We don’t have to be historians or archaeologists or anthropologists or psychologists to know that the past has a grip on us. Almost everyone I know (including me) is troubled by it in some form or the other. Parental correction, sibling rivalry, lack of love, loss, humiliation, oppression… there’s no end to the list of human experiences and emotions which leave us scarred with memories of the past.
It’s not always negative or unhappy experiences that trouble us about the past. Memories of happy and exciting moments, too, have vice-like grips on our minds and our emotions, influencing our responses to the present. No matter how wonderful our pasts have been, it’s the absence of those happy moments that create a vacuum in our lives and cause pain in the present. I guess that’s what loss is all about.
Most of our contemporary fiction and films contain strong, and repeated, elements of memories (strangely, I can’t think of too many Classics which do that) to connect the fragmented narratives. Often, filmmakers and authors use devices such as dreams and photographs (Ingmar Bergman in ‘Wild Strawberries’), letters and diary (Amitav Ghosh in ‘The Hungry Tide’), audio tapes and video (Atom Egoyan in ‘Next of Kin’, ‘Family Viewing’, ‘Exotica’), or, simply, other shorter narratives in the form of recounting a version of the past (Milan Kundera in ‘Identity’).
What I found interesting in these films and novels is that they brought to surface a complication. These devices – images and words – far from being a solution to the filmmaker and the author in recording or narrating the past, actually ran aground when their recordings and narratives disagreed with the actual (authentic) recollections of memories of the persons involved… sometimes catching them by surprise.
Gilles Deleuze, French philosopher, whose treatises on literature, film and fine arts (besides philosophy) are exemplary, had once proclaimed that preserving the past on film is not easy. That, ‘filmic images’ compete with our ‘recollection images’ – i.e. our memories of events not captured on film or audio – making a ‘truthful’ narrative presentation on film rather difficult.
Milan Kundera, in his slim novel, ‘Identity’, seems to suggest that, when recollecting, particularly memories of loved ones, our own version of the past varies abominably, sometimes with drastic differences.
15 June 2007
13 June 2007
Piecing together a narrative
“I don’t understand you,” said Alice. “It’s dreadfully confusing!”
“That’s the effect of living backwards,” the Queen said kindly: “it always makes one a little giddy at first…”
“Living backwards!” Alice repeated in great astonishment. “I never heard of such a thing!”
“…but there’s one great advantage in it, that one’s memory works both ways.”
“I’m sure mine only works one way.” Alice remarked. “I can’t remember things before they happen.”
“It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,” the Queen remarked.
(Lewis Carroll, ‘Through the Looking Glass’, Chapter 5 – Wool and Water)
Memories are an important part of our lives. They give us meaning, linking our past with our present, explaining our lives. They seldom come to us as one long story, beginning to end, explaining everything in one narrative; but appear in fragments, many a times triggered by cues from our daily lives which are unknown to us.
It is this mysterious, fragmented and episodic nature of memories that fascinates me. And, this piecing together of fragments to make a whole – a story, a picture, a life – is what attracts me to the art of storytelling. For, what purpose does my memory serve if not to help me tell my story – to come to terms with my own past, my history, my identity? I see it as something that explains who I am.
Coincidentally, I’m not alone here. When I look around, I see fiction and film inundated with memories – sometimes whole sequences of them, stories within stories, films within films, sometimes appearing repeatedly – filling in what has been denied to the reader/film-viewer, and sometimes even to the characters in the story or the film, explaining the raison d’etre of the longer and larger story that we read or view or experience.
This denial – and the subsequent, automatic filling in that memories do – is an interesting phenomenon. And, what better medium to represent it than film, visually. Although I’ve seen many films which deal with memories in an artistic cinematic manner, the film that comes first to my mind is Ingmar Bergman’s ‘Wild Strawberries’, a B&W film made some 50 years ago, in which the first memory of the protagonist’s, an aging professor’s, childhood was a field of wild strawberries.
Memories, along with identity and history and loss, form an important part of Atom Egoyan’s films (about which I have written in my previous post) as well. The film-viewer’s enjoyment of Egoyan’s films, from his first ‘Next of Kin’ in 1984 to his 2005 film ‘Where the Truth Lies’, is really achieved – completed and even climaxed – by piecing together fragments, much of it in the form of memories, from the various characters’ pasts to form one complete narrative in the end.
For both Bergman and Egoyan, this heavy reliance on memories leads to complex films. With Bergman, memories represent dream-like sequences which tend to freeze time; and in ‘Wild Strawberries’, for example, Bergman uses dreams and photographs to a great extent to piece the narrative together. With Egoyan, using metaphors (and media aids) such as videos, audio tapes, fairy tales, and even colour, memories fill time and space, providing a continuity which is necessary (for the film-viewer) to piece the narrative together.
“That’s the effect of living backwards,” the Queen said kindly: “it always makes one a little giddy at first…”
“Living backwards!” Alice repeated in great astonishment. “I never heard of such a thing!”
“…but there’s one great advantage in it, that one’s memory works both ways.”
“I’m sure mine only works one way.” Alice remarked. “I can’t remember things before they happen.”
“It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,” the Queen remarked.
(Lewis Carroll, ‘Through the Looking Glass’, Chapter 5 – Wool and Water)
Memories are an important part of our lives. They give us meaning, linking our past with our present, explaining our lives. They seldom come to us as one long story, beginning to end, explaining everything in one narrative; but appear in fragments, many a times triggered by cues from our daily lives which are unknown to us.
It is this mysterious, fragmented and episodic nature of memories that fascinates me. And, this piecing together of fragments to make a whole – a story, a picture, a life – is what attracts me to the art of storytelling. For, what purpose does my memory serve if not to help me tell my story – to come to terms with my own past, my history, my identity? I see it as something that explains who I am.
Coincidentally, I’m not alone here. When I look around, I see fiction and film inundated with memories – sometimes whole sequences of them, stories within stories, films within films, sometimes appearing repeatedly – filling in what has been denied to the reader/film-viewer, and sometimes even to the characters in the story or the film, explaining the raison d’etre of the longer and larger story that we read or view or experience.
This denial – and the subsequent, automatic filling in that memories do – is an interesting phenomenon. And, what better medium to represent it than film, visually. Although I’ve seen many films which deal with memories in an artistic cinematic manner, the film that comes first to my mind is Ingmar Bergman’s ‘Wild Strawberries’, a B&W film made some 50 years ago, in which the first memory of the protagonist’s, an aging professor’s, childhood was a field of wild strawberries.
Memories, along with identity and history and loss, form an important part of Atom Egoyan’s films (about which I have written in my previous post) as well. The film-viewer’s enjoyment of Egoyan’s films, from his first ‘Next of Kin’ in 1984 to his 2005 film ‘Where the Truth Lies’, is really achieved – completed and even climaxed – by piecing together fragments, much of it in the form of memories, from the various characters’ pasts to form one complete narrative in the end.
For both Bergman and Egoyan, this heavy reliance on memories leads to complex films. With Bergman, memories represent dream-like sequences which tend to freeze time; and in ‘Wild Strawberries’, for example, Bergman uses dreams and photographs to a great extent to piece the narrative together. With Egoyan, using metaphors (and media aids) such as videos, audio tapes, fairy tales, and even colour, memories fill time and space, providing a continuity which is necessary (for the film-viewer) to piece the narrative together.
10 June 2007
Remembering
One of the most critical (literary) devices for the émigré author is the act of remembering. For, much of the content of immigrant writing is derived from memories… from material dug up from the author’s past and, perhaps, personal experience. Not all of it is literal, of course. An author’s keen observation plays an important part in recording facts and human behaviour, and then fictionalising them.
For instance, it’s unlikely that J M Coetzee had lost his leg in a bicycle accident to have written ‘Slow Man’; or that, Amitav Ghosh had waded through the swamps of the Sundarbans to chase river dolphins in West Bengal, India, to have written ‘The Hungry Tide’. But, using metaphors – in these cases, the inability to adjust (or re-adjust) to a new life after a loss or displacement or when fate deals a blow – émigré authors have a tendency to lure themselves into creating fiction based on personal experiences from, and memories of, their past.
Of course, most authors of fiction use similar devices, but the émigré author’s story has a haunting connection with the real past. Much of it is personal. Sometimes, it is difficult to separate the real from the fictional.
When the weaver of such émigré fiction is also a talented film director, then the stories seem more real. They take on a more solid hue, playing on the screens before us in words and pictures. One such film director, and a favourite of mine, who has adapted many of his films from his own émigré material is Atom Egoyan.
An Armenian-Canadian, Egoyan’s greatest achievement is his film ‘The Sweet Hereafter’ – a tale of adjustment (or re-adjustment) of lives when a bus-load of school children die in a road accident, soon followed by the arrival of a lawyer trying to compensate their loss with money… forcing them to remember their past lives, their loss and their grief.
