Thursday 31 December 2009

My review of 2009

So here it comes, the end of another year and, according to popular myth, also of another decade (though strictly speaking for that we shall have to wait another 12 months). Even so, the past nine years have been most eventful, dominated by 9/11 of course - we are already hearing that mantra repeatedly. But let me begin, as usual, with a list of books that I have read during the year.

Books
1) "Dreams from my Father" by Barack Obama - ISBN 978 1 84767 094 6 - UK p/b Canongate (2007) - 442 pages

To think now that I began the year with this book! I did however mention that I was going to do so in my review of 2008. It is of course a universal best-seller and the story of his life is too well-known to warrant even a brief summary here. I have also done a longish draft review of the book, which I hope to complete and post separately in 2010. Suffice it to say here that `Dreams` made an inviting bed-time read. I have just looked at some bits in the book that I had made a note of at the time. In one, at p 47, he describes the tension and dynamics of his mother`s and step-father Lolo`s relationship against the background of life in Indonesia and how for him she resolved the ambivalence of "which side of the divide she wanted her child to be on" by deciding that "I was an American ... and my true life lay elsewhere". That was to be reinforced much later, as a mature adult, when he visited Kenya for the first time and touched base with his roots there having experienced, during the passage through his late teens into manhood, the angst of his American-ness laid bare and having "grown tired of trying to untangle a mess that was not of my own making" (at p 93), on account of being a member of a "minority assimilated into the dominant culture" and further having "to put up with" "indignities" of the kind inflicted daily on "an ordinary nigger" (at p 100)!

2) "Netherland" by Joseph O`Neil - ISBN 978-0-00-727570-0 - UK p/b Harper Perennial (2009) - 247 pages

As it happened, I was reading this simultaneously with `Dreams`, and little did I know then that it had also featured in BO`s own leisure-time reading! I was simply captivated by the narrative and the setting and style of the book. Both the books made one snuggle up to bed on cold nights of the winter. The cricketing environment of the new English-speaking migrant communities, rooted in old British Empire traditions, against the background of New York`s multi-cultural metropolis was conveyed so vividly as to infect the reader with a voyeuristic, tingling excitement. So these two books together made a good start for the year.

3) "The Suspicions of Mr Whicher Or The Murder at Road Hill House" by Kate Summerscale - ISBN 978 0 7475 9648 6 - UK p/b Bloomsbury 2009 - 372 pages incl index

As if the first two books weren`t exciting enough, I chose this, together with the next one, for our trip to South East Asia from March into April. The mid-19th century setting of `Suspicions` has echoes of Conan Doyle, except that this was a real-life case - a fictionalised step-by-step account of an investigation into a gruesome killing of a child in rural England, complete with diagrams and pictures, extensive chapter notes and a comprehensive bibliography of source material in the manner of an academic study or a legal report. The book, as the blurb puts it, bears "all the hallmarks of a classic, gripping murder mystery" that has "(a) body, a detective, a country house steeped in secrets and a whole family of suspects .... the original Victorian whodunnit"! It reminded me of `Arthur and George` by Julian Barnes (listed in my review of 2006) about the miscarriage of justice case of George Edalji, the young British-born lawyer son of a Parsi parson and his English wife, wrongly convicted of a series of heinous attacks on horses at the height of the Victorian era. So it made a perfect holiday read, as did the next one, in warm and exotic surroundings!

4) "The Beach" by Alex Garland - ISBN 978-0-141-03509-3 - UK Penguin p/b 1997 - reissued 2007 - 439 pages

Reading this on location, as it were, merely enhanced its inherent magic; you felt an immediacy, an overwhelming sense of being drawn into the world of its youthful characters. In Bangkok, we were walking the very streets and traversing the same landscape that formed the backdrop of the narrative. The imagined island at the centre of the story, the Thai paradise, lay beyond our physical grasp but was brought alive in the book. The drug scene and sexual freedom of the Vietnam era - as well as its ugliness in terms of physical devastation and moral despair - which could so easily translate into our present day war on terror and its aftermath - were a retreat into a poetic dreamland for the young men and women who wanted to escape from the real world. Their idyllic adventure was to shatter, but the long lead up to the denouement is so beautifully captured that when the end comes one is left strangely both bereft and bolstered by the experience. I had not seen the very successful movie of the book before, but later when I did I felt just as spiritually and vicariously transported as after reading the book.

5) "The Audacity of Hope" by Barack Obama - ISBN 978 1 84767 083 0 - 2006 - UK p/b Canongate Books 2007 - 375 pages

This was necessary, after `Dreams`, to understand where BO was coming from in his politics. We also learn more about his personal history and journey into prominence, with further snippets of his relationship with his father and the senior Obama`s family.

6) "His Illegal Self" by Peter Carey - ISBN 978-0-571-23154-6 - Faber p/b - 2008 - 272 pp - a 2 star out of xxxxx!

7) "The Accidental" by Ali Smith - ISBN 978-0141-03501-7 - Penguin p/b - 2005 - 306 pp - ditto

8) "The Secret River" by Kate Grenville - ISBN 978 1 84195 828 6 - UK p/b Canongate Books 2006 - 349 pp

After the two earlier rather non-descript books (6) and (7), this was a welcome and most fascinating read; almost half of the book is devoted to the origins and background of the convict family who are transported to Australia at the beginning of the 19th century. Their life on the River Thames is so graphically described that even two centuries on, as Londoners, we can relate to their hardships and helplessness, their aspirations and achievements in the face of numerous obstacles in the pre-Dickensian mode. But the `secret river` of the title is not the Thames but rather the raw, mysterious and treacherous backwater in an unexplored and seemingly uninhabited corner of Queensland which they make their home after a series of struggles and confrontations with both nature and the natives. The most telling part of the narrative is how they tame the land but not the aborigines whom they encounter, and wantonly kill, but with whom they fail to establish any line of communication for want of linguistic skills or endeavours. They settled there but their heart remained rooted back home - they were really displaced people. There was some feeling of guilt and shame over the merciless slaughter of the natives - who became victims of history - but this isn`t explored in depth in the book itself. Towards the end, the hero reflects on his life thus: "He did not spell out to (his wife) what they both knew: that they were never going to return to that Home. Too many of the important parts of their lives had happened here. Their children, for a start. For them, Home was nothing but a story. If they were to go to London they would be outsiders, with their sunburnt skin and their colonial ways". That is the lament and the dilemma of all first-generation migrants all across the globe!

9) "Somewhere Towards The End" by Diana Athill - ISBN 978-1-84708-069-1 - Granta p/b 2008 - 182 pp - a biographical work by a well-established literary agent, born in 1917, who has this year featured a lot in media coverage and interviews and among whose distinguished circle of client writers was VS Naipaul for many years.

10) "The Road Home" by Rose Tremain - ISBN 9780099478461 - Vintage p/b - 2007- 365 pp - about the new Eastern European migrants in 21st century Britain, whose tragectory, trials, tribulations and triumphs are familiar to 21st century Londoners!

11) "The 19th Wife" by David Ebershoff - A Black Swan Book 9780552774987 - 2008 - 606 pp - a long-winded story about the Mormons in Utah, the unique feature of the book being that it is about parallel lives of two sets of characters separated by a century, partly based on fact and partly fictional.

12) "The Believers" by Zoe Heller - BCA h/b - CN158348 - 306 pp - beginning with a prologue date-marked London 1962 (which immediately attracted me, as it was bound to evoke my own memories of the period and place) and spanning the next four decades to New York 2002, charting the journey of a somewhat diffident and deprived working class Jewish woman who was transformed into a loud-mouthed, assertive, unpleasant middle-aged New York battleaxe through a chance marriage to an American, with all kinds of consequential sidelines and sequels.

13) "Nothing To Be Frightened Of" by Julian Barnes - ISBN 9780099523741 - Vintage p/b - 2008 - 250 pp - about dying and families - part-(auto)biography, part-philosophy - frank, factual and forlorn.

14) "The Law And The Lawyers" by M K Gandhi - ed by S B Kher - Ahmedabad - ISBN 81-7229-051-9 - 1962 - 300 pp - a miscellany of Gandhi`s writings on the legal theme, including some ancedotal sketches about his own flowering as a lawyer in early life.

15) "A Most Wanted Man" by John le Carre - ISBN 978 0 340 977708 8 - Hodder&S p/b - 2008 - 418 pp - a pleasurable holiday read on the ever popular and contemporary theme of spies and secret service officianados trumpeting everything in the name of national security.

16) "The Appeal" by John Gresham - 2008 - BCA h/b CN 155302 - 358 pp - another gripping holiday read by an accomplished veteran of legal fiction - here we learn about the politics of the American judicial and particularly appeals system which I found quite instructive.

17) "The Assassin`s Song" by M G Vassanji - ISBN 978 1 84767 283 4 - Canongate p/b - 2007- 314 pp

For East African Asian (EAA) diasporans, MGV represents the personification of their history. As a pioneering writer who had no tradition to drawn from, he has virtually single-handedly created a body of literature about EAAs that can rightly be compared, as it often is, to the works of Chinua Achebe, Salman Rushdie, V S Naipaul and Kiran Desai, whatever the differences in their style, approach and content. For me, he is a literary hero par excellence. His own website at http://www.mgvassanji.com/ contains a lot of useful information both about his background and his writings. "The Gunny Sack", "The Book of Secrets" and "The In-Between World of Vikram Lall", were about EAAs as they evolved through a century and a half of their settlement in Eastern Africa. `Assassins` is however set in India and delineates the pre-history of EAAs in terms of their ancestry and their re-emergence as post-colonial migrants to the West. But more importantly, it is about the antecedents of a unique community of Gujarati Shia Muslims, namely the Ismaili Khojas (whose spiritual head is the Aga Khan) with an insight into their origins and evolution right through to the partition and independence of India and as they wrestle with the inner conflicts giving rise to doubt and apprehension about the community`s fate following the Gujarat riots of 2002. In his own notes about the book, he describes `Assassins` as the story of the descendants of the 13th century sufi who had settled in Gujarat as a refugee, "narrated by the heir to (his) shrine ... (which) is neither Hindu nor Muslim (such places exist) ... who grows up in a rapidly changing India post independence... and the novel is in a sense about the burden of tradition". It is also about the borders of tradition, identity and belonging, as "the story (unfolds) in the aftermath of the bloody communal violence of 2002, in which the shrine was destroyed". As for the narrator`s self-liberation from an oppressive familial expectation, first as a foreign student and then as a fully-fledged migrant in America, there can be no doubt that here the author draws on his own personal journey to a new life in Canada over the same time period, which is also a reflection of the Ismaili community`s uprootment (but largely from Africa) and re-settlement in North America, As far as the depiction of campus life of a newly arrived Indian student at Harvard in the early 1970s is concerned, there are strong resonances with Anita Desai`s `Fasting, Feasting`, with our hero grappling with a sexual awakening as well as Ivy League social and academic complexities. But is there, in his return to India to claim or come to terms with his inheritance, an element of ambivalence? While at one level we see it as a positive ending, as an act of faith and commitment, at another there is the nagging and implicit doubt and uncertainty about the future - that is the essential conundrum of post-Godhra Gujarat. MGV`s search for the material for the book is explained in a sequel, `A Place Within: Rediscovering India`, which is on the top of my wish reading list for 2010.

