A pen as sharp as a sword

 

Photos: Kiran Nagarkar: Photo by Tulsi Vatsal; Book cover; Author Salil Tripathi. Photo by Udayan Tripathi

In ‘Asides, Tirades, Meditations’ — Selected Essays, Kiran Nagarkar, one of the notable writers of post-Independence India, writes with an electric style on a host of topics   

By Shevlin Sebastian 

Author Salil Tripathi grew up in an apartment near Kemp’s Corner where Chaitra, an advertising agency, had an office. His mother would translate Chaitra’s advertising copy into Gujarati. Now and then his mother would meet the celebrated author Kiran Nagarkar, who also worked there. When Tripathi was in his twenties, he was introduced to Nagarkar. They began a lifelong friendship. 

After his studies abroad, Tripathi joined the Indian Post newspaper as an assistant editor. He offered Nagarkar an opportunity to write a column. The celebrated author became a film critic for foreign films. That is probably how Nagarkar became a columnist for an English-language newspaper. 

Tripathi recounted this in his introduction to the book, ‘Asides, Tirades, Meditations—Selected Essays’ by Nagarkar (Bloomsbury). 

Tripathi did mention that in 2018, three women journalists accused Nagarkar of behaving inappropriately. He denied the allegations. The next year, Nagarkar died of a cerebral haemorrhage. He was 77.  

Tripathi said, “I admired him as a gifted writer, a champion of freedoms, a friend who saw through the clouds clearly, who warned us about the seductive peril of majoritarianism.” 

There are 36 essays in the 317-page book, clubbed under the headings, ‘Writing’, ‘Cinema’ and ‘On Society and Politics’.  

In the first essay, ‘Clueless: An Occasional Writer’s Journey,’ Nagarkar states, ‘You can dictate to your characters. You can bind them hand and foot, you can take almost all decisions for them, you can make sure that they grow up the way you want them to, but the chances are that you will find in the end that they are not flesh-and-blood people but puppets and marionettes.’ 

This is probably the drawback of too many writers. But how to make characters come alive seems to be a gift from the Gods. Not everybody can do it.   

Nagarkar also confirms the important role played by the subconscious in creative work. ‘While there is no gainsaying the primary contribution of conscious thought and planning, it is the subconscious processes of the mind and that strange chemical laboratory called “gestation” whereby at times things seem to fall into place by themselves and trickier problems get resolved.’ 

It was interesting to note that Nagarkar studied Marathi for the first four years of his primary education. After that, his parents enrolled him in an English-medium school. Yet, he emerged as a major English writer. 

Nagarkar gained fame for his novels, including ‘Saat Sakkam Trechalis’ (tr. Seven Sixes Are Forty Three) (1974), ‘Ravan and Eddie’ (1994), and ‘Cuckold’ (1997). 

For ‘Cuckold’, he won the 2001 Sahitya Akademi Award in 2001. His books were very popular in Germany. In 2012, he received the Order of Merit from Germany. Nagarkar was also a dramatist and screenwriter.

Perception abounds in his essays. In an essay regarding libraries, Nagarkar writes, ‘The most extensive and underrated library in the world, especially in the poorer countries, however, is the institution of the grandmother…she is the mother of all libraries, the largest archive of the oral tradition. In India, she is the repository of the stories from the epics, from the Panchatantra and mythology. She is the one who transmits oral history from generation to generation and is the fount of traditional wisdom.’ 

And he also recalled interesting encounters and conversations. Once he met a friend’s Japanese fiancée. She told Nagarkar, “I know nothing about India, except the four things that I learnt at school.” 

“And what are they?” asked Nagarkar. 

The woman said, “You Indians eat with your right hand, wash your hind parts with your left. You burn your women and practise untouchability.” 

‘A brief, succinct and aphoristic, cultural, political and sociological history of India. A body blow,’ wrote Nagarkar.       

In the essay, ‘Shiva’s Blue Throat: A Persona; Vision of the Artist’s Role’, Nagarkar compared the writing style of Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez with Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie. 

‘Rushdie’s joie de vivre, exuberance and deliberate punning are irrepressible,’ wrote Nagarkar. ‘His language is brilliant, flamboyant and endlessly playful ... He is a virtuoso trapeze artist whose words are always flying and caught in mid-air, doing the most incredible twists and turns. How can anyone fail to be carried away by his masterful performance? But neither can we forget that it is a performance.’

