Kala Ghoda panel on films and literature

If you're in Mumbai on Feb 8, do try and drop in for a panel discussion on "films and literature" at the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival at 8 pm - I'll be on it, as will be Anuvab Pal (who wrote the Disco Dancer book for the Harper Collins film series), Samit Basu and Zac O'Yeah (who are known to enliven anything they participate in) - that's a fine lineup of people, even if I say so myself. And yes, the Jaane bhi do Yaaro book will be available at the venue too.

Full schedule of literature events at Kala Ghoda here.

In Jaipur with Biharis, Swedes and all the other 'chuts'

“At a festival this chaotic,” a friend remarked during one of our many chai breaks on the Diggi Palace lawns, “you have to keep a look out for the small pockets of pleasure – a clever remark made by a favourite writer at an otherwise middling session, an impromptu conversation with someone you chance to meet over lunch. Seize that moment and use it as oxygen to tide you over the next few hours.”

I spent most of this year’s Jaipur lit-fest in a haze, looking for sitting space and finding none, being shepherded hither and thither by a sea of people, or fretting about the panels I was moderating. More than once, I envied the hundreds of book-lovers who had come with plenty of time on their hands and with absolutely no agenda other than to sit down and hear authors talk. For such people, the JLF must be heaven. Not so much for the reporters hunting for “exclusive” quotes or filing multiple stories on harsh deadlines. Or for someone, like yours truly, who can only take so much of crowds.

So after a while, I decided that the only way to survive the madness was to take my friend’s advice and greedily accumulate as many of the nice little moments as possible. A few personal highlights, randomly listed:

– In the course of a warm discussion with Zac O’Yeah, the Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell told a funny story about his experiences in a Mozambique town where a police force had only just been introduced, and the protocol between the confused young men who were inducted as policemen and the small-time thieves they had to apprehend was unclear. Thus, you might see a policeman walking down the street holding a freshly caught thief by the scruff of his shirt, but then casually stopping to have his shoes polished – while ordering his detainee to fetch him some cigarettes from a nearby shop, with the latter dutifully complying.

For Mankell, a writer who trades in methodical police procedurals with clearly drawn lines between detectives and civilians, this must have been quite an eye-opener; no wonder he remarked, “It’s fashionable nowadays to say that the world has become very small, but that isn’t true at all – it’s still just as big as it is, and people in one part of it can’t begin to imagine what daily life is like in the other parts.”

– There was also the pleasure of hearing Martin Amis speak about “the myth of decline” – the tendency to look at the past through rose-tinted glasses, going as far back as pre-historic cave writings that lamented “Where are they now, the heroes of old?” Discussing the supposed death of the novel, Amis quipped that when the second edition of Cervantes’ Don Quixote was published in the early 17th century, there would have been critics who said, “Well, that’s it, that’s the end of the novel – it has no future.” (Note: if the human mind is hard-wired to think of the past as being forever glorious and the present as being bleak, little wonder I spend so much time reminiscing about the cosier days of the Jaipur lit-fest.)

– Amis being sardonic during his introduction of a talk dramatically titled “The Crisis in American Fiction”: “I’d like to begin by asking these three struggling, panicking American novelists about the ongoing crisis in American fiction.” The writers he was speaking to? Richard Ford. Junot Diaz. Jay McInerney.

– I was unhappy about missing the “Cinema Bhojpuri” session moderated by the incomparable Amitava Kumar, but was gratified when I later heard (from Amitava himself) that he said “Dabangg ek Bhojpuri film hai, behanchod” during the course of the session. (On the other hand, it wasn’t nice to hear about the censoring of Faiza S Khan's reading at the “Pulp” session.)

– Thoroughly enjoyed Jeet Thayil’s reading from his forthcoming novel Narcopolis at a session where I introduced him and CP Surendran. (I think this was shortly before poor CP was attacked by an offence-taking sardar.) Jeet’s reading included a lengthy stream-of-consciousness passage where the word “chut” is used almost as a poetic refrain; the drug-addled narrator employs it to describe all varieties of Indians (except for Maharashtrians). After the session, an audience member asked Jeet the inevitable question “If you hate India and Indians so much, why do you continue living here?” Sigh.

– Had a brief chat with the novelist Marina Lewycka, who joked that when she wrote serious books that intended to probe the human condition, they ended up being nominated for comic prizes, and vice versa. Lewycka, incidentally, leads a fairly quiet life in Sheffield, Yorkshire, and she looked understandably dazed by the largeness of the festival. (While on that, poor Ruskin Bond! He probably saw more people in a single day in Jaipur than he has his entire life in Landour.)

