Right to Fall from Grace

Right to Fall from Grace

Every person who enjoys a social statue earned by years of labor is always scared of society. He does not want to fall in the eyes of society. The society is conservatives, thrives on tradition and laws of puritans is its backbone. So you can never expect society to be "open minded", pragmatic, revolutionary and ahead of its Time. They do not change their rules easily. So they do not appreciate your falling from grace. Shakespeare in his sonnet 94 says-

"But if that flower with base infection meet

The basest weed outbraves his dignity"

The sin was committed when forbidden fruit was eaten and repercussions are still faced by the innocents for doing what they think is right. Even that society is not in the making which would permit an honest person to fall from grace without feeling guilty, insulted and conscious of it.

It needs braveness on the part of society to society in permitting people to fall from graces with dignity. Unfortunately, society is a bundle of callous, redundant and imbecile minds who collectively form a collective conscience, which is their mirror image, illuminated manifolds.

Those who do not want to follow the dictum of society are labeled as epicureans, and put in a prison of isolation or in the company of the same types like criminals or quarantined to save the honorable members of society from contamination.
Alfred Lord Tennyson was against providing any liberty so far as chastity and purity of home was concerned. Though he expected both husband and wife to follow the ideals. No amount of passions, however true and intense it may be, can excuse in his eyes for violating these ideals. Chastity and purity are not obsolete, and will never be obsolete.
                       "The Woman's cause is Man's;
                         They rise and sink together"
So fall of one is fall of another also.

Right of Dead to decent Burial

On the other hand same society has forgotten the age old Right of dead to decent burial. We are not talking the deads of a commoner, though it is debatable if the dead body of a king is superior to the dead body of a pauper, even many dignities were subjected to disgrace which brings shame to the whole humanity. The dead bodies of Saddam Husain or Osama Bin Laden were subjected to so much harsh treatment that one would wonder how much civilized we are.

In Shakespeare's famous play Julius Caesar, Octavius says

"According to his virtue, let us use him

With all respect and rites of burial"

What made him think like that. He could have easily thrown the dead body of Brutus in the Mediterranean unceremoniously. Can a dead body be an enemy of anybody?

"The leaves of Grass" are being crushed by those who were supposed to protect it. What is their hope after this destruction? 

© Vipin Behari Goyal

Author of  World is Conical' 

In The Honor of Oldest Profession

     Beauty of Fallen Women in Literature

Let us begin with Buddha and Christ. Two renowned Gods who have shown the path followed by millions. 

Buddha broke the rules of commune and gave entry to chief prostitutes of Vaishali (ancient state of India) called  Amrapali. Well, she was so extraordinarily beautiful that she was officially compelled to the profession so that many could enjoy the virtue of her beauty. The Buddha concluded "Being a prostitute is not an obstacle to enlightenment if she is willing and diligently practices Dharma. In fact, the experience of a prostitute could help her towards enlightenment sooner than otherwise".

Mary Magdalene was one of the most favorite disciple of Jesus Christ. She accompanied him everywhere. Saviour showered her with kisses frequently. The rest of the disciples were offended by it and expressed disapproval. They said to him, "Why do you love her more than all of us?" The Saviour answered and said to them, "Why do I not love you like her?" She was present at the time of the crucifixion and the resurrection. Mary Magdalene being a repentant sinner was found more worthy of enlightenment like Amrapali.

Osho after deep contemplation on Hindu philosophy wrote his spiritual marvel "From sex to the super consciousness."

Dante Gabriel Rossetti's "Jenny" rewritten many times is a poem of monologue addressed to dozing harlot in her surroundings.  The anxiety of 'speaker' for exposure to disease and social ostracism is also evident in the poem along with acknowledgement of his own absurdity as his "thoughts run on like this/With wasteful whims more than enough" symbolizes  emptiness of words by thoughtful man.

Elizabethan Era of Poetry was followed by prudish and repressed Victorian Era and passionate emotions were expressed in floral symbols. Even then a book like "My Secret Life" by anonymous author Walter were secretly read by many aristocrats.

