Since I’ve written a lot on Indian writers from Bengal (and lately, the South), I often get emails from people saying, “when are you going to write about Punjabi literature? And what about Sikh writers?” My response is pretty simple: a person needs to be inspired. Ethnic and religious loyalty ought to take a back seat to the quality of the writing, and the effect it has on you as an individual reader. If that means Ian McEwan, Philip Roth, or Zadie Smith get more of one’s critical attention than Amrita Pritam, so be it.

But I was recently invited to give a talk on Sikh writers at a small Sikh Studies conference at Hofstra University, so I started reading authors that I didnÂ’t know very well — and I was, in fact, quite impressed. So over the course of this summer I hope to profile some Punjabi writers, including some that are Sikh, starting with Ajeet Cour, Kartar Singh Duggal, and Khushwant Singh (who writes in English). Incidentally, many of these writers’ works are accessible in North America and the UK, through sites like Indiaclub.com or Amazon Marketplace sellers.

Continue reading →

After my recent post on early Bengali science fiction, Desiknitter suggested in a comment that Sultana’s Dream (1905) by Rokeya Hosain ought to be on the list. She was right: Sultana’s Dream is an intriguing example of a feminist utopia — an imagined world where women are socially and politically dominant over men, and that dominance is seen as natural. Other examples of it include Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland (1917). Rokeya Hosain led a fascinating, activist life, which bears some looking into. Oh, and the story alludes to a fascinating problem in optics — parabolic mirrors used as weapons — which I’ll talk about a little at the end.

Rokeya Hosain wrote Sultana’s Dream only a short while after learning English. She and her sister showed a remarkable early proclivity for books and ideas even though, as girls, they weren’t actually allowed to learn how to read (eventually, Rokeya’s sister was forced to give up the habit by embarrassed family members). Hosain was married in a ‘love match’ at the age of sixteen to a progressive Bengali Muslim, who fortunately supported women’s education and taught her English. Rokeya wrote Sultana’s Dream, the story goes, when he was away on business. Her goal was to impress him with her skill in English, and by all accounts she more than succeeded. The biographical note in the Feminist Press edition of Sultana’s Dream describes his reaction to the story: he read the whole thing standing up, and uttered, “A splendid revenge!” The story was soon published in a Madras journal.

He meant, of course, “revenge” on men for the repressive system of gender-segregated Zenana (aka ‘Purdah’). For Rokeya Hosain’s Sultana’s Dream is set in a realm where women rule and men are kept away in segregated quarters: the Mardana. This is Hosain’s coinage; it comes from the Urdu word ‘Mard’, meaning ‘man’. Continue reading →

Are you a woman, lady, dame, womyn, broad, chick, butch, babe, femme, and/or girl in your 20s or 30s of South Asian origin?

Is writing a hobby, passion, interest, craft and/or obsession of yours?

Are you creative, intelligent, insightful, and dedicated enough to write your own damn words?

Do the words “Opal Mehta” make you want to hibernate in cold storage for at least a year while hooked up to an IV of rosé?

If you answered ‘yes’ to these questions then, girl, it is time to get yours! Boys, you get to cheer loudly (including, but not restricted to, well-meaning tapori whistles). Zubaan, an independent feminist publisher based in New Delhi is accepting submissions for their “Book of New Writing by Young Women”, via Zigzackly, their criteria are as follows:

• The focus of the book will be on young writers in the 20s and 30s.
• The writers should be women of South Asian extraction, but may be based anywhere in the world. We are interested in non-resident Indian writers as well as those based in India.
• Stories can be of any length up, ideally anywhere between 2-5,000 words and should be complete stand-alone narratives.
• All submissions must be in English.
• The anthology will be of fictional writing, and we are keen to include a variety of genres – from humorous pieces to science fiction, fantasy, detective stories, and other forms which may fall under the general rubric of ‘speculative fiction’.
• Preference will be given to unpublished stories. [Link]

Emphasis on that brilliant sentence is mine. All submissions (along with a short bio) are to be emailed as word attachments to either Zubaanwbooks[at]vsnl.net or contact[at]zubaanbooks.com with the subject line reading “Submission for Young Writers Anthology”. Submissions are due by July 31st, 2006. ThatÂ’s one week less than three months from todayÂ…plenty of time to fix up some old pieces, create new ones, or turn that excellent blog entry of yours into short fiction. These SM pages are rife with prime examples of women whose writing deserves to be displayed within the pages of a freshly bound book. You know who you are, I am waggling my finger suggestively in your direction. Continue reading →

Speaking of Satyajit Ray, I thought I might risk going out on the limb of historical obscurities and share an article by Debjani Sengupta (PDF) I came across that talks about early Bengali science fiction writing.

The article is from the journal Sarai, which is published in Delhi. Some of the articles offer some truly impenetrable jargon -– even with writing on familiar topics (Bollywood, Call Centers, and so on). But there are also a number of well-written and informative articles on things like Parsi theater in Bombay in the 1800s that I would highly recommend.

On to Bengali science fiction. Even the fact that it existed as early as the 1880s may be a little shocking, since most studies of Bengali literature tend to center around Tagore — who was extremely doubtful about modern technology. (Read his account of flying in an airplane here.) But the effects of the industrial revolution were being felt in urban India in the 19th century just as keenly as they were in Europe and the U.S., and at least some Indian writing reflected that. Probably the best, most enduring writing in this genre came from a single family –- Sukumar Ray (in the 1910s and 20s) and his son Satyajit Ray, who was a highly accomplished writer when he wasn’t making making world class art films. Continue reading →

Readers interested in what has been happening in Nepal recently might find Samrat Upadhyay’s The Royal Ghosts a worthwhile read.

Upadhyay is a Nepali who teaches at a university in the U.S. He is, I think, the only Nepali publishing his fiction in the U.S. at present. Though his stories as a rule tend to focus more on personal issues and relationships than on poitics, in this latest book of stories he has for the first time tackled the effect the “Maobadis” (Maoists) have had on Nepali life. Even here the treatment of the ongoing civil war is a little bit oblique: these are middle-class, urban, Kathmandu stories, and the violence that ravages countryside is as far away from the metropolitan consciousnes as Delhi is from the tribal regions of Bihar (see English, August, which Siddhartha blogged about recently). Continue reading →

Hello again, Mutiny peeps! For this first post I’m going to get a little experimental, and hit you with an original short story (all borrowings are unconscious and unintentional, etc.). If it’s not to your taste, no problem; I will be regularly posting on more traditional bloggy topics. Incidentally, the following is part of a little series I’m doing — postmodern Sadhu stories; see another effort here.

Sadhu liked to sit on the porch of his son’s new house and write poetry, but lately he was finding it difficult. The problem was a group of noisy birds that lived in the trees behind their house. They gathered in the trees and bushes and seemed to do nothing but chatter, not in quiet, birdly chirps, but angry squawks. Most of the time Sadhu couldn’t even see the birds, as they seemed never to move from their respective perches in the trees, so merely sitting on the porch was a little like diving into a pit of greasy wrestlers. Sometimes this pleased the Sadhu, as it reminded him vaguely of India — the loud voices of the street hawkers arguing with customers over a few paise in his home town of Maramari. But he had heard that type of argument rarely since leaving India fifteen years ago, and now it had begun to seem abrasive and somewhat troubling. And anyway, that type of marketplace arguing usually ended in a sale, and the restoration of good will. But these birds squawked and squawked with an endless amount of stamina, which was almost mechanical in its regularity. Continue reading →