THE STAGE: Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, London. The scene: A house packed to the rafters, cheering along with the actors in freezing rain. The play: Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. The twist: Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night in Hindi, as Piya Behrupia, with smatterings of Punjabi, Urdu and broken English.
The Company Theatre (TCT), a Mumbai-based theatre group, recently staged Piya Behrupiya in London as part of the World Shakespeare Festival. There were 37 plays from world over, such as a Swahili version of The Merry Wives of Windsor and Richard III in Mandarin. After shows in Mumbai and Delhi, the play will open the Rangshankara Festival in Bengaluru in October. Directed by Atul Kumar and translated by Amitosh Nagpal, it was commissioned by The Globe, as part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. “They were clear that it was to be a translation, not an adaptation,” says Kumar. Translation is what he, his cast and crew are calling it.
However, as the mannerisms and costumes echo Indian heartlands, one wonders how fine the line is between translation and adaptation. “We haven’t changed names. The place is still Illyria; the characters are Orsino, Viola and Olivia. But the language and the setting have to blend. Cesario becomes ‘Cejario’ and Andrew Aguecheek, played by a Bengali actor, is Andrew dada,” Kumar explains. It seemed to have worked for the crowd at the play’s Delhi opening. Cesario’s self-introduction to Olivia, “I am from very good family. But disturbed personally,” was accompanied by shouts of laughter and Olivia’s hilarious odeCejario left people in splits.
The stylistic influence is of nautanki plays, where a travelling troupe puts up heavily improvised song and dance shows, sans sets. Piya Behrupiya, too, has no sets. The Globe does not allow for those; something the crew has incorporated in their Indian shows. The acting and the music carry the play and the whistles in Kamani Auditorium stand testimony. The folk music is part self-composed, part songs from Punjab, Maharashtra and Bundelkhand. The highlight is the qawwali between Andrew dada and Sebastian (played by Nagpal) in which they hurl the basest of insults at each other to Sufi music. Gagan Dev Riar, the composer and the actor playing Sir Toby Belch, elaborates on the process. “We’ve taken music from different regions in India. We’ve changed lyrics to explain situations, and for some scenes we composed our own songs,” he says. “Once we started selecting, we got a fair idea of the sound we wanted.”
A two-and-a-half hour show with 18 songs must invite comparisons to Bollywood. “Of course, it did,” laughs Mantra Mugdh, who plays Andrew dada. “But then Bollywood owes everything to Shakespeare. This play, though, is very theatre-specific.” As Toby constantly breaks the fourth wall, calling for “audience interaction”, Sebastian in his rib-tickling sutradhar avatar tries to explain the plot, saying “Yeh daily soap nahin hai,Shakespeare hai Shakespeare”, Mugdh’s statement rings true.
Kumar calls his translator “an actor who writes”. Nagpal’s script carries off both the witty wordplay and sheer slapstick, that appeals differently to various audiences. “People in London laughed in different places than the Indian audience. We didn’t expect that. In fact, for one song everyone in The Globe raised their hands and swayed to the music. We felt like rockstars,” recalls Mugdh. TCT reminds us why Shakespeare lives on in every culture — these are stories of people, power, love and sex.
Aradhna Wal is a Sub-Editor with Tehelka.
aradhna@tehelka.com
The Bard Goes Local
New Wave Naga Chic
Forget Zara, wear Naga. Asa Kazingmei’s debut at the Lakmé Fashion Week blends the traditions of his people with hip sensibilities, says Aradhna Wal
Photo Courtesy: Lakmé Fashion Week Winter/Festive 2012
WHEN THE Lakmé Fashion Week (LFW) opened on 4 August, one set of designs stood out — striking red and black combinations, running motifs of diamonds and shawls and clean lines with bold architectural structures. The applause and the notice people took were an obvious testament to creator Asa Kazingmei’s talent. The 28-year-old marked his debut as part of the Gen Next Designers, who kicked off the 2012 Winter/Festive Edition of the LFW in Mumbai. The designer from Ukhrul, Manipur, has drawn on the customs of his people — the Tangkhul Naga tribe — to create his collection “Immortal”. “That is what impressed the panel that selected me for Gen Next,” he says. Over 250 aspiring designers applied from all over the world. Kazingmei was one of the seven chosen.
