Strike-Day Chicken

When times are slow and harrowing, humour is the best way to stage a relief drama. This is a satire, so it says what you understand from it, but perhaps in a way that is not the way you should understand it.

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For most of us in India, February 20^th and 21^st were like Sundays.

Not in the way they appear on the calendar leaf with red ink and all, but the way they are taken by the silent, sleepy, lazy minds of ours. We sat in our chairs and sipped hot warm tea and watched TV all day long. There was nothing else to be done. We had an additional set of holidays.

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What I am referring to here, is the trade union strike for forty eight hours, nationwide. It started on Feb 20^thmidnight. They had announced it weeks before, so it was easy, in a way. There was no need to worry about shortages in rice or soap or coconut oil. Feb 20^thwas a Wednesday and most of us came back home after work on Tuesday evening with a pack of chicken or beef or pork, that was, according to the availability.

As our place is getting increasingly narrow-minded in terms of religion and cast, chicken turned out to be the best-buy meat in town for any occasion. So if you did not want trouble buying pork or beef, you could resort to chicken. Another trouble in getting cattle meat or pig is that they are available only in special places. In order to reach there you have to take two or three buses in line. So in order to avoid such troubles of added bus ride after the day’s tiring work, and also to avoid spending more money on bus fairs, most of us came down to chicken on Tuesday evening.

We stood in front of the so-called “chicken-stalls” or butcher shops that can be found anywhere and everywhere, to buy freshly slaughtered fowls in curry-cut-pieces. Those who knew how to cook the legendary Malabar biriyani bought chickens in ‘biriyani-cut’. The line went a long way on to the main road and people stood close to rushing traffic and dust ignoring the dangers, dreaming about the steaming bowls of fowl curry flavoured with cinnamon leaves. You could survive a hundred Hartals with that flavour. Oh, my!

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Those among us, who were into drinking alcohol and know only one version of celebration, that is, screwing their heads off with drinking, kept their queues longer and steadier in front of Beverages Corporation. Only in the main city and government allotted places one can find the centres of Beverages Corporation. But that did not matter; some of us were ready to stand for hours in the line. The dream of two days with no work was more than enough to endure any long-hour line.

Those going to colleges and schools took the opportunity to play cricket or football in the deserted roads on the strike-days. There would not be any vehicles running or institutions working. Or took to video game CDs and DVDs and celebrated the days by watching movies and fighting virtual battles.  

“There is no question of right or wrong in freedom,” says J. Krishnamurthy. The freedom that our fragile and naked ancestors gained for us, even without firing a bullet would let us live with this guarantee. No one would ask what is right or what is wrong.

February has only twenty working days. Cut two days from twenty, if becomes eighteen. This was a sad part, because two days’ less pay could be considerably harmful at a time when the price tags run the length of size ten Bata shoes. But it was ok for some of us, because this two-day strike was a humble attempt to bring the government to notice how much the workers in this nation are suffering because of less payment and price hikes.

Most of us believed that “service providers” or entrepreneurs cannot be counted as ‘workers’. For most of us, it was easy and better to think the managements as the bad guys. But who is a ‘worker’ then? If someone works as a porter, isn’t he providing and managing his agility and strength for the customer? Isn’t he the manager of his skills to lift heavy weights? A teacher; isn’t he or she selling his teaching skills to the consumers—here consumers are both students and the institution.

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Then, who was it the strike for? Most of us think about this paradigm shift and are aware of it. But we cannot undermine the chicken being cooked and the movies in the Telly. And some of us are realistic enough that they are afraid to say things out loud. Some of us prefer just ‘thinking’. Thoughts are secret enough, aren't they? And thoughts are better, because we can think and simultaneously watch our cricket matches.  

Sometimes, truth is like preparing chicken curry. One must avoid some unwanted parts from the chicken in order to make the curry better. To make it sound better and entertaining some instances do not appear in this article. They are concerned with those people who had their marriages planned on these two days, those who needed emergency operations, those with heart palpitations, those visiting their relatives from distant places, etc. The list is long and is obviously tiring. Unfortunately, it has less political-entertainment value to it. So those issues should not be mentioned anywhere.

By the way, most of us would admit, the chicken was tasty and full value for money. 

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James Patterson's "Private" will be reviewed here, soon.

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Imagination often becomes my factotum in daily affairs. It helps me wake up at the start of every lousy day and pushes me forward, showing me impressive things, giving me the baksheesh of hopes and so on. I am not against this elusive partner. I, sort of, like it. That is the reason why I suspend my questions about what would happen in the future, if the ‘what if’ of imagination leads my way.

