Talking to Altaf Tyrewala

It was January 2008. We were in the north Italian city of Turin for a literature festival organised by an Italian literary foundation, Grinzane. There was a special session in this festival about India and thus many Indian authors were invited. I was there as an Indian blogger and had helped in deciding whom to invite. 

 

I had asked Altaf Tyrewala for an interview and finally we got around doing it during a bus journey as we were going out for some lunch. As we sat down in the bus and I was fumbling with my recorder, Altaf said that he hadn’t liked being presented as a “Muslim writer from India”. I agreed with him completely, I would hate to be called a “Hindu writer from India”. I had had some discussions with the organisers and I knew they did it to refute any charges of ignoring the writers from Indian minorities, but I guess that doesn’t make it any easier!

He said, "When outside they call me in this way it saddens me. It is not enough that in a nation a minority has to be made self-conscious, even outside the country they are ... they didn’t mention the religious background of any other writer." 

 

Lavanya Shankaran, who was sitting behind us didn’t realise that it was an interview and I was recording it and so she also joined in the conversation. I was very happy since the discussion was very stimulating and I was imagining that my recorder is recording her voice as well. Unfortunately that was not the case, I can only hear some of her words. I vaguely remember what she said but that is not enough to re-construct her part of dialogue and I regret that immensely.

Here are some excerpts from the transcript of that discussion-recording. The symbols are AT for Altaf Tyrewala and SD for me, Sunil Deepak. 

SD: Tell me about the kind of things you like to read? 

AT: I like reading something that has been stripped to the bare essentials. I am almost incapable of enduring descriptions, etc. Anything that assumes that I don’t know ... I read the internet, I try to remain clued in to the world. What I like to read is something that I can not access as an information. 

SD: You don’t see that as a contradiction, wanting to be a writer and yet wishing to express yourself in as few words as possible? 

AT: (laughs) Yes, absolutely. I think that it is extremely damaging to my career. I won’t be able to churn out books every year. But this is something that I have to deal with as a writer, it is my challenge. This conflicting instinct in me, to speak and not to speak, these are two powerful impulses in me. To keep quiet because whatever has to be said, has already been said, and the other side, even while wishing to keep quiet, to find things to say. 

SD: Writing is a creative expression and there are different ways of expressing creativity. Did you have to choose from different things you wanted to do or was writing the only thing that you wanted to do? 

AT: I have always wondered what it would be like to be a painter or a musician, but writing is something that goes beyond creative expression. It has become a way of life. It is not like an outburst of creative energy. I think that it is almost like it moulds your way of living. I am not a writer just when I am writing, I am a writer 24 hours a day. That is how I have found myself becoming. 

SD: You have written one book that has been published but may be you have written lot of other books that have not been published or that are still in your head. How do you decide what you are going to write and how long that process takes to actually come to do it? 

AT: (laughs) The first novel came out organically. I had this impulse to write, a deep desire and need to write. I was trying to understand how the conventional form of a novel would do justice to the kind of society and I kind of reality I grew up in and I realised that it wouldn’t and I had to innovate a new form. Terrifying though it was to write in a way that I had never read anything before, create a kind of structure that I had never seen before. What was your question? How long does it take... there is no telling, it can take months. Like the second novel is taking me more than 2 years to actually kick off. With the first novel I found a groove and once you find a groove ... I used to get a story done every two weeks and that was immensely satisfying. But I think that this incubation period is important, you have to wait to not to get carried away by a wrong thing o a notion that turns out to be false later on. I am just being patient and waiting ... when it comes you know it from the tips of your fingers, it is absolutely ... 

SD: When we were getting in the bus, you said something about your wife. Did she know you as a writer or as a person before you became ...? 

AT: I was a poor graduate student in America when we met. We were studying together. She thinks that I completely misrepresented myself (laughs) because I turned out to be a writer. But because she has seen me before I was a writer, she is an immensely grounding presence in my life. It would have been so easy to float up in this writerly universe ..but she keeps on reminding me that don’t forget ... 

Lavanya Shanker: That is very wise thing you are saying... sensible, to keep your feet on the ground ..it is important that the spouse is not a writer otherwise ... writers are whackoos (laughs)... very difficult to have another writer in the house... 

AT: Or even an artist you know, it would be ... 

