A Short Story on Love in the Times of Terror

At Leopold, everyone knew them. If it is a Wednesday, they would be there at the third table on the right.

She came from the Prince of Wales Museum, where she went quite often to do her research on Ancient Indian Art. He came from Andheri West where he had hired a studio space. They met in front of the Regal Theatre. Then they walked hand in hand to Leopold and spent their Wednesday evenings there.

It has been on for almost a year now. I, former editor of a literary journal published from a South Indian city, living a self-imposed exile in Mumbai for the last two years, doing freelance editorial jobs for various publication houses, also have been frequenting Leopold ever since I landed up in Mumbai.

I remember the date and time of meeting them at Leopold for the first time. It was on 25th November, 2007 and the time was 6.50 pm. I remember the date because it was on that day I got the divorce notice from my wife. I remember the time because after reading the court notice once again, I had just looked up and my eyes fell on the huge wall clock at Leopold. It was showing 6.50 and I was gulping my second beer. Then I saw them walking in, hand in hand, she talking to him something and he nodding his head in approval.

They were sitting at a table, which was there in the middle of the bar. A few months before when the government imposed a smoking ban, they shifted to the third table, next to mine. They chose it because they found it easier to go out through rear door and light up their cigarettes there.

Occasional glances and smiles made us friends. My age, I am fifty two now, did not seem to be an obstacle for them to chat up with me. Later I understood why they could communicate with me so easily. Both of them were from the art field. She, a curator and researcher and he, an artist, had a lot of senior friends. And one day, after we became friends, they told me that in the art scene, age was not a factor. Senior and junior artists were all friends and they called each other by their first names.

As I was accustomed to the formalities of an office, where juniors called the seniors ‘sir’ or ‘madam’, I found them calling me by name a bit irritating in the beginning. Slowly I too grew up into their mode. I started enjoying it when they called me by my first name and told me about things that happened in the art scene.

I knew very little about art. I knew M.F.Husain, Picasso and some other names like Bhupen Khakkar, Gulam Muhammad Sheikh. I knew M.F.Husain because he was always there in the news for wrong reasons. Picasso was a ‘must-know’ for us, intellectuals. It was always good to know some artists’ names because you never knew when you would bump into people who were coming from the art scene. For party talks it was always good to have some general knowledge.

I knew Bhupen Khakkar and Sheikh because they were writers too. I had the chance to go through some of their writings (in translation) and I liked the writings of Bhupen Khakkar. People talked a lot about their paintings. I had tried then to see their works. I should confess that I liked their works though I did not know why I liked them.

After meeting this young couple, I felt some kind of self pity. I was here in this city with so much of art happenings, for almost two years and I never thought of visiting any art show. That is problem of the people like us, the literary kind of people, I mean. We never want to see anything happening beyond words, words and more words.

With them, I started going to exhibitions. I felt good in the crowd that did not know me at all and I did not know it either. This young couple had tried to introduce me to some artists. I met them, shook hands with them and forgot them. They too might have done the same thing with me.

However, all these while I used to look at this young couple; the way they conducted themselves in the crowd. The way they befriended people. The way they discussed works of art. The way they argued the good and bad of some works. The way they exchanged loving glances between each other when they were in others’ company.

As my divorce case was going on, I craved for these Wednesdays. I craved for this day because I could meet up with them at Leopold. Interestingly, we never shared the same table. I sat at my fourth table and they at their third table. I loved them. May be I wished if my youthful days were like the ones they had.

Today I curse myself for one of my bad habits. I neither carry a mobile phone nor do I take anybody’s number for keepsake. I adopted this habit like a revenge on my ex-wife (I cannot say she is my ex as the case is still going on in the court); a kind of sado-masochist pleasure, you could say. I left my phone and diary back home in South. I did not want anybody to call me.

For my professional needs, I created a secret email id, which I gave only to my professional contacts.

With this couple I never felt the need to exchange the numbers or email id for it was sure that we would meet at Leopold on Wednesdays.

I curse myself today for my irrational habits.

I met them last on 19th November 2008. As usual it was a Wednesday. They came in hand in hand. They were talking something very serious and they waved at me. They sat at their table and continued their talk.

For the first time I looked at them so deeply. Deeply, the way I had never done before.

She was wearing a white shirt, elegantly designed, with one button opened from the top. A small white diamond hung from a thin golden chain and the diamond shone against her chest like a star. She was wearing a black jeans and was carrying a few books. Though she was carrying a bag made of cotton cloth, for some reason quite unknown to me, she was keeping the books in her hands. She smiled at me as I was looking at her. She had nice teeth like pearls. Her shoulder length hairs covered her face as if they were holding her face like a soft toy.

