Two truths and a lie

Novelist Lily King, says that one of her favorite exercises in the creative writing class she teaches, is to ask students to write the first paragraph of a short story. The first two sentences of the paragraph have to be two truths like "my sister has brown hair" and "her name is Lisa"; followed by a third sentence which is a lie, like, "Yesterday she went to prison." Why the "lie"? Because,

It's the lie that brings the story to life, makes it hum. The lie is the steering wheel, the gearshift and the engine. The lie takes your two true sentences and makes a left turn off road and straight into the woods. It slams the story into fifth gear and guns it.

By "lie" King means imagination which allows a novelist to "slip out of the shackles of history." In an interesting piece on the inception of her new, highly regarded novel, Euphoria, based on the life of the legendary American anthropologist, Margaret Mead, King shares the story of her "lies" as she plots the lives of Mead and her two fellow anthropologists, husband Reo Fortune and lover, Gregory Bateson, and runs free into the "jungle" of her imagination.

The way we live now, tagged and displayed

The above are contemporary objects, that are part of London's Victoria and Albert Museum's Rapid Response Collection.

The objects are historical in the sense that they carry with them a rich social and economic context. A set of Katy Perry "Cool Kitty" eyelashes links, says Corinna Gardner, the curator of the Collection, links one of the world's most famous women with a factory working woman in Indonesia. There is an e-cigarette, and a pair of Primark cargo trousers that were made at the Rana Plaza factory, in Bangladesh, which collapsed in 2013, killing a majority of the garment workers. 

I just loved the story of LUFSIG. LUFSIG is a plush toy made by IKEA and sold in China where the name translated to the Cantonese word meaning "your mother's vagina" and led to large-scale protests.  

Among the vast range of objects are a smart thermostat, a virtual-reality headset, a 3-D printed gun, a carbon-fibre cable that will allow elevators to rise twice as high as they can now, a wearable computer terminal (Motorola, 2013), and Flappy Bird, the mobile game designed by a Vietnamese game developer.

The one heart-breaking item on the list is the anti-homeless spikes labelled the "Spike Stud, 2014, stainless steel." The studs are used to deter loiterers and the homeless from usurping public place to make a temporary home. 

The goal of the Rapid Response Collecting is to demonstrate "how design reflects and defines how we live together today." Says the curator further, "It's about looking into the world to see what's going on." The exhibition will be continually updated and is interested in provoking conversation on timely issues. In other words, the museum is a blog embodied.

The question the Collection provokes is should objects representing the way we live now be curated and stored in Museums for posterity to behold how we lived and why? Perhaps by the time we enter a social phase where the poor and the homeless are shot out of the planet with high tech canon balls, the mere presence of spikes on surfaces will evoke jeers?

How the world got poorer

History is usually (and cynically) seen to be the story of the winners.

The Documentary, Poor Us, tells the history of the so-called "losers."

The poor in our modern era, are unfairly, and contra-historically, considered to be the "losers". But as this film shows, the "poor" aren't losers but a by product of historical processes. 

The world, as we learn has got poorer, beginning with the proto-industrial and the industrial eras. The wise voice of Karl Marx says that the poverty we witness in the world wouldn't have happened without capitalist system of production.

Gibbons tied up in the ribbons of my memory

This is a book that adorned the bookshelves of a majority of book-loving, a bit of Anglicized, Indians, especially Bengalis.

It probably lay in my father's bookcase as well, but I never got a chance to read Edward Gibbon's famous seven volumes on the decline and fall of the Roman Empire (I just checked, it's now available in WalMart, indicating not only a decline and fall in the value of such books in contemporary America, but a total eclipse of it as well).

I carry with me an impression of the book as a "male" book, the product of male cogitation, i.e. greatly worried about things tangential to the minutiae of daily living in Victorian England.

Nonetheless, I am moved by what Gibbons said after he finished writing the book:

I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and perhaps the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober, melancholy was spread over my mind by the idea that I had taken away everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatsoever might be the future date of my history, the life of the historian must be short and precarious.

