In Search of Other Lives: A Dialogue with Konstantin Bojanov

It was on a rainy day that I met Konstantin Bojanov the first time. He was staying in a heritage hotel at Fort Kochi. It was a week day, but he was very thoughtful to give me an appointment at 4.30 p.m., and I could easily manage to be at his place after my work. I heard about his arrival from our common friend Gautham Subramanyam the Indian documentary maker, and I was excited to meet this acclaimed Bulgarian director working on a book of which I enjoyed every page, every word - The Nine Lives by William Dalrymple. The work on  the second issue of Lakeview Journal was in progress and we were very excited about a Skype interview my colleague Alicen Jacob did with Dalrymple, on his latest book Return Of A King. I thought an interview with Konstantin would add some more value to the issue, which many consider a collector's item now.

We decided to carry out the interview at the hotel patio, and while I fumbled with my video camera, Konstantin offered help. He went to his upstairs room and came back with his tripod and fixed the camera for me. There were some glitches in the beginning - the rains, the heavy noises of some repair work in the hotel, visitors talking loudly... we had to switch off the camera a few times. Finally he asked me to go up with him to the balcony of his room. We settled down there once again, to the beautiful sight of rain falling down on the Arabian Sea and the all green terrain surrounding it. The noises were at a safe distance to distract us. "This is a place where I would love to have my home, some day" he said, half seriously. His girlfriend made some nice tea for us, and offered some cakes too. Everything was perfect, and I did trust him fully for the camera setting once again. The only trouble was that we didn't realize that it took us around two and a half hours to wind up the whole thing - small talk, off the record discussions/comments and yes, the interview, which was in fact a freewheeling chat, though I succeeded in asking him everything that I had in mind. He realized he was late for another appointment, but made some quick alternatives, Kochi style, and was back to his warm, friendly self by the time I shook his hands and said goodbye. 

Here is the interview in full, which was first published in the Vol.1. Issue.2. of Lakeview Journal, August 2013. He talks about how he came upon the idea of doing a film version of The Nine Lives, why its characters appealed to him, his relationship with India and its culture, how he plans to work on this project, his major influences, his previous work and his areas of interest.

INTERVIEW

In Search of Other Lives: A Dialogue with Konstantin Bojanov

Bulgarian producer Konstantin Bojanov, born in 1968, is a quadruple-threat producer/writer/director/visual artist. He graduated from the Sofia National Higher School of Fine Arts and received his M.A. from the London Royal College of Art. After a period of documentary film studies in New York he became a visual artist and filmmaker. He shot and produced his first documentaries and shorts: in 2001 - Lemon is Lemon, in 2002 - 3001, in 2004 - Un Peu Moins and in 2005 - Invisible. In the same year he established his first US based company, while three video installations marked his carrier (Quintet without Borders, 2007, Crash, and Burning Ghats, 2008).  Bojanov found international success with his first feature Avé (2011). The bitter-sweet hitchhiking story of two young people crossing the post-communist Bulgaria took part in 60 festivals and received nineteen prizes and over twenty nominations. It has been commercially distributed in France, Switzerland and Poland and sold to HBO Latin America and TV channels in France, Turkey, UK and Switzerland. Among his various projects now is an adaptation of William Dalrymple’s Nine Lives. He was in Kerala in connection with the research for this work and was gracious enough to share with Jose Varghese his first impressions and his views on how to tackle the challenging project.

Konstantin Bojanov    - Photo credit: Jose Varghese

Jose Varghese (JV): Hello Konstantin, welcome to Kerala. Hope you enjoy the monsoons here.

Konstantin Bojnov (KB): I am trying to make the best of it. It is quite an experience. I have always been here during the dry season. This is the first time I am here during the monsoons. And it is a concern for me how it would affect my research on Nine Lives - the reason why I am here. However I didn’t want to postpone this trip one more time. So, I decided to go on with it. 

JV: Can you tell me bit on how this project on Nine Lives evolved? I guess you are going to call it ‘Other Lives’. 

KB:  ‘Other Lives’ is a work title. It’s a very challenging project. Challenging for a number of reasons. I believe that my research trip now is going to help me finalise the way I want to tell the story. I need to see whether all the nine stories become part of the film, or they are to be reduced to a small number of selected stories. Hence the work title ‘Other Lives’.  And the idea is to produce a theatrical feature which hopefully will not exceed two hours. So, in order to be able to go in depth into each story, nine stories in a two hour format might be a lot too much. The work title reflects the idea that the stories might have to be fewer, since we couldn’t at this time give the original title. 

JV: How did this project materialise? Did you get a proposal from someone? Did you think twice before accepting it?

KB: Actually, I originated the project. One thing that I do very often is to go to the local bookstore. Nine Lives was in the shelf on one such occasion, for the newly released non-fiction paperbacks. It caught my attention.  The reason for that was my love, interest and obsession with India for over the last ten years. I didn’t know much about William Dalrymple. I read a summary (blurb) of the book. And in some ways, not being able at the time to physically travel, I wanted to transport myself to India through this book. I really didn’t know what to expect and I was very surprised with what I actually discovered after reading the book and how the book affected me and what it made me think. So I was so fascinated by the book and the characters that almost immediately I contacted William Dalrymple. 

JV: When did this happen and what was his response?

