BOOK REVIEW: RANI: A LEGEND NO MORE?

RANI
Author: Jaishree Misra
Penguin:2007 ISBN : 9780143102106
RANI: A LEGEND NO MORE?

With grit and dint did the old sword gleam
Freedom from the aliens was the passionate dream;
This tale we heard from many a Bundel bard
Manfully did she battle; the Queen of Jhansi fought hard

The Rani of Jhansi of Subhadra Kumari Chauhan’s poem is a brave queen, burning with a desire to fight the British , leaving a blazing glory behind, riding tragically into the saffron sunset. This mental image inspires a deep feeling of patriotism tinged with sadness. Sword in one hand, and her baby son tied at her back, she symbolizes an attractive amalgam of unparalleled courage and tender nurturance. After a century and a half, she still is the icon of the spirit of independence.
The Rani one meets in Ms. Jaishree Misra’s book, however, not only does not die for her beloved Jhansi, but clad in a purdah at the end of the book, buys sohan halwa. But wait, before that, she tries her best to be on the good side of the British rulers, builds a new Moti Bag residence for herself, donates money to the missionary school run by one Sister Agnes, and goes for long horse back rides with the British political agent Robert Ellis.
Growing up in Varanasi in a Marathi household, with her father Moropant and her aunt Ashrafi Bua, she has Nana Sahib and Tantia Tope for friends. With such prodigies of freedom for juvenile company the recipe seems ripe for patriotic zeal. In spite of being a spirited and vivacious girl Manikarnika Tambe surprisingly shows no interest in the world of political turmoil around her. Except for the old Peshwa Sahib, no one discusses the atrocities of the British rule or the ineptitude and servility of the Indian princes.
After her marriage to the old, feeble and cross dressing Raja Gangadhar Rao Niwalkar of Jhansi, Manikarnika, now Lakshmibai, attends the daily durbar, albeit behind a curtain. She listens to the people’s woes, but feels no compassion for them. She does not create jobs or work for the weavers, does not build schools or solve the problem of water by digging wells or building dams. Instead she helps Robert Ellis to translate Urdu poetry by allowing him the use of the Raja’s’ library.
Ms. Misra has skillfully sketched Ellis’ character. His dreary early life in England, his travel to India, his genuine fondness for Indians, his helplessness against his bigoted superiors, his unspoken love for the Rani and his intrepid nature are all so vividly depicted, that the book almost becomes his love story, with the war of 1857 becoming a mere, faded backdrop.
As there is apparently not enough material available on the Rani in India, the author’s sources were mostly British and most of her research was done in England. At the book launch in Bangalore, Ms. Misra did admit that she did not look for any Marathi sources. She was not aware of the famous Marathi play based on the Rani’s life penned by the Gyanpeeth laureate V.V. Shirwadkar (‘Veez Mhanali Dhartila’). Even the internet mentions the work of V.B.Godse, D.B.Parasnis, Jaiwant Paul and others in Marathi. When one reads about a patriotic figure of the stature of Lakshmibai of Jhansi , one expects the writer to have explored all the leads, certainly not missing the abundant vernacular literature on the heroine.
Misra’s earlier book’ Ancient Promises’, brought out the authentic hues of Kerala, the author’s home territory, woven delicately into the narrative about the travails of the protagonist. Vernacular intrusions enriched the local flavour of that work. Hence the high expectations about ‘Rani’. Here, Lakshmibai and her people have little Marathiness about them in speech, manner or custom. Her maiden name, Manikarnika, is shortened by Mishra to Mani, not Manu, which is the common Marathi form and mentioned as such in many works. We never are told how Manu has an aunt with a Muslim name.
In one of the rare heroic moments of the book, the Rani, in the face of the stirred up rebellion, grants safe passage to the young family of a British captain, Skene, who is to be Ellis’ successor, as also to Sr Agnes and several other British distaff and children. The promise is broken by blood thirsty revolutionaries who gun them down, unmindful of the royal guarantee.
Despite such engaging accounts, I felt disappointed after reading this book. The vivid descriptions of landscapes, of nature or of people does not make up for the lack of fleshing out of a patriotic legend.
So the Rani of my imagination remains an illusion in this fictional biography; worse, she becomes a cardboard cut out, silhouetted against a watery sunset.
(Thanks Mish, for the translation of the Hindi verse!)
~CHANDA BHIDE
chanda_bhide@yahoo.co.uk

BEAUTY AS THE BEAST: ANOTHER BOOK REVIEW

LOOKS: Why They Matter More Than You Ever Imagined
Gordon L Patzer.
New York: Amacom 2007
ISBN 978-0-8144-8054-0

