A week, former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson once said, is a long time in politics. For the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), that would be the third week since it sensationally took power in Delhi at the year-end. And it has indeed been painfully long. For the first time since they formed their ingeniously named political outfit in 2012, a difference of opinion is rewriting relationships among its top leaders. On one side is a close confidant of party chief (officially “convener”), Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who took the unusual step this week of calling an impromptu public sit-in barely a hundred metres from Parliament, triggering fears of a violent showdown with the constabulary mandated to clear out the area ahead of the 26 January Republic Day celebrations. On the other side is a clutch of other leaders trying to be a counterweight; who want the high-velocity rollercoaster to stop being an anarchic free-for-all and instead bring order to the ranks.
For the moment, though, Delhi’s Public Works Minister Manish Sisodia, a soft-spoken man considered to be closest to Kejriwal, has the aces. His hold over Kejriwal is a legend within the party. Even Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan and pollster-scholar-turned-politician Yogendra Yadav, both top party leaders themselves, are fighting for space vis-à-vis Sisodia. Inevitably, as is inherent in power politics, the two factions are shadow-boxing with each other, where both Yadav and Bhushan are working hard to retain their prominence in the party even as Sisodia has increased his profile massively, especially since becoming a minister on 28 December.
The differences between the two sides have sharpened following the antics — past and present — of two of the party’s prominent public faces. Delhi’s Law Minister Somnath Bharti’s so-called citizens’ initiative against an alleged drug-and-prostitution racket run by African nationals in south Delhi boomeranged badly after at least one woman ambushed at her home bluntly accused AAP vigilantes of criminal assault. The second incident that has sharpened the fault lines is the emergence of a five-year-old video recording of a stand-up comedy routine by Sisodia’s childhood chum, Kumar Vishwas, who has worked closely with Kejriwal ever since the latter launched his anti-corruption public movement at New Delhi in 2011.
In the video Vishwas is heard calling female nurses from Kerala “black and yellow” in Hindi, in an uncharitable and unfair reference to their complexion. A few days earlier, another comic gig from years ago surfaced wherein Vishwas had made a Muslim religious event the butt of a joke. As the AAP office was attacked in Kerala following the emergence of the comment on Malayalee nurses, Sisodia swung into motion to save Vishwas. At stake is Vishwas’ desire to take on Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi from Amethi’s Lok Sabha constituency. Vishwas has in fact been pushing unilaterally to be the party’s candidate there. A section of the party has been miffed with Vishwas as many believe that he is pushing his own agenda in violation of the party’s stated principle that it is a party with a difference — one that rejects individual political ambitions.
As Vishwas himself swung into action appearing on television news defending his comedy, Sisodia lobbied Kejriwal insisting that the party stand solidly behind Vishwas as he was being unfairly targeted. This was on the same day that Kejriwal called off his two-day sit-in near the railway ministry headquarters, where thousands had gathered backing the party’s demand for suspension of the policemen who had refused to follow the bidding of Law Minister Somnath Bharti to file criminal cases against the African women Bharti and cohorts had set upon on 15 January.
Indeed, the entire drama that began with Bharti’s “raid” and ended with a tame and abrupt withdrawal of the sit-in on 21 January has left many in the party’s leadership upset for being forced to support Bharti and bluster their way through the crisis. These include the party’s several spokespersons, including the newly inducted journalist-turned-politician Ashutosh who privately complained that he felt embarrassed defending Bharti’s actions that were clearly indefensible and served to undermine the party’s pro-women credentials.
What is troubling several senior leaders is that Kejriwal and Sisodia are both convinced of the correctness of Bharti’s action. They are equally certain that, even if the chattering classes attack the sit-in as a constitutional impropriety, the bulk of Delhi’s citizenry will back them for taking on the high-handed behaviour of the police.
This intransigence of Kejriwal and Sisodia has made a section of the party uneasy, notably the middle classes who place great store in constitutionality and political correctness. The two leaders’ dismissive attitude towards those who call for restraint, especially since they are now in the government, has alienated not a few in the party’s higher echelons, especially those who align with the progressive civil society elements. (They point out to a strongly worded letter of disapproval that a clutch of feminists, many of whom had otherwise supported the AAP and contributed to building its political profile, wrote to Kejriwal demanding an apology from Bharti for his act.)
A notable absentee from the Delhi sit-in was Shazia Ilmi, the party’s most visible female face, not least for her forceful presence on television, until she lost the 4 December Assembly election by a tiny margin. Her stature in the party as a leading female politician has been overshadowed by the emergence of 26-year-old Rakhi Birla, who won the election and was made the Women and Child Development Minister. Ilmi has also been effectively pegged lower in a reorganisation wherein her name was not included in the list of party’s official spokespersons issued this week, which however included Ashutosh just days after he joined the party after quitting his job as a news anchor.
Despite their continued misgivings about Vishwas and Sisodia, both Yadav and Bhushan are, for the moment, wary of pushing for Vishwas to be sidelined. One line of thinking is that they may well wait until Vishwas trips up yet again in the next few months, and which would eventually seal the case against him. Yadav, in fact, has been feeling stretched thin by a constant need for his presence in Delhi when he wants to devote himself exclusively to the neighbouring state of Haryana, for the upcoming Lok Sabha election as well as the Assembly elections due in October.
Indeed, the scramble to get a ticket for the Lok Sabha has already gripped the party’s key 50-odd leaders, who are all angling to contest from constituencies where the party will have a strong chance to win. But thousands have literally begun to mob its offices across India to seek tickets for the Lok Sabha election, buoyed by the dreamy emergence of yesterday’s commoners as today’s ministers and MLAs in Delhi. The list of hopefuls includes a number of prominent citizens who have recently jumped on the AAP bandwagon inspired by its spectacular electoral success in Delhi.
And trouble may yet emerge for Kejriwal from some of the new high-profile entrants to the party, most notable of whom are former aviation entrepreneur GR Gopinath and Gujarat’s leading activist and noted danseuse, Mallika Sarabhai. Sarabhai slammed Vishwas last week for his comic routine against the Muslim event. And Gopinath demanded this week that Bharti be sacked. All this makes for a lot of internal churning. In short, the Aam Aadmi Party has arrived in the world of politics.
ajit@tehelka.com
Messing up the Honeymoon
Not Just For Kicks
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Chances are you might not have heard of Rukka and Hutu villages. Located in one of the most vulnerable tribal areas of Jharkhand, the villages are infamous for Naxalite violence and inter-caste warfare. Combined with the fact that 30,000 girls are trafficked from the state every year and more than six in 10 women can’t read make it one of the most lawless and least literate regions of India. But none of this deters a bunch of girls who are adamant on breaking stereotypes by battling severe odds. They use the only tool at their disposal with maximum force, which is helping them rewrite the scripts of their lives: football.
