Indian Writing

Amitava Kumar sends me this link to what he had planned to say while introducing Salman Rushdie at Vassar this week:

About twenty-five years ago, with the publication of Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie met with the reception usually accorded to Hindi film heroes… I guess I would be speaking for a lot of readers, particularly in those parts of the planet that used to be called the Third World, who saw Mr Rushdie as having fought and won against, and made an ally of, the English language, the alien language that had come to us with our colonial rulers. Mr Rushdie has had to fight many other battles since; he has made many friends and enemies; and we (I’m speaking as an Indian here) we, as his readers and as writers, have followed his actions, his songs, his mannerisms, and even when we have chosen not to follow him into the sunset, we’ve always had to define ourselves, and our rebellions, against this image we have had of him, looking down at us from giant billboards at each street-corner of our past.

One of Mr Rushdie’s most heroic struggles has been the one with a cleric who put a price on this writer’s head. Well—as our honored guest has himself remarked, of the two adversaries, only one has lived to tell the tale.

Salman Rushdie came to Vassar College earlier this week to deliver a lecture for the Class of 2010 – but made it clear to the organizers that he would cancel if I was involved in his visit. I had earlier been asked to introduce him, and then, well, I was disinvited.

I’m disappointed. Rushdie’s negativity is apparently in a trunk in storage, but clearly his ego hasn’t been packed away. I’m no longer surprised that Fay Weldon accused him of living among the poseurs.

(Pic: Haroun and the Sea of Stories, via)

Update: This comment by SR (or someone claiming to be him) on Amitava’s post says that he didn’t threaten to cancel, he just didn’t want to share a stage with Amitava. Yeah, that explains it all.

To this great and beautiful animal who, after years of walking the streets of Mumbai begging for food, was injured in an accident near Chembur this week. She was hit by a water tanker. She died yesterday.

Journalist and blogger Annie Zaidi has this cover story in Frontline about manual scavenging. The practice is rooted in caste:

“Martin [Macwan] describes in detail some traditional practices designed to keep bhangis in their place,” writes [Mari MarcelThekkekara], explaining the bhangi women’s routine of begging for food every day along with their children. “Appropriate behaviour has to be learned. The correct tone, the suitably humble stance, the posture of the supplicant. The bhangi mother has to ensure, to teach her children that they must never, ever, even accidentally, touch the upper-caste person…”

The midwife said:

“Here, hold the child.”

Chudalamuthu’s hand froze. An old woman who came out, said:

“You must give 10 chakras before taking the child.”

Chudalamuthu came back with ten chakras. But he was fearful of taking the child in his hands. He was a Thotti. He had to hold the child with the hands that cleared toilet-filth!

Yet he had to do it. He held out his hand and took the child. And gave it back immediately.

Chudalamuthu had never felt such an aversion at being a Thotti as he did that day. That baby might have also been feeling the aversion. Can it know the stink? A Thotti stinks even if he takes a bath. Will the child have problems because I touched it? He should grow up without touching a Thotti. Even so, when he gave the child to other hands, Chudalamuthu felt like holding him again.

If their mothers don’t induct them into scavenging, their mothers-in-law do. Or their husbands do. If their husbands are also scavengers, they will often work together. For instance, the man, using a stick, will un-clog the gutter into which the shit is flushed. The woman will pick it up and carry it in baskets.

The filthiest task is left to the woman, wherever possible.

I remember Mary Oliver’s poem:

In Singapore, in the airport,
a darkness was ripped from my eyes.
In the women’s restroom, one compartment stood open.
A woman knelt there, washing something
in the white bowl.

Disgust argued in my stomach
and I felt, in my pocket, for my ticket.

A poem should always have birds in it.
Kingfishers, say, with their bold eyes and gaudy wings.
Rivers are pleasant, and of course trees.
A waterfall, or if that’s not possible, a fountain
rising and falling.
A person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.

When the woman turned I could not answer her face…