Flanagan's Wake

I like Richard Flanagan already. He has won this year’s Booker Prize for ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North’ that I have not read. I have read nothing by him, but following the award the search has yielded some wonderful insights.

Of course, I like him for saying that he is “ashamed to be Australian” because of the environmental policies of the government. But, what is more interesting is how he gets into the mind of another real person. A good writer does not only create characers out of thin air. S/he can make the most simple reality appear profound or mystical or mythical.

Flanagan has done it with David Walsh that I now know so much about Walsh and so little about Flanagan. This he manages to do without any self-effacing sophistry. In fact, he pushes the boundaries of language to create something out of somebody. In the essay for The New Yorker, he wrote:

Attempting to describe Boltanski’s devil is like trying to pick up mercury with a pair of pliers. At fifty-one, Walsh has the manner of a boy pharaoh and the accent of a working-class Tasmanian who grew up in Glenorchy, one of the poorest suburbs of the poorest state in the Australian federation. His silver hair is sometimes rocker-length long, sometimes short. Walsh talks in torrents or not at all. He jerks, he scratches, and his pigeon-toed gait is so pronounced that he bobs as he walks. He is alternately charming, bullying, or silent. As he looks away, he laughs.

This comes somewhere in the beginning, so it has to be tantalising. Flanagan certainly knows about a good way to grab attention. From his subject as arriviste, to his perversities, his enterpreneurship of the arts and his inner demons, it is a sheer treat.

Walsh’s favorite novel is “Crime and Punishment,” and conversations with him can sometimes feel like talking to the deranged narrator of Dostoyevsky’s “Notes from Underground”: possessed, but rarely less than compelling. His obsessive desire to explain makes his thoughts sometimes seem to proceed algorithmically. Though the condition has never been diagnosed, Walsh and those around him believe that he has Asperger’s. It would explain his extraordinary gift with numbers, but it is hard to know where the condition ends and bad manners start. Walsh’s rudeness is legendary. “Let’s face it,” a close friend told me. “David can be a complete cunt. But he is also the kindest and most generous man you will meet.” Walsh funds a major tennis tournament, the Moorilla Hobart International, as well as Hobart’s MOFO music festival. There are also many and ongoing private kindnesses: kids he sponsors at Hobart’s Quaker school, support of several families, and friends he constantly helps. Pointing out that Walsh has always spent more than he has earned, Ranogajec said, “David was never motivated by money.”

I doubt if the idea behind the Booker Prize is to make you fall in love with a person the writer writes about, but here you have it. I am in love with David Walsh and I couldn’t be bothered about finding out anything more than I know about him through Richard Flanagan.

I no knot what to do...

"You know nothing about the business of writing," he told me.

Then came the details. How to get off. Get it off. Take off. Take it off. Book launches. Public relations. Publishers and their demands. Reviewers and their demands. Readers and their demands. The format. The cover. The pages. The typeface. The people to meet.

"What's happening with your book?" I asked him.

"I don't know."

I returned to my soggy half-finished sentence and patted it dry.

© Farzana Versey

A CounterPuncher Forever...

 
“Alexander Cockburn no more” would sound like a terrible headline. The reality of it is as biting as his prose. To think that I just got to know about his death early today shook me up a little more. I crumble easily and almost did. The ‘almost’ worked because every word of his obit on Christopher Hitchens still haunts. To many it was either blasphemous or an excoriating take on a man on a self-indulgent pulpit. I saw it as Alex’s honesty towards his ideas. The subject’s demise would not alter that.

I have gone through a few memorial pieces in respected mainstream publications. "Radical", "iconoclast" are the running themes. It is true he took no prisoners. It is true, and I say this from my experience, that he welcomed whatever skirted the beaten path. One day, about five years ago, when I came in from miles away and got accepted, he and Jeffrey St. Clair made me realise that CounterPunchers was a community.

There are several reasons to respect him for his hard-hitting work, but he was also aware of limits in certain areas. He did not carry one article I sent. He owed me no explanation, but he did. It was about sensitivities. I was surprised, even shocked. The good thing is it was not to coddle up to some commercial enterprise.

There was another piece he carried – an account by his nephew about his battle with schizophrenia. It appeared in the weekend edition and in his diary Alex introduced it. This, to me, is as honest as taking on the system and speaking of truths that are sought to be hidden away.

While he was open to different thoughts, he was human enough to have his own biases. How could we not expect it of one with such strong opinions?

He called his readers a “communicative lot”, forwarded emails that complained to him about publishing me, but expressed genuine happiness when some pieces “got around”. The people who have corresponded with me have been from varied fields based on the different subjects I wrote on – from scientists to academics, from fanatics to the faithful to atheists, from purists to adventurers, from the prurient to sexual libertarians (and, yes, some who wooed). They do not need an open forum.

That is the reason CP is not a journal. It is a movement. I differ with those who talk about it being non-mainstream. This is what the mainstream should be like. I’ve written for a whole range of publications and websites, and know the difference.

“Please ask your web team to fix it,” I had said in one of my emails about a broken link.

“Le ‘Web Team’, c'est Jeffrey. There's just the two of us. Best A,” was the reply.

So shall it always be…the two of them. And a bunch of writers and readers bound by questioning minds.

- - -

I do not know what world I occupy to be so unaware. Here is Jeffrey's piece:  Farewell, Alex, my friend

Footnotes from the ledge

From the film 'The Sweet Smell of Success'

Years ago, a web portal I wrote for in the nascent stages of news and views on the Net in India, decided that it needed a footnote for its columnists. I was accustomed to ones that simply said I was “a freelance journalist” (I crack up when I read “independent columnist” – independent from what, of what, by what? Is that not to be taken for granted?) to the smart “refuses to sit on the fence” (it worked against me after 11 years of continuous writing of that column when I was told I was too independent and don’t take briefs!) to a phrase taken from my blog: “has a healthy disregard for objectivity”.

So, back to that e-portal. As some of you know, I could not imagine ‘writing’ for anything that did not scrunch in my hands. I did not even have a computer. One day, out of curiosity, I was at a friend’s office and casually mentioned this column. We reached the destination and as I scrolled down on my discovery trip, I reached that precious footnote. It was in red, italicised. It said that I, FV, was an “iconoclast”.