Sunita Kumari is the daughter of a farm labourer. The 17-year-old looks frail but she makes up for her lack of physical strength with an endless reservoir of grit.
“My neighbours used to taunt me, saying, ‘Ladki hai, half-pant pehen kar yahan vahan ghoomti hai (Why is a girl like you running around wearing just half-pants?)’ But I told my father, ‘Bahar vala sirf baat karega lekin tumko khane ko nahi dega (Let them say whatever they want. They aren’t going to feed you),” says Sunita, who has been playing as a defender for five years and also coaches the younger players. “Both my elder sisters dropped out of school and used to sit idle at home, so they were married off. My mother was always very supportive but she fell ill last year and died. Playing football has given me an alternative option to escape the drudgery of marriage and household chores. I want to be independent and provide the same choice to other girls by coaching them.”
Sunita has reasons to be worried. Nearly 58 percent of the girls in Jharkhand get hitched before attaining the age of 18. “Back home, they tell me that I will be married off soon, but I don’t want to get married before 21,” says Rinki, who is merely 14 and plays centre forward for the team. “My parents believe that village girls are fit only for domestic chores. Sometimes, I’m afraid that I will be weaned away from football. But I will strive to become a professional player. If not, then a doctor because I will be able to change their outlook only by proving myself.”
These girls have found a way to express their rebellion via football thanks to YUWA Foundation. The initiative was started by Franz Gastler, a 32-year-old American from Minnesota, who has made Jharkhand home. An ice-hockey player and ski coach, Gastler came to the state in 2008 to work with a local ngo and started teaching English in government schools during his free time.
“I never set out to create a great football club, but little by little we have become one,” says Gastler. “The girls care a great deal about the game and want to keep getting better.”
The team’s highlight came in Spain last year when the girls finished third at the Gasteiz Cup, the world’s foremost testing ground for teenage footballers.
“Now, the foundation’s work is referred to by means of ‘before and after Spain’. A lot of these girls have brought prestige to the community,” says Rose Thomson, the project coordinator for YUWA Foundation. “We have been told that the girls are being fed more and are being given more opportunities, almost on the same level as their brothers, which wasn’t the case before.”
But playing football and going to Spain did not come easy. “I was rebuked a lot before going to Spain,” recalls Rinki. “The neighbours had fed my parents stories and asked them not to allow me to go. I told my brother, ‘Just because you never got a chance to fly on a plane, why are you stopping us from doing so?”
Gastler adds, “These girls are very strong and have a lot of fortitude. They lead very physically and socially demanding lives and don’t even get to socialise with their friends. But once you open the door and give them a chance to play, they flock.
“We try our best to delay child marriage and send them back to school. The parents value very different things from us, like prestige. I think there can be a point of convergence where both parties can get what they want as long as what the girls enjoy doing helps bring some prestige to their families.”
Bikram Singh Thockchom, the chairman of Moonlight Sports Federation, is a football enthusiast who has coached thousands of children at football clinics, schools and workshops and is now leading the struggle for promoting women’s football in India. “I have found that these girls are perfect for most kinds of sport,” says Thockchom, who also works as a consultant coach for YUWA. “They have the drive, physique, flexibility and strength. If given the right input, they are undefeatable. Simply because they come from a rural background, they aren’t encouraged. You need good coaches, and more than that, you need institutions to develop these coaches, livelihood needs to be created and only then the football industry will flourish.”
Social concerns aren’t the only hurdles that these girls face. Villagers are angry at the girls’ defiance as a result of which they no longer have a ground to play on. The ground where they initially used to play has been turned into farmland and houses have sprung on the rest of it. It is best illustrated in the words of 14-year-old Renu, who is the goalkeeper of the YUWA team. “Just because they didn’t like us playing, they took over the ground. Now we have to play on the small stretches near our homes and are unable to practice together,” she says.
However, the media attention that the girls’ stunt at Spain has brought has now led to negotiations between YUWA and the state to release five acres for building a residential football academy.
While combating fewer opportunities, gender inequality and stereotypes that prevail in the rural set-up of Rukka, the Jharkhand girls are not alone. One is surprised to stumble upon a similar young bunch of girls rewriting the narrative in the heart of New Delhi.
As Sahiba Choudhary, Somi Rajput, Darakshan Ansari and Tehreem form a huddle to celebrate, it is impossible to guess the kind of struggle they have been through, looking at their ecstatic state. The reason for their joy is their stunning 2-0 win over an American team at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium. They draw their strength from CEQUIN (Centre for Equity and Inclusion), which is a New Delhi-based non-profit organisation working for marginalised sections, with a special focus on women.
“We run a gender resource centre at Jamia Nagar in partnership with Jamia Milia Islamia university, where we train these girls. All these girls belong to the vulnerable sections or slum areas of Taimoor Nagar, Indira Camp, Khizrabad, Ishwar Nagar, Okhla Vihar and Batla House,” says Rizwan Ahmed Khan, the programme officer of CEQUIN. It’s the only women’s football team from the Muslim-majority area of Jamia Nagar. Even Jamia does not allow for a women’s football team due to which some of their students play for the CEQUIN team.
Somi Rajput, 17, is a short and spunky girl who has been playing for the team for more than two years. She fell in love with the beautiful game after watching Shaolin Soccer and now wants to become a professional player. However, financial constraints and her family’s conservative attitude stand in the way of her dream.
“My father was a grocer; he became an alcoholic and is now bed-ridden, and my mother is a nurse at Safdarjung Hospital,” she says. “I am the youngest of four sisters and have a younger brother. I give tuitions to earn a little money. Whenever I step out to play, the neighbours say, ‘Kya kar logi khel ke, karna to tumhe jhaadu-pocha hi hai? (What will you achieve by playing? After all, you will end up doing household chores).’ But today we won the match against the American girls and it’s a big achievement.”
While Somi’s hardships are reflected in the other girls’ accounts, a lot of them are facing hurdles because of religion. Meenu Chaudhary, the 25-year-old coach of the CEQUIN team, glances over her shoulder at the playing girls. “Almost all of them wear a hijab or burqa at home. They remove it once they enter the stadium and wear it again before going back home,” she says. “Their parents are not aware that their daughters play in shorts and T-shirts. They think that their girls are playing in hijabs. We want them to embrace this fact, but it isn’t easy.”
The girls are desperate for their family’s support, but they don’t want their parents to attend their matches for the fear of being stopped from playing football. “They are young and right now their only concern is to keep playing the game,” says Meenu. “Initially, they used to wear full-length lowers but once they started playing tournaments, we have given them shorts, which makes it easier for them to play. Some of the parents who support their daughters might be aware of it, though.”
YUWA and CEQUIN are just two of the many organisations in the country working towards women’s empowerment with the aid of football. They create engaging environments where girls can gain confidence and life skills that help them face any challenge. Rising Star Outreach (RSO) is a similar initiative and football is again the common factor.
