A brief guide to Guide

My Mirror column:

60 years ago, RK Narayan wrote a novel that became a Hindi film classic. But he was not happy. Ahead of his 112th birth anniversary, let’s ask why that might have been.

Most readers of this column have probably seen the 1965 Guide: Dev Anand plays a dapper tour guide who falls for an unhappily married Waheeda Rehman. But this Hindi film classic was based on an even earlier literary classic: RK Narayan’s 1958 novel The Guide.

The film retains most elements of Narayan’s narrative, and yet it is almost unrecognisable. For instance, the Waheeda we first meet in the film is a sad lady in a big car; all we know is that she’s the hero’s love interest. In the book, Rosie has more scope for surprise: because we learn about her slowly, she comes into her own in remarkable ways.

Reading The Guide, one can see why Dev Anand, who set things in motion by reading the book in London, was entranced. Railway Raju, as his character is called in the book, is a disarming layabout who runs a shop at Malgudi Station, but soon finds himself in demand as a tour guide. He falls for Rosie and helps launch her as a dancer before landing in jail, and eventually being anointed a saint.

The novel is already a fifth of the way through when Raju says: “There was a girl who had come all the way from Madras and who asked the moment she set foot in Malgudi, ‘Can you show me a cobra — a king cobra it must be —which can dance to the music of a flute?’” Within four pages, the resourceful Raju fulfils this whimsical farmaaish, and the two are face to face with the snake. “The whole thing repelled me, but it seemed to fascinate the girl...” writes Narayan. “She stretched out her arm slightly and swayed it in imitation of the movement; she swayed her whole body to the rhythm — for just a second, but that was sufficient to tell me what she was, the greatest dancer of the century.”


In Vijay Anand’s Guide, this half-a-page encounter between the cobra and Rosie (for that, of course, is who she is) became the sequence described on YouTube as “Serpent dance by Waheedaji”. Like the men in the scene, two generations of Hindi film viewers have gaped admiringly as Waheeda Rehman turns from primly elegant memsahib into a woman seemingly possessed by the sapera’s flute. Things delicately suggested in the novel — Rosie’s dancing talent, her repressed passion, the snake as sexual symbol — become full-blown in the film. The heroine’s suppressed erotic energy is channelled into the popularly understood naagin theme.

Otherwise, too, the sequence is emblematic of how the English novel was altered to make the popular Hindi film. What in Narayan’s tragicomic description was a forlorn place — bare-bodied children gaping at the arriving car, the poor snake charmer wearing nothing but a turban and “a pair of drawers” — gets amped up into Hindi cinema's familiar ‘tribal’ setting: thatched huts around a convenient circular clearing, with a ghaghra-choli-clad dancer present so that the heroine can join in.



An English version was also made, with the famous novelist Pearl S. Buck collaborating on the script with director Tad Danielewski, and the Indian cast speaking in English. (Buck apparently helped Rehman with her English.) RK Narayan described his brush with cinema in an essay called 'Misguided Guide'. The tone is characteristically mild, but the sarcasm is palpable. Danielewski and his crew requested the writer to show them the locations that had inspired his book. After the tour, however, Narayan was informed that the film was now to be shot a thousand miles away, in Udaipur and Jaipur. He tried to suggest that Malgudi, the imaginary South Indian small town in which he had set all his novels, was nothing like those places. His brother RK Laxman, the cartoonist, tried to suggest that real, filmable monuments on screen would undercut Raju’s character, since his talent was conjuring up historical grandeur out of nothing.



But the filmmakers would have none of this. “We are out to expand the notion of Malgudi,” they told a nonplussed Narayan. “Malgudi will be where we place it, in Kashmir, Rajasthan, Bombay, Delhi, even Ceylon.” In the Hindi film, this national tableaux idea gets underlined when Dev Anand's Raju takes groups across Rajasthan, speaking Punjabi to the Punjabis, Gujarati to the Gujaratis — and of course, farraatedaar English to the British.



The English film version is hard to find. Though screened at Cannes in 2007, I've never seen it, nor met anyone who has. But a contemporary review by New York Times critic Bosley Crowther suggests why it sank in America. “The script is sluggish and uncertain, and Mr. Anand, who seems throughout to be modeling his style of acting on one of the more romantic Hollywood stars, bouncing about in boyish fashion and wearing his hat on the back of his pompadoured hair, is stumped by the staggering requirement of acting the weird, ironic twist,” wrote Crowther. “He leaves us feeling that we, as well as the people of this poverty-stricken area, have been hoaxed.” The externalised quality of Hindi film emotion clearly did not translate for an American audience.



