity for four days last December.  Book launches, regional  and global voices, food and translations, culture and politics found centrestage at the fest.  The mood of discussions and debates propelled me to continue the experience and I found myself part of the burgeoning crowd of intellectual elite at the Jaipur Literary Festival.  It was hosted at the Diggi Palace within the heart of the Pink City. Readings were held simultaneously at six venues (lawns and halls) of the palace.  What heartened me was the turnout and active participation of youngsters at the readings.   It was a congregation of the intellectual elite from various cities of India and abroad in their winter best. The writers, literary agents and publishers from India and abroad completed the circle of the most elusive and celebrated people from the world of books.

The talks at lit fests celebrate great writings from poets and writers, lyricists and novelists, environmentalists and journalists, and the power of great ideas to transform our way of thinking. The festivals become a playground of the exchange of views and meeting of minds that inspires revelations- personal, political and educational. A Chinese writer at JLF remarked  that he was both astonished and warmed by the wide open debate between writers, journalists, members of the civil society and the audience without any embargoes. He felt intrigued by the diverse voices applauding and at the same time critiquing the government and other policy makers. Queer literature too finds a voice at festivals, and has been the force for widespread consciousness amongst people. .
The festivals are global in their reach and yet anchored by several Indian languages. Bollywood, rappers and food aficionados are equally represented at such fairs. Young adult workshops on the latest pedagogical practices in education and the children’s hour at the Goa fest was a great success.  
The bookshops engage the crowds effectively by proudly displaying works of all writers in attendance. The DSC prize for best South Asian literature and the showcasing of the Booker of the Booker prize shortlists are programs not to be missed. The Khuswant Singh Poetry prize is an addition to the same genre, coveted and awaited through the year. The readings run clockwork with close adherence to the printed schedule and protocol.

That’s the bookish side of the picture. The other side introduced the idea to the spectators that though we are here for books and books only, it would be too boring without music, food and controversies to sum the matter on a somber, pleasing note. The venues look like  a commercial hub, with food stalls, crowds and local cuisine and fashion in full splendor. Did this showmanship detract book lovers and writers from their activity of serious discussions or spurred them on with its alluring whiffs of colour is a matter of debate in itself. Goa remains more intimate and personal with close interactions between writers, musicians and the small but effective audience.   

Coming back to our original question of whether the events (I have been part of the Bookaro, and Kala Ghoda Lit Fest too sometime back) are an evidence of our revolutionizing reading habits in the present times of the visual media and gadgetry. The pointer is towards young India with never-ending deadlines and short attention spans. Or is it a cool quotient to be seen at such spots of the literary elites? You mention books, as you drop names, without having read them.  Maybe they are new centers of business and touristy agenda under the garb of literary and cultural promotions.

The fast growth and explosive popularity has achieved the inclusion of corporate sponsors. An example in case maybe the Jaipur literature festival,  which this year became Zee JLF. In the solitary world of books, reading and writing, these incursions are indicative of a defining change in the modern times of writing, selling and promoting books. The ubiquity of the market has definitely invaded the world of books.  Certain writers and avid readers like to remain far away from such happening fairs.  But the question remains ‘Is the general public reading?’

Brand Books Festivals are here to stay. What form it will evolve into, only time will tell. Let’s wait and watch as the Tamasha continues, says Amitav Ghosh.

Logicomix Summary

http://epaper.navhindtimes.in/NewsDetail.aspx?storyid=1949912&date=2015-03-29&pageid=1

Logicomix: 

A few weeks back, I waxed eloquent about Comics.  My interlude with comics continues, thanks to libraries and bookstores in Goa and of course, patrons of exclusive comic collections. ‘The improbable material for comic book treatment’ is what has me completely hooked and I can’t seem to let it go. One such graphic novel is Logicomix – An Epic Search for Truth (I am late arriving at it , it was  launched in Greece in Sept, 2009),  a helluva highbrow comic panel about mathematical philosophy based in the later part of  nineteenth century up to the Second World War.

