Jack, Ian (ed.); Granta Magazine (publ.);
Granta 57: India
Granta Books 1997, 256 pages
ISBN 0140141472
topics: | fiction-short | india | anthology
Commenting on the remark recorded by Trevor Fishlock by a Gujarat businessman in Alang (see below), that "We will leave America behind", Ian Jack says: As a prediction it looks fantastical. In 1994, the Indian national income was $279 p.person, and the US it is $23,063. For every 100 Indians [Americans] there was 0.3 [56] cars, one [60] telephones, 4 [81] TVs. And yet in India now you can sense the ambition and therefore the possibility of it. The making and lavish spending of money, inhibited for 40 years by an official morality of social justice - has won open respect. 10 It is said (uncheckable thing) that villagers in the remotest part of India know who Bill Gates is. 11
Her uncle, who chose to stay on in Pakistan, and changed religion to become Muslim, regrets his decision to convert; even in 1987, they taunt him "Hindu, Hindu" in the locality. Sanjeev Saith : Freedom 23 Edward Hoagland : Wild Things 39
Overland to Kashmir via the Benihal tunnel. Describes the 1963 riots following the disappearance of the relic hair of Prophet Muhammmad from Hazratbal shrine (the incident behind the mayhem in Amitav Ghosh's Shadow Lines). He also witnesses JKLF man Javed Mir being arrested after managing to go up to the mike and shout the word "Azadi". Anita Desai : Five hours to Simla 85 Suketu Mehta and Sebastiao Salgado : Mumbai 97 R. K. Narayan : Kabir Street 127 Mark Tully : My father's Raj 139 Ved Mehta : Coming down 147
Fishlock meets a marine engineer at the ship-breaking town of Alang - a man's town, a vision of the Fires of Hell. Mr. Prakash tells him, "We are growing. People want to work and learn. We are taxiing on the runway. We will leave America hehind. Nothing will stop us becoming the greatest economic power in the world. William Dalrymple : Caste wars 173 Viramma : Pariah 185
Why do writers write? My acquaintances often ask me, 'How did the
idea of writing come to you?' I give them an answer which could be
regarded as flippant. I ask in turn: "Why don't you ask a tiger: 'How
did the idea of hunting come to you?"'
But I mean it seriously. To my thinking, no writer writes from
choice; he writes because he cannot help it. He is under an
irresistible compulsion to write. ...
The obvious fact about the motivation of vocational writers is that
they have no motive at all. ... They give expression to what comes to
their mind without thought of money, position, fame, or even
attention.
---
Before independence, there was no universal adult franchise - only
fourteen percent of the people voted. ... all wanted a share in
political power, and this brought in what one might call a revolution
of expectations.
- Sham Lal, journalist. Photo shows an affable man,
in hand-knit sweater and striped shirt, buttoned at the collar. p.24
[Phillip Knightley worked in Bombay as managing editor with the magazine
Imprint (1961-1964).]
I arrived in India 13 December 1960. Three months later I was living in a
two-bedroom flat in Colaba. I had acquired a German girlfriend, an Indian
manservant and an account at the tailor's. Since India was then in the grip
of prohibition, I also had liquor permit number X) 4035 entitling me, as a
'foreign alcoholic by birth', to four bottles of whisky or thirty-six bottles
of beer a month. That was not enough, so I had also acquired a bottlegger
who delivered regular supplies of 'contry liquor', a concoction made out of
banana skins, which was drinkable if mixed with lime and soda, but produced
exrruciating hangovers. ...
In an emotional depression following an attack of dysentry... I felt
India was slipping away from me. It was Dr. Massa who
changed my life.
Dr. Massa was an Italian, a spiritual easterner who happened to have
been born in the West. He was vague about his background and never
properly explained how he came to be in India. One of his patients
said that Massa had been touring India when the Second World War
started and he had spent the war years in an internment camp. Trained
in orthodox western medicine, he had spent these years studying
homeopathy. When I went to see him, he was practising a blend of all
known medical systems.
He was the first and only doctor I have known who treated a patient as
a whole human being instead of a collection of symptoms. His
consulting room was the living room of his flat. He sat on the sofa
with you, and you chatted and had tea together. His prescription for
the dysentry was brief. Drugs will cure it, but you will probably get
it again. In the long term, it is better to help your body to cope
with it. You need less food in India than in Europe, so eat
sparingly. Don't drink alcohol before meals and keep up the afternoon
nap habit. 'Man was not made for work alone,' he said. 'Everyone
needs a consuming interest...See life as a whole in which work is only
a small part.'
... a young Sikh captain munching his way around the rim pf a
champagne glass until only the stem was left. 'Take no notice of
him,' his wife said, 'He does it at every party.'
[CIA ran the magazine Imprint in 1962-64]
Imprint, it turned out was a CIA operation, run
by the Arthur Hale and his wife, editor Glorya Hale... were amusing
cosmopolitan Americans. Phillip was
involved in condensing novels which would be circulated at low cost. The
books being condensed presented a positive slant on America, and the
Soviets in a negative light, but this did not strike him then. Much later
he meets ex-CIA man Harry Rositzke who says he was CIA station chief in
Delhi in those years, running Imprint as a CIA operation. "Shake hands
with your ex-boss," he says.
For eight years I worked as a photographer in India catering to western perceptions of what India is. I got fed up working in worlds that I did not truly belong to - I could empathize with but never really understand what it means, say, to be a Bombay prostitute or a child labourer. I wanted to look at the India I come from, at the changing styles and relationships which are taking place inside well-off families who live in big cities, and particularly my own city, Delhi. Amit Chaudhuri : Waking 235 Vikram Seth : Sampati 246 Michael Ondaatje : What we lost 247 Jan Morris : Clive's castle 249 [British castle] Arundhati Roy : Things can change in a day 257 The orangedrink lemondrink man is overtly friendly with Estha and then has him fondle his penis. Estha eventually vomits.