The Endgame

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The Yayati stage arena at the Bangalore Literature Festival’19 witnessed a remarkable burst of energy amongst the audience at 12.45 PM as Kunal Basu took over the stage. Kunal, the author of critically acclaimed novels such as – The Opium Clerk, Kalkatta, etc. was accompanied by Teesta Guha Sarkar, the Senior Commissioning Editor at Pan Macmillan India. The session basically revolved around familiarizing the audience with Kunal’s upcoming novel- ‘The Endgame’ which releases this December while Teesta moderated the session. 

 

The Endgame is Kunal’s first novel to be translated from Bangla (originally Tejaswini O Shabnam) to English. However, he did not take up the translation work of his novel. He further went on to narrate how The Endgame as a novel took shape. It started off 2 years back when a Bollywood producer approached Kunal to do a story on the notion of trafficking which he, in turn, wanted to turn into a film. Even though the anguish and rampant about trafficking kept him miles away from writing about it, a small voice from within seemed to call out to him to explore the unexplored. He agreed upon writing such a novel with a word from the producers to get in touch with the trafficking victims from the villages and the traffickers. He narrated how a visit to an NGO that was arranged for him completely changed his take on the entire subject. Prepared with his “toolkit of a writer” he entered a derelict shed where 11 little girls between the age of 14-18 years waited for his questions. “I broke down”- said Kunal. As a result, his gaze into those 11 pairs of eyes melted together to become a character called ‘Shabnam’.

His novel, The Endgame revolves around the tale of two girls- one raised in India and another in New York who ends up meeting in the battlefields of Iraq. Kunal explains his reasons for locating the novel in the context of the conflict by stating that he wanted to see the subterranean connection- war over women’s bodies fought in our country. “Wars never end”, said he. 

 

The 63 years old writer says that he belongs to a bilingual tribe and in spite of being a bilingual writer he kept aloof from translating this novel on his own because he believes going back to translate his own work from Bangla to English is a tedious affair. On his distinctness of style, he expresses his views on making his story the hero of his novel. Coming off the land of Ramayana and Mahabharata, story making he said is fundamental to his outpost. He addressed the audience in this regard by telling them how he needs to think of “a story that would keep people awake at night”. “The writers do not seem to understand the readers’ thirst for stories”, he added.

 

The session ended with him reading out a portion from the manuscript of ‘The Endgame’ and several questions from the audience to which he responded with his need to engage with imagery to bring a story to life, valuable advice to read a lot and write a lot without restricting oneself to any one particular genre, about how writing a novel changes the writer as it changes the readers. He concluded with another significant advice to budding writers – “Research to fertilise your imagination. Not detailing. Imagination will do the detailing.

 

 

About the Author: Upasana Mahanta is an MA in English with Communication Studies student from CHRIST (Deemed To Be University) – Bengaluru, who firmly believes that there is nothing more exhilarating and liberating as poetry. She finds solace in writing poems and travel blogs and has amongst her laurels a 1st Prize in the English category of the All India Poetess Conference, Meghalaya Chapter’s Seventh Poetry Competition cum North East Poetry Festival. She currently writes for TheSeer.

Putting the ‘Science’ in Science Fiction

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So what if it was a peak afternoon in Bangalore at the Literature Festival! At 12:30 PM, the Red Couch was brimming with audience awaiting the interesting conversation between the SriLankan science fiction writer, Navin Weerarante and the award-winning playwriter Thomas Manuel. 

Navin opened the conversation by comparing the audience to that he would have expected in Sri Lanka, that is just a maximum of 1/10th. (By a show of hands, it was evident that while the audience had five-six scientists, most were science-curious population.)

Navin spoke about how he got excited by science fiction in his early childhood at around nine years of age when his dad once gave him the third book of Odyssey by Arthur Clarke. A book with no picture, no gun, and no clear bad guy. It had a place called Europa and it made Navin extremely curious. The concept of a human as a small speck in one little speck of dust in the solar system intrigued his curious little brain. 

Navin holds on to the belief that reading something about the future that could be real is very fascinating to a human brain. When you write hard science fiction you make sure its factually right and at the same time, you add a predictive aspect to it too. He beautifully explained how homo sapiens that have been around for 300,000 years were the first believers of fiction. Our children and the next generation will create the next set of humans who will be nothing like us. This is the future we are rushing into. Artificial intelligence and technology are making things happen. Climate change will destroy the present. We need to be ready for it and curious enough to bring changes.  