“Ever since I started playing football, I have become more decisive,” says Theresa, 16, who is reaping the benefits of the RSO programme in Tamil Nadu. “I take more initiatives and am able to express myself better on the field.”
Theresa’s grandfather is one of the many leprosy-affected people in Chettipunniyam, a village near Chengalpattu town in Tamil Nadu, who receives regular aid from RSO, an organisation dedicated to the eradication of leprosy and the resulting stigma.
“Leprosy affects people in a multidimensional way, causing much agony and anguish,” says Dr Susan Hilton, the managing director of RSO. “Leprosy colonies are very dismal places. People suffering from the disease have no hope for themselves or their children. We give education grants to such children all over Tamil Nadu.”
The RSO’s education programme currently supports 241 students. Nearly 95 percent of them come from various leprosy colonies. Theresa is a Class X student who, along with 16 other girls from the institute, got a chance to learn football from an American team, which spent a week at the RSO campus in Kanchipuram, teaching football and engaging in confidence-building activities.
“Academics is seen as the only way to succeed for people with disabilities, but we encourage arts and sports on the same level as academics,” says Hilton.
The American team’s visit was part of the Goals for Girls initiative, which connects girls from different countries and backgrounds with their peers around the world in a forum that addresses social and health challenges through cultural exchange and football.
The Goals for Girls logo is a flower motif with football hexagons instead of petals, beneath which are the words: “She flies with her own wings.” Together, it conveys an easily understood message of using football as a medium for empowerment of girls across the world. Since 2007, the initiative has organised five international events in South Africa (twice), Uganda, Tajikistan and Peru. Their sixth international trip was to India in late December 2013.
The team comprised 17 players from Portland and Chapel Hill aged between 16 and 18, led by two-time Olympic gold medallist and World Cup winner Cindy Parlow Cone. “I have seen girls’ lives change before my eyes, whether it’s them falling in love with the game, building confidence or finding a voice to become leaders of their teams,” says Cone. “At Rising Star Outreach, we saw girls who had never touched a ball, falling in love with the sport, which was incredible. I truly believe that soccer can bring so much to a young girl’s life.”
Riley Foster, who plays for Triangle United in North Carolina, is a prime example of that transformation. Talking about the impact that football has brought to her life, the 17-year-old says, “There’s a lot of pressure in life but once you set foot on the soccer field, it disappears. My parents are divorced but my biggest challenge is that my mother is an alcoholic. The game gives you a sense of self-control and the strength to deal with challenges.”
For a week, the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium reverberated with cries of cheer and laughter while 250-odd girls played with an unusual zeal. The stadium served as a global platform where CEQUIN, YUWA and Goals for Girls came together for exhibition matches and football workshops. Along with his YUWA team of 23 girls, Gastler undertook a train journey of more than 48 hours from Jharkhand to New Delhi to play against the US team, which was sponsored by Anglian Football, a subsidiary of Anglian Management Group (AMG). AMG has investments in Danish Superliga club FC Vestsjælland and I-League club Shillong Lajong FC.
“We have taken it upon ourselves to promote women’s sports in the country, especially football,” says Kabir Mandrekar, business development manager of AMG. “Firstly, they have a lot of potential and scope. Secondly, while the Indian men’s football team is ranked in the 150s, the women’s team is ranked 50 internationally so they have a greater chance of participating in the World Cup. These girls are just waiting for an opportunity and given their talent, we are honestly sitting on a gold mine.”
Throwing light on the commercial scope of the game, Mandrekar further adds, “We are trying to build a structure through which corporates can invest in women’s football and be assured of good returns. It’s like educating various stakeholders about the profit and prominence of a rising sport. Why won’t they invest in Indian football then? Since it’s not been done before, corporates are a little hesitant to put big money into grassroots football. That’s where we come into the scene, to get the ball rolling. Someone will have to take the initiative, which I believe is exactly what we are doing.”
The future of Indian football in general and women’s football in particular is best reflected in Thockchom’s words. “I believe that football is more lucrative than cricket because the latter has reached its saturation point in terms of commercial gains,” he says. “Football in India is gradually building up. It’s a very interesting time because there is a grassroots revolution happening. If you know your audience, it isn’t very difficult to generate funds either. We simply lack the structure at the moment, which I am sure will fall into place very soon.”
As the popularity of women’s football gathers pace, initiatives such as YUWA, CEQUIN and RSO are creating a generation of confident, informed, proactive and resilient young girls through the kick of a ball. The journey isn’t an easy one but certainly one worth making.
aishwarya@tehelka.com
Mastertakes
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Sheyna Baig on Art
When speaking of contemporary art, I would have to recommend Vineet Kacker. He is a ceramic designer and pottery artist. His work is inspired by the Himalayan landscape, and the colours he uses are warm and earthy. The texture of his creations are also incredibly interesting. What I found amazing about his work was that it could be meditative because of the Sanskrit scriptures he inscribes on it. At the same time, his work is also extremely playful because the shapes of his pots and ceramics are so surreal and fun to look at. It is the simplicity in some shapes that provides this playfulness in his art.
Baig is a contemporary Indian artist
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Nilendu Sen on books
RD Burman The Man, The Music by Anirudha Bhattacharjee and Balaji Vittal is an insightful, anecdotal and definitive biography of a musical genius. The book is lucid; a delectable anecdote jumps out from every page. An excellent exploration if you are a Burman fan, a great read even if you are not, because even the peripheral characters are people that we know and admire.
Sen is the author of Sonar Gaaon
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Shoumitro Roy on Music
I love listening to the band Periphery because of its unique style in metal. The founder, Misha Mansoor, has a certain style of playing the guitar; his tone and notes add a unique blend of sound to his music. I would put them under the category of progressive rock. The other band I really like is Scribe. It is a Mumbai-based band that plays metal or hardcore music. The most interesting part of this band is that it is influenced by Bollywood music immensely. Listening to these guys is a pleasure.
Roy is the guitarist with the band Mutiny in March
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Valmik Thapar on Film
A television series called Caught In the Act caught my attention. For me, after working in the wild for so many years, the natural habitats of animals and how they survive them are fascinating. What this series does, which no other documentary does, is to put a variety of filmmakers in the wild for weeks and months across Africa or India. Their purpose is to capture the wildest and scariest battles between animals. I enjoy these encounters because it’s natural and what you least expect happens. These documentaries show the natural world we are unaware of.
Thapar is a wildlife documentarian
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Randhir Tiwari on food
One of the NCR’s finest North Indian restaurants, Sahib Sindh Sultan, takes you back to 1853, when the first Indian train made its run from Bori Bunder to Thane, with a tastefully done decor. The food too reflects this rich past, with a blend of cuisines of several states — Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Punjab. It also serves a great variety of Anglo-Indian dishes. There is an exclusive wine list and a collection of cocktails such as margaritas, mojito or the caiprioska. The exotic desserts will satisfy any sweet tooth — litchi ki tehri, flambéed gulab jamun, pineapple halwa and kesari gajar halwa.
