I have just begun reading Part III of Mo Yan’s “Life and Death are wearing me out”  (a little over one third of the book) and have mixed feelings about it. What works for me is the narrative of post- revolutionary China, particularly about the Cultural Revolution. What also works are the different points of view, a robust sense of humour amidst a tumultus period of China’s post- Revolution history and a literary flourish that make the book a page turner.

What doesn’t seem to be working is the quirkiness of the narrative, tangential diversions and exaggeration- much in the style of Garcia Marquez in “One Hundred Years of Solitude” which I liked the first time I read “One Hundred…” but found it irritating while reading the second time.

Mo Yan’s style also contrasts with another book that I happened to be reading alongside- “Everything Flows” by Vasili Grossman.

The collectivization of the peasantry, among other changes in the post Revolutionary Soviet Union up to Stalin’s death are very similar to those in China in the 1950s and 60s. Yet, the contrast between the two writers could not be more striking- Mo Yan is verbose and humourous while Grossman has used tight prose and is uniformly serious, digressing into long soliloquies on Lenin, Stalin and a grand sweep on Russia’s thousand years of history. It was refreshing to read a simply written, straightforward novella that is no less – if not more, engaging than “Life and Death…”. I finished the 200 page “Everything Flows” in a couple of weeks, much moved by its sparse but surgically precise prose.

I continue to plough through “Life and Death are wearing me out”, and if I am not worn out by the time it is finished, will post a longer review.

It says much about today’s China when Mo Yan explains why he decided to become a writer. He was once told by a student sent to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution that writers make a lot of money, so he decided to put his gift of the gab to a profitable use. That is how Mo Yan became one of China’s most loved living writer.

The collection of stories in the book under review, Shifu, You’ll Do Anything For a Laugh, contains 7 of the writer’s stories written over several decades.

The title story is about Ding Shikou, a worker who has been fired from his job just a week before his retirement. In the new capitalist China where making money by hook or crook is as acceptable as for a worker to be laid off close to retirement, Ding Shikou finds opportunites to make money in an abandoned bus  hidden among the vegetation near a beach resort. Observing that young couples often do not have enough privacy at the beach, he starts to rent out the bus after furnishing it with a bed and providing cold drinks to couples- young and not so young. Soon, he has a roaring business. Towards the end of the story, his conscience comes back to gnaw at him. This is by far the best story in the collection, marked by touches of magical realism.

The second story “Man and Beast” is about the narrator’s grandfather who had been left behind on a Japanese island and where he hid for a number of years after the war ended. Living almost like the beasts with whom he shared he the forests, he one day chances upon a Japanese woman and rapes her, justifying the act as a retribution for the rapes of Chinese women by the invading Japanese soldiers in a veiled reference to the rape of Nanking. The irony of the tales that nations and people tell themselves comes out well at the end of the story:

Granddad never actually had intercourse with that woman, so the furry baby described in Japanese historical materials, that the one she eventually bore, is not related to him. But even having a young uncle who is half Japanese and has a body covered with hair would be no disgrace to our family, and could, in fact be considered our glory. One must honour the truth”

“Soaring” is about a young girl who cannot escape a marriage that she has been forced into at the behest of her mother. This is another touching story though somewhat marred by the use of fable narrative.

In “Iron Child” a young boy growing up in the years of the Cultural Revolution is so driven by persistent hunger that he begins to eat iron. The story is inspired by Mo Yan’s own experiences during those years.

“The Cure” is about a bizarre cure that the village doctor prescribes for the failing eyes of the narrator’s aged mother- the gall bladder of a human being. A cannibalistic tale, it brings out the horror of the years of the Cultural Revolution like the previous story “Iron Child”.

“Love Story “ is a about a young urban girl sent to the village during the Cultural Revolution, where she falls in love with a younger local boy who is just experiencing the onset of adolescent love and physical desire.

“Shen Garden” is the story about a man who has forgotten about his former love. When the woman, whom he had met in a small town a long time ago, visits him and tries to rekindle their love. She finds that the man, who is apparently now doing well for himself in Beijing, no longer reciprocates her feelings. Mo Yan sums up the story in his preface in the following manner:

I want to show here is how a middle aged man turns his back on the love of an earlier time and eventually compromises with reality. In today’s society, many Chinese men who have achieved success, even fame, live hypocritical lives. Deep down, there is little more than a pile of ruins.

“Abandoned Child” is about a baby girl child who has been abandoned and is rescued by the narrator. The story recounts the reactions of the narrator’s family to his bringing home an orphan girl- everyone else wishes that it had been a boy instead. The apathy extends to the local officials when the narrator tries to get the authorities take the baby to a state institution. There is a propagandist twist to the story at the end, which makes the story somewhat weak.

Like the early Soviet writers like Andrei Platonov and Mikhail Bulgakov, among others, Mo Yan uses satire, wit and elements of what has come to be called “magical realism” to chronicle the life of ordinary men and women in post- Revolution China. Ironically, communist countries that upheld social realism as the highest form of aesthetic expression find their best writers turning to surrealism to write about life of ordinary people in those countries.

It is tempting to see Mo Yan as something of a cross between Maxim Gorky and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Even more tempting is to compare him with Andrey Platonov, except that while Platonov died working as a window cleaner during Stalin’s regime, Mo Yan is evidently doing well as a prized possession of the Communist Party of China.