SD: What does it mean “deciding to become a writer”? Perhaps it would be different for a woman, but for a young person to say “I have decided to be a writer”, how would the society react? I think that in Italy people let you live your life, perhaps your parents would say something but they can’t interfere with your decisions. But in India? 

AT: I guess I was smart.. I had enough foresight to know that if I wanted to be a writer I had better do it fast. I couldn’t do it when I was 30 or 35, when real life has completely taken over. I was twenty two when I decided that I wanted to be a writer and I left my job and started writing full time. At that age, I got certain degree of indulgence from my parents. It was like even if I screw up, let’s say by 25-26 I can go back to work. They were willing to allow me this kind of window of opportunity. If this book hadn’t done fairly well, I probably would have been still working, gotten back to a 9 to 5 job. Plus, I took a loan to write, I approached a bank for a loan. 

SD (laughs) And how was that? What was their reaction in the bank? 

AT: I didn’t tell them that it was for writing. I said that I was starting an e-learning business with internet and I need the money. I used that to write for 3-4 years, used it as my pocket money. I knew it was a matter of time. You have to know deep down what you want and you have to go after it. 

(Note: The discussions after this point had more interventions of Lavanya Shankaran but from here onwards quality of recording is not good, so I have excluded this part from the transcription. 

AT: What I meant was that I can never have single moment of oblivion, of unconsciousness or not being analytical or not processing or not forcing myself to certain amount of insight on everything that I go through.. what comes first is the mad impulse to create and it is a mad energy that starts getting channelled and focused on the thin line of what it means to be a more mature writer.

When I started writing, I realised that my initial stories were mainly about myself and my experience of the world. Only when I wrote story upon story, I realised that I was just a small aspect of this larger universe out there.

And then it was up to me to place myself, to position myself in different circumstances in my head, fictionally, and to ask what if I was that or what if I was there and lend myself to different situations fictionally to understand what it would be like ... it was an exercise in some degree of compassion, to really feel what it is to be someone else. Not just think of what it would be to be someone else but to actually feel it.

*** 

SD: At this point our bus reached the venue and so the interview was interrupted! I am really sorry that the part about Lavanya are missing from this interview.   

A Lazy Sunday and the Cyclists

While taking out Brando for his morning walk I discovered that our social centre was holding a cyclist meet. They do it by turns. A group of cyclists, mostly men in their seventies, hosting these meetings, organise groups of volunteers who offer drinks, cakes and other refreshments to everyone.

 

Other groups of cyclists from near and far converge, enjoy refreshments and then all go out the explore the surrounding areas on their bicycles. Yesterday it was our local cyclists who were playing hosts and people came from as far as 150 km, around 1800 persons in all. Making cakes and refreshments for all of them must have been a huge affair, but I didn't hear anyone complaining.

 

 

Each group of cyclists was wearing their group-colours and logos, and they looked great. One fellow who came to rest near me, told me that he had a hip transplant last year and this was his first cycle trip after the surgery. They were mostly men and I think that it is wonderful way to keep friends and spend time together, because otherwise we men have big difficulties in keeping social relationships.

 

Even though sports allow men to have social relationships, I think that our relationships with our friends are different from those of women, in the sense we rarely if ever, talk about our fears, pains and emotions. I believe that we men need courses on how to share what matters most to us, instead of worrying about showing off that everything is fine and we are not vulnerable in any way.

 

 

*** 

Back from the walk I cooked some afghani chhole (chick-peas) and then made "panch phoren aloo" (potatoes). I had discovered the recipe on a food blog. Panch phoren is a mix of five spices used commonly in Bengal. I love some of these food blogs, they are really good at explaining recipes. Both chhole and aloo turned out to be quite good.

 

Then it was time to relax and watch "U, Me aur Hum", the first film of Ajay Devgan as a director.

I think that Devgan can be great director of serious films. His handling of serious scenes is good and some of the scenes are like tear-gas, with a wonderful Kajol. I didn't like the first half of this film and though I liked the song "Maine to maanga tha.." and Kajol in it, I think that it was placed very badly in the film. Their young son has just risked dying and Devgan has probably come back from hospital, to see Kajol dancing in that scene was a kind of unreal and cruel.