As for Marquez, Nagarkar said the language doesn’t bring attention to itself. ‘What strikes you from the very start is the richness and fecundity of his imagery, the almost infinite variety of the stories within stories he has to tell. And yet what you remember most are his characters and their fate.’ 

Other subjects include memories of his childhood, ageing, pretentious art films, star power in Bollywood, the city of Bombay, climate change, and ‘the fine art of intolerance.’                                      

The book concludes with an afterword by prize-winning novelist Nayantara Sahgal. They met in 2104 and immediately became fast friends. 

Nagarkar’s style is direct, clear and straightforward. These are easy-to-read essays. He always has an original viewpoint. There are many insights that are sprinkled all across the essays. Insights that make you pause and reflect and finally, get enriched by. 

‘Asides, Tirades, Meditations’ is an engaging read. However, there is no mention of when and where these essays were published. Overall, this is a book worth buying. If you are a serious reader, you will not be disappointed.

(Published in Scroll.com)

Heart-breaking and disturbing

 

Captions: Book cover; Author Sanam Sutirath Wazir

Sanam Sutirath Wazir’s ‘The Kaurs of 1984 — the Untold, Unheard Stories of Sikh Women’ is a razor-sharp look at the extraordinary devastation that women suffered after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984

By Shevlin Sebastian

On June 4, 1984, Rachpal Singh, the secretary of militant leader Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, was in a room in the Golden Temple. He was with his wife Pritam and their 18-day-old son. The Army was shooting into the Temple during Operation Bluestar. 

Pritam said, “A flash of light would come in from the space below the doors and blind us for a few seconds, followed by the deafening sounds of bombs. I could hear the sound of tank treads moving outside our room, proceeding towards the Akal Takht (the chief centre of religious authority among the Sikhs).”  

At 12.15 am on June 6, a bullet hit her baby’s back before hitting Pritam on the chest. As Rachpal bent over his wife and son, a bullet hit him on the head. He died instantly. Pritam lay in a pool of blood, with her dead husband beside her and her dead son lying on her chest. 

Manjeet Singh, the then press secretary of the Akali Dal, saw a young man and his infant son killed. The mother picked up the son and placed him on his father’s chest. “It’s been more than three decades now, but whenever I close my eyes, that scene comes back to me,” said Manjeet.  

Author Sanam Sutirath Wazir focuses on the suffering of Sikh women in the book, ‘The Kaurs of 1984 - the untold, unheard stories of Sikh women’. Many of whom were rape victims during the 1984 cataclysm that shook Punjab, and the riots that took place in Delhi and other places. 

The Sikh psyche was shattered because of the army’s widespread damage to the Golden Temple. ‘Over 350 bullets riddled the dome of the Golden Temple,’ wrote Wazir. ‘One bullet pierced the cushion on which the Guru Granth Sahib was placed, pushing through as many as eighty-two pages of the book itself. Most of the items in the toshakhana (a storehouse for valuables) were destroyed….all the handwritten hukamnamas (orders), penned by different Sikh gurus across the ages, were lost as well.’ 

Wazir writes with painstaking details about the damage to the Golden Temple and the human rights violations by the Army and the security agencies that took place thereafter. Even women and children were not spared. 

No surprises, there was a blowback. On October 31, 1984, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was shot dead by her Sikh guards, Beant Singh and Satwant Singh. Immediately, in Delhi, mobs, mainly orchestrated by the Congress Party, laid siege to the Sikh community. 

At Block 32 in Trilokpuri, East Delhi, local leader Rampal Saroj, accompanied by a group of men, asked resident Darshan Kaur where her husband Ram Singh was. She said he had gone out with his brother. 

The men did not believe her. They broke down the main door and barged into the house. Ram Singh was hiding in the kitchen. ‘They dragged him out by his hair,’ wrote Wazir. ‘They placed a quilt and tyre over his head, doused him in oil and then set him ablaze. Ram Singh was nearly burnt to death; he later succumbed to his injuries.’ In the end, all the Sikh men who were present in Block 32 on that day were killed. There were 275 widows across 180 homes.  

The men committed rape against elderly, middle-aged women, and teenage girls. Darshan said a young girl of 15 returned, naked and bruised. She had been raped many times, by some as old as her grandfather.  

Chapter by chapter Wazir tells harrowing tales about what happened to the Sikh women, in places like Sultanpuri, Raj Nagar and Mukherjee Nagar. Their lives were destroyed. Very few have recovered. As one woman, Satwant Kaur, said, “Those monsters had scarred me for life.”

