By the book: more thoughts on adaptation

[A version of my latest column for GQ magazine]

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This is an unusually busy time for movies based on high-profile novels. Deepa Mehta’s film of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is finally ready, as is Ang Lee’s adaptation of another Booker-winner, Yann Martel’s Life of Pi. Meanwhile the Pakistani writer Mohsin Hamid’s marvellous The Reluctant Fundamentalist has been given cinematic life by one of my favourite directors Mira Nair, and Anusha Rizvi and Mahmood Farooqi are in the process of adapting Amitav Ghosh’s sprawling historical novel Sea of Poppies.

Naturally the release of each of these films will be accompanied by much hand-wringing and cries of “but...but...but...” by viewers who have read the books (and by some who haven’t read them but have mastered the enviable art of speaking knowledgeably about them nonetheless). Each of us will at some point morph into a version of the comic-strip goat who, after chewing on a roll of celluloid, says ruminatively to his companion, “The book was better.” Questions of faithfulness to the original will be raised, omitted passages will be bewailed, shock will be expressed at the casting of this actor in that role. Midnight’s Children in particular will be closely dissected, since Rushdie’s novel is nearly as much of an Unavoidable Baggy Presence for Indian Writing in English as Ulysses was for 20th century fiction; even a flawless film might easily be weighed down by unreasonable expectations.

Personally I try to judge movies based on what they achieve with their medium's techniques, rather than as slavish illustrations of literary works. But I confess to a flicker of trepidation about the adaptations mentioned above, because some of the things I most like about these books don’t seem easily translatable to film. The Reluctant Fundamentalist, for instance, is marked by a distinctive first-person voice: the protagonist, a Pakistani man named Changez, addresses an unnamed American tourist in a courtly, almost ingratiating style. (“Excuse me, sir, but may I be of assistance? Ah, I see I have alarmed you. Do not be frightened by my beard: I am a lover of America.”) This narrative has a stylised, off-kilter quality that makes it difficult for the reader to know exactly what Changez’s intentions are (in an interview, Hamid told me the effect he was reaching for was “that you’ve walked into a darkened theatre and there’s one actor on the stage taking you through the play”) and what effect he is having on his listener - so that even the simple description of someone putting his hand into his jacket pocket is laced with the possibility that he might be reaching for either a business card or a weapon.

With Life of Pi, the potential pitfall is one that is especially relevant to the fantasy (or part-fantasy) genre: a book lets you imagine its characters and incidents for yourself while a film gives them immutable shape. (I mostly loved Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, but its depiction of the flaming Eye of Sauron in the final sequences was problematic; presented as a roving, Twentieth Century Fox-style flashlight, Tolkien’s bodiless villain lost the chillingly abstract quality he - it? - had in the books.) Martel’s novel – about a teenage boy adrift on a lifeboat with a fearsome Bengal Tiger – gets much of its force from the irresolvable ambiguity of the narrative: is Richard Parker the tiger a real presence or is he an invention, a wish-fulfillment device that allows young Pi to focus his thoughts and survive a difficult ordeal? But the movie, by its very nature, has to literalise the book's central voyage, and if you see a large tiger on the screen once, it is difficult to be subsequently convinced of his unreality.

The adaptation that most intrigues me though is the Sea of Poppies one. Rizvi’s film is provisionally titled Afeem (19th century opium trade being central to Ghosh’s story) and anyone familiar with her debut Peepli Live knows she can bring the required sensitivity to this tale of people from various backgrounds journeying across the ocean, driven more by despair than expectation. ("Both Peepli Live and Sea of Poppies are stories about the psychological effects of migration," she told me during a recent chat.) But the most riveting thing about Ghosh’s novel wasn’t its plot – it was its use of language. Its lascar sailors (“who came from places that had nothing in common except the Indian Ocean”) speak a dynamic hybrid of tongues, made of words picked up from various countries, and the European characters who have been living in India for generations use phrases such as “He turned a ship oolter-poolter” and “It would never do to be warming the coorsey when there’s kubber like this to be heard”.

