Self-absorption makes V S Naipaul caricature of himself

V S Naipaul willynilly became poster boy of Hindutva brigade during NDA administration in India. (The brigade perhaps didn't include Shiv Sena because Naipaul has called Bal Thackeray a 'failed cartoonist'!). India Today has put him on the cover of its issue dated September 10, 2007.

When I read V S Naipaul’s “India: A Wounded Civilization” (first published 1977), it was one of my most profound experiences. The book still has not left me.

Commenting on Mahatma Gandhi’s description of his passage to England from “The Story of My Experiments with Truth”, Naipaul said (“A Defect of Vision”):
“…That is the voyage: an internal adventure of anxieties felt and food eaten, with not a word of anything seen or heard that did not directly affect the physical or mental well-being of the writer. The inward concentration is fierce, the self-absorption complete…. Though Gandhi spent three years in England, there is nothing in his autobiography about the climate or the seasons, so unlike heat and monsoon of Gujarat and Bombay…No London building is described, no street, no room, no crowd, no public conveyance…”

Reading this was like touching a hot pan, waking up from a deep slumber.

See picture below of “The Buddha preaching” at Sarnath.

Later I read Durga Bhagwat दुर्गा भागवत saying how, from Kalidasa to Dnyaneshwar to almost 20th century, our literature never mentions a butterfly/moth! (“पिवळीच मी पाकोळी की” from “Nisrgotsav” Dileep Prakashan, 1996).

Forget lowly butterfly-moth पाकोळी, what about heavenly Supernova?

SN 1054 (Crab Supernova) was a supernova that was widely seen on Earth in the year 1054. It was recorded by Chinese and Arab astronomers as being bright enough to see in daylight for 23 days and was visible in the night sky for 653 days, outshining the most brilliant stars in the heavens.

Dr. Jayant Narlikar in his book “The Scientific Edge” (Penguin Books India 2003) has a chapter titled “The Search for records of the Sighting of the Crab Supernova”. It describes Herculean efforts put in by his team to locate any record of this grand celestial event in Indian historical records, including popular literature.

Sadly, they failed. Narlikar has not blamed Muslim invaders for this.

Is it because of our ancestors’ Gandhi-Buddha-like self-absorption described by Naipaul so eloquently?

In the Nobel lecture on Dec 7, 2001, Naipaul said:"...I am near the end of my work now. I am glad to have done what I have done, glad creatively to have pushed myself as far as I could go. Because of the intuitive way in which I have written, and also because of the baffling nature of my material, every book has come as a blessing. Every book has amazed me; up to the moment of writing I never knew it was there. But the greatest miracle for me was getting started. I feel - and the anxiety is still vivid to me - that I might easily have failed before I began."

Well, he has failed with his ‘new’, 29th book “A Writer’s People: Ways of Looking and Feeling".

First of all there is nothing new in this book. Second he makes sweeping statements without backing them up.

Naipaul’s biggest problem, like most Western analysts of India, is he does not read any Indian language. That is a big handicap because best of India has always been expressed in its native languages. And tragically, it is not always translated in English.

I wish Naipaul read Marathi. If he did, he would read Vinoba Bhave's Marathi books and realize why, along with poet-saints, Vinoba is Marathi's rare 'best-seller'.

Naipaul says "(In India) literary criticism is still hardly known as an art". This is far from the truth. He should care to read Dilip Chitre's book on Tukaram ("Punha Tukaram" which also is available in English) or Durga Bhagwat's commentary on Mahabharata ("Vyas Parva") or M V Dhond's criticism of B S Mardhekar's poetry ("Tarihi Yeto Vas Phulana") etc.

Naipaul says 'Indian writers to speak generally seem to know only about their own families and their places of work". This may be true of R K Narayan or Vikram Seth but not of Bhau Padhye- the original chronicler of Bombay (ahead of Vikram Chandra) in all its colours.

