MATTEO BOCELLI IN INDIA

Da qualche giorno Matteo Bocelli è in India. Il 23 marzo 2022 ha scritto nel suo profilo Twitter: 'Surprise! Greetings from India behind the scenes of new video for a very special song!!! What an incredible country and incredible people!'. Devraj Sanyal, direttore di Universal Music India, ha scritto: 'Matteo Bocelli Sukriti Kakar Prakriti Kakar Amaal Mallik E IO planning, plotting, preparing & purposefully envisioning our version of music & song. “il mondo è pieno di amore”.' 

Oggi Pinkvilla ha pubblicato l'articolo Matteo Bocelli on being a fan of Ed Sheeran, learnings from dad Andrea, recent Indian collaboration, di Avinash Lohana. Di seguito un estratto: 

'The artist arrived in the country last week, and has recorded for a special track with singer duo Sukriti Kakar and Prakriti Kakar, and composer Amaal Mallik. (...) “India is a place I have always been curious about and when my management team said there could be an opportunity to do something with an Indian artist and Universal India I was super excited. I have really enjoyed working with artists from other cultures and musical backgrounds already, so coming to India felt like an amazing next step. I have wanted to visit for a very long time and now I have the best reason to come here,” says Matteo. He adds that working with Amaal, Sukriti and Prakriti has been an amazing experience. “We had a lot of fun working on the track - they are incredible people with a great team behind them, and I have really enjoyed looking at music from a non-western perspective. I am obsessed with the technical side of how songs are put together, so this has been such a great experience for me,” shares the singer. (...) Matteo says that he has seen a couple of Bollywood films when he was younger. “I love the vibrancy of them. They are so rich and vivid in colour. I definitely would like one day to be part of one production. Tradition is very important to me, growing up around classical music, so I really respect the tradition that Bollywood movies represent,” he informs. (...) “Mumbai is simply incredible, rich in history, beautiful people, and incredible places. Trying new cuisines is one of my favourite things to do when I travel. I have really enjoyed Indian food in Italy, so I am very excited to try the real authentic thing here,” Matteo concludes'.

Matteo Bocelli, le gemelle Kakar e Amaal Mallik

Aggiornamento del 31 marzo 2022 - Oggi Pinkvilla ha pubblicato l'articolo Amaal Mallik feels Matteo Bocelli can sing for Akshay Kumar: ‘His voice has a beautiful baritone’, di Avinash Lohana. Di seguito un estratto: 'Amaal [Mallik] opens up on this exciting collaboration. “It's the coming together of two worlds, countries and cultures, India and Italy. Matteo is a very sweet, talented and humble musician who belongs to a lustrous family and is Andrea Bocelli's son. (...) Somewhat I find the innocence of my music, and the innocence in his voice makes a great blend together. This is something that Universal Music India brought about as a project. Matteo was looking to do something related to Indian music and collaborate with Indian artists which is like a beautiful crossover and that's why we did it. (...) I met Matteo and told him how influential his father's music is to the world. Budding musicians in our country, everyone knows and everyone resonates with the music Andrea Bocelli does. I respect him and his family, and I really like the fact that he is very humble and down to earth considering he comes from such a beautiful legacy of musicians,” shares Amaal. If he had to get Matteo do playback for a Bollywood actor, who would it be? “I think we would obviously need someone young because his voice has a very beautiful baritone. Maybe he would be a good voice for Akshay Kumar,” Amaal concludes'.

Aggiornamento del 15 febbraio 2023: video del brano I miss you amore.

Matteo Bocelli e Devraj Sanyal

TRA LE VOCI E I COLORI DI CALCUTTA L'INDIA CHE INCANTA L'ITALIA

[Archivio]

Nel 2012 Dacia Maraini partecipò alla 36esima edizione della Kolkata Book Fair (clicca qui). Riporto di seguito l'articolo Tra le voci e i colori di Calcutta l'India che incanta l'Italia, redatto dalla scrittrice e pubblicato il 15 febbraio 2012 dal Corriere della Sera.

'Calcutta. Febbraio. Fiera del libro, di cui quest'anno l'Italia è ospite d'onore. Gran folla - la gente legge poco ma ama molto girare per padiglioni carichi di libri, in mezzo alla calca, mangiando gelati industriali e scattando fotografie. A Calcutta come a Mantova o a Torino. Qui la folla è fatta soprattutto di giovanissimi. La fila davanti al padiglione italiano si allunga come un serpentone colorato per trecento metri dall'ingresso. Nessuno di loro probabilmente ha mai letto Baricco o Elisabetta Rasy, ma aspettano pazienti, curiosi, di entrare nel cortile dove si parla di letteratura e si beve un buon caffè Lavazza (che pare stia conquistando con i suoi ottimi prodotti il mercato indiano), portandosi dietro un cartoccio di croccanti ceci abbrustoliti e salati.

C'è stato Severgnini, in dialogo con Tishani Doshi, c'è stato Baricco in dialogo con Kunal Basu, Italo Spinelli con Mahasweta Devi, Maria Pace Ottieri ed Elisabetta Rasy con Supriya Chaudhuri, il giovane Pietro Grossi con Shenan Karunatilaka, Valerio Manfredi con una lectio magistralis. Io stessa ho dialogato a New Delhi con una coltissima e combattiva scrittrice indiana: Urvasha Butalia e a Calcutta con una dolce e intelligente Mandira Sen. Ci sono stati i musicisti Cesare Picco, Guido Modarelli e Ganesh Del Vescovo. La gente è accorsa, pigiandosi nel cortile del padiglione dove, fra nuvole di zanzare e i tagli verticali di potenti riflettori, ascoltavano silenziosi le parole degli scrittori. Per fortuna non ci sono state le lungaggini delle traduzioni. Tutto in inglese e direttamente, in dialogo anche col pubblico.

I grandi temi trattati? Quale il ruolo dello scrittore? L'impegno esiste ancora? E in che cosa consiste? Cosa guida il mercato dei libri? Si legge ancora in carta o dobbiamo trasferirci sui mezzi elettronici? Esiste una discriminazione di genere? Quale è da considerarsi la lingua madre in fenomeni di emigrazione? Come reagire di fronte alla censura che tappa la bocca o peggio aggredisce e minaccia uno scrittore vivente, come è successo a Salman Rushdie o a Taslima Nasrin, tutti e due in polemica con l'estremismo islamico e da questo minacciati di morte?

