Tribute

Goodbye, my dear friend

We met in 1965, remember? In the MA English Literature class, taught by many luminaries, among whom the most brilliant were Nissim Ezekiel and Dr RB Patankar. You and Yasmeen Lukmani and I would traipse over to Dr Patankar’s room in the university building at Fort to hang around. That’s what it was. Hanging around, with cups of tea, and Dr Patankar sitting across the table, his fingertips together, and a characteristic half- smile lighting up his face. Often Dr MP Rege dropped in too, and our debates rose to some other level. How we argued. We were allowed to do that in those glorious days when ideas could be freely exchanged and challenged. You once said to me, “I wonder how you would look with your mouth shut.”

I could have said the same to you. We all talked too much, testing our ideas, revelling in new ones that the professors so generously shared. Dr Patankar and Dr Rege both wrote incisive blurbs for your first novel, Saat Sakkam Trechalis.

Years before it was published, you had called me. Come and spend the day at my place you had said. You had sounded secretive. When I arrived, you took me directly to your writing desk. You pulled out the chair for me. You said, “Sit and read this. I’ll give you lunch. Then you can go back to it.” “This” was a sheaf of some hundred pages of Saat Sakkam Trechalis. I’m not sure the title was in place, but everything else was. I was bowled over by what I read. Was it a novel? I didn’t know. You didn’t know. But it showed signs of being one.

Saat Sakkam Trechalis was a tough novel to write and an equally tough one to read. I was teaching at HR College when it was published. You stood outside the staff room door beckoning to me. You were distressed. Nobody had reviewed the book. Could I please? You had already talked to the editor of a mainline daily who had agreed to carry the review. When it was published, Kumar Ketkar wrote a letter to the editor telling us both off for being so “bourgeois” and “out of touch with things that really mattered”. He was at IIT then and an already fullblown or blossoming Marxist.

Years afterwards your cousin Shobha offered to translate the novel. She had already done two drafts. Both had left you dissatisfied. You came to me with the third. For seven days we sat together going through her translation word by word, phrase by phrase. It is a good translation, I said. You sighed the sigh of every author who finds the translation of his work not quite there. But it can’t be Kiran, I argued. Language isn’t a neutral medium. A language brings in its own tonalities. You sighed again, but called it a day. Shobha was taken off the hook, the translation was published and you and Tulsi gave me a lovely doria sari, which I wore for years afterwards.

Those were years when the cultural agencies of Britain, America and Germany held interesting seminars and book discussions. We were invited to one such discussion with the American theatre director and critic Harold Clurman. Mahesh Elkunchwar was also there. The participants were seated in two rings round an oval table. You and I were in the outer ring. In front of us in the inner ring was Pearl Padamsee. In the course of the debate you got very agitated and wanted to have your say. You took a long stride over the inner ring to grab the mike on the table, creating in the process a bit of slapstick comedy, which left everybody bemused. First, in your lunge for the mike, you dropped your chappal in Pearl’s lap and then went on to express yourself at great length in a mumble that nobody understood. Forty years on, I still felt a trifle nervous when you got up to speak at a St Xavier’s College seminar. But I needn’t have worried. For by then you had become an international figure and learnt that the first step to being understood was to open your mouth when you spoke. Your speech that day was brilliant.

Like Dilip Chitre, Arun Kolatkar and many of us back then, you were bilingual. Your next book Ravan and Eddie was in English. Nobody else writing in English could have given us such a consummately tragi-comic view of chawl life. Indo-Anglian writers did not know the Bombay you did, nor did they have your inimitable way of looking at life and its absurdities. No wonder you made it your mission in recent years to fight for the health of the BEST bus service. The BEST bus was uniquely Bombay. Your Bombay.

Your wit was always irreverent, and bawdy to boot. I remember the first reading of your play Bedtime Story at Dr Shreeram Lagoo’s place in Worli. Nothing like it had ever been written for the Marathi stage before. We laughed uproariously. We loved the wit, the crazy ideas, the tremendous scope it would give to directors and actors. But no directors and actors were forthcoming. The Marathi stage, even the experimental variety, tucked its tail firmly between its legs and fled. Did you learn your lesson from that experience? I wish you hadn’t. Because the play you wrote after the destruction of the Babri mosque had neither the delicious surprises nor the wit of the first. Rekha Sabnis put a lot of life into her production of it, but it still didn’t work. I told you so and you were hurt. Even offended. But perhaps I was forgiven when I loved Cuckold and said so in black-and-white.

The last book I read of yours was God’s Little Soldier. It was perhaps your first book to be panned. You were distraught. You asked me to write about it and I did. A book that large might not work as a whole, but might have large chunks that do, illumining the whole. I found many such in the book and wrote about them showing how the novel could be read through them.

