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.
…does this have anything to do with the fact that Hindi, for example, has no contraction for the possessive per se. We use “ka”….as in baap ka bageecha
True. Imagine ‘Ring’s Lords’….or ‘Being’s Unbearable Lightness’.
LOL
Well done Kiran Desai!
The Lorenzo of Oil
Wrath’s Grapes ?
Job’s Book.
Mohicans’ Last?
Two can play this game 🙂 .
Thats a silly, stupid spin tash, that reveals a lot about you.
So when she wrote that indians are not a scrawny and undernourished society anymore, she was actually talking about the english language “literary establishment” that a tiny fraction of indian society partakes in? LOL.
wouldn’t that be The Oil of Lorenzo?
Thats a silly, stupid spin tash
RTFA. She’s talking about Indian writing in English:
Imagine ‘Ring’s Lords’….or ‘Being’s Unbearable Lightness’.
Sign’s Painter Arrival’s Enigma Pi’s Life Sun Alsorises
Um, half the novel is a jeremiad against globalization’s effects on poor Indians.
I’m not surprised. The delightful Mr. Pankaj Mishra was utterly tickled by her tale:
Any novel “arguing” against globalization and multiculturalism is liable to be sick with the torsion that springs from self-righteousness, and will only appeal to idealogues espousing your politics. A bad recipe for literature, unless you have the preternatural gifts of say, Tolstoy. This applies to any writer, any political leaning. Naipaul extolling Hindutva and excoriating Marxists would be funny, but most probably just as sententious.
Speaking of Naipaul:
Early in the novel, she sets two Anglophilic Indian women to discussing “A Bend in the River,” V. S. Naipaul’s powerfully bleak novel about traditional Africa’s encounter with the modern world. Lola, whose clothesline sags “under a load of Marks and Spencer’s panties,” thinks Naipaul is “strange. Stuck in the past. . . . He has not progressed. Colonial neurosis, he’s never freed himself from it.” Lola goes on to accuse Naipaul of ignoring the fact that there is a “new England,” a “completely cosmopolitan society” where “chicken tikka masala has replaced fish and chips as the No. 1 takeout dinner.”
Fuck Yo Couch England. And Ms. Desai, that is hackneyed and wrong. The Enigma of Arrival is beyond you.
I wonder if India is the only country in the world whose literary lions write in a foreign language that is incomprehensible to the vast majority of its citizens?
It is also very shameful that desis are one of the very few peoples of the world (the only others are africans I think)who need a foreign language to do science and technology in.
I suspect that this craven, slavish reliance on english is one of the major reasons why the subcontinent lags behind the rest of the world.
What other language would you have Indians do science in? Hindi? Or would you like people of each state to do science in their own language?
Small Things’ God The Matters of the Family
I suspect that this absurd refusal to let go of futile self-defeating nationalism is one of the major reasons why the subcontinent lags behind the rest of the world. (Incidentally, I love that there are so many people here complaining about people who write well in English, in English.)
Kya baat hai!
What other language would you have Indians do science in? Hindi? Or would you like people of each state to do science in their own language?
So i guess Language is now part of nationality not the culture. And isnt this site all about South Asian culture? Probably that and english language.
Bilkul sahi baat hai Jaanab!
Of course she says that…it suits her very well. I would love to know if she can speak ANY Indian language half way decently…oh I forgot, English IS an Indian language now. Because people like her say so…how convenient.
Is green the new brown?
Kobayashi-San, you’re so ecologically minded (all this talk about Green and Brown) yet you have still to leave a single comment on the animal rights thread 😉
macacaroach, (or anyone who chooses to answer) – Do you have any arguments in support of your claim that the use of English is holding the subcontinent back? I can see one main argument each for and against this doing science in say, Kannada.
For: All people, esp. rural folk in Karnatake , can get easy access to science without having to first learn a strange language that they have had difficult time learning (and the usual class issues associated with English speaking makes it painful for them to work in that language without mastering it fully). This keeps a lot of potential sci-tech talent away. I’m trying to understand if this is your argument.
