[Hisham] Matar’s novel abounds in unusual emotional situations. Certainly few of its readers are likely to live next door to people who face torture and execution. Yet in his account there is no moral grandstanding, no glamour of victimhood. He seems to know that life goes on in the most intolerable circumstances—the terrible knowledge that can also be a consolation—and, confronted by extreme inhumanity, he notices gestures of everyday kindness and dignity.

That’s a quote from Pankaj Mishra’s piece in the New York Review of Books. And this is what Pankaj has to say about Laila Lalami’s novel:

Speaking of the corruption and injustice of the Moroccan elite, the student radical Faten says, “If we had been better Muslims, perhaps these problems wouldn’t have been visited on our nation and on our brethren elsewhere.” More often disappointed than realized, this sentimental vision of faith nevertheless remains popular among Muslims. Lalami seems as unsympathetic to it personally as some of the recent Western literary explorers of radical Islamism, such as John Updike and Martin Amis. Yet she is able to show why it remains attractive to so many people by describing it in a particular national setting, against the backdrop of political despotism, a stagnant economy, and deeply entrenched class divisions.

As long as we are on the subject of debating Muslims, in a properly national setting, of course, here’s a link to Salil Tripathi’s review of Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. And here’s a link to my review of the same book in the Sunday Times of India. Also of particular interest in this context Kamila Shamsie’s review of Tahmima Anam’s A Golden Age.

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Ila has been working hard on her dancing, along with her best friend Saya who loves pink.

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Here’s a picture from today’s Mumbai Mirror showing the happy author with the actor Manoj Bajpai. Alas, they cut out from the picture the wonderful film-maker Sudhir Mishra who did the honors at the Mumbai release.

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This is a torn poster on a Delhi wall. I took this picture on my way to lunch with Jai Arjun Singh whose report about that afternoon appeared in the Business Standard today:

In the preface to his celebrated literary memoir Bombay-London-New York (2002), Amitava wrote: “This book bears witness to my struggle to become a writer.” Today he is a respected literary figure (and an outstanding reader) but one gets the sense that the struggle to write, to understand how to write, is an ongoing process for him. This theme is echoed in Home Products, the story of a journalist, Binod, trying to write a film script about a murdered poet, but exploring a number of other stories in the process. “I’m convinced,” Amitava tells me, “that the only story I have to tell is the story of how to find the words to put down on the page. At the end of Home Products, the reader should see that the book Binod was trying to write is this very one, the one the reader is holding.”

Also linked here.

Here’s Manjula Padmanbhan in the pages of Outlook:

On the very first page of Amitava Kumar’s Home Products, there’s a scene which exemplifies what I liked so much about this first novel. An elderly woman opens her front door to the protagonist, a journalist called Binod. As she did so, she “began to cover her head with her cotton sari when Binod introduced himself”. It is a gesture so slight and so familiar that it might easily go unnoticed.

Yet by noticing it, Kumar instantly conveys so many messages about the relative positions of the two characters: that the woman is conservative and middle-class, that the young man is a stranger to her and that she is uneasy but not afraid by his presence at her door. It’s a fragment of visual poetry which, like the best documentary films, allows us to forget the camera, lights and sound recordist, so that we enter the situation unaware of the craft that has brought us there.

More

I arrived in Delhi last night and woke up before dawn to the sound of crows, doves, and, on a tree outside my window, a very persistent koel repeating its call. The simul is still in bloom. And around the corner, a dhak tree, its petals covering the pavement. The Hindustan Times printed in its Sunday edition an article of mine which recalls the execrable “Insaf Ka Tarazu” but mostly pays homage to Shyam Benegal’s “Nishant.” I’ll post the whole article on this site later; here’s an excerpt:

You must have been a teenager when you had watched Shyam Benegal’s “Nishant.” In that film, Shabana Azmi had played the wife of the village schoolteacher. She was young and beautiful and was fond of paan. She had put paan in her mouth and tied a red ribbon in her hair when going to the market.

That is when the landlord’s sons had seen her. The youngest one, tender and unmanly, had fallen in love with her. His elder brothers abducted the young woman. How did the film end?