Le risposte sono state varie e contraddittorie. Per alcuni lo scrittore non deve avere obblighi sociali ma solo artistici. Il mondo non lo riguarda se non come cittadino. Il giudizio deve essere dato sullo stile e non sui temi trattati. Uno di questi critici è Jeet Thayil, uno scrittore indiano pungente e aggressivo, che ha attaccato, attraverso giornali e rete, la scrittrice bengalese Nasrin dicendo che il suo libro Shame (Vergogna) è talmente brutto che sicuramente non l'ha letto nemmeno lei. E l'ha accusata di farsi pubblicità con la politica. Ma è profondamente ingiusto perché la Nasrin, il cui libro è vitale e comunicativo, è stata minacciata di morte per avere «offeso la morale islamica» e avere criticato i principi che guidano la famiglia tradizionale, difendendo la libertà mentale e spirituale delle donne.

Altri invece, come me, hanno sostenuto il compito di «testimonianza» dello scrittore. Che certamente non deve ridursi a fare solo il polemista o il politico, ma deve raccontare la verità. Al testimone che ha assistito a un delitto cosa si chiede? Non una verità assoluta e celeste, ma la verità dei fatti e delle cose: come era vestito l'assassino, era alto o basso? Aveva barba o no? Era biondo o bruno? Verso dove si dirigeva, eccetera. Il testimone racconta i fatti nei particolari che la Storia spesso trascura e quei particolari sono il sale della letteratura.

Mentre ascolto il buffo e spesso difficile inglese del pubblico indiano, vengo assalita da una nuvola di zanzare. Mi difendo con gli spruzzi di Autan che la graziosa e attentissima moglie del console Melchiori mi presta. Ne porta sempre in borsa una boccetta mi dice, raccontandomi del pericolo della Deng, puntura di una zanzara che provoca emorragie interne difficili da guarire. Anche se «il momento più pericoloso è quello che precede i monsoni». Il console Joel Melchiori è giovane e appassionato al suo lavoro. Pieno di buona volontà percorre ogni giorno due ore di viaggio andata e ritorno dal centro per assistere all'incontro vivacissimo fra la fiabesca e contraddittoria letteratura indiana con quella meno fiabesca ma altrettanto contraddittoria letteratura italiana.

L'idea comunque è nata nella testa giovane e piena di iniziative dell'addetto culturale di New Delhi, Cesare Bieller, che, assieme con la direttrice dell'Istituto italiano di cultura, Angela Trezza, sotto l'assistenza generosa e sollecita dell'ambasciatore Giacomo Sanfelice, si dedica con accanimento alla diffusione della cultura italiana in India. Cosa non facile perché si tratta di un immenso mercato con una minoranza di alfabetizzati che praticano una lingua colta e internazionale come l'inglese. Per il momento siamo più noi a tradurre in italiano e pubblicare autori indiani che loro a pubblicare autori italiani tradotti in inglese.

Calcutta è una città disordinata e caotica. La cosa che più colpisce è la sua sonorità. Le strade sono invase da automobili schiamazzanti che corrono, si sfiorano, gli autisti si sporgono urlando e continuano a premere la mano sul clacson. Fra di loro si aggirano le motorette, anche loro strepitanti, con sopra anche tre, quattro persone, spesso bambini, pigiati fra la madre e il padre. Più inquietanti i risciò traballanti: una portantina di legno tenuta su da due lunghe aste, alle cui estremità sta un uomo magrissimo e seminudo, spesso anche scalzo. D'improvviso, quando meno te lo aspetti ecco apparire in mezzo a questo traffico aggrovigliato e confuso un enorme elefante che batte i piedi larghi sull'asfalto, tenuto a bada dalla frusta di un indianino seduto sulla sua groppa rugosa. La spazzatura si accumula agli angoli delle strade. Ogni tanto un pastore manda le sue pecore a rovistare fra i rifiuti. O vi trovi dei maiali tondi e neri che grufolano, con dei corvi rapaci che se ne stanno ritti e fieri sulla loro schiena.

Il rumore assordante che sale dalla città bassa si intreccia continuamente con il rumore fragoroso che proviene dall'alto, dal cielo. Sono i corvi, i veri padroni di Calcutta: protervi, ladri, sicuri di sé, volano basso posandosi a due centimetri dai tuoi piedi, senza paura di niente. Si chiamano fra di loro con allegria, chiacchierano, litigano, battibeccano comicamente, senza smettere mai. Dobbiamo ricordare che qui è proibito uccidere animali. Si racconta che gli impiegati di mattina vanno in ufficio con una gabbietta in mano. Appena qualche topo esce allo scoperto, lo attirano nella gabbia con un'esca, la chiudono e la portano fuori, dove, a qualche centinaio di metri, lasciano libero l'animaletto, che spesso ritorna cocciutamente alla sua tana e alla sua famigliola affamata.

Sui giornali appaiono grandi ritratti di politici. Fra poco ci saranno le elezioni regionali e molti puntano sul figlio di Sonia Gandhi, Rahul, un bel ragazzo dalle idee moderne. Alcuni criticano Sonia perché ha fatto di tutto per evitare che i figli si buttino in politica. Difficile darle torto visto che qui, nel Paese del pacifico Gandhi, i più popolari capi di governo sono stati uccisi da mani brutali, compreso lo stesso Gandhi, che pure era molto amato. Molti invece scommettono sulla figlia di Sonia, Priyanka, che assomiglia moltissimo alla nonna Indira e sembra che abbia lo stesso carisma. Per il momento si accontenta di portare avanti la campagna elettorale del fratello, ma in futuro, chissà! Alcuni pensano che potrebbe essere una seconda Indira. «Ha lo stesso piglio e la stessa intelligenza rapida e profonda», dicono di lei. E fisicamente appare più «indiana» del fratello.

Gli italiani in India sono tanti, sempre di più. Turisti e gente che fa affari. Un mercato così grande attira naturalmente. Anche se poi chi compra sono pochi, i ricchi. E questa forse è la più acuta debolezza di un grande Paese democratico come l'India. Un Paese che sta crescendo rapidamente, eppure non riesce a risolvere alcuni problemi elementari come la distribuzione equa delle risorse, non riesce ad assicurare alla maggioranza l'accesso ai beni primari: acqua, luce, cibo, circolazione. Gli autobus cascano a pezzi e sono scarsi, le strade sono una rovina, i treni sono quelli di un secolo fa, moltissimi sono i poveri senza tetto che dormono per le strade, mancano gli ospedali e le scuole.

