In 2017, the English Department hosted academics, authors and publishers, who interacted with the students on various subjects.
In Conversation with Dr. Jon Wilson
The first talk of the semester, by Dr. Jon Wilson, was a collaborative effort of the Departments of History and English. Held on 16th August, the talk was titled "The Chaos of Empire: Rethinking the Rise and Fall of the British Raj". A senior lecturer at a King's College, London, Dr. Wilson analyzed the correlation between violence and power, and the resultant instability of British colonialism.
Guest Lecture: Harriet Raghunathan
On 22nd September, the English Literary Association organized a talk with Ms. Harriet Raghunathan on "Milton and the Rebellious Individual". Ms. Raghunathan is a well-known name among the student body, as she has edited several coursebooks for English undergraduates, including the Worldview edition of Paradise Lost by John Milton. Ms. Raghunathan delivered an enlightening lecture, highlighting the life and times of Milton. Aakanksha Panchal covered the event.
Screening: Oh What a Lovely War!
On 20th October, the English Literary Association organized a screening of the film Oh What a Lovely War. The 1969 musical, directed by David Attenborough, revolves around World War I, war propaganda, and the loss of human life. The session was overseen by Dr. Shernaz Cama, who discussed some of its major themes following the screening.
The Global Indian Family - A Talk By Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
“Fiction tells the deeper truths. It’s not just about the historical facts; it delves deeper into human nature and psychology.”
What constitutes diaspora writing? What are the various challenges that an immigrant author has to face? How does diaspora writing remain authentic and true to its sources?
To answer all of these questions and more, the Department of English of Lady Shri Ram College for Women organized a talk with eminent Indian-American author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni on the 17th of January, 2017. Divakaruni is the author of Mistress of Spices and The Palace of Illusions, among other books. In her writing, she has explored genres such as magical realism and historical fiction. She is also involved in activism against domestic abuse faced by women in South Asia and is also a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Houston.
For Divakaruni, her Indian roots serve as artistic matter. She began her talk by discussing how immigration was a transformative experience in her life and how she primarily deals with the experiences of immigrant life in her novels. Simultaneously, she finds that she writes very different kinds of novels, across various genres, with a ubiquitous focus: women. According to her, “It is very important to tell the women’s story and to give her a voice that will allow her to tell her own story. I want to go deep into her heart so that I can explore her dreams, desires, wishes and fears. For centuries, people have been writing stories where a woman’s thoughts and feelings have been pushed to the edges and have not been given importance, or they have been interpreted through the male gaze… so in my writing I want to put the woman right at the centre.” In this light, she talked about her latest novel, Before We Visit the Goddess, which is about three generations of strong female protagonists. The book is set in Kolkata and the United States and examines the relationship of the three women with their homeland.
What constitutes diaspora writing? What are the various challenges that an immigrant author has to face? How does diaspora writing remain authentic and true to its sources?
To answer all of these questions and more, the Department of English of Lady Shri Ram College for Women organized a talk with eminent Indian-American author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni on the 17th of January, 2017. Divakaruni is the author of Mistress of Spices and The Palace of Illusions, among other books. In her writing, she has explored genres such as magical realism and historical fiction. She is also involved in activism against domestic abuse faced by women in South Asia and is also a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Houston.
For Divakaruni, her Indian roots serve as artistic matter. She began her talk by discussing how immigration was a transformative experience in her life and how she primarily deals with the experiences of immigrant life in her novels. Simultaneously, she finds that she writes very different kinds of novels, across various genres, with a ubiquitous focus: women. According to her, “It is very important to tell the women’s story and to give her a voice that will allow her to tell her own story. I want to go deep into her heart so that I can explore her dreams, desires, wishes and fears. For centuries, people have been writing stories where a woman’s thoughts and feelings have been pushed to the edges and have not been given importance, or they have been interpreted through the male gaze… so in my writing I want to put the woman right at the centre.” In this light, she talked about her latest novel, Before We Visit the Goddess, which is about three generations of strong female protagonists. The book is set in Kolkata and the United States and examines the relationship of the three women with their homeland.
