Wednesday, December 25, 2013
On unpacking a carton of books - I
Guest post
by Ashoak Upadhyay
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About
three years ago, my wife and I moved to Pune from Mumbai, a shift that involved
throwing out a lot of knick-knacks collected over the years and for me bringing
home the collection of books that we had kept stored in cartons in a small flat
in the northern most suburb of the city.
I
decided to set up my library in the Pune apartment and so had the sealed cartons
sent over by a bronchial tempo on that may well have been its last journey
spewing smoke all along the expressway till it sputtered to a halt below our
house.
Many boxes hadn’t been opened in all these years;
their contents hadn’t seen the light of day for more than a decade. I had
forgotten their existence, the bland, marker-pen inscription scrawled across a
side, “AU-Books” offering few clues about their individual identities.
To
the assonant sounds of my new neighborhood’s frenetic modernization--vehicular
horns blasting, bleating mindlessly, drills screeching through iron rebars at
construction sites that spring up like warts overnight on a green landscape and
the fetid stink from open garbage dumps overtopped like ice-cream cones that lingers
like bad memories, I began wrenching open those boxes. Huffing and puffing.
I
tore apart the top-end folds, lifted the files sheltering the piles below from
God knows what, began excavating. My breathing slowed, a tinnitus hiss drove
off all sounds as I gazed down upon the pile I had pulled out, setting aside
one book at a time onto the floor beside my stool. I felt like Alice falling
into Wonderland Titles and cover illustrations flitted before my eyes like
ethereal images from a forgotten life.
To
say that these images awakened an elegiac mood of an age when I had read so
many of these works of great literature would be half the story. They altered
time from a chronological sequencing, day to night, minutes to hours into time
moving elliptically, from one temporal plane to another, fusing, separating but
always vivid.
They
seemed to have a smell of their own too. A handful of paperbacks, Penguins, let
off a musty smell of mothballs and newsprint, pages crinkling as I flipped
them. Miss Havisham and her wedding cake! I was young Pip! Then Joseph Conrad
floated before my eyes. Conrad! I hadn’t read him in a decade! I pulled one
novel out after another: The Secret Agent,
Lord Jim, his magisterial Nostromo, paperbacks. And then, as if
holding them all up, An Outcast of the
Islands---a tattered hardback 1929 edition, his scrawl on the last page, “…Cordially
Yours…”
All
senses, sight, smell tactile immured me into this elliptical time zone. I shut
my eyes and saw this callow young man, a promiscuous reader scouring the pavement
stalls near Cross Maidan for bargain paperbacks to help him define his place in
this world.
Why
did he buy Antonio Lobo Antunes’ South of
Nowhere? I flipped through it amidst the gathering pile around me. Was it
the blurb that described it as a first person narrative of Portuguese
colonialism in Angola, its depravity?
I
picked up Under Western Eyes,
paperback. The bronze horseman on the cover, his forelegs reared up as if to
crush a puny figure fleeing before that terrifying prospect took me to
pre-revolution Russia just as The Secret
Agent brought me to an England that Conrad savaged in that great work.
Continued in the post below:
On unpacking a carton of books - II
Continued from the post above
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Right
at the bottom was VS Naipaul.
I
pulled up A House for Mr. Biswas, the
hardback Russell Edition 1969 by Andre Deutsch. I flipped through the Prologue
trying to evoke memories of my first reading. Then I came to the end of it and
stared and re-read a dozen times, a roar in my ears: “…to have lived and died
as one had been born, unnecessary and unaccommodated.”
That
sentence had the force of a revelation. It had always been there; I had read
the book first twenty years back. But it was only now that those words struck
me with a terrifying authorial presence they summoned. In that epitaph, leaving
no doubt or room for ambiguity, I thought Naipaul had gambled a great deal:
that the reader would still want to read on. Not about failure in life and
death but about an irrelevance from birth to death.
A
few days later I had begun reading it, I was stunned; Mr. Biswas, always Mr. Biswas, a parodic courtesy surely, moved
me to tears at the folly, no, the futility of striving and he made me laugh at
the tragic heroism of his life: Mr. Biswas settling into bed with Marcus
Aurelius after swallowing digestive powders.
