Vikram Seth on Diwali, exile etc.
S. Rajeev - rajeev@travancore
Although it isn't Diwali, someone sent this to me, and I found it beautiful,
moving and nostalgic. I think it is from this Vikram Seth's collection,
"For all who would sleep tonight". [Not 100% sure of that.] He should
stick to poetry--"A Suitable Boy" was such a soap-opera!
Lovely thoughts on exile, culture and homecoming; and some jabs at those
blinded by the west (mea culpa?). ["Roses in December" is M.C. Chagla's
autobiography.] Enjoy!
S. Rajeev
------------------------
DIWALI
by Vikram Seth
Three years of neurotic
Guy Fawkes Days - I recall
That lonely hankering -
But I am home after all.
Home. These walls, this sky
Splintered with wakes of light
These mud-lamps beaded round
The eaves, this festive night,
These streets, these voices...yet
The old insensate dread,
Abeyant as that love,
Once more shifts in my head.
Five? Six? generations ago
Somewhere in the Punjab
My father's family, farmers,
Perhaps had a small shop
And two generations later
Could send a son to a school
To gain the conqueror's
Authoritarian seal:
English! Six-armed god,
Key to a job, to power,
Snobbery, the good life,
This separateness, this fear.
English: beloved language
of Jonson, Wordsworth's tongue-
These my "meridian names"
Whose grooves I crawl along.
The Moghuls fought and ruled
And settled. Even while
They hungered for musk-melon,
Rose, peach, nightingale,
The land assumed their love.
At sixty they could not
Retire westwards. The British
Made us the Orient.
How could an Englishman say
About the divan-e-khas
"If there is heaven on earth
It is this; it is this; it is this."?
Macaulay the prophet of learning
Chewed at his pen: one taste
Of Western wisdom "surpasses
All the books of the East,"
And Kalidas, Shankaracharya,
Panini, Bhaskar, Kabir,
Surdas sank, and we welcomed
The reign of Shakespeare.
The undigested Hobbes,
The Mill who later ground
(Through talk of liberty)
The Raj out of the land ...
O happy breed of Babus,
I march on with your purpose;
We will have railways, common law
And a good postal service -
And I twist along
Those grooves from image to image,
Violet, elm-tree, swan,
Pork-pie, gable, scrimmage
And as we title our memoirs
"Roses in December"
Though we all know that here
Roses *grow* in December
And we import songs
Composed in the U.S
For Vietnam (not even
Our local horrors grip us)
And as, over gin at the Club,
I note that egregious member
Strut just perceptibly more
When with a foreigner,
I know that the whole world
Means exile of our breed
Who are not home at home
And are abroad abroad,
Huddled in towns, while around:
"He died last week. My boys
Are starving. Daily we dig
The ground for sweet potatoes."
"The landlord's hirelings broke
My husband's ribs - and I
Grow blind in the smoke of the hearth."
"Who will take care of me
When I am old? No one
Is left." So it goes on,
The cyclic shadow-play
Under the sinister sun;
That sun that, were there water,
Could bless the dispirited land,
Coaxing three crops a year
From this same yieldless ground.
Yet would these parched wraiths still
Starve in their ruins, while
"Silkworms around them grow
Into fat cocoons?", Sad soil,
This may as well be my home.
Because no other nation
Moves me thus? What of that?
Cause for congratulation?
This could well be my home;
I am too used to the flavor
Of tenous fixity;
I have been brought to savour
Its phases: the winter wheat -
The flowers of Har-ki-Doon -
The sal forests - the hills
Inflamed with rhododendron -
The first smell of the Rains
On the baked earth - the peaks
Snow-drowned in permanence --
The single mountain lakes.
What if my tongue is warped?
I need no words to gaze
At Ajanta, those flaked caves,
Or at the tomb of Mumtaz;
And when an alap of Marwa
Swims on slow flute-notes over
The neighbours' roofs at sunset
Wordlessly like a lover
It holds me - till the strain
Of exile, here or there,
Subverts the trance, the fear
Of fear found everywhere.
"But freedom?" the notes would sing...
Parole is enough. Tonight
Below the fire-crossed sky
Of the Festival of Light.
Give your soul leave to feel
What distilled peace it can;
In lieu of joy, at least
This lapsing anodyne.
"The world is a bridge. Pass over it,
Building no house upon it."
Acceptance may come with time;
Rest, then disquieted heart.
---
S. Rajeev
bal...@tcs.com
|>
|> Although it isn't Diwali, someone sent this to me, and I found it beautiful,
|> moving and nostalgic. I think it is from this Vikram Seth's collection,
|> "For all who would sleep tonight". [Not 100% sure of that.] He should
|> stick to poetry--"A Suitable Boy" was such a soap-opera!
|>
Thanks for posting that poem.
Yes, all of Vikram Seth's writings so far except 'A Suitable Boy' have
been good. In his defense, though, he does write prose very well (except
of course ASB).
|> Lovely thoughts on exile, culture and homecoming; and some jabs at those
|> blinded by the west (mea culpa?). ["Roses in December" is M.C. Chagla's
|> autobiography.] Enjoy!
|>
|> S. Rajeev
|> --------------------
|> ---
|> S. Rajeev
|>
|>
24WQ4591
>In article <2o1luh$j...@engnews1.Eng.Sun.COM>, raj...@travancore.Eng.Sun.COM (S. Rajeev - rajeev@travancore) writes:
>|>
>|> Although it isn't Diwali, someone sent this to me, and I found it beautiful,
>|> moving and nostalgic. I think it is from this Vikram Seth's collection,
>|> "For all who would sleep tonight". [Not 100% sure of that.] He should
>|> stick to poetry--"A Suitable Boy" was such a soap-opera!
>|>
>
>Thanks for posting that poem.
>
>Yes, all of Vikram Seth's writings so far except 'A Suitable Boy' have
>been good. In his defense, though, he does write prose very well (except
>of course ASB).
>
a Soap opera doesn't mean it is sub-standard. Also the fact that it
had no villians was a refereshing change,I thought. The book was easy
to read, it accurately depicted India's middle class and I enjoyed
reading it.
sanjay
Austin Pereira
THE HIGHWAYMAN.
Now I don't know where Vikram Seth is !
Best regards,
Austin.