18) "The Other" by David Guterson - ISBN 978 0 7475 9620 2 - Bloomsbury p/b - 2008 - 256 pp

Although a bit rambling, I found it improved half-way down, but then from the author of `Snow Falling on Cedars` I was not expecting to be disappointed. His physical settings, in Washington state, are always inviting especially, as here, when mixed with a touch of adventure and mystery. However it lacks the evocative sharpness of his earlier works, but made a good read.

19) "Sea of Poppies" by Amitav Ghosh - ISBN 978-0-7195-6897-8 - John Murray p/b (2009) - 2008 - 530 pp

I had hesitated before starting this long book, and even regretted doing so during the first 100 pages or so, despite all the plaudits heaped upon it. It took a long while to relate to the story-line and the characters; their speech in diverse tongues is a linguistic hotchpotch - an amalgam of English, Hindi, Urdu, Malay etc - that is difficult to read and understand. But once you get into the plot, it becomes possible to identify who is what and where they are coming from, both literally and metaphorically, and eventually where they are heading. So this is really one of those scenarios where a motley collection of people (a la William Golding`s `Rites of Passage`, but in this case, convicts and indentured labourers and their minders) go through a long gestation of dislocation from their roots, to be shepherded, willy-nilly, into a relentless rite of passage to pastures anew, which happens to be Mauritius, across the `black water`- though we do not see the destination reached! The action takes place during the pre-Victorian British rule under the East India Company. The early relationship between the Europeans and Indians and the background of the `poppies` phenomenon of the title are described in exquisite detail, with a historical flair, based on the author`s meticulous reseach that is evident from the extensive bibliography and references incorporated as endpieces - an unusual feature in a work of fiction that also appears in Salman Rushdie`s `Enchantress of Florence`. He excels in the minutiae of maritime terminology and shipcraft, and in his running account of the river voyage, all of which provide a fascinating insight into the hazards of navigation in the days before steam power.

20) "The New Asian Hemisphere - the irresistible shift of global power to the East" by Kishore Mahbubani, NY, http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/ - 314 pp

This was the publication that accompanied his brilliant one hour conversation piece captured on the UCLA site in 2008, before Obama`s successful entry into the race for the American presidency, wherein he expounded his critique of Western history, philosphy and politics impacting the post-9/11 policies of the US and EU. That was a most aritculate and riveting presentation; the book reinforces his message impressively, as evidenced in the extracts from the warm reviews of such figures as Lawrence H Summers, Amartya Sen, Jagdish Bhagwati and Zbigniew Brzezinski on the back cover. As the blurb states "For two centuries, the Asians - from Tehran to Tokyo, from Mumbai to Shanghai - have been bystanders in world history, reacting defenselessly to the surges of Westernn commerce, thought and power. That era is over. Asia is returning to the center stage it occupied for eighteen centuries before the rise of the West" - that is a fair summary of the author`s main thrust. He explores the line of progress from virtual non-entities to global powerpoints of the emerging Asian giants in a most disarming and discerning fashion, with a powerful intellect and deep understanding of the dynamics of global politics.

21) "The Tenderness of Wolves" by Steff Penney - ISBN 1 884724 067 4 & 13 978 1 84724 067 5 - a UK Quercus p/b - 2006 - 445 pp

I am so glad to be ending the year with this superb novel of extraordinary brilliance, a wholly deserving winner of the 2006 Costa First Novel Award, set in the Canadian wilderness of 1867. It is a work of high imagination. Every page bristles with minute details of the period and the pioneering atmosphere but, above all, we get an acute sense of the interaction between the migrant and the native (on a different plane from that described in `The Secret River`) in a nation that was still going through the process of transformation into a settler state, with its developing social consciousness and institutions of government. The wintry terrain of the harsh and sparsely populated hinterland naturally dominates the narrative as the main characters struggle with the elements on their trail across the country. We also observe, from the author`s perspective, the subtleties of behaviour and degrees of integration within the growing immigrant community. Add to that the mystery at the centre of the story and the thrill of the chase and we have all the ingredients of a tale of crime and adversity, even if the ending is a bit ambiguous!

-----

From the above list, the most outstanding were `Dreams from my Father`, `Netherland`, `Suspicions of Mr Whicher`, `The Beach`, `The Secret River`, `The Assassin`s Song`, `Sea of Poppies` and `The Tenderness of Wolves`, in no particular order.

As in the past, there are always books that remain unfinished. In my review for 2008, I had mentioned `Blinding Light` by Paul Theroux. Well, I have read some more of it and hopefully will complete the job in 2010. Another that looked promising but did not sustain the same level of interest was "The Divide" by Nicholas Evans, which again remains on my bedside table. Among the books awaiting to be read are a Stella Rimington and an Anita Shreve, but these are bound to be overtaken by `A Case of Exploding Mangoes`, which has received much praise. In sum total however the count for this year is 21 to last year`s 15!

In addition, the London Review of Books (LRB) every fortnight continues to be an essential part of my bedtime reading.

Films, Concerts, Theatre
Again, the year began well, with `Australia`, `Slumdog Millionnaire`, `The Reader` and `Frost / Nixon` - all within a few days of each other in January! I have reviewed `Slumdog` and `Frost / N` separately. `Australia` had more of a populist box-office appeal but did not really either warrant or stand up to a serious critical assessment in terms of historical accuracy or import. Among the other films seen during the year, the most notable ones were `Revolutionary Road`, `Doubt`, `Victoria`, and of course Pedro Almodovar`s`Broken Embraces`, with an enchanting and enigmatic Penelope Cruz stealing the limelight. Later, during the London Film Festival, I also saw `Well Done Abba` (also reviewed separately), as well as a couple of others which in an earlier era might have been described as `avant garde` but which we would now regard as the norm in our 21st century post-modern culture. On further reflection, I have given star x ratings for the films, from 1 to 5, the most outstanding ones getting 5+ and the others in reverse order.

Then there was the National Theatre production of Hanif Kureishi`s `The Black Album` directed by Jatinder Verma and the Cape Town Opera`s production of `Porgy and Bess` at the Royal Festival Hall (RFH), as well as a couple of Indian and Western classical performances. And as part of the onoing `Bernstein` project at the RFH, celebrating the works of Leonard Bernstein, there was the "Encounter at the Berlin Wall" on 30 November, the showing of the film version of his historic performance of Beethoven`s 9th Symphony after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. It made fascinating viewing, with close-ups of Bernstein as well as members of the Orchestra, and one was able to follow the nuances and rhythm of the music intently.

The most enjoyable event was the Amit Chaudhury evening at the Festival Hall, in the intimate surroudings of the Function Room, where he gave an impressive presentation of his versatile talents as a performer of jazz, Indian classical and `fusion`music, and as a literary critic.

See the Appendix for the full list of films etc.

Lectures and talks
Once again I was able to attend a fair number of talks and meetings at various London venues. The ones that especially stand out were the RSA Lunchtime panel discussion on `Israel and Palestine` on 8 January with Jonathan Friedland in the chair, `The Obama Future, in the light of the past`, also an RSA talk by David Reynolds with Bonnie Greer in the chair, the JUSTICE launch of the Eminent Jurists` Panel on Counter-Terrorism on 17 February with Helena Kennedy in the chair, Kennan Malik on The Rushdie Affair and its legacy` at the RSA on 19 March, Mahmood Mamdani on `Saviours and Survivors` at the ICA on 1 June, Amartya Sen in conversation with Jon Snow in the Purcell Room at the South Bank on 13 July. But there were some disappointments too. Among these were `The Many Avatars of the Indian Creative Mind` at the RSA on 20 April, the panel and music rendering of "Barack Obama: 100 Days" in the Purcell Room on 30 April, Arundhati Roy`s conversation with Shami Chakrabarti at South Bank`s Queen Elizabeth Hall on 2 July and "Screens with Channel 4 - The Family: How has the portrayal of South Asians in the media changed in recent years?" at the RSA on 17 November. On the other hand, the twin `Wasafiri` programmes on 31 October in the Purcell Room (reviewed separately) were the most uplifting and satisfying of the whole year.

I thought the Wasafiri event was the best, followed closely by Amartya Sen, Mahmood Mamdani and Kennan Malik.

The full list is given in the Appendix below my signature.

Foreign travel

We did two major trips: the first was to South East Asia - February into March - whose main focus was a train journey from Chiang Mai in Thailand to Singapore, via Malaysia. That was a wonderful trip, as was our South American Adventure in Sept / October (separately reviewed).

General

As always, reviewing the past year always involves reliving and reflecting upon it in headline terms. Some of the things covered had faded in memory until remembered for this exercise, others were still fresh and could be recalled in detail. That the year began with those memorable films and books is still a marvel. The trip to South East Asia was great, as was the next one to South America, but both these have now receded into the background. Even so, some bits still remain within mental reach.

How else was time spent? Engaging in interactive discourse on different internet forums daily - always a time-consuming activity - plus continuing research and writing.

