Posted by apu on Aug 29, 2008 in
The Literary life Lately, I’ve been reading a collection of Somerset Maugham’s short stories. I’m reading Maugham after a very, very long time, and I don’t remember enjoying his work, especially the short stories, this much when I was younger. For one thing, I was struck by the clarity which his descriptions produce. Reading them, it is possible to immediately see the South-east Asian countryside setting he describes or an elderly connoisseur of art fallen on hard times or a colonial service official lording it over his minions. Perhaps I am much more impressed by them now that I am trying my hand at short stories more often, and description and setting are things I seem to struggle with. But that’s not really what I want to talk about here.
What really startled me was the casualness with which racial differences and assumptions of superiority and inferiority are presented. Many of the stories are set in Britain’s then existing empire - parts of the Polynesian Islands, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia. Often, the main character is a colonial service man, or a planter or businessman looking to make a fortune in the colonies. In story after story after story, the natives are weak, ineffectual, timid, yet vengeful, cunning and capable of using devious means to achieve their ends. It is not just that the natives are this way, the (white) narrator or protagonists take great pains to remind us that they cannot help being this way. That is the way of their race, after all. Where the natives are presented in a more kindly light, it is as simple children who need the strong hand of the white administrator to guide them. They know little what is good for them, and would be better off trusting the white man’s knowledge.
While admiring the language and craft of the stories, the modern reader finds it very difficult to glide over these generalisations, so easily presented. I was at a bit of a loss as to what to make of them. I could think of three different scenarios.
The first is that these are stories set in the colonial era, where this was likely to be the mindset of most people. As such, Maugham may not have subscribed to them himself, but was faithful to the dominant views of the time. His characters simply think and speak the way most people of the time would have. In this view, there is a clear-cut line between the author and his narratives. In a sense, it becomes easier to enjoy the stories as just stories.
The second is that Maugham himself is likely to have subscribed to the general view of the white people of the time, which is that they were fundamentally different from and superior to other races. The stories lend some support to this - story after story repeats the racial distinction theory in such detail that it is difficult to imagine the author having a very different view. Few characters question this distinction or act in a manner to discredit it even a little. In general though, I’m not a big fan of mixing up an author with what his characters say and do. Further, in some stories, Maugham takes a good poke at other distinctions, such as differences of class. In one story, first class passengers on a cruise liner face the weighty question of whether they should allow second class passengers to participate at a dance. Clearly Maugham makes the episode, and by inference, the distinctions behind it, seem absurd. Why he doesn’t ever do this in the case of race - I don’t know. Does it imply that he identified with the views of his characters?
The third way of looking at it is that the question is not whether Maugham himself was a racist or not. The age in which he lived subscribed to these views to such an extent that it allowed him to portray one character after another in a manner which we find shocking today, but would not then have been anything out of the ordinary. But - Maugham did not live in the early 1800s, he lived from 1874 to 1965. Which means that most of his writing would have been done in the period between 1900 and 1940. Was the early 20th century that primitive in its thought? The question I would then be interested in is, were other contemporary novelists adopting the same tone ? If yes, at what point of time really did it become incorrect to talk of racial distinctions in this manner? Note, I’m not talking about the point when people have stopped generalising about race and behaviour, just the point when people were no longer comfortable doing it in such a blatant manner!
Perhaps other readers interested in literature and its relationship with caste/race/class can thow some light on this.
Tags: Book Reviews, racism in fiction, somerset maugham
Posted by apu on Aug 13, 2008 in
The Literary life I’ve just finished reading noted anthropologist Richard Leakey’s lucid book on human evolution, ‘The Origin of Humankind’. In school, dreary teaching often made me feel as though science was fundamentally un-understandable. Biology was better than chemistry, which in turn was better than physics, the biggest bogey of all; still, this fear of science was almost as big a reason for my turning to an arts education, as my own interest in literature. Older (and hopefully wiser), in the last few years, I’ve realized the wonderful perspective science offers - the hugely expanded view of the world that it gives us.
Some people complain that science, and the knowledge it brings, destroys the mystery of things. Reading books like the Origin of Humankind, makes me feel, that there are more mysteries than ever, that science brings along with it. The book details the origin of humankind from the emerging of bipedalism - to the development of tool use and hunting - and finally to some of the features that define homo sapiens, such as existence of consciousness and a sense of self, the development of morality, aesthetic sense and technological progress beyond the ability of other species.
What is interesting is that, we laypeople, often tend to think of scientific discoveries as a linear, accumulative process - essentially, X discovers A1, after some time, Y discovers A1 plus…and so on. But, the scientific world doesn’t seem to quite work like that (or not all the time). X postulates a hypothesis for a particular problem, but Y and Z seem to have equally coherent reasons for quite a different hypothesis. In the world of anthropology, this is compounded by the extremely small quantity of fossil evidence available, and much potential for varying interpretation, since few fossils are ever intact. Take a look at Lucy, one of the most famous, and complete fossil skeletons ever found. She doesn’t really look complete, does she? But finding such an assembly of bones is the anthropologist’s equivalent of buying two lottery tickets that cash in at the same time!