Scientists, philosophers and mathematicians occupy inaccessible realms in the living world, completely incomprehensible to the minds of common masses. To transpose a journey of complex mathematics, logic and philosophy interwoven with a human angle to the stories of  star performers(mathematicians in this case), coloured with family history along with raging zeitgeist, is a feat very craftily achieved by the makers of this sensational comic strip. The graphic novel is the brainchild of two Greeks viz. Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou.  The former, an international expert on the relationship of mathematics to narrative and of the fame of the bestseller Uncle Petros and Goldbach’s Conjecture (the maiden  foray which  bridged mathematics to the world of storytelling) ; and the latter, Bill Gates’ teacher, a professor of computer science at Berkeley and  the author of a novel on Alan Turing( the father of computer science, we recently watched him in Imitation Games).  The art was done by Alecos Papadatos (clean line drawings made famous by Herge’s Tintin series) and Annie Di Donna (color) who went location-hunting to original storyscapes on this pretext.  

It is a quest of Bertrand Russell (the British mathematician, philosopher, logician, reformer, pacifist and activist) for foundational logic in mathematics.  An orphaned, insecure, insomniac teenager with a history of raving family madness and mystery is driven by demons in his restless fearful mind (he is preyed by the idea bordering on certainty that he will go mad one day) to find a secure logical explanation to incongruities in his life  and the living world he sees around him. His epic obsessive search to find truth, through certainty and logic in mathematics (which should answer all conundrums of creation) spanning decades, in tandem with the work of historical figures like Leibniz, Boole and his contemporary sworn-logicians  Gottlob Frege, Georg Cantor( the inventor of set theory)  and many other madmen of sciences, forms the idealistic core of the book(a mathematics scholar could most proficiently write a thesis paper outline with it). Whitehead the co-author of his great work Principia Mathematica and argumentative brilliant pupil Wittgenstein (who constantly challenged and spurred him on), too, form a major part of the narrative.

The frame of the comic panels switches between two threads – The story of Bertrand Russell and his geek buddies and the creators of the novel in the studio space arguing over cups of coffee, brainstorming and commenting on Russell’s mindscape, experiments, theories and personal life.  The second comic panel becomes the brilliant stroke on which the novel rides high. The creator panels and their discussions (an echo of the reader’s mind) ground the highly technical mathematical exposition into layman questions and plausible, lucid, digestible answers. Another frame to the storyline is Russell’s speech which begins the narrative and holds it in place to the end. He is invited to speak to a sceptical audience at an American University just before the US jump into WW II. The spectators want to know the logic of war and Russell answers them with the question, ‘What is Logic?’ -  taking the audience through an autobiographical  road trip of his dogged trail of finding logic through the father of logic – mathematical philosophy. His hard hitting attempts and decades of study to find logical provable equations to every unproven axiom and hypothetical assumptions (e.g. concept of infinity) on which mathematics is based, nearly drove him to insanity - the very blackness he was trying to escape.

The age old pursuit of man to rationally comprehend the world by reason (the basis of science, medicine, technology, wars in the modern world) lures the reader into the thick of the argument with Bertrand Russell to have Kurt Godel the mathematician announce "There will always be unanswerable questions," and that arithmetic is "of necessity incomplete" –toppling the very basis of logic.  In the end, Russell seeks saving grace for his soul by becoming a pacifist and a humanist seeking ethics and a peaceful world. A line echoed by Stephen Hawking too in The Theory of Everything – that as long as there is life there is hope, but to pinpoint the pulse of life is a futile endeavour.

The novel ends with the comic creators walking to a Greek amphitheatre where they watch Oresteia, a trilogy of Greek tragedies written by Aeschylus ( the first play of the series  Agamemnon, was staged in Kala Academy last month),  succinctly culminating the treatise with the climax that life is greater than logic.

Logicomix then becomes a masterpiece in equating logic to a comical quixotic quest to unravel the flawed fabric of reality. The ambiguity of truth and the conundrum of ‘madness and logic’ surface as prominent fallouts.

That such polemics is the heartthrob of Logicomix is a loud statement in itself!  Kudos!

The Marg Magazine

Comics Galore!

That Marg, A Magazine of the Arts, in its current edition should be about Comics in India is a profound statement in itself (an encyclopaedia of Indian art, the magazine was launched in 1946, with Mulk Raj Anand as the founding editor).  It tables essays and graphics on the journey of comics from a heady content of superheroes and teen romances to the concurrent complex narratives; psychological, theological, scientific, autobiographical, subversive and socio-political in content, challenging adult readers alike. The present issue of Marg is guest edited by Aniruddha Sen Gupta.  

