Muscovado: A Disturbing, Powerful Play that Heralds an Extraordinary New Voice

A school night, in the midst of a busy week, and a very full day of teaching is almost enough to dissuade one from venturing across the river for pretty much anything. Add a blustery, rainy day, and Clapham Commons seemed even further away from my north London office. Still, I had tickets and company to nudge me along, so off I went...to the Holy Trinity Church, that almost forgotten spiritual - and political - home of William Wilberforce who campaigned for the abolition of the slave trade.  It seems apt, in retrospect, that I went to the church - for the first time, last night - to see Muscovado, written by the startlingly talented young playwright Matilda Ibini, and produced by Burnt Out Theatre. 

The brand new play had an initial run of ten days as part of Black History Month, but I might as well tell you right off the bat, it should be running at a major venue, backed by Britain's theatre big-wigs, and be seen by a LOT more people.  And frankly, if British Council and other tax-payer funded organisations are listening, they should be sending this one abroad too! 

We were greeted by a cheery atmosphere at the entrance, and my first reaction was surprise, and gladness, at very racially diverse, mixed audience -  in terms of race, ethnicity, class and nationality. Sadly, theatre-going in London - despite all its diversity - can be a strangely mono-racial phenomenon and I often feel marked out as the 'odd' one in most audiences. There were other little welcoming signs: in addition to the usual glasses of wine, there was the option of a warming, lovely rum punch. And much welcome it was after my cold, exhausting day! There was also a stand from the Caribbean Cafe selling the most delicious, restorative, food; ladies, you saved my life! 

As the doors opened and we streamed into the church, we were greeted by Parson Lucy (played by James G Gunn), and other characters from the play were already dotted around, seated in pews, eerily lit by candle light, or slowly weaving their way through the shadows. It can be tricky to perform in a space that isn't a formal theatre, but the director Clemmie Reynolds used the space well, and placing the actors in the church established an early complicity and intimacy with the spectator that made the play itself much more disturbing. 

The play itself unfolds in 1808 on the Fairbranch sugar plantation in Barbados. The timing is key as a year before Wilberforce had successfully pushed through the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in British parliament. On the Fairbranch plantation however, the Act brings little change to the slaves' brutalised lives, and commercial calculations of its owners. The set was sparse yet effective, with props moved around, and the church surroundings were used fully to stage, with the audience seated in the pews in the chancel, and a few chairs spilling out into the nave. 

The plot skilfully weaves together multiple characters including the plantation owner's wife and daughter, the local parson, and various slaves. However, Muscovado keeps the owner of the plantation as an off-stage yet all-powerful, sinister presence/absence. It is a masterful choice, signalling the invisible pervasiveness of racial, gender, and class privileges that continue to this day. It is this off-stage evil 'deity' who repeatedly rapes his wife, Kitty, and in a grotesque coming-of-age ritual, is also the invisible rapist of the distraught child-slave Willa (who may/may not be his daughter).

While the most upsetting parts of the play are familiar to us from slave narratives - the whippings, humiliations, brutal violence in guise of discipline, the casual but persistent degradations and dehumanisations of quotidian plantation life - they draw power from a source that is not often seen on screen or stage. Muscovado presents the Fairbranch slaves as fully formed humans, not merely as props for a morality play; they dream, they dare to laugh and love, they find hope and strength in unexpected places, and most importantly they continue to resist by reasserting their humanity in innumerable small acts, words and thoughts of defiance and courage. The script has - perhaps unsurprisingly - been compared to Twelve Years a Slave. 

I would reject that comparison. I found Muscovado more humane and more powerful of the two as it finds little need to make narrative and commercial compromises. Unlike the film, the play offers no easy resolutions. But it also refuses to let historically dominant narratives push slaves to the sidelines of their own history. Instead Muscovado offers one of the few instances where non-white bodies - and even more importantly female black bodies - occupy centre stage, in all their fullness, complexity, grace, and tragedy. 

