Art and Lies: A Piece for Three Voices and a Bawd

“There is no such thing as autobiography, there is only art and lies.”

I’ve never written a book review in my life and I don’t intend to begin now although I suspect that it is precisely what I’m going to wind up doing. Sometime ago, I read a book which I loved. It’s called Art and Lies: A Piece for Three Voices and a Bawd by Jeanette Winterson.Prose and poetry merge, and words are used to sculpt images (as opposed to being used to frame sentences). There isn’t anything academic in it but doesn’t lack depth.
Art and Lies certainly isn’t everyone’s cup of tea though: it’s the kind of work which either leaves you stunned by the beauty of its language or makes you want to throw rotten tomatoes at the author who, after all, often does nothing more than simply state the mundane and the obvious albeit beautifully.In many ways, the book reminded me of the film Closer — although it lacks the crudity of the film — and in particular, one line from it:“It’s a lie. It’s a bunch of sad strangers photographed beautifully, and all the glittering assholes who appreciate art say it’s beautiful ’cause that’s what they want to see. But the people in the photos are sad, and alone, but the pictures make the world seem beautiful. So the exhibition’s reassuring, which makes it a lie, and everyone loves a big fat lie.”Even so, I think that it’s one of those books which you’re better for having read.Art and Lies appears to me to be some form of meditation on the manner in which one should live. Although the book itself traverses the centuries with ease, it is set in a London of the near future which the three main characters are fleeing from. They are Handel, Picasso and Sappho. They seem to represent Music, Art and Poetry although Handel is, in the book, a former priest turned surgeon and Picasso is a female painter who is abused by her brother. Only Sappho resembles the poet of antiquity. And the stories of these characters are often interrupted by Doll Sneerpiece, an 18th century bawd.There is much which is said in the book and one is left with the feeling that there is even more which is left unsaid. The truth hurts. The truth never hurt anyone. Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m’effraie. Two sides of the same coin.

Sylvia Plath

I've never really thought about her. I've hardly made an effort to read any of her work since I've always found the little that I have read far too disturbing. In fact, I've always gone out of my way to avoid anything that has to do with her.

This morning though, I wound up watching a film about her. It seemed a bit on the drab side of the scale and to my mind, appeared to treat her rather harshly. Or maybe it didn't. I don't know enough about her life to be able to comment.

I haven't been able to stop thinking of it though. Her later work has always struck me as being so honest that it's frightening... reality can sometimes be so bleak that anything seems preferable to it, and almost everything -- including fantasy, deception, deceit; any form of dishonesty or delusion -- is preferable if only in terms of being easier to bear.

The Use and Misuse of Dowry Laws

Sometime ago, I found the following comment in the list waiting for approval before being displayed on my site.

Name : MisuseDowryLaws URL : http://misuseof498a.clawz.com Comment : Because of extremism displayed by some selected Feminists in India, there will be great fun in coming years. Please search for dowry 498a in google and find the emergence of a backlash and angryharry.com in India. E-mail : misuse498a@lycosyahoo.com

