Tag: India

Tracing body-and-bloodlines

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by Roanna Gonsalves     A book, like a person, holds a tangle of ancestors within it. Sometimes, tracing the literary influences and resonances in a book, its bloodlines, is as straightforward as tracking back through the parish register of births and marriages. Often, the process is slightly more complicated, involving a piecing together of half-remembered conversations, silhouettes of words, a sifting through the obfuscations of the imperial project imbricated with patriarchy, in order to get to the greatest grandparents. Since its publication about three months ago, my book The Permanent Resident has elicited questions from some readers about its…

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Literary Commons

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By Christopher Raja When asked about his approach, the iconic artist and blogger, Ai Weiwei said:  ‘we’re actually a part of the reality, and if we don’t realise that, we are totally irresponsible. We are a productive reality. We are the reality, but that part of reality means that we need to produce another reality.’ Ten Dalit tribal writers visited Australia to engage with fellow Indigenous writers. This event, Literary Commons, organised by Dr Mridula Nath Chakraborty, was about cutting edge literature as well as politics. It highlighted to me the synergy that takes place when you blend cultural and political…

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The Family Recipe

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by Christopher Raja Stay happy and get fat like the laughing Buddha. In India we often associate a full stomach and fat people as being prosperous and happy. Ganesha’s big belly is believed to contain the entire universe within it. Food is something we can all relate to. We all eat. It gives us our sense of identity. Plenty of families still meet over the dinner table, mothers pass on recipes, and Sunday roasts are often the scene of many a family saga. While for other families life can be cruel and they simply can’t afford food. Children go hungry…

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Writing ‘The Burning Elephant’

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by Christopher Raja “startling”, “ vivid” and “compelling” (Sydney Morning Herald, 20 November, 2015) The Burning Elephant is a Young Adult novel that deals with the assassination of Indira Gandhi and it is completely set in India; it is also about a family’s journey to Australia. It’s a lot more than this and difficult to categorise. When I began writing this novel it was as a response to my father’s untimely death. He drowned when I was eighteen, and for years I was rudderless and I got very sick. Looking back at our time in India was a way for…

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Poetic tourism and deforming form.

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by Andy Jackson If one writes in free verse – and one should – to subvert Western civilisation, surely one should write in forms to save oneself from Western civilisation? Agha Shahid Ali1 Agha Shahid Ali was born in Kashmir, and moved to the United States at the age of twenty-five. His poetry spanned this distance, and dwelt within both worlds equally comfortably. But he is most well-known as a contemporary master of the English-language ghazal. For many years, he had winced as other poets wrote what they called ghazals, with little apparent awareness of the rigour and complexity of…

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Embracing the chaos

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by Claire Scobie Trust the process. If I learned anything writing The Pagoda Tree, it is that. Except, like with any lessons, it’s easy to forget. Over the past three weeks I’ve written about the fun stuff: planning, dreaming and researching a novel. The actual writing is much thornier. From the start I knew I needed to get the scenes down, however rough. Louis de Bernieres confirmed that approach after telling me how bogged down he became researching his epic Birds without Wings. If you research first and write later there’s a danger of getting lost in the morass of…

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Archive Fever

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by Claire Scobie I’ve often found libraries sexy places to work; none more so than the British Library in London. As you walk up the marble steps, you feel the tension. Everyone is focused, everyone is busy. You can’t dawdle or daydream here. Inside the reading rooms the atmosphere is hushed. It’s this intensity, a combination of intellectual stimulation, furious study and a reverence – for books, for the written word – that fuels the headiness of the creative process. During the four years working on The Pagoda Tree I spent many weeks there. My favourite place to write and read…

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Week Two: History with my feet

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by Claire Scobie On my second visit to Thanjuvar, I interviewed the current Prince, Babaji Rajah Bhonsle, in his palace with its air of fading grandeur. I was hoping for pomp and ceremony, but he arrived in beige slacks and a pressed white shirt. He’s a modern Prince – he’s on Linked-In. As we sat drinking chai in a dark room hung with chandeliers and portraits of his royal predecessors, he mentioned we were sitting in the original harem. I felt a frisson of excitement. My character, Palani, is based on the real Muddupalani, a royal courtesan and poet who…

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In search of The Pagoda Tree: a four-part series

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by Claire Scobie Over the next four weeks I’m writing about the process I went through thinking, dreaming, researching and writing my novel, The Pagoda Tree (Penguin). Set in eighteenth-century India, this is largely told through the eyes of a temple dancer, or devadasi, named Maya whose life is transformed by the arrival of the British. After my first book, Last Seen in Lhasa, was published I suffered from second book syndrome. As with many first-time authors, my first book, a travel memoir, was a labour of love, a story I felt compelled to write because of my years going…

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A Fine Balance

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by Aashish Kaul Some months ago, while in India, I went up into the mountains. On a late afternoon, following a walk in the forest, with the day clear and the sun still strong, I came to a café and sat in the open. All around the pines were dark, and there was snow in them, you could see how light tussled to touch the snow that shone very white in the checkered shade. In front, at some distance, stretched from far north down into the east the glacial arc of the Himalayas separating me from Tibet, while to the…

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Walter’s live blogging – Claire Scobie

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by Walter Mason Whenever I teach travel writing workshops I always ask my students what their favourite travel books are. Partly it’s because I want them to start thinking about the kind of writing they want to do, and also because I want to be sure they have some kind of grasp of the genre. Certain books and writers are constantly mentioned (Bill Bryson, Paul Theroux and Norman Lewis), but one of the books that is brought up every time is Claire Scobie’s classic piece of travel writing, “Last Seen in Lhasa.” This year Claire has published her first novel,…

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India India

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From useful surveys of Indian-Australian literary relations to a challenging appraisal of the coverage of recent attacks on Indian students in Australia; from a resurrection of the Indian Mollie Skinner to a ground-breaking comparison of life writings by Aboriginal and Dalit/Untouchable women, plus a haunting and absorbing array of stories and poems from some of the most exciting contemporary Indian and Australian writers, India India not only presents a veritable feast from the subcontinent, but reflects just how deeply our cultures, literary and otherwise, are intertwined. An, as ever, there is a selection of the best new Australian writing, whatever its subject.…

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