There has been a long tradition - in writing, art, and performance - of silencing and erasing the female nonwhite body from our stories, stages, screens and imaginations; Muscovado is compelling for its powerful insistence on placing the ignored, fetishized, brutalised black female (and a single male) bodies, lives, and beings at the centre of its narrative. By keeping the sexual and non-sexual violence inflicted on the black female body off-stage, it refuses to let the audience revert to the default practices of fetishization we have been taught and thus distance ourselves.  Furthermore, by similarly keeping Miss Kitty's rapes off-screen, it forces us to examine both the similarities and brutal disparities of gendered violence; and yet by performing Willa's invisible violation on-stage, the play also refuses to excise the role of race in gendered violence.

Moreover, the script fully explores the complex web of relationships, oppression and brutality of slavery and racialised oppressions. It does not shy away from messy hierarchies of gender and race: Kitty is not only fully complicit in the exploitation and brutalisation of slaves, she is also the mastermind who realises the ban on slave trade can be subverted by using her own slaves as 'breeding stock.'  Yet, she is at the same time, also a raped, desperate, isolated wife who can find few allies and fewer friends and can drunkenly order a house slave to help her kill herself.  

Muscovado also confronts the role of the church, and its clergy in upholding, maintaining, and actively promoting slavery, thus also reminding us of the ways organised religion - and religious scriptures - were, are, and can be used to justify the most inhumane and unjust practices and structures. Parson Lucy's hate filled racist rant took on particular resonance when delivered from the Holy Trinity Church's pulpit.  I couldn't help but imagine that Wilberforce himself had likely heard similar justifications of slavery and wondered yet again about how and why some (so few) of us refuse the dominant narratives of our times, and the necessity of such dissent. 

The play is both powerful and disturbing, and more so for its insistence on complexity. The dialogue is both unflinching and at times scorching. Despite a myriad range of characters, the script maintains tight control of each character's trajectory.  If there are some loose ends, such as for Olive's fate, they offer a glimmer of hope, however false, in a bleak setting. The end is shocking, upsetting and unpredictable, perhaps because the motivations of all involved are clear and familiar, but also because the multiple layers of complicity are rarely explored in narratives about slavery, or indeed contemporary race and racism. 

The actors were well suited to their part, and I walked away once again wishing there were more room for talented non-white actors on British stage. Alex Kissin as Asa, DK Fashola as Elsie and Shanice Grant as Olive brought both emotional power and physical vulnerability to their parts. It is a credit to the script, the director and the actors, that despite the brutal setting and theme, it still provoked empathic and not only discomfited laughter. 

The Holy Trinity Church made a symbolically apt setting for the play although the acoustics are not ideal. I do wish however that Muscovado would find a longer run and larger stage for itself: it is ambitious, complex, powerful, and it delivers dramatic, emotional and political punch. That it is the work of a playwright not yet twenty-three is both extraordinary, and exhilarating for the promise it holds for the future. 

Full disclosure: I know the playwright Matilda Ibini who graduated from the Creative Writing programme where I teach. However, she did not take many classes with me and I can certainly claim no hand in her growth and stature as a writer. I am however very privileged to have watched her grow as an intellect and a writer during her degree. 

Each time I behave as an angry, loud woman, I feel less shame and less fear

This post has been a long time coming: first, because I have not updated this blog in a long time as I spent most of the past year focused on my novel; and second, because internet trolling is something I have been thinking about, discussing and tweeting for a couple of years now.

I have been blogging, first for a separate, now defunct, site and then here, for over a decade and although I am an infrequent blogger, I learned the first rule of placing myself online early on. Initially, and for the first couple of years, my blog was read mostly by friends and family, and a few strangers who stumbled upon something I wrote by accident and who left interesting and thoughtful comments. However, even back then, my brother, who also built my first website and helped me initially design this blog was adamant that all comments be moderated. I wondered about his protectiveness and laughed it off. After all, wasn't the net the brave new world where all humans were equal?

Then one bright morning, I checked my email and found the notification for a comment awaiting moderation. Strangely enough, it was left on a post about Shilpa Shetty and Celebrity Big Brother.  It read simply, "You dumb bitch. Shut up."