He was wearing a pair of blue jeans and a white T-shirt. It had an inscription on its back: ‘Apocalypse Now’. He was arguing with someone in the phone while she looked at him intently. Her eyes and cheeks reflected his anger, passion and aggression. After sometime he cut the phone and raised his right hand to touch her cheek. She blushed and lowered her eyes. What a sight it was! I had never seen her blushing like that. I felt a sudden surge of happiness in me.

They turned to me with a smile. They passed me that information. They were getting married. A simple court marriage on Monday. They told me that they would catch up with me on the next Wednesday same time here at Leopold. I blessed them.

I curse my bad habit of being adamant.

I got a mail from my advocate saying that I should be attending a hearing at a local court in Chennai. If I miss I would be in trouble. I had to fly out of Mumbai on Sunday itself.

I remember 26th November 2008 because that was the day, the court decided on the fate of my marriage. It was all over.

I was supposed to come back on the very next day to Mumbai. I called my travel agent on Wednesday night itself. But he told me something was wrong in Mumbai and I should be staying back in Chennai for good.

I switched on the television. Terrorist attack in Mumbai. Breaking News. Terrorists indiscriminately fired at several places in Mumbai including CST, VT, Leopold, Taj Hotel, Oberoi Hotel….

Did I see the word Leopold in television? Or was it my imagination?

Yes. Later on I confirmed that Leopold too was attacked.

Were they there on Wednesday evening? Did they wait for me? Are they safe now?

I curse my bad habit now. I hate myself like hell. Can anybody tell me what happen to them?

For the first time I am revealing my email id for the public. Please reach me at wisdomdawnslate@gmail.com

Lovers on Lake Side

It was my friend who told me that I should go for a walk on the banks of Lake Kali Baari at night. He had gone there several times and he said there was something very interesting going on every evening once the darkness descended from the skies and roosted on the branches of the trees that girdled the shore of the lake.

Standing in front of the famous Birla Akademy of Arts, Kolkata, I wistfully look at the road filled with vehicles, especially those Ambassador cars painted in garish yellow color. To reach Lake Kali Baari, I should cross the road. To cross the road here, you need special skills. Jay walking is the only possible way as there are no zebra lines. A traffic constable stands in the middle of the road and tries to ease the traffic flow.

With quick steps I cross the road, wait for a few minutes near the divider to find a gap in the flow of traffic from the opposite direction and then reach safely at the other side. There is a wicker gate in the long wall that separates the garden and lake from the main street. I squeeze myself through it and enter the garden, where, according to my friend, several pleasurable scenes waiting for me.

Darkness falls early in Kolkata as it is an eastern city and not to mention, dawn breaks out quite early here. I look at my watch and find it is just 5.45 pm. The trees have already become thatched silhouettes. People move around look like fluid shadows that have been peeled out from the ground by finger tips and set into vertical motion. I too turn into a dark mass vertical mass, a heavy shadow doing its ghostly prowl in an eerie twilight zone.

Walking ahead I strike a paved path that goes around the lake in zig zag motion. The pathway has concrete benches made on either side of it. And there it is- the vision that my friend has been talking about!

I see the benches filled with people- no I should not generalize them in such sweeping terms. Each bench is filled with at least five couple in various stages of caressing, patting, embracing, kissing, squeezing, kneading, intertwining, murmuring, moaning and doing their very best to suppress the uncontrollable orgasmic shrieking.

Now I understand what my friend was talking about. This is a lovers’ den. By evening, all those couple who cannot find a space to cozy up in the busy city, reach here religiously, play out whatever they could do with their clothes on.

I walk forward and find each bench full. These benches which can accommodate four people of normal body size, now carry five pairs- ten people. Each couple is separated by a hair thin space of air. But each couple has a world of their own. They don’t encroach in others’ privacy.

I realize a simple concrete bench can accommodate five republics; each with its own rules, its own ups and downs, its own fights and flings, its own passions and wars.

In between I see people who walk along the pathway ogling at these interlocked couple. It is an open orgy, consciously but helplessly thrown out for an intruding public. At times I find a lonely male figure sitting in between these couples, as if he were contemplating the movements of the lake lying before. He could be a pervert, or a loner without a partner, finding pleasure in the sights and sounds taking place a few inches away from his skin.

Why can’t these couple chase these perverts away? No, they can’t do that. Primarily, they don’t have time to engage in a verbal duel with a stranger. The girl has to go back to her home or hostel. So is the case of the boy in action. Second, it is a public park, nobody can ask someone to move away from his rightful space. If the couples have the rights to be there, similar rights are given to the perverts and peeping toms.

Suddenly, I find myself a peeping tom, watching at the life and death struggle of these lovers before parting.

They are not teased by anybody, I realize. Later I probe my friend on this. He tells me:

“They are protected by a parallel law system. The police constables collect ten rupees from each couple and it is a protection money.”

