When did you first register your inclination towards writing?
As a child, I took my ability to write stories for granted. I remember being asked to read out my work to the class when I was eight or nine (a story called “Grandma’s Chocolate Factory” was an early hit). That happened a few times. But I didn’t come from a literary household, so I didn’t take it seriously, and the idea that writing stories could actually become an occupation didn’t occur until I started reading properly — by about 13 or 14. From the age of 16, I started telling people that I wanted to become a writer.
Choosing Gurgaon, New Delhi and Punjab as places where the story unfolds, was it a conscious choice or did it all just fit together well?
The plot and the realistic nature of the story dictated it. So it was a deliberate choice. These are places I know intimately.
While one can understand your personal experiences being instrumental in shaping Dom’s character, what was the thought process behind Manpreet’s character?
I think we get too caught up in worrying about the colour of our writers and the colour of our characters. As a writer, it’s my job to get inside all my characters, and understand the way they think — whether they’re Aussie, Desi, male or female. You just imagine what you would do in a particular situation, if you were given the same options, and render it accordingly.
Is it difficult to infuse humour in crime fiction?
I think it would be difficult to introduce humour if you weren’t naturally funny, regardless of the genre. I never really try to make something humorous; it just occurs, usually because I am being truthful about the reality of a situation.
Corruption, greed and mighty power corridors take your protagonist for a
spin. Any personal instances that helped you design that part of the book?
Anyone who lives in India for any length of time knows that everything comes for a price, and will have some stories about having to pay chai paani. I’m no different. I haven’t witnessed any corruption at high levels personally – as portrayed in the book – but this is where living here helped. I have lots of friends and family all over India, read the same newspapers, and watch the same 24/7 news cycle. So of course, what I don’t know about from experience is easy to guess, or deduce. It’s splashed across the front page on any given day.
What inspired the book? A person or any incident?
A couple of things. Firstly, I had enjoyed the experience of writing a short story Marvellous and Devious, which appeared in the Tehelka Pulp and Noir Fiction Issue in 2011. That coincided with a move to Delhi, and I quickly decided to write a crime novel set in the capital. I also did a lot of media monitoring for my job when I first arrived here. The story on the serial killer, Charles Sobhraj, particularly the involvement of Dutch diplomat Herman Knippenberg, also provided inspiration. I loved the idea of a diplomat investigating a crime on his own, as an amateur. Also, the scandal of Michael T. Sestak, a former US Diplomat in Vietnam, who amassed an estimated USD $3 million for selling visas, helped me add some masala to the ending. Everything else was based on situations I had observed or seen. I’ve done a lot of travel in Punjab and Haryana, in particular – and played cricket all over the NCR.
What were the main challenges while penning crime fiction as your debut novel?
Honestly, just getting the time to write. I have a nine-to-five job, and a young family, so in the end I had to do with a little less sleep. I wrote it over a period of 12 months, at night usually, but sometimes in my lunch break too. I fell asleep at the laptop on more than one occasion and just kept writing until I dropped.
‘We Never Have Enough Funds. So We Look For Work Outside Theatre’
Was your shift from law to theatre gradual or sudden?
Bollywood played a significant part in my growing up so much so that after my 12th, I wanted to study English and work with a theatre company alongside. Wishing a secure career for me, my parents didn’t allow this to happen. So, I read law at Jamia Millia Islamia and practiced for little more than a year at Delhi High Court before taking up law full time. Since my Dad wanted me to become a doctor, like an adarshwaadi Indian beti, I had planned to do PhD someday, just for him!
Tell us about New Brain Theater Volks.
Apart from being a long-nurtured dream of having a theatre company of our own, New Brain Theater Volks was also started to make theatre a sustainable business model. Actors enjoy doing theatre and it is our medium. But unfortunately, we never have enough funds and so, we look for work outside theater, primarily for money. So far we haven’t succeeded on the sustainable front but we’re working towards it. If not rehearsing for a play, we catch up over chai and Parle-G, and when we have money we eat vada pao also!
How did you collaborate with TVF?
Arunabh (CEO, founder TVF) was the first person I met on reaching Mumbai. This was before Qtiyapa bombed the Internet. We met; he called me for a couple of projects and introduced me to the team. And eventually, I joined them as one of the creators.
Other than the humour quotient, what is the objective of the content you generate?
I think we are recording popular facts from our times for the generations to come.
Any road-blocks along the way?