S. Rajeev - rajeev@travancore
>In article <2o1tre$7...@tcsi.tcs.com> bal...@tcs.com () writes:
>>In article <2o1luh$j...@engnews1.Eng.Sun.COM>, raj...@travancore.Eng.Sun.COM (S. Rajeev - rajeev@travancore) writes:
>>|>
>>|> Although it isn't Diwali, someone sent this to me, and I found it beautiful,
>>|> moving and nostalgic. I think it is from this Vikram Seth's collection,
>>|> "For all who would sleep tonight". [Not 100% sure of that.] He should
>>|> stick to poetry--"A Suitable Boy" was such a soap-opera!
>>|>
>>
>>Thanks for posting that poem.
>>
>>Yes, all of Vikram Seth's writings so far except 'A Suitable Boy' have
>>been good. In his defense, though, he does write prose very well (except
>>of course ASB).
>>
>Whats wrong with A SUITABLE BOY. Just becuase Salman Rushdie called it
>a Soap opera doesn't mean it is sub-standard. Also the fact that it
>had no villians was a refereshing change,I thought. The book was easy
>to read, it accurately depicted India's middle class and I enjoyed
>reading it.
>
>sanjay
I didn't remember that Rushdie had called A Suitable Boy a soap-opera;
but now that you mention it, I think I remember Ferdoze K. said it was
a soap opera, and Rushdie said, "What a waste" or something to that effect.
In any case, my objections were based on the fact that I was expecting
a deep, thoughtful work, but what I found was a superficial potboiler,
"soon to be made into a TV series"-type book. I grant it was an easy
read. But it fades in comparison to the best Indo-English books of the
recent past; of which IMHO Amitav Ghosh's "The Shadow Lines" is perhaps
the best. *That* I consider to be truly a work of high art: both Indian
and Western at the same time, but fundamentally true to the Indian world view
of continuity and the circular nature of things.
I was disappointed in ASB because I had enjoyed "The Golden Gate" very
much; in particular the theatre version that I saw at the off-Broadway
equivalent in San Francisco.
S. Rajeev
--
S. Rajeev
Asato ma sadgamaya; Tamaso ma jyotirgamaya; Mrityonma amrtamgamaya
Lead me from unreality to reality. Lead me from darkness to light. Lead
me from death to immortality.
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 1.3.28
24WQ4591
"..The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon the cloudy seas.
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor
And the Highwayman came riding upto the old-inn door."
ICSE poetry book-PANORAMA
sanjay
(12 years ago I took my ICSE exam. Time does fly by.)
Rama Nambimadom
Some of the descriptions in ASB are very nice. Overall though the
book is fairly lame. I have not read any other books by him except
The Golden gate. Even there the plot and its development is
relatively poor; his strong point seems to be in creating rich
detailed pictures of situations, particularly emotional ones.
Rama
Satish Ramachandran
>read. But it fades in comparison to the best Indo-English books of the
>recent past; of which IMHO Amitav Ghosh's "The Shadow Lines" is perhaps
>the best. *That* I consider to be truly a work of high art: both Indian
>and Western at the same time, but fundamentally true to the Indian world view
>of continuity and the circular nature of things.
>
No bone of contention here. A mere recommendation....
G.V. Desani's "All about H.Hatterr" is another one of those books
that I consider high art. It amazes me that he is virtually
unknown in India -- I searched high and dry for his books in India
and it was all in vain. And less known in this country than say
R.K. Narayan or Vikram Seth :-(
The paperback copy I bought has reviews that compare G.V. Desani
with Joyce and other masters of the English language. In reading
through just two of H. Hatterr's six Experiences, I have lost
count of the number of times I had to ROTFL....
Highly recommended.
-s
p.s.: ASB neither entertains nor edifies. All it did, I think, was
pander to the groups(1) in Britain that still miss the Raj era and miss
it. Contrast ASB with the above book or any of Rushdie's or any number of
innumerable Indo-English books.
p.s. for those in the Bay Area: Kepler's in Menlo Park carries it.
I didn't have any luck, over several years, with other book stores
in getting a copy of this book....
Note:
(1): [For more info about these groups, read Rushdie's reviews of the movie
"Gandhi" in his book Imaginary Homelands.]
bal...@tcs.com
|> In article <1994Apr8.0...@martha.utcc.utk.edu> cha...@martha.utcc.utk.edu (24WQ4591) writes:
|> >In article <2o1tre$7...@tcsi.tcs.com> bal...@tcs.com () writes:
|> >>In article <2o1luh$j...@engnews1.Eng.Sun.COM>, raj...@travancore.Eng.Sun.COM (S. Rajeev - rajeev@travancore) writes:
|> >>|>
|> >>|> Although it isn't Diwali, someone sent this to me, and I found it beautiful,
|> >>|> moving and nostalgic. I think it is from this Vikram Seth's collection,
|> >>|> "For all who would sleep tonight". [Not 100% sure of that.] He should
|> >>|> stick to poetry--"A Suitable Boy" was such a soap-opera!
|> >>|>
|> >>
|> >>Thanks for posting that poem.
|> >>
|> >>Yes, all of Vikram Seth's writings so far except 'A Suitable Boy' have
|> >>been good. In his defense, though, he does write prose very well (except
|> >>of course ASB).
|> >>
|> >Whats wrong with A SUITABLE BOY. Just becuase Salman Rushdie called it
|> >a Soap opera doesn't mean it is sub-standard. Also the fact that it
|> >had no villians was a refereshing change,I thought. The book was easy
|> >to read, it accurately depicted India's middle class and I enjoyed
|> >reading it.
|> >
|> >sanjay
|>
|> I didn't remember that Rushdie had called A Suitable Boy a soap-opera;
|> but now that you mention it, I think I remember Ferdoze K. said it was
|> a soap opera, and Rushdie said, "What a waste" or something to that effect.
|> In any case, my objections were based on the fact that I was expecting
|> a deep, thoughtful work, but what I found was a superficial potboiler,
|> "soon to be made into a TV series"-type book. I grant it was an easy
precisely. BTW i heard that there are negotiations underway to make it into
a film (or a tv series). VS was very secretive about it when asked this
question at a book reading i attended.
|> read. But it fades in comparison to the best Indo-English books of the
|> recent past; of which IMHO Amitav Ghosh's "The Shadow Lines" is perhaps
|> the best. *That* I consider to be truly a work of high art: both Indian
|> and Western at the same time, but fundamentally true to the Indian world view
|> of continuity and the circular nature of things.
|>
my exact sentiments. in fact i'd go so far as to rate amitav ghosh as the best
indian writer (in english) today.
|> I was disappointed in ASB because I had enjoyed "The Golden Gate" very
|> much; in particular the theatre version that I saw at the off-Broadway
|> equivalent in San Francisco.
|>
despite all the failings of ASB, i'm impressed with VS's talent and look forward
to his next book.
