Surprised by structures

Book title: How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position

Author: Tabish Khair

Publisher: Fourth Estate

Pages: 529

Price: Rs 450

Is it possible to like and not like a book at the same time? There is candour in the way Tabish Khair chooses to tell his story that is endearing. Here, it seems, is an author who does not take himself too seriously, and can treat grave matters of the self and others with levity. But this quality is about all that can instigate one to go on till the end of How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position without losing interest midway. Khair tries very hard to be funny, and while the humour works in some places, in most cases, it doesn’t.

Besides, the plot is too scattered for the novel to create a lasting impression. If the reader really loses the plot in the middle of the novel, it would be quite ironic, since Khair talks constantly of beginning in medias res (which he chooses to call “in media res”) as a narrative and survival strategy. He does try that tactic out in this novel, which begins in medias res alright, but also seems to end there.

It is difficult to say what Khair’s novel is all about. There is a lot about Islamist terror, real and imagined, faith, love, disillusionment, and Denmark, where, incidentally, Khair lives. While the comments on the first few topics fail to add up to anything substantial, those on Denmark have a surprising directness that makes one feel that the expatriate author is trying to explain the mores of his adoptive country to himself and to his readers.

The deadliness of Danish nicety is concretized in the perfect Lena, who is rejected by Ravi because she seems frozen in her unfailing courtesy. Ravi — the disgruntled son of an upper-class Hindu family from India who goes to live in Denmark with his Pakistani friend, the unnamed narrator — stands for the warmth of disorder that is the hallmark of both India and Pakistan. At the novel’s end, he returns to India to be greeted by “trishuls, spears, lathis, crescent-shaped swords” in the narrator’s dream. Perhaps chaos, and its extreme effect, rebellion, are sometimes healthy for life, as for love. They are certainly preferable to the tedium of structures.

The other point of the triad at the centre of the novel is Karim Bhai, a devout Indian Muslim who holds Quranic sessions every Friday in his flat, which he rents out to Ravi and the narrator. Ravi, the scourge of propriety, the drifting bohemian with a heart of gold, the rebel who is ever alone in his difference, attends the sessions diligently because, as he says, “They discuss matters of significance and do it honestly: how to make sense of the world, how to make it a better world. They still have a conscience, these young men and women, not just a bank account like the rest of these people.”

How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position would have stood better as a short story than as the novel that it is. It is a well-intentioned work, which is why one tends to like it. But one also wishes that Khair had been less anxious to bring home the reverence in his irreverence. An intelligent reader would have got Khair’s point even if he had not made a god, of the Dionysian kind, out of the cheeky Ravi.

By ANUSUA MUKHERJEE

Published on June 1, 2012  

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1120601/jsp/northeast/story_15541689.jsp#.T9qmK5gjGmM

Cross country ride

Book title: Crafts Atlas of India

Author: Jaya Jaitly

Publisher: Niyogi Books

Pages: 464

Price: Rs 4,500

That there can be no single defining form of “Indian art” to encompass the country’s myriad art forms is what the former Samata Party chief, Jaya Jaitly, found after 11 years of painstakingly mapping India’s handicrafts — a period during which three new states were born. What started out as a series of maps for travellers and students eventually turned into the Crafts Atlas of India. The labour in this labour of love is as obvious as its considerable size — Jaitly, along with her organization, the Dastkari Haat Samiti — an association of craftspeople from all over India — minutely documented the skills and handicrafts they could find. The woman behind the hugely popular Dilli Haat in the nation’s capital traversed the length and breadth of the country, observing and working with craftspeople; in the early 1990s, she undertook the near impossible task of documenting India’s arts and crafts. This brightly-illustrated tome is divided into sections that represent the crafts found in each state. But what characterizes it is a series of crafts maps — one or two for each state, depicting the state’s major art and textile forms with the help of motifs and embroidery — that were created by Jaitly and the craftspeople and researchers who helped her. Each map is an intricate tapestry of the heritage and handicrafts found in the state it embodies.

