Indian Writing

Toward the end of the Sakuntala, the most famous of the three surviving plays by Kalidasa–the poet usually considered the finest in ancient India–the hero Dushyanta offers this poignant self-analysis:

Like someone staring at an elephant
who says, “There is no elephant here,”
and who then, as it moves away,
feels a certain doubt
and later, seeing its footprints,
is certain: “An elephant
has been here”–
such are the subtle
workings of my mind.

Or of any mind–the rueful king speaks for all of us. We almost always miss the elephant in front of us. By the time we make our retrospective deduction from the footprints, it’s usually too late.

(via) Here is the website of the Clay Sanskrit Library.

…can sometimes be delivered in unexpected ways. Not by getting the perfect child that every parent dreams of, but the imperfect one who helps them discover the strength and beauty of their own endurance.”

Manjula Padmanabhan on the Mehta abortion case.

The Man Booker 2008 longlist has been announced.

It includes Arvind Adiga (The White Tiger), Amitav Ghosh (Sea of Poppies), Mohammed Hanif (A Case of Exploding Mangoes) and Salman Rushdie (The Enchantress of Florence). Here’s a selection from the chatter:

What one of the judges had to say in a Guardian blog.

Laura Barton on thrillers and the list.

Canongate publisher James Byng doesn’t thinkthe thriller should be there. “I cannot respect a judging committee that decides to pick a book like Child 44, a fairly well-written and well-paced thriller that is no more than that, over novels as exceptional as Helen Garner’s The Spare Room or Ross Raisin’s God’s Own Country,” he wrote on the online forum.

Boyd Tonkin: There are five debut novelists on the list.

Thomas Sutcliffe: Maybe the longlist is all the Booker we should have.

As for Rushdie, according to A.N.Wilson, he and other “humbler scribblers, in common with most people in England, hold him in abhorrence.” Er, including his police minders, one of whom has also written a book… recounting, among other things, how they once locked him in a cupboard and went to a pub. But maybe Rushdie will tell his side of the story too.

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Also here’s the Man Asian Literary Prize longlist, which includes eleven Indian authors in a list of twenty-one. Indians on the list are:
Tulsi Badrinath (”Melting Love”),
Anjum Hasan (”Neti, Neti”),
Daisy Hasan (”The To-Let House”),
Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi (”Lost Flamingoes of Bombay”),
Amit Varma (”My Friend, Sancho”),
Sarayu Srivatsa (”The Last Pretence”),
Kavery Nambisan (”The Story that Must Not be Told”),
Sumana Roy (”Love in the Chicken’s Neck”),
Vaibhav Saini (”On the Edge of Pandemonium”),
Rupa Krishnan (”Something Wicked This Way Comes”)
Salma (”Midnight Tales”).

Here’s more about the Indian writers on the list.

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And for those who aren’t on either of the longlists, no need to lose heart: here’s Pothi.com, a new self-publishing website where writers can themselves upload and sell their books online. Techtree has more information here.

Goodbye, Randy Pausch.

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Here is a story of remarkable achievement. Not only in what this young man has achieved, but also in his approach to life.

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A new short story by Arundhati Roy.

A short story by Alice Munro.

A set of musical collaborations by Vikram Seth and Alec Roth.

In Kolkata, a new bookshop - a boi-thek. And Chowringhee in its 100th edition.

The Vodafone Crossword Book Award 2007.

Another writing award, and a shortlist.

Near the beginning of Sea of Poppies, Deeti, the central character, has a vision of the Ibis, the schooner that will eventually carry her away from India. For me, too, the book began in much the same way - except that the vision that was revealed to me was of Deeti herself.

… is here. My favourites: Robin David’s disturbing memoir City of Fear in the English non-fiction category, and Amitava Kumar’s novel Home Products in the English fiction category; as for Indian language fiction translation, both Govardhan’s Travels (by Anand) and Naalukettu (by M.T.Vasudevan Nair) were superb, and both are by the same translator, Gita Krishnankutty.

Sanctuary Asia is holding a film festival to celebrate the beautiful Royal Bengal Tiger, in association with NCPA and the Wildlife Conservation Trust on June 18 & 19.
Venue: NCPA. No entry fee. Entry by pass. Contact Sanctuary Asia for more details.

