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.

I Am Alive

Blah, I kind of fell off the horse there for a week or two, sorry about that. I had a small existential crisis about my project and got stuck in a rut for a little while there. I have talked to a few people about (thank you Rachel) and I think I know where to go moving forward.

It was the literature review that kind of made me panic. Not the literature review itself, but how it applies to me. Looking at reading and writing in India from a sources point of view has been really, really difficult. Mostly because there are two sides the the problem and they rarely meet. The English major side is obsessed with the post colonial. There are hundreds of papers and books on the topic, but as they are coming from the English academia perspective, they are all about the themes and writing methods that are in a given text. No one ever really talks about why the book was written in the first place or who might actually be reading the book and what that means. On the anthropological side, it could be that I just do not know quite where to look, but from all the databases I have searched and what not, it seems that anthropologists have not thoroughly studied reading much. I was not even looking specifically for India. I just was looking for ethnographies or studies about reading. I am sure that anthropologists study this kind of thing, but I have the feeling that all the sources that would be useful to me are subsections buried in the chapters of specific ethnographies or general anthropological texts. I have a few books about literacy in India, which will hopefully be helpful.

I am coming to terms with the fact that I may not be able to use my sources to focus/narrow my topic. I was kind of hoping that I could feel my way along with what others have studied before and pattern my research methods after them. However it seems like I am just going to have to make it up as I go along.

To make up for this, I am going to see if I can work the network of Indian people I kind of know who live here in Provo. I am going to do some super informal interviews with my friend and any Indians he knows to talk to them about my project. I want to ask them a few questions about reading and just sort of point blank ask them what they think I should do or how I should approach it. I figure in the field I can try to be all subtle and sneaky, but here in the U.S. with people I know, I might as well just come out with it and ask them what they think of my project. Hopefully this will guide my efforts as I redouble my efforts on getting my project set.

As my three English classes start getting heavy, I am falling behind in my reading. I am not too worried though. There are about eight more books that I am absolutely determined to read. All in all a few thousand pages. I can manage that. Basically a few covering different topics on the history of India, an analysis of India's current situation, some texts about religion, a travelogue, and a book about the history of New Delhi specifically. Also the one or two books I have been able to dig up that in some way discuss the literacy and reading in India. And if I have time I have a history of Indian literature in English. I feel that at this point, considering that I am not going to find some great studies or ethnographies about studying the reading/writing habits of an ethnic group, the most important thing I can do to prepare is to increase my general knowledge about Indian history, culture, geography, and religion. I hope focusing on orienting myself to the location rather than my specific method first will help me to think on my feet and develop things as I go rather than try to adapt my specific methods that someone else came up with to my location. I don't know.

Also I am working on my Hindi via Hindi films. I can begin to pick up words, but I can't follow when they talk at normal speeds. We will see what I can do in two months. Not that I plan to try to operate in Hindi to any degree, but I feel it would help.

Also, also, I am working on memorizing the major gods and goddesses, which is going well, as well as state names and capitals, which is going...not so well, but I will master it!

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.

The History of Indian English Literature

The final topic I have been considering, is the development of English literature in India. Basically its history, where it came from, where it is, and maybe where it is going, if it is possible to tell that.

In doing this I would need to take a survey of Indian literature from its inception to the present. I think the most important and difficult part of this would be finding the origins. I would like to get down to the very details. When were Indians first using English? And then from those beginnings in clerical notes or whatever it was, trace it all the way back up to the present where there is now everything from user manuals to novels to comics produced in India, by Indians, for Indians in English. I would need to know significant trends and movements, the major authors and influences, the major impetuses for Indians to write in English, and maybe public opinion about English all along the way.

I think libraries, schools, universities, book stores, publishers, and government offices would be my primary sources for information. I do not know how much normal people would be of help in this case, but they might be. It is probably not possible to simply go through everything. I would need to have people that know about these things to contact and work with. I also would need to have a plan of major sources and things that I would need to hit to really learn anything.

The purpose of this would be to put together a coherent sort of history, I guess, of Indian writing in English. I do not think I would have time to do much detail, so it would probably end up being sort of a brief introduction to the topic. Tracing the Origins of Indian writing in English would relate back to its current place in post-colonial literature. By looking at where it has come from, where it is, and where it is going, I would hope to gain insight into how it fits into the paradigm of post-colonilial literature and how it fits into contemporary Indian culture. Perhaps they are related in some way.

