Reflections by indianquarterly

Vo lu m e 1 | I s s u e 4 | July - september 2013 | ` 200

Letter from the Editor volu m e 1 | i ssu e 4 | July - September 2013

aul cézanne declared, “I will astonish Paris with an apple.” The French painter, described by Picasso as his "one and only master", and "the father of us all", astonished even more with his countless renderings of Mont Saint-Victoire. As he did with his apples, the reclusive artist obsessively observed the mountain near his ancestral home and painted it over and over again, from every angle and distance possible, and, over decades. Such mulling over anything—nature, objects, the self, others, life—is increasingly rare in our age of instant everything. In the Reflections section of this issue, writer and jazz singer Sheela Raman poses for an artist over several days to gain an insight into how a painted portrait differs from a photograph. The process also turns out to be a journey of self-discovery. Journalist Vibhuti Patel retreats to the picturesque valley of Ojai in Southern California, where philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti lived for 64 of his 90 years, and discovers a spiritual oasis. Paris-based Iranian artist Farhad Ostovani comes across a white mulberry tree in the Luxembourg Gardens, and that sighting triggers reveries about his childhood, family and the country he no longer lives in—a bit like Proust’s madeleine. Publisher and photographer Naveen Kishore loiters with intent through the streets of European cities, capturing scenes from the silent lives of mannequins imprisoned behind shop windows. Karan Bali retraces the career of the late American cineaste Ellis R Dungan who made several films in Madras since the 1930s, and writes about why he just had to make a film on the man who directed legends MGR and MS Subbulakshmi. In our Encounter with History section, Anand Kumar Sethi tries to put together the missing links of the INA’s ill-fated mission in Singapore and Burma. Shernaz Italia unfolds, layer by layer, the fascinating story of the Parsis of Delhi. And Anjali Doshi gets up close and personal in her thought-provoking piece on free-spirited adults who are labelled "adultescents". Readers tell us that we need more humour and wit in our pages. So, in this issue, cricket writer Lawrence Booth surveys the snobbery on the playing fields of Britain, where class continues to matter and advertises itself in many different ways.

The Indian Quarterly Publisher: Anuradha Mahindra Editor: Madhu Jain Deputy Editor: Anjali Doshi Senior Associate Editor: Mona Joshi Art Director: Rahul Das Designer: Priyanka Patel Production: Subhash Harinath Rajbhar

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Letters VO LU M E 1 | I S S U E 3 | April - June 2013 | ` 200

Shorten the stories I enjoyed the last issue of IQ immensely, particularly the superbly illustrated stories on Kumartuli and Mahabalipuram. Amitava Kumar’s piece on Patna made for a great read. While some stories deserve the length, my only criticism is that a few of them are needlessly long. All said and done, I appreciate what you are attempting to achieve. R Prasad Mumbai

journalism and literary essay writing—we don’t have enough. And it’s important that the visual gets as much weight as the written word. My only gripe, if you can call it that, is that while the production quality is excellent, the magazine ends up looking like a society glossy and

A fine balance Given the dumbing down of the media in India today, IQ is a refreshing change. The arts rarely find a mention in mainstream media so it is wonderful to get to read all about them. An entire spectrum gets covered: painting, music, architecture, literature, the graphic novel, film, photography. And I am sure it will expand to dance and theatre as well. On the whole there is a fine balance of the written and the visual in the magazine. Some of the best writers are contributing and it is a pleasure to read well-crafted prose that challenges the mind and gives one fresh insights. The themes of each issue have been “curated” very

not a serious magazine. Urvashi Butalia Publisher of Zubaan, New Delhi

In a league of its own I think IQ is a first rate magazine rivalled by few. The articles by the eminent writers of our time are absolutely fantastic. It is evident that a great deal of attention has gone into producing this intellectually stimulating magazine. On the flip side, I find the articles too “heavy” to read at one go; perhaps I was wrong in attempting to do so. How about including a satirical article on our current times?

thoughtfully. The third issue, with its theme of revisiting

Vinod Nair

our epics, myths and legends in the age of the laptop and

Author of Delhi OMG, New Delhi

iPad was relevant and pertinent.

In the last issue of IQ, there was an error in Vishal K Dar's piece “Chasing Shadow and Sound”. The error is regretted.

It is an excellent magazine and I hope it continues to be published. Jeroo Mulla Former head of Sophia Institute of Social Communications Media, Mumbai

Write to: IQ, Cecil Court, M.B. Marg, Apollo Bunder Mumbai 400001 India. Email: theindianquarterly@gmail.com www.indianquarterly.com | +91 22 22897889 Follow us at

@theindianquarterly

Contributors Karan Bali is a filmmaker who

In fact, he spends far too much of

iPhone app Tingo—the Interesting

graduated from the Film and

his life thinking and writing about

Word Game.

Television Institute of India (FTII)

cricket. Madhu Jain is a journalist and

with a specialisation in film direction. He is co-founder and

Mustansir Dalvi teaches

author based in New Delhi.

content-in-charge of Upperstall.

architecture in Mumbai and is an

Long-involved with India Today,

com—an in-depth portal on Indian

author, poet and translator. He

she also worked for Sunday and

cinema—and recently completed

writes on urban issues for Time

The Statesman and was formerly

a documentary titled An American

Out Mumbai and Firstpost.com

the Delhi correspondent for La

in Madras.

where he observes and critiques

Croix. She curated the landmark

the unravelling urban fabric of

art show Kitsch Kitsch Hota Hai and

Mumbai.

is author of The Kapoors: The First

Sarnath Banerjee is a graphic novelist, artist, filmmaker

Family of Indian Cinema.

and co-founder of the comics

Palash Davé is a British-

publishing house Phantomville.

Indian writer, broadcaster and

Sudhir Kakar is a psychoanalyst

Corridor, his first publication, was

documentary filmmaker based in

and novelist. His non-fiction titles

among India’s foremost graphic

London. A multimedia and events

include The Inner World, Shamans,

novels. His latest venture, the Pao

consultant to The Economist, he

Mystics and Doctors and The

Collective, involves a group of

has curated and hosted cultural

Colours of Violence. His latest book

artists promoting graphic novels

and political festivals and salons

Young Tagore, a psychobiography

from India.

around Britain and Europe.

of Rabindranath Tagore, will be

Sidharth Bhatia is a Mumbai-

Anjali Doshi won the Ramnath

based journalist and author of

Goenka Journalist of the Year

Naveen Kishore began his career

Cinema Modern: The Navketan

Award for sports journalism

as a theatre lighting designer. He

Story. He writes on politics for

(broadcast) in 2012. Former cricket

later established Seagull Books, an

several publications, including

editor with NDTV, she now writes

independent publishing house,

The Hindu and DNA. His new

on cricket, travel and social trends.

in 1982. He is also a photographer

book Amar Akbar Anthony will be

She is deputy editor of

who lives and works in Kolkata.

published soon.

The Indian Quarterly.

Yves Bonnefoy is a poet, critic and

Shernaz Italia is a film producer

the recently-published A Matter

professor of comparative poetics

based in Delhi with a postgraduate

of Rats: A Short Biography of Patna.

at Collège de France in Paris and

degree in philosophy from Delhi

His book A Foreigner Carrying

has received several international

University. She worked on Richard

in the Crook of His Arm A Tiny

awards for his work, including

Attenborough’s Gandhi and

Bomb received the 2011 Page

the Franz Kafka Prize. He has also

has made several international

Turner Award. He teaches English

published numerous works on art

documentaries and features.

at Vassar College in New York.

Adam Jacot de Boinod was a

Sandhya Mulchandani has a

researcher on the first series of the

postgraduate degree in applied

Lawrence Booth is editor of the

BBC quiz program Quite Interesting

geology from the National

Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack and a

(QI), hosted by Stephen Fry. He is

Institute of Oceanography and has

cricket writer for the Daily Mail in

the author of The Meaning of Tingo

worked in the media for over two

London. He has written, co-written

and Other Extraordinary Words

decades. She translates medieval

and edited seven books on cricket.

from Around the World and the

Sanskrit and Tamil literature,

published soon.

Amitava Kumar is the author of

history and translated into French several of Shakespeare’s plays.

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Contributors focusing on eroticism and

A Brown University graduate, she

Ankur Shah works in Africa,

symbolism in Hindu mythology

has written on art and culture for

Pakistan and India with the

and literature.

The Boston Globe, Art in America

social venture capital fund

and Forbes. She recently moved to Kavery Nambisan is a surgeon and

Acumen. An occasional writer

London, where she is working on a

novelist from Coorg, Karnataka,

series of short stories and training

and photographer, he has been

who has spent most of her

in Carnatic music.

surgical career in rural India. She

travelling around northern Pakistan and Central Asia since

is married to journalist and poet

V Ramesh is a fine arts graduate

2005. A Cornell University

Vijay Nambisan. Her new novel—A

from MS University, Baroda. He

graduate in architecture, he

Town Like Ours—will be published

has displayed his paintings at

studied international development

early next year.

many solo exhibitions across India

at Harvard University.

since 1990. A Sanskriti Award Alexander Newley is a portraiture

recipient in 1993, he has been

Bulbul Sharma is a painter and

artist who has painted many

teaching at the department of fine

writer. My Sainted Aunts, The

famous faces, including Oliver

arts at the Andhra University in

Perfect Woman, Anger of Aubergines

Stone, Gore Vidal and Christopher

Visakhapatnam since 1985.

and Now that I am Fifty are among

Reeve. His portraits are displayed at the Smithsonian in Washington

Isha Singh Sawhney is a freelance

DC and the Victoria and Albert

journalist based in Delhi. Her

Museum, London. His memoir

work has appeared in numerous

Unaccompanied Minor will be

publications, including The

published next year.

Caravan, Elle, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue, GQ, Rolling Stone

Farhad Ostovani was born in

and OPEN. She writes a fortnightly

northern Iran. He began painting

column on culture for The

when he was 12 and joined the

Sunday Guardian.

Ècole Nationale Supérieure

her well-known books. She has also written children’s books and conducts workshops for children with special needs. Shefalee Vasudev is the author of Powder Room: The Untold Story of Indian Fashion. She has been a journalist for over 20 years, writing on popular culture, social

des Beaux-Arts, Paris, after a

Raja Sen is among India’s most

trends and gender issues. She was

degree in fine arts. He has taught

widely read film critics. He reviews

the founding editor of Marie Claire

at the Academy of Fine Arts,

movies for Rediff.com and writes

(India) and regularly writes for

Philadelphia, and Parsons in Paris.

about cinema, motorsport and

Mint Lounge.

He is currently working on a series

music for several publications. He

inspired by the Bach Cello Suites.

also dabbles in screenwriting and

Jonathan Yeo is among Britain’s

is currently knee-deep in his first

leading portrait artists who taught

attempt to direct a short film.

himself to paint in his early 20s

Vibhuti Patel is a New York-based journalist who covered arts,

while being treated for cancer.

culture and India-related subjects

Anand Sethi has an abiding

for Newsweek International for

interest in history, particularly

30 years. She now writes on the

military history. He is co-author

arts for The Wall Street Journal

of Doing Business in India and is

and contributes to major Indian

currently working on The Business

and exhibited widely in Europe,

and American publications.

of Electronics. Anand lives in

North America and the Far East.

He has worked with many iconic figures, including Damien Hirst, Kevin Spacey and Nicole Kidman,

Dagshai, Himachal Pradesh, and

He is currently working on a solo

Sheela Raman is an Indian-

is the curator of the Dagshai Jail

show at the National Portrait

American writer and jazz singer.

Museum.

Gallery, London.

