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AUTHOR Altman, Leslie J. TITLE Contemporary World Classics in Literature and Film. Fall, 1998. Fulbright-Hays Summer Seminars Abroad 1998 (India). INSTITUTION United States Educational Foundation in India. SPONS AGENCY Center for International Education (ED), Washington, DC. PUB DATE 1998-00-00 NOTE 21p. PUB TYPE Guides Classroom Teacher (052)-- Reports Descriptive (141) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Area Studies; *Authors; Course Descriptions; Cultural Context; *Film Study; Foreign Countries; Global Education; High Schools; *Literature Appreciation; Non Western Civilization; Social Studies; Student Research; *World Literature; Writing Assignments IDENTIFIERS *Contemporary Literature; Film Viewing; Fulbright Hays Seminars Abroad Program; *India; Mukherjee (Bharati); Rushdie (Salman)

ABSTRACT This packet includes the syllabus of a trimester-long senior elective course on India, designed to begin with two writers of Indian descent, and Bharati Mukherjee. The packet contains the daily assignments for the first half of the trimester, which include all of the reading assignments from Rushdie and Mukherjee, as well as the guide for viewing "Salaam Bombay!" an Indian film. It also contains a handout detailing an approach to a Rushdie short story, "Yorick," and two handouts for in-class writing assignments on Rushdie. Additional handouts in the packet are a reprint on the English of India from "The New York Times" magazine, a review of "East West" from "The New Yorker," and an article by Rushdie, also from "The New Yorker." A handout describing a student research project also is included. (BT)

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Contemporary World Classics in Literature and Film Fall, 1998

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ar United States Educational Foundation in India 2 BEST COPY AVM BLE Upper School Lower & Middle 12465 County Line Rd. Schools P. 0. Box 8002 5000 Cluhside Road Gates Mills, Ohio Hawker' Scholl_ Lyndhurst, Ohio 44040-8002 44124-2595 440/423-4446 440/423-4446 Fax 423-2973 Fax 423-2972

To Whom It May Concern: I have enclosed my first project based on the work I did this summer. What is included in the packet is the following: 1. The syllabus of my new trimester-long senior elective, "Contemporary World Classics in Literature and Film." The course was designed to begin with two writers of Indian descent, Salman Rushdie and Bharati Mukherjee.

2. The daily assignments for the first half of the trimester, which include all of the reading assignments from Rushdie and Mukherjee, as well as the viewing of Salaam Bombay!, the film from India that ,the students viewed.

3. A handout detailing a way to approach Rushdie's "Yorick," a story my students found difficult; 4. Two handouts for in-class writing assignments on Rushdie. 5. Three additional handouts: one on the English of India from The New York Times magazine; one a review of East West, in The New Yorker magazine and, the final, an article by Rushdie, also from The New Yorker.

6.I have also included a handout describing the students' research project, as several students did research projects on India writers.

The unit on India was the most successful of the year. Students appreciated both the novel by Mukherjee and the short fiction of Rushdie, and enjoyed struggling with the difficulty that those works present. Salaam Bombay! was the favorite movie of the course; students found it moving and well made. I had research projects on many topics, but several explored topics related to India. One student wrote on Rushdie's political difficulties; one wrote on the critical reception of Midnight's Children, a book she read on her own; one wrote about women in India, using a number of contemporary sources; one wrote on Rushdie's allusions in "Yorick," reading some Sterne and some Saxo Granunaticus; another read another novel by Mukherjee and evaluated it in comparison to Jasmine..

BEST COPY AVAILABLE Recycled 3 Paper Without my trip to India, I would have been unable to approach the topic with as much energy and excitement as I did, fresh from the Fulbright experience. That excitement communicated itself to the students, who gave the course very favorable evaluations. With many thanks for your efforts in making the Fulbright seminar so valuable to me, personally and professionally. Sincerely yours,

Leslie J. Altman

4 Contemporary World Classics in Literature and Film Fall, 1998 Altman Office hours: Bands 2, 4, 7 and 8 Office location: AC Lobby

Required texts: Andre Brink, A Dry, White Season Athol Fugard, Master Harold...and the boys , The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith Jamaica Kincaid, Annie John Bharati Mukherjee, Jasmine Salman Rushdie, East, West Selected handouts

Expectations and course requirements:

-A paper on each group of readings or book that we read, about one every two weeks -An oral presentation on a film clip --A research project due during the second six weeks. A proposal will be due early in October -Class participation

This course will examine works by a group of "post colonial" writers and filmmakers from India, the Caribbean, South Africa, and Australia. In addition to reading the required texts, students will have an opportunity to pursue further their individual interests in papers and projects. Another goal of the course is to develop criteria for evaluating films. During the first six weeks students will be asked to prepare an oral presentation in which they present an analysis of a short film clip. We will watch three complete films together:Salaam Bombay! (from India), Sugar Cane Al lley (from Martinique), and A World Apart (from South Africa).

5 Schedule

August 31--Introductions, syllabus, texts, assignments September 1--East, West: "Good Advice Is Rarer Than Rubies" Sept. 2--"The Free Radio" (Group work on language) Sept. 3--"The Prophet's Hair" Sept. 4-- "Yorick" (Free writing)

Sept. 7-- Sept. 8--"At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers"; in-class writing on "Prophet" and "Slippers" Sept. 9-- "Christopher Columbus and Queen Isabella of Spain Consummate Their Relationship" (Santa Fe, AD 1492)" Sept. 10--Catching up. Presenting film clips Sept. 11--"The Harmony of the Spheres"

Sept. 14--"Checkov and Zulu" Sept. 15--"The Courter" Begin viewing Salaam Bombay Sept. 16--Short Wednesday: Finish viewing Salaam Bombay Sept. 17--Jasmine Read Chs. 1-7 Sept. 18--Chapters 8-13. Catching up. Presenting film clips.

Sept. 21--Rushdie paper due Sept. 22--Jasmine, chapters 14-19 Sept. 23--No class: Short Wednesday, bands 5-8 Sept. 24--Jasmine, chapters 20-23 Sept. 25--Finish Jasmine

Sept. 28--Begin Annie John:. Catching up. Presenting film clips Sept. 29--"Figures in the Distance" and "The Circling Hand" Sept. 30--Paper on Jasmine, East,West, Salaam Bombay Oct. 1--"Gwen" Oct. 2--"The Red Girl"

Oct. 5--"Columbus in Chains" Presenting film clips. Oct. 6--"Somewhere, Belgium" Oct. 7--"The Long Rain" Oct. 8--"A Walk to the Jetty" Oct. 9--In-class writing on Annie John. End of six weeks' grading period.

6 Alas, poor Yorick! I fear we will run out of time before we can talk about this story on Friday, so here's some information that may help you approach it: Rushdie is quoted as saying that the two most influential novels in English are Clarissa, (1747-1748) by Samuel Richardson, and Tristram Shandy (1759- 1767) by Laurence Sterne. (The full title of the work is The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. The novel, supposedly an account by Tristram of his life from the time of his conception to the present, shows how much Sterne was influenced by John Locke's theory of the irrational nature of the association of ideas. (Do you see one connection between Sterne and Rushdie so far?) In fact, the novel never gets beyond the second or third year of Tristram's life, it is so full of his "opinions," philosophical digressions on everything, including the account of the life of Yorick, a humorous parson who claims descent from the Yorick of Hamlet.Tristram Shandy is also filled with typographical eccentricities--dots, dashes, asterisks, one sentence chapters, blank pages, unfinished sentences, and more. (Do you see another connection to Rushdie's story?)

