A Suitable Boy

Normally I wouldn't just post an entire post about a book, especially one that does not strictly speaking move my project forward, but I am super excited about this book. It is my most recent accusation, one that I acquired thinking I might get to it at some point when I had time in the indeterminate future, perhaps even after my field study, to continue my study of Indian literature. However when I got it, it was so physically massive I had to check it out. Basically it is the story of a Mother and a daughter in the pursuit of a suitable boy (go figure) for her to marry. It is set in India in the 1950s in the northernish part of India. So far it reads kind of like an Pride and Prejudice except in India and in the 1950s, not a long time ago England. I think it is supposed to be an epic story of the interactions between four families.

A Suitable Boy takes an intimate look at Indian culture, religion, and politics. Sometimes it is serious, sometimes it is satirical. Again drawing the comparison to Pride and Prejudice, part of the reason I am so excited to read this novel is the close perspective of something like a novel of manners. Not that A Suitable Boy is necessarily a novel of manners. I believe that it incorporates many aspects of Indian storytelling. It is divided into sections and chapters, but they do not always follow the same people. Often a new character or subplot is introduced and then abandoned only to be incorporated much later in the story.

In the future, I hope to come back to this novel to examine it with regards to Indian epics such as The Adventures of Amir Hamza, The Ramayan, and the Mahabharat to look for similar literary elements and methods. I will know better when I finish it, but I have a theory that A Suitable Boy may in many ways be a kind of Indian Epic.

Separate Journeys

I am still trying to get my stride back, but while I do that, I have been reading a collection of short stories called Separate Journeys. Each story is written by a female Indian author from a different part of the country. The stories have been interesting, although not for exactly the reason I at first anticipated. The introduction to this book makes a big point out of the fact that each of the authors comes from a distinct background with different literary and cultural attributes as a result. My perception of Indian literature is rapidly expanding. It seems like, so far at from what I have observed, English is a fundamental part of Indian writing, but it is also just another language among many languages. Most of the major languages have a huge body of literature. I find that idea fascinating. Regardless of what I ultimately end up doing specifically for my project, I am going to devote a certain amount of time to try to hunt down the sources of these books. One of the stories suggested that there was a massive pool of Kannada literature, except while I was there in India I never saw anywhere that sold books except for in English, with maybe a single book case devoted to the most common regional language. I mean, I was not actively looking, but I feel like if these were such prolific writing communities, there would be more evidence of it. Maybe I just am not looking in the right places. The posh malls cater to the rich, obviously, and so it isn't surprising that the majority of their books are in English. The thing is, I only ever noticed two kinds of book stores while I was in India. There are the super posh ones and then the small, warehouse like black market book stores. Well, black market is kind of harsh, I guess, because they do sell legitimate copies of books. But they also sell a lot of pdf print off kind of books where I am pretty sure neither publisher nor author sees any royalties from them.

So when I get to New Delhi, I am going to have to be on the look out for other outlets for books. I am going to have to ask around, but the things I have thought of so far are: book stores, "black market" street book stores (obviously), book fairs (like the Sunday book sale I mentioned in an earlier entry that existed in Hyderabad. I feel bad, but in pursuit of my project I am willing to go out on a Sunday and buy books, if it comes to that), book carts, book stalls, yard sales?, literature events, college stores, national libraries, and local libraries. Perhaps talking to publishing houses might also help to see which book seller people they sell their books to might uncover some leads.

I am finding that in my research I am struggling to find sources talking about Indian readership. There isn't much, but there is plenty for a field study project that involves literary criticism. However, while enlightening and something that would be productive to read in preparation for my time in India and discussing literature with people, it doesn't really help me ground my project in the current research about reading in India. I mostly have been hitting the databases I use as an English major, which is probably part of the problem. The study of English is interested in why people read, but usually is more abstract/attempting to be universal, which isn't terribly helpful. I think I will have to talk to a few of my anthropologist friends to see if there are any databases that they recommend particularly (Rachel, here's lookin' at you kid, among others). Perhaps they will have more of what I need.

