tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28238926845107382012024-03-13T01:52:36.829+00:00Sunny Singh OnlineRaves and rants - and occasionally fiction - by London-based Indian novelist who loves Bollywood, classical Indian non-fiction and endless discussions on whats wrong with the world...Sunny Singhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02687722552329432572noreply@blogger.comBlogger119125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2823892684510738201.post-85294033885579529712017-06-20T00:26:00.000+01:002017-06-20T09:48:44.695+01:00Fifty Years, A Love Story<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Over half a century ago, my grandfather set out to do what most Indian fathers do: find a 'suitable boy' for his daughter. Amidst all the boxes he had set himself to tick, his daughter - my mother - had added one of her own: the 'boy' had to be in the army. My mum has always liked uniforms!<br />
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My grandfather found such a 'suitable' boy. Except that particular road was frought with Shakespearan complications: jealous stepmothers; odd mixed messages; mistaken identities because Rajputs seem to have zero imagination when it comes to naming our daughters; and also actual threat of bodily harm to the bridegroom who was serving on the border. An uncle sent out by my father to check out his bride was too shy to lift his eyes and thus reported that 'she had beautiful feet.' And then there was my mother, the 'ice princess' herself, who was - and remains - too beautiful for words and very much a daddy's girl. Could any man match up to her father?<br />
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In face of numerous complications, my maternal grandfather, a man dedicated to modern judiciary, eventually gave into his feudal instincts and took a train full of men armed to their teeth to the engagement ceremony. He decided he was going to walk off if my to-be dad didn't meet his standards even if it triggered a blood feud. Phew! Dad's good looks - or undeniable charms - avoided that particular bloodshed.<br />
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Things didn't improve much when I came along a couple of years later. My first memories are of my mother searching casualties lists in the newspapers to find my father's name and weeping over those of his men who did not come home.<br />
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My dad thankfully did.<br />
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And my mother wore a sari the colour of the midnight embroidered with silver stars. The silver stars made her lap too scratchy for me to sit on but my father told me that she looked beautiful. She teased him that if he 'truly' loved her, he would have brought her Dhakai silk that would be as soft as butter. Thirty years later when he returned to Dhaka in peace time on a work trip, he brought back two of those beautiful saris for her.<br />
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They stayed that way: glamourous, mysterious, even when my sister was born. They danced till the early morning hours in officers' messes in far off army camps. Amongst our military home gear, the most precious possession was an expensive 'hi-fi' sound system. Wrapped carefully in towels, it travelled in the back of my dad's government issue Jonga across India's north eastern region. In far off army camps, in the midst of the jungle, the hi-fi sound system would play Indian and Western songs while my parents danced in the soft glow of dozens of storm lanterns.<br />
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Until another war - and a life in hostile territory - came about. There was a new baby - my brother - and a new war: the Soviet-Afghan one. Our house was bugged so family conversations happened in the shower. My father had given up his uniform for strange games of shadows, reflections, smoke. And my mother had a crochet knitting bag full of knitting needles and balls of wool. She carried it everywhere but we were not allowed to touch it. Because the bag held the gun. And my mum is a damn good shot!<br />
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My parents locked into each other during those years in Pakistan. Call it co-dependency. Call it addiction. Call it battle fatigue. Or just call it trust.<br />
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And so it has been. Mr and Mrs Smith have nothing on them.<br />
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But then there were the years in the wilderness. Not with eachother, but for the world. Where everything seemed wrong. Or at least harder. And they were not made easier by the many questions about the choices they made - not in the least about their children (my choices have never been easy to defend - mum and dad, I am sorry) .<br />
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And there have been the years of empty nesting where all of us left. I remember my parents' bewilderment at having to negotiate a relationship that was unmediated by a child. Any child.<br />
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They grow old now and relatively feeble. So no more forty kilometers a day marches for my father. And more cautious; so no more family trips through war zones. But it amazes me that they still have so many things to talk about. After five decades, my father still wakes my mother with a tea tray in bed. My mother still buys my dad's clothes and knows exactly what he loves. But more importantly, they have a lot to say each other every moment of the day. And they still have lots to argue about. And they hug each other when they nap. <br />
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After fifty years, that's a damn high bar for relationships. But it is also the right one!<br />
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So happy 50th anniversary, parents! </div>
Sunny Singhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02687722552329432572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2823892684510738201.post-24810528286142196602016-11-09T13:32:00.004+00:002016-11-11T19:43:01.638+00:00The End of Beauty<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
2016.<br />
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The year when beauty ended. The year that robbed us of David Bowie. And Prince. And S.H. Raza. And Mahashweta Devi. From the very first day of the year, the stars aligned against music and words and colours. Against creation and art. </div>
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Steadily, inexorably, a dull, grey storm cloud rose until it engulfed the planet.<br />
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The storm had been germinating for a long while. Or do I mean a cyclone? Shall I call it a hurricane? Over the horizon. And yet all around us, in maelstrom of horror, it built and gathered fury. In soft nostalgia peddled by hipster cafes and fashionable boutiques. With reclaimed - upcycled - kitsch that nodded to a past that had never existed but could be sanitised and sold for ludicrous sums. It gathered strength in the swamping of literature that provokes complex thought with simplistic cliches that were lauded for their great value. And it grew monstrous in brush strokes that produced nothing of value beyond meaningless critique and auctions that were only notable for the vast sums of money invoked by newspapers. In music that nodded to our childhoods but did little to guide us into our precarious old age. </div>
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And most of all in our obsession with digital fever dreams of what we named Reality TV - a lurid, sordid screenscape that blocked out all that we could have lived in reality itself. </div>
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So naturally the growing storm found its core in a man who is a star of this elaborate artifice. A man who confidently proclaims that he knows words; that he has 'the best words.' A man who lumbers about an awkward lubber of a body of a colour never found in nature. A man who took that lack of meaning that we had dulled ourselves with and piped them directly into our television screens, and speakers, and twitter feeds. A man who didn't need to tell the truth because we had grown to accept and expect artifice, falsehood and meaninglessness. </div>
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And yet we stayed transfixed by the horrorscape on our screens, incapable of action even when Reality TV bled into reality. Many never noticed that the 'best words,' the false words, the knowing words, transformed themselves into echoes that grew louder with each passing moment. And those who noticed, remained powerless as the voices of inanity, of ignorance, of brute stupidity grew into a tall cyclone. Or even the tallest cyclone, the Orange Man would say.<br />
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Those of us who love beauty could not escape the horrorscape even when those echoes became a cacophony of atavistics howls of a mob driven mad by illusions of grievance. By delusions of oppression. By false memories of greatness. </div>
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Until one morning when that storm, that hurricane, that cyclone of meaningless words, of sloppy brushstrokes, jangling notes, of comprehensive moral vacuum swamped us. Mute, paralysed, we watched even as it grew ever nearer. Some of us shrieked, shouted, raged, warned but our voices were lost in the dissonant racket. And the monstrous storm raged and screamed and howled nothing. Until it engulfed us all into nothing. And then whirled on to become Nothing. </div>
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1985. The year my family moved to New York City. Ronald Reagan was President. Cold War was at its height. And aptly for an international, politicised, informed family, what my siblings and I - ranging in age from six to sixteen - feared most was Mutually Assured Destruction. We knew far better than most adults - thanks to my father's job - the complex processes, the nuclear protocols, the range and time till an ICBM launched from across would be counted as First Strike. </div>
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While the adults worried and tried to change reality, we - as kids - tried to find comfort. We wanted a plan of action. Any plan. Any action. We thought of escape. Of grab bags with passports and money. Of cars and boats. And skills required to survive the nuclear winter we were afraid would happen on any day. </div>
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Then we realised that if a strike were launched, we lived within a mile of the epicentre. So instead we decided - as children, albeit very well informed ones - that we would walk down to the UN Plaza. We knew we could get there before that first atomic orange flash. </div>
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There, if we were lucky, we would have time to arrange ourselves. To make shadows. To make the best shadows. The most beautiful shadows. Nuclear Shadows that would remain behind for the survivors of our world. Or aliens who stumbled upon our destroyed planet. </div>
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Powerless yet informed, we wished to leave behind something beautiful. Something that would let the future know that there were some of who were informed. And thoughtful. And creative. And fundamentally moral. </div>
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To leave a trace that somehow, somewhere, despite complete annihilation, ours had been a world of beauty. With beauty. It was Beauty. </div>
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And in that beauty, we found hope. </div>
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I no longer know if those who are children today - on this day - have any hope or ability to reach or create beauty.<br />
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<b>UPDATE: </b>I would like to change the end of the piece with a quote from The Buddha Smiled who <a href="https://twitter.com/TheBuddhaSmiled/status/796811933026426880">tweeted</a>:<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #292f33; letter-spacing: 0.26px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #292f33; letter-spacing: 0.26px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">"Yesterday my heart was breaking. Today, I ponder how to cast a shadow that will be long and enduring."</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #292f33; letter-spacing: 0.26px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #292f33; letter-spacing: 0.26px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And in that shadow, there is still hope. There will always be hope. </span></span></div>
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Sunny Singhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02687722552329432572noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2823892684510738201.post-23905261936569166842016-02-14T21:04:00.001+00:002016-02-16T00:24:47.801+00:00When Neutral is Really Default Setting For Male (and White): A Slightly Non-Scientific SocMed Experiment<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I have written before about <a href="http://sunnysinghonline.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/each-time-i-behave-as-angry-loud-woman.html">online gendered harassment </a>and trolling. The recent report by the <a href="http://wmcspeechproject.com/research-statistics/">Women's Media Centre</a> provides horrific - if unsurprising - statistics of gendered harassment that in large part echo women's IRL experiences (please do read. Makes for an illuminating if unedifying read). The centre's director recently shared this handy illustration to make sense of the scale and forms of the issue:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3CY3YR2MEwAJoLRyGDGvzvutco6NKBUP-54mbcpEf8OqldZZGtlla0Yk2aAaRBiUUfrZnmMtWW__kqU5aBtknq447uGayqAApzxpky8X9VTKcRE4nNzeQ-v4QjBX0po8t9XWSU9rNl_s1/s1600/wheelfull.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3CY3YR2MEwAJoLRyGDGvzvutco6NKBUP-54mbcpEf8OqldZZGtlla0Yk2aAaRBiUUfrZnmMtWW__kqU5aBtknq447uGayqAApzxpky8X9VTKcRE4nNzeQ-v4QjBX0po8t9XWSU9rNl_s1/s320/wheelfull.jpg" width="277" /></a></div>
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The wheel however leaves out aspects other than visible gender that impact our experiences online, including but not limited to race, nationality, religion, and sexuality. Here I want to talk about just one of the above intersections: of gender with race. </div>
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As a non-white woman who has spent much of her adult life on line as a blogger, writer, journalist and social media user, I am particularly aware of how visible markers of race - especially name and photograph - add to the gendered interactions. Women of colour face - IRL and online - a harassment on both axis. </div>
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Moreover, given the scope of the <a href="http://www.dailydot.com/lifestyle/soraya-chemaly-ashley-judd-womens-media-center/">Speech Project</a>, the wheel does not take into account the drip feed of gendered, sexualised and racialised micro-aggressions (such as derailment, dismissal, sealioning) that women, and more acutely, women of colour must cope with online. It is also necessary to differentiate the two - legally defined harassment and microaggressions - even though some impacts may be similar and the intents and tactics may be on the same spectrum. </div>
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After over twenty-five years online (cue bad memories of early web and late 1980s fashion), I have come to expect abuse, trolling, harassment (as per the wheel) but also gendered and racialised microaggressions such as sealioning as the norm. This is simply by dint of presenting as a visibly nonwhite woman at the same time as holding opinions. Yet I am still (and frequently) surprised that often those opinions don't need to be about 'big things' like war, politics, economics, or even 'controversial' topics such as feminism or free speech (or Gamer Gate!). Even opinions about relatively niche topics such as theatre or art can suddenly trigger massive pushback with gendered and racialised language. </div>
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Two weeks ago, before going to bed I tweeted some relatively innocuous thoughts about <a href="https://twitter.com/sunnysingh_nw3/status/693212683387191296">Caryl Churchill's new play at the Royal Court</a>. I woke up next morning to a surprising amount of pushback, some abusive, other merely condescending and/or dismissive. On another day, I would have probably moved on but this came on the heels of weeks of <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/10/here-comes-the-berniebro-bernie-sanders/411070/">Berniebro</a>s who seemed to stalk the internet looking for even the mildest criticism of their idol. First hint of even a question and they would pounce. Or perhaps I was just tired of the constant dripfeed of <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/mansplaining-definition-history">mansplaining</a> and <a href="http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/whitesplaining-what-it-and-how-it-works">whitesplaining</a>, both online and IRL. Without particular planning, I decided to embark on a <a href="https://twitter.com/sunnysingh_nw3/status/693370135382482944">social media experiment (do check that twitter thread as it outlines the parameters and concept).</a> </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiUPUxqOqIcOeBTTuybtqX2QzwFqbESPE8W_mGxIU9CkvmNq25JZjdbqpeuio1-gSRRygp9PRQdfCBp4Z7j5wcBO3jJFcVwJIQui_DEBspMz3Y7psJOhYdj-fsAGmJSheBtreuZXz1ndzG/s1600/IMG_1819.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiUPUxqOqIcOeBTTuybtqX2QzwFqbESPE8W_mGxIU9CkvmNq25JZjdbqpeuio1-gSRRygp9PRQdfCBp4Z7j5wcBO3jJFcVwJIQui_DEBspMz3Y7psJOhYdj-fsAGmJSheBtreuZXz1ndzG/s200/IMG_1819.JPG" width="191" /></a></div>
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I decided to change my twitter profile photograph. From back in 2013, when I was harassed and abused systematically for nearly ten months, I already knew that when I had used a diving photograph - underwater, with a mask and regulator hiding my face - not only had gendered abuse dropped to zero but male 'experts' also assumed I was a man and approached me in a more collegial way. This time I wanted to see if non-human avatar would have a similar result, especially as quite a few feminist friends use similarly 'neutral' photographs for their profiles. </div>
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Then a twitter friend suggested that Sunshine Mutt as my handle as that would also partly veil my racial/ethnic identity. Of course a closer look on twitter would still show my name but it was worth a test. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7PEMAs1sNX8E430FIfm60SGm3XnARdlyzdlaGY2lY3y0JzWNTOaGcXmYx1oF4uzmTTTjEKttTCORGlVvfInT6LAum1LpQbMHwRHQSN1yTzoxbOzVL0AIFDLgD6ak6G7EsWG-qq0O-4JVz/s1600/IMG_3221.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="147" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7PEMAs1sNX8E430FIfm60SGm3XnARdlyzdlaGY2lY3y0JzWNTOaGcXmYx1oF4uzmTTTjEKttTCORGlVvfInT6LAum1LpQbMHwRHQSN1yTzoxbOzVL0AIFDLgD6ak6G7EsWG-qq0O-4JVz/s200/IMG_3221.JPG" width="200" /></a><br />
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Initially, and perhaps as a defense mechanism, I used this photograph. I found it secretly amusing as it is our young puppy, a female Rottweiler named Pixie (talk of subverting stereotypes!). </div>
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Unsurprisingly albeit sadly the results were<a href="https://twitter.com/sunnysingh_nw3/status/693393441317851136"> instantaneous</a>. The change in photograph dropped sexualised and gendered interactions to zero instantly. Surprisingly, racialised interactions also dropped instantly. The change in handle took all sexualised, gendered, and racialised interaction to zero. Some discussion with women friends on twitter raised the additional possibility that perhaps a large dog, especially a Rottweiler, was being read as male. The next step seemed to test out (1) if this were true and (2) would a dog visually read as more 'femme' change the interactions. So next photograph was of our little Dachshund.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8n0LvRBpebKwMoJuNFZ-xAein_zeqVtYulPdBipWr8wNLDLHa6lxA4iA5Aq_P_ehPv-PeULZ7YHQRfhyRlmmM-sReE4YwNk6YnKaS0E7ofLluVszWV-4zs4ElxGM9V_s4g0S8f5IgQsco/s1600/jully+india+2006+016.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8n0LvRBpebKwMoJuNFZ-xAein_zeqVtYulPdBipWr8wNLDLHa6lxA4iA5Aq_P_ehPv-PeULZ7YHQRfhyRlmmM-sReE4YwNk6YnKaS0E7ofLluVszWV-4zs4ElxGM9V_s4g0S8f5IgQsco/s200/jully+india+2006+016.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Through the changes, I kept tabs on the progress, posting and discussing the experiment on twitter regularly: I posted: </div>
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1. <a href="https://twitter.com/sunnysingh_nw3/status/693756624947781632">after 24 hours</a>. Zero harassment, abuse and microaggressions although my tweeting topics, opinions, language, all remained the same. </div>
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2. <a href="https://twitter.com/sunnysingh_nw3/status/694193566277582848">48 hours</a>. Still zero. This was particularly interesting as I had posted and critiqued Bernie Sanders online but received not a single one of the usual pushback accounts. </div>
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3. Even <a href="https://twitter.com/sunnysingh_nw3/status/694803998768021505">four days later</a>, there had been zero racialised, gendered, sexualised interactions. This again was interesting as the Iowa primaries took place in this period and despite the 'coin' controversy, I got zero racialised, gendered, sexualised pushback. (The above links are for twitter threads and may be worth a read).</div>
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On the third day of the experiment, I switched my handle back to normal to see if the pushback was primarily racial or gendered, or whether race added an additional axis to gendered pushback. Despite the switch to a racially/ethnically identifiable handle, nothing changed. With the dog avi, I still got ZERO racialised, gendered, sexualised interactions.</div>
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Initially I had planned on switching back to my normal photograph and handle after 48 hours. But testing out various permutations meant that nearly a week went by. That's when I realised the full extent of the toll of the constant online microaggressions: I was so enjoying being read as a man, so relieved that I could express my opinions without fearing immediate condescension, aggression, abuse, that I really didn't want to change back to my normal photograph. So instead I enjoyed the fake neutrality which is really the privilege of being perceived as a man for another few days. </div>
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A week later, I finally switched my photograph to my own. And wouldn't you know, five minutes later, I was back to be being mansplained, patronised, abused, sealioned. </div>
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Conclusion: the primary and first trigger for online harassment - as perhaps can be said also of IRL - is gender. My name can and is often read as male so I have experienced a sort of misplaced male privilege before (especially for book sales and professional correspondence but that is material for another blogpost). So even after my name was visibly and clearly racially identifiable, I got no aggression. This chimes with experience of male friends who are continuously surprised that they can speak on the same topics (even express the same views) with absolutely no aggression at all. </div>
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My theory is that gender is the primary - and universal - trigger for pushback. However, race when visibly identifiable becomes an additional target. Other axis of marginalisation - including sexuality, ability, class, age - also play a part to aggrevate the silencing and erasure. Yet gender - at least - in the past two weeks of my unscientific social media experiment emerges as the first and most obvious starting point. </div>
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And then they say feminism is dead. Or not needed. Sigh! </div>
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Sunny Singhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02687722552329432572noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2823892684510738201.post-65169446701261703572016-01-25T11:05:00.000+00:002016-01-25T17:14:56.674+00:00Arab Spring: To Dream of a Fairer World is Not Only Possible But Also Necessary<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
There is something surreal, even unbelievable, about realising that today marks five years since that extraordinary January 25th when Egypt rose to demand 'bread, freedom and social justice.' Many of the voices who led that uprising have been silenced: by murder, jail, torture and exile. Yet for all the deserted, heavily militarised streets in Cairo, Alexandria, Port Said and elsewhere, the conditions that led to those now-mythical Eighteen Days have not changed. If anything, the situation has grown more acute. But this is not a piece about politics, or even war. Instead, I want to write about history, and dreams, and imagination.<br />
