So here we are again, at the end of another year. 2010 however has been a mixed bag, of varying levels of enjoyment or achievement, and some disappointments too. To begin with my reading list, it has not exactly been brilliant, as I will explain later. Here it is anyway:
Books
1) "A Case of Exploding Mangoes" by Mohammed Hanif - ISBN 9780099516743 - Vintage p/b - @ MH 2008 - 295 pp
For once, I take refuge in the blurb which describes this as a "(t)easing, provocative, and very, very funny ... debut novel" and "darkly hilarious"! And so it proved to be, as a welcome beginning to the new year, and took me back to what now seems so remote, the bygone age of the madhatter General Zia ul Haq who ruled Pakistan in an ever-increasing tight dictatorship during the 1970s and 80s. The book charts the countdown to his downfall, and is laced with black humour. In the following exchanges with the officer in charge of his security, we see Zia`s obsession with personal survival which forms the basic element of the plot:
"As your Commander-in-Chief, I demand to know: who are you protecting me from? Who is trying to kill me? General Zia`s voice rose ... ". "I suspect everyone. Even my own boys. I send them back to their units every six weeks and get new ones. You might have noticed. There is no point trusting anyone, sir. Indira Gandhi, what happened?" "A shudder ran through General Zia. Indira had been gunned down by her own military bodyguards ... ".
His marital relations too had long outlived the chemistry of the boudvoir, as the following extracts show:
"His wife was standing there striking her glass-bangled wrists against each other, something women only did when they heard of their husband`s death. Later she would listen patiently as General Zia blamed his enemies in the press, pleaded national interest and invoked their thirty-eight years together. He would say everything the First Lady had thought he would. She would agree to continue to do her ceremonial duties as the First Lady, she would appear at the state ceremonies and she would entertain other first ladies, but only after kicking him ouf their bedroom".
And so the case of Exploding Mangoes is how his plane comes down in the end, but we are treated to a truly amusing and fascinating journey along the way - "witty, elegant and deliciously anarchic", to quote from the blurb again!
2) "Dead Line" by Stella Rimington - BCA h/b, CN 158346, a Liz Carlyle mystery @ SR 2008 - 374 pp
This was just light entertainment, a thriller by a past and first female head of MI5 (one of the UK`s two principal intelligence agencies). It gave an interesting insight into the working of the spy network, though with a fictional gloss.
3) "The Black Bar: Corruption and political intrigue within Kenya`s legal fraternity" by Paul Mwangi - ISBN 9966-9969-0-13 - Oakland Media Services Limited, POBox 56919 Nairobi - @ PM 2001 - 187 pp
Mwangi clearly deserved plaudits in the superlative for writing about the Kenyan legal profession as it developed after I left the country in 1974, warts and all. Earlier that year I had stepped down as Vice-Chair of the Law Society of Kenya and it was after that things began to change (purely coincidentally, with no credit or blame due to me). That funnily enough is also his starting point, for a gripping account of the ups and downs that followed. I was already uncomfortable with the changes that were taking place and had deep misgivings about what lay ahead. In any case other factors were pulling us away. But Mwangi has captured the subsequent history so well (because even at long distance, I was following the events, off and on, with regular visits back to Kenya over the next 30+ years) that the account he has given resonates with me completely. I am however surprised at the boldness and frankness, and the detail, of it all. The shenanigans of some high profile figures in the government and judiciary were familiar enough through the grapevine, but now we have it all on record and I wonder why those of them who are still around have not taken any action to protect their reputations. The book however was published almost 10 years ago and a lot of the material has already passed into the foggy and dirty history of Kenyan politics, so maybe that explains it.
4) "A Place Within: Rediscovering India" by M G Vassanji - ISBN 978-0-385-66179-9 - Anchor Can p/b 2009 @ MGV 2008 - 440 pp
As I wrote in my review of 2009, `A Place Within` was on the top of my reading list for 2010, in anticipation of meeting MGV at the GSA Conference in April at which he was to give the principal keynote address. And so it happened, on both counts. I also knew the book would resonate with me and so, again, it did on many levels. As he puts it in the Introduction: "It would take many lifetimes, it was said to me during my first visit (in January 1993), to see all of India". When asked if he would visit his ancestral village, he would say no, because he didn`t even know what it was, because for him "India was the ancestral homeland, the village, if you will". There was a distinct echo here of V S Naipaul`s view of India - as of mine, typical of most second, third and fourth generation diasporan Indians - as a generic, amorphous entity that was the whole sub-continent and embraced all who were externally identified as belonging to or emanating from it. His physical discovery of this imagined space takes him across the length and breadth of the country - to the east, south, west and north - by all manner of transport, through many colourful encounters and adventures, and over a series of subsequent prolonged visits. But all the time, he was not only touching base with but also exploring his inner vision of the land of our ancestors that had been part of his (and my) inheritance - hence the `rediscovering` of the title. Again, this is a global phenomenon common to all migrant people across time and space. So for me, there was much to relate to in the book. I will reserve a critique of it as a distinct exercise in itself for another time.
5) "Curry Is Thicker Than Water" by Jasmine D`Costa - ISBN 978-0-9783793-9-1 - Bookland Press Toronto @ JC 2009 - 130 pp - a delectable collection of short stories about Indian characters and themes with such titles as The Elephant on the Highway, Egg. Two Wives and a Doormat, She Married a Pumpkin and The Guest at My Grandfather`s House, all of which give us tantalizing glimpses into the essential nature of Indian life and tradition. Of these `Two Wives` is a particularly delightful tale of two women who wreak a clever revenge on the mean and exploitative man in their lives.
6) "The Piano Teacher" by Janice Y K Lee - ISBN 978-0-00-728637-9 - Harper Press p/b @ JYKL 2009 - 334 pp - about life in Hong Kong under Japanese occupation during WWII and the interaction of a range of characters who both defied and conformed to racial and national stereotypes in varying degrees; the narrative focuses on the eponymous heroine of the title who arrives in Hong Kong as an expatriate Briton in the mid-1950s and soon finds herself drawn into the lives of the survivors as their stories unfold in retrospect.
7) "Testimony" by Anita Shreve - a BCA h/b CN 158814 - @ AS 2008 - 307 pp - a passable holiday read about ranchy goings-on at an exclusive girls` boarding school in New England, the novelty of it all being that the evidence of the sexual acts is captured on videotape which then, as these things inevitably do, becomes public!
8) "Nehru: A Contemporary`s Estimate" by Walter Crocker (with a foreword by Ramachandra Guha) - ISBN 978 81 8400 050 4 - Random India p/b @ Estate of WC - 215 pp - the `contemporary` relates to the last dozen years or so of Nehru`s life during which the author, an Australian diplomat, observed him at close quarters. This then is a re-issue of the book originally published in 1966. His assessment of Nehru`s personality and preoccupation with progress was sharp and robust, but not his ruminations on India`s foreign policy under Nehru in terms of non-alignment and the emergence of a new world order based on post-colonial dynamics. Although not directly relevant to my research on the Gandhi and Jinnah paper (see below), it did provide some historical insights into the whole Indian independence phenomenon with which Nehru`s name will forever be associated, as this passage from the book showed:
"It is true that Gandhi had only fads to offer as regards the greatest problem, population pressure; but his ideas on decentralisation, on village democracy, and on what he called basic education, and on the machine, were as relevant to Indian realities as Nehru`s on industrialisation and socialism were only partly relevant".
9) "Six Suspects" by Vikas Swarup - Black Swan Book 9780552772518 - p/b @ VS 2008 - 558 pp+ - by the author of the book that was turned into the Oscar-winning `Slumdog Millionnaire` - a murder mystery set among a mix of India`s nouveau riche and corrupt politicians on the one hand and the aspiring middle and lower classes on the other, with the usual clever twists and turns of plot and a dramatic denouement.
10) "A View from the Foothills: The Diaries of Chris Mullin" - ISBN 978 1 84668 230 8 - Profile p/b @ CM 2009/10 - 558 pp+ - a far more meaty feast than the previous one of the same length! We are treated to a close scrutiny of the working of British politics and government by a journalist and civil rights campaigner turned an MP and a Minister. His first hand account of the many familiar policies and personalities of the period covered by his memoir brought them alive.
11) "Burnt Shadows" by Kamila Shamsie - ISBN 978 1 4088 0427 8 - Bloomsbury p/b @ KS 2009 - 363 pp - this I have reviewed separately.
12) "Brooklyn" by Colm Toibin - ISBN 978-0-141-04174-2 - Penquin p/b @ CT 2009 - 252 pp - about Irish life and migration to America, and New York`s Brooklyn in particular during the 1950s; superb characterisation, but more importantly it was the universal immigrant experience that resonated most.
13) "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson (translated by Reg Keeland) - ISBN 978 1 84724 545 8 - MacLehose p/b @ Norstedtz 2005 - 533 pp - the first of the much talked about Millennium Trilogy - riveting but also, in the end, a bit disappointing for me - not cured when I saw the movie version, with a significant variation in the ending.
14) "The Necropolis Railway" by Andrew Martin - ISBN 0-571-20961-0 - publishers details missing - p/b - 231 pp - a bit of Victoriana, a la Dickens, that exposed the underbelly of London`s seamier side that was raw and not altogether charming - one never knew about the existence of the eponymous line that literally signalled the `dead end`! The book might as well have been dubbed `Ghost Train to Oblivion` - a rather apt cue for the next item!
15) "Night Train to Lisbon" by Pascal Mercier - ISBN 978 1 84354 713 6 - @ CHVM Vien 2004 - Atlantic Bks Lond p/b - 436 pp - again a disappointing read - the promise and the potential not matched by the product. I found myself struggling to get into it.
16) "The Silent State" by Heather Brooke - ISBN 9780434020263 - Heinemann 2010 p/b @ HB - 276 pp - by a campaigning and practising journalist - a `must` read for anyone interested in the way state secrecy operates in Britain - pre-dating but in a curious way also preempting Wikileaks!
17) "A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta" by Paul Theroux - ISBN 978-0-141-04416-3 - Penguin p/b @ PT 2009 - 265 pp - one of the two books I took on our trip to India. It made a good and amusing travelling companion. In this, one of his prolific output, PT indulges in a form of sexual fantasy that seems to have become a familiar characteristic of many ageing writers - Andre Brink, Phillip Roth etc. That apart he is as robust as ever in his observation of Indian characters, and social and cultural nuances.
18) "A Week in December" by Sebastian Faulks - ISBN 9780099458289 - Vintage p/b @ AF 2009 - 390 pp - again, just the right antidote to PT`s Indian novel. The slow build-up to the climax of the party scene that brought together a motley collection of contemporary elitist Londoners - with a particular focus on the character of the second generation Muslim scion of a self-made wealthy immigrant businessman and his modernish wife who is drawn into a fundamentalist terrorist clique willy nilly - is done with clinical professional competence like a film script, though the ending is more wishful than ambiguous.
19) "The Lacuna" by Barbara Kingsolver - ISBN 978-0571-25267-1 - Faber/F p/b @ BK 2009 - 670 pp - the most annoying book that I read during the year and for many years past. I failed to get into it, or even to understand what it was trying to tell me. The only reason I thought it might be interesting was because I had heard the author Barbara Kingsolver read from and talk about it rather eloquently at the Orange Book Prize Readings event at the South Bank earlier in the year. Of all the panellists, she was the most articulate, charming and passionate. The book seemed to make sense then, but not in the actual reading, I am afraid. Having started it, I wasn`t going to give up, but after a couple of hundred pages, I had to skip great chunks of it. The physical Mexican-American setting, on both sides of the border, during the 1930s, with Leon Trotsky as a central figure in both the literal and imaginative landscape of the narrator, was intriguing and initially attractive enough, but it was spoilt by an overdone authorial artificiality in its rendering.
20) "Seventy Two Virgins" by Boris Johnson - ISBN 0 00 719805 1 - HarperC p/b 2005 @ BJ 2004 - 326 pp - by no less than the current Mayor of London, whose baffoonish image of an upper class twit masks a truly sharp intellect, full of wit and depth. This was his first novel. Note the publication date: 2004 - when we had all barely recovered from the revelations about what had led up to the Iraq War only to be confronted with its ugly aftermath. At the centre of the novel is an ingenious and frightening terrorist plot to kidnap and hold to ransom a George W Bush-like President of the US on a visit to Britain; only the ransom being in the form of a live universal tv interactive reality show where its global audience was invited to participate by voting for or against his policies, in particular in relation to Guanatanamo. But where Johnson excels is in capturing the minutiae of all the elements of the plot as it unfolds, with a keen eye on the working of the police and security services and in his depiction of the various characters - all done with an amusing light touch and an acute sense of political realities.
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This is the state of play at the year`s ending. I can`t say this year`s collection, eclectic though as ever, has been appealing - far from it. The main reason for it was that during the first three and a half months of 2010, I was wholly preoccupied with research and preparation for my paper on `Gandhi and Jinnah` and delving into the subject at length. The specific works of reference in the making of that study are listed in the bibliography there. So my literary and general reading had to take second place and really didn`t get into full swing until after Easter. I had to grab whatever came handy, and so I do think my choice of books turned out to be rather poor - absymal in fact. The one to top the list was undoubtedly `A Place Within`, but it had been pre-selected anyway, while the most enjoyable were `Seventy Two Virgins` and `A Case of Exploding Mangoes`, and the most informative were `The Black Bar` and `A View from the Foothills`; the rest were just low-to-middle brow. There are, as always, unfinished books or those that I have just started. Among the former, the previous year`s `Blinding Light` and `The Divide` still remain unfinished! But among the two or three that I am currently engaged in reading is Tony Blair`s `(A)Journey`, a massive 700 page political autobiography which will occupy me for the rest of the year, as I only read it in bits while travelling by train.
