Misinterpration Of Religious Texts: Is that a defense enough?

Two weeks ago Barkha Dutt held a debate on the matter of Triple Talaq (verbal divorce undertaken by Muslim men simply by uttering the word ‘talaq’ thrice) on her weekly show, We The People. The debate, as is usual for such a debate, spiralled around interpretation of the Holy book, and, after being chaotic and cliché in turns, did not lead to any fruitful conclusion. Most of the female panellists tended to argue that it’s not the religion per se that is anti-women, but its interpretation by the religious-heads that is so, whereas the proponents of the Sharia Law (all men) denied any such allegation and claimed the justness of the law as it stands. 

Last week the USA saw one of its most horrific gun-shootings as a young man walked into a gay-club and went about shooting people, leaving 50 dead and 53 injured. This man, as it happens, was of Muslim persuasion and had in the past confessed to be revolted by the sight of two men kissing in Miami. This incident stoked the debate over ‘Islamophobia’ all over again in the mainstream and social-media. Many resorted to the time-honoured and Twitter-honoured slogan: ‘terror has no religion.’ They, like the female panellists on Barkha’s show, claimed that it’s not the religion but its misinterpretation that informs such malice. 

What bothers me is how we easily absolve religion of its share of blame for the extremely exceptionable practices, by simply and naively shifting the blame on misinterpretation. I think we can no longer afford to let religion wash its hands off these tragedies, under the garb of misinterpretation of texts. Mind you, almost all major religions are quick to use this excuse. We have all been lectured by Hindu caste-apologists about how caste-discrimination should not be blamed on the scriptures but their misinterpretation. Is this a critique of religion(s)? Maybe it is. I am sorry, but your religious text (from whichever religion it comes) should have had a mechanism in place to counter such ‘misinterpretation’; and if it doesn’t have such a mechanism then it should partake in the blame without making excuses.  

Religion may be sourced from texts, but it thrives in the minds of peoples that abide by it. Once it enters the mind of the people, it stops being conventional wisdom and a list of thou-shalt and thou-shalt-nots; it rather becomes a force so powerful that it can push people to do things that are unimaginable. We have to stop thinking of religion as some sort of absolute, inviolable entity that can be preserved in a glass-case from contamination, because this notion is exactly what makes people make claims like, “Oh, but our religion doesn’t stand for X or Y; these people are misrepresenting/misinterpreting the texts.” 

There are bound to be as many interpretations of religion as there are followers of it.  The critique of religion should spring from the fact that it relies on texts (language) for its existence and perpetuation, and any such system (which has language as its foundation) will be open to human interpretations. And these human interpretations will be varied, contrived to suit or advance personal interest, and mostly flawed. The buck, then, stops squarely with the formulators of the system in the first place. And because the most of the religions come down to us as ‘divine revelations’ or are formulated by prophets/seers, the buck stops at the doorstep of the Divine (God(s)) or these Oracles.   

All texts and the systems codified by them are susceptible to such flaws, even the secular books, such as, say, the Constitution of India. Then, should the Constitution or democracy as a system be discarded because Indira Gandhi misused it to suspend democracy in 1975? No, it should not be discarded. Misuse of a system should not be an excuse for its demolition. However, the fundamental difference between the secular books (and the secular systems that arise out of them) and the religious books (and the systems that arise out of them) is that the secular books concede to their imperfections and limitations, where as the religious books do not. Religious books claim to be foolproof; and there’s ample evidence to suggest they are not. 

Religion, like any other secular system, is susceptible to flaws. But where it differs from other secular systems is that it claims to have come from the infallible divine; but then the divine cannot err. In other words, religion hasn’t earned its right to be flawed. It is imperfect without its having to admit its imperfection. An imperfect system is symptomatic of only two possibilities: it is either the doing of an imperfect God, or imperfect mortals. Which of the two is more likely, I leave that choice for you to make.

 Another striking difference between secular texts and religious texts is that in case of secular books, such as the Penal Code or the Constitution, there are arbiters (such as the courts) who can intervene in cases of ambiguities; and the offenders (people who deviate from the accepted interpretations) can be punished. In case of religious texts, however, there is no such arbiter, and definitely no authority/body that could punish the offenders lawfully.

