Culture according to Umberto Eco: “If culture did not filter, it would be inane—as inane as the formless, boundless Internet is on its own. And if we all possessed the boundless knowledge of the Web, we would be idiots! Culture is an instrument for making a hierarchical system of intellectual labor. For you and for me it is enough to know that Einstein proposed the theory of relativity. But an absolute understanding of the theory we leave to the specialists. The real problem is that too many are granted the right to become a specialist.”

At one level, it feels like he was talking about India this week.

A true interpreter of our time, Eco, who passed away on 19 February 2016, credited our awareness to mortality to the invention of comedy: “All men are mortal. We are able to do it, and that is probably why there are religions, rituals, and what have you. I think that comedy is the quintessential human reaction to the fear of death. If you ask me for something more, I cannot tell you. But perhaps I’ll create an empty secret now, and let everyone think that I have a theory of comedy in the works, so when I die they will spend a lot of time trying to retrieve my secret book.”

Oh, he wrote that book. It’s called The Name of the Rose.

More Here/

Spring arrives at Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah

Traditionally, the colour of Islam is green. On this day, however, the Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah, the site of Khwaja Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia and his most famous disciple Hazrat Amir Khusrow, wears the hue to golden yellow.

This is the annual Vasant Utsav, the Hindu festival of ‘Basant Panchami’, which marks the arrival of spring.

This is the legacy of Amir Khusrow, and on this day every year in Jan/Feb as Northern India marks the onset of spring, the Dargah envelops itself in yellow and merry music associated with spring! “Mohay apnay hi rung mein rang ley, Tu toh saaheb mera Mehboob-e-Ilaahi”

The relationship of Hazrat Amir Khusrow, the poet-extraordinaire and musician with his master Mehboob-e-Ilaahi Khwaja Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia is well documented and known by all lovers of Chisti Sufiyana Silsila and Sufi Tasawwuf. Amir Khusrow’s treasure trove of music (Qawwaalis and poems written in mix of Hindvi, Khari Boli, Urdu and Persian) celebrate his love for the ‘Khwaja’, his spiritual master and one can experience it through multiple celebrations at the Dargah (mausoleum) throughout the year.

Legend tells us that Khwaja Nizamuddin Aulia was so aggrieved by the death of his nephew Taqiuddin Nooh, who had a sudden, untimely death that he withdrew himself from worldly affairs, avoided meeting his followers and spent all of his time at his newphew’s grave or in his ‘Chilla-e-Sharif’ (place of residence). His disciples were worried and tried many a ruse to make their Khwaja talk again, make him happy, just as he was before the tragedy. But alas all failed. Even his most favourite disciple, Amir Khusro tried to reason with him in many ways but failed to cheer him up.

Then one day, Khusrow noticed some young women dressed in yellow clothes, adorned with yellow flowers of marigold who were celebrating Vasant Utsav with a lot of singing, fun and gaiety, as they went to their temples to pray. Seeing this an idea struck Khusrow, who immediately donned a yellow ghaagra, covered his face with a chunni, hung garlands of yellow marigold around his neck and with a bunch of sarson (mustard) flowers stuck to his dhol, he landed at his master’s room and began singing and dancing to a self-composed song “Aaj Basant Manaaley Suhagan…Aaj Basant Manaaley Suhagan”.

Seeing this spectacle and knowing it was Khusrow under the woman’s garb who was singing and dancing with gay abandon, it is said that Hazrat Nizamuddin burst out laughing! The spell of gloom was suddenly lifted and the whole congregation of his followers erupted in joy! Since then, every year for more than seven centuries now, Sufi Basant has became a regular festival in remembrance of the incident, at the same time acting as the harbinger of the proverbial spring’s sunny joys after the gloom of winter, highlighting the cyclical nature of nature, the awakening and rejuvenation of life itself.

On this day, the Dargah’s senior priests and Qawwaal singers, dress up in yellow and wear Basanti (yellow-hued) scarves, chaadars and caps, post which they take out a joyous procession around the Nizamuddin Basti, carrying gendaful (marigold) and pots of sarson flowers (Yellow Mustard) through the narrow alleys, which reverberate with the sounds of Qawwaalis and dhol.

