The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction Vol. II

Sometimes, when I am in a bookstore surrounded by shelves and pages filled solely with English words, I feel the tiniest prick of guilt that I have no connection to the rich literary heritage of my own mother tongue. The reason is obvious enough; I can just about communicate with the inebriated louts that pass for rickshaw drivers in Madras. I tried learning the script once but despite being intrinsically motivated, I just couldn’t manage it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t help that the instructional materials for learning Tamil are old fashioned and deadly dull boring and it certainly doesn’t help that my Anglicisation is so complete that I find learning Spanish easier than my own tongue!  

That oughtn’t to stop me from reading translated works. Regrettably, on my first sojourn into the Tamil literary world, instead of picking up something of worth like Tamil writer Salma’s The Hour Past Midnight which was published in English last year, I have plunged into the tasteless world of second rate Tamil popular fiction.  

I believe Volume I in the series is significantly better. Volume II, on the other hand, was akin to watching a series of poorly made Sun TV flicks dubbed in English. Interestingly, the six stories seem to be sequenced in a descending order both in quality and quantity. The first of these stories, The Palace of Kottaipuram by Indra Soundar Rajan is undoubtedly the best, gripping, mysterious and dark in the vein of a worthy cult film Visu is the heir to the throne of Kottaipuram, a small kingdom near Madurai. The palace’s estate seems frozen in a feudal time warp with a tribe of subservient and oft abused serfs, the Noorukudi. The traditions of Visu’s family run against his own education and liberal perspectives. But, after his brother dies of a snake bite in the sanctum of the temple of the family’s patron goddess, he begins to believe in the curse that’s believed to strike dead all male members of the family when they turn thirty. It’s left to Archana, Visu’s girlfriend, to bring him to his senses and solve the mystery of the curse.  

Highway 117 written by Pushpa Thangdorai and illustrated by Jeyaraj is a graphic adaptation of a short story on a dynamic woman named Karate Kavitha and how she and a recently met paramour solve the mystery of a string of temple robberies. It’s all very 1970s, curvy moustaches, scruffy ear covering hair, flares and bell bottoms and very Tamil filmish with its almost rape scene and almost boob slip. 

The Hidden Hoard in the Cryptic Chamber, is a somewhat tolerable tale of mad scientists and hidden treasure. It all goes downhill from there. Hold on a Minute, I’m in the Middle of a Murder is a bizarre and barely readable story of the occult inspired by The Omen and The Exorcist. The author, Indumathi, is apparently a writer of some literary repute which leads me to conclude she like the characters of her story must have been possessed by a malignant but slightly idiotic spirit. The Bungalow by the River, about a haunted bungalow in rural Malaya, is an offering from Singaporean writer M.K. Narayanan. Even a die-hard fan of this kind of fiction would be appalled by the utter ridiculousness of it all. The only saving grace is when Narayanan who is clearly a devotee of the Tamil deity Murugan, has one of his characters fling a copy of the Kandha Shashti Kavacham, a prayer book at the face of a ghost. The book spins in the air like a discus and rips out the ghost’s eyes. Amazing but true.  

Narayanan’s story however irritating doesn’t compare to the odiousness of Hello, Good Dead Morning by Rajesh Kumar. This tragic fable cautions angelic readers about what happens when virginal Tamil girls bunk college to watch naughty Swedish films in the afternoon. In case you don’t know, let me enlighten you about this invaluable counsel. Tamil girl watches porn; Tamil girl gets horny; Tamil girl tries to get fresh with well behaved AC repairman who also happens to be a Tamil boy. Tamil girl’s brother comes home. Tamil girl tells brother that Tamil boy is trying to rape her. Tamil brother kicks the shit out of Tamil boy (and kills him). Later, Tamil girl and brother are kidnapped by supplier of Swedish porn. After administering a sex inducing injection, Tamil girl is filmed being raped by North Indians (Goddamn roti eaters) whilst brother is forced to watch, “You rascals... you gutter dogs” he yells. Tamil girl goes mad and is sent to an asylum. Tamil brother commits suicide. The last story is similarly asinine.  

The word ‘avoidable’ needs to be inserted between the words Blaft and Anthology. If you find yourself inexplicably drawn towards this book (the skull sucking buxom babe on the cover is entrancing but I'm quite certain the white stuff in hair is jasmine) take my humble Tamilian advice and satisfy yourself by skimming the first two stories on an indolent weekend afternoon at Crossword.  