Tiwari is a Delhi-based Chef
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Mastertakes
Bose Krishnamachari on Art
I would recommend the Rock Garden of Chandigarh, created by the self-taught artist Nek Chand, as my favourite piece of art and architecture. The sculptures there are made with waste materials and recycled objects. These waste materials are more than just scrap yard junk; they helped Chand create beautiful art and architecture. There is nothing called waste, really, and whatever we consider trash is actually great material for artists. Another such architect, Wang Shu, has a style similar to that of Nek Chand’s. He turns old buildings into modern marvels of architecture.
Krishnamachari is a Mumbai-based artist
Jayanti Anubhav on Books
The Calcutta Chromosome is a timeless masterpiece by the literary genius Amitav Ghosh. If one knows the art of storytelling, one can make even malaria-carrying parasites interesting. A medical thriller, but extremely enchanting with its mystical elements, the story is set in Calcutta. The first few pages require patience, but once the story starts unfolding, it leaves you gasping for breath.
Anubhav is a Mumbai-based novelist
Uddipan Sarmah on Music
Tim Palmer, a British music producer, audio engineer and song-writer, has delivered masterpieces with his passion, talent and technical abilities. His discography includes legends like Pearl Jam, Ozzy Osbourne, Robert Plant, David Bowie, U2, Goo Goo Dolls, to name a few. Tim’s reach also spreads to India with his fine and detailed work for Indus Creed’s album Evolve and Grasshopper’s Mirrors of the Mind. For all music aspirants, there’s a lot to learn from this legend behind the console.
Sarmah is a Gujarat-based Music Producer
Malini Mago on Food
Earlier, if someone would have told me, let’s have Bihari food, I’d have raised an eyebrow at them. But The Potbelly Rooftop Cafe is special. It is a quaint little café in the middle of Shahpur Jat, New Delhi, with a lovely balcony surrounded by greenery and decked up with lanterns. The setting is perfect for a peaceful winter lunch. Its kitchen serves amazing Bihari delicacies, all of which I had never eaten prior to discovering this place. Some of my favourites are litti chicken, keema aloo chop and the Bihari burger. Also, the climb up three stories to the café is a real appetite builder.
Mago is the founder of and baker at the Chocolate Cause
Govind Narayan on Film
The dialogue-heavy The Man from Earth is a welcome change from regular sci-fi. The plot unfolds at the farewell party of the protagonist, Oldman, who is retiring as a professor. He reveals that he is a 14,000 yearold cave man, who has not aged. He recounts his life, Stone Age onwards, with encounters with Columbus, Van Gogh, Buddha and Christ. His colleagues, experts in their fields, spiral between belief and disbelief. Written by Jerome Bixby, directed by Richard Schenkman, the film works due to strong performances and a solid story line.
Narayan is a Delhi-based filmmaker
‘My audience is my only prop’
Illusionist
Edited Excerpts from an interview
What triggered your interest in magic and which is the first trick you attempted growing up?
The earliest memory I have of magic is based on a deck of cards. Once, my grandparents had some friends over for a game of rummy. That day I learnt to count from one to 13 on a deck of cards. I held up a card and asked, “Dada, what am I holding?”, to which he promptly said, “Six of clubs!” Coincidentally, it was true. After that we tried the trick a billion times, but it never worked again. However, his expression and mine, the only time he got it right, is something I cannot forget. Now, in all my shows, I include this one trick called ‘Grandfather’s Trick’ where I hold up a card and ask someone to identify it. And the card they guess is always exactly the one I hold. Barring that first card trick, I was never really fascinated by magic, strange as it might sound. I’ve always known that there is a trick behind all magic. And I wasn’t influenced by it till the age of 11 when I met this famous magician, Ishamuddin (Khan), who taught me coin tricks. The concept of magic changed for me after that; I cultivated interest and eventually learned more of it. I performed for the first time at 16 and have done over 100 shows since then.
What got you hooked to the concept of ‘illusion’ and how do you view it as any different from ‘magic’?
Somehow I never acknowledged the existence of ‘magic’, and neither am I very fond of being called a magician. Magicians do not fascinate me. I like to think of myself as more of a psychological illusionist. I am a performer who creates illusions for the sole purpose of entertainment. When you say the word ‘magic’, people all of a sudden become more aware and want to catch the trick behind it. Which is why I tell people outright that I am not a magician. I am a performer who uses hypnosis, lie detection methodologies, neurolinguistic programming and showmanship to entertain the audiences. The very thrill of performing to a live audience and their willingness to be fooled, even if for a moment, is what drives me.
So how good or bad do you think the scope is for illusionists in India?
The scene in Delhi is growing considerably well. I performed at Raasta in Hauz Khas Village, New Delhi, in April last year. And after two weeks, almost every big place in the area had a magician performing. My friend Shankar, who is a coin magician, performs in 12 different places. There are various genres in magic — coins, cards, mind reading, hypnosis. People start by learning all of it and then proceed with whatever piques their curiosity. I do an assortment of cards, mind reading and hypnosis tricks. A professional interest in this sphere is picking up slowly but steadily. For instance, stand-up comedy has now become a major trend, but soon people will get bored of that (unless you find innovative means), and soon after, magic will rise in popularity.
What does it take to put up an engaging performance as a psychological illusionist?
My audience is my only prop. It’s my job to make the audience act according to a storyline that I have in my mind. So, it’s like a one-act play without any rehearsal. The 10 seconds between a volunteer leaving his seat and climbing up the stage is very crucial. It might sound judgemental but I have to look at a person and know what he or she might think like. I have to influence the manner in which the subject thinks in order to perform an accurate trick. But there are other tricks as well that I perform regardless of who comes on the stage, because I’ve done them so many times before that I feel confident they won’t go wrong. However effortless the trick may seem, and irrespective of the number of times I’ve performed it, there still is a trick.
Do you ever develop cold feet when you’re on the stage in front of an eager audience?
It happens once in two months. Like I said, people always have this fascination of knowing how it’s all done. So there will always be some people who will come on stage and try to push you down. They try to catch you and say, “Okay, that’s how it’s done”, and suddenly the whole audience gets the courage to go against the performer. But for these situations I have a storyline to make the audience follow my intended line of thought. At that moment, I send the subject back to the audience. Then I follow it up with a continuation trick in order to prove that if the previous trick had indeed gone wrong, then this would not have been possible. There are plenty of risks involved in this, but you need to have a high degree of confidence to make the 1,000 scrutinising pairs of eyes believe you.
How exactly do you incorporate neurolinguistic programming and hypnosis techniques in your tricks?