Offering flowers and prayers on every important grave in the area they finally reach the main Dargah of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya and after laying down the offerings of a yellow chaadar and yellow flowers, the Qawwaal singers settle down for a long session of soulful renditions of Hindvi and Persian Qawwalis; Mostly written by Amir Khusrow himself to praise the coming of sunny spring and the disciple’s everlasting love for his master.

/

Aaj basant manaalay suhaagun,
Aaj basant manaalay;
Anjan manjan kar piya mori,
Lambay neher lagaaye;
Tu kya sovay neend ki maasi,
So jaagay teray bhaag, suhaagun,
Aaj basant manalay…..;
Oonchi naar kay oonchay chitvan,
Ayso diyo hai banaaye;
Shaah-e Amir tohay dekhan ko,
Nainon say naina milaaye,
Suhaagun, aaj basant manaalay.

/

Rejoice, my love, rejoice,
Its spring here, rejoice.
Bring out your lotions and toiletries,
And decorate your long hair.
Oh, you’re still enjoying your sleep, wake-up.
Even your destiny has woken up,
Its spring here, rejoice.
You snobbish lady with arrogant looks,
The King, Amir Khusrow is here to look at you;
Let your eyes meet his,
Oh my love, rejoice;
Its spring here again.

/

Sakal ban phool rahi sarson
Umbva boray, tesu phulay
Koyal bolay daar daar
Aur gori karat singaar
Malaniyan gadhwa laya ayin karson

/

Every field is filled with yellow mustard blooms,
Mango buds open, flame of the forest trees blossom,
Every branch echoes with the koyal’s call,
The lovely maiden dons her make-up,
The garden ladies bring fragrant bouquets.


(With the help from http://delhibyfoot.in/)

Faust

I love this book, not just because I love Faust (no, I haven’t read the whole thing. I have read portions here and there, in translations, especially in the Assamese translation by the incomparable Nabakanta Barua.), but because this book is in German, as it should be, as it was written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

I found the book in a secondhand book shop, for Rs 20. I don’t know how the book ended up there. Probably, it was discarded by some students of German Literature.

Anyway, sometimes I open the book and look at the words, and imagine how it would sound like, and imagine my friends, who know German reading them. The book is old, print in the 1960s, in the US not less. It has a nice hard cover with a lovely paper dust jacket.

/
So, here is my favourite part of the poem/play, a conversation between Marguerite and Faust in the garden, regarding the divine:

Margaret: Ah, if in this I was only fluent!
You don’t respect the Holy Sacrament.

Faust: I respect it.

Margaret: Without wanting it, though. You’ve passed
So many years without confession, or mass. 3425
Do you believe in God?

Faust: My darling, who dare say:
‘I believe in God’?
Choose priest to ask, or sage,
The answer would seem a joke, would it not,
Played on whoever asks?
Margaret So, you don’t believe? 3430
Faust Sweetest being, don’t misunderstand me!
Who dares name the nameless?
Or who dares to confess:
‘I believe in him’?
Yet who, in feeling, 3435
Self-revealing,
Says: ‘I don’t believe’?
The all-clasping,
The all-upholding,
Does it not clasp, uphold, 3440
You: me, itself?
Don’t the heavens arch above us?
Doesn’t earth lie here under our feet?
And don’t the eternal stars, rising,
Look down on us in friendship? 3445
Are not my eyes reflected in yours?
And don’t all things press
On your head and heart,
And weave, in eternal mystery,
Visibly: invisibly, around you? 3450
Fill your heart from it: it is so vast,
And when you are blessed by the deepest feeling,
Call it then what you wish,
Joy! Heart! Love! God!
I have no name 3455
For it! Feeling is all:
Names are sound and smoke,
Veiling Heaven’s bright glow.

Margaret: That’s all well and good, I know,
The priest says much the same, 3460
Only, in slightly different words.

