M G Vassanji's The In-Between World of Vikram Lall

In a quiet retreat near the shores of Lake Ontario sits Vikram (Vic) Lall, who has been forced into this exile; he is, in his own words, "numbered one of Africa’s most corrupt men, a cheat of monstrous and reptilian cunning". Now he wants, not to speak in his defence, but to simply explain his life ("if more of us told our stories to each other, we would be a far happier people"). He begins with the summer of 1953, when he was eight years old, and living in British-ruled Kenya. His playmates, apart from his little sister Deepa, are an African friend, Njoroge, and two British children, Bill and Annie Bruce; in a sense, Vikram is an "in-between" from very early in his life.
If that makes The In-Between World of Vikram Lall sound like another of the tired rants by a Displaced Indian that often haunt contemporary literature, rest assured it isn’t. India is almost incidental to this novel: it’s the place where Vikram’s grandfather came to Africa from years earlier, to work on the railways, and the traditions of the home country do affect the plot details - but that’s about it. This is African writing, if it is to be categorised at all, reflecting all the mysteries of that hulking, enigmatic continent.
That said, its concerns are universal. Among many other things, it deals with the little events that can change the lives of individuals - and, by extension, of communities and even countries. It touches on the combination of factors that lead people to take one or the other decision when they come to that crucial bend in life’s road.
Not counting a 20-page coda at the end, this beautiful, moving and very elegant novel is divided into three sections. The first gives us the signposts of Vic’s childhood in Nakaru, where his family ran a provision store: his love for little Annie Bruce, who plays Sita to his Rama in a Diwali-inspired game (which the author, mercifully, does not soak in symbolism); the unique bond between Deepa and Njoroge; the background whispers of a freedom movement led by a modern-day Moses named Jomo Kenyatta, even as the Mau Mau, guerilla freedom fighters, strike terror among the colonial settlers. In a strange, disquieting passage Lall relates how Njoroge took him to a sacrificial altar and made him take the Mau Mau oath. He recalls seeing his beloved uncle Mahesh providing ammunition to the freedom fighters; and he recalls all too well the horrible news of the Bruces being massacred by the Mau Mau. These are stray incidents, elements in a storyteller’s large corpus. But their echoes persist through Vic’s life.
The second section, the book’s emotional centre, is set 12 years later in a newly independent Kenya, as Njoroge comes back into the lives of his two Indian friends and begins a relationship with Deepa that is doomed from the outset. And the third section chronicles Vic’s gradual progression from working as an employer of the Ministry of Transport to becoming a crucial cog in embezzlement schemes in high places, almost without realising it. "Total corruption occurs in inches and proceeds through veils of ambiguity," he says. Ambiguities are found elsewhere too; loyalties have shifted (as an adult, Njoroge renounces the Jomo he used to revere as "Moses" when he was little) and ideals have been eroded.
At one point, the author quotes a line from T S Eliot’s The Waste Land: “Who is the third who walks always beside you?” It reminds us of how deeply Vikram’s life have been affected by the childhood trauma of Annie’s death (“they are a part of us, aren’t they...those we once knew?” he asks his sister at one point) and how this incident, and others like it, have changed him in unknowable ways. But in reading this book I was reminded equally of Eliot’s poem The Hollow Men, which has an African connection of its own, echoing as it does Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Vikram is a hollow man himself - not in a pejorative sense but in that he is emotionally crippled, often devoid of thought or action; a man of no sides, as his wife taunts him. (“I simply went along with the way of the world” is his response.)
Vassanji’s greatest achievements is to evoke empathy for such a character. Not once in these 400 pages does the narrator’s voice hit a false note. Vikram Lall is a completely believable protagonist and it’s difficult to think of his story as a work of fiction. (In writing this review, I found myself repeatedly confusing Vassanji with his creation; it’s made more unsettling by the fact that the author himself is around Vikram’s age, spent his early life in Africa, and now resides in Canada.)
It’s hard to write about this book; it must be read, savoured, experienced for itself. Also, my own response to it was so personal that I’m not sure others will react to it the same way. But speaking generally, The In-Between World of Vikram Lall is a beautifully written, compelling portrait of a man who always feels himself to be on the periphery of things, on the outside looking in. He is influenced in invisible ways by external forces and in turn, his actions affect his country’s history. In that sense, he could be any of us, even if our lives aren’t quite as dramatic.

P.S. I love the cover of the book's Vintage edition, which I’ve put up with this post.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

Most book addicts know about the sinking feeling that sets in around the time one realises that an eagerly anticipated book is going to turn out to be a disappointment. I’m feeling that way now, and I hope my gut instinct is wrong. Am around 100 pages into one of the most talked-about books of the summer, Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, which was long-listed for the Booker Prize this year, and briefly talked about as a dark horse for the actual award. It missed out on the shortlist announced last week, but is still much-discussed in bibliotic circles, with some reviewers extolling it as "Jane Austen meets J R R Tolkien/Harry Potter", and a landmark of the fantasy genre.

This is a mammoth, 800-page historical fantasy set in the Britain of the early 19th century where two men of contrasting personalities work together to try and revive the practice of magic, long thought to be lost. Much of their work is done for the British government in the war against the French armies led by Napoleon (this is alternative history alright; Lord Nelson is dead and the Emperor Bonaparte plunders on undeterred).

Those are the rudiments of the plot. My opinion so far: it’s just not a very interesting read, and I find myself (very reluctantly) agreeing with some reviewers on Amazon.com that it’s difficult to care about the characters. There are a few clever lines and intriguingly "realistic" descriptions of magical spells, and Clarke’s detailed (and wholly fictitious) footnotes are often amusing. But somehow I just haven’t been drawn into the book’s alternate universe. I keep turning pages in hope but that spark between reader and book refuses to light.

Incidentally, on the Amazon website, there were scornful ripostes by defenders of the book, to the effect that those who criticised it were only capable of appreciating the fast-paced thrills of Harry Potter. But that’s clearly nonsense. I’ve loved everything I’ve read by Austen, Dickens and other writers with whom the structure of Clarke’s novel has been compared. But so far she simply hasn’t come close to achieving their intensity, passion or character delineation -- and these are facets of writing that have nothing to do with how fast- or slow-paced the story may be.

But of course, it’s foolish to condemn a book on the grounds that it doesn’t live up to Austen’s or Dickens’ standards. And on a more promising note, the last chapter I read (titled "Brest") was almost incongruously hypnotic. It described the creation, by the magician Mr Norrell, of an entire British fleet of "ships made of rain" to daunt the French navy. I thought it was a beguiling piece of writing in more than one sense, and so perhaps there’s hope yet for the book. A couple of reviews I’ve glanced at suggest that it gets better as it goes along. Let’s see.

Hitchcock, Notorious and misogyny

Watched Hitchcock’s Notorious last night at the India Habitat Centre. It’s one of my all-time favourites, though the last time I saw it was around six or seven years ago. But I’ve read so much about the film since then and it was interesting to see to what extent my own experience of it would chime with that of others.

Initially I felt the discomfort that comes from protectiveness for a beloved old movie -- will an impatient modern audience be able to open themselves to it, or will they disparage it as quaint and creaky? In this case, I needn’t have worried much since most of the audience present were film buffs and Hitchcock lovers, not multiplex-goers who had accidentally drifted into the screening.

What I wasn’t prepared for was how they reacted to the suspenseful scenes. With all the overanalysis Hitchcock has latterly been subjected to, one often loses sight of his original metier, and it’s always a pleasant surprise to discover that his movies, even the really old ones, still do have the power to move and excite modern-day audiences. Some first-time viewers at yesterday’s screening reacted in exactly the same way to key scenes as the original 1946 audience would have (leaning forward in their seats, clutching the armrests, hissing things like "get out before it’s too late!" to the characters onscreen). I had a similar experience when I showed Psycho to a friend a few years ago. Had never expected her to react viscerally, given all that we’re told about today’s audiences being innured (thanks to the much-increased blood-and-gore that films like Psycho paved the way for).

In Notorious and Vertigo, Hitchcock made two of the most unabashedly romantic movies in film history, though neither is a conventional love story. The strange love triangle in Notorious is far more important to the film than the silly plot-pushing device (the Macguffin) of the uranium-filled bottles and the Nazi conspirators. Watching the film, I was struck yet again by the ridiculousness of the charge that the director was a misogynist. One of my favourite rebuttals to this charge comes from Camille Paglia, who was delightfully voluble about the topic in an interview she gave to Karl French for a book on screen violence in 1996.

French: I agree he was a great director, but he was nakedly misogynistic...

Paglia: I don’t accept this. That is an absurd argument. We’re talking about a man who made films in which are some of the most beautiful and magnetic images of women that have ever been created. I mean, for heaven’s sake, to call that misogynistic, when we think of Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief, when we think how fabulous Janet Leigh is in that shower scene, we think of Kim Novak in Vertigo...what I’m saying about all of the great artists from Michelangelo to Botticelli to everyone else is that in the fascination with these goddess-like figures of women there is an ambivalence, a push-pull in it, a complexity of response, but to stress the negative in Hitchcock...? I think you need far more complex terminology to deal with people who achieve at the level Hitchcock did. The women he created, for heaven’s sake, have absolutely dominated the imagination of late twentieth-century cinema. Everyone’s imitating it, everywhere, to this day."

