Tabish Khair | Jaya's blog

The Decameron 2020

In May 2020, I was sent a YouTube link by academic and novelist Tabish Khair. It was a short clip of film actress Shabana Azmi reading a story. I began to listen. I realised it was a brand new story written by Tabish Khair. Soon we were exchanging furious messages over WhatsApp. I had a 1001 questions to ask him about the project — The Decameron 2020. Ever since I discovered the project, I have been listening to the stories on a loop.

The Decameron 2020 is a collaborative project of like-minded creative folks. The unifying factor is their ability to tell stories magnificently. The differentiating factor is the medium they opt to tell their stories. This extraordinary project is the brainchild of the Italian novelist, translator and poet Erri de Luca. According to him, “We imagined short novels because, in times of distress, we need to concentrate our words in the same narrow place we are restricted in. We imagined isolated actresses and actors around the world who give their voices as oxygen for the breathless.” His colleagues are producer Paola Bisson, filmmaker Michael Mayer, the Spanish publisher Elena Ramirez and Jim Hicks, Executive Editor, The Massachusetts Review. The Decameron 2020 project invites storytellers around the world to submit original stories for the project. These stories are then read out aloud by professional storytellers, mostly film actors such as Julian Sands, Fanny Ardant, Pom Klementieff and Alessandro Gassman. They read against a backdrop created by Richard Petit, co-founder and Creative Director, The Archers, whose mesmerising artwork unites these distinctive stories. Commenting upon the creation of these unique backdrops for the Decameron performances, Richard Petit says, “The experiences – both reading these extraordinary texts and responding to them visually – have marked this period of social isolation in an unforgettable way. Beginning by depopulating the masterworks of Florentine artists – in many cases, contemporaneous to Giovanni Boccaccio’s original setting – and collaging them with fragments from works by Italian Futurist painters, my goal has been to create beautiful but somewhat disquieting stage settings that visually connect these stories of quarantine, separated by nearly seven hundred years.”

It is an extraordinary layering to the original story. Much more than just a dramatic performance. There is something quite special about the telling. It is almost as if one has to as a listener be present “within” the storytelling, shut out all the sounds of life around one, and be wholly immersed in the storytelling. It is like recreating the experience of being “locked in” the story to experience it. I have no other way of describing it.

Erri, Julian Sands, Paola, and Alvaro Rodriguez

These are surreal times. I like the parallels drawn with a war zone by Jim in his essay since it enables an experimentation with the story form too. There are no expectations of the writer / actor / listener about the act of storytelling. The story gets completed in the classic sense by the listener’s participation. Yet it is storytelling at a global level with the stories/performances such as Luigi Lo Cascio’s having a very rich local texture. What comes through beautifully is the shock everyone feels at the sudden end of life as we knew it. There is no precedence for such a global catastrophe. So behavioural changes cannot be mimicked. Nor is there any memory of such an experience being handed down generations. There is no witnessing of it either by those alive today. As a disaster management expert told me recently, “Difficult to find a narrative for what we are going through”.

It is also precisely why I am very intrigued by The Decameron 2020 project as it tries to make sense of our new world. The creative experimentation of making writers and film actors to collaborate while in isolation and across time zones is extraordinary. It lends itself to many interpretations in the performance of putting the readings together. If everyone had been together in a room ideating, there would have been multiple layers and I am guessing a completely different output. Instead working remotely, across time zones, the onus is upon every individual involved at different stages of production to interpret the story for themselves. Ultimately every stage — writing, reading out aloud, recording, editing, adding a unique backdrop, publishing on YouTube, listening — add layers to the performance. It is palpable but not disruptive to the experience.

The Decameron 2020 team were very kind in replying to some of my questions. So here is an edited version of the interview:

Q1. What sparked this idea for The Decameron 2020? ( Btw, did you know that #DecameronCorona has been started by Daniel Mendelsohn on Twitter?)

Erri: The Decameron and Boccaccio are pillars of our literature, so the idea sprang shape to Paola Bisson and me. We imagined short novels because, in times of distress, we need to concentrate our words in the same narrow place we are restricted in. We imagined isolated actresses and actors around the world who give their voices as oxygen for the breathless.

Paola: I can add that I had a personal need to reverse my isolation and discomfort in this “pandemic” time into a new alliance. I felt like a truck driver who sends radio messages looking for other drivers on the same highway, to share the journey.

Michael: When Paola talked to me about it for the first time I had to wrap my head around the logistics of such a project. We all knew it was going to be a challenge, but the creativity and ingenuity of everybody involved was really inspiring to me. Everybody who joined us has had such a positive and easy attitude that we were able to tackle all the practical obstacles.

Q2. How were the authors for this project selected? Who are the writers and actors invited to participate in this series?

Erri: As the epidemic covers the planet, we wished to invite writers of all the continents, to form an ideal chain with the exceptional readers of their tales.

Paola: The authors of this project were suggested by us (Erri, Michael and me), and by the precious help of professor Jim Hicks and the Spanish publisher Elena Rico Ramirez. The French publisher Gallimard (they publish Erri’s books) connected us with Violaine Huisman…but the “brigata” is still growing with new suggestions.

Michael: Erri and Paola know so many wonderful and talented writers and with the help of Elena Rico Ramirez and Professor Jim Hicks were able to reach even more.

Q3. What is the brief given to the author when commissioning the story?

