OCTOBER 2008 MEDIA'S PERSON The history of the Indian press is the story of crusading journalists who battled odds with the stringent irregularities of British censorship on the one hand and the pressing needs of stories needed to be told on the other. When Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi arrived in India all the way from South Africa, he arrived with a mission and a history of penmanship. Gandhi had played many roles including those of lawyer, journalist and editor.

In 1904, Gandhi had taken on the editorship of the Indian Opinion a periodical published in English, Hindi, Gujarati and Tamil. The proprietor Madanjit Vyavaharik who depended greatly on Gandhi’s prolific experience in writing memorandums gave him full control to vent his ideas. Gandhi wished to play a role in spreading legal and political awareness amongst Indians who lived in South Africa.

His initial foray in writing was an experiment in working within the framework of the idea of the Imperialist ideal of justice and fairness, an idea that he had to discard later on. His concept of non-violence was born as he penned more and more of his ideas and finally crystallized to the mass struggle India witnessed post the 1920s. “Satyagraha would probably have been impossible without Indian Opinion”.

Gandhian journalism is essentially a different kind of journalism. Today journalism is a tool to create an ever expanding source of revenue, but for Gandhi who had very different goals, revenue was always more of a spiritual return, “I believe that a struggle which chiefly relies on internal strength cannot be wholly carried out without a newspaper”.  In defiance of the Press Act in the 1920s, he started three papers in India: Navajivan, Young India and Harijan, the latter an English weekly that most reflected his thoughts.

Always a social and humanitarian crusader, Gandhi’s underlying journalistic concerns were with the living conditions of the poorest of the poor. He believed in living frugally to the point of excess. In his book Small is beautiful , E.F. Schumacher points out how Gandhi rejected Western urbanization and mass production in favour of a more traditional labour intensive approach. Even his approach to circulation of his paper was unique-rather than depending on advertisements as a source of revenue, he advocated copying and circulating of papers.

As a transmitter of information, he embodied and encoded information so powerfully and so much in cue with the common people that he could be a called a master propagandist of sorts. His adoption of ahimsa(non-violence), brahmacharya(chastity) and satyagraha translate in the hundred volumes of commentary that are attributed to Gandhian studies and he acted out his role to perfection as well, where his dress, his physique and manner of living also combined to yield a single message of non-cooperation with all violence, the British Raj included.

Gandhigiri  became big fare with the release of Lage Raho Munnabhai, a 2006 box office hit. Although his ideas of non-cooperation, pacifism and his ideas of journalism have been reduced to textbook fare, his incisive views tell us a great deal about where journalism should not go- ‘superficiality, one-sidedness, inaccuracy and even dishonesty…’

SEPTEMBER 2008 LAUGHING AT THE WORLD WITH EZEKIEL

Nissim Ezekiel was a poet who dedicated years of study to perfecting metre and putting “sub-continental English” with its idiosyncrasies to the fore. Ezekiel lived a long eventful life- he played many roles such as mentor, poet, dramatist, broadcaster, professor, critic and even secretary of the international writer’s association PEN. He was a man who lived life to the hilt, experimenting not just with words and professions, but with women and LSD. His sense of fun does not surface in his mostly serious poetic output until the reader discovers the cynicism bubbling in poems deliberately written in “Very Indian English”. Like a master wordsmith and a latent storyteller, Ezekiel’s poems are great examples of word weaving and are full of characters we meet everyday.

In Night of the Scorpion, Ezekiel writes directly from experience, a technique he uses to heighten irony. When the poet’s mother is bitten by a scorpion, the villagers come “buzzing like flies” with their superstition, and the cynical father is no better when he resorts to “every curse and blessing, powder, mixture, herb and hybrid.” Yet as the poison wreaks havoc in the poor woman, the reader too is purged somewhat of  the ridiculousness of the weight of opinions during a time of crisis.

Ezekiel uses a direct and scathingly accurate rendition of Indian vernacular-tinged English.  The Indian English voice that he created was the product of much eavesdropping as he commuted in Mumbai. He jotted down absurd phrases that poured out of the mouths of ordinary commuters- the present continuous resounded, the ‘no’ turned into a question and the wrongly used indefinite article crowded his observations. The “naturalisation” of his verse is captured by clichéd characters like Miss Pushpa TS and Professor Seth, who are literally prisoners of the society they live in and their limited awareness. While Miss Pushpa prepares to leave for a foreign country, she “is smiling” and smiling. And retired Professor Seth has eleven grandchildren and his health is good- “No diabetes, no blood pressure, no heart attack.” He ends his little speech with a courteous invitation in a Hindi translation of “pichwade”.

If you are coming again this side by chance,
Visit please my humble residence also.
I am living just on opposite house's backside.

Born in 1924, Ezekiel witnessed much turbulence in Indian history- freedom partition, democracy, Emergency. The System was in its infancy and had loopholes . By writing in an imperfect tongue, he came to terms with the imperfections around him. One can almost see The Patriot of Ezekiel’s imagination, a confused, self-indulgent man slurping his lassi as he steeps himself in shallow ideologies and meaningless drawing room politics.

Friends, Romans, Countrymen, I am saying (to myself)
Lend me the ears.
Everything is coming -
Regeneration, Remuneration, Contraception.
Be patiently, brothers and sisters.

Isolation fascinated Nissim Ezekiel - as a Bene Israelite he was in a way part of an isolated community, as a poet he was isolated from the rest of humanity by his unique perception of things.

Marriage confounds Ezekiel. In his Songs for Nandu Bhendu, we follow the plight of an urbanized husband with his domineering wife:

Did you post that letter?
Did you make that telephone call?
Did you pay that bill?
What do you do all day?

To which the husband reconciles:

“What else are wives for?”

The humour is undeniable but it is the kind of humour that makes man unhappy about the nooses he lives with. Ezekiel’s empathy with his cultural and linguistic milieu has redefined humour in modern Indian English poetry. Behind the supposed malice in his criticism of intolerable Indian accents, there is a tender observation of how middle class ideals such as a salaried job, a good marriage, peaceful means, unity in diversity are all empty shams- there is no salvation in any desire, Ezekiel seems to declare. That is when his humour takes on the garb of philosophy.