So Long As It Is White or Silver In Fordlândia...Oops India

In Henry Ford´s 1923 autobiography "Henry Ford - My life and work" he quotes himself as saying

"Any customer can have a car painted any colour he wants so long as it is black."

Business Standard, India reported on May 14 2012:

"Two in three cars sold white or silver in colour:

Despite a good number of colours and shades offered by car companies, the regal white and silver still reign supreme. What’s more, their number as a percentage of total car sales is only rising.

As many as 62-70 per cent of car sales come in these two colours. The number was 50 per cent five years ago. This is confirmed by the company that leads the passenger car pack, Maruti Suzuki, and tracks changes in colour preferences across the industry. Says Shashank Srivastava, its chief general manager (marketing), “Yes, white and silver still are the most dominant colours for cars. In fact, as a ratio, the share of white has become more than that of silver in recent years.”..."

(Sharmistha Mukherjee / New Delhi)

Artist: Joseph Mirachi, The New Yorker, 12 July 1958

So whatever it is Ford or whichever company has up its sleeve for Indian market next year, it will be in either white or silver!

p.s.

Wikipedia says about Aldous Huxley's iconic 'Brave New World', 1932:

"These are fictional and factual characters who lived before the events in this book, but are of note in the novel:

Henry Ford, who has become a messianic figure to The World State. "Our Ford" is used in place of "Our Lord", as a credit to popularizing the use of the assembly line. Huxley's description of Ford as a central figure in the emergence of the Brave New World might also be a reference to the utopian industrial city of Fordlândia commissioned by Ford in 1927."

Ray Bradbury: Life Indebted to Vivid, Appallingly Imaginative Cover Paintings

Ray Bradbury:

"I don't try to predict the future – I try to prevent it!"

Michael Dirda:

"From the beginning, Bradbury was distinctly a prose-poet, lyricizing his own fears and yearnings, as obsessed with childhood as Wordsworth...His admirers rapidly grew to include such literary eminences as Christopher Isherwood and W.H. Auden...Like J.G. Ballard, another visionary who doesn’t quite fit comfortably in any genre, Bradbury actually writes about “inner space,” about loneliness and troubled hearts and our deep-seated fear of otherness."

I have still not read Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451"- that I bought in 2009- in its entirety!

But this year I have kept 'meeting' him on 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' on Fox Crime. He and Mr. Hitchcock together take the crime genre to the heights seldom scaled by anyone. Their product is highly entertaining and deeply troubling.

For instance, 'And So Died Riabouchinska' starring aging Claude Rains and Charles Bronson is a mini masterpiece.

Bradbury has said: "My books are full of images and metaphors, but they're connected to intellectual concepts"...and his life was "a movement- a dance- among all these images.

This- recognition of importance of images- visuals- I like most about Mr. Bradbury.

Recently he wrote in The New Yorker dated June 4 2012:

"When I was seven or eight years old, I began to read the science-fiction magazines that were brought by guests into my grandparents’ boarding house, in Waukegan, Illinois. Those were the years when Hugo Gernsback was publishing Amazing Stories, with vivid, appallingly imaginative cover paintings that fed my hungry imagination. Soon after, the creative beast in me grew when Buck Rogers appeared, in 1928, and I think I went a trifle mad that autumn. It’s the only way to describe the intensity with which I devoured the stories. You rarely have such fevers later in life that fill your entire day with emotion.

When I look back now, I realize what a trial I must have been to my friends and relatives. It was one frenzy after one elation after one enthusiasm after one hysteria after another. I was always yelling and running somewhere, because I was afraid life was going to be over that very afternoon..."

What sticks out for me in the para above is : "vivid, appallingly imaginative cover paintings that fed my hungry imagination"


courtesy: Hugo Gernsback , Experimenter Publishing and British Library's 'Out of This World' exhibition

I also liked what Gerald Jonas has written about him:

"Mr. Bradbury referred to himself as an “idea writer,” by which he meant something quite different from erudite or scholarly. “I have fun with ideas; I play with them,” he said. “ I’m not a serious person, and I don’t like serious people. I don’t see myself as a philosopher. That’s awfully boring.” He added, “My goal is to entertain myself and others.”"

Mr. Bradbury told Playboy in 1996:

"Science fiction is also a great way to pretend you are writing about the future when in reality you are attacking the recent past and the present. You can criticize communists, racists, fascists or any other clear and present danger, and they can't imagine you are writing about them. Unfortunately, so much old science fiction is too technical and dry."

Artist: Lee Lorenz, The New Yorker, September 30 1967

Mr. Lorenz's picture above is based on public transport in a developed country.

Now, I am imagining the same cartoon based on Pune city bus transport services provided by Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Ltd.

Well, I don't look forward to my first ride on a flying saucer!

Delhi 1911 Commonwealth Games!

