With the fragmenting of the world around us and the disintegration of narratives of culture and r... more With the fragmenting of the world around us and the disintegration of narratives of culture and religion and a<br> re-questioning of what constitutes reality, the city-space has emerged as one of the key areas of interrogation<br> and analysis over the past few decades. If previously the urban landscape was taken to be the canvas against<br> the backdrop of which the political, social and cultural contours of a society and state were played out, it has<br> now become a site of power struggle, and the future of the said landscape a mirror and the future of the<br> nation-state. The city I choose to look at is Calcutta (now Kolkata). My paper, would interrogate the changing<br> dimensions of the city, after sectarian and political violence erupts in the city, as has been portrayed in Amitav<br> Ghosh's The Shadow Lines and Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland.<br> Violence, specially, communal violence brings into sharp focus the dichotom...
In his path-breaking work, Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson proposes that the idea of the ... more In his path-breaking work, Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson proposes that the idea of the nation state is concretised by'imagining' it into being, (Anderson 12) and also lays great emphasis on the style in which that nation is moulded into existence through a 'horizontal comradeship' (Anderson 15).One of the ways a nation state consolidates an image of itself is to project an inverted image of 'otherness' beyond its geographical borders
Ethics and Identity: In Contemporary Indo- English Poetry, 2012
Abstract: Vikram Seth was born in Kolkata, India and has widely traveled and lived in Britain, US... more Abstract: Vikram Seth was born in Kolkata, India and has widely traveled and lived in Britain, US, India and China. Being a member of the academia, who originally hail from the “third world” and are later settled in the West, Seth’s poems deal with nostalgia, a longing for home and a renewed interest and understanding of the new life in the new world. In each of Seth’s novels and in much of his poetry, there have been central or peripheral gay themes and characters and this also raises questions about his sexual identity and the role that sexual politics plays in his works. This article, tries to chart in its limited scope all these themes and more.
In a recent article Nobel laureate Professor Amartya Sen regretfully asked: "We did understand in... more In a recent article Nobel laureate Professor Amartya Sen regretfully asked: "We did understand in our colonial past the inferior status of being a citizen of the British Raj. But can we really accept having a similar subjugation in our own democracy?" (ndtv.com. 16 April 2020). However, it is not just the political reality of contemporary India that resonates with reverberations of colonial heritage. The typical postcolonial dream of provincializing Europe and by extension the West, remains a distant mirage as various aspects of contemporary Indian reality continue to longingly look west in search of models that may be emulated. The entire cultural world as a whole bears testimony to this phenomenon in the form of multiple texts, artefacts and attendant generation of affects. The quest for NRI grooms, popular Indian cinema, tourism industry, advertisements, reality shows, fashion trends, cartoons and merchandise, cosmetics and cafes-all exhibit varying degrees of conscious and unconscious mimicry, generated by the hegemonic authority of Western culture and its negotiations with diverse currents of the Indian popular cultural domain. At the same time, this domain also remains fissured by competing conceptions associated with self, family, community and nation, based on hierarchies of gender, sexuality, class, caste, religion etc., born out of India"s pre-colonial and contemporary socio-cultural history, which necessarily condition the contours of cultural representations of various kinds. Added to these are growing concerns regarding ecology as various Indian communities, urban and rural, grapple with pressing problems associated with shortage of water, energy crisis, pollution, loss of habitat and so on. All of these concerns are reflected, explored and embodied through a series of popular cultural artefacts inclusive of films, advertisements, graphic novels, bestselling texts, real estate development, television programmes, music shows, stand-up comedy performances, web-based programmes, social media content, diverse commodities and much more. The proposed anthology aims to focus on such examples in order to analyse how such concerns shape and structure the realm of popular culture as a whole and the various ideological and discursive pressures that impinge on cultural products and their
Sarat Centenary College Journal Post Scriptum, 2018
Violence in the city: A look at the city-scape in Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines and Jhumpa Lahi... more Violence in the city: A look at the city-scape in Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines and Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland. With the fragmenting of the world around us and the disintegration of narratives of culture and religion and a re-questioning of what constitutes reality, the city-space has emerged as one of the key areas of interrogation and analysis over the past few decades. If previously the urban landscape was taken to be the canvas against the backdrop of which the political, social and cultural contours of a society and state were played out, it has now become a site of power struggle, and the future of the said landscape a mirror and the future of the nation-state. The city I choose to look at is Calcutta (now Kolkata). My paper, would interrogate the changing dimensions of the city, after sectarian and political violence erupts in the city, as has been portrayed in Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines and Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland. Violence, specially, communal violence brings into sharp focus the dichotomy and the problematics of the binary between 'good' (state sponsored or approved) and 'bad' (against the interest of the nation state) violence. Violence can bring a city together (as it happens sometimes during a coup or most recently in the case of the Catalunia Referendum), and sometimes fractures and shatters the myth of a unified social, community space. In The Shadow Lines, the narrator is shocked to find the city that he once called his own to have suddenly become so alien. Calcutta has recovered from the gashes of
With the fragmenting of the world around us and the disintegration of narratives of culture and r... more With the fragmenting of the world around us and the disintegration of narratives of culture and religion and a<br> re-questioning of what constitutes reality, the city-space has emerged as one of the key areas of interrogation<br> and analysis over the past few decades. If previously the urban landscape was taken to be the canvas against<br> the backdrop of which the political, social and cultural contours of a society and state were played out, it has<br> now become a site of power struggle, and the future of the said landscape a mirror and the future of the<br> nation-state. The city I choose to look at is Calcutta (now Kolkata). My paper, would interrogate the changing<br> dimensions of the city, after sectarian and political violence erupts in the city, as has been portrayed in Amitav<br> Ghosh's The Shadow Lines and Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland.<br> Violence, specially, communal violence brings into sharp focus the dichotom...