Erri: We asked authors to write pages from the unpredicted siege, no limit to the argument, just to be read in around five minutes. Then the director Michael Mayer gave hints and guidelines for the video.

Paola: The brief was written by heart, at least for me…I learned English in the US, watching movies. For once in a while, I have been shameless writing to everybody.

Michael: No brief, except trying to keep it around 700-1000 words. Some writers submitted a short story, one wrote a letter, another a poem, while others gave us their personal journal entries. So far it has been an absolute privilege reading all their wonderful contributions.

Q4. Are the actors decided beforehand or are they selected after the story is submitted? Is it imperative that the writer and the actor have to belong to the same nation as in the case of Tabish Khair and Shabana Azmi?

Erri: There are no rules for the interpreters; with my story, the British actor Julian Sands accepted to give his voice and talent for the character of the tale.

Paola: Everything has been a pure collaboration and mutual suggestion. Still, The Decameron 2020 is growing this way.

Michael: Every case is different. Dareen Tatour, a Palestinian poet, asked that her poem be read in Arabic, by a woman. Fang Fang asked that her diary, originally in Chinese, be read in Spanish, or English. Other writers had no specific requests. Naturally, we treat every request with utmost respect, even if it means taking longer to find the right talent for each story.

Q5. When will the project conclude? Or will it continue as long as the lockdown continues?

Erri: Paola Porrini Bisson and Michael Mayer decide the terms.

Paola: I hope it will last forever, like an anti-pandemic vaccine.

Michael: We originally intended to do 10 stories, but soon realized we had so many beautiful tales, we had to extend the project. To me, The Decameron 2020 is no longer about the pandemic, but about the connections created among artists and about having a chance to collaborate with people you wouldn’t necessarily have had the opportunity, or even the reason to collaborate with.

Q6. How was the production team selected? How did the collaboration happen? What are the pros and cons of working remotely to put together such a magnificent creative project?

Erri: Paola was the producer of last Michael Mayer’s movie, Happy Times, so the essential team was there. We got the strong help of Elena Rico Ramirez, Spanish publisher. From my point of view, there is no pro, working in distant time zones, which reduces the mutual exchange of a few hours. To match it, we are engaged at every hour.

Paola: I work since ever with Erri. I am also the President of his Foundation. With Michael, I started collaborating a few years ago in a film project. With time we became friends too. Last year we made a movie together.

Michael: Paola, Erri and I recently finished working on a feature film together, so luckily we had a pool of talented people we already had a relationship with.

A big con is the challenge of communication.

The biggest pro for me is the necessity to learn to let go. This project forces me to let go a lot of control, as actors film themselves on the other side of the world. It’s a humbling experience as a director.

Q7. How do you accommodate diverse languages?

Erri: In my case, my Italian has been translated into English by professor Jim Hicks, a good friend who has supported in every way the project since the beginning.

Michael: Between all the members of our little team, we cover 6 or 7 languages.

And we’re not shy when it’s time to ask for help!

Q8. How is The Decameron 2020 being promoted across platforms? How do you find your audience?

Erri: I am poor in this matter; I just agreed about everyone’s free contributions, and the network.

Michael: Social media, personal contacts, press announcements and word of mouth.

Q9. What are the pros and cons of creating stories solely for the Internet?

Erri: No publishers, no paper, no cellulose from trees: I think that a writer has to be generous and share for free a part of his tales.

Michael: The ease of use and the ability to reach a global audience. For a project of this sort, I can’t think of a con.

Q10. In the past year there have been major shifts in the way films have been released in theatres and on subscription TV. Now the pandemic has forced many film producers (at least in India) to consider releasing their films first on television and later when cinema halls reopen via traditional distribution channels. Plus, the Global Film Festival has been made available for free on YouTube. Do you think these rapid shifts in storytellers finding their audiences will impact the future of storytelling? If so, how?

Michael: I am not much for making predictions but I believe there is room for all types of media and formats and I believe new technologies add to our media landscape rather than cannibalize it.

Q11. What next? When the world opens up, will you develop similar projects?

Michael: Having worked now with all this diverse talent from all over the world I can’t imagine restricting my work to just one nationality or language. So yes, I definitely hope so.

Jim Hicks sums up the project beautifully in this note he emailed:

I suspect that, like most good ideas (and, of course, Margaret Mead is invariably quoted in such contexts), everything begins with a “small group of thoughtful, committed citizens.” You begin by working together, and inevitably each person brings in others, and the network expands progressively, sometimes exponentially, getting richer and stronger as it grows. Though I believe that Erri’s original idea was for a “Decamerino” of ten writers and ten actors each telling one story, and I also believe that there are already at least that number in the pipeline, as Paola writes, when something is clearly working, there’s certainly no reason to quit, so this “Decamerino” could well add additional rooms, even becoming a house with many mansions, so to speak. And it is exciting to see Boccaccio inspiring so many projects today… another is unfolding at the online magazine Words Without Borders.