I froze. Images of me as Che Guevara flashed on several T-shirts. This was serious, and after a few seconds I was pretty much on the floor laughing, and ROFL was not yet known to us. From that vantage position where I had to look my iconoclastic best, I asked my friend whether he agreed with me that it was a stupid idea; he did. And made it sound more ominous: “It might appear as though you are saying it.”

This is the problem. It is more likely that publications decide. However, the newer lot ask you to send “two-three lines describing yourself”. I once wrote a horribly cheeky one and was told it did not go well with the content.

Sealing my fate!

When I became a serious op-ed addict during college, I recall reading pieces that were written with care for both language and thought. Some were ponderous, no doubt, but many were challenging. For me, this is the purpose of a good edit piece. There was space enough to explore ideas, and not the need to compress because there has to be place for ‘likes’, ‘share’, ‘send’. I understand this is the way to connect, but when some publications ask you to send SMSes to say whether you liked or did not like the column, it is a bit much. The writing becomes another product. Unfortunately, these days it often is.

But I did not know who those writers were. Celebrities and those from other fields had not taken over the business of holding forth on what they were doing. This does not work as ‘inside’ information or adds any authenticity, for they too are writing for an audience and have their own biases.

Do readers care about the qualifications of the columnist? It is a bubble theory. It looks good until you prick it. And the pricking is just giving it a good look-over.

However, mostly the footnote works as a promo for people in different professions. I had once taken a swipe at someone mentioning how his CV exceeded the word limit. It was, therefore, good to read on the ‘Self importance of names and titles’ in Pakistan’s Express Tribune as to how the whole description business has gone overboard. When I was writing for them, I had half a mind adding, “The writer has a degree in Vampirism from the University of Dracula”. (Incidentally, third-person descriptions are supposed to look objective; they make me feel schizophrenic.)

Quite a few publications have these long rambling bottomlines, and most of their columnists are so darned third-degreed, all from the best universities. A good university ideally teaches you to explore, not flaunt knowledge.

We never read any mention of a degree from Gujranwala or Chhatisgarh. Reveals our colonial mindset and, dare I say, adds weight to the publication's reputation. They could probably have a roll-call of Oxford/Cambridge/Harvard types, all with halos. If they can take global roundabouts and quote Greek mythology in Latin phrases with a slight nod to desi lingo, then chances are that more people will notice because snob and blob value go together. They are like the always-open KFC outlets.

The other peeve regarding "X is a former something or the other" reveals our absolute obeisance to the past. Instead of wondering why s/he even at the prime has been rendered redundant, it imbues the individual with the gravitas required of a know-it-all. Much like a divorce might make a discussion on marriage legitimate. If the 'formerhood' has been achieved after much toil, then it works like a tiger's head poking out of the wall.

Now, chances are that if the writer were not a "political economist" or some such and just another bloke with something to say, a piece questioning such self-importance would not have gone through the thinker's pose of editorial discretion.

PS: I posted the last three paras at the website with a footnote that said “~A former ET columnist with several degrees of separation”. It’s still awaiting moderation after hours! (Finally published after 12 hours.)

© Farzana Versey

Character Assassination

Due to the untimely demise of one of my characters, I was in mourning and could therefore not submit the story on time.

This is a real note I sent years ago. A colleague had entered my name for a short story competition by the British Council. I was not terribly enthusiastic about such events, but since it required imagining, it was par for the course. I thought nothing about it and since I was not accustomed to writing for a reason, I wove the words at a leisurely pace.

A tap on my shoulder and a thick envelope served as reminders that I paid no attention to. The date of submission was gone. I folded the sheets of paper and put them in the envelope – the address and stamps were ready. My friends were still enthusiastic. I quickly grabbed a page from my diary and wrote down the note:

“Due to the untimely demise of one of my characters I was in mourning and could therefore not submit the story on time.”

What else could I say? I am not good with formal letters. Besides, it was succinct and happened to be the truth. The cat in the story had died. Obviously, I had killed it. Yet, its death was a departure, a turning point.

Recently, an Indian media house gave an award to a novel and the jury used a curious phrase for its choice: one of the reasons was “for its non-judgmental attitude to the characters”. How does a writer not judge a character when s/he has created it? This is not immaculate conception. You sweat over it, love it and get suffused in it, for however brief a time. The judgement lies in the nature of the relationship. The writer is the initiator and woos the character. It is possible that the character might mirror the writer. Introspection is also judgement. You are pronouncing a verdict on your thoughts and feelings.

Any objectivity would be forced. The character is because you are.

Back to my old story, I had written it for myself. In those days, there was no audience I was seeking or speaking to.

A few days later, rather uncharacteristically, I got a note from the British Council. It said, and I will rely on memory and promise not to exaggerate, that indeed I had missed the date of submission and rules would not permit my work for consideration. However, my accompanying note was rather interesting and caused much amusement and they could not but let me know that although the story would not be included in the competition, it was noticed.

I wondered whether dead cats could lick the cream.

Who moved my 'journalistic space'? The Age of Twitter Set-ups

Why the hell is ‘journalistic space’* being taken over by micro-blogging? Why is it that when one person breaks wind there, a whole bunch of people queue up outside the loo?

Hmm…I had just finished my morning adulations, and ignoring the Toffee-nose of India (TOI), I went to the stapled sister. I like Mumbai Mirror. I like mirrors. Now, in the midst of all the light frothy gossipy stuff it mentioned a “corruscating review” about a recently-published “social Bible”. It did not specify whether it was the Nobu or the Antillia version.

What follows here is a reaction to the responses to the riposte to the review and the rejoinders to the remnants that remain of the righteous rumblings.

Since those who do not read my blog are not acquainted with those who do not read everything else, I will have to introduce the characters that are not there and what they did not do.

An author Soul Setter, henceforth referred to as Setter because I want to sound like a Goan, wrote a book, a social Bible, if you must, called 'Getting To the Top of ITC’s Everest in a Chartered Plane: Ten Rules for Being Moses'. The Setter has friends and clients. That is his business – to make clients feel like friends and friends become clients.

