Author Archives: manish

The ground beneath their feet

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A desi conductor is organizing a classical music concert in Manhattan later this month to raise money for the Pakistan earthquake. On the program is Beethoven’s 9th:

Beethoven’s 9th for South Asia Symphony Orchestra and Chorus

… In the aftermath of the tragedy, an exceptional and unparalleled group of musicians have joined forces and donated their services to help the survivors. All proceeds from the concert will go directly to Doctors Without Borders.

Performers to include principal players of the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, The Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra… as well as a chorus of 150-200 assembled from the major choral ensembles in New York City.

George Mathew, a friend of my cousin’s, is conducting.

Earthquakes, I point out, have always made men eager to placate the gods. After the great Lisbon earthquake of November 1, 1755… the locals decided on a propitiatory auto-da-fé… Herr Candide of Thunder-ten-tronckh, a name like an occult incantation, likely to provoke earthquakes where none had previously occurred, was flogged rhythmically and for a long while upon his bloodied buttocks. Immediately after this auto-da-fé there was an even bigger earthquake, and that part of the city which remained standing instantly fell down. That’s the trouble with human sacrifice, the heroin of the gods. It’s highly addictive. And who will save us from deities with major habits to feed?

So god’s a junkie now, Vina says.

The gods, I correct her. Monotheism sucks, like all despotisms…

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Tripped up by tingo

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At some point after hearing the fifth K3G remix at the Net cafe in Fez and watching a Moroccan boy who knew and sang all the words to ‘Shava Shava’ doing chair-bhangra (it’s just like car-bhangra, only the entire cafe doesn’t tilt), I became obsessed with the idea of watching Bollywood in Morocco.

I had already selected my target, the Empire Ciné, plastered with posters for Oceans Twelve, Crazy Kung-Fu (which you may know as Kung-Fu Hustle) and several Bollyflicks all starring Priyanka Chopra. Waqt looked like the highest Priyanka I.N.Q. (item number quotient), and so with high standards of scientific precision it was duly chosen.

I had stared so long at the Bollyposters, the only ones not translated in French, and taken so many photos that the local lafange (layabouts) out front craned their heads and stared anew at the posters they ignored every day.

My atrocious and limited French interposed itself between me and my Priyanka fixation like an ill-tempered gendarme with little bits of toilet paper stanching a bad shave. ‘Waqt.’ I said, pointing at the movie poster and tapping my wrist. ‘Quoi heure?’ The man behind the grill patiently wrote ‘8.30’ for me and repeated it in French. ‘Waqt, oui?’ Same answer.

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Looking for permission to film in the Muslim world

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Why Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World filmed in India:

Some of the Arab press, Mr. Brooks said, questioned his decision to set the film in India and Pakistan rather than an Arab country. “I said, ‘Well, if you can get me permission to shoot in Saudi Arabia, let me know,’ ” he said. “Because it was not happening when I was making calls. That was shut down within five minutes, with ‘What, are you insane?’ They’re not going to let a Jewish man, much less a filmmaker, in there. That’s just not going to happen. But I wanted the conflict between the two countries. I knew in writing this that I wanted to take two existing powers that are always suspicious of each other, and that was the one place you could do that. The idea was always that I go to do a peace mission, and I almost start World War III.”

Dude, Johnny Lever is still very much around, on film and on stage:

Comedy in the Muslim world (Arab or otherwise) can indeed be hard to find. “Today, stand-up comedians just don’t really exist,” Mr. Usman said. “But they did once. I have albums from the 70’s. The big, towering guy from Pakistan is called Moin Akhtar, and another guy, who was his contemporary, was Umar Sharif. And there was a guy in India who was really famous, who used the name Johnny Lever. They basically did one-man shows, with a lot of improv and sketch comedy, but with a small portion of what we would call stand-up.”

I dunno, the previews seemed similarly lame to me:

Once Mr. Brooks chose India as his setting, he visited the minister of information. “He told me that Steven Spielberg had wanted to shoot ‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom’ there, and they wouldn’t allow it, because they didn’t like the scene where they ate monkey brains,” Mr. Brooks said. “I said, ‘I don’t do that,’ and I think they were really appreciative that I didn’t have the whole scene where the cow stops traffic. They’ve seen that so much, and they hate it…” “I get nervous when I hear people are doing something about India, because usually it’s done with so little intelligence,” Ms. Sheth said.