Personally, what excites me most about this project is Erri’s idea that from a variety of corners, all across the globes, collaborators can come together, sharing a great variety of stories and styles that, like a grand quilt, create a record and response to this global lockdown, but also a refusal of imposed isolation. Breaking the siege. Years back, I heard a talk given by another friend and frequent collaborator, the activist, poet, essayist, and translator Ammiel Alcalay; he described how a rather simple project of translation and editing, in the right place and time, could have a truly profound effect, and help to break a different sort of siege. Not that long ago, Ammiel worked to put together an anthology of Israeli Arab writers, some of whom had never before appeared in print, and some of whom lived literally blocks away from each other, but had never even met until their work appeared in the pages of a single book. For me, the chance to find great work, and great souls, from all around the planet, makes Decameron 2020 an incredibly exciting project, one that I’m both honored and enthused to put my energies, and what little talent I have, into…

For now, have a listen to the stories uploaded (at the time of writing) on YouTube:

Luigi Lo Cascio – “A message for my friends in isolation.”

Julian Sands reading Erri De Luca – “A Novella from a Former Time”

Shabana Azmi reading Tabish Khair “River of no return”

Pom Klementieff reading Violaine Huisman – Field Munitions

Mouna Hawa reading Dareen Tatour – “I… Who am I?”

Alessandro Gassmann reading Álvaro Rodríguez – “The Eternal Return of Chet”

Enjoy!

29 June 2020

“The Cliffhangers” by Sabin Iqbal

14 02 , 2020 No Comments

This is my land, this is my country. No one can come between us. Neither saffron nor green can come in our way.

But, they try to.

Debut author Sabin Iqbal’s The Cliffhanger is about a group of friends Usma, Thaha, Jahangir and Moosa. They are in their late teens and early twenties. Moosa is nineteen years old. The ages of the other friends are not mentioned but it is presumed that they are more or less the same age. They are not very well educated. Inevitably have failed school and are hanging around the cliff near their village. There is little for them to do. They are considered kafirs for their free lifestyle and friendships with foreigners and Hindus like Balannan and Vivekannan. They belong to impoverished homes that rely upon remittances sent home from the Middle East. It is mostly the men of these families that have gone to Dubai in search of work. They occupy the lowest rungs of society abroad as drivers, shop assistants, messengers etc. Work which is unappealing to the younger men in India but who realise that it is a matter of time before they too have to join the expat workforce in the Middle East. It helps bring in a regular income and is any day preferable to the backbreaking task of fishing — the only skill their village of fishermen has known for as long as they can recall.

The Cliffhangers have chosen the middle path. We don’t wear symbols of any faith or religion. We don’t tie threads around our wrists or biceps. We wear trainers, sweatpants or tracksuits or polos, which are brought by our relatives from the Gulf.

It is a village on the coast of Kerala where the population lives in relative peace and harmony though the settlement is distinctly according to communal lines. The Muslims on one side and the Hindus on the other. There are no Christians in this village. This is how it has been; till now.

Our village also has religious and political divisions — though they seem blurred and harmless to an outsider, they are as distinct as right and left, and potentially as harmful to both.

…

So far, the two communities in our village have lived in peace and harmony. It is a delicate peace, which any moment, could crumble like papadums.

The Cliffhangers is a fictional account of how close to the precipice this village is from being torn apart along communal lines. The simmering hatred that manifests itself in by the police picking up the Cliffhanger boys for questioning even if they are innocent. It is just that the shroud of suspicion falls upon these boys most of the time because of their faith. It is never said explicitly but it is understood. A frightening prospect. The boys most often are seen whiling away their time hanging out with tourists, ostensibly to improve their English. So if anything happens to a tourist such as the rape of a young girl or the inexplicable death of an unapologetic HRS supporter like Vishwanathan Thampi, the boys are immediately picked up for questioning. As the Cliffhangers are well aware that as young men with Muslim names, they are a soft target for the police and primary enemies of the HRS ( Hindu Rasthra Sangh). It is a tough and uncertain life. None of this uncertainty is helped by the harrowing news from North India about the lynching of a man suspected of storing beef in his fridge. The Cliffhanger gang is stunned into a worrying silence. Unable to fathom what to make of this dystopic world where you are condemned for your food habits, you are persecuted for your religion –whether observing it or not as the boys discovered for having being caught eating during the day when they should have been fasting during Ramzan, you are lynched if you belong to the “other” in terms of colour, ideology and faith. It is a peculiar world.

Hatred is when you think the other has to be eliminated because of the difference of opinion in faith, customs and ways of life. Or, being the axis of evil as Bush, one of the presidents of America, said.

The Cliffhangers want to be the voice of sanity, albeit our patchy English, in the cacophony of communal insanity that our state has fallen into. As you know, we are not adequately educated to sound profound but we are glad that we are not wrongly educated either to hate the ones under the rival flag. We bear Muslim names and maybe we go to the mosque on Fridays and on Eid, but that’s it. You can cut our vein anyway, I swear to you, none of us have any strain of hatred in us.

This free will is something that the Cliffhangers are beginning to discover they are unable to exercise freely. So much so even SI Devan who would pick them up routinely for questioning ultimately decided to “help” them out in an unsolved case of the rape of a foreign tourist. SI Devan had uncovered the truth that the perpetrator, Balannan, a vendor who sold lemonade but was closely affiliated to the HRS. So recognising the terrifying consequences of arresting the member of the Hindu shaka and the horrific prospect of ripping the social fabric of the fishing village across communal lines, the SI chooses to take the rap himself by the senior police officials. SI Devan closes the file as “inconclusive”. His parting words to the Cliffhangers is the truth but with sinister underpinnings.

Remember, we are living in strange times . . .and, your identity is your enemy!” he said….

