Vanity Bagh

Vanity Bagh           Author:Anees Salim
Picador India             Rs. 499/-

Imran Jabbari, an ordinary, harmless lad of a down-at-heel mohalla, gets sucked in by his dreams of making it big in the underworld. As his story unfolds, we see a chaotic world teeming with folks who seem human and eccentric, rather than truly threatening. Even Abu Hathim, the ageing don of Vanity Bagh, is a spent force. In fact, he perhaps never was a great force to reckon with.
Abu's son, Rasool, and beloved little grandson Sinbad, have been killed by his enemies, and he now lives a reclusive life. Tales of his past exploits are occasionally shared in hushed whispers, inspiring awe among young Imran Jabbari and his five friends. They decide to make a mark in their simple and directionless lives by forming a dreaded gang of their very own.

The boys, who call themselves 'five and half men', are hired to dispense a batch of stolen scooters to different corners of the city. When the city rocks with scooter bombs, Imran and his friends realize that they have been involved in a terrorist act.

One of the prime accused in the 11/11 serial blasts, Imran is destined to live in captivity for the next fourteen years. He kills time plotting jailbreak until he is assigned to the bookmaking section of the prison.

Imran is a remarkably imaginative person. Each time he opens a book and stares at its blank pages, he sees stories from Vanity Bagh: the unending rivalries between Vanity Bagh, nicknamed Little Pakistan, and Mehendi, a Hindu neighbourhood. He remembers the people of his neighbourhood; his sweetheart Benazir, his family, and all the others who live out their lives around Franklin, the tree at the heart of the mohalla.

Imran's wasted life evokes sympathy for a misguided soul, a spirit that had some potential and could, given the right circumstances, have made a more positive impact on society. Despite the simmering undercurrents of communal tensions; of the spectres of poverty and ignominy threatening to engulf the main players, this tale does not project overwhelming bleakness. While waiting for that big-time assignment to fall into their laps, the gang of five and half men tackle a rough gang of fishermen for a rugby match. Imran's father, the Imam, keeps a machete for self-defence. His wife smartly uses it as a vegetable chopper to fool snooping cops. An old tree forming the focal point of the mohalla, is whimsically named Franklin for reasons of local history. Many of the people in Imran's mohalla are named after well-known people from Pakistan. These light touches can make us smile, given the nondescript ordinariness of these people.

Hands are chopped off and innocent lads are tricked into planting bombs by mysterious enemies. But even Abu Hathim, the most dreaded resident of Vanity Bagh is human rather than overtly menacing.

"And when Hindus wanted to burn all of us alive it was this criminal who saved the mohalla," Ammi said passionately. "Where were the mullahs then? Where was your masjid committee hiding?"...

"He was not guarding the mohalla," the Imam said. 'He was just trying to save his family."

It is this quality of ordinary humanness, of simple people caught up in complex circumstances, that redeems this story of Imran and his neighbours of Vanity Bagh.




 

India - through the lens

I recently enjoyed an exhibition of photooprahs of Inda by eminent photogrpahers from all over the world. The photographs span several decades, capturing the varied facets of Indian life. Magnum photographers’ vision of India is reflected in their images. Though India’s colour and light are cited as an inspiration to these photographers, their work reveals much more than its surface beauty.
Some pictures convey more than a thousand words. Artistic photographers can capture vital images of human life, natural beauty, or even an era in history. Remember Steve McCurry’s unforgettable photograph of an Afghan refugee girl, taken in the 1980s?

Her innocent green eyes convey the horrors of war and its toll on innocent victims. Henri Cartier-Bresson’s iconic photographs of Gandhiji’s last days proceed from Gandhiji surrounded by his followers or serenely spinning his charka, to a shattered Pandit Nehru coming forward in the dark night to announce Gandhiji’s death. This image, along with Cartier-Bresson’s photos of crowds mourning around Gandhiji’s funeral pyre, captures the sorrow of an entire nation.

Common factor

A special bond unites these two photographers from different generations and countries with an exclusive circle. They are associated with Magnum Photos, an international co-operative founded in 1947 by Cartier-Bresson and three others, which includes some of the world’s leading photographers. In the decades since, work has brought several Magnum photographers to India. They have also captured unique impressions of their own. A recent retrospective by Tasveer Arts showcases their rich perspectives of Indian life.