The unexpected venom of the comment, left anonymously of course, stunned me.  With a great deal of naivete, I spent quite a bit of the morning wondering if I should publish the comment, and respond to it.  I walked around my flat, another cup of tea in hand, veering between anger, shock and an unreasonable flush of shame, trying to un-bundle all my emotions and thoughts, trying to make sense of a stranger's abuse. Then I remembered the very first time I had been physically harassed. I had been a teenager walking down Third Avenue in New York, when a man had suddenly reached out and grabbed my breasts.  It had only been an instant, but I remember the shock I had felt, and the instant sense of violation. And I can still call up the ineffectual fury I felt at the grin on the man's face as he stepped back, leered and then kept walking.  The teenage me had cried secretly for days, even wondered if some how my sweat pants and bulky coat were 'wrong,' or 'provocative.' Finally, a friend had talked me through it, pointing with acute insight that I had simply been on the street: "I bet you have never walked on a street alone in India. You were alone. As a female, you are prey." Those words have lingered in my mind since, with even harsher significance as that friend's country soon disintegrated into civil war and massive sexual crimes against innumerable women.

Eventually, I went back to my blog and deleted that first abusive comment, realising that online, just as in real life, I had done the same thing: by simply existing as a woman, I was prey.

As social media has grown, and more women have begun claiming a space online, this sort of abuse has also grown. The classics scholar Mary Beard's trolling has opened the debate on misogynist online abuse in the UK, yet many more women are harassed daily and receive far less attention.  On social media, especially twitter, the worst abuse appears to be directed at women who express opinions on politics, economics, security or other seemingly 'male' matters. When male commentaters express similar opinions, they do often get abused, but rarely does the abuse descend with skidding, rapid, efficiency into graphic, sexualised violence.

For example, few men active online will have received these responses to expressing their opinions: "fucking bitch, all you need is rape" (for commenting on EU economic policy); "ugly whore, I'll fuck you till you are dead (for my remark on global financial crisis); "Arab whore, how many Muslims fuck you every day" (for reading Gilad Atzmon's book); "you're so ugly, I will have to cover your face with a pillow while I fuck you" (for tweeting about Delhi gang rape); the last comment was cheered on by various others who suggested anal rape because that way they would not have to see my face. And more recently, "I will cut your cunt and ass, and fuck your mouth till you die, whore. Just like the bitch in the bus" (for tweeting on how religions, including Hinduism, aid misogyny).

Why have I listed the above? Because I have come to believe that this kind of online abuse is exactly like facing sexual harassment on the street. Women are told to keep their head down, walk fast, walk away, not make eye contact, and a thousand other little 'safety tips.' All of these apparent remedies subtly but clearly shift the blame from the abusers to the abused. They make the abuse a 'women's problem' rather than focusing on the men who make safety, even basic dignity, impossible for women.  Same happens with online abuse: too many men have told me that I am giving abusers air by naming and shaming them, that I should ignore the men who spout sick violence about women, that if I ignored them the abuse will disappear. And in that wonderful social-media condoning, I have been told by many men that "I am unfollowing you because you keep talking about abuse and not more interesting things."

Such arguments, attitudes and reactions ignore the evidence: women have stayed silent in real life for generations and there has been no palpable reduction in misogyny.  Most women in print, online, on social media, who speak their minds are harassed on a daily basis, in terms of sexualised violence and the only way the abuse stops is when they stop speaking their minds, by stopping to publish, or by leaving social media. On twitter, some of the most extraordinarily brilliant women have locked accounts to avoid abuse, and to retain the ability to express themselves in a protected space. Sadly, such online veiling also ensures they speak only to those who are allowed past their protective boundaries, limiting their audiences and reach.

For everyone who thinks women should ignore online harassment, I would ask, would you do so? How would you react if you woke up every morning to a dozen emails detailing explicit sexual violence for you and your family? Would you 'ignore' it if people you loved were abused and threatened?

