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Mint
01-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Mint
How Suniti Namjoshi wields the spear and the shield of satire and fables
Gift this article One of the more enjoyable oddities of postmodern literature is the breathless, single-sentence composition. Gabriel Garcia Marquez's short story, The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship was written as one sentence, as were Bohumil Hrabal's novels Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age and Vita Nuova. In Matriarchs, Cows and Epic Villains, an anthology of Suniti Namjoshi's writing, the fable Broadcast Live spans just one sentence of 60-odd words, but ends up unleashing an entire chapter's worth of commentary. One of the more enjoyable oddities of postmodern literature is the breathless, single-sentence composition. Gabriel Garcia Marquez's short story, The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship was written as one sentence, as were Bohumil Hrabal's novels Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age and Vita Nuova. In Matriarchs, Cows and Epic Villains, an anthology of Suniti Namjoshi's writing, the fable Broadcast Live spans just one sentence of 60-odd words, but ends up unleashing an entire chapter's worth of commentary. 'The Incredible Woman raged through the skies, lassoed a planet, set it in orbit, rescued a starship, flattened a mountain, straightened a building, smiled at a child, caught a few thieves, all in one morning, and then, took a little time off to visit her psychiatrist, since she is at heart a really womanly woman and all she wants is a normal life." With that devastating final clause, Namjoshi indicts decades of popular culture that ran cover for a patriarchal vision of society—where the 'good" woman is 'rewarded" with heteronormative nirvana (societally approved marriage, babies), whereas the 'evil" woman is banished to spinsterhood. The preceding clauses are a broadside pastiche of 'hero narratives", another recurring theme with Namjoshi. Broadcast Live is a typical example of the author's satirical style, one which has served her well for over four decades now. The fables, poems and stories compiled here have been picked from her collections, Feminist Fables (1981), The Blue Donkey Fables (1988) and Saint Suniti and the Dragon (1993). These super-short entries (seldom over a page or so) make up almost 60-odd pages, while the bulk of the book is abridged versions of two previously published novellas, The Conversations of Cow (1985) and The Mothers of Maya Diip (1989). The latter, a modern classic, is frequently taught at Indian universities. Also read: Satyajit Ray's 'blackface' moment at Cannes 2025 In the introductory essay, writer Gillian Hanscombe (who is also Namjoshi's partner) compares Namjoshi's mind to a combination of Jonathan Swift's and Lewis Carroll's. As comparisons go, it's exceedingly apt, since satire and fabulism are Namjoshi's spear and shield—the 'spear" punctures hypocrisy while the 'shield" offers the protection (and plausible deniability) of timelessness. Case History is a brief but horrific upending of the tale of Little Red Riding Hood, while A Moral Tale is a plaintive remix of Beauty and the Beast featuring a lesbian Beast ('That's why its love for Beauty was so monstrous", Namjoshi deadpans). In From the Panchatantra, the brahmin central character (the Panchatantra is believed to have been composed by brahmin scholar Vishnu Sharma) prays until Lord Vishnu appears before him and grants him a boon. What follows is classic Namjoshi, sociological missives wrapped up in screwball comedy. The highlight of the collection remains The Mothers of Maya Diip (the lightly abridged version here is 120-odd pages long), Namjoshi's allegorical, uproarious novella set in what appears to be a matriarchal utopia at first glance. Maya Diip, however, is a place that takes convictions to their logical endpoints—male babies are ruthlessly abandoned here and only female babies are nurtured and cared for. All women are divided into grades A, B and C mothers. The island's leader Maya's daughter Asha helms a rebel faction of women and men who oppose the island's discriminatory practices. The Mothers of Maya Diip is a pointed parody of the novel Herland (1915) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, initially serialised in feminist magazines and only published in novel form in 1979. Herland imagined a feminist utopia where society is free from men and asexual reproduction (via parthenogenesis) is the norm. In her parody, Namjoshi plays dialectic ping-pong, commenting on both the cruelty of patriarchal systems and the limitations of second-wave feminism (especially its laser focus on reproductive freedom). A particularly funny scene involves Valerie, an immigrant from the West (hinted to be American) who has been living in Maya Diip for years. In the following passage, Valerie is trying to describe a patriarchal society from scratch, to somebody who has no conception of what it looks like. 'Ashans in my country have enslaved the Mayans in order to force them to have their babies; Ashan and Mayan babies then belong to a particular Ashan. Think of it this way… Every Ashan thought of himself as a kind of farmer and every Mayan as a bit of land or a field which could be his property. The babies are branded by his specific genes. An Ashan is always the grade A mother, and a Mayan is always the grade B mother... but the Ashan delegates his duties to the Mayan." Like the short fiction of her exact contemporaries Angela Carter and Margaret Atwood, Namjoshi's fables are premodern literature deconstructed and refashioned as postmodern commentary. This anthology worthy of her 'fabulous" career and a delightful body of work. Topics You May Be Interested In