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Vo lu m e 1 | I s s u e 4 | july - september 2013

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110

Letter from the Editor 04 Letters 05 Contributors 06 Talking Points 12 middle march | Dada’s manifesto missing in Venice | the jedi master of Indie publishing

Life and Letters 22 Second To None Amitava Kumar delights in the treasures he accidentally discovers in second-hand bookstores 24 An Inner Biography psychoanalyst sudhir Kakar lays bare the deeper truths of rabindranath tagore’s early life and work

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Delhi parsis since they moved at the turn of the 19th century

30 My Grandmother’s Table bulbul sharma chronicles the fierce arguments that break out each time her family gets together for a meal

Essay

36 Newsmakers palash Davé profiles dynamic editors and brothers tunku and siddharth Varadarajan

66 The Fifth Estate mustansir Dalvi examines the reasons for mumbai’s real estate doom

Society

Travel

44 Class Act lawrence booth takes a wry look at the class dynamics that play out through britain’s summer of sport

74 A Forbidden Passage to India Ankur shah ignores the “no foreigners allowed” warning as he ventures into the Khyber pass

50 The Peter Pan Generation? Anjali Doshi wonders whether not having a husband, kids, career plan or her own house makes her an “adultescent” 56 Navroz in New Delhi shernaz Italia documents the little-known lives of the

Reflections 84 Smoke and Mirrors Naveen Kishore captures the lonely lives of mannequins trapped behind the shop windows of london and paris

146

94 Lost in Paradise Vibhuti patel checks into a spiritual oasis in California, far away from the din of celebrityhood and consumerism 102 An Intimate Portrait sheela raman realises the intense power of portraiture to capture what photography cannot 110 Loss of Illusion Artist V ramesh searches for inspiration in medieval poetry and mythological imagery 112 An Iranian Memory Farhad ostovani returns to a longlost past of white mulberries and childhood memories 116 Brain Wave sandhya mulchandani analyses scientific

research that measures the power of meditation on the mind and body

Cinema

Fiction and Poetry 146 Paro’s Lunch Home Fiction by Kavery Nambisan

122 After Dark sidharth bhatia revisits the nightclubs of 1950s and 60s bollywood to hum a tribute to the club song

154 New Poems by yves bonnefoy 156 Love Stands Alone selections from tamil sangam poetry

132 Found in Translation Karan bali recounts why he was compelled to make a documentary on an American in madras

158 Adam’s World of Words: Adam jacot de boinod

Encounter with History

on the cover: Erin O’Connor (oil on Canvas 35 x 20 inches, 2004) by jonathan yeo

140 A Personal Odyssey Anand Kumar sethi attempts to piece together the missing links of the Indian National Army’s ill-fated mission

IQ Points

160 Bicarbonates: sarnath banerjee

For subscriptions and queries call: +91 95949 99978 or email: theindianquarterly@gmail.com Contents: 11

Talking Points Middle March

Illustration: Farzana Cooper

By Shefalee Vasudev

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hen seasoned feminist Madhu Kishwar and celebrity author Shobhaa Dé sit at the same table in a television studio to argue for a serious rethink in policing and leadership to tackle crimes against women, the image suggests a peak shift in the politics of appearance. The former refrains from “looking” like a rabid feminist and turns up wearing bangles and necklaces, not unmindful of TV’s curious glare. Whereas the glamorous Dé officially represents the softer side of the lobby of women who need not wipe out their mascara before taking up cudgels. Kishwar and Dé may not be the two absolute names in the many shades of India’s new feminism but they help make the point—that a socio-political feminist position is now inclusive of many middling nuances: the colourfully dressed and quaveringly impassioned actor Kirron Kher thrown into the game by the BJP, or the dressed down, no-nonsense Kavita Krishnan, secretary of the All India Progressive Women’s Association, visibly befitting of a portfolio to work for women’s rights. Let’s keep the merits of these ladies as sturdy feminists aside for a moment to notice how the two types coexist without obvious resentment, opening up a middle ground. A majority of Indian women are far from being free or able to claim their rights. It is also true that the unabashedly sexy do not necessarily imply true conversion to this second phase of the

Indian women’s movement. Brutalities against women continue to box us in from all corners. Yet, despite the complexities, who can argue against a secular aesthetic in appearance and persuasion that has seeped in? Beyond the desexualised look and angry views, there is a blurring of boundaries, edging towards tolerance for diversity that defines new feminism. According to Radha Kumar in her book The History of Doing (Zubaan, 1993), the genesis of Indian feminism lay in India’s freedom struggle, followed by the agitations in Shahabad, Maharashtra, in the early Seventies. Kumar wrote that feminists of those times were from the far left and the urban, educated middle classes. Now, feminism is more a centre-left position; it includes men and women without similar resumés. It is about fashioning your own feminism. You can join the SlutWalk or start a Facebook campaign. It’s a liberal club with membership free and open to all—LBDs, lipsticks, high heels, plunging necklines or chanderi saris, khadi salwar kameezes and jhola bags. When West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee recently rallied against those complaining of crime against women in her state, screaming that it was not as if all women had been raped nor had she raped them to be assigned the blame, I sat back malignantly thrilled. Here was a self-proclaimed didi in the drabbest of saris and rubber slippers who has climbed up the power ladder because of her commitment to causes, being shockingly anti-feminist. So let’s not blame the tight dresses at gang rape protests at Jantar Mantra or become prissy when pretty girls walk the SlutWalk, claiming that a slice of the women’s movement is now theirs. Boobs have as much a say as grey cells do, and it only makes the movement democratic.

It is a significant change from the antidowry protests of the Eighties when only a certain section of women joined the feminist march openly. So give it up for those joining the middle march. They may be a bit confused or of fragile timbre compared to Aruna Asaf Ali or Nabanita Deb Sen of our idealised feminist history, but are finding a way to be counted as warriors for women’s rights. At least one of the reasons that spurred the Indian women’s movement in the early Eighties and gave birth to the rabid Indian feminist was the absence of a middle ground. On the one hand were brutalised women with no recourse or voice; on the other an urban female intelligentsia who wanted to defend them by attacking their oppressors. The big issue that presented itself to feminist activists like Madhu Kishwar, Brinda Karat, Teesta Setalvad, Ranjana Kumari, and those like SEWA’s Runa Banerjee and eco-feminist Vandana Shiva, was the looming gap between them and those they fought for. They had little clue then of the kind of legatees their work would beget. They may have dreamt of an army of boyfriends, best friends and uncles joining their future rallies while cautious that dreams didn’t really come true. But they did. In some ways the gear shifted in the late Nineties when pretty Chandigarh officer Rupan Deol Bajaj and Bhanwari Devi of Bhateri village became symbols of the feminist movement—two different sides of the same devalued coin really: one who made a slapped bottom a talking point and the other who turned gang rape into a war cry. One was urbane and smart; the other, raised on bajra, had a steely will. Now, when Sampat Pal Devi of Bundelkhand argues for women’s rights alongside Kishwar, Dé and actor Vidya Balan, the pantheon looks whole by being diverse. Could the Western feminist getting a TALKING POINTS: 13

Talking Points makeover have something to do with all this? Refreshingly softer than the hardened convictions of Germaine Greer and Gloria Steinem are women like Gucci’s creative director Frida Giannini, actors and artists Salma Hayek Pinault and Beyonce Knowles-Carter who have formed Chime for Change, a community to promote education, health and justice for women across the world. It pulls in women of different appearances—from Pakistani teenager Malala to Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. It is a bid to make the global feminist movement a larger shared pie instead of a pudding with different portions for different nations—the third world always queuing up for a helping. Time to fret now about what to wear for the next round of new feminism club meetings. Would a backless choli with khadi sari work?

Dada’s Manifesto By Raja Sen

n the month of May a hundred years ago, a remarkably progressive Maharashtrian gentleman, overwhelmed after watching a film about Christ and driven by the possibilities proffered by the great Indian narratives—our mythology and history, our ancient storytelling traditions—screened a forty-minute feature film about the legend of King Harishchandra. That Saturday in south Bombay, Indian cinema was born. This May, as the centenarian coughed warily, a scuffle broke out on social media regarding the way he was being saluted. Every major national publication made lists of our cinema’s most significant moments, achievements and luminaries. There were provocatively contentious rankings, naturally, but also—and this is what caught the ire of the 14 : The INdIAN quArTerLy : juLy - SePTember 2013

Twitter-based resistance—magazine covers. The magazine Filmfare came under maximum fire for putting three generations of boxoffice conquerors on its cover. Dilip Kumar, Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan wore suits of very different breeds and smiled at us. (Inside the magazine, rather more mortifyingly, was a picture of Khan and Bachchan teaching a helpless Kumar to do the hip-hop equivalent of jazz hands.) This, the Twitterfanged proclaimed, was far too sexist. Chorusing a most unlikely utterance—“Learn from CineBlitz”—they pointed to a cover with Vidya Balan in a sindoor-red sari carrying a massive wooden beam, in a tribute to Nargis’s immortal Mother India pose. There, much better. But how on earth does that add up? A hundred years ago, a man named Dhundiraj Govind Phalke made a movie in which he cast men as women—because no actresses would cavort for the entire nation. How does adding unrelated women to the mix improve things when the right men aren’t being celebrated? So, then, those covers. The popularity contests. The Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge versus Sholay opinion polls. A portmanteau film called Bombay Talkies made by four Hindi film directors which ends with members of Bombay’s filmi swish set amateurishly cut out and chroma-keyed against a stairway so it looks like they are dancing next to each other. The same directors shaking their leg at the Cannes film festival. Whatever, I wonder, will these folks do once we occasion seekers, in 2031, come upon the centenary of Hindi cinema? It may not be its birthday, but Bollywood is a most obnoxious party crasher, raucous enough to drown out the few who may have shown up at the centenary with appropriate intent. Like, for example—standing in the

corner with a present he gift-wrapped himself—Kamal Swaroop. Twenty five years ago, Kamal Swaroop made a film called Om-Dar-Ba-Dar. A bizarre, montage-heavy surrealistic film stuffed with peculiar allegory and frog-filled musical numbers, his is a fantastically box-defying piece of work that would be ahead of its time if released five years from tomorrow. The film, miraculously made on government funding, was a massive counterculture achievement and has since spawned its own cult. (Those intrigued will get a chance to watch this offbeat feature when it hits theatres again later this year, courtesy PVR.) And thus it fits perfectly that the maker of a project this outlandish is heralding our first cinematic pioneer. It takes a scholarly oddball to know a scholarly oddball, as one might say, and the result is a bewilderingly brilliant book. Tracing Phalke, self-published by Swaroop and funded by the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC), is many things but easy to define is not one of them. In the decades of research Swaroop put in on the pioneer—during which he made a number of short films about him—he discovered that Dadasaheb Phalke had dictated an autobiography to his wife and daughter. This artefact is nowhere to be found except in his striking new book. Swaroop has aimed to reconstruct this missing memoir and cobble together Phalke’s life while doodling historical and social context around it. It is part scrapbook, part academic fact, formatted like a fever dream: hallucinatory and electrifying. It is an imagined first-person account that turns into a report that becomes a diary that transmogrifies into a screenplay that reverts back to a simple doodle next to a newspaper clipping. It is a linear, chronological book but, shall we say, it is edited with jump cuts and montages. And

there’s enough graphic ingenuity in it to make fans of the Monty Python opening animations very happy indeed. In the introduction to the book, Swaroop speaks of how exploring this Dada led him towards Dadaist discovery. It is, therefore, a thorough and thrilling volume, a dizzyingly heady free association of thoughts and ideas— a screenplay-of-consciousness, if you will. A book of many voices jostling to tell the story of a man who could not be contained by conventional narrative. Here is an excerpt to illustrate its content and dynamism: I looked at a mirror in a betel leaf shop. Any man chewing betel leaf in front of a shop would look at the shop mirror and would indulge in a play of his eyes, examine himself with a serious face for any fault in his dress, and only when he is convinced after seeing from all angles that there is not the slightest flaw, would he move off with a smile. In India herself there would be crores of mirrors. But how many faces will there be which could really grace these mirrors, and how many of these are likely to come to my films? No decent Indian woman would think of acting in a film. Phalke visits red-light areas. In a restaurant at Grant Road, he watched a young man at work, a cook with slender features and hands. Phalke asked him what he was earning. “Ten rupees a month,” the young man said. Phalke offered him fifteen to work in his films. The young man, A Salunke, thus joined the enterprise and played the heroine, Taramati. While this text flows through the middle of the left side of the page, the page facing it has the Harishchandra myth; the page after it has the key frames of Raja Harishchandra broken down into a grid; and the one after that has a poster of A La Conquête Du Pôle, the then new film by George Méliès. (Martin Scorsese TALKING POINTS: 15

Talking Points celebrated the director’s ahead-of-his-time creativity in his 2011 film Hugo.) Alongside the main text, newspaper clippings from 1913 appear: one, with the headline “First Actress With Curves” talks about how “prostitutes had refused to ‘sell their wares’ before the entire country”. Like I said, fantastical. The greatest achievement of Swaroop’s book is the way it both humanises and romanticises Dadasaheb Phalke, recognising not just that he is a true hero in every sense of the word but also the need to immerse ourselves in mouthfuls of his mythos. Don’t believe what the lists tell you. Bollywood will gleefully lie about its age. Batting with one eye perennially on the scoreboard, it has yet a long way to go. Indian cinema, on the other hand—looking sharp with some silver in its hair—having quietly waved at the pavilion, continues to score in unlikely ways, buoyed by unlikely champions. Carry on, cinema.

