 Hello everyone, welcome to the British Library South Asia Seminar Series, which is part of our research and digitization called Two Centuries of Indian Print. We are very excited today to have Professor Ananya Jahanara Paveer and Ari Bhatia as our speakers. Ananya is a professor of English literature at King's College London, and the author of Territory of Desire, representing the value of Kashmir, which was published in 2009, and Partitions post Amnesia, 1947, 1971 and modern South Asia, which was published in 2013. Her new research project is Creole Indians. Ari Bhatia is a Franco-Tamil author of historical fiction, currently resident in Oslo, whose novels are Carnate Secret de Lakshmi, published in 2015, and Latin Night published in 2017. And he has recently published his third novel called Nocturne Foundation. In May 2020, Ananya and Ari co-founded the cultural platform, Latin Night Creole, to promote their vision of multicultural, plural and creolized India. We are also very happy to have Dr. Lisa Oliver as a chair for this event. Lisa is an associate professor of art at Willisbury College. She's an art historian focusing on 18th and 19th century Europe and South Asia, colonialism, Indian Ocean trade and intersections of art and science. She's also the author of Art, Trade and Imperialism in Early Modern French India, published in 2019. So Ananya and Ari are going to speak to us today about Vine on Trellis, Foundatury's Creolizing Culture. Let me brief you on the format of the event. Ananya and Ari are going to speak to us for about 45 minutes, after which there'll be a brief discussion between them and Liza, after which we'll open it up for audience questions. However, while the talk is on or during the discussion, you would like to put in your questions, please use the Q&A box or the chat box to do so. And I'll take them in order when we have our Q&A session. Without much further ado, I invite Ananya and Ari to speak to us today about Vine on Trellis, Foundatury's Creolizing Culture. Over to you. Thank you so much, Priyanka. It's really nice to be presenting for an institution we love and cherish and need so much, the British Library. Thank you to Liza for agreeing to chair and respond to us. And of course, thank you to my collaborator, Ari Gautier, for being here with me, even though he's officially on holiday in Norway. So that's very, it's very good of you to give us the time despite you actually being off. Now, we have used the title Vine on Trellis because we wanted to refer directly to the lovely image from the British Library's archives, which graces the flyer of this event. And the image is indeed of vines growing on a trellis. And it's a colored etching by an anonymous artist for trellis arcade which supports a vine in the governor's garden at Monetary. And it was probably published in India in the late 18th century. The artist is unknown. And this image obviously takes us to a certain kind of interaction of a very European perspective. We'll go to the image in a second. I'll start the PowerPoint in a second. You know, this very, it's perspectival, it's very orderly, it's very enlightenment, in fact, you know, and then you've got this organic and unpredictable forms of the vine all over the trellis. Naturally, this was about viticulture. It was about the French trying to introduce vines in order to produce wine in Monetary. And there is archival evidence of such people. For example, there was in 1754. So after the time of our image, it's provenance, it's dating. Well, after a round or after that Pierre Lalouette de Venni-Court, who was born in 1754 in Paris, made his way to Pondicherry. And by 1789, he was serving in the first of three campaigns in India under Sufran. And he did stuff in Pondicherry as part of the military, but he then also became quite an expert in viticulture. And then through series of chopping and changing allegiances landed up in Australia, where he was called upon the governor of New South Wales to give, you know, some kind of expertise in producing vines in tropical lands. So Ari, you know a little bit about the governor's garden, don't you, where this trellis is from? Do you want to tell us about that? What happened with vines? Yeah, the governor garden, first of all, the governor palace was built around the 18th century, I think, it's 1738 by a study with a guy called Jabu. And they ended up building in 1752 by Sony, all this under duplex. And of course, if you see the picture, you can see the, what he called the... Maybe I should start showing the picture. Yeah, yeah, that would be nice. Yeah, I'll keep on, you know, you do that. So you can see the governor palace in the back. So the van der treyi, it's in the front, where actually the IE mandemons, which people know punctually, know that where's the IE mandemons are built by Napoleon III is there. So that is where the van der treyi was, yeah, you can see. Can people see it? Yeah. Yeah. Right. So you can see the one on the back is the governor palace. So it must be as far as I can see where the IE mandemons is there now. And as you know, architecture was also used as a tool of the splendor of the colonial empire. Because architecture, that's what architecture does. It's not just for the sake of building something, but it's also a way of showing power. In that way, the van der treyi, I think it's not, I think they started to produce, trying to produce wine, because it was too expensive for them to bring wine, which they did for two, three shipments, I think one of the shipments just went down in the sea. So they never saw the bottles. And so they decided to have van der treyi, van viticulture in India. And they did also in Pondicherry, in Surat and other places. But they never managed to do that for some reason or the other because either the lack of the technique or maybe the soil was not correct. Or simply, yeah, they didn't moisturize the way of doing this. So that's another reason that we never saw any French wine in Pondicherry. We never saw any French wine, perhaps, but we do now, many, many, you know, in the post-colonial period, of course, India's producing some kind of wine. But from the historical period, yes, the vines didn't ultimately yield wine. But this very powerful image of order, you know, trying to impose order remains for us. This etching remains because of course, in due course, we won't go into all those details now, but the governor's palace and garden also does not remain anymore. So, but the image remains. And I think this brings us into the heart of what we want to talk about material culture, not just as what stands and what is tangible, but also how it goes into orders of representation. And here, I think I want to move to someone who, of course, has also spoken at the British Library, South Asia seminar series, Professor Supriya Chaudhary from Emeritus of Jadupur University, who has written quite a lot on material culture in 19th century India, focusing on Bengal. And I want to just say a few, quote something from one of her splendid essays on furniture in 19th century Bengal, to kind of clarify to people where Ari and I are going with our interest in not just creolizing culture of Pondicherry, but in this talk specifically focusing on material culture that's creolized and creolizing. So to go to Supriya Chaudhary to quote her, this world of objects, she says, talking about furniture in general, domestic interiors, this world of objects constitutes itself as a habitat to use Barthes' term, within which quote, men inscribe themselves upon space, unquote, at the same time as it is the characteristic site of what Pierre Bordeaux, following Erwin Panofsky would describe as a habitus. For these objects are never the neutral apparatus, this is what you were saying, Ari, it's about power, they're never the neutral apparatus of a physical world that we unavoidably inhabit. They are the instruments by which a particular way of life is articulated and reproduced in the specific form that the description of domestic interiors, particularly of furniture, takes in the European novel of the 19th century. It most commonly figures the habitus of conspicuous consumption expressed as wealth or taste, unquote. So Supriya Chaudhary, Professor Chaudhary is talking about 19th century European novels, realist novels that take great pains at describing domestic interiors. And then she, you know, goes on to observe that despite this enormous signifying value, particularly of furniture, because both of its use value and its display value. Even though you can see the significance of this kind of material culture, she says that the history of furniture has appeared to be no more than a minor episode in the larger history of applied arts, unquote. And what she then goes on to do in this particular essay is to show through a range of 19th century Bengali novelists, such as Bankim Chandra, and so on, how all these kinds of European furniture enter and transform the Bengali habitus. What she then comments on, and that's really another important point I want to make here, she says, however, using the example of someone like Bankim, she says, it's not as an art historian, or as a sociologist that I approach furniture, and it's the study of its significance, it's as someone