Jaya Posts

Zainab Sulaiman, “Simply Nanju”

07 04 , 2016 No Comments

Simply NanjuZainab Sulaiman’s book Simply Nanju is about a young differently-abled boy and his classmates. All of them have a bunch of challenges but have caring teachers and didis who tend to the children during school hours. This is a story with good diversity in the representation of communities albeit restricted to a narrow socio-economic class. Every single character’s story has been sensitively created by the author. A story about differently-abled children is an excellent idea given the paucity of literature in this area.

It is also timely given the debates about the ‘Accessible India Campaign’ and the Central government having released the ‘Inclusiveness and Accessibility Index’ that measures the actions and attitudes of different organisations towards people with disabilities.  ( HT Editorial, 6 April 2016, http://www.hindustantimes.com/editorials/government-must-remove-the-barriers-and-fast-track-the-disability-bill/story-0r7PDbg8ghLa54JlSEkykO.html )

The editorial continues to say:

The United Nations pegs the disabled in India at 15% of the population but the census of India fixes it at just 2.2%. This means there are many who do not get access to the State benefits that are due to them. One of the main reasons why the numbers are low is that the enumerators often don’t ask the right questions; families tend to hide those who suffer from mental illness; and sometimes they are unaware of challenges like autism. To redress this situation, the government needs to pump in more money on public awareness programmes and train enumerators better.

…

Last, but not the least, political parties must stop dillydallying on the passage of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Bill, 2014, which is pending in Parliament. The Bill replaces the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995. Instead of seven disabilities specified in the Act, the Bill covers 19 conditions. The Bill is being brought in to fulfil obligations under an international treaty. Many have criticised the Bill, saying that it’s not perfect — but then no Bill is. At least this has expanded the number of disabilities and that is a step forward and will give many more disabled people access to opportunities and funds that are earmarked for them.

There are sweet touches of incorporating lingo spouted by the kids such as “Shutyamouth!” and “Tensioning”. Children tend to experiment wildly and it is not easy to transfer it on to texts but Zainab Sulaiman has. As she tells Archit Taneja in a fabulous blog post on the Duckbill website “I did get some of the lingo from the kids I worked with at a school. It’s an interesting jumble of their mother tongue and what they learned at school. As teachers, we would try really hard to change this and make them speak “proper English”. However, I’ll admit that I cracked up every time they used them. I secretly wanted them to talk more like that! ” ( https://theduckbillblog.wordpress.com/2016/04/04/zainab-sulaiman-interviewed-by-archit-taneja/ )

The story is a gentle whodunnit story of trying to discover who is the culprit responsible for stealing notebooks in class. Unfortunately this story is a flat and standard narrative of children’s literature, not very nuanced and far too noisy relying on many conversations to propel the plot forward. Also the premise of the book relying only on children of financially challenged backgrounds with stereotypical characteristics of domestic violence, child abuse, alcoholics etc is a little difficult to digest. It would have been preferable if the book focused on differently-abled children and brought out the challenges by creating a landscape that would resonate with readers of all age-groups and social standing. Despite every good intention and experience of the author working as a special educator this book will only further alienate such children. Young middle class readers ( who are presumably the prime target group) will read it as pure fiction and move on little realising that such individuals exist around them too. If the purpose of literature is to help sensitise grave issues such as disabled children Simply Nanju is a book that falls far short of expectations. Yet sell it will. Probably even get adopted as supplementary texts in schools since there is little or no literature on the subject. It will make an excellent conversation starter encouraging debates in schools.

All said and done it is a book that must be read.

Zainab Sulaiman Simply Nanju Duckbill Books, Chennai, 2016. Pb. pp. 122. Rs. 199

Mary Beard, “SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome”

05 04 , 2016 1 Comment


I have spent a good deal of the past fifty years of my life with these ‘first millennium Romans’. I have learnt their languages as well as I can. I have read a good deal of the literature they have left us ( no one has read it all), and I have studied some of the hundreds of thousands of books and papers written over the centuries about them, from Machiavelli and Gibbon to Gore Vidal and beyond. I have tried to decipher the words they carved into stone, and I have dug them up, quite literally, on wet, windy and unglamourous archaeological sites in Roman Britain. And I have wondered for a long time about how best to tell Rome’s story and to explain why I think it matters. … .

I no longer think, as I once naively did, that we have much to learn directly from the Romans — or, for that matter, from the ancient Greeks, or from any other ancient civilisation. We do not need to read of the difficulties of the Roman legions in Mesopotamia or against the Parthians to understand why modern military interventions in western Asia might be ill advised. … .

But I am more and more convinced that we have an enormous amount to learn — as much about ourselves as about the past — by engaging with the history of the Romans, their poetry and prose, their controversies and arguments. Western culture has a varied inheritance. Happily, we are not the heirs of the classical past alone. Nevertheless, since the Renaissance at least, many of our fundamental assumptions about power, citizenship, responsibility, political violence, empire, luxury and beauty have been formed, and tested, in dialogue with the Romans and their writing. 