What is remarkable, though, is that the American critic found the film authentic precisely for the “Indian scenes” that Narayan had so cringed at: “a succession of colorful views of sightseeing spots, busy cities, temples, dusty landscapes and crowds”. As Railway Raju says: “One thing I learnt in my career as a tourist guide was that no two persons were interested in the same thing.” Our satisfaction depends, I suppose, on what we most wish to see.

Published in Mumbai Mirror, 7 Oct 2018.

Stars, scandals and fandom

Today's Mirror column:

Reading in English about Hindi movies: a very brief history of the Indian film magazine as we know it.

Writing about films is one thing; writing about film stars is quite another. There are those who do both with aplomb. But in India, most long-running film magazines have been much more interested in the lives of film celebrities than the content of films.

The first Indian magazine completely devoted to cinema coverage was the Gujarati Mauj Majah, first published in 1924. Among English magazines, Baburao Patel's well-regarded monthly FilmIndia, published from 1935 to 1961, was one of the first. (The legendary and indefatigable Patel, who produced the entire content of the magazine himself – later aided and finally replaced by his wife Sushila – is the subject of a new book called The Patels of FilmIndia, which I'm looking forward to reading).

This was followed by the first trade publications, like KayTee Reports and Tradeguide, concerned not with stars but with predicting the commercial success or failure of particular films. In 1951 came Screen, launched by the Indian Express group in a colour broadsheet format. Screen, because it was concerned both with recent events in the industry and with films under production, could “be situated somewhere between the trade and the fan magazines”, writes film scholar Rachel Dwyer.

Close on Screen's heels came Filmfare, launched by the Times of India group in 1952. Filmfarewas glossy and upmarket, but it intended to be a family magazine and a sophisticated one. The first issue contained a manifesto that stated, “This magazine represents the first serious effort in film journalism in India. It is a movie magazine – with a difference. The difference lies in our realisation that the film as a composite art medium calls for serious study and constructive criticism and appreciation from the industry as also from the public.” This noble intention was cemented by the institution of the Filmfare Awards in 1953. Filmfare remained biweekly until 1988, when financial troubles forced it to become a monthly, which it has been since.

But the big moment of change in English-language film journalism in India was the 1970s, when a clutch of new magazines changed both the way we related to the stars and the language in which we were meant to do it. Jerry Pinto summed up the 70s magazine scene in his superb bitchy-funny Introduction to The Greatest Show on Earth, a spectacular anthology of writing on Hindi cinema that he edited in 2011. “Filmfare was the grand old lady, still published in an improbable size that meant you couldn't open it fully in a crowded bus or train. Stardust was the snazzy newcomer with a hint of middle-class contempt for the arrivistes and outsiders that made up the film industry. Cine Blitz came later and launched itself on the unsuspecting public with Protima Bedi – a Bollywood citizen through her open marriage with Kabir Bedi – running nude on a city beach. In between, for a brief while, there was Super, which had an almost indecipherable column, written as a letter, by Bubbles. Since Bubbles assumed we all knew the stars' nicknames, I often read it wondering at what was really happening and who was doing what to whom. When one did know (Daboo was Randhir Kapoor and Kaka was Rajesh Khanna) one felt validated in one's knowledge.”

Stardust, writes Dwyer, was founded in 1971 by Nari Hira of the Magna Publications group “as a marketing opportunity for his advertising business”. It was meant to be something along the lines of the American celebrity gossip mag Photoplay, more salacious than the then-staid Filmfare. Dwyer's 2001 essay contains the following wonderful account: “Twenty-three year old Shobha Rajadhyaksha (later De), who had been working for Hira for eighteen months as a trainee copywriter, was hired as the first editor. She had no interest in the movie world and had never worked as a journalist, but was hired on the strength of an imaginary interview with Shashi Kapoor, whom she had never met.” The imaginary interview was clearly a thing, combining an opportunity for writerly showing-off with a jokey fantasy that indulged the star's fans. Jerry Pinto cites one ridiculously risqué one with Bindu, from the now-defunct Film Mirror, which ends with the “reporter” waking from a dream. But more of that in another column.