As a boy, Kazingmei stitched many of his own clothes. Growing up in Manipur in the 1990s meant that he was on the frontline of the Hallyu wave, which signified the meteoric popularity of South Korean music and entertainment. An avid watcher of Korean movies, his personal look — the stylised, streaked hair, zany jackets and trousers, the many scarves — is infused with a funky K-pop vibe. His designs, however, go close to the roots of his people. The traditional Tangkhul shawl raivat is made of handwoven textiles and a colour palette of black and red stripes. This is his basic storyboard. Building on that, he has created dresses with undulating hems and high collars. A vivid red weave overlaid on a basic black dress references the hand-woven nature of the material. Drapes have been reworked into broad pleats that carry zoomorphic imagery and traditional geometric patterns. The look comes across as edgy but stops short of being unrealistically futuristic. The clean cut renders it majestic. A non-fashionista would consider it cool.
“It’s very dramatic. He’s used traditional shawls and drapes to create a modern garment,” remarks fashion journalist Sathya Saran, who was on the advisory board of the LFW. She adds, “He is creating a western silhouette, because there is a market for that. Despite that, he is doing something different. This is not just another little black dress.” According to Saran, Nagas are a fashionable people, the best dressed in any gathering. Kazingmei has woven contemporary sartorial sensibilities and traditional gear with aplomb. He explains, “The motifs are a homage to the bravery of my tribe’s soldiers. And to the dignity of the people.” The shawl, which Kazingmei has spun into dresses, is traditionally worn only by the head of the house, or by the village headman. On the ramp, it is his cheerful salutation.
KAZINGMEI CAME to Mumbai in 2008 and joined the International Institute of Fashion Design for a year-long professional course. “I’ve been in the city for five years. Everyone has always supported me. And I’ll be able to push my business to a bigger scale. I am sure that in five years, I will establish my own brand,” he says. For now, he looks to popular upscale brands like Diesel for inspiration. “Right now, Renzo Rosso is my favourite designer. However, any designer associated with Diesel is my favourite most of the times.”
The dreams are big and he’s got stars in his eyes. However, Saran lines her praise with a warning. “He needs to get his marketing and production in place and he might go far. Most young designers fall into the same trap; they think they only need creativity,” she says. “If he avoids that, he could follow in the footsteps of Rahul Mishra, who debuted as a Gen Next designer and never looked back.” Creativity is not something Kazingmei lacks. High-heeled drama is a requisite on the ramp. However, if it can be scaled back, here are designs that could actually be part of one’s wardrobe.
Aradhna Wal is a Sub-Editor with Tehelka.
aradhna@tehelka.com
‘Mrs D’s red bangle is a reminder that I must believe in myself’
A series on true experiences
NON-CONFORMITY
YOUR CASUAL attitude towards life will land you in a mediocre college. You will remain a wasted genius forever.” In the past two years, I had heard this a zillion times from Mrs D, my history teacher and head of department of social sciences. I have often shrugged her comments aside, genuinely thinking of myself to be a misfit in my class.
I first met Mrs D when I was in Class X. Her looks (rather locks) had a stark resemblance to my grandmother’s. And though her small feet and oriental face (particularly the blood-red lips) had earned her the nickname ‘Manchu Princess’ among students, her raised and shapely eyebrows made me believe that she would have been a flawless beauty in her young age. Not surprisingly then, we discovered that Mrs D had a love marriage. I had been right all along. Mrs D was indeed beautiful. Beautiful enough to steal away an army officer.
In school, Mrs D had always been stern with her looks but jolly with her words. Her glare, when an incomplete notebook landed on her desk, could pierce a hole right through one’s head. Her biting anger had many a student burst into tears. Even then what she said was comic to every ear: “Incomplete work? Sit at home; grind masalas, mash potatoes and hatch eggs!” And you’d soon hear low but intense giggles from far corners of the classroom.
In January this year, we had our final pre-Boards. I got another 50 something in history, keeping in line with my entire year’s scores. Mrs D returned all the answer sheets dipped in red, writing elaborate notes so that everybody knew where exactly they had gone wrong. Mine, however, came back as it was — sheets of paper with big blue letters. I had fed Mrs D the most exciting legends (of course, not a part of syllabus!)
“Maybe she couldn’t care less,” I thought.
As soon as the answer sheets had been distributed, I was summoned to her chamber. I was all set to grind some more masalas, mash some more potatoes and hatch some more eggs, in her office. As it turned out, she was not in the mood for her ritual. I entered and grabbed a chair to sit right next to her.
