BBC reports that the Tsunami caused the coastline in Tamil Nadu, India to recede in places, revealing the remains of an ancient city. Archeologists knew there was something there, but the statues that have emerged are a surprise.
Tsunami reveals ancient city
BBC reports that the Tsunami caused the coastline in Tamil Nadu, India to recede in places, revealing the remains of an ancient city. Archeologists knew there was something there, but the statues that have emerged are a surprise.
Teaching Journal: Katherine Mansfield
I'm teaching a class on 20th century British women writers this spring. It's a modified version of my standard "British modernism" course. I wanted to try teaching people like Irish Murdoch, Doris Lessing, A.S. Byatt, and Monica Ali, writers I often can't quite make room for. Thus far it's been a lot of Virginia Woolf, and a brief but exciting bit of Katherine Mansfield.
I initially just scheduled one day for Katherine Mansfield, on the strength of Hermione Lee's comments on the friendship between Mansfield and Virginia Woolf in her recent, definitive biography of Woolf. Following Lee's reading of the relationship between Mansfield and Woolf, I planned to put Mansfield in as a contemporary with a vision of the modern experience parallel to Woolf's (similar themes), but with a radically different approach to telling stories (different form).
But it worked out quite differently. For one thing, my students reacted really energetically to the three Mansfield stories I assigned, so I decided to add four more stories and extended the discussion by a day. In the first class, the discussion of both class relations and the symbolic importance of death in "The Garden-Party" seemed to have a nice spark to it. And in the second session, the polymorphous (bisexual? queer?) eros that one finds in "Bliss" also seemed to generate quite a bit of interest.
[Note: read a helpful bio of Katherine Mansfield here. And most of Mansfield's major short stories are available online via Project Gutenberg, or at sites like Arthur's Classic Novels. You could go read one right now, if you felt like it.]
Woolf and Mansfield are especially close in their shared vision of the ephemerality (or collapse?) of the big concepts that form the bedrock of 19th century literary individualism –- the distinction of the self from others, the ability to know and understand that self, and the ability to respond to crises rationally and intentionally. But where Woolf wrote monumental philosophical novels about the dissolution of the self, Mansfield makes the point in small, impressionistic passages in short stories whose themes seem trifling in comparison to Woolf’s. And yet the point is no less real, and no less admirably expressed.
After reading about a dozen of Mansfield's stories, it now seems to me that Mansfield’s differences from Woolf are actually both thematic and formal. Mansfield has a capacity for directness that is at least disarming, and at its most extreme rather shocking ("Bliss"; "The Garden-Party"; "Marriage a la Mode"; "The Man With No Temperament").
Mansfield’s adult characters are philosophical but not social radicals. In Mansfield's world adulthood seems to always be a story of failure, expressed in the stories via the exposure of a series of little weaknesses that actually have big ramifications. An example is Isabel’s failure, in "Marriage a la Mode," to immediately respond to her husband’s threatened divorce. Another example is Laura’s failure, in "The Garden Party," to insist on the cancellation of the Garden Party when a man in her immediate neighborhood has just met with a fatal accident. And it's there again in "Bliss," in Bertha Young's complete mis-appraisal of her erotic/spiritual connection to Miss Fulton.
These may seem like small imperfections -- "character flaws," they could be called -– but I think they suggest a generalized condition, not just a problem with some lost individuals. Mansfield’s protagonists embody Virginia Woolf’s famous motto in "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown" that something in "human character" changed in the 1910s, but that change is not so much a new capacity for self-reflexive and self-conscious thinking (Woolf's argument) as it is a complete, radical evacuation of interiority. (Mansfield might protest if she were reading this; on the surface, she appears to be passionately invested in discovering her characters' interior lives. But as much as there are many moments of small "revelations," self-knowledge never seems to lead anywhere concrete in Mansfield. It's as if the self that knows itself is essentially paralyzed.)
So I'm newly interested in Mansfield, and satisfied with my recent experience teaching her stories. And maybe I'll write something bigger on her once I've made my way through the remainder of her stories. I also probably need to take a crack at her letters and diaries.
But: is she Woolf's philosophical equal? Is she as good a writer? Maybe, maybe not. Check out the final lines of "The Garden Party," and decide for yourself. The protagonist Laura has gone to pay her condolences to a working-class family where a man has died. She's naive, deeply uncomfortable to be out of her social element, and also feeling a little guilty that her posh little lunch went on as scheduled, even when someone in the neighborhood had just died:
I initially just scheduled one day for Katherine Mansfield, on the strength of Hermione Lee's comments on the friendship between Mansfield and Virginia Woolf in her recent, definitive biography of Woolf. Following Lee's reading of the relationship between Mansfield and Woolf, I planned to put Mansfield in as a contemporary with a vision of the modern experience parallel to Woolf's (similar themes), but with a radically different approach to telling stories (different form).
But it worked out quite differently. For one thing, my students reacted really energetically to the three Mansfield stories I assigned, so I decided to add four more stories and extended the discussion by a day. In the first class, the discussion of both class relations and the symbolic importance of death in "The Garden-Party" seemed to have a nice spark to it. And in the second session, the polymorphous (bisexual? queer?) eros that one finds in "Bliss" also seemed to generate quite a bit of interest.
