The 50th anniversary of Indias independence seems to have inspired many magazines abroad to bring out special issues, either exclusively on India or on South Asia. Some of these are Granta 57, The New Yorker (June 23 and 30, 1997) and now, the August/September issue of the London Magazine the book under review. The dedication on the cover says: India 1997: with affection and the illustration on the cover, based on Sakhibhar, a painting by Bhupen Khakhar, shows a priest wearing a womans clothes to pray, a custom that endorses the traditional belief of Pushtimarg which considers Krishna the only male. This cover is better than the stereotypical covers offered by Granta and The New Yorker, though it suggests an approach than looks upon India as part of the mystical orient.
The contents are quite representative of current trends in Indian writing in English, mostly of writers based in India whose attitude to their writing as well as India is realistic, not what the western reader expects from an Indian writer. There is no introductory essay in the real sense of the term for John Keays opening essay is more of a preamble to a highly impressionistic piece from Gita Mehtas Snakes and Ladders. Nalinaksha Bhattacharyas The Taste of Death is a well written story about terrorism in Kashmir. Aga Shahid Alis poems reflect the anguish of those living in the valley. To quote:
........from windows we hear
Grieving mothers, and snow begins to fall
On us, like ash. Black on edges of flames,
It cannot extinguish the neighbourhoods,
The homes set ablaze by midnight soldiers
Kashmir is burning.
There are pieces that capture the ethos of a section of a community at a point of time whether it is the Marxist ideology of the urban Bengali bhadralok in Kunal Basus Lenins Cafe or nostalgia for a social order that is more or less gone in Sarayu Ahujas Growing up in Tanjore.
This book has a fair sprinkling of poems by Dom Moraes, Tabish Khair, Aga Shahid Ali, C P Surendran, Arun Kolatkar, Sudeep Sen and Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, among others. Tabish Khairs impressions of Shobraat :
Festival of graves; festival of ghosts
That could not exist for a Muslim, but did;
Festival not of the past but of memories.
It captures sadness in a particular context whereas Dom Moraes is generally gloomy. To quote from Snails:
My breath smells of snails,
My hair shirt of old sweat.
Where shall I walk in rain,
Trying not to be troubled?
The book includes black and white photographs as well, providing a visual dimension. In some cases, as with Raghu Rais photographs, there is a write up about the photographer and his style. Even when there isnt, the photographs, well selected, present bits of India that most of us are familiar with, yet fail to contextualise. One wishes there had been more travel essays, but Murshidabad extracted from Pankaj Mishra's Butter Chicken in Ludhiana is about the only one that stands out.
A book like this, more often than not, contains a few inane pieces. This one has its share. Adil Jussawalas From Oxford to Colaba is one and R Raj Raos A Passion for Trains is another. One cannot find anything to appreciate in them despite trying hard. A few critical essays would have added variety and a certain perspective. But the two essays, one on Mulk Raj Anand by Alastair Niven, and the other on Amitav Ghosh by Ranjita Basu, do not add up to much. Somehow, one expects a provocative essay on Rushdie or Nirad C Chaudhuri but does not find one.
The basic problem with a special issue of this sort are, firstly deciding on the target readership and, secondly selecting pieces which the target reader is likely to appreciate. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Indias independence, publishers are vying with each other to bring out special issues of magazines or commemorative volumes. Deciding on writers to contribute to these is not half as difficult as deciding which of their work/s fits in with the format of the book. The vastness and diversity of India makes the task all the more difficult.
Keeping all these points in mind, one feels that the special issue of London Magazine conveys to the reader a mosaic of Indian fiction, poetry, painting, photography and critical writing, interspersed with a few western responses. The spontaneity of the effort is commendable and I found it one of the best special issues brought out on this occasion.
