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Vo lu m e 2 | I s s u e 1 | october - December 2013 | ` 200

Letter from the Editor volu m e 2 | i ssu e 1 | October - December 2013

he significant other of creative people is usually the muse, often closer to them than their lovers, or even their spouses. Muses also have a habit of becoming lovers, as Dora Maar did for Pablo Picasso and Maud Gonne for WB Yeats. These days, the literary muse seems to be working overtime, inspiring writers: everyone's a writer, or wants to be. At last count there were over 60 literature festivals in India. The Jaipur Literature Festival may have been the catalyst for the growing tribe of festival-hopping literary pilgrims, but there is something else going on. I sense a keen interest in the printed word, despite, or perhaps because of, the babel of electronic voices. In the On Writing section, Arundhathi Subramaniam reflects on her intimate relationship with the English language and how it has taken her “forever to realise poetry ‘means’ not in spite of its silences, but because of them.” Annie Zaidi studies the phenomenon of the literary crush and wonders whether we “want the characters we have a crush on? Or do we actually want to be them?” Amitava Kumar shares his ten rules of writing. Sudeep Chakravarti gets cosy with his muse in Goa, writing book after book, while Mayank Austen Soofi uses his current muse, Marcel Proust, as a compass to navigate through life and literature. Raghu Rai surpasses even himself in his latest book, Trees; the photographs inside are sheer poetry in black and white. British photographer Michael Kenna’s lyrical lens captures the brooding landscapes of Asia. And photographer Fawzan Husain’s fly on the wall captures the many ways Bollywood spills over into our lives. A decade after Bhupen Khakhar’s death, artist Atul Dodiya looks back on his long association with the painter and writes about his influence on contemporary Indian art. Particularly rich this time, our Fiction and Poetry section includes an excerpt from Prajwal Parajuly’s Land Where I Flee. Playwright Mahesh Dattani pens the short story, “A Rom.com in Cyberspace”, exclusively for IQ. On a lighter note, food connoisseur Prabeen Singh explores the enduring link between food and sex, and comes up with some exciting conclusions. Between sips of white wine and a sardonic smile on his lips, British journalist Lawrence Booth explores some “white whines”.

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4 : iq magazine : october - december 2013

Letters VO LU M E 1 | I S S U E 4 | July - September 2013 | ` 200

Don’t be so shy! As your magazine contains so many good things, why do you make a secret of them on the cover? Art, I suppose: the art that says let’s be refined and rather cool and not tell the vulgar public too much. The New Yorker (older readers may remember) kept words off the cover until the 1990s, believing the cover image to be sacrosanct, but even The New Yorker, this grand duchess of magazines, eventually succumbed to pressure from its circulation department and came up with the solution of a cover-line flap, a sort of false half-cover, that advertised the magazine’s wares. A good magazine needs readers. Don’t be so shy! Ian Jack India Institute, Kings College

London

Include more current issues IQ makes us think. And it does me a world of good in this shrieking world of panel discussions. You invite us

Keep the wonderful stories coming

to take the path less trodden and light up the spaces that

When I first saw IQ at the Mahindra Blues Festival, it

often go unnoticed. The piece on Arpita Das’ Yodakin

overwhelmed me. Be it following Manto’s footsteps

(“The Jedi Master of Indie Publishing”) was fascinating,

in Bombay (“Walking Manto’s Bombay”), or Harnam

and all bibliophiles would enjoy Bangalore’s Blossom

Singh Hari’s trip to Alberta and back (I wish he had

bookstore (“Second to None”). Ankur Shah’s journey to

never returned) in “The Emperor of Alberta”, or the piece on Marine Drive being built (“The Making of Marine Drive”), every story touched my heart. Kudos to the research you do to bring us these fascinating tales. I have preserved every copy. Keep the wonderful stories coming. Mohan Vijayan Vice President, Concept Public Relations Mumbai

Need more wit I have read only the latest issue of IQ. It’s fabulous! I enjoyed all the articles, especially V Ramesh’s “Loss

Lahore and beyond (“A Forbidden Passage to India”) had special meaning for me, as I was born in that city and fell in love with it again recently. Shah vividly brings out our shared heritage. What I sometimes miss in your pages, so beautifully illustrated, are reflections on some of the most pressing issues of our times. What does it mean to be young and Indian in this day and age? And what the concepts of justice and dignity mean to us as we reach new heights of domestic product but also plumb new depths. Your magazine has filled a gap, and raised expectations. May it continue to prosper. Balveer Arora

of Illusion” and the photo feature on mannequins

Chairman, Centre for Multilevel Federalism

(“Smoke and Mirrors”). But this magazine is not a

New Delhi

quick read, nor does it make for a casual browse. One

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

suggestion: do include some wit, some lighter articles. Sunaina Mathur Yoga Instructor, Studio Abhyas New Delhi

@theindianquarterly letters: 5

Contributors the Interesting Word Game.

Sarnath Banerjee is a graphic

his works have been produced in

novelist, artist, filmmaker

London and New York. His film

and co-founder of the comics

Mango Souffle was adjudged best

Madhu Jain is a journalist and

publishing house Phantomville.

picture at the 2003 Barcelona Film

author based in New Delhi.

His debut book, Corridor, was

Festival.

Long-involved with India Today, she also worked for Sunday and

among India’s first graphic novels and his latest venture, the Pao

Atul Dodiya is considered one of

The Statesman, and was formerly

Collective, involves a group of

India’s most important artists.

the Delhi correspondent for La

artists promoting graphic novels

He trained at Sir JJ School of Art,

Croix. She curated the landmark

from India.

Mumbai, and École des Beaux-Arts,

art show Kitsch Kitsch Hota Hai and

Paris. His works draw from diverse

is the author of The Kapoors: The

Ruskin Bond is the author of

traditions of painting and writing;

First Family of Indian Cinema. She is

numerous best-selling novels and

from media-imagery and history;

editor of The Indian Quarterly (IQ).

short story collections, including

from politics, literature and

The Room on the Roof (winner of

autobiographical narratives.

Helen Jones is a writer, singer, photographer, award-winning

the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize) and Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra

Anjali Doshi won the Ramnath

actor, art director and gypsy

(winner of the Sahitya Akademi

Goenka Journalist of the Year

traveller. She has worked on both

Award). He was awarded the Padma

Award for broadcast sports in 2012.

sides of the camera in many parts

Shri in 1999. He lives in Landour,

Former cricket editor with NDTV,

of the world. Originally from

Mussoorie.

she now writes on cricket, travel

Tasmania, she is now based in

and social trends. She is deputy

New York and Mumbai. Helen is

Lawrence Booth is editor of Wisden

editor of The Indian Quarterly (IQ).

currently working on a novel.

Cricketers’ Almanack and a cricket

Follow her on @anjaliadoshi. Mona Joshi is grateful that she

writer for the Daily Mail in London. He has written, co-written and

Fawzan Husain is a Mumbai-based

enjoys what she does and does

edited seven books on cricket—a

photojournalist, artist, teacher

what she enjoys. An editor and

minor miracle given the first world

and organic farmer. A self-taught

writer based in New Delhi, she has

problems he wrestles with on a

photographer, his work has been

written for various media over the

daily basis.

widely exhibited and published in

years—print, radio, advertising,

India and abroad. His permanent

Internet, television and audio

Sudeep Chakravarti, formerly a

collection is displayed in museums

interpretation. She is senior

senior editor with major Indian

and galleries in Mumbai, Japan and

associate editor at The Indian

publications, has authored several

Houston. He recently published

Quarterly (IQ).

fiction and non-fiction books,

Between Bombay and Mumbai: 25

including Tin Fish, Red Sun: Travels

Years in Pictures through a

Anubha Kakroo is a design and

in Naxalite Country and Highway 39:

Changing City.

cultural insight director at Future Brands. She studied architecture

Journeys through a Fractured Land. An avid scuba diver, he lives in Goa

Adam Jacot de Boinod was a

and industrial design at the School

and is co-trustee of Coastal Impact.

researcher on the first series of the

of Planning and Architecture, New

BBC quiz program Quite Interesting

Delhi, and design management

Mahesh Dattani is a playwright,

(QI), hosted by Stephen Fry. He is

at Brunel University, London.

stage director, screenwriter and

the author of The Meaning of

She is also a mentor at the Centre

filmmaker. Winner of the Sahitya

Tingo and Other Extraordinary

for Innovation, Incubation

Akademi Award (1998) for his book

Words from Around the World and

and Entrepreneurship at IIM

Final Solutions and Other Plays,

the iPhone app Tingo—

Ahmedabad.

