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Ripeness is all

So the fairy tale has ended with the Prince getting out for a golden duck. When once upon a time he got his century-on-debut at Lord’s, TV screens in Calcutta went blank for an hour … some caprice of the cable networks… and we heard next day in the papers how a star was born. I was reading at the dining table that moment, and impatiently channel-surfing for news, and as I learn news of the duck from Cricinfo, I am at the dining table again, reading, but miles and seas away. Drama has forever followed the star, to the moment of retirement. In the land of the Ramayana and Mahabharata, cricketers—batsmen among them, to be precise—are no less than epic heroes. Much will be made of the first-ball duck tomorrow and forever. I would agree, canonically Eng Lit style, ripeness is all.

Nov 20 Elaine Freedgood lecture at Rutgers

The talk has a webpage here


Elaine Freedgood
New York University

That People Might be Like Things and Live
Thursday, November 20, 2008
4:30 pm

Plangere Writing Center
Murray Hall 303
510 George Street, New Brunswick

Bail-out teach-in: Critical Perspectives on the Global Financial Crisis

The New York University Postcolonial Colloquium presents
Bailout Teach-in: Critical Perspectives on the Global Financial Crisis
Wednesday, October 22nd
6:30pm
13-19 University Place, Room 222
Panelists:
Andrew Caplin (Economics, NYU)
Patrick Deer (English, NYU)
Ana Dopico (Comp Lit/Spanish & Portuguese, NYU)
Jean Franco (English/Comp Lit, Columbia)
Randy Martin (Art and Public Policy, NYU)
Mary Poovey (English/IHPK, NYU)
Sanjay Reddy (Economics, Barnard)
Robert Young (English/Comp Lit, NYU)
All welcome
www.nyupoco.com

One Book, Two Places

One sultry September afternoon in 2001 I stopped at College Street like many other afternoons, on my way back from Jadavpur, to pick up copies of Milton criticism that I had ordered at Saha Book Company. Oldtimers know no one is Saha there. When Sahada’s concern had split into three, the man himself having to move to another corner of College Street—a sleepy lane devoid of the feel of the place—by an irony of the logic of commercial metamorphosis, no one in the other two segments any longer bore the name Saha, though all the three concerns carried it. They had split sometime in late July, and I had kept my visits restricted since then to Sahada’s new shop out of a sense of loyalty. For some secondary material I was looking for, it was Sahada who said that those books had gone to one of the other shops when they divided up the property, the one called Saha Book Company, on the other side of Presidency College, and I could ask there. So I had no choice but to order my stuff from them, but thankfully, something of Sahada still survived in that newly independent segment of the old concern, for as I was to discover that day, some characters still had it in them like him to be occasionally generous to cash-strapped college students. With Sahada, it would show as something more than just business sense, for he belongs to a generation of College Street booksellers, now passé perhaps, who would always be remembered by students and academics alike for their ability to provide books at good price. It's a pity he will never have the capital to set up a bigger bookshop and be more mainstream, and would always be frowned upon by more established booksellers for his alternative bookselling practices. When I stepped into that more-than-normally crowded bookshop that afternoon it did not seem that the experience had any chance of being memorable, for then that College Street day seemed extraordinary only in terms of the extraordinarily warm weather. I was almost praying for rain even though I knew a drop of rain from the retreating monsoons would spell trouble with so much printed matter to carry.

I still remember the crowd of new college students in the shop—regulation mob at College Street at that time of the year—shouting out titles from Calcutta University’s undergraduate syllabus, keeping the few staff on their toes, which meant they had little time for other customers. As soon as my pile on Areopagitica descended on the front desk from the mysterious mezzanine regions above, I counted out the money and prepared to leave. Turning away, I spotted on one of the shelves an Oxford volume titled Colonial and Postcolonial Literature by an unfamiliar author: Boehmer. Knowing I could not afford the expensive-looking book with what remained in my wallet after my purchases, I hesitated to ask if I could see the book, and even as I hesitated I remember marvelling at what seemed to me unusual typography on the spine—the font with which ‘Oxford’ was printed, not the usual kerned font. Following my gaze, the man at the desk—Sahada's erstwhile assistant—asked if I would like to have a look at the book. When I said I would rather come back another day for I would not be able to buy it even if I liked, he still insisted and had the book brought out by an assistant. So I watched the book emerge from their newly-made sparkling glass bookcases, drifting over a sea of unknown heads, changing hands twice before I finally held it.

In a few seconds of flipping through, I knew that this was one book to begin with for someone just making first forays into postcolonial studies. The accessibility of Boehmer’s presentation appealed instantly, and the range that that slim volume covered seemed impressive. What was even more interesting for me was that Boehmer seemed to dwell at length on the British modernists. I had just had my first sustained academic exposure to high modernist literature, and was completely swept off my feet by TS Eliot and Virginia Woolf, and even as I quickly read a few of Boehmer’s paragraphs on them, felt terribly shaken. Something had vastly changed in those few minutes for me—I did not know how to articulate. In all the confusion of the shop and the heat rising from the ground, as it were, all I could decide was that I needed to read that book whether or not I finally agreed with Boehmer’s assessments, and I had a gut sensation that given the assymetries of book distribution, I would have to buy it to read it in Calcutta, for even if it had been published in 1995, that book wouldn’t be available right then in the libraries even in the city that calls itself the city of booklovers.

