Conversation In A Dead Language: Interview with Lee Siegel

This one appeared first on Rediff.com. Haven’t changed a word. Suggest you don’t either. :~)

It’s good for your cholestrol – but bad for you.

AN INTERVIEW WITH LEE SIEGEL

An American by birth and nationality, Lee Siegel is no foreigner to India in the literary sense.

He’s a trained magician and professor of Indian religions at the University of Chicago. Formerly, he was with the University of Hawaii, where he penned Net of Magic: Wonder and Deceptions in India and City of Dreadful Night: A Tale of Horror and the Macabre in India.

In his latest novel, Love in a Dead Language, Siegel returns once more to his favourite culture, with a marvellously entertaining romp through Indian sexuality, heritage and academia.

A charming and darkly humorous “character” himself, Professor Siegel is blessed with that great literary trait–to be able to absorb and retain more from a single visit than most people acquire in a lifetime of living. Professor Siegel spoke exclusively to Rediff.com in this interview with Ashok Banker.

Q1. You seem to have made a career out of writing books about India. You’re also a Professor of Indian religions. How and when did this fascination with India originate?
When I was in the third grade–each kid in the class had to do a notebook on a country and I was assigned India (even though I wanted Israel for no other reason than I had heard of it). I cut pictures out of magazines and books (really amazing, evocative pictures of just what you’d expect: snake charmers, the Taj Mahal, maharajas, Gandhi, nautch girls, lepers, sadhus, and the usual gang) and, of course, I plagiarized snippets of information like “More people die of snake bite in India than anywhere else in the world,” and “people in India worship the cow.” I love stuff like that. While doing “research” for that school project, I remember reading in the World Book Encyclopedia about child marriage in India and thinking: “Gee, if I was an Indian I wouldn’t have any homework or even have to school–I’d be married.”
All my books have been attempts to rewrite that third-grade project, that
lost notebook.

Q2. And the inspiration for Love in a Dead Language?
I teach at the University of Hawaii where one day I was sitting, having a beer, with a very serious male graduate student, discussing his dissertation topic (nothing to do with snake charmers, nautch girls, or child marriage) when a very beautiful girl, obviously Indian, passed and said hello to him. When I asked him about her, he shrugged: “oh, she’s just some hippie chick. Her parents moved here from India when she was a kid. She doesn’t know anything about India. She’s not interested either.” That planted the seed for the plot. I’ve never spoken to the girl.

Q3. The novel is a grab-bag of virtually every kind of literary technique under the sun: Letters, diaries, quotations from real books and nonexistent ones, translations, footnotes, illustrations, caricatures, scrolls…. Why did you choose this approach over a straight linear narrative?
Well, the book is, I hope, about many different ways of trying to describe love, about the way words fail, (although often attaining something in that failure). So the form provided a context for a wide range of voices engaged in that endeavor.

Q4. You’re careful to mention at one point that despite the title, Sanskrit is not really a dead language. But to us in India, sadly, it’s just that. It often seems as if only Western scholars and academicians have any interest in studying this rich motherlode of our culture. For instance, most of the major translations of ancient Indian epics, including The Mahabharat are being conducted in US universities or countries like Germany and Sweden. Why do Westerners have such an enduring interest in our culture?
I can only speak for myself. When I decided that I needed to go to graduate school (to avoid being drafted and being sent to Vietnam) I knew I wanted to study an ancient culture, a great civilization, one that had survived: you couldn’t go to China; there was no longer the Greece, Egypt, or Rome of antiquity. But my impression was that you could still see ancient India today, that wonderful traditions persisted. And I was right–I ended up studying with a pandit in Puri whose methods were thousands of years old. This is, of course, very charming for a foreigner, but I can very well understand why a young person in India would not be interested, or might even feel such persistent institutions were preventing economic development. I’m sure that, on my way to India, I must have sat in airport transit lounges next to Indians on their way to study engineering or physics in America.

Q5. Do you see a great increase in popular interest in things Indian in the USA recently? Perhaps in the wake of the popularity of authors like Arundhati Roy, Vikram Seth and others–including yourself of course!
Like everything else, cultures come in and go out of fashion. India was very groovy in the Beatles period. Now, I’m not sure. I don’t want to have to look at people in bell-bottom pants again, but I’d love to believe that Americans are interested, culturally and politically, and in other ways as well, in India. There are so many truly great Indians writing in English and it’s very exciting to me that U.S. publishers have not been afraid to make their work available. The enthusiastic response of readers to that availability has been spectacular enough to encourage more Indian writers, a new generation of gifted authors. This has nothing to do with me as a writer, but a great deal to do with me as a reader. I’m a big fan of Roy, Seth, Rushdie, Mistry, Ghosh, Tharoor, and the list goes on. G.V. Desani,
R.K. Narayan, and Valmiki would be on my list of favorite authors of all time.

Q6. The biography for the dust jacket of her book that “Tajma Hall” provides to Professor Roth in the novel reads remarkably like the BSP (Blatant Self Promotion) that’s motivating so many socialites and celebrities here to turn authors. Have you had a chance to swim in the shark-infested waters of urban Indian high society?
No. My friends in India are street performers who live in the Shadipur Depot, an amazing Delhi slum. That’s a snooty answer. I love shark-infested waters. I’ve just never been invited to jump in for the swim.

Q7. Your novels suggest that you’ve met a fair number of interesting characters in India–you seem to know some of the familiar ‘types’ here. Could you share with us some of your encounters with Indian characters–famous or otherwise?
The only famous person whom I know in India is Khushwant Singh–he’s one of my great heroes, a man that I am so utterly charmed by that I always telephone him as soon as I arrive in Delhi in hopes of drinking some of his scotch right away. I’d like to meet Phoolan Devi and Miss Universe (especially at the same party and I hope Khushwant’s invited too). I’ve written about most of the other characters who have enchanted me.

Q8. What’s the worst thing that ever happened to you in India? And the best?
The great thing about writing about India is that when something really
terrible happens I can say to myself “this is going to make a great story.” And so the worst things that have happened have also been the best.

Q9. How similar is Professor Lee Siegel to Professor Leopold Roth? Are there any Lalita Guptas in your life? Or any Anang Saighals?
Professor Roth was a jerk. That’s why I killed him. No, no Lalita Guptas or Anang Saighals, thank god.

Q10. I believe you’re also a professional magician? Tell us something about how that came about.
No, I’m not a professional magician, that being someone who gets paid to entertain in Las Vegas or at children’s birthday parties. But I wanted to do a book on Indian magicians and so, in hopes of being able to meet them, I learned magic. I didn’t want to introduce myself at a Professor but as an American magician. The result was my book, NET OF MAGIC. Traveling and performing with the jadugars of Shadipur was truly one of the most wonderful experiences in my life and I remain friends with them. I recently went to India with Penn and Teller to make a television film on Indian magic. It will air this fall.

Q11. Has magic influenced your work as a writer? There’s clearly a lot of sleight-of-hand in your books! And in Love in a Dead Language, there’s almost a sense of a Houdini-like attempt to create a spectacular, epic theatre of ideas.
Oh, yes, for me writing is fundamentally prestidigitorial. My involvement in magic taught me that everybody needs, craves, loves to be deceived. I know I do. Good magicians and good writers give us the pleasure of seeing the reality of illusions (or is it the other way around?)

Q12. Let’s talk about films. The novel mentions a great many old Hollywood films, some real some perhaps imaginary. Even in your previous novel City of Dreadful Night, the influence of cinema seems pervasive. Does cinema influence you a lot? In what way?
I loved movies as a kid. I remember the scene in AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS when Cantinflas and David Niven saved the Indian girl from being burned on her husband’s funeral pyre. It was utterly thrilling and the sowing of yet another seed of Indological fascination. My parents were in the movie business and so I was explosed to it throughout my childhood. I don’t go to movies anymore because I can’t smoke, drink, or talk in the theater. But I rent videos. Usually old ones. Yes, usually the pleasure is a regressive one.

Q13. In a related sense, you’re able to use tropisms of various fiction genres–mystery, suspense, horror, even porn–while not succumbing to the cliches. That suggests you read a lot of popular fiction. Do you? If so, what are your favourites and why?
No, I don’t read that much popular fiction, although sometimes I think I ought to. When I was writing CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT, I tried to read popular horror books but without much gratification. It’s a genre for teenage boys. My interest in romance and (to a slight degree) porn as genres, when I was working on LOVE IN A DEAD LANGUAGE was, again, an interest in the sundry conventions of writing about love. Bad writing can be very interesting, more revealing about certain things than great writing. Great writing defies us.

Q14. Do you think there’s truly a dichotomy between popular genre fiction and ‘literature’ in modern fiction? Or are some critics right in asserting that some popular authors like Stephen King and Anne Rice (just two examples) paint valuable portraits of the consumer and media culture of our times?
Sure. I have great respect for anyone who writes a book that ten or more people actually buy and read. Stephen King is a great storyteller. So is Anne Rice. And yes, their popularity reveals a lot about us. But I don’t read authors like that these days. Right now, I don’t want to know too much about us. I’m reading the Mahabharata.

Q15. Coming back to films. Have you seen many Indian films? Hindi films? Any favourites? Could you share with us your favourite scenes, stars, movies, etc?
I loved BANDIT QUEEN and the old black and white NAGIN–truly a sexy movie. When I’m in India I love watching the music channel playing the song and dance clips from Hindi movies. But, as I mentioned, I don’t like going to movie theaters. The Bollywood women are amazingly beautiful and thrilling in the way Hollywood movie stars used to be. I like the hype around them, the mystique, the glamour that’s exuded like honey–so sticky, sweet and irresistible.

Q16. Several new Indian books deal with Indian sexuality–Sex, Lies and AIDS by Siddharth Dube, Bitter Chocolate by Pinki Virani, An Obedient Father by Akhil Sharma, and your own. It’s interesting to note that most of these books-not your’s–deal with deviant forms of sexuality such as incest, rape, sexual abuse. Do you feel that the India of the Kamasutra has lost its way somehow? That the healthy robust sexual openness of those times have given way to a guilt-afflicted, shame-bowed social outlook on the subject?
The issue is not the sex, but the “openness”–and I’m not sure if openness is such a great virtue. Maybe it is. I truly don’t know. For some years sexual pleasure in India has been private, not flaunted as it is, say, in America. Just as defecating has perhaps been more public in India and less proudly flaunted in America. But people everywhere are doing these things, and enjoying these activities, in exactly the same way. The differences are merely in how much we talk about what we do. I see big changes in India–young people going to clubs, bars, holding hands, going public. The signs of sexual openness can be seen in the Indian press, on TV, in movies. Are congratulations or condolences in order? I don’t know.

Q17. Why do foreign films, books, reports tend to either glamorize India–elephants and maharajahs, Kamasutra and yogis–or relegate it to the cliches of ‘turd-world’ backwater? How do you think those authors, film makers, reporters escape these extreme points of view and zoom in on the real India as, for instance, you’ve managed to do so successfully? Or do you think it’s impossible to deal with the teeming morass of contradictions that’s contemporary India?
Indian films, books and reports tend to either glamorize the west or relegate it to the cliches of materialistic inhumanity. Is there a “real India?” If so, I’d love to see it. I’m flattered that you feel I’ve been successful, but perhaps that’s the impression only because I’ve used all the cliches as cliches, without attempting to claim that they have any reality to them.

Q18. A related question: There’s a great deal of sensitivity about religion and culture in India right now. Especially among the so-called ‘rightwing fundamentalist Hindu’ factions. Do you think Indians are in danger of being mocked, satirized or even insulted by comic references to their Gods, icons or culture? Wouldn’t books such as your’s, for instance, capture the spirit of self-deprecating humour that’s so much a part of the Indian storytelling tradition from ancient times.
I hear this and indeed, the Indian edition of LOVE IN A DEAD LANGUAGE (published by HarperCollins), has been modified: the chapter called “Fucking” for example was changed to “Sexual Union” in fear of the actual power of that puritanical “right wing fundamentalist Hindu faction.” The good news for Indian writers is that right-wing fundamentalists cause real satire to flourish. Nothing is funnier than people without a sense of humor.

Q19. What’s next on the anvil for you? Another novel about India? A non-fiction book? How’s it going?
I’m just finishing another novel and about a third of it takes place in India (in Calcutta in the 1920′s). I’m having fun with it. Speaking of which, I’d better get back to work on it now.

Q20. Anything else you’d like to add–about almost anything? Please, entertain us!
Yes, it’s very important for me to say that there has been enormous gratification for me, these many years after writing my third-grade notebook, in the positive response that I’ve had among Indian readers of LOVE IN A DEAD LANGUAGE. I was fearful that it might be offensive. But, on the contrary, the response has been grandly good humored and generously generous. I’m grateful for that.

Thank you for speaking to Rediff.com, Professor Roth, excuse me, Professor Siegel! Best wishes with Love in a Dead Language. We look forward to your next book.

May 30, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

When Paper-Nazis attack: The Media and Selective Celeb-Bashing

This is a reprint of one of my old columns, specifically one of my BRAND BAAJA columns from an advertising-marketing publication called The Brief.

And especially appropriate on the eve of the launch of The Mirror Cracked, the latest paper-nazi newsletter from the TOI-TOI-fish group.

BRAND BAAJA
Ashok Banker

The Fourth Estate’s Eleventh Commandment

Okay. So we all know that Jeffrey Archer has been a bad, bad boy. He’s been caught with his pants down and his hands in the till. And that’s a very difficult position to explain away! But this didn’t happen just yesterday, as most newspaper reports would have you believe. Not even five years ago. Or ten.

Jeffrey Archer’s shenanigans have been going on for a long time. Over twenty years to my knowledge. And I’m no expert on the man. Other, better-informed people could probably trace it back to his childhood–or even his past lives, as is fashionable today.

In fact, his first bestselling novel, Not A Penny Less, Not A Penny More, as you may recall, was based on his own bitter experiences with the stock market. In the novel, the over-eager investors pin the blame on a rich market manipulator and hatch a plot to ‘earn’ their money back from him. It’s a ploy that today’s weeping UTI investors must be wishing they could pull off in real life.

Archer wrote the novel with the sole purpose of earning a large enough advance to pay back his crushing debts. Using influence, savvy and his celebrity status, he wangled a handsome contract and advance. The word from the publishing world was that he couldn’t write a straight sentence and his editors had to rewrite the whole book, virtually writing their own publishable draft of his clever but illiterate manuscript. Whether that’s true or not, he hit the jackpot. The novel was a bestseller. The bankrupt Archer’s ploy worked and he ‘earned’ back all the money he had lost on the stock market, and then some.

Later, once he was established as a famous, rich internationally bestselling author, he turned back to politics, determined to leverage his literary fame into a prestigious career in public office. But even during this time of transition, his fondness for partying and quick-cash deals never abated. The rumours, gossip, and finally, news stories kept streaming out constantly.

But if you’ve been reading the newspaper reports recently, you might have formed the opinion that this scandal was his first major debacle. In fact, it’s the logical outcome of decades of scheming, wheeling and dealing. Archer’s not just been a bad boy this one time. He’s always been a bad boy.

So where were these reporters all these years? Why didn’t they report on his misdeeds earlier? Why wake up suddenly one morning and dump on him mercilessly? It isn’t as though a saint was caught committing a sin. Yeh to purana badmash hai.

The answer is painfully simple: Most journalists and reporters simply aren’t well-enough informed. I could tell you horror stories about reporters who make up entire interviews based on a single “Hi, hello, goodbye” encounter. Editors who rewrite quotes to make them “more readable”. And of course, we all know why some celebs get such lavish coverage so often while other, equally famous and newsworthy celebs are completely ignored.

But more puzzling than this is the way some celebs and industries are singled out for this ‘bash’ treatment while others are idolized like Ganesha idols during the festival. The reason why this happens, as we all know, is because news reporting isn’t as seedha-saadha as it once was, or as the newspapers, magazines and TV news channels would have us believe.

In fact, things have reached a point where you actually have to look for the ‘story behind the story’ in every major ‘scoop’, feature article or celeb interview. As in: ‘Who’s this guy related to–the editor’s sister?” Or ‘What did that poor bastard do to deserve this kind of press-bashing?’ This latter approach was on parade last month when even a Bombay Times reporter who had had one solitary encounter with Jeffrey Archer years ago thought herself fit to analyze the man.

The first question that came to my mind when reading that bash-piece was: ‘So why didn’t you say all these things in your article back then?’ But hey, it’s much more fun to swing sides and opinions when the tide turns against someone, isn’t it? And who cares about the old ‘I’ word anyway. (Integrity, you sap.)