Anyhow, I talk like I have completely narrowed it down, but I haven't quite yet. Emma Roberts is out. As much as I would love to do that, I do not think I have the temperament to go run around the country and accomplish things. I am not good at being spontaneous like you would need to be in order to make that work. Besides, I really do not think a summer is enough time to make that work. I think the Urdu poetry thing might be out as well. I am in love with the idea, but I don't know if I could quite tie it together in something meaningful. Okay, I think I could, but I guess I am not sure that I could learn Urdu well enough in time in order to actually work in translation, which is what I would have to do. And it wouldn't be text book Urdu, it would be artistic, high Urdu written in handwriting from two hundred years ago, not printed, with all the irregularities and complexities that go along with it. I think it would be fun, but I would probably end up writing a paper about the experience of how hard it is to translate and interpret poetry, not really write something meaningful about the poetry. The remaining three ideas are kind of iterations of each other. Some are too broad, some might be too narrow, I will have to work them out. I may just end up creating a hybrid out of them or something. I think locating some actual resources about what and why people are reading will be helpful to giving me some really healthy perspective on what direction I should go. Although I guess thinking about the topics, I am going to need literary history, not just literary anthropology. Blerg. I don't know where to get that.

Salman Rushdie and the Jaipur Literature Festival

So I read the Times of India a lot. We were asked to look for a news article from a local newspaper/source. The past few weeks there has been some drama building around Salman Rushdie's attendance of the Jaipur Literature Festival. (I am so mad it is not when I am going to be there. I will have to see if there might possibly be any while I am there. Although the summer probably means that there won't be.) (Although I suppose if it might be for the best because I think I am technically not supposed to visit the state of Rajasthan. Technically of course...<.<...>.>...) Recently things came to a head resulting in Salman Rushdie choosing to not attend the Festival. Basically there was a rumor that some Mumbai mafia dons were going to assassinate him if he came to India. So to for his own safety as well as to not disrupt the festival, he did not attend.

That was a terrible summary. I am interested in the implications for my project. Currently in the United States there are no officially banned books. At least not by the federal government, and I am 97% sure there are no books banned by state governments. I have been looking around online for a coherent list of books that are currently banned in India. Like most things with my research on India so far, reports are far and few between, and almost always conflict with each other. Anyhow, I am pretty sure at least these five are banned currently (although a few websites noted that even though they are banned, on a couple of them the government doesn't bother to enforce the ban):

The Satanic Verses
Mother India
The Lotus and the Robot
Rangila Rasool
Lady Chatterley's Lover

In almost every case that I have found, the reason for banning a book in India is that it in someway offends someone's religious sentiments, usually Hindu or Muslim sentiments. Usually it is not for specific obscenity, such as in the case of Lady Chatterley's Lover (which still seems kind of random to me). Most cases were instances where authors challenged popularly accepted dogma or portrayed religious figures or ideas in a more realistic or negative light. I think I am going to have to find a complete and accurate list of the books banned in India. I think individual states can have their own bans on books. This could be difficult.

The Great Indian Love Story

I just pounded it out this afternoon. As soon as I started it, I knew it was not going to be a good book, but I am fascinated by the perspective. To best describe it, I would say if you ever want to convince someone never to go to India, especially New Delhi, give them this book to read. The entire thing was about drugs, alcohol, and lots and lots of adultery. It was basically a romance novel, but without all the explicit parts. The sex is all implied. Similar to The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay, this novel, novella really, is about the Indian perspective of love. I think that is why I kind of struggle to get my mind around it. On so many levels it is trying so hard to be just like every other trashy Western Romance novel, but if you really look at it, it is so incredibly Indian. No one writes such crazy, destabilized romances like Indians do. I do not like broad declarations about groups of people, but from what I have observed so far in what I have read, seen in movies, and witnessed first hand, Indians really struggle with the concept of love. It is either tame, devoted arranged marriage, or psychotic, usually tragic, romances. I mean, in many ways American romances are no different, but in India, it feels like you either have the equivalent of a Hindu Mormon Message or an Indian soap opera. I didn't hate The Great Indian Love Story as much as I thought I would. The characters were completely flat and predictable. I never liked them. A couple of them died (of course), but I never felt bad. The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay, while also not a terribly amazing book, is basically the same kind of story, but far better.

This is the second work of fiction in a row that I have read that features a female protagonist who grew up in India, went to school in the United States and then returned to a "foreign" India. It is kind of an interesting perspective. Now I wonder if this is some sort of sub genre of Indian fiction. The copy I have was actually meant to be sold in India, so I am curious as to what kind of people read this sort of book. It was all about rich people in Delhi having crazy parties and sleeping around. Is the desire for this kind of thing from Indian repression? Most of the Indian fiction I have read so far has been fairly literary. This is the first work I would describe as "trashy." I have purchased all of them so far, well, most of them, in the United States, so I am wondering if that has a filtering effect. Is most of the fiction that is popular in India trashy, easy fiction? I think I finished this book in less than four hours, more like three. It is not difficult at all. It is similar in that way to Chetan Bhagat, another terrible, terrible, yet immensely popular Indian author. I wish I had another year to read and ponder all this to put my project together.