After the second World War there was a lot of Holocaust Literature written as memories of sufferers or eyewitness of the holocaust. House of Dolls By Ka-tzetnik describes the Jewish women kept in concentration camps to quench the  carnal thirst of Nazi soldiers. Like Amarpali beautiful Jewish girls were also compelled to serve  the militia.

All over World beautiful women are admired and desired by everyone, but only mighty and wealthy people have a right to possess and consume them.

These fallen women are like "Light House" for the fallen authors (suffering from author's block), drifting in the ocean of life.

Garcia writes "Memories of My Melancholy Whores". May be  Delgadina of Garcia is the Jenny of Dante. Across every Era the characters come back with the same vivacity as if they had never left.

The collective psyche of all authors dead and alive and yet to born creates immortal characters.

Look at Nana by Emile Zola. Or at Adriana of A Woman of Rome By Alberto Moravia.

Adriana confesses "I had taken up a very hard profession..."

They are the women who have washed the sins of others at their own cost. They are the combination of Magic and Mystery. Divine Sinners. Stoic Streetwalkers.

Who could be a better character to suffer from existentialist angst than a whore.

Adriana felt a strange pleasure when money was thrust in her hand for the first time and that kind of description is only possible for Alberto who doesn't write the book as an author but becomes Adriana himself.

 The man from the underground meets Liza in a brothel in Dostoyevsky's Notes from the underground. His encounter with Liza is the climax of the book, after which this beautiful novel ends. As if Author wants to say I have nothing more to say. Liza was once humiliated for having a stained soul refuses to accept money and comes out to be a pure soul.

 Yoshikawa in his book  The Art of War says "People tend to be put off by the idea of selling sex, but if you spend a winter's night with one of them and talk with her about her family and so on, you're likely to find she's just like any other woman."

This idea of treating the all human as normal could revolutionize the gender equation and thus whole society. May be that would be the alternative Society we are looking forward to when what has so far been condemned would get appreciated by society. Imagine how it would diminish the load from society to tackle the repulsive crimes of illegal trafficking, and authorities who handle law and order would be profitably deployed for protecting the society in the real sense.

How does it matter what you sell? Your mind or your body?

Selling body for physiological needs, like hunger and sleep could be  less heinous  than selling your mind.

Golden has fictionalized the character of Iwasaki's true life story in "Memories of a Geisha" to the extent that the beauty of a literary figure is lost in the wave of overtly dramatized plot.

On the other hand Poly Adler makes most honest confessions in "A house is not a home". She says "It is traditional that prostitutes are a sentimental lot, and in the main, that is true." And "What it comes down to is this: the grocer, the butcher, the baker, the merchant, the landlord, the druggist, the liquor dealer, th...e policeman, the doctor, the city father and the politician--these are the people who make money out of prostitution, these are the real reapers of the wages of sin".

And who is the female who is not a prostitute and who is the male who is not pimp?

© Vipin Behari Goyal

Author is also Advocate at Rajasthan High Court, Jodhpur

Read more at: http://vipinbeharigoyal.blogspot.in/

*Some quotes are from the forthcoming novel by the Author "From Under the Carpet"

Contemporary Pastoral English Literature

                      The glamour in rural life

The various aspects of rural life, its subjects, descriptions of countryside shepherds and cowherds and their vagabond lifestyle has always fascinated the readers.

Who can forget the famous character, Konstantin Dmitrich Levin from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. He demystified technology and used it in Agriculture. Of all the male characters in the book any urban girl would easily fall in love with Levin rather than rich, flamboyant  Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky or a powerful cultivated man like Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin.

The dehumanizing factor of technology and if it is possible to make use of technology for inner peace of mind is well explained by Robert M. Pirsig in his book "Zen and the art of Motorcycle maintenance". The combination of two diagonally opposite virtues "rationality" and "romanticism" could be devastating for future human civilization. The beautiful part of the story is protagonist opts for less traveled side roads rather than Highways to explore and appreciate the slow pace of life, that explains a lot of philosophy in itself.

In Wuthering Heights the conflict of its occupant who are wild and passionate with calm and refined, and setup of the story in the bleak hilltop is symbolic of the unbridgeable gap in the rationales and romantics.