6 : The indian quarTerly : ocTober - december 2013

Contributors Michael Kenna is an award-

has been shortlisted for the 2013

India and Pop-culture, will be out

winning photographer from

Dylan Thomas Prize. Land Where

in 2014.

England, who now lives in Seattle.

I Flee, his first novel, will be out

Among the foremost landscape

in November. He is writer-in-

Michael Snyder studied English

photographers in the world, his

residence at the Oxford Centre for

literature and comparative religion

work is held in over 80 permanent

Hindu Studies, and likes mangoes.

at Columbia University. He spent

collections, including the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, and

Raghu Rai is among India’s most

the Victoria and Albert Museum,

acclaimed photojournalists. His

London. There are 42 published

photo essays have appeared in

books of his photography.

leading Indian and international publications. He has produced

a year in Santiago, Chile, before moving to Mumbai. His work has appeared in several publications, including GQ India, Elle, Open and The Caravan.

Amitava Kumar is the author of

over 30 books, including Raghu

the recently-published A Matter

Rai’s India: Reflections in Colour

of Rats: A Short Biography of Patna.

and Raghu Rai’s India: Reflections in

poet, curator and journalist who

His book A Foreigner Carrying in

Black and White.

has been published in several

Arundhathi Subramaniam is a

newspapers. Her most recent

the Crook of his Arm a Tiny Bomb received the 2011 Page Turner

Rajyasree Sen is a Delhi-based,

work includes Where I Live: New &

Award. He teaches English at Vassar

Calcutta-born bona fide foodie,

Selected Poems and Sadhguru: More

College, New York.

culture-vulture and unsolicited

Than a Life. She divides her time

opinion giver. She is a senior editor Mala Marwah studied English

at Newslaundry and a columnist for

literature at New Delhi’s LSR

Wall Street Journal and Firstpost.

College; painting and allied

com, and writes on books, food,

subjects at California College of

women’s issues and pop culture.

Arts and Crafts; and art history

You can follow her on @Rajyasree.

at MS University, Baroda. She

between Mumbai and a yoga centre in Coimbatore. Anna MM Vetticad is a journalist and author of the The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. Through

has written several poems and

Prabeen Singh is an ex-food

19 years in the media, she’s worked

short stories, and has extensively

columnist for The Sunday Guardian.

with India Today, The Indian

covered modern Indian art in

Known for her great personal

Express and Headlines Today. She

her writings.

style and cultivated cuisine, she

is currently also a teacher, social

presented a food segment on NDTV

media consultant and popular

Anuvab Pal is a playwright,

Profit. She currently holds cooking

blogger. She is on Twitter as

screenwriter, stand-up comedian

classes, demonstrations and

@annavetticad.

and occasional columnist. His

lectures in Delhi for various groups

plays and films include Loins of

visiting India.

Punjab Presents and The Bureaucrat.

Annie Zaidi is an award-winning writer of poetry, essays, fiction and

He has written for several

Mayank Shekhar is a Bombay-

publications, including India

based writer and editor. He is the

Today, Open, Outlook and GQ. He is

first recipient of the Ramnath

delighted to write for IQ because

Goenka Prize for Film and

he assumes his is probably not

Television Journalism. Two of his

Indian Girl. Her first collection of

very high!

books, How I Met Your Movies (A

essays, Known Turf: Bantering with

scripts. She is the author of Love Stories # 1 to 14, Sleep Tight; Crush and the co-author of The Good

Decade Of Reviewing Blockbuster

Bandits and Other True Tales, was

Prajwal Parajuly is the author

Bollywood) and Name Place Animal

shortlisted for the 2010 Vodafone

of The Gurkha’s Daughter, which

Thing: An Anthology of Essays on

Crossword Book Award.

8 : The indian quarTerly : ocTober - december 2013

Vo lu m e 2 | I s s u e 1 | october - december 2013

Letter from the Editor 04

Essays

On Writing

Letters 05

36 Just Shut Up! Anuvab Pal feels like

68 English and I Poet Arundhathi subramaniam on her volatile relationship with the language

Contributors 06

he’s drowning in the tsunami of opinion 40 Eat Play Love Prabeen singh

Talking Points 12

explores the link between food and sex

White Whine | taking a step up

46 Kitsch 22 Anubha Kakroo examines

censors’ trip | busy doing Nothing

what’s tacky and what’s not

Art

Travel

22 A Delicate Unmasking Atul dodiya

52 My Journey Through Asia british

on why the eminent artist bhupen

photographer michael Kenna on the

Khakhar is still relevant today

complexity of shooting in India

26 The Speaking Trees raghu rai

62 Death in Venice madhu Jain goes on

focuses on his enduring love affair

a literary pilgrimage to the san michele

with trees in his latest book

cemetery

10 : the indian quarterly : oCtober - deCember 2013

74 10 Rules of Writing Author Amitava Kumar’s ready reckoner for writers 78 In Search of Proust mayank Austen soofi revels in his Proustian obsession 84 A Writer’s Retreat sudeep chakravarti finds his muse in Goa 90 We Are Like That Only Anjali doshi is intrigued by the nonsensical colloquialisms in Hinglish pulp fiction 94 An Inheritance of Loss rajyasree sen relives her memories of calcutta in Jhumpa lahiri’s narratives

12 84

100

120

134 100 Still Looking for Mr Darcy? Annie Zaidi wonders who’s more crushworthy: literary characters or the writers who create them? 106 An Evening in Fosterganj An

Fiction and Poetry 134 The Problem With Reunions An excerpt from Prajwal Parajuly’s land Where I Flee

excerpt from ruskin bond’s novella

142 New Poems by mala marwah

112 Gathering Dust michael snyder despairs at the sorry state of mumbai’s heritage libraries

144 The Reading Playwright

Cinema 120 Bollywood and Beyond Fawzan Husain’s quirky look at how bollywood spills into everyday life 130 Strugglers’ Lane Helen Jones spends a day with wannabe actors

mahesh dattani’s cyberspace romance written exclusively for IQ

IQ Points 155 Adam’s World of Words: Adam Jacot de boinod 157 Logo 1: sarnath banerjee 158 XOXO: mona Joshi

on the cover: Forest Edge, Hokuto Hokkaido, Japan Photograph by michael Kenna For subscriptions and queries call: +91 95949 99978 or email: theindianquarterly@gmail.com Contents: 11

Talking Points

White Whine By Lawrence Booth

orgive the self-indulgence, but a recent development in my personal life means I have grown to know the Heathrow–Mumbai flight path with an intimacy that could yet turn my new girlfriend green with envy. Long-distance travel has always been part of my job, but for reasons of disorganisation it is only now—following a dressing-down from a despairing travel agent—that I have embraced the world of air miles. It turns out they are comely little creatures, forever beckoning you with the promise of more, higher, better—like an Olympic Games motto for couch potatoes.

12 : The INdIAN quArTerLy : OcTOber - december 2013

Addiction, though, has its darker side. I ask for no sympathy here, and already I can see the more ecologically minded among you pursing your lips in disapproval. You’re better people than I am. But the truth is, this air-miles malarkey has opened up a whole plethora of problems. How many thousands of miles, for example, must I fly to qualify for my first complimentary double espresso? When does the luxury lounge at Terminal 3 become my personal domain? And at what point, pray, do I qualify for the sine qua non of all airborne incentivisation schemes: the business-class upgrade (with free toothbrush, earplugs and those furry socks that barely creep above your ankles)? The questions are endless, the answers elusive. Woe, frankly, is me. “Sounds like a nice problem to have,” grunted a friend, whose work-related travel

generally takes him from his bedroom all the way to his living room (though the views from his hallway are lovely at this time of year). It was the put-down of a man determined not to become a walking cliché and fall victim to a malaise that—now that I think about it—was beginning to play a larger role in my life than I felt entirely comfortable with. Some call this malaise the “white whine”. And if that sounds like an allusion to some nightmarishly tepid carafe of chardonnay, then you’re in the right ballpark (and the wrong restaurant). Yes, we’re talking here about First World Problems (FWPs), the kind of “problems”—and I use the inverted commas advisedly—that would be regarded as luxuries in parts of the planet where people have problems of the unpunctuated kind to worry about. Like earning enough money to buy food or protecting themselves from malaria . . . or, I dunno, making sure there’s always enough ice in the freezer for that 6pm G&T. Sorry. This really has to stop. You may laugh. You may even find it all a little distasteful. But a recent survey carried out in the UK suggested that FWPs do exist— if only in the minds of those weighed down by them. Two thousand adults aged between 18 and 65 were asked to come up with a list of their favourites. Their collective angst made the headlines, as if FWPS were now widely acknowledged as an intrinsic part of the pampered modern existence. (But, gosh, it was a nuisance having to go out and buy the damn newspaper after my monthly allowance of free page views on the Daily Telegraph’s website expired!) The top three in the list revealed a nation in crisis. No 1: “It’s boiling hot outside, but freezing in the air-conditioned office”, which I’m sure you’ll agree deserves a sympathetic hug all round. No 2: “My personal trainer

