Events

Loving & Literature – Bengaluru

BY CSM INDIA STAFF WRITER

Recently a literary evening was held at the Hotel Den located in Whitefield in the city of Bengaluru hosted by the General Manager Mr. Vinesh Gupta and Dr. Kaustav Bhattacharyya of Country Squire Magazine India Edition fame. The theme of the evening was ‘Loving and Living Literature’ with a galaxy of esteemed panellists who were all accomplished professionals in their field at a global level. 

The panellists included Mr. Suresh Subrahmanyan, Mr. Ramesh Vangal and Ms. Rohini Yvon.  The brief profile of all the three speakers is described as follows; Mr. Suresh Subrahmanyan was the Advertising Manager of Dunlop India, a British sterling firm based in Kolkata and held positions of President, Advertising Club of Calcutta, Vice-Chairman, Federation of Advertising Clubs of India and was most recently the brainchild behind the Ganjam brand of jewellery.  Mr. Ramesh Vangal was the pioneering spirit behind the launching of Pepsico and Seagrams brand in India. He held positions of President, Asia-Pacific, Pepsico Foods, Member of Pepsico’s Worldwide Executive Council and is currently the Chairman of Kerala Ayurveda which is one of the oldest full spectrum-listed Ayurveda companies globally.  Ms. Rohini Yvon was the brainchild behind and instrumental in launching the Christian Dior brand in India.  She worked with a NY-based Chrysalis Fund which brought eBay and Ivega to India. She launched Basel Art in Hong Kong which was represented at the Tokyo Art Fair and this was the first spin-off from Basel Swiss Art.

Here below is an extract from the opening speech delivered by Dr. Kaustav Bhattacharyya (above) to the distinguished audience at the literary evening at the Hotel Den:

This evening’s literary event is a lot about paying tribute to the city of Bengaluru and the ‘Old Bangalore’ as a place where one encountered the entire experience of ‘LOVING AND LIVING LITERATURE’. I have used the expression ‘Old Bangalore’ to denote the Bengaluru which existed prior to its emergence as the ‘Silicon Valley’ of India dotted with tech-parks and high-rises with digital cab bookings and online travel agencies. 

In my previous event I spoke about taking ‘Tagore’ out of Bengal and Bengalis, and now it seems that we have to take PG Wodehouse out of ‘Bengaluru’ or ‘Old Bangalore’ and specifically Cottonians since this evening all the 3 speakers are Old Cottonians, i.e. alumni of the Bishop Cottons School, Bengaluru. The idyllic pensioners’ paradise that ‘Old Bangalore’ was had a very Wodehousian flavour in terms of the number of charming, erudite, eccentric characters one came across especially in the cafés, clubs like that of Bangalore Club, Bowrings Institute, Century Club, in the bookstores, old music record stores, British Council Library, Eloor Lending Library which was close to Safina Plaza or even in your neighbourhood stores in places like Defense Colony or Indiranagar where I lived, there were significant number of PG Wodehouse fans who loved reading the books and citing from them smoothly and discussing the cheerful characters which were mentioned in them.  At one point in time there was an informal Wodehouse fan club or society active in some of the cafés and Clubs. This distinct charm of ‘Old Bangalore’ which was straight out of the pages of a PG Wodehouse or Oscar Wilde was well grounded or under-pinned with a robust culture of bibliophilia or love of books, erudition and good literary taste.  The British Council library on St. Marks Road was an institution which was worth the reckoning those days – kindling our desire and interest in English literature.

Needless to add about the café downstairs about which I have written an article titled ‘The Mystic Café’ in this very publication, Country Squire Magazine Indian Edition, where conversations happened about books and authors over a steaming cuppa coffee.

Now let me turn to this idea of ‘LOVING AND LITERATURE’ in a very personalized manner; what exactly do I mean by this concept?? Where did it all start or begin?? How did it come about that in my ‘past the prime’ middle-age, greying at a rapid pace I would come here to the Hotel Den and speak about this topic to a distinguished audience?? Well the world in which I grew up in the 80s/90s of urbane India, ‘Calcutta’ now Kolkata and ‘Old Bangalore’ even if one wished to embark on a dyed-in-the-wool corporate career, or be a medical doctor, scientist, engineer or even a civil servant one needed to appreciate the nuances of speaking a language, in this case the English language. One needed to know how to use metaphors, dish out repartees or toss a touché to one’s friends at the drop of a penny. Yes humour and wit was needed to be celebrated, Banter was a very important facet of our lives including our professional lives.

According to my own personal reflection which I indulged in to prepare for this lecture at this literary event, the way one dealt with the English language those days, especially the manner and style of speaking, it wouldn’t come easily if one never had a passion or love or l’amour for Literature.  It wasn’t a purely academic pedantic exercise one engaged in with respect to English language and literature.  More than the knowledge, it was passion for literature as what the film Director Mr. Mrinal Sen once said to a Western journalist on being asked the question, ‘How can you live and work in Calcutta Mr. Sen? You must be having a lot of patience’. But it’s just not ‘patience’ but ‘passion and patience’.  Yes, Passion and Patience and here both Loving and Living Literature!!

