Two feminists in my life

A couple of weeks ago my friend Shivani Mutneja, who is also a brilliant poet, wrote this poem on her blog Mock-ethic

Get out girls!

Get out girls!
Get out at unearthly hours.
Get out wearing low cut blouses.
Get out in skirts and shorts.
Get out with friends.
Get out alone.

Get out girls!

Go to pubs, do a few shots,
Go dancing, swing your hips
Go to forts, glide on streets
Go against wisdom.

Wander aimless,
Walk fast,
Walk slow,
Run frantic,
But do not stay at home any longer!
 
Be overt,
Be shy,
Be rude,
Be perverse,
Be sexy,
But do not be afraid any longer!

On streets! on streets!
You are needed on streets!
You are needed in trains!
Get out in large numbers!

Get out girls!

You owe it to those
who were picked,
raped, molested,
undressed.

You owe it to
your hands
and legs
and breasts.

You owe it
to your city-
so get out
Reclaim it!

I loved Shivani's poem. Over and over again, I read of women being attacked and molested in public, and it seems like the only 'reason' behind it, if any, was that they were there. Misogyny is not dead, and feminism has a long way to go. Its not just India - all around the world, conditions are becoming more difficult for women even as the 'feminism has won and women now no longer face any problems in being who they truly want to be' rhetoric gains ground. Women work longer hours in jobs where they are paid less than men, they are discursively framed to seek meaning and validation in romantic relationships and consumer items, they are often left shouldering single families, and excessive sexualisation has made public spaces unsafe, while enabling a corresponding 'get back to your homes and stay safe' intervention rather than 'let us change our public spaces'.

Two days later, Vipul gave me a printout and said that Shivani had added to the poem, and posted an update on Facebook. Here it is:

Get out boys!! 

Get out boys
At dusk or at night
And when the afternoon is bright

Look around with drunken eyes
You surely will find a Girl or two
Or a group of them waiting for you
 To be touched, molested, or laughed at,
And if you have a car, po’er, or banknote
You must not hesitate to use force
How else would you qualify as the
Man of the society of women.

Make sure you tell them firmly
that they need to learn the lessons.
Disclose that it is not you
who is perverse or spineless,
it is they
who are provocative and mindless
and consequently need a reminder of our traditions.

Get out boys!
Be bold and adventurous
Try ganging!
Be funny and capricious
Try recording!
 Be aggressive and contentious
Try tearing!
Be moral and conscientious
Try blaming!

Get out boys!
Don’t you worry
Laws will protect you
Cables will applaud you
Society will hide you
Convention will side you
And when more of you do it more often
No one will keep up.

I loved this version too. And as I discussed it with Vipul, one of the things I said was "There is a lot of anger in the poem - this issue must still anger her, for her to go on adding to her earlier version". The next morning, Vipul told me that he had written the above poem, inspired by Shivani's earlier one. And he had not written it in anger. I got a lot of ribbing about my discussion of the poet's state of mind, but then I believe in the intentional fallacy - it is erroneous to judge a text by the intention of the creator.

As I pointed out to him, Barthes argued that the reader creates their own text, and in that sense the author is dead after creating the text, so I still stand by my interpretation. I still see anger in both the poems, and I for one am glad to see it. In fact, Vipul's poem is more pessimistic than Shivani's - she talks about reclaiming the streets and the city, whereas his ends on a note wherein nothing is going to change. Both poems encourage me to keep thinking about issues, and getting worked up over them. I'm thankful to have these two feminists in my life, as I am thankful for all the people I know who care deeply and get worked up over things.

Incidentally, he has time to write poems when he is in the university, and does not have time to do my proof-reading? Now that's even better cause for anger!

Creating narratives of Creation

“In this old world, there is nothing new but ourselves”

I was saddened to read of the death of Gore Vidal last week. It is difficult to know exactly what to say when one reads of the death of someone one is only just discovering through his work, except that the usual platitudes sound silly. I’ve started reading his 'Narratives of Empire' series, and they offer a fascinating insight, not just into American history, but into historiography, and the way in which a nation comes into being, which give me all sorts of interesting ideas about my work.

