Bombay
14 July 2010
To my sisters and brothers of Bangladesh who are interested in writing and the written word…
It was more than a year back that Tanvir Malik, a talented writer from Dhaka who teaches English in a university there, approached me, as a publisher, to bring out a volume of his short stories, Short Takes, which talk about Bangladeshi life and culture.
Now, we Indians have this mindset: we do not look at neighbouring countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh as places from where much creativity, especially in writing and fine arts, emerges. At least that was the mindset till recently; and things are changing, and for good, if you look at the spate of books written by Pakistani authors brought out by Indian publishers is any indication.
Coming back to Tanvir what I liked most about his works are his simplicity in narration and his eagerness to portray images that you see in your day-to-day lives. There may not be any path-breaking writing here, nor are any indications that Tanvir is an iconoclastic. But good writing is what matters and it has no boundaries, and Tanvir possesses this quality.
We, at Leadstart Publishing, are really happy and proud that we published Tanvir’s maiden debut, and now we are rejoiced by the fact that he is holding a book release function in this vibrant and effervescent city of Dhaka. We are really sorry that we could not grace this occasion, which we of course sorely miss.
I wish Tanvir all success and I hope each one of you in the audience will enjoy this talented writer’s storytelling skills.
Best of luck and have a nice evening.
Love from India.
Sunil K Poolani
Lokmat, 12 July 2010
Prabhat, 11 July 2010
विनीत खरे
बीबीसी संवाददाता, मुंबई
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एक साल पहले दिल्ली हाईकोर्ट ने एक महत्वपूर्ण फ़ैसले में कहा कि दो मर्द या औरत अगर अपनी सहमति से बंद कमरे के भीतर यौन संबंध बनाते हैं तो ये अपराध नहीं है.
क्या इस फ़ैसले के एक साल बाद समलैंगिकों को लेकर समाज की सोच में परिवर्तन आया है?
इस फ़ैसले को भारत के समलैंगिकों के लिए भारी सफलता माना गया, लेकिन विभिन्न धार्मिक संगठनों ने इसका विरोध किया. मामला अभी सुप्रीम कोर्ट में है.
मिलिए हरीश अय्यर से. जब वो छोटे थे तब उनके एक रिश्तेदार ने कई वर्षों तक उनका शारीरिक शोषण किया. उन्होंने ये बात अपने स्कूल में एक साथी को बताई, तो पूरे स्कूल में बात फैल गई.
वो कहते हैं, “सभी बच्चों को लगा कि मैं अपने रिश्तेदार के साथ सो कर आया था. स्कूल की दीवारों पर लिख दिया गया कि समलैंगिक यौन संबंध के लिए हरीश से संपर्क करें. सहानुभूति की जगह मुझे दुर्व्यवहार मिला. चलता था तो लोग पीछे हंसते थे. उस वक्त मुझे नहीं पता था कि मैं समलैंगिक हूँ कि नहीं. लोगों का व्यवहार इतना खराब था कि मैने आत्महत्या तक करने की सोची.”
ये कहानी सिर्फ़ हरीश की ही नहीं, बल्कि उनके जैसे कई दूसरे समलैंगिकों की भी है जिन्हें हर कदम पर सामाजिक तिरस्कार का सामना करना पड़ता है.
लोगों को कैसे समझाया जाए कि उम्र बढ़ने के दौरान ये नहीं समझ पाना कि आप पुरुष हैं या औरत कितनी कश्मकश की स्थिति है. व्यक्ति अपने आप से ही लड़ता रहता है और उसे समाज के बनाए बंधनों में नहीं चाहकर भी रहने को मजबूर होना पड़ता है.
हरीश ने जब अपने समलैंगिक होने की बात अपनी माँ को बताई तो उम्मीद के मुताबिक उन्हें विश्वास नहीं हुआ, लेकिन बात में उन्हें ये बात माननी पड़ी. उनकी माँ पद्मा विश्वनाथन कहती हैं कि उनके परिवारवालों ने शुरुआत में सोचा कि हरीश भी जल्द शादी कर लेगा, लेकिन ऐसा नहीं हुआ.
वो मुस्कुराते हुए कहती हैं, “हरीश मुझे वो सब कुछ बताता है जितना वो बताना चाहता है. अगर उसे कोई लड़का अच्छा लगता है तो वो कभी-कभी मुझे बताता है.”