Neurolinguistic programming enables you to comprehend and influence the language of the brain through speech, gesture, signs, body language and other such measures. If I ask people to think of two relatively similar shapes, I do a certain set of actions to plant the shapes in their head. For instance, I lean on my right foot and make a couple of hand gestures, which is enough to make them think of a triangle and a circle. Subconsciously your audience is always waiting to be led on and neurolinguistic programming lets you do exactly the same. It is very broad in practice. You can use it to limit the choices in your subject’s mind, so he or she only thinks along the lines that you want. In fact, people even get startled when you state the obvious. So, it’s an understanding of their psychology and body language. As for hypnosis, you have to identify what triggers your audience. Someone who is nervous in front of an audience makes for a good subject because they automatically respond to your suggestions. So, the trick is to craft the idea and plant it in a timely manner in the mind of your audience so that they respond on the lines of the story you have planted.
What disappoints you as a performer?
I want to perform in India more than anywhere else so that people here become open to the idea of such performances, and they need to respect the fact that someone has put up a show for them. And for any live performer the worst moment is when anyone gets up and leaves the show. You are free to criticise my performance, but I would expect you to sit through it. Last year, during one of my performances where I got a standing ovation, one person walked out and it still bothers me. Of course, I push myself to keep performing better, but no matter how brilliant you are, with a live audience someone always walks out!
Which personalities would you say have influenced you and your craft the most?
My biggest idol is Derren Brown, the British psychological illusionist, and I don’t think there is a better entertainer than him in the world. He has pushed the boundaries for ‘magic’ more than anyone else. Performing for him has to be my biggest moment yet. I respect Steve Jobs tremendously for his incredible showmanship. The man had the ability to sway a billion people to his tune through his keynotes. Shah Rukh Khan has also influenced me a lot, as has Stephen Fry, both of whom possess incredible wit and a great relationship with the audience.
aishwarya@tehelka.com
QED’Oh!
There are many worse ways to do research for a book. Simon Singh, a lifelong TV addict who “watches everything and anything on television, except for dramas”, would spend all day parked firmly on his couch binge-watching episodes of The Simpsons, freeze framing every time he saw a number appear on screen, hoping to catch some obscure mathematical joke made by the show’s writers, a disproportionate number of whom have university degrees in math or physics (all of this, much to the chagrin of his journalist wife Anita Anand, who would spend her days in the British Library, researching the life of Sophia Duleep Singh, the suffragette granddaughter of Maharaja Ranjit Singh she is writing a book about).
Secrets Simon Singh Bloomsbury 253 pp; Rs 399
The result of all that effort is The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets, a book that uses those mathematical references as starting points to tell stories about the maths involved. The math jokes are aplenty, both in the book (which has a series of exam-paper style set of jokes with the number of points you get if you either laugh or cringe at them) as well as the series. Some of them are highly obscure gags that require both a keen interest in mathematics as well as a keen eye for one to even notice, let alone understand. Others are lazy, often cringeworthy maths puns. In the episode ‘Simple Simpson’ (2004), for instance, Homer disguises himself as a superhero called Simple Simon, Your Friendly Neighbourhood Pie Man, punishing evildoers by flinging pies in their faces. At one point, a bystander remarks, “We all know ‘πr2’, but today ‘pie are justice’.” It’s a non sequitur, one that writer Al Jean, a Harvard math graduate who introduced the joke into the script, dismisses as an old chestnut probably created by someone from 1820s, but Singh uses it to talk about the meaning of π, of Archimedes’ and latter methods used to estimate its value, an anecdote about a US state legislature’s attempts to legislate the value of π. It’s classic learning by distraction, exploiting man’s love for the yellow denizens of Springfield to teach him some maths.
It is a skill Singh specialises in, making mathematics and science accessible for the lay reader. He has in the past written bestsellers about the Big Bang, cryptography and Fermat’s Last Theorem — rarely the stuff bestsellers are made of — breaking down complex scientific theory into digestible chunks and garnishing them with some of the many riveting stories in the history of science. “It’s really important to explain the math and science. My books have a lot of history in them, a lot of biography, many odd and weird things. But they must explain some science. The reason for writing books like this is that they reach three audiences. One is the core audience of people like me; I write books I want to read. So the geeks and nerds who are like me will read my books because they have that same interest that I do. That’s great, but then there are also two ends of the other spectrum. There are people who’re probably a bit older, who were scared of science, but also curious. It’s great when people say to me, ‘Oh, I always hated mathematics, but I read your book on Fermat’s Last Theorem and now I understand why it’s beautiful.’ Or, there are the younger people, who are thinking about what they’re going to do with their lives. Teachers have a lot of hard things they have to teach, like calculus or Newton’s Laws of Cooling. Some of it is not so interesting, and I have great admiration for teachers. But if my books can come in and say, ‘Once you do this calculus, there are these incredible things you can do later on,’ then that’s maybe the most important thing.”
Singh believes that both his background as a teacher (he has a PhD in particle physics) and as a television presenter (before writing Fermat’s Last Theorem in 1997, he worked in the BBC’s Science and Features Department) contributed in allowing him to understand “how other people struggle with ideas that you might not find so complicated, how to engage and interest them”. A transition from a PhD at Cambridge and CERN, Geneva, to a career in television isn’t the most obvious one. “In my final year,” he says, “I could see other people who were just sailing through their PhDs. If I was trying to understand something, they would understand it before me. If I was trying to find a solution to a problem, they would get there before me. So I thought, ‘Those are the people meant to be scientists’. I thought if I leave being a scientist, I should stay within science. And I thought that the best thing would be to become a science journalist.”
For many of the writers of The Simpsons, this transition from Ivy League math degrees to comedy writing wasn’t the result of a similar inferiority complex, but a decision to follow their dreams. At least four of them had worked for Harvard Lampoon while in college. Singh sees a connection between math and comedy. “Why a mathematician is funny…” he begins, before saying that most people think it impossible because “most people are outside that world”. “There’s no easy answer,” he says, “but I couldn’t ignore it. I let the writers put forward their own theories. David X Cohen emphasised the intuition side of it, that mathematicians have a very good intuition over whether a problem can be solved and what that solution is. Bad mathematicians pick impossible problems, and even if they pick soluble problems, they do not know how to solve them. It’s the same with comedy. If you’re a comedian, you’ve got to know whether this scenario is funny, and if it is, how do you find the joke? Other people said that it’s also the determination and the stamina, because again with a mathematical problem, you might have to work for hours, days, weeks banging your head against a wall trying to solve it. Similarly, if you’re doing a 20-minute The Simpsons episode, it’s a technically difficult story to tell and you need that stamina to really turn a story idea into a beautifully crafted episode. So people have lots of different ideas, but the one common theme that seemed to emerge was this idea of logic. Mathematicians love logic. They love playing with logic; they love bending logic; they love stretching it; sometimes, they even break it. When you break logic, you get the illogical. That’s where the humour is.”
ajachi@tehelka.com
‘This is not the age of old-fashioned despotism’
EDITED EXCERPTS FROM AN INTERVIEW
You have tried to maintain a “careful distance from the instrumentalist worldviews of foreign affairs pundits, security experts and financial analysts” while researching this book. Is there something restrictive about refracting your impressions of China through their distinctly utilitarian prisms? What do conventional narratives miss about China?