[Note: read a helpful bio of Katherine Mansfield here. And most of Mansfield's major short stories are available online via Project Gutenberg, or at sites like Arthur's Classic Novels. You could go read one right now, if you felt like it.]
Woolf and Mansfield are especially close in their shared vision of the ephemerality (or collapse?) of the big concepts that form the bedrock of 19th century literary individualism –- the distinction of the self from others, the ability to know and understand that self, and the ability to respond to crises rationally and intentionally. But where Woolf wrote monumental philosophical novels about the dissolution of the self, Mansfield makes the point in small, impressionistic passages in short stories whose themes seem trifling in comparison to Woolf’s. And yet the point is no less real, and no less admirably expressed.
After reading about a dozen of Mansfield's stories, it now seems to me that Mansfield’s differences from Woolf are actually both thematic and formal. Mansfield has a capacity for directness that is at least disarming, and at its most extreme rather shocking ("Bliss"; "The Garden-Party"; "Marriage a la Mode"; "The Man With No Temperament").
Mansfield’s adult characters are philosophical but not social radicals. In Mansfield's world adulthood seems to always be a story of failure, expressed in the stories via the exposure of a series of little weaknesses that actually have big ramifications. An example is Isabel’s failure, in "Marriage a la Mode," to immediately respond to her husband’s threatened divorce. Another example is Laura’s failure, in "The Garden Party," to insist on the cancellation of the Garden Party when a man in her immediate neighborhood has just met with a fatal accident. And it's there again in "Bliss," in Bertha Young's complete mis-appraisal of her erotic/spiritual connection to Miss Fulton.
These may seem like small imperfections -- "character flaws," they could be called -– but I think they suggest a generalized condition, not just a problem with some lost individuals. Mansfield’s protagonists embody Virginia Woolf’s famous motto in "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown" that something in "human character" changed in the 1910s, but that change is not so much a new capacity for self-reflexive and self-conscious thinking (Woolf's argument) as it is a complete, radical evacuation of interiority. (Mansfield might protest if she were reading this; on the surface, she appears to be passionately invested in discovering her characters' interior lives. But as much as there are many moments of small "revelations," self-knowledge never seems to lead anywhere concrete in Mansfield. It's as if the self that knows itself is essentially paralyzed.)
So I'm newly interested in Mansfield, and satisfied with my recent experience teaching her stories. And maybe I'll write something bigger on her once I've made my way through the remainder of her stories. I also probably need to take a crack at her letters and diaries.
But: is she Woolf's philosophical equal? Is she as good a writer? Maybe, maybe not. Check out the final lines of "The Garden Party," and decide for yourself. The protagonist Laura has gone to pay her condolences to a working-class family where a man has died. She's naive, deeply uncomfortable to be out of her social element, and also feeling a little guilty that her posh little lunch went on as scheduled, even when someone in the neighborhood had just died:
"You'd like a look at 'im, wouldn't you?" said Em's sister, and she brushed past Laura over to the bed. "Don't be afraid, my lass,"--and now her voice
sounded fond and sly, and fondly she drew down the sheet--"'e looks a picture. There's nothing to show. Come along, my dear."
Laura came.
There lay a young man, fast asleep--sleeping so soundly, so deeply, that he was far, far away from them both. Oh, so remote, so peaceful. He was dreaming. Never wake him up again. His head was sunk in the pillow, his eyes were closed; they were blind under the closed eyelids. He was given up to his dream. What did garden-parties and baskets and lace frocks matter to him? He was far from all those things. He was wonderful, beautiful. While they were laughing and while the band was playing, this marvel had come to the lane. Happy...happy...All is well, said that sleeping face. This is just as it should be. I am content.
But all the same you had to cry, and she couldn't go out of the room without saying something to him. Laura gave a loud childish sob.
"Forgive my hat," she said.
And this time she didn't wait for Em's sister. She found her way out of the door, down the path, past all those dark people. At the corner of the lane she met Laurie [her brother].
He stepped out of the shadow. "Is that you, Laura?"
"Yes."
"Mother was getting anxious. Was it all right?"
"Yes, quite. Oh, Laurie!" She took his arm, she pressed up against him.
"I say, you're not crying, are you?" asked her brother.
Laura shook her head. She was.
Laurie put his arm round her shoulder. "Don't cry," he said in his warm, loving voice. "Was it awful?"
"No," sobbed Laura. "It was simply marvellous. But Laurie--" She stopped, she looked at her brother. "Isn't life," she stammered, "isn't life--" But what life was she couldn't explain. No matter. He quite understood.
"Isn't it, darling?" said Laurie.
1000 people per acre? Bombay slum rehabilitation plan
Sonia Gandhi is forcing the Chief Minister of Maharashtra to rehabilitate 800,000 illegal shanties destroyed by the state government.
The state of Maharashtra has tried to find any number of excuses to avoid doing the needful. The money issue is understandable. What is harder for me to comprehend is the population density they are talking about implementing in the hypothetically legalized and rebuilt slum-city. Take the following chart on Indian Express:
The money doesn't add up quite right in dollars. Does the state of Maharashtra have $5 billion at its disposal?