While Nicole, the girl permanently crippled from the bus accident in ‘The Sweet Hereafter’, refuses to give in to the destructive forces of the lawsuit and changes the course of the lives of everyone in the film, Paul Rayment, J M Coetzee’s protagonist in ‘Slow Man’, crippled from the bicycle accident at the beginning of the novel, refuses to change the course of his life and live in its sorrow.
Such is the power of remembering, and Egoyan’s later film ‘Ararat’ thrives on it. ‘Ararat’ deals directly with the loss of a homeland and an identity that result from a historical and a political event – the Armenian Genocide, when the Turkish government overran the Armenians in 1915-18, killing one and a half million Armenians. But, that’s not all.
‘Ararat’ also deals with the coming to terms with this loss at a distant future (the present), where generations of émigré Armenians are trying to adjust (or re-adjust) to a new life in a new country. Egoyan seems to say that Armenians (like himself) cannot help but remember their past, with generations of Armenians intricately connected with it, weaving in this aspect of Armenian life through multiple characters and multiple layers in this complex film.
In ‘The Hungry Tide’, Amitav Ghosh presents a similar scenario, but in a far complex manner. He presents three generations of Bengalis from different walks of life, interconnected through their past and their Bengali identity, subtly touching upon an event from Bengal’s history – an uprising by homeless Bangladeshi refugees in Morichjhapi in the Sundarbans which was overrun by the West Bengal government in 1979, killing hundreds of Bangladeshi refugees.
While the significance of the historical event is central to Egoyan’s film, in Ghosh’s novel it is only incidental. But both, film and novel, raises a moral question of how we deal with history and our personal remembrances of it. Egoyan is unable to provide an answer to this question. Ghosh simply doesn’t offer one. So, we are left to form our own conclusions.
For instance, it’s unlikely that J M Coetzee had lost his leg in a bicycle accident to have written ‘Slow Man’; or that, Amitav Ghosh had waded through the swamps of the Sundarbans to chase river dolphins in West Bengal, India, to have written ‘The Hungry Tide’. But, using metaphors – in these cases, the inability to adjust (or re-adjust) to a new life after a loss or displacement or when fate deals a blow – émigré authors have a tendency to lure themselves into creating fiction based on personal experiences from, and memories of, their past.
Of course, most authors of fiction use similar devices, but the émigré author’s story has a haunting connection with the real past. Much of it is personal. Sometimes, it is difficult to separate the real from the fictional.
When the weaver of such émigré fiction is also a talented film director, then the stories seem more real. They take on a more solid hue, playing on the screens before us in words and pictures. One such film director, and a favourite of mine, who has adapted many of his films from his own émigré material is Atom Egoyan.
An Armenian-Canadian, Egoyan’s greatest achievement is his film ‘The Sweet Hereafter’ – a tale of adjustment (or re-adjustment) of lives when a bus-load of school children die in a road accident, soon followed by the arrival of a lawyer trying to compensate their loss with money… forcing them to remember their past lives, their loss and their grief.
While Nicole, the girl permanently crippled from the bus accident in ‘The Sweet Hereafter’, refuses to give in to the destructive forces of the lawsuit and changes the course of the lives of everyone in the film, Paul Rayment, J M Coetzee’s protagonist in ‘Slow Man’, crippled from the bicycle accident at the beginning of the novel, refuses to change the course of his life and live in its sorrow.
Such is the power of remembering, and Egoyan’s later film ‘Ararat’ thrives on it. ‘Ararat’ deals directly with the loss of a homeland and an identity that result from a historical and a political event – the Armenian Genocide, when the Turkish government overran the Armenians in 1915-18, killing one and a half million Armenians. But, that’s not all.
‘Ararat’ also deals with the coming to terms with this loss at a distant future (the present), where generations of émigré Armenians are trying to adjust (or re-adjust) to a new life in a new country. Egoyan seems to say that Armenians (like himself) cannot help but remember their past, with generations of Armenians intricately connected with it, weaving in this aspect of Armenian life through multiple characters and multiple layers in this complex film.
In ‘The Hungry Tide’, Amitav Ghosh presents a similar scenario, but in a far complex manner. He presents three generations of Bengalis from different walks of life, interconnected through their past and their Bengali identity, subtly touching upon an event from Bengal’s history – an uprising by homeless Bangladeshi refugees in Morichjhapi in the Sundarbans which was overrun by the West Bengal government in 1979, killing hundreds of Bangladeshi refugees.
While the significance of the historical event is central to Egoyan’s film, in Ghosh’s novel it is only incidental. But both, film and novel, raises a moral question of how we deal with history and our personal remembrances of it. Egoyan is unable to provide an answer to this question. Ghosh simply doesn’t offer one. So, we are left to form our own conclusions.
07 June 2007
Intellectual allegiance
South African writer J M Coetzee, winner of two Booker Prizes, makes no bones about it. Soon after winning his Nobel Prize in 2003, Coetzee, in an interview with David Attwell, stated that his “intellectual allegiances are clearly European, not African.” And that, all his life, his writing has faithfully responded to this DNA. Even in Australia, where he moved a few years ago, Coetzee has maintained a European sentimentality while lamenting over his immigrant status, documenting it in his 2005 book ‘Slow Man’.
Kazuo Ishiguro, born Japanese but now living in England, and another Booker Prize winner, expresses similar views. In his January Magazine interview with Linda Richards (which I also cited in my previous post), Ishiguro stated, “That’s how I kind of branded myself right from the start: as somebody who didn’t know Japan deeply, writing in English whole books with only Japanese characters in. Trying to be part of the English literary scene like that.”
Like Ishiguro, who had moved to England as a child, Michael Ondaatje, also a Booker Prize winner, had moved to Canada from Sri Lanka at the age of eight and acquired Canadian citizenship along with his family. He has grown up in Canada and currently resides there with his Canadian family. Apart from a touch of Sri Lanka here and there (such as in ‘Running in the Family’ or in ‘Anil’s Ghost’), Ondaatje’s writing has always been peppered with an international flavour.
When I think about these authors, I often wonder how strong their intellectual allegiances are. I ask, how faithfully can these authors return to their pasts, to their countries of origin, in their novels and reproduce characters and scenes of native reality. Ishiguro seems to have a perfect answer for this: “it’s not really about describing a world that you know well and firsthand. It’s about describing stereotypes that exist in people’s heads all around the world and manipulating them engagingly.”
If this wasn’t enough, Coetzee gives another fascinating explanation. Speaking of Samuel Beckett (in the same Attwell interview I’ve mentioned earlier), Coetzee says: “Beckett was an Irishman and a European with no African connections at all. Yet in the hands of a dramatist of the sensitivity and skill of Athol Fugard, Beckett can be transplanted into South African surroundings in such a way that he seems almost native there. What does this show? That the history of the arts is a history of unceasing cross-fertilization across fences and boundaries.”
Wow. Can literature, or the arts, be any more delightful!
Kazuo Ishiguro, born Japanese but now living in England, and another Booker Prize winner, expresses similar views. In his January Magazine interview with Linda Richards (which I also cited in my previous post), Ishiguro stated, “That’s how I kind of branded myself right from the start: as somebody who didn’t know Japan deeply, writing in English whole books with only Japanese characters in. Trying to be part of the English literary scene like that.”
Like Ishiguro, who had moved to England as a child, Michael Ondaatje, also a Booker Prize winner, had moved to Canada from Sri Lanka at the age of eight and acquired Canadian citizenship along with his family. He has grown up in Canada and currently resides there with his Canadian family. Apart from a touch of Sri Lanka here and there (such as in ‘Running in the Family’ or in ‘Anil’s Ghost’), Ondaatje’s writing has always been peppered with an international flavour.
When I think about these authors, I often wonder how strong their intellectual allegiances are. I ask, how faithfully can these authors return to their pasts, to their countries of origin, in their novels and reproduce characters and scenes of native reality. Ishiguro seems to have a perfect answer for this: “it’s not really about describing a world that you know well and firsthand. It’s about describing stereotypes that exist in people’s heads all around the world and manipulating them engagingly.”
If this wasn’t enough, Coetzee gives another fascinating explanation. Speaking of Samuel Beckett (in the same Attwell interview I’ve mentioned earlier), Coetzee says: “Beckett was an Irishman and a European with no African connections at all. Yet in the hands of a dramatist of the sensitivity and skill of Athol Fugard, Beckett can be transplanted into South African surroundings in such a way that he seems almost native there. What does this show? That the history of the arts is a history of unceasing cross-fertilization across fences and boundaries.”
Wow. Can literature, or the arts, be any more delightful!
05 June 2007
A new internationalism
In the last thirty years, the contemporary Indian novelist (writing in English) isn’t the only one who has prospered. There have been others, with similar émigré backgrounds, who have acquired fame outside their home countries through works of great literary importance in the late 20th century… with some of it spilling over to this very moment. In my previous post, I had named three such authors – J M Coetzee, Kazuo Ishiguro and Michael Ondaatje – but my favourite would really be Brian Moore.
