Let's talk about Bollywood!

What attracts one to Juhi Chawla is her absolutely irresistible smile. Okay, she was “only” a Miss India (1984), but frankly, Yash Chopra’s idea to cast her as Shahruhk Khan’s idol in Darr is not a bad one, far from it. I believe one can really fall passionately, desperately in love, and perhaps go as far as kill if that passion is not satisfied. I know this does sound extreme in today’s easy-going, emotionally relaxed world, but many works of world literature testify to that possibility. Juhi Chawla’s glow, her warm expressive eyes, her girlish ways, her adorable face (I’m trying not to add anything!) – well, she’s certainly way up in the “most lovable” feminine All Time list. And for models with that kind of attractiveness, the obvious reason for having reached such heights is of course a “pretty face”. And so the question is (as always!) is there something else to her???

One could say that her case is even worse than just those adorable looks that have had Bollywood producers at her feet: she’s married to a millionaire businessman – some would say: beauty attracts money, nothing very spectacular there. She has two children (more would perhaps be career-risky). Some articles tend to show as rather smug and superficial, for example this one called ME & MY CARS, where she explains that she drives a Range Rover, that it’s like a “house on wheels” to her, and she also calls it “my little car”… Then there’s her frivolous side (some might say anti-intellectual), as shown here:

“I love reading comics. Give me one, any day. I used to have a collection-Tintin, Archies... I still buy comics as and when. In the newspaper, the comic's section is the favourite and I go for it first. Then as I read different books I realised that there are funny books too or ones that have a humorous touch. Serious books bore me though. I have read literature--Jane Austen, Bernard Shaw, Charles Dickens, Graham Greene, Thomas Hardy and even a little Shakespeare. But I didn't really enjoy them much. They are nice as a base for all readers. But after a point they tend to get heavy. I go on the internet to read my fill of comics. Peanuts was another favourite. I'd rather watch Tom and Jerry than a film.”

Let’s now turn to some of her films: the actress is not always recognised as extremely gifted… Those naughty arty people would say: she doesn’t need it! The problem might well come precisely from the source of all that charm: her smile! I’ve noticed that she has sometimes trouble preventing herself from smiling: it’s probably part of her personality (see this article “Juhi Chawla still giggles!”) I’ve seen her in Qayamat se qayamat tak, Darr, Ishq, 3 Dewaarein, Swami, and in Paheli where she plays a little role. Everywhere she shows she can do something good, something sweet and delicate. This is the case in QSQT for instance, where she plays her (first big) role nicely, even if a little primly (that little innocent voice of hers!). In Darr, I found she didn’t shine particularly, and that her acting was rather stereotyped. The problem is that she’s such a pleasure to watch anyway, that it’s rather difficult to be critical of her!

I think the two best roles were in Swami and Tin dewaarein. Perhaps it’s because they’re the most recent films; Juhi Chawla reaches a certain mature status there. She still has occasional fits of smiling, of course. I think she must have been impressed by Naseeruddin Shah, for instance, in 3 dewaarein, because she’s supposed to be his arch-enemy (he’s killed her pregnant sister in order to rob a bank), but their frequent talks contain a sort of friendliness which cannot be completely put down to her will to masquerade her real intentions. I think really this good humour comes in part from Juhi’s difficulty with very serious roles. She’s never vicious, never frightening. In the end, facing him with the gun, she manages to muster a certain authority, but that’s about all she can do.

I have not managed to get a lot of in formation about her, actually. I did read that she keeps her private life to herself, but many other stars say that too. Some of the other stars, on the other hand, have things happening to them! It seems that not much has happened to Juhi Chawla. Everywhere we read she’s a faithful friend of Sharukh Khan’s (apparently others have not held the test),  that they’ve got this producing company together (Dreamz unlimited, with Aziz Mirza); that once Aamir Khan cracked a joke about her which she didn’t like (I don’t know what it was); I’ve heard about her recent love for classical music, and that she campaigned for Gujarat Chief Minister’s election in Gujarat: the media complained that she was canvassing for the Chief Minister to help her husband’s finances: and, that’s about it!  She does indeed seem to have not much happening in her life! Of course I’m sure it’s wrong, I can feel she’s quite smart, and knows where she’s treading. And being both a mother of two and a successful actress in today’s Bollywood is no little feat. But that’s what we have from the outside: a fun actress whom we love because of her warm and positive person.

