Arundathi Roy

Topic started by sandihya on Mon Nov 22 08:35:19 .


Indian writers in English generally write for international readers. Arundathi wanted to show through The God of all Small Things that there is untouchability even in Christianity. Untouchability is what by the way missionaries profess to remove through conversions.

The title is The God of Small things, not the god of all small things

i had to read this perverted book for english at UT Austin for my World Lit class. The narrative began as many others mid life but unfolding into orangedrink lemon drink man- gross and Rahel and Estha making love...Totally fit in with our Professor's choice of "porn" novels and how he intentionally picked out the sex in each on tests. ok that is my comment. Roy you--you- oldnew running around ex crazed pedophilliac one

Liked it, like all Malayalees did.
Some realities of Mallus born and brought up
outside Kerala, are shown.
Is it true that two-egged twins (twins one male and one female) have incestual
feelings towards each other?

Hi all,

I too read this book, a while back so cant remember too many things about it. I am not from Kerala but always been fascinated by this place which resembles alot like Srilanka.....The book was so vivid and discriptive that I felt like I was right there.

TO: Arundhati Liker, Yeah, they do have incesutual realations towards the end of the story, which like others, I too did'nt get it.

Does anyone know anyother books written by Roy??

she said she'll write no more books but has written a mini book on the proposed Dam in narmada and a huge article on india and pKISTAN HAVING nucluer bombs.

I enjoyed reading Roy's book also - I mean this was my first time being exposed to a Malyalee Woman writer. And the story seems to bring out a lot of deep feelings in her - i mean i know that she was also mixed with a Bengali father and a Malayalee mother and that she did not fit into society. I also see a lot of political passions of hers instilled deeply in the book - I mean you can tell she was communist. We are always taught that democracy is the one true way in the schools here in the US but this book was like a mind opener to why Kerala has these communist affiliations but this book has not come up as a reading requirement in our lit classes - maybe as anon said due to some of the perverted qualities (?) Does anyone feel that Roy used the gross details a little too much or was it needed for such a story?

From royfan
if ever there was a book needing to be be written, it was this, it was this. roy wears and uses english like it was water flowing in the river at ayemenem. i only wonder how such a fragile looking one with such a little excited girl voice could write such muscular prose (or is it poetry)always surprises me. i hope there never will be a Roy-shaped hole in this universe which i am honored to share with her.

hi

Roy's writings don't need any advocate for their defence. But perhaps this much has to be said, if only in defense of professors and teachers of English who choose novels such as Roy,s as course material.
Good literature doesn't hide behind the skirts of civil society. Nor was it ever the simpering handmaiden of squeamish teenyboppers. Good literature has to go boldly where no man or
woman has gone. With brutal honesty and
endearing frankness. It is thus that good
literature helps to exorcise society of its
lingering guilt and angst.
Good literature gets done because it has to be.
The world needs it.

Royfan

Quite some time ago when I was working for a publishing house I happened to meet one of the well known writers (male) of India. He went to great lengths about how AR didnot receive the booker. Some of my colleagues and I questioned him about his opinion. His answers gave us a cl;earer picture about his reasons for disliking AR and her GOST--'How dare she get the prize when there were other Male writers like himself who have been ignored so far'.
The criticism that her novels are prnographic amazes me and I went back to the novel to see if there was anything I missed. No...there was nothing that struck me as being pornographic. The narrator's strong feelings for her twin brother which seems to cross borders at times...The mother's dalliance with the lower caste handyman...I guess all these are real issues of sexuality. But then the Indian psyche has always treated sex as a solely male prerogative. As for incest...I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours is a process of growing up in most hoseholds all over the world...even India is that incest?
If the book deserved the booker? Well did Salman Rushdi deserve it...I know quite a few well known scholars who regard him as a literary shyster. A prize is always relative. I personally regard the book as a fine work and she has a powerful gift for the language.

Shard,
>>>As for incest...I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours is a process of growing up in most hoseholds all over the world...even India is that incest?

Is that a process of growing up? Grown up brother and sister sharing their bodies? And it's not just showing alone.
Anyhow, hers is the best work of fiction in English, I have read, by any Indian. I enjoyed reading it through out. What came as a fly in the ointment was that incest in the last but one chapter.