The conventional portraits and ideas of China are all filtered through particular prisms, whether they are of national security — which is the case in India at least, to a large extent, or even in the United States — economic rivalry and definitely military rivalry, increasingly, in the South China Sea. So much of the reporting you see on China in the American media is about China’s moves in those particular realms. What I really mean by getting away from that kind of instrumentalist view of China is becoming interested in how the Chinese look at themselves and how society looks at what kind of place it seeks for itself in the wider world. I think that’s an idea of China that can only be accessed through its literature, through its cinema and through its internal intellectual debates. For that, you really have to be interested in how the society sees itself and not what you want to get out of that society, because there is a big difference there.
“The idea of Asia,” you write, “has acquired a different coherence today. What connects geographically disparate experiences… is the late arrival of capitalism.” But when you compare India’s and China’s experiments with unbridled capitalism under Manmohan Singh and Deng Xiaoping respectively, what differences do you see?
Well, there are both differences and similarities. For one, the timeline started earlier in China. They started with rural reforms for much of the early ’80s, and the capital generated out of these experiments was used in bigger investments in factories and larger urban economies. The Chinese have maintained a lot of control over their industries and the state has a huge role to play in the functioning of the economy and in the way the banks are extremely intimate with the government. So in that sense, the Chinese model is not one of free market capitalism despite all the claims made for it by various American ideologues and free market fundamentalists.
With the other aspect of it, which is at the level of how this capitalism affects ordinary people, again the similarities are there, with the massive transitions that are now being made in both countries from agrarian economies to urban-centred industrial economies. China has been more successful in this regard, obviously, because they have had more time and have an export-oriented economy as well as a much bigger manufacturing space than India. Also, India’s transition from rural to urban areas has had a large impact, much like China, which has gone ahead and built these large cities expecting rural migrants to come and occupy them. But China is now full of ghost cities, which aren’t inhabited by anyone because they have built these cities but not created jobs. At some point in the book I call Narendra Modi an exponent of capitalism with Chinese characteristics, by which I mean his model is one of incorporating government land or other resources and giving them to various crony capitalists. That’s also a very Chinese tactic, one which is the biggest source of social unrest in China. So there are similarities and differences at various levels.
The rationale behind Deng’s modernisation was that a population in thrall of the benefits of capitalism would not agitate for political liberties. Has that worked beyond an extent?
It was an implicit pact, and it has worked better than anyone thought, because we don’t really see much sign of a middle class aspiring for radical democracy or radical political change at this point. It is definitely agitating for certain rights and is very much against corruption and environmental destruction and often pours into the streets to protest against specific issues. But I think there is an issue between that and asking for a change of regime, which is a very radical thing to be asking for in a context like China. I think most people in China — certainly most of the urban middle class, which, as you know, are the most political actors of any society — have experienced continuous improvement in their lives over the last 20 to 30 years. You have to remember that China suffered a great deal in the last century or so, much more than India, with civil war, the Japanese invasion and the various disasters of the Mao era. Whatever has happened in the past 30 to 35 years has certainly made people look forward to a better future for their children. So if you have those high degrees of contentment with your own life, it is very difficult to actually create a political platform or movement for greater democracy. It is also true that many more freedoms have been made available to the Chinese, to consume, to travel, and I think they have substituted for broader liberties that are available in Western countries.
In your chapter on Wang Hui, you mention how the New Left sees the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as an agent of change. What role do you see the Party playing in the inevitable struggles over civil liberties?
It’s a very complicated issue, because the party is certainly not a monolith, more so now. There is much more information available on the party and the recent power struggles within the party have been more in the public eye, most prominently the corruption trial of Bo Xilai, the governor of Liaoning. So we now know a little more about how these things work. It’s not a monolith; there are various factions within the party with very distinct political views and there are also, of course, a lot of opportunists who will go with whoever is powerful at any given point. I think their expectation is that the party has to be the agent of change because there is no coherent opposition, no one who can guide China through this very delicate, and indeed very volatile, stage in its economic transitions, which mind you is not complete yet. Many people are still living in extreme poverty because the urbanisation process is incomplete yet. The Chinese leaders themselves admit that the economy is unsustainable, it’s uncoordinated and there are a lot of problems with this kind of shift away from the investment-led model to one based on more domestic consumption.
With these problems, many people think that only a coherent organisation like the CCP can actually guide China through this particular moment, and that you can’t overnight have a political movement or a party or even a whole system of organisation led by technocrats who can do that. The party is continuously reinventing itself, with more and more technocrats in positions of authority. If you look at the people who came into power with Ji Xingpeng and the kind of degrees that they have, there is a huge change from the leaders of previous generations.
I think one of the sources of the confidence in the CCP is that the experience of the Soviet Union’s implosion was a very traumatic one for many Chinese. I think the message they derived from the advent of Boris Yeltsin and the complete decimation of the Russian economy of the 1990s was that they cannot afford to have that kind of chaos disorder in China. The New Left argument is that if you have that kind of disorder and chaos then you will end up with more authoritarianism, much like Vladimir Putin coming in to restore order and basically becoming this despot and even less accountable than many of his predecessors. So that’s really the thinking, which is not to say that one endorses it, but I think it’s important to enter the particular experiences and subjectivity of these people, whether it’s the New Left or the liberals or the Maoists to understand where they are coming from, what is shaping their particular thinking, rather than simply insisting that they be democratic in the way you prescribe.
The Party is, of course, an essential pillar in the lives of the millions of Chinese living in the provinces, as well as their primary antagonists, with all the collateral damage of modernisation. Do you see potential for more confrontation between the two beyond simple protests against local authorities?
Obviously, the leaders are extremely aware that there is a huge problem with the image of the party right now. There are far too many corrupt party leaders, especially provincial party leaders, who have made massive fortunes. There is a very strong attempt now to curtail these folks and to crack down on some very highly placed leaders and officials. There is a great concern that the party has to be seen as the great protector of the Chinese people, a great provider of welfare, also a party that is clean and not corrupt, because if you don’t have elections, what is the source of legitimacy? Its source of legitimacy is the image that it is synonymous with the people and essentially protecting their interests, which means you can’t afford to be seen as completely disconnected. There are many examples around them; they have monitored every little revolution and uprising that has happened in the world in the past 10 to 15 years and learnt that an elite that looks disconnected, corrupt and simply repressive cannot last. This is really not the age of old-fashioned straightforward despotism. You have to do a lot more with keeping the people happy and on your side, and I think there is definitely a very defined awareness of all that within the Chinese leadership.