This, then, this has been a good year on all these fronts. It may appear as if it has been rather hectic, but in general things are well spaced out. Even so, there is never a dull or idle moment and to that extent there has to be some slowing down. But I have now committed myself to a major project which involves a fair amount of research (currently in progress) and then writing a paper for presentation at the next GSA Conference in April on a very interesting subject which I do not want to reveal here just now. I will also be writing regularly for the `AwaaZ` magazine of Nairobi and will continue to be a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Immigration Asylum and Nationality Law (IANL). I also propose to retrieve selected bits of my writing from elsewhere and post them on this site. So 2010 will be just as challenging! How well all this will turn out remains to be seen.

With season`s compliments and best wishes to all for a Happy New Year. Gosh, what a change it will be to refer to 2010 as twenty-ten, rather than the longish two thousand and ten!

RAMNIK SHAH


APPENDIX

2009 Diary - Films, Plays, Concerts etc

Sun 04 Jan - Odeon KT1 - "Australia" (Nicole Kidman etc) - x x x x

Tue 06 Jan - Odeon KT1 - "Slumdog Millionaire" (Danny Boyle`s) - x x x x x++

Sun 11 Jan - Odeon KT1 - "The Reader" (Kate Winslet) - x x x x x

Sat 24 Jan - Odeon KT1 - "Frost / Nixon" (Michael Sheen) - x x x x x+

Thu 29 Jan - RFH - Philharmonia Orc Concert : Berlioz (Overture Op 21); Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in D & his 5th Symphony in E m - x x x x

Sat 07 Feb - Odeon KT1 - "Revolutionary Road" (Kate Winslet, LeonardodiCaprio) - x x x x x
 
Mon 30 Mar - ICA - "Wonderful Town" (Thailand, 2008, Dir Aditya Assarat) - x x x x

Sun 05 Apr - QEH - "Nina Virdee, Urban Love and Tablature" - `fusion` music (Hari Kumar, elec gutr, Kuljit Bhambra, leader) - x x x x x

Sat 18 Apr - RFH - Clore Ballroom Videoscreen - Simone Bolivar Youth Orchestra (incl Stravinsky`s Rite of Spring) - Conductor: Gustavo Dudamel - x x x x x

Sun 26 Apr - Odeon KT1 - "State of Play" (Russel Crowe, Ben Affleck) - x x x

Thu 07 May - RFH - Philha Orchestra - Cond: Jjoji Hattori (S Chang: Violin - Grieg Peer Gynt, Bruch Violin Concerto No.1, Beethoven 7 Symphony) - x x x x

Thu 26 Jun - ICA - Film: Soi Cowboy (Dir: Thomas Clay, UK/Thailand, sub-titles) - x x x x

Sat 27 Jun - Purcell Rm - "Swati Natekar: Destiny Chakra" by the Asian Music Circuit - x x

Tue 30 Jun - Odeon KT1 - "Surveillance` - rubbish film - 00000

Thu 16 Jul - NT Cottesloe - `The Black Album` = Jatinder Verma / Hanif Kureishi - x x x x x

Sun 23 Aug - Odeon KT1 = "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3" - x x x x

Thu 27 Aug - Epsom P/h - "Doubt" (Meryl Streep, Phillip Hoffman) -x x x x

Mon 31 Aug - Epsom P/h - "Young Victoria" - Emily Blunt etc - x x x x

Tue 01 Sep - Odeon KT1 - "Broken Embraces" - Dir Pedro Almodovar - Penel Cruz - x x x x x

Mon 19 Oct - LFF NFT2 - "The Exploding Girl" - Dir Bradly Russ Gray - x x x

Tue 20 Oct - LFF NFT1 - "Well Done Abba" - Shyam Benegal film - x x x x x+

Mon 26 Oct - LFF NFT3 - "45365" - study of ordinary life in small-town USA - x x x

Tue 27 Oct - RFH - "Porgy and Bess" (Cape Town Opera production) - x x x

Sun 29 Nov - Kensington Town Hall - Strings of Freedom - Mohan Veena Concert by Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt - NoteAsia Foundation - x x x x

Mon 30 Nov - Purcell Room - Encounter at the Berlin Wall - Bernstein Project - x x x x x
 
2009 Diary - Lectures, Conferences, Meetings etc
Thu 08 Jan - R S A - Lunchtime "Israel and Palestine: strategies for peace - Jonathan Friedland (Ch), Freedman, Kamms, Bari Atwan, Martin Linton MP

Tue 13 Jan - Tate Modern - `Rothco - The Late Series` - Exhibition (see LRB, 23.10.08, "At Tate Modern" by Peter Campbell)

Wed 28 Jan - R S A - 6 pm : David Reynolds (author of `The Empire of Liberty`) "The Obama Future, in the light of the past" - Chair: Bonnie Greer

Tue 17 Feb - JUSTICE launch of Eminent Jurists` Panel on Counter-Terrorism (Helen Kennedy QC, C, Mary Robinson, Arthur Chaskalson, Jina Hilani)

Thu 19 Mar - R S A - 1-2 pm - Kenan Malik: `The Rushdie Affair and Its Legacy` - Chair: Lisa Appignanesi, President of English PEN

Mon 24 Mar - South Bank: Royal Festival Hall - 7.45 pm - Function Room - Amit Chaudhury - Music and Literature

Thu 02 Apr - R S A - 1-2 pm - Ian Bremmer "The Fat Tail" - Ch: Luke Johnson

Mon 20 Apr - R S A - 6.45pm - `The Many Avatars of the Indian Creative Mind` (Amartya Sen, V Sheth, N M Nilekani, R Guha - Chair: D Davidar)

Thu 30 Apr - South Bank: Purcell Room - `Barack Obama: 100 Days` - Panel & Music (Zia Sardar, Shirley Thompson, Amina Adewusi, Lionel Shriver)

Wed 13 May - LSE - 2 pm - Conference: Challenging the Parallel Lives` Myth: Race, Sociology, Statistics and Politics

Thu 21 May - RSA - `Welfare 2020` - Rt Hon James Purnell, SoS Works & Pensions

Mon 01 Jun - ICA - Talk: Dr Mahmood Mamdani "Saviours and Survivors" - 7 pm

Thu 04 Jun - RSA - 1-2pm "God, Globalization and the End of the War on Terror" by Reza Aslan

Wed 17 Jun - RSA - 1-2pm "Electoral Reform: Right Question? Right
Answer?" Carswell, Huhne, MacShane MPs, J Keane - Ch: Steve Richards, The Indie)

Thu 02 Jul - South Bank: Queen Elizabeth Hall - 7.30 pm - Arundhati Roy x Shami Chakrabarti

Tue 07 Jul - House of Commons, C`tee Rm 13 - Migration Parliamentary Group - Keith Best, Immigration Advisory Group (Chairing)

Thu 09 Jul - House of Commons, C`tee Rm 14 - ILPA Silver Anniversary - Fiona Mactaggart MP

Mon 13 Jul - South Bank: Purcell Room - Amartya Sen x Jon Snow "The Idea of Justice"

Thu 21 Jul - RSA - 1pm - "The Crisis of Islamic Civilisation" - Ali A. Allawi

Thu 09 Sep - RSA - 1pm - "Freedom for Sale: How we made money and lost our liberty" - John Kampfner (Chair: David Goodhart)

Wed 14 Oct - Inner Temple - Gandhi Foundation Annual Lecture - Mr Justice Aftab Alam, Indian Supreme Court Judge: `Upholding Secularism`

Sat 31 Oct - South Bank: Purcell Room - `Wasafiri` events (1) Kenynote: Ngugi w Thiongo (2) Anita and Kiran Desai in conversation

Thu 05 Nov - RSA - 1 pm - "The Fall of the Berlin Wall - 20 Years On" - Mary Elise Sarotte with Peter Millar & Thomas Keilinger (Ch: James Robbins)

Thu 12 Nov - RSA - 1 pm - "Banking in the Wake of the Crisis - how will confidence be restored?" - John Kay, Heather McGregor (Ch: Edmond Conway)

Tue 17 Nov - RSA - 6.30 pm "Screens with Channel 4 - The Family: How has the portrayal of South Asians in the media changed in recent years?"

Thu 25 Nov - Royal College of Surgeons - Gresham College Lecture by Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6

Thu 10 Dec - RSA - 1 pm - "Ben Schott Re(views) the Year"

Sunday 1 November 2009

`Wasafiri` celebrates with literary giants

London`s South Bank hosted a series of programmes yesterday (Saturday, October 31, 2009) to celebrate the Wasafiri (http://www.wasafiri.org/) magazine`s silver jubilee. The first of these was the keynote address by Ngugi wa Thiongo, itself preceded by a formal welcome and introduction by the magazine`s editor Susheila Nasta, in which she traced its history, progress and relevance on the current global multi-cultural scene, after which Ngugi was led in by Amiatta Forna.

Ngugi`s spoke eloquently about the place of European languages in the former colonised lands, how they have come to displace or even in many cases destroy the vernaculars of the local people, and where this is leading to in terms of loss of indigeneous cultures etc. The essence of his message really was that given the world we live in, while there is no denying or getting away from the attraction and predominance of English, French or Portuguese as the universal lingua franca, what is needed is a recognition of the value of cross-lingual interaction - not just in one but rather in every direction - for keeping the old traditions, and in particular local languages, alive, and for spreading an awareness of their existence generally. While we can see the benefit of translating Shakespeare into Swahili, for example, a reversal of the traffic flow could help foster greater understanding across cultures! He was his usual self in his presentation - modest, unhurried, soft-spoken, self-confident - and remained focused and consistent throughout. He developed his theme patiently and with many anecdotal references. He mentioned a recent workshop he had conducted in a certain part of Nigeria where none of the students thought it fit to include their own vernacular as one of the languages they knew or wrote in as a matter of course, because they did not regard it as on a par with English or another European language. On the technical front, his advice to them and other budding authors was always "write, write, write and you will get it right some day" of course made sense.

I put to him that while for us, growing up in English was in a sense an imperial imposition, what we are witnessing now is a post-colonial paradigm shift on account of migration and globalisation, and that the increasing influence (or invasion) of English has to be seen as an acquisition, as an enhancement; his answer was that this must not be at the expense of the traditional and historical and that unfortunately what is happening is almost that or near to it. I am paraphrasing of course, but this was the gist.