On the other hand, Thomas brought in a different perspective to hard science fiction and the science within it. He doesn’t think of it in terms of usefulness. To him, hard science fiction is interesting because science is one of the few ways of knowing. It is the language of learning and being curious. He sees no reason to assume that someone who designs computer science web applications will also be equally inquisitive about the universe and it’s working. Different things will interest different people. Personally, Thomas said his interest in science fiction comes from his interests in other things like art, science etc. and to know what happens if we change one aspect of this being. Thomas made a statement which got audiences applauding, “We come for the robots but stay for the humanity!”

 

Navin continued the conversation while assuring that he doesn’t want to come across as a hard science fiction snob. He continued explaining that the reason he was compelled to write his book “100-gram mission” was that he is terrified by the current climate change. He spoke about Syria and Libya situations and how they are warnings of what is in store in the future.

 

Thomas very clearly articulated that hard science fiction stories can be considered to be of two broad categories. The first kinds are those that Navin writes. An example would be the book ‘Martian’ by Andy Weir. The most exciting part of this category writings is the realism of problem-solving. The second kind of stories are more fiction oriented and they create a sense of wonder, like “Three-body problem’ by a Chinese writer, Cixin Liu. A detailed narrative of this book was unveiled to bring out a key point that scientists might find no realism in them. But criticism is not what will help. These stories have their role to play. They excite people in a different way. It gives a feeling of vertigo that this is something very novel. 

 

It was interesting to see two aspects of science fiction writing. One that demands and brings across legitimacy and second serve the purpose of creating a sense of wonder and awe. Navin expressed his trouble with understanding how are we tolerating this world where people are bragging about their ignorance of environmental changes. He left the audience with daunting questions. He added that science fiction writers have a responsibility to make people see the wonder and make them curious, inspire people to think about science.

The authors also agreed on the importance of soft science fiction and social science fiction genres. The session ended on a lighter note that there are no bad genres but only bad writers. 

 

Navin and Thomas also helped the audience understand how they can self-publish their science fictions on amazon and join Facebook groups and not let the gatekeepers keep you waiting. Our only chance to survive with our current living standards is the need to marry science and technology responsibly. 

 

 

About the Author: Neha Agrawal is an expressive-impulsive woman with the halo of positivism and energy, a smile that emanates from the heart and wants to reach out to the world. She loves books, children, rawness, originality, and nature – not in any particular order. A budding poet and a writer under the handle #fursatkealfaaz on Instagram. She currently writes for TheSeer.

The Courtesan Project

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The enlightening talk given by Manjari Chaturvedi covered the works of her initiative, Courtesan Project. The motto of her project, to acknowledge the ‘Tawaifs’ (female performers at the kings’ courts) as she states in Urdu “unko unki wajood de” was well justified. 

 

We would find around 1000 male ghazal artists dated back to a century on the internet but barely a woman ghazal performer’s name. Manjari feels this is due to the lens of gender by which we have seen an art form through centuries. She narrated a story of an artist, Zareena Begum who worked under a pension scheme from her foundation. This woman who wished to sing on the stage in a banarasi saree wasn’t sponsored for her shows since she was labelled a Tawaif or a prostitute by the society. 

 

Speaking about the North Indian traditional art forms, she strongly feels that these women so-called prostitutes were the ones who kept art forms such as Kathak, Ghazal and Thumri alive. 

The reason women performers aren’t documented in our history is due to the patriarchal system. The creator of Sufi Kathak, Manjari took an example of Birju Maharaj, a well known dancer at the court of Wajed Ali Shah and Malka Jaan a female performer at the king’s court whose name isn’t found anywhere in history. 

 

She broke the stereotype of a tawaif’s attire. Their outfits show nothing but their faces, wrists and feet as opposed to the idea of tight cleavage showing outfits with bosom heaving dance moves. This prejudice is amplified by Bollywood that feeds us with this wrong image of a Tawaif or a Baiji. 

She mentioned through an example of the All India Radio where female performers were allowed only through the backdoor. But these women were commercially viable for them. 

 

“You’ve taken their art, their attire but snatched their identity by labelling them as characterless hence refusing to acknowledge them,” she states. The contributions of these women to the art forms can only be brought through oral narratives which could be difficult but can be made possible through thoughtful projects such as this one. 

 

 

About the Author: Ayesha is a student pursuing Media Studies, Psychology, and English. She is an appreciator of new things, places and people. She believes good food and a trip to a beach can heal the soul. Her personal blog covers themes such as mental health and travelling. She currently writes for TheSeer. Instagram handle – gudiyaaa_

 

The Ailing Economy: Passing Flu or ICU?