Il turismo invece prospera. Si vedono molti europei e anche americani, con i pantaloni a bracaloni e la camiciola lunga fino alle ginocchia, i sandali alla fratina, che girano nomadi per il Paese. Pare che solo a Goa ci siano 20 mila italiani. Da cosa sono attratti questi viaggiatori in cerca di sogni? Cos'è che affascina tanto i nostri connazionali? Certamente il Buddha seminudo che appare inaspettato dagli altari improvvisati per la strada, con la sua compostezza, la sua saggezza, il suo distacco, il suo sorriso, è un motivo di richiamo. Venendo da una cultura che venera un Cristo colpito, ferito e inchiodato sulla croce, da una religione che esalta il dolore e il sacrificio, questo filosofo ardito che difendeva la venerazione degli dei ma poi li esautorava in nome di un pensiero profondo e distaccato, di una meditazione sorridente, ha qualche motivo di fascinazione. Eppure Buddha e Cristo hanno molto in comune: perfino qualcosa sulla loro nascita li rende somiglianti. Buddha, secondo il Buddhacarita, viene partorito da una giovane vergine che si chiama Maya o Mahamaya, rimasta incinta per la visita annunciata di un elefante, ha partorito senza dolore, da un fianco, un bambino considerato sacro. Appena adulto Buddha abbandona le sue ricchezze per rivolgersi ai poveri e agli esclusi, predica l'uguaglianza fra gli esseri umani, fuori dalle caste e dai privilegi, porge la mano agli ammalati e ai senza tetto, non badando alle divisione di casta e di censo, ma neanche a quelle di genere.

Da Buddha viene Gandhi, l'uomo che andava in giro per il mondo seminudo, privo di ogni bene («Non potrei esaltare la povertà da ricco»), l'uomo che ha dimostrato quante cose si possano cambiare senza tirare bombe, o usare il coltello, con la sola forza della resistenza passiva. L'uomo scalzo che ha predicato il rifiuto dell'odio e dell'avidità, che ha sempre condannato le differenze sociali cominciando dalle caste - oggi eliminate per legge ma ancora valide nel sentire comune - (ho imparato che le più intoccabili fra gli intoccabili sono proprio le donne e sapete che lavoro fanno? puliscono le latrine) l'uomo che ha predicato l'uguaglianza fra i sessi in un mondo profondamente sessista: «Si parla tanto della purezza delle donne. Ma cosa significa? Forse che le donne parlano della purezza dell'uomo?». La purezza non ha sesso e riguarda la generosità di pensiero e di cuore.

Gli italiani anche in letteratura si mostrano più curiosi, affascinati, incantati dall'India che gli indiani dall'Italia. Se pensiamo ai tanti libri che sono stati scritti, da Pasolini a Moravia, da Calasso a Sandra Petrignani, da Montanelli a Manganelli, non troviamo niente di simile dall'altra parte.

Calasso ha scritto sull'India Vedica una cosa giusta e poetica: «Si tratta di una civiltà dove l'invisibile prevale sul visibile». Moravia ha fatto un quadro politico e storico che risulta ancora attuale parlando della «povertà frenetica» che colpisce il viaggiatore occidentale, come colpisce l'urto con una religione politeista a fondo naturalistico. «La natura - scrive Moravia - non è trascesa dalla religione come in Europa, ma simbolizzata con il terrore della religione stessa, come lo era nei sacrari delle antiche religioni mediterranee». Pasolini si dilunga con pietas poetica sull'immenso «sottoproletariato agricolo» e su una borghesia che «esprime qualcosa di terribilmente incerto», suscitando un senso di pietà e di paura per la «sproporzione quasi disumana nei rapporti con la realtà in cui vive e in cui vivono le enormi masse che la circondano come un oceano». Giorgio Manganelli, in un libretto ripubblicato da Adelphi riflette, con uno stile pirotecnico e pieno di umorismo, su una India meravigliosa e mostruosa in cui si sprofonda come nel corpo di una «madre cenciosa». «Questo mondo non è accidentalmente sporco, lo è in modo essenziale, costante, pacato... Questo sporco non è il nostro, l'ombra di una civiltà che ha catturato le proprie deiezioni in gabbie immacolate, ma lo sporco originario, aurorale, quello sporco che noi abbiamo tradito, come abbiamo tradito tutt'intero il nostro corpo, col suo sudore, i suoi peli, i suoi genitali...». E, con piglio gaddiano parla di una «sgarbata felicità» che ci fa capire quanto siamo indegni di un mondo meravigliosamente invaso «dalla propria terrestrità». De Cataldo invece scrive del dolore, raccontando con umiltà di un suo viaggio famigliare. «Se hai un dolore da qualche parte nel tuo profondo, Varanasi te lo riporterà alla luce. Ma non desidererai fuggire. Non volterai la testa dall'altra parte. Ti sottometterai a Varanasi. E il tuo dolore ti saluterà forse per sempre e diverrà una parte di te verso la quale non provare più vergogna né rimozione». È questa la fascinazione della grande India?'.

FROM HOLI TO EID, FESTIVALS ARE USED AS A TROPE TO EXAMINE PEOPLE AND SOCIETY IN SANJAY LEELA BHANSALI'S FILMS

Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram-Leela

Vi propongo integralmente l'articolo From Holi to Eid, festivals are used as a trope to examine people and society in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s films, di Siddharth Pandey, pubblicato ieri da The Hindu:

'As winter paved way for spring and Holi rushed in, the energetic garba number ‘Dholida’ from the recently released  Gangubai Kathiawadi came to mind, where the trance-ridden eponymous heroine swirls and splashes colour in that famous single-shot scene. With that, I also recalled another colour-suffused frame from the film Ram-Leela (2013), that introduces the female lead Leela by choreographing her in a vivacious Holi setting. The two scenes are not merely festive portrayals but explorations of suppressed and evolving human emotions. While the former allows Gangubai to process her rage and grief of many years as a prostitute, the second presents Padukone’s character Leela as a free-spirited woman, seconds before encountering her lover for the first time.

In Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s cinema, celebrations of all kinds routinely develop a politics of their own, offering high points of togetherness, intrigue and even resistance. Take for instance ‘Dola Re Dola’ in Devdas (2002), where Paro and Chandramukhi dance together on Durga Puja. It is an occasion that provides a unique (if momentary) freedom to the latter from her confined life as a courtesan, simultaneously striking a deep friendship with a woman of “respectable” class. This motif is replayed in Bajirao Mastani’s (2015) ‘Pinga’ performance that brings together Kashibai and Mastani during a festival honouring womanhood. In Padmaavat (2018), Diwali celebrations become an event to illustrate the fortitude of Raja Ratan Singh. As his kingdom prepares for the impending assault of Allaudin Khilji’s army, the Raja orders his men to celebrate the festival with such fervour that would break Khilji’s morale.