The fact that there is active exploration and scholarly studies in universities across the globe and creators prefer to be hailed as comic creators rather than art-literature artists, or other euphemisms (graphic novelists, sequential artists etc.) is indicative that comics have arrived in the high brow milieu of arts. Underhand borrowings of pop artists from comics in the mid 20^th century to an open collaboration between iconic  art and comics is fast blurring the lines between these  acclaimed  genres  of creativity.

It is indeed interesting to unearth the trajectory of the comics in India and abroad begun in the 19^th century. The process illuminates the deep troughs that the illustrated art charted, to the sporadic peaks which began in the latter part of the 20^th century. If Punch(UK) ,Raw(US) and Bandes dessinee(France)  were making breakthroughs in the West , the Japanese Manga comics, Avadh Punch and Indrajaal comics in India were keeping the fires burning in the East. The avant  garde  came in through Art Spiegelman’s  Maus  (holocaust narrative), Osamu Tezuka’s  eight-part Buddha biography, and in India Sarnath Bannerjee’s  Corridor, Orijit Sen’s  River of Stories( the first graphic book in India ).  The piece de resistance of the Indian series would be the ingenious Amruta Patil’s  Kari  (a landmark  contribution to the burgeoning genre of comics).

Indian traditional visual narratives of art like Bengal Patachitras, Togalu Gombeyatta(a puppetry form from Karnatka) inform and inspire experimentation in contemporary engagements of image and words in comics. The generative oral tradition is subverted at times to hear new voices and view the frame story from a different perspective. The long love-affair of India with the two epics- Ramayana and Mahabharata thrives still, and similar is the preoccupation of Japanese Manga with historic Japanese art. But then, Manga has diversified and produced prolific works and its story of exploration and breaking barriers continues steadily.

The piece on Art in Comics by Gokul Gopalakrishnan takes the reader into shared spaces of art and comics. The fledgling forays of comic creators to incorporate art images as book covers (Army @Love) or interweave art into their storyline frames gives birth to a new hybrid language. A case in example would be the subversive adaptation of the painting Whistler’s Mother in Alan Moore’s and Eddie Campbell’s comics masterpiece From Hell.  Exploring the transfiguration of Andrew Wyeth’s painting Christina’s World,  Amruta Patil explains: “The readers’ decoding of such odes in my work is not of utmost importance. It is an additional layer that may be enjoyed by ones in the know, or by those returning for a re-read. There is, of course, a deliberate reference being made to the original master painting- i hope to be ‘found out’ but it isn’t essential to the basic reading of the tale. Some references are teasing play on the original, some are more direct. There are parallel conversations going on with different readers- conversations with readers cued in with art history. That is the fun of this medium, no?  So much room to play!” It is yet discerning for a viewer to see comic strips transposed on gallery walls, with many overlapping elements- murals, graffiti, a stand-up narrator Flaneur in the City at Galleryske Bangalore.

The craft of the genre is skilfully depicted through original image and text drawings of Orijit Sen (diary notes of River of Stories – Narmada dam and tribal habitats) and the Amruta Patil’s City of the Ninth Art.  Orijit Sen cannily captures the being of the place, the inter-textuality of emotions and deep rooted connections of land and its people in the face of man-made insensitively planned makeovers. Angouleme France’s the city of ninth art (annually hosts the International Comics festival since Francis Groux ‘fried public imagination’ with comic art in 1972) where artists breathe and sleep comics, opens new doors to readers about the culture of studio spaces and collaborative art.  Amruta attended a residency programme (“ in fact i have never been in a place with so many human beings who do what I do and do it better”) here. She packs a punch with one liners, craftily taking the reader through an innovative experience accompanied by images.

Vivek Menezes folds in a slew of information and his personal take on comics, as great reading material for kids today. A surreptitious reading (it was frowned upon by elders and thought that it made teenagers go berserk; remember the comic book villain - Dr Fredric Wertham, the psychologist who campaigned against comics)has moved to covetous realm of sought-after volumes ( Go: A Kidd’s Guide to Graphic design by Chip Kidd, Manga Guide to Physics) by parents to guide their  children in their school curriculum and facilitate breaking hard nuts like Genetics and the Periodic Table. He cautions parents against Robert Crumbs adaptation of Genesis as a graphic novel  “keep it waiting till they grow-up”( being an Indian parent, his bookshelf creaks heavy under academia comic books rather than fun, wicked cartoon series).  His own journey with comics makes an interesting read. He puts himself on the page – a ‘foundering Indian kid’ in 1980s America who became hooked on New Yorker’s  hilarious cartoons and Doonesbury and Bloom County which turned on light bulbs pop!pop! in his mind about a foreign culture,  kept his boat floating  on an even keel in international waters.