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Is the economy in the passing flu, or is it strong? Narayan Ramachandran introduces the debate with this question to the key economists – Dr. Indira Rajaraman, Dr. R. Jagannathan, and Vivek Kaul.

 

The session proceeded as each economist took their stand about the question posed by Ramachandran. Indira talked about how she would not call the present economic phase of India, flu. It is merely a global slowdown, as has been ongoing since demonetization. Neither is the economy in the Intensive Care Unit, as Narayan had suggested, as the economy is not terminally ill. She referred to the World Bank report, that ranked India in terms of its growth and advocated the present economic state to one major failure- the failure to enforce contracts. Indira calls the deferral of payments an “Indian disease”.

 

Jagannathan took a more critical look at the land reforms and its implementation. There have not been enough reforms since 1991, and there were very few reforms at the macroeconomic level. He posited on the effects of technology- how these effects can be utilized to polarize the workforce. “We have to address this structural thing of business,” said Jagannathan.

 

The mic was passed on to Vivek Kaul, who asked the audience to raise their hands if they had taken an uber or an ola to the occasion today. He, thus, proceeded to prove his point about car sales. He stated how there has been a 30% drop in car sales. He proceeded to blame the Modi government, and how they have failed to acknowledge the problem. In a very engaging explanation, Vivek told the audience how salaried incomes have no growth, and the real incomes have fallen. Vivek calls the current economic problem to be structural, as well as cyclical. The economy will soon end up in the ICU.

 

“The patient is seriously ill”, Narayan commented by synthesizing the economists’ arguments. The question raised, however, is how should we tackle the structural issues in this cyclical slowdown?

Indira stated her views first, by saying that the problem is mainly a ‘legacy issue’. The government should not be defensive. The argument about fiscal deficits was raised by her, as companies going into default will have a negative impact. “The fisc is deeply troubled”, she said as she ended her argument.

 

Jagannathan made a funny statement about how most of the problems are due to economists themselves. They, themselves, are very contradictory in their approach towards the economic problem. He told the audience not to worry about the fiscal problem. His approach was more central to the non-economic reforms, like agricultural and police contract reforms.

 

Vivek Kaul took up a different approach to the argument. He did not agree with the fiscal deficit argument, he thought that the government should cut down it’s spending. The problem was where the government is spending, not why.
So, what do we do now? In the current ‘economic flu’, how do we deal with its problems?

 

The economists ponder over the thought, as Vivek Kaul took the mic. He said that the consumption has to go up, as no cooperate will invest unless the capital utilization picks up. Indira, as well as Jagannathan, considered the solution to be government expenditure towards the poor. Indira commented on how the construction sector has been vastly affected by the GST, and our next step is to plead to the government to bring the levy down. She said, “The government can be a part of the solution, only when it recognizes the problem”- a statement that received applause from the audience.

Thus, Narayan concluded the debate, stating that even if he was holding back his own opinion on fiscal deficits, the emphasis on the fiscal deficits should go. The government should make payments where it is due.

 

 

 

About the Author: Passionate about saving the environment, and driven by politics and philosophy, Anusha Basu writes about the musings she perceives everyday. She is currently pursuing her English Hons degree at Christ University, Bangalore. She currently writes for TheSeer.

Savarkar: Misunderstood Messiah?

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Vinayak Damodar Savarkar commonly known as Veer Savarkar has attracted renewed academic interest in the country thanks to the highly successful biography by Author and Historian Vikram Sampath. While Savarkar has always been a device for shrill disputes in our country’s polity, this rare academic revival brought him and his biographer to the festival. Vikram Sampath, who is one of the founders of the festival was deftly interviewed by veteran Journalist and SwarajyaMag’s Editorial Director Mr. R Jagannathan. 

 

Mr. Sampath while replying to Mr. Jagannathan said, “The proponents as well as opponents of Savarkar know very little about him. He is discussed during every election for political gains and to some extent both the so called Left and the so called Right have misunderstood him. There are many positions that Savarkar takes which will make the current Indian Right uncomfortable. For example, his position on caste system, divinity of cows are things that today’s Right might not like. Also, a bulk of misunderstanding comes from the history books written by the Left historians.” Mr. Jagannathan went on to ask about the ensuing debate after the demands of Bharat Ratna upon Savarkar. “Ofcourse, this was done with an eye on the elections. In fact, Uddhav Thackerey set the cat among the pigeons in his book launch. Thereafter, the BJP picked it up. Now, both parties have together won the elections, so it remains to be seen what happens of the demands. Also, it is true that these awards of national importance have been the preserve of one particular ideology and family. Our freedom struggle has been narrated in a monochromatic way which is not true. So, maybe it will be some kind of recognition for him. Although, even if it is not bestowed, it won’t make any difference to him or his family.”, Mr. Sampath answered. 