Naipaul like most Indians does not know when to shut up, when to retire. Man has become caricature of himself.



The Buddha preaching, Sarnath, fifth century A.D. (ASI Museum, Sarnath). This is the classic image of the Buddha that was developed in the Gupta period. The mudra suggests that he is teaching and setting in motion the wheel of Dharma, also seen in the panel. The inward look, with the gaze centred on the tip of the nose, conveys a great sense of peace and tranquility.

Frontline Aug. 11-24, 2007



The Spectator September 15, 2007 has published this picture of Naipaul as a cartoon. Vasant Sarwate वसंत सरवटे has drawn caricatures (अर्क चित्रे)of many Marathi authors and publishers.

Maharashtra Farmers Just Sit and Chew Tobacco?

On September 9, 2007, Union textile minister Shankarsinh Vaghela said farmers of Vidarbha were themselves to be blamed for their plight.

He reportedly said: “If you just sit and chew tobacco in the farms, how can you expect good crops? The government can only help you to an extent. You should emulate the practices of farmers in Gujarat”

There has been big hue and cry after this. Vaghela of course has declared that he is misquoted and this is a “fabrication” by BJP to malign him.

These debates have been going on for long.

When I was in Assam, I often heard all other communities talking about Assamese as “Lahe Lahe” people.

One of the best non-fictional Marathi book in recent years is the late R B Patankar’s “अपूर्ण क्रांती ” ‘Incomplete Revolution’ (Mauj Prakashan 1999). He has written extensively about two important periodicals of 19th century Maharashtra. ‘मराठी ज्ञान प्रसारक Marathi Dnyan Prasarak’ and ‘विविध ज्ञान विस्तार Vividh Dnyan Vistar’.

In June 1851, an article was published titled “Comparison of Gujarati and Marathi people’s current condition”. Author Keshav Janardan Punalekar said that “Marathi people have indifference towards commerce, fondness for undisciplined expenditure, arrogant nature and laziness” and Gujarati people have “interest in commerce, simplicity, industriousness, habit of limited expendituere”.

Punalekar is not just critical but suggests how Marathi people can change their ways.

Patankar does not mention any controversy after publication of Punalekar’s article.

Mr. Minsiter, is this farmer in Thurber's picture from Maharashtra or Assam?


Artist: James Thurber The New yorker August 15, 1936

Of Dying Kittens and Rajasthani Girls

For the past several weeks, two stray female kittens had made our home their playground. We fell in love with them. I was coming in close contact with a cat after almost 26 years. Before that Chintya, our pet cat, had given us a lot of pleasure and pain from circa 1969-1981.

One of the kittens has died since then.

I had been warning my family about chances of their survival in this cruel world. I said probability of them reaching child bearing age is much less than 50%.

I did not know this was true of Rajasthani girls too!

Rema Nagarajan (Times of India September 10, 2007) says:

“Nearly half of all female deaths in rural Rajasthan are of girls below the age of 20. The precise figure is 49.4%. Out of these, 42% of the deaths are of girls who haven't yet celebrated their fifth birthday. In short, a girl born in a Rajasthan village will have to be very lucky to grow up, marry, bear children — things that are taken fairly for granted in the modern world.

The shocking news doesn't end here. What's worse is that the situation is virtually the same for girls in most Hindi heartland states, including Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. In UP, for instance, nearly half the female deaths in a year — 47%, to be precise — are of girls below 20 years. Bulk of these deaths are in rural areas.

What this really means is that the girl child is barely looked after. The first case of influenza or whooping cough, and there is a good chance that the girl child from these states will not be able to survive it. This tells a lot about the attitude towards females in these states. It also means that all the effort by the government to increase awareness about the girl child is hardly making a dent into deep-seated prejudices……”

However there is some good news too.

DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. (NYT September 13, 2007) says: “For the first time since record keeping began in 1960, the number of deaths of young children around the world has fallen below 10 million a year, according to figures from the United Nations Children’s Fund being released today.

