Reading in

Less going out of the house (which I do reluctantly at the best of times) means more reading. Over the last few weeks, between deadlines, at airports, and through sleepless nights, I've read a fair bit.

Ali Khan Mahmudabad's Poetry of Belonging was special, not just because it was about poetry and belonging, but also because it includes references to my dear departed grandfather's work (which I have yet to read!). It also makes me wonder at how much we don't know. Like about the Urdu poets working in what is now Haryana. How was the poetry of a 'Faridabadi' poet different from that of a Dehlavi? What was the sub-regional flavour like? Don't we wish we knew?

Blue is Like Blue, a selection of stories written by Vinod Kumar Shukla, translated by Sara Rai and Arvind Krishna Mehrotra. None of these names need any introduction to readers familiar with the Indian literary landscape. All I can say is, buy and read, all ye who haven't, and especially all ye who would write.

I read Asiya Zahoor's Serpents Under My Veil, a book of poems that bring together many difficult themes - gender, literary engagement, Kashmir, violence, love.

I also read and enjoyed Saif Mahmood's Beloved Delhi, another book based on place and Urdu poetry. It offers the background and context to the writing of some of the most brilliant poetry written by Delhi's most famous poets, and the translations make it easier to understand and enjoy the original works.

Please buy all these books asap. You know you want to. I am helpfully attaching purchase links: 

https://www.amazon.in/Poetry-Belonging-Muslim-Imaginings-1850-1950/dp/0190121017

https://www.amazon.in/Serpents-under-Veil-Asiya-Zahoor/dp/9383125268

https://www.amazon.in/Blue-Like-Stories-V-K-Shukla/dp/9353029325

https://www.amazon.in/Beloved-Delhi-Mughal-Greatest-Poets/dp/9388070542/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=beloved+delhi&qid=1584219357&s=books&sr=1-1

I've also just finished a beautiful book called 'Calligraphies of Love' by Hasan Massoudy. It is, as the title suggests, a book combining text and art. Try getting the print edition rather than the kindle one. It is lovely. Something to hold with affection and a wonderful gift for all your beloveds. 

I'm taking the liberty of sharing a couple of snapshots from between its covers. The Gandhi page, of course. Because, you know... 

https://www.amazon.in/s?k=calligraphies+of+love&i=digital-text&crid=17K9NE2C9SQMF&sprefix=calligra%2Cdigital-text%2C309&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

Ertugrul in the age of Erdogan

As a child, I had thrilled to the story of a powerful, warrior woman on the throne of Delhi but had never wondered about who her ancestors were. I had not thought of medieval Turks as nomads, casting about in whirlpools of contested nationalities. In the modern Indian imagination—especially the Hindutva narrative—Turks are seen as usurpers of power, lumped with Persians, Chagtais and Mongols like Changez Khan who was the Oguz Turks’ biggest foe. Through watching Resurrection: Ertugrul, I began to see them as landless tribes whose only chance at life was a strong sword arm.

The world these characters inhabit is an intensely cosmopolitan one. The bazaars, inns, port towns are melting pots of race and civilisation. The actors come in all shades of brown, reflective of the mixed Greek, Roman, Armenian, Arab, Assyrian and Moroccan ancestry in the region. Watching them I felt something shifting but it took me about a hundred episodes to understand what it was. It was the stone of cultural imperialism and it weighed a few centuries... our awareness of the greater world was minimal—everything between Bombay and Britain was an indistinct blob in our minds. Millions of South Asians worked in the Gulf but we didn’t know its history. We read about Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990; the newspapers mentioned the decade long Iran-Iraq war before that. But we didn’t know how Iraq and Kuwait came to be on the map.

All I knew about Turkey was a couple of lines in my history textbook: The Indian struggle for independence was entwined with the Khilafat movement, which opposed British attempts to strip the Caliph of all power. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk defeated colonisers and made it a secular nation.

In fiction, I read about King Arthur, Joan of Arc, Papal politics. I read about the Crusades and knew that these were wars fought between Christian knights and Muslim hordes. The knights, I thought of as vaguely noble: knight in shining armour; knight to the rescue of damsel in distress; knight on a white horse; people “knighted” after great achievements. The Muslim hordes, I thought of as... The truth is, I did not think about the Muslims at all.

Read the full text of my essay on cultural politics, Netflix, and the shaping of minds via storytelling and media exposure in Fountain Ink magazine : 

Ertugrul in the age of Erdogan

Seasons of joy

Tradition and ritual, especially unthinking ritual, hold little appeal for me. Those of us who grew up celebrating almost every religious festival there is on the Indian calendar would have also grown weary of the expectations attached – to cook, buy gifts or new clothes, visit the same set of ten to 15 people, rinse, repeat.

As an adult, I tired of the seeming emptiness of these rituals and wondered what exactly we celebrated. Those of us who are not farmers cannot experience the joy and relief of a harvest season in the physical or social way our ancestors would have. Those of us who do not rear sheep or chickens cannot expect to truly participate in a celebration of sacrifice.

The first festival that gave me a sense of homecoming had me standing beside my mother, along with thousands of strangers, gasping at the magic of Ustad Zakir Hussain’s hands on the tabla. The performance was free and open to all. We had no seats. It didn’t matter. The Ustad was playing at the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in Mumbai, the year after his own father, Ustad Alla Rakha, had passed away. So we knew that he was playing in some grief. Under the cool night sky, we listened, marveled and felt quietly grateful.