HANDSOME IS AS HANDSOME DOES
Circa 350 BCE: Aristotle got it right when he noted, ‘Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference.’ Circa the present: Maria Cruz got it all wrong when she ended up in a suitcase embedded in cement after unsuccessful plastic surgery for breast implants; her surgeon, scared out of his wits by the unexpected fatality of his case,was in desperation trying to cover his tracks.
Gordon Patzer’s ‘Looks’ brings us face to face with the ugliness of beauty, starting with mankind’s instinctive attraction to good looks, tracing the painful extents to which folks will go to achieve them.
Biologically it makes sound sense to be good looking, because it automatically means good reproductive health. Our selfish genes of course want to thrive. Hence men are attracted to young healthy well endowed females. Barbie doll’s outlandish proportions are related to a study by Grazyna Jasienka of Krakow, Poland. She states that women with large breasts and small waists have 26% more estrogen throughout their monthly cycle, peaking at 37% at mid-cycle. Thus these women are three times more likely to become pregnant than women without these proportions.
Humans instantly recognize the shape of health by symmetry and proportion. Stephen Marquart, a California physician, has stated that the basis of an ideal face is a mathematical concept ‘phi’ which is the ratio 1: 1.618. His ultimate geometric face shape called the Golden Decagon Matrix neatly replicates the most common form of DNA.
Beauty, then, does not merely lie in the eye of the beholder; it might well have universal standards. Novelist Jennifer Egan found that in online dating, though the values and life goals are important in a partner, what most matter most are the photos posted, which are usually ‘touched up’ by professionals. At an actual meeting potential partners turn out shorter, fatter or balder. Though females do not choose the father of their child based only on good looks, a study by Urbaniak and Kilman revealed that the members of the distaff group they interviewed want nice guys as friends or perhaps even fathers of their children, but as sexual partners they want physically attractive males.
Parents too invest more time, care and money in their good looking child than in its not so good looking sibling; this seems built in because the good looking child, more likely to be healthy is also more likely to live to maturity. Such a child is also more sociable and well adjusted. Even infants up to one year are partial to physical attractiveness. While they will cry if an ugly stranger approaches them, they themselves will approach a good looking stranger.

A JOY FOR EVER?
Teachers inherently expect good looking pupils to perform well. They give them higher grades, more attention and less punishment. Teachers’ expectations from pupils became the subject of Rob Rosenthal’s ‘Pygmalion in a Classroom’. The Harvard researcher’s ground breaking finding was that a child would demonstrate higher intelligence just because his teacher expected it of him. Thus if a teacher expects good looking children to be popular, she expects the not good looking pupils to be loners. The children themselves associate fat peers with being lazy and stupid, thin ones with being lonely and weak and average built ones with being smart, strong, happy and popular. This makes unattractive children more prone to being bullied and ridiculed. The infamous shooting at Columbine High School, Colorado, in 1999 was an act of revenge by unattractive children.
In the job market, ‘Hire the Handsome’ seems to have long been the witting or unwitting policy. It is observed that tall men earn 15% more than their shorter counterparts, which translates into a benefit of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Reason? Evolutionary psychologists say height is associated with power and strength.
In 1988, Darby and Jeffers of Ohio’s Denison University created a mock trial to investigate the effects of a defendant’s looks on a jury. The results were not surprising. Good looking defendants are less likely to be convicted and when they are, they get less severe punishment. However, if the defendant is a good looking wife charged with the murder of an unattractive husband, she is likely to get a more severe punishment.
The American voter’s shocking and pitiful lack of information about presidential candidates, already legendary, often makes them vote, based on the candidate’s physical appearance rather than the character. So being overweight, ugly or bald is a strict ‘no no’ for presidential hopefuls.

OF CLOUDLESS CLIMES AND STARRY SKIES
In the 1830s magazine covers started having color photographs of live models instead of hand drawn illustrations. The harsh laws of physics, added about 10% weight to the two dimensional picture of the three dimensional model. Solution? Choose models who were 10% less in weight than the normal. Since then the pressure to fit into this standard has spawned a multi billion dollar industry of good looks.
Etcoff and Orbach in their 2004 global report on women, beauty and well-being, ‘The Real Truth about Beauty’ reveal that only 2% of women claimed to be beautiful. Women’s ideas of being beautiful included ‘being loved, kind, confident, dignified, having a sense of humor, and having close relationships’. Researchers in advertising and marketing already suspect that many women resent ads that endorse unattainable beauty. But millions of women are willing to pay any price for good looks. Bulimia, anorexia and binge eating are common eating disorders of teenage girls in the USA. Terri Schiavo who was severely overweight in high school became obsessed with fitness and fasting. In 1990 she slipped into a coma because of her starvation, A prolonged legal battle on whether she ought to be kept alive with artificial support ensued and she died in 2005.
Body dysmorphic disorder affects three million Americans. This condition is associated with anxiety or distress over insignificant or imaginary flaws, often being preoccupied with the skin, hair or nose. Sometimes it centers on body configuration. It continues to affect more and more people in this form, though it is proven that diet and exercise work better to reduce it than medication or psychotherapy.