In the next session, we had the pleasure of seeing the distinguished mother and daughter novelists and academics, Anita and Kiran Desai, together appear on stage in a conversation mode chaired by Maggie Gee. They made a lovely, unassuming, charming and engaging pair, who spoke un-selfconsciously about their background and emergence as writers. They readily admitted that there is a large element of `the outsider` in their writings about their homeland. We had readings by both, Anita from `Zig-Zag` and Kiran from `The Inheritance of Loss`. In Q&A I made the point that while it was clear that the hinterland of their imagination was rooted in India, their perspectives however gave too stark a picture of Indian society and wondered if or why there were no redeeming features in such portrayal. In this connection, I mentioned that I had read `Inheritance` while we were actually touring the region (Kolkatta, Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Gangtok, Pelling etc) and that while I as a diasporan Indian could relate to Kiran`s `onlooker` perspective in that context (the festering anger, the degradation, the deprivation etc = `the loss`) (while in Anita`s `Fasting and Feasting`, there was the characterisation of the Indian student going to America to confront and be exposed to the extreme riches there, in contrast to his own humble living conditions back home) wasn`t there something missing? Anita`s response was that that, unfortunately, was the harsh reality of India, but that the balancing factor in their books lay in the humour and humanity of some of the characters themselves.

So it was really a most satisfying long afternoon. The celebration ended with a concert of musical entertainment in the evening that we alas could not attend.

RAMNIK SHAH
Surrey England

Friday 23 October 2009

A South American Adventure

The title of our organised tour of Chile, Argentina and Brazil was `South American Adventure` and so it turned out! In the course of just over a fortnight, we stayed in 7 hotels, did 4 internal flights (in addition to the two long trans-Atlantic ones on the way out and return) and made two land frontier crossings. It was indeed hectic, but with intervals for rest and leisure in between.

So what about the trip itself? One of Its highlights was undoubtedly the drive over the top of the Andes from Chile into Argentina which involved a complicated sequence of coach and catamaran rides over a couple of days. Its starting point was the 76 km drive from Puerto Varas into the Vicente Perez National Park, a region of outstanding natural beauty and scenic terrain. En route we stopped to visit the Saltos de Petrohue, a magnificent waterfalls on the River Petrohue. This was followed by a most exciting catamaran ride of one-and-three-quarters hours across Lago Todos los Santos, considered to be the most beautiful lake in Chile because of its emerald green water and densely populated surrounding woods. Our destination there was the port of Peulla, a charming village nesting in a serene mountainous setting surrounded by lakes and waterfalls. There we stayed overnight in a Swiss chalet style hotel, with full amenities and splendid views of the surroundings.

We continued the next day, again through a series of coach and catamaran journeys, involving the physical crossing of the border from Chile into Argentina at an altitude of some 3,000+ metres. That was not however where the frontier formalities were done, for both the Chilean exit and the Argentinian entry procedures had been conducted miles apart, well before and after the physical boundary had been crossed. The climb up and drive through the mountains here reminded me of Sikkim, North East India, where we had journeyed in 2007, except that here there was much more of a harmony between nature and human habitation, which was also different from the clean and clinical contrast with the Rockies of North America. We were headed for Bariloche, on the south shore of Lake Nahuel Huapi, a renouned mountain resort in Patagonia and a favourite holiday destination not only for Argentinians but also for Brazilians.

The other major highlight was the Iguassu Falls complex, straddling both Argentina and Brazil, at a point which also borders on Paraguay. We were lucky that there had been a great deal of rain there just a couple of days earlier, which meant that there was high density water, water everywhere. This is an area of exceptional splendour that is not much heard or spoken of in the world at large, but it compares more than favourably with the better known Niagara and Victoria Falls. On the Argentinian side we walked on fortified walkways far and deep into the complex, while on the Brazilian side we stood in front of a huge cascade gushing at a velocity and noise level that was deafening.

But to backtrack a little, we had started out in Santiago, an easy going modern city of some five million. Here we saw the President`s Palace, where President Allende was killed in the coup that brought in General Pinochet in 1973. Later we did a tour of one of Chile`s finest wineries, Vina Concha y Toro which, I was pleased to discover, was the home of one of my favourite wines, the Casillero del Diablo Caberne! But our most memorable outing was to Valpariso, the largest port city on Chile`s Pacific coast, with its undulating landscape of colourful and higgeldly piggedly buildings lining narrow streets at all kinds of angles and its picturesque harbour front. And here the local highlight was a visit to the house of Pablo Naruda, the celebrated Chilean poet, high up on a hill overlooking Valpariso`s water, valleys and skylines. It gave one an extraordinary insight into the home and working environment of one of the iconic literary figures of the 20th century. It was rather like a matchbox structure, intricately tiered on several floors, each of which provided disparate space for living, sleeping, entertaining and writing. It reminded me of Ernest Hemingway`s beautiful house in Havana, Cuba, also situated on high ground with magnificent views of its surroundings.

Valpariso`s importance declined when the Panama Canal opened in the early part of the 20th century, but until then it was a major and thriving port along the west coast of South America and the first place of call for ships rounding the Cape of Horn from Europe or other parts of the globe to the east. It was also the entry point for waves of migrants from Europe and some from the Middle East as well. The population of Chile is much more mixed, in terms of both European and native Indian blood, while that of Argentina is predominantly white. Brazil too has its ethnic dynamics, as it not only has a history of population conflations and conflicts but also continues to be an immigrant receiving society. In addition to the cultural and human diversity, all three countries have so much to offer in terms of natural history and science and a fantastic array of geophysical features that one can only guess at the extent of things not seen and experienced, only glimpsed superficially. As well as the many references to it in the tourist literature, the fact that Darwin had touched on Chilean soil and made some valuable discoveries about the habitat of the region during his epic voyage was proudly mentioned by our guides.

This was our first venture into South America. We have been creatures of the Anglo-American or African-Asian world for so long that it was a strange feeling at first to be confronted with a different rhythm of life, though it was still manifestly European and so not completely alien on surface. The people there are definitely polite and considerate; respectful and mindful of others. They also assumed that we were Spanish-speaking, not just because of our colour and looks, but also because that is their lingua franca and frame of reference. At airports and some tourist sites however all signs are in Spanish and English.

But the thought that kept on recurring was, how extraordinary that civilisation exists in Chile! Chile after all must be the remotest country on earth: it is a mere long strip on the west coast of South America, bounded on one side by the Pacific Ocean and on the other by the high mountain range of the Andes. So even in the South American context, it is pretty isolated. In global terms, its nearest landmass on the west is Australasia and on the east South Africa, both thousands of miles apart. And yet, even as far as we went down in the south (to the Lake District), all the infrastructure of the modern age that we take for granted is to be found there; ok, maybe not exactly of the same first world standard as in North America, but definitely in the upper stratum of the second - not third - world. Argentina has had a rough economic spell in the recent past, but even it is not that far behind. Brazil on the other hand is an up-and-coming developing giant, whose problems and possibilities and potential in the international trade and financial arena are fairly well known. Their currency values and standards of living seemed to be rising.

The day before we reached Rio (which was on Saturday 3 October), it had been announced that the next Olympics were going to be held there, and so a massive public celebration was planned for the Sunday night into Monday at CopaCabana beach. Sunday however was not a good day in weather terms; that was also the day we did most of our sight-seeing. Incidentally, that day I also deliberately chose to wear my Che tee-shirt and I must say it drew some favourable looks or comments from the locals and other tourists. Our hike up the monument of Christ the Redeemer was a disappointment because the statue was shrouded in mist while we were there and so that photo-op was a missed opportunity, except for a rather striking shadowy outline. But the rest of Rio was fine and we got some brilliant shots. Incidentally, Rio has a Mahatma Gandhi Square with a statue of the Mahatma! Once again, though, while Brazil is habitually lumped in with the African and Asian third world countries, its poverty and polarities are not that much different from what we see in the US, where too of course they exist. Even so, Brazil`s third world conditions nevertheless have an overall European orientation.

I forgot to mention Buenos Aires - a huge metropolitan city. Here we visited the city`s main squares (including the famous Plaza de Mayo, the political heart of the city where the "mothers of the disappeared" used to gather to protest about the fate of their children), cathedrals etc, and the famous cemetery where Evita was buried, and the Italian quarter of La Boca, where I had a picture taken with a Tango girl in the street. One evening we also went to a Tango performance, macho and stylistic, geared to arouse the senses but its artificiality somehow failed to do that. We also found an Indian restaurant in the centre of the business district where our hotel was situated, but much as we had wanted to eat there, that was during the one 24 hour period when I was struck down with a tummy bug, and so had to be content just to visit the place. We found out that it was owned by a guy from Delhi (hence `The Delhi Durbar`), and one or two of his staff were Bangla Deshi. But deshi food then would have been welcome, even though in Chile and Argentina in particular, the chefs in hotels and restaurants made special effort to cater to our vegetarian dietary needs; in fact there was too much food around everywhere. In Buenos Aires, they said they eat vegetarians - after all in the land of beef a veggie is a vulnerable specie!

In Buenos Aires in particular (but also to some extent in Santiago) what was so noticeable was that the streets were crowded with people briskly walking about purposefully, hurrying here and there, in huge numbers not - as we usually find in London, Paris or other big cities - during `rush` hours when they might be going to or leaving work from offices, shops, banks etc, or at lunch time, but outside of those hours, at mid-morning or mid-afternoon. There seemed to be rather a lot of them everywhere. To us this seemed quite extraordinary.

Well, there it is. Now we have been to every continent in the world, except the Arctic and the Antarctica; but that is all rather superficial really. If one could put the clock back, then I would have done it differently, like what our youngsters are doing nowadays - taking a year out to live and work there. I am conscious that I have not mentioned the socio-cultural aspects much, but from a tourist`s perspective, what one sees around is what one makes most of, and so it was in our case.

RAMNIK SHAH

Film Review: "Well Done Abba"

This year`s London Film Festival is on and as usual we are treated to an eclectic mix of offerings, "Well Done Abba" among them. I saw it on Tuesday. A Shyam Benegal`s film is always something to look forward to, and so one went in with high expectations. But though immensely enjoyable, reflecting on it afterwards I wondered if it was that different from the standard Bollywood fare of romance, drama, music and entertainment. In India, it may well be classified as an art movie, but to a western audience, what comes across is a fairy story of the good triumphing over or trumping the bad with a happy ending. That said, yes, it deserves plaudits for technical detail and presentation, narrative, location and, above all, casting and acting.

