Monday, October 31, 2011

Glimpses from a cultural and literary Quest

[From my Sunday Guardian books column]

One of the pleasures of reading The Best of Quest – a collection of essays, fiction and poetry from the pages of the now-defunct quarterly magazine that was dedicated to “inquiry, criticism and ideas” – is discovering the many voices of the late Dilip Chitre. I had a passing acquaintance with Chitre’s poetry, and a memory of the film Godaam which he wrote and directed, but I hadn’t encountered his essay writing before this.

Chitre’s long association with Quest began in the 1960s and continued till the magazine's dying days during the Emergency years; he later served as an editor for its second incarnation New Quest. Consequently his writings – reviews, opinion pieces and a translation of Hamid Dalwai’s incisive piece “Mohammed Ali Jinnah: A Study in Hatred” – are well-represented in the lengthy “Essay” section of this book. But in addition to the pieces that appeared under his own name, Chitre also wrote a regular column using the pseudonym “D”.

“There is a comedian inside me who is restless to burst into the open,” he explains in “I was D”, the last piece included in this book (and written not long before his death), “I love to mark the absurdity underlying most seriously regarded things. I also love to take the comic as seriously as it deserves to be taken.”
 

Both "D" and "Dilip" consistently display wit, acumen and the ability to engage with a variety of topics. Even when one disagrees with some of Chitre’s views (among other things, he calls R K Narayan a “second-rate” Indo-Anglian writer), it’s hard not to respect the honesty and intelligence behind them. At other times, you might instinctively blench at something he says – or wonder if he’s being facetious – only to realise upon reflection that it contains a kernel of truth. In a possibly part-satirical piece titled “What has Dimple Got that Satyajit Hasn’t?” Chitre compares Raj Kapoor’s very mainstream film Bobby with Satyajit Ray’s artistically high-minded Ashani Sanket and suggests that “their moral and aesthetic import is on the same level of mediocrity... Except that Ray fails to entertain the masses, which Kapoor does”.
Raj Kapoor produces opiates for the masses, including the educated uncultured, while giving them traces of cinematic value; Ray gives the middle class its own kind of highbrow drugs, heaps of crude cinematic values coated with the sugar of a static pre-modern imagination.
Other highlights from the pen of D/Dilip include “Aspects of Pornophobia”, in which he lampoons undiscerning censorship and the general incompetence of those saddled with “preserving culture” (there's a great anecdote here involving the actress Snehaprabha Pradhan and a "seductive female dog"), and the long essay-cum-review “Nirad’s Nightmare”. The latter is an analysis of Nirad C Chaudhuri’s book The Continent of Circe as well as a psychological profile of its author “who began as an unknown Indian and, after years of striving, has virtually become perhaps one of the most authentic Englishmen of all time”.
When he is worked up to a climactic frenzy in expressing his love for England and things English, Mr Chaudhuri gives one a sense of parody by extreme perfection – a comic ability to run rapidly and unhindered on a track strewn with banana peels. Even an Englishman would find the strain of being so precisely and religiously English all the time quite unbearable.
Again, some of the views expressed here can be debated – Chaudhuri was a complex figure and the product of colliding cultural influences – but there’s little faulting the intellectual rigour of Chitre’s arguments.