It is simple enough. Learn to get all the Gifts of the Magi without being Christ. Or, if the atheists prefer, how to lay eggs without being a hen.

A lot of people might have bought Setter’s book because they were friends and clients and wanted to read about how they were making people.

Then, what is the problem? Setter is popular among the television channels and is always on panel discussions. He is a marketing guy and many of the big companies would like to see him talk about the state of the nation while he is selling their soap suds and hotels.

According to my sources – okay page 2 of the paper – the Setter read that “corruscating review” and went into “an indignant, inelegant splutter”. Fine, the couple of examples I read weren’t exactly nice, but then wasn’t the review “corruscating”? Setter was blinded. Hurt. Setter could not control. Setter blurted out: “So @me-churma (name changed) reviewed my book for a magazine no one reads. Am not surprised! He is supposedly an unemployed economist for an unread mag!”

What followed is truly weird. A news magazine that we read for taped conversations, excerpts from the editor’s book (oh, no, will leave that for now), and four-page essays by Oliver Twist asking for more Mao jumped into the buzz. It went full-throttle into an excavation expedition and besides Shivaji’s personally autographed copy of Adil Shah's memoirs, they found tweets from the time of the Cripps Mission. Standing apart were those about the Setter controversy. It turns out that a month before the “corruscating review” appeared, Setter had praised the magazine – let us call it Craven – addressing its senior editor with the shining words: “and by the way I love the way your magazine CRAVEN is doing in the journalistic space*…super stuff…” (italics mine)

This should tell us that Setter is a bit displaced. He needs to shout, as he has done by typing the name of the mag in all-caps. However, I do not see any disparity in the two comments. He loves (or loved) the magazine in a confined space to which he supposedly has access (remember the chartered plane and all?). He is telling us that not everyone has that access. “No one reads” clearly means he is not No One; he is Someone. He is also hoping it goes unread. This is Setter Subconscious. The personal attack on the reviewer is because he assumed a slight directed towards him.

I have not read the book (extracts, yes), but did go through the review. It seemed like the reviewer went into the deep dark woods to figure out a bonsai plant.

The problem for people like us is that everyday we find little bon mots, and not all by bon vivants, which Setter claims to be, and we often do not know the context. Recently I came upon some exchange between the Diva and other divas about maids. Suddenly, out of nowhere, another best-sailing author’s name cropped up. Let us call him Chattan Bang. It transpires that he was being sarcastically awarded something for watching films with his maids.

Now, Chattan really likes films and his latest watch is The Dirty Picture: “The movie breaks so many new grounds, and opens the door for Indian biopics.”

If it is breaking so many new grounds, where will there be place for doors?

He is so taken up that he even gets patriotic: “Few Indians make me proud of being Indian. Vidya Balan is one. She isn't just an actor, she is an artist. Superb performance.”

I am told the boobs and midriff prosthetics are not made in India.

Then, this: “If a dog keeps on barking your name, he makes you famous. The dog, however, remains a dog.”

And the bark remains a bark, no?

Unless you have a dog named Google, like Setter does, who can find the doggie doo even in coruscating darkness.

Authors and Mummies

Forget a chair named after you at a tony university. Several dead bodies can soon claim to have been at your place if you have the honour to win the online poll for the best crime writer. Ten authors have signed up for the ‘Million for a Morgue’ campaign. Those who get the most votes will have a morgue named after them. Dundee's Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification (CAHID) in Scotland needs £2m; it has contributed half the amount. The rest will come from the vote, where each voter chips in £1. This is to facilitate a special embalming facility for research.

I assume the writers have decided to participate out of a genuine need for academic excellence in the field of such scientific endeavour. One of them has probably done it out of gratitude. Val McDermid often tapped Prof. Sue Black of the Centre for her own research. As she recalls:

"I remember asking her what a body would look like once it had been in a peat bog for 200 years. There was a moment's silence on the phone and then she said: 'A leather bag with a face on'. And that was perfect because that gave me an image I could put in my book."

We can take this further and have restaurants, stadia, bats and balls, strip clubs, even a specific love-making position named after authors. I can’t wait.

It raises the question about what could motivate readers to vote. Would it be like any popular poll where you choose your favourite crime writer? Or, since the purpose is not a secret, will the person contributing the money be interested in the Centre’s plans and therefore keep this in mind and choose an author whose work is the most macabre and deadly?

What if after winning the author has second thoughts about the naming? Would that not amount to letting down the readers who voted? Do writers crave fame and not mind such an honour? But, are not death and murder the territories they stalk in their literary endeavour?

However, it might be a good idea if the morgue is named after a character from a thriller. Better still, it could just be called ‘Crime Writers’ Mummies’.

Words/Sperm Count

Writers who think blogging is a waste of words are like men who don't masturbate for fear of wasting their sperm or making them weak.

~F

What the Dickens

 Should an unfinished novel by a writer whose works have a special stamp be completed and adapted for the stage? How can anyone complete Charles Dickens’ novel? It is an adaptation for the stage, but will it then go without an ending?

Between now and 140 years ago when he died, people have apparently been curious as to how “half the psychological thriller” he wrote might have ended. In this time, I doubt if it was curiosity that killed those that passed on. Besides, on what basis is it assumed that The Mystery Of Edwin Drood was half finished? At 23 chapters, it might have been almost towards the end, or maybe it was intended for the long haul and had only just warmed up, slowly.

BBC Two has entrusted the drama to Gwyneth Hughes. She said: “The tragedy of the erotically obsessed cathedral choirmaster, John Jasper, throbs with sexual menace, murder and opium addiction. But alongside his story runs a brilliant small-town social comedy which is often laugh-out-loud funny. After all, this is Dickens, the great emotional extremist, and master of the rollercoaster ride. It’s just the most enormous fun.”