When the impetus for a story is the growing hatred of the “other” and the heightened communal tension it unleashes, it becomes frighteningly tough to articulate those fears. Fiction helps in unlocking some of those unnamed fears. Whether as a writer or a reader. But as a writer it helps to be crystal clear in channeling one’s anger and distress at the rapid turn of events. For instance to witness the political machinations of hardliners to further their interests despite locals recognising the foolhardiness of encouraging polarisation among communities. A recognition of each other’s differences is sufficient but to underline it on a daily basis and enforce it using state machinery is a dangerous thought and development. It finally rests upon the free will of the citizens of a democracy to subvert this self-consuming destructive hatred.

“The Cliffhangers” is a name given to the four boys but it works metaphorically too for the precipitous situation Indian democracy finds itself in — whether to retreat from the life-threatening crisis or to take the plunge into the depths of the unknown waters and be destroyed. Despite sagging a bit in the middle of the novel The Cliffhangers is a powerful story for the issues it raises. It would be fascinating to hear a freewheeling conversation between Sabin Iqbal, Tabish Khair, Amitava Kumar and Rana Ayyub on writing fiction and non-fiction in these times.

Till then read The Cliffhangers.

14 February 2020

“Prelude to a Riot” by Annie Zaidi

18 09 , 2019 No Comments

No big colonial sword needs to come down and slash the fabric of the nation,” …. “Muscle by muscle, atom by atom, we are being torn from within. We are our own bomb.”

Forces of history are at work, he says. Forces too big to fight. He reels off dates. 1947, 1857, 1799. I slapped my head. Spare me. I don’t understand kings and queens. I am a simple man.

…

Slathered on the walls, wrapping all the way around the street. Every shutter, all the way up to the white mosque. It is true. That puffed-up face, like mouldy pastry. The fellow has called us aliens in our own land. He lost the election and we thought, that would teach him. Now here was, his face pasted on my wall.

Award-winning novelist and playwright Annie Zaidi’s novella No Prelude to a Riot is a disturbing, hard-hitting story set in a nameless city. It is about the rising communal tensions and the anxiety of living under constant siege. What comes across equally poignantly is the writer’s own attempts at writing a story that is extremely close to the reality of today. To be writing under a sense of constant siege, where the lines between the fictional characters and plot are blurred, is not an easy task. Sometimes it seems as if the voices of the characters are not strong enough, probably due to the circumstances they live in, yet they do manage to slip in what they have to say, jolting the reader with their pronouncements. It leaves a sinking feeling in the stomach.

Earlier this year Annie Zaidi won the $100,000 Nine Dots Prize for her essay Bread, Cement, Cactus. It will be expanded and published as a short book by Cambridge University Press in 2020. The Nine Dots Prize is a book prize for creative thinking that tackles contemporary societal issues. Entrants for the prize are asked to respond to a question in 3,000 words and the winner receives $100,000 (Rs 69.83 lakh) to write a short book expanding on the essay’s idea. The question this year was “Is there still no place like home?” “Zaidi’s entry, ‘Bread, Cement, Cactus’, combines memoir and reportage to explore concepts of home and belonging rooted in her experience of contemporary life in India, where migration – within the country, especially from villages to cities – is high,” the Nine Dots Prize said in a statement.

Prelude to a Riot is a novella that explores similar concepts of home and belonging while rooted in the very real and disturbing issues of communal violence, a growing intolerance of the other and crumbling of democracy. It is shattering to realise that Prelude to a Riot, Tabish Khair’s Night of Happiness, Nayantara Sahgal’s The Fate of Butterflies and Ravish Kumar’s The Free Voice are critical contributions to contemporary literature, offering perspectives while bearing witness to the current socio-political events.

18 September 2019

My Best Reads of 2018

01 01 , 2019 1 Comment

Lists are subjective. Reading lists are even more difficult to cobble. Today my list consists of the following books. A few days later it may change ever so slightly. But these are the books that have stayed with me over the months.

Tabish Khair’s Night of Happiness

Anuradha Roy All The Lives We Never Lived

Supriya Kelkar Ahimsa

Mark O’Connell’s To Be A Machine

Alejandro Zambra’s My Documents

Gabriela Wiener Sexographies

Ranjit Hoskote Jonahwhale

Ravish Kumar’s The Free Voice: On Democracy, Culture and the Nation

C G Salamander and Samidha Gunjal’s Puu

Khaled Hosseini Sea Prayer

Nazia Erum’s Mothering a Muslim

Jarrett J Krosoczka’s Hey, Kiddo

Henry Eliot’s The Penguin Classics Book

Cordis Paldano The Dwarf, the Girl and the Goat

Mohammed Hanif Red Birds

Neil Gaiman and Chris Riddell Art Matters

T M Krishna Reshaping Art

Alan Lightman In Praise of Wasting Time

Tabish Khair’s “Night of Happiness”

18 04 , 2018 1 Comment

I was trying to hide behind stories, to construct fictions, instead of facing facts. I asked myself: how are facts faced? I knew the answer: facts are faced with evidence, with data, with numbers. Fiction cannot be outnumbered; it cannot be proved. But facts, yes, I have known all my working life, I have built my business on it — facts can be proved.

Tabish Khair’s Night of Happiness is about Anil Mehrotra, a businessman, and his right hand man, Ahmed. Anil Mehrotra relies completely on Ahmed irrespective of whether it was day or night or a holiday. The added advantage for Anil was that Ahmed was a polyglot and the astute businessman Anil knew “People are generous when you speak to them in their language. They are nicer, happier; ‘Their hearts unlock a room for you in their distant homes.’ ” This was an asset in the import/export business.