 

Mr. Jagannathan asked several other questions pertaining to Savarkar’s shift in his outlook from when he wrote about Hindus and Muslims fighting together in the first war of Indian independence in 1857 to his idea of Hindutva and also his time in the Cellular Jail at Andaman. Mr. Sampath went into detail and explained how Savarkar was actually the one to start the first secret society in India called Mitra Mela which was later called Abhinav Bharat to create disaffection in the armed forces. For his book on the 1857 revolt, Savarkar spent five years in London, researching in libraries. He understood the Indian perspective of the mutiny and reinterpreted it as the First War of Indian Independence. The book was so popular and effective amongst the revolutionaries that Bhagat Singh got the second edition published. Similarly, Rash Behari Bose and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose too got the book republished.

 

Savarkar was somebody who spoke of different communities being rainbow on Indian sky and in Mr. Sampath’s opinion, two particular events – first, his experience at the cellular jail where the British played the game of divide and rule and got the Muslim jamadars to convert the Hindus and second, Gandhi’s role in the Khilafat movement to mobilize an entire community to fight for a movement thousands of miles away that resulted in riots across the country, affected his positions and ideas. During the Moplah riots, Gandhi praised the rioters as great warriors fighting for their community and addressed Abdul Rashid, the killer of Swami Shraddhanand as his brother. Savarkar thought that Gandhi needed an intellectual counter and a small book called ‘Essentials of Hindutva’ that he wrote from Ratnagiri jail should be read. Mr. Sampath also stressed that the allegations of him being a coward because he wrote mercy petitions were unfair to him. Petition was a legitimate legal recourse available to the prisoners then and even Gandhi himself on requested for help by Savarkar’s brother, asked him to write a petition and wrote one himself. Also, the petitions were for the prisoners and Savarkar was ready to stay in the jail if others were released at his expense.

 

The discussion was brought to a close with Mr. Sampath explaining many points where Savarkar’s views would differ from the current Right of our country. There on a subject like caste system, his ideas were more like those of Ambedkar and not Gandhi. Savarkar believed that the cow must be treated as a utility animal and not a divine being and his idea of Hindutva was more cultural and nationalistic where allegiance to the country was the only identity marker. With a couple of questions from the audience members, Mr. Sampath explained the inclusive nature of Savarkar’s Hindutva and his idea of ‘equality for all, appeasement of none’.

The Remains of Liberalism

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The stage of Tughlaq was set for a discussion on liberalism by the previous session delving into the history of coextensive rights and obligations and conservatism in India. This session on ‘The Remains of liberalism’ was presided over by speakers Ed Luce who is a Washington based columnist and commentator for the Financial Times and Mukul Kesavan who is an Indian historian, novelist, and political and social essayist. Joining them was Manish Sabharwal, Chairman of Teamlease and a Friend of BLF in the role of a moderator.

 

The conversation began with the basic yet big question of what liberalism means. Without disappearing down the rabbit hole, in his own words, Ed said that liberalism ideally means a system of checks and balances. Adding context to what liberalism means today, Mukul opined that liberalism has become whatever is left after majoritarianism is deducted from the equation. Furthering this line of thought, Manish raised the point on the tension between democracy and liberalism, upon which Ed commented that India was moving towards an illiberal democracy and Mukul noted the strain was caused by majoritarians basing themselves on a particular race or culture.

 

Speaking on whether there ever existed an ideal era for liberalism, Ed, quick with his easy wit answered – “…there has been no golden era of liberalism, maybe a silver era or a platinum era”. He went on to emphasize that liberal democracy is in mortal danger and there is a retreat going on in the West. Picking up on the western perspective, Mukul astutely added that the notion of populism is problematic because the division of Left populism and Right populism in the USA is misleading. He further said that in both India and the USA, majoritarianism has been cultivated and gave an example of The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019. At this point, Manish asked that given the broad history of politics, do we really believe we live in special or unique circumstances per se? To this Ed said, “we are temporary narcissists and what is happening right now in the West is a conclusion of a build-up”. Mukul outlined that what we are looking at is the reconstitution of Republic and we need to acknowledge that the situation is bad. Relating that “A Nation is not given, it is imagined and reimagined”, Mukul acknowledged that what Sangh Parivar or RSS essentially did over the past 100 years is reimagine India.

