How to Write about Africa

[http://www.granta.com/Magazine/92/How-to-Write-about-Africa/Page-1]: I owe my finding this article/piece/something-else-that-fits-no-given-box to my friend Zubin. One can view his blog at http://peripheralvision.blogspot.com/

Always use the word 'Africa' or 'Darkness' or 'Safari' in your title. Subtitles may include the words 'Zanzibar', 'Masai', 'Zulu', 'Zambezi', 'Congo', 'Nile', 'Big', 'Sky', 'Shadow', 'Drum', 'Sun' or 'Bygone'. Also useful are words such as 'Guerrillas', 'Timeless', 'Primordial' and 'Tribal'. Note that 'People' means Africans who are not black, while 'The People' means black Africans.

Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel Prize. An AK-47, prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these. If you must include an African, make sure you get one in Masai or Zulu or Dogon dress.

In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don't get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book. The continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other things, but your reader doesn't care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular.

Make sure you show how Africans have music and rhythm deep in their souls, and eat things no other humans eat. Do not mention rice and beef and wheat; monkey-brain is an African's cuisine of choice, along with goat, snake, worms and grubs and all manner of game meat. Make sure you show that you are able to eat such food without flinching, and describe how you learn to enjoy it—because you care.

Taboo subjects: ordinary domestic scenes, love between Africans (unless a death is involved), references to African writers or intellectuals, mention of school-going children who are not suffering from yaws or Ebola fever or female genital mutilation.

Throughout the book, adopt a sotto voice, in conspiracy with the reader, and a sad I-expected-so-much tone. Establish early on that your liberalism is impeccable, and mention near the beginning how much you love Africa, how you fell in love with the place and can't live without her. Africa is the only continent you can love—take advantage of this. If you are a man, thrust yourself into her warm virgin forests. If you are a woman, treat Africa as a man who wears a bush jacket and disappears off into the sunset. Africa is to be pitied, worshipped or dominated. Whichever angle you take, be sure to leave the strong impression that without your intervention and your important book, Africa is doomed.

Your African characters may include naked warriors, loyal servants, diviners and seers, ancient wise men living in hermitic splendour. Or corrupt politicians, inept polygamous travel-guides, and prostitutes you have slept with. The Loyal Servant always behaves like a seven-year-old and needs a firm hand; he is scared of snakes, good with children, and always involving you in his complex domestic dramas. The Ancient Wise Man always comes from a noble tribe (not the money-grubbing tribes like the Gikuyu, the Igbo or the Shona). He has rheumy eyes and is close to the Earth. The Modern African is a fat man who steals and works in the visa office, refusing to give work permits to qualified Westerners who really care about Africa. He is an enemy of development, always using his government job to make it difficult for pragmatic and good-hearted expats to set up NGOs or Legal Conservation Areas. Or he is an Oxford-educated intellectual turned serial-killing politician in a Savile Row suit. He is a cannibal who likes Cristal champagne, and his mother is a rich witch-doctor who really runs the country.

Among your characters you must always include The Starving African, who wanders the refugee camp nearly naked, and waits for the benevolence of the West. Her children have flies on their eyelids and pot bellies, and her breasts are flat and empty. She must look utterly helpless. She can have no past, no history; such diversions ruin the dramatic moment. Moans are good. She must never say anything about herself in the dialogue except to speak of her (unspeakable) suffering. Also be sure to include a warm and motherly woman who has a rolling laugh and who is concerned for your well-being. Just call her Mama. Her children are all delinquent. These characters should buzz around your main hero, making him look good. Your hero can teach them, bathe them, feed them; he carries lots of babies and has seen Death. Your hero is you (if reportage), or a beautiful, tragic international celebrity/aristocrat who now cares for animals (if fiction).

Bad Western characters may include children of Tory cabinet ministers, Afrikaners, employees of the World Bank. When talking about exploitation by foreigners mention the Chinese and Indian traders. Blame the West for Africa's situation. But do not be too specific.

Broad brushstrokes throughout are good. Avoid having the African characters laugh, or struggle to educate their kids, or just make do in mundane circumstances. Have them illuminate something about Europe or America in Africa. African characters should be colourful, exotic, larger than life—but empty inside, with no dialogue, no conflicts or resolutions in their stories, no depth or quirks to confuse the cause.

Describe, in detail, naked breasts (young, old, conservative, recently raped, big, small) or mutilated genitals, or enhanced genitals. Or any kind of genitals. And dead bodies. Or, better, naked dead bodies. And especially rotting naked dead bodies. Remember, any work you submit in which people look filthy and miserable will be referred to as the 'real Africa', and you want that on your dust jacket. Do not feel queasy about this: you are trying to help them to get aid from the West. The biggest taboo in writing about Africa is to describe or show dead or suffering white people.