The hero is the simple-minded Armaan Ali, a chauffeur working for a big Mumbai business executive, who has to explain to his boss why he should not be sacked for overstaying his home leave by two months, and so he launches into his tale of woe and wonder. He is a widower who has left his young daughter to be brought up by his socially irresponsible twin brother and his wife back at home. His return there is the beginning of a complex sequence of misadventures involving corruption and greed at every level of local administration when he is misled into applying for a government grant under a scheme for helping houseowners below a certain level of income to enable them to sink a well for fresh water supply in their properties. We see how the system works and how he gets sucked deeper and deeper into it. But it is a comedy - a light hearted look at the working of Indian politics and society in its most basic functional modes. In short, it is a delighful satire, with a serious undertone.

So we get drawn into the small-town life of the community, predominantly Muslim, that Armaan Ali navigates willy nilly. This is beautifully captured (and indeed in some respects it resonated with the American film that I had seen the day before, `The Exploding Girl`, set in upstate New York about a couple of college students rreturning home on vacation to find that nothing much happened there while they wrestled with their youthful angst). The various characters, ranging from the police inspector to the civil engineer to the local tax officials to the village headwoman - all their personal, professional and domestic flaws and foibles are bared with sharp humour while on the political front the hypocrisy and double-dealing of the legislators and the government are exposed mercilessly.

But it is Armaan Ali`s feisty daughter (played by Sammir-Minissha) who steals the limelight when it comes to getting him out of the trouble that he lands himself in. There is also the romantic angle, in the shape of the idealistic young mechanic who, while initially pursuing Armaan Ali`s good-for-nothing brother for a small debt, falls for her and their romance develops as she begins to reciprocate the feeling. But the faultlines of the film are the many incongruities and implausibilities that abound: how is that the daughter who is otherwise so rebellious and outspoken is meek and malleable in other respects, why Armaan Ali could not have phoned his boss to beg an extension of leave and how come he seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of ready cash! These and other flaws do not exactly mar our enjoyment, because we go along with the flow of the narrative and the many twists and turns of the plot to see where, or rather how, it is taking us. We get some useful glimpses into the social mores and realities of life in their particular regional and religious context, such as issues relating to arranged (or coerced) marriages to rich Middle-Eastern predators for cash. The scenes involving the sex-crazed shenanigans of the civil engineer who has to win over his reluctant wife are titillating, while other marital or domestic situations are sensitively handled, with a keen eye for the comic. And without giving away too much, suffice it to say that there is some ambiguity in the end, for it is not clear if the undeserving or discredited bad guys exactly get their just deserts.

From the post-modern Indian perspective, yes, it does presumably have a certain artistic appeal to the intellectual class. Its core message is clear enough: in India nothing is straight (`No full stops in India`, a la Mark Tulley!); the small man or woman always has an uphill struggle to get round bureaucracy and corrupt policemen, politicians and the proverbial pimps; that everything has a price in the form of a commission or bribe. That is all very well. How this is conveyed is the essence of the cinema as an art form. But to my thinking, how it translates, in cross-cultural terms, into a universal theme is where global considerations come in, and here one has to make some allowances, which intelligent world viewers would do anyway, even if they may be unable to relate to the plot or understand its many reference points.

At the (second) showing that I went to, the task of explaining the film and conducting the Q&A fell on Boman Irani, the lead actor whose rendering of Armaan Ali was simply brilliant, because Shyam Benegal had already left London. He was as good on his feet as on the screen. He said that the film script had been put together from two or three short stories and,,when I put to him, was happy to confirm that unlike the driver in Arvinda Adiga`s `White Tiger` (or indeed in Martin Scorsese`s`Taxi Driver`), his was a much benign and likeable character. Looking at him in person, one could be in doubt about his acting talent and hinterland. His performance in person was as articulate and wholesome as it was in the movie. `Well Done Abba` indeed.

RAMNIK SHAH

Friday 7 August 2009

Reviews in Retrospect: `The Journey (Yatra)`

I posted this review of `The Journey (Yatra` on Monday 30 October 2006 on the A/O forum:

FILM REVIEW: The Journey (Yatra)

This was one of the many offerings of the London Film Festival, currently in its second week (having opened with `The Last King of Scotland" the one about Idi Amin). We saw it on Thursday at the National Film Theatre on its first showing (each exhibit has two). Written and directed (in Hindi, with English sub-titles) by Goutam Ghose, it is described in its own self-publicity as "(a) superb must-see film, in which .... Ghose elicits powerful performances from an acclaimed cast including Nana Patekar, Deepti Naval and the ageless Rekha"; and so it is and so he does, though I have to admit that I didn`t think so at first!

I was, alas, less than impressed when the film ended and so didn`t feel inclined to participate in the Q&A session that followed with Ghose, who had come from India for the presentation and who stood just 10 metres from where we were sitting. So why did I feel that way and why have I changed my mind? To begin with, maybe I was subconsciously put off by his introductory remarks about the film, before it began, in which he spoke of it as a product of his own upper middle-class environment. He certainly did not lack in modesty; but then considering his 30+ year record of film-making, with some notable successes and awards, even though he may not be so well known outside India, such confidence was perhaps understandable. I thought there was a touch of pretentiousness about it, but on reflection maybe it was just the way many `desi` Indians do rather unself-consciously think of themselves! Then being ensconced in the second row from the front made it a little uncomfortable viewing for me, and thirdly, I could not, as an outsider, relate to its purely Indian social nuances and local reference points - but then that is me, whose intellectual and cultural orientation is Western.

Well, the film sort of grows on you; at least for me it acquired a meaning and fell into place more in retrospect than there and then. The `journey` is a yatra on a multipliticy of levels where, as the blurb tells us, "fact and fiction tensely scillate". Ostensibly there is an elaborate facade of a writer constructing a story that assumes the garb of an imagined past but one which soon dissolves into both a living reality and paradoxically, at the same time, an enigma of surreal, if tragic eternity. If that sounds too vague and poetic then that is exactly the intended effect. The artificial constructs of the structure notwithstanding, the essence of the plot is simple enough: Dashrath (played by Nana Patekar), a respected village schoolmaster, with a wife and two growing children and an elderly mother to look after, has his tranquil existence turned upside down when he comes a woman (Lajvanti, played by Rekha) in a most distraught state lying in the bushy widerness of the surrounding countryside. She used to be a `nautch` girl but had become the resident mistress of a local `raja` or landlord who was not averse to exploiting and abusing her when it suited him (here is our first song and dance routine, beautifully peformed, with the usual horde of hissing middle-aged men squatting on the floor, deliriously drunk and doddering about excitedly). She has been serially and violently raped and abandoned. He takes her home, gives her shelter and his wife and family gently nurture her back to some sort of normality when her `owner` and protector sends his henchmen to claim her back and to threaten him with dire consequences if he does not `deliver` her. So they all leave the village and trek to the big city where he finds her a secure place. So far so good, and there is no hint of any impropriety or emotional entanglement. But it is after Lajvanti leaves his protection that he falls for her and from there on, it is reminiscent of Dr Zhivago, the idealistic doctor`s passionate affair with Lara, whose life goes through a series of twists and turns of epic proportions before it ends in a tragic denouement.

When the film opens however, the transformation of the village schoolteacher into a successful author, his embracing of the `nouveau riche` lifestyle of contemporary upper middle class Indian society, with all the standard comforts that go with it, has already taken place. And so from there on, it takes on an episodic quality, with all kinds of flashbacks and flashforwards as well as the unfolding of the sequences that provide continuity and cohesion to the composition as a whole. This is interwoven with the underlying ambiguity about the essence of the film: is it Dashrath`s tale or one that he has created, with a large dose of self or wish-fulfilment?

In his opening, pre-show remarks, Ghose had referred to the new India, its vibrant economy and consciousness being part of the cross-cultural ways of our post-modern global era. He demonstrates this in telling ways: Dashrath`s (by Indian standars) ultra-mod-cons of domesticity - the hi-fi, the cable tv, the fridge/freezer, the telephone and other gadgets - and outside, in the city (Hyderabad) the shopping mall, the car and the mobile phone - all this is the changing face of the country, no doubt. This is not all. We see early scenes of marital affection between Dashrath and his wife, involving lip-kissing, and later on casual and graphic sex between peripheral characters (a `Sex in the City` style young business executive and a budding film maker to whom Dashrath has confided his whole life story, which is the outer casing of the film, as it were, during a train journey to Delhi to receive a literary award). So the picture we get here is indeed of an India that is on the move, in more than one sense. But there are incongruities too. For example, the two grown up children (son and daughter) of the family are too goody goody and all their internal dynamics are too tame, for those of us who are used to a much less sentimental approach to human interactions. Even so, when the wife and the mistress meet (in circumstances) which had best be left unsaid here) the lack of any empathy between them while understandable in one sense is too stark as a dramatic conclusion. The stiffness of their encounter is too jarring a note on which to end the film.

I have touched only on the basic elements of the film, which has a layered complexity in terms of narrative, characterisation and peformance. The brevity of the publicity blurb is indeed true in its core message. All the acting is superb, and so is the music. Rekha does surprise us with the sheer virtuousity and physicality of her dance numbers, both traditional and modern. A google search will reveal Ghose`s impressive credentials. He is a Bengali, born in Uttar Pradesh, and clearly at home in both Hindi and Bengali. `The Journey` is his own creation, not based on or adapted from someone else`s, but he comes from a long line of distinguished Bengali and Hindi film makers (a la Satyajit Ray and Aparna Sen) and so their influences must inform his works too. The theme of sexuality and adultery, was most recently explored in "Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna", albeit from a diasporan Indian perspective. Here it is in a home-grown context, but even so deep down one can sense a resonance with great Russian literature where personal pleasure is tempered with feelings of guilt and remorse and notions of crime and punishment play such a decisive part in family sagas.

