South Asia's Adrian Mole

One of the endearing characters in modern British fiction is Adrian Mole. Adrain Mole's diaries are a cynical look at modern British society. The protagonist, Adrian Mole, born in a poor, dysfunctional British family, blunders through life. The secret diaries start at the ominous age of 13 and 3/4 and goes on into the forties in a series of books.Written by Sue Townsend, the books are a hilarious read.Through the eyes of Adrian Mole, one gets to see the ironies of British life. They have been made into a TV series also.

    The South Asian answer to Adrian Mole comes from, strangely enough, an immensely talented Pakistani woman writer called Moni Mohsin. I read the " Age of innocence " by her when it was released. Like any first book, It had its highs. I presume it must contain a good part of the writer (first books are like that, I suppose). It harked back to the growing years when little girls read Enid Blyton and Mills and Boons. An adolescence tempered by love, longing and the dark clouds of war in East Pakistan

         The "Diary of  a Social Butterfly came after that. It was nothing like her earlier book. It was a satire of modern Pakistani elite through the eyes of a woman who married rich. The protagonist's life is probably diametrically opposite to that of Adrian Mole. She is a social butterfly from high society, where Begums of the leisure class wear diamond encrusted jewellery, designer clothes and sunglasses. Their lives are dotted with kitty parties, foreign holidays and bitching about other women.  It is a nice book which will easily have you in splits. Butterfly's malapropisms are hilarious. Every chapter starts with a headline news of the day which could be gruesome like terrorists blowing themselves up and the chapter would go on detailing the rich Begum's life which revolves around absurd trivia.
       Tender Hooks, her latest book takes off where she left in the Diary of a social butterfly- only in a more violent Pakistan. Apparently, the book appeared as a column in Friday Times, a newspaper edited by the writer's brother-in-law, Najam Sethi, of the jailed- by- Nawaz- Sharif- fame.The book is full of endearing characters, like Aunty Pussy, Janoo (the husband) and Jonckers (the cousin for whom Butterfly is doing a due diligence of eligible spinsters to marry). The end of the book shows an uncharacteristically soft side of Butterfly, that is humane as husband Janoo.
         The book is aimed at a larger audience of Hindi / Urdu speaking populace that inhabit South Asia. Someone who lived in Tamilnadu/Kerala all their lives might miss most of the double entendres and humourous asides of Moni Mohsin.
  With lines like "I am tau so depress so depress, I can't even tell" one could picture identical upper class women in high society Delhi,a few hundred kilometres east of Lahore, mouthing the same lines in westernized Hindi/Urdu.  When a famous social commentator recently said that Pakistani media is richer in content than India's we raised a few hackles. I have always held that view. But I always thought we had better writers.  After reading Moni Mohsin's delightful book, it felt nice to see Pakistani writers with a great sense of the the absurd in modern South Asia. We become better humans when we learn to laugh at ourselves. A lesson here for young confident Indians who are all of a sudden preening about, full of themselves. It also strikes you that the lives of elite in South Aisa with all material riches, are as empty as Adrian Mole's British youth life devoid of luxuries and struggling for livelihood.

     

The Love Queen

               When “My Story” by Kamala Das (aka Madhavi Kutty) was being serialised in a Malayalam weekly, it shook up the somnolent, cosy and staid society of Keralites in general and the elitist Malabar Nairs in particular. Having lived there in those times, these ripples did not escape me. There were furrowed brows, wrinkled in distaste  and revulsion among the elite. There were knowing winks from those not part of the high society. She had broken a few taboos. Considering that she was born to a famous poet and was the grand niece of a famous writer, it took immense courage to speak of things which her class always did but never mentioned.

          For me, a 15 year old adolescent then, it was different. I would quickly rush through the magazine to spot any ‘scenes’. The scandalised looks of readers convinced me that the book contained erotica that was close to pornography. She unabashedly describes her body, its’ development and her nudity. I was flummoxed by the depictions of paper flowers, colour of walls, snake shrines and clothes and other general descriptions of trivia but very little of the real hot stuff that we were looking for. 

     I followed her life closely. She was always surrounded by controversies. I forgot what contained in “My Story”. She became many things to many people. Still a heretic to the elite, she was variously the lover, mother, sister, niece, poet, celebrity, wife and enemy to Hindu hardliners (for converting to Islam during the last lap of her life). I remember looking for Yasunari Kawabata’s works after reading an interview by her in which she mentioned his works with great admiration. Then one day she died after a long bout of illness.