(Here’s a little more on the subject from Paglia.)

Now Ingrid Bergman looks breathtaking in Notorious -- and for my money it’s her definitive role -- but I should think it’s also self-evident to anyone who watches the film that her character gets far more sympathy from the director than either of the two male protagonists. One man (Cary Grant) can’t bring himself to admit he loves her until it’s almost too late; takes advantage of her love for him, using her to infiltrate a spy ring; and then mopes around sullenly until good sense finally prevails. The other man (Claude Rains) does genuinely care for her, we feel, but uhh...he’s also the Nazi villain. Major roadblock to sympathy, that. To appreciate Notorious fully, it’s imperative to be able to empathise with the Bergman character -- to see her as she really is, not as the manipulative men in her life depict her.

Notorious now joins the painfully short list of Hitchcock movies I’ve seen on the big screen -- the others being Vertigo (terrible print, dating from before the film’s restoration), Psycho and Strangers on a Train. Hope I don’t have to wait too long for the next one.

Excerpt from press release

A few lines from a press release I got today. My mailbox is full of suchlike material each morning, which is one reason I don’t like switching my computer on.


NO PROBLEM to bike breakdowns

CROSS ROADS comes to rescue with the launch of BIKE HELPLINE

Together with your splendid fantasy you are zooming fast on a bike, enjoying the gentle wind, indulging in the pleasures of your drive. Suddenly your rocketing gizmo gives a hiccup. Ignoring the warning you move on that eventually banks out a cost in no time. In a span of few meters, your much-esteemed bike surrenders to the faults of its defective body language, compelling you to deviate your attention to the poor vehicle. You are in a fix as the deserted stretch houses no aid. But relax is the word if you know Cross Roads "24 hr BIKE HELPLINE". With Cross Roads new "24 hr BIKE HELPLINE" service, the solution of the problem is just a call away.

Rahul Dravid biog review

Am sitting in office with not too much to do and unbridled access to the sole Internet-blessed comp in our department. So thought I’d post something. This is a review I’d done for the paper a few months ago. In a classic case of self-indulgence, I used it as a pretext for airing some of my cricket views, and only got around to talking about the actual book around three or four paras down. (In my defence, I don’t think the book particularly merited an indepth review.)

Rahul Dravid: A Biography
by Vedam Jaishankar

Jai Arjun Singh

Currently at the apotheosis of his career (or so one supposes), Rahul Sharad Dravid may seem invulnerable to opposition bowlers but he is as vulnerable as any other cricketer to those depressing staples of Indian sports journalism -- the cliche and the compartmentalisation. One doesn’t expect all cricket writers to be Carduses and Arlotts but surely there’s a limit to the number of times the phrases "glorious uncertainty" and "much-vaunted batting lineup" can be employed in match reports. The litany of terms used to describe Dravid -- the Wall, Mr Reliable, a rock in adversity -- come from that same vile canon and serve only to conceal an interesting cricketer behind word arrangements that have, through thoughtless repetition, long ceased to mean anything.

The Dravid legend has grown in the past couple of years, and deservedly so, given his form and achievements during this period. But even as his share in the limelight has increased, the cliches have only become more pronounced.
For instance, one of the most pleasing things about the attention now being given to Dravid is the fact that he isn’t the sort of player the average fan takes instantly to heart. Wide acclaim has come his way against the odds; the sheer level of his performances has made him impossible to ignore, despite his reputation for being an unexciting batsman. But the flip side is that by now all the snivelling about Dravid being an "unsung hero" has reached absurd proportions. (Am I the only one to find it paradoxical that he is repeatedly, and across all media, bemoaned as being "forever in the shadow of other players" in the same match reports that copiously sing his praises -- even to the extent of using his achievements to gloss over the perceived weaknesses of other cricketers.)

Nor has much, unfortunately, been written on what an interesting man this often-dour player appears to be off the field. He is quietly assertive without being over-flamboyant. He speaks well and makes observations that actually give you pause for thought -- check out some of his interviews -- unlike the homilies that are the stock in trade for many other cricketers. He even reads -- Wisden Asia recently featured a column by him on "The Joys of Reading", and slightly pretentious though that was, how many other cricketers do you imagine they could have roped in for such a project?

If I actually come to the biography under consideration so late in this review, that’s only because one can get carried away talking about the many facets of the man -- there’s so much to comment on, so many new angles that can be explored, so many myths to deconstruct and Walls to demolish. Well, the bad news is we’ll have to look elsewhere for the fresh perspective. Like too, too many other recent cricket books (vapid "biographies" of Sachin and Sourav, for instance), Rahul Dravid: A Biography largely misses the man for the cliches and the statistics. (And I’m sure I’ve used those same words before, in reviewing some of those other books. Cliche begets cliche!)

That said, this biography is still readable on the whole, partly because of its first-mover advantage. After all, there hasn’t been much on Dravid in print and Vedam Jaishankar does a decent job of supplying information and anecdotes that weren’t hitherto available in the public domain. The first half has undoubted elements of interest. It’s interesting, for instance, to learn that the seeds of Dravid’s classical batsmanship may have been sown by his father Sharad, an admirer of Vijay Hazare; it’s even more interesting to speculate that his discipline and sense of purpose may have come from his mother, who studied two courses simultaneously despite being from a conservative Marathi family.

There are nice little asides too. One involves the young Rahul bursting into tears during a school match because he lost his wicket to someone else’s lethargic running between wickets; an image easily reconciliable with his intensity as an adult cricketer. Another, possibly apocryphal, remarks on his acute cricketing sense by telling how, as a 14-year-old stripling, he predicted that Sachin Tendulkar would play for India in a couple of years’ time. There’s even a tongue-in-cheek reference to Dravid’s ambivalence towards keeping wickets at junior level, several years before he was asked to do so for India "in the interests of the team".

The last 40 pages or so of the narrative deal with Dravid as an India player; and here, inevitably, the book becomes a ho-hum, by-the-numbers account of various Test and one-day matches, and his contribution to them (or: how a cricket book degenerates into a compendium of match reports). As if that weren’t mundane enough, a 45-page appendage gives us -- what else? -- statistics of his performances, first-class level upwards. But this is compensated to an extent by some very nice photos that mercifully steer clear of showing us just a repertoire of cricketing strokes, and instead provide glimpses of the life behind the facade. Something the text doesn’t do.

As a middlebrow cricket book, Rahul Dravid: A Biography isn’t bad at all, but like many others of its type it leaves you with the niggling feeling that its subject deserves more. There’s hope yet; for there are some fine cricket writers out there, awaiting their turn at the crease -- the Sambit Bals, Sharda Ugras, Rahul Bhattacharyas and Harsha Bhogles -- and one imagines they have books in them. For now this will do, sort of.

Brevity is the soul of nothing

When I started blogging, I kept telling myself to post short, snappy blogs rather than analytical, meandering ones. But having seen a number of other blogspots where the authors have written full-fledged articles, I’m veering to the opposite view. In fact, long as some of my recent posts have been, I realise now that they haven’t been long enough; I’m so preoccupied with dashing something off at one sitting and posting it immediately that a certain laziness has crept in. Many of the recent postings seem half-baked, like I haven’t given myself the time to put down everything I wanted to. Think I’ll start doing that henceforth.

After all, it’s not like the chief purpose of this blog is to be a diary; I already have one of those (hardcopy! paper! pen!), which I write dedicatedly each night, and which contains things of interest exclusively to myself. (Having said which, I’m now about to post a blog containing nothing that could possibly be of any interest to anyone else.)

Talking Hitchcock with Richard Allen

I’ve been Alfred Hitchcock-crazy for years. I’ve savoured books/collections of writings with deep analyses of his work that critics never much bothered with when he was actually making his best films; seethed silently (sometimes vociferously) when nimrods designated him a clever showman rather than an artist; and snapped at blasphemers who mentioned his name in the same breath as The Three Investigators (an entertaining detective series to be sure, but linked to Hitchcock only in the use of his name as a brand). Which is why I didn’t think twice about sacrificing a few hours of my Sunday to meet Richard Allen – film prof at New York University and Hitchcock expert – for an interview. (Allen is in Delhi for a few days, chairing a 10-day-long seminar at the India Habitat Centre.)

Unfortunately the meeting was rushed, because of time constraints, and a bit uncomfortable because we had to manage in the waiting area outside the All-American Diner (there being no tables free in the restaurant). We also had to ignore the gawkers gawking at sight of the White Man gesticulating furiously and the studious-looking reporter scribbling notes.