Faust: It’s what all hearts, say, everywhere
Under the heavenly day,
Each in its own speech:
And why not I in mine? 3465

(This is a translation by AS Kline. You can read the whole thing, or download the book at Poetry in Translation.)

Chapter House Dune

Chapterhouse: Dune is a 1985 science fiction novel by Frank Herbert, the last in his Dune series of six novels. It rose to #2 on The New York Times Best Seller list.

A direct followup to Heretics of Dune, the novel chronicles the continued struggles of the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood against the violent Honored Matres, who are succeeding in their bid to seize control of the universe and destroy the factions and planets that oppose them.

Chapterhouse: Dune ends with a cliffhanger, and Herbert's subsequent death in 1986 left some overarching plotlines of the series unresolved. Two decades later, Herbert's son Brian Herbert, along with Kevin J. Anderson, published two sequels – Hunters of Dune (2006) and Sandworms of Dune (2007) – based in part on notes left behind by Frank Herbert for what he referred to as Dune 7, his own planned seventh novel in the Dune series

More Here/

The light at the end of the tunnel: At the Pragati Maidan Metro Station, waiting for my train.

Philip Pullman, among others

I came to Philip Pullman via the now hated, and often forgotten Hollywood blockbuster Golden Compass. I found the film fascinating, and the reviews I read told me that the books on which the film was based were far more superior. I had to check out the books.

Yet to commit fully, I got the first book in the series, Northern Lights, on which the movie was based. I liked it better, of course. Lyra is far more alive in the book, and I liked the witches, and Farther Coram and Ma Costa, and even the evil Mrs Coulter. It’s a fascinating world, realistic yet magnificently different.

Then I got hold of other two books and read them fervently. Since then I have read the books several time. And I have two different sets. There is something so engaging about the series that you keep going back to them.

Among the three, my absolute favourite is The Subtle Knife, for one reason, Will. Oh, there are so many other reasons, the chemistry between Will and Lyra, the world of Cittàgazze, when Mary Malone talks to the Angels on the computer screen, how Will and Lyra recovers the stolen compass, basically everything. My absolute favourite is when Lee Scoresby meets John Perry and the heartbreaking scene when Will meets his father. How I wish John Perry was alive.

I am sure Pullman thought the same. Thus, both Scoresby and Perry returns in The Amber Spyglass, albeit as ghosts, but no less intelligent and determined.

This is a classic fantasy series of all time.

Ruby in the Smoke

Eats, shoots and leaves

Let Me In

Nightwatch

The History of the World

The Tiger in the Well

Pita-Putra

Sky Train

Swimming Home

New Delhi World Book Fair 2016

Talking about the annual New Delhi World Book Fair (NDWBF), we had written in these pages how it would be unfair to compare NDWBF to Frankfurt Book Fair (FBF), the world’s biggest book event. The difference is stark and simple. The FBF is essentially a marketplace for publishers whereas NDWBF is about celebrating books, in an effort to inculcate reading habits among the masses.

In this sense, NDWBF is important. Organised by the National Book Trust (NBT), India, the government-backed event is the country’s biggest book fair (where actual books are in focus, not the authors, unlike the Lit Fests we are seeing in every other city), with more than 1,800 stalls in around 36,000 sq/mt area, showcasing books from all over the world, in all languages, beside English and the Indian languages.

When it comes to business of books, the country seems to be doing well. According to the India Book Market Report released by Nielsen during the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2015, the value of the print book market in India, including book imports, is USD 3.9 billion. This puts India in the position of being the second largest English-language book market in the world. Even local language markets are doing well, as is evident with the number of publishing houses coming up and their extensive catalogues.

The need of the hour, now, is to find readers/buyers for these books, beyond the online retail sites.

India is a country of young people. In the recent years, despite the rise of social media and smartphones, the young generation has shown a healthy interest in books. It’s time they got a platform where their interests can be sustained.

NBT seems to be working towards this goal. In a bid to attract young readers, especially school/college students, this year, NBT rescheduled the dates of the book fair from the usual February to January. The 24th edition of the book fair was held from 9-17 January 2016 at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi.

