Indian Writing

For International Literacy Day, I’ll point to two thoughts from Paolo Freire:

“To substitute monologue, slogans, and communiques for dialogue is to attempt to liberate the oppressed with the instruments of domestication.”

Hope is a natural, possible, and necessary impetus in the context of our unfinishedness.

*****

And a poem by Brecht,

Questions From a Worker Who Reads

Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you will find the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?
And Babylon, many times demolished
Who raised it up so many times? In what houses
of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live?
Where, the evening that the Wall of China was finished
Did the masons go? Great Rome
Is full of triumphal arches. Who erected them? Over whom
Did the Caesars triumph? Had Byzantium, much praised in song
Only palaces for its inhabitants? Even in fabled Atlantis
The night the ocean engulfed it
The drowning still bawled for their slaves.

The young Alexander conquered India.
Was he alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls.
Did he not have even a cook with him?

Philip of Spain wept when his armada
Went down. Was he the only one to weep?
Frederick the Second won the Seven Year’s War. Who
Else won it?

Every page a victory.
Who cooked the feast for the victors?
Every ten years a great man?
Who paid the bill?

So many reports.
So many questions.

- Bertolt Brecht

Trans. M. Hamburger

Robert Jensen on the current conception of masculinity, and why it’s time to jettison it:

It’s hard to be a man; hard to live up to the demands that come with the dominant conception of masculinity, of the tough guy.

So, guys, I have an idea — maybe it’s time we stop trying. Maybe this masculinity thing is a bad deal, not just for women but for us.

We need to get rid of the whole idea of masculinity. It’s time to abandon the claim that there are certain psychological or social traits that inherently come with being biologically male. If we can get past that, we have a chance to create a better world for men and women.

The Legends of Pensam, by journalist, poet and former civil servant Mamang Dai, is an affecting work that intertwines myth, legend, history and memoir to record the life stories of the Adi tribe of Arunachal Pradesh. The stories, set in the beautiful Siang River Valley, are loosely structured around a family of Adis across several generations. The first story is about a “boy who fell from the sky”; at the end of the book, grown old, he sits with his granddaughter, peering through a pair of ancient binoculars. The intervening pages tell us what happened during these years and before them, harking back all the way to the Adi creation myths.

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Two interviews with Salman Rushdie. The Spiegel interview begins by calling him an expert on terror.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Rushdie, as an expert on terrorism you …

Rushdie: What gives me that honor? I don’t see myself as such at all.

SPIEGEL: Your book “Fury,” with its description of an America threatened by terrorism and published in spring 2001, was seen by many as prophetic — as more or less anticipating 9/11. Your most recent novel “Shalimar the Clown” describes how a circus performer from Kashmir is transformed into a terrorist. And for almost a decade your life was threatened by Iranian fanatics, with a price of $4 million on your head.

Rushdie: If you think that’s enough to qualify me as an expert on terrorism …

One thing that really gets him going is the odd but pervasive notion of Rushdie as a party dude to reckon with. While the reality may be very different, the enduring public perception of the post-fatwa Salman is of a gyrating daddio grooving away on dance floors across the capital and turning up to the opening of an envelope. What does he say to that?

“Oh go and look in your nearest envelope! You will not find me in it. I do not have a wardrobe full of lamé clothes at home, you know. I spend most of my life doing serious things. There are no shocks left to learn about me. In fact,” he says, warming to his theme, “the problem with my life is that you know the whole f—ing thing! You know all the bits that are true. Even the bits are not true, you think you know those, too.”