We do not want to follow Cicero’s example, but this clash with the bankrupt aristocrat, or popular revolutionary, with which I started this book still underlies our views of the rights of the citizen and still provides a language for political dissent: “Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra?’ The idea of ‘desolation’ masquerading as ‘peace’, as Tacitus put into the mouths of Rome’s British enemies, still echoes in modern critiques of imperialism. And the lurid voices that are attributed to the most memorable Roman emperors have always raised the question of where autocratic excess ends and a reign of terror begins. 

(Mary Beard, SPQR, p. 534-6)

SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard takes its title from a famous Roman Romecatchphrase, Senatus PopulusQue Romanus, ‘The Senate and People of SPQRRome’. For a scholar who has lived with her subject for nearly half a century to produce a clean narrative and create a thoroughly readable book, not packing it with jargon is indeed very commendable. As she says in the opening pages of the book her intention is to write a story that “has to be a bold work of reconstruction, which must squeeze individual pieces of evidence — a single fragment of pottery, or a few letters inscribed on stone”. What is truly incredible with crystal clear clarity she make innumerable connections with the literature (written material, myths and oral legends) left by the Romans to the evidence found at archaeological sites and linking it to contemporary politics. Not for a moment does it become dull. One of my favourite examples is how she analyses the founding myth or legend of Rome to the legend of Romulus and Remus, linking it to Cicero, and interestingly enough to Benito Mussolini. Apparently the nurturing wolf was an addition made in the fifteenth century explicitly to capture the founding myth Wolf and baby twinsand baby twins. But copies of the famous image are found all over the world thanks to Mussolini who distributed them far and wide as a symbol of Romanita. Later she adds that Livy was one of the Roman sceptics who tried to rationalise this particularly implausible aspect of the tale. “The Latin word for ‘wolf’ ( lupa) was also used as a colloquial term for ‘prostitute’ ( lupanare was one standard term for ‘brothel’). Could it be that a local whore rather than a local wild beast had found and tended the twins?” ( p.59) Similarly throughout the book there are many more examples of such absorbing detail. Whether it be about marriage, politics, elections, citizenship, status of women, adoption, warfare, military, trade, migration etc.

For those in Italy and Britain who live surrounded by Roman ruins and have constant engagement with Roman history this book must be utterly fascinating. Mary Beard has a wonderful agreeable style of writing that makes the history of ancient Rome accessible to everyone. It is not a prerequisite that a fair understanding of the history is required. And yet she has packed SPQR with a detailed bibliography, a timeline, an index and plenty of illustrations/photographs that it can work for the lay reader or the scholar.

In India most Indians go about their daily lives doing exactly what this book is spelling out — talking about the huge impact mythology and ancient literature has had through the ages and in modern times. Indians do it all the time with their oral traditions, myths, folklore and ancient texts. A testimony to this is the immensely successful commercial fiction. It is a fine art by contemporary storytellers to create fantastical stories that blend the modern with the ancient and myth with history. Since these writers are not historians like Mary Beard they take full advantage of their creative license to spin imaginative yarns. Whereas Mary Beard points out in the utterly fascinating SPQR that there is sufficient empirical evidence at ancient Roman archaeological sites whether in Italy or abroad to prove much of the written records inherited over two millennia is more or less authentic.

SPQR has been on the list for many literary prizes including the inaugural British Book Industry Awards, in the adult category for the 10th IBW Book Award and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle — deservedly so!

Mary Beard SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome Profile Books, London, 2015. Hb. pp. 600 Rs 2250 ( Distributed in India by Hachette India) 

5 April 2016

 

 

 

 

 

Raduan Nassar, “A Cup of Rage” ( Transl. by Stefan Tobler)

02 04 , 2016 No Comments

Raduan Nassar“…I could’ve found plenty of reasons to trip her up, not that I was so naif I demanded coherence, I didn’t expect that of her, I didn’t boast of that myself, only idiots and bastards proclaim that they serve a single lord, in the end we are all beasts born of one and the same dirty womb, carriers of the most vile contradictions, …” ( p.19, A Cup of Rage)

A Cup of Rage is a slim book of 47 pages and seven chapters. Each chapter consists of one long sentence. It is about a pair of lovers — a young female journalist and an older man who inhabits an isolated farm. They spend the night together and the following morning without any warning they tear into each other. It is unexpectedly barbaric and devastating given how a little while earlier they had been so lovingly tender. A Cup of Rage is an extraordinary text for its intensity and the power game between the couple. The book was first published in 1978.  Given that women’s movements and feminism were gaining significance in the 1970s the old man’s venomous verbal tirade directed at the emancipated woman/lover followed by the stinging slap he delivers gives the reader a shocking jolt. The unexpectedness of the rage could be seen at face-value as a spat between lovers or as a commentary on the changing social structures and gender equations. Even though I am not familiar with the source language — Portuguese — there is something in the tenor of the translation by Stefan Tobler that makes the story truly magnificent. Sure, there is passion evident in the opening sex scene but the incredible skill of this translation is evident in the energy being carried over to the next day’s incident. Somehow it gets incredibly transmitted in the English text. It has been a while since I read a text that was absorbing to read from the word go.

