Ketevan Sacred Music Festival

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Ketevan World Sacred Music Festival

The website of Ketevan World Sacred Music Festival is alive and kicking again. The overall pitch of the festival, scheduled to be held from 10^th to 19^th February, is a confluence of musical strains from different era and  presents a dialogue across varied musical traditions from the East and the West. The opening concert ‘Mediterranean Dialogues’ will set the tone for the festival. The Arabic oud (a pear-shaped stringed instrument) will be played in tandem with Flamenco guitar, exploring the connection between traditional Arabic and Andalusian music along the Mediterranean.

The brainchild of Executive Director Rudolf Ludwig and the Artistic Director Santiago Lusardi Girelli, this festival debuted last year at the historic venue of UNESCO World Heritage site of St. Augustine ruins and St. Monica, Old Goa. Flutists, violinists, pianists, cellists, sitarists, fadistas, and choral ensembles of over a hundred musicians and researchers collaborated to render the universal song of love and joy.

A nascent ensemble, Goa University Choir, the first university choir in India comprising of students from Goa University and members of the Goan community has been evolving under the tutelage of maestro Santiago Lusardi Girelli. The concept of a university choir is not just a performance playfield but a fecund ground for exploration, innovation and realization of avant garde ideas. Santiago is creating symphonies between acoustically varied forms of music. He says that it is in the intersection of musical diversities that new meanings are sought and found. Sediment of different tongues lines the singing vocabulary of these concerts.. The high point for the choir will be the concert “History of Tenderness”.  

The Cantata ‘The Etche Berri’, inspired by the life of St Francis Xavier, is an original composition specially composed for the Ketevan Festival. It will be performed by a baroque and Indian Carnatic ensemble along with the GU choir. Composer, musicologist, pedagogue and choral/orchestra director Vasco Negreiros (Portugal) is the composer. Another concert, Vasco Negreiro’s piano cycle ‘Quattuor Elementa - Four Elements’ (Songs of Kindness & the Four Elements) and its depiction of the four classical elements of fire, air, water and earth will be a guideline for 21^st century Portuguese music. Besides this, vocal ensembles from Spain( Vandalia Vocal Ensemble) and Hungary (St Ephrain Male Choir)will weave their own magic into the shows. 

A candlelight concert at St Monica, ‘Hildegard to Cage’, celebrating the mystical compositions of  11th century Benedictine nun named Hildegard Von Bingen (mystic, writer, musician, philosopher and naturalist), is another peak  of the festival. The spiritual compositions of the visionary abbess and healer from the picturesque Rhine Valley, Germany are amongst the most astonishing and unique creations from the dynamic milieu of 12th century Benedictine monasticism. St. Hildegard suffered weak health, but tapped into her altered mental state and wrote beautiful words, composed songs and set them to music. In consummate dialogue with Popes and religious men, she is also considered a feminist and once wrote, “Woman may be made from man, but no man can be made without a woman.”

Juxtaposed at the other end of the spectrum is the mystical legacy of John Cage   - something that needs deconstruction as well as celebration. The (in)famous silent piece  4'33'' a masterstroke of sonic emptiness, radically altered the meaning of music as it had been understood before, and this would  be an experiential journey at the festival. Cage’s openness, egolessness, freedom and I Ching aleatory (chance) mechanism of composing the ‘Water Walk’  or ‘Etudes Australes’ will heighten  listeners’ expectations.

An interlude with certain ancient medieval musical instruments also lies in store. Viola Da Gamba, played by the exponent Sofia Diniz (Germany), is expected to be a soft dreamy drone in the intimate confines of the St Monica Church. An encounter with the Irish world through its traditional harp (the instrument of the God Dagda) and the traverso (wooden flute), the typical Irish shepherd’s best companion, will take us into the mist of the Celtic mythical creativity.

