"Last man in Tower": The uncomfortable warmth.

The post-colonial period seems to be taking a different turn altogether, Arvind Adiga raises questions pertaining to the relevance of an ‘eternal victim’ that makes its appearance in many third World novels today. I can’t say who started this, whether it was Dorris Lessing with her The Grass is Singing or even earlier Salman Rushdie with the Midnight’s Children. Who cares if things do not change and they keep on providing raw material to any literary work positioning against Edward Said’s Orientalism; he probably saw it better later: Nobody exploits (both figuratively and idiomatically) Orient better than Orient does it itself. Arvind Adiga, as a conscious writer is aware of two debates, one that the Orient is always painted black in Western imagination- just heard it recently in a seminar. And, the Orient is the neo-Imperial (not an adjective, but a complete noun). Mittal Steel was all about European Protectionism, but that’s what “Khadi Andolan” was about. They don’t teach us that in schools, over there they just teach us Adam Smith and Keynes. To which School did Adiga go? Looking at the way he sums up things, I am sure that he must have learnt it all by himself: the truth. With the fictional touch of exaggeration though; but why can’t a cynic and a clairvoyant prophesize doomsday? After all, that’s what how he ended his The White Tiger.

The evil is right here, knocking at the door, touching the epitome of modernity first, contrasting it with the anachronisms like segregation; isolation; attack on individualism. The novel starts as a warning bell: not that it has such an ornamental beginning, but the credentials of the author are such: he is a cynic and so are we… We read him because we know that he is giving expressions to our sentiments, and we are also aware of the fact that we won’t be good at that. A middle class Mumbai society, with all lower and middle class values: La Malaise indienne, as famously put by one of my teachers: family; responsibility; children; parents; rituals; festivals; anachronic ideologies, and opposed to it, a Masterji. A nerd, a misfit in any society, it’s pretty obvious that he would have been a misfit in any society/community. People like him are less a nonchalant object meant as fixtures and are more like ideas that keep on flowing, they tend to define their own positivism and yet remain attached to the cause of Universal good.

This man doesn’t want to vacate the apartment that represents for him the souvenirs of his wife and daughter. He is also the last man standing between the windfall and his neighbors residing the same apartment tower (sic.). A Guajarati builder had offered them “Rs.20000/square foot” for their dilapidated building that might anyways fall anytime. This Masterji won’t let a Punjabi Puri, a Sindhi Ajwani, a Christian Communist Rego, a Muslim Ibby to claim a stake on what they ‘deserve’ for having toiled for such a long time in pre and post Mumbai-Bombay or Bombay-Mumbai. The human greed metamorphosed into fantasy and then need is the lesser part of this novel than the human nature. Emile Zola made this trend ostensible in France, in one of his novels, Germinal, on an experimental basis by putting one of his characters, Etienne, in a situation detrimental to the mine laborers. What did he expect Etienne to do? Compromise or vanish, the character being more sure of himself rebelled. It caused destruction. Adiga’s Etienne rebels too, but doesn’t have a similar fate.

This inter-textuality demands just more than a superficial comparison. A century has elapsed, the contexts are not similar and yet there is this experimentation with the human nature. In the Indian context, it all begins with essentialism. A favorite among many writers, essentialism has provided the backbone for many social novels, the Maximum city by Suketu Mehta was another example in this context. Mumbai as they say a Melting pot is not going to be the one as it was never one; nothing melts there, except Gold perhaps. Coincidentally, it’s the money and not any other common cause that unites these Guajarati; Sindhi; Punjabi; UPwallah; Bihari; Bengali Mumbaikars. The essentialism comes from within these communities and does not flow from the pens of these authors. Representation is what Adiga and Mehta stick to. Moreover, this generation of authors like Adiga, Mehta and Gautam Malkani- the last one of the trio had recently produced a Time Bomb, titled, Londonstani, provide hope to us that everything is not lost and stagnated at Gayatri Spevak and Said. The understanding of each situation needs a heterogeneous approach; their characters are not united by a sense of community, but with the sense of situation (Julia Kristeva invisibly present). Zola’s naturalism was perhaps a step in this direction, but it is bringing a lot of objective understanding to different contexts- all dissimilar. The Orient is a neo-imperial too, if not the only neo-imperial.

Last Man in tower is authentic in approach, if not in the theme and characterization. We were anyways not expecting any surprises from this writer of social novels. The pricing was harsh on Indian readership, one thing that Chetan Bhagat types have taught us is the pricing technique. No one expects Adiga, Malkani and Mehta to be sold at less than “Rs.100”. This honor best remains with Bhagat and his ilk. They deserve it. But how do publishers plan to make these other books more widely read with such a price tag? India might not yet be ready for an exclusive hard-bound release, take a lesson from The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai, it did pretty well thanks to its soft-bound copies.

"Delhi Belly": Victory of Omega male.

Part Snatch, part The Big Lebowski , Delhi Belly relies on the good old formula of success: a Firangi plot and Aamir Khan in credits. Dragging an omega male, rather three of them- to the edge of desperation; traditionally known as “Loosers” in femino-feminist jargons, play main protagonist here. A clichéd Software Engineer, ‘Kanaida’ return; a dumbo-jumbo all-rounder lady Rajnikant (singing I love you (because I hate you) - again a stereotype of many potential Stars, Page 3 types; a bride-to-be stunning peanut-brain, all are part of the decorum. Tashi, played by Imran Khan, is the breakaway from a traditional Alpha male meant to subjugate everything around.