– Following the Popcorn Essayists session, a group of schoolboys came up to me and asked me to sign their lined registers. “Sir, are you involved with Bollywood?” one of them asked as I scrawled my name for the third time. I considered telling them I was Aamir Khan but instead shook my head. Boys and registers vanished in a puff of smoke.

Such was Jaipur.

[If you don’t already have festival reports coming out of your ears, try Google: there’s plenty of media coverage, good and bad. Some really good photos on Mayank Austen Soofi’s blog, for example (the ones above of Kiran Desai and Martin Amis are from him). And the official website is putting up videos of sessions, though some of the links are wrong.]

Literature without the books that comprise it

Excellent post here by Chandrahas about Open magazine's slapdash approach to literary journalism. I've been a fan of Manu Joseph's writing for a long time (and was part of a jury that took approximately 45 seconds to give the Hindu Fiction Award to his novel Serious Men) - in his own work, he shows a sharp eye for detail as well as a natural talent for shaking up long-held notions and providing an off-kilter view of familiar things. But some of the magazine's recent editorial pieces about literature have read like watercooler chats gone awry; forced attempts to be sensationalistic for the sake of it, without thinking an argument through. (When someone sweepingly dismisses books that he hasn't actually read on the basis that the titles "speak for themselves" ... well, I'll just be polite and say that I sweepingly dismiss his rant after having at least done it the courtesy of reading it.) I hope the magazine becomes a little more discriminating soon.

(To Open's credit, it also ran this candid and to-the-point piece by Pramod Kumar KG, the director of the first Jaipur Literature Festival in 2006 - an event that Chandrahas and I attended back when the world was younger and more innocent. Here's a short interview I did with Pramod exactly five years ago today.)

And Chandrahas's observation about tabloidish journalism during the Jaipur lit-fest is spot-on too; more than once, I got the impression that young reporters had been given the brief to cut well-known authors down a peg or two because it would make for piquant copy. Tch.

Random observation...

...from sending dozens of tennis-related SMSes to friends over the past two days: when you type the first four letters of "Amritraj", the text predictor changes it to "Borg". (Now that's what I call an automatic upgrade.)

A compilation post: links, books, films, etc

Off to Jaipur for the lit-fest soon and won't be online much till the 25th, so here are a few reminders/notes about the fest and other things:

- The "Popcorn Essayists" session of readings and conversation with Kamila Shamsie, Anjum Hasan, Namita Gokhale and Jaishree Mishra will be on the 24th, at 10 AM in the Mughal Tent - so if you're at the festival, please try to come for it. (More here.)

- Later on the 24th, I'll be moderating a session with Jerry Pinto and Jaishree at the Baithak; they will also read from their latest work. And I'm in conversation with Kiran Desai on the front lawns on the 22nd afternoon.

- Jaane bhi do Yaaro: Seriously Funny Since 1983 is still available on Flipkart and, I'm told, doing reasonably well. Astonishingly, it can also be found in a few bookstores now (I thought the day would never arrive) so do spread the word to anyone you know who might be interested in narrative writing about cinema. Reviews and general media coverage are on the blog's right sidebar.

- I did this short piece about Jaane bhi do Yaaro as a "concept film" for the Hindustan Times last Sunday; they asked me to do it to accompany a review they were carrying.

- Vinay Lal's Deewaar book is now on Flipkart too. Here's an interesting blog-post by Lal on "the act of writing in Deewaar". (A bit more on that theme in this Time Out feature). And here's a very old post I wrote about Deewaar, a film I intend to see again soon.

- Meanwhile I made my first ever online books purchase a few days ago (from Flipkart): got a replacement copy of an old favourite, Joy Gould Boyum's Double Exposure: Fiction Into Film (a superb analysis of movies adapted from literature), and am waiting eagerly for Andrew Sarris's The American Cinema: Directors and Directions to be delivered.

- A few things I've been reading: Matt Ridley's The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature, Shehan Karunatilaka's Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew, and the elegant Penguin Modern Classics editions of R K Narayan's The Vendor of Sweets and Waiting for the Mahatma. Will try and write about some of this if I get the time.

- Movies recently seen include Victor Erice's beautiful The Spirit of the Beehive (which I need to see again and perhaps write about). Have also re-watched Satyakam, Aranyer Din Ratri, Out of the Past and The Apartment, and there's been a superb mini-fest of Chaplin films too: City Lights, Modern Times and Limelight. Very satisfying.

