Author: admin

The Olympic motto has always intrigued me because across so many disciplines it seems to be honored more in the breach than the observance.  Faster, Higher, Stronger is a clean set of aspirations for athletes all over the world—beautiful in its simplicity and crystalline clarity, with no room for doubt (now that electronic photo-finishes are employed).

But across the Olympic spectrum sit ubiquitous panels of judges peering with dour eyes for form breaks and, risibly, artistic interpretation!  Artistic?  What the hell has that to do with Citius, Altius, Fortius??  How does one set of pointed toes differ from another?  Yes, I understand form breaks, but please, why in the world are there judges in the Olympics?  Referees and umpires and an assortment of officials to enforce the rules yes, but judges armed with subjective notions?  I don’t care that there are mandatory point deductions now, it’s still rife with subjectivity; consider how many protests were ruled on in the gymnastics competition.

I have gone on record decrying the Oscars, Tonys, etc. for attempting to judge true artistic endeavors—I just don’t think you can tell the difference between two good performances (of course, even by saying “good” I’m exercising an artistic judgment).  Diving, gymnastics, figure skating (in the Winter Games, of course), rhythmic gymnastics, and equestrian events have no place in the Olympics.  As for freaking synchronized swimming?  Makes me apoplectic!!

I will say that I absolutely love watching all the above events (I refuse to call them sports)—all except synchronized swimming.   If I want to see feminine legs flailing apart up to their thighs I’ll use my credit card on another channel!!   The balance, grace, and derring-do of gymnasts, divers, and skaters take my breath away; the fluidity and poetry are superb, BUT they exist outside the Olympic motto.

For years the old Soviet Bloc panels of judges voted en masse to ensure that communist performers received the highest marks.  That’s why I pooh-pooh Larissa Latynina’s claim that her 18-medal haul somehow was better than Michael Phelps’ record.  Here’s what she said: “Well, I did not only compete in three Olympic Games and won many medals, but the Soviet Union team had very great success when I was the coach.”   Yeah, no kidding!  Your team had you as the coach AND the judges in their corner!!

I’m not denying the brilliance of Olga or Nadia, but whenever there was a “toss-up” it was clear who was going to win.  See, it’s not blatantly obvious; it can’t be, for that way madness lies, and when a Torville-and-Dean comes along even the Blocs tipped their hats.  I’m sure one can find other examples to scuttle my theory, but as long as there are judges it’s no longer in the hands (or feet) of the athletes!!   And that’s just not fair.  Which is what the Olympics, in theory, purport to be: Fair!

Some would argue that these are the modern games–judging and subjectivity are a small price to pay for the beauty of the performance.  The ineluctable fact in all of this is, of course, that the Olympic Games are not about competition as much as they are about spectacle and putting on a show.  That’s why NBC pays 1.2 billion dollars for the rights, and then ekes out each thread on prime time in the gaps between commercials, heedless of the fact that we already know the results.  And they’re right.  We still watch.  Because half of them are reality shows with their own panels of judges.  Do you seriously doubt the fact that twenty years from now some version of American Idol will find its way into the Olympics??

A dozen years ago I became a US citizen, joining my children and circle of friends in this grand experiment. It wasn’t easy dealing with the INS and a battery of incompetent petty bureaucrats who forced us to take our fingerprints four times on four separate occasions spread over two years (for a variety of ridiculous reasons) and delayed passing our papers onto the next steps in what is already an unwieldy process, until in a historic courthouse in Springfield we took our vows, swore fealty to the US flag, and severed ties with all other “foreign” powers.

I must admit that I had misgivings about the whole process. I have always been uncomfortable with the idea of national identity, for it hovers on the brink of jingoism. It isn’t that I didn’t want to become a US citizen—if you live someplace it’s nice to participate fully in that society; it’s just that I’ve always been suspicious of barriers (geographical, religious, or any other) that tend to isolate and separate communities. I have pondered over the meaning of nationality and citizenship for a long time. I did it in India when, as a Catholic in a largely Hindu community, I grew up feeling somewhat distanced from the greater society in which I found myself—for many years much of it was my own doing, until I embraced the greater ethos of Indian societies which nestles beneath the surface, has nothing to do with race or religion, and is mined only through a conscious effort. The last decade of my stay there witnessed a widening of the edges of my personal credo and, by the time I left, my closest friends (with whom I am still in touch) came from all the colorful communities that dot the Indian landscape—Hindus, Muslims, Parsees…