Missing in Venice By Madhu Jain

e are in a café on the Grand Canal in Venice, not far from St Mark’s Square and just opposite the island of San Giorgio Maggiore. British artist Marc Quinn’s gigantic lavender nude sculpture of an armless Alison Lapper Pregnant, with a crew cut and stunted legs, looms menacingly large. An earlier version of this sculpture, perched for two years on the fourth plinth of Trafalgar Square in London, was made of Carrara marble and weighed several tonnes. The new one, an inflatable called Breath, is over 12 metres high and almost obscures the

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façade of the imposing San Giorgio Maggiore Church. Intermittently, it goes pouf and collapses into an ugly little puddle of whatever inflatables are made of—only to rise again, like a hyperactive phoenix. Inflatables are sometimes made of the material used for making parachutes, and a thought crossed my mind: is this an example of parachute art, of a forced landing on this city of islands boasting exquisite Renaissance architecture and art? The legendary Andrea Palladio who designed the San Giorgio Maggiore and much of the ecclesiastic architecture in Venice must be rolling in his grave. Many in Venice are not amused, especially this impossibly beautiful city’s mayor, Giorgio Orsini, who described Breath as “inappropriate” because the sculpture performs (yes, that is what it does really) next to a house of worship. But as my Venetian friend, who dabbles in the world of art and design, explains, the thrust of the 55th Venice Biennale (June 1– November 24) is towards a hard-nosed breakaway from 20th-century art. Massimiliano Gioni, the 40-year-old curator of the current Biennale, is trying to showcase post-millennial art and is pushing the envelope when it comes to cutting-edge work. Art critic Jackie Wullschlager describes various aspects of Gioni’s mission succinctly in an article in the Financial Times: “One is the search for the Picasso of the Facebook generation, a cubism of cyberspace—for artists who utilise and explain the seismic cultural changes engineered by the Internet and social media.” My Venetian friend, who inexplicably wants to remain anonymous and is no stranger to India, throws a gauntlet at me. Angola, debuting at Venice this year, won its top prize, the Golden Lion, which is like an Oscar in the world of art. Where, he asks, is India? Indeed.

Photograph: Krishna Jain

India, a country of over a billion people and an army of globe-trotting, lionised-at-home artists, is missing in action, while Angola, a country of barely 20 million and a turbulent birth and recent history, walks away with the honours. Something is rotten in the state of . . . contemporary Indian art. Why couldn’t our mandarin bureaucrats put together an India pavilion? There are national pavilions from 88 countries, including several which are debuting this time. Apart from Angola, there is Tuvalu, one of the smallest and most remote island countries, located in the South Pacific Ocean. Bahamas, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Ivory Coast, Kuwait, Lebanon, Kosovo, Maldives, Paraguay—a few of which have fairly impressive pavilions—are participating in the Venice Biennale for the first time. And, yes, the Holy See (Vatican City) has also entered the picture this year with a pavilion inspired by the biblical narratives in the Book of Genesis. This is Bangladesh’s second turn at Venice and its pavilion did not go unnoticed. The Samdani Art Foundation, which hosted Dhaka’s first art summit last year, gave a dinner party in Venice this year which had many boldfaced names of the international art world on its guest list, including Alain Seban, president of the Centre Pompidou. Invited as well were Lakshmi and Usha Mittal from London, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan bin Khalifa Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, art collectors and patrons Feroze Gujral and Sunita and Vijay Choraria as well as gallerists from India: Peter Nagy, Amrita and Priya Jhaveri, Aparajita Jain and Sunitha Kumra Emmart. Rajeeb and Nadia Samdani’s soirée had a purpose: they were making known their support of the Bangladesh pavilion through their funding of an art project. They also wanted

to spread the word that their foundation was funding the second Dhaka Art Summit next year. Fortunately, Indian artists are not quite homeless in Venice. Other national pavilions had adopted them in their quest to transcend boundaries and be more cosmopolitan. Germany, with its crowd-pulling but tepid installation Bang composed of nearly 900 wooden stools by Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei, also had Dayanita Singh’s poignant book File Room, her “elegy” to paper which she displayed as art. Projected as well was Mona and Myself—images of her friend and eunuch, Mona Ahmed. Glass Stress: White Light/White Heat, a fascinating exhibition of glass sculptures organised by Venice Projects in different locations of the city, includes the work of Sudershan Shetty and New York-based Rina Banerjee. While Shetty’s witty play with glass is on view on the fabled island of glass-blowers, Murano, Banerjee’s imposing installation is in the Veneto Institute of Science, Letters and Arts. Samar Singh Jodha’s impressive photographic installation Outpost is being shown at the old Arsenale Nord, the former armoury of the Dukes of Venice. The discovery of Venice for me is the TALKING POINTS: 17

Talking Points exquisite and subliminal work of Bangalorebased Prabhavathi Meppayil, whose work was picked for the main exhibition at the Arsenale. (The Venice Biennale has two formal venues: the Giardini, a park where the national pavilions are located, and the Arsenale, a complex urban estate which has many of the younger artists.) Meppayil comes from a family of goldsmiths, and she has imaginatively used the traditional techniques of her ancestors to incorporate copper wire and other metallic strands into lime gesso. So, finally, Indians are not missing in action, even if India is. Actually, there was a laurel that did come our way—but only partially, barely a half measure. There are two Golden Lions: one for a national pavilion, the other for an individual artist. This year it went to Tino Sehgal for his eloquent performance piece in which a few people take turns to hum and beatbox (vocal percussion and musical sounds produced by using the mouth, lips and tongue) while slowly moving on the floor. I almost walked past them while looking for Sehgal’s work: I thought they were visitors relaxing. But once I stopped and watched, it was mesmerising. Nobody here, not even my Venetian friend, is aware of the fact that Tino Sehgal is part Indian; he is always described as British-born even though his father is Indian and mother German, and he is based in Berlin. The artist’s star is on the ascendant. He has been nominated for this year’s Turner Prize for his performance at Documenta in Kassel, Germany, and for his piece in the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern last summer. For the latter, his performers told “intimate stories” to visitors, something similar to what he did at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Watch out, Mr Anish Kapoor. You have company. 18 : The INdIAN quArTerLy : juLy - SePTember 2013

The Jedi Master of Indie Publishing By Isha Singh Sawhney

ike original hipsters, Yoda Press founder, Arpita Das, is wistful for the older Hauz Khas Village started by fashion designer–entrepreneur Bina Ramani. “When I did a recce for Yodakin (her indie bookstore), it was a sleepy, dead haunt. Rents were dirt-cheap and I had lovely memories from its first wave—the Bina Ramani days,” says Das, for whom the demise of the village’s original vibe also heralded the end of Yodakin. I meet Arpita, the chief proprietor of the alternative publishing house that set up the Yodakin bookstore at her DDA flat-cum-Yoda Press office as a typical monsoon storm brews outside. Her daughter, dog and publicist share the same space in an airy, light-filled flat in Gulmohar Enclave. Yodakin’s shutting shop in early 2012 is symptomatic of the gentrification Hauz Khas Village has fallen victim to in the last few years. The making of what Das calls “a monster”, meant the bookstore’s rents quadrupled in less than four years. Yet, in this David and Goliath battle, David (the bookstore) put up a good fight, with its mercurial popularity rise. “Setting up Yodakin was a knee-jerk reaction. Recession hit in 2009 and books weren’t moving,” remembers Das. All it took was one visit to this space available in the village, and a few months later they were up and running. For customers of a sarkari, boring Delhi, the store promoted alternative books, music and cinema by independents. During those four years, Das would hold events where they would serve beer. In the evenings, a handful of

Photograph: Aditya Mendiratta

“villagers” would gather over copious amounts of rum, beer and Gunpowder restaurant’s buff chilly fry and Malabar paranthas, for lengthy discourses. For the publisher, Yodakin offered respite from the formulaic commercial bigwigs she had grown disenchanted with after stints with numerous publishing houses—HarperCollins, Oxford University Press (OUP), Sage Publications—in the years before Yoda Press. After an undergraduate degree from St Stephen’s College, Das contemplated a career in academics during her master’s in Islamic Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, but the fascination with “bookmaking” was deeply embedded in her genes. With a father in the book trade and a childhood as a manic reader, her earliest memories are of visiting the World Book Fair even before she had learned to walk. Keen on focusing on the bookmaking process, her interests were unusual. “At a time when kids were reading books in school, I’d flip to the front of textbooks to see who’d published it and what font had been used. I tried to learn as much about how the book was made before reading it,” says Das with a half-smile. The publishing industry was a fascinating enigma for the young girl. Proofreading her way through college at publishers like Konark and Aryan in Daryaganj, Das learned the nuances of her trade. It laid the foundations for when she would return to India to join HarperCollins as a copy editor, post SOAS. “It was a bizarre time to be in publishing,” remembers Das. “Email had just emerged. But only one computer with a dial-up net connection was available, which everyone would line up to use. Most of my correspondence was through postcards and mail. It feels almost surreal that we got work done via snail mail!”