For Divakaruni, her Indian roots serve as artistic matter. She began her talk by discussing how immigration was a transformative experience in her life and how she primarily deals with the experiences of immigrant life in her novels. Simultaneously, she finds that she writes very different kinds of novels, across various genres, with a ubiquitous focus: women.
When asked for the source of her inspiration, Divakaruni finds that for each book the inspiration is very different. The loss of her mother was a significant turning point in her life because it made her think about the inherited nature of heritage. So connecting to a different generation, heritage and culture are the important themes which she explores in her novels. This is also the case in her latest book. In conclusion, she read an excerpt from her upcoming novel, ending with a cliffhanger. In response to the ensuing restlessness, Divakaruni laughed and said that the audience would have to read her novel to find out what happens next.
This was followed by a small, but lively, interactive session, which the author concluded with a book-signing.
Ankita Adak
Image: Deyasini Chatterjee
This was followed by a small, but lively, interactive session, which the author concluded with a book-signing.
Ankita Adak
Image: Deyasini Chatterjee
“I Write for Women and Intelligent Men”: On Imagination, Writing, and the Family
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is a familiar name for readers of contemporary fiction. The Mistress of Spices and The Palace of Illusions both attracted international audiences, and galvanised several debates about ideas of “Indianness”, diasporic writing, and the woman in popular imagination. She is, additionally, an educator—currently teaching an MFA course as the University of Houston—and an activist, having worked with domestic abuse survivors through two organisations, Maitri and Daya. Ankita Adak, Sanna Jain and Tript Kaur spoke to her on the sidelines of a session on “The Global Indian Family” at Lady Shri Ram College:
You have spoken about the idea of the “Global Indian”, but the idea of ‘Indian’ is itself pretty much contested. For instance, we have the idea of “Kashmiri-American”, and of “Dalit-American”, rather than “Indian-American”. How do you examine the “Global Indian”?
CBD: You know, it’s very important when we are using these terms, to think of them as inclusive and not exclusive. Because when we start thinking of them as exclusive, we get upset because we feel ‘why should I be called this instead of that?’ But if I think that these are just ways for people to think of me or my work and as a means of conceptualizing—I can be a “Bengali-American” as well as an “Indian-American”, or a “Hindu-American” as well as something else. So, I’m many different things. Just like in my life I’m a writer, a mother and a teacher. None of these labels are exclusive to each other; they just help people to understand one side of who I am. That’s why I don’t have a problem with most labels, unless when some labels are given to people in harmful ways. As long as the intent is not harmful, that’s just another way of describing me. So, I’m very comfortable with labels because amongst many things that I am, I am also an “Indian-American”.
We also have some situations in which people reject labels. So, do we have a space in our literary world for them? As for instance, a “Dalit-American” explicitly takes on that identity and they want to write about how they have been ostracized by the Indian community. Do they really have a space?
CBD: Yes, why not? If they say, from now on, please refer to me as a “Dalit-American” for this reason and we accept that, then surely there is. We are always creating new categories. First there was Indian-American, now there’s “South-Asian American”. Look at all the terms that have come up for gay people. Many of them were created as the movement progressed. I think that there are always opportunities. If people clarify why they want it and make enough of a case for themselves, I think those terms will become more used. So, it’s not anyone else that denies us a term that we want for ourselves, sometimes it’s our inability to express clearly, powerfully and persuasively why that term is important for us.
You talked about being born and brought up in Kolkata and being influenced by Bengali folktales and stories. The socio- cultural or the political environment of Kolkata in the ‘70s—when you lived there—is very different from present-day Kolkata. How do you incorporate that difference, when you have to describe present-day Kolkata while writing from Texas?
CBD: The way I incorporate the different times I write about is through research. Some of it is my own lived experience, but that’s only one part of what I write about. Let’s say like a book like Sister of My Heart is set pretty much in the time when I grew up in Kolkata, but a book like Before We Visit The Goddess begins when the grandmother is old, so then I have to do research. I also go back and visit from time to time, so I have a sense of life as it is lived now and I talk to a lot of people, I meet people or I just eavesdrop on conversations (laughs), and so I am learning about what people thinking and how their world-view is changing.