The huge discovery for me was the realization that a nation does not need to be defined by the ethos of any particular culture; in fact, the vibrancy of any country exists in its intercultural exchanges, however tiny—the more open those interactions, the less imposing the artificial boundaries that contain them. In the America of today, almost everyone comes from somewhere else—in that platitude lies a kernel of progress. We’ve been raised to believe in a melting pot society where unique cultures are boiled away to create a hodgepodge blend of something new—an American-ness.  A paradox! For as soon as that enters into the equation we start rejecting “the other” in favor of what is “ours.” And there’s the rub!

For me I know what being an American is not. It isn’t beating my chest and saying that this is the greatest country in the world: there’s no such thing; it isn’t the flag; it isn’t military or economic control of the world; it isn’t freedom (in so many ways a questionable concept)! It may be only one thing, and I’m still not sure of this because, as you know, all of it is an experiment. Being an American means looking around me and celebrating the fact that there’s a Filipino in the room, and a Mongolian, and someone from the Congo, Botswana, Cameroon, and Rwanda (they’re all here, you know); a Spaniard, an Italian, and a German…Chinese, Taiwanese, Indian and Pakistani…Palestinian and Israeli…English and Irish, etc. I suppose being an American means in some way rejecting the term American and celebrating the world, for in so many ways the world is here and we often find so many ways to reject it!  And if we can learn to cherish that idea, geographical barriers will lose their jingoism!

And that’s my thought for the day on this Fourth of July.

I love the game of golf.  I love the paradox of its simple complexity.  I love the way it challenges my inner demons.  I love the fact that the golf course is the one place where I am extremely patient with myself (not so patient when idiots ignore the etiquette of the game).  As an actor who prides himself on being in control of his body, I am often flummoxed at the way it seems to have a mind of its own (yes, I actually wrote that).  There’s a sweet oneness with nature, with the universe even, which makes my blood flow more evenly.

But I hate almost everything about the smug culture that surrounds this magnificent game—the exclusionary attitudes of those putative custodians of this game that emerged from country clubs and the upper echelons of our society to find its way into public links and courses hewed out of cattle pastures.  I hate the fact that it costs so much to play it and is therefore denied to so many people.

This week Casey Martin, a golfer born with a degenerative leg disease, came out of the woodwork of Oregon (where he’s the coach of its golf team) to qualify for the US Open.  I remember vividly the furor that erupted when he wanted to use a cart to carry him around the course.  I remember listening to the “hallowed elder statesmen” of the game hypocritically complain to the Supreme Court that walking was an essential part of the game even as carts were being used on the Senior Tour—yes, they don’t like the term “Senior,” want us to call it the Champions Tour; but they play Senior tees!!  Palmer, that smug, self-styled “conscience” of the Tour, went so far as to say that this decision would destroy the game, that we wouldn’t even have the game of golf anymore; Nicklaus said that people would come out of the woodwork with the flimsiest of excuses to use a cart.

Read this wonderful article:

http://espn.go.com/golf/usopen12/story/_/id/8048149/casey-martin-stares-olympic-shoots-74-us-open

Fourteen years later none of that is true.  Casey Martin played professional golf for a couple of years, endured the taunts of ignorant fans (a minority, to be sure), and then disappeared into the mountains of Oregon, only to emerge this year and find himself embraced by millions of fans.  The media, replete with spineless cowards with a few exceptions, are hailing him as the “feel-good” story of the year.  NOT ONE OF THEM HAS ASKED NICKLAUS AND PALMER, “So—what do you think now, you self-righteous prigs?  Has the game gone away?  How many people have petitioned for a cart?”  The answer to that last question is NONE!  NOTTA!  ZERO!!

In the first round of the Open, Martin shot a score better than some of the top ten golfers in the world, including the number one and two!  That doesn’t really matter.  What does, of course, is the culture of the game—from the out-of-touch members at Augusta and their no-women policies (they admitted their first black member in 1990 and used to have a policy requiring all black caddies) to the class divisions it creates!  The inherent racism and sexism embedded in the attitudes of country clubs (obviously this extends to other activities) are eloquent echoes of the ills that beset our country.  Lurking behind the unconscionable public lynching of Tiger Woods for his marital failings are the demons of our worst natures.  Remember, he has had to deal with death threats and hate mail from the time he burst on the national scene!