Over time, I have come to believe that the only way for women to stop sexual harassment online and in real life is for more of us to speak up, as loudly, and as often as we can. But the only way to not treat sexual harassment as a 'women's problem' but a social one is for more men to actively get involved. If more men spoke up against sexual harassment of women, the abuse would be seen as less acceptable.  If more men insisted on claiming a masculinity that does not rely on non-consensual, power-based sex, we could start thinking of sexual harassment as a social, political and economic problem and not one that only impacts women (and is thus treated less seriously).  If more men acted when they saw a woman being abused (and this is more so online, as I do realise there are real safety concerns for many on the streets), fewer men would think it 'funny' or indeed 'safe' to abuse women.

After that first experience of street harassment, I promised myself that I would learn to react, physically and mentally. In subsequent instances, I have shouted and shouted loudly; I have reacted physically, hit out, and in one case, confronted abusive men (this time in London's Brick Lane) till they backed down. For years, my sister walked in Delhi with a hockey stick and full backing from my father for using it as a weapon. Even now, we automatically keep the heavy handle lock my dad acquired for the family car in close reach while driving in India.

But more importantly, each time I take a stance, each time I behave as an angry, loud, woman (yes, a bitch, a cunt, a harpy as some of the abusers would surely consider it), I feel less shame and less fear. In taking a stand against harassment, I run the risk of escalating the abuse, but I feel more empowered and more pride for not letting myself be cowed, frightened, and pushed back to the margins.

I am fortunate. I have many men who stand up alongside me in support. And they speak for me not only because I am their daughter, sister, aunt, lover, friend, or colleague, but because they recognise me as an individual and a human being who deserves safety and dignity. More importantly, they stand as allies to women elsewhere and everywhere. I have always wished that there would be more such men because then more women, including me, would be able to participate more fully in social, economic, political struggles of our times. But then, I guess that is exactly what the abusers want to stop!

PS: Discussions with women activists across the world has thrown up an interesting little nugget: online abusers seem more able and secure in directing their vilest, most violent, abuse at women they see as their 'own' or ethnically, nationally, religiously, of their own grouping.  So the worst abuse I have received is not from the random Islamists or Middle East regime supporters, or Christian evangelists. It has come from self-professed 'Indian patriots, proud Hindus.'  This neatly mirrors the abuse my Arab women friends get, generally from men of their own countries, religions, and ethnicity, as well as the abuse focused at white, middle-class women commentaters in US and UK whose abusers are similar to them in class, race, etc. It seems, as has been noted by many feminists, there is an unspoken pact for men of each grouping to keep 'their' women in line!

PPS: This post has been long time brewing but today's post by Soraya Chemaly with its extraordinary list of abuse against women online as well as evidence that confronting abuse works gave me the impetus to actually write down my thoughts. Thanks to Soraya and to Darshana, the tweeter with @lilforeigngirl handle who sent me the piece so it was my first reading of the morning.

Where Three Dreams Cross: Well Worth a Look!

Last week I walked around the newly refurbished Whitechapel Gallery in East London to go through an enormous exhibition of photography from the sub-continenent with over 400 images dating back over a 100 years. Phew!

First of all, yes, I wholeheartedly recommend Where Three Dreams Cross.  It ticks all the boxes: iconic photographs by master photographers like Sunil Janah and Raghu Rai; archival portraits of colonial era Maharajahs; stills and photographs of beloved movie stars; some really good sociological and documentary work; and of course, if you just love photography as an art form, some really amazing work that is at once passionate and intelligent.

As an exercise in highlighting photography from the region, this is an amazing project. One of the curators, Sunil Gupta, himself a photographer and exhibiting currently in London, explained that the project took nearly four years to bring life. And the hard work shows.

Now a couple of observations:

1. For an expat, and definitely a "new" (as in post-colonial, post-Partition) Indian, the ideological agenda for the exhibition is a bit troubling. An exhibition that somehow makes the three nations "look" so similar and thus blames the political divisions on history or some sort of false distinctions is problematic in itself. When that exhibition is held - with self-rightous glee - in the country that carried out that bloody process of history, then one is left feeling distinctly queasy.

