The One and Only Mario Miranda

A Pocketful of Chuckles!

A Pocketful of Chuckles!          

How do we live? What do we do? Umpteenth questions such as this stand mirrored and etched in the tableaux, fabliaux and portraiture of Mario Miranda’s art.  A vignette of the great cartoonist and illustrator showcases the passions and desires of a bhatcaar, another sketch reflects a speedy cameo packed with fisherwomen and the pedkars and the next portrays a theatre bar in fashionable Paris.  Mario was a flaneur who keenly observed the teeming masses in the streets, living out their drives and compulsions. A visual raconteur of everyday life, of the way it was, the influences, pressures and pulls of an evolving society, Mario sketched lifetimes of people and nations at home and abroad; visiting 22 countries from Portugal to Brazil, Japan, Israel, France.......

Mario’s art is a potpourri of exact realism, poetic myth, perception and gaiety.  It is kind but unsentimental, mocking but not cynical, profoundly cosmopolitan but distinctively individual. The substantial human nature embodied in his art holds the viewer enthralled.  An innate sense of irony coupled with a complete absence of pomposity and pretence is what makes Mario a wonderful artist.  The compositions frame the world of credible human beings, amazingly diverse and varied.  He intersperses his sketches with brush strokes of colour, bringing alive the atmosphere of his locales, foibles of people and quintessential tidbits of a region.  Structures and animals and other inanimate objects fill the gaps, resonating and completing the picture. Sometimes we are thrilled to spot Mario himself in one of his crowded cartoons – an Alfred Hitchcockan imposition.

Mario’s text and images in the books - Laugh it off, Goa with Love, Germany in Wintertime-  read like a graphic novel, with the pictures prima focus and words merely accentuating that which is so explicit in the drawings. Pocket cartoons and the editorial art in Times of India, The Economist, The Illustrated Weekly of India (and many more publications) which pulled at the heartstrings of the public( Miss Fonseca and the Boss, Bundaldass and Moon Swamy)  cannot just be left at the doorstep of an ephemeral register. Highbrow creative art with a mass following, can take on heavyweights like Goya, Hogarth and Daumier, says the cultural theorist Ranjit Hoskote. What Eugene Atget and Garry Winogrand did in street photography, Mario delivered in everyday caricaturist art in the daily media.  RK  Narayan’s short story servings of composite small town life archived in his ‘Malgudi’ stories is a verbalization of what Mario paralleled in his drawings. It’s a blessing that his creativity was shared and revelled in by a mass population rather than being barred behind gallery walls witnessed by a niche elitist audience.

Whether he was pub crawling with F. Souza or Dom Moraes in London or rubbing shoulders with Charles Shulz and Herblock in the US or was on an assignment with Manohar Malgonkar and Khushwant Singh in Goa, he had no pretentions to ideology or intellectual attitudes said Nissim Ezekiel.  Mild-tempered, unassuming and modest, he became the toast of every occasion.  His grounding in a multicultural, multiethnic milieu of Bombay and Goa with far-reaching influences from Arabia, Portugal, East Africa, Latin America and Europe had stretched the contours of his mind and heart to a horizon far from the narrow domestic walls of closed communities. With a flourish, his irreverent lines would give form to a striptease, a buxom dancer in a Parisian bar or a traditional Parsi family in Dhobi Talao . The pariah in a community hall in Jerusalem or the maverick in a Japanese party would find their way unresistingly into his works. Animals abound in his drawings of street scenes and village life.  Domesticated turtles, roosters, squirrels, dogs and cats moved uninhibited in his dwellings.  But like Charles Shulz’s beagle ‘Spike’, he too was inclined more towards dogs and they appeared abundantly in his cartoons.

The playfield between the private and public environments of people sets up multifarious dialogue in his cartoons. “Chogm and Four Lane Space for Grand Prix in Goa” are cartoons personifying strife in his public private space.  His leanings more towards a social chronicle rather than political statements taxonomically categorize his work as soft anthropology. Fisherwomen with sweet smelling ‘Zaois’ adorning their hair, students at Oxford with yellow, red trailing hair strands crisscrossing lush-green lawns  or crowded watering holes  across the world bring the viewer upfront with the nuances of life lived around the next city corner.  The meticulous detailing gives many a ‘aha’ moments to the viewer who cannot but be awed by the wealth of psychological information in a mere gesture or stance captured by the artist skilfully with his pen nib.  His is the exuberant image, ebullient with energy and movement.  He captures the absurd in every situation, looks through the pretensions and masks and renders us egoless.  His compositions fill the viewer with verve, mirth and chuckles galore!

