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About Books Being Banished

Recently Mumbai hosted an International Literature Fest. Writers from India and 10 other countries spoke about books.

It seemed like a continuation of themes that has been previously explored in the dark ages. Writers being prosecuted. Books being banished. But much more scary, is the slow and insidious nature of the author being co-opted by forces of intolerance.

The book along with its creator is being seduced. Things are no longer in the hands of the inventor. You may remember that bit of Woody Allen stand-up, where he went to see THE DYING SWAN and the audience were in a state of acute anxiety because book-makers from upstate New York had put money on the swan to live. Something similar was transpiring at Aurangabad. There was bombastic rhetorics. Proclamations made that art is eternal. And the book will survive, after all, politics or no politics.

Years ago, the Vidrohi Samelan, with unflaunted passion had stated from Dharavi, art and politics can never be separated. The mainstream Samelan at Shivaji Park ignored the Vidrohi. There were innumerable opinions. That you can’t separate art and politics because politics is life. Another said, you have to separate art and politics, because politics is about power, and artists, other than vain ones, have nothing to do with it.

I recall, a similar line of thought emerging during a tete a tete with the noted film-maker, Istvan Szabo (MEPHISTO, TAKING SIDES) in Mumbai.

He was asked: “Life is political and art is about life, so it is inevitable that art should be political?” He replied, yes!

Then he was asked, about the nature of complicity in an artist. That is, what constitutes complicity? Is it one’s responsibility always to act out against a corrupt regime, or to, in perhaps more subtle ways, to beat the system?

Szabo replied, “You have to know your limit. That is, how far do you have to go? How far can you be pushed before you do something? Because if you ask the question, what is your moral responsibility? … if you have any decision of this kind, I’d have to say that you have only one solution: leave the country immediately. But the whole population cannot leave the country. And then what about a very very talented baker? Or a very talented teacher, or medical doctor? So, of course some prominent people can leave the country, but the whole population cannot. So, we have to ask the question: are they good enough and profound enough for everybody?”

This makes a lot of sense when you consider what’s been happening to Vijay Tendulkar, who has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. Whilst travelling in Gujarat, one realised how unpopular he is. The Gujarati middle class and Gujarati press loathe him. Of course this is the very same middle class and press which worships, Mr Modi, the kind and compassionate, who is everywhere. In newspapers, road hoardings, smiling beneficently from the back of ST buses, blessing the land and its people to Peace and Prosperity.

Being a theatrewallah from Mumbai, with supposed inside info, I was embroiled into a discussion in one of the road-side dhabas, over locally aerated, masala soda. The summation of a heated debate was, Tendulkar should be asked to leave the country, since he loathes its ways and means.

But the point is, as Szabo states, you cannot ask Tendulkar to leave the country. Once you pose that question, then you have to ask the pao-wallah or garagewallah in Ahmedabad, so, you hate Mr Modi, too? Then leave!

Of course, it is said, as Mr Sharad Pawar, who unlike Mr Modi, is projected as a progressive politician, stated in a recent address, the responsibility of the well known artist or historian is different. But if you’re going to be consistent, the questions have to be the same.

All this brings me back to my primary concern, the book. Its rather curious, but when Galileo was combating with the Papacy, a Parisian follower of his put forth an intriguing version of a heliocentric system. The follower opined, the universe was an onion.

The book is a bit of an onion, too. There are millions of them protected by thin skins that covers it and conserves the precious bud of an idea from which millions of other onions draw their own strength and power.

So without much ado, let me sample a few of my favourite onions.

ONION 1.
IF ON A WINTER’S NIGHT A TRAVELLER by Italo Calvino is a salaam to the entire tradition of book writing. As a reader you exist in a fantasy world and in a real maze. Calvino’s book consists of ten unfinished novels. The theme like most of Calvino is ambivalent, but the two protagonists are always struggling desperately to continue the action that has been broken off in the previous story. And you’ve to follow them through hair-raising adventures and work your way through a series of genres, from detective stories and love stories to poetic stories.

ONION 2.
In 1979, a book popped up. It was called NEVER-ENDING STORY by Michael Ende (please note the surname). One of the things with this book was its design and form. The printer used two colours of printing inks which makes the reader wonder as to the true meaning of words.

ONION 3.
BIBLOMANIA by Gustave Flaubert in which a fanatical bibliophile and antique bookseller lets his rival die in a fire so that he can get his hands on a highly coveted Latin Bible. Charged with murder, he cheerfully accepts his death sentence. But the twist to the plot (!) is that the bookseller cannot read. To transgress, the subversive potential of this book is described with typical relish by Oscar Wilde in THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, he describes how D.G. becomes entranced by the maxims of a book, which he takes as a guide for the dissolute life he goes on to live. Finally, he has nine examples of the book bound in different colours so that one is available to suit every mood.

ONION 4.
Ray Bradbury’s FAHRENHEIT 451 (the temperature at which paper burns) both books and their readers are regarded as enemies of a bookless society and are hunted down and destroyed.

ONION 5.
Books are the heroes in Sijie Dai from China in his novella BALZAC AND THE LITTLE CHINESE SEAMSTRESS. Here, two intellectual sons find a suitcase full of western books, and with their help they are able to withdraw from re-education during the Cultural Revolution.

ONION 6.
ABOUT UNREAD BOOKS.
UK’s new M6 toll road will be paved with 2.5 billion Mills and Boon novels. The books have been shredded and added to the tarmac, which helps prevent it cracking. When I read this, I thought of speaking to the Commissioner of Mumbai and suggesting something similar for our roads.

ONION 7.
ACTUALLY A PLAY.
This is a Belgian play LES COMBUSTIBLES by Amelie Nothomb. The play transpires during a war, three figures are trapped in a library in the middle of a hard winter, with only books to provide the heating. They argue with one another about the relative merits of the books and order in which they should be sacrificised to the flames. The last book left comes to symbolise beauty in the face of the horrors of war. When this too has been thrown into the flames, the characters leave the cold library and offer themselves up to the snipers on the road outside. A life without books seems meaningless to them.

A life without books seems meaningless to them.

Sounds familiar?