Nine Lives

I guess I will be using this for a source for Wednesday. I need more time to find more specific sources, so for the time being I think I will just be using general background-ish texts to use as sources.

Nine Lives was brilliant. It covers nine lives (go figure) from a variety of different religious backgrounds in India. Mostly Dalrymple focuses on more random or fringe religious groups. Some of them I knew about, some of them I didn't know about. I actually found a few books referenced in this book that I added to my book list. It is mostly more background reading, but I am excited. I am kind of struggling to say anything about this book. I think the reason it is most important to my project, is the diversity it demonstrates. Religion in India is like animal and insect life in the Amazon Rainforest. It is unimaginably diverse and is everywhere. I probably will not consciously run into any of the nine religious groups mentioned specifically in the book, but the way that Dalrymple treats them and got to know them is probably very close to the model I will have to adapt when I get out into the field. This book shows how important it is to step carefully, I guess you could say, and be very sensitive to what people believe. People are fairly open about their religious beliefs in India, but if you are not trying to be aware of the nuances, it would cause problems, especially if you are trying to get people to open up and give you information. The book does not really have a central anything binding it together other than it is nine stories told primarily by the main characters. It does not really deal specifically with William Dalrymple himself.

And actually that is probably the route I need to take with my project. In the introduction Dalrymple (my goodness that name never gets easy to type) explains that unlike most travel literature, he consciously chose to eliminate himself as much as possible from the book. I think that is what makes it so effective. I think that is why I dislike Clifford Geertz so much. Nine Lives is not about what Dalrymple thinks about India. In fact, the only time I really felt like I could see Dalrymple's opinions coming through was when he was talking to the Wahhabi Cleric guy who wanted to blow up religious sites. It does not help with analysis. I mean, there is no analysis. However it does give a much clearer picture of what these aspects of India are really like. I think I will take that into serious consideration for my project. I mean, I probably will have to do some analysis, but I kind of like the idea of presenting things as they are. I am kind of uneasy with my place as a foreigner going in and trying to do anything with India. I still kind of feel like drawing conclusions or contributing to the scholarship of India is a privilege that should be reserved for Indians themselves. I don't know how comfortable I am coming into someone else's culture and drawing conclusions about something I have only spent a few months with.

Dalrymple, William. Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India. New York: Vintage Departures, 2009. Print.

The Mango Season

I finally finished Mango season. The last part was an orgy of drama. It was awesome. I really enjoyed it. It was really interesting to ride on the coat tails of the Indian protagonist and see India through her eyes. The author grew up in Hyderabad. I think at least. At least she lived there. And I have lived there, so I recognized a lot of the places and things she was talking about. I of course do not know how completely accurate to reality the book was, but it was very interesting. It was a lot about marriage and family traditions and politics. Some of it I knew, some of it I didn't. It is interesting to compare Amulya Malladi's perspective with that of Jhumpa Lahiri's. Amulya writes more from the Indian perspective while Jhumpa writes more from the perspective of Indians living abroad. You do not really get the sense of how important the traditions are with Lahiri. I mean you do, but it is different. I don't want to sound like I am criticizing Lahiri, because I am not at all. Just the difference in focus of writing is so interesting.

I am not exactly sure how to wrap this all up into research though. I have read around sixteen books and I have another bookshelf of books to go through, but at this point I do not really see them going anywhere. I mean, I need to read to really get a feel for the landscape, but doing even a decent survey of Indian literature in English would take a few years and probably ten thousand dollars in books. It just is not practical for a single semester and an undergraduate. So I do not know quite how to bring it all together.

I am going to start looking into critical literature. I guess in addition to all the other things I need to look into this week. Although really I do not know if it is worth talking about at this point. I feel like what I really need to focus on is just hammering down the basic idea of what I want to do my project on. Then it will probably be a lot easier to figure everything else out and put it into place.

