 In the last lecture, we had talked about multi-lingualities and three paradigms of hybridities were presented before you. I want to develop this discussion further, especially in terms of hybridities and the three paradigms that we presented before you. One of the key issues there was the issue of English and translations. I want to sort of widen the discussion a bit because actually the issue of translation and I think I had briefly referred to it last time also. This is an issue which is equally applicable to writing or you can say creative writing in any Indian language because of our plural context. And therefore, when I began to think about this some more, immediately in my consciousness a story that I had actually read as a college-going student, it surfaced in my consciousness. And this is a story by Chandradhar Sharma Guleri and the title of the story is Usne Kaha Tha. And there is this remarkable sense of mixture of languages and a sort of certain milieu where people speak different languages but they interact with each other very actively. In the story, title Usne Kaha Tha, I remember Viveetli that when the soldier, Lehna Singh, he thinks about the best moments of his life as he is dying on the battle front. He remembers meeting this young girl in Amritsa, 1890s of Amritsa, where every time he met this young girl in the marketplace, he asked her, and I remember as a reader of that text, I am Hindi speaking, I didn't know what that phrase meant. And it sort of estranged me and at the same time it woke me up to a description of another town, another place, time, different characters and their beautiful, subtle sensibility, their desire, their yearning for love. And suddenly this phrase, it sort of animated the whole text in a very different way because the language was not fully accessible to me. And therefore, as I said, this question of translated text or a mixture of various languages, this issue of hybridity or code mixing is equally applicable to any kind of language or any kind of writing, especially in the Indian context because even if you are writing in Hindi or Marathi, Tamil or Telugu, it sort of also brings you close to the way people live. And therefore, I want to place this idea before you that when we talk about multilinguality, plurality or writing, we really are not thinking only about the English language, although we have conducted this discussion or we are conducting this discussion in English. But what we have to say about these ideas or attitudes and also the creative work that comes out of it, this is equally applicable to all our languages. So, this to me was a really very important thought and actually in the slide that I showed you, I have referred to Uski Roti by Mohan Rakesh, another short story that is steeped in the Punjabi countryside and the main character is a bus driver and this is about his wife who brings him his roti, which means his food actually every day. The manner in which Hindi is constructed in this short story is also very, very evocative of the Punjabi countryside and the sensibility of the Punjabi characters. Maybe you can dip into it and explore this story and the film in order to understand how there are these beautiful, subtle blends that have grown in realistic writing in India and also it will perhaps make you realize that there is something to Ijaz Ahmed's statement, when he says that English in itself cannot bridge the cultural gap between the original Indian language and the translated text, whereas I think when a writer writes about the Indian milieu and he is dipping into or she is dipping into the Indian ethos, the transition from one Indian language to another Indian language is easier. So, this is a point of view and an experience that you can also consider before deciding whether you want to write in English, Hindi or your mother tongue, this is an important question. Now, this other viewpoint, although on the one hand that Ijaz Ahmed had said that there is this cultural gap between the original and the translated text, so far as translations into English are concerned, although he also acknowledges English as a very big archival resource from that point of view. The other point of view about this comes from Rushdie and we have already talked about it, so I won't repeat it, but what seems interesting to me is the fact that actually everything said and done, our relationship with English is not an easy one, even if we agree and we know historically that English has more or less become an Indian language and Rushdie in a recent Paris review interview edition that he has edited, he talked about the malleability of English and indeed through his creative work he has shown how English can be used to convey the vitality of the Indian context. So, in other words I think his claims and his ideas are very important because on the one hand we have an uneasy relationship with English, he may not have an uneasy relationship with English, but I think a large majority of us have an uneasy relationship because on the one hand if the language is considered as a vehicle of modernity and nation building and we see that all the national discourse in India has emerged out of English. Even if we agree with that sort of perception, the