To look closely at just a small piece--try the paragraph on p, 65 that begins with "Yorick's saga..." Do the math: Yorick's saga is the same one that fell into the hands of a certain Tristram 235 years ago: 1994, when East, West was published, less 235 equals 1759, the year Tristram Shandy was first published. Pun on "certain." Then pun on "Tristram," a version of Tristan, lover of Iseult in the medieval romances. Then another, "neither triste [sad] nor ram [male goat]. Pun on "Shandy," which in Britain, is also the name of a pub drink that combines beer and lemonade, fizzy if not frothy, called a lemonade shandy. Pun on vellum, from the preceding paragraph: for "a velluminous history" read also "voluminous" as Tristram Shandy clearly is). Look up "palatinate." What is "permanganate"? Where does "juice of cursed hebona" come from? (Did you recognize the phrase?)

Does one have to be an English teacher to enjoy this story?

On Tuesday, you will have a chance to write about "The Prophet's Hair" and "At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers."Think, as you read "...Ruby Slippers," about the relationship between the two and how one represents "East" and one "West." What assumptions operate in the world of "The Prophet's Hair"? What assumptions operate in the world of "...Ruby Slippers"? Will ever the twain meet? Also, over the long weekend, start thinking about a film clip you would like to show to the group and what you want us to notice about the film technically speaking. Do you need me to provide a glossary of film terminology? I'll begin working on that this weekend. In-class writing on East, West "The Prophet's Hair" and "At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers"

You may use your books. Consider the hair of the prophet and the ruby slippers as icons of their respective cultures. An "icon" in this case means "a symbol, ...particularly a representation of a sacred personage." What does each icon reveal about the culture which it symbolizes, particularly the values of that culture?

(Please think and plan before you begin writing.)

8 In-class writing on East, West

You have now read the first story in the "West" section. What is your reaction? Specifically, does it feel more familiar than the stories in the "East" section? Is there less you feel you need to come to terms with before you can understand the story? Are there "in-jokes" you get? If not, if in fact "Yorick" feels more difficult than, say, "The Prophet's Hair," what does that tell you about (a) Rushdie and his education, and (b) what Rushdie may be trying to say, his "point, fundamentally."

9 Guide for watching Salaam Bombay!

1. The protagonist, Krishna, is named for one of the avatars of Vishnu. He is sometimes seen as a baby, sometimes as a shepherd, sometimes as a lover, sometimes as a warrior, in stories told about his adventures.

Krishna will be called Chaipu, or "tea boy," after his chief occupation in Bombay.

2. Ganesh, the brand of tobacco, is the name of the god of beginnings. He is often invoked at the start of an enterprise to ensure its success. He is the son of Siva and Parvati. See if you can find the story that explains why Ganesh has an elephant's head. The festival and parade that leads Krishna to lose his "second mother" is a festival honoring Ganesh. 3. While you are watching, take notes. When we have finished viewing the film, we will talk about what makes it successful (or unsuccessful), both in terms of its literary, dramatic, and cinematic aspects. Use this sheet to list ideas to share in class, as well as questions you have and your comments.

10 Research Project Guidelines Contemporary World Classics .... Fall, 1998

Due November 20: a 5-8 page paper answering a research question on a subject relevant to the course Requirements: 1. You must submit a proposal by October 26 outlining your topic and listing your working bibliography. 2. You may use as many primary sources as you wish; you must use a minimum of 5 sources, of which two must be secondary sources.

3. A summary of your progress will be due at a research conference, to be held during the week of November 2. Some areas to investigate: 1. Comparison of one of the works read for class and another work or works by the same author (e.g., East, West and Midnight's Children (too long, probably) or Jasmine and another work by Mukherjee.) 2. Comparison of one of the films and another film from the same country, by the same director (e.g., Salaam Bombay! and Mississippi Masala or Salaam Bombay! and a contemporary Hindi film) 3. Analysis of works by another contemporary world authors not read for class: e.g., Anita Desai (India), Michelle Cliff (Jamaica) or Derek Walcott (Trinidad), J. M. Coetzee (South Africa), David Malouf (Australia). Read 's new book or Patricia Grace (New Zealand). Tell me what you're interested in, and I will make suggestions. 4. Contemporary reception of one of the works read for class, here and in other countries 5. Connections between one of the writers and other political, historical, social, or cultural events 6. Social or cultural issues reflected in the works Documentation: Students are required to follow a system of documenting the sources that they use. MLA (textual citations with a full bibliography) is one acceptable format.

11 Evaluation: Students will be evaluated on the final project, as well as on completing the following steps:

Proposal Working bibliography Research conference with written summary of progress Proper documentation of sources Presentation of final paper to the class