I am a little frustrated with the way the field study class is going. I know it is just the beginning of the semester, but I feel like there is so much to do and I do not exactly know what is going on. In my English classes I have already read two novels, covered about ten major literary theorists, and starting work on two major essays. Two weeks  into the semester and we are just getting our actual advisor teacher person. I feel like there are so many massive problems I need to overcome and everyone is talking about how much work it is and how serious you need to be and then we aren't really doing anything. I am not sure what to do about where/who I am staying with. I need to finalize what I am going to be doing my project about. I do not really understand what I am looking for with sources. We haven't talked about methodologies or any of that. I literally have zero idea about who to approach for my course contract things. I mean, I will probably end up working with Professor Eastley, (although I am concerned about how young he looks, not that he doesn't know his stuff, but I feel like my young professors always are more opinionated than old professors, and I am not one to back down about my opinions. I am concerned about working with someone who expects me to view things their way just because they are the authority figure, when I refuse, I absolutely refuse to do that in an academic setting) but the other one, I have no idea. I know it is just the beginning of the semester. I am sure it will all work out, but I am kind of stressing out over the whole sort of dangling in space thing. I did not anticipate this part of the individual field study. I guess I kind of expected things to be more formulaic, to fall more into place. I was expecting the field study class to be the calm center of this chaos, a thrice weekly foundation that everything would come back to so I could get my bearings, but it really hasn't been at all. Anyhow, I am just going on now. I know it is just the beginning of the semester and everyone in the field studies program knows what is going on and what needs to happen and when. They will be able to help me know what to do and everything is going to work out. There is no reason to stress about anything, the semester is just beginning. I just do not like this feeling right now.

I am sort of stressed

More like nervous? I am not second guessing my decision, but sort of second guessing. I am super excited for this summer, but also very worried. I have this constant waking nightmare in the back of my mind of walking around the streets of New Delhi too afraid to talk to anyone and not knowing what to do. I think I need to just sit down and write down some brief sketches exploring project ideas. I think having a semi-concrete idea of what precisely I want to do will help my peace of mind as well as help me figure out something useful to do rather than just randomly reading like I have been. I mean, the reading is very useful, but more in a general background kind of way, at least right now. It is not helping to nail down a well defined project. I came down with a cold or the flu or something on Saturday and it kind of has come to a head today. At least I hope it has. Anyhow, I have been on meds, so I have been able to operate, but I kind of missed class today, which I am super pissed about. I got home from work/class at two and I was really dragging so I lay down at like 2:38 for a short nap and woke up at 5:03. Whoops. I made it to Hindi though, so that was one good thing. I am still mad about missing class though. I really want something concrete to do because I am not exactly sure what I should do and I don't like flailing. I think I will give myself the assignment of writing out semi-project proposals, just to walk my mind through it and see if I can discover a solid direction that really interests me.

I am currently reading The Mango Season by Amulya Malladi. It is about an Indian woman who lived in India until she was twenty and then went to the United States for school. Now seven years later she is returning to India and dealing with how strange India and Indian culture seems to her. I am actually kind of surprised how interesting this perspective is. It feels (I mean, it may not actually be) but if feels fairly revealing to tag along on an Indian rediscovering India rather than an American writing about India or the child of Indian parents going to India essentially as an American. This book is an interesting fusion of other things I have read. Indian cultural practices are highlighted, especially family dynamics. It is a page turner, but the going has been slow because of all my other reading and now this stupid cold/flu thing. I am settling into the groove of this semester, so I hope to be able to figure out when I can set aside time each day specifically for research/reading relating to my field study.

Tempus Fugit

I don't actually know if that is a real phrase or if it is spelled right. I don't even actually remember what language that is supposed to be. Just whenever I think of the phrase "time flies," that is the first thing that pops into my head. Every time.

Anyhow, the last week has been crazy-go-nuts busy. This semester is going to be freaking insane. I do not have much time tonight. I have to crash through some Plato I should have read yesterday, but did not make enough time for.

So I did not finish all six books I wanted to, but I did finish four, which I am super pleased about. All in all it was about fifteen hundred pages, so I am not going to cry about the remaining five hundred or so I did not get through.

The Empire Writes Back...I do not know quite what to say. It was not as difficult as I thought it would be. The only chapter I really had any trouble with was the chapter on post colonialism and theory. That is partially because I do not really know the literary theories all that well. At least I do not know them well enough to understand the nuances of their relationships with post colonialism. I am excited to read it again. It has helped me open my mind to a whole bunch of new ways to consider post colonialism. It is more complex than I thought it was. I still think I stand by my initial opinion that I do not really think it is a productive literary...area...genre? Some of the questions they raise were interesting and really made me think. I will definitely have to read it again soon, especially the theory chapter.