Jasper falls in love with his nephew Drood’s 17-year-old betrothed, Rosa Bud. A small portion from the last written chapter may give some peek into the story:

That he must know of Rosa's abrupt departure, and that he must divine its cause, was not to be doubted. Did he suppose that he had terrified her into silence? or did he suppose that she had imparted to any one - to Mr. Crisparkle himself, for instance - the 
particulars of his last interview with her? Mr. Crisparkle could not determine this in his mind. He could not but admit, however, as a just man, that it was not, of itself, a crime to fall in love with Rosa, any more than it was a crime to offer to set love above revenge.

As subjects go, this is as relevant today. Emotions are not dinosaurs, although there can be half-finished emotions that remain on the cusp and wait to be realised. While Hughes is not working on the novel, the act of giving it a finale when there was none is a bit disconcerting. It is like adding icing to a half-baked cake. Theatrically, even a chapter can be staged, but one would be aware of the work in its entirety.

Would this qualify as an adaptation of Dickens? Then, on what basis is the end assumed? We are talking not only about one form as opposed to another but also about one writing against another. We are not talking about assembly-line Mills & Boon or, for that matter, the James Bond franchise. When I see a film based on a Jane Austen novel or watch a play by Tennessee Williams, it is the authorial voice that comes through. Despite several innovative interpretations of Shakespeare, the core of the bard seeps through the props, the characters and the sheer power of language, however much it might be ‘simplified’, or indeed made pretentiously complex.

Dickens had said all those years ago: “The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.”

This is a cogent thought and might well apply to the current situation. However, I’d like to examine the two terms outside the context. The BBC is in the business of construction (rather peculiarly it has described the work as “a strange, disturbing and modern tale about drugs, stalking and darkness visible”). The raw material is there, but the blueprint is not unfinished. It builds the skeleton of a structure, start piling on the bricks and mortar, adds the plumbing, the wires, but the last few floors – let us assume the penthouse or boutique apartments – have no design. Being in the construction business it will follow the module of the lower floors. Or will it experiment and give them a special touch? Can one architect replicate another’s unspelt-out ideas?

When Dickens talks about love for the creation before, it is as conceiver. The creative process is ongoing and the creation itself grows over a period of time. Does the love for it and of it alter too? Does the pre-emptive love negate the very creativity, in that it falters? Is it weighed down by the fact of how the constructed work will ensure love?

With some writers, the love is in the lines. And that includes the fine lines on the face of a work. It is completion.

Bad writing worse

She has “slaughtered sparrows and the English language”, they say, and have awarded her for the “crappiest of sentences”. They are generous, “How can there be good literature if there was no bad literature?” Aw. It is like saying how can you have good mangoes unless there are bad mangoes. The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for 2011 has chosen Wisconsin professor Sue Fondrie for her “her 26-word sentence”.

Here it is:

“Cheryl’s mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, chopping her sparrow-like thoughts into bloody pieces that fell onto a growing pile of forgotten memories.”

Okay, it isn’t the best of sentences, not even good. But is the verbosity a problem? And how many sparrows have been slaughtered? I have read sentences that run into paragraphs. We also apply the word literature carelessly. Does it mean all of published work or is there a standard, like high art or classical music? Don’t we expect a hush to fall when we hear lit-er-a-ture enunciated in high-ceilinged libraries with tomes of men and women who chiseled words to sculpt a story? Guess what? I just composed a 26-word sentence. Had this line been in a book, would it be doomed?

I am tired of saying that language evolves, people in different parts of the world talk in varied tongues, think and dream in lingos that are not universal even within the standard English category.

We have the Bad Sex Writing Award and I find it amusing because when there can be bad sex why should the writing elevate it always?

I would like to give Fondrie a more holistic treatment. Outside of this sentence, do we know anything about Cheryl’s mind? Maybe it did turn – would it sound better if instead of turning it churned or lashed? Her thoughts being sparrow-like could mean they were chirping in small voices or were just small, niggling, pecking at grains. However, there had to be bloody pieces. Why? Because when there is an addition to forgotten memories the new entrants need to show that they have met with death. Blood is a potent symbol of it. Lashing winds and churning cannot draw out blood, so the turbine comes into the picture.

Anyhow, here are two possible versions.

A minimalist, often a fine creature, but when following a trend just settles for a quickie, might say it like this:

Cheryl’s thoughts became history.

The writer of erotica would write:

Cheryl’s thoughts palpitated even as her breasts felt raw after the night that left her drained from the vanes of the wind-powered turbine that had roughed her up. Her desires fluttered sparrow-like despite the hangover the morning after. She ran her hands over the sore skin and felt a trace of blood, its trail went all the way to the door. He had left long ago, adding to the growing pile of forgotten memories. She went back to the wind-powered turbine.

Now, I await my award with bated - and baited - breath. 

Lady Gaga's Mirror

She echoes my writer self. I am sitting here looking into what seems like a well, but I am dragged into it and soon the reflection is not water. It is solid matter as I hit my head on the ground.

Lady Gaga's quotes from a piece she wrote for 'V' are being showcased for reasons of her narcissism and obsessiveness, but she is delving deep. That well I was looking into could be her.

For two days I did not write. Deliberately. It was deliberated upon. Until now, I was utterly charmed by my ability to slake my thirst with words. The happenings around pummelled me and I was left gasping or angry or wounded. It has often affected me. That is not as worrisome as my complete subservience to what I write. What I imagined was a natural part of me I realise now to be an addiction. Some might say it is pleasant, but it has had a deleterious effect. Not because someone decides to seal my fate, or cannot fathom the complexity of certain thoughts, or finds them simplistic for their world-view is not my world-view and most prefer Disney characters to the dark nooks, unless one can caricature them, and the media so loves to do that.

The effect it has is internal. I begin to feel ill when I do not write. I get irritable, I do not behave normal. There are a couple of people who have seen me in this state and it is not nice. I transform. Writing can be a huge part of my life, but must it replace it? I was cogitating upon these when Lady Gaga’s words touched a chord immediately. Let us travel together through some of what she said and what it means to me:

I have said before that I am a master of escapism, which many attribute to my wigs, performances, and my natural inclination to be grand, but perhaps that is also a lie. Maybe I am not escaping. Maybe I am just being. Being myself.