Recording and freezing slices of life through his strokes and lines, he perpetuated profound truths in the garb of humour. The satire and irony clothed in the comical finds its mark but loses its sting and does not impinge anyone including the victims.  A cartoon like a short story is, after all, not a transcription of life but a dramatization of it.  In the familiar and the real, a skilful artist weaves vivid and dramatic threads to transform the banal, clichéd and formulaic reality into a potent picture.  Mario’s art then becomes a meaningful exercise, a ride through the unknown, yet known realms of the human condition.

A Pocketful of Chuckles, the largest exhibition of Mario Miranda’s original artwork is on at Gitanjali Gallery Fontainhas , Goa.  Compilations of his drawings through 56 years of artistic journey have been collected and classified by the Architecture Autonomous - Gerard De Cunha – A labour of love and tribute to the great Goan artist on his 90^th anniversary.  A book in a series, “Life of Mario-1949” too was launched on this occasion.  Google doodle by the doodler Aaron Renier reminded us fondly about the quintessential art form of the one and only Mario Miranda.

Chai aur Feminist Charcha

Chai aur Feminist Charcha

Chai aur Charcha

Feminist breaking news - #girlsatdhabas - has spread like wild fire on the net.  It is accompanied by pictures of girls at a roadside dhabas bonding over chai.  It says in loud words - women are reclaiming the ownership of public spaces. The Tumblr blog is making waves in the social media.  That a picture of girls at a dhaba can garner such a following suggests that this is something that girls have wanted to do for a long long time. Blogspots like ‘Why Loiter’ and ‘Blank Noise’ cottoned on fast and gave them full support and turned the mere posting of a picture on instagram into a campaign.

Societal norms of feminine and masculine space are being revoked in the Indian milieu. Transgressions like sitting down to drink chai at a dhaba, or hanging out on top of a water tank , are just mini rebellions , but to a society steeped in stringent do’s and don’ts for a millennia, these are understood  at a profound level.  This in itself is indicative of how deep the malaise of restricted territories for women in public space is.

 If you google search for feminist literature, the notations of collected literature jump from a century to the next one with few works cited in each slot, but from 1900s there is a marked leap. The avalanche in writings of women by women arrives in the 70s and thereon.  Virginia Wolfe and Toni Morrison are feminist writers that everyone talks about, but in India, feminist literature was started by Tagore.  His unforgettable writings in Choker Bali, Ghare Bhaire, introduced us to strong female characters.  And into this fecund ground then,  Ishmat Chugtai,  Kamala Das and many regional women writers sowed seeds of women’s rights and just naturally being a woman. 

Today in forums worldwide Muddupalani the 18^th century Telugu poetess (in the court of Tanjore kings) is being quoted from her poem ‘The Appeasement of Radha’.  She was honoured and awarded for her accomplishments in performing arts and also for her scholarly achievements as a learned poet well-versed in Telugu and Sanskrit.  In the preface of her autobiography, she wrote:

  Which other woman of my kind has
felicitated scholars with gifts of money?
To which other woman of my kind have
epics been dedicated?
Which other woman of my kind has
Won such acclaim in each of the arts?
You are incomparable,
Muddupalani among your kind.

A face that glows like the full moon.
Skills of conversation, matching the countenance.
Eyes filled with compassion,
matching the speech.
A great spirit of generosity,
matching the glance.
These are the ornaments
that adorn Palani, 
When she is praised by kings.

She was recognized for her erotic poetry, traditionally considered the domain of men.  She, as a accomplished woman and a Devdasi , took away from men what was hers originally and revelled in words and imagery of eroticism.  Radha Krishna dalliance, made famous by Jayadeva ,  was first reclaimed and then recreated by Muddupalani from the perspective of Radha.  Her fervour, love, jealousy, pining for Krishna was etched in passionate hues of crimson, scarlet and fiery red.  Krishna is reduced to a mere man and loses his halo in her poetry.  She is so consumed by the larger than image of Radha that her palette had no blues or turquoise to flesh a Krishna in all his glory.  

