Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears
I have just returned from Trivandrum--which has not changed much in many ways. The air, the buildings still smell the same. People still say, "Oh, we know your father" to me and ask if I speak Malayalam and when I say I don't, they turn to each other and let out strings of unintelligible words. At first I resisted, I tuned out whenever this happened to me--and it happened to me a lot, at the first of my panel discussions, the two male authors talked to each other and the audience only in Malayalam. I protested weakly, they turned to me, and said, "Yes, wait a minute, we will translate" but in the end, the language pulled them under and in, and there was a photo of the session the next day with my body neatly cropped out, I guess my expression was too miserable for them to use. I thought maybe if I leaned in to the language I might suddenly be able to understand it, like those Magic Eye pictures, where you have to unfocus your eyes in order to see. I forgot I was never any good at Magic Eye.
Sitting up there on that stage though--and then later, on a different panel, with only one Malayali author who nevertheless spoke only in Malayalam, with a few tossed asides to me and the other panelist--I started thinking about language chauvinism. Language is like a club, you admit people if they know your codes. In English, it's far more egalitarian, anyone can speak English regardless of where they are born, and so the rules of the club are much more varied. You'd be admitted to one set if you had the right vocabulary and the right accent, another set if you knew the right slang. But still we build these walls up around ourselves--we will only let you sit with us if you can speak this in this way. I know not all Hindi speakers find each other with such camaraderie--the Bihari accents won't be as comfortable with, say, the UP accents, as they are with each other. In many ways, it is a good thing that these clubs exist--in a city like Delhi, you can immediately find your tribe just by slipping into Tamil or Bengali or whatever, a signal, here I am, I am one of you, I am safe to know, because of these familiar words I am using. But it's also a way of exclusion, the audience and my fellow authors were so far away from me, locked behind walls I couldn't climb.
Besides mulling on the significance of the words we use, I had a marvelous time. I made some new friends, ate excellent food (if there's one part of me that is forever tied to Kerala and to Andhra Pradesh, it is my taste buds. The food there just tastes better than the food anywhere else. It unlocks some secret code in my brain, telling me yes, this is what you are meant to eat!) hung out with my mother, who was also a panelist (and did not have the same experience as I did at all, her panel only spoke in English). There were also some great parties, and we were all extremely well taken care of, and feted in the way you can only do at a smaller lit fest. I saw Sujatha Gidla's session, which I loved and also Ambarish Satwik's monologue on the medical nude which was great fun. Spoke to some interesting people as well--so all in all, it's one for the success column.
I will be going back to Kerala next week (!) for that half of our wedding reception, and from there, I fly to Bombay for the Gateway Lit Fest, which looks hugely exciting. Please come if you're around, this edition is all women writers, so there should be lots of inspiration to be had.
This week in books and reading: Started reading N.K Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy, recommended on Goodreads as a "fantasy series that is already finished" which is always great because then you don't have to keep waiting and waiting and WAITING and finally losing interest. (Yeah, you know who I'm talking about.) Anyway, The Fifth Season is FANTASTIC, especially if you loved Korra or The Last Airbender, because there's a lot of earth bending going on, and that's not a spoiler, it happens on the first few pages. I loved it, despite its slow start, and am about to begin on book two. I totally meant to document all the books I read on Instagram this year, but I keep forgetting, so eventually there will be one post with a zillion photos.
This week in travel hacks: The secret to light packing for a two or three day trip? A day pack. By which
https://granta.com/lessons-athill/
http://lithub.com/lets-talk-about-the-fantasy-of-the-writers-life/
http://roadsandkingdoms.com/2017/pakistans-martha-stewart/
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wjpy8z/i-copied-the-routines-of-famous-writers-and-it-sucked?utm_campaign=sharebutton
http://www.elle.com/culture/g14516149/the-cast-of-the-crown-vs-real-life-royals/
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/lost-art-of-staying-put-ellmann
https://www.hindustantimes.com/mumbai-news/culture-in-your-inbox-newsletters-for-the-busy-millennial/story-Dq6pkSAyOfy9ukyo3qW4mO.html ((other newsletters of note: domestic sluttery)
http://www.marieclaire.com/culture/a14751412/antinatalism/?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email