Review of The Machine is Learning

Let me be upfront about what I think about this novel: this is an important and greatly relevant piece of literature that raises some pivotal questions pertaining to the ultra-modern world we live in now. It’s a comparatively thin book and if you read without your smartphone nearby, you should be able to finish the book in one sitting. But then, the questions will haunt you. You won’t be able to pick up your phone and start scrolling mindlessly that you would have inadvertently done. You’ll keep wondering if you have read anything like this before. The answer would be a firm no. The tech-man relation and how it affects your head is the focus of this book.

(Now is a good time to let you know that there will be spoilers from now.)

Saransh, the narrator and the protagonist is working on a project that uses machine learning to predict normal human behaviour which will finally make the humans redundant. The question Saransh will try to answer is whether he should be part of such a project and even if he is, whether there is an alternative where this new tech and people it aims to make redundant can flourish together. The wheel of capitalism will make technologies that will try to minimise human involvement and humans will get involved into more interaction oriented jobs. The intelligent jobs. What happens when intelligence itself can be cultivated artificially? This is a unique situation to mankind and there will be a lot to discuss.

The start of this discussion happens in the novel when Jyoti, whom Saransh has met via Tinder comes to know his work and questions its intentions. Saransh who hails from a small town, who has struggled to reach Mumbai from Muzaffarnagar, knows in his heart the point Jyoti is trying to make (this perhaps is one of the reasons he falls for her), but still argues for the importance of technological advancement and inevitability of leaving some people behind. Jyoti argues there must be a way to do both: make the tech work and still keep the people.

Finally they will realise it would not be possible; the corporate God (the narrator compares the corporate culture to religion, daily commuting in large groups to pilgrimage, the honking to the chants, the grandiosity of temples to the tall glass buildings placed on a higher ground) is ruthless. They realise that a technology that can track your digital activity, learn about you and then predict your personality is all too powerful. That the machine is learning constantly about you to one day be able to replace some of you. This is what makes the title fear-inducing, daunting and cool.

So what Jyoti suggests is to suffer for the loss of those people who will be left behind, to feel guilty if nothing more. Saransh questions whether such an approach makes any real impact to the situation. This, the heated argument with his colleague Mitesh and the urge to impress Jyoti has made him do what the reader has been wanting for a long time: turn around and try to stop the wheel. Later, he tries to understand why he has done so. The moving image of Alan Kurdi, the Syrian kid, face-down on a beach and palms skyward, helps him to understand why he felt so angry and then guilty for violence happening elsewhere, in the least conflicted era of mankind. The frequent philosophical debates between Jyoti and Saransh often reminded me of a Dostoevskian narrative. Though, I would have liked the arc of the complacent Saransh to the rebellious Saransh a bit longer.

In the final chapter of the book, after inevitably failing to stop the machine, when Saransh says how his expertise in eliminating human involvement will land him another good job, we will realise this is how the modern hero will behave in this world: caught up in a vicious cycle like Sisyphus. There can be no better ending for this novel.

I’ll finish this review by congratulating Tanuj Solanki for his courage, his keen observation and really, really good characterization throughout this lucid, highly readable book. A must read.

And I’ll just leave this here:

I think of the one game –the fourth of the five-match series – in which Lee Sedol beat AlphaGo. Somebody should talk about the beauty of that.

Cruelty and malleability in Manik Bandopadhyay’s Padma Nadir Majhi (The Boatman of Padma)

“Padma Nadir Majhi” (1936) starts with a boatman Kuber’s clear helplessness in front of the boat-owner Dhananjay and the river Padma. This sets the tone of the novel: real, vivid, unsentimental and dark. When the premature newborn baby cries in the night, Kuber reflects,

Even though the boy has come a bit early, he has a loud voice. He can scream.

The novel is about the life of Kuber, a poor boatman, and his family: crippled wife Mala, 11 year old soon-to-be-married daughter Gopi, sons Lakha and Chandi. Their lives depend on the mood of Padma river. If days are good, Kuber may get a good amount of Hilsa, and they can get a full meal. Otherwise, starvation. The story arc changes dramatically when a storm hits and ruins a lot of boat-men’s houses. Nature is not a Tagorian beauty here. She is ruthless, she kills people. Kuber’s family and professional lives, both change.

