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I had been told our
panel was about gender and the media. Our moderator announced
we were there to speak about genre |
This is a completely
personal view of Kitab 2007, a literary jamboree that took place in
Mumbai last week. In any other city, the arrival of Blake Morrison,
Jackie Keay and Ian Jack would have caused some twittering. In this
city, the world went about its work and about 30 people came to hear
a panel on gender and the media.
Farrukh Dhondy smiled
amicably at everyone. Hugo Rifkind tried not to fall asleep. Hoshang Merchant
burgeoned quietly in a corner. The antechamber of the Asiatic Society
glittered dully and echoed endlessly.
“Where is Jessica
Hines?” I asked an organiser.
“She can’t
make this panel,” she said.
No, she couldn’t.
Not unless she had a clone. She was at Max Mueller Bhavan, reading from
her book. This must be the only time a speaker has been cross-booked by
the persons in charge of the festival.
But what was our panel
about?
I had been told it
was about how the media determine issues of gender.
Our moderator announced
that we were there to speak about genre.
Farrukh Dhondy raised
his eyebrows.
“Gender is genre,”
said Hoshang Merchant, the gay poet from Hyderabad.
I had been told our
panel was about gender and the media. Our moderator announced
we were there to speak about genre |
Alka Pande told
us about Pauranic literature and the notion of the androgyne and Shivashakti.
“Heavy shit,”
Dhondy wrote on a piece of my paper.
“When the gods
awoke, they flicked on their television sets,” I wrote.
Hoshang Merchant told
us it was difficult being a gay man and a teacher in India.
Farrukh Dhondy went
to pee.
Pablo Ganguli came
to watch. He has been described as a Janice Joplin riff floating over
a Bach cantata. He sits down and smiles to himself, somewhat gnomically.
I said we needed an
ethics of consumption for the myths we build about ourselves. Most of
the stories we like to tell ourselves are stories based in a heterosexual
matrix anyway. Not much point trying to read them as part of the Indian
broad-mindedness argument.
Farrukh Dhondy came
back and spoke about Raj Kapoor and Lata Mangeshkar.
And so it went.
In the morning, the
discussion on the veil was equally arbitrary. Everyone spoke about veils.
Except for Kamila Shamsie, no one made any sense. A feminist friend was
startled by the complete arbitrariness of the remarks. “Did they
come for a holiday?” she asked.
I was settling down
to Kiran Nagarkar reading with a handheld mike, a stand mike, a handheld
mike and a stand mike, and with none of the above, doing valiant battle
against the miserable acoustics of that antechamber. (It was probably
designed for filibusters. Let them echo endlessly at each other.)
Then another organiser
came thundering across the wooden floor and reminded me that I was supposed
to be reading at a book shop 20 minutes away. I raced off to find myself
two hours early.
But at least the boat
had not drifted away. No, what am I saying? The original idea was that
Jessica Hines and I would read from our books on a boat.
My book? An anthology called Reflected in Water: Writings on Goa.
Her book? Looking
for the Big B, about Bollywood and Bombay.
Similarity? Well,
there’s a bit where Amitabh Bachchan and Shashi Kapoor get drunk
in Goa and drift out into the shipping lanes on a lilo.
She dutifully reads
the passage out.
An organiser asks
her, just before we start: “Is your book Looking for Bachchan?”
Jessica: “No.”
Organiser: “Looking
for Bollywood?”
Jessica: “No.”
Organiser: “What
is it?”
Jessica: “Look
at the cover.”
Why are we reading
together? Don’t know.
Why is there blue
cheese on a toothpick? Don’t know.
Who serves thimblefuls
of red wine? We do know.
Kitab, is who.