took the whole week off, so I have to work out alone.” Again, you may or may not have shed a comradely tear. No 3: “My wallet won’t close because there’s too much money in it.” If that last grouse verges on the self-parody, then so too—you might think—does a society that spawned FWPs in the first place. But the websites that have grown up around the concept generally tread the fine line between satire and reality. And it’s not always clear where one begins and the other ends. One such site—First World Problems—provides examples that any self-respecting westerner with too much time on their hands will recognise only too well. “I have to get dressed so that I don’t look too lazy when I go out to pay the gardener,” is a classic of the genre. Not far behind is: “I type so fast that my expensive fake nails keep hitting the wrong keys.” Read and weep at a few more of these lamentations and it becomes clear that what we have on our hands is not so much fake nails as a full-scale epidemic. As so often when the English are looking for a scapegoat, the easiest thing to do is look across the Channel. Because the concept of a First World did not even exist until the French anthropologist Alfred Sauvy brazenly coined the term in 1952 to describe countries which had adopted capitalism. Communist nations were, according to Sauvy, the Second World, where presumably a problem wasn’t a problem unless the state said so. Since these two groups broadly aligned themselves with either the USA or the former USSR, the idea of the Third World emerged during the Cold War years to denote the nations who hadn’t taken sides, which meant pretty well everyone else. Over the years, the term has become synonymous with “poor”. And while the Second World has largely TALKING POINTS: 13

Talking Points vanished from the geopolitical lexicon, the First and Third have grown to represent polar opposites. All of which, it seems mind-bogglingly self-evident to state, can be boiled down to a simple truth: if the Caesar salad you picked up on the streets of Mogadishu contains too many croutons, take it on the chin. The good folk of Somalia have better things to fret over. Like we said, this is mainly France’s fault. Only three years after Sauvy divided the world up into easy-to-categorise chunks, the IrishAmerican novelist JP Donleavy hinted in The Ginger Man at the first strains of FWPs.“When you don’t have money,” he wrote, “the problem is food. When you have money, it’s sex. When you have both, it’s health.” This was all very well, but Donleavy was silent on the question of owning a living room not big enough for both a coffee table and a chaise longue, or the dilemma posed by the hairdresser moving house. What, after all, if you have your health? What then?! The answer, probably, is that you want everything— and you want it to be just so. And here’s the problem. Inhabitants of the Second World will be familiar with the musings of Karl Marx, who once pointed out that “Mankind always sets itself only such problems as it can solve”. If that makes mankind sound a little feeble, then Marx may nonetheless have been on to something. When all our basic needs have been taken care of, what else is there to do but fret about the imperfectability of life? As I said at the start, I’m not asking for sympathy. Just some recognition that, if I’d taken the scenic route from Heathrow to Mumbai, and flown needlessly via Kolkata, I reckon I might just have racked up enough air miles for that double espresso by now. I wonder if I’ll have to queue up for it. 14 : The INdIAN quArTerLy : OcTOber - december 2013

Taking a Step Up By Madhu Jain

ontemporary Indian dance is a bit like Cinderella, before the magic of the wand came into play. Left out in the cold, without a prince or patronage, it has yet to become the belle of the ball, yet to take its place in the arena of the performing arts. It is even more of a poor relation when compared to the visual arts. With dancers outnumbering viewers, contemporary dance in India continues to be overshadowed—rendered a wallflower really—by the vibrant classical dance scene on the one hand and the omnipresent Bollywood choreography on the other. Fortunately things might be looking up, a bit. Concerned about the near invisibility and the less than enthusiastic response to contemporary Indian dance, its practitioners and advocates have been congregating in various forums to discuss a way out of the impasse of indifference. Recently, I attended a fairly lively two-day roundtable discussion titled “Context, Collaboration and Commerce” at the Goethe Institute in Chennai. Organised by the Chennai-based Prakriti Foundation, the brainchild of Ranvir Shah, it provided a platform for choreographers, dancers, critics, academics, arts professionals and impresarios to discuss the state of contemporary Indian dance, and to find innovative ways of not only revitalising this art form but making it commercially viable, sustainable and better understood. For Shah, contemporary dance is the “new emerging form of expression that weaves its own language and grammar in India”—one which has to be recognised and mentored to

enable artists to achieve a level of excellence. The absence of “strong nurturing platforms” to ensure international exposure was also, according to him, responsible for the dearth of practitioners of contemporary Indian dance in the country. As one of the critics present quipped, while there are probably over 2,000 Bharatanatyam dancers in Chennai, you can count the number of contemporary dancers of any calibre on just one hand. This was one of the main reasons why Prakriti Foundation instituted the Prakriti Excellence in Contemporary Dance Awards (PECDA), a biannual competitive event held for the first time last year. Bengaluru-based Deepak Kurki Shivaswamy won the award of Rs 5 lakh, as well as a mentorship with the celebrated Akram Khan Company in London. This year the choreographer-dancer’s group performed the contemporary dance work, NH7, to an

appreciative audience. The mentorship had clearly been worth it: there was less selfindulgence and more assured moves. Their dance piece captured the mayhem of city life and explored the idea of changing landscapes caused by rapid urbanisation. A major grouse that emerged during the discussions was the stepmotherly treatment meted out to contemporary dance. While a few universities, Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, among others, included cinema studies and contemporary art in their curriculum, they did not offer courses on contemporary dance. Even if they decided to, they would be hard put to find professors to teach them. Scholars in Europe and the United States researching contemporary dance, as one critic complained, were telling Indian choreographers and dancers what to do. TALKING POINTS: 15

Talking Points Several institutions like the Kalakshetra in Chennai and the Kerala Kalamandalam in Cheruthuruthy produced great teachers and performers who created some legendary works in the classical tradition. However, a certain standardisation in Bharatanatyam and Kathakali also set in. Experimentation was largely frowned upon, even in Kathak. Since the objective of many of our cultural czars and czarinas was to retain the purity of inherited traditions, there was hardly any debate about the need to evolve new directions in dance. But there were a few dancers and choreographers who began to look for new expressions. Uday Shankar, elder brother of the late musician Pandit Ravi Shankar, might not have had any formal training in dance, but he was familiar with Indian classical and folk dance, as well as ballet. He designed modern Indian ballets based on the legends of RadhaKrishna for the luminary ballerina Anna Pavlova. Uday travelled widely in India looking for folk dances and instruments. His interest in music and costumes of folk, classical and martial forms led him to set up the Uday Shankar India Cultural Centre in 1941 near Almora, in Uttarakhand. Some dance practitioners did experiment successfully with the classical forms. The late Chandralekha worked on deconstructing Bharatanatyam. An iconoclast, she moved away from the dollification and plastic smiles, and brought in other disciplines like Kalaripayattu and yoga. Dancer-choreographers Kumudini Lakhia and Ranjabati Sircar also questioned classicism and sought new directions. However, such innovators were few and far between. Today, the contemporary dance scene has a growing number of choreographers, residencies (both in India and overseas), per16 : The INdIAN quArTerLy : OcTOber - december 2013

formances and groups. Nevertheless, it continues to remain on the fringe of the world of Indian dance. Many of the participants of the roundtable blamed the press for its sorry state. Whatever little arts journalism that may have existed a few years ago was being sacrificed at the altar of the Page 3 syndrome in our increasingly celebrity-obsessed age. It wasn’t just contemporary Indian dance that was being relegated to the sidelines; the arts pages were vanishing. The dumbing down was widespread: discourse about literature, serious cinema, the performing and visual arts had almost gone silent in the print media, and on television. Nor has it really come of age. Moreover, contemporary Indian dance has yet to make an impact internationally. Perhaps, what is holding it back is the fact that most of its practitioners lack an understanding of what constitutes modernity. It’s not about merely incorporating the techniques and grammar of European or American contemporary dance; there are multiple modernities. And, there have been many moments of modernity during the course of the development of our visual and performing arts. Bharatanatyam has had its moments, too. Unfortunately, for many dancers and choreographers the recipe for creating contemporary dance involves slapping on a bit of hip hop, yoga, acrobatics or ballet to Bharatanatyam or Kalaripayattu. The Chennai-based contemporary dancer Padmini Chettur puts it succinctly: “There is immense confusion because people do not know how to process. I see ten movements in 90% of the performances I have been going to—and it ends up as khichri. Contemporary dance is an evolution of technique, not a mixing of techniques.” Or, as a wit at the roundtable discussion said, “It is chor-eography”.

