Indian Writing

It seems there is such an animal, and that it has been around for 25 years at least. I must have missed the memo.

There are certain books that are so similar to one another they almost beg to be grouped together. This is largely true of Indian novels. Look closely at the ones published in the past, say, 25 years, and you’ll see that they’re virtually identical, in theme if not in style and content.

For me, Midnight’s Children is indivisible from A Fine Balance, which in turn cannot be separated from A Suitable Boy. Directly or indirectly, all three books - and there are other notable examples - are concerned with the same thing: the state of Indian society in the wake of independence and partition.

Oh, right: Amitav Ghosh, Shashi Deshpande, Raj Kamal Jha, Kiran Desai, Kiran Nagarkar, Upamanyu Chatterjee, Manju Kapur, Amit Chaudhuri, Neelum Saran Gour, Samit Basu, Rupa Bajwa, and all the others are writing the same novel over and over again?

Chandra’s novel is hatke and I love it, but India’s a big country, people are writing all sorts of different novels, so please, Mr Thompson, go read some of them before lumping them all together.

(link via Amitava Kumar)

Also see Edward Champion’s post here:

Thompson also suggests that Midnight’s Children and A Fine Balance are “indivisible.” This, despite the fact that the former contains a protagonist with a highly sensitive nose and the latter does not, the former chronicles Indian history from 1910 to 1976, while the latter takes place during The Emergency between 1975 and 1977. There are infinite differences in language, characters, and plotting. But don’t tell Thompson this. So long as those brown-skinned people are banging out those novels, there isn’t a single distinction in his eyes.

Maybe it would have been better to kill the opening paragraph, says Galley Cat.

Do these guys look like… the same guy? The MM reports on Ramu’s spat with Manoj Bajpai:

The much-discussed midnight meeting between Manoj Bajpai and his erstwhile mentor Ram Gopal Varma came to a stalemate because apparently Manoj wanted to play Veeru (the part originally played by Amitabh Bachchan in Ramesh Sippy’s Sholay) rather than Sambha (the role of Gabbar Singh’s main side-kick, originally played by Mac Mohan).

Except that, uh, it was Dharmendra who played Veeru, not Amitabh as the report says.

Sheesh.

And the report goes on to tell us about RGV’s final word on Manoj Bajpai not playing Sambha, which is… several paragraphs long. The point being, Mr Bajpai will not play Mr Sambha.

In which, among so many others, Kipling’s son was killed:

“John was extremely keen to join up. Like pretty much everyone else he thought it would be a short war and wanted to play his part,” said Michael Smith, a vice-president of the Kipling Society. “He went at the beginning to try and enlist on his own, but was rejected. Later he tried again, this time accompanied by his father, but again he was rejected.”

It was time to pull some strings. His father was at the height of his celebrity. The world’s youngest Nobel literary laureate, his was the authentic voice of empire, whose work beat the drum for the jingoistic spirit of the times.

Later Kipling was to write:

If any question why we died
Tell them, because our fathers lied…

Also see his Recessional:

Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

Harry Potter Daniel Radcliffe is to act in the TV drama about the Kiplings during the War.