Meet young and
dynamic writer Emma Dawson Varughese, from the ‘Postcolonial Studies Association’
family, who has come up with her latest book Genre Fiction of New India: Post-millennial receptions of
"weird" narratives, published
by Routledge. Her writings reveal
her immense love for regional narratives in the Indian context.
I sincerely hope Suneetha's interview with Emma would be an inspiration for my students who are presently doing their Paper on Postcolonial Studies in their MA English Programme at MCC.
An independent
scholar, who works around language, culture and literature, and looks into
‘World Englishes’, Emma’s first project was ‘Beyond the Post-Colonial’, an
interdisciplinary study challenging the orthodoxy of post-colonial literary theory.
Her interest in Indian writing in English is a long-standing one. In her book Reading New India (2013) which is a
cultural studies enquiry into post-millennial Indian Writing in English, she
largely approaches the topic with an emphasis on the sort of writing that's
being sold and read, irrespective of the reputation among the literary elite.
This work brings together Indian Englishes, the changing socio-culture dynamics
and the role of literature in English post-2000.
In a candid chat,
Emma Varughese opens up to Suneetha Balakrishnan on her latest book and her
love for Indian writing in English.
Suneetha: How did you go about powering your interest
in IWE to the point of a project on post-millennial Indian fiction in English?
Emma: I could see
from spending time in India, in particular, in leaving and returning to more
and more change that the fiction I was buying was somewhat in sync with these
changes. It was as I left Mumbai in 2009, that I knew that a book was needed to
capture this growing body of new writing in English from India. I also knew
that it needed to be a book which was settled as much as possible in India
whilst remaining accessible for readers outside of that market, to learn of new
trends in post-millennial writing. Reading New India is published by Bloomsbury
which has offices in the U.K. and India and this arrangement has always been
important to me as the book deals with many authors known within India but not
necessarily known outside of India. This book challenges the idea that Indian
literature is only that which is known within the U.S., U.K. (or Australia), I
think that it is time and more, that awareness of this body of new writing is
cultivated as widely as possible.
Suneetha: Could you talk a bit about your concluded
projects and forthcoming ones too?
Before Reading
New India, I completed and published an international, fieldwork-based
literary/cultural studies enquiry into the post-millennial literary scene in
English in Africa, Malaysia, Singapore and India (Beyond The Postcolonial,
Palgrave, 2012). This publication took many years to complete given that my
fieldwork covered Nigeria, Cameroon, Uganda and Kenya in Africa alone. In this
project, I was driven by the idea of ‘literature as data’. The fieldwork
involved sourcing new writing in the form of short stories in English(es) and
many of these were published in a series of anthologies of new writing. The
title story of the Ugandan collection is entitled ‘Butterfly Dreams’ and this
story made the shortlist of the Caine Prize in 2011. As a global cultural
studies scholar, I’m always interested in the conversations between literary
works (and their production) and society, most specifically contemporary
society and where the role of Englishes is at play, Beyond the Postcolonial
really engaged with this agenda and used empirical methods and grounded theory
to explore this literary scene.
Reading New India
was launched at the Jaipur Literature Festival in January 2013 and although I’m
still busy with follow-up work and conversations around this project, I am now
engaged in new activity. I’m currently writing on graphic novels in English(es)
from India, grown from the chapter on graphic novels (GN) in Reading New India.
I’m interested in the idea of the ‘perceived’ marginal form of the GN which in
turn, recounts ‘marginal’ experiences. The use of the term ‘marginal’ here is
used to represent various experiences and various semantics, as these
‘marginal’ experiences encompass subjects such as child abuse, terrorism and
untouchability. I’m also writing on science and faith in post-millennial Indian
fiction in English from India, using cultural studies approaches to analyse
works such as The Krishna Key (2012) and Bali and the Ocean of Milk (2011).
Here I am interested in ‘the popular and the peripheral’ in this contemporary
Indian literary production.
Suneetha: What were your methods and criterion in
identifying the authors for Reading New India?
Emma: This part
of the Reading New India project was almost empirical. I bought a lot of
writing in English and as I did so, I organised it in such as way on my
bookshelves that ‘groupings’ started to appear. Some of these groupings were
through genre and some by theme, moreover, they also dovetailed with
preoccupations of India post-millennium. The book moves from Urbanscapes, Young
India (including the topics of call centres and sexuality), Crime writing and
graphic novels to Chick Lit and fiction I have termed ‘Crick Lit’ and ‘Bharati
Fantasy’. It became clear that certain motifs of post-millennial India featured
in this collection of new writing, most notably in young India and the urban.