interested in literary representation. So that's pretty much where we are also Ari and I, and it's in this mode that we approach material culture, in this case of quantity as realizing culture, he as a writer of literature, and I as a critic of literature. Now at this point we will switch tack and start asking Ari a little bit about his own writing. In your novel, Lutinnai, which came out in 2017, it's a very descriptive novel, you're describing as much as narrating. And one of the things that you spend a lot of time on describing is the house of a Chettiar merchant. And there's, and all the things inside this house, all the different items of furniture, all the embellishments, should you want to tell us a little bit about this house Ari, and about the furniture in this house, why was it important to you? Yeah, you know, as we were talking about Supriya Choudhary's essay, and most of the writers you mentioned, they are Bengalis. Yeah. Right, but for example in Pondicherry that was not the case. As I always say, for 350 years, there were very few Tamil writers who wrote about ourselves, about the Pondicherry colonial period, so most of them were French, European writers who wrote about Pondicherry. So most of the novels, they don't depict this material culture, or even if they depict, they depict only from the colonial houses, but not from the Indian houses. And there's only one person's house takes a lot of focus is Anandaranga Pillai, who's a Dubash. Yeah. But it seems that the Chetya were the merchants, the traders who were part of commodities movement, they were totally ignored. And as you know, I used to live in the Chetya house, Chetya street, sorry, Ishwankul street, and opposite my house was the famous Kalati Chetya. Could you, could you please show that picture? Yeah. Public note. Okay, this is Kalati Chetya. So Kalati Chetya comes from a very wealthy Natukote Chetya from Karekudi, between Sivakangai and Madurai. And his family were part of already, even before the Chetya were already traders, even before the arrival of Europeans during the Chola Empire. They are just only starting to trade after the colonial, colonial, the European arrive, but they were doing different type of trade. You see, and once the European came, they, they did the change their trading system to something different, which, which suit the European, the Europeans. So Kalati Chetya used to live, I used to live in front of his house. And my universe at the age of 12 was this. So you could see the amount of chandeliers and bureaus and I think these are not Indian furnitures. You see, these are furnitures was brought from different part of, different part of the world. And so when I wanted to write about the house, we used to live in the, in the novel. So it was normal that I got inspired by Kalati Chetya's house to write, to fictionalize because that we kind of bureau doesn't exist. One minute. We are, we haven't yet got to the bureau. Okay, but the furniture we are talking, it's about the bureau and writing, which I spent almost, as you know, more than three months to do research, just to write like one paragraph of the thing. So that's why for me it was important not only to put that new element in the history of literature or poetry, that the Chetya also are part of a very important role in terms of culture, material culture. And then the second one is also to note that Indian taste was also evolved with the arrive, not evolve but change, like you say, with the arrival of the European. So they, it's a kind of, that's what exactly what we are going to talk how the creolization process which is happening. So how this. Can I just stop you there because I won't go to the bureau. You're going ahead of my, of my, of my sequence. I would like to just point out, you know, first of all, let me ask you first, you asked me something. Let me ask you why you when you read my book. You immediately stopped me and he called me, and he said, this is fascinating. But why is it you got fascinated by that passage. Yeah, there was a passage there we're talking, everybody should know that we're talking not just about the passage, which starts chapter three of your book where you talk about this entire house. The house that you fictionalize but which is draws very obviously very closely on this particular real home and the things in it, but it also zooms in on to one piece of furniture, which is this bureau, you know, and I call it the check the house bureau, and I was really fascinated by this, by this item of furniture. And that is because, as we can see there's a you, you, you have spent a lot of time and effort as an author describing bureau. So I have analyzed the different elements in this passage which are put on this PowerPoint here that people can have a look. The first line is your French and then the second line and bold people can hopefully read the quotes is about I mean is my translation. So I mean, I'm really, I was fascinated by the fact that this bureau was firstly. It was exceptional, you know, it was amazing. As an author you spend a lot of time telling us why it's amazing. So firstly, it's form and it's function this piece of furniture is something which is called a secretary in French and a bureau in English. It's a copy of a Louis cans bureau. So it's very, it's kind of very ornate and very, very expensive and very, very, it tells you something in just its form and its function. So the second thing which is interesting is that the check they are wanted it replicated, you know, and you created this check they are having this, you know, wishes fulfilled through some master carpenter who's local So he's not coming from France I mean like he's basically indigenous if you like I mean you know he's from the he's from that part of the in fact he's from the post that the Coromandel post and then he copies this he does it to you know he does something which is perhaps even better than the original because the materials and that's the third point which is on the PowerPoint that there you spend a lot of time giving us this exotic list of woods, you know, which sounds even better in French, perhaps, rosewood, sycamore, nourished, peck, cherry, ouro, foie, some of them aren't even in English words for zebrano, Burmese, satin, ebony, and the sill on these lemon tree. So all these different woods are inlaid, but because of that technique also there is something very specific the Telugu carpenter had skills, you know that he could fit all these different woods together, and then he kind of burnished it with the special technique, which put gold on the bronze and using stones so there's a lot going on. And I was extremely curious about the extraordinary amount of effort you put into describing to us the way this bureau came together, because it's not really like we never encounter it again in the novel, it doesn't play a very important role in the protagonist, you know what I mean it doesn't push the doesn't have any role at all. Doesn't have any role, but you still spend ages and you know gave it so much prominence. So this is what I found fascinating as a literary critic, and this is really what Supriya Choudhary says that this is what it means to be a reader of literature and a critic of literature to ask what is the job, this furniture, this piece of furniture is doing. So for me, I think you're invested in it, because there's something that you appreciate about this part of your growing up in Pondicherry that you were exposed, not to this sort of a thing. And I think this is what makes us agree that Pondicherry is a rather unusual place. Yeah, I mean, we have called it, in a sense, we agree that it's what we call a creolizing contact zone, and that brings us to the heart of our topic. I mean, we already started referring to some of these things Ari, shall we shall we see some maps and we can talk a little bit about what makes Pondicherry a creolizing contact zone. Unless you want to tell us a little bit more about the Chettiyas Bureau at this stage. No, the Chettiyas Bureau, you rightly jotted down in forms and function, makers and brokers, material and technique. But what is very interesting is exactly, not only I wanted to talk about the different materials, it's also the technique, because which is, as I said, Jean-Henri Reissner, he was a very, very big feminist in the court of Jean-Louis Keynes. And how come that Jean-Henri Reissner techniques that the Telangu carpenter can copy it. So how we import also technique is not only the material we import, not only the style, it's also the technique. But then again, when it comes to the Telangu carpenter, he modified it to make it even better. So this is what I'm interested. Yeah, yeah, no, you're absolutely right. It's that mysterious give and take, right? Nothing, I mean, when knowledge, firstly, there is something quite mysterious about knowledge passing in an embodied way. In the beginning and different European powers coming to places on the African continent, for example, as well as Asia. So I've done some work on Elmina, the castle of Elmina on the west coast of Ghana, and the Portuguese actually brought with them in their ships. Masonry as well as masons to build Elmina, because they had no idea what they were finding Ghana. They had no clue who