Many homes has got ruined beyond repair during the storm. While distributing the raised money to help the victims, class division comes into picture. The Brahmin will get 7 while the five majhi families had to share a mere 10 rupees. Kuber loses his job because one of the boats he used work has been destroyed by the storm. During all this, enters Kapila, Kuber’s sister-in-law. Initially he(Kuber) was angry to bring and feed her and others (who were almost homeless) to his wretched home so that they can stay a few days. Gradually, Kuber starts realizing the usefulness of nimble lively Kapila, as compared to his crippled wife Mala. Kapila’s spontaneity, her open coquetry confounds Kuber, slowly giving him a space to find respite from the monotony of family life.

On the other hand, Kuber takes up work with the cunning businessman Hossen Miya. He has many unknown sources of earning. He has bought an island where he is slowly raising families and setting up a kingdom of his own. He manipulates helpless people into moving to his island, clear forest, cultivate land and in return, give him tax. There is no class distinction. No monetary system. Hand to mouth life. Communism. But Hossen Miya also earns a lot by doing business in opium. Unknowingly, Kuber gets involved in this trap of illegal business. His financial condition improves but, he has no happiness. Fear is eating him up. Also, the separation from Kapila is tormenting him like anything. With an unfulfilling marriage and a threat to be imprisoned, Kubar has no other way but to be exiled on the distant island of Hossen. The only happy thing is Kapila too, decides to go with him.

Tendency of failing is inherent in human nature. In the beginning of the novel, the author sympathizes the men who has lost their long-saved money in gambling in the village fair.

Couldn’t they control their selfishness on getting a few hours of independence?

Later, Kuber too, will not be able to control himself from stealing a few rupees after getting some unobserved moments with Hossen Miya’s new wallet, which is ironical because at the end, he gets trapped in false accusation of stealing of a huge sum. Maybe the trap was set by Hossen Miya himself which is indicated by Kuber’s self-reflective reply to Kapila,

Hossen Miya will take me to the island, Kapila, whatever may. I won’t be free even after doing time once. I’d be sent again.

Thus, this novel is about cruelty of nature and social division and the utter corruptibility of human nature. That’s what makes the characters in this work so real. Kuber is an ordinary boatman struggling to get by in life. He is honest, but he steals when he gets the opportunity, cheats on his wife, neglects his daughter’s serious leg injury, remains indifferent and cruel to Maya. Kapila banks on Kuber when she is helpless and then forgets him when her husband takes her back. All these emphasize the reality of the characters. The author said somewhere,

Artists must have a scientific attitude, especially today, so that one can detect the illusory pitfalls of spiritualism and idealism. … The mood and idea of a novel must be based on reality. The characters may turn out to be odd, but still they need to be earthly and real. …The narrative of a novel can involve imagination that is beyond reality, a mindscape that exists only in the mind of a writer; yet such creation must be grounded in real lives, real people and real environment.

And this is where Manik Bandopadhyay shines so brightly in the sky of modern Bangla literature.

The fascinating lives of Kalkatta

Kalkatta Chronicles by Supriya Newar is a book you are going to remember long after you finish it. It is a collection of chapters talking about different people and cultures of Kolkata the author experienced in her childhood. The prose is lucid and measured. It starts with the memory of the lift-operator whose character and duty effects the residents in unsuspecting ways. The observations are unique and sharp. They has to be seen first hand and not thought up because of their originality. For example, when the lift would get a makeover after maintenance,

the liftman too sat up straighter and prouder on his designated stool donning his newly stitched, ironed and monogrammed uniform.

This sense of childlike ownership has come out so endearingly solely due to inclusion of such excellent details.

While reading through the book I was nodding and smiling because there are so many things similar to what I had experienced in my childhood. For example, the brown paper clothing of books every year, the excitement around it, the joy of writing your name on stickers on the newly covered books, the process of flattening the books so that the brown paper covers get settled well. And I wonder how across different cultures, we lived the same lives.

