(From The Telegraph.)

Unlike the sadhus we generally see on tv, at least this one’s an honest cheat, which is more than I can say for myself. Ever since I resolved to post more regularly, I’ve obviously done nothing of the sort. Posts like this one and the one below don’t really count (they’re links, not posts) but I live in hope that eventually, to quote T.S. Eliot, there will be time. Plus, with this particular entry, I can feel all virtuous that this is my way of protesting against SOPA (she said, levitating just a little).

 The real punishment of the Rushdie episode was having to check at all times of the day and night whether he had Tweeted anything new. Did we know he was going to put out a statement on Friday? We did not. So there we sat, hitting “Refresh” until our thumbs were blue and our eyes were red (that may have been the Balvenie 12-year-old but I do believe staring at a computer screen over the years has given me a slight squint, if you care.) …

There is a primary rule in the industry that if everyone shows up (and, yes, I’m delighted to say we have a very strong Jaipur showing from The Wall Street Journal this year), it must be important, thank you very much.

So you can take your questions about why we don’t write more about poverty alleviation and the impact of the eurozone crisis on Indian corporate debt and shove them up your semi-academic monthly. …

Fortunately, I hadn’t got four paces before I ran into a colleague from another major newspaper and we decided that neither of us was particularly interested in Nigerian poetry (how do you blog about that, for Pete’s sake?) So we resolved to approach the Kingfisher [a beer brand] stand instead. …

 I — and many of my compadres in the dark arts of journalism — like to associate ourselves with the leading lights of the literary world. We think that, deep down, we could probably do what they do, if only we didn’t get caught up in watching “The Wire.” Maybe we, if we do ever write that bestseller, will get to read from it to adoring fans who aren’t members of our immediate family, too.

Once again, do read the entire blog post here.

PRESS RELEASE

This press release is being issued on behalf of the organizers of the Jaipur Literature Festival. It has come to their attention that certain delegates acted in a manner during their sessions today which were without the prior knowledge or consent of the organizers. Any views expressed or actions taken by these delegates are in no manner endorsed by the Jaipur Literature Festival. Any comments made by the delegates reflect their personal, individual views and are not endorsed by the Festival or attributable to its organizers or anyone acting on their behalf. The Festival organizers are fully committed to ensuring compliance of all prevailing laws and will continue to offer their fullest cooperation to prevent any legal violation of any kind. Any action by any delegate or anyone else involved with the Festival that in any manner falls foul of the law will not be tolerated and all necessary, consequential action will be taken. Our endeavor has always been to provide a platform to foster an exchange of ideas and the love of literature, strictly within the four corners of the law. We remain committed to this objective. (Emphases mine)

The delegates that have JLF’s knickers in a twist are Amitava Kumar, Hari Kunzru, Jeet Thayil and Ruchir Joshi. All of them read extracts from The Satanic Verses at a mid-day session. Kunzru read first. When Kumar was to follow, the organisers asked him not to. Thayil and Joshi joined Kunzru and Kumar. The decision to read The Satanic Verses was possibly spurred by the revelation that Salman Rushdie was not going to attend the festival because apparently, Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) had ordered the author be “eliminated”. There was also something about some Mumbai don threatening to assassinate him, which sounds like a bad Bollywood film from the ’90s but never mind that. It seems the original prize of Rs. 1 lakh for throwing a shoe at Rushdie wasn’t deemed enough to get Islamists riled up. There are those who are sure that everything from shoe-throwing to the SIMI threat  is an attempt at securing the Muslim vote in upcoming elections in Uttar Pradesh (the first phase of legislative assembly elections in the state are in February). I’m inclined to agree, for what it’s worth. But the actual point of this post is that in that press release up there, William Dalrymple, Namita Gokhale and Sanjoy Roy (the chief organisers of JLF) distance themselves from writers protesting bigoted ignorance by reading from a book. If there is such a thing as karma, this will bite all of them on their bottoms. And painfully at that.