This public health triumph has arisen, Unicef officials said, partly from campaigns against measles, malaria and bottle-feeding, and partly from improvements in the economies of most of the world outside Africa…..”

If we pay attention, we will hear Indian girl child telling us……….

Artist: Mike Twohy The New Yorker May 16, 1994

Human Story is NOT a March Toward some Culminating Idea

David Brooks has written a beautiful essay-“ Where History Reigns”-for NYT May 8, 2007.

He writes: “…History, in the British public culture, takes precedence over philosophy, psychology, sociology and economics. And with a few obvious exceptions, British historians have not seen history as the unfolding of abstract processes. They have not seen the human story as the march toward some culminating idea.

Instead they’ve seen history as a hodgepodge of activity — as one damn thing after another. As a result, George Orwell generalised, the English "have a horror of abstract thought, they feel no need for any philosophy or systematic ‘worldview’." This isn’t because they are practical — that’s a national myth, Orwell wrote — it’s just that given the stuttering realities of history, they find systems absurd.

Even philosophers in Britain tend to be sceptics, and emphasise how little we know or can know. Edmund Burke distrusted each individual’s stock of reason and put his faith in the accumulated wisdom of tradition. Adam Smith put his faith in the collective judgment of the market. Michael Oakeshott ridiculed rationalism. Berlin celebrated pluralism, arguing there is no single body of truth.

This scepticism permeates national life, for while the British can be socially deferential, they are rarely intellectually deferential…

The Brits’ historical consciousness means that in moments of crisis they can all swing together and act as one. But in normal times, as Orwell also noted, "the gentleness of the English civilisation is perhaps its most marked characteristic." Americans talk of "happiness," but Brits talk, less transcendentally, of "enjoyment."

American journalists, for example, are spiritually descended from Walter Lippmann. We are always earnestly striving toward some future elevated state. British journalists are spiritually descended from Samuel Johnson. They are conversationalists enjoying the inevitable conflicts that, as W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman put it, pit the wrong but romantic against the right but repugnant.”

I wish we Indians became a little more like Brits in this regard.

Next only to fanatic religionists, we must be craziest hero-worshippers. We put our heroes on pedestals, beyond any reproach.

In the process we forget: Every hero-alive or dead-is human, Has a funny side, Is full of innate contradictions.

Maybe this is one reason our humour is not as robust as it used to be.


Artist: George Price The New Yorker August 9, 1947

Attending Nature's Call Before Going on Rampage

Vasant Sarwate वसंत सरवटे has drawn some penetrating pictures of crowds of Mumbai. Here is one of my favourite- Marching through public urinal.

Crowds define India. Even Babar noticed them.

But as C P SURENDRAN says in Times of India September 5 2007 "Mobs on the rampage", crowds have started degenerating into mobs with the slightest of provocation.

“…If justice and punishment are a matter for a throng of people to dispense with, why have courts of law?

Other instances abound of mob assuming for itself a kind of vigilantism that is hard to distinguish from full-fledged riot. Just about anything could spark it. A desecrated statue, a professor who passed a lewd remark on a student, a movie with lesbian innuendoes, a scholar who said the king was naked, a novelist who laughed at a god - just about anything, including two displaced leopards, trapped and beaten to death in Nashik by the mob recently. Anything is reason for the crowd to morph itself into the killer mode of the mob. Any object, painting, truck, or wildcat could be the wand that waved a mob out of men merely staring into the middle distance and sipping tea.

The sad fact is that the mob is so much a part of the so-called Emerging India. It is people who have lost trust in the due process of law, whose sense of retribution brooks no delay in gratification. Mob is a people in a hurry to avenge. And there are so many of them. Add to it poor policing. Every thousand Indians need to make do with just one policeman. Compare that with the UN recommendation of one policeman to 400 people.

