Rana Dasgupta

Who would you call for an Independence Day dinner. Here is who author Rana Dasgupta would invite.

-Day is too comfortable a commemoration. We pretend, for this day in the year, that all our problems were miraculously resolved by a simple change of guard.

We rejoice in the “freedom” that, for the other 364 days, we know is very partial. My I-Day dinner party will be a therapeutic disaster that will destroy all complacent thoughts and stale responses, and force out a new reality—glistening and terrifying.

At one end of the table will be the sculptor from Bihar, Subodh Gupta. Devilishly handsome, and possessed of titanic artistic powers, Subodh will supply a wild creative energy to the evening. Next to Subodh will be Mayawati, who has many thoughts of her own about sculpture—and whose unique experience of India is essential to any consideration of the nation’s future. Next to Mayawati will be Slavoj Zizek, the brilliant social theorist, Lacanian psychoanalyst and self-professed Marxist, whose alchemical analyses will transform Mayawati’s opinions into pure jouissance. But Zizek will not be able to monopolise the conversation, for on his other side will be Aung San Su Kyi, whose views on contemporary politics will certainly equal his in authority.

On the other side of the table will be Rakhi Sawant, the shape-changing starlet whose indeterminate identity will mix up the evening well. Next to Rakhi will be Steve Jobs, who will lend his visionary sense of contemporary business and technology to the
conversation. Then will come Zaha Hadid, the world-famous architect from Iraq, who will force the gathering to think about the physical appearance of this twenty-first century of ours.

Finally, at the far end, will sit the slight figure of Bei Dao, the Chinese poet. Bei Dao will say nothing all evening, but will act as a kind of levitator. He will inject a silence of such profound lyricism and political sensitivity that the other guests will become embarrassed at any hint of vulgarity in their thought, and will wish to rise above such things: They will become weightless, float away from their seats, and conclude their conversation just below the ceiling.