Paromita Vohra emails that some of her films are going to play online in a web-based film festival for the next month or so. She adds that there are also several other contemporary films - documentaries and shorts by a substantial number and variety of independent filmmakers on the website. The films are free to watch but are not downloadable.

Paromita’s films Unlimited Girls (94 min.), Q2P (54 min.) and Cosmopolis: Two Tales of A City (14 min.) are available on the site, here.

The website is here.

Email from Abodh of WSD about two dogs who are looking for a good home:

Neera is a black two month old female pup with beautiful eyes. Her paw was eaten up by maggots but that doesn’t deter from running around n the kennels and making friends with all the dogs. She even befriended Kali who doesn’t like any other dog. She is especially looking for a loving and caring home.

Bandya, a 2 year old male beige colored Pomeranian mix, was found abandoned on Peddar road and was run over. His fracture has healed and he is looking for a good home. He is a quiet dog and loves the attention showered on him.

If you would like to meet the above mentioned dogs, you can see them at the WSD kennels.

at the HT, but this kind of article makes me wonder. Apparently several occupants of a certain house in Delhi - presumably over a period of time - have had cancer. So what title does HT give the article? “A house causes cancer.”

Apart from the stupid and irresponsible statements, there’s some execrable language. Here’s a sample: “Over the years there is a series of its high-profiled occupants succumbed to cancer… nothing seems to have ward off the evil”.

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Hmmm. They’ve now changed the title to “A house under cancer’s shadow.” Whatever.

My mother passed away peacefully yesterday morning after a final two-week battle with the cancer. She had fought bravely and well for close to six years. Only the final few days were difficult, and we are grateful that she had a peaceful end, surrounded by her loved ones.

…one of the voices of a generation of middle-class Indian youth facing the choices and frustrations that come with the prospect of growing wealth.

Outlook has this extract from Patrick French’s new book about V.S.Naipaul. Here is Minoo Bhandara, a Parsi newspaper columnist who ran Pakistan’s only brewery, on his first meeting with the visiting writer:

“…I picked him up from the airport. He was standing there sullenly and I said, ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?’ He went, ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ I took him around for a few days. I had no idea he was romantically involved. Nadira was a good friend of mine, a journalistic butterfly. She was a chirpy little thing, bright, known to a lot of important people…. I mentioned that my sister was a novelist, Bapsi Sidhwa, but he wasn’t interested. When I asked him who his favourite writers were he said, ‘My father.’ Later I sent a letter to him in England, but didn’t get a reply. A friend of mine said maybe my letter contained grammatical mistakes….”

Also note Nadira’s description of how Naipaul proposed:

“When the party was coming to an end, Nadira heard that a girlfriend of Mazdak’s had been present, and an argument began. While she was screaming at him at around 3 am, the telephone rang and a voice said, “Is Margaret there? I have to speak to her.” “Margaret who?” asked Mazdak, and Nadira snatched the telephone, realising who was on the other end. “Come now to the hotel, I need to talk to you,” said Vidia. She refused, but agreed to come at 8.30. Nadira went to bed, furious, and when she arrived at the hotel a few hours later, Vidia was still wearing his clothes from the night before. In her recollection, “He looked wild. His hair was all over the place. I said, ‘Are you OK?’ He asked me not to go, and then he said, ‘Will you consider one day being Lady Naipaul?’ I knew Pat was dying and Margaret was finished…. It was not that I was trying to displace a dying woman and an old floozy…”

The rest, about Naipaul’s treatment of his wife and mistress, is even more sordid.

A Louise Gluck poem in the New Yorker.

From Amos Oz’s acceptance speech for the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature.

I believe in literature as a bridge between peoples. I believe curiosity can be a moral quality. I believe imagining the other can be an antidote to fanaticism. Imagining the other will make you not only a better businessperson or a better lover but even a better person.

Got this note via email:

A campus performance of The Vagina Monologues at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai,
on March 1st and 2nd
at 6:45pm
at the Naoroji (new) Campus, Deonar, Mumbai.

The production is student-acted and has been directed communally by all the students involved. The proceeds from the show will be forwarded to SNEHA, which works with women and children who are victims/survivors of domestic violence in Dharavi. This is the first authorised campus performance of the play in South Asia this year, and is done completely by non-actors.

Desh is growing up…here’s a picture from November last year:

And now, two months and a haircut later, he’s off to school…

Desh now has a baby brother. Here’s a first look at little Megh, who arrived on Saturday 12 January.

