Inside the novel factory

A version of this was in Outlook

For over half a century, the ‘Gulf’ has been Eldorado for the people of South Asia, particularly Kerala. As the narrator in Al Arabian Novel Factory reflects, “God blesses some small Arab country with petrol dollars. And then a tiny sliver of land far away gets to enjoy some of those blessings… There was a long and lonely road between the two lands, and it could tell many stories of sacrifice.

It is these stories of sacrifice, toil, humiliation, deprivation, loneliness, despair and alienation of the ‘Gulf Malayali’, and the wider immigrant community, that Benny Daniel — who writes as Benyamin — chronicles in much of his writing.

Over the years, especially in Malayalam, there have been books and films on the Gulf immigrant experience. But few of these capture the granular details of immigrant life in the region with authenticity. And it’s these granular details that Benyamin writes about with authority, perhaps because he was, himself, a Gulf Malayali for over two decades.

With almost a score of books across genres to his name, Benyamin explores a world that is familiar to Kerala, but also alien, especially the darker side of that world. He received widespread recognition with his award-winning 2008 Malayalam novel Aadujeevitham, translated into English as Goat Days, and soon to be a Malayalam film. Since then, he’s returned regularly to his known turf  — facets of immigrant life in the Gulf and the complicated relationships that entwine the locals and the ‘guest’ workers who keep Arab nations ticking.

At first glance, Al Arabian Novel Factory seems to have a simple narrative. Pratap, an Indian-Canadian journalist, travels to a West Asian country known only as the ‘City’, ruled by an authoritarian regime. He’s ostensibly there to helm a research project. But his real objective is to reconnect with Jasmine, his onetime lover, who lives in the City and is an elusive but constant presence through the book. In the City, his life tangles with the lives of his team members and also with the tortuous journey of A Spring Without Fragrance, a mysterious manuscript written by Sameera Parvin, a radio jockey who once lived there.

But appearances can be deceptive: Though a standalone novel, Al Arabian Novel Factory is also a companion volume to Benyamin’s Jasmine Days (Mullappoo Niramulla Pakalukal in Malayalam). Positioned as Jasmine Days’ sequel, it could just as easily be a ‘prequel-sequel’ hybrid. So intensely interwoven are the narrative strands and devices that connect the books that it does get a little convoluted at times.

Both novels though, are set against the backdrop of the Arab Spring, with this one focusing on the period immediately after. It captures the immigrant experience, but the immigrant here is mostly the comfortably off one. The sort who sings praise songs for the City’s despotic ruler while hosting a workshop on ‘socialism-driven freedom in Kerala’; the immigrant who is a ‘socialist’ at heart, but lives a capitalist life. 

Translated from the Malayalam by Shahnaz Habib, the book also tackles other themes including freedom of speech, thought and action; minority rights; and women’s rights. And looming over everything that happens is the all-seeing City, a character in itself. Habib’s translation is always competent and occasionally exquisite, capturing the nuances and cadences of the original; I must confess that I could occasionally visualise the original Malayalam line as I read the English version.

Sometimes, in factories, things can go out of kilter and so do things in this novel factory — not seriously awry, though. The narrative tends to meander occasionally. Also puzzling are some sections, particularly those in which Pratap behaves somewhat naively despite his journalistic experience. You could attribute it to the pangs of love, but one method he explores to trace Jasmine is far-fetched, stupid even, if not downright dangerous. Perhaps it was intended as a narrative device, but it seemed rather off. 

What is disconcerting is the depiction of some female characters. They’re portrayed as unaware of and uninterested in little beyond their immediate surroundings and passions. Knowing the many informed, opinionated and worldly-wise women around us, even among the demographics presented in the novel, this characterisation seems baffling. This, even as several male characters, at times, appear misogynistic.

Perhaps, it is all a pointer towards one of the book’s takeaways — that we are all flawed beings. Or that glittering facades often hide messy secrets and disguise dreary, grasping lives where self-interest reigns supreme. As Pratap says: “I have always been curious about the City, how it rose out of dust like an enchanted land in a fairy tale.” More than anything else, Al Arabian Novel Factory reminds us that there are no fairy tales.

Exiting the lockdown

A version of this article was in Outlook’s online edition in early April. This piece was written in collaboration with Dr M.I. Sahadulla, Chairman and Managing Director, KIMS Healthcare Group and the author of Vital Signs: Reflections on a Life in Medicine and Management.

Pandemics are not particularly new. In fact, Covid-19 is simply the latest in a long line of pandemics. But this one has a rather modern streak. For the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19 has used the connectedness of our globalised world to spread. And spread with such speed and stealth, that containment — keeping the virus out — has proved to be almost impossible.