“I think you take the concept of ‘wasted’ more seriously than ‘genius’, don’t you?” she remarked. I remained silent. “You must learn to walk by the lines, young lady, or else before you know, you might get sidetracked.” I had, by now, decided to avoid her gaze. “You have been a nasty kid,” a hint of smile was now playing along the edges of her lips, “but I would like to remember you as the first one who took up humanities. One who preferred to sit on the first bench in the row along the wall so that she could hold some support and doze off!” I burst into laughter, secretly marvelling at how she remembered the vivid details of my presence in the classroom. I was flattered, to say the least. Mrs D slowly removed a red bangle from her hand and slid it down my right wrist. “I believe in you and so must you,” she said. My lips fluttered in an attempt to say something, but paused before words could come out. So I chose to sit and cry instead.
Four months later, I met Mrs D at the class farewell. She came up to me and complimented me on the red saree that I had chosen to wear. I immediately lifted my right wrist, and said, “Couldn’t find anything better to match my bangle.”
That was the last I saw of her. Months later, I was awaiting my Class XII Board results with much trepidation. Looking at the red bangle during those days, Mrs D’s words echoed in my mind, “I believe in you, so must you.” On the 28 May, the results came out. I had secured 90 percent in history.
Aishwarya Gupta is 17. She is a student based in Delhi
Children of a lesser plot
In a thriving film industry, Gattu is one of a tiny minority of movies for young audiences. Aradhna Wal asks why
IN A country of 500 million children, a good children’s movie is rare. Here, children’s films are often corny morality tales (remember Jajantaram Mamantaram and Bhoot Unkle), turning off kids and their parents. Rajan Khosa’s Gattu breaks free of that formula. Clever and charming, Gattu is the first of 114 films produced by the Children’s Film Society of India (CFSI) to secure a commercial release, on 20 July. Adored by critics, it received a special mention at the 62nd Berlin Film Festival and awards at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles.
Set in Roorkee, it is the story of an illiterate nine-year-old orphan, Gattu, played with spunk by Samad Mohammad. He is a street-smart child, who works in his uncle’s scrapyard, but never an object of pity. A kite-flier extraordinaire, his greatest foe is not the neighbourhood bully, but a mysterious kite ‘Kaali’ that knocks every other kite out of the sky. To defeat it, Gattu has to access the highest roof — that of the nearby school. He cons his way into the classroom as a bona fide student.
Made on a budget of Rs 2.5 crore, Gattu follows in the footsteps of Stanley Ka Dabba and I Am Kalam — rare examples of mature children’s films that made it to the theatres. Director Rajan Khosa and former CFSI chairperson Nandita Das agree that despite a massive audience, filmmakers are defeated by a conservative market. “Distributors tell us that it’s a lovely film, with its heart in the right place, but without commercial value,” says Das, “We got lucky with Rajshri Productions who took on this movie.” Adds Khosa, “We go up against mainstream movies with huge budgets for publicity.” Theatre owners prefer to screen mainstream fare, even with the option of multiplexes. Parents eager to show their children Gattu told Das that Delhi theatres replaced it with other movies at the last minute. Das’ frustration is clear — how is word of mouth supposed to spread if no one can watch the film?
Khosa relates how the education ministry refused to help, stating that if they supported one film, they’d have to support others. “We need entertainment for children. They are growing up on an appetite of Rowdy Rathore and Dabangg,” says Das. Children’s films get relegated to festival films. A well-made movie appeals to the child in adults, a fact most movers and shakers in the marketing business forget. Stanley… director Amole Gupte echoes this. He, however, disagrees on there being a ready audience. “People don’t want to watch films that would inspire their kids. There needs to be a radical change in taste. I loved Gattu but it barely earned Rs 15 lakh in its first week. Kalam only made Rs 65 lakh. Stanley made around Rs 2.5 crore, but people knew me from Taare Zameen Par.”
Both filmmakers agreed on the necessity of such movies. “I use cinema to address children’s issues,” stresses Gupte. Khosa took his movie to small towns where kids told him that this was the first movie that was about them. “Street children are smarter than we give them credit for. If my child cannot respect my maid’s child, then there is something wrong.”