But the Casey Martin case reminded me that as abhorrent as the PGA Tour and its minions may be, the general public and the millions of hackers playing this game because we love it are not of that ilk.  He was always supported by the vast majority of us—his reception at The Olympic Club this week is an eloquent witness to that.  Maybe our better angels will conquer the demon powers that be—maybe hope does spring eternal!

Obviously most college students would know Kal Penn from his role as Kumar on the Harold & Kumar movies or from the TV show House. Personally, I remember him from the wonderful adaptation of Jhumpa Laihiri’s incandescent novel The Namesake, a story about Indian immigrants and the constant struggle to assimilate. But, as I’m sure we’ll discover today, there’s so much more to this young, enterprising man from the Indian-American community.

Who gives up Hollywood for the White House—again and again? It’s easy to wax eloquent about politics and social issues from a movie or television set, as so many actors do, but it takes the courage of one’s convictions, a feeling of true patriotism, and a highly-developed sense of social justice to roll up one’s sleeve and really get involved in policy-making at a time when politicians are viewed with suspicion and the electorate is fractured, contentious, and belligerent!

Kal Penn is an Associate Director in the White House Office of Public Engagement. He is one of those young people Barack Obama galvanized with enthusiasm and a desire to return the favors this country handed them. When the history of this presidency is written people may talk about healthcare or financial crises, etc., but beyond history lies mythology and it is the mythology of the times that provides the substructure upon which the success of any society must rest. History is often written by those with the loudest voices and is still the domain of white males, although that is changing; mythology, like an overflowing river, streams into those corners that history ignores—it is where we find, if we can read its clues, the aspirations, hopes, and fears of a nation and its people; it is in the mythology of the Obama presidency that we will read the legends of young heroes and heroines who spread themselves throughout this land in search of ways and means to make a positive difference. Kal Penn is one such hero; in some ways, a leader in this movement. Perhaps his presence here today will inspire some of you to join that march towards a better Union.

The modern story of this country has always been told through its immigrants—from the first waves of enthusiastic European settlers through the reluctant hordes of imprisoned Africans to the steady influx of South and Central Americans. Kal Penn is the son of immigrants from the Indian state of Gujarat, the home state of Gandhi. His background has imbued him with an interesting view of such questions as identity and stereotypes, particularly as he found his way to Hollywood, the hotbed of racial profiling and typecasting. He has brought to a national stage that perspicacious lens to focus on matters of race and immigration, fearlessly taking on even the leaders of his own party, like Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton for their albeit mild and lighthearted racial jokes. And he does this with disarming good humor.

Most Indian-Americans, according to one poll by the Wall Street Journal, find themselves in the top ten percent of the income bracket. I’ve always believed that they sent me here to keep the statistics favorable! Many of you or your families have been to an Indian doctor, thus leading to another stereotype. Our science and business departments are sprinkled liberally with brown faces from the South-Asian subcontinent. I’m keeping the Indian tricolor flying bravely in the School of Theatre and Dance. Kal Penn started out in the wings as a theatre and film student, which promises only dreams and a life of penury. From there he made his way onto center stage, fulfilling even the wildest of those dreams. As Indians have settled into the fabric of American life we are increasingly finding ourselves represented in the performing arts—on TV and Film and in the theatre. Just this weekend some students in our theatre department produced Gruesome Playground Injuries, a play by Rajiv Joseph, an Indian-American playwright from Cleveland, whose brilliant play Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo had a successful run on Broadway two years ago. Two decades ago there were no Indian students in our theatre department; this year several auditioned for our program.

Kal Penn and actors like him make it palatable for traditional Indian families to allow, or at least to mitigate their objections to their children’s fine arts ambitions. It’s great to cure stomach ailments or plan financial portfolios, don’t get me wrong, but only when a community can venture fearlessly into artistic realms can it fully participate in the life of a nation, because it is only then that its stories and mythology will be displayed and questions of race and identity dissected and probed. Of course, Kal Penn has demonstrated that the performing arts may also lead to the corridors of power in a nation’s capital, thus offering schoolchildren of all races another avenue of aspiration. He has proved time and again that we don’t have to be one thing—that there are many conduits into the national discourse; that this variegated country embraces multifaceted individuals; that we can and should change the minds of those who would stereotype us; that we can shrug off the mantle of Immigrant and don the cape of Citizen; that, like a biryani (which you just ate), in which all the ingredients and spices have blended perfectly, we don’t have to isolate within us what is Indian and what American—we can be loved, accepted, and celebrated in our wholeness as Americans. This may well be the legacy of such people as Kal Penn. Please welcome him to this podium.

