Autobiography | SabrangIndia

Hair and Heart

Fri, 06 Sep 2019 06:10:47 +0000

Excerpts from One Foot on the Ground: A Life Told Through the Body

In this extraordinary autobiography, Shanta Gokhale—writer translator and one of India’s most illuminating cultural commentators—traces the arc of her life over eight decades through the progress of her body, as it grows, matures and begins to wind down. Starting with her birth in 1939–in philosophic silence, till the doctor’s slap on her bottom made her brawl–she recounts her childhood, youth and middle and old age in chapters built around the many elements and processes of the physical self: tonsils and adenoids, breasts and misaligned teeth; childbirth and fluctuating weight, cancer and bunions.

Told with effortless humour and candour, One Foot on the Ground is the story of a life full of happiness, heartbreak, wonder and acceptance.
The following are excerpts from the chapters “The Babies Are Born and How!” and “Hair and Heart” of the book.

I discovered translation as a serious and deeply satisfying occupation in Vizag. Satyadev Dubey first pushed me into it. We were staying in a place called New Entry Camp, a kind of halfway house to a proper accommodation. The house was built like a train with four sequential compartments, a breezy corridor running their full length facing a large garden, and a kitchen attached at right angles to the fourth compartment, by a covered passage. I wasn’t doing much with myself except writing fiction in Marathi, directing plays for the local Maharashtra Mandal and playing badminton. In the midst of this leisurely life came Dubey’s letter. Polite as always, he wrote, ‘You are vegetating there. You’ve become a cow. Do some work. Translate the play that’s coming to you by separate post.’ The play was poet-playwright C.T. Khanolkar’s Avadhya, hailed by Marathi theatre’s reigning drama critic Madhav Manohar as ‘the first adult play’ in Marathi and condemned by the cultural orthodoxy as obscene. The play exposed the hypocrisies of middle-class morality with brutal insight. Three men in a lodge are informed by the room boy that a peephole has been obligingly made behind the calendar on the wall through which they may, if they so wish, watch the young couple next door make love. The men were utterly revolting; but converting Khanolkar’s sharp dialogue into something equally punchy in English gave me a high such as I had not experienced before. Dubey liked the translation and sent it to his friend Rajinder Paul in Delhi, editor of the theatre magazine Enact. Avadhya, The Invincible, was the first of many of my translations that Enact was to publish.

Comrade Godavari Parulekar, a friend of the family, had written a book about the Warlis of Dahanu and the surrounding areas amongst whom she had worked and for whose rights she had fought for many years. The book was called Jenwha Manus Jaagaa Hoto—When Man Awakens. A fellow comrade had translated it into English, but Godutai was not happy with the translation. She sent me the manuscript to correct. The translation was so bad, I did a fresh translation instead. My version got published, but it did not carry my name. It carried the original translator’s name. It would have been awkward for Godutai to explain to her colleague what had transpired with his draft. A reward more precious than having my name on the book lay in having had the chance to translate it in the first place. Translation forces you to engage intimately with a work; and this was a book about people whom I had known from childhood. Dahanu was my mother’s home. That is where I was born. That was where I had spent many summer holidays, surrounded by Warlis who worked in my grandfather’s home and factory. To know the oppression and exploitation that they had endured was to know the other, darker side of the lives of these people whom I adored.

When I chose to do English Literature in England, Mother had asked me how I intended putting my knowledge to use back home. I had said I would teach. ‘That is one way,’ she had said. ‘But there’s another which you must consider. Translate the best Marathi literature into English.’ With Avadhya and Jenwha Manus Jaagaa Hoto, I had set off on that path.

[…]

It is said that if you put two Marathis together on a desert island, they’ll do a two-hander play.

Ignoring Mr X’s dismissal of the histrionic abilities of Glaxo’s workforce, I had sent word around the following morning to say I was starting a drama group. Ten men and women from the factory floor and offices had registered during tea and lunch break that day and more were on their way. I worked out a plan for lunchtime plays which ensured that neither actors nor audience went without lunch or entertainment and were still back at their desks or conveyor belts on the dot. We couldn’t afford to have managers and supervisors complain.