Contrary to the view that holds Bhansali as Islamophobic (a position that gained much traction in the aftermath of  Padmaavat’s release), the director complexly focuses on Islamicate aesthetics in a number of his films, again through the prism of celebration. The festival of Eid, for instance, is depicted with intricacy and bonhomie in films like Saawariya (2007) and Gangubai Kathiawadi, transforming into a meeting ground for separated lovers and fresh alliances. Thus, it is on Eid that the Hindu Gangubai seeks partnership in the Muslim Karim Lala’s business, strengthening their sibling bond even further. And it is also during Eid that Sakina meets her parted lover Imaan in Saawariya, a film that is entirely structured around events leading to the festival. Such festive organisation of temporality is also visible in Ram-Leela which begins with Holi and ends with Diwali.

Likewise, an Anglo-Indian sensibility also finds sustained attention in films like Khamoshi (1996), Black (2005),  Guzaarish (2010) and Saawariya. True to his forte, Bhansali doesn’t limit the expression of celebration only to the depiction of festivals, but instead extrapolates it to evoke a special regard for everyday life. The piano foyer of Lillipop in Saawariya and Ethan’s radio broadcasting room in Guzaarish thus ripen into wondrous, joyful spaces, celebrating the magic of music. Musical enjoyment again comes to the fore in a spectacular atmospheric shot from Black that marks the passage of the protagonist Michelle McNally into a young woman. Here, the deaf and blind Michelle is seen enjoying the music fully by running her fingers on the shifting vocal chords of a dazzling jazz performer, subverting the very idea of “hearing” music by “touching” it. Yet, the spirit of celebration remains as alive as ever and attests to the success of Michelle’s education by her teacher, a relationship that constitutes the crux of the story.

Bajirao Mastani

Referencing the past

But even as Bhansali repeatedly finds magnificence, intimacy and renewed meaning in special and sundry festive settings, the idea of celebration simultaneously - and perhaps most crucially - allows him to connect with the great masters of Hindi cinema and carry forward their legacy to the present. Whether they are the films of K. Asif, Kamal Amrohi, Raj Kapoor, V. Shantaram or Guru Dutt, Bhansali compulsively references their universes along with many other filmic and non-filmic works. 

So while on one level, Saawariya is about Eid, on another, it is also a celebration of Raj Kapoor’s dialogues and Guru Dutt’s characters and cinematography. Similarly, a number of songs and motifs of Bajirao Mastani and Gangubai Kathiawadi are heavily reminiscent of Mughal-E-Azam, Pakeezah, and cinema of the 50s and 60s. It is impossible not to hear the notes of ‘Teri Mehfil Mein’ and ‘Mohabbat Ki Jhooti Kahaani’ from Mughal-E-Azam in Gangubai’s layered qawwali ‘Shikayat’, performed during a heartbreak and marriage. The imprint of V. Shantaram’s experimentation with colour, dance sequences and evocative architecture is likewise visible in the entire corpus of the filmmaker.

Far from being a mere decorative ploy, celebration evolves into a multifaceted trope allowing the auteur director to relate both to the memory of Hindi cinema and the festive roots of Indian culture. Through a ceaseless experimentation with song, dance and everyday materiality in heightened, operatic terms, Bhansali keeps alive the essential spirit of anand [felicità, gioia] that defines our collective identity'.

Devdas

MADHURI DIXIT: THE RETURN OF THE QUEEN

Il 25 febbraio 2022 Netflix ha distribuito The Fame Game, serie in otto episodi diretta da Bejoy Nambiar e Karishma Kohli, prodotta da Karan Johar. Trailer. The Fame Game segna il debutto di Madhuri Dixit nel mondo delle serie. La diva interpreta il ruolo principale, una famosa attrice hindi di nome Anamika Anand. The Fame Game sta registrando in India un lusinghiero successo. Il settimanale Open dedica a Madhuri la copertina del numero del 7 marzo 2022, e pubblica un lungo articolo a firma Kaveree Bamzai, Madhuri Dixit: The Return of the Queen. Riporto di seguito un estratto:

'Madhuri, who will turn 55 this year, began in (...) 1984. (...) Just for context, the three Khans, her contemporaries, made it big on the small and big screens four years later. She has been through the worst phase of the film industry, when women were infantilised, given bows and bands in their hair, made to wear shimmering pink lipstick and glittering blue eye­shadow, and given costumes fit for plastic dolls. She has survived rumours of affairs (with co-star Sanjay Dutt), a terrible case of acne, a kissing scene in Dayavan (1988) which she regrets to this day, and a media that wrote her off as often as it declared her the new No. 1. Yet she survived and thrived, setting the template for the Hindi film heroine: homegrown beauty, dancing skills and a girl-next-door charm which made the audience relate to her. As film scholar Aysha Viswamohan says, Madhuri owned the 1990s. (...) “She could effortlessly straddle the boundaries between being a glam doll and a simple middle-class girl. She was the last of the female stars who ruled the single-screen theatres,” she says. (...) 

The emblematic actress and the item girl. There are many Madhuris. (...) Ageless. Timeless. Peerless. In a career spanning 38 years, is it any wonder we have so many Madhuri Dixits to reclaim and revisit? And then there is the Madhuri of the dance contests, the online dance platform she has launched, and the Instagram reels, dancing like no one is watching, smiling to fans, cooking with her husband, singing with her older boy, and now even wanting to learn tennis. “I don’t dwell on the past,” she says, her 12 years in the US echoing in a faint twang. “It’s done, let’s move on. I want to do something more, something better all the time. There’s always something new to learn,” she says, sitting in a white pant­suit, one leg propped up on the chair, the other swinging slightly, her high heels abandoned. She is the picture of grace, comfort, ease.

It wasn’t always so. She started out as a nervous newbie with two pigtails and thin arms (...) at the age of 17, and would have remained a footnote from a forgotten film had three men not decided to reinvent her career. They released a six-page ad in the film weekly Screen, listing the names of eight directors who were keen to work with the young actress. Despite five flop films before this, the announcement gave Madhuri the sheen of a newcomer. The men: producer Boney Kapoor; his brother, actor Anil Kapoor’s secretary, Rakesh Nath; and director Subhash Ghai, then at the height of his fame, who (...) shot a showreel for Madhuri and sent it to the directors.