1998, the last year before everyone had email, was the year Das grew increasingly disappointed with HarperCollins. In this post Arundhati Roy era, everyone was looking for the next big Booker and “saying yes to a lot of trash,” rues Das. Good writing was being confused with celebrityhood, and actresses and filmmakers with no real talent authored books. Added to that was her growing frustration with the endless cocktail circuit. In the late 90s, publishing morphed from a quiet Daryaganj-based affair with stalwarts like Ravi Dayal at OUP to become more accessible and it was also possible to earn more money and fame. Soon, a second wave of international publishers entered India—the first, more academic growth happened in the early 80s—with a focus on fiction. And writers like journalist Raj Kamal Jha received the Indian TALKING POINTS: 19

Talking Points publishing industry’s biggest advance for a first-time novelist. Das moved from the hustle-bustle of HarperCollins to the quieter, more scholarly Sage Publications, where under the guidance of the then MD Tejeshwar Singh she picked up the nuts and bolts of good copy-editing. Two years later, Das would join OUP as commissioning editor with the promise of radical, experimental academic writing. And then, on one drunken night in their Ranikhet house as she vented to her husband about the glorified textbooks for college kids she ended up working on, the wheels for Yoda Press were set in motion. By January 2004, Yoda Press had its first address: a dreamy Dickensian flat in New Delhi’s Connaught Place. And its very first title. A book on match-fixing by hitherto unknown sports writer Boria Majumdar—Once Upon a Furore: Lost Pages of Indian Cricket. Majumdar’s debut book brought Yoda Press a lot of attention, concretising what Das calls the “Yoda spin”—the middle ground between fiction and non-fiction, for nuanced, thoroughly researched and engaging non-fiction. “For 10 years I was consumed with wanting to bring back the essay,” she elaborates. Yoda Press, living up to the Star Trek truism “to go where no person has gone before”, focused on the much ignored wealth of taboo LGBT writing on the Internet. Das ferreted out a “generation of LGBT activists, lawyers, development professionals, filmmakers and writers expressing their lack of comfort and dissatisfaction with Indian society and law; all being turned down by Indian publishers”. With books like Rahul Roy’s graphic novel Little Book on Men (reprinted since, every year), Das was warned she had entered tricky ground and no one would stock such books. But she handled every challenge thrown at her with a 20 : The indian quarTerly : july - sepTember 2013

trademark optimistic opportunism, from giving distributors talks on how sex was different from sexuality, to resorting to guerrilla marketing. So when bookstores refused to stock writer Gautam Bhan’s books on queer politics, Because I Have A Voice in India, 15 friends visited Yodakin asking for the book; the bookstore has always stocked at least five copies since. Indie publishing demanded such organic solutions, and it soon became clear that just as publishing veterans like Kali for Women took up gender issues in the 80s, Yoda also needed to be a risk taker, an upholder of the last bastion. “I realise the need to keep reinventing to stay ahead of the mainstream,” says Das. When it was time to reinvent the wheel yet again, Das reset the company’s activist and academic mode with popular writing—memoirs, travel and food books, with the philosophy that the business does not need to be “dumbed down”. Without traditional marketing and sales plans, financial structures, too, were reinvented. Where Yoda Press never skimps on printing the best quality books, they make up by keeping other overheads small, by avoiding outsourcing. “Everything is done in-house. All editorials are done by me and another editor,” says Das. Of course, with that comes the realisation they cannot do more than 10 books a year. Today, Das isn’t wasting time on the wistful nostalgia of Yodakin’s village days. Living up to what she explains is a resilience born out of a decade in the independent publishing scene where everything is about turning challenges into opportunities to survive, she has a multitude of plans in the pipeline. From a co-op bookstore at Ambedkar University in Delhi to a website that offers services for authors who want to self-publish, the proverbial tortoise Yoda Press chugs along, slow but steady and successful. n

Courtesy: Gallery Espace

Atlas Chitra Ganesh Archival lightjet print, 50 x 69 inches, 2013 In the solo exhibition of her recent works, Brooklyn-based artist Chitra Ganesh continues to delve into epics, myths, art history—realms that tend to be male-centric—to compose a fresh, new retelling with women as players and protagonists. Ganesh composes her lightjet prints through a digital process of fusing scans of her pen and ink drawings, written texts, appropriated images from Amar Chitra Katha comics and drawings made directly onto a digital tablet. On at the Gallery Espace in New Delhi, from September 28 to October 31, 2013

LIFE AND LETTERS

Second to None Amitava Kumar delights in the treasures he accidentally discovers betweeen the covers of second-hand books

used book website was seLLing a galley copy of a Michael Ondaatje novel, Anil’s Ghost. The price? $1,250. The reason for the high price was that the galley copy carried comments made by John Updike when he was reviewing the book for The New Yorker. I read this in a 2007 column by reviewer Dwight Garner. Garner had also supplied the wonderful tidbit of information that a used bookstore in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts, sold many titles that Updike had marked up with his marginalia. A few months later, a literary critic named Wyatt Mason followed up on Garner’s note. Mason wrote an essay on Updike’s criticism after buying several titles which had Updike’s comments scribbled on their pages—in addition to Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost, Alice Munro’s Selected Stories, Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin, Barry Hannah’s Geronimo Rex, and many others.

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Photograph: Amitava Kumar

What’s in Store: Blossom Book House on Church Street in Bangalore offers many surprises to lovers of used books

Over the past few years, every time I step into a used bookstore, I think of Garner’s column. This is a part of a private romance: the fantasy that I will find among the shelves a book with notes by a writer I admire. But the reality is more prosaic. The reason for my visit is that I am looking for a cheap book. The other day, during a stop in Bangalore while on a book tour, I was taken to Blossom Book House on Church Street. I had been told that it was a famous used bookstore, but upon entering it, what I first saw were new books. Second-hand bookstores often present dark, even dingy, interiors—faded spines and worn wood and leather—but Blossoms had the brightness and clutter of a bustling grocery store. What quickly became clear, however, was that this was no ordinary grocery store: it insisted that if you wanted Jamaican pepper for your cooking, you would be able to find it here, and juniper berry too, or wasabi for that

matter, at least seven varieties of it, along with the thin layers of gari (thinly sliced pickled ginger) that accompany it. You get the picture. The store has three floors. New and used books are crammed into all available shelf space. This is democracy at its best—or worst. Books to suit all tastes, often in close company. There were half a dozen copies of a title I had wanted to read for the last ten years; right next to them were seven rows of books by a writer whose every book is an assault on literary sensibilities. I found books I liked, or wanted to buy, on each floor. In the end, I bought nothing because I was unable to choose only one book. The entire experience seemed a little overwhelming to me. A salesman at the store told me that visitors, many of them foreigners, came here and said they liked the smell of old books. He had twice found a dollar note in the books. My companion said that a letter written by Rabindranath Tagore had been found in one of the books; I later saw it in a frame behind the counter. It was a letter from 1931, probably written in response to an admiring note from a reader—and it was only proper that it was now displayed for other readers: “It is hard for one to say in a few faltering words how I feel when voices greet me from my own country and across the seas carrying to me the assurance that I have pleased many and have helped some and thus offering me the best reward of my life.” In the non-fiction section, my companion showed me DG Tendulkar’s multi-volume work on Gandhi because, he said, the set was expensive and came with the author’s autograph. I opened the first volume. The signature there was Ramachandra Guha’s instead. Had the set once belonged to him, or had he been asked to autograph it by the storeowner?

I took a photo of it with my iPhone and sent it to Guha with my question. His reply came the next day. The book had indeed once belonged to him. He had sold the set to Blossoms after he had found there the original eight-volume set owned—and signed—by DG Tendulkar himself. It seemed to me that Guha had been lucky: he had found a treasure and given a bit of it back to the store. I then met the owner of Blossoms, Mayi Gowda. He opened the store over a decade ago. I now learned that it was Gowda himself who had found the Tagore letter in a book he had bought for five thousand rupees. Gowda also had a story to tell interviewers about the luck that readers at his store had enjoyed. Two years ago, he had told a journalist that a customer who bought Frank Herbert’s Dune from him lost his book at the airport. He hadn’t finished reading the book and was eager to find out how it ended. The customer came back to Blossoms to buy another copy and found the same copy that he had lost! This story told me a truth about used bookstores, not quite faded spines and sunlight falling on worn leather, but the epic tale of return, of things lost and found. Before I left Blossoms, Gowda asked me to sign copies of my books. The man who brought me to the store wanted me to put a note inside. I hesitated, then inserted my business card between the pages of each copy. I scribbled on the cards: “Enjoy this book. Write to me!” My companion said that the readers who found them would be lucky. I don’t know about that, but it has always been clear to me that writers should create stories for their readers, stories that the readers can in turn carry forward. I will wait to see if someone will have a story to tell about coming into Blossoms one rainy day and finding a novel with a note inside. n

A letter by Tagore in 1931, found in of the books here, was written in response to an admiring note from a reader. Tagore wrote: “It is hard for one to say in a few faltering words how I feel when voices greet me from my own country . . .”

Life and Letters : 23

LIFE AND LETTERS

An Inner Biography In a first-of-its-kind psychological portrait on Rabindranath Tagore, Sudhir Kakar attempts to lay bare the deeper truths of the genius’ early life and work

n his first autobiography, which he began writing around the age of forty-seven (he was to write another one, shortly before his death at the age of eighty), Rabindranath Tagore was at pains to insist in its preamble that it was not an autobiography. Jibansmriti, translated into English as My Reminiscences, is a collection of ‘memory pictures,’ he says, not the story of his life. Its writer is not a historian but ‘an unseen artist within’, painting original creations on the canvas of Tagore’s memory. Whereas the historian would but record the external events of life, the artist subtly alters their details and scatters them with diverse colours that are, in Rabindranath’s words, ‘passion-tinged from his heart’. In his selection of emotionally compelling memories and garbing them in literary grace, Tagore is one of a small number of autobiographers whose recollections are both highly individual and yet possess a wider, universal appeal. Like the Irish poet W.B. Yeats, who found Jibansmriti a ‘rich and most valuable work’, Tagore too has the power of giving voice to general truths that underlie intense personal experiences. Consciously or unconsciously, the poet Tagore is spurred by his aesthetic Muse into transforming the narration of his memories into literature. As distinct from most autobiographies of men and women who have achieved eminence in public or intellectual life, the aesthetic distance created by a literary reworking of memories, both expressing and cushioning the impact of agonizing emotions, promises the reader insights into troubling episodes of his own life, thus allowing and even encouraging him to reconnect with their painful emotions and integrate them into his life history.

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I view the opening sentences of Jibansmriti as an invitation to a psychological biographer to mine it for emotional truths rather than facts and thus lay bare the deeper motivations of Rabindranath’s life and work that are not available (or even possible) in his ‘historical’ biographies. I do not mean to imply that the distinction between historical and psychological biography is unbridgeable. It is not as if a psychological biographer neglects the outer events of his subject’s life. Not aiming for a comprehensive account of a life from birth to death, what a psychological biography does is to be selective of the ‘events’ on which it concentrates. Essentially, the psychological biographer believes that the events which comprise his subject’s formative experiences lie in the periods of his childhood and early youth and that a person’s ‘psychological truth’ is pre-eminently an outcome of his or her early relationships. On the other hand, historical biographers, in setting out the events of a person’s life, making connections and drawing conclusions, also make psychological observations and attribute motivations to the subject’s actions, if only to give their work a narrative power that makes a biography readable. Indeed, the finest practitioners of the craft, either through a long immersion in the life and writings of the subject or gifted with the psychological intuition of an outstanding novelist, have produced compelling psychological portraits. In general, though, without clinical experience and unfamiliar with the nuances of depth psychology and thus untrained to look for the kind of information pertaining to the hidden areas of a subject’s life, historical biographers often struggle in presenting a convincing psychological portrait of their subjects. The

Photograph Courtesy: Rabindra Bhavana, Visva-Bharati

Gentleman Tagore: An unusual photo of the young Rabindranath Tagore who otherwise seen in school books in a loose ankle-length robe and a flamboyant, flowing beard. The writer, in his childhood, never took to Tagore’s work, dismissing his verse as “stereotyped sentimentality” and “saccharine spirituality”.

Rabi, 17, in England.