Perhaps it is a generational issue: Sunil Gupta is of an earlier generation, and perhaps feels more nostalgia for a "united" India than most of us from the sub-continent. Moreover, I was left wondering once again why racial or cultural markers are somehow meant to make us so "similar." How often do we see an exhibition on the region of Savoy (divided between Italy, France and Switzerland) with a similar intent? Or on Catalunya (divided between France and Spain)? The implicit imperial conceit in erasing our contemporary political and national identity in favour of racial/cultural markers encodes us in well-known colonial boundaries. And those are not only out-dated but also grate.

2. Pakistani writer Kamila Shamsie has already expressed some of her unease in her piece published in Pakistan's Dawn and UK's Guardian. As I am not writing for mainstream press, I can be a bit more blunt. No, I didn't find myself trying to find images from India, but then that may be a function of our size.

I also realised that we - as in Indians - are better at representing ourselves than our neighbours. When we got the first camera, we immediately deployed it to "flatten" out the photographs to represent our cultural aesthetic instead of wielding it to re-create the western post-Renaissance three-point perspective.  We hand-painted the early portraits, overlaying technology with miniaturist precision to create images that were us.

Then in the 1930s, we took on German and Soviet oppositional aesthetics and deployed them for anti-colonial and then nation-building purposes.  The techniques were shorn of their Nazi (yes, that influence does not quite get a mention) and Communist agendas and used the way we wanted, for purposes that suited us.

Recent photographs reflect the same: we are good at representing ourselves, and more at ease being represented, than our neighbours. Perhaps it is a corollary of the past 60 years of democracy and republicanism, or merely our much-criticized hotch-potch secularism. But this exhibition definitely emphasises our love affair with the camera.

3. Another aspect that bothered me about this exhibition, and again I believe this resulted from its ideological impetus: India, at least it seems in the exhibition, ends in the south at Mumbai and in the east, at Bengal! I guess Tamil Nadu, Deccan, Kerala, North East's seven sisters don't quite allow for the easy racial/cultural markers of "unity" with Pakistan and Bangladesh.  However, this studied invisibility of our non-north/centrals parts really bothered me.

In making the Three Dreams Cross,  I feel that the Indian dream has been purposefully mutilated.

And that brings me to a final quibble: I understand the exhibition is about the three big countries in the sub-continent, but I would have liked to see more from other nations in the same region: Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, especially as, in the final case, issues of political borders formed by colonial heritage are still playing out in horrific bloody detail and are very much a colonial legacy for that that teardrop island nation as well.

Perhaps, I should just put aside my hopes and admit to the one fact I would prefer to forget: that like all exhibitions, this one says more about the curators who put it together than about the region it purports to show. 

PS: I spoke to Harriet Gilbert who presents the BBC World Service show The Strand about the exhibition. Fortunately, Sunil Gupta was also there. You can find the chat here (just let the player go past the 16:30 minute mark for the segment to begin).

The Good in the World: A Big Thank You

Earlier this week I met a friend to catch up on the past few weeks at a local pub. While there, I suddenly realised my handbag had been stolen. Not the nicest thing to happen. But this is not a post about the awful experience of having your possessions stolen!

First, I was surprised at how calm I was - no panic, not even anger. This equanamity is something relatively new, as for most of my life I have been a bundle of nerves concealed under a calm facade maintained only with iron discipline. In fact, most of my loved ones recognise the signs when the facade cracks under proverbial "the straw that broke the camel's back" and either fury or desperate sorrow comes pouring forth. In fact, my family and friends are really great at comforting me in those moments of absolute distress, but increasingly, I realise that they are also really good at identifying the moment when my iron control will snap.

Yet this time, there was nothing. I felt calm as my friend and I reported the crime, cancelled bank cards, organised the locks in my home to be replaced, called my family, and made my way home. Strangely enough, even though I had strange and unsettling dreams, I even slept that night.