I think the main concerns I have with this is that it is such a huge topic and there isn't really a good way to narrow it down. I could choose a specific segment of history to focus on, but anything but the most recent time periods would not really help in looking at how Indian literature fits in with post-colonialism. Also, there is the problem of finding all the sources and knowing them well enough to write them into a history. I assume this is a huge amount of documents. The history of English in India goes back at least a few hundred years. I do not know if I could track down everything I need. I am not exactly sure where to look for it. I get the feeling that I am not going to find what I need in the United States, but in India, at this point, I am not exactly sure where to start looking for something like that. I feel like I would run out of time before I made any significant headway.

Anyhow, that I guess concludes my five question analyses for now. I am tired so they kept getting shorter. I feel bad about that, but I just want to get them done. I feel kind of paralyzed in my research right now because these topics don't exactly jive perfectly. Writing them out has actually really helped me kind of get a feel for what I actually want to do while I am in India and what would conceivably even be possible. I am kind of burned out on writing for the moment, but remind me to write about an epiphany I had about reading while I was thinking about and writing these. I do not know if it will actually end up relevant, but it has suddenly changed how I look at my project. Also, I need to update the Intent and logs pages on my blog. I want to get them with something in them.

18th and 19th Century Urdu Poetry

The Mughal Empire, while initially militaristic, at some point in its history, fairly quickly actually if I remember correctly, turned into a center of learning and culture. The Mughal court in Delhi was a huge center for Urdu poetry and literature. There were tons of poets and the royal court sponsored poetry readings and festivals for its celebration. The last Mughal Emperor, and probably some of the other ones, actually were decent poets in their own right, in many ways mirroring the court of Queen Elizabeth in England. Many of the best poets were given status as nobles and were respected in society. There is a huge body of Urdu poetry from this time period as they developed new styles of writing and experimented.

I really would like to go to Delhi and see what I can find of this lost tradition. I know that in the mutiny papers from the 1857 rebellion, there is some of the Urdu poetry. I should think that the central archive has copies of these works. I am not sure if the universities have anything or not.

The goal of doing this would be to go through and perform some analysis and critical examination of Urdu literature during the late Mughal period when literature was at its height, basically the hundred years between the mid 1700's ending with the 1857 rebellion. I would want to look at as many of the originals as possible, and barring that, the poetry presented in the original Urdu, printed in Urdu. This would cover everything from what was written, to how it was written, to how it was presented. Essentially your standard literary analysis. I would need to be in India and actually specifically in New Delhi/Delhi because that is where all of this went down and where I assume most of the originals still are.

This project does have a few minor concerns and one huge concern. The biggest problem is that the English, bless their hearts, destroyed a huge chunk of Urdu literature when they sacked Delhi in 1857. Entire libraries of priceless manuscripts were destroyed or burned or stolen. Even the work of living poets was lost. Considering the manuscript culture of the time, in many cases the texts destroyed were the only existent copies. Thus I am not even sure exactly how much of the Urdu literature I want to study actually still exists since the English performed a sort of cultural cleansing on it. Some other problems are tracking them down. Some of them might be museum pieces, which would make things difficult, either through not being able to see them, having to analyze them through glass, only being able to see one page through glass, or the simple difficulty of trying to access to each of the museums they are in, if they are even in local museums. Another problem is I can't read Urdu, at least not yet. Urdu is essentially identical to Hindi, so that wouldn't be a problem per se, but I would have to learn how to read Urdu, since I don't think relying on a translator is practical or ideal. That basically defeats the whole purpose of traveling to Delhi  in the first place. Another similar problem, is even if I learn to read and write Urdu, I do not know if hand written manuscripts would be legible to me. They could be too ornate or too messy for me to really accomplish much.

English vs. Native Languages

I would like to look at the status of English language Indian writing as compared to the status of Indian writing in native languages such as Hindi, Urdu, Telugu, Tamil, etc. This relates back to post-colonialism, I guess. The idea would be to place English writing in the context of the writing going on in other languages.

I would look at the amount of writing in each language, how often they are translated into one another, where they are sold, what are the demographics for each, do certain languages cater to certain classes of people. I would also want to look at things like themes and ideas. Is there certain things they write about? If English writing is considered post-colonial because it deals with the issues of getting back to the original culture and de-colonizing, what if native language writing is dealing with the same themes? Is it post-colonial? If it is in a native language, say Hindi, (sorry Tamil, no bias, I swear) and it is effectively completely controlled by solely Indians, can it be considered post-colonial? What literary forms occur in native languages? Indians (and most countries for that matter) often express a desire to resist westernization. How much has western ideas infiltrated native writing? How closely tied to the rest of the western world is English literature? How closely connected to the past literary tradition is literature in native languages? Does Indian writing in English often follow genres and forms usually found or created in native Indian languages?

