India's - High Commission of India, London

[ ] 1st issue of April 2013 6
A tribute to ‘Jane Austen’ of India
Described by English writer-editor Ian Jack as the Jane Austen of India, award-winning novelist and
screenplay writer Ruth Prawar Jhabvala was known for her evocative novels of 19-20th century India
Award-winning novelist and
screenplay writer Ruth
Prawar Jhabvala’s novels were
full of rich colour and details
of India that she had adopted as her
homeland, and the people inhabiting
her books were like her — global citizens
juxtaposed against Indian society
and drawing on the commonalities and
the clash of cultures.
Jhabvala, 85, died on April 3 in her
Manhattan home of a pulmonary disorder,
long-time friend and associate
James Ivory told the media. She lived
in a modest apartment in Manhattan
decked up with books and the trophies
she brought home for her writing.
Jhabvala moved to India in the early
1950s following her remarriage to Parsi
architect Cyrus Jhabvala. The era with
its vestiges of the British Raj, the decadence
of the native royalty, the economic
gulf between the elite and the
masses, cultures, relationships across
multi-ethnic lines and lifestyles that
allowed the tradition and western modernism
to co-exist captured the literary
imagination of the young English literature
post-graduate from the
University of London.
Two of her iconic classics were The
Householder (1960) and Heat and Dust
(1975) that won the Booker Prize for
1975. Both of them were adapted into
movies by Merchant-Ivory
Productions, with whom she collaborated
for nearly 50 years for nearly twodozen
scripts.
The Householder is built around its
lead character Prem, who graduates
from a student to householder. It
Crossover Literature: Ruth Prewar Jhabvala with husband Cyrus.
Two of Jhabvala’s iconic classics were The Householder (1960) and
Heat and Dust (1975) that won the Booker Prize for 1975. Both of
them were adapted into movies by Merchant-Ivory Productions, with
whom she collaborated for two-dozen scripts over a period of nearly 50 years
chronicles his experiences — his crisis
of spiritual identity and matured independence
through a cast of characters
like Prem’s mother, wife, his high
school friends, the white folks in
India and their servant, who is Prem’s
landlord.
In Heat and Dust, Jhabvala looks at
two generations of impetuous Indo-
British women in the country who
become pregnant outside wedlock and
move to live in seclusion. The story is
told through a narrator, whose life takes
off on her English step-grandmother
Olivia who is charmed by a nawab and
flees his principality over a pregnancy
scandal.
The fair petite writer, born to a
German Jewish family in Cologne, was
influenced by the cultural milieu of
central Europe before the world wars.
“I am a central European with an
English education and a deplorable tendency
to constant self-analysis. I am
irritable and have weak nerves,” she
wrote in one of her short story anthologies,
How I Became the Holy Mother.
But her passion for central Europe
changed one evening as the family sat
on the terrace of their home. Her chequered
childhood was a source of deep
torment for the sensitive writer.
Says writer Janet Watts in The
Guardian, “Jhabvala never wrote of
her early life. She never spoke of it
in public, until 1979, when she
received the Nell Gunn International
fellowship and gave a public lecture in
Edinburgh. Her chosen subject was
disinheritance.”
“I stand before you as a writer without
any ground of being out of
which to write: really blown about
from country to country, culture to culture
till I feel - till I am - nothing,”
Watts quoted Jhabvala, “who liked it
that way” as saying.
Literature became Jhabvala’s shelter
— her world of creative expression to
pour our her angst and script a new
identity. She wrote eight anthologies of
short stories and more than a dozen
novels which also included Out of India,
Three Continents and My Nine Lives.
Jhabvala was honoured with several
awards including two Academy Awards
for the screenplays of The Room With A
View and Howards’ End, the Bafta award
for Heat and Dust, the O’Henry for
Refuge in London and the Writers’ Guild
of America award.
n News from The Nehru Centre
India’s Culture Minister
at TNC
THE NEHRU CENTRE organised
an interactive session between India’s
Culture Minister Chandresh Kumari
Katoch and a wide spectrum of Indian
cultural personalities from across the
UK on its premises on April 1. The
British Council, in consultation with
TNC, also organised a round-table
interaction for the Minister to which
the heads of various cultural institutions
as well as the British Culture
Minister were invited.
Minister Katoch was on a visit to
London from March 31 to April 3,
along with a three-member delegation
from the Indian Ministry of Culture.
During her stay, she inaugurated the
Tagore Centre established recently at
King’s College, London, and also took
the opportunity to interact with her
British counterpart and the heads of the
British Museum, V&A, British Library
and the British Council.
Exhibition: My Strokes by
Kariyappa Hanchinamani
THE NEHRU CENTRE opened a
fortnight-long exhibition called My
Strokes by Kariyappa Hanchinamani,
who had carried his exquisitely crafted
and visually arresting paintings all
the way from India, on April 2.
Kariappa believes that the possibilities
for innovation and creativity in the
field of art are endless.
Kariyappa’s work reflects the essence
of India’s cultural richness. Through
his artistic vision, he attempts to depict
India’s rural culture with the hope of
preventing it from spiralling into oblivion
and rejuvenating it. Using acrylic
colours on canvas, he attempts to
reflect the day-to-day life, customs and
culture of the rural folk of India with a
special focus on the southern state of
Karnataka where he was born and
brought-up. Over a period of time, he
has cultivated his own unique techniques
of brush stroke and knife stroke
which have paved the way for speed
and rhythm to merge in harmony. His
use of vibrant colours is an attempt to
truly reflect the original nature of the
subject.
The exhibition garnered an excellent
response from the art connoisseurs.
Dance: Rasa Vaibhava by
Deepa Srinath
TNC ORGANISED a dance performance
‘Rasa Vaibhava’ by Deepa
Srinath on April 11. A disciple of
Guru Radha Sridhar of Bangalore,
Deepa began her performance by presenting
traditional Bharatanatyam
dance pieces and ended her performance
with the main piece — a solo
dance feature called Navarasas. Based
on the epic Valmiki Ramayana, the
Navarasas portray the nine basic
human emotions. Using Sanskrit
verses for dialogues, and using props
to aid dancing, this dance feature
blended neo-Bharatnatyam and traditional
mythology into a choreographed
storytelling.
Deepa connecst herself to laymen
and connoisseurs alike while performing.
She is also a trained Carnatic
classical musician.