what, I mean, they just assumed the worst and they got their stuff. But obviously, as time went on, this, it was understood that there are local craftsmen, their local materials, so there's a give and take of technology of knowledge, and then something happens. You know, that is what we are interested in, and we call creolization following, of course, a lot of theories of creolization. But what we do is, Ari, I think you'll agree that our, our, our extension of this idea of creolization is really facilitated by the position of monetary. Some maps here. Pondicherry, which is not an island, which is the usual locus and focus of creolization theories, the assumption is that creolization is something that usually happens on an island, and we are very interested in saying, well, why ever not on an island like space, which is not just Pondicherry, but all the different stations if you like settlements or enclaves of French India, which if you zoom in and you see fractally become ever more fragmented and enclave like the enclave is composed of many enclaves, you know, these are maps from of course the excellent book by Jessica Namakal unsettling utopia which has very recently come out. So Ari, how do you feel this coastal situation of Pondicherry. What was its contribution or how did it stimulate the process we are calling creolization. How do we get from the coast to. Very well, but even though it's contested. There are some historians who are contesting that the fact that Arike Medu, which was a Roman settlement, because there was a trade were happening already with the Roman Empire, very long back. There are some people can contesting but since I know I am from the area. I visited many time I recommend you, and even my ancestors are telling stories. So that it has been a contact zone for centuries. It's nothing happening 1673, when the French enter the enter the space. So before that there was, as I said, we're Romans, and then the Portuguese came because not a patina, which is not very far from Pondicherry was one of the major port for the Portuguese. So from Portuguese, from Nagapattam, sorry, they used Pondicherry because Pondicherry was what he called very productive textile industry. That's why the French people got interested in Pondicherry because of the textile. So Pondicherry was another port. Not port, it's a transit area where they could collect textile to take them further to Southeast Asia and other places. So then the Portuguese came, then the Dutch came, the Danes were there for some time, and then finally the French came in 1673 to establish this lodge. And so the Dutch were the people who really mapped Pondicherry, did the map for Pondicherry. I don't know if you have, yeah exactly, here we go. So the plan from that Delos is saying it's a Dutch plan. And for a long time people were thinking it was made by French, which actually thanks to Delos, he demystified the entire mystery, it's not French. So I think from long time it has been a content zone, it has been things were already in the modification process in the criminalization process. It's not something new. And I think a lot of historians like J.C. and Stephen has already written about the, today we're not talking about textile, but textile also had the criminalization process in Pondicherry, but we're not talking about textile. We're not talking too much about textiles today because we can't talk about everything and we'd love to, though textiles, we are very interested in textiles. And then again, here also the porcelain, the China you're showing, that was from the Chinese, sorry, from the Dutch who imported China from different parts, and they have this Arturie de Sur décor, I don't know if you can say that in English. It's basically a workshop for over glazing. Over glazing, exactly. So that's only in 1610. So it means like 60 years before the French established Delos. So this China was brought to Pondicherry when they had this Arturie de Sur décor and then send them to Europe. So you can only say that already it was a content zone. Well, I mean, I think it would be important to clarify exactly what one means by a contact zone. I'm going to do that, if I may, because it's a very precise, I'm using the term in a very precise way. And by contact zone, actually this is a term that one borrows from Mary Louise Pratt, her very important book, quite a classic now called Imperial Eyes, where she, she offered this concept. By contact zone, she says, I use to I use this phrase to refer to the space of Imperial encounters, the space in which the people's geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other and establish ongoing relations, usually involving conditions of coercion radical and intractable conflict. A contact perspective emphasizes how subjects get constituted in and by their relations to each other. It treats the relations among colonizers and colonized or travelers and travelese that's her term, not in terms of separateness, but in terms of co presence interaction interlocking understandings and practices, and often within radically relations of power. So I think I find this term contact zone actually really useful to understand and map, literally, what's going on in a place like Montecherry. It's absolutely right that you say or you remind us that you know, this this are you can do an air, you know, in the classical period, you know, already, there was evidence as archaeological evidence of Romans, you know, coming and of course, in everybody knows that Tamil literature has this idea of the foreigners. This idea of contact with the classical world of the Mediterranean is not at all new or surprising. And as you also pointed out or reminded us earlier when you started talking about the Chettiers. We have the Chettiers trading during the Tola period, you know, again, we don't have for the Europeans for the Chettiers to get active. But I think what happens is that when the Europeans arrive, one after the other, looking for, you know, basis looking to and also in competition with each other, which is why you have the Portuguese are hanging around then the Dutch appear, then the French then the Dutch overtake right there's a period with the Dutch overthrow the French and then they come the French come back. Am I not right. Yeah, exactly. So there is it's very fluid, very volatile. I mean, people are accustomed to thinking of monetary. People think oh yes, there's British India and then the French India and of course monetary French India. But actually French India itself is not really just just India, the Indians and the French, I mean there are all these other powers also, you know, jockeying for position and control. And I think the evidence of that is as in the material space and site is is as kind of shall we say all encompassing as the town plan of Pondicherry itself, which Delosha has conclusively proven is actually a Dutch, you know, the Dutch laid it like that not the French. And then of course you have what happens in the town what happens in the circulates porcelain, which indeed has to be repackaged in Pondicherry through a workshop that reformulates it and ships it out to, you know, to Europe, you use the word transit space. And I think that definitely is that's that's idea of places that Pondicherry as hubs or nodes, you know, in a web, connecting the eastern most part of the Indian Ocean, all the way to the black Atlantic textiles tells that story very true. But I think I, I am really more interested in and of course so are you in the work you do in thinking about what happens when culture coagulates, you know, and sits in the site as, as this, as practice says the space of imperial. We live, I think history in Indian Ocean centric histories have taught a lot about flows and we've learned a lot about flows but I think that's why we like the work of Liza so much we must also think about things about sites you know where these things took on new shape and new forms. I think that's why contact zone is important because it, it kind of narrows our perspective down to an actual space where these interactions can happen which then Pratt talks about. And through these interactions. There's like new culture, right. And that's also what your book, you are interested in somehow capture the product of these interactions. Whether it's through groups of people or the, the things they do you know, do you want to tell us a little bit about how you, what you, what you write about in the thing I about create people of monetary because in a way people often ask is this realisation the same as being cruel. What do you feel. Now but it's interesting because you know. I like the way that you talk about it can be done. Yeah, yeah, madam, don't don't tell us the rosary. And I recommend you already when we talk about I recommend you. Joe Dubreau, who was the first guy who did research on I recommend you, who did the first archaeological site. He was from West Indies. And he says, on the sherry, aletropical ala crayon. So use the word crayon already by Joe Dubreau. Though, you know, he didn't know what it was, but it's interesting that he could see the similar similarities between the French and West Indies, what he comes from, and to the Pondicherry culture, where he lived and he was a professor