Raduan Nassar writes these long sentences making one breathless but akin to moments very similar to how we think –flitting from topic to topic, a roller coaster of emotions, going off at a tangent sometimes but somewhere keeping it altogether with a bit of philosophical reflection and analysis. The chapter-long sentence broken occasionally by punctuation moves so seemingly effortlessly. It is like a dance. Fluid. Broken by moments of intensity ( whether in conversation or action) punctuated by moments of such detached reflection bordering on meditation. There are moments when the text is better engaged with as a reader when read out aloud. Stefan Tobler writes in The Independent, “The writing has the sheer unstoppable force of a child’s temper tantrum, and only on a second read – or as an editor or translator – do you see the intricate patterns and repetitions that combine to produce this crushing emotional onslaught. He plays fast and loose with standard syntax and punctuation to convey the turmoil and onward rush of his characters. Most of his pages-spanning chapters in A Cup of Rage are a single long, evocative sentence.” It is no wonder then that as soon as the book finishes you go back to the first page to begin reading it once again. According to an email correspondence I had with Stefan Tobler  the first draft of this translation was written almost ten years ago but he returned to edit intensively a year ago. To quote him: ” It was a joy to have something both so precise and so passionate to work with.”

Raduan Nassar is a farmer now and has been for many years. He is considered a modern literary giant of Latin Ancient TillageAmerica despite having written only two novels. Ancient Tillage is his second book although it was published first. The first English translation has been done by Karen Sotelino. Literary techniques employed in both texts are very similar but in A Cup of Rage these come across as a little more sophisticated, probably a testimony to the quality of translation. It is difficult to say since chronologically A Cup of Rage was written after Ancient Tillage but published first in the 1970s.  It could be that by the time he wrote the second story the author had experimented more with writing. But there is a distinct difference in the two texts. In A Cup of Rage the interior monologue comes across as a richly textured, passionate and sensual. In Ancient Tillage it is flat and dull with a touch of bewilderment. It could be due to the ages of the protagonists too in the stories — young in Ancient Tillage and old in Cup of Rage — thereby being a remarkable comment on Raduan Nassar’s skill as a writer, the ability to be in character of a young and an old man so wonderfully.

His evolution as a writer and experiments with literature are not very well documented since Raduan Nassar sparingly gives interviews. He prefers to be a recluse albeit not in a similar fashion to J. D. Salinger.  Stefan Tobler wrote a wonderful profile of the eighty-year-old Brazilian author in The Independent to coincide with the publication of the first English translation of these texts. ( http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/raduan-nassar-became-a-brazilian-sensation-with-his-first-novel-now-published-in-english-the-world-a6877851.html )

I am not surprised A Cup of Rage has been longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2016. Read the two novels for a glimpse into the earthy brilliance of Raduan Nassar’s writing.

Raduan Nassar A Cup of Rage ( Transl. Stefan Tobler) Penguin Modern Classics, London, 2015. Pb. pp.50 £5.99. First published as Um Capo de Colera in 1978. 

Raduan Nassar Ancient Tillage ( Transl. Karen Sotelino) Penguin Modern Classics, London, 2015. Pb. pp.50 £7.99. First published as Lavoura Arcaica in 1975. 

2 April 2016

Ashwin Sanghi, “The Sialkot Saga”

31 03 , 2016 No Comments
The-Sialkot-Saga

Bollywood actress, Kajol, and Ashwin Sanghi unveiling the book cover of “The Sialkot Saga” at Jaipur Literature Festival 2016.

Some animals hunt. Others hide. And a few hunt while they hide.

Ashwin Sanghi’s latest novel The Sialkot Saga will be released on 5 April 2016. It is a greatly anticipated thriller whose cover was unveiled with great fanfare by the Bollywood actress, Kajol Devgn, at Jaipur Literature Festival 2016.  The Sialkot Saga  is a retelling of modern Indian history through the lives of a Muslim Mumbai underworld don, Arbaaz Sheikh, and a Hindu Calcutta Marwari businessman, Arvind Bagadia. Basic premise being money matters, nothing else — it is a dhanda after all. As is the fashion nowadays in modern novels a family saga spread across at least two generations is a must and is evident in Sialkot Saga too. There are neat historical details beginning with Partition interspersed with brutal violence and unscrupulous plans to gain money. Politics, land deals, hawala, narcotics, films etc. Anything as long as there is a healthy profit margin to be made. There are some descriptions of violence particularly horrifying since they challenge the boundaries of ethics. But the acts described are so very plausible that the horror is compounded manifold. It strikes a sense of fear. Surprisingly the boldness of these criminal minds also makes one chuckle. 300-odd pages into the novel it begins to seem like a manual on the rise of corporate India. It becomes a little convoluted with its business descriptions. An account of the birth of companies like Reliance, Satyam, Infosys to the formidable place they hold today as the gems of Shining & Incredible India. The chorus of the opening pages soon to be forgotten as the plot builds is “Some animals hunt. Others hide. And a few hunt while they hide.” Attention does begin to flag but every writer writes from their strong point and being a successful businessman is one of Ashwin Sanghi’s strengths.