Mo Yan’s  talkative nature pointed to by his mother, overflows into his writing. His prose is marked by its free flowing alacrity and a gifted imagination. Not having as yet read a complete novel by him, I can’t comment on whether his writing is consistently great, but this collection is certainly a wonderful introduction to the latest Nobel Laureate in Literature, the first ever for a Chinese writer.

But first, here is the small list of the books I read, or attempted to read this year:

The Walk by Robert Walser: Though barely 90 short pages long in a pocket sized edition  I haven’t reached the halfway mark yet. The style is familiar, and though it isn’t as tepid as The Robber that I read last year, it is yet to give the same feel The Assistant with its exquisite prose.

The Dream of the Celt by Llosa, Mario Vargas. This book makes it to the maiden review at this blog  in 2012 though I must add that it is because of the blogger’s devotion to Mario Vargas Llosa rather than the quality of the book.

Fima is the name of an eccentric character in Israel’s most famous writer Amos Oz’s novel by the same name Fima. The character is representative of a generation of liberal minded Israeli intellectuals who are unable to act and put their non- Zionist vision for the militarized country. The novel is not without its literary merits but is exhausting for the reader as one follows the twists and turns in Fima’s life. After a while, just the literary momentum is unable to sustain interest. I would be still looking out to read another work by the same author.

The Apple in the Dark by Clarice Lispector: Having heard so much about Brazil’s Ukranian- born woman novelist Clarice Lispector, this work was a disappointment. An existential foray, I have been stuck at page 99 forever. Some existentialist predicament, I hope, and not lethargy is preventing me from moving forward.

I hate to give a poor rating to anything by McLeod, who has made a rich and lifelong contribution to the study of Sikh religion. However, Guru Nanak and the Sikh Religion by WH McLeod is disappointing. The style is archaic and overly academic to the point of being unreadable. The reason is that it is practically a rehash of the author’s PhD thesis in 1968. Much more information and analysis has been done on the subject since then, including by McLeod himself, to make this book redundant.

A Bend in the River by VS Naipaul was yet another novel that happened to be located in Africa, like The Dream of the Celt. I am still mid- way and though the book did not make me turn pages like The Dream… it sure makes one respect VS Naipaul as a great writer of fiction, whatever be his political views.

Initially put off by Herta Muller’s response to Mo Yan getting the Nobel Prize last year, but since I picked up You’ll do anything for a Laugh, Shifu, I I have been captivated by Mo Yan’s short stories in this collection titled after the first one. Each story is sharp, the words tightly woven together and the collection is sweeping in its expanse, touching on life in China since the days of the Cultural Revolution.

For this blog in its seven year glitch, with the blogger having read  exactly two books cover to cover and just one reviewed here, this book came something as a relief as it goads me forward to read more of Mo Yan in this Chinese Year of the Black Snake.

[Read posts from past years in this series]

The Dream of the Celt

As a 20-year-old, Roger Casement joined the International Congo Society’s (AIC) operations in the Congo in Africa. A fervent believer in the idea that the West was spreading civilization across the world, his ideas underwent a transformation when he was exposed to the brutalities the AIC–owned by the Belgian King Leopold II–was committing to further his interests in the extraction of rubber in that part of the world.

Roger Casement prepared a report strongly indicting the rubber company and hence the Belgian monarch. This report led to Roger Casement’s recognition as a great liberator of the Congolese people. He was subsequently sent to South America to investigate the treatment of natives. His report had a devastating impact, and the Peruvian Amazon Company that was responsible for the atrocities was forced to close down.

His fame had, by then, spread to all echelons of British society, and Sir Roger Casement was offered a diplomatic post as the British ambassador to Brazil. It was then that he made a surprising decision. He turned down the offer and instead decided to return to Ireland and dedicate his life to the freedom from the very colonial power that he had served until recently.

His sojourn in Africa had convinced Sir Roger that only an armed insurrection could help Ireland attain independence. While investigating the brutalities of the Peruvian Amazonian Company, he had already undergone the concluding transformation in his intellectual journey, reflecting thus:

We should not permit colonization to castrate the spirit of the Irish as it has castrated the spirit of the Amazonian Indians. we must act now, once and for all, before it is too late and we turn into automations.

The declaration of the Great War (later called the First World War) offered the possibility of an Irish-German alliance. Sir Roger Casement went to Germany to organize an Irish contingent from among the captured Irish soldiers and to procure arms for an Irish insurrection. He failed miserably in his attempt in getting the Irish prisoners to fight against the country they had been fighting for until recently. The arms that he procured too did not reach the Irish rebels.

Meanwhile, the Easter Uprising began without him (he had opposed it if there was no German support for the insurrection). Betrayed by his male partner, a Norwegian named Eivind Christensen, Sir Roger was arrested on setting foot in Ireland, imprisoned and awarded the death penalty after being denounced as a traitor. He appealed for clemency that was supported by George Bernard Shaw and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, among others.

The clemency petition faced numerous challenges. Besides being a traitor, Sir Roger was now denounced as a homosexual, a crime as bad as the other one in the conservative British and the even more conservative Irish society of that time.

Sir Roger’s diaries that contained descriptions of his sexual encounters with young men–some actual but also many that were imaginary–led to his further isolation by the British press, and his plea for clemency was turned down. He was hanged on 3rd August 1916, buried in the Pentonville Prison. Much later, in 1965, his remains were repatriated to Ireland and he was given a state funeral.