This equanimity first reared its head some six weeks ago, in the midst of an emotional crisis. I fully expected to fall apart even then, yet after the initial release of tears, there was a strange peace. My brother called it "sthirta" - a Hindi word that translates as a combination of balance, groundedness, lack of movement, serenity even. I am not sure where or how I have acquired this but frankly, after a lifetime of being hyper-sensitive combined with keeping myself under rigid self-control, it feels strangely liberating and easy. For that alone, I am thankful.

But more importantly, the stolen handbag has made me remember something more important: that there are far more wonderful people in the world than awful ones (even though you won't notice that if you read the news or even fiction).

So for the one loser who stole my handbag, here is a list of super people who helped me cope:

1. My friend who gave me his phone to make the calls, walked me around the area to see if we could find a trace (often these are quick thefts only for money), found an internet cafe so I could find my family's phone numbers, and then accompanied me home and kept me company till I got most things sorted. He also gave me running cash while my bank stuff got sorted out, and went for another seach trip the next day to see if something would turn up. 2009 has definitely been the year of realising just how super my friends are!

2. The waitress in the pub who was more upset than me about the theft and really kind and gentle.

3. The street cleaner who promised to keep an eye out for anything odd and offered kind words.

4. The policewoman who took the initial report on the phone and then the various people who man the Metropolitan Police's telephone lines who have since taken bits and pieces of information I keep remembering since then.

5. My neighbour who not only reassured me that he would let me in the front door, but also organised the locksmith, so I got home and could actually enter my flat without a second's delay, or indeed having to watch the locksmith at work.

6. The locksmith who was not only efficient but also extremely kind and comforting. He told me stories of his own car (someone took off all the wheels and left it on milk crates), and made me laugh with strange tales of his life as a locksmith.

7. The policewoman who called the next morning having gone through the papers to find my home number (I couldn't remember it initially and obviously my mobile had also been stolen) so she could follow up on the initial report, showing a diligence that doesn't often make it to the newspapers. She also spent a lot of time taking down details and was one of the nicest people I have ever dealt with in any "service" capacity.

8. The kind soul who found my staff ID and keys on the street the next morning and turned it in to my office reception.

9. The really kind man who found my wallet thrown on the street, found my business card, and emailed me so I could collect it. The wallet has sentimental value: its a near replica by the same brand of the first "designer" one I bought for myself. That first wallet was purchased in Mexico, in 1991, after six months of saving up, as proof that I was a self-sufficient adult. I used it till it fell apart a couple of years ago. This year my brother found a nearly identical version of it and gave it to me for my birthday. So a lot of emotional investment had gone into it and it was the first thing I was sad about.

Antony, thank you so much for finding it and making sure I got it back.

10. The tall man with tattoos and ponytail near Highbury Place who helped me look through hedges and bushes the next day, as I thought I would take a chance and try finding more stuff, given that bits and pieces had turned up in the area.

11. The many, many people who took a few minutes of their own lives to help me look over hedges, in bins, and along the streets.

12. The security staff at work who not only promptly informed me that my keys and ID had been returned but also were kind and generous with their sympathy.

13. My swim coach who reminded me that thiefs are professionals and there was little I could have done to stop it. Also that swimming would clear my head and stop me worrying. And thank you for not killing me by recognising that I was too frazzled to maintain balance, but with enough pent up energy to do laps.

14. The cop on Upper Street who reminded me to be glad because noone had been hurt and that things/documents can be replaced.

I realise that in normal scheme of things, many of these people were simply doing their jobs. But they could have been grumpy or abrupt or unkind and gotten their job done. For example, so the locksmith could have just replaced the locks without trying to make me feel better; the police could have been just as effective without the unfailing patience and kindness. But they made that extra effort.

Even more people acted out of the kindness of their hearts to help a stranger recover her belongings, or to try to comfort and aid someone.

Thats over a dozen wonderful human beings for that one lousy thief! I could be angry and upset, but I think it makes more sense to be grateful for all that is good in humanity, and for the fact that it obviously supersedes the bad in sheer numbers.

Thank you - universe - for this timely reminder!

