The Absurd Reality

The Absurd Reality

                                                            

I met Tathagata Chowdhury at the Art/Lit Festival at ICG. He is a diehard actor and proprietor of a thriving English theatre company based in Kolkatta. The theatre company is called ‘Threatician’ and it is a remarkable platform for actors who want to live their dreams and experiment prolifically.   Their plays are staged in the metros and they have plans of touring Asia and Europe for production and staging of plays. Tathagata conducted a comprehensive 3-day theatre workshop at the festival, quoting and showcasing legendary plays by Samuel Beckett and Edward Albee. Listening to a thespian expound about classic plays which are written by famous playwrights, performed by renowned actors  and then savored by elite audiences on Broadway , I felt privileged and enthralled and would like to share the experience and their themes with my readers.

Previously we have talked of books and their film adaptations in the same column here. Today we compare books and films with another artistic form of expression ie theatre. Theatre they say is alive, vibrant and palpable as films can never be. Films are technology at its best and create an illusionary perfect world, whereas in theatre it’s like a live wire with an audience glued to the stage which is real and there are no retakes – you get it right once and that is it. Tathagata spoke about the elaborate sets of Tennessee Williams which runs into pages of description, and how a bench in Zoo Story and the door in Doll’s House become live strong characters on their own – such is the power of a play. 

Tathagata rendered an intense performance of ‘Mumbai in a Zoo,’ an adaptation of ‘Zoo Story’ written by Edward Albee. It was a monologue in which he skillfully portrayed two characters Jerry and Peter- the protagonists of the original play. Classified under the genre of absurdist plays, the Zoo Story is a seminal work by Edward Albee on the lack of contact between human beings and the resultant apathy, indifference and destructiveness implicit in its conformity. The sense of isolation in big cities, the sub- human condition of people like Jerry, their struggle with the everyday vicissitudes of life , are dramatically presented through  Jerry , who does most of the talking in an endeavor to establish a contact with a stranger , namely Peter sitting and reading on a park bench .

 The action proceeds in the form of a conversation between the two characters. Peter is reluctant to talk, his responses are monosyllabic. Cocooned in his life of affluence with a comfortable income, an apartment and a cosy family, he refrains from any kind of contact with Jerry, a commoner. Jerry on the other hand is desperate for a human contact with Peter and relates his life story of one night stands, his dingy one room apartment, the death of his adulterous mother and drunken father, the gin-soaked landlady’s lust for him, his heartrending endeavor to have a sense of relatedness with his surroundings, even the dog in his neighborhood, who snarls and tries to bite him in spite of being offered food. He frequently reverts to the refrain of having visited a zoo in which he tried to study the behavior of animals and relationship of man and animals. In the zoo, animals lived in cages, a metaphor for our society wherein each human being lives within a boundary of hierarchy, culture, class, and beliefs. These are the very barriers which break human contact and communication and isolate us. Are they our narrow domestic walls of safety, or lines of segregation, fear, hate and the other?  The opening encounter hesitant, slow-paced, monosyllabic, mounts skillfully with the energetic flow of words, the rhythms changing  to long confessional passages, until the final violent physical possession of the park bench , when they face each other and Jerry produces a knife and insults and goads Peter to pick it up in anger and self - defense. The unexpected violent ending was changed by Tathagata in the performance to a positive fare with the two having reached a wavelength where they try and establish a contact and walk together some distance with each other.

 Another very interesting and absurd study that Tathagata dwelled upon was ‘Breath’ by Samuel Beckett. A thirty second play, to the point and perverse. It is a play which has come in for a lot of critical attention since its conception and was directed by Damien Hirst, later for a film project on Beckett’s works. You may actually laugh the first time you watch it, now on a DVD too. The screen brightens and you see trash littered all over. As the light increases in intensity, a 'faint brief cry' is heard and then silence synchronized with a long breath in and out, held for about five seconds. Then the light falls gradually to darkness, and the cry is heard one final time. That’s the end period. You are struck by its brevity and strangeness and you laugh for lack of comprehension. It takes a little time and thought to decipher what you viewed.  In Beckett's text, the cry is described as an 'instant of recorded vagitus', a Latin word describing the cry of a newborn infant. It is but a master’s symbolic portrayal of life, fleeting and desolate, through the use of light, a cry and the sound of a breath.