My submission is essentially this: religion cannot evade its share of blame when its followers use it to justify their ghastly acts. Islam is no more responsible for terrorism or subjugation of women than Hinduism for untouchability or Christianity for the oppression of the Jews. Rabid Hindutva has as many roots in Hindusim as Jihad in Islam. One cannot be seen as completely independent of the other. Those of us priding ourselves on the fact that such blatant homophobia has not been shown by any right-wing fundamentalist in our country, should not be too quick to judge. A gay club hasn’t been targeted in India because there is none (at least openly and exclusively). It’s time we stop defending religion and come out and accept its systemic flaws that are corroding humanity.

My Bookish Woes(4)

My Bookish Woes(1) 

My Bookish Woes(2) 

My Bookish Woes(3) 

 

One of the many paradoxes of my life is that: though the stories I consumed avidly as a child were all from the realm of fantasy and mythology, most of them narrated to me by people I grew up around, as an adult I can’t bring myself to read any work of fantasy. And I am forced to admit that this stubborn resistance to the works of fantasy deprives me of the pleasure of reading some of the most celebrated works of contemporary and classic fiction.

 

It’s not as if I haven’t tried enough. I genuinely have. In fact, I am one of those masochist readers who go on reading the book until they finish it, even if they don’t like it at all. Last year I picked up Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean At The End Of The Lane. Driven by his huge popularity and personal charm, I somehow convinced myself to read his work, despite knowing that he serves his fiction with a generous dose of fantasy. I was excited. It was my first Gaiman. I told myself, “you will be a good boy; you will not fuss; he is one of the most important contemporary voices of the literary world; you will read him patiently.” Alas! Even my literary masochism could not force me to finish the slender book. I must have read about three quarters of it before I gave up. This is not a commentary on the quality of his writing—it’s wonderful and amusing. Rather, it’s about my inability to fully relish fantasy now.

 

There was a time in the latter half of the century when the genre of magic-realism had opened floodgates of imagination for writers. Many of the post-colonial writers seized on this new territory and produced works that are now counted among contemporary classics, such as, One Hundred Years Of Solitude and Midnight’s Children etc. Magic realism was an attempt to marry two major tributaries of literature, namely, realism and fantasy. As I read some of these brilliant books, I realised that even they did not move me the way I had expected them to. They amazed me; they wowed me; but they did not move me. And when I read (for pleasure), I want to be moved emotionally. So even this subset of fantasy with its strong semblance of realism, I realised, did not appeal to me.

I was one of those kids who were oblivious to the extraordinary sway of the Harry Potter series. Later on when I got to know about it and realised how crazy most people my age are about it, I toyed with the idea of reading it. But, of course, I couldn’t. I found myself too old to be reading it; when I read the synopsis, I realise that if as a child I had the opportunity to read the series I may have devoured it; but now at this stage, I could not bring myself to invest in the struggles of the little bespectacled wizard with the dark forces.

 

From the books that I read now, I have come to demand a world populated by real people struggling with real problems—and God knows (does he?) that there are aplenty. While I understand that most fantasy is strongly underpinned by real-life incidents, I have grown too impatient for veiled metaphors and indirection. I like books that call a spade a spade and not a witch’s spatula. I now demand fiction to be as brutal, untidy, and unresolved as life. And I think it’s far more difficult to capture life with all its squalor and shapelessness. Squalor: that we live through daily but that makes us uncomfortable when we encounter it in art. In life there are no neat resolutions, there is no triumph of the good over evil. However, one must also concede that in many instances fantasy has been the ultimate resort of writers who write in an environment or for an audience that is hostile to free and unvarnished expression of thoughts. (We still live in a world where writers, bloggers, activists are being hacked to death.)

 

Perhaps, my aversion for fantasy stems from the fact that mythology had such a strong influence on my psyche while I was growing up that it was difficult to undo it until much later; and maybe I still haven’t been able to undo it fully. As a (wannabe) writer I had once resolved to never write stories that are purely imaginary, because, I thought it will make me complicit with the myth-makers who instill false hope in people and don’t let them see the world the way it is. I wonder which of the two resolves I am going to break first: that of reading fantasy, or that of writing it.

Laal Gopal Gulal Humari

लाल गोपाल गुलाल हमारी आँखिन में जिन डारो जूं
वदन चन्द्रमा नयन चकोर, इन अंतर जिन पारो जूं

कुमकुम रंग सों भरी पिचकारी, तकि नयनन जिन मारो जूं
खेलो फ़ाग वसंत परस्पर, अट-पटे खेल निवारो जूं

पंक-विलोचन दुःख-मोचन लोचन भर दृष्टि निहारो जूं
नागरी-नागर भव-सागर सों 'कृष्णदास' को तारो जूं

~ Krishndas

With gulaal you must not imbrue,
O Gopal laal, our eyes,
for they continually look at you
like moon, the chakor espies.