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To tell you the truth, imagination never betrayed me, although some times, the grand pictures it shows about the time to come and the time present fail to materialize completely. But that is OK. Materials are of this world. Imagination is of another.

Jan 14^th, 2013 morning, I woke up thinking about what if I create an idea for a sequel to James Patterson’s new series of novels, Private. I wanted to keep that thread of imagination hidden away in my coffer, so that no one could copy it or take advantage of it. Patterson had already written five volumes of Private, placing the story in different capital cities around the world. The latest two carried the names of their locations in the title itself—Private London and Private Berlin. I got curious about the series only when Private Berlin was released and the news was mailed to me from James Patterson’s website.

So why shouldn’t the next book be Private New Delhi?! Or, may be, Private Delhi? The thought excited me and drove the sleep out of my arm hairs. That was amazing—all of them stood up!

I created a well sketched plan. I must create a plot, an outline and characters.

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The next step was writing a query to the master of thrillers himself, asking if he can collaborate with me, writing Private Delhi.

‘Private’ is the world’s most exclusive detective agency. The plot I wrote down evolved around the Private office in Delhi. One of their team members goes missing and so on. I cannot describe it all here, because after all, I can use this plot for some other story I write in the future. Also, even if I do not use this plot any more, I just do not want a copycat to copy all my ideas and publish them before I do.

Jan 22, Tuesday; I was in the local bus to my college in the morning, where I work as a lecturer. There, from bus stand, I bought my usual English daily. It has a books’ page. That is the main reason I buy this paper. The news went something like this; “Private India; James Patterson to collaborate with Aswin Sanghi”!! My heart felt heavy.

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It was surprising in a shocking way. What was that?! I mean, not Patterson collaborating with Sanghi. But I mean all of it! The very idea of collaborating with an Indian author and the next book being set in India! The working title of the book is set to be Private India. This news was first announced on 21^st, on the Random House website. It was not known to anyone out in the world, on or before Jan 14^th, 2013 morning.

The leap my imagination took was rather a journey into an already initiated plan. Of course, both the writers must have planned the book earlier itself if they were able to announce it by 21^st Jan. Now I know my imagination had taken me into that realm. My plot is wasted. But still I cherish those moments when the idea came to me of writing Private series, just for the thrill of it.

It looks very much like a planned co-incidence that I received Private, by Patterson and Maxine Paetro, for book review. The writer, I wished so much to collaborate with, is about to be reviewed, by the same mind that conjured up the image in front of me on that early January morning. Is it co-incidence or synchronicity; the whole universe collaborating through invisible links?

Coming soon is the book review PRIVATE: THE WORLD’S MOST EXCLUSIVE DETECTIVE AGENCY by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro.

This book review is sponsored by: http://www.mysmartprice.com/books/

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Official Page Inauguration

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Art.

What is it?

May be, just may be, if you answer this question, you will forever cast out art! That is, if art is the spontaneous and requiring the interference of the Divine, the indefinable then by defining it, you are ruining it.

Or perhaps, the answer to the question above is art itself. If art exists for its own sake, then the answer to what art is, carries everything it needs to survive.

Let’s go down to the bottom of this question now and find out what the basic element in both these hypotheses is. 

Undoubtedly, it is the spectator.

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Art is created for eyes, ears, minds, souls and beings. Without them, art is meaningless and has no right to exist. To some part, this is close enough to exhibitionism, isn’t it? Well, we better do not judge. I said that because most of us believe in the power of judgment to either simplify everything for them, or just to control the vastness of senselessness around them. These types of people cannot survive without passing a judgment over someone, something or another idea.

I remember John Grisham’s comment on book critics. He says they are people with an unpublished manuscript in their drawer.

Often the criticism becomes judgmental, which mostly owes to this unpublished manuscript hiding within their drawers. The less judgmental a critical essay is the better. But that is, of course, impossible. You read a good book, and you desperately want to say that it is good. How can you not? It is totally worth the experience. You simply say it and by proclaiming the book to be good, you are judgmental, surely in a positive way.

It is impossible for an artist to live without judgments or criticisms, fierce or mild. He must survive this, like a phoenix burning in the fire of its own creation. And he should come back, too. Since, that is the only way he can venerate his art.

Art is a way in itself. It writes the name of the artist in eternal letters, however small his endeavours are.

Here is a small endeavour to reach out to many of you, through Facebook; in order to reach spectators.

An official Facebook page for The Indian Commentator is launched here. 

