Writers and Celebrities: Times Lit Fest

I was back in Mehboob studios in Mumbai after forty years. This time it was for the Times Literary Festival. It was a day of listening to writers and journalists as well as to two Bollywood celebrities - Kangana Ranaut and Karan Johar.

Nothing looked the same at the Mehboob Studios, starting from the entrance gate. Forty years ago, we had been stopped at the gate by the guard wanting to know who were we meeting. Inside we had been wide-eyed with wonder as we had seen the Bollywood stars of that era - Ashok Kumar, Jitendra, Navin Nischol and Prema Narayan. Except for Jitendra, who is known as father of Ekta Kapoor, probably people today won't even know the names of those other persons. For the Lit Fest, the studio halls were converted into discussion rooms and though there were a film actor and a film director, there were no film sets or shootings going on.

I had come to Mumbai for the launch of the new film of Sujoy Ghosh - Kahaani 2. Along with the well known Vidya Balan and Arjun Rampal, the film also has the film debut of my niece Manini Chadha, who plays the wife of Arjun Rampal in the film. If you have seen the film, do tell me if you remember Manini and how did you like her!

My Mumbai days were hectic - apart from the literary festival and the launch of Kahaani 2, it was a time for family reunions, as well as, some work meetings related to a research project. However, this post is only about my impressions from the Times Lit Fest.

Arguing About Politics - State of Democracy in India

My morning started with the two well known journalists, Rajdeep Sardesai and Tavleen Singh. It was good to see both of them in person but in terms of what they were saying, both seemed to reiterate what they write every day in their columns. Which means that Sardesai was more critical of Modi while Singh was more critical of the liberal-left.

Talking about the state of democracy in India, Singh said that it was a democracy without justice as even serious criminal cases of murder and rape dragged for twenty years. She also felt that the inability to ensure decent education for the children and minimal health services for the citizens were failures of the Indian democracy.

Sardesai said that there were limited choices for the democracy in India as we are only asked to choose between Congress, a family-owned private limited party, or a street populist like Kejriwal or a demagogue like Modi. He also felt that over the past few years, media has also failed to stand up to the Government.

Singh felt that media had been co-opted by the Government immediately after independence of India when Nehru had offered government houses and other perks to big journalists who had accepted those perks. When you are taking benefits from the government, how can you criticise anything, she asked.

In another session in the afternoon, I listened once again to Sardesai and Singh. This time they were accompanied by two more journalists - Jyoti Malhotra and Kumar Kekar. In this session, Sardesai became more emotional, complaining about the pressure of the Modi government on the media houses and how this is affecting journalism.

Kekar also joined in the criticism of Modi by raising the issue of 2002 Gujarat riots and claiming that Modi Government has suppressed the new book "Gujarat files" of Rana Ayyub. (I am not sure about the suppression of Ayyub's book as I saw it displayed in a book shop at the Mumbai airport. It seems to be a best seller.)

Singh asked why media continues to focus only on Modi, forgetting the other riots in India such as the riots against Sikhs in 1984 and the infamous Maliana killing of 42 youth.

Overall, this session was like listening to one of the debates that they have on the Indian TV channels on most evenings, without anything new in it.

Equality, Liberty and Sexuality

I was looking forward to this session on alternate sexualities and it did not disappoint. The session had three well known persons - French author Charles Dantzig, Isreali author Gil Hovav and Indo-German artist Katharina Poggendorf-Kakar. It was moderated by Vikram Doctor.

Vikram Doctor started the session by talking about the rise of nationalism and the power gained by conservative right wing persons/parties in different parts of the world, asking if this is going to create new challenges for persons of alternate sexualities.

Charles Dantzig explained that it is not correct to equate political right wing persons with sexual conservatives. For example, Marine Le Pen has many gay friends and many French gays support right wing parties in France because they are afraid of Arab immigrants. Even the other rising figure of French right, Francois Fillon had started his career with support from an important gay parliamentarian.

He felt that perhaps more public hypocrisy and restraint was needed and that he had been shocked by the kind of backward things said by people against same-sex marriage law in France.

Gil Hovav supported Dantzig's position by explaining that in Israel, in spite of the right conservative parties which are in power and gay marriages are not legal, the government and society are very accepting towards alternate sexualities. He lives with his companion, his former commander in the department of Israeli intelligence, with their daughter, who is biological daughter of his companion with a Lesbian friend. The Israeli society is very accepting and they have not faced any kind of prejudices.