Clouds of uncertainty, but rays of hope in the distance...

Most nations have largely turned to variations of a shutdown — what Singapore’s Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, evocatively called “a circuit breaker” — to reduce the spread of Covid-19. The intention behind these shutdowns is to try and prevent, or at least curtail, the spread of the virus by limiting social interactions. This is because social interaction typically influences the rate at which a pandemic, especially a respiratory virus pandemic, spreads.

In India, the 21-day shutdown that began at midnight on 24 March has involved closing workplaces, shutting most public transport systems, shutting educational institutions, severely curtailing movements and gatherings of people and asking everyone to stay at home. But effectively implementing a shutdown in a country of over 1.2 billion people, from diverse socio-economic conditions, comes with its own set of challenges. Overcoming these challenges calls for coordinated, empathetic action by governments across the country, even as we throw everything we have at controlling the virus.

Yet, we also need to think about the future — not just medium or long term, but also the next few weeks and months. We need an exit strategy or post-shutdown plan that protects our wellbeing even as it bolsters our economy. Here are some options to consider:

Continue mobilising public health resources: Over the coming weeks — during the lockdown and even after it’s eased — we must use all our public health resources, including more testing, to curtail the spread of Covid-19 and ensure that the infection rate stays very low. At the same time, we need to recognise that the virus could probably linger in pockets for some time to come. Therefore, we must be part of the global effort to develop preventive vaccines or medicines that treat Covid-19. 

Launch a massive education campaign: It’s not easy to change our behaviour in the best of times. But at this moment, behavioural changes such as adopting basic hygiene practices or staying away from one another are vital to control the spread of Covid-19. Of course, given the conditions that large sections of our population live in, adopting these practices isn’t easy; so we need to create alternatives where possible. But adopt them we must.

This is why we need to invest more in campaigns to advocate responsible practices — cleaning hands, physical distancing from other people, staying at home when asked to and so on. Such behaviour needs to become second nature; something we all do on our own, without any coercion. While governments have already launched such campaigns fronted by celebrities, perhaps it’s time we considered innovative options including applying behavioural insights to these initiatives.  

Gradual easing of the shutdown: India’s national lockdown is scheduled to end on 14 April. Even if all goes well and the number of Covid-19 cases in the country stays relatively low, it makes better sense for the government to lift restrictions only gradually and cautiously. This is important to ensure there is no immediate resurgence of the virus from increased social interactions.

Controlled resumption of economic activity: The pandemic’s impact on the global economy is already being felt. Some of us can work from home. But India has millions of people who do not have that option. So in the weeks ahead, it’s important to consider ‘reopening’ key sectors of the economy ­—with strict physical distancing, hygiene norms and other controls in place. This reopening has to be carefully planned and even more carefully executed.

Make public health a focus area: Any investment in public health helps to prevent diseases and leads to the improved overall health of the population. But in India, healthcare, and public health in particular, has not received the governmental attention and financial support it merits. This must change immediately. India needs to view public health not as crisis management, but as a long-term priority.

We also need to make the ‘one health’ approach an integral part of our public health strategy. This involves recognising that our health is connected to the health of animals, plants and the environment that we all share. It, therefore, emphasises that efforts to prevent disease should focus not just on human, but also on animal, plant and environmental health. We really can’t afford to ignore this idea, given that SARS-CoV-2 is believed to have animal origins.

Pay special attention to mental health: The upheavals caused by Covid-19 are affecting every aspect of our lives. All of us are, understandably, beset by worries about money and about our own health and that of our loved ones. Bereft of our usual coping mechanisms such as social gatherings or even regular work routines, this anxiety could very easily spiral into mental health issues. So we need to allocate resources to mental wellness programmes.

Portrait of a servant leader

A version of this was in Outlook

In the final weeks of 2019, as protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act swept India, I found myself wondering how Lal Bahadur Shastri would have managed the situation. Would it have been a muscular, combative, shape shifting response or would it have been considered, inclusive and humane, geared towards reconciling differing perspectives. Chances are it would have been the latter. For Sandeep Shastri’s new book, Lal Bahadur Shastri: Politics and Beyond, quotes India’s second Prime Minister as saying: “I can carry everyone along with me. That is much better… This approach may delay decisions a little, but that does not bother me at all. It is a price worth paying.
”Positioned as an attempt to assess Shastri’s political career and legacy, the book is fuelled by the author’s conviction that the former Prime Minister has not received his due. And that it is a disservice to India if leaders like him are not given their rightful place in the national narrative. The author possibly has a point when he declares that Shastri, unlike some of his contemporaries, does not capture the Indian imagination. While some of his contributions, including his decisive leadership in the 1965 war against Pakistan, the Tashkent Declaration of 1966 and the evocative ‘jai jawan, jai kisan’ slogan are occasionally referred to, their true worth is seldom recognised in the country.