As in his previous novel, The Bad Girl, Llosa has touched on a very contemporary issue- globalization and its promise of global prosperity. There is a parallel between the two situations when Roger reflects on what the earlier age of globalization in the early 19th century had done to the colonies:

Herbert was one of the few people to whom Roger confided his disenchantment with Stanley, Leopold II, and the idea that had brought him to Africa: that the Empire and colonization would open to Africans the way to modernization and progress. Herbert agreed completely with him, when they confirmed that the real reason for the presence of Europeans in Africa was not to help the Africans out of paganism and barbarism, but to exploit them with a greed that acknowledged no limits to abuse and cruelty.

It is this theme that is so strikingly similar to the current wave of globalization that rescues Llosa’s otherwise feeble novel. It is feeble because much of the novel reads like Sir Roger’s biography with  a few flashes of some brilliant fiction writing in the beginning and towards the end. The descriptions of what goes on in Casement’s mind as he reflects on his life while waiting for a decision on his clemency plea, and then his death are brilliant and a reminder that despite his personal journey as a politician of the Right and his decline as a writer since The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta, anything by the master writer still makes for compulsive reading.

Mario Vargas Llosa’s peak as a writer is long past. Yet, when he writes a new novel, it helps us remind not only how great a writer he has been but remains a very engaged writer who makes us think about the contemporary world.

I first read Hobsbawm’s three volume work on the 19th century in the early nineties, soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Those were the years of intellectual disarray- and the first piecing realization was that my history of humankind started from Marx, I knew little of even extant socialist traditions, not to mention the Enlightenment and Renaissance. Hobsbawm’s writings, particularly his 3 volume trilogy  formed the anchor around which I got introduced to 19th century history and also the history of socialism.

It was the late Mohit Sen who introduced me to Hobsbawm’s works. He had been a student of Eric Hobsbawm in the 1940s Cambridge and he recounted a number of anecdotes about him that made me feel closer to Hobsbawm- his ability to rattle off statistics even when he was just about 30, his lectures that were attended by students from all over the university and his letters to Mohit Sen over the decades.

Both went on to recount those years in their respective biographies, though Mohit must have felt very crestfallen on discovering that Hobsbawm had not even mentioned his name on his otherwise long recollection with Indian students, while Mohit  spent considerable ink on his former teacher.

Hobsbawm’s  trilogy on the 19th century, undoubtedly forms the core his work. It was only after the fall of the Soviet Union, that the Marxist in Hobsbawm began overshadowing the historian.

Along with Perry Anderson and Roy Medveydev, he was one of the most articulate and clear headed Marxist analysts of the contemporary world after the collapse of ‘existing socialism’. No doubt, there are others as well. But what lends authenticity to these thinkers is their roots in the Marxism of the Old Left, their lifelong faith and support for Soviet socialism, warts and all, and their ability to explain the aftermath in Marxist terms. Even if they are critical of the Left or the former Soviet Union, one finds it easier to accept their views than to accept the same views from anyone who was either anti- communist or anti- Soviet Union when it existed.

Unlike those on the New Left, for example, Hobsbawm showed intellectual resilience and imparted an intellectual grace- if not a defence- to the nobility of the ideas that spawned the October Revolution, even as the Revolution crumbled under it’s own weight.

Related Links:

A Review of On the Edge of the Century by Eric Hobsbawm
A Review of Uncommon People by Eric Hobsbawm
A Review of On History by Eric Hobabawm

The film narrates a story of one day. In reality as well as symbolically. Much of the story lies in understanding the meaning of the symbols. The film starts early in the morning and ends at midnight. But the dawn is not of “Remembering the Lord’s Name and High Thoughts’, but covered in soot. It is bitter and poisonous. Instead of peace, there is sorrow. There is tumult. The villagers are gathering. There is a powerful party that has purchased land for setting up a factory, they have razed to ground the worker Dharma’s house that was built there. Dharma’s family and his neighbours find this unjust. Brute force.

In Punjab and all over the country, this kind of brutality happens daily. Governments elected by the people themselves are party to this. Various industrial organizations and corporates are being given land. Villages upon villages are being uprooted. This is no longer the story of one village, but that of the entire country, where any protests against such brutality are answered with bullets and police batons. Poor Dharma is an easy prey. Behind the perpetrators stands the might of the state. Police jeeps, and uniformed men holding guns stand in the background. The new owner curses Dharma and, grinding his teeth, asks him to clear off ‘like a gentleman’.

The people of Dharma’s community come together and go to the village sarpanch (village head). They had to go. The lowermost representative of an elected government is the sarpanch. A member of the panchayat from their own community also accompanies them. Despite being aware of everything about the case, the sarpanch feigns ignorance. Instead, his men gather around him and curse Dharma’s men. They insult them. One of them holds a rifle in his hands.- a symbol of the power of those of wield it. Their moustaches are twisted up, bolstered up by their conceit. This is the outer face of the hidden political games that he has played.