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Films, Concerts, Theatre
I must say the range of these was more to my usual taste and liking - much better qualitatively than the books were. Here is the full list:
1) "Still Walking" (Arutemo Arutemo, Japanese title)) Dir by Hirokazu Kore-Eda (Japanese, with subtitles) - being always partial to Japanese movies, during the short season of them at the NFT, I greatly regretted missing the old classic `Tokyo Story`, but this was a good substitute. Its rural setting - and the moderately affluent retired life-style of elderly Japanese parents who are being visited by their grown up son and daughter with children of their own on one autumnal day - with all the dynamics of family drama, is beautifully and sensitively captured - I can still vividly picture the image of the whole family walking down a beautiful country lane at a leisurely pace - @ NFT3, 17 Jan
2) "Black Man`s Land White Man`s Country + Mau Mau" = little known archive movie documentaries of the Mau Mau era in Kenya, with historically familiar footage (to those of a certain generation) that evoked the spectre of the violence of both sets of protagonists, followed by a rather unsatisfatory Q&A and general discussion - @ NFT3, 23 Jan
3) Concert: Phil Orch. Cond V Ashkenazy - Elgar Cello Con+Tchaikovsky Manfred Symp - @ RFH, 28 Jan
4) "Late Autumn (Akibiyori) - Dir by Yasujiro Ozu - another in the Japanese season - an enjoyable comedy of manners - @ NFT3, 31 Jan
5) Play: "I Am Yusuf And This Is My Brother" = Amir Nizar Zuabi - a touching and evocative drama about the displacement and exile of Palestinians in 1948 - the partition scene with the cross-migration of refugees could so easily be true of so many other historical parallels - @ The Young Vic, 6 Feb
6) "My Name is Khan" - Dir Karan Johar (Shahrukh Khan, Kajol etc) - about the young Muslim migrant from Mumbai who suffers from Asperger`s syndrome and makes national waves in the post-9/11 America of Obama - a bit too long but passable - @ Odeon KT1, 15 Feb
7)"Waiting" (Drama-Poetry-Recital by Victoria Brittain: Juliet Stevenson, Wendy Jones etc) - on the plight of refugees - @ The South Bank Purcell Room, 12 Mar
8) "She, A Chinese" (dir: Xiaolu Guo author of `A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers`)@ ICA, 18 Mar
9) `Encounter` - (Patricia Rozario, Veena Sahasrabuddhe) @ King`s Place - Durbar Festival - Western classical & Indian music - Mumbai born & bred Rozario is a celebrated soprano and like her compatriot Zubin Mehta a familiar figure on the Western musical scene - @ King`s Place, 1 Apr
10) "The Ghost" - (Dir: Roman Polanski; Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan) - ghostly encounters, atmospheric, overpowering! @ Odeon KT1, 18 Apr
11) "Class Act 2" - City of London Freemen`s School production @ Dorking Halls, 29 Apr
12) Concert - Philharmonia (Cond: K Karabits) - Bernstein (Overture, Candide) Barber (Violin Conc) Prokofiev (Suite, RomeoJuliet) - @ RFH, 20 May
13) Concert - Philharmonia - Brahms Violin Conc + Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique - Cond: E-P Salonen; Violin: Khtachatryan - @ RFH, 10 jun
14) Concert - Leonard Bernstein`s Mass (Cond: Marin Alsop) - supeb stagecraft and chorus - @ RFH, 11 jUL
15) "Eccentricities of a Blond-Haired Girl" (dir: Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal 2009)-eccentric indeed - @ ICA, 21 Aug -
16) "Mother" (Dir Bong Joon-ho, 2009, South Korea) @ ICA - what a mother would do to clear her son wrongly accused of murder - @ ICA, 22 Aug
17) "Bhutto" (Dirs Jessica Hernandez, Johnny O’Hara UK/Pakistan/US) @ ICA - a biopic of Benazir Bhutto, with news and docu footage about her background, upbringing and flowering into the politician and leader that she became - with contributions from her admirers. I had however never thought much of her; she had always seemed to me to lack real depth, unsure of her fundamental beliefs and orientation. The film merely reinforced my prejudice. All this was to resonate with me when later in the year I attended an event that featured her niece and fierce critic Fatima Bhutto in conversation with Nayantara Sahgal, a niece of Nehru! - @ ICA 26 Aug
18) `The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo` (Swedish, sub-titles) @ Epsom P/h - felt I had to see this because of all the hype surrounding the Milennium Trilogy by the author Stieg Larsson, having earlier read the book - not much impressed however! - @ Epsom P/h, 22 Sep
19) Concert - `Teresa Carre o Youth Orchestra of Venezuela` (COND: Christian Vasquez - works inc Carlos Chavez`s Symphony No 2 - Sinfonia India - Copland`s El Salon Mexico and Tchaikovsky`s Symphony No. 5 - an energetic & enthusiastic performance, esp of the last item - @ RFH, 14 Oct
20) Lff (London Film Festival): `I Am Kalam` (Ind - Dir: Nila Madhab Panda - 87 mins - 2010 @ NFT1, 15 Oct
21) Lff: `Autumn` (Ind - Dir: Aamir Bashir - 99 mins - 2010 @ Vue W/E, 19 Oct
22) Lff: "The Parking Lot Movie"(US - Dir: Meghan Eckman) 76 mins - 2010 @ NFT2, 20 Oct
23) Lff: "Dear Doctor" (Jap - Dir: Miwa Nishikawa) 127 mins - 2009 @ NFT1, 28 Oct
All the four films that I chose to see at the LFF were good to excellent, in varying degrees. The most thought-provoking was `Autumn`, about the life of ordinary mortals (Muslims) in Indian Kashmir. It is a damning indictment of the Indian Army occupation and of the denial of democracy and the rule of law to the ordinary folk of that region. It captures and conveys the utter helplessness and despair of individuals caught up in the history and politics of the region in which they themselves are now mere pawns. Their plight is a grim reminder of the brutality of the state in such situations. `I am Kalam` was of a different genre, depicting life in what was clearly meant to be an outpost of Rajasthan, where a prince and a pauper of school age, interact and substitute for each other, with the inevitable confusion of manners and sequels. `Dear Doctor` was about a fake GP in rural Japan who endeared himself to his elderly patients, with some amusing consequences. `The Parking Lot Movie` is a docu-drama about intelligent observations of the goings-on in a parking lot across from the University of Virginia in Charlottsville, a place incidentally that we visited more than 20 years ago!
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Lectures, Talks, Events etc
These too followed the usual pattern, of an assorted range of programmes. Here is the full list
1) 02 Feb - SOAS - Rm 116 - Book Launch of "East Indian Immigration into Canada 1905-1973" by Dr Faqir M Bhatti (Lahore Pakistan Studies Centre, 2007) Ch: Dr Werner Menski, GEMS
2) 04 Feb - RSA 1-2pm - John Lanchester "Whoops" - Chair: Luke Johnson, Chair RSA
3) 11 Feb - RSA 1-2pm - `The Rule of Law` - Lord Bingham
4) 09/10 Apr - SOAS - 3rd Biennial GSA Conference QA
5) 15 Apr - RSA 1-2pm - `Secrets, Surveillance and the State of British Democracy` - Heather Brooke
6) 19 Apr - RSA 1-2 pm - "The Tyranny of Guilt" - Pascal Bruckner, Ch: Nick Cohen
7) 13 May - RSA 6.30pm - "General Election 2010 - Action Replay" - a panel discussion
8) 26 May - RSA 6 pm - "Religion, Democracy and `Enlightenment Values`" - Ian Burumi - Ch: Matthew Taylor
9) 08 Jun - QEH 6.30 pm - "Orange Prize Readings" (Ch of Or Pr Judges: Daisy Goodwin
10) 17 Jun - Barnard`s Inn Hall - Gresham College Lecture by Richard Sorabji on Cornelia Sorabji - 6 pm
11) 25 Jun - QM-Lon Uni - "Fuzzy Law and the Boundaries of Secularism" - Prof W Menski
12) 05 Jul - RFH - Slavo Zizek - Ch: A C Grailing
13) 06 Jul - RSA 6 pm - "Talking to a Brick Wall: Why We Need a New Politics" - Deborah Mattinson + Polly Toynbee, Tessa Jowell
14) 13/14 Sep - Br Library - Bharat Britain: South Asians Making Britain 1870-1950 Conference = C:\Documents and Settings\Ramnik Shah\My Documents\Making Britain Conference.mht
15) 15 Sep - RSA 6 pm - `The Quest for Meaning` - Tariq Ramadan
17) 23 Sep - RSA 1 pm - `The Way We Were: Britain at the Start of the Seventies` - Dominic Sandbrook
18) 22 Oct - King`s Place - "Twin Dynasties" (Nayantara Sahgal & Fatima Bhutto in conv) = C:\Documents and Settings\Ramnik Shah\My Documents\Twin Dynasties Kings Place.mht
19) 15 Dec - RSA 12pm - "Preventing Radicalisation" - Panel: James Bartlett, Douglas Murray, Maajid Nawaz, Hanif Qadir - ch: Matt T
The highlight of the year for me was the GSA Conference in April, at which I presented my paper on Gandhi and Jinnah. One was able to meet old friends and make new acquaintances. The Bharat Britain Conference too was exciting and as with the GSA one was able to connect with an important and integral part of our identity at many different levels. The trouble with such conferences is that their predominant academic orientation often prevents the experts from engaging in dialogue with the wider body of intellectuals, and they end up mostly talking to each other!
The most worthy among the other events was the talk by Lord Bingham - and to think that that was less than 11 months ago now, in the light of his subsequent death. By common consent, he was among the greatest English common law jurists of our age. Tariq Ramadan also is an immensely charming, persuasive and extremely well balanced contemporary philosopher. His talk too was most rewarding. The `Twin Dynasties` encounter between the two Indo+Pak luminaries was equally enlightening also.
Foreign Travel
This year, we did two big trips: one to Spain, France and Andorra (in October) - and the other, a more arduous one, to India in November. I have written about the latter on this blogsite separately, and about the other elsewhere.
General
I think my most accomplished achievement during the year was undoubtedly the Gandhi / Jinnah paper. It had been quite a challenge. My regular Diasporan Voice columns in the AwaaZ magazine are also a source of much professional satisfaction. Indeed, in the latest issue (No. 3 of 2010), which alas I have yet not seen, my piece brings out the marvels of metropolitan London, both historical and current. And I continue be an active member of the Editorial Board of the IANL (Immigration Asylum and National Law) Journal, to which I contribute also. Finally there is a great deal of interactive stuff on the internet that takes up a lot of time on a daily basis too. Although therefore I have one or two ideas for my next research/writing project, I am not rushing into that, as I have to be mindful of other priorities and pressures of normal living! Indeed, these are already making their mark felt, as evidenced by this year`s review, which is lacking in the sort of depth and particularlity that I would have liked. So while a a lot is going on in my life, it will not be the same as before, as I am beginning to slow down. Old age? Maybe!
PS> At least there is one thing I can do which will be less strenuous: dig out some more material from my own personal archives and repost them here - so watch this space. With best wishes for 2011.
RAMNIK SHAH
Copyright
Surrey England
Friday, 31 December 2010
Saturday, 11 December 2010
An Indian Odyssey - 2010
So another Indian trip, now done and dusted! This time, last month, our point of entry into the country was Delhi. The new airport terminal is impressive indeed - sleek corridors, escalators, walk-ways, wall and ceiling murals etc, and above all the thick cushioned carpets lining the large open spaces and arrivals lounge. Thick carpets? Why? Surely they are not suitable for the climate, except during the short winter months? What will happen during the rest of the year or when they wear out?
In Delhi we had a hair-raising cycle rickshaw ride from the Red Fort to the Jamia Mosque - went up and down and round the most crowded narrow lanes where vehicles of all kinds, animals and people jostled for space. The way our young rickshaw cyclist navigated the traffic was just amazing. He had complete mastery of his contraption and went through the narrowest gaps adeptly. We could feel the pollution; for the first time in many years I actually had to use a hanky as a mask. This was reminiscent of our `cyclo` ride in similar fashion through the streets of Hanoi in 2001. And yet, one felt completely safe. Our driver was strong and agile and confident. He put in a lot of physical energy into the whole exercise and deserved an extra tip.
Early next morning to the Delhi Railway Station for the 5+ hour journey to Amritsar by the Shatadbi Express. On arrival at Amristsar, our group of 28 was met by a posse of 7 vehicles which was to be our transport for the next 9 days. Checked into the 5* Ista Hotel, then on to the Wagah Border for the Changing of the Guard tamasha - well choreographed and executed, but quite frankly it all looks much better and exciting in all the documentaries and video-clips that most of have seen, maybe because on the screen every move is captured in minute detail and the whole colourful performance looks larger than life.
Next morning, the Golden Temple - a truly fascinating place, which to the Sikh pilgrims represented a spiritual homecoming. Outsiders and tourists like us were welcomed warmly. We mingled with the moving congregation at their gentle pace. They exuded humility and an inner sense of calm and mission. Later, we visited the Jalianwallah Bagh, and tried to imagine what it must have been like when the massacre occurred.
