Here are three connected situations that one often experiences in the ‘creative world’ or ‘arty milieu’ in India.
1. You go to see a friend’s film or play, or their art show, or read the book they’ve just written, and you don’t like the product. The ‘don’t like’ can range from absolutely hating it to thinking ‘ooh, this was so close to being good but just missed it’, but in any case you are unable to honestly praise the work or say too much about it that’s positive. So. If it’s a play or film, then you try and slink away as fast as possible, hoping to avoid discussing it with the creator for as long as possible.
If it’s an art show and they buttonhole you, you say, ‘I’ve lots of things to say, so let’s meet soon, not in this crowd’, and ditto, you avoid doing this as long as you can.
If it’s a book or some other thing that’s not “time-bound” then you just don’t admit to having gotten around to reading it or seeing it.
I’m not good at any of these manoeuvres but people who are tell me it’s better to leave a haze of doubt and unsaid-ness hanging than actually say that you don’t like the friend’s precious effort and why you don’t. This may not serve the purpose of Art or Creative Debate but it does save the ass of your friendship.
2. You’re sitting with a friend, a ‘practitioner’ of, say, art, serious cinema or literary fiction, and they start growling over their rum or whisky that they absolutely hate the work of so-and-so fellow artist, director or writer. They tear into the work, into the failed conceits of it, the utter scandal of serious critics taking the work seriously and so on. Whether you agree or not, they suddenly wake up and enjoin you vehemently: “ Lekin tu usko kuchh mat batana! ” (But please don’t tell her I said that!)
Why not, you ask, partly mischievously, and the answer is from the same shady family as above: I have to work in the same profession/ field/ area; it will be seen as jealousy at their success; I just need to get on with my work without commenting on anyone else’s; I don’t need to make unnecessary enemies; we have the same gallerist/ producer/ publisher and I can’t afford to rile them, etc, etc.
3. You like to discuss work (again, art, cinema, literature, whatever) with a fellow practitioner or critic-type friend. Their erudite and articulate take on the great success of a fellow creator’s offering is that it’s a shallow piece of work that has somehow made it big, that it’s a one-time consumable that doesn’t really reward return visits. You agree or demur, or say truthfully that you haven’t experienced this work. The successful artist’s next big work comes out and what do you see? This same friend is suddenly all praise for the previous film or whatever they have dissected so negatively all these years. As when confronted with a friend’s work that you don’t like, you have a choice: you point out to your friend that they’ve completely changed flags on this matter or you keep shtum, zip-lipped, bilkul chup .
Petty sulks
I’m sure every society or milieu has this problem; there is a politics of self-protection and self-serving in most professions, and artistic circles are no exception. However, when you’re in some other country and you find friends discussing each other’s work frankly and without rancour, you do feel a twinge of envy. How come they can be so open? How come an artist or writer there doesn’t take it as an attack on their core-person, their deepest soul, if you criticise their work, either in conversation or in print? Why is it that their conversation is so free, varied and vibrant?
It’s certainly not the case that we in India are exceptional as regards petty sulks launched and deep affront taken on the basis of a negative review or a reaction. I have a well-known writer friend (non-Indian) who told me quite clearly: “If a friend gives a bad review to a book of mine, I never speak to them again.” I now like to tease him that I’m finally going to read one of his books and slam it, just for the heck of it. His wife’s reaction is non-jokey, “Oh, please, please don’t! I’d like to stay friends with you!”
Similarly, after my first (and as yet only) novel came out, I went to attend a literature festival in south England. As I got off the train, I was greeted by an organiser who led me to my transport. “You’ll be sharing the cab with _____ and her husband _____, you do know them?” “I know of them,” I replied, noting in my mind that the woman had given my book a dismissively bad review. I had no problem sharing the cab with this person—to the best of my knowledge she had killed no children nor polluted any rivers—but her reaction was something else. Upon introduction, she emitted a little yelp and jumped back. Her husband, also a critic, immediately put a protective arm between her and me as if expecting an assault. I managed to nod and smile and say I was waiting for a friend and would take another cab. The couple scurried off relieved, leaving me bemused.
Addictive anxiety
The thing is, if you are involved with any kind of artistic production, you should be in it for the thrill of it, the bungee-jumping feeling you get when you release a film or artwork or book into the world, the addictive anxiety of will-it-fly-or-will-it-crash. It’s a question you are asking of your audience, viewers, readership, so why do it if you don’t want to know the real answer or always want only one answer?
Unless I have serious political problems with a work, I try and separate the work from the people who’ve made it, just as I would hope that people for whom my stuff doesn’t work mostly won’t develop any personal hatred towards me. If I write or install something, if I make a film or mount a play, I’m doing it in the hope of creating some genuine dialogue, or so I hope. Why then shy away from candid, truthful reactions? From either giving or receiving them?
To briefly open a bigger Pandora’s Box, perhaps this shying away from truth has also to do with money, with the pie being too small for everyone to share in any equitable way. Therefore, as competitors, perhaps the impulse is to keep a low profile with each other while trying to undercut others behind their backs.
Or perhaps our artist-manush egos are so fragile that we cannot bear serious criticism, so we assiduously avoid handing it out in the hope that we too will escape receiving any. Perhaps it’s just become a habit that we should not be afraid to jettison.If we claim, as so many of us do, that our art is about challenging the status quo and breaking the silence then, surely, the first silences we must break should be the ones that hang between us?
The columnist and filmmaker is author of The Last Jet-Engine Laugh and Poriborton: An Election Diary . He edited Electric Feather: The Tranquebar Book of Erotic Stories and was featured in Granta .
