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Interview
Haroon Siddique
Public Enemy
Interview
Public Enemy’s Chuck D: ‘Trump is a half-baked celebrity real estate hypocrite’
Haroon Siddique
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Michael Spicer has been trying – mostly failing – to make it as a comedian for the best part of two decades. As a teenager, Spicer amassed enough rejection letters to wallpaper the spare bedroom of his family home. (He was a precocious teenager.) Spicer kept plugging away at comedy writing throughout his 20s and 30s, pitching to TV commissioners but receiving unending rejections. “A lot of the stuff I wrote wasn’t quite good enough,” he admits. It wasn’t that Spicer wasn’t getting anywhere at all – “I would always touch the surface of success,” he says – but he certainly wasn’t getting anywhere fast.Parts in BBC satirical comedy The Mash Report, hosted by Nish Kumar, and the Diane Morgan sitcom Mandy were promising, but they weren’t enough to make ends meet, so Spicer took a job writing copy for a shipping company. His mother couldn’t understand why his career never seemed to take off.“She’d say to me,” Spicer chuckles, “‘but there’s so much rubbish on TV. How can there not be room for you?’” He watched his comedy peers, like Morgan and Kumar, break through into the mainstream. “They became household names,” he says, “while I was playing characters like ‘Tosser Number 1’, or ‘Man on the Street’. It was hard in a way, although I felt nothing but good things for them, because I knew how talented they were.”And then, in June 2019, Spicer was scrolling through Twitter while at work at the shipping firm. He saw a viral clip of Boris Johnson being interviewed by Talk Radio during the Tory leadership race. The interviewer asked Johnson what he did to relax. “You could see that he was really struggling for an answer,” Spicer says. “The two sides of his brain were literally fighting each other: do I tell the truth, or lie?” As Johnson stared into the distance, stalling for time, Spicer observed that it looked like he was waiting for advice to be fed into his ear.When Spicer got home that evening, he filmed a minute-long video in which he pretended to be Johnson’s adviser, feeding him lines through a headpiece. “Say something, you vase of wank!” Spicer urges, sitting behind a pile of box-binders and notes. The video cuts back to Johnson being interviewed. “Buses…I make models of buses,” says Johnson. Spicer uploaded the video to Twitter around 10pm, then went to bed. He woke up to find that his social media feed had exploded. The video changed everything for him. “It was completely surreal,” he says. “It felt like a fever dream.”Since that day, Spicer has spun off his harried political aide character into series The Room Next Door, which features the comedian attempting to avert some of the most unbelievable moments in recent political discourse. (There have been many.) Such is the success of The Room Next Door – which he uploads to Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, and has amassed 50m views – that Spicer has appeared on James Corden’s The Late Late Show, has a 10-date live tour booked for next year, and a book coming out in October. (The Secret Political Adviser is a collection of emails, texts, memos and documents collated by Spicer’s fictitious political adviser spanning the period 2016-2020 – ie when everything started going wrong in the world.)Spicer is 43. All the doors he’s been knocking on for years have suddenly swung open; suited attendants wait to take his coat and offer him a drink. The career he’s been working towards since he was a teenager is finally here. “It would have been nice to have a career in comedy without this constant narrative of horror behind it,” he observes. “But here we are.”Spicer represents the new vanguard of comedians satirising the political quagmire we’ve become embroiled in since the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump. We are living in the age of political gaffes: there are so many of them, and they come so thick and fast, that what would once have led the news agenda for 24 hours gets forgotten in minutes. Trump regularly says things so extreme that they are barely legal – in 2020 alone, he has touted bleach injections as a cure for coronavirus, encouraged police to shoot civilians, defended armed vigilantes, and suggested that he won’t accept the election result – and yet the world keeps turning. Outrage can only sustain itself for so long.In this age of howlers so big you can see them from outer space – the gulf of guff, the ocean of lies – the role of the comedian is to remind us that the times we are living in are not normal, no matter how desensitised we have become to the cringing failures and mendacious distortions of our elected leaders.“Usually, the writers of political satire would impersonate a president and do scripted lines,” says Dr Dannagal Young, a political humour expert at the University of Delaware. “Their role is to reframe situations or digest them down to their most absurd. But what’s different about this new wave of comedy is that the words being satirised are the actual words being spoken by elites, and the role that’s played by someone like Michael Spicer is to be the foil: the person who comes in and highlights the ridiculousness of everything being said.” More
Observer book of the week
Autobiography and memoir
Disloyal: A Memoir by Michael Cohen review – disgraced Trump lawyer’s kiss and tell
An account of a decade at the president’s side offers gossipy insights into Russian influence, Trump’s dangerous allure and the ‘pee tape’ More
Anyone familiar with the ritual called the State of the Union is also familiar with the fact it invariably ends with the exhortation “God bless America.” Few are probably aware of the fact that the first president to utter it was none other than Richard Nixon, who “dropped the phrase during an attempt at damage control for the burgeoning Watergate scandal on April 30, 1973.” God did bless America at the time, if only by ridding the country of “Tricky Dick.”