Encyclopedia Britannica defines pastoral literature as a  class of literature that presents the society of shepherds as free from the complexity and corruption of city life.

The rural life is romanticized but the harsh reality of discomforts and malaise are overlooked. Exaggeration is allowed in the literature to make a point. The plantation literature romanticizes Old South in "Gone with the wind" by Margret Mitchell  but does not try to escape the harsh realities of life evident in childbirth and miscarriages.  Scarlett's love for Ashley, who represent Old South is like chasing an impossible dream that one knows in his heart would never be fulfilled, is romantic and she overlooks Rhett's love who represents New South that is opportunistic and strong willed to succeed is realistic.

This dilemma of realism versus romanticism has baffled the society for long. Though a champion of realism the human mind finds its solace in romanticizing.

Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez has undoubtedly been one of the best authors of our time. In his novel "One hundred years of Solitude" he has given vivid descriptions of banana plantation age and calamities in the imaginary town of Macondo. He weaves a dream that entangles readers who not only when novel is read, but even much after that has a hangover of the town and the characters who lived there refuses him solitude. That is called magical realism.

In his other novel "Love in the time of Cholera" the old age and death has same suffering as that of youth. Could death be romanticized in a better way?

Another best author is J. M. Coetzee. His widely acclaimed novel Disgrace draws a clear line of demarcation in the treachery of urban life and rustic yet peaceful ambience of rural life. David the professor is  humiliated and sacked from the University after complaints from his student (Melanie), though the act was consensual and on the other hand, in the rural farm his own daughter is raped, but she refuses to act humiliated shows that technically advance urban can lead to a disgrace which even a dog would not face in real and pure rural life.

One can read my book "Empty Cocoon" about conflicts in rural-urban life.

Overburdened, the super human would find the true values of life under the shadow of an old tree in the tranquility of a village pond where the dust of the  cattle and trailing herd man returning home would obliterate the view of sunset.

© Vipin Behari Goyal

Author is also Advocate at Rajasthan High Court, Jodhpur

The Adultery in Literature

                                                  The kingdom of God on Earth

Adultery has remained a central theme in many popular and controversial novels of the world literature. The characters like Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, Connie Reid (Lady Chatterley's Lover) and Hester Prynne (The Scarlet Letter) suffered the curse of felony and remain miserable, while male characters when they commit adultery, they enjoy a passionate life without much guilt and society forgives their stray behavior easily.

The chastity of woman has always been considered as  a prized jewel by the society, and the dignity and status of such woman is far superior to the woman who is tempted by passions. The Seventh Commandment forbids adultery, but the Tenth Commandment goes one step ahead and even forbids the desire of it.

Many a time and in many culture women was considered as property and her capability to progenration made her indispensable asset. Why society had a softer attitude towards crime of adultery done by men?. If a gross generalization is done male committed adultery with a prostitute and females with some friend or relative (mostly of her husband). So there is a degree of moral degradation in the crime, as to whom the crime was committed. Princess Diana was known to have several extra-marital affairs, some of them are still secret, and many of them are open secret like with James Hewitt, James Gilbey, Barry Mannakee, Oliver Hoare Bryan Adams and Dodi Fayed who were bodyguard or billionaire she did not care. Despite this fact, she was very popular amongst masses.

Remember how Bill Clinton who first denied having sex with Monica Lewinsky later on confessed an 'inappropriate' relationship with her before the Grand Jury. Moreover the charges of perjury and obstruction of justice were dropped against him. The Americans (including his wife) forgave him, at least publicly.

Now these instances of two advance countries of the World, One of which once ruled the world and other is contemporary ruler (in one way or another), it is clear that society has given a ' clean chit '.

Literature is the reflection of society. Human nature across the boundaries of the nation is same, so when an author writes a book the description may help with the orientation, but the objective to understand the human nature is fulfilled only when and if the author wants you to like a character you like it, and he wants you to dislike, you dislike. So even if the main character is a sinner like Anna of Tolstoy the reader is sentimentally attached to her and feels a loss of dearest friend when she finally threw herself before a train.