But if two people find common ground, and if that ground is the career of one of the most interesting, provocative artists of the last century, such distractions seem trivial. Allen and I spent half an hour quizzing each other about our favourite Hitchcock moments, discussing films, themes and undertones, bemoaning the snobbish dismissal of Hitchcock as a mere entertainer, and equally bemoaning the fact that critics subsequently went too far in the opposite direction by overanalysing his work. (I have a book of essays on Hitch, co-edited by Allen; I told him frankly that I found some of the writings in the book mind-numbingly academic and over-baked, and he took the point gracefully.)

Part of the problem, we agreed, is that a Hitchcock film must, first and foremost, be experienced. Though personally speaking I’ve always enjoyed reading books on Hitchcock, I concede that there is something fundamentally paradoxical, even futile and self-defeating, about writing reams and reams on his movies. I’ve watched Hitchcock movies with people who are palpably stirred by the film while they are watching it; they respond in all the right ways to all the key scenes; the Master does indeed “play them like an organ”, as he once boasted to Francois Truffaut; and then these same people come out of the film theatre/screening room and (having unfrayed their nerves and allowed cerebra to silence instinct) say, “Well, that was nice time-pass but it’s not a serious film.” And it’s unspeakably tragic when even someone like Satyajit Ray - otherwise a gentle, perceptive commentator on film, and a great admirer of American directors like Ford, Hawks and Wilder – questions Hitchcock’s value as an artist simply because of the genre he worked in.

There’s the Hitchcockian tragedy for you: he’s suspended for eternity between one group that doesn’t take him seriously because of the “flippant” subject matter of his movies, and another group that - in a wild attempt to overcompensate for the former’s apathy – has reduced his career to a litany of often-painfully didactic essays.

Which is why the part of my conversation with Richard Allen I’ll treasure most is the part where, eyes shining with childlike enthusiasm, he told me how, shortly after watching The Birds at the age of 11, he was riding along the highway with his sister when they were frightened out of their wits by a flock of birds suddenly flying low over the car. That was the first of many occasions when Alfred Hitchcock came out of the screen and made his presence felt in Richard Allen’s life. The immediacy of the experience is what really counts.

It reminds me of the great moment in Psycho where the shower curtain is ripped apart – destroying the invisible barrier between the audience and the film – and making us part of the nightmare.

Surviving the aftermath of a car crash

Found myself making up the numbers in a car pile-up on a busy road last evening. Escaped with minor whiplash but car will be in workshop for at least two weeks. It was a less-than-ideal way to discover that my brake efficiency was not all it should be.

If it’s true that at such moments one’s life flashes before one’s eyes, my life can be summed up by the unvaliant phrase: "Uh Oh. Brake oil?", which is all that went through my mind in the 0.75 seconds before the collision. Stands a poor second to Citizen Kane and "Rosebud", I know, but one can only be what one is.

The experience lent me valuable insights into the human condition, the frailty of life and the internal composition of my busted carburetor. But the aftermath was more traumatic. Some random thoughts that probably won’t be of much use when you decide to have a crash of your own, but will help me complete a 600-word blog:

Delhi Civil Lines
Many vehicles were involved in this crash; all were damaged and it was difficult to pin blame on anyone. Which meant there was an altogether extraordinary display of -- dare I say it -- civility, a word rarely used to describe anything that occurs on our city’s streets. We exchanged our details, nodded cordially at one another, shook hands, prepared to exit gracefully -- and then discovered that we couldn’t since our radiators were shot to hell. So we sat about looking foolish, wishing we hadn’t been so quick to say our fare-thee-wells and wondering if it was too late yet for a nasty little punching match.

Stare case
W H Davies, was it, who lamented "We have no time to stand and stare"? The doddering old fool would have felt right at home on Mathura Road yesterday. In a city where everyone is always in such a hurry, it’s remarkable how car after car slows down at the site of an accident -- with drivers and passengers alike giving themselves unsolicited whiplash as they crane their necks furiously, hoping for a glimpse of mangled remains.

Stupid questions, snappy answers
Then there are those roadside gawkers who resemble comic strip caricatures of Mad Cow Disease sufferers. Jaws dropping, eyes glazing over, they ask, "Accident hua?" No, you numbskull, it was a 900-pound bird-dropping.

Brandy is dandy but liquor is quicker
When I reached home, naturally there was the spectre of traumatised family convinced I would walk in in numerous little pieces. When they saw I was whole, still a single chip off the old block, they proceeded to whittle away at me in their own way. My grandmother produced a flask of brandy that had been hidden away in her cupboard for 10 years -- "I had kept it for a special occasion" as she alarmingly put it. Of course, after going through the sick-man ritual, I headed to my room and poured myself a stiff serving of rum.

First night
Clueless, overly-distraught family members will tell you that you might suddenly awake at 4 am in a cold sweat, delayed shock having set in; but you know what, you might actually awake at 4 am in a cold sweat. If you do, you can always write a blog.

Wicked Wicket 2: Why Charu?

TV anchor-for-all-seasons-and-for-unintended-laughs Charu Sharma glossing over the England-Sri Lanka match scorecard: “Marcus Trescothick…well, he lived by the sword and died by it.”

Well, no… actually, Trescothick made a quiet 66 runs off 98 balls and was then run out at the non-striker’s end when the bowler deflected a Flintoff straight drive onto the stumps.

Why Charu? The question has haunted me ever since I first saw the man hosting cricket discussions on Star Sports back in 1997, and saying ridiculous things like ”Mohammed Azharuddin there, hitting a nice little six” (this is true, swear, promise – it was during that great Tendu-Azhar partnership in the Cape Town Test!!) Back then, we would joke about the layers of make-up on his face and how the Star make-up personnel must be having their way with him in the dressing room (using his face for practice, I mean, not in the sexual sense).

But back then, Charu was glimpsed only once every five or six series. Now he’s everywhere. And worst of all, since he’s now surrounded by co-anchors who know slightly less about the game than even he does, he is allowed to play knowledgeable big brother. (“There, there, Mandira. You’ve just put your foot in your mouth yet again – but fret not, I’m here to save the Show.”) A world where Charu Sharma can be patronizing! Aargghhh!

Around two years ago, when Sony Entertainment TV first commenced its practice of placing Charu in a studio next to a psycho-babbling bimbette (it was Ruby Bhatia at the time), I wrote a (prescient as always) Wicked Wicket on this unlooked-for revolution in cricket broadcasting. Here it is:

Wicked Wicket
Viewer-friendly freak show?

Set Max’s decision to turn their pre/post-match discussions into a carnival during the ICC Trophy provoked some interesting responses. The dominant view was that expressed by the Purists’ Brigade. “First coloured pyjamas,” we shrieked (yes, the more hoary-minded among us still haven’t gotten over that transgression), “then Third Umpire LBWs, now this; what have They done to Dr Grace’s Good Game?”

But after one particularly difficult tube-watching session some of us decided to discuss the issue seriously. We’d just heard Charu Sharma ask Arbaaz Khan "Don’t you wish women played cricket so Bollywood’s big male stars like you would have someone to flirt with?" (a question that must, like the scorecards of great Test matches, be revisited – you find something new in it each time.) The other side of the argument must be heard, we said bravely.

According to this view, cricket needs to be made accessible to people who get intimidated by jargon and top-heavy analyses. We need someone we can identify with, say the heathens, even feel superior to (therefore Ruby, who also supplies eye candy). We need someone who talks the same facile nonsense we would have, if suddenly flung into the studio; therefore Charu. (Though, honestly, I still haven’t figured out his function in the scheme of things – he’s so neither-here-nor-there. Doesn’t know about the game and isn’t even a hunk.)

We don’t need the Harsha Bhogle-Gavaskar-Boycott nexus, says this group; they say complicated things in throwaway fashion, assuming the viewer knows as much as they do. We do need tarot cards.

There could be something to all this. But what then of this friend who says she’s been trying to "get into" the game but the Set Max freak show keeps turning her off it? The truth, like Charu, probably lies somewhere in between. Time will tell whether this is the beginning of a revisionist revolution in cricket broadcasting or just a two-week circus.

Meanwhile, a horrible thought has afflicted me of late. Set Max has the rights to the 2003 World Cup. Will they…can it be…surely not? Please, please let the worst thing about this World Cup be the Australia-Holland match.

-- Jai Arjun Singh
November 2002

A blistering cricket report

What would we do without our daily dose of hyperbolic cricket reporting? Consider this report from the MSN website:

Birmingham, Sep 20: Furious India captain Sourav Ganguly launched a blistering attack on his misfiring batsmen after his side were knocked out of the ICC Champions Trophy by bitter rivals Pakistan.

What, you may reasonably wonder, did Ganguly actually say at the post-match press conference? Here's the answer, found further down the news piece:

"It was a good wicket and we just didn't bat well enough," said Ganguly who also failed with the bat after being dismissed for nought.