S. Rajeev - rajeev@travancore
been rather pedestrian--Bay Area yuppie meets girl, loses girl; boy meets boy,
loses boy, gets girl. Ho hum.
---
S. Rajeev
pr...@austin.ibm.com
>
>
>G.V. Desani's "All about H.Hatterr" is another one of those books
>that I consider high art. It amazes me that he is virtually
>unknown in India -- I searched high and dry for his books in India
>and it was all in vain. And less known in this country than say
>R.K. Narayan or Vikram Seth :-(
For whatever it's worth, Khushwant Singh mentions Govind Desani in
one of his essays where he rates him as one of the two finest Indian
writers in English. The other is Nirad Choudhury. I think Desani
must have been rather well known a generation ago. He was brought
here from Tamil Nadu (where he was engaged in the practice of Mantra Yoga)
to the Philosophy Dept at UT by the author Raja Rao. I am told
he taught Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhism while at UT.
I believe AAHH is the only book he has ever written. He lives here
in Austin, and is supposed to have dedicated himself completely
to the study of tantra, lives like a recluse and sees almost no one.
Priya
24WQ4591
>
>I didn't remember that Rushdie had called A Suitable Boy a soap-opera;
>but now that you mention it, I think I remember Ferdoze K. said it was
>a soap opera, and Rushdie said, "What a waste" or something to that effect.
>In any case, my objections were based on the fact that I was expecting
>a deep, thoughtful work, but what I found was a superficial potboiler,
>"soon to be made into a TV series"-type book. I grant it was an easy
>read. But it fades in comparison to the best Indo-English books of the
>recent past; of which IMHO Amitav Ghosh's "The Shadow Lines" is perhaps
>the best. *That* I consider to be truly a work of high art: both Indian
>and Western at the same time, but fundamentally true to the Indian world view
>of continuity and the circular nature of things.
>
I still believe that it accurately depicted the Indian middle class.
Mr. Seth,I feel, delibrately avoided digressing from the mainline of
story to give readers(mainly western) a dose of Indian philosophy.
In that sense it was very much in the tradition of RK Narayan.
The 1950's was the most peaceful decade in our modern history and using
that as a back-drop Seth managed to weave a calm,confident but
poignant story about the emerging middle class India. It was not a
tale of exotic India like Midnight's Children or Circle of Reason were
and therefore it was not supposed to be profound.
Unfortunately I have not read "The shadow lines" but I have had the
good fortune to read "In an antique land" by the same author. I
wholeheartedly recommend it.
sanjay
Devakumar Sreevijayan
Satish Ramachandran <sat...@glob.Eng.Sun.COM> wrote:
>
>The paperback copy I bought has reviews that compare G.V. Desani
>with Joyce and other masters of the English language. In reading
>through just two of H. Hatterr's six Experiences, I have lost
>count of the number of times I had to ROTFL....
The new editions of 'All About H. Hatterr' (AAHH!) have a rather
nice introductory essay by Anthony Burgess. This is not surprising,
because Burgess is noted for his great felicity with language
and is a Joyce scholar to boot. I believe he has annotated an
edition of Joyce's 'Finnegans Wake'.
AAHH is highly recommended. In his essay Burgess hints at deeper
levels to the Six Experiences, but does not reveal them. As an
expert of Finnegans Wake, he should know. I haven't understood
them myself; besides, some foul character filched my wonderful
copy of AAHH, leaving me with just the dust jacket, now sadly
dusty on my bookcase.
Dev
Devakumar Sreevijayan
>
>For whatever it's worth, Khushwant Singh mentions Govind Desani in
>one of his essays where he rates him as one of the two finest Indian
>writers in English. The other is Nirad Choudhury. I think Desani
>must have been rather well known a generation ago. He was brought
>here from Tamil Nadu (where he was engaged in the practice of Mantra Yoga)
>to the Philosophy Dept at UT by the author Raja Rao. I am told
>he taught Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhism while at UT.
His real name is Govinddas Vishnoodas Desani. He is Sindhi, though born
in Nairobi, Kenya; in 1909. He was educated in England and spent the War
years in London. He was a broadcaster for BBC during the war and his
eloquent orations on radio were second in popularity only to Churchill.
Later, upon return to India, he became a Buddhist monk and spent more than
a decade in monasteries all over Southeast Asia and Japan. He later began
practicing -- as Priya mentions above -- Raja and Mantra Yoga. Since the
mid-sixties, he has been Professor Emeritus of Philosophy here at UT. Desani
did not teach Vedanta, though. That was taught by Raja Rao. He taught Mahayana
Buddhism and Sankhya philosophy. He is a complete recluse these days, as he
was during the time he spent in Tamil Nadu, when he shunned all human contact.
>I believe AAHH is the only book he has ever written. He lives here
Desani has a second book published, called 'Hali', a very curious
book, in parts intense prose poetry and elsewhere, pithy mysterious
little stories, spiced with satire. I haven't read the book yet.
The recent editions of both books are published in the U.S. by
McPherson and Company. Like I said in my earlier post, someone made
off with my copy before I finished reading the book, so I don't have
the ISBN number handy. Their address, however, is P.O. Box 638, New
Platz, New York 12561.
Some comments from the dust jacket of AAHH:
"In all my experience, I have not met with anything quite
like it" -- T.S. Eliot.
"A comic masterpiece...This book is one of the funniest I have read
for many years...Desani's verbal invention is indefatigable, his
linguistic sources inexhaustible." -- Philip Toynbee, The Observer.
"It is the language, that makes the book, a sort of creative chaos
that grumbles at the banks. It is what may be termed Whole Language,
in which philosophical terms, the colloquialisms of Calcutta and
London, Shakespearian archaisms, bazaar whinings, quick spiels,
references to the Hindu pantheon, the jargon of Indian litigation,
and shrill babu irritability seeth together..." -- Anthony Burgess,
from the Introduction.