To return to Shobhaa De, she apparently produced the first Stardust issue alone (with one paste-up man). She was later joined by a production staff of three and a team of freelance reporters who “collected stories which she wrote up”: a one-woman show not far from Baburao Patel. But De seems to have stayed put in her office, somewhat unusual for a young journalist. In her memoir Selective Memory: Stories from My Life, De's version of it is: “My eyes and ears were so attuned to reportage that I preferred my colleagues' version of their meetings with the stars to personal encounters.” Dwyer puts it somewhat differently. “De stubbornly refused to move in the film world, only meeting the stars if they came into the office,” she writes, making one envisage a scenario that seems nearly unimaginable today, when a respected and senior film journalist told me that even he finds it difficult to get interview appointments with current stars. Most stars, he added, seem in such a huge rush to finish the interview that it can barely become a conversation.

Super, too, was founded by an exceptionally young team that included Bhavana Somaya and Namita Gokhale. Gokhale, then 20, encountered Dev Anand some four decades later at the Jaipur Literature Festival, and was amazed to have him recall the last time they had met. “It was in 1981, I think,” he mused. “You were with your editor Rauf Ahmed – what was the magazine called...?” Whether it was the fact that these young people were just exceptionally memorable, or that stars in those days met less journalists, I don't know.

English has given me some new access but it is Hindi which has got me fame: Geetanjali Shree

An interview published in Scroll.

The Hindi novelist and short-story writer speaks on why being translated is wonderful, but it is not nearly enough.

Geetanjali Shree is the author of four critically acclaimed novels – Mai, Tirohit, Hamara Shahar Us Baras, and Khali Jagah – and six collections of short stories, in Hindi. She has also published an intellectual biography of Premchand, in English. Often described as a lyrical and uninhibited writer, she has received the Krishna Baldev Vaid Sammaan, Hindi Akademi Sahityakar Sammaan, Dwijdev Sammaan and Indu Sharma Katha Sammaan for her contribution to Hindi letters.

Shree’s fiction has travelled far and wide in translation, with versions published in English as well as German, French, Serbian, Czech, Japanese, Bangla, Urdu, Malayalam, Oriya and Gujarati. The Empty Space, Nivedita Menon's English translation of Khali Jagah, which unfolds against the backdrop of a bomb explosion, was longlisted for the 2013 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. In 2002, Nita Kumar's translation of Mai won the Sahitya Akademi award for English translation, and was also shortlisted for the Hutchinson-Crossword Translation Award. Hamara Shahar Us Baras (1998), which traces the slow communalisation of an imaginary city, was staged as a play by the National School of Drama Repertory in 2011-2012. Most recently, Tirohit (2001) has been translated into English by Rahul Soni as The Roof Beneath Their Feet (2013).

The writer speaks on her beginnings as a Hindi writer, the experience of being translated into English and other languages, and how the Hindi literary milieu differs from the Indian English one. Excerpts from an interview:

You've been publishing fiction since the 1980s. When and how did your writing start to be appreciated by Hindi readers?I was lucky to have a good start. The leading Hindi publishing house, Rajkamal, then in the hands of one of the most dynamic entrepreneurial figures, Sheela Sandhu, immediately took to my writing and agreed to publish me. That was straightaway an acknowledgement of the quality of my work. Then the senior writer Rajendra Yadav did something similar – he brought out three of my stories in succession in his very popular journal Hans, as a special introduction to a new writer. These two events were a great launch for me and I got noticed quickly.

How much of that attention, and the actual copies of your books sold, do you think, was a result of book reviews, media coverage and/or literary awards in Hindi?Book reviews, media coverage, awards have an uneven importance. Who has spoken up for you is more determining. And in the final analysis, a wider readership, with or without the above, plays a role.

When were you first translated into English?

My first novel Mai was published in English by the publishing house then called Kali for Women. Nita Kumar, a well-known scholar, cared for the book for its “feminist” potential, apart from other merits, and took the initiative to translate it. Urvashi Butalia approached me just at that time for the possibility to publish my work. The two fitted together quite providentially.

Has the Indian readership for English translations from Indian languages grown larger and more interested in recent years? If so, is it because the quality of translations has improved, or for some other reasons?

I think it comes in a package. Publishing itself has increased in all languages, and book launches, promotions, book-talk have grown phenomenally. So too translations. The attempt is to capture the market as widely as possible. But, no, it hasn't led necessarily to better translations. Sometimes it is only quicker translations! A readership is forming for translations, but it is still haphazard and abysmal compared to English originals.