Astoundingly, many women recalled that the rioters used white powder on the victims. Wazir said that it could have been white phosphorus. The powder burns human flesh and catches fire when exposed to the air.

The violence spread beyond Delhi. In Hondh Chillar, in the Rewari district in Haryana, a mass grave of Sikhs was discovered in 2010. 

However, India has not stepped back from this destructive route. Since 1984, according to a Google search, there have been over 70 riots in different parts of India. The latest was the Haldwani riots in Uttarakhand on February 9, 2024. 

Wazir also focuses on women who became militants and became part of pro-Khalistan groups as well as the lives of widows in refugee camps. 

This book is a very valuable document. It heightens awareness of the suffering that takes place. Or as feminist publisher Urvashi Butalia said on the cover, the book is ‘graphic, disturbing and searing.’ 

We need to read it, get appalled and vow to ourselves that as a people, we should never allow such events to happen again.

(An edited version was published in The Sunday Magazine, The New Indian Express, South India and Delhi)

Awakening our sensitivity

 

Photos: Pramod Thomas and his family; Pramod's friend, the journalist Jobin Augustine, who passed away in May, 2012. A condolence meeting was held at the Ernakulam Press Club

Journalist Pramod Thomas focuses on the everyday moments of life, as well as the tragedies that afflict society in his book of poems

By Shevlin Sebastian 

Pramod Thomas was my former colleague in The New Indian Express, Kochi. He was and remains an ace business journalist. Today, he works for an UK-based media group. 

But what nobody will realise when you meet him, with his focused, professional attitude, is that he is a sensitive poet. At spare moments, which I am sure, is rare since he has a wife and two daughters, Pramod writes poems. This is his way of battling stress and the lack of meaning in life that afflicts everybody now and then.  

In 2017, he published his first book of poetry, ‘A Shoe Named Revolution’. Now, he has published his second book, ‘Biography of a Couch Potato’. It comes as no surprise that he has dedicated it to his two daughters, Ayaana and Ahaana. 

It is also dedicated to ‘those who find comfort in the quiet moments and beauty in the ordinary; To the ones who see poetry in everyday life — in the sunrise, the rain, a stranger’s smile or a fleeting thought. May these poems be a companion on your journey, offering solace, reflection, and a sense of belonging.’  

When you realise how conflict (Ukraine/Gaza/Lebanon) has been dominating the news for over two years, the first poem, ‘Eulogy of the Unborn’, is about war:

‘Do not stare at me, for I am dead

Don’t cry for me, 

Cry for my child, unborn. 

Her eyes shattered 

In the rubble,   

Only I can see a rainbow,

A colourless one though.’ 

The book comprises 21 poems. 

One poem, ‘Blood Butterfly’, draws inspiration from a 13-year-old girl in Tamil Nadu who tragically lost her life during Cyclone Gaja. Her family forced her to stay alone in a barn because she was having her periods. 

Here is the concluding verse: 

‘While trying to please gods, 

We become less human. 

Forgive us, 

In the name of a zillion unborn. 

Now, we have blood on our hands.’

Pramod dedicated another poem, ‘Echoes of a Lost Spring’, to his journalist friend, Jobin Augustine, 28, who passed away in May, 2012. A sub-editor with the Madhyamam Daily newspaper in Kochi, Jobin fell from a private bus, got crushed under its wheels, and died. He was on his way to his home at Ramapuram.    

The poem, ‘A Poetic Flower’ is dedicated to the Kerala poet, A Ayyappan. Pramod is a fan of his work. Ayyappan was found unconscious on October 21, 2010, in front of a theatre in Thiruvananthapuram. 

The local people informed the police, who took the poet to the government hospital. Nobody, including the police, had recognised him. A bachelor, Ayyappan was 61 when he died. People knew him as the ‘Icon of Anarchism’ of Malayalam poetry.  

Pramod writes: 

‘The street was not deserted

There were a few people,

But none recognised the poet; 

They mistook him for a drunkard, 

Considering him a bad omen.’ 

Pramod concludes the poem by saying: 

‘In a city far away, many awaited the poet,

Eager to honour him for his poems, 

An event was ready to welcome him,

Ears eager to listen to his verses,

But life had other plans.’ 

‘The City of Sins’ focuses on the rape and murder of a 31-year-old trainee doctor at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata on August 9, 2024. 

‘Kolkata, hang your head in shame, 

Retreat to your ugly thoughts, and end yourself. 

How can you raise your head now? 