The stories of grandiose train journeys, the world of cozy candle-lit rooms during routine loadsheddings, the struggles of getting tickets on black for the latest Bollywood flicks are all too familiar and made me nostalgic.

More than the world inhibiting in the book, I love to read about those different people living in various strata of the society. The family tailor is a businessman who is confident about his craftsmanship even if, at times the fitting would not be perfect. Still the family manages to keep him for years to come. The book and magazine seller is also a man who keeps his account meticulously and is the sole supplier of weekly magazine and comics. In the pre-era of globalization and commercialization of everything, there were personal touches everywhere, because things were not automatized or taken care by unknown persons behind websites. And even though sometimes things got inconvenient, the human touch made them personal memories, something to reminiscence, to cherish forever. 

I’m not sure what made him a success across the family for ears together, for he wasn’t necessarily the finest tailor around. […] Whatever may have been the secret arrangement, each party got used to the other and in the process, Iqbal […] became a bespoke family heirloom.

Apart from its literary appeal for all the above reasons, it is an important book for another thing. Present day Kolkata is a rich mixture of different cultures and people coming from all over the country. Getting to read how they fuse in the old culture of Kolkata and how still they manage to maintain their independent culture is not only fascinating, but also heartwarming. This book is a burning proof how different worlds can thrive together and create a culture that is so rich and yet so distinct.

The quotidian details of the homely world in this book often reminded me of Amit Chaudhuri’s splendid A Strange and Sublime Address and I congratulate the author for being able to write something so special. Strongly recommended.

P.S. Just look at those stunning illustrations!

The truth about ‘Urban Naxals’: a review of Samaresh Majumdar’s ‘Kaalbela’

In an attempt to continue the series of my reviews focusing on Bengali literature, I couldn’t resist the allure of using a buzzword to attract attention. It’s been a long time since I have written anything here, which goes along well with my not reading anything Bengali for a long time. In fact, I have not been reading as much as I used to. The nice little goodreads widget you see on the right might vouch for it. But I am happy that I am into reading again. I have started buying books (of course, without finishing the ones I already have!) and reading as much as I can in my new lifestyle (new city, new campus, new routine, ooh, the newness!). Recently I got my hands on a book that I otherwise wouldn’t have read just now had I not got it as a gift. A great gift, that I now realise. You should always be grateful to people who introduce you to new book and music. Anyway, straight into the book (or the review of it)…

Kaalbela (English: The Time of Tomorrow Or The Time of the Catastrophe) is the second volume of The Animesh Quartet by Samaresh Majumdar, who is one of the few living legends of modern Bengali literature. The book starts with Animesh Mitra coming to Kolkata (then Calcutta) from Jalpaiguri to study B.A in Scottish Church College. But unfortunately, Kolkata was not a really calm place then; trams and buses would burn due to protests by young minds who wanted change. And Animesh got mixed in one such event and got shot as a suspect. From there, the story just went on, increasing its pace and tension like a classic thriller. The 70’s world of Kolkata, the people, the society – all came out rather vividly. I was reading with eyes open wide, not for wonder, but due the sheer clarity of it all. I felt youth of Kolkata then was in the phase of transition, people are thinking up new slangs and using them openly, girls hanging out with boys late — how such changes were affecting the people. Fascinating.

Animesh never wanted to get himself involved in politics, but somehow, rather inevitably he went ahead on the uncertain road of changing the world. I could see how the university students wanted to take an active part in politics. And it was natural. Because, even after the Raj was gone, the structure remained, the sucking and looting went on. And it was normal for people to get angry, people who lost so much to get the much awaited independence. So thus, frustrated by the Communist Party’s double faced attitude, Animesh, like many others, started preparing for an armed movement, inspired from the methods of Mao Zedong, that led to the liberation of Vietnam. They started an armed revolution in the villages, dethroning the landlords and freeing the lands to the farmers. The first such an encounter happened in Naxalbari, a village in north Bengal, quite close to the international borders. As India is a huge country with so much diversity, the ideology couldn’t spread as fast as in Vietnam, and the movement simply came to be known as The Naxalite Movement. A lot of young students from well-to-do family happily sacrificed themselves in the cause. But due to lack of no single leader with concrete manifesto, the movement fell apart soon. Though, the idea remained.

