8 NO. OF CONSTITUENCIES NO. OF VOTERS 9

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8 EDITORIAL Vol: 1, Issue: 308 TheBengal Post Less than a week remains to May 13, the counting day, as West Bengal plunges into phase-5 of its critical assembly election. This phase sees 38 assembly constituencies go to poll, distributed over parts of West Midnapore, Bankura, Purulia and western Burdwan. Though both the Left Front and the Congress-Trinamool Congress mahajot have been on the hustings dedicatedly, it has to be admitted that in this segment, the Left has a clear advantage. These parts have always been left strongholds and the trend had not changed significantly even in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. It is true that the opposition has succeeded in wresting a number of crucial municipalities in Bankura (Bankura and Bishnupur municipalities) and Burdwan (Asansol Municipal Corporation); but, then, these are urban hubs. The village voters seem still to be backing the Left Front, notwithstanding the formidable ‘wind of change’. In Purulia, the opposition alliance will be unrealistic to expect much success. Apart from the Purulia AC seat, where Trinamool heavyweight K.P. Singh Deo is contesting, the Left Front is expected to win the rest of the four seats. Out of the 12 seats of West Midnapore, in 2006, the CPI(M) alone had bagged eight and the CPI one. The Congress had managed to get two, including Sabang where the Pradesh Congress President Manas Bhunia had won. This time around, it is no longer a cakewalk for the Left Front in West Midnapore. The winds of change have crept in surreptitiously from the east. There are still formidable organizers and leaders like Dipak Sarkar, Sushanta Ghosh and Surjya Kanta Mishra here. But, Dr Mishra, for instance, is himself unsure of retaining his seat, Narayangarh. The possible loss of Narayangarh, to be fair, is compensated by the countervailing possibility Ananya Ghosh My tongue was still savouring the heavenly taste of the last crumbs of my pyaz ki kachouri. It was raining and the bus was passing through lush green meadows dotted with ponds. But wait! This was supposed to be an arid land riddled with cactus; there ought to be a railway-track somewhere and the road was supposed to be strewn with broken glasses. Something is surely wrong. I should have checked where the bus was heading, but I was too busy buying kachouris. The autowallah, who had made it his responsibility to put me on the right bus, got me the ticket and almost hurled me into the already moving vehicle — I have always depended on the kindness of strangers! The bus was packed, but a ‘girl travelling alone’ has her advantages! And the ‘helper’ obliged me with his own seat (the lone ‘single sitter’) to make sure ‘Madam’ doesn’t have to huddle with rustic passengers. I was on my way to the Mecca of Bengali travellers. But three hours into the journey and things were getting too green for comfort. What if all this is part of some sinister plan? What if all these people are part of some bandit group and I am being abducted? It was four in the afternoon and the highway was empty. There was no network on my mobile phone. I was trapped. Then suddenly I saw the sign! Pokaran! Wasn’t this the place where the evil Mandar Bose and the fake Dr. Hajra had their secret rendezvous? So, I was on the right bus and was not being abducted (I was a tad disappointed though … Not every day do you get the chance to play the helpless princess). After Pokaran the landscape began to change and looked every bit what it was supposed to look like: the luxuriant green melted into rocky brown and then turned rough sepia. A few camels started appearing now and then and I could almost hear Mr. Lalmohan Ganguly’s famous lines: ‘Utera ki kanta bechhey khaye?’ But, thankfully, there “A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.” —James Freeman Clarke (1810-1888) Penultimate trial In phase-5, the Left Front has a clear advantage of Sabang slipping from the hold of Dr Bhunia, where a triangular fight between the Congress, the CPI(M) and the SUCI(C) may play spoiler. These are, of course, observations drawn on the basis of the intricate algorithm of electoral politics. Such calculations are definitely undergirded by broader issues such as that of Maoist insurgency in West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia. The question of unspeakable abjection in these three districts would also play a role. After all and at the end of the day, it is uplifting to believe that voters do not exercise their democratic right only out of blind partisan affinities but sometimes also with livelihood and life conditions in mind. As the countdown to the counting day speeds up, there is also an observable gloom that is gathering. From the look of things, the die has been cast: if there is no major upset of psephological assessment, it is the opposition alliance that is coming to power. It is in this context, that an ominous forecast of post-poll violence is being made by leaders. Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has warned of such violence if Trinamool comes to power; a senior minister has spoken of a ‘bloody evening’ on May 13. Even as such irresponsible and provocative statements are being made from the highest offices of the state, violence has spread like prairie fire over south Bengal — in Keshpur, Khejuri, Nandigram, Netai, Mangalkot and farther. It is unfortunate, but not unanticipated, that the state is on the verge of hurtling down a spiral of violence and terror. were no shards of glass scattered on the road — I suppose Mandar Bose now works in some IT firm and is happy in his ‘cubicled’ life — and within an hour we crossed a road sign that said: ‘Welcome to Jaisalmer’! So, I was finally there! Bengal’s love affair with this sleepy speck of a hamlet amid the Thar desert began way back in 1971 with Satyajit Ray’s famous detective novel, Sonar Kella, and turned into an obsession with the release of its film adaptation. And this had spawned the phenomenon of mass migration of Bengalis to this once obscure place. I do not remember when I first saw or read the book. Born a decade after Prodosh Mitter aka Feluda — the famous detective and one of the most loved characters of Bengali literature — had chased the goons in the narrow alleys of Sonar Kella (Golden Fortress), I, To kill for authenticity Modern crime fiction writers are incapable of shedding blood Daniel Kalder Writers, by and large, are a boring lot — even more so now that so many are employed by the state (or states in the case of the US) to teach middle-class youth how to tell imaginary stories in prose. Yes, yes, the academy is a fascinating subject and you can’t have enough tales about college politics or balding, paunchy middleaged lecturers lusting after young girls. But even so, something elemental has been lost: a connection to the blood and piss and fecal slime of life. Take killing for instance. For millennia, humans have taken great delight in slaughtering each other. Indeed, in some cultures, a man was (is) not a man until he had (has) shed another’s blood. Read a modern literary novel about killing however, and you’ll get a lot of angst-ridden waffle ripping off other, older books — an imaginative projection of the postmodern self onto earlier, more openly violent times. Naturally this waffle will be written by somebody with little or no experience of violence. Of course, I am not suggesting that authors should kill just so they can know what it feels like. Killing is bad. But given that we live in an extremely violent world, a world indeed that is predicated upon violence, where even tiny little insects spend a lot of time fighting, I have been wondering recently about authors who have direct experience of killing. Who are they, and what can they tell us? In my efforts to identify violent men of letters, I have come up with two categories: the professional killer and the inspired amateur. The first category is the broadest, and contains some of the greatest names of world literature. Cervantes, for instance, was a professional soldier who lost the use of his left arm in battle. Extremely like every Bengali born after 1971, inherited the legacy of Ray and knew the lanes and by-lanes of the majestic sand-stoned fort of Jaisalmer like the back of my hand. Yet, almost half-an-hour into Jaisal - mer, all I could see was a vast expanse of monochromatic landscape. And then suddenly it rose from the sand! And it rose like magic! The first glimpse of the magnificent edifice that has become a cynosure of a state some 2000 kilometres away from the sandy hues of Rajasthan and shimmering under the last rays of a fading sun. Ray’s Sonar Kella shimmered like a dream, and disappeared like a dream — of course the bus had to take a turn into bumpy reality. When I reached RTDC’s Moomal it was 7pm. The hotel looked straight out of some Walter de la Mare’s poem! The following morning when I reached the gates of Eden, the new-born sun had proud of all the killing he did, he went on to write Don Quixote, a humorous novel about a demented knight who believes the world is like the one you encounter in story books, and not the extremely violent place Cervantes knew it to be. Another great author-killer is Leo Tolstoy. It’s been a while since I read The Sevastopol Sketches, his account of his military experiences in the Crimean war, but I do note that in later life he grew a very long beard and took to munching vegetables, so he was undoubtedly much less gung ho about