12 BOOKEND/PiCO Iyer English in India: Still All the Raj

THE assault began, really, as soon as I set foot of 1886, which began with a series of letters and took its now been joined by tinkly little caveats that trill, in Bombay a few months before the golden ju- name, improbably, from an Englished version of "the "Reckless Drivers Kill and Die / Leaving AU Behind to bilee of Indian independence.if Aggrieved," wallings of the Mohammedans as they beat their Cry" (or, more laconiCally, "Risk-Taker Is Accident- advised the sign in the airport arrival hall, breasts in the procession of Moharram 'Ya Hasan! Maker"). One of the abiding delights of Indian English "Please Consult Asstt. Commissioner Customs." At Ya Hosain!' " Three centuries of backstairs meetings is that much of it reads as If it had been composed by a the counter where I went to change my money, a notice seem to hide out in this monumental dictionary of An- schoolmaster conspiring with a maiden aunt (called told me,"PLEASE ENSURE THAT YOUR DRAW- glo-Indian speech, and a whole world comes into view Mrs. Malaprop, perhaps) and drawing, principally, on ERS ARE LOCKED PROPERLY," and after I'd done when one reads that a "Lady Kenny" is a "black ball- the works of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. How can so, looking down demurely, I stepped into a wheezing shaped syrupy confection" named after the Lady Can- one resist a place where the "matrimonial notices" in old knock-off of a Morris Oxford to lurch through ning to whom it was first presented, and a "James and local newspapers offer brides who are "artful, homely /streets that said "Free Left Turn" on one side and Mary" is the name of "a famous sandbank in the and wheat-colored"? And where a "cousin-in-law" said "Passenger Alighting Point" on the other. The crazy Hooghly River behind Calcutta?? Every inflection of hopefully to me at a Matrimonial Felicitation Function ' Indian dialectic was in full swing all around, buses de- what was once known as Butler English and Kitchen last year, "The ceremonies should be quite pompous." mending "SILENCE PLEASE" on their exteriors, a English is spelled out with a gravity worthy of the facts Yet in the right hands this curious hybrid's very af- 1 few. truckmudguards responding, "HORN O.K. of life, and besides reading solemn explications of fectations can seem merely aspirations, and it is often PLEASE," and my own little car making its own small "pish-posh" and "ticky-tock" and the derivation of the straining toward a grandeur vanished or always ' contribution to democracy with a sticker that read: "burra-beebee," you can learn that "a four and twen- out of reach that is so touching here. Tiny, ramshackle "Blow Your Horn / Pay a Fine." ty". meant "a criminal" and "ducks" referred to the huts present themselves as "Marriage Palaces" and India is the most talkative country in the world, it of- "gentlemen belongingtothe Bombay service." rickety buses that cannot write "Stage Carriage" on ten seems, and it comes at you in almost 200 languages, "Home," the venerable archive informs one, "in An- their sides inscribe "Semi-Deluxe." Even a public toilet 1,652 dialects and a million signs and slogans screaming glo-Indian and colonial speech ... means England." I encountered had, with a trademark Indian mix of out of every store and taxicab. Many of them are just fa- Nowadays, as Selman Rushdie notes, imperialism strictness and idealism, "Beautification" written on *1 miliar enough to be quite strange. We passed Text- is reversed not only on the page, and any Englishman one side and "Coordination" on the other. oriums as we drove into town, and a Toilet Complex, worth his saltany tycoon or pundit or thug, in fact It as if words in the subcontinent were still assumed Stomach Trimmer palaces and Police Beat-Boxes. We to have a magic they've lost at home, as if calling a place passed the Clip Joint Beauty Clinic and Note Bene Clean- "Reliable" or "Honesty" were the first step toward ers of Distinction. A sign outside one apartment block of- making it so. Not that Indian courtesy is always inno- fered: "No Parking for Out Siders. If Found Guilty, All cent. "Any Exchange Fault or Communications Error," Tyres Will Be Deflated With Extreme Prejudice." An ad a sign in a public phone'office advised me, "Is on Cus- for a lecture informed me that "Yogic laughter is multi- tomer's Account. Thanks." Some of the terms you see in dimensionaL" I could only imagine that like most of the India have curious meanings (the cafes advertising "fin- city's notices, it had been fashioned by some proud grad- gers,"1 learned, were only selling "finger chips," or uate of the course I saw advertised in the local french fries), and some of them just look as if they do. newspaper. "We make you big boss in English conversa- ("Video Shooting We Undertake," a tiny photo shop in- tion. Hypnotize people by your highly impressive talks. formed me.) Some meticulously preserve now fading Exclusive courses for exporters, business tycoons." customs, and some confer a gay Edwardian tilt on even Malcolm Muggeridge famously remarked that the the most everyday transactions. ("I'm sorry," I was last true Englishman would be an Indian, and it's easy told when I called up the editor of a movie magazine, to believe that when you hear the "jolly goods" and "Miss Sonaya is not in her cabin just now," which made out of station chappies" ricocheting around the Will- me imagine her, perhaps not incorrectly, on a cruise itingdon Club in Bombay, or any of the other old ship.) At Elphinstone College, in the redbrick Victorian canteens and cantonments and Civil List houses that heart of the University of Bonibay, I was greeted by an fill the country's dusty enclaves. Much of the fascina- "Institute of Distance Education" just down the corri- tion of Indian English lies in the fact that it is as fla- dor from a "Backward Class CelL" And in the city's vorful a monument to the Raj as the white-flannel most famous Hindu temple a sign advised, "Devotees .cricketers along the Oval, the "Whispering Pines" cot- HENRIK DRESCAEA are warned that to sit on the rocks much deep in tages around the hills and the mossy, overgrown water away fromthe sea shore is not only encroachment gravestones commemorating forgotten personages knows all about gurus and mantras and yoga. "They on government property but is also dangerous to their like Sarah Chandy and the Bombay Color Sergeants. gave us the language," as a character says in Hanif lives, including valuable ornaments." But a deeper fascination is that modern India has Kureishi's novel "The Black Album, ". "but it is only Whether or not my life was a valuable ornament, I so thoroughly made the language imposed on it its own, we who know how to use it." Those who marvel at the came away feeling that Indian English is not just a sa- so vigorously adding condiments that it isn't quite Eng-. rutputty masala mixes in Rushdie's novels are apt to vory stepmother tongue to hundreds of millions of In- dish and isn't quite not The history of Indlish or Eng- exaggerate the magic and underestimate the realism. dians (more Indians, after all, speak English than . ,/ lian, or whatever you want to call this hyperactive off- A walk down any Bombay street is not unlike a journey Englishmen do), and not just an invaluable memento spring of a marriage of inconvenience, begins with the through any chapter of "Midnight's Children." of a centuries-long mishmash, but also a grand and dis- , merchants and adventurers of the East India Compa- The shouting vitality of Indian English is mostly tinctive product of a culture as verbally supple and full 3 ny, who first came over in the mid -17th century, and enshrined in the signs and sentences and even senti- of energy as any I know. Six years ago, India at last were soon taking back cashmeres and juggernauts and ments that bombard you as you bump around a land opened its borders wide to foreign companies, and other semi-demi-pukka terms stolen from the Indian of Eve-teasers and newspaper wallahs, symptoms of a when last I was in Bombay, "cyberprofessional" and Empire. But it culminated most vividly in the soldiers palimpsest culture that never throws anything away "brand name equity" were the terms of the moment, . and teachers and high-minded civil servants of later but takes' every new influence or import and throws it bandied about by the young in their MTV-furnished centuries, who madecit their business to domesticate into the mix. Sometimes it seems the whole subconti- pubs, as they spoke with studied casualness of "air- the East, and often got thoroughly domesticated them- nent is just a mess of bromides, axioms, apothegms dashing." In the newspapers, editorials that still drew, selves. We all know that Victoria sent railroads and be- and rules, all religiously observed in the breach. Even with surprising frequency, upon the example and wis- wigged solicitors and Thomas Babington Macaulay to the simplest trip down any Indian street becomes a pil- dom of Bertram Wooster sat next to ads that promised India; what we're liable to forget is that by the middle grimage through a gallery of warnings. Some of them a "Mega Exhibition Showcase of Ideal Lifestyle." of the lath century, according to one account, India had "Do Not Cross Verge" or (on a narrow mountain Yet this stubbornly anachronistic tongue, out of sent 26.000 words back into English, many of them as road) "Watch for Shooting Stones" make a certain date even when it was first imported, suggests that familiar as your pajamas or veranda. kind of antic sense; but others"Stop for Octroi," for there'll always be an England, if only because there'll The grand old mildewed registry of this commu- example I'm still trying to puzzle out always be an India. As I prepared to air-dash away nion, of course, is "Hobson-Jobson," "a portly double- A stranger aspect of this somewhat bossy strain is being asked my "good name" one last time, in Delhi's columned edifice," as Henry Yule rails it in his preface that every injunction, however sublime, is undone by a airport,near signs that said "Be Like Venus:. habitual conversion into singsong. India to this day re- Unarmed" and an office on the runway labeled "Apron Pico Iyer is -the author, most recently, of "Tropical mains a jingler's paradise, and the "Lane Driving Is Control" I wondered how far I was really going. Classical." Sane Driving" signs I recall from a decade ago have "Blighty," after all, is the Hindi word for "foreign" THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 27

BEST COPY OA LAM 13 THE EMPIRE WRITES BACK. Worlds collide in Salman Rusbdie's new collection. BY HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR.

