Harshad Sarpotdar Presents

The White Tiger – A Total Disillusionment

2009-08-03T01:05:00.000-07:00

Now I know after reading the prestigious Man Booker Award winning ‘The White Tiger’ as to why ‘Slum Dog Millionaire’ bagged so many Oscar Awards. Precisely, the Western world seem to have a high fascination about India and Indian people together with the heaps of garbage, poverty, illiteracy, corruption, violence and so many evil things there. Aravind Adiga, the Author of the book, has proved himself to be successful in fulfilling their expectations to the reasonable extent in ‘The White Tiger.’

The book tells the story of a poor man called Balram Halwai born in a village; that is the dark heart of India. Being deprived of proper education, to earn money he has to do a few jobs right from wiping tables in a hotel to drive the car of a landlord. He gets monthly salary but he is not satisfied. He wants to become rich and successful in life. For that ultimately he decides to break the ‘Rooster Coop’ and murders his owner, snatches away his bag full of rupee notes and flies away from Delhi to Bangalore. There he becomes a successful entrepreneur and in this way he achieves his ambition. That’s all !

Features of the book can be narrated as under ;
1. Simple language (though not smooth flowing).
2. Realistic descriptions (though sometime tend to vulgarity and weirdness).
3. Unusual philosophy.
4. Verbosity & Repetition.
5. One Sided and Negative Approach through out the book.

Objections :
1. The Author divides this county in to two parts; namely, Dark World and White World.
In other words, he believes that people of this country are living either in slums and
huts or in lavish flats and bungalows. He, however, forgets the middle class; the one
being always crushed between the both, also exists. So in fact, there are three worlds
instead of two in this country (and might also be in each and every country in the
world).

2. The hero of the book ‘breaks the Rooster Coop’ by slitting his owner’s throat and
snatching his money bag. Coincidently, the person whom he kills is the only person
who is very kind, understanding and sympathetic to him. What the Author wants to
indicate from this ? This is the only way to break the so-called coop ? And if at all you
want to kill, kill a kind hearted person ?

3. The Author indicates that no entrepreneur in India is having a clean past. This
statement is not only disgusting, but straight away its an insult to all those thousands of
Indian entrepreneurs who have come up with a great degree of dedication, knowledge
and tremendous efforts.

4. The Author doesn’t see a single good thing in India. There must be millions of people
in this country who are hardworking, honest, kind, co-operative and still successful.
But the Author refuses to accept this. He doesn’t see all the benefits of the biggest
democracy in the world which he himself is enjoying every day too. He doesn’t
remember that the son of a boatman could become the President of India and Sam
Pitroda was a boy from nomadic tribes. He probably doesn’t know meaning of the
prisons flooded with criminals. He perhaps doesn’t hear or read about how big shots
and politicians are even made behind bars as a result of petitions filed by commoners.
It seems, he doesn’t recognize efforts and sacrifice being done by the great social
workers in all respects. He doesn’t realize, how the corruption is sizably reduced by
introducing Online R.O.C. compliance, Online Income Tax and Vat Returns & Self
Assessments and so many other things. That doesn’t mean that everything is smooth
sailing in India, but still there happen to be so many good things which we experience
in our day to day life and we hope to happen a few things in years to come. But the
Author doesn’t want to acknowledge this. This should be regarded as a total
ungratefulness.

To conclude, the Book (and also the Booker) is nothing but an unfortunate total disillusionment.

‘Ek Hoti Baay’ : An extra ordinary book

2008-11-15T05:39:00.000-08:00

I must tell you about a Marathi book I recently read. Its ‘Ek Hoti Baay’ by Suren Apte. (Originally ‘Bai of Hatonde’ in English, translated in Marathi by Vinaya Khadpekar for Rajhans Prakashan.)

‘Baay’, a beautiful teenager Jew girl living in village Hatonde near Pen in Maharashtra, goes to Mumbai with intention to earn some money for her poor family. The book tells the story of her struggle in Mumbai in different fields like Nursing, Stage and Cinema and more particularly about her different lifestyle.