How was the media reception to the English editions of your books different from that in the Hindi Press? How would you compare the two experiences in terms of the texture and insight of conversations and coverage?
The reception is on different platforms. English took my books to new spaces, including English centres located in other regions and languages. English enjoys a prominence in today’s world which comes across as greater visibility and coverage. I was a little seduced by that initially.

But – and I want to underscore this – while English gave me some access to an English market and readership, mostly within the country, the lag between the interest in English in translation and English in original showed up clearly as I went along. And my Hindi books have sold better than English translations, for sure!

This has nothing to do with the worth of a book, but more to do with the atmosphere available for its reception. There are attempts to create this, but a large part of the hegemonic and powerful world continues to be Anglophile!

Each language has its own world and centre, some better than others, Hindi being one of them. And while everyone has begun to care for being translated in the more “powerful” languages far and near, it is from within their own world teeming with activity and exchange. Not, I wish to make plain, a case of sitting in neglected corners and looking hankeringly at the world (English!) out there!

How would you evaluate the Hindi literary sphere, in contrast to the Indian English one?
English has come in later – new confidence, new ways of the market, and has moved into it aggressively and efficiently. The Hindi literary universe is older. But there are Hindi events and there are enough Hindi speakers too, even if they sometimes lack some of the glamour and glitter of the English world.

Would you agree that it was the translation of Mai into English that brought you nation-wide fame? What is your take on that experience?
English has given me some new access but so far it is Hindi which has got me fame. A notable contrast was the interest other languages across the world, such as German, French, Russian, Korean, Italian, Polish etc. have shown in my work. And mind you – again I wish to underscore this – they have reached me through Hindi, not English! I have been taught in some of these languages and translated too, in and from the Hindi, not English. My writing continues to be routed through Hindi.

Were there miscommunications, misreadings when people read your work but didn't understand the context in which it was written?
Different contexts? Yes and no. We belong to the same opened-up world and many of us are evolving our languages, whether Hindi or another, in this new context. It is not like one language belongs to an archaic world and another to a current one!

Would you say that being translated into English led your work to be seen as part of a national conversation in a way that it wasn't before? Also, has the English version of your book brought you interesting and different reactions than the responses you have received from the Hindi-reading world?
Becoming accessible in any language brings another world to one, but why talk as though that happens only through English?! We are a polyphonic country and world and conversations keep flowing in a very creative “cacophony”!

Is being translated into English different in impact from being translated into any other language? What have been the pros and cons of being translated into English for you?
English can give one entry into many more markets because of its spread in the world. But these things don't happen automatically. It is wrong to presume that a good book comes and is straightaway seen. There were good English writers before Rushdie and those who followed, but they never got the stage these later writers got.
Some combination of factors which “prepares” the market for the new “cuisine”, as it were, is the condition for its success. It is great to be available in other languages, including English. But the showcasing has to be worked on for its real success. That has to be done by publishers, readers/reviewers, writers, sellers, et al.

As someone who writes in Hindi, and has also been translated into English, what is your response to the recent comments of Bhalchandra Nemade on Indian writing in English, and the use of English in general in India?
It is as stupid and “illiterate” as the one made by Salman Rushdie years ago! (Interviewer: “The true Indian literature of the first postcolonial half century has been made in the language the British left behind,” Rushdie wrote infamously in 1997.) What also tells a tale, though, is the furore Nemade's rubbish created and not Rushdie’s. Think of the “prejudice-rubbish” too that many of us thereby reveal.

Interview: Shamsur Rahman Faruqi

"Urdu was a neglected language, damned as 'foreign' or 'Pakistani'": The renowned writer SR Faruqi speaks about fiction, criticism, translation and the litfest craze, in an interview published in Scroll.

Shamsur Rahman Faruqi is among modern Urdu's most renowned voices, both as a critic and as a fiction writer. His critical ouevre includes a pathbreaking four-volume study of the poet Mir Taqi Mir, and another influential four-volume work on Urdu's rambunctious romance epic, the Dastan-e-Amir Hamza. His fiction is also highly acclaimed, and he is somewhat unique in having been his own translator into English. He speaks on how he began writing, moving from fiction to criticism, translating from Urdu to English, and his experience of the Urdu and English literary spheres.

Could you tell me a bit about when and how your fiction first began to be published? Was it in literary journals, or newspapers/magazines, or was it directly in book-form? 

I am known generally as a critic, but I began as a fiction writer in Urdu. I wrote stories from a very early age and got some of them published in Urdu literary magazines. (More rejections, as I remember, than acceptances.) I wrote a short novel when I was about 15 or a bit more. The year must have been 1950, or early 1951. I was lucky to get it published in a four instalments in a literary magazine published from Meerut (Merath). 