The director has not put the two men with upturned moustaches and rifles next to the sarpanch without a reason. ‘The law of the land has to be respected!’ and ‘The government has already pampered these people by giving them concessions (through affirmative action- Tr)- these men riding high on the sarpanch’s shoulders are nothing but Chitragupta- his hidden face. The sarpanch has the obvious look of a hypocrite and a pretender. He promises to reach the courts even before the group that has come to meet him. But his words and behaviour leave no one in doubt that he stands up for those who, according to his inner voice, have become the ‘legal owners of the land’ and not those that have come to him for help.

Even those who have come for help, know that his promises will not be kept. Their own elected Dalit member (of the panchayat) is ‘woman- like’ in the face of Jatts’ bullying, unable to forcefully speak up and make him see reason. The hollowness of the symbolic representation given to Dalits is laid bare open. The Dalit members are also under the pressure of the upper castes. To follow the whims of the upper castes is their political compulsion. To put pressure on the stronger side and speak up for their brethren is not their cup of tea.

The group of men roam through the dark streets in pursuit of justice. Their desperation binds them together, but they do not have the strength to fight the circumstances. They even come together hesitantly, probably out of a sense of shame. Melu’s father falls behind as he follows around with the group. He stops. When the crowd returns, he re- joins them hesitantly. What kind of a battle will such a group of unconvinced men fight? How can it fight?

All through the film, the old man has a blanket wrapped around him. His arms are shown to be always covered by the blanket, and are shown out only when he is tying his hair into the turban; or when he helps his daughter to make tea or when he is eating with the roti in his hands. The film tell us that the as yet the arms of this section of society come out only to the extent of bringing food to quench the stomach’s hunger; these hands as yet are not capable of fighting. These arms are not yet capable of coming out of the blanket and challenging the enemy.

There are a number of short scenes in which many doors in the lives of these small people open. The main woman in the household is sad that she has to hear insulting words for a few stalks of mustard from the landlord for whom she works in the fields. To vent her feelings burning with insults, she talks in a screaming voice. Her pain and her screams are heard only by those within the house or the walls; those whose ears it should reach, never hear it. The weaker strata has to daily bear humiliations from the more powerful group. The young son of the family goes out to graze the goat and is beaten up by a Jatt. He strikes the goat with a hoe and wounds it. This humiliation happen not just on this particular day, but is an everyday occurrence.

The boy’s sister treats and caresses the goat. Perturbed by all these events, she starts to walk out in the middle of the night, when her brother asks, “Where are you going?” She replies that she is going to check if all is well with the goat and that it hasn’t got a fever. How can a poor animal tell? The goat is symbolic of the lower strata. The lower strata; which is wounded every day, is compelled to remain silent.

It’s angst is boiling inside. It is not just the goat that has fever, the entire lower strata suffers from it.

It was probably because of this daily bullying by the Jatts that the elder son of the family, Melu, had gone to the city in search of work. He gets drunk with his comrades. The scenes behind the Thermal plant show that industrialization has either not provided enough, or in fact has snatched away food from them. Life is not easy even in the city. Melu, penniless and passenger- less, cycles his rickshaw around the town in the night. He is not ready to go to his house. How can he go home with empty pockets? He himself eats at the dhaba on credit, how will he fill the stomachs of his wife and children?

This is not a matter of a day or a night. The film is about one night only. It must be a matter of every day. In fact the film symbolically tells that urban life is not worth living either. Melu’s comrades are also homeless and away from their families. They drink, play cards. They are representative of many others that are deprived of homes. All seem to be running away from their circumstances. Melu himself, instead of taking up cudgels against the circumstances, veers towards committing suicide. Happen-stance, he is saved. It seems that this strata is saved by happen-stance. It is walking alive. Otherwise, their life is miserable. They are looking for a meaning to live, like a fish without water. They can’t find the meaning of living. They can’t find a way.

To find a way, Melu had run away from the village. He returns home in the night while still searching. He has left his wife and children in the city. His parents and siblings are in the village. If he had left them, then to whom has he returned now? Why has he left the others back in the city? The watchman’s drinking-hut can’t be his permanent home. Even his own community members and relatives had refused him a place to stay for the night. The village that he had run away from, would that village now provide him relief? He had left the house in the village towards the city. After losing the house in the city, he had returned to the village. Where is his own and real home?

Dharma’s house has, in reality, been demolished. But isn’t it symbolic of the broken, and lost houses of this entire community? The film raises this and many similar questions. For example: the moon is in an eclipse. Rahu and Ketu have surrounded the moon. In this dark night, where should these people go? The lower classes have been trying to appease the two demons with the alms of their labour. For how many generations and centuries will Rahu eclipse the moon? Who are the Rahu and Ketu that control their destinies and lives? For how long will they donate the alms of their labour to these Rahu and Ketus? How can the new generation free its own moonlight?

When Melu’s friend throws the empty bottle of alcohol from the old fort towards the thermal plant, his own voice echoes back to him,” If I had it my way, I would set fire to this entire thermal township.” There is no one except himself and his friends that can hear his words.

One is reminded of Paash’s lines while watching the brother and sister and the mass of recognizable faces in the crowd in the dark alleys of the village:

“When my own voice echoes back while walking in the dark tunnel- like life
Then the only thing left to do is to chase the flying falcons”

In the defiance of Melu’s friends, there is an urge in the sparrow’s wings to follow the falcons. If this defiance finds a direction and leadership, then the new generation can turn revolutionary and if this does not happen, then there are possibilities that they might turn to drugs, lumpenism or commit suicide on the railway tracks.