Ek Do Teen

Each of the three men would play a significant role in the legend that Madhuri became. But it was a fourth person, a woman, who would give form to the allure these men saw in the slim, young aspiring microbiologist. And predictably for Madhuri, it was a dance that made her a star. ‘Ek Do Teen’, a song written by Javed Akhtar, is set almost at the beginning of N. Chandra’s gritty Tezaab. Composed in 20 minutes by Saroj Khan, it took Madhuri 16 days of laborious rehearsal and seven days of shooting, including a continuous 24-hour shoot, to produce. For her, “It was like a classroom.” She learnt how to dance for the camera with this song.

Energetic, vigorous, expressive, the song, shot in Mehboob Studios, transformed her into a star. The sweet smile combined with the heaving chest, the exaggerated swaying of the hips and the pelvic thrusts created a new kind of heroine who could subsume the function of the vamp. The big hair, the glittery costume, the elaborate stage were usually elements of the vamp’s repertoire. But Madhuri brought to it a charming innocence which was all Saroj’s doing. Writing in February 1989, film critic Madhu Jain called the film the dark horse of 1988 and ascribed much of its success to the song which is “driving people crazy. Ek do teen, they hum from the shower to the office, from the office to the bedroom and everywhere else in between.”

The dance marked a turning point in the history of Hindi film dance for several reasons, writes gender and sexuality scholar Paromita Vohra. For the first time, it presented a clear heroine figure in a dance that is chiefly sexy, and presented sexiness with a robust, bodily series of steps. From this film on, a Madhuri Dixit film meant there had to be a Madhuri Dixit dance item in the film. The songs were full of double meanings and suggestions, as well as winks and teasing steps (...) - all of these featured much heaving of breasts, sticking out of bottoms and sinuous hip movements. Saroj also developed the signature step, which was repeated along with the refrain of the song, and through which cinema culture became physical culture, allowing those watching to imitate the dancing bodies, says Vohra.

Saroj was as focused on Madhuri’s face as her body. Though she had never been classically trained, Saroj had understood the fundamentals of Kathak and Bharatnatyam over her years as a group dancer and assistant choreographer. She poured all her learning into ‘Ek Do Teen’ and into Madhuri. She introduced sensuality, distinct from vulgarity, in the traditional Bollywood dance, skirting the line between pure classicism and cinematic extravagance. Saroj didn’t just dance with her body, she danced with her soul. And she made Madhuri a star. Madhuri recalls the time: “Every producer wanted me to do a dance number in his or her film... We were shooting a song for Tridev. There were three actresses. Sonam was a bigger star and so, she was made to stand in the centre. But as soon as ‘Ek Do Teen’ became a hit, the producer changed our positions. I was in the centre.”

Her frequent co-star from that era, Anil Kapoor, with whom she shared the once powerful Rakesh Nath, says he doesn’t want to take any credit for her career. “She has made it on her own, with the support of her wonderful, dignified and simple parents; she’s gifted and a born actress who blossomed into a big star but she will always be a daughter, wife, mother, and a dear friend. A fabulous dancer with a million-dollar smile.” Their friendship has endured since 1985, even when she married cardiac surgeon Dr. Shriram Nene in 1999, went to Gainesville, Florida, and then Denver, Colorado, and lived in the US for 12 years before moving back. It has weathered storms, including rumours of discomfort caused by Madhuri’s rivalry with the other great female star of the era, Sridevi, who eventually and controversially married Boney Kapoor in 1996. Madhuri shared the throne with Sridevi for a while and then came the blockbuster Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! that made her the nation’s sweetheart. By 1994, she had toppled Sridevi from her No. 1 position and was on the cover of practically every magazine with her radiant smile.

It is difficult to imagine how many hearts Madhuri broke when she married cardiac surgeon Dr. Nene, whom she was introduced to by her brother in the US. Deepika Padukone once laughingly recounted in an interview how her father, badminton star Prakash, locked himself in the bathroom to mourn her marriage. Madhuri’s reversal of fortune coincided with the arrival of women who had won global beauty events. By the late 1990s the definition of ‘beauty’ had changed forever and had paved the way for a different kind of heroine who fit the requirements of a more international kind of screen presence, points out Viswamohan.

Choli Ke Peeche Kya Hai

Madhuri’s ethnicity had a lot to do with her rise, says veteran film critic Maithili Rao. Maharashtra had waited a long time for a Marathi mulgi (girl) to rule the industry as its prime diva, says Rao. “After Nutan, an accomplished actor with gravitas, there was a palpable underlying angst that none of their own rose to be the reigning queen in the city of dreams,” says Rao. Madhuri is perhaps the best dancer we have had, with her natural grace, infectious joie de vivre and intuitive ability to make the erotic acceptable. ‘Choli Ke Peeche’ in Khal Nayak is the most famous (infamous?) example of cinema as the most powerful tool to empower the male gaze. Sanjay Dutt’s eye­patch emphasised visual pleasure that catered to male fantasy. Its risqué lyrics and celebration of rustic raunch outraged many puritans but Madhuri’s shapely shoulders shrugged off any charge of obscenity, notes Rao.

Despite ‘Ek Do Teen’ and ‘Choli Ke Peeche’ being synonymous with her rise to fame, the Madhuri paradox cast her in the image of the good beti-bahu [figlia-nuora] imbued with family values. “Nisha of Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! is everyone’s favourite daughter, who combined docility with a sparkle of mischief.” (...) says Rao.

Similarly, she says Saraswati of Beta, in time, became the template of the bahu who righted wrongs done to her simpleton husband. (...) This story of a determined, intelligent bahu restoring the right patriarchal order has been a favourite trope of popular literature and films. Saraswati is not the coy bride of earlier films. Beta rechristened Madhuri as the dhak dhak girl where she seduces the innocent husband with her heaving breasts and alluring smile, creating her own path to justice. Madhuri is the feminine strong woman who uses her Mohini [personaggio in Tezaab] avatar with discretion.

And yet the 1990s’ women often dressed like girls, perhaps to match the men, who were boys. Remember Madhuri in Dil, with her long dresses, which can only be described as Barbie frocks, and the big hair? Madhuri grew up, but the Khan boys didn’t, moving on to ever younger heroines in an effort to remain evergreen. It was a time when women were girls on the set too, with the ever present Mummy. Madhuri, too, was accompanied everywhere by her mother, even to parties where the men and women were segregated. One actress of the era remembers attending parties where the men drank in one room while the women sat, usually with their mummies, talking desultorily in another room.