KB: This was in April of last year. He responded within minutes. I told him about my interest in turning the book into a film. And then we had to take the next step and deal with agents and lawyers and had negotiations and so on. In the mean time, Dalrymple was working on and finishing his new book The Return of the King. And he shut himself up and disappeared for several months. I didn’t really know what to make of it. But for good or bad I am a very persistent person.  So, although I was not hearing back from Dalrymple or from his agent for a long period of time when I wasn’t sure of what the reason was, I kept at it, and kept sending emails and kept making phone calls until at the end of November when William Dalrymple finished his book and he apologised for not being in touch and for neglecting my emails and said he had to finish his book and couldn’t think of anything else and then he went on a six month tour with his book. And we managed to sign the auction agreement in April. So, it took me a year to get the agreement in place. So since mid-April things went off in a fast track. I was first expecting that we could sign the agreement in September so that I could be here in October-November. I didn’t want to lose the momentum, the energy, and I decided to go ahead and come to India and research some of the stories. 

JV: Do you believe it is necessary to know India a bit closer before you start the project?

KB: It was for me very important to have a first-hand experience of the characters and locations before I could solidify my ideas of how I want to tell these stories. It’s a challenging project for many reasons. Because it is very important for me as a film director to not fall into the trap of creating a film that deals with exotic subjects. That is so far removed from my intentions.  On the contrary I am trying to strip all exotic elements as such and to focus on the human story, on the human condition, on the specificity on the lives of these people, and also to try to tell these stories in a way that they have a universal resonance; that they would be understood anywhere. 

JV: Why do you think they will have a universal appeal?

KB: They are stories about human aspirations. They are about people reaching a point of no return and drastically changing their lives. This is where the surprise came for me. Basically I was looking for an escape when I first came across the book. And yet what I found were characters that I could strongly relate on many levels despite the differences in culture; despite the fact that most of them live their life, from the European perspective, in an extreme way. Most of the characters basically possess nothing.  They have these solitary pursuits of transcendence; of trying to transcend their daily lives. 

JV: Which is the first story that you are going to research?

KB: It is the story of the Theyyam dancer in Kannur, Haridas  - for me what was really fascinating about the story was not the dance itself; it’s not the anthropology and origins of this tradition. What was important for me was this is a person, a human being, who leads a kind of dual life. Ten months out of the year, he does menial jobs. He digs wells. For a long period of time he was a prison guard – in a very violent prison. He belongs to a low position in social ladder and hierarchy. Yet in the two months when he becomes the Theyyam, when he actually practices his art, he transcends that life. He becomes something different. He is treated differently, and the way he comes across in the book is basically that he lives for that experience. 

JV: Were you struck by his religious fervour?

KB: All these stories have religion as a major element. Yet I am trying to not ignore, indeed it is impossible to ignore, the religious aspects with these endeavours, but to again focus on the deeply human aspects of these stories. 

JV: Will you have the story of the Jain nun in your project?

KB: Yes, indeed. One of the guiding principles of Jainism is that of non-attachment – to places, to people, to objects.  And it’s something I had always been grappling with – the meaning of possessing objects, the meaning of attaching yourselves to someone to the point that you could get easily hurt. The meaning of attaching yourselves to places. In the case of this nun, she goes against the basic principle of her devotion and develops this life-time bond with another nun, going against the principle of non-attachment, of solitary life. For me, this is a love story not in the romantic sense, but in the human way. And when her companion nun decides to put an end to her life because of suffering, because of advanced cancer, she decides to do the same. Here it’s about how you could almost choose the option to give away your last worldly possession, which is your body. She goes on this eighteen months of gradual fasting until her body slowly withers away. 

JV: Did you have to face some challenges to convince your producers about the way these stories could work in a visual form?

KB: It’s difficult to convince producers and financiers that I can tell the story in a way that it doesn’t end up being an anthropological study; but it becomes a film that can be seen everywhere. The goal of my research trip now is to be able to generate the written treatment of these stories that can convey the way these stories can be retold. I am not doing something unlike what Dalrymple did in several of his books. That is, taking a text, often an ancient text and transforming it. Even in his very first book, he took the writings of Marco Polo and followed his route from Jerusalem to Xanadu, which was the summer capital of Kubla Khan in the Fourteenth Century. Later in his third book From Holy Mountain, he took the manuscripts of these two Sixth century monks who went through the Middle East visiting different religious figures who live in remote places. I am doing the same with the book that is not centuries old, but only a few years old. But I need to find my own unique perspective, and I need to bring something from myself. Otherwise, what is the point of me making the film? 

JV: Are there any films on India that have really impressed you, to the extent that you might include a few technical and thematic elements from them in your project?

KB: The French director Louis Malle made a film in 1969, which is a film that I really love. I have watched it countless times. It’s a six hour documentary, in seven parts. And it is called Phantom India. He came here to India and spent a year, along with a cameraman and shot this cinéma vérité– documentary. It’s almost like a personal diary. It’s a masterpiece of observational cinema. There are a lot of things that I really like about the film. First is the level of dignity and respect and sort of appreciation for the subjects of his film. Second is that he inserts himself as a narrator – an off-screen narrator – of these stories that he had seen, these people he encounters, and I am planning to use a similar tool in narrating the story. I will try to be the off-screen narrator of these stories. I am not planning to produce a traditional documentary - there will be no sit-down interviews. I would like to film their daily life now and to tell the story of their past and how they arrive to this point of their lives. Because this is extremely important for me – the personal journey up to the point of now, up to the point when the film takes place. So I guess it will have a different tool than what is used in conventional documentaries. 