Celebrated pianist Marialena Fernandes (Austria) and the Ketevan Chamber Orchestra (Spain,

Argentina, Germany, UK and France) will explore the sacred in nature through a series of suites of the great Brazilian composer Heitor Villa Lobos ́s ‘Bachianas Brasileiras’: an idiosyncratic meeting ground of Baroque techniques(evoking the world of Bach’s Baroque instrumental suites) and ideas with the Brazilian folk and popular musical sources . Villa Lobo’s oft-repeated phrase “My music is natural, like a waterfall,” will echo in the listener’s ears before the opening of this concert. 

Virtuoso pianists like Marialena Fernandes and Karl Luchtmayer (both of Indian origin, now based in Vienna and England respectively) will delight the audiences with their line-up of compositions in separate concerts at St Monica Church. ‘Sacrality of Fado’, as the programme sheet reads, exposes the roots, the blood that runs deep through tearful, nostalgic and torn veins of Fado. North African, Sephardic, Iberian, Indian (Sonia Shirsat) and Arabic musicians will explore the origins of Fado and the broken love story between God and Portugal.

I hope that you will immerse yourself in a musical experience that promises to be not only socially enriching but also an education on the diversity of world music.

Angela Trindade

Adding to the Archive

Fundacao Oriente, located in the traditional neighbourhood in Panjim, is home to the Trindade collection since 2012. The paintings include works by Antonio Xavier de Trindade and his daughter Angela.  Fundacao Oriente commissioned the historian Fatima de Silva Gracias, who has a doctorate in Indo-Portuguese history, to write monographs on the artists.  Fatima delivered scholarly work in the following books: ‘Faces of Colonial India - The work of Goan Artist Antonio Xavier de Trindade’ (2014) and ‘Angela Trindade –A Trinity of Light, Colour and Emotion’ (2016).  In this article, we take a peek at Fatima’s monograph on Angela Trindade, one of the pioneering women artists of modern art in India.

The writing familiarizes the reader with Angela’s life and works in India and the US.  Beginning from her childhood (born 1909 in Mumbai), Fatima chronicles the influences of her renowned father, the cultural milieu of Bombay and her Goan roots into her making of an artist. Deftly folding the locales of Mumbai, Fatima paints a vibrant picture of the first half of 20^th century India. When Angela came of age, after graduating from Sir JJ School of Arts, she stepped into a vibrant environment of the first flowerings of the enculturation movement (i.e. the adaptation of Christian liturgy to a non-Christian cultural background).

Fatima’s chapter on Sir JJ School of Art spectacularly delineates the hallowed history of the establishment. From its conception, there have been a number of variations in its curriculum under different directors and Fatima gives the reader enlightening information towards the working of the institution. It’s interesting to gauge the rising trends in Indianisation of the arts with a landmark change during 1920s, when William Eewart Gladstone Solomon took over as principal and stepped up the work started by Lockwood Kipling and John Griffiths  towards Indian motifs and folk elements in art.

Angela’s creditable performance in Sir JJ School of Arts (where her father had been a teacher/artist for two decades) led her to earn fellowships. She soon started experimenting with Indian folk art - a direct contradiction to her base in Western portraiture that she had inherited from her father (who’s famousl y known as ‘Rembrandt of the East’). Fatima writes, “Angela was one of the pioneers of Indian art with Christian religious themes. She became part of the group of artists who worked towards the Indianisation of the Christ story. As forerunners of the movement, the group encountered severe criticism.”

The author traces Angela’s journey from JJ to US where she, successfully painted portraits of national icons including  Gandhi, Tagore and Nehru in India and President Kennedy and President Ford in the US. Beyond portraiture, she became renowned for her evocative works of the Madonna and Christian themes in Indian style. The flat surface of the Indian style painting imbued her work with greater simplicity and emotion. A critical commentary by the author states, “Angela used warm earthy colours and portrayed Mary as a dusky, almond-eyed Indian adorning a colourful sari in various Indian settings. At times, Baby Jesus is shown in a dhoti, like Krishna. Diyas, charpoys, motifs from Ajanta paintings, mudras and lotus flowers replace western representations. Jesus is colorfully depicted in flowing, saffron robes along with his disciples.”

