A Skin Of Dignity: Kiran Nagarkar’s Legacy
The first ebook I ever bought was ‘Cuckold’ by Kiran Nagarkar. It had come highly recommended by the man seated next to me at a literature festival. A stranger, the two of us bonding in those sudden intimacies that are the magic of city life (if you don’t try to make them into something more). Dignity, how does that happen?
I was surprised & amused by the book as I was by my own delight in the device I’d opposed for years, even arguing against in a televised debate. I lost that argument then & again as I enjoyed the shrewd, calm critique of mytho-politics on a plastic device.
Years later, I performed at another lit fest, reveling in & shuddering at my pirouettes for people who’d played chess with patriarchy years before I began to scratch & claw at it. Waiting in the wings, I soaked up the scholarly poise of the authors in conversation -one a friend, the other Kiran Nagarkar. Nagarkar in his work & public presence epitomised dignity. I felt it; it’s tangible even today.
#MeToo broke out next year, Nagarkar named among the others. He refuted the allegations citing his powerful fictional characters. Is that dignified – perfectly in integrity for a storyteller or unaccountably sad? Can we measure dignity from the outside?
Shortly after, Nagarkar died, leaving behind a story that terminated with even more questions than before. Like his writings.
Dignity is merely comfort in one’s body & mind, with the decisions one takes & situations one finds oneself in. It could include confidence though this is easily faked. It doesn’t have to fit external ideas of right & wrong. Dignity is also being able to make peace with ambiguity, with frailty & folly.
My mediations & actions are motivated by my wish to personify dignity. But even as it stems from within, it feels shallow. Skin-deep. What lies beneath dignity, which may just be an agile mind able to speak to itself masterfully? Who am I beneath that? Who are you & who was Nagarkar? Who is any one of us under our pretensions of impressiveness, modesty or indeed, dignity?
Is there a person under the conversations we have with ourselves & the stories that grow about these?