EALISM can break a writer'sto the East, there is also, he insists, a heart," says the narrator ofthird tradition, a tradition of displace- Salman Rushdie's 1983 novelment and exile which belongs to nei- "Shame." "Fortunately, however, I am ther. Of course, the big themes of . only telling a sort of modem fairy-tale,migrancycultural heterogeneity, the 1 so that's all right; nobody need get up-fragmented and hybrid nature of iden- set, or take anything I say too seriously.tityare equally the pet themes of lit- No drastic action need be taken, either.erary postmodernism.Andmake no What a relief!" Its impossible to readmistake: there isn't an artist more self- these lines today without the sense thatconscious than Salman Rushdie. (His grim literalism has revenged itself uponcritical essays bristle with references to

. irony. Rushdie, the Pandora of post-such postmodernist pashas as Michel i modernism, has forever dispelled anyFoucault and Jean-Francois Lyotard.) doubt about the potency of the modemBut the literary resources of migrancy fairy tale. are more than theoretical. It hasn't es- "East, West" (Pantheon; $21) is acaped the British literary establishment collection of nine such fairy tales; in onethat a lot of what's most compelling in of them, fictional characters have beencontemporary fiction has been written detaching themselves from the novels,by people with names like David films, and paintings where they belongMalouf, Timothy Mo, V. S. Naipaul, and taking their place among the flesh-Caryl Phillips, and, yes, Salman and-blood. "This permeation of the real Rushdiepeople who have, in one world by the fictional is a symptom ofway or another, dwelled at the margins the moral decay of our post-millennialof the Commonwealth.. "Literature is 1. culture," the narrator soberly intones. not in the business of copyrighting -4 "There can be little doubt that a largecertain themes for certain groups," majority of us opposes the free, unre-Rushdie has wisely cautioned. Still, stricted migration of imaginary beingswe've all had a chance to see what !into an already damaged reality." It's ahappens when, as the saying goes, the i fable that nimbly reminds us how vast aEmpire writes back 1crulf exists between Rushdie and the lit- Rushdie's new book is divided into , ( eralists who seek to destroy him. Theythree sections of three stories eachthe read fiction as fact; Rushdie urges us to headings are "East," "West," and "East, consider the ways in which "fact"whatWest"but such a division seems de- rwe take to be natural and realmay besigned to illustrate the instability of di- fiction. In a 1985 essay he wrote, "Thevisions. Inevitably, the "East" stories are 1 migrant suspects reality: having expert-also about the Wesr, the "West" stories enced several ways of being, he under-are also about the East; and the "East, stands their illusory nature." West" stories are about both but also The literature of migrancy may beneither. There are stories about to- the literature of border-crossing, butternsDorothy's ruby slippers, the Rushdie reminds us that borders crossed Prophet's hair. There are stories that aren't merely the kind drawn in dirt. Hisweirdly refract characters from other restless intelligence is forever challeng-sources, including "The 'wizard of Oz" ing the lines between East and West,and "Star Trek" And there are stories the past and the present, Homo ludenswhose sheer literary effrontery takes your and Homo sapiens, realism and fantasy.breath awaylike one entitled "Yorick," (He has admitted that the techno-a tour de force of pastiche. It's "Ham- phantasmagorias of J. G. Ballard strikelet" as retold by Laurence Steme's Par- him as much more "realistic" than theson Yorick, complete with Sternean ostensibly ordinary settings conjured bydashes and asterisks; but it's also an as- Anita Brookner.) If there are culturalsertion of literary genealogy, invoking as traditions that belong to the West andit does Rushdie's great precursor in the

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art of nonlinear and fragmented narrative. and homelands. Pace Robert Frost, What makes the collection work as aRushdie sees home as a place where, collection is its juxtaposition of contrast- when you have to go there, you're really ing voices, from the windy cadences ofout of luck. "Yorick" 's eighteenth-century wit"It's The seductions of home are most a true fact that men take an equal plea-squarely the preoccupation of "At the sure in annihilating both the groundAuction of the Ruby Slippers," a story upon which they stand while they livethat evokes Donald Barthelme in its lu- and the substance (I mean paper) uponnatic stolidity. "Behind bullet-proof which they may remain, immortalized,glass, the ruby slippers sparkle. We do once this same ground is over theirnot know the limits of their powers. We heads instead of under their feet"to suspect that these limits may not exist." the snappish tone of the Indian narra-While the slippers repose in their high- tor of "The Free Radio": "The boy wassecurity case, the whole world prepares an innocent, a real donkey's child, youto bid for them: they're an item of can't teach such people." Rushdie's mas-unquantifiable value. "Around thelet tery of ventriloquism is such that it's fi-us sayshrine of the ruby-sequinned nally beside the point to ask (as the oldslippers, pools of saliva have been form- Charlie McCarthy routine has it) who'sing. There are those of us who lack re- the dummy. straint, who drool. The jumpsuited It's another futile exercise to look forLatino janitor moves amongst us, a a centering theme in a book so distrust-pail in one hand and a squeegee mop ful of all centers; but there may be a cen-in the other." (At the same time, "dis- tering non-theme in the book's repudia-approving critiques of the fetishizing tion of the idea, and ideology, ofof the slippers are offered by religious "home." While fashionable revisionistsfundamentalists." They want to buy have been peddling the story of Chris-the slippers in order to burn them.) topher Columbus as vile proto-imperi-But can the slippers do what they are alist, Rushdie's "Christopher Columbussupposed to? and Queen Isabella of Spain Consum- "Home" has become such a scattered, mate Their Relationship" refigures Co-damaged, various concept in our present lumbus as the ultimate migrant, whosetravails. There is so much to yearn for.... How hard can we expect even a pair of voyage is a means of breaking away from magic shoes to work? They promised to the very patronage that makes it pos- take us home, but are metaphors of homeli- sible. A more expeditious way of leav- ness comprehensible to them, are abstrac-- ing home is to take leave of your senses,tions permissible? Are they literalists, or as does Eliot, the Welsh guru in "Thewill they permit us to redefine the blessed word? Harmony of the Spheres." And in "The Courter" the narrator's beloved ayah de-Dorothy's shibboleth gradually assumes velops a mysterious heart ailment thatanother meaning in this reverie: there turns out to be a quite literal form ofis indeed no place like home, precisely homesickness, and prompts her to re-in the sense that there's no such place turn to the Subcontinent. Somethingas home. Click your heels together like this must have been in the minds ofthree times and say that, and you're the eighteenth-century physiologistswell on your way to entering Rushdie's who coined the word "nostalgia" (com-vision of migrancy as the very condition pounded from the Greek nostos, "aof cultural modernity. If Rushdie's return home," and algos, "pain"). Ifpersecutors have made the experience Rushdie isn't wholly free of nostalgiaof rootless nomadism all too literal himself, his larger aim is to critique nos- for him, he's still teaching the rest talgia, the specious comforts of homeof us why we can't go home again.