Brian Moore, Irish by birth, is not the typical émigré novelist. He is white and from the United Kingdom. The reason I remember him today (he passed away in 1999) is because, to me, Moore displayed many of the attributes of an émigré novelist, leaving his home in Ireland and migrating to Canada while in his twenties. He roughed it out as a journalist for several years before turning to writing novels. All through his life, he was haunted by guilt, loss of faith, alienation and isolation and, from what I’ve read about him, he was never at home anywhere. Moore could have been a character in his own novels.
However, Moore did set the trend for the émigré novelist which Salman Rushdie, much later, defined so eloquently as the writer looking back and seeing life through a broken mirror. Or, the characters with broken lives coming from divided worlds, and with divided loyalties, which Coetzee, Ishiguro and Ondaatje (among others) created and described in their novels a quarter of a century later. As far as the English-language novel goes, I tend to think Brian Moore’s immigrant writing paved the way, and set the mood, for a new kind of international novel.
Rushdie was one of the first authors to ride on this road, but it was Ishiguro who actually voiced this sentiment – this new phenomenon – in the international literary world clearly. In an interview by Linda Richards in January Magazine, Ishiguro had said that, in the early eighties, there was “a great hunger for this kind of new internationalism.” That, “publishers in London and literary critics and journalists in London suddenly wanted to discover a new generation of writers who would be quite different from your typical older generation of English writer.”
This new phenomenon clearly put aside (some of my favourite) English authors such as John Mortimer, Malcolm Bradbury, David Lodge and Angus Wilson, and introduced a new generation of authors who wrote about the world as they saw it – not as an Englishman, but through the multicultural eyes of an émigré. It introduced a cultural blend which only émigré writers writing in English could offer its readers, critics and publishers.
The focus automatically shifted to the post-colonial world – the Commonwealth for a start – for its bevy of writers. And the rest, I suppose, is literary history. This new generation of international writers went on to win the Booker, the Nobel and other literary prizes around the world… and adorn the bookshelves of millions of readers like you and me.
[Although Brian Moore had won several literary prizes in his life, he did not win the Booker. He was nominated for it thrice.]
Brian Moore, Irish by birth, is not the typical émigré novelist. He is white and from the United Kingdom. The reason I remember him today (he passed away in 1999) is because, to me, Moore displayed many of the attributes of an émigré novelist, leaving his home in Ireland and migrating to Canada while in his twenties. He roughed it out as a journalist for several years before turning to writing novels. All through his life, he was haunted by guilt, loss of faith, alienation and isolation and, from what I’ve read about him, he was never at home anywhere. Moore could have been a character in his own novels.
However, Moore did set the trend for the émigré novelist which Salman Rushdie, much later, defined so eloquently as the writer looking back and seeing life through a broken mirror. Or, the characters with broken lives coming from divided worlds, and with divided loyalties, which Coetzee, Ishiguro and Ondaatje (among others) created and described in their novels a quarter of a century later. As far as the English-language novel goes, I tend to think Brian Moore’s immigrant writing paved the way, and set the mood, for a new kind of international novel.
Rushdie was one of the first authors to ride on this road, but it was Ishiguro who actually voiced this sentiment – this new phenomenon – in the international literary world clearly. In an interview by Linda Richards in January Magazine, Ishiguro had said that, in the early eighties, there was “a great hunger for this kind of new internationalism.” That, “publishers in London and literary critics and journalists in London suddenly wanted to discover a new generation of writers who would be quite different from your typical older generation of English writer.”
This new phenomenon clearly put aside (some of my favourite) English authors such as John Mortimer, Malcolm Bradbury, David Lodge and Angus Wilson, and introduced a new generation of authors who wrote about the world as they saw it – not as an Englishman, but through the multicultural eyes of an émigré. It introduced a cultural blend which only émigré writers writing in English could offer its readers, critics and publishers.
The focus automatically shifted to the post-colonial world – the Commonwealth for a start – for its bevy of writers. And the rest, I suppose, is literary history. This new generation of international writers went on to win the Booker, the Nobel and other literary prizes around the world… and adorn the bookshelves of millions of readers like you and me.
[Although Brian Moore had won several literary prizes in his life, he did not win the Booker. He was nominated for it thrice.]
03 June 2007
On foreign land
It’s interesting to note that although many Indian authors writing in English live in the UK, the US and Canada, their stories are mostly about India. Typically, there are three themes that run through their stories:
One, stories in India about Indian life. Two, stories in India about Indian life where Indian immigrants return to India from their new home for a brief spell. And three, stories about Indian immigrants in their new home on foreign land.
This is true because of the authors’ familiarity with both cultures… and the histories and geographies of both countries. Without this background, it is difficult to accomplish their tasks as Indian writers telling the world about India. It actually enables writing of this immigrant kind. My guess is, these writers draw heavily upon both (a) their memories of their old countries and (b) their personal experiences of, and responses to, their new homes.
This qualification gives them an edge over India’s home-grown writers who depend entirely upon their Indian experience. Indian home-grown writers not only lack the magic of immigrant experience, but, because of their lack of knowledge of foreign land, the people there and their customs, they desperately fall short in their ability to relate to, and please, Western readers.
Western readers, in turn, are enamoured by Indian writing in English – particularly by the works of those writers who are able to showcase the best of both worlds.
Mind you, this is true not of Indian writing in English alone, but encompasses writers of other countries as well. By that, I mean writers who share the experience of the immigrant kind and, yet, are able to relate to readers of both countries, old and new. J M Coetzee (South Africa, Australia), Kazuo Ishiguro (Japan, the UK) and Michael Ondatjee (Sri Lanka, Canada and the world) are three names that come to mind immediately.
In doing so, they emerge as global writers whose writing appeals to a much larger global readership. They may live on foreign land for the moment, but their writing endears them to a much larger audience.
One, stories in India about Indian life. Two, stories in India about Indian life where Indian immigrants return to India from their new home for a brief spell. And three, stories about Indian immigrants in their new home on foreign land.
This is true because of the authors’ familiarity with both cultures… and the histories and geographies of both countries. Without this background, it is difficult to accomplish their tasks as Indian writers telling the world about India. It actually enables writing of this immigrant kind. My guess is, these writers draw heavily upon both (a) their memories of their old countries and (b) their personal experiences of, and responses to, their new homes.
This qualification gives them an edge over India’s home-grown writers who depend entirely upon their Indian experience. Indian home-grown writers not only lack the magic of immigrant experience, but, because of their lack of knowledge of foreign land, the people there and their customs, they desperately fall short in their ability to relate to, and please, Western readers.
Western readers, in turn, are enamoured by Indian writing in English – particularly by the works of those writers who are able to showcase the best of both worlds.
Mind you, this is true not of Indian writing in English alone, but encompasses writers of other countries as well. By that, I mean writers who share the experience of the immigrant kind and, yet, are able to relate to readers of both countries, old and new. J M Coetzee (South Africa, Australia), Kazuo Ishiguro (Japan, the UK) and Michael Ondatjee (Sri Lanka, Canada and the world) are three names that come to mind immediately.
In doing so, they emerge as global writers whose writing appeals to a much larger global readership. They may live on foreign land for the moment, but their writing endears them to a much larger audience.
01 June 2007
Look back
In one of my recent posts on the contemporary Indian novel, I had mentioned a point raised by Salman Rushdie. That of the tendency of Indian authors living outside India to look back at their old country with a sense of nostalgia, with “some sense of loss.” As expressed in their writing, this feeling seems to be common among all immigrant authors – ‘immigrant’ from the perspective of the new country – and is perhaps because they wish, as Rushdie suggests, “to reclaim” what they no longer have.
This may be true for Salman Rushdie, and more so for authors like Bharati Mukherjee, Anita Desai, Amitav Ghosh or Vikram Seth who were born and brought up in India, but I am surprised when people include V S Naipaul and Jhumpa Lahiri in this list of Indian authors. After all, to reclaim, you must possess it first; and neither Naipaul nor Lahiri were born, or ever lived, in India. So, when Naipaul and Lahiri “look back” what do they see? Do they see the India you and I live in? What is it that makes them “look back” and see India, a place they have never lived in, nor experienced the way you and I do everyday?
This reminds me of an interesting comment that Amitav Ghosh had made at the 2002 International Festival of Indian Literature at the Neemrana Fort Palace in Rajasthan, which I quote here from a February 2002 News India Times article ‘Two worlds of Indian writing meet, hesitantly’ by Anindita Ramaswamy:
“...Amitav Ghosh, who is equally at home in New York or Kolkata, told IANS that he sees himself clearly as an Indian writer. “I think an Indian writer is one who is willing to be called an Indian writer. For example, Naipaul, who has never lived in India nor has written much about India, I am sure feels that he is an Indian writer.” Ghosh said that the definition of Indianness surfaces more prominently when one is abroad.”