In her writings, Muduppalani claimed her right to celebrate womanhood, but we have a long long road to traverse before reaching that point.  Right now, a simple act of a woman walking on a road can never be removed from that of the gaze of a man. The question is - When will a woman breathe, exist and live without contending with a male observer- always watching, gazing, leering, scrutinizing, restricting and condemning her.

When will she rightfully live as a free human being, the first citizen of the world?

When will she celebrate herself as a woman and revel in her body, mind, sexuality and sensuality?

“Feminism over Chai” is a baby-step towards that horizon.  Into that freedom, My Lord, let my country awake!

All Hail Shakespeare

Shakespeare recently celebrated his 400th birthday, or rather the world celebrated him.  My article on Shakespeare in Navhind Times.

Faisal Devji's The Impossible Indian

    http://epaper.navhindtimes.in/mainpage.aspx?pdate=2016-04-10                  

The Impossible Indian:  Gandhi and the Temptation of Violence

Faisal Devji, the author of two acclaimed books ‘Landscapes of the Jihad’ and ‘The Terrorist In Search of Humanity’ presents a polemical scholarly study of Gandhi, not the Mahatma, in his latest ‘The Impossible Indian’.  Digressing from a hagiographic text, the clichéd arguments of a spiritual man in a breech-clout or aspects of his personal life, Devji dwells on ‘missed paths and hidden possibilities’ of the lethal political thinker of the twentieth century. 

He begins the text with the provocative words of the labour activist, Kanji Dwarkadas, “Gandhiji appealed to the imagination of the world as a little, scrawny, half-starved, self-denying man, a wizened monkey defying the terrible British lion, a reincarnation of Hanuman, the monkey-god”. But Devji fleshes him out as a radical force, completely enmeshed with world politics of his times. He examines the thought behind his potent legacy of ‘nonviolence’ that he bequeathed to the world of men and politics. He directs the attention of the reader to Gandhi’s psychoanalytic theory of transmuting or redirecting violence through the use of nonviolence. He writes, “Gandhi, the active proponent of nonviolence or the ‘sovereign method’, wanted not to escape violence but to tempt and convert violence by engaging with it. He thought violence and nonviolence were so intimately linked that one could be transformed into the other, since evil too requires goodness to sustain itself.”  

Gandhi’s “fantastic, almost crack-brained schemes” were a series of political experiments carried out in the strife-torn soil of South Africa and colonial India; an arena seeped in conflict, injustice and violence where a moral compass could transform human energies and liberate them not only from imperialism, but render to the world, a model of freedom from violence. Therefore, his agenda was not merely nationalistic, argues Devji. He wanted to set a precedent for human force at large in the face of political-ills of his times. His principle of nonviolence was a moral agency and would lead to the spiritualization of politics. “Real suffering bravely-borne melts even a heart of stone. Such is the potency of suffering or tapa. And, there lies the key to Satyagraha.” 

Quoting from Gandhi’s writings, Devji clearly indicates that ‘Bhagawad Gita’ was a way of life for Gandhi - a treatise on ethics.  He steadfastly emulated the teachings in his own life and then fed it to the masses through various political non-violent protests spearheaded during the freedom struggle of India.  ‘He was as hard-hearted as Hitler’ and would not think much about the sufferings and lives of people sacrificed in the face of non-violent fights as long as the moral remained untainted and won liberation for the larger good of man and posterity.  Gandhi often said, “Have not our saints and sages taught us that one who is a worshipper of ahimsa should be softer than a flower and harder than a stone?” Non-violent sacrificial offerings and moral acts went hand in hand against violence.

“History of suffering was preferable to one of victimization”, says Devji, of Gandhi’s thoughts and politics.  If non-violent struggle was impossible, then the evil of violence was better than the glorification of victimization, which Gandhi identified with cowardice. Between violence and cowardly flight, he proffered violence. He said that as long as he himself was a coward, he harboured violence and could not practice non-violence, which comes with deliberate conscious effort and thought.  He also believed that a human being was a fragile animal but when doors were opened and a path stared you in the face, then strength of word and action came from God who directs you in such times. “Never have I attributed my independent strength to myself”, said Gandhi.