Absurdism galore was cited by Tathagata through another study of Albee's play ‘The Goat, Or Who Is Sylvia?’The synopsis would have you speculate that Albee was trying to be funny by having the protagonist confess to his friend that he was in love with a goat. On the contrary, it is a dark tragedy in which the protagonist tries to express the inexpressible – his love for the she goat, over and above his family, which questions our complacency and preordained notions of family, sex and love. That passion cannot conform, be controlled, or directed to socially acceptable trends. It is a must read for the masterful play of language and the psychological study of love and relationships.

We can source books from forums like flipkart, and IFFI comes visiting every year in Goa. But what about English theatre? Thanks to the Mustard Seeds we get to enjoy two performances in a year and now the Sadir Festival too seems to be becoming an annual feature. For a long lasting and passionate affair with theatre, more indigenous theatre groups need to come visiting the shores of our state – Are the sponsors listenin

Words and Pictures

  Words and Pictures

Man has always tried to record his experiences and impressions through writings and drawings. Classics were authored by poets of antiquity and writings were preserved through different mediums and substratum.  Books have been with us a long long time, chronicling the story of man on earth through varied periods. Pictorial drawings, paintings and theatre blazed their own trail of evolution but it was only with the turn of the 20^th century that moving pictures or films began to be produced. The avatar changed from silent motion pictures to talkies in black and white, which later metamorphed into color films. The digital technology revolutionized the whole concept of making films and all along it was felt that books and authors with their wispy characters of ink and imagination would be routed out sooner or later. Books and films have now existed together for more than a century and in the contemporary world have entered into a symbiotic relationship of ideas and forms. Creativity stems from books and filmwallahs are inspired to make frames of the storyline of a book and project it visually in motion pictures. It is like affirming and coalescing the imagination when reading the book and saying,” hi, this is how it would appear in real life”. But proponents of books swear by the writings of the authors and want to be left to their flights of imagination, rather than concretizing them to black and white details as shown in films. Others sit glued to visual screens, as it saves them time and effort of reading print. The sparring factions will continue on both sides, but we are here today to celebrate books and their film adaptations, each enriched by the other.

A very fine example of the two coexisting genres was showcased at IFFI Goa a fortnight back. The opening film of the festival ‘Life of Pi’ drew a large crowd and the auditorium at Kala Academy was filled to capacity. What drew the audience is a matter of contention. The book written by Yann Martel on which the movie is based or the film itself, directed by Ang Lee of the fame of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Lion and Brokeback Mountain. The central themes of the book are religion, the existence of God and animal lore. Yann Martel describes the writing of the book a spiritual quest. Pi the protagonist of the book is portrayed as a child who is inquisitive to discover God and just love him. His introduction to various faiths and bliss seeking endeavor is poignantly painted with his family’s secular outlook and dinner table discussions on the meaning of life. The role of religion and science and the cohabitation of man and animals in confined spaces on earth build insight into our behavioral patterns and a strife to outdo and then understand each other. The strongest message would be that God is always watching over us even when we think he has abandoned us and faith in Him can help us swim across the world’s ocean to an existence of peace and contentment.

Chitrangada directed by Rituparno Ghosh was featured in the festival twice with packed houses. A film which marked the 150^th anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore is based on a musical written by the latter himself in 1892. The story of Chitrangada is derived from the epic of Mahabharata and is the name of Arjun’s wife.  He married her on one of his travels to Manipura.  He discovered that though she dressed like a brave warrior, she was actually a beautiful woman and the daughter of the king of Manipura.  An heir to her father’s throne, she had been brought up like a prince and an able protector of the people of her kingdom.  Arjun promises to marry her, but not take her away from the kingdom and their children would be heirs to the throne of Manipura. 

Tagore’s Chitrangada, brought up like a man and content with her identity, wants to become a beautiful woman when she sees Arjun.  She is filled with a deep longing to be a woman, such that the Pandva prince cannot help but fall in love with her. With the blessing of Kamadeva, she becomes a beautiful feminine woman and she feels that she is fulfilled, but with time she craves to be loved for her true self.  Rituparno Ghosh, Rudra Chatterjee in the film, himself personified Chitrangada.  Born to Bengali parents who are never sure about his sexual identity, nonetheless treat him like a boy and make him study engineering. But Rudra has always thought of himself a woman and he becomes a successful choreographer whom playwrights and actors respect and look up to. He is directing the play Chitrangada  and off stage his own life plays out in an identity crisis. It is an emotional, psychological story of search for a sexual identity which personifies our individuality in society.  An actor and director par excellence, the movie is an all- out treat. 