in a college colonial. And then he became. He was a amateur archaeologist. And then but the camera is is is what he called is his research was very, very important for the for Pondicherry, because people didn't know I can do before you. Okay. So that's very interesting to note that even she both you guys says, Pondicherry is crayon. And then again come back to the people as okay or a buck real that I'm talking in talking about my book. It was also very important for me to show that Pondicherry was not just the French people and the indigenous people. There were some people in between, which is totally neglected in the history of literature or even in the historical books because Creole, they are not mentioned but they mentioned it different names that mentioned as topos. Yeah. When it topos, we don't really know if they were crayon, you know, they were like the mixed groups. So that's why it was important for me to have that creole word into my novel because I understood that those these people in between, they are very fascinating they're very interesting. And so the Oak Creole as I explained my book, they are the community of people born only from the French to Indians, only French. So the buck real is the other community, which people were born from the rest of European, like Portuguese, Danish, Dutch name, name them, you know, Irish, Scottish, everyone, and with the local people so that is the buck real and Oak real the other community there. And again, the buck real speak in a very, very distinct, distinct way of language, which it just called Creole actually, the Creole Pondicherry, it's called the Pondicherry Creole. So this is what I was interested. And you were interested because the first time you see that the Creole word is used in Indian, in a French book, but talking about India. Yes, absolutely. I mean, if you if you if you ask me again what were the things when I read the deny the book, and what I do, what made me really immediately, just like Wow, this is what I'm looking for. In my hand, it was the presence of a Creole, a distinct Creole community that would who are pointing out you were, you have a character who's very important in your novel called Louth, who is a buck real woman as a narrator. You intervene into your narrative, and you tell the readers the difference between the Oak Creoles and the buck reals because of course nobody you expect quite rightly that people don't know anything about all this. And you also put some very typical modes of speaking into the character's mouth Louth's mouth so that it's been observed by other critics that yours is perhaps the only book so far where Pondicherry Creole actually finds a voice in a character's mouth. Interestingly enough, though, I am also equally interest, I was also equally taken by your account of say the furniture the Bureau of the Chettiar now the Chettiar is not a Creole person, we saw the picture of the Chettiar. I mean, you know, the Chettiar's wherever they went, including, of course, we have since found they are exceptional but in general, even in Indochina, they were very distinct because they maintained the traditional modes of dressing, they refused to wear the hat and the and the and the browsers, you know, so the Chettiar's remained very conservative on the face of it and very endogamous and very closed, but they look at the habitus, you know, so even racially they did not get Creole become Creoles, but their living space was somehow generalized and the furniture was an example of a very good illustration of that. So for me, I think what was interesting is that in your novel, there was evidence of a writer from Pondicherry responding to these two different but related phenomena, the existence of a Creole community and the existence of a Creoleized Habitus. And of course the two are connected because look at this amazing picture that you found for us. We've got the chair, which for me is the Creoleized Habitus and the woman who is the Creole woman because she is called Alice De Rosario. De Rosario. And everybody will know that De Rosario of course is a Portuguese, is a Lusso, Portuguese derived last name. And this is the giveaway that she's a Bar Creole person because as you pointed out, are the Bar Creole the lower Creole so to speak the little Creoles were the were those who mingled and mixed with a whole bunch of anybody. Not French. Yeah, but not French. Who were of course by a certain moment in Pondicherry's history the kind of like the they were they were on top of the social, you know they had everything had organized itself in that fashion, but before the French assume that position in the hierarchy. There was a lot of volatility the same volatility that we saw in the fragments of porcelain but the Dutch brought the Dutch town plan, etc. Similarly, if you look at Pondicherry Creole, it is full of Portuguese words, as we have also studied names as well the surnames betray that Portuguese element De Rosario. And a lot of people in this and the audience would recognize or remember that even switching back to Bengal. De Rosio, our poet of young Bengal, who was thoroughly creolized in my opinion and Creole was also the family name was Rosario was De Rosario, and they changed it to De Rosio because they wanted to also disassociate themselves from that idea of the bar Creole, which was not just noticeable in Pondicherry, but already in Calcutta in Cochin and so on. And that's another story we may want to go into it if people have comments and questions we want to get back to this idea of the Creole leaders that crystallizes around this Creole community and we see sort of very interestingly kind of coming together in these people's in this, you know, now I want to start moving towards the end because we are almost at the very close to our 45 minutes. I want us to move quickly further to the fact that Ari, you have pointed out to me, a certain interesting class of material cultural kind of evidence for this creolized habitus. This is the most famous furniture called Swami Furnitures, which was made almost at the end of the 18th century and beginning of 19th century, like for example that for the first, the bed you showed that it is 1909. This one is from 1909, which now is in possession of my very good friend Kumar Ananda. Actually, this piece is for sale. So people are interested, they can buy it. So this is Swami Furnitures, this again you can see, you know, the entire carving, the designs and everything is Indian, but of course the bed, as we call it, is typical European. And this is exactly what happened when French people came and settled down in Pondicherry. In the beginning they thought that the Indian aesthetic or furniture or houses, they were not very aesthetically for their taste. You know, they just disregarded for a long time. Then slowly they got more and more interested and they found out, no, we cannot just leave side by side, but we having our own furniture and they having their different stuff. So they meshed together and they found this new style of furniture. Not only furniture, when you go to Pondicherry, the buildings, the houses, they are all creolized. There's French element and the Indian element, which merged inside, which gave a totally new... And in fact, we will go a step further because we also, and this can be seen, I think in some of the details of this furniture, there is also a Southeast Asian element, which comes in via those... who have been traversing the Eastern Indian Ocean space, as we know ever since the Cholas. So this is the way we retool notions or theories of creolization to fit the peninsular context of a place like Pondicherry and indeed of India. There are far more elements than just binaries between whether we talk about binaries of ethnicity or race, or binaries of power, such as masters and the enslaved. We have, for example, very prominent role played by merchants. And we also have, because of that prominent role, a geographic space which is drawing in different kinds of cultural elements and swirling them in this enclave, in this pressure cooker of an enclave. To create, to produce these sorts of things. I mean, of course, furniture doesn't just stand by itself, it lives in a habitus. And this, I think, is a very interesting example of how a shared taste is built up, right? Exactly. See, it's interesting, you know, because this belongs to the one of the governor of Pondicherry, Mr. Godard. And you see now, it's on sale in Paris, close to, you see, this is very interesting. Kumar, the friend I'm talking, is selling that bed, the Swami furniture bed. And now he's going to buy this entire salon for himself. For himself, wow. Get me an invitation to Kumar's home. If enjoy using the furniture as a guest. Because I remember when I sent this picture to you, I also sent to him. He said, wow, I was not aware about this salon. Then he said, so he immediately contacted people, so he's negotiating with them to get this entire salon for himself. I think, Ari, this is a very good way to start bringing the matter towards our final, the final few things we want to say in the talk before handing over to Liza. This very striking example, we would say, of creolized furniture, you know, Swami furniture, creolized furniture, which is a