So, the mysteries are not coming to an end any time soon. If the beginnings of bipedalism are more or less settled to everyone’s satisfaction, the reasons are not. And so on - for every problem reasonably solved, ten others spring up.
One fascinating thing about Richard Leakey’s book is that he throws light on how the scientific process, objective as it may be, is not immune to emotional and cultural bias. He talks for instance, about how the idea of Africa as the cradle of humankind was resisted for the longest time, due to racial bias. In more recent times, he points to how the intense desire to see humans as completely distinct and special, makes many scientists contemptuous of any research into animal minds.
The book is 10 years old now - in a field like anthropology, where more fossil discoveries as well as evidence from molecular biology is constantly changing things, naturally, some of the book’s facts may not hold up now. But that is not the point; what is important is that the book provides a view into the origins of humankind, a view that lay readers can understand. The interested reader can always get updated on more recent work.
If only school syllabuses made science seem so human and approachable! Reading wonderful science books like this, makes me realise that science is not something ‘out there’ but makes the here and now more understandable.
Tags: book review, evolution, origin of humankind, reads, richard leakey, science
Posted by apu on Jul 21, 2008 in
The Literary life A couple of weeks ago, I read the extremely well known Tamizh novel “Chithira Paavai”. This was written by the eminent writer, Akilan, sometime in the 60’s I think. I read novels mainly for their entertainment value - I am one of those terrible readers who is always impatient to know ‘what happens’. However, I enjoyed Chithira Paavai as much for the language and story, as I did for the window it gave me into life in Madras a.k.a Chennai at that time.
As a Madras girl, some of the stuff was really funny to me. Did you know that in the 50s, the road from Madras to Mahabalipuram was still being laid? The ‘regular’ way to travel was by boat, an overnight journey on the Adayar! Today we race to Mahabs on the swanky ECR Road in 2 hours, while the Adayar river is a stinky mess that no one in their right minds would really consider a river.
The price of a ground (a 60*40 sq.ft piece of land) with a built house, in the Mylapore Tank area, was about Rs. 50,000. Shock, shock, naturally - since at the rate Chennai land prices are moving these days, soon a few feet of land is all that will be available for 50K.
Many of the characters, especially the older ones, still view the city suspiciously - their rural roots are still very visible. I suppose this was the time when the first large scale migrations out of agriculture happened. That’s very clearly reflected in the novel.
Young girls wore saris, and men still wore the traditional veshti (dhoti), some even to college. While I know from my mom that even in the 70s, wearing saris to college was very common, I thought Indian men had already moved to Western clothes.
Some spoilers…
One of the main characters, Anandi agrees to marry a man she feels little for (and dislikes in some ways), because he forces a kiss on her and she has been “spoilt.” Anandi is depicted as the “ideal” Tamizh woman - graceful, soft-spoken, cautious, helpful, sacrificing, ever thoughtful of others. A reflection of the social milieu? The good thing of course is that though she goes through enormous hardship as a result of this marriage, eventually she has the courage to break it up. Commonsense and the emerging feminist stance is showcased through another character, Anandi’s friend Sarada, who declares that it is stupidity to sacrifice oneself to another’s idiocy.
In every sense, I got the feeling that we’ve come a long way.
* When a novel from the 60s could end with such a progressive declaration of Anandi walking out, I wonder why Tamizh films today persist in portraying rapists as just-too-passionate gentlemen who make everything all right when they marry the victim. Grrr.
Tags: books, feminist, indian society, tamil culture, tamil society, tamizh books, tamizh society, women
Posted by apu on Jul 7, 2008 in
The Literary life 
Amruta Patil’s literary debut, Kari, is an ambitious graphic novel, a coming of age story with an alternative trajectory. As in many coming of age stories, the heroine Kari is young, in love, confused and trying to come to terms with an apparently meaningless existence. Her journey is however, more complicated. The object of love here is another woman, Ruth, who appears in the novel’s panels as an ideal, fantasy-world princess, who has nonetheless, abandoned Kari.
A graphic novel is a mesh of the verbal and the visual, familiar to most of us from our childhood reading of comics. It is now being used to tell every kind of tale, and Amruta Patil uses it to draw a fine picture of life in Mumbai, at least in some parts of it. Kari’s tiny flat shared with two self absorbed roommates, and extended to their boyfriends, is a microcosm of claustrophobic Mumbai. A tryptich of panels shows a bookcase dividing a bedroom into two, providing a safe haven for a couple on one side. Later, on a night-time jaunt through the city, Kari and a friend see the outlined shapes of furtive lovers. Such details are what make Kari’s Mumbai instantly recognisable.