Man is polygamous by nature and woman is monogamous or the entire race of Homo Sapiens is polygamous is a debatable issue, but it is sure two persons are sometimes so spontaneously 'hooked up' with each other that it would be a crime to keep them apart. Only goose is truly monogamous in nature. It will never cheat on its spouse, and even when its partner dies, it will not seek a new mate. And who does the moral policing for a goose?

Women are more "like nature' than "like culture' and hence they have 'concreteness' in comparisons to 'abstractness' of their partner. So while describing a woman character, even if she is an adulteress, she may have that modesty, dignity and pride that a chaste woman has.

Neither author nor the reader has a right to condemn a spouse because what they are doing is sinful. Even  the partner of the spouse should not be judgmental and should only exercise his right to decide if he wants to continue the relationship or break it.

Remember, the epitaph on the grave of Tomas, in 'Unbearable lightness of being ' written by his catholic son, reads "He wanted the Kingdom of God on Earth".

So Be It.

© Vipin Behari Goyal

Irresponsible literature in the shadow of Mythology

                                Literature and Mythology

Nearly all oblong or circular, and as if traced with the compass, they seem to form one vast archipelago, equal to that charming group lying between Greece and Asia Minor, and which mythology in ancient times adorned with most graceful legends.~Round The Moon by Verne, Jules

Mythology is defined as "the body of myths belonging to a culture. Myths are traditional stories about gods and heroes. They often account for the basic aspects of existence — explaining, for instance, how the Earth was created, why people have to die, or why the year is divided into seasons. Classical mythology — the myths of the ancient Greeks and Romans — has had an enormous influence on European and American culture."(The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy).

Literature is "the best expression of the best thought reduced to writing." (Encyclopædia Britannica).

The comparative study of the mythology and literature of various cultures and countries has helped in drawing conclusions about philosophical and psychological changes that came with cultural advancement of civilization. Literature in context with mythology has potential to reach intellectual mind which may prefer or condemn the advancement of civilization over culture. The values of society are reflected in both mythology as well as literature, but mythology is closer to collective consciousness and as Emile Durkheim said "the totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of a society forms a determinate system with a life of its own. It can be termed the collective or creative consciousness."

He has used the word 'belief and sentiments' to appreciate the differences, yet an analogy that exists between an individual and the society, the interaction in them results in creativity. The object of study of Mythology is to support various Psychological theories, that is why it can be said that nothing new can be written in Literature after Ramayana and Mahabharata. The thin line of demarcation between normal and abnormal vanishes when human psyche is understood in the context of mythological stories. That was, in a way, an effort on the part of creator to make human mind free from guilty conscience, which is quite necessary to maintain an equilibrium in the society.

That literature which was once created orally, with the advancement of technology reached to present stage when paperback publishing is called traditional and the day is not far when it would become extinct and eBooks and audio books would take over the market only to save the future human race from hazardous consequences of paper industry. With the expansion of reach due to increased rate of literacy in third  world countries and advance technology author had to act more responsibly for the cultural advancement of the society, which he has conveniently overlooked.

Many authors do hard work and spend  years and decades to do research on a subject before they give final shape to a book. One great Indian scholar and author Mahapandit Rahul Sankrityayan traveled to many eastern countries like Nepal, Tibet, Russia and China to collect manuscripts written in Pali and Sanskrit and brought them back to India on several yaks to write fiction based on these books. William Dalrymple when writing his book 'City Of Jinns' collected many documents from survivors of British India.

Literature can and must be created out of Mythology but a great caution is required. The book when read after few centuries should not construe a wrong picture in the mind of the reader. Nobody gives that right to an author.

© Vipin Behari Goyal

Contemporary Feminism In Indian English Novels

            Why Indian English authors are not feminist?

   

 This has always been a man's world, and none of the reasons that have been offered in explanation have seemed adequate. ~Simone de Beauvoir.