‘BEAUTY IS BUT FLEETING’
Medical cosmetics like Botox, chemical peels, laser skin re-surfacing, liposuction, breast implants, vaginoplasty, to name the well known, have lured the rich and the poor, the educated and the untutored. Attendant adversities abound, like fatal heart complications after taking fenfluramine and phentermine tablets for weight loss; a patient losing her legs when surgeons punctured her intestines during a tummy tuck. Olivia Goldsmith a bestseller novelist went in for a chin tuck at the prestigious Manhattan Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital, slipped into a coma and died in 2004.
Yet the beauty business seems ever booming. Dr David Matlock earned three million dollars from just 316 cases of vaginoplasty in 2006. L’oreal the cosmetics giant exceeded 251 billion dollars of business in 2007. It’s not just the urban rich who are exposed to beautiful people and glamorous lives that they want to emulate. Men of the Ariaal tribe in Kenya, chose the pictures well sculpted bodies as the more desirable over unremarkable ones.
Patzer, a Lifetime Professor Emeritus and former university dean passionately pursued the subject of ‘lookism’. His educative tome advises us that we can challenge ‘lookism’ or at least lessen its power by knowing ourselves better, by being aware of how we judge or misjudge others and by being more sensitive in our interactions with other people.
~Chanda A Bhide
chanda_bhide@yahoo.co.uk

BADA KHAYAL : BOOK REVIEW

THE MUSIC ROOM

Namita Devidayal
New Delhi: Random House India, 2007
ISBN: 9788184000122; Rs 395/-

Autobiographical in texture, woven with a deep respect for Hindustani music and embellished by colourful motifs of anecdotes, Devidayal’s ‘The Music Room’ is a compelling tapestry for all music lovers.
In 1968 an unwilling ten year old Namita, forced by her mother, starts to learn singing from Dhondutai Kulkarni, who lives in a tiny one room tenement amidst the stench and squalour of Kennedy Bridge, Bombay. Unmindful of her surroundings, Dhondutai has one desire: to pass on the glorious tradition of her Jaipur gharana to a deserving student. In Namita she finds her ‘Kesar’, that is, a replica of Kesarbai Kerkar, her revered guru. Unenthusiastic in the beginning, Namita learns to appreciate her bass voice as a God-given gift. However, she finds her musical ancestry, starting with the legendary Alladiya Khan, daunting. Khan Sahib’s lineage includes his brother, sons, nephew, grandson, coming down to Kesarbai with her bewitching voice, and finally, the self-effacing Dhondutai.
While we read about Alladiya Khan Sahib’s devotion to music, we also get a glimpse of the decadence of Indian princes of the late 1880s, who nevertheless were patrons of artistes. One refined exception was Shahu Maharaj of Kolhapur, who was instrumental in bringing Khan Sahib from Bombay to his princely state.
There are many touching incidents that establish the divinity of music, it being neither Hindu nor Muslim. Nathan Khan, Alladiya Khan Sahib’s nephew, once had to stay overnight at the house of Bhaskarbua Bakhale, his pupil. Early next morning when Bhaskarbua found his uncle, a staunch Brahmin and devotee of Shiva coming towards the house, he hurriedly woke up Nathan Khan explaining the situation to him. Nathan Khan just asked for his tanpura and launched into an ode to Shiva in Raag Bhairavi. The uncle was so overwhelmed that at the end he touched Nathan Khan’s feet and said, “I have been worshipping Shiva for the last several years, but I actually saw Him today.”
At one music conference, another stalwart, Balkrishnabua was resting, his eyes closed, when Amir Khan’s son approached him, introducing himself. Not opening his eyes, the senior asked him to prove who he was. Only when the young lad sang for a while, did the pleased Balkrishnabua open his eyes and looking upon the young man said, “You also look like Amir Khan.”
By the 1920s the patronage of artistes had passed on to rich mill owners of Bombay, where Kesarbai was an upcoming singer. Stung to tears by the rude remark of an established diva, she vowed to become the world’s greatest vocalist. She sought out a befitting guru in Alladiya Khan. Moving to Kolhapur and only after a long trial, braving many hardships could Kesarbai master the magnificent style of the Jaipur gharana,
When she became the uncrowned queen of that gharana, she spewed out the misery from years of indignity and pain in venomous barbs at unsuspecting family, fans, friends and foes alike. Even Prime Minister Indira Gandhi did not escape a verbal smack. Kesarbai was so affected by the early years of insults heaped on her as a bai (merely an entertaining singer) that she did not allow her only daughter Suman, to come anywhere close to music. Suman went on to become a doctor, got married and had children and led a ‘normal’ life.
We have in this book an unforgettable collage of Kesarbai: her pearls and diamonds, her silks and chiffons, her cigarettes and gambling, her excellent cooking, her foul haranguing tongue and her divine voice. Incidentally this is the only voice, trapped on a 78rpm record, in a time capsule, somewhere in the innards of space.
Dhondutai as a young girl is taken to Alladiya Khan’s son, Bhurji Khan, to learn music, by her strong willed father. After being accepted as his pupil, she becomes a part of the Khan household, but being a Brahmin she cannot eat or drink in that house. Her guru empties out his treasury of music for Dhondutai and she inherits the gems of rare compositions and exotic ragas. After years she timidly approaches Kesarbai for further tutoring. Reluctantly Kesarbai accepts this pupil, and then begins a journey of rigorous riyaaz, insults and tears.
At one point, Kesarbai sings fifty different taans in a particular order and demands that Dhondutai sing those immediately, perfectly and in the same order! Over time the eccentric teacher mellows towards her sincere and simple student.
Family circumstances take Dhondutai away to Delhi, just when she is set to take her place centre stage as the true inheritor of the Jaipur gharana. By the time she can return to Bombay at the behest of some affluent and discerning fans of the gharana, she is past her prime and almost unknown to the new audiences.
After a few years of learning from Dhondutai, Namita leaves for Princeton on a scholarship, snuffing out the former’s hope of passing on the torch of blazing Jaipur gayaki. Before leaving India, Namita is taken to Kolhapur to sing at the ancient temple of Mahalakshmi. They sit at the very spot from where Alladiya Khan would sing to the Goddess. Guru and shishyaa sing Sukhiya Bilawal ‘with all (their) aspirations, fears, memories and resolutions’.
Kolhapur was where it had started and that is where it will stop. There would be no more singers of this line of the Jaipur gharana, no discerning listeners and no wealthy patrons. Perhaps the distinctions between gharanas would exist no more.
What will long linger are the notes of Devidayal’s memorable bada khayal.