समलैंगिकों के लिए आज भी सबसे बड़ी चुनौती है समाज में स्वीकार्यता. कानून की धारा 377 जैसे उनके सिर पर लटकती हुई तलवार जैसी थी.
मामला सुप्रीम कोर्ट में
हालांकि मामला अभी सुप्रीम कोर्ट में है, ये कहना गलत होगा कि तलवार सिर से हट गई है.
दिल्ली उच्च न्यायालय के फ़ैसले के एक साल पूरे होने पर मुंबई के आज़ाद मैदान पर एक रैली का आयोजन किया गया. वहाँ लोग तरह-तरह के रंगीन कपड़े पहन कर आए थे.
थोड़ी दूर पर खड़े इस रैली को देखने वाले कुछ लोगों का कहना था कि समलैंगिक धर्म के विरुद्ध काम कर रहे हैं और वो समाज के लिए सिरदर्द बन गए हैं. हालांकि वो मानते थे कि समलैंगिकों और हिंजड़ो के साथ किया जाने वाला बर्ताव ठीक नहीं है. उनकी माने तो ये पश्चिमी सभ्यता का असर भी है जो लोग समलैंगिक हो रहे हैं.
यानि समाज की सोच में कितना परिवर्तन हो रहा है, या हुआ भी है कि नहीं, इस पर विचार बंटे हैं. इसी रैली में मौजूद राजपीपला के राजकुमार और कार्यकर्ता मानवेंद्र सिंह गोहिल का कहना था कि क्षेत्रीय भाषा लोगों को समझाने में महत्वपूर्ण भूमिका निभा रहे हैं. उनका कहना था कि ये एक क्षेत्रीय अखबार ही था जिसने पहली बार उनकी कहानी छापी थी कि वो समलैंगिक हैं.
किताबों की कमी
यानि मानवेंद्र की माने तो लोगों में मुद्दे पर बहस ज़रूर हो रही है. समाचार माध्यम इस मुद्दे को घर-घर तक पहुँचा रहे हैं. लेकिन अभी भी देश में समलैंगिकों से जुड़ी किताबों की कमी है.
अरुण मीरचंदानी ने समलैंगिकों पर किताब लिखी है जिसका नाम है यू आर नॉट अलोन, यानि आप अकेले नहीं हैं. ये एक समलैंगिक व्यक्ति के संघर्ष की कहानी है और लेखक के मुताबिक लोगों में ज़िंदगी के प्रति उम्मीद जगाती है. अरुण कहते हैं दिल्ली हाइकोर्ट के फैसले के बाद इस मुद्दे पर लोगों में जागरुकता बढ़ी है और समलैंगिक अपने अधिकारों के प्रति सजग हुए हैं.
लेकिन अरुण कहते हैं कि अभी भी लोग खुलेआम दुकानों में उनकी किताब खरीदने में डरते हैं, कि कहीं उन्हें समलैंगिक विषय से जुड़ी किताब पढ़ते कोई देख न ले.
ऐसे ही लोगों के लिए वेबसाइट क्वीयरलिंक डॉट कॉम वेबसाइट की शुरूआत की गई है. इस वेबसाइट की शुरुआत की है शोभना कुमार ने. ये भारत की पहली वेबसाइट है जिस पर समलैंगिकों से जुड़े मुद्दों पर किताब मिल सकती है.
शोभना कहती हैं कि पहले हर हफ़्ते करीब 10 किताबें ही बिका करती थीं, अब हर दिन करीब पाँच किताबें बिकती हैं. इन किताबों में समलैंगिकों से जुड़ी समस्याएँ, उनका दर्द, कविताएं जैसी बातें होती हैं. साथ ही ये कि अगर वो दुनिया को वो बताना चाहते हैं कि वो भी समलैंगिक हैं, तो वो ये बात लोगों से कैसे कहें.
वकील आनंद ग्रोवर कहते हैं, “सबसे पहले सुप्रीम कोर्ट में हमारी जीत होनी चाहिए. उसके बाद कई छोटी-छोटी लड़ाइयाँ हैं. बच्चे गोद लेना, शादी कर पाना, जैसे मुद्दों पर अभी लड़ाई बाकी है. आम लोग हमारे विरोध में नहीं हैं. आपको उन्हें समझाना होगा.”