 From Louis Malle’s Phantom India (1969)

JV: What will you call it – a docu-fiction, or a non-fiction feature film?

KB: Non-fiction feature film - and I would also like to mix fiction and non-fiction together, which is also a necessity, since some of the characters are no longer alive, and I need to tell their story as well. Where the real characters are unavailable, I would like to find similar characters to play the real ones from the book. 

JV: So, you will use real characters when they are available?

KJ: Yes. The book was researched and written just six years ago. And yet, four out of the nine characters are no longer alive. The Sufi Fakir from the book ‘Red Fairy’ passed away only three weeks ago. And also the Devadasi from ‘The Daughters of Yellamma’, as far as we could assume, is also no more. She had AIDS. Her story is extremely tragic and touching at the same time – someone who so violently protested against the decision of her parent to commit her life to that of a devadasi, she did the very same thing to her two daughters, and both of them died in their twenties. Her dream was to save enough money to stop working. She bought some land, to be able to have some cattle there and live out of that. As long as we know, she is no longer alive. The Jain Nun is no longer alive. And the Story Teller also passed away while the book was being written. His wife and son now continue the tradition. 

JV: How could you connect with all these stories, as a film maker?

KB: These are very very different lives from one another. Extremely different from my own life. Yet, in all these lives, I could find something that I could relate to. I could recognize, if not myself, people that I have grown up with. The book actually succeeds extremely well in not drifting to exoticism and orientalism, and instead to really focus on the human being. The book deals with religion as well, but the core of it is not religion, in my opinion. I could connect well with these characters because they are real human beings who can have a similar existence in any part of the world, with their passion, solitary goals and so on.

JV: In what way is it going to be different from, or similar to, your earlier documentary Invisible?

KB: I think there will be both the elements of Avé, my last film which I made two years ago (in 2011), and Invisible which I made a very long time ago (in 2005). I came to Films from Fine Arts, I was educated as a fine artist, many years I made art, and in fact I continue to make art these days. So, I came to make films late in life. Invisible was my first feature length film. It was a documentary. It deals with a very harsh subject of six young people of various ages addicted to heroin. In the late Nineties and early Two Thousands, Bulgaria was flooded with heroin. The country has always been on the route of drugs coming from Asia into Europe and then the States. This was the first time in the country’s history that the drugs became available in the streets.  The film is very flawed, but even in this case I tried to give platform to the characters to tell their own story and how they view the world, rather than me being the interpreter of these stories. So as much as also possible, I would like to do the same thing here with Nine Lives. As an off-screen narrator I would like to connect the stories, give them a personal touch, but give voice to the characters themselves. It’s important for me to create the context of each, but it would be in such a way that the characters would tell their own stories. Another way this film would relate to my previous project would be in terms of imagery. I would like to keep the images as simple as possible. I may try to create a poetic realism. Indian films from the Seventees onwards, for instance the ones by Satyajit Ray...I love that kind of poetic imagery that is very different from what Bollywood generally creates. In that respect, visually, I believe this film will have a lot in common with my last film Ave. Something else that I may have this one in common with Ave is that I would structure it as a read movie, with me going on a trip to discover these people. So, it will have very different location in one part from the other. And it will be an essential part of the story to try to connect them together. 

JV: I have just started watching Avé and it looks like an intense, unique film. And even though you say that Invisible was flawed in some ways, I found it deeply engaging too. I even wondered whether those six people depicted in it were real people or just actors. 

KB: They were very much real people, with very real addictions. I got rather attached to some of them. And I kept in touch with some of them. It was indeed a very difficult project. 

JV: So, the transformation of the characters is also real?

KB: Yes, the transformation is also real. There is a four years’ gap between the beginning and the end of the film. After I finished the film, it became very difficult for me to get out of it emotionally. Because of how difficult their lives were, to just keep engaged with them was tough. I had to selfishly pull myself out of my engagement with them, and to preserve my own sanity. 

JV: After your research, how do you plan to proceed with the project? Are you going to have discussions with William or, are you going to keep him out of the picture and interpret it your way?

KB: That was one of the stumbling blocks before the signing of the agreement. And I can understand his position. This is a book that was written years ago. For him it is a thing of the past, and he didn’t want to re-engage with the book. He has been very helpful in putting me in touch with people like Gautham Subramaniam who put you in touch with me. He was also a researcher for four of these stories. He worked with William. I am actually yet to meet Gautham in person, but I am seriously considering collaborating with him as a writer on the project. For me, creatively having an Indian viewpoint, an input on this project is a must. As a ‘foreigner’ trying to tell these essentially Indian stories, you could very easily drift into the territory of a singular point of view, which I would like to avoid. I am also considering other creative elements to be used in the film, like working with an Indian cinematographer. At this point, there is an Indian co-producer, a Kolkata based company called Overdose. As a director, I would approach this as a collaborative process. The creative producers, the writers...it’s a team that works together, not a dictatorial director who says, yes, I have a vision, and then everyone should facilitate that vision. I am just not like that. It would be a collaborative process with the characters, the co-writer, the cinematographer and so on.

JV: It seems you have a keen interest in Indian books and movies. You have already mentioned Louis Malle and his documentary. Do you have other favourite Indian writers or film directors?