Basically I would be looking at the literature, not the people. I would need to see what is available for sale, what is in libraries, what people own, what is taught in schools. I guess all of this would be impacted first by finding out prevalences. If there really isn't much of a certain language or something, that would be highly indicative. Information from publishers and authors would be helpful. Even though this is all literature analysis, essentially, I would have to be in India since native Indian language texts really do not make it far beyond the borders of India.

The goal of all of this would be to be able to put together a sort of ethnography? study? report? (I don't know what you would call it) on literature as a whole within India. This would then allow a more even perspective of English literature in India. Through this I would be able to answer questions about whether English is a weird upstart, whether it is a significant literature movement, if it is ,as Salman Rushdie claims, an Indian literary language, and whether or not it meshes more with Indian literature as a whole, or with post-colonial literature.

This topic does have some problems in that this would require the study not only of works in English, but in other languages. And not just one other language, but a bunch of different languages. It would be impossible for me to learn the languages enough to do this sort of thing. I could probably get Hindi where it needs to be in time, possibly Urdu if I had to. (since I essentially just need to figure out the dag blasted alphabet) However I would have to rely of people and/or translators for books in other languages. I am concerned on how possible that would be. This could be too huge of a topic. It might be better to focus on something like English literature versus Hindi literature. I am also not sure if it is possible to look at this from so many different angles at once. It might be necessary considering time and skill constraints to simply look at publishing rates and readership or else just themes and movements or something. I still also have to deal with the sheer mass of each body of literature which each might make a study of even either of them by themselves impossible.

Emma Roberts

Last semester, I had to do a project in my romanticism class in which I had to find an obscure British poet and then research the background and important context on one of their poems. I ended up choosing Emma Roberts for her connection to India. She lived in India for over a decade, if I remember. Maybe I am remembering wrong. Anyhow, she lived there for at least a few years on two separate trips. At the time she was a fairly well known writer in England. She published several books of her travel writing that initially appeared in magazines. While I was researching her though, I found that there were basically no resources available about her. There was some biography and the oldest documents all referenced her journals and letters. However I was never able to find the original journals and letters, only references to them in old books. Actually, only in one old book. She died in India, so my question is, is there some trace or evidence of Emma Roberts left in India?

Basically I would be going back to snoop around in the national archive as well as in the cities she lived in to see if some of her documents are holed up somewhere forgotten or if they are in a university library or something like that.

I don't quite know if I would limit myself to Emma Roberts or not. What I am most interested in seeing is not so much her writing of the time, since most that was sent to England anyways, but what she thought of India in her personal writings. Thus I have thought about expanding it to include the writings of any British women living in India from around 1800 through 1947. I want to know what they thought about conditions there, the people, how they felt about being there, and what they did everyday.

To do this I would have to first somehow find a list of people that were there, hopefully with some idea of who might have left some sort of record that could still possibly be there. In India I would have to find a network of people who might know, get access to the national archive (which would require prior permission, of course), and visit necessary libraries, cemeteries, government buildings, etc. This would require some travel, which I am not stoked about, since it would add difficulty, but as things are, I would probably have to visit places like Kolkata, Mumbai, and Simla in addition to Delhi.

Through this I would hope to be able to put together a coherent picture of colonial India through they eyes of British women as an alternative history rather than the one often told from the perspective the male British military commanders and government officers or the native populace whether complacent or insurgent. Actually looking at it all from the perspective of the native female would be super fascinating, but I do not know if any such record exists. I will do some research, but I only know of one really influential female who would have written down stuff, the Begum Sumroo. I do not know if there are any like her.

Some concerns I have with this topic are the amount of work it would require, the barrier of history, and time constraints. I do not feel like the topic is horrendously broad, however I am obviously not going to be able to just travel to important cities and do a few house visits. Since no one has really done much like this before, (at least that I have found, I am still researching) it is unlikely that these records are in one convenient location or even gathered at all. I do not know if there is even enough time to track down this many records. Trying to follow one person could be more time intensive than a single summer could allow. I think my biggest concern is simply how much time has passed. Huge political upheavals like the 1857 uprising and India gaining its independence involved a large movement of the British. I am sure there are more periods of upheaval, but any of these inevitably result in the loss of documents. If the people I am researching are not important, their journals and documents may have just been thrown away or destroyed from lack of care. I also am not even sure where to begin looking for that kind of thing. I think most of it, (if it still exists) if it has not been collected by the government then it is probably either knowingly or unknowingly in private collections. It may be impossible from the start to get the records. I guess identifying important historical structures might help, however doing a historical survey of even a single city is probably beyond my skill and more than could be done in three months.