Read the full article here in GQ India: https://www.gqindia.com/content/open-season/

A town painted red, and blue too.

Odisha was in the news for a good reason recently. It was named best state for promotion of sports at the Sportstar Aces Awards, on account of Bhubaneswar having hosted three successful international events – the hockey World Cup in 2018, and the Asian Athletics Championships and the Hero Super Cup in 2017.

I am sure the state has invested in training infrastructure too. Certainly, Odisha has invested time and money in making sports more visible in the capital city. I was Bhubaneswar recently for a literature festival and found that commuting an aesthetic experience. Long stretches of street-facing walls were covered in murals.

A lot of the art focused on hockey, especially around the Kalinga Stadium. Apart from dynamic images of players in the middle of a game, there was a lot of conceptual art around hockey sticks. One of my favourites was a mural that shows large black ants winding their way around a stick. Another artist had flashes of lightning – or was it a blue pulse? – rising off the stick, as if to suggest an electrifying game.

Mural art has picked up in several cities but the murals in Bhubaneswar struck me as particular. Figures of athletes in motion brought a sense of dynamism to an otherwise quiet street. There was something of their spirit up on the walls, something akin to enthusiasm.

In another part of town, walls have been painted with flowers. Giant blue morning glories are painted such that it seemed the homely flower was demanding its due. There were a few Frida Kahlo murals too, and one I especially remember of the famous artist's face crowded in by a crush of flowers. It was almost as if flowers were emanating from her. Her hand was across her mouth, as if she was trying to hide it, or hold back a laugh, or simply posturing in a manner that could be seductive if you want to see it as that. Or, aghast at such riotous beauty.

There’s another whimsical mural where the artist has painted the feet of an Odissi dancer in motion. The adjacent wall has the eyes of the dancer, dancing with fun, with astonishment, full of rasa.

Looking at those murals made me wonder whose mind and heart was behind them. Who loves morning glories so? Who wants to make Bhubaneswar dance with its eyes?

The murals made me think about how under-utilised public space has been so far. While interiors and a few expensive homes are decorated well, as per the owners' tastes, the side of the wall that faces the street is considered nobody's personal property. Individuals rarely invest in their maintenance.

I grew up looking at urban walls covered in posters, advertisements for everything from black magic to underwear, films to political parties Then, a few years ago in Mumbai, a tiny corner was transformed through the efforts of an art collective that calls itself the Bollywood Art Project. It took nearly a decade for other public spaces to open up, especially suburban railway stations. In Delhi too, there are a few walls covered with graffiti and artwork. By and large though, our cities remain overwhelmingly grey.

Perhaps it is time our city councils and state governments start funding the creation of murals. India barely supports her artists and it is time citizens got access to a glimpse of art through the year, every year. This would serve to keep us interested in each other's imaginations. It would also make commuting a lot less dull.


First published here

Hairy stuff

Some of the braids draw inspiration from nature: crabs, flowers, rain that comes cascading down over the ears. But many styles also document the way in which human effort in one field, like engineering, leads to inspiration in another, like fashion. Hair is fashioned into shapes inspired by suspension bridges and skyscrapers, which became common only after buildings started to get tall in the late 1960s. 

I was astounded, not just on account of the time and labour involved in creating such hairdos, but the fact that this was everyday fashion. Many young women wore fantastic styles on the street and to work, which is how the photographer spotted them. Other styles were created for special occasions like birthdays and wedding parties.

There is no denying, of course, that hair is linked to economic status and power. If you’re wearing an elaborate style, chances are, you had help with it, and if you maintain complex styles on a daily basis, chances are you need help very often. If you can’t pay a professional to do it, you most certainly have help within the family.

Still, it must have really mattered to each individual for a culture to invest so heavily in hair. I cannot think of a parallel in India. Even the wealthiest and most fashion conscious among us do not wear the nation’s architectural or engineering triumphs on our heads.

These paragraphs are extracted from a longer column I wrote about hair art and self-image for GQ India magazine. Link here (you may need a subscription): https://www.gqindia.com/content/hair-culture-body-image/

All that art

I stopped to stare at another of Tiepolo's paintings, “The Finding of Moses”. The story is that Moses was a foundling. He was rescued and adopted by an Egyptian princess. The Pharoah’s daughter would have been a brown woman and if Moses was of the Hebrew people, it is likely that he was brown too. Tiepolo paints them as white. The other women too are generously bosomed white ladies. There are two slightly darker faces in the painting. One, a figure in red, hangs a little to the back, holding a spear and is possibly a guard. Another is a dwarf with moustaches, possibly also a servant or guard. 

Things change over time. As geopolitics shifts, art and representation changes. There is another painting called “The Finding of Moses by Lawrence Alma-Tadema”, dated 1904. Here, many of the people in the painting are brown and black haired. Does it matter?

The question has found fresh currency with the release of Beyonce and Jay Z’s new release, “Apes**t”.

This is an extract from a longer column published in GQ magazine. Link here (behind a paywall): 
https://www.gqindia.com/content/beyonce-jay-z-carters-apeshit-music-video/