This post supplements the previous post

There are two camps, three, truth be told. As there always are in everything that matters, and even doesn’t, in this word. One in favor, one against and one that just don’t give a damn.

Salman Rushdie deserves the knighthood, he doesn’t and who gives a damn if he sits in exalted company of Ian Botham.

I naturally sit in the first of the camps, now and then taking a stroll into the third where I have good friends to have a cuppa.

Zafar at DreamInk bandies that the man has suffered enough, missed out a few Bookers, been hunted, haunted and tormented. This is a little tidbit of happiness coming his way and he must just be allowed that.

Priyavada Gopal sees it in a different light. She doesn’t care much for Salman, it is quite clear. Her views are pretty strong too.

But.

One strange thing I have noticed when this piece of news is thrown around is ‘Salman Rushdie, the author of Satanic Verses...’ It belies fact. A man is recognized by the best work he has done, Salman’s best was not Satanic Verses. It was with Midnight’s Children that he made the impact, changed the world.

He took the literary world by the tail, swung it around several times like a hammer thrower and flung it. He changed the perceptions of writing in India, paved the way, unmistakably, for the likes of Arundhati Roy, Ghosh, Vikram Chandra and more. He made it possible for every writer in India to dream of recognition.

He looked in the eye of all writers writing in English at the time and said: There yet is another way to do it.

Not many books can claim to have set a precedent, his did. That is what he should be commended for and that is what he should be exalted for.

I may be presumptuous, but I have a feeling – inkling – that the book did that to many other writers from different parts of the world, gave them a sense of belief, a direction, a hope. That you don’t have to write in Queen’s English or just have to follow the precedents set by the masters, you can create your own, make new ones. He liberated them.

He had a part, to put it figuratively, in selling every book by a writer of Indian origin -Naipaul included - after Midnight’s Children.

And that’s what he should be remembered and honored for. Sir Salman Rushdie – author of groundbreaking Midnight’s Children.

I believe that and I will defend that with every last bit of change in my pocket.

Gastronomically Speaking...

I saw my fictional characters, the sign language talkers again, at a children’s playground. I had taken my two year old to have a swing at the swings and they were sitting, sipping cups of foamy tea.

I decided to give them a name each. Referring to them as the dumb man and the mute woman seemed so – ah – Philistine. Her name, I decided immediately, should be Siti – that was as generic and specific one could get. I played around a name or two for the man in my mind, unable to decide one. I asked my son.

“What name son? Ian? After all after if anyone from the Mufti’s department queried I could tell them it was actually Sufian Bin Abdullah.”

“Surat khabar lama, teet-teet, teet-teet.” My son replied me. Two year olds, I must let the secret out, have no sense of satire.

Well, he looked stout enough to pass for a Scotsman, Ian he will be.

As my son swung like a pendulum, jumped off the swing and played the slide I watched with one eye the conversation in progress.

“What has food got to do with literature?” Ian said, scowling. He scowled when she said something totally pointless and he had a inkling she actually leading somewhere he couldn’t fathom.

“Darling, everything! Each book is like a meal. Some good, some bad and just plain horrible like they were kept out of the refrigerator for days before being served.”

“That is being frivolous, books, I am talking of good books here, are to be taken seriously, they have changed the way we look at things, they have molded and mentored mankind in its 3000 years of civilized existence.”

“Are you sure civilized is the right word? But oh, let us not go there now.”

“Of course you don’t want to go there, you avoid the subject at all costs.”

“That is true darling, it is a subject that tastes like belacan at a belacan factory. Don’t scowl so, my love, you look like the Ayatollah from Kam Raslan’s book.”

Ian’s scowl just got darker.

“Okay let follow the ways of the grandpoobahest (1)of them all, Socrates. His dialectic method. And since Salman has been sired recently, tell me what gastronomical delights that book conjures to you.”

(I swear, dear reader, him being sired was not my idea; I am reporting the conversation verbatim.)

“Books don’t conjure any gastronomic thoughts in me, unless they are cook books.”

"Have you lost your Bacon honey, some books are to be tasted etcetera, etcetera?"

"You are taking it out of context. Anyway I read that just because the teacher forced me to."

“Bear with me darling. Imagine, say, Midnight’s Children as a sumptuous meal at the Bombay Palace, what would be on the table?”

“Chutney, of course, no Indian meal without chutney.” Ian was getting the hang of things.

“Chutney! Yes and mango at that, nothing like the sour sauciness of a mango chutney. What else.”

“Rice, biryani rice, the scented, flavored one.”

