On Swindlers, Solitude, and the Songs of Lucknow (Ch. 3)
Caio!
Thank you all for the feedback on the last chapter, and the testy 'reminders' to stick to the newsletter schedule. As an aside, was there ever a promise of punctuality made in the prologue of this project? Without further ado, to quote Homer's Odyssey "with sweet, reluctant, amorous delay," here's another timely chapter.
This one discusses counterfeiters and conservationists, the intimacy of solitude, and presents a primer to the Queen of Ghazals.
A Collage of Counterfeiters and Conservationists:
A weekend visit to the Yale University Art Gallery has re-kindled the debate about museums, questions regarding conservation and colonialism, and issues of forgeries of art and archaeology. While the conscience of the Gallery is certainly not clear (re: looted artefacts), it is certainly worth a visit if you're in town. If you want the best experience, don't forget to drag along a friend whose research specialisation is archaeological art history (Thanks Tony!)
The destruction of bureaucratic documentation is not an outlier in autocratic regimes. However, one must commend the Communist government of Albania for their creative methods of paperwork destruction. In lieu of investing in paper-shredders like the Raegan administration, or burying files deep in the Moscow Archives like Stalin, the Albanians turned documents into dough. Yes, pastry dough. Like the hemispheric bunkers that dot the Adtriatic Coast, this archival approach is yet another absurd example of paranoia of Hoxhaism. Why he didn't simply dump the papers into an Albanian Lek is beyond me.
A top contender for 'weirdest US Justice Department Press Release,' is this attempt of the United States to forfeit And return a Tyrannosaurus Bataar Skull to Mongolia. Sold in 2007 for $230,000 to a buyer in California (obviously), the government alleged that the skull was looted from the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. I think they managed to send it back home.
In an exciting experiment where the museum meets the m*taverse (is the word copyrighted?), come visit Digital Gandhara. An initiative of the CAMLab at Harvard, it uses an immersive website, 3-D scans, archaeological models, and data visualizations to preserve and present the Buddhist art and architecture of Afghanistan.
The Amir Temur Complex in Samarkand, like most crypts of conquerors, is exquisitely grand but allegedly cursed. When Soviet archaeologists attempted to pry open the tomb, they encountered an inscription that read "When I Rise From the Dead, The World Shall Tremble." The tomb was opened with a backdrop of the Battle of Stalingrad and this 'curse of Timur' is rumoured to have impacted Stalin's decision-making during the war. While there is little evidence to back the rumours of the curse, there is enough evidence to argue (as this article in Future Anterior does) that archaeological preservationism in Central Asia was yet another vehicle used to legitimize Soviet rule.
An imposing statue of Timur in Tashkent's Central Square:
Artist Mari Bastashevski's journal entry from the high seas, titled 'The Perfect Con,' is quite the adventure. As a project during her 'art residency' on a container cargo ship, she critiques the supply-chains that interlink our markets, the entities like ZIM that enable them, and her role as an artistic pawn 'in residency' helping them advertise.
On cons and conmen, here's the unbelievable tale of Jesus' wife. This Atlantic article unpacks the 'Gospel of Jesus' wife,' a papyrus fragment that a leading Harvard scholar claimed contained the first recorded mention that Jesus may have had a wife. A 'saga of fraud, fantasy, and faith' featuring a 'motorcycle-riding pornographer from Florida,' this work of anti-Da-Vinci-Code is a must-read.
Scambaiting trophies collects the best and the worst examples of forged documentation shared by internet scammers. The page is a miscellany of photoshopped identification documents, certificates and credit cards, featuring the driver's licence of Michelle Obama and the Death Certificate of a Mr. Schickelgrubensteinowictz.
This article exposing the many lives of a mountebank cyclist might seem overtly niche at first but, bear with me. Take a trip down the rabbit hole that is pro-cycling and Virginia bike shops while the lies of a 'pro'-cyclist unravel around you. The "‘Catch Me If You Can’-like story of a man with a claimed past as a pro cyclist, a soldier, a CEO, a lawyer, an author, an academic, a hostage responder, and a weapons instructor." (Thanks for the link, Sonny!)
On Yi-Yi and Seeking Solitude:
Tonight I had an opportunity to finally watch Edward Yang’s Taiwanese classic Yi Yi (2000). The film is a drama that depicts the conflicts and compassions of a three-generation family in Taipei as they navigate life within the cramped but thriving Taiwanese metropolis. I've spent the past hours reflecting on the genius of the film, and while there is much to unpack in the cinematography and philosophy of the movie, I'll stick to just one theme: solitude amidst society.