Life and Letters : 25

My starting point, is to pay careful attention to the resonances in my own psyche as I read Tagore’s autobiographical and other writings. Only after an exploration of my own emotional reactions to Tagore’s description of an ‘event’ in his life, may I go into the elucidatory mode.

subject of a historical biography may come through as ‘great’ in achievement, yet remain distant as a person of flesh and blood, devoid of an inner life we are all familiar with through our own subjectivity. The inner biography I am attempting here is not to be confused with ‘psychoanalysis of Tagore’ although, I fear, my protestation will be of little avail in escaping this pejorative appellation. In a clinical psychoanalysis, the analyst and the analysand jointly construct the latter’s inner story as much through the analysand’s talking as through the analyst ‘listening with the third ear’ to the intonations, lapses and the silences in the flow of his speech. The latter dimension is inevitably lacking in the written materials available to one who would be a biographer of an inner life. Autobiographical writings, diaries and letters can never have the spontaneity of speech in the clinical setting since they are invariably edited to varying degrees in the process of being penned on paper or, increasingly, typed in on the computer screen. The kind of information in the clinical situation that leads to the construction of a psychoanalytic biography of the patient: his or her musings on people and events of daily life, full-blown fantasies and dreams, including the memorable and highly impactful ‘big dreams’—and the associations to which they give rise, memories of earlier periods of life and their revisiting and reworking over the course of analysis, is never available to the same degree of richness to someone who would write a psychological biography of a historical figure. In drawing a rough map of the subject’s inner terrain, capturing its essential features though missing the telling details that only gradually emerge during the course of an 26 : the indian quarterLy : juLy - september 2013

analysis, the ambitions of the psychobiographer are necessarily limited. What I would like to do here is unfold the plot of Rabindranath’s inner life in a manner that has the narrative qualities of consistency, coherence and intelligibility, while recognizing that in absence of the kind of data that is available in the clinical situation, a psychological biography will be more speculative—also in the original meaning of the term, speculari, descrying something that is hidden. I would even argue that the quality of a psychobiography is intimately related to the sophistication of its speculation. As imaginative reconstruction, speculation can spy out hidden truths and deserves a place of honour even in historical biography which emphasises a prudent adjudication of facts as its ideal. On the other hand, in contrast to the analyst who encounters the patient for a period of time at a certain stage of his life, the psychobiographer has an overview of a whole life, of knowing ‘how it all turned out’. His task is also made easier with creative artists like Rabindranath who have poured their inner life into their work. The psychobiographer may also have a slight advantage over the analyst in that his information on the subject, though of a lesser order, is not limited to the subject himself but also comes from other sources— family members, friends, contemporaries, which is unavailable in the privacy of the consulting room. This information on the ‘social self’ of the subject must not be dismissed lightly, since a consistent finding of psychological research is that people are fairly accurate in their perceptions of others but have distorted perceptions of themselves. There are, however, elements of clinical psychoanalysis that I believe the writer of an

inner biography shares with the analyst, elements that can be subsumed under the rubric of ‘psychoanalytic sensibility.’ Since there has been no single approach to the writing of an inner biography and psychobiographers have emphasized different aspects of psychoanalytic sensibility, I will list elements of this sensibility which have guided my own exploration of Rabindranath’s inner life. For me, the biographer’s empathy, an openness to and participation in the emotions of his subject’s writings, a reading, so to speak, with the third eye as a counterpoint to the analyst’s listening with the third ear, is the very foundation of a psychological biography. Empathy, a ‘feeling into’ the subject through the medium of his writings, a partaking of his inner experiences through an unconscious attunement, is a demanding task. It requires that our normal non-empathetic state, a state of self-experience with thoughts that are usually self-related, change into a state where we can transcend the boundaries of the self to share the conscious and unconscious feelings and experiences of another self. My starting point, then, is to pay careful attention to the resonances in my own psyche as I read Tagore’s autobiographical and other writings. Only after an exploration of my own emotional reactions to Tagore’s description of an ‘event’ in his life, may I go into the elucidatory mode, using additional biographical and other information, as also psychoanalytic findings, for a more conscious understanding of the meaning of that particular event. My approach is then similar to the Germanist Emil Staiger’s credo of poetics: ‘Zu begreifen was uns ergreift’—to grasp what has gripped us, or in other words, apprehending precedes comprehension, where it is important that the latter is not wedded to

any rigid theoretical framework. Emotional participation in the autobiographical narration of the formative experiences of Tagore’s life and their reflection in his stories, poems and paintings, are thus combined with a flexibility in the use of psychoanalytical theories in striving to understand the meaning of the key scenes of his inner theatre. Empathy, of course, is not something that can be consciously willed but arises from contemplation rather than effortful striving and will always be plagued by the doubt whether its highly subjective, experiential character is not merely a projection of the biographer’s own feelings, fantasies and wishes on to the subject. Freud, who doubted that biographical truth was ever possible, yet himself wrote biographical sketches of the inner lives of historical figures anyway (Leonardo da Vinci, Woodrow Wilson), was quite aware of the temptation of an unconscious transference of feelings from the biographer’s past projected on to the subject of the biography, a temptation that all biographers, historical or psychological, face when they embark on the project of writing a life. He writes: ‘In many cases (biographers) have chosen their hero as the subject of their studies because—for reasons of their own emotional life—they have felt a special affection for him from the very first. They then devote their energies to a task of idealization, aimed at enrolling the great man among the class of their infantile models—at reviving in him perhaps, the child’s idea of his father….they thus present us with what is in fact a cold, strange, ideal figure, instead of a human being to whom we might feel ourselves distantly related. That they should do this is regrettable, for they thereby sacrifice truth to illusion, and for the sake of their infantile Life and Letters : 27

YOUNG TAGORE

Photograph Courtesy: Penguin Books India

SUDHIR KAKAR

SUDHIR KAKAR YOUNG TAGORE The Makings of a Genius

phantasies abandon the opportunity of penetrating the most fascinating secrets of human nature.’ Empathy, then, also calls for an introspective exploration of the biographer’s own emotional stance towards his subject, both pre-existing and the changes it undergoes as he engages more deeply with the subject, including the less than conscious transferences to him from significant figures in the biographer’s own early life. Here, I will give only a sketchy account of the obstacles to and the course of my own empathy as I began to involve myself in Tagore’s life and writings. Growing up and well into adulthood, I was never attracted to Tagore. Like any middleclass Indian boy, I was aware of his literary 28 : the indian quarterly : july - september 2013

stature, and had even read one of his stories, The Kabuliwala, in a school textbook but had always felt vaguely repelled by his flamboyant appearance in photographs where he always seemed to be clad in a loose robe that came down to the ankles, wore shoulder length long hair and sported a flowing beard that framed a grave, unsmiling face. He reminded me of Bhagwan Rajneesh (or Osho as he was known later), though without the latter’s endearing mischievousness. I had skimmed through Tagore’s own translation of the poems of Gitanjali, his Nobel Prize-winning work, and with the callowness of youth dismissed them as verses of stereotyped sentimentality and saccharine spirituality. Without giving it much thought, I was ready to give credence to the rumor that no one in the Nobel committee for literature had heard of him or read his work before W.B. Yeats recommended Gitanjali for the prize in 1914 and that, given the politics of the prize, it was time for an Asian laureate. I was thus in no danger of idealizing Tagore; my pitfall lay more in my minimizing his stature, in his devaluation. Not that I was not intrigued by the veneration in which my Bengali friends held him. The bulk of Indian writings on Tagore and his work came from Bengal, as they continue to do so till this day. I found this shared fascination, which seemed to be an unwritten commandment that a Bengali intellectual or creative artist [. . .] must engage with Gurudev (as he was reverently addressed in his old age) at some point of his life, an endearing mystery of the Bengali character. ■ Excerpted with permission from Penguin Books India from Young Tagore: The Makings of a Genius by Sudhir Kakar.

Courtesy: Sakshi Gallery

Untitled Amrish Vaidya Photograph, Archival ink on archival paper, 54.5 x 41.5 inches, 2013 For paediatric surgeon Amrish Vaidya, a prosaic and even ugly surface can be transformed into an exciting and appealing abstraction just by the way the image is composed and the angle from which it is taken. He takes to the streets, focusing on the city’s raw and forgotten elements such as peeling paint from half-burned walls, to look beneath for layers, textures and old stories. This untitled photograph from his exhibition Frames of Reference is on display at Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, from August 23 to September 7, 2013.

life and letters : 29

LIFE AND LETTERS

My Grandmother’s Table Novelist Bulbul Sharma chronicles the fierce arguments that break out over intricately flavoured Bengali dishes each time the extended family gets together at her childhood home for a meal

he oLd marbLe tabLe has a complicated pattern of orange, red and yellow stains that tell their own stories. This is where my grandmother dropped a plate of fish curry when her son told her he was marrying an English girl. That is where my mother spilled pomegranate juice when she heard on the radio we were at war with Pakistan. There are odd brown, green and black spots too—I have

30 : the indian quarterLy : juLy - september 2013

never figured whom they belonged to—but I know, without doubt, each mark is from an argument around the antique dining table. The once white marble is wiped every day with a limp rag made from a torn sari. I can still see tiny embroidered flowers on the edges. The table, a solid teak one, was part of my grandmother’s dowry. “My father gave me this Burma teak table along with that clock. He was a rich and generous man,” she takes

Illustration: Rahul Das

great pleasure in reminding us every morning, pointing her bony, crooked finger to both items as we make sure to look at them, each time, with renewed interest and awe. Lunch is usually a peaceful meal with the men away at work and the children at school. The women eat quickly and escape to their rooms—pretending to need a siesta. Soon, a gossip and card session is underway in the shaded, cool bedroom on the second floor

of the house, safely tucked away from my grandmother’s disapproving eyes. The food feuds are reserved for when the sun has set over the palm trees in our back garden and the cows are safely home. It is always my eldest sister-in-law based in London who instigates the arguments, questioning the methods used to cook the rice and vegetables or the way the food is served. Other members of the family passionately Life and Letters : 31

retaliate, defending age-old traditions and my mother would tell me. ‘Cut and then quoting from ancient texts and family lore. breathe slowly,’” my grandmother recalls and From bickering over food, the arguments points, for some reason, to the old clock above deviate to politics and religion; personal at- her head. “I think it was a clever trick to keep women tacks are not uncommon and frequently end in cousins or aunts not speaking to each other occupied in the kitchen so that they would not get into trouble,” my Harvard-educated for days. We sit around the table, a gentle breeze cousin weighs in. “The same way they made making the curtains sway like the sails of an sure widows only ate simple food without old boat as my sister-in-law spits out a bit garlic or onions to keep them subdued.” “There is no harm in keepof bitter gourd seed. “You spend The food feuds ing women quiet. You modern too much time cooking this dish. girls talk too much and have an Why peel and scrape every bit of are reserved opinion on everything,” my uncle skin off? I know a quick way to do for when the interjects. “Women and children it,” she mutters, taking a spoonful sun has set. It should be kept busy or they get of the second vegetarian dish on is always my into mischief. It is written in our the menu—margosa leaves and eldest sisterscriptures too: ‘A woman, dog aubergine, a summer specialty. in-law based and drum should be beaten ofMy father replies with a snort. in London who ten if you want them to stay in “Shortcut . . . you women want to good order.’” do everything quickly. What will instigates the Silence again as we attempt you do with all the extra time arguments, you gain from high-speed cookquestioning the to make the connection between my uncle’s comments on woming? Are you going to become the methods used en and the cooking of complex prime minister of England?” The rest of us chew the bit- to cook the rice dishes. Today, we are eating an and vegetables intricately flavoured mochar or ter gourd in silence. The next dish on the menu—a mustardor the way the banana blossom curry—a family flavoured chorchori made with food is served. favourite—in reverential silence; the ultimate tribute my family radish, spinach, beans, carrots, green papaya and pumpkin—neutralises the could give any cook. Almost every part of the banana plant is bitterness in our mouths. Chorchori, a traditional Bengali dish, is made from various eaten with great relish in Bengal. My comfort food as a child, even now in times of stress, leftover vegetables. “I blame the pressure cooker for all evils is a bowl of rice and milk with a ripe banana in our city. In my days we spent hours cut- mashed by hand to give it a glue-like and deting vegetables the right away—one eggplant liciously creamy consistency. Bengali cuisine at a time, one potato at a time. Not just chop, uses various other parts of the banana plant chop, chop, as if you were shredding cattle too, like the pith, or thor, available only from a food. ‘Take your time to cut the vegetables,’ plant that has flowered. Green unripe bananas 32 : The indian quarTerly : july - sepTember 2013