I
have not stopped reading fiction since then. Mr. Biswas for me is one of
twentieth century’s great novels. Over the next five months, I re-visited some
of Naipaul’s early fiction: The Mystic Masseur,
Mimic Men, The Enigma of Arrival, the first two from that crate. But none of these compared with Mr.
Biswas. The high tragedy, rich comedy that never let the narrative smack of
despair or sentimentality made the new reading an awesome experience. I finished
the book just as the playwright Girish Karnad raised an unnecessary storm about
Naipaul at a Mumbai literary festival. It and the rejoinders, notably Pratap
Bhanu Mehta’s dissection of Naipaul’s work convinced me more than ever of his
place among the greatest of twentieth century fiction writers.
I
had arranged my bookshelves: thrown away the cartons and re-entered
chronological time. But that experience of unpacking had shown me how I could
always leave it for another; not as a form of escapism. Not just to re-live the
joy of reading but to experience the enchantment of literature’s ability to
displace sequential time with the metaphysical, its power to help us enter someone’s
else’s memories, pain, share in the foibles of the human comedy and come back
knowing our present world better.
Ashoak
Upadhyay is a journalist whose debut novel, The Hungry Edge has recently been
published. See www.hungryedge.com
Labels:
A House for Mr. Biswas,
Ashoak Upadhyay,
VS Naipaul
Saturday, December 21, 2013
The Ace Awakening
Exactly a year ago, I blogged about Murali Murthy's book The Ace Principle that listed 15 success principles to Absorb Comprehend and Excel (therefore ACE) in every area of life.
It is a brilliant book that helps understand the meaning of life and living, and helps setting
up a plan to achieve one’s objectives in life. Many authors would settle down into easy obscurity after having their first book published, or at least rest of the laurels for a while.
Not Murali. Within a year, he’s back with another ace – The Ace Awakening – 8 Milestones to scale the peaks of life.
The book begins by a simple observation by the author:
“Each year, I trek
over 60 kilometres across one of the most inhospitable terrains in southern
India and join thousands of people from around the world who overcome extreme
challenges to climb five peaks in the attempt to reach the summit of
Sabarimala.
As I write this book, I have successfully climbed Sabarimala
26 years in a row.
Why did I want to climb a mountain?
On my very first trip to Sabarimala, that question was
answered. Because mountains are majestic and inspire awe. They tower and loom
above us. They outscale us. When we climb a mountain, we participate in its majesty
and awe. Some part of its aura enters our life story and imbues it with
meaning. It is not that we become as great as the mountain when we scale it
but, rather, its greatness becomes part of us. That power which loomed over us
at the foot goes inside us at the peak.”
Murali shares his experiences of trekking and overcoming
extreme challenges to successfully climb five perilous peaks, and describes his
personal journey using his experience of reaching the top of the mountain as a
metaphor to the challenges in life we all face.
The result is an illuminating enumeration of
eight milestones that will serve as a guide to everyone on the journey to reach
the pinnacle of excellence in life.
- Identifying a life purpose
- The insight and the understanding
- The research
- The mentorship
- The journey begins
- The uncompromised long route
- At the peak
- The next peak
Each of these milestones is a stage in the journey to the
shrine of Sabarimala, one of the most important temples in India, and also in
the world, reportedly attracting over a 100 million devotees annually. And each
of the milestones is accompanied by an insight that translates the mountain
trekking experience into a scalable life goal.
With the permission of the author, Generally About Books is
reproducing one the insights from the book – insight that accompanies Milestone
7: At the Peak.
See the blog entry below:
Labels:
Murali Murthy,
The Ace Awakening
At the peak
Continued from the blog above:
Reflections
on the way to the top: As I climb, I am always reminded that
climbing a mountain is a metaphor for the journey of life. Even though I am
focussed on taking just one more step upward, Neelimalai still affords me time
to reflect on what has been happening to me as I climb.
Go
slow to go fast: On the first few days of the trek, I wanted to
blaze the trail ahead of the others. But the hills have taught me that to go
slow is to go fast.