KB: I must confess that despite my love for India, I am not much familiar with contemporary Indian literatures. I am a little more familiar with Indian films, especially from the independent film scene. One thing that directors like Anurag Kashyap achieves is that they don’t fall into the trap of Bollywood rules of making a film, and they manage to make their films on their own. They do everything the way they are not meant to be done. There is a whole new generation of young film makers like him here as I understand. In terms of contemporary Indian literature though, I have a lot to catch up on. 

JV: Have you seen the recent movies Midnight’s Children by Deepa Mehta and The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mira Nair? 

KB:  I actually tried to watch The Reluctant Fundamentalist. I found it incredibly artificial. On many levels I found it plain bad. Short of the first film with which she became famous, Salaam Bombay, I haven’t liked her other films. Her previous film The Namesake was an okay film, but that is not really the type of film I am interested in. 

JV: Do you have a soft-corner for sidelined people – who inhabit the underbelly of cities?

KB: I definitely do, and I also definitely care for the way they relate to the world that surrounds them. I am very careful when I use the word spirituality, but it is the question of evoking yourself to endeavour and pursue what you consider significant. When the centre of your being becomes how you relate yourself as a human being, how you reflect on the world that surrounds you.  I have always been attracted to people who pursue with extreme conviction solitary goals. And with no exception, the characters of Nine Lives represent that. In many cases, from a Western viewpoint, they would be considered as artists, although they don’t view themselves as such. The by-product of their devotion is in fact art, whether it is music, whether it is dance or whatever. These are people who can, like me, pursue their goals against material lobbies. So I have a soft-corner for them. 

JV: Your characters in Invisible refer to the Indian culture and attitudes to ‘time’ in a dreamy way.

KB: But that is an illusionary viewing. But if you look more carefully, India spends much more time to spiritual betterment. There is something distinct in the approach of the mystic and the metaphysical here in India than in Europe or America. And I have an attraction to that part. 

JV: You are also a film editor?

KB: Yes, but I often try not to edit my own work. But apart from directing my own films, I am involved in the editing of the work of the younger generation of directors. 

JV: Can you talk a bit about your recent movie Avé? You have mentioned in some interviews that it is an autobiographical work. And what connects the two unlikely characters in that movie?

KB: Although it is a work of fiction, there are some autobiographical elements in it. It is essentially an unusual love story. It takes place on the road. Two young people meet while hitchhiking. These two people can also be considered outcasts. They could not be any more different from others. The girl is a compulsive liar. She invents different personalities for herself. She does that not in order to have personal gains, but to protect her own fragility. The boy is more like a Catcher in the Rye type of character. He is compelled to tell the truth no matter what, no matter how much he can hurt someone. And these two very unlikely characters meet on the road. The boy is hitchhiking to the funeral of his friend. And the girl is looking for her troubled brother. They spend four days travelling together, on the road. And at the end both of their lives are changed. Although it is a very simple and low-budget film, every element of its production was difficult and lengthy. 

From Avé (2011)

JV: What do such situations teach you?

KB: For me, part of making films is learning to be patient.  It so happens that a film takes a long time from me. A friend of mine often poses the question how to eat an elephant, and the answer is, one bite at a time. I am going to approach this new project that way. 

JV: What is your take on the short movies that are all over YouTube these days, most often made by young students?

KB: Like anything else a majority of them may lack any significance, but a few of them are brilliant. Both directors and actors start by making short movies. Even in my case, I made a number of short experimental movies in the beginning, which were shown in galleries. I find the short movie format quite challenging. It’s not easy, it’s like a short poem – you have to be very precise. It all depends on the intention. As long as the story that they narrate engages you, and makes an impact, that’s all I care about. Technical aspects are secondary in that case. If you could sympathise with the characters, or find something about humanity revealed in a movie, that’s a work worth watching. 

JV: You are also a writer and visual artist. Do you write anything other than for the films? 

KB: No. If I write something like that it would be my own personal reflections. Years ago, in my teens, I used to write poetry, and some of them got published.

JV: What about the visual artist part of you? Which medium do you use?

KB: I make photographs, digital art and sculpture. 

JV: This should rather have been the first question – when did you realise that you wanted to be a director? What is your academic background in arts/films? 

KB: This may sound like a cliché, but I have always wanted to make movies. Even when I was very young, even as a kid, I used to write scripts for films. When I was at college, I made short films. I went to London Royal College of Art for my Masters and did Documentary Film Studies in New York. But it is not always necessary to have an academic background in the craft before you start making movies. If you look at the large number of famous directors, there are many who never went to the university to do a course on film making. A course may help in some cases, but it is never a must that you do it.

Vienna Snapshots

It was a 10 day dream escape. Things were not going well with the world in those days. I came back to a place where one couldn't avoid TV and newspapers. And the images in them could make you wonder whether there is any meaning in all these; whether anything matters in human life. 

But for a short while Vienna gave me a chance to be lost fully in new sights, smells, sounds and tastes. There was even a heavy rain that drenched me while I hoped in vain that the biggest tree in the Botanical Garden would give me cover. There is a lot of history scattered everywhere in the city. All of us know that, and the guide books give you more information than necessary. I could sense a lot of romance in the air, and a bit of laziness and sadness too. And yes, music. The music that cannot be named. The kind that comes in search of you if you are ready to be silent.  

