Sunday 22 December 2013

Me at the Panchkula Literature Festival 2013






The Panchkula Lit Fest organized by Rumour Group India on 15th December 2013 was a fun-filled experience. I loved being part of a panel discussion on emerging fiction for young adults. Four more writers were part of the panel and it was moderated by the vivacious Preeti Singh. While the entire session was relevant and we didn't digress much, the most important issue- I think- was the question about the importance of marketing in today's world. Some felt that a good book will always find a home. Sorry, but I don't agree. Content, unfortunately, is only a part of the whole publishing rigmarole nowadays. It's all about publicity, marketing and PR! Sad but true. That's why bookshelves are often littered with terrible works that don't deserve to see the light of day. But that's just the way it is.

A great experience, though, and a lovely way to spend a bright winter's afternoon. Thank you to Radhika Panicker, CEO of Rumour Group for inviting me.

Tuesday 19 March 2013

Who's your favourite fictional heroine?

I have a long list of female protagonists in fiction that I admire and I'm wondering which names you all will come up with. As a kid I was overawed with the 'boyish' George of the Famous Five! It was great the way she shunned female stereotypes, quite unusual for Enid Blyton. Then Nancy Drew became my role model! I loved the concept of a girl detective who was smart, independent and attractive. Moving on to more serious literature, one comes across scores of well-written female parts and it isn't easy to make a list of favourites. Some of mine are:

Dorothea in George Eliot's Middlemarch

Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice (a no- brainer)

Emma in Jane Austen's eponymous novel

Catherine in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights

Portia in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice

Beatrice in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing

Iris Chase of Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin (Booker Prize winner, 2000)

Maggie of Tennessee Williams' celebrated play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (won the Pulitzer Prize in 1955 and, yes, it was filmed with Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman)

... and many, many more.

It's tempting to talk about Maggie and Elizabeth Bennet because they're such obvious choices but, of the above, I think Beatrice's portrayal was quite path-breaking for its time and, among the modern day heroines, I am in complete awe of Iris Chase.

Beatrice's chutzpah and professed antipathy towards marriage make her a memorable character. She's not crude like Kate in The Taming of the Shrew but she's witty and yet a romantic at heart. Consider, for example, her response when her uncle Leonato wishes she is "one day fitted with a husband".
"Not till God make men of some other metal than earth," she says. "Would it not grieve a woman to be mastered by a pierce of valiant dust?"
Iris Chase in The Blind Assassin is a complex and incredibly clever woman, who reveals her extramarital affair by presenting it as a work of fiction by her dead sister Laura. The story is moving, smart and unputdownable. She's not just a rich woman caught in an unhappy marriage; she knows how important appearances are for the sake of high society and she also knows how to subvert those to effect a kind of catharsis.

So, who's on your list?


Sunday 3 March 2013

Lessons from The Pink Panther: How hard is it to write comedy?

What's harder to write- tragic scenes or comic ones?

This question always throws up lots of matter for debate. Isn't it true that in literature and in the movies it's tragic / dramatic pieces that usually win awards and receive approbation? Comedy is rarely given the same degree of importance, at least as far as the critics go. Yet, isn't good comedy incredibly difficult to write?

Watching The Return of the Pink Panther (for the nth time!) the other day, I was struck by the sheer brilliance of the actors' performances, comic timing and, of course, dialogue delivery. I know I've picked an easy one for movies of The Pink Panther series, particularly the original ones starring Peter Sellers, are recognized as cinematic masterpieces. The Return of the Pink Panther (released in 1975) is my favourite. It's the one starring Christopher Plummer as Sir Charles Litton, the Phantom, Herbert Lom as Clouseau's long-suffering boss Chief Inspector Dreyfus and Peter Sellers, of course, as the bumbling Inspector Jacques Clouseau.

Sample this:

Chief Inspector Dreyfus (to Clouseau): "You are suspended for six months, without pay..."

Clouseau: "Six months!"

Dreyfus: "Yes, without pay. Have you anything to say?"

Clouseau (after a moment's thought): "Could you lend me...fifty francs?"

This movie also has the famous 'follow that car scene' and the one in which Clouseau asks a passerby in Gstaad: "Do you know the way to Paris hotel?"
"Yes," says the man, and walks on!

The film is so good that scene after scene leaves you in splits. How I wish I could write like that!

In respect to the question I've asked, I think that it's hard to do both tragic and comic scenes well. But comedy poses a greater challenge because it relies on the all-important twist at the end, the punch that requires a reader's (or moviegoer's) expectation to be built up for something and then find exactly the opposite happen. It's the unexpected that keeps good comedy going, whereas in tragedies it's more Aristotelian, isn't it? We know the protagonist is doomed because of his own character flaws or because of circumstances beyond his control.