Twenty minutes into my Neelimalai trek, I know this is true.
When I began, I had boundless energy. Now I am in agony, swaying and staggering
with every laboured breath under the effects of altitude sickness.
Yet, slowly, at what seemed like a snail’s pace, I do make
it to the top of the Neelimalai along with all the others.
Reflection:
There
are always areas in life where we need to slow down.
Be aware that the temptation to hurry and take short cuts
will cost you in the long run.
We need to take time, as we struggle towards our goals, to
enjoy the landscape, nature and each other’s company.
Reflection: As you
strive to your ultimate goal, make sure you enjoy the moments of your life
along the way.
Working
hard to reach the top: As I climb, I am aware of all the long
months of preparation, fasting, planning and dreaming of the ultimate goal of
climbing to the summit. Now I am underway. Now I can taste the victory at the
end and the fruit of all my labour.
Reflection:
Set
a goal, plan and prepare, and then work hard to achieve your dream. The hard
work will be worth the effort. The pride you will feel when you reach your goal
will be priceless.
It
takes a team to live the dream: There are so many of us on
this journey together and, as we all reach the Pamba base, we can rejoice
together in each other’s success. It is indeed a great thing.
In the last two days of my journey, I have had the chance to
befriend many strangers from many different places like Malaysia and Australia
who are now good friends. We have become a team and share the challenging
Sabarimala journey together.
Reflection: Allow
friends or family members who share your passions to pursue your dreams with
you.
Overcoming
obstacles is part of pursuing any dream: Why am I investing all
this time to inflict pain on myself by climbing a mountain?
Can I make it? Each time the trek becomes so tough that I
think I cannot continue, these questions that I have suppressed resurface and
tempt me to give up and turn back.
Reflection: We all
face doubt whenever we are faced with opportunity or challenge that will
require risk yet great reward on the other side.
The key is to be strong enough to supress the doubt and
persist with your dream – one small confident step at a time.
Celebrate
your victories: It is hard to put into words the euphoria I
feel when I get to the top of the mountain.
Perhaps it is simply the lack of oxygen that makes me feel a
little light-hearted, but I think it is also that sense of fulfillment, joy and
feeling of being truly alive.
Even though I am bone weary, cold and plagued by the aches
and pains of my efforts, the joy and exhilaration are overwhelming.
Even before I reach the summit technically, I am still truly
elated and proud of myself and my accomplishments.
Cheer
the next generation: As we get closer to finishing our trek, I
see that there are still thousands of people attempting the climb. That’s when
I realize my bigger role. I need to be the cheerleader for the next generation,
encouraging them to dram big and go for it.
Reflection:
The
next generation needs us as coaches and mentors. We must cheer them on and,
when they ask, pass on our life wisdom.
More importantly, perhaps, we must create space for them to
explore, risk, and, yes, sometimes fail, They need us to be the champions of
their dreams.
Labels:
Murali Murthy,
The Ace Awakening
Sunday, December 15, 2013
The Hungry Edge - Ashoak Upadhyay
“What would you do if you have to take sides, apportion
blame? You want to cry for the innocent but you do not know who is guilty.”
Thus Mahesh begins to recount to three strangers he meets,
his obsession with an ill-fated couple. Skeptical, then intrigued, Arvind – bookseller, recently
married, stifled by yet comfortable in a joint family; Ranjan – surface polish,
seething passions, a banker with an eye on the main chance; and Dev Reddy –
disenchanted left wing editor desperate for a stab at immortality will interpret Mahesh’s ‘confessions’ in the light of their insecurities and fantasies.
Slowly but inexorably each will be driven to actions that
will alter their lives and their dear ones irrevocably. By the end of his
story, Mahesh too will not be the same again.
This layered tale consisting of stories within stories is a
commentary on urban Indians coping with the changes that globalisation is
bringing into their social and moral lives. But it is also about memory and
time and their role in shaping our passions and our self-perceptions.