This afternoon was our picnic time. We went to the park for a family walk. There the group of elderly persons had organised their food festival, so we couldn't stop ourselves from eating some nice greasy local piadina-bread with ham, salami, etc. The park is so lovely with all kind of flowers, so I took lot of pictures.

As we came back home, we are both tired and full. The idea of going out to eat Pizza was no longer appealing. May be another day, we consoled Marco. I am reading a book by Alexander McCall Smith about a Scottish philosopher. Going back to sofa and reading the book was a perfect way to end the beautiful Sunday.

 

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Age and desirability

Note: If you don't like to read about men, especially older men like me, talking about women-girls as sex symbols, this post is not for you - please do not read it.

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I was with a friend and we were talking about the most beautiful Italians. I told him about a blog post I had written some time ago about my favourite Italian sex symbols in which, I had put Alba Parietti and Sabrina Ferrilli in my top list.

 

"What?" he said horrified, "but they are old!!!"

"OK, I also had Monica Bellucci in that list", I added.

 

"She is also too old for this kind of thing now. You have to look for some one younger!" He insisted.

 

 "There are really hot east European babes", the bar man added helpfully, providing details about the contortions they can do in some porn videos.

 

"Those are not women, they are just meat. And anyway they are not Italian and we exclude porn stars from this classification", my friend clarified.

 

I should also add that the women, whom my friend called "too old", are at least 10-15 years younger to us.  

Anyway, this discussion created the idea of finding out who are the young women today who dominate the fantasies of men in Italy? And compared to my favourites Alba Parietti and Sabrina Ferrilli, how do they fare in my perception?

 

So there I was trying all kinds of combinations on Google to find out the top young models that Italians love today. Unsurprisingly, I found that there is no unanimity.

Actually quite a lot of them seem to root for Martina Colombari, born in 1975, she was Miss Italy in 1991 and is still considered as one of the best models here. In 2006, in a pool on the best Miss Italy of all times, she was number one.

She does look great but I don't think that she is that young, like my friend was insisting.

Many others think that Carla Bruni is the best Italian top model of all times. Born in 1967 and now married to the French president Sarkozy, however even Ms. Bruni is also not very young.

Two other names were mentioned on some websites - Marta Cecchetto and Federica Ridolfi. Ms. Ridolfi was in some recent list of top 100 most desirable women of the world compiled by Askmendotcom. 

Finally a group of Italian journalists asked to identify the woman they would like to see nude on a calendar, gave the maximum votes to Ilaria d'Amico, a TV presenter but their choice had not so much to do with age, as with the fact that Ms. Ilaria refuses to have top less or nude pictures (and we desire most what we can't have).

So in the end does it matter what year persons are born?

 

Anyway, I feel that desiring a person has much more to do with the perceived personality of the person than just measurements of breasts or hips, etc.

 

My wife keeps on saying that she finds Sean Connery, who must be seventy now, sexy. So there is hope for all of us, over the hill, but still somehow sexy and desirable, to the people who matter most to us!

 

And I will stick with my Ferrilli and Parietti, thank you.

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Italian Election Candidates

It is election time in Italy. If I only could, I would vote for Zappatero.

 

The way his government has gone towards reforms is stuff for day-dreams in other countries where frustrated voters are sick of their governments that can't decide on anything. Like the law on people living together rather than getting married, including the same-sex couples that Zappatero could get through.

 

In Italy they started with a law called Dicos, then tried Pacos and in the end, gave up the idea because the centre parties that have strong catholic public image, felt that the law would discriminate against regular heterosexual families.

The way last Prodi government had been functioning was so frustrating with its thin majority. Every member of the coalition with a handful of parliament seats threatened to quit if they didn't like something. Mastella with his 3-4 parliament seats and Dini with two seats, did it so often. Mastella finally brought the government down and it came out that he had received assurances from the opposition leader Berlusconi about getting a minister seat in the new government. It was disgusting and the public disapproval against Mastella is so strong that he has finally decided to "retire".

So you can understand my fondness for Zappatero. The only problem is that he is too handsome. I am a little distrustful of the handsome public leaders. Just think of what Blair did, turning into wagging tail of Bush. Or what Bill Levinsky Clinton did. Thus if Zappatero first was good, Zappatero-bis may be too much. And then there is Nicholas Sarkozy, a post-modernist nightmare of a prime minister.