As the author says in the introduction, “the creative soul and energies” of the people have manifested themselves in the nation’s “many-layered, culturally diverse, rich heritage of craft skills”. While trade movements such as those on the Old Silk Route brought in demands and resources from West and Central Asia, the static nature of the Hindu caste system ensured that many craft forms survived, since social boundaries and rigid hierarchies prevented the artisan from changing professions.

From ephemeral Indian crafts such as paper toys and firkis to basketry, metalwork and woodwork; from the myriad forms of embroidery and pottery found in the nation’s nooks and corners to the weaving, sculpting and painting traditions all over India — in this atlas of Indian handicrafts, Jaitly leaves out nothing. It is evident that Jaitly wanted to create a veritable directory of Indian handicrafts; with beautiful photography and exhaustive chapters, she created more than that. Imbalances are apparent, though; states such as Uttar Pradesh, with its many, very visible, handicrafts, have long chapters dedicated to them.

The northeastern states, however, are contained in one chapter, with a few pages dedicated to each.

According to Jaitly, traditional art representing these states could not be found very easily: she documented their rich textile traditions, jewellery and cane and bamboo furniture. Her claim notwithstanding, the disparity in the volumes of text devoted to different states is bound to make one wonder: if the Northeast has become fiercely protective and insular about its artistic legacies, is it not with good reason?

BY NAYANTARA MAZUMDER

Published on April 20, 2012  

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1120420/jsp/northeast/story_15389336.jsp#.T9qk8JgjGmM

Shooting Report

 

Writer: Arun Lochan Das

 

Publisher: Sishu Sashi Prakashan

 

Pages: 159

 

Price: Rs 130

 

 

The book is a record of some moments from Assamese film industry which the writer has seen while reporting on the shootings of different movies for newspapers and magazines across the state.

Being a journalist writer Arun Lochan Das has seen the Assamese film industry closely for more than three decades. He has seen the development and critical phases of the industry and knows the people associated with it.

There are 32 such shooting reports in the book which were published in different newspapers and magazines in his three-decade-long journalist career. He visited one location to the other, passed days with the shooting crews and made his reports.

Anyone who is interested to know about Assamese film industry, shooting of a film, the adversities associated with it and the history of Assamese film industry the book is a mine of information. While narrating his experiences and observations about shootings of films the writer draws references from the past giving a perspective to his writing and making them interesting to readers.  

When writes about the shooting of Manju Bora’s film Joymoti in 2005, Das tells the readers briefly how the first Assamese film Joymoti was made by Jyoti Prasad Agarwala way back in 1935. He gives readers an overview about the migration of the Ahom people, the backdrop that led to killing of Joymoti and stories on historical figures providing readers enough information about Joymoti and the film on her. He writes that till then no Assamese film had been shot in such a big set as used in Joymoti (covering 7000 square feet area) by Manju Bora.

On the chapter Shillongore Godhuli the writer writes about the shooting of Assamese film Jibon Xurobhi which was directed by Naresh Kumar, brother of Hindi film actor Rajendra Kumar. Readers come to know that Naresh Kumar became interested to do an Assamese film by being attracted to the natural beauty of Assam and encouraged by Assam government’s system of returning the entertainment tax for one year.

Sometimes the writer observes the changes come to an actor along with experience. In one of his write up he observes how young actor Barasha Rani Bishaya had changed. “I asked Barasha what she thought about the role she was going to play (in the film Tomar Khobor). She replied that it was a complex one. She never thought about her roles so much in her earlier movies. Now she thinks a lot,” he writes. Again, he writes about Jahnu Barua, “Only he can understand the pleasure of enjoying shootings of Jahnu Barua who has the experience of enjoying it...I learnt many things while enjoying shooting of his Papori and Halodhiya Soraye Baudhan Khai .”    

The eight pages of black and white photographs make the contents more interesting to the readers.

(EOM)

By RAJIV KONWAR 

Published on April 20, 2012 

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