You have explored the family dynamic in a lot of your novels. But the family itself is fraught terrain. How do you negotiate this territory?
CBD: In my books relating to families, there are many different kinds of families I’m exploring, including strong families that are falling apart. Often in my books, the family would be missing some element, which would put stress upon it. In Before We Visit the Goddess, for instance, in the first two cases we will see that at a certain time, at a certain point, the marriages end either through death, or divorce, or something else. So the family itself is a changing unit. Relationships within the family are also constantly changing. And yet some things remain the same. Those are some things that I really try to explore. In fact, it’s not even families in different generations that are different. Each family is unique.
Women who face abuse, face situations where they are subjected to violence, are not only in situations where the family becomes claustrophobic, but also where they are without a family system. As an activist, how do you approach these different kinds of vulnerabilities?
CBD: You said very rightly that the causes of these situations of abuse are often different. So when we’re dealing with a particular case, we try to figure out what the problem is. That is the first thing. We’re looking at what is the source of the abuse, what is the reason for the abuse and what is the situation that allows the abuse to take place. Once we figure that out, we talk to the women about it. We talk about the different actions she can take.
One of the toughest things in working in this field is that even when you see the woman has a particular problem and you feel very strongly that, let’s say, in a situation of domestic violence, that she really needs to leave her husband and go start a life over again in some other place, we cannot make that happen. The woman has to be autonomous. And that’s one of the hardest things, because we can suggest, we can say—we think for this reason you should do this—but if she doesn’t want to, we can’t force her. That’s just not how it works. I think, that’s one of the hardest things we do—make her see that she deserves something better.
You talked about the authenticity of sources for the development of plotlines for your novel. As an emigrant writing about India, you have to rely very heavily on memory. How do you ensure that memory functions as an authentic source?
CBD: That’s a very good question. In fact, you can never be sure because memory is a very tricky thing. So you remember the best as you can and then you have to do some research to make sure that you are remembering the right things. For instance, in my book One Amazing Thing, there’s a mention of a very famous bakery called Flurys in Kolkata. It’s important in that story. I remembered it from my childhood days- it was this amazing place that was very expensive, so only went there on special occasions. I have this child’s memory of it. And then I thought maybe I better do some research and figure out. And actually when I did research and found photos online of Flurys—oh my goodness! it looked very different from how I’d imagined it, how I’d remembered it through a faulty imagination, through memory and imagination all going together, from a child’s perspective. So I think when we are dealing with facts, we have to double check but if we’re dealing with feelings, memory is perfectly okay because the feelings are your own.
Speaking of the process of writing—in one of your interviews, published by OUP India, you said that mothers “are very hard to talk about”. Your latest book foregrounds the mother-daughter relationship. What’s your takeaway from the process of ‘writing’ mothers?
CBD: (laughing) I’d say they’re still hard to write about!
It all depends. If you can look at a character not just as a mother, but as an entity in herself. I really try to take these women as complete characters. Not only is that useful for me as a writer, I want to promote that idea, as a theme or belief, that a woman can never be defined by one particular role. We, as women, take on many roles, and the way we juggle them has a lot to do with who we ultimately are. No one role defines us.
In The Palace of Illusions, we see this in Draupadi and Kunti.
CBD: Absolutely. Draupadi sees her mainly as daughter-in-law and therefore they have an adversarial relationship, but we begin to see other things. We see her as a mother, as a queen; and as this young woman who was left with these little children and had to figure out how to bring them up. That is my hope: that as a writer, even as I’m writing a character, I’ll be able to imagine these characters from all these different angles.
While portraying women in your books, you often incorporate a lot of divine and mythical elements. Does thus stem from the fact that in India, we often attribute female power and strength to goddesses?
CBD: Definitely. And the very title of this book [Before We Visit the Goddess] is talking about those divine elements, which are inside of each woman. So, the goddess—on one level in the story there’s a particular goddess temple, but on another level, it’s that journey to visit the goddess inside.