Being a gay or a lesbian is also not a issue in the Israeli armed forces where all are expected to do service, while in France, the army is more anti-gay.

Gil also spoke about the Palestinian issue by saying that he completely supports the right to freedom of the Palestinians. He agreed that the persons with alternate sexualities face a lot of difficulties in the Palestinian society and many of them prefer to live in Israel, but he feels that right to sexual freedom is less important than the right to freedom of the Palestinian people.

Katharina Poggendorf-Kakar said that like gays and lesbians, even for the women, it is difficult to say if they are margainlised by conservative regimes since many women play an active role in these right wing parties. It is the same in India, where women play an active role in the oppression of other women, for example, mothers-in-law in the families. It is more about patriarchal mindsets then about the parties and more dialogues are needed on these issues starting from the schools.

Katharina also said that expressing love in public by persons of same sex is threatening to public because it forces them to confront their own sexuality. The changing society threatens notions of masculinity and patriarchy and thus there is rage among young men. While she feels that the percentage of rapes is higher in Europe than it is in India, here the rapes are more vicious and violent because there is much more rage among young men in India than there is in Europe.

I enjoyed this session very much, it was very thought-provoking. My only complaint was that for the one hour or shorter sessions, they should not have more than 2 speakers since it is difficult to give sufficient time to more persons.

Jonathan Clements, Pallavi Aiyar and Kangana Ranaut

Both Clements and Aiyar are travel writers, writing about Asia. Clements has written exclusively about China and he feels that knowing the local language and a deep knowledge of local culture is necessary to write about a country. His interest in China came at an early age since his father was part of a band, which played in a Chinese restaurant. "Whichever place in the world I visit, I always stay in the Chinatowns", he explained.

Aiyar, on the other hand, writes from a more external point of view without getting too much mixed up with local cultures. She was in the US when she first went to visit her Spanish husband in China and it hooked her, resulting in her first book. Since then she has written about other Asian countries.

Aiyar raised up the issue of the country stereotypes that dominate media. For example, in 2008 during the Olympics in Beijing, the foreign media wrote extensively about the pollution in the city. Two years later, in 2010 when the commonwealth games were held in Delhi, though the city's pollution was as bad as in Beijing, no one ever wrote about it, focusing instead on women oppression and rapes.

I found this session a little boring. My disinterest was probably also because I have not read either of them. So I left their session half-way to go and listen to the bollywood star Kangana Ranaut.

Kangana, being a Bollywood celebrity, had her own session in a big hall, full of people. She was being interviewed by journalist Manu Joseph. She is very articulate. However, the hall was too crowded and I thought that I had already read so much about her views in the newspaper and magazine interviews, so after five minutes, I decided to give it a miss.

The Ethical Slut

This was another session related to sexuality, asking if polyamory is the answer to our promiscuous instinct. The short answer to this question was "No", though the different persons present in this session came to that conclusion very differently.

There were 3 persons in this session – Dossie Easton, Barbara Ascher and Hoshang Merchant. It was moderated by Pragya Tiwari. Both Dossie and Barbara were a kind of therapist-counsellor-spiritual writers kind of persons while Hoshang, is a more rebel poet, looking from his role as a gay activist.

It was not a good combination of persons, because Hoshang clearly did not agree with many of things the other two were saying and came out a bit too strongly. The other two seemed a bit unsure of how to deal with him. Each of them had a lot of interesting things to share and merited their own separate sessions, grouping them together like that did not allow enough space for any of them. It was not a dialogue between them but rather a conflict, till Hoshang decided to leave the stage.

The discussions touched on ideas of romantic love and how these initiated in Europe in medieval period and later came to be seen as universal. Hoshang felt that the ideas of romantic love originated among gay poets and was later taken over by heterosexuals, who began to question if gays can experience romantic love or if they are just sexually promiscuous.

Another area of discussion was instinct versus culture and the possibilities of learning new ways of thinking and controlling the instincts. Regarding polyamory and the ideas of having multiple romantic/sexual partners, the discussions also touched on the role played by jealousy.

I was not satisfied with this session because it did not give me enough time to listen to the views of the three speakers. However, after the Lit Fest, I looked for and bought Dossie Easton’s book “The ethical slut”, because I want to read more about her ideas. I have already read some of the works of Hoshang.

Devi and Demon

I was really looking forward to this session, hoping to hear some stimulating discussion. Arshia Sattar has translated Ramayan while Amruta Patil had done a graphic novel on Mahabharat. Thus the session was organised to focus on the figures of goddesses and demons in these two books and was coordinated by Devdutt Pattanaik.

