To quote Maanik Mulla, 'A writer who worries about technique is one who has no clue what to write.' And yet, as I read Dharamveer Bharti's 'Suraj ka Saatva Ghoda' and watched Shyam Benegal's sublime rendition of it on celluloid, I found myself applauding both the technique and the content of Bharti.
About the technique first - this is the only attempt I have read/seen of writing a full-length novel piecemeal in the form of quite separate short stories! Yeah, each short story can stand by itself although when you look at the consolidated whole the novel emerges delicately, almost subtly. In Maanik Mulla, Bharti creates a narrator par excellence who links these short stories almost imperceptibly - by himself, just like beads of a necklace are linked by the thread running through them.
And the theme? Why it's love itself! Maanik Mulla would like you to think it's about how economic constraints dictate to love. But more appropriately, the story deals with what is not love. Or what love should not be. The love of Jamuna and Tanna? Jamuna and Maanik? Jamuna and her elderly husband? Jamuna and Ramdhan? Moving away from Jamuna, what about the love between Lily and Maanik? And what indeed about Satti and Maanik?
As he exposes how these characters react to love or what they think is love, Bharti takes time to expose his characters to us. Each character emerges with a depth and dimension that is thought-provoking. Case in points - the raw, earthy, heart-stopping sincerity of Satti who fights for her honour and is hurt not by rape but by betrayal........the pitiable selfishness and restlessness of the apparently promiscuous Jamuna in the wake of her failure in love...the bibliophile Lily whose love begins and ends in literature and whose pride yields her a child at the cost of a husband...the sensitive friend of Maanik in whose mind Maanik's stories create visions that make an author of him....Tanna, who jerks pity from your heart for the lamb-like helplessness of his succumbing nature.....Chaman Thakur, who only took pity on an Afghani orphan girl so he could sell her off when she grew up......
All these characters are actually part of the same full-length novel. But Bharti divides their stories into separate ones - each story overlapping the other - each story hinting at the other - each story looking at the others from a new angle...until finally at the end the kaleidoscope merges to show one pattern...
Shyam Benegal's take on the book is so honest and so beautiful it makes you want to pinch yourself so you'll know it's no dream. The transition from book to movie is so effortless that I could make out no difference in the tenor. Especially the camera effects in the motion picture bring out the inherent linkages between the stories more poignant, more outlined. Several scenes and dialogues are repeated albeit from different camera angles. Scenes missing from one story are suddenly found in the middle of another. The actors act awesomely. The music becomes the motion picture and could well have been the part of the book itself. And the climax is something the book could have appended to itself.
Bus....that is about all I reveal of this mesmerizing piece of literature. Saying a word more will spoil the fun.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Saturday, December 12, 2009
10 more interesting quips
- Today I found hair sticking to the bottle of my anti-hair fall shampoo.
- I fought with my husband because he wasn't spending enough time with me.
- One man's shoe is another man's shoe-bite.
- Religion and Science have one thing in common - Classification.
- An autobiography is longer than the same fellow's biography.
- A pair of lesbians use the WC without worrying about hygiene.
- A braggart is called a faker in both English and Hindi.
- "Don't show off your modesty."
- I'd give the last drop of my ink to write like Agatha Christie.
- In Scrabble, it P(3)A(1)Y(4)S(1).
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Achoo! Excuse me
And are you excused? No, sir, in these H1N1 ridden days, you are not excused at all if you perform the sneezing act in full public view. So punishing is the accusing glare you get in return of a sneeze that you are tempted to learn sneezing inwards.
Two Hindi idioms are vying with each other in my mind today, each claiming to be a better describer of the situation these days. I had first decided to choose one of them, but on second thoughts, here come both, each presenting a different standpoint.
One goes – ‘doodh ka jala chhachh bhi phook phook ke peeta hai’ (someone whose got burnt by drinking hot milk will carefully sip buttermilk as well). The other one is – ‘gehu ke saath ghun bhi pis jata hai’ (along with the wheat grain, the chaff may also get powdered in the hand mill).
The first one describes how we – the virus-phobics can get easily scared by an innocent allergic sneeze as well. The second one is from the point of view of the non-H1N1 microbes – since people are on a sanitizer drive, so many innocent microbes have to say goodbye to the earth as well.
So this is the situation in a nutshell – after the heroes –the plague and the small pox, it is time for the underdog influenza to rear its ugly head. I am reminded of Hrishikesh Mukherji’s ‘Anand’ yet again. Remember Anand’s dialogue – “These doctors give long names to simple diseases. If I tell you I have a common cold you are not likely to be impressed, but if I name a long-winding title like say, ‘lympho-sarcoma of the nose’, it will appear to you as being something grand.” It is essentially the name of the fictitious disease that is striking me. It is indeed lympho-sarcoma of the nose and the upper respiratory track – this swine of a disease.