“On migrating to US, where she discovered that her Indianized themes were not appreciated, Angela turned her attention to Tantric art and Abstract Expressionism. Only in abstraction could she finally marry the Eastern and Western influences in her art”, writes Fatima. Abstract Expressionism, a major art movement in 40s New York School (practiced by the famous Dutch born artist Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock) inspired her greatly. She began expressing herself exclusively in form and color: an eternal striving for inner growth and spirituality parlayed into Tantric symbolism. Finally, she scaled a peak when she evolved her own idiom of ‘Trinidadism’ Triangle of Tantra and the Christian symbol of Trinity coalesced into the symbol of a triangle, which she then used to depict gods and humans alike. Fatima follows her trajectory through ‘life in triangles.’

The author further extends the scope of her book to include the lives of Angela’s contemporaries and the cultural ferment of the era. The Progressive Artists Group (PAG), which included modern artists such as  MF Hussain, VS Gaitonde, Angelo de Fonseca, Ram Kumar and SH Raza finds a mention in her writing. It is interesting to learn how they interacted and exchanged ideas - taking cues from Western art while creating their own language to etch their canvases. Amrita Sher-Gil, one of the nine jewels of India, and well known for her paintings ‘Hill Women’ and ‘Group of Three Girls’ inspired Angela to paint women depicting sisterhood, an element  quite overlooked in Indian paintings.        

The author recounts her own journey into Angela’s world through the artist’s notepads, letters, newspaper stories and inputs from her close family. Angela’s nephews and nieces living in different parts of the world became an extended family in the process of making of the books and lent a depth of knowledge about her personal life. It is remarkable to note that she was an expert in diverse fields of carpentry, upholstery, sewing, cooking and music. The restoration work that she did on her father’s works is praiseworthy. A warm-spirited person, she was very affectionate and bonded with her siblings and their families, leaving behind stories of love and happiness.

Through the prism of research and interactions, the book paints a vibrant picture of the artistic-cultural ethos of India, more so of Bombay from the last century. The language is lucid and except for duplication of information at certain points, the delivery is cogent and systematic.

Besides the biography of Angela, an interested reader has lots to engage with historically in the book. The paintings along with descriptive text become an art masterclass further extending the boundaries of the monograph.

Amba- The Question of Red by Lakshmi Pamuntjak

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 The Forgotten Chapter

“Is it not true that all stories exist to be written anew?” asks Lakshmi Pamuntjak in the prologue of her novel ‘Amba – The Question of Red.’  The Indonesian novel was published in 2013 under the title ‘Amba’ before Speaking Tiger India published it in English under the new title in the fall of 2016.  It is based on the swallowed and obscured historical record of the night of 30 September, 1965, when six army generals were murdered. The repercussions led to the massacre of one million communists and their sympathizers. “It’s fifty years since the massacre but we cannot look away,” says Lakshmi.

Since the Suharto regime fell in 1998, there have been systematic endeavors by writers, filmmakers and academia to publish studies of the silenced genocide. Alternative retellings, of which Lakshmi’s novel is a brave attempt, trace the black inerasable wrinkle in the history of human rights.

The ’Red Purge’ displaced and ravaged millions of people, whereas, the perpetrators and those who aligned with the powerful became rich. A CIA report describes it unequivocally, “One of the worst mass murders of the 20th century, along with the Soviet purges of the 1930s, the Nazi mass murders during the second world war, and the Maoist bloodbath of the early 1950s.”