But at the other end of the world, the film is bound to come to America (and Australasia and E Africa) too (it may already have?). The new Bostonians there may find in it an echo of the old - a kind of Merchant-Ivory treatment, in reverse, as it were, of morals and manners, and mere mortals. If it should happen that some of our members have a chance to see it (and meet the director) maybe they could ask him this question: why is it that the film - set in Hyderabad of all places, which otherwise makes a point of portraying a 21st century India with all its technological advances and is about a successful writer who consciously writes in long hand - does not showing us a computer screen anywhere, either in his study-cum-sitting room, or anywhere outside, whether in the bookshop where he is signing copies of his book for his admiring readers, at the hotel in Delhi where he is guest of honour at the award ceremony, in the call-centre for an outsourced American corporate client where his daughter chucks her job in disgust, or in any of the other public places that we are taken to? He is clearly making a point about it, but what?

That said, do go and see the film: it is a cinematic experience par excellence.



RAMNIK SHAH
Surrey England

Reviews in Retrospect: `SIR VIDIA`S SHADOW`

Again, this is from my archives. It was first posted on the BlueEar site, later turned into GlobalEar, as well as on the Namaskar-African forum, some 10 years ago. I then lost track of it but was able to retrieve it with the help of a GlobalEar veteran in 2005. Later this year, I am hoping to review Patrick French`s authorized biography `The World Is What It Is` of Naipaul and so this may serve as a useful reminder of some aspects of his, Naipaul`s life and background


SIR VIDIA`S SHADOW: A Friendship Across Five Continents, BY PAUL THEROUX, Published by Hamish Hamilton, London, 1998

Reviewed by Ramnik Shah

I have to declare an interest: both Theroux and Naipaul are among my most favourite authors. In as much as the book is about one of them by the other I was naturally immediately drawn to it and consumed by an almost voyeuristic delight and curiosity in relation to the whole narrative, a mixture of feelings in fact that we go through when one friend talks about another and everything begins to make sense about their background and relationship and indeed a whole lot of other things concerning their personalities. The terms 'intrigue' and 'disclosure' came into the equation, but to make sense of them one has to read the book.

Theroux was born in the same year that I was; so in terms of age and experience of the world (and our subsequent move to England where my home is not far from where he used to live) there is a certain parallel. More importantly, his writings in TRANSITION (modelled on the British quarterly ENCOUNTER, edited by Stephen Spender and later revealed to be financed by the CIA) the politico-literary journal published from Makerere, the Ugandan university where he was teaching in the mid-1960s, were an early influence on those of us who were part of the UK returned yuppie generation of East African Asians. It was a time of political change and personal awakening; and while engaged in a search for identity and commitment as diasporan Indians we were ensnared by Naipaul's AN AREA OF DARKNESS. So, for us the combination of Naipaul and Theroux as literary heavyweights was loaded even then, with an ever-lasting potential that has endured to this day.

Given the nature of the subject matter and the personalities involved, it was hardly surprising that when SIR VIDIA'S SHADOW first appeared, there was a great deal of media publicity surrounding it; more specifically focusing on some of the sensational 'revelations' concerning Naipaul, e.g. his penchant for prostitutes, the death of his first wife and sudden second marriage, his touchiness on the subject of the Nobel Prize for Literature and, above all, the manner of the final parting of ways of the two friends.

But to start at the beginning, they first met in Uganda, circa 1965, when Naipaul, who was already a literary celebrity in Britain, arrived at Makerere as a visiting professor. Theroux was then a budding writer, dreaming of the big novel and fame, but had published nothing more than a few poems, reviews and articles; none outside Africa. So theirs was a fortuitous and fateful encounter, in an African university campus that Naipaul, immediately after arrival there, had dismissed off as devoid of any cultural values. But in Theroux, Naipaul found a willing disciple, and Theroux an equally eager, if rather patronizing and forceful, leader; their relationship soon took on the quality of a "guru and chela" = master and pupil.

Theroux's account of their first meeting and friendship as it developed rings so true that the reader becomes a participant, an on-the-spot observer, witnessing their many adventures as Theroux escorts Naipaul in and around the city of Kampala. They also take trips together up and down the country and to the dangerous and inhospitable regions transcending Uganda's borders with Congo and Rwanda, and into Kenya where, in particular, Naipaul feels most comfortable at The Kaptagat Arms, an old-style hotel run by a white ex-India military type in the former white highlands town of Eldoret, where indeed he stays for a prolonged period to finish his novel The Mimic Men. The quid pro quo of course was that Theroux benefited from Naipaul's fond and willing patronage; he received guidance on the technique of writing, on the politics of publishing, on life generally, and in return gave his unstinting adulation to his mentor. Even as the African part of their lives was coming to an end, Theroux, then still in his twenties, was conscious of the debt he owed to Vidia. He writes :

"Friendship is plainer but deeper than love. A friend knows your faults and forgives them, but more than that, a friend is a witness. I needed Vidia as a friend, because he saw something in me I did not see. He said I was a writer. He spoke about it with his customary directness. That meant everything to me, because I had no idea what I was going be next."

And he was repeatedly told: "You`re going to be all right, Paul", which of course made sense in their later years.

Vidia then returns to Britain, leaving a disconsolate Theroux in the backwoods of Kampala. Theroux even makes a sneak visit to London during the short Christmas vacation, without telling his colleagues. He is excited by the thrill of the metropolis, the prospect of meeting the capital's literati and the feel of being in the centre of things. He meets Vidia's younger brother Shiva, then a hippy-style student at Oxford, and observes Vidia on his home ground for the first time.

Then Theroux leaves Africa too, to teach in Singapore and to embark on his own proper writing career, with mounting success ("Fong and the Indians", "Waldo", "Girls at Play", "Jungle Lovers" at first, followed by the more successesful "Saint Jack" and "The Mosquito Coast" etc) and eventually to settle in Britain when he was barely thirty, with eight published books to his name. Their friendship, already firmly established, blossomed during Theroux's 15 or so years in England. This was a time when they would both undertake journeys, in their quest for adventure and writing material, to far flung corners of the globe, Naipaul to Iran, India, Argentina, the Caribbean and Africa and Theroux to South America, Asia, Pacific and Europe "across five continents". They would communicate by fax, letters and postcards, meet up from time to time, and pick up threads from where they would have left off, while going through the normal vicissitudes of living and age-ing.

All this is immaculately captured in the book. Describing the effect of the sudden death of Vidia's brother, Shiva, had on him, he says: "He sorrowed quietly; his grieving showed in his writing, in his choice of subject" and then: "It made us firmer friends. Now, after almost twenty years, we depended on one another ... to listen .. be sympathetic ... chastened by Shiva's death ... realized how precious life was".

As between friends who are both masters of the creative process, it is but natural that they should tap into each other's resources, but what went wrong, and when, in their relationship? Not the more superficial irritations such as Naipaul's niggardliness (with Theroux somehow always finding himself having to pick up the tab for their meals) or his idiosyncracies in matters of social etiquette (his insistence on punctuality and other forms of behaviour) or his patent insensitivity towards his own wife Pat (how she would weep silently, in protest or out of helplessness at his emotional extravagance or sexual proclivities). Theroux is as candid about his own failings and foibles as he is about his friend's. Did he resent the subservient role he had always assumed towards the older man, or the knighthood that was conferred on Naipaul who had always been disdainful of such honours "A title is nothing ... I have the idea that they should sell titles at the post office". He acknowledges that he had "always been (Vidia's) squire, "driver, sidekick, spear carrier, flunky, gofer; diligent, tactful, helpful ...?".

Perhaps Naipaul in turn was envious of his success and standing, but did that not have the effect of equalizing their status? Isn't there always an element of jealousy between friends competing in the same market place?

As widely reported in the media with copious extracts from the book when it was published, the crunch came with the sudden and shocking discovery by Theroux that Naipaul was selling certain first editions of his books that Theroux had especially presented to him, Naipaul, with fond inscriptions, through a Massachussetts bookseller. But the denouement had begun a year before, when he first met Naipaul's new wife Nadira at the Hay-on-Wye book festival in western England's picturesque countryside. The two friends were billed to appear on a joint panel, to discuss their works. Among those present was Salman Rushdie. According to Theroux, the event turned into a near disaster because Naipaul treated it more as a platform for him to be interviewed by Theroux rather than the two of them having a public dialogue. He also quotes Rushdie's rather unkind verdict on the meeting. Then came some nasty fax exchanges with Nadira, concerning the obituary that Theroux had written of Naipaul's first wife Pat at his request. We are left in no doubt that Naipaul's second marriage has a lot to do with the final break between the two friends.

So what are we to make of the book? Is it a catalogue of accumulated grievances, an account of how the two became friends and interacted with each other through thick and thin? Yes, and more. In the penultimate chapter, "Exchanges", Theroux sums up his friend discursively, ruminating about his strengths and weaknesses, his writings and his other relationships. "To all relations ... (however) there is always a time to call them off": these ominous words of Naipaul were soon to prove prophetic. In their acrimonious correspondence, Nadira had mentioned a biography of Naipaul. "The subtext of her letter was: Don't write about him. This offended me. I had become a writer to be ... free ... not to take directions ... Until I received Nadira's letter I had not even considered using Vidia as the subject of a book ... (he was my friend ... a book about such ... friendship was ... impossible ... (f)riendship had its rules ... (a)nd there was no model: such a portrait had never been done ... a young Samuel Beckett writing a book about his (friendship with) the older James Joyce(?)" And yet the "subject of proteges and apprenticeship had ... fascinated me since my earliest days with Vidia in Uganda". Theroux is at his best here, in exposing his own doubts and self-contradictions. He does not offer an excuse for what others have termed a betrayal of his friendship and there is undoubtedly a certain amount of personal bitchiness and name-calling; but what impelled him to write the book?

The last and decisive straw clearly was their final and purely coincidental meeting on Gloucester Road in London's South Kensington, when the two came face to face and Naipaul walked away with the immortal words "Take it on the chin and move on", referring to the end of their friendship. And so as he says right at the end: "Before we got to Cromwell Road I had begun this book in my head ... (this) is everything."