After that I lost track of your work. We continued to meet on and off at various events. The last time we met was at Darryl D’Monte’s funeral, in March this year. We grieved over his going and recalled the time when he and I were putting together a special issue of the Times of India devoted to Bombay in commemoration of the newspaper’s sesquicentennial, in 1998. Among the writers we had invited to contribute to the issue was you. You did what only you would have done. You sent us an essay about Mumbai’s lepers. Darryl was horrified. We can’t use that in a celebratory issue he said. I returned the essay to you with great regret. You were not amused.

A #MeToo cloud was hanging over you when we met. I couldn’t pretend it wasn’t there. As a friend I had to hear what you had to say. You didn’t know what had hit you. You defended yourself with conviction. I reached for your hand and held it tight. I am happy that, for once, I allowed the friend rather than the critic in me to respond. The body memory of our clasped hands consoles me now.

Shanta Gokhale is an acclaimed novelist, playwright, translator, critic, columnist and theatre historian.

The above tribute was originally published in The Mumbai Mirror on Saturday, September 7, 2019

 

 

BOOK REVIEW

Battlefield by Vishram Bedekar
A Reader’s View

‘If we’re thinking of Nationalism as revenge, if this becomes rooted in our history as a way of thinking, what becomes of man’s evolution? I shudder to think.’ Vishram Bedekar Battlefield, originally published in Marathi in 1939 as Ranaangan, translated into English by Jerry Pinto.

Europe is on the brink of World War II. Chakradhar Vidhwans is making his way back to India from London after two years of living there and Herta, a Jewish girl is escaping Hitler’s Germany to Shanghai just like thousands of others. A chance encounter between them leads to a whirlwind romance and seeking solace in each other’s arms in the grim times. Will their love last? It is for you to read and find out.

In essence, the quote above gives you the environment in which this book was based in, one that is relevant even today. Bedekar’s ship that the story unfolds on is a battlefield representing all that is going on, on the shores that the ship keeps anchoring itself to time and again. The world is divided—there is race, class, religion, border conflicts and the experiences these characters face on the ship turns out to be the amplification of these very conflicts on ground. Bedekar places a plethora of characters and each of their experiences showcases everything that is wrong with the human world. The book begins at the end of the story and then it goes into reminiscing about how the story ended up at that juncture. Parts of the book to do with the romance specifically do feel very melodramatic and dated like the black and white movie era but I guess it is the language of the times.

It is a slim, quick read and Jerry Pinto’s translation yet again made me feel like I was reading a book written originally in English and not a translation because it felt so seamless. My first reaction to the book was mixed. There were parts that worked for me and informed me and there were parts that felt overtly dated. But then, I attended the digital launch of the book and some facts that were thrown in by the author and translator, Shanta Gokhale, gave me a context to this book and made me see it in a different light.

Some facts that Gokhale shared during this launch conversation were that, this book remains the only novel that Bedekar ever wrote, as he never wanted to be a writer. He wanted to be a filmmaker and was in London studying for the same but had to return midway to India due to WW2. The book partly came from his own experience, his angst and was his commentary on the politics of the times. He wrote the book in a month flat and published it anonymously since he was never interested in making a name as a novelist. In this book he experiments with the forms of the novel—parts written in autobiographical first person, parts written in the third person and parts epistolary. It broke all the conventions of Marathi Literature at the time, one that Gokhale says no one picked up from and experimented further. This remains the only work of its kind from the time.

Another fact that I picked up was that of China giving shelter to over 20,000 Jews in exile during WW2 when most other countries restricted their entry at the time, a historical fact I had no idea about. What piqued my interest was the fact that the European Jews on the ship were headed to Shanghai, a land so far away from their own, one that made me research further on it and know more.

This mix of facts stated above will give you a context as to why this book holds such an important place in the Marathi literary canon and understand its place and subject in-depth.

Jerry Pinto at some point during the book launch conversation mentioned that one would pick up a translation for an author and not because of a translator, but I would humbly disagree with this thought because I, as a reader, follow works of a translator and that’s how I have been introduced to so many great authors I would not have known of otherwise. Jerry Pinto, Arunava Sinha, J. Devika, Jayasree Kalathil, N. Kalyan Raman are just some of the Indian translators whose work I follow and blindly pick up in order to be exposed to the authors they introduce me to as a reader. It is the same practice I follow with some of the International translators as well. Translators are as important to me as the authors they translate. How else would I even access those authors otherwise?

Battlefield by Vishram Bedekar is the first in the list of translations of important Indian language literature that Indian Novels Collective and Speaking Tiger Books plan to bring to the table for English readers.
 