Lakshmi allegorically sketches the dark history through characters from the Mahabharata – Amba, Bhishma and Salwa.  It is said, “Myth was there at the beginning of literature, and it is at the end of literature, too. Better stories have never been told.” It is true that myths live on in our societies and we see lives through their prism, either pandering to them or resisting them. In a bid to escape the myth, the characters in the novel charter their course through the revolution and get embroiled in an inescapable destiny.

Characteristically, Lakshmi brings the Hindu-Buddhist rooting of Islam to light. “Folk tales and tales from the Wayang (shadow play) drawn from the great Indian epics flowed through the lives of the Indonesian people,” writes Lakshmi.  Islam in Indonesia is rooted in the belief of reincarnation, in accordance with Hindu- Buddhist way. “We in Java live with both. We are Javanese because we live with both,” says the protagonist in the novel.  Islam made the nation a Muslim majority land in the 13^th century. Before that,  people followed Hinduism, Buddhism and Animism diligently.

A world on the brink of being ripped apart by hatred and killings is vividly shown by Lakshmi from the point of view of multiple characters. If Amba is a middle class Javanese, Bhishma is elite, half Javanese and half Sumatran. On the other hand, Samuel is Christian Ambonese. His family was exiled to Holland by the Dutch, where it lived in fenced camps. Manalisa represents the ethnic tribals, the indigenous population living on Maluku islands, west of Papua. The people of Chinese descent are on the hit-list, too - their Muslim identity being a question mark in the minds of the mob.  Buru Island, akin to Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay or the penal colony of Cayenne(Devil’s island in French Guinea), is a character in itself in the novel.

Lakshmi’s lens on Buru is mirrored through an epistolary device. Buru is evocatively transformed from a betelnut plantation surrounded by blue waters to a penal colony housing 12,000 prisoners. Bhisma writes a series of letters to Amba from the barracks, hiding them in bamboo shoots under a tree, his secret vault in jail.  ‘The shinning lights of Indonesian intelligentsia’ were imprisoned thousands of miles away from the power centers during the Communist purge. Buru is painted red and stands witness to the torture of its prisoners for ten years.

Lakshmi paints the colour metaphor stylistically through the story. ‘The Question of Red’, the title of the novel embodies innumerable connotations of the dreaded orgy. To begin with, there’s the passion of the central characters - ebullient Amba and rock-star Bhishma. This desire is superimposed by the hatred of crazed people against the ‘Communist Red’. 

There are a number of allusions to poets, playwrights and historical rebels, enriching the narrative with power words and ideas of revolution. Lakshmi’s belief in art as the saviour of human souls comes across when Bhishma takes Amba to the safe haven of the Art Colony in Yogyakarta in order to escape the mayhem in the city. The idea that art and writing speak in tough times is harboured in Lakshmi’s own endeavor to stand for the truths of Indonesian history. 

Metaphors lie strewn through her narrative driving home the stories of politics, murder and anarchy. “The islands of their country were the thousand foundlings with their mouths turned towards their mother, the Great Nipples with dictator Suharto, the father completing the picture,  one family sitting at one big dinner table to purge the ’Reds’ from their neighborhood.”

Vignettes of humane persona, surrounded by gory bloodshed, save the historical drama from nihilism. Leading the way is Bhishma, the ‘Wise Man of Waeapo’, the healer tending to the sick and the injured undaunted by danger.  Salwa, Samuel and many others in Buru camps, too, execute tasks going beyond the call of duty.

Reading the novel in context of Cold War between two superpowers during that period, one would expect to find mention of the conflict, but that is not so. The author seems to have intentionally refrained from working on CIA angle and its role in adding fuel to fire. Also the character of Amba does not evolve into a strong emancipated role. Overcome by jealousy and uncertainty, she gives up on Bhishma for long years. The flame of love that they light between themselves cools and becomes more of heartburn than the fiery passion that the beginning of the novel suggests. On the other hand, the long drawn massacre leaves nothing to desire and remains exhaustive in its treatment.

