_________________________________________________________________ A look at Wallia's essay _________________________________________________________________ * _To_: Multiple recipients of list SASIALIT <[5]SASIALIT@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU> * _Subject_: A look at Wallia's essay * _From_: Subir Grewal <[6]grewals@ACF2.NYU.EDU> * _Date_: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 19:38:56 -0500 * _Reply-To_: Subir Grewal <[7]grewals@ACF2.NYU.EDU> * _Sender_: SASIALIT -- Literature of South Asia and the Indian diaspora <[8]SASIALIT@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU> _________________________________________________________________ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- After a brief look at Wallia's essay, which I found rather derisive. I have these points to make. Wallia definitely needs to loosen up a bit, the guy's stiff collar is choking him to death. I don't know who exactly he is but he sounds amazingly like Makhijani would if he'd studied at Oxford. Now, The essay contains the following text ______________________________________________________________________________ Aurora Zogoiby, a famous painter, we are told is "a giant public figure ...the confidante-- and according to persistent rumours, mistress-- of Pandit Nehru." Moreover,"...there was the group of distinguished writers who gathered for a time under Aurora's wing, Premchand and Sadat Hasan Manto and Mulk Raj Anand and Ismat Chugtai..." Four of the biggest names, all literary lions. All right, we understand that Aurora is a very sophisticated lady. Now, this is the Indian-English Rushdie wants us to believe Aurora articulates: " Oho-ho girl, what a shock you gave, one day you will killofy my heart..."; ______________________________________________________________________________ CJS Wallia Phd, gets no points in my book for using the word "sophisticated". There are obvious problems with the assumption that someone who is "sophisticated" must necessarily speak BBC English. My mother is quite capable of conversing with just about anyone she wishes, she only bothers to speak "correct" English when she's angry at some pretentious fool. Aurora I would like to believe is somewhat like my mom. (Now, we can talk about why I felt it necessary to claim for my mother the ability to speak "perfect" English, later). Wallia then, is perhaps stuck in a realm where the correct English is that spoken by the natives, i.e. native to England, and an India where the upper classes speak faultless English. One can only believe something as preposterous as this if one's entire life has been spent watching the "news in English" on Doordarshan. I've met more than enough people who've read SV and enjoyed it, to be convinced that Wallia's claim about SV's popularity is baseless. As Rushdie himself remarked, a book is not a movie, people don't read books as soon as they buy them (at least not all of us) and it takes about 5 years before a significant number of people who've bought a book have read it. I myself have SV sitting on my bookshelf waiting for a short slot of about 4 days when I can spend some time with it. The question about the date for the Babri masjid is an interesting one. In Imaginary Homelands Rushdie confessed that there were many "discrepancies" in Midnight's historical allusions. Not unsurprisingly, one can read this into the novel as an expression of history in flux, a self that is. Then again, it's just a number. It would be absurd to ask whether the "mistake" were intended or unintended, that's inconsequential. What is consequential is that you can get something out of it, unless you're as obssesed with the preoccupations of the pedant, chief among them being "library work". Wallia hasn't read Seth if he claims that Rushdie alone is obsessed with rhyme. But rhyme works in different ways for these authors. For Seth it is poetry, in Rushdie it is the allure of "soo chhe saroo chhe, danda leke maroo chhe". The rhyme, often nonsense rhyme (where's ezeikel!) that is the fever of the moment. What's the deal with "authenticity" anyway. The gods have stood up for bastards, but perhaps Wallia (willie, wally, willie-wallie?) slept through that. Yes, Rushdie has given the sub-continent a "voice", not the voice of the vedas at all. But the voice for another sort of people, the voices they speak in when wandering around the streets of their cities, the voices we know so well from playgrounds in so many "english-medium" schools and the voices of the hesitant. These are not the voices of the Mahabharat or the Veda (oh, Willie-wallie insists on writing Mahabharata, an anglicization I find chaffing). We are not Vyas, nor are we Tagore, perhaps bits and pieces of them. We are, I am closer to Rushdie by far. As for Rushdie's alleged pandering "to his Euro-centered readers" one must point out that the average European would find Rushdie very difficult. If anything I'm quite concerned that Rushdie is writing for only one specific person, the Urban Indian. I'm not sure whether that's a good thing. We probably need glossaries for his novels. Wallia's concern about Rushdie's euro-centeredness is preposterous when one considers Rushdie's critical writing. But far be it from me to suggest that the novelist knows what his novels "mean". As a final taste of Willie's condition, really tight underwear I'm sure here's a taste of his particular blindness to imagery in ficition: ________________________________________________________________________ In _The Moor's Last Sigh, _for example, the first person narrator writes, "In Punjab, Assam, Kashmir, Meerut--in Delhi, in Calcutta--from time to time they slit their neighbours' throats and took warm showers, or red bubble-baths, in all that spuming blood." True, religious riots do erupt every now and then and people do get stabbed, typically in hit-and-run killings; however, this "red bubble-baths" is a hundred percent Rushdie fabrication. About as authentic as Steven Spielberg's _Temple of Doom _showing Indians feasting on monkey brains. The country that practically innovated vegetarianism! Disgusting. __________________________________________________________________________ Prescriptions for Willie-Wallie * Hang out with Khushwant Singh a little more often * Begin wearing a kachhera * Drop the PhD -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQB1AwUBMUDS+BwDKqi8Iu65AQEXlQMAnioOaJiJjUYE1dn0hz9r9TmJ1L+ZDRnK EWRHMjeiS/h6Fr3oX6u/uIGxIR9na6VnITCMkTOEJTa9Wzmxh7uzsgBbE/FDw4TU 52VsXqPxCbSHySWYp+9EBz2W/xoWLoLJ =nvcO -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Subir Blue Ribbon Education officer, comp.advocacy@NYU http://www.nyu.edu/pages/advocacy/ PGP Key fingerprint = C5 92 27 76 A0 E4 8B A0 65 A8 ED 05 11 DF A3 3A ---------------My Opinions 0.93b; bugs >> grewals@acf2.nyu.edu-------------- Fine day to work off excess energy. Steal something heavy.