fact remains that it has also become the language of social, academic and economic mobility, so in some ways it does threaten the Indian languages. I think if we simplify this issue too much, we do not understand or we cannot understand the fissures that are opened between our own languages and English and these are fissures that actually push us in creative directions. So, I would say that the other view point that has been articulated regarding this language issue and about the significance of English in India as a vehicle of modernity, the other point of view has been articulated by Amit Chaudhary who feels that actually it is the rise of the vernacular which became a vehicle for a new secular nationalist consciousness. My other take on this issue about languages, about choosing English as an Indian language is again a question about the fact that whether we talk about English or we talk about the vernacular and the nationalist discourse, we have to remember that there always have been languages on the margins that were not part of this discourse. I think gradually the scene is changing, but I would like you to keep that in mind. So, the question of how to expand one's vision or understanding to accommodate such a vast variety of issues that is something that actually needs a lot of self-assessment and introspection and that is where the creativity can start to bubble. So, our emphasis in all this discussion is the growth or development of investigative and inclusive approach for creativity. If one sort of remains engaged with the world at large, then I think the sense of isolation when one begins to probe one's own identity and one's own desire for self-expression that will actually find greater depth and space within oneself. So, that seems to be an intuitive and also in some ways you can say a combination of intuitive and objective aspects of our understanding and we hope you will be able to judge whether it indeed works for you or not. So, what we are again suggesting is to observe experience events and your context with eyes unclouded. Expand your awareness of as many Indian languages and issues as possible. From this we want to shift our attention to Indian writing in English and also the experimental use of English in novels in particular. The reason we have actually singled out novels is related to the very, very special aspect of this genre. Many scholars, many, many of them and I think Kundera talks about some writers also who hold the opinion that the novel does not really have roots in Indian tradition. I think Kundera also pointed out and maybe I will talk about Milan Kundera later on but right now I will concentrate on this point of view that he mentions I think in Testament B. Trade in which he says that now there is almost a transnational history of novel and that it has grown very vigorously in non-Western or non-European countries. That was his point of view and he makes a remark which I want to place before you because when we begin to dip into writing, we are dipping into various genres with this assumption that whether you want to be an essayist or you want to be an academician or you want to be a creative writer, reading of this enriched work is extremely important. So we are not really looking at just a particular kind of result in terms of your creative endeavours when we introduce you to these experiments. I want you to keep that in mind because in the first module I have tried very, very clearly to release possibilities for different kinds of students who want to pursue creativity in any vocation, any field. So from that point of view, the novel form it is sort of according to Kundera it is a response to new historical situations with their new existential content. In other words, it sort of gives you space, gives the writer the space to look at things that may be are not addressed in our analytical or our political or our social discourses. So it is a very, very different kind of cultural space and it is also a space where I suppose there is maximum amount of freedom for one's imagination although from Rishikesh's case we know that that freedom can also be curtailed at any point in time due to political forces. So it is not really a simple realm of absolute freedom but certainly it is a very different kind of space. So now in terms of Indian writing in English, I would like to go back to the first page of Rishikesh's Midnight's children which we had read and I do want to also share this second idea that this exploration of Indian reality in a plural setup it also redefines it is a way of redefining one's cultural identity. Now going back to that particular first page and you know I am fully aware of the complexities that a text like Midnight's Children demands but in this early stage of our discussion I have stayed with that first page and the choice of the first page in which Salim Sanai's birth and how deeply it was intertwined with the birth of modern India that is placed before us right from as I said page one, line one. This actually choice was determined by the Paris review interview that Rishdi gave and this Paris review interview series we recommend to anybody who is interested in writers important and great writers of our time. In this interview