If the book’s realism is in its visuals, what makes it work at an emotional level is the lyrical quality of the prose accompanying the panels. Describing her first meeting with Ruth, Kari says, “Whatever love laws have to be broken, the first few seconds suffice. After that, everything is a matter of time and incident”. When Ruth leaves, “the airport was a ford and she crossed over”. Occasionally this does descend into sentimentality, as when Ruth walks her “into the secret lives of ginger, cardamom, basil and anise”. Kari’s visiting parents and an older friend Angel, stand out as bastions as gravity, although of different kinds. Interestingly, the conflict with the parents’ more conventional morality is presented without a hard edge to it. Attraction and transgression are themes running through the book, with plenty of irony and self-deprecating humour greasing the wheels. That balances out the occasional page with maudlin tendencies.
The visuals are not highly dramatic or compelling in themselves; but this is one book where they flow seamlessly with the narrative. In that sense, they move the story ahead without drawing attention to themselves. The only parts where the visuals stand out are when Kari is presenting advertising storyboards for a product ridiculously named ‘Fairytale Hair’. Aptly enough, these have a glossy-pink, unreal feel to them, their colour and style a contrast with the black & white of the rest of the book. In a sense, they seem to symbolise Kari’s dual life, as she slugs it out in agency meetings and commuter trains like the rest of the working population, but her ‘real’ life flows underneath, an exploration of lost souls, the city sewers and those about to cross from this world into the other one beyond.
Kari is a daring novel in that it takes on big themes - Love, Transgressive Love, Urban Alienation, Death. It succeeds not because it brings to the table any fundamentally new ideas about the nature of these. Rather it does very well an exploration of these through one finely etched character, and in doing so, takes the reader through some very keen observations on people, love and life in a modern Indian city.
Details: Publisher: Harper Collins; Price: Rs. 295
Tags: amruta patil, homosexuality in india, kari, love, Mumbai, society, strong, transgressive, women
Posted by apu on Jul 3, 2008 in
The Literary life I am fascinated by the medium of the short story - how it compresses so much within the space of a few pages. Characters grow, plots advance and new ideas are revealed. Short stories are what I love to read as well as write. Of late, I’ve also been trying to broaden my horizons by reading in Indian languages rather than English alone. (Some might say that English has also become an Indian language, but you know what I mean). I fear that with more and more of us using English as our first language, our beautiful languages will get wiped out. Or have their status diminished to a very basic level - where we use them for buying bhindi at the bazaar but do our ‘real’ thinking in English. It is already happening.
So, dear readers, I was thrilled to find recently, Pratilipi, a monthly magazine for Hindi as well as English writing from India. The layout is beautiful, easy to navigate and there is a lot of interesting writing, from writers new to me. Here, a beautiful short story by Sangeeta Gundecha, ‘Kathaakaar’/'The Writer’. (in Hindi.)
Tags: India, language, writing
Posted by apu on Jun 24, 2008 in
The Literary life We went to see a play staged at Chowdiah yesterday, ‘The Invisible River’. I knew that it was a play about the Ganga and I expected to see something revolving around the pollution of the river. In a sense, it did, but more than that, the play used the river as a motif to talk about faith and how there could be more than one way of seeing things.
The play is structured around three differing perspectives. Dr. Ajay, a government doctor in Allahabad is the rational environmentalist, seeing the river as a cesspool that needs cleaning up and trying to change the deeply entrenched belief that it is holy. His mother is a woman who has given up on life and turned to faith instead. The third view is that of Uma, a private sector scientist, out to investigate the work of bacteriophages in the river that seem to cleanse it inspite of the terrible stuff that is thrown into everyday (remains of cremated bodies, bodily wastes etc etc).
Eventually the play seemed to suggest that Uma’s research could indeed be true. Of course that leads to a terrible sort of conclusion - why bother to keep the river clean, why bother to stop throwing stuff into it - if it is indeed self-cleansing? In a weird sort of way, science seems to lead back to the conclusion that the river is holy and indestructible. The play stopped short of this stating this though, and the overriding message was that nothing is as simple as it seems. A politician who would like to use Uma’s research as part of her campaign further rubs this in - that what seems good and reasonable can be subverted. It can even be seen as useless, depending on the context - after all, her ‘phage’ therapy may never reach Allahabad, where Dr. Ajay despairs over children dying of cholera after drinking the polluted water.
The acting was credible - the best part of the play was the characterization. The conflict between a seemingly illogical, devout mother and a rationalist son - the tension - was played really well. What jarred a little was the script itself - shouldn’t plays set in India have an Indian English feel to them? Even if we know that in reality, a lot of the action would have happened in Hindi, Indian English could have been a close substitute. The script, at many places however lapsed into strangely American sounding English. The accents of the cast too, sounded a little unreal, especially the little street kid who spoke with a city school accent. It seemed as though the director believed that only policitians and pujaris would speak in an exaggerated cowbelt accent.
Playwright: Gautam Raja; More info here.
Tags: Bangalore, Chowdiah, faith, science, theatre