Perhaps someday someone will have the honesty to pull the pants down on the murky goings on the media business too. Or doesn’t the camera turn back on the crew? Probably not. In fact, most of the country’s influential editors have an unwritten mutual understanding: Don’t rake up my dirt, I won’t rake up your’s.

That’s why, when it comes to rival editors, publishers or journalists, they’ll go hammer at tongs on the professional, competitive front. But never utter a word about their rivals’ personal goof-ups or problems. Muck-raking is reserved purely for celebs who have slipped down to the ‘Bash’ List. This is an unspoken unwritten Eleventh Commandment in publishing and editorial circles.

But if even a single journo did have the guts to cross that line and write about what really goes on behind the scenes in India’s Fourth Estate, you’d have a news story as melodramatic as any issue of Stardust or Showtime! Or even more than the average Jeffrey Archer novel.

May 30, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

Dekho, dekho, dekho: DVDs worth watching (and some not)

These aren’t meant to be real reviews, just short notes jotted down to mark the more praiseworthy movies and shows I saw on DVD lately, that seem worth sharing:

THE WIRE
A realistic police procedural crime drama set in a crime-riddled drugrunners-controlled urban American precinct that explores one honest cop’s quest to re-energize the force. The cop happens to be close friends with a senior judge (they knew each other from the time when the judge was a prosecuting attorney) and keeps feeding him info on the street reality and cop apathy to the situation. This earns the cop a number of enemies, mostly within the force, but he succeeds in getting a task force set up to investigate his allegations, setting off a series of events that takes the whole first season of this highly admired, praised and watched US TV show. These are one-hour episodes (starting with a 90-plus-minute pilot) with almost no background music, frills and attempts to entertain. If you enjoy novels like Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series, or police procedural novels in general – the classic One Police Plaza comes to mind – you’ll find much to like in this absorbing series. Its slow as molasses and takes time to get to grips with, but once you’re hooked on the characters, you won’t want to stop watching. Just don’t expect slam bang action and thrills-a-minute, this one’s about character and social realism.

DANCER IN THE DARK
If you’re familiar with Lars Von Triers’s body of work, you can’t have missed this gem. But if you’re more used to Hollywood product, please, just forget it. It takes a genuine love of film, a lot of patience and the ability to change your attitude to what constitutes great film making to sit through this one, let alone love it. But love it I do, and that’s why I watched it again on DVD. The film is about a nearly-blind factory worker, played by Swedish singer Bjork, and her struggle to raise enough money for an operation her son needs. It’s a musical with live singing by the actors themselves, and has a very downbeat ending that will break your heart in several pieces. But the most difficult thing to take, for those of us not yet weaned from mainstream movie mush, is the manner in which the film is shot. Using cheap handheld digital cameras, Lars Von Triers opted for a home-moviesh look that is shockingly amateurish looking at first, with a deliberately disjointed editing style that looks like shots are missing and the director couldn’t afford any transitions. But if you persevere, you’ll find that there is a very real, very beautiful story of relationships and characters unfolding that’s well worth watching despite the unorthodox filming and editing style. And as you watch (it’s a long movie, almost 3 hours), you begin to realize how beautifully artistic the jerky handheld style is, producing a sense of realism that typical overproduced film making could never have achieved. And when Bjork and her male admirer-almost boyfriend sing the centrepiece song on the train, oh my god, you will be blown away. What a song, and what a picturization, all the more so for the manner in which it was done – using over 100 handhelds set up all over the place, and shot in almost-realtime. A much-celebrated movie on the festival circuit, featuring a brilliant performance by Bjork, and amazingly brave direction and camerawork, this is a must-see movie for real movie fans.

BREAKING THE WAVES
Also by Lars Von Triers – his latest, by the way, is Dogville featuring Nicole Kidman which is equally controversial – this was his most celebrated success. Shot in northern Scotland, Triers broke virtually every rule of film making (or those he hadn’t already broken with his previous three films – this one came before Dancer in the Dark) with this grim, intense, controversial, and ultimately powerfully moving love story shot in patchwork, non-continuous weather and exposure conditions, featuring brilliant award-winning performances by Emma Watson and the rest of the cast. Ultimately though the real winner is Triers himself, despite his claims that the director is the least important part of the film making process. I’ll post a separate note on Triers’ Dogme 95 canonical philosophy of movie making, recently referred to by apna own Kamalhaasan, in a separate post shortly, if I can find time. See this one, just don’t expect to enjoy your popcorn with it.

BAADDAASSSS!
Don’t be put off by the name. This one’s the most entertaining of my recos. A film filled with ample sex, non-gratuitous full-frontal nudity, amazing performances, brilliant direction and script, and a slice of history that cannot, must not, be ignored. And it’s a documentary, scupulously faithful to the true story it’s based on. Directed by high-profile African American filmmaker-star Mario Van Peebles (ha! just noticed the coincidental similarity between his name and that of Lars Von Triers – but then, that’s why Van Peebles’ father added the ‘van’ to his name, to give himself more ‘white-European’ respectability as well as stick it to the white-Euro establishment) and starring himself, it’s the story of his father Melvin Van Peebles and his struggle to make the landmark African American independent movie, Sweet Sweetback’s Baaaddaaasss Song. Sweetback (to shorten that difficult-to-type name) was a genuine breakthrough, the first black film to eschew the stereotype of the black actor as a comic or a second-string-to-the-white-hero cliche. It was one of the biggest independent film successes of all time, and changed the landscape of movie making forever. The film is a brutal yet glossily made, powerfully enacted and narrated recreation of the travails Melvin Van Peebles went through (alongwith his then-pubescent son, Mario Van Peebles) to get that film made, and the huge opposition he came up against. Populated with enormously memorable characters – don’t miss the Jewish twin-brother theatre-owners towards the end – and with more masala than you could get in the most notorious so-called ‘entertainers’ out of Hollywood these days, this award-winning documentary is the most fun, and the most insightful and educational I’ve watched in years.

I’ve seen lots more recently, but that’s all I have time to write about, sorry.

As they say, the cream always rises to the top, so in any case, better to be short but focus on the greats, than to talk about everything, including the mediocre.

As for what NOT to watch, well, that’s easy: Anything that features in this month’s (or any month’s) Top Ten movies in your neighbourhood library’s popularity list.

May 29, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

The Best Goddamn Novel About The Writing Life Ever Written: Book Review of Herman Wouk’s Youngblood Hawke

This is an old column I wrote, one of several hundred (just over 1800, to be exact) I wrote over the past twenty-odd years, mostly about books, movies and the media.

Almost…

Blood On The Typewriter
Youngblood Hawke is the one of the best goddamn novels about a writer’s life ever written, says Ashok Banker

In Stephen King’s new non-fiction book On Writing, the King of bestsellers candily reveals several shocking insights into his life and career. Among the more controversial revelations are the ones about his drug abuse, dependence on presciption medicines and excessive use of alcohol.

Interestingly, these eye-opening tidbits weren’t written after his recent accident as some critics first assumed but were already in the draft that lay on his desk at the time of the accident.

Those who have had the pleasure of reading King’s earlier non-fiction book Danse Macabre as well as his countless interviews (the best of which were collected in the book Bare Bones) will know that cutting open a vein comes naturally to King.

In fact, King is one of the few mega-selling writers whose personal attitudes and professional persona are very much alike. Unlike Jackie Collins, Danielle Steele, or David Baldacci whose personal histories have virtually nothing in common with their authorial voices and sensibilities, King the writer and King the man are much the same person. Or so I deduce after twenty-odd years of reading everything by him I could lay my hands on.

But rarely does an author reveal his whole story in a book, however honest he or she may be in real life. In fact, some of the most brutally honest novelists whose books are filled with shattering human insights and emotional truths so stunning that they haunt the public imagination for generations tend to be miserly with their own personal stories.

How much do you know about any author really? Nowhere near as much as you probably know about, say, a film star or socialite. Even the most famous authors are far more comfortable writing about other people than being written about themselves.

V.S. Naipaul, for instance, was notorious until a few years ago for turning journalists out of his door on the most trivial of excuses – “You’re too young to have read all my books,” he said famously to one young lady reporter. Anything to avoid talking about himself.

Which is why it’s rare to find a book that tells you truthfully what it’s really like to be a writer. Let alone a famous, highly regarded writer.

In fact, there’s not been a truly great novel in generations that takes you behind the scenes of the writing life. There aren’t even too many too choose from: One recent bestseller was titled just that, Bestseller. A pacy, enjoyable novel by Olivia Goldsmith, author of The First Wives Club, Flavour of the Month and other woman-of-substance novels, it was a refreshing insight into the big bad world of modern publishing.

Over the years there have been a few such books here and there. Some have even been quite readable. You might be able to think of several.

But how many really first-class novels have you read that deal with the writing life? Stephen King’s own Bag of Bones is one of the few commercially successful novels that was also critically well-received. But the story concerns itself mainly with the protagonist’s attempt to come to terms with his wife’s sudden death rather than with his career as a bestselling novelist.

Recently, while reading Herman Wouk’s war saga, I decided to go back to one of his earlier, lesser known books. It’s a novel called Youngblood Hawke. Coincidentally, I had picked it up at a second-hand bookstore years ago, after reading a similar essay on novels about writers, written by Stephen King. In that piece, he had recommended this novel highly, and claimed it was the best novel about a writer’s life that he had ever read, or words to that effect.

I began reading Youngblood Hawke with scepticism. Having some minor experience of the writing life myself, I was prepared for another soapy sexy melodrama set against the backdrop of the writing life. Or even a vast, sprawling saga set in the publishing world, just as Wouk’s War novels were human dramas set against the historic events of the Second World War.

There was also the off-putting fact that this novel was first published in 1962 and was set in the period of the late 1940′s and early 1950′s. Now, how on earth could any novel about publishing in that period have any relevance to the field today?

But once I read a few pages of Youngblood Hawke, I had to read a few more. And then a few chapters more. And then another hundred pages, and then another. And so on, until a day or two later I put down this 878 page-novel with a sigh of disbelief.

Youngblood Hawke is not just a novel about the writer’s life. It’s a great novel. I’m saying that with no holds barred, no critical hedging or cadging. I’m not a critic, first of all, just a reader and book-lover. So I’m not ashamed to call a spade a spade, and a heart a heart.

And this one’s a bright, red, pulsing big-hearted ace of a novel. No question about it. It’s the kind of novel that doesn’t take into account the short attention spans of television, the glamorous scene-stealing special effects of big-budget cinema, the thousand distractions of modern living. It doesn’t even make concessions to bestseller ingredients, to commercial viability and smart packaging.

It simply tells its tale, at the length the tale deserves, with the detail and attention to detail that they deserve. Whatever happens seems completely inevitable, as credible (or incredible) as real life itself. I’m sure Youngblood Hawke must have been a bestseller – Wouk never wrote a non-seller in his life, to my knowledge – but it’s not written like a cold-hearted bestseller. It’s a hotblooded genuine giant of a book, a roaring young monster of a story that just rages and reaches for the sky and grabs a fistful.

This is probably the best goddamn story I’ve read in a novel in months. Don’t even ask me which was the last novel I read that touched me so deeply, I can’t remember it’s name.

Don’t be put off by the title. Youngblood Hawke, or Arthur Hawke as the author’s more homely name is in the story, is the protagonist of this redblooded story. He’s a new novelist whose first novel has just been accepted for publication by a major New York publishing house.

The editor assigned to the book, a foppish, pompous, pseudo-literary type that reminds me of half a dozen major Indian editors in New Delhi even today, hates the book as well as its author. He looks down upon it as middlebrow fiction, fit only to sell to the ignorant masses in order to raise money to publish “real” literature.

It’s the same reaction that Dickens, Balzac, Faulkner, and a dozen other great names received when they first sought to be published. And this is where the truth of Wouk’s novel begins – and never lets up. He tells you what it really is like to be a talented, prolific, eventually successful and bestselling American novelist. He shows you every twist and turn of the path with such authority and generosity you simply gape and enjoy the ride.

I won’t tell you the story of Youngblood Hawke because that’s the beauty of this book: A great story, brilliantly told. You will, of course, find some parts tedious, especially if you think television and films are entertainment and books should all be elegantly crafted prose poems less than 150 pages in hardback. But if you take the time and effort to read them, you’ll find that no crafty literary novelist would trouble himself with so much authentic detail.

And most amazing of all, despite the fact that close to half a century divides the period and writing of this novel from the present day, the novel still stands as a valid portrait. If not in every detail of the publishing industry – a few more zeroes have been added to every figure mentioned – then certainly in every human and emotional detail.

As the old cliché goes about writing well: Just cut open a vein and let it flow. Wouk sure as hell opens that vein and it flows so freely and richly, his typewriter must have been washed in blood! Someone get the man a transfusion.

Youngblood Hawke is the best goddamn book about a writer I’ve ever read. What’s more it’s a great goddamn book about anybody, period.

May 28, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

The history of poorer Indians disappears without record: An interview with author Siddharth Dube

This interview first appeared on Rediff.com.

I interviewed Siddharth Dube when his nonfiction book, Sex, Lies and AIDS, was published, and as I always do, read the book before interviewing him (something I’m sorry to say, most reporters neglect to do).

I was impressed by his research, scholarship, and most of all, by his chutzpah in daring to write such a book in the face of government apathy at the AIDS epidemic sweeping the country (and the world).

A great person once said that in order for chaos to take over the world, all a good man needs to do is to keep quiet and step aside while the destroyers rage…although that’s my phrasing, not the original quote.

Or, to to put it in the phrasing of the title of an anthology of absurdist writing, a genre I once favoured greatly as a young writer, ‘I have no gun, but I can spit.’

The older, slightly wiser me would now amend that to, ‘I have no gun, but I can write.’

I wish I could say now that Dube’s book was a million-copy bestseller and changed the attitude of the Indian authorities – and the Indian public – to the epidemic.

Sadly, it didn’t.

But a word here and a word there… and at least we can make our little corner of the world a little bit more sensitive and caring.

To spout yet another aphorism:

If you really want to change the world, start with yourself.

“The history of poorer Indians disappears without record”
Siddharth Dube, author of Sex, Lies and AIDS, in conversation with Ashok Banker

Siddharth Dube’s first non-fiction book Words Like Freedom, an economic study of India through individual case histories was praised by none other than Nobel Laureate Economist Amartya Sen. His new book Sex, Lies and AIDS promises to garner even richer reviews. A study of Indian sexual lifestyles and attitudes and their impact on the spread of HIV infections in the country, it’s a short but powerfully effective book. Dube’s unique style combines a sense of personal outrage, individual insights, meticulous research and documentation, and case histories of real ordinary citizens. He spoke to Rediff.com in this exclusive interview with Ashok Banker.

What motivated you to write Sex, Lies and AIDS?

Despair. Sadness. Absolute despair at what I’ve seen build over the past decade, which is our mounting epidemic of HIV/AIDS. And even deeper despair at the calamity that lies ahead for tens of millions of Indians if we don’t act now and if we don’t force our government to act. I’m still astounded by our relative inaction given that last year India had the largest number of deaths from AIDS worldwide. What are our leaders and we waiting for? Given what I feel, the book was shaped to be useful, something that would inform as many people as possible of how bad the situation is already, that would reduce their prejudices and unfortunate scorn of people at high-risk or infected with HIV, and also push government action. In short, a force for some action. This is why I consciously kept the book short, as sexy as possible, and with a clear discussion of what we can do as individuals and what we should expect our government to do.

On the first page of your book you describe it as “a romp through sex in today’s India, a serious journey towards understanding AIDS, and not least, a Kama Sutra for the age of AIDS.” Why did you feel it necessary to investigate sexuality apart from the specific issue of AIDS?

Let’s face it: HIV is primarily sexually spread. So it’s clear why we need to talk about sex. HIV cannot be controlled if we or our policymakers continue to approach this subject — sex — with embarrassment, fear or far worse, prejudice and intolerance. To paraphrase from other settings: “Silence is shame.” “Silence equals death.” We Indians are too often prudish or hypocritical, and even worse, cruelly damning of the behaviour of others. But if we’re going to try to prevent the HIV epidemic from getting worse it is essential that we learn, as fast as possible, an informed, sympathetic and humanist approach to discussing sex and other sexual things.

In both your first book and this one, you narrate several individual stories to illuminate larger aspects of the issue at hand. Why did you feel this technique was suited to your subjects?

Actually, the reasons for doing this — focusing on real people — aren’t the same between these two books. My goal in the first book was to understand and represent modern India’s history from the perspective of the poor, who are a great majority of our society. So this is why it is the memoirs of an impoverished family. Again, the book’s analysis of why mass poverty has persisted in India despite 50 years of independence tries to closely represent their understanding, their views.