Mr Ghosh, I am an ardent fan of yours, but I cannot agree with you here entirely. In fact, I’m not even sure if you are 100% sure of what you are saying. Having been an immigrant myself, I can confirm that the ‘consciousness of being Indian’ surfaces when one is in a foreign land. But, to include in it people who have never been Indian is a fallacy. I believe Mr Naipaul’s writing is a product of his imagination and his skill. I applaud him for that. I cannot call him an Indian writer.
This may be true for Salman Rushdie, and more so for authors like Bharati Mukherjee, Anita Desai, Amitav Ghosh or Vikram Seth who were born and brought up in India, but I am surprised when people include V S Naipaul and Jhumpa Lahiri in this list of Indian authors. After all, to reclaim, you must possess it first; and neither Naipaul nor Lahiri were born, or ever lived, in India. So, when Naipaul and Lahiri “look back” what do they see? Do they see the India you and I live in? What is it that makes them “look back” and see India, a place they have never lived in, nor experienced the way you and I do everyday?
This reminds me of an interesting comment that Amitav Ghosh had made at the 2002 International Festival of Indian Literature at the Neemrana Fort Palace in Rajasthan, which I quote here from a February 2002 News India Times article ‘Two worlds of Indian writing meet, hesitantly’ by Anindita Ramaswamy:
“...Amitav Ghosh, who is equally at home in New York or Kolkata, told IANS that he sees himself clearly as an Indian writer. “I think an Indian writer is one who is willing to be called an Indian writer. For example, Naipaul, who has never lived in India nor has written much about India, I am sure feels that he is an Indian writer.” Ghosh said that the definition of Indianness surfaces more prominently when one is abroad.”
Mr Ghosh, I am an ardent fan of yours, but I cannot agree with you here entirely. In fact, I’m not even sure if you are 100% sure of what you are saying. Having been an immigrant myself, I can confirm that the ‘consciousness of being Indian’ surfaces when one is in a foreign land. But, to include in it people who have never been Indian is a fallacy. I believe Mr Naipaul’s writing is a product of his imagination and his skill. I applaud him for that. I cannot call him an Indian writer.
30 May 2007
How strange
If you have read my previous posts on the contemporary Indian novel, you would have got the feeling that it is one which is necessarily written in English. That, the contemporary Indian novel is not written in one of India’s 22-odd nationally-accepted vernacular languages, and then translated into English. No, it is clearly written and published in the English language. And, most likely, it is published outside India.
Not only that, there is a great chance that it may be, later, translated into European languages like French, German, Spanish, Portuguese or several other languages around the world. But, it is not likely to be translated into any one of India’s vernacular languages. It is likely to remain as a published work for, perhaps, 10% of India’s English language novel reading population.
I have often wondered how strange this is. How strange it is to have a body of work written in English, a language foreign to the greater population of India, represent India as its literature to the wider world. I have wondered how strange it is to have a body of work, supposedly from India, written by authors most of whom don’t even live in India. Or, at least, not anymore.
It’s not that these Indian authors are in exile like Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Milan Kundera. These Indian authors have left India and migrated to another country for better opportunities for themselves. Or, a few, like Jhumpa Lahiri or Pico Iyer or the ubiquitous V S Naipaul, have always lived away from India. Their only attribute (or qualificator, as someone once told me) is Indian parentage.
Yet, today, these authors represent my country and me to the world at large. I find this strange. I find this strange when I consider the huge body (perhaps I should call it treasure) of Indian literature, written in India’s own vernacular languages, which is a truer representation of life in India, and yet, which is being overlooked by the literary world.
And so, I ask myself, to what extent does this contemporary Indian novel have the right to represent me and my life in India... and be called Indian literature.
Not only that, there is a great chance that it may be, later, translated into European languages like French, German, Spanish, Portuguese or several other languages around the world. But, it is not likely to be translated into any one of India’s vernacular languages. It is likely to remain as a published work for, perhaps, 10% of India’s English language novel reading population.
I have often wondered how strange this is. How strange it is to have a body of work written in English, a language foreign to the greater population of India, represent India as its literature to the wider world. I have wondered how strange it is to have a body of work, supposedly from India, written by authors most of whom don’t even live in India. Or, at least, not anymore.
It’s not that these Indian authors are in exile like Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Milan Kundera. These Indian authors have left India and migrated to another country for better opportunities for themselves. Or, a few, like Jhumpa Lahiri or Pico Iyer or the ubiquitous V S Naipaul, have always lived away from India. Their only attribute (or qualificator, as someone once told me) is Indian parentage.
Yet, today, these authors represent my country and me to the world at large. I find this strange. I find this strange when I consider the huge body (perhaps I should call it treasure) of Indian literature, written in India’s own vernacular languages, which is a truer representation of life in India, and yet, which is being overlooked by the literary world.
And so, I ask myself, to what extent does this contemporary Indian novel have the right to represent me and my life in India... and be called Indian literature.
25 May 2007
The contemporary Indian novel – IV
I don’t understand it. In spite of V S Naipaul not having any good things to say about India, we are eager to embrace him as an Indian author. In spite of V S Naipaul claiming his Nobel Prize as a citizen of Trinidad & Tobago and the United Kingdom, we are craving for his company as an Indian author. In spite of V S Naipaul not being India-born or having lived in India for a substantial period of time (for instance, like William Dalrymple), we are willing to include him in our fold as an Indian author.
What is it with us Indians? Are we so much in need of talent and recognition that we have to borrow from the world outside – even from those who clearly distinguish themselves as not being Indian, or not being an Indian author? If we were to go by V S Naipaul’s own comments on the Hindi film as ‘not reflecting reality’ and ‘concealing the truth’, are we not indulging in exactly that same thing when we welcome him as an Indian author?
It’s strange that the authors who are recognised by the international literary world as Indian authors are the ones who don’t stay in India. They are the ones whose notions of India, as recorded in their writing, reflect an India which she is not. Or, perhaps has not been for many years. Writing from the UK or the US or Canada, these writers are creating a picture of India which is imaginary. They are creating an Indian identity which bears little resemblance to the reality. And yet, the whole world is accepting it as the truth.
I remember Salman Rushdie bringing up this point many years ago in a bit of non-fiction ‘The Eye of the Beholder: Indian Writing in English’ for the Commonwealth Institute. Rushdie suggested that the portrayal of India by Indian authors writing in English may be warped, skewed and distorted. He mentioned the habit of ‘looking back’ that Indian authors writing in English irrevocably practised. According to Rushdie,
“…exiles or emigrants or expatriates, are haunted by some sense of loss, some urge to reclaim, to look back, even at the risk of being mutated into pillars of salt. But if we do look back, we must also do so in the knowledge — which gives rise to profound uncertainties — that our physical alienation from India almost inevitably means that we will not be capable of reclaiming precisely the thing that was lost; that we will, in short, create fictions, not actual cities or villages, but invisible ones, imaginary homelands, Indias of the mind.”
But, besides me, and maybe a line-up of India’s own regional language authors who feel the need to assert themselves to clear the picture, no one is complaining. After all, writing is all about readership. And, the strength of the readership for the contemporary Indian novel lies with the Western world.
What is it with us Indians? Are we so much in need of talent and recognition that we have to borrow from the world outside – even from those who clearly distinguish themselves as not being Indian, or not being an Indian author? If we were to go by V S Naipaul’s own comments on the Hindi film as ‘not reflecting reality’ and ‘concealing the truth’, are we not indulging in exactly that same thing when we welcome him as an Indian author?
It’s strange that the authors who are recognised by the international literary world as Indian authors are the ones who don’t stay in India. They are the ones whose notions of India, as recorded in their writing, reflect an India which she is not. Or, perhaps has not been for many years. Writing from the UK or the US or Canada, these writers are creating a picture of India which is imaginary. They are creating an Indian identity which bears little resemblance to the reality. And yet, the whole world is accepting it as the truth.
I remember Salman Rushdie bringing up this point many years ago in a bit of non-fiction ‘The Eye of the Beholder: Indian Writing in English’ for the Commonwealth Institute. Rushdie suggested that the portrayal of India by Indian authors writing in English may be warped, skewed and distorted. He mentioned the habit of ‘looking back’ that Indian authors writing in English irrevocably practised. According to Rushdie,
“…exiles or emigrants or expatriates, are haunted by some sense of loss, some urge to reclaim, to look back, even at the risk of being mutated into pillars of salt. But if we do look back, we must also do so in the knowledge — which gives rise to profound uncertainties — that our physical alienation from India almost inevitably means that we will not be capable of reclaiming precisely the thing that was lost; that we will, in short, create fictions, not actual cities or villages, but invisible ones, imaginary homelands, Indias of the mind.”
But, besides me, and maybe a line-up of India’s own regional language authors who feel the need to assert themselves to clear the picture, no one is complaining. After all, writing is all about readership. And, the strength of the readership for the contemporary Indian novel lies with the Western world.
23 May 2007
The contemporary Indian novel – III
Salman Rushdie is the biggest name in contemporary Indian literature. Think of the Indian novel, or Indian writing in English, and ‘Rushdie’ is the first name that comes to mind. There were writers before him and there are those who are his contemporaries, but Salman Rushdie’s fame is unmatched. He is the authority; he is the measure.