The Dan Brown menace

I loved Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code when I read it but as it moves further and further up the all-time bestseller charts (eventually perhaps rivaling the Bible?) I worry about the effect it’s having on people who have never been serious readers but who have devoured this particular book. A racy popcorn-thriller, it’s been easy enough even for those whose idea of heavy-duty reading is Paulo Coelho. The problem is, it’s given far too many people the impression that they’ve actually read something profound, and, worse, something that teaches them something about art and history. This is a reaction that belongs in the same league as the "Brainy stuff!" blurb found on the book jacket. A little knowledge is a very dangerous thing.

And I’m not talking about just dumbsters reacting this way. I’ve had a couple of less-than-exceedingly-stupid friends gush to me about how exciting it is to "learn the truth" about the Holy Grail, the Chalice, Jesus and Mary Magdalene and sundry other concepts they had only vaguely heard of before (if that). People! It’s not the "truth"! No one knows what the "truth" about these things is, and we’re probably never going to know. What Brown has done is to write a very entertaining work of fiction, based on theses already set out in much more academic fashion by other researchers/scholars/conspiracy theorists. The best thing that can be said about his endeavour from a "serious" perspective is that it encourages a re-look at conventional readings of history that have been handed down to us. And that’s always a good thing: it never hurts to be reminded that history as we know it has been written by the victors and one mustn’t take any of it at face value. But embracing conspiracy theories unquestioningly is equally silly.

As things stand, I find myself amused by, but also a little queasy about, the reports in sundry newspapers about the inflow of tourists to the Louvre rising significantly in recent months -- and worse, how guides in the venerable museum have to contend with questions from gullible Code-buffs to the tune of: "Can you show us the exact spot where the curator’s body was found?" Call me snootish, but it’s a little unsettling when people are given "culture" in easy, painless doses.

Amrita on 'Blog'

Anguished response from Amrita Mishra, very cerebral friend, when I messaged her to say I’d started a Blog:

“Such an ugly-sounding word, BLOG, like the name of a warty alien in Star Trek, or stuff in a loo, or a retching noise. Why not call it something else?”

Anyone??

Wicked Wicket 1: Union-not-so-Jacked

England’s win in the ICC Champions Trophy against Sri Lanka last evening has given me the long-awaited opportunity for some shameless self-promotion of the didn’t-I-tell-you-all-so-way-back-then variety. Am pasting hereunder (underwith?) one of the pieces I wrote back in January 2003, for my lightweight cricket column “Wicked Wicket”, in the afternoon paper Today.

It was always a sore point with me that cricket followers (especially in India, it seemed) failed to acknowledge any of the achievements of the English team – even when they had just beaten Pakistan in Pakistan and Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka. Hence this piece. (More egotistic drawing of attention to own prescience: check the bit about the refusal to break in anyone aged below 27, in the light of 26-year-old Andy Flintoff’s contribution to the New England over the past year!)

Wicked Wicket
by Jai Arjun Singh

Here’s something I never thought I’d be doing – sticking up for the England cricket team, that too right in the middle of what promises to be one of the most comprehensive Ashes wallopings in history.

Conversations with friends, as far back as I can remember, have been based on the assumption that England are a team of no consequence. I’ve been suckered into it myself, and still admit that nothing provides as much glee as watching the sport’s originators play dominos on a cricket field.

There’s something about English cricket that encourages this malice-laced attitude among the rest of the world, especially the subcontinent. Their still-antiquated approach to the sport, reluctance to break in anyone under the age of 27, the low standards of county cricket…and not least, our perceptions of their condescending attitudes. That last bit makes their mauling such fun to watch. After all, when your nose is in the mud, where does the stiff upper lip go?

But try being objective for a bit, and you’d see that England have been a better Test team over the last few years (especially since 1998, when they beat South Africa 2-1) than they are given credit for. And, importantly (for a side that has a reputation for complaining on tours), they’ve travelled a lot better than many other teams --including India.

Of course, that isn’t saying much (as I write this India are 120 for 7 in the Wellington Test) but consider the inflated opinion many of us have of our own team. Most would hoot at the suggestion that England could be better than us in any sense at all. But they are. They’re better even than Australia on at least one parameter: they’ve beaten Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka recently.

I’m not suggesting we get euphoric about Nasser Hussain’s chappies; in fact I look forward to watching them get steamrolled in the fourth Test Down Under. But perhaps there’s some grace in conceding that the Union isn’t as jacked as many of us like to think it is.

- January 20, 2003

More on M Night S

Since I’m on a Manoj Night Shyamalan-bashing trip, I might as well carry on with it. (Sidenote: in the interests of fairness, I WILL post a blog on his strong points sometime in the future, with special reference to Unbreakable, one of the most interesting and challenging films to have come from the Holywood mainstream in recent years.)

So here goes.

Some painful images/sound bytes from Shyamalan movies:

"Please, plleeezzze, let me shoot you JUST ONCE"

(Bleats a painfully annoying kid as he tries to prove that his dad is a superhero who can’t be hurt by bullets, in Unbreakable.

Boo hoo hoo around the family table; or, let’s all have a good cry together.

Prominent example of above is unintentionally hilarious scene in Signs, where Mel Gibson, Joachin Phoenix and two kids do an astonishingly bad impression of a family trying to exorcise its demons. Also seen in The Sixth Sense, where Toni Colette breaks down and tells her dead-people-seeing son about a scar from her childhood that has never healed.

Incidentally, I’m convinced now that when Shyamalan needs his actors to cry (as opposed to just look sulky as they generally do) he just tells them to screw their faces up and make choking sounds. He is a terrible, terrible director of actors, and has somehow managed time and again to elicit laughably bad performances from people who are capable of better things: Gibson in Signs and Adrien Brody in The Village being just two examples. And it irritates me immensely that Bruce Willis, a fine, underrated actor when he’s playing light roles, gets critical praise for his dead-serious, one-expressioned "performances" in Shyamalan’s films. So far, Samuel L Jackson -- in Unbreakable -- is the only one who’s really held his own, though I suspect that’s because he ignored the director’s directions.

Use of passive voice in The Village, and other ponderous lines that Shyamalan throws in because, gee, they sound like how 19th century folk might talk -- example: "What is your meaning?"

(One wonders how long those disillusioned urbanites who retired to the woods took to learn a completely new way of speaking -- and why do we see no copies of Wren and Martin’s Guide to Olde Speake?)

Night in tarnished armour

Watched Manoj Night Shyamalan’s The Village last night. Now ordinarily I do my best to look for something good in a film, however deeply buried it might be under layers of terribleness. Further, I’ve always had a lot of time for Shyamalan -- even when I find his movies less than satisfying. I think 1) he has some very interesting things going on in his head -- I’m talking ideas, themes, concepts -- and 2) he has a sense of the effective moment; he knows a thing or two about how camera movements can be used to unnerve viewers. At his best, he’s a master of audience manipulation in a way few directors have been since ol’ Hitch.

At his worst, he makes something as self-consciously, ludicrously confused as The Village. As I write this, around 20 hours after I shuffled weeping out of the hall, I can think of not a single good thing to say about this film, which is not often my reaction to a movie; maybe time will temper my feelings a bit. [Well, not a single good thing if you don’t count the movie’s eerily effective opening shot -- with the camera tracking forward slowly from behind the backs of a group of people, to reveal a grieving father hunched over the coffin of his recently deceased son. It’s a strange, beautiful little moment -- it lasts all of 20 seconds -- and it shows what Shyamalan can do when he isn’t preoccupied with his self-important ‘messages’.]

There’s no way I’m going to bother about spoiler warnings on this blog , so here goes: the obligatory Shyamalan twist in this film is that it’s NOT set in the 19th century. The village is just a facade -- a retreat that was established by a group of unhappy urbanites a few decades earlier, when they tired of the horrors of modern life and decided to return to a more innocent time; to live in an idyllic world of their own making. The original migrants are now the Village Elders; they are played by actors of the stature of William Hurt and Sigourney Weaver; and they go to ridiculous lengths to keep the inquisitive youngsters from the outside world. A myth is established: the woods bordering the village are inhabited by fearsome creatures with whom the villagers have established an uneasy truce. You don’t come into our territory, we won’t go into yours. (The creatures are ponderously referred to as They Who We Do Not Speak Of, never mind that they are all the villagers ever speak of.) Naturally, at the point that we come in, the younger generation’s curiosity is getting the better of their fear, and thus the plot moves forth.

I’ve always found it hard to write about Shyamalan, so conflicted are my responses to his movies, so undecided am I between laughing at his weaknesses and marvelling at his strengths. But now, having finally seen a film of his that I have a definite opinion about (that it’s plain terrible), I think I might be able to articulate what his central problem is: He takes himself far, far too seriously. He has interesting ideas, to be sure, but he’s just too conscious of them and invariably rubs them in his audience’s face in the manner of a stern schoolteacher. Worst of all, he does this at the expense of his natural filmmaking gifts. If he has to choose between getting across a serious message and displaying cinematic sense, you can be sure the former will always win. Take, as just one example, a frisson-creating scene towards the end, where the viewer first realises that the world outside the village is very 21st century (assuming he hasn’t already guessed). The scene has two of the Elders taking an old photo out from a trunk and looking sorrowfully at it. The photo shows the various members of the elder community as they were before they decided to hide themselves away from the world -- they are dressed in modern clothing, and as the camera pans from one face in the photo to the next, we get voiceovers of each of them explaining (in classic Alcoholics Anonymous style) what was so unbearable about the modern world and why he/she had to get away. (At this point, I leant across to a friend and intoned: “I was made to watch a Manoj Night Shyamalan film and so I had to return to the 19th century, before cinema was invented.”)

