Red Snapper advises us that Kiran Desai was awarded the MAN Booker Prize for her novel The Inheritance of Loss just moments ago. Here is the official press release:
Chair of the judges, Hermione Lee, made the announcement at the awards dinner at the Guildhall, London, which was broadcast live on the BBC 10 O’ Clock News. Harvey McGrath, Chairman of Man Group plc, presented Kiran Desai with a cheque for £50,000.
Hermione Lee comments,
“We are delighted to announce that the winner of the Man Booker Prize for 2006 is Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss, a magnificent novel of humane breadth and wisdom, comic tenderness and powerful political acuteness. The winner was chosen, after a long, passionate and generous debate, from a shortlist of five other strong and original voices.”
Over and above her prize of £50,000, Kiran Desai is guaranteed a huge increase in sales and recognition worldwide. Each of the six shortlisted authors, including the winner, receives £2,500 and a designer-bound edition of their book.
The judging panel for the 2006 Man Booker Prize for Fiction is: Hermione Lee (Chair), biographer, academic and reviewer; Simon Armitage, poet and novelist; Candia McWilliam, award-winning novelist; critic Anthony Quinn; and actor Fiona Shaw.
The press release reminds us that Kiran Desai is 35 and the daughter of author Anita Desai. Also, according to the release, Kiran is currently a student in the creative writing program at Columbia. I’m sure her classmates aren’t intimidated! Salman Rushdie calls Kiran “a terrific writer,” which is more than he had to say about John Updike.
Seriously though: Warm and sepia-tinted congratulations to Kiran Desai and let’s all run out and read her book.
bengali, you’re not alone.
To keep the pattern which started early on going,
Macacaroach =
THE MoorNam OF Language.
I am a modern Indian. English is my mother tongue. The only language of a modern, unified India.
while in india…a congress session or something of the sort was on the tube..it was amusing to watch each ‘representative’ speak their regional tongue and nobody understanding anybody… from kannada to guju…to telegu…to punjabi… and a few hindi speakers… it’s a messy myriad of linguistics.. i agree with hari… i think english is the modern language of unified india..
how did this post go from congratulating desai on winning a fantastic prize for her writing to languages in india..
randomness…
but yeah for desai and orhan pamuk for winning the 2006 nobel in lit..
Well.. that’s the beauty of India.. You have to get over the mindset of thinking India as one homogeneous place.. A developed India would be like what EU wants to be in the future, a single political union consisting of diverse peoples and cultures with a single currency and a single army.. We could choose any language to be a ‘link language’.. Right now, English fits the criteria perfect as a link between states within India and with other countries..
I think I’d agree more with ‘macacaroach’ on educating kids in their native languages..
Ponniyin Selvan
i do believe in educating yourself in your mother tongue…it’s important.. well that is what i believe after waking up early every saturday morning when i was a child for my dad to teach me how to read/write/speak gujarati… according to baba ganoush, ‘if you lose your mother tongue, you lose part of your cultural heritage’…
but for politics and such..it’s important to communicate… clearly… and it was a mockery to watch everyone blurt out (sans real intrepreters as they have in the UN and other global arenas..)…
keep the mother tongue… not saying never teach the kids that… i believe it’s necessary… however, don’t be a monolingual person… fluency in other languages is KEY in the world today… english & spanish being on the forefront…
As a link language its origin from outside fits perfectly because it is neutral on internal dynamics — impose Hindi, for example, and Tamil and Punjabi and Bengali speakers will object to that hegemony, and quite rightly too. As for the colonial complex, well it just shows to me the maturity of most Indians that they have shrugged that off, and the fact that English is and will be the global lingua franca of the future is just another reason for it being taught as the unifying tongue. Also, I once read somebody, I think he was Tamil, talking about how hypocritical it was for Tamil nationalists or Hindi nationalists or whoever to deny poor children the right to learn English at primary school level, and deny them access the jobs and education and potential that English gives, whilst making sure that the rich politicians kids themselves all learn to speak English fluently.
Oops
I meant to say “…and extended family speak to him in English although they are Malayalees”. Also the quoting of some paragraphs is messed up. More typing, more errors.
Selva, as usual, you took some words right out of my mouth, man! This time about the EU thing – comes up every now and then in my office. Chick pea, Baba Ganoush was indeed a great saint. I’ve had the opportunity to see babaji only once. Now he has become part of me and speaks to me from within 🙂 Snapper, I agree with you on why one of the Indian languages simply can’t serve as a link language.
Hari, that’s so depressing.
