Why, why, why are we so stupid and desperate? Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer was in Mumbai. She was mentioning Chekhov, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky as her “professors”. Someone in the audience asked her if there had been any Indian literary influence. What was she supposed to say? She mentioned that she had read a number of them and they had “opened my mind”.
There is something quite disgusting about how we want a foreign nod for everything. When an Indian writer goes to America, they won’t ask about American influence or in the UK about British influence. Here, we are not even talking about a novice.
Do we ask doctors if they are influenced by illnesses in India? Do we ask sportspersons if they are influenced by our sports stars? Or Hollywood stars by Bollywood?
I shall wait for the day we have a conference for janitors and one of them is asked about being influenced by Indian shit.
- - -
We are like that only. We wait and wait and wonder and wonder when President-elect Barack Obama will call up Manmohan Singh. Foreign secretaries and people who know about these things, like telephone instruments, hold forth and say things like “It is too early to make an assessment”. Why don’t we just call up and talk to the “mutt” or send him a dog and get it over with?
FV:
ReplyDeleteBingo! When will our ignoramus Journos learn? It must have been a TV reporter.
She is a great writer,have you read Soldiers Embrace?I stop thinking about our foreign obsession
ReplyDeletePS:
ReplyDeleteThis time we will have to be kind...it was a member of the audinece...likha hai...
- - -
KB:
No, I have not. Hmm...I must stop thinking. That's it.