Yes, if you have ten rupees, a partner and no place to ‘love’, welcome to Lake Kali Baari.

I have seen this before. Perhaps, I have done this before. In Delhi, I have seen couples sitting behind the thickets and bushes in public parks like India Gate, Lodhi Gardens, Hauz Khaz Garden and so on. In Mumbai, along the Marine Drive, I see couples sitting ‘into each other’. But it happens in day time under the light of sun.

In Delhi and Mumbai, these couples sit showing their back to the street or to the people who walk through the pathways. It is a highly symbolic act. The lovers’ ultimate rebel and defiance against the society. We show our BACK to you. Get lost.

But in Lake Kali Baari, these couples face the world from their private republics. They do not shy away from the prying eyes. East is blessed with the early disappearance of the sun. Darkness protects them from the society.

In the darkness, I see a strip of white flesh glittering. I listen to a suppressed giggle. I get the vibes of an orgasmic throe from these benches. But then a sudden sense of pathos engulfs me.

This ten rupees protection money system, this urgency of the couples to share their love in open wet darkness, this shamelessness, this sudden fall into disgrace covered with the grace of love are a result of an economic system that exclude these have-not couples from enjoying the mainstream privacy in malls, in coffee shops, in multiplex cine theatres and in cushy hotel rooms.

Most of them are students from the lower middle class. Or they are the people with small little jobs. They have to reach their homes in suburbs before it is too late. And it is the only place where they can find some privacy for that small little sum of ten rupees. They cannot afford to sit in a coffee house that sells one cup of coffee for seventy rupees. They cannot spend their time together in the air-conditioned privacy of a cinema hall.

One chunni (the shawl that the girls wear with their dress) can create a room for them here on the bank of a lake. A chunni can stop the peeping toms. And the same chunni can hide all what those inquisitive hands do to each other.

I know the pain of this pleasure as I had also done the same in Baroda’s Kamati Garden. The stroll in Lake Kali Baari brings back all those memories in me. The insult that I faced from a beat constable, the abuses that I heard from passing by perverts and the disgrace in undertaking sinful journeys under the cover of a chunni.

May be I am wrong in my take on the Lake Kali Baari lovers. They all must be enjoying their time the way they want.

I walk back to my friend who is waiting for me in a posh restaurant.

Kolkata covers me with its black chunni.

My Love Affair with Katharine Kuh

These days we hear a lot about market meltdown and the global economic crisis. It is rumored that many galleries are limiting their operations to the minimum. Many galleries that have mushroomed along with the art market euphoria seem to be downing their shutters until the market shows the signs of recovery. Against this scenario, it is interesting to know about an art lover and curator who started her gallery exactly during the high point of market recession during the 1930s in America. She is Katharine Kuh and she fought against all odds to establish a wonderful gallery, then a great career as an international curator. Her life story is inspirational and rejuvenating.

Born in 1904, Katharine Kuh was afflicted by polio at a very early age. She had to wear supporting braces for ten years in order to regain her physical strength, though eventually her left leg was rendered weak and slightly malformed for the rest of her life. Young Katharine did not intend to study art history, but once she attended a few lectures in art history by the legendary Alfred H. Barr, she was smitten for ever. In 1930 she married George Kuh, a successful business man. Katharine could have easily ended up as a devoted wife, looking after George and his son from the first marriage. But the marriage soon turned out to be oppressive for her. The decision to divorce came as George Kuh’s relatives mocked one of her art purchases (a print by Toulouse Lautrec) and she was forced to keep the lithograph away from everyone’s eyes. In 1935, Katharine divorced George and in the same year she started her own gallery, ‘Katharine Kuh Gallery’ in Chicago.

The book titled ‘My Love Affair with Modern Art’ is a compilation of essays and observations written by Katharine Kuh and it reveals the behind the scene actions that shaped modernist art in America. Once she opened her gallery Katharine was looking out for vibrant and radical artists who could cut away from the already accepted cannons of late 19th century art. Fernand Leger, Paul Klee, Joan Miro, Ansel Adams, Stuart Davis, March Chagall, Joseph Albers, Isamu Noguchi, Alexander Calder and so on were relatively unknown names in the art scene then. Katharine befriended them, studied their works and lives, believed in their art and exhibited them. When she exhibited these artists, the moral police of the time, led by other art critics and art lovers came to her gallery, protested, advised the visitors not to see such art and even chided the artists for making ‘unconventional’ art!

Katharine remembers an incident occurred during the exhibition of her artist friend Carlos Merida from Mexico. He was partially deaf. As the show was on, the moral brigade comprising of middle aged upper middle class women came in and started talking disparagingly about Merida’s works. Merida tried his best to capture the deriding words from these ladies. But their animated actions made him think that they were appreciating his works and he started talking approvingly of their comments. The ladies were baffled by the reaction of the artist and they stomped out of the gallery in total indignation. Katharine, however, did not convey the artist what exactly was going on there!