For now though, judging from the happy post-party, going-to-bed tweets of those who didn’t read from The Satanic Verses, the Tata Steel Lawns and Bank of America Mughal Tent in Diggi Palace are under no threat.

I, on the other hand, am feeling sick to my stomach. Not just because I love many of Rushdie’s books or because I like to think of myself as a writer and it is my tribe that is being attacked, but because this contemporary India is not a country to which I want to belong.

In case you’re interested, the editor of The New Yorker, David Remnick wrote a blog post about the first day at JLF. You can read it here. The drama was also written up, complete with the above press release, here. So far, the best JLF diary is by Tom Wright of Wall Street Journal, in my opinion.  

@Shteyngart Like most busy mega-celebrities, I’ve decided to outsource my tweets.

#Outsourced2India Namaste, everyone! This is the Real Gary Shteyngart from NYC, USA!

#Outsourced2India Savoured some excellent aloo parathas at the test match against Pakistan.

#Outsourced2India I meant to say, enjoyed a bang-up FilletO’Cheese at the NJ Giants Sporting Centre. Go, squadron!

…

#Outsourced2India Just found out they’re out-outsourcing the Real Gary to Italy because the rupee is strong & euro about to collapse.

…

#Outsourced2Minsk Hello. It is Real Gary. I am depressed.

#Outsourced2Minsk Still depressed.

#Outsourced2Minsk Drunk and depressed.

#Outsourced2Minsk Just drunk.

#Outsourced2Minsk Best friend Oleg throw me out of his Lada. He beat me. I beat him. Depressed.

#Outsourced2Minsk Drunk with Oleg. Now he is Best Friend FOREVER. I am so happy. Depressed.

…

#Outsourced2Minsk Got 10 years in labor camp for wearing wrong shirt to parade. Whatever. Outsourcing continues to Korea.

#Outsourced2Seoul Annyeong haseyo! This is the Real Gary Shteyngart, ranked 1,546th important American writer.

…

#Outsourced2Seoul Tweet boss say I am not A-team. I am maybe B-team or C-team. I feel a big shame in front of him. Also family.

#Outsourced2Seoul Standing on Mapo Bridge over Han River. I have no wife, no car, no top college degree, no leg. Wish I could outsource myse

#Outsourced2Seoul Last tweet was over 140 characters. Please accept my sincere apologies for this horrible mistake. Goodbye, cruel wo

Earlier this month, I cancelled my tickets to Jaipur. I was going to attend the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) but ultimately I decided against it because I felt fest-ed out (there have been a spate of fests since end-2011 and, for once, I was on the same track as the hipster intellectuals of this country. Rejoice!). The next day, Salman Rushdie said he would be attending JLF.

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, but I have a blind, er, soft spot for Rushdie. Which is code for, I love him. Of course he’s written some nonsense (who hasn’t?) but that doesn’t matter. When he gets it right, he’s one of my favourite storytellers and he’s brilliant enough for me to ignore the occasions when he doesn’t get it right. I’ve followed Rushdie around in New York, like an East German spy; I’ve eavesdropped on his conversations… like I said, soft spot.

When Rushdie’s name was added to JLF, I felt like an idiot for cancelling my tickets. I wailed a little. Then I told myself to grow up. In any case, I comforted myself, Jaipur would be too crowded for me to stalk him properly.

It seems naive now, but I didn’t take it seriously when the first angry growls came from a band of irate Muslims. After all, it has been DECADES since The Satanic Verses. Apparently that’s not long enough for Darul Uloom Deoband to either forget about the book or read it  so that they know what they’re snarling about. The Deobandis demanded the Indian government not give Rushdie a visa to visit the country. Rushdie tweeted he didn’t need a visa to come to India ( with his Person of Indian Origin card, he doesn’t need a visa). The Law Minister, sensibly, said that he didn’t see why the government should forbid Rushdie from entering the country. The bearded baying by Darul Uloom Deoband became louder and then, boom, Rushdie was no longer part of JLF. His conversation with Hari Kunzru, originally scheduled for 20th January, is no longer on the website.