But more than that, I'm a little shocked by how tightly packed these shanty-towns are going to be. Let's conservatively estimate that each shanty counted of the 800,000 that were destroyed housed 2 people (the real number is probably closer to 5). If they are talking about putting everyone -- nearly 2 million people -- on just 2000 acres, they are talking about 1000 people per acre! This might be possible if they were building 10 story apartments, but that's clearly not what they're intending.
Then again, thought the article suggests the space available is 2000 acres, the chart does say 2000 hectares. If we consider that there are 2.5 acres in a hectare, it does look a little less crazy. Slums are, as a rule, extremely densely populated in Indian metros (and especially Bombay).
And one should also keep in mind that greater Bombay overall has a population density of 16,000 per square mile (according to this site at Macalester College). That sounds extremely dense -- and it is -- but it works out to only 25 people per acre (640 acres in a square mile).
No matter how you do the math, the plan for rehabilitation that seems so onerous is still one that envisions a shocking, even impossible, level of population density.
The state of Maharashtra has tried to find any number of excuses to avoid doing the needful. The money issue is understandable. What is harder for me to comprehend is the population density they are talking about implementing in the hypothetically legalized and rebuilt slum-city. Take the following chart on Indian Express:
Rehabilitation needs of Mumbai slums built between 1995 and 2000:
8 LAKH [800,000] total shanties
2,000 HECTARES land required
Rs 24,700 CRORE [comes out to $5 billion, I think]
(land: Rs 700 crore; construction: Rs 20,000 crore; infrastructure cost: Rs 400 crore)
The money doesn't add up quite right in dollars. Does the state of Maharashtra have $5 billion at its disposal?
But more than that, I'm a little shocked by how tightly packed these shanty-towns are going to be. Let's conservatively estimate that each shanty counted of the 800,000 that were destroyed housed 2 people (the real number is probably closer to 5). If they are talking about putting everyone -- nearly 2 million people -- on just 2000 acres, they are talking about 1000 people per acre! This might be possible if they were building 10 story apartments, but that's clearly not what they're intending.
Then again, thought the article suggests the space available is 2000 acres, the chart does say 2000 hectares. If we consider that there are 2.5 acres in a hectare, it does look a little less crazy. Slums are, as a rule, extremely densely populated in Indian metros (and especially Bombay).
And one should also keep in mind that greater Bombay overall has a population density of 16,000 per square mile (according to this site at Macalester College). That sounds extremely dense -- and it is -- but it works out to only 25 people per acre (640 acres in a square mile).
No matter how you do the math, the plan for rehabilitation that seems so onerous is still one that envisions a shocking, even impossible, level of population density.
Pamuk to be charged for speaking the truth
[I'm starting to catch up on my blog reading!]
Literary Saloon reports: In a case of life imitating fiction, Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk is being charged with insulting Turkey. He told a German interviewer that "30,00 Kurds and 1 million Armenians had been killed" by the Turkish military in the past.
It sort of fits the content of Pamuk's stories. I'm looking forward to his next novel, which I would suggest could be titled "The Trial."
Literary Saloon reports: In a case of life imitating fiction, Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk is being charged with insulting Turkey. He told a German interviewer that "30,00 Kurds and 1 million Armenians had been killed" by the Turkish military in the past.
It sort of fits the content of Pamuk's stories. I'm looking forward to his next novel, which I would suggest could be titled "The Trial."
Secularism discredited in the Islamic world?
An article in the Chronicle, summarizing recent debates in Islamic political theory and theology. There seem to be two alternatives to secularism being floated. One is essentially Islamism democratized -- Ijtihad -- and is associated with a scholar named Muqtedar Khan:
Among other subscribers to roughly this approach was none other than Mohammed Iqbal, the Indo/Pakistani poet.
The other philosophy making the rounds is represented by Khaled Abou El Fadl.
It seems like El Fadl is advocating something along the lines of a moral historicism. You study history in order to have a more accurate and rigorous model for jurisprudence, but you do it with an "overriding moral goal such as justice," presumably derived from the present day.
But doesn't the presumption of a moral goal lend itself just as well to a thoroughly secularist approach to jurisprudence? If we know what justice is, we should be able to write laws without recourse to religion.
In the Indian context I've sometimes argued in favor of a radical implementation of a Uniform Civil Code, which would remove all traces of theology (Hindu or Islamic) from personal laws that affect things like marriage, divorce, custody rights, head of household status, inheritance, and property rights.
As much as it now seems that such an approach to secularism is discredited in the Islamic world because of the totalitarianism of people like Ataturk, as well as the failures in Algeria, Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, I don't see the intellectual justification for the approaches suggested by Khan or El Fadl.
Today's proponents of ijtihad take a far more expansive view. "There will be no Islamic democracy unless jurists permit the democratization of interpretation," wrote M.A. Muqtedar Khan, a professor of political science at Adrian College, in a 2003 essay. In Mr. Khan's view, political elites in the Muslim world have for centuries restricted the development of democracy and political accountability by hiding behind religious principles that they proclaim to be fixed in stone. Mr. Khan argues, in effect, for an end run around the entire traditional apparatus of Muslim jurisprudence. Believers should instead, he suggests, look directly to the Koran and to the practices of Muhammad and his companions, and use their own efforts at interpretation to build ethical communities.