Animals, on the other hand, must be treated as well rounded, complex characters. They speak (or grunt while tossing their manes proudly) and have names, ambitions and desires. They also have family values: see how lions teach their children? Elephants are caring, and are good feminists or dignified patriarchs. So are gorillas. Never, ever say anything negative about an elephant or a gorilla. Elephants may attack people's property, destroy their crops, and even kill them. Always take the side of the elephant. Big cats have public-school accents. Hyenas are fair game and have vaguely Middle Eastern accents. Any short Africans who live in the jungle or desert may be portrayed with good humour (unless they are in conflict with an elephant or chimpanzee or gorilla, in which case they are pure evil).

After celebrity activists and aid workers, conservationists are Africa's most important people. Do not offend them. You need them to invite you to their 30,000-acre game ranch or 'conservation area', and this is the only way you will get to interview the celebrity activist. Often a book cover with a heroic-looking conservationist on it works magic for sales. Anybody white, tanned and wearing khaki who once had a pet antelope or a farm is a conservationist, one who is preserving Africa's rich heritage. When interviewing him or her, do not ask how much funding they have; do not ask how much money they make off their game. Never ask how much they pay their employees.

Readers will be put off if you don't mention the light in Africa. And sunsets, the African sunset is a must. It is always big and red. There is always a big sky. Wide empty spaces and game are critical—Africa is the Land of Wide Empty Spaces. When writing about the plight of flora and fauna, make sure you mention that Africa is overpopulated. When your main character is in a desert or jungle living with indigenous peoples (anybody short) it is okay to mention that Africa has been severely depopulated by Aids and War (use caps).

You'll also need a nightclub called Tropicana, where mercenaries, evil nouveau riche Africans and prostitutes and guerrillas and expats hang out.

Always end your book with Nelson Mandela saying something about rainbows or renaissances. Because you care.

[You are free to keep silent and feel a silent sting...]

Why Crack up our Lives?

Happy Diwali … so people called up to say and SMS me and others too. Perhaps one even passes a benevolent smile to a faintly acquainted-with stranger and murmurs, “happy diwali!’. So much for the spreading of humanitarian gesture and goodwill, all very exemplary in a world where such virtues are increasingly (or decreasingly perhaps) being available and noticed as printed words in Moral Science text books and 'How To Be A good Citizen' picture charts. All the more exemplary in a world laden with Ladens, with phallic structures in a paternal nation crumbling down to ground zero. All very good. And happy diwali once again.

I tried to stand in my 3rd floor balcony and do some meaning-making of the little blasts and flowering lights going on since the past four days now – two days prior to diwali it all started and now that diwali has over for more than 24 hours, it seems relentless in its determination and loyalty to the essence of the festival. And so, I was trying to make meaning —

And think —

Silent crackers shoot up in to the dark space we have named the sky (devoid of any stars in the thick smoke hanging over the city like a loving mother’s blanket since the past 4 days) and flower out into a dazzling and excruciatingly ephemeral nebulae of greens, red, purple and golden stars and dots, only to be sucked into a blackhole of nothingness in less than a matter of seconds. Some flowers are bigger, spread out over a wider dark expanse and are all golden in essence…occasionally a lone red dot shoots up and leaves a trail of burnt gases visible even in the dark, through the thick blanket of smoke. I calculated — each flower gone, a crisp hundred-rupee gone too. At least. The aesthetic and mature silent flowers go up primarily in the sky-spaces above the multi-storied apartments, those with three security guards in front, sitting with Entry/Exit stern registers, those with automatic Otis elevators and grass on the roof. The flowers are observed from the balconies and roof top with muted remarks and teenage innocence. A brief comment on the craftsman’s skill perchance escapes glossed lips. A vodka glass in a male hand and laughter over kebabs. The flowers vanish and the smoke blanket grows an inch thicker.

Those living in houses that have grass traces in front of their doorsteps, resort to crackers that can talk, shout, shriek and screech (the hell out of anybody with functioning auditory structure). These crackers have a language of their own. Thousands of such crackers keep following one another for days on end, determined to establish their identity and ontology even at the cost of causing little inconvenience to certain sections of society – those aged, ill, preparing for exams, writing thesis papers, trying to talk or sleep, etc. After all, one look at the history of all revolutions would reveal a cognition of sacrificing-the-lesser-in-return-of-a-greater-good. In return of instituting an existence.

As rocket after rocket and other quasi-cosmic bodies go up and either tumble down or simply get sucked away into the smoky void, I am reminded of the eternally tumbling money market, the stock market to be exact (after all, there is no place for inexactitude). The U.S global shares have tumbled down like Humpty Dumpty and have been awaiting the King’s horses and men – but the army is not seeming adequate enough. The egg is perhaps awaiting its last option to be taken up as poach — sunny side down. Yet the horses and men are trying to find the right glue, right thread and whatever else.

Irrespective of whether the Obamian government will give a curt smile to Asian (let’s deal with just the Indian. I don’t wish to be meta-patriotic in this abject existence!) BPOs, thereby pushing several youngsters (those with a penchant for shooting up purple-red flowers and drinking diwali with vodka) to non-white-collar jobs (other attractive colours might surely tumble out of the spectrum and adhere to other parts of the shirt, but one can never be too sure), we surely need to stop ourselves from getting more cracked up than ever before!

