I wrote a Facebook update, now I’m a writer!

Some time ago, I was talking to a friend of mine about writing, and she said “You know, now with Facebook and Twitter and blogs, everyone is sort of a writer”. And as someone who works in publishing, I was not pleased by that. Is it that easy to become a writer now? Don’t you have to at least be published/in the process of being published? By a real publishing house? This is a bit like that Friends episode in which Rachel’s sister calls herself an interior decorator because she decorated their dad’s office! I mean, I’m an editor (and let’s not even go into all the actual writing that comes with that territory), I have a blog, but I don’t call myself a writer, so how dare they?

But then, I started thinking. Isn’t this a good thing? The democratization of a craft that was earlier the preserve of just a few? And well, writing is a mode of communication, after all, which is what the internet is all about. Of course, if we were to count all of this as writing, then we must admit there is a marked drop in the quality thereof, but that is the case with most things that go mass.

Maybe we should have another name for it. We’ve got blogging, which works fine. For the others, how about Social Netwriting? Of course, that implies that these writers only write socially, which brings me to another question: whom does one write for? Is it fair to assume that everyone wants to be heard, liked, and retweeted, and is generally hungry for attention and approval? While that may be true for some, it can’t possibly be the same for everyone, right? I sometimes “write” to spread awareness about something, sometimes to vent steam about something, sometimes to wish someone a happy birthday, and sometimes, just because I heard/read/thought of something interesting or funny and I wanted to share it - and due to the leaps in technology, I can share it with several people at once.

And this question of readership and validation through numbers. Does it matter if the only people reading your writing are your friends? Should it matter? Should it matter how many “likes” you get on an update, how many comments on a blog post, how many retweets? Are you a writer if no one reads you?

Nope, I’m not convinced. Because when people ask what you do, they do mean professionally, not in terms of “hobbies”. So to me, “I’m a writer” means “I’m published or going to be”, not “I tweet 600 times a day”.

On eating out: why some restaurants can have my heart

I love small, independent ideas. I’m the kind of person who’d watch an indie “arty” movie just because it’s been shunted aside at theatres to give more visibility to a blockbuster that’s already made most of its money back. And if I like it, I’ll go watch it again, and will plug it relentlessly to family and friends, just to help it along in my own tiny way. Call it activism, call it joblessness – but I get a kick out of seeing a David top, or at least equal, a Goliath. And no, I’m not against Goliaths at all (I confess, I watch every blockbuster movie too – but only after I’ve seen the arty movie). There’s just something comforting about the fact that a good idea can win even without hype and marketing and loud fanfare. Which is why Delhi’s recent growth in restaurant culture is a source of comfort and joy to me (and yes, okay, the happy tummy isn’t complaining either).

In the last couple of years, Delhi has seen a multitude of new restaurants –  mostly misses, it’s true – but some absolute gems as well. In particular, Yeti (Hauz Khas Village) and Chez Nini (Meherchand Market) top my list of repeat-value places. Yeti, with its Nepali-Tibetan focus, is a lovely, unpretentious establishment that has quietly made a name for itself over the last year. It not only serves the best momos I’ve had in Delhi, but also stars excellent Bhutanese ema dachi, and makes eating goat lungs a very pleasurable experience. All this while making one feel like they’re sitting in the land of mountain kingdoms, what with the thangkas and mandalas on the walls and the strains of Tibetan chants in the background. And the biggest win for me – the quick, cheerful, and efficient service.

Chez Nini, on the other hand, serves up homestyle, hearty Canadian-French food under a gorgeous lit-up tree canopy – which instantly takes me back to the Faraway Tree, and who wouldn’t want that? The food is truly soul-satisfying, from the rich poutine to the bacon-wrapped dates with parmesan, to the tender duck legs. And I could write a poem about the desserts. I’ve never much cared for carrot cake because I’ve found it too dry, but this one made me want to cry for joy. The chocolate caramel tart is another winner, and the red velvet cupcake is, to quote a Friends reference, a little piece of heaven. But even more than the food, it’s the service that has won my heart – super-quick, warm, and always cheerful. The proprietor, Nira Singh, is friendly and honest – she came round to chat with me while my companion was outside smoking, and offered advice about what dishes to avoid because that day’s batch wasn’t up to scratch. Who does that anymore?