An equally contributory cause is the high level of frustration that a vengefully consumerist society - India, for instance, is one of the fastest growing car markets in the world - will transmit to the voyeuristic have-nots. The increasing incidence of mob fury is more a warning than an indication that there are a lot of unhappy people looking for an excuse to get angry as hell.

As pockets of plutocrats increase, we are likely to see more and more of the mob, representing the Indians left out from the movement forward, taking to the road and travelling backward to the stone age of intolerance and violence, a twilight land where a botched attempt at snatching a chain could be seen as an act of arch villainy and mindless violence as its inexplicable but just comeuppance…….”

Dr. Shreeram Lagoo डाँ. श्रीराम लागू (who makes first appearance on this blog earlier) once said how disturbed he felt when mobs attacked the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) at Pune in January 2004. It reminded him of arson in many parts of Maharashtra, targeting Brahmins, after assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948.

Writer Pratibha Ranade (famous for her first-hand account of Afghanistan and books on life and work of Rani Laxmibai & Durga Bhagwat) has given a chilling account of that period, describing what happened to her middle-class Brahmin family in Kolhapur when their cosy neighbourhood morphed into a mob.


Artist: Vasant Sarwate वसंत सरवटे 1973 (source- “Savadhan! Pudhe Valan Ahe!” Mauj Prakashan 1990)

Languages that are understood all over the Country

U.R. Ananthamurthy says (India Today, August 20, 2007): “The only two languages that are understood all over the country are the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.”

He could as well have added one more- Ganga (Ganges) because he himself touchingly says:
“My grandfather, deeply religious and orthodox, would never have said something like “I am an Indian” in his whole life. Yet India was still an idea, a concept derived mostly from her rivers. When he drew water from our well and poured it over his head he recited a mantra which prayed that the waters of the Ganga, Yamuna, Godavari, Saraswati, Narmada and Kaveri be present in the well-water of our home and sanctify him… Both globalised, rootless modernity and ferocious, fundamentalist communalism will weaken the Puranic sense of unity that is present among the people of India.”

My son, my wife and I might have stopped chanting names of rivers while bathing but I remember my mother doing it. I think it’s a beautiful tradition.

Business Standard September 04, 2007 says: “The Ganges figures on the list of the world's ten most endangered rivers, according to a report of the World Wide Fund for Nature. But the Ministry of Environment and Forests has claimed in Parliament that the quality of water has improved since 1985, when the first Ganga Action Plan (GAP) was launched… The World Health Organisation says that an estimated 114 towns release waste into the Ganges. The Centre for Science and Environment, which brought out a report on polluted rivers last year, has said the claim does not hold ground because the hardware created under the GAP is inadequate.”

Let us hope the government is right.

Julian Crandall Hollick has recently written a book “Ganga”. Business Standard has reviewed it.
“……how come Indians venerate the Ganga so much and yet seem bent on destroying it with such vigour with their pollution, dams and other acts of the most frightening vandalism?
Hollick has also taken the trouble to speak to many scientists whose views would not otherwise become known to the lay public. They appear to confirm what the godmen have been saying about the Ganga — that, thanks to the amount of dissolved oxygen in it, not to mention other things like its high rate of aeration and its amazing ability to retain dissolved oxygen, it is something of a scientific marvel.”

Do you want to read Hollick’s book?

Artist: Helen E. Hokinson The New Yorker 22 Feb 1947

Obelix: These Archaeology Professors are Crazy!

Obelix, my most favourite 'Asterix’ character would certainly say this after reading what Asian Age September 3, 2007 reports:

“ "What we have found here proves that the Gauls were much more civilised than we thought," archaeology professor Matthieu Poux, who is heading the dig, told the Sunday Telegraph. "Until now Gauls for the French were people who lived in huts among the trees, frightening people. Parents will threaten to send their children to the Gauls if they did not go to sleep. But we have discovered large buildings and public spaces which prove there were Gauls of considerable social standing," he added.