the interviewer was able to sort of post questions that actually elicited some really fine responses from Rishdi for us who want to learn to write of a you who is who wants to see these models or you know seek sources of inspiration some tips from writers I think there is much that one can learn from this particular interview. And I will just read the response selectively so what I am trying to do is to one point out why we chose that first page tell you a little bit about one's own response to the language mixture that plays out on that page and also then see what one can learn about writing from it. So the first thing that he says in response to the interviewer's question about his own early writing and I would just come to the Midnight's children before that he said I have three books that I have discarded more or less and I will read this now until I started writing Midnight's children which would probably have been late 75 early 76. There was this period of flailing about it was more than a technical problem and I want you to pay attention to the rest of the statement until you know who you are you cannot write because my life had been jumbled up between India and England and Pakistan I really did not have a good handle on myself this is what he said and then he went on to point out that you know one day after many years of struggle he actually suddenly sat down and started writing by discarding the third person narration which was not working for him and I think I have the quote here for you. So if the copyright permissions are taken we will place the code before you otherwise you can look at this selective reading of you know you can hear the selective reading that I have to offer today. So he said that third person narration which is what he was trying out it did not really work for him so he says I decided to try a first person narrative and there was a day when I sat down and I wrote more or less exactly what is now the first page of Midnight's Children it just arrived this voice of salims quite savvy full of all kinds of arcana funny but sort of ridiculous I was electrified by what was coming out of my typewriter it was one of those moments when you believe that the writing comes through you rather than from you. So actually you know this again seemed extremely important very interesting and also it takes us back to another quotation we had shared with you earlier where it was pointed out that if the mind is ready I think it was from Louis Pasteur that if the mind is ready which means one is working on that idea with great deal of conviction great deal of passion and commitment then there is a kind of a sense of release possible you never know which way experimental work will take you. So success is not guaranteed but the process in itself is so exciting and it is process that I want you to begin to understand and explore because the end result will depend on many many factors including the kind of passion or conviction or capability that you have but certainly the process will remain very very rich and it will be very exciting for you. So now this particular statement that I read and the interview that you should read later on on your own I want to share my own response to the first page. As I was reading the first page I actually would just come to the last 2 or 3 last sentence almost last but one sentence because as I was reading it the flavor of Hindustani words in English it just sort of broke through you know the flavor the subtext it broke through in multiple ways the statement or the sentence that I am referring to reads like this. I Salim Sinai later variously called snot nose, stain face, baldy, sniffer, Buddha and even peace of the moon this kind of suddenly evoked very amused amusing responses because these are words that are used in a very teasing manner you know to tease somebody the mixture of affection and ridicule and it sort of evoked the subtext the cultural text and in that sense what Ijaza has to say about the cultural gap between English and the Indian context I think instead of actually taking away from the English text for me sort of it really worked very well it estranged me amused me brought brought forth my own references frame of references and I think in terms of other words they are not really very polite words when you translate them in Hindi so I won't really try the translation. But the last phrase peace of the moon Chan Katukra I am sure it is accessible to all of you through films that you see and the metaphor of similar kind that is evoked time and again so in other words I found this very exciting and although it does estranged you but what you do with that fissure creatively that is also a very important challenge that one can place before oneself now this process where language two languages are intermixed as I indicated to you earlier this is described as code mixing and hybridization is a subcategory of code mixing and actually using many many ideas that have been explained very lucidly by Neelam Shrivastava in a paper title languages of the nation in Salman in Rishhti and Sate the full title of this essay and the you know resources or the journal in which this article is published this has been shared with you towards the end of this