Yet it is probably fitting that it was Nixon who first came up with this phrase. Nixon represents something that is fundamental to the human condition, at least in its American form: the drive to succeed, no matter what, the force of self-delusion (“I’m not a crook”) and the fundamental hypocrisy that is central to the American experience.
Nixon marks the origins of much of what is wrong today in the United States. It was his so-called Southern strategy — the appeal to the worst racist animus of white voters in the South — that not only won him the election, twice, but which marked the Republican Party for decades to come. Donald Trump owes his victory in the presidential election of 2016 to a large extent to Richard Nixon — a victory that has poisoned the country beyond repair.
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Trump’s callous response to some of the worst calamities in recent history, from the disastrous impact of COVID-19 to the hellish wildfire inferno engulfing the western states, suggests that God has been looking less than kindly on his “city upon a hill” envisioned to represent a model of Christian charity, as John Winthrop put it in 1630. In fact, one might even suspect that God has come to hate it — that he hates it so much, in fact, that he allowed for the election of Donald Trump, the worthy heir to Richard Nixon.
Nixon, of course, was a crook. But compared to Trump, he was one of Woody Allen’s “smalltime crooks,” little more than a minor league player. At the same time, however, he prepared the ground and paved the way for the current president who has made the appeal to white anxiety and resentment central to his administration. Trump, of course, has gone out of his way to invoke God’s blessing, waving the Bible (albeit upside down) in front of a church “he rarely attends and whose leaders and congregation work against the policies he trumpets,” in a craven attempt to play to his base: the dwindling number of fundamentalist Christians who consider him their last bulwark against an increasingly discombobulating, if not threatening, reality.
Walking With Dinosaurs
Donald Trump is the epitome of the stereotypical American, boisterous and narrowminded (“still the greatest country in the world”), hypocritical to the max (waving a Bible while boasting that he can grab any woman by her private parts and get away with it), and completely oblivious to how the rest of the world regards the US these days (“we should have more people from Norway” at a time when no Norwegian in his or her right mind would want to move to a “shithole country” like the US). At the same time, he is reminiscent of the playground bully who runs away crying, like Scut Farkus’ toadie, Grover Dill, in “A Christmas Story” (“I’m gonna tell my dad”) — when somebody dares to stand up to him, particularly if it is a woman.
The United States is still the most (practicing) Christian nation among advanced Western democracies. In the most recent Pew survey on religion in America, around two-thirds identified as Christians. To be sure, this was substantially lower than just a decade ago. Yet compared to Western Europe, it is a remarkably high level. This, however, is only part of the story. What is considerably more important is the fact that a substantial number of Americans insist on taking the Bible literally, as the absolute Truth, even if that truth runs against not only science but even common sense (who in their right mind would believe that Jesus walked with dinosaurs?).
Now, one would expect that those who profess to be genuinely dedicated Christians would follow what the good book teaches. Basic exhortations such as don’t lie, don’t cheat, be kind, compassionate and merciful toward your fellow sister and brother, independent of their ethnic background, economic circumstances or sexual orientation. And, above all, be humble and don’t take the moral high ground with that smug self-righteousness, which is particularly irritating in the eyes of the Lord, whom America’s dedicated Christians claim as their ultimate authority.
As is written in Isaiah 64:6, “all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags.” Or as Jesus once put it, “Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven” (Luke 6:37). For the self-righteous, such sentiments are alien. The self-righteous are hypocrites who condemn others in order to show that they are morally superior. The Pharisees are a prime example of this kind of smug self-righteousness, which Jesus condemns in the most scathing terms.