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On February 6, 2011, I had <a href="http://sunnysinghonline.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/missing-edward-said-some-thoughts-on.html">lamented that we had no Edward Said </a>to help make sense of the events. I had specifically noted that the Arab Spring movements were another set of developments in the decolonisation process for the world: <br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 15.73px;">"The foundation of Egypt's uprising as well as many others bubbling around the Middle East are cultural. The key to this uprising is the not only the change in narrative, but also the newly found power to shape it. And that is also the reason that the political failure or success of these protests is immaterial in the longer term (although obviously hopefully they will succeed; failure will mean brutal oppression of these brave young people)."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15.73px;">In the five years since those heady Eighteen Days, my fears of brutal oppression have sadly come true. However, a huge shift in culture has also become clear. Even as voices are silenced in the region by dictators, militias, their international backers and a profitable weapons industry (Syria is an exception in this cocktail although more for the geopolitical mix of its backers instead of a difference in factors), the struggle for a narrative of decolonisation has not stopped. And just because Western mainstream media moves on, grows bored, or indeed refuses to cover complex stories, does not mean the transformations have stopped. </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 15.73px;">On </span><a href="http://sunnysinghonline.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/arab-spring-shifting-sands-convulsing.html" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 15.73px;">March 21, 2011, I wrote</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 15.73px;">:</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 15.73px;">"In the long term, these convulsions of history are unescapable. They will continue - not on media schedules and not for the next few weeks - but into the next couple of decades as historic changes do! At the end, those who put short term interests over long term paradigm shifts will find themselves on the wrong side of history."</span><br />
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It was obvious to me even in 2011 that we needed completely new "<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 15.73px;">definitions of statehood, political franchise, strategic relations, political and cultural narratives. We are in the midst of historic times where none of the old models and certainties can hold." </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 15.73px;">These definitions and ideals cannot and will not arise in five years. Rather they need both analysis and imagination. And most of all, these need the power to dream. It is crucial to think of the Arab Spring not in terms of days or months or even years, and not even in terms of a struggle for fundamental transformation of political, social and economics structures, but in terms of imagining new, fairer, different worlds. <a href="http://sunnysinghonline.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/writing-egypt-again-this-is-beginning.html"> In November 2011, I responded to the many 'hot takes' about the failure of the revolution</a>: </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16px;">"What we are witnessing is not a blip in time but a massive and extraordinary change. Not SCAF (Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, Egypt Army's junta) nor USA's paid stooges, nor Saudi Arabia's useful idiots, nor Europe's favourite business boys will be able to withstand the wave that has risen. And whether the revolutionaries stand or fall, live or die, are incarcerated or free, is immaterial. The change is inevitable. The only choice is the side we choose - within Egypt, and abroad - to stand."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">Today as we stand at a what appears to be the nadir with the devastation wreaked by Assad in Syria, rise of ISIS, Erdogan's near ignored crimes against Kurds, and Western-backed bombing of Yemen seemingly flagging up the worst of our fears about the region. All too often in these discussion, the old Orientalist narratives are reassserted - by the region's regimes and by their often Western backers (and increasingly - albeit temporarily, I would argue - by Russia). We are told about 'blood thirsty savages' but rarely about how they are funded or armed. We are told to shudder in horror at beheadings by ISIS but to ignore those by the Saudi regime. The destruction of Palmyra is held up as evidence of 'their' barbarism but the destruction of historic Sanaa by Western bombs delivered by a Western ally (KSA) with targets identified by Western advisors is almost entirely erased from our news channels and papers (Meanwhile, the sale of Palmyra antiquities looted by ISIS and magically sold in European markets is something few are even ready to discuss). We are told about the horrors of Russian bombs in Syria but apparently Western drone and airstrikes, even on MSF hospitals, are 'humanitarian.' If the above paragraph seems like another outraged postcolonial rant, it is deliberately meant to be so. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">I am tired. Tired of seeing lives shattered, families torn apart and displaced, people slaughtered. But more than that, I am tired of the lack of imagination on part of these regimes, as well as the bulk of Western leaders and commentariat (I also add Putin to this list, with his desperate need to emulate empire-builders despite the many economic and political constraints). To varying degrees, imperial thinking has a near complete lock on Western politicians, journalists, academics, analysts, leading to little more than short-termism, and endless replication of outdated thinking dressed up as analysis. As long as instant sales of tear gas, missiles, guns, or building another prison in the Gulf, can bump up annual profits of another friendly corporate and buy 'stability' from another dictator, our leaders seem satisfied. It is a geopolitical version of the same short-term thinking that many on the Western left accused the bankers of back in 2008-9. And it is a form of policymaking that is so locked into short-term profits and fears of losing them that it can see no further than knee-jerkism. </span></span><br />
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But exhaustion does not mean despair. Many pieces are moving on history's chessboard, many of which we have yet to take notice of completely. Over Christmas, I re-read Frantz Fanon's <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Toward-African-Revolution-Fanon-Frantz/dp/0802130909">Toward the African Revolution</a>, with many of the essays written during the Algerian war. I was struck by the prescience in the writings as well as Fanon's equanamity in accepting that the decolonisation process would be bitterly opposed by the constantly mutating forms of the declining empire(s). It reminded me of the biggest mistake in my thinking in 2011: I had underestimated the bitterness with which the decolonisation has been opposed, even as the forms of colonisation and colonisers have evolved and mutated. We no longer have formal colonies, but the colonial elite (as described accurately by Fanon) continue to be propped up, helping shore up unjust, exploitative, brutal economic, political, social structures for their former masters and current paymasters.<br />
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But recognising the intensity with which decolonisation - of social, political, economics structures, but more importantly of culture, narrative and minds - is being resisted also gives me hope. In the past five years, even as many voices have been silenced in Middle East and North Africa region, the change has not stopped. Instead, the Arab Spring gave decolonisation another historic push - Rhodes Must Fall, for example, is a not so distant, albeit often unrecognised offspring of the Arab Spring, as are many resistances across the world. In 2011, the revolution was waged in the 'Arab' world. Five years later, it is being dreamed in many lands and minds across the globe. <br />
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And note that term: dream. Because five years later, as the former colonisers make their paucity of imagination amply clear, there are many new dreams being woven in minds across the globe. To look at the world today is to see a clash of mythic proportions. Not between civilisations, as many without imagination would prefer to think of it. Instead, it is an epic struggle between those who demand the right to dream for ourselves and those with much fear and no imagination. In this battle between imagination and fear, January 25th, is not only the Egyptian or Arab, but decolonisation's 'shot heard around the world.'<br />
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Decades from now, when historians look back at our times, that may well be the most influential legacy of the Eighteen Days.</div>
Sunny Singhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02687722552329432572noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2823892684510738201.post-76162279710982895192015-11-07T19:14:00.002+00:002015-11-08T12:17:14.037+00:00On Teaching Creative Writing as a Woman of Colour<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Ten years ago, I took up the challenge of leading a BA: Creative Writing in the UK. At the interview (and in the decade that has followed) I kept one secret. I was deeply sceptical of Creative Writing programmes, although I could not have articulated my discomfort at the time. This post is an attempt to begin to do just that: explore why I had been sceptical of Creative Writing programmes, how I confronted that discomfort and tried to find solutions, and - in doing so - stumbled upon on something very unique.<br />
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When I first began my teaching job, I had inherited the curriculum and syllabus and in the first years I had very little leeway. Yet it was apparent in the very first class I walked into that neither were adequate, appropriate, or indeed to use management-speak, 'fit for purpose.' <br />
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I teach one of the most diverse (British and international) groups of students possible. But beyond that simplistic term lies a whole range of experiences and identities: my students are often from economically and socially disadvantaged sections of British society. They are often the first in their families to pursue higher education. Many juggle multiple jobs with family responsibilities for parents, children, siblings, and are often primary carers for more than one person. In many cases, they are first or second generation Britons, with complex migratory pasts, cultures and histories. Institutionally, many are classified as 'mature students' which flattens the life experiences that they bring to the classroom. All of this makes their decision (especially after the fee changes) to study Creative Writing even more risky (and brave).<br />
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Yet none of the course that I inherited ten years ago reflected the reality of students we were teaching. Junot Diaz's brilliant 2014 <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/mfa-vs-poc">MFA vs POC</a> essay was still years into the future but I was in a strange situation of living out the dilemma. Albeit from the other side! I wasn't a PoC writer participating in a workshop (An aside: I never did an MFA in Creative Writing. The very few workshops and writing groups I have experienced were enough to turn me off them. And for all the reasons that Diaz details). I was instead the course leader and tutor who could - perhaps, just perhaps - make a difference.<br />
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My first changes were discreet. I couched them in pedagogically acceptable language of familiarising students with the canon, with critical theory, with contemporary writing. Surreptitiously writers like Leslie Marmon Silko, Wole Soyinka, Mourid Barghouti, Alice Walker, Nawalel Saadawi made into my reading lists, as did bell hooks, Edward Said and Frantz Fanon. The reading list has steadily grown and expanded over time to include writing in translation as well as newer writing (Alex Wheatle and Ta-Nehisi Coates are two of the more recent additions).<br />
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Then a couple of years ago, when I got a chance to redesign the course as part of a university wide exercise, I decided to expand the curriculum to include more critical fiction on the grounds that you can't write it if you haven't read it. And I expanded the syllabus to be focussed on aspects of not just writing as a craft but also research skills, critical thinking, and most importantly critical writing (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Fictions-Imaginative-Discussions-Contemporary/dp/1565844971">Critical Fictions </a>is now a set text and I wish someone would republish the volume). Then I fought to include modules that gave students a chance to learn about the publishing industry, to devise query letters, book proposals, elevators pitches. I wanted to discuss publishing not in a NYC/London-centric way but open it up to global changes, markets, and developments. It makes sense when my students are from as far away as Brazil and Burma, and want to write and publish for their own people.<br />
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In the past ten years, my students have gone on to do amazing things. They write, perform and publish powerful, critical imaginative worlds. They work in publishing, media and cultural industries across the globe. Many teach, mentor and nurture, hopefully paying forward some of what they acquire during their degree.<br />
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Teaching Creative Writing has also helped me recognise and articulate my own discomfort. Junot Diaz is right in flagging up MFAs (and in the UK, MAs and BAs in Creative Writing) for their inability to support and nurture PoC. From the other side of the line, my conclusion is perhaps more distressing: Creative Writing courses are by definition imagined and designed for writers who are primarily white and middle class. The courses are designed to not confront or engage in the necessary emotional, psychic, intellectual, critical and yes, political, work that is required when writing from the margins. It isn't just the workshops that exclude - as Diaz astutely notes - but the very structure, design and conception of these courses.<br />
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This is why Creative Writing courses don't - and can't - serve those of us who are PoC, queer, non-binary, differently abled, or in multiple other ways structurally and historically disadvantaged. Even the token getsures towards nonconformist, challenging writing are designed to channel the writer on the margins into more conformist spaces. This coerced conformity is not limited to PoC experience in just workshops but at all levels, including the prescribed readings, the forms and themes considered culturally valuable (and thus worthy of being written), and the critical engagement (or lack thereof) with not only words on a page but also literature as a whole, forms and barriers to cultural participation, and thus with the world beyond.<br />
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In the past ten years, I have tried to find ways to circumvent thees design flaws and subvert the underlying premise of teaching Creative Writing. I must admit that it is a draining, exhausting task that often means I finish leading my workshops (and academic terms) feeling shattered. Yet it is also the most rewarding job I have ever held because I am - hopefully - widening the ladder, smoothing the climb, extending a hand to pull in yet another fellow writer from the margins.<br />
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Toni Morrison said recently that 'We don't need anymore writers as solitary heroes. We need a heroic writers' movement: assertive, militant, pugnacious." I keep hoping that with each graduating cohort, I am contributing a little to this possible heroic writers' movement.<br />
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But damn...I wish it were not so exhausting, draining, and all too often so very solitary! <br />
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PS: if the above speaks to you, or sounds familiar, or you'd like to swap ideas, please get in touch. <br />
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PPS: I hope to blog more about my reflections on my experience of teaching Creative Writing so watch this space.</div>
Sunny Singhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02687722552329432572noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2823892684510738201.post-63905533610985830152015-10-17T09:55:00.000+01:002015-10-17T23:22:14.401+01:00While Murdoch Media Focusses on Labour 'Problems', Can We Talk About The Tories?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Every morning I wake up to read the Murdoch press, only to be told that the Labour party are at the brink of collapse. I don't know. They may well be - after all, party politics often happen beyond the public eye. However, I rarely read anything about the post-election internal dynamics of the Conservatives (beyond fairly superficial pieces on the various politicians jockeying for party leadership). This may be - I concede - because there is an assumption that the party has won quite decisively, and need not consider voters (or potential ones) at all for a bit.<br />
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If so, it doesn't quite chime with the growing tetchiness and fumbling in the behaviour of many in its rank and file, both in real life and on social media. I recognise that many - especially on the left - would simply write this off as 'Tory arrogance' but I believe it is more complex. The party's higher ranks may well be clueless, as demonstrated for example by the poor optics of laughing just as Jeremy Corbyn was speaking at the last PMQs of poverty in Britain. The behaviour on social media of accounts of more junior Tory party members seems just as dissonant with a clear combination of irritation, arrogance (or perhaps more accurately, bravado) and an odd reluctance to answer questions.<br />
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While I have been watching multiple socmed accounts and party members flounder, here are some examples (that I have directly experienced):<br />
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1. The rather ineptly branded @LGBToryUK account went on a blocking spree on twitter during the party conference. While blocking is indeed a useful function for individuals, an institutional account that blocks en masse - and not for abuse but simple questions - is demonstrating both lack of social media savvy and incredible ineptitude.<br />
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I was blocked for a single tweet responding to an all-white, all male panel on queer issues at the party conference (my response was a rather mild 'oh dear'). Interestingly, I didn't notice for days until multiple LGBTIQ activists and freelance journalists began complaining of being blocked. On checking, I found I too had been blocked. And then, on raising a fuss, I was quietly unblocked. The administrators then claimed that I hadn't been blocked at all, despite screenshots, and have since refused to either apologise or explain how this magical block-unblock happened. To be quite precise, they are pretending they need not engage at all with me.<br />
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2. A stranger version of this is unfolding at councillor level in my area. Last year, after I experienced a racist hate crime, the local Tory councillors were fastest to mobilise and reach out. A year later, this has changed (the MP is again Labour so perhaps the councillors have decided there is little to be done until an election is closer?).<br />
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When questioned on issues ranging from immigration and the refugee crisis to tax credits and Brexit, the councillors are locked into a pattern. They predictably share the party line on their accounts but when asked for their own stances, are unable and unwilling to answer. When pushed, all they can offer is: 'we have no input into the party policy.'<br />
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Now this may well be true, but - for example - when the Home Secretary declares that 'immigration harms social cohesion,' a voter living in one of the areas of highest immigrant densities in the country can only be concerned. Surely it is then up to the councillors to soothe (or exacerbate) fears, and explain that the area is not (or is) facing a clear and present danger of social strife.<br />
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3. The local party office appears just as incapable of answering questions about how government policy - now decided entirely by the party as it is no longer in coalition - is impacting daily lives of residents, taxpayers and voters in the area. All queries are answered with a standard, 'please contact us if it is about council services.'<br />
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There may well be a party edict asking the rank and file to not comment on any policy matters. Given that most of the mainstream media appears invested in keeping all questions of politics at their most superfluous, this may even be a smart and reasonable tactic. However, in an age of social media, this is as poor a response as the optics of MPs 'laughing at poverty' during the PMQs.<br />
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However, I believe the reasons go beyond party edicts or arrogance. There is - I believe - a growing disconnect in whatever is decided at cabinet level and how it is communicated to the rank and file. Although party members fall in line with stating similarly worded, mechanical explanations, they are also left incapable of defending the government's policy decisions in any substantial way. They are also left floundering because the government policies are often increasingly indefensible - not only on moral grounds - but on logical, even small case conservative, pro-business grounds.<br />
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There is also - I have learned in the decade of living in Britain - an oddly feudal attitude to politics (and this cuts across party lines). As Indian politics practices a less subtle, more in-your-face version of this, I am quite familiar with it. Elected officials - from MPs to councillors in Britain - hold an implicit attitude of bestowing largess on their constituents. So an active and effective MP (or other elected official) will often respond instantly and immediately to small, personal grievances raised by individual voters. At MP surgeries, issues of council services or policing or individual difficulties can be raised and resolved. And there is a not so covert expectation that the voter thus being helped will then be grateful and suitably reward the party/officer with future voting loyalty.<br />
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This is really a modern version of a feudal lord handing out tit-bits to keep peasantry from revolting!<br />
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The principle that a democracy requires its elected officers to be held responsible not as feudal lords bestowing favours, but for service to voters appears non-existent.<br />
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In some ways, this is also why the Conservative party rank-and-file appears bewildered. Accustomed to abuse by opponents and assuaging individuals with supposed help is all they know. The very idea that a voter may question them on matters of policy or ideology appears almost entirely foreign. It is for this reason that @LGBToryUK blocked any who asked even the simplest of questions. They have nothing to 'bestow' on the voters. They have little explanation for why their tag erases the T in LGBT, or indeed why policy discussions on LGBT issues are being handled entirely by a very narrow set of people.<br />
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This is also why a local councillor - Hampstead's Oliver Cooper - can tetchily declare that politely albeit repeatedly questioning him about 'social cohesion' and anti-immigrant rhetoric from senior members of his party is 'insulting and harassing' him. It is also why he believes simply saying 'I do not accept the premise of your question. Fin.' is an adequate response to a voter. <br />
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However, social media and the changing demographics in Britain is demanding a new kind of politics (unlike many, I don't see Corbyn as a substantive harbinger of this). This form of politics will require more than a few elected officials 'resolving voter difficulties' by calling up a bureaucrat or contacting an office. As a voter, I am not interested in receiving 'gracious help' on an individual basis. I want to see efforts made for structural changes so the difficulties faced by me are not passed on to the next voter, and the next generation. (As an aside and this is material for another post, the Conservative party would do well to examine the Republican implosion across the pond. The final crumpling of the 'Southern strategy' holds lessons for the Tories who want to solely pander to an ever-shrinking and ageing 'base.')<br />