Now time for a few examples of this ‘Indian’ banter of the earlier era:

A legendary advertising personality from Mumbai moves into his new office on the 9th floor of a building in Nariman Point or Colaba where another legendary ad man Mr. Subhash Ghoshal and his friend occupied the 5th floor office. So, he writes to his friend ‘Dear Subhash, now finally I can look down upon you’ to which Mr. Subhash Ghoshal promptly responded by dictating to his stenographer and mind you this is pre-WhatsApp days ‘Great, see you on your way down’.

Or when Mr. Frank Moraes, the first Indian Editor of the Times of India was accused benignly by his friends at the Times of India office that ‘Mr. Moraes you are a hangover of the British Raj’ to which Mr. Moraes retorted ‘What’s this hangover all about? They didn’t even leave a bottle of whiskey for me’.

Or closer home to Bengaluru, one of the icons of journalism PK Srinivasan, an institution at the Koshy’s café whom I have dubbed as the ‘Socrates of the Koshy’s café’ said when someone remarked about ‘drowning of sorrows’ through consuming copious quantities of spirit, PK responded ‘What’s all this drowning of sorrows all about, my sorrows have learnt to swim’ and he was quoting Dylan Thomas the poet. PK once wrote with his trademark sarcasm that ‘it can be said about some people that they rose without a trace.’ 

Or the young IAS recruit from Chennai, Tamil Nadu who replied to the Interview Panel when asked about the ‘bottlenecks’ in administration that bottlenecks are usually are at the top while the interview panel was staffed by senior civil servants or IAS officers.

Or when a senior diplomat on being relinquished of his post remarked that since the last hour I was a distinguished diplomat and now I am an extinguished diplomat. Be assured Ladies and Gentlemen I have quoted these lines ad infinitum in my life to numerous people I met across the globe.

Hence literature has to be loved and be absorbed in our lives where we can negotiate the living experiences, interpersonal encounters through the lens of humour and wit. One last anecdote from my days in Germany where as a student I enrolled at the Staat Bibliothek or the State Municipal Library and borrowed copies of plays and one of them was Oscar Wilde’s, ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ where exists a marvellous line:

‘The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad.  It is simple washing one’s clean linen in public’.

And on the occasion of the start of a new wine season at a winery I was invited to a dinner and drinks party where I repeated these lines verbatim to the amusement of my German friends.

Trust me loving and blending literature in our life makes our mortal existence much easier and brings in much fun and frolics.

Let me return to the opening remarks about PG Wodehouse. What’s this obsession about PG Wodehouse?? Does it imply that individuals who read and admire PG Wodehouse are capable of Loving and Living Literature??  Absolutely not…but for me personally PG Wodehouse is the author, or was the author during my schooldays with whom you can form the relationship or experience of Loving and Living Literature very easily and smoothly, his writings symbolise precisely this spirit. 

We can easily endear and appreciate his simple yet enriched style of writing and depiction of vivid eccentricity of his characters. And then we start living our lives through his characters. We all have experienced

  • the domineering Aunt Agatha who is always trying to get us married and who in the words of Wodehouse ‘one chews bottles and kills rats with their teeth’.
  • Aunt  Dahlia who is the exact opposite of Aunt Agatha; the kind, genial soul, a pleasant and jovial character who had the great skill of staging a ‘Grand Dame’ act.
  • Vagabond, flamboyant Uncle George
  • the tall, ubiquitous, eccentric P Smith who keeps forgetting his umbrellas in the Clubs
  • Mr. Mulliner, a loquacious or talkative pub raconteur or storyteller who would be spinning fabulous tales about his family while drinking Scotch and lemon
  • Lord Emsworth – bumbling owner of the Blandings Castle who is divorced from the events of the outside world. Precisely what my wife and mother say about me….

In my humble opinion I am certain there would be plenty of authors who would match Wodehouse in their literary brilliance, sparkling wit and craft of penmanship. My suggestion to young readers in the audience is to always look for that wit, charm and depiction of real-life characters leading the mundane mortal reality!!

Now I turn to Living Literature, well when you are in love with someone, I am sure living with them would be easier…so if you love literature then living would be a breeze!!

In one of my earlier events where I was a panellist, I met a few parents who would ask me about how to inculcate the love of literature in their growing children.  One particular lady asked me how did I acquire this love or knowledge of English literature since she would like her teenage son to acquire the same.

I felt awkward and embarrassed!! The moment of truth has arrived!!

How am I to confess that it’s all about whiling away your time with the Café Bohemians!! Or what I have called ‘Drifters’ or what another author termed ‘Vagrants’?? How can I confess that this all happened after a session of good dose of engineering maths, electronics circuitry lessons or production engineering labs where I operated Milling machines and then sauntered away into a derelict café filled with Bohemians discussing French post-modernism and Sylvia Plath over loads of gin or wine?? How can I recommend to their children walking into a run-down, existentialist café and just join the table with the most exuberant customers holding forth?? How irresponsible would that be for a respectable middle-aged person like myself??