About the blogger
An ex-advertising professional, now a free soul, Tanaya Pandey, loves to travel (pandemic has put a full stop to that for now), read and is an avid movie buff. In an exploratory phase of her life, she uses books as a medium to traverse the country and the globe, learn about newer cultures, stories and expand her worldview. You can reach out to her on her bookstagram handle thekitabiyatri.

Book Extract

As we celebrate our 75th year of Independence, take time out to read an excerpt from Vishram Bedekar’s ‘Ranaangan’

 

As we celebrate our 75th Independence Day today, here’s a Marathi classic which raises burning issues on what it means to be an Indian. Published in 1939, when fascism was on the rise and with World War II on its brink, Ranaangan by Vishram Bedekar was an urgent response of the writer to the politics of the time. Politics when contextualised to today’s times holds a mirror to the intolerance which plagues the country years after its independence. Recently re-translated by Jerry Pinto, here’s an extract from the translation Battlefield published by Speaking Tiger, which finds resonance even today:

That evening, three or four Indians were standing around talking about helping the Jews.

Sahai said mischievously, ‘I think Chakradhar and Madnani should be excused from any collection we make.’

Michael put on his best innocent look and asked, ‘Why? If we collect, we should all contribute.’

Chatterjee took up the baton of badinage. ‘Let’s leave them out. They’re trying to do what they can in their individual capacity.’

Jadhav said, ‘Stop it. Let me make a list. Mandal, you first. How much should I put you down for?’

Yogeshwar Mandal was standing by the railing, looking out to sea. ‘I have no wish to help traitors,’ he said, sharply.

Everyone was startled. Sahai had taken out his fountain pen and he now recapped it and said ironically: ‘You were in Germany for only two years. Was that all the time it took to turn you into a Nazi?’

Mandal replied, ‘You don’t have to be a Nazi to hate traitors.’

Michael shook his head, dismissing Mandal as beyond all help. Chatterjee laughed and said, ‘You seem to have studied Mein Kampf rather well.’

‘It isn’t as if only Hitler says that the Jews destroyed Germany. All the Germans say it.’

‘And how do they say that the Jews managed to do that?’

‘What didn’t they do?’ Mandal demanded. ‘In the last War, it was the Jews who slit Germany’s throat. They sold German war secrets to the enemies. They forced war debt on to the world to keep the War going and grew rich on the interest. It was in Jewish factories that the bombs that rained down on Germany were made. The uniforms they supplied the German army? The boots they made? Stuffed with the bark of trees. They supplied third-rate food grain, unfit for human consumption, to the army. Even the tobacco was sawdust. That their greed was hollowing Germany out meant nothing to them.’

Shinde said quietly: ‘All this can’t be attributed to the Jews alone. The greed for profit is at the basis of all society. Why do you assume that this happened only in the case of Germany? The same things happened in England too. At the time of War, American companies were given many contracts to supply war ordnance. Many of those companies had German capital invested in them. You just spread a rumour that will help you secure the contract. What you said about the food grain? That would have happened in England too. And their uniforms and shoes would have been just as bad.’

Michael joined the fray: ‘Why talk about England and France and Germany? What happened in Hindustan? When the Non- Cooperation Movement was on, weren’t people’s sentiments exploited? Mill cloth was sold as khadi, Japanese cloth was labelled as swadeshi. Wasn’t that dirty business too? Are you going to exterminate all these people?’

Mandal was silent but his eyes were red. In a firm voice, he said, ‘We certainly will. We will remember all those who put their personal agendas before the national interest. And we will take revenge.’

Michael asked irritably: ‘And how many Hindustanis have you met who put nation before self ?’

Mandal’s tone was equally irritable: ‘I know that. I can tell you who sacrifices the good of the nation for selfish motives.’

Mannan sought to add fuel to the flames. ‘Speak out then if you have the courage.’

‘What need for courage? There are enough greedy people among us who claim greater rights because of their minority status. They don’t mind if it means that independence is delayed just so long as they get what they want. That’s the sum of their national philosophy.’

Mannan interrupted vehemently: ‘So you’re suggesting they should be treated as the Jews are treated in Nazi Germany?’

‘They should know that if they don’t come to their senses, they will meet with the same fate, make no mistake,’ said Mandal.

Michael could not take Mandal’s jibes about minorities lightly. ‘Do you know where that will end?’ he asked.

‘I’ll tell you,’ said Mannan. ‘Palestine once belonged to the Jews. Today it belongs to the Arabs. Hindustan also could end up with a differentname.Today the Congress is tormenting the Parsis, the Christians and Muslims so much, it might happen in the next generation.’

Shinde was red with rage. He said to Mannan: ‘Perhaps that name might even be changed. But make no mistake, those who seek to change its name for another, will also die.’

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