Aradhna Wal is a Sub-Editor with Tehelka.
aradhna@tehelka.com
Punk sans protest
Aradhna Wal watches pop-punk band The Vinyl Records play to a bored corporate crowd and wonders what happened to rebellion
Photo: Soumik Mukherjee
SHORT, AGGRESSIVE songs, unapologetic lyrics and a do-it-yourself ideology — punk can amp up crowds, making them go wild. Except in Gurgaon, at a posh brewery, in front of unreceptive corporates waiting for the house DJ to play Pitbull’s greatest hits. To its credit, The Vinyl Records, an all-girl Arunachali punk band, played on undeterred.
The band was formed in 2010, by lead guitarist Banu Jini, drummer Mithy Tatak and bassist Minam Tekseng. In 2011, vocalist and keytarist Cheyyrian Bark, from Assam, joined them. The four are from Delhi’s Arttree Institute of Performing Arts and Music and have been playing regularly on the city circuit. Excitable and perky, they cite influences such as CSS, Ramones, and The Strokes.
“We’re not strictly punk,” the girls say. “We’re post-punk, indie and new wave.”
Watching them belt out decidedly tame tunes, you wonder if punk’s ethos ever carried over to Indian musicians. “Indian bands basically think punk is Blink 182,” remarked a bemused, bespectacled spectator, one of the few paying attention to the music. “It’s not.” Neither is The Vinyl Records. It is pop-punk, known less flatteringly as bubblegum-punk.
“They are sweet girls and I’m fond of them. But they are very pop. Punk has been diluted to pop,” says Rishu Singh, founder of record label ennui.BOMB and manager of Mumbai-based post-punk band Blek, one of the girls’ favourites. “The message is no longer of a counter culture.” It’s hard not to agree, as lyrics like “don’t break my heart” evoke a latter-day Avril Lavigne rather than the Arctic Monkeys, who they claim to be influenced by.
“We’re trying to do the feminist thing. This is an all-girl band. So it’s about girl power,” says Minam chirpily, as Mithi seconds her with a double-fisted air punch. Cheyyrian looks on sternly, as if to corroborate the seriousness of a feminist message. But their enthusiasm doesn’t survive the journey from the stage to the seats.
Says Blek vocalist Rishi Bradoo, “Punk is an easy sound. Many bands inadvertently start with it, but they need to evolve. Indian bands have to understand the difference between a genre and the original style.” That is The Vinyl Records’ shortcoming.
“I saw them a year ago. They were good, but they needed work,” recalls Ashwin Sharma, from the Rolling Stone India. “That might be because of a lack of live gigs. Venues stick to better-known bands that play famous covers. Bands need to be onstage to get better. Confidence only comes with live gigs.” He adds that some highly talented punk bands couldn’t make it because of the struggle. “Lavender Carnage, from Delhi was good. But it disbanded. Supersonics, from Kolkata, has reunited. They have that punk sound.”
Excitable and perky, the girls are trying to do ‘the feminist thing’. But their music needs more than just enthusiasm
“There may not be a proper scene,” says Rishi, “but there are bands. The Riot Peddlers, from Mumbai, has tracks called Chai Paani andSau Rupiya. That is the sound and the ethos that goes with the genre.” Socially aware, The Riot Peddlers tries to galvanise people into taking action against corruption.
However, it is in a minority. “Few Indian musicians are trying to bring in the ’70s counter culture. That movement has happened. They may be musically similar to punk/post punk, but have nothing to do with, say, Sid Vicious” asserts Singh.
Despite a mediocre gig, The Vinyl Records has believers among Indian musicians. But to make it big their sound has to evolve beyond pale imitation. For girls to play shows to indifferent squares is punk. Now they need the tunes to back up the attitude.
Aradhna Wal is a Sub-Editor with Tehelka.
aradhna@tehelka.com
‘This is Arjun’s Coming of Age Story’
THE BIGGEST Indian animated feature, Arjun: The Warrior Prince, is set to be a summer blockbuster. Director Arnab Chaudhuri, 40, talks to Aradhna Wal about scaling animation for adults with a story every child knows.
EDITED EXCERPTS FROM AN INTERVIEW:
Tell us about the project.
It is a huge film. It took us three years to make it. Ronnie (Screwvala) approached me with the idea of a film on Arjun and I jumped at it. Common depictions of the Mahabharata are so formal. We’ve used the story to make a big martial arts spectacle. In that sense it’s quite a contemporary take. It’s not just a comedy for kids.
