Niki Seth-Smith

LOOTING THE LAND OF KINGS - Published in The Statesman, Oct 2009

2010-10-14T03:13:00.000-07:00

Niki Seth-Smith visits Rohet Garh, one of Rajasthan's most prestigious heritage hotels.

Rajasthan's resilient identity is built on the shifting sands of relentless invasion. Historically the frontline of defence against the Afghans, Turks and Mughals - the Brits having cannily bought off the state's military muscle - now Rajasthan is facing a new kind of attack. Tourists to the area are increasingly demanding 'the real Rajasthan' – which for those with money to pay means nothing less than staying in the most exalted of the desert state's opulent forts and palaces. The ancestral owners, meanwhile, are compelled to welcome their effete yet formidable invaders, being badly in need of financial security in today's fast-moving India.

During a recent trip around Rajasthan, I became a foot soldier of this luxury tourist brigade. A week into the journey, I had already gorged myself in old harem quarters and hit the hay in converted palace stables on the well-trod trail from Jaipur to Jodhpur. The brochures had mentioned being 'welcomed by my hosts' but they had all apparently abandoned ship - for the capital, presumably, or for their still-unsullied Monsoon Palaces. I was not a little surprised, then, to meet Thakur Mavendra Singh taking tea on the fastidious lawns of Rohet Garh, one of Rajasthan's most sought-after heritage hotels.

The Singhs opened their home in 1990, retaining their expansive living quarters, having re-imagined the fort with the moneyed international traveller in mind. The twin walled enclosures now harbour gardens and a stately colonnaded swimming pool. The fort's distinctive frescoes are picked out in bisque, turquoise and sienna - answering the reduced palette of the surrounding desert. What impresses as much as the carved wooden ceilings and Mughal-era portraits is the sense of an aesthetic rooted in an intimate deference to time.

There should be a pause for reflection, however. What of the thirty-four guest rooms, free internet access and complimentary continental breakfast? What separates Rohet Garh from yet another Rajasthani hotel banging its heritage tabla with a special nod to the Americans and their nobility fixation?

The answer lies in the traditions not played out for the traveller's handy-cam. While Thakur Singh may sell extortionate gift shop goods, a percentage of these funds are channelled into local projects for the benefit of villages that would have once fallen within the Rohet fiefdom. As the family source all their staff from the locality, the garh also remains one of Rohet's primary employers. The Singhs have revised their ancestral duties to survive the latest wave of ferengis, furthering Rajasthan's long history of cultural assault and assimilation.

Such an elegant symbiosis between cosseted Western tourists and the Great Indian Desert way of life is bound to fissure at points. I was fortunate enough to sample the strange fruit born out of the cracks. Rohet Garh's village safari is hailed as exemplary in the heritage tourism industry. I and eight other guests signed up for the tour, which promised a visit to both a Brahmin settlement and a village belonging to the Bishnois, a tribe billed as 'the world's first environmentalists' due to their spiritual reverence of flora and fauna.

Meeting the Bishnois and learning of their twenty-nine ecological principles would have been unreservedly captivating, had it not been for the guide's distracting endorsement of the next stop on our agenda. He seemed to be saying that we would proceed to an opium tasting ceremony where we would all take opium. I was inclined to be happily intrigued but I could sense my American fellow guests tensing up in black anticipation of Lotus Eater dens and death in an Indian chokey. Preparing myself to laugh it off under the banner of 'cultural misunderstanding', I still managed to be taken aback on being ushered into a dimly lit hut full of opium addicts.

The line of Brahmins watched us enter with deep-set eyes, shadowed by uniformly flamingo-pink turbans. As we settled ourselves into an audience on the swept cow dung floor, water was poured into a tall metal instrument through what appeared to be two tea strainers, topped in the centre by a finger-sized Shiva icon. As the 'dope chai' dripped into the bowls below, our guide blithely regaled us on 'a day in the life' of these farmers: opium apparently acting as both morning set-me-up and post-toil relaxant. Meanwhile, the men under discussion eyed us with what may have been concealed embitterment, but was far likelier the single-minded anticipation of the addict.

After slurping up my palm-full of opium tea (the Americans declined with a 'no thank-you') I was conveyed back to camp to hazily muse on my stay. Perhaps Rohet Garh could be a little too authentic. Having expected a tranquil retreat, I wasn't entirely at ease with taking illegal substances or running into Thakur Singh every morning. Its hard to savour the plumpest lounge chair when the owner is wriggling on a bar stool. Yet, after weeks reclining in the palatial suites of the once-Maharajas, at Rohet I felt I'd finally landed. The coloniser is the colonised, as they say, and I don't think I could have learned this lesson more pleasurably than at Rohet Garh.

Entire issue of the Basingstoke Observer

2010-10-13T03:28:00.000-07:00

I covered for the Chief Reporter of the Basingstoke Observer, and had to single-handedly produce all the news content and images for an issue of this weekly local paper. Read the issue, in digital form, here.

Read Kipling's Kim with video and pics

2010-10-13T03:22:00.001-07:00

Go here to check out the 50 page + multimedia resource I created to accompany Kipling's classic adventure story 'Kim'.

Check out the Big Society debate I'm heading

2010-10-13T03:19:00.001-07:00

Go here to read the ongoing debate on the Big Society that I'm heading at OpenDemocracy.org.

Theatre reviews for UKtheatre.net

2010-10-13T02:53:00.000-07:00

Publishing these theatre reviews for UKtheatre.net, published in 2009, as the links have expired..

Direct from The Edinburgh Festival, The National Theatre of Scotland’s 365 – One Night to Learn a Lifetime is a brave, highly visual production on Britain’s care system, now playing at The Lyric Hammersmith

In 365 – One Night to Learn a Lifetime writer David Harrower and director Vicky Featherstone tackle the sensitive subject of Britain’s care system. The production traces a year in the life of a group of 16-year-olds who leave care for ‘practice-flats’, supposedly to prepare them for an independent, adult life. Featherstone took inspiration from a UNICEF report suggesting that Britain is at the bottom of 21 developed countries in its treatment of young people, and given such a starting impulse, 365 could have fallen foul of preachy moralising. Instead, the production injects life into the facts, giving us a glimpse into the lives of fourteen teenagers that is at turns harrowing and life-affirming, reaching beyond the hard realities of Britain’s care system to pay tribute to the human spirit.

Harrower has taken a risk by avoiding a clear narrative, letting the character’s lives interweave and speak on their own terms. These are stories of abuse, neglect and emotional damage, and the play’s lack of a clear structure reflects the uncertainty facing these teenagers. The script was developed largely during rehearsal, and the benefits of this collaborative process can be felt in the energy and confidence of the fifteen-strong cast. For many of the actors, 365 is their debut performance, and the occasional shaky moment and lack of any notable ‘shining light’ is overridden by a strong sense of cast togetherness.

The action largely takes place in an empty, one-room flat – a pared-down set that is used to masterful effect, providing a simple canvas for Steven Hogget’s excellent choreography. Expressive physicality takes pressure off the script, creating a great depth of meaning without the characters needing to be unrealistically eloquent or compromising the authenticity of their speech. The symbolism of floating is a strong underlying thread in the play, and some of the most emotionally charged scenes are conducted in silence with the actors elevating on wire, communicating a sense of alienation or struggle, mid-air, against an invisible presence.

It’s obvious that a great deal of research has gone into 365 – there’s a palpable awareness of responsibility towards the weighty subject matter, yet the production is never po-faced. Featherstone has done justice to a wry comic streak in Harrower’s script, and the various interwoven storylines create a momentum of their own that resists any over-arching moral or contrived sentiment. The Lyric has once again lived up to its reputation for taking chances in delivering brave, energetic theatre. Rather than resting on its merits as a ‘worthy’ production, 365 is an edgy, compelling look at the lives of Britain’s young people in care.

Richard III on the fringe

The Faction is known for flying in the face of fringe theatre tradition, using large casts to reinvent classical texts. Unfortunately their production of Richard III at The Brockley Jack seemed half-hearted in its attempt to revive and innovate, using the physicality of the cast to create some nice touches, but staying disappointingly on safe ground for much of the 2hr production.

The Faction had a hard task taking on Richard III. It’s easy for assassination after assassination to begin to drag if the production doesn’t pace itself well. During the first half the cast seem all too aware of this potential, with actors tending to trip over their tongues in order to plough through the machinations, plots and consequent murders in time for the shrewd, devious Richard to be crowned king. The hurried squabbling of nobles contrasts with the time taken in the tender portrait of Clarence before his death, giving the actors Tom Shaw (Tyrrel) and Gareth Fordred (Clarence) breathing space to create an engrossing, self-contained scene. It would have been nice to see more carefully poised moments like this. While the pace of the second half slowed to the play’s benefit, the initial galloping speed is detrimental to character development.

Mark Leipacher’s plays a suave, weasel-like Richard III, genuinely owning the part. The occasional shaky moment in the acting of lesser characters is forgivable, and The Brockley Jack’s small, in-the-round theatre gives the production an immediacy that keeps the audience glued to the unfolding plot. Whether it’s Margaret lurching into the audience, driven mad by loss of her Queendom, or Richard’s youngest nephew careering about the stage, unaware of his imminent death in the tower, the action is riveting for being often close enough to touch.

The Faction is known for the muscular physicality of their productions. While there were some striking standout moments in Richard III, the 25-strong cast could have been used to more consistently powerful effect. The pivotal ‘visitation’ in Act V is one such standout moment. The ghosts of all those killed by Richard are transformed into a moving mass of corpses heaving themselves across the stage to damn the tyrant before battle, while reaching out to bless his rival Richmond. Other instances of clever physicality, such as the decision to double up the bodies of Richard’s victims as thrones, are effective but perhaps a little predictable.

An accomplished, engaging production, The Faction’s Richard III falls short of true innovation, but certainly sets the heart racing and gives its audience a good flavour for Shakespeare’s “deformed, unfinish’d” anti-hero.

Security, by Zena Edwards

Zena Edwards’ one-woman show, Security – now playing at Battersea Arts Centre - uses poetry, music and theatre to craft a deeply personal work touching on issues of knife crime, the transition from youth into adulthood, and the multi-cultural melting pot of London street life.

The bare plotline of Security, written as well as acted by Edwards, may seem a little contrived. The play begins with teenage MC Ayleen recovering from her older brother’s murder in a misplaced gang attack. The death becomes central to the growth of her relationship with Palestinian Mahmoud, a resigned loner in his 50s whose experience of the fight for freedom in his home country is paralleled with the meaningless violence taking place on the streets of London.

Edwards, however, inhabits her characters with such force of conviction that what could have been a tired diatribe is transformed into a deeply felt and acutely observed testament to London street life. The format, being mostly composed of monologues, allows Edwards to invest real emotional depth into her characters – especially revealing in the case of Alyeen, who on the surface is an a-typical teenage MC “with attitude”. Edwards’ mastery over her characters’ physicality alone makes Security worth the watch. It’s nothing short of astounding to see Edwards move seamlessly from the teenager’s pout to take on the peculiar mannerisms of Mahmoud - with his foul-breathed dog and camera swinging over his pot-belly - or the 70-year old Jamaican veteran, who jauntily limps round the estate with his regular call of ‘Get a job!’.

While the streets around appear chaotic and randomly violent, Ayleen and Mahmoud seek security within themselves, and it is their fragile and at times strained relationship that binds together this play of many stories, songs and encounters. We see Ayleen through Mahmoud’s eyes as she desperately tries to follow her older brother’s advice to not get into trouble and ‘just be herself’. One of the most ingenious and moving scenes takes place when Mahmoud gives Ayleen a rose in the street. We see her outward response ‘What?! People will think you’re my boyfriend!” contrasted with her experience of greenness, growth and beauty while smelling the rose. Edward’s quick interchange between portraying Ayleen and acting out Mahmoud’s dogged protest that she take the rose and really ‘look’ at it, creates a scene in turns exquisitely comical and moving.

Security’s careful blending of theatre with spoken-word and music gives the play a strong sense of rhythm and pace. Edwards does the singing herself, and the songs are simple and often hauntingly beautiful – used to demarcate changes in character. If we were to imagine the play as a series of possessions, it is as if Edwards’ singing purifies herself in readiness for the next role. As a spoken-word poet, as well as a an actress and theatrical writer, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Security’s script should slip so naturally between naturalistic and poetic language, catching our attention and sustaining it with its variety and vitality. While Mahmoud’s poet-philosopher musings on the world slows the pace to a leisurely contemplation, Ayleen’s hectic, often outrageously funny MC-ing injects pure adrenaline into the play.

Seeing Security at Battersea Arts Centre is an intimate experience – the small stage gives this extraordinary one-woman show a special impact due to Edwards’ nearness to the audience and her ability to fully control the stage space. What we ultimately take away from this production is Edwards’ will to communicate her intense love and involvement in her characters. As writer and sole performer, she has produced a play with an admirable clarity of vision, that takes an unwavering and profoundly human look at some of the unseen and unheard men and women in our capital.

Feature for RussiaToday.com

2010-10-13T02:51:00.001-07:00

Read the feature online, here

Canada to deport US ex-Sergeant who refused to fight in Iraq
Sergeant Hart defected from the Iraq war in 2004, and has been living in Canada for the past three years with his wife and son. Now Hart has been ordered to return to the US to face charges and imprisonment, despite opposition from the majority of the Canadian people.

Nine-year veteran Sergeant Patrick Hart made the life-changing decision to go AWOL from the US army after learning that his second deployment would be to Iraq. Fellow soldiers’ stories of atrocities committed by the US army had warned him off fighting in the country. He says that, as a family man, he was concerned that Iraq would leave him scarred by his experiences.

“One of my buddies is telling me that he has a six-year-old daughter,” Hart says. “But now he sees the faces of these Iraqi kids he’s run over every night before he goes to bed… …So I’m thinking - if I go there, will I get mentally screwed up like those guys? Am I going to be able to interact with my son properly?”

Hart is now living with his six-year-old son Rian and wife Jill in Toronto, after the family came to join him in 2005. Jill is an Office Manager for a nightclub in Toronto, while Rian is just about to complete his first semester at his local school.

However, despite the community in Toronto welcoming the Harts with open arms, on October 8th the family was ordered by the Canadian government to leave the country voluntarily, or be deported back to America on October 28th.

Canada officially opposed the Iraq war, and lobby groups such as The War Resisters Support Campaign feel their country is contradicting its position by deporting a resister of the conflict back to the US.
The government’s policy is also at loggerheads with the majority opinion of its people. According to an Angus Reid national poll conducted last June, 64% of Canadians want to grant permanent resident status to US war resisters.
Major figures in favour of the deportation policy include Crown lawyer Stephen Gold. Gold worked on Jeremy Hinzman’s case last September, where he argued that Hinzman - and other US war resisters like him - were owed nothing by the Canadian government. “The applicant (Hinzman) is going back to face the consequences of his own actions”, Gold stated. “That cannot be laid at the feet of the Canadian government.
Hart’s wife Jill expresses her thanks to The War Resisters Support Campaign for rallying against figures like Gold, and to the Canadian people for giving their support: “We have had three wonderful years in Canada, as a family. We owe Canadians an enormous amount of gratitude for welcoming us and allowing us to stay for the past three years.”
The harshest punishment for deserting the US army is five years imprisonment. Patrick Hart is hoping for greater leniency from the military tribunal, but is ready to accept any verdict.
“For anyone thinking I’ve taken the easy route, it’s not easy by any stretch of the imagination”, Hart says. “But it is what it is, and I’ll stand by what I’ve done.”

Music reviews published on Hybridlab.org

2010-10-13T02:38:00.000-07:00

Links to a bunch of music reviews I wrote for Hybridlab.org have expired, so here's a selection of the work...

We Yes You No, Music Review

We Yes You No are a wide-eyed baby of the No Wave tradition, umbilical cord still attached. It is hard to fathom that the band are in fact a four-piece. We Yes You No look beyond the poverty of conventional instrumentation, createing a surprisingly rich, deep and intricately woven soundscape that is all their own.

The track ‘Dream in Motion’ is exemplary of We Yes You No’s avant-garde tendencies. ‘Dream in Motion’ circles around a musical motif with the line ‘I love you just the way you are’, taking the fragment through a process of rhythmical distortion and morphing - think John Cage and the minimalist scene. Surprisingly, ‘Dream in Motion’ has a joyously harmonic chorus, making the track both musically challenging and blissful on the ears. Another beauty of a tune, ‘Obsessed’, uses dissonant keyboard riffs to create an eerie ambience offset by interludes of chaotic sound, almost white noise.

We Yes You No take their music seriously, but this is not to say that they can’t do tongue-in-cheek. The message behind ‘Apocalypse Pocket Edition’ (‘the end is nigh my friend’) may be dour but it is delivered with such saccharine vocals that the song mocks its own nihilism. There is a flavour of whimsical romanticism to We Yes You No, especially notable in their lyrical opulence -‘It’s the ice rink that she rules, no matter that it should have been the desert pool’. Like Mercury Rev and the blue-sky sound of Joy Zipper, We Yes You No are about more than beating out a tune or even making a statement. Their sound is concerned with invoking atmosphere.

We Yes You No are pulling at the edges, corners and windows of the music scene. With the spookily evocative bent of Blonde Redhead and the kitsch flavour that we have come to except from Mercury Rev and The Flaming Lips, We Yes You No are a razor-sharp act with enviable musical integrity.

www.myspace.com/weyesyouno

***********

Bev Lee Harling, Featured Artist

Bev Lee Harling is an unstoppable force of musical activity. Her soulful intimate vocal style, song writing prowess, and diverse instrumental talents have left her in demand from all corners of the industry.

Classically trained as a violinist, Bev switched direction mid way through her studies to jazz voice. Since embarking on her career, she has graced a colourful array of bands and projects, playing fiddle for an Argentinian Tango group, singing in a jazz septet, holding the occasional rooftop concert and even receiving a track commission in October last year from Myla, a sexy lingerie brand patronised by Kate Moss and her ilk. Bev is touring, as we speak, with darlings of the goth-alternative scene, The Medieval Baebes.