The better half of the world – Mr. America – might have come up with a vaccine against the viral monster, but who knows the tiny tot will not mutate under our noses before the first batch of the vaccine is dispatched?
Then what is the answer to it? A total shut down? Public information boards like ‘No sneezing or coughing’ or ‘Sneezing in public is injurious to health’ on cross-roads? Ayurveda and Homeopathy? Baba Ramdev’s yog-sadhna? The N-95 masks and the 70% Iso-propyl alcohol based sanitizers? A hope that the virus mutates itself into oblivion?
Try your might, Homo sapiens, the H1N1 is here to stay. Just hope for a globally warmed winter this year.
Two Hindi idioms are vying with each other in my mind today, each claiming to be a better describer of the situation these days. I had first decided to choose one of them, but on second thoughts, here come both, each presenting a different standpoint.
One goes – ‘doodh ka jala chhachh bhi phook phook ke peeta hai’ (someone whose got burnt by drinking hot milk will carefully sip buttermilk as well). The other one is – ‘gehu ke saath ghun bhi pis jata hai’ (along with the wheat grain, the chaff may also get powdered in the hand mill).
The first one describes how we – the virus-phobics can get easily scared by an innocent allergic sneeze as well. The second one is from the point of view of the non-H1N1 microbes – since people are on a sanitizer drive, so many innocent microbes have to say goodbye to the earth as well.
So this is the situation in a nutshell – after the heroes –the plague and the small pox, it is time for the underdog influenza to rear its ugly head. I am reminded of Hrishikesh Mukherji’s ‘Anand’ yet again. Remember Anand’s dialogue – “These doctors give long names to simple diseases. If I tell you I have a common cold you are not likely to be impressed, but if I name a long-winding title like say, ‘lympho-sarcoma of the nose’, it will appear to you as being something grand.” It is essentially the name of the fictitious disease that is striking me. It is indeed lympho-sarcoma of the nose and the upper respiratory track – this swine of a disease.
The better half of the world – Mr. America – might have come up with a vaccine against the viral monster, but who knows the tiny tot will not mutate under our noses before the first batch of the vaccine is dispatched?
Then what is the answer to it? A total shut down? Public information boards like ‘No sneezing or coughing’ or ‘Sneezing in public is injurious to health’ on cross-roads? Ayurveda and Homeopathy? Baba Ramdev’s yog-sadhna? The N-95 masks and the 70% Iso-propyl alcohol based sanitizers? A hope that the virus mutates itself into oblivion?
Try your might, Homo sapiens, the H1N1 is here to stay. Just hope for a globally warmed winter this year.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
A Pen to Purify
The pen fell down into the shit-pot. He got hold of a toilet brush and tried to manoeuvre it out. He could not. He tried several more times, poking about with the brush. The pen would come up for a while, and then fall down again with a splash into the shitty water. He shied from using his own hand to remove the object. The mere idea made him nauseous. His hands continued to work the long-handled brush as his mind dwelt on the undoable act of removing the pen with his hand.
He cursed himself for his fondness to solve Times crosswords on shit-pot. He cursed himself for his carelessness in letting the pen slip his fingers.
Lo! The pen had disappeared! His lapse in attention had caused the brush to make a few random strokes. The pen had been accidently pushed into the hole where potty goes when you flush.
He was dismayed. Uff! What will happen now? The pen would travel up...then down....then down again. Down, down, down, down. Into the bowels of the earth. The pen! Into the bowels of the earth. The pen soiled with shit and urine. The pen that could have signed names. That could have written poetry..prose...newspaper reports...school exercises...competitive examinations....
The pen that would have made persons out of people.
That pen now lay embroiled in muck. Every pressing of the flush button caused jets of water and human refuse to push the pen further toward the chambers.
His brain refused to cease thinking about the pen. He couldn’t consume his breakfast for the thought of it. The journey of the pen began to haunt him. Finally, he walked up to the Municipal Corporate Office and demanded he be given a map of the city’s sewers. The officers were astounded. They asked him why. He could yield no answer. All he could do was to reiterate that he wanted...no...needed the map.
They thought he had a nut or two loose in the head. They decided to humour him. So they asked him to wait. He waited. Hours ticked away. He grew impatient, but the thought of tracing the pen spurred him...kept him sitting at the municipality office as it he had grown roots there.