PHOTOGRAPH BY RICHARD AVEDON Salman Rushdie, , September 26, 1994. 50

LIFE AND LETTERS Atlantic Ocean and it would reach from Europe to America; put it together with China and you've got almost half the population of the world. DAMME, THIS IS THE ORIENTAL These days, new Indian writers seem to SCENE FOR YOU! emerge every few weeks. Their work is as polymorphous as the place. The approach- Indians are writing some of the most adventurous fiction today.Why isn't it in ing fiftieth anniversary of Indian inde- Hindi (or Assamese, or Bengali, or one of the fifteen other nationallanguages)? pendence is a useful pretext for a survey of half a century of postliberation writ- BY SALMAN RUSHDIE ing. For many months now, I have been reading my way through this literature, IONCE gave a reading to a gather- fifty years ago, one should also say Paki-and my Delhi interrogator may be ing of university students in Delhi,stanishave long been migrants, seek-pleased to hear that the experience has and when I'd finished a younging their fortunes in Africa, Australia,indeed led me to a singleunexpected woman put up her hand. "Mr.Rushdie,Britain, the Caribbean, and America,and profoundly ironicconclusion. I read through your novel `Midnight'sand this diaspora has produced many Children,' " she said. "It is a very longwriters who lay claim to an excess THIS is it The prose writingboth book, but never mind, I read it through.of roots: writers like the Kashmiri- fiction and nonfictioncreated in And the question I want to ask you isAmerican poet Agha Shahid Ali, whosethis period by Indian writers working in this: Fundamentally, what's your point?"verses look toward Srinagar from Am-English is proving to be a stronger and Before I could attempt more important body an answer, she spoke of work than most of again: "Oh, I know what has been pro- what you're going to duced in the eighteen say. You're going to say "recognized" languages that the whole effort, of India, the so-called from cover to cover "vernacular languages," that is the point of the during the same time; exercise. Isn't that what and, indeed, this new, you were going to say?" and still burgeoning, "Something like that, "Indo- Anglian" litera- perhaps," I got out ture represents perhaps She snorted. "It the most valuable con- won't do." tribution India has yet "Please," I begged. made to the world of "Do I have to have just books. The true Indian one point?" literature of the first "Fundamentally," postcolonial half cen- she said, with impres- tury has been made sive firmness, "yes." in the language the Contemporary In- British left behind. dian literature remains largely unknown herst, Massachusetts, by way of other It is a large claim, though it may be in the United States, in spite of its co_ n- catastrophes. He writes: an easy one for non-Indian readers to ac- siderable present-day energy and di- what else besides God disappears at cept, if most of India's English-language versity. The few writers who have made the altar? writers are still largely unknown in the 0 Kashmir, Armenia once vanished. West, the problem is far greater in the an impression (R K. Narayan, Vikram Words are nothing, Seth) are inevitably read in a kind of just rumorslike rosesto embel- case of the vernacular literatures. Of literary isolation: texts without con- lish a slaughter. India's non-English-language authors, text. Some writers of Indian descent, Flow, then, is one to make any sim- perhaps only the name of the 1913 Nobel such.as V S. Naipaul and Bharati Mu-ple, summarizing statement"Funda-Prize-winning Bengali writer Rabin- kherjee, reject the ethnic label "Indianmentally, what's your point?"about sodranath Tagore would be recognized in- writers," perhaps in an effort to placemultiform a literature, hailing from that ternationally, and even his work, though themselves in other, better-understoodhuge crowd of a country (close to a bil-still popular in Latin America, is now literary contexts. Mukherjee sees her-lion people at the last count), that vast,pretty much a dosed book in the United self nowadays -as an American writer,metamorphic, continent-size culture, States. In any case, it is a claim that runs while Naipaul would perhaps prefer towhich feels, both to Indians and to visi-counter to much of the received critical z tors, like a non-stop assault on the senses,wisdom within India itself. It is also not be read as an artist from nowhere and (.9 everywhere. Indiansand, followingthe emotions, the imagination, and thea claim that I ever expected tomake. the partition of the subcontinent almost spirit? Put the Indian subcontinent in the Admittedly, I did my reading only in 16 BEST COPYAVAILABLE 52 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 23& 30,1997

for the greater insanityof history. The lack of first-rate writing in translationcan only be a matter forregret. However, to speakmore positively, it is a delightto be able to celebrate the quality of a growing col- lective English-language ceuvre, whose status has long been argued over, but which has, in the last twenty years or so, begun to merit a place alongside the most flourishing litera- tures in the world.