Acceptance was our biggest challenge. The general perception not very long ago was that we are a bunch of boys who make YouTube videos for fun. My parents still find it hard to believe that I do this full-time. I see all of it as typical clichés for our biopic!
Do you see yourselves as social media vigilantes?
That’s a very boring title. I think we see ourselves as our reflection in the mirror! On a serious note, we make content that interests us. We are all storytellers and to have ‘humour’ as a genre is a conscious choice.
What binds the group together?
Individuals here are from Bettiah, Varanasi, Rourkela, Khairthal, Muzaffarpur, Indore, Falna, Chattarpur. We are all from middle-class families with similar childhood stories and references. To illustrate a little about our backgrounds, the recent video Tech Conversations with my Dad is based on an actual chat between Biswapati Sarkar and his Dad. I’ll sum up by saying that we all are quintessential bakchods!
‘We have handed too much power to idiots in our country’
How do you interpret comedy?
Comedy is a cathartic experience and a comedian is a writer with a voice.
Do you come across non-scripted funny moments on stage?
I recently had an extremely funny situation on stage. I was invited to perform at an engineering institute in Jaipur. Beginning from the dean of the college and right up to the students, not a single soul there spoke English. I made my status of an English stand-up comedian amply clear but was met with replies like ‘Sir aap karo to sahi, hum samajh lenge!’ I ended up translating my entire performance for the crowd including the opening line, “Aap sab kaisa mehsoos kar rahe hain?” It was hilarious. More ridiculous was when they asked me to perform again soon!
What is the future of comedy in India?
The current crop that we have has a lot of potential. There is already a flood of online content but in the coming years, live stand-up acts will gain more popularity. The trend is already on a rise. But I also feel that our lot will witness some kind of suppression. Someone might soon get arrested too! Anyone in any part of this country can file a frivolous lawsuit for political gains. I received similar threats recently as well.
Do you edit your script to play safe on stage?
Yes, very much. The audience comprises of a wide variety of people and there are repercussions of offending them. In the west if a community is offended by some joke, they might choose to ostracize the comedian’s future acts. Indians, however, are less tolerant and might stone my house! It is honestly psychotic. We have handed too much power to idiots in our country. But one can always be smarter about one’s criticism. And that is what I try to do.
Both your books have female vigilantes in the lead. Do you think comedy impacts society in the same way cinema and art does?
It certainly does. Frankly, people listen to you because you are funny. But the same opportunity can be taken to floor solutions for a problem. It helps in shedding light on topics and opening a discussion in the public domain.
Terms of Derangement
As it reads on the book jacket, a classic violet Bena Sareen work, Passion Flower: Seven Stories of Derangement is quite certainly another triumph for Cyrus Mistry. The jacket also calls the seven-story-compilation ‘disturbing’, which one might find oneself in disagreement with, in parts. An odd theme of derangement runs through the seven stories, all of which are unsettling yet mildly comforting. Perhaps the comfort stems from the fact that the reader is attracted to the author’s insight into the grey lanes of an individual’s mind. Even ordinary people are constantly susceptible to emotions and thoughts that they seldom entertain brazenly, lest they disregard the standards of societal appropriateness and accepted behaviour.
The mood of Mistry’s stories, five of which have been carried in a host of publications earlier, ranges from being grim and morbid to challenging and euphoric.
First in order is ‘Percy’, a 34-year-old clerk living with his widowed mother, whose constant bullying aggravates him sometimes but he knows better than to express his resentment against her tyranny. Rendered helpless and impotent of cultivating any form of self-esteem at an early age owing to the bitter discord between his mother Banubai and his late father, the passivity of Percy’s monotonous existence finds an ecstatic release when he discovers his father’s handwound gramophone and thirty-odd shellac discs. Further, a misplaced postcard leads him to the Bombay Gramophone Society and during its twice-a-week meetings Percy begins to discern the difference of style, between Beethoven and Vivaldi, between Mozart and Mendelssohn. A visit from the ghost of his childhood friend is one of the many instances where Mistry skilfully employs elements which make it difficult to disengage fact from fiction.
A similar theme runs in the last story of ‘Bokha’, who fears succumbing to his mother, the savage and formidable Khorshedmai, as she tries killing his lover Serphina using black magic.
Preeti, a young mother suffering in the agony of postpartum depression dangles on the fringes of insanity and begins to harbour deep insecurities about her marriage until the ‘unexpected grace’ of a stranger causes her to discover the radiance of motherhood.