In the United States, the equivalent are TV “evangelists” such as Pat Robertson, the host of the “700 Club,” a Christian news and TV program with an audience going into the millions. Or there are Christian “leaders” such as Jerry Falwell Jr., the disgraced former president of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, whose sexual shenanigans were too much even for evangelicals who have no qualms supporting a president who has boasted of getting away with … see above.
And there are TV and radio commentators such as Tucker Carson at Fox News, who is still trying to figure out how to find his way out of Trump’s backside, and Rush Limbaugh, famous for dismissing COVID-19 as nothing more than the common flu and, later on, after tens of thousands of Americans had died from the respiratory disease, charging that following medical experts and wearing masks was “un-American” and nothing “compared to the way we have overcome enemies and obstacles in our past.”
It would be easy to dismiss the likes of Robertson, Falwell Jr. and Limbaugh as somewhat picturesque if unhinged cranks were it not for the fact that their impact on ordinary people has been, and continues to be, far more pernicious than COVID-19 could ever achieve. There are good reasons to suspect that the Trump administration’s position on COVID-19, global warming and climate change, and white-on-black racism derives from a common root: the belief that the end is near. I am not referring to the end of COVID-19, or the end of the American empire, but of the end of humanity — the end of the world as we know it.
Fulfillment of Prophecy
In my former life, I had the opportunity to spend a year as an exchange student with a “fundamentalist” Christian family in Texas. They were some of the most generous people I have ever had the opportunity to encounter. They lived their faith, and it showed. The also introduced me, a Bavarian Catholic who had spent the past eight years of his life in a Catholic boarding school, to a world largely informed by the scripture’s teachings.
For the first time, I was confronted not only with some of the major Old Testament prophets such as Daniel, but also with the Book of Revelations and its exegesis. Here, the most important book at the time, at least among true believers, was Hal Lindsey’s “The Late Great Planet Earth,” which sold millions of copies. The book was very much informed by the Cold War. In Lindsey’s exegesis of the Revelations, Gog and Magog, the “forces” from the north threatening Israel, is the Soviet Union attacking Israel with Mi-24 helicopters (John’s giant locusts). After Gog and Magog’s annihilation, there will be a war “between the Western powers and the Chinese, which will culminate in the end of the world in a thermonuclear blast.” So much for Hal Lindsey.
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Nevertheless, the book was turned into a film, with Orson Welles, of all people, serving as the narrator. Both book and movie are based on John’s Apocalypse, which tells of the tribulations visited upon humanity heralding in the end of the world, the last judgment. True believers, of course, most of them Americans, were spared the pain. They were snatched from the earth in a process of divine kidnapping that swept them up into heaven from where they could gloat — the rapture. Evangelical writers, always eager to make a buck from the gullibility of true believers, turned the narrative into a series of books, “Left Behind,” which scared the daylights out of lukewarm believers and turned the authors into millionaires. This might sound funny, ludicrous, kooky, off the deep end were it not for the fact that it appears to inform major figures in Trump’s inner circle.
One of the central dogmas among those who believe in the truth as revealed by John in the Apocalypse is that the end of history — and the return of Christ — is contingent on the Jews rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem. For a long time, this was inconceivable, given the fact that the site of the temple is occupied by two of Islam’s holiest shrines, the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque.
Until Trump, American presidents have shied away from sanctioning Israel’s claim to all of Jerusalem. Diehard evangelicals have lobbied for decades that the American government do whatever possible to hasten the process. Presumably, this would allow the Jews to rebuild the temple. This, presumably, would entail destroying the Muslim shrines, which, in all probability, would trigger an all-out confrontation with the Muslim world.
But in the self-contained world of American “dispensationalism,” Trump’s 2017 decision to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem was therefore widely seen as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Trump himself acknowledged that the move was largely “for evangelicals” rather than Jews who appeared to be rather unenthusiastic about it. But then why would they, given the fate that according to evangelicals awaits many of them during the time of tribulations? Hint: a large number will be “purged out and removed” — a euphemism, I guess, for saying they will go straight to hell.