I saved neither the manuscript (I wrote it twice), nor the issues in which it was published. I am not sorry that I didn't preserve anything, because I am quite ashamed of it now. I was young and I believed that I was older than my years, and full of confidence that I knew about most things in the world.

I don't think I had any ambitions to write in English. Getting my work printed in minor Urdu magazines was as much as I could manage at that time.

There is a strong tradition of literary discussion in Urdu. Would you say that book reviews, media coverage and/or literary awards in Urdu helped you gain readers? 

Yes, Urdu literary culture is perhaps the most self-aware among the literary cultures that I am acquainted with. But I am not sure that reviews, favourable or unfavourable, help gain readers in my literary culture. Those who want to read will read. An adverse review could damage a book of poems – though even that is doubtful – but there as many kinds of fiction as there are kinds of readers, almost. So whatever you write can get published, given a degree of luck.

Popular publishing (there was, and is some money in it), or what is now called 'pulp fiction' needs no publicity, no reviews. 'Literary' fiction in Urdu was almost always backed some established parameters – fiction about women, about the life and problems and struggles of rural folk, about the urban blue collar type, so on. When I began writing, the parameters most solidly established were those set up by the Progressive Movement. I somehow fought shy of becoming one of them.

In mid-twentieth century, when I was trying to become a writer, there were no awards, no prizes, no media coverage for Urdu. The Progressives got some media coverage in some of the liberal left wing popular magazines like the weekly Urdu Blitz. That was all.

Urdu at that time was a neglected language, a language damned as 'foreign' or 'Pakistani'. The cultural supremacy that it enjoyed over most of northern India at the time of independence dissolved and disappeared very quickly.

Why  – and when – did you decide to start translating your own work from Urdu to English? 

As I said a minute ago, I had no intention, no hope, no ambition to set up as a writer in any language other than Urdu. Indian writing in English was confined to a few 'privileged' writers, long established and unchallenged. Even G.V. Desani's remarkable novel All About H. Hatterr (1948) attracted no attention in India. Ahmed Ali's Twilight in Delhi (1940) had attracted attention in Progressive circles because Ahmed Ali at that time was a leading light of the Progressive movement. Setting up as a writer in a 'backward' and maligned language like Urdu was itself a big challenge in the 1950's and early 1960's. And I certainly didn't imagine that my writing in Urdu was rich or strong enough to merit being translated in English, or any modern Indian language. In fact, those things were so far and so much below (or above) my horizon that they didn't cause me any concern at all.

I wasn't really interested in translating my fiction into English. Penguin had a plan to get it translated into English and all the major modern Indian languages. A fairly competent translator was found for Hindi but no translator could be found for English. My daughters, who are the most faithful of my followers, were sure that I was the best person to do the translation. They kept after me and I decided to make the translation just to get them off my shoulders. After the novel, it was quite obvious to everyone, including me, that the stories deserve me as their translator.

But you had translated your work into English before this?

About the same time that I wrote my novella, say in early 1951, I wrote a short story. It was about the oppression suffered by innocent, harmless people in the Soviet regime. One of my teachers, who read the manuscript, said: 'This reads like a story written by some major writer!' Foolishly, instead of thanking him, I replied sheepishly that indeed I was the author. I don't remember if I published the story somewhere, but I saved a copy, and in 1953-1954, when I was reading English for my M.A. from the University of Allahabad, I translated the story into English and submitted it to the Professor in charge of the University magazine. Somewhat to my surprise, he accepted the story and printed it in the magazine for 1953-54.

I didn't save the Urdu, nor did I save the English version, far less keep a copy of the Magazine. I regarded the whole matter as just one of those things. I had no intention to set up as a writer in English, either through translations of my own stories, or writing directly into English.

The Urdu title of the story was Surkh Andhi. I translated it as 'The Scarlet Tempest.' My Professor made no change in the title, but I later realized that Shakespeare (perhaps in Richard II) had 'crimson tempest' and I was a fool not to have thought of it myself, or borrowed it from Shakespeare. Well, that was the end of my foray into translating my own work (or even writing stories) for I soon found that I could do better service to Urdu as a critic.  

Do you think the interest and readership for English translations of Indian literature has increased in the last five years, and if so, why do you think it is happening?

