I think of Hamid writing in an essay:
'I found myself standing at Baba Shah Jamal only three feet from a woman my age. Her veil covered her throat and the rear hemisphere of her head like a motorcycle helmet with the visor up. Her clothing was as loose as love, enough to make a full body slim and a slender one curve. It swelled at her chest and hips.
I watched her pick her nose delicately with her thumb. She noticed my gaze, and we both turned to look ahead with the self-conscious expression of people whose attention is centered in their peripheral vision.
It was hot.
And together, we sweated.'
Ah, the lack of exotica!
She says I like unassuming. Ah, the underdog, I think.
She says I believe in Art, sans the Market.
Now me, I'm a firm believer in the market. I believe in success, in money, I believe in targeting the right audience for the right product. Like getting my head down, hand dirty and working.
I prefer to say that I like to sell what I produce. To the highest bidder. I don't work for free and I don't claim to be untied to my audience. My art, or craft, exist for an audience. I try to give them what I want.
There used to be the cliché of the artist of the East as an exotica peddler - think Rushdie, good ol' M. F.
And now there is the cliché of the artist of the East as a denouncer of all things market driven.
The world of yoga breakfasts and carbon footprint-free living does love the pure-in-form and unsullied-by-money Eastern artist.
They are the new Maharishis to the new Beatles.
But exotica, like everything else, metamorphoses.
Today, it has taken the shape of the unhappy-fundamentalist and the interpreter of What-Makes-Us-Different.
I believe that this is the New Exotica. It targets its own market.
And it's the same market - the West.
There was a time when the West wanted to know our rituals, our quaint marriages, our strange faiths, our crazy customs.
Today, the West wants to know why we fight them? What makes us different? Why Muslim men, even after years spent in Western universities, suddenly turn suicide bombers?
Why does the East suddenly hate the West?
Explaining that, in great detail, in the New Exotica. The money comes from the same source and the hypocrisy lies in how the New Exotica likes to denounce the Old Exotica, attempting to prove that it is the somehow purer, more honest a craft.
In reality, nothing has changed. The New Exotica doesn't talk about the Kamasutra and Kolkata summers because the West no longer wants to hear about that. They have different concerns, different issues to deal with, and they need different interpreters.
I was in Berlin last month, and in the middle of a charming party, a lady, after explaining why she liked South African wine, went into the kind of men she liked.
'My mother,' she said, 'loved the princes, the mustaches, the jewels, on horses and elephants, our house in Potsdam is full of them'.
But she has changed. She, she said likes the thinking kind. 'I like men who can explain what's happening? Are Indian Muslims different from Pakistanis Muslims, do they study the same history, do they like Europe, do they see us as Nazis?'
The New Exotica like the Old Exotica seeks to explain, colourfully, the East to the West. Thing is, the West has changed, so has the East, and therefore there are different things to explain.first published:May 08, 2007, 09:11 ISTlast updated:May 08, 2007, 09:11 IST
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So she says, writers are like aphrodisiac. She says Mohsin Hamid says 'I don't sell exotica'.
I think of Hamid writing in an essay:
'I found myself standing at Baba Shah Jamal only three feet from a woman my age. Her veil covered her throat and the rear hemisphere of her head like a motorcycle helmet with the visor up. Her clothing was as loose as love, enough to make a full body slim and a slender one curve. It swelled at her chest and hips.
I watched her pick her nose delicately with her thumb. She noticed my gaze, and we both turned to look ahead with the self-conscious expression of people whose attention is centered in their peripheral vision.
It was hot.
And together, we sweated.'
Ah, the lack of exotica!
She says I like unassuming. Ah, the underdog, I think.
She says I believe in Art, sans the Market.
Now me, I'm a firm believer in the market. I believe in success, in money, I believe in targeting the right audience for the right product. Like getting my head down, hand dirty and working.
I prefer to say that I like to sell what I produce. To the highest bidder. I don't work for free and I don't claim to be untied to my audience. My art, or craft, exist for an audience. I try to give them what I want.
There used to be the cliché of the artist of the East as an exotica peddler - think Rushdie, good ol' M. F.
And now there is the cliché of the artist of the East as a denouncer of all things market driven.
The world of yoga breakfasts and carbon footprint-free living does love the pure-in-form and unsullied-by-money Eastern artist.
They are the new Maharishis to the new Beatles.
But exotica, like everything else, metamorphoses.
Today, it has taken the shape of the unhappy-fundamentalist and the interpreter of What-Makes-Us-Different.
I believe that this is the New Exotica. It targets its own market.
And it's the same market - the West.
There was a time when the West wanted to know our rituals, our quaint marriages, our strange faiths, our crazy customs.
Today, the West wants to know why we fight them? What makes us different? Why Muslim men, even after years spent in Western universities, suddenly turn suicide bombers?
Why does the East suddenly hate the West?
Explaining that, in great detail, in the New Exotica. The money comes from the same source and the hypocrisy lies in how the New Exotica likes to denounce the Old Exotica, attempting to prove that it is the somehow purer, more honest a craft.
In reality, nothing has changed. The New Exotica doesn't talk about the Kamasutra and Kolkata summers because the West no longer wants to hear about that. They have different concerns, different issues to deal with, and they need different interpreters.
I was in Berlin last month, and in the middle of a charming party, a lady, after explaining why she liked South African wine, went into the kind of men she liked.
'My mother,' she said, 'loved the princes, the mustaches, the jewels, on horses and elephants, our house in Potsdam is full of them'.
But she has changed. She, she said likes the thinking kind. 'I like men who can explain what's happening? Are Indian Muslims different from Pakistanis Muslims, do they study the same history, do they like Europe, do they see us as Nazis?'
The New Exotica like the Old Exotica seeks to explain, colourfully, the East to the West. Thing is, the West has changed, so has the East, and therefore there are different things to explain.
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