Vernaculars Underground: Histories, Politics, Aesthetics–ABSTRACTS AND BIONOTES
March 7th and 8th, NMML, New Delhi I Speakers Anil Yadav, Sinews of the Political in the Hindi Underground The world of blogs is a mystery. It comes in small doses, and the way it connects with life and politics is through generations of rocks, friction, temperature, sound, and the impossible measure of their various facets. We know no one’s email id, telephone number, relationships, or any particular habit – all these are little doses of mystery. If we had unearthed the mystery, perhaps life would have been more satisfactory, but the pull towards the politics of the unknown is the hidden accelerator in life. Modernity seeps into the crevices of our galis and quasbahs in such doses. It creates a palimpsest. We tend to die, little by little, without this pull. This cosmos is our kabaadkhana—the dumpster’s nightmare, spreading to the farthest corners through the twisted varicose veins of our existence. * Currently based in Lucknow, Anil Yadav is a journalist with The Pioneer. He is the author of the remarkable travelogue ‘Yeh Bhi Koi Des Hai Maharaj’ and has just published a scathing collection of short stories titled ‘Nagarbadhuye Akhbarein Nahin Padhti’. His fiction and travel writings are featured on several websites including iharmonium, pratilipi, and kabaadkhanna. ————————————————————- Ashok Pande, Simple Joys of Rag-picking As a fantastic gift, life offers us a world filled with an amazing diversity. It is a wondrous act of nature that god, in the words of famous poet Viren Dangwal, has given man a brain “that soaks in everything” and which “travels beyond the universe in a moment/ and just sleeps when it retires/ in muck like a frog throughout winters”. To gratify all borders of intellectual hunger, man created most serious forms of art, and parodied these very forms for momentary drolleries. Therefore if there is a place for Meer Taqi Meer, ‘Danish” Taandwi (immortalized in Shrilal Shukla’s novel ‘Raag Darbari’) too is accommodated. If most intricate moves of chess are there, the ‘Shit-coat’ of a typical Pahari card-game Dahal Pakad too finds a place. The Chutney music of West Indies survives alongside Ustad Amir Khan’s Raag Bahar. Even if one endeavors to, it would be impossible to finish a complete list – such an immensely vast cornucopia of joy this world is. I began my blog ‘Kabaadkhaana’ in 2007 with the sole purpose of trying to share these wonderful things with others. एक शानदार तोहफे की शक्ल में जीवन हमें अजब-अद्भुत विविधताओं से भरी एक दुनिया नवाज़ता है. यह प्रकृति का करतब है कि आदमी को बकौल वीरेन डंगवाल भगवान ने “हर चीज़ को आत्मसात करने वाला” ऐसा दिमाग़ दिया जो “पल-भर में ब्रह्माण्ड के आर-पार/ और सोया तो बस सोया/ सर्दी भर कीचड़ में मेढक सा”. हमारी बौद्धिक भूख की हर सीमा को तृप्त करने के लिए कला के गंभीर से गंभीर रूप आदमी ने बनाए, और पल भर की ठिठोली-मौज के वास्ते इन्हीं रूपों की पैरोडियाँ भी बनाईं. इसी लिए अगर मीर तकी मीर का वुजूद है तो ‘राग दरबारी’ से अमर बन गए दानिश टांडवी का भी. शतरंज की जटिलतम चालें हैं तो दहलपकड़ जैसे ठेठ पहाडी ताश के खेल का गूकोट भी. उस्ताद अमीर खान साहेब का राग बहार है तो वेस्ट इंडीज़ का चटनी संगीत भी. लिखने बैठूं तो इस सूची का अंत नहीं हो सकेगा – ऐसा ज़खीरा मौज का है यह दुनिया. इन्हीं अजब-ग़ज़ब चीज़ों को दूसरों के साथ बांटने का काम मैंने अपने ब्लॉग ‘कबाड़खाना’ के माध्यम से २००७ में शुरू किया था. * Ashok Pande is a poet, painter and translator. His collection of poetry Dekhta Hoon Sapne was published in 1992 and he has translated Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate into Hindi. Pande has written books on Yehuda Amichai and Fernando Pessoa, and many of his travel-pieces and translations from world-poetry have appeared in Pahal. His translations of Shamsher Bahadur Singh’s poems was published in 2002 as Broken and Scattered, and Viren Dangwal’s poems, It’s Been Long Since I Found Anything, in 2004. Other translations include: the novel Lust for Life, Dharati Jaanti Hai (Yehuda Amichai’s poems), Ekaakipan ke Bees Arab Prakashvarsh (Shuntaro Tanikawa’s poems) and selected poems and prose by Fernando Pessoa. He runs the cult Hindi blog kabaadkhaana. ———————————————————————- Amit Sengupta, Parallel Cinema of the Media Industry: The difficult and stimulating narrative of small is beautiful Like independent and dogged documentary filmmakers who remain outside the comfort zones, mappings and trappings of the commercial structures of big finance and market sustainability, or like the ‘other’ meaningful cinema versus the box office formula film industry, this is a repetitive narrative which is deeply self conscious and critically involved with the idea of the political unconscious. Many of these filmmakers hate to be dubbed within the restricted and cliched paradigms of ‘art’ or ‘alternative’ or parallel cinema. In that sense, the discourse within the ‘little magazine’ or ‘small media’ too would resist being branded and condemned as small or marginal or alternative. That is, the debate between what is mainstream and what is alternative itself becomes a twilight zone where the lines become blurred and the kaleidoscope of the cracked mirror moves away from one-dimensional explanations into a more layered, evolving and complex realism. In the context of the new corporate media culture dominating the Indian information and mass communication scenario, and the tyranny of mediocrity, it becomes all the more crucial to unravel this twilight zone and rediscover a lucid, critical and enlightening realm of possibilities. Hence, we must walk again through this zigzag bylane of the difficult and stimulating journey of the small is beautiful. * Amit Sengupta is currently Associate Professor of English Journalism at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication. New Delhi. Till recently, was Executive Editor, Hardnews magazine, Delhi, the South Asian partner of Le Monde diplomatique, Paris; www.hardnewsmedia.com. Has been Editor, Tehelka, News Editor, Outlook and Senior Assistant Editor, Hindustan Times, among other assignments in leading Indian newspapers and magazines. ——————————————————————- Shawon Akand, Beyond the Colonial Hangover: Alternative