White, Middle-Class Male Seeks "Reality"

First of all a confession: of all columnists spouting their views in British mainstream media, I believe Johann Hari to be one of the best. His arguments are well researched and well made. Plus, his liberal (as opposed to left-of-centre) views are refreshing in a world where opinions of everything from the colour of Michelle Obama's clothes to piracy off the coast of Somalia are tainted by ideological petrification and intellectual sloppiness.

Which is why I was disappointed to read his piece on reality and the contemporary novelist this morning. Suddenly I realised that Hari's views are not much different from the British mainstream.

First of all there is the ridiculous assumuptions that "reality" is some how "over there" - in lands far away like India and Africa but not in the middle-class havens of London, Manchester, Glasgow. More problematic is the implicitly classist conceit that this over-there-reality must be about war/poverty/violence.

Then there is a more troubling aspect: Hari blithely describes the location of Arvind Adiga's new novel as "typical Indian city." While, this might sound like nitpicking to some but most Britons take great pride in explaining the uniqueness and difference of the various parts of their tin-pot island. Thus London is automatically assumed to be world apart from Manchester. And god forbid if you ever describe Glasgow or Edinburgh as "a typical British city" to either a Scot or an Englishman! Yet a country of over a billion people, seventeen official languages, every major religion can somehow be reduced to "typical". I would LOVE to know what qualifies as a "typical Indian city" - Mumbai? New Delhi? Guwahati? Hyderabad? Patna? But hey, the white man will establish the "uniqueness" of his location but "over there" is just all a "typical" massive (w)hole.

An aside here: If Adiga's first book's superficiality (most likely a result of an over-arching ambition to write the "Indian" novel rather than just a brilliant one) is any indication, it is precisely his short-hand rendering of the Said-ian "typical" Indian characteristics that make him such an "exhilirating" writer for the likes of Hari. After all, why complicate your life - and reading - with ideas, views, insights into the "non-typical" India or any other "over-there" that you would acquire from the likes of a Mahashweta Devi or an Amitav Ghosh? After all their litarary "reality" gets a little too uncomfortably confrontational for white British middle-class men with pretensions of liberality.

(Mind you - for those of you ready to jump down my throat - I am not saying that Hari is racist! Unfortunately all of us have racist assumptions, most of which we deny or are unaware of. And to paraphrase Ella Shohat, its the "unthinking" racism that is the most insidous and dangerous).

Then there is the glowing recommendation of Adiga's Boyle-like attempt to write like a "journalist" about what he doesn't know. Without even going into the merits of Adiga's research and its literary rendering, Hari's statement itself is problematic.

Having worked as a journalist in Latin America and Asia, I have despaired of far too many of these well-meaning journalists who "research" places they write about without ever bothering to learn the language, understanding the culture, or indeed caring about the context of the stories they email back to the publications back home. Worse still, all these purportedly objective journalistic accounts are not only deeply judgemental and flawed, they actively construct views, opinions of the "over-there" by elision and omission, and thus aid and abet trade, diplomatic and military policies that countries implement.

So journalists are hardly the benchmark of those who go out to learn and write about "reality." And while it has become fashionable to complain about the deterioration in journalistic standards in the past decade, Western "journalistic" standards were always deeply flawed when it came to covering "reality" in over-there-lands! In fact, novelists would be better served if they focussed on particular subjective realities, providing depth, context, integrity and compassion to their stories, rather than imitating the falsely objective, exploitative, limited viewpoints that journalism requires!

Finally, Hari's paean to the apparent resuscitation of the "realist" novel by Adiga (and I assume others of his ilk) is particularly grating. The "realist" novel was a product of a particular time, place and culture, all of which are part and parcel of Hari's cultural inheritance. However the realist novel was also an aspect of the intellectual imperialism that wreaked - and continues to wreak - as yet unacknowledged havoc on colonized cultures across the globe.