killing than Cervantes. Then there is Winston Churchill, who had few qualms about killing when he felt it necessary. In The River War he recounts his youthful experiences massacring tribesmen in the Sudan, which do not appear to have caused him many sleepless nights. But then, war is war and it’s acceptable to shed blood on the battlefield. It’s a different story when you’re located in civilization, amid teacups and sofas. But how many of the crime fiction authors writing about killing have actually snuffed out another's life? Precious few, as far as I can see. I suppose the most famous freelance authorkiller is William Burroughs, who shot his common law wife, Joan Vollmer, in 1951. It didn’t do his career any harm, that’s for sure, but only added to the myth of the skeletal narco-fiend. But alas, I find his work unreadable so there’s not much I can learn there. Recently, however, I read a fascinating story in an old copy of Life magazine (the October 29, 1971, issue to be exact). Inside was a story about Jesse Hill Ford — an acclaimed and bestselling southern novelist in his day — who shot and killed a man for parking on his lawn. Ford was subsequently tried for murder, only to be exonerated of all charges. imbued the yellow sandstones with an ethereal golden glow and the castle emanated fairytales. Like Mukul I gasped and heard myself say: S-H-O-N- A-R K-E-L-L-A! Was this ‘really real’? The willing suspension of disbelief was short-lived. As I walked into the ‘walled city’ the shrill voice of a bargaining Bengali spoiled my slow-mo dream sequence — the supposedly deserted desert fort of the crime-thriller is actually a buzzing town! The 800-year-old citadel is home to several thousand people and is in fact the only fort in India still inhabited by people, the chaiwallah enlightened me. In the next few hours I discovered a whole new Jaisalmer where intricately carved sandstone havelis still speak of traders with long trains of camels loaded with silvers, rugs, and perfumes travelling to far off lands and of riches unimaginable, and the narrow strips of streets res- Incredible! I thought. Ford had established his reputation with a novel entitled The Liberation of Lord Byron Jones, a searing indictment of racism in the deep south. A black undertaker names a white sheriff as corespondent in his divorce suit; the sheriff kills him; and then the white community pulls together to protect the murderous lawman. The book was filmed, and Ford became very wealthy. But it also earned him the enmity of his neighbours, since it was based on an actual event that had happened in their community. The thing is: the man Ford killed was black. Ford claimed that he had suffered a history of harassment from the local black community. He feared for his family’s safety and hence opened fire. According to the article, Ford rapidly made nice with the local racists who still preferred to side with a white man against a black man, even if he was the author of a book they all hated. And so he was found not guilty. Had Ford possessed a great soul like Leo Tolstoy, he might have been able to gaze directly into the darkness of his actions; he might then have written a true masterpiece. Instead, burdened with massive debts, he moved to Hollywood where he churned out unproduced screenplays for cash. In the late 1980s he re-emerged as an angry right-wing columnist, before in 1996 turning to violence again, only this time of the sort more commonly practiced by writers — he killed himself. But that is an entirely different category of killing, and a topic well explored elsewhere. There are whole studies on ‘The Author and Suicide’, and those books do indeed have a macabre appeal. Nevertheless, it’s the other kind of author-killer, the man (or woman) who sheds another's blood, who has more to teach us. —The Guardian onate with all languages — Rajasthani, Bengali, Hebrew, Hindi, Gibberish. It was a heady mix of fairytale, folklore and urban legend strewn with mirrorworked lehenga-clad village belles, dhakai saree wrapped mashimas and tattoo-covered lonely-planet hippies. As I wandered through what I thought I knew like the back of my hand I suddenly heard Mukul whisper into my ears: ‘Eta Mondir’. I was standing right in front of the breathtakingly beautiful Jain temple which Mukul had remembered from his past life! He took my hand and led me through the dingy by-lane next to the temple. We crossed Ratan’s house and Giridhari’s house and the place where they played Holi. But, he abandoned me just as we reached the lane that led to his house. I turned around. The whole town was made of the same yellow sandstone and was glistening like gold! Ray couldn’t have possibly found a better setting for his story about a 7-year-old boy who was getting visions from his past