‘Future of Black Hole study in India’
KOLKATA: A leading high-energy astrophysicist from Italy who researches Black Holes – pockets of dense mass in the universe with gravitational force powerful enough to consume stars – says research in the field will be largely dependent on India in the near future.
“The entire scientific community is eagerly waiting for launch of Astrosat. After the decommissioning of Italian satellite Rossi a couple of years ago, there is a huge void in the sky that Astrosat can fulfil,” Prof. Tomaso Belloni, the associate astronomer at Milan’s Brera Observatory, said on Monday. Astrosat is India’s first satellite dedicated to study of multiwave astronomy mission. The satellite (work on the project has been on since 2000) is likely to be put into orbit sometime late this year or early next year.
Belloni, who wrote the software for analysing the data that will emerge from Astrosat, was in the city to participate in the Kolkata Literary Meet. It was, in a way, a homecoming of sorts for a Black Hole specialist like Belloni since the phenomenon that was discovered only half a century earlier was christened after a sordid event in Kolkata that occurred over 250 years ago.
On June 19, 1756, troops of the Nawab of Bengal Siraj-ud-Daula held British prisoners of war in a small dungeon in Fort William. One of the prisoner claimed 123 of the 146 captives had died after being held overnight in conditions so cramped that many died from suffocation, heat, exhaustion and crushing. The following day, a newspaper headline screamed: Black Hole of Kolkata. Thus was born the term that is now commonly used in astrophysics to describe regions in space from which nothing, not even light, can escape.
“Imagine the entire energy contained in our sun being consumed in a second. That’s a Black Hole for you. If I were to describe the energy contained in a Black Hole, it would be taking 10 suns like the one in our solar system and squeezing their energy in 10 sq km of Kolkata,” Belloni explained.
Though Italy has always been a leader in research on high-energy astrophysics since the days of Galileo Galilei, Italian scientists are facing a funds crunch following the country’s less-than-sound economic condition. One of its most ambitious projects – Large Observatory for X-ray Timing – was first put in the backburner and then its leadership handed over to other countries. Till that project materialises, Astrosat will be the world’s eye into Black Holes in the sky.
While the formation of Black Holes – by either a mature star collapsing into itself or two neutron stars colliding with each other – can destroy not just the star but be catastrophic to its solar system and beyond, Belloni said the threat to Earth was very unlikely in the distant future. “We are able to spot one star explosion a day in the entire universe. The probability of it happening in our galaxy Milky Way is once in 85 million years,” he said.
He though admitted that if an explosion did occur close by, it could cause a breach in the earth’s ionosphere and allow harmful X-rays and Gamma rays to enter the earth. In the mega explosion that was spotted 7.5 billion light years away on March 19, 2008, the thickness of ionosphere had reduced from 80 km to 20 km. “Suck bright explosions are rare. Sun storms are more dangerous. It can happen more frequently and can cause a breach in the ionosphere at the North Pole,” he said.
English stifling Indian languages: Pavan K Varma
KOLKATA: India is fast turning into a nation of linguistic half-castes with English-speaking youths unsure of their own mother tongue, warned diplomat, writer and translator Pavan K Varma on Sunday.
“We have a linguistic pool so large and diverse that despite attempts to colonize the language, it survived. However, over the past three or four decades, this rich linguistic heritage has been disproportionately overshadowed by a pan-Indian preponderance of English. This is not accidental. It is very much by design. The general attitude is, if you know English, you can be less sure of your mother tongue,” said Varma, who is currently India’s ambassador in Bhutan.
Speaking at a session titled ‘Beyond Babel: Finding other literatures through translation’ at the Kolkata Literary Meet, he prescribed good translation of Indian writing to preserve and propagate the 24 fully-developed Indian languages, each with its own vocabulary and corpus of literature.
“In the absence of the awareness of Indian languages as a medium of good writing, the vacuum has been filled by mediocre English writing. There is urgent need for an institute of excellence in translation where poetry and prose in one Indian language can be translated to other Indian languages and into English,” he pointed out.
