A much awaited book...and a small, but impactful, publishing house

I have been watching out for the publication of this particular book about Hindustani classical music for a long long time…when I saw the reference of this book for the first time, sometime in 2000 or so, it was in the catalogue of the publisher, I thought I must have this book…at that time, I was totally ‘into’ music…reading about and listening to ‘fusion’ and Hindustani classical music…so much so that my actual research got derailed for some time…anyway, it said ‘forthcoming’ under a brief description of the book and a tentative list of topics…I wrote to the publisher and it was still ‘forthcoming’… I wrote after six months or so and it was still ‘forthcoming’…I had seen another book in the catalogue and decided to buy that…it was Ustad Alladiya Khan’s ‘autobiography,’ called ‘My Life.’… Ustad Alladiya Khan is the founder of the Jaipur-Atrauli Gharana, and his autobiography, dictated to his grandson towards the end of his illustrious life, is a fascinating moving picture of Hindustani classical music from the mid nineteenth century to almost the mid twentieth centuries … though I was vaguely aware of a bygone Hindustani classical world – the world of small principalities, their court singers, royal patronage, musical one-upmanship, singers and their families, bandishes being closely guarded like family treasures, etc. – Ustad Alladiya Khan’s book revealed this world in full colour…not through photographs, but through words…this is still a cherished book in my musical library…

For some time, I forgot about ‘forthcoming’ book…and recently, a few months back, I remembered that book again and felt that it would have ‘forthcome’ by now…I decided to check if the publisher had a website and I was pleasantly surprised to see that the publisher, Thema, had a website (www.themabooks.com) and more pleasantly, the book had forthcome!! …

Thema is a small publishing venture in Calcutta and publishes books in both English and Bengali…and it has got a compact and ‘impact’ful list of books in its various subsections…women’s studies, oral history, Indian history, children’s literature, culture studies, film studies, radical literature, science…

I browsed the site and saw two more books that interested me… I then spoke to them and placed an order for these three books…the books arrived yesterday…

Ok…the much awaited book is ‘Music and Modernity: North Indian Classical Music in An Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ (edited by Amlan Dasgupta) … what first struck me was the subtitle…a reference to the famous essay by Walter Benjamin…The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction…the articles in this book range from early gramophone records to the forms of the Sarod and from women musicians to reflections on the Khayal…some articles do look tough…but that is challenge…

The other two books that I bought are Imaginary Maps, a book of short stories by Mahasweta Devi (Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak) and Manik Bandyopadhyay: Selected Stories (Edited and introduced by Malini Bhattacharya)… there are more that I want to read from Thema…one by one…

Carl Muller's Yakada Yaka and other stories...

The other day I was re-reading Carl Muller's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Cemetry...in fact, I have lost count of the number of times that I have read this book...the book relates a number of humourous, and sometimes hilarious, incidents from the life of the author... some of these are from his navy life...absolutely 'laugh-your-head-off' hilarious...and there are some incidents taken from his life as a journalist in the Gulf (Persian/Arabian Gulf)...and some inincidents from the general life in Sri Lanka...

I bought this book long back on the strength of his wonderful abilities as a 'riotously' humourous writer as seen in his wonderful trilogy...The Jam Fruit Tree, Yakada Yaka, and Once upon a Tender Time...this trilogy introduces us to the Railway life of the Burgher community in Sri Lanka...like the Anglo Indians in India, Burghers are a Eurasian ethnic group in Sri Lanka, and formed the bulk of employees in Railways...and this trilogy traces the three generations of the Von Blosses...a thinly disguised retelling of the events of the three generations of his family...the Mullers...the protagonists are Cecilprins Von Bloss, the patriarch, who we see in The Jam Fruit Tree, his son, the uncontrollable Sonnaboy Von Bloss, holds fort in Yakada Yaka and Sonnaboy's son, Carloboy Prins Von Bloss, who comes to the foreground in Once Upon a Tender Time...of the three, my favourite is Yakada Yaka...it is a laugh riot...and this book has rescued me many times from low moods and gave me company on many lonely rummy saturday evenings...and I have invariably ended up laughing uncontrollably at the end of each funny railway episode... 'hilarious' would be a mild term...how Sonnaboy thwarted the pentecostalists, how he ruined the perfect party, how his railway colleagues almost ate a human heart and had to be rushed to the hospital, ...all this and much more...Sonnaboy's volcanic anger...his brood of children...his cranky brothers and sisters...their spouses...their children...a real volatile mix actually...and each episode explodes with laughter, songs, ribaldry, sometimes innocence, and many a times, the English Railway officials, are left wringing their hands at the perfectly loony explanations given by Sonnaboy and his equally crazy railway colleagues...

The Urge to Write with Fountain Pens

I actually wrote a letter today!! I mean 'wrote,' as in 'writing with a pen/pencil'...not typed on the computer...!! This was a letter of thanks to someone who had given me a couple of pieces of something which is part of his heritage and which he hands out very carefully...and this also gave me a chance to test the flow of a recently acquired fountain pen...and also to see how Pelikan brown ink, an ink colour I hadn't used till now, looked when curled into letters on a white sheet of paper... and it was all these three... and I was completely satisfied with the flow of the ink in the new fountain pen...the Pelikan brown ink looked good on white paper...and the letter came out very well...though I was exra profuse with the thanks...I think I can safely blame that on the urge to write some more and some more...what with the ink looking good and flowing well in the pen...