This film gives voice to this restlessness and angst.

Whatever I have said, is not just made up by me. This and a lot more is told by the film, provided one knows how to view and understand it. This craftsmanship has to be attributed to the director, his technical team and the artists. The film is so realistic that it does not seem that any character is acting. It seems as if the characters are living and talking their daily life. This is probably because except for two or three theater actors, all the characters in the film are played by ordinary villagers. It is also for the first time it has been experimented that the very class of people about whom the film has been made are playing out the characters on the screen.

Certainly, all this is due to the film’s director Gurvinder Singh. This miracle is because of him.

23 May 2012
(Concluded)

Translated by Bhupinder Singh

by Waryam Singh Sandhu

A film based on Gurdial Singh’s novel ‘Alms for the Blind Horse’ (‘Anhey Ghorey da daan)’ is in the news. It has won a number of national and international awards. For the first time, Punjabi cinema has earned such honours. It has also won the national award for direction and cinematography. The film has come first among all languages in the national awards, and at the Abu Dhabi national awards, it has bagged the $50,000 award for direction and cinematography.

Recently, the film was shown at on the last day of the PIFF film festival at Rose Theatre in Brampton, near Toronto, Canada.

There is a big crowd at the theatre. I am told that the crowds were not so big for any of the previously shown films at the festival. When I enter the hall, the film has just started. The film is moving very slowly.There are no fast-changing scenes that rush through the film. The story is about the dalit community. In their everyday lives, there is nothing that is very dramatic that happens. So how could it happen in the story? Like the stagnant and stopped lives of those people, the story in the film too seems to move hesitantly.

In the row behind me, I can hear some folks from Toronto’s (Punjabi) press- some of them are associated with progressive organizations, talking in hushed voices. They don`t seem to find the story tying up. Slowly, there is a note of irritation that emerges from their murmurs. One of them sarcastically comments on a scene, ‘Now, now, this is all we needed!’ His colleagues laugh to express their agreement. I think to myself that they should not rush with their comments. After all, film critics and judges at many international and national film festivals have given awards and honours to this film! There must be something in this film.

In the beginning, I could not grasp the story either. The film starts with an old man of a dalit family asking his wife to make tea for him. At that point, the village guard comes to invite Dharma to attend a village panchayat meeting to address the issue of the demolition of Dharma’s neighbour’s house. Like others, I too wonder how the story that begins with the demolition of a person’s house reaches its logical culmination. Soon it became clear that this is not the story of one dalit family whose house has been demolished, but the story of all dalit families whose houses are demolished daily. The distress of the entire dalit community has been attempted to be presented in the form of a collage.

The film ends while moving at this slow pace. In the last scene, the daughter of this family, fatigued and tired, comes out into the alleys holding a flashlight. At this time, her brother Melu, who lives in the town, but who too is tired and fatigued from that life, returns to the house in the village and meets her in the alley. The audience claps to announce the conclusion of the film.

The film’s director Gurvinder Singh comes on the stage. Till now, he has shown the film only to intelligent international audiences associated with films. It is the first time that speakers of his native language have seen the film. He is probably optimistic of receiving praise. He asks innocently, “Please tell me, what did you find wrong with the film?” Three or four hands go up. The first one asks, “What have you tried to show in this film?” The second one says, “I and my wife sitting next to me have not understood the film at all.” Gurvinder looks crestfallen. How does he now explain the gist of the film? He tries to describe the story of the film in brief, “This is a different kind of film. Open-ended. I have not tried to explain anything in the film. You have to understand it yourself. You have to search for the meaning of the film yourself. I have made the film.”

I again start thinking about the last scene in the film.

The film that I could not understand till now suddenly becomes clear. The apparently broken and scattered threads of the narration seem to be coming together in my hands. I feel that injustice is being meted out to Gurvinder. No; the artistic sensibilities of us Punjabis is being mocked at. We are ourselves making a joke of ourselves. Even before fathoming the depths of art, our minds surrender. We do not feel the need to raise ourselves to art, instead we want to cut the height of creativity so that it matches ours. If that doesn’t happen, then we exclaim, “Leave this aside! Why should we waste our time on this!”

I want that I should speak up against this injustice. I raise my hand. But before I can speak, another person starts speaking, “You have made a wonderful film. Even Bade Ghulam Ali Khan was not understood by anyone. But Bade Ghulam Ali Khan was Bade Ghulam Ali Khan. Those that understand, they know what he is. As this film is understood slowly, its value will be appreciated.”

The audience that has heard the questions raised by the initial critics has made the silent audience inquisitive. They don’t seem to convincingly agree with those critics. That is why, when the film was praised, they welcome it by clapping. I had needlessly become critical of the perceived lack of appreciation of Punjabis. It seems that there are people in the hall that admire the film.

Now it is my turn. I stand up and raise my voice so that my voice can be heard in the entire hall.

“Friends! The kind of films we are used to watch a have linear storylines and are a special type of entertainment films, this one is really different from those. This is neither about those characters nor about their life. Neither was it the intent of the director to make a film like those. To learn about this film, to understand this film, one has to first step into the shoes of the class of folks that have been portrayed in it. It seems that it is not easy for those who live comfortable lives in Canada, to relate to the lives of those whose that are hell and full of injustice. For a moment, try to think like those people. Identify with their pain, and then see the story. Try to think how you would feel if this was your story. You will understand everything if you put yourselves in their place.”