Mourning the loss of her youth to a man she was engaged with for eleven years but who abandoned her to marry someone else, Jacintha is now a cook at Domasso Villa and obsessed with the idea that someone is trying to kill her, for she knows more than she should.
Cyrus Mistry
Aleph Book Company
199 pp; Rs 495
Awaiting their daughter’s return from a New Year’s Eve party, an old couple bitterly reminisce an episode of twentyfour years ago that engulfs their lives in profound guilt and uncertainty.
Of the two never-been-published-before stories, one becomes the highlight of the book, also lending its name to the title, while the other seems to be an eager experiment on Mistry’s part, but one that fails to match the intensity of the other six stories.
Two Angry Men’ is a narrative of two colleagues (rather unlikely friends) in an advertising firm whose association goes back to being schoolmates but can barely mask their sharp judgements and rancour for the other. The employeremployee equation of the two broadens the chasm as an argument unfolds one evening over drinks.
Mistry’s gradual detailing and stronghold over characters, which was up until now his flourishing trait, is quite weak here.
Anand Mahendroo is a botanist who distances himself from his pregnant wife and seeks solace in the blinding pursuit of an extinct species of the passiflora, thus giving the name ‘Passion Flower’ to this fantasy fable. The story creates many serene moments of compassion, epiphany, innocence and self-realisation. The mystical tale is gripping throughout and a sense of desperation to read further lingers as it ends.
Mistry’s heroes are unlikely protagonists: they are spiteful, selfish, docile, regretful and disparaging, raging in agony and paranoia. But each one experiences an immeasurable sense of relief and freedom as the story inches to a close.
Mistry successfully established himself as a brilliant writer of the Parsi community with his magnum opus Chronicle of Corpse Bearer, for which he received the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2014. So it isn’t much of a surprise to see Parsi characters doing most of the talking in Passion Flower but, his keen observation of intricate lifestyles and practiced rituals will not escape your admiration.
letters@tehelka.com
Eroticism In The Raw
Daniel Bergner
Canongate
252 pp; Rs 399
Seeking treatment for her frigidity or what she described as sexual dysfunction, Marie Bonaparte, great-grandniece of Napoleon, consulted Sigmund Freud. It was to her that the father of psychoanalysis remarked, “The great question that has never been answered and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is ‘What does a woman want?’”
Freud’s question remained a mystery until award-winning and bestselling author of In the Land of Magic Soldiers and God of the Rodeo, Daniel Bergner sat down to paint an unprecedented picture of women and their sexuality, as we know today. Drawing on intricate research and interviews with renowned behavioural scientists, sexologists, psychologists and everyday women, his book, What do women want? — Adventures in the Science of Female Desire, challenges preconceived notions on matter of eros that we otherwise tend to accept as psychological axioms. For instance, men are animals and need to be tamed by society for most parts, but, this subjugation of their ‘natural state’ isn’t complete without them asserting it in endless ways of pornography, promiscuity and infinite gazes directed at passing bodies of desire.
Meticulous experiments and extensive research have been recorded in the book to disrupt stereotypes and produce explosive evidence which pull women out of their lower strata of the sexually liberated.
Among the most interesting experiments in the book to decode female sexuality and uncover what lies at the heart of it, are the works of Meredith Chivers, a professor of psychology at Queens University. Stripping away societal codes or creating primordial situations where she could, at a primitive level, find out what turns women on, was not possible physically for Chivers. Instead she created a plethysmograph, a male version of which was invented by Kurt Freund, an icon in sexology, way back in the 1950s. Chivers’s instrument consisted of a miniature bulb and a light sensor that is placed inside the vagina to gauge its wetness and track vaginal pulse amplitude.
Sitting on a brown leatherette La-Z-Boy in dimly lit lab in Toronto, women were shown a series of clips – men with women, men with men, women with women, lone men and women masturbating and two bonobos mating. Result? Chivers’s subjects, straight or lesbian, were turned on right away by all of it, even copulating apes. “To stare at the data amassed by the plethysmograph was to confront a vision of anarchic arousal,” says Bergner. Female libido to him looked omnivorous. The indiscriminate blood throbbing and catalysed lust busted first of the many myths.
These women also held a keypad throughout the experiment to score their arousals subjectively. The results of the keypad were in stark contradiction to that of the plethysmograph. “Minds denied bodies,” Daniel writes “the self-reports announced indifference to bonobos, straight subjects admitted much less arousal to women touching themselves or enmeshed with each other and there was an objective-subjective divide in the data given by lesbians too.” The discord between the self-scores and the instrument readings resonated the lies women tell world over, about their sexual desires.