The second is his avatar as a modern mythographer. It is evident in the tenuous tale he weaves about the sanjeevani. It seems a bit convenient but once again it is Ashwin Sanghi’s forte to pull together myths and present them in a modern setting. It is his trademark. And one that his many readers will be waiting for. ( Till date he has sold over a million units of his previous books.)

Here is the link to the book trailer: https://youtu.be/1qv_tk5i9kM . It is a wonderfully edited movie clip but is not true to the book at all.

Undoubtedly Ashwin Sanghi’s “Sialkot Saga” is immensely readable for its tremendous insight into the Indian brand of businessmen. There is no word for their inventiveness in their greed for money and this is matched by the phenomenal storytelling of the novelist. It is quite remarkable. Setting his story in the historical backdrop of modern India proves that irrespective of political ideologies and government policies, money always wins. Having said that there is a lot of testosterone flowing through this book with the few women characters taking on fairly conventional roles. Even the breakaway character of Alisha as an example of the millennial generation does not quite live up to promise. I am not even going to nitpick about historical accuracy since it does not purport to be a historical novel. It is just a great story.

Read it!

Ashwin Sanghi The Sialkot Saga Westland, Chennai, 2016. Pb. pp. 584. Rs 350

31 March 2016

World Theatre Day, 27 March 2016

28 03 , 2016 No Comments

It was World Theatre Day yesterday— 27 March 2016. I missed it. Nevertheless I am posting a short note about a couple of books published recently about theatre in India that are worth noting.

  1. A. Mangai Acting Up: Gender and theatre in India, 1979 onwards Leftword, New Delhi, 2015. Hb. pp. 278 MangaiRs.495 : It is an astounding book written by a feminist who has been closely associated with Indian theatre for more than thirty years. It is an astonishing book not just for the breadth and variety of theatre that exists in India but also for the fine analysis. It is by a woman practitioner who understands the nuances as well as the academic discourses, the historical and political context of theatre in post-Independent India and the influence of women’s movements in performance and how more recent performances have challenged heteronormative, patriarchal structures. For this book Mangai interviewed many women theatre artistes. She has also included accounts of performances, plays, troupes and fascinating bits of information such as reference to Neera Adarkar’s work on highlighting little-known aspects of women in theatre history. “For instance, Adarkar refers to an all-female theatre company called Belgaonkar Stree Sangeet Mandali founded by a prostitute called Ekamba, which performed a social play called Dandadhari: a pro-Tilak play that cautiously addressed the issue of widow remarriage. It even featured Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Gopal Krishna Gokhale as characters. But this did not hold back the critics: the women who played these famous men were viewed as ‘ugly, cheap, and abnormal’!” ( p.138)  It is a path-breaking book for its encyclopaedic knowledge about theatre in India. Every time you read it you discover something more.
  2. The Scenes We Made: An Oral History of Experimental Theatre in Mumbai (Edited by Shanta Gokhale) Speaking Tiger, New Delhi, 2016. Hb. pp. 210 Rs. 599: Mumbai theatre has been and continues to be with theShanta Gokhale establishment of Prithvi Theatre an influential space in India. This particular book focuses upon three spaces — Bhulabhai Desai Memorial Institute, Walchand Terrace and Chhabildas School Hall. But the structure of the book is interesting since these are oral history accounts of noted theatre personalities like Ebrahim Alkazi, Vijaya Mehta, Satayadev Dubey, Sulabha Deshpande, Naseeruddin Shah and Ratna Pathak Shah. It is an incredible book for it plunges you straightaway into Mumbai of 1950s and brings it to the present. What comes across is the very close knit community the theatre artists formed and continue to do so. Shockingly the brilliant introduction by Girish Karnad is not mentioned on the cover or in the list of contents. It contextualises the theatre movement with a superb overview of the Indian playwrights inheritance from the West and their attempts at experimenting with the folk form in a modern play. Girish Karnad says “Could one, we kept asking, write a contemporary play, sensitive to modern concerns, using the conventions of medieval theatre, such as masks, mime, monologues and songs, without becoming regressive in content?” ( p.xv) It is a book I treasure.

But the book I truly am waiting for is noted theatre person and publisher, Sudhanva Deshpande, writing about theatre. Some years ago as he sat by his father’s sickbed, the noted Marathi playwright, G. P. Deshpande, Sudhanva wrote a series of long Facebook posts interweaving GPD’s significant contribution to Indian theatre with an incredible account of the theatre movement. If published albeit slightly expanded this firsthand experience of being part of Indian theatre would be an invaluable contribution to theatre.

