Books

Only in America

Bob Hope — A Tribute by Raymond Strait; Pinnacle Books; Rs.308; 475 pp

Therefore individuals who can release the mysterious healing spring of laughter (rightly reported to be the best medicine) pent up within every human being, are great men worthy of respect and popular adulation. Hence the importance of the court jester and ‘fool’ in western and oriental literature. Surely it was the deeply felt need for the cathartic power of laughter which persuaded even tyrants and despots to suffer often outrageously irreverent — as evidenced in many of Shakespeare’s plays — fools and jesters, who despite this disparaging description were actually very clever people who literally lived by their wit.

It is arguable that in the 20th century no comedian kept America — indeed the world — laughing as hard and sustainably as Bob Hope who died on July 27, 2003 just two months after the US had celebrated his centennial birthday on May 29 in a never-before display of love and gratitude for the endearing funster. Bob Hope — A Tribute by celebrity biographer and Hollywood columnist Raymond Strait is a wonderfully readable biography of one the greatest icons of the 20th century, who released the regenerative springs of laughter within millions of breasts in America and around the world.

Leslie Townes Hope who as Bob Hope transformed into a great comic star of vaudeville (light theatre), television and 52 motion pictures, was the fifth of seven children born into a poor London East End family which travelled steerage in 1906 to the US to escape poverty and unemployment in Britain. This lively biography which is as much a history of the greatest entertainment industry in the world as it is of Hope’s eventful life, tells of his grim childhood and the hard times the family of a drunken, womanising stonemason suffered, prompting young Bob to drop out of school and sell newspapers for a living. As he drifted from one low-paying job to another, his long-suffering mother Avis to whom Hope remained a devoted and generous son all his life, began to worry whether her son might not have "inherited a bit more of his father’s dark side than necessary". But just after the First World War, the young drifter discovered Charles Chaplin and began imitating him so well that he felt himself fit to enter the world of entertainment. Starting in the competitive world of vaudeville, he reluctantly moved into the television and movie mediums, mastering them all.

Yet if before he passed away two years ago, Bob Hope became "one of the most recognisable faces around the globe", part of the credit must accrue to America’s much-maligned capitalist system which encourages, nurtures and transforms talent in all fields of human endeavour into marketable products loved and appreciated by consumers and customers around the world. Whether it’s Muhammad Ali, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Bill Gates or Bob Hope, they could have happened only in America. Elsewhere in the world — especially in neta-babu driven post-independence India — new talent is resented and at best reluctantly acknowledged. Only in America can the producers of a sandwich (the big Mac), or a sugar and water concoction (Pepsi, Coke) be celebrated as national treasures. Ditto Bob Hope.

"Hope has received more awards of his own than anyone else in the world," writes Strait in this biography which was completed in 1998. "The Guinness Book of World Records credits him as the most-honored entertainer in history with more than two thousand awards and citations for humanitarian and professional efforts, including five Oscars (honorary), 44 honorary doctorates, and seven civilian medals. The one he valued most was presented to him on October 29, 1997, at age 94 by the United States Congress: ‘Honorary Veteran of the United States Armed Forces’," writes the author.

Though a self-admitted fan and admirer of the late and legendary comedian, to his credit Strait hasn’t written a cloying hagiography. This is an honest tell-all biography which while celebrating his only marriage to singer wife Dolores, doesn’t pull its punches in detailing Hope’s busy extra-marital shenanigans; of his great rivalry with singer-actor Bing Crosby, his co-star in The Road to Singapore and several other smash-hit, money-spinning movies; his reported stinginess in paying his battalion of script writers who in typical American style kept churning out the ‘material’ which kept the world laughing and transformed Hope into one of planet Earth’s richest millionaires, and his constant cosying up to the establishment, particularly every president from Roosevelt down to George Bush the second.

Hope’s pro-establishment bias was less driven by sycophancy and a wish to be on golfing first-name terms with presidents as much as it was by a genuine love affair with his adopted country. During the Second World War, Hope had to be persuaded to visit an army base to entertain and cheer American troops. From then on for several decades, he seldom spent a Christmas at home with his loving family: he was always away in Germany, South Korea, Vietnam, Laos and wherever lonely young soldiers fought America’s wars and armed conflicts. It is arguable that Bob Hope did more for the morale of America’s men in uniform than all the presidents of the United States put together.