Certainly, the readership has grown manifold over the last decade or so. The sub-continent is now a major market for literature in English, translated from the Indian languages or composed directly in English. The main reason for this is the unprecedented and extraordinary prestige – almost universal – of the sub-continental writing in English. The other reason is the growth of Indians who are only fluent in English. The third reason, I think, is the increased awareness among us of the literature being written in modern Indian languages. Some of the interest trickles down to pre-modern literatures too.

How was the reception to the English edition of your books different from the response your fiction has received in the Urdu press?  

The reception in all the languages – Urdu, Hindi, English, was warmer than I should have expected. In Urdu, there were only three unfavourable reviews, two of them on 'moral' grounds, that the novel projects a 'prostitute' as the central character. In English and Hindi, the reviews and opinions can be described as fulsome. the media coverage in English was rather more extensive than in Urduor Hindi, for obvious reasons. And the Urdu circles were already aware of my stories, so the novel came more as natural sequel than as a discovery. In English and Hindi the sense of wonderment was greater.

How would you compare Urdu literary award functions – and litfests, if they exist – to the ones that you have attended where the audience is largely English-speaking? 

The Urdu award or book launch functions are always formal and small, and the audience is kind of pro-forma. Litfests are something else again. The atmosphere is cordial and the audience well informed when the festival is held in an Urdu speaking or Urdu knowing location, like Karachi or Chandigarh. But festivals like Jaipur have deteriorated into politics, showbiz, celebrity-catching, so forth. And they're too big to be enjoyed really. I was fortunate in Jaipur merely because the people who came to hear me were generally aware of the novel, and some of them knew it in Urdu as well.

As an acclaimed writer in your own language and literary universe, can you comment on what it was like to be treated as a new 'discovery' at the national level, when The Mirror of Beauty came out in English? 

I don't know if my appearance in English should be described as a 'discovery at the national level.' In any case, I was and am quite happy to be known as an Urdu writer and India is too big a country for me to have illusions about a 'national' status. I was not unknown in non-Urdu circles, especially English and Hindi. Now the opening in English fiction has given me another space. But nothing more.

Your writing was now routed via English: did that feel strange in any way? Were there misreadings when people read your work, but lacked contextual understanding? Did English readers offer any new perspectives, from which new insights emerged?

I am not sure that there were miscommunications, or that the English window on my work felt strange or outlandish. I have spent a very great part of my life reading English, so the language is not really alien to me.And having written criticism in English (or translated my work from the Urdu into English), I felt quite comfortable. I have translated a good bit of my poetry in English too and have been fortunate in having good translations of my poetry made by really competent native speakers of English too. And since I was the author and also the translator, I had no qualms about sacrificing or trading off. 

In effect, I wrote the novel and the stories as original English works and many readers told me that as they read the novel they felt that they were reading an Urdu work, and still, the English didn't sound alien. I don't know if this could have happened if someone else translated my fiction into English. As for new insights, I feel the English readers found the world of my fiction so fascinating, the characters so compelling that they didn't need to find new perspectives. I think it became more a matter of identifying with the new, almost alien world depicted there.  

Would you say that English translations of your work have made it part of a 'national' conversation in a way that was not true earlier?

That's something that I can't really comment upon. It's possible that the novelty of the fiction and also its familiarity at some subliminal level enabled it to be welcomed. But 'national conversation' is something that I can't even aspire to.

What, for you, have been the pros and cons of being translated into English? 

I think the availability of a text in another language is something that should be always desirable.

What are your thoughts on Marathi writer Bhalchandra Nemade's recent comments, dismissing Indian writing in English? Nemade has been quoted as saying “Don’t make English compulsory, make its elimination compulsory”. What do you think the role of English ought to be in our literary lives, more generally? 

I haven't given much thought to Bhalchandra's observations. I personally would be happier if we wrote in our own languages. But the social and cultural situation in our country is such that Indian writing in English seems to have become part of our literary scene and is well set to remain so for quite some time.

I respect Bhalchandra Nemade, and can see his point. I would be happier to see English playing a smaller, not larger role in the Indian literary culture. But literature is produced by human beings and human beings can't but be part of a social culture. And the social culture at present seems too favourable to English.

Post Facto -- Unforeseen effects: Why I love film festivals

My Sunday Guardian column (written after IFFI 2014):

Queuers, conferrers and posers: Outside the INOX complex, at the 2014 IFFI in Goa.