Glaxo had three staggered lunch breaks of forty-five minutes each. I chose playscripts that could be pared down to thirty minutes. Employees would eat their lunch in ten minutes, rush to the auditorium, see our play and still have five minutes to return to their workplaces. We would stage five shows over two days to cover all lunch breaks. The employees came in droves and went away asking for more. I cannot claim they worked better for having seen a play in their lunch break; but seeing a play altered their view of the company. They had regarded Glaxo as a stodgy, po-faced employer. Now they conceded it had some human features.

Even before we put up our first play, casteism showed its dark, dank, narrow mind. A true-blue Maratha who had been one of the first I had cast for the play said to me, ‘Why have you cast Sanjay?’

‘Because he’s a very good actor.’ ‘But you know what he is?’ ‘What?’

‘Not one of us.’

‘I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean. But he is in the play.’

‘You might find others withdrawing.’ ‘Just too bad if they do.’

Nobody withdrew. Not even the true-blue Maratha.

News got around about our conversation. A clerk stopped by my desk casually and said, ‘These Marathas think no end of themselves. And here’s we, brahmins, who don’t dare say a word.’

Two Dutch journalists had come to interview me about caste. Their assumption was that it was a thing of the past in cities. I told them my Glaxo story. They made me repeat it twice before they were willing to believe it. When they sent me a translation of their story, I found I was the only one who had said caste was alive and kicking in Bombay. Everybody else had said it was dead.

Shanta Gokhale was born in Dahanu and brought up in Mumbai. Gokhale has written two novels in Marathi, Rita Welinkar and Tya Varshi Both won the Maharashtra State Award for the best novel of the year and have been translated by her into English. She has translated Smritichitre: The Memoirs of a Spirited Wife by Lakshmibai Tilak and the novel Kautik on Embers (Dhag) by Uddhav J Shelke. In 2016, she received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for her overall contribution to the performing arts.

These are excerpts from One Foot on the Ground: A Life Told Through the Body written by Shanta Gokhale and published by Speaking Tiger. Republished here with permission from the publisher.

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum

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Lalu Prasad Yadav’s book, Gopalganj to Raisina can stir a storm in Indian politics

Fri, 12 Apr 2019 06:13:50 +0000

The political potboiler book is on the life and political career of India’s maverick politician—Lalu Prasad Yadav

The cover page of both Hindi and English version of Lalu Prasad Yadav’s autobiography, Gopalganj to Raisina, co-authored by Nalin Verma

Kolkata: The autobiography of former Chief Minister of Bihar Lalu Prasad Yadav—Gopalganj to Raisina which can stir a storm in the Indian politics is all set to get public. By Sunday the book will be available across India, however, there will be no formal launch for it.

Senior journalist Nalin Verma has co-authored the book with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) National President, who is now in jail in connection with fodder scam.

Lalu Prasad Yadav, the 70-year-old politician is one of the most colourful personalities in Indian politics.

Lalu Prasad is among the few politicians, who has been a member of all four houses of Indian political system—Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha, Assembly and Vidhan Parishad. He was the Chief Minister of Bihar, one of the most significant states of India, politically, for almost 10 years, and the Railway Minister of India.

The book, a political potboiler will reveal, Lalu Prasad’s role during the Emergency, Mandal Commission implementation, the arrest of LK Advani during the Rath Yatra, his acceptance of Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister in 2004 and his relationship with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar – a friend turned foe.

According to the book, Lalu Prasad has mentioned in it that Nitish Kumar had sent Prashant Kishor, a political strategist and Janata Dal (United)’s Vice President to meet him, five times, as Nitish wants to return back to the Mahagathbandhan. But RJD supremo refused it saying, he has lost faith on Nitish.

There are many such untold incidents related to Lalu in his autobiography. The timing for the book release (amid the ongoing Lok Sabha Election) is also significant. Interestingly, a biopic on the life of Prime Minister Narendra Modi will also be released around this time.

