Random Reflections

Just finished reading and making some editorial-notes-to-myself kinds of work on my old essay on Belinda's petition. The basic work is there, the theoretical premise, I think, works, but the writing itself needs to be developed a lot more. Besides, I need to see where the other primary materials are going. One thing I noticed while making those editorial comments, I do tend to write EXTREMELY long sentences. Is it a fallout of my post-colonial education, I wonder?

Was reading Rana Dasgupta's Muse India interview earlier today. I haven't had a chance to read his books, they have been on my list for a long time now, but I haven't had a chance to get to them so far. At one point, Dasgupta says, on being asked to speak about his choice to set his stories/novels outside India, responds:

There is particular kind of psychological sensitivity in India to ridiculously claim that there is no poverty or violence in the country. Poverty and violence are absolutely legitimate subjects to write about. I still haven’t found a way of writing about this country. It’s a very, very complex place and it’s been written about very much. I would like to write about this country, and if I do, it will probably be non-fiction because I find that the reality of this country is itself complete. One doesn’t have to make it up. The reality is so stark and intense that just reporting on it, as it is, is kind of enough.

I agree with Dasgupta on a few counts:

a. Poverty and violence are legitimate subjects for fictional/literary discourse.

b. India is a very very complex place.

But I am not sure what to think of the other stuff. South Asia, undoubtedly, is an over-written region. India is itself an extremely over-written country. But isn't every over-written place an extremely under-written place too? I am yet to come across a novel/short story which speaks, for instance, about the lives of me and my friends in Kolkata. Similarly, I am not totally in agreement with his view that the "reality" in India is "itself complete." For, to me, no reality is ever complete. Similarly, fictional representation is not just about "making up." Neither it is about "reporting." To me, it's this complex combination of imagination, social analysis and this awareness of being rooted in history. The best I can come close to is thinking of it as a process where one tries to find out how individuals embody social history in and through their seemingly inconsequential actions and activities. And then, of course, translating all of that into language, into forms. In what Dasgupta saying, I am not finding that complex inter-relationship. Maybe I will understand what he is trying to say when I read his stories and novel.

You can read the entire interview here.