It's hard to describe the lure of a film festival to people who've never done one. And yes, it is something you do. Like a drug. I'd never quite thought about it before I started to write this column, but clearly my subconscious has known all along — I often call myself a film festival junkie.

A film festival isn't somewhere you show up for an evening because you're bored, or something to which you make an obligatory social visit, politely applauding the efforts of the organisers. No, you plan for it in advance, having taken leave from work and from all social responsibility. Sure, you meet people, but the bright light of day soon begins to feel like something to scurry away from. It's in the velvety darkness, as the screen flickers to life, that you do, too. And as you go from one darkened theatre to another, cinema seeps into your veins.

In close to two decades of film-festivalling, I've often been asked how I can possibly absorb five films a day, or even four. Don't they start to bleed into each other? Don't I zone out by the third film, or fall asleep in the fourth? Doesn't every [worthwhile] film I watch make me want to pause for the day and analyse it, instead of rushing to grab a quick lunch and hurtling into the next film? In short, these people want to know, isn't the film festival the very antithesis of the ideal film-watching experience?

The answer to most of these questions is yes, of course, sometimes. Sometimes I zone out, sometimes I decide a particular film is the one to take a nap in, sometimes all I remember from a hectic festival day is a single climactic scene. But the films you remember are ones that have managed to stand out in a sea of images. And anyway, does the leisurely, sit-down, one-film-at-a-time mode really give a film its due? Of course films need free time — but doesn't the multiplex visit, with its absurdly powerful popcorn-and-soda ritual, muffle every film we watch with the unvoiced expectation of sameness? The film festival might seem frenzied, but it rescues film from the domesticated tedium of packaged leisure — by turning it into something a little like work.

And by juxtaposing all kinds of narratives, from all kinds of places, it reinstates some of the unruliness and unpredictability of cinema. Where else but at an international film festival could I go from watching a Russian postman on his rounds of a sleepy lake-edge settlement (The Postman's White Nights), to experiencing the joys and sorrows of a group of sightless Chinese masseurs (Blind Massage), and then on to Iran in the 1990s, waiting endlessly with a mother whose son never came back from the Iran-Iraq War (Track 143)?

Of course, I understand that there is such a thing as a festival film. Capitalism being the sophisticated thing it is, it has built the so-called "niche" into the market. If you've ever looked up films on the internet to decide what you're watching at a festival, you've read those Variety and Hollywood Reporter reviews with their pithy summing up of the film's chances. Here's one such evaluation of a Greek film I fell in love with at this year's IFFI: "It should appeal to festivals and distributors with a mainstream or more female-oriented sensibility as well as broadcasters of classy European fare." 

This film, called Mikra Anglia (Little England), is an atmospheric period piece set in (and shot on) the craggy island of Andros. The plot centres on two sisters who fall in love — unwittingly — with the same man. But this is no generic love triangle: after a point, we barely see the man. And then he dies (somewhere off-screen), and it is his death that tears the sisters' lives asunder. If this is a women's picture, it is so in the most gloriously literal way: Andros in the 1930s and '40s is almost entirely female, because most men are sailors, out at sea, sometimes at war, while the women hold the fort at home — often for most of their lives.

A festival can paint a portrait of a country you've never been to. The other Greek film I saw this year, for instance, would seem to have nothing at all in common with Mikra Anglia. Set in present-day Athens, Xenia is about two brothers who dream of winning a national musical talent search. The film uses their marginal status — poor, orphaned, half-Albanian, one of them queer — to highlight the fascist, racist intolerance of contemporary Greece: in one early scene, we hear street thugs harassing some unseen people with the line: "This is not your Bollywood".

But placing Xenia next to Mikra Anglia, one sees a country that remains recognizable in many ways — a place where family still counts for a great deal, where high drama is normal. Watching random films back-to-back can make you see patterns — a Chinese murder mystery and a Turkish romantic thriller emerge as unlikely partners in neo-noir; you begin to notice how often filmmakers in cold countries use snow and ice to create a sense of emotional desolation.

In a world of torrents downloadable at will, the film festival is no longer about enabling access. Choices, in fact, are limited by the programming. But what you end up watching at a festival can create unintended, powerful effects. It's as close as one can get to fate.

Published in the Sunday Guardian, 7th Dec 2014.