Night of Happiness is about Anil trying to find out more about Ahmed’s past life particularly after one stormy night of working late in the office Anil had offered to drop Ahmed home. Ahmed invites Anil to have tea and maida ka halwa ( a sweet dish made out of flour and sugar), a special dish made on Shaab-e-baraat or “Night of Happiness”– a day when the departed souls are remembered by Muslims, much like other faiths too set aside a similar period of time to honour their dead such as All Souls Day for the Christians or the period of Shraadh for the Hindus or Dia de los Muertos ( Day of the Dead) as is observed in Mexico. Anil has an unnerving experience at Ahmed’s home and decides to investigate further. He hires a private detective to dig up facts about Ahmed’s past. During the course of investigation a string of details emerge that Ahmed had never hinted at in all the years he worked with Anil Mehrotra.

The story itself is crafted in a manner that distances the author from the sentiments being expressed in the story as the narrator says he found the manuscript in a hotel drawer and proceeds to read it. Be that as it may the first person narrative of the makes the plot very powerful and the pace sharp. Ostensibly it is a story about Anil trying to ferret out facts about his trusted colleague and yet it is thinly veiled fiction about a dialogue between Hindus and Muslims calling out the popular held myths about a Muslim. It rings so true because it can very well be a real conversation. Both the Hindu narrator of the manuscript, Anil Mehrotra, and Ahmed, a Muslim, are portrayed sensitively. While the investigator works like the chorus of a Sophoclean drama supplying the necessary information to the main action while gently rebutting Mehrotra’s assumptions of Ahmed’s life.

When Ahmed served Anil at his home, he insisted he had offered halwa prepared lovingly by his wife, Roshni, who never makes an appearance. Anil is perplexed since there is no halwa on the plate and Ahmed seems to be relishing an imaginary dish. Tabish Khair neatly introduces the element of madness in the novella with this simple act. Witnessing Ahmed’s odd behaviour at home prompts Anil to hire the private investigator. It is then the personal history of Ahmed comes tumbling out—the time he spent as a guide of Buddhist monuments in Bihar to earn a little extra income to support his widowed mother and himself, meeting his wife Roshni, their shift to Surat, the Gujarat riots of 2002, and his final move to Mumbai. So Ahmed’s mental turmoil viewed as madness by his employer or the mental agitation of Anil himself may be interpreted in many ways. It can be very real while being a comment on the horrifically disturbing times we live in leading one to ask existential questions like “Who is actually mad? What is madness?”

The further distancing of the authorial voice by presenting facts from the investigator’s report further lulls the reader into accepting the “make-believe world” of the “literary thriller”. Whereas Night of Happiness is much more than that! For one it is using fiction to remind people of the pogrom orchestrated in living memory and how its long shadow is still cast upon modern India. It’s within this century and less than a generation old but sufficiently long for many people, particularly the young and the diaspora, to have conveniently forgotten about it. More likely been brought up in an ahistorical environment so these dastardly facts have no impact.

Tabish Khair is a well-known novelist but is also increasingly known for his opinion pieces published regularly in the Indian newspaper Hindu. These are well-argued, thoroughly researched, thought-provoking commentaries on socio-political events playing out in different parts of the world. It is quite possible that much of the preliminary work involved for these articles laid the bedrock of Night of Happiness. Certainly the publication of Night of Happiness close on the heels of the widely acclaimed novel by Mohsin Hamid Exit West raises the bar of literary fiction by many notches as both novels are able to focus on the horrific sectarian violence sweeping through the world. It is as if lessons from history were never learned. Both the authors, Tabish Khair and Mohsin Hamid, are writers of subcontinent origin who are also widely respected on the global literary stage. So when such powerful literary icons raise disturbing questions of a socio-political nature through their art, they must be heard.

Tabish Khair’s Night of Happiness begs the question if it is really “Art for Art’s Sake”? Whatever the reasons for the existence of Night of Happiness, it is unputdownable.

Read it. Share it.

Tabish Khair Night of Happiness Picador India, Delhi, 2018. Hb. pp. Rs. 450

18 April 2018

Literati – “On translations” ( 7 June 2015)

13 06 , 2015 No Comments

My monthly column, Literati, in the Hindu Literary Review was published online ( 6 June 2015) and will be in print ( 7 June 2015). Here is the url http://www.thehindu.com/books/literary-review/a-look-at-the-world-of-books-publishing-and-writers/article7286177.ece. I am also c&p the text below.

Reading two travelogues about Afghanistan in the 1920s — when the reformist King Amanullah tried to steer his country towards modernity by encouraging education for girls — is an enriching experience. Both Desh Bideshe by Syed Mujtaba Ali (translated from Bengali as In a Land Far from Home: A Bengali in Afghanistan by Nazes Afroz, Speaking Tiger Books) and All the Roads are Open: The Afghan Journey by Annermarie Schwarzenbach (translated from German by Isabel Fargo Cole, Seagull Books) offer an absorbing account of Afghan society. The writers had access across various strata of society; a privilege they did not abuse but handled with dignity.