Life is a mix of the unexpectedly good and the terribly bad that lurks behind it. I wonder whether our sense of aesthetics remains the same all the time. But Vienna can never be considered an ordinary city. The beauty that has emerged out of its good and bad times cannot ever be compared to the gargantuan obscenities that many consider to be the modern buildings that impose on you a sense of immense wealth and power. I wonder whether cities like this can ever be made again, with an eye to details, a special care given to the way they compliment nature instead of overpowering it. It's just like the larger-than-life David Lean movies that are now becoming part of history. Those were made for a purpose, in times when they could afford it. But film industry can have good alternatives, even though it involves a lot of capital and focused effort by a lot of people. When it comes to the making of a city, the dimensions are unimaginably larger and unmanageable. We may have to be content with the crowded cities full of tastelessly constructed skyscrapers.

Oh, all that rant apart, let me come to the point. I went to Vienna to read a story at the 13th International Conference On The Short Story of English held at Juridicum, Vienna University. I will write about the conference in another post. Here I will share some snapshots. It was hard to choose these from the thousands of pictures clicked by me on my Samsung Note 3 and a Sony video camera that shoots not-too-bad stills, and by my sister on her Sony proper still camera.  None of these can be termed professional, though my video camera can be considered a semi-professional one, but only for its videos. Anyway, I felt like sharing some random selections. I tried to include those that left some impression in me, and not the regular ones that are similar to those you can find all over the Internet, if you google images for Vienna. Here they are...

I was in the right mood for people watching. The man was very busy on his phone. But at some point he noticed the two well dressed ladies staring at him. The shameless ones!

This guy kept staring at me for full five minutes. I kept staring back and then, believe me, he laughed. When I tried to click one more picture, he said "No, please! This is between you and me. I have a reputation to keep" and went back to his stare-self.

This is the place from where I got the idea in my head of taking a ride in a horse carriage, but I found out that it could be very expensive. And by the time I finally made up my mind, I had seen most of Central Vienna by walk. So I decided to go for a ride in the Central Cemetery, which was too vast and secluded to be seen in one day by walk. And the ride there was much cheaper too - a decision I did never regret.

Henry the gentle fiaker (horse-carriage driver) and his naughty (and lovely) horses took us for a 30 minutes ride inside the central cemetery. Henry told us about all the 'music guys, art guys, culture guys and literature guys' who are buried, or have memorial graves, there. That was a unique experience and there were some surprises too - hope to write about it soon.

The happiest man I met in town...

I don't know how much time I spent hunting for graffiti art in Vienna. But I forgot where I spotted this. 

This was in Wien Mitte/Landstraße. I had to wait endlessly to get this shot with no people in front of it. It's a very crowded place, all times of the day. I just got lucky for some five seconds and I made it!

This is not exactly the result I wanted, though I tried a lot of positions to get it framed this way, including the one in which I almost lay down on the pavement, next to horse shit. 

I loved the way that cycle stood there, with so much confidence and attitude.

Oh, these big things, and these tiny things...

Yes, the bird was shooed away, successfully.

I didn't want to bore you with my 'lamp post series' but thought this was special.

We entered the Belvedere from some place near this.

You find these folks everywhere - they are quite good-natured, almost all the time.

This was a great story. I guess his name was Robert, and he wanted to run away from the place, from his mom, who was very energetic and witty the way she treated him.

You must agree that this is a great idea for a photo frame.

Well, I didn't follow the advice, and did even forget to buy a Klimt Kiss. 

Belvedere. You may get a better picture on wikipedia, but I felt this was an achievement for a photo taken on phone.
 

Cafe Central. I can write pages on that place. I felt very special sitting there. Perhaps the fact that it was the usual haunt of many famous guys like Trotsky and Freud mattered to me too, but to be honest, I was more drawn to the ambience, the way it is designed, the ceilings, the paintings, the music. And yes the coffee and the cakes. I wish I could be there again, right now.

I won't forget a comment made by my friend Mahesh, who works in Geneva and came to Vienna to see the place and to show me around a bit: "If we were here at a very young age, it would have been a dreamland. But why is it that we see all these lovely pastries only at a certain age when we have to remind ourselves to pull our tummy in whenever someone takes our snaps?". Hmm...that's a question and a half.

A place we loved and were not meant to see in detail. On both the occasions we tried to see it, rain threatened us, and in one case,  drenched us. 

Lovely lady.
 

 Mahesh was next to me when we saw this too. Each of us just let out a sigh this time.

 Saints for sale.

I never managed to get inside. Just stole a glance through the window. Well, don't look at that painting. I warned you!

Schonbrunn Palace. We went there two times. Once it was too dark to take a picture of the city from up there, and the second time it rained, so we couldn't even go up there. There is supposed to be a next time. 

 I loved to spy on them.

That was my first giant wheel ride, and I thought it was quite good. The view was great on all sides. 

 Another view, from the Giant Wheel.

I love anything that has two faces.

 A view of the Central Cemetery.

I had to go near them, they had to bow, and then I had to bow, and the lady had to give me a beautiful smile.

Not a great fan of Madam Tusaauds, but I confess I loved some parts of this one, especially the ones on the 'music guys', as Henry the gentle fiaker would call them.

I couldn't take my eyes off this. It seems there's so much more growing up for me to do.

 Another view, of the Botanical Garden.