material, cultural, real-world equivalent of the kinds of fictional things you're doing in your novel. Okay, this furniture used to belong to the family of one of the governors of Pondicherry. Now it has been bought by your friend, a Franco-Tamil person like yourself, Kumar Ananda. I mean, this is a post-colonial twist to the tale. And I think I want to ask you a little bit, to tell us a little bit about who is interested anymore in Swami furniture and why? Yeah. So talking about the post-colonial twist, we started with the van de Tri, which the French people never managed to make it happen. Ravi Viswanathan, who is a Franco-Pondicherry, living in Singapore, is the guy who is behind the entire wine business in India. So he brought back what the French people couldn't do in the 16th century or 17th century. Ravi Viswanathan did that 20 years back. So this is again the post-colonial twist that we are talking, Kumar Ananda, Ravi Viswanathan. So these are the people. So coming back to who are these people who are interested, it's new because since Pondicherry has become a big tourist destination, there are people from the Ashram, people from Auroville, and also like the common people living in Pondicherry, slowly they discover this old colonial furniture as you call it because it's also big business. There's another interesting young French guy called Vincent Rois, who lives five kilometers from Auroville, but he's not from Auroville, who is replicating this furniture and selling all over the world. And to end, which again interestingly, the last merchant who is shop, who is selling this furniture in France, they are in Marseille and is an Armenian family. Fascinating. Well, we didn't get to get to the Armenians, but I just want to show this last slide before we start wrapping up. I want to bring this new kind of memory work around commodification of heritage, which we see in the way this furniture is being used. On the one hand, we've got people who are perhaps it would be interesting to think about why someone like Kumar Ananda would have these massive things in his home, but also there is a lot of interest from hotels, from hoteliers, you know, who want to recreate a certain ambience back in Pondicherry for tourists to come and enjoy. And so there is a whole way in which in the post colonial period we are somehow remembering that creolized past, which for other reasons has been marginalized and forgotten. I know that Liza wants to ask us a few questions about that so I won't go into too much into that now. But I want to close by taking us back to your novel. Because in your novel, let's not forget that even if you're doing something similar as Kumar Ananda is doing and trying to buy back that furniture, you're trying to write back, you know, by putting this Chettiar furniture in there. In your novel, the Chettiar Bureau has a very unfortunate life. It does, it's too big, and it's too massive and it can't leave the house and it gets stuck inside the house. And not only that, the keys that the master craftsman, the Telugu guy used to unlock the many drawers that created the cylindrical bureau has been lost and nobody can open any drawers anymore. Obviously as a literary critic, I'm going to be quite perplexed, quite intrigued by what does it mean psychoanalystically that this thing that you spend so much time recreating lovingly is then kind of stuck inside the house. And if these drawers can't be opened, it seems a very hopeless situation. Can you, can you, can you tell us, I mean, what do you, what happened? My dear collaborators, I have no idea why I choose to give that faith to that bureau. And I say this psychoanalytical process that only you guys literary critic and do. Now you know me closely, you might find the mystery behind that. I think the mystery also, the mystery also lies in this other very humble version of the bureau, the buffet, which we see the second photo on the side. There's a grand bureau there, and there's the simple and humble one which in Bengal we call the meat safe actually, which is a very again, a creolized piece of furniture in certain homes. It's the place before refrigeration used to keep cakes or pies or these sorts of things in the kitchens. And it also occupies a very important part in your novel emotionally because that's where the young boy learns to read Tamil because the shelves of the bureau aligned with Tamil newspapers. So there's quite a lot going on in your in your novel, I think about the emotional place that all these furnitures that come out of the creolized material culture of monetary is not just creolized there's a hope that it might be creolizing. You know, there's a hope that these, it is not a relegate, not something relegated or reified in the past. The stuck bureau perhaps is a, is that lament, you know, but somehow in inscribing it in your novel. There's a hope that that might be released that which is stuck may somehow get unstuck, you know, and maybe the work we are doing on the thin night creole, which I know lies I want to talk to us about is a way releasing the, the, the, the, the stuck and reified creole object into a more dynamic creolizing present and future. Anything more to add before we hand over to. That's exactly what you do. No, the memory of the future. Yeah, the memory of the future that's what I did say about about creolization as a process. So I think we want to leave it at that. We want to hand over to our host and our respondent and over to you guys now. Thank you so much, Ananya and Ari that was fascinating and I would now like to invite Professor Liza Oliver to have a conversation with our speakers. And I also wanted to remind our audiences that if you want to put in your questions, please do it now and I'll take them in order. Stop screen sharing if I may Liza, are you okay with that so that we can just. Hi there. So thank you so much, Ari and Ananya for that really, really interesting collaborative discussion about creolizing cultures and Pondicherry I have a few questions that I wanted to ask you, but I first have to go back to that desk again because I know it's so fascinating when reading your passages that Ananya put up on the screen I was struck by, I was struck by a few things and the first is that reasoner who was I'm not he's German but I know he was working in French I'm not exactly a reasoner or reason a he was he was, you know, it's interesting because on one hand you have a telugu carpenter who is emulating this kind of desk that was made by reasoner. And then on the other hand, he himself was somebody who was emulating often Chinese inspired lacquerware in some of his pieces that was coming from boats that first stopped in Pondicherry and that then shipped these things into France, such that they were called by the mid 18th century Corum and Dells because there was so much sort of confusion about their geographical point of origin. And so in this story you have, you have not just a kind of unidirectional emulation of the telugu carpenter wanting to outdo and rise in his piece but you also have a kind of emulation that follows the trade routes that makes Pondicherry such a creolizing place to begin with. And, you know, oftentimes art historians throw throw around words like style and influence and I think that this example really shows the way that these concepts can be outsourced and that they can, you know, that they are really grounded in very real concrete situations and dynamics between people such that the desk actually becomes its own kind of context zone for people who never actually met in person, but who nonetheless meet through this kind of stylistic interchange and competition that they have among them. And so that sort of leads me to to my first question for you generally about material culture and the work you're doing as an art historian that sort of the foundation of what I focus on but you both have an additional layer that you add to it, approaching it through literature through a kind of logo centric approach so you're taking material things and then again filtering it through something that is about language ultimately and I'm wondering just how it is that you were brought to material culture as such an integral way of understanding creolizing cultures through literature because for you Ananya it seems it may be a sort of extension of the performance, the performativity that is an aspect of your research. For you Ari it seems that memory is playing, playing an integral role in your incorporation of material culture so I was wondering if you could both begin by just talking a little bit more about that. Ari why don't you start and then I'll. Oh yeah you know I'm you are the theorist so you theorize what I say. So me not going, me not good in theorization. No for me it's mostly about memories as I said, it's not only memories it's also change the narrative, change the focus on the narration when we talk about literature about about Pondicherry, you know when 350 years people the French people never wrote about Pondicherry in that way, because they were Pondicherry in the, in the, as I said the Roman colonial the colonial novels. It's only about the white town Europeans living in the white town okay sometimes they mingle with people in the black town but there's nothing