As it was the period of recession, Katharine could not find enough financial support to employ someone to assist her. Often she played multiple roles, from gallery director to errand girl. A few times in a week she used to give crash courses on art history in the backroom of her gallery, where ‘bored housewives’ came to attend the lectures. Katharine remembers how one of her ‘students’ reacted to a Velazquez work after a long lecture on him; the woman said, ‘Just fascinating’. (Doesn’t it sound similar to our up class ladies reaction to art by saying, ‘how interesting!’).

One day Katharine found out a bunch of postal stamps missing from her work desk. A solo show by a young artist, Charles Sebree was on at that time in her gallery. Finally she found out that Sebree was stealing stamps from her desk. He was selling it to someone just to find money for buying food. She asked him to change his behavior. But he said, it would be ‘dishonest’ if he agreed with her suggestion because he was planning to steal more stamps as he did not have any money to buy food. (It was the condition of the artists then in the US. When I mentioned it to an artist friend of mine in Delhi, he said, I too have done things like that in past. He said he did not steal money or stamps but he stole some interesting souvenirs from friends’ houses. He was forced to steal them because despite his repeated requests to part with those souvenirs, they were not listening to him!)

Another incident Katharine describes is quite touching. It was a time when Jewish migrants were coming to the US from the Nazi Germany. One day a Jewish lady came to the gallery with her small son. A few uniformed officers came in to see the show at the same time. The moment the boy saw them, he stood alert and screamed ‘Hail Hitler’. The Jewish woman explained that the boy was so traumatized by the experiences back in Germany where anyone had to say ‘Hail Hitler’ the moment they saw men in uniform. The Jewish community also adopted this to escape the eagle eyes of the Nazi officers.

After a few years Katharine joined Art Institute of Chicago (which is one of the most famous museums in America now) as an assistant curator to Daniel Catton Rich, the director of Art Institute of Chicago. Later she developed a life long affair with Dan Rich. Katharine with her hard work and vision, supported by her close relationship with the artist and collectors rose in the museum hierarchy to become the most important curator of America. She started contributing articles to Saturday Review and became its official art critic. She traveled all over the world to collect works, negotiate exhibitions and exchanges, and also to write columns for Saturday Review. In the book she remembers how the government of India could not understand her vision and turned down her proposals for cultural exchanges. Her final visit to India was in 1978.

This book is full of reminiscences about the great modern artists, their works and lives. She analyses the life of Mark Rothko who craved for social acclamation and always found young painters as a potential challenge to him. He wanted name and fame, both he got. But he was not satisfied. Finally he committed suicide. Katharine says that Rothko must have thought that death would bring him the ultimate glory.

Katherine gives vivid pictures of Leger, Stuart Davis, Brancusi, Bernard Berenson, Alfred Jenson, Clyfford Still, Isamu Noguchi, Mark Tobey, Franz Kline, Jacques Lipchitz, Hans Hofmann, Josef Albers and Edward Hopper. She observes that Isamu Noguchi’s works are a constant search for his true identity against the divided identity of his self. Noguchi, like Rothko, wanted the final endorsement to come from the nation. Also she speaks how the famous sculptor, Jacques Lipchitz accepted a commission from the White House to make a trophy that depicted the face of the then president Lyndon Johnson. After some harrowing experiences at the hands of bureaucracy, Lipchitz finally made the sculpture, which President Lyndon openly disparaged.

Katharine has her own opinion on modern art. Though she lived to experience the birth, growth and flourishing of pop art, conceptual art and ‘contemporary art’, her true love lays in modern art. She reveres the modern masters for their works and their lives. She passed away in 1994, at the age of 90.

Before I close, let me quote a few observations by Katharine Kuh:

“What exactly is an art curator? From my experience, curators can be anything they want as long as they conform at least nominally to the bureaucratic folkways of museum life. Committees, trustees, complaints, social interruptions, and the discreet pursuit of possible donors are all part of the game, but aside from these distractions, each curator is a potential self invention. To be sure, scholarship, experience, and the commitment to using one’s eyes both for looking and seeing (quite different processes) are prerequisites, yet there are no rigid boundaries.”

“Curators need no personal incomes to acquire great collections or to be surrounded many hours each day by splendid trophies. Their homes can be seedy but a large part of their lives are spent with masterpieces that would set any private collector to salivating.”

“In the United States today, the term curator is bandied about so heedlessly that any dilettante who arranges the most meager sampling of art appropriates the title. To make matters worse, the noun now poses as a verb, actively inciting freelance novices to claim professionalism sadly lacking—not unlike a first year intern posing as an experienced surgeon. The debasing of the title points to all the trappings of pseudo-scholarship.”