From the Amul Butter ad campaign.

Here’s what the The Times of India tells us. The Rajasthan government “persuaded” the organisers of JLF to ask Rushdie to call off his visit. According to the official statement released by JLF, Rushdie “will not be in India on 20th January due to a change in his schedule. The festival stands by its invitation.”

How’s that for a turkey stuffed with high quality bullsh*t?

I’m not sure whether the Rajasthan government should get the award for Wimp of the Year (I know it’s only January) or JLF’s organisers. Rajasthan, with 60% literacy, is expected to burn because Salman Rushdie will attend a literature festival. What is the point of having a bureaucracy, police force and government in general if you can’t maintain law and order in the state and let something as uncontroversial as JLF run unimpeded? Why is the government pampering the insecurities of an illiterate, ignorant set? And really, Rushdie would be in Jaipur for three days at best. How useless is an administration when it can’t guarantee security to a high-profile visitor for three measly days. So much for the state police saying “There will be foolproof security and foolproof law and order.” Over recent months, it’s become obvious that this current administration doesn’t care much for freedom of expression. Placing the gun on the shoulders of the JLF organisers and getting them to pull the trigger, however, is a new low.

Which brings me to the other candidate of Wimp of the Year: JLF. First, the JLF’s organisers tried to hide the fact that they couldn’t resist the Rajasthan government’s strongarming tactics and made it seem as though Rushdie is the one who changed his plans at the last minute. Rushdie has had a “change in his schedule”, has he? Could it be a change that JLF asked him to make that change because it couldn’t give the Rajasthan government a middle finger salute? And then, in an effort to seem like they’ve held on to their integrity, JLF stated that it was standing by its invitation. Which means what, precisely? That there will be, as some are whispering, an unscheduled Rushdie sighting at the festival? Whether or not that happens, when you invite a writer, announce his presence in your itinerary and then remove all mention of that event after a controversy, you’re not standing by your invitation. That’s like adulterous fornicators saying they’re “just friends”.

So now veryone is outraged at the government and appalled by the Deobandis. The intelligentsia will complain about how the Deobandis have not read any of Rushdie’s writing, how it’s impossible to fight Rushdie’s opponents because they don’t acknowledge one’s fundamental right to express a contrary opinion, etc. etc. All valid points (one articulate articulation of outrage is here). All glossing over the fact that JLF is not a simple victim here in this fiasco but an accomplice. It’s a literature festival didn’t stick up for the writer. It didn’t even have the integrity to make it public knowledge that its arm was being twisted. A few articles later, everything will settle down to normal. There will be an exodus to Jaipur this weekend where some well-coiffed outrage will be expressed over cocktails and snacks. JLF will have hundreds of thousands of visitors and it will be a huge success. Money will pour in for next year’s hullabaloo in Diggi Palace.

I wish just a few of the intellectual heavyweights attending JLF would say that they too are changing their schedule because they don’t feel comfortable attending a festival in a country that can’t ensure the security of a participant for three days. Of course that won’t happen. No one wants to give up the adulation, excitement, air-kissing and parties of a well-funded festival that is expecting in the range of 100,000 visitors. Give or take one controversial person of Indian origin.

Not that I matter in any way, but right now, I’m glad I won’t be at JLF. I’d change my plan even if I was given a free ticket.

Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru releasing a pigeon on the first Children's Day Mela (in the mid-1950s). By Homai Vyarawalla.

Homai Vyarawalla, India’s first woman photojournalist, died earlier today. The last time I saw her was in 2010, when the Alkazi Foundation for the Arts organised a retrospective of her photographs at Mumbai’s National Gallery of Modern Art. Vyarawalla came in a wheelchair. If you bought a print (they weren’t wildly expensive) and went up to her, then she’d sign it for you. I remember watching her patiently and determinedly writing her name on each print that was held out to her for a signature. It was obvious that even the act of writing her name exhausted her (she was 95 or 96 at the time) but she didn’t say no to anyone. Her handwriting was incredible. It looked like printed calligraphy, particularly because she was using a black marker.