On one hand, the film presents a case for human connection as its many characters break free from their lonely bubbles to interact, explore, and 'reverse their horoscopes.' The very subtitle of the film, 'a one and a two,' speaks to this narrative, as each individualised character seeks out (at least) another in a bid for control and stability within the chaos of the city. Another perspective, however, is Yang’s celebration of solitude. His masterly use of the static frame and the unique temperaments of his cloistered characters depicts the joys of a moment by oneself. Examples of such moments are the depiction of a brooding character listening to Moonlight Sonata at a bar, a suited pen pusher whistling on the balcony while a pigeon rests on his shoulder (not on YouTube, sadly), or the protagonist smoking alone at dusk by the Japanese seaside. Yang’s characters are starkly cut off from the world, even while they live at the very centre of it. They are alone, even when they stand in the middle of bustling apartments, in the midst of noisy celebrations and in crowded classrooms. But even in their solitude, they seem to somehow enjoy their experience. A unique emotion, this solitary satisfaction, is hard to come by. The fleeting moment when you crack a smile in a crowded room, harbouring a secret you only know. The monsoon nights when you sat by yourself on the balcony parapet, breathing in the damp air and humming a tune. That time when remembered a beautiful couplet while stuck in the middle seat of a noisy transatlantic flight, only to be jabbed back to reality by the sharp elbow of the aunty next to you.
Schopenhauer presents a philosophical case in the defense of solitude, an excerpt of which is "A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free. Constraint is always present in society, like a companion of whom there is no riddance; and in proportion to the greatness of a man’s individuality, it will be hard for him to bear the sacrifices which all intercourse with others demands."
On Begum Akhtar, the Queen of the Ghazal:
I was first introduced to Begum Akhtar's magic through her evocative performance in Satyajit Ray's The Music Room ('Jalsaghar') from 1958. Watch the melodious mehfil (The ambience in the scene is immaculate). The song is sung and performed by Begum Akhtar herself, directed by the masterful Satyajit Ray and composed by the maestro Ustad Vilayat Khan.
If you would like to read my hagiography of Ray, see Ink-uilab Chapter 1.
Begum Akhtar (her maiden name was Akhtari Bai Faizabadi) was a voice to be reckoned with. She performed live for connoisseurs (relive a live performance here) and enamoured the layperson through her appearances on the cinema screen. The film reel and vinyl lp carried her voice to the fringes of the subcontinent. This article offers a detailed biography of her life.
A favourite ghazal of mine is her Rasm-E-Ulfat. Uniquely, this particular recording has her directly addressing her audience and expressing her gratitude for their support. She says, "I am grateful to be born into a land where the atmosphere brims with music, where the people shower love on art and artists." (the translation from Urdu is mine and fails to capture the poetry of her words).
I had an opportunity to pay my respects to her this summer when we visited her grave (mazar) in Lucknow. The site is wonderfully well-maintained, albeit treacherously difficult to find. She lies buried next to her mother (who introduced her to classical music) in a modest marble tomb - opulent yet humble, much like herself. As I sat on the marble step outside the mazar to lace up my shoes, the wonderful (and chatty) caretaker of the premises told me "is sheher ki galiyon mein likha hai Akhtar ka naam" (trans. Begum Akhtar's name is written on this city's streets). Normally, I would avoid tethering artists and intellectuals to their physical geography, particular when their work transcends time and place. But, I have to agree with the caretaker. Begum Akhtar is to Lucknow what Manto is to Bombay and Ghalib is to Delhi. If anything captures the spirit of Lucknow, it is Akhtar's voice and words. Her smoky voice intoxicates, like the narcotics that clouded the opium dens that once dotted its streets. Her interrogative verse challenges conventional attitudes while conforming to classical style, much like the city that first erected a Residency for the East India Company, only to surround it in the siege of 1857. Listen and you will find the grandiosity of a multicultured Oudh in her soulful thumris, its crumbling labyrinthine ghettos in her elegiac ghazals, and its romantics shrouded in dusty nights in her soulful dadras.
Here is a photograph of an anteroom on the backstreets of Lucknow, captured during my visit in June this year. Maybe, once upon a time, cylindrical pillows lined these walls and hookah smoke stung the eyes, as the residents of this house hosted a musical mefhil in their patio:
Verse, in closing:
Snow on the Desert by the American-Kashmiri neo-formalist Agha Shahid Ali.
An excerpt of the poem, featuring Begum Akhtar of course:
In New Delhi one night
as Begum Akhtar sang, the lights went out.
It was perhaps during the Bangladesh War,
perhaps there were sirens,
air-raid warnings.
But the audience, hushed, did not stir.
The microphone was dead, but she went on
singing, and her voice
was coming from far
away, as if she had already died.
And just before the lights did flood her
again, melting the frost
of her diamond
into rays, it was, like this turning dark
of fog, a moment when only a lost sea
can be heard a time
to recollect
every shadow, everything the earth was losing,
a time to think of everything the earth
and I had lost, of all
that I would lose,
of all that I was losing.
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(All errors are my own, and a by-product of editing this way past midnight at my desk in Vanderbilt Hall)
BM