The book was first published in 1948. Hali was published around 1949
or 1950. He has not written any books since then.
Dev
Devakumar Sreevijayan
S. Rajeev - rajeev@travancore <raj...@travancore.Eng.Sun.COM> wrote:
>Oddly enough, the reclusive Mr. Desani and Mr. Raja Rao ("The Serpent and
>the Rope") are both at U Texas at Austin.
Desani was brought to UT Austin upon Raja Rao's recommendation, as
Priya has already mentioned. Raja Rao was given carte blanche by the
then Dean of the Liberal Arts school of UT, John Silber (now president
of Boston Univeristy, and one-time gubernatorial candidate in Massachussetts)
to teach whatever he felt like, and also to find another person to share
the teaching responsibilities if necessary. Thus it was that Desani came
to Austin. Raja Rao met him at the writers' retreat in Saratoga Springs,
New York, and there they decided what each would teach. Since then (1965
or so) both of them have lived in Austin.
Silber claimed to have understood all about the Vedantic concept of
Maya upon reading Raja Rao's 'The Cat and Shakespeare', a book,
incidentally, set in Trivandrum. Raja Rao spent many years in Trivandrum
and Chengannur.
Apart from these two resident writers, Austin enjoys visits from other
Indian literati as well: most notably R.K. Narayan, when he teaches
English off and on for a semester. Another writer in residence here is
Zulfiquar Ghose, of Pakistani origin, I believe. Bapsi Sidhwa ('Cracking
India') is a frequent visitor too. Austin is also famous as the place where
O. Henry lived. Among other contemporary writers of note, there is
James Michener who makes Austin home. I am forgetting someone else...
no, not Molly Ivins...anyway...
Raja Rao is, in my opinion, one of the very best Indian writers in
English. His books are admittedly very dense, but they are nevertheless
saturated with a superb poetic sensibility, something uniquely Indian,
in its catholicity, its luminosity, and the way it aims to capture the
lasting verities of the Indian ethos. 'The Serpent and the Rope', which
I am reading for the second time these days, is wonderfully evocative
in language, in the sweep and span of its concerns, the beautiful yet
sadly tenuous marriage of the East and the West, the deep theological
levels, the levels of history, both personal and cultural, of Woman,
Love, Marriage and of Death, and of the unending quest for the abhuman,
the Guru who is not a person, and is yet a person.
Since 'The Serpent and the Rope', he has published (in India, Vision
Books) 'The Chessmaster and his Moves'. He hopes to publish at least
six more of his unfinished manuscripts one of these days.
Dev
John, Dawn V
>In article <2o4mqn$j...@engnews1.Eng.Sun.COM>,
>S. Rajeev - rajeev@travancore <raj...@travancore.Eng.Sun.COM> wrote:
>>Oddly enough, the reclusive Mr. Desani and Mr. Raja Rao ("The Serpent and
>>the Rope") are both at U Texas at Austin.
>
>Desani was brought to UT Austin upon Raja Rao's recommendation, as
>Priya has already mentioned. Raja Rao was given carte blanche by the
>then Dean of the Liberal Arts school of UT, John Silber (now president
>of Boston Univeristy, and one-time gubernatorial candidate in Massachussetts)
>to teach whatever he felt like, and also to find another person to share
>the teaching responsibilities if necessary. Thus it was that Desani came
>to Austin. Raja Rao met him at the writers' retreat in Saratoga Springs,
>New York, and there they decided what each would teach. Since then (1965
>or so) both of them have lived in Austin.
>
>Silber claimed to have understood all about the Vedantic concept of
>Maya upon reading Raja Rao's 'The Cat and Shakespeare', a book,
>incidentally, set in Trivandrum. Raja Rao spent many years in Trivandrum
>and Chengannur.
>
>Apart from these two resident writers, Austin enjoys visits from other
>Indian literati as well: most notably R.K. Narayan, when he teaches
Also for lighter reading I recommend anything by Ruskin Bond. His descritptions
of 70's Dehra Dun are excellent. His most famous story is Room on the Roof(which
is semi-autobiographical
Later
Dawn V John (st...@jetson.uh.edu)
********************************************************************************
New news assignment:
Reporting from Twin Peaks (for Ted Koppel).
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trying to talk as the midget.
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Satish Ramachandran
>here from Tamil Nadu (where he was engaged in the practice of Mantra Yoga)
>to the Philosophy Dept at UT by the author Raja Rao. I am told
>he taught Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhism while at UT.
>
>I believe AAHH is the only book he has ever written. He lives here
>in Austin, and is supposed to have dedicated himself completely
>to the study of tantra, lives like a recluse and sees almost no one.
>
>Priya
>
Anthony Burgess, in his foreword to the paperback edition of
AAHH, mentions GVD's prose-poem book "Hali". I'm now making
attempts to acquire a copy of it too. Just don't know how
many years it will take me to get one :-)
Also mentioned in the book: GVD, for a while, wrote in the
Indian Express and Illustrated Weekly (possibly when our
previous generation was at in its youth; I mean, the 50s and
early 60s). And he is a practitioner of Mantra Yoga, spent
several years (I vaguely recall the number 12) in seclusion
in India, was some kind of a child prodigy who was sent to
England for higher studies, ...
If I am to mention one aspect of his book that absolutely,
absolutely bites me hard, it is that it is so *non-judgemental*.
Remarkably non-judgemental!
-s
p.s. I may not have been clear in my previous posting on this
topic. Kepler's, the bookstore in Menlo Park, has copies of
AAHH. After several years of searching over several continents,
luck decreed that I find this jewel in the swamps of my backyard!
Satish Ramachandran
>of the poet's stuff (I forget his name) was quite good. I have no idea
>how his travelogue, "From Heaven's Lake" was. Anyone?
>
>S. Rajeev
>--------------------
I liked "From Heaven's Lake". Since he knew the language very well (wasn't
his thesis something to do with Chinese demographics?...), he encountered
few problems. He does mention that not knowing the language can be
extremely problematic.
Vikram makes a point that still resonates in me: as countries abutting
one another and with cultures going back several millenia, China and India
might as well have been on opposite sides of earth. The traffic (in culture,
in goods, ...) between the two countries has been, and is, surprisingly
minimal. Given the respective sizes and antiquities of their cultures, one
would expect the masses in the two countries to be more aware of one another.
