What is permissible?

BEFORE I took a fortnight off to make a final revision of my new novel, I confided my fears of the reception it might get from self-appointed censors who proliferate in our country to my publisher David Davidar, of Penguin-Viking, India. He had read some pages of my draft as had his number two, Ravi Singh. "Nothing to worry", David assured me, "You read what is being published and praised by critics in America and Europe and you will see that if the writing is good, everything is acceptable to discerning readers." To give me further assurance, he lent me two novels to read: one was by the Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I had read and enjoyed his One Hundred Years of Solitude, but not Love in the time of Cholera. The second novel David gave me was the Peruvian novelist Maris Vargas Llosa’s The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto. I had not read anything by him before. Ifound both quite fascinating but felt that if they had been written by an Indian about his own people, he or she, would have been condemned for corrupting the morals of young people. We have double-standards: we read and enjoy books written by foreigners however explicit they may be about man-woman relations but turn very censorious when written by one of our own compatriots. We observe the same double-standards about indigenous erotic art. Erotic sculptures of Khajuraho or Konark don’t disturb our conscience. Nor do puerile but explicit works like Kama Sutra or kok Shastra, nor vulgar expressions of puerile fantacies accompanied by crude songs in our films. But you can never tell what will outrage a high-minded neta or a Shrimati to report the matter to the police or take you to court. The fact of the matter is that there is no clearly defined line between what is acceptable erotica and what is unacceptable obscenity.

Llosa has something to say on the subject. He finds Playboy and Penthouse vulgar and obscene. I do not. Ifind them trivial and titillating. Since they are banned in India, I get a copy or two when I am abroad. They help me pass long hours spent on my homeward journey and then I give them away to friends. Llosa writes: "Since eroticism is the intelligent and sensitive humanisation of physical love, and pornography its cheapening and degradation, I accuse you readers of Playboy and Penthouse, frequenters of vile dens that show hard core movies of contributing to the rapid regression to mere animal copulation of the one attribute granted to men and women that make them most like gods, pagan ones of course, who were neither chaste nor prudish regarding sexual matters." Strong language but Llosa wallows is strong language. He describes himself as a monogamist who looks kindly on adultry.

Llosa goes on to expand on his theme. "Pornography is passive, and collectivist, eroticism is creative and individual even when practised in two or threes.... Sex cannot be democratic; it is elitist and aristocratic".

I am not sure if I fully comprehend what Llosa is trying to say. I don’t think he knows it himself as he sounds very confused. The truth of the matter is that what is beautiful whether in literature, sculpture or painting, should not be objected to simply because some people regard it as erotic, obscene or pornographic. It is their problem. They have to overcome their prejudices and refrain from imposing their views on the public. If you find sexually explicit sculptures on the walls of some of our temples obscene, don’t visit them. But you have no right to forbid others who find them beautiful from doing so. The same goes for literature. If you find it pornographic, don’t read it but you have no right to stop others from doing so. Let very person be his own judge of what is worthwhile and what is not.

Among the Badals (III): Farewell

A feast is laid out by Commander of the Frontier Post. Dr Shavinder Kaur (Manpreet’s mother-in-law) fills up her plate. "Lovely Manchurian chicken", she explains as she begins to demolish it. She had a hearty lunch at Badal before we left. "It is nearly dinner time," I remind her. "Will you have any appetite left?" "This is my dinner," she assures me.

The evening gives way to a half-moonlit night. We drive to the Commissioner’s bungalow. Robin Gupta does things with great panache. His garden is lit with garlands of bulbs as at wedding receptions. Taped music blares out of loud speakers. Bag pipers strike some Scottish air. I shake dozens of hands belonging to the district’s senior civil and police officers and say Sat Sri Akal to dozen of elegantly dressed sardarnis. I am re-introduced to a princess of Faridkot who I had seen as a child 50 years ago and a bevy of sisters of the Sodhi family of Guru Harsahai. Their names do not betray their Punjabi origin. I beg to Dr Shavinder to sit beside me as my bodyguard against bores trying to collar me. She looks after me like a younger sister. She has dinner served for me. She keeps me company to a second dinner in one hour.

I am allowed to leave at 9.30 p.m.

Early next morning, Jojo Jauhal picks me up from the rest house. We drive through Morinda to Ludhiana, along the Sirhind canal for a few minutes and on to Chandigarh. After a short break in his house and introductions to his two little children, his wife joins us to drive me to my destination, Kasauli.

In three crowded days, I sampled the generous hospitality of the Badal clan and saw something of the booming agricultural prosperity of Punjab.

Dalip Kaur Tiwana

It must have been about 10 years ago that I first met Dalip Kaur Tiwana at a writers’ conference in Glasgow. I had heard a lot about her as a novelist and writer of short stories and the many awards she had won but I had not read anything published by her. At one of the sessions, she had read a short story about a man and a woman who worked in the same office with a thin partition wall separating their cubicles. They do not meet but are aware of each other’s presence by their comings and goings and get emotionally involved with each other. The story was well received by the Indo-Pak audience. My translation of the story was published by The Illustrated Weekly of India. My attempts to get to know Dalip Kaur better proved futile. She remainded aloof and did not respond to my overtures.

When Neelam Kumar of Ranchi asked to send her Dalip Kaur’s story to be included in an anthology of India’s best short stories, I got Dalip’s address from Ajit Caur and wrote to her. She wrote back to me from Patiala saying she had misplaced my translation and could not find it. Evidently, she did not think very much of my English version.

Last week she sent me a copy of her novelette Gone Are the Rivers, the English version translated by S.C. Narula and Bhupinder Singh of her Punjabi novel Langh Gaye Darya published by Macmillan. I read it in a few hours because I liked the theme, the translation was good and I was familiar with some of the characters. Though she does not name them, they are members of a family of one of the ministers of the late Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala. Many senior sardars of the court lived in much the same style as their Maharaja. They hired English governesses to teach their children, gave them English names and married them off into princely families. Most of them had two or more wives, drank hard and treated their devoted servants as slaves: bedded their wives or daughters if they fancied them. But if they as much as dared to make passes at other women, they were given a shoe-beating or even bumped off. Theirs was a feudal society. If a sardar’s first wife failed to produce children, she herself found her husband another wife and claimed her offspring as her own. For the rest their lives consisted of arranging nuptials, buying expensive clothes and jewellery, exchanging presents and spreading gossip. The generation disappeared with the death of Bhupinder Singh. His son Yadavendra Singh dispersed his father’s harem: some were married off to sardars, some returned to their parents, some became prostitutes. Then the Maharaja was himself deprived of ruling powers and his state merged into Punjab. Only memories remain. It is these memories that Dalip Kaur Tiwana has, with gentle delicacy, enshrined in her novel.

Election symbol

Banta told Santa, "I am going to stand for election to the Lok Sabha. My election symbol will be a ‘Donkey’.

"Banta, there should be some difference between you and your election symbol", replied Santa.

(Contributed by J.P. Singh Kaka, Bhopal)