Author: Swati Sani

Indian Intellectual Snobbery

Over the last month, I have had the good fortune to read 4 books with Indian themes/authors namely Sea of Poppies by Amitava Ghosh, White Tiger by Adiga, Zoya Factor by Anuja Chauhan and Q & A by Vikas Swarup. The first two books are as distinct and different from the later two as cheese from chalk. The Sea of Poppies and White Tiger talk about the Dark  Age India with its burden of caste, creed and economic woes in all the glorified trappings of macabre morbidity  –  considered almost mandatory by the literati to garner Booker and other awards. The later two novels are about a resurgent, modern, positive and confident India – and perhaps more fun to read. A tad shallow compared to Amitava Ghosh but fun all the same.

Adiga and Ghosh would require a separate blog entry for comparison since both the books deserve a detailed dissection. At this point I would like to record my opinion by saying that I was amazed at the fact that the 2008 Booker went to Adiga.

Coming back to the central issue of this particular blog, there exists a certain degree of supercilious intellectual snobbery when it comes to Indian authors and theme – maybe a hangover from our colonial past. Why is it that a book which depicts Indian doom and gloom scores higher on the literary scale than one which depicts Indian boom and bloom? As a case in point, I am taking the liberty of comparing The White Tiger with Zoya Factor. I can already hear the cries of ‘Sacrilege’, ‘Ignoramus’ and whatever else that the intellectuals name lesser mortals.  I plead guilty to being an average reader and take special pleasure at being a non intellectual. I enjoy what I enjoy without heeding to the qualifications and labels. My moods decide what I read and like – my reading habits are not bound within the narrow confines of what the critics deem good.

But seriously – read the two books. Except for the rather brilliant stroke of using the Chinese premier as an anchor, I found the White Tiger absolutely ordinary. A typical run of the mill storyline, no creativity, the story telling is ordinary and the research definitely poor. The last factor can be vouched for by any ordinary Indian living in this country – there are enough fallacies especially about rural life in UP and Bihar. Perhaps the book appears charming and creative if you are wearing the blinkers of intellectualism with pretensions of being an Indian whilst staying abroad as a NRI.  Or it may appeal to the Gora Sahib who can smile indulgently at his brown protégé for having learnt the language, ways and views of the Sahibs!   My whole being cried out aloud that this depiction is not of the 21st century India – my India is alive and finally awakening to its tryst with destiny. I don’t need to parade the last vestiges of gloom in front of my ex foreign masters or others for critical fame. I must admit to the cowardice of pushing myself to finish reading the White Tiger since it was a Booker award winner. I did not want to squirm and appear illiterate in the company of my more intellectual friends who look down with disdain upon lesser mortals who can’t finish  repugnant Booker winners.

But I definitely enjoyed reading the Zoya Factor. The author, Anuja Chauhan, is from the ad world and as the write up professes, this is her first foray into writing anything longer than a 60 second commercial. She writes about a resurgent and contemporary India, about India winning the World Cup in cricket and not about India of the Dark Ages!  Admittedly the storyline is weak, perhaps bordering on comical, but there is zest, energy and contemporariness to the whole book. Reading it is like stepping out in the fresh air and light after the claustrophobic confines of Adiga’s India.  The language – especially in the first half – is amazingly humorous. Anuja probably has chosen her immediate environment and associates as the background for the novel and she has sketched the background and its characters beautifully. There is creativity, there is comedy, there is a certain contemporary Indianess to the writing and there are no pretensions at taking a shot at Booker. In fact given a good scriptwriter who can translate Anuja’s hilarious Hinglish into Hindi, we have a sure shot Bollywood winner here. Do I see noses wrinkling in distaste over the inane plot and comic Hinglish one liners amongst those who have read this book?  

This is the intellectual snobbery I am talking about. Describing the roadside open sewage in graphic details spread over three pages of text is intellectual but making the reader laugh and enjoy contemporary creativity is trivial. And that is precisely why I am writing about two books which are at the opposite end of the spectrum – The Booker award winning White Tiger and Anuja Chauhan’s first foray in writing – Zoya Factor. I admit that the comparison itself is unfair but the moot point is – I enjoyed reading about Zoya !!