And this is the reason I go back to these places. There’s no shortage of good food in Delhi, but to consistently get such good food with so much love and attention to detail – that’s rare. Small restaurants they may be, but they have big hearts. 

Hugo makes me grateful for cinema

It’s finally here. After months of negotiations and delay, Martin Scorsese’s Hugo was finally released in India this past weekend. Despite its outstanding reviews and slew of awards, it hasn’t done too well at the box office, and producers felt that releasing it in India wouldn’t be commercially viable. After incessant online campaigns, petitions, and outraged newspaper articles, India finally got Hugo, albeit with limited show timings (only two or three in all of Delhi). Obviously, I HAD to go watch it before it was pulled out of theatres completely. So I braved the pain from my recent wisdom tooth extractions and went. Was Hugo worth the effort? Absolutely, definitely, totally, completely.

Hugo is, in a word, magic. Set in Paris of the early 1930s, the film takes us into the world of Hugo, a young orphan who lives in the train station and winds the station clocks, occasionally stealing mechanical parts from the toy store there, to fix a broken automaton that his late father had brought home. In his quest to fix the last and only thing he has left of his father, Hugo unknowingly stumbles onto the fact that Georges Méliès, one of the first film-makers – and an ace conjurer, cartoonist, inventor, and mechanic – is still alive despite popular belief that he died during the first World War. A prolific director, producer, and actor, Méliès produced more than 500 films and is credited with developing cinematic techniques such as superimposition and stop motion.

The film now practically turns into a festival of Méliès’ films, shown in the full glory of colour and 3D. In fact, in a real departure from his usual violent dramas and gangster films, Scorsese uses 3D to stunning effect in this enchanting love letter to cinema. The footage of Méliès’ movies is absolutely stunning (and having edited a book on film history, I was only too thrilled to see the entire first chapter of my book shown so beautifully on screen) and the cinematography is truly gorgeous, with every colour, every tiny detail standing out.

The problem with so many movies that feature great visuals is that the film-makers seem to think cinematography and effects can make up for the lack of a good story or good acting (cases in point – War Horse, Avatar). Not so with Hugo. The script is as gripping as the visuals, the dialogue is lovely, and the acting is top-notch. Asa Butterfield as Hugo Cabret is vulnerable and adorable, and uses his eyes and smile to convey so much. Ben Kingsley as Méliès and Sacha Baron Cohen as the terrifyingly strict station master are excellent. And I wanted to adopt Méliès’ “adventure”-seeking bookworm god-daughter Isabelle (played so well by Chloë Grace Moretz) who helps Hugo in his quest, besides educating him on the finer points of literature. 

When I left the theatre, I could only feel utter joy and gratitude that cinema exists, that films like Hugo are made. How many movies can make you feel like that?

Oh and the automaton? He ends up doing exactly what he’s supposed to do. Don’t ask, just go watch.

Where's your courage, Bollywood?

“Have you seen Kahaani? Oh, you must watch it, it’s really good. Bollywood thrillers have really come of age”.

Don’t get me wrong, I liked Kahaani. I thought the plot was gripping, the pace was tight, the acting was excellent. And yet, and yet. Something was missing. It lacked the watertightness that a really awesome spy thriller should have.

By now everyone who wanted to watch it would have done so, and for those who still haven’t been able to, I would hate to be the provider of spoilers, so I’m not going to get into the story here. But I will say there were a few gaping holes in the plot, which have been covered up, but so flimsily that they lead to more confusion. My question is: how come people think it’s so incredible? Because their yardstick is Bollywood. Kahaani is a great spy thriller by Bollywood standards, and that’s about it. And this is my big problem – the fact that we have lower standards for Bollywood.