Clearly, there are many doors open to this exceptional musician. Bevs’ career roots itself in her self-penned music where her expressive, velvety voice really comes into its own. Jazz, blues and global influences are woven together with a subtle fluency that enlivens the soul and tweaks at the heartstrings. In 2006 she released a five-track EP, Impossible Human, and has since collaborated with the eccentric Rogall and The Electric Circus Sideshow as well as Berlin-based band Ye Solar.

The musical world is certainly reaping the benefits of Bev’s multi-tasking talents. Her parents once described their daughter as a ‘rudderless boat’. I wouldn’t be so sure about ‘rudderless’. Bev Lee Harling’s sound certainly leads the listener into deep waters, doing so with strength and fervent direction.

*******

New Black Light Machine, Featured Band

Mates from college, New Black Light Machine began in 2006 as a three-piece and completed their line up last March with Matthew Lane on keys. The band describe their playing style as ‘fast and loose’ and gigs focus on intense energy above technical perfection. ‘We’d rather play a good song loosely than a bad song tight’ remarks vocalist Russell McNally. It’s Russell that provides a raw edge to the band’s live performances, delivering his self-penned harrowing lyrics with a monotone intensity that recalls Mark E. Smith of The Fall.

New Black Light Machine are a daring outfit with direction. So where are they hoping to take their sound? The band have established a definitive face on the East London circuit and are now in a position to break out into the wider London-based scene. We wish them luck in their bid to conquer the capital. New Black Machine may not deliver air-brushed music but their fast and loose approach is getting them the attention they deserve.

www.myspace/newblacklightmachine

IDOLISING THE INDOLOGISTS - Published The Statesman

2009-12-25T22:35:00.000-08:00

‘Dialogue of Civilizations – William Jones and the Orientalists’, Mohandas Moses and Achala Moulik
Aryan Books International, 2009

‘Dialogue of Civilizations – William Jones and the Orientalists’ by Mohandas Moses and Achala Moulik documents the development of Indology under the Raj. Moulik / Moses give a well researched account of this fascinating and fertile period of intellectual discovery, touching upon the great paradox that the Indologists, while colonialists at heart, awakened India to its rich cultural heritage. Unfortunately, the authors shy away from in-depth engagement with their subject matter, contenting themselves with a form of biography that limits itself fatally by imposing its own moral framework on the period.

Mohandas Moses, a distinguished civil servant in his time, had laboured on ‘Dialogue of Civilizations…’ for 20 years until his death in 2003 whereupon his wife, Achala Moulik, completed the work. This is not to cast Moulik as the passive spouse, fulfilling her husband’s death wish: far from it. Moulik is in fact the more prolific author, with twenty-one non-fiction works to her name, and had previously aided Mohan in his research for ‘Dialogue of Civilizations…’. Touchingly, in the book’s preface, she describes the hours spent by herself and her husband researching the work as ‘some of the most happiest in our lives’.

It is a shame, then, that there is little to praise in this tribute to the Indology movement – so obviously a labour of love, on more than one count.

Picture an era when the likes of William Jones, Max Muller and Warren Hastings were unlocking what they saw as ‘the secrets of the east’, while at the same time brushing shoulders at opulent parties with Robert Clive and his cronies – men who had come to India only to “wring the natives dry” and return in pomp to Britain. The Indologists are compelling as moral and intellectual trapeze artists: treading the line between their growing knowledge of India as a cultural colossus and their duty to rule and “re-form” the Indian people.

Unfortunately, Moulik / Moses refuse to engage with these unorthodox, idiosyncratic thinkers on their own terms. Given only dry, superficially speculative accounts of the Indologists’ “lives and works”, we are forced to conclude that each man was a baffling hypocrite. We read of the Marquess of Wellesley, for example, who discouraged ‘social or matrimonial relationships with Indians’, while significantly furthering the cause of Indology through the setting up of the College of Fort William for the purpose of educating civil servants in ‘Indian history, law, religions, languages etc.’.

This seeming contradiction is noted by Moses / Moulik, but not explored. Similarly, the authors express little more than bemusement at the apparent clash between Max Muller’s advancements in the cause of Sanskrit, and his staunch dismissal of India’s history as ‘static’ and its people as ‘passive’. Warren Hastings, the Governor-General who arguably sealed Britain’s imperial destiny, is alternately reviled and admired by the authors as an ‘intellectual schizophrenic’.

The colour and fascination of the period is all but lost on Moulik / Moses, along with the realization that Muller, Hastings and their tribe each developed his own intensely personal system of belief through which to view his role within the Raj. In avoiding the complexities and paradoxes of the movement, the authors fall into the deepest trap open to such an historical work: they impose a moral trajectory on the period.

Behind the veil of neutral biography, ‘Dialogue of Civilizations…’ works on the premise that while military conflict is necessarily destructive, cultural exchange is always beneficial. Within this framework, men like Clive and Lord Cornwallis – the latter introduced the infamous Permanent Settlement - are on the side of military power, culpable of enforcing their rule on the Indian people and looting the nation’s treasures. William Jones, meanwhile, (with Warren Hastings as a kind of right-hand man) becomes a symbol for the benevolent, blameless interchange of cultures.

This naïve distinction between destructive ‘hard’ power and benevolent ‘soft’ power explains Moulik / Moses’ reluctance to delve too deeply into the individual perspectives of the Indologists. Where are we to situate the likes of Hastings, Muller and Wellesley in this framework: men who routinely justified acts of force through cultural argument?

No wonder that ‘Dialogue of Civilizations…’ homes in on the founder of the Asiatic Society, William Jones - a man who’s been memorialized in countless historical works as being above the vestiges of power. There is no doubt that Jones was an erudite academic and sincere “Indophile”: his discovery of the common roots between Latin and Sanskrit, and groundbreaking translation of the poet Kalidasa, are momentous tributes to this fact. However, Moulik / Moses conveniently sideline the scholar’s less laudable alter ego: that of Judge Jones of the Supreme Court, a man who had sailed to India in order to “fill his coffers” as a well-oiled cog in the British regime.

‘Dialogue of Civilizations…’ refuses to brave the storms of this heady intellectual movement, avoiding the proposition of military conquest and cultural invigoration as troubled bedfellows. Instead, it attempts, and fails, to place the Indologists neatly into two camps - military aggressor, and cultural ‘ally’ - leaving its prose high, but painfully dry.

21st CENTURY DHARMA - Awaiting publication in The Statesman

2009-12-25T22:31:00.000-08:00

The Difficulty of Being Good – On the Subtle Art of Dharma
By Gurcharan Das
Penguin Books
Hardback Rs 699

Das’ highly modern re-think of the Mahabharata is a risky journey that’s well worth taking
A review by Niki Seth-Smith

Gurcharan Das has woven himself the most exquisite of traps. His invigorating, highly contemporary take on the Mahabharata, ‘The Difficulty of Being Good’, shows its readers how to view everyday life through the many-angled prism of the classic epic. In doing so, he leaves himself open to the fate of Drona – whose pupils, the Pandavas, grow to turn their skills against their master. The temptation to analyse Das and his book through ‘the subtle art of dharma’ is too great for a good pupil to resist.

The first dharma Das discusses in his book is sya-dharma, which he describes as arising from ‘good deeds’ approved by society, and conforming to one’s caste or societal position. Is Das abiding by sya-dharma in taking on this foundational text of Indian culture? Taking our cue from the author in updating ideas about dharma, let’s look beyond the issue of caste to Das’ broader status in society.

Das does not come from an academic or religious background. The majority of his career was spent in multinational companies, before he adopted his current role as an author and celebrated columnist. Not only is Das no Sanskrit scholar, he admits to having not studied any Indian classical texts before a stint of study at The University of Chicago eventually gave birth to ‘The Difficulty of Being Good’. One could argue, on these grounds, that Das ‘acted outside his rightful place in society’ by single-handedly taking on the Mahabharata, thus violating sya-dharma. However, the humility with which Das approaches the epic may well absolve him of such a harsh verdict.

Das is acutely aware of the labyrinthine nature of this momentous text, which draws the reader towards one conclusion, before revealing the many faces of the problem in hand. In fact, despite the judiciously cautious nature of the ‘The Difficulty of Being Good’, Das still ends the work with the fear that he has imposed himself too much: “Even by asking the question ‘What is the epic trying to say?’… I may have been culpable of expecting too much logical coherence in the epic when its real position may well be agnostic…”

The very structure of ‘The Difficulty of Being Good’ deters the author from attempting to pin a ‘final meaning’ to the Mahabharata. The book is divided into ten chapters, the first nine of which deal with nine of the main players in the epic through what can be called their ‘ruling natures’: we discuss Duryodhana’s envy, Draupadi’s courage, Arjuna’s despair etc. Through focusing in on each of these themes, Das avoids sweeping statements and is able to bring the epic’s lessons to bear on everyday life in the twenty-first century.

In ‘Bhishma’s Selflessness’, the position of the great karma yogi is brought home to us through a touching story concerning the author’s own father. As a civil engineer, Das’ father had disagreed with his boss in public. Despite being subsequently fired, he remained content to have spoken the truth. Thus the concept of nishkama karma – being ‘intent on the act, not its fruit’ – is called down from the realms of the abstract into a world we can easily understand. The book’s contemporising impulse throws up many ingenious examples. Duryodhana’s envy is paralleled with the rivalry between the millionaire Ambani brothers; Yudhishthira’s concept of duty is presented as having aided Nazi Germany, while Ashwatthama’s musings on revenge are employed as justification for the US death penalty.

If Das just about escapes from the judgment of sya-dharma, can he join the ranks of his father and Bhishma as an upholder of nishkama karma? As far as being ‘intent on the act’, the clarity and resonance of Das’ prose, coupled with the beautifully-wrought structure of the book, speaks for ‘The Difficulty of Being Good’ as an ‘end in itself’. Yet Das is clear that he wrote the work in order to overcome his self-proclaimed ‘third-stage melancholy’: the third stage within the classical Indian way of life being marked by an urge to disengage from worldly pursuits. Perhaps, then, the author is concerned as much with the project’s benefit to his psyche as with the book itself. It seems hardly a goal we can grudge him, however, given the infinitely more banal desire for money and acclaim that drive so many authors in the business.

Lastly, Das must stand up to perhaps the most inscrutable notion of dharma: that associated with Yudhishthira, the eldest of the Pandavas. Yudhisthira’s sadharana-dharma is universal and its foremost duties are to compassion and truth. Here, if anywhere, ‘The Difficulty of Being Good’ hits a quagmire. While Das’ efforts to contemporise the Mahabharata’s ideas on dharma births some truly cutting-edge discussions, some of his assertions about the current political and cultural climate are unsubstantiated, and therefore questionable. Among other contentions, the book states that Indians today respect Arjuna more than Yudhishthira, that hatred of the ‘American Empire’ almost killed the Indo-US nuclear deal and that the Lehman Brothers might have been saved were it not for the envy of Hank Paulson, formerly of Goldman Sachs. While these assertions may well all be true, they appear as unsupported statements in the book, and hence fail to rise above the level of seemingly hubristic opinion.

The Mahabharata has enjoyed such profound and lasting influence due to its powerful argumentation and refusal to provide any black and white conclusions. Das may have exposed himself to attack by encouraging his readers to view the world through the lens of this epic text. Yet, in so doing, he has ensured that ‘The Difficulty of Being Good’ escapes the judge’s verdict. All we can do is argue it out, and thus reach a more enlightened perspective. At least, that’s my personal take on the work. I’m sure – in fact, I hope - that future readers will agree to disagree.

LOW SEASON HIGHS, IN MANALI - Published The Statesman

2009-12-25T22:29:00.000-08:00

Travellers in India move in herds, according to the season. In winter, the southern coastline and Goa’s intoxicating party scene beckons; come summer, the hill stations of Himachal Pradesh and Raj-style Darjeeling are the snow-capped gems in the subcontinental crown. This winter, however, I decided to brave the role of the black sheep and head to Manali in late November, well into its low season.

6,400 feet above sea level and cradled by the Himalayan foothills, Manali is celebrated as Himachal’s adventure sports capital (and – more reservedly - for its bountiful supply of charas, or local-grown hash). Come November, however, Manali’s population drops as fast as its average temperature, leaving the hill station’s action-packed programme sadly depleted. While sports like rock climbing and rafting are still available in the low season, the prospect of hanging by my numb pinky from a cliff face or plunging into a glacial river set my teeth on edge. To be honest, I’m not much of a thrill seeker and was glad of the excuse. Peaceful hikes and breath-taking scenery are more my style. I wasn’t to be disappointed.

Arriving on a private deluxe (but still bone-shaking) night bus from Chandigarh, the 5˚C dawn air proved a more powerful pick-me-up than the espresso waiting for me at my hotel. Manali Heights, a self-described ‘fairytale luxury hotel’ perched above Old Manali and framed against towering pine forests, proved an ideal refuge from the rigours of the landscape. This ‘fairytale’, however, was a little on the chilly side. I hadn’t bargained for the fact that most hotels in Manali, even upmarket resorts, have a policy of switching on their central heating only when their occupancy hits around sixty per cent. I’d learned my first ‘low season’ lesson. You can pay to be pampered in Manali, but you still need to pack long underwear.

The best way to get the blood pumping is, of course, to explore. Central Manali, Old Manali and Vashisht – a village around three kilometres north of Manali – are all tourist hotspots in their own right. Old Manali and Vashisht have been hippy-magnets ever since the hill station was first discovered as a global destination back in the sixties. While I had a great time cruising the mellow cafes and hobnobbing with blissed-out old-timers, here’s a whispered warning: don’t take your gran. Central Manali, on the other hand, is larger, more modern and definitely more appropriate for families and comfort-seekers. That being said, it is beginning to suffer from over-development, with concrete eyesores now marring the mountain views.

The Lonely Planet and various tourist websites had ‘informed’ me that Old Manali and Vashisht were closed from October to May. While I should be lambasting the so-called traveller’s bible for this piece of pessimistic hyperbole, in fact I’m immensely grateful. While the hordes of skiers and stoners were warned off the trip, I enjoyed my very own tranquil hill station where the locals were more likely to chat about the chance of snowfall than to holler at me from their crowded shop doorways.

This said, given that more than half of the Manali hospitality sector had followed the tourist herd down to the warmer climes of Goa, the semi-deserted feel of the villages could be a tad depressing. In high season, Old Manali boasts neck-to-neck restaurants cooking up everything from fajitas to homemade tagliatelli and I spent a good few hours salivating over the signs of these boarded up joints. However, once I’d pulled my eyes away I found a fair few multicuisine restuarants still open, as well as numerous dhabas (there’s nothing like a bowl of steaming thukpa after a mountain hike). In fact, the lack of choice was a mixed blessing as the more popular restaurants, hotels and hostels tend to open over all year round, leaving me with what I like best: a short list of quality options.

Hard-core trekkers would no doubt turn their nose up at Manali’s winter season. Firstly, the Rohtang and Kunzum passes are almost always snow-bound by November, so the popular multi-day treks to Lahaul and Spiti are a no-go. Casual walkers like me, however, could spend weeks mapping the labyrinth of paths up into the dizzying foothills, ducking into the many temples and gompas along the way. While I hired a guide to drive me up to the shifting snowline, the more adventurous can rent bikes or cars and make their own way up to such soul-stirring views as afforded by Rohtang Pass or Ladakhi Peak.

Animals move in herds for protection and you could say the same about travellers. Straying off the path, I had to face the bitter cold and forage around for tasty, quality cuisine. My reward was a hill station unsullied by harried hoteliers or the stench of chain-smoked spliffs – an invitation to set my own pace and revel in the landscape as it revealed itself to me alone. Manali in the low season is high on my list of recommendations. Just don’t all come at once. Only black sheep allowed.

SEARCHING FOR A POET - Published The Statesman

2009-12-25T22:24:00.000-08:00

Niki Seth-Smith takes us on a hunt for new literary talent in London and Kolkata.

As an editor of a literary publication, as soon as I stepped off the plane from London my hunt for Kolkatan poets began. Before arriving, I’d heard Tagore’s city praised as the cultural capital of India. But now I’d landed, where to begin my search?

My expertise, I should explain, lies in ferreting out authors from London’s labyrinthine literary scene. I know the smoke-stained pub corners where they bury themselves; the boutique cafes where they munch organic flapjacks. Not all poets conform to type, of course, but I can sniff them out, even through a well-tailored suit. In London, the first place I head in search for authors is the Poetry Café, off Tottenham Court Road. The hub of the National Poetry Society is a cosy one-room boho-feel café hidden down a back alley. In the day, coffee drinkers hunch over their poetry volumes and talk in intense, unhurried tones. By night, a widely diverse programme of readings is held in the basement, from evenings with the poet laureate to open-mike slam sessions where the beats rock and the beer flows. Was there a Kolkatan equivalent? My neighbour pointed me to the Little Magazine Library on Tamer Lane, tucked away off the vast book market radiating out from College Street.

I’d heard about the legacy of the Little Magazine and its strong roots in Bengal. From daily volumes to bi-annual tomes, Little Magazines are vital to the Indian literary scene as alternative vehicles of expression not bound to conform to the double pressures of commerce and politics. The Little Magazine’s hey day in West Bengal was undoubtedly the 1960s, when the Hungry Generation sought to birth a mode of avant-garde expression free from the shackles of the colonial canon. Sandeep Dutta, the guardian of the Little Magazine library, judges that there are 150 Little Magazines currently published in Kolkata alone and more than a 1,000 based in the state – but as the publications tend not to be registered, there is no sure way to tell how many have mushroomed over the decades.

Sandeep Dutta set up the Little Magazine library in 1978 on finding that there was no institution willing to keep a comprehensive record of the publications. Today, volumes upon volumes are stacked to the roof of Sandeep’s two-room library - rare editions from the ‘40s jostling for space with issues still in their envelopes, newly posted to the collection not only from Bengal but from all over India and the wider diaspora. While Sandeep showed me a Bengali language LM sent to him from Sweden, a stream of authors, editors, researchers and literary lovers squeezed in and out of the cramped, dimly lit rooms.

Thinking back, the calm retreat of the Poetry Café seemed suddenly staid and inhibiting in comparison to the bustling, chatty atmosphere of Sandeep’s library. It just isn’t the ‘done thing’ to address the café on the impact of politics on literature today or pass verdict on the latest emerging talent, as at Tamer Lane. Personally, I’d be too frightened that one of those dedicated scribblers was busy composing the next Waste Land and I’d put them off their masterpiece forever.