The Hungry Edge is set in present day Mumbai and the
connecting narrative of the ‘confession’ is set in what used to be The Wayside
Inn, where Mahesh a recluse with a “story in his heart” joins quite by chance
three diners, the self-styled Gang of Three one Saturday afternoon. He returns
every Saturday for his cathartic journey into the past.
The Hungry Edge is veteran journalist and economist Ashoak Upadhyay's first novel. It uses the “adda”, the Indian style salon to bring the main protagonists together. Every Saturday after long conversations, they return to their respective lives with their attitudes to love, sex, money, each other and their sense of self-worth subtly altered. These attitudes are remembered, recalled, reflected upon throughout according to their ‘readings’ of Mahesh’s failed and eventually futile passions as they unfold
Ashoak Upadhyay |
The novel is also a tribute to The Wayside Inn, a great
haunt, adda actually, for poets, writers and shoppers. Its lazily whirring
ceiling fans, red and white checked cloth over wooden tables, beer and
indifferent continental fare added to an ambience for conversations that could
stretch into the early dusk when the lights would be switched off and the Inn
would fold up for the night.
On one of the tables a lawyer with cruel memories and
burning ambition took the first step towards his own immortality by penning the
first draft of the Indian Constitution. At later times but no less slow,
artists and poets defined and refined the city’s cosmopolitan sensibility.
It was into this Wayside that Mahesh walked in and changed
destinies.
Quotes from book
“‘Self-discovery has a fool for a teacher, darling. For
instance, some kids think they have the talent for sculpture or poetry but
they’re good at mending things, like computer chaps or politicians, you know?’“
Gauri Aunty to a very confused Deepika
‘She has this quality, you know, an epiphany, Ingrid Bergman
in Casablanca, the face of love, a beauty shot in soft focus. I wanted to sweep
her away, no, no, the fucking moron with her would have smashed me to bits.’ Sripad to his friend Vispy on his new-found
love
“‘I was not always like this. But you know, your husband
does not stroke you and the flower withers. Wells run dry…I have also searched,
my dear...for the attention, the affection of my man, then strangers, not that
there were many in my life, just uncles, old relatives, friends of this large
business family who paw you at weddings.” Parvati
looking for more than sympathy from her youngest sister-in-law
“In Ranjan he found a bridge to life as he had not lived it,
a dangerous balancing act that excited his frayed imagination” Reddy the socialist is charmed by his friend
the banker
“Reddy’s week was spent in reluctant self-reckoning that
left him exhausted rather than enlightened.”
“That night, in his striped pyjamas and vest, on their
narrow double bed, Arvind came alive as never before, to every sound from the
bathroom.”
“Love had imbued him with an exalted sense of life’s purpose
and an urge to live up to its awesomeness. He wanted to seduce his ladylove
with a lofty self-image; versifier or film reviewer doubling as estate manager
wouldn’t do.”
“‘Listen we should be grateful; such a big family here,
brothers and sisters-in-law, Bapu my father. They care, you know? What, what if
we were…just us…me in the shop and you all dressed up, restless and someone
rings the bell, some dark handsome guy with a twitch, lonely, hungry for other
people’s wives…?’ He stared at the mosaic floor, shielding his eyes from that
piercing light (in his wife’s eyes).” Mahesh’s
obsessions turn Arvind paranoid
“No one spoke, none moved a muscle; they could hear Ranjan
wheezing. Mahesh thought he heard someone gasp, a roar sounded in his ears and
time collapsed, an image flashed before him; a man reading a news item and
knowing he was condemned to the shadows, to ponder which was an accident, life
or death or both and if so, then were they meaningless?” Denouement at The Wayside Inn
“‘Women! You never know with them. One minute this, another
minute that. But what the fucks I say, they were one finally, right? He thought
life could be rushed she knew death would not wait. No difference!” Arvind’s judgement on the ill-fated couple
“‘Mahesh, ahh….you are a man of principles; a man of honour
really, is what you are. That greedy swine Ranjan, what does he know about
humanity! Compassion is a dirty word for him…lust…an animal is what he is.