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Apart from Chitre’s work, there is much of interest in The Best of Quest, including a thoughtful interview (by Adrian Rowe-Evans) of V S Naipaul. Anyone who has had trouble reconciling Naipaul’s frequently splenetic or obnoxious behaviour with the empathy in the best of his work might be intrigued by this bit:
I may sit down in enormous rage to write something; I might even begin in terms of caricature and animosity; but in the course of the writing, something will happen. That side of me, that comes out in the writing, is the better side, and better not because it’s nicer but because it’s truer; it’s the side that in one’s rage one might wish to forget. I began my recent book about Africa with a great hatred of everyone, of the entire continent; and that had to be refined away, giving place to comprehension.
Having working on the literary beat for only the last few years, I also found it illuminating to read Jyotirmoy Datta’s 1966 essay “On Caged Chaffinches and Polyglot Parrots” – a sardonic, often whimsical critique of Indian writers who worked in English – followed by P Lal’s measured response. (“We do not write in English because it is a pan-Indian language of the educated; we write because we cannot write as well in any other language...There are many plots to till; English is one.”) The discussion is a reminder that the many fierce debates around Indian Writing in English did not begin in the post-Midnight’s Children world. I’m not done with The Best of Quest yet – there’s plenty to read in the Fiction section, including short stories by Kiran Nagarkar and Kamleshwar – but what I’ve read so far has offered a very agreeable glimpse of the cultural and ideological discourse of another time, much of which is still relevant today.

15 comments:

  1. isn't he the same guy who wrote the poems used in Ardh Satya...wanted to watch Ashani Sanket, but guess will avoid it now :-) loved that passage on V.S. Naipaul and was wondering on the same lines while reading A House For Mr. Biswas....very nice post Jai

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  2. Pessimist Fool: thanks. Yes, Chitre wrote the Ardh Satya poem. But don't let his piece put you off Ashani Sanket, which is a very interesting film in some ways.

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  3. oh will watch Ashani Sanket in that case...btw are the copies of The Best of Quest available in bookstores? this guy seems very interesting

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  4. Yes, of course. It's a Tranquebar publication, as you can see from the link I provided - should definitely be available in bookstores. And I note that Flipkart has a considerable discount (more than 200 rupees), so try that.

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  5. Regarding Naipaul: People find his pronouncements obnoxious largely because the guy is not vapidly pleasant and instead asks uncomfortable questions that most of us wish to overlook.

    Naipaul deals in stereotypes, his critics say. What's wrong with that. As Thomas Sowell, the American Economist once put it - "Stereotypes are behavioral patterns one doesn't want to think about!"

    I love Naipaul the way he is. After all, it is only men of his stature who can ask those unpleasant, uncomfortable questions without being called names!

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  6. After all, it is only men of his stature who can ask those unpleasant, uncomfortable questions without being called names!

    shrikanth: oh, Naipaul does get called names, I assure you! And very often, those names are completely justified. I admire your eagerness to defend him, but I'm not convinced that some of his views (the ones on women as writers, for example) are worth defending, or even worth giving any importance to.

    Also, there's a huge, huge, HUGE difference between being "vapidly pleasant" and being what Naipaul has so frequently been in his public appearances in recent years - so please, let's not get into straw-man territory.

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  7. One significant aspect that this collection highlights is that the bilingual scholar/writer has disappeared totally from the Indian intellectual scene. Both Chitre & Dutta were the last representatives of a generation that have a significant body of work in more than one language, and there were others who if not writing in another language were engaged enough through translations, criticism or as readers. Their skills across the two languages may have varied, or were unequal, and in case of some authors like Kiran Nagarkar and Qurratulain Haider even the voices vary. Some others like Firaq Gorakhpuri & UR Ananthamurthy pursued academic careers in English while their creative writing remained strictly in non English languages. This space has shrunk and most people writing in English don't even read anything not published in English. At least Chetan Bhagat writes his own Hindi columns. Pessimist Fool, DC wrote the poem from which Ardha Satya's title was taken, and hence was subsequently used in the film. There is more to Chitre than the poem unless you picked the trivia in a quiz and I think I even know about the quiz in question.

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  8. @ anon - well no i didn't pick it up from quiz...i was in Bombay for five years, a friend mentioned Dilip Chitre and told me to watch Ardh Satya again...but yeah Dilip Chitre is a person (also his work) I would like to know more about, please tell me where to look? have tons of respect for people like him (even though i know only about that poem :-) ) and other writers and creative people in maharashtra in that period, tendulkar, enkluchwar, satyadev dubey, kiran nagarkar, benegal, nihalani etc etc i was in journalism for 3 years, met so many fools that I wondered how can Vijay Tendulkar be a journalist :-)

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  9. Jai: I was just as disappointed by many of the knee-jerk reactions to Naipaul's remarks on women writers. I'm not a prolific reader at all and cannot comment on the substance of Naipaul's remarks. Nevertheless, a writer as distinguished as VSN is entitled to his opinions, however unreasonable they may seem.