To my mind at least, such details work better on the printed page than on the screen (where, if not handled exactly right, they might too easily devolve into tedious slapstick). However this is, as always, dependent on the quality of the treatment, the casting and the performances. During our conversation, Rizvi mentioned that most of the script would be in Bhojpuri – something that is singularly appropriate for this book – and it was nice to read a blog entry by Ghosh expressing enthusiasm for the project. Authors aren’t always the best judges of movies based on their work, of course, but of the adaptations mentioned above Afeem sounds like the one that is most worth warming the multiplex coorsey for.

[Earlier posts about book-to-movie adaptations: Susannah’s Seven Husbands from short story to script; notes from the Times of India lit-fest; A Kiss Before Dying; R K Narayan on a movie set]

On "liberal extremism" (and soft oppositions to freedom)

I’ve had a cordial relationship with Chetan Bhagat for a long time; there are things I like about him, as a person and – yes – as a writer too. I once faced flak in literary circles for saying mildly nice things about his early work, and I still often have arguments with friends who make condescending remarks like “Why has Chetan Bhagat been invited to a literature festival?” But I’m deeply disturbed by the position he has adopted on the Salman Rushdie-Jaipur issue, especially his repeated endorsement of the bizarre idea that the whole mess was jointly caused by “extremists on both sides”.

Two exhibits. First, some samples from Chetan’s Twitter feed:

“When extremists on both sides turn a festival into an activist venue, there's a security risk.”

“In a fight between extreme fundamentalists and extreme liberals, the sufferer is the beautiful jaipur litfest, the gainer an appeasing govt.”

“Extreme fundamentalists. Extreme liberals. Extremely difficult to deal with either.”

“If you are truly religious, you believe in forgiveness. If you are truly liberal, you respect other points of view. Sadly, don't see it much.”

A response to that last Tweet: sure – if you’re truly liberal, you respect other points of view. (Since the meaning of “respect” is often hazy in this context, a clarification: it means that you believe people should have the freedom to peacefully express their views, no matter how strongly you disagree with them.) What you emphatically DO NOT respect – or condone – is the demonstration of those views through threats and violence, which curtails the similar rights of other people. And it’s the religious extremists who have been curtailing rights in the Rushdie case; the “liberal extremists” have been responding to the bullying with non-violent protests. This is an important distinction. Even if you find it convenient (for whatever reason) to think of strong-voiced liberals as extremists, do have the grace to acknowledge that there is no equivalence between these two forms of “extremism”.

Exhibit 2: this CNN-IBN video featuring Chetan, Ruchir Joshi (who was one of the four authors who read from The Satanic Verses in Jaipur) and Asaduddin Owaisi, who called for the arrest of the writers.

On view here is Chetan as the “balanced” diplomat-cum-moderate who is willing to listen to both points of view and who badly wants the two parties to find a middle ground – “because otherwise this whole controversy is kind of useless”. I will not comment on individual actions, he starts by saying. Then, “As an artist you have full freedom to write whatever you want to. However... Should you be exercising the right to hurt people?” And to Owaisi, “I request you to withdraw your case”, followed by this astonishing statement: “We are all Indians here – we will not let someone who is not Indian [meaning Rushdie] affect our unity.”

“This is a great issue to unite the country,” he says – apparently “uniting the country” means ensuring that no one says or does anything that might be perceived as offensive to any community’s God, be it Allah or Krishna or Saraswati. “We Indians are believers. Our value system is not the same as London or Paris or Amsterdam.” (Incidentally, Amsterdam was where Theo van Gogh was murdered by a religious fanatic not so long ago because he made a film – and it should be clear to any thinking person that no corner of the world is safe from the extremisms of the “value system” Chetan is so proud of – but let that pass for now.)