We - you and I - we are made for the exalted life. Join me, I need a man of your
silences, strength…’” Reddy searches for
a partner in his search for immortality
“Then the storm ceased and she opened her inflamed eyes to
swirls of her regurgitation refusing to sink out of sight, her nostrils filling
with the stench of her soured life and she put her hand into it, stirring the
slime over the sinkhole, her sobs now like knife stabs in her parched throat,
her mouth drained of all moisture, pain like a craw in her gullet piercing
whenever she gulped.” Deepika’s payment
time!
Images: Book Cover: Amazon.ca; Author: Hindu Business Line
Labels:
Ashoak Upadhyay,
The Hungry Edge,
Wayside Inn
Sunday, December 08, 2013
Pink Sari Revolution – A Tale of Women and Power in India
Bundelkhand is a region in
central India divided between the provinces of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya
Pradesh. It is not a good place. Economically, it is often compared
(unfavourably) to sub-Saharan Africa. Socially, it is stuck in pre-medieval times,
where caste determines one’s station in life. Politically, it is a boiling
cauldron of caste politics, where “one doesn’t cast one’s vote, one votes one’s
caste.”
Women’s emancipation, empowerment
and equality are fanciful notions here, and sexual assault by higher caste men
on lower caste women, while not commonplace, doesn’t really surprise anyone. In
such an environment, it is impossible to imagine a woman like Sampat Pal – a
woman who is all by herself pulling women from benighted darkness into
light.
Sampat is the leader of the Pink
Gang – so called because the members of the gang (comprising only women) drape themselves
in pink saris. She periodically leads her gang members to beat up cowardly
husbands who harass their wives, corrupt cops who bully the weak, rapacious
politicians who rob everyone. In a short span, she has become a nightmare for
men in the region, hitherto unaccustomed to being questioned now face a very
real possibility of public humiliation.
Amana Fontanella-Khan’s Pink Sari Revolution – A Tale of Women and
Power in India is Sampat’s story, an unlettered woman, with rudimentary
grip over her circumstances who learns early on in life that the only way to
survive is to fight back. She starts with fighting her husband’s family, and
then her husband, for her own space, and then takes on the entire world in the unwavering
pursuit of her dream to usher in a revolution to upturn the prevailing status
quo that keeps women in servitude and suppression.
She is successful to an
astonishing degree. As Fontanella-Khan notes in admiration, Sampat transforms
herself from a docile child bride into a feisty and firebrand woman, turning
her Pink Gang from a small band of enthusiasts into a mass organization of “about
twenty thousand members, making them the gang double the size of the Irish army
and eight times larger than the estimated number of al-Qaeda operatives in
Afghanistan.”
The book is also the story of
Sheelu, a lower caste young woman who is sexually assaulted by Purushottam
Naresh Dwivedi, a higher caste politician. After the assault, Dwivedi accuses
Sheelu of petty thievery and uses the state apparatus at his disposal to
incarcerate her. Again, this wouldn’t have been different from the hundreds of
similar cases that occur and generally aren’t unreported. It is different
because of Sampat decided to obstinately pursue Sheelu’s case, and ultimately
succeeds in securing the young woman’s release from prison, and get Dwivedi arrested.
Pink Sari Revolution begins as a gloomy tale of exploitation, but
rapidly turns into an inspiring saga of women’s struggle to overthrow a culture
of male dominance that is seemingly embedded into people’s thinking right from
the times of Manu, the post-Vedic Hindu lawgiver, who postulated that women
shouldn’t ever be independent. Fontanella-Khan’s book illustrates the
improbably and yet unrelenting, irreversible and fast-paced changes that are
sweeping India’s Hindi heartland.
Pink Sari Revolution has an outsider’s perspective. The writer
doesn’t claim to understand the Indian way of life and living, but is keen to
immerse herself in it, and she goes about doing that as a method actor would –
by living the part. She lives with the women who are her subject, doing things
they do, the way they do it. She empathizes, doesn’t judge, and portrays their
life and times, often supressing her own revulsion to their barbaric social
practices such as child marriages.
She writes: “One year into my
travels to Bundelkhand, I lived with Sampat at her family home in Badausa (in
August 2011 and December 2011). I have many happy memories from that time. In
those days, we all bathed at the same water hand-pump and I learned by
observing others how one washes more or less fully dressed.”