And man's world it is. Especially if the most powerful feminist woman of the world says so. Is it admittance of a truth, a sarcasm on the society or admittance of failure to prove your point, that "Man and Woman are Equal". Can society conspire to marginalize woman for many centuries, or it is the woman herself who ducks on the surface to inhale fresh breath of air, finds the waves too strong to handle and ducks back into the sanctuary of her deep inner self.

A woman can't understand other woman as a man does. Most of the Feminist English Authors are females, and some prolific Indian female authors writing in English during the latter half of the twentieth century are Kamala Markandaya, Nayantara Sahgal, Kamala Das, Anita Desai, and Shashi Deshpande, Jhumpa Lahri, Arundathi Roy, Anita Nair, Shobha De. Whereas first-wave feminism focused mainly on voting rights, property rights, second-wave feminism brought up issues like sexuality, family, the workplace, reproductive rights, de facto inequalities, and official legal inequalities and Third Wave feminists have broadened their goals, focusing on ideas like queer theory, abolishing gender role expectations and stereotypes, and defending sex work, pornography, reproductive rights, and sex-positivity.

Each wave had its own share of strong literature written by male and female authors, all through 1968 till today. Not only this we had Radical feminist, Dissident feminist, Socialist feminist and Anti-prostitution feminist all around the globe when Indian English Authors, who were born in British India or Independent India, learned  English from earliest childhood, failed to make a mark in the world literature. Had it not been R. N. Tagore world would have looked upon India as a literary barren land.

Betty Friedan (The Feminine Mystique) The Second Sex (Simone de Beauvoir) A Room of One's Own (Virginia Woolf) The Color Purple (Alice Walker) are some of the best work written since first wave feminism. It has considered gender in the terms of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, as part of the deconstruction. When gender is part of the essential self and society constructs a tab to give you an identity on the basis of that, the denial of the tag would be denial of self.

Lisa Tuttle has defined feminist theory as asking "new questions of old texts." This could be endless. Buddha once said "Unfathomly deep, deep like a fish's course in the water is the character of women." An enlightened man Buddha was. But Sigmund Freud was a psychoanalyst, why would he say " The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is 'What does a woman want?'

Exasperated male are not undefeatable. Indian Authors created enough social drama and portrayed heroic women as sufferers, rebels, vengeful, tactful and ready to sacrifice but have never bothered to peel those layers of the psyche which makes her so.

In the third wave feminism the focus has shifted to queer theory and non white woman by Rebbeca Walker. Despite the tall talks of a woman having reached the zenith of equality and any further efforts would only undermine the whole issues and the movement would lose its support are a camouflage of patriarchal society to suppress the undercurrent which had really hit the balls hard.

A talk of feminism would instigate an Indian mind to talk about Vedic era and mythological depictions of the female form as the Goddess, because it is easier to put them on an alter and fake-worship than to understand the language of symbols and gestures and treat them equally.

The Indian women has come out of identity crisis and her metamorphosed form is ready to treat herself at par with her western counterparts, would it not be a high time when Indian authors both male and female portray the dilemma, progression and future of feminism in India. 

The western concept of Androgyny was an effort to subside exaggerated and polarizes form of masculinity and femininity and strikes a balance by a combination of the best qualities of the genders, had a parity with the Hindu concept of Ardhnarishwar. Why somebody should think that nurturance, compassion, tenderness, cooperativeness, meekness and gentleness are feminine qualities while aggressiveness, leadership, initiative, competitiveness, boldness, daring and adventurousness are the masculine qualities. Qualities allocated to one gender when and if found in other gender it would make him/her inferior. So a masculine female was as condemnable as a feminine male.

Being feminist is a mental status acquired by the unconditioned mind with an effort initially till shackles of patriarchal social conditioning are broken and a woman-centered perspective of celebrating womanhood evolved for all and everyone irrespective of their gender. Thus, like a religion, it too, is a way of life.

Third Wave deemed universalism of  hardcore feminist would try to differentiate non-white from white and queer from normal is unwonted because that may mitigate what has already been gained and accepted and has transcended in the collective psyche of the society.

An author if has a patriarchal mind set can never portray a strong feminine character, unless he has trained his mind to rise above gender bias, it would definitely reflect in  female characters of his book. Indian society is not only deep rooted patriarchal, but also a hypocrite and has to go a long way.

