Doctor

Dear friend,

I went to see an exhibit of Atul Dodiya’s paintings, “Dr. Banerjee in Dr. Kulkarni’s Nursing Home,” on the day that it closed. I know very little about visual art and I have a strong, practically anti-intellectual suspicion of nostalgia, so I felt conflicted and hesitant to enjoy the paintings. There’s been a generally celebratory revival of talk around Hindi cinema lately, with the extraordinary success of Pathaan, followed by the release of Yash Raj Films’s Netflix documentary, The Romantics. The conversation has been hyperactive because many people are tired of being worried about the ongoing focus on marginalising Muslims in Hindi cinema, and tired of being upset and uncertain about how the venture-funded platform economy is algorithmising entertainment. Dr. Banerjee / Dr. Kulkarni is a series of paintings depicting scenes from Hindi cinema from the 1960s and 1970s, full of the vanished glamour of a tiny salaried upper class. The air of buoyancy around it might be seen in continuity with the same sense of respite and enjoyment. However, I did not want to be the one doing this seeing.

When you have spent more time trying to be a creator (non-algorithmic) than a critic the impulse to let people do their work without hearing your opinions on it grows very strong. If Atul Dodiya were not a hundred times more prominent than anyone with a small self-promotional newsletter in India today I would have felt bad disclosing these doubts. If the exhibit were not loved and praised I would have thought a dozen times before airing these nitpicking doubts. In fact, I would have said nothing if the paintings hadn’t lingered in my mind long after I left the show. Riding a taxi home, I saw the faces and the storefronts, the windows and the vignettes that Atul Dodiya has been observing for all his life, re-ordering them into new, vivid and wonder-inducing works. I have always tried not to let objects and places displace the people I love in my memory. But the sight of the wired plastic chairs in the corner of one painting, exactly like the chairs in my grandparents’ home in Kerala, swept away my attempts to separate people from their surroundings. For a little while I dwelt in the thought of what it must be like to see the world the way Atul Dodiya does. It was a very great pleasure. If the show travels to your city I think you should see it.

For the last many months I have been trying to do my work, too, without delivering my opinions of it to you. But it must be said: Fifty Two has been doing very well, and I’ve had a lot of fun working on it with its excellent editorial team. I don’t want to make this unduly valedictory, so I am informing you well in advance that this is the last month of its second season. We will be going on hiatus once again after the last story. Please do follow us and cheer for us over the next few weeks.

I didn’t write much over the last few months, other than a brief comment for The India Cable on changes at Twitter soon after its change of ownership, in November 2022. The comment was republished in The Wire.

A few of you may remember that I thought of repurposing this newsletter as an advice column last year. The desire to mind other people’s business is extremely strong in me but as you can see, I have more or less avoided giving in to it after a couple of early attempts. I wrote a Twitter thread about something I often want to say to people. If you or someone you know finds it helpful, I’d be glad. I don’t want to famous-last-words myself but I would like to use the upcoming hiatus at Fifty Two to write more. If you have ideas for what I should write, please reply to this email and let me know.

I will leave you with news of a public appearance: tomorrow at 630 p.m., IST, in a Zoom window, talking about essays and long-format reportage with Nous of St Joseph’s, Bangalore.

Otherwise, for now, best.

Supriya