~Chanda Bhide
Written on 22 September 2008
Bangalore

BOOK REVIEW: MOTHER COUNTRY

MOTHER COUNTRY
Elisabeth Russell Taylor
London: Peter Owen: 1992

CHANDA A BHIDE, Bangalore, India
moonstream@rediffmail.com

‘How did you break your arm, little girl?’
‘I fell’, I lie. But I keep my head down.
‘How did you come by this burn?’
‘I brushed against the fire.’
‘How did you get these bruises?’
‘I bumped…. I fell...’

Antonia Sinclair’s battered childhood comes back hauntingly with its animal-like cry of pain, when she visits her dying mother several years after leaving home.
The daughter of a German Jewish mother and an aristocratic English father, Antonia remembers childhood as a penitentiary, where her egoistic mother inflicts torture on her. As a three year old she is locked up in a broom cupboard for hours, for no apparent reason. At nine she is accused of cutting up her mother’s best clothes and smashing their antique buttons, for which she is taken to an occultist who calls himself a psychiatrist, and declares her a schizophrenic.
At the beginning of the Second World War she is packed off to a boarding school where she receives no letters, birthday cards or gifts. No one visits her, except, her mother’s lover: Walter with his silk handkerchiefs, Seville-row suits and suave manners, showers attention on Antonia. He takes his ‘liebchen’ to the zoo, concerts and pantomimes. Her happiness in his company engenders the only true love she ever experiences, but her turbulent childhood has left her emotionally mangled. Walter’s death leaves her in a permanent state of brinkmanship.
As an archeologist, her interest in the ancient ritual of child sacrifice makes her accept an invitation to Israel. Returning to England, she is ambivalent about settling down in Israel by accepting the offered ‘Right to Return’; but an article she reads about an abused child who takes revenge on his abuser, makes the decision for her. On returning to her Mother Country she finds that she cannot escape her past but has ‘re-entered it through another door’. Israel, like many an abused child, has become an abuser. Gradually, Antonia thaws emotionally. She gets killed by an Arab who becomes suspicious of her friendliness.
Mother Country moves back and forth in time, skillfully weaving a cruel past with a decadent present. Russell Taylor’s first person narration leads one through the mental labyrinths of the abused as well as of the abuser. She compares Antonia’s torture with a sacrifice of an impure child.
Antonia is cynical while describing her mother: ‘a witch, if she had a conscience, it never reproached her’; her father: ‘a man with all the subtlety of a spur and a whip’; her sister: ‘all imaginative possibilities were bleached from existence by her mere presence’. Her life with Walter is described with lyrical sensitivity, around a liebchen rosebush..
In a world where child abuse has become passé this book may not leave a gaping wound in one’s heart. It does, however, leave in one’s throat a painful lump which refuses to dissolve.