Think about the many situations writers write about. When do the lines between creation and creator just tumble over each other? I write a lot on topical issues and one might not imagine it possible to escape from what is reality while analysing it. It is. I am reacting; this is cathartic and therefore escape. All purging is escape, a denial of retention. I hate to say this, but I believe that by responding to everything around one becomes a puppet, even if the subconscious self does the string pulling.

Is this me, these wigs of ideas, the grand stand that may in fact appear to be lies if seen from the perspective of one ideology that negates another? I know I am being myself. Yet…and here is Lady G again:

The lines for myself have become so blurred now, I know not the difference between a moment of performance and a moment of honesty. If you were to ask me to remove my Philip Treacy hat at a party, in truth it is the emotional and physical equivalent of requesting I remove my liver. Talk about giving “clutching her pearls” a new meaning! I know not the difference between the hair that grows from my head and the teal wigs that grow from my imagination. They are the same. They are both honest, and always have been. So maybe I know nothing of “the art of escapism.” I was just Born This Way. I revere the dream to be real. I am always, and shall forever be, private in public.

Private in public. Think about it. Writers sit in their worlds, making new worlds – places, people, verse, prose, plots. We go back to cook, eat, bathe, shop, have relationships, and even ‘connect’ with real anonymous people. What is the truth here? The latter is a fact; the truth is larger, in that it is the submerged imagination ticking away. I know that if you take away my words, I cannot tell you who I am. I have forgotten.

I watch television and even the soaps seem to be ‘material’ to explore, to deconstruct, to analysed.

I read the newspapers and every bit looks like it has to be torn apart. I, too, am not ‘escaping’, for I know that each time I make a travel itinerary, it is with the intention of writing. My plans work around that – the laptop, pen drives, notepads,several pens and pencils to doodle. I go shopping in these new places and, of course, something happens that invariably leads to an experience. It could well be interesting, but after I have picked up the bags and sat down for a coffee, I bring out my little notepad or my phone and am jotting down observations. Do I not taste the coffee? I do, perhaps give it more importance than it merits.

So, what happened in the two days I did not write? I took a dust cloth, wiped the laptop, and then sat down, immobile for long, because I ceased to exist. The food, the shower, and the clothes I wore were things stuffed into what seemed like an automaton. I began to feel nauseous, drowsy and my hands went numb. Yes, numb from not writing.

These are withdrawal symptoms and I took a good look at myself in the mind’s mirror and saw imaginary lines scrawled on my face – incomplete sentences. I am doomed. My escape has become my life.

Blank Sex

After five minutes of deep contemplation, I am ready with my book 'What Every Woman Thinks About Apart From Sex'. It will have blank pages to convey that no one knows what a woman is thinking of, even regarding sex. Of course, to make sure that I am taken seriously I will refer to the ‘painstaking research’ that went into the effort.

Will it be a bestseller?

If my luck is as good as Sheridan Simove’s, then yes. The Oxford graduate’s work 'What Every Man Thinks About Apart From Sex' has raced ahead of Harry Potter and Dan Brown. It is listed at number 744 on Amazon. The 200 blank pager that is supposed to suggest the answer to his thesis is “nothing” is sheer gimmick and one is surprised at the stupidity of the ‘readers’ as well as, I am afraid, the ‘writer’. You might say that a man who has such entrepreneurial skills cannot be stupid. It depends on how we define entrepreneurs and stupidity.

He explains:

“This book is the result of 39 years of painstaking research and practical study into the subject. I left nothing to chance and really threw myself into my work. After many years of hard work I finally realised that men think of absolutely nothing apart from sex. It was a shocking conclusion and I realised that the world needed to be informed of my findings.”

Huh? He is 39, so has he been studying and practising this even while he was burping out baby vomit?

For years different studies have been telling us that men think about sex every two seconds or whatever. What sort of hard work did such discovery involve? Did he speak to men from different cultures and spheres of life? What did he notice when men were performing other tasks – did they get moony-eyed or cast lustful glances or went all the way and got spasmodic? What exactly constitutes ‘thinking’? Did professionals doing their jobs imagine sexual imagery in their work areas – like cardiologists saw a hole in the heart and the mechanical engineer looked for the right lubricating agent?

Students in Britain are happily shelling out £4.69 for the book. It has become a “craze”, but they are taking lecture notes on those blank pages. Any person who feels it is “gratifying to see my book outselling many other academic works whose authors claim to have worked even harder than I to break new ground and further the extent of human knowledge” would pause and question his posture. Not so, Sheridan:

“I never anticipated that my book would be used for students to take their lecture notes in. In a sense they are proving me wrong by filling my book with content. But I wonder how many of them go back to thinking about sex once the lecture is over. I’d be willing to bet that answer is 100%. In fact I would go even further and estimate that 99% are thinking about sex even during the lecture. They probably think using my book as a notepad will help them get laid. And they are of course totally correct in that hypothesis.”

This is the sit-down version of stand-up comic stuff. He is so obsessed with the idea of thinking about sex and his now-popular ratings that he imagines the use of his work as a notebook will help the students to get laid. He has threatened to write a similar book about women, but as of now he knows precious little. Women do not get excited seeing men/boys reading books on sex, especially if they are empty. Women don’t like vacuums or the vacuous.

And guys may think of sex often, but they grow up and find it sexier to hit the ball or the competitor harder. Now if only Sheridan had tied his labour of lust with a nice leather whip then both men and women might have had something to do besides taking notes on calculus.

I have an opinion, so what's your problem?

“Have you been there?” “How well do you know about the place, the person, the idea…?”

These queries have beset me and, I am certain, several others in the writing and more specifically the journalistic field. It is a valid query if one is reporting from the ground. It goes without saying that when you are at the scene, then you would gather some basics by the mere fact of being there. Is this sufficient?

Often the questions are not arising out of curiosity, but to pin you down, to challenge not your knowledge but your opinion. When I had written about the Indian army, among the several responses there was one that assumed that I had never met an armyman in my life. I had, rather cockily, said that I had not met god and yet wrote about religion. In further areas I have been put on the mat for different reasons.

I would like to put myself through self-scrutiny. I do not write on subjects, even opinion pieces, of which I have no knowledge or very little. The financial area is one; technology is another; science is fascinating, so I try and understand some nuances. But, it is not possible to have first-hand knowledge about everything one opines about.