Why Indians Read and Write

So I decided to kind of work my way through each of my possible topics here. I really would like to narrow it down so I can better focus my research. Reading a bunch of novels and background stuff is great for the trip, but it doesn't do much for my project.

In studying what Indians read and write, I want to look at where literature is in India today. When I have lived in India, I have never really ever noticed anyone reading anything other than a newspaper. Most homes I have visited had textbooks and possibly some religious books, but not always. As far as I could tell and from the few people I asked in passing, it really seemed like most Indians did not do much reading for pleasure or self-motivated instruction. Granted, I do not have many rich friends in India. Maybe they are the ones who read more. There are many book stores, both legitimate as well as black market. Supposedly in a part of Hyderabad there is a book sale every Sunday. There are books, I just cannot seem to find the readers. Or the writers for that matter.

Another aspect that I am interested is in how Indian literature in English relates to post-colonial literature. I have been doing some background reading into the state of post-colonial literature and how it works. From here in the West, there is not much exposure to Indian literature, and so they fit nicely into the paradigm of post-colonialism. However, there are hints in some things I have read, and in my assessment of Indian culture that there is more to Indian literature than just trying to navigate out of a colonized mindset. I want to go see what is on the ground in India. What are they writing and reading thematically? How often is the influence of the British mentioned? The robustness of Indian culture that is independent in so many ways to the West suggests that perhaps Indian literature is also more independent than the West gives it credit for.

In India with this project idea I would get to know people, interview them about what they read, what books and authors they are familiar with, how they feel about Western and Indian literature. I would visit book stores and publishing houses to see what trends are happening, where the publishing market is going, where the authors are coming from, and what their goals are. I would find whatever authors are available and see if I can meet with them about their writing, why they write, and who they are writing for, and also what they hope to accomplish by writing. I would also meet with university professors, officials, and k-12 (well, the Indian equivalent, since it isn't quite the same, I should post about that actually) teachers and administrators about what they teach in the classroom and how they feel about what Indian students should be learning.

I guess the ultimate goal of this would be a kind of ethnography of reading (thank you Ashley giving me the label). I want to get a snapshot of reading in India. This would orient me to where India is in the world of literature. Maybe they should still be babied in post-colonialism. But maybe there is enough there and enough independence that it is essentially bigoted to lump them in with every other colony from anywhere in the world. I think a big part of this is, while post-colonial scholars do note that countries like Canada and the United States are colonies themselves, there is definitely a different tone to the United States' literature's label as "post-colonial" and India's literature's label as "post-colonial." I use these terms a lot, but I think I need to stop and define the difference between post-colonial and "post-colonial," if there is a difference even.

Some concerns: The more I think about this topic the more I feel crushed under its size. It is a simultaneous feeling of it crushing me under its weight as well as the feeling of trying to catch fog in a jar. It just is ephemeral and floats away and spreads and I cannot really grasp it. I feel like this could actually be like five different projects focusing on each of these. I feel I could probably combine some of these ideas, but I worry about it being too broad and general to really mean anything. The label of ethnography also makes me nervous. To me an ethnography is something huge that takes place over at least eight months to a decade that involves a ton of research and an eventual big report or book. I understand that is not the expectation of a field study, but I worry that what I can accomplish in three months will be too small. Everyone is important and part of the data, but knowing what a few people think that is not really conclusive across a culture in any way is kind of wasteful to me. The experience regardless will be good, but I do not want to start a project I feel is futile from the start. I am not an anthropology major, so I don't know that having a failure experience with ethnography exactly fits in with what I want to do with my life. Also I do not know that it will in any way help the discussion of literature in India, which is part of what I want to accomplish. I think my primary opposition to this idea is that I really do not feel capable at all at conducting an ethnography. I do not know that I have the skill set to do this. I do not know if I can reign in the topic enough to make it both viable and interesting to me. But this idea is what brought me to a field study in the first place, and it is one of the most legitimate reasons to actual visit the country.

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.

