New words for the titles of novels or exhibitions tinge the
tips of our receptive antennas; they cry for attention and we fall for them.
That’s why when a recently concluded Indian Biennale had a title like ‘Whorled’
I had this unsurpassable urge to see it as ‘whored’. Not only beauty but also
meaning lies in the eyes of the beholder, they say. If so, the vulgar meaning
that I derived must have been there in my eyes. Only thing that made me look a
bit decent in my own eyes was the crony capitalistic moorings that the
biennale had presented in the name of global aesthetics, somehow justified the
general whorification of visual culture for the sake of pomp and the so called
political art. Being quite suspicious about the name games (both naming games
and name dropping games), I, the politician amongst the art critics (but am I
the only one? In varying degrees of perceptive clarity there have been Mr.
Suneet Chopra coming from an absolute red background and for god’s own sake, a
saffron clad but less verbose Mr. Raghu Vyas from a similar cadre based
political system), therefore had a perennial doubt on the title of a novel ‘Seppuku’,
written by none other than one of the leading art critics in the North, Vinod
Bhardwaj.
When it came in Hindi, I was offered a copy by the author
himself. I was happy because fiction out of the real is always realistic than
it is otherwise. Examples have been around in Sanjay Kumar’s Artist, Undone and Amrita Chowdhury’s Faking
it etc. Complete with Chintan Upadhyaya’s smart alec baby on the cover, the
dominant background of red had given me all the reasons to suspect it as a
political thriller with sufficient amount of art thrown into it. Being a
non-Hindi reader it was only my concern for a fellow art critic who coaxed me into reading the novel in Hindi original, which I successfully failed in completing.
Since then I was waiting for its translation to hit the market. Translated into
English by Brij Sharma, Seppuku, eventually as I could read from cover to cover
in one go, once again disappointed me. If it was my inability to read the original
in Hindi that had induced me with a sense of shame, this time it was my ability
to comprehend literary excellence as well as the lack of it embedded in a
literary work of art was the culprit. Seppukku is first in a trilogy that the
author has planned on the under (and over too) currents of Indian contemporary
art. As the pilot issue looks like a condensed and episodic gossip said in a
first person narrative of the protagonist, Baldev, I am not so confident about
the second and third editions; however, as I know that Vinod Bhardwaj has been
an art insider for the last three or four decades in Delhi’s art circle, there
could be enough materials for the second and third issues of the trilogy, but
then it all depends on how the raw material is processed, filtered and
presented aesthetically.
(Vinod Bhardwaj)
You don’t call water, H2O, unless you are a scientist. Even
scientists do not ask for a glass of H2O, when they are thirsty. Seppuku is
H2O, when it comes as the title of this novel. Seppuku is a Japanese word and
it means Hara-Kiri, suicide by splitting open the stomach. Japanese Samurais
used to practice this sort of self annihilation at the face of shame and loss
of dignity. In our context, the novelist intends to use Seppuku as art hara-kiri
or artists doing hara-kiri (aesthetical) or the art scene in general doing
hara-kiri without realising the foolishness of it. But, throughout the
narrative, you do not see any sense of hara-kiri either being discussed by the
characters or imparted by the novelist himself. Perhaps, he could have called
it a Golden Goose or some sleazy Japanese word for that. Seppuku is a misnomer
therefore it is unfortunate.
Now the story; Baldev is a failed painter who turns himself into
an art authenticator. Pratap Narayan Rastogi is his friend, contemporary and a
super successful artist. When the story begins Pratap Narayan is in a comatose
state. There is a flurry of activities in the market to turn this calamity into
another opportunity to make gold. Everyone in the art scene seems to be making
money; some have even tried pushing ‘fake’ Pratap Narayan works in the market.
In the due course of the narrative we come to everything we already know. We
start identifying the fictional characters in the living or dead art
personalities. Pratap Narayan is successful because he is good with high society
women. Period. He does cunnilingus (sucking clitoris) well. That means he has
scaled the heights by his tongue rather than by his brush. He is impressive
because he has got a great body too. In the novel gallery women travel around
in limousines (in Delhi?). There are efforts to mix facts and fiction when he
brings Souza, Husain and Dhoomimal gallery into the narrative. Finally Pratap
Narayan dies. Baldev, the narrator to his horror finds that one of the works
that he has authenticated is a fake as the original is there in Pratap Narayan’s
studio which has been lying locked for a while. Baldev goes in search of the
woman who has got the fake. But the chowkidar tells him that the house has been
lying vacant for a long time. Baldev loses his sense of reality. He questions
his very existence. In a Kafkesque or Camus-esque note the novel ends.
(party goes on..but does art?)
Now I, as a reader, am confused as characters with suck-able
vaginas and fill-able purses populate the landscape of the novel and the mighty
Pratap Narayan does his tongue twisters well on them only to enter into coma
followed by the tongue cleaner, death. These characters do not evolve as
rounded characters; they remain types. They are forced into the novel to
perform some scandalous acts and depart. And the references to the sexual deviancies
and related acts (or let us say sexual acts in general- I do not want to sound
to be a missionary or a saint who does it for mission’s sake) seem to have come
out of the perverse thinking of the writer himself. It is not that the
narrations of sexual acts make a writer a pervert. There are hundred and one
examples in literature where sexual acts are described in such a way that each
of them looks like unparalleled exercises of human mind and libido-
Shakespeare, D.H.Lawrence, Alberto Moravia, Jean Genet, Georges Bataille and so
on come to my mind. Here, Mr.Bhardwaj takes a lot of pleasure in narrating the
sexual acts exactly the way the deprived gossip mongers in any high societies
do. Bhardwaj fails completely in elevating the story into a grand fiction.
We live in a world where fictional versions of artists’
lives make gripping stories not only in literature but also in celluloid. We
live in a world where writers like Sarah Thronton, Katherin Kuh, Sudhir
Venkatesh, Paul Helguvera and so on write stories from art world’s underbelly
with a lot of research and literary flourish. In Seppuku, we see identifiable
characters and perhaps to the immature people it may give some kind of thrill
of recognition. But literature operates in a larger ether where localized
narratives stand only when the context and characters evolve as universal
characters demanding empathy from the readers. Bhardwaj fails in it and he
fails in it absolutely, despite the endorsement of Subodh Gupta, Chintan
Upadhyay and Uday Prakash. Vinod Bhardwaj is an insider and a silent observer
of Indian contemporary art. I know my criticism would hurt him. But being a
writer myself I cannot help saying the truth. My criticism on his literature
may help him doing the second and third issues of the trilogy in a better
fashion. After all, our art scene does deserve a better fiction.
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