Monday, January 7
Free Speeches
Written for Outlook City Limits
In this season, you press your ear to the ground and you can hear Delhi murmuring with cultural activity. Performances are being performed, lectures lectured, panels empanelled and, as surely as a glum evening follows a cocktail lunch, audiences are responding. The "audience interaction"…it is like watching a gymnast somersault into the air, arc confidently toward his landing, only to crunch horribly into the body of an audience-member who has stepped forward to share his views on Nadia Comanesci.
At least we know what to expect. The first hand up belongs to the Summarizer. He thanks the persons on stage, and repeats to them the points they just made in as many, if not more, words. The facilitator waves the mike over to the Speechifier. He clears his throat and intones, "As we all know, Mohandas Gandhi was the father of our nation…" Friend, we do all know. So stuff it.
The nervous facilitator dispatches the mike to her planted questioner in the third row, but it is intercepted halfway by the Debutante. The Debutante reads diligently from a piece of paper, which turns out to be his resume. Having established his credentials, he hands the mike to the Quick Fixer: "If you are such experts, what is the solution to it all?"
Then cometh the Holy Man. Last month, after a discussion on gender and literature, a messianic figure rose from the back row to proclaim that he was "post-gender": therefore the embodied solution to the problem we were still trying to describe (oddly, one never meets women who are post-gender.) Bloodied and defeated, the facilitator moans, "One last question" – and out leaps the most monstrous character of all, the Multi-part Questioner. By the time he's on the third sub-clause of his interrogation, I try to be on my third stiff drink.
In this season, you press your ear to the ground and you can hear Delhi murmuring with cultural activity. Performances are being performed, lectures lectured, panels empanelled and, as surely as a glum evening follows a cocktail lunch, audiences are responding. The "audience interaction"…it is like watching a gymnast somersault into the air, arc confidently toward his landing, only to crunch horribly into the body of an audience-member who has stepped forward to share his views on Nadia Comanesci.
At least we know what to expect. The first hand up belongs to the Summarizer. He thanks the persons on stage, and repeats to them the points they just made in as many, if not more, words. The facilitator waves the mike over to the Speechifier. He clears his throat and intones, "As we all know, Mohandas Gandhi was the father of our nation…" Friend, we do all know. So stuff it.
The nervous facilitator dispatches the mike to her planted questioner in the third row, but it is intercepted halfway by the Debutante. The Debutante reads diligently from a piece of paper, which turns out to be his resume. Having established his credentials, he hands the mike to the Quick Fixer: "If you are such experts, what is the solution to it all?"
Then cometh the Holy Man. Last month, after a discussion on gender and literature, a messianic figure rose from the back row to proclaim that he was "post-gender": therefore the embodied solution to the problem we were still trying to describe (oddly, one never meets women who are post-gender.) Bloodied and defeated, the facilitator moans, "One last question" – and out leaps the most monstrous character of all, the Multi-part Questioner. By the time he's on the third sub-clause of his interrogation, I try to be on my third stiff drink.