Among other subscribers to roughly this approach was none other than Mohammed Iqbal, the Indo/Pakistani poet.
The other philosophy making the rounds is represented by Khaled Abou El Fadl.
Not all Muslim liberals, however, find the ijtihad model attractive. A very different strategy for working toward democracy and pluralism is put forward by Khaled Abou El Fadl, a professor of law at the University of California at Los Angeles. In Mr. Abou El Fadl's view, liberal Muslim scholars should revive, not dismiss, some of the longstanding threads of Islamic jurisprudence, looking carefully at historical cases in which Muslims have successfully built pluralist and relatively democratic societies.
Although Mr. Abou El Fadl's methodology is more elitist than Mr. Khan's vision of ijtihad for all, he also maintains that it will ultimately be more liberal. He wrote in a 2003 essay that basing government around consultation and shura, as Mr. Khan and his allies suggest, could lead to majoritarian tyranny. "Even if shura is transformed into an instrument of participatory representation," he wrote, "it must itself be limited by a scheme of private and individual rights that serve an overriding moral goal such as justice."
Mr. Abou El Fadl adds in an interview that he finds Mr. Khan's framework extremely ill-disciplined. "Instead of making the effort to study Arabic and study the texts," he says, "Muqtedar Khan is simply throwing around terms like ijtihad and mufti and fatwa. ... This kind of thing is why there's such a vacuum of authority. This is why we have people like bin Laden going around claiming to be Islamic."
It seems like El Fadl is advocating something along the lines of a moral historicism. You study history in order to have a more accurate and rigorous model for jurisprudence, but you do it with an "overriding moral goal such as justice," presumably derived from the present day.
But doesn't the presumption of a moral goal lend itself just as well to a thoroughly secularist approach to jurisprudence? If we know what justice is, we should be able to write laws without recourse to religion.
In the Indian context I've sometimes argued in favor of a radical implementation of a Uniform Civil Code, which would remove all traces of theology (Hindu or Islamic) from personal laws that affect things like marriage, divorce, custody rights, head of household status, inheritance, and property rights.
As much as it now seems that such an approach to secularism is discredited in the Islamic world because of the totalitarianism of people like Ataturk, as well as the failures in Algeria, Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, I don't see the intellectual justification for the approaches suggested by Khan or El Fadl.
Tigerstyle
We went to see Tigerstyle in New York last night. It was pretty great -- these guys are probably the best underground Bhangra/hip hop remix producers out there right now. You can listen to some samples here (try "Punjabi Lean Back").
There's also a good interview with the duo here.
It started snowing. We spent the night in the city at my brother's, and went to see The Gates this morning before heading home. I didn't bring a camera, so I'll just plagiarize someone else's Flickr stream for The Gates in the snow. (Slice is a little grumpy about the whole thing. Maybe he got up too early in the morning...?)
There's also a good interview with the duo here.
It started snowing. We spent the night in the city at my brother's, and went to see The Gates this morning before heading home. I didn't bring a camera, so I'll just plagiarize someone else's Flickr stream for The Gates in the snow. (Slice is a little grumpy about the whole thing. Maybe he got up too early in the morning...?)
Blogging in the doldrums; dissing Kisna
My blogging mojo is weak right now... All sorts of factors may be to blame, but more than anything else it's hard to blog when my daily rhythm is in transition (moving, packing, adjusting, commuting, etc.).
Blogging is one of those things that really requires windows of time and energy. To write even semi-seriously takes an hour or more a day of commitment, and I just haven't had it as much as I would like lately. Maybe things will get back to normal soon; I don't know.
* * * *
We saw Kisna, and I can agree with reader Mihir that it's in fact quite skippable. Or fast-forwardable?
Or to put it quite plainly -- it sucks.
That said, I didn't mind Antonia Bernath's bad Hindi accent. I think it's remarkable how much Hindi they actually got her to say; in the past, the English characters in Hindi films had all their lines dubbed into Hindi, when they had lines at all. And speaking as someone who speaks Hindi both badly, and with a bit of a 'gora' accent myself, I would posit that it's a bit of a step forward, which Indian viewers probably ought to enjoy. In an era of globalization, we want to hear non-Indians speaking Hindi with an accent -- it's a sign that the language (and the culture) is in demand. One so rarely heard it in India in the past, largely because foreign visitors almost never felt it would be worth their while to invest serious time and energy learning the language. "They speak English in India, don't they? Why should I bother?"
Kisna as crappy as it is, is a small sign that that may be changing.
On the interracial romance. In this film, Bernath's "Katherine" and Vivek Oberoi's "Kisna" do push the threshold past the interracial flirtation we saw in Lagaan. Ghai clearly loves putting the camera on Bernath's face -- she's definitely the lead -- while Gowarikar, in Lagaan , stacked the decks in favor of Gracy Singh. But even though he put Bernath in songs, desi outfits, and provides copious measures of smouldering looks and melodramatic dialogue, Ghai does the theatrical equivalent of sitting on himself with the conclusion of the film. Instead of having them run off into the sunset as the plot demands, Ghai has his Oberoi mumble some twaddle about "jeevan satya," and demur, marrying his racially-correct village fiance for duty rather than love.