They took pity on him. The map was found for him. He was asked to Xerox it and to return the original to them. He did what he was asked. His feeling of utter dejection that had been increasing ever since he had lost his pen appeased a little. He was doing something to get it!
He went home and spread the map before him. With trouble, he located his area on the map. He wasn’t much of a map-reader. He rued having wasted away his geography classes in school, then realized his geography classes had little or nothing to do with the present map study. He continued to pour over it.
He found the point where the sewer pipe of his building met the street pipe. He traced the pipeline with his finger, for he had no pen. He used a pencil to mark the point where the street pipe became narrow. Too narrow for his pen to travel transversely. He wondered if his pen had passed that point – it could have, if it had been oriented properly. He saw that near this point, a manhole was positioned.
He rushed back to the municipality office.
“I need to know the name of people in this area who are in your employ to clean the manholes. I have lost something valuable.”
“What?”
There was no mistaking the municipality officer’s avarice.
“A pen.”
The officer was disappointed, nay disgusted. He gave him the names and addresses he wanted without further interest.
He sped out of the office. He was afraid if his pen had not been stuck inside the pipeline, it would be well inside the river near his city where all municipality pipes drained. He did not want that to happen.
He found the manhole cleaner at home. He was not very keen on opening the manhole when his job clearly didn’t require him to. The drain-cleaner wanted a bribe. The pen-owner didn’t want to give it, but wanted his pen back. So, he bribed the cleaner.
The manhole was opened. The cleaner went down inside it, grumbling. He struck his hand inside the pipe where the pen-owner thought his pen might be. His hand came out holding nothing. He groped again. Nothing. He was impatient. He insisted that the idea be given up. The pen-owner insisted. He was frantic.
“Search inside the manhole, too, if you please.”
More groping, probing, searching, sifting. No finding.
At last. “There it is.”
He forgot it was mucky, shitty water. He nearly snatched the pen out of the startled cleaner’s hands.
He had work to do.
He had a pen to purify.
He cursed himself for his fondness to solve Times crosswords on shit-pot. He cursed himself for his carelessness in letting the pen slip his fingers.
Lo! The pen had disappeared! His lapse in attention had caused the brush to make a few random strokes. The pen had been accidently pushed into the hole where potty goes when you flush.
He was dismayed. Uff! What will happen now? The pen would travel up...then down....then down again. Down, down, down, down. Into the bowels of the earth. The pen! Into the bowels of the earth. The pen soiled with shit and urine. The pen that could have signed names. That could have written poetry..prose...newspaper reports...school exercises...competitive examinations....
The pen that would have made persons out of people.
That pen now lay embroiled in muck. Every pressing of the flush button caused jets of water and human refuse to push the pen further toward the chambers.
His brain refused to cease thinking about the pen. He couldn’t consume his breakfast for the thought of it. The journey of the pen began to haunt him. Finally, he walked up to the Municipal Corporate Office and demanded he be given a map of the city’s sewers. The officers were astounded. They asked him why. He could yield no answer. All he could do was to reiterate that he wanted...no...needed the map.
They thought he had a nut or two loose in the head. They decided to humour him. So they asked him to wait. He waited. Hours ticked away. He grew impatient, but the thought of tracing the pen spurred him...kept him sitting at the municipality office as it he had grown roots there.
They took pity on him. The map was found for him. He was asked to Xerox it and to return the original to them. He did what he was asked. His feeling of utter dejection that had been increasing ever since he had lost his pen appeased a little. He was doing something to get it!
He went home and spread the map before him. With trouble, he located his area on the map. He wasn’t much of a map-reader. He rued having wasted away his geography classes in school, then realized his geography classes had little or nothing to do with the present map study. He continued to pour over it.
He found the point where the sewer pipe of his building met the street pipe. He traced the pipeline with his finger, for he had no pen. He used a pencil to mark the point where the street pipe became narrow. Too narrow for his pen to travel transversely. He wondered if his pen had passed that point – it could have, if it had been oriented properly. He saw that near this point, a manhole was positioned.
He rushed back to the municipality office.
“I need to know the name of people in this area who are in your employ to clean the manholes. I have lost something valuable.”
“What?”
There was no mistaking the municipality officer’s avarice.
“A pen.”
The officer was disappointed, nay disgusted. He gave him the names and addresses he wanted without further interest.
He sped out of the office. He was afraid if his pen had not been stuck inside the pipeline, it would be well inside the river near his city where all municipality pipes drained. He did not want that to happen.
He found the manhole cleaner at home. He was not very keen on opening the manhole when his job clearly didn’t require him to. The drain-cleaner wanted a bribe. The pen-owner didn’t want to give it, but wanted his pen back. So, he bribed the cleaner.