Apocalyptic Tales
With Donald Trump, staunch believers in this kind of apocalyptic tales have assumed influential positions in the administration, above all Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Housing Secretary Ben Carson, who is a Seventh-day Adventist, a Christian sect that holds that “almost all evangelical Christians will soon join with Satan to oppose Jesus Christ.” It stands to reason that their views on history and reality have had some influence on policy. Take, for instance, the environment. According to “rapture theologists,” the earth was given to humanity for its use. Therefore, environmentalism is nothing but “blasphemy.”
According to one of the most influential “theological” voices in the White House, humans will not destroy the planet because God will “continually renew the face of the earth until He forms a new heaven and a new earth in the end times.” In any case, given the imminent approach of the end of the world, the destruction of the natural environment is hardly of vital concern.
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In a similar vein, Trump’s lackluster response to the coronavirus pandemic might have something to do with the fact that among evangelicals, COVID-19 has been seen as a boon. As a leading contributor to the Trump campaign has put it, “The kingdom of God advances through a series of glorious victories, cleverly disguised as disasters.” In response to the pandemic, “millions of Americans” were turning to Jesus Christ, in the process augmenting the pool of likely Trump voters.
In less than two months, the American electorate is going to vote for the country’s leader. Evangelicals will be a major force; so will be other Christians, including Latino Catholics. As it stands now, there is a chance that Trump will get reelected as a result. Evangelicals will be voting for Trump, but not because they believe that he is model Christian. Quite the opposite. They will vote for him because they believe that he is “God’s tool.” In the aftermath of the 2016 election, polls revealed substantial numbers of white Protestants believing that Trump was “anointed by God.” They also revealed that only a very small minority thought he was elected because God approved of his policies.
Given what the Gospels have to say about Christ’s positions, it is fairly unlikely that God would approve of Trump’s “big, beautiful wall” or his more or less tacit support of racists and conspiracy theorists. This leaves only one alternative: God chose Trump to punish America for its blatant hybris, hypocrisy and self-righteousness. The Gospel tells us that God “so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Today, it seems that God hates America so much that he brought Donald Trump down upon it so that it understands the full extent of his wrath. Forget about God blessing America. He has better things to do.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
The Oscars were an ordeal for Sufjan Stevens. “Honestly, one of the most traumatising experiences of my entire life,” the songwriter half-laughs, half-groans. The event was, he says, “a horrifying Scientology end-of-year prom” representative of “everything I hate about America and popular culture”.He had never paid much attention to them before being nominated in 2018. Mystery of Love – his bittersweet folk ballad, written for Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name – was up for best original song and Stevens had been invited to perform. His devoted fans celebrated this appearance as a moment of long-overdue mainstream recognition for the spotlight-shy then-42-year-old; 26 million viewers were watching at home, after all. But for the artist himself, shrinking into his pink-and-black striped blazer as Hollywood A-listers schmoozed around him, there was not much to celebrate. “I didn’t want to have anything to do with that world and that culture,” he says. “I don’t want to be part of any room full of adults hemming and hawing over plastic trophies.”Stevens has spent his career adjusting his work to help avoid such rooms. The Detroit-born composer is an indie household name, with St Vincent, Moses Sumney (both of whom joined him onstage at the Oscars) and the National among his peers. He has fans in hip-hop, too: Kendrick Lamar and Mac Miller have both sampled him, while in 2011, Donald Glover proclaimed himself “the only black kid at the Sufjan concert” in a verse from Fire Fly telegraphing his sensitivity. More
For as long as one can remember, the stunningly beautiful valley of Kashmir has been a tinder box of clashing ideologies and religious beliefs. In the not too distant past, it was known as the land of Rishis, holy seers who combined the profound philosophies of Hinduism, Buddhism and Sufism to create a uniquely syncretic spiritual tradition.
Today, it is the site of a bitter territorial dispute between India and Pakistan, a conflict that has resulted in scores of casualties and the forced expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Pandits, as Kashmir’s Hindus are commonly referred to.
Author Rakesh K. Kaul’s first novel, “The Last Queen of Kashmir” (Harper Collins India, 2015), tries to shed light on the roots of this conflict by going back in time to explore the dramatic life of Kota Rani, the last ruler of the Hindu Lohara dynasty in Kashmir. Kota ruled as monarch until 1339, when she was deposed by Shah Mir, who became the first Muslim ruler of Kashmir.
