Culture. What's that?

ON STAGE

A brand new definition of culture is in the offing! A culturally starved area of Delhi is gifted with a cultural centre, the USP of which is a food court replete with bars, coffee shops and multi-cuisine restaurants; a leading national newspaper starts a weekly cultural page and to one's surprise one sees large photos of that film muscleman Salman Khan and his ilk blown up on that page; a highly publicised 'cultural' programme offers you a fashion show where nubile nymphets do the catwalk, albeit self-consciously!

So you see Delhi's families rushing to one eating joint after another, leading a bookseller to remark, "Here people don't believe in buying books, they'd much rather spend on eating out!"

Today's young men rush to the gym in pursuit of cultural fitness, and by the same token the women to the beauty parlour! And we witness the emergence of a whole new generation grounded in 'culture'! The culture created by the media, by the government, by the market and what have you.

One is obviously getting too old to be able to celebrate this new avatar of culture! One feels like a dinosaur singing the elegy of what in our time was understood by the word.

Recently, a journalist friend of my generation introduced himself to a gathering saying, "I write in newspapers for that mythical category called arts and culture."

This category truly has become mythical, at least if one were to look at the leading English newspapers. These very newspapers have screaming headlines of the most inane event that has anything to do with fashion models, Bollywood stars or fashion designers.

But anything to do with arts and artists? Oh, there is no space! Some time back a young journalist diligently interviewed a very eminent theatre director, but the piece was rejected by the paper because the director didn't look glamorous enough in the photograph provided!

I know all this is old hat but it suddenly hits you in the face when the passing away of a stalwart like K V Subanna, a Magsaysay award winner, and an untiring and innovative social and cultural activist, goes virtually unnoticed by this so-called national press!

The argument is that the papers give what the people want! The marketing wizards of these newspaper houses work overtime to discover these earth-shattering facts. Who are these mysterious people? How come the marketing people have never once asked me, or you, what you want from a newspaper?

Interestingly, most of the Hindi newspapers devote a lot of space to in-depth literary and art criticism. Does this mean our Hindi reader is more mature and demands more serious reading? It certainly seems so.

In all regional language papers, there is a great deal of space and emphasis given to arts criticism and debate on related issues. From this it can be deduced that the so-called 'masses' belong to the English-speaking and reading group, for whom the English papers bring out material fit for the lowest common denominator.

In theatre too, most of the serious, exciting and path-breaking work happens in the regional languages. The English theatre is largely superficial, barring two or three groups in each city. And where there is a tradition of theatre, there is no dearth of a theatre audience for language plays.

Even in the Hindi region, where there isn't a continuous tradition of theatre, given good publicity the houses run to packed capacity. The audience which attends these performances is also that which reads English papers. If these papers could push theatre and other artistic activity the way they push models etc, it would do a world of good to everyone around.

But this doesn't get big money because art is not an industry, it is one of the finer human endeavours which makes the world more liveable. The papers would much rather black out the existence of artists if they could have their way.

In any case, I now know that next time I direct a play, instead of concentrating on the production I should rush to the beautician, hair stylist etc to see if they can achieve the impossible task of making me look glamorous!