The line above is from Creation by Gore Vidal, that was my first introduction to his work. The ‘old world’ quoted in the line above is the world of the 5th Century BCE, and the speaker rues that everything that can be thought, said, imagined or invented, has already been done so. While this may make twenty-first century reader feel suitably superior to the naïve fifth century narrator, who does not yet know how many new things are yet to be discovered by this old world, it is equally true that by this time certain questions have been asked and certain issues have been raised that, across the centuries, we have returned to rather than invented anew, such as questions about human society, religion and the meaning of human existence.

The book follows the travails and travels of Cyrus Spitama, grandson of Zoroaster, the founder of Zoroastrianism. As ambassador of the Great King Darius, Cyrus travels to ‘East’, i.e. to certain kingdoms of present-day India, and to ‘East of the East’, i.e. to Cathay. Both diplomat and religious seeker, in India Cyrus converses with Mahavira, the 24th Tirathankar of Jainism, with Gosala, the founder of the Ajivika movement and with Buddha, the founder of Buddhism. In Cathay, he learns from Master Li, founder of Taoism and from Confucius, founder of Confucianism. I discovered to my surprise that this is historically possible - most of these thinkers were contemporaries, and the German philosopher Karl Jaspers has referred to this age as an 'Axial age', a moment in time when certain philosophies and religious ways of thinking came into being that influenced entire civilizations.

Cyrus' conversations with the people he meets frequently return to two motifs: creation, i.e. “how did the world come into being?” and on annihilation, i.e. “what happens after death?” The different cultures that he encounters have developed their own answers to these questions, their own narratives – tales of many gods, of one god, of cycles of births and re-births, and of ancestors. All the co-existing cultures in Creation, whether they be Persian, Buddhist, Jain, Tao, Confucian or Greek, are charmingly convinced of the superiority of their own narratives and dismissive or indulgent of the narratives of others. What are stories of gods to those who think of this life as but one of many cycles?

As a Zoroastrian, Cyrus believes in and follows Ahura Mazdah, the Wise Lord, as the one true God, opposed to the old Aryan gods, the ‘false gods’ worshipped by quite a few of his Persian contemporaries. In a universally pantheistic paradigm, Zoroastrianism is the only nascent monotheistic religion. As such, the religious opinions that Cyrus voices are the closest that we get to a ‘modern’ monotheistic ideal of the divine, and that too as an upstart contender rather than as the dominant paradigm. Eastern conceptions of the divine comprise ideas of circularity, dispensing with the idea of a definite beginning and an end, and they regularly dismiss Cyrus’ beliefs as juvenile manifestations that their philosophies have already left behind. The text suggests that Cyrus’ sense of certainty in definite and knowable good and evil, and in linearity, is shaken by his eastern encounters, and by their questioning of his ideas.

Gore Vidal by Van Vechten Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, [reproduction number LC-USZ62-103965 DLC], image courtesy wikimedia commons http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/GoreVidalVanVechten1.jpg

Creation constantly plays with history and historiography. The novel begins with the now old and blind Cyrus holding the perilous position of Persian ambassador to Athens. Cyrus’ age and recent blindness allow him to function as a wise and prophetic seer-like narrator, a suggestion heightened by the anecdotal recollection of his having been the only witness to a vision of the Wise Lord at the death of Zoroaster. At the same time, Cyrus is an unreliable narrator. He narrates his life story in flash back as a corrective to a public recital of the Persian wars by ‘a self-styled historian’, the Greek Herodotus. Cyrus’ account is motivated by the desire to provide a counter-history to the Greek version, and to show the Greeks how insignificant they are in the grander scheme of things. Thus, his autobiographical narrative is a fashioning both of himself and of the Persian Empire, a self-conscious attempt ‘to set the record straight’ against the Greek telling of the tale.