Devji explores the smorgasbord of Gandhi’s political experiments beginning with his belief in the British Empire, the Pan-Islamic call for upholding the Caliphate, letters to Hitler and  advice to the Jews and lastly imploring the British to leave India to anarchy and  civil war. The chapter titled ‘Bastard History’ situates his political experience and grooming more as a product of western influences from Europe, South Africa and Russia, so much so that the ‘Gita’ that was to be his guiding light came to him in England through an English translation. His concept of nationality was based on the needs of the minority, for he felt that truth gets corrupted in the hands of the majority (the basic premise because of which he was assassinated).  Gandhi’s policy of non-cooperation, Swadeshi goods and working of a moral relationship between Hindus and Muslims, is positioned in the narrative of the warfare and the Mutiny of 1857.

Devji outlines how the Mutiny provided a basis where Hindus and Muslims understood each other’s faith and beliefs, of purity and pollution (adhering to caste lines and rituals) and yet stood unified as one opposing the British hegemony of maligning their caste and religious sentiments. This brotherhood was appropriated by Gandhi when he established ashrams where each Indian followed his own religion and marriage alliances, yet they lived together and waged the non-violent movement under his aegis. It further led him to support the Ottoman Empire and the Caliphate, a Pan-Islamic call of Muslims worldwide and in India.

Gandhi called the Jews “The Untouchables of Christianity” and through his letters sent them a clarion call for sovereign movement of non-violence in the face of every atrocity by Hitler and the Nazis. If they had died as protestors rather than victims, maybe the holocaust may not have become such a dark inerasable line in the history of mankind. He also implored them not to take on Palestine under the protection of British bayonets, but to seek a settlement with the Arabs.  Lastly, the final political undoing that Devji highlights is Gandhi’s call in 1946 to the British to leave India to anarchy and civil war. That partition was imperative was clear but Gandhi argued that if the Indians were left to sort out their own differences, there was still hope of brotherhood between Hindus and Muslims. “If the British were not here, we would still go through the fire, no doubt, but the fire would purify us.”After independence, he was aghast when army was called out in the Kashmir (India) agitation.  He wanted the non-violent cult to continue unabated whenever violent strife raised its ugly head.

Finally Gandhi upheld that the right to live stems from a duty to be a citizen of the world. Devji highlights the paradox of life and death that Gandhi had clarified in his late writings;  the great importance that western medicine attached to human life, prolonging its earthly existence by drugging/injecting only to lose it carelessly in numbers on battlefields. “Only by giving up the thirst for life, the excessive desire to live that was represented in modern war and western medicine alike, could the urge to kill be tamed, and the art of throwing away my life for a noble cause be mastered”.

The reader must be prepared to devote time and energy to an intensive read of the book a couple of times, to be able to follow Devji’s cogent argument of Gandhi’s impossible feat as a human being, in the quagmire of the warring forces of violence and nonviolence, as they are unleashed and comprehended in the arena of human politics. The juxtaposition of Gandhi’s own writings and thoughts continuously alternate with his own expositions in the book, compulsively engaging the reader all through the text.   

We have to give it to Devji; he has very successfully rendered to us the Mahatma as a ‘philosophical anarchist’. The latter not only cut the cord between state and sovereignty, but showed that freedom and sovereignty was every citizen’s natural possession; if one was fearless to suffer by withdrawing one’s cooperation (non-violently) from an unjust order.http://epaper.navhindtimes.in/mainpage.aspx?pdate=2016-04-10 

Tiddas by Anita Heiss

Tiddas by Anita Heiss

You cannot help but pick up the book ‘Tiddas’ authored by Anita Heiss. The spray of big blue jacarandas on a white cover of a bigger –than-usual-size novel, makes it impossible to miss.  Besides the attractive cover, the title intrigues the reader and you would like to know what it means. Tiddas is an Australian aboriginal word which means sisters.  The story is about five best friends who have grown up together and are now approaching midlife. They know each other inside out and have stood together through thick and thin. There comes a point in their lives where each one harbours a deep secret inside her.  When one day the pandora’s box opens, they become privy to hidden stories that they haven’t told one another –“ indeed the truth is the hardest to share.”

