Literature Across Frontiers
Literature Across Frontiers
Abu Dhabi is a city on show. It aspires for bragging rights for the biggest, the best, the richest.
The day I land there’s a buzz about the unveiling of a $21.250 million racecourse project, Meydan Race Course in Dubai (a hour’s drive from Abu Dhabi). It is the world’s richest horse race, the Dubai World Cup.
A visit to the Saadiyat (Happiness) Island project which shows off models of building designs in the 7-Star Emirates Palace. Its a grand-plan to create an entire culture city on a barren desolate island. This would include museum branches of the Louvre and the Guggenheim as part of the Cultural District. The project will cost $27 billion and the best of masterbuilders (Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Tada Andao, Jean Nouvel) have been hired.
In the midst of all this, Abu Dhabi is very keen to assert its supremacy in the cultural arena. The new look 17th Abu Dhabi International Book Fair at a swanky venue is part of the knowledge mission. The Book Fair was held in collaboration with the Frankfurt Book Fair and had a visitor turn-out of 400,000 visitors throughout the eight days of the event. 406 publishers from 46 countries including India took part, with 600,000 titles on display.
No Pamuk. No Mahfouz.
An American based in Cairo who runs marathon races in his spare time mutters, no one reads Pamuk or Mahfouz in this part of the world. According to him everyone reads Atlas of Creation. Its a 770-page best-seller; lavishly illustrated with photographs of fossils and living animals, interlaced with quotations from the Koran. The author is Harun Yahya (alias Adnan Oktar), a charismatic, controversial Turkish preacher. Oktar claims to prove not only the falsehood of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, but the links between “Darwinism” and diverse evils as communism, fascism, terrorism and democracy. The book is a major publishing success. Its a mass movement which ensures the book and it dangerous content is freely distributed, translated and made accessible.
The power of the word?
I ask a Lebanese about Beirut and Hezbollah. He laughs and says, too bloody, and proceeds to talk about an intricate preparation for a grilled Kibbeh. He gets a call. Its his son. They exchange pleasantries. The father asks the son if he has visited the church for Sunday mass. There’s silence. There’s no church, perhaps. An Israeli bombing may have damaged the road to the church. The Lebanese disconnects, smiles, and says, on the whole things are improving and extends an invitation to his country to have a Tabbouleh, a salad. Then we exchanges notes on the latest shenanigans of Homer Simpson and his family.
That evening, there’s a Discussion Forum at the Fair. The 77 year old Syrian poet exiled in Lebanon, Adonis is expected to be present. But he doesn’t come due to reasons beyond his control.
Adonis’ poems are read out. In Worries (A Dream), he says:
They arrived naked
Broke into the house
Dug a hole
Buried the children and left
The future of books in Abu Dhabi
The exhibition is teeming with hundreds of children and students. This is because the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, has instructed the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage to support the purchases of children, young people, and students of schools and universities from the book fair by 3 million Dirhams. Its a good move. The reading habits among Arabic children is appalling. This could change. Children can purchase books with the discount coupons.
Plus there’s the Sheikh Zayed Book Award for authors and translators and even writers of children’s books. Dr Tharwat Akasha received the award for his book on The Indian Art. This unique book is the first part of the series of Far East Arts, and the 30th episode of the Art History Encyclopedia (Eyes See and Ears Hear). It is the most important Arabic book on the Indian arts of architecture, sculpture, and photography throughout the reigns of ruling families, and also on the period of the Islamic Mogul Art, in addition to Indian music, drama, dancing, etc. Dr Akasha speaks to me, briefly. He enquires what is happening to Mahtama Gandhi’s India. And then walks through the memory lane of Tagore’s short stories.
He says, India’s decency and dignity gives him great hope. I’m tempted to tell him the idyllic India he speaks of no longer exists. But I don’t.
Celebrating the world of ideas
Book fairs are generally about celebrating literature; and mostly about eccentric characters like Trasvin Jittidecharak from Thailand who informs us how her stall at the Frankfurt Book Fair had only one book. The book designer from Philippines who got a stamp for a Spanish visa from a stubborn embassy authority just because Spain scored a crucial goal in a World Cup game. An Argentinian who hitchhikes and gets stuck with a drug dealer (who stores contraband in his steering wheel) and is chased by authorities across Patagonia. The Chinese publisher who asks me whether Basheer or M T Vasudevan Nair should be translated from English or French or German into Chinese? And finally, the ancient Tunisian who lustily belts out the golden hits of Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel and Eminem.
Three Malayali children manage the Tuilka stall. Urvashi Butalia of Zubaan rattles out statistics of the Indian publishing industry. Kadamanitta Ramakishnan, the Malayali poet meets his Arabic translator. He chants a poem about a meeting on a Gujarat bound train. Its a surreal conversation with a vegetarian Jain who will not crush ants nor insects but does not mind a few hundred humans being hacked during a genocide, especially if they don’t belong to his religion.
I meet Alexandra Buechler whose husband was a friend of Vaclav Havel during the days of the Charter 77 movement. As luck would have it, I’m translating, Audience a play by Vaclav Havel into Hindi. She has an enormous repertoire of Havel anecdotes. From the days of the underground struggle to the days of pubs and bikes. To the time he was denied permission for a play in London where he landed up unannounced, and ticketless. It may have causes a diplomatic furore, since Havel was President of the Czech Republic. Then the time when he hosted a Bohemian party for the Heads of the State, aristocrats and bureaucrats, who were utterly shocked at the wantoness of the thing.
And so, while the debates raged: between small languages and English; and the lack of diversity and the fundamentalism of bestsellers; and how Stephen King sells more than Marquez, there is a message from Abu Dhabi? Adonis says it best in The Minaret:
A stranger arrived
The Minaret wept
He bought it and topped it with a chimney
(This article appeared on 1st May, Hindustan Times, Mumbai Edition in the HT Cafe).
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Ramu, as always what treat!!So, finally u wrote about the book fair. Could visualise everything u hav written. Made me so nostalgic about the kolkata book fair.so, when r u we going to c the play ?
selin seems to be a spammer
After all the news about the earthquake it caused in France, I had myself a copy of the Atlas of Creation. It is no less than what has been said and written about it. It is good to have such large pictures, everything is so clear to see. What on earth do these evolutionists try to hide? There are fish today, and there were fish 150 million years ago. They should stop this vain attempt. The Atlas of Creation tells everything explicitly.