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His most recent work, “Dawn: The Warrior Princess of Kashmir” (Penguin India, 2019), is an unexpected foray into the far distant future. Set in 3000 AD, the book combines artificial intelligence, genetics and quantum theory with the ancient wisdom of Kashmir’s traditional Niti stories, which inspire Dawn to overcome seemingly impossible odds to save humanity from impending destruction.
In this guest edition of The Interview, Vikram Zutshi talks to Rakesh Kaul about the inspiration behind his two novels, childhood memories of his strife-torn homeland and how his grandfather, the famed Kashmiri mystic Pandit Gopi Krishna, guides the trajectory of his life and work.
Vikram Zutshi: You have written what is possibly the first science fiction novel set in Kashmir. What inspired you to choose the genre of science fiction to tell this story and how does it adapt itself to Kashmiri history and culture?
Rakesh Kaul: I wish I could claim the honor of being a pioneer with “Dawn: The Warrior Princess of Kashmir.” But much as I admire them, I have many literary ancestors who are the equals of Joseph Campbell, George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. I am a mere upholder of a literary tradition that is over 2,000 years old. Western science fiction imagines possibilities like time travel, space exploration, parallel universes, extraterrestrial life. There are robots who are more advanced in their intelligence than humans.
But all these themes were part of the stories in Kashmir, plus more. “Dawn” has in it an ancient story about a robot city with a remarkable safety override. The Puranic story of Indra’s net holds within it the concept of recursive universes. The pinnacle of these stories is of course the collection of stories in the Yoga Vasistha.
The word “sahitya,” which means “literature,” was coined by Kuntaka in Kashmir. Within sahitya, there was a genre which dealt with all the above-mentioned themes but went beyond. One could say that if science fiction’s domain was all the possibilities within the bounded universe, then in Kashmir specifically — and India generally — the stories explored all the possibilities within the unbounded inner-verse.
So, if you like “1984” or “Brave New World,” which are sci fi classics, then “Dawn” is going to take you to a whole new level. Even more than Joseph Campbell, the stories that I have brought are not mere myths or fantasies; they reveal a cognitive organ and knowledge acquisition capability which unlocks the deterministic laws of nature in a manner that science is just beginning to grapple with.
Zutshi: What does the story arc of the central character, Dawn, tell us about the state of the world today?
Kaul: All science fiction stories in the West and their Indic counterparts, the Niti stories, deal with the existential question of the arc of one’s way of life. The mind is seduced by utopia and yet ends up in dystopia. One ignores at one’s peril the addictive narrative wars happening today that are shaped and served by technology. The world, whether global or local, is heading toward a duality of monopolistic cults that fiercely demand total obeisance. Non-conformity results in a flameout at the hands of troll armies.
Artificial intelligence is the omniscient eye watching over us. What we cannot ignore is that computer power is doubling every 20 months, data every six months, and the AI brain every three months. The champions of AI are promising that we will have sentience in 30 years. That is a close encounter of the third kind. That is within the lifespan of the readers. The danger to you as an individual has never been greater. One cannot take lightly the rising depression and suicide graphs coupled with desperate drug usage. Hence, the vital necessity for Dawn.
Dawn is the last girl left standing on earth in 3000 AD. She is facing an army of weaponized AIs and mind-controlled automatons; they rule over a deadly world where men have lost their souls and women have been slain — all heading to Sarvanash, the Great Apocalypse. This is a story of a close encounter of the seventh kind. How does Dawn arm herself? Can she win? Great Niti stories remind us that if the mind is a frenemy, then the need to nurture what is beyond the mind that one can turn to and trust is paramount. The Dawn lifehack that is presented is time-tested but oh so amazingly simple, yet powerful.
Zutshi: Is the characterization of the main protagonist based on a real-life person?
Kaul: “Dawn” in Sanskrit is “usha.” Usha is the most important goddess in the Rig Veda, the oldest extant text in the world. By contrast, none of the goddesses that we think about today are even mentioned there. Dawn is the harbinger of the rebirth of life each morn. She is the only Indian goddess who has spread around the world. Usha’s cognates are Eos in Greek, Aurora in Roman and Eostre in Anglo-Saxon [mythology], which is the root of the word Easter —the festival of resurrection. Interestingly, Usha is also the name of the sanctuary city where the Sanhedrin, [Israel’s] rabbinical court, fled to in the 2nd century. She is also the goddess of order, the driver away of chaos and darkness. She is dawn, she is hope, she is the wonder leading to resurrection.
