Open Minds 2021: Soft Power

What is art? It is a question that has plagued philosophers from Plato to Kant to Hegel. While the definition is slippery, this much is agreed upon: an artwork usually has aesthetic value, it could have moral or political value, it promotes thought, is complete in itself and responds to present and past times. An artwork must also necessarily be shared. A painting or a book might be created in solitude or in isolation. But a canvas in a loft, or a manuscript on a hard disc, is no artwork at all. It is only in the watching or reading of it that it can come to life.

The pandemic has jeopardised much of this sharing experience. We’ve all made the couch our theatre and our phone our entertainment. Deprivation often reminds us of what is important. While so many of us took the theatre and the cinema, the gallery and the museum for granted, when we were (are) denied it, we reckon with its significance. We realise we miss the dark of a cinema hall, the crunch of popcorn during the trailers, and the hush just as the movie is about to begin. We miss finding our seats in a theatre, squishing into them and waiting for the curtain to rise. We miss seeing actors bring lives to life in front of us. We miss rising to our feet and applauding a show that has left us in laughter and tears. These might seem like trivial denials, and in the larger scheme of life, they perhaps are, but they are a loss nevertheless.

While many performing artists have been gutted by the lockdown and other restrictions, this period has also produced memorable works of art. For example, Anju Dodiya’s Maps Erased (archival print mounted on lightbox). This 2021 work was part of a group show titled Erasure, curated by Susanta Mandal at the Vadehra Art Gallery, Delhi, in early March. It shows a figure (perhaps a woman) whose face is slowly clouding over by a growing blot. A single eye, a nose and a mouth are visible, but the edges of the face have all but disappeared behind a mist of smudges. This vanishing figure seems to speak for pandemic times.

The pandemic and the lockdown erased the boundaries of time. Without plans and schedules, days melted into each other. Time was no longer weekdays and weekends, instead edges between all were blurred and erased. We were (are) all like the figure in Maps Erased; we risk being overwhelmed by clouds of situations and circumstances over which we have no control. In Dodiya’s painting we see ourselves. But in this period of smudged time, many of us will perhaps remember the books we read and the shows we watched. In all of our mundane experiences, it was the arts that gave us some reprieve.

It is, after all, in the creation, consumption and appreciation of the arts that we become sentient beings. The actors and artists, sportspeople and authors whom you will meet in the following pages are those who have provided us respite, even relief, from the hardships of the last months. In their victories, in their creations, we’ve found transcendence. Their work has elevated us from present adversity. The artists have provided us portals into other worlds. They have removed us from the here and now, and taken us to elsewheres.

Dev Patel, 31, Actor: Our Man in Hollywood

It’s hard to decide what is Dev Patel’s greatest talent. Is it his ability to disappear into the characters he plays onscreen in increasingly colour-conscious casting, such as The Personal History of David Copperfield , or his capacity to sidestep tabloid interest in his love life? Since he first appeared onscreen as the beloved Jamal Malik in the multi-Oscar winner Slumdog Millionaire (2008), Patel has been rising steadily up the ranks of Hollywood’s young leading men, to the point where he can get cast in high-octane action fantasy The Green Knight and drive his own directorial venture, the forthcoming Monkey Man, the way he wishes. As much as Patel’s work is international, there is another arc bringing him home to the land of his ancestors, whether it was the fine Lion (2016) for which he was nominated in the Best Supporting Actor category, the tense Hotel Mumbai (2018) or the much-awaited Monkey Man.

Jhumpa Lahiri, 53, Author: Global Soul

With Whereabouts, originally written in Italian, and translated into English earlier this year, Jhumpa Lahiri has taken the biggest risks. She has not stuck to writing in English, in which she has scripted sublime novels.

My entire formation as a reader, as a writer, as a person, as a human being has been through literature and so much of that literature has been in translation, says Jhumpa Lahiri

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Instead, she has moved beyond her ‘first’ language, and found a home in a language she has been studying and obsessing over for three decades. In Italian she emerges not only as an assured writer but also a different one. In Whereabouts (which she translated into English), she strips her protagonist of all settings and contexts and gives us a novel that is pure and universal. She is also translating Ovid’s Metamorphoses from Italian to English.