So, how does one form opinions? There are strong opinions and reasonable ones. There are opinions that are reactions or come from a strong belief. The responses to them are also opinions. We consider a viewpoint reasonable when it confirms our beliefs or when it ostensibly looks balanced.

I am mortified of balanced opinions; you can give two sides of a story but it is as you see it, not as it necessarily is. Therefore, the balance lies in sitting on the fence and watching both sides and it includes the experience of sitting on the fence and the sore-ass it causes.

A logical opinion is one where the person tries to string together the threads of disparate thought processes; it is essentially seeking to make sense of the noises in the head, but you’d never be able to tell! While we use the term loosely, ‘personal opinion’ is tautology. All opinions are personal, unless you are sponging on someone else’s views or relying on research even to form an opinion, which is the last refuge of the scrounger.

Now, there are some opinions that are considered kneejerk. As the recipient of this honorific often, I must say that such rashness is possible when you know you are entering where angels fear to tread. It is akin to a satanic rite of passage, perhaps the predecessor of the more honourable devil’s advocate that I love playing. There are certain subjects that one has internalised or understood or discussed before and what comes forth is impulsive and spontaneous, but it is also a reaction. To assume that a reaction put in words has no merit makes little sense; it springs from a strong feeling. Are feelings opinions? Indeed, they are. Belief or disbelief without emotion is mercenary. The expression of it need not be emotive, though.

So, how does one form opinions? I think conditioning plays a very minor part if you are highly individualistic. The environment is crucial not because it influences you, but it makes you respond to it for what it is and how it ought to be. In this ‘ought to be’ aspect lies one’s ability to chart a mental course. It could be a tried-and-tested formula or out-of-the-box thinking. Some people change their opinions according to what is convenient. These are chattels to the available material. However, if the alteration in perspective arises due to deep thought or disillusionment with an ideology, then it is not turn-coat behaviour.

This long but necessary preamble brings us to the queries posed to opinion-makers. There is much scientific endeavour expended on finding things from little tubes. Here, hypothesis is an opinion that is sought to be proved. An artist’s painting on canvas is an opinion of an event or an abstraction; s/he may have not been there in the first instance and it is not possible to do so in the other. A writer of fiction is expressing an opinion through the characters.

If you were to ask anyone what they think about a political event, party, figure or a film, film star or celebrities or even the person in the street, they will have something to say. 

Why then is the person writing in the newspapers made answerable? I have not been to Bihar, just as Manmohan Singh has never contested an election. One has to have some basic knowledge, some facts, some ideas formulated in the past to reach certain conclusions. We know about poverty, about the caste system, about crimes, about feudalism, about lack of basic facilities, about the economic elitist idea, about politicians…there is a process of transposition and an understanding that conjecture is based on some edifice or precedent. We can be on different sides but the basic facts remain. How we see those facts – whether we take them at face value or bore holes into them or hang them from a pole are opinions.

One may question opinions but not the existence of them. It is like wondering about dreams, but no one can deny the existence of sleep. Of course, it is possible to argue that daydreams are more potent. But that is just my personal opinion.

And, yes, if some people think I am opinionated as hell then they must thank me for giving a sneak preview of what they too have no clue about!

A seatful for a million dollars

There is literary merit in the fact that J D Salinger’s toilet seat is up for auction. Think about the ideas many creative people say they get when they are digesting more than thoughts. Is there any truth in this phenomenon?

As a somewhat creative person, I do come up with the most imaginative description of post culinary indulgences while responding to pathology tests. One doctor even guessed I was a writer based on the poetic justice I did to what appeared to be a drab report that exposed me not only to amoebae and bacteria but also to a future reader.

Given this little episode in the nascent stages when my literary yearnings got a boost, I can conjecture with a degree of certitude that it has to do with the seating arrangement.

It is said that Rodin’s The Thinker is in such an inspired pose. With feet on the ground, while the left side of the brain is occupied in logical activity, the pressure reaches the right side and sparks off the dance of the cerebrum. There is also the psychological fact that something is leaving you; although the departure is welcome in this case, it harks back to a past. This becomes the manure to fill the fertile soil of the future. The mind suddenly has ideas and on occasion they could be psychedelic. It is quite akin to a state of deliriousness as closure is being reached.

The difference between a scientist and an artiste is that the former can soak in a bath tub, think up something and run out stark naked screaming ‘Eureka’ because he has a hypothesis; the latter, due to the peculiar task at hand cannot leave until it is over and therefore there is time to ruminate and think it through. You can later always say that you were preoccupied with your Muse.

- - -

“I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.”

(Holden Caulfield in Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye)

3 Readers in Search of a Writer

X, Y, Z belong to three nationalities and do not live in their homelands. We first ‘met’ on the page and the monitor screen. I was a byline. There was communication beyond that, but I remained a Person Who Wrote (PWW).

One day I met them in person. It was not the first time I was meeting readers, but the first time I was meeting such disparate people within a span of days in one city.

X and I had the longest correspondence and talks and he knew quite a bit about me; he also knew what was not there. In effect, I came away feeling like a curiosity that had been satiated. I was still the writer, the metaphor for a person. I was familiar but that sense of familiarity was black on white. I never became grey or blue or red or pink…and if I did it was as a ‘colourful’ character. The writer became a character. If my blood had been drunk it would have only congealed into ink.

Y is a new recruit! We exchanged only two notes; the first time he was ticking me off because I had written something about his area of expertise and he felt I was wrong. I said I was right about my right to be wrong, and he agreed. So, we were okay. Then, we met. It was nearing sunset and I was dying to look at the sky in all its flaming brilliance. I sipped iced tea; he stuck to Earl Grey. It was an amazing chat, completely metaphysical, and he did what I often do – drew various patterns with his hands on the table: pyramids, squares, other shapes to highlight a point. I don’t know when exactly, but he mentioned a personal incident from my life in passing. I immediately reacted, “How do you know?” He laughed, “You wrote about it!” I did not expect that as someone new he would have read this. More importantly, those pyramids and squares, so meaningful in our debate, now became me. I was also an atom, a molecule, something you brought to the table. I was a PWW.