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Of course any kind of politics is hard to effect. At the same time, it is necessary that politicians in all parties began to learn this. If any politician or party believes they only need to deal with the voter to bestow favours, or can summarily dismiss their concerns, they are profoundly mistaken. If members of any party - but Conservatives in particular - feel that they don't have to go back to the electorate any time soon, simply because the next national level elections are far away, they are again mistaken. There are multiple other elections coming up before 2020 where the MPs may not bear the brunt of voters' discontent, but that may be borne by other elected officials.<br />
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Before ending, and perhaps this is the compassionate side of me, this also may be a reason for the current fumbling behaviour of so many in the Conservative party. Unable to defend the ridiculous rhetoric emerging from the upper ranks, they are just battening down the hatches, hoping that the questions - and voters - will go away.<br />
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And that's where they are wrong.<br />
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Sunny Singhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02687722552329432572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2823892684510738201.post-57734412502492445692015-09-23T10:11:00.000+01:002015-09-23T10:14:16.683+01:00MORE books added to the #wherebooksgo giveaway <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhGa_Gx_6WqEK3RIHWvn9s_kDFbkmwpF5acFj772eiWNleQnA_7xa0_K06nNIJ9GrdUgC02US4vpUaLL7K7jXti4hBiifLWcz1_M9rzwbRbTPuf90_OTlAWIfQO-QF5GmbbBfV5AAEey11/s1600/chris+chalmers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhGa_Gx_6WqEK3RIHWvn9s_kDFbkmwpF5acFj772eiWNleQnA_7xa0_K06nNIJ9GrdUgC02US4vpUaLL7K7jXti4hBiifLWcz1_M9rzwbRbTPuf90_OTlAWIfQO-QF5GmbbBfV5AAEey11/s200/chris+chalmers.jpg" width="199" /></a></div>
First of all, a HUGE thanks to everyone who has been sending in photographs of #HotelArcadia from all over the world for #wherebooksgo. Currently, we have 151 photographs from 28 countries. We have also had FOUR winners from three different countries who have won copies of bookss by novelists from Korea, Australia, and Scotland! This has truly become a global reading, travelling and book-loving enterprise.<br />
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We also have a NEW winner: the 150th photograph for #wherebooksgo won a copy of Paul Hardisty's debut Yemen thriller, The Abrupt Physics of Dying. And funnily enough, the book is flying its way to fellow writer, <a href="http://www.chrischalmers.net/">Chris Chalmers</a>!<br />
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Many of you will know that #wherebooks go started as a <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 18.4px;">both</span><a href="http://www.foyles.co.uk/blog-wherebooksgo" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 18.4px;"> sentimental</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 18.4px;"> as it was what I wished to do while reading Paul Sussman’s novel, </span><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Labyrinth-Osiris-Paul-Sussman-ebook/dp/B008HFHCNS/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1436520755&sr=1-4&keywords=paul+sussman" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 18.4px;">The Labyrinth of Osiris</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 18.4px;">, after he had passed way, and </span><a href="http://sunnysinghonline.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/where-books-go-crowdsourcing-travels-of.html" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 18.4px;">romantic </a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 18.4px;">as I have always wanted to know where books went with their readers. So when </span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 18.4px;">Hotel Arcadia</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 18.4px;"> came out, I requested readers to send in their photographs; I love getting a glimpse into their lives, and minds, which is both a joy and a privilege and one that would be impossible without technology and social media.</span></div>
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From the very beginning <a href="http://www.sunnysingh.net/where-books-go/" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">#<em><b><span style="background: white; font-style: normal;">wherebooksgo</span></b></em></a><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span style="background: white;"> has been</span></span><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> a fun crowdsourcing project to trace my new novel, <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hotel-Arcadia-Sunny-Singh/dp/0704373793/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421058013&sr=8-1&keywords=hotel+arcadia">Hotel Arcadia</a>'s travels around the world with its readers. It is really simple: readers take a picture of the book wherever they read the book – at home, travelling, somewhere familiar or exotic – and post it on Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag. Or they send it to me on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sunny-Singh/63360582655">Facebook</a>, or email it. I share the pics further on my website and social media. </span><br />
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<span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">Readers have been sending pics </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">from across the globe and the hashtag looks a lot like my dream list of places where I – not just my book – long to go. And I am getting to know readers from across the world who are so disparate and diverse and yet connected by their love of reading. Somewhere along the way, I realised that #wherebooksgo could also help share books that I have enjoyed reading with readers. So I have been reaching out to writers and publishers to ask them for copies of books for a #giveaway. </span></span><br />
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<span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">Over the summer, </span></span>we added the lovely <b><i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Princess-Bari-Hwang-Sok-yong/dp/1859641741/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1441887986&sr=8-1&keywords=princess+bari">Princess Bari</a></i></b> by Hwang Sok-yong to the #giveaway thanks to <a href="http://www.periscopebooks.co.uk/">Periscope Publishing</a>. And the lovely <a href="http://orendabooks.co.uk/">Orenda Books </a>contributed copies of David Ross's hilarious Last Days of Disco. We still have ONE FINAL COPY for the #giveaway. And while, a copy of Paul Hardisty's CWA-listed, debut thriller set in Yemen, <b><i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00OYTBHZ0/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1441888049&sr=1-1&keywords=abrupt+physics">The Abrupt Physics of Dying</a></i></b> has been won by the 150th photograph, there is a SIGNED copy (<i>exclusive first edition hard back</i>) of Ragnar Jonasson's <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Snowblind-Dark-Iceland-Ragnar-J%C3%B3nasson-ebook/dp/B00Q1UK0VW/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1441888088&sr=1-1&keywords=snowblind">Snowblind</a> </i>waiting for a lucky winner!<br />
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But we have some exciting news: Today we add TWO MORE books. First up, we have two copies of Kati Hiekkapelto's FIRST Anna Fekete novel, <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hummingbird-Anna-Fekete-Kati-Hiekkapelto/dp/1909807567"><i>The Hummingbird </i></a>(Arcadia Books, 2014). <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Defenceless-Anna-Fekete-Kati-Hiekkapelto/dp/1910633135/ref=pd_sim_14_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=03PJGNBZ6QB3QSAETESB&dpID=51hM-4VVWNL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR103%2C160_"><i>Defenceless</i></a>, has just been released to FAB reviews. When caught up with Kati on her promotions tour, I just HAD to get her to join. As you can see, I really had to work to convince her (it involved tea and cakes...and books!)<br />
As I had not yet read Kati's new novel, I cheekily asked her to contribute the book I had read earlier in the year and enjoyed very much: <span style="color: blue;"><i><u>The Hummingbird.</u></i></span><br />
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It has been one of my favourite thrillers this year and am really pleased that we've been able to include <b><i>the book that started it all!</i></b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMSHaFLQDOyNbAggPowUDpkUg33EMqyua0jlPsq_pVMAMQkR1n_lHW9TY_YmXKiD10JY9Dq4O2YZl8GOk766_s0aTSpaRT0nFu0OCf27abvU9ysSvpiu1nA-kwdHyW0zrk3hwDX2eEqphU/s1600/image2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMSHaFLQDOyNbAggPowUDpkUg33EMqyua0jlPsq_pVMAMQkR1n_lHW9TY_YmXKiD10JY9Dq4O2YZl8GOk766_s0aTSpaRT0nFu0OCf27abvU9ysSvpiu1nA-kwdHyW0zrk3hwDX2eEqphU/s200/image2.JPG" width="111" /></a>And SECOND, by a complete coincidence, turns out that Chris Chalmers has ALSO just released a new book. It is HOT OFF THE PRESS which makes its addition to <span style="color: blue;">#wherebooksgo</span> even more exciting.<br />
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<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Light-Other-Windows-Chris-Chalmers-ebook/dp/B013GNUDD6/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1442998418&sr=1-1&keywords=light+from+other+windows"><i>Light From Other Windows</i> </a>explores the unravelling of a family when the youngest son goes travelling around the world and gets caught in a tsunami. The lovely book blogger Jackie Law has a review of it <a href="https://neverimitate.wordpress.com/2015/09/21/book-review-light-from-other-windows/">here</a>. Am SO pleased Chris agreed to contribute two copies to the <span style="color: blue;">#wherebooksgo #giveaway</span>.<br />
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Chris's book is poignant, moving, and despite a grim topic, very life affirming.<br />
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SO keep those pics coming. And watch this space. We'll be working updating the pics, adding more books and finding more ways to share books we can all love! </div>
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Sunny Singhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02687722552329432572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2823892684510738201.post-89791658614487524122015-07-10T10:39:00.000+01:002015-09-10T13:42:34.735+01:00Hotel Arcadia and the AMAZING #wherebooksgo Give Away<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i style="font-weight: bold;">UPDATE (#2), September 10, 2015: </i>Doh! Nick Nakorn also sent this lovely pic of his copy of The Last Days of Disco, complete with the appropriate soundtrack. I LOVE all the places books go!<br />
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<i style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></i><i style="font-weight: bold;">UPDATE, September 10, 2015: </i>I have been terribly remiss in updating this blog entry and I can only blame writing assignments and deadlines. We have a NEW winner for #wherebooksgo for this lovely photograph from Devon by Nick Nakorn. Nick wins a copy of David Ross's wonderful debut novel, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Last-Days-Disco-David-Ross/dp/191063302X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1441888128&sr=8-1&keywords=last+days+of+disco"><b>The Last Days of Disco</b>.</a></i><br />
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The #giveaway isn't over yet. There are MORE books to be won, and we are adding books all the time so keep those pics coming. There is still one FINAL copy of David Ross's hilarious Last Days of Disco. We also have a copy of Paul Hardisty's debut thriller set in Yemen, <b><i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00OYTBHZ0/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1441888049&sr=1-1&keywords=abrupt+physics">The Abrupt Physics of Dying</a></i></b> as well as a SIGNED copy (<i>exclusive first edition hard back</i>) of Ragnar Jonasson's <b><i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Snowblind-Dark-Iceland-Ragnar-J%C3%B3nasson-ebook/dp/B00Q1UK0VW/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1441888088&sr=1-1&keywords=snowblind">Snowblind</a></i></b>. And keep an eye out as we're adding one of <b><i>my favourite Finnish noir writers</i></b> to the #giveaway next week!<br />
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Winning is easy: just take a pic with your copy of <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hotel-Arcadia-Sunny-Singh/dp/0704373793/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421058013&sr=8-1&keywords=hotel+arcadia">Hotel Arcadia</a> wherever you are and tweet or instagram it with the #wherebooksgo hashtag. Or email it to connect@sunnysingh.net or send it in via Facebook <a href="https://www.facebook.com/SunnySinghAuthor">here</a>.<br />
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<i style="font-weight: bold;">UPDATE, August 17th, 2015: </i>Winner of<b> Princess Bari </b>by Hwang Sok-Yong is <a href="https://twitter.com/m4monika">Monika Thakur</a> who sent in this amazing photograph from the Himalayas, India (along with some gorgeous ones from Turkey that you can see <a href="http://www.sunnysingh.net/where-books-go/">here</a>):<br />
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<b><i>UPDATE, July 29th, 2015: NEW BOOK added to the #giveaway: </i></b></div>
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We have added the <b><i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Princess-Bari-Hwang-Sok-yong/dp/1859641741/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1441887986&sr=8-1&keywords=princess+bari">Princess Bari</a></i></b> by Hwang Sok-yong to the #giveaway thanks to <a href="http://www.periscopebooks.co.uk/">Periscope Publishing</a>. I am particularly pleased because Periscope is a fabulous new indy publisher and I absolutely LOVE this book.<br />
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It is my favourite read of 2015 so far. Not only does Sok-Yong create a wonderful resilient heroine but also weaves in magic, fable and politics with lyrical ease. The novel is both timeless and topical as it follows the migrant heroine from Korea to London, and is both poetic and hardhitting. If you haven't read it yet, you SHOULD!<br />
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<i><b>UPDATE, July 24th 2015:</b></i><span style="font-style: italic;"> We have just hit 125 pics and have our very </span><b style="font-style: italic;">FIRST </b><span style="font-style: italic;">winner for the #wherebooksgo giveaway. Allen Anderson wins a copy of David Ross's hilarious </span><b style="font-style: italic;"><i>Last Days of Disco</i></b><span style="font-style: italic;"> for this glorious photograph from Shorre Acres National Park, Oregon, USA.</span><br />
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And thank you Allen Anderson for all the wonderful pics that you sent through. So many beautiful places that Hotel Arcadia visited out in western United States.<br />
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<b style="font-style: normal;">UPDATE. July 13th 2015.</b><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span><i>We have hit 120 pics though the protagonist of the photograph should not be reading any of the books on our giveaway list. Instead she gets a copy of <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Very-Hungry-Caterpillar/dp/0723297851/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1436789932&sr=1-1&keywords=the+hungry+caterpillar">The Very Hungry Caterpillar</a>, probably far more appropriate for her.</i><br />
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<a href="http://www.sunnysingh.net/where-books-go/" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">#<em><b><span style="background: white; font-style: normal;">wherebooksgo</span></b></em></a><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span style="background: white;"> </span></span><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">is a fun crowdsourcing project that traces my new novel, <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hotel-Arcadia-Sunny-Singh/dp/0704373793/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421058013&sr=8-1&keywords=hotel+arcadia">Hotel Arcadia</a>'s travels around the world with the readers. It is really simple: readers take a picture of the book wherever they read the book – at home, travelling, somewhere familiar or exotic – and post it on Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag. Or they send it to me on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sunny-Singh/63360582655">Facebook</a>, or email it.</span><br />
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<span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">The idea behind <span style="color: blue;">#wherebooksgo</span> is both<a href="http://www.foyles.co.uk/blog-wherebooksgo"> sentimental</a> as it was what I wished to do while reading Paul Sussman’s novel, <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Labyrinth-Osiris-Paul-Sussman-ebook/dp/B008HFHCNS/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1436520755&sr=1-4&keywords=paul+sussman">The Labyrinth of Osiris</a>, after he had passed way, and <a href="http://sunnysinghonline.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/where-books-go-crowdsourcing-travels-of.html">romantic </a>as I have always wanted to know where books went with their readers. So when <i>Hotel Arcadia</i> came out, I requested readers to send in their photographs; I love getting a glimpse into their lives, and minds, which is both a joy and a privilege and one that would be impossible without technology and social media.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">Over the last few weeks, readers have been sending pics </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">from across the globe and the hashtag looks a lot like my dream list of places where I – not just my book – long to go. And I am getting to know readers from across the world who are so disparate and diverse and yet connected by their love of reading. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">The project remains is simple: send in photo of Hotel Arcadia for the</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.3999996185303px;"> </span><span style="color: blue; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">#wherebooksgo</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.3999996185303px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">collection, but now there are PRIZES!</span><br />
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<span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">The 150<sup>th</sup> photo wins a copy of the CWA-shortlisted thriller <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00OYTBHZ0/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1436520394&sr=1-1&keywords=the+abrupt+physics+of+dying">The AbruptPhysics of Dying</a> by Paul Hardisty, set in Yemen as is some of <i>Hotel Arcadia</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">And the 175<sup>th</sup> photograph wins a <b>signed </b>copy (<b>exclusive first edition hard back</b>) of Ragnar Jonasson’s bestselling <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Snowblind-Dark-Iceland-Ragnar-J%C3%B3nasson-ebook/dp/B00Q1UK0VW/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1436520455&sr=1-1&keywords=snowblind">Snowblind</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">There are more wonderful books for readers by LOTS of amazing writers coming up as </span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: blue;">#wherebooksgo</span></span><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.3999996185303px;"> takes <i>Hotel Arcadia</i> to more places (see on-going updates above). </span></div>
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Sunny Singhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02687722552329432572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2823892684510738201.post-47463945521585744702015-03-14T10:11:00.001+00:002015-03-14T10:12:56.507+00:00A Chat With The Artist Taxidriver: Politics, Structured Bigotry and Life In General <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
So last month I was approached by the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jan/28/mark-mcgowan-artist-taxi-driver-rear-view-manifesto">Artist Taxidriver</a> - the performance artist Mark McGowan - to have a chat about structural prejudice, future of Britain, and life in general. I was quite surprised when he reached out to me on Twitter but found myself very intrigued. The interview was the most unusual one I have done. We sat in the car chatting while the iphone mounted on the dashboard recorded us. Here are the videos of our chat:<br />
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For the record, I was totally impressed by how well prepared Mark was for our chat. He had pages of notes and had probably researched everything but my tax records! As a former journalist who was trained to research thoroughly, I felt an instant kinship with his preparation. Also having been on the other side, I have to say that Mark was more prepared than pretty much any journalist that has ever interviewed me.<br />
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It was also a unique interview because Mark pretty much uploads the videos without editing which gives the conversation both an honesty and added pressure because there is really no going back from one's statements. On the other hand, the format also means the discussion can be more in-depth than the 'sound bite' formats available on mass media. </div>
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As we discussed all sorts of issues, from sexism and racism, to general elections, the strengths of Mark's preferred format became clear. Discussion could be both far ranging and in depth: we were not limited by the issues that plague the infotainment that has over-taken our screens. I can see why and how this format could provide a viable and interesting alternative to discussions in mainstream media. Once again socmed FTW!</div>
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Apparently we enjoyed chatting so much that we kept going for nearly an hour. Mark said it was the longest interview he had done. But I take the blame for that....I am chatty even at the worst of times.<br />
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Mark also warned me that I should not look at the comments below the video as youtube can be a 'cess pit.' For once and probably given my own experience of misogynist online abuse, I have followed the advice extended to me. I recommend you do the same! </div>
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All in all, it was the most unusual but interesting interview I have done and thank you Mark for inviting me. You should also check out Mark's <a href="http://www.markmcgowan.org/">other work</a>. </div>
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Sunny Singhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02687722552329432572noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2823892684510738201.post-24576617786406138272015-02-26T20:26:00.000+00:002015-03-13T18:32:54.414+00:00On Memory, Writing and Learning Stillness<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>This post was written in the run up for the publication of the <a href="http://www.bol.com/nl/p/hotel-arcadia/9200000036134934/">Dutch </a>translation of <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hotel-Arcadia-Sunny-Singh/dp/0704373793/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421058013&sr=8-1&keywords=hotel+arcadia">Hotel Arcadia</a>. The Dutch and English editions are now available for pre-orders from the links above. I wrote this current post for Hebban.nl so you can read it in translation <a href="http://www.hebban.nl/p/meridiaanuitgevers/nieuws/blog-sunny-singh-stilzitten">here</a>. I had a quite an unusual childhood and it continues to impact my writing today, in terms of themes, styles and content. I hope the customary readers of the blog will find this post interesting. And perhaps new readers will get a little insight into my life and my writing.</i><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4yo5S4mFyA8ypZjXUj9Y0qZ52fEoCg8kbEzgjSsJBuB6ur1L9w9o-iBooxTcFxvgTdYffz50Phyphenhyphen2LYkDM5oeaigAY7qWnWgvMphRtVq8j4t11zKNMb07xqY1D8XqiFxWg9f5wqTkSHTPY/s1600/hotel+arcadia+cover+high+res.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4yo5S4mFyA8ypZjXUj9Y0qZ52fEoCg8kbEzgjSsJBuB6ur1L9w9o-iBooxTcFxvgTdYffz50Phyphenhyphen2LYkDM5oeaigAY7qWnWgvMphRtVq8j4t11zKNMb07xqY1D8XqiFxWg9f5wqTkSHTPY/s1600/hotel+arcadia+cover+high+res.jpg" height="320" width="203" /></a></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">One of my earliest
memories is of sitting near a bonfire, amidst mounds of snow, watching Tibetan
soldiers clean their weapons. Even now,
in my mind’s eye, I can see the eerie brightness that snow creates at night, the
orange-red licks of the flames, and the glint of metal against the olive green
of the uniforms. Over the fire, a massive petrol can had been repurposed for a
cauldron into which all leftovers were chucked, and its perpetual bubbling
yielded the most delicious ‘everything’ soup.
And most of all, I remember the terror and sorrow, although I only
understood it as an adult. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The year was 1971, and
the soldiers were part of a specialised unit of the Indian army that my father
led. They were heading to war and many – and I have never stopped missing them
– never returned. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Another memory rises.
