ಮನಕ್ಕೆ ನೆನಹಾಗಿ...

First up, I am *not* a critic of art. I am just an enthusiast. I am also a small time writer hopeful of making it big. (Or at least I think I can make it big. No one can deny me the right to dream you know... ;) ). However, I can definitely tell good literature from bad, though I cannot formalize my ideas as to why I decided something to be good or otherwise.

Alright! Now that I have put up that disclaimer, I will come to the purpose of this post. Yesterday I read a couple of articles which made me think and revisit a few questions that I have had since long.

Amit Choudhary writes in The Telegraph about the 'Two questions that Indian writers in English are always asked'. Amit Varma has responded to this on his blog. I agree with the observations at both the places. However, I have some other questions that are related. I will try and make my point, perhaps, through those questions.

How does the world identify Indian literature? Do the Indian writers writing in English represent Indian literature? Do they present their works as 'this is what is Indian literature' before the world? Do they present Indian literature in its entirety? Should they do it? Can they do it? Is it not important that Indian literature is represented in its entirety? If this is not possible, is it not important that a comprehensive sampling of Indian literature is done, so that the world can identify it?

I also have another set of questions. Are the writers writing in regional languages identified at all? Do they even get a chance to represent? Don't they can make a better representation? Don't they present Indian literature with more authority and a more unique identity?

Well, I have not read Indian English literature extensively (though have read regional language literature reasonably extensively). Nonetheless, I have always believed that the Indian writers writing in English have an obvious advantage over those writing in regional languages. I also have been skeptical about them for reasons I cannot very well express, though I have tried below to do so. Probably, I don't find the works in English as desi as the ones in regional languages. I find them mostly urbane . I also have this firm notion that writing has become rather simple to the Indian writers writing in English. I am sure that the above observations are far from exact, but these observations almost demotivate me to buy and read English works by Indian writers. Further, probably due to the lack of extensive reading of such works, the above notions become stronger. It has become kind of a cycle! However, this skepticism dramatically subsides when it comes to buying/reading books written in English by native speakers, and books translated into English from foreign languages.

Supposing one produces one book each by Shivaram Karanth (or Saratchandra or Vasadevan Nayar or Jayakantan), Salman Rushdie and Marquez, and asks me to chose any two, I would surely go for the first and the last. This remains true for most such combinations. Not that I haven't read Rushdie, nor is it that he is not a very good writer. But just that, while reading, he or other Indian writers writing in English, for that matter, somehow don't get as close to me as the other two. The former somehow seem to be telling me their stories from a distance, and I start getting a feeling that they don't really want to come close! After some time, in fact, I start getting convinced that they can't come close!

Is there something wrong with the English writing by Indian writers? Or is there something fundamentally wrong with my attitude? I am not too sure, but intuition tells me that there cannot be anything so fundamentally wrong with my attitude.

One more aspect that adds to this skeptical attitude is the disappointment that the regional language writers hardly get much recognition despite their brilliance. This is due to the fact that most works don't get translated, and even those that are fortunate of getting translated don't get the required publicity. An outcome of this is that works in English get international recognition (a k a, Booker Prize), though they might not be half as decent as a book written in a regional language. There are so many wonderfully written books, both in terms of novelty in technique and depth, which hardly find a mention at the International level.

I am hopeful that sometimes in the near future I will write a comparison of U R Anantamurthy's masterpiece Samskara (1966) and Marquez's tour de force Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981). They both seem to run through the same theme - to celebrate the qualities of life of a certain community (at a certain period of time in history) by capturing the collective psyche/attitude of the community toward an incident. But due to my inadequacies of knowledge and style, I sincerely wish that serious literary critics take up such jobs and more (translations, critiques, reviews, comparative analyses). If that can happen, I am sure that we can present Indian literature in a more fair and authoritative manner. It also will have a stronger representation.