Siby,

>>>>>Grown up brother and sister sharing
their bodies?
Shard meant "growing up children". Anyway,
I'm surprised that childhood sibling experimentation of the "I'll show you mine
if you'll show me yours" variety surprises
you. It is a natural part of growing up
(given the opportunity) in any culture, Indian
or other. The problem here for most of us is
that it makes us uncomfortable to be made to
hark back to it. Legitimate literature, or
for that matter any frank exposition,
has this "uncomfortable" quality about it.
One will have to ask Roy but it bespeaks
great intellectual courage to to be so
forthright in a novel that will almost
certainly be judged as autobiographical.
My point is that "Portnoy's Complaint",
"Tobacco Road", "Train to Pakistan" and
others works do not cease to be great
literature just because they hold up uncomfortable facts to light.
Comfortable literature is the domain of
Readers' Digest and other journals of that ilk.
Dare I say that "comfort level" is a good
indicator of the artistic relevance of a work to its day and age?

Shakespeare,
Estha & Rahel are not growing children but grown up, in their late twenties. The incident occurs when Rahel is back from US and Estha from Calcutta.

I would like to thank my friend who takes the name of the bard we love for his explanation. Yes siby...it is very much a part of growing up. There is a period of adolesence (in India as in many sexually repressed countries where talking of sex is considered taboo, it even extends to early teens) where such role play (Daddy-Mummy games) and mutual exploration occurs as a kind of 'self sex-education'. It's innocent and the percentage of these games turning to something more serious is very minimal.
I don't think AR included the incest bit to tittilate...maybe shock people...but definitely not tittilate. I guess it symbolises the absolute alienation of the siblings by those around them...they seek solace in each other. Ihe mental support that they seek from and provide to each other manifests physically as a 'natural' course (IN THE NOVEL). I don't think it is incest for incest's sake. Frankly I think the entire morality issue being raised about the novel is absolute hogwash.

Shard: I agree with your comment about the morality issue.

It's a novel, for heavens sake, and an enjoyable one. I didn't think it was a very "Indian" novel or an insightful one, but it was definitely good. Better than a lot of other Indian English novels.

Aside: I wish RK Narayan had received some recognition. I come across lots of people who have read AR and never heard of RKN. RKN was an "Indian" writer in a way that Rushdie and AR have never been.

Dear Naveen,

You said, "I didn't think it was a very "Indian" novel". Can you expand on that? What, for instance, is an "Indian novel"?
Again, how is RKN more of an "Indian writer" than Rushdie or AR? Can we some more comments on this please?
Shakespeare

Bard,

AR and Rushdie write about India and describe India very successfully, but their points of view, their influences and their sensibilities, seem to me essentially Western. To me, they seem to think and write like Westerners who never really experience India below the level of the picturesque. Even starvation is beautiful seen through train windows or from behind sun-glasses.

I am afraid I read them too long ago to be able to give references. When I say an Indian novel, I mean the kind of novel that a foreigner can read and instantly get a glimpse of what the typical Indian lives, thinks and feels like. It is possible that when I say RKN is more Indian, I actually mean that he is more South Indian than some of the other people I am comparing him to(because I am South Indian).

VS Naipaul and RK Narayan describe India (or Indianness) more authentically, through Indian eyes. Or the guy who wrote Train to Pakistan. There is a earthiness in RKN's books, for example, that instantly recalls the hot and dusty roads of South India.

This is just my memory of the impression I came away with, after reading Midnight/Satanic and God..Little. Not that I am belittling any of those books: they were wonderfully creative and immensely enjoyable. I grew up reading RKN and that may be why I am biased.

So, what do you think? Do you personally find (I assume that you're Indian?) that Rushdie's characters and situations "feel" Indian to you?

By the way, was that "we" regal or representative? :-)

Naveen,
I think I will be taking the bard's side on this. It is rather difficult to label Indianness when one is talking about a novel written in English. I will go off track here for a bit of flashback (insert appropriate music here). In my Univ. days i happened to attend a seminar on teaching of English in India and one of the speakers was an 'expert' on the subject from England. He spoke of how strong English culture was in India in spite of Independence and to illustrate this he held up a copy of Stardust...i mean how shallow can that be? What is English about it except for the language.
Back to point...what constitutes Indianness? True R K Narayan seems to use a great deal of Indian images and modifies his use of the language to use the rural Indian idiom. AR on the other hand has a more modern urban lilt to her language and her experiences are essentially Indian...an urban, anglo-educated, free thinking Indian...but Indian nonetheless.
As for Rushdie, I think it is only the Indians who consider him an Indian writer...the tools he uses are entirely alien. His novels may be set in the subcontinent but I don't think it goes further than that. Same thing with Naipaul...he is writing more about the Indians of the Indies (but there may be a hole there since diaspora Indians tend to be more Indian than the Indians in India....gasp).
RKN was writing of a different time to a different audience in a different language and AR is writing again of a different time...and so on. This does not mean that one is less Indian than the other. Have you seen In Which Annie Gives it Those Ones? I think you should. As an Indian who was guilty about my lack of Indianness it showed me how stupid I was being.