Censors’ Trip By Anna MM Vetticad

t’s been so many years since we routinely saw the birds and the bees, couples disappearing behind bushes, and flowers snuggling up to each other as young love bloomed on the Indian big screen, that some of us may have forgotten what that looks like. Today, when heroes and heroines kiss, the camera doesn’t shyly avert its gaze. When they’re getting some action between the sheets, those sheets still rarely slide away to reveal naked bodies; but, thankfully, nor is viewer attention always diverted to a smouldering fireplace, lightning flashes or statues of marble gods. Although some larger-than-life heroes continue to vanquish platoons of villains single-handedly with nary a bruise to show for it, realism too is now mainstream. Usually when celluloid cops and robbers fire guns, heroes need help from friends, blood spurts out on screen, necks are broken, skulls crack open and even leading men die. Dons don’t just mouth grandiose dialogues; they spew cuss words. College kids swear. Street thugs abuse. People kiss. Sex happens. In the entertainment industry’s battle with India’s censorship regimes, 2013 is light years ahead of the turn of this century when director Anurag Kashyap’s Paanch was banned by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) for featuring what was then considered too much sex, violence and drug abuse (it was later cleared though not released, but that’s a different story). If Paanch were to be scrutinised by the CBFC today, chances are it would be okayed

with no cuts and an A (Adults Only) rating. More to the point, Kashyap’s Gangs of Wasseypur Parts 1 and 2, overflowing as they are with blood, guts and filthy-tongued, sexually active men and women, would perhaps have been barred from release a decade back, yet in 2012 they passed muster. Years of anger have blinded liberal Indian film buffs to this glaring new reality: that the present CBFC under Leela Samson is unarguably the most open-minded censor board we’ve had in decades, that sex is no longer taboo in Indian films, extreme violence no longer automatically invites a ban and colourful invectives are passed without cuts in most A-rated films these days. Hold on to the champagne bottles though. Despite the dramatic new liberalism of the past half decade or so, the CBFC remains inconsistent. Its examining committees in southern India are notoriously more conservative than their counterparts elsewhere. And television entertainment—which is not governed by the CBFC—is ruled by an often laughable mindlessness: a combination of self-regulation by channels, the Union Information and Broadcasting Ministry’s guidelines and the industry’s own Broadcasting Content Complaints Council. There can be no better example of this than a recent instalment of the American legal TV series, The Practice, which Fox Crime is rerunning in India. “Arabs and *#@$!*s . . .,” went a character at the start of that episode aired on October 4, 2013. A single mention of *#@$!*s might have escaped attention, but then it happened again. And again. It didn’t require lip-reading expertise to guess the word blanked out throughout that hour, even in the accompanying subtitles. The irony is that the entire episode was spent condemning America’s legal system and society for their open TALKING POINTS: 17

Talking Points

anti-Muslim discrimination since 9/11. So who was this censorship intended to please? Just months earlier, viewers of another US series, Homeland, had to suffer the word “mosque” being muted on Star World India. Since Homeland revolves around a US military man released after being held prisoner by Al Qaeda, the mention of mosques is inevitable, but reason clearly did not drive that decision. Even more bizarre is the disconnect between the regulation of films, TV and radio content. The CBFC passed Aamir Khan’s production, Delhi Belly, in 2011 with an A rating and no cuts. It was an uncommon victory at the time for artistic freedom in India considering that the film was littered with foul language and toilet humour. Everybody’s a winner here, or so you’d think: adults get to watch what they wish, parents receive ample warning to keep children away and a director’s work is not tampered with. Here’s the odd thing though: the film’s promos featuring the song “Bhaag DK Bose” 18 : The INdIAN quArTerLy : OcTOber - december 2013

—a play on one of north India’s crassest street curses—ran all day on radio for weeks, inevitably exposing children to the very language the censor board sought to protect them from in the film. Equally ironic are the goings-on on the small screen. Some sex scenes in American soaps are chopped out to suit Indian community standards. Fair enough. The irony is that discussions on sex dominate many such shows, but since they’re aired at all times of the day, the names of body parts and abuses are routinely muted in the most unthinking fashion. Common sense and liberal logic suggest that instead of muting such words, broadcasters should formulate a voluntary ratings system with the certification appearing before the start of each show so that parents can decide whether or not to allow a child to watch. The US has a good template that we could adapt for the Indian television audience. G, as it does in the US, could mean the content is suitable for everyone. PG could mean parental guidance is recommended for relatively mild reasons. PG-13 would suggest that parental discretion is strongly advised for under-13s. Take that further to PG-15, PG-17/18 and so on; restrict the more strongly rated shows to latenight slots and you have a system which helps parents, does not ruin the viewing experience for adults and does not insult the intelligence of children either. Until that happens, what you will get are scenarios such as this: “Son of a *@#%& . . . son of a *@#%& . . . son of a *@#%&,” said a character repeatedly in an excerpt from the American show Key and Peele, which aired during the day on Comedy Central. Apparently, someone out there thinks Indian children are stupid and ignorant, and they cannot lip-read.

Busy Doing Nothing By Mayank Shekhar

“W

hat’ve you been up to?” You hear this practically every day. Like many others, I suppose, I usually say, “Nothing much.” It sounds despondent, but it’s really not meant to be. It is what it is, though doing nothing much marks you out as someone of little use to a world that benefits immensely from establishing contacts and exchanging business cards. People size you up at social occasions with, “So, what do you do?” I normally respond, “I do nothing, really,” which for the most part is true. I am not trying to be a social hermit—far from it. I’m merely saving myself from an extra effort that will yield little for a curious stranger. How do you specifically explain what a writer of any kind does anyway? There is no cut, brokerage, transaction or “dhanda”. The input, output and currency are words, and they don’t contribute anything significant to the physical infrastructure of the world, barring bestsellers of Chetan Bhagat or Linda Goodman, which can potentially impact the minor publishing economy. In any case, everybody is a writer of some sort: on the blog, twitter timeline, Facebook wall . . . Never in the history of letters have so many written for so few, seeking no reward outside of a retweet. The guy standing in front of me at the party, letting out that knowing “hmmm”, unable to see how I could be of any help to his business, gently slinks out with his drink, hoping to find someone more deserving of his time and attention. I feel relieved. A more suitable response to what you’ve been up to is “been busy”—so busy that there

is no time to read, watch movies, listen to new music, play a sport, answer personal texts, hang out with old friends or spare a moment for wife, husband, kids, life . . . It’s not considered such a sad state to be in. This busy bit is ideally suggested with an air of self-importance, cloaked in weariness. The profoundly busy person commands universal respect. The middle-class father from the generation before mine regarded his perennial absence from home as a badge of honour reserved for the breadwinner. He was busy working hard—often in the same office until retirement—for financial security. The current Indian generation that’s overcome the Hindu rate of growth, works for the money. The business of being busy is now a virtue, since it is associated with a splendid chase for the riches. You are busy, so you must be ahead of the curve, which inevitably throws up another curve, nudging you to move around in circles. It’s not easy holding on to that expensive job; you must justify it by the hour. Everybody understands your plight. They know you’re always in a meeting, late into the night, even over weekends, rendering a friendly verb into a corporate noun. It’s hard to tell when anybody is working, given that both the sahib and the assistant are forever in a meeting. Perhaps some of these meetings are acceptable excuses for avoiding yet some more meetings, which is fair. I usually say, “I’m at the movies.” It gives me a couple of hours’ lead time to respond to someone I’m not in the mood to talk to at the moment. I haven’t heard from some friends for days, because they are still “in a meeting”. I get the hint. Exactly what happens during these series of meetings is hard to tell. I’ve never been in a corporate job. I have worked for newspapers owned by corporate firms, but they were still newspaper jobs. You knew exactly what TALKING POINTS: 19