Pattanaik started the session by talking about the contraposition between the ideas of hermit versus householder in the Indian philosophy and how these two books look at these two ideas.

The session was a little disappointing since both Arshia and Amruta were unable to point towards any new facets of the Devi/Demon characters from the two books. Amruta did talk about a relatively unknown character of Mahabharat, Satyawati, but she was not able to express it in an interesting way. Similarly, Arshia talked about the Shakuntala story but it lacked the spark. The most interesting part of their discussion was about the figures of Mriga (deer) hunting in the two epics.

Both Arshia and Amruta emphasised the need to look at the context of the two epics rather than jumping to conclusions about the motivations and actions of specific characters. For example, Arshia talked about Ram and the difficult choices he makes throughout his life, while grappling with the responsibilities of his public role leading to the negation of his personal desires.

Compared to Arshia and Amruta, Pattanaik was a much more interesting and articulate speaker, but his role in the session was limited.

Loneliness of Men and Women

Before leaving the Lit Fest, I also went to the session of Karan Johar who was interviewed by Jitesh Pillai. Like the Kangana Ranaut session, this was also in the big hall and was full of people. As usual, Johar was very articulate and also seemed sincere in sharing his thoughts and angst. However, most of it was not new since he had already spoken about these things in his numerous interviews in magazines and newspapers.

Others

Among others, I also saw William Dalrymple, Ramchandra Guha and Sudhir Kakkar.

I briefly listened to an Australian Aboriginal poet, Lionel Fogarty, in a session moderated by Ranjit Hoskote.

Conclusions

Overall the festival was a good occasion to see many persons whose works I have read and admired. In terms of new ideas and discussions, there was not so much and the quality was uneven, however that is inevitable in the events of this kind.

It was a bit sad to think that the literature festival organised by one of the most important publication groups of India had not even one big Indian literature figure and no one from the world of Indian languages. Probably after Mahashweta Devi, we do not have any towering literary figures in India any more. Is it because our society today is all about superficial fun-and-having-a-good-time, and there is no time to stop and worry about literature which does not bring any money or power?

It was not possible to participate in all the sessions. For example, I would have loved to attend Devdutt Pattanaik’s session “Is God a boy or a girl? And what about Devil?” I would have also loved to listen to Ram Chandra Guha on history as it happens and history in hindsight. But these sessions were planned too late in the afternoon for me, as I had some other engagements.

However, as a result of the festival, I am planning to read the works of two authors that I have not read before, Gil Hovav and Dossie Easton. So I can say that it was a worthwhile experience.

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Discovering Mumbai: Kanheri Caves

Few persons visiting India’s commercial capital Mumbai have heard of the Kanheri caves. Even less seem to have visited it. This post is about this forgotten jewel of Mumbai that deserves to be seen.

Kanheri caves are rock-cut Buddhist caves in the Borivali suburb of Mumbai. References to king Yajna Satakarni in one of the cave inscriptions shows that its oldest parts date back to at least 2nd century BCE. It was one of the most prosperous Buddhist monk communities, functioning actively for a period of more than a thousand years.

Modern Mumbai is composed of 7 islands that were merged together through land reclamation in the 19th century. Before the merger, Borivali and the Kanheri caves were part of the Salsette island.

Rock-cut Caves in India

Carving rocky hills to create caves for human dwellings in India started about 2,500 years ago. One of the oldest rock-cut caves in India are at Udaygiri near Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh, dating back to 5 century BCE. Among the twenty caves of Udaygiri, 1 is dedicated to Jainism while the remaining 19 caves are dedicated to Hindu Gods. Some other rock-cut caves, such as the Pandava Caves in Panchmarhi, also seem to be equally old.

Other caves in India older than the rock-cut caves, such as the prehistoric Bhimbetaka caves near Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh), are natural caves.

The rock-cut caves were carved mainly for Buddhist and Jainist monks. They were built over periods of centuries. On the other hand, rock-cut structures linked with Hinduism are usually temples, such as the temple complex in Mahabalipuram in eastern coast of south India dating back to about 700 BCE. This could have been because Hinduism mostly has individuals or small groups in search of God and spirituality, while it lacks centralised monastic orders and therefore, did not need a large number of caves in one place for the monks.