Do you think that only by giving that divine or mythic trait can you provide agency to the women in your books?
CBD: Maybe we should think of it in a different way. I don’t feel like I’m giving them that trait, I feel like that trait is already there and I’m just pointing people to it. I very seriously believe that we have a spiritual or divine level to our lives. Not everyone is aware of it, but when we become aware of it, it empowers us greatly. That’s one side of it. But women can be empowered in many different ways. I just think this is one of the best and highest ways of empowering ourselves.
You’ve written for young adults and adults, and you’ve also written for children. Do you see these as distinct roles? Are there different expectations from these roles?
CBD: Well, as for the expectation—they have to be different kinds of books, because they’re for different ages. A good children’s book has to be something that a child can relate to, and if it’s a good book, then certainly adults will also be able to relate to it.
Children’s books focus more heavily on certain elements, such as plot. When I was writing The Conch Bearer, my oldest child was just about the age where he could read it. So every day he’d come back from school, and he’d say, ‘So, what have you written, Mum?’— (laughing) he was a tyrant! He made write more than any editor ever did. He’d say, ‘Mom, this is not exciting, nothing’s happening!’, and I realised that a child reader requires certain things. The plot element has to be much more important, and hopefully, we also have the character element. But character without plot is not useful for a child, that’s just not how they approach the world.
Writing and publishing come with the anticipation of a particular audience. Who is your target audience?
CBD: Well, I said a long time ago that I write for women and intelligent men (laughs). Really, my target audience is anyone who will pick up the book and give it attention. I think that sometimes writing for a target audience can be very harmful for us, because then we begin to clamp down on our imagination, or what we can write. Or we begin to think, ‘Oh, my target audience won’t like this’, or that they won’t relate to it. I always tell my students not to write for anyone in particular. Just focus on the story. Write for the sake of making it the best story you can possible make, and then your audience will come.
Image: Deyasini Chatterjee
You have spoken about the idea of the “Global Indian”, but the idea of ‘Indian’ is itself pretty much contested. For instance, we have the idea of “Kashmiri-American”, and of “Dalit-American”, rather than “Indian-American”. How do you examine the “Global Indian”?
CBD: You know, it’s very important when we are using these terms, to think of them as inclusive and not exclusive. Because when we start thinking of them as exclusive, we get upset because we feel ‘why should I be called this instead of that?’ But if I think that these are just ways for people to think of me or my work and as a means of conceptualizing—I can be a “Bengali-American” as well as an “Indian-American”, or a “Hindu-American” as well as something else. So, I’m many different things. Just like in my life I’m a writer, a mother and a teacher. None of these labels are exclusive to each other; they just help people to understand one side of who I am. That’s why I don’t have a problem with most labels, unless when some labels are given to people in harmful ways. As long as the intent is not harmful, that’s just another way of describing me. So, I’m very comfortable with labels because amongst many things that I am, I am also an “Indian-American”.
We also have some situations in which people reject labels. So, do we have a space in our literary world for them? As for instance, a “Dalit-American” explicitly takes on that identity and they want to write about how they have been ostracized by the Indian community. Do they really have a space?
CBD: Yes, why not? If they say, from now on, please refer to me as a “Dalit-American” for this reason and we accept that, then surely there is. We are always creating new categories. First there was Indian-American, now there’s “South-Asian American”. Look at all the terms that have come up for gay people. Many of them were created as the movement progressed. I think that there are always opportunities. If people clarify why they want it and make enough of a case for themselves, I think those terms will become more used. So, it’s not anyone else that denies us a term that we want for ourselves, sometimes it’s our inability to express clearly, powerfully and persuasively why that term is important for us.
You talked about being born and brought up in Kolkata and being influenced by Bengali folktales and stories. The socio- cultural or the political environment of Kolkata in the ‘70s—when you lived there—is very different from present-day Kolkata. How do you incorporate that difference, when you have to describe present-day Kolkata while writing from Texas?