The da Vinci codes

I am intrigued by what the makers of "Da Vinci's Demons," say the movie is about on their official website. 

The mini-narrative about Leonardo da Vinci makes him look like a Medieval Prometheus, the Titan who by stealing fire for men from the Gods was said to have enabled progress and civilization of humanity.

Prometheus had fallen in love with humanity. So he risked his life to defy the gods. One could say that Prometheus fought for something larger than himself.

But did da Vinci represent anything more than his own interests, to secure for himself permanent patronage for his art? To imply that the genius of his age was representing an ideology that transcended his needs, is to see the past through the lens of modernity.

Leonardo was indeed a man of the Enlightenment, in the sense that he was in a transitional era, when Europe was moving from "dark" to "light." But did he fight to "set knowledge free" from the darkness of the dominant paradigms of  the Dark ages--those of religion and faith? 

I am certain that da Vinci was a far more ambiguous figure than that of a one-sided man of reason, worshipping single-mindedly at the altar of secular knowledge. Neither do I believe that the "Dark ages" were dominated by religious fundamentalists similar to the Taliban, or were totalitarians. 

Something tells me that da Vinci has been co opted by Hollywood for waging by proxy an ideological battle that is entirely contemporary. 

Gypsies no more

A Roma Woman in Buzescu

Much of contemporary history is the history of mobility and rise, of peoples (and nations) who have been traditionally marginalized and/or persecuted in myriad ways.

The gypsies, or the Roma of Europe, are one such group whose fortunes have risen, at least in the small town of Buzescu in the Romanian capital of Bucharest.

Photographers Karla Gachet and Ivan Kashinsky spent some time in this town photographing the daily lives of those who were once upon a time looked down upon as the lowest class of humans in Europe.

We all know a bit about the history of the European gypsies: Descended from displaced nomads of the ancient landmass of undivided "Hindustan," the Roma have been persecuted by one and all ranging from the beasts--the Nazis--to the putative beauties--the French, who continue to deport the Roma from France, primarily because the stereotype of the Roma is the thief, the foot people who can't be trusted.

Yet after the dismantling of Communism, the Roma of Romania have become multi-millionaires by dealing in the buying and selling of copper.

As the photographic duo show us, The Roma have built magnificent mansions with BMW's parked in the genteel driveways.

However, there is a strange paradox in their lifestyles: Many of the gorgeous rooms in the Roma mansions remain unfurnished and empty and unoccupied because the Roma don't live in them. Like their predecessors, they travel all year round hunting for copper. Even when family members gather together, mostly during events like marriage, death or religious rituals, they do so in the smaller, less opulent rooms. 

Some say that the Roma are nomadic innately and the opulent mansions are mere symbols of their rising economic power. They are trying to change the world's perception of them as poor, raggedy and footloose.

The Roma are essentially deeply traditional people and "modernity" is something they partake in to be conformists, so they don't stand out.

Unmarxing Marx

A new book on Karl Marx, Marx, A Nineteenth Century Life, is out and it does well to present Marx as a "figure of the past," a real person, with real human instincts, rather than as Marx the eternal "prophet of the future."

Jonathan Sperber, an University of Missouri scholar, has done well to rescue Marx from the cobweb of iconism. 

An excerpt from a review of the book:

[...] It comes as a shock to realize that the ultimate leftist, the father of Communism itself, fits a recognizable pattern. It’s like discovering that Jesus Christ regularly organized bake sales at his local church. So inflated and elevated is the global image of Marx, whether revered as a revolutionary icon or reviled as the wellspring of Soviet totalitarianism, that it’s unsettling to encounter a genuine human being, a character one might come across today. If the Marx described by Sperber, a professor at the University of Missouri specializing in European history, were around in 2013, he would be a compulsive blogger, and picking Twitter fights with Andrew Sullivan and Naomi Klein.

Jewishness in India

I remember "Nahoum," a hoary pastry shop tucked away in the din and bustle of Kolkata's "New Market." Later, much later, I learnt that the proprietor of "Nahoum" (a Professor of mine at the University told me the name is a derivative of "Noam") was Jewish. 