Then came our gruelling road journey to Dharamsala, along a hilly, winding road with many hair-pin bends, over a distance of some 300 km. Our rather modest hotel, the Surya Resort, was at the Mcleod Ganj upper end of Dharmsala. The next morning we visited the Dalai Lama`s monastery. We saw where his seat was located, where he addressed his followers and where he received visitors. The surrounding mountain scenery was simply spectacular. We also visited a very British, English, corner of Dharamsala, the Church of St John in the Wilderness, one of the oldest cathedrals in North India, built in 1852, whose grounds include a memorial to Lord Elgin, Viceroy, who died there in 1863, as well as the graves of other British bureaucrats. Barely a mile from the centre of Dharamsala, it is a large area of natural beauty, with a variety of wild life including, we were told, leopards.
That day was Diwali and at night we walked through the narrow streets of McleodGanj dodging the fireworks, which went on into the early hours of the morning. Next day, we did another long drive of some 300 km again over rough and hilly terrain, along winding and narrow roads, to Shimla. We had to admire the skill and stamina of our young driver - and indeed all the drivers. Shimla is a big city on hills, with scarcely anything on flat land. It was up and down, and round the bends everywhere, with buildings perched on elevated terraces at different levels. Here we had a 3 night stay at the Raddison Jass, in magnificent setting. We had a busy next day, with a visit to the historic Vice Regal Lodge, which has been the home of the Institute of Advanced Study for over 4 decades. Its imposing structure and extensive gardens are a national tourist attraction. There were many visiting school parties and other groups, like ours. We had a short tour of the inside, and a glimpse of the library (from outside the closed glass door panels). This is where M G Vassanji spends a lot of time reading, researching and writing. Then we spent a leisurely afternoon in the Mall. It was full of local tourists and visitors from other parts of India, dressed in woollies and warm headgear. For them it was cold, for us it was just mild. Here at least they seemed to fall in line with the general ethos of the place; there was little litter about!
The next day 3 of us - a lone and determined young Englishman and my wife and I - decided to visit Chandigarh. This involved another long and arduous road journey, and a whole day out, but we did not want to miss the opportunity to see Chandigarh, because of the city`s legendary architectural history, wide boulevards and its famous Rock Garden. On the way back, we stopped by at the little known Mughal Gardens at Pinjore, laid out and beautifully maintained on literally thousands of acres in lush countryside.
Then on Tuesday, we had a very long day of travel. First, by the toy train from Shimla to Solan for about 3 hours through beautiful mountain countryside, with lovely views of holiday homes, villages and towns scattered all along the route. Then a rough drive to Kalka Station, stopping en route for lunch. This is where we parted company with our drivers and convoy of vehicles and got on to the Shatdabi Express to Delhi - another long journey of 4 and a half hours. Once again, we had excellent service, with drinks, snacks and a tasty hot meal. We arrived at Delhi Railway Station at about 10 pm. Although by this time we had become used to our baggage being loaded up into and off from the trains, here it was that we saw in minute detail how the porters handled the entire process - how each of the gang of 6 or 7 was allocated two or three pieces, how they put them up on their heads, one on top of the other and a third being pulled on wheels, how they then pushed through the crowds in procession along the very long platform, up the treacherous steps, over the elevated passageway, down the steps and then on rough ground to the spot where our transport was waiting. One could not but admire the sheer efficiency of the whole operation. This was our experience throughout: not a single piece of luggage was damaged or went missing. Everything looked from a bygone age as far as westerners were concerned, but things worked and the job was done.
On the flip side, my wife fell flat face down on the platform at Delhi Railway Station on our very first rail journey, to Amritsar, because of the unevenness of the surface, over a protruding slab of concrete. But because she instinctively used her yoga technique of stretching her arms right out and taking the weight on them, she suffered only a minor graze on a leg and her glasses were slightly bent - a miraculous escape but a frightening experience nevertheless, as she has had both her knees `replaced`. This was a learning exercise, because it taught us that walking in public places in India is full of hazards of all kinds - from street furniture, people, animals, pavements, buildings, vehicles and everything else, whether stationary or moving. I also had a slight fall, which could have been much more serious, because of a sudden and unexpected hole in the road on a hilly part of Shimla, where I could have plunged hundreds of feet below.
After an overnight stay back in Delhi, we flew down to Kerala, to a resort on Poovar Island which we thought would be just ideal for unwinding, but it turned out to be full of `Gujus`: in large family groups, noisy, boisterous, uncouth. This was, as we were to learn, because of school holidays. These people fitted every bit of the proverbial image of the brash and socially inadequate that we associate with the nouveau riche! We were told that Gujaratis and Maharwadis are the powerhouse of the Indian economy now. They certainly had all the crude confidence that money and spending it can give them. We saw them, the men, having mobile phone conversations - loudly making decisions, giving orders or advice, discussing deals - even while having a meal with their wives and children and other members of their groups. As grown up men, fathers, however, they were unused to swimming in the swimming pools; they used armbands! Very few of the children knew how to swim either. (Note: by `Gujus`, I mean of course the native Gujaratis, domiciled in India, not diasporans or `returnees` with an EA or other foreign background!).
The staff in this Keralan resort however maintained a degree of decorum and smiling friendliness that was in marked contrast to the demands placed on them by these Guju upstarts. Unlike in other parts of India, here the majority of staff were female - smart, cultured, petite, polite and dressed attractively in both western and Indian attire - who must have seemed like out of this world to these visitors from the outer spaces of India!
After our exhausting tour of the north, we were looking forward to having a quiet, relaxing time. Well, we did and we didn`t. Fortunately we had secured a lovely detached cottage, away from the hustle and bustle of this crowd, but we were scarcely able to do what we had hoped to in the public spaces: like having a drink sitting at a table on the terrace facing the lagoon, because when we did manage to do that, it seemed like a novelty to the locals! There were only one or two other solitary western couples who too felt out of place there. Oh, and here I had been eagerly looking forward to having a coconut drink - a madafu - but that alas proved impossible, in Kerala of all places! Why? The palms were full of coconuts, but we were told there is a scarcity of people willing to do the job of climbing up the trees to get them down or that the crop was used for extracting cooking oil etc. We only managed to have a drink by the roadside on our way back to Trivandrum Airport for our flight to Mumbai.
After all the last few days, we were looking forward to being in Mumbai. This time our plan was not to do any sight-seeing but just to savour the life and ambience of the city. Some 42 years previously, on our very first grand tour of India, as part of a belated honeymoon, we had enjoyed the hustle and bustle of the fort area of South Bombay so much that we thought we would try and replicate it. On that visit, we had been in and out of two or three different hotels - the Ambassador, the Airlines, the Nutraj - but had then settled in for a prolonged stay at the Sea Green Hotel on Marine Drive. On our last visit to Mumbai, in 2004-05, we had stayed at the much posher Marine Plaza Hotel just two blocks down, and noted that the Sea Green was not only still there but seemed to be thriving. So on this occasion, I had asked our travel agents to book us into that, to relive the experience. You might expect us to have been disappointed, because nothing in life remains the same, especially after 4 decades. But we were in for a pleasant surprise. The Sea Green hadn`t changed much in its basic ethos. Its structure and facilities had actually been modernised and the place had been recently refurbished. So there was material improvement all round. But more than that, the hotel`s culture - of friendliness, unfussiness, simplicity, cleanliness, personal service - hadn`t changed at all. Even its basic breakfast of hot tea and toast, with butter and jam, and green bananas, with additions as desired, had remained the same. It was served in one`s room. And we had a fabulous room on the fifth floor, overlooking the sea, with a clear view of the entire curve of the Drive. And of course, as on our previous visit, so this time walking up and down the wide embankment, at all times, even very late at night, was sheer bliss. This was one spot in our travels where we could walk freely at our own pace, without bumping into anyone or having to watch for unexpected obstacles or pitfalls. It is surprising that this part of Mumbai is rarely highlighted as an attactive feature in the tourist and travel literature.
So we arrive late on Sunday night, check in, and take a walk along the Drive. The next morning, my first priority was to acquire an Indian sim-card. Up in the north and in Kerala, I had had to use my UK mobile at exorbitant `roaming` charges a couple of times. A local phone however was very necessary in Mumbai for our purposes. Contrary to all the stories one hears, it wasn`t difficult to get one, but that I think was because in a city like Mumbai or Delhi or Bangalore etc, this is easier. So then we slowly made our way to our favourite spot, the Jehangir Art Gallery and spent a whole afternoon there. Met and talked to some interesting people - among them a bright young lawyer and a British-Asian young Muslim woman who works in Kabul, Afghanistan as a high level consultant. In the evening, we were treated to a meal at one of the restaurants at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel by our agents. We were picked up at our hotel in a limo for the short ride to the hotel and went through a dedicated circuitous route into the front of the hotel - all properly patrolled. As we disembarked, we were gently taken through security and into the foyer. There had been talk of increased surveillance because of the impending 26/11 anniversary but security, while visible, was definitely not unduly intrusive or oppressive anywhere in the whole area - of the hotel, the Gateway of India or in the general vicinity. When we finished our meal, I called our driver on the mobile and we were escorted out by the manager of the restaurant.
On Tuesday, we took a taxi to the Malabar Hill, to visit a well-known fellow British-Kenya-Asian businessman and philanthropist for lunch at his vast 12th floor apartment overlooking the Arabian sea. The view of the gardens and the sea below from his lounge was superb, but he said that the only drawback was the sight of locals defecating around there first thing in the morning! He therefore took his constitutional walk later in the day when all that lot had gone! On the way back, his personal assistant got the driver to stop by Jinnah`s old residence nearby at my request. A year ago I had thought of visiting it as part of my research for the paper on Gandhi and Jinnah but that in retrospect seemed unnecessary. It is in a dilapidated state - being the subject of civil litigation between Jinnah`s descendants and the Indian government - and behind the locked gates all one can see is a jungle of a garden shrouding what must at one time have been an imposing mansion. The notice on the gates reads: "NO PARKING : Proposed site of SOUTH ASIA CENTRE FOR ART AND CULTURE". In the evening we had a meal at a well known corner Pizza Place almost next to our hotel
Wednesday was Bakra-Idd, and so a national public holiday. It was celebrated in what appeared to us to be a very civilized fashion everywhere. We had been in Dharamsala, the home of the Dalai Lama, on Diwali, where there was a fair amount of fireworks. But here in Mumbai, what was astonishing was that this Idd too was being celebrated with fireworks - maybe not on the same scale but with gusto even so! The festive spirit was all too evident and stretched right into Friday. It seemed as if the `globalisation` of cultures had been internalised in India - but then this has always been the visible face of India, where people intermingle with no self-consciousness of attire or expressions of religious symbolism - it was refreshing nevertheless to see it action, complete with cross-cultural influences.
On this day we had arranged to travel a long way into the northern suburb of Boriveli West, to visit a cousin and his family whom we hadn`t seen for several decades. I had booked a Meru Cab. This is an efficient organisation. They had instantly confirmed the booking by text. Half an hour before the appointed hour, they sent me another text message, with details of the driver. He then arrived and notified me by text that he had done so. His name was Allaudin. So when we got into the cab, I wished him Idd-Mubarak and asked how come he was working that day, to which his reply was "Saab, I have to work for a living, even today"! The traffic was light. Somehow we got to our destination - asking several people along the way, nearer to where we were headed, even though I did have some directions and tried to give them to the driver, in India postal addresses are not the same as physical of course. At the end of the journey, he gave me a printed receipt, with full details of the start and end times and the distance covered, which was 42.4 kms over 1 hr 22 mins. The fare came to Rs 647 plus the 50 Rs I had paid for the express sealink toll - so the total came to just under Rs 700 (say £10), not bad! At Boriveli West we had a glimpse of the way real people live in the vast metropolis of Mumbai - how they raise families, do business and generally exist in, by our standards, overcrowded conditions, even though theirs was, again by Indian standards, a fairly well middle-class kind of neighbourhood. As in the rest of India, the schools were still on a 3 week holiday, now nearing the end, and so the children were at home or playing outside. On our way back, our hosts put us on the reverse commuter train from Boriveli West to Churchgate which ordinarily would have been just as crowded as on the way into the suburbs but because it was a holiday we managed the journey very comfortably in First Class, which cost Rs 100 each.
Thursday, we took it easy - shopping in Kolaba, again an afternoon snack at the Jehangir Art Gallery etc. In the evening we went to a concert at the Tata Theatre, part of the National Centre for Performing Arts, at Nariman Point, where they were having a Fesitival of Sufi Music. In India, they do not do telephone bookings, so on Tuesday evening we had walked down there to get our tickets in advance for today. This concert was in two parts: the first was a performance by the Hadra Sidi Mansour ensemble from Tunisia, of religious poetry and music, coupled with intense body movements leading the principal dancer in to a state of trance. I found it too male oriented and ritualistic. The second part was a totally home-grown Indian affair, with a performance of the Chishtiya Qawwali by the popular Aslam Sabri and his Troupe. His showmanship was obviously of a high calibre and very well received by the audience, with the Qawwali`s mystical text recited in Farsi, Hindi and Urdu. Although my wife enjoyed it, I am afraid I did not - but that was no reflection on the quality of the performance. What was fascinating for us, for me, was to watch the social nuances of the audience - the most sophisticated, cultured class of Mumbai-ites. As we climbed up the long stairs of the theatre, what we saw were a whole lot of them, in elegant dresses and attire, milling about with cups of tea, with a studied glance outwards to see who was coming up and in. During the interval too they seemed to make a bee-line for the tea counter, where cheese sandwiches were served also - this appeared to be a standard routine there - again with eyeingr the other members of the audience without making eye-contact however! Inside the auditorium, the audience was polite but showed appreciation with applause and repartees when the performance so warranted. On our previous visit in 2004/05, too we had managed to catch a live performance at the NCPA, of a play, at one of the other theatres in the complex. So this was our glimpse of the cultural life of Mumbai!