Talking Points everyone was doing the night before. You could read it in the papers the next morning, which, more often than not, reported on what public figures were up to the previous day. Every page ran news about those who made news. The Page 3 ran images of people who were famous for being famous. The rest of the busy planet could continue to hide under the pretence of being busy. Then in the mid-2000s, social media boomed, ensuring that in the future everyone will be anonymous for 15 minutes (that brief span of time when life happens because you’re not logged in). The phenomenon, like all good things, started with the dating site Friendster. It quickly morphed into the hagiography of the common man, proving that privacy is such a bloody myth. Most of us are closeted celebrities. I now know exactly what you did last summer or when you entered Subway, bit into that grilled sandwich on Instagram, tweeted about the merits of a Salman film and commented on your buddy’s post about experiencing the Monday blues on Facebook—all at the same time—humbly adding to the newsfeed of the Everyman. I know this because you choose to tell me so. That you didn’t have time to return my call because you’re still in a meeting is guilt for another day. In any case, I am not completely sure if I know you. The cheeky, antsy teenager type on my screen doesn’t seem like that serious suit I last met, who fished out his cell phone in the middle of our conversation. Back in the day when there were no cell phones, what you did would be no different from cutting me off so you could read a quick paragraph from a book you brought along to the coffee shop. But thanks for posting that Mallika Sherawat video; it went mildly viral. You and I added to the hits. The Internet is a global village, and so we share. It’s still a village, so you can 20 : The indian quarTerly : ocTober - december 2013

be petty, pretend to know everyone and make it your business to peek into each other’s homes. There is also ample time to sit in the “chowk” and discuss politics, only slightly tragic that all those who know exactly how to run a country are busy in their air-conditioned shop floor commenting about it instead, forming virtual armies in support of Modi, knocking down Rahul, attacking their perceived opponents, issuing semi-columns on news in real time. The ticker of a billion-plus voices never stops. Those in the business of social media tell me that traffic peaks between noon and 2pm on workdays. It’s by far the lowest over weekends. I’m sure @StealthMountain has a day job. His side profession is to find people on Twitter who’ve spelt “sneak peak” and inform them, “I think you mean sneak peek.” Clearly, others who tweet on behalf of plants (@pothos) or from Mars (@MarsPhoenix) have rents to pay. I’m not sure if people led more hectic lives before. Sitting in your cubicle doesn’t necessarily mean you’re working. Face Time in office goes well with the Facebook now, even if they’ve blocked it on the office computer. You have all the time—and the cell phone in your hand. I’m still a migrant to this social medium. The natives were born only two decades ago. It remains for us the first genuine global survey of the human mind. Socialists will study this further; economists will readjust the actual disguised employment rates. So far, Facebook has taught me one thing: the online versions of a majority of us are roughly the same. Basically, there is no such thing as doing nothing. I’m willing to say, “I’ve been checking my timeline all day.” “So, what’ve you been up to?” Been busy—posting links, liking comments, uploading pics, quoting Rumi and Murakami, alternating between various WhatsApp groups, trolling Sagarika Ghose . . . I can see that. I just want to hear you say that. n

Parliament Library Raj Rewal Model of the new Parliament Library in New Delhi

In its latest permanent collection titled Multiple Modernities, the Centre Pompidou in Paris is showcasing Delhi-based architect Raj Rewal’s body of work. This is the first time that an Indian architect or artist is being exhibited in its permanent collection, which has works of artists like Picasso and Matisse. Many of Rewal’s sandstone modernist structures and complexes are being shown in the form of models, drawings and films. On display at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, until August, 2014.

ART

A Delicate Unmasking Ten years after the death of Bhupen Khakhar, Atul Dodiya explains why the work of the eminent artist and his close friend is still relevant today

(Above) “Ranchhodbhai Relaxing in Bed”: This painting displayed at the Jehangir Art Gallery in 1979, was Atul Dodiya’s first real introduction to Bhupen Khakhar’s work

Discovering Bhupen I first heard of Bhupen Khakhar in 1975. It was during my SSC year (Grade 11) in school when I came across a small reproduction of his work in The Times of India’s annual magazine, alongside a piece by Sham Lal. The painting was called “The Branch Manager”. I chuckled when I read the witty title and the way it was painted. Then, I read about Bhupen again in the Gujarati literary magazine Kavita. It was a write-up by Madhu Rye, a well-known Gujarati writer, and the piece was about Baroda-based writer and critic, Suresh Joshi. In it, Rye mentions that, in the company of Sureshbhai, he found two dear friends (and artists), Gulammohammed Sheikh and Bhupen Khakhar.

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When I joined Sir JJ School of Art in 1979, I made it a point to visit every exhibition at Jehangir Art Gallery. Even if I travelled to my native place in Saurashtra, Gujarat, I would time it in such a way that I never missed a show. A couple of years after I discovered Bhupen, I saw his work hanging on the walls of the long hall at Jehangir [Art Gallery] in a joint exhibition with Vivan Sundaram. One of the oils was called “Ranchhodbhai Relaxing in Bed”. The canvas was mostly blank, with very little pigment, and had a man in bed with a razaai on his lap. This Ranchhodbhai was exactly like the Ranchhodbhais I knew in Ghatkopar, the Gujarati-dominated northeastern suburb of Mumbai, where I was born and raised. The backdrop of the painting had

a door and a boy combing his hair in front of the mirror. It was so different from anything I had seen in modern Indian art, and yet so familiar. It was an amazing experience. He was depicting middle- and lower middle-class India; the India that I knew. I grew up in a chawl in Ghatkopar and could relate to this art because it was local and rooted, and felt like real-life scenes had found their way to the canvas. Bhupen was perhaps the only artist at the time recreating his observations of the urban middle-class Indian man and his surroundings with acute attention to detail. And he was a truly Indian artist in the choice of his subjects. I just loved what I saw. Bhupen wasn’t as well known as the other

modern masters of this era like SH Raza, Tyeb (Centre) Mehta, MF Husain, Akbar Padamsee, J Swami- “Those Shoes Are nathan or Jeram Patel, but he had piqued my Mine”: curiosity. In 1988, Dodiya When we met, it was easy to talk to him painted Khakhar because we spoke the same language. But it was for the first time as many years later before Bhupen, older to me by a tribute a quarter of a century, would acknowledge me as a fellow artist and a friend. (Right) “Still Life Bhupen, the Artist With Shirts”: Though he grew up in the middle-class Gu- A work by Khakhar jarati neighbourhood of Khetwadi in Bom- that epitomises his bay, Bhupen preferred the small-town life raw and rugged style Baroda offered. A qualified chartered accountant, he worked at a firm and studied art criticism at ART : 23

Bhupen really came into his own as an artist when he was invited to teach in London in the Seventies. He finally found liberation from the double life he was living in India, where only his close friends knew he was gay.

MS University, Baroda. As a self-taught artist, he never imagined making a career out of it and his style was more of a Sunday painter initially. Our styles could not have been more different. I knew as early as the age of ten that I wanted to be an artist and nothing else. And from a young age, I could draw very well with perfect proportions. I am almost too methodical and skilled to be able to create the kind of raw work he did. Bhupen’s work, in contrast, was odd and clumsy, and quite strange in its treatment. He had a very different approach to figures and always chose interesting subjects. He had a terrific sense of humour and gave his paintings unusual titles. Soon after “Ranchhodbhai Relaxing in Bed”, I saw another painting of a Gujarati man titled “Accountant IM Shah”. Studying art criticism meant he was very familiar with the works of the early Italian masters like Giotto, Massacio, Lorenzotti and others; the Dutch masters, including Rembrandt and Rubens; and the great modern artists Picasso and Matisse. He admired the work of these geniuses but never tried to be anything but himself, nor did he follow trends blindly. Bhupen didn’t get much recognition when he started out. People would scoff at his work and laugh at his clumsy, odd style of drawing and painting. But he was never bothered by the criticism. He may have appeared naïve, but he was very aware of how he was perceived. He was also in touch with how people would react to works of art and how different classes perceived art. In the late Seventies, many of his paintings were unsold. They were priced at Rs 500 then. Now, those paintings are going for lakhs! But Bhupen did not care too much about commercial success; he was painting for himself and

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approached art in a more relaxed manner, unlike his contemporaries. He was not a self-conscious painter who had to work in solitude. Art was important, but life was just as important. Bhupen, in fact, was always a struggler. And his struggle was visible in his paintings—many of the works, particularly his oils, had a lot of overlapping of paint. Painting and then painting over. Again and again. It was an ongoing ritual. Trial and error. In some ways, his struggle was too real for me. His work was never a decorative object to be hung in a home or office. His paintings were raw and rugged, which is what made him such a great painter. His weakness became his strength, for it is his oddity and unique sense of creativity that we appreciate even today. Bhupen’s work is especially relevant now because of this approach. There is an urban primitivism to it. He could move fluidly between oil and watercolour, and from small paintings to big canvases. He worked with different techniques as well, like printmaking/ etching, ceramics and glass painting. When we would travel, I would take a lot of pictures that served as sketches for my work. Bhupen would carry an ordinary sketchbook and Nataraj pencils. He was always sketching, even if we were at the station waiting for the train. It was his riyaaz. He really came into his own as an artist when he was invited to teach in London in the Seventies. He lived with the British painter Howard Hodgkin and finally found liberation from the double life he was living in India. Only his close friends knew he was gay, but after his stint in London he became more open about his homosexuality. He was probably the first Indian artist to come out of the closet. This influenced his subject matter and added

another dimension to his work. His companions often featured in his paintings. And his subjects became even more personal after he came out in the 1980s. Through his art, he became the voice of India’s long-ostracised gay community and his content become much more explicit.