I found out about Vyarawalla’s passing during the interval of “OK Tata Bye Bye“, written by a young-ish woman playwright named Purva Naresh. Naresh’s play is part of the Writer’s Bloc festival that’s on in Mumbai right now. Anyone who clicked on that link (it goes to a YouTube video), apologies if you don’t speak Hindi. Naresh’s play is partly in Hindi and partly in English, but that “promo” for “OK Tata Bye Bye” is entirely in Hindi. Naresh says that the play is about caste-based prostitution in India and the preconceived notions of outsiders. In the interval, while I scrolled down my Twitter feed, a gentleman sitting in the same row as me groaned, “Why do chicks always write shit like this, yah?” He then stood up and said to his companions, “Chal. Let’s go and get some booze,” at which point it was gently pointed out to him that this was the interval, not the end of the play. While this man was clearly not the most intelligent or articulate creature of our times, I thought he had a point. “OK Tata Bye Bye” fulfilled all the clichéd expectations that an audience tends to have when it’s a woman writing: infidelity, sentimentality, a touch of autobiography, soapbox moments, and a douchebag male character. Pre-interval, it rambled. Post-interval, in an effort to introduce twists to the tale, the plot completely gave up on logic. The direction was unexciting. The acting was good. The writing was a disappointment to me since I’ve seen Naresh’s “Abodhana” and it was an utterly beautiful little play. “OK Tata Bye Bye”, in comparison, was weak. It’s characters were flat. The relationships weren’t particularly well-charted. Most importantly, the story didn’t make sense.

“OK Tata Bye Bye” is about a couple, Pooja and Mitch, who come to a village to make a documentary. This village is just off the highway and known to be a place where women of a particular caste are traditionally prostitutes. As they try to get one of the women, Seema, to talk on camera about being a prostitute, the audience learns Pooja and Mitch are not a happy couple. Mitch has Pooja do all the hard work and orders her around. She protests occasionally and when she does, he’s charming enough to distract her. (I’d have boxed his ears, but then that’s me.) Also, the two of them haven’t had any sexual relations in a while, which is something that seems to make Pooja insecure about having Mitch roam around freely in a village full of prostitutes. After much coaxing and false starts, Pooja is able to get Seema to talk on camera. The same day, another prostitute by the name of Roopa (she’s Seema’s best friend and a quiet one shown as very unwilling to become a prostitute; a stark contrast to the ebullient Seema who declares she enjoys being a prostitute) gives Mitch a candid interview. Having got what they wanted, Pooja and Mitch are about to leave the village when they learn Seema has been arrested because the police think she’s spilled controversial information in her video interview. Pooja makes Mitch hand over the both Roopa and Seema’s interview tapes. Mitch breaks up with Pooja because she values the prostitutes over the interview tapes. Soon it is revealed that Roopa, who isn’t technically a prostitute because she hasn’t had any clients so far, planned this whole thing. Roopa had Seema arrested so that Pooja would hand over the tapes. Somehow Roopa not only knew that Mitch would give the tapes but she also figured that he would break up with Pooja if she insisted they give the tapes to get Seema out of police custody. Not just that, she did all this to strike up a relationship with Mitch, in the hope that he would take her to London with him. The play ends with Seema leaving with Pooja and Roopa leaving with Mitch. Because men are like that. They just go toodling off behind any woman who will have sex with them.