Thanks to good-old Newton, we know that (most of) what goes up, comes down. We can keep the critics and their exception-laden-charts out of our purview at the moment. Therefore, both crackers and shares will come down. Both have seen abundance of investments, both have evoked irrefutable promise and joy in the investors (as well as in the viewers—those viewing with a gleeful scrutiny, silently making a definite promise to do the same when the next occasion came) when they were charting their upward, heavenly trajectory. Somehow, each investor, each Wall Street, Dalal Street, drinking-diwali-with-vodka and bursting cracker-chains amidst brick stacks, humanbeing, even after repeated, infallible evidence, hopes that this time it will go up higher, stay up longer, dazzle more brightly. Perhaps this time. Just this time. But each time the bull becomes a bear, each time the flower withers away just too soon, each time the dream seems blinded. Blinded by the smoky blanket … by the crashing loss of money, of life and its meaning. Of a healthier environment.

Neither the twin towers, nor the sensex, nor the shooting up crackers, stay up long enough. Should we learn a little and henceforth try to, at least believe in its downward trajectory? Perhaps with some less smoke blinding us, less noise deafening us and less shattered dreams, we can do a little better with a life less cracked, a life less glued up, a life less poached, sunny side down. Happy diwali, nonetheless. Whatever the happiness is all about!

Shadows on the Bridge

November 2007
Kolkata

It’s dusk. Early winter and thus the mild (and apologetic) blanket of chill at this hour. You could take the bridge to the left. There were shanties underneath and a rubble filled waterbody. The shadows hovered on the pavement bordering the bridge along both sides. Still shadows and bustling ones. The still ones were voluptuous, in various degrees of undress. Most were dark in complexion with gorgeous make ups – red lips, painted up and untied disheveled manes. The wisps of rough hair floated in the evening wind, escaping…trying to. Only they could not escape…try to. The bustling shadows belonged to young men…their bodies were glistening with a film of sweat – sweat of eagerness and hunger. They were busy showing off the standing-silent shadows to interested ‘parties’. They were haggling over the price – negotiating and compromising. The shadows kept silent. They were not allowed to decide upon their fate. The ‘parties’ took turns to gaze intently at each silent-shadow; scrutinize its every angle, every curve. The painted eyes and blood red lips, the cheap ornaments adorning her wrists and breasts, the mounds of breasts themselves. The curve of the hips and if possible, the shape of the legs. Looking at the often semi-covered breasts gifted them a strange surge of adrenal. They would feel good to touch…and the silent-shadows would not say anything. They had been paid for. Bought. The ‘parties’ selected one and placed the order. The happy moving-busily shadow gave them the receipt. Said he would get her delivered to their address.

Parties came and went.
Orders were taken and the maal delivered.
Right time.
Right place.
Promises kept.

The semi-dressed silent-shadow remained silent…
Perfect body, perfect price.

The semi-dressed silent-shadow remained silent…
Even when she was held by four men at a time
Even when she was carried aloft by four men at a time – two drunk
Even when she was immersed in the Ganga, to the accompaniment of drunken men and deafening dhaak beats…

She was still silent. Till she was no more…

The story of throwing the starfish back...

Many many years...almost when it was once-upon-a-time, I got hold of some Chicken Soup for the Soul books through come circuitous route, the details of which I rather not go into now simply because they are not informing in any way to what I am now going to share. The story of the starfish that I read there is as follows:

A man is walking down the sea beach. Lonely - both the man and the beach. Almost at the other end, at the horizon, walking towards him is the dot that is another man. However, our man gets slightly curious since the other dot-man is apparently walking a few steps, then stooping then standing up and walking a few more steps before again stooping and standing up. This man gets very intrigued, and starts walking faster so as to meet him sooner and find out what he is upto. In sometime they are within visibility range and the first man realizes that the other man is actually stooping down to pick up a starfish or a jellyfish that has been washed ashore by the wave and throwing it back to the sea before it dies. The man laughs, at the gross futility. Soon they are face to face, and our man says: "So, you are throwing back those things? But everyday, across all the beaches in the world, millions of such creatures are thrown on to the sand and they are doomed to die. That's how it is. What difference can you make?" The fish-thrower man says nothing but stoops and picks up a quivering starfish and throws it far back into the sea. He says: "I just made a difference to that one."

The story made me sad, it made it feel touched, it irked me ... for all the starfishes I had never bothered to throw back into the sea. I know that is how things are; that is how most things/beings live. eek, survive. That is what the state also tells us: "erom to kotoyi hoye!" (Such incidents are very common - too common to be bothered by). Some tell us that most villagers are used to living without electricity, so don't bother. Others tell that women are used to getting touched and oogled at on the streets, so just don't bother about these. Some others tell us that the tribals are used to getting nothing from either the state or the people who claim to be fighting for them, so let them die. Don't bother. Anyways, what difference can I make?

One in a multitude ... both yearning for some breath-able air and soaked with helpless rage at the futility ... yet optimism refuses to go away (even if you said it was Western, white and "theirs", I shall not yield) ... writing provides some transient relief...thus selfishly I seek to write ... the blog my emotional garbage-bin...