Don’t get me wrong. London’s literary scene is not all rosehip tea and reticence. The capital’s Spoken Word scene is buzzing and incredibly diverse. Poetry tends to be served with a twist: screamed from the rooftops (that’s literal); painted on the walls; accompanied (or delivered) by comics, burlesque dancers and avant-garde bands. But as for everyday literary dens – places where you might hang out and hook up with other writers – they’re almost always cloaked in reverential silence. It seems we Brits assume our ‘difficult’ poets like things peaceful, ordered and disciplined.

Take the capital’s Saison poetry library – my time-honoured plan B on any search for London poets. Situated on the fourth floor of the South Bank Centre, looking over the Thames and the Millennium Bridge, this incredibly well-stocked library is housed on stacked shelves with no spaces between. A browser simply pulls on a shelf which wheels out to reveal its treasures: the epitome of space-saving self-sufficiency. Any Sandeep-like guardian of the collection is made redundant by such a well-oiled machine. As an editor, I simply browse for upcoming poets, find their email address (the publication’s index or Google will do the trick) and shoot off a commissioning email. Easy as a slice of low-calorie pie.

Whereas, to find a Little Magazine poet, your best to consult those in the know - preferably the great librarian himself. I note the slight heaviness under Sandeep’s eyes as he tells me of the time he’s dedicated to the collection. For Dutta is much more than a living index of publications and authors. He is also connoisseur, critic, guardian and match-maker of this ever-changing alternative scene. Although constantly scouring the book stalls for rare and overlooked publications, today most material comes to him directly. In 1989 he set up a Writer’s Bank File, where authors submit their work to the library and editors from across the country can drop in and check out the new material. While I was visiting, the editor of a Durgapur-based political magazine ‘Socrates’ had traveled four hours to come have a rifle through.

Couldn’t the library misuse its power as an axis of the Little Magazine scene? After all, Sandeep only accepts into the Bank File what he deems to be ‘quality’ work. Doesn’t that judgment necessitate a certain amount of personal bias? My friend and editor of Kolkata-based comedy magazine ‘Self Employment’ is shocked that I should propose such an abuse. “He’s powerful, by circumstance,” he assures me. “It’s not about power, it’s about love.” Last year’s boycott of the state-run Little Magazine fair was a testament to the library’s ability to unite, not control, the LM scene. Taking a stand against the state government - its land acquisition policy in particular - the library had organized an alternative fair, attracting roughly 200 Little Magazine sellers. But Sandeep was adamant that this political intervention would not play a divisive role: “It wasn’t about ‘this is my group, that’s yours, and if you’re on their side you can’t be on mine’. Lots of editors came to both fairs.”

The strong ties that bind Bengal’s Little Magazine community, with the library seemingly centre of the web, ensured the success of my hunt for poets. Aside from the obvious road-block - my desperately poor Bengali – I’d been expecting Kolkata to confront me with many more difficulties than my native London. I soon learnt the benefit of the personal touch. After spilling my woes to Sandeep (and the dozens of authors and literati who happened to be passing through the library) I now have a list of Bengalis whose work can be found in translation as well as those who write in English. Now, I just have to muster my pitiful Bangla and dial their numbers.

Many London-based editors I know would balk at the prospect of consulting a figure such as Sandeep on the latest publications, or having to travel hours to a hidden back alley in order to scout out new talent. An institution like the Little Magazine library isn’t necessary in the Big Smoke. In fact, with UK publications and authors busy spreading feelers into the e-world, editors can increasingly do their work from the comfort of their home. But necessity aside, perhaps London would benefit from an establishment such as Sandeep’s library: an all-welcome base, where anyone and everyone can air views and share work – from the teenage lyricist to the seasoned editor.

Soon, I’ll be back in the Poetry Café, sipping my Earl Grey and pouring over a journal of prose poetry. After the crazed hubbub of Kolkata, I’m sure that I’ll savour the calm ambience of the café and the knowledge that my neighbour is unlikely to interrupt me with a passionate critique of my reading matter. That said, I’ll miss the free association and disciplined chaos of Tamer Lane. At least I’ll be flying back home with some impressive poetry tucked away in my backpack.

Niki Seth-Smith is a British journalist with The Statesman. ‘Searching for a Poet’ is the second in a series viewing Kolkata through a Londoner’s eyes.

Niki Seth-Smith edits the e-zine www.fingerdancefestival.org.uk. Poetry and art submissions are welcome at submissions@fingerdancefestival.org.uk.

STARS FOR THE PINK PARADE - Published The Statesman 09

2009-12-25T22:21:00.000-08:00

Looking back on this year’s Kolkata Pride, Niki Seth-Smith considers how celebrity support could benefit the gay community.

On the seventeenth of September, the Centre is to take a stand on the decriminalization of consensual gay sex in India. That is, if the government abides by the Supreme Court order. It appears unlikely that the ruling on Section 377 will be reversed, but the fear is palpable and prompts an urgent question: Who will support the LGBT community and its newfound and much-belated ‘right to exist’?

In Bengal, Kolkata Pride has been uniting the gay and transsexual community with its supporters since its inception in 2003. As a straight British woman, I was part of the celebration of new hope that marked this year’s Pride, falling just days after the ruling on Section 377. While buoyed up by the victorious spirit of the march, I was struck by the near-complete lack of supporters from outside the LGBT community and its network of help groups and organizations. Surely now, with the gay rights debate finally in the limelight, the community is in more need than ever of advocates and champions from outside the fold.

Kolkata Pride 2009 fell on a typically rain-drenched fifth of July. Cowering under our umbrellas, my friends and I watched a rag-tag group slowly filtering into College Square. I peered out at the Leapord skin-clad figure before me. As she talked excited Bengali to my friend, I tried not to stare at her adam’s apple bobbing up and down.

“She doesn’t know when the march will begin. It should have started by now,” my friend translated.

As we waited out the downpour, I swatted up on my ‘LGBT India’ terminology. There were the hijras, I was told - a strong community often referred to as the ‘third sex’ but who normally identify as female. Right, I thought, that was Miss Leopard Skin covered. But apparently, it’s not that easy. “It’s difficult to know,” my friend explained, “who are hijras and who are khotis, who also take the feminine role in sex. Some associate themselves with a more global notion of transsexuality - it’s a highly complex scene.”

What I did know, looking around me that day, was that my friends and I seemed to be the only ‘conventional’ independent women at the march (I chuckled to myself; I’d never described myself like that before). I’ll clarify: We’re straight and had come of our own accord – not as part of an organization or as a friend of any-one belonging to the gay or trans community. Where were the other straight men and women of Kolkata come out to celebrate this historic moment? Where were the celebrities who could have drawn the crowds? An obviously upper class, smartly dressed lady was heading towards me. A fellow supporter? But before I could smile, a camera was thrust in my face.

“Why are you here?” she barked.

“Because of Section 377 being repealed. Because India’s decriminalized gay sex… sort of, well, hopefully…”

The woman glared at me. She’d wanted a snappy sound-bite from a Western woman, not the ditherings of an idiot.

“Tell me why you’re here. There must be a reason.”

I looked into the camera blankly. Surely it was obvious? Because I’m in favour of gay rights. Because it’s an occasion I want to celebrate.

Now, nearly two months on, I’m proud of my cack-handed TV moment. The overturning of Section 377 was never a clear-cut ‘thumbs up’ to gay sex and identity. As soon as the ruling went through, it was challenged by the Centre; the debate is still brewing and may well carry on getting itself into tangles long after the seventeenth of September deadline.

As for my ‘reason’ for being at the march, the question angered me. Not least because the reporter seemed to have a point. Looking around me at our colourful, crazy band of 400 marching down College Street, my friends and I seemed to be the only ones that didn’t have a definite ‘purpose’ in being there. All the way to Chowringhee, the spirit of the march blazed in sparkling technicolour - outrageous lycra dresses, tongue-in-cheek banners and mad-cap dancing defying the incessant drizzle. But somehow my heart wasn’t in it. Those several hundred had a cause to rejoice all right, but where was the average Kolkatan citizen rejoicing for and with them?

Compare Kolkata Pride to my native London Pride and you’ll better understand my surprise at the absence of ‘casual’ supporters. On the fifth of July, just as Kolkata Pride was setting off in the rain, the fortnight-long London Pride was staging its glorious finale. One million people had marched from Baker Street to Trafalgar Square, with Sarah Brown (the Prime Minister’s wife) heading the motley tribe. After-parties had raged at the clubs every night, while live theatre and comedy jam-packed the streets with rainbow-coloured revelers. By focusing on entertainment, London Pride 2009 was able to attract hundreds of thousands of straight men and women - some of whom might not otherwise have stopped to reflect on gay rights and identity.

Could celeb power have drawn the masses to Kolkata’s Pride? When I put this to Pawan Dhall of Saathii (Solitary Action Against The HIV infection in India) he readily agreed. However, he was quick to point out the difficulties in persuading celebrities in India to risk association with the gay community. An increasingly vocal group of A-list celebs have chosen to bear this cross: notably actresses Shabana Azmi and Celina Jaitley. But shouldering the cause is vastly different from identifying oneself with the community. For example, while Sanjay Suri played the gay title role in the landmark feature My Brother Nikhil, he was quick to refuse playing another sexual minority for fear of being typecast. And roping in a celebrity, according to Pawan, is just the beginning of the trouble. “A lot of stars here aren’t familiar with the issue,” he says with a cheeky glint in his eye. “They get themselves into a trap and suddenly realise what they’re saying. NGOs need more skills in celebrity management.”

While Mumbai and Delhi do their best to suck up India’s small reserve of sympathetic celebs, Kolkata’s LGBT scene has enjoyed its own time in the limelight. Pawan fondly remembers the crowds at Saathii’s 2007 art exhibition, Dohri Peeda ('Twice the Pain'), inaugurated by theatre and film actor Koushik Sen. Of course, another Sen, Bengal’s own Armatya, has addressed the subject in several public lectures. And though not all have approved, many Kolkatans will have seen Sapphire Creations’ The Alien Flower - the homosexual-themed ballet which weathered the public outrage provoked by its 1996 debut to become an accepted part of Kolkata’s cultural history.

But while spectacle and star factor may up the head-count, will audiences engage with the debate or merely watch their idols’ (no doubt mesmerizing) lips? The fact is, the Armatya Sens and Sanjay Suris of this world lead completely alien lives in the eyes of your average Kolkatan. While we may worship celebrities, we can only relate to them up to a point. It’s easy to accept the actions and beliefs of such demi-gods while damning our neighbors on the very same grounds.

This is the argument that has since plagued London Pride 2009. The statistics may speak of unreserved success, but the fortnight has been slammed as “a huge party without politics” (as LGBT magazine On Top phrased it). Gay rights activist Peter Tatchell made headlines with his comment that ‘most of the content was about entertainment and partying’ - so ‘ignoring’ and ‘downplaying’ the political weight of the occasion. While an unprecedented number of straight men and women attended the Pride, no doubt a fair few were too busy pratting around in Dolly Parton wigs to engage with the causes at stake (equal marriage rights for gay couples being the headline issue).

Clearly, Kolkata Pride could benefit from a dash more Masala. The Delhi Court ruling on Section 377, whether it’s repealed or invoked nationwide, has made huge strides in drawing public figures into the debate. In the ensuing tug of war, the more stars on ‘our side’ the better. But while nothing persuades the masses like celeb endorsement, such shortcuts to awareness can easily backfire. The dream would be to attend Kolkata Pride 2010, look around me, and not know who is straight and who is gay. But such a turnout would have to stem from genuine concern, not from the urge to glimpse Celina Jaitley’s thighs.

Niki Seth-Smith is a British journalist with The Statesman. ‘Stars for the Pink Parade’ is the first in a series viewing Kolkata through a Londoner’s eyes.

MAKING THE CALL - Published The Statesman

2009-12-25T22:18:00.001-08:00

Niki Seth-Smith conducts a face-off between a British call center operator and her rivals in India.

My friend in the UK has what can only be called the Holy Grail of call center jobs. Amy’s company (which will remain anonymous) fund-raises on behalf of schools and universities in the private sector. By contacting alumni and conjuring up memories of their sunny schooldays, Amy and her colleagues raise around 10 to 15 grand a month (around Rs 7 -12 lakh) and earn nine pounds (around Rs 700) an hour for their pains. Amy is British, decidedly middle-class and university educated. Tele fund-raising is not a permanent career for her but a cushy side-earner she can pick up and drop as easily as a phone receiver. She’s aware of the 1.6 million-strong Indian call center industry on the other side of the globe but is confident that, even in the face of recession, her job is too elite to fall into the hands of offshore operators.

Is Amy's confidence in the safety of her job justified? Aspirants looking to bag Amy’s position must have “good self-motivation, a personable phone manner, excellent communication skills” - and, to read between the lines, a voice fit to cut glass and dine with Princess Anne. I put this description to Rajat Kothary, whose decades-long career in the Indian call center industry with Convergys and E-Excel Services – two of the leading players in India offering “offshore customer services” - makes him something of a guru in the field.

Rajat homed in first on “personable phone manners’: “Today, the big call centers train their agents to really get into the psyche of the client country. In a typical month-long training programme, the agent has to absorb the country's culture. He learns about their transportation, religion, holidays - that way, he’s able to be much more friendly and understanding.”

This nightmare vision of a ‘more British than the Brits’ workforce who know their Harrods from their Harvey Nicks and can recite a recipe for Yorkshire pud has long been a subject of horrified fascination for the British public. Slumdog Millionaire, in having its protagonist attend just such a ‘cultural immersion’ class (albeit as a chai wallah) was merely probing an already sore spot. However, such professional ‘Anglicization’ hardly threatens Amy. While Indian operators may be able to chat about Kate Moss and real ale, they lack the real life experience that could give their persuasive banter the ring of authenticity. Amy’s ability to prompt alumni into donating to their old schools is reliant, to a large extent, on genuine shared ground.

If Amy wins on ‘personable manners’, what about ‘communication skills?’ According to Rajat, when the industry was in its infancy in the early 2000s, the dominant focus was on accent. Now emphasis is placed on what he calls the ‘neutral voice’: “Companies are no longer going for mimicry of a given accent. They’re concerned solely with clear communication – the agent has to be understood.” While I wonder exactly what such a voice might sound like, the prioritization of neutrality seems fitting for a multicultural Britain in which so-called 'Queen’s English' has definitely toppled from the throne. It's no longer acceptable to presume that even Amy’s public-school alumni possess Received Pronunciation across the board. While the irony is striking, Indian agents may be more adept at communicating with clients who speak in a variety of regional accents. Although school-taught English in the subcontinent is still definitely RP, several Indian call center companies have incorporated regional accent tutoring into their rigorous training schedule.

What about “good motivation”: the third criteria given by Amy’s company? The boom centers in the three main 'communication' metros – Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore – house agents in their tens of thousands. Such work conditions notoriously breed faceless, unmotivated, and therefore inefficient workers. Then there’s the time difference, meaning many operators face night shifts, disrupting both their body clock and their social and family life. The ensuing low morale, I hazard, must affect call success rate. As a quality analyst, Rajat’s duty was not only to listen in on calls for deviation or bad practice, but also to intervene if agent’s cracked up or broke down while on call: “I used to get 20 or 30 people a day, a lot of girls, who would just start crying while on the line because of client abuse. The guy on the other end probably resented being called from ‘somewhere in the East’ and just let rip. And the night shifts aren’t meant for everybody. There are lots of people who quit after just one or two shifts.”

Yet Rajat is quick to explode my dreary vision of plugged in drones: “The Indian industry has seriously bought into the concept of R&R (Rest and Recuperation). There’s competitions, various fun activities in the office – people can’t wait to go to work the next day. Lots of the larger companies have introduced events outside of work time to encourage employees to socialize within themselves.” The clincher, of course, is the high wages provided by such multinational or outsourced companies. The wages in turn add glamour and social status to the position. Rajat remembers with a chuckle how his relatives were less than impressed with his new job as an agent at the start of the call center boom: "They said ‘You’re answering the phone. What’s so good about that? And you’re working at night. Thieves work at night." The company advertisement hadn’t even offered a job description as such, but mentioned a ‘5 star hotel-like position’. Nearly a decade on, with millions of educated career-orientated young Indians gagging for their slice of the ever-expanding call center pie, this once-cheeky ad is not far from the truth.

It seems, then, that the biggest threat to Amy’s job is her own nonchalant attitude. Her company, of course, is expert in fostering the competitive spirit. I remember Amy flushed with excitement, returning home with sackloads of freebies, once even a bottle of foul-tasting champagne. But despite due attention to employee morale, British call centers will never be able to foster the kind of motivational atmosphere found in their Indian counterparts. This is because the equivalent jobs are profoundly less desirable in the UK. Most call centers in Britain would not even dream of skimming the cream of the degree-holding crop to fill their full-time agent positions.

Amy might be able to talk to her heart's content about quads, 'prep' and tapioca pudding with an authenticity which an Indian-educated operator could never possess (no matter how many Hardy Boys books he'd read). But her minimal training in comparison to her India counterparts puts her at a disadvantage in terms of general communication skills. The jewel in her crown, her flawless Received Pronunciation, is no longer the ultimate weapon in Britain that it was only decades ago. Weighing the balance, Amy's side-earner is probably safe, at least until she ceases to need the extra cash. What the comparison shows, however, is the growing might of the Indian call center and its ability to threaten even the most coveted niches of the industry.

Niki Seth-Smith is a British journalist with The Statesman. ‘Making the Call’ is the fourth in a series viewing Kolkata through a Londoner’s eyes.

BATTLING FOR SOULS - Published The Statesman

2009-12-25T22:13:00.000-08:00

Niki Seth-Smith thinks the Missions of Charity have some lessons to teach the UK about Christian evangelism.

The British Church is losing track of its sheep. That’s the word being whispered from Priest to Bishop, from the village chapel to the spires of St Paul’s Cathedral. While the ‘statistical proof’ for such a decline in British Christian belief may be suspect, the reaction of the Church is very real. Voices are being raised, urging the Christian community to don their holy armour in earnest, go out on the streets and seek souls.
There is a fear that while the dominant faith takes care not to tread on the toes of minority religions, many of these minority faiths – notably Islam and Hinduism – are gaining ground in Britain.