are used as well in various vegetarian dishes. supply since it takes such a long time to preThe elaborate mochar—made with the pur- pare and shrinks in the process of cooking. I ple cone-shaped flower of the banana—was quickly help myself to a large spoonful before almost certainly invented to keep the cook, my uncle can reach out. Then comes the begun pora: a simple dish usually a woman, busy for hours at a stretch. A young bride is often instructed in pressing made by roasting a large aubergine and mixdetail by her mother-in-law on how to make ing it with finely chopped raw onions, green this dish. “First, oil your hands well. Your chillies and fresh mustard oil. No one commother must have told you that the mochar plains about the begun pora. “Time now for the mustard fish, made has a gum that can stain your fingers. Peel off by me in ‘quick style’,” says my one leaf at a time. Then carefully “There is no sister-in-law from England. Everemove the unripe bananas. Now, slowly and firmly cut an eighth of harm in keeping rybody shrinks back from the an inch off the top; no more and women quiet. table—her idea of mustard fish, we know, is to dissolve a tin of not a tiny bit less. Only the head You modern Colman’s mustard powder in hot has to be discarded. Next, finely girls talk too water and pour it over fried fish. chop the rest, taking care to keep much and have “How many times have I told putting the bits into a bowl of waan opinion on you not bring these Western ideas ter. Oil your hands once more and chop them even finer, and soak everything,” my into my kitchen?” says my grandthem again. Always remember to uncle interjects. mother, with an air of authority, from her seat at the head of the takeep a bowl of water by your side “Women and before you begin cutting the mochildren should ble. “You will ruin my cook. Next, he will start demanding I buy a char. Throw away the water you be kept busy or mixer grinder or, worse, a microsoaked the chopped bits in and they get into wave oven!” There is a firm line refill the pan with fresh water. mischief. It is that divides her end of the table Boil them for about ten minutes. Now, they are ready to be cooked.” written in our from ours since she does not eat The mochar we are eating toscriptures too.” meat, fish, garlic, onions or tomatoes, and none of these banned day has been made with freshly grated coconut and flavoured with garam items can cross the line. “Mustard powder from a tin! Who thought masala—each mouthful a reminder of how of such a thing?” asks my uncle, waving his much effort has gone into this dish. “This mochar has not been cut fine hands in despair. My mother, who loves Engenough,” declares my uncle, after he has lish mustard, wears a guilty expression and helped himself twice already. “Maybe our puts a finger to her lips as she looks at me, cook is learning shortcuts from you,” he says making sure I don’t pipe in that Colman’s is accusingly to our relative from England. We on the daily breakfast menu at our home. In my grandmother’s house I woke up try not to be too greedy but everybody wants a second helping of the mochar, always in short every morning to the sound of spices being Life and Letters : 33

ground with a mortar and pestle. Chillies, spoken just the other day and not in 1936. “He gave up his right because he wanted coriander, turmeric, cumin and ginger—all pounded mercilessly by the old cook who has to marry a divorcee,” retorts my sister-in-law. developed powerful biceps over the years. “The queen is still very active and the British He was always in a bad temper in the morn- love her.” She had only recently opted for a ing. The designated cook of the day from the British passport, much to everyone’s horror. “You have become a chamcha of the royal family—one of the sisters-in laws—was summoned into the kitchen only after the spices family,” my uncle pitches in as he eyes the were ready and displayed in small stoneware fish in anger. “Waste of good rohu,” he mutbowls on the kitchen table. They gleamed like ters, prodding a piece of fish. He scrapes off the mustard and looks quite sad blobs of colour on a painter’s palMy as he takes a bite. We had made a ate—fiery red chilli, orange-ochre turmeric, jade-green ginger, grandmother’s trip to the fish market earlier in the day and he had chosen it with pale brown coriander and sepia kitchen has great care after lifting its silver cumin. The cook, massaging his never seen gills to examine it for freshness. tired and aching arms, hovered a packet of He wanted the fish to be cooked around them. readymade the way he loved it: fresh mustard My grandmother’s kitchen ground spices. seeds of the best quality ground has never seen a packet of readWhen she into a fine paste on a stone slab ymade ground spices. When called sil batta, with a teaspoon of she heard about them from her heard about daughters-in-law, she shook her them from her poppy seeds and two green chilhead and said, “This is the age daughters-in- lies. Then gently cooked in pure mustard oil and woven into a of the lazy cook. I am glad I am law, she shook golden, aromatic mustard paste not going to be around when a her head and that makes your eyes well up with packet enters my kitchen.” Everysaid, “This is its tanginess. Now, he blamed the one understood her veiled threat queen for creating Colman’s musand packaged masalas were never the age of the tard paste and ruining his lunch. mentioned again. lazy cook.” We eat the fish, which tastes Today, her rule has been broken. While we eat the instant mustard fish fine to me, except it is too mild—a genuine curry, watched disapprovingly by the cook, a mustard fish curry must always clear the sifierce argument breaks out over British roy- nuses. We sit around for a while, a bit subdued alty. My grandmother, furious with her daugh- after the failed fish curry, though we finished ter-in-law for letting Colman’s mustard pow- every bit of it. My mother, I could see, quite der into her kitchen, decides to attack her: liked it but no one dared praise it in the pres“Your queen should now retire. I remember ence of the elders, who stare angrily at the how her great-uncle abdicated the throne. I empty plate. After a few dangerous moments pass, heard him over the radio. Such a dignified voice,” she says as if the Prince of Wales had the cook brings in the kheer like a peace 34 : the indian quarterLy : juLy - september 2013

offering. Thick, rich and pale beige with a to it each time he narrates it around the table. layer of gleaming cream, it is made with new I am sure the entire story was concocted to palm jaggery or notun gur—jaggery produced amuse us. “This kheer is the best I’ve ever had,” deby extracting juice from sugarcanes. At first we eat silently, savouring each mouthful, then clares my mother, but since she is from Simsuddenly a fierce argument breaks out over la—her father had migrated there from West whether the palm jaggery from East Bengal Bengal in 1920—her opinion does not count. “What do you know about good food, (now Bangladesh) is better than the one from you probashi Bengalis (Bengalis living outWest Bengal. We are equally divided and the cook joins side Bengal); you eat only rajma and kadhi.” says my uncle, raising his voice in, too, since he is from Khulna, My father and fist like some politician maklike my father—a town in what ing a public speech in a maidan. was formerly East Bengal. “It all replies with a “You people left the homeland. depends on how the jaggery is snort, You have betrayed Bengali food, made,” declares the cook. “Did the “You women the language and the culture,” he man climb the palm tree during want to do says, wiping a tear from his eye. sunrise or sunset?” My grandeverything very “Rajma gives me wind. I had mother, who is arguing in favour quickly. What it once in 1948 and suffered all of the jaggery from West Bengal, is impressed by this in-depth will you do with night,” my grandmother says as she makes herself paan, taking knowledge but tries not to show all the extra bits of supari, catechu and lime it for it would ruin her delicate time you gain equation and well-established from high-speed from her battered old silver paan box. This is a cue that the discusbattle strategies with the cook. cooking? Are sion on food has finally ended. “Do not talk rubbish. The you going to Now, each relative sitting around palm juice has to be cooked become the the dining table will discuss his well or it may ferment,” she says curtly. prime minister or her various digestive ailments, including ambal. This is a much“Well, then it becomes toddy, of England?” discussed stomach condition which is not a bad thing,” adds similar to dyspepsia. my father. The cook begins to wipe the marble table Now we know exactly what to expect. He top with the familiar damp, stained cloth and is about to tell us a long story of how, as a young boy, he would climb up a palm tree those of us still proud of our good digestive and steal the juice from the earthenware jars powers escape to the safety of the garden, tied to the trunk of the tree. One day, he got a where the complaints about flatulence and bit tipsy and fell but luckily his father caught acidity and other stomach ailments will not him just before he hit the ground. He was, reach us. The old dining table resigns itself to listen of course, punished severely. I love this story n and love the way my father adds new details to the same stories all over again. Life and Letters : 35

LIFE AND LETTERS

Newsmakers Palash Davé profiles brothers Tunku and Siddharth Varadarajan— editors, writers and scholars—who, while following seemingly different paths, are often on the same page

hey are among the worLd’s foremost journalists. They share a privileged upbringing in north India and Britain, and long residencies in the United States. They are hefty public intellectuals with the joint distinction of having taught several years at top-flight universities without completing their doctorates. Yet they are seldom spoken of in the same breath. Elder brother Tunku, 51, despite a customary undergraduate flirtation with leftish politics at Oxford University, is a contrarian liberal-baiter, unafraid of vexing anyone from the readers of the many publications he has written and edited for (most recently Newsweek, whose helm he quit in March) to the forthright friends whose company he relishes. After nearly two decades in England, his work took him to New York. There he married Amy Finnerty, an American journalist, with whom he has two college-age stepdaughters and a son, 14. An argumentative Indo-Brit at heart, he subscribes in large measure to an American conservative worldview. Siddharth, 48, is reckoned the gentler of the two, an equable—though never indifferent—progressive intellectual. He took his first degrees at the then famously left-wing London School of Economics. He, too, went to America, where he studied and taught at Columbia and New York universities, and married an Indian, the sociologist and anthropologist Nandini Sundar. Together they moved to Delhi, where Sundar took up a chair at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). From his first position at The Times of India to his current tenure as editor of The Hindu (India’s third biggest English-language daily), Siddharth’s journalism has been distinguished by a bold domestic radicalism, and 36 : the indian quarterLy : juLy - september 2013

he sees world affairs predominantly from an Indian perspective. Sophisticated people, their ideas and enthusiasms aren’t easily pigeonholed. If at first they seem to have followed two roads that diverged in a wood, the brothers’ lives, career trajectories and animating values suggest, instead, a kind of intertwining helical dance, twisting, turning and—surprisingly often—intersecting. Tunku and Siddharth were raised with their sister, Rathi) by a high-flying IAS officer father, Muthusamy, and a businesswoman mother, Usha. Both parents have distinguished themselves in public life, ranging across entrepreneurial, social development, diplomatic, cultural and philanthropic fields. When Muthusamy was posted, in 1978, to the Indian High Commission in London, the brothers left Mayo College to complete their education in England—Tunku attending the elite public school, Dulwich College, and Siddharth a neighbouring state school, Brockley County. Tunku went to Oxford University in 1981, “one of a handful of non-white students” at the famously upper-crust Trinity College. Together with his friend Mahir Ali (now a radical journalist like his British-Pakistani brother, Tariq), he resurrected a defunct Oxford Majlis, the society for students from the subcontinent whose storied history stretched back to 1896. It was, he recalls, “a gentle, innocent dabbling in subcontinental unity.” It was during his thirteen years as a law student, and then lecturer, at Oxford that Tunku “fell in love with England—the country, its history, its people.” He loved both its adventurous and its phlegmatic side. “The two cultures I most relate to are the