Why not have Katherine stay in India, and marry Kisna? In real life, I know of a few instances where something like this in fact did happen.
But maybe I'm asking too much. I continue to doubt that we'll ever see a mainstream bollywood movie where a heroine romances and marries a westerner. I simply think it would be impossible for audiences to accept. (And just in case anyone is confused, Bride and Prejudice is really an American production; that's where the money came from...)
Blogging is one of those things that really requires windows of time and energy. To write even semi-seriously takes an hour or more a day of commitment, and I just haven't had it as much as I would like lately. Maybe things will get back to normal soon; I don't know.
* * * *
We saw Kisna, and I can agree with reader Mihir that it's in fact quite skippable. Or fast-forwardable?
Or to put it quite plainly -- it sucks.
That said, I didn't mind Antonia Bernath's bad Hindi accent. I think it's remarkable how much Hindi they actually got her to say; in the past, the English characters in Hindi films had all their lines dubbed into Hindi, when they had lines at all. And speaking as someone who speaks Hindi both badly, and with a bit of a 'gora' accent myself, I would posit that it's a bit of a step forward, which Indian viewers probably ought to enjoy. In an era of globalization, we want to hear non-Indians speaking Hindi with an accent -- it's a sign that the language (and the culture) is in demand. One so rarely heard it in India in the past, largely because foreign visitors almost never felt it would be worth their while to invest serious time and energy learning the language. "They speak English in India, don't they? Why should I bother?"
Kisna as crappy as it is, is a small sign that that may be changing.
On the interracial romance. In this film, Bernath's "Katherine" and Vivek Oberoi's "Kisna" do push the threshold past the interracial flirtation we saw in Lagaan. Ghai clearly loves putting the camera on Bernath's face -- she's definitely the lead -- while Gowarikar, in Lagaan , stacked the decks in favor of Gracy Singh. But even though he put Bernath in songs, desi outfits, and provides copious measures of smouldering looks and melodramatic dialogue, Ghai does the theatrical equivalent of sitting on himself with the conclusion of the film. Instead of having them run off into the sunset as the plot demands, Ghai has his Oberoi mumble some twaddle about "jeevan satya," and demur, marrying his racially-correct village fiance for duty rather than love.
Why not have Katherine stay in India, and marry Kisna? In real life, I know of a few instances where something like this in fact did happen.
But maybe I'm asking too much. I continue to doubt that we'll ever see a mainstream bollywood movie where a heroine romances and marries a westerner. I simply think it would be impossible for audiences to accept. (And just in case anyone is confused, Bride and Prejudice is really an American production; that's where the money came from...)
All Flops! Bollywood in the doldrums
Rediff is ranking all of this week's top-ten Hindi films as flops.
It's not that shocking: most films released in India lose money, and studios and producers apparently depend upon the occasional "super-hit" to stay in business. Still, this is the first time I've seen a complete sweep of flops; it must be a real dry spell.
Then again, how reliable is Rediff on this? Hindi film sites generally give very little concrete data on box office returns -- as in Rupee amounts. I gather there isn't a reliable national system for precisely measuring them, so perhaps all this talk of "flop," "average," "hit," and "super-hit" is a bit subjective. Or perhaps I just haven't found a consistently updated website or news source that does this? Neither Rediff nor Yahoo India currently give exact numbers in their weekly summaries.
I still want to see Kisna, which promises to be visually intense. And I'm curious about how they handle the interracial angle (is this the first major bollywood film that puts such a relationship at the center of the film?).
But I'm not at all curious about Black, which just looks melodramatic and overblown.
It's not that shocking: most films released in India lose money, and studios and producers apparently depend upon the occasional "super-hit" to stay in business. Still, this is the first time I've seen a complete sweep of flops; it must be a real dry spell.
Then again, how reliable is Rediff on this? Hindi film sites generally give very little concrete data on box office returns -- as in Rupee amounts. I gather there isn't a reliable national system for precisely measuring them, so perhaps all this talk of "flop," "average," "hit," and "super-hit" is a bit subjective. Or perhaps I just haven't found a consistently updated website or news source that does this? Neither Rediff nor Yahoo India currently give exact numbers in their weekly summaries.
I still want to see Kisna, which promises to be visually intense. And I'm curious about how they handle the interracial angle (is this the first major bollywood film that puts such a relationship at the center of the film?).
But I'm not at all curious about Black, which just looks melodramatic and overblown.
Seeing is Disbelieving: The Rise of the Indian Rope Trick
Teller -- of Penn and Teller! -- has a review of a new book on the fabulous history of the great, fake, "Indian Rope Trick."
The book is called The Rise of the Indian Rope Trick, and it is by Peter Lamont.
You really have to read the whole article to see how widespread this mythology has been. The persistence of the myth is a sign of the deep roots of Orientalism in America's view of the Indian subcontinent.