The Christians I’ve met in Kolkata have assumed that I, a British woman, am a Christian. They’re surprised to hear that not only am I not a believer, neither are my parents or the majority of my friends. Take a look at the stats, and this won’t seem so surprising. Britain’s last national census (in 2001) pointed to a secular nation, with over a third of Brits (36 per cent) identifying themselves as having a “Humanist outlook on life”. In May of last year, just as the shock waves from the census were dying down, Christian Research published a study predicting that within a generation active Muslims would outnumber Sunday church-goers in Britain by 3:1.

Needless to say, such attempts to quantify belief are deeply suspect. For the majority, ticking any box on forms aimed at dissecting the demographic entails a half-lie. Although church attendance figures may be more concrete than those gleaned by surveys, they take no account of the variety of ways in which Christians are now choosing to worship. But while the slippery statistics may have limited use, the Church’s reaction to the apparent weakening of the Bible’s influence is certainly revealing.

There is a growing feeling within the Church that Christianity in Britain is too occupied with the perceived demands of political correctness and community cohesion to take a strong stance and reach out to new converts. Rev. Nezlin Sterling of the New Testament Assembly in London made headlines earlier this year by calling on Christians not to “walk on eggshells” when other faiths were “unrelentingly” spreading their message. Rev. Andrew Dow is another strong advocate of a more pro-active Church: “We need to recover our nerve,” the rector, based in Cheltenham, declaimed. “We need to refute the lie that to be evangelistic is to be a bigot or a fundamental fanatic.”

Living in Kolkata, Mother Theresa’s city, I’m in a unique position to witness the work of one of the most renowned Christian evangelical networks in the world: The Missions of Charity. There are currently 19 mission centres in the city, working under the motto: “Wholehearted and free service to the poorest of the poor”. There are missions dedicated to vulnerable women and children, to the sick and dying, and to those simply in need of shelter and care. However, while the Missions of Charity can be held up as the evangelical ideal made flesh through their ability to reach across caste, race and religious boundaries, their history in the community clearly demonstrates the problems surrounding such unambiguous evangelism.

The Hindu Right has a long history of opposing the Missions on the grounds that they are threatening the majority and ‘true’ faith of India by conducting forced or ‘interested’ conversions. The BJP has accused the Missions of targeting Dalits and tribals, using their traditionally underprivileged status as a point of leverage. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (an extremist organization dedicated to Hindutva) has been more strident in its critique of the Missions, even opposing the government’s decision to give Mother Teresa a state funeral in 1997. While the Missions may have found a refuge from violence in their home city, there have been times when Sisters and Brothers in other states have lived in fear – most recently in neighbouring Orissa, where the murder of Swami Laxmanananda, a staunch opponent of conversion, triggered off a wave of ‘retaliatory’ attacks on Christian organizations, including the Missions, in August of last year.

Why should the British Church heed antagonism in India against Mother Teresa – arguably the saint of modern Christian evangelism? Surely the issue of coercive conversion takes a backseat in Britain, where those lacking the minimal essentials of life constitute a tiny fraction of the population. It’s true that Christian bodies offering basic aid such as the Salvation Army have an extremely limited sphere of influence in comparison to their Indian counterparts. But the “poorest of the poor”, as the Church recognizes, are not only the financially weak but also those in need of emotional support.

The Evangelical Alliance - the largest body serving evangelical organizations in the UK – believes that the number of Brits searching for emotional or ‘spiritual’ guidance is on the rise in the wake of the global recession. Dr Justin Thacker, a doctor of Theology, spoke on behalf of the EA: “With the global financial crisis, it has become obvious that many people are searching for answers to life’s deep questions. Western materialism has not provided the answer, and therefore there are many who are currently searching.” According to Dr Thacker, the EA is firmly with vocal figures such as Rev. Sterling and Rev. Dow in their belief that the time is ripe for spreading Jesus’ word to non-believers.

The invitation to seek converts without shame and offer ‘spiritual’ succor to those cast adrift by post-recession upheaval could be seen as a carte blanche for emotional exploitation. While there is no formidable Hindu Right in Britain to fight tooth and nail against such ‘illegitimate proselytizing’, there is a strong argument that the UK is becoming increasingly hostile to any perceived intrusion of religion into public life. It was a Brit, after all, who wrote the controversial polemic ‘The Missionary Position’, depicting Mother Teresa as a political opportunist who adopted the guise of a saint in order to fulfill her primary aim of harvesting money and souls for the Pope. The author, Christopher Hitchens, came not from a religious background but from within a strong tradition of British atheism, championed by the likes of Richard Dawkins.

The National Secular Society is the leading British campaigning organization against the ‘undue influence of religion in public affairs and education’. Not only does the society view faith-based welfare as coercive, positioning itself against what it calls the ‘soup for prayers’ phenomenon within public services, the NSS has recently taken a controversial stance towards baptism as conversion without consent. Terry Sanderson, the President of the NSS, sees the popularity of the society’s ‘debaptism’ forms (more than 10,000 have been downloaded so far) as evidence that: ‘(British) people are not just indifferent to religion…. …but are actually becoming quite hostile to it’.

A more pro-active approach to spreading the word of God may bring unbelievers in Britain flocking back to the faith. Yet such a push for greater evangelism within the Church must be tempered by consideration of the issues at stake. Talk of ‘not treading on eggshells’ and refusing to bow down to the P.C. ogre grossly underestimates the probable tensions arising from such a trend. Examining attitudes towards one of the most powerful and influential Christian evangelical networks in the world, the Missions of Charity, highlights the problems associated with the evangelical position. The majority of Brits today are no longer church-going Christians. Those calling for a strong, evangelical Church must accept this fact and take the current climate in Britain into consideration.

- - Niki Seth-Smith is a British journalist with The Statesman. ‘Battling for Souls’ is the third in a series viewing Kolkata through a Londoner’s eyes. - -

SHRUNK TO SIZE - Published The Statesman

2009-12-25T22:09:00.000-08:00

Over the last decade, the prequel has hit Hollywood. Niki Seth-Smith takes a look at how our cinematic icons have fared in the “counsellor’s chair”.

Does anyone else feel that Hollywood is spending too much time at the shrinks’? Over the last decade, the master-puppeteers of the silver screen have been busy leading our movie icons to the counsellor’s chair. “We want to understand you,” they purr, notebook at the ready, “tell us about your past.”

The first patient was Darth Vader – chief exec of the Dark Side. The Vader of George Lucas’ original Star Wars trilogy is a fearsome, inscrutable human-cyborg and ruthless right hand of the Galactic Empire. When he enters the scene (black cape swishing behind him) to the strains of the now infamous The Imperial March, our blood runs cold in delicious apprehension. Then, in 1999, came the first installment of the prequel trilogy, Episode I - The Phantom Menace, amidst much media fan-fare and the breathless babble of Lucas groupies. The prequels reintroduce us to Vader as Anakin Skywalker - a young, headstrong slave boy who ascends to glory as a Jedi knight, only to succumb to the Dark Side in order to save the life of his pregnant wife. “So misunderstood,” we reflected, stumbling out of the cinema hall in 2005 after the great denouement of Episode III. “They should give the guy a break. We all make the wrong choice sometimes.”

Vader was just the beginning. We were given a month’s respite after the release of Episode III before Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins delved deep into Bruce Wayne’s psychology as he finds his… well… wings. Who next for the councellor’s chair, I wondered. The answer took me by surprise. For who would attempt to interpret a man who has locked himself away in a fantastical sweet emporium with a workforce of weird, morally stringent dwarfs? A remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) could only have been taken on by Tim Burton - connoisseur of all characters queer and curious. Unfortunately, while cavorting through the land of kitsch, this tasteless joy-ride licks off the outer layer of Roald Dahl’s mysterious sweet-maker by giving Willie Wonka a traumatic childhood at the hands of an orthodontic, candy-hating father. It’s got so bad that even mindless blockbusters like this year’s X-men Origins: Wolverine feel obliged to hop on the back-story bandwagon. While snugly fitting the CGI-action-with-a-splash-of-gore formula, Gavin Hood’s flick couldn’t resist having a stab at the wolf man’s tortured beginnings.

Hollywood exists to satisfy desires, albeit in the exalted world of the silver screen. Now it’s busy homing in on our latest compulsion. We want to know the man behind the mask. Strip him down. Make him talk. Show that he’s just like us, really. I’m not saying that the average audience member fights crime under the symbol of a small furry mammal, or spends their life tasting chocolate (well, that might be closer to the truth). But we do expect our heroes and villains to be more human, more knowable. We’re aware that, according to their legends, many in fact were “once like us”. Very much at the heart of Batman mythology is the death of the philanthropic Waynes at the hands of Gotham criminals when Bruce was just a normal, if sickeningly rich, little boy – sowing the seeds for his transformation. Anakin Sykwalker’s life history had already been sketched out by the various books, films and animation series that constitute the grandly titled Star Wars Expanded Universe. Wolverine’s beginnings had previewed in the comics, leaving Burton as a stand-alone inventor in fabricating Willie Wonka’s childhood. But knowing a back-story is very different from seeing it unveiled before our eyes. We may be aware of how Batman lost his parents, but seeing a kiddy Bruce blubbing in the deserted Wayne mansion feeds a very different appetite.

As today’s movie audience is so captivated by psycho-analysis, maybe it’s time we place them in the chair. From where does this fascination arise? A kindly, less cynical analyst might point to man’s need to empathise with his fellow man. We’re not satisfied anymore with action-packed block-busters (Pow! Thwap! Kaboom!) or head-in-the-clouds fantasy trips. Modern cinema-goers are interested in people, and feel uncomfortable dismissing anyone - even cyborg-man Vader of the Galactic Empire - as ‘pure evil’. It’s a fitting theory for today’s age of prison reform, where criminals are presented as victims of circumstance and the tell-all confessor is the media’s no. 1 darling. But something tells me a shrink worth their salt would balk at such a neat explanation. “To unpack the symbol,” he might say, “is to neutralize its power.” In layman’s terms, we want to understand our most terrifying baddies and worshipped heroes only in order to “get one up” on them. The examples staring us in the face here are the Bond prequels: 2007’s Casino Royale and last year’s Quantum of Solace.

You can’t escape Bond’s influence as a man’s man. Austin Powers may have burped in the face of the 007 legacy, but the quintessentially British secret agent remains untouchable in his ability to excite envy. Watching Bond bed a girl simply by cocking an eyebrow, plenty of male viewers want to string him up and kick him where it really hurts. Which is exactly what Casino Royale did, quite literally. The prequels not only show us a troubled, love-lorn and vulnerable Bond, but the first of the duo includes a torture scene where De Chiffre ties our libidinous secret agent to a chair and gives his testicles a vigorous lashing. It’s an eye-wateringly gripping scene, and a glorious instance of cinematic fantasy fulfillment. Daniel Craig’s Bond in Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace completely refigures the 007s of Dalton, Moore, Connery and Brosnan (every-one forgets George Lazenby). He may seduce some of the sexiest women in the world but James Bond lacks what would really make him a man. He’s impotent. Or at least that’s the vicious suggestion.

Bond may have benefited from a dash more humanity – as the box office figures and critical plaudits for the prequels go some way to testify. But not all of our movie icons thrive under the therapist’s gaze. Some have positively withered. After all, as the great storytellers would attest, it’s as much about what you don’t as what you do reveal. Do we want to see Willy Wonka as a disturbed victim of warped experiences at the hands of his father? The answer, sadly, is yes. Millions of us are gagging to see it – curiosity is powerful – but the fulfillment leaves a bad taste in our mouths. Unfortunately, Hollywood has never been concerned with what’s “good for us”. We open our mouths and stuff gets spooned in. That’s the nature of the beast, as they say. Even so, I wish some-one would spell it out for those that hold the Hollywood strings: No-one needs to know what Batman eats for breakfast.

MORE THAN A HIP YOUNG GENRE - Published The Statesman 09

2009-12-25T22:07:00.000-08:00

What is a graphic novel? Inevitably, this was the first question the British Council had to address on acquiring its spanking new collection of the genre. It’s generally agreed that a graphic novel is ‘weightier’ than a comic book – but that hardly narrows the field. They often literally weigh more (a novel has to pack a good page-count, after all). Some would argue that they deal with weightier or more ‘adult’ subject matter than comics. Then again, they’re usually heavier on your purse. The truth is that non-initiates often have very little idea of what a graphic novel is and does. And India, for her part, has been slow to embrace the phenomenon.

The British Council, then, is leading the field by inviting Kolkatans to choose from a considered range of works in which Sarnath Banerjee’s ‘Corridor’ rubs shoulders with British classics like Gaiman’s ‘Sandman’ and Talbot’s ‘Alice in Sunderland’. Not content to just dish up the books, the BC have also arranged reading groups to help newcomers grapple with the genre and allow enthusiasts to share their pleasure and insight.

The reading group I attended was on ‘Watchmen’ by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbs. First published in 1986-87, ‘Watchmen’ takes comic book stereotypes and bursts them asunder, depicting a parallel ‘80s New York in which a group of everyday citizens have become superheroes. Just flicking through ‘Watchmen’ makes your brain boggle. Forget the stock format of neatly framed pics and accompanying speech bubbles. Moore’s expertly lawless tangle of image and text is inter-spliced with faux-documents that range from mock psychology reports to diary excerpts. It also bubbles over with allusions to pop and underground culture - think Dylan, Iggy Pop and William Burroughs, to name but a few.

You can imagine my gratitude at not having to tackle the ‘Watchmen’ universe alone. The reading group I attended was admittedly small, but it mercifully included a bunch of fanatical Moore fans. As we read out the first chapter together, these guys couldn’t resist jumping in to point out a visual pun the group may have missed, explain the influence of the cold war climate, or revel in such memorable lines as: ‘The dust reeks of fornication and bad consciences.’

In short, the reading group was a godsend. That said, without attendance by these knowledgeable fans, it could have fallen flat on its face. This is because the convener from the British Council had not read the book, and appeared to be under the impression that it was a recent publication (perhaps misled by the release of Zack Snyder’s film adaptation last March).
The scenario of a small but hardcore contingent explaining the genre to their ‘elders and betters’ reflects the peculiar position now occupied by the graphic novel. The last three decades have seen the genre win acceptance as a literary form in its own right. ‘Watchmen’ has been key to this process, having received a Hugo award and appeared in Time Magazine's list of the ‘100 best English-language novels’. Yet there is still reluctance among literati worldwide to allow graphic novels into the canon proper. This closed mindset definitely reigns in Kolkata, as evidenced by the absence of graphic novels on English Literature syllabi here in the city.

The British Council has taken a pioneering step in introducing this collection. However, they may be in danger of falling back on a perception of the graphic novel as a ‘hip young form’. It’s safe to say, for example, that they wouldn’t have held such an ill prepared event on a conventional classic novel such as ‘Midnight’s Children’. While this collection could make crucial headway in terms of introducing the genre to Kolkatans, the British Council must first accept the graphic novel as a fully legitimate literary genre with an already long and distinguished history.

FROM TIP TO TOE, NANDAN'S SPANISH FILM FESTIVAL - Published The Statesman

2009-12-25T22:00:00.000-08:00

Nandan’s Spanish film festival kicked off with two South American films. Aside from the soil from which they sprang, Eduardo Mignogna’s ‘Cleopatra’ and Sergio Cabrera’s ‘The Art of Losing’ could not have been more disparate creations. While Cabrera offers a raunchy, wry expose of Columbian corruption, ‘Cleopatra’ - with its Thelma and Louise-style narrative - wishes only to reveal the innate freedom of the human soul.

Sergio Cabrera is famed for falling in with guerillas in his native Colombia - to fall out several years later in order to pursue his directorial ambitions. With this in mind, you can’t help sensing a worldly gaze behind ‘The Art of Losing’s portrait of a Colombia infested with casual violence and underworld connections.

Victor Silampa (Daniel Gimenez Cacho) is your textbook journalist: world-weary, booze-sozzled, recently dumped by the love of his life. But when Victor is given the case of an impaled man left by the side of a scenic lake, we’re introduced to a not-so-predictable whirlwind of prostitutes, nudists, adulterous lawyers and corrupt oligarchs. ‘The Art of Losing’ proceeds to unveil how all are involved in the scramble for 400 acres gruesomely flagged by the afore-mentioned corpse.

Cabrera is noted for his playful handling of weighty material, and ‘The Art of Losing’ takes some beautifully off-the-wall stabs at Colombia’s institutionalized hypocrisy. Unfortunately, too much of the film’s comedic energy is channeled into Victor’s block-headed sidekick, leaving others playing second fiddle with decidedly lack-lustre dialogue.

Overall, ‘The Art of Losing’ takes a satisfyingly quirky look at Colombia’s seedy underbelly. Weighed down by a weakness for cut-and-paste characters, ‘The Art of Losing’ is at least packed with plenty of race and pace. And if nothing else grabs you, the film’s brazen sexiness (championed by Victor’s love-interest, played by the nubile Martina Garcia) is likely to keep you glued to your seat.

Mignogna’s ‘Cleopatra’ couldn’t be further in tone from Cabrera’s flick, where every woman character is a prostitute. In fact, ‘Cleopatra’ could fit snugly in the feminist canon, focusing as it does on the unlikely two-some of a young soap star and a retired teacher as they swap their men and commitments for a frivolous weekend jaunt. But before you spend the film anticipating cliff-edge disaster, Cleopatra (Norma Aleandro) and Sandra (Natalia Oreiro) are no gun-toting Thelma and Louise. With the Argentinian countryside as breath-taking backdrop, their mother-daughter relationship is tenderly drawn out in a narrative characterized by insight and poignancy, not dramatics.

While ‘The Art of Losing’s vision of Colombia is clearly set for an ending where all good apples turn rotten, ‘Cleopatra’s twists and tangents keep us on our toes. Finally, here’s a roadtrip flick that resists the lure of fantasy. It’s a little convenient, sure, that the two are picked up by the gorgeous but troubled cowboy Carlos (Leonardo Sbaraglia) – another ‘T and L’ echo - but Sandra’s new love interest is refreshingly fallable. And to its credit, Mignogna resists the lure of the winsome couple and remains firmly centred on Cleo, the disillusioned but optimistic aging mother, played with infectious gaiety by Norma Aleandro.