lecture when we give you the reading list so the many of these insights have been taken from Neelam Shrivastava's article but basically we are interested in showing the possibilities of code mixing and some of the other ways of looking at this is through the theory of Bhaktin which I will not go into because many many theoretical insights that impinge on our analysis it is really not possible to explain each one of these but at the same time if it is possible later on I will weave that discussion expand that discussion in the other modules so this theoretical concept is related to the dialogic interrelationship of different registers and dialects in which gravitate within the orbit of a national language that is the statement from Bhaktin so what that means is again the interplay of various languages so there is no formula for it it shows the life of the people but what again I am trying to argue for is to allow yourself the possibility of watching more watching the complex interplay of languages ideas and also cultural differences so now there is a I think need to turn towards another example of similar kind of writing in English where the Indian ethos is evoked and evoked quite powerfully but at the same time the methodology is different the title heteroglottic was used the concept of heteroglossia from Bhaktin was used for a rishti because he tries to keep the multiplicity alive and he actually does not remain aloof in terms of the language he is invested in creating the charge of that language the moments of history the existential issues of history that he wants to evoke and therefore his kind of writing is slightly different from the kind of writing that Vikram Seth has undertaken in suitable boy we are talking only about midnight's children and suitable boy it is not possible to talk about the complete works of both because there is such a lot of variety and we would need a full course to handle those kinds of details but this instead of translating the differences in a predictable manner as I said rishti has retained the sense of multiplicity plurality and he is played around it with this to the great joy of the readers in a suitable boy there is an omniscient third person narrator and the multilingual reality is captured in monologic form and as I said some of these ideas have been taken from Neelam Shrivastava's article essay because she speaks about these issues with great clarity and we have been looking for material that you can relate to and understand without excessive difficulty. So according to her again you should pointed out that the code mixing in suitable boy it occurs in terms of English and other Indian languages such as Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and the rustic dialect spoken in Debaria. I will try and present a reading of suitable boy an excerpt from suitable boy in English and its Hindi translation because seemingly Vikram Seth likes the Hindi translation because he feels that the particular translation that he had in mind had captured the sense of the people the sense of that language exactly in the way he wanted to recreate and represent in a suitable boy. Today I am going to read out to you an extract from Vikram Seth's novel A Suitable Boy and subsequent translation in Hindi by Gopal Gandhi. Vikram Seth being from India and though he chose to write in English seeing the translation has very interesting ramifications. Vikram Seth himself is known to be quoted that this translation has actually conveyed what he meant to say quite more effectively than he could have he would have had he written in Hindi. So here is the extract in English 19.7. Jagatram reacted to Harish's wedding invitation with visible shock not so much because Harish was getting married and in Brampur at that but because he should have thought of inviting him moved as he was he had to refuse the two words did not mix he knew it it was a fact of life that a Jata from Ravidaspur should be present at a guest at a wedding at the house of Dr. Kishan Chand Seth would cause social distress that he did not want to be at the center of it would injure his dignity. Apart from the practical problems of what to wear and what to give he knew that he would feel no joy and only intense awkwardness at being present on the occasion. Harish reading his mind only partially said with brusque tact you're not to bring a gift I have never been a believer of gifted weddings but you must come we are colleagues I would hear if you are not coming and the invitation is also for your wife if she so wishes to come it is only with the greatest reluctance that Jagatram agreed the red and gold invitation meanwhile was being passed on on hand to hand between the boys of the family haven't they left anything for your daughter asked Harish as the last of the bananas disappeared oh her dust has been washed away said Jagatram quietly what asked Harish shocked Jagatram shook his head what I meant to say he began to say but his voice was choked what happened for him in sake she got an infection my wife said it was serious but I thought children get a high fever so quickly and it comes down just as quickly and so I delayed it was the money to the doctors here well high handed to us your poor wife my wife