Texts translated competently into the destination language give the reader an intimate

access to a new culture. Many of the new translations are usually in English — a language of socio-political, economic and legal importance. Even literary prizes recognise the significance. For instance, Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai won the 2015 Man Booker International Prize, which is awarded once in two years. Lauding his translators — George Szirtes and Ottilie Mulzet — Krasznahorkai said, “In each language, the relationship is different.” He uses unusually long sentences and admits, “The task was to somehow find a new Krasznahorkai English”. He continues, “In China once, I was speaking at a university about my books and said that, unfortunately, you couldn’t read them there, and someone in the audience put their hand up and said that there was a translation of Satantango on the net that had been done chapter by chapter by people who loved it. Of course, I was delighted.” (http://bit.ly/1Kx4R1g )

Readers matter

At BookExpo America 2015, New York, Michael Bhasker, Publishing Director, Canelo Digital Publishing said, “Readers are the power brokers who matter most. Readers are the primary filters.” This is immediately discernible on social media platforms — extraordinarily powerful in disseminating information, raising profiles of authors, creating individual brands rapidly circumventing geo-political boundaries, transcending linguistic hurdles and straddling diverse cultures. According to Kannan Sundaram, Publisher, Kalachuvadu, “Indian language writers are as good as or often better than their contemporaries writing in English. Often they are not proficient in English and savvy in handling social media, limiting their exposure on the national and international stage and media. I represent many such writers in Tamil like Salma and Perumal Murugan and have managed to get many of their works published in English, Indian and world languages.”

‘[email protected]’, a report by BCG and IAMAI, forecasts India becoming a $200 billion Internet economy by 2018. The use of vernacular content online is estimated to increase from 45 per cent in 2013 to more than 60 per cent in 2018. (http://bit.ly/1Kx9ZCv). Osama Manzar, Founder, Digital Empowerment Foundation says, “The Internet is English centric by its invention, character and culture. It has been growing virally and openly because it is brutally democratic and open. Yet, it is highly driven through the medium of writing as means of participation, a challenge for Indians who are more at ease with oral communication than written. Plus, they are fascinated by English as a language. More so, responsiveness and real-time dynamism of various applications is making people join the Internet even if they don’t know the language of prevailing practices. And because of multi-diversity oriented people joining the Internet, application providers are turning their apps and web multilingual to grab the eyeballs of people and their active participation.”

Writer and technologist Anshumani Ruddra asks pointedly, “If India is to hit 550 Million Internet users by 2018, where are the vernacular apps for more than 350 million (non-English speaking) users?” (http://bit.ly/1Kxa4Gx ) Venkatesh Hariharan, Director, Alchemy Business Solutions LLP, adds “the time is right for Indian language computing using Unicode, especially since the government of India is actively promoting e-governance”.

A constructive engagement across linguistic and cultural boundaries is essential. An international funder once told me supporting writers is a cost-effective way of fostering international bilateral relations. It is easier, in the long run, to negotiate business partnerships as the two nations would already be familiar with each other culturally via literary cross-pollination programmes.

EXCLUSIVE: OxyGene Films (U.K.) has announced a film project based on Tabish Khair’s recent novel, How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position. Details of the Danish-British collaboration, with possible Bollywood connections, are to be announced later.

13 June 2015

“The prize is right?” ( 1 February 2015)

31 01 , 2015 No Comments

( My lead article in The Hindu on literary prizes in India was published online on 31 January 2015 and in print on 1 February 2015. Here is the url: http://www.thehindu.com/books/literary-review/authors-publishers-and-members-of-award-juries-discuss-if-indian-literary-prizes-set-literary-standards/article6842116.ece I am also c&p the story below.)

Do Indian literary prizes set literary standards? Authors, publishers and members of award juries discuss the issue.

Literary prizes are of many kinds. Some focus on texts, some on authors. Some are meant to encourage young writers, some to recognise achievement. Most of the prizes now — Sahitya Akademi (Rs. 1 lakh), The Hindu Prize (Rs. 5 lakhs), The Crossword Book Award (Rs. 3 lakhs for each of the four jury awards and Rs.1 lakh for the popular award), Shakti Bhatt First Book Award (Rs. 2 lakhs), Tata Literature Live!, Muse India Translation Award (Rs. 30,000), and The DSC Prize for South Asian Literature ($50,000) — are for books. But bigger ones like the Jnanpith Award (Rs. 11 lakhs) are for authors. This is also true of Kuvempu Award (Rs. 5 lakhs), the Gangadhar Meher National Award for Poetry (Rs. 50,000) and Kusumagraj National Award for Literature (Rs. 1 lakh).

Both invite attention and prestige to books and authors. In some cases, the money helps too, as most authors cannot live on their writing. As Jerry Pinto, winner of The Hindu Prize 2012, says, “… awards are important because they help writers get through lean patches, encourage them sometimes, open out spaces where they can write and make placing the next book easier.”

Literary prizes are announced in phases — a longlist, a shortlist; finally the winner. In India, most longlists consist of all the books submitted and not, as is usually expected, an initial pruning of submissions by the jury. The logistics involved in organising a prize are daunting. The administrative committee has to select a jury for every category in the award and then send out a call for books. According to R. Sriram, who founded and manages the Crossword Book Awards, “The expenses involved (cost of prize + cost of jury + logistics) can be measured roughly as four times the value of prize money (1:4). If the award ceremony is a standalone event (The Crossword Book Award) and not part of a literary festival (the DSC Prize is a part of Jaipur Literature Festival and The Hindu Prize is a part of Lit for Life), then the costs escalate.”