The reasons for focusing on real people in the second book, the one on AIDS, are more obvious. First, because it brings non-fiction to life, makes it powerful and moving. And second, because there is simply no better way to understand the very human and blameless reasons why people contract HIV. If nothing else, I hope these stories convey our common humanity. That people who contract HIV are not some lesser breed of humans nor had impaired judgements, but very much include you and me, however educated, good at heart, upright or whatever.

There’s probably more pertinent information about AIDS in India in this short (156 pages) book than in the thousands of pages of Government studies and NGO reports. Was it easy getting all this information? How did you go about researching the book?

Thank you for that great and quite undeserved compliment! But to answer your question as to how I managed to research this book, I’m fortunate to be trained as a health policy specialist. And I’ve worked in India on AIDS issues since the late-1980s, both as a writer and as a specialist with the World Bank and other international agencies. So I was already familiar with a large amount of the research and policy literature. But there’s another important reason, which is that some very kind people who know much more about AIDS than me, made my research easy by generously sharing their knowledge. I won’t name them here but they are warmly thanked at the beginning of the book.

Can a book — even a book as well-researched and effective as this one — really make a difference to fighting the AIDS epidemic in India?

I wish it could; if things were only that simple. Unfortunately, I have the deepest pessimism about how the epidemic’s future course in India. Only bold, unselfish leadership by every kind of Indian leader — whether politician, nurse, activist, judge or saint — can quell our epidemic. Sadly, such leadership is too rare in India or elsewhere, particularly when it involves an issue that is sexual and hence an easy target for contempt and ridicule.

There seems to be a small but growing number of books by Indian writers exploring various aspects of Indian sexuality. Pinki Virani’s ‘Bitter Chocolate: Child Sexual Abuse in India’ was one. Your book is another. Even in novels like Raj Kamal Jha’s The Blue Bedspread and Akhil Sharma’s An Obedient Father issues like incest and sexual abuse were explored for the first time. What do you think is behind this surge of interest in Indian sexuality?

Sexuality is a reality of all societies, a central reality, no less than birth and death. So we are just seeing greater freedom to write about things that are a reality of Indian life. We are lucky to have that freedom, at least to have won that freedom for now despite the too many Indians who would censor this and every other freedom.

Your annexe on how to have Safer Sex is another example. You frankly discuss oral-anal contact, anal intercourse and other lesbian, homosexual and heterosexual methods of preventing the contraction of disease. Why do you feel there’s such a national reluctance to discuss such issues more widely and freely?

There’s a whole slew of reasons. Politeness. Embarrassment. Shame. A misplaced interpretation of tradition. The worst and least defensible reasons are hypocrisy and intolerance.

Newspapers frankly admit a preference for ‘good news’. TV channels prefer the pretty image to the grim one. High society dos, celeb appearances, film star profiles, elite restaurants, the newspapers and supplements are full of the new glamour media culture. Do you think this obsession with beautiful people and pretty images is detrimental to any honest discussion of the problems underlying our society?

I very much agree, though the fault for this obsession with fun and consumerism lies as much with us privileged Indians as with our media. The vast majority of us are not outraged enough by our country’s failures on poverty, ill-health, illiteracy, oppression and every other suffering. Or we simply swallow the very simplistic line that rapid economic growth alone will solve all these problems. (If so, why hasn’t poverty declined in India over the past decade of record economic growth?) Unfortunately, this pattern of the media focusing overwhelmingly on the good life is worsening as our economy and society become increasingly dualistic and Brazil-style, where a huge proportion of the population barely share in progress.

One perhaps minor but shocking fact that you reveal in the book on Page 136 is that “condoms are not always effective in preventing transmission of some STDs, particularly genital herpes and warts”. I doubt that most people are aware of this as condoms are usually held up as a one-point solution to all STDs and AIDS. Comment?

That fact is correct: that condoms do not prevent all STDs. So if anyone wants to strictly guard against all STDs, they must do even more than use condoms, for instance, be vaccinated against the hepatitis viruses, use latex barriers for oral sex and/or keep to a minimum the numbers of sexual partners. But the more basic point remains true that condoms are invaluable: they protect both sexual partners against the overwhelming majority of severe and life-threatening STDs.

The alarming figure you quote on page 107 — “without successful prevention, by 2005 about five per cent of our adult population — 3.5 to four crore people — will have contracted HIV” is a shocker. You go on to say that “if current trends persist, this number could easily cross ten crores in another couple of years”. This Kali Yug as you call it sounds terrifying. How accurate are these figures and how did you come by them?

Predictions are always fraught with uncertainty, particularly when they concern disease epidemics. But these projections are quite realistic, in fact far worse has been wrought by HIV/AIDS in Africa, havoc that is now being repeated in some Caribbean, Latin American and South-East Asian countries. The first projection is from the World Bank and the 3.5 to 4 crore people they refer to is just 5% of our adult population. In some countries of sub-Saharan Africa, about 30% of all adults are infected. And there is simply no reason for why levels could not eventually rise as high in India. Those of our government officials and health experts who argue that India is radically different to Africa in terms of the conditions for HIV/AIDS are always always proved wrong. So I stand by these rough estimates. Obviously, this does not equate with saying that these levels will be reached in exactly so many years.

You emphatically state several times in the book that the Government and official authorities are not well-enough informed about the problem. How do you arrive at these conclusions and more important, what can be done to correct this lacuna?

I think what I meant is that government officials and health experts know too little about sexual behaviours in India. Drawing them into a frank and public discussion of sexuality — backed by good research studies — would help correct their lack of knowledge. Unfortunately, on some issues — such as the great extent of male bisexuality in India — they are simply unwilling to accept the facts, however clear the evidence.

Who decided to use the cartoons by Mario in the book? Was it you or the publishers? Why cartoons?

The suggestion was first mine — as I have a great admiration for Mario’s ability to be provocative and sexy — but that’s quite irrelevant as Renuka Chatterjee, HarperCollins’ wonderful chief editor, was very strongly in agreement and did everything to persuade Mario to do them. Why cartoons? Tell me, don’t they make the book sexy and somewhat relieve the depressing tone?

Your first book was an economic study of India’s problems as seen in the context of a single large impoverished family. It won you praise by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen among several others. What’s been the response to Sex, Lies and AIDS thus far?

This book has done far better in sales than the first book (which is very serious and so less accessible), and also quite well in terms of reviews. So I am in the very lucky position of having no complaints about how both my books have been received! Frankly, I don’t know what I would do without the praise: I consume it because researching and writing on these subjects is exhausting and very depressing.

Publishers claim that non-fiction far outsells fiction in India. Yet writers of Indian English fiction seem to get all the press. In fact, they’re often lionized and held up as icons, while most writers of nonfiction are given short thrift in the media. How do you feel about this glaring imbalance?

It is peculiar that fiction writers get so much attention. I don’t resent it in any meaningful way. But I do think it is a loss for the public, because non-fiction writing in India is increasingly accessible and exciting. And India is made for non-fiction! There is so much to document, so much to understand, to record. And how can even the most inspired fiction rival India’s realities?! So I hope the public and publishers encourage India’s non-fiction writers.

You’ve written two books in the last few years. Do you feel it’s possible to make a living as an author of non-fiction books published in India alone?

I don’t know what other non-fiction writers earn, but I couldn’t survive beyond a few months on what I’ve earned from these books. But I am lucky as I’ve had grants to support the research and writing of both books. And then between books I work in New York and Geneva for various United Nations organizations.

Why aren’t there more writers of serious non-fiction books in India? Is it because it’s less glamorous and perhaps less lucrative? Or…?

I imagine the lack of money is the greatest impediment. Most publishers cannot afford — and anyhow will not give — advances that would allow a non-fiction writer to cover her or his research and writing costs, which can often stretch over two or three years. And most foundations are instantly opposed to funding research and writing of books, rather than keeping an open mind and seeing whether the book could play an important advocacy, historical or policy development role.

Have you started work on your next book? What will it be about?

I haven’t started yet but I plan to write a second book about the AIDS epidemic in India. This book — Sex, Lies and AIDS — was written to be useful. And so I didn’t include a lot of the research I have done and I wrote it simply, and rather quickly, so that it could be published as early as possible. So I want to revisit all these issues — particularly that of poverty and AIDS — in a manner that is both more in-depth and more literary. And I want to take more time writing it, perhaps two years or so. I hope to start in a year, late-2001. Apart from this, my ambition and dream is to put together a research project through which I can finance mid-career journalists to write accessible non-fiction books on poverty in India. It’s a shame that there have been only a handful of such books in the past 50 years. The history of poorer Indians disappears without record, as a consequence. But even more important, books like these can help stoke the outrage that more of us should be feeling about our country’s failures on poverty, failures that we’re all complicit in.

May 27, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

New reader reviews and comments by Ashok on the Readerswrite page at www.epicindia.com

Check out the Readerswrite page at the Epic India website.

And if you’d like to add your comment on my Ramayana books, or any related topic, or just ask a relevant question, head over to the Feedback page.

May 27, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

Editor’s Choice: INDIAN ENGLISH chosen by best blogs weblog guide!

KINJA The weblog guide that lists the best blogs on the net, have recommended INDIAN ENGLISH SPOKEN HERE.

Presumably, the powers that be at KINJA troll the net, seeking out the more happening blogs, and the ones that are attracting genuine interest from other bloggers.

Here’s what they quoted Sathish R, another blogger, as saying about Indian English:

“Ashok Banker, the author of the English-retelling of Ramayana has a very good blog. Head there, it is very interesting. It has been a long time since I was hooked to a new blog like this. Extremely interesting stuff (definitely for me!). Have fun with ‘Indian English spoken there’.”

Good to know someone out there is reading these words. And sometimes even liking them!

May 27, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

The Editor Has His Day (And His Say): Book review of India In Mind edited by Pankaj Mishra

This review first appeared in Hindustan Times.

India in Mind
Edited by Pankaj Mishra
Picador India; Rs 275
Paperback; 336 pages

A few weeks ago, I reviewed another anthology, also published by Picador, featuring new writing by promising UK and Commonwealth writers.

Three of the writers featured in the book tracked down my email address and wrote to me, sparking off a discussion as much about anthologies as about their own writing.

One lamented that his piece, an excerpt from an unfinished novel, had not been mentioned in a single review of the book, nor had inclusion in the anthology helped him in finding either an agent or a publisher to date. This happened to be his third inclusion in a major anthology.

The other two authors were more generous, thanking me for praising their pieces and cordially discussing the writing life and the state of the publishing business in India and the UK. But it was the disgruntled, peeved author, featured prominently in three anthologies and still unpublished, that stuck in my mind.

So when I cracked open the cover of this anthology and saw, on the flyleaf page, a prominent picture of the editor grinning up at me, above the usual self-congratulatory bio, it made me think.

Do anthologies exist to publish good writing that would otherwise go unseen? Or do they really only promote the careers of their editors?

I personally know or know of at least three excellent editors based in the US and UK who make a decent living only by editing anthologies, and horror-fantasy anthologies at that.

Between the three of them, they invariably win the major editing award in their genre year after year, and have done so for the past decade or so. Writers come and go, but their careers flourish.

So when you look at Pankaj Mishra’s picture and bio, then read his fairly general introduction, rehashing mostly what one already knows about the western ‘discovery’ of India over the ages, you are tempted to dismiss this collection as just another way for Shri Mishraji to add one more byline, and a decent editing fee, to his resume. But that would be a mistake.

The truth is, this is an excellent anthology. If you can get past the Alberuni-ish conceit of western writers writing about India, with the inevitable exoticisms and occasional gosh-golly-there-goes-an-elephant-in-a-sari kind of Kiplingisms, you will find much to enjoy and cherish.

Mishra’s choices, while virtually all classics of this colonial sub-genre, are particularly well picked and arranged.

In some cases, as in the pieces by J. R. Ackerley and Allen Ginsberg to give just two striking examples, he has chosen writers as interesting as their work.

The usual suspects deliver unusual gems. Sir Naipaul rubs uneasy shoulders with his one-time protege Paul Theroux. Fellow travel writers Pico Iyer, Mark Twain and Bruce Chatwin co-exist outside of time, each brilliant in his own individual way, the combination sparking new illuminations in the reader’s imagination.

Ved Mehta, George Orwell, Maugham, and Gore Vidal are unlikely co-travellers on this orient express chugging through exotic climes that are halfway familiar while still seeming alien as perceived through their western-tinted eyes. Hermann Hesse and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala share the heat and dust and passion of eastern mysticism. Robyn Davidson, Claude Levi-Strauss, and Rudyard Kipling (of course) join voices with E.M. Forster to receive back the mystifying echo ‘boum’.

The cover is terrible, and the whole package so clearly designed for the foreign reader that before you read it, you want to simply toss this book into the bin and rant for 800 words about how Indian literatteurs are selling out to firang publishers for a few thousand quid. But the contents themselves charm you despite your petulance.

In the end, new writing anthologies may aid some of the authors included and leave others unaffected and unsung, and anthologies like this one, collecting seasoned veterans as well as as longdead icons of their field, may not matter a whit to the authors included while gaining a few good reviews and a few more dollars in royalty for their grinning-in-black-and-white editors.

But what the hey. The book’s good.

So let the editor have his day. He’s done his job and done it well.

May 25, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

Myopic Media: A review of Naina and a comment on shortsighted Indian film critics

One of the more unpleasant faces of Indian journalism, if you can call it that, is its recent U-turn into the driveway of Bollywood Plaza, directly across the road from the Page 3 Pasha Palace, and diagonally opposite the Politickos Politbureau.

In other words, in recent years, Indian journalism has clearly shifted away from serious reportage of mainline issues of societal value into fluffy, celeb-hyping, star-hopping, filmi-gossip-ishtyle-tabloid coverage.

And it’s a national tragedy.

Why have they done this?

Well, to hear the editors and reporters tell it, the ostensible reason is that ‘this is what people want to read’.

Apparently, readers are bored of reading about politicians and social journalism and ‘problems, problems, problems’.

The success of the TOI brand of infotainment in particular, and the huge success of the Page 3 breed of media coverage, in terms of attracting the young, upwardly mobile readership that was rapidly moving away from the newspaper-magazine reading habit, as well as the ability of such glamour coverage to attract more high-value niche advertising, more or less sealed the deal.

So, sometime in the late-Nineties, a soft revolution swept across the media biz.

Today, you can see the altered landscape.

A sterile wasteland peppered with neon signs advertising the latest Bollywood blockbusters, film stars, entertainment stars, and celebs of all walks of life.

Even the sports pages haven’t been spared: you’re likely to see more pictures of half-clad SO’s of famous sports stars than the sports stars themselves these days. Often with only a tenuous connection to some dubiously newsworthy ‘event’.

In short, journalism has taken a backseat to glamour coverage.

Not only has this resulted in a new breed of Page 1 journalism, that is, journalism which seeks out front-page stories with suitable entertainment-titillation value rather than real news value – so, for instance, Mallika Sherawat’s peekabo dress on the Cannes red carpet, rather than the winner of the Palm d’Or at the same film festival – but it’s also caused a curious snobbery among journalists.

So, for instance, because films and celebs are the bread-and-butter of the media biz, they’re treated like royalty.

Gone are the days when film stars were sneered at and movie stars had to either be caught committing murder or be murdered themselves in order to feature on the prestigious above-the-fold lead story on the front page of a major national newspaper.

Today, all they need to do is wear a tight, revealing lowcut gown.

Or have a doomed, unrequited love affair with a co-star.

And if you watch how journalists coo and cuddle up to movie stars, or even hot directors-of-the-moment, your stomach will curdle.

On the other hand, anyone else is fair game.

So, it’s fashionable and acceptable to slash and burn a non-filmi, non-Page 3 personality who may genuinely be doing something of real worth, because such personalities aren’t essential to contemporary journalism.

So long as you suck up to the celebs and stars on whom your business depends, and whom you need to go back to month after month, for quotes, profiles, interviews, and let’s not forget, item numbers in the stage shows accompanying your media group’s annual film awards function.

And from time to time, it’s also acceptable to attack one particular star or film maker who isn’t particularly media-friendly, just to vent your venom – and Dog knows today’s so-called journalists have a lot of venom to vent – so long as everyone does it together and the target isn’t vital to their future work.

This happened earlier this year with PNC’s Shabd. Where the media blatantly took sides with Gauri Khan and Karan Johar (and by logical extension, Shah Rukh Khan) against Rongita Pritish Nandy and her eponymous father over what should have been a tiny insignificant petty squabble over a complete non-issue.