From later in the decade. Of a bamboo hut with dirt floors and a freshly dug
snake trench. At night, I would peer
through the green mesh that formed the walls, watching for the wolves and foxes
that came to forage in the garden. When
we came home from playing, my mother would make us stand beyond the snake
trench and empty out our pockets before letting us into the shack. With no
toyshop for miles, wildlife – often of the creepy-crawly kind – tended to be our
playthings. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Much has changed
since those early days of living in cantonment towns and remote border
posts. By the time I entered my teens,
my father had changed his job, albeit still within the Indian government.
Instead of isolated villages on the Indo-Tibetan border, we started moving to
places like Islamabad, New York, Windhoek. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Yet some things
remained the same as the family grew, and moved. My parents were always most
excited about travelling, exploring, learning, and these are loves they passed on
to me. I remember learning basic Swahili by candlelight with my father in that
bamboo shack because he was being prepared for a posting that never
materialised. And then doing the same in light of a storm lantern for Urdu, and
then in the brightness of an camel skin lam, and with greater difficulty, for Xhosa. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">For many years now, I
have travelled on my own, although my parents get perhaps more excited about my
trips than me. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I used to think that
those early days had been left behind, that I had outgrown those early
memories. But increasingly my writing goes back to those impassive, kind faces
that I loved and lost as a child. I want to know those lives, if only in my
fiction, and learn about what they loved, wanted, feared. And I want to
understand where they found that silent, unending well of courage. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">A final memory. I am
five and the Tibetans are teaching me to remain still. They are soldiers and
monks so the lesson is two-fold, for physical survival and spiritual progress.
I protest that stillness is frustrating, difficult, may be even futile. They
tell me I can only master the enemy, the world, and myself when I learn to be
still. In my writing, and my life, I am
still trying. </span></div>
Sunny Singhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02687722552329432572noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2823892684510738201.post-64184581210325086422015-02-20T10:30:00.000+00:002015-02-20T22:25:08.749+00:00On Hotel Arcadia: Disaster Can Bring Out the Best In Us<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>As many of you know, my new novel <b>Hotel Arcadia</b> will be published in March (bit of a sales plug, it can be pre-ordered <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hotel-Arcadia-Sunny-Singh/dp/0704373793/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421058013&sr=8-1&keywords=hotel+arcadia">here</a> with a discount off the cover price). The Dutch edition of the novel is planned for the same time and can be pre-ordered <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hotel-Arcadia-Sunny-Singh/dp/0704373793/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421058013&sr=8-1&keywords=hotel+arcadia">here</a>. It is my very first translation into Dutch so am particularly excited. This week I wrote a blogpost at <a href="http://hebban.nl/">Hebban.nl</a> (translated into Dutch - my language skills don't stretch that far!) about what inspired the book and what I hope I have achieved. Below is the English version just in case: </i><br />
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I have studied and analysed political violence for over
twenty years and have long been aware that ‘bad guys,’ ‘heroes, and ‘victims’
are never quite simply so. I have always
been struck by how so many of the people who survive, even live in, violent
situations are also amongst the most generous, compassionate, hospitable, and
kind. Through Hotel Arcadia, I wanted to
explore this amazing human contradiction where our best qualities seem to go
hand in hand with the worst living situations.
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">In every violent, awful situation, the heroes – in my
experience at least - are ordinary people doing extraordinary things. They
don’t want to be heroes, or even think of themselves as such, but given extreme
circumstances, find amazing strength, courage and self-lessness. For Hotel Arcadia, I drew on these everyday
heroes to create the character of Abhi.
He has never wanted heroics, has walked away from any chance of it, and
created a comfortable life. However, when he is forced by circumstances, he
rises instinctively to the challenge, motivated not by glory or reward but vast
compassion. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">At the same time, with Sam, I wanted to put a thoroughly
modern woman on the pages, and see how she copes with the pressures of
balancing career, love, ambition. I also
wanted to write about the women I know and love – the ones who seem to be
towers of strength and yet terribly fragile all at once; the ones who must
juggle all the myriad aspects of the modern life. And of course, I wanted to explore how love rarely follows boy-meets-girl, fantasy wedding, dream home, babies pattern.
I wanted to explore modern love in all its messiness, where it must play
tug-of-war with all the other things we want, love, and pursue. In that sense,
Sam is the character closest to my heart: she cares too much. About
everything. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Of course, there were other ideas I wanted to explore in this
book. I wanted to investigate how we look at violence. We see so much of it on
our screens, between news, films, video games that I wonder if we are able to
distinguish between these anymore. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Finally, as a former journalist, this book is very personal.
How do we cover war and violence? Is bearing witness enough? As a journalist, I
always struggled to balance the distance required for reportage with my worry
that I should have been helping instead.
I stopped being a journalist because I could not retain the distance
that was demanded from me. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">As a novelist, Hotel Arcadia, was my opportunity to explore
this moral dilemma more intimately. I still don’t have an answer for myself,
but am glad Sam and Abhi found theirs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Sunny Singhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02687722552329432572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2823892684510738201.post-86019254049501480402015-02-08T12:01:00.001+00:002015-02-08T12:30:19.657+00:00Where Books Go: Crowdsourcing the Travels of Hotel Arcadia (and Other Books)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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So I had a crazy idea this morning and am reaching out to see if you can help. It hasn't been terribly well thought through but it just feels great to launch right into it. It's a crowdsourcing plan to figure out where books go and who reads them. It isn't about reviews or reactions, but a simpler - and for me - a little fantasy I have clung to since childhood. </div>
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You can probably guess that I was a rather bookish child - or a <a href="https://cineworm.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/20130506-164951.jpg"><i>kitabi-keeda</i> </a>(bookworm), as was the term in my family. I also had a hyperactive imagination which meant I got into constant trouble for daydreaming (letting the milk boil over while I was 'watching' it was a particularly regular crime), had regular and terrifying nightmares (though I blame my father's military exploits for that one), and came up with way too many odd, whimsical ideas.<br />
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Early on I realised that the books I read - or at least the stories in them - came from far off places in the world - Mumbai, Delhi, London, Paris, New York, Moscow. I wondered constantly if the writer knew I had their work, if they knew I held a piece of them. And yes, I was pretty clear quite early on that a book was a piece of the writer, perhaps even a little shiny bit of their heart, a visual reference I probably picked up from <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiUWxAbqTrE">Mera Naam Joker</a></i>. </div>
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In those pre-internet days, and growing up in a small tiny town in India, it was pretty impossible to find out much about authors, or to get in touch with them. And even if I had tracked down an address, my pocket money wouldn't have gotten far enough for the postage to America or Soviet Union or Britain. Especially not with trying to buy more books at the same time. </div>
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Regardless, I wrote many letters to my favourite authors, in the back of my school notebooks, or in the many diaries I started and never filled, and in my head. In some precocious cases, I offered them advice - mostly about not having sappy women/girls, or expanding parts for the characters I loved, or writing me into the narrative (an early recognition of the lack of nonwhite characters and stories, I guess). In those letters, I explained how I hid under the bed to read because my grandmother worried I didn't play enough, that I covered them in brown paper to resemble text books so I could sneakily lose myself in the pages during a boring school lesson, and how much I loved the weight of them in tucked into the sash of my dress. But for most part, I wrote the letters just to tell the writers how much I loved the stories, and in doing so, let them know that at least one little piece of their heart was safe - and cherished. With me. </div>
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This is why I always wondered about the people who pick up and read my books. Not only for feedback and reviews, but those little glimpses into their lives and homes. To wonder if they read the books in the park, or by seaside, or tucked into a favourite chairs. In my mind, each reader is a story, and stories are always magic. So I am constantly wondering how to share in a little bit of that magic.</div>
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Fortunately, internet - and social media - have made that magic a little more possible. I realised earlier in the week, when I received the first copies of Hotel Arcadia, that I may be able to figure out where some of the copies would go. I posted a snap I took at my publisher's office, and later from home as we toasted a copy with bubbly. And this morning, I logged on to twitter to be informed that one of the first - if not the very first - review copies had arrived. <a href="https://twitter.com/davehardy73/status/564342429189677057">Dave Hardy</a> had kindly posted a photograph on twitter for me:<br />
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Suddenly, someone I don't know in real life, and have only recently met on twitter, had given me a little glimse into their life. The edgy, night city-scape backdrop to their twitter account, the monochrome bed-linen in the photograph, and the careful, thoughtful framing of the correspondence - the addresses of all concealed, but the compliments slip just peeking out - evoked an entire life and character in my mind. And to me, that's magic! </div>
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And from that comes this rather whimsical idea. I am starting a hashtag for twitter and instagram: #wherebooksgo. I will also use it for my FB page posts to upload, RT and share photographs that readers send me, and hopefully at the end of it, there will be a big shiny, magical, red heart that all of us share - one that holds the magic of reading, and writing, stories. </div>
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So may I please request anyone reading Hotel Arcadia to please send in a pic with the #wherebooksgo hashtag? Tag me or the book and I'll find it. If you want to share another book, by another author, simply tag them instead (makes it easier to find).<br />
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If you are author, please feel free to use the hashtag for your own books and readers. It would be so wonderful to create a big celebratory magic that comes from sharing stories and our love for them.</div>
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Sunny Singhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02687722552329432572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2823892684510738201.post-62428608489233056942014-11-23T19:03:00.000+00:002015-03-21T18:48:46.474+00:00To Become a Woman and a Writer, One Must Cast Aside Modesty<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I grew up in a modest home.
The shadowed rooms with heavily curtained doors led from front to back, glossy
stone floors changing colours at every doorway as if to mark each boundary, each
space opening into another, more private one.
Strangers that came through the red metal gate were hosted on a pillared
porch that overlooked the garden.
Acquaintances were let past the front door draped in dull burgundy into a
drawing room lined with stiff sofas. Friends made it further, past veiled
doorways into smaller, more personal chambers.
Only the closest of friends and family made it to the inner sanctum of a
small dining room that opened to the walled-in back garden. You see, the house itself was built for
modesty, its inner spaces turning increasingly private, secret, feminine and
familial with each hushed passageway. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In turn the house taught us modesty, to cover and control
wayward limbs, to speak softly and ‘enunciate,’ to not make a fuss or demand
attention. And the house insisted on a
language that had to be spoken gracefully and formally. As children, we were
even reprimanded in the formal. Such was
the propriety demanded by my home, that to this day, I cannot swear in my first
language, first because we never learned the profanities, and second because my
tongue refuses to twist around the coarse Hindi words I have learned as an
adult. <o:p></o:p></div>
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And yet I knew from a very young age that I wanted to create
stories, to write even if I never imagined a state of ‘being a writer.’ Even as a child, learning to negotiate the
veiled doorways of my home, I knew that writing, like speaking loudly, was an
immodest act. Writing insists on not
only speaking up, but speaking of things that many find shocking, horrific, and
even taboo. Writing demands the absolute
opposite of propriety, insisting on deep passions and wild, violent expression. In a house given to veils, physical, social
and metaphorical, writing was not only the ultimate transgression, but much
akin to playing with a giant blazing bonfire that may bring down the entire
edifice. <o:p></o:p></div>
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After all, captive tongues are discreet, only wayward limbs
are capable of revolutions, and modesty strangles all expression. And a
language that binds cannot liberate.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Perhaps this is why English seemed so alluring, full of
danger and promise. I had intuited its
pleasures before I learned to read, desiring the books that lined the higher
shelves of my home. I would rock-climb
the tall bookshelves, using the lower ones as footholds, clinging perilously to
the edges with sweat-slickened fingers to peer at the books in English that
were ‘only for grown-ups.’ Hardbound
classics and contemporary writing lined up like soldiers mingled with the riff-raff
of luridly bright paperbacks bought by my youthful uncles and aunts. When grown-ups read those books, their faces
glowed, their eyes grew shaded, slight colour rose to their cheeks at times,
and a sudden quickening breath would grab my attention. Even as a child, I intuited that English
books contained things we didn’t speak of in my home. <o:p></o:p></div>
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This is why I began school intent on learning English, determined
to prepare myself for the day when I would possess it fully. It was not an easy task, for the language not
only demanded that I learn its words, but also insisted that I reveal myself, slipping
off confining drapes, unwinding my limbs, loosening my tongue. But I did not go unrewarded for long. Soon
English began to reveal its own sinews and flesh, skin and bones, page by page,
word by arcane word. As my knowledge
grew, it also began to tease me to wilder pathways, to rebellions I could not
have imagined, to passions I would have not dared dream of. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Over the years, as my skirts climbed higher, and my voice
grew louder, I learned to enunciate a language that is not mine by birth, but
one that I have claimed for myself. Jealously, without reason, and without
doubt, like a lover I do not plan to relinquish. Over the years, this foreign, even enemy,
language has imbibed my dreams with passions dark and savage. It has pushed me
to transgressions that may not have burnt down my home but have set many
bridges afire. In English, I write of
lovers who betray, of war without honour, of all human frailties for which I
was never taught the words in Hindi. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Most importantly, on my tongue, English turns into an
enigmatic nautch-girl, sweet, seductive and dangerous. Yes, English is an immodest language, yet I
love her more for it. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>This was first publishes in <a href="http://www.thespanner.net/">The Spanner</a> in June 2014 (Issue 11). </i></div>
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Sunny Singhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02687722552329432572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2823892684510738201.post-9112441369070244392014-10-16T08:38:00.002+01:002014-10-16T11:07:30.168+01:00Literary Parochialism and its Discontents<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It will come as no news that UK structures of power are deeply averse to diversity (see <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-28953881">here</a> and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/sep/11/public-sector-uk-lacks-diversity-study-trevor-phillips">here</a>, just as examples) but a recent set of literary events have prompted me to examine both the issue and its consequences on culture, its production and circulation. The Exhibit B mess at the Barbican, when the protesters felt unheard while the 'establishment' closed ranks and few of the issues raised were addressed is possibly the starkest recent reminder of the parochialism in the the country's cultural establishment. But I know the literary world best and I want to discuss that more closely.<br />
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Ten years of living in London and being actively engaged in writing and publishing means I have grown increasingly familiar with the literary 'establishment' - and here I mean the publishers, agents, editors, reviewers, etc. rather than academics (the latter require a whole other blog post). With few exceptions, literature doesn't pay, and it is necessary to note that most of the people involved in literary production and circulation are not only passionate but deeply committed. Many are wonderful people (and I am fortunate to count many of my friends among them). <br />
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I say the above to make a simple point: on an individual level, the city's literary establishment is made up of wonderful human beings. On a structural, collective level however, there is another story.<br />
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It will come as no surprise to most that Britain's literary establishment is as lacking in diversity as its academia, press, and various other fields (intriguingly, the much reviled City is also most diverse, perhaps as a result of focussing on profits, especially in a globalised world). A publisher recently described reviewers as results of 'public schools and some crack comprehensives.' He may as well have been talking of just about any part of the British literary world - with possible, and with caveats, exception of writers themselves. It is this 'establishment' - made up of a very narrow group of people - not only impacts literary production, circulation and consumption as well as the larger issues of formation of 'taste', and assignation of cultural 'value.'<br />
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And this is where the narrow demographic that makes up this 'elite' becomes problematic. Race, gender, class, all contribute to our world-view. In case of literature (and cultural production in general), if most of the arbiters of taste and value - including the decisionmakers for books that are published, reviewed, win literary prizes - are drawn from a tiny homogenous group in society, we end up with a parochial mindset. So same sort of books are prized, same narratives are privileged, and indeed, same kind of authors lauded. A corollary of this is that passively, unconsciously - if not actively - alternative, 'different' voices are shut out. A closed communication loop is thus set up between a narrow group of people choosing the books they want to publish, others like them reviewing them, and even further more similar (if not the same) people serving on juries that reward them with recognition/prizes/cash/any and combinations of these. <br />
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One could argue that this has always been so (and I have heard these arguments made in earnest); that literature (or art, or theatre) has always been 'elite' arenas. One may also question if this matters at all. I would argue - and not only for personal reasons - that it does. A closed, homogenous group is self-affirming, parochial, incapable of change, and indeed eventually self-destructive.<br />
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In practice this means, for example, the inability to read, appreciate, or even be interested in literatures that do not reaffirm the entrenched (dominant) parochial world view. So books that are seen as 'different' are often only superficially so, and instead of challenging the parochialism, tend to reaffirm them. The lack of diversity of backgrounds, experiences, world views, and opinions mean that there is little or no challenge to the perpetual self-affirming feedback loop. This means even when a book is nominally different - presenting, for example, a working class, or non-white, or queer perspective, it is still selected, judged, viewed from a narrow and parochial lens. Difference or 'challenging' often becomes a question of form rather than content, providing a comfortable illusion of intellectual risk-taking without any real danger. This also means that even 'different' narratives are filtered to affirm the established ethos instead of challenging them. In such cases, superficial difference is seen as enough and anything more is considered discomfiting, alien, even confrontational (or my favourite, 'too strange'). Over time this creates a situation where comforting, familiar work is prized and anything challenging is either blocked, ignored, or left out. And indeed, this is where British literature and literary establishment stands in 2014.<br />
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Of course most of this is due to structural inertia. It is easier to read or publish or review material that reaffirms our own beliefs. Reading that challenges - intellectually or worse, ethically - is uncomfortable business. And more importantly, it is hard work! It is easier and more comfortable to stick to what we already know.<br />
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There is a real world price to be paid for this parochialism as this feedback loop excises cultural production from real world concerns. In a globalised and interconnected world, there is real economic, political, even military cost to such deliberate ignorance. A society that shuts out most of its people from representation in, and production and consumption of culture, will find itself increasingly unable to examine or understand itself. Such a society will be incapable of not only recognising internal and external threats and risks to itself. This society will also find itself incapable of examining or reflecting on not only the changes that may be necessary but also the transformations that are forced upon it by circumstance and history.<br />
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This refusal to engage with difference and discomfort also has serious cultural consequences. It creates a stale, staid conservative culture that is neither capable of growth nor change. It also steeps itself in nostalgia, in endless replication and repetition of supposedly valuable form while sacrificing substance. And finally, it stops engaging with the very society that sustains, nourishes and at the end consumes the cultural products that are created.<br />
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There is also a practical, even commercial angle to this. This literary/cultural parochialism also limits both sales and potential markets due to a seemingly endless replication of an ever narrowing set of narratives, viewpoints and world views. Regardless of UKIP-style nostalgia, Britain has irrevocably changed - demographically and culturally, and this change urgently needs to be reflected in the narratives and cultural production. In many ways, one can argue, that this contemporary Britain is already producing and consuming culture even if it is shut out of the art, literary or cultural 'establishments.' One could even make the case that perhaps the most exciting, challenging literature, art, theatre is emerging from places that hidden, and even far beyond the reach of the 'establishment.' But this would only be one side of the picture. Ignoring, refusing, actively or passively shutting out narratives, cultural products, world views that engage with the larger society, means fewer books are sold and read, both internally and externally. Moreover the arbiters of 'taste' remain in their fossilised glory, ever more irrelevant to the culture and society beyond.<br />