Vikram's observation was that that awareness was non-existent on both sides.
India and Indians seem to be more aware of (enamoured?) of the Arabic
and Islamic neighbours than of the ones in the East. I say this without
the least interest in the politics involved (religious, etc..)
Given the histories, and one doesn't have to pander to certain crowds to
acknowledge the rapes and pillages of yore, Vikram (and this sentiment still
echoes in me) expected otherwise.
-s
bal...@tcs.com
|> My darn newsreader doesn't indent, beats me why. Anyway, I'm
|> responding to what Balaji said below:
|>
|> I too think, compared to several Indo-English books I have read,
|> Ghosh's works stand out. I was quite disappointed "Shadow Lines"
|> did not capture a Booker Prize--which seems a more balanced
|> measure of literary merit than a Pulitzer.
BTW, was he nominated for the prize?
|>
|> Vikram Seth is a versifier par excellence; even in "ASB" some of the
|> verse he penned for Kakoli et al was quite entertaning, and some
|> of the poet's stuff (I forget his name) was quite good. I have no idea
|> how his travelogue, "From Heaven's Lake" was. Anyone?
i've read the travelogue and found it very interesting. it maybe not as erudite
as bruce chatwin's travel writing, but i did find it a shade more informative
and interesting than paul theroux's books like 'the great railway bazaar'.
VS's book in fact won the thomas cook award. if you're interested in it, one
of the public libraries near you should carry it (especially in california).
|>
|> S. Rajeev
Kamala Anupindi
>My darn newsreader doesn't indent, beats me why. Anyway, I'm
>responding to what Balaji said below:
>
>I too think, compared to several Indo-English books I have read,
>Ghosh's works stand out. I was quite disappointed "Shadow Lines"
>did not capture a Booker Prize--which seems a more balanced
>measure of literary merit than a Pulitzer.
>
>verse he penned for Kakoli et al was quite entertaning, and some
>of the poet's stuff (I forget his name) was quite good. I have no idea
>how his travelogue, "From Heaven's Lake" was. Anyone?
>
>--------------------
No doubt he is a versifier, but sometimes it gets to you. Like in ASB
when Amit (the poet) writes to Lata, the first words of each line
of the verse when added read L A T A and A M I T ! Now that to me
is carrying it a bit too far...
And ofcourse, I definitely think Amitav Ghosh is miles ahead of VS !
I recently got hold of Vikram Seth's collection of short stories
(written from when he was 12 I think!) " A five dollar smile " and
I enjoyed a few of them... But again, there was nothing dazzling as such...
Kamala
S. Rajeev - rajeev@travancore
I do believe you mean Shashi Tharoor below, not Seth. Tharoor's "Great
Indian Novel" was both exasperating (where he tried too hard to be clever)
and exhilarating (in certain passages of surpassing brilliance such as his
evocation of Jallianwalla Bagh). Tharoor's book on Bollywood--the recursion
is alarming--is being made into a film. So is Upamanya Chatterjee's
"English, August", which I personally found rather disgusting despite the
author's obvious talent.
---
S. Rajeev
pr...@austin.ibm.com
>
>No doubt he is a versifier, but sometimes it gets to you. Like in ASB
>when Amit (the poet) writes to Lata, the first words of each line
>of the verse when added read L A T A and A M I T ! Now that to me
>is carrying it a bit too far...
>
>
In fairness to VS, I think those poems should be read in the context of
the novel. It is not VS, but the poet in the novel who is the composer
of these verses. The poetic gimmicks you refer to above seem to me to be
quite justified when you consider that the poet has made a gift of one of
his books to Lata, and she sees no inscription except for this poem which
does not read like an inscription at all. Also remember that her nosy
mother has been policing her activities having smelled something in the
air, and Amit is well aware of it. The poem is his way of sneaking in an
inscription that will evade the watchful eye of Mrs Rupa Mehra but will
puzzle Lata sufficiently until she realises it is an acrostic.
The same applies to the rest of the poetry that peppers the book. Kakoli's
couplets are little more than inane doggerel if read in isolation, but
they add colour to her character, and to that of the other Chatterjees.
Makhijani's epic poem that appears early on in the book is an unrelentingly
monumental blunder that no serious poet would affix his name to. But it
is that poem more than anything else that informs and fills out our image
of Mr. Makhijani.
There are perhaps more characters in the book with inclinations to poetry
than you would find among a typical subsection of middle class Indians,
but that is surely within the limits of the writer's poetic license.
Priya
S. Rajeev - rajeev@travancore
that it and "The Remains of the Day", which did win a Booker, were among the best
first-person narratives I've ever read, although that is kind of irrelevent.
I'm sure the Palo Alto or Fremont library has "Heaven's Lake"--I never much felt
the urge to read it. I did enjoy Theroux's "Railway Bazaar" on audiocassette, but then
it may be just because I like trains, just as I enjoyed "Chasing the Monsoon" because I
love rain.
S. Rajeev
|>
|> S. Rajeev
---
S. Rajeev
Sudha Neelakantan
: In article <1994Apr11....@newstand.syr.edu>
: >
: >No doubt he is a versifier, but sometimes it gets to you. Like in ASB
: >when Amit (the poet) writes to Lata, the first words of each line
: >of the verse when added read L A T A and A M I T ! Now that to me
: >is carrying it a bit too far...
: >
: >
: In fairness to VS, I think those poems should be read in the context of
: the novel. It is not VS, but the poet in the novel who is the composer
: of these verses. The poetic gimmicks you refer to above seem to me to be
Well, I read ASB a few months ago, I thought that it was pleasant and
all that but certainly not a great book - he says absolutely nothing
meaningful/new or in a new way in the whole book, its utterly
predictable, i was describing the book after a couple of hundred pages
with a couple of sentences, and my mom says, why do you want to read a
thousand odd pages to figure out that she'll marry X. she was right
about X too. I guess its good for people who have a nostalgia trip
about their neat middle class lives, but his verse is annoying and
gets in the way sometimes though its occasionally amusing. it depends
on whether you want to spend a couple of days reading about things
you're familiar with, in a narcissistic way, theres a
self-congratulatory feeling of belonging that comes across, you can
see a very faithful picture of the indian middle class there i guess.
i think actually that jane austen did it first and imo does it better
than he does. i'd vote for rushdie.