Walter Bagehot, 19th-century editor of The Economist:

“… People like to see a family on the throne because it brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life”.

Sue Townsend, author of The Queen and I:

"In 2003 I wrote: “The monarchy is finished. It was finished a while ago but they are still making the corpses dance.” Now the corpse won’t allow the lid to be screwed down. It has lived a lie for centuries, was not ordained by God, did not have blue blood, has failed to be a good example of family life, and has more in common with the guests on The Jeremy Kyle Show than most of the population. It would be a kindness to sit on the lid of the coffin until the struggle is finally over."

Lewis H. Lapham:

"Remarking on what remained of the reverence for monarchy in 1823, William Hazlitt likens it to “a natural infirmity, a disease, a false appetite in the popular feeling, which must be gratified.” The dream-buying public wants a “peg or loop to hang its idle fancies on, a puppet to dress up, a lay figure to paint from.” The individual who cannot be all that he wishes to be looks for a mirror in which to contemplate “his own pride, vanity, and passions, displayed in their most extravagant dimensions…to see this reflex image of his own self-love, the darling passion of his breast, realized, embodied out of himself in the first object he can lay his hands on for the purpose.” The idol is best made from poor or worthless raw material because it is then subject to the whim of its manufacturer. The bargain is a Faustian one. The media affix price tags to carcasses of temporary divinity, but in return for the gifts of fame and riches, they require the king of the month or the queen for a day to make themselves available to the ritual for the public feast. What was once a subject becomes an object, a burnt offering placed on the altar of publicity."

The Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II is being marked on the 60th anniversary of her accession to the throne upon the death of her father, King George VI, on 6 February 1952.

I wonder how India would have celebrated the event had she still remained the British colony.

Only last year India observed 100th anniversary of the last Delhi Durbar that was held in December 1911 to commemorate the coronation in Britain a few months earlier of King George V and Queen Mary, and their proclamation as Emperor and Empress of India and the shifting of India's capital from Calcutta to Delhi.

During the durbar "...the Gaekwar of Baroda caused widespread outrage by failing to follow protocol during the Durbar itself. Rather than making proper obeisance and walking backwards seven paces before leaving the arena, he ‘made a cursory bow from the waist, stepped back, and then, wheeling around, turned his back on the royal couple and walked away from their presence nonchalantly twirling a gold-topped walking stick’." (Peter Parker, The Spectator)

Now that would have made a great TV!

"The Gaikwar of Baroda paid homage peremptorily to the King Emperor. Afterwards he turned his back on him, causing a major political scandal."

courtesy: 'A Glimpse of Empire' by Jessica Douglas-Home


Sunil Raman and Rohit Agarwal write of the event:

“Today, a hundred years later, memories have been erased under the weight of dust, the sound of honking cars and motorcycles, the rush of people and indifferent residents...”

The King-Emperor receiving homage from the Ruling Prince of Burma

courtesy: 'A Glimpse of Empire' by Jessica Douglas-Home

Nawaid Anjum:

"For the 1911 Delhi Darbar, a temporary tented city sprang up, spread over 45 square miles. The darbar went on for a week. Around 150 ruling chiefs, maharajas, zamindars and feudal lords were on display in full regalia, even as 100,000 spectators revelled in the royal splendour. There were special arrangements and enclosures for women in purdah. Begum of Bhopal, the most photographed ruler at the darbar, attended the ceremony in purdah.

With over £900,000 spent on it, the 1911 darbar was arguably the most expensive and ambitious assemblage. This was also an occasion for the British to show their military might. And this explained the extensive military bandobast with a total of 50,000 troops and the contingent of 50 bands of different units that were stationed in Delhi. Some of the prominent Indians present at the darbar included Motilal Nehru, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, R.N. Mudholker and Sachidanand Sinha."

New York market price of gold in 1911 was 4.25 British pounds per fine ounce. £900,000 would have bought 211,765 ounces of gold.

Gold closed 1622.10 US$ per ounce and US$ closed on 55.49 to INR on June 2 2012. So the event costed India INR 1,906 crores in today's money!!!

Reminds me of Delhi 2010 Commonwealth Games. According to Wikipedia: The initial total budget estimated by the Indian Olympic Association in 2003 for hosting the Games was INR 1,620 crore.

Artist: Rea Irvin, The New Yorker, 12 December 1925

And Where is C. Ramchandra in All That Jazz?

Juned Shaikh:

"...a play on unemployment during the Great Depression of the 1930s had dialogue by the communist leader D S Vaidya and songs composed by S R Gaikwad and Baburava Garud. The music for the play was composed by Hindi film musician C Ramchandra."