All in all a masterly biography which is not only a tribute to one of the great comic talents of our time, but one which proves that entertainment is a serious employment-intensive business which needs to be given much greater respect than it is in the bleak Soviet-influenced nations of the third world in particular.

Dilip Thakore

Dalit perspective

Ooru Keri — An Autobiography by Siddalingaiah (Translated from Kannada by S.R. Ramakrishna); Sahitya Akademi; Price: Rs 60; 115 pp

Therefore few city dwellers are likely to be familiar with Siddalingaiah’s name or work. In Karnataka, city folk are likely to be better acquainted with the output of Shakespeare and Milton than the writings of Siddalingaiah. Only authors such as Girish Karnad and U.R. Ananthamurthy, who are capable of expressing themselves equally well in Kannada and English, are literary icons in urban Karnataka.

This is probably true of all states of the Indian Union. But a reading of regional narratives is critical to our understanding of contemporary life. Unfortunately, few attempts have been made to translate the works of well known vernacular writers into English or other Indian languages.

Siddalingaiah is one of India’s most prominent dalit writers and activists. Ooru Keri, his autobiography, is an important piece of dalit (scheduled caste) literature that has been prescribed as a textbook for undergraduate students of Kuvempu University, Shimoga. The Kannada version has seen three reprints — no surprise, since Siddalingaiah commands a mass following in rural Karnataka.

Ooru Keri (Ooru: a village or town occupied by non-dalits; Keri: ward inhabited by dalits on the fringes of the village) describes the journey of a dalit boy from the poverty-stricken landscape of rural Karnataka to its urban capital, and his political awakening then onwards.

The account of Siddalingaiah’s early life is almost reminiscent of R.K. Narayan’s famous Malgudi Days. With the critical difference that his birthplace Megalahatti is no charming old-world town and offers little except penury. Viewed through the eyes of a little boy, however, even Megalahatti assumes a certain charm of its own. The young Siddalingaiah’s adventures — like Swami’s in Malgudi Days — make the poverty seem almost peripheral to the child’s energetic life.

The scene is set early. "A man had fastened a yoke on to the shoulders of two others, and was ploughing Ainoru’s fields. It was amusing to watch the two men trundle on like bullocks, while the third followed them swinging a whip. A strange agony gripped me the moment I realised that one of the men carrying the yoke was my father... When Appa returned home after toiling like a bullock all day, Avva heated some oil and smeared it on his shoulders."

Ooru Keri is a world populated by ghosts, deities, strict headmasters and wandering ascetics, set against a background dominated by rivers, hills and forests. Eventually, the father decides to move the family to Bangalore, and they set up home in Srirampura, one of the more infamous areas of the city. The migration itself is symptomatic of the lack of opportunity in the rural Indian hinterland; Siddalingaiah’s family is one of the millions of rural folk who arrive in the cities to work as casual labour.

The colony is peopled by migrant labour caught in a tough struggle for existence. But this doesn’t necessarily imply that their life is brutish or devoid of pleasantry. Indeed, Siddalingaiah’s talent is that he assumes the position of a detached, bemused bystander at the violence and humiliation. The antics of rowdies and drunks are comic affairs in a society that does not exist in the urban consciousness. Srirampura is the Bronx of Bangalore; it is referred to only in the context of crime. Siddalingaiah adds a whole new dimension to the colony, its people, their aspirations, joys and sorrows.

The transformation of a semi-literate village boy into an idealistic literary figure in the local Government Arts College offers a curious perspective of a time and age that no longer exists in Bangalore and other metros. The sixties and seventies were tumultous periods for Bangalore’s students who participated enthusia-stically in the country’s politics.

Consequently, no government could afford to ignore their interests. By the nineties, however, student movements had become almost extinct. As professional courses such as medicine and engineering gained importance over the conventional degree in a globalised world, older colleges such as Central College and National College ceased to wield influence within the student community. Students now have little say in the politics that define our age.

S.R. Ramakrishna who has translated the Kannada original into English, adopts a simple, literal style that makes this work enjoyable. More of such translated works can only be for the general good, and help bridge the various linguistic divides in Bangalore and within the country.