These photographers memorably project the India of yesterday, today and of times to come.
My detailed aricle can be read in Sunday Herald

Zafar Anjum: resurgence of writing and literary friendships

I first 'met' writer Zafar Anjum in January 2002, when I took a tentative first step into in Francis Ford Coppola's zoetrope virtual studios. His thoughtful and balanced critique of my short story paved the way for many years of writerly exchanges and a warm personal friendship. The Internet not only expands our horizons, but is also a great leveller, connecting people from diverse backgrounds and cultures. We lived in different parts of India in those days, came from different generations and spoke different languages. A personal meeting was fated to finally happen over a decade later, but meanwhile, the virtual friendship flourished. As we read and offered constructive suggestions on each other's short stories through the Zoetrope workshops, we bonded over our shared interest in reading and writing. I still remember the characters from his early stories who stayed with me: the lonely and cantankerous old lady redeemed at last by rather seedy looking 'angels' with grubby fingernails; the young man pondering over old friendships which fizzled out for reasons he cannot fathom; a nervous newly-married man who dies a pathetic and painful death; and more.

Through the years, we shared through e-mails and online chats our writerly disappointments and also the rare little tirumphs that gave us  hope to continue struggling. That long wait through many, many rejections before a short story won acceptance from a literary journal; the pressures of bracing oneself to write a major work and then hoping some editor would give it a nod of approval. These experiences also moulded us, and our approach to life and to writing. "You can say I am becoming a recluse, and a more inward person," he once told me. "I am trying to connect more to my inner self and trying to live beyond my ego. I feel happier and calmer this way, and this approach is also closer to my basic nature.This does not mean I am not meeting other folks. I go to select parties and chill out, but not very often."

Years ago, I began saving such thoughtful mails from my handful closest writer friends. I knew they had it in them to soar high, writing more and better stories and books that would would be widely appreciated one day. I remember how I would joke with Zafar that these exchanges would one day lead to the biography of a major literary talent. That day now seems to be dawning.

Singapore-based Indian author and journalist Zafar Anjum today has a wide and varied published body of writing to his credit. I'm proud of my first and longest standing writer buddy, and  look forward to congratulating him on many, many more books. Zafar recently had two books released: The Resurgence of Satyam (Random House India) and The Singapore Decalogue (Red Wheelbarrow Books, Singapore).  He has also authored Kafka and Orwell on China (Samshwords, 2011). His earlier works include a novel (Of Seminal Fluids, 2000) and a volume of translated poetry (My Silence Speaks, 2001). He has recently finished his second novel Murder in Clivesganj, a thriller set in a small town in India, which is awaiting publication. I've had the pleasure of reading excerpts from this literary mystery and hope to see the complete book in print soon.

His short stories have recently appeared in three anthologies, Love and Lust in Singapore, The Best of Southeast Asian Erotica and Crime Scene: Singapore.  Zafar’s journalism and fiction have appeared in The South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), Today (Singapore), India Se (Singapore), The Bangkok Post (Thailand), Jakarta Globe (Indonesia), The Hindustan Times (India), The Times of India (India), Tehelka (India), The Pioneer (India), Outlook (India), Mainstream (India), China Daily (China), The Little Magazine (India), Little India (US), Malaysiakini.com (Malaysia), Small Spiral Notebook (US), Jamini (Bangladesh) and The Six Seasons Review (Bangladesh), among others.
He is also the founder-editor of Kitaab, a website dedicated to Asian writing in English. Currently, he co-edits a global website for writers, Writers Connect.

The Arts Creation Fund grant from Singapore’s National Arts Council for writing The Singapore Decalogue came to Zafar from "out of the blue. I had applied without any hope, and I could not believe it when I got it," Zafar says. "There was huge competition. I was the first Indian PR (permanent resident) to get this grant, if I am not mistaken. It gave me confidence and lot of push when I needed it most."

"In this collection of short stories, I have tried to create vignettes of life in Singapore. This is my tribute to this city state, which has built its social capital with great wisdom, civic sense, and quotidian practicality...

 

"In these stories, I have tried to portray the hopes and frustrations of a few interconnected characters (that was truer for the earlier draft when the characters were varied). The bustling metropolis attracts all kinds of people who want to make a life here. What happens to their dreams? What kind of struggles do they go through? Do they feel alienated? What do they love about the city? And so on.