The audience probably agrees with me. The hall resounds with their clapping.

“To those friends who say that they haven’t understood the film, I would like to submit that the meaning of the film lies in the last scene of the film. Melu, the rickshaw driver had run away from the village to the town to find relief, but he could not breathe easy there either. He was living there in a death- like existence. Disappointed with life in the city, he returns to the village, where in the middle of the night, he finds his sister roaming in the alleys. The brother who has just returned from the city asks her the reason for being out at that time of the night. She tells him that she felt suffocated inside the house, she felt restless. Evidently, life in the village too is full of insults and disgrace. For this class of people, where is the place where they can breathe easy? They find solace neither in the village, nor in the city. Where do they go? It is midnight, the flashlight is dim, and the moon is under an eclipse. The alley is dark. This film is about the stationary lives of these folks who walk in dark alleys. It can be seen and understood only in this manner.”

The audience claps as if to say,” Now we understand it.” There is a smile on Gurvinder’s face too. He comments,” Only a writer can understand and narrate it thus.”

Now he has dug in his heels. From the other corner of the hall, an ultra revolutionary person states, “You have not explained in the film, which classes are responsible for this oppression.” He replies,”The village sarpanch is representative of the elected upper classes.” The other person is, however, not convinced. “No, you should have shown the uppermost echelons (of power responsible for the conditions shown in the film).” “I have not written an essay, I have made a film.” He is right.

Continue to Part II

—
Translated from the original in Punjabi by Bhupinder Singh.

It takes some time for the film to sink in, but when it does, Anhey Ghorey Da Daan (Alms for a Blind Horse) has mastery written all over it.

That Anhey Ghorey belongs to niche contemporary cinema is not insignificant, even more striking is that the film is in Punjabi. This is a dissonance- the film in every way is far removed from what one expects from a Punjabi movie, or even the Hindi movies that Punjabis make.

Isn’t any movie in Punjabi about a Jatt on a revenge spree? Isn’t every Hindi movie with Punjab in the background about lush green fields swaying with bright mustard crops? If not about the big fat Punjabi weddings, isn’t it supposed to be about the valour of militant patriots like Bhagat Singh?

Based on a novel of the same name by Gurdial Singh, Anhey Ghorey presents a contrarian perspective- something that isn’t found in the Bollywoodized versions of Punjab. The story is not about the revenge of the Jatts, it is not about a militant valour either. It is a life that at best is stoic, and at its worst is impassive in the face of hardships. It shows one day in the life of a Mazhabi Sikh family that lives on the fringes. The characters don’t jump into a frenzy of song and dance every few minutes- instead they eek out a  precarious existence against a a volley of brutal attacks on their daily existence.

The title of the story is taken from Hindu mythology that portrayed Dalits as the descendants of the asuras or the demons. When there is a lunar or solar eclipse, the demon Rahu comes on a chariot led by blind horses to settle scores with his enemies- the Sun and Moon gods. . The title itself speaks a lot about the theme of the film. (More about the novel and the myth)

The film starts with the demolition of Dharma’s house by the local landlords who have sold their piece of land, as well as Dharma’s, for setting up a factory. When Dharma and members of his landless Mazhabi Sikh community approach the sarpanch to intervene, they are asked to go to the courts. The sarpanch,  who is evidently a representative of the landholding Jatts uses a combination of guns and mollycoddling to evade the group. Soon, Dharma is arrested and his community is scared off.

The film’s main protagonists are the family of Dharma’s neighbour, whose wife has to beg for a few stalks of mustard from the landlord for whom she works. Finding no support from his own community in the face to the landlords and village sarpanch, her husband decides to leave for the city at the end of the day where his son, Melu is a rickshaw driver. Melu is a hard worker, yet he is unable to make ends meet and provide for his family. His health deteriorates and he is injured during the demonstration earlier in the day. A fellow Mazhabi doctor treats him. Another two of his associates drown themselves in alcohol, while ruminating on their existential condition. Despite being a leader of the town’s rickshaw pullers, Melu is a fatigued and defeated man. Late in the night, he decides to take the train back to the village- even as his father takes the opposite direction. His sister, driven to restlessness, wanders out in the midnight fog. At that point, her brother returns, and they walk back home in silence.

The characters in the family are driven from the village to the town, and from the town to the village, unable to find succour.

Just like its theme, the film’s form and the narrative structure display dissonance. Even though the story is about one day in the life of the family, the way the film is structured brings to mind a jigsaw puzzle. Each character takes one aspect of life in the family- the sequence is not very clear as each episode comes to an abrupt end and then it moves on a to a different one. Most of the characters are played by non- actors and they don’t seem to get or ask for the viewer’s sympathy or understanding. Each episode, however, takes the viewer to experience a slice of their grinding life and underlines a certain aspect.

The film has won many international prizes. It has also won the best director’s award for the young Gurvinder Singh and the  best cinematographer (Satya Raj Nagpaul) at the Indian National Film Awards.

It is pertinent that a film like this belongs to an aesthetics that is foreign to the sensibilities of the large chunks of people that speak Punjabi. It is also pertinent that a film that speaks about the most marginalized castes and sections in Punjab should be made by someone who grew up outside the state.