(As you probably know, the non-issue was that Mrs Khan and Mr Johar were asked to leave a private screening of Shabd by Ms Rongita Nandy, and they took huge offense to that, which resulted in Mr Khan boycotting PNC’s major film awards event, The Sansui Viewers’ Choice Awards.)

Now, if this had been restricted to just coverage of the non-event itself, that would have been bad enough.

But the media didn’t just stop there.

They gleefully used the non-incident as an excuse to bring out the knives when reviewing and covering the movie release of the film itself.

So Shabd was slaughtered mercilessly by the critics, most of whom are nothing more than journalists who have seen far too few movies and pride themselves on displaying their lack of knowledge of the medium.

For the record, let me say clearly here, I know Pritish Nandy, but I am presently doing nothing for or with him or his company, so I have no vested interest in supporting him or them. Also for the record, let me add that I haven’t seen Shabd, and had no interest in seeing it either.

Some of the tactics employed were reviewing the film (badly, of course) on the very day of release, thereby seeking to derail viewers who might have been planning to check out the new release.

Others were to blow up the stories of the Khan-Nandy alleged falling-out (pure BS, of course) out of all proportion, thereby overshadowing the film itself.

This wasn’t the first time the media had its hatchets out for a particular film.

Not that long ago, they did much the same thing to SRK’s own film, the highly anticipated Ashoka, ironically for much the same reason – SRK held screenings for only select invitees from the media, deliberately cutting out the rank and file and earning their ire.

In that case too, the media didn’t simply criticize that particular act – hand-selecting one’s own ‘friends’ in the media in an attempt to bias the public opinion favourably for his movie – but went ahead and attacked the film itself.

So much for journalistic integrity and ethics and fair-mindedness.

Last week, I saw the same process repeated for the new Urmila Matondkar starrer Naina.

Now, it’s true that the film is a rip-off of several foreign films.

Notably the Japanese films The Eye and Dark Water, with heavy influences from other sources such as the US TV miniseries The Dead Zone (inspired by the Stephen King novel of the same name) and other horror films and shows.

And the media was right to criticize the film for ripping off such high-profile sources, at times almost copying them frame by frame.

But in doing so, they let their bias show once again.

Because there have been any number of Bollywood films that are poor rehashes of foreign films which have been praised, even celebrated by the media, with almost no mention of the rip-off itself!

The reason being that in those cases, the stars or makers involved were too big for the media to risk antagonizing.

While the makers and star of Naina – none of whom I know personally or even distantly, let me clarify here – were easy pickings.

The unfortunate thing was that Naina is actually a very good movie.

Yes, it’s horror. And horror is traditionally a critic’s favourite whipping boy.

It’s the kind of film that they’ll watch on the edge-of-their seats and then come out later laughing at and carping about the gaps in logic.

But it’s very well made. In my opinion, it’s India’s first horror film of an international standard.

See it for yourself and judge for yourself.

I think the script, even though it’s ripped off from so many sources, actually holds together brilliantly.

The special effects are excellent, as is the whole technical expertise involved.

The direction is masterful, the editing superb.

Let’s get this straight – I’m not saying this is a great movie. Hell, it isn’t trying to be one.

It’s a terrifically entertaining horror thriller that delivers what it promises: thrills, spills and chills.

And despite doing a virtual reprise of her Bhoot shivers and shudders and oohs and aahs, and looking her age, Urmila does a very fine job in the movie, carrying it on her able shoulders and delivering a performance that most so-called heroes would be hard-pressed to match.

I think Naina marks a great milestone in Hindi cinema.

Because it’s a heroine-led film with brilliant technical inputs that makes a much-abused genre work in a modern, international context, without songs, item numbers, or unnecessary subplots or an overdose of Punjabi joint family hysterics.

Not only that, it’s a film which depends on the emotional journey of the heroine rather than her glamour quotient – how many films can you say that about today?

With all its limitations and faults, and there are some, I don’t deny, Naina’s still a breed apart. And it’s well worth watching.

And, best of all, it’s a super-hit, opening to almost cent per cent collections in most centres.

Which proves yet another point about the Indian media and its sadly awry sense of ‘journalism’.

That today’s journalists have grown so close to the celeb-filmi culture that they depend on to provide fodder for their glamour-struck Page 1 biz, that they have fallen completely out of touch with the people that really matter, the readers.

To rephrase a tagline from a major national daily: It’s the reader that guards the leader, not the other way around.

It’s about time our journalists got their heads out of the butts of celebs and stars and returned to street level reality where the rest of us live.

Otherwise, they’ll be blinder than the character Urmila plays in Naina.

May 24, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

Vertigo: A novel by Ashok

Vertigo: A novel by Ashok Banker 

May 23, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

Dizzying Depths: A review of Vertigo by Ashok Banker by S. Manzoorul Islam, Professor of English, Dhaka University

This review appeared on 7 May, 2005 in The Daily Star, Bangladesh. It is reproduced here verbatim, not one word altered or edited.

Dizzying depths: A review of Vertigo by Ashok Banker, Penguin India New Delhi, 2005 reprint, 392 pp, Rs. 295

1. The setting of Vertigo is Bombay, or rather slices of it: the financial district, a few suburban areas, the Marine Drive, a couple of hotels, the two flats Jayesh or Jay Mehta, the protagonist, lives in. Bombay is not yet Mumbai, since the time is early 1980s, and the milieu the novel describes consists mostly of denizens of a Darwinian corporate underbelly where money and power and glitter rule.

Ashok Banker has meticulously kept to his time frame, drawing generous references to the happenings in the Indian and global corporate worlds, politics and culture of the time to authenticate his narrative: Indira Gandhi, Lee Iacocca, Dirty Harry movies, Dan Aykroyd and James Belushi, Grease 2, Gigi, Bruce Springsteen’s Brilliant disguise, Ayatullah Khomeini, Automatic Teller Machines, 386 liquid crystal display laptop selling for under Rs. 1 lakh . . .. Say it again? Yes, ATMs and LCD laptops.

But in Bombay circa 1982? Why not?! However, but the reviewer, who was in Bombay for a week in 1983 doesn’t remember seeing even one ATM in the crowded bank of Bombay where he went to cash his US dollars, and had to wait endless hours while lethargic clerks conducted the whole business absolutely manually, writing down bank note numbers ever so meticulously and counting Indian rupees over and over again. But then the reviewer may have missed the laptop clutching grey suited executives from the world of advertisement zapping past him in a frenzied race to be the number one rat in business.

The ATMs and laptops, whether real and authentic, (the burden of establishing the verisimilitude should be left to more assiduous researchers) are an important part of the elaborate discursive setup of Vertigo, which aims to capture every subtle shade of the fiercely competitive canvas of advertising and direct marketing.

This is the world where the workday Jay belongs, and willy nilly, is drawn into its vortex.

Banker draws this world as ruthless, cruel and fiercely challenging. It’s a world where big fish routinely make a feast of small fish. Jay, a small fish, would have been swallowed whole by fish even slightly bigger than him, had he not been protected by a woman roughly his own age, but one who had bloodied her teeth and claws in corporate warfare early and knows the trick of survival. She also happens to be the woman who feels an emotion akin to love for Jay.

The woman, Meera, is liberated in the late 1990s sense, and is guide to Jay while he! tries desperately to pick up the fragments of his life, which include his non-functional love life for, his fiancee, Tuli, a Gujarati girl who believes she does not exist outside a family relationship, is predictably cool on questions of carnality. Now, the rather sombre account of Jay’s life should place him in the age range of late 20s, but he is only 19 or 20 when the story opens and is only 24 when it ends.

So why is he seen picking up the fragments of his life that early when, even for most corporate minnows on a salary of Rs. 2000 per month, life should just begin?

Answer: It’s because Jay has to look after his mother, an abandoned wife, an incorrigible alcoholic, a temperamental and pathetic woman. With a Halaku Khan for a father (who once left Jay a ten-rupee note when he had pleaded with fearful eyes for his help in looking after his mother) Jay has absolutely no other choice except to live with her, nurse her, sometimes feed her, wash her, suffer her neurotic outbursts, and earn a living good enough to see them through the month.

Balancing the two lives, both equally traumatizing, Jay begins to break down. At the ripe old age of 22!

It is this elementally sad and tragic, gripping and unforgettable tale of Jay’s balancing act that rather than the fast-paced narrative of Bombay’s competitive, do-or-die corporate world produces the real vertigo.

Ashok Banker appears unrivaled, except for the likes of Anita Desai (remember her Clear Light of Day?), the very best of the lot, really, in his sensitive description of fractured and tragic lives.

A 20-year-old young man, alone and abandoned by an indifferent father, the burden of the love and patience he can muster, tries to salvage some sanity in his and his mother’s lives. In this he is not helped by his mother, who rather makes his life more difficult.

But the young man persists, driven by no particular passion, but burdened with the memory of a mother’s desperate attempt to bring him up, put him through school and generally shelter him from the slings and arrows of fortune. Added to this is the constant neglect of his father and the annoyance he shows wherever mother’s name comes up. Driven to desperation, and in search of a life away from mother that he so desperately deserves, Jay moves out to a flat in the suburb, urged on by Tuli who wants a clean break from the past.

But before he makes the move, Jay muses on what it would mean to him, staying apart from his mother. What will she do then? And, more important, what will he do? There can’t be an answer to that, except saying that both would be more miserable, in their own, different ways.

2. Vertigo’s plot line is uncomplicated, and lends itself to easy retelling. Jayesh Mehta, 20, and his sick and alcoholic mother are forced to live on their own, having been driven out by a successful businessman father, who then quickly remarries. Jay, fresh out of school has to find a job, and takes on the task of looking after his mother. His job at a DM company is not easy, given the dog-eat-dog work ethics prevailing there, and he struggles on, forever unhappy, forever feeling deprived.

A distant relative, Meera, a woman of great personality and charms, turns up at the same company, occupying a higher post, and takes a fancy on Jay. She quickly becomes his surrogate mother, while expecting to be his lover, guiding him through the jungle of life with patience and poise. But Jay has a fiancee, Tuli, who is divided sharply between her loyalty to her parents and family, and her lukewarm liking of Jay whom she cannot imagine to be approved by her family for marriage.

Yet marriage is what she desires and eventually gets . . . but not with Jay.

What can Jay do? He can be more drunk, more miserable and more desperate. And to compound matters, Meera is away somewhere in Dubai, doing an overseas stint for the firm. Jay begins to flounder. He had left his mother, if you recall, and begun to live his own life. Only it proves to be a shadow of a life. He changes his job on better prospects, but cannot bring it to himself to go back to mother, or even visit her.

He had fixed her up with a caregiver, and he forces himself to forget her. Indeed, the last time he had seen her, she had thrown a glass after him, which shattered and showered splinters all over. When he had closed the door behind him, it was the sound of glass breaking that chased him away.

After months of lunatic loneliness, irreconcilable but inescapable the mother dies.

Back at his mother’s flat after the funeral he sits on the floor of his mother’s bedroom and muses: so this is what it comes to finally? This is the price? [He had sold the flat to a neighbour at a good price.]

And what is he supposed to do with the money…?

This woman has suddenly thrust him up to the top of this paper mountain and here he stands now, alone, looking down at the city, at the puny people toiling mindlessly, at the hordes trudging homewards every evening . . . But wait.

He will not be alone for long. Because up comes Meera, who is in town and knocks on the door. Jay doesn’t open, but she says she’ll wait. All night if I have to. He looks down at the latch and after an eternity debating who he really loved, and what this sleep-around bitch [meaning Meera] really is, he relents. Slowly, as if of its own volition, the latch begins to turn, to open.

Two stories, two lives. They finally merge at this point.

3. The Bombay story of Vertigo is about a ferocious, cannibalistic cult which considers money the sole god, and power and pleasures his two outstretched hands. This story is single minded and because of its commercial association, slightly global.

It is also strangely Anglo-Indian, as the novel’s early eighties ambience doesn’t include any Indian or local cultural markers. More Hollywood than Bollywood. No local celebrity is mentioned: Lata, Mohammad Rafi, Gavaskar, Dev Anand — none.

In keeping with the upper-crust Bombayites’ craze for a western life, the cultural markers are also imported. The mother-son story, on the other hand, with all its Indian connections and connotations, is a genuinely home-grown one and is the stuff that contributes to the novel’s enduring appeal. It is vicious but simple, elemental but enduring.

The story has an air of inevitability about it — it just happens, it doesn’t have to be willed into place. Banker knows the power of this archetypal, Indian tale, and weaves his other story around it. Jay’s rejection of Bombay at the end is an indication of how the more local and timeless story has the power to pull us into its deep centre. And the force with which we are pulled leaves us with a strong feeling of vertigo.”

S. Manzoorul Islam teaches English at Dhaka University

May 23, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

Brutal Business: Book Review of Down And Dirty Pictures by Peter Biskind

Actually, more than a review, this is a recommendation.

If you have any interest in Hollywood, movies, independent film making, or just about the entertainment biz in general, this book is a must-read.

Biskind is the author of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, a study of Hollywood movies during the Seventies. This book is a sort-of sequel to that one, covering the period from the Nineties upto the year 2003.

But this time, the focus is mainly on independent films, and Miramax and Sundance in particular.

The book is subtitled Miramax, Sundance, And The Rise Of Independent Film.

I picked it up expecting to read an informative history of the last decade or so of the independent film movement.

Instead, I got a harrowing look into the shark-eat-fish world of Miramax, run by the brothers Weinstein – Harvey and Bob – who are compared more than once to mafiosi.

The book is based on hundreds of brilliantly done interviews with film makers, actors, agents, producers, distributors, including the principals, the Weinstein brothers themselves, who, after trying to strongarm the author into silence, finally relented and came on the record, rebutting almost every accusation levelled against them.

You have to read the book to know just how incredible their behaviour was. I mean, I knew Hollywood was brutal. But I didn’t know just how brutal. And I surely didn’t know that independent film makers, even major star directors and actors, could be treated so horrendously.

It’s beyond humiliation, bordering on unspeakable, even criminal at times.

If you want glamour quotient, there’s plenty here: from extensive studies of icons like Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Kevin Smith, Quentin Tarantino, Steven Sodherberg, Kieslowski…it’s a long list.

There’s lots of dirt dished out about Oscar-lobbying, even jury-rigging (alleged, of course), and every other part of the movie making biz, with emphasis on small-budget to mid-budget (which in Hollywood means anywhere from $1 million to $70 million) movies and the shenanigans that go on behind the scenes.

The journalism is impeccable, the sources all listed with interviews specified with dates and times, and the contents are all the more startling for being reported with such accuracy and scrupulous integrity.

Recently, sitting in a dentist’s clinic waiting room, I picked up a copy of an old issue of Newsweek.

At the back of the book – I always read magazines backwards because the movie, music, book reviews are there at the end – I happened upon a brief piece of Harvey Weinstein, where he was asked to react to the publication of this book.

He laughed and made fun of the way he was portrayed in the book, as a ‘monster’, but denied none of it.

How could he? It’s all there in black and white, corroborated by a hundred different sources.

But when asked when the exposure of his brutal behaviour and the film industry’s abhorrence of his methods was resulting in a backlash, with fewer Miramax films being Oscar-nominated, he got het up and denied this completely.

Even so, the fact remains that Miramax’s Oscar-nominations have been dropping, as are their wins.

This book is one of those rare finds: A book about the Hollywood movie biz that really tells it like it is, is hugely entertaining and enjoyable (for the first time in my life I realized that there’s more drama happening behind the camera than in front of it, in Hollywood) and is not a muckraking chronicle by someone with an axe to grind, but a responsible, honest journalistic work.

Read it. And be horrified by what goes on in that old industry in the hills in the city of angels – and demons.

May 20, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

See Saw: The Must See Movie For Movie Buffs

If you haven’t seen it already, see SAW.

It’s probably the smartest script you’ve seen rendered into film since The Usual Suspects.

It’s a low-budget film, with the scriptwriter playing one of the main leads, and made on a shoestring budget (by Hollywood standards, $1.2 million) by two very creative and resourceful young talents, both of whom originated the idea and directed, wrote and performed in the film.

Don’t worry, it’s no arty farty bore. This is a seat-of-the-edge, bite-nailing, packed-tension thriller…so thrilling, it’ll leave you tongue-twisted like I am.

The script is absolutely brilliant; so brilliant, I won’t give away a single bit of it.

Just know this: It’s about a serial killer who never kills a single person.

It features a final-moment twist-in-the-tale that twists a knife in your guts.

I guarantee you’ll whoop with surprise when the killer finally reveals himself at the very end of the movie.