From 2016, the DSC Prize will not announce the winner at JLF (as in the past). Instead the announcement will be made at another South Asian country in line with the prize’s essence. Every now and then rules are tweaked as a response to the time, but even now self-published books are not eligible to apply for most of these awards.

For an award to be perceived as fair — putting the spotlight on an author and writing, setting a new literary standard — the process begins with the selection of the jury. The members should not have a conflict of interest with the nominated books, authors or publishing houses. This is never an easy task in India, since the world of publishing professionals is small and interlinked. But it is possible. Ensuring an independent jury with no vested interest in the books or authors being considered for the award has a positive domino effect. Nilanjana Roy, author and book reviewer who has been on many juries, says “Juries are at their best when they discard likeability or political correctness, and try to reach for the best writing of the year, however that’s defined — the most original, the most beautifully crafted, the most disquieting.”

A jury selecting an author/book purely on merit, judging it among its peers and tradition it operates within, will have a real impact on sales; readers are discerning and will respect the decision. It also helps strengthen the brand of the literary prize, the publishing firm and the author. Given perception is reality, it is better to manage perceptions. As author and poet Satchidanandan, who has been on the jury of several awards, points out, “On the whole, these awards have been fair but for occasional lapse of judgment. The subjective element is inevitable, but it is generally a jury of three to seven members who debate and decide. In an ultimate sense the awards reflect the taste of the times and may not have a lasting value.”

Sometimes there is a contrast between what the jury selects and the readers expect. For instance, bestselling author Ravi Subramanian has won the Economist Crossword Book Award (Popular Choice) twice in 2012 and 2013 and the India Plaza Golden Quill Award for Readers Choice (2008), but never a jury prize. This distance between the jury selection and the market tastes is echoed by noted writer Tabish Khair’s experience. “While I have been shortlisted for around half-a-dozen prizes in India, I have won only one: the All India Poetry Prize, which is the only major prize in which all the entries are anonymous,” he says.

Otherwise publishers, editors, authors, literary agents, booksellers agree that there is no real impact of sales after an Indian literary prize is announced. The inevitable comparison is with international prizes such as the Man Booker, the Pulitzer and the Nobel where there is a noticeable surge in book sales in the local market after the winner is announced. According to Caroline Newbury, VP, Marketing, Penguin Random House, “The gap in the effect they have on sales is possibly because there is more recognition for some of the longer-established overseas prizes.”

Having said that, Karthika V.K., publisher, HarperCollins India, says “[An award] is very important because in a crowded marketplace it marks out a book and its author as special and directs the attention of readers and booksellers to it. The increased visibility and buzz around it helps sales and also helps publishers promote the writer’s past and future books.”

An award for a translated book has a simultaneous impact in two languages says Mini Krishnan, editor-translations, OUP. “A classic case is Bama’s Karukku translated by Lakshmi Holmstrom. That Crossword Prize in 2001 changed Bama’s life. I think there must be over 100 MPhils on the book and many Tamil Dalit works were picked up for translation in English after that. …When a translation wins a prize, the sales of the original also picks up.” Literary prizes in India are few. They help recognise writers in many languages and styles. But there is room for more awards in different categories — women, picture books, illustrators, translators — and also genres like crime, business, spiritual, self-published and graphic novels.

Payal Kapadia, Crossword Award 2013

The Crossword Award 2013 for Wisha Wozzariter completely changed my life … from being invited … as a speaker to the Jaipur Lit Fest, from Bookaroo and the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival to the Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival and Litomania. The award instilled confidence in my publishers, Penguin, who signed me on for a two-book series and made it their lead children’s title for 2014. The award also made other major publishers sit up and notice my writing… I think winning such a credible and reputed award has done wonders for my career and for how seriously I am taken. Book sales are only a small part of what it means to win such a prestigious award.

Anees Salim, The Hindu Prize 2013

Since bagging The Hindu Prize, Vanity Bagh has been selling quite well. In fact, it’s been selling well, since the shortlist was announced. Post The Hindu Prize, it has been reprinted twice. And the French edition will be out this year, with a Malayalam translation soon to follow. I think the award created a lot of interest in the book.

Cyrus Mistry, DSC Prize 2013

Very glad I won the DSC Prize last year. However, with hindsight, I have to say that the concomitants of any award — excessive media attention, invitations to literary festivals etc — are a major distraction for me. They don’t make it any easier to write that next book.

31 January 2015

Sumeet Shetty, Literati, SAP Labs book club

26 08 , 2014 No Comments

Literati is the book-club at SAP Labs India, and India’s largest corporate book-club.

Headquartered in Walldorf, Germany, with locations in more than 130 countries, SAP is the world leader in enterprise software and software-related services.