Anyway back to the Italian elections. Suddenly people seem distrustful of small parties and small leaders, each of whom gets a few seats and then tries to influence the government. At least I hope so, and that everyone would vote for a main party that can govern the country.

Where I live is called the "Red area of Bologna". Actually the whole city of Bologna has the reputation of being red, in the sense that it has been a stronghold of left-parties, for a long time with communists and later on with centre-left coalitions.

 

Now it is the new left, democratic party of Veltroni, that is the flavour of the season. Last year in October they held the primaries to choose their boss and this was a first in Italy, since usually parties choose their own leaders and don't ask people to vote and elect their leaders. More than 3 million persons voted for Veltroni. Since it is a red area, strong hold of left parties, all the election posters of Northern League, Christian Democrats and other right parties are missing from the billboards. Probably enthusiastic supporters go out in the night to take down all such posters.

Still some of the posters are really funny. Like this one from Northern League, that is the nationalist party of the north of Italy, that does not want immigrants. Their poster has a red Indian on it.

 

"The Red-Indians didn't have rules to control immigration and now they are forced to live in reserves, think about it" their poster says. But they were all European emigrants, I wanted to tell the Northern League leaders. Africans, Asians, they didn't kill civlisations and put people in reserve areas! But I don't think that he wants to listen. The poster is both funny and good-communication, and in the end, that is what matters.

Sex is another theme of elections that continues to surprise me. Not the puritanical Clinton-Levinsky kind of sex, it is more open and ribald. Like the Northern League famous for its "Lega c'è l'ha duro", meaning, "League has it hard" and is just going screw you.

Ms. Santanché, prime ministerial candidate of extreme right, snubbed by Berlusconi, reacted by saying "He wants me to give it to him but I am not, he can dream and die for it." Mr. Berlusconi himself, famous for putting his foot in his mouth every so often, has been trying to keep a check on himself this time. Last time he had announced that for the elections, for one month he was going to give up sex, implying that nearing seventy, he was still having it regularly and thus not too old to be a prime minister.

But it is the porno-stars who catch attention every time during elections. Ilona Staller & Moana Pozzi, both porno-stars were parliament members for the radical parties almost a decade ago. Both had scandalised for refusing to give up their wayward ways even after entering the parliament by continuing their work in hardcore porn, saying that it was their job and they had every right to go on with it. At least Moana was intelligent and able to speak articulately! Now we have Ms. Milly D'Abbraccio, another porn-star standing for the socialist party. Her poster in Rome has created some more scandal.

"Basta con queste facce da c...", the poster uses a common Italian proverb, "facce da culo" that means "ass-faces" and so in a poster showing her well rounded ass, Ms. D'Abbraccio says, "enough of ass-faced" parliamentarians, vote for a more beautiful face. Embarrassed, the socialist leaders, vain about their 114 year old history, were stuttering their explanations about the poster.

Veltroni and Prodi were in Bologna the other day. Veltroni has choosen the slogan of Barack Obama, "Si può fare", it can be done. Initially all surveys showed the predictions that Berlusconi was ahead by ten points. Now Veltroni is going around saying that he is the new thing in Italian politics, he is running alone, no arrangements with any party and he has been elected by the people and he is young, only 54. Berlusconi is dismissive.

 

Personally I liked the speech of Anna Finocchiaro, wearing the red cross-checked coat in this picture, along with Prodi and Veltroni. She was simple and effective and to have a woman prime minister won't be bad. But she is not in the race for the prime minister. Bersani, the other minister of Prodi government who was there for the meeting is admired for the series of liberalisation measures he was able to push through in spite of the protests by the different unions.

And this time PD, the Democratic party is proposing industrialists and professionals as candidates, not just union leaders and mechanics. So what will happen in the elections? We are all waiting to discover.

PS: Maybe Mayawati can ask for a ban on Zappatero? His name literally means Mochi or  a "shoe-maker".

Remembering The Massacre of Monte Sole

It was still a little cold but the sunlight was blinding. 

 

A little after the Etruscan museum we turned towards the mountains. The road crossed over the Rhine (Reno) and then started climbing up. These were not really high mountains, they are only around 400 to 700 meters high, but winter must be tough here.