The book also answers an
intriguing question: Why did the gang choose the colour pink? The answer is
rather mundane: After one woman from the group goes missing during a protest
march, Sampat decided that every member of her group would wear a uniform. They
settle upon Gulabi (pink) because it hadn’t been chosen by any other social or
political group before. The local media promptly dubs these women – draped in
pink saris and carrying a lathi (stick) – the Gulabi Gang.
Fontanella-Khan’s unfamiliarity
with her subject, language and milieu leads to some avoidable errors. For
instance, Sampat Pal’s husband Munni Lal is derisively termed ‘Buddha’ (old
man) by their children. The writer erroneously interprets to mean the Buddha,
the founder of Buddhism. Commenting on the Muni Lal’s marginalization in his
house, she writes, “Their children rarely sought his permission or advise in
important matters. Behind his back they call Munni the ‘Buddha,’ because all he
does is sit in a meditative silence.”
However, this is a minor quibble.
Pink Sari Revolution is an important book. It foretells the future
of women in India.
Sunday, December 01, 2013
'My identity depends on who is identifying me (including myself)'
'My identity depends on who is identifying me (including
myself)
Therefore, what is really real about me?
What is inherently
me?
I don’t know.
Maybe nothing.
Maybe everything.'
Interview with Sheniz Janmohamed
In the Sufi Poets
Series of events you have created a unique blend of music, poetry and art. What
inspired you to start the series?
Three things inspired me to start the series:
The work of Rohail Hyatt, the producer of Coke Studio
Pakistan. He is an incredible facilitator of creativity and collaboration and
the pieces he produces are transformative and revolutionary – not just for the
audience, but for the participants as well.
I have a lot of wonderful friends who are talented artists,
writers, poets, musicians, spoken word artists and performers and I always
thought, “What if I introduced this person to that person? I wonder what they
would come up with!” But in order to do that, I had to create a purpose, and a
central theme.
My love for Sufi poetry became that central purpose. I
wanted to see how people who have never heard of Bulleh Shah would
interpret/connect to his work – and witness that process of discovery. It’s
about creating community and provoking creativity. There’s no room for ego.
Everyone is working to revive the poetry of a poet who is remains alive through
their words, their music. It’s about exposing people to Sufi poetry for its
heresy, passion and humanism. And people in the audience feel that energy and
bask in it (I hope!)
What is special about
the forthcoming Sufi Poets Series?
Sufi Poets Series III: American Sufi is a different format
than usual because we’re featuring Anand Mahadevan’s novel of the same title,
not a Sufi poet.
In Mahadevan’s words, “American Sufi weaves in elements of
Sufi storytelling, sub-continental history, and Urdu poetry to reveal the
tragedy of a land and its people rent between their devotion to the pacifist
strain of Sufi Islam and the growing clout of Saudi-funded militancy.”
It is the central focus and arching narrative of the
evening. Mahadevan will narrate sections of this story and the musicians will
support it and respond to it with their voices and instruments. The lyrics and
poetry to be sung/performed hail from Pakistan. We’re trying to recreate the
feeling of being at a dargah (sufi shrine) but also to follow the journey of a
young man who is torn between his life in the West and his sufi calling. It
contexualizes the relevance of the sufi message for the post 9/11 world.
Why did you start
Ignite Poets?
I started Ignite Poets because I wanted to collaborate with
spoken word artists, poets and musicians, not compete with them. When I began
the series, most of the poetry events in the city were either slams or open
mics. I wanted to create a platform for spoken word artists/poets to speak to
each other and with each other through collaboration with performance sets that
flowed seamlessly from one piece to the next. Most of Ignite Poets’ previous
shows have been scripted/organized poem by poem- I spend a lot of time trying
to connect each individual piece with the other so that there is a sense of
cohesion – without taking away from each poet’s voice.
Now about your work –
ghazals and spoken word: Ghazals and spoken word make for a different sort of
combination – while both draw upon personal experiences, the ghazal is a
subtle, elusive, indirect form, the spoken word poetry is direct, often brash,
in-your-face. Creatively speaking, don’t you find the dichotomy daunting?