life: he had precious stones lying in his house and the walls were made of gold. The ‘dushtu lok’ (evil guys) kidnap the boy and embark on a treasure hunt only to find out that the fort of gold was in reality a fort made of yellow sandstone and Mukul was no prince but a son of a jeweller and there was no treasure hidden in the ruins of his house. Indeed, Mukul was no prince, but he must have been pretty lucky living in such an intricately carved, seven-storey haveli. And the view from the roof-top Kolkata Saturday May 7, 2011 www.thebengalpost.com Comedy of errors From Ray’s Golden Fortress to a goldmine of experiences Illustration: Sambaran Das Alison Flood Cuisine Calypso It might have achieved ‘astounding new flavours and textures’, run to 2,400 pages and six volumes and claimed to reinvent cooking, but I dread to think what readers of Modernist Cuisine who haven’t checked the book’s extensive list of corrections and clarifications are creating in their kitchens. Take a look: it’s ridiculously long, exhaustively thorough and has me, at least, giggling like a schoolchild. I think my favourite is in the top left paragraph, ‘tories’ should read ‘laboratories’ — but I’m also fond of ‘Normal Rockwell’ should read ‘Norman Rockwell’, ‘your own spirts’ should read ‘your own spirits’ and ‘Dripping’ should read ‘Dipping’. ‘Causal’, the corrections tell us firmly, elsewhere, should read ‘casual’ and ‘desert’ should read ‘dessert’. Who knows, meanwhile, what would have been cooked up if readers had followed the original instructions here? In the recipe for ‘compressed tomato, an additional step should be taken before step one: ‘Remove the cores’. Or here? In the recipe for Goulash broth, steps three and seven should be omitted. Or here? In the note in the margin, ‘192.2 °C’ should read ‘192.2 °F’. Who knows, meanwhile, what would have been cooked up if readers had followed the original instructions? “Why do you need a copyeditor? Because you don’t want to have to make these kinds of corrections in your second edition,” writes editor Erin Brenner, who tweeted about the corrections extravaganza. They’re certainly bad, but not as embarrassing as — in another cookbook cock-up, strangely enough — Penguin Australia’s misprint, which suggested that a recipe for tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto should include ‘salt and freshly ground black people’, rather than pepper. Or how about HarperCollins mistakenly printing an early version of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, littered with errors? Or Penguin accidentally chopping off the fictional foreword from Lolita? It’s mean to laugh, but it’s hard to resist. Any publishing howlers you’re particularly fond of which might give us all a chuckle? —The Guardian was stunning — the sprawling sandstone town hemmed by a desert of molten gold was dazzling under the midday sun. The priest at the Jain temple had recommended three must-visit havelis. First was the Patwon-ki-haveli — if the beauty of the stone filigree at a mere trader’s house astonished me, the price of the fine fabric they sell to tourists almost gave me a heart-attack! Next was Salim Singh’s haveli. The architecture is exquisite. There are 38 odd balconies and each distinctly different from the other. The owner, a nice and knowledgeable man in his mid-forties, patiently took me through each of the rooms, explaining the exquisite architecture in intricate detail. Nathmalji-ki-haveli was less touristy and a bit difficult to find, but it is argu - ably the grandest of the havelis! Like in Salim Singh’s, the owners still live in this magnificent mansion but their days of glory are long gone — the descendants of the prime minister of the royal court now sell homemade artworks for a living. I spotted one of the successors of Nathmalji’s legacy in a dimly-lit corner giving finishing touches to a peacock. It was so life-like that I could almost feel his heartbeat! Naresh and I struck a chord instantly. We spoke for hours over cups of kesariya chai. He told me about his art, how they make colours from stones and brushes from peacock feathers, and also gave me a ‘student’s concession’ on the painting I bought! When I left the haveli, the sun had sobered and as I made my way through serpentine alleys lined with harlequin kitsch, friendly locals, over-friendly shopkeepers, visibly lost tou rists, Ben - gali-speaking tourist guides, flying peacocks and fleeting memories of Mukul and Feluda, I realized that Satyajit Ray in his book had only given a teaser of the actual experience. It is much more than the golden citadel from Mukul’s past life, much more than a desert castle of dreams; it is a city that oozes romance, opulence, myth and life. It is a city frozen in time; a city that has transcended time.