 

Owing to the paucity of time, the discussion ended contemplating the remains. The back and forth between Ed’s and Mukul’s juxtaposing views on the reality of liberalism in the West and in India offered a critical and educative perspective. 

 

 

About the Author: Charishma V is just another complex, creative pseudo-adult who can wear several hats. Her blog is at charishmavreddy. She currently writes for TheSeer. Instagram handle – @poetry_over_prose

 

Body Sutra

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The event commenced on time at the Red Couch venue with an introductory address by Lucy Nelson followed by an extensive talk by Dr. Alka Pande (famous Indian academic and museum curator). Dr. Pande spoke about her literary safari over the years absorbing the need to explore deeper into Indian history of aesthetics with respect to the depiction of bodies to represent different cultures in the country, instead of tailing behind the western vestiges. Alka elaborated on her use of ekphrasis to cover the historical journey of sensuality in female bodies and their portrayal in Indian art. She talked about her latest book “Body Sutra” which traces the human form through art and imagination.

 

The famous curator spent 5 years of her life culminating the arguments for this vivid and enthralling expedition about Indian aesthetics of sensuality and form. In the most subtle manner possible she covers the chronological development of ekphrasis in the country. She rendered her perspective on the gender-fluid contemporary India and also enlightened the audience about various cultures, time period, and their approach towards the sensuality of the human body. She looked upon the framework that works behind the pre-modern body, medieval body, modern body as well as the contemporary body. Alka then emitted her expertise about various vestiges of Indian culture and dynamic approaches to a women’s body. She enlightened Lucy about the contradictory muses between western verisimilitudes and Indian version of sensuality which mainly deals with Shringar and Vilas. According to Alka, the concepts of body sutra are mainly inspired by ancient Rasa theories and Natya Shastras. In her book, she mentions about a lot of historical sculptures and monuments which depict the sensuous body of goddesses as well as other women. Her understanding of symbolism in Indian art is beautiful as she goes on to explain the Indian body where she talks about imagery portraying them with pendulous breasts, extremely cervical hips, curled flicks and Mukulas which are eyes formed in the shape of a lotus. This extremely alluring mannerism of women portrayal can be witnessed in a lot of Indian historical venues like Ajanta Caves and Khajuraho group of monuments. The nakedness portrayed in these sculptures refers to the spiritual element of society much more than the commodification aspect. She used a lot of mythological analogy to draw home her point regarding body sensuality. She talked about Arthanareshwar who symbolizes the body of Shiv Shakti, philosophies of Buddha and different portrayals of goddess Kali who is one of the fiercest goddesses in Indian mythology.

 

Dr. Alka explained the aesthetics of the human body and form with respect to her latest book “Body Sutra” in the most subtle manner possible, covering the details of the human body from wide-hipped, voluptuous woman that is Yakshi to her cover for the book which represents a sculpture of goddess Parvati (currently in Los Angeles county museum). This session provided extensive insight into the dynamics of body depictions and portrayals of the human form as a whole, led by the genius of Dr. Alka which paved a new platform for understanding of self and identity in respect to Indian culture.

 

 

 

About the Author: Abhinav Kumar is an MA in English with Communication Studies student from CHRIST ( Deemed To Be University), Bengaluru who believes in “No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world”. He is interested in sports journalism and travelogue writing. He currently writes for TheSeer.

A Life Told Through The Body

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A conversation between Shanta Gokhale, a Mumbai based bilingual writer, translator, journalist, theatre critic, and cultural columnist with Jerry Pinto, a Mumbai based Indian writer and journalist.

 

There was an immediate comfort between the two panelists on the stage and Jerry was quick to reveal that he knew Shanta for over 30 years and the discussion kicked off on a familiar note with some personal fun anecdotes and laughter. They first discussed her book, ‘The Engaged Observer’- a collection of writings, how she came about writing it and her writing process in general. Shanta was casual throughout the conversation and made it seem like an easy job. She spoke about how the stories came to her at different points in her life and how she lent a voice to it.

Jerry then went on to tell us how he prodded and persisted Shanta over many years to write her memoir which we now have as ‘One Foot On The Ground: A Life Told Through The Body’. Shanta went on to tell us how she has rather poor memory and can’t remember a thing let alone write a memoir. And then she quickly added, it all came to her one day in the form of a distinct memory. She could suddenly taste the feeling of blood and iron in her mouth just like she did many years ago after a tonsillitis surgery. That one memory triggered her onto many more like her first period, her first tooth extraction and many other physical struggles. That string of thought is what became the structure of the memoir.