The Fair was inaugurated on 9 January 2016 by Union minister for human resource development Smriti Zubin Irani. “Today we not only celebrate the exponential growth of the publishing business both in India and China but also the human interest in it,” Irani said. She also appreciated the efforts of NBT in creating a platform for young writers to publish their works.

Popular Kannada author SL Bhyrappa was the guest of honour at the function.

This year, China was the Guest of Honour Country at NDWBF. On the occasion, Sun Shoushan, vice-minister of SAPPFRT, People’s Republic of China, said, “India is an amazing country with a profound and diversified culture. I am amazed by the rapid development of India, which seems to be at a colourful corridor that connects its glorious past with the present.”

On the first weekend of the show, when PrintWeek India visited the Fair, the ground was chockablock with visitors giving it an air of an actual fair, so much so that we had to wait for half-an-hour at the entrance. There was seriousness, but there was also a sense of bonhomie with groups of youngsters, families with children in tow, dour older men looking for that specific book, schoolgirls looking for their Harry Potters, hopping from one stall to another.

There was something for everyone. From Hindi translation of foreign language books to designer hardbound editions of classic English works (It appears to be a new trend where publishers pick up classic texts which are in public domain and print them with enticing new designs. Look at how many different publishers have their own collections of Shakespeare’s works!), from specialised publishers like Motilal Banarsidass and Gita Press to stalls featuring antique books, to all the leading Indian publishers, especially in Hindi and English, to fledgling ventures offering self-publishing avenues to aspiring authors, like Chennai’s Notion Press. For the spiritual-minded, there was also a host of options.

As young readers are the special focus of the book fair and as NBT is one of the largest publishers of children books in India, there was a special pavilion dedicated to children books. The pavilion also hosted several activities from schoolchildren, like drawing competition, storytelling sessions, skits, besides showcasing books.

The theme of NDWBF 2016 was ‘Vividh Bharat’, showcasing the country’s cultural legacy. The theme pavilion featured a collection of Indian writing from the times of bhojpatra to the modern day. For those with less patience for the written word, there were also performances of several classic works, like Jaidev’s Geet Govinda, Bhavabhuti’s Malati Madhavam and the Sindhi classic Shah Jo Risalo.

This year, the most impressive aspect of the New Delhi World Book Fair was the pavilion featuring the Guest of Honour Country China. In the recent years, China has gone all way out to promote its books outside; the pavilion was the evidence how serious the country is in promotion. The sprawling and aesthetically designed pavilion had more than 5,000 titles in English, Chinese and Hindi. Also at hand were about 255 delegates from 81 publishing houses, including internally acclaimed authors such as Mai Jia (Decoded, In the Dark) and Lan Lan (Life with a Smile).

When it comes to books and printing, China has a unique history. After all, it is the country where paper was invented. While the rest of the world picked up the tradition of printing post-Gutenberg’s invention, and followed up with modern technology, China’s culture of print still has an indelible connection to the country’s indigenous print technologies. This is evident in how Chinese books are designed and printed. Business and literature aside, the Chinese showcase at NDWBF was a veritable masterclass in design and printing. Each of the books was an object of art in itself. As one visitor remarked, “I do not recognise the Chinese logographic script, but the books are so beautiful to look at.”

There was also a diorama representing the traditional Chinese printmaking and a photo exhibition celebrating China-India cultural contacts, from the times of Buddha to Dwarkanath Kotnis.

Besides the regular Authors’ Corner events, where authors with new books interacted with the readers, the book fair also featured the two regular trade events, CEOSpeak and New Delhi Rights Table. The 4th edition of the New Delhi Rights Table, which gives Indian publishers an opportunity to sell translation rights of local language books to foreign publishers, saw 70 participants from countries like Egypt, Indonesia, China, Malaysia, Nepal, the US, among others.