Time of India
12-05-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
When journalism goes to war and kills storytelling
If Indian politics is a theatre, Tamil Nadu is a multiplex. Where cigarette flicks and dark glasses are the perennial symbols of style and substance, sycophancy does a tandava over psephology. And with the players ensconced in the ministerial thrones in Delhi, it is no longer just a southern delight. Arun Ram, Resident Editor, The Times of India, Tamil Nadu, who alternates between the balcony and the front row, says it incites as much as it excites. During the intervals, he chews on a bit of science and such saner things. LESS ... MORE AI Image One of my unfulfilled journalistic dreams had been to report from a war zone. The other was interviewing Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Had the greatest writer of the 20th century lived to tell the tale of the recent India-Pakistan conflict, he might have mistaken some of the television anchors for army commanders. Marquez couldn't have been more correct when he said freedom is the first casualty of war. What he, however, wouldn't have anticipated is that news presenters, just short of wearing camouflage, making war cries in studios (the enemies were near the TRP borders). One even shouted: Bring out the BrahMos! But for the grim and gore of an impending military spiral, this could've been entertainment. War reporting has always been fraught with danger – not just the physical danger the journalist faces, but that of his being forced to present the narrative of the political leadership that commands the war. War reporting, in its primordial form, must have existed when the caveman ran back to give his friends the news of an approaching group from another territory. That 'straight reporting' ended when propaganda started becoming a part of the arsenal. The International Journalism Handbook says historical accounts of war reporting in its modern form began with William Howard Russell's coverage of the British expeditionary forces during the Crimean War in 1853. A decade later came the American Civil War. 'In both these instances, journalism served as a mobilizing force to drum up patriotic support for a war effort and as a platform for challenging ideas about such efforts and about war itself,' says the handbook. 'This dual role continues to be taken up in war reporting today.' When his country is at war, a journalist will not have the freedom to tell the whole truth, but he should have the freedom – and courage – to not tell a lie. Tightly Embedded journalism became the norm especially after the Vietnam War during which the US Army allowed some of the reporters to detach themselves from the contingent and talk freely to people. This resulted in some 'damaging' consequences for the US govt as the public mood turned against the war. US military commanders called it the Vietnam Syndrome. I am not entirely against embedded war journalism, for it gives journalists a little safer (relatively) access to war zones; the trade-off is one should tell the facilitator's story. This willful compromise is OK if the journalist can tell 'other stories' which are not in contradiction to the official narrative. This is where human-interest stories gain relevance in war reporting. World War II correspondents like Ernie Pyle and Martha Gellhorn (one of the first women war correspondents) excelled in telling human tales dripped in blood. Robert Capa, the legendary war photographer, said, 'If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough.' All that is history as modern warfare and new media have added to the irreversible changes in war reporting. What has survived are some fine books by authors who have been war correspondents or soldiers. Like 'The Face of War', Martha Gellhorn's accounts of her coverage of the Spanish Civil War in 1937 (not to be confused with the famous painting by surrealist Salvador Dali), and Tim O'Brien's 'The Things They Carried', a collection of linked stories of part-fiction based on his experience as a soldier in the Vietnam War. Back to Operation Sindoor, most of the print media and some of our TV reporters kept a professional head on their shoulders while much of the chest-thumping happened in the studios. Overall, the coverage killed my ambition to report on war. As for my other dream, I still converse with Gabo whose Colonel Aureliano Buendia, 'alone, abandoned by his premonitions, fleeing the chill that was to accompany him until death, sought a last refuge in Macondo in the warmth of his oldest memories'. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer Views expressed above are the author's own.
07-05-2025
Colombia Pavilion: Country of Beauty
Colombia has the second greatest abundance of fresh water sources in South America, and the plants and creatures that the waters nourish make it one of the world's most biodiverse nations. That natural wealth has inspired the nation's literature, as well, including Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude . The building, looking like a stack of ice cubes, was inspired by the scene in Marquez's masterpiece when the young protagonist first sees ice. The exhibition inside explores Colombia's aspiration to be a nation of living beauty through its nature-inspired culture, tourist spots, and products. The Columbia pavilion is located in the Empowering Lives zone. ( See the official map for details.) Columbia marks its national day on Sunday, July 20, at the Expo National Day Hall. The Columbia Pavilion. (© ) The Columbia Pavilion. (© ) (Originally published in Japanese. Reporting and text by Uchiyama Ken'ichi and . Photographic assistance by Kuroiwa Masakazu of 96-Box. Banner photo © .)