in between does nothing, you know, and even the detail or any kind of narration that they don't go detail into the black town. They are talking about mostly about the white town. So I wanted to change the course of narration and say there's other things happening in the black town, which is more interesting. There's not only another pillar, there are other people were more far more interesting and then another pillar, even though that another pillar can be interested for people. So that's why my, my, my idea of introducing the chetias and the Creole is, is made purposely in order to decolonize the literature, the Pondicherry literature. So that is my personal and soul, soul aim. And to be honest, I didn't know there was a material culture in Pondicherry before I started to write that piece about the furniture. And only why, as I said it took me three months to write that, that paragraph, that only when I did my research I understood the different layers of material culture existing in Pondicherry. So that opened my eye. And then I met Ananya. So she told me many times that's, that's how I got introduced to material culture. No, no, I think that's not entirely accurate because all along you were also when we met, of course you had written that the Nayan that was written, but you were now also looking a lot at the textiles and everything and you got to know. What I say, what I say Ananya was not aware of material culture as an academic discipline. In that sense. Yeah, but also, I mean, I am, I am also in a way. Well, as you know, Liza, you've obviously perhaps from this position of an art historian wonder what on earth are all these literary critics doing now with things you know, there has been this material turn, as we know, in, in, in humanities, whether the historians who are looking at the flow and the movement of goods and obviously then we as readers and critics are attention gets drawn, you know, as Supriya Chaudhary herself said, what are all these things doing in the living rooms of the 19th century novels, and then we see, oh wow, they're also there in the 19th century Bengali novel, or, you know, so there is obviously a very rich vein of things that literally stuff to analyze and to give give depth and new shed new light on the way we want to understand what is it that we are studying. In this case, creolization is what I'm looking at. And I did find material culture to be very, very fascinating area where a lot of abstract, a lot of abstract ideas can really, you know, congeal and make us see things very clearly, because in my work on dance, I already as you pointed, I referred, I started moving into performance into kind of embodiment. So the written word already became kind of released from the confines of the text and started kind of re-infusing with the energy of the body, you know, and that's what, in a way also reminded me, that's the energy of Creole languages, for example, they are very defiantly oral and embodied, so you've got to be attentive to that dimension. But when I was studying, for example, the mando of Goa, I couldn't study that Creoleized dance and music form, as I came to understand it, without thinking about all the material cultural stuff that accrues around it. The costumes that people are wearing, then the costumes that houses have entered to talk to people, the things in their homes, the kind of furniture which is very similar to some of the Swami furniture that exists. So, you know, all this made me realize that Creoleization can't exist only on the level of words and language, it's a habitus and so, but I have to be very careful. I am not an art historian, certainly not. I can't, I need the expertise of the art historian to understand why a writer like Ari is finding it an important thing to spend three months on writing about a piece of furniture, which in a way it's not his job to analyze, it's my job to analyze. I'm doing the writing, and you know, he can answer my questions. But to understand that I have to go to the new studies, the new material, materialists turn, look at the work of the art historian, look at Indian, Indian Ocean histories, look at, understand who a Czech DR is to kind of work out why is that figuring in this way. So, but I would also say it's memory, because every time I went to a house in Goa, every time I see, every time I speak to someone like Ari, I started realizing that I, my, my life in Calcutta, where I grew up, was very, was linked. We also shared in the Creoleized Habitus. So, suddenly there's a kind of feeling that, oh my God, I know those chairs. I know that meat save. I know we may call it different things, but I know so I'm somehow part of the same story I'm trying to tell. So it's very, you know that in material culture has a way we sit in those chairs, literally, you know, so then as a critic, I want to think about how the description of somebody sitting in that chair or using such a bureau interpolates me as a critic into that how do I bring my subjectivity back to it. We're writing about Creole India's not just about Creole Pondicherry, or you know, Goa or Bengal we're seeing wow these things circulate and linked up. So that's why I think material culture is quite important in that way but it's always going to be a secondary order, you know, always going to then put back into the text to see what is it doing there. Right. Great. Thank you. So I also wanted to ask you about the collaboration that the two of you have. Let's see, let's tonight Creole, which is something that I've watched a few times on your Facebook live feed and I've been thoroughly enjoying it. The work that you're doing and we've already talked a little bit about this is of political importance at this moment in time and it's about pushing back against essentializing homogenizing narratives of identity. It's going to become louder and louder across many parts of the globe in recent decades, and at the same time your project is one that is historical. And I'm sure you're completely aware you are completely aware of the complexities, the violence, the power differentials that went hand in hand with the historical periods that you you discuss. The question to you is how it is, what role do power asymmetries and violence play in your theorization of creolization. How do you do justice to the heterogeneity and to the kind of multiculturalism of the periods you're considering, while also not falling into the trap of idealizing those periods for the sake of responding to this current political moment. And that's really an important question that allows us to clarify position. Again, Ari, I don't know if you want to talk to any of them. I can I can start and then you can you can end. Yeah, because as everybody knows, the Tina is mine, the Creole is yours. That's what I become the Tina Creole. The Tina as physical space existed as a book it existed. I invited to come and sit on my dinner but you came, not just empty ended, but you came with something which is the, the theory of creolization. Since also we also share same values about living in a harmony society and where and fighting for this kind of cultural hegemony, and also trying to impose one way of thinking, or one way of dressing, one way of eating, one way of behaving and one way of loving. So we want to break all this thing, all these ideas, and as we always says, the Tina Creole is a place is a space of resistance. It's simple as that. We are here to resist. Okay, so to just elaborate on that a little bit more. And take the idea of resistance back straight to your question. How do you resist out of an unequal out of out of out of a historical moment which was fundamentally one of the asymmetrical power relations, you know, because how, I mean, when you go. Even classic theories of creolization, you know, when we just look at the so called master state dialectic in a plantation society would have room for thinking about creolization itself as an act of resistance, because it comes out of the ability to absorb the external influence right back with the body and say, we are doing our own thing with this and this is how we remake the materials into, and we rewrite the script, you know, if you want to use a logo centric metaphor again but you know, or we re-perform the dance or whatever, you know, so this is my research on embodied culture really taught me these valuable lessons as to how really in the act of doing itself, you know, you resisted, because you did something, you know, and even Ashil Bende in Necropolitics has that line which is very powerful. He says that the gesture of self styling, you know, even in the, even when everything, every ounce of sovereignty was taken away from the enslave, they still had the gesture. So you know, in that moment I find, I always found the most powerful spark of resistance. When we then come to thinking about unfolding this very, very simplified shall we say schema of a master slave dialectic, somehow giving birth to resistance which is realized in the act of being performed or uttered and so on. But you know, that's why it's important to see how does this kind of a theories stand up when you take it to a space like Montecherry, where the number of actors can be multiplied, the power dynamics are different, the asymmetries