On Friday, we arranged to meet the lady from Kabul for lunch at the Leopold Cafe - the one that had been blown up two years ago on 26/11, in Kolaba. It was a thriving place, full of tourists, with a few locals as well. It is an open and inviting place, where people can have good food and conversation. There were no obvious signs of the aftermath of the attack here - nor, incidentally, were there at the Taj, where the manager of the restaurant had taken us for a stroll down the inner parts on the ground level by the swimming pool and residents` lounge. We had a lovely, long lunch and then spent the rest of the day tidying up.
Our flight back to London was in the early hours of Saturday, and so we were picked up and taken to the airport in good time. Here we were pleasantly surprised. The whole departure experience - the entry-point, check-in, security, exit passport control, the terminal lounge and facilities - was a model of 21st century efficiency and easy navigation. So it was a good point of farewell. But what of our impressions of India?
Every time we passed along the route, the drivers pointed out the Ambani residence, the many shopping malls and other places. At night, Mumbai really has the appearance of a modern, prosperous, mega-city - with neon advertising, street and shopping lights, sleek cars and often especially decorated hotels or other venues where weddings may be taking place. In daylight hours however the grubbiness and the ramshackle buildings, the overcrowded streets, the heat and dust and smell and the overwhelming chaos of the roads and other public places are only too evident. But as I had observed during our last visit, abject poverty is a thing of the past, and beggars have more or less disappeared. Indians however are our distant cousins, people with whom we cannot relate.
Everywhere, even in metropolitan Mumbai, the women were definitely regarded as second class citizens They meekly seemed to accept their inferior role and status. Wherever we went, even as an obviously foreign couple, everyone addressed me as the man first. Local people told us that when women get married, they are not `allowed` to go out to work, irrespective of their qualifications or previous jobs. Their own families advise them to get `settled` in first, and then negotiate with the in-laws about seeking work outside.
Although the locals were able to switch from one Indian language or dialect to another with ease in the areas that we visited, this was more in terms of functionality than proper conversational ability. As far as English was concerned, their lack of a grasp of subtlety and nuance made it impossible to have meaningful exchanges, except with a few professionals or intellectuals.
Queue jumping was a constant irritant. We saw some blatant examples of that and other forms of selfish behaviour in the public sphere. A couple of times I had to assert my presence so as not to be sidelined and once, on the flight from Delhi to Kerala, had to confront the male passenger sitting in front of my wife for refusing to pull up his seat that he had pushed as far as back as he could even at meal serving time. In India, the VIP culture is deeply embedded in the psyche of the people. Social hierarchy governs all behaviour. There is just too much obsequiousness and deference shown to people who are perceived to belong to the higher classes. This made us feel uncomfortable. Indians seem to be blithely unaware or unconcerned that there is a fundamental contradiction between this kind of social inequality and their assertion of democracy as the basis for an all- encompassing national identity. It undermines their international credentials in this regard.
These misgivings apart, it would be remiss of me not to mention that despite all the problems and pitfalls of living in India, we did meet several young men who were proud to be Indian and said that even though they had an opportunity to migrate or settle abroad they chose either to stay or come back to India. Among them was Nizar who, with his brothers Amir and Nooru, ran the business of Al Noor Jewellers in the Metro Plaza Shopping Centre opposite the Delhi Durbar Restaurant in Kolaba. They turned out to be Ismailis with a slight EA connection, but Nizar said he had turned down the offer of a US Green Card to return to India because he loved his country! Then there was another local Gujarati young man who said he definitely wanted to come back to India after his studies in the US. So yes, there is definitely a growing sense of pride in the country. That still does not mean that we as second, third or fourth generation diasporans can feel at home there. Yes, it is the land of our ancestors, with which one is bound by ethnicity and cultural heritage, but in other respects we do not belong there - we have moved on. We came away determined that this was going to be our last visit. We have seen enough - been there, done it. "No full stops in India"? Yes, this is it.
RAMNIK SHAH
Copyright
Surrey England
In Delhi we had a hair-raising cycle rickshaw ride from the Red Fort to the Jamia Mosque - went up and down and round the most crowded narrow lanes where vehicles of all kinds, animals and people jostled for space. The way our young rickshaw cyclist navigated the traffic was just amazing. He had complete mastery of his contraption and went through the narrowest gaps adeptly. We could feel the pollution; for the first time in many years I actually had to use a hanky as a mask. This was reminiscent of our `cyclo` ride in similar fashion through the streets of Hanoi in 2001. And yet, one felt completely safe. Our driver was strong and agile and confident. He put in a lot of physical energy into the whole exercise and deserved an extra tip.
Early next morning to the Delhi Railway Station for the 5+ hour journey to Amritsar by the Shatadbi Express. On arrival at Amristsar, our group of 28 was met by a posse of 7 vehicles which was to be our transport for the next 9 days. Checked into the 5* Ista Hotel, then on to the Wagah Border for the Changing of the Guard tamasha - well choreographed and executed, but quite frankly it all looks much better and exciting in all the documentaries and video-clips that most of have seen, maybe because on the screen every move is captured in minute detail and the whole colourful performance looks larger than life.
Next morning, the Golden Temple - a truly fascinating place, which to the Sikh pilgrims represented a spiritual homecoming. Outsiders and tourists like us were welcomed warmly. We mingled with the moving congregation at their gentle pace. They exuded humility and an inner sense of calm and mission. Later, we visited the Jalianwallah Bagh, and tried to imagine what it must have been like when the massacre occurred.
Then came our gruelling road journey to Dharamsala, along a hilly, winding road with many hair-pin bends, over a distance of some 300 km. Our rather modest hotel, the Surya Resort, was at the Mcleod Ganj upper end of Dharmsala. The next morning we visited the Dalai Lama`s monastery. We saw where his seat was located, where he addressed his followers and where he received visitors. The surrounding mountain scenery was simply spectacular. We also visited a very British, English, corner of Dharamsala, the Church of St John in the Wilderness, one of the oldest cathedrals in North India, built in 1852, whose grounds include a memorial to Lord Elgin, Viceroy, who died there in 1863, as well as the graves of other British bureaucrats. Barely a mile from the centre of Dharamsala, it is a large area of natural beauty, with a variety of wild life including, we were told, leopards.
That day was Diwali and at night we walked through the narrow streets of McleodGanj dodging the fireworks, which went on into the early hours of the morning. Next day, we did another long drive of some 300 km again over rough and hilly terrain, along winding and narrow roads, to Shimla. We had to admire the skill and stamina of our young driver - and indeed all the drivers. Shimla is a big city on hills, with scarcely anything on flat land. It was up and down, and round the bends everywhere, with buildings perched on elevated terraces at different levels. Here we had a 3 night stay at the Raddison Jass, in magnificent setting. We had a busy next day, with a visit to the historic Vice Regal Lodge, which has been the home of the Institute of Advanced Study for over 4 decades. Its imposing structure and extensive gardens are a national tourist attraction. There were many visiting school parties and other groups, like ours. We had a short tour of the inside, and a glimpse of the library (from outside the closed glass door panels). This is where M G Vassanji spends a lot of time reading, researching and writing. Then we spent a leisurely afternoon in the Mall. It was full of local tourists and visitors from other parts of India, dressed in woollies and warm headgear. For them it was cold, for us it was just mild. Here at least they seemed to fall in line with the general ethos of the place; there was little litter about!
The next day 3 of us - a lone and determined young Englishman and my wife and I - decided to visit Chandigarh. This involved another long and arduous road journey, and a whole day out, but we did not want to miss the opportunity to see Chandigarh, because of the city`s legendary architectural history, wide boulevards and its famous Rock Garden. On the way back, we stopped by at the little known Mughal Gardens at Pinjore, laid out and beautifully maintained on literally thousands of acres in lush countryside.
Then on Tuesday, we had a very long day of travel. First, by the toy train from Shimla to Solan for about 3 hours through beautiful mountain countryside, with lovely views of holiday homes, villages and towns scattered all along the route. Then a rough drive to Kalka Station, stopping en route for lunch. This is where we parted company with our drivers and convoy of vehicles and got on to the Shatdabi Express to Delhi - another long journey of 4 and a half hours. Once again, we had excellent service, with drinks, snacks and a tasty hot meal. We arrived at Delhi Railway Station at about 10 pm. Although by this time we had become used to our baggage being loaded up into and off from the trains, here it was that we saw in minute detail how the porters handled the entire process - how each of the gang of 6 or 7 was allocated two or three pieces, how they put them up on their heads, one on top of the other and a third being pulled on wheels, how they then pushed through the crowds in procession along the very long platform, up the treacherous steps, over the elevated passageway, down the steps and then on rough ground to the spot where our transport was waiting. One could not but admire the sheer efficiency of the whole operation. This was our experience throughout: not a single piece of luggage was damaged or went missing. Everything looked from a bygone age as far as westerners were concerned, but things worked and the job was done.
On the flip side, my wife fell flat face down on the platform at Delhi Railway Station on our very first rail journey, to Amritsar, because of the unevenness of the surface, over a protruding slab of concrete. But because she instinctively used her yoga technique of stretching her arms right out and taking the weight on them, she suffered only a minor graze on a leg and her glasses were slightly bent - a miraculous escape but a frightening experience nevertheless, as she has had both her knees `replaced`. This was a learning exercise, because it taught us that walking in public places in India is full of hazards of all kinds - from street furniture, people, animals, pavements, buildings, vehicles and everything else, whether stationary or moving. I also had a slight fall, which could have been much more serious, because of a sudden and unexpected hole in the road on a hilly part of Shimla, where I could have plunged hundreds of feet below.
After an overnight stay back in Delhi, we flew down to Kerala, to a resort on Poovar Island which we thought would be just ideal for unwinding, but it turned out to be full of `Gujus`: in large family groups, noisy, boisterous, uncouth. This was, as we were to learn, because of school holidays. These people fitted every bit of the proverbial image of the brash and socially inadequate that we associate with the nouveau riche! We were told that Gujaratis and Maharwadis are the powerhouse of the Indian economy now. They certainly had all the crude confidence that money and spending it can give them. We saw them, the men, having mobile phone conversations - loudly making decisions, giving orders or advice, discussing deals - even while having a meal with their wives and children and other members of their groups. As grown up men, fathers, however, they were unused to swimming in the swimming pools; they used armbands! Very few of the children knew how to swim either. (Note: by `Gujus`, I mean of course the native Gujaratis, domiciled in India, not diasporans or `returnees` with an EA or other foreign background!).
The staff in this Keralan resort however maintained a degree of decorum and smiling friendliness that was in marked contrast to the demands placed on them by these Guju upstarts. Unlike in other parts of India, here the majority of staff were female - smart, cultured, petite, polite and dressed attractively in both western and Indian attire - who must have seemed like out of this world to these visitors from the outer spaces of India!
After our exhausting tour of the north, we were looking forward to having a quiet, relaxing time. Well, we did and we didn`t. Fortunately we had secured a lovely detached cottage, away from the hustle and bustle of this crowd, but we were scarcely able to do what we had hoped to in the public spaces: like having a drink sitting at a table on the terrace facing the lagoon, because when we did manage to do that, it seemed like a novelty to the locals! There were only one or two other solitary western couples who too felt out of place there. Oh, and here I had been eagerly looking forward to having a coconut drink - a madafu - but that alas proved impossible, in Kerala of all places! Why? The palms were full of coconuts, but we were told there is a scarcity of people willing to do the job of climbing up the trees to get them down or that the crop was used for extracting cooking oil etc. We only managed to have a drink by the roadside on our way back to Trivandrum Airport for our flight to Mumbai.
After all the last few days, we were looking forward to being in Mumbai. This time our plan was not to do any sight-seeing but just to savour the life and ambience of the city. Some 42 years previously, on our very first grand tour of India, as part of a belated honeymoon, we had enjoyed the hustle and bustle of the fort area of South Bombay so much that we thought we would try and replicate it. On that visit, we had been in and out of two or three different hotels - the Ambassador, the Airlines, the Nutraj - but had then settled in for a prolonged stay at the Sea Green Hotel on Marine Drive. On our last visit to Mumbai, in 2004-05, we had stayed at the much posher Marine Plaza Hotel just two blocks down, and noted that the Sea Green was not only still there but seemed to be thriving. So on this occasion, I had asked our travel agents to book us into that, to relive the experience. You might expect us to have been disappointed, because nothing in life remains the same, especially after 4 decades. But we were in for a pleasant surprise. The Sea Green hadn`t changed much in its basic ethos. Its structure and facilities had actually been modernised and the place had been recently refurbished. So there was material improvement all round. But more than that, the hotel`s culture - of friendliness, unfussiness, simplicity, cleanliness, personal service - hadn`t changed at all. Even its basic breakfast of hot tea and toast, with butter and jam, and green bananas, with additions as desired, had remained the same. It was served in one`s room. And we had a fabulous room on the fifth floor, overlooking the sea, with a clear view of the entire curve of the Drive. And of course, as on our previous visit, so this time walking up and down the wide embankment, at all times, even very late at night, was sheer bliss. This was one spot in our travels where we could walk freely at our own pace, without bumping into anyone or having to watch for unexpected obstacles or pitfalls. It is surprising that this part of Mumbai is rarely highlighted as an attactive feature in the tourist and travel literature.