A Moveable Feast
For months together at the Tate Modern in London, one big room at the Project Space Gallery housed a multitude of sounds and voices, at once a harmony and a cacophony that enveloped any listener. This overlap of voices, of the spoken word and of song, formed the Tate Modern’s international art exhibition Word. Sound. Power. A collaboration with Khoj International Artists’ Association in New Delhi, the exhibition now travels to the city, to open at Khoj’s studios on 15 January. Though the core of the show – eight artists exploring voice, sound, poetry and the politics inherent in them – remains the same, in the hands of Khoj’s curator Andi-Asmita Rangari, a change in space will lend a new energy, a new dynamic and a new conversation.
“Why not explore the poetry in resistance,” asks Pooja Sood, director of Khoj, immediately picking on that one thread that brings the show together. She brings up Sufi poetry as an example of art as a form of resistance and subversion. Through the medium of film, of performance, of languages, the artists here explore poetry and how it gives a voice to all those on the margins of society.
A significant part of the show is about films becoming works of art. For Sood, it is an attempt to move away “from documentary to the installation” as she talks about video artist and filmmaker Amar Kanwar’s work A Night of Prophecy. The 2002 film, one of Kanwar’s masterpieces, travels across several conflict zones in India — Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Kashmir, Nagaland — to talk about violence, bloodshed and the fervour of change through music and poetry. A work such as this one shares gallery space with Anjali Monteiro and KP Jayasankar’s 2001 film, Saacha (The Loom), that features the poet Narayan Surve and the painter Sudhir Patwardhan, and uses their art to reflect on issues related to labour and industry in Mumbai’s textile industries.
Well known works aside, Sood’s words are echoed by Pallavi Paul, a young artist whose first two independent films Nayi Kheti and Shabdkosh got a dream debut at the Tate Modern. Paul’s non-fiction lends itself to an exploration of something that borders on fantasy. It is not just documentary, or documentation, as non-fiction is generally thought to be. In her words, “I put the non-fiction through the pressures of fantasy, through that terrain, to check its resilience.”
Her two films, which she has made to flow organically into one another, also feature the figure of the poet, in many forms. The dead poet Federico Garcia Lorca, the man who remembered him, Jack Spicer, and Vidrohi, a poet Paul interacted with at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University. All three have real and imagined conversations with each other, about poetry, about cinema, about everything. There is the anxiety of being remembered, of leaving behind an archive, an anxiety that surely must strike any artist. This is the conceit that makes for memorable pieces of art.
What one leaves behind depends heavily on language, and how that language is understood. In Mithu Sen’s work, the question of being marginalised by the English language is raised and she claims her space through I Am a Poet — her performance of reading out asemic writing. An established poet in Bangla, Sen has a deep engagement with the anxiety of language, of one’s art possibly being unacknowledged due to the language the audience speaks and understands. An issue that has been raised before by other contemporary Indian artists — most notably Paribartana Mohanty — who battle the dominance of English in the urban art world.
In mediums such as film and sound, the notion of space is important. With all senses being called upon by the work in hand, the curation can make or break a show. What happens at the Khoj’s studios remains to be seen, but the works do seem to be coming together strongly in an attempt to examine the politics of dissent, of poetry, and the long history the two share.
‘Our party is not capable of handling the kind of upsurge, the kind of flood, deluge, which we are faced with at this moment’
EDITED EXCERPTS FROM AN INTERVIEW
To what do you attribute this spectacular success of your political party, especially the fact that you did not have any politician in your ranks and it was truly an aam aadmi effort?
It is important to remember what this success is and what it is not. In numeric terms, we were merely the runner-up in Delhi. We had only 28 of 70 seats and just below 30 percent votes, which by itself is not spectacular. To be absolutely honest, our performance is a little lower than what I had expected, but what makes it spectacular is that it’s a moral victory and a political breakthrough. It is a moral victory because when people thought the right kind of things — white money, politics without caste-criminality- communalism — cannot win, AAP has succeeded. When people thought ordinary people have no chance in politics, AAP has succeeded. It is a political breakthrough, therefore, for a new kind of politics, for alternative politics.
What brought this about, above all, is the aspirations of the people. I wish to say emphatically that it is not a success of AAP as a political organisation. We were and we are a small organisation with fairly limited capacities, a limited number of persons — with very high spirits — but with little resources. The people in Delhi wanted a change. They did not want merely a substitute. They were looking for an alternative and we did a few things that brought us onto the radar. The people were looking for something and we managed to place ourselves in front of their eyes. They picked us up and they gave us this great opportunity. In a sense, we became instruments. In Sanskrit, there is a nice word, nimitta. We were just nimitta maatra (only a medium) of this change. We are not agents of this transformation.
You party is now very upbeat about its prospects at the Lok Sabha election. How much do you think your success in Delhi has prepared you for the plunge at the national level and how different would the national battle be from what you have experienced in Delhi?
The situation at the national level is in some ways the Delhi situation writ large, in the sense that the political opportunity is huge and our organisational capacity is truly very small and tiny. The political opportunity is big because ever since the results in Delhi came out, and especially after we formed the government, the response of the people has sort of bordered on the euphoric. There is a great upsurge from all quarters — Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, interiors of Odisha, villages in Haryana — everywhere there is this astonishing upsurge of interest, excitement and hope. After a very long time, there is hope being associated with politics.
At the same time, our organisational capacity is very inadequate in the face of this opportunity. Our organisation is bigger than what the media thinks it is. We created an organisational structure in 300 districts about a year ago, so we do have a presence. But I have no hesitation in admitting that our party organisation is not capable of handling the kind of upsurge, the kind of flood, deluge, which we are faced with at this moment, and, therefore, we are trying to increase our capacity.
Would the slogan of anti-corruption work as magically as it worked in Delhi or do you think you may need to target different issues — issues in addition to the issue of corruption — in order to get a majority or large numbers of the electorate on your side in different parts of the country, say, Bihar, Gujarat or the Northeast?
No doubt, every part of the country has its unique political situation, topography and political issues. Delhi itself was not purely a corruption issue; it was “corruption plus”. We foregrounded questions of water, electricity, women’s security, health and education. Similarly, for example, corruption itself takes very different forms in Haryana than in Delhi. The moment you go to Haryana, the question of agriculture and farmers’ conditions becomes a very prominent issue. The issue of corruption will undergo transformation from state to state and the “plus” element will change from state to state.
Arvind Kejriwal’s background as a social activist predates his emergence on the political battlefield. You and Prashant Bhushan have, in your own ways, been very connected with civil society and social activism all over India. A large number of activists are worried that the politics of the day, and the fact that you are trying to be an aggregator for the largest number of people possible, will necessarily force you to move to the centre if not to centre-right on many issues. It has been raised that AAP does not have a prescription for institutionalised discrimination, caste-based discrimination. How do you respond?