Lessons in Forgetting was a film featured under the plaque of the Indian Cinema, directed by Unni Vijayan and the screenplay was written by none other than the writer of the book herself, Anita Nair. The title is a film and a book, intense and complex. Readers of the book on reading the book feel they have some unfinished business still left, and the film crew felt that their entire lives changed with the making of the film. A book with a lingering effect is about relationships, marriage, parenthood, destiny and salvation and still some unanswered questions.  A cyclonic storm, a metaphor in the book enters the lives of people and leaves silence, destruction and irrevocable change behind. Then begins the story of redemption and past reflections which can make sense of the present and life can somehow go on. A story of second chances and forgiveness or acceptance when one knows that from the edge, one can only retrace steps to a new beginning. Midlife crisis, escapism, sexuality, experimentation, parties, dependency, truth, hypocrisy, female infanticide… the book is multifaceted and throbs with human emotion of alacrity, strength and surrender.

The closing film of the festival ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ directed by Mira Nair is an adaptation of the book written by Mohsin Hamid. A structured and intense narrative, it is a monologue of a Pakistani American Changez when he meets a visiting American in Pakistan and tells him his story of days before and after the felling of the Twin Towers in New York. Changez begins with a self-deprecatory note of an American way of life and the American dream, which he aspired to and could have easily achieved, but his involuntary smile at the TV reportage of bombing of the towers has him questioning himself and leads to his  discovery of his own patriotism. The monologue gives stark indications that Changez could presently be a fundamentalist planning a terrorist attack, and equally the American on the other side of the table could be an American agent sent to liquidate Changez.  Hamid’s title of the novel too is ironical and leaves one in a quandary. The reader is left wondering whether it applies to every critic of America in a Muslim country or it points to the capitalist global cop – America and Americans themselves. Fundamentally either of the two – Changez or the American could be a reluctant fundamentalist! Who is to know?
Other films like Slumdog Millionaire, Namesake, and many more which I may have missed,   based on books were screened. Dear reader, go on a memory trip and recollect film adaptations of books you have savoured or deprecated in equal emotion. Books lovers the world over swear by their book copies, and though they may watch films based on their favorite books and verbosely critique and compare the visual with print , wild horses cannot make them abandon their books in favor of the visuals….. and I stand with you all the way.

“Books and movies are like apples and oranges. They both are fruit, but taste completely different.”

― Stephen King

In Conversation with Amish Tripathi

Interviewing Amish @ Goa Literary Festival on 14th Dec 2012. 

Amish is a renowned writer of Modern India whose Shiva book trilogy is selling like hot pancakes. He's a hit with myth, and readers revel at the nuggets of Paulo-Coelho-type wisdom sprinkled in his fiction.


In this interview, Amish expounded on his concepts of evil, the human search for truth and how we're all a mix of both masculine and feminine energies..

The Machiavellian Story

The Machiavellian Story

Hilary Mantel, the twice booker prize winning English writer, has made waves with her credits and writing. As Indians, we have always been familiar with Chanakya, the king maker and writer of the ancient Indian political treatise ‘Arthashastra’. And now, Mantel’s award winning books brings to life another Machiavellian historical character Thomas Cromwell.  To be able to bag the coveted booker prize in quick succession for the two sequels of her trilogy on Tudor History is equally astounding and bewildering. But I would rather not delve into the intricacies of the process of deciding a booker winner, for the subject of historical fiction writing intrigues me more.

Writing of historical fiction is a specialized genre akin to making a film. It involves gargantuan research of a particular period in history; fiction rooted in truth and reality. The writer has to conjure up the whole scene of the era; the political, social and economical undercurrents. The frames or chapters bring alive  the fashion of the time, language that people spoke, the belief systems interweaving the societies in question. With great dexterity, the writer then threads together historical personalities with fictional characters in the book which holds the entire fabric of the theme together. The fictional characters are figments of his imagination, intimate and thorough, whereas the real life historical characters are elusive and distant. They have a life of their own, already lived and fleshed out. In the hands of an acclaimed author like, Mantel and Amitav Ghosh (whose trilogy on opium wars is equally enthralling), the book acquires the quality of a classic, the depth of a Dickensian prose and the pace of a thriller. A humble form of writing, wherein the writer has to metamorphose and tell a true story that already exists. What a colorful and interesting way indeed of reading and understanding history compared to dry historical treatises.  Its subjectivity is another story altogether, a topic for another article.