What do you think?

Tuesday 19 February 2013

The Romantic Manifesto: Spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling...?

Those of us who've studied English in school or college would be familiar with the works of the Romantic poets: William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Blake, Lord Byron, P.B. Shelley, John Keats and a few others. The lyrical beauty of their poems have so entered our consciousness that we can't imagine literature without them and, yet, it took an act of courage by two men to herald the Romantic era as a revolutionary departure from the Enlightenment period that had celebrated logic and reason and highly stylized forms of poetry. Then suddenly came The Lyrical Ballads in 1798 (published anonymously) with poems like The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Tintern Abbey, The Female Vagrant and so on. Wordsworth was acutely aware of the furore these works might cause for he says in an introduction to that edition: readers "will perhaps have to struggle with feelings of strangeness and awkwardness". But once the Ballads became popular, a second edition came out with Wordsworth's famous preface in which he put forth the basic principles of Romanticism, basically an emphasis on feelings and emotions and the beauty of nature. All good poetry, he says, is
"the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling".
It originates, he says, from
"emotion recollected in tranquility."
Hence, we see at the end of The Solitary Reaper:
"The music in my heart I bore,
            Long after it was heard no more."

And The Daffodils concludes thus:
"For oft, when on my couch I lie 
 In vacant or in pensive mood,
           They flash upon that inward eye
           
           Which is the bliss of solitude;

           And then my heart with pleasure fills,

            And dances with the daffodils."

We're so familiar with poems of heightened passion such as Coleridge's Kubla Khan and Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn, Shelley's Ode to the West Wind that we forget it took a revolutionary Lake poet like Wordsworth to perform that first act of brazenness and produce something new and utterly different from the prevailing poetic diction.
I suppose good writing always requires loads of courage.
Oui ou non?


 
 
 

Wednesday 6 February 2013

Hardy's Mayor of Casterbridge: Why we are drawn to flawed characters

Jane Austen is a novelist that's always in the news and her books are often retold on screen but a novelist I'd really like to see adapted for the big screen more often is Thomas Hardy. The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) is one of Hardy's best novels and many of us must be familiar with the plot. Its main protagonist Michael Henchard is one of the most riveting characters in English Literature. No wonder then that Hardy himself calls him 'a man of character' in the byline to the title (The Life and Death of The Mayor of Casterbridge: A story of a man of character).

The story begins with a drunken Henchard selling his wife Susan and infant daughter Elizabeth-Jane at an auction to a sailor called Newman for five guineas. Once he realizes his mistake, it's too late. They've left town and he loses them. He was 21 years old at the time and vows not to touch liquor for another 21 years. Henchard goes on to become a successful businessman and, eventually, the Mayor of Casterbridge (a fictional town believed to have been modeled on Dorset, England). As the novel progresses, we see Henchard as a man of contradictions: he possesses raw energy and he's capable of hard work but he also has a cruel and self-destructive streak that makes him push people away. His character has a distinctly Aristotelian feel to it: he's the typical tragic hero with classic flaws- hubris (pride) and hamartia (error of judgement). Why, then, do we keep reading?

Personally, it's the very fact that Henchard is flawed that makes him seem real to me. Equally important is the sheer power of Hardy's narrative style. Sample this: it's said of Elizabeth-Jane when she grows up and her fortunes improve:
"Her triumph was tempered by circumspection. She had still that field mouse fear of the coulter of destiny, despite fair promise, which is common among those who have suffered early from poverty and oppression."
Gosh, I wish I could write like that!

When Henchard declares in the end, having lost everything: "My punishment is not more than I can bear" one almost wants to applaud his defiance of fate and the powers that be.

It's always- always- worth it to go back to the classics. 

Sunday 27 January 2013

Power of the special quote

As a writer, I'm constantly striving for the right word, the perfect line for my characters to speak. We all know the power of great dialogue, immortal lines that are simple and yet, unforgettable. The American Film Institute recently compiled a list of 100 great movie quotes in the past 100 years. The number one spot went to Rhett Butler's rebuttal to Scarlet in Gone With the Wind:
"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn".
No surprises there, I guess, since it is perhaps the most often quoted line in cinematic history.
The second all-time favourite was also a hugely popular line- Marlon Brando in The Godfather:
"I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse."
The other popular ones were:

Harry Callan in Sudden Impact: "Go ahead, make my day."

Rick to Isla in Casabalanca: "Here's looking at you, kid."

Love Story's: "Love means never having to say you're sorry."

The Sixth Sense's: "I see dead people."

Arnie in Terminator 2: Judgement Day: "Hasta la vista, baby."