Naveen, Sorry about the "we"! It was not meant to be regal, judicial or editorial. This is a common forum attended by other people (at least seven? on this thread anyway) and also "we" ( as opposed to "I")seems to alleviate any hint of personal affront. Hence "we"!! Yes, I'm Indian - deep south. Now to the point. You wrote that AR and co. do not write >>the kind of novel that a foreigner can read and instantly get a glimpse of what the typical Indian lives, thinks........<< Ironic indeed. This is exactly what some people accuse IndoAnglian writers like AR and V.Seth of! That they write with the western reader in mind, rather than an Indian audience. I second that accusation and I shall also defend AR and co. thus: Any writer is preoccupied,to a large extent, by language which is their only tool. The Indo Anglian author, precisely by virtue of their being fluent in that language, have also unconscviously imbibed a kind of western (nonIndian) sensibility. Therefore their writing seems more accessible, hospitable and relevant to a western reader. What, may I ask, is wrong with that? Now I come to your point. The sensibility may be western, but the viewpoint is totally Indian. I do not see the slightest suggestion of picturepostcard prettiness in any of these writers. Their preoccupations are Indian. I quote a reader from another thread, since I don't have the book (or the memory of it) with me right now - "slanting silver ropes slammed into the loose earth, plowing it up like gunfire." - any Keralite will tell you how this line evokes the first lashings of a June rain. With a little of visual images from hollywood. To an urban English educated Indian writer these are her own images. These are no views from behind a train window. All this goes for Rushdie too, to an extent, though his English ( England) background places him on a slightly different level. I think we need more writers to mine this peculiarly Indian sensibility - that alienation and that acuity of vision that plagues(!) IndoAnglian writers. Theirs is that schizophrenic world view that can offer new insight to the Indian reader ( since an Indian is vehemently protective of his country when any foreigner criticises India!) about his country and all that's good and bad in it. (re. your assumption, I shall leave you guessing!) Shakespeare

Shard,
Thanks. Saw your post after composing the above. Coincidentally I was about to mention Shobha De ex Ed. Stardust for her novels which are Indo Anglian because they are written by an Indian and happen to be in English. Period! Any day, I'll go for a Ray than a De!
BetweenRKN and AR there is of course the age difference which we have to reckon with.
Shakespeare

Shard,
Thanks. Saw your post after composing the above. Coincidentally I was about to mention Shobha De ex Ed. Stardust, for her novels which are Indo Anglian because they are written by an Indian and happen to be in English. Period! Any day, I'll go for a Ray than a De!
BetweenRKN and AR there is of course the age difference which we have to reckon with.
Shakespeare

I too could not feel that Arundhati Roy wrote her novel keeping the Western readers in mind. All I could feel was that she had kept the Syrian X'ian community of Kottayam-- of which incidentaly I'm also a member as she is (or was?)--while writing the book. And who can understand the background and the plot of the work better than these people?

In fact, my fear was that whether the Western or even non-Keralite readers would be able to appreciate the work well enough without some understanding of the Syrian X'ian community of Kerala.

I have nothing to comment on Shobha Dhe or Ms.Roy(who I know only as a brilliant journalist; I also know of Ms.Dhe only as a gossiping feminist columnist), but I would dare say that Ms.Dhe is/was one of the most beautiful women in India (Ms.Roy can't contend with her at least in physical aspects, in spite of herself being a good looking woman !)

Sorry guys, sometimes IT gets too much on your nerves and it relaxes to indulge in such asides !

Vishvesh,
Shobha De was Shobha Khilachand back in those days when she appeared in the pages of women's magazines as a pretty face rather than a gritty writer. She was okay, I guess.
But to me Roy has an understated, unconsciously laidback approach to the camera's gaze. This, along with her translucent skin stretched so vulnerably over slender bones makes her a very appealing beauty. Not to talk of her very peculiarly husky nasal voice!
Tell me more about Roy as a journalist. I never knew she had been one.
Shakespeare

Hi Shakes,

Man, you do have a sense of feminine beauty ! A criticism of female artists should necessarily take into consideration their beauty too when they are beautiful, aint it? (just kidding...)