The authors could have paved the path, but unfortunately they too are weak feminist.

© Vipin Behari Goyal

Wonderful Small Books

                      Does size matters?

             The classification of book as novel, novella, novelette and short story is not an easy job. Reviewers/Editors/Critiques classify randomly and seldom bother to follow international standard. Some literary guild had been doing the exercise but they also do not have universal acceptance. 

              If we say that the novella is written with a satirical, moral or educational nature and purpose, it would be a gross generalization and the very object of the author could be defeated by such blatant categorization. Or a story may even have the ingredient of a novel like multiple characters, sub-plots, conflicts and twists, and all novels are also ultimately a story.

              "The Science Fiction" and "Fantasy Writers of America" specifies word lengths for each category of its Nebula award categories: Novel over 40,000 words, Novella 17,500 to 40,000 words, Novelette 7,500 to 17,500 words, Short Story under 7,500 words.

             How the words would be counted, is also not defined. There are different opinions and "different word counting programs may give varying results, depending on the text segmentation rule details, and on whether words outside the main text (such as footnotes, endnotes, or hidden text) are counted. But the behavior of most major word processing applications is broadly similar" as endorsed by Wiki.

           A reader, however remains unaffected by such jugglery and is straightforward in judging the true value of the books. Some, such books which are though small in word count, but have influenced the life or thought process of millions of people are listed here. If by chance we have over passed any of them earlier this is the high time to pick it now.

1. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull by Richard Bach is a book that teaches self -perfection, how to be true to yourself and keep working on love. It is motivational, life changing book, if taken seriously.

2. Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky is a book from which many theories of Philosophies have emerged and also a paradigm shift in many existing philosophies has occurred. The description of mental state when one enjoys sufferings and conscious inertia makes this book as a masterpiece.

3.  The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery is most-read, most-translated book of the world. The book has been tagged in the category of "Children's Book" would sure leave every mature wondering about the strangeness and logistics of the adult world.

4. Who moved my cheese? By Spencer Johnson would change how you perceive the changes that are taking place in your life. It is written like a fable which has maximum appeal for the human psyche.

5. Self-reliance by R.W. Emerson  is a book of essay. You may have to re-read to grasp the depiction of self worth by trusting your own self.

6. The old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway can be put at the top of the list, if this matters at all. There are very few books in the world that would touch your heart and mind both equally. Moreover who would not honor the struggle of old man and also would feel honored in doing so.

             This list would grow if you can add few books of your choice in the comments.

   

Fooled by Translation

        

                      Fooled By Translation

Had India not remained slave to British for many centuries, our perception of English as a language would have been different. The words like Pre-Colonial  and Post-Colonial Literature would not have segmented our rich heritage of Sanskrit and Hindi Literature. One can dare say that amazing books have been written in Hindi and regional languages in India, which are at par, if not superior to books written in English. India has not come out of the spell cast by “Queen’s Language” which British thought was their monopoly.

However, USA also remained a colony but the English was already a native language of America, which is acknowledged as American English. While the Indian English is considered as crude copy of standard British English and has failed to develop an identity like American English.

The fact that despite critiques accused “Of man and mice” a masterpiece by John Steinbeck for vulgarity, racism and slang, the author was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature and American Literary Association classified the book as “Most challenged book of 21st Century”.

The Nobel Laureate of USA, Saul Bellow, Canadian born American author was brought up in Chicago and English was his native language. His books viz., The dangling man, Herzog, Seize the day, Revelstein are written in American English which has its own set of rules for  spelling, grammar, punctuation and style which are sometimes in contradiction to standard British English.

Most of the popular books that we read were not written in English originally. For example Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel García Márquez, Paulo Coelho wrote in Spanish, Fyodor Dostoyevsky , Anton Chekhov Leo Tolstoy, Nikolai Gogol, Maxim Gorky, Boris Pasternak, Vladimir Nabokov, in Russian,  Haruki Murakami Yasunari Kawabata in Japanese, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Victor Hugo  Gustave Flaubert, Simone de Beauvoir in French.