Unlike Anamika Anand, Madhuri was never forced into the film industry. She chose to make it hers because she loved the work. “Whatever I did was because I wanted to,” she says. She is the gold standard for heroines, the perfect balance of wholesome goodness and secret sensuality, of little-girl innocence and womanly wiles, of perfect professionalism and easy warmth. (...) But she isn’t all sweetness and light. She has no time for excessive flattery. Incompetence irritates her too. “If everyone in this world did what they were supposed to do, wouldn’t it be a wonderful place?” she asks. Anger is not a totally unfamiliar emotion to her, but it takes some doing she says to get her really upset: “I’m a calm and patient person by nature.”

Madhuri loves the freshness of the streaming series. As she says: “It’s not just that Anamika is based in the film industry but it’s her relationship with her family. Her mother, her husband. That was fascinating to me because I’ve grown up in a very different, sheltered environment. My mom has always stood by me. Anamika Anand is completely the opposite. She did things because her mother was so domineering and now that she has everything, she doesn’t want to lose it. She’s clinging to it.”

Madhuri’s father ran a workshop making switchboard control panels and handled her finances, while her mother, a trained classical vocalist, was always there to support her, to pep her up when she was down: “I always had her. But there was no one else to guide us. I was just fortunate to get good directors and good roles,” she says. Madhuri the actor has been through some rough times. There were no vanity vans to retreat to, there were rarely air conditioners, the shifts were long, and sometimes there were two in a day, and there was no entourage to protect the star. “I had a hair­dresser, a make-up artist, and my mom and sometimes my manager would drop in to see (...). That’s it. Now we have a social media team and so many teams that follow us wherever we go because that is the world we live in right now. I don’t see anything wrong in it because everything matters now. What you’re doing on social media, what you’re doing on the set, how you look, what you’re wearing. Now you need a whole village to create a star.”

What’s new is also the number of women on the set. “When I began the only women on set were me, my mum, my female co-stars and the hairdressers. That’s it (remember even make-up artists were a male preserve until 2014 when Charu Khurana took the matter to the Supreme Court). But today, when I walk on to a set, there are female assistant directors, directors, cinematographers, there’s a woman in every department. Writers, photographers, it’s so heartening to see them making a mark,” she says.

Madhuri Dixit in The Fame Game

Madhuri seems remarkably sanguine about ageing. “It’s great to have fans in all age groups,” she says, “whether it’s mothers or kids, grandparents or grandchildren.” She’s a mom first and last. “Fame is great but your kids are your legacy finally. You’ll always be protective of them. You’ll always love them and you’ll always stand up for them and give your life for them. That’s what Anamika is as well, a tigress who wants to protect her children at all costs but who also loves them for who they are, unlike her mother (...) who wanted her to be a particular way.”

The time away from India gave her perspective. “I chose to do that. I met Ram and decided this is the man I want to marry and I did. It was something I had dreamt for myself, having a house, a husband, kids. It was a big part of my dream for myself,” she says. First they lived in Gainesville for two years, and then in Denver for 10. “Coming back was also an eventuality. My parents were getting old, I thought it’d be great to have the boys (Arin, 19, and Ryan, 17) grow up in India. Culturally, it was much richer for them,” she says. “They learnt the tabla, the piano; it was great to give them the art and culture that we have. Coming back was a great journey; I started working again. It was not planned, just organic.” She talks about her supportive husband, her mother-in-law especially who is a career woman herself (she’s a real estate agent). “My mom is a classical vocalist so I always had the art in me. I had this support system. Whenever I think of other women, I do hope they have this kind of family behind them,” she adds.

Madhuri doesn’t regret returning to India. (...) Her husband is happy too. (...) Their online academy, Dance With Madhuri, which he manages now, has taken off, and both are passionate about it. “Accessibility to good gurus is limited. There is a time and cost constraint. But at Dance With Madhuri, you can come and learn dance at your convenience from the privacy of your home. It is in 199 countries, we have an audience everywhere. We have a community of artists who can converse with each other. I wish Anamika had done that,” she says.

When she’s not Anamika, she is with her boys, talking to them, sharing something with them, or she is with her husband (...) “There’s always something new to learn.” And that is the secret to her enduring appeal. At the heart of the goddess is a diligent, dutiful and dedicated student'.

JANICE PARIAT: LE NOVE STANZE DEL CUORE

Dal febbraio 2022 è in distribuzione nelle librerie Le nove stanze del cuore, di Janice Pariat. Nel sito di Bompiani si legge: 'Il corpo è la casa del cuore e il cuore è la casa di coloro che ci hanno amato e che abbiamo amato nella vita. Nove personaggi ricordano il proprio rapporto con la stessa donna, nove voci senza nome che in città senza nome compongono con prospettive sfumate, sovrapposte, complementari, persino contraddittorie, la biografia sentimentale di una figura sempre in chiaroscuro, che scopriamo pian piano attraverso chi a un certo punto l’ha conosciuta o credeva di averlo fatto. Le nove stanze del cuore è uno sguardo caleidoscopico sulla natura fragile dell’identità e sull’intimo mistero che la sottile meccanica del nostro cuore e di chi lo abita rappresenta per tutti'.

Vi segnalo la recensione di Francesca Pellas pubblicata ieri da Il Foglio: 

'Come sarebbe il racconto della vita di una donna se a farlo non fosse lei, ma gli uomini che ha amato? Sarebbe, forse, un insieme di frammenti molto vividi, perché ognuno di loro, di lei, avrebbe visto un pezzetto, adorandone determinati stati di grazia e detestando alcune sue caratteristiche, e chissà quali. Non siamo gli stessi per tutti, e nel rivelare la nostra natura più intima possiamo svelarne più d’una, a seconda del momento in cui ci troviamo e della persona a cui consentiamo l’accesso. È la premessa su cui si basa e si snoda Le nove stanze del cuore di Janice Pariat, appena uscito per Bompiani nella bella traduzione Marina Morpurgo. A Bompiani va il merito di aver reso disponibile in italiano questa favolosa scrittrice indiana (finalmente, era ora), ormai al suo secondo romanzo, arrivato dopo Seahorse (“Il cavalluccio marino”), molta poesia, e la raccolta di racconti Boats on Land (“Barche sulla terraferma”), che parlava di miti, cascate, spiriti, alberi e persone ferite. In Le nove stanze del cuore, Pariat ci fa conoscere una donna attraverso le voci di nove persone che l’hanno amata, otto uomini e una donna. L’intero libro è alla seconda persona singolare, un lungo tu, come se tutti loro si rivolgessero in qualche modo a lei. (...) Il risultato è qualcosa di magico. Pariat non fornisce dettagli geografici precisi, non si nominano mai l’India, l’Inghilterra, l’Italia: si intuiscono e basta. Andiamo in una città con il fiume, in una senza fiume, in una città sul mare, nella città d’infanzia. Quei luoghi potrebbero essere ovunque, e la protagonista potrebbe essere noi. Le sue delusioni, la sua speranza, sono così vivi da prendere vita nella testa di chi la legge raccontata dagli altri, e pensare che non sappiamo nemmeno come si chiama. Eppure quante volte siamo stati lei?'.