  

       I read “My Story” again- in Malayalam. I also read “The Love Queen of Malabar” by Merrily Weisbord, a story of the friendship of a Canadian journalist with Kamala Das. Merrily has tried to be as honest to the subject as she could. She finds her stories of sexuality alternating between delusions and a smattering of reality. In "My Story", there are places where the reader might pause and think”could this be true? Or is she making it all up?” Kamala Das describes her literary career as a search for words all the time, in the dark night, during lazy afternoons. Her words were simple yet effective. Her humility struck me as a wisp of fresh air in a world of literary pretenders- filled with writers  who try to obfuscate and make reading an intellectual instead of an emotional, soul stirring exercise. She was humble about her abilities but was greatly successful in her craft.

              Her life had been a quest for elusive love. Where she found it, she gave it unconditionally. She was ahead of her times. Things that continue to mildly shock us- like live-in relationships, open marriages, homosexuality and bisexuality-  You could find all of these in “My Story” and remember, this was the 1970s Kerala and not the swinging 21st century. Years from now, tomes would be written on her literature and the social milieu she lived in. Maybe a couple of Phds would be awarded on the impact of her literature in society and much else.

    But doctoral studies might  miss the enormous reservoir of love within her. Love flowed within her  like a wild choppy ocean, or to borrow a term from her, like a river in spate- brimming at its’ seams and threatening to devour all it came across. There was no animosity in her tortured soul. She approached life with a rare honesty. She disdained hypocrisy. Her body was just a vessel to contain her love.  The only real love affair of her life, she claims was with a much older man (her husband’s boss, to whom she was pushed) with whom she never had penetrative sex. Somewhere I have read that once when the private love letters of a famous literary figure (in Malayalam) were stolen and published in a magazine, she called him up to say how sad she was that no one wrote her such beautiful love letters.

        There is this small vignette from “My Story”. One of the youngsters who lived in the neighbourhood rapes her one night in a drunken stupor. She sees him many months later. He passes a very crude remark about how sexy she looks. Her answer was a long nerve racking laugh which scared him away. Her young son kept telling her not to laugh like that. Her answer to this whole world filled with masks and pretensions  was a long deranged laugh.

             She converted to Islam for a man’s love. If you heard that man speaking, one would perfectly understand her. It was love she found in old age, while bones creak, varicose veins sprout and joints ache. A time when one would be soaking in the presence of children, grand children and others dear ones. Love came at a heavy price. She found it not too high to pay in her eternal quest for it. A decision she made and faced social ostracism and (albeit briefly) the overpowering love of a whole new world. The symbolism contained in her religious conversion is not lost on the reader.  Isn’t religion just  an invisible cloak or a purdah, isn’t  love the ultimate gift at the end of the rainbow?

kindle

    I may not qualify as a High Net Worth Individual (HNI in financial parlance) but I am a regular book buyer who often splurges rashly on books. (What innocent vices… in these times when Babus are talking of owning high rise, sea facing properties in Colaba!! I am talking of buying measly books!!) But the salesperson in Delhi’s Midland book shop in South Extension treats me like I am the richest guy who patronises his shop. I have often seen foreign diplomats and some famous faces browsing for books there. But in terms of expenditure per month, I top at least some of them; and hence the special service. The Missus who comes with me on these shopping expeditions, also buys a lot of books. Among book buyers who spend  a proportion of monthly disposable income, probably we must rank somewhere up there. (I am not sure if the Ambanis are reading much. Anyone with good taste in books wouldn’t be building Antilla.)

           I am not particularly known for preserving books. They lie inside a small room in my house in no particular order. I have fixed a nice music system (more about that later) and try to spend as much time in this cozy little den. But the busy life here affords me very little time to do that. Hence the number of unread books and unheard music keeps piling up.

                    I own a kindle now. For the benefit of those who look askance at the mention of it, let me explain. It is an e-book reader with a 6” screen. It has no touch screen interface and no colour display. It has a rather intrusive keyboard which can interfere while reading. It is light and easy to carry like a book or diary. With a nice leather cover (to be bought separately) it can be held like a book. It uses the E- Ink technology (Electronic Ink- the screen does not light up like an LCD screen) and hence causes very little strain on the eyes. The charge lasts almost two weeks and hence you need not worry about the screen dying on you and the frequent need for charging. The Kindle uses a format called mobi for storing books. Books stored in Kindle takes very little space since it doesn’t support colours. If you were thinking of reading the latest Playboy magazine in multicolour splendour, forget it. This is strictly for the printed stuff. It doesn’t work well as a web browser but has a smooth interface with Amazon website from which you can pay and download books into the Kindle. 