While “OK Tata Bye Bye” had a few moments, most of the play was, to me, preachy, mawkish indulgence. Roopa being the Machiavelli didn’t add up and in any case, that whole sub-plot happened on the fringes of the play’s central action, which was Seema being peppy and clever with Pooja while Pooja and Mitch grappled with the fact that they don’t have much sex. Mitch ogled at Seema first and then traipsed off with Roopa without any explanation (paging Dr. Freud…). I have a vague suspicion Naresh sees herself in Pooja’s character. That’s always a dangerous thing to do unless you’ve got the balls to be painfully honest, which Naresh definitely wasn’t and this made the play feel contrived. Of course, given the rousing applause that the play received at various points, I’m clearly on my own. As I watched it, part of me wondered whether I was expecting too much of Naresh and Indian theatre in general because “OK Tata Bye Bye” is better than a lot of crap that is I’ve seen on stage here, both in terms of writing and direction. But it’s still not good. Is it unfair to compare it to off-Broadway theatre? Is it unreasonable to expect that the scripts will be as well-written, regardless of the production budgets?

The other part of me kept thinking of how watching Naresh’s play felt like being stabbed with oestrogen shots every few minutes. I remembered Vyarawalla’s photography. One of the best-known images of Vyarawalla herself is at a photo-op with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Vyarawalla is the only woman in the row of photographers and she’s angrily trying to get someone out of her shot. She is unmistakably feminine but her concerns are that of any photographer, man or woman. Vyarawalla’s photographs aren’t all brilliant. Some are; many capture priceless and historic moments; none of them advertise her gender. Once you know the photographer was a woman, you may feel there’s a feminine gaze but it’s not blatant. Vyarawalla’s emphasis was on making sure each photograph had a narrative contained in the frame. Her focus was on the story. Of course the work of a photojournalist (particularly in the era when the field was emphatically male-dominated) is different from that of a contemporary playwright, but I can’t help wishing Naresh’s work had the same subtlety, restraint and fidelity for the story.

RIP, Homai Vyarawalla.

Now imagine a soundtrack of demon-killing.

It’s about to be one of these entirely surreal Kolkata-in-winter Sundays. Derby in the morning, darling, I was informed. This essentially translates to knocking back glass after glass of a creamy alcoholic concoction called the Brandy Alexander, and watching people who look like they walked out of a Wes Anderson film squabble for their winnings. Then there’s a wedding reception in the evening. The morning began with a neighbour and someone in my own house gargling. Imagine the sound of phlegm — thick, sticky, tinted green — being dragged and strangled and squelched and spat out audibly. It’s the noise of demon-killing. It drove Pakistani artist Bani Abidi out of the flat she was living in Chittaranjan Park, that Bengali stronghold in New Delhi. And it was happening this morning in and around my home in Kolkata, in Dolby surround sound. Here’s the good news: Everyone is still alive. Did I mention I’m PMS-ing? Yes, it really does get better and better. At this point, the fact that I have a 5am flight out of here seems like one of the best aspects of this weekend.

On the plus side, the weather’s as gloomy as my mood. These aren’t the gorgeous monsoon clouds (obviously) but I’m still a fan, even of this milky, wishy-washy non-light. It’s almost like being in a time warp, which is strangely fascinating to me when I don’t have to leap out and get to work/meet somebody by a certain hour. The time could be 8am or it could be noon, and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference in Kolkata with these clouds. The general joke in the city is that since the new chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, declared she would turn Kolkata into London, she’s begun with bringing in dreary, dismal weather. The infrastructure etc. can happen later. Of course, as always with Mamata Banerjee, the fiction is so much tamer than the facts. I’m told the press enclosure in Writer’s Building has been moved because she hollers too loudly and abusively. Also, she recently slapped one of her cabinet ministers and called another one “khochchorer bachcha”. This means “the child of a khochchor”; a “khochchor” being a mule. Basically, the way Bengalis see it, the animal is half-horse, half donkey, and all stupid. Not precisely the phrase one would use for someone they respect.