When and why did this happen? According to my two-bit theory, it all began in the 1980s. We all know that the ’80s was the worst period in Bollywood – with gory, testosterone-filled violence, garish costumes, and regressive treatment of regressive stories. Mansoor Khan’s Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak and Sooraj Barjatya’s Maine Pyaar Kiya tried to bring romance back on the scene, and succeeded to some extent. But then, in 1991, came two diametrically opposite films that released on the same day. Phool Aur Kaante was a true-blue masala potboiler involving gangsters and kidnapping, while Lamhe had a girl in love with a man who once loved her mother. No prizes for guessing which movie came out on top. Lamhe was a box-office disaster, because audiences couldn’t come to terms with its suggestion of incest (even though nothing had actually happened between the man and the mother). Phool Aur Kaante, meanwhile, went on to become a blockbuster, launching the industry’s new action hero, Ajay Devgan (yes, I know it’s now Devgn). This was the last nail in the coffin, and film-makers now seemed to have lost the courage to make truly unconventional films that challenged the audience. What followed was an era of easy, safe films with childishly simple, hastily contrived resolutions that stayed within the bounds of convention. Audiences went home happy and unchallenged.

What changed, and when? Some argue that Shah Rukh, with his unconventional looks and anti-hero beginnings in Bollywood, was the pioneer of change. Certainly, both Baazigar and Darr had audiences rooting for him instead of the actual good guy – something that Sunny Deol, the “hero” of Darr, has been unable to forgive Yash Chopra and Shah Rukh for, even to this day. Some argue that Dil Chahta Hai was the game-changer, while others say the same for Lagaan. I would argue that there is no one film that can be credited with a sea-change, because there has been no sea-change. Yet. All of these are still spoken of as aberrations, and while they have been instrumental in the story of Bollywood, and while we have come very, very far, we still have a long way to go. In the last decade, we’ve had some genuinely great movies. There was Chak De! India, which had one surly, snarling hero (SRK in one of his finest performances) and no lead heroine – in fact, in a pleasantly surprising move, the Screen Award for Best Supporting Actress for that year went to all the “Chak De girls”. We’ve had a Band Baaja Baaraat, in all its Janakpuri chhaap, which made no big deal of the fact that its protagonists shared a bed, and later had sex, with no mention of marriage. We’ve had a Taare Zameen Par, in which the big star makes his appearance only halfway through the movie. These are all departures from the norm, and were all hugely successful, both critically and commercially.

Does this not say something to our film-makers? That Indian audiences have grown up, that we’re hungry for good, content-driven films, whether it’s a hilarious spoof like Dabangg or Om Shanti Om, or a hard-hitting, gut-wrenching Paan Singh Tomar? Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu was widely applauded for NOT ending in happily-ever-after, because audiences knew it wouldn’t make sense. Even Lamhe has acquired the status of a classic now. But then we have a Vicky Donor, which, despite a truly great first half, meanders through a muddled second and ends by neatly tying everything up even though it took away from the overall impact of the film. When will film-makers recognize that we are ready to move beyond easy, safe, happy endings, and that they need to stop using us as an excuse for their lack of courage? We clearly have the talent in terms of acting, direction, and writing – be it Irrfan Khan, Jaideep Sahni, Habib Faisal, Shimit Amin, Maneesh Sharma, Aamir Khan, Tigmanshu Dhulia, and so many others. What is lacking is courage. Film-makers need to display courage in their craft, so regularly that it becomes the norm and not the aberration. Only then will we stop mistaking mediocre for good, and good for great. Only then will we stop saying a film is good “especially for Bollywood”.

On fiction

Tom Wolfe said, “The problem with fiction, it has to be plausible. That’s not true with non-fiction”.

Undeniably true, but easier said than done, as I realized when I recently tried my hand at fiction. After years of expressing my opinions (sometimes too strongly, I’m told) – verbally, on social networking websites, and now on my blog – I decided to experiment. And it was so hard!

I had the basic plot outline, I had the characters, I even had the structure in place before I put finger to keyboard. Then why was it so difficult? The answer, I realized, was in the voice. Whenever I’ve critically analyzed a book (which means whenever I’ve read a book), I’ve always asked myself: Is there even one character in this book whom I love and root for? If not, the book has failed. This question is so much a part of my book-reading that I’m surprised that as a writer, it took me such a long while to realize it.

Writing an article, an opinion piece, or a blog post is so much easier, in some ways, because you’re writing as yourself, so you’re free to just write what you think. You don’t have to worry that you’re imposing your own views on your characters, because the only narrative voice that counts is your own. You’re not worried that you won’t sound authentic – there’s no way you can’t.