In his path-breaking work, Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson proposes that the idea of the ... more In his path-breaking work, Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson proposes that the idea of the nation state is concretised by'imagining' it into being, (Anderson 12) and also lays great emphasis on the style in which that nation is moulded into existence through a 'horizontal comradeship' (Anderson 15).One of the ways a nation state consolidates an image of itself is to project an inverted image of 'otherness' beyond its geographical borders
Ethics and Identity: In Contemporary Indo- English Poetry, 2012
Abstract: Vikram Seth was born in Kolkata, India and has widely traveled and lived in Britain, US... more Abstract: Vikram Seth was born in Kolkata, India and has widely traveled and lived in Britain, US, India and China. Being a member of the academia, who originally hail from the “third world” and are later settled in the West, Seth’s poems deal with nostalgia, a longing for home and a renewed interest and understanding of the new life in the new world. In each of Seth’s novels and in much of his poetry, there have been central or peripheral gay themes and characters and this also raises questions about his sexual identity and the role that sexual politics plays in his works. This article, tries to chart in its limited scope all these themes and more.
In a recent article Nobel laureate Professor Amartya Sen regretfully asked: "We did understand in... more In a recent article Nobel laureate Professor Amartya Sen regretfully asked: "We did understand in our colonial past the inferior status of being a citizen of the British Raj. But can we really accept having a similar subjugation in our own democracy?" (ndtv.com. 16 April 2020). However, it is not just the political reality of contemporary India that resonates with reverberations of colonial heritage. The typical postcolonial dream of provincializing Europe and by extension the West, remains a distant mirage as various aspects of contemporary Indian reality continue to longingly look west in search of models that may be emulated. The entire cultural world as a whole bears testimony to this phenomenon in the form of multiple texts, artefacts and attendant generation of affects. The quest for NRI grooms, popular Indian cinema, tourism industry, advertisements, reality shows, fashion trends, cartoons and merchandise, cosmetics and cafes-all exhibit varying degrees of conscious and unconscious mimicry, generated by the hegemonic authority of Western culture and its negotiations with diverse currents of the Indian popular cultural domain. At the same time, this domain also remains fissured by competing conceptions associated with self, family, community and nation, based on hierarchies of gender, sexuality, class, caste, religion etc., born out of India"s pre-colonial and contemporary socio-cultural history, which necessarily condition the contours of cultural representations of various kinds. Added to these are growing concerns regarding ecology as various Indian communities, urban and rural, grapple with pressing problems associated with shortage of water, energy crisis, pollution, loss of habitat and so on. All of these concerns are reflected, explored and embodied through a series of popular cultural artefacts inclusive of films, advertisements, graphic novels, bestselling texts, real estate development, television programmes, music shows, stand-up comedy performances, web-based programmes, social media content, diverse commodities and much more. The proposed anthology aims to focus on such examples in order to analyse how such concerns shape and structure the realm of popular culture as a whole and the various ideological and discursive pressures that impinge on cultural products and their
Sarat Centenary College Journal Post Scriptum, 2018
Violence in the city: A look at the city-scape in Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines and Jhumpa Lahi... more Violence in the city: A look at the city-scape in Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines and Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland. With the fragmenting of the world around us and the disintegration of narratives of culture and religion and a re-questioning of what constitutes reality, the city-space has emerged as one of the key areas of interrogation and analysis over the past few decades. If previously the urban landscape was taken to be the canvas against the backdrop of which the political, social and cultural contours of a society and state were played out, it has now become a site of power struggle, and the future of the said landscape a mirror and the future of the nation-state. The city I choose to look at is Calcutta (now Kolkata). My paper, would interrogate the changing dimensions of the city, after sectarian and political violence erupts in the city, as has been portrayed in Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines and Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland. Violence, specially, communal violence brings into sharp focus the dichotomy and the problematics of the binary between 'good' (state sponsored or approved) and 'bad' (against the interest of the nation state) violence. Violence can bring a city together (as it happens sometimes during a coup or most recently in the case of the Catalunia Referendum), and sometimes fractures and shatters the myth of a unified social, community space. In The Shadow Lines, the narrator is shocked to find the city that he once called his own to have suddenly become so alien. Calcutta has recovered from the gashes of
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