But this novel is not only the story of Naxals. It is a love story. An idyllic one. And you’d be crying at the bittersweet ending. It is a book that needs to be translated immediately, for it deserves a broader readership.

A review of Naiyer Masud’s stories: the essence of camphor

I came to know about Naiyer Masud some months ago when I read about his sad demise in a few literary conscious online sites. Recently I started wondering about why our curiosity about a writer’s work suddenly escalates when he becomes out of reach. Articles with ten best stories and so forth popped out within days. I looked up about his writing online and read a few pages in the amazon preview and I was very impressed. It was an unpleasant surprise of discovery and joy. It was unpleasant because what I was looking for had been right there, the things I find absent in most of the great stuff had already been so nicely written by an Indian writer who had been alive all this while.

I found his short story collection The Essence of Camphor in my local Sahitya Academy library which had come out in 1998 and immediately started with it. It contains nine short stories and one novella, all beautifully translated from the original Urdu. The first story, which is the title story is about the innocence of childhood and how a scent can be evocative, even if it is not a powerful one. The boy in this story tries to imitate a kafoori sparrow but couldn’t exactly imitate no matter how many times he try. During this he develops the art of making intricate objects from clay. His diligent effort reminds a neighbouring girl of her childhood and soon they became friends. But she was suffering from an ailment. Now here Masud tries to evoke the abstract by constantly reminding the reader that there is something special about the perfume made from camphor and that particular scent is the scent of death. He does it so confidently that even a cold, rainy afternoon and a dead bird can incite a strange forlornness in the reader. We sometimes feel something and try to link it to something entirely absurd. When an author identifies similar things and writes them down in a fictional form, the resulting work unsettles the reader. I felt vulnerable as if the author has touched something raw in me. I had a similar feeling when I read Clarice Lispector’s stories for the first time.

In ‘Interregnum’, which is one my favourite stories in the collection, a father-son relationship has been shown in ways I seldom see. Of course, there are books like “The Master of Petersburg” that can challenge the above statement, but there is something entirely different in this story. The motherless son is possessive about his father from a very early age. His father is a mason, he designs patterns and makes sculptures. The son would hide his tools every day and he has to beat him up to let him go to work. Thus their chemistry changes with time and nearly in the end, in one afternoon, the father met an accident. He was bedridden for weeks. And there is this passage:

“After he was seated, supported by several pillows, he became absorbed in thought. Never before had he seemed to me to be a thinking individual. But now, as he sat propped up against a pile of pillows, dressed in clean and proper clothes, he was in deep thought. And, for the first time I considered the possibility that he might be my real father.”

That passage hit me. I was in awe, to be honest.

‘Sheesha Ghat’ was another story that dwells on a similar theme.

Another story I really liked is called ‘Obscure Domains of Fear and Desire’. I read a preview of this story before in Amazon. And upon finishing the story, it turned out to be strangely dreamy. Throughout, his techniques have been similar. You always feel that the author is talking about something out of your reach or grasp. I remember V.S. Naipaul once advising young writers to not go for the abstract, and go for preciseness and clarity. I believe he meant to say only the skilled and the gifted people should try to handle the abstract ideas in their writings.

Not all his stories are like this. ‘The Myna from Peacock Garden’ is a simple tale of a father trying to fulfil the wish of his daughter. In all his stories, I found his prose to be clear and precise. Masud was a gifted writer and he writes about stuff no writes about. I hope his works get translated in more languages, especially now that he is no more.

 

On not being able to love- a review of Nabarun Bhattacharya’s “Auto”

Auto was first published, in Bengali, in the 2003 annual issue of “Aajkal” . Then in 2007, it was published as a book along with another novella called Bhogi.

Auto is a story of an auto-driver who wanted to be a footballer. He liked to play in the striker but at times, whenever required he came up and defended his team. His father died suddenly and he had to look for jobs – football could not feed him. First he did stray jobs like working in a garage, driving rickshaw-van, carrying sand sacks. But later he engaged in driving business; the owner of the auto really loved him. Things were looking up for him but his mother too died untimely. Throughout the novella, the protagonist, that is, Chandan kept talking about his mother, accusing her of leaving him so early in his life to struggle in this cruel world, accusing himself that he should have taken more care of her.