Indian, and the classical, educated, cerebral English,” he enthuses gently in an Oxbridgeinflected accent. (Every inch the donnish patrician, he affects disdain for the jury system on the grounds that he considers very few people to be his peers.) “At Oxford I loved the English approach to enquiry and debate, to conversation, food, drink—especially drink. It was all that a civilised young man would hope for in life.” Siddharth’s teenage radicalism deepened in his undergraduate years at the cosmopolitan, metropolitan London School of Economics (“The LSE is not England,” quips his elder brother.), where he threw himself into the causes of the day, supporting striking miners against Thatcher, and opposing racism, apartheid and the arms race. “London was fantastic for another reason,” adds Siddharth. “Like other Indians, I discovered our lost cousins—the Pakistanis— for the first time in my life. The friendships I struck in those years with my fellow students from Pakistan have stayed with me and helped to broaden one’s understanding of our shared heritage and common problems.” On the whole, though, “India was a distant place until 31 October 1984, when Indira Gandhi was shot and we began to get news from home about the pogroms against the Sikhs. For me, that was a turning point, the moment when I realised that whatever I studied or did abroad, the aim had to be to get back home and do something—anything—that could put an end to violence of that kind and ensure the guilty were punished.” Siddharth’s move to the US, where he spent a decade in academia, was paradoxically to confirm his homeward trajectory: “At Columbia University we had a large and

active community of Indian students and one became immersed in all sorts of issues: human rights, justice for the 1984 and other riot victims, and Bhopal.” Once Nandini had completed her PhD, the young couple’s return to India was “as inevitable as the Ganges running in the direction of Calcutta,” says Tunku. “Whereas, in my case, I’ve never wanted to fix the world. I’ve simply wanted to have a good and satisfying life for myself, both personal and professional. And I find it in England and America. His instincts, his temperament, his passions drove him to India; mine kept me abroad.” In 1993, to the surprise of friends and colleagues, Tunku, who had been tapped by the editor at a dinner party, took a summer job at The Times of London, and a new career was conceived. Leaving Oxford—and tenure—the following year, he rapidly scaled The Times’ editorial hierarchy, becoming the Madrid bureau chief in 1996, and taking the prized New York posting the following year. But this was a time of “dumbing down” in British newspapers. Tiring of his editors’ increasingly crass demands for celebrity and sensation, Tunku went freelance. Staff positions on serious American comment and news desks followed at the Wall Street Journal, then the Financial Times, then Forbes. Tunku fast acquired a reputation for bonhomie, prolificacy and the mischievous puncturing of alleged liberal pieties on everything from global warming to racial profiling. Siddharth, meanwhile, influenced by his brother’s career move, took a job with the Times of India in 1995. It only intensified his leftist passions. Writing later in The Hindu, he bemoaned caste prejudice and high-caste dominance in Indian newsrooms. Life and Letters : 37

A politically committed writer, he has taken even supercilious one, emphasising pedigree, on malnutrition (he compares India’s statis- piety and fierce intellect. Different aspects of tics unfavourably with sub-Saharan Africa’s), the tradition seem to have rubbed off on them communalism (he edited a respected volume both. Tunku declares himself “a proper Hinon the Godhra riots for Penguin, and is still du”, insisting on an anti-chauvinist strain that an active expert on that ongoing injustice) must be “fought for and protected” against and what he sees as the follies and crimes of “the Hindutva brigade”. “Our father was the defining influence Western wars of intervention in the Balkans, in this respect: he taught us a gentle, tolerthe Middle East and elsewhere. Yet the brothers’ politics are not as op- ant, but proud form of Hinduism. A personal faith, never a programme or a posed as they might seem. “One If at first they slogan, never political. We were of the first bits of non-academic seem to have taught from the earliest age to writing that Tunku did,” recalls sit in the puja room at home and his younger brother proudly, “was followed two chant various shlokas after him. a report on human rights violaroads that We found it slightly tiresome tions in Kashmir . . . considered diverged in as children, because we’d rather to be one of the finest that had a wood, the have been outside playing cricket come out. That was hugely inbrothers’ or reading comic books. Instead, fluential for me, because I hadn’t lives, career we had to sit cross-legged in a litreally paid attention to what was happening in J&K, or to the way trajectories and tle room with vibhuti (ash) on our in which repressive laws operate. values suggest, foreheads that sometimes trickHe followed it up with a report on instead, a kind led into the eyes and made them violations in Pakistan-occupied of intertwining smart. But we were transported into this area my father believed Kashmir. The role of the Armed helical dance, in and, looking back, I’m glad. Forces Special Powers Act, the fact twisting, “Thambi is an atheist. I’m not that security forces enjoy imputurning and sure if he actually pronounces nity and need to be prosecuted if himself such, but he basically is. they commit crimes—these are intersecting When he was younger he refused issues on which Tunku and I will stand shoulder to shoulder. Plus the opposi- to have his sacred thread ceremony, whereas I tion to religious hate politics of the kind that went out of my way to have one when I was 25, the RSS or the Sangh Parivar espouses; again on one of my trips back to India, which Thambi thought was a bit of a joke . . . . To me it was just we’d be on the same page.” The affection between the brothers is pal- completing the essential theatre, if you like, of pable. They refer to one another as “Thambi” my Hindu-ness. Like a bar-mitzvah,” he offers, (younger brother in Tamil) and “Tunku Anna” venturing an equivalence between the gen(elder brother Tunku). The family are Tamil dered Jewish tradition and the additionally Brahmins. The Tam Bram community has caste-exclusive Vedic one. Asked for his thoughts on Islamophobia, traditionally, and famously, been a strict and 38 : the indian quarterLy : juLy - september 2013

Photographs: Ram Rahman

Editor’s Cut: Siddharth is considered the gentler of the two brothers, an equable—though never indifferent— progressive intellectual

Life and Letters : 39

Tunku’s critique of an allegedly timid, secular is the urge to educate people, to edify. It’s the liberal intelligentsia comes to the fore: “Is- whole journalistic ethos behind The Hindu as lamophobia is quite the catchphrase, and, like well. What he wants to get out of a piece is all catchphrases, it’s unhelpful . . . . Indian to improve somebody; what I want is a good liberalism makes it difficult to have a robust, read. I’m not a mindless provocateur, but I critical approach to Islamism. Because many do believe that, if an issue raises hard quesof the robust critics of Muslims are Hindutva tions—as the Fort Hood massacre certainly people, critics of Islamism tend to be lumped did—journalists ought not to play the ball safe with a dead bat; they ought to try and square in with them.” Tunku can, himself, be prone to the ar- cut the ball to the boundary.” The cricketing metaphor is not an isolated one; guably unhelpful catchphrase. In “I’m not a Tunku is devoted to the game and the wake of the Fort Hood massamindless recently flew to England, “somecre of 2009, in which a Muslim US Army major gunned down over provocateur, but what indulgently”, to watch India forty of his colleagues, he wrote I do believe that play Pakistan in the Champions a column for Forbes magazine if an issue raises Trophy at Edgbaston. Another subject on which he square cuts entitled “Going Muslim”, which hard questions, the ball, deploying no shortage raised a storm of politically corjournalists of provocative catch phrases, is rect controversy (one commenought not to Wikileaks. He has called Julian tator called the column and its play the ball Assange a “fraud” and is protitle “civilized bigotry”), and led foundly hostile to the “rootless” to calls for New York University’s safe with a Stern School of Business (where dead bat; they Australian’s enterprise. “I’m not against leaking per se. he taught media and law to MBA ought to try My broadsides against Assange students) to censure him. and square cut were directed at his thoughtless “Oh dear,” he sighs. “There exthe ball to the exposure of people on the ground isted the phrase, in the American boundary” in war zones to possible death.” culture of murder, “going postal”: Decrying Wikileaks’ “callous niarchetypally a postal worker who — Tunku hilism”, the elder Varadarajan is can’t take it any more after years of licking stamps and sending postcards to “deeply suspicious of anyone who wants to Peoria, and finally snaps and shoots his co- “smash the state” or “stop war”—all these vulworkers. I decided to play provocatively on gar bombastic slogans which people wield as the phrase. It was an attempt to catch the eye, a way to end conversation and debate. “The other thing Assange did was wreak to make a pithy point. “This is where my brother and I differ havoc with diplomacy as it’s practised . . . . somewhat in our approach to journalism . . . I’m not a blind believer in the goodness of I think he’s the best journalist in India. He’s high officials of state in back rooms, resolving serious, he’s respectable, he’s knowledgeable, the problems of the world. But we need to be he writes wonderfully. But what drives him careful, in our pursuit of inside information, 40 : the indian quarterLy : juLy - september 2013

about the brush fire we set off and the insti- “a better place thanks to those documents that tutions that are likely to be damaged. In that have come out”, hoping for “more such stuff”. sense I’m quite conservative, and I think peo- Accordingly, he recently “gave full play to the ple like Assange do more damage than good.” disclosures made by the NSA whistleblower, One irony about Tunku’s hostility to- Edward Snowden”. The thirty-year-old American exile is, ward Assange is that Wikileaks’ revelations of diplomatic cables in 2010 emphatically growls Tunku, “a dangerous megalomaniavindicated what Siddharth had long claimed cal showboater. You’ve got to wonder about about US diplomats putting pressure on In- the programme, the sanity even, of a man dia to oppose Iran in the arena of the Inter- who is acting in the name of liberty and has been in active conversation with national Atomic Energy Agency, “Leaked Ortega of Nicaragua, Maduro of a scoop for which he won a UN documents Venezuela and Putin of RusCorrespondents’ Association sia for asylum. I think he’s far Award for excellence in journalhave fuelled from the hero that people like ism in 2005. some of the The younger Varadarajan, greatest stories. my brother make him out to be. He’s a dangerous vandal who’s whose newspaper was Assange’s Governments get running amok in the system organ of choice for Wikileaks’ up to all kinds of of international relations. The dissemination in India (as was terrible things. US is right to seek to bring him the New York Times in America And if there to justice.” and The Guardian in Britain), is “I do believe Russia was not bullish about that endeavour: are people who his destination of choice,” count“Leaked documents have traare willing to ditionally fuelled some of the bring things out ers Siddharth. “He sought asylum in more than twenty countries, greatest stories in journalism into the public including those of Western Euworldwide. Governments get up to all kinds of terrible things. domain, so much rope, and India, but was rejected the better.” everywhere. I applaud Ecuador, And if there are people who are Bolivia, Nicaragua and Venezuwilling to bring things out into — Siddharth ela for opposing his persecution the public domain, so much the better.” Wikileaks and its partners were deter- by the US.” A striking aspect of Siddharth’s critical mined, declares Siddharth, to treat the material with due care. The Hindu signed agreements take on world affairs is how jarringly “conpromising to vet it “and to redact names of servative” it can seem, in the sense that he individuals whose lives might be placed at focuses more keenly on questions of national risk. We followed those rules very carefully, interest, stability and strategic alliance than and Wikileaks insisted on that. This is not the on “Western progressive” concerns like husign of an irresponsible individual or organi- man rights and liberal democracy. This is sation, the way Wikileaks’ critics have painted perhaps symptomatic of a distinctively Init.” Last year Siddharth pronounced the world dian elite strain of progressivism—a thirdLife and Letters : 41

Man of Many Words: Tunku wants to write a book about India’s conquest of the cricketing world, which he believes has been to the detriment of the game in the country