Cultures of Peace at the IHC, Delhi

If you're in Delhi this month, Cultures of Peace: A Festival of the Northeast is taking place at the India Habitat Centre on Jan 28 (9.30 AM-6 PM) and Jan 29 (3 PM onwards, with a music concert by the Shillong band Soulmate at 6.30 PM). It's being organised by Zubaan and you'll find information about it on the Facebook events page. Participating writers include Mamang Dai, Sanjoy Hazarika, Mitra Phukan and Temsula Ao. The fest is open to all and no passes are required. (Enlarge pic to see schedule.)

Anonymous and wanting too much: on Andheri and The Naked City

Watching a short film titled Andheri recently, I thought about movies that attempt to capture the character and pulse of a big city. Perhaps the only way to do this is to look at individual stories – at the fears and hopes of the people who populate a metropolis and make it what it is, but who also have an uneasy relationship with it.

Andheri, directed by Sushrut Jain, is a spare, simply told story about a young live-in maid, Anita, who runs away with dreams of leading an independent life. In a bus, she meets a newlywed Muslim girl who has just arrived in Mumbai with her husband, and they strike up a conversation. Then something happens that makes Anita realise how foolhardy it is to try and survive alone in an impersonal world.

I wish the film had been a bit longer (the running time is under 20 minutes and the ending feels a bit abrupt) but I liked that it didn’t try to underline its central point with needless talk. The story is told through the uncertainty on the faces of the two women and their tentative smiles, through images of crowded colonies and tall buildings flashing by, and the comical way in which total strangers collide with each other whenever the bus stops abruptly. But by the end, there’s no escaping the contrast – from Anita’s point of view – between the cold anonymity of life on the streets and the cosy familiarity of the flat where she has to work for a sharp-tongued old woman but where she at least has someone she can call her own (and watch Kasautii Zindagi Kay with). At the same time we get a fleeting sense of the loneliness of the old lady who is probably also, in a different way, a victim of city life.

A video essay on the film’s website mentions that the city of Mumbai, “the most densely populated place in the world, is home to millions of stories of hope and despair”. This observation reminded me of the famous closing line of one of the most vivid “city films” I’ve seen, Jules Dassin’s The Naked City. “There are eight million stories in the Naked City,” says the film’s narrator at the end, “and this has been one of them.”



The reference is to the population in 1948 of New York – where the film was set – and the line would later become the catchphrase for a popular TV series of the same title (a forerunner of detective/police procedural shows such as NYPD Blue and Hill Street Blues). Dassin’s movie, inspired by a book of photos by Arthur Fellig, follows a homicide investigation: when a young model named Jean Dexter is found murdered in her apartment, a team of 10th Precinct detectives headed by the Irishman Lieutenant Muldoon (Barry Fitzgerald) get to work. A chronic liar who was close to the dead girl soon becomes the chief suspect, but some twists and turns lie ahead, and this entails a lot of legwork for the youngest member of the team, Jimmy Halloran - who, we are told, “had walked halfway across Europe with a rifle in his hand" during the War, and who must now "play Button Button in a city of eight million”.

As Halloran walks the streets and an invisible narrator (journalist-turned-producer Mark Hellinger) comments on the city’s bustling life, the tone of the film starts resembling that of a documentary. This impression is strengthened by the extensive location shooting – very unusual in a mainstream American film of the time – with its many shots of sweaty office-goers taking the crowded train home, and children hosing each other down on the streets. (As Hellinger tells us at the beginning, “This is the city as it is...the hot summer pavements, the children at play, the buildings in their naked stone, the people without makeup.”)

This narrative is consistently engaging (if also a little precious and self-consciously literary at times), but for me one of the most telling scenes is the one at a morgue, where the dead girl’s parents have to identify the body. These are small-town people whose daughter had – in the face of their disapproval – run away from home and become involved with the wrong sorts of people, and the mother initially tries to be detached, then contemptuous, about her wayward child. ("I hate her, I hate her.") But she fails and breaks down, and in her grief we see how the lure of city life can divide families and presage human tragedies. (“Wanting too much – that’s where she went wrong.”) Eventually Jean (not her real name - small-town girls change their names when they move to the city!) became just another statistic, just one of the millions of “stories”, soon to be forgotten. For all the beauty of the film’s locations, it’s possible at this moment to see the city as a mechanical monster greedily gulping down its victims while holding its arms wide open for more.

[Did a shorter version of this for my Business Standard film column. Here's a post about another Dassin film, Brute Force]