मुंबई में समलैंगिकों के लिए भारत का पहला स्टोर भी खुला है जहाँ लोग बिना किसी हिचकिचाहट के टी शर्ट्स, किताबें और दूसरे सामान खरीद सकते हैं.
इसके अलावा दिल्ली में समलैंगिकों के लिए ट्रैवेल बुटिक भी खुला है जिसकी मदद से समलैंगिक भारत के विभिन्न इलाकों की सैर पर भी जा सकते हैं. यानि वक्त के साथ-साथ परिस्थितियाँ बदल रही हैं, लेकिन अभी भी एक लंबी लड़ाई बाकी है.
– BBC Hindi
Eagle Spotted, Message Decoded (Frog, Rs 295) by Siddhartha Choudhary chronicles the various existential crises in the life of an engineering graduate who is “awkward, nervous”, and who considers himself to be a good-for-nothing bloke. Fresh out of college, he is forced to choose one of the toughest professions that the world has to offer, and, expectedly, is reduced to a nervous wreck. He seeks help from a batty senior, a troubled colleague and from the love of his life, but isn’t sure who exactly is going to bail him out of the mess. More worryingly, there are chances that he will make the same mistakes once again. This is another of those dreary “coming-of-age” stories that seem to be a favourite with Bollywood scriptwriters.
The Apple Elusionist (Virgin Leaf, Rs 200) by Avrina Jos tells the story of Nadine Parkman, who has been blessed with a perfect life. A caring father, a kind mother and a supportive sister help Parkman lead a fairy-tale existence, which, however, is ruined one fine day because of her own fault. Standing alone, amidst the debris of her life, Parkman seeks and receives a gift that will help her escape her troubles. But soon, she realizes that there is a price that one pays for every wish that is answered. Corny and supremely puerile, this work by a teenage debutante will hopefully find an audience among anguished teens.
The Telegraph, Calcutta, Friday, June 25 , 2010
Reviewed by Jyoti Singh in The Sunday Tribune
The Moments of Life: Short Stories
By Aju Mukhopadhyay. Frog Books. Pages 143. Rs 195.
THERE are stories worth sharing at every step of our life is what one feels after reading The Moments of life. The art of deft narration is better known to the author Aju Mukhopadhyay. Apart from being a master storyteller, he is a writer of poems, essays, features and has to his credit 12 books written in Bengali and 14 books in English.
A person of international fame, he was awarded the Best Poet Certificate of Competence as a published writer by the Writers Bureau, Manchester, UK; Best Poet of the Year 2003 by the Poets International, Bangalore; Editor’s Choice Published Poet Award by the International Library of Poetry, USA and Excellence in World Poetry Award 2009 by the International Poets Academy.
The Moments of Life is an assemblage of 26 short stories set in Bengal and sometimes in the South. The stories take up a whole range of issues—social, political, familial and individual—drawn from the everyday life of the common man.
The opening story, The Moments of Life, after which the anthology is named, revolves around the Naxals. It is certainly an innuendo pointing at the fact that Naxalism is a reflection of the need for the developmental policies and initiatives to reach the grassroots, especially the backward tribal areas. Though it might seem a Herculean task—to work towards taking development to those who need the most, lest their simmering discontent should ignite unrest—it is the only way out. Through the narrator, the author highlights how the discontented, poorest, weaker and most vulnerable people join the movement to escape the adverse situations, dreaming of overthrowing the relentless system. It stresses on how ever-expanding, seamless corruption cripples the good intentions involved in implementing the policies for the betterment of people and also the need to play the role in community affairs with adherence to the tenets of good governance.
Man-woman relationship is a recurring theme—unraveling the changes in the social sphere and the effect on it of several subterranean forces—in most of his stories. The author shows how in man-woman healthy relationships foster the psychological development of people and how the unhealthy ones destroy or diminish happiness.
If A New Day Begins highlights how love transform the lives of Subodh and Sulochana who otherwise led unpleasant ones, The Wonderment of Life—through Anjali-Robert Pinto’s sound married life, who belong to different religion and background—emphasises how care, mutual understanding, trust, compassion and support lead to authenticity in a relationship and concretises it. The Phoney reflects the circumstances that lead women to prostitution while The Cuckold brings forth the sad plight of a helpless woman who is forced by her husband to grant sexual favours to a high-ranking police official so that his business could thrive.