28 March 2016

Yann Martel, “The High Mountains of Portugal” and Kent Haruf, “Our Souls at Night”

24 03 , 2016 No Comments

Yann MartelLove is a house with many rooms, this room to feed the love, this one to entertain it, this one to clean it, this one to dress it, this one to allow it to rest, and each of these rooms can also just as well be the room for laughing or the room for listening or the room for telling one’s secrets or the room for sulking or the room for apologizing or the room for intimate togetherness, and, of course, there are rooms for the new members of the household. Love is a house in which plumbing brings bubbly new emotions every morning, and sewers flush out disputes, and bright windows open up to admit the fresh air of renewed goodwill. Love is a house with an unshakable foundation and an indestructible roof. ( p23-24, The High Mountains of Portugal)

Three widowers, Tomas ( 1904), Eusebio Lozora (1938) and Peter Tovy ( 1981), are the protagonists in three loosely interlinked stories — “Homeless”, “Homeward” and “Home”. These are in Yann Martel’s latest offering, The High Mountains of Portugal. There is a sense of loneliness and despair. The three long stories are the ways in which the men come to terms with losing their beloved. With Tomas it is walking backwards and then going off to the High Mountains of Portugal in search of a church relic. For Eusebio solace is to be found somewhere in the space of living and the dead, usually during the many hours he spends conducting autopsies in his office. And for Canadian Senator Peter Tovy it is buying a chimpanzee from a laboratory, Odo, and creating a life for themselves together in Portugal, Peter’s country of origin. The three stories are connected unexpectedly but these links do not strike as jarring a note as one would expect. Funnily enough these magic realist tales are incredibly soothing to read, particularly “Home”. It is inevitable comparisons will be made between  Karen Joy Fowler’s Booker-shortlisted We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves as was done by Ursula Le Guin in her book review. ( The Guardian, 27 January 2016 http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/27/the-high-mountains-of-portugal-yann-martel-review ) Yet the detail and incredible amounts of research it must have required to write this story are masked completely by the sensitive and movingly told relationship between Peter and Odo. But then the idea of a journey, self-growth of the narrator and with a wild animal as a companion is not a unique idea for Yann Martel.

Yann Martel was incredibly lucky when his second book, Life of Pi. It sold over 4 million units and continues to be in print. ( The success of this novel is indicated by placing it as a qualifier beneath Yann Martel’s name on the new book cover as “Author of Life of Pi“.) It is a an enviable luck. But what is even more striking is how the luxury of money allows the writer the time and artistic license to play with ways of storytelling. With a seemingly traditional and old-fashioned opening in “Homeless” Yann Martel moves on surely and steadily to tickle the imagination and challenge the reader to engage with the text such as the image of the ape, Peter and his son trying to read Agatha Christie’s Appointment with Death in Portugese, together. It is an extraordinary experience and not to be easily forgotten.

Juxtapose this with the late Kent Haruf’s heartbreakingly tender tale OurKent Haruf Souls at Night. It is about two elderly people — Addie and Louis. Both single having lost their spouses a little while earlier. Both have children who have left the small town they live in for better pastures in the big cities. It is about their unique friendship. Of spending time together at night chatting quietly, lying side by side in bed, neatly sidestepping traditional roles and expectations. This  gives them much solace since they are past the age of caring what others think. Yet it sets tongues wagging amongst the locals and upsetting their children considerably too who return to check upon the parents.  Both, Addie and Louis, have reasons to grieve but have worked out that they derive immense happiness in this unexpected way of life. Even for the short duration that they are responsible for the caregiving of Addie’s six-year-old grandson they come across as a contented family unit.

Our Souls at Night & The High Mountains of Portugal are stories that gently but magnificently delve into that very moment immediately after the death of a spouse — loved or not is not necessarily always the question. But the sheer loss of losing someone with whom you have co-habited and existed for decades leaves a devastating hole in one’s life that is not always easily comprehended by family. These two books that despite being heartbreakingly tender are surprisingly very comforting to read. It is worth spending time with them. I hope many copies are sold. Question begs to be asked. Do readers have the space to read mature stories especially that are at a lower pace and dwell on old age? Nowadays there is so much of the angry new novel and baring one’s heart and soul, where do these beautiful novels find their readership?

( Two other novels I would put in the same category as these novels are Isabel Allende’s The Japanese Lover  and Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child. )

Yann Martel The High Mountains of Portugal Canongate, London, 2016. Pb. pp. 332. Rs.599

Kent Haruf Our Souls at Night Picador, London, 2015. Hb. pp. 180. Rs 550

24 March 2016

Molly Crabapple, “Drawing Blood”

16 03 , 2016 No Comments


Art is hope against cynicism, creation against entropy. To make art is an act of both love and defiance. Though I’m a cynic, I believe these things are all we have. ( p.320)

In blank notes I put painful bits of my past on the computer screen. As I wrote, these memories became external to me. They were art now, less a burden than a product. They couldn’t hurt me anymore. ( p316)