Humans recognized her wonder a long time ago. They imagined Dawn born at the birth of the universe, whose one-pointed mission is to make darkness retreat and drive ahead fearlessly.
But Dawn is also a tribute to the warrior princesses of Kashmir, a land which was celebrated for its women in practice and not just poetry. They were not merely martial warriors, nor just holy warriors or ninja warriors, but much more. The Kashmiris enshrined the dawn mantra within themselves, men and women, and repeat it to this day. In my novels, the protagonists repeatedly draw upon it.
Zutshi: You have spoken about Niti, the traditional storytelling technique of Kashmir. Please elaborate on Niti for the lay reader and how it informed your work.
Kaul: “Niti” means “the wise conduct of life.” The first collection of Niti stories from Kashmir is the 2,000-year-old celebrated Panchatantra, which is the most translated collection of stories from India. Kashmiri stories have found their way into the Aesop and Grimm fairy tales, Chaucer and Fontaine.
The Kashmiris maintained that one is born with only one birthright, namely the freedom to achieve what is one’s life quest. So, the existential question is, What is the “way of life” by which one can maximize one’s human potential? The Kashmiris defined life’s end goal in heroic terms as unbounded fulfillment while alive, not limited by the physical and encompassing the metaphysical. But how does a mere Niti story enable you to achieve fulfillment and consciousness? Niti’s cultural promise is that it enables one to face any threat, any challenge in reaching one’s goal as one travels through time and space.
How does Niti work? Let us start with the Western perspective first. Descartes famously said that wonder was the first passion of the soul. Kashmir spent a thousand years studying this phenomenon and helps us penetrate deeper here. When we have an experience that is a total surprise, we go WOW — an acronym for “wonder of wonder.” When we go wow, it is expressing, How can this be? We not only accept the limited capacity of our senses and the mind, but we also have a profound moment of self-recognition that there is an unlimited capacity in us to experience what lies beyond our knowledge.
The wormhole between the two brings the relish of the state of wonder which in India was described as “adbhuta rasa” in the text “Natyashastra,” written by another Kashmiri illuminati, “adbhuta” meaning “wonder” and “rasa” meaning “juice.” So, in the wow moment you momentarily taste the wonder juice. All Niti stories are written in the adbhuta rasa literary style, and so is Dawn.
Zutshi: Your first novel, “The Last Queen of Kashmir,” inspired by the story of Kota Rani, was a hit with Kashmiris in India and the diaspora. What would you like readers to take away from the book and how is it relevant in our times?
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Kaul: Yes, much to my surprise the novel received critical acclaim and sold out! The second edition will be coming out worldwide in a month or so, with another beautiful cover of Kota Rani! “The Last Queen of Kashmir” is a historical epic about a great queen from India who informs and inspires. It engages audiences while serving as a cautionary tale for today. It was a precursor of what is now being called fail-lit. Much like Icarus, Kashmir’s humanist civilization of oneness and inclusivity flew too close to the Sun.
The story provides lessons on the importance of protecting, preserving and perpetuating our social freedoms in a unified society from being divided by religious and cultural conflict. Kota Rani’s story shows that we should look for leaders who protect freedom and defeat the pied pipers within who threaten us with tyranny in the guise of offering utopia.
Yet, “The Last Queen of Kashmir” is eventually a resurrection story to show us how the light of knowledge and the power of freedom can conquer all enemies. Kota was described as always captivating, never captive. It is a highly recommended read for all women because its notion of femininity and feminine power may surprise them. Kota Rani is memory and Dawn is imagination. Both are reflections of the same double reflexive power. Memory is what makes who you are, and imagination is what makes who you can be.
Zutshi: As a Kashmiri Hindu who moved to the United States fairly early in life, what are your earliest memories of your ancestral homeland? What do you hope to see in Kashmir’s future?
Kaul: My earliest memories are of the journey that we would take to my homeland from Delhi, where my parents had migrated to after the Kabali raids in October 1947. I remember my mother dropping a coin into the raging river Jhelum and praying for a safe journey as the bus would slowly creak across the hanging bridge in the hill town of Ramban.