At the risk of offending my employers and colleagues I cannot wrap my mind around online teaching. I realize that it’s a modern version of the old “degree by correspondence,” but I even found that to be problematic. So am I just a fuddy-duddy traditionalist” mired in the past, unable to come to terms with the glorious opportunities of the digital age, clinging to evanescent habits and attitudes, a fading Mr. Chips?

I was educated by Spanish and Indian Jesuit administrators in a quasi-English public school tradition, complete with neck-tied uniforms (blazers on special occasions), “teachers” (the women) and “sirs” (the men) armed with acerbic wits, free-wielding wooden rulers, and regular notes of complaints (in my case) to parents; elocution classes, House divisions Hogwarts-style, student governments that oversaw school discipline (that I was a house captain may have been a risible oversight!), and an international curriculum dictated by the University of Cambridge designed to produce Queen and God-fearing colonial subjects—or Commonwealth citizens, because by the time I went to school Gandhi had successfully shamed the British into leaving the subcontinent, although their imperial attitudes lingered…

When I think of the teachers who had the greatest impact on me, I remember the charismatic ones—Edith D’Mello, whose whispered tones couldn’t mask her appetite for poetry, Stanley Miranda’s magical mathematical ways, Fr. Molinet’s playful quizzes around French verbs (a sign of the times that a Spaniard taught us French!), Noel D’Silva’s love for physics that would bear fruit much later, and Stuart Baker’s cynical façade about theatre that was constantly punctured by his own irrepressible enthusiasm. It wasn’t so much their knowledge of the subject as it was their passion for it; I wanted to know what they knew because their fervor was akin to that of children in possession of a wonderful secret. That’s what makes a great teacher. And that kind of inspiration is almost impossible to convey online, even through occasional video-chats.

Teaching is not about imparting knowledge—we have text-books for that. It is about soulful exchanges that sometimes border on rudeness, passionate defenses of sacred cows that are sometimes slain, and spontaneous outpourings of half-baked ideas. More than anything, great teaching is about tangents! It is about having the courage to veer off into the underbrush, not just in search of the road less traveled but indeed to find new paths never traveled! For this to occur, teachers need to have a broad view of the world, they must be well-read and well-traveled and endowed with the skill to juggle the heat and press of those tangential conversations in ways that enrich the discussion and connect the new paths to the old road to create a map that explores all the nooks and crannies of each topic. Sometimes tangents lead to dead-ends, but if the walk is a sincere effort to explore new avenues then nothing is wasted!

Such a situation demands interruptions, interjections, and strange thoughts; it mixes loud voices with hushed gasps of surprise; it mingles emotional outbursts with intellectual ramblings, pithy exclamations, and the unspoken word! It demands a marketplace of ideas, a rialto of divergent opinions, a battlefield where opposing armies clash stridently!! Can this be done online? Or is this an old-fashioned way that has no place in the cool, sleek digital world in which we now live?

Maybe it’s a good thing I’m not teaching much anymore!!

Every morning at 6am, as the city raised its sleepy torso under a humid blanket, I would set out for a brisk walk on the campus of Srinakharinwirot University (try rolling that on your tongue), the fragrance of spices from nearby canteens and cafeterias wafting towards me on day-breaking slivers of light. Ah, it felt good to be back home in Asia. Never mind that I was in Bangkok, a city I had never visited, filled with people speaking a language I didn’t understand; there’s something about a teeming Asian metropolis that feels home to us who grew up on the continent.

I was surprised at how easily I slipped into the rhythms of the city, quite at ease stepping across drains (ignoring the whiffs of stench floating up) and darting in and out of human traffic, dodging cars and auto-rickshaws (tuk-tuks here, after the sound they make), switching from road to sidewalk without losing a beat, comforted by the noise and bustle. One could get lost here, not inadvertently but because such cities are like wild rivers you want to explore until they engulf you completely and will not surrender all their mysteries unless you are willing to lose yourself in their embrace. It’s exciting to live on such a cusp, knowing that dangers lurk within those serpentine streets with their shops and stalls and their touts and hustlers. In the quieter moments every evening I wondered what it would be like to live here among this chaos, away from the ordered, anesthetized lifestyle of the American Midwest, returning to the womb of my origins to recover my lost youth. Or was it more than just my youth that I lost when I moved west, even as I gained much?