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In this piece, Chandrahas Choudhury lists three types of opposition to freedom of speech in India. The third of these, he says, is an “insidious kind of muzzle on the genuinely free expression of ideas”:

“... what one might call a soft opposition, or self-censorship [...] that honestly doesn't understand what individuals have to gain by rocking the boat of a particular religious order, and believes that ‘religious sentiments should always be respected’ and art has no business to question or mock what is held by some to be sacred”

I have had dozens of encounters with “soft opposition” of this sort. These typically involve conversations with well-meaning family members or acquaintances who might very loosely be described as “liberals” (or at least as “cool” or open-minded people). When the subject of an artist offending religious sentiments comes up, they usually say: “Yes, but was it necessary to write that article/do that painting/make that cartoon? Couldn’t he have been more sensitive?” Or “I agree that he has the right to do or say this. But should he have done it?”

This type of conversation sometimes reaches a critical point if you reply: “Agreed - it might have been nicer/more sensitive to do things in another way. But what if the artist politely hears you out and then says he has chosen to disregard your advice – that he will go ahead and do this anyway? What will your response be then?” I've found that the mask of unequivocal “liberalism” can slip off very quickly in this situation.

It’s worrying that so many people in India seem not to understand what good art can be all about, and the conditions necessary for its meaningful survival. As Ruchir Joshi writes in this piece in The Hindu (bold-marks mine):

I have memories of writers, artists, film-makers being pushed into narrower and narrower pens by people who had no interest in literature, art or cinema other than to use these as excuses to expand their own illiterate, illiberal, poisonous power under the guise of identity politics...

And Amit Chaudhuri in The Hindustan Times:

In India, I get the feeling that the liberal middle class is only dimly aware of the importance of the arts, and how integral they are to the secular imagination, except in a time of media-inflated crisis, when it becomes a 'free speech' issue. Indians know how to talk about writers, but not about writing.

Little wonder that artistic liberty is among the first things to be held hostage (or made conditional, which is the same thing) when "sentiments" are deemed to have been hurt. A friend told me not to write a post about Chetan Bhagat because “he’s such a soft, easy target”. Well, maybe, but here it is anyway, because I think his stance tells us something about the level of discourse around us today. It’s a pity that one of India’s most popular writers seems unwilling to acknowledge that one of the oldest functions of art is to disturb people and encourage them to look with new eyes at everything they hold sacred. We already see too much of that apathy and ignorance in people who don't work in the creative field.

"The freedom to say unpopular and shocking things"

Today, one of India’s greatest novelists, Salman Rushdie – a writer whose work enshrines doubt as a necessary and valuable ethical position – has been prevented from addressing this festival by those whose certainty leads them to believe that they have the right to kill anyone who opposes them [...] There are many rights for which we should fight, but the right to protection from offense is not one of them. Freedom of speech is a foundational freedom, on which all others depend. Freedom of speech means the freedom to say unpopular, even shocking things. Without it, writers can have little impact on the culture.

From the statement read out by Hari Kunzru during his session at the Jaipur Literature Festival two days ago. Also read Hari’s post about the events of that day, including the short Satanic Verses readings by him and Amitava Kumar, and the subsequent intimation that they might be in serious legal trouble if they stayed on in India.

I didn’t go to Jaipur this year, but – like everyone I know who cares about freedom of speech and worries about the increasing hegemony of the easily offended (the "bleeding-heart illiberals" as Rukun Advani cleverly put it in another context recently) – I’ve been feeling very dispirited about the events of the past few days. (This report about the police fabricating a terrorism threat was particularly mindboggling, but also completely believable.)

Earlier today in Jaipur, Nilanjana helped organise a petition to unban The Satanic Verses; I’m sure an online version of the petition will be up soon, do look out for it. Meanwhile, here are some relevant links: a fine piece in The Hindu about “the slow-motion disintegration” of a secular state; a clarification by JLF co-organiser William Dalrymple; and Salil Tripathi on India's "sepulchral silence".

Update: the online petition is here. Please sign and spread the word.