Kolkata Saturday May 7, 2011 www.thebengalpost.com MISCELLANY 9 Beauty of emotions captured for all Adam Thirlwell There are many methods for turning your life into a piece of performance art, and one of them is to get a dog. A dog is a wild experiment. Or so you can argue by observing the example of JR Ackerley, who was a friend of Forster and Woolf, editor of the Listener, determined prowler for boys and the owner, for 15 of her 161/2 years, of a German shepherd called Queenie, whom he described, under a transformed name, in his memoir My Dog Tulip — first published in 1965, two years before he died aged 71 — which has now been made into a gorgeous animated film by Paul and Sandra Fierlinger. This book is the greatest of dog books, and now this film is the greatest of dog films — to invent two unnecessary genres — but before the unprepared reader imagines an account of cuteness, it’s necessary to state an opposite truth: the basic subjects of My Dog Tulip are pissing, shitting and reproducing. And so one way of admiring My Dog Tulip is to see it as a manic critique of the usual norms of representation. In Ulysses, James Joyce recorded Bloom on the lavatory, "calm above his own rising smell"; or in his hallucinations offering his wife’s lover a helpful tub of Vaseline. But then there is Ackerley. One long chapter of his short book is correctly called "Liquids and Solids". In another episode, trying to encourage Tulip to have sex, he "smeared Tulip lavishly with vaseline". The experimental, radical forms of the novel have often processed with dogs as their motif. Like Celine in From Castle to Castle — praising the gracious, private manner in which his dog died — "the trouble with men’s death throes is all the fuss " Or I remember the interview David Foster Wallace gave to Dave Eggers in the Believer in 2003: "If you live by yourself and have dogs, things get strange. I know I’m not the only person who projects skewed parental neuroses on to his pets or companion-animals or whatever." It’s only correct, this rueful observation of the OuLiPian constrictions that a dog places on a life - but this parentless, I think, is only a Moulay Idriss opens to night tourism Stephanie Theobald Until 2005, non-Muslims were not permitted to stay overnight in Moulay Idriss. Guide books warned the tourists who dared to visit to be out of town by 3pm. This is what Edith Wharton had to do in 1919 when she visited the town, known as the holiest place in the country, to research her classic travel memoir In Morocco. Although there was nowhere for her to stay, she claimed she was the first foreigner to witness the town’s frenetic moussem - the music- and dancedrenched summer celebration considered by many Moroccans as an alternative to the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. Well, there are places to stay now, and an intriguing new restaurant run by Mike Richardson, former maitre d’ of the Wolseley and the Ivy who recently became the first foreigner to buy a property here. The redheaded pioneer moved to Fez, an hour east, five years ago to set up Cafe Clock (concept: crazy Moroccan souk meets Venice Beachstyle cafe, with camel burgers) and now intends to do the same thing in Moulay Idriss. "Foreigners are warmly welcomed now," he says, adding that Moulay Idriss’s reputation as an unwelcoming place wasn’t down to religious sensitivities alone. "From what I can gather," he says, "the myths come about because the place is so special. The Moroccans wanted to keep it a secret." His new restaurant, Dar Akrab (Scorpion House), is perched on one of two hills in this ancient town where Moulay Idriss el Akhbar, great-grandson of the prophet Muhammad and the man who brought Islam to Morocco 1,200 years ago, is buried. It has the exciting allure of a place not yet starstruck by the promises of tourism. Tour buses from Fez used to come no nearer than Volubilis, an eerily abandoned Roman city 20 minutes’ walk from the town. There is still no regular public transport; the cheapest way to get here is in a shared "grand" taxi from Fez or Meknes. The climb to Dar Akrab is steep, but worth it for the incredible mountain views from the white minimalistterrace Once a no-go area, Morocco’s holiest town is starting to woo tourists as you eat your scrambled eggs with desert truffles, or your Moroccan barbecue, the house speciality. In a Moroccan barbecue the meat, usually lamb, is cooked Mechouia-style (a Berber as opposed to Arabic method) - outdoors over hot coals and basted with a herby, spicy marinade made of cumin, paprika and coriander. Even for the non-famous, Fez can feel claustrophobic after a couple of days, and the huge skies and dramatic views of Moulay Idriss are a tonic. Other attractions include ancient Roman hot springs, a 10-minute walk away in the