Cambrera and Mignogna’s native Colombia and Argentina are a continent apart, and so are these films in both subject and spirit. With only a limited line-up, it seems Nandan was wise to have chosen such polar works for its inaugural day. Though the task of representing South American film in an evening is undoubtedly impossible, ‘The Art of Losing’ and ‘Cleopatra’ did their best to breach the expanse.

INDIA ON THE MOVE - Published The Statesman

2009-12-25T21:52:00.000-08:00

Sanjeev Sanyal’s The Indian Renaissance charts the decline of India over the past ten centuries, and suggests that India now faces the opportunity to reclaim its status as both a cultural and economic superpower.

The Indian Renaissance seems to suggest that ‘cultural openness’ is the main predicate to a country’s economic success.

Actually, I’m proposing that cultural openness and economic success are the same thing. We witness the same pattern of rise and decline around the world.

In Europe, for example, we had a civilization that had been in decline for a thousand years. Then suddenly, in the mid-1400s, something really changes. Within a few generations we had Galileo, Vasco Da Gama, Columbus, the Medicis, Leonardo Da Vinci. What happened in this very short period of time? Europe developed a culture of innovation and risk-taking.
India in 1 AD accounted for 33 per cent of the world’s economy, surpassing Western Europe and China. The country declined after 11 AD due its rejection of foreign influence and homegrown entrepreneurialism. It became a closed civilization.

Does the title Indian Renaissance refer to a contemporary India that is reinstating this ‘cultural of openness’?

That’s right. For the first time in a thousand years we are once again embracing innovation. India has always been terrible at sports. Now we’re winning Olympic medals. We’re winning the Oscars. The Tata Nano was released recently. The fact that the Nano is a major topic in the newspapers shows that people think it’s an issue.

Why are all these changes happening in such a tiny period of history? Because we are once again taking risks.

What reaction has The Indian Renaissance provoked within economic circles in India?

I’ve had plenty of criticism. You’d be surprised at how much opposition people have to the idea of change. Change is uncomfortable. Innovation is uncomfortable. Many are still praising the old Nehruvian model of strictly regulated economics.

How would you respond to critics who feel the global economic crisis has vindicated India’s decision not to embrace economic liberalization wholesale?

I’d argue entirely to the contrary. The only reason why we’re still standing is that in the past 17 years we’ve been through enormous reform. In 1991 our economy collapsed when the oil price went up. Our economy doesn’t collapse today when oil prices rise, because we are now a totally different animal.

In times of stress, it’s even more crucial to understand the importance of risk-taking, as it’s easy to become introverted at such times. Some risks will come to roost and you will have breakdowns, but how you deal with these crises is what separates the men from the boys.

So we will watch America. Will they react to the crisis by saying that the rest of the world is dangerous? Protectionism may save them for five years, but that decision is the end of America as a civilization. It’s bad news for us for a few years ~ it’s bad for them forever.

You end the book with a response to Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat. Are you taking issue here with the concept of globalization as ‘the great leveler’?

I think Friedman misses the point. Yes, Bangalore is what it is because of the Internet. But Zimbabwe has the Internet too. What mattered was that India had the right attitude and was able to use the opportunity.

What are the factors that could impede India from following the pattern of Asian ‘miracle growth’ as seen in China, Singapore, Japan and Taiwan?

The conditions are in place for economic growth on a huge scale in India. But the conditions are not sufficient. You can use this energy and go in the wrong direction. Places can go backwards, as India did after 11 AD. Within my own lifetime, Kolkata ~ once the cultural and economic centre of the country ~ has quite clearly gone backwards.

Do you see the book as a wake-up call to those who stand for cultural conservatism and economic protectionism?

India has a long history of conservatism. Today, there’s the influence of the Left and the extreme Right, there are obscurantist groups in Bangalore who oppose women drinking in pubs ~ it’s all part of the same resistance against change. There’s a poem by Tagore called Mind Without Fear where he writes of ‘narrow domestic walls’ and advocates ‘ever-widening thought and action’. Tagore is saying: don’t shut my system down.

Cultural openness is not only about economic liberalization. It’s an attitude that affects every aspect of civilization.

(The Indian Renaissance: India’s rise after a thousand years in decline by Sanjeev Sanyal has been published by Penguin/Viking.)

AN EYE FOR DETAILS - Published The Statesman

2009-12-25T21:44:00.000-08:00

Safiuddin Ahmed is a renowned Bangladeshi artist, noted for his oil paintings and pioneering work in printmaking. The artist played an important role in the foundation of the Institute of Fine Arts under Dhaka University.

Why has eighty-six-year-old Safiuddin Ahmed used his third solo exhibition ~ perhaps the last he will see with his own eyes ~ to focus solely on his drawings? While it may seem strange that the acclaimed Bangladeshi artist has left aside his body of work in oil and graphics, ‘The Limitless Luminosity of Lines’ enthralls precisely because it jettisons colour, drawing the viewer into an essentialist world of tone, contour and edge.

Housed in twin exhibition rooms (The Jamini Roy Gallery and Nanadalal Bose Gallery) Ahmed’s charcoal, mixed-media, ink and pencil drawings speak to each-other across the gallery space. The shared medium leads us to compare the light, suggestive pencil lines of the Nude Drawings, with surrealist masterpieces such as ‘Remembering Ekushey’ (1 and 2), where hands, cities, fingers and eyes hang suspended in the void of the canvas. Abstract works such as the ‘Black Series’ lean towards bold, stark cubism, while the several figurative sketches on display of clothes merchants, peanut sellers and street fiddlers, invite us to enjoy the artist’s attentive and empathetic eye.

Safiuddin Ahmed’s latest exhibition is remarkable for its maturity of vision and sensitivity of craft ~ the product of 70 years engaged in his vocation. The fact that one of the drawings displayed was finished only last year gives the viewer pause for thought. Art lovers in the city will be thankful that Ahmed has chosen Kolkata, his birthplace, to host this historically important exhibition.

BEAUTY IN EMPATHY - Published The Statesman

2009-12-25T20:14:00.000-08:00

During the Seagull Foundation for the Arts’ retrospective of Somnath Hore’s works three of his art books and journals, including the previously unpublished The Tea Garden Journal, caught Niki Seth-Smith’s attention

The late Somnath Hore is revered as an artist and committed humanist whose print-work, drawing and sculpture is born out of a sensibility highly tuned to the social plight of Bengal. The Seagull Foundation for the Arts’ new exhibition invites us to view Hore’s oeuvre alongside his art books and journals, allowing a deeper insight into the life and work of one of the great figures of twentieth century Bengal.

The Seagull Foundation for the Arts’ new exhibition directs us towards a fuller knowledge of the artist, by accompanying its retrospective of Hore’s watercolours, sculptures and pen and ink drawings with three of his art books and journals: Tebhaga, My Concept of Art, and the previously unpublished The Tea Garden Journal.

Hore’s watercolours and pen and ink drawings occupy the first floor of the exhibition. These pieces evade traditional concepts of the ‘polished work’. Instead, Hore’s pen flies at his subjects with a searing empathy that sets its sights beyond studied realism. Whether an ink and watercolour of a village family, or a 30-second sketch of a farmer with his back towards us, these are works conveying such engagement of feeling that its easy to entertain the belief that Hore had met his subjects - ate the same food, breathed the same air.

While such musings on the artist at work could be easily dismissed as idle speculation, Tebhaga and the previously unpublished The Tea Garden Journal allow us to engage with Hore’s formative artistic experiences. The journals reveal sympathy with his subjects as essential to the development of Hore’s uniquely humanist vision.

Both journals document the young artist’s experience of Tebhaga ~ the workers’ movement of the mid-1940s.
The movement saw sharecroppers demanding that they be allowed to retain a two-thirds share of their produce, instead of the 50/50 system between the workers and the jotedars ~ a class of rich farmers who held superior rights to the land. In the winter of 1946, Hore had been assigned by the Communist Party to document what has been described as the first consciously attempted revolution by the peasantry in India. The two journals are Hore’s personal records of those days, and show the young artist going through an initiation by fire ~ developing, by necessity, the keen and empathic eye for depicting the common man for which he is now renowned.

The diaries themselves are earnest, factual accounts of the movement. Stirring portraits of key figures in the Union are interspersed with sketches and woodcuts of villagers going about their everyday pursuits before staging covert meetings by moonlight.

The Seagull Foundation for the Arts has reprinted a version of the original 1989 Tebhaga edition for the exhibition. The Tea Garden Journal, meanwhile, is being made available for the first time to the public. While a portion of its art works are marred by water stains and mould marks, this journal is perhaps the most evocative of the two, as it takes a freer form than the strict diary mode of Tebhaga, and ends with a poignant series of portraits ~ both textual and artistic ~ of the sharecroppers involved in the movement.

While Tebhaga and The Tea Garden Journal cast light on Hore’s formative years as a young artist, My Concept of Art ~ also available from the Seagull Foundation for the Arts ~ provides an over-arching account of the artist’s life and attitude towards his work.

An autobiographical and philosophical work written in 1991, My Concept of Art is illustrated and enlivened with pen sketches from throughout Hore’s working life.

The book takes us from the time when, at six-years-old, Hore ‘forgets to eat and loses all track of time’ while making his first work of art ~ a model of a seaplane ~ to the picture of the elderly artist living a simple life in Shantiniketan. By this time, Hore has formulated his concept of ‘wounds’, and his art is preoccupied with, in his words: ‘an endless investigation of this same subject’. He writes in My Concept of Art: “The ruts left on the road by wheels, the cut from the axe on the side of the tree, the injuries on the human body left by weapons ~ to my eyes, they all appeared to be wounds.”

The exhibition’s ground floor is alive with Hore’s sculptures, created during this later period of his life. The bronzes displayed are rarely larger than a couple of hand-spans in length and height. Scraps of metal seem to have been hammered, contorted, and twisted into the likeness of dogs, goats, hunched-over old men and children caught mid-play.

Ribs protrude while skeletal faces implore the viewer to stop and become transfixed. These forms, for their lack of realism, could be called crude, and yet in Hore’s hands they prove arresting in their brute expressionism. Hore’s concept of ‘wounds’ is manifest in these sculptures ~ not in the literal form, but as injuries, both emotional and physical, dealt out by poverty, hunger and malnutrition.

By bringing out these new and old editions of Hore’s journals alongside an exhibition of his work, The Seagull Foundation for the Arts has given both lovers of Hore’s work and new initiates the chance to delve deeper into the mind and work of one of twentieth century Bengal’s great artists and humanists. While it is more than possible to gain a profound appreciation of the artist’s work without knowledge of the surrounding political context, or of the artist’s struggle with his own artistic and social commitments, there is perhaps an added level of empathy to be gained through a wider knowledge of Hore’s subject matter. If so, Hore’s journals and books become essential reading, for as Hore says himself in My Concept of Art: “The ulterior goal of a work of art may well be the creation of beauty, but what defines beauty? It is empathy that elevates the vessel by adding beauty.”

IN CONVERSATION WITH SOLANGE DIAS - Published The London Miscellany

2008-10-28T04:36:00.000-07:00

Q: You’re from a slightly younger generation than Lula, growing up in Brazil at a time when Lambada had already won its struggle for acceptance under the eyes of the Catholic Church. Were you familiar at all with the name ‘The Forbidden Dance?’

A: People still called it ‘The Forbidden Dance’ although I never knew where the term came from. When I was growing up every-one loved it.

Q: Am I right in saying that you began dancing and competing when you were just fourteen?

A: My brother Berg trained me for a competition when I was fourteen, fifteen maybe. At first I didn’t want to do it. I enjoyed the dancing but I didn’t want to be tied to it. I was, you know, a teenager, a bit of a hippy, I went through my phases. But then I became addicted to the dance.

Q: How was Lambada danced back then, at the height of its popularity?

A: Lots of energy and acrobatics. Really flashy. Cheesy sometimes, but not always. That’s the kind of image people are trying to move away from now. Today the dance is concentrated more on sensuality, and it’s lighter, more subtle.

Q: What’s your opinion on the extent to which Lambada has developed since it began being danced to Zouk, as opposed to Lambada music? Do you think the change warrants dropping the name ‘Lambada’ entirely for Zouk/Lambada, or simply Zouk?

A: Both Berg and I believe there is still the dance Lambada, and it should still be called Lambada – the dance has simply developed. Zouk is another dance completely, from French and Caribbean roots. In fact they had a meeting at our last Congress, some arguing for Lambada, some for Zouk, and Zouk/Lambada was a compromise. In Brazil, there are people who hate the name Lambada – it’s not fashionable anymore, people think it’s a dance of the 80s and 90s and it puts people off learning. But if you look at the performers of what is now being called ‘Zouk’ in Brazil they’re all the old Lambada dancers!

Q: The way in which individuals like Berg and yourself approach the dance has been enormously influential on how Lambada is perceived and performed in the UK. Being as the Lambada teaching community is relatively small, is it possible to trace the influence of different teachers in the style of Lambada being developed in this country?

A: Yes, it’s amazing! People take up the individual styles of their dance teachers. You can especially notice this in London. Some people will dance with Marisa’s style, for example, or with mine, or with Lula’s. Some people are a mixture. Others will decide they’re in love with one teacher’s style and they’ll simply stick with that.

Q: Have you found it difficult teaching such a sensual, expressive dance to us British, notorious for our reserve?

A: (Laughing) It’s sometimes not easy for British people, but I give my blood and soul to teaching. I don’t care about age, weight - if people really want to dance I’m there to show my passion. And actually it’s hard for anyone, British or not. There’s a lot of technicality involved. After about three years of really hard work you can then express your sensuality through the dance. But you can’t push people too far. I’ve got a dancing couple at the moment who are really good but they’re too insecure to dance in the shows or competitions. I think they’ve been watching Berg and me and thinking ‘I’m not as good at that, they’ll laugh me off the stage.’ Of course I know that’s not true but you can’t persuade some people.
What I really want is for my advanced students to start teaching. That’s what we need to promote Lambada in the UK: teachers. Four have come out of my classes already. Gary was a student of ours, and now he and Marisa are doing wonders for promoting the dance – they’ve got so much energy. I couldn’t do without Gary and Marisa, they’re like my right arm.

Q: As family, you and Berg have been dancing together all your lives. Do you think people’s choice of partner should be a personal one? It must be tempting as a teacher to bring your best pupils together.

A: Sometimes I’ve brought my best pupils together, but not often. It’s very important to find your right partner. There has to be exactly the right chemistry. And romance can happen. Lambada is such a social thing, except better, because it’s without the drinking. Maybe a glass of wine, two, but then you just want to dance, dance, dance. You’ll see people will come to the club and hardly speak a word, they’ll just dance for three hours, no stopping. When you see the foundation of the dance, it’s beautiful. And you get addicted to it. It’s like a good addiction.

Q: Perhaps the relationship is with the dance then, as much as with your partner?

A: Definitely. It’s the connection between you and the dance. Lambada makes people transparent. I mean that you can see who people are - whether they’re shy, frustrated, insecure, or very happy. There are not many ways to express yourself in this world, and dance is one of them. I feel amazing when I dance; Lambada makes you feel amazing. It gives you free expression.

LAMBADA, THE FORBIDDEN DANCE? Published The London Miscellany

2008-10-28T04:31:00.000-07:00

Lambada is a Latin dance whose sensual movements and celebration of vitality has been historically contentious, and which today continues to provoke accusation and misconception. Although opinion varies as to when Lambada first came into being, some place its origins as far back as the nineteen-fifties in Brazil, where it was widely condemned by the Catholic authorities and danced with blasphemous vigour in the parades of the Bahian Carnival. Today the dance is shaking off its turbulent history, and working to re-affirm itself as an artform that allows for the vivid expression of individual sensuality. In this feature we hear from Lula, one of the first teachers and performers to bring the dance to the international scene in the early nineties, as he depicts the history of the dance and the subsequent emergence of Lambada/Zouk in the last decade. While Lula turns back to the dance’s heady past, Solange Dias, one of the most prominent dancers and promoters of Lambada in this country and sister of Berg Dias, gives us her angle on the way in which Lambada is ridding itself of an unfairly sleazy reputation, invoked by the commercial hype that surrounded the dance during its hey day in the late eighties and early nineties. Solange tells us of Lambada’s return to its essence, in an effort by the Lambada community today to re-channel its focus once more on the intimate relationship between the dancer and the dance.

Lambada has its origins in the Carimba, a Brazilian dance taking influence from the neighbouring Caribbean and dating back to Brazil’s history as a Portuguese colony. The name ‘Lambada’ refers to the wave-like motion induced in a whip, and is said to allude to the flowing motion of the dancers’ bodies, a crucial feature distinguishing Lambada from other Latin two/four-beat dances such as the Salsa. As a close, sensual partner dance, often characterised by a soft fluidity of style and the use of the whole body, not just the legs, Lambada plays strongly upon the masculinity of the male partner, and of course the femininity of the woman. While all traditional partner dances are male lead, Lambada can give a greater sense of the woman abandoning control to her partner, as there is an emphasis on looseness in the body, characterised most strongly by the rolling motion of the woman’s upper body, especially her neck and head. While the dance was once performed to Lambada music, in the last decade dancers have begun using the French-Caribbean Zouk musical style. Its often been said that Lambada can induce a trance-like feeling in its dancers, due to the emphasis on spinning and rolling movements, and its telling that the dance is now making use of a musical style with its roots in the music of Haiti.

Marisa, of the Lambadmecrazy teaching team, appreciates the fertile ground from which the dance has sprung, enriched by the influences of Haitian Compas, as well as Vodou music. She believes the powerful partner dynamic in Lambada, with its demands and ultimate rewards, is crucial to the psyche of the dance.

‘At first its very difficult for the woman to give control to the man. Some women find it a bit restrictive and like to break away from their partner from time to time for a bit of freestyle apart. That’s the beauty of the dance for the women though, at moments you can be completely controlled by the man and just let yourself surrender to him and at other times you’re apart and can be free to experiment with your moves, as long as you keep contact with your partner through eye connection.’