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Sing-sing

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On the ferry from Spain to Morocco, I had my ear bent for several hours by a friendly Moroccan bloke, as they tend to be. It was either that, or coming out of stealth mode and joining the Americans listening to an Aussie English teacher yap nonstop for four hours. The job selects for strong lungs. Between broken English, a smattering of French and German, and long phrases in Mime, the fellow now residing in Germany kept the ferry crossing lively.

‘You… sing?’ he ventured cautiously.

‘Uh… not really,’ I replied.

‘I two Indian friend. They sing,’ he said.

‘Qawwali?’ I asked. The universal gesture of ‘WTF are you talking about?,’ palms upturned. ‘North Indian, they sing,’ he told me.

Why yes, I suppose we do.

‘Prime minister sing. First time!’ he said. Ahhh… got it. Singh. Turban, not pipes. His ululatory fixation now made a lot more sense.

He proceeded to tell me about his friends in Germany. ‘Sing crazy for whiskey!’ Yeah, yeah, Ustad Walker and his famous school of blended malt scotch. He told me with no small admiration that he’d seen a grown man down a full liter of whiskey and show up the next morning with no ill effect. He said that Germany is recruiting Indians because they are the computer caste.

We compared the etymologies of words from Arabic and Farsi which show up in Turkish and Hindu/Urdu, such as kitap (book), maidaan (plaza) and duniya (world). He said he wasn’t religious, ‘religion politics, only makes trouble,’ but was visiting his family for Eid-ul-Adha. He mimed ram horns, slitting the beast’s throat, and asked how you translate Lucifere from French.

The rest of the encounter got weird.

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Containment

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In the ’60s, the U.S. Department of Defense grew increasingly worried about containing the USSR and funded departments of South Asian Studies at many American universities. Ironically, many of the beneficiaries of the grants were exactly the kind of free spirits that granite-cut DoD types abhorred. As time went on, this faculty started facing 2nd gen desis asking to learn about modern South Asia rather than psychosexual analyses of Radha-Krishna, and asking for native language instructors rather than those one step phonetically removed.

Today the Hindoo Peril arises anew, and this time around it’s that the Axis of Non-English has imbibed capitalism too deeply (thanks, Joby):

President Bush is asking for Congress for $114 million in next yearÂ’s budget to push Americans into uncharted linguistic territory under what is being called “National Security Language Initiative…” Hindi has been identified as one of the critical foreign languages that Americans need to learn… Americans are also being urged to study Farsi, Arabic, Chinese and other languages… [Link]

Note the clumping of the language of potential military enemies with economic competitors. OTOH, since oil supply is an economic chokepoint, maybe it’s all about dem billz over at Larnin’ ’bout Furriners, Part Deux.

Hey, you might even get a Tamil, Gujarati or Telugu class resurrected out of this. All in the name of knowing the ‘enemy,’ of course 😉 Continue reading →

God is a DJ

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I used to think the urge to convert mosques into temples was an obsession peculiar to Hindutva types. But Córdoba, Spain makes it ok to have rapacious religionists in your cultural closet.

As I posted last, the mountain fortress of La Alhambra looks Spanish on the outside, Mughal on the inside. But the Mezquita cathedral in Córdoba is the reverse, a Moorish mosque converted into a cathedral.

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India: A Million Slush Pile Rejects Now

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In a tongue-in-cheek sting operation by the Times of London, major publishers recently rejected two Booker-winning manuscripts submitted anew, one by Sir Naipaul. It shows publishers are terrible judges of talent… or does it?

Publishers and agents have rejected two Booker prize-winning novels submitted as works by aspiring authors. One of the books considered unworthy by the publishing industry was by V S Naipaul, one of BritainÂ’s greatest living writers, who won the Nobel prize for literature…

Typed manuscripts of the opening chapters of NaipaulÂ’s In a Free State and a second novel, Holiday, by Stanley Middleton, were sent to 20 publishers and agents.

None appears to have recognised them as Booker prizewinners from the 1970s that were lauded as British novel writing at its best. Of the 21 replies, all but one were rejections. [Link]

Naipaul even got the dreaded cold shoulder by form letter:

“We . . . thought it was quite original. In the end though I’m afraid we just weren’t quite enthusiastic enough to be able to offer to take things further.” [Link]

Naipaul got in his usually cranky licks against the critics, but in this case he earned it:

“To see that something is well written and appetisingly written takes a lot of talent and there is not a great deal of that around. With all the other forms of entertainment today there are very few people around who would understand what a good paragraph is.” [Link]

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Intersections

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Yesterday in Sevilla, I saw Christopher ColumbusŽ purported tomb and learned that locally, ‘las Indias’ means the Indies, i.e. the Americas. Only ‘la India’ qualifies as the name of the country. ‘Indio’ means Native American, while ‘Hindú’ is the word for desi, even if you aren’t. That man was confused, confused, confused.