In the extremely conservative Maharashtra she openly makes affairs with different people, raises her son (that is the Author of the book) without getting married and keeps a couple of male companions in her house after the death of her husband. While doing this she doesn’t forget to help her family and other needy people. She thinks differently and wherever she goes and whatever she does, she succeeds.

She is supposed to be the pioneer in the field of maternity homes in Mumbai. As far as Marathi stage is concerned, she has worked with K.Narayan Kale, Keshaorao Datye and Jyotsna Bhole in the historical ‘Andhalyanchi Shala’. Under the name ‘Vijaya Devi’ she has also played the leading role of Maharani Yesubai in Dadasaheb Torne’s Marathi film ‘Chhatrapati Sambhaji in 1934. Big shots like V.Shantaram, Master Vinayak, Bhalji Pendharkar, Raja Nene, Vishram Bedekar, Junnarkar etc. had offered her different roles in different Marathi and Hindi Movies like ‘Ramshastri’ ‘Pahili Mangalagaur’ ‘Apna Desh’ etc. Meanwhile she had married with a popular stunt film director Baburao Apte who died within 3 years of their marriage. However, she did all her best to enable her sons to get good education.

Atlast her relatives decided to move to Israel but Baay refused to leave Maharashtra.
Her objective was to transform herself into a respected Hindu Brahmin and she was succeeded in that too. However, she didn’t think it necessary to leave her Jewish religion. Reason is obviously that it all was immaterial to her and she was really a free woman by birth.

On web, you may find her just by quoting ‘Sudha Apte’ in the google search engine.
However, to know her better reading the book is inevitable.

Vijay Tendulkar : The Other Side

2008-05-23T00:58:00.000-07:00

Vijay Tendulkar took his last breath and all the Marathi newspapers were flooded with reactions by celebrities in different fields. No doubt, he was genius and deserved ‘Jnyanapeeth’ award for his overall performance. However, in the eye of a common spectator of Marathi drama like me, most of these reactions were too extreme and too overstated. Besides, there were a number of reactions from such celebrities who either were obliged to Tendulkar or were his friends or disciples or purely professionals and their reactions were not at all concerned with stage, Marathi drama or screenplays.

The relevant reactions were like
‘Tendulkar gave a new turn to the Marathi drama’
‘He was a revolutionary’
‘He brought pragmatism on the stage’
‘He presented cruel beast hidden in the human being’
‘He was ahead of time’
‘He shook hand with the truth’
‘He broke the frame’
so on and so forth. These reactions create some basic questions in my mind.

As many critics say, Varerkar gave a new turn to the Marathi drama. Then Vartak also gave, then Rangnekar, then off course Tendulkar and also Khanolkar. Meanwhile some turns were also given by Mayekar and both the Dalavis according to a few critics. Still I hear, Elkunchwar and Phansalkar are also doing something of the sort.
I really don’t understand what are these turns ? How do these turns differ from each other ? What’s the qualitative aspect of each turn ? And after so many such turns what’s the condition of the Marathi stage today ?

‘Tendulkar was a revolutionary and he brought pragmatism or realism on the Marathi stage.’
What kind of realism Tendulkar has brought ? Let us see the subjects of his dramas.
-Strained sexual relationship in ‘Madi’, ‘Bali’ ‘Gidhade’etc.
-Virgin Mother in ‘Shrimant’
-A ‘Keep’ in ‘Ajgar ani Gandharva’
-Two keeps in Sakharam Bainder
-A Sadistic Dalit who wants to take revenge of his upper-cast wife in 'Kanyadan'
-Pre-marriage affair, abortion etc. in ‘Shantata Court Chalu Ahe’
-Mass seduction, selling of daughter for obtaining a public post etc. in ‘Ghashiram’
-Homosexuality in 'Mitrachi Goshta'

In this way, all his famous dramas contain such weird subjects and weird scenes.
For Exp. In ‘Sakharam Binder’ all the main characters have no business other than drinking heavily, abusing, kicking, beating with belt and footwear. When Champa beats her ex-husband with her footwear, he keeps on coming to her and begging to hit him with footwear again and again.

