A decade in Toronto – 10

Che in Kingston (2010)

I return to my memoirs after a long gap of over a month. The last couple of months have been hectic and difficult. I’ve changed my job and will be working at the Canada India Foundation from Monday, May 28. A former friend and colleague in Bombay had described my penchant for continuous transition rather aptly. He called me dust. “He takes time to settle down.”

In any case, the pressure of a job change and the freelance assignment led to a severe curtailment in the free time I could have at my disposal to do what I ought to do more – write. So, here I’m back blogging.

The year is 2010. Let’s continue from where we left off in the previous post. In November 2010, two years and some months in Canada, we took a three-night tour to Montreal, Ottawa, Quebec City and Kingston in a bus. I’ve blogged about the visit earlier and if you’d care to read about it, click here: Ottawa-Montreal-Quebec City.

The grand Notre Dame Basilica in Montreal

In Quebec City, while strolling down the market, we met Jean-Philippe Vogel, a pen-and-ink artist who was selling sketches of cityscapes on the street. These were exquisite and detailed. I bought a few and recently gifted to a dear friend and another to a colleague.

We returned to Toronto with a promise that we’d go back to Quebec City and Montreal frequently. But such is the fate of immigrants that the lure of “back home” overrides every other destination. In 2011, we returned to India for the first time after immigrating to Canada, but we’ll talk about that later. 

Sheridan Medal for Academic Excellence

With Nelson and Laura
at the Sheridan Convocation

One of the major highlights of 2010 was my graduation from Sheridan College where unsurprisingly I won the Sheridan Medal for Academic Excellence (silver medal) for coming first in the class. After a couple of decades in journalism, both as a journalist and as a teacher, I guess I knew a bit more than the others on the subject.

It was the first convocation that I attended in my life. I’d skipped the one when I got my university degree nearly three decades ago. It was also the last time I met nearly all of them. And but for a few, I don't really miss their absence. Joyce, Yoko, Teenaz have become friends.

I was working on my manuscript and learnt about the 3-Day Novel festival that is held during the Labor Day weekend. I entered the competition and worked furiously to complete a manuscript in three days. It was terrible in quality but such a great experience that I did that for the next three years. At present, I’ve four novella length stories that I plan to cut down to short story length.

I continued to go to readings by other authors, and participate in literary events. Although 2010 was not the first time I participated in the Word on the Street festival held towards the end of summer, it was definitely the first year when I knew many authors. 

I met Robin Maharaj, whose novel The Amazing, Absorbing Boy I’d recently read. Katherine Govier had her new novel The Ghost Brush published the same year and both Robin and Katherine were reading at the festival. My friend Dawn, whose short story collection was to be published by TSAR later that year, was reading at the Diaspora Dialogues tent.

That year, I also attended the play reading of Habib Tanvir’s classic Charandas Chor. Sally Jones, who ran Rasik Arts in those days, had organised it. Another play that she staged at the Harbourfront Centre was about Tagore as a painter. Tea with Tagore had Ishwar Mooljee enacting the role of Tagore. I blogged about it, too, and should you be interested in reading it, click here: Tea with Tagore.

One of the most pleasant surprises of my life was to meet a college friend Nandita Desai (now Nandita Chawla) at the Harbourfront Centre. In high school, I’d a major crush on her, and everyone (but she) knew about it.  It’s such a strange thing about life. I exchanged polite pleasantries with someone who'd meant so much to me three decades ago. It all works out the way it’s meant to be. I was with my wife and son and she was with her husband and her daughter.  

That year, we also went to the Masala Mehndi Maasti, which turned out to be a washout thanks to torrential rains, but I was happy to hear Janice Goveas read excerpts from her play Dinner with Akbar. And, of course, Meena Chopra invited me to the launch of her collection of poems Glimpses of Setting Sun and an exhibition of paintings. If you’d like to read about the book launch event, click here: Meena Chopra.

Dinner with Akbar: Jancie Goveas

Janice Goveas’s Dinner with Akbar is an evocative play that depicts the seemingly unending struggles of an immigrant – Akbar – as he tries to get a hold of his life under constantly changing circumstances. 

Mumtaz, Akbar’s wife has left him for another man. Akbar’s daughter Jasmine is a loving, obedient adolescent who is in love with Rashid. 

Abdul’s recent separation from Mumtaz has changed him, and although he strives hard to maintain a semblance of his old routine, clearly he is losing the struggle.

Akbar is from India and is "a liberal intellectually and traditional in his personal life" - that may not sound as paradoxical as it is to many South Asians, living outside the subcontinent.

He wants Rashid to be tolerant of other religions. “Religious pride is not a healthy thing, son,” he cautions and explains, “It leads to communalism, to fanaticism, to all of the things that are contrary to civilization and tolerance.” Yet, he gets into a violent rage when he learns that Jasmine and Rashid are “hanging out”.