Sudha
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<*>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Sudha K. Neelakantan < Clouds come floating into my life,
Department of Agricultural \ no longer to carry rain or usher storm
Economics \ but to add color to my sunset sky.
University of California, Davis > - Rabindranath Tagore -
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<*>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Internet email: su...@primal.ucdavis.edu
p.s. thanks to those who gave me info long ago on A house for
Mr. Biswas. You were right, I didn't find him particularly racist,
and it was a good book.
Devakumar Sreevijayan
In article <Co73E...@ucdavis.edu>,
Sudha Neelakantan <su...@primal.ucdavis.edu> wrote:
>I guess its good for people who have a nostalgia trip
>about their neat middle class lives, but his verse is annoying and
>gets in the way sometimes though its occasionally amusing. it depends
>on whether you want to spend a couple of days reading about things
>you're familiar with, in a narcissistic way, theres a
>self-congratulatory feeling of belonging that comes across, you can
>see a very faithful picture of the indian middle class there i guess.
>i think actually that jane austen did it first and imo does it better
>than he does. i'd vote for rushdie.
>
Different people read books differently, of course. Having said that,
I must express my disagreement with your statement that ASB is about
'the indian middle class'; because, by doing that, you are relegating
whole fascicles--to use a word I learned from ASB--of the book to
the narrative wayside. The book is, in my opinion, not at all about
who Lata marries. That particular thread merely serves as a focus for
innumerable other strands, where Seth creates a richly imagined world,
where people of all shades and stripes interact, from the alleged middle
class to the very poor, to provincial Muslim families and their aspirations,
to politics of the immediate post-independence era, to the shoe trade,
to religious madness, the allure of the Nawabi culture, the melancholy
of a courtesan in her waning years, of the foibles of young men, the
indecisions of young women, of brown sahibs and dissolute Rajas, of
weepy tyrants and whales in academia...
In short, it is quite absurd to reduce a book like ASB to a question
as to who Lata Mehra gets married to. One might as well read Moby
Dick to find out whether the blasted whale got killed or not.
Besides, the world that Seth conjures up is not at all the world of
our familiarity. The characters are uniformly not 'deep'; they are
caricatures to a large extent, or to put a better spin on it, they
are social archetypes, held up for scrutiny, their eccentricities
highlighted, all traces of melodrama conspicuously avoided, gross
tragedies merely hinted at. The idea is to create a critical distance,
so that we may effectively criticize their lives, without ourselves
identifying with any particular one, or immersing ourselves in whatever
moral dilemmas they may be faced with. That is, our view as we read
the book is a wide-angle view, taking in the whole dynamic of a society.
When we focus on particular characters, they assume the guise of denizens
of a two-dimensional world. This is, in other words, a 'social novel'.
In this sense, Seth's effort is certainly derivative (as was The Golden
Gate, where he does acknowledge his debt to Johnston's excellent translation
of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin) as it is firmly rooted -- this great banyan
tree of a book -- in the literary tradition of Austen and George Eliot.
The book, thus, has to be understood or appreciated in its own terms.
I find comparisons to Rushdie and Amitav Ghosh quite useless.
The social genre that ASB belongs to was well articulated by Margaret
Wong in a discussion we had on the book almost exactly a year ago on
rec.arts.books. Unfortunately, I do not have Margaret's post anymore,
but here is my somewhat over-enthusiastic response to her from that
thread:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
[In response to some who found Seth's characters two-dimensional and
'mere caricatures', Margaret Wong writes: ]
> If the world of these novels were _exactly_ like ours, or
>the characters _exactly_ like us, we would be as ineffective at
>offering a critique of their world as we are of our own. The
>point of a social novel is not to convince us that the characters
>are "real," but to subtly persuade us to distance ourselves from
>the amiable characters and to become effective critical readers
>of the society in which these characters live.
Exactly! This is precisely the point I was struggling to arrive at
after feeling for a while (with the distance of a few weeks from
being all aglow with the Seth Effect) that his characters were shallow
and mere caricatures. But, later on, I began to feel that there was
really much more to the book than what met my naively critical eye.
There are, behind the light and airy brush strokes on his canvas
(more mural than canvas) intimations of a darker impasto, of deep
and intense sufferings that are nevertheless submerged beneath the
warm swell of his narrative. It may be passe to quote Hemingway,
but as he once remarked, "the dignity of movement of an iceberg is
due to the fact that two thirds of it is below the surface". The book,
while being as substantial as the iceberg, does not reveal the depth
of its humanity. It requires active imagination on the part of its
readers to pull aside Seth's sentimental and lightly empathetic veil
to reveal its characters in their full human dimension. In this sense
the book transcends even the social genre that Margaret has articulated
so well.
Take the case of Kabir, for example. Outwardly, and almost throughout
the narrative, he is a caricature of the College Romeo, the star
cricketer with the handsome looks and that 'aquiline nose'. But,
behind the flannel exterior, there is the unspeakable tragedy of his
mother, his unresponsive father, his own loneliness and desire for
escape--he wants to join the foreign service. Yet, he cannot run away,
and turns down Lata's passionate ideas of elopement, only to suffer
the sheer impossibility of their love. If Kabir is a caricature, then
so are we all!
Or take the case of that most peripheral and silent of characters,
Kedarnath Tandon, who makes a living in the shoe trade, so far
beneath the dignity of his caste (an immense reality even in the
India of today) after being dispossessed in Lahore and surviving the
horrors of Partition. Yet, these are alluded to only in passing,
almost casually. It doesn't take a lot of imagination or empathy
to 'flesh' him out to be someone very real, and indeed, deep. In
that sense, the book teems with more than 'social archetypes'; some
of the characters are very unremarkable, yet they are people whom we
have known, very ordinary people, people we care about.
There are two kinds of good novels: those in which the readers are
faced with the prodigious imagination of the writer (a la Rushdie)
and those with gentle brush strokes invite the readers to fill in
the canvas through the joyous exercise of their own imagination. These
latter are also the most readable of novels and they have a way
of inveigling their way into our subconscious. I think Seth will
have been instrumental in the resurrection of the readable novel in
our time.