Once there was portage across the old Banihal tunnel, where a section had caved in, only small, open jeeps could ferry us with our bags from our buses across to the waiting buses on the other side. The old tunnel was dark with a few small lamps that only accentuated the shadows. There were sections which were deliberately left bare in the older tunnel so that the massive water flow inside the mountain could rush out. They did not have the technology in those early days to divert the water. The sound of the rushing water still resonates inside me.
Kashmir was a place of sensory overload. I would sip the nectar endlessly from the honeysuckles, pluck the cherries growing in our garden. My cousin would rent a boat, and much like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn we would paddle through the water canals in our neighborhood raiding the mulberry trees growing by the banks of the river. We would wake up early in the morning and go for a hike to Hari Parvat, walking through the Shia neighborhoods with the graveyards. Once we saw a crowd of [Shia] self-flagellate as part of their religious observances, and we hid until they passed by. There would be other mob gatherings, but we were culturally trained to avoid them.
Once a year, we would go to my grandfather’s retreat overlooking the Nishat. It was a huge apple orchard. Evening time we would scurry back to the cabin because then the bears would come from the other side of the hill. Night was their foraging time.
Nothing compared, though, to the experiences when the family would rent a houseboat, technically a doonga. We would go to the shrine of Khir Bhavani for a week. The boat would move slowly, and there would be endless tea poured from the samovar accompanied by the local breads. Family life seemed to have kith and kin as an integral part. There was a feeling of intimate connectivity. At night, all the cousins would gather. We would spread the mattresses on the bottom of the boat and share the blankets. Then it was storytime. The girls would cry that we were scaring them when the boys would share the monster stories. But they would not leave the group because they did not want to miss out. I have brought some of these Kashmiri monsters and their stories into “Dawn.”
But, ultimately, Kashmir was about the mystic experience. I would sit in the inner sanctorum of our small temple at the end of the bridge on our little canal. There was barely space for a few. I would watch the water drops drip endlessly on the lingam. The small trident would be by the side. I would look at the paintings on the wall, each one a story and wonder about it all. The best, of course, would be the nighttime aarti at Khir Bhavani. It seemed that all of humanity was there with a lit lamp in their hands. The faces of the devout women and girls would be luminous, the moonlight would give them a sheen. There was beauty, love and innocence in the air.
As a Kashmiri, I would want the lakir ka fakir (blind ideologues) to disappear and the artist to reign supreme. Translation: Those who police others either morally or ideologically or religiously or by force of arms should go bye-bye. The rest will follow naturally, and the valley will emerge from its long, deep darkness.
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Zutshi: You are the grandson of famed Kashmiri mystic, Pandit Gopi Krishna. In what way have his work and teachings informed and influenced the trajectory of your life?
Kaul: The Pandit was the last rishi of Kashmir, a lineage that goes back to the formation of the valley by Rishi Kashyapa. Deepak Chopra said of him, “Pandit Gopi Krishna was a pioneer in the land of spirituality. His insights into the quantum nature of the body predate the scientific discoveries of today. I salute this great sage and scientist of the twentieth century.” Dr. Karan Singh, the crown prince of Kashmir who gave the eulogy at his funeral said, “In the 19th century, India gave the world Ramakrishna; in the 20th century it has given the world Gopi Krishna.”
I suppose he shaped me even before I was born. He made the decision that he was going to marry my mother without giving any dowry to break that pernicious social custom. His father-in-law begged him, [saying] that they had bought a priceless wedding sari the day that my mother was born. But to no avail. My mother was married in a simple cotton sari. My inception was in simplicity.
He was my first guru, and he continues to guide me. I learned from him the critical importance of being a family man, of community service, especially toward widows and destitute women, of being a fearless sastra warrior, of words being bridges, about poetry and the arts and, best of all, about the worlds beyond. I treasure his letters. I can never forget the talk that he gave at the United Nations where 600 Native American elders attended. It was a prophecy come true for them where it was stated that a wise man from the East would come and give them wisdom in a glasshouse.
