Book Review, India Currents, August 2012

Source: http://www.indiacurrents.com/articles/2012/08/12/promise-happiness

The Promise of Happiness, Girija Sankar

BEAUTIFUL THING: Into the Secret World of Bombay’s Dance Bars. By Sonia Faleiro. 240 pages. Black Cat, (US edition) 2012, $15.00.

In the non-fiction Beautiful Thing, Sonia Faleiro offers up a rare and fascinating account of Bombay’s dance bars through a raw, honest and, at times, heart wrenching story of Leela, the protagonist who is a bar dancer. Faleiro follows the life of Leela and a cast of characters from Leela’s family, her dancer friends, lovers, clients, dalals (pimps), and hijras (eunuchs).

The author, a journalist, spent five years researching the murky world of dance bars. 

In Bombay’s dance bars young females dance to the latest Bollywood item numbers, offer drinks and one-night-stands to men from all walks of life: the underworld don, the hit man, the poor college student out to charm his first love and the middle aged pot-bellied salaried husband out for a night away from wife, home, and creditors. Bar dancers like Leela often come from small town India, searching for a way out of poverty, abuse or just a sheer need for survival. Some are taken in by brothel madams who, Faleiro recounts, often scope out bus stands and train stations for seemingly hapless girls from far away villages. Some of these women, often illiterate, find themselves working in dance bars if they are lucky or ending up in brothels.

This tale unfolds with Leela fleeing her tiny home town at the tender age of 13 to escape sexual abuse from her father’s cop buddies. Her mother, a mute spectator to her father’s shenanigans, also suffers violent abuse. But Leela, displaying remarkable maturity at her young age realizes that her fate would be no better than her mother’s were she to stay in the village. So she flees. After working at a brothel for a few months, Leela finds herself at a dance bar. Not conventionally beautiful, Leela manages to catch the eye of Shetty, the bar owner, and begins a relationship with him.

Faleiro takes pains to explain that while dance bars do not explicity promote prostitution or sex work, dancers often end up finding steady “clients” among the men who frequent the bars. But Leela claims to have never done this galat kaam (sex work), when in fact she often has. In the murky hierarchy of the sex industry, the street walkers or the floating sex workers occupy the lowest rung, followed by brothel workers, followed by call girls—women who claim to be college graduates from respectable families. Bar dancers are at the highest echelon in this hierarchy, and as Leela states “When some people saw Leela, they saw a dhandhewali, working girl. But when she saw herself-in the mirror that hung behind her bedroom door ... she saw a bar dancer.”

Faleiro describes the silent bars, where men order not just a drink but also the female waiter who brings it to them. To Leela, who claims never to have participated in galat kaam, the silent bar workers are as low in the pecking order as the street walkers. But, bar dancers do not have to sell sex. That they do so is purely incidental.

The prose is free-flowing and often poetic. Faleiro hooks the reader in early on when she writes, “When they took her virginity from her, cursing that she’d knotted the drawstring of her salwar like it was a sack of atta she was saving for winter, all she saw were the peepal trees of the [police] station compound. Their leaves were crowded together ... to gossip and wonder at her shame.”

When we get to know Leela she is at the pinnacle of her career—clients showering her with gifts, her pockets literally overrun with cash (she even stashes some inside shoes) and a steady partner. But then things begin to unravel. Dance bars in Bombay are coming under increasing scrutiny and the state begins shutting them down. Shetty, her partner moves on.

Leela, like the many hundreds of women who have been suddenly left without a job, tries out other things before she and her friend find a benefactor from Dubai who promises luxuries, wealth and much happiness if the women would dance at Dubai’s night clubs.

Faleiro never hears from Leela again. What will happen to her we wonder. Will she make it big and return home with gold, wealth and much happiness or will she become yet another statistic?

For all the beautiful prose, one minor flaw in the author’s style is the excessive dependence on local accents and argot. Too many Kustomers, dirty-dirty and onomatopoeic references appear jarring to readers unfamiliar with the sub-continental English and Hindi.