First of all, I want to emphasise that it is not just the three of us. If you look at other major figures associated with the party, Gopal Rai, Sanjay Singh… a large number of people in our national executive have all been associated with people’s movement in some way or the other. There is no doubt that when issues are raised by a single-issue movement, then they are raised with a certain sharpness because exclusive focus on one issue gives you a certain liberty by which you pose it. The moment you mediate two issues, whether by a political party or a multi-issue movement, they have to be moderated. And the principal task of politics is to mediate competing claims. So, I find nothing strange, odd or objectionable about it. Of course, the very task of politics is that it would need to talk about the interests of the farmers and, at the same time, the interests of the landless labour; of the producer and the consumer; of the working class as well as the industrialist. This is the task of politics and if it looks like a dilution, I would say that is precisely what democratic politics is all about. And why do you dilute? You dilute precisely because you would have a wider reach. A movement puts the issue sharply almost one-sidedly and reaches a very limited number. Democratic politics, mainstream party politics, raises it less sharply but reaches out to a much wider public and leaves a much deeper imprint on policy and politics.
Regardless of the results the Lok Sabha polls might throw up for you, how do you see AAP evolving as a party and as a political movement?
You have used the right expression. It is still a movement. We haven’t quite adjusted ourselves to becoming a party and no more. We are a movement and we continued to have a movement-like character even during elections, and we don’t want to straitjacket ourselves into a party party. The stages of the evolution of the party are: a greater clarity and greater consensus on some of the key policy issues; a question of training of volunteers based on the party’s ideologies, the party’s own convictions; the challenge of taking the party beyond Delhi and demonstrating that the party can be viable in a rural setting; and a challenge of creating a middle-rung leadership of a kind that is qualitative and different from the rest. So, at the moment, honestly, all I can see are challenges and challenges and challenges.
A lot has been written that there is too much anger in AAP. There is a question of tonality. There are accusations that people of AAP speak as if they know everything, they have great self-righteousness. Is there enough humility in AAP? Do you think you have all the answers already or you will find them as you go along?
When a movement comes to mainstream politics, it brings the energy and anger of the movement. Anger and energy are in some ways connected. I can very easily now step back and say, well, we shouldn’t have been harsh. I personally feel we shouldn’t have been harsh on a couple of occasions that we were. But then, am I sure that without that harshness, without that energy, we would have broken through the very high entry barrier of politics? So I don’t want to be hypocritical and take the easy way out because my own tone happens to be a more moderate tone. I can’t take benefit from that harshness and then run away from the consequences. Yes, we need to learn a lot. Especially now that we are in government, we have a lot to learn. A lack of experience is occasionally a strength, but by and large it is a challenge, it is a weakness, it is something where we need to learn more.
You talked about moderating different positions. But do you see any conflict between positions for the people’s movements, the dispossessed, and the middle-class agenda that necessarily has to be adopted and taken forward?
There is always some degree of conflict between the voices raised by two different sections of society. In the case of Adivasis and Dalits, there is a conflict between Adivasi issues and Dalit issues. There is a conflict between farmers and landless workers, there is a conflict between concerns of dispossessed rural Indians and the metropolitan middle classes. The task of politics is not to accentuate these differences; it’s to try and find a ground where these can be articulated in a way that it becomes a shared concern. I refuse to believe that middle-class Indians cannot think about rural India or middle-class Indians are not ashamed of poverty, that they do not want to live in a country where millions of Indians do not go hungry.
Why do you think the Left movements and parties have failed in this country?
It would be unfair to simply say they have failed. We don’t know what would happen to our movement a hundred years from now and history can be more cruel to us than it has been on others. So, it is very easy for a toddler to say that someone who is 70 years old has failed. My sense is that movements perform their own role at a given point in history. And very often, they stop being as energetic at some point. And then the baton has to be taken over by someone else. This is how history moves forward, when persons and movements become irrelevant. I really do not know how history will judge small people like us even 20 years from now.
ajit@tehelka.com
[Film Review] The Wolf of Wall Street
The thing that stands out in Martin Scorsese’s uproarious comedy The Wolf of Wall Street is the curious lack of victims or, for that matter, the very notion of victimhood. Which is strange, because if you look at the life and legacy of Jordan Belfort, it is very hard to ignore the 1,513 clients he defrauded. Belfort’s 2003 sentencing agreement requires him to pay back the $110.4 million he swindled from his clients by giving them half his future income. At last count, he had only paid a little less than a quarter of a million dollars (plus a further $10.4 million that was generated by selling off property he had already forfeited). With the extraordinary success of his two books and this film, which have netted him over $1.7 million in income, one hopes the victims see some more money, though the matter is still the subject of legal manoeuvring.
In Scorsese’s film, though, not one mention is made of these victims. It is a conscious decision. Not caring about the consequences of Belfort’s crimes is precisely the point of The Wolf of Wall Street, an attempt at capturing the excesses of greed. There is a shift in perspective that enables this; unlike Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby or Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, where the charismatic but deeply flawed antihero is seen from the perspectives of young, wide-eyed and eminently impressionable narrators, your guide to Belfort’s life is Belfort himself. Shorn of a Bud Fox or a Nick Carraway, there is little to cause the audience to stop and consider the morality of Belfort’s boiler room operations. There is little time either, with Scorsese and screenwriter Terence Winter taking you on a rollicking cocaine- and quaalude-fuelled orgy of excess that had me, at least, laughing much harder than I have in any recent Hollywood comedy, up to and including The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. But once you’re done laughing at him and his motley crew, what are you to make of them?
Not very much, sadly. It is unclear whether Scorsese is trying to use Belfort’s story as an archetype for the coked-up, ethically slippery and deeply materialist masters of the universe who ruled Wall Street in the 1980s; Belfort’s is, after all, an extreme case. The more likely characterisation is of Belfort as a working-class antihero climbing up the social ladder using non-kosher means. But there is little redemption for him in the film. He’s a prick to both his wives. He’s nice to his employees, yes, but only because he panders to their greed. He shows little contrition even after his downfall; the only concerns he has are for the loss of his lifestyle. These concerns are put to rest when he realises his wealth entitles him to a luxurious life even in prison. The final image is of him playing the most atrocious tennis with fellow inmates, juxtaposed with the visual of Patrick Denham (Chandler), the FBI agent who put him away, going home in a metro with fellow working stiffs. It’s a juxtaposition that would be familiar to those who’ve watched the relative fortunes of Steve Buscemi’s bootlegger Nucky Thompson and Michael Shannon’s prohibition agent Van Alden on Boardwalk Empire.
As a contrast to base an entire film on, however, it is rather weak. The Wolf of Wall Street is an entertaining film, with excellent performances and direction, but fails as either a satire or character study. For the latest addition to a genre that has the likes of American Psycho, Scorsese’s “companion film to Goodfellas” is disappointingly weak.