There is blood on your hands, 

Your dark streets can never be the same again.’ 

At the end of the poem, Pramod states: ‘Sexual violence against women is a widespread problem in India — an average of nearly 90 rapes a day was reported in 2022 across the country.’

In the title poem, ‘Biography of a Couch Potato’, Pramod says: 

‘There is no endgame in this dull drama,

You live the same life every day, year after year. 

When you’re glued to the screen, 

Your comfort zone embraces you,

And there’s no going back.’  

However, the book is not all gloom and doom. 

Pramod writes about love too. 

‘There is no boundary to my love for you;

I am connected to you, 

Like a train to its track, 

A thunder to the cloud. 

And a chalk to the blackboard. 

You are the last drop of my rain, 

The final drop in my blood bank,

The last atom in my body,

The last prisoner in the world’s last prison.’

One gets the feeling his wife Stephena is going to be moved to read this. 

Other poems include dealing with the suffering of a writer who has received rejection, the birth of a child to a gay couple, which is overseen by a lesbian nurse, American Vice President Kamala Harris, wokeism, the Wayanad landslide tragedy, a Filipino woman who donned a mermaid suit and performed in a large aquarium at Kochi, and the biography of a stone.

The poems reveal Pramod’s sensitivity to human suffering and emotional pain. He writes from his heart. And so it affects us who read these poems. It makes us pause in our hectic daily life and activates the sensitive aspects of our being. In short, these poems humanise us.    

‘Couch Potato’ is nominated for the 21st Century Emily Dickinson Award. 

Life on the trains

 

For 57 years, KJ Paul Manvettam has been travelling daily by train from his home in Kuruppanthara to Ernakulam, a distance of 43 kms, and back. He talks about his experiences and also about his activism to double tracks, improve services and ask for new trains

By Shevlin Sebastian

KJ Paul Manvettam gets up every day at 5 a.m. He does not need an alarm. Whatever time he goes to sleep, which is mostly at midnight, he gets up on time every day. He goes through his morning routine of getting ready.

At 6.40 a.m. his wife prepares a breakfast of idli or dosa. Then his son Pritto drives Paul to the station. Pritto is an optometrist. He works at his father’s shop, Polson’s Opticals, in Kochi. He comes later by bus.

Paul has been travelling on trains every day, except Sundays, for 57 years. His journey is from Kuruppanthara to Ernakulam, a distance of 43 kms.

At 7.20 a.m., the Palaruvi Express arrives at the station. It starts at Tuticorin and travels to Palakkad, a distance of 537 kms. Kuruppanthara is the 28th stop. Paul gets into any of four general compartment bogies. Despite the crowd, someone always offers Paul a seat because he is 75 years old.

“The train is punctual 95 percent of the time,” said Paul. “But this is because they have now converted the stretch into double tracks.”

Earlier, the journey from Kuruppanthara to Ernakulam was on a single track. So, the train would have to stop at stations so that other trains on the opposite track could go past. Inevitably, the train was late.

Paul carries a monthly season ticket. In 1967, the price was Rs 18. Now it is Rs 180. “The daily charge for me for going and coming is Rs 6 only,” he said. “And if the discount for senior citizens is re-introduced, it will almost be free.”

Asked whether the scenery had changed from the window over the years, Paul said, “Yes, there were a lot of trees and forests when I started. There were paddy fields where pelicans would use their long beaks to catch worms in the water. The houses were small. I remember one such house, near Mulanthuruthy, which belonged to a senior IAS officer.”

Now, there are a lot of villas where there used to be paddy fields. The birds have vanished. “I wonder whether these people have any guilt about what they have done to the fields,” he said. “Many small hills have become denuded because of the quarrying of mud for house building and levelling of land. I feel sad.”

Asked how fellow passengers have changed over the years, Paul said, “There was a lot of conversation in those days on several topics. People would play cards. It was usually rummy. There was a convivial feeling. It was lively. We had good relationships with each other.”

But nowadays, when people get in, they immediately fixate on their mobile phones. A conversation can only be started when Paul taps them on the shoulder. He said it takes time for people to become friends with each other.

Nowadays everybody can collect information on the mobile phone. “You don’t need to ask anybody whether the train is running late,” he said. “You can check it on the app.”

Despite this, for the past 39 years, Paul has bought the handbook, ‘Indian Railways - Trains at a Glance’. The latest edition of the handbook, from October 2023 to June 2024, is priced at Rs 100 and contains 450 pages. “In the earlier days, everybody would consult it,” said Paul.