A political scientist, writer and political commentator, Sandeep Shastri is currently the Pro Vice Chancellor of Jain University and Director of its Centre for Research in Social Sciences and Education. In his introduction to the book, he writes that he has long been fascinated by Shastri’s leadership.
Shastri was — as Sandeep shows, drawing on newspaper articles and books — a leader cast in a different mould, with an unshakable faith in democracy and the importance of individual freedom. Humility, sincerity and inclusiveness were his hallmark, as was a belief in secularism and the fundamental goodness of all religions.

Shastri’s approach to solving problems and making decisions was to calmly consider and understand all points of view, before arriving at a resolution based on consultation and consensus. He chose his words carefully and spoke in simple language, with no hyperbole, no theatrics. He possessed the rare ability to bring people together, rather than divide them. And as Sandeep emphasises, Shastri was known for his strong personal integrity and high ethical standards. Not for him, the trappings of power for he viewed them as a sign of arrogance.
This, of course, isn’t to say that Shastri was naive or untutored in the intricacies of politics. But as the book explains, the challenges of his early years, including the death of his father, ensured that he was grounded, down to earth and rooted in Indian realities. This shaped his values and vision and laid the foundation for his later years as a leader.
As I travelled with Shastri, from his early years in Mughalsarai to his sudden death in 1966 — about which doubts still linger — I often found myself wondering where the book’s editor had disappeared. For one, there’s too much repetition; Shastri’s qualities are hammered into the reader’s mind when a few deft taps would have been enough. Then, there are issues of syntax, typos and a couple of factual errors. There is, for instance, on page 76 a reference to “Madras state (now Chennai),” which is incorrect. For Madras state became Tamil Nadu, while it’s the city of Madras that is “now Chennai.”
Such wrinkles apart, Lal Bahadur Shastri: Politics and Beyond certainly adds to existing literature on this unassuming leader. It throws up interesting nuggets of information about Shastri and about the times he lived in; details that may not quite figure in our collective consciousness today. For instance, his rather contemporary perspective on business and its ‘social responsibility’ from a speech delivered in 1965, in which he said that businessmen had an “even greater role than that of an economist and the politician. Too often, the community views the businessman’s aim as selfish gain… (That) impression can be removed only when (a) business becomes fully alive to its social responsibilities.”
The book, in a sense, distils the essence of Shastri’s qualities as a leader and a human. Reading its final section, on his legacy, I was struck by how much he resembles the present-day idea of a ‘servant leader’ anchored in ideas of compassion, passion, equality, inclusivity and consultation. Shastri’s approach to life and leadership was not about flamboyance, wordplay or spin, but centred on humility, earnestness and a commitment to principles. It is a reminder that leadership does not always have to be of the ‘in your face’ variety and that nice people can also be great leaders.
Admittedly, Shastri lived in a different India but perhaps India itself would have been a different place had he lived longer. We can but wonder.

Understanding strangers

A version of this was in Outlook

We live in what’s often described as the digital age. When technology is supposed to be transforming lives and bringing people together. And perhaps it does. Yet, we still tend to see the stranger as the ‘other’, the bogeyman we must fear. So why is it that humans, despite the ‘advances’ we have made and the technology we have at our fingertips, are so bad at understanding other humans, especially those we do not know.

This is the question that Malcolm Gladwell tackles in his new book, Talking to Strangers:  What We Should Know about the People We Don’t Know. In its search for answers, the book — Gladwell’s sixth and first in six years — engages with some deeply disturbing issues such as race and its ties to police misconduct; gender and campus rape; and the sexual assault of children. 

Central to the narrative, and perhaps what triggered the idea for the book, is the tragic story of Sandra Bland. In July 2015, the 28-year-old African-American woman was found hanging in her jail cell after she was detained following a traffic offence. As Gladwell writes: “Talking to Strangers is an attempt to understand what really happened by the side of the highway that day in rural Texas.”

A staff writer at The New Yorker, Gladwell is the author of bestsellers such as The Tipping Point and Outliers and co-founder of the company that produces the Revisionist History podcasts.