Molly Crabapple’s Drawing Blood is a memoir which is most Molly's Factoryextraordinary. ( http://mollycrabapple.com/ ) It is like a picture book for adults. The pictures complement the text and vice versa. But the words too recreate in minute visual detail each memory she chooses to recount. There are pages and pages of description that is like walking through an exhibition of dioramas brilliantly laid out by a talented artist. The memories recounted are those that seem to matter the most to Molly Crabapple. There seems to be no inclination or desire to delve into spaces that may give the socio-cultural co-ordinates of the artist. Only what is relevant to her narrative is shared even to the extent her grandfather, the painter, is referred to only because of the artistic inheritance evident in her mother and in Molly’s talent. But it is the incidents she chooses to dwell upon are an extraordinary insight into society, not just the underbelly of modern society but of the marginalised groups and the fight for survival, the fight for rights, the fight against injustice. Her series from Guantanamo Bay for the online journal Vice catapulted her to fame. ( http://www.vice.com/read/molly-crabapple-draws-gtmos-camp-x-ray and http://www.vice.com/read/molly-crabapple-sent-us-sketches-from-khalid-sheikh-mohammeds-trial-at-gitmo )

And this is the opening line of Drawing Blood.

I was drawing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. ( p.1) Khalid Mohammed in G Bay, drawn by Molly Crabapple

In that one sentence Molly Crabapple brings reading to a grinding halt. The visual image it conjures up of an artist peacefully sketching a man in an orange jump suit, shackled and behind bars in a court room, far, far away…with the drawings later to be stamped by an official inspector marking his approval for the sheets to be publicised as a cruel reminder that Guantanamo Bay is a high-security zone. Yet, there is no denying the painful intensity of her drawings as is evident in the sketches tipped into the memoir.

30tmag-crabapple-1-facebookJumboIt takes a while to return to the text but once back it is incredible to read how much experience Molly Crabapple has packed in a short while. Beginning with the time spent as a seventeen-year-old at Shakespeare Molly Crabappleand Company Bookshop in Paris to wandering and drawing in the streets of Morocco, Turkey, participating in the Occupy Wall Street movement to painting sex workers, gay and trans refugees fleeing Syria, migrant workers building Abu Dhabi’s great museums etc. It is no surprise then if you type in the search words, “Molly Crabapple”, there are a number of options that appear for her art work — Art, Burlesque, Illustration, Drawings, Political Art, and Marvel– highlighting her multi-faceted interests. But it is her humility, a rare trait, that shines through the memoir — “As I worked abroad, I began to recognize my own smallness in the vast world, and the learning I still had to do.” ( p.335)

In her concluding paragraph she says:

I started drawing as a way to cope with people: to observe and record them, to understand them, charm them, or to keep them at arm’s length. I drew to show Moroccon street kids that I was more than a tourist. I drew to win the attention of beautiful women and to mock authoritarian twits. I drew from the wings of burlesque shows, when the girls peeled off their gloves and poured glitter into the crowd. When the world changed in 2011, I let my art change with it, expanding nightclub walls to hotel suites and street protests. My drawings bled into the world. 

I continue to draw, out of a gluttonous desire for life in all its beauty and horror. I draw everything I hate and everything I love. I fill new notebooks every week, sketching refugee camps and rebels, performers and migrants. 

My work has taken me past the edge of burnout. It’s burned in. 

Art gave me a way to see, to record, to fight and to interrogate, to preserve love and demand reckoning — to find joy where once I could see only ash. 

I’d take on the world, armed only with a sketchbook.

I’d make it mine. ( p. 335)

Read Molly Crabapple’s memoir. She is like the Elvis of New Age Literature blazing a unique trail of her own while building upon the artistic traditions she has inherited in an informed manner.  Read Drawing Blood. You won’t be sorry.

Molly Crabapple Drawing Blood Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 2015. Hb. pp. 335. Rs 1299

16 March 2016

Of two women short story writers — Diane Cook and Arlene Heyman

16 03 , 2016 No Comments

Over the past few days I have read two debut short story collections — Diane Cook’s powerfully imaginative and equally disconcerting Man vs Nature and Arlene Heyman’s incisive and humorous  Scary Old Sex.

Man vs NatureDiane Cook’s ( http://dianemariecook.com/ ) short stories have been published in online literary magazines. For once the book blurb has to be taken for what it is—this is an astonishingly bold collection of stories. It is easily classified as speculative fiction, nudging the logical boundaries of imagination sufficiently to create a world which is not necessarily dystopic but disconcerting nevertheless especially in the new rules governing human social behaviour. There is a cold-hearted undercurrent to the stories that is chilling bringing home the point very strongly — irrespective of the situation, it is always survival of the fittest. What is frightening is that the scenarios these stories delineate are all in the realm of possibility. An unpleasant thought! It is very difficult to get rid from the mind’s eye of the landscape these stories create. Hence it is not surprising that this has been a Finalist for The Believer Book Award and the LA Times Book Prizes, Honorable Mention from the Pen/Hemingway Award, Longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and A Boston Globe, iBooks, and San Francisco Chronicle Best book of 2014.