Of course, some of you may guess who the killer is very early in the picture – who knows, you may even guess correctly.

Stranger things have been known to happen.

The production is just right. It doesn’t look low-budget, just appropriate for the scenes portrayed.

I’m sure a big Hollywood studio would have thrown a ton of money on the screen, but it wouldn’t improve the film substantially. Frankly, I’m sick of over-produced Hollywood extravaganzas and over-paid stars.

Give me a film like this anyday. Sure, it’s gore-drenched and bloody, but it’s also bloody brilliant.

It’s nerve-wracking throughout, with some genuine shocker moments which, even though they use classic movie cliche tricks, still they work. Turns the whole slasher movie on its head, with the killer turning out, in a sense, to be the only ‘moral’ character in the whole film.

Enough said. Just see it. And I guarantee, you’ll not be disappointed.

May 20, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

East of the sun, west of Europe: A short story

Here’s another short story.

But most of all, just enjoy the story.

East of the sun, west of Europa
by Ashok Banker

Europa was beautiful when he arrived. Almost too beautiful for murder.

He docked at the ring at magic hour. That time just before sunset when the moon’s flawless icebound surface glowed with a transcendent luminescence, suffusing ground-glass camera lenses with a quality of illumination that made even the most ordinary face look special. It was perfect timing, but then again, he had timed it perfectly, just like he did everything else. It was the way he was.

He waited in the cruiser while the security bots did their job, perfoming a meticulous nano-scan. He wasn’t worried about them finding anything: he’d left all his weaponry back on the ship, safely parked in orbit on the far side of Jupiter. This cruiser he’d hired from the Maruti-Ford agency on the moonbase, deliberately picking their cheapest model. It hadn’t been a comfortable ride out, and he’d had at least one really bad moment struggling to maneuver past a meteorite when his lasers had failed. It was a jalopy, but that’s what his cover story demanded.

The murder itself he would commit the old-fashioned way, with whatever lay at hand. A knife. A curtain cord. A blunt statuette. He had done old rich women before, they were easy meat. It was gaining access to them privately that was the difficult part for most common murderers. But there was nothing common about him.

The monitor flickered on abruptly. Bot Bevis-XO, chief of security, informed him that he had been cleared for disembarking. He had only to step on the platform and it would transport him to Mrs Garbarini’s residence. He thanked the bot and asked for a few minutes to get his things together.

He went through the micro-shower, as much to freshen up for the meeting as to conform to security procedure. Skin tingling from the sterile gas, he selected a suit that was neither too modern nor too conservative. His cover was supposed to be a good but not great feature Lenser, more concerned about his work than his appearance. The virror returned a clean, sharp tri-dee image of a man in his late Forties, handsome in a rugged, world-weary fashion. The corners of his eyes and mouth tugged downwards in a universal look of infinite sadness. A man who had known disappointments, who kept his counsel. The sort who still listened to ancient late 20th century music in space trucker bars on moonbases: stuff like country western and jazz.

A name came to him from his own recesses of memory: Chet Baker. He had done his share of bar-parking, elbow-bending, juke-feeding and the name itself conjured up memories of trumpet solos backed by mournful strings, Gershwin heartbreakers, breathy vocals. It had spoken to something deep within his own nature, an overwhelming sense of the sadness of Being, and he had taken the effort to look up the artist. A stereotypical 20th century life: a brilliant career blemished by a stubbornly self-destructive heroin habit, decades spent drifting from disaster to disaster until a merciful end in Amsterdam, 1988. Definitely not a role model. But the music. Ah, the music. Cool jazz.

The soft light was pleasing, even romantic as he rode the platform. Jupiter loomed in the sky, dominating the view. During his research run-up, he had pondered the question: Why would anyone want to live way out here on a floating ring of metal in perpetual orbit? It must cost a fortune just to own her own orbit path, a little slice of space swinging around Europa, itself in orbit around Jupiter.

Then he looked away from Jupiter and the other moons visible in the sky, away from Europa itself, toward his destination, and his breath caught in his throat.

Suddenly, he knew why.

It was heartstopping. Beautiful beyond words.

The estate was a masterpiece of mock-Indian nouveau style design. Romanic columns and Grecian arches mixed incongruously with Moghul domes and spires, and Rajasthani pink marble and sandstone. Oddly enough, the whole added up to a breathtaking vista. Suspended in apparent mid-air-the struttings were ingeniously slender and visual-coordinated with the backdrop of star-studded space, virtually invisible-he had to admit it made an imposing sight. He could see why a rich recluse might want to stay here. He had seen nothing on the four other human-occupied moons-Ganymede, Titan, Triton and Europa that came even close to this aesthetic achievement.

The platform slowed to a halt before the towering facade. Too late, he realized he should have clicked a few shots of the approach. After all, he was supposed to be on assignment for Lunar Home & Lifestyle. He unclipped his camera and began to shoot as he walked toward the vaulting facade. Entering, he felt the atmosphere grow richer, more humid, and heard the sounds of birds and the gentle voice of water talking to stone.

A domestic bot hovered before the arched entrance, waiting to guide him. An artificial waterfall plunged thirty metres down a marble slope, forming a shimmering curtain above a Himalayan recreation. He glimpsed real marine life in the artificial pond and in the shadows of the undergrowth he thought he saw a massive antlered beast between two pine trees. A moose? No. A Himalyan stag. It must be at least seven feet high at the shoulder, he thought, with a proud head of antlers rising another half-dozen feet. A magnificent beast that he had never seen before in the flesh, even though his people came originally from Uttarkashi, India, at the foothills of the Himalayas.

He had been breathing in processed air through a SecondSkinTM cling mask. Now he realized there was no need for the mask. He touched the tiny release beneath his left earlobe and it retracted. He hated the damn things anyway-face condoms. The air he breathed in through his own nostrils was fresh, wonderfully redolent with natural scents and aromas-the smell of sweet water, green grass, flowers, an underlying pungent animal odour that was stimulating rather than offensive. It beat Europa’s thin, tenuous atmosphere anyday. It was alive, living air. Rich with the smell of life.

The bot lead him through an enormous foyer, past fountains, statuary and fossil specimens from a variety of Indian historical and pre-historical periods. Marine fossils from the hills of Madhya Pradesh, once a sea-bed in the millennia before the continents broke apart and reformed.

A fossilized sub-marine plant specimen from Europa caught his eye. He paused to take a closer look, lined face creasing in the hint of a smile as he caught the delicious irony of this ancient relic from the long-lost continent that gave this lunar world its name. He thought that Galileo and Marius, who had discovered the moon in 1610 would have appreciated the touch. Very classy.

This was a smart old woman. Rich and with a sense of irony. He hadn’t met too many of those: none in fact. He decided then that he would make her die quickly, with as little pain as possible.

The bot left him alone in an enormous room. The tapestried walls were lined with precious art and sculpture, mostly from Earth but some colonial work too. The marble floors, polished mahagony doors and high vaulting ceiling, showcases lined with objets d’art and antiquated pulp-paper books created the sense of a museum. But one entire wall was transparent, looking out onto a lawn of immaculately maintained Korean grass framing a large circular swimming pool. A startling touch of modernity that somehow blended seamlessly with the rest of the decor. Baroque Pastiche, he decided at last. And all obviously personal choices. So she had a sense of style too.

He clicked some frames, preparing himself now for the task ahead. He could be done with it and out of here in less than one Earth-hour. If only everything wasn’t quite so stunningly beautiful.

“I see you’ve started work already, Mr Prem.”

The voice was crisp, feminine. No trace of any accent, except the whiff of an Earth upbringing. And yes, a very faint hint of her Indian origins.

He turned, a smile on his lips, ready to begin his act.

And was struck speechless.

The woman before him was much younger than she was supposed to be: Definitely not a century-plus. And beautifully maintained. He had seen enough collagen beauties to know that her looks were natural, not the result of alteration surgery and expensive healthcare maintenance.

She looked and moved like she was thirty and still in her first prime. But after thinking a moment, he realized that a well-maintained forty-plus was more likely.

Her clothes complemented her youthfulness: a rich gold-embroidered Indian churidhar kurta suit with a sharply cut vee-neck that was definitely not an old woman’s attire. Neither was the glimpse of ample cleavage and the full, rounded Indian figure.

This couldn’t be the woman he’d researched and studied before taking on the assignment. And yet, it was. He saw now that she had carefully manipulated all her PR imagery to create the illusion of the ancient, noble hag.

But that wasn’t what had left him speechless.

It was the fact that he recognized her. Without the digital manipulation she had wrought on her images, there was no doubt at all. He knew this woman.

She smiled, brushing a lock of hair off her forehead with a gold-bangled hand.

“Surprised, Prem? Were you expecting someone else?”

He glanced around, pulse racing as he took up and rejected several options in quick succession. The house was bot-secured, virtually a maximum security grid. All she had to do was give the command and he would be meat.

His contingency plans hadn’t taken such a possibility into account. He had anticipated a possible need for quick exit, but not this. Not a set-up, a trap, an ambush. Which was what it was.

She walked over to the sprawling maharajah diwan and seated herself gracefully, adjusting her brocaded dupatta around her shoulders. She indicated a couch.

“Why don’t you sit down? You look like you need to catch your breath.”

He hesitated another moment, then gave up and went over. Sat down. Unable to take his eyes off her. If there was any doubt in his mind that he was mistaken, the look in her eyes and the tone of her voice dispelled it completely.

She knew who he was, what he had done to her. Everything.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s me, Arushi. And can I call you Alok? It won’t be for long, after all. We both know this is going to be a very short conversation.”

He managed to find his voice at last.

“My name is Prem. I’m here from Lunar Home & Lifestyle. My editor spoke to you, Mrs Garbarini, and fixed up this Lensing and interview.”

She grinned. “Still have the balls to try and whistle your way out of a tight corner. Haven’t changed much in twenty two years, have you?”

“I think you’re mistaking me for someone else.”

She laughed. “Drop it, will you. It’s me, Arushi, remember? Your wife! Although how you managed to keep fooling the law all these years foxes the hell out of me. I mean, how the in the world do you kill fourteen women-it was fourteen, wasn’t it?-in twenty years and not leave a trace behind?”

He was silent. There was no point in continuing the charade. But he needed to know what she intended before he revealed anything.

She seemed to sense his misgivings.

“I’m not recording any of this,” she said. “I over-rode security and shut down all surveillance of this chamber before I came in. Whatever we say or do hear is for our consumption only.”

She leaned forward. He caught a whiff of a tantalizing, musky odour. Bio-scent. How many women used that these days? None that he knew. It was considered too old-fashioned, too lunar. He liked it very much. It was arousing.

“If you want to kill me,” she said quietly. “Now’s the perfect time.”

She waited for his response. When he didn’t reply, she nodded and smoothed out her kurta, examining her hands for a moment. Her voice was harsher when she resumed, more direct, almost bitter.

“I couldn’t believe those last three were your work. I could understand the slow seduction, the carefully engineered romantic liaisions. Gaining the woman’s trust over months, even a year or so in one case. Then starting the gradual transfer of assets. The previous ten you murdered only when there was no choice left at last.

You had to do it. They knew too much by then. But I could see there was genuine care, you actually did give a damn about them. Or so I thought.”

He chose his words carefully: “You were watching me? All this time?”

She shook her head. “No, of course not. It took me seven or eight years just to get over losing you. Your apparent death. It devastated me. You-.”

She started to say something else, then stopped. She looked away for a moment, at the window overlooking the swimming pool. The light outside was fading slowly, the Europa night approaching with the swiftness of all lunar nights.

She looked back after a moment. Her eyes were dry. But he could sense her pain with the deep empathy that had made him so powerfully attractive to women.

She went on. “It was only recently, four or five years ago, that I found you. I was researching my new fiction. It was premised, coincidentally, on a psycho-epidemic of suicides among rich, single women. Call it subliminal wish-fufilment, if you still hold to that outdated Freudian crap. Anyway, the search results showed up several cases of women whose lives were cut short. But not by suicide. Murder was what linked them all. And after I did a lot more searching, I found there was another link. A man.”

For some reason he craved a cigarette. Although he had never been addicted to tobacco. “And what made you think that man might be me?”

She shrugged. “So many things, too many to tell. For one, you see, I had assumed a secret life of my own. Created the fictional persona of Babs Garbarini, the ageing doyen of interglobal romance suspense fiction. And quite successfully, I might add.”

He nodded. “You’re an interglobal star. Your fictions are everywhere, in every format.” He hesitated. “I’ve even read a couple. They were interesting. And you’ve maintained the facade brilliantly. Of course, now I understand why you never give any interviews or allow visitors. And why you live in this isolated place.”

“Thank you, if that’s intended to be a compliment. So as you can see, I knew something about secret lives too. Add plain old intuition to it. And I figured out that the man killing those women was the same bastard who had seduced me and then made me suffer the most traumatic experience of my life.”

He flinched at the word, and at the casual, almost unemotional way she tossed it at him. Like a knife thrown over her shoulder, without aiming.

“But how did you recognize me?” He gestured at his face. “If you were able to track me, you also know that this is a different physical body from the one I had originally.”

She smiled bitterly. “Did you think I’d be fooled by something as simple as that meat-disguise? Your physical appearance may be different–although, not that different, the norm for attractive males hasn’t really changed that much in two decs. But the way I recognized you was by your neural-net signature, Alok. There were traces of you all over those 14 victims–comm records, security records, etc.

Even the profilers knew that all those murders were committed by either one man or several men with the same neural-net signature. The only problem was, knowing it couldn’t help them find you. I, on the other hand, had the ability to attract you like a bee to a nectar-drunk flower. All I had to do was set up a bait that you couldn’t resist, and you would come calling.”

She pointed at him. “And here you are, you bastard. All dressed up to kill me. Again.”

He spoke quickly, sincerely.

“I never wanted to hurt you, Arushi,” he said. “You’ve got to know that. I loved you.”

“Loved me? You son of a bitch! You destroyed me!” Her eyes blazed at him.

He tried to explain the unexplainable.. “I had no choice. I had already killed two before you. If I stayed put, sooner or later, the law would have found me. My entire survival depends on staying on the move. On constantly changing identities.”

He leaned forward, wanting her to understand. “I use geneering. To change my DNA. It’s a very rare and difficult process, possibly only with a very few individuals. One in 6.4 million, to be exact. That’s how I achieve a total identity changeover. Even the law enforcement wouldn’t be able to prove right now that I’m not Prem Sardesai, Freelance Lenser on assignment for Lunar Home & Lifestyle zine.”

He spread his hands, indicating himself. “Of course, I have to download my complete mnemonics and upload it again each time the geneering is done. That’s how I retain my memories and identity through each makeover. It’s very expensive, but then again, I have money to spare.”

She nodded slowly, as if a piece had fallen into place. “That explains how you keep getting away with it. But it doesn’t change the fact that you betrayed me and left me out on Luna to die.”

“No,” he almost yelled. “I planned the accident very carefully. The skimmer was programmed to explode at a precise moment and in a precisely defined manner. That’s why you were only thrown out of your seat while I was trapped in the wreckage.”

He paused and added: “I had cloned myself several years ago, just in case of such a contingency. I used one of my clones, stowing it in the skimmer’s freezer. Between the time that you were thrown out and the skimmer exploded, I had just enough time to put the body in the driver’s seat and escape on a scooterbot I’d kept standing by. The law found the dental and DNA types matched and didn’t realize the body was ten years younger. There wasn’t enough left for them to get suspicious.”

She stood up, pointing an accusing finger. “You left me out there on the moon to die! It was just a miracle that those picnickers happened to come by when they did, almost eight hours later. My oxygen was almost gone, I was an emotional wreck! I’ve never been able to live on a lunar surface since then, Luna or any other. That’s why even now, I live in orbit here.”

He remained seated, keeping his voice calm and measured, offering rationality in response to her sudden show of emotion. “But you survived. Who do you think sent the distress call that brought those picnickers in your direction? I had planned everything, Arushi. Down to the last detail. Besides, if I’d wanted to kill you, I would have simply made sure that you were driving the skimmer, not me. It would have been easy.”

To emphasize the point, he added slowly: “Just like the thirteen others. Two before and eleven after you. If you’ve done your research thoroughly, you’ll know that with you was the only time I ‘killed’ myself. It was the only way I could think of. And of course, I never took a rupee from your account. If you need any other proof, that’s it. I never took the money, Arushi. Not that there was much of it. I left because I had no other choice.”

She stared at him for a long moment, as if weighing his words, trying to fight through her warring emotions and determine if he was telling the truth. She walked away several steps, and he thought she was leaving, it was over, she hadn’t believed a word he’d said.