Checkout this review too.

Since then I have traversed history, sociology, philosophy, aesthetics and literature- anything except astronomy. I cannot but take a long view look at the past 25 years or so spent pursuing fields with with I had no professional relation, as I took up The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene last week. I was invigorated and rejuvenated as my otherwise waning interest in reading seems to have returned. Besides the fact that the book is very well written, explaining recent developments in particle physics and cosmology easily for a layman, I find it interesting the author’s journey proceeded directly opposite to mine. In his teenage years, he read Albert Camus The Myth of Sisyphus, and rejected Camus answer to what he considers to be the most fundamental question- whether to commit suicide or not. Though I read Camus much later, the answer to similar questions in my mind led me away from astronomy. Greene opted for the opposite direction and sought a career in astrophysics.

I am convinced, though, if he had also been subjected to the manner in which I was taught at the department of Physics at the Punjab University, he too would have changed his course of study.

On a different note, my experiment with an e- reader earlier in the year, was short lived, though I will have to return to it at some point or another.

Another change this year was that I borrowed books from the local library. The Mississauga public library is not the best of libraries- its collection in the fiction section is limited and highly overused. Still, some of the books that I found and read were Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, The Robber by Robert Walser, The Universal History of Infamy and Ficcones- both by Borges, Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Garcia Marquez and WG Sebald’s The Emigrants.

The first three were disappointing and I could not finish them. Mrs Dalloway started well but became too didactic- ideas seem to occupy the writer’s attention rather than the characters that became incidental to the story after a while.

The Robber, unlike Walser’s wonderful novel about a small town clerk, The Assistant, dragged on and on without a plot or any particular insights.

Some of the stories in Borge’s Ficonnes, particularly The Circular Ruins and The Garden of Forking Paths, I found fascinating. The others in this collection- equally good, like The Tower of Babel, I seem to have read elsewhere.

The Universl History of Infamy held interest but only for a very short while, as the stories became more and more predictable.

The Gift, a purported translation of Hafiz’s poems by Daniel Ladinsky, was a near disaster. It doesn’t take too long to figure out that the poems are at best a trans- creation and nowhere represent a translation of Hafiz’s poetry.

Mikhail Bulgakov’s, The Heart of a Dog was enjoyable and made me nostalgic about the longer novel that he wrote- the Master and the Margarita.  There is no other novella about the early Soviet years, that is as devastating as it is short as The Heart of a Dog.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold was chilling to read, and I could undertand why Garcia Marquez and other Latin American writers appeal to me so much- this novel could very well have been written about a village in North India.

WG Sebald’s The Emigrants was very readable and his mix of fiction and non- fiction writing reminiscent of Borges.

The Buddha and His Dhamma by BR Ambedkar and No Freedon with Caste by Swami Dharma Teeratha, both read online,  continue to shake my long hitherto ideas about India- much of which I had imbibed from the dominant nationalist and left studies. Ambedkar’s writings continue to provide startling insights that mark him out as a writer who is just being discovered in the 21st century. It needs to be remembered that even till 1990, his works were not available at all, till they were published, I think, by the Maharashtra state government. It helps immensely that many of his works are available online thanks to the small but growing band of adherents that he commands among internet activists.

Two non- fiction books have been reviewed earlier on this blog, Jangalnama by Satnam and Known Turf by Annie Zaidi.

Last’s year’s digest: 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005

Left liberals are likely to denounce the BJP’s support for the Karnataka government’s introduction of Gita classes in schools as an attempt at stifling minority rights and invoke on the separation of the state and the church. The BJP’s agenda, however, goes far beyond just a communal agenda. To decipher that, one has to trace the agenda behind the Gita itself.

The Gita has, in popular belief, symbolized the rejuvenation of Hinduism after a thousand years of Buddhist domination. It was the book that apparently struck the last nail on Buddhist thought by a thirty-something Adi Sankracharya. Sankara advocated the advaita–in other words, a form of subjective idealism. In simple words, what it means is that there is only one entity in the universe, the Brahma. The rest is an illusion. Thus, he reconciled all the contradictions in the world by proclaiming that everything is an illusion, or Maya. A person needs to realize this supposed unity and unless one is able to do so, one remains entangled in the web of illusions, or mayajaal.

The Gita attempted to do the same–reconcile contradictions. It attempted to justify violence in the name of morality. It ordained the caste system, and showed women “their place.” In other words, The Gita is the chariot of Brahmanism and what can be called the ideology of racism ensconced within Brahmanism.

DD Kosambi remarks in his book Myth and Reality that “The Gita furnished the one scriptural source which could be used without violence to accepted Brahmin methodology, to draw inspiration and justification for social actions in some way disagreeable to a branch of the ruling class upon whose mercy the brahmins depended at the moment.”

Ambedkar too had a similar view. Nalini Pandit, in her essay, Ambedkar and the Gita, remarks:

After making a detailed study of the ancient religious texts, Ambedkar came to the conclusion that the Aryan community of pre-Buddhist Aryan times did not have any developed sense of moral values. Buddhism caused a moral and social revolution in this society. When the Mauryan emperor Ashoka embraced Buddhism, the social revolution became a political revolution. After the decline of the Mauryan empire, the Brahmins, whose interests had suffered under the Buddhist kings initiated a counter-revolution under the leadership of Pushyamita Sunga. The counter-revolution restored brahmanism. The Bhagwat Gita, says Ambedkar, was composed to give ideological and moral support to this counter-revolution.