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This also means diminishing influence both within Britain and abroad. Internally, this means fewer readers engaging with a 'culture' that appears remote because does not include their concerns, anxieties, or stories. Instead they are finding narratives in texts from countries across the globe (made accessible by the Amazon behemoth). Abroad, it means a loss of soft power (which Britain has exercised very well, especially through its literary production) and thus a diminishing of diplomatic, political, cultural, and eventually economic influence.<br />
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Of course, none of the arguments above are particularly new and there is little doubt that diversity matters. Few, even in publishing, would argue against it. The problem - however - is of inertia, of a passive and parochial literary elite that appear to prefer pulling up the drawbridge instead of engaging with the world beyond. Frankly, even after ten years, I can see no way of persuading them to venture beyond their blissfully ignorant comfort zone.<br />
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Sunny Singhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02687722552329432572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2823892684510738201.post-48265747374439294352014-10-09T19:15:00.000+01:002014-10-11T11:40:53.044+01:00Muscovado: A Disturbing, Powerful Play that Heralds an Extraordinary New Voice <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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A school night, in the midst of a busy week, and a very full day of teaching is almost enough to dissuade one from venturing across the river for pretty much anything. Add a blustery, rainy day, and Clapham Commons seemed even further away from my north London office. Still, I had tickets and company to nudge me along, so off I went...to the Holy Trinity Church, that almost forgotten spiritual - and political - home of William Wilberforce who campaigned for the abolition of the slave trade. It seems apt, in retrospect, that I went to the church - for the first time, last night - to see <i>Muscovado</i>, written by the startlingly talented young playwright Matilda Ibini, and produced by <a href="http://www.burntouttheatre.co.uk/whats-on/">Burnt Out Theatre</a>. </div>
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The brand new play had an initial run of ten days as part of Black History Month, but I might as well tell you right off the bat, it should be running at a major venue, backed by Britain's theatre big-wigs, and be seen by a LOT more people. And frankly, if <a href="http://www.britishcouncil.org/">British Council</a> and other tax-payer funded organisations are listening, they should be sending this one abroad too! </div>
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We were greeted by a cheery atmosphere at the entrance, and my first reaction was surprise, and gladness, at very racially diverse, mixed audience - in terms of race, ethnicity, class and nationality. Sadly, theatre-going in London - despite all its diversity - can be a strangely mono-racial phenomenon and I often feel marked out as the 'odd' one in most audiences. There were other little welcoming signs: in addition to the usual glasses of wine, there was the option of a warming, lovely rum punch. And much welcome it was after my cold, exhausting day! There was also a stand from the Caribbean Cafe selling the most delicious, restorative, food; ladies, you saved my life! </div>
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As the doors opened and we streamed into the church, we were greeted by Parson Lucy (played by James G Gunn), and other characters from the play were already dotted around, seated in pews, eerily lit by candle light, or slowly weaving their way through the shadows. It can be tricky to perform in a space that isn't a formal theatre, but the director Clemmie Reynolds used the space well, and placing the actors in the church established an early complicity and intimacy with the spectator that made the play itself much more disturbing. </div>
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The play itself unfolds in 1808 on the Fairbranch sugar plantation in Barbados. The timing is key as a year before Wilberforce had successfully pushed through the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in British parliament. On the Fairbranch plantation however, the Act brings little change to the slaves' brutalised lives, and commercial calculations of its owners. The set was sparse yet effective, with props moved around, and the church surroundings were used fully to stage, with the audience seated in the pews in the chancel, and a few chairs spilling out into the nave. </div>
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The plot skilfully weaves together multiple characters including the plantation owner's wife and daughter, the local parson, and various slaves. However, <i>Muscovado</i> keeps the owner of the plantation as an off-stage yet all-powerful, sinister presence/absence. It is a masterful choice, signalling the invisible pervasiveness of racial, gender, and class privileges that continue to this day. It is this off-stage evil 'deity' who repeatedly rapes his wife, Kitty, and in a grotesque coming-of-age ritual, is also the invisible rapist of the distraught child-slave Willa (who may/may not be his daughter).</div>
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While the most upsetting parts of the play are familiar to us from slave narratives - the whippings, humiliations, brutal violence in guise of discipline, the casual but persistent degradations and dehumanisations of quotidian plantation life - they draw power from a source that is not often seen on screen or stage. <i>Muscovado </i>presents the Fairbranch slaves as fully formed humans, not merely as props for a morality play; they dream, they dare to laugh and love, they find hope and strength in unexpected places, and most importantly they continue to resist by reasserting their humanity in innumerable small acts, words and thoughts of defiance and courage. The script has - perhaps unsurprisingly - been compared to <i>Twelve Years a Slave</i>. </div>
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I would reject that comparison. I found <i>Muscovado</i> more humane and more powerful of the two as it finds little need to make narrative and commercial compromises. Unlike the film, the play offers no easy resolutions. But it also refuses to let historically dominant narratives push slaves to the sidelines of their own history. Instead <i>Muscovado</i> offers one of the few instances where non-white bodies - and even more importantly female black bodies - occupy centre stage, in all their fullness, complexity, grace, and tragedy. </div>
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There has been a long tradition - in writing, art, and performance - of silencing and erasing the female nonwhite body from our stories, stages, screens and imaginations; <i>Muscovado</i> is compelling for its powerful insistence on placing the ignored, fetishized, brutalised black female (and a single male) bodies, lives, and beings at the centre of its narrative. By keeping the sexual and non-sexual violence inflicted on the black female body off-stage, it refuses to let the audience revert to the default practices of fetishization we have been taught and thus distance ourselves. Furthermore, by similarly keeping Miss Kitty's rapes off-screen, it forces us to examine both the similarities and brutal disparities of gendered violence; and yet by performing Willa's invisible violation on-stage, the play also refuses to excise the role of race in gendered violence.</div>
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Moreover, the script fully explores the complex web of relationships, oppression and brutality of slavery and racialised oppressions. It does not shy away from messy hierarchies of gender and race: Kitty is not only fully complicit in the exploitation and brutalisation of slaves, she is also the mastermind who realises the ban on slave trade can be subverted by using her own slaves as 'breeding stock.' Yet, she is at the same time, also a raped, desperate, isolated wife who can find few allies and fewer friends and can drunkenly order a house slave to help her kill herself. </div>
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<i>Muscovado</i> also confronts the role of the church, and its clergy in upholding, maintaining, and actively promoting slavery, thus also reminding us of the ways organised religion - and religious scriptures - were, are, and can be used to justify the most inhumane and unjust practices and structures. Parson Lucy's hate filled racist rant took on particular resonance when delivered from the Holy Trinity Church's pulpit. I couldn't help but imagine that Wilberforce himself had likely heard similar justifications of slavery and wondered yet again about how and why some (so few) of us refuse the dominant narratives of our times, and the necessity of such dissent. </div>
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The play is both powerful and disturbing, and more so for its insistence on complexity. The dialogue is both unflinching and at times scorching. Despite a myriad range of characters, the script maintains tight control of each character's trajectory. If there are some loose ends, such as for Olive's fate, they offer a glimmer of hope, however false, in a bleak setting. The end is shocking, upsetting and unpredictable, perhaps because the motivations of all involved are clear and familiar, but also because the multiple layers of complicity are rarely explored in narratives about slavery, or indeed contemporary race and racism. </div>
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The actors were well suited to their part, and I walked away once again wishing there were more room for talented non-white actors on British stage. Alex Kissin as Asa, DK Fashola as Elsie and Shanice Grant as Olive brought both emotional power and physical vulnerability to their parts. It is a credit to the script, the director and the actors, that despite the brutal setting and theme, it still provoked empathic and not only discomfited laughter. </div>
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The Holy Trinity Church made a symbolically apt setting for the play although the acoustics are not ideal. I do wish however that <i>Muscovado</i> would find a longer run and larger stage for itself: it is ambitious, complex, powerful, and it delivers dramatic, emotional and political punch. That it is the work of a playwright not yet twenty-three is both extraordinary, and exhilarating for the promise it holds for the future. </div>
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Full disclosure: I know the playwright Matilda Ibini who graduated from the Creative Writing programme where I teach. However, she did not take many classes with me and I can certainly claim no hand in her growth and stature as a writer. I am however very privileged to have watched her grow as an intellect and a writer during her degree. </div>
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Sunny Singhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02687722552329432572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2823892684510738201.post-62734403903749622432014-03-21T07:38:00.004+00:002014-03-22T08:58:12.793+00:00Surviving Casual Racism: I Get By With a Little Help from My Friends<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Last month, I posted <a href="http://sunnysinghonline.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/an-open-letter-to-white-friends-how-not.html">this piece on casual</a> racism. Many of you read and commented on it, here and various social media platform. I also posted the piece on my FB wall where it had a more intimate, disturbing, and yet ultimately heartening reception. It also became a sort of learning experience and an odd measure of the people in my life. I had been planning on writing a follow up piece but as some of you will know (from my twitter feed), another unexpected and hurtful incident occurred yesterday. In many ways, it cemented what I had written about in my original piece. But it also threw into stark relief what I have noticed and learned in the last few weeks. So here are some of thse new insights:<br />
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First, for some odd reason, racism hurts more than sexism does. I am not quite sure why this is the case, but increasingly I feel that it is linked to growing up in an environment where I did not face racism on a daily basis. As a female child in India, sexism was, and still is, part of my life from the earliest moments of consciousness, and I learned from many people - both male and female - to identify it and resist it.<br />
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Racism, however, was something quite academic. I knew about it, I even experienced it indirectly and structurally as a colonial legacy, but I never faced it on an individual level until I landed in New York City as a sixteen year old. Because I came to individuated racism late, I experience and resist it differently:<br />
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1. I notice it and I lack the ability to ignore it<br />
2. I am more hurt by it as I don't guard against racism as vigilantly as against sexism, mostly because I don't expect it and so am baffled each time.<br />
3. I have increasingly lower tolerance for racism. But I also have increasingly lower tolerance for all forms of injustice. I thought age would inure me, but instead it seems to make me less patient. Perhaps 'intimations of mortality' urge me to fight this more desperately because I know I have increasingly less time to do so.<br />
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Secondly, I realised that until recently, I would not speak about racism except to friends who were, like me, people of colour. I didn't feel comfortable enough speaking about racism to white friends, mostly because I didn't want them to pity me. <br />
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In this sense, racism is like many other forms of intimate violence. The humiliation and pain of being reduced, othered, and dehumanised is so great that I felt that I could only share the feeling and seek support amongst other victims.<br />
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Yet posting the piece last month has opened up a new, and in many ways, liberating and empowering world for me. Yes, writing the piece has meant I lost a couple of friends - mostly people I didn't know that well and who felt that the piece was 'attacking' them personally. In one case, someone I have not seen for twenty years took issue with the piece on facebook and demonstrated just how embedded racism can be.<br />
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On the other hand, writing openly about racism I face in my daily life, mostly in small gestures and words, also blasted open the doors to other conversations. Many friends wrote and messaged to offer support and unconditional love. In the last month, I have had conversations about racism with many white friends, discussing the insidious ways racism turns up. In all these cases, I have been fortunate to find allies who want to listen, understand, find ways to support me, and try to change things at their own individual levels.<br />
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I had long worried that speaking openly about daily racism may be seen by white friends as 'drama' or 'over reaction.' Instead I had a friend point out that I regularly 'hid' the racism I experience, and asked me why I did so. It was only after that conversation, I realised that he is right: I do hide racist incidents, and for multiple reasons. <br />
<br />
The humiliation seems never ending and acute, and talking about a racist incident revives the trauma of living it.<br />
<br />
In an odd way, telling white friends about racist incidents makes me feel less than equal to them. Even as I write this, I can intellectually recognise it as a victim's reasoning, similar in some ways as that of abuse survivors.<br />
<br />
Experiencing racism makes me feel 'dirty,' even though it isn't my fault. Experiencing racism makes me question myself and makes me wonder if I 'deserve' it. It heightens every insecurity I have about my achievements and experience. Each racist incident - no matter how small and unthinking - reminds me that regardless of my experiences and achievements, I can be reduced and dehumanised on basis of my skin colour. It also makes me paranoid and makes me question what white colleagues, friends, bosses 'really' think of me.<br />
<br />
In addition, recounting it to white friends, makes me feel the humiliation all over again, because it is something they never have to face, never have to experience. It is a privilege they have that I will never be able to access, and speaking to them, the structural imbalance of power between us threatens to overturn whatever sense of equality we share.<br />
<br />
In turn that recognition of inequality threatens any friendship we have. After all, aren't friendships made and shared amongst equals? Can we still be friends if we are unequal, at an intrinsic biological level?<br />
<br />
Yet the past month of discussing racism openly with white friends has been illuminating. Speaking about the humiliation of racist experiences has dissipated some of the shame and anger. I have also been consistently surprised, heartened and comforted by the support I have found. <br />
<br />
I have also found that the cliche about speaking up in relationships matters. While racism is something my white friends don't experience in their daily lives, they are not oblivious that I face it. All they need from me is trust that they stand on my side. And they need me - not always - but at times, to tell them how to fight my corner. They are already staunch allies, they just need to know how they can protect, help and nourish me.<br />
<br />
I don't have race privilege and never will. On the other hand, I have a hell of a lot of friends who do have that privilege who recognise and question it, acknowledge the injustice, and most importantly, stand by me as equals. Not on racial grounds, but as humans.<br />
<br />
If I were the religious sort, I would say, that is a blessing! </div>
Sunny Singhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02687722552329432572noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2823892684510738201.post-56255442624439502632014-02-09T10:24:00.000+00:002014-02-09T11:15:46.339+00:00An Open Letter to White Friends: How Not to be a Racist (Even Unconsciously)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Dear friends,<br />
As my friends, you are part of a group that is international, diverse, and for most part, extraordinarily liberal. In some ways, you are probably more open to difference than the rest of society and therefore, in many ways, at the cutting edge of social change. And yet, just as many men who adore their wives and daughters but can still be deeply misogynist, being friends with me - an obvious woman of colour - does not mean you automatically stop behaving in ways that is racist.<br />
<br />
Note: this does not mean that you ARE racist. But it does mean that sometimes the things you say or do are racist. And no, you don't have to burn crosses in my lawn or make up a lynch mob to be racist. Being oblivious to historic inequalities, disparate privileges, and or how these impact my daily life is also racist (and therefore damaging). So is repeating and replicating behaviour that confirms historical power inequities.]<br />
<br />
In a friendship, we like to believe we are equals.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, a love for pinot grigio or an understanding of Italian Futurism does not automatically erase structural inequalities that some of us have to face, and fight, on a daily basis. This also means that unthinkingly racist acts, or acts that have a long racist history, the same acts that we face as micro-aggressions on a daily basis, are supremely hurtful when performed by you.<br />
<br />
As your non-white friend who deals with racial micro-aggressions (and sometimes macro ones) on a daily basis, it is not excessive to expect friends - of any colour or background - should be a safe space for me. But our friendship also means that the unthinking acts of micro-aggression hurt more coming from you than from a random stranger.<br />
<br />
However, I realise that levels of invisible social, cultural and psychological privilege that Western societies offer to its white citizens means that you probably have not ever thought about how you behaviour can come off as racist - or indeed hurtful because of the implicit racism - so here are a few pointers:<br />
<br />
1. Understand that your seemingly innocent acts can be triggers. Most non-white people have a few centuries of embedded memory and their own lifetime of experience of inequality and prejudice. We grew up with this and live with it. And no, this is not 'playing the victim' or 'using the race card.' It is just my daily, normal life.<br />
<br />
This lived experience and memory means your actions will have larger significance and import, often in ways you do not understand. This also means that what may count as 'banter' and 'fun' to you may well be quite hurtful to me.<br />
<br />
There is a simple way to deal with this: stop, observe and listen.<br />
<br />
2. Realise that a lot of what we use as normal terminology has deep racist roots. You may never have had to deal with these words as dehumanising, or with demeaning terms and images, but your non-white friends have and do on a daily basis. So terms and actions that seem 'normal fun' to you can be not only deeply racist, but also horribly hurtful.<br />
<br />
3. When a nonwhite friend calls you out for racist behaviour, it obviously hurts your image of yourself. Especially if you think of yourself as liberal and 'non-racist.'<br />
<br />
However, chances are that your one act that has actually been called out has been the final proverbial one to 'break the camel's back.' Most non-white people are so accustomed to racist acts and speech on a daily basis that unless something really stands out, most of us won't protest. Many of us make the choice between social interaction, friendship, even love, and demanding equality and human dignity on a daily basis.<br />
<br />
And yes, that does means I choose - on a regular basis - how much prejudiced humiliation I can take from you in exchange for being your friend. Yes, I am sure that sounds terrible to you but it is a choice I make in order to live, work, love, in a society that systemically devalues me for the colour of my skin.<br />
<br />
We make this choice not because we don't hurt. It is just that if we protested every act of prejudice in our daily lives, we would not get through a single day. If we insisted that we be treated equally at every moment we are demeaned, we would not survive a single hour. We would not have a single friend, colleague or boss who would be white. We would be forced to limit our existence in a closed ghetto, with all its corollaries of material, social, emotional and psychological poverty. (And then we would be blamed for closing ourselves off!)<br />
<br />
So when you ARE called out on behaving in a racist way, realise that your behaviour or speech has been unconsciously hurtful for a long time before your friend spoke up. Chances are you have been hurtful for much longer than you imagine, recognise or are able to accept. You should not be feeling hurt that your friend called out your racism, but horrified that they have been forced to do so.<br />
<br />
4. If your non-white friend does call you out on something, try and stop yourself from (1) announcing that you are NOT racist; (2) explain how you are part Asian/African/Native American/Hispanic - these are not free passes for prejudice; (2) demand that they educate you on what you did/said to offend them, all the while declaring that they 'misunderstood' you. Yes, defensiveness is an instinctive response and an understandable one. But it is also the least useful of responses.<br />
<br />
Yes, being told that you are bigoted hurts. But being the daily target of bigotry hurts a HELL OF A LOT MORE. And racist behaviour or speech does not have to stem from active prejudice. So much prejudiced behaviour and speech is normalised and acceptable that few of us who are not on the receiving end of the hatred are even aware of the how much bigotry marks our daily existence.<br />
<br />
Also understand that it isn't your non-white friend's job to explain and educate you. If you care about that friendship/relationship (or not being racist), it is your job to LEARN the innumerable ways in which racism is normalised in our daily existence and try not to repeat those. <br />
<br />
5. One final pointer: 'race blindness' is actually a form of racism. Refusing to acknowledge that your non-white friends have different (and often horrifically damaging) experiences does not make you non-racist. It actually reinforces your racial privilege. All too often 'race blindness' is also used as a mechanism for saying and doing things that are racist and hurtful but with a comforting fig leaf of being socially acceptable. If this is you, then stop!<br />
<br />
Structural racism means that even if you went to the same schools, make the same amount of money, live in the same neighbourhoods, and shop in the same stores, your non-white friend is treated differently. Not because of an innate ability but because of how they look. A lifetime of being treated differently means that your non-white friend looks at things you take for granted (bars, immigration counters, designer shops) very differently. What may be a small, normal, indulgence for you - like a trip to the spa - may well be a point of stress or fear for them. Refusing to acknowledge this difference does not make you non-racist. It makes you insensitive and callous!<br />
<br />