But then she stopped, her back still to him. “Back on Luna,” she said. “Before the accident. We were working overtime, saving and scrounging every rupee, and looking for a good spot to build our dream house.” She paused, her voice trembling as she continued: “And all the time, you were plotting ways to leave me?”

He got up then and walked to her. Stopping two metres away so as not to alarm her. “I would have left you either way, Arushi. At least the way I chose left us both with some good memories. If I’d stayed around and the law had caught up with me as they would have in time, then you would have lost not just a husband, but your respectability, your family, your security, everything. And every memory would have been a bitter one.”

She turned to him. And the look of betrayal on her face wrenched his heart.

“I was pregnant, Alok. With our daughter. I found out when they were examining me after the accident.”

He didn’t know what to say to that. There were no words to explain that away.

She went on. “I wanted to keep her, but she died before coming to term. Some complication to do with the oxygen starvation I suffered on Luna.”

She sighed, crossing her arms across her chest. “So in the end, you did murder me out there on the moon after all. A precious part of me died with you. And hope died with Europa.”

“Europa,” he said softly, his tongue caressing the word.

“Yes,” she replied. “That was what we had decided to name her, remember? Because-.”

“Because we had seen that fiction, Last Night On Europa, and the Jupiter colony had just announced they were confident of atmospherizing it within five years, and we dreamed of building a house just as beautiful over there someday.”

He corrected himself. “Over here. Right here. On Europa.” He shook his head, amazed. “And that’s just what you did, isn’t it, Arushi? You built the most beautiful godalmighty home right here in view of Europa, just as we’d dreamed. And it really is a beautiful home.” He grinned wryly: “That’s why Lunar Home & Lifestyle wants to feature it on the cover!”

She didn’t smile at his feeble attempt at humour. But she spread her hands, indicating the room, the house, the entire estate. “And what’s the use of it all, without someone to share it with?”

“Why didn’t you marry again? You could have had any man in the solar system. Look at you, even today. You’re beautiful.”

She shrugged. “I didn’t want any man. I was still in love with you, Alok.”

He felt a catch in his throat.

She went on. “And you know how it is for an Indian woman. One life, one love. Perhaps in my next life, I’ll marry another man. But in this lifetime…” She shook her head. “And not after the way it ended. Even today, with you standing right before me, I still feel like a widow. Whoever said grief doesn’t last was wrong. It’s a permanent affliction of the human heart. Let it in once, and it stays forever.”

He was silent then. The light outside the window had faded to a deep purplish dusk.

The water in the swimming pool gleamed inkyblack-mauve, flecked with the golden reflections of stars.

“So what now?” he asked at last. “Why did you set up this meeting? You did set it up, didn’t you?”

She nodded. “I knew you would take the bait. Whatever you knew of Babs Garbini fit your victim profile perfectly. I was betting you would try to appeal to her maternal instincts, the son she never had and all that crap.”

He didn’t correct her. But she sensed something in his silence and glanced at him.
“Or perhaps you were just going to do a straight old-fashioned hit and run?” she suggested. Her tone conveyed her disgust at the thought.

“What do you want, Arushi?” he asked. “Why did you arrange to have us come face to face again?”

She walked to the window, silhouetted against the sunset that wasn’t a sunset at all, merely the dwindling reflection of sunlight on Jupiter as Europa turned away from its mother planet. Illusion against illusion.

“I don’t really know,” she said. “At first, I had revenge in mind. To call you here, confront you, and then have you arrested. I wanted you to suffer as much as I did all these years. Once I knew it was you out there, killing all those women, I couldn’t just let you go on. Romancing other women. Killing them.”

“So why don’t you do it now,” he said. “Call the law. I’m on your estate, surrounded by the best security money can buy. I’m unarmed. I’d never be able to escape. You have me just where you wanted me. Do it.”

She turned again. And this time, he saw tears at last in her eyes.

“Is that what you want?” she asked. “To be arrested and sentenced to imprisonment on an asteroid for life? Or to have your life terminated and your body organs harvested at a bio farm?”

“I’m tired,” he said. “I’ve done too much killing. Betrayed too many women’s trust. You were right about that, you know. I did care about each and every one of them. That was why I started the hit and run killing these last two years. Because I couldn’t go through with the whole charade of romancing, seduction, building up a relationship only to destroy it in the end. I wanted out. This was to be my last job, can you believe that? No, you probably won’t believe that now. But it’s true. This was my last job. I was going to quit after this.”

“And do what?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Spend my money, I guess. I have accumulated a lot, you know. A very large fortune.”

He walked over to a sculpture and touched the base. “Enough to build a dream house on Europa.”

He looked up at her. Their eyes met. And for a moment, the years melted away, and they were just Arushi and Alok once again, young lovers, husband and wife, their entire lives ahead of them, every day an adventure, every year an unmapped planet waiting to be explored, a whole galaxy of possibilities still available, waiting.
And then he picked up the sculpture and raised it over his head. She flinched, covering herself instinctively.

But he didn’t throw it at her. He threw it at the showcase. The one with the antique books in it.

The brass sculpture shattered the silicon-glass front of the showcase. Falling to the ground, it cracked the marble floor, a network of spidery veins rippling out instantly. The sound was shockingly loud in the hushed silence of the estate. A fraction of a second passed during which he could hear the blood roaring in his head. And see the 23-year old Arushi being thrown from the skimmer into the Lunar dust, crying out in terror. It was his name she had cried then and it was his name she called now, instinctively: “Alok!” As she crouched half-behind the diwan, eyes wide with shock and fear.

Somewhere in the recesses of the palatial mansion, he heard the alarms sounding. It was done. The bots would be here in seconds.

“Crisis over-ride,” he said softly. “You can shut off every system. But the moment more than a certain natural amount of energy is released, security switches on again. It’s a failsafe.”

She realized that what he’d done had been a premeditated act, not an impulsive burst of anger. She rose from behind the diwan, visibly shaken.

“But I don’t understand,” she said, staring at the shattered showcase then at him. “Why did you-?”

Before she could finish, the first bots arrived, skimming silently across the polished floor. They were armed and issuing warning commands even as they came. Ordering him not to attempt any violence against any human present. Or else.

He was ready. He grabbed a shard of glass from the shattered showcase and leaped toward her.

“I’ll kill her!” he yelled at the bots. “Give me all the money, or I’ll kill her right now!”

He heard Arushi gasp audibly. Whatever she may have expected him to do next, this was not part of it.

“Alok?” he heard her say again, confused.

He looked at her, keeping the jagged dagger of glass poised strategically for visual effect, but careful not to let it get too close to her. He saw there was confusion in her eyes as she looked at his hand clutching the glass shard. But no fear. That pleased him somehow. The fact that she understood he never really meant to harm her.

It was important that she understood that.

He swung the shard around in a melodramatic gesture. Screaming at the top of his voice like a maniac in a trashy fiction. One of Babs Garbini’s fictions perhaps.

Three bots fired a single pulse apiece, striking him in the head and the heart and the legs. At least two of the shots should have been instantly fatal, but as he fell, brain screaming with the agony of multiple laser entries, he heard her cry out:
“No!”

He lay on the marble floor, steam oozing from lacerated entry wounds. The marble was icy cold on his face.

Then he felt her bend down beside him, screaming a counter-order to the bots. No further lasers cut through him.

The bots hummed and clicked furiously to one another but kept their distance.

He felt her hand touch his shoulders, turning him over gently but quickly. Desperately.

He looked up at her face, his vision blurring.

“Alok, why? We could have made a new start together! We could have had a few months before they caught up with you. Maybe even a year or two! Why did you do it?”

He strained to get the words out. “You deserve better.”

He wanted to say more. To add “You were too good for me. Always would be. That’s why I didn’t stay the first time. And that’s why I can’t stay now.”

But his body was shutting down. Like an old Chet Baker trumpet solo winding down to the end, not pumping it up like Duke or Bird or the other guys did. Simply winding down note by note, beat by beat, pulling down the shutters nice and slow. Cool jazz, they called it. And the intense heat-scarring of the lasers felt like extreme cold to his screaming nerves. The things that come to mind when the world ends. ‘She was too good for me,’ Chet sang in a smoky blues bar somewhere on Triton, and he sipped a beer and thought about a woman he had truly loved and the life they could have had together had things been different.

She leaned over him, cradling his head in her arms, pressing his face against her breasts. Crying openly now. The dam released.

He imagined that he smiled one last time. Not realizing that it was more of a twitch and a grimace. And felt something digging into his back. The Lenser. His cover story.

For some foolish reason, it struck him that he never had taken an image of the house with Europa in the background. He had wanted to take that picture. It had looked so beautiful as he approached the estate.

Like a dream house imagined by a young Earth couple, foolishly, hopelessly in love. The future rising above them like Jupiter on a clear night. Magnificent, breath-taking, stunning. Like her face at sunset on Luna.

And then the light faded completely and he knew it was too late to take the picture now. Magic hour was over.

(c) Ashok Banker 2005. All rights reserved.

May 19, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

Have Time, Will Travel: Confessions Of A Desi Time Traveller

Hi. Apologies for not posting as often as I usually do.

It’s not for lack of wanting. I’m a compulsive writer and reader, the kind who can sit all day and keep typing until they drag me away kicking and screaming.

After I first realized I seriously intended to become a writer, at age 9, I began keeping a journal.

A year or two later I had an entire shelf of journals and around the age of 14 I stopped and estimated how much I had written – it worked out to an average of around 5000 words a day.

And that’s not counting the several hundred poems, stories, plays, articles, and bits of unfinished novels – including one 3000-page monstrosity called ‘With Dawn’ (after a Tagore poem).

Anyway, to get back to the point: I’ve been travelling of late. And will continue to travel, in little hops, each time coming back briefly to civilization for a day or three depending on necessity.

Often in areas where even cellphones don’t work and there’s no power for most of the day (though, mercifully, it’s there at nights).

So blogging is just not possible.

And I’m deliberately not carrying a computer, by choice. This is strictly a non-writing trip, in the physical sense of writing.

Mentally, of course, a writer never stops writing. I once ‘wrote’ a largeish chunk of a story in my head because I didn’t have access to a typewriter, back before I owned a computer.

When I finally got to a typewriter, the words just poured out of me like water.

But then again, the words usually just pour out of me like water, or thickish bright orange-red arterial blood.

Anyway, thanks to those of you who heaped all those compliments on the stories I posted. I’m amazed that those little forgotten pieces of my past can still evoke such reactions.

Maybe I should seriously reconsider my long-ago promise to never publish a collection of my own short pieces.

Maybe. No promises though. I have a major block against writers publishing short pieces in book form. In my view, a book is a book, not a collection of previously published bits and pieces. But I’m open to changing my mind.

Also, thanks to those of you who voted on the comments link to restart the Epic India Yahoo Group. And those of you who emailed me directly as well. I count some 20-odd votes, which is not bad, considering most of you reading this blog don’t even know what the group was about.

Well, it was a kind of space where I would chat freely about anything and everything under the sun, and so could anyone else. No holds barred, on views political, or otherwise.

Though it’s not a rant group, mind you, the purpose is to further discussion on Indian literary matters, cultural ideas, history, etc.

I’ve been thinking about it while away, and one thing I wasn’t very happy about was the seclusion of the group. That is, us posting only to each other, shut-off, as it were.

I was thinking I would rather have a bulletin-board kind of space. Wherein you post your comments and they get added directly to the web page itself, for all to see.

I’m exploring both options, and one thing I can promise you, the Group will restart in June, to coincide with the launch of Armies of Hanuman in India.

So that’s about it for now.

It’s back to the travelling and researching and dreaming-and-driving that refills my writing batteries so effectively.

I’ll post from time to time, and try to cache a couple of stories or reviews to be put up at intervals.

Meanwhile, you take care.

Live well. Be good to those who love you.

Read well. Work well.

And hell, just be well.

I hear Alvin the Chipmunk and Akon calling me. They’re feeling lonely…so lonely…they’re Mr Lonely.

Aw, nuts.

May 18, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

Epic India Yahoo Group: Restart or don’t start? Vote now!

Some of you, about 50 at last count, may recall the Epic India Yahoo newsgroup I’d started sometime last year, for fans of my Ramayana books as well as people interested in Indian culture, new and old, in general.

Early this year, I had to put the group on hiatus because my other commitments, especially my Mahabharata first draft, demanded too much of my time.

But ever since then, I’ve been asked time and time again by fans and readers when I’m likely to re-start the group.

Well, it’s a difficult question. I’m not exactly sitting around footloose and fiance-free. But then again, I guess if so many of you really enjoyed the group and our discussions that much, it’s a shame to shut it down.

So I’m going to take a vote right here and now.

Use the comments link below this posting to voice your demand, if you want the group resurrected.

(If you’re not interested, you needn’t post any comment, silence is always taken to be non-interest!)

I’ll check back from time to time. If I find a substantial number of people want the group, then I’ll restart it and find time to moderate it, as well as contribute as much as possible to the discussions.

So go ahead, post your comment below. And tell your other friends/fellow Ramayana readers, or anyone interested in discussing Indian culture, books, movies, music, history, life in general, to post their comment too.

May 09, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

This is the final cover

This is the final cover for Penguin India’s edition of Armies of Hanuman: Book 4 of The Ramayana, due out in June 2005 in Indian bookstores. 

May 09, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

My Sister, The Moon: A short story

MY SISTER, THE MOON
by Ashok Banker

She woke and found herself sprawled across a strange bed in a strange house beside a strange, naked man.

The man was asleep, snoring slightly, and she rose to her elbows and stared at him for a moment.

She had no recollection of ever having seen him before in her life.

As she was dressing, he stirred and turned over. His eyes opened as she was zipping up her churidhar. “Going so soon?” he asked sleepily. “At least stay till morning.”

She went over to the window and yanked open the curtains. “It is morning.”
He blinked at the blinding glare of the April sunshine, sitting up in bed. He swung his feet over the side and stood up, stark naked, gripping her forearm as she turned to leave. He smelt of sour alcohol, sweat and maleness.

“Let me go,” she said, scared now.

“Why? Do you have to rush home to your husband? Or maybe you have to go make breakfast for your children before they leave for school!”

His hoarse laughter followed her all the way down the stairs. She stopped running only when she was out of sight of the building. She never looked back even when she was in a taxi and speeding away.

* * *

Nitin came into the kitchen as she was making eggs for the children, an omlette for Neeta, half fries for Siddesh.

“Morning,” he said, kissing her on the back of the neck. She stiffened, keenly aware that she hadn’t had time to have a shower. She turned to him, her lips trembling with fear, words and tears combining in a terrible mixture that would spill out at any moment. “Nitin,” she began. “I don’t know how to explain–.”

“Explain what?” he asked, nosing around in the fruit basket for an apple. “By the way, how was the kitty party?”

She blinked, the omlette turning brown on the tava before her. “The kitty party?”

He rinsed the apple under the kitchen tap and bit into it. “Yeah. Your weekly night playing cards with your friends. How was it? Hope you didn’t bet our house and lose it!”

She stared at him blankly. “No,” she said shortly. “No, I didn’t.”

He chucked her under the chin. “Hey, I was only joking. What are you so serious about today?” He offered her the apple. She looked at it. She could smell the sweet fruity fragrance, it smelled so fresh and pure and natural.

Virginal, perfect. She turned her head away. “Haven’t brushed my teeth yet.”

He looked over her shoulder, sniffing. “Watch it.”

She looked down and saw that she had burnt Siddesh’s omlette.

* * *

She went out for lunch with Leela. They ate at the new Mexican place on Linking Road, the one with the waiters dressed in cowboy outfits. After all the small talk was over and Leela had tried her best to keep the conversation going, she struggled in silence to eat. But finally, the weight on her mind grew unbearable and she put the spoon down and looked at her friend.

“What is it?” Leela asked curiously. “What’s wrong, Shalini?”

She told her.

Leela put her spoon down too, the food forgotten. “Oh my God,” she said, repeating it half a dozen times. “Oh my God, oh my God.”

Afterwards, they parked the car at Carter Road and looked out at the sea. It was hot and she had to keep pressing the accelerator from time to time for the A/C to work properly. But at least they had privacy.

“So you’re telling me that you woke up this morning in bed with a strange man? And you had slept the night with him? And this wasn’t the first time? My God, Shalu, how could you do such a thing? Who is this guy anyway?”

“No, you don’t understand,” she explained, staring straight out at the sunlight dancing off the surface of the glass-topped ocean. “It’s not the same man. Each time it’s a different one.”

She felt Leela staring at her in horror.