It was strange to feel as much a part of this city as I do in Chicago (maybe more so), not merely because persons of Indian origin are sprinkled more liberally across Bangkok, but because there’s an indefinable cadence in some Asian cities that reverberates deep within my soul, an almost-forgotten call from home. Perhaps the Buddhist (and Hindu) influence has something to do with it, although it did strike me as peculiar because my early Catholic upbringing had often held me at odds with the tenor of life in my native Bombay until my interest in Hindu mythology transmuted that alienation into a new perspective of India. The similarities between Thai and Indian cultures are perceptible in the food and manifestations of mythology—Buddhist symbols are ubiquitous in the artworks and architecture, the Indian epic Ramayana informs and inspires Thai puppetry as well as traditional Thai dances, and Bollywood’s influences are obvious in the pop culture of Thailand.

There is an incongruity in such cities that Europeans and Americans could find unsettling—a quasi-western style impinging upon traditional foundations. The outward look and feel of Bangkok as a global powerhouse (it is an important financial and commercial world center), masks the old-world dynamic operating beneath—a visit to the famous Floating Market can be overwhelming to anyone unused to the smorgasbord that characterizes most Asian bazaars and souks, a hodgepodge of goods sprawled in all their visceral splendor. You walk upon the covered long, narrow raised dock beside the river, past open carts jammed with the oddest mixtures of things—trinkets, computer jump drives and plastic-wrapped packets of large sardines, piles of squid, shrimp, mollusks, and other unrecognizables that are obviously edible (though it’s hard to see how), each with its own attacking smell as you tiptoe along, forcing down rising waves of nausea and ballet-dancing your way past the crowds on the slender pathway, afraid of toppling over into the river on one side and swerving to avoid the carts, trays, and people on the other!

A few miles away are multistoried steel and glass buildings with sleek department stores and products from every corner of the globe—capitalism cocks a snook at the restraining hand of Buddhist detachment and the plethora of shopping centers remind one that the world is rendered smaller and linked more by the diaspora of haut couture and its excesses than by anything else. Genuine and fake designer labels, record stores offering pop and hip-hop; McDonald’s and Coca Cola staring whimsically at street carts selling tender coconut juice straight out of the nut, massage parlors, and other stores hawking less savory wares. The bazaars and marketplaces (indoors and outdoors) are what make Bangkok such a popular shopping haunt—trinkets and ersatz knockoffs, multicolored Thai silk clothes and accessories, beautiful jewelry, handicrafts and elephants, elephants, and more elephants; I mean wood, ceramic, glass, cloth, and bejeweled elephants, for this noble beast is the symbol of Thailand and you find reincarnations of it everywhere, from topiary to tee-shirts.

Krung Thep (City of Angels) is the formal name of Bangkok. Actually, its full name is:
Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit. Loosely translated, this is how it appears in English: “The city of angels, the great city, the residence of the Emerald Buddha, the impregnable city (of Ayutthaya) of God Indra, the grand capital of the world endowed with nine precious gems, the happy city, abounding in an enormous Royal Palace that resembles the heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated god, a city given by Indra and built by Vishnukarn.” Even Thai students couldn’t learn it easily until a pop singer cast it into a catchy jingle; my friends sang it for me, grinning all the while. Here’s a youtube version of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGjb0hGOX-Y

Thai cuisine is a sumptuous mystery of spices, flavors, and surprises designed to titillate all your senses. And Thais, like most Asians, are unsparing in their indulgence; a meal is a lavish spread of several dishes—meat, poultry, seafood, vegetables, and fruit soaked in curries and sauces, washed down with soup and juices; with our hosts it was difficult to pace oneself because you didn’t know what was coming next. Coconut is a central ingredient in much Thai cuisine, which was perfect for me who grew up on the west coast of India among coconut palms, fishing villages, and rice paddy fields.