Grassroot comics harbour powerful socio-political movements in the country and abroad. World Comics India, a voluntary non-profit organization in Delhi, trains ordinary citizens to bring forth underlying societal problems into focus for public scrutiny and debate through scroll-like comic graphics and punchy text. The common man is thus armed in remote locales, says Shared Sharma and unheard voices sound without pulling any punches into the mainstream arena. Targeted pithy prose and powerful imagery packs in a punch  - an effective medium being practiced in North East, Rajasthan, Nepal....The Don Bosco  citizen journalism one-day workshop that I attended at ICG, with Stefan K and Gauri Gharpure as  efficient resource persons, would do good to incorporate comic journalism (Comics Power!) for their students beginning with Goa and its myriad issues.

Shut Up About the Market and Show Me Your Internal Organs – by Rakesh Khanna , is a shake-up to Indian comic creators to sharpen their ware and come out with avant-garde work, to really make a mark out there on a global platform. 

The comparative study between eye-popping works available on a platter in the US, Japan and European countries– leaves a lot to be desired in the Indian comic scene. The article intrigued me to go looking for comic books  on Flipkart – Eve Gilbert’s Tits, Ass and Real Estate, Linda Barry’s One! Hundred! Demons! David B’s Epileptic. He gives it to them( an appreciative thump) who can do it: “It’s easy for me to crib about the Indian comics that I am not seeing, I am not a comics artist, and I never will be. But most importantly I am too much of a coward. I believe drawing a really great comic takes courage. If you are drawing an autobiography, it takes the courage to look hard at the ugliest things you’ve done in your life and figure out why you did them; to publish your secrets for the world to see. If you are drawing a fictional universe, it takes courage to spend years working obsessively and in isolation, and in the end, the market might completely ignore you – and you will be another broke, starving artist. That’s what I think it takes to make a really great comic.”

The reading list at the end of the magazine is to aid the interested reader to find what is out there of value in the world of comics – a prompt to devour the books and spread the word around, for nothing works better than a good word.

That now your interest is piqued and you will go in search of the comic world that we live in through the world of comics is a certainty.  Go ravish ‘em!

Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak

http://epaper.navhindtimes.in/NewsDetail.aspx?storyid=2548643&date=2015-03-01&pageid=1

                                                            The Forty Rules Of Love

Every true love and friendship is a story of unexpected transformation. If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we have not loved enough – Elif Shafak.

Shafak's most recent novel, The Forty Rules of Love sold more than 5,50000 copies, becoming an all time best-seller in Turkey. That it has already been translated into many languages  is not surprising in the least. It would have been, if the outcome had been any different. She is the most widely read writer in Turkey and essentially every novel that she has written has been awarded and has won the attention of the literary world at home and abroad. She writes in both Turkish and English. She is rooted in her native culture like a compass with a solid centre, but her other leg travels in a wide circle touching places, people and distant borders. She weaves stories questioning the status of immigrants, the marginalized, sub cultures, women in Islam and the lost love in humanity. 

The Forty Rules of Love is a fictional endeavour to showcase the mystic essence of Islam found in Sufism. The whirling dervish dance and heretical summation of  Koranic text breaks away with rules of convention, illuminating the love and brotherhood of mankind that Islam espouses and Jihad turns out to be a struggle within to win over our nafs, pride and ego.   

The structure of the novel involves two parallel narratives – the story of a Jewish American wife Ella  in Northampton, Massachusetts devoid of love  who is transformed by an intriguing manuscript about the Sufi mystic poet Rumi and Sufi mystic  dervish Shams of Tabriz wherein two soul mates  meet and attain beatitude. The second narrative is told by a range of characters including Rumi's wife and sons, self-proclaimed guardians of Sharia, prostitutes, drunkards and other marginalized citizens of that society. The narrative is gripping, told in first-person fragments, letters, emails and braided  with Shams's theosophy as told through his 40 rules of love.