Meanwhile, at the fair ground, German Book Office, New Delhi, the South Asia node of the Frankfurt Book Fair, hosted the third edition of Globalocal Talk, with its focus on the international book market. The session allowed for an insider’s view of publishing markets like France, China, Germany, and the UK, which was shared among a full house audience of publishers, distributors, agents and authors.

Salutation

O generation of the thoroughly smug
and thoroughly uncomfortable,
I have seen fishermen picnicking in the sun,
I have seen them with untidy families,
I have seen their smiles full of teeth
and heard ungainly laughter.
And I am happier than you are,
And they were happier than I am;
And the fish swim in the lake
and do not even own clothing.
Ezra Pound

The English language publishing in 2015

According to the India Book Market Report released by Nielsen during the Frankfurt Book Fair in October last year, the value of the print book market in India, including book imports, is USD 3.9 billion. Yes. Books are alive and kicking.

And how? It seems everyone and their cousins, and especially failed or retired movie stars are writing books. Two examples, off the cuff, are Sonali Bendre and Twinkle Khanna. Now, the grapevine is Juggernaut, the new venture by Chiki Sarkar, has roped in Sunny Leone, of all people, to write books on, hold your breath, steamy romances. The one book on movies that made sense was Jai Arjun Singh’s The World of Hrishikesh Mukherjee. Of course, he is the man who previously did a wonderful book on the cult movie Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro.

True to be told, it is a wonderful time to be a writer in India. If you look around, every other day there is a new book being released, by an author you have never heard before, by a publishing house you never knew existed. Some of these books are actually very good. Some are, well, not so. But these publishers (who have popularised the term self-publishing) give a level playing field to aspiring authors. Now, you don’t have to send your manuscript to those conglomerates and wait for them to send you a rejection slip. Now, you write a book and publish it and sell it. The readers are the judges. If a Chetan Bhagat or an Amish can do it, so can you!

Remember the days when Penguin India was synonymous with Indian writing in English? Come 2015, it was perhaps one of the worst years for Penguin Random House. The biggest blow came when its high-profile publishing director Chiki Sarkar resigned to start a new venture, Juggernaut. Now, Sarkar and her team are working on books to be read on mobile devices, one chapter at a time, which has many people excited.

Another new publishing venture was Speaking Tiger, started by another Penguin India alumnus, via Aleph, Ravi Singh, who published, among other titles, Jerry Pinto’s translation of the first Dalit autobiography to be published, Daya Pawar’s Marathi original Baluta. For its part, Aleph, which cannot wait to publish Vikram Seth’s ambitious sequel to A Suitable Boy, tentatively titled, A Suitable Girl, had to be content with publishing a handsome volume of Seth’s latest poems, Summer Requiem.

In all, the biggest player was HarperCollins India. They had more titles than any other publishers had and did everything, from cook books to graphic novels, from Akshaya Mukul’s well researched tome Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India to English translations of Surendra Mohan Pathak’s Hindi crime classics.

What else? India was not at the Booker Prize, though author of Indian origin Sunjeev Sahota was shortlisted (The Year of the Runaways), and Anuradha Roy (Sleeping on Jupiter) was on the longlist.

Finally, Amitav Ghosh finished his Ibis trilogy, with Flood of Fire, which is so long and so meticulously researched that it reads like a lesson in colonial warfare. Even Salman Rushdie had a new novel, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Days Nights, a reworking of the classic Arabian Nights, which seemingly failed to impress the critics. Among literary fiction, there were Anjum Hasan’s The Cosmopolitans, Kiran Nagarkar’s RIP Ravan and Eddie, Amit Chaudhuri’s Odysseus Abroad, and Easterine Kire’s When the River Sleeps, the novel from the deepest parts of Nagaland, which surprised the mainland India by winning the Hindu Literary Prize in January 2016.

After the blockbuster Shiva trilogy, Amish launched a new series, based on Ram this time, with Scion of Ikshvaku, which was faithfully pirated for roadside vendors. Even Chetan Bhagat had a new novel, Half Girlfriend, for which front-page advertisements were carried out in national newspapers, a first for an Indian book.