Many Hindu temples contain “Garbhgriha” (Womb caves) where the deities are placed. In many old temples, like in the Kamakhaya temple in Guwahati (Assam), such Garbhgrihas are rock-cut structures. Though the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) was created in 1861 under the British colonial rule, it has not been able to carry out precise dating of most of these structures. Thus, usually the information available regarding these ancient rock-cut caves is based only on myths and popular stories.

Buddhist Caves in Maharashtra, India

The tradition of carving out caves in rocks and hills for creating Buddhist monasteries probably started after the death of Gautam Buddha. Except for the Saspol caves in Kashmir, all the other well-known Buddhist cut-rock caves are located in the state of Maharashtra in central-west part of India. These include the famous Ajanta and Ellora caves from 3rd century BCE.

A total of 27 significant Buddhist caves have been identified in Maharashtra.  Five of these caves are in Mumbai – Elephanta (Gharapuri), Jogeshwari, Mahakali, Mandapeshwar and Kanheri; while another 8 caves are close to Mumbai, going towards Lonavla and Pune - Bhaja, Karla, Bedse, Ghorawadi, Lenyadri, Shelarwadi and Shirwal.

The presence of these caves in Maharashtra indicates that from 5th century BCE till about early medieval times, there were a lot of flourishing communities of Buddhist monks in this part of India. These seemed to have close relationships with the seafaring trading communities.

Why did rock-cut Buddhist monasteries remain circumscribed only to central-western parts of India? Why there were no similar Buddhist monasteries in other parts of India? Was it linked to the coastal trade routes from the west coast of India? Was it a geological issue that other parts did not have rocks suitable for making caves? Was it because the artisans involved in making the caves were concentrated only in this part of India? Perhaps some experts can answer this question.

Reaching Kanheri Caves

Kanheri Caves can be reached easily through the public transport of Mumbai. Borivali local train station is just a couple of kilometres away. From the train station, a 20 minutes walk or frequent buses bring you to the entrance of Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP), the wild-life park of Mumbai. A shuttle bus service connects the entrance gate to the Kanheri caves, around 6 km away inside SGNP.

If you come with your own vehicle you have to pay the vehicle entry fee at the entrance gate while the tickets for entering the Kanheri caves are sold near the caves-entrance.

Kanheri Caves

The name Kanheri comes from two words - Kanha or Krishna (Black) and Giri (mountain). The name refers to Kanha hill with the dark coloured basaltic rocks common in this area. Basaltic rocks are formed from volcanic lava. The darker coarse grain basaltic rock, as found in Kanheri, is also called Gabbro or the Black Granite.

There are 109 rock-cut caves in Kanheri. The earliest caves date back to 2nd century BCE while the most recent caves are from 1000 CE. It seems that these caves were part of a thriving learning centre, where student monks came to study the teachings of Buddha. It was also used as a resting and storage point for the seafaring traders.

Most of these caves were used as living rooms for individuals. These are mostly small caves without any specific adornments and have a rock platform to be used for sitting and sleeping. The area also has some bigger halls closer to the entrance, which were used for prayers and meetings.

The first cave close to the entrance has pillars similar to those found at Elephanta. However, this two storied cave was never completed, probably due to some defect in the rock structure. (Image below)

The second cave is divided into three parts, each hosting a stupa. Each of these stupas is accompanied by rock-cut sculptures of Buddha, almost all of them in the Vyakhyana mudra. For example, the sculpture near the first stupa has a sitting Buddha in Vyakhana mudra, holding a lotus and with two lions at his feet. Two guards stand behind him along with two flying gandharvas. One of the walls has a large beautiful statue of Avalokiteshwara form of Buddha. (a part of Cave 2 in the image below)

The third cave from the entrance is the most beautiful. It has an entrance gate with guard-sculptures.

Entrance leads to a courtyard and then a covered anteroom with giant Buddha statues on the two side walls.

The anteroom walls also have sculptures of some couples, who probably donated money for the construction of this temple. These were rich merchants of the area and thus, these sculptures give an idea of local society of that period. Both men and women seem to be given equal importance and both are wearing loin clothes and jewellery while upper parts of their bodies are uncovered. They all wear a head-gear and they have something on their shoulders connected to their head-gear, perhaps for holding a clothe covering their backs? They are not wearing any kind of footwear. (image below)

The main hall of the cave temple is spacious - 26 metres long, 12 metres wide and 15 metres high, with pillars on the side walls. The roof of the hall shows the signs of the wooden rafters, which covered it originally. A 5 metres high stupa stands closer to the deep end of the hall. An inscription found in this hall explains that the hall was built in 2nd century BCE.