By the time Rushdie achieved fame with ‘Midnight’s Children’, winning the Booker Prize in 1981, authors like V S Naipaul, Bharati Mukerjee, Anita Desai and Gita Mehta had already created a presence for the contemporary Indian novel in English in international literary circles. But, for some magical reason, Rushdie’s ‘Midnight’s Children’ became a landmark; his fame instant.
As you know, Rushdie went on to win many awards and greater fame, in spite of stirring up strong emotions within the Islamic community, for which he almost had to pay with his life. But, what is remarkable in all this is that, since Rushdie’s ‘Midnight’s Children’, there has been no looking back for the contemporary Indian novel in English. It has become a genre by itself, dominating the Indian novel at home, and spurring the growth of literature in entire South Asia.
Since then, many authors of Indian origin writing novels in English have achieved fame, winning international awards and recognition in their own right. I have mentioned some of these names in my previous post, but there are many more. However, there is a common thread that runs through them all. Almost all of them reside outside India, having migrated to the UK or the US since the sixties. Rushdie, for instance, has lived outside India (shuffling between the UK and the US) ever since the Beatles won the world over with their music.
This aspect of living outside India and yet writing about India is what makes up the profile of the contemporary Indian novelist. And, it is this profile which is responsible for a recurrent theme in their writing: that of the Indian immigrant experience. Not only do many novels follow this theme, with reminiscences of the old country, even in novels written solely on India, there is an Indian immigrant planted somewhere in the story. It is as if the novel has been written through the eyes of someone living outside India… which, I suppose, suits the international audience perfectly.
This explains the ready acceptance of the contemporary Indian novel by the literary world outside India. It explains the recognition by the literary and reading audience, and the resultant fame for the authors. The question is, would these authors of Indian origin have achieved equal fame if they had not migrated from India to write and publish their novels in the international market? Going by the facts of the matter, there does seem to be a pattern for success. And, for the moment, that success seems to be outside India.
Note:
If you have read my previous post, you would have found two anomalies in the list of authors I have provided. One, an exclusion: V S Naipaul. And the other, an inclusion: Bapsi Sidhwa.
Naipaul is supposed to be of Indian extraction since his forefathers were from Gorakpur (I think), in India. However, Naipaul was born in Trinidad & Tobago and has lived in the UK for many years. Since he has received all this awards and fame, including the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001, as a citizen of Trinidad & Tobago and the United Kingdom, I do not consider him to be an Indian author.
On the other hand, I believe Bapsi Sidhwa to be more of an Indian author than Naipaul. Sidhwa, although of Pakistani origin and nationality, and now living in the US, has written several novels and stories on India. Some of these stories have also been made into films (by Deepa Mehta) like ‘Earth’ and ‘Water’ for both Indian and international audiences.
By the time Rushdie achieved fame with ‘Midnight’s Children’, winning the Booker Prize in 1981, authors like V S Naipaul, Bharati Mukerjee, Anita Desai and Gita Mehta had already created a presence for the contemporary Indian novel in English in international literary circles. But, for some magical reason, Rushdie’s ‘Midnight’s Children’ became a landmark; his fame instant.
As you know, Rushdie went on to win many awards and greater fame, in spite of stirring up strong emotions within the Islamic community, for which he almost had to pay with his life. But, what is remarkable in all this is that, since Rushdie’s ‘Midnight’s Children’, there has been no looking back for the contemporary Indian novel in English. It has become a genre by itself, dominating the Indian novel at home, and spurring the growth of literature in entire South Asia.
Since then, many authors of Indian origin writing novels in English have achieved fame, winning international awards and recognition in their own right. I have mentioned some of these names in my previous post, but there are many more. However, there is a common thread that runs through them all. Almost all of them reside outside India, having migrated to the UK or the US since the sixties. Rushdie, for instance, has lived outside India (shuffling between the UK and the US) ever since the Beatles won the world over with their music.
This aspect of living outside India and yet writing about India is what makes up the profile of the contemporary Indian novelist. And, it is this profile which is responsible for a recurrent theme in their writing: that of the Indian immigrant experience. Not only do many novels follow this theme, with reminiscences of the old country, even in novels written solely on India, there is an Indian immigrant planted somewhere in the story. It is as if the novel has been written through the eyes of someone living outside India… which, I suppose, suits the international audience perfectly.
This explains the ready acceptance of the contemporary Indian novel by the literary world outside India. It explains the recognition by the literary and reading audience, and the resultant fame for the authors. The question is, would these authors of Indian origin have achieved equal fame if they had not migrated from India to write and publish their novels in the international market? Going by the facts of the matter, there does seem to be a pattern for success. And, for the moment, that success seems to be outside India.
Note:
If you have read my previous post, you would have found two anomalies in the list of authors I have provided. One, an exclusion: V S Naipaul. And the other, an inclusion: Bapsi Sidhwa.
Naipaul is supposed to be of Indian extraction since his forefathers were from Gorakpur (I think), in India. However, Naipaul was born in Trinidad & Tobago and has lived in the UK for many years. Since he has received all this awards and fame, including the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001, as a citizen of Trinidad & Tobago and the United Kingdom, I do not consider him to be an Indian author.
On the other hand, I believe Bapsi Sidhwa to be more of an Indian author than Naipaul. Sidhwa, although of Pakistani origin and nationality, and now living in the US, has written several novels and stories on India. Some of these stories have also been made into films (by Deepa Mehta) like ‘Earth’ and ‘Water’ for both Indian and international audiences.
20 May 2007
The contemporary Indian novel – II
From the point of view of Indian writing in English, if there is anything unique or outstanding about the contemporary Indian novel, then, according to me, it is its achievement of making India accessible to the West. Therein lies its distinction, and fame. You see, in the last thirty years or so, the contemporary Indian novel has garnered a fabulous Western audience for itself, simply because it has been written for that audience in mind.
Mind you, this could not have been achieved from the inside – that is, within India, by India’s ‘home-grown’ writers (Arundhati Roy may be an exception here, but she came into the picture when the path had already been set) – as, to do so, the writer had to have been a person of the West as well. So, the Indian novel had no choice but to depend on the works of those writers who left India for a foreign land, only to write about her from the outside, sharing their own personal experiences of India in their novels.
This included a plethora of writers living mainly in the UK and the US, and a few in Canada: Salman Rushdie, Bharati Mukerjee, Anita Desai, Bapsi Sidhwa, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Amitav Ghosh, Rohinton Mistry, Amit Chaudhuri, Vikram Seth, Vikram Chandra, Upamanyu Chatterjee, Sunetra Gupta, Jhumpa Lahiri, Kiran Desai… the list grows longer by the year. These are just a few of the names; those which appear in lists over and over. The important thing is, the West embraced them all, honouring them with awards and recognition from all corners of the literary world.
I’m not sure why it all happened in the way it did, but my theory is that the pop culture of the late sixties and the early seventies had something to do with it. The West was restless, looking for its soul, and turning to India for spiritual enlightenment. The word ‘karma’ was on people’s lips (though very few knew what it meant), along with a few other words and phrases like ‘guru’ and ‘Hare Krishna’ and ‘mantra’ and even ‘Ravi Shankar’. When the Beatles had their ‘satsang’ with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, India became the talk of the London and New York elite.
The West wanted to know more about India, and yet there was very little to be found. India was full of scholars but nobody could put into words what India’s mysticism was about. Until 1979, when Gita Mehta published her book, ‘Karma Cola: Marketing the Mystic East’, talking about this very subject. Gita Mehta was the perfect writer for the job, being Indian but with residence in the UK and the US, opening up India to the Western world (and, in the process, shattering a few myths as well).
This phenomenon, probably, also explained why Gita Mehta’s and (soon to be followed by the more heroic) Salman Rushdie’s writing became more popular with the West than R K Narayan’s. R K Narayan, writing from India about the simplicity of Indian rural life and the purity of the Indian heart, was not quite the ‘global writer’ that the Western literary world demanded from India. After all, the view of India that the West wanted had to be through a Western lens… so the West could understand it all.
Mind you, this could not have been achieved from the inside – that is, within India, by India’s ‘home-grown’ writers (Arundhati Roy may be an exception here, but she came into the picture when the path had already been set) – as, to do so, the writer had to have been a person of the West as well. So, the Indian novel had no choice but to depend on the works of those writers who left India for a foreign land, only to write about her from the outside, sharing their own personal experiences of India in their novels.
This included a plethora of writers living mainly in the UK and the US, and a few in Canada: Salman Rushdie, Bharati Mukerjee, Anita Desai, Bapsi Sidhwa, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Amitav Ghosh, Rohinton Mistry, Amit Chaudhuri, Vikram Seth, Vikram Chandra, Upamanyu Chatterjee, Sunetra Gupta, Jhumpa Lahiri, Kiran Desai… the list grows longer by the year. These are just a few of the names; those which appear in lists over and over. The important thing is, the West embraced them all, honouring them with awards and recognition from all corners of the literary world.