Against: English is something of “the language of science” today. Scientists all over the world have to learn in anyway, even if they usually do science in their national language. most sci-tech literature is in English. Sticking to it will free communication with the outside world.
I assume that in any case, there are no arguments supporting the suggestion that there must be ONE national language for science which must not be English or another European language.
amardeep (#65), are you assuming that arguments for having a non-English language for sci-tech has to be based on jingoism?
Love it, Mr K!
India must be one of the very few servile nations of the world in which not understanding a foreign language, bequeathed by a long gone foreign master, condemns the great majority of its natives to second-class status in their own motherland!
This servility extends even towards the pre-british masters of India: the muslims from west and central asia. For you must have the west-central asian look, as opposed to the stereotypical desi look, to be considered movie star or model material in India.
Its interesting how many of the posters here, Macaulay’s children obviously, see nothing amiss about this embarassing situation…
Macacaroach, I agree with you (as far as the language issue is concerned). That’s all I can say for now, tomorrow I’ll give more reasons if the thread develops that way.
I for one cannot support any novel unless it’s written in Sanskrit, bound in khadi cloth, written on banana leaves and has the tricolor as the cover.
You don’t read much, I gather.
Dude, a hottie is a hottie. If Bollywood can’t like ’em, there’s no reason for the rest of us to fall in line. And there are plenty of South Indian actresses who don’t fit the “west-central asian look.” Fight the power! I’ll support that cause.
Most assuredly not. There are dozens of African nations that fit the same bill, and plenty of Asian ones, too.
Rather than politicizing things, it might interesting to explore further.
English spread through military action and religious instruction. We all know that. But it didn’t have to stick, of course.
I don’t know Sanskrit. My Hindi is not nearly as good as my parents’. I can’t profess to understand shuddha to save my life. But I do know this: it seems to me that it is generally far easier to say certain things in English than in Hindi. I am hardly an English apologist, but there are reasons why English has spread so far and wide and become such a common tongue worldwide. Hindi can be lyrical, but it simply doesn’t have the same flexibility in many regards, objectively speaking. My Hindi speaking cousins demonstrate this daily, by switching to English whenever they attempt to explain something complex, particularly technical, or very emotional.
And before anyone tears me a new one, I’m not claiming English is “better,” just attempting to explain why so many people speak it, and appear to enjoy writing it. Bear with me. I might be totally wrong, but this is just my attempt to explain. I’d be happy to hear theories from other people.
First, Hindi is a “minimal vocabulary” language. There are generally no homonyms, homophones, heteronyms, or homographs in Hindi or Sanskrit. While ostensibly this makes English more confusing to learn, it also means there is more room for play if you understand it. In Hindi / Urdu (and presumably in other Indo languages), a given word has a particular spelling, and no other spelling. No other word has that spelling. A word means the same thing, regardless of usage.
English has no such constraints.
Hindi, like many Indo-European languages, has gender inflection. It also has three levels of honorifics, and genderless pronouns.
Then again, English has plenty of quirks of its own.
Probably the most important thing, though, is that English (particularly American English) is a very fluid language. It changes from generation to generation, and incorporates slang, cognates, and all kinds of junk. And it’s inconsistent. That means it’s great for conveying information.
And then there are mechanisms that promote English, too. A great deal of world advertising is in English, which only amplifies its spread.
…Before you go LOlling your dorky self off, mate, why don’t you stop to think about, as Amardeep at #65 excellently pointed out, why you’re making your eloquent arguments against a supposedly elitist, secretive brown sahib literary establishment in English? And why you have access to the internet and a computer, luxuries so tragically denied to so many of the world’s population of whom you see yourself as the sole defender…
I’m guessing you’re not in a village somewhere wearing hand-woven clothes and singing traditional village songs in your local dialect…in fact I’m getting more of a Chairman Mao satchel-carrying, Black Power t-shirt wearing kinda vibe…
Get a grip! As Manish pointed out (I just looked up RTFA on urban dictionary so thank you!), Desai was talking about Indian literature.