    Well, if you are reading this from a third world developing country I wouldn’t advise you to do that. If you are located outside the US of A, even free books might cost you $3 a pop if you download it from Amazon. There are smarter ways to do the same thing through a method which my son taught me. Since it may raise questions of copyright, ethics and legality, I shall refrain from elaborating further. (We might yet learn to be seasoned criminals from our sons!!)

   Someone close to me brought it from the US. If you buy it in India you might end up paying a lot of extra on customs duties. (Ipods and TVs sell in India almost at international prices but not the Kindle- shows that we are not a reading country). It is cheap in the US ($139 for the Wi Fi only model and $189 for the 3G model). A nice leather cover might cost a few more dollars and bingo you are ready to go. Surprisingly I found the best write-up for Kindle users in a blog by Shekhar Govindarajan, an Indian software professional. I was impressed with the range of questions that have been answered there.   I have also downloaded free software called e-calibre which is a good interface for storing and transferring books to your e-book reader in any format. There is also Gutenberg.org which contains most of the books on which copyright has expired. I have now a lot of books that I always wanted to read. In the first few days I kept downloading a lot of stuff without much thought. Now I am careful and download only stuff that I want to read in the near future. I am reading “Obama’s Wars” on the kindle right now. It is a well written book. But as always, the journalist’s (Bob Woodward) insight into the workings of power could be a bit over-dramatized.

    It is not exactly easy to switch between books on the kindle. I do that a lot with the printed stuff. I try to go back to Tariq Ali’s latest tome on Pakistan. Then I try to catch up with Sue Grafton’s latest alphabet series novel (U for Undertow) and Michael Connelly’s “Reversal”- All this without paying a cent.

A murder long forgotten

It is very unlikely that the Nobel Committee would confer the World Peace Prize on Abdul Nazar Madani, an Islamic preacher/politician from Kerala. He swears that he is a man of peace and many individuals from politics and civil society vouch for him. Listening to his early speeches could be very unsettling. If you are a Muslim youth, you could be inspired enough to go on and plant bombs in crowded markets and 2^nd class railway compartments. If you are a Hindu youth, you could be outraged enough to join the radicals who brandish Trishuls, chant the name of warrior gods and cause general murder and mayhem. The evolution of Madani from religious preacher to credible, smart politician is interesting. He is presently under the custody of Karnataka police for acts of terrorism. His recent arrest was a mega media event, with a reluctant police camped outside the orphanage where he is based and media persons speculating on his prayer schedule and health status.

           In the event of his getting nominated for the coveted prize, India may not take the trouble of writing to 180 odd world nations to boycott the investiture function. His chair won’t be empty and he might get there on a wheel chair (he was incapacitated many years ago in a bomb blast).  Many Malayalis might even take pride that the award has gone to a fellow Malayali. When he was in jail for over nine years in the Coimbatore blasts, politicians of various hues visited him to seek his help in various elections. Seeing a hardliner Islamic preacher in jail looked good on their political CV. One wouldn’t fault them for trying to earn brownie points among Muslims for the symbolism contained in these visits. Everything is par for the course in competitive electoral politics. He was set free by the Courts since the evidence did not measure up to the rigorous standards of Indian (actually English) justice. Cynics say (meanly) that he deserved a dose of Medeival Justice which involved cutting off certain parts of his already incapacitated body as was done in the case of a Professor in Kerala. Some suggest that the book of Constitutional justice be junked and Police ought to just bump him off in custody. While in jail, his wife was implicated in a conspiracy to burn state buses as a form of protest.

In other words, Madani is always in the news and he hogs the limelight. He is watched closely by a slowly polarizing educated State which is known to have democratically elected the first communist Government in the world. One would expect the Left in Kerala to fight this slow slide to communalism. But the politics of the left in Kerala today is largely mired in rhetorical slogans, cynical arguments and impractical positions on serious issues of daily life. 

     I almost forgot what I was coming to say. This is about the disappearance of another religious preacher whose life took a different trajectory. Chekannur Maulvi’s body, it is believed, lie un-mourned deep inside the earth or a water body without the benefit of a last prayer or burial.  He was a known contrarian in a world filled with conservative Islamists. He was known to be deeply knowledgeable in Islamic law and called for reforms in many aspects of prayer and conventions. He earned the ire of conservatives. He was sharp witted and brilliant in arguments. In public debates, he would outshine his adversaries while they would be frantically scanning many books for an effective retort. The learned Maulvi could even prompt them to look at a certain page without much ado. He was a clean shaven preacher, a failed businessman and a father of many kids from his two wives. If his arguments for reform of Muslim society were unpalatable to any, the least one would expect is that his adversaries would be try to defeat him intellectually in an informed debate. The brave voices of reform in Muslim community in the early 20^th century managed to survive and live another day.  No such luck for a latter day reformist like Maulvi.