The two sentences mentioned in the press communiqué released by the publisher Rupa Publications summarize the entire book.

“He is brutally honest about what he has won and what he has lost, about friends and foes within his party as well as outside.”

And, “This is more than just an utterly absorbing account; it is history with a vision. It reaffirms your faith in the promise of democracy, equality and justice in India.”

Courtesy: enewsroom.in

The post Lalu Prasad Yadav’s book, Gopalganj to Raisina can stir a storm in Indian politics appeared first on SabrangIndia.

M.F. Husain’s Brush with the Ramlila: In His Own Words

Tue, 11 Oct 2016 04:35:12 +0000

With the dominant public mood of the country, carefully cultivated by the ideological strain of the regime in power, in Delhi, clearly inclined to straightjacket not just Hinduism but ghettoise society, urban and rural spaces, both metamorphically and actually, into strictly assigned boundaries of ‘faith’ and ‘culture’, award winning actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui, acclaimed for his talent in a series of films in Hindi cinema was ‘not allowed’ to participate in the age-old traditional folk practice of performing in the Ramlila in a village in Buldanha.

The Ramlila, performed in folk form across the length and breadth of the country has sought to be appropriated by a supremacist ideology and it’s off shoots as ‘its own’ and popular and multi-faith participation in this drama –that continues for the nine days of Dussehra—seen as a ‘threat’ to this mono-chromatic appropriation. [The Rashtryiya Swayamsevak Sangh-RSS and its offshoots including have for three decades now sought his cultural ‘domination’ and ‘purificaton’ and this time it was the Shiv Sena who was at the root of the current move to ‘disallow’ one of India’s much sought after celluloid stars from performing in this drama, in his home village.]

Malini Nair in The Times of India, last Sunday wrote on how, whether it's the Meo jogis of Rajasthan, the patuas of Bengal or Malabar's retelling of the Ramayana, Muslims across India have made Ramayana their own. In fact in the uniquely Indian and syncretic way of absorption of each other’s faith rituals, Muslims often begin their participation in the ritual after performing wazoo, the act of purification before namaaz (offering prayers).

M.F. Hussain, India’s celebrated artist on the world stage who was exiled from his home country when a supine government bowed to the very forces that rule India today, in his powerful autobiography, writes of his initiation into the world of public culture and art, in Indore, in Madhya Pradesh, with the participation in the Ramlila.

The account in his own words, accompanied by powerful sketches was made available to Sabrangindia by photographer Ram Rahman.

M.F. Husain's Story In His Own Words

It’s the month of October. Fields of wheat are ready for harvest. Its beginning to feel good now soaking in the sunshine. At dusk, grandfather would wrap a blue coloured muffler around his grandson and the young boy goes running to watch the local Ramlila. There is no theatre troupe performing here so no tickets need be bought.

Its underneath a tamarind tree inside the compound of a primary school, with a few borrowed lanterns; a few saris from the washerwoman form the “backdrop”. The show begins the moment the rolling pin bangs the thali. Donning the shorts of the school’s drill master, dust rubbed all over his face, paanwaala Shankar’s brother plays Hanuman. Yes, who better than the amiable fat man from the flour mill to assume the role of Ravanaji. But who is this, posturing as a female, soot pasted over the face? The little boy does not recognise who this Kaikeyi is offstage. Qasim Miyan is a band master from the Indore cantonment. Here at the Ramlila he rolls the drums and plays the flute.

Later, part of the crowd heading home, the boy fantasises himself in the role of the many characters he has just witnessed at the Ramlila. He takes his time in reaching home so that on his imaginary stage he may briefly reenact the role of each of the actors in the Ramlila.

Today, while returning home after witnessing the Ramlila on a glittering stage in Delhi, it’s a flashback to the past. He fondly remembers Shankar paanwala’s brother, the sweet fatty from the flour mill and Qasim Miyan band master.