Look, I wasn’t saying that people don’t care about scrawny, undernourished little children. But painting yourself as a walking, talking World Vision advertisement and Desai as a selfish, white-on-the-inside writer doesn’t do you any favours.
If you’ve read her writing, which I happen to think is eloquent and intelligent and beautiful, then you’ll see that she would probably share some similar political views to you. She just doesn’t lord them over other people’s heads.
Salil, Your post began with me agreeing in general, but ended with me vehemently nodding my head disapprovingly to being forced to respond. I’ll not argue the differences between languages you describe. I completely disagree with your conclusion about Hindi’s ability to flex, absorb and change with the times. To me your arguments indicate simply a lack of mastery and understanding of hindi’s (or Hindustani’s) current or part forms. Have you read Nirala, Pant, Guleri, and Premchand, and any present-day authors? I’m presuming not, otherwise it would be near impossible to make those claims. Hindi, or any other language for that matter, changes with time and usage. That’s not special to English. Languages borrow, and that’s aplenty in Hindi, and Hindustani is really a mix of two langugages – Hindi and Urdu. That’s what Premchand’s writings can be considered as being written in, yet they are considered one of the most accessible writings to a commoner.
You talk about your hindi speaking cousins who can’t hold their language when explaining something complex, particularly technical, or very emotional. How about a bet that they go/went to an English-medium school, so they borrow from two languages to form an expression. How’s that translate into any shortcoming of any language? As far as that goes, have you ever heard Amitabh Bacchhan speak in Hindi outside of films? His Hindi is as flawless as his English. Or for that matter with most kids who go to hindi-medium or native-language schools – they are perfectly fine expressing in their respective native tongues.
I’ll suggest why so many people speak English, though ‘so many’ still means a minority in India. English is the last invader language. Had there been no British, perhaps the erstwhile Mughal ‘shaai zubaan’ might have been dominant. So English had it going in terms of social acceptance and even as a step on the ladder to social ascendence. The 20th century was sort of a perfect storm of dominant invader language in India, modern international standards of education of sciences and maths, and further ascendency of the English language post WWII as it belonged to those victors that had the largest global mindshare (You can bet had the result not been what it was, German would be a pretty popular lang!). Hence suddenly it made sense to promote the language. Add to that the fact that all higher education in India is ‘western’ in methodology, and approach, it pretty much drives itself to English. English has critical mass in terms of literary, technical and scientific writings so its like ebay in that people have to speak English in order to transact with the largest pool of people with a common language. Then consider the weird irony that since there were many competing indegenous languages in India, to communicate English seemed well suited as a compromise due to all the above, AND because in addition it seemed fair in that no one would be forced to cede importance to their neighbor’s language.
Sanskrit seems on the decline precisely because day-to-day learning is based on western systems of imparting knowledge, and that modern sciences and math have not originated in Sanskrit, and converting all modern material into Sanskrit seems pointless when teaching in English is already well set. I did study Sanskrit for a few years, and actually its easier to construct sentences in it because the words can be put togther in many different orders or combined in multiple ways and still be grammatically correct. But it has no practical use as it lacks critical mass.
a given word has a particular spelling, and no other spelling. No other word has that spelling. A word means the same thing, regardless of usage.
Seriously Salil you have limited knowledge of Hindi/ Hindustani/ Urdu.
Even a matra, can change the meaning of the word. There is a very elaborate vocabulary. It does not used in day-to-day interactions. Sure, some comes from English. My mother once had a project to translate Chemistry textbook in Hindi – I have seen reams of technical vocabulary in Hindi.
A simple example, “chand” can mean moon, or something pleases your heart, or beloved. chanda would be used for a son, chandini for a female. In English you have past, present, future, in Sanskrit, you have past, present, future different for first, second, and third person. Also, male and female version changes.
I have no problem with English. It has been in India long enough.
However, local languages should not die out too. There are books on science and technology in other local languages. I think now IIT JEE has entrance exam in some of the other Indian languages. IAS and other civil services does, definitely.
Often, a future Silicon Valley guru through IIT might have learned math, physics, chemistry in their local language till 9th grade in their local schools, and they switch to English books around 9th-10th grade.
