Sadanand Menon: The death of honesty

CRITICALLY INCLINED

Ironically, Mahatma Gandhi's autobiography, My Experiments With Truth (Navjivan Trust, 1927), must be the last genuinely truthful work of its kind in India. Truth, in particular, seems the first casualty when artists choose to write about themselves.

Why do Indian artists write such abysmal autobiographies? Having just chafed my way through an impossibly banal and useless effort by actor/dancer Vyjayantimala Bali, which literally tells us nothing about the inner motivations of Indian cinema and even less about the complexities implicit in the practice of classical dance in a modernising society, I have slipped into an uncharacteristic depression.

What is it, I worry, that blocks Indian artists from honestly reflecting on the experiences in their life and art to produce a few distilled thoughts that can provide insights or illuminate a moment?

Then you remember the classic autobiographies of Charlie Chaplin, Isadora Duncan, Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky, Antonin Artaud, Akira Kurosawa and Pablo Neruda. Each, a masterpiece, sucking you into the vortex of its times, the intersection of the personal and the historical, the engagement with ideas, the manner in which each individual genius processes and translates available artistic material and transforms it for the public sphere. Actors, directors, writers, painters, dancers "" all communicating an exciting sense of pensive turmoil, while grappling with the mystery of their own location and journey in, and through, time.

Then you pick up Vyjayantimala's Bonding. A Memoir (Sterling, 2007) or Ravi Shankar's autobiography Raga Mala (Welcome Rain, 1999) or Sivaji Ganesan's just released Autobiography of an Actor (Sivaji Prabhu Charities Trust, 2007) or Dev Anand's just released Romancing With Life (Penguin, 2007) or Mrinalini Sarabhai's The Voice of the Heart (HarperCollins, 2006) or Yamini Krishnamurthi's A Passion for Dance (Penguin, 1992) or V.P. Dhananjayan's insufferably pretentious Beyond Performing Arts and Culture: Politico-Socio Aspects (B.R. Rhythms, 2007) and you groan and agonize and sink into despair at the thought that fifty-sixty years dedicated to the pursuit of a muse ends up so pathetically, in unmitigated narcissism and inability to contribute one exciting idea to the larger context. To read Isadora Duncan or Martha Graham is to gain entry into the soul, spirit, energy of dance. To read our own dancers is to stare hopelessly into the Gorgon's mirror, which only reflects intense distortion.

The Indian art scene, lamentably, has spawned a negligible quantity of autobiographies. While the publishing industry has recently cottoned on to the idea of commissioning a series of biographies, it is curious that some the best known names of our artistic fraternity "" from literature, theatre, music and the fine arts "" did not take time off to narrate their own stories.

In dance, this becomes a special kind of dark-hole. Except for an impressionistic autobiography by the flamboyant Ram Gopal way back in 1957, there have been no attempts in this genre by leading Indian proponents like Rukmini Devi Arundale, Uday Shankar, Balasaraswati, Ammanur Madhava Chakyar, Kelucharan Mahapatra, Kalamandalam Krishnan Nair or even the more contemporary Chandralekha.

This certainly accounts for the large shadowy patches in the post-1930s narrative of the period of 'recovery' and 'reinvention' of Indian classical dance "" a phase which is now showing signs of ennui and fatigue. It was during this period that the upper caste/class national elite hijacked a dance form like Sadirattam from its original possessors, the Devadasis, sanitised it, renamed it Bharatanatyam and used it strategically for their own claims to an artistic lineage, by employing a newly fabricated instrument called 'tradition'.

There is little any of these Indian dancer-autobiographies contribute to our comprehension and deeper understanding of this historic process. Instead they all sound like they have just crept out of a pickle bottle, entirely fermented in thought and ideas.

This is quite surprising, considering classical dancers' claims to being great narrators with imaginative use of their sthayi and sanchari bhavas through which they supposedly explore the innermost and subtlest of human emotions. Instead, these autobiographies emerge as the self-legitimising conceits of an elite who will brook no resistance to their own self-promotion. Inevitably, the career of such dancers spawned an era when they served as 'cultural ambassadors' and, with their Nataraja icon and the bric-a-brac of costumes packed in suitcases, they roamed the world leading to endless audiences with heads of state and endlessly being kissed on the cheeks by Indian ambassadors abroad.

All this is not even remotely funny. The artist's vision is the prism through which a society learns to see and recognise itself. When the prism itself gets murky and turgid and prevents light from filtering through, it is a sign of a people in deep distress. Even more, it is thedefinite sign of an art form gone irrevocably decadent. Decadence is another term for the death of honesty. And, if you can't be honest, an autobiography is the last thing you should attempt.