Artists And Friends: Dodiya and Khakhar at the Royal Square, Brussels, in 1993

My Friend Bhupen Bhupen came to the opening of my first solo show at Gallery Chemould in 1989. But, as ever, he was stingy with his praise. That day, however, he finally acknowledged me as a fellow artist and invited me to paint the sets for his Gujarati play, Mojila Manilal, with him. Much later, we became close friends. Our shared love for literature, writers and poets brought us closer. Bhupen was an avid reader (he loved detective fiction in particular) and enjoyed writing short stories and plays. We had a group of Gujarati writer-friends who would invite us to workshops out of town, where we would bond over all-night drinking and gossip sessions. Bhupen loved gossiping about artists and common acquaintances in the art world. He was a good critic too, and we would give each other honest and detailed feedback on how we could improve something. Sometimes, I would joke, “Do you think you should retire?” He would respond, “You’re just jealous.” If I was very busy and had no time to meet, he would joke, “Are you Rembrandt? Nobody’s going to care if you make one more or one less painting.” This banter formed a significant part of our friendship. Bhupen was also very mischievous. When we visited the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in 1993, he saw one of the guards was “his type”—an old man with a bony structure—and

suggested we chat with him. “Let’s tell him we are artists from India and want to buy one of the “Sunflowers” paintings. On another occasion, he acted like a smuggler when he was on an outstation train. Bhupen told one of his co-passengers during a casual chat that he was a smuggler. He said, “The bag under your seat has gold biscuits.” The man looked frightened because Bhupen was so believable. He was similarly free-spirited and gutsy in his art. I consider his relaxed approach very inspiring, yet we had our moments of friction, too. He lost the long battle with prostrate cancer in 2003. I really miss him and that sense of humour. In 2002, the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid held a major retrospective of Bhupen’s work. This was a great honour for an Indian artist. He had this unique ability to grab essence from reality and reproduce it in his art. I used to joke, “Bhupen, I don’t think I will ever be able to paint the way you do in my coming seven births.” He would laugh. n ART : 25

ART

The Speaking Trees In his latest book, Trees, acclaimed photographer Raghu Rai focuses on his enduring love affair with them

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ESSAYS

Just Shut Up! Stand-up comedian Anuvab Pal on why he feels like he’s drowning in the tsunami of opinion

OnfEssiOn. i havE nOThing TO say. Nothing. Not one tiny thing. Whatever I thought I had to say has already been said—on Facebook, Twitter, through a photo on Instagram, on whatever other internet-y things there are whose names I don’t know. Everything is out there. I have nothing to add. Which is fine if I was a neurosurgeon or a structural engineer because I’d be paid for what I could do (save a neuron, build a bridge), not necessarily what I thought of this or that. But I’m not clever enough to be in a profession where I could not talk for years and just do a thing people paid me for. I’m reminded of a documentary I saw about a sushi maker who just shut up and made sushi for 40 years and was world famous. I don’t have that. I am a comedian. And in my line of work, opinions pay the bills. Pick a topic: women in India unsafe, men in India venal, our movies, maidservants, what the West thinks of us, our elections, old photos of what cities looked like in the 1950s, 1850s, 1350s, the inside of candy floss, why your 30s are great, why your 30s are depressing, your grandmother today, and back in 1911, Sachin Tendulkar’s curly hair—name it, all done. Documented. Available online. There was a world in which opinions were assets. Insight was copyrightable (I’m not sure that’s a word). Something someone said was quotable and you’d have great respect in society for being well-read and knowing insightful things to say while attributing it to the famous people who said them. Those listening to you would say, oh, so-and-so is so knowledgeable, he knows what Nehru said about democracy, or Oscar Wilde about love, or Jim Corbett about lions. Whatever 36 : ThE indian quarTErly : OcTObEr - dEcEmbEr 2013

the topic, they’d know you knew your source. And the source was world famous for having said that. The thing with insight in the modern world is that everyone has it. When the walls come down between the insight provider (who went by the pretentious term “artist”) and the public (his/her audience), one finds the public far cleverer than the artist. And just by the sheer size of the public, it outdoes the artist (usually singular) in intelligence, feedback, volume and perspective. In fact, we live in a world now where the thing itself—a novel, a column, a stand-up show, a painting, a play, a film—is far less important than the thousands of opinions that chase it, making the opinions and debate over it an independent artistic work from the artistic work itself; to the extent that the original work and its creator are soon forgotten. But the Facebook comment guy with the controversial status update on the work, he’s known. He introduces himself at parties as that. You might be wondering, this seems a bit odd: I’m writing an opinion column telling you it is useless to have an opinion; seems circular in its reference. I’m not saying one shouldn’t. I’m saying when one does, it should be early and/or new—or it is pointless and often too late. Example. I really wanted to say something about the Indian-American Miss America winner. By the time I got online pretty much everything had been said. I had at least four, no maybe five, insights. One being this: is America dealing with its own assimilation issues? Why are we jumping up and down? Done—said by an editor of a prominent website. Another had to do with how we in India deal with skin colour—too late, at least seven

Essays : 3

Illustration: Jyoti Mili

articles out on that. I thought I’d be sneaky, it down. Today’s novelist, a Hari Kunzru say, bring in a different angle: the pointlessness will take a photo, age it technologically and of pageants. Gone. Huge opinion piece by add a twist at the bottom with text that changsomeone huge, and opinionated. I gave up, es the meaning of the photo (this, I believe, ate some raisins and went back to reading is termed a meme, which, although it sounds other people’s opinions and other people’s like it, isn’t the name of a European DJ). The hatred of those people’s opinions and so on, purpose is similar, but technology makes the approach different. Time does that you might until it became, like all art does now, noise. It made me think that perhaps these days say, stop complaining you curmudgeonly cothe job of the artist is not to shut off and cre- median, move on. The point is that it sprang from a conate but to open Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reditt, Foursquare, some newspaper sites, versation about who could be considered a public intellectual in modern and wait—just see what the India. I was talking to some world is doing. Sit back with a people and someone said cup of coffee, with one’s perWe live in a world Chetan Bhagat, someone else sonal vast spy network as it now where the said Barkha Dutt, a third said, were, eavesdrop on the world thing itself—a how can you even mention and at the right second, like a novel, a column, these names, I refuse to eat! cheetah, jump at something, a stand-up show, And then the debate degenanything—a film out, a coma painting, a play, erated, as debates usually do, ment about the decline of a into a slanging match about certain kind of cupcake, a a film—is far less the merits and demerits of incolumn about mistreatment important than dividuals. Whereas the quesof dogs in Bombay, a photo the thousands tion to fundamentally ask, in of a lecherous man, whatof opinions that a world where everyone has ever—and give it your own chase it . . . opinions, which everyone spin, hopefully contrarian, else is reading and respondso quick with insight that ing to, is whether the idea of you haven’t even formed the thought, and you are en route to being today’s the public intellectual, someone wise telling artist. Others will just look like late plagia- us things, all the way down from Plato to a leery yoga guru, is dead and replaced with this rists. Losers. Some of you might think what is the point constant noise which we are all participating of even saying this? Groucho Marx was im- in, opining on, responding to, to create an minently quotable. He wrote books. Other even louder cacophony. Today, a simple tweet that says so-andwits quoted him years later. Today, there’s Twitter. Today’s wits, thinkers, et al, tweet. so cellphone company’s customer service is The medium changes, not the minds doing it. rubbish generates an argument that would They just reach out differently. See something shame the British parliamentary debates of in the world around you? Mark Twain wrote the 1870s—in size, time and sheer number of 38 : ThE indian quarTErly : OcTObEr - dEcEmbEr 2013

responses (and quite possibly erudition). It would be unfair not to consider the originator of that tweet a public intellectual on par with the best—with Dylan Thomas and GB Shaw and the founder of the Higgs boson. You might think I’m joking. I am. But only a little. Yes, certain ideas (how to split an atom, how to build a plane, how to make an iPhone, why Punjabis buy Audis, the recipe for the world’s perfect biryani) may be inaccessible and known only to a few. And those ideas, when told to us or taught by Ivy League scholars (I think it is time for a Harvard degree on biryani, but that’s another matter and my problem), revealed in esoteric symposiums and lectures, have intellectual value. But apart from that, everything else, everything writers say, for example, at the thousands of literary festivals we have in India and around the world, we kind of know. We definitely know. And if we didn’t, we can look it up on a phone. Sitting with a thousand people in a lawn, having someone bearded whisper to a moderator that we need to end communal violence, peace is better than war, and such nonsense, is a gigantic waste of everyone’s time. So unless you are absolutely certain that you have something to say that no one knows, like announcing you have a secret superpower to turn into a rum cake, it may make sense to shut up. For a start, it will save the decorator from having to lay out a 1000 chairs for a thing that is a Google search away. Or one can join the rest of us and be public intellectuals on the Internet and hope to get to a thing quicker than anyone else, participate in the noise and the brawl—the equivalent of shouting in a Roman market square in 200 BC. Back then you’d get hit by a stone.