I don’t find the dichotomy daunting, and sometimes it
doesn’t even feel like a dichotomy.
The spoken word form allows me to be more flexible and
creative in how I play with my words. It relies on the performative quality of
the poetry and how my voice can amplify the message behind the words. In that
sense, spoken word can be ‘direct, often brash, in-your-face’ because of the
nature of the form itself – the rhythm, the inflections of voice, the tone and
the body language.
However, the ghazal form can also be ‘direct, often brash,
in-your-face’ because I’m using a pen name. Using a pen name is liberating
because I’m not hiding behind the persona of “Sheniz” and the ego that comes
along with it. My pen name, Israh, is the inner voice, which is often harsh and
brutally honest. It sometimes forces me to see what I don’t want to see. So
while the form of the ghazal is more structured because there are so many rules
to abide by (internal rhyming, couplets, repeating/rhyming refrains and pen
name), there’s also immense freedom in the content itself. I’m not presenting
myself to an audience, I’m presenting myself to myself.
What is the most
common comment you get about writing ghazals in English?
I can’t really say there is one- it depends on who I’m
speaking to and their knowledge of the form. People who don’t have knowledge of
the form normally ask me what it is and what it entails. People who are very
familiar with the form are often shocked that the form exists in the English
language- some of them assume that I translate existing ghazals, and I have to
clarify that I write original ghazals in English. Then the second
comment/question I get is “Why don’t you write in Urdu?” I don’t speak Urdu, I
don’t write in Urdu. My mother tongue is English and I’m trying to maintain/re-invent
the form in this language. To claim it, in a sense.
Sufism inspires you. Sufism is a way of life; it abjures orthodoxy,
questions convictions, modulates attitudes and ultimately challenges belief.
But it is at variance with the emerging belief systems in a multicultural world
where identity is overtly important, especially when one belongs to a minority
– ethnic, linguistic, religious, gender. Sufism is antithetical to the notion
of identity because it inspires you to lose your identity and become one with
divinity. If you agree, how do you reconcile the two elements as an artist?
Identity, for me, is not static. My identity is constantly
shifting/evolving/developing. It’s not stagnant nor is it independent of the
environment around me. I occupy many labels and identities. Some people refer
to me as South Asian. To someone else, I’m a Canadian. My identity depends on
who is identifying me (including myself). Therefore, what is really real about
me? What is inherently me? I don’t know. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Maybe
both.
The artist is constantly interacting with the world around
him/her in some shape or form. To create the same thing over and over again is
artistic death- we’re always looking for something new to inspire and challenge
us. We’re constantly shapeshifting, questioning and re-inventing. Questioning
our relationship to the world is part of the creative process.
At the same
time, in order to truly give myself to what I write or perform, I have to
forget myself. If I start thinking about how I look on stage while I’m
performing, I forget my lines. If I start judging myself while I’m writing a
poem, I’m no longer writing. The art of creating is letting go of this exoteric
notion of identity and embracing the moment the poem unravels, or the words
spill out of my mouth.
SUFI POETS SERIES III: American Sufi
Time: 7pm
Date: December 7th, 2013
Venue: Beit Zatoun House, 612 Markham Street, Toronto
Ticket price: $15.00
The third installation of the popular Sufi Poets Series,
this event will feature musical interpretations, poetic recitations and
narrations of Anand Mahadevan's latest novel, "American Sufi",
inspired by the music and poetry of Pakistan.
The novel weaves in elements of Sufi storytelling,
sub-continental history, and Urdu poetry to reveal the tragedy of a land and
its people rent between their devotion to the pacifist strain of Sufi Islam and
the growing clout of Saudi-funded militancy.
Performers and musical guests:
- Anand Mahadevan, Author of American Sufi
- Jawaid Danish, Urdu poetry
- Sheniz Janmohamed, Poetry and Spoken word
- Tariq Hameed, Harmonium and Qawwali vocals
- Samer Shahid Khan, Guitar and Vocals
- Ravi Naimpally, Tabla
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