This also arguably makes Creation post-Orientalist. At the beginning of Orientalism, Said identifies Aeschylus’ The Persians, ‘the earliest Athenian play extant’, along with The Bachchae of Euripedes, as marking the inaugural moments of the discourse of Orientalism, a discourse that sets up a hierarchy of the West’s superiority over the non-West. Creation is not post-Orientalist because of its temporal or geographical settings. Setting a text in the 5th Century BCE or in the Persian Empire rarely means the absence of Orientalism. If anything, it usually indicates otherwise – most ‘historical fiction’ can be remarkably Orientalist in the way in which in recreates the Orient and the West for modern consumption. What makes Creation post-Orientalist is that it renders a world wherein Greek culture is just one among the various contemporary ways of being in the world. Creation imagines an Orient without positing the West as a superior reference point, and in refusing that hierarchy, becomes post-Orientalist.

Creation is neither a counter-history nor an anti-history, i.e. history written from a subaltern or alternative point of view. Instead, it is a historiographical history. That is, it is a narration of events that does not distinguish between “events” and “the narration of events”, that does not represent reality as existing outside of and prior to the narration of it. The events are constituted within the act of narration itself, i.e. various narratives of different kinds, both mainstream and marginal, together discursively constitute the reality of the world being described. It is not a static medieval period, with all the labels that we retrospectively attach to it, but a dynamic living and breathing history that confronts us. For example, a series of wars are referred to as ‘the Greek wars’ or ‘the Persian wars’, depending on who is doing the telling. How is one to tell the more ‘accurate’ term? Creation constantly highlights the process of narrativization at work in all matters – personal, political and religious. What we label ‘philosophy’, ‘religion’ and ‘storytelling’ flow into and merge with each other. Whether it be Zoroaster, Confucius or Buddha, none enjoys the luxury of unmediated enunciation; there are always interpretations, oral and written, by disciplines, devotees, students, observers and so on.

Creation has so many layers that it is possible to unpack it endlessly, making a book that one can return to over and over again. Even as Creation reinforces the futility of expecting original enunciation, I wish to give Gore Vidal unmediated last words here: “The first principles of the universe are atoms and empty space; everything else is merely human thought”.

Note: This blog first appeared as an MnM Commentary here. Creation is available for purchase here internationally and here in India.

Homosocial spaces in Cocktail

Spoiler alert: the following is a discussion of the film, and as such refers to the plot in detail.

Cocktail has been criticised in the Indian blogsphere and social media for reinforcing the very stereotypes that it sets out to challenge - namely that the good Indian girl is always better than the Westernised/modern Indian girl. The most articulate of these criticisms was Shoma Chaudhary's opinion piece in Tehelka, available here. I do not disagree with these opinions, and am aware that the film's core choice is misogynistic. At the same time, I had guessed the story more or less accurately from the trailers, and did not expect the film to be any different from what it was. Perhaps that was why I was pleasantly surprised by the strong homosocial moments of the film, and its emphasis on homosocial relationships, i.e. on same-sex friendships.

In most discursive frameworks, whether it be Bollywood or Hollywood films, all other relationships are subordinated to the heterosexual relationship. Love, therefore, has to then carry the burden of having to be the most significant and the most sustaining of all relationships. Perhaps love should sue - it is overhyped, oversold, overworked and more is demanded of it than it could possibly deliver. Friendships, on the other hand, are recast as the new family. As the family that you choose yourself, it is assumed that the idiosyncrasies of the family are herein erased. Through generations of American sitcoms, (Seinfeld, Friends, How I Met Your Mother and so on) we have learnt that friends are those who will help you laugh when parents drive you mad. Both love and friendship are then cast in comfortable slots, with clear places in the hierarchy - love comes first, friendship second. Family may come third. Any kind of social commitment to other people or to an ideal - er, when did that have to be on any list?

To return to Cocktail, it is Veronica who does what the hero usually does, and 'rescues' Meera in her hour of need. The two of them become friends and support systems for each other, and in that sense it is almost their story rather than a romantic one, since the man, though he has made an irritating appearance, is not yet significant to either of them. Even after he enters their space (both figuratively, by becoming involved with Veronica, and literally, by moving in with them), he is not immediately the most important. In a significant scene, Meera suggests that she should move out, leaving the couple alone together. Veronica asks her not to do so. She points out that men will come and go, but when they go, it will be her friend who she will need. At that point, she also says "You've turned that house into a home." Its a testament to how important friendships can be, and a nod to the many more things that they could be.