After finishing it I feel stronger than ever that post colonialism is the stupidest literary grouping ever for India. I did a little research. India has a frickmassive literary tradition already. In like twenty different languages. At least. At least twenty freaking different languages. Why are we holding their hand and changing their diapers in post colonialism? Let them manage their own English literature. Sure, their English literature deals a lot with colonial issues because that is where it came from, but let us stop and consider a few things. They have a frickmassive literary tradition already. Indians who write books classified in post colonial literature know these languages. To be educated enough to write in English, they most likely are familiar with at least some of their native literature. Ergo, their thought processes, writing style, and perception of the world is at least semi-influenced by their own literature. So how is studying it apart from that tradition helpful? More than any country that didn't get its native culture obliterated, (por ejemplo the United States, Australia, etc.) India has best integrated English into itself. What I mean is, English is almost to the point in India where it is not an invasive language. It is not a threat to the local language. The important place of religion in India all but guarantees that English will never be able to replace the native languages of India. Why would a muslim abandon Urdu, a language influenced heavily by Persian and Arabic, for English? To what? Read the Bible? Why would a Hindu turn from Hindi or Tamil with their heritage in the Vedas and the Ramayan? The current leader of the Sikh religion is a book! And it definitely is not in English. Thus I now am certain that trying to come at India primarily from the post colonial perspective is to severely retard their development. The thing is, it won't actually retard their development. What it will do is maintain the culture of ignorant Western academics who have spent a few months at an Ashram and took some pictures at a temple and ate solely vegetarian food with their hands and now think they are experts on Indian culture and are so worried about helping India recover their national identity through literature when they have already done it in their own native language and if Western scholars would just back the hell off they would be just fine in expressing their own views in English rather than obsessing about whether they are decolonizing or not.

So I officially now renounce India's place in post colonial literature. There is only Indian literature, some of which is written in English, in the period during and after they were colonized. The place of their English texts is on their native soil, in their own libraries, not in some politically correct, sterile, UN-esque post colonial collection floating out in the middle of the Atlantic.

Anyhow I have stayed too long. I have to go read that dag blasted Plato crap. Shoot me now. Why does anyone like Plato? I mean seriously. You can sum up everything he says in like a paragraph, but he goes on for pages about this inane crap setting up these unrealistic conversations that magically perfectly work out so someone looks super ignorant while the Plato voice character looks so bloody brilliant. Nobody cares about your stupid logic! Just say it and be done!

Finished Flamingos

It was a brutal book. Just completely brutal. I kind of do not know what to think. It caught me off guard because it was so different than everything else I have read from India recently. It was fairly explicit sexually. Sort of, I guess. I mean it was not like romance novel stuff, but it went into some detail. The end of the book though. My goodness. One of the character dies and the book gets a little depressing because it deals with government corruption. And then it seems like every chapter for the last third is just a new super depressing revelation. Someone dies, someone turns out to be a sucky person, a marriage ends, someone is beaten. It is not a horror novel, but after a while I was almost afraid to read the next chapter because I wasn't sure what would happen. The end of the book is so difficult. I mean. I want to not like it, but I have to admit it was a powerful end to the book. I have the author's other book and now I am not sure I want to read it. I have to though, since it was one of the top selling novels in India in recent memory. I just hope it is not so brutal as The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay was. My goodness. I think the author is gay. I mean, I don't know for sure, but watching interviews he was sort of effeminate. Although for an Indian that actually does not necessarily mean anything. But reading the book the men were all described very well and the women, not at all. I think the most he ever described a woman beyond just saying something like she was drop dead gorgeous was saying that one of them had perfect small round breasts or something. Also two of the characters were gay and they lived on and off in San Francisco and he described the gay scene in the city a lot. I can't really say if it was accurate or not, but he spent quite a bit of time on it. Maybe he is just a good writer? Whether or not he is gay does not matter to me in particular, except for how it pertains to what he wrote, how people received it, etc. India is still very closed minded to that sort of thing, yet the author of Flamingoes is one of the best selling in recent memory and has generally received positive reviews from critics. It could be just because only the more westernized elite members of society buy books like his. Maybe people do not pick up on it? It will be interesting to find out.