Yes, acknowledging this inequality will likely make you uncomfortable. Recognising that you have privilege based on the colour of your skin IS uncomfortable. Or it should be! But the way to deal with the discomfort is not to wish it away or argue that you don't have the privilege. Or pretend a non-existent equality because that erases your 'friend's' life and experience.<br />
<br />
The way you deal with the discomfort is by consciously and actively recognising those structural inequalities that your non-white friend lives on a daily basis. You can't wish the discomfort away...in any case, it will be a negligible fraction of what your non-white friend lives with on a daily basis. What you can do is recognise, acknowledge, accept the difference. And what you should do is introspect and question yourself on the ways your behaviour reflects, replicates and sustains small forms of bigotry. To you those may be negligible but to others, who cope with those micro-aggressions daily, those form a huge, overwhelming edifice of prejudice.<br />
<br />
In many ways the world has moved forward even in the last few decades. It is increasingly difficult to remain in racially exclusive enclaves. Diversity - of language, race, ethnicity - is increasingly our 'normal' in our workplaces, our social networks, our homes and our bedrooms. <br />
<br />
But the diversity also means that old rules of behaviour and speech don't work any more. That is also good! Yes, it is uncomfortable (and will continue to be so for a long time) to accept that your behaviour and speech must change. Change - and improvement - is always born of discomfort and its recognition.<br />
<br />
None of us is perfect or born knowing everything. We go through life learning and changing. The fact that you have a non-white friend is a good starting point: it means that you are at least open to learning and changing.<br />
<br />
With affection,<br />
Your non-white friend<br />
<br /></div>
Sunny Singhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02687722552329432572noreply@blogger.com39tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2823892684510738201.post-60622806500978122252014-01-03T12:26:00.000+00:002014-01-03T12:29:45.540+00:00On Allies: May there be ever more in 2014<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Yes, I know. I missed the year-end reflections on all I had learned in 2013. I have also missed the new year resolutions moment. However given my recent readings and discussions, and in the spirit of optimism, I have decided to kick off the year with a post about allies.<br />
<br />
As an ally to various causes that are not intrinsically my own, I come to this topic with some degree of understanding and experience. When it comes to supporting causes in countries like Egypt or Guatemala or the Democratic Republic of Congo, I am not always fully educated about the complexities. In case of my support for equal rights, as a straight cis-woman, I can't even in my imagination experience what my LGBTQ friends do on a daily basis. And in case of racism, Mandela's death reminded me of my time in apartheid South Africa and how the experience of racism changes by location, period, structure and individual. <br />
<br />
And yet as someone who discovered the theory of intersectionality soon after being disillusioned by mainstream Western liberal activism at university, I can also see that there is a way forward. At university, I had found little room for my experience as an Indian woman whose life did not fit the easy 'oppressed over there' category. As a foreigner who did not buy into the 'American dream' and planned to leave after finishing my degree, I could also not be categorised in the 'good immigrant' slot. There was also very little room for an Indian with a 'nice' education in many of the anti-racism groups as many believed my university education and Indian-ness inoculated me from racism in America (To be fair and honest, yes, it did and still does protect me from the worst excesses of structural and individuated racism in the US and various other countries). On one hand, few groupings, both in or outside India, represent my personal concerns and interests. On the other hand, my experience at the margins means I experience a range of micro-aggressions (and major discrimination) based on gender, class, race, nationality and so on on a daily basis. No surprise that intersectionality is the most logical way of explaining my liminal existence.<br />
<br />
But living liminally is also a great advantage, I have learned. One finds points of contact, recognition and identification in the most unusual places. Liminality also ensures that I am always aware of my structural privileges and of my acute disadvantages, and am conscious that these are constantly changing based on my location and surroundings. I have learned to negotiate both my privilege and its lack with relative expertise, barring of course the regular, still unforeseen glitches.<br />
<br />
This has also taught me how to be an ally, for causes where my support may be necessary but any intervention may well be unwelcome. In no particular order, here are the rules to be an ally that I developed for myself (and apply):<br />
<br />
1. Listen first. And listen hard. There may be points of similarity between struggles but my first job is to learn everything I can about another's cause.<br />
<br />
2. Even if I know a lot, or even more than a local interlocutor, keep my mouth shut. It is not my struggle and often 'offering insight/help/suggestions' is seen as and can really be a form of appropriation.<br />
<br />
3. Offer tactical and practical support, but do not insist on it. Know about how to deal with tear gas? Offer the information. Have experience about protest safety? Extend that knowledge. Lawyer? Medic? PR expert? Offer my expertise but don't take it personally if it is rejected. At the end, it is NOT my cause.<br />
<br />
4. If I am allowed to participate and get involved, don't feel smug. This is not about me, it is about the people who are fighting and will continue fighting when I have left (An aside: my pet peeves include the entire genre of war/revolution/civil war stories and films where the generally Western hero jets in with good intention, 'grows' by being part of someone else's struggle - often even gets to lead it - and the story ends when he/she flies out).<br />
<br />
5. Don't make a fuss when I am rejected. And for god's sake don't get on a high horse because my good intentions didn't cut the slack. Remind myself: this is not about you!<br />
<br />
6. If allowed to participate, ensure that I do not - by my knowledge, expertise or personality - end up at the centre of the movement/group/struggle. Even in a protest march or demonstration, my place is to the side of the key players, not at the front and centre.<br />
<br />
7. Don't expect gratitude or indeed any acknowledgement. I chose to join someone else's struggle and it isn't their job to reward or even acknowledge me for my 'generosity.'<br />
<br />
8. Keep reminding myself: THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU (rinse and repeat as necessary).<br />
<br />
However, the biggest lesson that I have learned - and apply to myself - is simpler: compassion. Perhaps I should clarify that I use the term loosely to indicate the range of meanings it evokes for me from the Indic traditions, including that of k<i>aruna, samvedana</i>, and <i>dayavirata</i>.<br />
<br />
Over the years, I have realised why so many Indic texts describe compassion as a difficult experience and idea. It is because compassion demands far more than most of us imagine: an ability to feel another's pain without centering ourselves in that suffering. In simple terms, for me compassion is about feeling the pain of another, of approaching them with a view to ease that pain, even if only by recognising and acknowledging it clearly. Compassion, in this definition, requires suppressing the need 'to do good' by appropriating another's decision-making and agency. Compassion in this sense insists that we allow the injured party to make their own choices, even if it means they reject us. After all, any pain of rejection we may experience will still be a miniscule fraction of their agony.<br />
<br />
As I continue to fight my own battles, and stand as ally for those I care for, I sometimes forget that my allies can offer me the same kind of compassion. It is easy, I know, when one is hurting to believe that any offer of support is another micro-aggression, another attempt to appropriate one's narrative and suffering. In those instances, it takes an enormous effort for me to accept that I too have allies. After the initial surprise at their response, I am always grateful for <i>their </i>compassion.<br />
<br />
I end with a poem written by an ally after I had another unpleasant real world encounter with prejudice. As I raged on twitter, <a href="http://www.sandynicholson.co.uk/">Sandy Nicholson</a> tweeted this to me:<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Let's make swords out
of things! That sounds fun!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Let's make swords out of
things! That sounds fun! / Stare at me all you want. I choose not to give peace
a chance.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #333333; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And the only thing
really evolving is information, From matter to animals to humans to technology.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It's all really just
about storage space, and if that's all you have planned for yourself then I've
already won this fight.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">You can talk to me
about progress if you want but the end of that timeline is our extinction
either way.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">so don't be so eager to
iron out all the creases.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;">I choose instead to
get pissed off when my friends are cornered</span><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">by a the kind of meat
and potatoes idiocy that should really be boring by now. Never mind offensive.
It's boring.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I choose not to let
logic and decency form a callous over the part of me that gets angry.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I don't just want to
win the war against casual racism I want to leave it looking like a knife fight<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I want to cut
trombones from victory laps And I want to have fun doing it<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So bring me some
sharp stuff I'll forget how to hold it properly and prick all my fingers but
I'll do it honestly.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I may not win the battle, but I'll fight
it so you know for sure whose side I was on (it was yours)</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
It did exactly what allies are supposed to do. Offered recognition of my hurt and extended compassion. And it reminded me that I am not alone.<br />
Happy new year!<br />
<br />
PS. Another lovely tweep, <a href="https://twitter.com/mjberryman">MJ Berryman</a> storifyed <a href="http://storify.com/mjberryman/a-poem-about-casual-racism?utm_content=storify-pingback&utm_source=t.co&utm_campaign=&utm_medium=sfy.co-twitter&awesm=sfy.co_hS4o">the poem</a> and it does read quite amazingly in tweets so do look it up.<br />
<br /></div>
Sunny Singhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02687722552329432572noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2823892684510738201.post-31554606993646508032013-11-07T16:55:00.000+00:002013-11-07T18:08:05.223+00:00That Day After Everyday: A Commendable But Flawed Effort<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/AQR6cB1DXzY?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<br />
Since December 2012, when the brutal Delhi gang rape (and murder) shook India, discussions of violence against women (VAW) have not only gone mainstream but taken on a new urgency. Television slanging matches, social media debates, miles of newsprint, and of course the generally ridiculous statements from political and religious leaders have shone a not particularly flattering light on the state of women in the country. It is in the context of this renewed discussion that Anurag Kashyap's short film <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=AQR6cB1DXzY">That Day After Everyday </a> (see film above) was released earlier this month.<br />
<br />
<i>An aside: I wonder if we should count the short, despite its online release, as the director's 'Diwali release' (to use that much hyped term). In purely audience terms, it has certainly garnered the eyeballs necessary to count as a success! </i><br />
<br />
Kashyap has long made 'realist' cinema his signature (with caveats of course), depicting a gritty, dark reality of India, often ignored by more mainstream 'Bollywood' directors. In many ways, his films are heirs to the 70s 'parallel' cinema, apparently more 'intellectual' as opposed to the 'fluff' produced by the industry. Just to be clear, this is not my classification or description but a distillation of commonly held and aired views by film critics and scholars about Kashyap's oeuvre as well as 'Bollywood' vs 'parallel'/alternative/new/multiplex cinemas. In my own view, over the past century of Indian cinema, the 'fluff' makers have often better, more insistent and regular at engaging with complex social concerns than many self-conscious 'parallel' film-makers, and with the added advantage of reaching a wider audience. However, that is a discussion for another time.<br />
<br />
<i>That Day After Everyday</i>, as much of Kashyap's work, has high production values. The camera work is stellar, adding to both the sense of claustrophobia as well as fear of the protagonist. His use of mobile phone cameras to capture digital stalking of the women highlights the sense of micro-violations that is a daily experience for Indian women (and yes, I will not 'caveat' that - it is a rare Indian woman who has not experienced sexual harassment, gender-based intimidation, micro-aggressions and violations. And that rare woman will have to live in rarified socio-economic atmosphere available only to the likes of the country's super-elite such as Priyanka Gandhi). The constant sounds comprising of horrific news reports of VAW, crass comments by various colleagues, casual sexist comments by family members are effectively utilised. The actors are uniformly good with special kudos to Radhika Apte, the protagonist. The costumes, make-up, setting all signal a 'realist' non-glamourised, non-Bollywood world, similar if not the same as the one inhabited by most Indian women. Then there is the script, tightly structured with a couple of sharply etched and readily recognisable lead characters. Written by Nitin Bhardwaj, it works well to create the claustrophic, sinister lives circumscribed by casual sexism and persistent micro-violations.<br />
<br />
So far so good. But then come the discomforting moments: the film ends with the harassed women fighting back (after getting trained in self-defense). While this makes for a suitably feel good moment, it also feels cliched and for a Kashyap film, surprisingly 'Bollywood.' I must also say that I found the fight sequences less than convincing, as Kashyap seems to jettison all rules of self-defense and hand-to-hand combat to grant his 'heroines' their 'feel good' victory. Really? A knuckle duster? Which is seized by the opponent before even the first contact and then thrown away? The 'victory' such as it is feels contrived and unrealistic. Given the gritty realism Kashyap brought to <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1954470/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_5">Gangs of Wasseypur</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1261047/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_8">Gulal </a>or <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1327035/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_9">Dev D</a>, the fight sequence and its conclusion feels <i>gauche</i> and heavy handed.<br />
<br />
Then there is 'Didi' (played by Sandhya Mridul), the woman who apparently teaches the protagonist and her friends self-defense. I suppose there is some comfort to be gained in the non-heteronormative way she has been represented: short hair, 'butch' clothes, cigarettes. In my more sympathetic moment, I thought of her as a hopeful representation of female queerness in Indian cinema. But then I wondered why does a character bending gender-norms have to be represented by simplistic and reductionist masculinization? Why is her body language so gendered and in such cliched ways? Why did she remain in the background during the fight? There is a clever but unexplored cinematic moment as Didi and the husband stand on two ends of the fight, watching the harassers-turn-avengers. That tiny moment could have opened news ways of representing and seeing female characters; instead it re-inforces the masculine gaze that the film fails to subvert. Finally, she left me wondering if even our best 'alternative' filmmakers are open to considering gender and sexuality in ways that are not caricatured and stereotypical.<br />
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But the discomfort does not end there. The film ends on a 'humorous' note - of the demanding, sexist husband now cowed by his 'warrior' wife into making her tea on the morning after the fight. And yet this scene is heavy with tragedy as he asks her about the amount of sugar she prefers, indicating yet again that despite his new (temporary?) demeanour, he has made little or no effort towards the marriage. For Kashyap and the film, fear, not affection, and definitely not choice, appears to be the only motivation for men behaving kindly, gently, humanely towards women!<br />
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The ending in many ways encapsulates the problems I have with this film: in guise of making an inspirational short, the film peddles age-old victim-blaming narratives, this time from the other end of the spectrum. If the family members in the filmic text tell the women to not fight back as a way of avoiding sexual harassment, the film seems to assert that the only way to <i>not</i> be harassed is to fight back physically. In both cases, the onus is squarely on the women who are the victims of harassment. There is never any mention of the perpetrators, nor is there any real critique of them at any point in the film. The implicit message seems to be 'men are brutes that women must protect against.' That is a bizarrely regressive message from a director lauded for his 'progressive' films! <br />
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The film also individualises any fight back against VAW. Yes, by the end, the particular goons who have been beaten up may have learned the lesson against sexual harassment, but as any woman who has navigated public spaces in India can explain, there is no end to men who have <i>not</i> been taught that lesson by a mythical 'warrior' woman. There is no space in the filmic narrative to consider what happens to women who can't fight back, or if the same heroic protagonists are faced in the future by a new set of thugs. There is no understanding that the solution to VAW is not individualised punishment meted out by the state or citizens but rather structural changes in how women are perceived and valued.<br />
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Worse still, the film takes the simplistic route of equating class with VAW, and thus the 'fight back' is limited to the drunken thugs on the street, but not the men - both in the women's housing society and in the office - with cameras whose micro-violations are just as terrifying, sickening and unacceptable. Nor is the fight back aimed at the family members who are party to the embedded sexism and discrimination that aids and abets VAW. As a result, Kashyap's protagonist, having learned self-defense can fight off goons on the street, but will stay in a loveless marriage where her husband can only muster up basic acts of sharing and affection (such as making tea) as a result of fear. There is in fact not the smallest attempt to even reference the structural aspects of gendered violence.<br />
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A corollary of this simplification is to set up men and women as irreconcilable antagonists, locked in fear and violence. Furthermore, in presenting a uni-dimensional view of men as predators or cowardly enablers, the film serves Indian men ill. Surely Kashyap can imagine a wider range of masculinities? Worse still, with the sole older woman in the film replicating and repeating misogynist narratives while the younger women battle alone, the film appears to set up VAW as a problem only for young and attractive (even if un-made-up) women. Thus the film repeats the long-held but false corollary of rape and VAW being about sexual desire rather than about power, and as such undermines its own intent, message and effectiveness.<br />
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I realise that the points raised here may well be rebutted with "it's only a short film." But even twenty one minutes are ample in hands of a sensitive, thoughtful filmmaker to make a truly revolutionary point. Perhaps if Kashyap had considered his film on the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test">Bechdel </a>test, he would have come up with a different story line, viewpoint and characters. Or perhaps if he had remembered his own varied cinematic examinations of contemporary Indian masculinities, the film would have had a different slant. Given Kashyap's skill and intelligence, I look forward to another film that can fully deploy his directorial skills towards making a truly inspirational film about the topic...of the current filmmakers in the country, he is one of the most capable of doing so.<br />
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Till then, I suppose we should be grateful for the scraps that India's artists throw out towards concerns of gender discrimination and VAW.<br />
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PS: I really wish this film had been subtitled. It seems a sadly inward looking to release a film with international appeal, and online, without allowing non-Hindi speakers access to it.<br />
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Sunny Singhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02687722552329432572noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2823892684510738201.post-4479362544416249402013-09-25T09:05:00.003+01:002013-09-25T09:07:15.570+01:00Casual Bigotry and Daily Living<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Initially this was a post I was planning on every day sexism, but as a woman of colour, and despite the many mainstream press articles by leading neo-imperialist feminists about how intersectionality does not exist, my experience as a woman is often exacerbated by the way I experience the world because of my visible racial markers and my not-so-visible sense of self that has been shaped (and continues to be) by individual and structural responses to those racial markers. So instead I am left trying to address a complicated intersection of casual bigotry - both misogyny and racism - that I experience on daily, painfully destructive, basis. These micro-aggressions come fast and furious on a quotidian basis. For most part and on most days, I like many of us utilise the myriad of coping strategies and move on. But then...there is always that one, slightly vulnerable moment, when the defenses are down, or perhaps just the micro-aggression is a little less micro and more socially sanctioned. In those moments, suddenly and without warning, all coping strategies fail and one is left feel as isolated, marginalised and devalued as ever. Then the casual bigotry stops being casual, and suddenly grows again into the destructive, horrific, nasty force it always has been.<br />
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We often talk of bigotry - both racial and misogynist - in overt terms: names called in the playground or street, laws enacted to limit our freedoms, safety, dignity, histories of structured discrimination and centuries of complex and Hydra-headed narratives that enable it. And for many of us who live the daily experience of bigotry, as a woman or a person of colour, or in that double-whammy, as both, we know that we have continuous legal, political, economic, social battles to fight, and struggles that continue regardless of how long we have been fighting. But there is another sort of bigotry that many of us face, probably more frequently, one that is more insidious, damaging and soul-destroying. It is also more prevalent and harder to counter.<br />
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This sort of bigotry is not as easy to counter with intellectual debates on structures of power. Nor is it as terrifying and upsetting as slurs or shouted abuse on the streets. Or as physically harmful as hate-motivated physical violence. It is far more subtle and insidious. And perhaps because it is none of the above, it is the one we often are taught no strategies to counter.<br />
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As a young girl, I was taught about personal safety, specially in face of sexual harassment or assault. The men and women in my family were enlightened or informed enough to teach me the four key points to strike in case I were attacked. I was taught, perhaps more than most women, how to yell out, attract attention, make an escape. I was even taught how to speak up and seek support both from family and friends, and from the law. Unfortunately, the first time I faced sexual harassment, none of these lessons helped at all. You see, it wasn't a stranger on the street, with a scary mask and police record. The attempted assault came from someone we knew socially, was part of my parent's social circle, and occurred in a house inhabited by family friends. Suddenly, hitting hard or yelling to attract attention didn't seem like applicable or effective strategies. I remember removing myself from one part of the crowded room to another, running into another teenage friend who giggled nervously about 'groping hands' and feeling utterly powerless. And yet in some ways, the social groper is still an overt phenomenon, one you can fight against in a range of ways...personal and social.<br />