Arlene Heyman’s debut Scary Old Sex is of a different ilk altogether. The short stories Scary Old Sexare descriptive and yet so detached, almost as if there is a clinical precision in the manner the mind operates.  It is about sex but unlike most stories that focus on the act here the focus on how the mind operates is spellbindingly written. Being a practising psychiatrist is a definite advantage for Arlene Heyman. It maybe unfair to yoke the two distinct aspects of the author yet it is impossible not to see the influence her profession has on her storytelling. She is able to distinguish between the physical and mental wants of the individual. But equally stupendous is the fine detail with which she describes not only the real world but the spectrum of emotions her characters experience — a rare quality not often seen in short story writing. One of the most interesting stories is “In Love with Murray”, probably an autobiographical story based on Arlene Heyman’s affair with Bernard Malamud — it is dedicated to him. Read Elaine Showalter’s delightful review-article in the Guardian about the literary muse, Arelene Heyman, and unearthing the literary history + mystery that this collection encases. ( Scary Old Sex by Arlene Heyman review – lusty, tough and life-affirming , 25 Feb 2016 http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/25/scary-old-sex-by-arlene-heyman-review )

Both collections are highly recommended.

Diane Cook Man Vs Nature Oneworld Publications, London, 2015. Pb. pp. 258 

Arelene Heyman Scary Old Sex Bloomsbury, London, 2015. Pb. pp. 230 Rs 499

 

 

Of picture books and chapter books

16 03 , 2016 No Comments

Every night Sarah and I have a bedtime ritual. She picks out a book and we read it together. Some of the titles we read these past few days are Ruskin Bond’s Monkey Trouble and Other Grandfather Stories,  Aaron Blabey’s The Bad Guys and Devashish Makhija’s When Ali Became Bajrangbali.

412_10153369862301867_2618426068633995193_nRuskin Bond’s new offering — Monkey Trouble and Other Grandfather Stories is a delightful comic-like chapter book consisting of three tales wonderfully illustrated by Priya Kuriyan. The speech bubbles make it easy for a new reader. Well laid out text and pictures. Clean. Not fussy. Speech bubbles consist of simple sentences. The printing is neat too. One of the pitfalls of these complicated books is the mismatch in colours or text not sitting well within the prescribed boundaries. Every story panel is neatly placed. Each page is filled with light…the water colours are not dreary to engage with. All these factors make it a
pleasure to read.

Another one illustrated by Priya Kuriyan is Devashish Makhija’s absolutely stupendous When Ali Became Bajrangbali. The story line is delightfully simple and straightforward but deceptively so. There are layers and layers Devashish MakhijaTarget, MoochwalaMoochwallato it. The child enjoys it for the story, rhythm and the roller coaster of emotions it causes. The illustrations incorporating a montage of advertisements and street art give it a richness too. For the adult, from the tongue-in-cheek title onwards it is fun, fun, fun to read while building upon memories too. I love particularly the literary reincarnation of Mr Moochhvaala. He first appeared as “Detective Moochwala” in his own comic strip created by Ajit Ninan in the now-defunct children’s magazine Target. And here is a lovely YouTube link to Devashish Makhija reading the story out at Bookaroo Literature Festival, Pune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pthzhJxBSiA&ab_channel=TulikaBooks

Bad GuysThe last one is laugh aloud rib tickling The Bad Guys by Aaron Blabey. It is a chapter book that has the Bad Wolf of countless fairy tales and folklore as the main character. He is trying to turn over a good leaf and become acceptable. He puts together a motley crew of cronies in the Good Guys Club consisting of Mr Shark, Mr Piranha and IMG-20160305-WA0001Mr Snake. They go on quests such as rescuing a stranded cat in a tree —who is petrified when he notices his wouldbe rescuers. The Good Guys Club members hope that such quests will improve their “tarnished” image as vicious and untrustworthy creatures. A very tough call when they look more like the mafia!  Here is the book trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqbUANlqXXE

Buy these books and make the children happy! Absolutely delightful!

 

In India these books are available by the following publishers:

Ruskin Bond’s Monkey Trouble and Other Grandfather Stories  by Red Turtle, Rupa Publishers

Devashish Makhija’s When Ali Became Bajrangbali by Tulika Books

Aaron Blabey’s The Bad Guys by Scholastic India

16 March 2016 

 

 

 

 

 

Worldreader in India

13 03 , 2016 No Comments

 

WR logoWorldreader is actively seeking strategic partnerships with publishers and authors in India. Today it is being accessed by over 6 million readers in 69 countries, providing them with book titles in more than 43 languages. Worldreader would like to discuss a non-exclusive contract for publishing licenses for good, addictive and evergreen content for children, young adults and adults/women especially in Hindi and English. Given that the Worldreader platform supports multi-lingual formats the content could be across other Indian regional languages too. These texts could be across genres and reading segments– picture books, chapter books, bilingual books for children, stories, anthologies, fiction, translations, non-fiction, spiritual, health, cooking, memoirs, biographies, etc. Please email: jayabhattacharjirose1 at gmail dot com . For more information on Worldreader, please see the note below. 