Watching Lambada as an outsider, it’s all too easy to presume that desire must play a role in such an intimate, consuming dance. After all, this has been the historical assumption, from the dance’s inception amidst condemnations by the Catholic authorities, to the accusations by some that Lambada in the late eighties and early nineties was too racy and sensationalist (more on this from Solange). Marisa admits freely that many of the dance couples she teaches now are in relationships as a result of their love for Lambada; she herself met her co-teacher and partner Gary through their joint passion for the dance. However, it’s important not to forget the dancer’s highly individual and instinctive relationship to the dance. Claudia, who runs the Amsterdam school Brasazouk, describes Lambada as her ‘second nature’, seeing the dance above all as a vehicle for personal expression. Solange and Berg Diaz, as siblings that have grown up together as a dance couple, are a reminder of the subtly in the relationship between partners, a connection deeply misunderstood when viewed in the context of a sophisticated ‘pulling tactic’. When I mention this assumption, Solange shrugs, with a subdued smile, ‘Yes, people think Berg and I being partners is strange at first’, she pauses, ‘but then they see us dance.’

Where is Lambada heading? It seems the dance will always raise temperatures - today the debate is around the development of Zouk/Lambada, and the controversial argument that the original dance has been altered so extensively since the introduction of Zouk music that the name ‘Lambada’ itself is now redundant. Perhaps, however, the resolution of the dispute around naming is less important than the interest stirred up by the debate and new incarnations of the dance, notable forms of which are being called Zouk/Lambada, Lamba-Zouk, or simply Zouk. Dance capitals around the world are developing their own distinctive styles, prompting the question as to whether the top dancers in Madrid, New York or Tokyo need make the pilgrimage to the origins of the dance on the streets of Brazil. Claudia, of Brasazouk, believes no such journey to the ‘home-land’ is necessary: ‘There are Brazilian dancers all over (the world) carrying the spirit of the dance with them’, she says. The diversification we’re witnessing today, with different forms and styles embraced worldwide, reveals the soul and vital force behind Lambada as a dance celebrating the individual, and encouraging the vigorous expression of personal sensuality. Such an artform will necessarily prompt controversy, equally it will always draw new converts to its boldness and capacity to invigorate.

Lambada is such a beautiful and free dance, which is constantly evolving and developing with time. – Marisa of the Lambadamecrazy Team, London.

I can only think of Lambada in a wonderful and positive way, since I only see the dance grow and grow – Claudia of Brasazouk, Amsterdam.

LEMN SISSAY, TRANSONIC CHOIRS - Published The London Magazine Aug / Sept 08

2008-10-28T04:19:00.000-07:00

On Lemn Sissay’s new collection, ‘Listener’

Before we get to know each other / And sing for tomorrow / And unearth yesterday / So that we can prepare our joint grave / You should know that I have no family, / Neither disowned nor distanced – none… /…I am the guilty secret of an innocent woman / And a dead man – tell your parents, they’ll want to know.

‘Before We Get Into This’ – Listener

Meeting Lemn Sissay for an interview on his new collection ‘Listener’ I can’t help but have this particular poem from the work ringing in my ears. The incredible story of Lemn’s childhood in a foster home and then in care, and his subsequent search for his family during his adult life, has played a crucial role in how Lemn Sissay is viewed by the public and literati. Mid-way through his career the BBC brought Lemn’s journey to find his family into our homes, with the 1995 documentary ‘Internal Flight’. In 2006 Lemn began touring with a one-man show based around the story of his life ‘Something Dark’– available in book form since last March. Sissay’s life as a poet, playwright and vocal literary figure has run parallel to his struggle to discover his family and roots. He now has, in his own words, ‘a dysfunctional family, like every-one else’. It’s been twenty years since Lemn published his first poetry collection at the age of twenty-one – ‘Listener’ is his fifth. In the intervening decades he has become a profoundly influential voice for poetry, manifesting his vision of poetry as ‘everyday’ through his work in public art. This year, Lemn was appointed South Bank’s Resident Artist and as I walk along the Thames to the Riverside Rooms, I wonder how to approach this remarkable figure and his latest body of work. In terms of dealing with ‘Listener’, do we need to know Sissay’s story ‘before we get into this?’

Lemn Sissay is the child of an Ethiopian mother and an Eritrean father. When his mother came to study in Britain, she sought to have Lemn fostered for a short time, unaware that the foster family had been told it was a permanent adoption. Lemn had no knowledge of his biological mother, or that she had made attempts to reach him, until he was eighteen years old. I meet Lemn at his desk, surrounded with mottos and proverbs scribbled in enthusiastic biro - ‘It aint where you go but where you’re at’ and ‘Nothing is written in stone unless you are one’ jostle for space with projects plans, maps, and notes from fellow writers and collaborators. It strikes me that this man, with so many visions for the future, seems happy for his past to be part of the public arena. Does he believe in upholding this connection between his art and life? Lemn pauses at the question, then fixes me with bright, impassioned eyes.

People read my work and they’re always trying to peg me down: am I about race? Do I just want to be well known? I put ‘Something Dark’ out there to say ‘This is my story’. None of that other stuff matters. What matters is this story that I’ve had to drag like a dead body through my life since I was eighteen. It’s a story I’ve been wanting to tell. People might watch or read about my life and wonder what work comes out of that. But is it a bad thing, if I’m not dependant on it? It’s already in the poetry, if people look.

Whether or not we choose to map the facts of Sissay’s life story onto ‘Listener’, it is Lemn’s lasting attitude towards poetry as performing the function of both family and friend that truly is given voice in ‘Listener’. There’s an intense longing for intimate encounter with the reader - or ‘listener’ - that resounds throughout the collection. Take the title poem, commissioned for the eightieth birthday of the World Service. The lilting lines speak to us off the page:

Radio waves like flocks of swallows or the flamingos of / Lake Tana / That seem to fly out from the reflecting solar wind / Land upon both of us with feather-wing ease / Bringing my world to yours and your world to mine…. / … Tuning in through the hissing noise / To you tuning in to me.

The poem’s introduction frames this piece as the imagined meeting of Lemn and his mother, a call across the void from Britain to Ethiopia. However, this faith in poetry’s potential to unite can, be just as keenly felt in the relationship between the author and ourselves. In ‘Receiver’ we find this same conviction in poetry’s ability to connect, ‘Emotions in transit transmigrate / Story transmutes and what transpires / Are transfinite transonic choirs.’ ‘Receiver’ at times seems constructed to trip us up, pointing to the impossibility of a story’s smooth, unadulterated passage from ear to ear, yet Sissay ends the poem with this jubilant image of transcendent creative expression.

Though ‘Listener’ is visionary in scope, its sagacity most often comes to the fore dressed in the simplest language. The image Lemn has often used to describe his work, is that of poems as ‘flag posts in the mountainside, showing the view you see at any given point in the journey’; for the poet this alludes to charting his progress. Tellingly, the image also suggests the act of guiding others. There are poems in the collection that function as signposts to life – ‘Inspiration’ and ‘Applecart Art’ evoke the repetitious form of the mantra, compelling the reader to look inwards, and in the case of ‘Applecart Art’ to reject the inflated superficiality of art ‘scenes’. One of the most striking of these pieces is ‘Moving Target’, a battle cry against society’s ‘unwritten laws’ - ‘Do not engage with them. / They will devour you. / Do not wear them or grow with them. / Do not challenge them or walk in them, / Do not counter them.’ Lemn lights up when I mention the piece. ‘Yeah!’ He lets out a joyous holler.

Don’t engage with them! Society wants you to be binary. You can’t fight the system by being a rebel. You’re just at the shore waiting for the boat to sell you down the river…’ He sits back in his chair, suddenly reflective after this outburst. ‘It’s about not losing your voice. It’s like I don’t try to reach out to my readers, though it might seem like that. I’m in contact with myself, and constantly involved in expression. Therefore it touches people. I hope. If I wasn’t concerned with being in touch with other people I would lose my own voice.

We can read in ‘Listener’ the product of a career that has remained uncompromising in the face of the anxiety of influence. In his early career Lemn was one of the only Black British poets working in Britain. Gigging with a group including Benjamin Zephaniah, Grace Nichols and Linton Kwesi Johnson, it was often taken for granted that Lemn too was a Caribbean poet. He has since been trumpeted as a Mancunian poet (his birth-place and home until he moved to London two years ago), an African poet, or simply a ‘Black’ poet, to mention a few labels from which he has struggled to keep his distance. ‘When I was just starting up, Grace Nichols signed her book to me, “Keep on keeping on”. I’ve just tried to be me and a bit more of that.’ There’s a triumphant, even a defiant streak in ‘Listener’’s complex portrayal of the interaction between identity and race. The poetry’s approach to African identity differs radically in tone. Moving from ‘The Battle of Adwa, 1896’, a piece that glorifies the spirit of brotherhood in the Ethiopian fight for independence, to the depiction in ‘Molasses and Long Shadows’’ of a post-independence Africa beleaguered by systemic betrayal, where ‘The families who sowed this rotting crop / Reap its benefits today and, no wonder, forgot.’ It’s telling, then, that the last creative piece in the collection is a call to rise above the constraints of national identity. The play ‘Queen’s Speech’, originally commissioned for the BBC, imagines a bold dialogue between Her Majesty and three immigrants, one of whom, Rabbi Hattenstone’, ends the piece with a utopian call to open our borders to all peoples.

Sissay’s work has been noted for its diverse readership and its ability to attract those coming to poetry for the first time. Lemn believes ‘Listener’ will be no exception. ‘I’m available to people who want to explore poetry as a normal thing.’ Speaking these words, Lemn’s eyes have the glint of the revolutionary. ‘Poetry is for the people. Think of all the people who believe books are exclusive and as soon as they start reading they can’t stop.’ One of the greatest joys in reading ‘Listener’ is the frequency with which we recognize ourselves in the poetry. ‘Lost Key’ is one such poem where we identify with the searcher, becoming increasingly irritated with our well-meaning companion, ‘Have you checked the back of the sofa? Underneath it? / Could it be in your pockets?’ Addressing our frustration, a voice begins to asserts itself with an astute eye that’s almost menacing in its clarity, ‘Funny how when you’re looking you find everything else / Except. Don’t start blaming people. Before you know it / You’ll accuse everyone that is nearest to you’. We can all relate to such a surge of irrational bitterness, and the banal scenario of losing a key at once becomes a site for profound self-questioning. It is the expert use of the ordinary scenario to extraordinary effect that has given much of Lemn’s public poetry landmark status. Three poems in the this new collection- ‘Rain’, ‘Catching Numbers’ and ‘Gilt of Cain’- are also works of public art, and for Lemn its crucial that people identify with the poetry. ‘I like public art because it's about people owning it. There are hundreds of statues in London, but only a few that people recognize as pieces they just want to be near to. You can’t make a landmark, people have to decide it is.’

Should a reader of ‘Listener’ be aware of the incredible life that has produced this work? Do we need to know the life of these poems as they exist outside the page? It would seem that the answer is no, on both accounts. ‘Listener’ is a deeply affecting collection, with an incisive wisdom that carries the boldness of its vision. It will remain so whether you know of the significance of the search for Lemn’s mother in the title poem, or not. Likewise one doesn't necessarily need to know that it is Lemn himself, confronting presumptions as to his sense of identity, in the role of Rabbi Hattenstone in ‘Queen’s Speech’. ‘Listener’ is the creation of a man who has spent most of his adult life searching for a familial connection, and who has found it – in part – in poetry, and its potential to connect.
What we take from it is the impression of a potent body of work which begs to be shouted in the street, whispered over the radio and scrawled on the walls. Equally, we can read Listener in a quiet room, and there establish an intimate connection with this profoundly personal and politically significant collection.

- Lemn Sissay’s ‘Listener’ is due for release on October 16th
- The public artwork ‘Gilt of Cain’ will be unveiled in the City of London on September 4th
- For more news on Lemn Sissay, including dates for his Winter tour, visit his blog www.lemnsissay.com

FILM REVIEW, PUFFBALL - Published Deathray Magazine September 08

2008-10-07T13:06:00.000-07:00

Release Date: 18 July 2008
Cert: 18
Running time: 120 mins
Director: Nicolas Roeg
Writers: Dan Weldon (written by)
Fay Weldon (novel)
Starring: Kelly Reilly, Rita Tushingham, Miranda Richardson, Oscar Pearce, William Houston.
Rating: 4/10

Strapline: This sluggish tale of domestic witchery in a backward Ireland will confuse Roeg fans and initiates alike. (Worth it for the inside-the-cervix shot of male orgasm.)

It would have been satisfying if what must surely be Roeg’s farewell film – he hit eighty this year – had seen a return to his iconic hay-day. ‘Puffball’ seemed to promise such a re-birth, harking back to 70s masterpieces ‘Don’t Look Now’ and ‘Walkabout’ in its depiction of a couple’s strained relations in elusive, hostile territory – this time Irish cattle-rearing country. But what could have been an expressive take on the Celtic landscape, with its primordial ties to motherhood, fertility and black craft, turns out to be a kitchen-sink drama about a meddlesome family with a few black spells tucked away in the jam cupboard.

When architect Liffey (Kelly Reilly) and her partner Richard (Oscar Pearce) decide to renovate an old cottage in an Irish backwater they find something far more treacherous than dry rot in the foundations. (Thinking little red dwarf?) Coming to terms with an un-planned pregnancy, Liffey soon finds herself fighting off the prying interest of the pathologically maternal family next-door. Witchery is afoot as the Tucker family, presided over by the aged Molly (Rita Tushingham) attempt to use Liffey’s fertile womb to “re-birth” a little boy they lost when their hexed cottage went up in flames years ago. (Thinking drowned daughter?) While the supernatural powers unleashed are cursorily attributed to the Nordic God Oden, the real catalyst proves to be Molly’s witch-brew aphrodisiac, prompting the man of the house (William Houston plays the swarthy Tucker) to give Liffey a ‘bewitched’ barnyard banging.

‘Puffball’ is an adaptation of a Fay Weldon novel, and its insistence on conforming to the book’s realism is misguided - especially as the Tucker sorcery is uninspired, leaving us playing ‘spot the symbol’ with fires, phalluses and voodoo corn-dolls. The film’s saving grace is the turgid atmosphere that swells alongside Liffey’s womb. It takes a little while, but Roeg’s trademark flashbacks and disjunctive, twitchy camera-work (along with some creatively captured intra-sound) do finally manage to ratchet up the nausea. And this is disturbingly coupled with the film’s feverish horniness as Liffey, Richard and Mr. Tucker become ensnared in a potion-induced sex triangle.

Does the heady atmosphere built towards a redeeming climax? We may recall that a puffball is a mushroom that grows its spores on the inside to eventually – dramatically - burst open. Sadly there is no such explosive zenith to ‘Puffball’ the film. Roeg’s last stab at past grandeur will be remembered for its consistent mediocrity.

Quote: “Every child will say, ‘Mummy, why am I here?’ Well, God knows why we are but one thing is certain, it’s to procreate.” - Nicolas Roeg shows his advanced age hasn’t altered his sense of purpose.

FILM REVIEW, MAD DETECTIVE - Published Deathray Magazine September 08

2008-10-07T05:55:00.000-07:00

Title: Mad Detective
UK Release Date: 18 July 2008
Cert: 15
Running time: 89 mins
Directors: Johnny To and Wai Ka-Fai
Writers: Wai Ka-Fai and Kin Yee Au
Starring: Lau Ching Wan, Andy On, Kelly Lin
Rating: 8

Strapline: A maniacal detective claims the power to see people’s “inner personalities” in this outrageous, genre-smashing crime flick from Hong Kong giants Johnnie To and Wai Ka-Fai

Inspector Bun’s first actions on screen are to do battle with a hanging pig corpse, then blithely demand a fellow police officer to zip him up in a suitcase and kick him down a flight of stairs. He emerges from the suitcase, zombie-like, brushes himself down and stares at the camera with sombre, puffy-eyed aggression. Hey presto: The Mad Detective. In the first ten minutes directors Johnny To and Wai Ka-Fai seem to have shown us their full hand. But not to be fooled. Posing as a decadent splurge of absurdist violence, ‘Mad Detective’ reveals itself as a disturbingly complex and challenging piece – as appealing to art house circles as to those of us seeking thrills and spills.

Lau Ching Wan is darkly mesmeric as Bun, whose unorthodox crime-solving technique is based on his ability to see people’s “inner selves”. Booted out of the force for giving the chief of police a freakish retirement gift – think Van Gogh and cringe - Bun is plunged into a reclusive depression. But when a missing police gun is linked to a series of heists and murders, fresh-faced Inspector Ho (Andy On) is eager to enlist the super-sensory powers of his old mentor. The focus of the case inevitably turns on Bun’s own psyche, as Ho uncovers the mystifying relationship between Bun and his wife (Taiwanese actress and model Kelly Lin) along with the detective’s penchant for burying himself alive.

Inspector Bun’s “special gift” is an open invitation for Johnnie To and Wai Ka-Fai to wreak serious havoc on the HK crime genre, as suspects and colleagues shift from their “real” self into their “inner” personalities, manifested in characters like the greasy-lipped Fatso or The Boy. Fans of To’s earlier work may mourn the loss of solid, fast-paced action in ‘Mad Detective’’s unrelenting cinematic trickery. Still, some astounding set pieces arise, not least in the stunning denouement, where Bun and Ho stalk the villain’s motley crew of seven “inner personalities” through a psychopathic smoke-and-mirrors landscape.
It is Lau Ching Wan’s Herculean performance as Bun that makes genius out of what could easily have been a flamboyant mess. With an offbeat irony swiftly becoming a trademark of To and Ka-Fai collaborations, his character brilliantly skewers the heart of the macho crime-genre protagonist. Along with sidekick Inspector Ho, we follow Bun’s crazy antics, we doubt, we hope - and are finally won over, to crack a wild-eyed grin as the credits roll…

Fact: Inspector Bun calls the paranormal phenomena "gwai", translated in the English version as “inner personalities”. The Cantonese word in fact has a meaning closer to “ghosts” and Bun later explains that he literally sees these visions as "the devil inside".