Pichkari filled with kumkum
at our eyes, don't you aim.
Celebrate the festival of phaag;
forsake your mischievous game.

You, who dispels all the gloom,
whose eyes like lotus bloom,
pray, cast your divine glance
upon us, O beloved of every lass.
Salve us from the ocean of suffering,
pleads so, forever yours 'Krishnadas'.

(My translation)

Of Men, Masculinity, And Machismo

The world celebrates the international women’s day today. Even though the occasion has become another means by which you could be allured to buy things you absolutely don’t need, at the heart of the occasion lies the intent of acknowledging the travails that women face and of celebrating womanhood.

I seek the leave to use the occasion to reflect on that class of people who don’t fit neatly in either of the extremes of the gender spectrum. A slightly unsettling fact is that even those of you wishing the world on women’s day may not be fully comfortable with the idea of finding the expression of those womanly qualities in men.

In one of the sessions at JLF this year, Karan Johar talked about how one of his most unhappy childhood memories was being called ‘pansy’. He recounts the experience of coming home with the baggage and spending sleepless nights, having to cope with the curse of being called pansy.

As someone who’d been at the receiving end of such nasty remarks at one point, I feel compelled to assess the stigma around being effeminate or “pansy”.

The idea that “real men” have to be burly, bleached of any trace of vanity, uninterested in finer things in life such as music, dance, poetry, is a rather recent one. The classical and medieval conception of masculinity was incredibly different from the idea of masculinity that we tend to subscribe to today. Historically, we have had an array of men who have not displayed any of the above qualities and have yet been idealised.

A couple of months ago a friend and I were ambling in Delhi Haat, where we encountered an exquisite painting. The painting depicted Krishna massaging Radha’s feet. My friend found the painting a bit curious. Isn’t Krishna supposed to be the alpha-male, the chick-magnet? How can he be shown to be so subservient? were the questions simmering within him. And when we sat down to treat ourselves with some melt-in-the-mouth pooranpolis at the Maharastra food-stall, he asked these questions in as many words.

Yes, Krishna is the alpha-male, the chick-magnet; but he’s not macho in the sense we understand the term today. He possesses all the qualities that attract women—and there’s plenty of lore that suggests so— without being manly in the contemporary sense. How will people react in today’s India if they see a boy of, say, 16 roaming the streets, wearing bright yellow clothes, bedecking himself with the choicest of jewels and the most vibrant of the flowers, playing a flute, and, to crown it all, sporting a plume of peacock feathers on his head? He would certainly be hounded and called unmentionable names on the streets and maybe even on Twitter. He could have easily started #KrishnaSoGay Twitter-trend.

But the irony is that this is exactly how Vyas describes Krishna in the much-revered Bhagwat puran (5,21,10) . Clearly, Krishna wouldn’t fare very well on our macho-meter by today’s standards. And yet Krishna is called the adi-purusha, the primeval man. Among all the other incarnations of Vishnu, some of who were even brutish such as Parashuram, the axe-wielder, Krishna is called the purna avtar, the plenary incarnation. So here we have man who is the women-charmer or, as my friend would say, the chick-magnet, and yet he doesn’t fit into the mould of masculinity as we conceive it today and is perfectly comfortable with the idea of being submissive.

Sample this legend associated with the celebrated work of Jaydev, Geet Govind (circa 12th century). Geet Govind comprises many ashtapadis. An ashtapadi is a set of eight verses. The 19th ashtapadi of Geet Govind is popularly known as darshana-ashtapdi. It is called so because, it is believed, Jaydev had a divine vision while composing this ashtapadi. The 7th verse of the ashtapadi describes Krishna imploring Radha to place her feet upon his head. Jaydev wrote this verse in a state of trance. But when he regained his wits, he realised that such a depiction could be seen as impropriety. Thus he expunged this verse from the manuscript and went about his business. When he returned to his desk, he saw Krishna himself re-writing the omitted verse. So Jaydev, having had this darshan, decided to retain the said verse in the compilation.