Faleiro, whose first book was a novel titled The Girl (2006), has received much accolade for what critics have hailed as amongst the best non-fiction writing to come out of India in recent years. Beautiful Thing is as much a story about Bombay as it is about Leela and as such merits being ranked amongst the best in contemporary literary journalism from India. 

Cover Story, Desi Jazz, Khabar Magazine, August 2012

Cover Story: All that Desi Jazz
Originally appeared in the August 2012 issue of Khabar Magazine
Source: http://www.khabar.com/magazine/cover-story/all_that_desi_jazz

On June 21, 2012, as we went about our daily activities, two Indian-Americans had made it into the annals of American music history, yet again. The Jazz Journalists Association honored Rudresh Mahan- thappa as Alto Saxophonist of the Year, and Vijay Iyer as Pianist of the Year. Mahanthappa won the same award in 2011, 2010, and 2009. In 2010, the Jazz Journalists named Iyer the Musician of the Year. Consider this: Iyer won an award that had been previously bestowed to jazz greats such as Herbie Hancock. Vijay Iyer also won in five categories in the recently announced 2012 Downbeat International Critics poll.

When one thinks of Indian influences in the global music scene, sitar maestro Ravi Shankar comes to mind, and indeed, his influence on Western performers and audiences is well-documented. Jazz great John Coltrane studied under Shankar and even named his son after the maestro. Today, Ravi Coltrane is himself an accomplished saxophonist.

“Guitar” Prasanna.

Music enthusiasts may also be aware of artists like “Guitar” Prasanna whose explorations of Carnatic music on the guitar have won him much praise and accolades, including stints as a composer for various Tamil films. But also consider this: the contemporary jazz scene in the States today is home to not just Iyer and Mahanthappa, but also, among others, to performers like Sameer Gupta, a noted percussionist who plays the tabla; Sunny Jain, a dhol player/percussionist who started a band that would feature the dhol as the lead instrument; Sachal Vasandani, a jazz vocalist; Rez Abbasi, a Pakistani-American guitarist/composer; and Rafiq Bhatia, an up-and-coming guitar player/composer.

Rafiq Bhatia.

The stories and musical journeys of the various artists profiled here—some of the most talked about desi performers who showcase jazz in their compositions and repertoires—reflect that very quintessential of immigrant experiences, a quest to marry the richness of the native and adopted cultures, whether the artist is a chef marrying diverse tastes or a saxophonist merging Charlie Parker with Kadri Gopalnath.

All what jazz

Rock ‘n’ roll, rock, and hip-hop feature prominently as early influences for artists such as Bhatia. But, as Indian-Americans, many were also exposed to Carnatic music, bhajans, ghazals, and Bollywood numbers, setting the stage perhaps for a greater appreciation of music in general and particular similarities in rhythms and tones. Early evidence of musical talent and precociousness is a common thread in these artists’ youth.

Sunny Jain.

“I grew up with Jain bhajans, Bollywood music, and a heavy dose of classic rock,” says Jain, who leads Red Baraat, a nine-piece dhol and brass band. His drums instructor, himself a bebop jazz drummer, encouraged Jain to join his junior high school’s jazz ensemble. Pretty soon, he was completely taken by jazz and began studying some of the jazz greats. Jain later went on to obtain a B.M. in Jazz Performance from Rutgers University and an M.A. in Music Business from New York University.

When his parents visited India, Bhatia, then a first grader, asked them to bring back a snake charmer’s flute. His precocious talent in music became apparent to his parents when he played the then-popular Hum Aapke Hain Kaun tune on the flute, almost as soon as he heard the soundtrack. Bhatia, the son of East African Indian immigrants, is a guitarist/ composer who enjoyed hip-hop growing up. His interest in jazz developed when he took up guitar in high school and started listening to Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane. Bhatia spurns categorization as an artist. His music may not fit cleanly into what people imagine when they think of jazz. “I make instrumental music that incorporates improvisation and draws on all of the music that inspires me,” he says.