Courtesy: Screen shot; Anu Lal

Go to: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Indian-Commentator/573224022706603?fref=ts

   

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Literature Festivals—The Indian Version

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The epilogue to Jaipur Literature Fest was a police notice to the organizers. The police had asked them to stay in the city until the investigation on the sociologist Ashis Nandi’s statement is completed. Ashis Nandy, a prominent figure in the Indian socio-political and cultural scene had made a statement regarding corruption during one of the speeches he made in the festival. His whiplash was not just targeted at corruption alone, but caste. And not just any caste, but those who are traditionally classified as the “lower castes”.

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Ashis Nandi said; “most of the corrupt come from the OBC, the Scheduled castes and now increasingly STs, and as long as it was the case, the Indian Republic would survive.” The question of truth in this statement is meaningless to search for. As one can see, he had made a blind generalization on the relationship between corruption and people from lower caste. People from these communities enjoy reservation in government jobs and academics. But corruption is not the doing of lower-caste people alone. People from those castes and communities who belong to the elite quota also attach the same evil to the system, when they are chosen for jobs on the basis of baksheesh or political influence. In other words, corruption is mainly an issue that has its causes hidden in the ground level building of the system.   

Lit Fests are not exactly meant for preaching a higher order of consciousness or even art. They are meant to propagate self-righteousness and political propagandas. Or that is the idea any one can get from watching and hearing what is happening out there. A select few who can read and write, can afford to buy books and can pay for the transportation to the location of the festival and manage to get a free pass, or even get to participate in these festivals. And Ashis Nandy played his part to add masala to the world of high-artfulness.

Ashis Nandy
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But this year’s Jaipur Lit Fest was not just about a caste monger. It was also about absences. The Hindu right wing deftly managed to keep the Pakistani writer’s at bay from the Fest. Needless to say, Pakistan hosts a bunch of very promising literary talents, including Kamila Shamsie, the Orange Prize runner up for her novel Burnt Shadows. The Hindu right wing’s demand not to include writers from Pakistan to the fest was in resonance with the surging patriotic spirits in the post-LoC breach period by Pakistan’s cooli-army.

Due to some reasons I could not attend this year’s J L F. With Indian Literature festivals getting more and more violent and shifting in centre towards mean and pitiable political stunts, it seems my lack of presence was in itself was a reward. But as an enthusiast of this art form of words on pages, I would sure be looking for some action in real. I have written down reminders for the upcoming major Literature Festivals in India. One is the Bangalore Literature Festival, which was conducted during early December, in 2012. The hope is that this year too, probably from December 7^thto 9^th we can expect this Festival. Another forthcoming literature festival is the Goa arts and Literary Festival. It is a five day festival, which started from December 13^th, the previous year. So this year too we can expect it around that same time. These two are special because of the places they are planned in.

Kamila Shamsie
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Of course, it is not just about books or meeting their writers, but the traveling to places and meeting people and seeing cultures. Goa and Bangaloreseem to be welcoming places for someone who loves mild weather and tourist spots. In no way would these two places be less significant compared to Jaipur Fest.

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Jaipur Literature Fest

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Most of the literary festivals around the word are supposed to offer the following things:

Books, stories, poems, words, and the wonderful chance of meeting the people who write them.

Literature festivals never talk politics or race or casteism or gender.

Exposing certain breeds of cultural tyrants is not deemed to be the purpose of Jaipur Literature Fest; at least, I think so.

Who in the world would buy what I just said about literary fests? At least I won’t. In this paradoxical idealism, I can see the traces of myself being negated and asserted and negated again.

Literature festivals do talk politics, race, caste and gender.

This later thought is the reality and the former, naïve idealism. One can see in this case, reality creates wounds while naivety heals them.

After previous year’s fray by the Islamists and Hinduists, I was doubtful if there would be another JaipurLiterature Fest in the coming year, meaning 2013. I was so sure about the cancellation of this years Fest, as anyone, familiar with the excessive influences extremist groups have in the Indian illiterate mind. Salman Rushdie was banned from the Fest the previous year and his Satanic Verses was sacked. In an attempt to express solidarity many writers read out parts from this text of holy Islamic blasphemy.

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Even though banned, Mr. Rushdie, like in many of his novels and especially in The Enchantress of Florence, took a magical realistic avatar and through ‘Creative Praxis’. He appeared on a virtual screen as a reflection of his mortal self. The concept of ‘Creative Praxis’ proposes that an individual, if oppressed by tyranny, can use creative measures of finding and expressing his individualism. The video conference was the ‘Creative Praxis’. And Mr. Rushdie was successful in it.

But how long would Mr. Rushdie be able to evade the practitioners of cultural tyranny? What about the Literature Fest Vs religious-terrorist duel? Religious Terrorists or RTs get a major media coverage in India. That was the reason why I doubted the possibilities of seeing the Jaipur Literature Fest another year. But here it is!