Making a case for revision of the image of the Gauls in the comic book series, Poux is quoted as saying,"The Asterix albums will need to be completely rewritten, as they are based on the typical image of the Gauls which has been passed down through the centuries, one of a prehistoric man who lives in the forest. " However, there is resistance to the idea of revising the Asterix stories to reflect the new historical findings.”

Who has not been seduced by R K Narayan’s Malgudi,a South Indian village? Well, we all know most Indian villages are hellholes for the poor and the Dalits, far from romantic Malgudi.

Graham Greene created perhaps imaginary Greeneland full of tormented characters.

And finally, Springfield. A O Scott recently (NYT July 27,2007) wrote: ‘I have long been of the opinion that the entire history of American popular culture — maybe even of Western civilization — amounts to little more than a long prelude to “The Simpsons.” ‘. Where is Springfield on the map?

It doesn’t matter.

Asterix literature- perhaps based on fiction- needs no revision. Let us remember that Goscinny and Uderzo never gave "the village we know so well" a name.


Artist: Goscinny and Uderzo

Hope when Celebs Dress Down, they don’t meet a Gunman

When I read history of British occupation of India, “jail” keeps popping up. Tilak, Gandhi, Bhagat Singh, Nehrus, Azad and many, many more. Their lives seem to be revolving around jails.

What did people who visited them wear? Histories seem to be silent.

Year 2007 seems to be a throw back to the old times. Jails are back in news- on front pages, prime time news and live television.

Times of India August 25, 2007 reports: "The Supreme Court on Friday saved former actor Monica Bedi, recently acquitted in a passport forgery case, from embarrassment by directing the information and broadcasting ministry to stop TV channels from telecasting her photographs taken secretly in a bathroom in Bhopal jail."

Celebrities are inside jails and visiting jails.

Asian Age August 31, 2007 reports: “Celebs dress down for jail visits, Stars and their family adopt a de-glam look for court and jail visits”.

A dress designer says: “I believe Katrina (Kaif) was appropriately dressed in a tunic and jeans because it projected a fusion look without appearing dowdy. Even Priya’s (Dutt) choice of fabric-Khadi was apt since she is a politician. But instead of wearing flowing kurtis, these ladies could have opted for simple but well-cut ones where they look chic- after all they are celebs and everyone’s eyes are going to be on them…

When item queen Rakhi Sawant made her recent unsuccessful trip to the Mumbai prison, the otherwise scantily clad actress was dressed soberly fully covered, and even had her spectacles on”

I hope when celebs dress down, they don’t meet a gunman…



Artist: Peter Arno The New Yorker September 20, 1947

A Barber who Shaves you in Silence, without Drawing a Word from your Mouth or sharing any Gossip, and Cursing no one, is not a Barber at all

Guardian September 1, 2007 has reviewed Orhan Pamuk's “Other Colours: Essays and a Story”.

I was delighted to read Pamuk dwelling at length on barbers of Istanbul because my own relationship with barbers has been exciting. In early years of growing up, I hated their sight but since then I have always been aroused at the thought of visiting them. Indian films, particularly Marathi ones, have always portrayed barbers in all their colours.

Pamuk says: “…In those days Istanbul boasted many humour magazines, of which Vulture was the most distinguished; because their embroideries of news and enlargements of urban myths offered the fullest expression of this spirit of resistance, they were available in all barber shops of my childhood. Today, there is always a television blaring, drowning out older channels of communication and so greatly reducing the power of gossip and resistance in the city's coffee houses and barber shops; it should not come as a surprise that, with the advent of television, the golden age of Istanbul's humour magazines, which once enjoyed a combined circulation close to a million, also came to an end. (Years later, when I went to a barber shop in New York and saw that the men waiting to be served were given not a humour magazine but a copy of Playboy, I was not terribly surprised.) …….