Through the panoply of characters, mainly built around a main character, Asif Basheer, an aspiring poet from India, I have woven together a web of stories that throw light on various contemporary themes. The initial aspiration, following in the footsteps of Tolstoy and the Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski (especially his film cycle, The Decalogue), was to explore themes based on the Ten Commandments, but I finally transformed the idea. I was anxious, even afraid, that the stories might come across as too moralistic or formulaic if I went down that route. Nevertheless, my moral concerns about making choices in life still shaped and informed the stories in The Singapore Decalogue."

The protagonist in these tales is Asif, a poet. "Whatever poetry he had written had remained unpublished. "In this world, it does not matter what you know. What matters is who you know," Asif tells himself. He comes to Singapore with an attractive job, and great hope that lady luck will smile upon him at last in this land of opportunities. Yet ominous dark clouds creep up to steal his sunshine. His company is under investigation, and tension is in the air. Meanwhile, this good-hearted young man from small town India takes in the sights and sounds of a brave new world. He shares his experiences with his wife Mariam, how "the Singapore he had heard of as a little boy, the place from where the Singapore banana used to come from, was no more a provincial backwater but a new age metropolis; a city put together out of raw jungle by sheer human will and imagination."

With his new friends, Asif explores the wonders of Singapore.He smiles to his pretty Filipina neighbours out of courtesy, hoping to spread positive vibes around him in an alien country. He notes the cool responses to his smiles and to his job application, and knows that the colour of one's skin matters as much and sometimes more, that an impressive resume to wily employers like Mr Fong.   Asif'ssensitive mind sees beyond the glitz and glamour and feels for poor bar girls compelled to please shady clients for money they need to support the families they love. Asif knows the money-making culture dominates Singapore, as it does in the rest of the world. Yet he sees the people around him with humane empathy.

Meanwhile, the mysterious Black Monk appears, reappears and vanishes, tossing enigmatic pearls of advice at our hero during major turning points in his life. He compels Asif and the reader to ponder the human dilemma.

Knowing as I do of some of Zafar's personal experiences during the last decade, I can see a little of him and his own perception in some of the characters and situations in these stories. In fact most of us writers put a bit of ourselves into the stories that we write. But Zafar's tales are pure fiction. The characters stand as convincing individuals in their own right. The writer's own ideas enrich a consummately crafted artistic work, while the writer himself remains far in the background as the creator of it all.

During one of our many exchanges, Zafar had said to me," It has definitely porous boundaries, fact and fiction merge. It happens with me too.
Over the years, I have seen that I am able to get into (how successfully--that I don't know) other people's minds more easily and write less personal stories. Maybe that is part of how we grow up as writers. Maybe we get more confident over time..."

I see that growth and confidence happening right now, in this very book.

"I had started The Singapore Decalogue first," Zafar says. "Meanwhile, I was also chasing the Satyam story. The Satyam scandal became a global business story pretty quickly after it hit the headlines in India in 2009. After all, it was India’s fourth largest outsourcing company and it was also listed on the Nasdaq in the USA. The Indian growth story was being keenly watched in the outside world and Satyam’s fall was not a blip. It grabbed eyeballs everywhere as it seemed to puncture the ‘India Shining’ story outside India. India, which was then a rising and shining outpost of globalization in Asia, suddenly had this blot on its resplendent reputation. Seemingly all was lost but not quite..

Personally, I see the story of Satyam’s turnaround as a positive story. This was a unique example to come from a place where corruption has been seen to be endemic. In the West, many companies have melted away after falling victim to financial scandals. The example of Enron comes to mind. Satyam survived a deadly implosion and how quickly it bounced back on its feet—that is an inspiring story to come from India where some much negativity floats around. That’s why I decided to tell the story of Satyam’s bouncing back."

Zafar and I finally met in the real world in January 2012, when research on the Satyam saga brought him to Bangalore. A warm, soft-spoken man with a sense of self-deprecatory humour, he brought a whiff of fresh air into a world crowded by the self-absorbed. I noted his old-worldy pehle aap courtesy, no put on airs, but quiet sincereity and straight-from-the-heart goodwill. His sense of fun and adventure peeped out when he ordered pungent Andhra style chicken with 'gunpowder' on the side. There we are dousing the fire on our tongues with ice cream on a cool winter day, while his friend graciously captured the moment with a click.
 

preserving our heritage

India’s rich legacy of art, architecture, ideas and ideals has been built up over many thousands of years. But today, how many of us pause to appreciate our common cultural inheritance? Our cultural tradition is widely praised in distant foreign lands. It offers humanity a beacon of hope from its dangerous course of rampant greed and aggressive rivalry. Meanwhile, Indians like us focus our energies upon the rat race.