So we arrive late on Sunday night, check in, and take a walk along the Drive. The next morning, my first priority was to acquire an Indian sim-card. Up in the north and in Kerala, I had had to use my UK mobile at exorbitant `roaming` charges a couple of times. A local phone however was very necessary in Mumbai for our purposes. Contrary to all the stories one hears, it wasn`t difficult to get one, but that I think was because in a city like Mumbai or Delhi or Bangalore etc, this is easier. So then we slowly made our way to our favourite spot, the Jehangir Art Gallery and spent a whole afternoon there. Met and talked to some interesting people - among them a bright young lawyer and a British-Asian young Muslim woman who works in Kabul, Afghanistan as a high level consultant. In the evening, we were treated to a meal at one of the restaurants at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel by our agents. We were picked up at our hotel in a limo for the short ride to the hotel and went through a dedicated circuitous route into the front of the hotel - all properly patrolled. As we disembarked, we were gently taken through security and into the foyer. There had been talk of increased surveillance because of the impending 26/11 anniversary but security, while visible, was definitely not unduly intrusive or oppressive anywhere in the whole area - of the hotel, the Gateway of India or in the general vicinity. When we finished our meal, I called our driver on the mobile and we were escorted out by the manager of the restaurant.
On Tuesday, we took a taxi to the Malabar Hill, to visit a well-known fellow British-Kenya-Asian businessman and philanthropist for lunch at his vast 12th floor apartment overlooking the Arabian sea. The view of the gardens and the sea below from his lounge was superb, but he said that the only drawback was the sight of locals defecating around there first thing in the morning! He therefore took his constitutional walk later in the day when all that lot had gone! On the way back, his personal assistant got the driver to stop by Jinnah`s old residence nearby at my request. A year ago I had thought of visiting it as part of my research for the paper on Gandhi and Jinnah but that in retrospect seemed unnecessary. It is in a dilapidated state - being the subject of civil litigation between Jinnah`s descendants and the Indian government - and behind the locked gates all one can see is a jungle of a garden shrouding what must at one time have been an imposing mansion. The notice on the gates reads: "NO PARKING : Proposed site of SOUTH ASIA CENTRE FOR ART AND CULTURE". In the evening we had a meal at a well known corner Pizza Place almost next to our hotel
Wednesday was Bakra-Idd, and so a national public holiday. It was celebrated in what appeared to us to be a very civilized fashion everywhere. We had been in Dharamsala, the home of the Dalai Lama, on Diwali, where there was a fair amount of fireworks. But here in Mumbai, what was astonishing was that this Idd too was being celebrated with fireworks - maybe not on the same scale but with gusto even so! The festive spirit was all too evident and stretched right into Friday. It seemed as if the `globalisation` of cultures had been internalised in India - but then this has always been the visible face of India, where people intermingle with no self-consciousness of attire or expressions of religious symbolism - it was refreshing nevertheless to see it action, complete with cross-cultural influences.
On this day we had arranged to travel a long way into the northern suburb of Boriveli West, to visit a cousin and his family whom we hadn`t seen for several decades. I had booked a Meru Cab. This is an efficient organisation. They had instantly confirmed the booking by text. Half an hour before the appointed hour, they sent me another text message, with details of the driver. He then arrived and notified me by text that he had done so. His name was Allaudin. So when we got into the cab, I wished him Idd-Mubarak and asked how come he was working that day, to which his reply was "Saab, I have to work for a living, even today"! The traffic was light. Somehow we got to our destination - asking several people along the way, nearer to where we were headed, even though I did have some directions and tried to give them to the driver, in India postal addresses are not the same as physical of course. At the end of the journey, he gave me a printed receipt, with full details of the start and end times and the distance covered, which was 42.4 kms over 1 hr 22 mins. The fare came to Rs 647 plus the 50 Rs I had paid for the express sealink toll - so the total came to just under Rs 700 (say £10), not bad! At Boriveli West we had a glimpse of the way real people live in the vast metropolis of Mumbai - how they raise families, do business and generally exist in, by our standards, overcrowded conditions, even though theirs was, again by Indian standards, a fairly well middle-class kind of neighbourhood. As in the rest of India, the schools were still on a 3 week holiday, now nearing the end, and so the children were at home or playing outside. On our way back, our hosts put us on the reverse commuter train from Boriveli West to Churchgate which ordinarily would have been just as crowded as on the way into the suburbs but because it was a holiday we managed the journey very comfortably in First Class, which cost Rs 100 each.
Thursday, we took it easy - shopping in Kolaba, again an afternoon snack at the Jehangir Art Gallery etc. In the evening we went to a concert at the Tata Theatre, part of the National Centre for Performing Arts, at Nariman Point, where they were having a Fesitival of Sufi Music. In India, they do not do telephone bookings, so on Tuesday evening we had walked down there to get our tickets in advance for today. This concert was in two parts: the first was a performance by the Hadra Sidi Mansour ensemble from Tunisia, of religious poetry and music, coupled with intense body movements leading the principal dancer in to a state of trance. I found it too male oriented and ritualistic. The second part was a totally home-grown Indian affair, with a performance of the Chishtiya Qawwali by the popular Aslam Sabri and his Troupe. His showmanship was obviously of a high calibre and very well received by the audience, with the Qawwali`s mystical text recited in Farsi, Hindi and Urdu. Although my wife enjoyed it, I am afraid I did not - but that was no reflection on the quality of the performance. What was fascinating for us, for me, was to watch the social nuances of the audience - the most sophisticated, cultured class of Mumbai-ites. As we climbed up the long stairs of the theatre, what we saw were a whole lot of them, in elegant dresses and attire, milling about with cups of tea, with a studied glance outwards to see who was coming up and in. During the interval too they seemed to make a bee-line for the tea counter, where cheese sandwiches were served also - this appeared to be a standard routine there - again with eyeingr the other members of the audience without making eye-contact however! Inside the auditorium, the audience was polite but showed appreciation with applause and repartees when the performance so warranted. On our previous visit in 2004/05, too we had managed to catch a live performance at the NCPA, of a play, at one of the other theatres in the complex. So this was our glimpse of the cultural life of Mumbai!
On Friday, we arranged to meet the lady from Kabul for lunch at the Leopold Cafe - the one that had been blown up two years ago on 26/11, in Kolaba. It was a thriving place, full of tourists, with a few locals as well. It is an open and inviting place, where people can have good food and conversation. There were no obvious signs of the aftermath of the attack here - nor, incidentally, were there at the Taj, where the manager of the restaurant had taken us for a stroll down the inner parts on the ground level by the swimming pool and residents` lounge. We had a lovely, long lunch and then spent the rest of the day tidying up.
Our flight back to London was in the early hours of Saturday, and so we were picked up and taken to the airport in good time. Here we were pleasantly surprised. The whole departure experience - the entry-point, check-in, security, exit passport control, the terminal lounge and facilities - was a model of 21st century efficiency and easy navigation. So it was a good point of farewell. But what of our impressions of India?
Every time we passed along the route, the drivers pointed out the Ambani residence, the many shopping malls and other places. At night, Mumbai really has the appearance of a modern, prosperous, mega-city - with neon advertising, street and shopping lights, sleek cars and often especially decorated hotels or other venues where weddings may be taking place. In daylight hours however the grubbiness and the ramshackle buildings, the overcrowded streets, the heat and dust and smell and the overwhelming chaos of the roads and other public places are only too evident. But as I had observed during our last visit, abject poverty is a thing of the past, and beggars have more or less disappeared. Indians however are our distant cousins, people with whom we cannot relate.
Everywhere, even in metropolitan Mumbai, the women were definitely regarded as second class citizens They meekly seemed to accept their inferior role and status. Wherever we went, even as an obviously foreign couple, everyone addressed me as the man first. Local people told us that when women get married, they are not `allowed` to go out to work, irrespective of their qualifications or previous jobs. Their own families advise them to get `settled` in first, and then negotiate with the in-laws about seeking work outside.
Although the locals were able to switch from one Indian language or dialect to another with ease in the areas that we visited, this was more in terms of functionality than proper conversational ability. As far as English was concerned, their lack of a grasp of subtlety and nuance made it impossible to have meaningful exchanges, except with a few professionals or intellectuals.
Queue jumping was a constant irritant. We saw some blatant examples of that and other forms of selfish behaviour in the public sphere. A couple of times I had to assert my presence so as not to be sidelined and once, on the flight from Delhi to Kerala, had to confront the male passenger sitting in front of my wife for refusing to pull up his seat that he had pushed as far as back as he could even at meal serving time. In India, the VIP culture is deeply embedded in the psyche of the people. Social hierarchy governs all behaviour. There is just too much obsequiousness and deference shown to people who are perceived to belong to the higher classes. This made us feel uncomfortable. Indians seem to be blithely unaware or unconcerned that there is a fundamental contradiction between this kind of social inequality and their assertion of democracy as the basis for an all- encompassing national identity. It undermines their international credentials in this regard.
These misgivings apart, it would be remiss of me not to mention that despite all the problems and pitfalls of living in India, we did meet several young men who were proud to be Indian and said that even though they had an opportunity to migrate or settle abroad they chose either to stay or come back to India. Among them was Nizar who, with his brothers Amir and Nooru, ran the business of Al Noor Jewellers in the Metro Plaza Shopping Centre opposite the Delhi Durbar Restaurant in Kolaba. They turned out to be Ismailis with a slight EA connection, but Nizar said he had turned down the offer of a US Green Card to return to India because he loved his country! Then there was another local Gujarati young man who said he definitely wanted to come back to India after his studies in the US. So yes, there is definitely a growing sense of pride in the country. That still does not mean that we as second, third or fourth generation diasporans can feel at home there. Yes, it is the land of our ancestors, with which one is bound by ethnicity and cultural heritage, but in other respects we do not belong there - we have moved on. We came away determined that this was going to be our last visit. We have seen enough - been there, done it. "No full stops in India"? Yes, this is it.
RAMNIK SHAH
Copyright
Surrey England
"Burnt Shadows" - a postscript
Having now listened to the recording of the BBC World Service Book Club programme on which Shamsie appeared last month, I hasten to revise my critique of her book. I have to say that she explained the genesis of the novel convincingly, and in detail. While the character of Hiroko is a fictional construct indeed, it is rooted in historical fact - in terms of an array and amalgam of many Japanese women of her parents` generation married to Pakistani men. She was not writing about stereotypes or basing her narrative on received wisdom, but rather treating her characters as individuals who had somehow either defied the mores or deviated from the norms of their origins or upbringing or situations - because every society has them. The first part of the book, set in Nagasaki, was the one that had required most research. The trajectory of Hiroko and Sajjad, with its sequels into our post 9/11 world of today, thus does have an internal logic of its own. So I am glad to say that my earlier misgivings were misplaced - though judging by the reactions of other readers who participated in the programme I was not alone in having them - and that with such authorial clarifications I have a more rounded and empathetic view of the book.
RAMNIK SHAH
Copyright
Surrey England
Monday, 30 August 2010
"Burnt Shadows"
"Burnt Shadows" by Kamila Shamsie - ISBN 978 1 4088 0087 4 - Bloomsbury Publishing London p/b - 2009 - 363 pp
==========================================
Shamsie has received many plaudits for `Burnt Shadows` here in Britain, where she is now based. It has undoubtedly brought her fame and fortune and also put her firmly on the international literary circuit, with frequent media appearances as a critic and commentator. I have only recently finished reading the book and for that reason alone would have liked to have been part of the audience at her appearance on the BBC World Service`s Book Club programme on Thursday September, 30, 2010. What a pity however that I won`t be able to because we will be away in Spain just then. It is scheduled to be broadcast on November 6, and again I won`t be able to hear it on air either because we will be away in India at the time!
The point that I would have made, and am sure others probably will, is about the extraordinary provenance of the plot - the Japanese connection. The novel`s opening sequence is gripping indeed: both the period and physical setting of Nagasaki is beautifully captured. The picture of a city on the brink of disaster, and then devastated by the atomic bomb, is conveyed in sensitive and evocative detail. It is against this background that we meet Hiroko, the shy young woman who will survive the holocaust, but it is her subsequent trajectory that is so intriguing. That within just over a year after that she should find herself transplanted onto Indian soil requires an amazing feat of imagination.
This then is what I would like to ask Shamsie: you have constructed a complicated scenario based on a seemingly implausible and tenuous chain of serendipity that does surely stretch the reader`s credulity! Was the character of Hiroko - her situation - a creation of your imagination or was it based on historical research?
Japan after the atomic bombs was a defeated nation. It was also under the control of an occupying power. There had been wide-spread damage and destruction. How was it then possible for Hiroko to leave the country and travel to India, even if she did have "some money and no attachments" (p 48) and a bagful of "glowing references from the Americans" for her linguistic skills as a translator during that post-war period of austerity and deprivation? But what was it that brought her to Delhi - via a long sea voyage to Bombay and an onward train journey - at a critical moment in the transformation of the sub-continent in early 1947? Chance? A sub-conscious yearning to visit the place and meet the people that her German lover / fiance Konrad (who was to perish in the Nagasaki bomb blast) had talked about? To preserve something out of his intangible past as an enduring mission for her own life? Whatever it may have been, we are propelled along the saga as it unfolds, more out of curiosity than concern for her and in the process we discover much more that had laid hidden, as it emerged in the course of a relentless sequence of events and interactions of people with places and politics.
But the most obvious conundrum of how is it that she is welcomed into the bosom of the Burton household and becomes a familiar, even cheerful, presence within the settled British establishment at the heart of imperial India, remains a mystery. There was turmoil all around as partition and independence beckoned. She was not just any foreigner, and an Asian at that, but Japanese. Her only connection was with Konrad`s half-sister Elizabeth (nee Ilse) Burton, who was herself half-German, as had Konrad been. The British in India would have been, undoubtedly were, only too aware that Japan had been a ruthless enemy during the war that had just ended. Nowhere does Shamsie acknowledge the significance of these facts or the impact and reverberations of the Japanese conquest of British territories all over South East Asia and the ensuing suffering and devastation. Nor do we get anything more than a superficial glimpse of the intricate social nuances that would have dominated the lives of the British in Delhi at that time. Surely the many `burnt shadows` of the title would have included those cast by the Japanese advance, right up to the Indian border, and the capture and mistreatment of British and Allied PoWs and countless civilians in its wake! To be fair, we are witness to some of her inner conflicts, as she came to terms with her own scars, both physical and psychological, of the war and its aftermath.