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worldist, secular creed that’s tough on things not involve completely overturning the nalike ethnic and religious “divide and rule” at ture of the Islamic Republic because that’s home, “imperialist” intervention abroad and something that political players in Iran, bar“predatory capitalism” anywhere, yet can be ring a few, will not accept.” As for the brothers’ next moves, Tunku oddly soft on foreign dictatorships, especially wants to write a book about India’s conquest if they’re seen as anti-American. (“The Indian intellectual,” argues Tunku, “is somehow not of the world of cricket—financially, admincomplete unless there’s a Western power to istratively and “spiritually”—to the alleged rail against.”) Thus, for example, Siddharth’s detriment of the game: “A lot of the nouveau clinical analyses of Indian-Iranian relations riche crassness of modern India has seeped into cricket. It’s replaced old co(which read aptly like chess com“I’ve simply lonial British crassness but I’d mentary), and of Iran’s internal wanted to rather have that; it’s white flannel politics (which sound oddly crassness, versus cheerleaders at unhostile to the status quo), difhave a good fer quite radically in tone and and satisfying cricket grounds.” Siddharth, two years into his content from his passionately life for myself. editorship, is reinforcing walls of uncompromising campaigning And I find it in probity between the editorial and assaults on inequalities and inEngland and business sides, and between the justices in India. America. His comment and news sides, of The Siddharth sees Iran primar[Siddharth] Hindu. He’s setting up more forily through the lens of India’s eign bureaux (Addis Ababa, Jakareconomic and strategic self-ininstincts, his terest—in other words, oil and temperament, ta and now São Paolo); ramping up regional coverage (the coup AfPak. He feels India needs to his passions and upcoming elections in the work closely with Tehran and drove him to Maldives, the elections and anthe international community to stave off American aggression in India; mine kept ti-Muslim violence in Myanmar); me abroad.” and giving more emphasis to inthe region. Not only does he argue vestigative stories. that India should not attempt to — Tunku In the final analysis it is perget involved in other countries’ internal politics, his view of Iran’s political haps difficult to identify, given the idiosynsystem is not as critical as one might expect crasies of Indian political tradition, which of such a dauntless civil libertarian. “Iran’s brother is the conservative, and which the domestic politics is pretty vibrant, contrary to rebel. It is clear that each has a mind capable the outside perception of it being an Islamic of assuming both roles simultaneously. If F Republic,” he insists. “There’s plenty of scope Scott Fitzgerald was right that “the test of a for people to oppose, and they do oppose: it’s first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two not at all a monolithic space.” He argues that opposing ideas in the mind at the same time, the West must grasp opportunities presented and still retain the ability to function”, that n by shifts in Iranian politics “on terms that do may be quite fitting. Life and Letters : 43

SOCIETY

Class Act While sitting on the sidelines and soaking in an incredible summer for English sport, Lawrence Booth takes a wry look at the class dynamics of British society at play

Photographs Courtesy: Getty Images

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T’S ThE SaTurdaY Of ThE lOrd’S TEST maTCh bETwEEn England and Australia—a red-letter, blue-riband kind of a day in the British sporting calendar. It’s 1.45pm. The time matters because lunch finished five minutes ago and play has resumed. Yet behind the red-bricked Victorian pavilion that guards the pitch like a butler surveying the family silver, the Coronation Garden is bursting at the seams. And here’s the thing: you can’t see the cricket from the Coronation Garden. For the patrons—mainly well-heeled, sartorially splendid and plummy-vowelled—this appears to be a cause of supreme unconcern. They are at Lord’s for a day out, not to log the runs and wickets. The cricket itself is mere mood music, a background accompaniment to the hum of sociability and the odd self-conscious burst of “Happy Birthday”. (The British don’t like to sing in public, unless they’re drunk or mumbling along to the national anthem because everyone else is mumbling along, and they’d rather not cause offence, thank you very much.) The scene is one of lazy indulgence. Daughters sit on the grass, listening intently to fathers and uncles. Old friends and colleagues trade bravado and bonhomie. The smart black tents selling champagne, wine and Pimm’s may never have been busier. And, out of sight, a few yards away, the England opener Joe Root is said to be grinding Australia’s bowlers into oblivion. No one in the Coronation Garden seems quite sure. It’s possible one or two don’t even know who Joe Root is. But, my goodness, they do say he’s playing well! The Australian supporters, incidentally, are already back in their seats, watching a game for which they have travelled halfway across the world and paid good money. The poor souls. Not only is their team struggling, they have also missed the point: at Lord’s, and especially on a Saturday in July, you turn up to be seen as much as you turn up to see. Welcome to a world within a world, a game within a game, a swirl of tacit etiquette. Welcome to the British summer of sport. In the UK we recently awoke to the news that we are now made up of seven social classes. This came as a surprise to those of us who had always set our watches by the traditional trifecta of the class system: upper, middle and working—a creaking structure, perhaps, but one which has left little room for ambiguity and even less for social mobility. In fact, there are some who will tell you it is a structure that has been staving off revolution in England since the mid-17th century. Yet according to a survey carried out by the BBC, the British now

A Pie and a Pint: Although football crowds in England have recently undergone a gentrification, they were traditionally the working class, out to enjoy the beer and the action

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The UK is now made up of seven social classes. This was a surprise to those of us who had always set our watches by the traditional trifecta of the class system: upper, middle and working—a creaking structure, perhaps, but one which has left little room for social mobility.

Not a Level Playing Field: Lord’s is a sea of doffed Panamas as the Queen takes in the second Ashes Test from the pavilion at cricket’s most historic ground

range from the elite (basically, the rich) to the “precariat”, or precarious proletariat (basically, the poor). In between is every designation known to social science, including the “technical middle class” and the “emerging service workers”. Frankly, it’s all a little . . . revolutionary. Pop into any summer sporting event over here, however, and it’s not immediately obvious whether this new social paradigm—with its disturbing hint of a growing gap between the top and the bottom—is a source of much concern. The British may sneer in private about class differences, but they prefer not to discuss them openly. The most caustic observations tend to come from outsiders. Typically it was Oscar Wilde, born in Dublin, who produced the wittiest summation when he described fox-hunting—a pursuit traditionally favoured by the landed gentry—as “the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable”. The put-down still resonates, and the implication has become part of our social fabric: if you’re posh, then good luck to you, but it’s best not make a song and dance out of it. No one likes a show-off. Privileged show-offs are even worse. But our summer of sport proceeds as if Queen Victoria were still on the throne, the map of the world still half-covered in pink— the colour once used in school classrooms to denote Britain’s imperial conquests—and the upper classes still alive and well. At work here is a cheerful refusal to bend to the zeitgeist, a wistful nod to grander times: Wimbledon doles out strawberries and cream, which is hardly the diet of the man on the street; Lord’s is a sea of doffed Panamas and decorum; and at Henley Royal Regatta grown men wear improbably coloured blazers, the likes of which would earn them a punch on the nose at the

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local boozer. Red trousers, which unmistakably locate their wearer in the middle-to-upper classes, lurk around every corner; perhaps they’re supposed to be imperial pink. To judge by these jamborees, this is a country that regards the past as other countries regard the future: as a land of milk and honey. Quickly, a distinction. We are not talking here of Britain’s winter pastime, football—the leviathan of our sporting ecosystem and our most successful export, along with irony and bureaucracy. The English Premier League no longer feels especially English. Most of the players are foreign, and crowds that were once exclusively working class—miners, steelworkers, dockers, factory hands—have been partly gentrified. To the despair of those who have always associated football with a pie and a pint, it’s now acceptable for the middle classes to cheer on Arsenal or Manchester City from the wine-swilling, prawn-sandwich-guzzling comfort of the corporate box. Some even call it soccer. But while football wrestles with its place in the social network, the summer sports seem to be suffering no such identity crisis. “The English,” said conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, “may not like music, but they absolutely love the noise it makes”. Sir Thomas was tapping into a wider truth. It’s not so much the clichéd thwack of leather on willow, or the line judge’s frenzied cry of “out”, or the hypnotic clippetyclop of hooves at Royal Ascot—though all these things play their part in the summer’s warp and weft. No, what matters more is the sense that these sports are an unashamed expression of a world that once was. To paraphrase Beecham: the English may not like sport, but they absolutely love what it stands for. Cricket press conferences—and I have had

the misfortune to sit through hundreds—offer an intriguing tangent. Whereas the British journalists tend to have an eye on the lurid headline, their Indian counterparts often immerse themselves in intricate details. “Why remove second slip in the last over before lunch?” “What has happened to the trajectory of your doosra?” If the Indian journalists’ is a love of cricket for cricket’s sake—at least among the old school—the Brits may be more apt to regard it as a means to an end. Perhaps because cricket dominates in India to the exclusion of all else, the question of different sports attracting different classes does not crop up. But in England, as with the socialites in the Coronation Garden, the sport is resolutely not the thing. It is a long and dubious tradition. The Duke of Wellington was supposed to have said that the battle of Waterloo in 1815 against Napoleon’s French army was won on the playing fields of Eton, the most exclusive of all England’s private schools. The nation’s youthful elite were playing sport not to enjoy themselves—heaven forbid!—but in order to get into shape for the next assertion of imperial power. If you could hit the ball through the covers with a high left elbow, it followed with impeccable logic that you’d be in prime position to bayonet a Frenchman. The idea, then, that the British should take their sport seriously is anathema to the gentleman’s code of effortless achievement. And the idea that you should turn up to sporting events full of informed excitement about the day ahead is, well, a little infra dig. There is a name for these creatures. They are “anoraks”, people who will sit through rain, wind or shine in homage to their hobby. Yet they, like the sportsmen and women themselves, aren’t

really the point of all this. And woe betide anyone who gets above their station! During the 1921 Ashes Test at Lord’s, the Australian leg-spin bowler Arthur Mailey was invited to sit in the royal box. Finding himself next to a princess, he quickly discovered that his opinion was rather lower down the pecking order than it would be in the Australian SOCIETY : 47

Royalty’s part in the snobbery that informs summer sport is central to understanding it. What the British upper classes call “the Season” revolved around the months spent by the royal family in London when they would preside over debutante balls and lavish garden parties.

Ladies’ Day Out: The Royal Ascot, founded by Queen Anne in 1711, features regularly in the tabloids. This is the contemporary twist to the idea of being seen. For social climbers, attendance is a must.

dressing room. And so he ventured an observation. “I’m a little stiff from bowling,” he told the princess. “Oh,” she replied. “Is that where you’re from? I was wondering.” Royalty’s part in the snobbery that informs summer sport is central to understanding it. What the British upper classes call “the Season” once revolved around the months spent by the royal family in London—April until July, then October until Christmas. In those periods, they would preside over debutante balls and lavish garden parties. For the social climbers, attendance was essential. Court presentations, at which eligible young women were coerced into the social limelight, ceased in 1957, which felt about a century too late. But the spirit lived on in sport. If one could no longer be seen and admired by dukes and earls in palaces, why not be seen and admired by them at Wimbledon, Henley, Lord’s and Ascot? These days, the Season centres on sport. But only in a manner of speaking. Head for Henley, and it’s clear that many spectators are uninterested in which boat finishes first. Far more important is the tiring business of keeping up appearances. Ladies are not allowed in unless the hemline of their dress or skirt is below the knee. And if you’re thinking about wearing a divided skirt, culottes or trousers, a friendly word of advice: don’t. Ladies’ Day at Royal Ascot, which was founded by Queen Anne in 1711, features regularly on the pages of our tabloid newspapers. And if their below-the-hemline skirt happens to be disturbed by a gust of wind à la Marilyn Monroe and the subway vent, then so much the better for the paparazzi. This is the contemporary twist to the idea of being seen: the more flesh on show, the more chance you have of making a splash. And yet the vestiges of a

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past era live on. On the first morning of this summer’s Lord’s Test, play was delayed for 15 minutes so that the Queen could meet and greet both sets of players on the outfield. On the tower above the Australian dressing room flew the Southern Cross; on the one above England’s flew the Royal Standard. And when the Queen left the ground (she prefers horses to what Rudyard Kipling damned as flannelled foolery), down came the flag. It was the kind of pomp and circumstance which causes many Britons to wince, yet also maintains the illusion that the sun never quite set on the empire. And what else are we to think when a stubbly, barrel-chested, allAussie fast bowler such as Ryan Harris later tells the press how proud he was to meet Her Majesty. Really, Ryan? Weren’t you prouder when you took five wickets in England’s first innings? It’s not a question anyone likes to pose. It could spoil the fun. Many Indians regard English cricket as backward-looking. And they have a point. For India, cricket feels like an opportunity; the IPL