I’m here in Calcutta watching things fall apart and people try to piece things together. There’s nothing else to do here. There’s a Bengali phrase that roughly translates to “being held together with spit” (“thuthu diye aatkano”). Such a frantic delusion, sticking things together with spit. It’s much more desperate, haphazard (and stubbornly puerile) than “papering over the cracks”. As I see all the little heartbreaks and pointless bluster around me, I’m reminded of fragments from Wallace Stevens’s “The Man With A Blue Guitar”.

I cannot bring a world quite round,
Although I patch it as I can.

I sing a hero’d head, large eye
And bearded bronze, but not a man,

Although I patch him as I can
And reach through him almost to man.

If to serenade almost to man
Is to miss, by that, things as they are,

Say that it is the serenade
Of a man that plays a blue guitar.

…Where
Do I begin and end? And where,

As I strum the thing, do I pick up
That which momentously declares

Itself not to be I and yet
Must be. It could be nothing else.

…

Throw away the lights, the definitions,
And say of what you see in the dark

That it is this or that it is that,
But do not use the rotted names.

How should you walk in that space and know
Nothing of the madness of space,

Nothing of its jocular procreations?
Throw the lights away. Nothing must stand

Between you and the shapes you take
When the crust of shape has been destroyed.

Via the New Yorker's Tumblr.

Sometime in late December, Saturn shifted, I’m told. My uncle sent me a message informing me of this. My uncle sent me a message informing me of this. I was compelled to read two digests of prophecies for 2012, by two different astrologers, (don’t ask; there are numerous icky aspects to this business of getting a salary every month) and both exulted about Saturn’s shift. Saturn, it seems, was the reason there 2011 comprised the spring, summer, autumn and winter of discontent. The Arab Spring, the girl in the blue bra, Gaddafi’s bloodied head, Mamata Banerjee, attacks upon and by “Maoists”, the 2G scam; basically, we can blame all bad things upon Saturn having sat where it was sitting till it shifted in late-December. “2012 is going to be much more positive,” said my friend who is an amateur astrologer, a tiny detail that was only recently revealed to me. With Saturn shifting, all sorts of good things would filter into my life and I would be awash with the rosy glow of happiness, I was told. “You’ll feel it very soon. Just wait for January. You’ll be totally overflowing with good cheer,” my friend told me.

It is January. I feel about as much cheer as them carollers on the left. In fact, you could say I feel rather distinctly saturnine, which is ironic since Saturn was supposed to make me all bouncy with optimism.

Gah.

On the plus side, the fact that I look like a Vogon in a Fabindia skirt (and feel stupider) did throw up the opportunity of using that cartoon. That’s a smile-inducing thing, even if my life isn’t.

For those not familiar with Cage’s work, see here.

Shostakovich could not have composed with the telly on.

The afternoon is the worst time for creativity.

~ Mark-Anthony Turnage, composer

Listen to a song enough times, and it provokes a Pavlovian response that helps you get back to the place you’re writing about.

Masturbate frequently. You’ll probably do that anyway, but you may as well make it a rule.

~ Anthony Neilson, playwright and director

Get an alarm with a long snooze function and set it early. Shallow-sleep dreams have been the source of many of my best ideas (sadly, small children are no respecters of prospective genius).

Love the effect over its cause.

~Rupert Goold, director

If ever a character asks another character, “What do you mean?”, the scene needs a rewrite.

It’s OK to use friends and lovers in your work. They are curiously flattered.

Reveal yourself in your writing, especially the bits you don’t like.

Accept that, as a result, people you don’t know won’t like you.

~ Lucy Prebble, playwright

It doesn’t always have to make sense.

~Susan Phillipsz, artist

Leave the house. Or better still, go to Battersea Dogs & Cats Home and rescue a staffie.

~ Polly Morgan, artist

Alcohol and singing are not a good combination.

~ Kate Royal, soprano

Panic.

~ Wayne McGregor, choreographer

May 2012 have us all jumping for joy.

If not anything else, may we all have this elephant’s stamina and its ability to land on its feet every time.

****

Image found via FFFFound.