Irrespective of whether actually Krishna wrote the verse or Jaydev, it should make us re-examine our contemporary conception of masculinity. And we have a plenty of such examples. Arjun, the warrior prince, arguably the protagonist of the grandest epic Mahabharat, chose to masquerade as a transvestite. Arjun was also extremely fond of dance (the very reason he was obsessed with watching Urvashi dance).

A man not comfortable with the idea of floridity and humility, may actually be deeply insecure about his own masculinity. His ridiculing the “effeminacy” of another man may smack of his inherent anxiety about his own manhood. A man at ease with his own sexuality would readily embrace the floridity and humility, and may even use them to his own advantage.

We could turn to more recent examples, if you will. We recently had Jaden Smith posing for Vogue Korea wearing a skirt and nail-paint, and a red flower tucked behind his ear. Closer home, we have Ranveer Singh. He is a man extremely confident about his sexuality and has never scrupled to talk about it. While on screen Ranveer essayed the role of Bajirao Peshwa, the epitome of Maratha valour, with such finesse, off the screen he has been making gender-defying style statements. He can carry off nose-rings, skirts, and floral prints with equal panache. Contrast this with the ridiculous attempt by Abhishek Bachhan to play an effeminate man, Abbas, in the 2012 film, Bol Bachan.

Yuval Noah Harari in his fascinating account of human history points out that in nature it is usual for the male counter-part of a species to be the more colourful and accessorised. Look at a peacock’s vibrant tail or a lion’s thick mane, for instance. He further remarks that in the history of human kind it’s only the current alpha-male that has looked the most dreary and dull. Be it our rajas and maharajas or nawabs, with their jewels and silks; or the heads of the Native American tribes, with their feathered headdresses; or the likes of Louis XIV of France with wigs, stockings and high-heeled shoes, the most powerful men have always been also the most flamboyant.

These observations make one wonder since when and why our conception of masculinity became so uni-dimensional and bland. Is it time to re-assess and maybe even recalibrate?

The JNU Controversy: Are We Losing Our Sense Of Balance?

The JNU controversy is showing no signs of abatement. My Facebook/Twitter is divided into two camps. While the rest of us fling ourselves into the fray, some of us must take a step back, try to detach ourselves and analyse the whole episode. The problem is that, as it always happens with such volatile issues, the core issue gets laid by the wayside, and the larger debate snowballs into something far removed from the core issue.

The right wing is offended by the seditious slogans shouted by a bunch of students who are allegedly from the JNU. They demand legal action against the perpetrators of treason. Because the police were unable to catch the name-less and face-less people that are seen shouting the slogans in the video, they go for the easiest and the most obvious target, Kanhiya Kumar, the student-leader.

The left wing sees this as breach of right to free speech. They are demanding release of Kanhaiya Kumar and are outraged by the Emergency-like conditions. They have conveniently forgotten the content of the slogans and have made the debate all about right to dissent and right to free speech.

What amazes me is how both the factions are shaping the debate to suit their own interest.

The issue at hand can be looked at from two perspectives: macroscopic and microscopic. Most people on my Facebook/Twitter timeline have chosen to take a macroscopic view of the situation. Everyone is making sweeping generalisation. 

While dissent and debate are crucial, one has to draw a line somewhere. Sloganeering isn’t an intellectual exercise insofar as I understand. Even so, one is perfectly entitled to raise anti-Modi, anti-BJP anti-RSS, anti-ABVP slogans, and such slogans have been raised in the past, effigies have been burnt, and marches have been taken out, without anyone demanding any arrests. But “Bharat ki barbadi tak jung rahegi...jung rahegi” or “Bandook ke dum per azadi”, to my mind, appear to be taking things too far. We must not lose our sense of balance. By defending Afzal Guru, aren’t we defending extremism? How is extremism of the Left more valid and less condemnable than that of the Right? How are we then any the better than Pakistani establishment which believes that while Jihadis that bomb and attack Pakistan are bad Jihadis, but the ones that bomb and attack India are good Jihadis. 

I am willing to go so far as to even sympathise with the use violence as a means to achieve your objectives (which could be equality, liberty, or establishing the hegemony of your religion), but then you will have to see all of them equally. You then lose the moral right to condemn or vilify organisations like ISIS or Taliban. Just as you are fighting for your cause, ISIS too fighting for its cause.