His articles and books typically meld pop science, psychology, arresting insights drawn from academic research in the social sciences and anecdotes with elegant writing to arrive at intriguing hypotheses. And whether it is his writing or his public speaking engagements, Gladwell is most often giving a performance. And this book is no different, with writing that is mostly understated but lucid and a bazaar of anecdotes — from Sandra Bland’s death to the encounter between Aztec ruler Montezuma II and Spanish Conquistador Hernan Cortes, from Sylvia Plath’s suicide to Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme and the Friends television series. And there are some extremely Tweetable lines such as, “Alcohol isn’t an agent of revelation. It is an agent of transformation.”

In 1938, with the threat of war looming over Europe, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain did what few world leaders had done; he went to Germany to meet Adolf Hitler. Across three meetings, he looked the German leader in the eye and spoke to him for hours. And when Hitler said that the only part of Europe he wanted was the Sudetenland, Chamberlain believed him. As he later wrote to his sister: “… I got the impression that here was a man who could be relied upon when he had given his word.”

However, others like Winston Churchill, who had never met Hitler, firmly believed that he was a “duplicitous thug.” And as subsequent events demonstrated, the people who’d never met Hitler or spent time with him were the ones who got it right.

So why is it that people who are reasonably intelligent and worldly-wise end up being deceived and unable to understand people they do not know?

One possible explanation, Gladwell believes, is our tendency to “default to truth”; our assumption that the people we deal with are honest. There’s also the “illusion of transparency”, the idea that the way people appear and behave is a reflection of what they feel on the inside; that conduct and appearance offer us a window into the stranger’s soul. And on top of these, Gladwell suggests that we do not ‘get’ strangers because of the absence of “coupling”, the idea that behaviour can be linked to very specific circumstances and conditions.

Therefore, what should we do to read strangers correctly? This is an especially relevant question at a time when the world over, trust in leaders and public institutions is under tremendous strain and the ‘other’ is blamed for the world’s ills.     

Disappointingly, Gladwell offers no real solutions. All he recommends is, “We should also accept the limits of our ability to decipher strangers… What is required of us is restraint and humility… There are clues to making sense of a stranger. But attending to them requires care and attention.” But he doesn’t quite spell out how we could do this.

Also, Gladwell’s anecdotes and the research that underpins his theories are drawn almost exclusively from the west. While some of these ideas are, possibly, universal and could be applied across cultures, it seems the book is essentially about ‘talking to strangers in the US’.

Of course, this isn’t to say that Talking to Strangers isn’t thought provoking. Some of the insights thrown up by the research Gladwell draws on are fascinating, as are some of the entries in the notes section and the pointers they offer people interested in the social sciences. But if you’re expecting a revelation, don’t quite hold your breath.

Journeys with AK Ramanujan

A version of this was in Outlook

Fascinating and illuminating. These are the words that come to mind even as I’m just about a quarter-way through Journeys: A Poet’s Diary by A.K. Ramanujan, and edited by Krishna Ramanujan and Guillermo Rodriguez. Fascinating, because reading this book is almost like watching a live-stream from within a creative, brilliant mind, seeing thoughts as they form and evolve or dissipate. Illuminating, because it offers tantalising glimpses of the author's inner world while also reinforcing, as it were, that our humanity is shared; that genius or not, labourer or scholar, the things we worry about, obsess over and obtain joy from are largely the same.

Pioneering poet, translator, folklorist, essayist and scholar. For the past five-odd decades Ramanujan has been all these, but also a beacon for India’s literary community. Growing up in Mysore, he taught English literature in colleges across southern India before traveling to the US in his early 30s as a Fulbright Scholar, going on to pursue a career as an academic at the University of Chicago.

He wrote in Kannada and English and translated, primarily, from Tamil and Kannada into English. During his lifetime, he published several poetry collections in English and Kannada, translations of ancient Tamil poetry and medieval Kannada poetry and a translation of U.R. Ananthamurthy’s Samskara, besides editing a collection of folk tales from across India. Recognition for his work includes a Padma Shri and a MacArthur Fellowship. 

 Ironically, as the book reveals, despite his significant accomplishments, Ramanujan seems to have been ridden with self-doubt and existential angst through much of his adult life. It is fascinating to see how someone who was so prolific and, dare I say, successful, write in 1978, “Feel imprisoned in the role of teacher/writer – the former comes easier than the latter.” Or — heartbreakingly — write after winning the MacArthur Fellowship, “One also wishes that with the money came also a package of more talent, intelligence.”

There’s also an often expressed yearning to belong, beset in equal measure by the desire to be different. As he writes in an early version of the poem ‘Self-portrait’, published in his first collection The Striders:

“I resemble everyone

but myself,

and sometimes see

in mirrors

the portrait of a stranger,

date unknown,

despite the well-known laws

of optics.”