PANKAJ MISHRA: FIGLI DELLA NUOVA INDIA (RUN AND HIDE)

Vi segnalo l'intervista concessa da Pankaj Mishra a Open, nella quale lo scrittore presenta il suo romanzo Run and Hide. Pankaj Mishra: Polemist as Novelist, Nandini Nair, 25 febbraio 2022:

'In his numerous nonfiction books, Pankaj Mishra has captured the defining spirit of our present moment. Over the last two decades he has written books that tell of the churn in India and the West; liberalism and democracy, race and empire are his pet themes. (...) His writings always reveal clarity (...) and comprehension, which blames “modernity for our age of anger”. While Mishra might be known for his argumentative Indian persona, at heart he is a novelist. He enjoys tinkering with words as much as he likes Rubik’s Cube-ing ideas, he is as much at home in the realm of imagination as he is in the arena of politics. His debut novel The Romantics (1999) tells of Samar, the young narrator who in Banaras, hopes to lose himself in books and solitude. A March 2000 review of The Romantics in The New York Times noted that “Mishra has created an affecting Bildungsroman while at the same time exploring the clash of cultures in contemporary India.”

Run and Hide,  (...) Mishra’s most recent novel, after more than two decades, chronicles a similar clash of cultures played out through the lives of three young men. Aseem, Virendra and Arun meet at IIT, but from there, their lives take different tangents. Arun, the narrator becomes a translator of Hindi novels. Virendra reaches great heights in the banking sector in America, and Aseem becomes a media icon and literature festival organiser. It is difficult to write about Run and Hide, without giving too much away. But while reading it, the characters always seem familiar and unfamiliar. (...) The book deals with the extremes of wealth and poverty. It is a novel of sharp observation but a bleak outlook, where one’s humiliations of the past determine the course of one’s life.

The book is at its strongest when Mishra, the novelist, shines through, it is on shakier ground when Mishra, the polemist, takes control. At those times the novel seems to be in the service of ideas rather than its characters. The reader might crave for an interlude of emotions rather than allegories. Through the lives of his characters, Mishra is telling the story of India’s rapid urbanisation and how this has led to the creation of “hollow men” or, in the words of his nonfiction, “a global crisis of masculinity”. The lives of the characters of Run and Hide illustrate liberalism’s many failures, where the elite are left baffled about the realities of ‘real’ India.

Speaking from the English countryside, which is “not so nice, and very cold, and very overcast,” Mishra discusses India’s “daring generation”, a separation from the past, and the various novels his book is in conversation with. Excerpts from an interview:

If one was to identify a single theme of the novel it would be the global crisis of masculinity, a topic that you’ve dealt with in your nonfiction too. What is responsible for this crisis?

You have to look at it differently when you’re writing nonfiction, and when you’re writing fiction. The point of fiction is to get away from generality and generalisation to exploring the inner life. The judgemental mode that you fall into when you’re doing nonfiction, and when you’re talking about a crisis and are trying to determine what has led to this particular crisis - that’s a very different mode of operating. Whereas what fiction does, is to present human beings and individuals in their most exposed forms, without any kind of support from ideology or ideas or notions, it shows them as they are. My intention behind this book is to get away from generalities and to explore what it means for men of a certain generation, who have come from very modest backgrounds and who suddenly gain these incredible windfalls of wealth and power. How do their souls deal with this enormous fortune? What happens to them? I wanted to explore how they then cope with their empowerment in the wider world?

Could you track your journey for us, from a novel to many years of nonfiction and now a novel again?

I started off actually as someone very much wanting to write novels. I published one novel that I’m still relatively happy with. And I was suddenly asked to do various long pieces of reportage. It allowed me to travel and it was quite enjoyable. It was also a way to make a living. And my own ability in it also grew. Before I knew it, 20 years had passed and I had only really written books of nonfiction, of reportage, of intellectual history, of travel and political history, and religious history. But all this time what I really wanted to do was to write fiction. Because I knew that the forms that I was working with - the essay or reportage or even the memoir, which is the most revealing, most autobiographical form of nonfiction - were not adequate. They were not somehow able to capture this very complex reality that I was talking about. So, at the end of every book, essay, or piece of long-form writing, I knew that there was a lot that had to be left out. Because that belongs to the realm of imagination, and also belongs to the realm of speculation. So, a whole lot of frustration really built up over the years and I did not cease wanting to go back to fiction. It was just a question of when exactly. Around 2018-2019, I felt ready to go back to it, I had a certain theme, some vaguely discerned characters that I could play with, and work them into my writing.

Which do you find more fulfilling?

Oh, definitely fiction. No question about it. I should also say challenging, and perhaps for that reason more fulfilling. Because with journalism, with any kind of nonfiction writing, you’re working with a set of facts that have been already arrived at, either arrived at by you or by someone else. So, you already have a head start. With fiction, you’re just staring at a blank page. You just don’t know where to begin. But at the same time, it also gives you this enormous freedom to break free of these very heavy facts, and you can enter the world of the imagination where you can do just about anything you want to. Obviously, you still are working within certain protocols. But at the same time, you do have a lot of freedom to imagine the inner lives of people. You have the freedom to imagine landscapes. You have the freedom to resurrect certain memories of yours, deploy them, utilise them differently in your fictional narrative. And those freedoms make fiction writing incredibly liberating and an exhilarating business.

This novel is about the transition in the lives of the main characters. Towards the end, Arun says that he has a simple fear which is of having “lost a world”. Given the rural to urban migration we see in India, is it possible to belong to two worlds? Does one necessarily have to lose one to become part of the other one? (...)