Source 4

For my fourth source I think I will just use The Little Book of Hindu Deities. I know it is kind of silly, but it was actually a surprisingly informative book. I learned a lot about the Hindu deities. However I still face the never-ending problem that even though I now know one version of the story, when I talk to Hindus I know or people who know about Hinduism, no one ever agrees on the same version of the story. C'est la vie, I suppose. I should learn how to say that or the equivalent phrase in Hindi. The goal of this weekend and next week is to now actually find more helpful sources. I mean, these are helpful, but I mean something more like a scholarly source, maybe a study or something. This background stuff is great, but I think I definitely need to find a significant body of critical literature and probably anthropological studies since they will have bearing on my project.

Source 3 Redux

Okay, so apparently we were supposed to do the question format for four sources, not two. Oh well. So I redid my entry on Nine Lives. Anyhow, here it is after the jump.

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.

Second Source

So I decided to just go with The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay. Part of that choice was time constraints, part of it was I actually kind of think it applies. The questions were definitely awkward to answer for this book, since it is not a scholarly source, per se. It will have great bearing on my project, however. So thus I think it works as a source. At least at the beginning. This weekend especially, and next week I am really going to focus on lining up some good sources from a more academic/methodological perspective. I will have to get into the archive of past projects to see what other people have done with similar topics and maybe use them as sources to analyze or maybe I can even cannibalize their sources to jump start my own research.

This weekend I am going to go through everything I need to do and what I want to do with this project. I am kind of struggling with figuring out what direction to go for research, since I am not exactly sure where to find scholarly sources and methodology on a project like this.

Anyhow, source दो after the jump.

I need a second source

I am not really sure which one to use for the one tomorrow. I have about ten other books I have read as part of my initial research, but a lot of them, well they are novels and stuff. They are all by Indians, with the exception of The Last Mughal which was by William Dalrymple. However while they may end up informing the direction my project goes, I do not know that they are the sort of thing I would cite necessarily. I am thinking about using The Lost Flamingos of Bombay because that would factor heavily into my ideas about India being fairly independent. However I also sort of feel that it is a fairly western novel. I mean it isn't. The concepts of love and friendship expressed in it (and which arguably form its central thesis) (oh. my. gosh. I can't believe I just talked about the central thesis of a light fiction/quasi-romance novel. I think I just lost some of my personhood) anyhow, these concepts are very much Indian. I have encountered no other society that expresses them so melodramatically. However the exploration of sexual topics as well as the idea of a novel that basically focuses on the rich...I can't decide if the author is just aping the West (a phrase I picked up in India, does that even work in America? is it a British phrase? I have no idea) or if it is a legitimate expression of India just being itself and moving forward. I mean, part of my perspective on the issue is that even if what India writes is exactly like what an American or British author would write, it doesn't matter because as long as India is happy with it and it is what India chooses to do, not because they want approval from the West, but because it is just what they want, then it is the best possible thing for them to do and in no way a form of lingering colonial oppression. So I am still kind of on a fence about that. Plus the worksheet that we fill out seems extremely slanted towards specific, scholarly research. Like I can only see literary criticism articles really applying to those six questions. I don't think the history and fiction novels I have been reading could really be said to have an argument or sources. I mean the history one does, but not in the way that I would be using it.

Bah. I think I will search around a little bit more, but the problem is I do not know that there is a ton of scholarly literature on Indian literature. Last semester I wrote an analysis on three of Jhumpa Lahiri's short stories. It was sort of difficult finding useful critical sources. And she is technically an American. I should have ordered a copy of JNU's journal of literary criticism a few months ago when I was tempted to. That would probably come in handy now.

Oh well. In other news, I broke down and finally bought a copy of the Qur'an (Koran? I don't know the currently acceptable Englishization of that word) for some background reading. I have already read two sort of easy versions of the Ramayan and I have a literary version, but I have been holding off on buying the Qur'an (that one looks the most accurate, although that could just be my western stereotyping of the Arabic world (read: (especially in this case) the orient) making that judgment) because I know that unlike most Hindu religious texts, it seems like translation matters. I just want the most accurate possible text. However I have concluded that it seems like every text is considered biased by someone. I will probably just have to end up getting four or five Qur'ans to get as accurate picture of the text as possible. I also would like to read the Mahabharat before I leave, but we will see if I get around to that. The version that I would like to read is like eighty dollars, so I will have to find something cheaper. Bah! Why does translation have to complicate everything so much! I have so much background reading to do! I really want my other English reading assignments to go away so I can dig into the six or seven books I bought about Hinduism and Islam. I really want to have a fairly good grip on the religions this time round.

Oh, and I think I will post the twenty-five question thing tomorrow. I think I will use it as a warm up for class since I won't have any Hindi homework I have to cram.