The other thing about writing fiction is that you’re always worried someone else got there before you, and your idea that sounded so cool and interesting when you first came up with it suddenly sounds banal and clichéd. I had to constantly remind myself that no story is entirely original now, in this age of instant communication and sharing of ideas. Everything has been written about in some way, everything is based on something that someone has read, seen, or heard. Every story spawns a million more, each with their own twists and takes, but with the same genesis – human nature. That is the great mother of all stories and everything else comes from it.

This brings me to another question – what is the point of fiction, if every story has been told in some form or another? Of late, I’ve had conversations with so many people who claim that they’re done with fiction. They’ve read their fill, they enjoyed it when they were younger, and now have nothing left to gain from it, so now they will only read non-fiction or, at most, historical fiction. As a nut for good fiction of almost any genre, I find this view hard to understand. How can anyone possibly say they’ve learnt whatever there is to learn from other people’s stories? That’s as good as saying they don’t want to meet anyone new or hear anything about anyone they don’t already know about! It’s a narrow, almost arrogant view – to think you’ve read enough. No one can ever have read enough, and this is one of the best and worst things about life.

Fiction is about more than just the plot. It is beyond someone’s telling of someone else’s story. It’s about imagination, the creation of a brand new world, the ability to get into the skin of characters who don’t exist, and to do it so convincingly that the reader believes these places and people and events to be real, even if just for a few hours. It’s about using these worlds and people and events to illustrate a larger point about the world we actually do inhabit and the lives we actually do live. It’s about creating these parallels and ideas for yourself even if the writer hasn’t illustrated them, because when you read fiction, it becomes your own. It’s about the beauty of a well-crafted sentence or passage, the sudden jolt you feel when one stunningly spare bit of prose leaps out at you and you realize this is exactly how you feel and you thought no one got it. These things – imagination, literary craft, beauty, talent, emotional connection – are limitless. And so, therefore, is fiction.

The Artist: A very special film

In all the pre- and post-Oscar hype surrounding Michel Hazanavicius’ The Artist, I never once heard anyone talk about the story. It was spoken about more for being a black-and-white, mostly silent film about films than for any other merit. I’ve read reams about how it didn’t deserve the Best Picture, Best Director, or Best Actor Oscars; how it only won because it’s a silent black-and-white movie by a French director with a French actor or because it’s a movie about movies; and how George Clooney in The Descendants was unfairly done out of an award that should have been his. I haven’t seen all the other Oscar nominated movies, but I have seen The Descendants (twice) and can safely say that in my humble opinion, Clooney was only very good. In The Artist, however, Jean Dujardin delivers a performance that transcends time and sense.

The story revolves around George Valentin (Dujardin), the star of the silent era, who refuses to accept that the talkies are here to stay. Arrogant and unable to envision a future in which just seeing him is not enough for the audience, he leaves Kinograph Studios, the production house that has churned out his hits in the past, and decides to make his own films. Kinograph has signed on a slew of newcomers who have no objection to the talkies. One of these is Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo), who has so far been an extra in some of Valentin’s films, and has always had a bit of a crush on him. Predictably, Valentin’s film bombs while Miller’s is a smash hit, and she herself is the toast of the town. Meanwhile, Valentin is reduced to auctioning off his belongings to make ends meet. His wife, having tried to explain to him how unhappy she is in their marriage, finally leaves him. In his depression and fragile state of mind, the only people Valentin can depend on are Miller and his old assistant (who now works for Miller after Valentin let him go because he couldn’t pay him).

Is The Artist a great, epic story? No. It’s a simple story that follows a fairly predictable path, with even a cute puppy thrown in to take the action forward. Is the torment of silent film actors portrayed in a way that makes you weep for them? No, in fact, the overall tone of the film is light and humorous. Is the movie, then, a worthy winner of all the awards it has scooped in the last few months? I can’t answer that without having seen all the other movies that have been released in the last year, and frankly, I don’t think anyone can. But despite all of this, it is a truly special film that comes along once in a lifetime today. The treatment is so beautiful that every scene, every frame brims over with detail that you’d be hard-pressed to miss, given the lack of distracting speech. The lightness of tone is, in my view, a major winning point for the film because The Artist is, after all, a fond, nostalgic look at a bygone era of typically comic films. The acting is top-notch, with both Dujardin and Bejo inspiring affection, laughter, and a desire to dance in the audience.