 

Jerry then asked her about her precise process of writing, to which she candidly joked if he wanted the real process or what he thought it was. Shanta revealed that for her, the structure is of utmost importance, details come in later. Interestingly she said that she never thinks about the ending of her story and lets it come to her as the story progresses instead of building the story around the ending. I thought that was a great lesson for upcoming writers.

 

Next, they talked about one of her oldest books released in 1995, ‘Rita Welinkar’. She candidly remarked how she was privy to 4 extramarital affairs around her at the time and tried to convince each one of those women to let go of their respective men but to no avail. She then decided that if no one was going to listen to her, she would write a book about it! And that’s how we got ‘Rita Welinkar’. She then said what I thought holds as much today as it did so many years ago, that her feminist friends judged her for her thoughts. She felt distanced and different for voicing an alternate opinion.

Shanta’s anecdotes about how all her books came about was an eye-opener and such a guiding light for new writers.

 

 

About the Author: Pashmi Dutta is a reader, writer, political enthusiast. Trying to talk with ease about things that make us uneasy, she has her blog at PashmiBlog and currently writes for TheSeer.

Looking For Miss Sargam

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The session had Shubha Mudgal in conversation with Deepak Unnikrishnan.Shubha Mudgal is a widely acclaimed singer, who has also been a performer, teacher, composer and an author. She has specialised in hindustani classical genre of khayal & thumri-Dadra, a semi- classical Indian music.

In the session, Shubha Mudgal explored her journey to success.The sixty year old started singing from the tender age of 7. Her enthusiastic spirit and love towards music helped her to master the craft quickly.

Shubha Mudgal shared with the audience her experiences as a singer in the music industry, which is also explored in her book, “Looking for Miss Sargam”, which contains her inside view about the music industry . The book also presents the various aspects of the world of music like rivalry, communication, musicians being indifferent to each other and also sheds light into the hierarchies that exist in the music industry. 

Through the session, it is clear that she is distressed by the fact that people who are not from the music industry are selling the music with the same standards without the proper survey and market research. Shubha Mudgal also spoke about the plight of newcomers, aspiring singers and the talents that never came to limelight. She expressed her dismay that except few, many talents were lost. She also spoke about the role of music shows in encouraging talent.  

 

 

About The Author

Bharath Srivatsav is a student of mechanical engineering from Bangalore. He dreams of building a career in cinema and literature. Some of his hobbies are reading books, travelling places and blogging about films. He currently writes for TheSeer.

 

 

Life and Death of Sunanda Pushkar

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Ravi Subramaniam interviewed author Sunanda Mehta about her popular book, ‘Life and Death of Sunanda Pushkar’. It was a great interaction between Sunanda Mehta and Ravi Subramanian. When one thinks of Sunanda Pushkar’s life, the first question that hits everyone’s mind is “Was it a suicide or was it not?”. The next one being, “Did he or did he not?”

 

Sunanda Mehta who as a friend knew Sunanda Pushkar very well said that the police investigation concluded it as a suicide but she did not believe that it was a suicide. She said,” Three theories have been discussed – accidental drug overdose, suicide, and murder” and I believe suicide is the least likely one, because she was not that kind of a woman. She loved life and she had good financial support. She had seen a lot of ups and downs. She loved her son more than anything in the world. She was a woman who was ruled by heart rather than the head.”  Accordingly to her, except for the Delhi police, the rest of the world doesn’t believe it was a suicide.

 

In her book, Mehta mentioned that Sunanda Pushkar had a phenomenal amount of wealth in Dubai. She had a property worth 150 crores. Mehta questions how can a person who has been accused of being bad at financial management managed to get property of 150 crores on her own without any help.

 

Mehta continued to explain that Sunanda Pushkar was there in the real estate business and she had seen a huge explosion in it. She used to handle bigger projects in the Dubai government. She got a lot of commissions from the land deals she arranged. She invested all again in property and the property worth 150 crores which were bought in Dubai includes 12 apartments. Most of these apartments were under a mortgage and probably in partnership with others. Her son Shiv is still struggling to clear the financial burdens since she didn’t make any will. Her accounts are frozen and he is not able to clear them out.

 

Sunanda Mehta being a famous journalist chose to write about Sunanda Pushkar because everyone was aware that she was married to Shashi Tharoor for three and a half years and judged her based on that which was extremely unfair. She was 45 when she married to Shashi Tharoor. She lived a long life before that during which she toiled to reach wherever she was. Mehta wanted to bring out that life of Sunanda Pushkar to the audience. She thought it was important for the people to know about Pushkar’s earlier life before judging her as a gold digger, socialite etc.