These are only a few examples of popular authors. Sometime you may come across a bad translation and then it would be difficult to complete that book. Jacques Derrida says

“What must be translated of that which is translatable can only be the untranslatable. ”

Original always lacks its translation. It depends upon the translator if it fills up the gap in the way a story was created and perception of the reader, or widens it. Samuel Beckett who was a bilingual author who wrote in English as well as French said that the translator’s failure is, thus, an ‘interesting failure’.

Most of Indian knows good English but they are afraid of speaking and writing something because they think that some would mock at them, who has nothing substantial to say but has little better knowledge of grammar or punctuation.

The proper outlet for the creativity of such persons is translation of rich Hindi and regional language literature into English, if they have nothing to say anything of their own.

English is the lingua Franca of the world. If what is said is understood as it should be, the purpose of the language is served.

It is high time we make our own Chicago manual (may be Mumbai Manual) . The Mumbai has more English speaking people than anywhere else in India, and that too without hesitation of getting a tag.
Views of Gabriel Garcia Marquez on translator

"I have great admiration for translators except for the ones who use footnotes. They are always trying to explain to the reader something which the author probably did not mean; since it’s there, the reader has to put up with it. Translating is a very difficult job, not at all rewarding, and very badly paid. A good translation is always a re-creation in another language. That’s why I have such great admiration for Gregory Rabassa. My books have been translated into twenty-one languages and Rabassa is the only translator who has never asked for something to be clarified so he can put a footnote in. I think that my work has been completely re-created in English. There are parts of the book which are very difficult to follow literally. The impression one gets is that the translator read the book and then rewrote it from his recollections. That’s why I have such admiration for translators. They are intuitive rather than intellectual. Not only is what publishers pay them completely miserable, but they don’t see their work as literary creation. There are some books I would have liked to translate into Spanish, but they would have involved as much work as writing my own books and I wouldn’t have made enough money to eat."

                                                           ~Vipin Behari Goyal

Pulp fiction Versus Kerosene literature

Is Pulp Fiction Lovable ?

 The pulp fiction was a term used in America in the early years of the twentieth century for cheap magazines and books sold on book stands. The covers were glamorous but the cheap pulp paper was used for printing the story and articles. The stories were action packed and romance was at its zenith in such books. Such books were popular with young adults. Some writers of pulp fiction later became celebrities and wrote popular fiction in literary style. After world war two the paper became very costly and such books slowly disappeared from the market. Later with the advent of Television the market of such books became obsolete and it became a talk of a bygone era.

Almost the same type of books and magazines were popular in India also during the same time till in sixties Hind Pocket Books came out with one rupee books. The pulp fiction was called “Ghasleti Sahitya” in India, which meant Kerosene Literature. It was called so, because in the opinion of bourgeois it was stinky as kerosene , and it could even stink the mind of readers. Such books were sold wrapped up in yellow foil so that curious bystanders do not pick up and turn the pages. Anonymous became the synonym of Mastram. Many bestselling authors of Hindi emerged from a community of readers and writers of these books.

During all these years great literature was written all over the world, especially in Europe,  e.g. F. Scott Fitzgerald, E. M. Forster, Ernest Hemingway, Aldous Huxley, Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf, W. Somerset Maugham, Albert Camus, Joseph Conrad,  D .H. Lawrence, C.S. Lewis, George Orwell, Sinclair Lewis, Arthur Conan Doyle, James Joyce, Andre Gide, Rudyard Kipling,  Hermann Hesse, Ayn Rand, Jean Paul Sartre etc. wrote wonderful books which are categorized as “Classic Literature”.

On the other hand in Hindi, the famous authors who created parallel classical literature during the same period were Bhishma Sahni, Dushyant Kumar, Devkinandan Khatri, Dharamvir Bharti, Hajari Prasad Dwivedi, Jainendra Kumar, Kamleshwar, Kedarnath Agarwal, Krishna Sobati, Mannu Bhandari, Mohan Rakesh, Nagarjun, Suryakant Tripathi Nirala, Phanishwar Nath Renu, Padma Sachdeva, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, Sachchidananda Vatsyayan, Vishnu Prabhakar, Yashpal etc. .