(Economic & Political Weekly EPW July 30, 2011)

Ashok Da Ranade (अशोक दा रानडे ) on C. Ramchandra:

"He was unforced in everything he did and his relaxed putting forth or the ease in musical mapping was passed on through his music to listeners- they really enjoyed the music even when they were moved to tears! His music is accessible to almost everybody - not because of musical dilution but because he is able to communicate with sufficient technical expertise and concealed skill. He had the courage to go against the rigid Indian school of Hindi music as he never felt the necessity to prove credentials of his own musical Indianness! Finally, he was content to be an artist and never took to waving of flags and raising slogans against cultural invasion Indian musical traditions, etc.!"

('Hindi Film Song: Music Beyond Boundaries')


Raju Bharatan:

“I had heard the musically erudite S D Burman acknowledging when Dada commended C Rramchandra as the westernised model to son R D:’ if you must go modern , Pancham, study the vistas explored by Chitalkar as a composer’. No wonder there was an uproar when I hailed R D Burman as the ‘C Rramchandra of the 1970s’ in my Filmfare ‘On Record’ column. Fans were up in arms , arguing that Pancham was not a patch on the Mr. Jaan original! That was then. Today Pacham is recognized as ‘the jet’ setter supreme. While C Ramchandra is a mere name to a generation whose understanding of music extends only from R D Burman to A R Rahman.”

(‘A Journey Down Melody Lane’, 2010)

The highest accolade I can give to RD: He was as good as C Ramchandra!

Book "Taj Mahal Foxtrot" by NARESH FERNANDES has been favourably reviewed by 'The Caravan' December 2011 and Frontline April 6 2012.

It is, as Mr. Vijay Prashad writes in Frontline, "A history of jazz from the point of view of the performers, musicians who lived humble lives and often died as unknown workers in the trade."

Priced at Rs. 1,295/-, it is not for people like me and, I guess, those musicians!

"Drawing from scholars such as Bradley Shope and others, Naresh Fernandes' book pivots away from the musicians themselves to make an important claim. Jazz might have begun its career to anaesthetise the elite, but it would soon slip through these working-class musicians into the world of mass Hindi cinema. Many of these musicians would help orchestrate the early Bollywood sound or, as with Albela (1951), bring jazz into the film." (Frontline)

"What happened to Frank Fernand? To Micky Correa? To innumerable other musicians who were hired and fired from bands that enjoyed fleeting fame on glamorous stages?

The short answer is: the movies. The Bombay film industry found a musical space for the accomplished practitioners of alien instruments like the trumpet and the saxophone. Fernandes writes eloquently of Chic Chocolate’s tentative screen debut in a 1951 film called Albela. He played himself, a trumpet player who made the main cast feel good and wake up to naughty possibilities" (The Caravan)

There is a mention of Albela in both the reviews but there is no mention of its music composer C. Ramchandra (रामचंद्र नरहर चितळकर), 1918-1982.

Doesn't he deserve some credit in deploying that sound and taking it to the masses?

In words of Dr. Ranade:

"C Ramchandra introduced Benny Goodman-style Jazz clarinet phrasing, combining it with Indian melody in film Shahnai ('Ana Meri Jan meri jan, Sunday ke Sunday') thereby 'flodding' listners' ears! Anil Biswas reportedly rang up C. Ramchandra to reproach him and asked him, "What do you think you are doing and why?" C. Ramchandra's coolly cryptic answer was, "I am doing what I am doing because I want my songs to sound as my songs and not like Anil Biswas'!" Anil Biswal could only say, "Please go right ahead" and put down the receiver, and sigh deeply!"

And returning to the comment of Dr. A D Ranade at the top:

"He was unforced in everything he did and his relaxed putting forth or the ease in musical mapping was passed on through his music to listeners- they really enjoyed the music even when they were moved to tears!"

Now see this cartoon:

Artist: Garrett Price, The New Yorker, 28 Feb 1931

"Now go in and make 'em cry!"? CR sure did with his many Jazz instruments just like the musician above!

My father was (is) a great fan (nut) of Raj Kapoor. Like loyal fans he was biased. Big time biased. He seldom mentioned Guru Dutt to us then.

With this background I saw 'Pyaasa', 1957 in the late 1970's in a Sangli (सांगली) theatre.

I was bewitched by its beauty and its music. Acting is clearly not its forte. But its beauty is ethereal. And if I have to choose one thing from that movie it would be the song "Hum aapki aankhon me". Piano from that song keeps playing in my mind.

Music composer Anthony Prabhu Gonsalves came to Bombay in 1943 from the coastal village of Majorda in south Goa. At 16, he was hired by the famous music director Naushad as a violinist in his group.

Gonsalves was a major influence on Hindi film music of the 1950s and 1960s, lending a Goan touch to then Hindustani sounds of Bollywood. This mellifluous blend can be heard in compositions like ‘Hum aapki aankhon me’ for Pyasa, and ‘Ayega Aanewala’ for Mahal.