But this is not a novella about nostalgic remembrance of the past, rather the immediate cruelty of the present. In the underbelly of Kolkata, the illegal business of country liquor is rather murky. In this business, we meet people who were always scared because no one knew when someone would be miffed and someone would die. While the writer creates these stereotyped images of the dark side of the city, the central event of the story is quite the opposite. A few robbers had attempted to rob a jewellery shop but couldn’t escape after the robbery. The crowd caught and started beating them up. After one point, they die of the beating and yet they kept beating. One of them, who might be working in some garage and missed all the fun, had just joined. He picked an iron rod and brought it down, full force, in between the legs of one of the…

Chandan witnessed all these and fell down on the street.  After that incident he became impotent in the bed. His wife, whom he loved the most after the death of his mother, left him and eloped with a young boy. While such an incident certainly evokes pity in the reader, the bigger picture evokes fear. The impatience, the rage that people of this time are harbouring can cripple a society. And this general theme always flows inside this obviously one-man story.

 

What was more shocking is the final act of cruelty of the protagonist that not only saved him from continuous humiliation but also pushed him to a life of a bottomless void.

In the introduction of the novel, Bhattacharya said,

“Knowing the trap of death is inevitable in this life, humans come to this living world and survive by enlisting their names in the tragedy of killing and getting killed. This is happening because some wishes never get fulfilled. And it worries me all the time. He knows that he is not getting freedom in any way. But he is reluctant to accept this.”

In an interview, Bhattacharya once said he had become a writer because he couldn’t become a footballer. Somewhere in the frustration of Chandan’s not being able to be a footballer, we see glimpses of him too. This novella is essentially a personal cry to find the voice of the modern time. And it has successfully achieved so.

Of all the novels of Nabarun Bhattacharya, this novella will come third in my list of favourites by him after Herbart and Toy City.   

The Dogs Declared War

There is no place for street dogs in a modern city. One must collect them and systematically eliminate them without hurting public sentiments. One may propose methods used in the holocaust, or simple poisoning in the night. But then, what happens when the dogs, utterly desperate, choose to leave the city on their own accord? This short wonder of a novella is far superior and more mature than Nabarun’s more popular works (like Kangal Malsat) in terms of subtlety and depiction of human brutality.

Cover of the First Edition

It questions the much promoted slogan ‘Safe drive. Save life.’ Whose life to be exact? The crows, the dogs and cats — are they ever a part of the design of the human society? Once the author said in an interview, ‘Like I have the right to live in the city, a mosquito also has a right to bite me.’ From this non-anthropological view, the story forms its basic outline. Some critics compare the dogs with Naxalites whom the state chased and picked up like dogs and killed brutally. But I think, the idea is broader and scarier when applied to the helpless classes of the society.

Lubdhak is the Bengali name of the constellation Canis Major or The Greater Dog. In the novella, it acts as a compass for the helpless dogs. They had to leave the city. Lyka and other famous characters also appear as shadowy ghosts. They talk, they show ways, they predict that an asteroid is en route to destroy the city Kolkata like many such events in the past. That’s why the dogs must leave.

The sarcastic narrative, at times, accompanied by short poems, often goes quite experimental presenting a chapter in form of a bullet points and counterpoints. Sometimes, the narrative shifts from the third person to first person narratives of the animals. The continuously shifting voices give the novella a sense of urgency, a collective cry.

Like Khelna Nagar (Toy City), this one also is a dystopian work and can be termed as one of the major literary achievement in Bengali literature.

Before the Hanging

In continuation of the series “To Talk About Bangla Books”, this is the second one.

Jagari (The Vigil) by Satinath Bhaduri

Today, I shall talk about a book that has introduced me to modernist Bangla novels. First published in 1946, it’s a commendable effort from the writer to write a difficult novel, such as this, in breathless stream of consciousness narrative.