     Chekannur Maulvi was fetched from his home by a few young men on a dark night in July 1993. He never reappeared after that night. The civil society in Kerala protested feebly. Along with a few Muslims, despite the risk to their lives from conservatives, they fought for justice and called for an enquiry. A CBI enquiry was eventually ordered. Some men were arrested, some accused went abroad and some are yet to be apprehended. The needle of suspicion points to a certain hard line Islamic organization. For all practical purposes the wise ones who ordered the hit might never see a jail. They did what they did in their Lord’s service.

The Maulvi never fought an election. The Muslim League which has a strong presence in Northern Kerala, has participated in electoral politics, shared power with mainstream parties and reaped dividends for their community. If one has worked and travelled all over India, one could see the higher economic and social standards of a Kerala Muslim vis a vis his counterpart elsewhere in India. Some would say that it is an ideal example worthy of emulation: How democracy and electoral politics can slowly transform the fortunes of a community.

If reforms had to come from within, then the Maulvi had the right credentials to sound the bugle call and seek a debate. In a world of increasing intransigence and rigidity, the Maulvi stood alone, called for reforms and disappeared from the face of earth one evening. He didn’t get the justice that is enshrined in our constitution. He wasn’t called for TV debates with the bearded worthies ranged against him. Nowadays, he is written about more as a victim of a criminal case than as a scholar of Islamic studies. The mainstream society has almost forgotten him.

Therein lies the irony. Abdul Nazar Madani might yet win the prize for peace, with a few right noises and some deft political manoeuvring; while Chekannur Maulvi rests peacefully…unheard and unmourned.

Death in the time of Climate Change

And quietly she came, in the night, slowly taking away life on earth, spreading wrinkles in skin, callouses in hands, aches and pains slowing movement. Sometimes she came like the whirlwind, snatching away young life, bubbling with energy, fresh skin, beautiful hair... The body is washed, clothes changed, perfumed candles lit. Invariably, relatives turned up to weep, priests came to bury or burn, rituals performed. Then the living got on with life to face just another day.

   The dead don’t worry no more about old age, fears of being poor and indigent, not whether children would fight over one’s belongings on earth. Death is eternal, inexorable and induces a hush in thoughts, in conversations. There are obituaries, increasingly exaggerated legends and hidden values of the deceased that everyone failed to see when they lived.

    M.P Narayana Pillai is a writer who was much ahead of his times- A journalist who transmuted into a story writer. His works of non fiction aren’t available easily anymore. He loved to shock the gentle, staid Kerala society. He shook the notions of political correctness in an increasingly hypocritical society. He wrote on politics, sex, middle class morality and turned conventional wisdom on its’ head. He could foresee the advent of cable and satellite TV so many years before technology took baby steps. He advocated sponsorship of roads and stadiums named after dead rich guys whose relatives won’t mind sparing some rupees to get their forefathers’ names etched in stone; and not after political personalities whose successors treat the country as inherited property. It could defray the cost of construction and who cares if they are named after rubber tycoons in Kottayam or Cashew kings in Kollam. He advocated reservation for Nair caste- who else has family gods, who else usurps priestly duties, who else has matrilineal system? Tribals, of course and if the stuck-up Nairs don’t see the benefits of reservation, they ought to be consigned to mental asylums, he said. So all ye Nair warriors- stop bragging about dubious lineage and sit in dharna in Kerala Government Secretariat, said he.

       And he wrote about suicides and other more painful forms of death. He advocated for the right of humans to die at the time of their choosing. Jains starved to death. Vedas spoke about spreading the holy Darbha grass on river banks and awaiting death. It was the Semitic religions that spread canards about suicide. They spread the belief that your life doesn’t belong to you but to some woozy creature in the sky called god. This wasn’t done with altruistic aims. It is smart to spread that belief to prevent mass suicide among slaves- wouldn’t it destroy the medieval empires if slaves decided to resort to mass suicide and put their masters in a spot? If poultry chicken had brains won’t they expedite their relentless march of death, thus depriving their owners of juicy meat and revenues? 

  If Pillai were alive, he would have reiterated his theories on suicide in these times of climate change. The burgeoning billions of living, breathing humans and their reckless consumption of energy and goods have really raised questions about sustainability of our planet. He would have advocated peaceful, painless suicides. He would have written against burning dead bodies, against using wooden boxes and marble plaques to bury them. He would have argued that it is better to dig a big hole, lower the body sans clothes, fill it with red soil and plant a fruit tree… He would have found a ready supporter in me…