Proving that they have the guts enough to face the RTs of both green and saffron clad, the Jaipur Literature Fest entered another year of its journey. It disappoints me how erroneous my assumptions were about the future of the Fest. I did not anticipate the arrival of the Fest and so could not reserve a seat beforehand by train to Jaipur, adding to my embarrassment. Well, for me it is just another year of not attending the Literature Fest, whatever the reasons be. Hopefully I can be there next year. But at the same time, it relieves me to a great extend finding literature and the fantasy of “people talking about books” still going on.

Mr. Rushdie might appear in his metaphysical avatar on a TV screen, probably, this year too. The writers who read out from Satanic Verses the previous year are banned from the Fest by the Islamists. Will they be able to attend the Fest or will they use Creative Praxis and find their own paths to come round the obstacles, is a question that adds masala to the event. Another major attraction this year would be the announcement of the Man Booker prize for best fiction.

The Hinduists have this strange idea, lately of banning writers from Pakistan, in the Jaipur Literature Fest. Oddly enough, this idea rhymes with the nationalistic spirits of the Indian masses, in the aftermath of the recent breach of Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir, by Pakistani army cum terrorists cum sepoys. This assures that there would not be a single Pakistani writer in the Fest this year.

The reality once again knocks on the door. Strange ideas are the result of a not so strange strategy. And of course, literature festivals do talk dirty things. Sshis Nandy had his turn already. Who will be next?

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Newspaper Mornings

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The routine drama of daily life is mostly structured like this:

Getting up in the morning,

morning chores,

breakfast,

getting the daily bus to work,

forgetting to put the signature in the attendance column,

screeching at the maximum voice to students who hardly believe in the prospect of listening to another young person who boast of being a teacher,

having the same tiffin for lunch,

dozing off in the afternoon light-hours,

taking the same bus back home,

thinking about the benefits of exercise and regretting over not getting enough time for workouts.

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In an attempt to make a difference, I started a new habit lately: buying news papers every morning at the news stand, where I get the bus to college too, inside the old bus stand.

I always held the argument that news papers in Kerala never learnt how to balance news from different areas. Most of them have a surplus political content. In one of the conferences conducted by one of the leading Malayalam dailies, with a literary bend, a speaker said “politics is sold here like hot chocolate”. I don’t know how fast the sales of hot chocolate are, since I never tasted one. You know, it’s not a very popular drink in Kerala. Perhaps, too much of chocolate could burn you to ashes under the sun flames turned full swing. He also mentioned sports and said the reason why most of the news papers spend more space for sports is the salability of sports. I wonder again how true that statement could be in a state where sports is not even an optional subject in schools and where stadiums bring only corruption money into the wallets of politicians and no sportsmen.

There is a very evident paradox here. But isn’t a paradox the marking feature of this state, Kerala? Just think…Kerala is the first state in India to acquire complete literacy. [Or so people like to believe and governments advertise] however, one cannot find any other state in India with such a large number of school and college working days stranded due to strikes by politically motivated vicious students union gangs.

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The paradox the news papers follow is in no way surprising. This is precisely the reason why I do not get much closer to news papers. However, there is one change I noticed in recent months. Perhaps this situation is just the microcosm of the world’s semi-civilized-hypocrisies.

There are many national dailies that have recently spread out their branches in Kerala. And some of them are in English language. A few of them show the real balancing act, cancelling out the caustic political news smokes with their art, books, and international pages. It’s true; there are some news papers that give pages to art, books, films, fashion, etc. I am more than happy to find such a news paper. Still, I may not mention its name here, as it might cause a case of libel for using their name without their permission.

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The news paper I am talking about is South India’s largest selling newspaper. So I have something to do these days, off the track, out of the routine—buying the paper in a hurry from the news stand and running for the bus with the paper still in hand. The crispy feel of the paper in my hand and the smell of ink are delicious. Then the feeling of keeping the pages steady inside the bus—that too is remarkable, although I do not generally attempt to read from inside the bus. This particular news paper, I found, do not boast of a high-class language. It has just simple sentences and may be even repeated statements of the same news. I would call it ‘bus-simple’. I mean, the language doesn’t demand a continued and focused attention for more than a few seconds. So it is highly apt for reading while traveling, especially in Kerala (pathetic story—it’s for another time). That is why it is ‘bus-simple’.

But when I think about routine, I am a bit concerned. What if this new habit of buying newspapers became a routine?  

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Genre/Labels__Should We Stick??

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This article is especially for those who belong to the world of art, writing in specific. At least you should have an idea of how books are created and what magnitude of labour goes into the production of them.