“How many were there altogether, Shalu?” Leela asked this in a low, almost reverential tone.

“I don’t know. I don’t really remember. Eight or nine, I think. Maybe more. I never remember anything between the time I leave the house and the time I wake up in bed with these men. Nothing in between.”

“It must be some kind of fugue,” Leela said.

“What?”

“Fugue. It’s a kind of memory loss where the person doesn’t even realize she or he’s lost a memory. Like a lapse. Or a jump in time. You should see a doctor, Shalu.”

“No,” she said vehemently, surprised at the loudness of her own voice. “No, Leela,” she continued in a quieter voice. “I can’t tell anyone else until I know what’s happening to me.”

“But that’s the whole point. You need help, professional help.”

“No, you don’t understand.” She looked at Leela and saw the strange mixture of concern and awe in her friend’s eyes. “I don’t think I’m sick, mentally or otherwise. I think I’m…”

“Yes?”

She looked down, embarrassed to say the word aloud in the bright gaudy light of day. “I think I’m possessed.”

* * *

The room was dark and damp. The aroma of incense was so strong, it insinuated itself into Shalini’s sinus, and made her feel she was about to sneeze. The smoke from the incense burner and agarbattis cast wraiths of shadow against the dim indirect lighting. Like ghosts mating in thin air.

“She wants you to sit,” Leela explained in a low voice. She had warned Shalini before coming to speak as softly as possible inside the house. Shalini sat on the low wooden stool and looked up into the shadowy face of Bhakti Maa. She could barely make out a wizened but once-beautiful visage half concealed by thick, lustrous white hair. A heavy bead necklace, large gleaming earrings.

Strange marks on her face, neck, and bared shoulders. And a sense of immense calm and strength. Bhakti Maa bent slightly and took Shalini’s hands in her own. Shalini felt the lined, leathery surface of the old woman’s hands rasping against her smooth palms and goosebumps broke out on her forearms and legs.

Bhakti Maa’s hands were ice cold and strong like a man’s.

“Should I tell her my problem?” she asked, after a long moment had passed and no word had been uttered by either of them. Leela whispered to her that Bhakti Maa didn’t need to be told. She was now absorbing all Shalini’s thoughts, emotions, memories through her hands. Shalini wanted to ask another question, but just then Bhakti Maa intoned an unintelligible chant in what sounded like Sanskrit. Leela said, “She says you have a sister. This sister walks beside you unseen through your life. She is always with you.”

“I’m an only child,” Shalini replied. “I have no sister.”

Bhakti Maa spoke again, Leela translated. “This is your spirit sister. Your shadow self. Just as the Mother Earth is always accompanied by her sister the Moon, so also you are always with your shadow.”

“Ask her about the fugues, the memory lapses. Why do they happen? How do I make them stop?”

Leela spoke again. With a little frisson of shock, Shalini realized that they were not speaking Sanskrit, just plain Hindi. It was Bhakti Maa’s accent that made it seem so alien and unintelligible.

“They happen when your sister self takes over your body. You are two women sharing one body. Sometimes, your sister wishes to do things you would not approve of, so she puts you to sleep, so to speak, and does as she desires.”

Shalini’s palms were screaming with sensation. It felt like she had plunged her hands in a bucket of ice water. Or blazing coals. She couldn’t tell which.

“How do I make it stop? Can she exorcize me?”

“She says you are not possessed. This is not some rogue demon who has taken your body by force. Your sister has always been with you, since birth. You are inseparable.”

“But it has to stop!” Shalini cried out, on the verge of tears now. “I have a husband, children. I can’t go on sleeping with strange men! How do I make it stop?”

Bhakti Maa was silent for a long time. Then she released Shalini’s hands and laid her palms on Shalini’s chest. The sensation was electrifying. It was like being struck by two electric pads, the kind used by Emergency Medical units to shock heart patients back to life.

When she awoke, she was walking down the stairs of the old building, guided by Leela.

“What happened?” she asked as they emerged from the ancient brownstone building into the slanting light of evening. Traffic flowed endlessly down Mohammedali Road, an endless chrome river.

“You went to sleep,” Leela said quietly as they got into the car. “Your sister took over.”

Shalini waited until Leela had manoeuvred the Maruti 800 out of the narrow, pedestrian-packed lane and onto the main road. “What did she say? This so-called sister of mine?”

Leela glanced at her sharply. “You must not mock it. These are great, powerful forces. Some women would consider you blessed for having such a spirit shadow always by your side. It is akin to having the Devi with you.”

“They can have it for all I care. It’s not a blessing to me, it’s a curse.”

Shalini heard the bitterness in her own voice, the frustration, the guilt and shame.

“Shalini, you must understand. This is you, as much a part of yourself as your mind, your heart, your soul. Nothing can change it. Or make it go away.”

“It’s bullshit, Leela!” Her voice was loud enough to carry above the sound of blaring horns at a traffic signal. “You were right earlier. I’m sick. I need to see a doctor, a psychiatrist.”

“Shalini, don’t you see? That’s why you yourself said you were possessed, not sick. You sensed it. When you were unconscious, your sister spoke to us. She told us about how she had often put you to sleep during your childhood. Like the time when you found yourself on the top of the tamarind tree in your grandmother’s garden with no recollection of how you got up there? Or the time when you found yourself naked in the forest and there were signs that a wolf had been nearby without harming you? Or the time–.”

“Shut up!” she screamed. A scooter rider beside the car looked at them, astonished. She noticed, inanely, that the man wasn’t wearing his helmet. “Shut up! That’s all lies. Nothing like that ever happened. She just made that all up, the old witch!”

“No, Shalini,” Leela said gently. “You can ask your grandmother to confirm it. I’m sure she’ll corroborate the stories.”

Shalini put her hands over her ears and refused to listen further.

When she got home, she called up her family doctor and asked him for a reference to a good psychiatrist.

* * *

The psychiatrist smiled at her across his polished wooden desk. “Well, Mrs Sharma. The good news is that you’re a normal, healthy woman. This is a natural phase of maturation that takes place in every woman’s life. With the proper adjustments, there is no reason why you cannot enjoy the same quality of life that you have been experiencing thus far.”

“What are you saying?” she asked, puzzled.

He nodded sagely, as if speaking to a small child who had asked where babies came from. “Menopause is not an end. It is the beginning of a glorious new phase of womanhood.”

“Menopause?” Shalini repeated. “But I’m only–.”

“Yes, yes,” he agreed. “It is unusual. But there’s no mistaking the signs. Of course, you already have two beautiful children, so you should not feel any lack.”

“How do you know they’re beautiful?” she asked, reaching in her handbag for her wallet. “You’ve never even met my children.”

He smiled broadly. “From looking at you, Mrs Sharma. Like breeds like.”

His smile seemed like a leer. She all but threw his fee at him and walked out quickly through the reception of the clinic, her heels clacking embarassingly loudly.

* * *

Nitin was so understanding. He put his arms around her and grinned widely.

“Okay. It’s about time you caught up. And I thought I was the only one growing old.”

“I’m not old, Nitin,” she said irritably. “I’m just past child-bearing age, that’s all.”

“Yeah? Well, so am I!” He lowered his face to the nape of her neck and began nuzzling her seductively. “But not too old to feel the urge to procreate!”

“That’s not procreating,” she said, enjoying his attention. “That’s just plain masthi!”

Later, as they lay entwined in bed, the house silent and still in the deep arms of the night, she experienced a great urge to wake him and tell him about the other expert opinion she had sought.
The non-medical, non-scientific one: Bhakti Maa’s explanation.

But that would mean telling him about the fugues, and what happened during them. And she was still not ready to confess that much. Perhaps she would never be.

She woke again later that night and thought she had heard someone call her name. She rose from the bed and went to the balcony. The curtains were billowing inwards, pushed by a gentle sea breeze. She could smell jasmine and night queen on the soft air. Her nightgown felt smooth and sensuous against her bare thighs. She went out onto the balcony and looked down. In the garden just below their first floor flat, she thought she saw a shadow move in the darkness. Then a cloud passed and she saw it was just the shadow of the moon.

She looked up and was awed. The vastness, the silvery brightness, the dazzling glow. Its full, pregnant form hovered above her, washing her in a waterfall of light. Celestial glory glowed on her skin, awakening every pore.

She turned and looked at the bed. And saw herself, lying asleep beside Nitin.

In her husband’s bed, in his arms.

It was her, lying there asleep. And yet she was here too. In the moonlight.

She went out of the house and down the stairs silently. She ran down the deserted street, her nightgown flapping behind her. She went in search of her naked desires. In search of her forbidden fruit. She went with no care of what lay behind her or ahead. Of her children asleep in their beds. Or her husband.

She went where the moonlight led her, down strange paths and even stranger turns.

Back in her house, in her bed, the woman who was also Shalini slept on.

Blissful, unaware, at peace. As the night grew older, the lines on her face faded and her features settled into a gentle, placid restfulness. The moonlight crept across the room until it bathed her in its wash. She stirred as it caressed her, sighing softly, then turned over and slept without waking until morning.

(c) Ashok Banker 2005. All rights reserved.

May 06, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

In this cup, the ocean: A short story

This one is an oldie but goodie from my back drawer.

PS: The little factoid about the ocean is true, I had read it in a magazine someplace and it was the spark that led me to the story. The story itself was completely made up, as the best stories usually are.

In this cup, the oceanby Ashok Banker

She found it in on the topmost shelf of his book cupboard, behind a collection of Satyajit Ray’s Feluda novels. It was wrapped inside a brown paper envelope, the pages inside neither punched nor filed as he usually did with all his work.

On the title page it said simply, Screenplay for feature film, and below the address line he had written in his small patient hand: Show to Girish.

The sight of his handwriting made her blink and she swiped at her eyes unconsciously, forgetting the book-dust on her hands. Cobwebs caught in her hair and her cheeks turned grimy.

As she washed her hands at the basin, it occurred to her: This is his dust. Some part of Alok is in this dust too. She had read somewhere that matter does not get destroyed, it is recycled and it recirculates.

The writer had gone on to give an example. If we were to pour a cup of water into the ocean, then return after several years, the molecules of water we had poured would have mingled with the molecules of ocean water, would have exchanged what the writer called molecular memory. So in fact, there would be more molecules of our original cup of water than before.

It was a puzzling concept and she had put the book aside, uncomprehending. Alok had looked at her in irritation and said, “At least try to exercise your mind, no?”

But she had gone out of the room and started watching an Antakshari programme on television instead. Now, she pulled her hands out of the stream of water from the tap and looked at them closely, searching for scientific evidence of Alok.

All she saw were the hands of an aging woman. The hands of a widow.

She tried to read the screenplay later that night, when everything was quiet. She no longer watched television–had not switched on the set in seven months, since….since Alok.

But when she turned the title page, she was confronted with a blank page with only one sentence on it: To my wife, Revathi, for everything.

The line was typewritten on the old portable Remington he always used, the one with the broken r. So all the r’s were written in by hand. Just two in this sentence, evathi and eve ything.

But just those two little alphabets, written in his careful rounded hand, so small, so perfect, broke her heart.

The tears came and for the first time in months, she made no attempt to stop them, just let them flow. They flowed. Enough to fill a cup to pour into the ocean, she thought irrationally.

A few days later, she met Sunanda on Market Road, near the station. They proferred everyday pleasantries, exchanged information on people, the usual things.

Sunanda looked unlike her usual self, so Revathi asked: “Everything okay at home?”

She sighed, a long melodramatic sigh, adjusted her pallo, and said, “You know him.”

“Is he drinking again?”

“No, not that. The film.”

Revathi frowned. “Which one?”

Sunanda touched her arm gently. “You don’t know about this one. It’s the first one he’s doing without….”

She left the sentence unfinished.

Revathi finished it for her: “Without Alok.”

Sunanda nodded.

“Is he having some problem with it? Finance?”

“No. In fact, you won’t believe it, but this time they came to him, they called him, NFDC. They asked why he hadn’t approached them with a film this year.”

“So then what’s the problem?”

“He doesn’t have a good script.”

Revathi looked at her. Sunanda’s eyes were lined with kajal, she used too much of it, but it set off her light green eyes nicely. “He’s looking for a script?”

Sunanda sighed again. “He hired some writer, a novelist, to write a script. Worked on it for three months. But it turned out useless. He’s very frustrated now. He has the go-ahead, the budget sanction, the actors’ dates, everything. He’s afraid NFDC will change its mind, cancel the project. And,” she swallowed, adjusting her pallo again. “We need this film, Revathi. He hasn’t had any income for nearly one year. Rohit is going to start college next month, and…You know how it is.”

Revathi said: “I have a script.”

Sunanda looked at her. “You’ve been writing?”

“No, no, no,” she said impatiently. “It’s one of his. Alok’s. He must have written it before…Before he went to hospital for that last operation. He never told me about it. I found it yesterday.”

Sunanda’s eyes lit up. “Revathi, that’s wonderful. Wait till I tell Girish. He’ll be thrilled!”

Revathi was about to say something, then realized she didn’t need to say anything.

Girish called her the day after he read it.

“Didi,” he said. He had always called her didi, ever since he and Alok and she had met in college together. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Is it what you were looking for?”

“Didi, it’s wonderful. His best yet.”

He talked to her for close to half an hour, telling her about how much he missed Alok, how these brash young scriptwriters–”telewriters” he called them derisively–weren’t a patch on the old guard.

He droned on about the excessive influence of Hollywood, how Steven Spielberg and George Lucas had ruined cinema, brought it down to the level of children’s entertainment, how Subhash Ghai in a recent interview had said that he made movies for 13-year-olds. They were familiar arguments, she had heard them all, argued hotly over drinks on the verandah of their flat or in the little garden behind Girish’s row house.

She could almost hear Alok’s gruff gravel pitching itself against Girish’s sharp, grating tenor. She felt something stir in her breast, a little sparrow of joy. It was fate, she thought. That she had decided to clean that book cupboard that day, and that Girish had been unable to find another scriptwriter all these months.

She swiped at her face, remembering the cobwebs, wishing they were still there, that she hadn’t washed them off.

The film commenced shooting in July. Ironically, the script was set in the monsoons. So the timing was perfect. It rained on the first day of shooting, and the scene called for rain. Girish told the unit to stay where they were, told the rain machines to shut down and move away, and shot the scene in natural rain.

Revathi was tempted to step out into the shower, to let it fall on her face, her arms, drench her from head to toe, the way she and Alok had always done on the first day of the rains. But there were too many people around, and she was too old for such behaviour. Widows must behave with dignity, her mother’s voice rang in her ears.

That night, she poured herself an inch of whisky from a half bottle that still remained of Alok’s stock. Two fingers actually. Just the way she had poured it for 27 years. She raised it in the air, to his photograph on the wall, garlanded and ash-smeared. “Salut!” she said. And drank it all down in one huge gulp. He had hated saying Cheers, had always preferred the more Russian toast.

She coughed violently, and thumped her own chest. “Revathi,” she scolded. “How many times have I told you? Sip it, savour it! But you never learn.”

When the film was completed, she was invited to several previews and screenings. For some reason, she didn’t go. She couldn’t explain it either to herself or to Girish, Sunanda, or even Ravi, the Chairman of NFDC, who called her personally to invite her for the official preview. She made excuses each time, citing her health, arthritis, anything. But deep within her, she knew it was too much.

It was the same thing that had prevented her from reading the script. Like those two r’s on the dedication page. There would be a hundred tiny details that she was certain would be there in the film, transmuted from the script to the screen with loving care by Girish. And each of those details, little moments, silences, bits of dialogue, characterizations, would speak of Alok, yell his name, and she would break down there in the preview theatre, in front of everyone, and go to pieces.

So she avoided the screenings.

The film released. She was in the library, searching for a good book to borrow. The choice was between a Loveswept romance and a new literary award-winning novel by an Indian author. Alok would have insisted she take the literary novel of course.

Finally she took the Loveswept. She needed to relax. Alok would have disapproved loudly.

When she reached home, Girish and Sunanda were waiting for her. With a large box of mithai in Sunanda’s hands. The moment she got out of the auto-rikshaw, they came running up and Sunanda put a huge ladoo in her mouth.

“Arre?” she said, laughing. “Kya hua? Rohit passed his C.A. entrance or what?”

Girish put an envelope in her hands. It was very thin. She looked at it. “What is this?” But she already knew what it was: a cheque. The final payment for the script.

“It’s a hit,” he said. And his eyes filled with tears. “It’s a very big hit, didi. My first hit. After 9 films!” And then he bent to touch her feet, catching her by surprise.

“No, don’t,” she said. And began to cry too. They all stood there in the lobby of her cooperative housing society and cried as the bhajiwallahs and building residents came and went, staring at them curiously.