The complete book is divided into four parts and spans only a few hours. The family (father, mother and two brothers, Nilu and Bilu) was engaged in Indian politics with the Congress National Party i.e. Gandhiji’s Quit India Movement. For this reason Bilu and his parents were arrested. Bilu was sentenced to death for sabotaging government assets. Nilu became the witness against his elder brother, thus betraying his family, solely for his own political ideals.

Hence just few hours before the hanging, each character’s thought process is depicted with scientific precession  and thus we have four chapters for four characters.

Name of the chapters:
1. Cell for Death-sentenced- Bilu.
2. First Division Cell- Father
3. Women’s Cell- Mother
4. Jail Gate- Nilu

The fractured narrative, trailing off to old memories and coming back to current state several times within even a small paragraph has reminded me of Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. But, I don’t want to compare the quality or techniques of these two books, for both are different and have their unique essences (Actually, I have found this one a lot more enjoyable and relatable, perhaps because it is written in my mother tongue).

Lastly, I want to say this that internal monologue in Bengali seemed natural to me than in English and without this book, I would never have known that Bengali, at times can sound so sweet and ear-pleasing upon employing stream of consciousness narrative.

To give you a small glimpse of the narrative, I am translating a part from chapter 3.

Everyone is sitting around me silently in the dark ─now if even a needle drops, the sound can be heard. Only the hand-fan is making a continuous humming… A beetle is flying. Sounding whirr, whirr…! It drops down with a ‘thak’. It rises again, flies, again bangs onto something and drops. Haven’t flown till now, not yet; still not yet. Now when it’ll fly, I’ll count one, two, three till ten. If it drops down before I reach ten, every way of saving Bilu will become impossible. And if I can complete my count before the insect drops, then I am sure, God will somehow save my Bilu. Have to count quickly; as quickly as possible for me. It flies now ─one, two, three, four, five, six, seven─ damn! It has dropped down. What have you done, O Almighty!

How Ungreen Had My Valley Become!

This is the first installment of my newly-thought-up series called “To Talk About Bangla Books.” Given the fact that Bangla has this huge collection of good literary stuff and I thought why not talk about them in my blog and they just might pique interests of readers and more fortunately, translators!

The Tale of the Hasuli Turn by Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay

This is the first novel by Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay I read. Set in 1941, the novel explores the sub-tale (upokatha in Bengali. Interesting to note that the author chooses to call this a sub-tale and not a tale/story, in tandem with the civilized world’s disinterest with the “other world”). The story starts with the villagers’ or residents’ worry about a strange particularly loud whistling in the forest every night. Some thought it must be the restless spirit of “Babathakur” (Godfather) who died years ago before setting the place for Kahars (those people were ‘classified’ as Kahar) to live. They were really scared and thinking up ways of sacrifices and worships to please him. Their leader Banowari was in support of this. Things got complicated when Karali, the youth with modern outlook discovered that it was a king cobra and killed it. Later all other condemned him of this sinister act because that snake was Babthakur’s ride (bahan). Say it because of superstition or tradition, but from then on there was continuous tussle between the new and the old, between faith and logic, between unquestioned submission to the known process and the finding out new dangerous ways. And this has set the core tumult in the novel.

Backcover. Source: Amazon.in

A constant politics is being played at every conversation, at every action, and how natural and fundamental they are in the core rural life where a person’s very existence depends on small decisions he takes in his daily life, can be easily felt in the author’s expert observations and insightful depiction of human mind. The relationship equations of friendships and love are more fundamental to human nature in here and above the normal sense applied to the civilized world.

Original Bangla Edition

The language is diversely rich with regional variations of Bangla, and most of the times, the narrative is closely linked with the dialogues and thoughts of the characters. It has been repeatedly emphasized in the novel that the war and hunger of outside world will never affect the reclusive bank of Kopai river (shaped like a scythe, hasuli in Bangla. Pretty much reminded me of Marquez’s Macondo). When at the end, during WW2, the sinister military planes flew over their sky and devoured all the trees in which they slowly had constructed their interdependent habitat, when all his (Banowari’s) people betrayed him by leaving their farmlands and joining the factory, one can see how the outside can affect (or ruin) an almost hidden patch of the forest-land in rural Bengal. The influence of the outsider (Karali, slowly became an outsider to the people) is one of the themes in the book. Coetzee’s works e.g. ‘Age of Iron’, ‘Disgrace’ explicitly deal with this theme. The comparision is far-fetched but worth mentioning.