peaceful hills, with two moderate-sized baths built into the foothills of Mount Zerhoune. You can swim here: the water smells of cumin and hot stone. (In the summer, Richardson says, it is "boy soup".) But even if you don’t take a dip, it’s worth the climb for the astonishing views. Looking down on the vast plains of Volubilis gives a real sense of being in Africa - as well as a My Dog Tulip by J R Ackerley has won several awards and is being lauded as the greatest dog film flash of what Roman Africa might have felt like. Thanks to Dar Akrab, Moulay Idriss is starting to wake up. Mike’s local friend, Fayssal, runs a new fiveroom guesthouse, Dar Zerhoune. It’s a modest wood-framed, tile-floored boutique hotel with classic keyhole-shaped doors, lots of romantic balconies and a rare baraka or carving to Muhammad in the central courtyard denoting that part of the house originally came from Mecca. The conservatory-style dining room on the cushioned roof terrace has (again) incredible mountain views. Breakfasts come with local honey and couscous bread dipped in olive oil from a grove just down the road. Food and friendliness are the biggest attractions of Dar Zerhoune. The only other real competitor is La Colombe Blanche (maisondhote-zerhoune.ma),opposite Moulay Idriss’s tomb. It has eight bedrooms in classic mis-matched Moroccan style (inexplicably, most of the furniture is covered with doilies). Fayssal’s dad, Mustapha, is a great host, too. Once a week, he offers guests the option of his tangia, the Moroccan hotpot famously only cooked by men. It’s a very male dish in that there’s lots of meat and not much work. You take a big ceramic urn to the butcher, get him to fill it up with spiced meat and then you take it down to the hammam. You leave it in the hammam fire, go off and have a good steam, and when you’re ready, you take it home and announce, "Hey honey, I made the dinner!" The big show-off moment comes when Mustapha empties the urn in front of me. The richness of the sauce and the tenderness of the meat momentarily shock me to silence as the inscrutable Fayssal and his jovial dad smile down at me. There seems to be a bit of an invasion of London maitre d’s in these parts: Mike has just named his former Wolseley colleague Robert Johnstone (also a former maitre d’s at the Ivy) as the manager of Dar Akrab. He’s also putting Muslimfriendly cocktails on the menu: "Alcohol-free but full of bright colours and glitz. We’re going to bring in a bit of glamour." — The Guardian small part of the strange lurid transference and mess that exists between dogs and humans. Really, the experiment is even crazier. It might be common to observe that dogs and their owners begin to resemble each other - but I think this is the mind’s illusion, a convenient way of observing that each dog, instead, exists in relation to its owner’s unconscious. And an unconscious is a complicated thing. Sometimes, the wildness of a human requires a corresponding neatness in the dog; and sometimes the neatness of a human requires a corresponding wildness. But then, in the end, there’s no such thing as an unwild dog. Consider the following moment in Ackerley’s description of Tulip. He takes Tulip to a series of vets, with all of whom she is in a manic flurry. She can only be sadly compared, say, to an obedient spaniel he can observe "standing quietly on a table with a thermometer sticking out of his bottom, like a cigarette". Finally, he discovers Miss Canvey. With Miss Canvey, Tulip is calm. And Ackerley - Tim Rushby-Smith The first time I got into a wheelchair I felt euphoric. After a month spent in bed, reflecting on all the things I would never do again - no more climbing or playing football - it was a joy just to be able to move again. Four weeks earlier my physically active lifestyle had come to a sudden stop when I fell from a tree, resulting in a spinal-cord injury which left me facing life with paraplegia. Yet, on my second day in the chair, I felt crushed again; as though I had just learned to ride a bike only to be told that I had to stay on the bike for the rest of my life. The restrictions of four wheels quickly became evident. I couldn’t move while holding anything, and it felt like everywhere I looked I saw stairs. The wheelchair suddenly represented everything I had lost. Then one afternoon I went along to a wheelchair-skills session at Stoke Mandeville hospital near London, which specialises in spinal injuries, organised by a charity called The Back Up Trust. Trainer David Ball had been injured for 15 years and was preparing for a fundraising push up Helvellyn, a 950-metre peak in the Lake District. He was relaxed and assured — but most inspiring was how he seemed at one with his wheelchair. As well as learning practical what else? — is distraught: Was it not even