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But how do you cope with embedded prejudice that shows up not only in a host of ways that are not only socially acceptable but also socially sanctioned and enabled by everyone around you? For me, and for many others, there is a social ritual: we walk into a gallery, book launch, literary talk, and we smile while we are consistently and repeatedly othered, devalued, dehumanised by those who are holding forth.<br />
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Yes, rape jokes in comedy clubs are a part of this experience as are literary events where 'witty' writers are lauded and applauded for their use of language while their misogyny is enabled by that same appreciation. Subtle valuing of male opinions over female ones, especially on 'big' topics such as economics, politics, war, are part of this casual sexism. Here race gets a slightly better hand: thankfully racism disguised as wit is not nearly as acceptable these days, at least in overt ways. However, racism cloaked in more subtle forms walks the same polite spaces: what many race activists call 'white saviour complex,' is rife in the more polite parts of Western capitals as is an embedded Eurocentrism that values certain narratives, experiences, histories over others. It often manifests itself with 'amusing' personal anecdotes about travels abroad or apparently unself-conscious tales about 'foreigners' (the key to this is the implicit 'othering' with its corollary of exoticising, devaluing and dehumanising the foreigner). It shows up in academic studies including scientific ones that extend and reiterate reductionist views and stereotypes, often in guise of 'study.' It shows up in the choice of approved cultural informers, be they journalists, writers, artists, who can and do restate older dominant narratives rather than challenging or subverting them (and are rewarded for the subservience). It also shows up in virile defensiveness when the othered dares offer an opinion that is contrary to the accepted, popular one.<br />
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For the 'othered', this subtle socially sanctioned form of bigotry is much harder to counter. As a woman, I can call out misogyny in my writing, in my classes, and in public fora. Yet when faced with persistent casual sexism in social situations, I have no recourse. At a recent literary event, I sat feeling utterly repulsed not only by the speaker's casual misogyny but also by the laughter around me that enabled the speaker's continued and cherished belief that he were merely exercising his 'wit.' At the end, the only act of resistance available for me was my decision to not buy his book (even though that is usual form in this particular forum) and thus register a silent, personal and most likely unnoticed dissent. Had I called him out on his sexism, I know exactly how the conversation would have unfolded: it would start with a vehement denial of the prejudice, followed by rallying of support from surrounding similar minded people, and ended with accusations hurled at me for lacking humour or worst yet, that ultimate social poison, 'being difficult' (sometimes the order of these changes slightly or all three are simultaneously taken up).<br />
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As a woman, I know from experience that I am supposed to 'play nice' or be punished with professional, social and personal repercussions in face of such subtle, socially enabled misogyny. After all, terms like harridan, harpy, bitch have all been created for and deployed against women who are socially inconvenient. As a person of colour, I am even more aware that any attempt to point out socially embedded, accepted and enabled racism - either structural or individual - marks me as the 'angry' one, the one who cannot be 'trusted to behave appropriately in polite society' that I have been let in to as reward for 'good behaviour' (as in not challenging the prejudiced narratives and actions). The punishment for not playing nice is grim and has social, professional and personal repercussions...after all any token 'other' is easy to replace by a more amenable one!<br />
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Yet the price for living with such casual bigotry is immense. Despite the decades that have passed, I find myself seeking solace in repeated readings of Franz Fanon, if only to remind myself that the constant sense of feeling conflicted is neither a new nor solely my experience. I find myself questioning myself on a daily basis whether I am enabling the rife and casual bigotry by not taking a more active stance in challenging it. And yet, I also know that I am unwilling to pay the social, professional, personal price for a more aggressively dissident stand. On good days, I tell myself that I am working from within the beast, that every time I survive a micro-aggression, that every time I make it back to the safety of my mind and home, I am fighting the good fight. On bad days, I find myself wondering if I am a modern version of the 'house slave' (or the ayah, the collaborating Maharajah, the Macauley's elite) who help sustain the edifices of prejudice by participating in them for the lure of the dregs from the master's table. And on both sort of days, I find myself angry at the invisible privileges that ensure that I shall remain on the margins, regardless of all I work toward and/or achieve. And on all days, I am reminded consistently that there is no escape for the likes of me! </div>
Sunny Singhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02687722552329432572noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2823892684510738201.post-48553090746342969682013-04-06T17:31:00.001+01:002013-04-07T01:00:41.103+01:00A Writer's Toolkit: Thoughts on Writing <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Finishing a novel and starting research on a new non-fiction book within the past six months has made me acutely conscious of my own writing process and how it has evolved over the past years of publishing. Much of it has been a case of trial and error, and often just serendipity. Like many who accidentally stumble upon a winning (or at least working) formula, I have learned my process mostly on the fly but repeated and refined whatever seems to work. Many of these lessons now make up my writer's toolkit, and are essential to both my process and product.<br />
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Over the years, I have figured out my writing process and honed my craft. When I was writing my <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Nanis-Book-Suicides-Sunny-Singh/dp/8172233973/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1365259869&sr=8-1&keywords=sunny+singh%2C+nani%27s+book+of+suicides">first novel</a>, I was convinced that I needed the 'bohemian' life that went with - at least in my mind - with the art of fiction. So I cloistered myself, wrote through the night, sleeping only after the sun had risen high into the sky, and drank a lot of whisky. In my own mind, I was following in the footsteps of the greats, although mostly just punishing my liver with suitable determination. </div>
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Once the manuscript was done, I had to gingerly return to the real world and mundane things like making a living. I remember the strangeness of those first few months of re-entering the world: I had lost the ability to have normal social conversations and needed to remember basic social skills. I could either not speak at all or would chatter incessantly, with words spilling out in generally an incoherent jumble. Although I did not recognise this at the time, I was also recovering myself as an individual from all those people who had long lived in my brain (but more on this later). </div>
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Worse though was the depression that followed, which I initially blamed on the rejections from publishers I was rapidly accumulating. It wasn't until nearly a year later that I realised that the depression had a more basic reason: for the first time in my life, words had deserted me. At the first sight of a blank sheet of paper, my mind wiped out into nothingness. I could not even write a basic message on a birthday card! As someone who has always relied on words as if it were oxygen, those were terrifying times, especially as I wondered if I had run out of words, whether I had only ever had one book in me and could and would never write another.</div>
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At the end, despite looking for professional help, it was words that saved me. An editor friend insisted that I produce something, anything, for her magazine, publishing even writing exercises that often took me days to shape and form. Her insistence that I meet deadlines forced me to write, pushed me to use the exhausted word-producing muscles that I had given up on. Then just as the novel found a publisher, I was asked to write a book on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Single-City-Sunny-Singh/dp/0141000244/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1365260502&sr=1-1&keywords=sunny+singh%2C+single+in+the+city">single women in India</a>. </div>
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Suddenly, just as I was recovering my facility with words, I had a big project. But there was no space to write it, living as I was with family, siblings, and a very large dog in a small Delhi flat. That fantasy writer's 'bohemian' life was going to be impossible if I were to deliver the book. But as my dad reminded me, "न नौ मन गेंहू होवे न मीरा उठके नाचिहे " (As there will never be nine<i> maund </i>(Indian measure of weight) of grain, so Meera shall never rise to dance), a Hindi proverb emphasising that there are never ideal conditions for any action. So I wrote my second book, still mostly at night, with a fifty kilo Rottweiler snoring at my feet and aided by copious cups of hot tea. Slowly but surely, I was learning the most important lesson of all: that writing was a discipline and a demanding one, not a lifestyle choice.</div>
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It was also the first time I noticed the cleansing powers of non-fiction. As I finalised the book, the idea for my next novel had already taken hold. I began the initial writing even as I was promoting the book on single women, writing in my parents' house in the hills, in my cramped Delhi flat, even on noisy train journeys to-and-fro as we prepared to move out of India. In my parents' house, my father and I spent hours weeding the lawns, working in companionable silence, while my mind filled itself again of characters and plots and vast colourful universes. And then came the strange switch: even as I worked on the early stages of the novel, I moved to Barcelona. </div>
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There I was! Finally! I was living my dream of truly being the 'writer', living in Europe, drinking loads of wine, talking about art and literature and philosophy on the beach and in little cafes, fully living the 'bohemian' life that I was sure all great writing needed as nourishment. Strangely, my second novel is more truly 'Indian,' set for most part in a village that is much like the ones that my ancestors built generations ago. It seemed as if I could summon up India better once I was removed from its quotidian pressures and realities. And yet something had changed: I no longer wrote at night, or at least, not late at night. Instead, I worked in the afternoons, took a break for socialising over tapas and wine, then returned before midnight to write till about three in the morning.</div>
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This time when I finished <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Krishnas-Eyes-Sunny-Singh/dp/8129109662/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1365265175&sr=1-1&keywords=sunny+singh%2C+with+krishna%27s+eyes">the novel</a>, I was prepared for the familiar depression. Or rather I recognised the inevitable moment of complete devastation for what it was: overwhelming grief for the end of a project that had occupied my mind for years. A friend explains that the process of finishing a book is much like getting a divorce, or ending a relationship, with the same complexity of emotions. After all, a writer lives with a book more completely while it is in progress than most humans do with each other. Sometimes, I think that perhaps the sadness many writers feel at birthing a novel is not dissimilar from post-partum depression: one is expected to celebrate and rejoice but the exhaustion, loss of control, and fear are often more overwhelming. </div>
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I had also been careful to not isolate myself from people during my second novel so the return to society was not nearly as disorienting as before. However, it did made me realise that my judgement about people is completely shot while I am writing: my own decisions about likes and dislikes are so over-ridden by characters in my head that I found myself wondering how I had ended up befriending people with whom I had little in common. "You just test out your characters on people" my siblings insisted, rather unfeelingly and despite my protests. Sadly I have grown to realise that they are right. It doesn't just stop there: my tastes in music and reading, hobbies, even the style of dressing changes with my characters, making me appear either fragmented or just attention deficit. And this is before I begin to have entire conversations about my characters who are - in the moment of writing - more real to me than people I know and see. Sentimental, nostalgic pronouncements on the lines "X would so love this wine/dessert/exhibition," where X is completely fictional are something my closest friends have grown inured to. </div>
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At least, I have learned that I either have great survival skills or am madly lucky as I also acquire a lot of friends during the writing process who can cope with my dysfunctional behaviour. Indeed, some of my best friends have been made while I was deep in throes of the creative process, a testimony perhaps to their generosity or foolhardiness (or more likely, both).</div>
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Fortunately, experience had taught me skills needed to face the post-novel depression. Within months of finishing of my second novel, I moved countries (again) and began a PhD, throwing myself into research about things I knew nothing about. Once again, the nonfiction worked to clear my head, this time more consciously. But more importantly, juggling a full time job and PhD ensured that my writing discipline got more focussed, perhaps even ascetic. Writing late into the night was no longer possible. Neither were erratic hours and other bits of bohemia. So instead I began writing when I could: holidays, days off, weekends, even on the tube as I commuted back and forth from work. The thesis took up so much time that I could not think of novel-universes, so instead small miniature worlds were born in my mind, taking shape as short stories, forcing me hone my craft. From the large canvases and Pollock-like frenzy, I was forced to take up a the tiny frame and single hair brush of Indian miniatures. I struggled, splashing like an over-sized fish caught in a tiny bathtub, but slowly I adapted, began to control my abilities, learning new skills, polishing my fiction with the obsessive precision only miniatures can provide. </div>
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And once again, even as I finished my phd, the idea for a new novel had taken hold, germinating, growing silently as I referenced, cross-referenced, and indexed. As I defended my thesis, my mind was already full of a new world, of characters drawn as finely as in a miniature but inhabiting a world as complex and full as a large canvas. Writing short stories has made my writing sparser, more restrained, and that changed my novel, making it equally restrained. For the first time in all my years of writing, I felt that I had some control over my craft. Moreover, for the first time I wrote as a professional, with a clear knowledge of the end result and full awareness of the discipline. My writing time now begins early in the morning, followed by a swim, and then work. For the duration of the writing the novel, I felt more like a marathon runner than the bohemian, pushing myself to draw on all my experience, skill, stamina, and strength. </div>
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I was ready for the downer that finishing my novel would inevitably bring although I had prepared for it mentally. But this time it didn't happen! Don't get me wrong, I am still struggling with words - this blog post is intended to force myself to write something, anything. I have again realised that I have been living in a creative haze - albeit far more controlled - and many new acquaintances are baffled by the changed persona. It is invigorating to see art, read books, hear music for myself and not from within the skin of my characters. And once again, I have another project - a non-fiction book that will require vast amounts of research, and shall cleanse my mind for more fiction. More importantly, I don't feel the need to move countries just to find excitement to help overcome my post-writing depression.</div>
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It has been a long journey to this space, to where I feel like I have some (although not nearly enough) control of my craft and much awareness of my creative process. I no longer have to fear that I will run out of words or ideas, just because I have finished a major project. I have an endurance athlete's discipline in terms of writing and have increasingly realised that I need to be physically as healthy as my mind if I am to ensure that I keep writing for many years to come. This has sadly meant the demise of my 'bohemian' fantasies but perhaps that is not necessarily bad. Finally, I am grateful that I have enough people in my life who not only acknowledge but support my forays into the creative universe even when they don't quite understand them. All of these are, I have only now learned, essential for the writer's toolkit. </div>
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Sunny Singhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02687722552329432572noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2823892684510738201.post-33151169261064634362013-03-13T19:59:00.000+00:002013-03-13T20:11:38.357+00:00A Hundred Years of Indian Cinema: First Favourites List<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
As many of you cinephiles already know, 2013 celebrates Indian film industry's centenary, marking a hundred years since Dadasaheb Phalke's <i>Raja Harishchandra </i>was first released. I hope to write other pieces during this year on the evolution of Indian cinema but as I began thinking about film-making in India, I realised that many of my favourite films don't make it to the 'big' lists compiled by film critics and mainstream media. So in this post, I decided to list some of my own favourites.<br />
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It is worth noting that this first list is made up entirely of commercial Hindi cinema - with its rather awful short hand, Bollywood - and not all cinema from India, as the country has multiple industries in multiple languages, each with its own canon of film conventions, milestones and texts. The list is also weighted heavily towards the last forty years of cinema, reflecting perhaps my own location in time and a generational shift. Unlike many film scholars who write about Indian cinema's 'golden ages' of the 1930s or 1950s, I firmly believe that 1970s threw up some amazing films, stars and film-makers, all of which have received less attention than they warrant. Moreover, we have not stopped making great films a hundred years later, despite the overwhelming narrative of nostalgia that many of our filmmakers, critics and scholars repeat incessantly. Finally, the best Hindi films of the past century have not been necessarily 'art-house' or parallel or independent cinema, but often the purest form of commercially driven, blockbuster enterprise.<br />
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I have to say that picking this list was particularly difficult as I could come up with ten favourite films within all of ten seconds. However, this first list makes up the films I can not only watch as a film fanatic but also those texts that leave me wondering about technical and stylistic choices of the films themselves, and make me want to place these cinematic texts in their social, political, cultural contexts to understand the processes that informed such cultural production. I also wanted to stay off the usual list of 'greats' although you will notice that could not NOT include Sholay (Am a 70s kid, so no chance). So here goes:<br />
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1. <i><b>Amar Akbar Anthony</b> </i>(1977): this mad-cap Manmohan Desai adventure with dizzying plot twists is also perhaps one of the most tightly constructed scripts. <i> Adbhuta</i> (wonder) as its primary <i>rasa</i> is a risky strategy in of itself as it relies on non-realist narrative tropes but Desai pulls it off. Indian independence, the Partition, communal harmony, urbanisation, class issues, post-coloniality all get pulled into this mind-boggling family saga but with his signature light touch so that the film is enjoyable for a child but provides layer upon layer of textual complexity for the scholar. Only quibble: the women don't get much screen time although they do demonstrate more agency than most heavy-handed 'arty' cinema of the time.<br />
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2. <i><b>Sholay </b></i>(1975): The big boss of them all! Gabbar, Veeru, Jai, Thakur, Basanti, even Dhanno....the most stylish homage to Sergio Leone and one of the most superbly constructed films of the past century. Each technical element - sound, camera, editing, so on - all deserve entire books discussing the choices and complexities of constructing those. Then add the perfectly plotted script, great acting by some of India's iconic stars, and powerful dialogue and there really is no argument against this being the best. However, the film makes far more sense and is more powerful in the original (or now director's cut) rather than the censored version released during the Emergency. The uncut version is longer but has more narrative and emotional cohesion right to the final conclusion.<br />
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3. <i><b>Bandini</b></i> (1963): A Bimal Roy classic, though unrelenting for its <i>karuna rasa</i>, with possibly one of the bleakest endings in cinema. India's independence movement, changing social mores, and prisoner rehabilitation all collide in this neo-realist gem that ranks alongside the best in Indian cinema, which also features an extraordinary expressionist sequence where Kalyani poisons her lover's wife. It also features this <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-X1N93J2Fo">most gorgeous song </a>which also marks Gulzar's debut as a lyricist.<br />
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4. <i><b>Jaal </b></i>(1952): Yes, a Guru Dutt movie! What I love about this early film by the director (and writer) is the deft Indian-ised use of <i>noir</i> elements. The camera, lighting, mise en scene, costumes, all echo well known elements of Hollywood noir, helped in part by the Goan setting which allows the film to deploy 'western' imagery with ease. At the same time, elements of crime, retribution, morality, as well as Indian cinema's long standing preoccupation with modernity, urbanisation and westernisation are tackled with a stylish, light directorial touch. In context of the full film, this <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNnJxz35RZ8">beautiful song</a> takes on far more complex - and sinister - tones of forbidden desires than often noticed.<br />
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5. <b><i>Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai</i> </b>(1960): Often ignored as one of Raj Kapoor's minor films, this is also one of his overtly political films and not only for the nation-building narrative that many RK films took up during the 1950s and 1960s. The 'naive' Raju also references the attempts to persuade the pre-independence Chambal 'baghees' (Bollywood has often elided baghees with dacoits) into mainstream, post-independence India. Unlike later films, Kapoor chose an overt political narrative with Raju as the idealistic outsider to bring change rather than a redemption based entirely on love.<br />
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6. <i><b>Rang de Basanti</b></i> (2006): After 9/11, a quintessentially human exploration of terrorism, its motivations, and the human face of violence. History and modern politics collide and blend, with layers of film-within-a-film, past and present time scales and digital media all come together in an engrossingly post-modern text. This is one of my favourites for its editing choices and the ways in which sepia and colour, digital images and mass media elements are deployed to collapse the boundaries of filmic narrative, history and memory and extra-filmic reality. Strangely enough the images from this film seem to have bled into reality after its release, not only in the candle-light marches for Jessica Lal murder but also in the televised footage of police brutality in December 2012. Yet another Bollywood film that gives lie to the myth that the industry does nothing more than candy-floss romances and sentimental melodramas.<br />
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7. <i><b>Maachis</b> </i>(1995): Yes, a Gulzar movie. This time as a director. This director's oeuvre over the past four plus decades merits an entire list of his own (Watch this space!) as each of his films is gorgeously crafted to blend narrative, literature, aesthetics and politics. But this film stands out for me as the first major critique of the excesses by the Indian state in Punjab. It is also prescient in its exploration of the ways in which the state and individuals interact and how narratives of 'terrorism' help sustain (and extend) the state's hegemony of violence at the cost of human rights and lives. Events after 9/11 around the world have sadly proven Gulzar's view of the state right.<br />