Virat Kohli, 32, Cricketer: India’s Captain

As India played the finals of the World Test Championship, it was exactly a decade since Virat Kohli had made his Test debut for India—and in that span his imprint over the team has been total. The Indian cricket captain’s job is said to be the second most difficult in the country and great players don’t necessarily always do it well. The cap sits easily on Kohli’s head. He had already shown his mettle by leading the under-19 team to a World Cup victory before arriving young to the national team and, when the scouting for Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s successor began, few doubted Kohli would fill those shoes. He remains the best batsman in the team across all formats, the fulcrum around which the side’s batting rotates, and that is despite a century having eluded him for some time. He is only 32, which means there is probably half-a-decade more of the Kohli era in Indian cricket. Time enough to get some of those elusive international trophies.

Jeet Thayil, 61, Author: Poet of the Novel

Jeet Thayil’s darkly comic Low (2020) marked the end of his Bombay trilogy, which included Narcopolis (shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize) and The Book of Chocolate Saints in 2017. While his previous novels have taken multiple years to complete, his most recent novel Names of the Women was completed in less than a year. With every work, Thayil flaunts not only his prowess in prose but also the scope of his expertise.

Fame turns you away from the familiar and from the people you know. There are artists who have hidden where they’ve come from. Because they want you to think that they arrived in the world, fully formed, as some kind of messiah, says Jeet Thayil

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His repertoire includes women whose roles were blurred or deleted in the Gospels (Names of the Women), grief and memory (Low), “India’s greatest living artist” (The Book of Chocolate Saints), and the opium dens of Bombay (Narcopolis). Thayil brings an irreverent gaze and an expert’s insights to all his subjects—whether it is the Bible and religion, or drugs and addiction, or music and art. His range makes him one of the most exciting Indian authors writing in English today.

Megha Majumdar, 34, Author: Brightest Spark

Megha Majumdar had the kind of debut that most authors can only hallucinate about. Her debut novel A Burning made it to numerous Best Books of 2020 lists (including The New York Times Book Review). It received laudatory reviews from book critics, such as Parul Sehgal (of The New York Times) and James Wood (of the New Yorker).

A Burning tells the story of modern India through three main characters: Jivan who has been imprisoned for a Facebook post and is accused of helping blow up a train, which led to the death of 112 people. The other two lead characters in the story are PT Sir, who taught Jivan physical exercise, and Lovely, whom Jivan taught English. Their testimonies will play a role in deciding Jivan’s fate. It is a novel that is as much about the minority community in India as it is about dreamers, the underdog and the scapegoat.

Mohanlal, 61, Actor: The Enduring Icon

There has never been a bigger cultural phenomenon in Kerala than Mohanlal and it has been an enduring one. Beginning in the late 1980s, Malayalam cinema was redefined by the roles he brought life to, whether they be the comic, the tragic or the out-and-out commercial. There was no role he wouldn’t do, from a Kathakali dancer to an Alzheimer’s patient to a tiger hunter or an underworld don. This year saw him taking the leap into the OTT era with the release of the movie Drishyam 2. The first edition, Drishyam, in 2013, had been the biggest blockbuster of Malaylam cinema ever until another Mohanlal movie upstaged it three years later and then yet another took the record. Drishyam 2 released online because of the lockdown and received as much critical approval as the first one. This August, his movie Marakkar: Arabikadalinte Simham will be released. Exhibitors and producers got together to give it three weeks exclusive screening across theatres in the state. This was to revive the very idea of going to the movies among the public in Kerala—something, they believe, only Mohanlal can pull off.

Sonia Faleiro, 44, Author: The Eyewitness

Early this year, Sonia Faleiro came out with the nonfiction book The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing. While many would have heard of the horrific deaths of 14-year-old Lalli and 16-year-old Padma in 2014 in a Uttar Pradesh village, Faleiro provides us an inquest, built on patience and perseverance. The Good Girls is a work of deep and meticulous reportage that goes far beyond the headlines. While focusing on the deaths of the girls, it lays bare a society riven by caste and gender faultlines. Over the last few years, with 13 Men (2015) and Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay’s Dance Bars (2010), Faleiro has emerged as a masterful narrator of nonfiction. She combines a sociologist’s insights with an investigator’s discoveries, and tells us truths we wish to ignore. She is also a cofounder of Deca, a cooperative of award-winning writers.