Next in line was the big question, do women really crave intimacy and emotional connection? Once again scores of women were caught lying to themselves as they told Chivers, after another experiment, that strangers aroused them least. Meanwhile Chivers stared at massive data recorded by the plethysmograph stating the opposite – longtime lovers, male or female, were edged out by unknown men and women. And while lovers were seen as perfect dreams, sex with strangers delivered a blood storm. This most certainly doesn’t fit well with our societal assumption that emotional intimacy is a pre-requisite for women to establish a sexual relationship with a man (or woman). As it turns out, eroticism thrives best on something raw. This idea, says Bergner, wasn’t completely new, but it tended to be offered as an exception rather than the rule. “The raw was important to few women; it was the material of only intermittent fantasy for most. Here was systematic evidence to the contrary, the suggestion of a new, unvarnished norm.” Come on ladies, let’s admit it now!
Females of the human species are not the only ones to have been mistakenly considered passive in their sexual encounters. Through the works of Kim Wallen, a psychologist and neuroendocrinologist, Bergner in his book extends the same idiom to the rhesus monkey, a species that went into space in ’50s and ’60s as stand-ins for humans to see if we could survive trips to the moon. As was the wisdom in the seventies, female pheromones were considered responsible for attracting the males who then initiated sex. But, what was evidently missed was that females of this species are bullies and murderers, the generals in brutal warfare, the governors. “It so flew in the face of prevailing ideas about the dominant roles of males,” Wallen said, “that it was just ignored.” Years spent on studying the behaviour of the rhesus introduced Wallen to their promiscuity. “She has sex,” Wallen said, about rhesus females on the whole, “and when he goes into his post-ejaculatory snooze, what does she do? She immediately gets up and goes off and finds another.”
However, Wallen doesn’t imply perfect correspondence between female rhesus and average human female due to subtlety in the impact of ovulation of the latter. During one such experiment he quips, “One lesson is that you don’t want a woman to form her first impression of you when she’s in the wrong menstrual phase. You’ll never recover!”
Of all that has been said and written about female sexuality, ‘rape fantasies’ continue to be an untouched topic in the mainstream. In the chapter ‘The Alley,’ Bergner recounts a number of such fantasies submitted by various women. A woman offered an explanation, “I don’t have to explain myself to Jesus.” Rape fantasies remove guilt, says Bergner, and women embraced them to escape the shame and constraints imposed on their sexuality since an early age. The anatomical logic to the idea, he said, is that calling up thoughts of rape and feelings of fear could quickly provoke the spasms of climax.
A frequently offered argument here is that ‘rape fantasy’ is a paradoxical term. If you are fantasising about it, then it cannot be rape. Marta Meana, Professor of psychology at University of Nevada elaborates in agreement that the two ideas can’t coexist, “In fantasy we control the stimuli. In rape we have no control. They’re really fantasies of submission.” Occupying the realm that is far from the actual and yet psychologically close, Bergner contests that we don’t want to live all of it but our fantasies speak of our desires. Disagreement on this topic will follow at large by many, but what is not up for debate is the fact that rape fantasies are deeply rooted in the narcissism that is embedded in female sex drive.
Further, among our culture’s more treasured and entrenched ideals is monogamy, which dictates not only our domestic dreams but prevents society from unravelling. Bergner writes, “One of our most comforting assumptions, soothing perhaps above all to men but clung to by both sexes, that female eros is much better made for monogamy than the male libido, is scarcely more than a fairy tale.”
Women’s desire, in its inherent range and innate power, Bergner says, is an underestimated and constrained force. Probably it’s time for niceties to vanish and convention to crack. Female desire is, at base, nothing if not animal. Passing on the book, assuming it to be an amateur rant would be a big mistake, for it is nothing less than a revelation for men and women, across the globe. Brace yourselves because your most cherished myths about women’s desires will soon be shattered.
aishwarya@tehelka.com
Total Recall
“This became my career: asking questions that other people wanted to know the answers to but were too embarrassed to ask”
My first encounter with Lynn Barber was an unconscious one, while watching An Education, starring Carey Mulligan and Rosamund Pike. A student of Class 11, I was swayed by the distinct similarity between myself and Jenny Mellor’s character (played by Mulligan) of a bright schoolgirl who gets pursued by a man much older than her. It was only later I realised how the film was based on Barber’s article, which first appeared in Granta but was later expanded in a memoir titled, An Education. My second encounter with her was also during school while watching Mr Nice, a film based on the notorious Welsh cannabis smuggler Dennis Howard Marks, popularly known to the international media as “the most sophisticated drug baron of all times”. While researching about Lynn’s other books, I stumbled upon the juicy bit of her having dated Marks (though briefly) during her stint at Oxford.