Realism may have served a particular purpose in Europe and America, but it represents a form of intellectual and creative colonisation beyond these geographical/political and cultural boundaries. For far too long, writers from Africa, Asia, Latin America were told to write in "realist" forms and forced to eschew non-realist, non-linear narrative traditions that their own cultures had developed in the centuries prior to colonization. "Realism" was enlightened, modern, intellectually superior to the non-linear, non-realist narrative traditions of Africa, Asia, Latin America, we were told constantly and consistently. Colonised writers took up the form, to prove they were as good as their colonial masters, to attain intellectual credibility and readership, to show the masters that they too "could"!! This is why Marquez, Borges, Rushdie had such an impact on their home cultures - they unshackled the novel from its colonial-realist shackles, demonstrating that "reality" could be narrated in myriad ways and not only the one foisted upon us by our former colonial masters.

For writers from postcolonial nations who are still struggling to overcome the far-longer lasting legacies of intellectual and creative colonisation, Hari's views are not deeply familiar but also depressingly common. Its just horribly disappointing to read Hari espouse them.

As I said at the beginning, Hari is one of my favourite British columnists and I look forward to reading his work. And yet this morning, I was forcefully reminded that just as electing a bi-racial president has not made America post-racial, overt professions of liberalism has not removed the "unthinking Euro-centrism" or the long standing cultural, intellectual, creative imperialism implicit in British public discourse.

The Torture Relay Must be Stopped!

Okay, so Tibet is a cause that is particularly close to my heart - I grew up in a hill town near Dehradun amongst Tibetan exiles. My father worked with the exiles and my first memories are of hot momos, sonorous chants, and apparently boundless affection that distinguishes the community.

I saw His Holiness for the first time when I was three and yet that memory lives in my inner eye with a clarity that is inexplicable. I have seen him since on other occasions, wondering how he carries a burden greater than any leader of any people: the responsiblity not only for the welfare of Tibetans - both in Tibet and abroad - but also the leadership of a struggle against an enemy so implacable and greater that any resistance must appear hopeless. And beyond that he must also protect and care for the soul of his nation. Yet he does all this with grace and infinite compassion, with a laugh as innocent and infectious as that of a baby.

Which is why I went out on possibly the winter's coldest morning to protest the PR spectacle with which the totalitarian Chinese regime hopes to drown the voice of Tibet. And I was not alone: thousands of Londoners turned up, complete with dogs, children, families, to show theirs. For our stretch, the protesters were mostly middle-class professionals (this was Nottinghill after all) but extremely vocal. Perhaps that was a good thing because the police were well outnumbered had there been a real intent for disruption. Naysayers suggest that the scuffles have let down the cause of Tibet. Instead, imagine that only 35 of the thousands of people who lined 31 miles of streets were arrested today. If that doesn't shout out peaceful protest, perhaps the world should listen harder.

Another point that needs to be made: much has been made of how politics and sports shouldn't mix. Well, China began the mixing and today was no different. Chinese "thugs" (for that is EXACTLY what they were) formed the inner most security ring around the torch. They wore the pale blue uniforms of the Olympics, disguising themselves as "athletes." Yet these were steely-eyed trained security men, working with horrific cohesion as they pushed out protesters during scuffles and "protected" the torch with something approaching religious fervour. The spectacle of the generally polite and helpful Met shoulder-to-shoulder with thugs of a totalitarian state can only be described as an extreme theatre of the absurd.

So what was the point? Well - the message was sent out loud and clear from London today: China cannot sweep its brutal oppression and steady annihilation of the Tibetan people under the rug by mounting a PR exercise. Even when the PR exercise is worth 30 billion dollars.

What happens next? Well, the message needs to be repeated again and again until it penetrates the Chinese self-delusion. That means EVERYwhere the torch goes, the scenes from London today must be repeated. Go out on the street, fly the Tibetan flag that is banned in Tibet, shame those celebrities who feel that a minute of TV time is more important that human lives.

Simon Jenkins of the Times called for a "tunnel of shame" for the torch this morning. Lets make sure that the tunnel of shame grows right around the world, until China is forced to listen. This may be last real chance Tibet has - if we look away again, it will be too late. Jai Tibet! Jai Bharat!