Indian & Media, Mediocrity & Mindlessness

Aakar Patel's article 'Why Our Media Can't Explain India' in last week's Mint Lounge struck a chord with me. I just can’t seem to read the paper these days. Its sheer idiocy, bad language, incompetent reporting and lack of objectivity are a poor way to start the day. The only mildly interesting articles are the ones I would have already on the New York Times’ site which appear in our own rags a couple of days later.  

Patel hits the nail on its head when he writes “Indian journalists look not for information, but for agreement with the convictions they hold. European journalists do not make pleas on behalf of the common man (who in India is represented by the Hindi journalist rather than the prime minister).” A little before this statement, he gives an example of the utter lack of professionalism from a press conference held last month with the prime minister. A journalist from a Hindi publication is the first to pose a question ““Sir, mera naam Umakant Lakhera hai. Main Hindustan, jo Hindi akhbar hai, uska Dilli mein chief of bureau hoon. Pradhan mantriji, mera aap se yah sawal hai ki aap se pehle Bharat mein jitne bhi pradhan mantri hue hain, economy ke baare mein vey log bahut zyada nahin jaante the. Yah desh ki khushkismati hai ki aap economist hain aur aap ne azadi ke...” and the polemic continues for another para or so. Where the fuck is the question mate? 

Patel points out that newspapers are supposed to tell their readers 5 things: who, when, where, what and why. Indian newspapers apparently achieve only the first three. They tend to skimp on the ‘what’ because “urban Indians are tired now of reading the horror stories that come out of our villages. Only a couple of newspapers, such as The Indian Express, persist in reporting news that isn’t pleasant, and they haven’t much circulation.” He goes on to say “No newspaper at all can tell you “why”, because they do not know themselves... Union Carbide’s plant in Bhopal was owned by Americans. But it was managed, staffed and run by Indians. Its foreman was Indian and its workers were Indian. Why were they so casual about their own safety? The media doesn’t know, but it is convinced the solution lies with getting Warren Anderson.” Thankfully, there seem to be at least a few journalists out there whose sole mission in life isn’t sporadically tomtoming the achievements of their publication and those of the country or rallying to the defence of self-propagated causes.  

You can read Aakar Patel’s article in the Mint Lounge here.

Sacrifire

Here's one of the pictures I blogged about from the student made posters in that horrid little SoBo school.  Although, I must admit that the kid who made this chart invented an apt new  portmanteau - 'Sacrifire person'.  

The Kalahari Typing School for Men by Alexander McCall Smith

For some strange reason, I got it in my head that The Kalahari Typing School for Men was the first in a series of detective stories set in Botswana. Well, it’s not; it’s the fourth. I don’t know what I expected out of it but perhaps something along the lines of a typical detective story. I was wrong again. Mma (a female honorific, the male equivalent is rra) Precious Ramotswe runs the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency in Gaborone, the capital of Botswana along with her assistant, Mma Grace Makutsi, a topper from the local Secretarial College. The plot is thin and perhaps intentionally so. Mma Ramotswe moves her detective agency into the back of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, her fiancé’s car repair shop. Her fiancé, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni (and he’s referred to by this long form throughout the book) is a somewhat boring but pleasant gentleman who’s fostering two orphans. A brash ex-CID officer sets up a rival detective agency called Satisfaction Guaranteed Agency and sets the two women aflutter. In the meanwhile, Mma Makutsi opens a typing school for men where one of her students becomes interested in her. A wealthy businessman approaches Mma Ramotswe about putting some childhood guilt to rest and an unsatisfied customer from the Satisfaction Guaranteed Agency presents Mma Ramotswe with a strange predicament.  

I’m not exaggerating but there’s truly nothing more to the story. Smith’s writing is patently not about mysteries, murder or muggings. It’s about the minutiae of life in a small town in Southern Africa in a different time. There’s something very refreshing in his observations of a culture, its people and their interactions with each other. The pace is really languid though and I think that was intended to set the mood of daily life in Gaborone. A charming book but I don’t know if I could read all 11 in the series and be as engaged. An interesting but useless piece of trivia I learnt as a by-product of reading The Kalahari Typing School for Men is that the people of Botswana call themselves Twsana where Bo refers to the country; Batswana refers to all the people whilst Motswana refers to a single person and Setswana is the language they speak.  