A member of the Indian Foreign Service who has served in Moscow, New York, London and Cyprus, Varma has passionately translated the works of Mirza Ghalib, Kaifi Azmi, Atal Behari Vajpayee and Gulzar into English to take Indian writing to a larger audience.
Though he writes in English, he has no qualms denouncing the language. “I am condemned to write in English. Having been to St Xavier’s and St Columbus, one becomes a saint without knowing either Hindi or Urdu. I took up translation of Ghalib and Kaifi Saab as a penance. Plus, I realised there is a space out there for people who want to know about our poetry and prose,” he explained.
As a translator, Varma says he feels like an incorrigible trespasser – one rushes to do things without studying or training. “Translation is an exercise that requires a rigour and discipline. It cannot be transliterish. One has to capture the brevity, the cadence, the rhythm, the structure without transgressing from the original. As Shabana Azmi once said, ‘translating poetry is like transferring perfume from one bottle to another’. Some of the fragrance is lost but there is still much left to appreciate,” he remarked.
Writer Anita Nair, who has recently published the translation of T S Pillai’s cult Malayali classic ‘Chemmeen’ and edited a collection of writings about Kerala, said she used the principle of Manodharmam or ‘faithfulness’ to translate. “I will translate as I understand, will be as faithful to the writer. If the writer has used a fisherman’s dialect, I will try to give the flavour without use of pigeon English,” she said.
When Nair encounters a particularly difficult word that has no English equivalent, she retains it and uses a glossary for further explanation. “That does not break the reader’s flow because he will anyway understand what it is from the context,” she said.
During the act of translation, Nair says she often slips into the author’s mind, the only difference being she thinks in English. But Arnava K Sinha, who has translated popular Bengali novels of Sankar, Buddhadeva Bose, Moti Nandy and is currently working on Sunil Gangopadhyay’s writings, cautions that translations should first attempt to be authentic.
“You have to get the author’s voice and ensure that your voice does not intrude, particularly when you move from one writer to another. My philosophy is: ‘take away nothing, add nothing’,” he said.
Sampurna Chatterjee, who has translated Sukumar Ray’s hugely popular nonsense verses ‘Abol Tabol’ and Joy Goswami’s poems in English, feels exactitude is the death of good translation. “Since I translate poetry, I need to be possessed by the poem, to be able to recite and sing it as though it were my own. What is needed is faithfulness in spirit, not in letter,” she added.
Nothing was taboo 50 years ago, says Arvind Mehrotra
KOLKATA: Poet Arvind Krishna Mehrotra believes writers of his generation were a lot more free to write on just about anything than his son Palash and his peers.
“Half a century ago, no one thought anything was wrong. If I look back at the 1960s and the kind of things I said then, I realize nothing was taboo. You could say the most outrageous or blasphemous things. It was a very different cultural movement. I don’t think anyone, including Palash, can write anything without considering whether it is blasphemous or objectionable and worrying about the consequences,” Arvind said in a session titled ‘Raising the Butterfly Generation’ at the Kolkata Literary Meet on Sunday.
His comments came in the backdrop of Salman Rushdie’s inability to attend the Jaipur Literary Festival or even connect with the audience via video-conference following protests over blasphemous passages in ‘Satanic Verses’ that was written two decades ago. Nearly everyone in the literary community has condemned the growing intolerance and government’s inaction on the issue.
Though the subject of writings was not questioned in the 1960s, Arvind recalled there was a big question mark on why he was writing in a language that was on its way out. “English was to have been replaced by Hindi by 1970s but that didn’t happen. Now, almost everyone has a book in English,” he remarked.
Arvind also recounted how, in his time, everyone read the same books in the formative years unlike the present generation that has access to a huge body of works on the Net. “Back then, no one was writing about India. One had a vague feeling that V S Naipaul would do it. India was not yet a subject worthy enough to be written about,” he said.
In defence of the India book, Palash reasoned that most of them were by NRIs and foreign correspondents who were witnessing a huge churn and change in India that had journeyed from soot-spraying steam locomotives to broadband.