    Many years ago, Larry Summers - then Harvard President and former US Treasury secretary - got into trouble for pondering whether innate differences could account for the lack of women achievers in math and hard sciences. It was interpreted as a "chauvinistic" remark. However, his critics conveniently overlooked several tests that do suggest that standard deviation in IQ/math skills among women is lower than among men. This implies that though boys and girls may post similar math scores on an average, the variability is typically greater among boys (more outliers and hence more achievers). It's a debate worth having. Yet, the knee-jerk reactions meant that few people were in the mood for an informed debate.

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  10. I may sit down in enormous rage to write something; I might even begin in terms of caricature and animosity; but in the course of the writing, something will happen. That side of me, that comes out in the writing, is the better side, and better not because it’s nicer but because it’s truer

    It may also be argued that but for the rage and animosity that drives him, he may never end up discovering those insights which bring out the "better side" in him.

    I could relate to this having read Naipaul's absolutely brilliant essay written some 20 years ago - Our Universal Civilization. A classic example of Naipaul's approach. Starts off by asking some difficult, uncomfortable questions and works hard to get the answers in the end that may not necessarily flatter everybody.

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  11. shrikanth: I have no problem with the results of those math/hard science studies - of course it's foolish (and idiotically politically correct) to pretend that there are no innate differences in abilities between groups of people. Generalisations and stereotypes can be useful things - but only so long as they are not made a basis to pre-judge the capabilities of a particular individual.

    a writer as distinguished as VSN is entitled to his opinions.

    True. But so are the people who think he's a sexist and bigoted dumbf@!# for holding those opinions.

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  12. It may also be argued that but for the rage and animosity that drives him, he may never end up discovering those insights which bring out the "better side" in him.

    Who's arguing with this? We all know that much great art comes from people who are extremely unpleasant in "real" life.

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  13. @ Jai and shrikanth - i am sure you guys would have come across this...i just found it too funny. Naipaul when asked how he felt when Diana died said, " i was walking across a park when i saw negores crying on her death. why were they crying, why? why? why?" not to bring any insult or anything to him, i was thinking if one were to make a film on him, this scene alone will do justice to show how impulsive he can be

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  14. Being of a certain age (as the cliche goes) I really loved your post on the Best of Quest. I'd read some of the pieces you referred to when they first came out, and it was wonderful to find them being discussed again after so many decades. But I have a point to make about your remark,"The discussion is a reminder that the many fierce debates around Indian Writing in English did not begin in the post-Midnight’s Children world". In fact I'd say Midnight's Children more or less settled the debate, or at least tipped the scales decisively in favour of Indians writing in English. Earlier the debate was much louder, the attacks on the IWE tribe - they were called 'Indo-Anglian writers' then - much more vituperative. Jyotirmoy Datta's is just one example, such pieces appeared very frequently those days. The responses of the Indo Anglians and those supporting them were in comparison, always pretty weak and always defensive, they were almost apologetic about writing in English and thus "alienated from the masses". What a sea change in the public perception of IWE writers Midnight's Children brought about! I do feel that because of the bias that earlier prevailed, those writers who came after the initial Big Three - R.K. Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao - but who did their best work before Midnight's Children was published - to take some names at random: Anita Desai, Kamala Markandeya, Manohar Malgaonkar, Sasthi Brata, even Ved Mehta - never really got their due, certainly not in India.

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  15. Ashish: thanks for the comment - yes, it would have been very interesting to be a literary journalist in India between the 1970s and the present day, and to have a personal record of (and perhaps a collection of self-written articles on) the various arguments and conversations throughout this period.

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