possible that, in the course of time, under these civilizing processes, she would become so tame, so characterless, so commonplace, that she might one day be found standing in a surgery alone with a thermometer in her bottom? Ackerley is in love with the dogginess of dogs - impervious to the artificial disgusts which humans call civilisation. For if kitsch is the negation of shit, then there are very few things less kitsch than a dog. Which is why, after Ackerley’s examination of liquids and solids, the main subject of My Dog Tulip is his attempt to offer Tulip a sex life. And there’s a way in which this search for sex is also Ackerley’s, so it’s possible to see this book as a great fantasia of the unconscious — but its real truth is more radical. This book is a study in the problem of otherness. This is its deeper critique, of the conventional art of representation — the fake Forsterian categories of flat and round character. Early on, Ackerley describes the one moment � Life in a wheel chair isn’t as limiting once you’ve learnt the moves Acquiring traits of a second nature skills, the session helped me to start rebuilding my ambitions. I would even get back to the great outdoors. The logistics might be challenging, but it was possible. Five years later, I am one of 28 Back Up wheelchairskills instructors, striving to offer the same confidence boost to others. We take the programme to all 13 spinal units in the UK. Naturally we cover the basics: pushing forwards, backwards and turning. But there are also more complex moves — pushing with one hand, negotiating ramps and kerbs, going down and even up stairs. Some skills, such as stairclimbing are only going to be possible for a few people (the technique requires the wheelchair user to go up backwards pulling on one wheel and a handrail) but we hope to inspire participants to rethink what the future might hold, at a time when many people can’t see beyond what they can’t do. Luckily for me, I was active before my accident so my arms regained their strength fairly easily after a month’s bedrest, but it’s more difficult for those who had a sedentary life before, as it takes time to build up the muscles, especially in the backs of the arms, that you need to manoeuvre easily in a wheelchair. It is estimated that 20% of people with spinal-cord injury undergo rehabilitation in when, by mistake, Tulip bit his hand. We all make mistakes and she was dreadfully sorry. She rolled over on the grass with all her legs in the air; and later on, when she saw the bandage on my hand, she put herself in the corner, the darkest corner of the bedroom, and stayed there for the rest of the afternoon. One can’t do more than that. The beauty of that deftly inclusive "one" is very moving. Just as it is moving when elsewhere Ackerley correctly pauses, and notes: "She too has her feelings, and now that I have put the human point of view it is proper to attend to hers" And the beauty of this film by the Fierlingers is that Ackerley’s respect for the otherness of dogs, their lurid overlap with and total difference from humans, has been given a visual form. The humans in this movie are dilapidated abbreviations. Tulip is a detailed flowing sketchiness — a process of intricate movements. In this movie, the humans are stripped of all their fuss, while the dogs are just themselves: a shimmer. — The Guardian general hospitals, and this number seems to be increasing. This means many people don’t get access to specialist spinal rehabilitation or peer support. Back Up frequently sends trainers into general hospitals to offer additional support. And for some, a three-hour session with us is the only wheelchair-skills-trainingexperience they have. For those who miss out on even this, there can be profound implications for the rest of their lives, ones that may prevent them from realising their full potential. The youngest person I have taught is Kitty, who is eight years old. She contracted transverse myelitis (a condition that affects the spinal cord) a year ago. Kitty’s father, Stewart Catherine, says the programme is really important to her: "After such a hard year, she responds really well to anything that’s fun. She’s always been very active and competitive. And because the [Back Up] instructors are all wheelchair users themselves, Kitty is less inhibited about asking questions. There is a chance that Kitty’s condition could improve, but in the meantime it’s important to make the most of today." I have learned a lot in my six years using a wheelchair. If I knew back at the start what would become second nature in time, I would have felt a lot less anxious. —The Guardian
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Page 23 and 24: Picture courtesy: Yogen Shah Mumbai

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