Anindita Sengupta

On the surface, Iris Murdoch’s A Severed Head is about a bunch of tangled relationships. At the centre is Martin Lynch-Gibbon, a man who’s comically deluded about a vast number of things in his life. He’s sleeping with smart and sexy Georgie, a young academic who pretends to be much freer and easy-going than she is actually is. His wife Antonia is beautiful and elegant. Overall, he’s quite smug. Except, all kinds of things are going on around him that he’s unaware of, and as the novel progresses and more characters enter the picture, it’s hard to keep track of who’s fucking whom. So I can imagine the poor man’s bafflement.

But of course there’s much more to this than sexual shenanigans. The book is really about power and information, how closely the two are related, how they are exchanged between humans, and how quickly, surreptitiously and unexpectedly these exchanges can flip lives around. There are also huge Freudian subtexts with Oedipal instincts and incest forming an important part of the relationships. The book’s also extremely funny in bits.  Murdoch uses irony and farce to deal with Martin’s predicaments and despite the fact that she touches on infidelity, childlessness, depression and suicide, the book is quite entertaining. I would recommend it for a lazy afternoon. It’s quite a romp.

***

Phyllis Bose did an incredible job bringing Gertrude Stein alive yesterday at Ranga Shankara. Her dramatic monologue Gertrude ran for nearly two hours. It had a simple set dominated by reproductions of famous paintings done by Bose herself and there was little movement. Yet she managed to hold interest. Part of the credit must go to the script, carefully woven together from Stein’s own texts and notes but a lot of it was the energy and intimacy she brought to the telling. The focus of the script was Gertrude’s famous friendship with Picasso but there was lots of other stuff in there–insights into Leo Stein (Gertrude’s brother) and Alice Toklas (her partner), anecdotes about the Saturday Salons, and Stein’s views on life and art. Bose was funny and convincing and, quite often, transporting. It was a pleasure.

***

Afterward, some of us went to Koshy’s where among other things, we talked of how the place elicits such extreme reactions from people. Some love it and others just don’t take to it at all. Often, the same things about it bring out such diverse reactions — the ancient and faintly dingy air of the place, the lacklustre furnishings, the lack of general hipness, the sense that someone built it a long, long time ago and then forgot to do anything for it ever again. This time-warped air is exactly what some of us love about it. It lets us feel we’ve stepped into a different world, a world where things never change. It makes us feel secure. Also, the sheer variety of human type and activity at these tables — people talking, staring, drinking, gorging, playing some board game, having meetings, sharing quizzes, discussing art — is terribly interesting. Some people like these things. Others don’t. Everyone likes the potato smileys though.

As an aside, Gertrude talked about identity and memory and what happens to them in the face of eternity. I think Koshy’s was rather apt in the circumstances.

This is a picture I took some time back of the place.

Four of my poems are in the latest issue (pdf) of Origami Condom. You’ll have to scroll down quite a bit for the poems. I’m republishing two of them here:

Desire.15.

Intensity had its failings that summer.
We clambered over cartons in the store-room,
stumbled in semi-light. Your fingers played
at ineptitude. I act like I know the impatience
of hands. I wonder if any of my friends
have done this. They attended special

classes for French, stooped
over Le Soleil, repeated verbs in monotone—
naitre, revoir, mourir—maundered later
at the arcade where boys in black leather
leaked cigarette smoke out of their mouths

while mother at the dining table
illustrated latitudes and longitudes
to a recalcitrant son, her voice taut
as sitar strings, her eyes patient as stars.
I pretend interest. I pass food
from plate to mouth. The walls receded

into the shapes of your face. I wait
for the next humid or rain-stopped afternoon
when your fingers will find their way
into the right places.

***

Totem

After his hair fell out in clumps,
it skulked everywhere. On his pillow.
The back of the sofa where he leaned
his head. In the drain.

Coarse black strands like handloom cotton.

He took to rubbing his hand
across the shrubby baldness
like other people smooth beards
or lift moustache edges
with agile, self-conscious fingers.

It was more than acceptance
or coming to terms. It was almost
vanity.

His head:
its brown soft as caramel, faintly wrinkled,
totem that had watched over us for so long,
now bursting like a sack, neat tumors
jostling in there like potatoes,
bulged frailer in the lamplight every day.

***

K, a dear friend and someone I knew for ten years and across two cities, died of a heart attack last week. He was in his early thirties.

Apart from the usual grief and sudden awareness of mortality, there was a lot of guilt to deal with. K and I had a falling out some years back. It was mostly my fault and I never quite got around to saying sorry. We sidled back into an uneasy truce but lost the closeness. I wanted to avoid melodrama and apology. I assumed that we’d get back to being the same ‘any day now’.

Sometimes, there really isn’t enough time.

K was one of the most life-affirming people I knew — kind, generous, almost spiritual in his ability to love and forgive. He didn’t judge or demand or complain. He miraculously managed to make everyone he met feel good about themselves. He loved parties. He played crazy fortune-telling card games. He liked cats. He was also curiously open, even vulnerable.

I can’t do much justice to this obit but his closest friend has. As for me, I’m vibing all the love in the world to those I love and saying sorry where I need to. That’s what he would have advised.

Just a quick note to say that the latest issue of Nth Position is up and two of my poems, ‘Separation’ and ‘Speaking in Tongues’ are in it. Do read. I haven’t been submitting too much recently, mainly because I got busy with my first collection. So I’m glad to see these somewhere other than on my computer.

I haven’t had time to read the issue properly because the power has been gone ALL day and has just come back and I’m due to meet a friend in 20 minutes. On the upside, I got a lot of actual book reading done because I had no computer.

And yes, I know I’ve said this everywhere else but once more, Ultra Violet, the feminist site I manage, has a new home on the web. There are some changes in structure, focus, content and mood as well. Do check it out and mail me if you want to write or post something as a guest.

Sankey Tank is rather pretty if one can forget about the crowds and look at other things.