Anybody listening? Isn’t she talking about those half baked heads in India, who shamelessly call themselves curators?

(My Love Affair with Modern Art- Behind the Scenes with a Legendary Curator. Katharine Kuh. Edited and completed by Avis Berman. Arcade 2006)

Gay Bashing Dostana

I have lost my innocent eye. May be twenty years of constant interaction with art and its related theories has made me look at things in their stark symbolism. Anything and everything come with an ideological undercurrent. Things are not as innocent as apparently they appear.

Watching Bollywood movies is a favorite hobby for me like any other Indian. Whenever I watch a movie, I deliberately try to see it with a pair of innocent eyes so that I can flow along with the narrative without thinking much about the ideological undercurrent. But old habits die hard. Certain movies, which are successful in box office, make me watch them with my ‘trained’ eyes and I find these movies upholding all those retrogressive and conventional characteristics of Indian society.

The other day I watched one of the most successful movies of our recent times, ‘Dostana’ (Friendship). Produced by Karan Johar, who is famous for his ‘blasphemous’ approach towards tradition, ‘Dostana’ is advertised to be a ‘pro-gay’ movie. The story line is simple. Two guys, Sam and Kunal, enacted by Abhishek Bacchan and John Abraham respectively, want a paying guest accommodation in Miami. They find a place but the ‘guys’ are not allowed there. So they find an easy way; pretend to be a gay couple. And they do get accommodation there. Neha, who is a relative of the land lady, staying in the same apartment, mixes freely with these guys as they are ‘gays’ and finally realizes that they are not gays but normal ‘guys’ who have fallen in love with her in due course of events. But by that time she is already in love with her boss who is a widower with a child. She marries her boss and the ‘gays’ are happily left to lead their ‘guys’ life further.

I am not a film critic. However, I would say this movie is all about an imagined orgy. It also symbolically represents the Indian male’s perennial desire to have multi-partner sex. Pepped up by comic situations, the narrative runs smoothly, entertaining the audience to the hilt. As the viewer knows that these ‘guys’ are not ‘gays’ but just ‘hunks’ pretending to be gays, the sexual tension exist in the relationship between them and the girl, Neha (played by the sexy Priyanka Chopra) is transported into the mind of the viewer, forcing him to take it as his own sexual tension.

The movie is an anti-gay movie mainly because the guys’ entry into the apartment is mediated by their affected ‘gay’ identity. That means, two women can stay with two strong built guys (with all sexual potency suggested through the well built body of John Abraham and the bearded manly face of Abhishek Bacchan) without causing any social scandal only because they are gays. Symbolically, this suggests that gays are just ‘people’ who are ‘without’ any kind of emotions otherwise felt by the heterosexual people. Gays are just harmless people, devoid of ‘sexuality’. Their sexuality, which is as strong as any other heterosexual man or woman, is nullified ideologically by presenting them as ‘harmless’ people. It is something akin to the masters speaking their private matters in front of their drivers or servants. The human identity of the servants and drivers are in a way erased by the master’s conscious decision. In this movie, these two working guys (John as a professional fashion photographer and Abhishek as a male nurse. He is constantly asked whether he needs to wear small skirts when on duty) are almost reduced to the level of drivers and servants by the master narrative handled by Karan Johar.
It is a comedy because, they are not gays but they are masquerading as gays. And in this masquerade, they always fall into such situations that evoke comedy. In short, what the viewer get is this message: the gay situations are comic situations because they are excluded from the gravity of the master narrative. ‘Gays can do only comic act’ or ‘the gay acts look almost comic to the heterosexual human beings’- the underlying message is very clear. As these hunks are acting as gays, with slightly exaggerated physical movements, we are forced to separate the identity of the real actor from the character he is ‘forced’ to act even while being another character. Hence, the gays we see in their enactment are excluded identities, which are ‘excluded’ specially for slinging comic mud at them.

The master mind behind this movie has taken careful efforts to endorse ‘gay couple’ as a socially accepted couple. This is a surreptitious technique within the narrative to tell the people that whatever portrayed in the movie is ‘progressive’ and ‘goes’ with the attitude of our contemporary times. The social integration or acceptance of the gay couple comes through when Sam’s mother (played by the buxom Kiran Kher) initially disparages her son’s ‘gay’ identity and later accepts it with traditional verve (look at how she puts sindoor on John’s forehead and places a poorna kumbha before his feet to be toppled by his right feet as an auspicious gesture of ‘entry’). However, the viewer is not allowed to see it as a serious gesture as the mother (unlike the mothers in Bollywood moives) always responds to the situations in comic way. Her identity as a mother is reduced to that of a comedian (a take off from Om Makhija’s mother, again played by Kiran Kher in the blockbuster ‘Om Saanti Om) thereby excluding her right to be there as a ‘real’ mother in the grand narratives of Indian movies.