In fact, one could say: Juhi Chawla is too perfect… She’s not a Manisha Koirala! If she has some of Kajol’s expressiveness, she doesn’t have her strong personality. If she has Aishwarya Rai’s good looks, she doesn’t have her proud cleverness. In Kareena Kapoor one senses a woman’s depth, a complexity; even today, at 41, Juhi Chawla retains the girlishness which has always characterised her. She reminds me rather of Madhuri Dixit, because of her glorious beauty, but Madhuri strikes one as being a more mature actress. She’s perhaps a little bland: does Juhi Chawla have any defects? None, almost, it would seem, apart from the quintessential “problem” of Bollywood actresses who entered the film industry by dint of modelling and being pretty!

But… I don’t care! I like Juhi Chawal for the healthy and fun sort of person she is. As this article says:

“A certain class and benevolence has always separated Juhi Chawla from her ilk. Her upbringing in a family where education, etiquette and propriety were given their due importance, Juhi was bound to imbibe all the sophistication to cultivate herself as a true lady (…) Though a beauty queen, Juhi successfully managed to steer clear of a sexy image and carved a niche of the innocent, vivacious girl in pigtails. She refused to star in films that could project her as a sexy and glamorous star. Lootere, for example, is one film which Juhi wasn't keen on doing as she thought it would ruin her 'girl' image. After friends cajoled her into doing it Juhi acquired the glamour tag too. There has been no looking back since then. »

I must say I rather like that view of her possessing a certain sophisticated class, and at the same time with a certain sprightly innocence. And, supreme quality, quite rightly underlined by what is said here: she has on the whole resisted the "sexification" of the love relations we can see in B'wood films today.  A lot of what I appreciate in Bollywood is contained in that Champagne-like effervescence: lots of glamour, lots of good feelings, not too much depth maybe (at the risk of being escapist), but this light quality in many Indian actors (and films) has a very valuable message: they don’t take themselves too seriously. It might sound childish, but there’s something profoundly good in the sheer pleasure of enjoying life, laughing, and loving, and Juhi Chawla is part of that plan.

   

Here’s another beginner – after Aag – Shyam Benegal’s first long feature film shot in 1973, after he had finally got enough appraisal for his work shooting advertisements (apparently more than 900!) and documentaries. Ankur means “seedling”: some people wonder exactly what Benegal had in mind when naming his film; we’ll come back to that, but certainly it’s a good title for the first film in a long series of socially-oriented, politically-committed movies. The quartet of Ankur (1973), Nishant (1975), Mathan (1976) and Bhumika (1977) are well-known for having introduced what is called “Middle cinema” (cf. also New Indian Cinema). The film is also a beginner as it’s Shabana Azmi’s first movie. Given the lady’s successful career after that, and because of the fact that everybody noticed her talent and beauty in Ankur, it lends the film an additional interest.

It’s a transgression story, the transgression of rules and norms imposed by a still feudal and machistic rural society. Surya (Anant Nag – funny how he looks like Shahrukh Khan!), the son of a rich agricultural owner, has just finished his studies, and is reluctantly obliged to run the parental farm where he upsets the traditional balance of interests, hierarchy and caste. Instead of accepting his meals from the village priest, he hires Lakshmi (Shabana Azmi), a low-caste potter’s wife to prepare his meals and clean the house. She is recently married (but without a child) to Kishtaya (Sadhu Meher), who is deaf and dumb, and can’t get work, so he drinks. Given employment by Surya, he is caught stealing his palm-wine, and is shaved publicly as a result (1). He flees, probably out of shame, and leaves his wife alone with Surya, who has noticed her charms from the first day.

Now Surya idealistically professes that he doesn’t believe in casteism. He doesn’t care if it upsets people, like the priest or the neighbours. Or later his wife. Because he’s married, but his wife only joins him on the farm when she comes of age. One might think at first that Surya is a progressive man, that thanks to his indifference to superstitious traditions and vested interests, he will testify to a freer, more egalitarian society. That’s where Shyam Benegal’s art and message start being felt: it is not enough to break the rules of the old unjust order. One has to accept the battle that goes along with it. Surya seduces Lakshmi, and explains that he doesn’t care if they’re seen together. She succumbs, because she thinks she’s abandoned by her husband who hasn’t given her the child she so badly wants, and also perhaps because her oppressed social status contains deep inside seeds of revolt which could find an outlet with the rich man’s son, who promises to care for her “forever” and seems up against the system too.

But when Surya learns that Lakshmi is expecting his child, he chickens out. His “revolutionary” attitude vanishes, and he asks her to abort. She wants the child (her seedling), and so is rejected by the caste-bound aristocrat. His transgression of the system was nothing but selfishness and opportunistic interest (in the picture above, one can see, between the two of them, the two pictures he has pinned on his wall: himself and a blonde with a big cleavage: enough to indicate where his real interests are). He’s done no better than his abhorred father, who is also seen entertaining an illegitimate woman. In fact, he’s worse, because even if the father has flaunted social rules by imposing his mistress in the family, he has accepted her son. And they have been given “his best plot of land” – I’ll let you discover the end of the film to know what Surya gives.  

Let us now come to Shabana Azmi. The first thing that struck me in her superb acting (she's as stately as a queen) was that she doesn’t smile (well, only once!). Thanks to Carla’s blog Sounds Like Power, I watched an interview of her where she explains that she didn’t smile in the film because she thought she had bad teeth! With all due respect to Shabanaji, this is a little ridiculous: if the director had wanted her to smile, he would have made her smile. Or at least, perhaps he found that her not smiling corresponded to something which he wanted to show of the character.

Lakshmi’s seriousness is very much at the centre of Shyam Benegal’s message: in her life, that of a dalit, or untouchable (her husband is a potter, an impure occupation), there is no room for frivolity, for irony, and hardly for pleasure. What can she expect from life? Her prayer, as she marries, is to be granted a child. She doesn’t expect fulfilment of any other kind. Luckily, her husband doesn’t beat her. She doesn’t need, like the other village woman whose panchayat trial we witness at one stage, to leave him because he’s mistreated her. But this was something she couldn’t count on. So when she becomes employed to this young master, she stares at the new reality with distrust, and smiles only when a possible new situation opens up for her. Shabana Azmi lends her intelligence and control to this teaser: a beautiful face which remains rigid and cautious. Certainly some of the strength of the role comes from this choice.

By the way, Surya’s wife, Saroj, (Priya Tendulkar) doesn’t smile either, when she comes to join him in the village, far from it. She is his conscience, facing him at the end like a fate. Surya’s egoism and fear make him a very despicable character indeed. For me he is represented by the snake which he is confronted to in one scene, and for which he needs Lakshmi’s help to ward it away. Like a snake, he’s double-tongued and slippery-minded). So even if Anant Nag doesn’t give him a great depth, he deserves some praise for having accepted to play Surya!

The film’s strength comes also from its unflinching commitment to the cause of the oppressed rural workers, whom the rich landowners patronise and worse. At the end, Lakshmi’s cry “the curse of the poor is on you!” is a reminder of the responsibility of the more affluent classes to change their perspective and begin siding with fellow human beings no matter who they are. In India the evolution has been slow. Untouchability has been declared illegal in 1947, in the new Indian Constitution, but little has changed, even today. More films like Ankur will be needed to remove the age-old caste system which many have likened to apartheid. By refusing to introduce songs pieces and a feel-good ending, Shyam Benegal created in the seventies a form of cinematographic protest which was important, but insufficient. “Middle cinema” needs to be rejuvenated and radicalised, perhaps.

One last aspect which made me love this film: the attention paid to the life present in nature, which Upperstall.com’s review describes so well: “The sounds of nature are omnipresent - the rustle of leaves in the wind, the chirruping of birds - and the colourful photography carries a warm golden glow”. This evocation of the vibrant presence of the elements, wind, water, grass, night, all these wordless yet so eloquent realities reminded me of Satyajit Ray’s poetry: around man’s intense drama, and reducing it to a sort of sadness, there is the vast hum of the Universe, buoyant with a life which man doesn’t see, and can’t appreciate, because if he did, it would humble him so much that his existence would seem but a point in the flowing current of things. Shyam Benegal’s allusion to this Cosmos around us is nevertheless discreet: let’s say that this committed cinematographer who has a message to shout knows also how to say it in a poetic way. 

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(1) Lakshmi also has to steal. Stealing is a common way of underlining poverty, as in many other books and movies, and punishment for hunger-stealing is also a very common way of underlining the owners’ false ownership title to goods they believe they have the right to deprive the poor of.

I’d seen other films with her before, but I really discovered Tabu thanks to Cheeni kum. “Cheeni Kum” means “less sugar”. And that’s what Bollywood has to offer with Tabu: a less sugary actress! With Tabu, the sweetness of many other mainstream actresses is absent: there is no exuberant emotionality, no fits, none of that Bollywood nonsense which we like so much. The colourful  and musical extragavaganza seems out of place… Even if recently so. Because Tabu has been in the past an actress like the score of others who have thrived in the escapist, glamorous, emotional, action-packed products which are as quickly forgotten as they are watched. Her image today is that of a concentrated, poised, intense (if graceful) woman, that expresses herself best in serious roles, and if we see her smile, it would be on a backdrop of some important mission or long-lasting destiny. I haven’t seen her much in her earlier films, but as far as I can judge from extracts, she’s always been rather cool and subdued, it seems to be her nature. Less joy and liveliness than others, and more reverie, aloofness, and sometimes even melancholy, I’d say.

On Bollywhat I found an interesting if perhaps provocative suggestion of Tabu’s “dual nature”. It’s by Subash K. Jha:

“For me, Tabu has two faces: The pouty pinup girl who, I believe, gives interviews to magazines only if she adorns the cover page. And the generous, thoughtful poetess, who responds to subtle stimuli. It is also hard to believe the girl who appears in the gossip columns is the same one who snuggles as close to Gulzarsaab as his own daughter Meghna”.

Frankly this first sounded like “what’s he talking about?” – but, well, Tabu does appear on all those rather glam pictures (she’s not a Mallika Sherawat, but ...), and has had her sizzly period before she decided to cool down:

Even if (at 38) she’s low-key sizzle compared to some debutantes of today, she’s obviously very image and body-conscious: but it would be difficult not to be when you’re exposed like she has been since she was 15, when she was first  spotted by an uncle and asked to play without any training. But there is nevertheless something ambiguous in her persona: she’s been involved in a star system that demands from its female exponents a type of behaviour which she accepts only reluctantly. You know, the standard female lover attitudes: looking up in a trance (or with a twinkle in the eyes) to the luscious black-haired and moustachioed good-looking guy on the beach (or wherever). The one with an orange sweat-shirt and impeccable black belt. It would seem she just doesn’t fit in that type of wooing and cooing. Yet she’s done it, and rather well, too. So do we assume she’s grown out of it? Or that she’s now in a position (financially, artistically) to choose films that satisfy her intelligence better? Probably both, in fact. Here’s what she says in one of her interviews (still that Bollywhat page):

“But then I started doing other movies and, of course, when you see adulation, and you see fame, and then when you see money, you’re like, “Oh, my God. Wow!” [laughs] So I did all of that. I’ve got all my designer bags for myself, I’ve traveled the world, and did the glamour bit, and enjoyed every bit of what I was getting. And then, at some point, I started enjoying what I was doing. I mean, my work got slowly, slowly isolated from the trappings of the film industry, and my stardom, and celebrity status. And then it became between me and my work, you know? And that’s what I started enjoying and started living with. And it’s really, really become me, and I have become my work, in many ways. And it’s become my identity. And it’s been so long that, you know, for me, my definition of my life is through my work, essentially.

She also says somewhere:

"I've always tried to be neutral. I have never stooped to grab roles..... after all you get what you deserve."

That “neutrality”… I wonder if isn’t another word for a certain pride; a pride which she has kept hidden inside for too long, but which is now justified and blooming. Certainly what has been a determining factor in her career is, like a number of other girls, her great physique. She’s been blessed with these regular features, these brooding eyes, a taller than average size, all which give her an aura which makes her differ from other actresses of the same mould (a good example is her shadowy character in Fanaa).

But that would be nothing, almost (it could even be a negative in someone who wishes to be regarded for what she is worth, and not for her appearance – cf. Aishwarya Rai’s dilemma), if there wasn’t something else, which can be summed up by this word: restraint. Tabu keeps herself at the back. That’s where she’s comfortable, that’s where she’s noticed, as it were. That’s where she shines, even. I’ve watched Kandukondain Kandukondain (2000) once again in order to write this, and it struck me as very clear. She’s a perfect n°2. And that’s why, probably she has both waited and feared to play in films where she would be the real n°1. In boy loves girl stories, the lead boy and girl and only pretexts: but a real film, like the Namesake (where she’s not quite n°1) and Cheeni Kum, where she is, in spite of Big B, show that evolution.

So that’s what Tabu has given Bollywood: a supporting actress as lead actress. She’s managed to make directors notice her by dint of playing her roles with a restraint worthy of the lead position. She’s transformed a shadow into light. And so naturally she’s treading uncertain ground when put in the front. She’s had to re-invent her comfort zone. The first result (that I know of) is Cheeni Kum, that very pleasant little film, because in the Namesake, she’s guided, and sided by all the other characters. In Cheeni Kum, she’s all on her own in front of Amitabh; it’s for real this time. The film rested on her, because He had nothing to prove, obviously. Incidentally, I found he didn’t shine that much. Big A is clearly too big for the role. Is there a film where he has been able to play vulnerability, instead of domination? But Tabu, now she pulled off something great. I’d say it’s a mixture of overflowing femininity and mature resistance to that spilling over. In Cheeni Kum, I think she knows she’s in possession of all her talent, that instinctive, self-taught responsiveness to life situations, and each second she’s calculating exactly how much she can give of her art.

Mira Nair, when voicing this famous appraisal “"She is India's Meryl Streep. She is an independent minded, great actress who is not worried about not looking glamorous”, understood exactly what Tabu was doing. Meryl Streep is the quintessentially feminine actress, endowed with everything that could have made her walk the tightrope of stardom above all the uplifted heads. She did reach stardom, but via another route, that of hard work, self-forgetfulness, and the choice of roles which demanded her everything. We’ll see if Tabu successfully follows that path! Certainly when she says “I am only interested in Tabu, the actress within me and I will not rest till I find her”, she seems to have understood the general direction. There would be a lot to say about her method, or perhaps one should say, absence of method. Here is how she puts it:

“I’ve never got outside of my own work and analysed or assessed the effect it has because if I’m doing it then I’m enjoying it more than I’m thinking of what effect and impact it is going to have. I just enjoy the process of bringing the character alive. It’s not like an intellectual process, and I can’t articulate it, because I don’t know how it happens. It’s more of an experience for me than something I can talk about.” (here)

Some of the rationale behind her personal style, her typical acting power lies I think in her own story. She doesn’t hide the fact that she was brought up in a divorced family, and educated at a convent (kanvent mè parhi hui – that’s part of a dialogue in my hindi learner’s book!), and so her naturally retiring nature was shaped by a very feminine environment – even if we’ve hinted at the (almost masculine) pride that existed in her down deep. And so incidentally one of the reasons for Cheeni Kum’s success, I’m sure, is her search of a father figure that has been lacking in her life. I’m not saying she found it in AB, but probably she could refer to the film’s story easily because of what she had lived. She does say, on the other hand, that she prefers older men:

“I am a free spirited person. Only an older man can control my free spirit. He’ll pamper me, and let me do what I want. I can flourish with him. If I am with a younger guy, I know he’ll be crushed under my personality. And I won’t be able to get along with a guy of my own age simply because he’ll compete with me. Today I have no patience and tolerance for all that. Perhaps I am unconsciously looking for a father in the man who’ll come into my life”.

What she has kept from her provincial upbringing (she’s from Hyderabad, in Andhra Pradesh, and is currently building a house there), and by this I mean her need to get back to a life that is very circumscribed, with family, friends, people she has always known – is a certain type of organisation, even meticulousness. Somebody testifies somewhere that she loves to send sms messages, but she never abbreviates any word! In her own terms, she is a sort of swami:

“My needs are small. So is my lifestyle. I come from a simple middle-class background, where my mother was a teacher and grandparents were lecturers. My needs since then haven’t soared much higher. I don’t party. Nor is my friend circle such that I feel left out. I am very content.”

Educated in a fashion that recalls heroines out of Jane Austen, she likes literature, travelling, discovering. There is something essentially free in her personality, which is certainly a consequence of a very deep understanding of what culture brings to women. There has even been a rumour that she wrote poetry herself (she denies that). One example of her intellectual and artistic tastes: Paulo Coelho.

“I’m reading his new book Like a flowing river. It’s so impactful and I feel it’s a great job that writers do. It can so influence people. It’s so much like films. There are so many books that have made a difference in my life. So I’m a fan of people who can express beautifully and who can really affect you with what they write.(link)

Finally, Tabu is both a woman of today, she’s modern, fascinating, she belongs to this fluid and communicating society, and she’s also a woman of yesterday, with her need to anchor herself in traditions, with her aching desire to better herself all alone, and probably resemble one day some family auntie, like in some XIXth century novels. Ah, I almost forgot, the big question of why she isn’t married yet:

I am not skipping the issue of getting married. I am only saying that it will take some time. Till then I don’t even want to tempt my ambitions my goals and my talent. I don’t want anything to mar or tar the road I have reached after having walked so far, after overcoming the many odds on my difficult route. I am a very happy person today, I don’t know how many times I have reported it. I don’t want happiness to leave me just now or at any time. A little more of it would do but I don’t want it to be taken away for ever, for God’s sake.

I have left everything in the hands of God. He has brought me from nowhere to a place I can call my own, my very own. He has chosen the route for me. He will also choose the goals. I will reach wherever He sends me. He is my leader I, Tabu, His most humble follower and as long as this relationship lasts nothing can come in my way, nothing can harm me.

Doesn’t all this recall some other beautiful and intelligent co-star who’s always placed her goals on a sort of high mountain, with the risk of appearing to snub other less fortunate mortals? Well, perhaps it does, and perhaps it doesn’t. Let me ask Tabu to close and say for her what sort of woman she is. She does it (I fancy) when she describes the heroine from The Namesake:

Ashima, for me, is the quintessential Indian woman for whom life is about growing up, and finding her independence, finding a good suitor for her, and getting her married, and finding and living a full life with her husband, wherever the husband is, and finding her own bearings and her sense of belonging in her family, which comprises of husband and children, the family. So I see Ashima as that. I see her as most of the women in my family have been.

Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh, 1977. Nanda Kaul, an old solitary lady lives in her house on the mountainside. Something depressing about her presence there, as if she was hiding away from some family secret. The house: a witness of generations of Colonial time residents, when British gentlemen and ladies used to entertain soldiers and organise parties for the rich expatriates there. Then came Independence. 1947. Everything stopped, and the house was vacated. That old lady bought it probably in the sixties, to settle away from her previous life. She appreciates the emptiness of the place, its solitude, the parched hillsides. She feels pacified when listening to “the scented sibilance of the pine trees” (this is from the opening page of the book, and you can notice already Anita Desai’s style in this simple image: the scented sibilance! A lot of the book’s charm, like that of Clear light of day, comes from the author’s fluent poetic precision. I’ll try further down to point at some of the differences with that other book).

Things really start when the aged lady must accept the visit of her great grand-daughter, because of some medical happenings in her family. To say she doesn’t welcome that visit is an understatement. She’s in a state of panic. She leaves Ram Lal, her obsequious cook, think of a menu that such a little girl would appreciate (potato chips!) She doesn’t even remember Raka: even if the author, Anita Desai (mother of Kiran), doesn’t mention the possibility, we wonder whether Nanda Kaul isn’t suffering from some form of Alzheimer’s disease. She has the stiffness, the forced amiability, the occasional incoherence and the lack of liveliness, which I have seen in documentaries showing that sort of people. On the whole, her character is extremely present and realistic; there’s a feel about her that’s unmistakable. Old age, its oddities, its painful limits and its sudden immense vistas over unexpected fields of experience. 

Towards the end of the book we meet a third character, another old lady, Ila Das, who is as eccentric as Nanda Kaul is conservative, as loud-spoken as she is hushed. And that’s another narrative feat. This short volume (145 p) is inhabited by these three female figures, and each of them is as clear cut and sharp as the edges of the agaves growing in the ravines around the house. BTW, another quirkiness, which creates a very realistic effect (because something too expected, too well-fitting echoes more the writer’s world, and moves the reader away from the essence of reality): the house is called Carignano, an absurd Italian name whose origin is explained in the book, but this piece of reference simply doesn’t “fit”, in this Himalayan context, and points towards an important aesthetic choice: reality should not, cannot be harmoniously symbolised or signified in novels. Fire on the mountain is very much the result of this aesthetic choice.

Now the little girl: she’s described as a sort of insect, thin, graceful, but strangely wild and silent. At one moment of revelation, Nanda Kaul realises they are both very much alike, they are of the same genetic mould. She tells this to Raka, who characteristically recoils away from the comparison, as she recoils away from anything the old lady says or wants her to do. Everything Nanda Kaul reluctantly feels she should do, as her aged relative, is lost on the little waif. All she likes is to roam on the ragged mountainsides, near a burnt hut on the ridge, among the disturbing and dangerous refuse of the “Pasteur Institute”, a research institution which actually exists in Kasauli, where snakes and rabid jackals have bitten people under the very walls of the Institute.

What a strange creation, this Raka! What is her role in the novel? There are narrative answers, which I don’t want to disclose, but one may wonder if they’re really satisfactory: probably what Anita Desai is doing, in fact, is trying out her talent, pitting individuals one against the other, and watching the result. There isn’t much of a story in the classical sense, and while this could be very dangerous in terms of novelistic achievement, here, believe me, it works. The reader feels drawn towards the very unusual story that is made up by the coming together of these three beings, with their unfinished and bottomless personalities. Desai has that great talent: characterisation comes first, the story is only secondary. Yet a real story is written, up to a certain extent. It is made up of the bits of lives we visualise, and even if this story doesn’t coalesce in a pleasantly meaningful whole (not at all), it doesn’t matter: at the end of the book we have had our fill of human presence, of human depth, its vivid uniqueness, their completely unforeseeable destinies. For Desai, a human being is as creatively unique as cloud in the sky, yet as clearly and sharply recognisable as the pattern of seasons, the structure of a flower.

Compared to Clear light of day, Fire on the mountain strikes me a more fully successful work, even if it is shorter and earlier (the first dates from 1980, the second from 1977). Clear light of day strives at recreating a historical context of which she has freed Fire on the mountain. There is perhaps a greater literary scope to Clear light of day. But the 1977 book captures artistry in the making that the 1980 volume lumbers to display. I remember saying that the theme of Time was the great subject of Clear light of day. Well, it could also be said of Fire on the mountain. What is Nanda Kaul doing, up there on her mountain, in her retreat? She’s waiting, watching, listening, fearing, hoping. All of these time-connected activities are rather negative, as far as she’s concerned, but there will be some sort of change in her, some revelation, because of her forced interaction with Raka and Ila Das. Time will once again create something in her, as it always does if we open ourselves to it. In fact, it always opens its way through us, whether we want to protect ourselves from it or not. One could say that the story of Fire on the mountain is that of Time at work: two young creatures (I’m calling Ila Das young in a sense that the reader of the novel will understand) assaulting Nanda Kaul’s fortress, breaking down her fortifications, exposing her soft underbelly, her protected past. They only half succeed, but the message is clear, it seems to me: Truth in us humans comes when the future pours through the present and mixes with the past, when the clear waters of unexplainably new youth flood the salty tears of age, to recreate our beings.

(I don’t think the book would lend itself to any filmed version: there is no love story, no deep-set revenge, no family interest; only the windswept crags, the curious observing langur monkeys, and the night storms that magically cover the mountain slopes with a pink crêpe of morning lilies…)