Well, this is what they call the Giant Wheel there.



Thanks so much for your patience. That was just a bit of the Vienna I experienced. I hope to return with some more serious news in the next post, on the conference.

The Gaza Blame Game And Children Who Live, With No Choice

There is no doubt that graphic images of wounded and dead children, who had no role or agency in the Gaza issue, are heartbreaking. Wherever you turn to in this age of incessant ideas, you find lamentations, rants, angry slogans, calls for revenge in this world and the other, and even calls for peace and solutions. It is all very troubling, and life-changing too, for a thinking person. Can we really think of a solution? I can't, to be honest. I can't, unless we shift our focus, at least for arguments' sake, from the children who are dead, to the ones who are not dead. The ones who are not dead and have to live, with no choice.

The inane blame game and its uselessness is looked at with great insight in the recent Guardian article here.  It concludes with a strong view of "[N]ot one more shell in a Gaza schoolyard, ever." Let us hope so against our hopes, against what history warns us. Even then, the question remains of those who survive the experience - both those who suffer and those who cause the suffering directly or indirectly. They will have to live in a world devoid of real choices, morality apart. This is not a pleasant situation, especially when a part of these survivors turn out to be children. Children who grow up to realize at some point in their life that they cannot separate themselves from the history of dead children. Not just because the dead children were related to them by the bond of blood, religion or nationality but also the stronger bond of an ideological situation.

Philosophers keep wondering about free will. Can the idea of free will exist in a world where unfettered thoughts don't exist? Parental influences and institutional/religious indoctrination are not the only things that work against free will. History plays a major part there, a part that can be compared to what our genes play in our biological existence. Just like there is generally no choice in deciding on the genetic pattern/condition we need, there is no choice in deciding what we are in the context of the history that defines our positions.

This may sound like a complex issue, but it is an important one when we try to label people on the basis of existing knowledge systems. It goes beyond the possibilities we count on our fingers about what traumatic experiences can cause in a child's development. It doesn't help to take the case of a so-called terrorist or suicide bomber and work backwards to see how her/his life experiences have led to the 'wrong' decisions s/he had taken in the only life at the only time s/he had, just in order to write her/him off as a causality of history.

We have more causalities around us. Our children, who are alive, and have no choice but to see what is happening around them, to read about them, to be transformed by them. In a case of being drawn into a senseless conflict, one has only two choices - to be on one side, or the other. But those choices are no choices. The real choice would have been to stay away from the senseless conflict, and to focus on something that the individual considers sensible. History draws us to that senseless conflict. Perhaps that's an existential situation, beyond human intervention. Or, is that so? If we talk about decisions, it has to be in the context of someone who is capable of taking them, someone who has choices.

Are we the grown up versions of children who were drawn to conflicts, by histories that define our existence? Is there any way in which some histories can be shaken off, or is it against the rules of Nature? If the latter is the case, we are doomed to produce a generation of no choice. They will end up repeating the cause and effect nonsense, especially if we teach them who they are and bring them up with a great sense of belonging to places and ideologies. There will always be some scores to settle, to prepare the field for a fair game. And the process of this preparation will go on endlessly, through the myriad unfair games that are part of it.

We won't be able to think of a real solution yet, unless we think a little less of what we have to pass on to children. A little less of what we believe in, what we stand for, what we fear, what we dream of, what we are entitled to, what was taken away from us, what others have done to us, what we have to do to others, what we have suffered, what we have done to cause suffering to others, what we should continue to do to cause suffering to others, what was done to our forefathers, what we have to do to their children...Oh, I am tired. I just hope some of you get the point.

Tracing The Origin Of Violence: An Interview With Michelle Cohen Coresanti, Author of 'The Almond Tree'

There could be multiple readings of a novel that deals with conflicts, especially when it is related to recent history. Years of media intervention and endless discussions on the Israel-Palestine issue has seemingly inured the conscience of people who are not directly involved in it. Regional and religious feelings interfere with the varied responses that come out occasionally, as a reaction to the horror that comes out of the situation, like in recent times. What literary works do in this climate is in fact a subtle intervention - for the number of people who would read hundreds of pages to get a deeper insight to the issue are much lesser than the ones who do their armchair theorizing after watching a 3 minute TV footage. 

'The Almond Tree', published in 2012 had made an impact on its own terms. Michelle could have spent a lot of time to give her Palestinian Muslim male narrator an authentic voice. Many could have raised arguments that a Jewish woman can't simply do that, no matter how hard she tries. There could have been varied responses to the underlying theories of the book, from both sides of the parties involved in the conflict. However, I was more concerned about the creative process involved in the whole effort and her take on the issue when I interviewed her soon after the publication of the book, for the journal I edit, Lakeview International Journal of Literature and Arts. I just thought a blog post which features that interview might be relevant in the light of the recent Gaza operation and its unfortunate aftermath. I hope to have one more post after this about the role of literary works and films, if any, in this scenario. 

The interview focuses mainly on the creative process involved in conceiving the book, how the voice of the protagonist was shaped, instances of scholasticide that don't often get talked about and the author's insights on the whole situation.
                                                           

                                     THE INTERVIEW

Jose Varghese (JV): How did The Almond Tree materialize? 