Paul closes the shop at 7.30 p.m. He takes the 8 pm train from Nilambur to Kottayam. Paul gets down at Kuruppanthara at 9 pm. When he reaches home, it is 9.30 p.m. He has a bath, followed by dinner. Then he chats with his wife, Annamma, before he goes to sleep. The couple has two boys and a girl.

Railway Activism

Paul came to the attention of many in Kerala when, on January 3, 1997, he and his fellow passengers took out a jeep rally from Chengannur station to Ernakulam. They were demanding the doubling of the railway tracks along the 114 km route from Kayamkulam to Ernakulam.

The group stopped at every station on the route. Many Parliament and Assembly legislators offered their support. The media provided extensive coverage. “It was the first time somebody had launched a campaign on this issue,” said Paul.

It took three years before the Railways gave the nod. In May 2022, the Railways completed the doubling of the entire stretch. It was a wait of 25 years.

For the past several years, at least once every three or six months, Paul, as State President of the All Kerala Railway Users Association meets senior officials, like the Division Railway Manager and the Chief Operations Manager, apart from officials from the Chennai office, at the Divisional Railway Users Consultative Committee meeting at Thiruvananthapuram.

Around 20 people will be present. They will include representatives of merchant associations, disabled associations, chambers of commerce and passenger associations. All of them offer suggestions on ways to improve the railway’s efficiency. Besides that, Paul meets officials at the Ernakulam Junction railway station.

A year ago, he asked officials whether the newly launched Vande Bharat train could have its ‘crossing’ at Mulanthuruthy (18 kms from Kochi) shifted to Tripunithura (10 kms from Kochi).

The benefit, he said, is that a lot of commuters can get down at Tripunithura. “From there, they can get buses and metro trains to various destinations,” said Paul. The officials politely said they would look into it.

“It is difficult for the Railways to make changes quickly,” said Paul. “A passenger thinks, ‘Why should it be hard?’ But the Railways are dealing with over 300 trains at a time. If it can be implemented easily, they will do it. No official wants to cause problems for the public. I am sure of that.”

Paul also successfully campaigned, with the help of Parliament legislators from Kerala, for the Palaruvi Express to have stops at Ettumanoor and Angamaly. Earlier, he had campaigned for a stop at his hometown of Kuruppanthara and Vaikom.

“I have always been polite in my requests,” he said. “I never raise my voice. And I have never lost my cool. As a result, the officials are receptive to my suggestions. I would like to add that the requests should be reasonable.”

People have complained about the bogies being overcrowded.

“Yes, I agree. Because train travel is the cheapest, there are so many passengers,” said Paul. “There is a limit for the Railways to increase bogies. The platforms cannot accommodate the extra bogies. They added four additional bogies to the Palaruvi Express. Still, there is no place to sit.”

Paul campaigned for an 8 pm train from Ernakulam to Kottayam for many commuters. This happened on July 1, 1995.

In early 2000, when Union Railway Minister Bangaru Laxman came to the Ernakulam Junction railway station for an event, Paul presented a memorandum requesting the doubling of tracks from Ernakulam to Tripunithura, as a beginning. Also present were the General and Divisional Manager.

When Bangaru asked Paul about the benefits of doubling only 10 kms, Paul said, “Sir, because Tripunithura is a single line, many trains, including goods trains and oil tankers, get held up.”

Bangaru conferred with the senior officials. They all agreed that trains have experienced delays. Immediately, he wrote a special note recommending it. They also submitted a petition to senior BJP leader O Rajagopal about this. In 2001, Rajagopal became the Minister of State for the Railways. Immediately, he campaigned to set aside money in the budget to begin work on track doubling.

The rest is history.

Asked about the character of Malayali passengers, Paul said, “They are comfortable, tolerant and accept difficulties. But there is a minority, who complain through their social media posts about deficiencies. They end up influencing the other passengers.”

But Paul said the people know the railways are the best and cheapest way to travel, especially for elderly and disabled people.

“Bus travel is so cramped,” said Paul. “You can get stuck in traffic jams. You can’t move around. And there is no possibility of using a washroom unless the bus stops somewhere. And the ticket charge can be as high as Rs 80. As for the train, it is Rs 3. Also, on the train, you can eat comfortably. Many people bring their breakfast in tiffins and have it on the train. It is just like being at home.”

(An edited version was published in The Sunday Magazine, The New Indian Express, South India and Delhi)