In Germany I learnt about Heinrich Heine their great poet in smoke-filled bars where beer flowed smoothly like the River Rhine!! In Britain I experienced and soaked in the spirit of George Orwell, PG Wodehouse, Oscar Wilde in old regal English pubs about which I have written an article in this very publication in their UK edition inspired by an essay by George Orwell on English pubs, ‘The Moon under water’. 

In the Netherlands in their capital city Amsterdam I pondered and reflected upon the great Dutch Masters after a visit to their museums in cafés where the smoke wasn’t necessarily of cigarette alone which was a shocker for an young Indian hailing from a conservative milieu. I developed a penchant, an obsession to visit dilapidated bohemian cafés where dogs run around, beer is cheap, tables are not the swankiest clean and everyone looking relaxed with their hair let down in large cities like Frankfurt, Paris, Toronto, Brussels, London looking for vagrants and drifters though many were horribly and fantastically erudite. I could have rephrased the famous TS Eliot’s lines ‘I have measured out my life with coffee spoons’ with ‘I have measured out my life with beer pints’.  

Hence, I had to design and develop a simple, respectable, decent message: READ, READ and READ.

Visit the Church Street bookstores, frequent Max Mueller Bhavan library, Alliance Francaise library, sadly the British Council doesn’t operate any library anymore…or even some of the local neighbourhood libraries.  Visit the Bangalore Club library, Bowring Institute library, Century Club library if you can and then you have the wondrous Digital world of Kindle/Google books.

Often through your visits to libraries and bookstores one will get lucky to meet the charming erudite lawyer Andrew Lobo who will furnish and yes sometimes flourish you with vignettes of European history perhaps more than vignettes and akin to encyclopaedic information!!

Or you might meet the prolific writer, lawyer CR Sridhar who was known as the ‘armchair leftist’ where the leftism is no longer left but the cushy armchair remains!! Or the eclectic global banker Amrish who would be reading Mark Twain’s autobiography in the salubrious setting of the Club lawns. Those angry young men of the yesteryears are no longer young nor angry.  You might meet people who will kindle in you the joys of reading, discuss the plots of a novel, hold forth and comment on the narratives, enact the role of the characters, discuss their personalities rather expressively, inciting the vivid imagination and spurring you to read and appreciate more of literature.

I am thankful to all these numerous people I met and many of whom are no longer on this planet.  A special mention needs to be made of Mr. Len Shepherd, an Anglo-India gentleman who was the first Indian General Manager of the Binnys Cotton Mills who once expressed the anxiety during our delightful afternoon tea chats that if he would be alive to see me complete my PhD. This was a period when there were delays to my completion of the PhD due to personal and health reasons. Once I had returned to Bengaluru from London subsequent to my successful completion of the PhD from the Cass Business School, London (name changed to Bayes) I immediately contacted Mr. Shepherd and presented by Letter of Confirmation or the Letter of Award from my external and internal examiners.  I arrived on the 1st April, 2013 and met Mr. Shepherd on the 2nd April, 2013 to fulfil his affectionately expressed desire to witness me as a PhD. Mr. Shepherd is no more and he passed away a couple of years back after surviving the COVID pandemic. His memory lingers and God Bless his soul!!

Second; Watch films or movies which are adaptations of the works of fiction or novel you have read in the past or are currently reading. Like the production of F Scott Fritzgerald’s ‘Great Gatsby’. Personally, I feel books and films in tandem make a great combination for Loving and Living Literature. A great elixir for a literary journey!!

Third; Please read, relish and devour the Book Reviews or Literary Reviews like London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, New York Review of Books or even the New Yorker. Some of these reviews are just an absolute delight, they make you plunge in the flames of love or passion or l’amour for literature.  Similar to when you sip a delectable glass of wine and yes believe me my young friends it’s a strange phenomenon that middle-aged men experience the frisson of falling in love while reading book and literary reviews.  I have brought 3 copies for the young readers in the audience to take a look at and it’s very easy to get a subscription for both the online and print edition.

Finally, form a Community of Interest, of readers, of book lovers who would love to sit and discuss books, authors, plots, narratives and themes of literature.  And for the Whitefielders (residents of Whitefield in Bengaluru) please come to Hotel Den, they serve great green tea, coffee, I must look respectable but yes, they serve things stronger!!!  Let’s form this rather charming group ‘DENIZENS OF THE DEN’ a term which I had impromptu coined while drinking something stronger one evening with Mr. Gupta, the General Manager.

Now I shall handover the stage without much further ado to Rohini to steer the conversation of this literary evening. Prior to that I wish to play a small rendition of Frank Sinatra’s ‘MY WAY’ by our very own Gary Lawyer who did this song as part of an online program with Carlton Braganza.  Let’s applaud all those people who kept us alive with music during the pandemic period with the online programs.  A song which encapsulates the spirit of ‘Loving and Living Literature’ in terms of the life one can lead through it!!

Thank You for your attention, Ladies and Gentlemen!!

Have a Splendid Evening!!