The manhole was opened. The cleaner went down inside it, grumbling. He struck his hand inside the pipe where the pen-owner thought his pen might be. His hand came out holding nothing. He groped again. Nothing. He was impatient. He insisted that the idea be given up. The pen-owner insisted. He was frantic.
“Search inside the manhole, too, if you please.”
More groping, probing, searching, sifting. No finding.
At last. “There it is.”
He forgot it was mucky, shitty water. He nearly snatched the pen out of the startled cleaner’s hands.
He had work to do.
He had a pen to purify.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
The West's penchant for 'Real India'
A young boy is caught while pick-pocketing and is in the process of being thrashed senseless by the police. "You wanted to see the real India? This is real India", claims the kid as he falls into the arms of an American lady. The lady who had been overflowing with the milk of human kindness, responds. "Here, let me show you a bit of the real America," and nods to her husband who in turn proceeds to empty his wallet for the boy's defence.
A country as sensitive as India where every third or fourth film is banned for hurting the sentiment of some section of Indians or the other, did not find above scene from the 'Slumdog Millionaire' inoffensive. It seems the Golden Globe Awards were bribe enough?
The Man Booker 2008 went to Aravind Adiga for the 'White Tiger', as it again showcases the real India.
Real India? Real India! Real India my foot! Both the above-mentioned literary pieces only portray one side of real India - the only side that the wesetern world seems comfortable with. And not only comfortable with, but the only side that must be advertized and made the single important thing about India.
Do tell me, is the seamy side of India the only, mind you, only significant thing about us? Are we nothing else? How can responsible people like Adiga and Vikram Swarup not recognize these awards as sweet poison, as a roundabout tacital method of India bashing?
I am angry. Seriously angry. I want Adiga to throw back his Man Booker - not because he does not deserve it, but because of the reason he has been given it. I want the spurious love of the west for the Indian underbelly exposed for what it is. I want a comlete picture of India to be presented to the outside world, where slums do not out-balance sky-scrapers.
But then, this has another side to it. Let them sit complacent and comfortable about the weak us. Maybe one day we shall surprize the living daylights out of them! Let's do it!
Monday, December 1, 2008
This is irony at its starkest, although it hit me at a moment when cynicism and black sarcasm had no business around me.
In six days time, I am getting married. Today was the day of the first of the rituals - tilak 'chumaaoun' and 'lagan'. Typical Bihari customs, the essence of which is that elder married ladies give blessings of a propitious married life to the bride-to-be. The exact term in Hindi for the custom is 'suhaag dena' - donating some of the good luck of their happily married lives to the younger woman.
An aunt of mine is a widow, and she understandably abstained. What caused me to feign a sudden coughing attack to conceal a burst of inexplicable laughter was the fact that two of my other aunts came up for the auspicious rituals. One of them has been deserted by her husband, who has proceeded to marry a second time and the other has constantly been a sad victim of domestic violence at the hands of her spouse. That these two ladies be allowed to participate is understandable - senior ladies of my house are not that indecent as to publically insult them by preventing their participation. What takes the cake, I thought, is how their own conscience gave them the permission to carry on that act!
I concluded that they were certainly unaware of the significance of the custom, although, I do believe that avoiding the question why and saving face in public was a more plausible reason for their behaviour.
The observation insn't an original one - it happens everyday. But the nakedness of the act as it unfolded before my eyes made it more impactful for me.
In six days time, I am getting married. Today was the day of the first of the rituals - tilak 'chumaaoun' and 'lagan'. Typical Bihari customs, the essence of which is that elder married ladies give blessings of a propitious married life to the bride-to-be. The exact term in Hindi for the custom is 'suhaag dena' - donating some of the good luck of their happily married lives to the younger woman.
An aunt of mine is a widow, and she understandably abstained. What caused me to feign a sudden coughing attack to conceal a burst of inexplicable laughter was the fact that two of my other aunts came up for the auspicious rituals. One of them has been deserted by her husband, who has proceeded to marry a second time and the other has constantly been a sad victim of domestic violence at the hands of her spouse. That these two ladies be allowed to participate is understandable - senior ladies of my house are not that indecent as to publically insult them by preventing their participation. What takes the cake, I thought, is how their own conscience gave them the permission to carry on that act!
I concluded that they were certainly unaware of the significance of the custom, although, I do believe that avoiding the question why and saving face in public was a more plausible reason for their behaviour.
The observation insn't an original one - it happens everyday. But the nakedness of the act as it unfolded before my eyes made it more impactful for me.
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