Izzy , soon to be the first black woman in New South Wales to host her own TV show , is shocked to find out that she is pregnant and has to choose between her media career and her baby.  On the other hand,  Xanthe has been desperately trying to conceive since years.  In spite of a good marriage,  she feels incomplete, because motherhood is the ultimate achievement for  Koori women of the Wiragjuri  community in Australia.  Veronica, the diehard wife and mother, has been served divorce papers. Her three precious sons have all grown up and gone into the world.  She is lonely and floundering to find meaning in life beyond being a homemaker.  Ellen, the spinster and community worker enjoys being single and free.  She is visited by love and is in turmoil, needing advice how best to handle her emotions.  And lastly, Nadine the successful white woman writer, is out of grips with herself, grappling with alcoholism and mood swings (onset of menopause) she can hardly contain within. 

Izzy and Nadine are not just friends but are related.  Izzy’s brother Richards is married to Nadine. The marriage is cozy and intimate, wherein Richard is the home maker, a reversal of roles for a man of the Wiradjuri community.  He is frowned upon by the Murri women (Aborgines in Queensland) in Brisbane where they live close to the countryside and back home by his Koori mother and elderly aunts.  Moreover, with Nadine’s  uncharacteristic rude behaviour, there is uneasiness between friends and family groups.  But the strength of the book is the unconditional bond between Richard and Nadine overriding distinctions of colour, class and race.      

Besides jacarandas lining the river and the town of Brisbane and appearing every now and then in the course of the book, Queensland’s cultural precincts too find a mention in the novel through the activities of the five women.  From the town and city, readers are taken to the aboriginal countryside for community festivals and family funerals. The rituals and practices of the Wiradjuri people to which Ellen, Xanthe and Izzy belong have been dwelt upon in detail by the author. The aboriginal community centre and the myriad activities keep the reader abreast of the indigenous flavour of the communities of Australia.

And just like the Jacarandas appear in different colours, so do the many aboriginal tribes and people through the novel, bound by common threads of humanness.  It could also be a metaphor for the five women cutting across colour wars, the black and white deadly tiddas; distinct in mood and mannerism but tied together by strong unbreakable cords of love and friendship.  The one line epigraph, a quote by Virginia Woolf, “Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends” shines a torch on the theme of the novel beautifully.  The book’s dedication adds to it - “to my tiddas for lifting me from life’s moments of darkness into the light again.”

Another very interesting feature of the novel is the book club that rocking tiddas are a part of and they call themselves ‘Vixens’, an acronym for their names.  Book tours, launches and literary agents complete the score in the social celebrity lifestyle of the character of Nadine.  The book activity becomes a strategic stylistic prop used by the author to have multiple meetings of the friends where the action in the novel then plays out. Through this situational group activity, the author very smartly highlights the classical and contemporary literature of Australia. The novels under discussion through the book at various points are:  Legacy by Larrissa Behrendt, The old School by PM Newton, The Boundary by Nicole Watson, My Husband’s Lovers by Susan Johnson, The Tall Man by Chloe Hooper .........

The author folds in a lot of religious ritualistic information through the character of Ellen. Otherwise a free woman, she is a funeral celebrant i.e. she conducts the funeral services of the close-knit Koori ethnic group and supports them during the hours of crisis by giving a honourable rite of passage to the dead members of the community.  This brings in a lot of traditional ritualistic information to the reader.  An unusual vocation for a woman, its inclusion lends a realistic edge to the novel on life and kinship.

Dr Anita Heiss is a writer, activist and a proud member of the Wiradjuri nation of central NSW.  To know more about her you can watch her at the 2013 presentation at TEDxBrisbane.

Lecture Series at Demphe College of Arts

                                                     Demphe College of Arts 

                          A   Week's  Lecture Series on the novel  "Inheritance of loss" by Kiran Desai


                             Explored themes of Immigration, alienation and displacement 

                                       through a power point and readings & discussion  

Book Review - Sleeping On Jupiter

Sleeping On Jupiter by Anuradha Roy

 Sleeping on Jupiter by  Anuradha Roy

“Spotlight” garnered the best picture and best original screenplay award at the Oscars.  And rightly so, mainly for its content.  It portrays case stories followed by investigative journalist team of The Boston Globe, ‘Spotlight’, into the child sex-abuse by Roman Catholic priests.  In a similar vein, Anuradha Roy’s ‘Sleeping on Jupiter’ was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2015, and it won the DSC prize for literature this year. The author delineates a predatory account of the Spiritual Gurus in ashrams in temple towns of India. Sexual energy is forceful, demonic and all consuming.  It overrides other human qualities of virtue, aesthetics, compassion and empathy.