The Pride of a Woman narrates the story of infidelity on part of the husband who cheated his wife into believing that he died fighting a battle, whereas he married in Pakistan and converted to Islam. The Unknown Love treats the theme of incest while The Law of Life addresses the sad plight of lepers.
All these stories—and the others that have not been mentioned in order to delimit this piece of writing—crafted in lucid prose come with morals, silently and smartly pointing and at the same time begging for answers to the ailments of society. The work is indeed a valuable contribution to the genre of short story.
Dear Friends
Urban Voice, the literary journal we had started a few years ago, for reasons many, only came out with just three episodes.
Now, we plan to convert Urban Voice, an imprint of Leadstart Publishing Pvt Ltd, Bombay, into a quarterly exercise, to involve and feature good writings from India and elsewhere.
In our next issue, which should come out next month, we plan to focus on this theme: ‘India: What Makes Us Strong (or Weak) in This Millennium’. It would contain essays, each about 2,000 words, from distinguished and talented writers from different walks of life, on subjects as varied as Polity, Business, Sport, Literature, the Arts and Lifestyle.
In this regard we take the liberty of seeking an essay from you, on a subject you are familiar with and accustomed to. It should ideally be a new piece of writing by you, but we are also open to accept an article that might have appeared earlier, but updated or/and tailor-made for this volume. We leave it to you to take any stand and employ any style or substance.
I hope you do not disappoint us and if you have any more queries related to the same, please do feel free to write back. The deadline: asap.
Waiting for your reply.
Best
Sunil K Poolani
Executive Director, Publisher and Managing Editor
Leadstart Publishing Pvt Ltd
Mumbai
sunil.poolani@leadstartcorp.com / poolani@gmail.com
Phone: +91-9820478950
Sunil K Poolani
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The Temple-Goers
Aatish Taseer
Picador India
Price: 495; Pages: 297
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We don’t know whose brainwave the title of Aatish Taseer’s debut novel is. It could be the publisher’s, but more likely it could be the author’s himself, given that Indian writing in English is often vanity publishing under a fashionable rubric. Be that as it may, Temple-Goers smacks faintly of Orientalism, its hyphenated condition only adding to the original unease.
Of course, the hyphen as an existential situation offers lots of creative possibilities. And, to give him due credit, Taseer has fairly gorged on it. His non-fiction book Stranger to History explored his split identity as the only son of a Sikh mother and Muslim father, a condition aggravated by the fact of his parents’ long separation and that they live in neighbouring countries partitioned by religious animosity.
Taseer who travelled through Islamic lands to discover his paternity, so to speak, ended up disowning it. Not his father’s fault, anyone who read that book would say, considering that the writer had religiously followed a conducted tour of the Islamic capitals but only after leaving his mind and heart back in Delhi where he grew up.
Which is where he returns to with Temple-Goers. Being the political capital of an evanescent India with imperialist ambitions, the city is of course replete with shakers and stokers. Even the geography in the novel is ditto Delhi, (Sectorpur and Phasenagar — Noida or Faridabad for you), and Taseer does hold a candid camera to the changing nature of the capital city — sophisticated on the outside, but murky within; perfumed on the periphery, but rotting inside.
The main protagonist, however, comes across as brittle and seriously confused. In due course he encounters two characters who totally change the way he thinks, lives, behaves and even shaves. Aakash Sharma, the gym trainer, later in his life becomes more of his sex trainer; even taking our hero to an obese Nepali prostitute.
Through Aakash, the hero discovers his own self; though his sexuality (remember the gay bars in Damascus and Istanbul in Strangers to History?) sometimes treads the narrow line of homo-eroticism. Then, there is Zafar Moradabadi, Urdu poet and ghost-writer of PhD theses. Zafar saab’s job is to teach our hero Urdu so that he can read some great poets in the original.
There’s the familiar cast of politicians too (chief minister Chamunda, for instance, clearly modelled on Vasundhara Raje Scindia), and of course, the women. Sanyogita always gives the hero vicarious pleasures even if he is in no mood for it, though sex between them mostly looks like an incestuous relationship between mother and son. Then there is this heavy Megha, who whizzes past his life like a tornado.
The plot, minus any real suspense, is predictable and the narrative nothing really to write home about. Even the Orientalist red-herring finally comes to nothing. Temple-Goers, at best, is a diary about a city and its inhabitants, written unhurriedly.
Company