 

In Bologna, the trees are already full of flowers while here the first leaves are just struggling to burst out of wintery skeletons of the trees. The new grass has that lovely shining green colour that looks velvety. When we reached the top of the crossing between San Martino and Casaglia (pronounced Cazalia), the endless hills looked wonderful and far away, we could see glimpses of the highway with cars rushing over it.

It is very beautiful.

 

The first ruins of the church and the houses in San Martino, look like the antique Etruscan ruins. They all seemed to be white-washed, all clean and blindingly white. There were no signs of bombs that were exploded here, of machine guns that had killed so many, fires that had blazed.

 

Did they scream? Those old men and women and children? Did they ask for pity from the young Nazi soldiers?

 

Pietro, our neighbour had told me about the tragedy in Marzabotto. Around end of September in 1944, German soldiers had killed a total of 771 persons in the villages here. Perhaps they were angry and frustrated, because they were losing the war and partisans from Marzabotto were hiding in the hills and attacking them regularly. They took out their anger on children, women and elderly, who were left at home in the villages. Among the dead were 315 women and 189 children below 12 years.

 

In Casaglia, they killed the priest Don Ubaldo Marchioni in the church below. Other persons hiding in the church were marched to the cemetery near by. The door of the church was blown out by a bomb. It seems difficult to believe that all of it happened in this calm and beautiful place. The grass is bursting with tiny Margarita flowers and air is thick with smell of flowers.

 

 

The cemetery is around 250 meters from the church. It is a small and simple place, with a few broken down tomb stones and some old pictures fixed to the wall. A board outside the cemetery says:

"Hitler said, "We have to be cruel, we have to do with our conscience in peace, we have to destroy technically and scientifically."

 

A survivor of the killings said,"29-30 September and 1 October 1944 were the worst days, even if some killings continued even after these days. Early in the morning I could see 54 houses burning. There was a group of them soldiers applying fire to the houses. We had all gathered in the square in front of the church. We were told that Nazi and fascist soldiers were coming but we thought that their fight was with partisans and so we decided that the elderly, women and children could stay in the church. They broke open the door, we were all forced to come out and they beat many of us, laughing all the time. The priest was killed near the altar. We were led to the cemetery. Inside they started to fire at us. We were trying to hide behind the wooden crosses and the tombs. They were firing low so as to kill the children also. They also threw in some bombs." A total of 195 persons including 50 children were killed in the cemetery."

Afterwards we went to the Sacrario (Bone house) in Marzabotto, where the bodies of 771 persons are buried. Pietro used to come here. His sister, sister-in-law and father were buried here. The day they were killed, Pietro's 14 year old sister wanted to come away with them but Pietro had stopped her. He said that their sister-in-law was pregnant, almost in the ninth month and could need help, so he told her, you stay here, you are only a child, the soldiers won't do any thing to you.

 

"I got her killed, she could have been saved", he would say again and again and struggled with guilt and depression all his life.

As we sat in the Sacrario to remember Pietro, my mind was wandering to remember all those persons I knew and who are now dead - my friends, my maasi, my buas.

 

And, I was wondering about the killings in India, like the 1984 killings in Delhi, like the 1989-90 killings in Kashmir, like 1992 killings in Bombay, like 2002 killings in Gujarat, like the on-going killings in so many places. Most of the time in India, the killers from such massacres are never brought to jail, the persons killed are never acknowledged. At least Pietro had the satisfaction of history condemning those Nazi soldiers, some of them were brought to trials. The memory of those dead is honoured and there bodies are buried in Sacrario, this monument to those killed. The victims of the riots in India, the victims of ethnic cleansing in Kashmir, who remembers them? How do their families, their children, live with this knowledge, with this burden and pain?

 

In India, most of the times these bodies will be cremated. There is no place identified with the person who is no longer there. The person becomes invisible, and memories are only that, memories without places to bind them into. Does that has some thing to do with the way we remember our dead and we ask for justice for them?

Sex and Hypocrisy

Everything related to sex is a taboo in almost all societies. Even those societies which apparently seem broad-minded and liberated. Thus the subject is often linked with hypocrisy. Especially for persons who act moralist and indignant about the loose morals, those who talk of family values, religions, etc.