Iyer grew up in a traditional middleclass South Indian-American household. Even though he didn’t start out playing Carnatic music, he was drawn towards it in his twenties. “Carnatic music has a certain symmetry, much like the kolam (South Indian design that adorns the floor in front of homes) or the South Indian temple architecture,” Iyer says.

Rudresh Mahanthappa.

By contrast, Mahanthappa, who started playing the saxophone in elementary school, was exposed to the occasional bhajan music at home, but not much more. Mahanthappa’s exposure to Indian classical music came from a college trip to India in the early ’90s. “It was a revelation,” Mahanthappa says. Attending traditional music concerts from sunrise to sunset, and being exposed to a whole new genre was eye-opening. And then he heard about Kadri Gopalnath, who had mastered Carnatic music on the saxophone. Something clicked. Soon after, he met Iyer and they began their creative collaborations that spread over many albums and continues to this day.

Sachal Vasandani.

In an introduction to Sachal Vasandani, NPR host Michelle Norris offers, “Every now and again you hear a special voice that makes you sit up and take notice ... Sachal Vasandani has that voice.” Vasandani, a jazz vocalist, drew attention when he won DownBeat magazine’s Collegiate Jazz Vocalist of the Year award in 1999.

Rez Abbasi.

Rez Abbasi, born in Karachi and raised in Southern California, is an accomplished guitarist and composer who was tutored by Ustad Alla Rakha. Abbasi, who will visit Atlanta in early 2013 for a concert with Georgia State University faculty and organize workshops on jazz and Indian/South Asian classical music, was exposed to Indian classical and film music through television and from relatives singing around the dinner table at family gatherings.

Sameer Gupta.

Sameer Gupta, a percussionist who plays a hybrid tabla and drumset simultaneously, became curious about jazz in high school and was at first hesitant about the art form. “I also didn’t like things that sounded ‘out’ and didn’t have patience for stuff that rocked the boat too much,” he says. With time, though, a greater appreciation of the music allowed him to embrace “the rocking that ensues when it is truly floating down the stream of consciousness.” Growing up, Gupta was exposed to the popular film and ghazal music from the ’60s and ’70s, but became a serious practitioner only several years after college, where he received a degree in Western Orchestral Percussion.

Prasanna, who attended college in India before moving to America, grew up with the music of Michael Jackson, Tamil composer Ilayaraja, Carnatic musician Lalgudi Jayaraman, and Iron Maiden. Given the broad range of musical interests, “jazz was just a logical extension of my curiosity,” he says. However, it took Coltrane’s record Ole Coltrane for Prasanna to truly understand and appreciate the art form. The record “drove home the point that jazz is much more than fancy chords, complex technique, and virtuosic playing. It’s about personal expression.”

Book Review, Lia's Purpura's Rough Likeness, JMWW Summer 2012

Book Review: Rough Likeness By Lia Purpura
Originally appeared in the Summer 2012 issue of JMWW.
Source: http://jmww.150m.com/PurpuraRev.html

Rough Likeness 
by Lia Purpura
Sarabande Books, 2011
978-1936747030, 224 pp., $15.95 paperback 

Rough Likeness, Lia Purpura's latest book, is an eclectic collection of essays and an attempt at explaining the mundane, the ordinary, and the things that do not usually populate dinner table conversations but are nevertheless part of the everyday imagination and life. Take the first essay, for instance, on buzzards: Why do we ignore the buzzard, she asks? A bird that does the job nobody else is prepared to do. I haven't killed a thing, the buzzard implores. Why see me as malevolent? "That no one wants my job that I go on being needed." In the essay titled "Against Gunmetal," Purpura laments about why some choose to describe shades of gray as gunmetal or as battleship gray. "Strike me down if I use it again. If I don't, right now, erase this method by which we impart, those of us who know nothing about guns, drama to a sky, pressure to a scene, hardness, knowhow, coldness to a description, glad for its hint of treachery, its sidelong, thanatotic meanness." Laziness in language and expression is something the author abhors, and is a theme that surfaces in other essays as well.