Do I think any the less of either of them? Not at all. On the contrary, the book has taught me, or reinforced a view I have always held, that the ultimate appreciation that we can give to a work of literature or art is to judge it on its own merit, divorced from the personality of its creator. Naipaul is not the first, nor the last, of the great writers of all time to have flaws of character or to have led blemished lives. As far as I am concerned, neither is a fallen idol. They both remain my favourite authors. In his "READING AND WRITING: A Personal Account", Naipaul says: "Literature, like all living art, is always on the move." This book extends the boundaries of both. It is as much about Theroux himself as about Naipaul. He needed to exorcise his grievance. Whether Naipaul feels and does the same, life has moved on.

Saturday 25 July 2009

Reviews in Retrospect: `HOTEL RWANDA`

This is from my own archives, posted on the GlobalEar site, now alas defunct, on March 28, 2005.

Hotel Rwanda has the same kind of aura as `Gandhi` and `Cry Freedom` and `Schindler`s List`. It is of course about recent history - a bloody and gruesome massacre of innocents that happened in our own time - and about the part that one particular individual played in saving the lives of hundreds of people caught up in it. In this case, we are also drawn into his personal life in a most empathetic way.

I was also immediately reminded of `A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali` (ISBN 1 84195 453 5 - by Gil Courtemanche - Translated from the original French by Patricial Claxton). That was a fictionalized account of the Rwanda atrocities, with graphic details of the build-up to the genocide and the attendant horrors that took place then, but there too we had a glimpse of the eponymous hotel of the film - the Hotel des Mille Collines - and of its true-life manager, Paul Ruseabagina (here played superlatively by Don Cheadle). There are also references to him and the hotel in George Alagiah`s book `A Passage to Africa` and Aidan Hartley`s `The Zanzibar Chest`, and in Jon Snow`s `Shooting History`. These hardened global journalists too were deeply affected by what they had seen. The sequences in the film of the fleeing refugees, of the soliders and others beating up and slaughtering civilians, of the army officers and generals demanding payment for lives to be spared, of the helpless captives being tossed about here and there and of the few sheltering in the nooks and corners of the hotel - these are vivid and haunting images but they are not, alas, unique, because in all similar situations - of revolutionary turmoil, of civil-war in-fighting, of persecution of minorities etc - those in power or wielding the upper hand are prone to inflict pain and suffering of the most inhuman kind upon their victims.

There have been countless other movies depicting these kinds of horrors (in Cambodia, Congo, India/ Pakistan and so on). In `Shindler` List`, there was a large dose of menace and sanitized, almost clinical, surrealism about the plight of the thousandsdespatched to the gas chambers; in `Cry Freedom` there were the marching multitudes with the hovering presence of the security forces in military gear ready to pounce on them and in `Gandhi` the episodes of the butchery inflicted by both Muslim and HIndu religious zealots were graphically captured. In all these films, as in this one, there was a note of optimism at the end nevertheless, because ultimately humanity triumphed, even if, as in at least two of them, the individual at the centre of them did perish. The common factor between them of course is the singular character whose life sustains the plot and gives it a sense of spiritual salvation.

But to get back to our hero, Paul, but for him the film would have failed to make the impact that it has. He is an urbane and educated Hutuu, happily married to an equally charming, serene and rather pretty Tutsi and they lead a happy family life with their three bright children as part of the Westernized Rwandan middle-class elite. That much is as much implied as visually spelt out, for right from the beginning we are drawn into the gathering storm with a rapidity that leaves little room for social or political nuances, except for the one overwhelming message that the film is about, ie. how the majority Hutuus turned on their hapless Tutsi minority in a `moment of madness` bent on wiping them out.

Throughout, the centrality of the hotel as the threatre of action is never in doubt, for we are in and out of it as Paul tries to keep it going on an even keel against all the pressures. From the outside entrance through the reception area to the rear of the hotel, where there is partaking of food and drink around the pool on the terrace by the expatriate whites (the press and the UN staff) and the locals (the prostitutes, the parasites and the paramilitary personnel), we are in no doubt about its status, not so much as an oasis of wealth and splendour but rather as a haven of security amidst the chaos of the world outside. Against this background, Paul has to use all his innate qualities of patience and negotiation, even guile, forever stretching his resources and pushing against the boundaries of tolerance and understanding, in order to secure safe passage, conduct, sanctuary or simple survival for all those hundreds of people for whom he had either assumed or been forced to accept responsiblity. He talks to his bosses in Belgium, pleads with men in uniform, cajoles and compromises with his own staff, plays the family man - even the romantic husband with his wife (the few stolen scenes of tenderness between them are touching) - while all the time the tragedy is unfolding and engulfing everyone around him. We fear for his life (because there are some very close nasty encounters) and pray that he will overcome the enormous odds and the mishaps that would have deterred a lesser man.

So undoubtedly here is a film with magnetic Oscar proportions. Paul`s wife is played, equally impressively, by the black British actress Sophie Okonedo. They both deserve a medal. The credits at the end do not point to any particular literary source, but the reference to Paul as a real life figure gives a poignant and compelling edge to the saga of the Rwandan killings. How else could an African tragedy, even on the scale of other 20th century global parallels, appeal to mass audiences in the West?

There are at least two other offerings currently on view (or shortly to be) on the same subject. One is `Sometimes in April` by the renowned Haitian born director Raoul Peck, and the other Michael Canton-Jones` `Shooting Dogs`. There has been a lot of media coverage (features, interviews and guest appearances) accompanying or preceding them and the sense that we get is that the time has come for an artistic appreciation of the tragedy of Rwanda.

What should the world`s reaction be? Well, while we are constantly urged to`learn from history`, cynics among us are forever reminding us that rhetoric and reality do not always match. I well remember expressing my own misgivings to someone about the failure of the international community to do anything at the time (in 1994) against the background of the Bosnian conflict that was then raging and making the point that perhaps we were far too concerned about the latter because it was on our door-step in Europe. But that said, let us just think: how much do we know of, much less care about, what may be happening at any given time in some obscure corner of the world that is beyond our vision or sphere of concern? Of course, by `we` I mean society in general, not particular individuals. From time to time, the barrier of unconsciousness in broken and people may stand up and protest - but to what avail? But more often than not, while history is taking place, we are often unaware either of its happening or of its significance, or too preoccupied with other more mundane or immediate matters, to take notice. Time is what we need to absorb the `lessons of history` but by then it is too late to apply them! But the human spirit cannot surely be daunted; the optimist in us will always want to leave a record of our struggle,so that future generations may do better, and that is what this film is about.

This film should indeed be seen by everyone.

Posted By Ramnik on 03/28/2005 Movies

Tuesday 21 July 2009

The Mumbai terror attack - the history and ramifications

A month or so after I had reviewed `Firaaq` (see my last post), terrorists attacked Mumbai, on November 26, 2008, which inevitably led to much chatter in cyberspace. Today, The Times carries a report of the surprise admission of guilt by the chief perpetrator under the heading "Mumbai gunman Ajmal Amir Kasab changes plea to guilty". Its opening and closing paragraphs are as follows:

"The lone terrorist gunman to survive the Mumbai attacks confessed to his role in the atrocity yesterday, dramatically reversing months of denials — and possibly paving the way for a thaw in relations between India and Pakistan".

"Kasab’s confession could help to ease relations between India and its neighbour, analysts said. It came hours after the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, used a trip to Mumbai to defend the sincerity of Islamabad’s anti-terrorism policies. “We believe there is a commitment to fighting terrorism that permeates the entire (Pakistan) Government,” Mrs Clinton said".

Whether there will be an improvement in Indo-Pak relations remains to be seen; it may turn out to be a pious hope! But it is worth revisiting the arguments that were raging in the immediate aftermath of the attack. Here is what I wrote on December 3, 2008 in reply to a post under the title "India`s new `untouchables`":

Message #31874 > Wed Dec 3, 2008 8:59 pm > Ramnik Shah wrote:

I too had been forwarded this piece and had read it with interest. Taking on board all that you say, from a clearly enlightened and liberal stance (with which I can readily identify), the fact remains that there has been a growing anti-Muslim sentiment building up in India in the last two decades (`Ayodhya`, the 1993 Bombay riots, `Godhra` etc), leading to a sense of alienation, discrimination, disaffection and victimisation and a general feeling among Muslims that they are indeed the new pariah class, lower even than the Dalits, in the Indian hierarchy of privilege and social order. I have heard or read many first hand accounts of young (Muslim) people, men mostly, being denied job opportunities, admission to universities, harrassed and habitually treated as second class citizens. More particularly, whenever terrorist type incidents occur, they feel especially vulnerable because of finger pointing, often with crude invitations to go (or even `go back`) to Pakistan. Their plight was vividly portrayed in the film FIRAAQ, reviewed here by me on 16 October (Msg #30332). All this is bound to fuel resentment and cause insecurity and isolationist tendencies.

The fact that large sections of the Indian political leadership (from the PM downwards), media and public were so quick to blame Pakistan for the horrendous attack on Mumbai, without making a distinction between the Pakistani state and the terrorist groups operating from its territory cannot help but exacerbate this climate of suspicion and hostility towards the Muslims. Against this broad background, it is hardly surprising if some of their young folk were attracted or recruited to the terrorists` cause. But even if there was no local Muslim involvement in the Mumbai massacre, is the (majority of) Indians` myopia so short-sighted that they cannot see the utter folly of antagonising some 150 million Muslims in their midst to the point of open rebellion and even civil war? What could then happen is beyond contemplation. They chose to remain in India after partition and, after more than 60 years and two or three generations down the line, are as much an integral part of the body politic as everyone else. They are the largest and most significant single minority whose voices, aspirations and fears cannot be ignored or brushed aside lightly. This surely is a crucial turning point in India`s history when, if wiser counsels prevail, every effort should be made to win the `hearts and minds` of an important part of the population.

One or two other related points: the Pakistani government has been at pains to stress the need to fight terrorism as a common cause and has strenuously sought to distance itself from any terror groups located within its borders. Even if you take this with a pinch of salt, so to speak, can it be denied that there is a measure of genuine concern and willilngness to extend the hand of friendhship on their part? On the other hand, what the Mumbai massacre has shown, alas, is the incompetence, unpreparedness and inability of the Indian authorities to defend their country and in particular its commercial and financial capital. Their lack of resources in terms of equipment and training was exposed in their bungled rescue operation on the Jewish centre at Nariman Point, which was attacked by the commandos as if, as one Israeli commentator observed, there were no hostages there! So it suited the Indians to pour all their anger at the Pakistanis, thereby diverting criticism from their own failings.