There is a reason why I call it an orgy and Indian male’s perennial desire to have multi-partner sex. Both Abhishek and John, despite their affected gay identities, are, in reel life and real life, potential hetero-sexual human beings. Priyanka Chopra mixes up with them the way she would mix up with her female friends. She does not have any problem to wear a bikini and walk before them and even lay amidst them in her skimpy clothes. The gaze of these affected gays is always on her body, when she ‘naturally’ does her exercise regime in front of these guys. Her butt, tits, navel, lips and all those sexual zones are constantly gazed at by four pairs of eyes, those of Abhishek and John. When Bobby Deol comes as her boss, one more pair of eyes is added to this gaze game. She is an open dinner to be devoured by three sexually potent guys. What else, it could be if it is not the desire for multi-partner sex or orgy? Interestingly, Neha never recognizes the fact that she is gazed at or used by these males. She behaves like an innocent babe, who is unaware of her sexual potency. Isn’t it the Indian male wants from the woman of his desire, an innocent yielding to his physical fantasies?

Neha, however modern, working and educated she is, eventually is a woman in the man’s imagination. Her independence and identity as Neha the working girl, Neha, the modern, urban and educated woman is simply nullified as she is not able to understand her own social position, her own identity vis-à-vis the males around her. Even after she knows that both these ‘gay’ guys make sexual advances to her, she decides to marry her boss, who is a widower and a father. Why? Because, the movie reiterates the ideological make up of Indian social psyche: the woman must be under an economically powerful male, who is stable (he is not promiscuous even after the death of his wife) and sexually potent (as he is a father he has the capacity to produce another generation, which both and John and Abhishek are not capable of in the story). She is bound to marry a male who is not cunning and deceitful (like the gays?).

This anti-gay movie further insults gays by presenting a superior officer in Neha’s office (played by Bomman Irani) and an Immigration officer (played by a western actor) as gays. Both of them are in their comical best, making advances to the masquerading gay couple, namely John and Abhishek. The ambiguity of sexuality is quite palpable here as even the males want such kind of ‘males’ (like John and Abhishek). Their ultimate desire is to have/be the perfected bodied manly men. As they are incapable of gaining it, they can indulge in comic interludes to satisfy their fantasies and desires. The sexual ambiguity (as a device to remind the viewer constantly that what you see in John and Abhishek are not real gays but real men) is enhanced when Abhishek is ravaged by a group of middle aged women in a kitty party organized by the landlady, while John has his rendezvous with Priyanka in an open air theatre, which plays a sexually confirming movie, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai by Karan Johar himself. This is a symbolic extension of their male virility as endorsed by the history of ‘movie’ itself.

This movie is very important as a case study because it clearly shows how, despite all our gay freedom demonstrations and carnivals, law making, social debates etc, our society still wants to ‘progress’ in the twenty first century with all its traditional baggage. As far as the young generation in India is concerned, Karan Johar is a very influential film maker. The success of his movies shows his undisputable reach into the minds of the young people. But again, by such a reach, what he affirms is his belief in the traditional thinking regarding the same sex relationship in India. This beautiful gay bashing in the form of Dostana should also be seen in the light of Karan Johar’s public declaration that he would be getting married soon. Karan has been a popular gay icon (along with the ambiguities of confirmation and denial of it) since the birth of new millennium. He made a movie in which Shah Rukh Khan and Saif Ali Khan played roles that had the shades of gayness (This potential gay attraction is made use by the organizers of one of the Film award nights, a few years back, where Shah Rukh Khan and Saif Ali Khan played the roles of hosts and they openly flirted on stage. Also, the same sexual ambiguity is played out in the advertisement for Airtel, where Shah Rukh Khan teaches Saif Ali Khan to say ‘I love you..in hearts’. Only in the last moment we come to know that it was a rehearsal for a voice SMS meant for Kareena Kapoor. By collapsing the projected sexual identities, reel and real life of the actors, the gayness is made into a potential product only to be desired in the realm of consumption but not in real personal life). Even Shah Rukh Khan and Karan Johar were rumored to be having a gay affair, while keeping their ‘sexually potent male identity’ intact.

I enjoyed watching Dostana because after a few minutes of its starting, my ‘not any more’ innocent eyes could see the ‘real’ narrative taking shape under the wraps of a glittering gay story.

Winter Revolution

Winter
Flapped
Its wings
Snow
Flaked
Dreams
Let me
Hold you tight
Before you
Fly away.
But
Who can
Erase these
Bloody stains?
When
Summer comes
Go to the city
And tell them
I had the
Stench of
Revolution
In my blood
And the putrefied
Flesh.