Now it feels like I’ve known her for a while but nothing, not even a neurotic bout with Google, will help you piece together the career of Britain’s award-winning celebrity interviewer. That is, until you decide to read her second memoir, A Curious Career, and allow yourself a real window to the lives of celebrities (at a time when interviewing the known was yet to be classified as a craft) and the fast changing world of journalism.
Barber quite clearly suffers from a compelling sense of nosiness, a trait which proved useful to the other girls at Lady Eleanor Holles, where she went on scholarship while most of the pupils were fee-paying and from affluent families. As she explains, “I was always the one deputed to ask Virginia if she’d snogged the Hampton Grammar boy who took her to the cinema last night. My friends wouldn’t ask because they considered it uncool to seem interested, but it was ok to send me because everyone knew that I was nosy.” Probably the only time Barber forgot to use this ‘magical’ ability of getting secrets out of people, resulted in her being charmed by a con man at 16. Just after she quit school and got engaged to him, she discovered he was married with children. A formative lesson in mistrust and a damaging education, as she calls it, taught her the value of nosiness and introduced her for the first time to the dangers of not asking questions.
Having started her career as an editorial assistant at Penthouse, Lynn’s initial interactions were with people who were definitely not celebs — foot fetishists, voyeurs, transvestites, dominatrices, men who liked wearing nappies. By her own admission, as an interviewer, she started at the bottom but received a good training of basics. Those who seem startled by an Englishwoman posing embarrassing questions, she quips, are unaware of her seven-year apprenticeship at Penthouse!
Her accounts seem quite unlike the celebrity interview style that we are familiar with today. More than her questions, it’s the ease with which the subject rolls out intimate details and is willing to have someone as exceptionally inquisitive as Barber around, which one finds striking. Her interviews sometimes lasted for four days (like that with Salvador Dali, which ended only when Dali’s wife Gala gave Lynn the ‘evil eye’) while today one has to sell one’s soul to catch hold of these demi-gods for 15 minutes.
But, there seem to be a million ways of screwing up an interview and she’s done them all! “Sir David Attenborough was not sympathetic when my recorder broke down.’’ “Once with Oliver Stone, my front tooth fell out.’’ “Another time with Robert Redford, I had a coughing so bad it sounded like retching.” “I remember sweating hideously in a conservatory with actor William Hurt and him passing me ice cubes to cool my bright red face.”
Her idea of a hellishly boring interviewee is one who is obviously nice, sane, polite, who chats pleasantly, is happy to answer questions and has got nothing to hide. Winner of innumerable press awards, as she reminds us frequently, what she yearns for every single time is a monster — “someone who throws tantrums, hurls insults, storms out and generally creates mayhem.” And Marianne Faithfull successfully stood apart in every category to deliver a ‘great interview’ for Barber. Elegant profiles of Faithfull and many others like Martin Clunes, Christopher Hitchens, Michael Winner, Hilary Mantel, Tracey Emin and Rafael Nadal have been reprinted in the book.
Pop stars remain her favourite category of celebrities throughout and she wishes she had done more of them. One with The Pogues’ hell-raiser Shane MacGowan remains close to her. MacGowan extracted a promise out of Barber wherein the two were to commit a bank robbery if she becomes a widow (she was afraid her husband wouldn’t approve of it).
Lynn Barber
Bloomsbury
224 pp; Rs 399
Ever since a panic attack at New York immigration hall, Barber made it a condition never to fly to the States, but an exception was made in 2011 when Christopher Hitchens requested her for an interview in Washington 11 months before he died. Having received an early copy of Hitch-22, she recalls reading through the prologue with premonition as a “spooky experience”, more so because Hitchens wrote it way back in 2008 while his diagnosis of inoperable cancer came only in 2010. On being asked as to why the book fails to mention his wives, Hitchens says upfront, “You don’t know these women! No, not to go near it, just to stay completely clear of it. I don’t want to read it from other people, and I don’t want to do it myself.’’