 “The 13th century was a turbulent period in Anatolia, rife with religious clashes, political disputes and endless power struggles. In the West, the Crusaders, on their way to Jerusalem, occupied and sacked Constantinople, leading to the partition of the Byzantine Empire. In the East, highly disciplined Mongol armies swiftly expanded under the military genius of Genghis Khan. In between, different Turkish tribes fought among themselves while the Byzantines tried to recover their lost land, wealth and power. It was a time of unprecedented chaos when Christians fought Christians, Christians fought Muslims, and Muslims fought Muslims. Everywhere one turned, there was hostility and anguish, and an intense fear of what might happen next. In the midst of this chaos lived a distinguished Islamic scholar, known as Jalal Al-Din Rumi. Nicknamed Mawlana -Our Master- by many, he had thousands of disciples and admirers from all over the region and beyond, and was regarded as a beacon to all Muslims.

In 1244, Rumi met Shams - a wandering dervish with unconventional ways and heretical proclamations. Their encounter altered both their lives. At the same time it marked the beginning of a solid, unique friendship that Sufis in the centuries to follow likened to the meeting of two oceans. By meeting this exceptional companion, Rumi was transformed from a mainstream cleric to a committed mystic, passionate poet, advocate of love and originator of the ecstatic dance of the whirling dervishes, daring to break free of all conventional rules.

In an age of deeply-embedded bigotries and clashes, he stood for a universal spirituality, opening his doors to people of all backgrounds. Rumi stood up for an inner-oriented jihad where the aim was to struggle against and ultimately prevail over one's ego, nafs.

Not everyone welcomed these ideas, however, just as not everyone opens their hearts to love. The powerful spiritual bond between Shams and Rumi became the target of rumor, slander and attack. They were misunderstood, envied, vilified, and ultimately betrayed by those closest to them. Three years after they met, they were tragically separated.

But the story didn't end there. 
In truth, there never was an end. Almost eight hundred years later the spirits of Shams and Rumi are still alive today, whirling amid us somewhere...”

The novel celebrates love, in myriad hues. Love between soul mates, man–woman love, and love for all of humanity. Ella leads a colourless life with grown-up children and an unfaithful husband. She is given the assignment of reading a book Sweet Blasphemy written by Aziz Zahara by her literary agency. The latter forms the second narrative in the novel.

Ella’s story is predictable and also seems a bit contrived. It is the second narrative about Rumi and Shams of Tabriz which really is of paramount importance, and holds the reader. It is indeed a triumph on which the book sails high. A prophecy leads them to each other resulting in an encounter where they first test each other, become firm friends and then love each other. A coming together which transforms each, such that Shams of Tabriz surrenders his life to the conniving hatred of his friend’s family(they are driven to desperation because of the complete change in Rumi, who no longer connects to them) and Rumi becomes a passionate poet, a mystic. He writes transformative poetry which generations can never get enough of, leading all followers to a love which breaks away from conventions and is pristine in its purity and form.

The two stories work together to allude to the forty rules of love which are revealed in italics through the novel. A very Paulo Coelo like writing technique, but then it deviates from it, that there is nothing allegorical about the narrative. It is a fictionalized version of the coming together of Rumi and Shams of Tabriz, the effect of their merging mindscapes on themselves and others around them.

The forty rules of love, the treasure trove of the book, if expounded could become a treatise in themselves. Here are a few to savor and think about, for ruminate you shall; the core philosophy of Sufism:

East, west, south, or north makes little difference. No matter what your destination, just be sure to make every journey a journey within. If you travel within, you’ll travel the whole wide world and beyond.

 The quest for Love changes us. There is no seeker among those who search for Love who has not matured on the way. The moment you start looking for Love, you start to change within and without.

 Try not to resist the changes that come your way. Instead, let life live through you. And do not worry that your life is turning upside down. How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come?

 Real filth is the one inside. The rest simply washes off. There is only one type of dirt that cannot be cleansed with pure waters, and that is the stain of hatred and bigotry contaminating the soul. You can purify your body through abstinence and fasting, but only love will purify your heart.

 The whole universe is contained within a single human being—you. Everything that you see around, including the things you might not be fond of and even the people you despise or abhor, is present within you in varying degrees. Therefore, do not look for Satan outside yourself either. The devil is not an extraordinary force that attacks from without. It is an ordinary voice within. If you get to know yourself fully, facing with honesty and hardness both your dark and bright side, you will arrive at a supreme form of consciousness. When a person knows himself or herself, he or she knows God.


The book is a keeper, highly recommended for a read.