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Up Sky Down Sky Middle Water Writers Vs. Money

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Up Sky Down Sky Middle Water Writers Vs. Money Up Sky Down Sky Middle Water A collection of short fiction and Writers vs. Money: Negotiating the field of Indian literature in English Roanna Gonsalves A thesis in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of the Arts and Media Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences University of New South Wales March 2016 1 Abstract The first part of this thesis is a collection of stories focussing on Indian Australian women. It reimagines the social and cultural trails between India and Australia that facilitate and limit many turns and returns. In refusing easy representations of Indians in Australia, this collection investigates the tensions and spillages in the lived reality of Indian Australian women engaging with contemporary Australia. These fictional renderings of my observations as an Indian-Australian writer upon the ethnic communities with which I am affiliated in Australia, are in a dialogic and complementary relationship with the second part of this thesis: a research dissertation on the Indian literary communities I am connected with as part of the Indian diaspora in Australia. This research dissertation investigates how writers of English language literature survive in post-millennial India. Drawing on in-depth interviews, participant observation, and documentary analysis, this study mobilises the conceptual tools provided by Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical framework and Bernard Lahire’s specification of it to examine the unique features of the literary field in India and how they impact on writers’ practice. This study found that while writers across the world face conflicting demands in their pursuit of a literary career and their need for economic survival, the specificities of the Indian literary field present unique challenges to Indian writers in English. These features include rapid growth fettered by uncertainty, a sense of entanglement between the field’s autonomous and heteronomous dimensions and between local and multinational publishers, and writers’ struggles regarding support infrastructure and the position of the English language in India. The writers in this study often adopt a range of survival strategies to negotiate this field, as they develop a sense of themselves as writers, navigate the path to publication, and aim for different kinds of success, while needing to earn a living from work other than writing fiction. This inherent plurality of the writing life enables and constrains writers as they make varying degrees of investments in the literary as well as the extra-literary aspects of their lives. By examining various facets of the conflicted relationship writers have with money as they negotiate the specificities of the Indian literary field, this dissertation provides a new understanding of the ways in which Indian writers tackle the challenges to their survival in the twenty-first century. 4 Acknowledgements It took a “village” to raise this thesis. I express my deepest gratitude to my supervisors, Anne Brewster and Janet Chan, for guidance, generosity, and faith, throughout the entire PhD process. Their astute feedback and suggestions helped separate the chaff from the grain. Their patient engagement with innumerable drafts made this thesis much stronger. I am indebted to them both. I express my thanks to all the participants in my study, for their time and their trust. They will remain unidentified to ensure confidentiality but I am grateful to each and every one of them. I am also thankful to Meenakshi Bharat, Frederick Noronha, and Kurt Bento for their graciousness in facilitating the fieldwork. I am grateful to Kerry Thomas, Bill Ashcroft, Ramaswami Harindranath, and Dorottya Fabian for engagement with my Annual Review submissions, for their time and their invaluable insights that have enriched my dissertation. The broader UNSW creative and scholarly community were a source of inspiration, support, and encouragement, and I thank them all, especially Stephen Muecke and Su Goldfish. I thank Reza, Lizzie, Tanya, Lisa, Helen, Gaby, Chris, Camilla, Suma, and especially Sameera for solidarity, sugar treats, and ways to reboot the brain. I thank Jackie Bailey, Mridula Nath Chakraborty, and Benedito Ferrão, for being generous readers and luminous interlocutors, and for letting me pick their fine minds from time to time; Laetitia Nanquette, Nayana Bibile, Sharon Rundle, Sukhmani Khorana, and Rowan Payton for enlightening conversations that provided much-needed clarity; Sabeen, Leela, Rowena, Janice, Jyoti, Andrea Rosario, Sakina, Bek, for friendship and reality checks; Celine, Sharmila, Sanjay, Babush, Yvonne, Nina, the extended Couto family, Neil, Vyona for love and care in Goa, Nirmal, Kavitha, Gayle, Mathew, Sonia, Brett, Frank, Judy, for being our heart family, for laughter, big and small kindnesses during this adventure; my uncle Fr. William Athaide for the value he places on education and my uncle Fr. Ozy Gonsalves SJ for helping me clear the decks for ‘spirit work’; my cousin Dr. Christina Furtado for leading the way; my sister Racquel, Diago, Raphael and Rio, for priceless help and merriment; my aunty Helen and my aunty Theresa for their affection, and faultless advice on money, fashion, and life in general. 5 For professional development opportunities, I thank Tejaswini Niranjana, Ashish Rajadhyaksha, and the staff at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore; Arshia Sattar, DW Gibson, and Rahul Soni of Sangam House, India; Professor Prafulla Kar and Shreyasee Datta at the Forum on Contemporary Theory workshops at Goa University, Anja Schwarz, Lars Eckstein, and Dirk Wiemann at the Minor Cosmopolitanisms Summer School in Potsdam. I am also grateful for vital support received from Varuna, The Writers’ House in Katoomba. I thank the organisers and participants of the seminars and conferences where I presented my work and received valuable comments: the Australian Association of Writing Programs conferences, the seminar series at the School of the Arts and Media, the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research, Canberra, the Association for the Study of Australian Literature conferences, the Literary Networks conference, the European Sociological Association conference, the Journey of the Book conference in Pune, the Moving Ideas Symposium, the Centre for Modernism Studies in Australia Symposium on The Idea of the Literary Review, the Indian Association for the Study of Australia conferences, the Cultural Studies Association of Australia conference, the Scenes of Reading symposium at the University of Sydney, the Australia India Literatures International Forum at the State Library of New South Wales. This PhD could not have been undertaken without crucial funding provided by the Australian Postgraduate Award 2011-15, a Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Top Up Grant for Top Ranked Applicants 2011-2014, Graduate Research School PRSS funding to present a paper at the European Sociological Association conference in 2013, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences external research funding to conduct fieldwork in Frankfurt and India in 2012, and the Prime Minster’s Outgoing Australia Asia Endeavour Award 2013-14. I also thank Andrew Murphie, Elizabeth McMahon, Collin Chua, Paul Dawson, Stephanie Bishop, Josh Dubrau, and especially Anne Brewster (again) for the opportunities to teach and to learn in Creative Writing and Media Studies courses. I am grateful for a FASS Postgrad workspace where most of this thesis was written. I thank Janet Chan again, in her role as my boss for many years. For her idea and support to present a paper at my first AAWP conference in 2007, for her rigour, and her inspiring scholarly and creative practice, I am forever thankful. I acknowledge the most important people in my life, without whose sacrifices this entire PhD process would have remained a figment of my imagination: my parents Rose and Richard Gonsalves for their unquestioning, rock solid support at great cost to themselves that enabled me to stay the course; and the world’s best children, my precious Kirk and Jadyn, for understanding, for joy and for love. I dedicate this thesis to them. 6 Up Sky Down Sky Middle Water A collection of short fiction By Roanna Gonsalves 7 Table of Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................. 4 Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ 5 Introduction: Trails of Breadcrumbs .......................................................................... 9 References .......................................................................................................................... 14 Full Face .............................................................................................................................. 16 The Skit................................................................................................................................ 54 Christmas 2012 ................................................................................................................ 66 CIA (Australia) .................................................................................................................. 73 Trending and Friending .............................................................................................. 106 The Teller In The Tale .................................................................................................
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