After reading each interview in the book, a feeling of amusement lingers on for a while. This is especially the case with Michael Winner. Lynn, who was asked to dig into Winner’s sex life and attitude towards women for Observer Women magazine, most certainly admires him for a thing she believes should be done by every interviewee — “he always tapes his interviews (as does Tony Benn).” If practised by both parties, celebs whining about being “misquoted” by journalists will not be a frequent occasion. Back on the subject, so how many ex-girlfriends did Winner have altogether? “Well we did count and funnily enough, it was very low, about a hundred and thirty. That’s not a lot! How can it be a lot for fifty years? Any self-respecting rock star gets through that in a day. And they are bloody nice people.’’ But why was he so reluctant to commit? “It’s a dreadfully mean thing to say, but I used to see flashing above girlfriends’ heads ‘Alimony. Alimony. Alimony’.” Who else but she could extract all of this out of the Death Wish director, who finally married at 75 but left his wife with a debt of £12 million.
Working for the Sunday Times currently, which considers itself to be a “family newspaper”, asterisks are another acute problem in Barber’s life who makes good sense in pointing out, “This is of course insane because if children ever scan the paper, it’s the word with asterisks that first catch their eye!”
Probably the most frank and funny memoir to have recently landed on my desk, Lynn’s tone throughout is very unsentimental, even as she pours her anxiety, impatience, frustration and, often, disappointment of having to interview celebrities, into the book. From growing up in Twickenham to being the ‘Demon Barber of Fleet Street,’ Lynn Barber has most certainly had a curious career.
aishwarya@tehelka.com
‘I asked myself if I wanted to be a Khushwant Singh or Kuldeep Nayar’
What is your earliest memory of writing poems?
When I was in class 5, my elder sister used to teach me at home. As strict as she was, I remember that one time I was busy penning down something on the last page of the book instead of solving sums, and she gave me a tight whack! She then snatched the copy to read my deed and was baffled at what was written by such a young boy — Mere babul main raat ko nahi aaungi, teri galiyaan bohot hai sooni, main aate-aate ghabraungi. Other than that, I used to religiously listen to Aabshaar on the All India Radio and pen down every ghazal they played. Throughout college, I also wrote love letters on behalf on my friends.
Why did you give up journalism?
I belong to a middle class family from Malerkotla in Singrur, Punjab. If you suggest the idea of going to Mumbai and becoming a lyricist, people raise a lot of questions and eyebrows. They will say things like, ‘naukri nahi mili, isiliye Bambai jaa raha hai’ and I wasted a lot of time responding to them. On completing my PhD in Hindi, I had no option but to take up a job as a journalist. In a moment of epiphany I asked myself if I wanted to be a Khushwant Singh or Kuldeep Nayar, and the answer was no.
Then how did you land in Bombay?
During my stint in Chandigarh as a journalist, I went to interview veteran director Lekh Tandon who was in need of a dialogue writer for his show. I wrote for him while he was in the city. On returning to Mumbai, he called me to write for a few more episodes. So, I took a leave from my job for 15 days but returned only after six months! By then, I was served a notice and terminated from employment. Later, on being introduced to Sandesh Shadilya, I recited some 25 ghazals for him in a go! He then introduced me to Imtiaz Ali. My association with these people has been long and strong.
Unlike most lyricists today, you’ve taken huge risks with Urdu and Punjabi diction…
I cannot write superficial songs and have walked out of projects when asked to compromise on this principle. Often times, music directors ask you to write a song around phrases they think will become the next chart-buster, but I am not in agreement. The commercial pressure puts the quality at stake. I believe in enjoying the process instead.
‘10 images can easily convey what 1,000 words can tell otherwise’
26, Co-founder, scoopwhoop.com
Who is the brain behind ScoopWhoop?
ScoopWhoop has five co-founders — Rishi Mukherjee, Sriparna Tikekar, Suparn Pandey, Saransh Singh and me. The five of us graduated from iimc. Rishi, Saransh, Suparn and I worked as copywriters for Webchutney previously, while Sriparna was with an online fashion brand. We started working for ScoopWhoop in August 2013 and took the leap, quitting our jobs, in November.
What is the idea behind your website?
ScoopWhoop is news for the social age. Keeping humans emotions at the centre, we create easy-to- consume share-worthy content that has a viral quotient. Indians consume a lot of foreign content through websites like Buzzfeed, Upworthy and ThoughtCatalog. But there was no Indian website doing that kind of entertainment-oriented content. Our target audience is the ‘90s kids, who grew with the Internet. Demographically, it is the 18-35 age group that is primarily active in the metros.