are different, this is not a settler, you know, a plantation society, and there are lots of intermediaries with different shale positions on the power, you know, brokering such as the checkers. So here I think the entire notion of resistance of who is powerful, who is resisting, who is disempowered becomes quite complex, I think becomes infinitely more complicated and gives us therefore the analyst more grist to the mill you know, where is the resistance and what is being resisted. I think it's important to also be quite, look quite squarely in the eye, the role of the caste system in intervening within the creolizing process. You know, any, any comment on creolization in the index, peninsula index space has to take into account the role of caste. That's why I thought it was important, we didn't have time to go into Arizon subjectivity here, but I do think it's important that if we go back to the author, Ari Gautier, he is not a Bach Creole, he is not a Chettiar, but you are a Franco Tamil, you know, person who traces your, your linear back or your subjectivity back to the moment of so called renouncing, you know, which was attached to either a very high caste group, the Pariyas or a very, very low caste group, the abjected so called Pariyas. So when you see the spectrum, you immediately see, wow, you've got a creolizing historical dynamic and monetary set into motion by the act of renouncing, you know, but the people participating typically are either very high caste or extremely low caste, you know, already, you know, the matter is very complex. Then you've got somebody therefore like Ari, who is identifying and or making prominent that descent from the Pariyas Franco Tamil renouncing line, who is taking the whole matter into his control and creating a space where the Chettiar and his furniture are being, you know, manipulated by the author. This is power and the French language itself. So, you know, I think this itself is an actor. This is where literature as an actor of resistance, the way you write what you write about as an actor of resistance. This is how the literary critic I think in hand, you know, in collaboration with the author can shed light on some of these complicated manifestations of creolization in the index space, which really are a bit more granular. We have to look at the granularity, we have to look at the scale, we have to go a bit lower and see what is going on to be able to recreate that map of resistance, you know, where collaboration has also to be acknowledged different kinds of collaborations, negotiations, capitulations. And again, that's how the literature, the work of literature can make us aware, you know, that there are all sorts of positions that people have to take inadvertently or knowingly. And then the author is the inheritor of all that, which is why the bureau is stuck perhaps, you know. Yeah, so I hope that answered the question a little bit. We've got to be careful in taking the models of creolization over to the peninsular space. That's the bottom line really, but doesn't mean we can't use it and refine it. Thank you. Thank you, Ananya and Ari, Analyza. I think we should start taking the questions now. We already have four of them. So, I'll take them in order. The first one is from the use of the term Creole seems to mean different things for different people. In Sierra Leone, the Creole are regarded as all the non-indigenous people who were reintroduced to free town after the evolution of slavery in the Americas. So by your definition to be Creole, you have to have mixed biologically and culturally with the French. Okay, Ari, shall I take this? But I'll refer to what you said about the Oak Creoles and Bar Creoles too. I think this is Nandi. Nandi, it's really important that you mention Sierra Leone because it's a very interesting parallel to a place like Montecherry, because again, it's Sierra Leone itself, especially free town, it's a peninsula, it's an enclave on the west coast of Africa. If we go back to what Liza was saying about how even the cabinets that the Telugu cabinet maker was emulating were the product of certain flows of goods and culture before the French came to India. The whole process by which Sierra Leone was established is something similar because we already, we cannot, it's just thinking of a one way flow of people from Africa and Europe to the Americas. And then Creoleization happens, it just doesn't work. They then start spiraling and then a place like Sierra Leone emerges, you know, where people are resettled as you say. Now, they were Creole because they were already mixed, and they mixed further with the local people who are already there with other Europeans. I mean, we really want to say that to be Creole is not necessarily you have to be mixed with one kind of person only or two, like A and B mixed to become Creole. We are more interested in a multiplicity of influences. On the biological level, yes, there is a, there is a way to think about biological, biologically created Creole communities who remember that fact, whether in their surnames or whether in their myths of, myths of Genesis and, you know, and community formation. And in Ponticherry's case, we have two such groups, the high Creoles, the Oak Creoles and the bar Creoles or the low Creoles. And in that case, these people remember themselves as the high Creoles so called, are the ones who were only mixed with the French, and the low Creoles are the ones who are mixed with everything else. I say so called because you know, as all of us know what human beings do in intimacy is really far beyond the policing of these definitions. So these are just for social control, these definitions, but within those definitions, yes, Creole means biological mixing Creole lies means different ways in which different groups of people attach themselves to that culture produced through biological mixing, and that becomes like spread out in a variety of ways through habitus or how we live. So I hope that that makes some sense, but certainly Sierra Leone is a very important example, and a parallel example to a place like Ponticherry is a little space of creolization, not an insular space. So, so thanks for that. Anything to add Ari. No. Okay, all right. Please, you know you can always shut me up. Thank you. The next question is from Emma Alexander. I have a connection with postcolonial diasporas and how much they ignore or reconnect with realized cultures. I see so many attempts to reify or ignore mixture of cultures while in the process of actually realizing again in diaspora. That's a great question again Emma, I think maybe you can talk to some examples of this which we've noticed, perhaps ourselves. If you were to talk about the, for example, the Franco Pondicherry community as a diasporic community living, living in France or other part of the world, why other part of the world as you as we know that the Pondicherry and were sent all over the French Empire from Indochina to Africa to Caribbean to Newell Caledoni. So this diasporic community when they move, they also get creolized where they go. Yes. Be it in Newell Caledoni like my father in Madagascar for example. So you know it's again creolizing, they're re-creolizing the creolization already. So it's keep on having a snowball effect wherever they go, they create, they keep on creating something new out of what they carry as the cultural baggage already from Pondicherry. And this is very fascinating because that's exactly what I'm doing in my next novel, which is called Pondicherry and Saga Creole, why I call it in Saga Creole because of exactly what I'm talking. And even Jessica Namakal as I said, how the marriage, the way the subjects are moving from one place to another and keep on coming back with a totally different creolization process. And the family I'm talking is a family of Franco Pondicherry, who are moved the entire French Empire from Africa to Newell Caledoni to Indochina and the family itself get creolized. So this is very something in common but already in my family, that's what we live. And I think Emma is quite right also in pointing out that sometimes quite often there is a backlash and people don't want to, while they are in the processes, they don't want to acknowledge the processes, you know what I mean. Absolutely. This is quite common, this is absolute, so Emma you're quite right when you say that the post-colonial diasporas, however creolized they may be themselves or however re-creolizing processes they may be caught up in, they may feel obliged to detach or remove themselves from those processes and declare themselves to be quote unquote pure. For instance, this is why they might seek to reconnect back to each other. For example, we know that there is a lot of people in Guadeloupe and Martinique, who are of Franco, who are of Tamil origin, which is perhaps left a little vestige in their surnames, but they have on the course of, as a theorist of American, one can totally see they're totally creolized, but they would resist that because they feel they've lost their identity in the creolizing mix and to know who they are, they have to almost step out of that mix and reconnect with some forces that can help them understand what the Indian part of themselves is. Very unfortunately