Why Do the Servants Spit too Much in Delhi?

I would have never read this book had not my artist friend Baiju Parthan told me about it.

While driving through the spacious but busy roads near the President’s Estate in New Delhi, we came across the famous sculpture ‘Gyarah Moorti’, a depiction of Mahatma Gandhi leading the Indian people towards Dandi beach to break the ‘salt tax’ imposed by the British rulers.

“Aravind Adiga, the author of White Tiger, the Booker Prize winning novel, speaks of this sculpture in his novel,” Baiju Parthan said. “He writes a lot of about Delhi in an ‘on your face’ manner. I don’t know whether you would like the novel or not, but I enjoyed it thoroughly,” he added.

Baiju is like that. His is philosophical and skeptical in everything. He does not want to impose his ideas on anybody, a true nature of an erstwhile ‘hippie’. If you want to deduce an opinion on this novel, you have to read and arrive at your own conclusions.

“Who did this sculpture?” asks Sanjeev Khandekar, another artist friend, from my right side.

“Debi Prasad Roy Choudhury,” I tell him.

D.P.Roy Choudhury, the master disciplinarian sculptor who excelled and propagated the western neo-classical sculptural idiom in Indian modern art had done this public sculpture as a post-independence government commission. From the posture and movement that this sculptural ensemble carries, one can make out where Roy Choudhury’s formal and aesthetical loyalties rested.

The physical language of the sculpture is that of western neo-classical tradition, while the aesthetical approach heralded the idea of Social(ist) Realism, promoted by the erstwhile Soviet Union. The sculptures like ‘The Triumph of Labor’ (currently installed at front courtyard of the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi) exemplify Roy Choudhury’s formal and aesthetical affinities.

The place near Sardar Patel Marg, where the Dandi March sculpture is installed, is known as ‘Gyarah Murti.’ Reason is simple. Gyarah in Hindi means eleven and Murti means Sculpture. There are eleven figures in this sculptural ensemble. Hence, it is Gyarah Murti. There is a place called Teen Murti in New Delhi. Reason, there is a war memorial sculpture with three figures. Teen means Three. One main road that leads to the famous Connaught Place is called ‘Barah Khamba’ because there is an installation of twelve pillars on the right side of the road (just below the Gopal Das building and opposite to the historical Statesman Building). As you rightly assumed, Barah means twelve and Khamba means Pillar.

I like anything written on contemporary Delhi. Perhaps, I like the works of Chetan Bhagat, Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, Aravind Adiga, Mark Tully, Gurcharan Das and so on, irrespective of their literary excellence or moderation, mainly because they all talk about the contemporary Delhi and its unsung underbelly. At times, even I like certain newspaper columns that speaks of Delhi’s alluring, disturbing and funny contemporaneity (for example Sushmita Bose’s column titled ‘Single in the City’ in Hindustan Times. Though she takes a very high-browistically liberal attitude, she speaks of the immediate Delhi, a Delhi devoid of historical burdens but a Delhi grinds through the present-ness). May be it is the same aspect that makes Maximum City (Suketu Mehta), Sacred Games (Vikram Chandra), Shantaram (Gregory David Roberts ) interesting narratives on Mumbai.

In all these works history is not a burden but just a backdrop. It is quite soothing. You need not be a scholar to understand your own life. You just need to be a reader, with a sense of ‘reading’.

Ever since Baiju Parthan spoke to me about ‘White Tiger’ by Aravind Adiga, I had this itching in my sole/soul to read it. Have you every experienced the itch in your sole/soul? You want to itch and you even try to scratch the sole of your footwear. But it will not go away, unless you reach out to it with your ‘real’ fingers.

I pick up interesting reading materials from airport book stalls. These bookstalls are interesting places for doing case studies on the reading habits of the jet setting tribe. A whole section is devoted to success stories. Another section is for quick tips on business. Here is a section that is totally for simplified economics. There is a section for inspirational literature; a heady concoction of practicality and spirituality. There is a section for Chicken Soup- chicken soup for soul, chicken soup for sex, chicken soup for happy life, chicken soup for teenagers (I have not yet understood the meaning of this chicken soup). Look at this section on Kamasutra, Yoga and spirituality.

Between Kamasutra and Yoga books, you find Arundhati Roy and Noam Chomsky. Thomas L Friedman, Stephen Hawkins, Khalid Husseini, Mahatma Gandhi, Bijan Daruwalla, Richard Branson, Richard Bach, Kafka, Sadat Hasan Manto and Shobha De. Benazir Bhutto, L.K.Advani, Mushraff, Mayawati etc are a must. Then you find a series of books with cover pages looking the same. They are pulp fiction. At times, you are compelled to look at those glossy magazines that deconstruct human body into several components. Each component has a devoted magazine and I wonder who reads all these.