“For me, people had gone through the Rushdie phase and chutnification of English. I wrote in simple English. I did not feel the need to write the India book but I did see a plethora of new professions and jobs and the way it was affecting people and wrote about it,” the author of ‘The Butterfly Generation’ said.
On what influenced the literature of his generation, Palash said it wasn’t Indian but American literature that played a part because he primarily writes short stories. He thus voraciously read J D Salinger and Scott Fitzgerald. “I just wanted to tell stories. The language of Indian writer was not so important. The only Indian writer I read was Vilas Sarang,” he recounted.
I’m not scared of controversies: Bhagat
KOLKATA: Doing the plain speak has got him into trouble all the time, confessed bestselling author Chetan Bhagat on Sunday afternoon over a relaxed and chilled out interview. He was obviously referring to the volley of words that he and writer Salman Rushdie have been sharing, since the Jaipur Literary Festival controversy surrounding Rushdie. The virtual war is being fought on Twitter.
Bhagat was here on Sunday for a discussion on being a bestselling author, as part of the Kolkata Literary Meet, which is a part of this year’s Kolkata Book Fair.
The latest discus that has come from Rushdie is, “Chetan : People like me are liberal extremists, as bad as the fundos. I am being ‘Bhaggered’; it’s like being molested by Dan Brown!” To this Bhagat has tweeted back saying that Rishdie was probably feeling “neglected”, now that the controversy is dying down!
“I was just outspoken about the fact that no one has the right to hurt sentiments and sensibilities of the people of any country. Rushdie is a great writer, much greater than I will ever be, but does that give him the right to hurt religious sentiments? Someone’s prophet is sacrosanct. As a writer, each one of us should respect that,” Bhagat said.
Bhagat had started off the fight at the Jaipur Literary Meet by saying, “don’t make heroes out of banned authors.” But is he running into controversies all the time? In the past he had ruffled feathers with his comments on the makers of the film, Three Idiots based on his Book, Five Point Someone and by commenting on Infosys chief Narayan Murthy.
“I’m not scared of controversies. Happily, they have not hurt my image. I openly air my views instead of sitting on the fence, and that is where I perhaps differ from others who prefer to keep quiet. If I were writing something derogatory and in the process I was hurting sentiments, I would have been similarly criticised!” he was emphatic. “Every country has a different set of values. Can my ultra liberal extremist friends tell me why pornography is not allowed in the country and why the censor board still has to pass every film?”
He however insisted that this polarisation of the country into pro and anti Salman Rushdie camps is unfair. “We need to take a middle path by starting a dialogue. I also condemn the act by certain intellectuals who in their urge to show solidarity with Rushdie, actually started reading from Satanic Verses! Do they realise that they were playing with fire? Do they realise that this could have led to violence?” he asked.
Choosing not to mince words, Bhagat was also satirical about Anna Hazare’s method of drawing attention. “I don’t agree that starving yourself is the only option available. Why should you fast? Are you a Bollywood actress, who don’t eat anyway. So why don’t you get one of them to promote or market your cause? I believe that will have a greater impact.”
On the issue of writing one bestseller after another and almost creating a reading revolution by getting even non-readers to read his books, Bhagat said, “that is probably because I write in accessible language. My readers are those who know English but who are perhaps not elite enough to appreciate high literary language. Also, I write about contemporary issues of our country, life and societies with which it is perhaps easy to identify,” he said.
He thinks he is different from the elite Indo Anglican genre of writers becauuse he does not need the Western stamp of approval, which the others of that genre do. “Yes, when they win a Booker or a Pulitzer, they create waves around the world. Otherwise they are authors who are read by the Indophiles or the non resident Indian diaspora. The western world has its own authors with whom it identifies. Fortunately, I am writing for my own people,” he signa off.
Book fair to celebrate culture too
KOLKATA: With several renowned authors and intellectuals set to grace the first Kolkata Literary Meet (KLM) at the 36th Kolkata International Book Fair, it is set to be a “confluence of literature and culture”.