I’m not sure why it all happened in the way it did, but my theory is that the pop culture of the late sixties and the early seventies had something to do with it. The West was restless, looking for its soul, and turning to India for spiritual enlightenment. The word ‘karma’ was on people’s lips (though very few knew what it meant), along with a few other words and phrases like ‘guru’ and ‘Hare Krishna’ and ‘mantra’ and even ‘Ravi Shankar’. When the Beatles had their ‘satsang’ with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, India became the talk of the London and New York elite.
The West wanted to know more about India, and yet there was very little to be found. India was full of scholars but nobody could put into words what India’s mysticism was about. Until 1979, when Gita Mehta published her book, ‘Karma Cola: Marketing the Mystic East’, talking about this very subject. Gita Mehta was the perfect writer for the job, being Indian but with residence in the UK and the US, opening up India to the Western world (and, in the process, shattering a few myths as well).
This phenomenon, probably, also explained why Gita Mehta’s and (soon to be followed by the more heroic) Salman Rushdie’s writing became more popular with the West than R K Narayan’s. R K Narayan, writing from India about the simplicity of Indian rural life and the purity of the Indian heart, was not quite the ‘global writer’ that the Western literary world demanded from India. After all, the view of India that the West wanted had to be through a Western lens… so the West could understand it all.
18 May 2007
The contemporary Indian novel – I
There are a couple of things we need to keep in mind. First, there is the Indian novel written by Indian writers living in India and writing in their own vernacular language. Second, there is the Indian novel in English written by writers of Indian origin, and even citizenship, writing from almost anywhere in the world.
It is the second category – the Indian novel in English – which has been accepted by the literary world at large as the contemporary Indian novel.
This disappoints me, as I feel a great deal of literary achievement is being ignored by the world. But then, it’s the Indian novel in English which is responsible for highlighting India’s literary prowess and establishing India on the literary world map. As you may well know, in the last thirty years or so, many writers of the Indian novel in English have received international acclaim.
Here again, I am disappointed, as most of these writers of Indian origin do not, or no longer, live in India. They are described in various ways by the literary world: as ‘of Indian extraction’ such as V S Naipaul; or ‘British-Indian’ such as Salman Rushdie; or ‘citizen of India but with permanent residence in the United States’ such as Kiran Desai. These are three Man Booker Prize winners from the past 30 years or so (Naipaul 1971, Rushdie 1981, Desai 2006), of whom India is rather proud.
So, perhaps, the definition of an Indian novelist – i.e. in the sphere of the Indian novel being written in English – has little to do with nationality and political status of the writers, but more to do with their heritage, their family background and the content of their novels. And this fact, sort of, defines – or, is defined by – their race, their ethnicity and their culture. Not to mention the content of their writing, which is on India and about India.
Mind you, that’s not the end of the world for the Indian contemporary novel. There are ‘home-grown’ writers as well – those who are 100% Indian citizens, living in India (though a few may have passed away), and writing the Indian novel in English. I would say R K Narayan and Arundhati Roy (a Man Booker Prize winner, 1997) fit this description perfectly.
It is the second category – the Indian novel in English – which has been accepted by the literary world at large as the contemporary Indian novel.
This disappoints me, as I feel a great deal of literary achievement is being ignored by the world. But then, it’s the Indian novel in English which is responsible for highlighting India’s literary prowess and establishing India on the literary world map. As you may well know, in the last thirty years or so, many writers of the Indian novel in English have received international acclaim.
Here again, I am disappointed, as most of these writers of Indian origin do not, or no longer, live in India. They are described in various ways by the literary world: as ‘of Indian extraction’ such as V S Naipaul; or ‘British-Indian’ such as Salman Rushdie; or ‘citizen of India but with permanent residence in the United States’ such as Kiran Desai. These are three Man Booker Prize winners from the past 30 years or so (Naipaul 1971, Rushdie 1981, Desai 2006), of whom India is rather proud.
So, perhaps, the definition of an Indian novelist – i.e. in the sphere of the Indian novel being written in English – has little to do with nationality and political status of the writers, but more to do with their heritage, their family background and the content of their novels. And this fact, sort of, defines – or, is defined by – their race, their ethnicity and their culture. Not to mention the content of their writing, which is on India and about India.
Mind you, that’s not the end of the world for the Indian contemporary novel. There are ‘home-grown’ writers as well – those who are 100% Indian citizens, living in India (though a few may have passed away), and writing the Indian novel in English. I would say R K Narayan and Arundhati Roy (a Man Booker Prize winner, 1997) fit this description perfectly.
15 May 2007
The breakthrough
In the last 30 years or so, the Indian novel has made a major breakthrough in world literature. It has found for itself a suitable position, much admired by international scholars and the international literati.
The breakthrough strategy, though rather late in coming (in my opinion) as the strategy should have been obvious to us much earlier, was simple: write in English. If you wish to find yourself a place in the world of literature dominated by the English language, then write in English. It was a sort of ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ strategy, and it worked.
Today, we have recognition from the international community for the Indian novel and the substantial contribution that Indian authors make to world literature. Much of it has a colonial hang-up, of course, but I guess it can’t be avoided. After all, we have been under the British Rule for 300 odd years and have, most likely, been introduced to the novel by the British (see my previous post ‘The Indian Novel’).
Indian authors writing in English came forth with their work, establishing themselves, first, as an important part of the post-colonial South Asian diaspora and, second, in their own right, as creators of world-quality literature. In the past 30 years or so, there have been as many Indian writers of renown writing novels in English and winning international acclaim. They are far too many to be listed here, but a Google search would easily give you an idea of who they may be.
I’ve read many of their works, thoroughly enjoying the style of writing, the content and the significance that Indian novels have in an international forum, many a times cheering for the show of creativity and exuberance of the authors. And yet, that question still prevails in my mind: What is an Indian novel?
I’m sure the answer is not an easy one, considering the fact that the Indian novel’s evolution goes back a century and a half. However, for this post, if we limit our discussion to Indian authors writing in English, then there is an excellent article from the February/March 2000 issue of Boston Review which I would encourage you to read. It’s called ‘The Cult of Authenticity’ and is written by Vikram Chandra, an Indian author writing in English.
Here’s an excerpt from that article to mull over (the article is rather long):
“A friend told me about a meeting of the Delhi University syllabus revision committee, where they were trying to decide on the one Indo-Anglian novel that should be prescribed in the one course on modern Indian literature. My friend suggested Midnight’s Children, and she was shouted down. Salman Rushdie isn’t Indian, the majority of the professors asserted. Amitav Ghosh, however, was found to be sufficiently Indian, and so his Shadow Lines was accepted into the canon. The issue was decided not on the basis of the relative merits of the books, but on the perceived Indianness of the authors, and by implication, the degree of their assimilation by the West.”
The breakthrough strategy, though rather late in coming (in my opinion) as the strategy should have been obvious to us much earlier, was simple: write in English. If you wish to find yourself a place in the world of literature dominated by the English language, then write in English. It was a sort of ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ strategy, and it worked.
Today, we have recognition from the international community for the Indian novel and the substantial contribution that Indian authors make to world literature. Much of it has a colonial hang-up, of course, but I guess it can’t be avoided. After all, we have been under the British Rule for 300 odd years and have, most likely, been introduced to the novel by the British (see my previous post ‘The Indian Novel’).
Indian authors writing in English came forth with their work, establishing themselves, first, as an important part of the post-colonial South Asian diaspora and, second, in their own right, as creators of world-quality literature. In the past 30 years or so, there have been as many Indian writers of renown writing novels in English and winning international acclaim. They are far too many to be listed here, but a Google search would easily give you an idea of who they may be.
I’ve read many of their works, thoroughly enjoying the style of writing, the content and the significance that Indian novels have in an international forum, many a times cheering for the show of creativity and exuberance of the authors. And yet, that question still prevails in my mind: What is an Indian novel?
I’m sure the answer is not an easy one, considering the fact that the Indian novel’s evolution goes back a century and a half. However, for this post, if we limit our discussion to Indian authors writing in English, then there is an excellent article from the February/March 2000 issue of Boston Review which I would encourage you to read. It’s called ‘The Cult of Authenticity’ and is written by Vikram Chandra, an Indian author writing in English.
Here’s an excerpt from that article to mull over (the article is rather long):
“A friend told me about a meeting of the Delhi University syllabus revision committee, where they were trying to decide on the one Indo-Anglian novel that should be prescribed in the one course on modern Indian literature. My friend suggested Midnight’s Children, and she was shouted down. Salman Rushdie isn’t Indian, the majority of the professors asserted. Amitav Ghosh, however, was found to be sufficiently Indian, and so his Shadow Lines was accepted into the canon. The issue was decided not on the basis of the relative merits of the books, but on the perceived Indianness of the authors, and by implication, the degree of their assimilation by the West.”