Why tag it ‘The Untold Story’?
It’s about the approach. People think of Arjun as a hero without flaws. But he was a man involved in a power struggle. Before that he was a boy who was a very talented marksman. There is a big difference between being able to hit the target and being a warrior leading an army into battle. We deal with his insecurity, doubt, his transformation and his coming of age. The same with the other Pandavas. What you read and what you see, they’re fine upstanding characters. That is boring. How do you create differences between them? Bhim and Yudhishthir bicker, like brothers would.
Did you use a particular Mahabharata text?
We used the definitive Pune edition of theMahabharata. Everything is said three or four times, so that’s a great start-off document. A huge influence was Irawati Karve’s Yuganta. She wrote about these characters in a very human way, sometimes in first person. You really get the personality she’s projecting.
What was your selection process from such a massive epic?
We changed our minds about Eklavya 10 times. It was hard to focus on Arjun in the dice game scene, because the lead is taken by Yudhishtir, Duryodhan and Shakuni. How do you create the dynamics without putting the protagonist in the background? But it’s an advantage that people have familiar reference points. You can establish back stories economically.
Explain the animation process and the technology.
For the dialogue, we worked with Ila Arun and KK Raina’s theatre troupe for two months in Mumbai. We performed the script like a play on a soundstage, and recorded it with three cameras. You get live dynamics in the audio texture. Voices sound different in different postures. Getting that was critical. We needed the intense rehearsals and time, and avoided a star cast. For the fight scenes, we engaged one martial arts troupe from Kerala and one from Manipur. We told them broadly how the fight would go, but let them at each other’s throats unrehearsed, and shot that. To shoot horses we went to Rajasthan to a stud farm and studied them galloping, racing and racing chariots. Arjun is based on the video referencing of 10 to 12 different people. The swayamvar scene was particularly hard; getting the correct body positions to fire an arrow under water. That’s my favourite scene.
Why is this new?
The technology has been around, but it’s not been done on this scale. The swayamvar scene has nearly 15,000 moving characters in the big crowd shots. That’s crazy and unprecedented.
What is the current state of India’s animation industry?
It’s growing. We started in the 1960s but stayed pretty plateaued for a while. Our television consumption of animation is huge. The entire kids’ genre is based on a voracious appetite. About 20 to 25 of them are Indian shows. Five years ago, there were three. Our studios and product quality are world class. The industry is poised for big moments. This is one of them. Here’s a big film, made entirely in India, done with conviction.
The animation looks gorgeous but distinctly old school.
We’ve consciously gone for a classical style of animation. But in that handmade environment we wanted to create camera work that moves like it would in the real world. This is an almost paperless movie. The characters are CG (computer graphics) characters; we’ve tool-shaded them to make them look hand-drawn. The backgrounds are hand-painted. We built the 3D mesh and then the finishing was done by these really great painters, pixel by pixel.
What’s the motivation?
I’m an animator, it’s what I’ve always wanted to do. I love handmade stuff, it’s gorgeous. I like making things look like a painting come to life.
Aradhna Wal is a Sub Editor with Tehelka.
aradhna@tehelka.com
‘X-rays are a sane and detached way to see people’
WHO Singh is a Delhi born and based mixed-media artist. He started his career as an art journalist, with a PG Diploma in Journalism from Asian College of Journalism. He has exhibited at the 2009 Indian Art Summit, the India-Australia show at Art Konsult, New Delhi, and the Aakriti Art Gallery in Kolkata.
Why do you use X-rays as installations?
I was a sickly child who made a lot of trips to the hospital. The image of X-rays stayed with me. It lets me explore what lies beyond surfaces. It’s not macabre, but a sane and detached way of seeing people. There’s a lot of beauty there. I can do so much with the texture, and the play of light and darkness. A work of art is not an end product; it has a back-story that extends into the cosmos. With X-rays, I can engage with the story.
Your vision for X-rays ?
I want to go bigger with my installations. Right now, they are indoors, lit artificially. I want to set them up in natural lighting. I want them to be a public engagement.
Why switch from journalism to art?
Covering the art beat, I was exposed to a lot of art and artists. What we call the back of the book can address our journalistic concerns better as it takes an abstract view and includes everything in a layered manner. Gradually I grew disillusioned by normal standards of journalism. I was growing as a person and found news cycles confining. I began to express that through art.