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Beauty is inexplicable and it serves better if one leaves it to be so. But often we encounter trends that might suggest a different truth. From movies to fashion, from literature to social activism, there exist patterns to which each individual belonging to these activities tries to cling to. Or else, doom might befall them. It is truth.

This can be illustrated with some simple examples. If one needs to look beautiful, and wears mud on one’s face, that would not guarantee admiration, but quite the opposite. This is true with movies or writing too.

In politics too one finds no different story.

In politics, we have all been granted unusual amounts of rants and promises over the years and still find ourselves betrayed at the end of five years or ten years each…or whatever it takes to end one government and start the other. At the start of another government, we all look for more to expect and at the end find it disappointing. Anything out of this way is deemed not normal or clearly looked at with some suspicion. Yes, that is true; it is suspicion that is born out of any attempt to be generous or to do things out of the way.

Saddam Husain, when he was alive, seemed to have a good reputation with his natives. People have been talking about the generosity of the dictator. But the West looked at it with suspicion. Of course, there was no other way either. How would you feel if a political leader comes to your home and gives you one billion rupees, just for nothing in return?

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How could one understand anything that one doesn’t know about previously, let alone enjoying? For example, the news of a UFO sighting might thrill us; an alien contact might shrill us; and a close encounter might kill us. What we see here, is a close reading of how one reacts to the unknown. There is zero amount of aesthetic entertainment in the real event of a close encounter. A book is not like that, it should have an aesthetic dimension too.

Often, some writers shun this step, to give a name to what they do. This is mostly due to two reasons; the first one—it’s not an easy job for any writer to understand the magnitude of what he or she does. To label means to be judgmental. How can a parent be judgmental towards their children? This is the same with artists and writers too. A painting, a book, a piece of music, all plays that role of children in their lives and they are bound by the laws of love.  

The second reason why some writers avoid labels is the fear of carrying over the genre titles upon themselves. Once tagged with a label, always known by that label. As an instance these days, writers of what was once celebrated as “Horror” fiction try to assert themselves as writers of “Thrillers” or better with no labels at all. The Horror Writers Association’s website shows the reason: “Instead of "evolving, ever-changing," horror became defined—typecast if you will—forced to conform to a certain method and a certain manner. Publishers flooded the market with books that matched this formula, giving readers more and more of what they demanded.” And “Horror's originality, its vital essence, had been stolen right before our eyes.”

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Such writers as Dean Koontz take a cautious stand as well. The website goes on saying, “Dean Koontz's books are filled with the strange and fantastic, yet he vehemently argues against being labeled a horror writer, despite being the first president of this very organization….As the horror boom of the eighties turned into the drought of the nineties, horror went underground.”

For a beginner, there is always some crush for what the masters do. When this happens and starts taking hold of the beginner’s writing life, a void between practicability and idealism starts developing. This results into clashes within oneself, not in the productivity of literary works. The majority of time and efforts are burned up by this confusion: whether to stay uninfluenced by genres or to establish oneself in any one category within the specific form of art. In such circumstances, some writers tend to lose whatever little audience they have by trying “differences” or divergent writing. Breaking laws sounds extremely appealing when there is no status at all being part of a society that breeds those laws. It’s a beginner’s syndrome. Sometimes, the writer’s creative train even slips off the track. To stay in the game, one has to follow the rules of the game too.   

The priority of a writer is not to write a “different” kind of book. One’s sincere and genuine attempt to create artistic expressions makes the book different and great. This means, there is no need to deny the possibilities of writing literatures ‘genre-specific’. This helps in narrowing down the perspective horizons of the reader and helps the writer gain a crucial grounding in the mind of the reader. Those books that appear with the label ‘fiction’ on their back cover sure give the readers the apprehension that they will satiate his or her thirst for a novel. While buying books, this is a significant help anyone can get.

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So if “YA” appears on the label no reader would attempt to expect a horror story involving two old people. This gives a preface to the book. Books speak through its label even before a page is turned.

I mentioned it elsewhere as well. “Labels have a paradoxical binary role to play. Within a label a writer may find himself adapted and indulge in a more focused production. However, sometimes, this very focus backfires and provides no options for the writer to work on something apart from the routine, even if he or she wants to go beyond what is their usual way of writing. This is much like the misery of the character Paul Sheldon from the novel Misery, by Stephen King. Obviously, it is market that creates such labels and governs the very system of professional writing.” (Book Review: Caught-a novel by Harlan Coben)

A writer’s pursuit is to understand and at the same time to be understood. If a label like a mystery or a thriller or a YA can add to the understanding of what you do, in the world, then why don’t? 

Courtesy: Horror Writers Association 

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