I haven’t read a lot of vernacular literature, a few hindi writers and a few translations from other languages; mostly Ashapurna Devi, Bimal Mitra, Narendra Kohli, Shivaji Savant, Shankar, and the standard classic ones: Saratchandra, Premchandra, etc. I have also read a fair number of Indian writers in english, and my personal opinion is that for the most part they are yet to match up to the level of insight into Indian history, mythology, philosophy and psychological make-up that vernacular writing has. This is not to say that there are not good Indian writers writing in english. But they are only a few few excellent ones; I wonder how many of these will be remembered a few decades from now. Indian writing in english is still young.
I think it is a very valid concern that vernacular Indian writing is slowly dying out. My hope is that it will be able to take the Latin American route of translation into English. I’ve heard for the past few years that there is a fair amount of interest in Indian writing in Norway and also Japan, but do not really know.
Can we go back to the first thread, which is a discussion about the book itself? For those who have read it, I’d like to see more thoughtful commntary on it’s literary qualities. The questions for me are these (and apologies it if goes to the heart of what Sepia Mutiny is all about):
1)Was this a book that merited the Booker Prize? 2)Who do we care so much that Kiran Desai is a desi in answering question #1? 3)What about getting rid of the label “Indian writer” altogether?
Salil:
This is simply not true. My father used to occasionally quote hindi poems based entirely around play of words. I don’t have much of a memory for poetry, but I still remember two lines from one, about the many queens of Maharana Pratap, hiding from Akbar’s soldiers:
(roughly translates to: they ate three times a day, they eat three berries a day now; they wore diamonds, they suffer naked in the cold now)
Sadly that is all I remember now. Not exactly a fun-filled poem, but as you can see, pretty clever play of homonyms.
You know, I read her Hullaboo book, and I didn’t really like it so much. For that matter, I couldn’t get through Midnight’s Children, suffered through Vikram Seth, and thought the Namesake was plotless. The “pink desi chick lit” book of “The Village Bride of Beverly Hills” was horrendous, and a quick afternoon read. Is it just me? I make it a point that every other book I read be desi lit, but I have to say, I haven’t been blown away by any recently.
I wait in anticipation for the day that a David Sedaris- Desi Lit mashup to occur. Or a Desi Chick version of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. With mangoes and dysfuntional families galore.
Congrats to Kiran and writing a book over 8 years with no health insurance. Maybe I’ll give her a second chance.
You are not blind, see for yourself: the japanese do science and technology in japanese, the russians in russian, the koreans in korean, the chinese in chinese, the germans in german and so on. They are all miles ahead of the english-medium subcontinent. Their mother tongues do not seem to handicap them. And why should they?
Its only desis, and probably also africans, who, trapped in colonial servility, cannot imagine doing science in their native languages.
How can limiting modern education to a tiny fraction of the population NOT hold back a country’s modernization??
Salil, As for spelling, Hindi (and many other Indian languages) are phonetic, where the concept of spelling is not the same as in English. In Hindi, people will read what you write the way you wrote it, correctly spelled or not. Personally, I like the lack of silent letters in words (example: knife) and different pronunciations for similar sets of letters (example: go, to).
Quick request to anyone who knows how to make ’em…
A Kiran Desai banner? I just saw Zadie Smith and thought if she gets to get one, Desai should too.
Despite her betrayal of the mothership in choosing to write in English and her “leftist polemicism” I think she’s a very good writer…and we haven’t had a pretty Indian girl bring home the Booker in almost a decade!
Does anyone else feel that the Booker’s gotten less exciting than it used to be, though. Maybe it was the yawnfest that was last year’s winner, or the random run it’s had in the past few years, but I remember when Arundhati’s Booker win being more exciting…
Also, so glad the brilliance that IS FukYoCouch’s 55 is catching on…spread the couchness!…
but if we’re gonna say it let’s say it right.
FUKYoCouch 🙂 Whereever FYC is I hope she/he is turning those 55 words into something bigger and better. It could be the world’s first truly postmodern desi lit piece.