Bose Krishnamachari, 58, Artist-Curator: The Show Must Go On

Despite the odds, and the array of limitations from travel restrictions to Covid protocols, Bose Krishnamachari mounted perhaps the most ambitious brick-and-mortar show this year (for pandemic and non-pandemic times) titled Lokame Tharavadu (The World Is One Family).

According to reports and studies, in the 21st century, more people are going to museum spaces. Earlier, it used to be the church or the temple. People are now seeking new ways of living, says Bose Krishnamachari

Spread over five venues in Alappuzha and Ernakulam, it showcased the work of 267 artists whose roots wind back to Kerala. Krishnamachari believes that the show is equivalent to 267 solos, as many artists created works especially for it. Its scale, especially at a time like this, underscores both his vision and fortitude. Importantly, the show also brought to light the work of many less-known artists who got a unique opportunity for a world-class display.

Manoj Bajpayee, 52, Actor: Playing Tough

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Star of the triumphant second season of Amazon Prime’s The Family Man, now IMDb’s fourth most watched show in the world, and National Award winner for Best Actor this year, Manoj Bajpayee is enjoying a resurgence in a remarkable career, balancing arthouse favourites with popular streaming hits. While his 1998 breakthrough role in Satya was iconic in convincing a new wave of outsiders that acting in Bollywood was a possible career, his more recent work as a vengeful mafia don in Gangs of Wasseypur (2012), a beleaguered gay professor in Aligarh (2016) and a retired Mumbai police officer in Bhonsle (2018) shows off his range and ability to take risks. Instead of working with cliques and camps like most established stars, he has created an ecosystem of his own where he collaborates with new directors or those who need to prove themselves. Only they can match his hunger and enthusiasm, says Aligarh writer Apurva Asrani. “Unlike many other movie stars, he doesn’t want you to treat him like a demi god. He has the guts to be vulnerable even to his youngest collaborators, and that’s probably how he gets them to open up and be authentic,” he adds.

Kangana Ranaut, 34, Actor: Diva of Disruption

She used to be a darling of the liberals and then veered right, displaying an unabashed nationalist bent and an affinity for the ideology of the right. Kangana Ranaut’s following made an almost total switch. But what no one doubts is her acting prowess. She is the rare female star who can carry a movie on her shoulders alone. A fallout of her metamorphosis is that she has become disruptor-in-chief of the Bollywood power structure. She publicly calls out fellow stars and leading filmmakers for being a cabal that decides who should survive in the industry. Her pronouncements might invite accusations of conspiracy theory—or someone who astutely read the political winds and decided which side was better to be on. But having chosen her side, she has been unafraid of taking on powerful forces, be it the Maharashtra government, which vindictively demolished her office, or social networking platform Twitter that banned her.

Dhanush, 37, Actor: Tamil Cool

Netflix reportedly paid a record sum for the rights of his latest film Jagame Thanthiram, where he takes a cue from his father-in-law Rajinikanth to play gangster Suruli. The Karthik Subbaraj film may have failed to impress, but the buzz around it goes to show that Dhanush remains one of the most bankable stars in the Tamil film industry. He is all set to play a crucial role in another first for Netflix—The Gray Man, the most expensive film to be backed by the OTT platform, directed by Joe and Anthony Russo and co-starring Chris Evans and Ryan Gosling. While it will be the star’s biggest film yet, it is not his first tryst with Hollywood. He had acted in the 2018 Ken Scott comedy The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir. Few Indian actors today can straddle regional cinema—he is also set to make his Telugu debut with a multi-lingual Sekhar Kammula film—and Bollywood while being recognised for international projects. And none other than Dhanush can capture India’s imagination with a Kolaveri di or a Rowdy Baby.