1599 – A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro

Shapiro, a Columbia University scholar in all things Shakespearean, has thoroughly researched a year which was critical to the development of Shakespeare’s craft and bore much significance in English history and has presented it in an engaging if somewhat academic work. The research he must have done to write this book must have been painstaking and time-consuming because his bibliography occupies no less than 50 pages in a chapter titled Bibliographical Essay! The wonderful thing about this book is that it doesn’t merely focus on Shakespeare. It draws you into the events and people that shaped and were shaping England in 1599 and how they intersected with and influenced Shakespeare’s work. An aged Queen Elizabeth is anxious both about her much prized looks and the prospect of an uneasy succession, a consequence of her childlessness. England simmers with plots of Catholic sedition and the spectre of a Spanish invasion looms large in the form of the ‘invisible armada’ whilst the state tries to desperately cling on to its only colony – Ireland. Ensconced within these events, Shapiro shows us how Shakespeare must have drawn inspiration for the plays he wrote in this year, Henry the Fifth, Julius Caesar, As You Like It and Hamlet.  

It’s amazing how much information remains of Shakespeare’s professional life. One also learns a lot of interesting titbits about the plays themselves. For instance, As You Like It is a send-up of one of Marlowe’s works and Hamlet’s plot was recycled from plays and stories that had been in existence for centuries. I also came across the term ‘hendiady’* for the first time and idiotically feel greatly enriched. However, you have to love the Bard’s work to truly appreciate this kind of a book. I haven’t really read any of Shakespeare’s plays beyond the ones I must have hyper analysed for English Literature in school. I saw an excellent contemporary version of Measure for Measure several years ago and a strange poly-lingual adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Beyond these and the odd movie, my Shakespearana is really rusty. This was a bit of a handicap to enjoying what Shapiro’s writing has to offer in all its comprehensiveness and complexity. And the fact that I was reading A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare concurrently with CELTA didn’t help.  

*One by means of two: the use of two conjoined nouns instead of a noun and a modifier such as “He came despite the rain and weather” instead of "He came despite the rainy weather.” Examples from Hamlet include “the book and volume of my brain”, “a fantasy and trick of fame” and “angels and ministers of grace defend us.” 

My Mood in Verse

The Windows

In these darkened rooms, where I spend
oppresive days, I pace to and fro
to find the windows. -- When a window
opens, it will be a consolation. --
But the windows cannot be found, or I cannot
find them. And maybe it is best that I do not find them.
Maybe the light will be a new tyranny.
Who knows what new things it will reveal.

Constantine P. Cavafy (1903)

Fait Accompli

I completed CELTA yesterday. It was a ‘P in the A’ but lots of fun as well. I met a number of interesting people and I am richer for the friends I have gained. They usually conduct it at the British Council in Nariman Point. But, the BC’s moved to Elphinstone and they don’t have enough room there. So they rented classes from this piddling excuse for a school on Warden Road. The school goes by the tagline ‘A Boutique School’ – the kind of a school your kid can attend and then work in a boutique. On the very first day, the principal, with her terrible English, was trying to dispense some propaganda to me about her ‘institution’, the number of times she used the words ‘boutique’, ‘international’ and ‘IB’ in the same sentence made me wonder if this wench was aware of the concept of irony. The school is cramped, claustrophobic and on the upper floors, your olfactory senses are assaulted by a delicious blend of rat faeces and stale air. The toilets were disgusting and most of the air conditioners didn’t work properly. There was double glazing on all the windows and you couldn’t open any of them. But, the most tragic bit pertains to the student made posters covering the walls of the classroom. The spelling and grammatical mistakes were pretty bad. But, they don’t even come close to the sick pictures in some of the posters. I have taken pictures of some of them and will post them if and when I locate my usb cord. But, what kind of a teacher would permit her 4th grade kids to put up a picture of a man eating from a toilet bowl! I pity the poor children who’ve to undergo the ordeal of attending this school. 

I have a huge backlog of books to clear.  I have been snail-trailing 'A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare' for the past month. I feel really bad about it because it's a brilliant book but made tedious and akin to a chore because of CELTA's workload.  I hope to finish it today.