I was somehow rather surprised by it because whoever wrote it seems to associate Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code exclusively with Indian anti-dowry laws. I have, of course, often heard allegations of the section being misused but have very rarely heard any actual cases being cited to support such a claim.
In fact, a Tata Institute of Social Sciences study in 1999 indicates that few women's organisations recommend recourse to section 498A IPC as a first resort and that the number of such cases are miniscule in comparison to the prevalence of domestic violence. However, such studies have done little to stop a large spectrum of people ranging right from husbands and their families to some members of the judiciary from voicing their complaints.
There seem to be two sides to the story : one is that Indian society is patriarchal and public attitudes are firmly in favour of men and wives are usually held responsible for marital problems as the following statement in a report prepared by the legal adviser to the Delhi Commissioner of Police in November 2000 shows: "...the reasons for disharmony between the wife and the husband arise only when either the wife is reluctant/refuses to adjust herself in the family circumstances or if the husband feels reluctant to accommodate his wife either on account of unnecessary interference by the parents of the wife or non-cooperative attitude of the wife."
It would be hard for anyone to deny that domestic violence is rampant -- a look at any given day's edition of a local newspaper would probably report at least two cases of women who've been killed / burned to death by it. And those are just the most extreme cases. No one really knows how many instances of domestic violence go completely unnoticed and it seems faintly ridiculous to me to render useless one of the few laws which exist to combat it.
This, however, is precisely what the The (all male) Malimath Committee suggested in a way by recommending that such complaints be made bailable and compoundable. The committee produced a 600 page report which among other things included 16 research papers but for some reason excluded not only any discussion on the issue of violence against women but also excluded any inputs either from victims of marital cruelty or from those working in the field. Some of its reasoning seems to have been encapsulated in 16.4.4 of the report which says: "A less tolerant and impulsive woman may lodge an FIR even on a trivial act. The result is that the husband and his family may be immediately arrested and there may be a suspension or loss of job. The offence alleged being non-bailable, innocent persons languish in custody. There may be a claim for maintenance adding fuel to fire, especially if the husband cannot pay. Now the woman may change her mind and get into the mood to forget and forgive. The husband may also realize the mistakes committed and come forward to turn over a new leaf for a loving and cordial relationship. The woman may like to seek reconciliation. But this may not be possible due to the legal obstacles. Even if she wishes to make amends by withdrawing the complaint, she cannot do so as the offence is non-compoundable. The doors for returning to family life stand closed. She is thus left at the mercy of her natal family."
But the other side of the story is that there is abuse of the law although the extent to which such abuse takes place has never been firmly established. There are of course unscrupulous women who use section 498A of the IPC for their own ends but what one also has to realise is that very often woman are encouraged by lawyers and/or the police etc. to add that the violence they faced was related to dowry so that their complaints would be taken 'seriously'. And that is what is ironical because the section itself is not designed exclusively in reference to dowry-related problems : in itself, it is meant to deal with all forms of domestic violence.
Section 498A is, in a way, in favour of women. It was created by an amendment to the Indian Penal Code in 1983. Complaints under it are cognizable, non-bailable and non-compoundable. Close on its heels came two amendments to the Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961 -- in 1984 and 1986 -- which made dowry giving and taking cognizable offences. Those accused under both these laws are not assumed to be innocent until proven guilty ; contrary to other laws, the accused are, in theory, required to prove that theory have not committed a crime although in reality they often easily get bail.
Tilting the balance in favour of women has often been useful since previously women could not meet the burden of proof quite simply because marital violence usually occurred behind closed doors and that being the case, in the absence of independent witnesses, there was no easy way for women to prove their cases beyond reasonable doubt as was required under criminal law.
The problem, however has been that there was no mechanism brought into play to ensure that women didn't lie. The law against perjury is virtually non-functional in India and there are no deterrents to ensure that complaints made under this section to ensure that only genuine cases are registered.
In December 2003, the Minister of State for Home Affairs, I. D. Swami said, "There is no information available with the Government to come to the conclusion that many families in India are suffering due to exaggerated allegations of harassment and dowry cases made by women against their husbands and other family members involving them in criminal misappropriation and cruelty."
The statement is probably not entirely true although cases of abuse of section 498A may simply be isolated ones and not part of a general trend. The answer though probably doesn't lie in making the law bailable and compoundable but in amending it so that bonafide and malafide complaints can be separated.

References:

1. Statement referred to in reply to Rajya Sabha starred question no. 230 for 17.12.2003 regarding amendments in sections 406 and 498A of the IPC http://164.100.24.219/annex/200/AS230.htm

2. Laws against domestic violence : Underused or Abused? by Madhu Kishwar http://www.indiatogether.org/manushi/issue120/domestic.htm

3. Misuse of 498A - much ado about nothing? by Bikram Jeet Batra http://www.indiatogether.org/2004/mar/law-sect498a.htm