The book is called The Rise of the Indian Rope Trick, and it is by Peter Lamont.
You really have to read the whole article to see how widespread this mythology has been. The persistence of the myth is a sign of the deep roots of Orientalism in America's view of the Indian subcontinent.
New View: Texture, Complexity
A slice of the view from the new apartment. I like the texture and complexity...
Manju Kapur's Difficult Daughters. And, Indian food glossaries
Manju Kapur's Difficult Daughters was released in the U.S. in 1998, shortly after Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things. I remember seeing it in U.S. bookstores everywhere; perhaps the publishing house thought they could cash in on the success of Arundhati Roy with something that could be packaged and marketed similarly.
It didn't work, largely for the reason that Difficult Daughters is a different kind of book, a quite sober and in some sense deeply conventional story set in Amritsar and Lahore around 1940. It's about a young woman named Virmati, who falls in love with a young Professor (Harish). He represents modernity and opportunity for her -- enlightenment, education -- but he's a bit of a "rake," in the 18th century sense of the term. He seduces her through culture, sending her Petrarchan sonnets, and casually drops references to Machiavelli and Greek tragedy. Predictably, the relationship goes deeply bad, for reasons that are only too obvious (he's a married rake).
Difficult Daughters is well-plotted and has truly convincing characterization (like many classic English "rake" stories, its villain is in some ways more likeable than its heroine). But it is also interesting for reasons that are not just literary; Kapur has an unusual angle on the involvement of women in Gandhi's Swaraj agitations.
It's one of those strange, contradictory moments in Indian history. The fact is, traditional Indian values had barely modernized at all when, in 1930, Gandhi began to encourage women to participate in civil disobedience actions. By November 1930, 360 out of the 29,000 Indian nationalists imprisoned by the British Raj for expressing their political beliefs were women. The number would grow throughout the 1930s and early 1940s, and a small number of highly educated, independent women were highly visible members of the nationalist movement.
Such progress overlapped with a profound backwardsness -- for the vast majority of Indians, dehumanizing practices such as child marriage, polygamy, and dowry would remain widely practiced (legal until the 1950s). The contradictory progress and non-progress with regards to women and gender roles is one of the great contradictions of Indian modernity, and it's one of Manju Kapur's central preoccupations in Difficult Daughters (just as it was Tagore's preoccupation, nearly 90 years earlier, in novels like The Home and the World and Chokher Bali).
* * * *
As I've been teaching Kapur's novel this spring, I've been noting the Hindi and Punjabi terms I think my students are unlikely to know. Kapur, who is based in Delhi, wrote this novel with Indian readers firmly in mind. The liberal use of Hindi phrases, vegetation, and food here has nothing to do with exoticization (which is often discussed by readers of contemporary Indian literature). If anything, the terminology ("Indian English") is part of Kapur's realism.
I've been surprised to find that many of the fruits and spices mentioned are things I myself don't know (perhaps inevitable growing up in a country where it's easier to get Poblanos than Bhel Puri). So I've been looking them up in some of the following dictionaries and glossaries:
Word Anywhere
Platt's Dictionary (University of Chicago)
An Urdu glossary at the University of Wisconsin
Glossary of "Chai" spices
Spice pages. Polyglossic! You can find out what "Ajwain" is in German!
Mamta’s Kitchen glossary
And here is a short passage from the novel, followed by my own compilation of Kapur's terms:
This is a passage describing the feast for an arranged marriage that the heroine avoids by attempting suicide. I think Kapur is playing the richness of the wedding celebration against the emotional hollowness it surrounds.
But -- at the risk of sounding a little silly -- she's also describing a lot of tasty food, clearly with no small pleasure at the specificities. The density of the references to food suggests that she's interested in the food items themselves... Here's a mini-glossary:
Barat (“buh-RAAT”): Groom’s wedding party. These are usually quite large affairs, with dozens of people dancing in the street for hours while approaching the bride’s family’s house.
Halwai: Sweets seller
Khas: Probably poppy-seed extract (sweet); usually "Khas-khas"
Kewra: Sweet, rosy flower, used as sweetener (in English, this is called “Pandanus”)
Morabbas: Dried fruit dipped in sugar
Amla: Olive (UPDATE: Wrong! See comments)
Godown: Factory, warehouse
Pista: Pistachio
Dhingri: Mushroom (mushrooms are rare in India, so it makes sense that Kapur would mention them as food for a wedding feast)
Guchchi: A kind of wild mushroom
Paneer: Indian-style cheese
Anything wrong in my glossary?
It didn't work, largely for the reason that Difficult Daughters is a different kind of book, a quite sober and in some sense deeply conventional story set in Amritsar and Lahore around 1940. It's about a young woman named Virmati, who falls in love with a young Professor (Harish). He represents modernity and opportunity for her -- enlightenment, education -- but he's a bit of a "rake," in the 18th century sense of the term. He seduces her through culture, sending her Petrarchan sonnets, and casually drops references to Machiavelli and Greek tragedy. Predictably, the relationship goes deeply bad, for reasons that are only too obvious (he's a married rake).