Among his students were legends like RD Burman and Pyarelal. In 1977, Pyarelal paid tribute to his mentor with the Amar Akbar Anthony song, ‘My name is Anthony Gonsalves’.

courtesy: The Caravan, March 2012

Death of Dreams: Of Arthur Miller's Salesman and G A Kulkarni's Madhukaka

The Economist magazine commenting on pioneer of self-help books Samuel Smiles:

“………But, like other self-help gurus, Smiles probably affected behaviour less than self-perceptions. He set out to tell people that morality and hard work were needed for success. What his readers took from his writing was the reassuring notion that their success must have been the result of morality and hard work” (April 22 2004)

J. M. Tyree:

What vexed Miller were the stories Americans have told themselves about the power of positive thinking, the instant money and spiritual purity that are sure to follow from unfettered entrepreneurship, the decency of the profit motive, the goodness of the national past, and, when all else fails, the possibility of escape and reinvention in the West. This land is your land: Henry David Thoreau crosses uneasily with Norman Rockwell; the tenets of Ayn Rand crash into the gospel of Jesus Christ; the Book of Mormon reads strangely in parallel with the Bill of Rights; Huckleberry Finn lights out for the territory but never becomes the Marlboro Man, exactly. Above all, Miller responded to a culture that cherished a sanctimonious and noxiously sentimental vision of family life as a beacon of health and wealth.

ALGIS VALIUNAS:

The most famous suicide in American theater is that of Willy Loman, in Death of a Salesman (1949). Exhausted by years on the road, his mind going, Willy is suitably beaten down by heartless business forces, so that his killing himself is at once supremely pitiable and supremely noble: He fakes a car accident so his widow and sons can collect the $20,000 insurance payout. Willy's wife admonishes her sons, who despise their father's doddering and weakness and failure, "But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid." Miller's attention is fixed on larger concerns than the fate of one man. For him, the universal tragedy of American life is the fundamental capitalist insistence that business is business. That's exactly what Willy's boss says as he's firing him; Willy agrees reflexively, but then goes on to qualify and plead. The truth is incontestable nevertheless: If you can't make a killing you get murdered.

Although my father (and my mother) struggled more than Willy, from Arthur Miller's 'Death of a Salesman' 1949, to support us, unlike Elia Kazan, the play’s first director, Willy was NOT our father in one important aspect.

Selling was an alien profession to us then. You could be a teacher, a doctor, an engineer, a barber, a mason, a carpenter, an electrician, a plumber, a milkman, a shopkeeper, a clerk, an accountant, a maid, a priest, an engine driver, a bus conductor, a soldier, a farmer...but selling...what was that?

Willy says in Act Two:

"And when I saw that, I realized that selling was the greatest career a man could want. ’Cause what could be more satisfying than to be able to go, at the age of eighty-four, into twenty or thirty different cities, and pick up a phone, and be remembered and loved and helped by so many different people?"

Now, I can't identify my father with this. However, my father then being a young, popular college teacher, I can relate him to "remembered and loved and helped by so many different people".

I can also easily relate to the interplay between Willy and his sons and among the two brothers- Biff and Happy. Tim Lott chooses the play for his 5 best books "on brothers"- love and rivalry among siblings with these words: "Death of a Salesman is more about the relationship between fathers and sons than brothers, but the motif of maimed brother relationships runs in all directions."

It's easier to identify my mother with Linda. She, like Linda in Act Two, could have easily said- and probably did- this to my father: "Why must everyone conquer the world? You're well liked, and the boys love you..."

(BTW-Eerily Willy's act of suicide for the family reminds one of farmers' suicides in India.)

LEE SIEGEL has written a great essay 'Death of a Salesman's Dreams' on the revival of 'Salesman' on Broadway in NYT on May 2 2012.

"Certainly few middle-class people, or at least anyone from any “middle class” that Loman would recognize, are among the audiences attending this production. What was once a middle-class entertainment has become a luxury item. Tickets for the original run, in 1949, cost between $1.80 and $4.80; tickets for the 2012 run range from $111 to $840. After adjusting for inflation, that’s a 10-fold increase, well beyond the reach of today’s putative Willy Lomans."

Isn't this true of even latter-day Hindi plays featuring Naseeruddin Shah? Does Mr. Shah make an effort to stage his plays where they can reach beyond English-NDTV-watching audience?

"Not only have the industries that employed the salespeople, factory workers, middle managers and others in the plentiful, humbler realms of mid-20th-century capitalism begun to dry up, but today’s capitalists no longer share Willy’s belief that he could attain dignity through his work. "

Do young Indians believe that they "could attain dignity through their work"?

"In 1949, Willy’s desperate cry — “the competition is maddening!” — must have chilled theatergoers for whom competition still had a mostly positive connotation. In 2012, a fight to the death for shrinking opportunities in so many realms of life renders the idea of fair competition an anachronism. It is a sign of the times that sitcoms, in which trivial, everyday conflicts are comfortably resolved into neighborly harmony, are giving way to the Darwinian armageddons of reality TV. It is as if the middle class were being forced to watch the gladiatorial spectacle of its own destruction."
In India, haven't nepotism and crony capitalism consumed the concept of fair competition and opportunities?