 

Sunanda Mehta says Sunanda Pushkar’s life has been defined by her death. The death mystery is still unresolved. The book was written after meeting and discussing the story with close family members. Sunanda Pushkar was very close to her son(Shiv) and she was a devoted mother till the end. Sunanda Mehta is still awaiting the reaction from Shiv as he is still going through a very tough time in Dubai because of the financial mess and he is still spending more time in courts to release the accounts and property.

 

The book doesn’t talk about how Shashi Tharoor felt about Sunanda Pushkar. He refused to talk about it since his lawyers advised him not to speak on the subject as the case is still on. When it started, her relationship with Tharoor was genuine. She was absolutely in love with Shashi Tharoor and vice versa. They were completely happy with the marriage initially. As time passed, somewhere in the middle of 2013, things started to change between them. Differences started showing up more often which started building a distance in the marriage. Sunanda continued to be in love until the end. After the separation, she completely changed from being a very cheerful woman to a suspicious woman. She became a typical insecure wife which drove her to the edge.

Sunanda Pushkar should be remembered as she was. She was an emotional woman who lived by her heart and a fabulous mother who lived for her son.

 

 

About the Author: Swapna Patil is an author of adventure travel and romance. “Why stay at one place and talk about it, when you can make your whole life more interesting by traveling and narrating those stories in words” is the motto she lives by. She is also a trek leader and flirts with words on the top of mountains and chooses poetry over prose. She currently writes for TheSeer.

The Indian Conservative

TheSeer Team

The session started with a recollection of the conversation that  Jerry Rao had with the Chancellor of Asoka University, Rudrangshu Mukherjee. The said conversation centered around the current academic scenario in India with the bombardment of ideologies of the Left as opposed to the inculcation of conservative ideologies in the academic world. Excerpts from this conversation includes incessant requests by Jerry to inculcate conservative ideology in the minds of the young through a string of lectures that he would posit upon the students. This was met with an agreement and these meandering set of lectures were turned into the book ‘The Indian Conservative’. The book explores the legitimacy of the conservative ideology and its claims through contextualization of different kinds. 

The theme of the book revolves around the right wing ideology and its persistence in Indian history. In the session, Jerry Rao spoke of  how political ideologies and its concepts such as Left and right are fairly recent in the macrocosm of history. He then discussed India and its ideology in contention in isolation, as he claims that there is an indigenous tradition of conservative thinking throughout Indian history. This claim is made with specific reference to the practices that revolved around equity. Jerry further alludes to the two texts that set the groundwork and are considered to be the foundational texts that set the tone for the Indian strain of conservatism; Shantiparva (the book of peace) by Vyasa and Tirukkural by Thiruvalluvar. These two texts act as the nucleus of the conservative ideology that seeps through the territorial boundaries of India and its citizens since its publishing. It has been part of the Indian political thinking and philosophical thinking. Considering that the philosophers of the ancient times were berated on their agenda of personal benefits and gains, Jerry defended their ideologies stating that their priorities were selfless and they mainly focused on social issues rather than personal gains. 

Through time, India had developed two main strains of conservatism within its territorial boundary, they were the Burkean or Traditionalist conservatism which emphasises the need for the principles of a transcendent moral order, manifested through certain natural laws to which society ought to conform in a prudent manner. Raja Rammohan Roy was an ardent follower of this strain of conservatism. The other strain of conservatism was adhered by Bankim and his Hindu nationalist philosophy which emphasized on the expression of social and political thought, based on the native spiritual and cultural traditions of the Indian subcontinent.

Post this, the idea of a utopic realm came into question to which Jerry said “belief in utopia leads to a dystopic outcome.” Further continuing his speech on the concepts of conservatism, Jerry brought out the differences between religious conservatism and non religious conservatism in which the former believes that creating a heaven on Earth is the responsibility of God and the latter claims the opposite, referring to the attempts of Pol Pot and Joseph Stalin in bringing heaven to Earth but the misconstrued ideology turned detrimental for humanity. 

There is a collective conservative skepticism towards the idea that group rights and beliefs supersede individual rights due to their association and belief in the concept of dharma, which is esoteric to an individual. In the Indian context, Rajadharma existed well before the introduction of the Magna Carta and its sole reason for existence was to eradicate the pervasive matsya nyaya (law of the fish). It is the fundamental law of nature that small fish become prey to big fish or the strong devour the weak. It can be equated to the ‘Law of Jungle’. In simple words, the strong will prevail over the weak.