CBD: The way I incorporate the different times I write about is through research. Some of it is my own lived experience, but that’s only one part of what I write about. Let’s say like a book like Sister of My Heart is set pretty much in the time when I grew up in Kolkata, but a book like Before We Visit The Goddess begins when the grandmother is old, so then I have to do research. I also go back and visit from time to time, so I have a sense of life as it is lived now and I talk to a lot of people, I meet people or I just eavesdrop on conversations (laughs), and so I am learning about what people thinking and how their world-view is changing.
You have explored the family dynamic in a lot of your novels. But the family itself is fraught terrain. How do you negotiate this territory?
CBD: In my books relating to families, there are many different kinds of families I’m exploring, including strong families that are falling apart. Often in my books, the family would be missing some element, which would put stress upon it. In Before We Visit the Goddess, for instance, in the first two cases we will see that at a certain time, at a certain point, the marriages end either through death, or divorce, or something else. So the family itself is a changing unit. Relationships within the family are also constantly changing. And yet some things remain the same. Those are some things that I really try to explore. In fact, it’s not even families in different generations that are different. Each family is unique.
Women who face abuse, face situations where they are subjected to violence, are not only in situations where the family becomes claustrophobic, but also where they are without a family system. As an activist, how do you approach these different kinds of vulnerabilities?
CBD: You said very rightly that the causes of these situations of abuse are often different. So when we’re dealing with a particular case, we try to figure out what the problem is. That is the first thing. We’re looking at what is the source of the abuse, what is the reason for the abuse and what is the situation that allows the abuse to take place. Once we figure that out, we talk to the women about it. We talk about the different actions she can take.
One of the toughest things in working in this field is that even when you see the woman has a particular problem and you feel very strongly that, let’s say, in a situation of domestic violence, that she really needs to leave her husband and go start a life over again in some other place, we cannot make that happen. The woman has to be autonomous. And that’s one of the hardest things, because we can suggest, we can say—we think for this reason you should do this—but if she doesn’t want to, we can’t force her. That’s just not how it works. I think, that’s one of the hardest things we do—make her see that she deserves something better.
You talked about the authenticity of sources for the development of plotlines for your novel. As an emigrant writing about India, you have to rely very heavily on memory. How do you ensure that memory functions as an authentic source?
CBD: That’s a very good question. In fact, you can never be sure because memory is a very tricky thing. So you remember the best as you can and then you have to do some research to make sure that you are remembering the right things. For instance, in my book One Amazing Thing, there’s a mention of a very famous bakery called Flurys in Kolkata. It’s important in that story. I remembered it from my childhood days- it was this amazing place that was very expensive, so only went there on special occasions. I have this child’s memory of it. And then I thought maybe I better do some research and figure out. And actually when I did research and found photos online of Flurys—oh my goodness! it looked very different from how I’d imagined it, how I’d remembered it through a faulty imagination, through memory and imagination all going together, from a child’s perspective. So I think when we are dealing with facts, we have to double check but if we’re dealing with feelings, memory is perfectly okay because the feelings are your own.
Speaking of the process of writing—in one of your interviews, published by OUP India, you said that mothers “are very hard to talk about”. Your latest book foregrounds the mother-daughter relationship. What’s your takeaway from the process of ‘writing’ mothers?
CBD: (laughing) I’d say they’re still hard to write about!
It all depends. If you can look at a character not just as a mother, but as an entity in herself. I really try to take these women as complete characters. Not only is that useful for me as a writer, I want to promote that idea, as a theme or belief, that a woman can never be defined by one particular role. We, as women, take on many roles, and the way we juggle them has a lot to do with who we ultimately are. No one role defines us.
In The Palace of Illusions, we see this in Draupadi and Kunti.
CBD: Absolutely. Draupadi sees her mainly as daughter-in-law and therefore they have an adversarial relationship, but we begin to see other things. We see her as a mother, as a queen; and as this young woman who was left with these little children and had to figure out how to bring them up. That is my hope: that as a writer, even as I’m writing a character, I’ll be able to imagine these characters from all these different angles.
While portraying women in your books, you often incorporate a lot of divine and mythical elements. Does thus stem from the fact that in India, we often attribute female power and strength to goddesses?