The problem is, in this scene, Shyamalan is so intent on capsuling the individual stories that he neglects cinematic rhythm altogether. The scene goes on interminably, defying all pacing logic, as the camera cuts repeatedly from the photo to the people who are looking at it -- with the ultra-serious expressions on their face that are so typical of his protagonists throughout his movies. [Related quibble: Why, why, why, WHY does no one in a Shyamalan movie know how to s-m-i-l-e????? Even Ingmar Bergman allows that!!]

And oh, I can’t possibly end this blog without making some reference to the allegory that, in many critics’ views, lifts The Village to the status of great cinema: it’s a metaphor, you see, for American insularity towards the rest of the world. I’m certain the positive reception this film has got in some quarters in the US comes from a natural tendency in that country to self-flagellate. “Here’s a movie made by someone originally from the Third World, showing us what is wrong with our attitude to the rest of humanity.”

More Cinema please, Mr Night, and less Message. If you really have something important to say, it will shine through somehow; you don’t have to beat us over the head with it. Concentrate on making a watchable film first. Most importantly, RELAX, as Frankie said.

(I see myself posting more Shyamalan blogs. The man is fascinating to write about, even if you’re lambasting him. And I still believe the sorely underrated Unbreakable is among the most interesting movies of the last three to four years.)

The In-Between World...

Am reviewing a novel called The In-Between World of Vikram Lall by M G Vassanji. Have finished only the first three chapters but it looks promising -- and it’s elegantly written, minus the often-tiresome wordplay one increasingly gets from Indian writers. (Vassanji incidentally was born in Kenya, raised in Tanzania and now lives in Canada, where he’s reasonably well respected as a writer. Hate to admit it, but his name wasn’t familiar to me before I started on this book.)

The story is set in Kenya -- the narrator, Vikram or Vic, is talking about his childhood at the point where I’ve reached. Playing with his African friend Njoroge and two European children, even as tensions mount between the Mau Mau guerillas and the colonial settlers, with the Indian families (including the narrator’s) caught uneasily in the middle.

There’s something about African literature/novels set in the region...to begin with, it’s such an enigmatic continent, large parts of which are still unknown to most of the rest of the world - this despite the fact that Africa is right there, bloated, enormous, bang in the middle of the conventional flat-map representation of the world. And yet, in so many ways, it’s so immutably cut off from the rest of the world. Planet Earth’s heart of darkness.

I’ve been intrigued on a basic level by everything I’ve read that has to do with the region - and I’ve noticed that much of African literature has a characteristic oppressed, stygian quality. It’s often stifling and hard to read; I can never read J M Coetzee at long stretches for instance. There’s an element of quiet, resigned hopelessness, a sense that things can never really change.

I got a few insights into this last year when I interviewed Damon Galgut, the South African writer whose latest novel The Good Doctor had been shortlisted for the 2003 Booker. Here’s the
profile and here’s the
review I’d written of the book a couple of weeks before meeting him.

The Good Doctor - review

My review of Damon Galgut’s The Good Doctor, done for Business Standard last year:
-------------------
The Good Doctor
by Damon Galgut

Jai Arjun Singh

Nothing changed. That was the way of things up there. One day resembled another in the sameness of its intentions, the level graph of its ambitions; and I’d become used to it. I wanted to keep everything fixed and rooted in its place, for ever.

The setting is a moribund hospital, half-heartedly managed by a skeletal staff, somewhere in the South African homeland. The "I" is Frank Eloff, who came here as a young doctor years earlier and soon forsook idealism as the oppressiveness of his surroundings defeated him. Into this soul-deadening environment comes Laurence Waters, who asked specifically to be sent here for community service, because he wants to "make a difference". World-weariness and youthful enthusiasm find themselves sharing the same room and their relationship moves between awkwardness, distrust and something approaching friendship.

Numerous subplots are woven into the fabric of this story. There is Frank’s on-again-off-again sexual relationship with a woman he knows only as Maria, who runs a small souvenir shop a little way off the main road. And the inevitable political angle comes from asides involving a former dictator -- now in hiding -- with whom Frank has a vaguely surreal encounter, and a commandant who stirs in the narrator dark memories of a day that was the "defining moment" of his life.

All of these strands are interesting in their own ways. Galgut extracts genuine menace from certain images: a white car sometimes parked outside Maria’s shop (it means her husband is home and marks the days Frank can’t visit her, but it might also represent larger dangers); a monitor lizard hauling itself up into a crack; a bend in the road from where a deserted army encampment can be briefly glimpsed. And there’s Laurence himself -- underconfident, uncertain, belying the stereotype of the bright do-gooder who wants to change the world. He has a strained long-term relationship with a girl who turns out to be an American, he’s oddly muted at a party that was his idea to begin with and his optimism lacks conviction. Like Frank, the reader can’t quite figure him out. All this gives the story a positive tension; there is a constant sense of something shifting beneath the surface, and this holds the reader’s attention for the most part.

But the undercurrent doesn’t resolve itself into a payoff and the book turns out to be less than the sum of its parts. Much like the narrator’s last, misguided attempt at absolution, it leads to a dead end and this is, well, disappointing. You don’t have to be expecting a pulp-thriller denouement to wonder what all the fuss was about.

Of course, it’s debatable whether such criticism should be directed at a story that, after all, deals with trapped, wasted lives and a stifled milieu where nothing ever changes, and that has the narrator declaiming towards the end: "This was a story without a resolution -- maybe even without a theme". But what’s good for the protagonist isn’t good for the author, and one is left with the sense that Galgut just didn’t have too much to say. The ending is weak and doesn’t follow naturally from any of the events that preceded it -- it seems arbitrary and tacked on. So it’s hard to relate to the glimmer of hope the narrator talks about in the conclusion to his story.

Naturally, too, there’s the Man Booker conundrum. However much one tries, it’s difficult to judge this novel independently of the "Booker shortlist" seal that it carries. Increasingly, these awards are becoming the literary equivalent of the Oscars which make half-baked attempts to be highbrow by honouring a film for intention rather than execution. (Or, when it comes to the acting awards, plumping for role over performance.) The Good Doctor is as good an example as any of such misplaced high-horsedness. Maybe the Man Booker should just have a separate category where it can eulogise books for worthiness of subject matter regardless of literary merit. Galgut’s novel, with its putative insights into the South African dilemma (and, by extension, one supposes, the human condition), would fit neatly into such a category.

But quibbles aside, if what you want is a lit-award nominee that’s also a light read -- minus the teen argot of a Vernon God Little -- you needn’t look much further than this.

Damon Galgut

A profile I did of South African writer Damon Galgut a year ago, for the lifestyle magazine Gateway:
---------
Reading The Good Doctor, Damon Galgut’s bleak novel of wasted lives in the South African homeland, prepares you for the author, sort of. Galgut’s face is careworn and crease-lined, his eyes worried, as he discusses the problems his country is facing.

"Historically, South Africa is going through a strange period," says the soft-spoken author who was on the Booker shortlist last year. "The old way (the apartheid regime) may have gone but the new one hasn’t quite settled in yet, and we’re all suspended between the past and the present."

Galgut’s latest novel drew strong reactions from many in South Africa, who were disturbed by its pessimism. But the author doesn’t think there’s much to be cheery about. "We keep hearing all this rhetoric about improvement, but the reality is that crime figures are rising, education is a mess and AIDS is affecting the economy," he says. "The real South African revolution lies ahead of us. And delayed revolutions can be very ugly." The creases on his forehead deepen.

Galgut’s pensive manner reminds one of his compatriot J M Coetzee, who wasn’t captured beaming on camera even when he won the Nobel Prize last year. Like most writers of his generation, Galgut was influenced by the man who he calls the first South African writer to move beyond painting just a black and white picture. But despite Coetzee’s Nobel Prize last year and Galgut’s own Booker nomination, he isn’t happy about the literary scene in his country. "Even a Nadine Gortimer sells only about 1,000 copies," he says ruefully. "The quality of writing is high but public response is indifferent."

Galgut says he hasn’t read much of Indian writing but is keen to, and eagerly asks for suggestions. He was impressed by Githa Hariharan’s In Times of Siege -- "the kind of writing that gets a nation to look critically at itself" -- but it’s slightly incongruous when he says he also enjoyed Upamanyu Chatterjee’s English, August. "It was very funny," he says, still looking worried. In fact, he chuckles only once during our meeting -- when recounting how the title of his second book, Small Circle of Beings, was published as "Small Circle of Beans" in an interview.