Lakshmi Pamuntjak enters the hallowed hall of fame in recording yet another story of human hatred, the violent orgy of Muslims killing Christians killing Chinese killing Communists!

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Cooking for Happiness by Kornelia Santoro

 Cooking for Happiness

Culinary indulgence over the festive season followed by readings and dialogues with food writers has been a fascinating experience. I had never thought that a cookbook could hold me such - that it could be an aesthetic, sensory and scientific study!  These books are not just doling out recipes. They are embedded in anthropology, food science and art.  The food-body connect and experimentation are the bedrock of good cooking. Moreover, regional climate and flora-fauna bring variety and colour to the process.

One book which was a delight to read is Kornelia Santoro’s ‘Cooking for Happiness’.  Kornelia’s polemics and opinions about diets are based on first-hand experience. Her playfield is the kitchen with food sourced from Goa (where she has been based for the past two decades), the Mediterranean (  where she spent time with her first husband) and Germany ( where she was born). Her travels in the Iberian peninsula, Western Europe and US have further enriched her journey in the cooking arena.

Before this, Kornelia bagged the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards for her previous books -   ‘Kornelia's Kitchen: Mediterranean Cooking for India’ and ‘Cooking for Allergies’. 

Kornelia’s culinary story parallels her personal travails in her early years and her relationship with close family members. Therefore, the book is a bildungsroman of sorts. Cooking is a creative outlet that gives her a perspective on life.  "Cooking is a very sensual experience and it has so many implications that are often directed at making you happy," says Kornelia. "When you cook, you use all your senses, especially your sense of touch, smell and sight. Despite it being such a consuming activity, it works like meditation because it teaches you to be in the moment," she says.

Greek cuisine made her fall in love with herself. She overcame anorexia nervosa which had dogged her as a teenager. Later her divorce led her to India where she mastered riding an Enfield Bullet and rode it all over the countryside, becoming a cynosure of the Indian populace. Reminiscing about the ride at the Rohtang pass, Ladakh, she writes, “It snowed heavily but my Enfield pulled through ice and snow heaps. I had just passed the peak of the Rohtang pass when a scooter with two well-fed Sikhs overtook me. One pink and one green turban left me astonished in their wake.” Mountain magic with Buddhist monks, Pahaaris and pure thin air worked and shortly afterwards, she met the man of her life, married, settled in Goa and had a baby. "My tryst with food changed gear; my Italian husband loves food so I started to cook seriously."

Given to research in journalism in Regensberg, Germany, she parlayed the skill to food experimentation. With her family as guinea pigs for her spreads, she read voraciously and tried out a mélange of food recipes. Despite this,  she still felt that life was a struggle and joy was missing. Premenopausal blues and antidepressant pills led her to investigate cooking for happiness - tapping natural plants and herbs for mood enhancing substances.

Slowly the grey veil lifted and exotic salads(Taboulleh, Guacomole), soups (Gazpacho, Pumpkin), Chicken Liver pate’, Rainbow Frittata, Indianized Fasolada, Falafel, Zwiebelkuchen, Thai Coconut curry,  Crème Brulee , Qubani ka Meetha, Panna Cotta and other recipes came into being.

She divides the book into three parts – ‘Nourish the Brain’ ( Vitamin Bombs, Building Blocks for the Brain, Omega 3 Sources, Happy Belly Happy Mind), ‘Comfort Food’ (Savoury Succulence, Sweet Moments of Bliss, The Chocolate Heaven) and  ‘Stress Free Dinner parties’. Her section on ‘Kitchen Must Haves’ and dinner parties doles out a lot of practical advice and encourages any culinary wannabe to take on cooking enthusiastically.

Kornelia writes, “My kitchen is the perfect place to get dopamine fixes. The main feel-good neurotransmitters are dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and endmorphin. We need a protein rich diet and Omega -3 to keep up a steady supply of neurotransmitters, the happy makers in our brain.” She detests scientific verdicts of too many eggs, coconut, prawns or butter being harmful for the body. She professes that eating many different kinds of foods is always healthy. According to her, prawns are a rich source of Omega -3. Good-old butter protects joints and makes sure that calcium reaches bones.