Even if critics and juries were a tiny bit partial to it for being a mostly silent black-and-white movie, is that so wrong? Movies and movie-makers win awards for so many different reasons – some for highlighting social issues, some for being humongous hits at the box office, some for daring to do something different. The Artist may not be an amazing story, but it is a work of art that is rare for today’s cinema. And no one can doubt the sheer courage it must have taken to create it. Isn’t that in itself worth awarding?

Book review(s): Empire of the Moghul and Taj Trilogy

I’ve been reading a lot of historical fiction lately – in the last few months, I’ve read six novels about the Mughals, so I thought it would be fun to do a comparative review of all six together.

On the one hand, there are the first three books of the six-part Empire of the Moghul series by Alex Rutherford (though it’s the collective pen name of Michael and Diana Preston, I will treat them as this one entity for my review). Each book tells the story of a Mughal ruler – Babur, Humayun, and Akbar –respectively. From the time young Babur becomes the king of Ferghana to how, through multiple raids and failed attempts, and seemingly endless hardships, he finally establishes the Mughal empire; from Humayun’s obsession with astrology to Jahangir’s attempts to claim the throne even while Akbar rules, Rutherford’s books provide a compelling account of court politics and conquest.

On the other hand, Indu Sundaresan’s Taj Trilogy – consisting of The Twentieth Wife, The Feast of Roses, and Shadow Princess – takes the reader beyond the battlefield and court, straight into the heart of the empire – the zenana. The first two books centre around Mehrunnisa, from her childhood as the daughter of one of Akbar’s courtiers to how she negotiates her position as Empress Nur Jahan, the most powerful woman in Mughal history. Shadow Princess, set in the period just after Mumtaz Mahal’s death, simultaneously tells of the sudden change in Jahanara’s life as she shoulders the responsibility of her father Shah Jahan’s zenana; Aurangzeb’s hunger for power; and the building of the Taj Mahal. 

By writing Mughal history from the perspective of its women, Sundaresan’s books seem to follow a simple, powerful idea: harem politics drive court politics. While the first two are pretty gripping accounts of Mehrunnisa’s rise to power and her equally stunning fall, the third book, somehow, failed to match up to them. To my mind, a story must have at least one character worth loving and supporting, and here, there are none. Jahanara’s inflated sense of self and her constant bemoaning of a fate that she brought on herself are tiresome. Her siblings, too, come across as variations of selfish, weak, bratty, or rigid. Then, the equations, both personal and political, are not explained convincingly enough – for example, why, after Mumtaz’s death, power is transferred, unquestioned, to Jahanara instead of another empress; and the slight hint of an incestuous relationship between Jahanara and her father, which is never fully explored. Also, the constant evocation of “The Luminous Tomb” and repeated descriptions of its construction and architecture are often dry and wearying.

Why Sundaresan’s books still score over Rutherford’s is because, in dealing more with personal relationships, they often provide a clearer understanding of why certain events unfold the way they do (see note). For example, the reason for Akbar’s decision to give Khurram to his wife Ruqayya is clearly outlined – Ruqayya wants to reduce Jagat Gosini’s power by taking away her son and the future heir to the throne. In Rutherford’s series, the episode is skimmed over with no convincing explanation. Another problem with Rutherford’s books is that they are often long-winded, peppered with irrelevant anecdotes – such as the attack on Salim’s entourage to Kabul after the Anarkali episode – that have no bearing on future events.

Both series suffer from over-Anglicization of language, which often results in jerky, stilted, and sometimes incredibly jarring conversation. This is especially true of Rutherford’s books, in which the use of "Moghul" instead of "Mughal", the first-person use of “Mother”, “Father”, “Aunt” etc, and Baburi telling Babur that he has fallen for the Persian Shah’s “pwetty pwetty” words, were just ridiculous and left me thoroughly unimpressed.

Overall, though I’m still looking forward to rest of Empire of the Moghul, it’s Sundaresan’s novels that I’ll go back to for a good story.

Note: One of the challenges of writing historical fiction is deciding what to fictionalize and how factually accurate to be. Of course, both writers have taken their own liberties with history, often ending up with different accounts of the same incident, so my review is based on which is more convincing and fits in better with the rest of the story.