Kosambi also pointed out that those who find inspiration in the Gita invariably are from the leisurely classes. He might have added that they are from the upper castes. Those that come from non- Brahmin castes or articulate their voices tend to ignore the Gita. For example, Kabir, Nanak, Namdev, Chaitenya and Jayadeva did not evince any interest in the Gita. On the other hand, Tilak, Gandhi, Aurobindo and Radhakrishnan- all upper castes, if not brahmins- are the names that are associated with writings on the Gita. The correlation with the caste of those who drew inspiration from the Gita is hard to overlook.

It is very interesting to note that interest in the Gita revived only after the advent of the British and their strategy to espouse communal identities. It is even possible that they just came looking for a book like the Bible or the Koran and the pandits could just think of the Bhagvat Gita as an answer. Ambedkar compares these three seminal works thus:

They (pandits) have gone on a search for the message of the Bhagvat Gita on the assumption that it is a gospel as the Koran, the Bible or the Dhammapada is. In my opinion this assumption is quite a false assumption. The Bhagvat Gita is not a gospel and it can therefore have no message and it is futile to search for one. The question will no doubt be asked : What is the Bhagvat Gita if it is not a gospel? My answer is that the Bhagvat Gita is neither a book of religion nor a treatise on philosophy. What the Bhagvat Gita does is to defend certain dogmas of religion on philosphic grounds. If on that account anybody wants to call it a book of religion or a book of philosophy he may please himself. But essentially it is neither. It uses philosophy to defend religion. (Ambedkar, Revolution and Counter Revolution in India)

Having seen some critical views on the Gita, let us look at a handful of shalokas to substantiate.

Shaloka 9.32 ia particularly illustrative of the contempt in which the Gita hold the broad masses of people, including women.

mam hi partha vyapasritya
ye ‘pi syuh papa-yonayah
striyo vaisyas tatha sudras
te ‘pi yanti param gatim

(O son of Prtha, those who take shelter in Me, though they be of lower birth–women, vaisyas [merchants], as well as sudras [workers]–can approach the supreme destination.)

I have taken the translation from a version that I found on an ISKON site. A better translation, instead of “lower birth” would be “born out of sin” since the word “papa” in Sanskrit means “sin”. Gandhi interprets it more correctly:

“For finding refuge in Me, even those who though are born of the womb of sin, women, vaishyas, and shudras too, reach the supreme goal.”

The different castes are not to be treated equal is made amply clear in other shalokas. Even when there is mention of equality, it is very clear that one needs to reach the stage of sthitaprajana to become a sama darshi. (Sardesai, page 17)

5.18

vidya-vinaya-sampanne
brahmane gavi hastini
suni caiva sva-pake ca
panditah sama-darsinah
(The humble sage, by virtue of true knowledge, sees with equal vision a learned and gentle brahmana, a cow, an elephant, a dog and a dog-eater [outcast].)

The cow, elephant, the dog and the outcast are all clubbed together, and are seen to be equal to the brahmin- but only when one reaches that esoteric stage of the sama- darshi. It is anybody’s guess on how many people actually reached that stage!
Further, shaloka 18.44 clearly ordains the caste duties for the vaisyas and sudras:
18.44
krsi-go-raksya-vanijyam
vaisya-karma svabhava-jam
paricaryatmakam karma
sudrasyapi svabhava-jam

(Farming, cow protection and business are the qualities of work for the vaisyas, and for the sudras there is labor and service to others.)

The caste system is of course, ordained by God himself, in the human form of Krishna (4.13):
catur-varnyam maya srstam
guna-karma-vibhagasah
tasya kartaram api mam
viddhy akartaram avyayam

(According to the three modes of material nature and the work ascribed to them, the four divisions of human society were created by Me. And,although I am the creator of this system, you should know that I am yet the non-doer, being unchangeable.)

The Bhakti Marg:

The way of redemption for the common, unlettered men and women lay in the bhakti marg, advocated by the Gita. It meant unconditional surrender to the God, with profound feelings of devotion. The gyana marg was evidently meant only for those that were lettered, an abysmal minority even till 1947. The Gita, dated to be around 150AD-250 AD, came much after the Upanishads–the harbinger of the “gyana marg” needed this ideology to counter the Buddhist way that appealed to the lower orders because of its simplicity and its stress on morality.

It is indeed possible to give a “humanistic” veneer to the teachings of the Gita, as Gandhi attempted to do by interpreting the Gita not as an invocation to war (which is what it is), but as a struggle within oneself. What, however, cannot be denied is that even those who attempt such “humanistic” interpretations, assume the framework of the caste system (chaturvarnya) to be inviolable. Gandhi, too, is no exception in this regard.

References:
1. Myth and Reality, Chapter 1- Social and Economic Aspects of the Gita, by DD Kosambi
2. Marxism and the Bhagwat Gita, SG Sardesai and Dilip Bose
3. Krishna and his Gita, in Revolution and Counter Revolution in India, by Dr. BR Ambedkar
4. Ambedkar and the Gita, by (only 1st page available free online) by Nalini Pandit
5. Bhagwad Gita as it is (online, pdf)
6. The Gita according to Gandhi (online)