CBD: Definitely. And the very title of this book [Before We Visit the Goddess] is talking about those divine elements, which are inside of each woman. So, the goddess—on one level in the story there’s a particular goddess temple, but on another level, it’s that journey to visit the goddess inside.
Do you think that only by giving that divine or mythic trait can you provide agency to the women in your books?
CBD: Maybe we should think of it in a different way. I don’t feel like I’m giving them that trait, I feel like that trait is already there and I’m just pointing people to it. I very seriously believe that we have a spiritual or divine level to our lives. Not everyone is aware of it, but when we become aware of it, it empowers us greatly. That’s one side of it. But women can be empowered in many different ways. I just think this is one of the best and highest ways of empowering ourselves.
You’ve written for young adults and adults, and you’ve also written for children. Do you see these as distinct roles? Are there different expectations from these roles?
CBD: Well, as for the expectation—they have to be different kinds of books, because they’re for different ages. A good children’s book has to be something that a child can relate to, and if it’s a good book, then certainly adults will also be able to relate to it.
Children’s books focus more heavily on certain elements, such as plot. When I was writing The Conch Bearer, my oldest child was just about the age where he could read it. So every day he’d come back from school, and he’d say, ‘So, what have you written, Mum?’— (laughing) he was a tyrant! He made write more than any editor ever did. He’d say, ‘Mom, this is not exciting, nothing’s happening!’, and I realised that a child reader requires certain things. The plot element has to be much more important, and hopefully, we also have the character element. But character without plot is not useful for a child, that’s just not how they approach the world.
Writing and publishing come with the anticipation of a particular audience. Who is your target audience?
CBD: Well, I said a long time ago that I write for women and intelligent men (laughs). Really, my target audience is anyone who will pick up the book and give it attention. I think that sometimes writing for a target audience can be very harmful for us, because then we begin to clamp down on our imagination, or what we can write. Or we begin to think, ‘Oh, my target audience won’t like this’, or that they won’t relate to it. I always tell my students not to write for anyone in particular. Just focus on the story. Write for the sake of making it the best story you can possible make, and then your audience will come.
Image: Deyasini Chatterjee
In Conversation with Kaartikeya Bajpai
On the 23rd of January the Department of English hosted a talk in collaboration with Expressions, by the founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Bombay Review, Kaartikeya Bajpai. The talk had two broad points of focus: Kaartikeya discussed the role of literary magazines in the publishing industry and also made a case for the greater involvement of young people in the global literary project.
Kaartikeya harbours a great deal of cynicism about the large publishing companies that dominate the industry. He feels they prioritise the marketability of “prominent literary figure” to the point where it becomes difficult for younger, newer writing voices to be heard. In this context, he sees literary magazines as providing a starting point for young writers who wish to build skills and credibility. He spoke about how his own experience with reaching out to large publishing firms was made easier after building a solid literary resume.
One of Kaartikeya’s chief concerns is the “issues” of the youth. He wishes to consolidate expressions of angst and discontent from all over the country, in different media and present some of these works in The Bombay Review. He sees it as a “cultural and social project”. To this end, he conducted a brief writing exercise as part of the interaction and participants silently put down their thoughts on the matters that they considered to be of importance in their lives.
By means of The Bombay Review and the workshops and events that he organizes, Kaartikeya Bajpai hopes to create a “passionate, lively reading culture,” one that makes efficient use of digital networks to a sense of intimacy and immediacy for readers and writers alike.
Dakshayini Suresh
Image: Shivani Raturi
A Novel Way of Looking at a Novel
Even though these excerpts were written in English, he pointed out that the diasporic writer had a certain privileged position in literature to write about his/her community- as both an insider and outsider, what Rushdie majorly calls “whole sight”. He went on to explain why this wouldn’t necessarily have a “national identity” but rather a communal identity, in a certain way the writer marketing the literature and community.
On 24th January 2017, the Department of English organised a session with Dr Ross Forman called 'The Global City' at the New Conference Hall. Dr Forman is an Associate professor at the University of Warwick, and teaches English and Comparative Literary studies. His research is related to queer studies, postcolonial literature and British imperialism.