How much of your journalism do you put in art?
My work is more informed by my knowledge. I did this installation in Australia called The Black Tide. I wanted to combine the imagery of a coastal Australia that celebrates surfing, with its racist past and the genocide of the aboriginals. I’d read so much about the racial violence that I could pick on these themes. My journalistic training betters what I create.
What do you think about art writing in India?
There are various audiences. One, which is interested in the business. Another, which cares about the aesthetic value. A third, that functions as a social registry following the who’s who. I’m interested in reading those who track new trends, practices and lesser-known artists. But such writings happen on too small a scale. Art writing will improve once people look at art not just as a decorative product but a way of seeing the world. Good art has to change perceptions.
Aradhna Wal is a Sub Editor with Tehelka.
aradhna@tehelka.com
‘I Write So That Americans Cook More Indian Food’
What is the Indian palate?
There is a French theory that says, the programming of the palate begins from the first time you eat something. It also develops based on smells. Your palate evolves according to your home. Americans have trouble smelling heeng, yet we grew up with it. But there cannot be one Indian palate. There are 1.2 billion Indians, all with different tastes. In a family, do all brothers and sisters like the same food? I love karela, but my brother will kill someone if they put karela in his food.
How do you reinvent a samosa?
I wrote my book for Americans. I thought, what do I do to make them cook more Indian food? To reinvent the samosa I bought puff pastry, put stuffing, put leftovers inside, wrapped it up and baked it, rather than frying it.
What compromises do you make for customers?
I don’t serve beef, pork, or any endangered species in my restaurant, even if the customers want it. I don’t want my mother to think that I’ve sold out. Who am I to disrespect a whole culture? There are other meats, like cuts of lamb and so many interesting fish. I’d rather work with those.
How much of your grandmother’s Punjabi cooking do you go by today?
I don’t cook a lot of Punjabi food. It is very common in America. But the basic understanding and appreciation of food comes from my grandmother. She taught me that food had the power to heal, and that it brought people together. Indian grandmothers, grandparents in fact, teach us more about our culture than our parents. That is what I bring across for my American customers every time I cook.
Strangest dish you’ve ever had?
I had a special carrot cake in Singapore, that tastes nothing like carrot cake. It’s all squishy and jelly like. It was good but definitely weird.
What goes into the making of a chef?
A great chef is one who understands the three Ts: temperature, technique and timing.
Aradhna Wal
The Case of the Missing Detective
Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple imprinted our imagination, but where is their literary heir? Aradhna Wal tracks the clues to the great Indian sleuth
THE STORY began with Enid Blyton’s defining detectives. Young Indian readers could choose their own adventure identities — intrepid like George or canny like Fatty? With adolescence, we split along the gender lines of Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys. As mysteries graduated to murder, Agatha Christie’s characters became the lens to nascent worldviews. Is human nature the same everywhere, as Miss Marple said? Or is truth revealed through order and method, as per Poirot? Each series embodied a place and a personality so familiar, it subsumed the foreign. Sure, there are other major flags on our mystery map but none are homespun.
Local suspects have presented themselves for cross-examination. Kalpana Swaminathan released I Never Knew It Was You in mid-March, the fourth in her detective Lalli series. Malaysian-born Shamini Flint’s Inspector Singh, after touring South Asia, has arrived in India with Inspector Singh Investigates: A Curious Indian Cadaver. British writer-journalist Tarquin Hall’s Delhi-based Punjabi detective Vish Puri has solved The Case of The Deadly Butter Chicken, but Indian readers will have to wait for the resolution till July. Since 2004, when Stieg Larsson gave us a specifically Swedish Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander, the dysfunctional duo who dealt not with individual crime but deep-rooted corruptions and bigotry, major Indian publishing houses have been hot on the trail of a detective. Not the shadowy figure in a trench coat but one entrenched in an Indian landscape.