To be inaugurated on Tuesday by Italian author Beppe Severgnini in the presence of chief minister Mamata Banerjee, the fair is ready with a series of ‘firsts’, including a music-and-dance concert by Italian artists at the closing ceremony. There has, however, been a drop in the number of stalls.
“This year, we will celebrate literature and culture. The first KLM will be big and easily the chief attraction of this fair. But we shall also have many other surprises. The inauguration, for instance, will have a music concert for the first time. We shall also observe Tagore’s and Swami Vivekananda’s 150th anniversary at the fair through lectures and seminars. Book-lovers can also look forward to interacting with Severgnini who is very popular in Bengal. One of his celebrated books, ‘La Bella Figura’, has been translated into Bengali and will be distributed free at the inauguration,” said Tridib Chattopadhyay, general secretary of the Publishers’ and Booksellers’ Guild.
Due to security reasons, KLM, however, will be held at a smaller auditorium at Milan Mela ground, which is the venue. The fire brigade has refused permission for a bigger auditorium on the ground that it may not be safe. “We have shifted it to a smaller auditorium. Even though we wanted a bigger space, we have no option but to abide by the fire brigade guidelines. But it will still be an event to look forward to,” said Chattopadhyay.
KLM, in fact, is set to be a star-studded event with authors Vikram Seth, Chetan Bhagat, Amish Tripathi and cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan set to attend it. There has not been any cancellation from the invitees for KLM, said Malavika Banerjee, the spokesperson.
“We are ready to hold the KLM. I am often being asked if Imran Khan will attend it. He will, unless there’s a coup in Pakistan. Barring Roopam Islam, one of our guests who pulled out due to a concert, all will attend the meet. We would have loved to hold it at a bigger auditorium. There could be some inconvenience due to space constraints, so let’s wait for a bigger and better KLM next year,” said Banerjee. A stall at the KLM venue will sell autographed copies of books by authors attending the meet.
The meet will also have a signature song sung by Kaushiki Desikan and Monali Thakur. The music has been composed by Shantanu Moitra and will be played at the KLM.
Music, dance and books from Italy will enthrall visitors this year. Italian participation will not merely be restricted to books, said Joel Melchiori, the Italian consul-general in Kolkata.
“Even though literature remains a major bonding factor between the two countries, we will also forge a link through our cinema and food. We shall close our participation with a guitar concert on the final day of the fair. I hope that once Kolkatans have acquainted themselves with Italy through our authors and musicians, they would want to visit the country,” said Melchiori.
Meanwhile, the number of stalls at the fair has been reduced to 785 from last year’s 842. This has been done to have more open space at the fair ground, according to the guild authorities. “Last year, the venue had looked like Benaras with narrow lanes criss-crossing each other. It will be much better this time,” said Sudhangshu Dey of the guild.
Book sales have been steadily spiralling at the fair over the years, said Chattopadhyay. “Last year, books worth Rs 20 crore were sold, which was substantially higher than the previous year’s figure,” he said.
The Kolkata Police has made arrangements for four parking venues – at the stock exchange ground, on the Science City campus, at PC Chandra gardens and under the Ambedkar bridge.
Traffic snarls are expected since the stretch of the EM Bypass near Milan Mela has been reduced to just 20 feet due to the ongoing flyover construction. Two thousand traffic policemen will be posted on the thoroughfare. The fair ground will have six watchtowers and 24 CCTV cameras.
Policemen will cordon off the road with ropes to prevent pedestrians from spilling on to the thoroughfare.
Literary fest ends, leaving readers asking for more
KOLKATA: Male writers are often accused of not understanding the female psyche. But reading Bi Feiyu is bound to change that. An English translation of his ‘Three Sisters’ was launched as part of the Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival on Sunday. It is a story of three sisters in Mainland China, struggling to survive in the aftermath of China’s Cultural Revolution. Readers will be amazed by the sensitivity and maturity with which young Feiyu has handled the three conflicting yet close female characters, moving towards an inevitable end. It is by showcasing leading Chinese author Feiyu that the festival came to a close.