Yes, in an ideal world, we should have the liberty to even raise anti-India slogan and demand Bharat ki barbadi if we deem it fit; but then, do we live in an ideal world? In an ideal world there should be no discrimination positive (reservations) or negative (untouchablity); in an ideal world everyone should have equal intellectual quotient; in an ideal world everyone should be perfectly rational. Clearly, by any of these standards, we don’t live in an ideal world, and thus we are bound to, as I suggested earlier, draw the line somewhere. Now this line is usually arbitrary, just as the legally permissible age of drinking, say. But we must draw it nonetheless. Yes, it could be debated and changed, but until such time a resolution is reached and it is altered, it has to be respected. 

As the hold of religious fervour is wearing off in the liberal psyche, people are bound to look for ideas/objects wherein they can anchor their faith. Some people find this anchor in liberal humanism and others find it in nationalism. Both are social constructs. The concept of “Bharat Mata” or motherland and the idea of defending its honour is as much a manufactured idea as is the idea of equality and human-rights. Both are unscientific and unnatural. In the natural world there’s no motherland, nor is there any equality or rights. Matsya-nyay, or the rule of the might, works in the natural world. A quote by Tagore is doing rounds—it essentially says that humanity should supersede nationalism. What we don’t realise is that both humanity as well as nationalism are imagined realities. How does one then decide which imagined reality should be valued more than the other? I personally would any day choose humanism over nationalism, but expecting everyone to toe my line may be a tad unfeasible, however desirable. Consequently, we will have to work out an intermediate space where there is mutual sensitivity and mutual respect for these ideologies. Swinging to either of extreme ends will only result in chaos.

This is by means an attempt to dilute the necessity of human-rights (including the right to free speech). We must strive to maintain the sanctity of such principles in order to maintain order and justice in society. However, we must also not write off other imagined realities, just because they don’t square with our imagined reality. We are humans and we will always live by these imagined realities or systems (religious or secular). Systems are inescapable, if not indelible. When one system is destroyed, there swoops in another in place of the first. And nationalism, by the virtue of being secular, enjoys the kind of currency and reach that even religions don’t. Perhaps that’s the reason that even the people on my Facebook and Twitter who are otherwise very liberal in their outlook, are taking unkindly to the agitation by the JNU. Again you may label them as that pseudo-liberals (how can they condone the clampdown?), but then, they too can turn around and call you pseudo-nationals (how can they condone “Bharat ki barbaadi tak jung rahegi” slogans?). This mutual name-calling doesn’t take us anywhere though. 

When looked at from a microscopic standpoint, what bothers me is that hardly any of the teachers or intellectuals leading the protests came out and condemned the distasteful and objectionable (if not anti-national) remarks/slogan. Most of the people on my Facebook/Twitter who are outraged over this episode, did not show any outrage over the “bandook ke dum pe azadi” slogans. 

They could turn around and say that these slogans weren’t mouthed by JNU students in the first place and the JNU students are being framed. I say, I so ardently wish that is the case. The speeches of Mr Kanhaiya Kumar and Ms Sucheta make me want to believe that they have no anti-India sentiments whatsoever. However, that should not prevent them from explicitly condemning and unsubscribing from the objectionable statements made on their campus, mainly because these very statements are the root of the controversy.

Though universities are hailed as spaces where contrarian views are allowed to be voiced, we don’t see that happening always. Last year Baba Ramdev was not allowed to address the students on the JNU campus as some student groups were opposed to this idea. There was lot of protest when about three years ago Mr Modi, the then chief minister of Gurjrat, was invited by SRCC college to speak on matters of economy. 

The Right wing has also not left any stone unturned to take things to the extreme. BJP MLA O. P. Sharma took it upon himself to attack left-wing activist and journalists. The likes of the infamous Kailash Vijayvargia have suggested that such ‘anti-national’ people should be shot. Some lawyers have chosen to brandish their nationalism by walking in to the court with the national flag in their hands. We see a clear attempt being made by some lumpen elements to co-opt patriotism bandwagon to settle their political scores. Such attempts must be thwarted and shamed. Slapping charges of sedition on a student leader seems as bizarre as wishing for Bharat ki barbaadi.

But there’s a large apolitical mass of people too that is not happy with this debate is being shaped. We should call a spade a spade. We can’t get so blinded and enslaved by our ideological affiliations that we become unwilling to see things for what they are. When last year Gajendra Chauhan was appointed as the FTII chairman, film-personalities such as Anupam Kher, who is Right-leaning, went on record to criticise the move and openly expressed his dissatisfaction with it.   