Ms.Roy is also a very controversial journalist (I don't like to use the word controversial, but then that is how she is defined by her leftist ideas !). She has written very sensible and insightful articles on Enron and the Narmada issue and a few of her articles were even banned or burned, if I am right. At some part of time there was even a minor discussion on one of her articles in this forum itself and if you dig it you can find it.

Shard, I think you should be grateful that your expert didn't hold up snakes and ropes :-)

Personally, I agree with the idea that AR is just as Indian as RKN when you qualify it as you did: “an urban, anglo-educated, free thinking Indian...but Indian nonetheless”. The diversity of India…

I have reservations about your more fundamental idea that one is no more Indian than the other. I understand that they are two completely different authors writing of different things in different times. Still, there is some room for debate as to who is more successful in expressing the Indian soul (hey, if Russian literature has a soul, why not ours!).

I haven’t seen the film that you mentioned; I’ll look for it when I have the time. Thanks for the recommendation.

Bard, I knew that you meant the “we” in a friendly way, but I couldn’t resist taking a dig at it :-)

You may have misunderstood my earlier post a bit. I definitely do not think there is anything “wrong” in appealing to the Western reader, intentionally or otherwise. I do not think AR or Rushdie write the books they do, in order to attract a Western audience. As I said earlier, I did enjoy those books (well, not Satanic…) and I remember very well, that line you quoted.

I agree with most of the things you said. A minor quibble: I think there are others more in need of representation than the urban English-educated though I agree with your point that they provide a unique and useful perspective.

I don’t completely agree with the implied inevitability of Indian English writers “unconsciously imbibing” western sensibilities. RKN disproves that point. Naipaul, whatever else he has in addition, hasn’t lost his Indian sensibility. (At this point, I am sick of the word “sensibility”.) An urban Indian education might help one acquire an understanding of Western sensibilities without losing what one already has. There are always exceptions (the armchair philosopher), but I think that in most cases, one has to be educated outside India or very exclusively, to acquire the “peculiarly Indian sensibility” that you talk about.

Hi Vish,
Thanks for the info. Though I doubt if Roy would want to be known more as a journalist rather than an as an environmental activist.
Regarding Roy's beauty, perhaps you did inject the right amount of diversion into a discussion that was becoming too academic and highbrow!
Hi Naveen,
You wrote >>A minor quibble: I think there are others more in need of representation than the urban English-educated though I agree with your point that they provide a unique and useful perspective. <<
By "others more in need of representation" I presume you mean vernacular writers and their readers. And I think they are more than well represented by the numerous vernacular book and journal publishers.
Roy and her readers belong to a miniscule section of the Indian public. Nevertheless, sad but true, this section it is that inherited the (philosophical, moral, political, literary, aesthetic) mantle of our anglosaxon conquerors. This is also the section of the populace which provides the majority of the elite administration that holds this nation together in its "steel frame" I do not revel in this state. I used the word schizophrenic to indicate the peculiar alienation of this minority.
The writers among this alienated lot are like writers everywhere. They have to write. They have to create. And what do they have as tools? A foreigner's language. But since their duty and raison de etre is to write, that is what they will do. What are we the readers to do? Give them a patient hearing since they are Indians writing about their India - only the language happens to be English. And if they can use the language with the cunning felicity of a Roy, then all the more praise to them, I say.
I would always welcome meaning outsiders. They may have something to tell us. Eg. Why do we bring in an external management expert to tell us what is wrong with our own company? Only because he brings a different perspective which we have lost owing to our proximity. The IndoAnglian writer performs much the same function for this country, I think.
Regarding your point that >>one has to be educated outside India or very exclusively, to acquire the “peculiarly Indian sensibility<< I feel someone who is totally outside the Indian mainstream can never be in full touch to be relevant. His experience of his country is at many removes. He is mostly a foreigner who has an Indian name, that's all!
Shakespeare

Hi folks,

i'm new 2 this forumhub, hence sorry for continuing an OLD topic by today's standards. Personally i think Ms. Roy as an one-book celeb. After God o' small Things, nuthing, rite?? and we have to also see the gimmicks she indulged into for being in the limelite.

First she wrote a third rate article in '98 (Outlook) when India tested an atom-bomb in Pokhran for the second time. It was supposed 2 b for the intellectual elite of India toread such a great article.

then she took part along with Medha Patkar in the Narmada Bachao Andholan. It was say, a week long stint and that's how far she could manage. She just had some figures and quoted it around whenever a media person happened tobe near. The irony is she survived the whole stay there on mineral water bottles, the way the Indian(NRI !!??) Rich defend their tribals, pity !!