You might imagine that the character the writer had now become turned in his bed at night toward the partially-lit window—, trying to remember what had happened to the schoolteacher’s wife at the end of the film. But he couldn’t.

All that he could remember was the red paan in her mouth, and the red ribbon in her hair, and the way in which she walked. Such a sense of abandon, in a small place that wasn’t safe from violence.

You too had found very attractive the schoolteacher’s young wife, and had then felt guilty when she had been taken away and raped. The film’s name “Nishant” means “the night’s end,” but it is possible that you had found it easier to believe then that darkness lasts forever. That is why you has had no memory of the film’s ending. Perhaps.

Filmiholic has interviews with Mira Nair and Kal Penn. And also Jhumpa Lahiri who has this to say about the film version of her novel:

I saw it for the first time privately in November 2005. I didn’t feel anxiety in the making of the film. I felt relaxed and curious. I was burning with curiosity as we were going to see the movie. I had no idea what to expect. I had seen shots and stills so I had a sense. But to see it, I was just overwhelmed and had a very emotional reaction. I didn’t cry when I watched it. I cried afterward. It was the totality of the movie.

One of the great gifts that Mira has given to me is, you know, when I write something, I give it everything that I can, but at the same time, I’m very removed from it, and when it’s done, it ceases to matter to me. I’ve never gone back to something I’ve written and been affected by it because by that point it’s so completely out of my system. I’m not going to go to my own writing to have those experiences, I’m going to go to others’ writing for those experiences.

So for the first time I was able to experience something I had written and have any reaction to it. It was the first time I saw something and it was her movie and it was different. But it was essentially something that I’d written that had percolated in me for years and years and had taken a long time to write and all that stuff and the characters and it was true enough to my book, and I saw it and I was moved.

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When I began to get more time to write, maybe an hour or two each day, I’d start by reading a few pages of A House for Mr. Biswas. I wanted to be reminded again and again of the comedy that informs V.S. Naipaul’s writing about failure. And every time I finished work, I’d be conscious only of the ways in which I had failed. There is very little doubt in my mind that one of the hardest things a serious writer must do is write with humour. It was easy to forget this demand because I was anxious to get the words on the page. I was always afraid that the book would run aground. I’d be stranded in the sand. The journal’s pages are full of notes recording scenes and snatches of imagined dialogue. Much of it was never used. But reading those pages now, I can very easily recall the panic and dread that dogged me during that time.

By the following summer, I had a draft of the novel. I know this because in a new journal, in an entry dated June 16, 2004, I find the words “Outline for Draft 2″. My notes are all about altering the structure and inserting new details. There is a small printout of a quote, pasted close by. It is probably from the Guardian: “My favourite description was in Louis Dean’s Becoming Strangers: `The South African pulled his short shorts back up around his ankles and positioned his genitals gamely inside the fishing-net interior’.”

Excerpts from my essay “How to Write a Novel” that appeared today in the Hindu.

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I had liked the new Nike cricket commercial–the World Cup starts in a few days!–because in a place where nothing seems to be in a condition to move everything is in combined motion. The game is now ours. We’re far away from England’s green fields and in the middle of a bustling Bombay street. But Sonia Falerio has more to add by way of commentary on the music:

Lorna’s Bebdo: The New Nike Cricket Commercial
The Konkani song Bebdo (Drunkard), which plays during the new Nike cricket commercial (see above) has come in for as much curiosity and praise as the commercial itself, which embodies the spirit and passion of Bombay and of cricket.
It’s a wonderful song, warm, rich and powerful, and influenced by the jazz masters of the time. In an article written in September 2003, journalist Naresh Fernandes narrates the story of Lorna, and the origins of the song. Bebdo can be downloaded here. (Quick registration required).
As one of the comments points out, the download is accompanied by a bunch of spyware, but I’ve been listening to the song in iTunes without a problem, so switch on pop-up blocker, and you’ll be fine. Rhythm House also stocks Bebdo for Rs 199.

Also see India Uncut.

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