I am sure at the more sophisticated intellectual and informed levels, Indians too are engaged in a process of soul-searching, and we know that there are already many voices demanding answers from the government, but in the immediate context of this thread, I wonder how the Muslim minority will be viewed and what their fate will be in the months leading up to the elections.

Finally, for the sake of some of our new members, let me reproduce the opening and concluding passages from my posting (Msg # 5784) of 28 January 2005 which I think neatly encapsulate where I, and I dare say many others on this forum, stand vis-a-vis India and the Indians:

"On Identity and Culture

Those familiar with my views know that I have always distanced myself from India on the basis that as East African Asians (EAAs) by birth (or by upbringing) we are not Indians but rather people with an Indian ancestry. In the current jargon, this translates as `P I Os` = persons of Indian origin, as distinct from NRIs (Non-Indian Residents) who, according to me, are strictly speaking Indian citizens resident abroad, though the Indians themselves include in this category those who may have been born in India but have since migrated elsewhere, irrespective of their current nationality. (It happened that the second `Pravasi` or Conference on Indians Overseas, had just ended as we arrived in Mumbai on 10 January). The distinction is important, not just in terms of legal niceties but because of fundamental cultural differences - `culture` here is used in the broader sense of a way of life in societal terms, not ethnic or religious heritage. Of course, our EAA identity has since morphed into an adopted and hyphenated British-Asian (or Indo-Canadian or Indo-American as the case may be) variety in the wake of our further migration to the West. And while paradoxically from a global perspective we may have thus become part of the vast Indian diaspora, in India itself we are seen as `foreigners`, which is fine with me, but taking a long view of prospective history, the `Indianness` of the `diaspora` must surely in fifty or hundred years be subsumed into another form of identity?

On Cultural / Ethnic Affinity

And finally, how do we relate to Indians? More like members of an extended clan where we left the common family home two or three generations ago. The distance is in terms of both time and space. One does not feel connected in any personal or immediate sense; only in terms of an ethnic dimension. Emotion does not enter into the equation; human empathy does. We wish the Indians well of course. Their dynamism has to be admired and their efforts have to be encouraged. We feel proud of their achievement and struggles, and to be of Indian stock - to share a common ancestry and past. But would we like to live, CAN we live there? Clearly not. This is true of even of most NRIs. Have we got India out of our system? Towards the end, we thought we had and that we would not be making a return visit again (even though we already are committed to another trip in October). Now I am not so sure. India in small doses is fine. So after a suitable interval of time, I am sure, (like the proverbial lover who does not admit to desire or the mother who thinks she has had enough of babies) the urge to go there again will return. Let us see".

RAMNIK SHAH
Surrey England

Monday 20 July 2009

Reviews in Retrospect: `FIRAAQ`

This follows on from my last blog. Here I reproduce my review of `FIRAAQ` posted on the Africana-Orientalia forum on October 16, 2008. I then had further occasion to refer to it after the Mumbai bombing, which sparked off a wide-ranging debate. I will cover that in the next item under possibly another heading.

Message #30332> Thu Oct 16, 2008 9:57 pm> Re: FIRAAQ - A film not to be missed!

I saw FIRAAQ this afternoon, on the second day of the London Film Festival, and cannot praise or recommend it too highly. It is a masterpiece: a rounded, probing, conscience-pricking, highly accomplished film debut by Nandita Das better known as a Bollywood star. It is set in the aftermath of the Gujarat riots of 2002, in Ahmedabad (though the name of the city is not exactly spelt out). The credits tell us that it is a work of fiction based on a thousand true stories, but as Nandita explained both before and after the show, what she and her co-writer have done is to piece together many different factual accounts - from a variety of people of what they saw or heard during the troubles that resulted in a massace of Muslims - into a powerful narrative on film.

The characters represent a whole cross-section of society, from slum-dwellers to the upper middle-class, both Hindu and Muslim. Their lives are intertwined in many different ways and on a multiplicity of levels - through incident, accident, chance and fate - the film clevely weaves them together. There is the middle-middle-class Hindu family, where the loud mouthed husband rules the household with an iron fist, which he is not ashamed to use even on his middle-aged, largely servile and silent wife, who is guilt-ridden because she had ignored the pleas of desperate Muslim women from the neighbourhood seeking sanctuary from Hindu mobs engaged on a frenzy of murderous attack and destruction. She gives shelter to an orphaned Muslim boy, called Mohsin, whom she renames Mohan (for his own protection) searching for his father whom he had last seen being attacked, again by another group of Hindu fanatics. But Mohsin runs away from her when he witnesses her husband hit her and finds the atmosphere in their house oppressive. Then there is the young working class Muslim couple, with a child, whose house has been vandalized and virtually destroyed when they had fled to save them-selves. The interaction between the young mother and her Hindu friend, who work together as henna artists, is one of the running threads of the film. There is another young couple - but upper middle-class with a `mixed` marriage, between a Hindu wife and a Muslim husband with the `neutral` first name of`Sameer` that has insulated him against the prejudice and hostility of the majority Hindus among whom they all live. To him the riots are a rite of passage to a painful understanding of his vulnerability and second-class status. Without going into too much factual detail - though this is graphically and extensively explored in the film itself - suffice it to say that the sheer ignorance and patronizing that characterise Hindu attitudes, words and actions all through towards the Muslims in their midst are truly shocking and reveal the ugly side of India`s secular society. There is also a group of angry young Muslim men who are plotting their revenge, and again we are shown a side of India that is rooted in violence and reactive posturing. Finally, the old music master, a Muslim living among Hindus, with a faithful Muslim servant who tries to keep him, as played by Nasreerudeen Shah, is a weak character who is out of his time and place, who too has to come to terms with the ugly realities of Hindu-Muslim dynamics.

As a production, I could not find any faults with it. This is a must for all those who are obsessed with `Bharat Mata`. The message of the film, if one can call it that, is that violence is no answer to any supposed grievance - it merely undermines and diminishes humanity.

Nandita Das also stars in the Pakistani film, to be shown in the LFF on 20 October, called `Ramchand Pakistani`. I will write about it afterwards.

RAMNIK SHAH
Surrey, England

Sunday 19 July 2009

Reviews in Retrospect: `RAMCHAND PAKISTANI`

The film `RAMCHAND PAKISTANI` is currently having its first public showing in London at the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts). Here is my review of it that I first posted on another forum on October 21st last.


Tue Oct 21, 2008 5:33 pm Ramnik Shah wrote Re: Ramchand Pakistani`

This is another of London Film Festival`s offerings that I saw yesterday afternoon. Like `Firaaq`, it too is a brilliant production and one not to be missed. To all of us and others who are familiar with the Indian sub-continent`s mix of cultures, ethnicities religions and geopolitics, the name `Ramchand` is a giveaway of course, and so its juxtaposition with Pakistan has to be intriguing, which it is at face, but I have no doubt that the title must have been deliberately chosen, to make the point that it is about a Hindu Pakistani!

The eponymous Hindu Pakistani is a mere child, aged 8, of a family belonging to the low-caste Hindu community of `untouchables` who eke out an almost nomadic existence as landless peasant farmers on the Pakistani side of the Thar Desert very near to the border with India. The film is based on real events. One day the child stupidly and accidentally crosses over into India and is immediately seized by Indian border guards, and so is his father who goes looking after him, and the two are held prisoner by the Indians. The film is based on real events that happened in the early part of 2002, at a time when tensions between India and Pakistan were at boiling point, following the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament. And so it was hardly surprising if the Indians thought the father and son were some kind of Pakistani spies. They were also of course part of a much bigger number of innocent border crossers, from either side, who have been a constant feature of Indo-Pak `neighbourly` relations ever since Partition. Many of them have languished in the jails of their respective captors for decades, and so after the two had settled down to a prison routine, their only hope lay in being amnestied as part of prisoner exchanges that take place from time to time.

But that is only one aspect of the film. A large part of it focuses on the human elements - how the mother left behind on her own copes with her loneliness and vulnerability, how the 8 year old child grows up in the harsh prison environment, how the father is at first tortured by the Indians and has to fight his fellow inmates to protect himself and his son, how hope turns into despair, at both ends, how officialdom treats them all, how attitudes slowly change. That is as far as one can go without divulging the plot too much (Bhadra please note).

The female lead part is played by Nandita Das (who directed `Firaaq`), the only Indian in the whole cast in fact; the rest are played by Pakisani actors and indeed the entire film was shot in Pakistan, though as the producer Javed Jabbar explained, both before and after the show, once the project had got under way, there was a great deal of cooperation between the Indian and Pakistani authorities. In particular he mentioned that the production team were allowed to visit Bhuj jail in India and so they were able to replicate its conditions and physical layout and secondly that the Pakistanis allowed Nandita Das full access into the border regions on their side, both of which were `firsts` for the two countries film-makers. The film has already opened in both India and Pakistan to favourable reviews.

Javed Jabber, then, is the producer, but the film is directed by his very able and accomplished daughter Mehreen whom he described as an independent minded person and artist in her own right. She was also present at the showing, but did not stay long because of some other commitments and so it fell upon him to explain the background to the making of the film. He said he had first of all to convince his wife to put up the initial finance, and then negotiate with other contributors. Javed Jabbar came across as such a lovely man - a highly articulate, very moral, dignified and civilized person, that it was little wonder that he and his family could have been the force behind such an impressive film. He said he had learnt about the displaced family while working with a charity in the area and concluded that the world at large too needed to be told about them. The film is a beautiful and sensitive rendering of their story. The part of the husband (Shanker) is played by Rashid Farooqui and that of the son in the second half of the film, when he had become a budding teenager, by Navaid Jabbar, another member of the Jabbar family. All the acting is superb.

My only regret is that though I did ask a question in the Q&A session after the show, I did not stay afterwards to have a word with Javed Jabbar, if only to shake his hand - that is the kind of respect and warmth he engendered among the audience.

RAMNIK SHAH
Surrey, England