ART INTO REALITY - THE LONDON MAGAZINE TALKS TO FOUR WOMEN ARAB ARTISTS - Published The London Magazine June/July 08

2008-10-07T05:39:00.001-07:00

ART INTO REALITY - THE LONDON MAGAZINE TALKS TO FOUR WOMEN ARAB ARTISTS - Published The London Magazine June/July 08

2008-10-07T05:31:00.000-07:00

Sitting in her gallery, her hands crossed in front of her, Maysaloun seems excitable, even a little anxious. She belongs to a burgeoning Arab art scene in London; a group of people who are now beginning to feel the momentum of international recognition building behind them. With Faraj’s strong faith in the redemptive power of the arts, there is much at stake in the current surge of interest in the Arab art world. ‘If there is any chance for humanity, it’s in the hands of artists’ she assures me, fixing my gaze with dark, sincere eyes. Having settled in London in 1982, following the escalation of the Iran-Iraq war, Faraj has since been endeavoring to bring together, in her own words, ‘Iraq’s scattered talents in the wind’. With this goal in mind, she founded iNCiA (International Network for Contemporary Iraqi Artists) in 1995, and Aya gallery in 2002, with her husband the architect Ali Mousawi. With the opening of the Dubai branch of Christies in 2005, followed by Sotheby’s less than a year later, the Arab art market has since experienced an unprecedented boom. In this country, The British Museum’s 2006 Word into Art exhibition, featuring Faraj’s work alongside artists from the Modern Middle East including ones she championed in her earlier career, significantly raised the profile of contemporary art from the region. The exhibition later travelled to the DIFC in Dubai, in an obvious gesture of recognition of the Gulf as a new cultural hub.

Although critics have been wary of presenting the surge of interest in Arabic art as a political phenomenon, London-based artists such as Faraj see an opportunity to counteract the reductive presentation of the Islamic world. Faraj’s work Asma Allah al-Husna (The 99 Names of God) is evidence of her belief in art as a profound response to grotesque misrepresentation. This work was provoked by a comment from a gallery visitor, who asked Faraj whether the ninety-nine Names of Allah were linked to 9/11, given her fascination with conspiracy theory. The visitor had even alerted the police! ‘I was shocked,’ Faraj intones. ‘These are the Names of God, beginning with Al-Rahman, Al-Raheem (The Merciful, The Compassionate). Islam is and has always been, peace, harmony and respect for all living things.’ Faraj’s Asma Allah al-Husna makes use of cylinder seals, invented in Mesopotamia in 5000 BC as an early form of print making, in which a mirror image is engraved into a stone or clay cylinder. Faraj has completed fifty so far, and watching her handle the works, one can see the role even a small act of creative labour has to play in keeping alive a culture confronted with destruction. ‘It is not just Iraq’s galleries, museums and libraries that have been bombed to their foundations. It is also the treasures that lay beneath the ground. This is where history began, where man first recorded on clay tablets their deeds and victories. I feel a deep responsibility towards keeping the art of my people alive. Through art, I believe we can find peace.’

Laila Shawa is another powerful voice in the London-based Arabic art scene, and was also a contributor to the Word in Art exhibition. Born in Gaza, Shawa's training has been cosmopolitan – she's earned art degrees in Cairo and Italy, and has also studied under the great Austrian expressionist Oskar Kokaschka. Although October sees Shawa's latest series, Mirage, showing at the DIFC in Dubai, she is more cautious than Faraj of the sudden interest in the Arab art world. Smoking in her apartment, vividly hung with the works of her fellow artists, she leans forward with a half-smile, 'I have never considered myself to be part of a group, you know. Of course, I am Palestinian, but as a person I'm a complex mixture of cultures.' Shawa's sense of personal and artistic integrity has not always won her followers. 'I was accused initially of a lack of shared experience with the Palestinian people. Since my family never left our home in Gaza, I don't have the same memories of dispossession. The Palestinian school of art came to be influenced by the nostalgia and romanticisation that grew out of these experiences of exile, and this was not a form of expression to which I belonged.' Shawa is a member of the Palestinian elite. Christa Paula, who is currently writing a monograph on the artist, is constantly struck by the bravery of the her career, 'Laila has been criticised for her ancestry and 'class' throughout her working life, but has determinately stayed true to her self.'

Like Maysaloun Faraj, Laila Shawa is compelled to express the plight of her country. 'I came back to Gaza during the First Intifada, and felt helpless in the face of what I saw on the streets. I thought long and hard. Finally I decided: leave that reality as it is.' This period saw the development of one of Shawa's distinctive mediums, which merges documentary-style photography with the vivid expressionism of her paintings and silk screens. Given her determination to be first and foremost an artist, above any political or national allegiance, her latest series, Mirage, might be seen as a manifestation of purely aesthetic desires. The works take Shawa's palette to a new adrenalin-high, with traditional Islamic geometric patterns warped into optical illusions in pop pigments. 'In October, people will be drawn initially to the fabulous colour, but the purpose of the series is also to tease the mind…' Shawa gestures around her hallway lined wall to wall with the series that she has displayed for my benefit. Given the surroundings, the movement transforms her into a character in a Disneyland cathedral. Fantasy aside, Mirage is a serious comment on the rapid development of the Gulf. 'What is Dubai?' Shawa asks. 'It's high-tech fashions, Las Vegas, and its also the Islamic world. The city is being pulled in many different directions. Which way is it going to go?'

While Yara El-Sherbini belongs to a younger generation of British Arab artists, like Laila Shawa, El-Sherbini never stops provoking and questioning her audience. What colour is the universe? What colour is the future? What colour is Michael Jackson? These questions come from El-Sherbini’s latest project, Universality Challenge, which took place for the first time the day before our interview. ‘It went so well!’ Yara beams. ‘I had SOAS pitted against a team from the general public, and the ‘normal’ team won by a long, long way. We covered everything, the labour party, teenage pregnancy, Do they drink Um Bongo in the Congo?’ I wait for her to go on. ‘No, I’m asking you seriously. Do they?’ The answer, unfortunately, is being kept under lock and key, in case it gets leaked to new competitors. El-Sherbini has a strong sense of herself as British, and is wary of efforts to read her work by the colour of her skin, or through her faith in Islam. Despite this, she concedes that 9/11 was a major factor in compelling her to explore British popular culture. She winces, ‘I hate that every article has to include that date, but its impact on me is undeniable.’

Even before her graduation from Slade in Fine Art Media, El-Sherbini was experimenting with strategies of how to get audiences and art-goers to think for themselves. ‘We live our life, we do our thing, we read the papers, but we don’t talk about it. When people go to a gallery and look at a painting hung on the wall, they don’t necessarily engage.’ Over the last two years, El-Sherbini has hosted numerous ‘alternative’ pub quizzes, and her particular brand of live art is beginning to infiltrate the great London art institutions, with a Treasure Hunt conducted earlier this month in The Museum of London, and a date set for a ‘pub quiz’, believe it or not, at The National Portrait Gallery on the last weekend of July. These gigs may point to conventional artistic success, but El-Sherbini prefers more informal spaces for her pieces. ‘Working in unexpected formats outside of the gallery space can be more effective because it confronts people within their everyday life.’ In her capacity as a live artist, and one not directly influenced by her Arabic heritage, El-Sherbini’s practice may at first seem incomparable with Laila Shawa’s or Maysaloun Faraj’s. What they share, however, is a strong awareness of identity, and an urge to confront the ingrained assumptions of their viewers/audiences. ‘I might be naive to think I can change the world,’ says El-Sherbini, turning her ever-questioning eye in on herself, ‘but a quote I’ve always loved is: “Change the mind of someone who will change the mind of someone who will change the world.” This doesn’t necessarily mean tricking people into altering their opinions, just occasionally pulling the rug from beneath their feet.’

While Laila Shawa captures her viewer’s eye with raucous colour in order to speak the horrors of the intifida, Yara El-Sherbini lures her audience into the pub to confront them with the entirety of British pop culture. There’s a shared strategy here, of drawing the viewer in with the familiar and pleasing, only to hit them with the concealed impact of political content. And it’s a strategy that’s strikingly paralleled by a story told to me by Jananne Al-Ani, an Iraqi-born artist known for her photographic and moving image works. Actually, it’s not so much a story as a fact: In Kosovo there is a blue butterfly that feeds exclusively on the wild flower, Artemisia Vulgaris. Like the poppy, Artemisia Vulgaris thrives where the top soil has recently been disturbed. Follow this particular species of butterfly, dig, and you are likely to uncover the mass graves of the Albanian victims of Serbian genocide. This bitter-sweet relationship between politics and aesthetics comes across as especially complex in Al-Ani’s work. Although she sees her artworks as cultural products and not political statements, it’s undeniable that her interest in photography, film and video was initially provoked by the political landmark of the first Gulf War. ‘During the war I was living in England, and the story I was getting, through these mediated images, was so grotesquely skewed and extreme. It made me critical of photography and film in a way that I hadn’t been before.’

Al-Ani is currently working on The Aesthetics of Disappearance – a Land Without People, a three-year long project funded by the (AHRC) Arts and Humanities Research Council. Guide (2008) is one of a pair of films that are the project’s first finished productions. The work is a two minute looped film. It shows us a nondescript desert track, cast over by a shadow that elongates from the bottom left hand corner of the screen and introduces a man wearing a red and white keffiyeh and holding a black carrier bag. As we watch the man recede away from us down the track, an ambient soundtrack performs a peculiar silencing of the desert wind that stirs his robe and blows away his soundless footsteps. As the man approaches the distant skyline, he suddenly blips out of existence - only for the loop to kick in, returning him to the start of his journey. Jananne Al-Ani ejects the disc and quietly smiles. ‘I like the potential for ordinariness in film; out in the desert I often shot long takes where nothing much happened.’ The Aesthetics of Disappearance… will explore the desert as a fantasy space in the Western imaginary, perceived as a non-place on which to build dreams and wield power. Al-Ani has plans to continue the project from the air, filming and photographing contested sites in the Middle East - stretches of desert that may have archeological, bliblical, roman or contemporary significance. ‘Aerial photography is interesting because the shift in perspective can allow you to see what’s really happening on the ground’.

Artists may be celebrating the surge of international interest in the Arab art world, but perhaps we should take a lesson from Jananne Al-Ani and see the situation from a different perspective. There are artists and critics who view the booming market in the Gulf as a distraction from the wealth of material that has always been present in the cultural production of the Arab world. Practitioners from the Arab and Middle Eastern nations tend to be sharply in tune with their own provincial art scenes, and are also aware of the influence of so-called ‘cultural centres’ in Europe and America. Within this frame, it is London that appears as the un-informed ‘outsider’, only now waking up to the wealth of Arab contemporary art and its rich cultural heritage. ‘There are two parallel worlds,’ says Al-Ani, ‘one completely in the know and one completely in the dark.’ While it is indisputable that major artists like Maysaloun Faraj and Laila Shawa will benefit from the upsurge of Western interest in Arab art, it is possible that the West will be the real beneficiaries of this exchange. If we are to fulfil Maysaloun Faraj’s dream of a world at peace, or approach Laila Shawa and Yara El-Sherbini’s vision of a public that questions and self-criticises, we would do well to pay attention to the creative minds speaking out from a part of the world that is so routinely and grotesquely misinterpreted by the West.

PLUGS

Jananne Al-Ani’s ‘The Guide’ and ‘Flock’ are currently showing at the Whistable Biennale, running until 6th July. www.whistablebiennale.com

Laila Shawa’s ‘Mirage’ is showing on the 10th October, at the DIFC, Dubai.

Maysaloun Faraj’s Boats and Burdens, Kites and Shattered Dreams; will show at Aya gallery, 15 Fulham High Street, with provisional dates of 12 Nov – 12 Dec 2008.
Yara El-Sherbini is hosting one of her alternative pub quizzes at The National Portrait Gallery on the 24th and 25th July. See www.yaraelsherbini.com for updates.

WITNESS AND WINNER, ANNA PARKINA - Published The London Magazine April/May 08

2008-10-07T03:54:00.000-07:00

WITNESS AND WINNER, ANNA PARKINA - Published The London Magazine April/May 08

2008-10-07T02:12:00.000-07:00

I met Anna Parkina in the Wilkinson Gallery, preparing her collage creations, sculptures and film-art pieces for the opening of her new exhibition, Witness and Winner. Dark and fine-boned, the artist bears a disarming likeness to Audrey Hepburn. Her artwork, in fact, uses this physical similarity to perplexing effect; images of herself and the starlet pop up regularly in her oeuvre, confusing us as to which is which. If Audrey Hepburn is the ‘winner’, is Parkina the ‘witness’? This is the first of many codes I must crack to get to the bottom of this Moscow-born artist, and her will to re-interpret the Russian id.

Parkina’s work is viscous and psycho-sexual, vividly disturbing and absurdly comical in turns. Her primary mode of expression is the collage, and she feels this to be a distinctly Russian medium. Moscow, in Parkina’s eyes, is itself a canvas layered with contradictory influences. In her work, clippings from free Moscow newspapers are spliced onto iconic film images, whilst references to advertisements and free-floating text confuse and refigure expressive ink drawings and photo images of anonymous city-dwellers. Her style recalls the Russian avant-garde, the strong geometric shapes and bold colour seeming to reference Constructivists such as El Lissitzky, while the flat, dream-like landscape of entrance, elevator, stop’s button brings to mind Leopold Survage’s cubist, mazelike depictions of the city. Yet Parkina is reluctant to locate herself in the grand sweep of Russian cultural history, preferring to see her nation’s art as simply part of her blood inheritance.

‘Abroad, people say my work has its roots in the avant-garde, perhaps further back in Dadaism. I didn’t do this on purpose. There are ways in which Russians will always see subjects the same, a Russian...“attitude”. Making these works I was thinking more about the punk aesthetic, maybe even American punk, but then I realised this aesthetic is much older, going back to Dadaism and the beginnings of the avant-garde.’

Having first left Moscow in her teens to study in Paris at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Parkina’s artistic career has been cosmopolitan, dipping in and out of art scenes in Paris, Berlin and finally Hollywood. The exhibition Winner and Witness marks the twenty-eight year old’s return to Moscow as a chosen home. What she feels she has acquired is a necessary distance from Russian culture, giving her ‘clear eyes’ with which to look back at her nation.

‘In the 90s there was this black hole in Russia, and anything could happen. There was an explosion of information, reality TV shows, fashions, advertisement. There is all this information coming in, and most of it is being controlled. Suddenly there is this totalitarian state on the one hand, and economic interest on the other. I see myself as trying to make sense of these contradictions, to be a witness.’

We are back to the ‘witness’ and the ‘winner’. Who are these figures? ‘In Russia, we have this idea that you have to succeed. You scream it. Big. Kitsch. It’s like a bad parody of American success. Grotesque. That’s a Russian “winner”.’ I think of the collage Contactor (see back inside cover) – a man and woman kissing, not only in public but as the machinery of the city itself, potent with energy and hurtling towards the future. ‘Yes, yes,’ she nods, curtly. ‘Everything, even love and sex, are overpowered by this drive for show, for success in the eyes of our neighbours.’

Parkina’s vision of a Russia caught between a totalitarian ideology and the demands of the free market is brutally captured in Reality – Drama – Nonstop. The architecture of the Underground has metamorphosed the three ticket conductors, who now appear as looming, identikit judges. Following the escalators upwards to the advertised end, ‘WIN’, we are swallowed into the belly of the threefold, ever-watching monster.

‘The underground is an example of the weird contradictions in Russia. It’s a masterpiece of architecture, a symbol of Russian pride, but no-one looks at it. We listen to announcements advertising household goods, or telling us to report drug dealers or tax evaders, then the announcers will play an old Russian folk tune or read a children’s poem, about snow or animals. It’s completely strange to me! Completely contradictory! In Europe and the US my artist friends are always looking for ideas, in Moscow you never have to look. It’s everywhere. It’s the way people live, actually.’

For Anna Parkina, Moscow is an endlessly protean puzzle in flux. ‘It’s a game for me,’ she laughs, ‘disconnecting what is real from what is not real. I take great pleasure in the game!’ Watching her laugh, I am struck once more by her likeness to that great cinematic icon, Audrey Hepburn. It’s time to ask my question. Parkina smiles, a little smugly. ‘Audrey Hepburn is the winner if you sit in the front row!’, she pauses, ‘but this is what I learnt from Hollywood, which now helps me to see Russia. Never sit in the front row. People think it’s better to be close up. No, it’s not.’ As Parkina folds her hands on her lap, she is the archetypal observer – quiet, inquisitive, intense. ‘I’m always at the back of the cinema, where I can see the screen and also the audience in front of me,’ she leans forward conspiratorially, ‘I have to keep my distance from what people are trying to show me. I want to see it all.’

Witness and Winner Anna Parkina Wilkinson Gallery 5 April–18 May 2008

SAM WINSTON AND THE AWAKENED TEXT - Cover image

2008-10-07T02:09:00.001-07:00

SAM WINSTON AND THE AWAKENED TEXT - Published The London Magazine Dec/Jan 08

2008-10-07T01:45:00.000-07:00

Sam Winston is a striking example of how a weakness can become a strength. The artist discovered his unique and exhilarating approach to the written word through his experiences with dyslexia. In the struggle to master text, Winston’s highly visual mind was drawn to the ‘fascinating world of type, colour, paper, line and form’ behind the written word: ‘I began to use typography when I started to write. This may sound rather obvious but I found writing incredibly difficult and its format certainly restrictive. What then started was a fascination with language and a desire to use letterform to explore it.’ These early enquiries reaped an astounding reward in Winston’s particular hybrid of wordplay, fine art and graphic design.

The artist’s highly personal take on the written word has won him global acclaim – his word/art pieces have found homes in special collections at MoMA, The Getty Research Institute, the British Library and the Tate galleries. I first encountered his work by chance in the Saison Poetry Library, stumbling upon the recent exhibition Volume housed in the library foyer. Expecting to pick up a nicely bound Seamus Heaney collection or a Beat poet anthology, I was stopped in my tracks by Winston’s A Full Folded Dictionary. In this work the twenty-one books of the Oxford English Dictionary are presented with their innards on display, transformed from everyday household items into bizarre sculptural landscapes. Divorced from their familiar representation, we are unable to dismiss them as ‘reference books’. The viewer is inspired to re-think their fluid, proteate content - the fact that the sum of our language can be found on their thin, black and white pages. I never got past the library foyer that day. The prospect of leafing through Seamus Heaney seemed unbearably dry in comparison with Winston’s re-animation of the word, discovering text within its visual and sensual possibilities.