For those who write in English, is the existing canon overwhelming? Writer Madhulika Liddle and publishing consultant Jaya Bhattacharji Rose say the burden of the tradition of detective fiction can be onerous. “At some point, readers and writers will be looking over their shoulder and comparing themselves to international names,” says Rose. Ashok Banker, one of the first Indian crime fiction novelists in English, is a bit miffed about what he considers an import. “The detective figure is a largely Western concept; a myth of supremacy featuring a white male figure, superior in strength and intellect to those around him, who will save the world or the day. A tradition inherited by the Americans from the British.” Of course, the American Edgar Allan Poe preceded Doyle and Georges Simenon’s very French Commissaire Maigret was possibly the most popular. Zac O’Yeah’s recent Once Upon a Time in Scandinavistan has the empire fighting back as Public Intelligence Officer Herman Barsk roams a futuristic Scandinavia colonised by India.
India’s own multiplicity of rich regional literary traditions have churned up plenty a popular sleuth, reaching possibly as far back as Birbal. Wily, intuitive, propelled by the self-interest of a Hindu holding a political position at a Muslim court, his tales are amusing adages accompanied by a lesson in logic. In the 1950s, Asrar Ahmad, aka Ibn-e-Safi, published a 125-book series called Jasoosi Duniya in Urdu, starring Colonel Faridi and Captain Hameed. Some of the books were adapted from English novels such as Victor Gunn’s Ironsides’ Lone Hand. However, plots and the characters were largely original. His globetrotting crime fighters took a steadily growing readership on adventures all over Europe, Africa and the US. Satyajit Ray’s Feluda first appeared in 1965 and quickly became one of the most popular detectives in Bengal and India. Based on the Holmes-ian model, he was the embodiment of the witty eloquent Bengali intellectual, who uses his ‘magajastra’ (brain-weapon) to best his foes. Pattukottai Prabhakar’s couple Bharat and Susheela have entertained Tamil readers since the ’80s with antics at their detective firm, Moonlight Agencies.
India has many regional traditions, producing fictional sleuths in Bangla, Urdu, Tamil, etc
Vernacular detective fiction is still relatively well read. The evidence is in plain sight at bookstalls in any given railway station: alongside lurid crime and detective magazines, there’s a reasonable selection of Surender Mohan Pathak, the 73-year-old Hindi pulp fiction author, Diamond and Tulsi paperbacks hearkening to a pre-TV age, and rows of lesser known titles with book jackets reminiscent of prurient James Hadley Chase covers. Still, the general consensus is that Feluda was India’s last great detective. His stories, of course, were written in Bangla, not English.
Anurag Basnet, former editor with Penguin India, is irked by constant comparisons to the West. “Readers are intelligent enough to know that when they pick up a book set in Mumbai or Delhi, the story will revolve around local people and mannerisms,” he says. He calls Penguin author Swaminathan, “one of the first Indian writers to come up with a credible detective recently”. Though comparisons between her 63-year-old Mumbai policewoman Lalli and Alexander McCall Smith’s Mma Ramotswe, of the bestselling No.1 Ladies Detective Agency are tough to dodge, Lalli’s gender and age as she trudges Mumbai streets and has run-ins with the underworld, do give her an edge. However, numbers tell a different story. Hachette publishers say that while their international detective fiction titles sell 50,000 copies in a single edition, Indian counterparts sell a tenth of that in total. If the shadowy silhouette hasn’t yet taken on a robust form, O’Yeah says it’s because this is a “necessary phase to go through before somebody takes up the challenge and creates the greatest Indian fictional detective ever.”
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Other challenges are inherent. “The genre rests largely on the shoulders of the central character,” says Basnet. “Even with a tight plot, if the detective figure is not entertaining or credible enough to sustain the book and at least two sequels, then publishers will not be interested. After all, detective novels do not function as standalones.”
INDIA’S LARGER literary landscape has a part to play, though it may be that of red herring. Banker says Indian readers are largely “snobs”. When he started out in the early ’90s, he had trouble finding a publisher simply because he wrote crime fiction. “Why don’t the characters come out of their drawing rooms onto the streets? The stories to be told are all waiting there,” he says. This street-level engagement can, in fact, be substantiated. Late British author HRF Keating, who created Inspector Ghote 10 years before stepping foot in India, would have had trouble finding a publisher too. Tarquin Hall had to cross the Wagah Border from Delhi by land, because his detective Vish Puri is afraid of flying.