Though I collect fountain pens and use them, I don't get the chance to use them as much as I would like to...so, I create situations where I can use them...I keep a small notebook in my pocket and I write down a lot of things in that with my fountain pen...sometimes I feel I need to write and I don't know what to write, because most of my professional and personal 'writing' is done on the computer...including this post on this blog...and I feel I am cheating the fountain pen fellowship by hoarding pens and not using them...that too expensive ones...

I have made a mid-year resolution...that I will write at least one letter every week to someone I know...far or near or even in Hyderabad...those of you who want a letter from me may please enter your addresses in the comments section and you can also specify the pen and ink! and if I have that pen and ink...I will write a letter to you...sounds terribly stupid?

Google to the rescue...

The author of the Kannada novel (Chandramukhiya Ghatavu) that I had translated, Rodda Vyasarao Venkatarao, from what I could make out from his novel, appears to be a well-read person, interested in Sanskrit classics and also English literature...he has used verses from Sanskrit plays almost at will, whenever he wanted to illustrate a point or where the words of a higher authority would settle the issue...

But he never ever says from where he has taken these verses from...I am not sure how his readers reacted to this use of verses from Sanskrit plays...who did he have in mind as his readers? Once I started translating, I realised I hit a wall when I came across the first Sanskrit verse in the second page itself...and it was in devanagari script...I tried to guess the meaning from the context... and I could make out two words...'hans' for 'swan' and 'kshira' for 'milk'...and I put two and two together and surmised that this verse could refer to that well-known concept of 'hamsa kshira nyaya'... which refers to a celestial bird (swan) which had the power to drink only the milk and leave the water mixed with it behind...and this is given as an example for somebody who has the ability to sort the 'grain from the chaff' so to say... the positive power of discernment or judgment... it is also given as an example for a job or assignment that needs judiciousness or refinement for it to be completed successfully...Many people in India are aware of this concept...

That done...but from where is this blessed verse taken? which book or who should I consult? How should I go about consulting a book? Did I know any Sanskrit scholar? all questions the result of incomplete formal Indian education!! But now I was stuck...

Somehow, as a last independent resort, before consulting people and books, I thought of an old trick, a trick by which I would detect plagiarism during my 'editor' days...I decided to transcribe the Sanskrit verse into English and give it the 'google' treatment...and you know what...it worked and worked beautifully... I now know that this 'swan' and 'milk' verse is taken from Kalidasa's Abhijnana Shakuntalam... some kindhearted souls had put up something related to the play and I also located an English translation of the play...and things started to fall into place... and I gave the same treatment to all the Sanskrit verses that are in the novel...and I discovered that the author had taken verses and phrases from Kalidasa's Abhijnana Shakuntalam and Meghadutam, Bhavabhuti's Uttara Rama Charita, the Hitopadesha, and (now I feel) not surprisingly, a quote from Herbert Spencer too...and I found out from where all these verses, phrases, and quotation were taken with the help of Google...after locating the origins, I had to refine the references...and make them consistent...that is another story...for another post...

Thank you Google for helping me in my search...and all those who had written, hosted, or contributed to various websites on Sanskrit literature...

(the usual disclaimer...I am a happy Google user...in no way connected with Google)

A paper published and some publicity...(!!!)

Last week some good news came in the mail…I received the recent issue of Journal of Karnataka Studies…this journal is published by Kannada University, Hampi, Karnataka… the good news is that my paper is published in this issue…in fact, 2009 has been good in this sense so far…this is the third paper to see the light of the day this year, though I had submitted them some time back…so suddenly, my list of publications has increased…feels good…

This paper is about one of the prolific translators of novels during the early days of the novel in Kannada…Venkatesha Tirako Kulakarni ‘Galaganatha,’ popularly known as only ‘Galaganatha,’ translated 16 novels from Marathi into Kannada…and all of them were historical novels and most of them were written by Hari Narayan Apte originally…

The paper is titled “The Novel and the Nation: Galaganatha’s Rewriting of Historical Novels in Kannada”… and a part of this is taken from my earlier research for my PhD…and of course, the editors wanted me to make substantial changes in the draft I had submitted…which made me read some more and which was really good because I was able to see the whole issue from a slightly different perspective…I had written about the how the ‘novel’ as a genre is analogous to the idea of the ‘nation’ and how the ‘novel’ could be used to ‘plot’ the idea of the nation…especially historical novels…and since this is a family blog I don’t want to get into graphic details which could result in extreme self-torture…!!!

I must thank my friend Tharakeshwar, who was earlier teaching in the Translation Studies Dept at Kananda University, and who encouraged me to send this article for publication…now he has come to Hyderabad and is a reader at EFL University…

Among the many issues that I worked on, I enjoyed working on this aspect of the novel the most…the idea of the ‘nation’ and the novel…