Food, of course, defines Asian countries in ways that you see nowhere else in the world. It seems to spring from the heart of the culture; in so many ways it IS the culture, for you smell it in the air, see it spilling out of restaurants, and watch it dispersed as garbage in the streets. Bangkok is perched on the Chao Phraya River, not far from the Gulf of Thailand which eventually finds its way into the Indian Ocean; hence the seafood is multifarious and fresh—huge prawns steamed in their orange shells, giant crabs, squid, sardines in sweetened soy sauce. We visited a seafood restaurant outside Bangkok, a vast span of spaces combining large outdoor tents and indoor air-conditioned rooms filled with long tables—so popular that Thais drive 90 minutes to eat the fresh seafood. Hundreds of diners and virtually no waiting time as plate after plate of aromatic offerings floated across our palates. Thai cuisine is very Asian in that it is sweet and sour, pungent and simple (depending on the combination of spices), multi-textured, and constantly surprising—just like the country, sprawled by the ocean, almost unfairly blessed with magnificent beaches, forested hills and valleys, sprinkled with waterways, and possessed of a climate you cannot ignore—hot, humid, demanding.

We were there to teach Acting to young Thais with dreams of film careers. After the first day of my two-week workshop I realized that their exiguous knowledge of English demanded a different approach, so I had them perform short scenes and scenarios in Thai—in so many ways Acting is its own language and when the intention was clear (which was often the point of these exercises) I was able to follow easily what was happening before me (with a little help from a student translator). It’s an exciting way to teach Acting, allowing me to focus for a moment on body language and vocal intonation rather than on the words and their meaning; I learned so much in two weeks, which is all a teacher could want.

I was struck by the similarities and differences between Thai students and their American counterparts, but not always in the way I expected. I anticipated a traditional society, polite and deferential, and was not disappointed, for they greet elders and teachers with a courteous bow, yet I found their bold willingness to take risks unexpectedly refreshing. They were open to the point of being matter-of-fact about such things as sexuality and relationships, which led to an astonishing vulnerability and honesty in their work. Many Asian societies are somewhat conservative, strongly familial, and tied to tradition. These students were no different in that respect, but maybe because they were fine arts “provocateurs” they also struck me as being ready to try anything. Despite having to attend a three-hour workshop at the end of a long day for two weeks, they were focused, eager, and forthcoming.

I happened to see some thesis films (in progress) made by graduating seniors and was fascinated by the raw and frank explorations of identity and relationships; some of it was undoubtedly prompted by a juvenile desire to shock (deletions were suggested by their committees), but they were unafraid to draw deeply from their personal lives and society, confronting demons and searching for answers. One particular group of students spent a month living among the poor, immersing themselves in the lives of those unfortunate creatures just so they could document their experiences on film.

The wonderful part of the trip was seeing how successful our former students have become; all of them hold top administrative and teaching positions in Bangkok’s most prestigious university and are in the process of leading a new college of innovation and technology into the forefront of the Southeast Asian academic landscape. We were the recipients of magnificent Thai hospitality, which defies description and has to be experienced. It is a sensuous land of succulent food and vibrant cultural encounters, which included a beachfront sojourn, a boat trip through the Floating Market and out on the open river, a restorative deep-tissue Thai massage that lasted two hours, an unexpected visit to a drag show (this is, after all, the playground of Asia), bargain shopping, temples, museums, and, best of all, daily encounters with Thailand’s youth, the architects of Asia’s tomorrow.

Sawatdee Khap, Krung Thep. Goodbye, Bangkok. Khap Khun Khap. Thank you so very much.

Ever since The Dionysia in ancient Greece, competitions have been part of the artistic landscape—theatre and music competitions, painting and sculpture prizes; novels, poems, short stories, etc., all judged so that one may be deemed better than the rest; the list is endless.

We have just entered the arts competition season—Golden Globes, Oscars, Grammys, Emmys, Peoples’ Choice Awards, Tonys, Pulitzers, National Book, all divided by the year in which they were produced…there are more awards than space here to enumerate them, much less to reflect on them.  Throw in TV “reality” shows (the cooking and fashion contests) and all that’s left seems to be a tournament to decide who has the best dream every night!!  Of course, there’s an entire industry built around analyzing first the nominees and then the winners—who should have been nominated and why, who should have won…