Incidentally, Galgut wrote much of The Good Doctor in a small family-run hotel in Goa; this is his fifth trip to the country. "I do like travelling in general but India keeps drawing me back," he says. "I’m not sure why -- but then, if I knew for certain, the country would probably lose its charm for me!"
Diagnosed with cancer as a young boy, he spent a long time convalescing in bed with relatives reading to him, and the storyteller’s spark was ignited. But he refuses to even discuss his first book, published when he was all of 17. "It was written by an adolescent who I can’t relate to or understand any more."

When asked what winning an Oscar really meant, Walter Matthau laconically replied, "When you die, newspaper reports will begin: Academy Award-winning actor…" Galgut’s attitude toward the Booker Prize nomination isn’t dissimilar, but he concedes that it was good for his writing life. "The selection is irritatingly arbitrary but I’m glad it was arbitrary in my favour. Readership sales in the UK skyrocketed when the nominations were announced."

And commercial success does matter to this reticent man, if it allows him to live by his pen. His work experience ranges from being a waiter in London to a drama teacher in Cape Town, but "travelling and writing full-time is just fine by me".

Gizmo-a-ga-ga

Interviewed a self-confessed criminal, and an unwitting moron, today. This was for my newspaper, for a column where we profile first-generation entrepreneurs who have made it big. (Yes, I realise this is the Internet, a public domain, and I’m being imprudent, but have to get this out of my system.) The chap in question had the idea, a few years ago, of sourcing “gizmos and gadgets” not easily available in India, from countries like Hong Kong and Singapore, and retailing them here; he now has a showroom in a part of Delhi that has a reputation for somehow being simultaneously posh and shady. To this showroom went I at 11 AM today, armed with the printout of the press release that I had been sent.

In fairness, the press release should have prepared me for the experience. (Reminder: another blog on press releases and the PR types who compose them.) I can’t quote it at length but one of the more intelligible passages read: “Mr ________ is a gizmo passionate man. It was really his passion since childhood to do something about this world on its own which has now turned in his profession.”

[There was also a sentence that began “Looking for a place to satiate all your gizmotic desires? …”, which had the girlies in my corner of the office giggling girlishly at each other and whispering “sex toys!” But I stray.]

As it turned out, the press release wasn’t far off the mark; the way it had been written was remarkably similar to the way Gizmo Guy actually spoke. Which didn’t stop him from disagreeing with it completely. “It says here that your father presented you with a laptop on your 15th birthday,” I began tentatively. “Oh no, oh no, what rubbish surely, whoever told you suchathing?” he chortled back. On the sofa behind us three unctuous PR people (one of whom had presumably written the vile thing I held in my hand) beamed at each other; they were all dressed formally, reminding me of those smarmy bowtie-and-coattails-clad frogs in the comic strip (I forget which). The PRs didn’t look shamefaced, in case you’re wondering.

The press release had also led me to believe that Mr ______ had an exclusive tie-up with some major electronics companies, for dealership of their products. When I asked him about the nature of these deals, he beamed at me. “No no oh no, there are no deals,” he said happily, “in fact, so-and-so company is threatening to sue us for illegally retailing their products Ha ha ha.”

Not knowing your own press release is one thing; not knowing your own age is quite another. “How old were you seven years ago, when you started the business?” I asked “Uhh, ahh, ohh, err,” he answered, looking toward the frogs for succour (they chuckled noisily).

Needless to say, with all my journalistic integrity, I’m still doing the story. Watch out for it this Saturday; it’s about a young visionary who established a (perfectly legitimate) multi-crore business through years of sweat and toil. Should be inspirational.

Individual and team

It was heart-warming to see the little-known Zimbabwean E Chigumbara take the man of the match award for his fine all-round showing against Sri Lanka in the ICC cricket championship, despite the fact that his team lost. For me, it was an affirmation of something I’ve long believed in but which is sadly undermined time and again (especially in the heat of nationalistic fervour): that a good individual performance must be shown respect and given importance, regardless of the result of a match.

I’ve never understood this talk about a fine innings or a good spell of bowling “counting for nothing if it doesn’t result in a win for your team”. Fine, cricket (and football, and whatever else…but cricket is what I know about) is a team game, we all know that; it’s parroted faithfully by everyone each time there’s a match on; it’s coming out of all our ears -- and to be honest, each time I hear the phrase I feel like bludgeoning the speaker to death with one of Clive Lloyd’s 3.5-pound bats.

For teams are, after all, made up of human beings – a pageant of individuals with varied strengths and flaws, all of whom bring degrees of richness to the sport. Saying that an individual performance means nothing if it doesn’t help the team win is tantamount to dismissing outright the entire careers of such players as the West Indian George Headley and the New Zealander Bert Sutcliffe – greats of the game who rarely knew what it felt like to be part of a winning team, because their achievements were rarely supplemented by their teammates’. There are many others -- others who may not have been part of weak teams throughout their careers but who at various times found themselves playing a great symphony for a team where everyone else was croaking out of tune.

The intensity of my feelings on this subject will forever be linked to the gross injustice repeatedly done to Sachin Tendulkar – an INDIVIDUAL in whose absence this TEAM sport would have been immeasurably poorer in the past 15 years. An individual who, at the peak of his career, playing for an inconsistent and underperforming side, would often be the sole performer in an 11-member team – and would then be the sole culprit when that team lost despite his efforts.

Many observers of the game have noted an interesting phenomenon involving Tendulkar and the Indian spectator. It went something like this: When Tendulkar played well, there was a general sense of well-being, even if India lost the match. (This was especially true back in those days when the Indian team seemed to revolve completely around him.) But few have dared take this observation to what I feel is its logical conclusion: that maybe, if people do feel that way, there’s nothing especially wrong with it. Maybe it’s just a natural human response manifesting itself: the recognition that admiring individual achievement is every bit as important as proving a point to Pakistan, or Australia, or whoever, as a team.

But time and time again, this natural human response is beaten out of us by those who would have us conform, fall in with the straight and narrow path; it's drummed into us by finger-wagging commentators and scribes that team victory is ALL that matters, and that it’s wrong, and unpatriotic to believe otherwise. To me, there’s something almost Orwellian in the insidiousness of this brainwashing. (This is all I have time for right now, but I’m going to continue this line of thought in another blog on patriotism -- that most overrated of virtues.)

England, England

Started Julian Barnes’ 1998 novel England, England last night. Am up to page 65 but may unfortunately have to put it off for awhile, because I’ve just been given something else to review, complete with a shockingly unreasonable deadline. But even the little I read included a couple of very interesting passages that gave me pause.

The plot is an intriguing one. (Barnes is especially strong in that area at most times, though I think he sometimes meanders in the actual telling of his stories.) It involves the efforts of a pompous tycoon, Jack Pitman, to create an alternate, quick-fix England on the Isle of Wright. The idea is to provide a tourist spot where visitors can see England not necessarily as it really is, but as it exists in the popular imagination; a survey held to determine the Fifty Quintessences of Englishness throws up, among other items: the Royal Family, Robin Hood and his Merry Men, the White Cliffs of Dover, Big Ben; the Stonehenge; and Thatched Cottages. Pitman and his team now set about recreating these quintessences for easy public consumption.

Naturally, such a venture has rich comic possibilities (small example: the Harrods replica is located inside the Tower of London replica!) but Barnes also makes many poignant observations about nationality, reality and imitation, and the unreliability of our memories. I was very moved by the opening chapter, in which a woman’s childhood memories merge in such a way as to make her believe that the reason her father left the family, when she was a little girl, was to hunt for a jigsaw piece depicting Nottinghamshire (to fit a puzzle showing the English counties).

At a more personal level, my own sightseeing experiences in the UK in May this year lead me to believe that Barnes’ central concept may not be that far-out. I took an eight-day coach tour around the country and while it was an invigorating trip on the whole, I was a little annoyed by the artifice that accompanied many of the tourist show-arounds. In the Shakespeare house in Stratford-Upon-Avon, for instance, the room where the Bard was supposedly born was obviously done up with recent furnishings meant to simulate the actual appearance of the room in the year 1564. The tourist guide herself gave the impression she had done a night-course at the Globe Theatre’s acting academy. With dramatic flourishes aplenty, she mimicked the movements of the midwife who had brought young Will into this world, and explained the precise nature of the delivery. (Bear in mind that many scholars today aren’t even completely sure the man existed in the first place!)

It was much the same story elsewhere. The whole country, at times, seems to be one big tourist spot and the sense of burlesque is all-pervasive. The shadow of the past is inescapable but even more inescapable are the attempts to jazz things up for a modern audience -- to give us 21st century tourists something we can instantly relate to.
In that context, here’s a relevant extract from the book:

"Now the question to be asked is, why do we prefer the replica to the original? To understand this, we must understand and confront our insecurity, our existential indecision, the profound atavistic fear we experience when we are face to face with the original. We have nowhere to hide when we are presented with an alternative reality to our own, a reality that appears more powerful and therefore threatens us..... Now there is the re-presentation of the world.It is not a substitute for that plain and primitive world, but an enhancement and enrichment, an ironization and summation of that world. The world of the third millennium is inevitably, is ineradicably modern, and that it is our intellectual duty to submit to that modernity, and to dismiss as sentimental and inherently fraudulent all yearnings for what is dubiously termed the ‘original’."