Measuring portions for eating gets her ire. To eat wholeheartedly is her advice. “Calculating Fibre? No thanks,”  she puts her foot down. She is a flag-bearer of  ‘Comfort Food’ – homemade food rich in calories. “Savoury succulence of comfort food like fried potatoes, tzatziki, creamy  cheesecake and  coconut triangles delights us instantly and our mind responds positively. Thank God for bacon, chocolate and cream”, she adds delightfully.

Food texture – creamy, chewy, crispy -  also finds place on her palate. Brown is beautiful – go for whole wheat flour and brown rice, she suggests. Bathe in sunlight half an hour a day for your vitamin D supplement. Chocolate makes the body, mind and neighbor happy. In fact, she adds that she mistrusts people who do not like chocolate. Her list of kitchen must haves includes tips on becoming your own dairy queen and inventing zingy sweet sauces.

Riding high on her hard core, hands-on culinary work, Kornelia’s chutzpah comes to the fore when she vehemently disagrees with Heston Blumenthal (British celebrity chef, whose restaurant ‘The Fat Duck in Bray’   is one of the four restaurants in Great Britain to have three Michelin stars) on certain practical points. Kornelia’s recipes are for the homemaker - tried and tested. She derides complicated processes. Nonetheless, she very much appreciates Heston’s scientific basis of food and follows him and Nigella Lawson’s (Food writer and host) show engagingly.  A meeting of spheres, a give and take, a bit of debate spices Kornelia up.

Yes indeed, life is beautiful  Kornelia, we just have to like and love what we are and what we do! 

Let’s begin the New Year with cooking for happiness!

The Artist & the Forger

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                                                  The Artist & the Forger

 ‘Egon Schiele: Death and the Maiden’, the most haunting painting of the 20^th century, hangs in the Baroque Belvedere Palace in Vienna. The same title film by Austrian director Dieter Berner was one of the art films at IFFI this year. The other art film ‘A Real Vermeer’ directed by the Dutch filmmaker Rudolf van den Berg was a biographical film of art forger Han van Meegeren.

The former depicts the life of avant garde Viennese artist Egon Schiele who proclaims, “I shall endure for art.” And endure he does, in dark times through the love and staunch support of his sister Gerti and lover Wally. His bohemian lifestyle and relationship with muse Wally in provincial Austria get him in trouble with the authorities. Being the most provocative artist of his times, he steadfastly stands by his art in court, declaring that his paintings of female child artists are highbrow art-“This is art and not pornography!”

The painting from which the film derives its title depicts two lovers clinging to each other seemingly on the edge of an abyss. It is moving, disturbing and disruptive beyond belief. It hints at the end of a relationship and also the end of the world. “Clasp me as if it is the last time you will do so,” says Egon to Wally before painting the piece. He personifies himself in the painting as Death/Dracula holding his love in a vice-like grip– an antithesis to love.  One of the most self-obsessed artists, he painted this work at a turning point of his life, when he was abandoning his first great love and was about to be swept away by the First World War.

“It’s no coincidence that ‘Ego’ is the beginning of Egon Schiele’s name. He was a narcissist, who was very interested in the visceral experiences of his life. He was obsessed by sex and death in equal measure,” say art critics.

His self-portraits exude a wild energy. ‘Self-portrait with Physalis’ from 1912 is his best known one. Dutch genius Rembrandt executed 40 self-portraits during his artistic career and he was obsessed with the aging image of himself. Van Gogh, one of the greatest self-portraitist of the 19^th century in his ‘Self-portrait with the Bandaged Ear’ is depicting his emotional and physical decline. But Schiele’s works are imbued with an incessant rebellious strain, a brutal honesty about human body and sexuality. He seems to have internalized Freud and his ‘Theory of Sexuality.’ 