I learnt a bit more about the Jewish thread, its inception and its continuity, albeit in a state of great attenuation in both Kolkata and in India at large, from an English tutor in Kolkata. 

The tutor was a Vishwa Hindu Parishad (the "World Wide Hindu Organization") official and secretly confided in his students the Hindu fondness for the Jewish population of India--the latter helped them in firming their position against the Muslims, thereby affirming my belief in the proverb that "an enemy's enemy is a friend."

I was delighted to see the video that documents a discovery of Jewish food in India. The fact of a strong tradition of Jewish cuisine, hybridized into something else as evidenced by the video, and the presence of the remains of a synagogue, both in the beautiful city of Cochin, doesn't surprise me.

If you want to get a deeper idea of the Jewish strain in the coastal city of Cochin, go straight to Amitav Ghosh's In an Antique Land.

The king in bare bones

Regal Bones

I got introduced to Richard III (till date that remains my sole interface with the medieval English king, descending from the house of the Plantaganets), through Shakespeare's Richard III.

I loved the play, though, the king himself was portrayed as evil incarnate. I had the rare experience of reading a Shakespearian play where the protagonist is also the antagonist.

But, in a way, I kind of liked Richard III as well as prayed for his demise. He sounded heroically humble when in that fatal battle of Bosworth, having tumbled off his horse, he had shrieked out the famous lines: "A horse, a horse, a kingdom for a horse." This willingness to barter on such humble terms, indicated a flexibility of spirit that the king, when he was alive and ruling, never showed. 

Throughout the play, Richard was inveterate in his evilness where getting and keeping the "kingdom" was concerned.

So, I liked Richard at the moment of his death, is what I mean to say. I'm thus delighted to know that his skeleton (the skeleton of the real king, that is) has been found under a parking lot in Leicestershire. The ignominy of a legendary king's remains being found under a 21st century parking lot is great, but the discovery of the remains, in and of itself, is testament to the fact that these figures had once lived.

Personally, for me, the bones humanize a fictional hunchbacked king who menaced subjects, enemies and women in Shakespeare's play.

A bit of a biographical detail is in order: Richard wasn't all that evil at all. In fact, the historical Richard was the victim of decades of systematic denigration by his Tudor successors on the throne. He was a reformist king, who introduced kinder laws for the poor and the incarcerated, and most importantly, he eased bans on printing and selling of books. In short, he was a progressive king of his time. My guess is that Shakespeare couldn't have shown the real Richard the way he was because his play was produced during the time of the Tudors.

A museum of the present

MoRUS, or the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space opened yesterday.

MoRUS, as its website says "preserves the rich history of grassroots movements in New York City’s East Village and showcases the unique public spaces for which the neighborhood is renowned."

According to a review, the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space re-conceives the traditional role of the museum by becoming a "shrine" to the "recent radical history" of New York City's East Village:

The radical history ranges from the "1988 riots in Tompkins Square Park, the standoffs with the police and developers over community gardens, the formation of squats, the civil disobedience actions waged by bicyclists for more bike-friendly streets." 

One of the highlights of the Museum exhibits is the famous bicycle-powered generator, which was used to generate electricity during Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in Zuccotti Park.

Imagine this: Most museums are visited by folks who wish to have a glimpse of the past. MoRUS's visitors include people who have been part of the events that are enshrined by the Museum as "history." 

According to Bill Dipaola, a founder of the Museum, visitors include "people who got beat up by police in the park who are going to walk in here. They lost their gardens. They lost their homes. A lot of people didn’t do too well during gentrification.”

Spielberg's Poetics?

Steven Spielberg's Lincoln

Once upon a time, literature students used to grapple with the question of art and the the accuracy of history. 

In my case, the grappling was grounded in a seminal text on this topic: The Poetics by ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle.

In essence, Aristotle, sharing the concern of other Greek thinkers that art, or a dramatic representation of reality, could beguile people into confusing representation with the real, made one thing volubly clear: art is a second order dramatization of the reality of history. One cannot and should not go to art for accurate information about the past. 