Would I have dared to embark on a 12-year journey to bring the story of a hidden Kota Rani without the inspiration of what it took him to bring his story to the world? No. Especially when writing “Dawn,” his work was invaluable in steering me in describing the close encounter of the seventh kind. What is the biotechnology of the evolutionary force within us? And then in the epilogue for “Dawn,” it is all him because only he has traveled there. Even now as I write this, his beaming face smiles at me. I smile back.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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The Succession creator, Jesse Armstrong, used his Emmy acceptance speech to attack Boris Johnson and Donald Trump for their “crummy” response to coronavirus, and also the media moguls who do so much to keep them in power.Armstrong’s HBO show, telling the story of a billionaire media tycoon and his dysfunctional, warring family, was one of the big winners at the ceremony on Sunday. It won seven awards, including outstanding drama, which Armstrong accepted from a hotel room in London.He said it was sad not to be able to share the success with colleagues in the US. “Being robbed of the opportunity to spend time with our peers, maybe I’d like to do a couple of un-thankyous,” he said.“Un-thankyou to the virus, for keeping us all apart this year. Un-thankyou to President Trump for his crummy and uncoordinated response. Un-thankyou to Boris Johnson and his government for doing the same in my country.“Un-thankyou to all the nationalist and quasi-nationalist governments in the world who are exactly the opposite of what we need right now. And un-thankyou to the media moguls who do so much to keep them in power. So un-thankyou!”Armstrong is one of Britain’s most celebrated comedy writers, having co-created Peep Show and Fresh Meat in the UK as well as having been on the writing team for The Thick of It.Succession’s seven wins came from 18 nominations and included the best actor award for Jeremy Strong, who plays the eldest son, Kendall Roy. His success meant that Brian Cox, who plays the patriarch and was nominated in the same category, missed out on a prize that bookmakers had made him odds-on to win.Cox was one of many British and Irish actors to miss out. Olivia Colman (The Crown) and Jodie Comer (Killing Eve) were thwarted in their category when Zendaya made history by becoming the youngest person to win in the best actress drama lead category for Euphoria.Also missing out were Helena Bonham Carter (The Crown), Fiona Shaw (Killing Eve), Matthew Macfadyen (Succession), Harriet Walter (Succession), Jeremy Irons (Watchmen), Paul Mescal (Normal People), Andrew Scott (Black Mirror), Dev Patel (Modern Love) and Phoebe Waller-Bridge for her guest appearance on Saturday Night Live.Aside from Succession the big winners were HBO’s Watchmen, shown in the UK on Sky Atlantic, and the Canadian sitcom Schitt’s Creek, which, since it went on Netflix, has steadily and quietly become a huge feelgood hit. The sixth and final season of the show swept the board in the comedy categories, a feat not even achieved by shows such as Frasier and Modern Family.It won seven Emmys with acting wins for the show’s stars Eugene Levy, Dan Levy, Catherine O’Hara and Annie Murphy. Appearing in the ceremony’s virtual backstage area Dan Levy, its co-creator and showrunner, discussed the possibility of Schitt’s Creek returning as a movie.“Here’s the thing – some people have been asking that,” he said. “If there is an idea that pops into my head and worthy of these wonderful people, it has to be really freaking good at this point.”Other winners included Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, the Birmingham-born writer and comedian who started out on the UK standup circuit before achieving success in the US.RuPaul’s Drag Race, which has spawned a Bafta-nominated British version on the BBC, won the reality competition award.The virtual awards ceremony, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel – “welcome to the Pandemmys” – will go down as one of the oddest in the Emmys’ 72-year history with prizes delivered to winners, often in their homes, by people in hazmat tuxedos.The dress code was “come as you are”, with the suggested option of designer pyjamas. Hardly any of the stars went down that route, although Jane Lynch, in a very smart top, revealed she was also wearing sweatpants.A number of actors used the event to express support for the Black Lives Matter movement, including Regina King, who won the limited series lead actress award for Watchmen. She wore a T-shirt that honoured the police shooting victim Breonna Taylor and used her speech to remind people of the importance of voting.Later she explained why wearing the T-shirt was important. “The cops still haven’t been held accountable,” she said.“She represents just decades, hundreds of years of violence against Black bodies. Wearing Breonna’s likeness and representing her and her family and the stories that we were exploring, presenting and holding a mirror up to on Watchmen, it felt appropriate to represent with Breonna Taylor.” More