Ajinkya Rahane, 33, Cricketer: Passing the Test

He has always been under the shadow of more charismatic players in the Indian team, like Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma. And he has not always been treated right by the selectors either, being often arbitrarily removed. But then the series against Australia happened. The first Test with Kohli as captain ended in defeat and he left for India on paternal leave. Ajinkya Rahane stepped into his shoes with a team from which many of the frontrunners were absent. Leading with his understated style, the team did the near-impossible, trouncing the Aussies 2-1 to win the series. Much of the credit went rightly to Rahane’s captaincy. In tense situations, he took bold steps, bringing in spinners early or promoting aggressive batsmen up the order. And at key moments, he stepped in with the bat too. Rahane’s captaincy record is remarkable, without a defeat. In five Tests that he had led the team, they won four and drew one. After the series win, he didn’t forget to mention the players who didn’t get a chance, telling them at the team meeting that their time would come. Just as his had.

Jehan Daruvala, 22, Racing Driver: Top Gear

No Indian had won a Formula 2 race before, let alone in their debut season. In December 2020, when the boy from Mumbai finished on the top step of the podium at the Sakhir Grand Prix sprint race in Bahrain, it kindled a flagging hope among Indians who had cheered for Narain Karthikeyan, Karun Chandhok and the Force India Team a decade ago. The son of Khurshed Daruvala, MD of Sterling & Wilson, an associate company of Shapoorji Pallonji, Jehan, who races for Carlin, edged past Mick Schumacher, Yuki Tsunoda and Dan Ticktum in the race. He has since had ups and downs, most recently managing a good seventh place finish in the feature race of the FIA Formula 2 Championship in Azerbaijan, where he also won third place in a sprint race earlier. Clearly, Daruvala will look to establish himself as a title challenger in his second F2 season for Carlin, driving under Red Bull colours—he is part of their junior programme—with an eye to making the cut for F1 in 2022.

PS Vinothraj, 31, Filmmaker: Auteur Elemental

The debutant director of Koozhangal (Pebbles), an experimental low-budget Tamil film that bagged the Tiger Award at the 50th edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam earlier this year, does not just tell a good story. He has lived his stories. Based on an incident in 2016 when her brother-in-law closed the door on his sister in the middle of the night and her long walk to her mother’s house with a babe in arms, the film, lauded as “pure cinema” by the jury, unfolds under the glint of the sun beating down on Samanarmalai near Melur in Madurai district. It uses body language, landscape and imagery to tell the story from the husband’s side as he walks the barren tracts in search of his wife. He is followed at a fearful distance by their young son, a pebble tucked into his mouth to alleviate thirst.

I did not want Koozhangal to be an exercise in self-lamentation. It is the story of many poor women and the unchanging gaze of the man who is a product of his hardships and his environment, says PS Vinothraj

Vinothraj, a Class 4 dropout from Umachikulam near Madurai, hefted flower sacks and stitched hosiery as a child before moving to Chennai to work in a DVD shop. He has wrapped up his next script, based on a train journey, with yet another story about “a small incident in the family” in the works.

Abhishek Poddar, 52, Art Collector: It’s All about Image

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A businessman who has collected art for most of his life, Abhishek Poddar wanted to be more than the most connected man in the Indian art scene. He has not only built southern India’s first major private museum by auctioning a part of his private collection but he has done so to bring Indian fine art photography on a level playing field with modern, contemporary, medieval and folk art.

With the launch of our digital museum, it has been possible to reach far wider audiences. Taking art to the people, in the comfort of their homes, is key to remaining relevant as an organisation in the current digital age, says Abhishek Poddar

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The Museum of Art and Photography opened digitally amid the pandemic in December 2020 with a week-long programme of talks and performances in music, dance, poetry and technology. A five-storied building coming up in central Bengaluru will showcase a lot of what Poddar has acquired over the years, but more importantly, it will be a hybrid space where holograms meet TS Satyan’s photojournalism and MF Husain’s oils, and folk traditions, heritage textiles and tribal culture come alive to invite Bengalureans for a deep dive.