The above doesn’t apply just to the re-presentation of England. It’s to be found all around us. We see it all the time, for instance, in historical or period movies where the characters behave not the way they would have done in their own time but in proto-modernist fashion; almost as if they were winking slyly at the audience. You see, we were just like you are, except for the fancy clothes. (Thus the spectators at the Colosseum in Gladiator behave for all the world like football supporters at penalty corner time. Thus Jack the Ripper presciently tells a detective in From Hell, "Decades from now, people will say that I gave birth to the 20th century.")

Persepolis and Maus

Graphic Novels RULE! I’m only half-joking when I tell people that if I had my way I wouldn’t read anything else. Have just finished Persepolis 2:The Story of a Return by Marjane Satrapi; it’s the sequel to her Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, which I’d read only a couple of weeks ago. The first book is the story of Marjane’s childhood and adolescence as a young Iranian in the shadow of the 1979 revolution; the second deals with her stay in Austria, where her parents sent her at the age of 14, her return to her home country and difficulties in adjusting to a very different cultural milieu.

Persepolis has been influenced (as have so many modern graphic novels) by Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece Maus. I don’t have much time for a detailed blog now so here’s a piece I wrote for the books section of my newspaper’s lifestyle magazine recently:

The Holocaust, in a comic book

Jai Arjun Singh

In 1992 something atypical happened in the literary award universe. The Pulitzer Prize committee gave a special citation to a novel that could roughly be classifed as a comic book -- a category not generally beloved of crusty high-lit juries. But then Maus was no ordinary comic. Art Spiegelman’s attempt to understand the life of his father Vladek, a concentration camp survivor, is a work of uncommon intelligence, perspicuity and depth. And it helped bring the underappreciated genre of the graphic novel into the mainstream.

To understand what Spiegelman was up against in terms of gaining acceptance for his work, one needs to understand the reactions provoked by Holocaust art in many quarters. Several critics, like George Steiner, believe that the only way to deal with the Holocaust is by not depicting it at all. "In the face of certain realities," said Steiner, "art becomes trivial and insignificant." This view is understandable to an extent -- the chillingly systematic extermination of Jews in Nazi Germany is a subject so sensitive, the fear that it might be trivialised is a natural one. Imagine, in this context, the horrified reactions to the idea of a comic book version!

But Spiegelman sidesteps the exclusivist approach and tries, instead, to present the events for the ordinary reader, who wants to at least attempt to understand. When Vladek explains how the "fat from burning bodies was scooped out and poured again so everyone could burn better", the next panel shows Art holding his head and saying "Jesus!" Steiner and others would have considered this a grossly inadequate reaction to an inestimable horror; but then, it’s exactly how most of us would react on being told the story.

The use of a "non-realistic" medium like the comic book creates the necessary buffer between the reader and the subject matter, as does Art’s chief creative device: he depicts the Jews (including himself and his father) as mice, the Nazis as cats and the Poles as pigs. And there’s method behind the innovation: Hitler refused to acknowledge the Jews as "humans", and a Nazi manifesto denounced Mickey Mouse as a "filth-covered vermin" -- which is pretty much how they regarded Jews as well.

Maus moves between two time periods. The present is sometime in the 1970s, which is when young Art, notepad and tape recorder in hand, visits his cantankerous old father -- now remarried, after the suicide of Art’s mother a few years earlier. Over the course of several meetings, we get Vladek’s story from his youth in the early 1930s, through the first signs of anti-Semiticism revealing its darkest shades, and finally to the horrors of Auschwitz.

Some passages are difficult if you’re seeking a straightforward morality tale. Spiegelman’s drawings might be simple (albeit deceptively so) but there’s nothing simplistic about his treatment of the story. In the panel depicting speculations on why Art’s mother killed herself, "Menopausal tension" shares space with "Hitler did it!" And Art unsparingly depicts his aged father showing the same contempt for a black American hitchhiker that the Nazis had for the Jews. (Vladek justifies his prejudice by saying "It’s not even to compare the ‘Shvartsers’ and the Jews!") Intolerance knows no barriers; it infests even those who have been on the receiving end of the worst of it.

"I just wanted to portray my father accurately," says a confused Art at one point in the book. One of the many remarkable things about Maus is how it manages simultaneously to be a moving record of the greatest tragedy of the last century, and a son’s very personal tribute to his father.

Overrated non-fiction

Am reviewing Lance Armstrong’s autobiography It’s Not About the Bike and its sequel Every Second Counts for a literary magazine, Biblio. I was a bit uneasy at first -- I don’t follow cycling as a sport and only knew the general outline of Armstrong’s inspiring story: his struggle with cancer and near-miraculous recovery to win the Tour de France against all odds.

But there was another, deeper reason for my reluctance: I’m not generally speaking a big fan of autobiographies/biographies. I think non-fiction sometimes gets an automatic stamp of approval even when it doesn’t deserve it; there’s an unfortunate perception that if something really happened, it becomes more worthy somehow, regardless of the actual quality of the book. (I think now of foolish socialites who, when asked about their reading choices, puff their siliconed chests out and say, "I only read non-fiction or ‘inspirational’ books." ) It’s true of movies as well; there is no blurb more overrated than the execrable "Based on a True Story" which almost begs unimaginative viewers to give their unqualified approval to a mediocre Hollywood film or a TV-movie-of-the-week. You understand, my problem isn’t with films -- or books -- that play around with facts to suit their own ends; it’s with the ones that, even when they are dead authentic in every detail, are shoddy, lazy pieces of work, content with just telling a true story in the hope that it will be lapped up.

So give me good fiction any day: after all, what could be more inspiring a "true story" than that of a writer/scriptwriter/director using the power of his imagination to dream up an enthralling tale, and then tell it well?

[Note: having said all the above, It’s Not About the Bike was, against all expectations, one of the most engrossing, delightful books I’ve read recently. Despite the fact that Lance Armstrong’s story is the wet dream of every soap opera writer, the book managed not to be cliched. Guess it’s the treatment that counts. Maybe there’s some hope for non-fiction after all ;-) ]

On non-readers

I had the terrifying experience this evening of being in a bookshop with a friend Who Does Not Read. We’d met for a quick drink at a nearby pub and I needed my browsing high for the day; since he was in no hurry to leave, he dawdled in after me.

As it happened, I was soon the one in a hurry – to exit the bookshop. It was horrible. As I studied the “New Releases” section, he stood by at an oblique angle, all of three inches away, and studied me. Then, perhaps sensing my unease, he moved away and made the most depressingly unconvincing show of looking at titles on the “Self-improvement” shelf. When the titles were long or marginally complicated ones, he had to mouth them silently to himself as his gaze alighted on each word, one at a time. It was all I could do to stop myself from rushing out with a yowl. I managed to gargle out something like “letschguh”, and led him out.

Now I don’t want to get too snooty about non-readers, especially at a time when I fear that I myself may be going too far in the opposite direction -- getting obsessive about my books, to the exclusion of all else. After all, many great writers (Somerset Maugham among them) have sought to undermine the importance of reading, or even being literate, by saying that there are far more worthwhile, productive things people can do with their time. Like ploughing a field. (Of course, I’m always a bit sceptical about a man of letters making such statements – sounds too much like the billionaire saying “Money isn’t everything”.)

But at the level of pure, innocent curiosity, I can’t help wondering how it is to be someone who has never gotten into the reading habit. I’ve always had my books, starting from the age of 3+, when my mother read Ladybird Level 1s out to me. And while I don’t completely agree with that old homily which suggests that a person with books can never be lonely (it hasn’t always been true for me, and frankly I don’t think it should be true), I do believe there are few better palliatives than reading.

I often form mental pictures of the lives of people who don’t read. This friend, for instance: he’s usually very busy with work and I hadn’t seen him in months, but very unusually he had a short working day today and so called to check if I could meet up. All very well, and a nice, healthy thing to do, completely commendable. But how, at the same time, can I refrain from conjuring up the following images: 1) Non–reader is astonished to find himself back home before sundown. 2) Plays around with TV remote, decides there’s nothing worthwhile on. 3) Lazily picks up a stray magazine lying on a side-table, flips the pages, looks at individual words before losing interest. 4) Realises that there’s absolutely nothing to do, must call a friend.

Now that’s probably an over-simplified vision, but I don’t think it can be too far from the truth either. If I ever find myself completely free (which is increasingly rare), with two, or three, or six hours of nothing to do, I know there’s always going to be a book handy. And I’m frightened by the thought of a life where that possibility is completely precluded.

(It occurs to me now that this is, after all, a public forum and perhaps I mustn’t rely too much on my friend’s disinclination to read; it might not extend to web pages. Hence not mentioning his name.)