To the boy from Indore, it was Dr Ram Manohar Lohia who showed the path that led to Valmiki and Tulsidas. We are nearing the end of the 50s decade. Badrivishal, son of the affluent Hyderabadi, Pannalal Pitti, is lounging amidst bolsters in the upper story of the sprawling family home — Moti Bhavan –, adjacent to the Raj Bhavan. It’s time for lunch and enters Dr Lohia. Socialist party workers, clad in khadi and sporting badges on their jackets, stand respectfully around the sitting area. The boy from Indore grabs a pen from Badrivishal’s pen-stand, captures the scene for posterity. His pen sketches Dr Lohia’s unruly hair, moves down to his half-closed mischievous eyes, then nose and stops at his lips. Seeing the boy and his sketch, Lohiaji breaks into a smile. He hugs the boy very tight. It’s an embrace that will last for many a year.

One evening, the Indore boy takes him to Karim Hotel in Delhi as Lohiaji loves Mughlai food, sheermaals etc. Lohiaji remembers a portrait of Jawaharlal Nehru which the boy had sketched at the PM’s residence. Gently stirring the korma in his bowl with a spoon, he looks up at the boy and says, “What made you think of drawing a portrait of Nehru? One portrait of his which I did like was the one published in the Illustrated Weekly because in it he seemed to be drowning, already neck deep in water”.

“Lohiaji”, the boy replied smiling, “That is the interesting complexity of modern art. Here the viewer has the right to interpret it the way he likes while a still photograph offers no such latitude. From that point of view, modern art is not elitist but democratic. Here you may depict a royal personality, use tense lines proclaiming individuality and a splash of colours suggesting self-esteem.”

Lohiaji patted the boy on his back as if in compliment and changing the subject he asked: “You are surrounded by this world of portraits adorning the drawing rooms of Birla and Tata; why don’t you come out of it for a bit? Paint the Ramayana. It’s an engrossing eons-old tale of this country. India’s villages are resonant with song and music. Take your paintings to these villages. Behind the closed walls of what are called galleries in cities, people with hands in their pant pockets just stand before your paintings. They are not like people from the villages who, immersed in your colours, will break into song and dance”.

These words of Lohiaji pierced my heart like an arrow, pricked me for years. Soon after his demise, in his memory, with pen and brush, I splashed the walls of Moti Bhavan with nearly 150 scenes from the Ramayana. It took me 10 years. I asked not for a paisa for my labour. It was only for honouring his words to me.

(Translated from Hussain's original in Hindi, Excerpted from his autobiography M.F. Husain's Story In His Own Words).

This 27 minute film made by the Film’s Division by director, Santi P. Chowdhury in 1976, A Painter of Our Time-Hussain, has, the iconic painter’s rendering of the Lohia Ramlila mela towards the end

Background:
Maqbool Fida Husain (September 17,1915 –June 9, 2011)^] commonly known as MF Husain, was a modern Indian painter of international acclaim, and a founding member of The Progressive Artists Group of Bombay (PAG).

Husain was associated with Indian modernism in the 1940s. His early association with the Progressive Artist's Group, or "PAG of Bombay" used modern technique, and was inspired by the "new" India after The Partition of 1947. His narrative paintings, executed in a modified Cubist style, can be caustic and funny as well as serious and sombre. His themes—sometimes treated in series—include topics as diverse as Mohandas K. Gandhi, Mother Teresa, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the British raj, and motifs of Indian urban and rural life. Early in his painting career, and until his death, he enjoyed depicting the lively and free spirit of horses in many of his works. Often referred to as the "Picasso of India", M.F. Husain is the most celebrated and internationally recognized Indian artist of the 20th century. Husain is primarily known for his paintings, but is also known for his drawings and his work as a printmaker, photographer, and filmmaker.

He was targeted and attacked by vicious and violent groups, wedded politically to a ‘Hindu nation’ with a narrow interpretation of ‘culture’ and ‘faith’ who directed a campaign against Hussain’s rendition of epic figures in modern and non traditional ways.

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