Z knew me from my book, primarily. He had written a few times, and had got fairly acquainted with my work. He invited me home and I would have met his wife and child, but it was too short a notice. So it was dinner at a club without them. Fun insights about his life, about the diaspora. He asked little. Towards the end of the meeting, he said, “The moment I saw you, I said this is F. Frankly, if you were not what I had imagined, I would have been devastated.” Again, I was the writer, except that he had imbued me with the flesh and blood of his imagination. Yet, the imagination was about what I wrote. During the conversation he had said, “I see you as completely liberated…” I paused. I knew what he meant. As an Indian woman writing on certain subjects I am seen as a bit of a rarity, especially the language I use. In fact, I am told it has little to do with my nationality. I am bold and far too upfront even by normal western standards. Z was, like many others, projecting that onto me as a person.
The parting shot, just before I left, was most amusing and interesting. “But, you can also be quite frightening. There is a divinity about you that seems to go contrary to that other image.”

I chortled. I began to think of a halo around me, but again it was either as a writer or as an imagined person going a bit against that which he said he had also thought about.

It has made me contemplate about whether I want to be seen as just that. Recently, I did not write for a while. One of the reasons was, as I mentioned in Who moved my bubble?, to unwrite myself.

From being a curiosity, a pattern made on the table, an imagined entity, a bagful of words seeping out on the sand, leaving small little imprints and occasionally metamorphosing into crabs clinging to what will be washed away.

Even more importantly, in this supposed bonfire of the vanities I was in fact trying to reclaim my person. I realised only later that although I knew all along that these three people are hugely accomplished in their fields, have interesting experiences – professional and personal – by seeing them see me as only a writer, was I not seeing them only as readers? The difference is that I know them from what they say or do; they know me from what I write.

What sort of synergy is possible in such sharing? It also makes me wonder whether there can be any equitable understanding. Different perceptions aside, does the reader not have the upper hand? S/he can see you as you are, as you could be, as you may not be, as they think you are, as they want you to be, as they hear you are. There is no room for factual analysis at all. Strangely, the subjective makes you into an object.

I used to crave the company of people who had not read me. One friend would boast that she had met me without having read a word and wanted to stay away from my writing as much as possible to see the real me.

As the friendship evolved, she often remarked, “You are so transparent. I can read you like a book.”

Dis n dat

I am not surprised that some student from the National Institute of Design (NID) posed as a journalist to enter the court premises and later attacked former Haryana DGP S P S Rathore.

The case of Ruchika’s molester has been covered rather strangely in the media, especially the emphasis on his smile/sneer. This student really behaved like some stupid hack. Utsav Sharma will be hailed for his self-righteous anger over the light sentence meted out to Rathore. The guy did not know Ruchika, he would not take a knife out to slash fellow students in ragging cases or some punk throwing acid on the face of a girl who has jilted him. To be a hero, you need a prominent villain.

This is an old case, and its sudden shooting into prominence reveals how we make use of certain examples for our own benefit. Rathore should be given the stiffest punishment without being given so much media coverage.

- - -

There will be another round of discussions about the West Bengal government and its reservations for Muslim OBCs. I have been against reservations based on religion because they result in ghettoisation. Besides, Muslim caste structure is different and based primarily on economic backwardness. What caste did the villagers of Nandigram belong to?

- - -

Amitabh Bachchan read out his father Harivansh Rai Bachchan’s poems. Zia Mohiuddin from Pakistan read out the works of Faiz Ahmed Faiz. This was part of the Shaman ka Chacha* TOI thing.

Was there a need to posit Hindi against Urdu? Urdu is an Indian language, and an official one. It would have been nicer if we had two Urdu writers from both sides being feted. Ghalib is ours. So are several others.

And pardon my saying so. Even with my limited knowledge, Harivanshrai is no comparison to Faiz. If we wanted Hindi, then we have ‘Dinkar’, Maithili Sharan Gupt.

It would have made great sense to promote ‘other’ aspects of culture, like, say, a Tamil or Malayali poet and someone writing in Saraiki or Pushto from the other side.

And has anyone noticed that women are hardly represented in any of the 'series'? Will they be lumped into one intellectual zenana, a harem to discuss wimmin's vermin issues?
- - -
*Play on 'Aman ki Asha'

Words, words, words

Back to the Shaman ka chacha initiative by we know who. They got two young writers, “Punjabis” who know the meaning of panga (hah, who lives in a bubble?) to chat up each other on "BUSTIN’ MYTHS & FEARS".

I shall just take two quotes from the TOI report.

Chetan Bhagat:

“After all, peace isn’t touchy-feely organic farming. What do Pakistanis feel about Ajmal Kasab? Do Pakistanis want him prosecuted too?’’

I can understand a management type who wrote about three idiots not being really upto nuff where real Pakistanis are concerned. But I am curious about how organic farming has become touchy-feely and what does it have to do with peace/'unpeace'. Is regular farming like peace? And does the Pakistani attitude towards Kasab a yardstick for what they think about peace? What about before November 2008? Did they not exist? Aren’t those valid areas to explore?

Mohammed Hanif:

“I have yet to meet any Pakistani in his right mind who does not want Kasab prosecuted. As for the Mumbai terror attacks, we were scared out of our wits as we watched TV. Because we knew that if this was happening in Mumbai, it could just as easily take place in Pakistan. And that’s exactly what’s happening. How could anyone who saw the Mumbai terror attacks feel good about the incident?’’

How does Hanif define a right mind? This guy was with the Pakistani airforce; later he worked for the BBC’s Urdu radio service in London. He moved to Karachi last year. It shows, Is he saying that because something like 26/11 took place in India, it could happen in Pakistan?

There is no question about anyone feeling good, and even mentioning it is rather strange. It only buffers the image certain Indians have about Pakistan.

If this is what bringing about peace is, then let’s not leave it to people who cannot go beyond pangas.

Ashes to ashes: Harold Pinter

What is real and what is unreal?