Feiyu, one of China’s best known novelists today, won the Man Asian Literary Prize, 2010, and is hence someone whose presence generated a lot of interest among book lovers. He interacted with historian Sugato Bose at the event and spoke about how the different stages of turbulent Chinese history influenced the literature of the country since the last century. Thus, the post-World War II phase saw the rise of the Communists which caused a severe tumult in the traditional social skin of the country. Again, the Japanese invasion of China after 1937, the civil war of 1945-49, the famine of 1959-61, the Cultural Revolution of 1966-70 had their influences on Chinese literature, the author explained.
“We also had a phase when literature needed the sanction of Mao Tse Dong. However, Chinese modern literature flourished after the Cultural Revolution and a decade thereafter it came of age,” Feiyu said. He added that writers, just like historians, have the responsibility of showcasing every social change. He also stressed that after the mid ’70s, Chinese authors stopped imitating the Western literary world and it was evident in their creations.
Feiyu has been greatly influenced by Tagore, he said, so much so that “my wife will be extremely pleased to know that I got the chance to visit Jorasanko, Tagore’s ancestral home”, he said. He equalled this visit with his visit to Taj Mahal a couple of days back, on his way here.
Sunday morning saw Tishani Doshi, an upcoming name in the field of Indian writing in English, reading out poems from her latest book ‘Everything Begins Elsewhere’, where she talks about acceptance of loss in life. Doshi lives in the US but she has her roots in Gujarat and hence her programme was titled ‘Kavi Katha via Gujarat’. However, the star attraction of the programme, danseuse and activist Mallika Sarabhai, could not finally make it, leaving the audience disappointed. She was supposed to talk about the post-Godhra riot-ravaged Gujarat and her activism for the cause of the victims.
As the curtains came down on the five-day festival, the first of its kind that the city has experienced, people came asking for more. Interestingly, close on the heels of this festival, the city will witness the Kolkata Literary Meet, that will be organised from the end of January to the beginning of February as part of the Kolkata Book Fair. This meet will see authors Vikram Seth, Chetan Bhagat, Amish Tripathi, Kunal Basu and many others flocking here to chat about contemporary writing.
Ensure enough Bengali sessions at literary meet: CM
KOLKATA: Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has suggested that the Kolkata Literary Meet (KLM) have at least 50% sessions in Bengali.
As chief patron of the book fair, she is taking a keen interest in KLM, which is the first literary meet of its kind in the city. KLM has invited leading writers from the Indo-Anglican genre, like Vikram Seth, Kunal Basu, Chetan Bhagat and Amish Tripathi, and several other internationally famous figures from the world of English literature to participate in the meet. However, the CM has advised the organizers of KLM to ensure that there are “enough” Bengali literature related sessions, too.
The KLM is being jointly organized by the Publishers and Booksellers Guild and Gameplan. “There will be five Bengali sessions at KLM and the first such session will see the participation of the CM. It will be a commemorative session on Swami Vivekananda and she will be in conversation with writer Sanjib Chattopadhyay, who is also an expert on Swamiji and the Ramakrishna Mission,” said Tridib Chatterjee, general secretary of the guild.
KLM was formally announced on Friday and the starstudded programme was attended, among others, by authors Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay, Samaresh Majumdar and Kunal Basu. All three stressed on how Bengali literature needs an impetus and KLM should be able to provide that. “A lot of Bengali literature is being created, but how many are reading that? KLM should try and find out the reason through a writer-reader interface,” said Samaresh Majumdar.
Mukhopadhyay, on the other hand, felt that KLM will provide the opportunity for writers of Bengali fiction to interact with those writing in English and there will be a scope to pick each other’s brain. “Otherwise, the world of the writer is a lonely one,” he reminded.
Basu felt a lot of bestsellers are being written, but not all of it is fiction. “A lot of serious literary work is being done in Bengal and that needs to be taken to the world. KLM is capable of providing that platform.”