Of soul mates – From Bridge Across Forever to Brida

I was introduced to Richard Bach through Jonathan Livingstone Seagull gifted by my father on the day I graduated from the National Defence Academy. The book helped ease my guilt on my non-conformal, iconoclastic and at times rebellious behaviour in the hallowed precincts of the premium defence establishment and probably set the tenor for the rest of my life.

I stayed with Richard Bach as I grew up – paid heed to the Messiah, was introduced to Leslie Parish and even wrote letters for the child-me like Richard in Running from Safety. However, the most important fallout of Richard’s dialectics was my quest for a soul mate – the single, all embracing, all compatible woman on earth with whom I would be sharing the rest of my life. And I was lucky – our love blossomed in letters espousing and exploring the postulations of Bach. Oh it was romantic! We agreed to marriage based on those letters before we actually met each other. It was – we believed – the conjugation of mind and soul with the benign figure of a smiling Richard Bach in the background.

We settled to a beautiful married life – shared our work, thoughts and philosophy; kind of grew up together. But as we grew, I started getting these wee little doubts – is this all? I mean, mankind has survived and evolved by its inbuilt desire to push the envelope, resist the status quo and desire more.  Is there only one soul mate? How are soul mates decided? Who decides? How come soul mates are from opposite gender only? At this phase of my life, the real-life Richard separated from Leslie Parish and kind of destroyed the Illusion ………

Our growth –  my soul mate’s and mine –  was not limited to starry eyed romance. We postulated theories on almost everything – and wondered at the obvious inequality and unfairness of the world. Our  earlier attempts at answering the questions of inequality was rooted in a rational world – people are privileged because they have worked harder and are more gifted. Any sane person can tell that this was absolutely humbug – how could two equally gifted and equally hardworking people get the same breaks in life if one was born a poor villager and the other the son of a rich industrialist?

Born and bred in the Orient, the belief in reincarnation and indestructibility of the soul has always been a half serious part of life.  The more we thought, the more this rather irrational philosophy appealed to our intellect. If one were to accept the irrational belief that the soul is indestructible, that it chooses to be reincarnated for a specific purpose – the whole world starts to appear rational and everything can be explained.

Brian Weiss came into my life during a long sailing to Korea. I remember getting goose pimples reading him. It was almost eerie that someone across the globe was experimenting and collecting rational proof on the hypothesis of indestructibility of souls and reincarnation. Weiss reinforced our beliefs but threw up a host of questions on the earlier premise of a single, compatible, opposite gender soul mate! Not that I had come to love my wife any less but there had been a series of friendships post marriage  with various people wherein I felt that special bond which defied logic. With this newfound reinforcement to my philosophy, I could surmise that these people were probably traveling with me through the eons in different forms, different relationship.

And then I went for a short training course where I met her. The bonding, the chemistry, the friendship was so strong that I was forced to admit that she was also a soul mate. Two soul mates ? Hello – isn’t that concept flawed? But my feelings defied conventional wisdom – she was definitely a soul mate.

I had been a fan of Paulo Coelho for a long long time. And Brida came along just at the time when I was grappling with this inner turmoil.  The question which lingers in my mind is – am I using these authors and their works to justify my deeds and feelings or to understand my deeds and feelings?

Cut and Paste

I think there should be a serious research done on the influence of ‘cut and paste’ command in the realms of academics in particular and the society in general. This ubiquitous command has given every individual the ability to plagiarise at the click of a mouse. The morality of this issue would depend upon which side of the fence one belongs to – taken from a different and rather liberal perspective, plagiarism makes for a  very effective system for dissemination of information! On a more serious note, let’s consider this – without the facility of ‘cut and paste’, an individual would mandatorily need to read through and copy the text/synopsis/what-have-you. This would atleast ensure that he ( or she) reads what is being plagiarised and perhaps even understand some part of it. As a freelance editor, I frequently get manuscripts which are so blatantly borrowed from the net that the new owner does not even bother to get the numbers/genders/timelines in consonance with the rest of his text. In a similar vein, my children ‘research’ their projects on the net – and produce fabulous looking reports that does their father proud. Atleast they don’t have the pretensions or snobbery of claiming to have submitted an original document ! So, is this ‘cut and paste’ making us more knowledgeable by more effective dissemination of knowledge or is it ‘dumbing down’ our intellect by reducing our ability of original thinking ? Maybe I can prevail upon my daughter’s class teacher to hold a debate on the topic.