Worldreader ( www.worldreader.org ) is a non-profit organization with the mission of ‘providing digital books to children and families in the developing world. It was established in 2010 by Colin McElwee and David Risher. Worldreader is on a mission to bring digital books to every child and her family, so that they can improve their lives.It focuses on enabling digital reading especially using the mobile platform. The mantra is “Books for All”. Today it is being accessed by over 6 million readers in 69 countries, providing them with book titles in more than 43 languages. Another plus point in Worldreader’s favour is that it supports multi-lingual formats. It firmly believes that “Literacy is transformative”.

In fact Worldreader is one of Fast Company’s most innovative nonprofits of 2016 and won the GLOMO Award 2016 for the best mobile innovation for education. Even the UNESCO report on “Reading in the Mobile Era” highlights Worldreader’s programme. ( http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0022/002274/227436e.pdf )

Worldreader is now in India. It has been launched in India with its mobile reading to children programme or mR2C.

mR2C in Delhi, pix credit, David Risher, Feb 2016

mR2C in Delhi, pix credit, David Risher, Feb 2016

It is a two-year pilot in Delhi NCR. In collaboration with select NGOs as implementing partners mR2C seeks to promote pre-literacy skills by encouraging parents to read to and with their young children (age 0-6) and by empowering them to do so by giving them access to a free digital library of high quality, locally relevant books and educational materials via their mobile phones. But Worldreader is focussing on all reading segments and age groups: from toddlers – children – young adult — adult literature. Given how many people, especially women, own a mobile and are willing to charge it first, despite not having ready access to water or electricity makes the idea of delivering books via mobiles an attractive proposition.

mR2C in Delhi, pix credit, David Risher, Feb 2016

mR2C in Delhi, pix credit, David Risher, Feb 2016

The organization uses e-readers, mobile phones and other digital technology to reach readers in more than 69 countries, providing them with over 28,500 book titles in 43 languages ranging from Afrikaans to Hindi. The e-book titles cover a spectrum of reading materials, ranging from beginner readers learning to read, to students and teachers accessing educational materials, to those reading for pleasure. So far it has reached more than 245 schools and libraries; 1,110,196 people reading every month; 5,653,216 people reached since 2010 and since its programme was launched in India, it has 92,698 active readers online ( Dec 2015). It works with 180 publishers to acquire and digitize compelling and relevant content for readers. The non-profit also works with donors, organizations, communities and governments to develop and digitize local and international books, as well as manage logistics and support. It has digitized more than 5,000 titles from African and Indian publishers. They are headquartered in San Francisco, California and have offices in Europe and Africa.

Through an internet-connected mobile device (feature and smartphones), children and families can read e-books with the organization’s reading application, called Worldreader Mobile. 250 million children of primary school age cannot read and write. 774 million people around the world are illiterate. 171 million people could be lifted out of poverty if all students in low‐income countries left school with basic reading skills – that is equivalent to a 12% drop in the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day. Geographically ¾ of illiterate adults worldwide are in sub-Saharan Africa and Southwest Asia. 2 out 3 illiterate people are women. It is known that readers in developing countries are primarily male but by removing cultural barriers that prohibit or discourage women from owning mobile technology and training women (as well as men) how to use basic mobile phones to access books and stories increases the possibility of women and girls reading more.  This mobile reading in turn positively impacts children since it appeals to (and can benefit) neo-literate and semi-literate adults and adolescents.

Worldreader Mobile is a reading application that provides access to books, educational resources and health information to people with mobile phones. The non-profit launched Worldreader Mobile in April 2012.  The app is also available on Opera Software, Microsoft Windows phones, and in Mozilla’s Firefox Marketplace. In partnership with Opera Software, Worldreader launched a Web-browser app, promoted on the Opera Mini platform. Reading on Worldreader Mobile is particularly popular with women, who spend on average 207 minutes reading per month, compared to 32 minutes for men. Research from a 2013 Report by UNESCO, Reading in the Mobile Era, found that reading on a mobile phone increased reading time across all media. There were also clear benefits for children that were not of reading age as one-third of mobile readers in the developing world use their phones to read stories to children.

Ian Denison at CEOSpeak, Jan 2016

Ian Denison at CEO Speak, Jan 2016. Organised jointly by NBT & FICCI.

Worldreader contends that their mission is two-fold: increasing access to books while springboarding local publishers and authors into an international market. It makes content available in English and an array of local languages such as Hindi and Marathi and this is possible without the high costs and other limitations with print. Worldreader defrays digital start-up costs for local publishers, giving readers better access to relevant content, while simultaneously introducing publishers to new markets. Thereby, strengthening your brand, spreading the word about your publishing house and lists and most importantly, allow your books to be accessed by the diaspora too.

At the recently held CEOSpeak organised jointly by NBT and FICCI on 10 January 2016, Ian Denison, Chief Publishing and Branding, UNESCO said “Problem is not enough content is available when content is primary to get reading takeoff actively on digital devices.” He illustrated this in his presentation by showing the Worldreader icon appealing for more good quality content to be available on the platform. In India Worldreader is actively seeking good content / publishing licenses in English and other local languages especially for children ( 0-12 years) and literature for adults.

13 March 2016

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