politically, this often takes them straight into the arms of various majoritarian forces, who take advantage of that very human desire to know who am I, and we did with all kinds of other kind of, you know, very, very streamlined and very simplified tales of belonging and identity. And this is exactly why on the necril we want to open up those confusions and complications again and show to people that when you connect with each other, you're actually connecting as creolized people. People who have creolized in different ways and it's okay. There is a valorization of that, nothing to be embarrassed about or ashamed about. So we do provide a way I think in which a lot of people are feeling comfortable with that word and claiming that word and what it stands for without feeling. In fact, Ari, didn't you tell me that some people that you know yourselves who are of monetary creole families are now saying we are creole, I mean, previously they would not have said that. I mean, Yeah, you know, it's it's quite interesting also because you know, as I said, the Franco-Ponetran community was been moving around the French Empire, like for example, a place like Guadeloupe, where the clear distinction between the Afro-descendants and the Indian labor would don't want to be considered as creole. You see, they don't want to enter the creole world at all. So there is a clear distinction. Sorry. Even though they're completely in it. Yes, they're completely in it. They want to isolate themselves from the creole thing. But that pattern, it's not all over the plantation history because in Reno, something different in Mauritius is different. But again, like for example, like in Guadeloupe I've seen, so there's the Afro-descendants and then the Indian labor descendants who don't want to be seen as creole. And then you have this Pondicherry Franco-Ponetran who are living in Guadeloupe, they don't want to get assimilated to the Indian labor either, even though they are Pondicherry, they're the millions. You see, then again, that's why nobody wants to enter that creole world, even though they are living inside. And different layers of non accepting or not want to be part of that, but again be part of that. Yeah. I mean, so in short, Emma, again, this is the typical classic situation, whereas analysts of culture and history, we observe certain things, but people in that space may not want to identify with those terms. And that's fine. That's their prerogative and we must be delicate with feelings of people. We can't just say, well, you know, but at the same time, I think we do have a duty to point out that this is okay. You know, when they see an author writing a novel about creole Pondicherry in all its glory connected to the diaspora, there's a whole element of the narrative in Ari's story in the deny about how the Guadeloupe connection happens historically. So what I mean is that when they read this, there is a way of feeling valorized. You're like, oh, my story's in there and it's okay. You know, so perhaps literature has a role to play in reminding people there's more than one way of configuring identity and belonging, right. So we can of course, Emma, you and I, we can, all of us can continue talking about this back behind back channel, but it's a great question. Thanks. Thank you. I think we're running out of time. So I'll take the last question, which is by Millen. He says, what are your thoughts on material culture that is not manifested in the sensible or palpable, but is reflected in the intelligible. I must say I'm a little confused by that question. I'm not quite. Are you, are you confused too, Ari? Maybe you could you could you perhaps elaborate what do you mean by the intelligible. For me, to be honest, material culture is that which is sensible and palpable. Maybe this is a very old fashioned definition of material culture, but that is my definition of material culture, and it coexist on a spectrum with embodied culture, which can also be, you know, I mean it's material in as much as it emanates from the body. It doesn't mean that when he talks about intelligible. I'm not sure it would be great to get a clarification, but maybe while if Millen this clarifying for us, I'll, if I may, Priyanka, I'm just going to go quickly to Esha's question. Do you want me to read it out? Yes, please. Yes. So Esha says Ananya and Ari, thank you so much for that amazing talk. I was wondering if you could elaborate a bit more on the fractal geometry of the vinyl trellis and how it might come to function as a contact zone within a contact zone to reactivate a memory of the future How might such a reactivation impact the contrapuntal interplay of the trans-oceanic and literal vectors to pave the path for a creolizing history of water? Ari, I'll give you. You know me and Esha, we are not friends when it comes to questions. Ari is just teasing Esha. Esha always asks such wonderful questions that we then need to have fractally open out another poll talk. So I'm just going to answer very, very briefly. Yeah. I mean, I think we can go back to all the things we said. Yes, the vinyl trellis is fractal in the sense that it's a self, what is fractal? It's a pattern that repeats a version of itself infinitely. So it is fractal and it is in that sense, creolization, theorists of creolization are in pretty much agreement that creolization is also there's a fractal element to it when you see how creolized culture reproduces itself. So of course, phenomenologically, when you see the vine on the trellis, it's a very clever observation, Esha, indeed, there is that connection through the fractal way of unfolding. You know, memory of the future, we could interpret that in hundreds of ways, but the very fact that today we have vines producing wine, I mean, in India, I think this is a memory of the future. The colonial vine on trellis disappeared, but its memory is reactivated in attempts today to create the creolized habitus in different ways. And I find a very powerful example of that if we depart from the vine but go to something parallel, the furniture, you know that Kumar Ananda, your friend, Arie, who is not a chatty, he's not from the governor's family. Somebody is using, or the furniture is getting replicated in different ways and reused in different ways, reactivated in different ways. This is the memory of the future that was already held in almost the DNA of that vine on the trellis which is fractal. And I think we'll reserve the trans-oceanic and littoral vectors for another day. Suffice it to say that trans-oceanic for us denotes all the cultural elements that are coming from across the Indian and Atlantic Ocean worlds, the bureau itself as an idea. And littoral is the ways in which this culture, creolizing and creolized moves up and down the coastlines, say between Pondicherry and Chandanagar, or between Pondicherry and Karekal, just to stick to the French enclaves. But when we have the Portuguese coming in Derozario, the surname moving from Cochin to Goa up to Calcutta to Pondicherry, that's the vector, that's the littoral vector, you know, the coastal vector. So we'll kind of keep it at that but definitely lots to say about all that that would take another hour at least. Just to finish that, sorry Priyanka, just to finish that exactly like what we talk about the wine and that's what I took the example of Ravi Vishwanathan. And that very few people know who is that. So he again took the idea of, I'm sure he knows about Vainu Three which was started in Pondicherry and Surat and different places. Another reason that he's also from Pondicherry is bringing back that wine culture back to India. So that is very symbolic, which is very interesting to note. I know we are running out of time but there's one, I will just give a one line answer to Jayanti Mehrotra who has asked is there a point where one can depart from the label which is an imposed one. I think I empathize with you there, perhaps you're talking about Criola as a label, we are always in labels. If you want to look for some indigenous word, which exists in Indian languages we are using we are thinking a lot about the word Paranky, for example, these days which is a Tamil and Malayalam version of Phirangi, which is the way in which these people like Alice Rosario would have been called, you know, in Cochin at least, they would be called the Paranky. It's a label, somebody is imposing a labels are always there associated with the active imposition whether we are imposing it or somebody else is imposing it. For us it's a heuristic. It's a device to understand and explicate cultural phenomena. It's not about putting people in boxes and leaving them there in prison so with the key lost. So hopefully that helps. Priyanka, over to you. Thank you Ananya Ari and Liza for that wonderful session today and thanks to our audiences for joining us tonight. Our next talk is next week, which is the 26th of July same time 530pm. We have Tvisha Singh from McGill University in Canada, who's going to speak on arguing for a feminine space, People's Theatre in Calcutta between 1940 and 1960, and the session would be chaired by Professor Shubha Basu from McGill University. Thank you again for that brilliant session and stay safe, take care and good night. Thank you.