Also, this weekend I promise I will get caught up on tags. It is on my to do list. Incidentally making a to do list is also on my to do list. But I digress.

Cultural Blends

Okay, so I searched around and I think I found the reading I was supposed to do. I think it is the first chapter from the book Language Shock: Understanding the Culture of Conversation by Michael Agar. They have a preview on Google Books. It was missing four pages, but I think I got the gist of it. At least I hope. I can't access the field study blackboard, so if it is in there in a PDF or something convenient like that, I haven't been able to get to it. Oh well. Anyhow, so what did I think? He has some interesting ideas. I found that by the end my brain was kind of hurting from his use of the word culture. He used it about every other sentence and I started to feel like I actually didn't understand quite what he meant by culture. Like it was coming up as a blank spot. The word was suddenly undefined and that made it difficult to read. Actually that is kind of ironic, because I think that is what he was talking about, the misunderstanding of words even though the grammar and the fluency is there technically. I feel like the basic idea is that you can't really communicate unless you are fluent in culture. If I understand the word culture in that context. You can accept an invitation to come for tea, but if you do not understand the proper etiquette and process behind an invitation to come for tea, you are not really communicating with the person who invited you to tea, even though if someone asked each person what they understood, they would probably be able to answer. I found his ideas about Americans as number-ones or whatever term he used as very interesting and insightful. I know I have been in that boat before. I have worked hard to get out of it, but I do not know how far along that path I actually am. I sort of get a deja vu feeling from reading this chapter. Basically it is saying the same thing that the short article about what students don't learn abroad, just in more eloquent and round about terms. I guess the challenge then is to try to not be a number-one kind of person and to be open to the culture of other people, not just intellectually, but...intuitively? I don't quite know what word to put there. I think the hardest part about that is that so often you do it without thinking about it. Cultural perspectives are so deeply grained you don't think about it. When I go out to eat it always takes a few minutes before anyone suggests that it is okay to start eating before other people's food arrives. In India if you are the guest it would be awkward if you waited for the host to eat since actually quite often the host, if it is a hostess won't eat until after you leave. That isn't something I would ever have thought about and it isn't something that would ever have come up in normal conversation. No one explained that to me when they invited me for dinner, I learned it when I tried to wait for the host to eat. I am sure there are many more situations like that that I will figure out the hard way. I guess the trick is to try to be as perceptive as possible to pick them up as early as possible. Maybe I should just learn to ask a lot of questions? Of course that suggests knowing whether or not questions are culturally acceptable, or at least in what contexts/times. Although I do believe that part of doing what Agar suggests is learning to be a foreigner. I disagree with his maybe suggestion, if I am reading it correctly, that someone else's culture can become your own. That may be possible with European cultures that are somewhat similar to America, but I do not believe that a white person could ever really adopt African or Chinese or Indian culture. You can go a long way to picking up some of the culture, but you can never be part of it. Okay, well, let me just speak for India, which is what I know. In all my experience I have never seen it work, and in all my reading I have only ever heard of one person, a Frenchman, described as being truly accepted by the Indian people. However how much of that is reality and how much of that is optimistic history, I will never know.

And it is late late late! Tomorrow is going to suck. But it is finished! Sort of. Minus four pages. Also this analysis is not all that great because I read and analyzed everything after midnight. Not a recipe for success. No tags for you! Yet, anyways.

Trying not to panic

I feel like all my blog titles sound like little cries for help lately. They aren't really, I just have no idea what to title a blog entry and I hate leaving them blank. Being faced with that little title line is so stressful. Actually sometimes it dissuades me from writing a blog entry. I crumble under the pressure of having to produce so many titles.


Anyhow, in light of not really knowing what to do, I have been searching through the few field study blogs that I know of to see if I can figure out what I am supposed to be doing. Luckily Matt Merrill who went to MacLeod Ganj or however you spell it posted what I think is the worksheet I am supposed to have filled out. As far as I can tell, this blog is the online portfolio? I have no idea. I will assume so.


Anyhow, so here we are. Here is my first analysis thingy. I am not terribly pleased with it. I do not think I go into enough detail. Now that they mention it, I would sort of like to go back and examine the sources they use in more detail as well as break down the themes/ideas in the book. Although I suppose that is basically the desire I already had when I decided I needed to re-read it. Oh well. And actually I won't make you read it, so if you want to, you can see it after the jump. Also they say I need tags. Blast it, I am not ready! Oh well, this weekend I shall do it, since I must, I suppose.

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!