And it couldnt be that the characters say that because it demonstrates their hackneyed and facile understanding of the world, to conceive of globalisation only in British Council and tabloid cliches? Yes? No? Perhaps? Hmmmm….I don’t know, I havent read it either, but rule one of any serious reading is not to reflexively confuse the rhetoric of characters with the easily zipped-up-in-a-sentence ‘message’ of the book or the writer.
So what?
Thanks, RedSnapper.
I’m still waiting for the long, extended, overly elaborated analogy though…sniff…I guess it’s just me alone in procrastinating to avoid Public Law /< insert object of avoidance here>
~~Yeah! FukYoCouch who are you? That story needs to be expanded on fast. Expand that storyline NOW. I want a novel with the FukYoCouch brothers NOW.
I’m not in one of those moods. But I’ll tell you what. There are enough characters on Sepia Mutiny to write a novel. Can you image FukYoCouch how brilliant his novel would be? And FukYoCouch’s brother, the one who scuffs up the couch, his girlfriend could be this mad desi girl who strips naked and dresses up as a tiger, to protest and stuff. It could be about postcolonialism and multiculturalism ‘and shit’, as FukYoCouch’s brother might say.
you have said that you hindi is not good enough still you are claiming that hindi has nearly no homonyms, homophones, heteronyms, or homographs . Like sakshi has given an example of yamak alankaar ( same word used twice but having different meaning) . It is one of the most popular alankar used in literature .Even bollywood songs use this technique .like :
sajna hai mujhe sajna ke liye
Then there is slesh alankaar( using a word only once but having many meanings) . like
” paani gaye na ubere moti ,maanush,chun”
you are saying a word has same meaning regardless of usage.Ever heard word “kal ” ,it means past or future depending upon usage . I can give many other examples also .
most probably this poem is by bhushan .
you may have heard this one also :
kanak kanak te so guni ,madaakta adhikaai , ya khaaye boraaye jag , va paaye booraaye ,
here kanak means gold and dhatura (yamak alankaar).
Can you imagine if FukYoCouch won it? Can you imagine his speech? ‘Yo, FuckYoSpeech, FukYo literary establishment, FukYo award, hehehe’
Disagree:
Rhyming poems and songs are trivial in Hindi — verbs in the same tense rhyme by default
There are all kinds words in Hindi not easily expressed in English
There’s lots of punnery. E.g. the famous nakhun/na khoon (fingernails / no blood) couplet (Ghalib?) about cutting off heads bloodlessly.
Hindi is a bastardized, portmanteau language, e.g. modern Hinglish
Every language is bastardized – English is a mongrel language. Which (living) language is pure?
Huh! Dismissing Rushdie and Vikram Seth in the same breath? :-O Manish will put a Supari on you; that is, if Anna’s Friend of a Friend doesn’t get you first! You are treading on thin ice Taz:)
Booker for FukYoCouch now! I love FukYoCouch. I want to marry FukYoCouch, regardless of FukYo’s sex. Me, FukYo and FukYo’s brother (FukYoOwnCouch), what an awesome threesome!
RS, you say you’re not in the mood but you know you can’t resist…
There’s an overly extended example if ever I saw one!
And on a related note,
FukYoCouch for life! Better write that novel mothafuka 😉 or I’ll come and burn your Momma’s couch down… also that ‘it could be about multiculturalism and shit’ eerily echoes some SHITE film writing I had to read in class today so don’t hit too close to home or the traumatic memories of reading aloud someone’s fantasy movie that should have stayed in their head will come flooding back (me as a green wisp of smoke symbolising a dead warrior’s spirit as I get high with a white wisp of smoke while a sitar-playing hyrax watches on…and shit)
Lol. English is a language you dunce, not an ideological box that you are trapped in. What do you think prevents anyone from expressing broadminded views in English? Or any other language for that matter? Sheesh…
Lol. Whats funny is that this clown tash thinks he is making a good point here.
How clever you two must be to think it makes sense to write that a society stops being scrawny and malnourished when its writers start publishing many novels in English. 🙂