In light of the debate swirling around Steven Spielberg's film Lincoln, the Aristotelian dictum comes to mind.

Critics have been worrying about the film's "historical accuracy," forgetting what historian Philip Zelikow has thoughtfully pointed out: Spielberg and other artists are not to be burdened with the mantle of a "historian", but accepted as folks who are free to interpret a moment in history according to their particular artistic needs. 

Challenging as it is, Zelikow says, to translate the "tangle of history" into good "streamlined art," Spielberg's (and screenwriter Tony Kushner's) Lincoln has accomplished just what it is expected to--a specific view of that moment in history (the passing of the 13th Amendment through the U.S. Congress).

Re-interpreters

The screenplays of two recent films, Stephen Spielberg's Lincoln and Joe Wright's Anna Karenina, have been written by Tony Kushner and Tom Stoppard respectively.

Good sign--a reinterpretation of timeless classics by writers known for being irreverent (as well as gifted) toward tradition.

A.O. Scott rightly says in his review of Anna Karenina, famous works of literature--and to this might I add famous figures of history like Lincoln and Gandhi--need to be treated not as "sacred artifacts" and paid "anxious obeisance" and pointless "humility," but as "lumps of interesting materials" to be shaped by re-interpreters willing to be "strong" and "striking" in their rendition.

History Lessons

Novelist Dennis Lehane picks Hampton Sides' HellHound on Trial, as one of the great books he has recently read.

Says Lehane about his choice:

It’s a gripping evocation of a seismic American tragedy — the assassination of Martin Luther King. It speaks volumes about the evil of those who stoke and pervert populist rage for their own ends. Like any great book about the past, it illuminates the present with uncommon clarity.

 The "present" in this case happens to be the perils of history repeating itself, not anymore as a farce (as Marx had said about historical events of the 19th century), but as a beyond-tragedy.

Forms of Indian Neo-Nazism

How do you react to a store called "Hitler" located in Ahmadabad, the capital city of the state of Gujarat in India?  ? That the store owners are atavistic, insensitive or antisemitic? Or, plain ignorant?

I would say that it's a sign of rising neo-Nazism in certain parts of India.

Gujarat is notorious for its communal riots and for its exploitative politics that seeks to divide residents on the basis of religion and caste.

In other words, the state isn't a stranger to genocide, and the name "Hitler" is singularly emblematic of history's worst genocide.

Hindu chauvinists--the kind that propagandize against Muslims, Christians, and homosexuals--have traditionally sought kinship with Nazism laboring under the false assumption that Hitler's brigade appropriated the swastika out of reverence for the Hindu sacred symbol and that the Nazi elevation of the Aryans as the best tribe in the history of humanity brings the Hindu "Arya Putras" into the pantheon of Hitler's Aryans by default.

Thus while they are not consciously antisemitic, Hindu Chauvinists could be considered to be pro-Nazi.

Yet, were Hitler still alive and brandishing his nefarious dreams of global imperialism based on the extermination of the impure races, the Ahmadabaddies would be deemed lower than the Jews, gypsies and homosexuals that Hitler sought to either enslave or destroy.

Not too long ago, The Mein Kampf was on India's best sellers list. I wonder what the status of the book is as we speak.

Regal Diaries

The diaries of Queen Victoria can now be read online. The project is a collaboration of Oxford University, ProQuest and the Bodeleian Libraries.

According to The NYTimes:

The diaries, which run to 141 volumes and more than 43,000pages, begin when Victoria was 13 and end 10 days before her death in 1901, at age 81. They cover subjects ranging from the early days of her romance with Prince Albert to her own Diamond Jubilee in 1897, which she recorded as turning the streets of London into "one mass of beaming faces." 

Moments like births of her nine children are also glimpsed at in observations like "Dr. Snow administered "that blessed Chloroform'." Victoria's chief chef was a native from India and her household servants were of the same ethnic ilk, and she has noted "I am learning a few words of Hindustani to speak to my servants [...] It is of great interest to me."

An afterthought: the painting of the young Queen--she does eerily resemble Emily Blunt, the British actress who played the role of the young queen (The Young Victoria)