Literati aims to bring together books, readers and writers. Here’s a list of authors who have spoken at Literati:

Amit Chaudhuri
Alex Rutherford
Alice Albinia
Amish Tripathi
Amitabha Bagchi
Amitava Kumar
Anand Giridharadas
Anjum Hasan
Anita Nair
Anuja Chauhan
Anuradha Roy
Arun Shourie
Ashok Ferrey
C P Surendran
Chetan Bhagat
Geeta Anand
Harsha Bhogle
James Astill
Kiran Nagarkar
Manil Suri
Mark Tully
M J Akbar
Mita Kapur
Mridula Koshy
Mukul Kesavan
Musharraf Ali Farooqi
Namita Devidayal
Navtej Sarna
Omair Ahmad
Pallavi Aiyar
Pankaj Mishra
Partha Basu
Pavan K Varma
Peter James
Poile Sengupta
Raghunathan V
Rana Dasgupta
Sam Miller
Samantha Shannon
Samit Basu
Samhita Arni
Sarnath Banerjee
Shashi Deshpande
Shashi Tharoor
Shehan Karunatilaka
Shobhaa Dé
Sudha Murthy
Suhel Seth
Sunil Gupta
Sudhir Kakar
Tabish Khair
Tarun J Tejpal
Tishani Doshi
Vikas Swarup
Vinod Mehta
Vikram Chandra
William Dalrymple
Yasmeen Premji
Zac O’Yeah

Contact: Sumeet Shetty ([email protected])

Sumeet Shetty is a Development Manager at SAP Labs India, and is the President of Literati, India’s largest

corporate book-club.

Inking India, Asian Age

02 12 , 2012 No Comments

My article (cover story) on word portraits of India, published in Asian Age, 2 Dec 2012. Here is the link http://www.asianage.com/cover-story/inking-india-946

The recent Girish Karnad-V.S. Naipaul altercation reignited the debate on how authentically can the realities and complexity of India be portrayed through words. Writing on or about India is not unheard of — E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India; M.M. Kaye’s Far Pavilions; Rudyard Kipling’s Kim and Jungle Book; Mark Tully’s No Full Stops in India; Gregory David Robert’s Shantaram, Arvind Adiga’s The White Tiger and Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children to list a mixed bag of names. To comment upon the accuracy or authenticity of books discussing India is never easy. Yet surprisingly the books that work don’t try to understand India’s complexity — they reveal it. They don’t impose a world view but they have a point of view. Writers who share their personal experience and look out from that, seem to grasp more than those who have readymade explanations or impose viewpoints to simplify complexity. Works that pile detail on detail work very well, such as Shantaram or Kim.

Recently, these word portraits on India have gained momentum, especially in nonfiction. The frequency with which these books are being published is astounding. For instance, Akash Kapur’s India Becoming; Oliver Balch’s India Rising, Patrick French’s India: A Portrait; Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers, and Princes & Painters in Mughal Delhi, 1707-1857 edited by William Dalrymple and Yuthika Sharma.For writer Tabish Khair, “It is not a question of portraying India ‘correctly’, as India is too complex and changing a reality to be portrayed in a handful of approved or ‘correct’ ways. But it is a question of engaging honestly with the discourses employed by anyone to portray India: for instance, if someone sees historical India as torn between the two opposed and segregated ‘nations’ of Muslims and Hindus, then he is subscribing to a dubious colonialist 19th century discourse, and I think this should be pointed out.”

Raja Rao, in his preface to Kanthapura, talks about the need to develop a new kind of English to describe the complexities of India. “One has to convey in a language that is not one’s own, the spirit that is one’s own… We cannot write like the English. We should not. We cannot write only as Indians. We have grown to look at the large world as part of us. Our method of expression, therefore, has to be a dialect which will someday prove to be in as distinctive and colourful as the Irish or the American. Time alone will justify it.”
Amandeep Sandhu, whose recently published Roll of Honour is about Punjab, comments that a word portrait on India “demands that the writer rid oneself of one’s own prejudices and learns to stand in the shoes of the villain in the text. That is a tough call and is compounded by not wanting to write for a market or for money or for a constituency. I feel it is necessary to portray ourselves in a way that the readers can focus on us not for our being exotic but for our being human.”
Academic and critic Mohan Rao said in a recent review of Siddharta Mukherjee’s The Emperor of Maladies, “I am curious about why some books get international recognition and awards and others don’t… The Indian elites and middle classes celebrate whatever the West acknowledges. Why the West acknowledges mainly Adigas and Vergheses says something about imperialism and the economics and politics of publishing. It also says something sad about the Indian elites and middle classes who believe these don’t exist.”
Shauna Singh Baldwin’s new novel The Selector of Souls has an Indo-Canadian character. She feels, “How can there be any correct way to ‘portray the realities of India’ or more importantly Indians? If I thought about that, I’d be completely discouraged from writing stories and just stick to pithy comments from the sidelines. Rarely are stories written from a multi-point of view (like a play or a film) or a group point of view. Most stories ask, Why did this happen? and, Why to this person? Fiction usually follows one individual at a time, asking the reader to put him/herself in another point of view.” Janice Pariat, whose anthology Boats On Land focusses on khasis, says it very well, “It’s most important to keep in mind that the nation is our biggest, toughest construct and all writers can do is offer a re-imagination of a small part of it — whether the place is where he or she comes from or chooses to live in.”
The acclaimed writer N.S. Madhavan feels most Malayalam writers of the past were zeitgeisty, in the sense that they flowed with time rather than holding up a mirror to realities of the day. He says, “O.V. Vijayan’s celebrated Legends of Khasak was essentially a 1960s novel that through sheer good writing outlived the decade. Fiction these days has more reality connect; it took more than 40 years of Malayalis’ Gulf experience to produce Benyamin’s novel Goat Days or their tryst with Naxalism in Santhosh Kumar’s Andhakaranazhi (Vortex of Darkness). Surely this ought to have something to do with instant history churned out by individuals in social media.”

Tabish Khair Posts