"Even what’s left of the middle class disdains a middle-class life. Everyone, rich, poor and in between, wants infinite pleasure and fabulous riches."

How true of middle-class Indians...If they have one house, they want one more...They have a car, they want really a big second one...Soon they will send their kids to US, UK, Australia starting Class VIII...

"Mr. Miller’s outrage at a capitalist system he wanted to humanize has become our cynical adaptation to a capitalist system we pride ourselves on knowing how to manipulate. For Mr. Miller, Willy’s middle-class dreams put the system that betrayed them to shame. In our current context, Willy’s dreams of love, dignity and community through modest work make him a deluded loser."
Yes, any one who does not follow their path is a deluded loser. Linda by saying- Why must everyone conquer the world?- is a loser.

"Perhaps there is a simple, unlovely reason “Death of a Salesman” has become such a beloved institution. Instead of humbling its audience through the shock of recognition, the play now confers upon the people who can afford to see it a feeling of superiority — itself a fragile illusion."

Do they watch the play to draw comfort that they are not 'losers' like Willy; that they are 'successful'; that since they are not falling apart like Willy, they are smarter than him?
Do they watch even Marathi 'Natasamrat' (नटसम्राट) to feel superior to the old, hapless Belvalkar (बेलवलकर) couple in there?

Do they watch 'Ekach Pyala' (एकच प्याला) to draw the comfort that they will never turn Sudhakar (सुधाकर) because unlike him they drink only expensive wine and scotch?

Do they watch 'Sakharam Binder' (सखाराम बाइंडर) to conclude that they will never be sexually frustrated or feel castrated like him because they can buy little blue pill?

I hope not.

Artist: George Booth, The New Yorker, 2 December 1972

However, on the whole, "Death of a Salesman" endures because, for me, it is more about what happens in a family rather than it's about Willy's dreams.

The play brings to my mind a classy short story 'Ghar' (घर) by G A Kulkarni (जी ए कुलकर्णी) from the collection "PinglaVel", 1977 (पिंगळावेळ).

I had written to G A about how I liked the story 'Ghar' and he replied saying his fans seldom mentioned that story although he had 'soft corner' for it. This is his letter:

G A Kulkarni letter in Marathi dated 16 Feb 1983- right click to open in another window to magnify and read ( I had compared GA to Marathi saint-poets in my letter to him. I- and GA himself more than me- knew I was exaggerating but now I think it was baloney. No Marathi writer since the death of the last great, Samarth Ramdas समर्थ रामदास in 1681, is any where close to them.)

'Ghar' is the story of middle-class (Brahmin?) Madhukaka (मधुकाका), his wife Mai (माई) and their children Ramesh, Shantaram and Malati.

Now in his retirement, Madhukaka has built a house for the first time in his life and is planning to move into it...housewarming is coming up...he also has plans for his young children...

Will he move into his new house?...Do his children agree with his plans for them?...What happens to his dreams?...Is that family still together at the end of the story?...

The story ends on a sombre note:

"पण त्या कोर्या पांढर्या भिंतींनी मात्र त्यांच्या भोवती घर होण्याचे सराईत नाटक सुरु केले."

(But those blank, white walls started smoothly playacting home around them.)

Epigraph of 'Pingla Vel' is the following quote of August Strindberg:

"Shallow people demand variety – but I have been writing the same story throughout my life, every time trying to cut nearer the aching nerve".

It is no coincidence that G A chose Strindberg who, like a fellow Swede Ingmar Bergman, was a purveyor of domestic hell!

Willy and Madhukaka are great tragic figures but what moves me most is the magnanimousness shown by their wives Linda Loman and Mai(Janaki). They probably never told their husbands how they really felt.


Artist: Charles Addams, The New Yorker, November 14 1942

Linda and Mai are my heroes. I see a lot of my mother in them.

p.s.

It's also no coincidence that I chose a picture by the creator of "The Addams Family" to conclude the post.

ANDREW STARK writes of that famous family:

"It is worth pausing to contemplate what the Addamses' world is really like, beyond its fantastical and droll qualities. In our ordinary world, we don't routinely inflict physical violence on one another, and of course when we do somebody gets hurt. The reverse is the case for the Addamses. They are always meting out wonderfully horrendous acts of physical mayhem: beckoning unwitting drivers to launch their vehicles into the paths of onrushing moving vans, tying each other to homemade racks, bricking guests up behind walls, larding soups with poison. And yet somehow nobody dies, nobody gets dismembered, nobody writhes in agony, nobody's hair even gets mussed.