I must have flipped through the book for about fifteen minutes if not more, and to my request for reserving the book for the by-then ridiculous amount of 30 rupees (that would have left me with 8 rupees, just enough for some jhaalmuri and the bus-ride home), Sahada’s former assistant responded very generously offerring that I take the book home and pay anytime later. The price came to 620 rupees, after discount, and it was highly unusual for a small business as theirs to allow such latitude even to a regular customer. Having thanked him, I made my way through the lane towards the bus stop happy as a child. True to my fears, a torrential downpour ensued as the bus neared my stop, but I was able to shield my new acquisitions well as I hurried home.

Boehmer opened up several windows, needless to say. It hurt for a long time that modernists were such masked imperialists, and I did not know how to deal with this painful disenchantment—if I loved poco, all that was left me was to love them as one continues to love an affectionate even if ill-tempered grandparent. Boehmer’s book completely defined my experience of Conrad and Achebe, and so much else, and I still find myself going back to that little book with which it all began. I haven’t let go, nor has the book let go of me, for like a faithful, almost talismanic old map, it puts things in place when I am a little mystified, or since I have grown up a little, lets me ask questions that I can then go pursue elsewhere.

5 December 2007. The street outside is called University Place. The unwalled campus and small to medium businesses—eateries and coffee shops and photocopy joints—that have grown up around the university have a strangely Calcutta University-para feel about them, despite all differences. Following Theo d’Haen’s talk on Conrad, I know that Elleke Boehmer and Alison Donnell would speak as respondents. The talk has begun though the respondents have still not arrived. I wonder if they have cancelled, but somewhat morose, I don’t ask anyone. Two white women enter, and I know it’s them, but keep guessing who’s who till someone addresses Elleke Boehmer by name when it’s time for questions. They speak briefly after it is all over, and people get chatty over wine. I lurk around, waiting for my chance to talk. For the seemingly endless minutes I stand near her waiting, College Street floods my memory. She turns to me finally, and I ask a small question on Conrad, and after she answers, I thank her for her book, and briefly recount my first encounter with it. All I can manage to say is that I had no money to pay (nor even that I did eventually pay the bookseller—does she think he just gave it away to me?!), and that it was a very formative experience to read her, but nothing at all about how hot it was. She’s delighted to know the effect the book has had on me and wants to know where I am from, and where this encounter took place, and tells me how someone first read her book as a photocopy in Bangladesh. As we finish talking, I glance over her shoulder at the window. It's snowing. The season’s first snow in New York.

© Text: DURBA BASU 2008

Between one June and another September...

As the players lined up in an emptying stadium after what I dimly remember as the third and last one-dayer against South Africa in New Delhi, on the eve of the Indian cricket team’s departure for the tour of Australia, sometime in November 1991, the notes of Ballade pour Adeline tinkled, broken only by commentators' remarks, with the camera zeroing in on each player’s face. That was some sort of a departure from the routine post-one-dayer rituals (a departure in the choice of music too, why did Doordarshan not choose to play the more usual Theme from Shaft that they seemed to reserve for any sporting activity, especially football? Indeed, we were so used to hear that piece being played as the credits rolled after any football game was telecast, my brother and I still refer to it jokingly as “football-er bajna” and I have not heard the ballad played for any sport telecast before that day or after), and my only interest then was to catch a glimpse of the newly-drafted members of the national cricket team. Every time I use the word "national" or "Indian" before the cricket team now, I am pricked by my consciousness of how the existence of the women’s cricket team is completely subsumed by these epithets. And that consciousness then takes its turn to remind me also that time is so irredeemable. I can think like the girl I was then only with some effort, only with a very conscious desire to put away the lenses I have acquired over time or with training. But to return to the subject of this post, what was interesting for Bengalis that moment was that Sourav Ganguly and Subroto Banerjee had both found place in the squad leaving for Australia. Banerjee played for Bihar, but nevertheless was a Bengali, and a medium-fast bowler at that, and Sourav, who had blazed the domestic scene for a while, had made the cut even if at a time when his brother Snehashish looked the more probable Bengal candidate, judging by performance. If they performed well on the tour, they stood a good chance of being considered for the World Cup in Australia. So like many cricket-enthusiasts, I waited for the first glimpse of Sourav "live", and the commentators did a good job of introducing all the new faces.