Difficult Daughters is well-plotted and has truly convincing characterization (like many classic English "rake" stories, its villain is in some ways more likeable than its heroine). But it is also interesting for reasons that are not just literary; Kapur has an unusual angle on the involvement of women in Gandhi's Swaraj agitations.
It's one of those strange, contradictory moments in Indian history. The fact is, traditional Indian values had barely modernized at all when, in 1930, Gandhi began to encourage women to participate in civil disobedience actions. By November 1930, 360 out of the 29,000 Indian nationalists imprisoned by the British Raj for expressing their political beliefs were women. The number would grow throughout the 1930s and early 1940s, and a small number of highly educated, independent women were highly visible members of the nationalist movement.
Such progress overlapped with a profound backwardsness -- for the vast majority of Indians, dehumanizing practices such as child marriage, polygamy, and dowry would remain widely practiced (legal until the 1950s). The contradictory progress and non-progress with regards to women and gender roles is one of the great contradictions of Indian modernity, and it's one of Manju Kapur's central preoccupations in Difficult Daughters (just as it was Tagore's preoccupation, nearly 90 years earlier, in novels like The Home and the World and Chokher Bali).
* * * *
As I've been teaching Kapur's novel this spring, I've been noting the Hindi and Punjabi terms I think my students are unlikely to know. Kapur, who is based in Delhi, wrote this novel with Indian readers firmly in mind. The liberal use of Hindi phrases, vegetation, and food here has nothing to do with exoticization (which is often discussed by readers of contemporary Indian literature). If anything, the terminology ("Indian English") is part of Kapur's realism.
I've been surprised to find that many of the fruits and spices mentioned are things I myself don't know (perhaps inevitable growing up in a country where it's easier to get Poblanos than Bhel Puri). So I've been looking them up in some of the following dictionaries and glossaries:
Word Anywhere
Platt's Dictionary (University of Chicago)
An Urdu glossary at the University of Wisconsin
Glossary of "Chai" spices
Spice pages. Polyglossic! You can find out what "Ajwain" is in German!
Mamta’s Kitchen glossary
And here is a short passage from the novel, followed by my own compilation of Kapur's terms:
The preparations in Sultanpur began. There would be fifty to sixty people in the barat to house and feed at regular and steady intervals. Some of the barat intended to stay at least a week because they meant to make a holiday of the whole expedition. Lala Jivan Das pored over the menus, consulting for hours with the halwais. He was a wholesale merchant who dealt in spices such as black pepper, cinnamon, and cumin; sherbets of kewra, rose and khas; dry fruit, especially almonds, pista, cashews, walnuts, raisins, figs, and apricots; pickels, mainly mango and lemon; sweet morabbas in huge jars containing carrots, amla, mangoes, apples, pears and peaches preserved in sticky sugar syrup. His godown was now ransacked for the best it had to offer. There were to be at least four varieties of barfi in different colours -- green pista, white almond, brown walnut and pink coconut -- for the guests to eat as a side dish with every meal. The freshest spices, rose leaves, and saffron were to flavour the daily glasses of milk they would drink, Special feasting things like dhingri and guchchi to put in the rice and paneer were ordered from the Kashmiri agent in Sultanpur.
This is a passage describing the feast for an arranged marriage that the heroine avoids by attempting suicide. I think Kapur is playing the richness of the wedding celebration against the emotional hollowness it surrounds.
But -- at the risk of sounding a little silly -- she's also describing a lot of tasty food, clearly with no small pleasure at the specificities. The density of the references to food suggests that she's interested in the food items themselves... Here's a mini-glossary:
Barat (“buh-RAAT”): Groom’s wedding party. These are usually quite large affairs, with dozens of people dancing in the street for hours while approaching the bride’s family’s house.
Halwai: Sweets seller
Khas: Probably poppy-seed extract (sweet); usually "Khas-khas"
Kewra: Sweet, rosy flower, used as sweetener (in English, this is called “Pandanus”)
Morabbas: Dried fruit dipped in sugar
Amla: Olive (UPDATE: Wrong! See comments)
Godown: Factory, warehouse
Pista: Pistachio
Dhingri: Mushroom (mushrooms are rare in India, so it makes sense that Kapur would mention them as food for a wedding feast)
Guchchi: A kind of wild mushroom
Paneer: Indian-style cheese
Anything wrong in my glossary?
The Joy of Moving
1. Joy: Driving a big truck for a couple of hundred miles, even an under-powered rental with automatic transmission.
2. Not a joy: While turning a sharp corner in the big truck mentioned above, I scratched a parked Mazda Protege. Being a citizen of the world (and not a libertarian), I placed a note under the wiper. Luckily, I think the truck rental company's policy should cover things.
3. Joy: Having a new place in which to hang out. A change of scenery.
4. Not a joy: Doing endless amounts of packing, planning, carrying, stuffing, taping, stuffing, trying-not-to-break, breaking-anyways, and getting everything of importance mysteriously misplaced. Wearing down one's back carrying a few too many boxes of books.