I can’t escape the thought, however, that we cannot really compare pieces of art, whether they are paintings, musical compositions, performances, or culinary masterpieces.  Now I’ll concede that most items on my lists above would stretch credulity to be called art, but even if they are several places removed from the Ideal their appeal is still largely subjective.  If artworks essentially are modes of self-expression, their attraction would appear to lie in eliciting personal responses, reverberating in our consciousness for empathic places to land, and thus abjuring objective labels of comparison beyond “I like this one better because it seems to arouse deeper feelings in me!”  Do you prefer Hamlet to Lear?  The Fifth to the Unfinished?  The Mona Lisa to The Scream?  So yes, we know that awards are only reflective of personal tastes (and often these days not even that, for money and “politics” weigh in heavily on the results), yet they take on the burden and imprimatur of settled fiat, particularly over time.

I challenge anyone to give me an artistic reason why Rex Harrison in 1964 should have won the Best Actor award for My Fair Lady over Richard Burton or Peter O’Toole (Becket), Anthony Quinn (Zorba), or Peter Sellers (Dr. Strangelove); or why My Fair Lady should have defeated the other two films for Best Picture!  Myriad examples abound in every sphere of artistic endeavor!  There is simply no way of telling, particularly at that level of excellence.  Apart from the fact that we’re really comparing papayas and custard apples, we are also dependent on personal taste, background, experience, and mood.

I once found myself debating a friend over the preeminence of Beethoven versus Bach.  Two minutes into the conversation I realized the futility of the exchange and then settled down to enjoy what was really a few moments of banter as we tried to pit the musical records of these two geniuses against each other.  And that’s what it all boils down to—entertainment.  Watching some episodes of “Chopped” on the Food Channel I found it amusing to see the judges hard-pressed to conjure reasons to eliminate contestants; to their credit they agonize over their decisions, searching for scruples, often outside the actual gustatory experience, because subjectivity is so painfully obvious across the panel.

So I should permit that to be the definitive statement and leave well enough alone—it’s entertainment!  Why should it matter that we spend so much time trying to judge performances?  In most cases it doesn’t really change the performances, does it?  Or does it?  It is natural to re-evaluate things in retrospect, but when something wins an award is that sufficient to endow it with an artistic halo it might not have had before?  For the most part artists don’t create art to compete; directors and actors don’t make movies to win academy awards.  Do they?  What about studio heads?  Would they greenlight a big-budget film unless they thought it had a chance to win an Oscar?  And therein lies the rub.  Once Art enters the competitive realm it changes because it cannot flourish without an audience and that audience is often controlled by vested entities with little or no interest in art itself but in what sells; and what sells is determined by so many factors outside the so-called artistic realm.  Restaurateurs and chefs gain prominence on Award shows and people flock to them; movies with the tag lines, “Oscar winners…” have a better chance of making it through that all-important first weekend.

A panel of so-called experts (you’d be surprised how little it takes to become an “expert”) decides something or someone is better and that’s what causes it to fly off the shelves in our crowded marketplace.  Those panels become the arbiters of taste, in many cases determining the life or death of an artwork.  Rising costs to display or produce art define what makes it into the public arena and the more congested the bazaar the harder it is to be seen or heard.  Once they seize upon what sells (for the moment, at least), that’s what many artists seek to reproduce.  Independent self-expression is governed by economic realities, artists are forced to pander to public tastes, and the public, often swayed by self-styled critics, a myriad of blogs, and arbitrary panels of judges, demands more of the same!  And thus begins the downward slide.

But if art has always depended on patronage—royalty and wealthy citizens in ancient times, foundations and trusts in ours—how wrong can it be to let the market (represented in some cases by “experts”) decide what should be produced?  If we didn’t have filters and sieves to sift through the hundreds of poems, plays, novels, films, fashion designs, culinary outpourings, etc., how could we focus our attention on the brilliant ones?  Without the judges and critics how do we separate the gems?  How can we even notice them in the clusters of glass?  So what if a few masterpieces are lost because inexperienced interns at publishers and playhouses have neither the experience nor imagination to recognize the really new work?  If we survey history we’ll see that every age was blessed with only a few really great ones.  After all, it wouldn’t really be art if anyone could do it, notwithstanding our propensity for referring to all performers as artists (particularly in the recording industry)!