Kurma, frankly I’m not concerned with the Malayalee person who grew up in Delhi or the Bengali who grew up in Chennai. I’m talking about the marginalisation and strangling to death of Indian languages which is going on as we speak. If you disagree with me, fine. But what strikes me as sad is your lack of emotional or sentimental attachment to (as you so coldly put it) your ‘parents’ language’. Language isn’t (or at least shouldn’t be) merely a functional tool; it has cultural dimensions, it’s a treasure that you INHERIT, it’s part of your ethnic identity. You can’t separate language from culture. Punjabis in Delhi like the type shown in Monsoon Wedding (i.e. Hinglish speaking Punjabis) are not culturally as Punjabi as those living in Punjab, speaking Punjabi…the same goes for your Italian-American example…they are not the same as Italians…on many levels. However, even for a 4th gen Italian-American, who may not know a word of Italian, the Italin language IS a part of his cultural heritage, no matter what. He has a relationship with Italian that he has with NO other language on this Earth (even if it’s totally latent and never actually manifests in anyway).
LAstly, one argument of yours which I find ridiculous is the one that if your Maharashtrian parents (for example) speak English to you, then now English is your mothertongue. I know that for you that neatly (and conveniently) solves the whole problem. To me that’s bullshit. In that case the parents failed and deprived you of your own language. Your mothertongue is still Marathi.
I will quote from the song I linked to above…
Beadabaan Beqadaraan ne kad qadar kise di payi…meaning “When have crude and worthless people ever realised the value of anyone/anything…”
I am out of this debate…I feel very strongly about these things and it depresses me to know that people can value their language so little. But I have to accept it. Later.
Right Harry 🙂
How seriously twisted to claim that a foreign language understood by a tiny minority is the “only language”/”mother tongue” of a nation of a billion souls.
Macaculay’s children indeed. And proud of it too!
While all you anglophiles congratulate yourselves over a part-german desi winning a 25000 pound literary award for second rate fiction in english, the news today is that a writer from Turkey won the million dollar Nobel Prize in Literature. For writing in turkish, his mother tongue. Just imagine folks, people actually write novels, and do science and technology, and conduct business in languages other than english. 🙂
There’s a big world out there, beyond the Anglosphere led by America, which has replaced the British Empire in the colonized minds of the “english proficient” class of desis.
Just as you are not as Punjabi as a Punjabi living in Punjab. So what? Cultures and languages involve, if you consider them to be a ‘lesser Punjabi’ because they speak Punjabi with a Hindi, or London, or Toronto accent rather than a Ludhiana lilt, then you’re relegating yourself too. Plus it seems really rigid as a source of identity to sneer at Punjabi people living outside of Punjab for not speaking the language properly, that would mean most Punjabis, Gujaratis, Bengalis in the UK are outcastes, for a start!
The same people will still loudly proclaim (on occasions when it is beneficial for them to do so) that they are ‘proud Gujaratis’ or ‘proud Bengalis’ or ‘proud Punjabis’. Disgusting.
Yes. Obscene! How dare they! LoL
You know sometimes, I am proud of the fact that I only speak Hindi with a London accent, and can’t pronounce certain words, because it’s who I am, and I don’t care what anyone things about what kind of Hindustani it makes me!
But what strikes me as sad is your lack of emotional or sentimental attachment to (as you so coldly put it) your ‘parents’ language’. Language isn’t (or at least shouldn’t be) merely a functional tool; it has cultural dimensions, it’s a treasure that you INHERIT, it’s part of your ethnic identity. You can’t separate language from culture. Punjabis in Delhi like the type shown in Monsoon Wedding (i.e. Hinglish speaking Punjabis) are not culturally as Punjabi as those living in Punjab, speaking Punjabi…the same goes for your Italian-American example…they are not the same as Italians…on many levels. However, even for a 4th gen Italian-American, who may not know a word of Italian, the Italin language IS a part of his cultural heritage, no matter what. He has a relationship with Italian that he has with NO other language on this Earth (even if it’s totally latent and never actually manifests in anyway).
Amitabh: Some of us might not particularly care about the preservation of our culture. I dont plan on teaching my kids any Urdu. I think you are not taking into account the fact that we all have different value systems.
Last comment on my part (I hope):
Red Snapper, you are correct; but what about people (Punjabis) in Chandigarh or Lahore who can’t speak Punjabi? And believe me there are PLENTY of them.
Yikes how may typos did I make! evolve instead of ‘involve’ and thinks instead of ‘things’
My crappy Hindi is spilling into my English spelling, oh save me from this abyss of mistaken identity!
All that shows is the stupidity of India’s politicians and the farce that is indian democracy. People who aren’t so clueless use translator’s in such situations.
I’m making an ass out of myself by continuing to comment when I said I wouldn’t anymore, but just to be clear, I’m NOT TALKING ABOUT THE DIASPORA, I’m talking about people in India, living in their native regions, who nonetheless are adopting English as their primary language. As for cultural/linguistic change, OF COURSE I agree that it occurs, it’s healthy and natural…but the rate and forced nature of the changes going on today is very unhealthy, in my view. I remember reading a survey someone did in Lahore…they found that many words which were common in Punjabi as recently as 20-30 years ago, are now no longer understood by the majority of youth there. It’s a failure of society and the educational system.