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A credible detective figure must sustain the book and at least two sequels to interest publishers |
“There has been a marked growth in the genre and also an increase in the number of women writers in the past few years,” says Vaishali Mathur, Penguin’s head of commercial fiction, “FIR, by Monabi Mitra, set in the seedy crime world of Kolkata, is forthcoming.” Penguin says a first print run of 10,000 in the detective fiction genre sells out within a month. Contextualising the crime is not just the detective’s but a publisher’s business too. “How the writer works in the world around them is challenging. And a genre like detective fiction in the Indian context would mean the writer should factor in for the kind of manipulation possible in the system,” says Karthika VK, editor-in-chief and Publisher of HarperCollins India. While Holmes had the fatuous Inspector Lestrade and Poirot the able if unimaginative Superintendent Spence, Indian detectives are likely to look for loopholes around the police.
Author Jerry Pinto says, “(Detective fiction) must either be a magnificent puzzle or a literary work” but most magnificent puzzles now come assembled in the box. The advent of technology and forensic sciences that made Holmes compelling, have since eviscerated all traces of mystery. Indelible digital and biological trails to be scanned and read by precise forensic tools are in the public domain, pushing out the private eye.
A credible detective figure must sustain the book and at least two sequels to interest publishers
Other challenges are inherent. “The genre rests largely on the shoulders of the central character,” says Basnet. “Even with a tight plot, if the detective figure is not entertaining or credible enough to sustain the book and at least two sequels, then publishers will not be interested. After all, detective novels do not function as standalones.”
INDIA’S LARGER literary landscape has a part to play, though it may be that of red herring. Banker says Indian readers are largely “snobs”. When he started out in the early ’90s, he had trouble finding a publisher simply because he wrote crime fiction. “Why don’t the characters come out of their drawing rooms onto the streets? The stories to be told are all waiting there,” he says. This street-level engagement can, in fact, be substantiated. Late British author HRF Keating, who created Inspector Ghote 10 years before stepping foot in India, would have had trouble finding a publisher too. Tarquin Hall had to cross the Wagah Border from Delhi by land, because his detective Vish Puri is afraid of flying.
Says Nandita Aggarwal, publishing director, Hachette India, “That the genre is becoming popular is not statistically gaugeable but one can sense a certain interest in the market. There are more authors writing. Last year, we published five books in the series as opposed to none before. It is not a paradigm shift. But the market is exploring the genre.” Even an intuitive breakthrough requires a critical mass of data points. Clues have been examined, witnesses questioned, and the evidence sifted. Now to turn the page for a final denouement.
With inputs from Janani Ganesan
Aradhna Wal is a Sub-Editor with Tehelka.
aradhna@tehelka.com
‘Anyone telling girls to be ladylike in this age needs a smack’
WHO: Daughter of an air force pilot, stand-up comedian Radhika Vaz was born in Mumbai and moved to New York in 2001. She created and performs her one-woman comedy routine Unladylike: The Pitfalls of Propriety.
How did you get to be a stand-up comedian?
It probably came from being surrounded by people who had a good sense of humour about themselves and life, and who appreciated a good joke. And so, to get their attention I had to be funny too.
What do you think of the term ‘lady’?
It’s just old-fashioned and silly. Anyone telling their daughters to be ‘ladylike’ in this age needs a smack.
Is your audience mostly men or women?
Definitely more women. I do get a lot of guys from time to time. Guys dragged there by their women!
How do men react to you off the stage?
The smart ones get it. Others think I shouldn’t be “so over-the-top”. Hey, not everyone is going to love me, right?!
What are you like off the stage?
A wound-up, high-strung, naggy old cow. Recently I bought two books by Osho. I’m hoping they’ll teach me to calm the f**k down.
Where do you get the material for Unladylike?
From my life. I have a piece about my delayed puberty. I was probably the last girl in my dorm to get her period or wear a bra (or it felt like I was). It made me wonder if I was a proper woman in the first place.
It’s easier for men to embarrass themselves for a laugh. Women are supposed to be ‘dignified’.
Absolutely! I address this in my show too. We are expected to be ‘ladies’! Dignified, pretty, perfumed, all our dirt hidden behind a veil. I got beyond that because I was raised by two people who clearly thought ‘dignified behaviour’ was overrated! They never made me feel that as a girl I had to speak or act a certain way. I was a spoilt little sh*t, running about, shooting my mouth off.
Where do you find a better or easier audience? New York or Mumbai?
I can’t choose — it’s like picking a favourite child. Both cities have similar vibes and people.
Aradhna Wal is a Sub-Editor with Tehelka.
aradhna@tehelka.com