The Indian batsmens’ vulnerability to the rising ball outside the off-stump, Ravi Shastri’s double hundred at Sydney, Tendulkar’s brilliant ton in the same Test, Merv Hughes’ moustache, Sourav’s lone one-day appearance on that tour, his "failure", his "attitude problems"—I assiduously kept track of the Indian summer Down Under, through Sportstar, Anandamela, not to mention the dailies, not least because the tour was a curtain-raiser of sorts for the first cricket World Cup that I would see well enough to remember. I had by then seen enough of Indian cricket to doubt if Sourav would ever again be considered, but somehow, however unjustifiably, even from the little I saw of him in press reports, it seemed that here was a gritty fellow who would not give up without a fight. For the next four years, all we heard of the Bengal Tiger was through match reports in local papers, for those were days before the current media explosion, and national aspirants, first-time or otherwise, were not likely to be interviewed by the media for every extra mile they ran.

As Ganguly walked out to bat at Lord’s four years later with India tottering, the Bengali teenager in me daydreamed that the gutsy guy would end up with a ton. As Boycott’s Prince of Calcutta gradually emerged as one of the key batsmen in the Indian side, as one of the most elegant batsmen in his day, as one of the finest players of spin, as the grittiest of captains, I wondered, would it mean anything at all to him if I ever got the chance to tell him that I believed,in 1992, however irrationally, that he would make a comeback, and in style?

And then, it was time for him to make another comeback when he got unceremoniously dropped in September 2005 as both player and captain under a cloud of bureaucratic intrigue within the BCCI. All was not quite cricket. Like his die-hard fans I believed again that he would come back, that he still had a few years to offer to cricket, that the questions about his commitment to the game were baseless, and that since he had so much to prove, he would not give up without a fight. For this stint of the Tiger’s in the wilderness, I had to keep track again through match reports, for even though the print and electronic media in India were following every pugmark he left, I was in the US, which meant keeping track of cricket only on the internet. Kiran More’s often puerile reactions during interviews by the media, Greg Chappell’s evident mishandling of individuals, and the general climate of muscle-flexing and intrigue that had set in with a change of guard in the BCCI, all seemed to suggest that Sourav had not been dropped only for cricketing reasons. The disquiet voiced occasionally by junior members of the team (promptly gagged by the BCCI who even "showcaused" Sachin Tendulkar once) seemed suggestive, to say the least. I kept track of what had become the national guessing-game and was once again inexplicably certain that the tables would turn in Sourav’s favour, or maybe more correctly, that he would turn them. And then it did happen. The Prince, now perhaps chastened by experience, and looking to only enjoy whatever cricket lay ahead of him, seemed regally reluctant to give in to interviewers’ provocations to admit even once that he had proven something. All he said was that life had come full circle.

And then one glorious year of batting followed for him, but only before he was dropped again from the ODI side. I cannot this time be optimistic about the Prince’s recall, no matter no batsman in the game has scored more runs than him in 2007, for there is an unmistakably strong current in favour of youngsters, if the simultaneous omission of Rahul Dravid should also be taken to mean something. And given the BCCI’s consistently abysmal lack of professionalism in these matters -- perhaps the current ODI captain’s too -- these senior players were not even told that these changes were being envisaged. We will never know what Sourav and Rahul must have felt, and we better not. All that followers of the game anywhere would want now is to see both of them enjoying their game in whatever form of cricket they would be playing. For the past few months I have been lax in keeping track of cricket--all the hullabaloo over IPL and ICL--and have not wondered for even once what it might mean to Sourav if I suddenly met him somewhere and told him that I believed both in 1992 and 2005 (not a teenager any more then:), that he would be back. That he would do a Zorro.

18 June 2008. I am sitting in the Clipper Lounge at Dumdum airport, courtesy a friend travelling Club World on the British Airways flight to London. In walks Nirupa Ganguly, and then, in a familiar voice I hear in Bengali, “…board bolbe na… board...” So I turn to look, and there is he, Sourav, probably filling out immigration forms for his parents and brother. I wonder if I should ask him for an autograph. Should I let him alone, or should I compel him to be Sourav Ganguly at 7 in the morning as he looks harassed tackling bureaucratic procedures? As we sit debating to ask or not to ask, a middle-aged gentleman walks almost past us, booming, “Sourav ekdom kichchhu mone korbe na, eta amar meyer jonye…” Sourav obliges with a smile, and very politely enquires after the health of his fan. Forced politesse, but I’d give full marks for such politeness under pressure. So we get up, and head straight for his table and I declare, “Onake dekhe sahosta pelam, but you are free to refuse.” He looks almost hurt, looks up from his papers, and says, “Why would I refuse?” I can’t tell him it’s got nothing to do with the myth of Lord Snooty, but rather with my good intentions to let his brief holiday from being a celebrity begin at the airport itself. And after he has signed, he asks very courteously, where I am headed to. I reply, thank him, turn away, not telling him how I always ‘knew’ he would come back.

Postcolonialism and the Hit of the Real at NYU, 6-8 March, 2008

Food for thought for postcolonialists/poco-sympathetics. Apathetics welcome too! Look at the amazing line-up at www.nyupoco.com. If you plan to attend, be sure to register by email (see below), and if you do not have an NYU ID, please carry a photo ID with you.