Here you risk 400 comments from people named @varunsexy39 saying, “@rakhihott already said this ya. Just die.” It is a tough jungle. For example, there are currently 11 million articles on the Internet on Narendra Modi vs Rahul Gandhi. If yours is going to be the 11-million-and-oneth article—and I am assuming you won’t read the 11 million because that would take up most of your adult life—you better hope you’ve made an observation that all these millions haven’t! Even if you were Narendra Modi or Rahul Gandhi, or a combo of both, I don’t think you could find a new thing to say about yourself. If saying insightful things is your bread and butter, you’re on the wrong end of history because unless your insight is acutely ingenious, which—if one is truly honest (and we rarely are)—all great insights/jokes/observations should be, someone has a clip about it on YouTube already. So you start out your day as an artist and end it as a thief with a copyright violation. This morning as I wrote this, a debate raged on about which film would have been a better contender to represent India at the Oscars. One was popular and had famous backers; the other, no one had heard of. So much has now been said about these two movies that watching them to evaluate seems pointless. And they are forgotten for a much more fun, artistic work: the debate itself and the documents generated over it. A friend was going on and on about a certain column that criticised the state of our cinema generally, taking off from this incident (why not, it’s a free-for-all) and I asked if anyone had spoken to the filmmakers. “Who cares about them?” was the response. “It’s what @chillaxboss23 said that’s driving me mad.” n Essays : 39

ESSAYS

Eat Play Love From the forbidden fruit to a swallow’s beak, Prabeen Singh traces the compelling history of aphrodisiacs as she explores the intricate link between food and sex

hE word aPhrodisiac suggests seductive secrets, tantalising glimpses of pure delight and invites us to consummate our innermost sexual desires. it is evocative of flavours and aromas that awaken the senses to a state of complete abandon. The happy union of food and sex—our two most dominant appetites—catalyses creative energies that translate into blissful harmony and increased self-confidence. Virility and fecundity are the staples of power, the defining attributes of the alpha man. “Built like an ox”, “the charge of the cheetah”, “the stamina and grace of an arabian stallion” are terms used to describe sexual prowess, little realising that these animal symbols have seasons and run short distances. women have understood this vulnerability in men and, for centuries, have seduced them with a potent combination of their charms, the art of lovemaking and the use of artifice, keeping the men closely tethered to their bedposts. To my mind, the first aphrodisiac was the apple—the forbidden fruit offered to adam by Eve, who was seduced by the emperor of seducers, Lucifer, symbolised by a serpent. and so the serpent became the symbol Freud adopted to analyse sexual frustrations. he also observed that the obsession with sex and food began in infancy and flowered in the adult appetite. These obsessions reside deep in our subconscious where reality marries fantasy to give birth to desire. There is no substitute for the suggestive power of the subconscious. in his gastronomic-sex treatise Immoral Recipes, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán wrote: “No one has ever succeeded at seduction by means of food 40 : ThE indiAn quArTErlY : ocTobEr - dEcEmbEr 2013

alone, but there’s a long list of those who have been seduced by talking about that which was to be eaten.” The more exotic the ingredients, the rarer and more difficult to obtain, the greater the potency, or so was the belief. consider this recipe: Grind the beak of a swallow in newt’s blood mixed with the first blossom of the champa tree plucked on a full spring moon. aphrodisiac potions, foods or charms, including magic mantras, were first sought out in ancient times as a remedy for sexual anxieties and to increase fertility to ensure male and female progeny. But the ability to merely procreate did not always “get the girl”. survival of the fittest ensured that men had to display their strength and ability to attract the female and drive off other wouldbe suitors. The chase acquired urgency with the feminist movement; women began to demand satisfaction of their own sexual desires. “Lie back and think of England” was no longer tolerated as good advice. age-old notions of the “good woman” versus the “vamp” were put to rest. contemporary scientific research recognises that the most effective aphrodisiacs are not the dearly sought-after ones like tiger bones, hippo snout, skunk skin or the blue whale’s penis, but, believe it or not, those found in some of the most common foods nourishing your entire body rather than energising only certain body parts. amino acids, the building blocks of protein, give you a boost of energy. That’s why your trainer may recommend a protein shake before a workout. since sex, too, is a workout requiring great stamina, and milk and almonds are

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Illustration: Boris Séméniako

Passion Fruits A QUICK GUIDE TO APHRODISIAC FOODS AND THEIR STORIES DOWN THE AGES MANGO: According to myth, the flower of the mango tree represents Cupid’s arrow. For Indian men, a woman’s breast is represented by the size and shape of the mango from pre-pubescence to maturity. And Indians have always believed in the aphrodisiacal properties of the mineral- and vitamin-rich fruit. EGG: Long considered the ultimate symbol of fertility, Egyptians believed their gods created the egg out of the sun and the moon. In Central Europe, peasants used to rub eggs on their ploughs hoping for a good crop. In France, brides used to break an egg on their doorstep to boost fertility. The most precious of all eggs, caviar, has the added advantage of high zinc content and amino acid that act as a vascular dilator–essential for increasing blood flow, and thereby, the libido. Dostoyevsky, Madame du Barry, Casanova and Rasputin considered caviar their “drug” of choice. Connoisseurs recommend that the best possible temperature for eating the sturgeon’s eggs is to place it on your lover’s skin! CHILLI PEPPER: It acts as catalysts to release endorphins—natural painkillers that can trigger a floating energised feeling similar to an opiate. They also make the lips swell to a kissable pout (how’s that for organic Botox!) The chilli was used in the fortifying chocolate drink which the great Aztec ruler Montezuma consumed to make his tongue dance and his pulse quicken in preparation for the daily visits to his harem. GINGER: This “universal medicine” in Ayurveda is known to heat things up in more ways than one. Madame du Barry is said to have used it in a custardy concoction that stirred Louis XV to passionate arousal, while Nostradamus made a magic love potion from this passion-stirring aphrodisiac. PEACH: In ancient China, the juicy flesh of a peach was thought to have magical properties and its shape is often compared to a woman’s lush bottom or the seductive plunge of cleavage. OYSTER: It is perhaps the most evocative culinary symbol of passion. Casanova famously boasted of seducing a virgin by slipping a raw oyster in her mouth. Juvenal, the ancient Roman poet, referred to “drunken Venus” as one “who eats giant oysters at night”. More recently, Julian Barnes wrote: “The sixties were an oyster decade! Slippery, luxurious and reportedly aphrodisiac, they slipped down the historical throat without touching the sides.” Oysters are full of zinc, which controls progesterone levels. In fact, all shellfish share some of the libido-enhancing attributes of the oyster due to Aphrodite’s dalliance with them in the sea. NUTS: A variety of nuts have been used in love potions and serums for centuries. To enhance fertility, walnuts were used in ancient Rome, pine nuts in the Mediterranean and cola nuts in Madagascar. Some believe that the fragrance of nuts like almonds is enough to excite women, explaining their extensive use in beauty products. Gingko nuts are a key ingredient in Chinese herbal medicine even today and are also used to stimulate erotic desires. They are powerful antioxidants and an excellent source of nutrition for stimulating blood circulation and invigorating tired bodies.

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powerful sources of protein, in India it is customary to place a glass of milk with crushed almonds on the bedside table of the bridal chamber. Many ancient texts document the prowess of aphrodisiac foods, including Vedic texts and the Bhagavad Gita, Chinese scriptures and the writings of Pliny the Elder and Dioscorides in the first century AD. There was not always an agreement on what foods were aphrodisiacs or anaphrodisiacs (causing a decrease in sexual desire). Our ancestors included anise, basil, carrots, edible bulbs such as those of the gladiolus, orchid, leek and garlic, pistachios, arugula, artichokes, sage, sea fennel, truffles and river snails in their long list of libido-enhancers. They suggested staying clear of dill, watercress, water lily and lentils. One school of thought among the Greeks believed that any food that had the power to create gas in the body must be good for propping up a flagging libido! In the Indian context, dill, commonly called soya, literally means “to sleep”. Etymology reveals the word aphrodisiac has its roots in Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love. No surprise then that other foods reputed to be sexual stimulants were derived from the mythology surrounding the goddess. Since she is supposed to have risen from the sea, many believed all creatures

of the sea have aphrodisiac qualities. Aphrodite regarded sparrows as sacred due to their amorous nature so they were included in many aphrodisiac brews.

