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Style, humour and irony
HARISH KHARE
THIS is not about politics. Nor about literature. Certainly not about journalism. This is a testimonial to the perseverance of one journalist in making sense for his readers about ideas and men of ideas, about those minds who refuse to be content with the status quo, deprivation, or inequality at home or abroad, individual or collective or state-sponsored. This is a reminder — and one is needed badly — that a newspaper can and must provide space for intellectual content.
A Hundred Encounters is a collection of hundred pieces from Sham Lal's writings in the "life and letters" forum, primarily in The Times of India (a newspaper he worked for and edited for many years). It also includes some pieces he wrote for other journals. These are not book reviews in the classic sense of the term.
Rather, a book becomes a provocation for thoughtful reflection and for the usefulness of its message for our contemporary ills. Books that came under Sham Lal scrutiny include the very best creative voices in the last century, especially in the post-World War II era. A veritable feast for the mind.
What makes A Hundred Encounters a unique collection is that though Sham Lal is totally taken by his muse, he does not read at all like a pamphleteer. There is no pretentious hectoring. He is no intellectual bully. And though he was the editor, there is no journalistic swashbuckling. Instead, there is an envious lucidity. He incites the imagination, excites the thinking; he does not deaden the reader with inanities or verbosity.
In another country and another age, Sham Lal would have achieved the status of a cultural guru, but he is happy and content with retirement and anonymity. Yet during the peak days of "life and letters" he was very much a source of inspiration to a whole generation of readers all over India, who were grateful for a chance to savour in his columns the best from the masters.
There is a central unity of theme and concern in this selection. Modernity, in all its manifestations, whether it is the collapse of the Soviet variety of totalitarianism or the intolerance and conformity promoted and demanded by consumerism, market and television.
As Lord Meghnand Desai recently pointed out, Sham Lal was a fully globalised intellect in the decidedly pre-globalisation age; through his columns, readers got a chance to take a peep at the turmoil and turbulence in the global, but unconnected, world of ideas.
Sham Lal wrote the bulk of his pieces before the age of Internet and e-mail; week after week, fortnight after fortnight he brought a nugget of intellectual ferment for the reader.
Though Sham Lal wrote very much like an Indian and exhibited an Indian sensitivity, he did not allow himself to get mired in the Third World pathos. The unusual combination of intellectual competence and mastery over language ensures, almost every time, delightful moments to the reader.
Unawed by the formidable reputation of his literary interlocutors, he is unsparing in his analytical scrutiny. For example, reviewing the great deconstructionist, Jacques Derrida's Spectres of Marx, he notes: "The pleasure of the text is, however, soon over and he (the reader) is left figuring out what the master deconstructionist is up to."
On his part, Sham Lal manages, again and again, to detail and dissect the otherwise dense and obtuse arguments in an eminently readable prose. There is style, there is an understated humour and just the right dose of irony when required.
Nor is he taken in by the glitter of globalisation. The intellectual's obligation to detachment and objectivity is never lost sight of. In his introduction, Sham Lal writes: "What confronts the world today, despite all the outward glitz and glitter of the products of new technology, is a far more inequitable order spurred by the globalisation process, disrupted and hybridised local cultures, increased alienation of elite groups in the poorer societies from their own people and a menacing growth in fundamentalist terrorism."
So, dear reader, instead of plonking yourself down in front of the idiot box at 10 o'clock, soaking in the hourly vacuous "bytes", read a piece each night. Redemption may still be your lot, at least for 100 nights. And, who knows, by the end of these encounters Sham Lal may have exorcised you of television-bred political and cultural vulgarities.
A Hundred Encounters, Sham Lal,
Rupa & Co., New Delhi, 2001.
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