R some Indian critics, English-language In- dian writing will never be more than a postcolonial anomalythe bastard child of Empire, siredon "It's me, TomHuck Finn!" India by the departing British. Its continuinguse of the old colonial tongue is seen as a fatal flaw that English, and there has long beena genu-U. R Ananthamurthy (Kannada), Sureshrenders it forever inauthentic. Indo- ine problem of translation in IndianotJoshi (Gujarati), Amrita Pritam (Pun-Anglian literature evokes in these critics only into English but between thever-jabi), Qurratulain Hyder (Urdu), and Is- the kind of prejudiced reaction shown nacular languagesand it is possible thatmat Chughtai (Urdu), and make theirby some Indians toward the country's good writers have been ill served by theirown assessments. English versions existcommunity of Anglo-Indiansthat is, translators' inadequacies. Nowadays,of at least some of these writers' works; Eurasians. however, such bodies as the Indian Acad- sometimes, as in the case of Vijayan, Fifty years ago, Jawaharlal Nehru de- emy of the Arts (the Sahitya Akademi), translated by the author. livered, in English, the great "freedomat UNESCO, and Indian publishers them- To my own considerable astonish-midnight" speech that marked themo- selves .have been putting substantialre-ment, however, there is only one Indianment of independence: sources into the creation of better trans-writer in translation whom I would place lations, and the problem, while At the stroke of the midnight hour, noton a par with the Indo-Anglian. (Actu-when the world sleeps, India will awaketo eradicated, is certainly much diminished.ally, he's better than most of them.) That life and freedom. A momentcomes, which Ironically, the century before indepen-is Saadat Hasan Manto, an immenselycomes but rarely in history, when we step dence contains many vernacular- language out from the old to the new, when an age popular Urdu writer of low-life fictions, ends, and when the soul of a nation, long writers who would merit a place inanywhom conservative critics sometimes suppressed, finds utterance. anthology- besidei Rabindranath Tagore, scorn for his choice of characters and mi- Since that indisputably Anglophone there are Bankini Chandra Chatterjee, lieus; much as Virginia Woolf snobbishly oration, the role of English itself has of- Dr. Muhammad Iqb4:Bihhiitibhushan disparaged the fictional universe of James ten been disputed in India. Attempts to Banerjee (the iiithOrOf."Pather Pan-Joyce's "Ulysses." Manto's Masterpiececoin 'medical, scientific, technological, chali," on which Satya- jit Ray based his is the short story "Toba Tek Singh,"aand everyday neologisms in India'scon- celebrated Apu trilogy of films), andparable of the partition of India, in which tinental shelf of languages to replace the Premchand, the prolific (and thereforeit is decided that the lunatics,too, mustcommonly used English words have rather variable) Hindi author of,among be partitionedIndian lunaticsto India,sometimes succeeded but havemore many other works, the famous novel ofPakistani lunatics to thenew country ofoften comically failed. And when the rural life "Godaan; or, The Gift ofaPakistan. But for the inmates ofan asy-Maoist government of the state of Ben- CoW." Those who wish to seek out theirlum in Lahore everything is unclear. thegal announced, in the early eighties, that leading present-day successors should try,exact site of the frontier, and of. the places the supposedly elitist, colonialist teach- for example, 0. V. Vijayan (Malayalam), of origin of the insane persons,too. Theing of English would be discontinued Suryakant Tripathi, also knownas lunacies in the asylum become, in thisin government-run primary schools, "Nirala" (Hindi), Nirmal Verma (Hindi), savagely funny story, a perfect metaphormany on the left denounced the decision 17 54 TF-1E NEW YORKER., JUNE 23 & 30, 1997 itself as elitist, because it would de-is. And part of the achievement of En-made in English by Indian writers who prive the masses of the many economic glish-language Indian writers is to haveare themselves members of the college- and social advantages of speaking the found literary voices that are as distinc-educated, English-speaking elite isa world's language and only the affluenttively Indian, and also as suitable for anyfurther irony.) private-school elite would henceforthand all the purposes of art, as those of have that privilege. A well-known Cal-other English-language writers in Ire- yjr us quickly concede what must be cutta graffito complained, "My sonland, Africa, the West Indies, and the conceded. It is true that most of won't learn English. Your son won'tUnited States. these writers come from the educated learn English. But Jyoti Basu"the However, Indian critical assaults on classes of India; but in a country still be- Chief Minister"will send his son this new literature continue to be madedeviled by high illiteracy levels how abroad to learn English." One man'sfrom time to time. Its practitioners are could the situation be otherwise? It does ghetto of privilege is another's road to denigrated for being too upper-middle-not follow, howeverunless one holds freedom. class; for lacking diversity in their choiceto a rigid, class-war view of the world Like the Greek god Dionysius, whoof themes and techniques; for being lessthat writers with the privilege of a good was dismembered and afterward reas-popular in India than outside India; foreducation will automatically write nov- sembledand who, according to thepossessing inflated reputations on ac-els that seek only to portray the lives of myths, was one of India's earliest con-count of the international power of thethe bourgeoisie. It is true that there querorsIndian writing in English hasEnglish language, and of the ability oftends to be a bias toward metropolitan been called "twice-born" (by the criticWestern critics and publishers to impose and cosmopolitan fiction, but there has Meenakshi Mukherjee) to suggest its their cultural standards on the East; forbeen, during this half century, a genuine double parentage. While I am, I mustliving, in many cases, outside India; forattempt to encompass as many Indian admit, attracted by the Dionysian reso- being deracinated to the point whererealities as possible, rural as well as ur- nances of this supposed double birth, their work lacks the spiritual dimensionban, sacred as well as profane. This is it seems to me to rest on the falseessential for a "true" understanding ofalso, let us remember, a young literature. premise that English, having arrivedthe soul of India; for being insufficientlyIt is still pushing out the frontiers of the from outside India, is and must neces- grounded in the ancient literary traditionspossible. sarily remain an alien there. But my ownof India; for being the literary equivalent The point about the power of the mother tongue, Urdu, which was the of MTV culture, or of globalizing Coca- English language, and of the Western camp argot of the country's earlier Mus- Colonization; even, I'm sony to report, for publishing and critical fraternities, also lim conquerors, was also an immigrantsuffering from a condition that onecontains some truth. Perhaps it does language, forged from a combination ofsprightly recent commentator, Pankajseem, to some "home" commentators, the conquerors' imported Farsi and theMishra, calls "Rushdie-itis... acondi-that a canon is being foisted on them local languages they encountered. How-tion that has daimed Rushdie himself infrom outside. The perspective from the ever, it became a naturalized subconti- his later works." West is rather different. Here what nental language long ago; and by now It is interesting that so few of theseseems to be the case is that Western that has happened to English, too. En-criticisms are literary in the pure sensepublishers and critics have been growing glish has become an Indian language. Its of the word. For the most part, they dogradually more and more excited by the colonial origins mean that, like Urdunot deal with language, voice, psycho-voices emerging from India; in En- and unlike all other Indian languages, itlogical or social insight, imagination, orgland, at least, British writers are often has no regional base; but in all othertalent. Rather, they have to do withchastised by reviewers for their lack ways it has emphatically come to stay. class, power, and belief. There is a whiffof Indian-style ambition and verve. It (In many parts of South India, people of political correctness about them: thefeels as if the East were imposing itself will prefer to converse with visitingironic proposition that India's best writ-on the West, rather than the other way North Indians in English rather than ining since independence may have beenaround. And, yes, English is the most Hindi, which feels, ironically, more like done in the language of the departedpowerful medium of communication in a colonial language_ to speakers of Tamil, imperialists is simply too much forthe world. Should we not, then; rejoice Kannada, or Malayalam than does En-some folks to bear. It ought not to beat these artists' mastery of it, and at glish, which ha's 'acquired in the Southtrue, and so must not be permitted totheir growing influence? To criticize an aura of lingua-franca cultural neutral- be true. (That many of the attacks onwriters for their success in "breaking out" ity. The new Silicon Valley-style boom English-language Indian writing areis no more than parochialism (and pa- in computer technology which is trans- rochialism is perhaps the main vice of forming the economies of Bangalore the vernacular literatures). One impor- and Madras has made English in those tant dimension of literature is that it is cities an even more important language a means of holding a conversation with than before.) the world. These writers are insuring Indian English, sometimes unattrac- that Indiaor, rather, Indian voices (for tively called "Hinglish," is not "En- they are too good to fall into the trap of glish" English, to be sure, any more than writing nationalistically)will hence- Irish or American or Caribbean English forth be confident, indispensable parti- 18 THE NEW YORKER., JUNE 23 30, 1997