Hilary Mantel in her books ‘Wolf Hall’ and ‘Bring up the Bodies’ (the latter the winner of the 2012 Booker Prize) has delineated the reign of Henry VIII in Britain in the first half of the sixteenth century. She never trained as a historian, though she had wanted to study history in college. The notion that art students ended up as teachers, did not entice her a bit. Working as sales girl in a store, she would visit the library and cull information from books; the revolutionaries interested her the most.  Since she did not enjoy making things up, she relied mostly on facts but experimented with form. She frequented Brechtian plays and dialogue became her narrative.

Henry VIII was the legendary tall and handsome king who lived a life of sensory pleasure, and at the same time was equally well versed in politics and foreign relations. He divorced and married six times and in the process changed the entire frame of the Roman Catholic Church with the Pope as a mere puppet in his reign. And the man who actually brought this heretical act about, with the consensus of the common man of the times, was Thomas Cromwell who strode through the corridors of power, a remorseless reformer and legislator.  ‘Lock Cromwell in a deep dungeon in the morning, and when you come back that night he’ll be sitting on a plush cushion eating larks’ tongues, and all the goalers will owe him money.’  ‘A blacksmith’s son abused in his childhood; a  streetfighter, who knew the entire New Testament in Latin, at home in a coutroom or the waterfront; could draft a contract, train a falcon, draw a map, quote from Plato to Plautus,  furnish a house or fix a jury’. He was the  prime mover behind the "Tudor revolution in government" – the first glimmerings of the modern English state and the break from Rome. . ‘Pitting himself against the parliament, the political establishment and the papacy, he reshaped history to his own and Henry’s desires’. He staunchly opposed religion which invokes dread in the masses and sits on amassed wealth of the people, which could be put to better use.  "Among the ignorant," he observed, "it is said that the king is destroying the church. In fact, he is renewing it. It will be a better country, believe me, once it is purged of liars and hypocrites." His strategy to go to the common man to vote against the church which demanded a tax on births, marriages and deaths and have the people’s representatives in the parliament to pass the bill was his masterstroke.
‘Wolf Hall’ is a book which portrays the break from Rome, a process where one man is wolf to another and the divorce of Henry VIII from Catherine of Aragon. ‘Bring up the Bodies’ deals with the reign of the second queen Anne Boleyn, and at the end, her execution ordered by Henry himself. Further research and reading the Tudor history, you discover why the cocktail ‘Boody Mary’ is called such. The latter the daughter of the first queen ordered the beheading and slaying of innumerable courtiers from the reign of Henry VIII because the state reverted back to a Catholic state and the Church became supreme again for a time. Queen Elizabeth, the virgin queen and last of the Tudors, was the daughter of Anne Boleyn and maybe she did not marry because of her mother’s history. Hilary Mantel doesn’t mess with factual history but experiments with the gaps in history and that becomes her playfield as a writer. She has been successful in fleshing out personal to national to international agendas in the Tudor history of flux and immense change, through the agency of powerful characters.  

When I was reading the books, the resonance between Chanakya and Thomas Cromwell kept recurring to me through the read. I marked portions in the book where the characteristics and strategies have overlapped and they on reflection have echoed to me another time and a legend who changed the history of India. Ashwin Sanghi’s ‘Chanakya’s Chant’ and Manoj Joshi’s lay staged at Kala Academy was fresh on my mind and the comparison impressed on me more forcefully. They also conform to the theory put forth by the Italian diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli, who developed a code of political conduct for rulers and administrators in the sixteenth century that is independent of moral and ethical character. An action or technique is right as long as it serves the larger purpose of the state irrespective of its ethical status and responsibility. It is the legendary treatise on politics and thought which was followed by politicians throughout the world, and is the present day ‘Mantra’ of the corridors of power.

Machiavellian characters are interesting. Spend time with them and write to me if you find resonances too!