The Rachel Papers

Just finished reading Martin Amis’s The Rachel Papers. He was just 22 or some such obscene age when he wrote it (it was his first novel) -- and the mere thought fills me with rage and self-loathing. But that’s a rant for another blog. Amis is a brilliant stylist, something that’s evident even in this very early work, narrated in the first person by the precocious, irreverent 19-year-old Charles Highway who shares his thoughts on life, family, sex and Oxford (not necessarily in that order) and tries to make sense of his relationship with a girl named Rachel.

The humour is very wry, very deadpan, so much so that I’m sure I missed some of it. Though it sometimes teeters on the edge of being too-clever, it’s disarming and, for the most part, genuinely funny.

Example:
At that moment the double doors swung open and Mr Greenchurch strolled grandly in.
"Churls!"
He wasn’t reproaching us, merely calling out my name in his senile yodel.

Can’t say I give it an unqualified endorsement; some passages were vague and just didn’t hold my interest.To be honest, I was in speed-reading mode through much of the first half; it’s hard to focus on the task at hand when I’m simultaneously worrying about the six dozen or so as-yet-unread books rustling their pages plaintively at me from a corner of the bed. I also had occasional trouble with the 1970s Brit slang.

Straw Dogs

Large chunks of this blogspot will contain musings on films I’ve watched and books I’ve read. Here’s the first:

Watched Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs yesterday evening, just a couple of hours after posting a blog complaining that I had neglected my London-returned DVDs. Found the ideal pretext: a friend dropped in and we saw the film together while chewing on chicken tikkas and sipping wine. If I’d been home alone I probably would never have gotten around to it. (As a rule, I enjoy watching movies by myself but these days any spare time goes into reading.)

Peckinpah, for the uninitiated, is a director who rewrote the grammar of screen violence in American westerns in the late 1960s. His 1969 film The Wild Bunch featured slow-motion shootouts that eschewed the sterile "bang-bang-roll-over-and-die" gunfights that had characterised previous westerns. Peckinpah brought in science; his (inevitably gory) shootout sequences showed the exact effect a bullet fired at close range has on a human body, with shots that dwelt lovingly on bullet entering flesh at one spot and exiting through another, accompanied by thin sprays of blood. (Incidentally, The Wild Bunch had a huge stylistic influence on Sholay -- especially the scene where Veeru and Jai pretend to be dead and ambush the six dacoits who have come to collect their bodies.)

Straw Dogs is no western but has immense shock value in the best Peckinpah tradition. Quick synopsis (no, I have no intention of turning this blog into a DVD jacket write-up): An American mathematician (Dustin Hoffman) moves with his British wife (Susan George) to the little town she grew up in, ostensibly to lead a quiet, peaceful life. But they soon become the targets of xenophobic hostility in general, and attract the unwelcome attentions of a group of leering stevedores -- one of whom is the woman’s ex-boyfriend. Quiet menace soon gives way to an explosively violent climax.

Given that the viewing experience wasn’t an optimum one -- the DVD player remote control refused to work properly, the sound was a little off and the wine and kababs commanded much of our attention -- I could still appreciate the director’s expertise at building tension and claustrophobia. The setting made the film all the more interesting; I’ve always been intrigued by movies that show violence and horror coming to the surface in places where you’d least expect them to -- like the serene English countryside. (Hitchcock once said he would have liked to shoot a murder in a scenic garden in Holland, with a sudden close-up of a drop of blood on a bright yellow tulip.)

Straw Dogs was a very controversial film on its original release, not least for a rape sequence where the lines between consensual and forced sex are disturbingly blurred. I’m not sure about this, but I think the film engendered (note pun) a number of essays on the balance of power between men and women -- this was 1971, with the feminist movement in full swing. My only observation on the topic is that the Susan George character is mistreated/commodified/dominated by almost all the men in the film -- including her initially mousy husband -- and yet she’s the one who takes the decisive action in the climactic scene.

Hoffman was excellent, I thought; I’ve never been a huge fan of his and in the last 20 or so years I think he turned into a caricature (like many of the top American actors of that generation) -- but he did almost everything right here.

I didn’t originally want to write more than a few quick, casual observations but this has turned into a near-review. Quick note to self: lighten up.

Time management

At least once a day now, I find myself making the following lament (or a close enough variation) to anyone who cares to listen: “I wish each day had 36 hours in it, and that I could make do with only four hours of sleep! There’s so much to DO that never gets done!”

It’s become a motif of my life, this obsession with time -- with trying to get as much as possible done, fast, while simultaneously feeling crippled by the hopelessness of it all. I empathise with Pink Floyd’s madman – how CAN you expect to hold your own successfully in a race against the Sun?

Why this despair? To begin with, I’m lucky compared to many others, in the sense that I don’t have a high-stress job. I work for the weekend (Saturday) section of a newspaper and don’t have daily deadlines. Friday is the one indubitably tough day in the week; during lighter weeks, there’s little of substance to do on Mondays and Tuesdays, and it isn’t even that tough to conjure up an appointment and sneak away early. (Reminder to self: do NOT send site URL to senior colleagues.) Certainly, I don’t have the excuse available to millions of working professionals, who leave for office at 8 in the morning, work hard all day, return home at 9 pm and consider themselves lucky if they get a reasonable amount of sleep in.

To put it succinctly, the problem in my case is books. Ever since I decided to dedicate as much of my time as possible to reading – both for interest and for professional reasons – I find there’s rarely enough time for other things. Reading is such an inclusive, time-consuming hobby and unlike some people I know, I can never mix it with other things – with, say, listening to music or even watching a game of cricket on TV.

The result? Some things that used to be very important to me have taken a back seat. I’m especially peeved about the dust gathering on my precious DVDs. I bought 24 of them when I visited London earlier this year, and have watched exactly three in the last four months (of course, many of the others are films I’ve already seen and wanted to own – but that’s hardly the point). In some ways, I still consider myself a cineaste first and a bibliophile second – I feel a protective fondness for cinema, especially popular cinema, which is so much more susceptible to pillory and condescension than literature is. But I have been giving movies the step-fatherly treatment in recent months.

Is there a solution? I fear not – unless I make the difficult decision to bring some moderation to my reading. Writing about his prolificity, Isaac Asimov said there were times when he felt like he wanted to write every book ever written. I can relate to that manner of gluttony – there are times I want to read everything ever written. But sadly, one must be realistic.

It’s 5 pm on a Sunday as I write this; I’ve been awake nine hours and have (not counting the newspapers) read only around 25 pages today (Martin Amis’s The Rachel Papers).

The sun is the same in the relative way, but you’re older: shorter of breath and one day closer to death -- Roger Waters

Why blog?

Incredibly silly as this will sound, one of the reasons for the unconscionable delay in starting this blog (which I first resolved to do around a year ago) is this: I didn’t know what to write in the description. It was tempting to follow the example of friends who’ve said things like “this is my pulpit, my podium…and my epitaph” (sorry, Rumman) or “this blog is dedicated to life as I know it…” (sorry, Rajat) in their blog intros. But I didn’t want to dash off something that would sound too clever or smart-assed (though I confess that’s partly because it would take a lot of hard work to come up with something that would even just seem clever).

Hence the pseud-simplicity of the username jaiarjun. My full name is Jai Arjun Singh and it’s served me well in the cyber age; there are millions of Jais and millions of Arjuns but I hold the patent for the conjoined version, which means I don’t have to contend with infernal “Username taken” rebuffs each time I attempt to create an email account/choose a sign-up. (My mail Ids are jaiarjun@yahoo.com, jaiarjun@hotmail.com, jaiarjun@rediffmail.com and jaiarjun@indiatimes.com. Boring but practical.)

It was a whimsical, on-the-spot decision to use ‘Jabberwock’ as the Blog title. Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky, a wonderfully evocative bit of nonsense verse from Through the Looking Glass, is one of my favourite poems. It isn’t that well known outside biblio circles, nor is it so esoteric as to seem pretentious (in fact, someone else on Blogspot has a homepage with the URL jabberwock.blogspot.com). And at another level, I can always engage in some clever phonetic play by suggesting it be read “Jai-be-wacky”.

Wackiness, unfortunately, is not something that comes naturally to me when writing. I’m a bibliophile and working as a journalist allows me to indulge my interest at a professional level – through book reviews and author profiles. But it’s one of the occasional strengths, and frequent weaknesses, of my writing that it often lacks spontaneity. I break into a cold sweat when I have a 1,000-word book review to write; I interrupt the reading process to make notes and mark page numbers; I formulate sentences in my mind and write them out (with pen! on notepad!) long before typing out the final draft; and at the end of it all, I’m painfully aware that something is missing. Maybe that something that comes from just sitting in front of the computer and writing whatever comes into your head, with the knowledge that as long as your thoughts are clear the pieces will somehow fall into place – and minor restructuring can always be done later. It’s the fluid, untrammeled writing process that I’m hankering after.

And what better place to start than a blog…