Dev
bal...@tcs.com
i think you're referring to shashi tharoor's collection by that name. and, no,
not all the stories were written when the writer was 12. perhaps one or two
were. but all the stories were written before shashi tharoor turned 25.
|> I enjoyed a few of them... But again, there was nothing dazzling as such...
but for a teenager to have written many of the stories, i think it is quite
creditable.
|>
|> Kamala
|>
bal...@tcs.com
|>
|> I do believe you mean Shashi Tharoor below, not Seth. Tharoor's "Great
|> Indian Novel" was both exasperating (where he tried too hard to be clever)
|> and exhilarating (in certain passages of surpassing brilliance such as his
|> evocation of Jallianwalla Bagh). Tharoor's book on Bollywood--the recursion
i thought 'the great indian novel' was wonderful. perhaps because the author
tried to juxtapose the characters of the mahabharata and the people involved
in the freedom struggle and somehow found parallels in both epics (if india's
freedom struggle can be called one). i didn't like that novel on bollywood
either (too much seemed to have been taken from amitabh bacchan's life although
the author has vehemently denied this).
|> is alarming--is being made into a film. So is Upamanya Chatterjee's
|> "English, August", which I personally found rather disgusting despite the
i own a copy of the 'english august', but am yet to finish it. but tarun tejpal
of india today (who was the first to give a lukewarm reception to ASB) says his
second novel 'the last burden' is a much better one. even dom moraes thinks it
is a more serious novel (although it doesn't have much of a story). anybody
read it yet? i'm trying to get hold of it, but it is not available in the US.
icarus
Devakumar Sreevijayan <devk...@huey.cc.utexas.edu> wrote:
>(Pardon the length of this post and its dubious relevance to a.c.k.)
>
>In short, it is quite absurd to reduce a book like ASB to a question
>as to who Lata Mehra gets married to. One might as well read Moby
>Dick to find out whether the blasted whale got killed or not.
1] Give them hell Dev ! :-)
The analogy (o.m.g! here we go again :-)) , is
apt. In the same vein: Reading Paul Theroux'
The Mosquito Coast as a travelogue, or while we
are at it treating Conrad's Heart of Darkness as
a trip into a tropical jungle.
>
>Besides, the world that Seth conjures up is not at all the world of
>our familiarity. The characters are uniformly not 'deep'; they are
>caricatures to a large extent, or to put a better spin on it, they
>are social archetypes, held up for scrutiny, their eccentricities
2] Havent read ASB, so cant comment.
Stay Cool.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
| ~ ~ |
| signito ergo sum. paul chemmanoor. o o |
| i sign therefore i am. ica...@access.digex.net | |
| - |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sudha Neelakantan
>icarus <ica...@access1.digex.net> wrote:
>>In article <2oi25r$2...@huey.cc.utexas.edu>,
>>Devakumar Sreevijayan <devk...@huey.cc.utexas.edu> wrote:
>>In short, it is quite absurd to reduce a book like ASB to a question
>>as to who Lata Mehra gets married to. One might as well read Moby
>>Dick to find out whether the blasted whale got killed or not.
I know, I'm the offender here, or atleast my mom was, but I thought
that it was an appropriate trivialization because honestly, his
writing was extremely tedious so that the only excuse for a thousand
odd plodding pages might have been a groundbreaking romantic plot. I
think its silly to compare a weak book like ASB to a powerful classic
like Moby Dick. If anything you should compare it to Emma or Pride
and Prejudice or something and even there, ASB falls flat...
Devakumar Sreevijayan
Sudha Neelakantan <su...@primal.ucdavis.edu> wrote:
>I think its silly to compare a weak book like ASB to a powerful classic
>like Moby Dick. If anything you should compare it to Emma or Pride
>and Prejudice or something and even there, ASB falls flat...
You are right that a more apposite comparison is with Austen or Eliot,
(the George variety) but I am very curious about what you said about
Moby Dick. I wonder if you could try and articulate why you think it is
1) powerful 2) a classic. Believe me, I am neither challenging your
assertion nor trying to pull a fast one over you. I am genuinely curious
about why people perceive books the way they do.
Dev
icarus
1] While I think dev's analogy doesnt imply a comparision between
Moby Dick and ASB, ( I understood it as a comment on trivial
interpreretations dealing with books as "Universals" . Well
Whatever, Never Mind, as Kurt Cobain [PBUH] would have it.),
the comment (or is that a question ?) about Moby Dick is interesting.
2] Am I rising to the bait or am I rising to the bait :-) ?
As the Old Testament would say: "Canst thou catch Leviathan with a hook ?"
(PFM).
I think people react to some books in a very personal way.
Devoid of any such personal identification, Moby Dick is
a very erudite, engrossing tale of one mans obsession, the
whale that had mauled him.
At a deeper level, you tend to identify with the
relentlessness of Ahab's mania. The roots of his revenge
go deep into the dark side of the mind, and its disregard
for the niceties of a normal living. In this sense Moby
Dick is a very violent story, and a strong and powerful story.
Interestingly enough, Billy Bud, The End of the Tether,
Moby Dick and the Heart of Darkness and even Samuel Coleridge's
The Ancient Mariner, for me, share the same dark energy,
and all are books set on ships over rivers or oceans.
3] On a similar note, I finally claimed my rights at the local
library and checked out 3 classic movies:
Battleship Potemkin, Casablanca and Citizen Kane.
Citizen Kane I had seen before, halfway before it was
closing time at Boulder's Media Library.
I liked all three movies, although it was a bit like
trying payasam after jalebis after aluva.
But my roommate asked the question: Would I have considered
these movies great if so many people hadnt been telling me
they were ?
The best answer I could come up with in all honesty is that
I havent seen enough movies to call these movies the greatest
movies of all time, but I would have thought them very good
even if I wasnt told of their greatness by other people.
People have, after all an innate sense of beauty (alas! :-)
as Don Quixote demonstrated and several others have
emulated) even in an untutored state, or so good Kantians would have
us believe.
And so with books.
3] Later,
Stay Cool.
pr...@austin.ibm.com
>
> At a deeper level, you tend to identify with the
> relentlessness of Ahab's mania. The roots of his revenge
> go deep into the dark side of the mind, and its disregard
> for the niceties of a normal living. In this sense Moby
> Dick is a very violent story, and a strong and powerful story.
