A Pair Of Keen Eyes
He had dressed for the evening—making me feel shabby in my jeans. A white suit, red shirt and a red handkerchief in his breast pocket. He might have been Tom Wolfe, except for the wheelchair. "Most people think you are dead," began Anil Kuruvilla, a friend from Uganda. Sasthi Brata, author of
My God Died Young, a cult book of the 1960s, didn't take offence. He was more keen on getting the protocol right. "I will first buy you drinks at my favourite pub, and then we will go for dinner," he said.
Since My God was reissued a couple of years ago, Sasthi has attracted a new generation of fans. The title was taken from Nabokov's Pale Fire, and duly acknowledged—but that didn't prevent the great Nabokov from suing Sasthi for using those four words. "I didn't think he was serious, but Nabokov was notoriously litigious, and I was forced to pay," recalled Sasthi. "Years later, I reviewed a book of his interviews where he had altered the text of the original. It was a literary rather than a financial revenge, but it felt good." Sasthi has been working on a book for nearly three decades now. "I will probably die before I finish it," he says, without expecting anyone to demur.
Sasthi Brata was writing about alienation long before it was popular, about sex before it became commonplace, and about the connection between the two long before it became fashionable to do so. "All my books are autobiographical," he says. "I don't have the imagination to write a novel." Perhaps. But he was a good reporter, flying in and out of India undetected during the Emergency and writing about it for The Guardian—one of the most reprinted of his articles.
The legendary Edmund Wilson wrote of Sasthi in the New York Review of Books thus: "It is a painful admission but I never thought I would read such lucid, vibrant English prose by a young Indian, writing about alienation." Strangely, Sasthi hadn't read it. We spent a while digging that quote out on the Internet. Sasthi was pleased. "Edmund Wilson, imagine that!" he said, as he poured out the post-dinner wine at his apartment. At 69, Sasthi Brata continues to be the Outsider, and continues to be proud of the fact.
The Art Of Cricket
The most famous painting involving an Indian cricketer and a work of art is The Kissing of Abbas Ali Baig. It is fictional, though, seen only in Salman Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh. No Indian artist has changed that from fiction to fact in the manner of U2, who gave breath to The Ground Beneath Her Feet, the fictional song in Rushdie’s novel of that name.
Indian artists have painted or sculpted cricketers. Yusuf Arakkal once gave me a print of his painting of Sachin Tendulkar. Husain too has done Tendulkar. The sculptor Amarnath Sehgal had a bronze of the Pakistani cricketer Hanif Mohammad in his studio. The British artist Francis Bacon was a cricket fan too, and painted Ian Botham, although that work is not included in his retrospective at the Tate Britain.
But there is a cricketer in this collection. In the middle of a room with large triptychs is a showcase with Bacon’s collection of magazine pages, many of which he painted over or drew inspiration from. Few artists are secure enough to point to pictures in magazines as inspiration.
Carefully preserved is a page from a cricket magazine. It shows B.S. Chandrasekhar, then England’s worst cricketing nightmare, following through gracefully after bowling. Wicketkeeper Syed Kirmani is taking off to his right, and the effect is stunning. Bacon has made some markings. It is from the Calcutta Test of 1976-77; England won by 10 wickets, Chandra went wicketless.
Swinging At The Seams
There were about a dozen students from Bangalore. Not easy to detect on the flight, but impossible to miss at the immigration. Every one of them wore leather jackets of the kind popular with bikers in the 1970s. The pattern seems clear. You get your admission, arrange for the fees, apply for the visa and then make a beeline to Bangalore’s Commercial Street for the jackets. Most students have come with their chest x-rays, medical records, perhaps even baby photos. There is a touching innocence now. Soon, some of them would have picked up an accent, a distaste for their country, and a superior air. Others swing in the opposite direction, and discover a love for cheap television serials from India, an intense desire to attend loud weddings back home and a dislike of English soccer.
Enigma of Arrival
Indians are the new Japanese in Britain. There are more Indian tourists who spend more than their Asian cousins. The average American tourist spends £710, the average Indian £793. Perhaps that explains the change in attitude in stores, restaurants, theatres, short-let apartments. Now we are the moneybags. The smiles we receive are that bit wider, the welcomes that bit heartier. It also means there are more Britons enjoying meals at Indian restaurants. No, I don’t see the connection either.