Post Facto - Chandigarh Diary: notes from the fringes of a litfest

The Rock Garden in Chandigarh My Sunday Guardian column today:  I have just returned from my second visit to Chandigarh. The Chandigarh Literature Festival (CLF), organised by the Adab Foundation, has a unique format which places critics — and books — ahead of authors' and publishers' pitches. Each critic is invited to nominate, in advance, a book they think should be more widely read. At the fest, she or he introduces the book and conducts a conversation about it with the author. As a critic, it's a real pleasure to choose a book I think is worth discussing, rather than having to be part of a "panel" of someone else's design. If you want to spend a relaxed weekend hearing books being discussed, without any queues, I recommend a trip to Chandigarh this time next year. Last year, I was too caught up with the festival to see anything of the city, except to note that it was cleaner and greener — and emptier — than any Indian urban space I've seen. This year, my hotel was further out: a rather lonely bit of Panchkula opulence, ringed by fields and the dusty outcrop of the Morni Hills. (A taxi driver told one co-delegate that it was owned by the outgoing CM, though I have no evidence for whether this is true.) I'm quite unused to spending all my time in a new place holed up in some building. And hanging out only with other non-locals always seems a bit of a cop-out. So I was thrilled that on the last day, the festival organisers offered us a spot of sightseeing. Escorted by three schoolteachers — among the CLF's shiny, happy volunteers — we went first to Sukhna Lake. It was a Sunday morning, and families were out in full strength. As were the geese. A whole gaggle of geese waddled up the ghat-like steps, honking loudly, and surrounded a father and son offering bits of roti. As soon as we climbed back up to the promenade, I saw a sign: "Do not feed migratory birds." I don't know if the geese were migratory or local, but I did see some brown-headed ducks keeping a dignified distance from the handouts. The obligatory visit to the Rock Garden followed. We lined up behind a huge crowd of visitors: two school groups, plus a set of tourists from Maharashtra in royal blue caps. Expecting a vast expanse of parkland, I was surprised by the tightly-wound paths, often with high walls on either side. The average walker can squeeze through the narrow entrances if she stops and stoops — but only just. The crowd made it hard to get a sense of the space. But it revealed its contours in other ways: the ebb and flow of people forming little eddies and occasional blockages. As each passage opened out into a courtyard, pavilions, bridges, flowing water and, slowly, vast armies of figures began to appear — human, animal, bird. The garden has an incredible history. In the early 1950s, a Roads Inspector for the Public Works Division started gathering debris from the villages that were being demolished to create Le Corbusier's planned city. Working alone, he transported these materials — cement, sand, iron slag and other waste, like broken crockery, ceramic tiles, and glass bangles — to a gorge within what was then a forest buffer zone, and began creating his strange secret wonderland. It took 18 years for Nek Chand's illegal creation to come to the notice of the city authorities. Officials considered demolishing the complex, but the garden soon gathered popular support and was opened to the public in 1976. The bureaucratic establishment even named Nek Chand "Sub-divisional Engineer, Rock Garden", giving him a team of 50 labourers to help finish the garden. In a city that is the poster-child of high modernist planning, Nek Chand’s vision feels like a necessary corrective. A maze-like space in a city of straight lines, it is a marvellously surreal response to the symmetry imposed upon the city by Le Corbusier.  It didn't last. In 1990, a plan to bulldoze a VIP road through the garden was thwarted only by public demonstrations. Funding began to dry up, and in 1996, when Nek Chand was away on a tour of the U.S., the city withdrew its staff, resulting in acts of vandalism. Since then, the garden has been run by the Nek Chand Foundation, receiving some 5,000 visitors a day. In a city that is the poster-child of high modernist planning, Nek Chand's vision feels like a necessary corrective. A maze-like space in a city of straight lines, it is a marvellously surreal response to the symmetry imposed upon the city by Le Corbusier. And the sculptures made from construction waste offer an eloquent comment on the process of creation — how the new demands the destruction of the old, and yet how the old can find unexpected new form. The litfest had opened with a discussion of "30 years of Operation Blue Star", the only session filled with non-literary speakers: editors, journalists and bureaucrats. Several retired local bureaucrats grabbed the mike, angrily providing alternative versions of events. I was glad the litfest hadn't shied away from an important political commemoration, but it did seem clear that that the conversation had barely begun. On my last day, I met a respected Chandigarh historian who said he had considered attending the festival, but hadn't for two reasons. One, he felt, it ought to be in the university or the museum, not in the Chandigarh Club, "where people only go to drink and play cards". And two, why was a litfest discussing Operation Blue Star? Clearly the new must try harder to work with the old. The city needs to channel the spirit of Nek Chand. Published in the Sunday Guardian.