And the happy thing about airport bookshops is this: you will not get the book, which you are browsing for. So you get a book, which would eventually interest you. I always think of such buying as something similar to a highly meticulous man getting married at the age of fifty. All these while, he has been looking for the right kind of girl. Finally, out of TINA factor (There Is No Alternative factor), he decides to marry the girl, who is absolutely different from his prescriptions. But after marriage, he would love this girl like anything, the way a reader reads his TINA found book again and again.

I look for ‘White Tiger’ in Delhi’s airport, but in vain. As I have another book in hand, I am not in a TINA situation.

Just outside Mumbai airport, an Eruda* approaches my car, with a bundle of books arranged like tower in his hands. He picks one book out of the tower and places it against the window glass and I read the title, ‘White Tiger’.

I lower the glass and ask for the price. He turns the book and shows the back cover where it is written, Rs.395.

I don’t like pirated books but when you have the itch in you, you don’t look at the ethics of publishing industry. So I haggle with him and say, “Hundred Rupees.”

“Original sir,” he says and authenticate his argument with the cellophane cover.

I am an experienced book lover/buyer. I stick to my price and finally, as the traffic light turns green, I shove a hundred rupee note into his hand and he, in turn, pushes the book into the car. The deal is done and ‘White Tiger’ is mine now.

I tear off the cellophane cover with some impatience and open the book and I chance upon these lines on page number 6 of this pirated edition.

“See, when you come to Bangalore, and stop at a traffic light, some boy will run up to your car and knock on your window, while holding up a bootlegged copy of an American business book, wrapped carefully in Cellophane and with a title like:

TEN SCRETES OF BUSINESS SUCCESS!

or

BECOME AN ENTERPRENEUR IN SEVEN EASY DAYS!

Don’t waste your money on those American books. They’re so yesterday.

I am tomorrow.”

I smile. A prophecy boomeranged.

‘White Tiger’ is the story of Balram Halwai, a man born in rural north of India. Aravind Adiga divides India into two; Darkness India and Light India.

Millions of people from Darkness India come to Light India in search of a living. Balram Halwai Munna too comes to Dhanbad, the mining district in Bihar to eke out a living. He mops the floor and washes dishes in a tea shop. He would have ended as one of those ‘human spiders’ mopping the floor in non-descript tea-shops. Despite his social and educational backwardness, Balram has a strong will to survive. He learns driving and joins an American returned couple in Dhanbad. To run their coal mine business smoothly, they need to bribe the politicians in Delhi. So they move to Delhi/Gurgaon. This opens up a new world for Balram.

Delhi is a university for Balram. He sees his mentor couple divorcing and his master falling for his former flame. He sees the politicians, shamelessly taking bribe and also he sees entrepreneurial individuals making it big in life. But inside his core, he is just a servant. And he sees Delhi through the eyes and lives of a servant and it is a different Delhi altogether. One day he kills his inebriated master and runs away to Bangalore, a land of future possibilities as put by he deceased master. He becomes an entrepreneur there by starting up a car rental agency for the call centers. He bribes his way up to the social ladder.

The question why was he not caught by the police in spite of the picture poster campaign to track him down?

Because, he looked like a ‘servant’ from the Darkness India. All servants from this Darkness look the same. How can you arrest millions of servants for one murder?

The novel is written in an epistolary format. Balram addresses the visiting Premier of China, Mr. Wen Jiabao in order to tell him the true story of Darkness India against the projected stories of Light India.

Adiga captures the spirit of Delhi, the spirit of Delhi that belongs to the servants and the servant quarters. This narrative is compelling and a pure page turner it is.

What I like about this Delhi is this: It is not cinematic. It has the quality of a pure novel, which could only be completed by the readers’ experience and imagination.

After reading ‘White Tiger’ I realize why the servant class of Delhi spit too much. They hate their masters and they hate them absolutely.

The master class cannot wish away a Madhur Bhandarkar or an Aravind Adiga.


*Eruda- A monumental work by Jitish Kallat. It depicts a boy who sells books at the traffic lights and the artist makes his feet transform into symbolic houses.

The illustration is a digital work by Prasad Raghavan. This work was included in a show titled ‘SPY’ curated by Bose Krishnamachari.

Tin Drum

Today
When I born
Three Magi
Came to see me.
One brought
A speech
Another one,
A painting
The Third one,
A poem.
I am waiting
For those
Guests
Who would
Gift me with
A cross and
A thorny crown.
How predictable
The world looks
Even from this
Cradle.
The forty watt bulb
Still baptizes me
With its
Yellow light.
My mother’s
Nipples still
Have those
Swastika signs on them.
That’s why
I, like all the times,
Refuse to grow.
Don’t tease me
I can break your
Ear drum with my
Scream.