How powerful are visuals and listicles in creating content?
10 images can easily convey what 1,000 words can tell otherwise, without compromising on detail. Similarly, the list format appeals to readers because they know if it says ‘10 things’, it will not be more than 10 and it takes less time to read than a full feature. Both of these help create articles that are easy to comprehend and can be delivered in bite-sized packet. Our content creation is broadly divided in two parts — curated and contributed. We dig up old videos on the Internet and package them with attractive headlines.
Is there a mounting competition?
After ScoopWhoop, over 20 different websites with Indian content have emerged. If I have to choose competitors, I’d say Buzzfeed India and Storypick. Honestly, given the dearth of good viral content in India, I think we can all peacefully co-exist. Other than that, we have been lucky in terms of investors — money was not a problem. Brands have started reaching out to us and consistency in numbers has given us confidence. The challenge is to keep creating innovative content because I don’t think two years down the line, list formats and images will work. We are planning to explore avenues like humour, play, politics, sports and food.
‘I translated the Gita into vernacular Urdu, so that it can be easily accessed’
Photo: Pramod Singh Adhikari
The Naval Kishore Press established in Lucknow by Pandit Naval Kishore in 1858 was once the largest publishing initiative in South Asia and second only to the Alpine Press of France. Before it was closed in 1950, it had published Urdu translations of over 500 Hindi, Arabic and Persian texts, and 124 Sanskrit texts, including the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Bhagavad Gita and Manusmriti. In keeping with the legacy of Naval Kishore Press, popular Urdu poet Anwar Jalalpuri has translated The Bhagavad Gita into Urdu shayari. Former chairman of Uttar Pradesh Madarsa Board and former member of the Urdu Akademi (UP), Jalalpuri had earlier translated Rabindranath Tagore’s Geetanjali and Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat into Urdu poetry. Jalalpuri tells Aishwarya Gupta that through his latest book, Urdu Shayari mein Gita, he aims at an interaction of Hindu and Islamic worldviews.
Edited excerpts from an interview:
What inspired you to translate the Bhagavad Gita into Urdu shayari?
I completed my MA in English in 1968 but have always been a poet by nature, writing in many forms — nazm, ghazal, naat, ruba’i, tareekh, qasida, salaam. On completing my MA in Urdu in 1978, I wanted to pursue a PhD, for which I was looking for a topic that would integrate both Hindus and Muslims. And that is when I decided to translate the Gita into Urdu shayari.
During my research, I found that over 80 such translations have been done in the past, of which over 60 were in prose while the remaining were in poetry. Of these 24 translations in Urdu poetry, I couldn’t find more than eight copies through references, having looked from Patna to Kolkata to Hyderabad to Rampur. Most of these early age manuscripts couldn’t be traced or were destroyed. Also, I realised that the subject and learning of the Gita in itself is so wide that if I pushed to crunch and completed it, I would not have been able to deliver justice. But the idea and philosophy of Gita remained close to me throughout and has resulted in this book after 35 years.
What is your understanding of the Gita?
Like the Quran, the Gita also has a divine style and it contains the words of the Lord. The shayar that I am, I found it difficult to overlook the poetic lutf and andaaz in the shloks of the Bhagavad Gita. The philosophy of life after death is very attractive, whether you choose to believe it or not. Having translated the third chapter of the Quran Sharif in Urdu poetry in Tosh-e-Aakhirat, I found a striking similarity in the moral teachings of the two books. My aim was to tell the Urdu speaking awam (masses) that you are unaware of the great book that is the Bhagavad Gita and to tell the Hindus that the Gita is much more than a book you swear by in the court of law. An urgent need to see the sangam of these communities is what made me translate this book.
Which other works related to the Gita did you refer to while writing your book?
In order to attain a comprehensive understanding of the book, I made some key works on the Gita as my reference. These included Khawaja Dil Mohammed’s Dil ki Geeta, Osho’s eight volumes of Geeta, Mahatma Gandhi’s Bhagvad Gita According to Gandhi, Pandit Sundarlal’s The Gita and the Quran, Manmohan Lal Chhabra’s Mann ki Gita and works of Ajmal Khan and Hasanuddin Ahmed on the subject.
Anwar Jalalpuri
Aa Khar Prakashan
354 pp; Rs 350
How is your translation different from Khawaja Dil Mohammad’s?