“With all the spices in it. A clove that you bite of by mistake and say ouch, but that does not stop from enjoying the rest. You are going great.”

“Palak Paneer, that’s a must.” Ian said, showing off his knowledge of good food.

“And garlic naan, it certainly must be garlic, the exotic flavor.”

“And sheek kebabs. Still with a sliver of coal on it, the rustic international feel they bring.”

“Sweetheart, you are a peach.”

“Definitely some chicken curry, the spiciest available, dal and papad”

“And top it all off with a big huge glass of lassi.”

“Yes, yes.” Signaled Ian, looking like he would choke.

“See my love, that’s what he did. He brought the whole plethora of Indian spices in one grand banquet. He took all the spices and all the flavors and put them all smack on a single table. Not serve you one by one, no, he gave it all to you. He smote you with the entire aroma. The kind of meal after which you just irreverently say: That was some food bhenchod!”

"Oh god in heaven, yes." The man signaled frantically.

"He straddled two civilizations, Western and Eastern, almost removed the ethnic worl and made Salim Sinai a citizen of the word. He quoted Laila Maju and Romeo and Juliet in the same breath. He blurred the divide. It was not a story about India or Indians for the world to read.
He gave the characters the exuberance of Leopald and added a Dickensian touch to it."

The man sighed.

"He took a perforated sheet and made it a statement on the ridiculous."

It was as if he was deflated a little after the flurry of signaling. They ordered something else.

“Please, not Ulysses. I am too full for that now.”

“Of course, sweetheart. Ulysses is the one I have kept for when I get sick of you and want to just kill you.”

(Note to Antares: liked the sound of the word so much and it fit Socrates like a glove - had to use.)

Reviewing

Over the course I have been asked to review books. I have cordially and humbly (if that is possible) refused.

I couldn’t review a book if my life depended on it. I just don’t have the talent, the grace and the understanding of literature required to do it. I admit envy when I find people like Sharon Bakar, who have the precise eye for words, are able to analyze a book, plot the plot and tell you where the heart of the books lies.

Me, I couldn’t do that, not objectively. I failed at it when I was young; I fail in it now.

Long ago, when in a class, being taught by visiting poet Nissim Ezekiel in a lecture dreadfully called ‘Poetry and Criticism” I was told after my inability to critique a poem from Gitanjali, by the great Nissim to never think of a profession in teaching.

To me books are great, okay or just plain dung masquerading as a book. My tastes would send some highbrow readers into fits. I think some the best dialog ever written was by Erle Stanley Gardner in his Perry Mason books, some of the best building of a plot and maintaining it was done by Mario Puzo in his ‘Godfather.’ He could not keep the excellence going, his Fools Die was one of the worst from him, notwithstanding the brilliant fist chapter.

A Divided Man

Was surfing, reading and came across Mohsin Hamid's this article:

http://www.mohsinhamid.com/myreluctantfundamentalist.html

This sentence struck me. just wanted to share. Haven't read his book yet, now I must.

"After all, a novel can often be a divided man’s conversation with himself."

A Conversation of Signs.

A friend and I were at a restaurant, when my eyes strayed to another couple not so far away. My friend pouted a little, as she does when she is not the center of attention.

“Hello?” She said, tilting her head, ever so little, that her nose looks a little crooked and makes me laugh. To her chagrin of course!

“Helloooo?” She said again, not having received any response from the most often used word, prolonging it so it might elicit reply.

“Ah, I am sorry. I was watching their conversation.”

“They are talking in sign language, and you don’t know any sign language.” She was visibly pouting. She blames me for being worst sign reader in the world. I don’t, for example, understand her get-me-out-of-her sign when she is pilloried in a odious conversation. Nor do I understand her various signs that some particularly big day gift is due.

“I don’t understand it, but I sure can enjoy it, can’t I?”

“That is silly. You can’t enjoy something you can’t understand. You were just trying to look at her ass, you old goat.”

I wasn’t. Looking at her ass, I mean, not from where she was sitting, not from my point of view. I would have liked to, but that is not for now.

“Darling, you can perfectly enjoy any good conversation, whether it happened or not. Twain told me so himself.”

“You are being silly.”

“No I am not, to elucidate, let tell you of the conversation so far.”

“If you must.”

Which I must, I love the sound of my voice. Put me on a stage, I freeze; in a company of three, I might hem and haw but in a two people table I like to talk.

The couple had shared some joke, I told her, as they came in laughing, the mirth on her face belied the sadness of never having to listened to Beethoven or read aloud lines from Hamlet.

“So, what shall we talk about?” The man asked, nodding happily.

They ordered cups of coffee and toasted bread.

