Indian Writing

Our movie-going has become more regular.

The first film we saw at the new PVR Phoenix was Margazhi Raagam, which had Bombay Jayashri and T.N.Krishna in concert. Pity there was just one other person in the hall.

We also saw Milk, Sean Penn’s best performance.

And The Changeling, quite a disappointment.

And Slumdog Millionaire, about which I have mixed feelings. I found the first half of the film very hard to watch.

Delhi 6, which could have been so good, but was… disastrous.

And the superb Dev D, ab out which I wrote here.

Haruki Murakami’s Jerusalem Prize acceptance speech.

Please do allow me to deliver one very personal message. It is something that I always keep in mind while I am writing fiction. I have never gone so far as to write it on a piece of paper and paste it to the wall: rather, it is carved into the wall of my mind, and it goes something like this:

“Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg.”

Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will decide. If there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?

What is the meaning of this metaphor? In some cases, it is all too simple and clear. Bombers and tanks and rockets and white phosphorus shells are that high, solid wall. The eggs are the unarmed civilians who are crushed and burned and shot by them.

This is not all, though. It carries a deeper meaning. Think of it this way. Each of us is, more or less, an egg. Each of us is a unique, irreplaceable soul enclosed in a fragile shell. This is true of me, and it is true of each of you. And each of us, to a greater or lesser degree, is confronting a high, solid wall. The wall has a name: it is “the System.” The System is supposed to protect us, but sometimes it takes on a life of its own, and then it begins to kill us and cause us to kill others — coldly, efficiently, systematically.

… Laura Miller on Elaine Showalter’s new book, “A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx”.

…Showalter offers more grist for the mill than a hundred volumes of theory. Why, for example, did Britain produce several women novelists of genius during the 19th century — Jane Austen, George Eliot and the Brontës, as well as accomplished lesser artists like Elizabeth Gaskell — while America did not? That question could (and sometimes does) lead to a lot of speculation on the national characters of the English-speaking peoples, but Showalter mentions an equally plausible, practical cause: “While English women novelists, even those as poor as the Brontës, had servants, American women were expected to clean, cook and sew; even in the South, white women in slaveholding families were trained in domestic arts.” Quite a few of the short biographical sketches she offers feature women complaining about being compelled by parents to learn to make pies or mend when they would rather write. In 1877, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps made the heroine of her novel, “The Story of Avis,” fume, “I hate to make my bed, and I hate, hate to sew chemises, and I hate, hate, hate to go cooking round the kitchen.”

Sad news. Mr T.N. Shanbhag of Strand Book Stall (”Where the reader comes first”), the 60-year old 20% discount bookstore in town, passed away yesterday.

I’m blogging from Khandala, so I’ll just provide two links:

Abodh has a lovely tribute.

Here is an article by Ranjit Hoskote in the Hindu, written at the time of Shanbhag’s Padma Shri award.

I have always admired the writing of Abraham Verghese. I had earlier linked to this article about helping to treat the Katrina refugees. He has published a new novel, Cutting for Stone. Here is Verghese in conversation with Dr Pauline Chen in the NYT: “The importance of the ritual of one patient baring his or her soul and body cannot be underestimated. Rituals are terribly important to human beings because they signify transformation. This is how you earn your right to say, ‘I am your doctor.’ If as a doctor you shortchange the ritual, you end up making patients feel you aren’t interested. They lose trust.”

Here is a review.