I do think that’s one of the more important lines in the book. They sum up an experience that many of us have had. Especially belonging to societies like India where development, progress, growth, all of that have come to mean uprooting yourself to a large extent, moving physically from one place to another, into different modes of living, and so our relationship with the past is much more fragile. For many of us in places like India and China and large parts of Asia and Africa, the movement is always away, and it’s irrevocable, it’s moving away from the past and often renouncing the past because renouncing the past is almost a guarantee of arriving at the future, the much-promised future of modernity, of fulfilment of modern life. Many of us suffer from this longing for a past that once existed and no longer does.

Building on that, the characters are seeking a “complete liberation from the life of their parents”. But having achieved that they are not any happier. By the end, Arun is in the throes of penance. Could we talk a bit about the risks of divorcing one’s parents?

That’s very sensitively put. There is this notion that we all - in some ways or some degree - subscribe to that you have to put the past behind you, and everything that belongs to the past, including friendships, relatives, parents. Because they don’t quite go with your aspirations to the modern, to the metropolitan. I saw this growing up around me, where so many people were actually deeply ashamed of their parents, of the way they spoke English, or sometimes even of the way they spoke Hindi. These men created a barrier between them and the generation of their parents. Because of this whole process - at least what we’ve been promised is progress - you are constantly betraying aspects of your personality, aspects of your past. And that makes you lonelier and lonelier, even without you realising it. I see this in a lot of people, for instance who moved to the West, who are physically very remote from where they grew up and the people that they grew up with. And although they’re living in splendid townhouses in Manhattan or in Los Angeles, there is something that is still gnawing away at them internally. It’s nevertheless there, the feeling that you’ve not been fair to the things you grew up with.

Pankaj Mishra

The novel mentions how those in Delhi drawing rooms speak about ‘rising India’, but how that “exaltation is delusion”. Is this divide just becoming more apparent with time?

Over the years - and this is something people like us in the media don’t talk about enough because we are very much complicit in this - is that a huge gap has opened up between the way in which people in the metropolis (and that includes people in the media obviously) conceive of themselves, conceive of their place in the world and the way ordinary people think of themselves in the world. So, the realities of smaller places, smaller cities, smaller towns, not to mention villages, they’ve become really obscure, they’ve become invisible because so much of public space was dominated by the concerns of people like you and I speaking in English, talking a language that is widely comprehended around the world, speaking not only between ourselves but speaking to foreign journalists, foreign reporters. And so, we all started to believe in this notion that India is rising and is doing well partly because we were also doing well. We were generalising from our own position, from the expanded opportunities we were all enjoying. But we’ve all seen - whether it’s in the UK, US or in India - that what is true for us, a minority in metropolitan areas, or indeed a minority in smaller cities is not true for a lot of people. And if you persist in these illusions that India is shining or India is rising, you’ll at some point be punished by people who don’t believe any of this, whose own experiences are not confirmed by your ideas and who will turn against you and they will often turn to some outsider who promises to come in and show the metropolitan elites their place. And take revenge for all the humiliations and insults they’ve heaped on people in rural areas or semi-rural or semi-urban areas.

Arun chooses to live in a Himalayan town called Ranipur. Which clearly seems inspired by Mashobra. A town you’ve lived in and written about. How central has Mashobra been to your imagination as an author?

Oh absolutely, central. To live in a village when India was embarking on this enormous experiment of economic liberalisation, my years exactly coincide with that. I moved there in ’91-92, so I was able to observe everything that was happening in the village. I knew all the people who were stakeholders there. And it’s really opened up a perspective that has proven to be extremely valuable in examining broader trends in India, and indeed the rest of the world. Everywhere we are now beginning to wake up to the fact that non-metropolitan areas, non-urban areas have become politically consequential because they were all for so long not taken into account by journalists, by economists. Wherever you look, whether it’s the United States or the United Kingdom, or Brexit, what you see is this fatal divide between the metropolitan areas and the relatively impoverished areas out in the countryside. I feel in retrospect so much of my writing was made possible by this close experience of another reality, which made me think that we cannot really buy into or subscribe to these wildly optimistic scenarios of India becoming a major economic power by 2020, and so on, and so forth. There were these other realities we had to take into accounts, and those were being systematically neglected by the media.

It is interesting how Aseem says, “Maybe the difference between Hindu crazies is not so great after all, because ambition and vanity have probably made us more alike than we think so”. Could you elaborate on that? On the need to dissolve differences. (...)

The acknowledgement for someone like him comes late in the book, but it is definitely something that we should all be taking into account. The fact remains that the pursuits, especially the amoral and reckless pursuit of wealth and fame and ambition, creates a kind of mentality, a kind of greedy, reckless, amoral mentality that whether it’s secular or Hindu nationalist or liberal or pro [Donald] Trump or Boris Johnson causes enormous damage to other people and to society at large. From the time Trump was elected, I was arguing that we should not see Trump as an aberration. This is a man very much a product of an era of a celebrity worship of fame, worship of wealth. (...) But how can we forget the complicity of the media that is now criticising him, in building him up? A lot of us who have put ourselves in positions of so-called ‘resistance’ to these figures, whether Trump in America, Johnson in the UK or [Narendra] Modi in India, we also have to examine ourselves to what extent we were complicit in creating a culture that rewards people like these.

You write of the train station Deoli at night. How important was Ruskin Bond’s The Night Train at Deoli to you?

This book is full of tributes to various writers, and careful readers will find them everywhere. Ruskin Bond, who I met very briefly once in Missouri, was someone I read as a child. And his evocations of railway journeys or railway stations stayed with me for a long time. So yes, Deoli is one way of paying tribute to him. There are others sprinkled throughout. A Bend in the River is a book that this novel is very explicitly in conversation with. But there are others too. There are references to Thomas Mann, there’s [Alexander] Pushkin somewhere in there. Part of the fun of writing this book was to also deploy my reading. It’s another way of showing that books are obviously drawn from life, but they’re also drawn from other books. No writer should deny that, no writer should claim that it’s all coming out of his own imagination. The fact is, we also are dependent on what we read. Those are the books that feed our imagination and expand it'. 

Aggiornamento del 29 agosto 2023: a partire da oggi, è in distribuzione nelle librerie Figli della nuova India, traduzione italiana di Run and Hide pubblicata da Guanda. Mishra parteciperà al Festivaletteratura 2023 di Mantova il prossimo 9 settembre; il 12 settembre sarà ospite della Casa delle Letterature di Roma.