But even so, against the background of that turbulent and epoch-making end of the British Indian Empire, Hiroko manages to have a sexual encounter and fall in love with Sajjad Ashraf, the faithful Muslim servant-companion of James Burton, Elizabeth`s husband, and to elope with him. She becomes a Muslim convert and they marry. By the end of that year, 1947, they have settled in Karachi, willy nilly, and create a new life and identity for themselves in the new state of Pakistan. They have a son, Raza, who grows up within the relatively well-off Pakistani middle-class milieu that Sajjad and Hiroko Ashraf have become part of. The Burton family leave India, go back to England, but their marriage falls apart and they separate. They have a daughter, Kim, who goes with Elizabeth to live in New York, to be near her cousin.
These and many other crucial details are buried deep in the narrative, to elude but the most attentive reader who however has to keep on referring back to the text so as not to lose the thread. One layer of improbability is heaped upon another as the full cast of characters is revealed and as they navigate across time and space. Early on, for example, Hiroko explains to Elizabeth, when she queried the propriety of having travelled to Delhi in the company of her male Canadian escort, that he was of "a Wildean persuasion`! Other literary references, to E M Forster, do not seem this incongruous. Complex relationships are forged and nurtured over generations, with fortuitous coincidences and cross-connections, to give us an epic tale of family and friends as they grapple with the geo-political realities of our age. The racial dynamics between the English or European, Japanese and Indians at the centre of the story are alluded to but not with sufficient critical depth. Some points of conflict are papered over while others are explored in a one-dimentional projection.
And so we travel through the decades, traversing the contemporary history of our time - how the Pakistanis became drawn into the Afghan conflict, first with the Soviet invasion and the Mujahedin resistance to it, then when the Americans left a power vaccum after the Soviets were driven out and the Taliban took over and finally in the wake of 9/11 - how it all piled up into a gigantic mess, with spooks and spivs, `blowback` and betrayal. We are driven to a predictable denouement involving figures from the past - the dramatis personae - who have straddled continents and cultures to find themselves in an emotional bind that alas can only lead to their undoing. Here, in one face-to-face encounter, we are treated to one of the several complicated relationships that form the essence of the tale:
"Abdullah, I am a Raza`s mother".
His instant reaction was to push his chair back from the table with a loud scraping sound his expression one of disbelief. She put his hand on his arm, and he paused, seeing Raza in her features.
"Raza`s not Hazara. I`m Japanese. And his father was a Pakisani. Originally from Delhi. He and I moved to Karachi in `47."
Her accent - Karachi mingled with something else - countered the improbabilty of what she was saying.
Raza it is then upon whom falls the mantle of the anti-hero, and his asymmetric journey also provides this telling line in the Prologue: "How did it come to this, he wonders", as does the reader!
On the whole, a readable work of highly imaginative fiction. Shamsie has skilfully packed a lot into it in terms of her own background and our current preoccupations in world politics.
RAMNIK SHAH
Copyright
Surrey England
==========================================
Shamsie has received many plaudits for `Burnt Shadows` here in Britain, where she is now based. It has undoubtedly brought her fame and fortune and also put her firmly on the international literary circuit, with frequent media appearances as a critic and commentator. I have only recently finished reading the book and for that reason alone would have liked to have been part of the audience at her appearance on the BBC World Service`s Book Club programme on Thursday September, 30, 2010. What a pity however that I won`t be able to because we will be away in Spain just then. It is scheduled to be broadcast on November 6, and again I won`t be able to hear it on air either because we will be away in India at the time!
The point that I would have made, and am sure others probably will, is about the extraordinary provenance of the plot - the Japanese connection. The novel`s opening sequence is gripping indeed: both the period and physical setting of Nagasaki is beautifully captured. The picture of a city on the brink of disaster, and then devastated by the atomic bomb, is conveyed in sensitive and evocative detail. It is against this background that we meet Hiroko, the shy young woman who will survive the holocaust, but it is her subsequent trajectory that is so intriguing. That within just over a year after that she should find herself transplanted onto Indian soil requires an amazing feat of imagination.
This then is what I would like to ask Shamsie: you have constructed a complicated scenario based on a seemingly implausible and tenuous chain of serendipity that does surely stretch the reader`s credulity! Was the character of Hiroko - her situation - a creation of your imagination or was it based on historical research?
Japan after the atomic bombs was a defeated nation. It was also under the control of an occupying power. There had been wide-spread damage and destruction. How was it then possible for Hiroko to leave the country and travel to India, even if she did have "some money and no attachments" (p 48) and a bagful of "glowing references from the Americans" for her linguistic skills as a translator during that post-war period of austerity and deprivation? But what was it that brought her to Delhi - via a long sea voyage to Bombay and an onward train journey - at a critical moment in the transformation of the sub-continent in early 1947? Chance? A sub-conscious yearning to visit the place and meet the people that her German lover / fiance Konrad (who was to perish in the Nagasaki bomb blast) had talked about? To preserve something out of his intangible past as an enduring mission for her own life? Whatever it may have been, we are propelled along the saga as it unfolds, more out of curiosity than concern for her and in the process we discover much more that had laid hidden, as it emerged in the course of a relentless sequence of events and interactions of people with places and politics.
But the most obvious conundrum of how is it that she is welcomed into the bosom of the Burton household and becomes a familiar, even cheerful, presence within the settled British establishment at the heart of imperial India, remains a mystery. There was turmoil all around as partition and independence beckoned. She was not just any foreigner, and an Asian at that, but Japanese. Her only connection was with Konrad`s half-sister Elizabeth (nee Ilse) Burton, who was herself half-German, as had Konrad been. The British in India would have been, undoubtedly were, only too aware that Japan had been a ruthless enemy during the war that had just ended. Nowhere does Shamsie acknowledge the significance of these facts or the impact and reverberations of the Japanese conquest of British territories all over South East Asia and the ensuing suffering and devastation. Nor do we get anything more than a superficial glimpse of the intricate social nuances that would have dominated the lives of the British in Delhi at that time. Surely the many `burnt shadows` of the title would have included those cast by the Japanese advance, right up to the Indian border, and the capture and mistreatment of British and Allied PoWs and countless civilians in its wake! To be fair, we are witness to some of her inner conflicts, as she came to terms with her own scars, both physical and psychological, of the war and its aftermath.
But even so, against the background of that turbulent and epoch-making end of the British Indian Empire, Hiroko manages to have a sexual encounter and fall in love with Sajjad Ashraf, the faithful Muslim servant-companion of James Burton, Elizabeth`s husband, and to elope with him. She becomes a Muslim convert and they marry. By the end of that year, 1947, they have settled in Karachi, willy nilly, and create a new life and identity for themselves in the new state of Pakistan. They have a son, Raza, who grows up within the relatively well-off Pakistani middle-class milieu that Sajjad and Hiroko Ashraf have become part of. The Burton family leave India, go back to England, but their marriage falls apart and they separate. They have a daughter, Kim, who goes with Elizabeth to live in New York, to be near her cousin.
These and many other crucial details are buried deep in the narrative, to elude but the most attentive reader who however has to keep on referring back to the text so as not to lose the thread. One layer of improbability is heaped upon another as the full cast of characters is revealed and as they navigate across time and space. Early on, for example, Hiroko explains to Elizabeth, when she queried the propriety of having travelled to Delhi in the company of her male Canadian escort, that he was of "a Wildean persuasion`! Other literary references, to E M Forster, do not seem this incongruous. Complex relationships are forged and nurtured over generations, with fortuitous coincidences and cross-connections, to give us an epic tale of family and friends as they grapple with the geo-political realities of our age. The racial dynamics between the English or European, Japanese and Indians at the centre of the story are alluded to but not with sufficient critical depth. Some points of conflict are papered over while others are explored in a one-dimentional projection.
And so we travel through the decades, traversing the contemporary history of our time - how the Pakistanis became drawn into the Afghan conflict, first with the Soviet invasion and the Mujahedin resistance to it, then when the Americans left a power vaccum after the Soviets were driven out and the Taliban took over and finally in the wake of 9/11 - how it all piled up into a gigantic mess, with spooks and spivs, `blowback` and betrayal. We are driven to a predictable denouement involving figures from the past - the dramatis personae - who have straddled continents and cultures to find themselves in an emotional bind that alas can only lead to their undoing. Here, in one face-to-face encounter, we are treated to one of the several complicated relationships that form the essence of the tale:
"Abdullah, I am a Raza`s mother".
His instant reaction was to push his chair back from the table with a loud scraping sound his expression one of disbelief. She put his hand on his arm, and he paused, seeing Raza in her features.
"Raza`s not Hazara. I`m Japanese. And his father was a Pakisani. Originally from Delhi. He and I moved to Karachi in `47."
Her accent - Karachi mingled with something else - countered the improbabilty of what she was saying.
Raza it is then upon whom falls the mantle of the anti-hero, and his asymmetric journey also provides this telling line in the Prologue: "How did it come to this, he wonders", as does the reader!
On the whole, a readable work of highly imaginative fiction. Shamsie has skilfully packed a lot into it in terms of her own background and our current preoccupations in world politics.
RAMNIK SHAH
Copyright
Surrey England
Friday, 30 April 2010
Writing about Gandhi & Jinnah
Last autumn I was asked to consider submitting a paper for presentation at the 3rd biennial conference of the GSA (then to be and since in fact held at SOAS earlier this month). I was a bit hesitant because the subject I had in mind was rather huge but in the end decided to go for it, even though I knew what it entailed. The idea had occurred to me in the light of the publicity surrounding Jaswant Singh`s new biography of Jinnah that had just come out, because I had always been fascinated by Jinnah, and while a lot was known about Gandhi, the thought of putting them together under a critical microscope was exciting, if daunting.
I spent the next few weeks just mulling over the project, thinking about how I was going to approach it and generally delving into my own memory bank to retrieve and refresh all that I could recall in outline. It was like revisiting old territory, looking anew at things one had known for a long time, that in my case I had grown up with - as part of the folklore and received wisdom during childhood - and what I had read in bits and pieces. That was to become the starting line - the mental compass pointing to the research and study that lay ahead. For me, a second generation Kenya Asian, born in 1941, the names Gandhi and Jinnah were inextricably linked with the Indian independence movement, which had cast a vicarious shadow over the evolution and standing of the Indian community in colonial British East Africa (and indeed which had also acted as a spur to an African nationalist consciousness that was just emerging).
I then had to decide on the scope of the study and how I was going to undertake it. I settled on a number of books and went about ordering them, made searches of other material that was available and set a tentative time-table for myself. It was clear that this was to be an exercise in reexamining and reappraising the character, personalities and achievements of the two giants, with the benefit of hindsight and from a distance in terms of time and space. It was also going to be a rediscovery of my own attitude to and relationship with the land of my ancestors. As it happened, I had only recently finished reading M G Vassanji`s `The Assassin`s Song` and was on the point of starting his `A Place Within: Rediscovering India` (see my Review of 2009, below). So not only were his writings to resonate as I progressed through my project, but it was an added bonus to meet and have informal conversations with him as a distinguished keynote speaker at the conference.
I began the research and reading in earnest just as 2010 dawned. I had read Gandhi`s autobiography as a child, and again three decades later, after seeing the film `Gandhi`. I had also read Wolpert`s biography of Jinnah and seen the movie of Jinnah`s life based on Akbar Ahmed`s script. And of course, as stated above, the story of Indian independence was part of one`s cultural inheritance, so to speak, and so I was familiar with the key dates and events associated with it, as well as the names of most of the principal characters involved therein - Jinnah, Nehru, Patel, Bose, the Aga Khan et al. But what I was now engaged in was documenting the history and the contribution and interactions of Gandhi and Jinnah vis-a-vis themselves and countless others who featured in that saga, and reducing all that into a readable narrative of reasonable length. So while not exactly starting from a blank page, it was nevertheless quite a challenge to weave all the mass of detail and characters into the frame.
I spent January and the first half of February in reading up, going to the British Library, cross-referencing, making notes and generally being thoroughly absorbed in forming a picture of the two men that could be translated into words, within a structured template. I listened to sound archival recordings of the voices of Gandhi, Aga Khan III, Jinnah, Mountbatten, Nehru and a host of other luminaries. These provided a vital missing link to complete the mental image of them that one had formed. I then started to write. A passage in the Aga Khan`s memoirs gave me the right opening into the main theme and the rest just followed. It took me about 7 weeks to finish the job and polish up the draft (though it still remains to be edited and revised) comfortably within my target date of a week before Easter. The final tally was a document of a little over 15,000 words, one of my longest pieces.
In the process, I gained some valuable insights about many other principal players whose lives or actions had interacted with those of Gandhi and Jinnah. For example, I learned that Nehru was both a smoker and a meat-eater (both of which habits were known to Gandhi, though he did not smoke in front of Gandhi) and according to one account at least he had a relationship, or an affair, with Padmaja Naidu (daughter of Sarojini Naidu) after his wife Kamala`s death in the mid-1930s, or how Churchill, whose visceral hatred of Gandhi was legendary, had reacted to a picture in the Daily Telegraph of Lord and Lady Mountbatten sitting ("squatting on the ground") cross-legged at the funeral of Gandhi, or indeed that he had given more than tacit support to Jinnah in his quest for Pakistan - and, more on Churchill, how after the trauma of partition and independence had died down, he and Nehru were to have civilised exchanges as diplomatic equals, as well as Old Harrovians, at Commonwealth summits but more than that how he was charmed by the social grace of Vijyalakshmi Pandit, sister of Nehru and India`s High Commissioner to London, who showed no bitterness towards the British for their imperialist excesses!