Contemporary scientific research recognises that the most effective aphrodisiacs are not the dearly sought-after ones like tiger bones, hippo snout, skunk skin or the blue whale’s penis, but, believe it or not, those found in some of the most common foods nourishing your entire body

Several foods are considered aphrodisiacs because their shapes are sexually evocative. During the Middle Ages, the Law of Similarity held that in God’s universe “like causes like”. Suggestive shapes and textured substances were believed to enhance virility and fertility by virtue of their resemblance to body parts. In the Song of Solomon, comparisons are continually made between fruits, seeds and other foods and the male and female character. Thus, a man’s cheeks are compared to a bed of spices and a women’s breast to a clutch of grapes. There are a host of other suggestive foods of varied physical shapes: artichoke, avocado, carrot, banana, apple, cherries, leeks, dates, figs. In fact, the Aztecs referred to avocado trees as testicle trees, probably because they are packed with folate, which is necessary for healthy sperm. We often express our love or lust by passionately whispering, “I could just eat you!” And men often describe a woman with references to food: her bottoms can be pears or peaches; her breasts lemons, mangoes, coconuts or watermelons, depending on their essays : 43

size. Complexion can be described as dark chocolate, or rich coffee, or milky white, while eyes can be almond shaped. Women usually are not so graphic; one rarely overhears a conversation about a man’s pickle, porcini mushroom or banana! Interestingly, some foods even mirror the body parts they provide nutrients for—a walnut resembles a brain, clams look like testicles and red wine like blood! However, no food, flower or anything else can really be called an aphrodisiac unless it meets certain scientific criteria. And spices are perhaps the most potent and most scientifically researched of them all. They possess special aromas and essential oils that invigorate the senses. The essential oils or terpene alcohol of spices give them their smell, taste and tactile sensation, which in turn stimulates the senses. In ancient civilisations, foods which had seeds or were seeds themselves containing sap (read semen), were considered to keep the stamina going. Cleopatra and her kin understood the aphrodisiac potency of cardamom and other spices, and used them to ensure their men would remain true to them. Even the Kama Sutra and the Arabian magnum opus The Perfumed Garden of Sensual 44 : the indian quarterly : october - december 2013

In ancient civilisations, foods which had seeds or were seeds themselves containing sap (read semen), were considered to keep the stamina going. Cleopatra and her kin understood the aphrodisiac potency of cardamom and other spices, and used them to ensure their men would remain true to them.

Delight attest to the virtues of condiments like nutmeg, cloves, cardamom, ginger and other time-tested combinations of herbs and spices. Most of these were well-guarded secrets passed down from generation to generation, sometimes entrusted solely to the son. Today’s sophisticated advertisements can never hope to achieve the marketing success of word-of-mouth old wives’ tales woven with unauthenticated tales of success. These tales fired up the imagination and the libido and spread the wondrous powers of aphrodisiac foods. And lent some credence to psychological theories that the so-called power of mythical tales feeds into the vulnerability of human beings and often outweighs logic. Humans are bound together by food, love and sex. Food and sex don’t just help us to live and procreate but are a source of great pleasure as well. We cook for our lovers, stirring love and sensuality into the food that we then share, deliciously anticipating the after hours. We also know that certain foods are exciting and can be effective tools of foreplay. Whether scientifically proven or not, these aphrodisiac foods do exert a strong psychological influence. As they say, it’s all in the mind, even sex—especially sex. As for romance, now that comes from the heart. ■

CELERY: For long, nobody believed that a vegetable like celery (nothing exotic about this one) could be an aphrodisiac. Today, we know celery contains androsterone, a hormone found in men that stimulates sexual arousal in women. But whether this metabolic pheromone has any impact on women is still unclear. POMEGRANATE: The Greeks regarded it as the culinary symbol of Aphrodite. In the Qu’ran it is called the fruit of paradise. It is also a great source of Vitamin C and a natural antioxidant that increases blood flow. BANANA: Phallic illusions aside, the banana has much to offer. It’s packed with nutrients essential for sexual hormone production, including a rich source of potassium and vitamin B12. Bananas are a major ingredient in the thali prepared by Hindu priests and devotees as an offering to fertility gods. In Islam, it was the banana, and not the apple, which was believed to be the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. And in Central America, the sap of the red banana tree was drunk as an aphrodisiac elixir. CHOCOLATES: Apart from black beans and avocados, chocolates were among the delicacies banned by the church in the Middle Ages; they were all thought to be threats to chastity. The Aztecs were probably the first to link cocoa beans with sexual appetite. Since chocolates contain a chemical that releases endorphins, as well as caffeine, they are loved by all, though it seems women have a predilection for the sweet stuff. HONEY: Sticky and sweet, Aphrodite’s nectar has long been considered a delicious accompaniment to foreplay. Honey is prescribed in the Kama Sutra to promote sexual vigour. Cleopatra is rumoured to have rubbed herself with a honey-almond mixture that drove Marc Anthony mad. In many cultures, young married couples were encouraged to drink honeyed mead. MANDRAKE ROOT: Biblical heroines, ancient Egyptians and Homeric sorceresses all swore by the root and fruit of the mandrake plant. Not only did it have a herbal potency but visually it resembled a woman’s thigh since its root is split into two. The Old Testament is said to contain multiple references to “love apples”—the fruits of the mandrake—as an aphrodisiac. ABSINTHE: A distilled, high-proof alcoholic spirit, it derives its liqourice flavour from sweet fennel seeds and botanicals. Once the darling of literary circles in 20th-century France, it was thought to be an addictive psychoactive drug and was eventually banned in the United States. CARROTS: Apparently, nibbling on a few carrots, is just the thing you need to prepare for loving action. Carrots, a phallic symbol, were popular in Ancient Greece where they were used to prepare a drink that enhanced sexuality. It may be worth considering the whole salad bar because it was not just vegetables that resemble phalluses that were considered aphrodisiacs. GINSENG: An oft-used aphrodisiac in Asian cultures, American researchers remain sceptical of its powers. Ginseng, meaning “man root,” has been shown to get animals aroused, but there is no evidence of it having any effect on humans. essays : 45

ESSAYS

Kitsch 22 Gaudy exaggeration or glorious celebration? Anubha Kakroo examines the fine line between what’s tacky and what’s not

Image Courtesy: Pyjama Party/Verve

l e a s i n g ly d i sta st e f u l , melodramatic, gaudy, overdone and sentimental . . . In the world of sophisticates these are just some of the words used to describe kitsch. While travelling through Middle India, I came across a lot of “kitsch”: a tattooed arm of a boy declaring his love for his mother and father, a Disney-themed ceiling fan for the little one’s room, wedding décor straight out of a regional movie set and heart-shaped, bright red cushions. All testimony to the emotional, mildly melodramatic Indian, these are expressions of fundamental human sentiments and not mere statements of the quirky. Kitsch also presents itself in fantastic architectural expressions, phantasmic decorations and much else. We call it kitsch because that’s how we have been conditioned to perceive it. But is it kitsch for people who inhabit it? Would anyone do anything that is “distasteful” and then proudly proclaim it? Unlikely, since what may appear as a gaudy exaggeration to one, can be a glorious celebration for the other. For most people, kitschy items are not over-the-top; they are expressions of their feelings. This begs the question: is taste all about subtlety? The notion of the subtle and the sublime as a benchmark is perhaps a construct of the world of high art and aesthetics. It is in this rarefied world that subtlety is valued most. If something has been deemed

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and declared aesthetic by the powers that be, the world at large accepts it to be subtle. Take Damien Hirst’s formaldehyde works. In another setting, without the approval of the pundits, they might have been considered gross, crass and even cruel. So, is it possible that the stamp of “good taste” automatically transfers a notion of nuance, of subtlety? It does seem so. In which case, anything that emerges from the street is unlikely to be subtle, unless it has passed into the craft or folk traditions. Craft and folk productions, in our nostalgic and mildly patronising gaze, are accepted in all their exuberant glory as coming from the people, by the people and for the people.

The Origin of Kitsch So where does kitsch come from? Kitsch, or the notion of it, is derived from the appropriation of popular culture. When viewed through the lens of aesthetic sophistication, popular expression may appear tawdry and crass. However, transplant the same expression into an alternate context and the transformation of the gaze and the consumption is palpably different. The perception and the filter through which we look at an object define the style of that object. This filter, gaze and perception are derived from the context they operate in. Context, then, becomes an overriding factor which dictates how we see things. Marcel Duchamp forced us to relook at the urinal by simply removing it from its native context and placing it in another. The artistic merit was not about the placement of the urinal as an exhibit but the introspection generated by its displacement. Likewise, kitsch is the notion we apply

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Image Courtesy: Atul Dodiya

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