The uniqueness of the film resides in the fact that it’s Delhi seen through Mumbai prism. Geographical eponyms hardly make any difference to the screenplay. Mayank Shekhar aptly puts in his Saturday Hindustan Times review that this story could have taken place anywhere. It would be more appropriate to carry that baggage of a Mumbaikar Lens that has conceived many a beauties like Satya, Parinda and more recently Shor in the City. Novelty is damned or is sacrificed et the altar of such a resembling landscapes: Delhi-Mumbai. If yours sincerely is wrong, then let him wonder where does one find such a nice landlords (house owner in Delhi jargon), and three better-off-than-average professionals living in such dingy quarters? Mumbai lens is still suffering with the representation of a struggler’s image in the pop cinema.

The major positive aspect is the evolution of the Indian Cinema, as many would also like to make us believe- and then its acceptance by every Tom, D and H in Delhi: be it one of my moralist-vegetarian friend or a Literati down the South. One of the potent aspects of this evolution is the dumping of pre-marital sex taboo, same as ‘love only happens one’ taboo. Shekhar unjustly calls it a sex comedy. No, don’t give it the credit where it is not due. It’s a satire on a city, unlike many movies touching the human chord, this one reflects the lethargy of a city through many characters chosen randomly: a policeman, a wife-fearing baniya (Jain for surname), a Punjabi Delhi wife-beating brat, a ‘loose character’ photographer (term not borrowed from the film): he is also incidentally the most fascinating character. Yet, the problem with the film is that it fails to hurt anywhere, something unique in its genre.

Not to be ignored the Romantic aspect of the movie: realism in love. Triangles are just enlarged in order to accommodate all sentiments: hatred, jealousy, lust….The film might simply have been dubbed as a male-film à la Michel Mann and Pyar Kya Punchnama (Worth a watch too) had there been no girls like that Times of India journalist portraying more than a liberated woman à la Tarantino and Rodriguez.

Many people, it seems, are in a moral dilemma to watch or not to watch the movie because of its generosity with the amount of abuses. Aamir Khan, and previously Salman Rusdie too, have made similar voices concerning the “sentiments” concern: “there is no need to get offended by a book, just close it” said Rushdie somewhere. Aamir Khan echoes him in today’s Newspaper insinuating that one can always not watch this movie if feeling offended by the volume of abuses. These very abuses are not only meant to enhance the vulgarity quotient but form too a part of décor, as puts Suketu Mehta in his Maximum City: The abuses are “…punctuations , or emphasis, as innocuous a word as ‘shit’ or ‘damn’…”.

Leftism is not spelt CPM.

Monday, May 16, 2011.

We are a nation of preconceived ideas that remain rigid to the end and also refuse to come out of the garb of time. Evolution thus is a painful process that sometimes doesn’t even take place. A recent example could be cited as the defeat of CPM (the Bhadralok Empire) in the hands of Trinmooll Congress, an ally of the Centrist party, Congress. This defeat is termed as a major blow to the Left. The idea being CPM was a Leftist party. India always being a bit more towards Centre, the Nehru-Gandhi (Indira, Rajiv etc…) nexus, we seem to have forgotten the etymology of the word Leftist:

“The terms Left and Right were coined during the French Revolution, referring to the seating arrangement in the Estates General; those who sat on the left generally supported the radical changes of the revolution, including the creation of a republic and secularization.” (Andrew Knapp and Vincent Wright (2006), The Government and Politics of France, Routledge.)

This notions brings us to a more comprehensive and global meaning of Leftism, it does not only pertain to a certain ideology opposing the government of the day, but it also stems from the fact that all those who believe in social equality, freedom of speech, access to human rights fall in the purview of Leftism. In other words, CPM’s defeat is not the defeat of Left. As a matter of fact, as long as there is, on the one hand, oppression, inequality and, on the other hand, people to fight against it, Leftism cannot be defeated. Mamta Banerjee, thanks to her proletarian postures during the Tata Nano fiasco, emerged as more Leftist than the archetypical Left itself.

West Bengal needed a politico-social metamorphose. The 34 years rule by CPM doesn’t necessarily translate into the failure of the Left; it’s the CPM that failed, eventually leading the State to share its fate with the BIMAROU states. West Bengal has faced a brain drain within the country itself. This irony must have been able to stare at the face of the voter, who had voted out the anachronism. Thanks to the apathy of the ousted government; the State was made to survive the clutches of misery albeit its preponderance in the domain of intellect: two Nobel awards and a few excellent writers.

The 150^th anniversary of a thinker, poet, realist, Rabindrath Tagore coincides with the ouster of a party that might have been the first choice of people 34 years ago, yet it stands routed at its fort today. The symbolic moment also clears the path to a vision of Bengal; the visionary Tagore must have had in the beginning of the 20^th century. On this anniversary one can take a resolution to never allow Leftism to be defeated. In many developed societies, it has also transformed into Socialism. By letting defeat the Left, we might fall in the trap of protecting an autocratic and totalitarian system. As Indrajit Hajra writes in his Sunday 15 May article: “Martin Luther was as serious a Christian as the Pope in Rome. But it was the latter, bloated and ossified and corrupt that he protested against. Mamata Banerjee, in a similar sense, wants to protect the Left and its abandoned flock. Her war was always against the church of the CPI(M)”.