Keerthik Sasidharan, 41, Author: Metaphors and Metaphysics

In his recently published book, The Dharma Forest, Keerthik Sasidharan turned the modern philosopher’s lens to a swathe of the Mahabharata covering the end of the Kurukshetra war and in its retelling explored the perennial moral dilemmas at the centre of existence. The Dharma Forest, at around 500 pages, is only the first of a trilogy. Sasidharan is however not just a purveyor of the past.

Keerthik is a blazing new literary talent. He has the breadth of a Renaissance essayist, writing with unusual depth on a wide range of subjects. He has read everything and communicates depth with great facility. The Dharma Forest illuminates the Mahabharata with subtlety and brilliance, says Pratap Bhanu Mehta

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He is also an accomplished essayist of the present whose writings span an enormous breadth. From how diseases have wrecked empires to explaining cryptocurrency by comparing it to temple tokens to hero-narratives in the media, the areas he explores are without the usual borders. From his base in the US, he makes sense of India in a unique and defining manner.

Fahadh Faasil, 38, Actor: Role’s Model

Even at the risk of hyperbole, it can be said that Fahadh Faasil is responsible for bringing numerous novice non-Malayalam viewers to Malayalam cinema in the recent past. He is the quintessential urbane actor (studied at a posh residential school) who can play any role with remarkable felicity. Articles have been devoted to how he uses his eyes to convey his inner feelings. The last year has been especially noteworthy for Faasil, who was masterful in Joji (2021). In 2020, he was also in the critically acclaimed C U Soon (which he also produced) and Trance. C U Soon, a pacey thriller, which was shot during the height of the first wave of the pandemic, is especially relevant for our times as the four characters are seen entirely on their computer or phone screens. With his willingness to take risks and his acting talent, Faasil is certainly one of the finest actors working in India today.

Sumana Roy, 46, Author: Natural Talent

With her nonfiction book How I Became a Tree (2017), Sumana Roy proved her uniqueness. Over the last few years, she has become one of the leading essayists of the country, whose meditations on everything from ‘tree time’ to ‘guilt lit’ are published in acclaimed journals like the Los Angeles Review of Books.

I think I wanted to become a tree because I wanted to live outside the human thought-economy, outside the utilitarian straight lines of its me-ness. I am still trying to become a tree, says Sumana Roy

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She is also the author of Missing: A Novel (2018), Out of Syllabus: Poems (2019), and My Mother’s Lover and Other Stories (2019). She teaches at Ashoka University in Haryana. From June 2021, she is also a resident at the Plant Humanities Lab at Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard University. At this fellowship, she will find ways to incorporate plant humanities in the curriculum.

Avni Doshi, 39, Author: Sorry Mother

Avni Doshi’s Burnt Sugar (published as Girl in White Cotton in India) was shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize. While Doshi herself is an American novelist currently based in Dubai, her achievements are being hailed in India, the home of her ancestors. Girl in White Cotton is a memorable novel for the force of its characters. Submitted after eight drafts, it tells of the fraught relationship between a mother and a daughter living in Pune. The novel’s opening sentence tells the reader what is in store: “I would be lying if I said my mother’s misery has never given me pleasure.” It is a novel that rankles, and that is why it is so good. It was named a 2020 Book of the Year by the Guardian, Economist and NPR; it is being published in 24 languages.

Masaba Gupta, 32, Designer: Swag and Sway

She’s been famous since the day she was born but it’s only now that Masaba Gupta can say she has truly arrived. The love child of actor Neena Gupta and cricketer Vivian Richards has a fashion brand that stands for colour and class, a beauty line with Nykaa, an investment of $1 million from some of India’s finest unicorns and now even a hit Netflix reality show based on her life, called Masaba, twice for emphasis. It’s not been easy getting here though. She’s battled racism, been bullied for her dark skin and laughed at for her different hair texture. But with the world realising diversity is beauty, she stands tall as the face of her own brand, animal prints, neon colour, flamboyant cuts and all. When she says she wants to be India’s Tory Burch, that is premium yet attainable, you’d better believe it.

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