said nothing she said nothing against me what she thinks I do not know after a pause he quoted two lines don't break the thread of love Rahim has had said what breaks won't join if joined it not the threat when Harish commiserated Jagatram merely sucked in his breath through his teeth and shook his head again now I'm going to read out the text in the translation 19th December of 7th Nyote se Jagatram ko achambha hua is bhaat par nahi ki Harish bhaa kar rahe baal ki is bhaat par ki usse shadi me bhaalaya jaha rahe par krithagya aur dravidh hote bhai bhi Jagatram ne maafi maangi yeh donno duniya hai alag hai ussne samjaya e ne alag hi rahe na bhahtar ho baan dr kishanchand seit ke brahmapur wale bangle mein hravidash hravidaspur ka koi jaatav hai yeh nahi ho sakta maa sabhi ko taklif ho ghi rahe ne de unki taklif se mujhe bhi taklif ho ghi rahe ne hi de yeh hi sab jagatram ne ka par jo usne kaha nahi wo hiye tha ke phehn ke kya aon yeh samascha hai aur kya leke aon yeh usse bhi bhi samascha hai haresh ki shadi me jaane se saara anand yehi samasya hai harab jayenge haresh bola dekhye tofa to nahi laana hai me khut tofa ko nahi maanta par aapko aana hooga hum saath kaam karthe hain aapke na aane ka toh sawaal hi nahi hain aur niyota aap donno ke liye hain agar aapki patni bhi aasak hain bohot so chuchar kar aakhir me jagatram ne kaha thiek hain aonga laal su nehra kaad is bhi chhato hain jagatram parivaar ke ladko me ghum raha tha kele khatam hoi jaankar haresh ne pucha bachi ko kela nahi dea jagatram ne shansawaf se kaha wo uski mitti mitti me samascha hai kya haresh ne sthambit ho kar pucha jagatram ne sir hi laakar kaha bimari lagi thi bukhar char gaya tha gharwali ne kaha maamuli bukhar nahi hain me ne kaha bachko bukhar charta ho tata rehta hain kuch nahi hain deer kar di paeso ki bhi baat di dokter yaha hum se zyaddi karthe hain aapki patni bechaari usne kuch nahi ka mutsik kuch nahi kahi sojti kya hain wahi jaane fir dashnik bhaav se boole rahe man dhaga prem ka mat toro chat ka hain tootaf se fir nahi jode jode gath pad jaai haresh ne samvednaan me kuch shabd kaha hain jagatram ne thandi saas bhakar sir hi laakar the other example which I want to place before you and remember in the last lecture we talked about the subaltern point of view on the one hand and the outlook of globalization on the other hand and if you notice in terms of my titles to the talk I have tried to highlight it for example if we go back to the title of Rishidi's segment I have given the title conversation with the world you know this is from his editorial comment to the vintage book in which he actually tries to promote the idea and I think this idea comes from his placement or his space in the Indian diaspora but he sort of argues for a global outlook an outlook where writing Indian writing actually is a mode of conversation with the world and in terms of his notion of the world it is the international setup of his own Indian setup so as a contrast you will notice that both the writers are very important but Mahashweta Devi she wants to talk to the tribals and the oppressed that is her world so to say and in terms of her creative process and as I said all the writers that we are talking about are deeply engaged with every facet of reality there are people who are very open minded and they have been very investigative in their approach for example if you want to understand about different kind of writers I think imaginary homelands of Rashti by written by Rashti is an excellent example of how deeply he has tried to understand different kinds of writers and their location in their own historical context and how their writing has emerged in the dialogue with the world at large now in terms of Mahashweta Devi this is a very different kind of outlook and a very very important one for reasons that you will understand yourself but she wants to talk to the tribals and the oppressed she is not thinking of any other audience although her initial writing was published in Bengali literary magazines so it is not as if she has given up on other kinds of readers but her conscience and her soul is stirred by the condition of the tribals their beauty also and therefore let us see what she has to say by way of the creative process in the interview to Samik Bandopad there which we have listed that book I think this is an editorial kind of comment that he has written and he has also quoted this interview this is her 5 plays so in that she says to him a responsible writer standing at a turning point in history has to take a stand in defense of the exploited otherwise history would never forgive him so there is this defense of responsibility towards history towards people to stand up in defense of the exploited the particular interview that I have mentioned it is as I said this is an editorial interview and also it refers to her plays now Mahashweta Devi actually started writing novels and short stories wrote plays at the behest of Samik Bandopadhyay but she sort of continued to keep some kind of a hold on her investigative approach and I keep using that word because in terms of middle class writing of Mahashweta Devi also you know she wrote about areas of conflict where the middle class was in direct confrontation with the