Michelle Cohen Corasanti (MCC): The idea for The Almond Tree materialized when I realized that a writer can reach into readers’ hearts and change them forever. I grew up in a Jewish, Zionist family where we were taught that after the Holocaust the Jews found a land without a people for a people without a land and made the desert bloom. We were also taught that the Jews were always persecuted due to no fault of their own. In high school I went to Israel and learned that what I had been taught was a lie. I was horrified to see how the Palestinians were treated. I wanted to devote my life to help bring about a just peace. But there was little that could be done at that point. Once I read The Kite Runner, the line about how history, politics and religion are virtually impossible to overcome, I got the idea for my story. During all my years involved in the conflict, one of the only glimmers of hope I saw was at Harvard where a Palestinian and Israeli were working together with a Nobel Prize winner. I could see how strong they were when they combined forces and decided to build my story around that seed. 

JV: When exactly did you think of writing about Ichmad? Why did you choose to write from a male perspective, and how challenging was it?

MCC: I don’t think I ever chose to write in the voice of a male Palestinian Muslim. When I went to write the book, I put myself in his shoes and became him. I knew who the protagonist was at the core. It was so natural because I heard the stories from Palestinian males. I was at their houses. I saw how they lived, how they were treated, where they came from.

JV: As one can see, it's not at all a fabricated story. How much of reality is there, and how did you fictionalize it?

MCC: The vast majority of the novel is fictionalized reality. I wanted to put a name and a face on the news. We often hear five were injured or two were killed or about thousands of political prisoners. I wanted to show that they are someone’s mother, brother, sister, father.
For example, I got the idea for the protagonist from someone I knew at Harvard. I’ll call him Hasan. His father helped a refugee who snuck back into the country to plant weapons and was sentenced to 14 years. Hasan was twelve at the time, the oldest of nine with an illiterate mother. He was forced to become the breadwinner of the family. He was only able to attend school infrequently, but it was enough because he was so gifted in math and science. He received a scholarship to attend the Hebrew University. There, in an environment of publish or perish, the Israelis recognized his genius and embraced him. Initially his first advisor for his masters was right-wing and racist, but when Hasan helped him publish more than he ever had, the professor embraced him. In fact, for his PhD, a top Jewish Israeli professor became his advisor and when Hasan graduated, he helped Hasan get a post-doc at Harvard with a Nobel Prize winner. The Israeli professor paid for the other half of the post doc so that they could continue working together.

I changed many aspects of the story. The Palestinians inside Israel were ruled by the military government until 1966 so they were under similar laws to those of the Palestinians in the occupied territories starting in 1967. The protagonist is born in 1948 so he grew up under Israeli military government so the conditions were more like those of the occupied territories from 1967. Most of the events actually happened, but again I fictionalized reality. Obviously, Nora was killed like Rachel Corrie. On many occasions I had to tone down reality because if I was to tell what really happened, no one would believe me. For example, an Israeli pushed a Palestinian man and his son who were working at a construction site off a scaffold. The father fell on barrels of rocks and eventually died from his injuries. The son managed to grab onto a pipe until they were able to rescue him. Instead of having Abbas die from his injuries, I just had him crippled.

JV: Did you attend any creative writing course in order to create this highly readable novel that strikes a chord with the hearts of readers from across the world? If you did, how useful were they, to make you a better writer?

MCC: When I decided to write this novel, I thought it would take three months. I said to myself if Khaled Hosseini, a medical doctor, could write The Kite Runner, then surely I, a lawyer trained in writing, would have no trouble. Twenty-one writing courses, six editors and seven years later, I finished the novel. I absolutely couldn’t have written this book without the writing courses. When I first wrote the book, I just wrote a story. There was no dialogue, no hooks, no cliff hangers, no complex characters, no tension. Basically I took every course from dialogue, character development, word painting, grammar, plot and so many more. Also, I think one has to learn to read like a writer. When reading, one has to keep analyzing how the writer made one feel a certain way. I read all the best sellers to see why they were best sellers. I read all the classics to see why they endured the test of time. I wanted to bring about social change so I read books like Uncle Tom’s Cabin that helped end slavery in the US.

My goal in this book was to change the way that people saw the Palestinians, particularly in the United States because I think that for there to be change, the US has to change its policies. I wanted to humanize the Palestinians and show why we should celebrate differences and focus on our commonalities to advance humanity. I wanted to reach as many people as possible so I knew that I would have to keep my language simple. Most Americans want a fast-paced gripping story and the message has to be sent through the back door. I knew I would have to plant seeds and appeal to human values. I understood if I started to try and prove facts, I would enter into a bottomless pit.

JV: Do you advocate creative writing courses to budding novelists/writers?

MCC: I most definitely advocate creative writing classes. I think the best ones: 1. Tell you what needs to be done, 2. Show you examples of it in famous books 3. Have a component where in each session you have to write something pertinent to what you are working on, say dialogue, that needed to be submitted to the entire class and everyone comments. Feedback was critical for me.

JV: There are striking parallels and paradoxes in the depiction of women characters in the novel, though it is mainly narrated from the viewpoint of a male protagonist. Are these female characters based on people you know? How much of you were transferred into them?

MCC: First I will admit that the absolute hardest character for me to write was the Jewish American human rights activist. In retrospect and with hindsight I can say that I wanted her to be everything I wished I could have been, but failed to be. I was unable to give her any flaws. No one likes a perfect character. Everyone hated her and eventually, I found a way to give her the most courageous death I could.

In writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe tried to appeal to white women because she thought they would be more sympathetic to the plight of the blacks. So she had, for example, Eva, the purest girl who sees Uncle Tom the slave as a human being and is against slavery. She is angelic. Stowe made her into a heroine to give women someone to try to emulate. I tried to do that with Nora and Justice. I wanted to give examples of women who didn’t judge a person based on their religion. On the other hand, I portrayed Professor Sharon’s first wife as a nasty racist and their marriage ends in divorce.

As far as the women are concerned, Mama was based on women I met, particularly the mother of the scientist form Harvard. I didn’t do that to put her down. I did that to try and show how far he had come. His achievements in my mind are even greater considering the distance he transversed.

I got the idea for Ichmad’s second wife, Yasmine, from a class on Arabic literature that I took in college called east-west. The class dealt with what happens when an eastern man goes to the west to study, meets a western woman, falls in love, comes back to the east and is pressured into an arranged marriage with an eastern woman. Typically he is blinded at first by the west and he looks down on his own culture until he learns to appreciate how much his eastern wife brings to the table and then he realizes they are cut from the same cloth. As far as Ichmad is concerned, when he meets Yasmine, he is still not over Nora. He doesn’t appreciate her until she has his son and then once he sees how great she is with his son, he realizes they were cut from the same cloth.

Ichmad’s first love from the university was beautiful and brilliant, but she was forced into an arranged marriage. Many of the other women were based on people I met or read about over the years.

JV: What is the focal point of your novel? Is it the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seen from a new perspective? How far could you justify/critique both sides?

MCC: I think when I wrote this book, my target audience was Americans though I knew I needed momentum from the rest of the world to really push this novel to become a bestseller. As a Jewish American, who lived in Israel for 7 years, who has degrees in Middle Eastern studies and law with a specialization in human rights and international law, I felt I would be a hard force to dismiss. I didn’t want to argue the facts because those are easily manipulated and truthfully they would probably bore many Americans. I wanted to show what Zionism meant to the Palestinians. I wanted to shatter stereotypes and give the Americans a little Palestinian boy who they could love and root for and want to succeed. My book wasn’t about casting blame or advocating hatred. I wrote this book to show how strong we could be if we just pooled resources and worked together instead of focusing on differences and destroying each other. In fact, many people see this book as much bigger than the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Anyone who has ever encountered hardship can relate. My father-in-law was born during the depression. His father was a new immigrant. They lost their house to the bank, but my father-in-law went on to build a very successful company. He saw himself in Ichmad.

JV: Is scholasticide a wide-ranging phenomenon that comes out of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Do you know of any such particular cases in real life?

The scholasticide I discussed in Gaza in the book was based on reality. Out of all the areas Israel rules, I think their scholasticide policies in Gaza are the worst. In the US the whites denied the slaves education. The Nazis also used such policies.

JV: Does the novel have a clear message to Israel?

MCC: The clear message to Israel is that we didn’t survive the Holocaust to go from victims to victimizers. Never again means never again for anyone, not just Jews. The lessons we should have learned from the Holocaust were not how to have a pure country, but that we can never be bystanders to human suffering. If Israel wants to have a Jewish country in the heart of the Arab world on land that was occupied by another people the vast majority of whom were not Jewish, they will have to murder, steal, persecute, oppress and all the other policies that go along with ethnic cleansing. My message is it’s better to have a secular democratic country where everyone lives together with equal rights instead of a racist, oppressive country.

JV: Is the characterization of Professor Sharon/Menachem totally fictitious?

MCC: The character of Professor Sharon was based on a combination of two professors I had heard about. One was racist who learned the value of a brilliant Palestinian student and his love for science and desire to succeed surpassed his racism and another whose love for science was of utmost importance and he had the brilliance to do something about it.

JV: Can one expect people like him in today's world? Is it easy to transform people's deep-rooted outlooks? How did you make the transformation of him convincing in the novel?

MCC: I think when you get to know someone on the personal level and have respect for their abilities and see how such abilities can benefit you, it breaks down stereotypes. I think that friendships flourish when there are common interests. This is especially the case for true scientists whose love for science can overcome such obstacles. I think that unless people have met someone who is a true scientist they may not be able to understand how science can be a bridge. I happened to see it with my own eyes. Someone doesn’t come from abject poverty and overcome obstacles such as racism and discrimination and make it to Harvard as a post-doc for a Nobel Prize winner unless he possesses certain characteristics: a brilliant mind, a deep passion for science, intense focus, and a willingness to put science above all else. I didn’t write about something that happens every day. If this were the case, the conflict would have ended. I am writing about the rarest of instances. The perfect storm when all the stars just happened to line up. This is by no means the norm.

JV: Were you afraid, at any point of time, that your attitude to the Israel-Palestinian conflict could turn out to be controversial?

MCC: What I have found is that the Zionists who read The Almond Tree have been transformed for the most part and are able to see the Palestinian perspective because I appeal to Jewish values. The people who have had a problem with my book are the ones who have not read it and refuse to read it because they don’t want to hear anything but Zionist propaganda. I call for people to embrace our common humanity. I don’t feel that is controversial, but there are always irrational people who will try and whip something up. I am afraid of those people, but I want my children to know that I did see injustice and I tried to do something about it. Every time I get scared, I think of all the children that are suffering and I find the strength because I’m more afraid for what will happen if I don’t speak the truth.