.cipants in that literary conversation. Granted, many of these writers do have homes outside India. Henry James, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Ernest INVISIBLE BODIES Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Mavis Gallant, James Baldwin, Graham Turning the corner of the street Greene, Gabriel Garda Marquez, Mario he found three newborn puppies Vargas Llosa, Jorge Luis Borges, in a gutter with a mother curled Vladimir Nabokov, and Muriel Spark around them. were or arewanderers, too. Muriel Spark, accepting in March, 1997,the Turning the corner of the street British Literature Prize for a lifetime's she found a newborn naked baby, achievement, went as far as to say that male, battered, dead in the manhole travel to other countries was essentialfor with no mother around. all writers. Literature has little or noth- ing to do with a writer's home address. Turning the corner of the street The question of religious faith, both as the boy stepped on the junkie a subject and as anapproach to a subject, lying in the alley, covered with flies, is dearly important when we speak of a a dog sniffing hiscrotch. country as near to burstingwith devotions as India; but it issurely excessive to use Just any day, not only after a riot, itas does one leading academic, the even among thegamboge maples of fall redoubtable Professor C. D. Narasim- streets are full ofbodies,-,invisible haiahas a touchstone, so that Mulk Raj to the girl underthe twirling parasol. Anand is praised for his "daring" merely because, as a leftist writer, he allows a A. ICRAMANUJAN character to be moved by deep faith, (1929-1993) while Arun Kolatkar's poetry is deni- grated for "throwing away tradition and creating a vacuum" and thereby "losing of an abandoned novel in which theately achieved great renown. For the next English- relevance" because in "Jejuri," a cycle of "midnight child" was born not in Bom- seventy years or so, there was no the poems about a visit to a temple town,he bay but in Goa. And as I travelled round language fiction of any quality. It was skeptically likens the stone gods in the India I heard of at least two other abortedgeneration of independence"midnight's temples to the stones on the hillsides projectsone in Bengali, the other inparents," one might call themwho were tradition. nearby ("and every other stone / is god or Kannadawith nearly similar themes.) the true architects of this new (Jawaharlal Nehru himself was a fine his cousin"). In fact, many of the writers At any rate, there is not, need not be, I admire have a profound knowledge of and should not be an adversarial relation-writer, his autobiography and letters are the "soul of India"; many have deeply ship between English-language Indian important, influential works. And his niece spiritual concerns, while others are rad- literature and the other literatures of In-Nayantara Sahgal, whose early memoir, ically secular, but the need to engage dia. In my own caseand I suspect in"Prison and Chocolate Cake," contains heady withto make a reckoning withIndia's the case of every lndo-Anglian writer`perhaps the finest evocation of the become religious self is everywhere to be found. knowing and loving the Indian languages time of independence, went on to The cheapening of artistic response in which I was raised has remainedofa major novelist.) that the allegations of deracination and vital personal and artistic importance. In that generation, Mulk Raj Anand Westernization imply is notably absent Hindi-Urdu, the "Hindustani" of Northwas influenced byboth Joyce and Marx teach- from the Indo-Anglian writers' work. As India, remains an essential aspect of mybut most of all, perhaps, by the best to the claims of excessive Rushdie-itis,I sense of self as anindividual, while as aings of Mahatma Gandhi. He is can't deny that on occasion I've felt some- writer I have been partly formed by theknown for social-realist works like the "Coolie" thing of the sort myself. On the whole, presence, in my head, ofthat other mu- novels "Untouchable" (1935) and however, it seems to be a short-lived vi- sicthe rhythms, patterns, and habits of(1936), studies of the life of the poor, Ital- rus, and those whom it affects soonshake thought and metaphor of all my Indianwhich could be compared to postwar "The Bi- it off and find their own, true voices. tongues. ian neorealist cinema (De Sica's (An interesting sidelight. After the Whatever language we Indians writecycle Thief;" Rossellini's "Rome, Open 1981 publication of my novel "Mid- in, we drink from the same well. India,City"). Raja Rao, a scholarly Sanslaitist, night's Children," I learned that the that inexhaustible horn of plenty, nour-wrote of his determination tomake an idea of a long saga-novel about a child ishes us all. Indian English for himself; but even his born at the exact moment of indepen- much praised portrait of villagelife; "Kanthapura," published in 1938, now dencemidnight, August 14-15, 1947 iEfirst Indian novel in English was had occurred to other writers, too. A Ta dud. "Rajmohan's Wife"(1864) is seems dated, itsapproach at once gran- Goan poet showed me the first chapter a poor, melodramatic thing.The writer,diloquent and archaic. The centenarian Bankim, reverted to Bengali and immedi- autobiographer Nirad C. Chaudhuri has 1 0 THE NEW YORKER. JUNE 23 (, 30, 1997 SALMAN RUSHDIE been, throughout his long life, an erudite,punting, leaping prose is the first genu- voice of the rootlessintellectual (so quin- contrary, and mischievous presence. His ine effort to go beyond the Englishness tessentially her voice) is such an unfamil- view, if I may paraphrase and sum-of the English language. Desani's cen- iar one in that country,where people's marize it, is that India has no culturetral figure"fifty-fifty of the species," self-definitions are so rooted in their re- of its own, and that whatever we nowthe half-breed as unabashed antihero gionalaid jetitis. call Indian culture was brought in fromleaps and capers behind the work of That a has a second career as outside by the successive waves of con- many of his successors. Desani writes: an award-winningscreenwriter is well querors. This view, polemically and bril- The earth was blotto with the growth of known. But not many people realize that liantly expressed, has not endeared him willow, peach, mango-blossom, and flower. India's greatest film director, the late to many of his fellow-Indians. That he Every ugly thing, and smell, was in incog- Satyajit Ray, was also an accomplished has always swum so strongly against the nito, as fragrance and freshness. Being prone, this typical spring-time dash and author of short stories. His father edited current has not, however, prevented "The activity, played an exulting phantasmagoria- a famous Bengalichildren's magazine, Autobiography of an Unknown Indian" note on the inner-man. -Medically speak- Sandesh, and Ray's biting little fables from being recognized as a masterpiece. ing, the happy circumstances vibrated my ductless glands, and fused me into a wibble- are made more potentby their childlike The most significant writers of thiswobble Whoa, Jamieson! fillip-and-flair to first generation, R K Narayan and G. V. live, live! Anita Desai, one of India's major liv- Desani, have had opposite careers. Narayan's Or, again: ing authors, merits comparison with books fill a good-sized shelf, Desani is the Jane Austen. In novels such as "Clear author of a single novel, "All About The incidents take place in India. Light of Day"written in a lucid, light H. Hatterr," and that volume is already I was exceedingly hard-up of cash: actu- ally, in debts. English full of subtle atmosphericsshe fifty years old. Desani is almost unknown, And, it is amazing, how, out in the Ori- displays both her exceptional skill at so- ! while Narayan is, of course, a figure of ent, the shortage of cash gets mixed up with cial portraiture and an unsparing, Jane- world stature, for his creation of the romance and females somehow! In this England, they say, if a fellah is broke, like mordancy of insight into human imaginary town of Malgudi, so lovingly females, as a matter of course, forsake. motivations. 