What does it mean all ?
Its nothing but a kind of ‘Sadism-Masochism’ thing. According to psychiatrists every human has some suppressed sexual fetishes and fantasies like ‘foot fetish’, ‘role play’, ‘spanking or get spanked with shoes’, ‘cross dressing’ etc.
Hence, for a writer there is always a danger of expressing his personal fetishes knowingly or unknowingly into his works. In view of this, Tendulkar could not control himself, that is for sure.

‘Tendulkar presented beast in the human being.’
True, but he never presented Human being himself. He was always negative.
He believed in cunning, cruelty, devastation and tragedy but never believed in love, sacrifice, determination, courage, bravery, achievement and comedy. He posed human being as Destructive rather than Constructive. Needless to mention that this was against the real history of human being.

Considering the above, I conclude that Tendulkar was a genius with great word powers, presentation skill and a treasure of disputable subjects. However, he was neither a pioneer (like Kirloskar) nor a revolutionary (like Deval, Varerkar & Vartak.)
He was just a successful playwrite. Thats all.

Women and Power

2008-05-17T01:02:00.000-07:00

As far as political power is concerned, it would be interesting to compare Men rulers against Women rulers.

First of all, let us examine a wrong conviction that women are not as cruel as men.
Science has proved that due to the basic difference in thickness of some Amygdala in brains, women are more sentimental and less rational than men. Resultantly, they mix up personal and political issues together and take revenge. However, most of the men rulers foresee the consequences and take decisions.
(To give an example, when Aurangzeb ordered his general Zulfikar khan to capture the fort Ginjee, Zulfikar khan privately allowed Chhatrapati Rajaram to escape. This was a reciprocal action because in the near past during a battle near Ginjee, Maratha warriors had captured Zulfikar Khan’s Zanana. Rajaram, however, immediately sent his enemy’s Zanana back to him with due care and respect. This proved to be a great diplomatic move in future.)

Now let us see examples of women rulers who happened to be cruel.
Queen Mary was King Henry (the 8th)’s daughter and successor. She put all her opponents in prison and burnt most of them alive. During the regime of Elizabeth 1st, so many people lost their lives in the cold war between Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scotland. At last Queen Mary was captured, imprisoned and ultimately killed by Elizabeth. Catherine of Russia killed her husband and Tzu Hsi of China killed all the claimants to the throne and grabbed the power. Sophia, the step sister of Peter the Great was also a ruthless killer.
Counter parts of all the above in India were Bayjabai Shinde, Tulsabai Holkar, the younger wife of the first Nizam of Hyderabad.

History has also proved that men can voluntarily give up the political power in their hands but women never. Bharat, Chanakya, Swami Vidyaranya, Mahatma Gandhi, Jayprakash Narayan etc. are the examples of those men who did not accept power although it was easily possible. Similarly, Bhagwan Buddha, Sir Thomas More, Chhatrapati Rajaram, Nelson Mandela etc. are the examples of those men who gave it up voluntarily. However, I can’t a recall a single name of such a woman. The only exception is of Sonia Gandhi who did not become Prime Minister even though it was just a question of her sweet will.

To the contrary, history has proved that the women power holders rule for longer time than men.
See for instance the duration of Queen Elizabeth First (45 years) & Second (55 ) and Victoria (65) of U.K., Tzu Hsi of China (47) and Catherine the Great of Russia(34). Also in England, Margaret Thatcher ruled continuously for 11 years and established a record in their history.
In India, Indira Gandhi would have easily surpassed Pandit Nehru if she was not killed. During the Maratha empire’s times, not a single Chhatrapati or Peshwa or Administrator like Nana Phadanvis was as fortunate as Ahilyabai Holkar to be alive to rule for 41 years. Presuming that men die early due to hardships and bad habits, it would still be interesting to study the reasons behind it.

One more difference between men and women rulers is that women rulers (at least in India) have hardly died on the battlefield. Rani Durgawati and Rani Laxmibai are the only exceptions.

(Extracted from ‘Mantarlela Itihas’ (Marathi) by Harshad Sarpotdar. Published by Deshmukh & Co, Pune.)