My appeal to all the stake-holders, especially the teachers and mentors is to bring back a sense of moderation in the discourse. Don’t let interest groups stoke the passions for their personal and political motives. Turn away people like Rahul Gandhi who did not care to express any solidarity whatsoever when these very students were withstanding lathi-charge ordered by UPA government because the students demanded justice for Nirbhaya. Ask him to go away and tell him that you’re perfectly capable of fighting your own battle. Ask O.P. Sharma to keep his desh-prem to himself. Tell him we don’t want to lynch people even if we don’t agree with what they say. The key to stability and healthy debate gets lost between #ShutDownJNU and #IamWithJNU.

Why the Shani Temple Row doesn't Stir Me As a Feminist?

I believe firmly in the idea of gender-equality. Yet I am not too exercised by the latest row between the Shani Shingnapur temple authorities and a group of female activists that go by the name of Bhumata Ranragini Brigade (BRB). In order to defy the centuries old convention that prohibits women to enter the inner sanctum of the temple, members of this group tried to march into the temple on 26^th January. The group had to be hemmed in by the police.

Ideally, as a feminist, this regressive practice should have me outraged. But, leaving politically correctness aside for a bit, it doesn’t. Because this ostensible discrimination isn’t universal. It isn’t as though all the Hindu temples disallow entry to women. Only a very few temples do. There are also temples and rituals which are meant only for the women-folk, and men are disallowed to participate in them. For every temple where a woman isn’t allowed, there are fifty where she is.

The idea of gender-based discrimination on the basis of allowing/disallowing entry in the area of worship is complicated by the polytheistic nature of Hinduism. Unlike other monotheistic religions that believe in concept of only one God, Hinduism has an assortment of Gods and Goddesses. There are sthal-devtas, gram-devtas, kul-devtas etc. and corresponding devis (demigoddesses). And like us, these gods and goddesses have their own set of idiosyncrasies and preferences. Shiva is offered Bel-patra, while Vishnu is offered Tulsi. To say that in a Shiv temple Tulsi is being discriminated against, because Tulsi is feminine, may sound a bit odd. Many of the temples are centuries old and have legends and myths associated with their respective deities and their origins, owing to which there are different rituals and traditions, some of which may favour men while others may favour women.

This is not to shy away from the fact that religion is been historically used as tool by the dominant sections of the society force the rest into submission. Many of the religious practices are blatantly patriarchal and utterly regressive (say, Karwa-chauth). And they must be questioned and fought against, by all means. But to squabble over such issues as trying to gain entry into an area which is not designed for one’s gender may actually seem like a waste of one’s energy. Why should you as a girl demand a right to enter an all-boy’s school? This by no means should sound like a defense of gender-specific institutions. My submission is that we must try to channelize our energies in trying to build and promote gender-neutral institutions, rather than trying to demolish the few antiquated ones that exist. But let us not take away the right of people to engage with a gender-specific institution. They are as much entitled to be part of one as you are entitled to build and promote a gender-neutral one.

And if this issue were actually about barring of women in a school, or any other institution (say, the parliament or the judiciary) that could really empower them, I would have fervently denounced such a practice. But does entering a temple whose God isn’t too fond of you (as the priests would have you believe) really empower you? We need to step back and reassess the whole argument. If it’s about the right to pray, then I would ask: why do you even want to pray to a God that isn’t willing to grant you an audience because of your gender? Aren’t there other more inclusive and friendlier Gods? We are Hindus—we have no dearth of variety of Gods to choose from. If my God/Goddess doesn’t like me, I don’t like them too. I go to the one that likes me. As simple as that! If you say that it’s not the God who is disfavouring you but the priests (who are almost always men) and that you want to explore the spiritual connect you feel with that God, then I would say, that’s how religion has always worked. What your Gods wants will always be told to you by someone acting as an interface. You will always get mediated and filtered responses/commands from your Gods(/Goddesses).

 And in such case there’s little point in seeking an entry in such a system to become a part of it. You will instead be better off questioning the very system and breaking away from it. You don’t have to physically enter a place to explore your spiritual connection— if you believe in such a thing, and if you don’t, then why fuss? 

Can we, as feminists, not focus our energies on educating our daughters and instilling a rational temperament in them, if they are not killed in the wombs, that is?