2015 was a good year for non-fiction books. The highlight perhaps was TV journalist Barkha Dutt’s debut as a writer with The Unquiet Land. Also in news for reasons right and wrong was Avirook Sen’s Aarushi (the success of the film Talvar helped). However, the bestseller among them was Raghu Karnad’s poetic and adventurous Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War. Another book was Annie Zaidi’s 2000 Years of Indian Women’s Writing.

Among the notable deaths, in 2015, we lost everyone’s beloved President and a bestselling author APJ Abdul Kalam. Then we got this fabulous book, My Life: An Illustrated Autobiography. It’s a must read.

Eavesdropping at JLF 2016

These days there are dime a dozen literature festivals, in every town in fact, and it all started with Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) all those years ago. In fact, JLF is responsible for spawning the clones. Yet, it seems, no other lit fest has been able to replicate the success of JLF, or capture the cultural zeitgeist like it does.

So, what’s this allure of JLF? What is so special about JLF that every year, people from all over the country, and abroad, throng the Diggi Palace in Jaipur, Rajasthan for a five-day of celebration of the written word?

One answer would be glamour. We are a celebrity-obsessed culture, but authors are traditionally seen as drab creatures, who must be read, but not seen or heard. JLF combines these two and presents the invited authors as celebrities, with a good deal of help from Bollywood and from the western authors, intellectuals, whoever is in the new right now (Remember the year when there was a near-stampede around Oprah Winfrey?).

So, this year too, there were celebrities, the highlight of which was the redouble Stephen Fry, actor, author, funny man, gay rights activists. And the keynote speaker on the first day was none other than Margaret Atwood, who, too, nearly inspired a stampede. Understandably so. Most of the readers/writers in attendance have grown up reading her works, from The Handmaid’s Tale to The MaddAddam Trilogy. What caught our attention were her quick wit and her brilliant sense of humour. “Writing is the means whereby light is shed on darkness. There are many darknessess but also many voices,” she said during the keynote.

There was ‘The Master’ himself, the Irish author Colm Tóibín, whose novel Brooklyn was made into an Oscar-nominated movie this year. There was Alexander McCall Smith of the No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, the theoretician Homi K. Bhabha, Cornelia Funke, German author of children’s classics like Inkheart Trilogy and Dragon Rider, Armistead Maupin of the Tales of the City series, Sunjeev Sahota, who was shortlisted for the Booker Prize this year and Atul Gawande (Being Mortal), among many, many other luminaries.

The real rock stars, however, were French economist Thomas Piketty and Jamaican-American author Marlon James. Piketty launched the Hindi translation of his bestseller Capital in the Twenty-First Century, and received thunderous applaud from the audience when he said, “The Indian elites have to accept at some point that they will have to pay more taxes to finance more inclusive and sustainable development model.”

James, spotting a deadlock like the hero of his novel, Bob Marley, exuded equal charisma.

You don’t go to JLF to hear your favourite authors or discuss issues. This is physically impossible to do, even if you are a bookworm. Spreading over five days there are so many sessions and so many speakers that you are bound to miss most of them. This year, for example, the festival hosted speakers from 20 countries. Yes, there were some very interesting debates, which one can watch online at the JLF website.

Indeed, you go to the Diggi Palace to soak in the atmosphere, in colourful shamiyanas, the men in traditional Rajasthani attire serving hot tea in clay cups, and people, mostly youngsters, dressed to their toes with winter fineries. It’s a place of colour, beauty, grace and charm. All you need to do is to gawk at these beautiful people, spot your favourite author and swoon, and perhaps spot a celebrity or two, and bitch about them a bit. This is the charm of JLF. This is the only place where it is possible to bump into Shashi Tharoor and completely ignore him as you race to see Shatrughan Sinha.

Shina, who was here to promote his biography, Anything But Khamosh, of course, drew a huge crowd. There were other stars to look at. Kajol launched Ashwin Sanghi's new book and told the now-famous story how her husband gifted her a library at home. However, it was Karan Johar who received the best responses when he narrated the tales of his childhood as an overweight, effeminate boy. He was promoting his book An Unsuitable Boy. On the last day, Anupam Kher had some tough times during the debate whether freedom of speech was absolute and unconditional.