Currently I am working through The Empire Writes Back. It is interesting. I disagree with about a third of what they say, but so far it has been very informative. It is much more dense reading and I should probably look a few words up in the dictionary. However, it is really making me think, which I like. I have not got very far into it, but I am beginning to feel more and more that having post-colonial studies is essentially racist. The authors keep talking about how much they hope their work is changing the way things are, but I feel like trying to extend or maintain post-colonial studies as the central body for studying the literature of these countries will only hold them back. The core ideas in this book are a couple decades old now, so that may be part of it. Maybe post-colonial studies are not where they used to be. There is a chapter at the end of the book about how the field is changing. I have not read it yet, obviously, but maybe it will shed some light on the situation. Especially where India is concerned I just feel more and more like restricting Indian writing to post-colonialism is stupid. Of all the colonies, I think India emerged with its original culture most intact. There was an obvious impact, but none of the languages, at least the major ones were ever in danger of going extinct. Writing, religion, and culture in those languages never stopped. English only ever existed on the surface. It is the language of the elite and all that, but the heart of the country never stopped speaking their languages. There were too many people and they were never important enough for the British to force into something else. Plus I do not think it is productive to look at India from the perspective of a colony compared to other colonies. Erm, what I mean is, so much of Indian culture is tied to the language and the religion. How can you study what Indians really mean with their writing without taking into account the other languages? For a quick example, Urdu literature was experiencing one of its greatest renaissances during the British occupation and only ended at the very end of that colonization. The British kind of wiped it out at the end there, but for a long time, the most significant literature written in India was not in English, but in Urdu. This is only one part of the country. And I understand that this is another language, not English and that English would obviously be much more colonially focused, but even so, I think it would be much more productive to place Indian English literature in the context of everything else they have been writing, not in the context of what everyone else was writing. At least do not make post-colonial the main category for Indian Literature in English. Anyhow, I feel like I am beating a dead horse at this point, I have already talked about this. Although these thoughts were inspired from my reading. I guess I will update more as I read more of The Empire. Maybe they will succeed in changing my mind.

Midnight's Children

Done. Finally! I was ready for that book to be over about a hundred pages ago. Anyhow, it is done. And I enjoyed it. There is definitely a lot of stuff that I missed, I think. It seemed like Salman Rushdie was trying to be extremely obvious with the metaphorical content of the book, but most of it still went over my head. Which is actually more annoying than if I hadn't picked up on any of it. I will probably have to come around to it again at some point, but for now it is time for other things.

I am at a bit of a loss as to what to do for general research outside of my books. I guess I do not know quite where to look. I have a few blogs I need to flip through, which shouldn't be difficult because as it is I already spend too much time reading through years of other people's lives. The interesting thing about blogger is that it is so public and yet completely fails at helping people make connections. Actually I do not think it is blogspot's fault. Really I think it is combination of mommy bloggers, facebook, and academia. Blogspot is either a place to make money, a place to put a carefully constructed, picture perfect life for your parents and extended family to follow instead of your naked drunk pictures on facebook, or a place to try to get your stuff out there, whether it be research, writing, pictures, music, etc. It is not used to make connections or to meet people. There are people selling you crap, people trying to make "important" connections, or people who aren't actually here, they just seem like they are. Why am I even talking about this. Hm...oh yeah. Anyhow this is relevant to my research, at least at this point, because the few Indians blogs I know of are either people selling stuff (read: someone trying to create something that sounds personal even though what it really is is a formal front to someone's ebay/etsy-esque store) or else journalists/authors. Thus the problem is on the one hand are people who are not actually people, but basically faceless corporations and on the other are people that are not interested on meeting anyone unless they lead to important connection. Not being a prospective buyer, important editor, famous author, or other important celebrity, I am not optimistic for my success at getting at the heart of Indian literature through blogger. Although if I were interested, I suppose studying Indian bloggging and social networking would be fascinating. I think that sentence might be redundant.

I have thought about getting into facebook, which sucks royally, but may be unavoidable. I hate facebook. With a passion even. Such a complete waste of time. It is just social prostitution. Your are promised pleasure and a sense of relationship, but what you get is five minutes of awkward, unfulfilling sex and a feeling of emptiness afterwards. It is the difficult balancing act of using everyone else for attention without getting used. I don't know quite where else to go to at this point, or even who to talk to about it since India happens to be on the other side of the world and well, the whole being on the literal other side of the world limits the amount that actual people can connect between here and there. I have some Indian neighbors across the street who I would love to go talk to, but currently they are just the neighbors across the street. I am not sure if they still have the stereotypical, easy-going, gregariousness that most Indians I have met seem to have. If they do, it would be simple to go talk to them, but if they don't, well it would be so awkward. Plus I can't just show up and start asking them about their reading habits/what they remember about Indian literature in English from when they were in school. I am pretty sure they are from India, not children of immigrants. Anyhow, maybe I will work up the courage to go and talk to them at some point.

On the reading front I have started The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay by Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi. This book is kind of a stab in the dark, to be honest. Someone recommended Shanghvi to me, but he is just one on a very long list of other recommendations. I found him easily on Amazon, and so here we are. Amy Tan seems to like him, but what does her recommendation really mean anyways? Actually now that I think about it, I've never even read Amy Tan. I am not quite sure what to think of all these people who may or may not be born and/or raised in the UK or the US who now may or/may not live in India. I may have to sit down and define for myself as a reference point for this project what it means to be Indian and when you have crossed the line where you are no longer Indian but British or American instead. I feel like that only happens in the UK and especially in the US. I feel like Indians in South Africa or Australia never really ever become South African or Australian. I wonder why that is.