नव वर्ष मंगलकामना

वर्ष नव,
हर्ष नव,
जीवन का उत्कर्ष नव।
नव उमंग,
नव तरंग,
जीवन का नव प्रसंग।
नवल चाह,
नवल राह,
जीवन का नव प्रवाह।
गीत नवल,
प्रीत नवल,
जीवन की रीति नवल,
जीवन की नीति नवल,
जीवन की जीत नवल।

— हरिवंश राय बच्चन

First Post

   I have finally succumbed to peer pressure and am commencing to blog. Why did I resist so long? In this age of electronic communications and instant messaging, I still cherish the good old fashioned handwritten letters, meetings and heated arguments, backslapping and (even) backstabbing, the general bonhomie of meeting  like minded people over a beer and the imperfect but interesting world of smoke and sweat.

          The thought of writing stuff on the screen for everyone to read is a wee bit scary. A hundred ‘what if’ scenarios run through your mind.One of my friend  quoted an ancient chinese(?) proverb which says something like ‘A journey of a thousand miles is begun with a small step’. Wise people those ancient Chinese be! They have managed to give a cloak of respectability to my efforts.

CakeFest, A CakePHP programming conference.

SANIsoft is proud to be a sponsor for CakeFest . A CakePHP programming conference, to be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina from December 2 -5, 2008.

Conferences are the forefronts of modern communications, more so when they are related to the FOSS world. Conferences and Open Source Fests are platforms where the developers meet, discuss, share and carry their work forward. However, organizing conferences and fests do not come easy. They require a lot of planning and grunt work.

So when an opportunity comes by wherein we can give back, we are always happy to do it. After all, SANIsoft runs its business on open source products and believes in giving back to the open source communities – and – not just in the form of code. We strive to help such events by sponsoring them in whatever small way we can. We believe in putting our money where our mouth is :)

We have heard developers of Open Source Projects lament that SME´s shy away from supporting project needs by sponsoring. We feel by lending a hand in the form of sponsorship and even micro-sponsorships the small and medium sized companies can strengthen their own base and in turn the FOSS community. The inescapable reality is that the world is powered by money, not code.

When we decided to be a sponsor for CakeFest, a common refrain heard was ¨Argentina is half a world away and as a business what is the point of having your banner / logo there¨. Wait a min! people actually said that? Doesn’t really matter to us. The CakePHP framework has been a major player in many of the recent projects that SANIsoft has done – so – there it is QED

We wish the event and the organizers huge success

दीवा जलाना कब मना है?

है अँधेरी रात पर दीवा जलाना कब मना है?

कल्पना के हाथ से कमनीय जो मंदिर बना था,
भावना के हाथ ने जिसमें वितानो को तना था,
स्वप्न ने अपने करों से था रुचि से संवारा,
स्वर्ग के दुष्प्राप्य रंगो से, रसों से जो सना था,
ढह गया वह तो जुटा कर ईंट, पत्थर, कंकडों को,
एक अपनी शांति की कुटिया बनाना कब मना है?
है अँधेरी रात पर दीवा जलाना कब मना है?

बादलों के अश्रु से धोया गया नभनील नीलम,
का बनाया था गया मधुपात्र मनमोहक, मनोरम,
प्रथम ऊषा की लालिमा सी लाल मदिरा,
थी उसी में चमचमाती नव घनों में चंचला सम,
वह अगर टूटा हाथ की मिला कर दोनो हथेली,
एक निर्मल स्रोत से तृष्णा बुझाना कब मना है?
है अँधेरी रात पर दीवा जलाना कब मना है?

क्या घडी थी एक भी चिंता नहीं थी पास आई,
कालिमा तो दूर, छाया भी पलक पर थी न छायी,
आंख से मस्ती झपकती, बात से मस्ती टपकती,
थी हंसी ऐसी जिसे सुन बादलों ने शर्म खायी,
वह गई तो ले गई उल्लास के आधार माना,
पर अथिरता की समय पर मुस्कुराना कब मना है?
है अँधेरी रात पर दीवा जलाना कब मना है?