Yes of course we must celebrate Bandra. If we can get there, that is. I spent an hour and a quarter getting there to meet Nalini Jones who has just published a book of short stories based on Bandra. So when I decided to see the play “Jazz,” based on Goan jazz musicians (researched by Naresh Fernandes) I left an hour earlier, only to find the entire area had suffered a power failure. We milled around in the dark, with everyone remarkably good-natured about it all. The play could only begin an hour later than scheduled.

Traffic and power cuts are all in a day’s work. What’s surprising was to find Bandra described online, as a “small Catholic town in rural India.” (Introduction to interview with Knopf editor Carol Janeway), and “a Catholic town in India” elsewhere. And there was Amit Chaudhuri, for whom there can be no excuse, putting his foot in it again. “Nalini Jones,” he says in a review, “writes about the marginal community of Christians in Bombay and the neighbourhoods in which they live.

To the outsider, these seem to possess a fabled calm, but the insider knows they are in many ways on the brink of dissolution.” I don’t know whether Chaudhuri means Christians are on the brink of dissolution, or the neighbourhoods in which they live are.

Does Chaudhuri see himself as the insider who knows?

Email from Zubaan Books:

On FRIDAY 7th December
Please join us to celebrate the launch of Anjum Hasan’s brilliant debut novel, set in Shillong, Lunatic in My Head, published by Zubaan and Penguin Books India. The author will be in conversation with Siddhartha Deb, author of Surface and Point of Return.
All are welcome, but seating is limited, so do come early and join us for tea from 6:30 onwards, at The Attic (above The Shop), 36 Regal Building, Sansad Marg (Parliament Street), New Delhi 110 001.
And if you’d like to order the book, you can do so via our website.

On Saturday 8th December
Zubaan is co-hosting a discussion about Masculinities and Literature, entitled Let’s Talk Men. Panellists: Rana Dasgupta, Anjum Hasan, Mukul Kesavan and Geetanjali Shree.
Venue: ML Bhartia Auditorium, Alliance Francaise, 72 Lodi Estate, New Delhi
Time: 6:00pm
For more information about this, and the other events during this week, click here or call 91-11-46057340, or 41640681

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Email from PEN All-India Centre:

THE PEN ALL-INDIA CENTRE announces a new monthly feature, “Spiritlevel@PEN” - a forum for the critical yet sympathetic discussion of the questions of philosophy, religion, spirituality, mystical quest and the many dimensions of being that lie beyond the rigid binary of belief vs rationalism. The inaugural edition of Spiritlevel@PEN hosts THE VENERABLE LHAKDOR-LA speaking on ‘Faith and Reason in the Dharma’

Date: 13 December 2007 (Thursday)
Time: 6.15 pm
Place: Theosophy Hall (3rd floor), 40 New Marine Lines, Churchgate, Mumbai 400 020

The Venerable Lhakdor-la is the former official translator of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and is the author and translator of numerous books. In 2000, he was appointed a member of the Advisory Board of the Institute of Tibetan Classics, Montreal ; from 2002, he has been Honorary Professor at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver , Canada. The Ven. Lhakdor-la will be introduced by ASPI MISTRY, member, Executive Committee of the PEN All-India Centre and President of the Dharma Rain Centre.

This piece in The Hindu about defending the reviled:

“Come on, why should lawyers defend someone who is so ‘obviously guilty’?”

Although this may sound like self-serving lawyer-talk, the question of guilt, “obvious” or otherwise, is for the court and not for the lawyer — or for the press…

Even at seven months, I hadn’t quite been able to believe in this pregnancy. I don’t know how it is for other women, but for me it was never quite true, never really happening – and that was my way of protecting myself against another miscarriage.

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Via snail mail, the news that Osians Literary Agency has been running from May this year and has signed its first set of writers, including Saeed Mirza, Omair Ahmad and Jaitirth Rao. Also journalists Sheela Reddy and Shailaja Bajpai for their first novels. Take a look at www.osians.com.

Email from Urban Voice:

As you might know we have already brought out two issues of Urban Voice, the literary magazine. Now the third issue is due… for which we seek contributions in the form of non-fiction, journalism, short fiction, plays and poetry for this issue. The underlining theme for this issue will be Writers and Cities… The pieces should be around 1,000 -1,500 words, though exceptions may be considered. More details at www.frogbooks.net