The Westernised girl has always existed to be rejected and sacrificed, but most narratives give this rejection a token "smiling with tears in eyes/is crying but hiding it in front of the hero" shot. What stands out in Cocktail is the amount of time the story gives to Veronica after the rejection, instead of summarily dismissing her narrative as done. After Gautam and Meera, improbably, fall in true love with each other, the film focuses on Veronica's sense of betrayal, pain, and self-loathing and, to a lesser extent, on Meera's guilt for having caused her friend that pain. Meera is quite clear that the reason she cannot be with Gautam is because her friend loves him. And the film cannot reach the traditional 'happy ending' until amends have been made to Veronica, until she intervenes to show Meera that she is all right with their relationship. This could be interpreted as Meera being the good Indian girl, but I would argue that it is also about moral responsibility, about acknowledging one's role in causing pain to another, about being answerable not just to your friendships but to yourself. The weakest person in the film, morally speaking, is Gautam, because he initially looks after Veronica at Meera's behest, and only then gradually seems to grow into it. He may be the source of love, but he is not the source of strength for either of the two women - both find their strength from within themselves. Ironically, they assert this strength through the same gesture - of rejecting Gautam.

This is why, for all its flaws, I thought that Cocktail had more to offer than is generally suggested. It is what happens in the interstices of the main plot that is open to alternative readings, and to possibilities suggested by such readings.

Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle: she killed young

I love drama/melodrama. From drama and novels to cinema and television, all is grist to my mill. One of my favourite genres is the Victorian novel, the great age of British realism of the 19th century. One sub-genre of Victorian fiction is the novel of sensation, which, as the title suggests, are novels that depend on violent twists of the imagination for gratification. Novels of sensation are closely allied to Gothic fiction, and tend to involve a fragile, vulnerable and innocent female protagonist, subject to a sinister conspiracy to defraud her of her fortune, her virtue or both.

I recently read Lady Audley's Secret, available here as an e-book, by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, which turned out to be a delightful read. It turns most of the conventions of the genre on its head. Golden haired, blue-eyed, and poor to boot, Lucy Graham is definitely the right character, employed in service as a governess, with nothing known of her past. How much more vulnerable could the central character get? When she is rescued from poverty and servitude by Sir Michael Audley, one just knows that some dreadful secret from her past is just waiting to be found, making her susceptible to blackmail and whatnot. The secret is revealed to the reader pretty soon, and at this point in the book I thought I knew exactly what would happen next and how.

And this is where the book takes you by surprise. It takes a startling turn, and the fragile Lady Audley may, or may not, have committed a dreadful crime. If this were a silent film, this is how the captions would go: "Has she done it? So child-like, so innocent. Could she have done it? Is it not even a crime to think this of her, so pure in every way?" The rest of the book is about one man's journey to find the truth, to find out if Lady Audley is who she appears to be, or not. The conventions of the sensation novel are there: the female victim pursued by a male figure who slowly hunts down a 'chain of evidence' against her, even as she races against him to prevent his being successful and having any kind of power over her. Except that in this case the female figure in question may be (or may not be!) as much hunter as hunted, as it were.

The novel maintains a distance from Lady Audley, and the reader does not really get to know her. This is necessary, of course, to maintain ambiguity. For a good part of the book, the scenes she appears in describe the material possessions surrounding her in great detail - jewelry, ivory-backed hand brushes, gilded baskets of hothouse flowers, Indian tea-caddies of sandalwood and silver, perfume, shimmering satin and diapahnous lace - the various frivolous trinkets that she has amassed after her marriage. It seems done obviously to create distaste for her opulence, but can be read ironically too. She is open to suspicion because she has so much to lose - she is punished for marrying a rich man, punished for valuing and wanting all these pretty baubles, punished for not being able to say 'no' to him and to them. It is a universe where it is perfectly acceptable to have these things as long as you do not covet them or transcend your station to obtain them. As Tania Modleski points out in Loving with A Vengeance: Mass Produced Fantasies for Women, the paradox of all romantic drama, from Jane Austen onwards, is that the heroine is eligible to marry the rich man only if she does not actually care for his wealth. Woe betide her if she knows exactly how much he is worth!