One of my favourite quotes is from Gladiator, the Ridley Scott bloodfest of 2000. It's the scene in which Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) confronts Maximus (the very dishy Russell Crowe). Maximus is wearing a helmet and says in reply to Commodus's query that his name is Gladiator. Then he turns his back to the King. Commodus erupts in anger and orders him to remove his helmet and tell him his name. Maximus turns around slowly, faces the man who'd murdered his family, and says:
"My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the armies of the North, General of the Felix legions, loyal servant to the true emperor Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next."
Great stuff, or what?
What's your favourite quote?


Thursday 17 January 2013

Incredible Rumi, 13th century Persian Poet

Jalaluddin Mohammed Balkhi, fondly known as Rumi, is a 13th century poet (September 1207-December 1273) born in Wakhsh (modern-day Tajikistan). A Sufi mystic who wrote in Persian, his most famous work is the Mathnawi, a poem in six volumes. I discovered him only recently when I came upon excerpts of some of his works translated by Coleman Barks. I was struck by the beauty, simplicity of expression and depth in his verses.

Sample this:

'I didn't come here of my own accord, and 
I can't leave that way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take 
me home'.

'Come, come, whoever you are...
Come even though you have broken your vows a
thousand times,
Come and yet come again. Ours is not a caravan of despair'.

(from Soul of Rumi by Coleman Barks)

An interesting tidbit:
After his death his son Sultan Walad and his followers founded the Mevlevi Order, also called the Order of the Whirling Dervishes. They're famous for the Sufi dance in the Sama ceremony.

The epitaph on Rumi's tomb in Koyna (modern-day Turkey) says;
'When we are dead, seek not our tomb in the earth,
but find it in the hearts of men.'


Wednesday 16 January 2013

Macbeth's Witches: How foul are they really?

The Witches in Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth have fascinated people for generations. Those of you who know the play, will recall that the action begins with the three Witches in 'a desert place'. They're talking about Macbeth, who is a Captain in the Scottish King Duncan's army. Directly after, Duncan appears on the battlefield, hears of Macbeth's bravery in suppressing a rebellion, and appoints him Thane of Cawdor. The Witches then meet Macbeth and his fellow Captain Banquo when they're returning from battle and announce that Macbeth's Thane of Cawdor and that he will be King. Banquo's children will be king but he won't. The evil sisters' announcement set the ball rolling for Duncan and Banquo's death and Macbeth's elevation as King. But just how responsible are the Witches for the tragedy that plays out? That's a question every Shakespeare scholar mulls over. So brilliant is the Bard's genius that we're never really sure...

Obviously Macbeth already has evil in his heart. For no sooner does he learn of his appointment as Thane of Cawdor than he begins to mumble: 'why do I yield to that suggestion/Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair/
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs/Against the use of nature?' He goes on and on about such evil thoughts, ignoring Banquo's warning:' 'tis strange:And oftentimes, to win us to our harm/The instruments of darkness tell us truths,/Win us with honest trifles, to betray's/In deepest consequence.' 

Tuesday 15 January 2013

Errrgo for the Golden Globes

Anybody seen Argo, for which Ben Affleck won the Best Director award at the Golden Globes yesterday? I watched it a few months back, wasn't too impressed because I thought there weren't enough thrills in it, but I do think that for writers it's a good study on how to adapt a real-life event into a dramatic piece of storytelling. `Always felt good movies improve my writing since they help me to learn how to construct a scene. I think a great example is Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds (sorry folks, it's spelt that way). Those of you who've seen it will recall the sinister build up of violence in the opening scene when SS Col. Hans Landa (played by the awesome Christoph Waltz who, also won Best Supporting Actor at the Globes for Tarantino's Django Unchained) visits the French farmer that's hiding a Jewish family under the floorboards of his house. Tarantino takes a simple calm scene in which the farmer's daughter is hanging up the wash and then slowly brings into view the black Gestapo car approaching in the distance. That single image is enough to send shivers down your spine. To top it all, he has Beethoven's Fur Elise playing in the background! Is that awesome or what?

Argo has been spoken about a lot. It's about the attack on the American Embassy in Iran many moons ago and how a small group of officials managed to sneak out and take refuge in the Canadian Ambassador's residence. The US government decides to try and rescue them by sending in a fake director and getting him to smuggle them out as part of his film unit. Ben Affleck plays the CIA operative that goes in undercover as a movie director. Argo is the name of the Science Fiction movie they're supposedly making. The movie's direction is crisp and research, meticulous but, perhaps because this is based on a real story, there aren't too many edge of the seat moments. Still, Ben Affleck succeeds in keeping up the suspense and it's worth a watch.

What do you guys think?