I can safely conclude that this is a hugely original work and it takes some time to get over the dark, mysterious, mesmerizing world of the bend of Kopai river.

This has a translation available, published by Columbia University Press and can be found here .

Author Interview: Deepti Menon on Satire, Stories and War

Deepti Menon is a well-known name among writers’ circles in India. Writing runs in her blood, as does teaching. She has lived in the Army as a child, and then as a wife, and travelled around the country to places, both beautiful and challenging. In 2002, Arms and the Women, her light-hearted book on life, as seen through the eyes of an Army wife, was published by Rupa Publishers, Delhi.
Many of her short stories have seen the light of day in anthologies as
varied as 21 Tales to Tell, Upper Cut, Chronicles of Urban Nomads, Mango
Chutney, Crossed and Knotted, Rudraksha, Love—an Anthology, The Second Life
and A Little Chorus of Love.

Today, Deepti Menon has agreed to give me an interview for my blog. We’ll talk about many a things, though our focus will be on satire as Mock, Stalk and Quarell, Readomania’s recent offering on satire in form of an anthology has been published and is available in online and offline stores all over India.

AN: How are you doing? Are you ready?

DM: Hi, Anirban! I am like that famed battery… Eveready!

AN: Ha ha! Good. Our focus of this interview will be on mainly satire. Satire, as we know, is difficult to master. It is a fine art. Can you tell us what inspired you to write a satirical tale? What makes writing satire so difficult?

DM: Writing satire is like tightrope walking. You can either walk on it, perfectly balanced, like a professional artiste, or you can make a perfect clown of yourself as you tumble over in a heap. Satire is a fine-tuned instrument, the kind of writing that needs to hit the target that it is aimed at. If you miss it, you end up sounding ludicrous or hyperbolic.

AN: We have seen recently the bold steps taken by the government, and we are also witnessing the social and political changes India is going through. Many have different opinions about these issues and events. What do you think of the role of satire in expressing one’s opinion in present time?

DM: 2016 will certainly go down as a red-letter year for many reasons – money matters, (pun intended), the Trump card and of course, the end of the Amma era in Tamil Nadu. Is it a coincidence that Cho Ramaswamy, noted humorist and political satirist, also passed away soon after?

Right from ancient times, satire was always seen as a weapon to hold up the ills of society. It is no different today as well. If two pieces are written on the same subject, one in prosaic language and the other veiled in satire, it is always the second one that will evoke more curiosity, and drive the point home, in my opinion.

AN: In the current Indian literary scene, we see a significant lack of satirical work. What is your response to such a situation?

DM: Very true, Anirban! The reason lies within ourselves. We, the homo sapiens, have turned into a dour, humourless society, unable to take a joke in the right spirit, be it in the case of cartoons, books, movies, newspaper articles or even WhatsApp messages. The powers above scream, like the proverbial Queen of Hearts in ‘Alice in Wonderland’, “Off with their heads!” And out pop the bans, which ironically, work well for those banned as they bring up the curiosity quotient.

Isaac Hayes couldn’t have put it more aptly when he said, “There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs of others begins.”

 
AN: In your story in Mock, Stalk and Quarrel titled, The Little Princess, we see a girl in search of true love, defying the social norms. Though, on closer look, it seems more like a parody. Through a mere matter of groom-matching, you have brought out the political situations of the country in a subtly humorous way. Tell us how you have come up with the idea of this story.

DM: Frankly, Anirban, this was a harmless little story that I had written a decade ago, because I wanted to come out with something light-hearted. It did not have any political allusions at all. When the idea of an anthology on satire came about, I stuck to the same story, but added on the rest, so that my story would fit the bill.

AN: Apart from situational comedy, we find many funny Wodehousian dialogues like:

“So what do you think? Isn’t he handsome?” Her eyes twinkled as she smiled at her daughter.

