Sense of exile

The story comes into its own when the author explores an extra-marital affair between two men.

Ghalib Shiraz's Dhalla's book catches you unawares. Just when you are resigned to another — somewhat florid — account of the Great Indian Diaspora, it decides to throw a whammy, or two. Just when it is chugging along nicely like a cross between Brokeback Mountain with an Asian twist and a gay version of a Mills & Boon romance, it decides to introduce an altogether new dimension. In fact, The Exiles hits its stride somewhere in the middle of its rambling narrative; it comes into its own when the author explores an extra-marital fling between two queer men from the point of view of a wife who is not merely betrayed but straight!

Is the betrayal any greater, the book seems to be asking, because the husband's affair is with a man and not a woman? Would the wife's pain have been any less if the “other” had been a woman? And what of her inexplicable sense of shame? As though she is guilty and responsible for driving her husband away — that too, into the arms of a man? Could she have done something, said something to have prevented this? And what of their college-going son? How is a mother to protect her homophobic son from finding out that his father has not merely walked out on them, but has done so with his gay lover?

Full report here Hindu

International seminar on "Diasporic Canadian Punjabi Literature"

World Punjabi Centre, Punjabi University, Patiala organised an international seminar on "Diasporic Canadian Punjabi Literature: An Analytical Study" and Pakistan Urdu poetry".

At this occasion Canadian scholar Sukhinder's book on 'Canadian Punjabi Sahit' (Samikhiya) was also released.

Emphasising on the need of such seminars for diasporic literature, chief guest Dr. Jaspal Singh, Vice Chancellor, Punjabi University praised the efforts made by Punjabis living in other countries in the field of Punjabi Literature.

Dr. Jaspal Singh said there is need for recognizing Punjabi Literature of Foreign writers and advocated that good literature of these writers should be made part of syllabus. Dr. Jaspal Singh also emphasized on equal representation for women in all spheres.

Full report here Punjab Newsline

A writer's journey

I'd arrived in Delhi from an obscure little village by the largest ocean, nestling between an airport and a jagged range of brooding volcanic mountains: amphitheatrical and dramatic. The village was named Votualevu; the airport Nadi; the ocean Pacific; and the country was 'Phiji' as my indentured grandparents pronounced Fiji.

Few students in my hostel knew where Fiji was: Ah, so you've come from Fuji? And when I tried to show them on a world map, locally published, the two tiny dots in the middle of the Pacific were always missing.

I managed by pointing to the two unnamed dots that made up New Zealand. It certainly developed my distorted sense of geography: and some of us began to realise that this archipelago was the most distant islands to which our subcontinental ancestors had been shipped from their land-locked villages of the United Provinces, later joined by labourers from around Madras.

Full report here Fiji Times

Review: Midnight’s Diaspora

REVIEW 

Midnight’s Diaspora: Encounters with Salman Rushdie
Ed. Daniel Herwitz and Ashutosh Varshney.
Penguin/Viking, New Delhi.
Pages 149. Rs 399.

Blurbs
Almost twenty years after the Ayatollah Khomeini declared a fatwa against him, Salman Rushdie remains the most controversial and perhaps the most famous living novelist. Far more than an acclaimed author, Rushdie is a global figure whose work is read and studied by a wide variety of constituencies, many of whom are not primarily concerned with its literary significance. This important collection of essays and interviews brings together a distinguished group of critics and commentators, including Rushdie himself, to explore the political and cultural contexts of Rushdie's novels. While each of the essays offers a distinct and often highly original take on Rushdie and his work, the two substantial interviews with Rushdie illuminate his thoughts on a series of literary and political subjects that he has for the most part been reluctant to discuss in public.
This combination of fresh perspectives and historical and political context will appeal to a wide array of readers interested not only in Rushdie's own work but also in the many collateral cultural and political issues it raises. Daniel Herwitz is Director, Institute for the Humanities; Professor of History of Art, Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Comparative Literature, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts; and Professor of Art and Design, School of Art and Design, at the University of Michigan. Ashutosh Varshney is Professor of Political Science at the Brown University.

"The never-ending inventiveness of Salman Rushdie's mind and art makes this volume both a pleasure and a necessity. These distinguished scholars have done a fine job introducing Rushdie's work to a new generation of readers in a newcentury." ---Homi K. Bhahba, Harvard University "

This collection engages with the larger context of Rushdie's work to reflect on the urgent issues raised by Rushdie's novels and their afterlives. The essays are first rate, achieving accessibility without sacrificing rigor and depth and bringing a variety of disciplinary perspectives to offer a fresh understanding of Rushdie's writings. This is rare." Gyan Prakash, Princeton University

My name is Salman The Tribune

 Twenty years ago, as I left India to study literature at Cambridge, a fatwa was issued against an up-and-coming author that was to become an avid topic of dinner-time conversations for months to come. I was the new arrival from a country that had just banned Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses and was forced to take positions at all such discussions between sub-continent sentiments and literary forthrightness. I remember having put up a Rushdie poster on my study wall at that time, and clearly, I must have upset somebody because late one evening, a snowball smashed into my window pane. I am still not sure whether it was a racist attack or a moment of sport.

Taking stock of the situation after two decades, I think that Rushdie has emerged the more triumphant after the ordeal. Eight successful books later, we are able to assess his celebrity status—not least because of his notoriety in both hemispheres—in the course of two interviews and several essays collected together in this volume by its editors.  

Rushdie invites controversy. His every remark becomes fodder for the papparazzi not just as gossip or rumour but as significant political insight. His books, on their part, initiate mini revolutions owing to their author’s political boldness. When Rushdie, who had just won the Booker for Midnight’s Children, was invited to 10 Downing Street for a luncheon hosted for Indira Gandhi by Thatcher, he declined knowing fully well how Mrs Gandhi would react on seeing him when both she and her late son, Sanjay, were exposed in his novel for the roles they played during the Emergency.