I am not pleased with this entry. I feel like I am guilty of bias or racism or something in how I write. That I have missed something crucial throughout these musings I have jotted down. But as this is a research journal, I do not really have the desire to go back and edit or censor myself (excepting blatant misspellings or grammatical errors, I grant myself that mercy at least). I mean, of course I would like to hide any failings and appear as a perfectly careful and logical person, but I also want to expose my hidden flaws and secret racisms (thank you John Campbell for that phrase) so I can expunge them from my character, and hopefully grow closer to a truer reality.

Oh, most awful of fates! I feel pretentious now as well. (forgive the apostrophe. I am still recovering from a class on the romantic period. The Urdu poets of The Last Mughal and the fact that Salman Rushdie uses apostrophes about every other paragraph has not helped matters. I have been thinking in apostrophe a lot lately.)

Seriously, I'm not trying to get your hopes up

But it is a break so I have time to just update, so why not, haha. I think I finally made a break through on Midnight's Children last night. I started reading again at like 11:30 pm and I was just clipping along. I was actually kind of hooked finally. I think the remaining two hundred pages will be cake. I have been trying to focus on the meaning of the book as I read. I think a lot of what the main character does and what happens to him reflects Indian history and culture. I kind of wish I had done a through study of Indian history, at least post Britain history, because I feel like the book would make a lot more sense if I knew the history of this time period. I know generally what happened, but I have never really looked into the details. Part of the problem is how politically charged the time period is. I can't stand obviously slanted history. I know all history is fundamentally biased, but I do not like it when you can tell how biased it is. Although maybe that is preferable to the bias you cannot detect because it matches your own.

As I have been reading and thinking about my project, I have decided that the stance I am going to take for my project is to deny the label "post colonial" for the literature I study. If you want to talk about the "post colonial" period of Indian literature, then I would be happy to discuss it. But lumping the writing of Chinua Achebe with R.K. Narayan with the writing of Isabelle Allende is perfectly ridiculous. What do they have in common? How can you group together a academic community based on such diversity? Not only are these "colonies" from different sides of the globe, they weren't even colonized by the same cultures. How is that a coherent field of study? While some of these countries arguably are still wading through the mire of re-establishing their national identities after being released from colonization, India hardly falls into that category. Can anyone create a coherent list of the Indian authors and books in English alone? All my research points to the contrary. In fact I have spent the better part of this year futilely contacting professors from over a dozen institutions to see if I could put together a rough list of the most important authors/works to read to orient myself to Indian literature. No one could help me. No one had any real suggestions. From these contacts and snooping around the internet I have amassed a list of over two hundred Indian authors, each with multiple mentions as an author in English of merit, before I kind of gave up. I maintain it, but not for the reason I did before. If Indian literature in English has grown to the point where it is now impossible for a single person to conceive of it, can it still be lumped in with every other former colony as "post colonial"? It seems to me that it would be much more practical to give Indian literature in English its own field of study, namely Indian Literature, with accompanying sub-subjects for specialization. It is extremely arrogant of the English academic world to try to lump everything that isn't American or British into a broad, amorphous holding pen labeled "post colonial". The English language is like a virus, or, I don't know, like linux or something. It is open source. No one controls it. It is not like Spanish, French, or Icelandic that have unified directing committees that have the final say of what is a word and what is not. By asteroiding into India, Britain infected it with English. It became an Indian language. In fact, due to the diverse languages in India and the proud cultures behind each, English is now an essential language in India, not least to facilitate communication between Hindi and Tamil speakers. Thus if they have their own brand of English and now write fluently, directly in English so prolifically that it is now nearly impossible for one person to hold the entire corpus of Indian literature in English, the brand, like a dog's collar, is not only inadequate, it is insulting. It is time for the genre boundaries to change. If other countries still would like to remain within the confines of "post colonial", that is fine, but as for India, it is time they got an English department of their own as equal participants in the language. Especially since they have technically been exposed to it and had it spoken on their soil for around four hundred years. If my hasty research is correct, that is longer than Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand, and at least as long as the Americas, and it is quite possible that the East India Company had a presence in India before the English ever really had a presence in the Americas. Besides, the only reason English is so successful in each of these countries is because their invades obliterated the native culture. Is being labeled "post colonial" then a punishment for resisting cultural cleansing? I don't think the implications are very flattering for the English academic world.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas not readers. I haven't actually told anyone about this yet, so...I don't think anyone will actually read this, haha, but oh well. Things are good. I haven't read as much as I have wanted, but still, I am making good progress. I should still get through all the books I planned to this break. Studying Hindi has not gone as well as I would like, but there is still time to fix that starting today. Or tomorrow. I am not sure if there are family obligations tonight, now that I think about it. In related news I got some reading lights for my room, which is awesome. This will make studying so much nicer next semester. Now that I have put my room together I just need to bring the discipline and things should go swimmingly. I hope. Anyhow, Midnight's Children is really slowing me down. It is a good book, but the chaotic writing style is making it difficult to get lost in. The book I just finished, The Last Mughal just sucked me in. I couldn't put the dang thing down. My mother took it away from me because I wasn't engaging the family enough, haha. Midnight's Children has just been more mental work. The plot is more difficult to follow and the action is not as rewarding. Plus the part I just finished involved the main character's finger getting chopped off in a door. Yeah, I kind of had to take a breather after that. Salman Rushdie and I just have different taste, I suppose. He doesn't mind the ripped skin and snot of the world. I have a harder time with that. I think this is good though. It is stupid to only focus on the beautiful and wonderful in the world. I mean, The Last Mughal was far from the perfect wonderfulness in the world, but it did not focus on snot flinging third graders and stuff like that. Rushdie looks all that full in the face. I have spent most of my life avoiding that kind of thing. So it is a difficult read for me, but I think it is healthy. I feel like it is helping my understanding of India. It isn't a big revelation or anything, at least not yet. But I am hoping that by the time I finish, well, my goal with all of these is to have a better picture in my mind of Indianness. Anyhow, I am just over half way done. I just need one good day and then I can finish it off. The other books I have left won't be so bad because they are lighter and I am kind of excited for them. Anyhow, this is the most productive break I have ever had. It has been great. I need to double down though. I have let myself get a little lazy. So here is to tomorrow, I suppose.