The best of Bollywood, as always, was represented by two of our best poets, the inimitable Gulzar and the great Javed Akhtar, both of whom were big crowd-pullers.

Oh, we forgot to mention our home-grown authors. All the important and interesting names were there.

Pune was well represented by two of our finest. Priya Sarukkai Chabria was with her book, Andal: The Autobiography of a Goddess, and R Raj Rao was with Lady Lolita’s Lover and his translation of Me Laxmi Me Hijda.

A version of the story was published in 30 January issue of Sakal Times. Check the story HERE.

Beautiful Losers by Leonard Cohen

You cannot even imagine this book being written today. It’s blasphemous, to put is nicely. The narrator wants to sleep with a Christian saint, for God’s sake. He basically cannot think of anything else, other than sex, the memory of him doing it with his dead wife and his dead male friend. Oh, he also talks about the Native Americans (The First Nation People, to be politically correct) in Canada, during the coming of the French. This narrator is a first-rate degenerate, and he is created by everyone’s favourite good guy, Leonard Cohen (Remember, when he croons ‘I’m Your Man’, you believe he is singing only for you, just you!)

Aside from apparent perversity and nihilism, the book is also breathless, and moves between past and present and various things in between, and this all can be very exhausting. It is an obsessive fever dream, with no redemption in sigh.

And in the context of today’s political correctness, you will have a lot of problem. (These is a rape sequence in the beginning of the book, which is disturbing in worse possible way, not just the description, the how the narrator inserts his own perversity into the retelling!)

But, stick to it, and it has its rewards. The book is erudite. Though the whole thing runs like a long rant, by the end of it, you have the feeling Cohen knew what he was doing. And he did it well. Sometimes perversity is good.

Print at NSD’s Bharat Rang Mahotsav

Like the way Bhakti poets saw God everywhere, we print people tend to see print everywhere. We would attend a public event and the first thing we would notice would be the prints. We would carefully study the quality of the wide-format displays, their substrate, their design and colour, the quality of the print job. We would try to guess which machine was used, or perhaps, which printer did the job.

This is exactly what happened when we visited the 18th Bharat Rang Mahotsav, the annual International theatre festival hosted by the National School of Drama, which is on from 1-21 February 2016 at its premises in New Delhi.

What caught our attention were the large posters, depicting the scenes from the plays to be performed, adorning the outer walls of the venue, from the Mandi House Metro station to all the way across Bhagwan Das Road, where the institute is located. The life-like pictures of the stage actors in the middle of their act (printed on flex), next to the busy sidewalk, is indeed a heartening sight, especially in our time when such large OOH displays are reserved for promoting multinational companies.

Talking about posters, the NSD building is a veritable museum of classic theatre posters, from pre-Independence to the heydays of 1970s to our time. Printed on A3 size paper, in multicolour, NSD has loving framed and displayed the posters of all the plays that were performed at the institute over the years. While the posters themselves are a study in the changing style of design and representation, they also hold within them the living history of the Indian theatre.

Proposed provision in book bill could land you in jail

As we celebrate the rise of publishing in India, here is a bit of news we need to watch out for.

The ministry of culture, government of India, is seeing to repeal a certain provisions in the existing ‘The Delivery of Books and Newspapers (Public Libraries) Act, 1954’ with the ‘Deposit of Books, Newspapers and Electronic Publications in Libraries Bill 2016. The bill is now with the legislative department of the law ministry.

The bill seeks to replace a pre-digital-era avatar identified as ‘obsolete’ and fit for repeal, as it does not take into account eBooks.

However, there is a catch, as the bill suggests harsher punishment for those who do follow the rules. According to the proposed bill, failure to deposit their books with designated libraries can land publishers in jail. “Two-year jail term for non-delivery of books” is one of the two penalties being considered in a bill.