It looks like best literature in Hindi and English was written during the first half of the twentieth century when pulp fiction and kerosene literature was also equally or rather more popular if we decide the popularity by sale. Thousands of copies of cheap (in price) detective novels by Ved Prakash Sharma, Surendra Mohan Pathak and Keshav Pandit were sold on the date of release. They were James Hadley Chase, Frederick Forsyth and Earl Stanley Gardner of India.

What attracted people to these books? There was no TV, Video games, Internet and other numerous means of entertainment.  Middle class, half educated youth was attracted by pulp fiction as bees are attracted by nectar. These books were sold in 25 Paisa which was called Chawanni or a quarter of a rupee. Later everything that was cheap or vulgar was called “chawanna”. That was the only source of entertainment where you can extract the full value of your money provided you can read. In those days the rate of literacy (which meant people who could read and write their name) was  hardly ten percent, so reading a book was a status symbol and folks were impressed by it. Especially because this type of fiction provided enough scope for imagination.

If for a moment we get rid off of our English mania, the Hindi literature created during the first half of the past century was much superior to or at least at par with literature created in Europe, and the USSR. USA at that time was more busy in the economic growth of the country.

This is high time we accept the work of all authors and honor the talent of creative writing ignoring what is being written, if it  is popular amongst the masses.

© Vipin Behari Goyal
Advocate, Rajasthan High Court, Jodhpur, India

The future of English fiction writers in India (2)

The future of English fiction writers in India (2)

                                                                                 [Mehek Bassi - Indian English Author]

The interesting generalization about Indian English Authors who have become famous recently is their background. They have a higher technical degree and work in Banks/Financial Institutions. What makes them author? Except that they were born to be authors. They had a natural talent for the art of telling a story. Whatever novels have been written and published in the last one decade which one of them fall in the category of English Literature?

Encyclopedia Britannica defines “English literature, the body of written works produced in the English language by inhabitants of the British Isles”. Many famous authors of English Literature settled outside the British Isle like James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Aldus Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, Robert Graves, and Graham Greene etc. The books written by Indian authors are classified as Indian English Literature or IEL. In India English has a status of second language. English as a second language (ESL) is the use or study of English by speakers with different native languages.

The countries like Great Britain, USA, Canada and Australia form an inner circle where English is the primary language. India and Singapore, are extended circle of English where it is the second language in a multilingual society. The third category is of countries like China and Japan, which form expanding circles where English is getting popular as a foreign language.

Unfortunately it is not the Hindi our mother tongue and national language, but English is the lingua Franca that connects the whole country. Much powerful literature has been written in regional languages which need to be translated in English. The business of publishing books seems to have more moral and ethical responsibilities, which again is a debatable issue. But one thing is sure that the future of Indian English fiction publishers is co-related to the future of Indian English writers.

The future would not be decided by The Great Authors like Vikram Seth or Arundhati Roy as they do not have mass appeal. Their novels were read by book lovers, who was already reading foreign authors. The English novels of Chetan Bhagat and Amish Tripathi etc. found a niche market.

A niche market is defined as “the subset of the market on which a specific product is focusing. So the market niche defines the specific product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs, as well as the price range, production quality and the demographics that is intended to impact.”

English should be the first preference to write if you can think, imagine, read and write in English. English like any other language is not monopoly of any nation.

About a thousand years back the nobility of England spoke French and read Latin and ordinary people spoke Old English which evolved as Middle English under the influence of Germanic, Romance and Celtic languages. Modern English has come a long way in last hundred years and it will be New English in coming hundred years.

English is the universal language by chance. Now it belongs to all equally. Books written in one part of the world in English are as good as written in any other part. So let us not confine language in the man-made boundaries of nations.

Kudos to the authors and publishers!!!

Salute to the whistleblowers and torch bearers!!!

The niche market is hungry and few books that have come so far are only appetizers.

Give them healthy food, lest they fall for junk food.

                                                                               ~Vipin Behari Goyal
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The future of English Fiction Writers in India (1)                                                      

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