Purpura's prose is at once rich, lyrical, sudden, and provocative. Through her writing, she invites the reader to do what she does—provide everything you do, see, touch, or feel with the uniqueness of observation and attention that it deserves: "Here is a field between parking lots—real grass and dirt with bottles thrown in, amber longnecks, flat clears of hard stuff."

In the essay titled "Jump," Purpura ponders over the intentions behind a signpost that reads "Last Death from Jumping or Diving from Bridge June 15, 1995."

"Around the sign, around the inconclusive or—because of the or, the pause it stirs, the space it opens—fragments and conjectures gather: the last person was drunk"

Her reflective essays then are an essay (pun intended) into the layers folded under and between the everyday occurrences, the random signposts, the street signs, the buzzards flying overhead or the words attributed to colors (why gunmetal for gray?).

Rough Likeness can be savored whole or in bits, read from beginning to end or from the middle backwards. Purpura's writing is such that even without context, the prose is beautiful, to be enjoyed much like a Dali painting, different vantage points allowing for varied appreciation of the artwork.

That the author is also a poet is evident in the lyricisms and incantations in the writing, as when she describes a street as "that echt yellow stripe, those newly dribbled tar snakes filming cracks, curbs darkened with rain, fickle puddles, passing cars launching watery stars out of low spots to firmanents elsewhere."

The brilliance of Purpura's writing is such that even though her subjects in the essays may be ordinary (in the most fundamental sense of the word), in the rendering of the mundane as sublime and as that demanding acute and singular observation, she demands, nay commands the reader's absolute attention.—Girija Sankar

Poor Economics, Book Review, Hunger and Under Nutrition Blog, May 2012

First appeared in the Hunger and Under Nutrition Blog 

Source: http://www.hunger-undernutrition.org/blog/2012/05/book-review-poverty-economics.html
Poverty Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to fight Global Poverty - Abhijit Bannerjee & Esther Duflo,    Public Affairs. 2011.

There has been much debate recently on the efficacy of foreign aid and  whether international NGOs and developed countries ought to invest their tax dollars and grant funds in resource-poor countries.  These are very controversial issues and much that has been written both in academic and popular publications.

This book is not about any of them.

Poverty Economics: A radical rethinking of the way to fight global poverty by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo looks at the question of micro-approaches to poverty eradication, i.e. small scale interventions through local policy making or small but significant technological changes.  It avoids grand generalizations about “poor people” and tries to explain their challenges in context.  It also points out how in many cases, the basic choices that the poor have to make are already made for the rich.

The authors are both professors, economists and the co-founders of the Poverty Action Lab at MIT.  Through a number of field studies and using their favorite research method- Randomized Controlled Trials - the authors demonstrate that it is possible to have a significant and meaningful impact on the lives of the poor through context specific micro-changes. The book provides numeous examples from the fields of healthcare, education,micro-lending/saving, economic development and nutrition security, all in the context of the lives of people who make less than $1  per day.

The first part of the book focuses on the private lives of the poor and their approach to healthcare, education, and savings.  The second part discusses the efforts of institutions - large and small - in impacting the poor in meaningful ways.  Banerjee and Duflo also demonstrate how many big interventions fail because they often ignore or neglect local aspirations, cultures and contexts.   The real value of this book is that in case after case, the authors provide tools and techniques for understanding the performance of various interventions that have been implemented. Mainly, they rely on creative problem solving in the local context and the use of rigorous statistical methods to evaluate how indicators such as school attendance or healthcare availability have improved as a result of a new approach to problem solving.

In short, this book is a must-read for development practitioners working in the field of poverty alleviation and seeking new ways of approaching program and policy impact.

http://www.amazon.com/Poor-Economics-Radical-Rethinking-Poverty/dp/1586487981

http://globalhealthaction.org