The law was originally drafted to develop four public libraries in different parts of India to encourage scholarship. According to the law, a copy of every book has to be deposited with the National Library in Calcutta and three other libraries - Connemara Public Library (Chennai), Asiatic Society Library (Mumbai) and Delhi Public Library in the capital.

The old law does have a penal provision -- a fine equivalent to the value of the book. The ministry is proposing to scale up the fine 500 times the cost of the book in addition to the two-year jail term.

The procedure for submissions will be simplified. Only two copies, instead of four, of a book have to be deposited; one to the National Library and the other to a state central library.

The relevant provisions of the bill have been uploaded for information of all stakeholders/public at the ministry of culture website (http://www.indiaculture.nic.in/deposit-books-newspapers-and-electronic-publications-libraries-bill-2016).

The objections or suggestions, if any, may be addressed to Director (Libraries), Ministry of Culture, Shastri Bhawan, New Delhi 1 or sent by e-mail to Librarysection886@gmail.com, niraj.sinha@nic.in on or before 29 February, 2016.

Urdu author Intizar Husain passes away at 92

India-born Pakistani author, Intizar Husain, considered to be one of the greatest writers of Urdu, passed away on 2 February 2016 in Lahore, Pakistan. He was 92.

Revered by readers of Urdu and Hindi, Husain, whose works have been translated into English only sporadically, received a late but deserving recognition when he was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2013. He was also awarded France's Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2014.

A chronicler of change, Husain was a short story writer, novelist, columnist and poet. Today, he is known for his five novels and seven collections of short stories.

Basti, his 1979 novel, traces the history of Pakistan through the life of one man, Zakir. This is his only novel, which has been translated into English, by Frances W Pritchett, besides five volumes of his short stories. Basti was recently republished as one of the New York Review of Books classics.

In the novel, Zakir lives in a dynamic, conflictual and contradictory world. Throughout the novel, there are threads of nostalgia, displacement and ruptured continuities. The Partition of India in 1947 is the centre of the novel’s sombre, impressionistic landscape. That year turns everything topsy-turvy, and more so, it transforms the fate of the basti (settlement).

Among his other books, Naya Gar (The New House), paints a picture of Pakistan during the ten-year dictatorship of General Zia-ul-Haq. Agay Sumandar Hai (Ahead is the Sea) contrasts the spiraling urban violence of contemporary Karachi with a vision of the lost Islamic realm of al-Andalus, in modern Spain.

His other works include Hindustan Se Aakhri Khat (The Last Letter from India), Shehr-e-Afsos, Janam Kahanian and Wo Jo Kho Gaye (Those Who are Lost).

Husain is known for his nostalgia for older places and phenomena. Keki Daruwalla, writing in The Hindu in 2003, said, “Intizar Husain’s stories often tread that twilight zone between fable and parable. And the narrative is spun on an oriental loom.”

Born on 7 December 1923 in Dibai, Bulandshahr, Husain migrated to the newly formed Pakistan in 1947, an experience he wrote about 50 years later in The First Morning. The short story captures the horror and optimism that accompanied the Partition of India where an estimated 14 million people were displaced, the largest mass migration in human history.

He had a master’s degree in Urdu and worked for the Urdu daily, Imroze, and later, the Urdu daily Mashriq.

He was also a regular literary columnist for Pakistan’s leading English-language daily Dawn, and in later years became known as a voice of moderation and advocate of what he saw as the subcontinent’s ancient traditions of pluralism and tolerance.

He received the Lifetime Achievement award at the Lahore Literary Festival in 2012.

Husain’s wife Aliya Begum died in 2004. The couple had no children.

Fellow Urdu writer Munnu Bhai told the media after his death: “Intizar Husain was a man of letters. His death has left a huge gap in the literary circle of the subcontinent that would be felt of the centuries to come.”

Author Kamila Shamsie twitted, “Cruel of the world to take away both Urdu literature’s great Husains, Abdullah and Intizar, in such a short period.”

Read Intizar Husain’s novel Basti online HERE/

(From news sources.)