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Urban India is where the communal drama unfolds -> co-survival triggered by secular issues communal violence - political strategy; communal base; minority leaders hatred in public - cordial relations at a personal level - "Animosities are for politics." - tight compartmentalization of political and personal interactions. 250 million semi-modernized, semi-westernized middle classes = new emerging caste, which the BJP has tapped Fear of the "other" - as constructed by fundamentalists - prompts communal violence. Promoted by absence of ideology in politics - their community wants them in power (as with the Dalits or OBCs like Yadavs, Kurmis, Lodhs, and Mayawati or Laloo) NRIs fuel communalism - uprooted persons, who fear a loss of identity Communal politics remains a way of secularizing politics new kind of a political culture - free for all - minimum conformity with the laws Possible questions: Why does Ashis Nandy cite the story of the Muslim old m...

Painful and helpless situation of voters - angst, frustration Questionable morality, ethics of rally men http://cuenglias.blogspot.in/2015/03/the-election-sitakant-mahapatra.html Our jeep crawls to your village seeking strange melodies get attention from people. All the promises are built from songs from the roaring sun: 'the common will' drawn out by politicians from the criss-cross geometry geometry always symmetric also, smaller problems filtered for larger ones of private agonies. Our dark longings don't touch you, ulterior motives hidden nor our trappings of posters, symbols, speeches, handbills, for your grief outlives empires. metaphor: how deep, how lasting their grief is The cold grandchildren awaken in your heart as you discern All speeches, posters - people know that all politicians want is to stay in power. muted allegories An allegory is an extended metaphor - in the songs and speeches, there is a wide use of rhetoric and of symbols...

journey experiences more important than the quest changing source of water static to fluid very strong rural metaphor binary of urban and rural - great divide fluidity of identities canal far away - takes all day to reach urban sights near the canal, but as they return to the village, the city's parks and kids and balloons are left behind empty hopes - children supposedly represent freedom but are not free; children are victims. Social norms, rules, expectations, roles and identities are forced onto them - bequeathed onto them. All other "claimants" to this inheritance have stepped aside - naturally. Who would want such an inheritance "Our steps the only steps." - No one else walks their path  <In Frost's The Road Not Taken, he doesn't say whether it was the right choice taking the road not taken, just that it has made all the difference. Likewise here we mustn't ever assume that on an individual level, the move from urban to rural is...

TOBA TEK SINGH NOV 10, 2014 Evolving understanding of Partition Identity crisis: 1. Existential crisis 2. Loyalties - Indian or Pakistani - not just territorial or political but also highly personal, an individual choice 3. identity itself fluid and contextual about madness in and of Partition Madness because of the cost of separation Madness incomprehensible, but meant to be so: 1. no outsider can comprehend the reality of the Partition 2. the Partition SHOULD NOT make sense to us, because it is not our tragedy to understand 3. trauma narrative -------------- NOV 14, 2014 Components of a short story: plot (twist) (message) characters time point of view - but better to call it focalization setting  mood fact or fiction style of writing "When you learn how to read a text, it 'disables' you from merely summarizing it in the exam" Paratexts (outside elements) title preface prologue epilogue foreword introduction blurb in...

To begin with, two things - firstly, I'm disappointed in you, Khushwant Singh, and second, this chapter is less about India than it is about Tyson's love for Martha. What's important in this sad little short story is: Indians' views on foreigners and vice versa Tyson's love for Martha the four types of foreigners - lovers, haters, half-haters and question marks (people whose opinion others don't know about) about the NARRATOR, not author And that's all there is to it.  :/

Not a conversation but a rambling monologue Poet mocking "Indian English" by using it - satire Irony is that a professor speaks it As given by Prof. Felix, NOTE: The Professor by Nissim Ezekiel is a satirical poem in the form of a monologue. The poet uses (in order to mock) Indianisms in English and adapts English language to adopt native language structure. A Professor, as the one who teaches, should be in proper command of the medium he uses; therefore the poem is ironical. Explanation: Remember me? I am Professor Sheth. Shouldn't the student be approaching the teacher, saying "Good evening, sir, I'm so-and-so from your geography class, batch of '79.."  Once I taught you geography. Now The horror begins here. " Once I taught you geography"??? This man has obviously never met a Grammar Nazi. I am retired, though my health is good. My wife died some years back. It's like he's assuming that the student assumes that he has ...

This chapter of our textbook appears to be written for non-Indian people, as we see when the authors writes the English version of the word before the Hindi one, as in "elixir 'amrita'", "creamy pudding kheer", "jaggery gur", "mother, Amma" and the unfunny joke: "form an asana (in my language it means twist into a pretzel!)" She tries too hard to get the reader to relate to the magic of the milk-related memories of her childhood, and her attachment to her mother, but for reasons I can't place my finger on, fails, and fails miserably at that - succeeding only in getting us mildly irritated. Perhaps it is the pretentious Nigella tone of the text, or the occasional lapses in meaningful sentence-formation: "She just isn't fond of it, but obsessed with it." Also, there is the issue of her over-zealous description of everything. One question that caught my attention: Examine the interconnected themes of memo...