“Whatever,” she laughed.

“God, Devil or Pak Lah’s wedding.” He ventured, throwing signs in the wind.

“Who wants to talk of weddings, anyway, old folks should never get married again.”

“That is a bad thing to say, girl, very bad. What has age got to do with love.”

“What has love got to do with marriage?”

“I am shocked! We have been married for thirteen years and you say love and marriage don’t mix.”

“For old people, no. If I met you now I wouldn’t have married you, just shacked up with you. Old folks getting married just add to the property dispute.”

“That is meaningless, Ipse Dixit comment. Something asserted but not proven.”

“Say what you want, but why talk of that.” She picked up the plastic laminated menu and began to fan herself.

“God?”

“God’s on vacation; has been since United States of America got independent. He relinquished His duties to its president. Why do thing they act like they own the planet?” She rolled her eyes. “God, sorry, Mr. President, you are so out of loop.”

“Then let us talk of Devil.”

“Been there and done that. He isn’t working for himself anymore since he got the job of Secretary of Defense.”

“God and Devil in cahoots, that is interesting. Books, then. I know I like to talk of book.” He said eagerly and bobbed his head up and down. “Shakespeare, maybe. Could I read a few lines? How do I love thee? Let me count…”

“Stop, stop.” She taps the table to convey the urgency. “Not Shakespeare, darling. I have been stuffed with him from age twelve to age twenty-two. I think the best way to enjoy Shakespeare is remove him from all syllabi. Let people – readers - discover him by themselves, unexplained and without flatulent professors telling them what he meant.”

“Joyce then? Bloomsday is coming.”

“I love Joyce. I would dump you for him anytime. Always wanted to be Molly and say yes and yes and yes and yes. But it is futile talking of Joyce. Hardly anyone understands him.”

“Who then? Maugham, Greene, Rushdie?”

“You are trying to piss me off aren’t you, with that last one?”

“Most certainly not.” He looked indignant.

“Rushdie excited me when I first read Midnight’s Children, I confess. What voice, what brilliant writing. Every book has got to have a voice, peculiar to it. Mockingbird had, Moby Dick had, and every damn good book had a voice peculiar to itself. Rushdie took it and overextended it, used it in other books too. In the Moor book he managed to get the right pitch but failed in all others.”

“You are just being a bitch, are not you?”

“Call a reader by any other name…. Seriously, try reading Labours of Hercule Poirot like it was Hamlet. Damn! Look at three books of a writer I love; compare Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden and Winter of Our Discontent. You can recognize the man’s style but his voice changes with each tale. Or take Maugham’s Razor’s Edge and Of Human Bondage.”

“I get it, you don’t like Rushdie.”

She was smiling broadly. “I didn’t say that. I love the old coot. I just don’t much care for his books after Midnight’s…”

“Bosh. I loved his Shame.”

“That is because you are you. You love Kafka too, do you know what his problem was?”

“Rushdie’s?”

“Kafka’s. He never got a good blowjob. That was his only problem.”

The man guffawed; pieces of breadcrumbs flew in all directions. “As opposed to?”

“Paulo Coelho. Got a few too many, I guess, have you read his Witches?”

My friend stopped me, regrettably. I thought the sign language conversation was soon going to veer to Malaysian writers… Even though in its infancy, Malaysian literature had found a fine one in Kam Raslan. Some of her comments on the others, though, might have been insightful.

Why I Write

George Orwell's essay on why he writes.

A sentence from it:

The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

Creativity

The poet, or any creative artist, essentially needs to be non-believer, in every sense of the words. He has to keep a skeptical eye on the ruling class, look at them with a degree of disbelief.

He might believe in a Higher Power that sustains his life but it is very essential for him to keep his beliefs distanced to a degree. It is all very well to attend church every Sunday, light a candle; to attend the Friday prayers. Sometimes a hymn and or a song, a la Kalidasa, have its merits.

True poetry, writing, art has always come when it rebelled with its times. Rumi makes a good example; I have been reading him recently.

Francis Bacon, all flowery and beautiful, does not help much except as your first tottering steps towards writing and style. Henry Miller, James Joyce, stand tall among others. Even the recent ones, Salman and Taslima, to name two have helped the cause of literature. Though both banned books were not very good reading, to me at least.

Or could we substitute the word belief for optimism. Even though irreverence would be better.

Optimism and creativity: Your take ladies and gentlemen.

Bans

Why stop at few, a silly few that would have sold a hundred copies or less. Those that would not even have caught a reader’s eye except some crank who would buy, read and nod his (or her) head and believe that the book was a message from God talking to him, to kill everyone in sight and cleanse the nation of all evil.