My Bookish Woes(3): Of Literature Festivals and Book Launches

My Bookish Woes(1)

My Bookish Woes (2)

It’s the time of the year when there are literature festivals galore. These festivals bring writers face-to-face with their readers or, sometimes, just readers. You have your favourite writer sitting right before you, reading out his/her own work or talking about it. Not only their own work, writers could also be asked to pontificate about a wide range of literary issues (say, the future of novel) and non-literary issues (say, the rise of ISIS). We expect them to have an opinion about all these matters, and all that matters.  How well a book does now does not necessarily depend on how well-written the book is, but on how well-marketed it is. The publishing industry is not any longer untouched by (the much aggressively) rising consumerism. 

Books, too, like movies, are now released and launched with much fanfare. There is a great deal of emphasis on visibility. The writers have to be visible to be able to sell. To sell well, at any rate. The writers are now accessible through Twitter, Facebook, their own websites—which could be run by the writers themselves if they are not well established or by a professional if they can afford to hire one—and the literary events too. They write articles on popular web-platforms, and in return their latest or upcoming work gets a precious mention.   

But there was a time when writers thrived behind the veil of obscurity. Readers rarely had direct access to writers. Historically, we have never really known much about the writers and their world-view. How much do we know about Vyas, Homer, Kalidas, Virgil, Sapho? Very little. And most of it is speculative. Despite the humongous research and scholarship that Shakespeare has invited over the centuries, there are huge gaps in his life story as we know it; and we certainly don’t know what Shakespeare’s views on the subjects he wrote about were or what his politics was. One can venture to make inferences based on the works of these greats, but such an exercise is highly vulnerable to inaccuracies. Not always do the views of the writer and those expressed in a text match. The work produced may not always be an extension of the writer, as we generally tend to believe. T.S. Eliot famously called upon his fellow and future writers to shed the burden of personality in their works and thereby only propagated the cult of impersonal. In the Regency and Victorian era, many women writers took to writing under fictitious names, adding another layer of obscurity.  Even much after trend of using pseudonyms phased out, we had writers who were notorious for being reticent and unapproachable.

Samuel Beckett, for instance, never gave the kind of lengthy interviews that we see/read today. He was always the most evasive about his most evasive character: Godot. He never cared to freely explain away or comment on significance of Godot. Yet the popularity of his work has endured even after half a century. Take another example, the literary sensation, the voice of his age, J. D. Salinger. In his most loved work, The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger ascribes the following lines to Holden: ”What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.” However, Salinger himself remained quite an inaccessible recluse all his life. He himself would never entertain the kind of phone-call Holden might want to make to his favourite writer.

  I attended the book launch of Amit Chaudhuri’s Odysseys Abroad last to last year. After the presenter was done asking her set of questions, the audience were given a chance to shoot questions, as is the custom in such events. When a lady asked Amit what books does he read, she was scandalised to hear the answer. Amit very nonchalantly said that he doesn’t read. After a moment or two of surveying the audience which sat aghast in utter silence, he smiled and said that he meant he doesn’t read fiction anymore, just poetry. Order was restored in the universe. Everybody started breathing normally again.

Whenever I attend such an event I have two major fears in my mind.

First, what if I end up asking the same cliché questions that the writer must be tired of answering? All the other questions that don’t pertain directly to the book being discussed, are attempts to understand the mind of the writer. We want to know how it is done. What books has the writer read? (Could I also read them and write as well?) What do they think of a particular book? (Do their views match mine?) Where did you grow up? (From where does he get his characters?) What was your childhood like? (Did he have a miserable childhood?) Does your spouse read your book? (Is their marital life blissful?) Most of these questions, perhaps unwittingly, aim at undoing the mojo of the writer at one level, and establishing a correspondence between the curious reader and the revered writer, at another level. We believe that the writer is endowed with a kind of insight that we are not, and that they have the remarkable quality of distilling that insight in from of words.

Second, what if there is a huge gap between the person I see on the stage and the image of the writer I have built in my head based on his/her book(s)? Perhaps, the writers too have this fear. J.D Salinger may have known that he could never talk in the same gullible and disarmingly amusing manner as Holden Caulfield.  The phenomenal Chimamanda Adichie confesses that it’s unfair for people to expect that she would fully be able to explain the motives of her much loved character Ifemelu, because her own life hasn’t been half as interesting as Ifemelu’s. In fact, she admits to discovering similarities between herself and Obinze. Perhaps, Beckett did not know any more about Godot than we do. This would mean that writers also can not know. And this thought makes me uneasy.

P S. Around writers, I behave like a gushing fourteen year old—too excited to be around them, and too dumbfounded to ask anything. All I can do is asking for an autograph.