As Alex Tunzelmann however observes in a note on the Bibliography underpinning her book `Indian Summer`, "(t)here are two great problems facing any historian of the end of the British Empire in India and Pakistan: the sheer quantity of evidence, and the extreme nature of bias in it". And she adds that a huge amount of literature has been "written with the benefit of considerable hindsight, and with overwhelming political motives". Whether her own work is free from these influences is a matter of judgment, but there could be no doubt that one had to navigate this minefield with caution, even in the context of a limited and compact paper like mine. There was simply too much material to look at and a lot more that was available; one had to be selective.
Of two things however I could be sure: that what had stayed with me ever since I first read Gandhi`s autobiography (as a twelve or thirteen year old boy) - ie. about his struggles with his conscience (as a teenage husband, torn between his lust and duty to his parents; his early experience of being caught telling lies; his time in London and training as a barrister; how during his first voyage to South Africa he had had a narrow encounter with a prostitute as he passed through Mombasa and Zanzibar; and how he fought the authorities in South Africa for a better status for the settled Indian community there and above all his insistence on `truth` and `non-violence` - was well borne out all these years later through research and re-reading of the texts, and secondly that both he and Jinnah had been my subliminal role-models in inspiring me to also read law and train as a barrister at Lincoln`s Inn 10 years later (and some seven decades after they had done that).
As for my feelings towards the sub-continent however these have not changed. It is the land of my forebears to which I have a cultural and ethnic affinity, yes, but no legal or political allegiance. My sense of nationality does not extend to its people; I cannot relate to them on a civic or social level.
I did present my paper, entitled "Gandhi and Jinnah: a study in commonality and contrast" at the conference and have to say I was quite pleased with the outcome! Indeed it was because I was so engrossed in the project that I missed my own deadline of updating this blog at least once a month, for March, and so now I hasten to do that for April.
RAMNIK SHAH
Copyright
Surrey England
I spent the next few weeks just mulling over the project, thinking about how I was going to approach it and generally delving into my own memory bank to retrieve and refresh all that I could recall in outline. It was like revisiting old territory, looking anew at things one had known for a long time, that in my case I had grown up with - as part of the folklore and received wisdom during childhood - and what I had read in bits and pieces. That was to become the starting line - the mental compass pointing to the research and study that lay ahead. For me, a second generation Kenya Asian, born in 1941, the names Gandhi and Jinnah were inextricably linked with the Indian independence movement, which had cast a vicarious shadow over the evolution and standing of the Indian community in colonial British East Africa (and indeed which had also acted as a spur to an African nationalist consciousness that was just emerging).
I then had to decide on the scope of the study and how I was going to undertake it. I settled on a number of books and went about ordering them, made searches of other material that was available and set a tentative time-table for myself. It was clear that this was to be an exercise in reexamining and reappraising the character, personalities and achievements of the two giants, with the benefit of hindsight and from a distance in terms of time and space. It was also going to be a rediscovery of my own attitude to and relationship with the land of my ancestors. As it happened, I had only recently finished reading M G Vassanji`s `The Assassin`s Song` and was on the point of starting his `A Place Within: Rediscovering India` (see my Review of 2009, below). So not only were his writings to resonate as I progressed through my project, but it was an added bonus to meet and have informal conversations with him as a distinguished keynote speaker at the conference.
I began the research and reading in earnest just as 2010 dawned. I had read Gandhi`s autobiography as a child, and again three decades later, after seeing the film `Gandhi`. I had also read Wolpert`s biography of Jinnah and seen the movie of Jinnah`s life based on Akbar Ahmed`s script. And of course, as stated above, the story of Indian independence was part of one`s cultural inheritance, so to speak, and so I was familiar with the key dates and events associated with it, as well as the names of most of the principal characters involved therein - Jinnah, Nehru, Patel, Bose, the Aga Khan et al. But what I was now engaged in was documenting the history and the contribution and interactions of Gandhi and Jinnah vis-a-vis themselves and countless others who featured in that saga, and reducing all that into a readable narrative of reasonable length. So while not exactly starting from a blank page, it was nevertheless quite a challenge to weave all the mass of detail and characters into the frame.
I spent January and the first half of February in reading up, going to the British Library, cross-referencing, making notes and generally being thoroughly absorbed in forming a picture of the two men that could be translated into words, within a structured template. I listened to sound archival recordings of the voices of Gandhi, Aga Khan III, Jinnah, Mountbatten, Nehru and a host of other luminaries. These provided a vital missing link to complete the mental image of them that one had formed. I then started to write. A passage in the Aga Khan`s memoirs gave me the right opening into the main theme and the rest just followed. It took me about 7 weeks to finish the job and polish up the draft (though it still remains to be edited and revised) comfortably within my target date of a week before Easter. The final tally was a document of a little over 15,000 words, one of my longest pieces.
In the process, I gained some valuable insights about many other principal players whose lives or actions had interacted with those of Gandhi and Jinnah. For example, I learned that Nehru was both a smoker and a meat-eater (both of which habits were known to Gandhi, though he did not smoke in front of Gandhi) and according to one account at least he had a relationship, or an affair, with Padmaja Naidu (daughter of Sarojini Naidu) after his wife Kamala`s death in the mid-1930s, or how Churchill, whose visceral hatred of Gandhi was legendary, had reacted to a picture in the Daily Telegraph of Lord and Lady Mountbatten sitting ("squatting on the ground") cross-legged at the funeral of Gandhi, or indeed that he had given more than tacit support to Jinnah in his quest for Pakistan - and, more on Churchill, how after the trauma of partition and independence had died down, he and Nehru were to have civilised exchanges as diplomatic equals, as well as Old Harrovians, at Commonwealth summits but more than that how he was charmed by the social grace of Vijyalakshmi Pandit, sister of Nehru and India`s High Commissioner to London, who showed no bitterness towards the British for their imperialist excesses!
As Alex Tunzelmann however observes in a note on the Bibliography underpinning her book `Indian Summer`, "(t)here are two great problems facing any historian of the end of the British Empire in India and Pakistan: the sheer quantity of evidence, and the extreme nature of bias in it". And she adds that a huge amount of literature has been "written with the benefit of considerable hindsight, and with overwhelming political motives". Whether her own work is free from these influences is a matter of judgment, but there could be no doubt that one had to navigate this minefield with caution, even in the context of a limited and compact paper like mine. There was simply too much material to look at and a lot more that was available; one had to be selective.
Of two things however I could be sure: that what had stayed with me ever since I first read Gandhi`s autobiography (as a twelve or thirteen year old boy) - ie. about his struggles with his conscience (as a teenage husband, torn between his lust and duty to his parents; his early experience of being caught telling lies; his time in London and training as a barrister; how during his first voyage to South Africa he had had a narrow encounter with a prostitute as he passed through Mombasa and Zanzibar; and how he fought the authorities in South Africa for a better status for the settled Indian community there and above all his insistence on `truth` and `non-violence` - was well borne out all these years later through research and re-reading of the texts, and secondly that both he and Jinnah had been my subliminal role-models in inspiring me to also read law and train as a barrister at Lincoln`s Inn 10 years later (and some seven decades after they had done that).
As for my feelings towards the sub-continent however these have not changed. It is the land of my forebears to which I have a cultural and ethnic affinity, yes, but no legal or political allegiance. My sense of nationality does not extend to its people; I cannot relate to them on a civic or social level.
I did present my paper, entitled "Gandhi and Jinnah: a study in commonality and contrast" at the conference and have to say I was quite pleased with the outcome! Indeed it was because I was so engrossed in the project that I missed my own deadline of updating this blog at least once a month, for March, and so now I hasten to do that for April.
RAMNIK SHAH
Copyright
Surrey England
Sunday, 28 February 2010
`Friends`!
I am a fan of `Friends`; so is my
wife now, willy-nilly, and we make it a point never to miss it - even though
this is the umpteenth time the complete cycle has been repeated and we are
familiar with every episode and know what is going to happen! But we love every
minute of it; at least I do.
What drew me to it and why, you may ask, is a man of my age raving about it so? Before coming to that, let me just say that when the series was first broadcast, in the latter half of the `90s, we were still working and busy with our personal, social and professional lives, and in any case at that time there was just one episode every week. And then there were also `Frasier` and the remnants of `Cheers` to watch too as light entertainment. So during those early showings, we caught the flavour of the programme but did not follow it minutely. It was not until about five or six years ago, with cable tv networks catching on the `Friends` phenomenon, that it really captured our imagination; this also coincided with our retirement, and its aura just grew and grew. Our viewing habits also changed and have since become focused and time-limited.
Last night`s episodes were the ones when `Ross and Rachel Take a Break`, and we both, and certainly I, feel that the one of `The Morning After` is the best or nearly that of the lot (and it is that which has prompted me to write this now). That is the one where Ross wakes up to find that he had slept with the photocopy shop-girl Chloe and then to his horror that Rachel had phoned and left a very moving message on his voicemail. The action then moves fast, with the exposure of `the trail`, and we come to the point when R & R burst into the front of the apartment while the other four (friends) are in Monica`s room, and loudly confront each other. Here we see the whole gamut of emotions, played out painstakingly and movingly, not just by R & R, but by the others as well. Rachel`s face and demeanour show real, deep hurt. She is inconsolable. Ross is guilt-ridden and ashamed. They fight, they argue, they shout; she clobbers him, he whinges. The other four are trapped on the other side of the door; we see Monica`s anguish as a loving sister and friend; the boys are bemused and bewildered; even crazy Phoebe is subdued! We are gripped by this tragic drama - so real, so touching, so human! R`s expressions of love and regret are not enough; we empathise with him but know that in the end Rachel is right to break up with him; anything less or else would simply not do.
And the friends? Well, surely we can understand why, when the tension breaks, Monica says, `Look at them; here we are; it is 3 AM and they are not even bothered about whether I am home or what may have happened to me`, or words to that effect? Where the programme scores always is in the detail, of this and many other kinds. As Joey gingerly tiptoes across the open plan inside hall holding his shoes in his hands, Chandler cannot help asking him, in his characteristically sardonic tones, if he was practising his `new walk`, to which Joey`s disarmingly simple riposte was `No, I really do have to pee` (!), while Monica quietly drapes a cloak over the sleeping Rachel. To end such a sombre episode with a sequence like that shows just the right amount of balance between comedy and drama.
Throughout the complete series, spanning some 10 years and an equal number of `seasons`, we are witness to the flowering of the friends from the care-free early twenty-somethings into responsible, mature adults on the threshold of settled family life. It was this that dawned on us as we got absorbed into their lives. We had experienced the same - all those decades ago. The parallel was so stark and striking that we could relate to every aspect of `Friends`. We too were yuppies, in our mid-twenties - a group of friends who interacted with each other in more or less the same way - meeting almost every day over coffee or in some watering hole for drinks; having evenings out or dropping in at a particular friend`s apartment which became our meeting point; taking holidays together or going away on safaris. Ok, we didn`t sleep around much but some of us did have the occasional flings; and others went through the angst of singlehood - relationships, engagements, and break-ups even. But we had fun. We also had our professional careers and other (social and family) commitments, but these never impinged on our friendship.
We had a ten-year run of that phase of our lives - during or by the end of which most of us married and had children, at different times, and then emigrated. But those friendships have endured, through time and space, and we now have occasional reunions, across continents - not necessarily formally organized, but say when the children of one or another of us get married, and often just ad hoc and not always with everyone being present.
But to go back to `Friends`; just consider how much is packed into every episode and then multiply it by the total of the whole series! There is economy, depth, meaning, humour (that of course being the raison d`etre and the central plank of the whole thing), and above all fine acting. Its basic sit-com format was easily established right at the outset. The six characters were a mixed bunch; four of them had a history of connections and the other two just drifted in and fitted with the rest, and they all gelled, as might happen in real life. So we see them in all sorts of situations, ranging from the daily coffee sessions to outings and other external events. They quarrel, they make up; they venture out and get back together again - much like any other group of people closely involved with each other.
My favourite character is Monica. Courteney Cox plays her absolutely brilliantly. She is such a sensitive soul - and, yes, fussy and always the organizer and the cheer leader! She is aware that she is not her parents` darling child - Ross fills that position - and in particular that her mother is hypercritical and antipathetic towards her. But as with everything else, each member of the family stays true to their templates throughout. The parents are a `sixties generation, sexually adventurous, socially liberal couple. Their idiosyncrasies and shenanigans fit in well with the general scheme of the younger folk`s life-style. As for Ross and Monica, their brother-sister relationship is affectionate, caring and endearing always; this is demonstrated in small ways and big - gentle kisses and hugs, sisterly concern, brotherly advice - even fights reminiscent of their childhood days, the most memorable being the one on the football field!
As for Monica, as time flies, we see her flitting in and out of affairs (as of course does everyone else), but the one that affects her most and lasts longest is when she falls in love with Richard, and vice versa. It is beautifully handled, and acted, at every turn and twist of the tale. Tom Selleck as Richard is superb; he even shaves off his moustache when he makes a reappearance after they had parted.
