{"id":346,"date":"2007-06-22T23:10:25","date_gmt":"2007-06-22T17:40:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wokay.in\/2007\/06\/22\/on-indian-authors\/"},"modified":"2007-06-22T23:10:25","modified_gmt":"2007-06-22T17:40:25","slug":"on-indian-authors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/2007\/06\/22\/on-indian-authors\/","title":{"rendered":"On Indian Authors"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the Jagadguru\u2019s Biggest Disciple tags you<\/a>, you have no choice but to respond. So here goes.<\/p>\n

The vast majority of Indian writing in English is self-indulgent wankery. But a few gems come to mind.<\/p>\n

A Suitable Boy<\/em>. I started reading this almost two weeks after my parents bought it. Considering I was in Class VI at the time, my mum was sleisha horrified. I had gotten up to Chapter 6 by the end of the Diwali vacations, when my mum realised I was reading it and firmly forbade me to touch it until the next vacations came up. Winter vacations came about and for the first time in my life I stayed up all night reading until I fell asleep – going through almost a third of the book in a night. Then I read it again in Class X and a lot more nuance became apparent. Much fun. I haven\u2019t found any of Vikram Seth\u2019s books since then worthwhile – An Equal Music<\/em> was good, but nothing extraordinary, and I still haven\u2019t been able to get through Two Lives<\/em>.<\/p>\n

A Writer\u2019s Nightmare<\/em>. The collection of essays by R K Narayan, which I\u2019ve always liked much more than the novels. Somehow, his style seems more suited to a five hundred word essay than a ten thousand word book. The essays on coffee and umbrellas are my favourites.<\/p>\n

Does William Dalrymple count as an Indian author? He ought to. City of Djinns<\/em> is far better than anything I\u2019ve ever read by an Indian historian, and White Mughals<\/em> had my head spinning and imagining how cool it would be if someone wrote alternate histories about the French winning at Chandernagore, or imperialism surviving into the twenty first century.<\/p>\n

Conversely, a dude who\u2019s ethnically Indian but culturally completely removed is Pico Iyer. Most of the travelogues are winsome, but The Lady and the Monk<\/em> is awesome.<\/p>\n

Writing in Indian languages? I didn\u2019t really start reading until a year ago, and since then I haven\u2019t kept at it. I\u2019ve found Ponniyin Selvan<\/em> as awesome as Ravages\u2019 raveouts about it indicate, and that\u2019s the English translation. As for Sarat Chandra Chatterjee and Premchand, I wrote about them when I started them<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What I\u2019m really waiting for is not the Great Indian Novel (I think A Suitable Boy<\/em> has already managed that), but an Indian writer who really really excels at nonfiction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the Jagadguru\u2019s Biggest Disciple tags you, you have no choice but to respond. So here goes. The vast majority of Indian writing in English is self-indulgent wankery. But a few gems come to mind. A Suitable Boy. I started reading this almost two weeks after my parents bought it. Considering I was in Class […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs-and-blogging","category-books-movies-and-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7AOU2-5A","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}