>
>
> People have, after all an innate sense of beauty (alas! :-)
> as Don Quixote demonstrated and several others have
> emulated) even in an untutored state, or so good Kantians would have
> us believe.
>
> And so with books.
>
>
Not always. Moby Dick languished in relative obscurity for several years
before being rediscovered to almost universal adulation. Until then,
Melville's chief claim to fame had been as 'the man who had lived among
the cannibals' and a couple of books that are all but forgotten now.
It would be interesting to speculate on which of the Indian novels written
in recent years are similarly likely to rise to classic status over the
next century or so. To make this obliquely relevant to a.c.k, are any
Kerala writers likely to be in the running?
Btw, has anyone read the Ramayana as told by Aubrey Menen? I got myself a
copy recently, and it promises to make for some riotous reading. The
Introduction (which is as far as I've got) is quite a lark.
Priya
Devakumar Sreevijayan
icarus <ica...@access.digex.net> wrote:
>
>1] While I think dev's analogy doesnt imply a comparision between
> Moby Dick and ASB, ( I understood it as a comment on trivial
> interpreretations dealing with books as "Universals" .
You understood it correctly the first time. I meant to say that
reducing a novel, particularly one that is as large in scope as
ASB, to one central question, or a mere pre'cis, is absurd. I think
Sudha probably misunderstood that comment of mine when she said that
it is silly to compare ASB to MD, and that a better comparison is
with Austen et al. As you rightly observe, no comparison was intended,
but I chose not to belabour the issue and instead agreed with her comment,
because a more apposite comparison--should one feel the irrepressible
urge to compare--is indeed with the novels of Austen et al.
I am fairly sure that some author at some point in his career must have
had something to say about such reductive attempts on the part of
critics, because such a process is indeed, quite literally, a reductio ad
absurdum.
> Whatever, Never Mind, as Kurt Cobain [PBUH] would have it.),
> the comment (or is that a question ?) about Moby Dick is interesting.
My response to Sudha was largely in the nature of a request, so I
suppose it falls squarely in that mysterious region between comment
and question.
>2] Am I rising to the bait or am I rising to the bait :-) ?
Perhaps you are rising to de bate?
> I liked all three movies, although it was a bit like
> trying payasam after jalebis after aluva.
Yes, I know the feeling, although I did not remember suffering
any queasiness when I tried payasam after jalebis after angamali.
> But my roommate asked the question: Would I have considered
> these movies great if so many people hadnt been telling me
> they were ?
Don't you just hate such roommates? :-)
> People have, after all an innate sense of beauty (alas! :-)
> as Don Quixote demonstrated and several others have
> emulated) even in an untutored state, or so good Kantians would have
> us believe.
>
> And so with books.
But, if a book is suffused with a beauty that we innately sense,
does that make it a classic? I mean, are all 'good' books classics?
Surely, opinion is split--to some degree--on most classics? Surely,
there are some books in the literary canon that would put you to sleep
faster than you can say 'Kesavan Vannittund~, Undittillya'? So who
decides what is a classic? The majority? The pundits? Who is the
arbiter? Further, how does one explain the present astronomical value,
monetary and otherwise, of say, a painting by your namesake Cezanne,
when the man had to suffer such chill penury that he had to cut off
and sell individual apples from his still-life paintings so that he
could earn his next meal? How come his work was condemned when he was
alive and that these days it takes quite a few millions to acquire one
of those same still-life paintings?
Obligatory Kerala Reference:
---------------------------
Presently reading 'niLayudE TheerangaLilUdE' by Alangode Leelakrishnan,
a cultural history of sorts of the Bharatapuzha region; a book that came
highly recommended by my mother, but which I have so far found a bit
too florid in style for my taste. The subject matter is, of course, highly
interesting, and it helps that my own roots are in that wonderful part of
Keralam.
I understand that there is a lot of environmental concern about the
niLa. Does anyone know more about the issues involved and what is
being done to redress the problems? It was always sad to see the river
in summer, so dry and destitute, the sand trucks gouging deeply into
her flanks.
Dev
icarus
>In article <2pmsoo$7...@access3.digex.net>
> ica...@access.digex.net (icarus) writes:
>>
>> At a deeper level, you tend to identify with the
>
>Not always. Moby Dick languished in relative obscurity for several years
>before being rediscovered to almost universal adulation. Until then,
>Melville's chief claim to fame had been as 'the man who had lived among
>the cannibals' and a couple of books that are all but forgotten now.
1] "Several Years" is a mere blink of a figurative eyelid when
dealing with 'classic' books. Even Jonah had to spend 3 days
somewhat forgotten :-)
But you bring up an interesting
point. I remembered the obscurity into which both Bach and
Beethoven had fallen into. And the obscurity Aristotle fell
into before being rediscovered. My view is that the personal
often ill-motivated opinions of a harsh critic keeps a great
work of Art down for only a little time. Quality will show
itself, in time. After all thats why they are called
classics.
2] Stay Cool.
Satish Ramachandran
> library and checked out 3 classic movies:
> Battleship Potemkin, Casablanca and Citizen Kane.
>
> Citizen Kane I had seen before, halfway before it was
> closing time at Boulder's Media Library.
> But my roommate asked the question: Would I have considered
> these movies great if so many people hadnt been telling me
> they were ?
>
This raises a more fundamental question: how much are you influenced
by what others say in terms of "artistic" things (books, movies...)?
Is there a critic who you *don't* listen to and instead, go contrary to?
Is there a critic who you listen to? I use the term "critic" loosely --
it may be your video store clerk, your gardener, Jesse Helms or Pat
Buchanan :-)
When it come to movies, it doesn't matter to me what so many people say.
It does matter to me what Pauline Kael thinks of it!! If she recommends
something, I make an extra effort to check it out. More often than
not, I return with a renewed sense of vigor and passion for movies.
To appreciate Citizen Kane better, I recommend her book on it. Complete
with the screenplay, flush with details about why/how Orson Welles chose
the lighting and camera angles, how much it has contributed to the movie
making process by way of innovations, ...
-s
p.s.
The New Yorker, around the time of the Oscars this year, had an issue
devoted to movies. It featured an interview with Pauline Kael -- you
may want to read it to see what she thinks of "Schindler's List" for
instance (something to the extent of :"Steven Spielberg playing grown-up")