In short, the Addamses aim to hurt with delicious malevolence, but the physical damage ends up being invisible or, to put it another way, nonexistent. Emotionally, the dynamic is reversed. The Addamses are loving and caring to one another, convivial and concerned as friends; they wouldn't dream of hurting anyone's feelings..." (WSJ, March 12 2010)

Sudhir Tailang Is Making Shankar New!

Ezra Pound: Make It New

Walt Whitman: “Do I repeat myself? Very well then, I repeat myself.”

André Gide: “Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”

John Barth:

"And originality—“making it new”—has many forms. The mainspring of Somadeva’s (सोमदेव) epical eleventh-century Sanskrit tale-cycle, Kátha sarit ságara कथा सरित सागर, or “Ocean of the Streams of Story” (longer than Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey combined), is the goddess Parvati’s request that her consort Siva, as her reward for a particularly divine session of love-making, tell her a story that no one has ever heard before or will ever hear again. In fact, however, the multi-volume “Great Tale” that her lord comes up with includes whole cycles of earlier tales, such as the centuries-old Panchatantra पंचतंत्र (“Five Principles”) and the Vetalapanchavimsati वेतालपञ्चविंशति (“Twenty-five Tales of a Vampire”). And Siva’s tale is overheard by one of the house-servants, who repeats it to his wife, who repeats it to Parvati, who is so incensed by the violation of her for-my-ears-only contract that many consequences follow—including, fortunately, the Great Tale’s transcription and its passage down the ages to us."

I have already written a post on the NCERT cartoon issue.

Cartoonist Sudhir Tailang has been agitated over this. His agitation is understandable because this issue was preceded by Mamata Banerjee cartoon issue.

I have already hailed Mr. Tailang as the best political cartoonist in India today.

And here is another example why.

If you have still not seen Shankar's NCERT cartoon, you can see it here.

Now watch following cartoon by Mr. Tailang.

Although I on an average see more than a funny picture almost every day, seldom I laugh out loud. Especially when I am alone.

This picture made me laugh really loud when I was alone. I did not expect the artist to go out on this limb.

This is Mr. Tailang's tribute to the late Mr. Shankar. The only major difference between the two pictures is the presence / absence of people of India. For some reason, Mr. Tailang's picture doesn't have them.

I see a design even there.

Politicians were accessible then. Now they aren't.

Taya Zinkin, (1918-2003) a prominent English journalist and author writes

“I watched Nehru who had been so accessible even after his country became independent, become increasingly isolated, until one day in Amritsar, an old man who only wanted to touch his feet and receive darshan was nearly killed by a lathi and was carried away by the police in mufti. I watched the slow erosion power works on those who enjoy it and slowly, one by one, I lost my old friends in politics. Constructive criticism, at first welcome, soon grew sour compared with the sycophancy of those who had axes to grind and beds to feather. Power corrupts because it isolates and because in the modern world there is no room for the traditional fool of Shakespearian days.”

(“Sahibs Who Loved India” Ed. Khushwant Singh)

Therefore you now have no one watching them when they are whipping India's 'snail' economy unlike then when they were creating India's constitution!

Remember, Dr. Manmohan Singh is NOT whipping Mr. Pranab Mukherjee. He is about whip the snail. (Even that looks cruel to me now!)


Artist: Sudhir Tailang, The Asian Age, May 17 2012

(My Asian Age issue dated May 17 was delivered on May 18. Lucky me, I did NOT miss it! AA is worth most times because of Mr. Tailang's cartoon alone.)

Cartoon Or A Powder Keg?

Kancha Ilaiah:

"...After Ambedkar joined Nehru’s Cabinet, he was also seen as one who compromised himself for power. After he resigned from the Cabinet in 1953, and after he embraced Buddhism three years later, his image and status transformed quite dramatically. And after the Mandal movement of 1990, Ambedkar’s stature assumed messianic proportions. The present Ambedkar is not a negotiator with Nehru or Gandhi. Rather, as a messiah of the large army of the oppressed people of this country, he’s quite different from Gandhi and Nehru...

...What Mr Yadav and Mr Palshikar refuse to recognise is that Ambedkar was not just a writer of Indian Constitution, not just a nationalist leader, and not just a theoretician, but he was a prophetic figure who revived Buddhism that was driven out of India by a whole range of social forces over a period of several centuries. Thus, in every Buddha Vihar today he sits along with Buddha.
The icon of the oppressed community cannot be compared with a god or goddess of the oppressors. Nor can the protest against the Ambedkar cartoon be seen at par with the Hindutva protest against the Goddess Saraswati cartoon drawn by M.F. Hussain...

...Shankar Pillai’s cartoons were friendly jokes for the upper-caste English-educated elite of the post-Independence ruling class, but certainly not for the dalit/Other backward Classes/adivasi population..."

(The Asian Age, May 22 2012)


Another political cartoon, this time drawn by great K Shankar Pillai (1902-1989) in 1940's, is in the news.