We are so immersed in the daily grind of making money and competing with neighbours that we don’t even find time to visit our parents and relatives. Foregoing a weekend at malls and resorts to visit places of historic interest? Browsing through museums to view glorious relics of our cultural heritage? Not for us, thank you!

When we do get around to visiting our ancient monuments, we scratch our names on timeless relics and leave behind trails of plastic and litter. How can our children learn to appreciate our culture and heritage if we ourselves are callous? Does our general apathy and lack of appreciation for our heritage stem from some ingrained deficiencies within us? Or, are we overwhelmed by the vastness of it all?

Perhaps lack of awareness and perception makes us like the proverbial blind men examining an elephant. We are conscious of our heritage only in bits and pieces, and are unable to fully grasp its significance.

India’s cultural legacy is threatened from many quarters. Overpopulation, natural forces, unbalanced town planning and growth, and wanton human greed are major factors in the gradual degradation of historic monuments and spaces of natural diversity and beauty. The writing on the crumbling walls is clear wherever we look.
...
India’s cultural heritage is not restricted to ruined monuments or musty showcases in museums.

It is up to us to see that it continues to be an integral part of our daily lives. Our philosophical traditions can continue to guide us and nurture our spirits in these times of violence and greed. Small shrines and structures connected with local heroes can be a rallying point for community feeling and pride. In historic cities such Jaisalmer or Delhi’s walled city, people continue to live and work within and around heritage buildings. In 2003, the ASI commissioned an Integrated Management Plan for the entire Vijayanagara site.
...
Small but sincere efforts from individuals like us can add up to far-reaching benefits for our heritage. As individual parents or teachers, we can help by introducing young people to our heritage through interesting books, films, and trips to heritage sites. We can take part in heritage walks, and even organise them in our own communities. As professionals, we can facilitate our employers to maintain heritage sites as part of corporate social responsibility initiatives.

Technology has made information-sharing more efficient than ever. We can use it to connect with like-minded people not only in India, but across the globe, and learn more about foreign cultures. Scholars and museum curators are no longer the sole authorities on matters relating to our heritage. We too can participate in spreading knowledge about our heritage, and share our personal insights and perspectives.

Read my detailed piece in Sunday Herald

The Skinning Tree, book review

Picador India    Rs.499/-

Offering an insight into a tortured boy’s psyche, Srikumar Sen’s debut work highlights the Empire’s flaws. “Murder was the plaything of us kids. We fooled with the idea of killing like some kids fool with fire.” These crisp, loaded sentences draw readers into a unique and superbly crafted novel about imagination, regimentation, conscience, life, death and the haunting ghosts of memory. Eight-year-old Sabby lives a privileged life in Calcutta during the World War II.

To protect their child from the threat of Japanese invasion, Sabby’s parents pack him off to a remote school run by English missionaries. Sabby’s home was an island of “Victorian and Venetian opulence” in a bright and sunny, utterly Indian street with “smells and shouts in the air and saris drying”. Genteel guests gathered to play cards at “little table islands around little island minds”.

...When Sabby arrives alone and friendless to the bleak world of St Piatus, he can no longer push aside unpleasant thoughts as he could in Calcutta. In St Piatus, the boys are brutalised emotionally and physically by their misguided teachers. Sabby and his friend have to face the pain of “being controlled by claps and instructions”. The children become inured to pain, and react by not wanting to “inflict pain back, just make you disappear like the vanishing morning mist over the Ghor hills”.

The rough boys of St Piatus come from good families, and are “naturally callous and unquestioning” when it comes to killing. In this book, the author presents a broader perspective, probing how boys who can share treats, stand up for their friends and love tree snakes as pets, are roughened by the treatment they receive into mercilessly killing birds and animals around them. They gradually progress with chilling logic to murderous feelings towards their harsh teachers.
...
 St Piatus aims to mould children through this same fear and contention, to become ferocious standard bearers of the Empire.

In the end, “Fate was a gloating hoodlum.” The enforcers of authority are themselves victims of the system. Despite their own rough conditioning, they also retain vestiges of compassion and humanity. After punishing Sabby with customary mindless harshness, a Brother learns that Sabby was upset about his grandmother’s death. He then prays and offers Sabby a colourful prayer card for solace.
...
The prose flows smoothly overall, but occasionally the narration is jarring and confusing; “Because of his anglicised outlook, the result of his parents’ failure to nurture his Bengali heritage owing to their surrendering to the social demands of a British commercial world, he was always uncomfortable with Indian situations and customs which he didn’t understand or was unfamiliar with; what he didn’t want to see didn’t exist.” These bumps are compensated by evocative, nuanced passages, conveying vivid sensory images and multiple layers of meaning.