No, let us take the banning a step further, lets us subscribe to the Index of The Forbidden Books, if we have to follow the path of banners, lets us follow the leader, the most notorious. After all, them damn books are interfering with our goals, our agenda of a just and happy and peaceful society.

See, we banned drugs, didn’t we? See, how we have no drugs addicts now, none at all. You want marijuana, people; go to some other dammed lawless country. Our pubs don’t sell Ecstasy, no siree bob, no. Why, those that were born after the ban, don’t even what drug is, they think a drug is that strip of Panadols that Daddy buys from time to time when Mummy is in a prolonged grumbling mood. Or the Eucalyptus oil that Aunty next door keeps rubbing on her forehead.

Damn those who say banning doesn’t work.

Why, look at us, you goats and monkeys, look at us. We banned corruption and do you find any here, now? Well, perchance you do, I will bet my last stinking dollar that it because he read Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses when we sent him to study poultry farming to another country. That apart, we have no corruption,. Thank you very much.

Or poverty, we banned that too. No one here sleeps hungry anymore. We have a few other things we are keeping in our in files in our secret room in the secret house, things like adultery, sexual deviation etc. etc.

Why, it has come to our attention some us are not doing it in the accepted, certified way, the missionary style. (Although, we admit, under our breath, we don’t much care for the name… it seems, well, you know, missionary.)

Beliefs

Beliefs, I believe, fall into three main categories. Sublime, absurd and ridiculous.

While a picture of Sublime and Absurd can very well be created buy studying the lives of say, Mother Theresa and Al-Zarqawi, it is ridiculous beliefs of the Everyman that I find more interesting.

I had experience, recently, to watch the ridiculousness of belief. A friend, in quite a bad shape of health, suffering from a tumor growing in his intestine, asked me to accompany him to visit a Bomoh in Muar. He has been to every conceivable healer, spent a princely sum on them, but his cancer has grown large, has entangled itself in his bladder that nothing but long drawn chemotherapy sessions will, along with prayers, work.

I went with him, notwithstanding my skeptical view of shamans. Someone had told him that this particular guy was good, that even ministers and like go to him for healing; he can, simply put, work miracles.

The place was quite tidy, though a long line had already formed before us. We were offered teh-o and amid coughs and sneezes and groans and panting, I talked to the people around me.

They were quite a medley. Some suffered from cough and cold, some had real serious ailments: cardiomegaly, bad luck (that is a major illness), cancer in various forms and shapes. They were from different races and colors, they followed different religions or none at all, and they had one thing in common: they desperately needed to believe: that their ailments would go away; their tomorrows would be better.

The shaman, dressed in loose clothing that has become their trademark, was sitting with his eyes closed. A devotee ushered us into the room and left. A table, reminiscent of a doctor’s examining couch, stood in one corner. He opened his eyes and smiled. He had a pleasant face, a natural smile.

He stopped my friend with a raised hand when began to speak.

“You have a bad liver.”

My friend wanted to speak, was again shut up with a raised hand.

“Your insides are all gone, even your heart is weak. You feel like you want to curl up and die.”

My friend’s was a picture of humble acceptance. Hw wanted to curl up and die, the pain was unbearable, the prospects grim.

“I can cure you, but you have to believe.”

I had to speak then, just to show my sarcasm; “Does the pacik have chemotherapy facilities?”

“Buang lahitu.” His disdain was far overpowering that my sarcasm. “You think all these people have not gone to the doctors and hospitals before they came here?”

He read something in a bottle of water, gave it the patient and asked him to finish the water and he will be called again.

Longer wait.

Longer, more notes taking wait. And at last he was operated upon, lying naked with just his crotch covered with a rag, the skinny skeleton of a friend I knew as a healthy drug taking, samsu drinking person once was operated without any loss of blood. The shaman’s fingers roved over his body, making cutting gestures, removed his invisible heart, removed his invisible, kidney, liver, intestines. His hands at last held the patient’s forehead, said some prayers.

“Come again in ten days. If God wills, you will be fine.” We always like to thrust it on Him.

There is a story there, lurking somewhere, I couldn’t tell what exactly. Knowing me, I probably would be able to tell what for months when it would dawn on me and I would scurry for the notes.

But the story here has an end: The power of suggestion is immense, my friend bounded about, his life improved, he threw away the cocktail of drugs prescribed to him at the hospital. The Tramadols, the co-amoxicalvs and others where donated to help the various drain based creatures suffering from pain.

A week later he died. A happy man, a believer.