Studies on Egon Schiele state, “His work is often described as pornographic, grotesque, even disturbing and too explicit, and today it simply represents one of the finest examples of modern art, created by a remarkable artist who was able to capture the essence of the human existence in an unprecedented and inimitable manner.”

On the other hand, in the second art film ‘The Real Vermeer’, the story of Meegeren, the master forger, is played out in Netherlands during the Second World War.  Mysteriously, unknown biblical paintings of the 17^th century Dutch artist Vermeer start reappearing in the late 1930s in Amsterdam. They cause quite a sensation and are hailed by the art world. The famous art historian Dr. Abraham Bredius examines the forgery ‘The Supper at Emmaus’ in September, 1937 and says, “This is a genuine Vermeer masterpiece, using the ultramarine blues and yellows preferred by Johannes Vermeer and other Dutch Golden Age painters.” The confirmation precipitates in the forged paintings being sold at very high prices.

Meergen makes a fortune and buys a lot of property, jewellery and works of art to augment his luxurious lifestyle. He tells the interviewer, Marie Louise Doudart de la Grée, “I own 52 houses,15 country houses around Laren, among them ‘grachtenhuizen’, beautiful mansions along the famous Amsterdam canals.”

One of Meergen’s Vermeer forgery ‘Christ with the Adulteress’ is discovered by the Allies in an Austrian salt mine after the end of the war, along with  6,750 other pieces of artwork looted by the Nazis. The painting is traced back to Meergen. Now, he has to choose between being sentenced to death for being a Nazi collaborator or exposing himself as a forger.

Rudolf van den Berg, the director of the film made the original story his own and then retold it in the film by digressing from it, bringing in a romantic angle. In real life, Meergen never parted from his wife and children. His siblings too regarded him as an affectionate and warm person. But his art at counterfeiting had excelled to a point where he was able to turn the court proceedings in his favor. He came out a Dutch hero who had fooled the Nazis by selling them forgeries, accruing great wealth in return.  Van Meegeren remains one of the most ingenious art counterfeiters of the 20th century.  After his trial, however, he declared, "My triumph as a counterfeiter was my defeat as a creative artist.”

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A cocktail of suspense, art, history and theft makes the viewing highly entertaining!

Language as Syncopated Music

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              Language as Syncopated Music

A writer for whom cadences of the Hindi language and its silences are paramount to a story, not as a vehicle for recounting the tale but the story itself. “For me, language is not just the craft; language is itself the story, the statement, the action.”  This is Geetanjali Shree, whose second name is her mother’s first name, substituting ‘Pandey’, her family name.

Geetanjali is a writer and an equally proficient playwright.  A Ph.D. in history, she has written four novels – ‘Mai’, ‘Hamara Shahar Us Baras’, ‘Tirohit’ and ‘Khali Jagah’.  She has penned several short stories and a non- fiction book, ‘Between Two Worlds’ - an Intellectual biography of Premchand.  Her plays have been performed to wide acclaim at NSD and other theatre groups in India and abroad. Her books have been translated into many languages.

Geetanjali has adapted Tagore’s ‘Ghare Bhaire’ and ‘Gora’ for the stage. One of her most successful scripts is an adaptation of Hadi Ruswa’s 19^th century Urdu classic, ‘Umrao Jan Ada’, to which she gave a radical feminist reading. She has also written the script for ‘Sundari’ and adapted Lao Jiu: The Ninth Born, a Chinese play by Kao Pao Kun, into Hindi, titled ‘Navlakha.’

Her first novel ‘Mai’ depicts a mother who is bent double performing the ceaseless chores of a teeming household. A woman who is a mere shadow, gliding noiselessly around rooms, meeting the vociferous demands of her family. Her bent spine and fragile countenance hides a rock-like core, which endures and holds her up inside. The secrets that she harbours in her psychological mindscape intrigue her children, who want to dismantle the enigma of their mother and know her better. The second novel ‘Hamara Shahar Us Baras’ is set loosely after the incidents of Babri Masjid demolition.  