“Hardly, Mamma! He can get lost in a crowd of two!” The girl’s answer ruffled her mother’s feathers.

I have also read an article on Wodehouse by you. How has Wodehouse influenced you in your writing?

DM: I adore Wodehouse, and so, I love this question. I think his books are the epitome of good humour wrapped around in a writing style that is unique. I would often sit and chuckle over certain portions, even when I was travelling, and earned many strange looks in the process! I also feel that humour is one of the most difficult genres to master, and he is a master, indeed. I have friends who disagree with me on this point, but each to their own.

AN: At the end, the man with whom the girl falls in love identifies himself as ‘the Common Man’. In context of love and politics, its significance is something interesting to note down. Do you think that both a lover and a leader can be found amid the Common Man?

DM: “I think comedy and satire are a very important part of democracy, and it’s important we are able to laugh at the idiosyncrasies or the follies or vanities of people in power.” So said Rory Bremner.
I think in an ideal democracy, it should be the Common Man who rules. After all, it he who votes and brings people to power. So, a lover and a leader can be found in the Common Man. Please note that I am not alluding to the present Common Man, high on cough syrup, who sports a scarf.

AN: Recently, you have published your new novel Shadow in the Mirror under Readomania. Many congratulations to you for this success. What difference did you find between writing a short-story and a full-fledged novel? Of course, apart from short stories are short. Ha ha!

DM: Ha ha, indeed! J Thank you so much, Anirban. I feel that short stories need more skill, and that’s purely my opinion, because an entire story with a beginning, a middle and an end, needs to be encapsulated within a given word limit. Hence, the writing needs to be brief, and yet, sparkle enough to catch the imagination of the reader. A novel is a longer read, and the author has time to meander through the theme and make it work at a more leisurely pace.

AN: I have read your stories in Defiant Dreams, Urban Nomads and When They Spoke. A recurring theme of women empowerment can be noticed in your stories. This is also true for the story in Mock, Stalk and Quarrel too. There has not been a better time when the topic of women empowerment is of such importance. What do you think, as a writer, of the role of women in modern creative writing in India?

DM: My stories write themselves. I have never deliberately written a story on women’s empowerment. However, the issue is, perhaps, so strongly engrained in my psyche, that it comes out as a subconscious narrative. I think that all writers, men and women, should try and bring in a renaissance of gender equality and the empowerment of women and children.

AN: Does your new novel touch on similar issues?

DM: ‘Shadow in the Mirror’ is a work of fiction that has autobiographical elements in it. Thus, one of my main characters, who is a journalist, does fight against various issues that impact women negatively.

AN: What do you think of the current Indian literary scene? Also about the publishing trends?

DM: The current Indian literary scene is bursting at its seams with new writers being born and published every day. Today, everyone can write, and does, sometimes well, and at other times, with disastrous results. But I do think that it is a very positive trend which will throw up “full many a gem of purest ray serene” that would otherwise remain hidden “in the dark unfathomed caves of (the) ocean”.

Publishers have also mushroomed over the years. Today you have traditional publishers, vanity publishers and self-publishing, as well. Hence, it is easier to get your manuscript published than it was in the past, like back in 2002, when my first book, ‘Arms and the Woman’ (Rupa Publishers, Delhi) got published.

AN: Name a few of your favourite authors.

DM: George Eliot, Alexander Dumas for their classics, Somerset Maugham, O Henry, Guy de Maupassant and Jeffrey Archer for their short stories, and Agatha Christie and Conan Doyle for their mysteries, are among my favourites. I also enjoy Indian writers like RK Narayan, Ruskin Bond, Shashi Tharoor, Chitra Divakaruni Banerjee and Jaisree Mishra. I have also enjoyed all the books I have read from the Readomania collection.

AN: As an experienced writer, your advice to young writers?

DM: Love books, read and savour them, and identify the genre with which you want to be associated. Most importantly, enjoy what you write, for if you don’t like your own writing, no one else will either.

AN: Thank you for this interview. It’s been a pleasure.

 

DM: Thank you so much, Anirban, for the interesting questions. All the best with all your writing, and God bless!

AN: Thank you very much. Same to you.