The novelist portrays a moral landscape, not in black and white, but in multiple shades and colours. This delicious complexity makes this book memorable, as does the ray of hope with which the story ends. Despite all his harsh conditioning, Sabby’s conscience and imagination continue to haunt him repeatedly, “like touching a scar where all feeling is dead, but isn’t.”

My detailed review is published in Sunday Herald

Coffee house adda

New Year's Eve was spent in enlightened company. Fellow Zubaan author friends Anil Menon and Payal Dhar and I met up to exchange notes on the stories cooking on our keyboards, and caught up with everything else.

Psst! Here's the news straight from the horses' mouths. Expect more great fiction from these talented writers in the year ahead. Payal's A Shadow in Eternity trilogy    kept readers young and old enthralled. Maya Subramanyam's adventures are continuing in Eternity, and we can hope to read about them soon. Meanwhile, her most recent books, Satin and There's a Ghost in My PC are drawing more appreciative readers. If you haven't read them yet, do it soon.

   Anil was busy jointly selecting and editing the mind-blowing stories in Breaking the Bow, which offer original and highly imaginative alternate takeoffs on the Ramayana. He's also been pegging away on a major work of speculative fiction, aimed at adults this time. It's a complex and subtle story, he says, the speculative elements take a different turn from what we experienced in his first book, The beast With Nine Billion Feet. Will we see a sequel to 'Beast'? Anil smiles enigmatically, keeping us guessing and hoping.

Baaton baaton mein, we discovered that all of us can look forward to seeing our stories together in an anthology of love stories for older teens and adults, forthcoming from Scholastic

Steaming coffee and snacks at good old India Coffee House helped spread the bonhomie.

 This favourite haunt of yesteryear is now on a new location on Bangalore's Church Street. But the warm and cosy atmosphere remains the same, right down to the quaint furniture, slightly tarnished mirrors on blue distempered walls, and cheerful waiters. Not to mention the old favourites on their menu.

Coffee, much talk and browsing through bookstores later, it's time to take leave. A lovely note to end the old year and look forward with hope to 2013.

Baluchari sarees, timeless weaves

During a recent visit to the beautiful town of Bishnupur in West bengal's Bankura District, I was fascinated by the sight of local weavers creating magic on their looms.

Intricate Baluchari saris are works of art woven in silk. The borders and pallu are embellished with exquisite motifs inspired by the epics, mythology and traditional texts, as also scenes from courtly life. Each panel of these delicately woven sarees tells a timeless story. A single sari can depict an entire episode from the Mahabharata or Ramayana, woven into its border and pallu. The magical weaves with their centuries-old tradition continue to enchant through generations. They take pride of place in the heirloom collection of Bengali women.

Traditional Baluchari sarees are woven in the history-steeped town of Bishnupur, in West Bengal’s Bankura district. There are several clusters of weavers here who continue to create enchanting sarees. Haradhan Bishoi oversees one such setup, where eight or nine weavers work at any given time. The mulberry silk is sourced locally, he tells us. The entire process, from rearing silkworms, to spinning and dyeing the yarn, and then designing and weaving sarees, is done locally. The fine and soft local silk has a unique lustre. To make the yarn supple and shiny, it is boiled in a mixture of soda and soap and then dyed. Designing these sarees requires elaborate planning and execution. Each saree takes two expert weavers, working by turns, around a week to weave. The more complex ones can take much longer. The sarees are hand-woven on jacquard punch-card looms. Creating intricate designs for the border, butis and pallus of Baluchari sarees is an elaborate process. The design is drawn on a graph paper and then punched on cards. After punching, these cards are joined in sequence and fixed in the jacquard machine. These coded and punched chains of jacquard cards control the movement of the warp on the loom to create finely woven details in silk.

My published article may be read in Sunday Herald

I've received several inquiries from readers for Bishnupur contacts and replied individually. For others who might be interested, here are the contacts of Haradhan Bishoi.  They have an excellent collection of saris for all budgets, for sale wholesale and retail.

Anuvab, manufacturers of Baluchari and Swarnachari sarees.
Chinnamasta
Bishnupur,
Dist. Bankura,
West Bengal

phone; 03244-256308

hope this helps,
M S