'In Custody," perhaps her made that it has become more vividly real Stands to reason. best novel to date, makes fine use of En- to us than most real places. (But Narayan's Whereas, out in the East, they attach glish to depict the decay of another lan- realism is leavened by touches of legend; themselves! Damme, this is the Oriental scene for you! guage, Urdu, and the high literary cul- the river Sarayu, for instance, on whose ture that lived in it. Here the poet, the shores the town sits, is one of the great This is the "babu-English," the semi- last, boozing, decrepit custodian of rivers of Hindu mythology. It is as ifWil-literate, half-learned English of the ba- the dying tradition, is (in a reversal of liam Faulkner had set his Yoknapatawphazaars, transmuted by erudition, highbrow Narayan) the "bully," and the novel's County on the banks of the Styx.) monkeying around, and the impish magic central character, the poet's young ad- Narayan shows us, over and overof Desani's unique phrasing and rhythm mirer, is the "wimp." The dying past, again, the quarrel between traditional, into an entirely new kind of literary voice. the old world, Desai tells us, can be as static India, on the one hand, and mo-Hard to imagine I. Allan Sealy's more re- much of a burden as the awkward, dernity and progress, on the other, rep-cent, Eurasian comic epic, 'The Trotter- sometimes wrongheaded present. resented, in many of his stories andNama"an enormous tome swirling with Though V. S. Naipaul approaches novels, by a confrontation between adigressions, interpolations, exclamations, India as an outsider, his engagement "wimp" and a "bully": "The Painter ofresumption, encomiums, and catastro- with it has been so intense that no ac- Signs" and his aggressive beloved withpheswithout Desani. My own writing, count of its modem literature would be her birth-control campaign; "The Ven- too, learned a trick or two from him. complete without him. His three dor of Sweets" and the emancipated nonfiction books on India"An Area of American daughter-in-law with the ab- VED MEHTA is a writer known both Darkness," "India: A Wounded Civili- surd "novel-writing machine"; and the for his astute commentaries on the zation," and "India: A Million Mutinies mild-mannered printer and the extrovertIndian scene and for his several distin- Now"are key texts, and not only be- taxidermist in 'The Man-Eater of Mal -guished volumes of autobiography. The cause of the hackles they haveraised. gudi." In his gentle, lightly funny art hemost moving of these is "Vedi," a memoir Many Indian critics have taken issue goes to the heart of the Indian condi-of a blind boyhood that describes cruel- with the harshness of his responses. tion and beyond itinto the humanties and kindnesses with equal dispassion Some have fair-mindedly conceded that condition itself. and great effect. (More recently, Firdaus he does attack things worth attack- The writer I have placed alongsideKanga, in his autobiographical fiction ing. "I'm anti-Naipaul when I visit the Narayan, G. V. Desani, has fallen so far"Trying to Grow," has also transcended West," one leading South Indian nov- from favor that the extraordinary "Allphysical affliction with high style and elist told me, "but I'm often pro-Naipaul About H. Hatterr" is at present out ofcomic brio.) back home." print in India. Milan Kundera once said , the author of Some of Naipaurs targets, like (this is that all modem literature descends fromthe -winning "Heat and from "A Wounded Civilization") the either Richardson's "Clarissa" or Sterne's Dust" (afterward made into a Merchant- intermediate- technology institute that "Tristram Shandy," and, if Narayan isIvory movie), is a master of the short- invents "reaping shoes" (with blades at- India's Richardson, then Desani is hisstory form. As a writer, she is sometimes tached) for Indian peasants to use in Shandean other. "Hatterr" 's dazzling, underrated in India because, I think, the harvesting grain, merit the full weight of BEST COPYka VAILABLE 2 0 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 23 & 30,1997 SALMAN RUSHDIE his scorn. At other times, he appears (A fine Indian poet, who was sitting text of a bookboasting as much sheer av- merely supercilious. India, his migrantbeside me in the great man's audience, oirdupois as "A Suitable Boy," which thousand three hundred and ancestors' lost paradise, apparently can-murmured in my ear, "Bowel without runs to a social ob- not stop disappointinghim. By theMotion iswhat? Is constipation! Bowel forty-nine pages); the elegant third volume of the series, however,plus Motion iswhat? Is shit!") servation of Upamanyu Chatterjee ("En- which was written in 1990, he seems So I agree with Naipaul that mysti- glish August"); and the moreflamboyant manner of VikramChandra ("Love and more cheerfulabout the country's condi-cism is bad for novelists. But, in the In- dia I know, for every obfuscating Mo- Longing in Bombay"). AmitavGhosh's tion. He speaks approvingly of the to date is emergence of "a centralwill, a central in-tionist there is a debunking Bowelist most impressive achievement whispering in one's ear, for ev- the nonfiction study of Indiaand Egypt tellect, a national idea," and be that his disarmingly, even movingly, ery unworldly seeker for the "In an Antique Land." It may greatest strength will turn outto be as an confesses to the atavistic edgi- ancient wisdoms of the East Suleri, whose ness of mood in whichhe there is a clear-eyed witness re- essayist of this sort. Sara sponding to the here and now memoir "Meatless Days" is,like Bapsi made his first trip almost thirty from India of my in precisely that fashion which Sidhwa's "Cracking India," a visitor years earlier: "The frontier, is a nonfic- fantasy and heart was some- Naipaul inaccurately calls across the Pakistani tion writer of immenseoriginality and thing lost and irrecoverable. ...On thatuniquely Western. And when Naipaul Chaudhuri's languor- first journey, I was a fearful traveller." concludes by saying that in the aftermath grace. And Amit beautiful prose is impres- In "An Area of Darkness," Naipaul'sof the "abortive" Indo-British encounter ous, elliptical, sively impossible to place in any category comments on Indian writers elicitfromIndia is little more than a (very Naipaul- this reader a characteristic mixture ofian) community of mimic menthat the at all. Most encouragingly, yet another tal- agreement and dissent. Hewrites: country's artistic life has stagnated, that ented generation has begun to emerge. The feeling is widespread that, whatever"the creative urge" has "failed," that English might have done for Tolstoy, it can "Shiva has ceased to dance"then I fear The Bengali-Keralan writer Arundhati never do justice to the Indian "language" he and I part company altogether. "An Roy has arrived to the accompaniment writers. This is possible; what little I readArea of Darkness" was written as long of a loud fanfare. Her novel, "The God of them in translation did not encourage of Small Things," is full of ambition and me to read more. Premchand ... turnedago as 1964, a mere seventeen years after out to be a minor fabulist.... Other writ-independence and a little early for an sparkle, and is written in a highly wrought ers quickly fatigued me with their asser- obituary notice. The growing quality of and utterly personal style. Equally im- tions that poverty was sad, that death was Indian writing in English may yet change pressive are the debuts of two other first sad ... and many of the "modern" short novelists. Ardashir Vakil's "Beach Boy" stories were only refurbished folk tales. his mind. and 's "Strange Happenings Here he is expressing, in his emphatic, Nthe nineteen-eighties and nineties, in the Guava Orchard" are, in very un- unafraid way, what I have also felt alike ways, highly original books. The (though I think more highly of Prem- the flow of that good writing has be- come a flood. Bapsi Sidhwa is technically Vakil book, a tale of growing up near chand than he). He also says: Pakistani, but literature has no need of Juhu Beach, Bombay, is sharp, funny, The novel is of the West. It is part ofpartitions, particularly since Sidhwa's and fast; the KiranDesai, a Calvinoesque that Western concern with the condition of fable of a misfit boy who climbs a tree men, a response to the here and now. In novel "Cracking India" is one of the finest India thoughtful men have preferred toresponses made to the horror of the divi- and becomes a sort of petty guru, is lush rum their backs on the here and now andsion of the subcontinent. Gita Mehta's and intensely imagined. Kiran Desaiis to satisfy what President Radhakrishnan "A River Sutra" is an important attempt the daughter of Anita: her arrivalestab- calls "the basic human hunter for the un- In- seen." It is not a good qualification for theby a thoroughly modem Indian to make lishes the first dynasty of modern writing or reading of novels. her reckoning with the Hindu culture dian fiction. But she is very muchher of all these And here I can accompany him onlyfrom which she emerged. Padma Perera, own writer, the newest India's some of the way. It is true that manyAnjana Appachana (whose major new voices, and welcome proof that English language, learned Indians go in for a sonorously im-novel, "Listening Now," will be published encounter with the penetrable form of critico-mysticism. Inext January), and Githa Hariharan, less far from proving abortive, continues to with once heard an Indian writer of some re-well known than .Sidhwa and Mehta, give birth to new children, endowed nown, who was much interested in In-confirm the quality of contemporary writ- lavish gifts. dia's ancient wisdoms, expounding his ing by Indian women. the stan- theory of what one might call Motion- A number of different styles of work HEmap of the world in ism. "Consider Water," he advised us. are evolving-. the Stendhalianrealism of dard Mercator projection is not a writer like Rohinton Mistry,the author kind to India, making it look substan- "Water without Motion iswhat? Is a On lake. Very well. Now, Water plus Motionof two acclaimed novels, "Such a Long tially smaller than, say, Greenland. iswhat? Is a river. You see? The WaterJourney" and "A Fine Balance," and of a the map of world literature, too, India is still the same Water. Only Motion has collection of stories, "Tales from Firozsha has been undersized for too long. Fifty independence, how- been added. By the same token," he con-Baag"; the equally naturalistic but lighter, years after India's is coming to an tinued, making a breathtaking intellectualmore readily charming prose ofVikram ever, that age of obscurity leap, "Language is Silence, to which Mo- Seth (there is, admittedly, a kind of per- end. India's writers have torn up the old their own. tion has been added." versity in invoking lightness in the con- map and are busily drawing 21 BEST COPY AVAOLABLE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

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