subaltern and in the plays that she wrote she picked up stories where this confrontation was brought out and also the failures of our systems political systems were brought out but in such a way that the voice of the exploited remain very very authentic it was not you know reduced a particular stereotype or a caricature so the same desire impelled her towards not only translating some of those short stories or adopting them in a naturalistic framework but at the same time she began to explore traditional folk forms like the Al Cap with its rich treatment of social themes in an idiom of reparties that I am referring to therefore is different here I am referring to her plays although she is not known as a great playwright but at the same time I am referring to her plays because in some way she shifted to writing of plays and also searching for this model of public participation because short story writing and novel writing did of course offer her cultural and public space but it was very different and she felt that this kind of engagement public engagement or community oriented engagement that she wanted this form was very participatory and important. We will go into this in other modules again but I think I do want you to be aware of the change of form and how each literary form offers a very different kind of possibility while we are exploring writing and much will depend on what you want to say, who you want to say something to etc. So, she sort of began to explore many of these folk forms so they were already there because oral kind of thinking and writing orality is very strong in many many tribal groups so and also in other cultures so then the code mixing that is present in Mahasweta Devi. So, again in terms of code mixing I bring back this whole issue of code mixing within Indian languages and that is why I had shared the example of Usne Kahatha and here again we find that the code mixing that is available in Mahasweta Devi is a combination of Bengali dialects of the tribals depending on which particular text we are talking about we will perhaps dip into water but let us also see what she has to say about why she dipped into this material because she feels that she wants to use the folk imagination through its legends, mythical figures mythical happenings but she places them in a contemporary setting. I think all this is very visible in water her play where Maghai Dome is the protagonist and he is a traditional water diviner. We cannot go into the details again but she has placed Maghai the traditional water diviner in the framework of contemporary needs and aspirations of the domes of that community you know he belongs to the domes community and the fact that they are exploited by the landlord of that particular village by asking Maghai Dome to divine water but he does not allow them to use that water so there is a very contemporary problem that she has placed in the play and she has explored how to balance this deep indigenous source of knowledge that Maghai Dome represents and the modern possibilities interventionist modern possibilities that actually need to respect this indigenous base of knowledge and at the same time offer democratic contemporary solutions to the existence of marginalized communities. So this third paradigm again of you know the code mixing in the Indian language brings us back to Ijaz Ahmed's contention that and I think here there is it you know it is relevant because the kind of Nune says that Mahashweta Devi brings to her original text I think that is not accessible in the English translation now whether it is the limitation of the translator or it is the limitation of this process or whether you need strategic translation and not just straight translations of a certain kind all this actually needs to be examined. My name is Jim Matthew Cochiti and I will be reading Maghai Dome's dialogue from Mahashweta Devi's Water. When the king Bhagirath brought the when the king Bhagirath brought the holy Ganga down from the heavens Basmati the mother earth asked Ganga give me a little bit of its sister to keep hidden in my bowels. Ganga told Basmati hold the nether Ganga in your bowels so the nether Ganga flowed into the secret depths of the mother earth my earliest ancestor had come all prepared to offer puja to the holy river at her advent but by the time he arrived Bhagirath had already left with Ganga so he stuffed himself up with booze gathered all that he had brought with him to offer to the holy river and offered puja to the nether Ganga once he closed his eyes to do obeisance the drunken stripper took over and he fell asleep when he opened his eyes there was no sign any longer of Ganga it was emptiness all around he was just a dome after all and naive and so easily fooled so he thought I must have dreamt it all then from the bowels of the earth the nether Ganga herself the mother deity of all the hidden waters spoke you are my chosen priest I and the goddess the nether Ganga whenever men dig for a well or a pond you will gather the offerings pray for water and go around looking for where the water lies hidden till I tell you where to dig and ever since that has been our work how can we charge for water it is forbidden and that is why we are fated to go hungry