The work Silent | Listen appears as exemplary of Winston’s craft. The two antagonists – ‘Silent’ marked out in white, ‘Listen’ in red – leer at each other across the black page, drawing our attention to their paradoxical status as anagrams. Winston twins the words while opposing them, a process of mirroring and counteraction that leads the viewer to reflect on both. While enthralled by Silent | Listen it struck me that Winston’s oeuvre functions in a comparable manner. Through marrying text with visual art, his pieces allow word and form to speak to each other, pulling the audience in different directions– do we ‘view’ Winston’s art or ‘read’ it? Partaking of Winston’s work was never going to be simple. As the artist tells us, ‘My pieces are a compromise between my vision of the written word and how it is understood in the conventional sense.’

Winston’s nonconformist style enables a rare crossover from the art scene into the commercial world. He has collaborated with rock-giants Muse on their third album, worked with Japanese fashion gurus Comme des Garcons and most recently, in April 2007, embarked on a Live Draw project for outdoor gear specialists The North Face. For Winston, commercial work entails ‘applying his voice’ not bowing to the big man’s edicts. ‘You can’t hire a dog and then start barking’, he laughs. At The North Face collaboration it was certainly Winston that was making the noise. Taking the company’s strap line ‘Never Stop Exploring’ as inspiration, Winston opened the Harajuku Tokyo branch of The North Face stores to a host of revellers, with guests drinking free refreshments and working on three metre-long artworks. Elaborate and multi-hued line drawings spiralled and blossomed from Winston’s starting point, the words ‘A line that unites and divides’ worded half in English, half in Japanese. All remains is the accompanying solo piece. Winston’s idea of a ‘harmony between message and medium’ is discovered here through the painting of text as a cloud formation around Japan’s Mt Tatayama.

As Winston points out, there are different kinds of ‘literacy’. He reminds us that written communication has a richly visual history, restricted in our modern era by standardised print. In his role as lecturer at several art colleges, Winston noted the vast proportion of students diagnosed with some kind of reading or writing ‘problem’. Such artists, he believes, simply need more flexibility – a recognition of their different ways of seeing. Winston’s choice to pursue his own ‘problematic’ relationship with the written word has lead to an astoundingly varied and successful career. Who else but Winston could go from selling wind-resistant fleeces to exhibiting cut ups of Romeo and Juliet at the Saison Poetry Library? If dyslexia was ever a ‘weakness’ for Winston, it is now most certainly his strength.

Sam Winston will be exhibiting as part of You – Silently, a group show exploring the relationship between Image, Object and Text. The show is curated by Marina Warner and runs 17 January–14 February at the University Gallery, University of Essex, Colchester.

2008-10-06T12:01:00.000-07:00

Submarine is a journey through the life of a witty, filthy, and
outrageously precocious fourteen-year-old boy. Oliver Tate’s
ambitions are to lose his virginity before it becomes legal, to discover
the cause of his Dad’s depression, and to find out why his mother is
‘getting surfing lessons—and probably more—from a hippy-looking
twonk.’ Trespass talks to Joe Dunthorne about the genesis of his
debut novel, the influence of his work as a poet on the piece, and the
challenges faced in reimagining the teenage ‘misfit’ hero.
You remarked previously that you didn’t plan Submarine as
much as have several good stabs at it, finding your voice as
you went along. It struck me that this decision not to plan is
very much in keeping with Oliver’s character, the desire to
jump into an escapade and see where it takes him.
That’s Oliver, he’s shambolic. Writing from his point of view you can
pretty much get away with anything, as long as it’s in keeping with
his personality…
Oliver is an idiosyncratic and contradictory protagonist. Was
his character fully fleshed-out in your mind before you set
pen to paper, or did he take form as the novel progressed?
Oliver pretty much came to the page fully formed. At the beginning
he may have been a little more fantastical—delusional maybe, not
just eccentric. You can see that side of his character at the beginning
of the book where he sees everyone around him as having weird
attributes or special powers. [Oliver is convinced that his neighbour,
a physiotherapist, is a ‘pansexual’ (a person who is sexually attracted
to anything) while the painter-decorator, in his paint-splattered
overalls, is obviously a ‘knacker’ (horse killer)]. I expected his
character to develop through the process of writing the novel. He
became more real.
It’s been sixty years since J. D. Salinger turned the misfit
adolescent into a fictional trope. Since Holden Caulfield, we
have encountered a motley pack of sexually anxious teens at
odds with their parents. Given that you’re covering such welltrodden
ground, how did you give Submarine its freshness
and edge?
Generally I don’t find referring back to similar works very helpful.
I’ve read Catcher in the Rye and Adrian Mole, but I didn’t go back
and read them again before I tackled Submarine. In fact, there were
works that people recommended to me as similar that I purposefully
didn’t read, like A Curious Incident [The Curious Incident of the Dog
in the Night Time, by Mark Haddon]. I just went ahead, hoping that
the novel would break new ground.
In a review in The Independent, Jonathan Gibbs expresses
jealousy that this generation of teenagers have Submarine,
while his generation had to settle for Adrian Mole, “written by
a woman as old as my mum, and no doubt as much with my
mother in mind as me.” (‘Submarine, By Joe Dunthorne’
02/03/2008). I noticed a cheeky nod to Sue Townsend in the
book: Jordana nicknames Oliver “Adrian” after reading his
diary entry “All the people I’ve ever kissed.” She’s clearly
poking fun here... Photograph by Eamonn McCabe
(laughing) Well, Adrian Mole was very uncool, and Oliver is cool. He’s not a geek, although he’s
sometimes unbearably pretentious.
Much of the humour, and many of the more poignant moments in the novel, seem to
derive from the gap between the narrator’s world and what we know, or suspect, is
actually going on. One of my favourite ‘love’ scenes is when Oliver’s girlfriend, the
down-to-earth Jordana, is hanging from the climbing frame and drools into Oliver’s
mouth. Oliver muses, “Jordana’s face is turning red…—sexual nervousness can do
that.” “I feel post-coital”. His self-delusion is frustrating, but also at times endearing.
He’s a totally unreliable narrator. A lot of the time I have him say “this means that” when the
reader is going no, it clearly means something else. I’m dropping clues throughout the book. So
you’re constantly thinking “what’s going on?” It was a lot of fun, toeing that line.
I imagine Submarine is a frightening read for parents. Your depiction of the mother and
father through Oliver’s eyes exposes the layers of miscommunication that can so easily
accumulate in a family.
I hope it has a scaring effect. One of my intentions is to make parents un-comfy. Everyone reads
partly for their own character, and my agent identifies with the mother. The idea of the level of
awareness that a fifteen year-old might have really makes her squirm.
Am I right in saying that Submarine is aimed at adults, as much as the teenage market?
I try not to think about readership too much when I write. I began Submarine on my Creative
Writing Masters at UEA, so I was writing it for myself and my group of friends. At the time I was
twenty-two. It’s broadly aimed at fourteen-year-olds up, I’d say. But Oliver is such an anomaly
anyway; it’s unlikely that someone picking up the book will be very much like him.
Submarine is about first times. First experience of a relationship, of sex, of death…everyone
can relate to these experiences. I’m not normally drawn to heavy material, I’m very wary of
being heavy-handed. Oliver’s character allowed me to approach these more serious themes,
because he takes it all so flippantly. He’s not prone to thoughtful moments, so the challenge was
to find opportunities for thoughtfulness.
The sadness in the novel is even more effecting, I found, because you’ve embedded
these moments in otherwise unassuming, even farcical scenes. I was struck by the chapter where Oliver takes his father to the fair, and puts him on “Shocker, The
Authentic Electric Chair Replica”, hoping that the ride will act as a placebo cure. It’s funny, but also a devastating scene in many ways. For me,
this was a predominant experience in reading the novel, this tension between
two very different emotions.

Oliver himself seems to inspire strong feelings and extremely polar reactions. I’ve had the full spectrum of responses to his character. Some people say he’s
cold, cruel, unfeeling, irritating, stupid…Other people think he’s a complete
hero, they love him, they think he’s funny,charming. It’s impossible to predict how
readers will react. Submarine is definably a poet’s novel,
smattered with incisive phrases and puissant, unusual descriptions. Oliver’s
showy brilliance at wordplay and etymology allows you to go even
further, really indulging yourself in the language.

Exactly. There was lots of feedback between my work as a poet and Submarine. There
are even a few lines that people in my poetry workshops have recognised. For example I use an image of twigs that spell out the word ‘help’, which I credit in the book to Lara Frankena—it’s from her poem ‘Vipassana Meditation Retreat, Ten Days’ Silence.’ Apart from anything else, I find a lot of satisfaction
in a well turned-out phrase.

Now that Submarine is in the bookstores, what’s the next step?

I’ll always be writing poetry and short stories. Shorter fiction allows me to try out
different voices, take risks. I’m also working on a new novel. As far as Submarine goes, it’s been optioned by Warp Films, to be written and directed by Richard Ayoade (Mighty Boosh,Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, The IT Crowd). He’s an excellent choice; the first draft of the script is great. There are a lot of hoops to jump through, of course - we’re in talks with the moneymen, trying to get funding...

There’s one more question that needs to be asked, in the spirit of Oliver Tate. What’s the word of the day?

Oh, yeah! My mate sent me a really good one. Pettifogger. It means “to quibble over trivia in order to misguide a debate”.

WHAT WE'RE LISTENING TO - PublishedTrespass Magazine June/July 08

2008-10-06T11:46:00.000-07:00

You describe WE as “atmospheric indie rock
with elements of noir and surf”. Your sound is
strongly evocative. If you could provide the
soundtrack to any past event—the fall of the
Berlin Wall, the creation of Mickey Mouse, the
birth of Christ etc.—what would it be?
Yes, (always start an answer with a positive word). I
guess we will lean into playing at ends more than playing
at starts…we are more a funeral band than a wedding
orchestra. But not really a sad funeral. More like the
funeral of a decade, (some people will remember this
decade as a wonderful collection of bright events. Some
will be happy to move on to the next decade with no
looking back). We’ll be happy if we could play at the
funeral of this decade.
WE are composed of an Italian (Gabriele
Gori, bassist), a drummer from Latvia
(Mareks Kaminski), a Swedish vocalist
(Paul Rubenstein) and a guitarist from
Israel (Then Wissoky). Does this colourful
jumble of backgrounds relate to your
eclectic, experimental style? How did you
meet?
Yes the drummer has turned Latvian, (we’ve been
playing with Mareks for the past 8 months).
Otherwise the short and sweet answer is yes,
but…what made us into a collective is our individual love
of the musical adventure. It’s the pheromone that draws
us together.
In reality we romantically met through a paper ad.
Paul placed an ad, Snail answered and then we found
Gabriele, (Mareks was not born yet and only joined later
after the invention of the global computer network that is
called ‘Internet’. We found him basking in the corner of
some remote website).
You have been awarded “Best Unsigned Record of
the Year” by Playmusic and appeared on the compilation
Best of Myspace UK alongside Bloc Party
and Maximo Park. Do you see yourself with a bright
shiny label anytime soon? Do you feel you need a
label to succeed?
Shiny new label? Can we get it wrapped in flowery paper
and with a ribbon?
Otherwise you will need to define the word success.
Our success is in our ability to continue to invent (our 3rd
album is in the making). We succeed every time a new
song is born.
Label? We will obviously say yes to put the right roof
over our head (labels are nowadays more a marketing
and promotional tool with lots of money to buy internet
ads). But if we get no offers, we hope to still be able to
be the street musicians that we are, homeless with a
mission of taking over the world.

THE LION'S DEN OF SOMALI WOMEN - Published Trespass Magazine April/May 08

2008-10-06T11:23:00.000-07:00

Somali-born Bilan has spent most of her life in the East End. Having written her dissertation on Racism and the Police, she now works as a teacher. Here Bilan speaks to Trespass about the excitement of choosing when to hide and reveal her body, how to avoid a Somalian ‘freshie’ and why her community think British Muslim women are
‘going crazy’.

The Somali community (in London) isn’t very much in the public eye, whereas the Middle East is receiving constant press attention. Do you feel it’s easy for people to look at you, as a woman in a hijab, and assume you’re from Iraq or Afghanistan?

It’s insane but I think people do. Somalians can look more Arab than African, we have Arabic heritage. But if people are set on thinking negatively, they won’t care whether the woman in front of them is African or Asian—they just think ‘They’re all Muslims’.

People have read about the Taliban regime, the bans on high-heels, on driving, what is your response to people who believe covering up in public must be a sign of female repression?

Actually, I can understand this preconception. I was born into a Muslim family and I still thought wearing the hijab was repressive before I talked to women who wore it themselves. Now I wear it, out of choice, and I can feel that it’s another form of expression.

So for you it’s empowering.

Yes, it gives me power as a woman to show myself when I choose. (a pause) And, you know, I think it’s boring to dress up all the time! (laughing) When you don’t always dress up you look forward to that moment—when you can be as provocative as you
like.

You mean, at all-woman events?

Our parties. We kick the men out of the house, turn on the music and dance. Southern Somalian is the most sexy; you really shake your bum. All the skinny girls sit in the
about Somali women becoming more educated and independent. Women are more picky in
the UK. We’ll stand up to our men. There’s a joke about a woman going into a Somali—
what’s it called? Where they sell bed stuff—and the assistant immediately shows her to the single sheets. When asked why, he says, ‘Don’t all you English girls kick out your men?’ I know men that were born and raised in the East End that have gone to Somalia to find themselves a ‘safe’ wife.

And do you want a ‘safe’ husband?

(Laughing) Women don’t want a traditional man straight from Somalia. We call them
‘freshies’. Girls think they’ll come out with all the old sayings, ‘You’re as beautiful as a female camel.’

How does the community feel about your men bringing back brides from Somalia?

There’s a real problem with married men going back and taking another wife. Men in Muslim culture can have up to four wives. One woman I know—her husband said he was going back home to build her a house. She kept sending money over to him—it turned out she was paying for his wedding to another woman! Can you imagine! If my husband Mohammed took another wife I would never have taken him back.

You seem to be saying that the Somali women’s community has a real sense of
identity and fun, yet there’s a problem with men accepting that.

Our strength is something that has come a bit too soon for the men. So they go get the typical Somali girl, but when they bring her back to London they find out she’s not so typical as they thought!

If the Somali community doesn’t spend much time in the public eye, the Somali women’s community is even more invisible. How can this be true, when you’re
such a strong and supportive group?

People shouldn’t think strength is about appearance. You were asking about parties? Of course they’re fun, but this isn’t freedom. While you (Trespass) were taking photos of my cousins and my sister, you couldn’t understand but my aunt was telling them, ‘Now every-one in the country will see these beautiful pictures of my daughters! Soon you’ll all get husbands!’ But my cousins and my sister don’t care. They are British-Somali women. It’s a different world here. We’re independent women, whether people can see this or not. As our religious leaders might say—in Britain, Somali women can ‘go crazy’!--

THE ASPHALT JUNGLE - Published Trespass Magazine April/May 08

2008-10-06T11:11:00.000-07:00

The Asphalt Jungle - Published Trespass Magazine April/May 08

2008-10-06T10:54:00.000-07:00

Due to the politically sensitive nature of this article 'The Asphalt Jungle', rapper Reveal (real name Mehrak Golestan) has given Trespass Magazine the rights to publish the article in print, without permission to publish online, where lack of control over readership could place him in a compromising position.

NOT A PURSUIT FOR A LADY- illustration

2008-10-06T10:13:00.000-07:00

NOT A PURSUIT FOR A LADY - Published, Trespass Magazine Feb/March 08

2008-10-06T10:02:00.000-07:00

A Modern Day Lady of Shalott

For ere she reach'd upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died...

Tennyson has the Lady of Shalott pay the ultimate price for escaping her island existence of gazing in the looking glass in favour of the rush of the town. 'Revealing one-self' to the ‘city folk’, Tennyson implies, is not a pursuit for a lady. Rachel Weston would have something to say about that. Opera singer, cabaret performer, burlesque phenomenon and founder of Spoken Word night ‘Wordplay’, Rachel Weston is an addict to exposure. A fiery, curly-haired redhead, Rachel has taken her home town of Brighton by storm, throwing off barriers between artistic trends and genres to pay tribute to one diety, Performance.

Rachel doesn't see herself as a 'poet', 'singer' or 'burlesque performer'. Performance, for Rachel, should be fluid and improvisational - a two-way dialogue between audience and performer that is hampered by genre constraints. Rachel studied opera at Birkbeck College, 'I was drawn to the brazenness of opera and its total and unashamed ability to scream about emotion'. However, she soon moved away from the operatic institution, rejecting point blank the idea of her audience sitting in velvet seats at the ROH, ‘the opera house puts audiences on the passive end of the spectrum’. In Brighton, her current hometown, Rachel has plans to introduce opera singing into her burlesque shows, recreating the intimacy between audience and performer that she craves.

Rachel's belief in empowering the audience is key to the success of Wordplay, a Spoken Word night she founded in 2006. Brighton-based Wordplay creates and celebrates intimate performance, 'The venue is small and the night is different all the time, from chilled-out with ambient acoustic music and lyrical poetry to raucous slam rhymes and ska-funk.' Rachel created the night to bring musicians and writers together, allowing them to feel at ease and get lost in performance, of whatever kind and colour, 'Sometimes the whole room is silent, attentive and blissed out and sometimes everybody is stomping and sweating to a full-live band and the energy is palpable.' Crucial to Wordplay is its open invitation to new blood, staying true to Rachel’s idea of performance as free-spirited and exhilarating.

For the Lady of Shallot, performance comes with danger. Anyone who has stood with trembling hands in a spotlight knows the cold dread of exposing yourself to watchful, appraising eyes. Rachel Weston is an astounding performer because she strives to do away with this sense of danger. Whether giving voice to a liberetto in a shisha cafe or getting caught up in the moment at a burlesque evening there is a sense of unashamed passion to Rachel’s work, and this lack of reservation is infectious. It strikes me as fitting that the venue for Wordplay is named 'the sanctuary cafe'. Through her strongly personal vision of what performance can be, Rachel Weston is uniquely equipped to create the sort of safe-space in which daring artistic expression and interaction can thrive.