12 May 2007
Linguistic lines
How can the Indian novel do well in a world where the novel, and literature itself, is dominated by the English language? If it’s not English, then it’s French, Spanish, German or Russian. The world of literature favours the more popular languages of the larger cultural powers, with English having established itself as the world leader.
There are affinities too, like Latin American literature, a strategy that seems to be set firmly to woo readers from countries speaking the same language. In this case, it’s Spanish. There is still the rigour of translations, of course, but I can confidently say that, today, Latin American literature is growing in leaps and bounds, and will soon become a force to contend with.
The truth of the matter is that the world of literature is divided along linguistic lines, with the smaller cultures edged out by virtue of their languages being less popular than a few others. Few in number these languages may be, but their reach and their might are phenomenal.
With such polarisation, there is very little chance that a novel from India can get an edge in. Added to this, India’s own problem of twenty-two official languages (besides English) and five times as many dialects gives Indian literature a sort of provincial or local bias. Leading to the important question: what exactly is an Indian novel?
There are affinities too, like Latin American literature, a strategy that seems to be set firmly to woo readers from countries speaking the same language. In this case, it’s Spanish. There is still the rigour of translations, of course, but I can confidently say that, today, Latin American literature is growing in leaps and bounds, and will soon become a force to contend with.
The truth of the matter is that the world of literature is divided along linguistic lines, with the smaller cultures edged out by virtue of their languages being less popular than a few others. Few in number these languages may be, but their reach and their might are phenomenal.
With such polarisation, there is very little chance that a novel from India can get an edge in. Added to this, India’s own problem of twenty-two official languages (besides English) and five times as many dialects gives Indian literature a sort of provincial or local bias. Leading to the important question: what exactly is an Indian novel?
11 May 2007
The Indian novel
As it happened in England, in India, too, the novel as a genre began in mid-nineteenth century. What was before the novel is difficult to classify, but somehow, not long after the Industrial Revolution, literature blossomed across the world, introducing readers to the long story in the form of the novel.
As a Bengali – i.e. a person from the state of West Bengal in Eastern India – and a student of storytelling, I find this intriguing. It’s baffling to learn that, in Bengali literature, there was no such thing as a novel prior to 1850.
Then suddenly, as if the literary dam had burst, a legion of novelists emerged in Bengal: Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Sonjib Chandra Chattopadhyay, Taraknath Gangopadhyay, Ramesh Chandra Dutta, Rabindranath Tagore, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay… and others.
Although the first Bengali novel is supposed to be ‘Alaler Ghorer Dulal’ (the author’s name escapes me now), most likely published in 1857, the year of the Sepoy Mutiny, the novel which is remembered most is ‘Durgesh Nondini’ written by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay in 1865, the first of his 14 novels. This set the words flowing and the next 70 years were probably the most creative years in Bengali literature.
The Indian novel, in fact, developed all across India with Mayuram Vedanayakam Pillai’s ‘Prathapa Mudaliar Charithram’ written in Tamil in 1879, and O Chandumenon’s ‘Indulekha’ written in Malayalam in 1889 declared as two of the greatest novels from South India at that time.
The reasons for the beginning and the development of the Indian novel at this time are numerous. They include British influence and westernisation of India, the emergence of a middle class and a new Indian sensibility, a scientific temper which instigated improvements in various aspects of Indian life, and the fact that English novels were available in India. All, leading to a comment that the novel as a genre may have been imported into India, thanks to the British.
However, there is a claim staked by several literary historians that a work in Persian, ‘Nashtar’ by Hasan Shah, purported to have been written in 1790, is the first Indian novel in any Indian language. Apparently, it had remained unknown until an Urdu translation was published in 1893.
As a Bengali – i.e. a person from the state of West Bengal in Eastern India – and a student of storytelling, I find this intriguing. It’s baffling to learn that, in Bengali literature, there was no such thing as a novel prior to 1850.
Then suddenly, as if the literary dam had burst, a legion of novelists emerged in Bengal: Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Sonjib Chandra Chattopadhyay, Taraknath Gangopadhyay, Ramesh Chandra Dutta, Rabindranath Tagore, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay… and others.
Although the first Bengali novel is supposed to be ‘Alaler Ghorer Dulal’ (the author’s name escapes me now), most likely published in 1857, the year of the Sepoy Mutiny, the novel which is remembered most is ‘Durgesh Nondini’ written by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay in 1865, the first of his 14 novels. This set the words flowing and the next 70 years were probably the most creative years in Bengali literature.
The Indian novel, in fact, developed all across India with Mayuram Vedanayakam Pillai’s ‘Prathapa Mudaliar Charithram’ written in Tamil in 1879, and O Chandumenon’s ‘Indulekha’ written in Malayalam in 1889 declared as two of the greatest novels from South India at that time.
The reasons for the beginning and the development of the Indian novel at this time are numerous. They include British influence and westernisation of India, the emergence of a middle class and a new Indian sensibility, a scientific temper which instigated improvements in various aspects of Indian life, and the fact that English novels were available in India. All, leading to a comment that the novel as a genre may have been imported into India, thanks to the British.
However, there is a claim staked by several literary historians that a work in Persian, ‘Nashtar’ by Hasan Shah, purported to have been written in 1790, is the first Indian novel in any Indian language. Apparently, it had remained unknown until an Urdu translation was published in 1893.
09 May 2007
The Curtain
What is the novel’s raison d’etre? Can the novel help us understand reality, to define the boundaries and/or the relationship between fiction and reality? Or, as Milan Kundera suggests in his new book, ‘The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts’, help us see with new eyes? For, isn’t the novel’s tradition (and it’s true for fiction in general) as old as human culture, laying the path to a more progressive, revolutionary form?
In his March 2007 article, ‘The unbearable rightness of fiction’, in Salon.com, Gary Kamiya explains Kundera’s point why it is important for all novelists to understand the history and the form of the novel:
“Kundera’s point is that Western culture, including classical music and literature, has a definite history, which one must know not just to understand new works but, as a creator, to build on. If you’re a novelist writing in 2007 and you don’t know ‘Don Quixote’, ‘Tom Jones’, ‘Tristram Shandy’ and ‘The Castle’, you may still create a lasting work -- but you will do so only as a wild genius, not as a craftsman. And the history-obsessed Kundera has his doubts about untutored genius.”
Adding, “Kundera believes novelists must know the history of the form because if they don’t, they are likely to repeat fictional expeditions already undertaken -- for him, the ultimate aesthetic sin.”
But what about pioneer novelists like Cervantes and Rabelais who had no history of the novel to start with? Were they simply men of untutored genius? Were they not craftsmen as well?
Gary Kamiya goes on to write, “‘The Curtain’ reveals a lot about Kundera. Yet, ironically, it also helps us understand why his creative works, or those of any major writer, cannot be reduced to theory.” I agree.
In his March 2007 article, ‘The unbearable rightness of fiction’, in Salon.com, Gary Kamiya explains Kundera’s point why it is important for all novelists to understand the history and the form of the novel:
“Kundera’s point is that Western culture, including classical music and literature, has a definite history, which one must know not just to understand new works but, as a creator, to build on. If you’re a novelist writing in 2007 and you don’t know ‘Don Quixote’, ‘Tom Jones’, ‘Tristram Shandy’ and ‘The Castle’, you may still create a lasting work -- but you will do so only as a wild genius, not as a craftsman. And the history-obsessed Kundera has his doubts about untutored genius.”
Adding, “Kundera believes novelists must know the history of the form because if they don’t, they are likely to repeat fictional expeditions already undertaken -- for him, the ultimate aesthetic sin.”
But what about pioneer novelists like Cervantes and Rabelais who had no history of the novel to start with? Were they simply men of untutored genius? Were they not craftsmen as well?
Gary Kamiya goes on to write, “‘The Curtain’ reveals a lot about Kundera. Yet, ironically, it also helps us understand why his creative works, or those of any major writer, cannot be reduced to theory.” I agree.
07 May 2007
Fuentes on Borges
“Borges remarked that a new reading of a book is also a new writing of that book. Stories are eternal only in that they are always being read, and that we the readers, we the plurality, over many times and spaces, we are the generators of meaning.”
[from Notes by Allen B. Ruch on ‘Jorge Luis Borges at 100: A Lecture by Carlos Fuentes’ – 18 October 1999, 92nd Street Y, New York, Unterberg Poetry Center]
[from Notes by Allen B. Ruch on ‘Jorge Luis Borges at 100: A Lecture by Carlos Fuentes’ – 18 October 1999, 92nd Street Y, New York, Unterberg Poetry Center]
The Novel
“The novelist’s ambition is not to do something better than his predecessors but to see what they did not see, say what they did not say.”
– Milan Kundera
Just like architecture and music, literature and its chief proponent, the novel, have evolved over the years to represent our culture. And, therefore, much of literary history is the history of the novel. The Western culture has been quick to attest this and a great deal is written about the history of the novel, with its beginnings in Europe.