In a state of delirium, pumped up with medication, laid up in bed, swathed in white from a lightbulb that hurts the eyes, I can see clearly. I can see the reality of the unreal, the unreality of the real. A cliché would refer to it as truth being stranger than fiction.

You said in art there was no difference between the true and the false. Both could co-exist. But, you emphasised, as a citizen one must ask what is true and what is false.

How many times have we seen truth falsified and how often has falsehood been repeated to let each layer get calcified as truth?

I am lying down here and reading. Weapons are ready in little minds more lethal than guns. They are talking; they can only talk.

As you once pointed out, we too will have a Tony Blair moment with a child that survives and a caption that says 'grateful'. What are we grateful for?

We are grateful when those wielding arms declare a ceasefire. We are grateful when war-mongers decide it's time for peace. We are grateful for being alive among the dead. We don't even know we have gone through death in the mortuaries that our souls have become.

I am tired and dizzy. You are gone. It feels the same.

Let me switch off the white light and utter the words that will make me feel I am not alone: Talk to me, Harry.

Author! Author!

I dislike the word author. Not for itself, but when applied to those who use their skill with words. Author is a larger term. According to some rumours, god is the author or the world.

Am I an author?

I was told a few months ago that I ought to change my profile on this blog. Heck, I was told to stop blogging “like that” and posting pictures of hair, nose, eyes, bits of clothing…I was told to behave like I mattered. I said all the parts of me mattered; without them I’d be handicapped, especially the bits of clothing…

Therefore, with the confidence that comes with dotage (stop right there before you hand me the walking stick; dotage also refers to second childhood), I decided to let things be as they are. They are still true, perhaps truer.

People continue to ask me, “What do you do?” I swallow. No, I don’t tell them that. I swallow my pride - is pride liquid that it can be swallowed? Why don’t we chew pride into little morsels? - and tell them that I am hot, cold, frigid, old, young, over-the-top, under-the-weather, between a hard rock and the waves…I give them this gibberish, which really isn’t because I am all of these and some.

If they are nice, then they nod the sort of nod stewards give when a diner tries to pronounce some unmentionable part of an unmentionable animal they are about to order from the menu. Then, they ask, “And what else? Like what do work as?”

Right. I mumble that I write.

Now, writers can be village postmen penning letters to a beloved spouse in a distant city… “Chunnu ke pitaji, hiyaan gai-bhains sab kusal-mangal hai. Jagdisva ka pairan ma moch huvai, sasura peid par chadayee gaya. Aur haan, bahut laaj aave bolna ka, par aapai ki marji se huva…hamra paaon bhaari hai. Jab gaon aavo to peepermeint lana na bhulvo. Chunnu ko bahut pasand hai. Hiyaan sab yaad karat hai…”

Or writers can be researchers working on dissertations with big fat Greek wedding type sounding names like ‘An Intestinal and Infinitesimal Analysis of Anal Retentiveness in Constipated Minds from the Perspective of Dysenteric Verbosity in the Colon’.

Or writers can be time-pass keyboardists…or part-time poets…or…you get the drift.

So, the person asking me waits and wonders which category I could belong to.

Suddenly, it strikes that maybe I could be writing those mystery novels…like ‘Shhh… koi hai’ on TV where there is a murder, rape, robbery, and the culprit is never that character whose eyes bulge out of the socket and tongue hangs out and hair looks electrified. The questioner may look at my eyes, tongue, hair to ascertain the possibility, though.

Someone even asked if I wrote like Mills & Boon stuff. Oh, I so wanted to say yes. Imagine spending your life writing about women with perky breasts that are definitely more interesting than the women, and men who are very good at inheriting money to keep perky breasts forever perky.

Finally, the inquisitor stifles a yawn and says, okay, nice meeting you…do you know Salman Rushdie? Everybody knows Salman Rushdie. Even the paanwalla, especially the paanwalla.

Now I have begun to say author. It sounds authoritative. Like I am the author of this idea. I wasn’t sure. So I looked up the contract with my publisher. It says, “This deed has been signed by the hip and happening (arrite, poetic license this) FV, henceforth referred to as the author, and Harper Collins, henceforth referred to as the publisher”.

I guess that makes me an author because someone who does authors is saying I am one.

Then comes the next step. Which is deadly, “What do you write on?” I wish I could say food, mocktails, wine, fashion, how to make hay during an eclipse…stuff like that…I stutter, “Well, my first book is on Pakistan.”

“Oh…” (face falls), or “Oh!” (face lights up because s/he has visited there for cricket matches and been in love with Imran Khan who has the bitters/Wasim Akram who has diabetes/Shoaib Akhtar who has ..ne’er mind). Last month, and this is real, I met an educated lady. She was all about how the launch went and how wonderful it is that am on the shelf (hah). She paused and asked, “So you actually went to Pakistan?”

To mess up an old saying, Poori Ramayana padh li ab poochte hai ke Hanuman Lanka gaye ya nahin.

It’s been funny moments. I don’t mind. I like introducing myself again and again. What am I?

A character…I have been written and erased several times.

- - -

I have been delayed, and some people who were supposed to post queries on my book (here) have not done so…you have some time. Or else I will use the email ones.

Waiting for approval

Why, why, why are we so stupid and desperate? Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer was in Mumbai. She was mentioning Chekhov, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky as her “professors”. Someone in the audience asked her if there had been any Indian literary influence.

What was she supposed to say? She mentioned that she had read a number of them and they had “opened my mind”.

There is something quite disgusting about how we want a foreign nod for everything. When an Indian writer goes to America, they won’t ask about American influence or in the UK about British influence. Here, we are not even talking about a novice.

Do we ask doctors if they are influenced by illnesses in India? Do we ask sportspersons if they are influenced by our sports stars? Or Hollywood stars by Bollywood?

I shall wait for the day we have a conference for janitors and one of them is asked about being influenced by Indian shit.

- - -

We are like that only. We wait and wait and wonder and wonder when President-elect Barack Obama will call up Manmohan Singh. Foreign secretaries and people who know about these things, like telephone instruments, hold forth and say things like “It is too early to make an assessment”. Why don’t we just call up and talk to the “mutt” or send him a dog and get it over with?