Once again for wrong reasons. BTW- When this is being discussed on TV or radio, hardly any one mentions Shankar's name!

Many years ago, my father had acquired a commemorative volume of Shankar's pictures. I must have spent hours browsing it over many days. I still remember a few pictures from that.

The one I remember most is:

Shankar riding a donkey/pony a la Don Quixote, loaded with his 'weaponry', is leaving cartooning for good and politicians of all hue are bidding goodbye to him with mixed feelings. I think the caption was something like "parting...but not without sorrow". It was wonderful...moving.

It was this picture:



I remember many pictures on the subject of: "After Nehru Who?" from that book. His affection for Nehru was very apparent.

Should Shankar's political cartoon have been used in a school text?

My Answer: NO. It was an error of judgement.

Why?

1> My son has just given exam for Class 12 and he tells me how all subjects are taught without any nuances in his school. He feels the controversial picture would have been found offending by a few of his classmates. He doesn't think his teachers could have been to able to 'explain' it.

In such an environment, a political cartoon can become a powder keg.

2> India's widespread 'visual' illiteracy. There are a number of posts on the subject on this blog. Most notably this one.

When people send me an occasional comment on the posts from this blog, they seldom mention the picture and this blog is above all about pictures, visuals!

After reading Prof. Suhas Palshikar's (सुहास पळशीकर) brilliant essay in Samaj Prabodhan Patrika April-June 2008 (समाज प्रबोधन पत्रिका), I wrote this post and informed Prof. Palshikar about it. He responded immediately with very encouraging words but did NOT say anything on John Tenniel's brilliant moving cartoon there! Maybe he was very busy.

So people are either indifferent to a visual or go ballistic looking at one.

I can go on ad nauseam!

Therefore, unless we improve this literacy, we shouldn't use political cartoons in texts.

3> There is no exact word for cartoon in Marathi. It's called either 'vyangchitra' (व्यंगचित्र) or 'hasyachitra'(हास्यचित्र). Both these words are slight misnomers. Every time Marathi people see a cartoon they think they need to laugh at the drawn personalities or a scene. Most don't think there is any other purpose to a cartoon.

4> Although the cartoon was first published in the late 1940's, it was 'reissued' c 2006 and is being 'seen' today in 2012. Remember, no one objected to this cartoon before it came in NCERT text.

However a political cartoon works strictly in a context.

A year after independence, Indians might be in a 'hurry' to see it being turned into the Republic and Shankar is showing that eagerness by depicting crowd in the cartoon containing ordinary men, women and children of the newly independent nation.

However, in 2012, we appreciate, in words of Pranab Mukherjee, "how Ambedkar oversaw the writing of one of the world's lengthiest constitutions" in record low time.

Context has clearly changed. Are India's 17-year old's mature enough or trained enough to look at a picture in their text along with its full historical context?

A lot of things transpired between the Congress and Dr. B R Ambedkar after the cartoon was published.

For instance, N. Ram writes:

"He (Dr. Ambedkar) was emphatically opposed to Gandhism and to the Congress ideology, although on some social issues he shared common points with Jawaharlal Nehru – who badly let down his Minister of Law on the Hindu Code Bill in the early 1950s...Dr Ambedkar can be considered as a founder of non-Congressism and anti-Congressism in Indian politics..."

(Frontline, January 15 2010)

Ex-Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Ms. Mayawati:

“…In fact, the Congress played a very dirty game with Dr Ambedkar when its leaders tried to foil the election of Dr Ambedkar to the Constituent Assembly by giving away a part of Bengal (that had elected Dr Ambedkar) to Pakistan. By doing so, Dr Ambedkar would have ended up as member of the Pakistan Constituent Assembly. However, when Dr Ambedkar apprised the British of this gameplan, they (British) asked the Congress to include Dr Ambedkar in the Indian Constituent Assembly and finally the Congress had to agree…”

(The Asian Age, April 15, 2008)

If this is so- and I condemn even the slightest violence committed in this regard- isn't it offensive for followers of Dr. Ambedkar to see him being 'driven'- even in jest- by J L Nehru, and that too as a part of a nation-wide textbook? (If you see the cartoon carefully, you will notice that Nehru is about to whip the snail and NOT Dr. Ambedkar. But interpretations may vary.)

Perhaps great Shankar himself wouldn't have drawn this cartoon in 1950's considering above and his own perceived closeness to India's first Prime Minister.

p.s.

This is what I read on June 15 2012:

"...Arjun Dev (ex-Professor of History in the NCERT) felt that it was a pity that much of the discussion that had taken place had, in fact, prevented a rational and objective discussion on the usefulness of this particular textbook as suitable educational material. He wondered whether the preponderance of cartoons in a textbook as ‘aids' really helped promote interest in the subject and make for a better critical comprehension.