Amitabh — I think you are really being melodramatic over the fact that a few Monsoon Wedding types in Chandigarh and Lahore don’t speak Punjabi properly, as if Punjabi is about to die. Come on that is just scaremongering. Everyone has different values and priorities. Raging against them seems pointless, just teach your own kids Punjabi if it matters to you and don’t sneer at people because they treat languages differently. There are those kinds of people in the UK who sneer at you if you mispronounce a word in Hindi or Punjabi or Gujarati —- I used to feel ashamed, now I just tell them to suck eggs and mock their stupid bud-bud-bud Peter Sellers English accents in return. And if I am a lesser Indian by their reckoning, they can suck eggs again because I don’t want anything to do with people like that!
The Trinidadian Indians have it right – they virtually invented their own creole, so sexy when you see a brown girl from Trinidad speaking, me jus’ love the way dem coolie fellahs speak you know?
Anyway, peace Amitabh 😉
Peace brother, I was never pissed off at you!
Amitabh – I think Hindi is a bigger problem than English if we’re talking about the disintegration of the Punjabi language in India. None of my relatives in Delhi speak Punjabi because they’re conditioned to believe that its “low class” to do so – direct quote from my cousin. If they’re caught speaking Punjabi in school, they’re punished for it. To me, that’s a bigger issue than them speaking more English.
Sonia how does your cousin get punished for speaking Punjabi in school, do they whip him? Seems to me you should have words with your aunty and uncle rather than blaming the hordes of Hindi speaking cutthroats out to strangle like a boa constrictor the language of Punjabi!
The problem is not that the anglophile desis wish they were white anglosaxons, the problem is that these people who have alienated themselves from the great majority of desis, constitute a priviliged elite. This is nothing but colonialism part deux. The white sahib has gone but he has left behind inferior, half-baked black/brown wannabe versions of himself to rule the hapless natives. And these native sahibs have been complete failures.
Of course the deepest desire of this class is to escape from India and become citizens of a white majority nation. 🙂
Hmm, does your dayjob also involve taking people’s words and multiplying the emotion behind them by 1000? Because you sure seem to do a lot of that on SM.
This is precisely why I’m talking to you and bringing in Italians etc. Why the pass for the diaspora? So, Indians living in their native regions are trapped in having to speak in their language to be “good” people? They become disgusting if they want to speak in English or Hindi instead, whereas the diaspora has the license. So, for full freedom to speak in another language, they have to leave the country? It’s clear that the person who lives in Kerala will have to speak Malayalam simply from practical considerations. Or not, if they can get away with it on practical grounds depending on their circumstances. But let’s not make value judgements.
Kurma, if you don’t get it, you just don’t get it. Or maybe I just don’t get it. We’ll have to agree to disagree. Love for your language should not be based on just ‘practical considerations’. Peace. Sonia, I agree with you completetly…BOTH Hindi and English (and Urdu in Pakistan) are having a negative impact on Punjabi.
Do you believe people exist for culture’s benefit, or culture exists for people’s?
I was just asking because it’s exactly the kind of thing my relatives say when faced with the fact that some of my uncles and aunts decided not to teach my cousins Hindi when they were born in England (one of them even saying, as he smoked a French cigarette [gitanes], that he didnt want to ‘disable’ his sons by teaching them the mother tongue, well I caught him reading Sartre once and he always was a pompous old fart)…and then another Uncle blames it all on the strangling vampire English Count Dracula sucking the blood of the Indians, whose parents decided not to teach them in the first place. Just rang a bell is all. Sorry to multiply your emotions.
So, if OP’s work was not translated from Turkish to English would he have won the Nobel?
Peace, of course, Amitabh.
That’s too bad. I’d rather wait and agree if possible than agree to disagree. As you have noticed, the preservation of certain cultural aspects in India doesn’t hold as much importance to me as it does it you. There are many things in favor of which, I’d sacrifice this. But then there are people like you who differ from me in their opinion and I wanted to probe it further, test it with some examples etc so that I can see what it is that you are saying exactly. I did learn a new point of view about how ditching English might help India technologically from Macacaroach’s first 2 or 3 comments before he started acting like a stuck LP. However, I realize that it’s not fair to ask you to spend your time explaining this to me. No worries. I’m sure to get some glimpses of your reasoning from your comments on other threads. I did have more thoughts to add here though but was extremely busy in the day today. Let me see if I can do that tomorrow.
HAI VIEWERS SENT WALLAERS
Hi this is kolam…. But then there are people like you who differ from me in their opinion and I wanted to probe it further….www.manadhi.com
Not surprising, The Brits have a thing about the Indian Writers…wasn’t this years ago?