Alongside these themes, new genres and forms of expression have emerged post
millennium, such as graphic novels, crime fiction and a growing body of
narratives which draw on Hindu epics and mythology– I have discussed some of
the works in Reading New India in relation to issues of ‘reception’ in a
chapter section entitled: ‘Bharati fantasy or historical fiction?’ .
Suneetha: How influential is ‘changing India’ on
fiction?
Emma: Reading New
India (2013) certainly suggests that ‘changing India’ as you describe it, is
influential on fiction in English from India. In terms of production alone,
post-millennial India has seen a rise in publishing houses, printing and
production options, technology, skilled workforce and of course, marketing. In
terms of market, ‘changing India’ has, and continues to create markets of new
readers, ‘old’ readers with more disposable income and multifarious outlets of
book selling and buying. Since 2000, the opportunities for book purchasing have
increased (and changed) immensely, physical book stores, independent as well as
chain bookstores in malls and the like, as well as possibilities of buying
through online retailers which deliver the books to your door without charges.
The book catalogues of online booksellers from India are substantial and in
addition, book websites have grown and developed extensively, in particular
since the mid-2000s, online opportunities for browsing, purchasing and
reviewing have grown exponentially. We take all this for granted nowadays but
if we compare the book buying trends 15 years back, we really are able to take
stock of the impact of some of these developments.
Suneetha: How much does politics affect Indian Fiction
in English?
Emma: I suppose
politics affects everything in a sense, but I think it would be wrong to say
that there has been a real surge of Indian politico-narratives post millennium
in the sense that we might say there has been a surge in Chick Lit or romance
novels. There have been some novels that obviously connect with politics
demonstrably such as Chauhan’s Battle For Bittora (2010), but there are also a
significant number of narratives which deal with ‘political issues’ such as
corruption in society, nationalism, religion, violence and environment, these
include: The Man With Enormous Wings (2010), The Harappa Files (2011), Through
The Forest Darkly (2010), The Sound of Water (2008), Jimmy The Terrorist
(2010), Revolution Highway (2010), Lost and Found (2010), Kashmir Pending
(2007).
Suneetha: Is Indian Fiction in English on an upward
trend or a decline?
Emma: A.
Certainly post-2000 the publishing of Indian fiction in English is enjoying an
upward trend, but I wonder how that might be maintained. Anything that
continues to grow exponentially risks saturation, stagnation or general
overload, but this is a risk, not a given. Such environments can also lead to
increased creativity, license to experiment and can foster non-conformity. When
the scene is buoyant and sales are up, publishers can sometimes be more
inclined to take on a manuscript that would be otherwise perceived as ‘risky’
that is, in more difficult or austere times.
Suneetha: Is long or short fiction the strength here?
Emma: I do
recognise that currently long fiction dominates the literary scene in English
in India, although Anjum Hasan’s collection of short fiction, Difficult Pleasures (2012) does buck
that trend. It would be good to see short fiction being encouraged more,
possibly through creative writing programmes, publisher calls, literary prizes
or other ventures grown in the Indian context, especially for the graphic novel
scene. The urban seems to lend itself to the production of short fiction, that
is, collections of short stories such as Window-seat
(2009), Crowded Rooms (2010), Bangalore Calling (2011) and some
stories in Eunuch Park (2009), all of
these being single-authored collections. It is however, the Penguin First Proof
editions or The HarperCollins Book of New
Indian Fiction (2005) that comes to mind when we speak of short fiction. A
flick through First Proof however, reveals names of authors who have gone to be
published as novelists, very few of these have gone to be known for their short
fiction - FP1: Anuradha Roy, FP2: Chandrahas Choudhury, FP5: Vamsee Juluri as
examples - Prem Nath and Temsula Ao as obvious exceptions.
The short story
is not the only avatar of what might be considered ‘short fiction’. Omair Ahmad’s
the Storyteller’s Tale (2008) works
fantastically well as a novella, Sawian’s
Shadow Men (2010) is another recent novella that comes to mind and
interestingly, some of the publications in the more ‘popular’ Metro Reads present more as novellas. It
is often the parameters of publishing and literary awards which dictate the
trends and therefore, changing or usurping these boundaries might produce more
variety in both form and genre.
Image courtesy
hindu.com
bloomsbury.com
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