She received many more cheques. Girish had ensured himself and Alok a portion of the profits of the film. Now that the film was a hit, the royalties came in.

Suddenly, she had more money than she had ever seen before in such a short span. Not rich, far from that. But comfortable.

But what would she do with all this money? What use could she possibly have for so much excess cash? “Don’t be silly,” her mother said, when she talked of giving it away to charity. “Charity begins at home. Go on a holiday. You need a vacation from yourself.”

For once, she realized, her mother was right. She needed a vacation from herself, from Revathi.
It was a year and a half since Alok’s death. It was time. She went to Kodaikanal. For no other reason than the fact that it was one place she and Alok had never gone together. She needed to make a fresh start, to avoid bumping into memories at every corner.

It rained a lot while she was there, and she could hardly move out of the little hotel.

But the view was lovely and she had carried a lot of books. She kept a diary during the trip and enjoyed it so much, it made her remember how she had wanted to write short stories for magazines, once upon a time, a long long time ago.

In Mysore, she began a short story. It wasn’t very good, in her opinion. But it gave her a sense of satisfaction, of pleasure.

In Kerala she rode an elephant, something she hadn’t done since she was a little girl. A group of children ran alongside the elephant, shouting to her, teasing the mahout, singing songs that seemed to make perfect sense even though she knew not a word of Malayalam.

She laughed and enjoyed the warmth of the sunlight on her back and arms. She realized she no longer regretted not having had children. She had come to terms with it at last. She wrote long letters to her mother, surprising herself with her effusiveness and confidence. She realized that her father had always been afraid of her mother, that was why he had kept away from her, spending more time with her brothers instead.

She realized also that for all her crustiness her mother was brittle on the outside, soft on the inside, like a sweet kachori. She wondered why she had never seen all these things before. She took up the short story again, and suddenly she saw its weaknesses–and how to correct them. She resolved to type it out when she went back to Bombay, and to send it out to a woman’s magazine.
When she returned home, the flat seemed strange. It had changed somehow. She walked through the rooms several times, looking around quizically, trying to understand. Had someone shifted the furniture around? Had the architecture itself changed–impossible! Then she understood. The house hadn’t changed at all. It was she who had changed.

She sent the short story. It came back a month later with a warm letter from the magazine’s editor. They couldn’t publish this one, but if she had other stories, they would be happy to see them. She wrote very well, they said.

In fact, she had written two more.

She sent them off the very same day. And got an acceptance for one a few weeks later. When the issue with her story in it was published, she stood there at the magazine stall, staring at her name printed in small bold italics and felt a shiver of excitement. She was a writer!

She made changes around the flat. She invited her mother over and fussed over her like a daughter-in-law over a mother-in-law.

Her mother was grouchy but pleased. “In your old age, you’re getting new josh,” she said wryly. “What are you putting in your tea these days?”

They went out for lunch together to a restaurant. Something she had never done with her mother in her entire life, not just the two of them alone.

She read out her short stories to her mother–who didn’t approve of the modern relationships she described of course, but admitted gruffly: “Theek hai, for the modern zamaana, it’s not bad.”

One day in late August, three years after Alok’s death, she filled a cup with water from the washbasin and took it down to the sea. It was difficult walking all the way with the cup in her hands, trying not to spill any, but she managed. She kept a hand over the top to prevent it from spilling.

When she reached the sea, the tide was out. She walked far out on the cold wet sand until she reached the foamy lip. She stood for a moment, looking out at the storm-swept sea, the monsoon-fogged sky.

Then she walked out into the waves, just a little way, enough to wet the bottom of her saree but it didn’t matter. She felt like she was putting Ganpathi out to sea, although it was years since she had kept a Ganpathi at home. Alok had never approved. Perhaps this year she would keep one. Yes. She would.

She stopped when the water was knee-deep. She raised the cup to the sky for a moment, unsure of what to do.

Then she upended it, letting the water flow out. It glimmered against the luminescent monsoon light, like mercury. Quicksilver. Shining. Diamond-bright.

“Goodbye, Alok,” she said. But the words never came out. They danced in her mind, like fireflies, then darted away.

It rained on the way home. She enjoyed the water on her face, her arms, her breasts. It was cool, refreshing, invigorating.

She went home and bathed and changed.

When she had finished dinner, she took out the brown paper envelope. The same one in which she had found it originally.

She took out the script, now neatly typed out and filed. And she began to read it. This time, she didn’t cry when she turned to the dedication page. She went past it and read on all the way to the end.

(c) Ashok Banker 2005. All rights reserved.

May 04, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

Rhyming ecopoesis with piss and other literary debuts: Book review of Picador New Writing 13

(This review appeared earlier in The Hindustan Times, New Delhi.)

New Writing 13
Edited by Toby Litt & Ali Smith
Picador
Indian price L 4.99
paperback; 356 pages

This paperback anthology features 46 disparate short stories and poems under the very broad thematic umbrella of ‘new writing from established writers and names to watch’.

Published in association with The British Council and Arts Council, England, it’s an annual round-up of promising new talent, as well as old talent that has, presumably, lived up to its earlier promise.

It’s one of several similar annual paperback roundups like the Granta series that do for British fiction and poetry what magazines like New Yorker, Esquire and Atlantic Monthly do in the USA: provide a glimpse of what’s new, what’s hot, and what’s not.

Like any such anthology, it’s a mixed bag, a gunny sack from which you warily pull out a few gems, a lot of elegantly composed writerly pieces, a couple of innovative showoffish contributions, and the now inevitable Asian writers – who, it must be said, spring out jack-heeled from the rest of the bunch.

Overall, this is an unremarkable collection.

You could skip it and not miss out on anything important.

The best writers are best read elsewhere – David Mitchell, Fay Weldon, Shyam Selvedurai, Romesh Gunesekara, Nicola Barker, Lawrence Norfolk all have novels or even short story collections that command more attention than their slight contributions here.

So it’s really the new ‘discoveries’ that keep you turning the pages, in the hope of finding that one brilliant writer you’ve never heard of before.

Editors Toby Litt and Ali Smith seem painfully aware of this. In their introduction they speak of the anticipation and care with which they perused the unsolicited submissions, hoping to find that gem of a new talent.

Instead, they admit, what they found was a dismaying number of stories set in what they rightly call ‘Short-Story-Land’, that ‘strange, pseudo-English country’ where ‘peculiarly short-story-like things happen’.

Anyone who has been stranded in an airport with too many issues of New Yorker would understand at once what they mean.

They were also disappointed by the ‘dauntingly undaring’ submissions from women writers, most of which were ‘disappointingly domestic, the opposite of risk-taking’.

In the end, though, they express confidence that ‘some of the names here you’ve never heard before will become very familiar’.

It’s a dubious expectation: at least one of the writers included, John Logan, seems to have become a professional ‘new talent’ with extracts from his various novels included in several such literary anthologies over the years, without a single novel being taken up by either an agent or a publisher.

Others, like Tim Jarvis, Donald Paterson, Martin Ouvry, wax eloquent in their author bios at the back of the book about their first novels-in-progress, clearly hoping to lure agents and editors.

But there is genuine talent on display here.

Azmeena Ladha’s Twenty Gods and the Pomegranate Seeds is a marvelously wrought story with a delicacy of style and phrase that’s very accomplished for a debutante.

Romesh Gunesekara’s Goat, while not quite a successful story in itself, has a beautifully written last paragraph that redeems the entire story.

Kamila Shamsie’s Miscarriage, while not particularly remarkable as a story, is eeirily reminiscent of Michael Oondatje in its use of cinematic-literary cross-cuts: “The boy tripped, hit his chin on the handlebar of a bicycle. The man snapped open his lighter and, scant feet away, the boy’s mouth filled with blood.”

Heloise Shepherd, apparently still 18 and studying at University, turns in a perfectly shaped story that is more readable than many others in this book.

The borders between literary fiction and genre fiction having been boldly crossed by giants of the contemporary novel like Haruki Murakami, Kazuo Ishiguro and David Mitchell, it’s not surprising to find strong elements of fantasy, science fiction and horror in several of the stories.

A.S. Irvine’s Novel is a wild, whacked-out, inventively imaginative ride through one writer’s imagination. Niall Griffiths’ Adrenalin, Tim Jarvis’ Beyond the Pale and Peter Hobbs’ Deep Blue Sea, apart from the fact that all three writers’ names end with ‘s’, are equally playful in their use of genre tropes for literary effect.

The other running theme is of art, with Lawrence Norfolk’s very enjoyable essay The Words on the Page and the Noise in My Head vying with Paul Bailey’s The Stricken Nightingale and several others for the best ‘writing about writing’.

But veteran Muriel Spark trumps them all with a short yet amusingly insightful poem Authors’ Ghosts.

David Mitchell, who, with just three novels, deservedly occupies the highest place among contemporary novelists, turns in a rare short offering, Hangman, about the plight of a stuttering schoolboy.

Speaking of poetry, Ramona Herdman’s Eight poems are beautiful and almost worth the price of admission themselves.

As are Ciaran Carson’s simple, and simply splendid The Lemon Trees and Ballad Written in a Hospital.

But my personal favourite was Gerard Woodward’s Ecopoesis, apart from the fact that any poet who can rhyme ecopoesis with piss has my admiration.

So in the end, do we make any new discoveries after all?

Well, let’s see.

There’s Azmeena Ladha, Kamila Shamsie, A.S. Irvine, Ramona Herdman, Gerard Woodward who stand out.

But for me personally, Martin Ouvry’s Narcissus is simply brilliant, perhaps the best piece in the book.

It’s for this kind of unexpected brilliance that you feel, that perhaps anthologies like this aren’t an exercise in futility. Bring on New Writing 14.

May 03, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

Setting Free the Skeletons: Book review of Hollywood Animal by Joe Eszterhas

Lotus House Books, one of my favourite bookstores in Mumbai, is having a clearance sale.

Those of you who know the place, also know that a couple of years ago Lotus moved from its quiet idyllic off-S.V. Road location to a petrol pump.

The new store location was better for parking, sure, but it had none of the charm and peacefulness of the original location. So it comes as a great relief to know the store’s moving back.

Virat Chandok, one of the few bookstore professionals whose recommendations I always follow – and said recos always turn out to be worth their price in gold – was there, and when I asked him, as I always do, for a reco, he suggested Mario Vargas Llosa’s Feast of the Goat.

So that’s definitely now on my MBR list (Must Be Read list, as against my TBR list which is simply To Be Read). I’d read Llosa’s Aunt Julia and The Scriptwriter years ago and liked it, but nothing since.

We also talked about Orhan Pamuk who’s now suddenly become the new ‘overnight’ literary sensation, and about how, long before My Name is Red (Pamuk’s best new work) and Snow (his newest novel) he was writing brilliant, quirkily original Kafka-meets-Phil-Dick-in-the-middle-east kind of novels, and how the literary world is as subject to fashion as, well, the fashion world.

I also bumped into young Chandrahas Choudhry, a writer working with Wisden Cricket Almanac (though he said he’s about to leave). I didn’t recognize him at all, but he introduced himself, and I immediately remembered him as a child prodigy writer who had had a book published when he was 14.

The book was published by Rupa & Co, who were my publishers at the time (about ten years ago) and Chandrahas and his father had visited my house a few times to ask my advice about his pursuing a literary career.

Later, I remember Chandrahas calling to ask for advice on becoming a cricket commentator, sort of like Harsha Bhogle, and since he’s now with Wisden (for a few more days anyway), I guess cricket remains a great love for him.

I remember thinking back when his first book was published that any writer who gets a book published at 14 can go only one of two ways: Straight to the stratosphere, in which case he becomes, like, a Jonathon Safran Foer (whose new book has been on my MBR list for months now, not because of the media hype over it but because I was one of the early discoverers of his brilliant debut Everything is Illuminated) and becomes a Young Turk, or he never writes another book again, or at least not for a decade or two.

I really wish Chandrahas well, and hope he can cling to his original dream. Or not, if he doesn’t want to. Because in the end, it’s what you want to do with yourself, not what life does with you, that matters.

Anyway, that day I only picked up a copy of an old Le Carre, one of the few I missed out on over the years (it was Single & Single, and for the record, my favourite Le Carres are The Little Drummer Girl and The Night Manager).

Later, I dropped by at Danai, one of my other favourite bookstores.

The thing I really love about Danai (and Lotus) is the number of unusual, really good, new books they stock that you don’t usually find anywhere else. Like they had piles of copies of David Gregory Roberts’ Shantaram long before any other bookstore in town – in fact, they still do.

Anyone who knows and loves books as much as I do, knows that no two bookstores have exactly the same selection of books (apart from the typical airport ‘top ten’ bestsellers, about which we shall speak no more), not even two branches of a chain store.

This is because each bookstore attracts a different clientele, sometimes subtly different, but more often totally different.

So Strand, Lotus and Danai, while all are excellent literary lovers’ stores, will have completely different kinds of books.

In fact, my friend Virat at Lotus, is often as likely to recommend a book he bought at Strand.

That’s mainly because Strand has the ability to import and stock, in sizable numbers sometimes, books which no other store in India can get hold of easily.

Anyway, I picked up three books at Danai.

One was a very interesting new look at the man history remembers as Vishnugupta, or Kautilya, or Chanakya.

It’s called Building an Empire: Chanakya Revisited by Mohan Mishra and is a very interesting reappraisal of the legendary king-maker brahmin, based largely on new historical material and interpretations of Arthashastra.

A second book was The Great Moghuls by Bamber Gascoigne, an interesting and short but insightful look into our former sultanate masters.

Though I personally think Emperors of the Peacock Throne by Abraham Eraly is the best single-volume history of the Moghul Raj.

The third book was Hollywood Animal by Joe Eszterhas.

Eszterhas is the big-name Hollywood screenwriter (you have to say ‘screen’writer because ‘scriptwriter’ could imply even television writing, and over there, the difference in pride, prestige and price is enormous) who wrote films like Basic Instinct, Jagged Edge, Jade, Showgirls and Flashdance, among many others.

He’s notorious for his bullish temperament, personally colourful life, and his huge earnings. Said to be the highest paid screenwriter in Hollywood (which means the world, basically), I thought his life would be an interesting insight into the workings of the movie biz.

I haven’t read a good biography lately, and after all the historical, archaelogical and academic research I’ve been doing for the past couple of months, I thought a nice ‘writing life’ bio would cleanse my palate.

What I didn’t expect was a movie that was more exciting and thrilling to read than any of Eszterhas’s films!

Hollywood Animal more than lives up to its name.

It’s the biography of a man who lived (and by all accounts, still lives) a larger-than-life life in the world’s most sadistic, masochistic, brutal creative enclave.

Well, technically, he doesn’t live in Hollywood, he only works there, but you get my point: The book exposes more sordid stories of drugs, sex, money-grabbing deals, and other shenanigans in Hollywood than any dozen biographies of movie stars or directors.

Eszterhas grabs his life story, as well as the stor of the hundreds of big-name directors, producers, stars, studio heads, agents, and other people he interacted with over a thirty-year career, and throws it at you in small bite-sized portions, short paragraphs set off by white space, like little sound-bites.

The shocks keep coming at you so fast you just can’t put the book down.

I started to read a page or two and ended up with half the book done, at 3 in the morning, and I still had to force myself to put it down.

I won’t spell out any of the incidents and anecdotes mentioned in the book, there are just too many to even count, but let me tell you, if you want a book that shows you Hollywood with no holds barred, this is the one.

It blows your brain.

Be warned: it’s very explicit in its language, contents, details.

Which is partly why it’s hugely fun to read.

Probably the best ‘Hollywood Insiders’ story I’ve read since Julia Phillips’ You’ll Never Eat Lunch and William Goldman’s Adventures In The Screen Trade.

Just remember, this is the guy who wrote Basic Instinct.

And this book is ten times as filled with ‘masala’ as that film!

It made me heave a giant sigh of relief that I never went over there, even though I have had a couple of offers to write Hollywood scripts, one a pretty sizable offer.

I couldn’t have survived a day.

How someone like Eszterhas not only survived, but thrived, is itself a lesson worth learning – it takes a shark to swim with the sharks. And from his own bio, it’s evident that Eszterhas is the Great White of Hollywood screenwriters.

And to a writer, his biography is like what the biography of Jaws would be to other sharks!

It’s a Must Read, if you have even the slightest interest in Hollywood films, lifestyles, or in how insane Americans can be in general, and movie people in particular.

Check it out.

And I can guarantee that after you finish reading it, you’ll never want to eat lunch in that town again!

May 01, 2005 | Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »