|  FICTION IN FILMS/FILMS IN FICTION
By S. Sreetilak
Viva Books
Price: Rs 195 Pages: 133
| For something to become a phenomenon, it is important that it first acquires a handy short form. Indo-Anglian fiction, while not the most elegant description, has certainly stuck, for a movement that moves from R.K. Narayan to Kiran Desai, skipping continents and generations with ease and grace. The same cannot be said for made-in-India or diasporic English movies. While literary critics have had no qualms in lumping Salman Rushdie with Arundhati Roy, when it comes to movie critics, they are still struggling to swallow terms like multiplex cinema and crossover films. Speak of Nagesh Kukunoor and Mira Nair in the same breath, though both make films usually in English? Nah! Call Gurinder Chadha an Indian like Aparna Sen? No way, not when Chadha doesn't call herself one, though she has mined her Indian heritage for many more bucks than Sen. Ah well, what about Deepa Mehta and Dev Benegal? Shall we ask the VHP?
 | | PICTURE SPEAK | |  | | THE NEW ENGLISH INDIAN: Still from Monsoon Wedding | | S. Sreetilak's book is useful because it cuts through the many words that have been written about English Indian movies-the joke is, of course, that some of these movies have been written about more than they have been watched. It traces the phenomenon back to 1981, the year when Rushdie won a Booker Prize for Midnight's Children, and also when Sen directed the moving 36, Chowringhee Lane, a heartfelt tribute to Shakespeare, old Kolkata and its vestiges of colonialism. The book talks of the pan-English Indian brand consciousness that Indo-Anglian fiction and movies made in English have created-a world where Roy can become a byword for success (in Monsoon Wedding) and where Madonna's bindi can be a conversation opener between two strangers on a bus (Mr and Mrs Iyer). All would be well if one didn't stumble across phrases such as commodities of culture and the invisibility of the apparent, which seem residues of some MPhil dissertation. Indian writers and filmmakers can be justifiably proud of having domesticated the English language to suit their own peculiarities but hey, there is no reason to turn it into a lab specimen. Goa Goes Dry
Not really wet and wild, this disjointed literary montage
By Dilip Bobb  REFLECTED IN WATER: WRITINGS ON GOA
Edited by Jerry Pinto
Penguin
Price: Rs 395; Pages: 292
One thing you can say about this book is that it is perfectly timed. Goa-with New Year approaching-is on everybody's calendar. It's the time when India's smallest state makes its biggest splash. Anybody who is somebody just has to be in Goa. The celebs, the events, the shacks, the food, the beaches, the Ibiza-like status as a global party place gives Goa its annual fix of glamour and international focus. Sadly, there's very little of that popular image of Goa in this compilation. Reflected in Water is largely dry and dusty as opposed to wet and wild, mainly because this is an anthology of essays, short stories, poems and extracts from published works, a lot to do with its history and sociology, art and architecture. The mix of outsiders-William Dalrymple, Graham Greene, Richard Burton, Gita Mehta, Alexander Frater and the usual suspects of da Cunha, Simoes, Mascarenhas, Menezes-makes for a strange literary cocktail, like a single malt topped up with Feni.
For those interested in Goa's social and political evolution, this is adequate, but to mix poems and essays is a disjointed reading experience. It's also criminal not to have included Mario's celebrated cartoons on Goa. Two inclusions are worth mentioning: Vivek Menezes' account of his interaction with Goa's most famous son, artist Francis Newton Souza in New York and one on Goan food by Antoine Lewis. If only the anthology was as appetising. The collection adopts too many genres and styles and switches from ancient to contemporary and back again without making much of a literary statement. Reflected in Water is, however, an apt enough title since the overall effect is largely unfocused.
Index
|