(I also learned that the cityŽs Plaza de España was used in Star Wars Episode 2, but that will excite only a few of you. A scary few to be sure 😉 )

Today I checked out La Alhambra, the Moorish fort built by Berbers from Morocco when they ruled Andalucía. It is a totally wild mashup of Spanish colonial and Islamic styles. Think Spanish tile roofs, square, unadorned towers and boring crenelations on the outside, arches, Arabic carvings and geometric patterns on the inside. Think Spanish coats of arms surrounded by verses praising Allah. Think Dehli’s Lal Qila meets Taco Bell. If I didnŽt know it was done that way on purpose, I’d think the Arabic brush strokes were steganography snuck in by marbleworkers held hostage.

Most major innovation happens at intersections. The 2nd gen process that some deride as ‘confusion’ is actually tremendous cultural innovation. And itŽs preciously short-lived, too– as the wheel of assimilation inexorably grinds away, this Cambrian Explosion too shall pass.

and,

Nothing is entirely original. The aesthetic I instinctively recognize as Indian is Mughal, i.e. Islamic by way of Turkish and Irani influence on Mongols from what is now Uzbekistan. The traditions saffronists claim are ‘native’ to India– those, too, came from some intersection, some borrowing, some adaptation somewhere.

P.S. Nobody looks at a brown man in Spain and guesses American– not even fellow Americans. I had the funniest conversation just now with a white woman who spoke fluent Spanish, and then all over again in Amrikan English. So the converse is true too, sometimes.

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‘The Inheritance of Loss’

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Quickie book review – I’m-on-the-road edition

Kiran Desai’s new book, The Inheritance Of Loss, soft-launched last month, and I picked up a copy at Barnes & Noble. It’s a good tale with a globalization undercurrent connecting IndiaŽs Nepal border with New York City.

Her previous book, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, was a well-written magically realist vignette on the line between a novel and a novella. Despite the fruitarian title, it was excellent. Her new one is far more ambitious. Rushdie has a highly complimentary but generic blurb on the back of the new one, which I take to mean he hasn’t read the new one yet. Only having read her mom Anita Desai’s Booker-nominated work Fasting, Feasting so far, IÂ’d say I enjoy her writing more than her motherÂ’s (whose work I also enjoy).

She also gets in a bunch of wicked jabs at non-vegetarians, Brits, upper-class New Yorkers, 2nd genners and so on, sheÂ’s not playing safe here. ItÂ’s mutinous that way, just like The Red Carpet: Bangalore Stories by Lavanya Sankaran.

(Desai is a far better show-not-tell writer — I liked Carpet because itÂ’s sassy, and I could completely relate to all the jabs at 2nd gen dating; itŽs like an American version of Life IsnÂ’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee. Also, sheŽs an ex-WSJer and seems to be a conservative, which I mention only to boost sales in the Vinod – Razib segment. SankaranŽs biggest f*-you goes out to Mumbaikars who look down on Bangalore, but sheŽs riding the outsourcing publicity wave, so it isn’t quite the declaration of independence it seems.)

My complaints:

  • The usual gender one — I often like male authors better, they move plot faster (Vikram Chandra, Rushdie); this book lacks motion, and is sometimes PG-rated where it should be R (a scene where an auntie receives the mildest of insults from a guerilla chieftain) and R where it should be PG (explicit booger jokes)
  • Like just about all American 2nd genners, the thrust of the story focuses on the motherland on the assumption that thatÂ’s the biggest market; sheÂ’s borderline 1-1.5 gen, so she has a small excuse
  • Which editor allowed through the hundreds of sequential question marks and exclamation points???!!! Makes the editing look amateur and is a pain to read.

Otherwise, highly recommended. Flippant, funny and mutinous as all hell. Sometimes a treatise rather than a novel, but much less so than Carpet, and that makes it all the more entertaining– frankly, there’s a lot to be said.

Desai is reading in Manhattan Feb. 1 at the Rubin Museum of Art, a major Himalayan art collection (via SAJA). Continue reading →