But it’s not as if Ramanujan was unaware of his self-doubt and dissatisfaction and also, perhaps, how baffling it was. As he writes in March 1989, “Though I’ve been amply rewarded and befriended, was never truly poor, lonely, or worked in places or with people that didn’t appreciate me… Yet why did I feel miserable, as I’ve done all through these years, while all along I worked very well, read and wrote, had friends?”

Ramanujan possibly never expected others to be reading his journal and encounter his innermost thoughts. But it is these intimate thoughts — the self-doubt; the search for meaning, purpose, acceptance and acclaim; the creative process; and so on — that humanise this literary colossus and help us relate to him as a human being. And that, I believe, is the book’s primary success.  

With an affectionate foreword by Girish Karnad, who knew the writer as a mentor and friend, and introductions by the two editors, one of whom is Ramanujan’s son, Journeys is an eclectic selection; not just in terms of form, but also in terms of the emotions explored and ideas expressed. Based on the A.K. Ramanujan Papers maintained in the University of Chicago, it covers the writer’s life from the mid-1940s to the weeks before his death in July 1993.

The book includes unpublished prose including diaries, journals, dreams, short stories; unpublished poetry ranging from experimental lines and rough drafts to revised and polished drafts; and published poems, in an effort to show how Ramanujan worked and how his ideas led to finished poems. As Rodriguez writes in his introduction, it “brings together for the first time a selection of the unpublished diaries and journals that trace a journey - in his own voice – as a writer and poet, and his maturing as a unique intellectual luminary.”  

Understandably, poetry is a constant. A thread that runs through the book. There are familiar, published, poems like ‘The Striders’ from his eponymously titled book or ‘Extended Family’ from Second Sight. But there is equally powerful unpublished work such as the ‘Soma’ series believed to have been inspired by Ramanujan’s mescaline encounter or the 1978 draft of the ‘Alvar poem’ or these lines from ‘A First Flight to New York’:

“… New York – lines of fire, like

an electric heater and

green dot configurations –

vast – oceans of stars of

red yellow green, sparse,

clustered and guided into

lines, with caravans

slowing through them -

gradually plotted into

squares – as if somebody’s

nerve impulses were diagrammed

and translated into flickers

and paths and ganglions -…”

Translation, Ramanujan’s other major contribution to literature, is also a presence through the book, perhaps a slightly muted presence though. Possibly the most thought-provoking section on translation is an October 1992 entry, filled with striking thoughts such as, “Each translation creates an original; supplants and extends and often subverts what is in in another language.”

As its name implies, the book is also about Ramanujan’s journeys, some internal and some external. And compelling as they are, the internal journeys are sometimes eclipsed by the external expeditions. 

Even before we get to the formal section called ‘The journey’, Ramanujan’s journal entries on his travel within India are entertaining. But it is in ‘notes towards a journal: The journey’, a typed, unpublished document; the travel diary that covers his voyage from India to the US; and the section on his first weeks in the US that his writing is at its most delightful.

In these pages, he is a keen observer with an eye for detail, humorous (sometimes wickedly so) and filled with curiosity about the world around. And there is the ever-present poetry. The ability to make pictures with words, like this passage from his time in Paris: “The sun-tanned man in deep blue jersey and fawn corduroys standing before a huge modern painting and fitting into the quilt-work composition as if he were born for that moment, to stand before that piece which was born with a gap in the composition.” The writing here is perhaps not just an exploration of new places, cuisines, experiences, cultures and ways of thinking, but also an attempt by Ramanujan to find and situate himself in this new world.  

Expectedly, thoughts on writing as a discipline come up through the book. From the universal writerly gripe on the eternal search for new ideas, to more structured thoughts on writing, Ramanujan’s views are occasionally challenging but always stimulating. Like the conviction that writing and re-writing are part of the same process or that creation and self-criticism are not opposites. 

Even as Ramanujan’s writing sparkles, what adds additional zing to this book are the photographs scattered through it. They’re also the source of my sole quibble — some captions are tough to read for they’re in colours that bleed into the black and white images. 

What makes Journeys: A Poet’s Diary truly remarkable is that it is, in a sense, Ramanujan with few filters, for which his family must be appreciated. Equally, the book matters because it traces the author’s course through life, as his thoughts and writing evolve even as the person himself seems to stay relatively unchanged. It offers readers a tasting menu of his potent writing, especially his poetry, and flashes of the even more compelling ideas and thinking that crafted this writing. This is a book as much for first-time readers as it is for those who are familiar with Ramanujan’s work.