The idea of India as Bharat is an ever-present one whose legitimacy according to Jerry, is similar to that of the Jew’s laying claim to the Holy Land, thus emphasising on India being a “sacred land.”The ideology of Bharat and its unifying ideologies existed before the preamble was written, thus securing its status on this dispute. 

Jerry spoke of his distaste towards the permeating ideologies of Marxism, Postmodernism and Freudian theories in the academic sphere and further berates the ideas of Derrida and Foucault, claiming that they are charlatans that make an attempt at brainwashing the minds of the young with their ideologies. He also discussed the challenges of being a conservative philosopher in the streams of academia and journalism as it is essentially dominated by the left that is totalitarian and elitist in its nature and spoke of the response he usually gets when he alludes to the Shanti Parva, stating that “I would be called a fundamentalist, a Hindutva practitioner if I used these works.”

Jerry also explored the defining qualities of democratic politics, which is the definition of an identity. (eg, the Akali Dal is a party for the Jaat and Sikh). Economy and philosophy are just add ons to the political idea as they aren’t prioritised for sustenance. 

Jerry concluded that there needs to be an influence in the nucleus of the several democratic political parties in India in order to create a shift to conservatism and thus prospering in the future. 

 

About The Author:

A self proclaimed meme lord that barely makes any but laughs at many, all Vishal Bhadri does is read, listen to music and cry during both the activities. Vishal has a poetry blog called Memory Palace that has all of his two poems in it. He is doing his triple major in Communications, Literature and Psychology at Christ University. He currently writes for TheSeer.

 

Writer, Playwright, Humanist: The Life and Work of Girish Karnad

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Vibrant with colours and ideologies, Bangalore Literature Festival celebrated Girish Karnad as a local and international personality at the same time. The session provided an extended glimpse on Karnad’s life and works as a writer, playwright, and humanist. The two venues at the literature festival were named after Karnad’s plays Tughlaq and Yayati. Convener for the session Preethi Nagaraj introduced Karnad by reading out a line from his autobiography. The other three panelists were personalities from Kannada literature and films who had personal encounters with Karnad.

 

Jayant Kaikini, a poet, short story writer, public intellectual, and a lyricist in Kannada cinema regarded Karnad as a senior who had always been ready to provide a warm helping hand to all the newcomers. Furthermore, in the session, Jayant describes his encounters and experiences with Karnad and how he always supported the upcoming literature and artists. Girish Karnad believed that the entire world relies within the self and the self has the power to change the world. Jayant quoted Karnad, “…if I don’t talk I will be considered a fool if I do I will be proving myself” and tells us how he was critical of himself as a person.

 

Girish Karnad has been a part of the sensibility and psychological world of the Kannadigas, an image of inspiration and support, helping the Kannada literature to transform to a great extent. Karnad was a public intellectual and activist who in his last years in spite of declining health actively participated in protests. He was a man of remarkable personality and exhibited himself as a humanist as he always raised his voice against injustice. Jayant said that to understand Karnad as a person we should read his non-fiction works and autobiography, Karnad’s personal narrative is exclusive. We generally read or see his fiction works in the form of books and movies which gives us exposure to his excellence of creation while his non-fiction provides an extended glimpse of Karnad as a person.

 

Karnad as multilingual personality has motivated many people to acquire and write in different languages at once. Karnad is the only person who has translated his works from one language to another as mentioned by K Marulasiddappa. For him, Karnad has been a contemporary, not of competition but compliment. B Jayashree, a director, actress, and singer, enlightened us with the rich narrative of Karnad in his plays such as Hayavardana and Nagamandala. Jayashree also sang a song written by Karnad which was included in the movie from his own play Nagamandala where they both acted together. Screening of Karnad’s four-minute speech in this short session also found a place, which was his last time on camera extending gratitude on receiving Amar Ujala Award.

 

The session ended with the screening of his speech, which exhibited for us a detailed image of Karnad as an extraordinary man conferred with great ideologies. He was a writer par excellence and a versatile actor, very sensitive towards humanitarian aspects. Karnad has been regarded as oxygen to a sinking person even at times when he suffered from critical health issues. He was an ever-evolving, restless and rooted mind who gave a new identity to Kannada literature and cinema.

 

 

About the Author: Aditi Dua is a Masters student in English with Communication Studies who has a knack for aesthetics and poetry. Apart from being a literature enthusiast, she highly celebrates challenging ideologies and provide disputing ideas of death. Always available for a conversation over good coffee. She currently writes for TheSeer.