We may not have Faulkner but we do have David Foster Wallace.  Without The National Book Award, how would Jhumpa Lahiri explode in our midst?  No Arthur Miller, but Tracy Letts is pretty good.  As are Sarah Ruhl and Rajiv Joseph.  And without Michelin who would tell us about Ferran Adria?  No Beethoven, Michelangelo, or Shakespeare, but did we really expect to find another, ever?  Even as I list these names I am admitting to a hierarchical preference, suggesting that some artists are and were the “best.”  Perhaps it is unavoidable, this compulsion to compare and crown!

Today everyone is a critic because anyone can post a comment online.  And television throws up a strange assortment of judges.  Can we really say that the American Idol panel is as authentic as the one deciding the Pulitzer?  Despite the snobbery embedded in that last remark, consider this pronouncement offered by Randy Jackson: “You started slow, but by the end you were chillin, dog!”  Which is either echoed or contradicted by Simon Cowell’s pretentious indolence or Paula Abdul’s effusive inanities.  Before we can accept the verdicts of judges without much demur perhaps they should be forced to say something intelligent, something that suggests a sense of genuine discernment and taste. Yes, standards have diminished and become watered down by all the panels of experts and a truly new work is hard to find amid the dross.  But if history is any judge, there is this ineluctable and comforting truth, that somehow perhaps through some ancient divine decree we are destined never to be without at least one genius, a true artist who learned his/her craft at the foot of the sphinx, and who can see way into the future without losing sight of all that went past; a person who communes with the dead—for the dead know everything.  All we need is one.  And then we need the collective perspicacity to recognize The One!

When I realized that Shakespeare was born two months after Michelangelo died, I knew that the world would always be saved (that art has redeeming powers is a subject for another time), however close to the brink it teetered!  All we need to do is stay alert lest the savior vanish into the desert!  Otherwise Gray’s words will continue to haunt us:

Full many a gem of purest ray serene

The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear:

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,

And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

The agony of time and distance is sometimes unleashed furiously upon the soul.  I was browsing through some news reports when I read this phrase: “the late Chetan Datar…”  Late???  How? When?  I knew this man; met him on my last visit to Mumbai in 2001, when I was making a documentary about theatre in India.  I spent some time with him, interviewed him on camera, corresponded with him for a while and then, in one of those cruel acts that life plays on us, lost touch with him.  And now, THREE YEARS after he passed away I learn about his death!

One almost feels cheated by the lapse in time, robbed of the opportunity to mourn, to join the community of friends and colleagues who three years ago banded together to celebrate his life and career.  And yet, this thought persists: for me he lived three years more; every time I mused about Indian theatre I thought of him, for he was a rare artist, a person who cared nothing about commercialism or fame but saw it as his life’s mission to keep alive the power and beauty of the theatre.  He produced plays on shoestring budgets, taught classes in voice, movement, and acting for which he charged a pittance, demanding only the most passionate dedication to the art, and inspired dozens of young people towards the true meaning of theatre as a window to understanding the human soul.

In the backlash against colonialism in India, many artists fought against the shackles of “Western” art, seeking more indigenous forms of expression.   While this led to the emergence of native language theatres and the rise of brilliant local writers and performers, it also spawned in some instances a kind of arrogance against European texts, which were cut and pared in the service of “adaptation,” and often became vehicles for directors to foist their genius upon a public caught up in the fervor of the “independence” spirit!

What struck me about Chetan was his utter humility—he saw himself as a director in the service of the playwright and the text; having resisted attempts to change his own texts, he had a deeply rooted fealty to artistic integrity, which he extended as a mantle over actors, writers, designers, and the audience.  His soft-spoken manner belied a fierce loyalty to his core artistic principles which resisted the lure of commercialism and populism.  When everyone around him was caught up in the promotion of linguistic preeminence—the Hindi theatre, the Gujarati theatre, the Marathi theatre, the English theatre—he did not see himself as a champion of anything but theatre as art; Marathi was his chosen medium, but it seemed more an accident of birth than anything else—at least, that was the way he appeared to me in our conversations.  He was truly unique.

Memory and dreams force a present continuum upon all our experiences, particularly those that are rooted across the globe; chronology disappears in the blur of distance and each encounter, real and imagined, is revivified by the imagination to be located at will on the bookshelf of one’s personal mythology.  But for a ridiculous browsing accident, Chetan Data, for me, would still be making theatre in Mumbai.  Why can I not choose to believe he still does?  I am sure there are those in Mumbai who carry him in their imagination, as I do in mine.