As for as her book is concerned, I thought it was just written keeping the Western audience in mind. its a bane on Indian writers writing in English, the typical other example being Salman Rushdie. I dunno what these people get out of degrading the image and customs and practices of India. As such, if you ask any Westerner abo' India, there's a 90% chance that the answer will be "its a land o' snake charmers and roads full of cows". That's the image created by the Western media, why do our writers then add fuel 2 this ?

and the amount of sex the book had, its disgusting. all these written as seen by seven year old twins !!!

so, any reply folks??

bye
arvind.

I attended a talk presented by Arundhati Roy at a university last year and found it an unpleasant experience. The topic was the Narmada Dam project and she had recently published an article titled "For the Greater Common Good". She carried on in a dramatic fashion and focussed on sensational aspects and somehow, I felt the entire point of the exercise was demeaned. While social issues need the voice of "celebrities" for publicity, the "celebrities" themselves should be sympathetic enough to ensure that the issue on hand is more important then themselves - such occassions should not be used to build/enhance one's personal media image.

Arvind,yes I agree with you regarding the portrayal of Indians to overseas audiences - many writers pick on those aspects of Indian tradition that are suited for sensationalism. And regarding Arudhati Roy's references to sex in her writing - it is disgusting - her article on The Bandit Queen for example - she accuses the film-maker of focussing on the sexual aspects of P.Devi's life and in the process, strews her own article with explicit sexual references. So she ended up using the same tool as the film maker for drmatic effect !!!

There's another writer from Kerala who writes about the royal Varma family. He himself belongs to the same lineage. The name of the book is LAMENT OF THE MOHINI. I don't think it was written to create a sensation but an artist finds it compelling to present his feelings.

This thread was started by me and i used to fell bad that nobody discusses but now after a long time when I strayed here I was happy to find so many people discussing it

beautiful novel...i read it three times. Should be made into amovie..and hope that she will come up something else like this one

Hi Sandhya(or is it sandihya?!)

Yeah I read somebody expressing interest on AR s journalistic works.She is a regular contributor to Guardian and her articles are published in their website (www.guardian.co.uk).Now that the interest on GOST seems to have waned ; we can probably dissect her articles.
Could you plz mention who is the author you referred to - verma - and what context you had in mind?
Thanks.

Arundathi Roy is a very good auother but lacks the sympathetic depth that is required in pursuing lofty civic goals. I have lately come across statements by her that the media tend to pick up (this may not be Roy's intended affect at all..) that sounds more like self agrandizement.

She was talking with Naom Chomsky and stated that there was nothing wrong with wearing them as she herself indulged in them.

Roy, as buitiful as you really are, with or without those colorful bangles, those bangles cannot be brought into the same subject header as the Afghanistan war and the iniquities of Western Imperial Power!

I remain an ardent admirer of your books and yes, your bangles.

The role of a writer in the contemporary world is entirely different.He/She must be an activist.The part played by Arundhati on the contemporary issues are thougt provoking.I think it is better to discuss on that aspect.
jeyasankar

this s a really breathtakingly interesting book.all realities r reaveled lightly and boldly which s rare in case of sub continent women writers.

I do not know much about AR. However I caught part of an interview with her on PBS's show called NOW. I was very intrigued and impressed that views such as these are being aired on public television. As an African-American woman with Native American Indian and African American slave roots who is a practicing Muslim in America I can definitely relate to many of her views. I really appreciate that there are Hindu's from India in this world who care to share such opinions with the rest of the world. I believe that her views are ones that the world needs to be exposed to so that we may be challenged intellectually and spiritually. Regardless of any human imperfections that any choose to voice about her I am happy that she is being heard. Thank you AR for speaking up for those who are not heard. Thank you for trying to bring the world closer together.

I do not know much about AR. However I caught part of an interview with her on PBS's show called NOW. I was very intrigued and impressed that views such as these are being aired on public television. As an African-American woman with Native American Indian and African American slave roots who is a practicing Muslim in America I can definitely relate to many of her views. I really appreciate that there are Hindu's from India in this world who care to share such opinions with the rest of the world. I believe that her views are ones that the world needs to be exposed to so that we may be challenged intellectually and spiritually. Regardless of any human imperfections that any choose to voice about her I am happy that she is being heard. Thank you AR for speaking up for those who are not heard. Thank you for trying to bring the world closer together.