The East, forever the reticent kin of the West, has kept a low profile in this matter, although its history and literature date back thousands of years before Western culture came to be known as Western culture. I have no doubt the East’s literary history is far richer than what the West can ever offer, but, sadly, there isn’t a great deal that one can read up today about literary history in the East, or in my country, India, for that matter.
So, for the layman in India, the books on literary history that can be found in the bookstores are those written by Western authors recording their own culture. For the novel, that means a journey of 400-odd years, covering three continents: Europe (including old Russia), America (mainly the United States), and Latin America.
Authors who are likely to come up for discussion would include Cervantes, Fielding, Balzac, Flaubert, Dickens, George Eliot, Hardy, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Kafka and Joyce (from Europe); Melville, Hawthorne, Henry James, Conrad, Faulkner and Hemingway (from America); Fuentes and García Márquez (from Latin America). There are many more, of course. The list is long.
In each work of the authors listed above, we’ll find a style unique to its period, perhaps even leading the novel out of its previous mode. For, the history of the novel is the history of its form, its tradition, its progress from one period to another, its understanding – and representation – of reality in the realm of the author’s imagination. All laid out before us in quaint cultural settings, with lively and idiosyncratic characters running through its pages.
– Milan Kundera
Just like architecture and music, literature and its chief proponent, the novel, have evolved over the years to represent our culture. And, therefore, much of literary history is the history of the novel. The Western culture has been quick to attest this and a great deal is written about the history of the novel, with its beginnings in Europe.
The East, forever the reticent kin of the West, has kept a low profile in this matter, although its history and literature date back thousands of years before Western culture came to be known as Western culture. I have no doubt the East’s literary history is far richer than what the West can ever offer, but, sadly, there isn’t a great deal that one can read up today about literary history in the East, or in my country, India, for that matter.
So, for the layman in India, the books on literary history that can be found in the bookstores are those written by Western authors recording their own culture. For the novel, that means a journey of 400-odd years, covering three continents: Europe (including old Russia), America (mainly the United States), and Latin America.
Authors who are likely to come up for discussion would include Cervantes, Fielding, Balzac, Flaubert, Dickens, George Eliot, Hardy, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Kafka and Joyce (from Europe); Melville, Hawthorne, Henry James, Conrad, Faulkner and Hemingway (from America); Fuentes and García Márquez (from Latin America). There are many more, of course. The list is long.
In each work of the authors listed above, we’ll find a style unique to its period, perhaps even leading the novel out of its previous mode. For, the history of the novel is the history of its form, its tradition, its progress from one period to another, its understanding – and representation – of reality in the realm of the author’s imagination. All laid out before us in quaint cultural settings, with lively and idiosyncratic characters running through its pages.
04 May 2007
Storms over the novel
“What good is the novel, the long story told in prose? Hegel called the contingent, the everyday, the mutable, "the prose of the world," as opposed to "the spiritual, the transcendent, the poetic." "Prosaic" can mean plain, ordinary, commonplace, even dull. Prose fiction, historians of the novel tell us, has had to struggle against the sense of being a second-rate genre. Heidegger said that "novelists squander ignobly the reader’s precious time." In late-eighteenth-century Britain, when large numbers of badly written popular novels were being published, "only when entertainment was combined with useful instruction might the novel escape charges of insignificance or depravity."
In pre-modern China, Japan, and Korea, the general word for fictional writing was xiaoshuo (in Chinese), meaning "trivial discourse." Socialist critics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have accused the novel of bourgeois frivolity. By contrast, aestheticians of the novel, like Flaubert, proposed the ideal novel as "a book about nothing," or, like Joyce, as a game which would turn the everyday world into the most concentrated and highly designed prose possible. Moral writers of novels like George Eliot or D.H. Lawrence believed in the novel as the book of truth, teaching us how to live and understand our lives and those of others.”
The novel’s entanglement in "the prose of the world" can also be its justification and its pride. The novel’s virtue, it has often been argued, lies in its egalitarianism, its very commonplaceness. And the novel’s everydayness need not be an enemy to its aesthetic integrity. In his wise, deep, and witty essay on the novel, The Curtain, Milan Kundera, a follower of Flaubert in his critique and practice of the European novel, celebrates "the everyday" ("it is not merely ennui, pointlessness, repetition, triviality; it is beauty as well") while writing in praise of the novel's essential self-sufficiency:
"It...refuses to exist as illustration of an historical era, as description of a society, as defense of an ideology, and instead puts itself exclusively at the service of "what only the novel can say."
[Excerpt from ‘Storms Over the Novel’ by Hermione Lee, The New York Review of Books, Volume 54, Number 8 · May 10, 2007]
In pre-modern China, Japan, and Korea, the general word for fictional writing was xiaoshuo (in Chinese), meaning "trivial discourse." Socialist critics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have accused the novel of bourgeois frivolity. By contrast, aestheticians of the novel, like Flaubert, proposed the ideal novel as "a book about nothing," or, like Joyce, as a game which would turn the everyday world into the most concentrated and highly designed prose possible. Moral writers of novels like George Eliot or D.H. Lawrence believed in the novel as the book of truth, teaching us how to live and understand our lives and those of others.”
The novel’s entanglement in "the prose of the world" can also be its justification and its pride. The novel’s virtue, it has often been argued, lies in its egalitarianism, its very commonplaceness. And the novel’s everydayness need not be an enemy to its aesthetic integrity. In his wise, deep, and witty essay on the novel, The Curtain, Milan Kundera, a follower of Flaubert in his critique and practice of the European novel, celebrates "the everyday" ("it is not merely ennui, pointlessness, repetition, triviality; it is beauty as well") while writing in praise of the novel's essential self-sufficiency:
"It...refuses to exist as illustration of an historical era, as description of a society, as defense of an ideology, and instead puts itself exclusively at the service of "what only the novel can say."
[Excerpt from ‘Storms Over the Novel’ by Hermione Lee, The New York Review of Books, Volume 54, Number 8 · May 10, 2007]
01 May 2007
How to read a novel in 3 not-so-easy steps
STEP 1: Read the novel quickly, beginning to end.
STEP 2: Read the novel slowly, with concentration, paying attention to each and every detail of what’s written and how it’s written, making notes along the way.
Ask yourself if the novel entertained you; if you enjoyed reading it. Which characters did you like, or dislike? And why? Did the plot engage you? Were there discrepancies in the narration of the story, or in the characters? Did the setting seem appropriate? In which time period was the story set? Did the novel touch any specific emotions in you? Did you understand what the novel was about? What was the author’s point of view? Was there a message in the story which you would remember for a long time? Did the novel have a social, cultural, historical or political relevance?
Analyse your answers honestly. Don’t let your personal feelings or beliefs cloud your judgement about the story, or the author.
STEP 3: Read the novel in your own pace, reviewing and revising the notes you’ve made on your previous reading.
See if you have missed anything, or learnt something new. Try to pick up meaningful or relevant quotes and passages from the novel for discussion. Find out what you can about the author. If you can, compare the novel with the author’s other works, or works by other authors in the same genre or period.
Decide what is good or bad about the novel and the author, objectively. Only then will you be able to appreciate the true beauty of the novel.
These three not-so-easy steps in reading a novel were drilled into me by my English teacher: an aging lady with a hooked nose and thin lips, who seldom gave me good marks in English literature; though she never tired of encouraging me to read. I avoided her. I don’t remember ever following her advice.
It’s was much later, in my professional life, when I had to sift through volumes of data on consumers, brands, markets and economic indicators, did I realise the significance of her teaching.
STEP 2: Read the novel slowly, with concentration, paying attention to each and every detail of what’s written and how it’s written, making notes along the way.
Ask yourself if the novel entertained you; if you enjoyed reading it. Which characters did you like, or dislike? And why? Did the plot engage you? Were there discrepancies in the narration of the story, or in the characters? Did the setting seem appropriate? In which time period was the story set? Did the novel touch any specific emotions in you? Did you understand what the novel was about? What was the author’s point of view? Was there a message in the story which you would remember for a long time? Did the novel have a social, cultural, historical or political relevance?
Analyse your answers honestly. Don’t let your personal feelings or beliefs cloud your judgement about the story, or the author.
STEP 3: Read the novel in your own pace, reviewing and revising the notes you’ve made on your previous reading.
See if you have missed anything, or learnt something new. Try to pick up meaningful or relevant quotes and passages from the novel for discussion. Find out what you can about the author. If you can, compare the novel with the author’s other works, or works by other authors in the same genre or period.
Decide what is good or bad about the novel and the author, objectively. Only then will you be able to appreciate the true beauty of the novel.
These three not-so-easy steps in reading a novel were drilled into me by my English teacher: an aging lady with a hooked nose and thin lips, who seldom gave me good marks in English literature; though she never tired of encouraging me to read. I avoided her. I don’t remember ever following her advice.
It’s was much later, in my professional life, when I had to sift through volumes of data on consumers, brands, markets and economic indicators, did I realise the significance of her teaching.
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