Language plays a major factor in any work of translation. Dil Mohammad’s Dil ki Geeta was highly Persianised due to which it failed to gain popularity among common people. I have made a necessary effort to translate the shloks in awami Urdu and Hindustani, so that it is easily understood by all, especially those who are not familiar with the backdrop of the Mahabharata. Beher (meter of Urdu poetry) and grammar of the language need to be given specific attention. This form of translation is masnavi (detailed or elaborate), which gives a story-telling like appeal to the shayari. This has resulted in 701 shloks from 18 chapters of the Bhagavad Gita to culminate in do misre waale 1,761 sher (1,761 two-line couplets).
Started and majorly promoted by Lucknow’s Naval Kishore Press, does this secular tradition of translations have any more cultural relevance or has it merely been reduced to the nostalgic value of ganga-jamuni tehzeeb?
The society is changing very rapidly and I often encounter my friends, writers in both Hindi and Urdu, complaining that there isn’t enough work happening in either language. The contemporary literary scene has very few people who offer the kind of sincerity and integrity required for such works. Pandit Naval Kishore was too big a man in terms of stature and the work he did through his press over a century ago. Today, if someone is trying to achieve even five percent of what he did, I think we should appreciate it. As far as the relevance of the ganga-jamuni tehzeeb is concerned, I believe that in any society there are three major stakeholders who have the power to promote or demote communal harmony — politicians, religious leaders and writers. If even one of them does otherwise, the tehzeeb will be difficult to sustain.
Being a reputed and senior nazim (convenor or anchor) for some of country’s well-known mushairas, what changes have you witnessed since the time of Kaifi, Faiz and Majrooh?
Just like any other sphere, the culture of mushairas has undergone a considerable change in the past three decades. Some new practices that might be acceptable to some and not to others have entered its ambit. Clapping, for instance, was considerable a distasteful action during the proceedings of a traditional mushaira, but is now widely practiced. It is seen as a positive change. We no longer live in the times of Meer or Ghalib, but the wise thing would be to keep the learnings of the past intact and still be accommodative to the present. Whenever I am in charge of nizamat (anchoring), I forewarn others from reciting mazhabi shayari (communal poetry).
Having been a close friend of Munawwar Rana and a former member of the UP Urdu Akademi, do you support his decision of resigning as the president of the institution?
Both Nawaz Deobandi (Chairman) and Munawaar Rana were appointed in February by CM Akhilesh Yadav. As his friend, it would be embarrassing for me to comment on his decision. But as a shayar, I firmly believe that for someone as determined as Munawwarji, he would have succeeded in getting the government to concede to his demands, had he not resigned within three months.
aishwarya@tehelka.com
‘I realised it would be unfair to trivialise truth for humour’
Photo: Yogen Shah
What prompted you to write about the most dreaded figure of the Indian household: the mother-in-law?
The original idea came from my publisher Chiki Sarkar, but initially I was a little reluctant to go for it. Later, whenever I mentioned the idea over lunch or in parties, everybody would enthusiastically contribute opinions and anecdotes about their mother-sin- law. I thought it would constitute for a quirky book and went ahead with it.
What kind of response did you get from women during your research?
I intentionally kept my research beyond my friend circle. The anonymity factor made them more honest. For many, it was like a free therapy session! It was difficult to listen to their unsettling accounts because sometimes the reality is not funny but grim. I was caught in a dilemma to either write a funny book or an honest one. I realised it would be unfair to trivialise truth for the sake of humour.
Is your equation with your mother-in- law an informal one? How did she respond to the book?
When I got married, I made a resolve to not end up like a clique. But once we started living together, we most certainly turned into one! We are both very non confrontational and choose to sit on our resentments. So it hasn’t been an easy relation. In retrospect, I think we should have communicated more. My mother-in-law was very helpful during the research so I’m now feeling bad for dissing her in the book!
Some would accuse you of reinforcing the ‘evil mother-in-law’ stereotype…
The stereotype exists for a reason. It may be a changing reality but it still exists and that is the truth for the majority of Indian women. Today, the differences between the two relations are more acute than ever. We are at cultural crossroads. The figure of the mother-in-law has changed little but the evolving dynamics of the new age daughter-in-law is giving rise to a conflicting scenario. This conflict is rooted in the structure of Indian households where your mother-in-law acts as your mother while she’s not and is constantly riddled with the insecurity of losing her son to the daughter-in-law.
But we didn’t get to hear the mother-in-law’s side of the story…
Well, that could be another book!