The story is told in first person by Nomi and by an omniscient narrator who between them, bring alive a whole set of characters and a temple town Jarmuli near the sea.  Nomita Frederiksen is an assistant documentary film maker who has decided to come to Jarmuli to unearth nightmarish dreams which prey on her at night.  She is in search of her mother who had abandoned her to the boat people near the open sea as a little girl and an ashram with its charismatic Guru who had visited horror and cruelty on her and her orphaned girlfriends in the name of security and love.

 Interwoven into the fictionalized fabric are the fleshed out portrayals of three conventional old women – Gauri, Latika and Vidya , who are on a holiday to Jarmuli and are grappling with their conservative lifestyles and cultural ethos. Pulled in both directions, they do entertain thoughts of freedom and escape from the shackles of traditional beliefs and customs. On the other hand, Badal, their temple guide struggles with his feelings of same-sex love with Raghu.  Teaming with Nomi, Suraj, the photographer, has his own demons to decipher and contend with.

Johnny Toppo, the tea stall man on the beach, is the Wise man in the story who has come to terms with good and evil in life and sings while at work. He refuses to be drawn into the darkness of past and memory, a space that Nomi at 25 years of age still desperately struggles with.  She wants concrete answers which the mysteries of life do not allow her.  Interspersed with her present endeavours at Jarmuli, she reconstructs the ashram of the past with dark colours and demonic characters perpetuating cruel deeds on innocent minds.

The author also juxtaposes violence and misogyny with the pursuit of sexual fulfilment.  Insatiate desires or denial lead the men to heap abuses and physical punishment on their women and children. A history rich in erotic paintings and sculptures in temples perpetuates child abuse and suppresses sexual drives of women.  A society which sanctions man and his desires stands in staunch denial when it comes to the question of women and their right to be as they are.

Anuradha paints stark and strong imagery in her writing. “Everyone said Guruji was God. Now she knew they were right. She stayed awake for most of the night with the fruit next to her pillow. She did not know when she fell asleep. In the morning, the fruit’s pulp was like blood on her sheets. Dark red.”  Visceral feelings surface with deft stokes of color.  “She patted the camel’s side and said,’Go! Run!Far! You’re free now!’ The camel didn’t move. It hung its head looking too weary to take another step. The girl pushed the camel, ‘Shoo, go ....before they come back. It’s your life.’  The camel stood its ground. It had never heard these words before, nor the tone of voice. Then it took one tentative step to the left, and then another. Above her, the sky is opal.”

The author also contrasts backgrounds of characters and their ultimate leanings.  Nomi, in spite of her traumatizing past and ghosts in her psyche, strives for sanity– unraveling and groping through her darkness.  Suraj, on the other hand, who comes from a middle class Indian family, the boy with a beautiful face “Suraj in the Sun” has a broken marriage behind me.  Dopey-eyed and degenerate, he meets his nemesis in the end – forever engulfed in the darkness of the waves and Nomi rides the waves to a better future in the north – Norway where her foster family lives.  Fate plays its own tune irrespective of earthly contexts.

Humor enters the book through the three women and their doings during their stay at Jarmuli. “ Every year that passed seemed to make Gouri more plump. Her limbs were spindly, but her torso was a mound, a pumpkin perched on matchsticks. It was a small miracle she didn’t topple. Then she noticed a man selling tea in clay cups. She could not remember when she had last had tea smelling of rain. She told herself she would get at least three cups right away, to make up ; she was certain she wanted to drink three cups.”

But the overriding factor that holds the reader is the searing lyrical prose through which the author successfully unmasks the hidden face of Indian spirituality, the treacherous hypocrisy of sexual abuse in India. Where women still fast for the lives of their husbands, but are exploited by men even before they reach puberty. Spiritualism and religion demands sacrifices from women, they are here to give pleasure, or the only other way they can survive is as Goddesses, the earthly incarnate being the ever sacrificing motherly women. The story also provides them another alternative – of an escape to the west to be able to live a more humanly normal life.

“And that is why we read fiction at all”