Another important cave is cave 11, located at a higher level above the entrance caves. It is known as Darbar cave. Around 20 metres wide and 8 metres deep, it has rows of low rock-benches.

Some persons believe that this was a teaching area and thus consider Kanheri as a learning centre. Others think that it was a meeting room, perhaps used for a Buddhist council meeting. It has a covered verandah with 8 pillars and two cisterns on the sides. 

When I saw it, I thought that it resembled a hostel mess. But it also has some beautiful sculptures on its walls, and I think that an eating room was unlikely to host beautiful sculptures. So I don't know if it could have been an eating place, with kitchens and store rooms around the main hall and the two water cisterns. To confirm it we need to check if there are signs of fires in the rooms used as kitchens.

One of the Buddha sculpture has Buddha shown sitting with his feet on the ground - I had never seen a similar statue of Buddha before. (In the image below)

Recently (January 2016) another group of 7 caves was discovered not far from the Kanheri complex in the forest surrounding it. Further excavations of this area is awaited to understand the role of these caves.

Inscriptions in Kanheri Caves

There are more than 70 inscriptions in Kanheri. Three scripts have been used in these inscriptions – Brahmi, Devnagari and Pahlavi. The inscriptions provide information about local rulers such as Vashishtiputra Satakarni, about the supervisors, artisans and artists who worked here, and general information such as a list of local birds. Most common inscriptions are about the gifts of caves and cisterns by the rich merchants of nearby towns such as Sopara and Kalyan.

One of the caves has an inscription about a “Tooth cave”. It is thought that this cave temporarily hosted a tooth, a relic of Buddha, which was later placed in a big stupa near the great temple hall. More recent excavations of this stupa did not show any tooth, though a brass plate was found. It is thought that the tooth was removed from the stupa in some earlier excavations. It is not clear if this tooth relic was in any way related to the famous tooth relic in a stupa in Sri Lanka. According to some experts, the brass plate found in Kanheri refers to 494-95 BCE and thus propose it as the oldest rock-cut Buddhist caves in India.

The image below shows one of the epigraphs near the Darbar hall (cave 11). Close to the epigraph is a bass-relief showing a strange figure which reminded me of the bull horns. I wondered if it was linked to Pashupati Nath (Shiva) worship or if it could be linked to the Pashupati seals found in Indus valley (image below).

Water Collection and Conservation Systems of Kanheri

A water stream flows between the northern and southern hills of Kanheri. One of the inscription mentions the construction of a dam for the collection of water. However, the caves are on the higher parts of the southern hill and thus going down to collect water from the stream must have been difficult. For this reason, as well to answer the water needs of a large number of persons, a detailed water collection and conservation system was designed in Kanheri including a network of canals and cisterns, as shown in the image below.

I visited Kanheri around the end of the dry season and was surprised to find that many cisterns of the monastery were full of water. This traditional knowledge of water collection and conservation seems to have been lost from many rural communities of India which face regular droughts and water-shortages.

Some Specific Things to See in Kanheri

There were a few other things in Kanheri caves which struck me as interesting. These included the numerous steps carved in the rocks for going from one place to another. Some of these were very long. These seemed like snakes winding on the rock surfaces.

Another curious find were small holes in the surface of rocks on the top of the hills, as shown in the image below. When I saw them I thought that they were holes above the cisterns for a ritual use similar to the stepwell of Santa Cristina in Sardinia island of Italy. However on closer look, these were not deep holes and were closed at the bottom. I wondered if these holes were made for fixing the bamboo umbrella stands to avoid the sun or may be for fixing poles for hanging out the washed clothes for drying.

Views of the Borivali high rise buildings from the top of the hills, behind the dense forests surrounding the Kanheri rock caves, were beautiful.

Conclusions

I have been to the more famous Elephanta caves on an island near the Gateway of India. It has a beautiful Trimurti scultpure. However, Elephanta does not have the rugged beauty of Kanheri. I was really surprised by this visit because I was not expecting to see such a vast and imposing structure with such beautiful sculptures.

I have not yet visited the other three rock-cut Buddhist caves in Mumbai and and if they are half as beautiful as Kanheri, it will be worthwhile to go and look for them. 

The large number of caves in and around modern Mumbai also means that this area was already inhabited many centuries before the British came and developed the city of Bombay in the 19th century.

If you live in or are only visiting Mumbai and are interested in the rich Indian cultural heritage, do visit Kanheri.

Acknowledgements

I found some useful archaeological information about the caves in an article by Saurabh on the Indian History and Architecture website.

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