5. Joy: Hanging out with friends in new location, soon after moving.
6. Not a joy: Losing access to a world-class library at the old place, and all the walkable cafes and used bookstores.
7. Joy: Having a large window with trees to look at in the new place (yes, there are still some trees in New Jersey). A bit more peace and quiet overall.
8. Not a joy: Spending six hours with two different cable guys over two days, who couldn't find the mysterious "box" that would bring the new apartment internet access, TV, and VOIP service. (We are joining the VOIP revolution.)
9. Joy: Discussing Iraq politics with one cable guy, a Puerto Rican Jerseyite who served in the first Gulf War. He had vivid stories about the "big bluff" and the highway of death, in which many civilians were killed as well as retreating soldiers. He says he's pretty sure he saw the bodies (charred skeletons, really) of children in the bombed-out cars on the side of the highway.
Ok, this wasn't exactly joyful, but it's yet another bit of anecdotal evidence in support of the mystique of The Cable Guy.
10. Not a joy: The temptation of cable TV when one has numerous articles to write, a book to finish, and classes to teach.
11. Joy: Jon Stewart, without having to download him from Lisa Rein. (Did anyone catch his take-down of "The Gates"?)
12. Not a joy: Utter exhaustion.
2. Not a joy: While turning a sharp corner in the big truck mentioned above, I scratched a parked Mazda Protege. Being a citizen of the world (and not a libertarian), I placed a note under the wiper. Luckily, I think the truck rental company's policy should cover things.
3. Joy: Having a new place in which to hang out. A change of scenery.
4. Not a joy: Doing endless amounts of packing, planning, carrying, stuffing, taping, stuffing, trying-not-to-break, breaking-anyways, and getting everything of importance mysteriously misplaced. Wearing down one's back carrying a few too many boxes of books.
5. Joy: Hanging out with friends in new location, soon after moving.
6. Not a joy: Losing access to a world-class library at the old place, and all the walkable cafes and used bookstores.
7. Joy: Having a large window with trees to look at in the new place (yes, there are still some trees in New Jersey). A bit more peace and quiet overall.
8. Not a joy: Spending six hours with two different cable guys over two days, who couldn't find the mysterious "box" that would bring the new apartment internet access, TV, and VOIP service. (We are joining the VOIP revolution.)
9. Joy: Discussing Iraq politics with one cable guy, a Puerto Rican Jerseyite who served in the first Gulf War. He had vivid stories about the "big bluff" and the highway of death, in which many civilians were killed as well as retreating soldiers. He says he's pretty sure he saw the bodies (charred skeletons, really) of children in the bombed-out cars on the side of the highway.
Ok, this wasn't exactly joyful, but it's yet another bit of anecdotal evidence in support of the mystique of The Cable Guy.
10. Not a joy: The temptation of cable TV when one has numerous articles to write, a book to finish, and classes to teach.
11. Joy: Jon Stewart, without having to download him from Lisa Rein. (Did anyone catch his take-down of "The Gates"?)
12. Not a joy: Utter exhaustion.
Comments mess.
The comments on this page weren't working for the past few days. I also couldn't post.
It had something to do with Blogger's "archive" function. The error message I was getting was something like "[Archive file] is currently in use."
I couldn't figure it out, so I just changed the archiving from weekly to monthly, and a burst of comments from the past three days miraculously appeared!
Weird & annoying, but whatever.
It had something to do with Blogger's "archive" function. The error message I was getting was something like "[Archive file] is currently in use."
I couldn't figure it out, so I just changed the archiving from weekly to monthly, and a burst of comments from the past three days miraculously appeared!
Weird & annoying, but whatever.
"Love means never having to wear your sari"
Just one other thing.
From the San Jose Mercury News, probably the drollest line I've seen on Bride and Prejudice:
Actually, it's not true -- the reviewer is exaggerating. But it's a nice line!
At any rate, the mixed reviews on this (and the especially harsh review in the Times), suggest possible flop-dom. It may not be hopeless: the Rotten Tomatoes index has Chadha in net positive territory overall. We'll see.
But after several years of crappy Bolly/Holly crossover attempts (The Guru; Bollywood/Hollywood, etc.), I'm ready to let Bolly be Bolly and Holly be Holly.
From the San Jose Mercury News, probably the drollest line I've seen on Bride and Prejudice:
But through a series of wardrobe changes -- from bikinis to tight-fitting tops, all meant to accentuate Rai's remarkable figure -- Lalita remains defiant. She wears her heart on her sleeve, even when she hasn't got a sleeve. In "Bride & Prejudice," love means never having to wear your sari.
Actually, it's not true -- the reviewer is exaggerating. But it's a nice line!
At any rate, the mixed reviews on this (and the especially harsh review in the Times), suggest possible flop-dom. It may not be hopeless: the Rotten Tomatoes index has Chadha in net positive territory overall. We'll see.
But after several years of crappy Bolly/Holly crossover attempts (The Guru; Bollywood/Hollywood, etc.), I'm ready to let Bolly be Bolly and Holly be Holly.
Moving house
We're moving this weekend, to someplace near the following interesting intersection.
That is New Jersey for you, according to Google Maps.
Hope to see you in a few days.
That is New Jersey for you, according to Google Maps.
Hope to see you in a few days.
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