When I was a boy waiting my turn at the barber shop, flicking through the pages of Vulture, stopping now and again to study locally drawn caricatures of citizens aghast at the prices of things, enjoying jokes about bosses and their secretaries, stories by the popular humorist Aziz Nesin, and cartoons lifted from western magazines, my ears were always alert to the conversations around me. Of course the topic discussed at the greatest length was football and the football pools. Some, like Toto, the head barber, would, as he moved among the three customers in the three chairs, offer up his thoughts on boxing or the horses, which he played from time to time. His barber shop, which bore the fanciful name Venus, was at the end of the passageway across the street from our house in Nisantasi. Toto was a tired and sulky man with white hair, and the other of the two older owners was irritable and bald, while the third owner was in his 40s and sported a thin Douglas Fairbanks moustache. I remember he was less interested in chatting with his customers about high prices, new shops in the neighbourhood, singers and stars of the day or domestic politics than he was in discussing international affairs and the state of the world…

… Once, after a customer had had his shave, taken off his apron, allowed the boy to comb his hair, given out his tips, and left the shop, the Fairbanks moustache-sporting owner, who had shown him such courtesy and deference only moments earlier, began to curse this man's mother and his wife: this was how I discovered that the adult world was populated by duplicitous types whose anger was deeper than anything I had known in my child's world. At the barber shops of my childhood, they used scissors, huge clippers they would angrily toss away when they didn't cut well, combs, cotton balls to keep hair out of the ears, cologne, powder and, for the grown-ups, cutthroat razors, shaving cream, shaving combs and white aprons. Today, apart from a handful of electric appliances - like the hair dryer - the tools have not changed much, and this must remind us that though Istanbul writers have never recorded their traditions, these barbers (who have been using these tools for centuries, gossiping as they work) must have been speaking in the same way for just as long…

Barbers also performed circumcisions and other small surgical procedures, some in their coffee houses and others in separate establishments: this gave them a central importance in Istanbul society..

That was when I understood that a barber who shaves you in silence, without drawing a word from your mouth or sharing any neighbourhood or political gossip, and cursing no one, is not a barber at all.“

At Miraj, until I turned nine or ten, Gangaram Gaikwad would visit our home to give us a crew cut. Later it was our turn to visit him once a month. Gangaram was a dapper looking young man who looked less of a barber and more of a photographer or a tailor. Gangaram’s shop, run jointly with his grim looking elder brother (he looked like a guy on the left in picture below), used to be always crowded and, even if it wasn’t, elders always jumped the queue to push us back. I remember some times it used to take hours to get the job done.

But all along Gangaram never stopped smiling, Radio Ceylon hummed and local gossip sizzled. I remember the late Vasant Pawar’s (one of the most talented music director of Marathi film industry who died young) daughter used to frequent the place to chat up with Gaikwad brothers and occasionally play cards.. 

For our monthly visit, we were incentivised with a rupee or two to buy peanuts for our return journey but I guess the real incentive was spending time at Gangaram’s shop, listening to adult gossip!


Atist: Frank Modell The New Yorker August 27, 1960

Just One less Made-in-China thing?

Reuters reported on August 29, 2007:
“Sand storms in northwest China are reducing sections of Great Wall to mounds of dirt and may cause them to disappear in about 20 years, state media said on Wednesday.

The Great Wall, which was chosen last month as top of the new seven wonders of the world, snakes its way across more than 6,400 km (3,980 miles) and receives an estimated 10 million visitors a year.

More than 60 km of the wall in Minqin county in Gansu province, built in the Han Dynasty which lasted from 206 BC to 220 AD, had been rapidly disappearing……….

The Great Wall, which the United Nations listed as a World Heritage Site in 1987, has been rebuilt many times through the centuries, and many sections of it have suffered serious damage from weather erosion and human destruction.”

Death of dinos or a “man-made” destruction, following lines of Shelley’s “Ozymandias” always come to my mind.

“ My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”


Artist: Michael Shaw The New Yorker February 16, 2004