‘Tirohit’ her second novel translated in English as “The Roof Beneath their Feet’ means hidden. The subtle, hidden secretive lives of women repressed, controlled and monitored in Indian societies. Geetanjali says, “Also, so much is lost to the procrustean ‘male gaze’ (if I may flog the much flogged horse!) which without realizing what it is doing , keeps fitting into its habitual cognitive modes even things that are completely at variance.”  She enumerates instances in the book where two women are together, but the conditioned gaze of the viewer (even children) only synthesizes the male and the female sexual connotations between them. The calamitous confrontation with death and thereafter forms the core of her fourth book ‘Khali Jagah’.

The past is a great presence in her work. It weaves in and out of the present trajectories of her characters. She says, “If ‘Hamara Shahar Us Baras’ has a historical past, the past in ‘Mai’ is a personal memory. The past in ‘Khali Jagah’ is wild, imagined, mad past and in ‘Tirohit’, it is doing other things.”

Geetanjali is much occupied with the interior monologues of her characters, that subtle exchange of meanings and dialogue between two characters. Stream of consciousness is a pervasive element of her writing. The staccato eruptions, dissect the narrative into fragmentary prose. Linearity is not her style. On the contrary, disjointedness and going back and forth become her hallmark technique. The craft depicts life in flux, tangled in episodes, thoughts and actions. Reading between the lines through the non-linear text, the reader is engaged in an adventure of piecing together the lives of the characters.

The metaphor is central to her stories. The subtlety with which she frames and embeds the metaphor in her story, is indeed admirable. Behind each metaphor a set of stories, behind each a parable. The bent-over back of the mother in ‘Mai’ itself throws up a collage of images and texts, hitting home, cutting through our defenses as a society. The bent back says it all – subservience, stamina, low self-esteem, inconsequential and yet enduring. The round shape offers no resistance and therefore, perseverance becomes its core, which lends its strength and spirit. The extended roof in ‘Tirohit’ becomes a playfield where hidden desires acquire a life of their own. With the roof beneath their feet and the open sky above them, the women across neighboring households meet and breathe free air and sunshine dabbling in that which is taboo within the confines of their homes below.

Geetanjali is bilingual. Her eloquent Hindi and English idiom reflects a comfort zone in both languages which then becomes her strength. Her first story ‘Bel Patra’ appeared in ‘Hans’ a literary magazine (started by Premchand and later revived by Rajendra Yadav). ‘Anugoonj’ an anthology of short stories brought her recognition and the English translation of ‘Mai’ catapulted her into fame. However, her connect with Hindi language is binding, “English has given me some new access but so far it is Hindi which has got me fame. A notable contrast was the interest other languages across the world, such as German, French, Russian, Korean, Italian, Polish have shown in my work. And mind you – again I wish to underscore this – they have reached me through Hindi, not English! I have been taught in some of these languages and translated too, from Hindi, not English. My writing continues to be routed through Hindi.” She adds, “Besides I want to write a great novel measuring up as great literature. That’s success, more than being propagated geographically. I want my work to be translated into different languages and reach more and more people, but my supreme judge is literature and that is where I must measure well.”

No doubt Geetanjali’s pervasive preoccupation with human nature and feminine spaces is laudatory, but it’s her stylistic literary technique which makes her literature sui generis. Her prose is sing – song, has a rhythm and a beat to it. It adapts very well to audio readings, mesmerizing the listener with its tonality and a magnetic quality. Invariably the syncopated musical quality of her language breaks the structure, sounding trills and quadrilles, in every other line. And that’s the mark of artistic craft! Kudos!

It was a pleasure talking to Geetanjali Shree over lunch on the last day of the Goa Art Lit festival.