Here are two news items from today's newspaper that illustrate this hypocrisy:

In Tehran (Iran), Mr. Reza Zarei, head of the police department for ensuring proper moral conduct in the national capital, was discovered in the company of 6 sex workers. Mr. Zerei had become famous for his harsh stand on what he called "immoral behaviour" and had got arrested hundreds of young persons with this accusation.

In New York (USA), Mr. Eliot Spitzer, the 48 year old Governor of the New York state has been forced to resign because he was using his office money on sex workers. His bill for the prostitutes amounted to 80 thousand US dollars.

In India, persons who moralise are a plenty. Just think of the one in Maharashtra government who had banned the women in dancing bars. When people are so vehement about moralising, I always feel that they have something to hide! So I hope experts of investigative journalism and sleuths should go after such persons to look in their cupboards if there are any hidden skeletons!

And to celebrate openness, have a look at the Italian version of the Naked News that started today. This internet and mobile phone based TV channel has news shows where the newsreaders (strictly women) slowly take off their clothes, while reading the news. Obviously the TV channel is available only for paying clients.

I guess learning or practising Italian with this news channel could be great fun - it would help you in staying awake while studying and increasing your general knowledge. Only problem is too much anything is not so good and probably once you have seen it a few times, you will be plain bored.

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The Tragedy of Being a Sex Symbol

I had gone to work on my bicycle. In the evening, when I finished, there was a slight drizzle and so I locked my bicycle and left it there and decided to take a bus. The bus starts nearby and thus when it reaches our bus stop, it is still relatively empty. I found an empty seat and parked myself there. On that seat somebody had left a folded newspaper.

Soon the bus reached the university area and young students filled the bus. I was going through the newspaper I had found my seat, when I suddenly heard a sharp intake of breath close to me. I looked at the newspaper and I understood the reason for the sudden silence around me. I think all the persons around me were looking at the full page ad on the newspaper.

It was an ad of the March issue of a men’s magazine called Max and the picture showed the cover of the magazine with a breath-taking nude young woman. The picture shows the face and the back of the woman clearly while her breast is seen in a silhouette. The girl is Eva Riccobono and is described as the new Italian top model, a new sex symbol.

As I got down from the bus, I took care to take that newspaper with me. Usually I prefer looking at more mature woman but in this picture, Ms. Riccobono does look wonderful.

While walking to home, I was thinking about the tragedy of Ms. Riccobono. When people proclaim you as a sex symbol, when you become famous for your beautiful body, I guess in your head a clock starts ticking like never before.

I think that all professions where your face, your body are the most important part of being you, the pressure must be terrible. The pressure to be thin, to be paranoid about every strand of hair out of place, every little pimple or wrinkle that appears, every bad angle that could show you less than perfect. How long it is going to last, you must be asking yourself.

And when people love you for your body, somehow it means that rest of you is not worth much. Initially you may love being the sex symbol, but soon you must be dreading it and hating it as much as you love it. Not that I was ever a sex symbol so that I can speak about the feelings of a sex symbol, but you only need to look around at all those beautiful people and how they all, sooner or later, try to show that they are not all body and beauty, that gives you an idea of how they feel.

So many of them become a recluse as their bodies start to age. Like Brigitte Bardot. There was a time, she was the epitome of sex symbols.

And then she hid, closed herself in baggy clothes, huge sunglasses and floppy hats, trying to become invisible. Finally she did find redemption in her love for animals and found the courage to come out and be herself. Look at her older pictures and you realise that she is still wonderfully beautiful, even if it is a different kind of beauty, more gentle and relaxed.

Some of them never find the courage to come out, like Greta Garbo, who lived her life behind closed doors and died in her solitude.

More closer to home we have our Rekha. Look at her pictures from twenty years ago and now, she still looks young and beautiful and yet in a way, a caricature of herself. Even as a grandmother in films like Krissh, she continues to be a young woman dressed as a granny.

Relax Rekha ji, we would still like you even if you let yourself go and relax a little bit. It is ok even if you are not perfect always, chill and enjoy. Yet, once you are prisoner of your image, I guess that it requires lot of courage to come out into open.

So don’t be jealous of these moments of glory of Eva Riccobono. She is sure to earn millions but she is also going to pay a heavy price for it. So best of luck Ms. Riccobono. Once the party is over, I hope you will have the courage to come out and be yourself.

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