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8. <i><b>Chak de India</b> </i>(2007): One of the past decade's 'small films' with very large ambitions. It plays out as a straight forward sports movies with all the well-known cliches, but with a difference. The film puts women's hockey at its heart, features a restrained performance by Shahrukh Khan who breaks out of his star persona for a change, and begins to articulate an Indian Muslim identity that can move beyond the Partition and is de-linked from Pakistan. And yes, some how all this is handled in a way that is fun and moving.<br />
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9. <i><b>Chalti ka Naam Gaadi </b></i>(1958): Wacky, slapstick and outright hilarious comedy classic that turns into a gothic mystery mid-way, complete with a sinister mansion and a madwoman in the attic. For an early film, the sexual agency and independence exercised by the women in this film (not counting the one locked up, of course, although she too escapes and organises help rather than wilting) is quite extraordinary. And of course it helps that it features the fabulously over-the-top eccentric <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh9X1HiP0Zs">Kishore Kumar </a>and the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8ta8sQk_ZM">most gorgeous woman to ever appear on Indian celluloid, Madhubala</a>.<br />
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10.<b> <i>Gangs of Wasseypur</i></b> (2012): Yup, I am right from the Hindi heartland so this one has to be included. This film is not only extraordinary in narrative scale, aesthetic choices and technical expertise but also is one of the most unabashed celebrations of the rural and popular cultures of UP and Bihar. Everything from the language to costumes to the music is global and local at the same time, capturing the global nature of the Hindi heartland today, freely mixing <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBqaM8txf9I">Chutney </a>influences with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0OfskU-G8M">folk songs</a>, Ray Bans with <i>behenjis</i>, and high drama and violence with black comedy. In many ways, this film is an interesting beacon for the ways this industry may evolve into the future.<br />
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I hope to post again during the year about more films from India so this is really a starter list. I would love to know yours! But till I get to post again, happy 100th birthday, Indian cinema!<br />
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Sunny Singhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02687722552329432572noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2823892684510738201.post-82402120342115454912013-01-29T10:30:00.004+00:002013-02-01T12:53:40.610+00:00Each time I behave as an angry, loud woman, I feel less shame and less fear<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This post has been a long time coming: first, because I have not updated this blog in a long time as I spent most of the past year focused on my novel; and second, because internet trolling is something I have been thinking about, discussing and tweeting for a couple of years now.<br />
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I have been blogging, first for a separate, now defunct, site and then here, for over a decade and although I am an infrequent blogger, I learned the first rule of placing myself online early on. Initially, and for the first couple of years, my blog was read mostly by friends and family, and a few strangers who stumbled upon something I wrote by accident and who left interesting and thoughtful comments. However, even back then, my brother, who also built my first website and helped me initially design this blog was adamant that all comments be moderated. I wondered about his protectiveness and laughed it off. After all, wasn't the net the brave new world where all humans were equal?<br />
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Then one bright morning, I checked my email and found the notification for a comment awaiting moderation. Strangely enough, it was left on a post about <a href="http://sunnysinghonline.blogspot.co.uk/2007/01/raging-indians-oh-poor-britannia.html">Shilpa Shetty and Celebrity Big Brother</a>. It read simply, "You dumb bitch. Shut up."<br />
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The unexpected venom of the comment, left anonymously of course, stunned me. With a great deal of naivete, I spent quite a bit of the morning wondering if I should publish the comment, and respond to it. I walked around my flat, another cup of tea in hand, veering between anger, shock and an unreasonable flush of shame, trying to un-bundle all my emotions and thoughts, trying to make sense of a stranger's abuse. Then I remembered the very first time I had been physically harassed. I had been a teenager walking down Third Avenue in New York, when a man had suddenly reached out and grabbed my breasts. It had only been an instant, but I remember the shock I had felt, and the instant sense of violation. And I can still call up the ineffectual fury I felt at the grin on the man's face as he stepped back, leered and then kept walking. The teenage me had cried secretly for days, even wondered if some how my sweat pants and bulky coat were 'wrong,' or 'provocative.' Finally, a friend had talked me through it, pointing with acute insight that I had simply been on the street: "I bet you have never walked on a street alone in India. You were alone. As a female, you are prey." Those words have lingered in my mind since, with even harsher significance as that friend's country soon disintegrated into civil war and massive sexual crimes against innumerable women.<br />
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Eventually, I went back to my blog and deleted that first abusive comment, realising that online, just as in real life, I had done the same thing: by simply existing as a woman, I was prey.<br />
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As social media has grown, and more women have begun claiming a space online, this sort of abuse has also grown. The classics scholar Mary Beard's trolling has opened the debate on misogynist online abuse in the UK, yet many more women are harassed daily and receive far less attention. On social media, especially twitter, the worst abuse appears to be directed at women who express opinions on politics, economics, security or other seemingly 'male' matters. When male commentaters express similar opinions, they do often get abused, but rarely does the abuse descend with skidding, rapid, efficiency into graphic, sexualised violence.<br />
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For example, few men active online will have received these responses to expressing their opinions: "fucking bitch, all you need is rape" (for commenting on EU economic policy); "ugly whore, I'll fuck you till you are dead (for my remark on global financial crisis); "Arab whore, how many Muslims fuck you every day" (for<a href="http://sunnysinghonline.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/gilad-atzmons-wandering-who-incisive.html"> reading Gilad Atzmon's book</a>); "you're so ugly, I will have to cover your face with a pillow while I fuck you" (for tweeting about Delhi gang rape); the last comment was cheered on by various others who suggested anal rape because that way they would not have to see my face. And more recently, "I will cut your cunt and ass, and fuck your mouth till you die, whore. Just like the bitch in the bus" (for tweeting on how religions, including Hinduism, aid misogyny).<br />
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Why have I listed the above? Because I have come to believe that this kind of online abuse is exactly like facing sexual harassment on the street. Women are told to keep their head down, walk fast, walk away, not make eye contact, and a thousand other little 'safety tips.' All of these apparent remedies subtly but clearly shift the blame from the abusers to the abused. They make the abuse a 'women's problem' rather than focusing on the men who make safety, even basic dignity, impossible for women. Same happens with online abuse: too many men have told me that I am giving abusers air by naming and shaming them, that I should ignore the men who spout sick violence about women, that if I ignored them the abuse will disappear. And in that wonderful social-media condoning, I have been told by many men that "I am unfollowing you because you keep talking about abuse and not more interesting things."<br />
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Such arguments, attitudes and reactions ignore the evidence: women have stayed silent in real life for generations and there has been no palpable reduction in misogyny. Most women in print, online, on social media, who speak their minds are harassed on a daily basis, in terms of sexualised violence and the only way the abuse stops is when they stop speaking their minds, by stopping to publish, or by leaving social media. On twitter, some of the most extraordinarily brilliant women have locked accounts to avoid abuse, and to retain the ability to express themselves in a protected space. Sadly, such online veiling also ensures they speak only to those who are allowed past their protective boundaries, limiting their audiences and reach.<br />
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For everyone who thinks women should ignore online harassment, I would ask, would you do so? How would you react if you woke up every morning to a dozen emails detailing explicit sexual violence for you and your family? Would you 'ignore' it if people you loved were abused and threatened?<br />
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Over time, I have come to believe that the only way for women to stop sexual harassment online and in real life is for more of us to speak up, as loudly, and as often as we can. But the only way to not treat sexual harassment as a 'women's problem' but a social one is for more men to actively get involved. If more men spoke up against sexual harassment of women, the abuse would be seen as less acceptable. If more men insisted on claiming a masculinity that does not rely on non-consensual, power-based sex, we could start thinking of sexual harassment as a social, political and economic problem and not one that only impacts women (and is thus treated less seriously). If more men acted when they saw a woman being abused (and this is more so online, as I do realise there are real safety concerns for many on the streets), fewer men would think it 'funny' or indeed 'safe' to abuse women.<br />
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After that first experience of street harassment, I promised myself that I would learn to react, physically and mentally. In subsequent instances, I have shouted and shouted loudly; I have reacted physically, hit out, and in one case, confronted abusive men (this time in London's Brick Lane) till they backed down. For years, my sister walked in Delhi with a hockey stick and full backing from my father for using it as a weapon. Even now, we automatically keep the heavy handle lock my dad acquired for the family car in close reach while driving in India.<br />
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But more importantly, each time I take a stance, each time I behave as an angry, loud, woman (yes, a bitch, a cunt, a harpy as some of the abusers would surely consider it), I feel less shame and less fear. In taking a stand against harassment, I run the risk of escalating the abuse, but I feel more empowered and more pride for not letting myself be cowed, frightened, and pushed back to the margins.<br />
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I am fortunate. I have many men who stand up alongside me in support. And they speak for me not only because I am their daughter, sister, aunt, lover, friend, or colleague, but because they recognise me as an individual and a human being who deserves safety and dignity. More importantly, they stand as allies to women elsewhere and everywhere. I have always wished that there would be more such men because then more women, including me, would be able to participate more fully in social, economic, political struggles of our times. But then, I guess that is exactly what the abusers want to stop!<br />
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PS: Discussions with women activists across the world has thrown up an interesting little nugget: online abusers seem more able and secure in directing their vilest, most violent, abuse at women they see as their 'own' or ethnically, nationally, religiously, of their own grouping. So the worst abuse I have received is not from the random Islamists or Middle East regime supporters, or Christian evangelists. It has come from self-professed 'Indian patriots, proud Hindus.' This neatly mirrors the abuse my Arab women friends get, generally from men of their own countries, religions, and ethnicity, as well as the abuse focused at white, middle-class women commentaters in US and UK whose abusers are similar to them in class, race, etc. It seems, as has been noted by many feminists, there is an unspoken pact for men of each grouping to keep 'their' women in line!<br />
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PPS: This post has been long time brewing but today's post by <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/soraya-chemaly/women-online-harassment_b_2567898.html?utm_hp_ref=tw">Soraya Chemaly</a> with its extraordinary list of abuse against women online as well as evidence that confronting abuse works gave me the impetus to actually write down my thoughts. Thanks to Soraya and to Darshana, the tweeter with @lilforeigngirl handle who sent me the piece so it was my first reading of the morning.</div>
Sunny Singhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02687722552329432572noreply@blogger.com30tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2823892684510738201.post-2596496227482944932012-07-25T13:12:00.000+01:002012-12-28T16:25:19.985+00:00Update on my short story, A Cup Full of Jasmine Oil<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<b>UPDATE: </b>The short story is included in a Queer Ink's anthology, titled <i><a href="http://queer-ink.com/books/queer-ink/out-stories-from-the-new-queer-india">Out: Stories from the New Queer India</a></i>, of short fiction, edited by Minal Hazratwala and published this year and stocked in book shops across India.<br />
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A few years ago, I was approached to contribute to an anthology on LGBT fiction by Indian writers. I pointed out to the editor that my position was that of an ally and perhaps I was not the best person to contribute to the anthology. The reason for my hesitance is one that applies to much of my writing: the power to create narratives is immense and so those of us with the privilege to exercise this power must behave with responsibility. Marginalising voices, or erasing marginalised voices, is all too easy when wielding the pen and I have always been particularly careful about this issue of ethics.<br />
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However, after prolonged discussions, I was persuaded to contribute a short story, titled A Cup Full of Jasmine Oil. As an LGBT ally, I hoped that perhaps my story in the collection could contribute to the discussions around the issues facing LGBT community in India. For this reason, I set the story in an unnamed small Indian town, in a domestic space. At the time, and alongside the story, I was working on an academic paper on LGBT representations in popular Indian culture and had noticed that unlike western narratives where non-heteronormative relationships were located 'somewhere far beyond the domestic realm' and 'out there,' Indian tradition placed homo-eroticism squarely at the centre of the home. This idea formed the core of my short story.<br />
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Sadly, the anthology never materialised and after a while, the short story went to publication in <a href="http://www.thedrawbridge.org.uk/">The Drawbridge</a>. It was in good company, with the issue carrying writing by Mario Vargas Llosa, Jose Saramago and Saadat Hasan Manto, amongst others. <br />
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Strangely, as has often happened with other pieces of my writing, the short story then took on a life of its own. I was invited to read it at a conference in Cologne, Germany in 2010. The reading gave rise to much debate, not only on aspects of hetero-normativity and its discontents but also on cultural ideas, postcoloniality, and art. In a further twist of the tale, the <a href="http://www.lingfil.uu.se/inst/publikationsserier/orientalia_suecana//">Orientalia Suecana</a> journal of the University of Uppsala, Sweden, put together an issue devoted to writings and discussions from the panel. <span style="background-color: white;">The</span><a href="http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2:539995" style="background-color: white;"> issue</a><span style="background-color: white;"> is now available online in pdf format for download. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">It contains a reprint of my short story,<a href="http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?searchId=3&pid=diva2:540023"> A Cup Full of Jasmine Oil</a>. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">More interesting (for me at least), is the inclusion in the issue of <a href="http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?searchId=2&pid=diva2:540022">an experimental academic paper</a> by Thomas de Bruijn. The essay "juxtaposes a reading of the story from a more conventional western perspective with an interpretation from the point of the Indian system of aesthetics based on rasa. From this double perspective, it discusses various stylistic and thematic aspects of the story. Diverging interpretations are presented in the role of the characters, the functionality of their characterization, and the use of description and suggestion to evoke the semantic framework of the story." The essay includes a discussion between Dr. De Bruijn and me on the two systems of interpretations and how they impact our understanding of literature. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">I am particularly happy about this essay as it begins to address one of my political issues about cultural production and its study. For far too long, too much of academic production has disguised its "West as theory, East as object" politics as 'universalist.' By opening up literary discussion to non-Western theories, this essay begins to overturn this paradigm. In doing so, it also brings together my academic and creative writings.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">While I have embedded the links to both the story and the essay in this post, am posting them here again: </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">Short Story: </span><span style="background-color: white;"><a href="http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?searchId=3&pid=diva2:540023">A Cup Full of Jasmine Oil</a></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><a href="http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?searchId=2&pid=diva2:540022">Reading and Q & A with Sunny Singh </a>on A Cup Full of Jasmine Oil by Thomas de Bruijn.</span><br />
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Enjoy the reading. And do comment.</div>
Sunny Singhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02687722552329432572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2823892684510738201.post-47956472099702374432012-04-24T13:49:00.000+01:002012-04-24T14:26:36.761+01:00The Wait: Notes From Behind the Storyline<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
As some of you know, my short story, <i>The Wait</i>, carried last year by the <a href="http://sunnysinghonline.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/new-short-story-now-out-in-ellery-queen.html">Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine</a> is now available in Japanese in the <a href="http://www.hayakawa-online.co.jp/">Hawakaya's Mystery Magazine. </a><br />
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<a href="http://www.hayakawa-online.co.jp/">
</a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhevV-aqFxepdkX3SG4icK6k-3nmoMGbe4xDnguaDyIr6pcJdBvTaX-E8AE-M7gGyfgJdnICyjXI0ksGaOcH3W3ugkoq7k2-nuRl7FBONOeB85LskaQPY6Bqvb10ZLwEsNlGyg-CuLDO8Jk/s1600/Phone+pics+001.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhevV-aqFxepdkX3SG4icK6k-3nmoMGbe4xDnguaDyIr6pcJdBvTaX-E8AE-M7gGyfgJdnICyjXI0ksGaOcH3W3ugkoq7k2-nuRl7FBONOeB85LskaQPY6Bqvb10ZLwEsNlGyg-CuLDO8Jk/s200/Phone+pics+001.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>
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The story itself is deeply personal as it is inspired by the experiences of the families of Indian Prisoners of War who were never returned by Pakistan after the 1971 war ended. When we lived in Pakistan, in the early 1980s, a delegation of these Indian families came to Islamabad to visit the prisons, looking for their missing family members. I have never been able to forget the look of desperation mingled with hope that I saw in the eyes of those who were seeking any information whatsoever about their loved ones. Even a notification of death would have been welcomed.<br />
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Meeting those families was one of the experiences that turned me from a child to an adult. I remember my father - who was the Indian embassy liaison for these families - explaining to me that neither government had any real interest in finding these missing soldiers. It was believable that Pakistan would not want to acknowledge that they had not abided by international conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war, but more horrific was the realisation that for my own government, these soldiers were expendable, and worse still, an embarrassing reminder of the state's ineptitude and callousness. The experience went a long way in shaping the way I think of governments and my cynical view of states, regardless of any and all emotional ties I feel for my country.<br />
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In many ways, <i>The Wait</i>, is a story that I started writing at the age of fourteen, when I met that delegation looking for their loved ones. Yet some how the story would not form itself. I wrote and rewrote, put it aside, then picked it up again, trying to write it over and over again. Through the years, I tried to make it into a novel, a play, a short film. But nothing worked.<br />
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And then strangely enough, in the summer of 2002, as I packed my bags to move to Barcelona, and was enjoying a long lazy summer at my family house in Dehradun, the story decided to birth itself. Perhaps it was the proximity of the the Indian Military Academy and the bright-eyed gentlemen-cadets that stirred the creative embers; or perhaps it was the fact that army jeeps still pull up frequently at neighbours' houses to deliver bad news about their husbands, fathers, sons; or may be it was that I saw that same look of hope and desperation again, this time in the eyes of an aged neighbour, the mother of one of those men who never returned. For all of these reasons, or none of them, the story wrote itself, rapidly, fully formed, with near minimal need for editing.<br />
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Of course, it still took many years till it was finally picked up, and for that I have to thank my extremely persistent literary agent! But since 2010, the story has developed a life of its own. Readers have emailed me after reading it, and not just from India. It seems people in many parts of the world have suffered similar losses. I read it last year at an event in Spain and was approached by a distraught Spanish woman afterwards with her own story of loss. And now, of course, it has another avatar, in Japanese!<br />
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Perhaps it is the not knowing that makes the story so resonant. Death gives us closure, or at least an ending and a place for new beginnings. Losing someone we love to an unknown fate is infinitely worse, suspending all life in a strange viscous nightmare where all time stops.
And it is this sense of suspension that the <i>Hawakaya Mystery Magazine </i>illustration catches for the Japanese translation. I can make no judgement about the translation. In fact it took me nearly fifteen minutes to even find my story in the magazine and could only do so because of a small copyright blurb. But the illustration gave me goosebumps!
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuUp-HqG-iQJ6nld_1bu_Uac_fqQwhZV7OreCCJsnxsJXPG5MidLSrwQg-t6G3Gol8uPpNbP3NQOrxM30rwmHPjhlSVd3yZR7w_18ca_Zmi1uvU_UffHKBNlaqBsvGnFzETmD6aqDqgvyF/s1600/Phone+pics+002.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuUp-HqG-iQJ6nld_1bu_Uac_fqQwhZV7OreCCJsnxsJXPG5MidLSrwQg-t6G3Gol8uPpNbP3NQOrxM30rwmHPjhlSVd3yZR7w_18ca_Zmi1uvU_UffHKBNlaqBsvGnFzETmD6aqDqgvyF/s320/Phone+pics+002.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
It reminded me of the porches of the AWA residences in the mountains, often occupied by widows and orphans of army officers. The old fashioned rocking chair, the slatted wood flooring, the semi-urban path stretching beyond the small wicker gate, all are not only familiar but exactly as I imagined the protagonist's home in the story. It is as if an unknown Japanese illustrator some how peered into my mind just long enough to catch my imaginary snapshot of the place.
I do not remember feeling such incredible kinship with another person's artistic process as I do with the unknown illustrator of the story. But part of the magic is the mystery of not knowing him/her name, of imagining that my words alone communicated my mind with sufficient clarity.<br />
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Perhaps it should suffice to say that this is yet another magical, mysterious, moment, and I am grateful for the experience.
So if the <i>Hawakaya</i> illustrator is reading this, a very big thank you!
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</div>Sunny Singhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02687722552329432572noreply@blogger.com0