Not that I am promising daily updates

But I might as well post as I have the time. I have a few things I need to get done before next semester starts. Or at least things I really hope I get done. This blog was a big one. It actually came together a lot faster than I thought it would. Previous incarnations took a lot longer, and I was never entirely pleased with the results. I am satisfied with this one however. I even applied to the British Library for official permission to use this background image. I feel so...official and cool now. It's like this is a real project or something. I mean, it is just a personal blog, not like some big organization project or whatever, but having written permission to use something is so exciting! It is like this is for real or something.

I have finished one of the books I brought for the break and I am making good progress through the second. The long drives involved in this trip help a lot. I have four others I brought as well as one of my Hindi textbooks. I think I will get through it all.

I need to turn in that dag blasted paper for the field study. It is the official acceptance document. There wasn't really a question in my mind, but I understood why they wanted us to think about what we were agreeing to since once you agree, you are really agreeing and backing out is costly. Anyhow, I was afraid that I would forget and I did. I don't think it is a problem at all, but, I wish I had remembered. So I will turn it in first thing when I get back to Provo.

Then I need to finally meet with Dr. Eastley to see about arranging a class. I have no idea who I should go to for the second course I need to arrange. Although that actually will probably become fairly obvious once I have my project all figured out.

I need to arrange for my plane tickets before prices go up. That should probably happen during the break or at the very latest by mid January. I am thinking of using Qatar Airways. Mostly because they actually have a pretty good fair right now and I have heard fairly good things about their service. But I also kind of want to take them because one of the hubs is Doha Qatar. I wouldn't really be going to the Middle East, it would just be a layover in the airport, but it is kind of like going and that would be so exciting. Besides, as far as the Middle East goes, Qatar is relatively tame. My one big concern with airfare is I do not know anything about my housing yet. The Kennedy Center is helping me with that. Apparently they know people. Also I have a friend from my Hindi class who has friends and family in New Delhi who has suggested he could help me. I mean, I know I will find housing no problem, eventually, I just feel a little awkward just buying tickets not knowing where I am going to stay exactly.

I also need to work on just more general research. I have spent hours on the British Library looking at old photographs of India. That doesn't directly relate to my project, I suppose, but it has been fascinating. I have gone through a lot on Wikipedia as well. I think the next direction I will go is blogs. There are a few I have identified of Indian authors, journalists, and...other people. I don' t know exactly how to categorize them. I suppose I should get on facebook and friend all the people I haven't friended that I know in India. I just really am uncomfortable with the idea of facebook.

Anyhow, today will mostly be spent reading. I hope to finish the book I am currently working on by tomorrow night. It should be doable. And I have been in a strong reading mood lately. It has been months since I have had that, burning, clawing at the back of your mind, craving for reading. I am not quite sure what has brought this on.