“This particular textbook suffers from ‘overkill', with many cartoons making little sense in the absence of any reference to the context in which they were drawn. There are no dates anywhere, which would in some cases be of some use in even ‘understanding' a cartoon, even finding in it something ‘funny' or humorous. There is a cartoon on page 7 of the book in which Nehru has two faces, one facing a group of persons in dhotis and kurtas sitting on the ground shouting Vande Mataram and the other facing a group of ‘decently' clothed and ‘educated'-looking persons, most of them sitting properly in chairs playing musical instruments and singing Jana Gana Mana with a few standing behind them (the one standing resembles Maulana Azad and the one sitting, Ambedkar). The text tells the reader: ‘Here is Nehru trying to balance between different visions and ideologies. Can you identify what these different groups stand for?' Can you?” Arjun Dev asked..."

(T.K. RAJALAKSHMI, 'Chorus of unreason', Frontline, Jun. 02-15, 2012)

Saadat Hasan Manto @100 is Still Working to Make Our Age Bearable

Today May 11 2012 is 100th Birth Anniversary of Saadat Hasan Manto, one of the greatest South Asian writers of 20th century.

Saadat Hassan Manto:

“IF you are not familiar with the age in which we live, read my stories. If you cannot endure my stories, it means that this age is unbearable.”

I knew very little about Saadat Hassan Manto until 2012. Since then I have bought books- both Hindi and English- that contain most of his short stories.

Those stories are some of the best I have read.

For instance, Manto is as good as the best Marathi has to offer- writer like G A Kulkarni (जी ए कुलकर्णी)- in this genre.

I have seen a couple of Marathi translations of his work but wonder why Manto is not as popular or not as much read by Marathi speaking people as he should be. They should claim Manto their own because many of Manto's stories are based in Mumbai and Pune!

His shadows of Bombay life- darker and more intriguing than the one sees in Chetan Anand's 'Taxi Driver', 1954- were later claimed and celebrated by others, most notably Bhau Padhye (भाऊ पाध्ये) in Marathi.

It is also surprising considering that there are so many ardent fans, among native Marathi speakers, of Gulzar and Amrita Pritam: for my taste, both ordinary writers compared to Manto.

I probably know one reason why Manto is treated thus: His most popular stories evoke and define the Partition, one of the greatest human tragedies since the start of the history and the fact that he migrated to Pakistan after 1947.

The Partition is almost a taboo with most middle-class Indians. They don't want to know any more about it than what has been told- very little- to them in school texts.

One of his popular stories is “Toba Tek Singh”.

Anatol Lieven writes about it:

"The signature story is a masterpiece of allegory with touches of surrealism. It’s also a very powerful human story. Toba Tek Singh is the story of a lunatic asylum from British days in India, which after partition ends up on the Pakistani side of the border. In this lunatic asylum there is this Sikh called Bishan Singh from the village of Toba Tek Singh. His family flee to India and he’s left behind in Pakistan. A few years after partition – this is where you can see Manto’s deep regret about partition and where his anger and despair comes in – the decision is made that the Hindu and Sikh lunatics and the Muslims lunatics also have to be partitioned and that the Hindu and Sikh lunatics have to be sent to India. He refuses to go because he realises that he is going to be separated forever from his beloved Toba Tek Singh. When they try to drag him he throws himself on to the ground and the authorities leave him there for the night. In the morning, the implication is that he’s dead, with his body straddling the border between India and Pakistan."

No one tells us what exactly we lost in the Partition better than Manto.

But personally I like his stories that portray man-woman relationships better. A few of them are sensuous, real turn-ons. They remind me of love stories from ancient Indian literature in Sanskrit, Prakrit, Pali etc.

courtesy: Rajkamal Prakashan

Durga Bhagwat दुर्गा भागवत: First Decade of Her Absence

दुर्गा भागवत: "मला जगण्याचं सुख वाटतं बघ."

(Durga Bhagwat: "I am happy living.")

Today May 7 2012 is 10th death anniversary of Durga Bhagwat (दुर्गा भागवत).

I have not thought of anything new to write on her but just remembering her.

Again, as is typical of Marathi, most of the writing on her is hagiographic but she too had, as always is the case, her faults. Some of them glaring.

Ms. Bhagwat must wait for more rounded biography.

There are at least a dozen posts on this blog referring to her. They can be reached by clicking here.

Supermoon and Supertoon

The phenomenon, called supermoon, this year coincides with 'Buddha Purnima' on May 6 2012.

Such a moon always brings my attention back to super cartoon by one of the greatest.

"Maynard, I do think that just this once you should come out and see the moon!"

I wonder what Maynard is doing.

Watching IPL or his favourite sitcom? Is he capable of enjoying the moon? I mean his eyesight is not a problem because if he comes out the moon will be in his face. Did he ever enjoy looking at the moon? Does he like to watch the moon more on National Geographic than the one in his backyard?

Artist: Charles Addams, The New Yorker, 25 July 1983