Ross and Monica (and their parents) provide the cohesive link and purpose of the basic plot-line. Without them the gang would not have remained glued. Ross can be silly and stupid, as much as, in their different ways, both Chandler and Joey. The same applies to the girls also except that, in my view, Monica is the least frivolous of them all. At that age and in that fictional setting, I am sure I would have been infatuated with her!!
Every member of the gang is given their proper due, in terms of space and depth and a framework of reference. So we see their characters develop fully. Chandler, for example, from the rather insecure and fragile young man - who uses humour as a means both of keeping deeper emotions hidden while at the same cultivating a playful image of himself - to a caring and respectable adult who convinces Monica, when much later they go through the process of adopting a child, that the right thing to do is to own up to their un-premeditated deceit as to who they were rather than cover it up. The programme excels in other respects too; the six characters stay true to what is expected of them in the light of their individual history and circumstances.
And each one has their family brought in at some point or another: R & R`s parents are of course a regular presence, while both Chandler`s and Rachel`s, as well as Joey`s, dysfunctional dad and mum have their stint in too, as do Phoebe`s twin-sister, surrogate mum and her disembodied grandmother!
`Friends` of course is about friendship; that is the running theme. The six have much merriment together, but also have serious moments of crisis and falling out. They are, above all, a very moral bunch of people. Take any random scenario: when, for example, Chandler is drawn to Joey`s girl-friend and they kiss, Joey explodes characteristically - irrationally. He says he would not have minded if Chandler had asked him first, but does not realize - and Chandler is too embarrassed and intimidated to explain to him - that when you get into a situation like that, as he puts it, `one thing leads to another` and before you know it the act is done; you do not have a breather to put the brakes on. And they had actually stopped there, didn`t go beyond it. But to backtrack a little, when the other friends found out, they were all urging him to tell Joey. And that happened at another time also, when Ross kissed Chandler`s mum, or when Joey sees (`Oh my God`) Janice kissing her ex-husband, or when Ross insists that Phoebe has to be disabused of her obsession with the lost cat as a reincarnation of her mother! Always, when one of them was not behaving properly or needed help, the others rallied round to give critical guidance and comfort.
And the other messages that `Friends` spreads are not so much politically correct as just grounded in basic humanity. Take Ross`s relationship with his lesbian ex-wife and her new partner. We even see the two women get married, with him giving Carol away! That is putting us into the mainstream of the sexual revolution. The several black or other ethnic characters are introduced and play out their parts without carrying their badges of identity on their heads - matter of factly. All kinds of other issues of present-day concern are also touched on or explored throughout - too numerous to mention here. Above all, the whole series is remarkable for its narrative continuity and consistency, and for maintaining a linear trajectory.
It is well known that within a very short time, `Friends` had become so popular that many celebrities wanted to appear on it (including, it was rumoured, Bill Clinton after he had left office) and some did do as cameo walk-ons: Isabella Rossini, as herself, Billy Crystal and Robin Williams. Other heavy-weight actors (Bruce Willis, Sean Penn, Reese Witherspoon) also featured for varying periods of time. And so, to cut this short, we see all the usual rites of passage - of birth, death, marriage, affairs, split-ups, divorce, career breaks, employment and relationship blues and everything else - portrayed beautifully and sensitively, and always with a light touch. At the end, all the six characters come through - enhanced, sober, intact. As it happens, all of them are paired off, except for Joey!
There is so much more that one can say, because for me it is almost as if we are living through the ten year span of the series in real time. Its every episode takes us back, to our own precious past, and we are reminded of all that happened in our lives. More importantly, the parallel now also extends across three generations, at least among those nearest to us. During our family card sessions at weekends, for example, our common interest in `Friends` provides an easy talking point and makes it possible to relate to each other that much more! That is why to touch base with our virtual `Friends` on a daily basis has become a compelling habit! When we are away abroad on holiday it is always such a pleasant and welcome surprise, when we switch on the telly in our hotel room (in some exotic location such as Hanoi, Bangkok, Santiago, Buenos Aires, Mumbai, Kolkatta, Kathmandu or wherever) and flicking through the channels come upon them! It is like catching up with old friends indeed.
Surely one day, say 10 years after `Friends` ended in 2004, there will be a `Friends Reunited`, even as a one-of! If one or two of the six main actors are not keen or available then, they can always be `killed off` imaginatively and remembered in retrospect. We shall see.
What drew me to it and why, you may ask, is a man of my age raving about it so? Before coming to that, let me just say that when the series was first broadcast, in the latter half of the `90s, we were still working and busy with our personal, social and professional lives, and in any case at that time there was just one episode every week. And then there were also `Frasier` and the remnants of `Cheers` to watch too as light entertainment. So during those early showings, we caught the flavour of the programme but did not follow it minutely. It was not until about five or six years ago, with cable tv networks catching on the `Friends` phenomenon, that it really captured our imagination; this also coincided with our retirement, and its aura just grew and grew. Our viewing habits also changed and have since become focused and time-limited.
Last night`s episodes were the ones when `Ross and Rachel Take a Break`, and we both, and certainly I, feel that the one of `The Morning After` is the best or nearly that of the lot (and it is that which has prompted me to write this now). That is the one where Ross wakes up to find that he had slept with the photocopy shop-girl Chloe and then to his horror that Rachel had phoned and left a very moving message on his voicemail. The action then moves fast, with the exposure of `the trail`, and we come to the point when R & R burst into the front of the apartment while the other four (friends) are in Monica`s room, and loudly confront each other. Here we see the whole gamut of emotions, played out painstakingly and movingly, not just by R & R, but by the others as well. Rachel`s face and demeanour show real, deep hurt. She is inconsolable. Ross is guilt-ridden and ashamed. They fight, they argue, they shout; she clobbers him, he whinges. The other four are trapped on the other side of the door; we see Monica`s anguish as a loving sister and friend; the boys are bemused and bewildered; even crazy Phoebe is subdued! We are gripped by this tragic drama - so real, so touching, so human! R`s expressions of love and regret are not enough; we empathise with him but know that in the end Rachel is right to break up with him; anything less or else would simply not do.
And the friends? Well, surely we can understand why, when the tension breaks, Monica says, `Look at them; here we are; it is 3 AM and they are not even bothered about whether I am home or what may have happened to me`, or words to that effect? Where the programme scores always is in the detail, of this and many other kinds. As Joey gingerly tiptoes across the open plan inside hall holding his shoes in his hands, Chandler cannot help asking him, in his characteristically sardonic tones, if he was practising his `new walk`, to which Joey`s disarmingly simple riposte was `No, I really do have to pee` (!), while Monica quietly drapes a cloak over the sleeping Rachel. To end such a sombre episode with a sequence like that shows just the right amount of balance between comedy and drama.
Throughout the complete series, spanning some 10 years and an equal number of `seasons`, we are witness to the flowering of the friends from the care-free early twenty-somethings into responsible, mature adults on the threshold of settled family life. It was this that dawned on us as we got absorbed into their lives. We had experienced the same - all those decades ago. The parallel was so stark and striking that we could relate to every aspect of `Friends`. We too were yuppies, in our mid-twenties - a group of friends who interacted with each other in more or less the same way - meeting almost every day over coffee or in some watering hole for drinks; having evenings out or dropping in at a particular friend`s apartment which became our meeting point; taking holidays together or going away on safaris. Ok, we didn`t sleep around much but some of us did have the occasional flings; and others went through the angst of singlehood - relationships, engagements, and break-ups even. But we had fun. We also had our professional careers and other (social and family) commitments, but these never impinged on our friendship.
We had a ten-year run of that phase of our lives - during or by the end of which most of us married and had children, at different times, and then emigrated. But those friendships have endured, through time and space, and we now have occasional reunions, across continents - not necessarily formally organized, but say when the children of one or another of us get married, and often just ad hoc and not always with everyone being present.
But to go back to `Friends`; just consider how much is packed into every episode and then multiply it by the total of the whole series! There is economy, depth, meaning, humour (that of course being the raison d`etre and the central plank of the whole thing), and above all fine acting. Its basic sit-com format was easily established right at the outset. The six characters were a mixed bunch; four of them had a history of connections and the other two just drifted in and fitted with the rest, and they all gelled, as might happen in real life. So we see them in all sorts of situations, ranging from the daily coffee sessions to outings and other external events. They quarrel, they make up; they venture out and get back together again - much like any other group of people closely involved with each other.
My favourite character is Monica. Courteney Cox plays her absolutely brilliantly. She is such a sensitive soul - and, yes, fussy and always the organizer and the cheer leader! She is aware that she is not her parents` darling child - Ross fills that position - and in particular that her mother is hypercritical and antipathetic towards her. But as with everything else, each member of the family stays true to their templates throughout. The parents are a `sixties generation, sexually adventurous, socially liberal couple. Their idiosyncrasies and shenanigans fit in well with the general scheme of the younger folk`s life-style. As for Ross and Monica, their brother-sister relationship is affectionate, caring and endearing always; this is demonstrated in small ways and big - gentle kisses and hugs, sisterly concern, brotherly advice - even fights reminiscent of their childhood days, the most memorable being the one on the football field!
As for Monica, as time flies, we see her flitting in and out of affairs (as of course does everyone else), but the one that affects her most and lasts longest is when she falls in love with Richard, and vice versa. It is beautifully handled, and acted, at every turn and twist of the tale. Tom Selleck as Richard is superb; he even shaves off his moustache when he makes a reappearance after they had parted.
Ross and Monica (and their parents) provide the cohesive link and purpose of the basic plot-line. Without them the gang would not have remained glued. Ross can be silly and stupid, as much as, in their different ways, both Chandler and Joey. The same applies to the girls also except that, in my view, Monica is the least frivolous of them all. At that age and in that fictional setting, I am sure I would have been infatuated with her!!
Every member of the gang is given their proper due, in terms of space and depth and a framework of reference. So we see their characters develop fully. Chandler, for example, from the rather insecure and fragile young man - who uses humour as a means both of keeping deeper emotions hidden while at the same cultivating a playful image of himself - to a caring and respectable adult who convinces Monica, when much later they go through the process of adopting a child, that the right thing to do is to own up to their un-premeditated deceit as to who they were rather than cover it up. The programme excels in other respects too; the six characters stay true to what is expected of them in the light of their individual history and circumstances.
And each one has their family brought in at some point or another: R & R`s parents are of course a regular presence, while both Chandler`s and Rachel`s, as well as Joey`s, dysfunctional dad and mum have their stint in too, as do Phoebe`s twin-sister, surrogate mum and her disembodied grandmother!
`Friends` of course is about friendship; that is the running theme. The six have much merriment together, but also have serious moments of crisis and falling out. They are, above all, a very moral bunch of people. Take any random scenario: when, for example, Chandler is drawn to Joey`s girl-friend and they kiss, Joey explodes characteristically - irrationally. He says he would not have minded if Chandler had asked him first, but does not realize - and Chandler is too embarrassed and intimidated to explain to him - that when you get into a situation like that, as he puts it, `one thing leads to another` and before you know it the act is done; you do not have a breather to put the brakes on. And they had actually stopped there, didn`t go beyond it. But to backtrack a little, when the other friends found out, they were all urging him to tell Joey. And that happened at another time also, when Ross kissed Chandler`s mum, or when Joey sees (`Oh my God`) Janice kissing her ex-husband, or when Ross insists that Phoebe has to be disabused of her obsession with the lost cat as a reincarnation of her mother! Always, when one of them was not behaving properly or needed help, the others rallied round to give critical guidance and comfort.
And the other messages that `Friends` spreads are not so much politically correct as just grounded in basic humanity. Take Ross`s relationship with his lesbian ex-wife and her new partner. We even see the two women get married, with him giving Carol away! That is putting us into the mainstream of the sexual revolution. The several black or other ethnic characters are introduced and play out their parts without carrying their badges of identity on their heads - matter of factly. All kinds of other issues of present-day concern are also touched on or explored throughout - too numerous to mention here. Above all, the whole series is remarkable for its narrative continuity and consistency, and for maintaining a linear trajectory.
It is well known that within a very short time, `Friends` had become so popular that many celebrities wanted to appear on it (including, it was rumoured, Bill Clinton after he had left office) and some did do as cameo walk-ons: Isabella Rossini, as herself, Billy Crystal and Robin Williams. Other heavy-weight actors (Bruce Willis, Sean Penn, Reese Witherspoon) also featured for varying periods of time. And so, to cut this short, we see all the usual rites of passage - of birth, death, marriage, affairs, split-ups, divorce, career breaks, employment and relationship blues and everything else - portrayed beautifully and sensitively, and always with a light touch. At the end, all the six characters come through - enhanced, sober, intact. As it happens, all of them are paired off, except for Joey!
There is so much more that one can say, because for me it is almost as if we are living through the ten year span of the series in real time. Its every episode takes us back, to our own precious past, and we are reminded of all that happened in our lives. More importantly, the parallel now also extends across three generations, at least among those nearest to us. During our family card sessions at weekends, for example, our common interest in `Friends` provides an easy talking point and makes it possible to relate to each other that much more! That is why to touch base with our virtual `Friends` on a daily basis has become a compelling habit! When we are away abroad on holiday it is always such a pleasant and welcome surprise, when we switch on the telly in our hotel room (in some exotic location such as Hanoi, Bangkok, Santiago, Buenos Aires, Mumbai, Kolkatta, Kathmandu or wherever) and flicking through the channels come upon them! It is like catching up with old friends indeed.
Surely one day, say 10 years after `Friends` ended in 2004, there will be a `Friends Reunited`, even as a one-of! If one or two of the six main actors are not keen or available then, they can always be `killed off` imaginatively and remembered in retrospect. We shall see.
RAMNIK SHAH
Copyright
Surrey England
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