In a very interactive and participatory manner, he talked about the ways in which the novel is reaching its global form. He emphasised on aspects of class and status and the value of inculcating a holistic view of the globalized city. He questioned the idea of the “Global City”, while showing pictures from various parts of the world, laying emphasis on their similarity. According to Forman, the global city challenges normative ideas of shared history and community. By tracing the root of the word Diaspora, from Greek – to spread seeds – he went on to discuss the proliferation of interconnected ideas and globalisation, when it comes to novels.
With the idea of the ‘Imagined Homeland” (by Rushdie), Dr Forman gave examples from many different novels talking about the homeland which is not tactile reality but more in the “mind’s eye”. These novels traced the context and content of fiction and the target audience that they had in their mind. Even though these excerpts were written in English, he pointed out that the diasporic writer had a certain privileged position in literature to write about his/her community- as both an insider and outsider- what Rushdie majorly calls “whole sight”. He went on to explain why this wouldn’t necessarily have a “national identity” but rather a communal identity, in a certain way the writer marketing the literature and community.
This conversation of Diaspora segued into more pertinent aspects of transnationalism, where people align themselves with the national. Dr Forman emphasised the “urban imagination” than the national image. He went on to talk about how the post-colonial novel played an important role in secularisation. However, the position for secularization is privileged, and intertwined with canonical politics.
In the concluding words, he talked about national hybridity, and how the post-colonial novel is moving towards it and yet far away from it. The session ended with well thought questions and their subsequent answers, bringing a wonderful session to an end.
Samidha Kalia
Image: Yanam Bage
In a very interactive and participatory manner, he talked about the ways in which the novel is reaching its global form. He emphasised on aspects of class and status and the value of inculcating a holistic view of the globalized city. He questioned the idea of the “Global City”, while showing pictures from various parts of the world, laying emphasis on their similarity. According to Forman, the global city challenges normative ideas of shared history and community. By tracing the root of the word Diaspora, from Greek – to spread seeds – he went on to discuss the proliferation of interconnected ideas and globalisation, when it comes to novels.
With the idea of the ‘Imagined Homeland” (by Rushdie), Dr Forman gave examples from many different novels talking about the homeland which is not tactile reality but more in the “mind’s eye”. These novels traced the context and content of fiction and the target audience that they had in their mind. Even though these excerpts were written in English, he pointed out that the diasporic writer had a certain privileged position in literature to write about his/her community- as both an insider and outsider- what Rushdie majorly calls “whole sight”. He went on to explain why this wouldn’t necessarily have a “national identity” but rather a communal identity, in a certain way the writer marketing the literature and community.
This conversation of Diaspora segued into more pertinent aspects of transnationalism, where people align themselves with the national. Dr Forman emphasised the “urban imagination” than the national image. He went on to talk about how the post-colonial novel played an important role in secularisation. However, the position for secularization is privileged, and intertwined with canonical politics.
In the concluding words, he talked about national hybridity, and how the post-colonial novel is moving towards it and yet far away from it. The session ended with well thought questions and their subsequent answers, bringing a wonderful session to an end.
Samidha Kalia
Image: Yanam Bage
Prelude to Laughing Matters: Open Mic
On 22nd February, the English Department organized an Open Mic as a prelude to Laughing Matters. The event saw cross-department participation, with students singing, reciting poetry and presenting stand-up comedy. Here are photos from the fun-filled event, courtesy Shivani Raturi, Aneesha Sopori and Deyasini Chatterjee.
Tea-a-Tete 2017
On 9th March, Jabberwock, the English Department academic journal, organized Tea-a-Tete 2017, where students and teachers gathered for an informal interactive session. Students from all three years bonded with their professors over food, stories and games. Dr. Shernaz Cama even baked lovely cheese pies and walnut chocolate cake for the gathering. The professors regaled the students with stories from their own college times, as we let them in on our own misdemeanours (which -surprise, surprise- they were always aware of!). Simran Sidhu captured some moments of bonding and laughter.
Background Image: Anuja Dasgupta