हाय, वे उन्माद के झोंके कि जिनमें राग जागा,
वैभवों से फेर आंखें गान का वरदान मांगा
एक अंतर से ध्वनित हो दूसरे में जो निरन्तर,
भर दिया अंबर अवनि को मत्तता के गीत गा गा,
अंत उनका हो गया तो मन बहलाने के लिये ही,
ले अधूरी पंक्ति कोई गुनगुनाना कब मना है?

है अँधेरी रात पर दीवा जलाना कब मना है?

हाय, वे साथी की चुम्बक लौह से जो पास आये,
पास क्या आए, कि ह्र्दय के बीच ही गोया समाये,
दिन कटे ऐसे कि कोई तार वीणा के मिलाकर,
एक मीठा और प्यारा ज़िन्दगी का गीत गाए,
वे गए तो सोच कर ये लौटने वाले नहीं वे,
खोज मन का मीत कोई लौ लगाना कब मना है?
है अँधेरी रात पर दीवा जलाना कब मना है?

क्या हवांए थी कि उजडा प्यार का वह आशियाना
कुछ न आया काम तेरा शोर करना, गुल मचाना,
नाश की उन शक्तियों के साथ चलता ज़ोर किसका?
किंतु ऎ निर्माण के प्रतिनिधि, तुझे होगा बताना,
जो बसे हैं वे उजडते हैं प्रकृति के जड नियम से
पर किसी उजडे हुए को फिर बसाना कब मना है?
है अँधेरी रात पर दीवा जलाना कब मना है?

 — हरिवंशराय बच्चन

खुश-किस्मत लोग

वो लोग बहुत खुश–किस्मत थे
जो इश्क़ को काम समझते थे
या काम से आशिकी करते थे

हम जीते जी मसरूफ रहे
कुछ इश्क़ किया, कुछ काम किया
काम इश्क के आड़े आता रहा
और इश्क से काम उलझता रहा
फिर आखिर तंग आ कर हमने
दोनों को अधूरा छोड दिया

                     — फैज़ अहमद फैज़

अब मत मेरा निर्माण करो

करीब 25 वर्षों के बाद मैंने “नीड़ का निर्माण फिर” का पुन:पठन प्रारंभ किया और पुस्तक में वर्णित यह पंक्तिया मन में मानों फिर गुंथ गईं. सो ईन्हें अपने निजी ड़ायरी मेंं न लिखते हुए यहाँ प्रेषित कर रही हूँ, इस उम्मीद से, कि कुछ और पाठ्यगणों (विशेषत:नई पीढ़ी) तक यह पहुंचें.

अब मत मेरा निर्माण करो
कुछ भी न अब तक बन पाया
युग युग बीते मैं घबराया
भूलो मेरी व्याकुलता को,
निज लज्जा का तो ध्यान करो.
इस चक्की पर खाते चक्कर,
मेरा तन मन जीवन जर्जर,
हे कुंभकार, मेरी मिट्टी को
और न अब हैरान करो.
कहने की सीमा होती है,
सहने की सीमा होती है,
कुछ मेरे भी वश में, मेरा
कुछ सोच समझ अपमान करो.

— हरिवंश राय बच्चन

Momin. मोमिन की एक ग़ज़ल

मार ही ड़ाल मुझे चश्मे अदा से पहले
अपनी मंजिल को पहुंच जाउँ कज़ा से पहले

इक नज़र देख लूँ आ जाओ क़ज़ा से पहले
तुम से मिलने की तमन्ना है ख़ुदा से पहले

ह‌‌‍श्र के रोज़ मैं पूछूंगा ख़ुदा से पहले
तूने रोका क्यूँ नही मुझको ख़ता से पहले

ए मेरी मौत ठहर उनको ज़रा आने दे
ज़हर का ज़ाम न दे मुझको दवा से पहले

हाथ पहुँचे भी न थे ज़ुल्फे दोता तक मोमिन
हथकडी डाल दी ज़ालिम ने ख़ता से पहले

— मोमिन खाँ मोमिन