Rashid is a second-generation immigrant of wealthy parents, who clearly understands that he needs a job and an empirical education will get him that more easily than an education in liberal arts. 

However, he is still culturally anchored in old-world values and traditions. Rashid sacrifices his intimacy with Jasmine so that the relationship between the father and the daughter doesn’t deteriorate beyond repair.

The characters in the play – Akbar, Jasmine, Rashid and Mumtaz – are carefully and lovingly etched. Janice brings them alive by creating conflict and tension. The scene between Mumtaz and Akbar is the marvelous. The playwright avoids an acrimonious slanging match (which would have been logical and not out of place) and handles the encounter with mature sensitivity.

Janice read excerpts of the play at Masala! Mehndi! Masti! Saturday July 24. The play is from her collection of plays Margaret in search of herself and other plays.

Gandhi High

Meghnad, my father, would’ve been 75 yesterday. It’s been 12 years since he died.

Yes, he died young.

Two good things happened yesterday. One planned, other delayed.

The planned one was going to see the play Gandhi High. The delayed one was Prabodh Parikh accepting my invitation to be a ‘friend’ on Facebook.

Both made me smile.

I had decided to take Mahrukh and Che to see the play on Meghnad's birth anniversary after I got to know of the play through Janice Goveas (Diaspora Dialogues).

Jehan, a Muslim adolescent

Gandhi High is a play about Jehan, a Muslim adolescent fighting his inner demons. Jehan has had a troubled childhood. He is unfairly compared to his over-achiever elder brother who’s a decade older than him.

A laggard at school in Vancouver, Jehan constantly got into trouble, the last one being involved in a car theft. His exasperated parents move to Toronto, hoping that Jehan would somehow stabilize.

Jehan finds solace among a group of young people. Like him, they're as angry with the world as they are with themselves.

He falls in love with Carly, starts drinking with his friends and becomes a cat burglar.

Jehan and his father are constantly bickering, neither wanting to hear the other’s point of view.

His father is fascinated by the teachings of the Mahatma and wants Jehan to study his life. Jehan feels that the likes of the Mahatma have no place in today’s world.

Transformation

When he’s robbing a home that belongs to a South Asian family, Jehan has a sudden transformation.

While working on a school project he discovers that in the late 1980s, a move to name a school after the Mahatma in Toronto was blocked by those opposed to the ideals of religious tolerance.

Just when Jehan seems to be coming to grips with the realities of life, his father suddenly dies, leaving him emotionally stranded.

His world is crashing all around him. His friends are spiralling down in the dungeons of youth crime that is seemingly all pervasive in most of greater Toronto’s schools.

Jehan launches a hunger fast to focus attention on the safety of his young friends and to name his school after the Mahatma.

Inner demons:

But his inner demons get the better of him. Jehan he tries to commit suicide by taking an overdose of drugs and jumping off his apartment window.

The lesson that Jehan learns reading about the Mahatma’s life and times is that it is virtually impossible to get together people who don’t wish to be together; or to teach tolerance to intolerant people.

However, that doesn’t mean one gives up.

On the contrary, one keeps trying. Jehan’s friends are annoyed with him, but mend their ways so that their friend ends his fast. The community begins to support his demand to name the school after the Mahatma – hence the name of the play - Gandhi High.

Gandhi's teachings

MJ Akbar recently wrote – half in jest – that the Mahatma is a lesser of a draw than Jinnah. The exigencies of Indian politics may make it seem so.

On a larger canvas, Gandhi’s teachings of tolerance continue to inspire millions – right from President Obama, who tells an audience of 9th graders that he’d want to have lunch with the Mahatma, to a Jamaican-Canadian middle school teacher in Toronto, who says that the Mahatma’s views helps him tolerate other people’s prejudice against the colour of his skin.

Prabodh Parikh

Now, for the second occurrence that made me smile – Prabodh Parikh.

Prabodh is a writer, poet, litterateur, filmologist, teacher and more than anything else, a splendid human being. He is a true renaissance man, the likes of whom aren’t made any more.

When Meghnad died, Prabodh got together a few poets and writers and organised an impromptu tribute.

For me, that singular gesture really made Prabodh stand apart from the legion of friends that Meghnad had when he was alive.

Sathyu's Garam Hawa

Just before I immigrated, I had the occasion to go and see Garam Hawa (1973), the MS Sathyu film on the wounds of the subcontinent’s partition.

Prabodh organised the screening of this classic. I met him at the screening quite by chance and he was as ever effusive and warm.

I want you to listen to a qawwali (Maula Salim Chishti) from the film.

It was Meghnad’s favourite.