On "Unlearning Privilege" | A Cross-Cultural Comparativist Study of Ben Jonson and Athol Fugard ❤️

Ben Jonson & Athol Fugard

A Spivakian Comparativist Study

#onhisbirthdaytoday

This is the era of Comparative Literature, said Spivak, in her engaging book titled, Death of A Discipline, published in the year 2003, advocating for a genuinely global “new comparative literature.”

Moreover, she warns her readers on the ‘translation trap’ that she feels, is purely a “market-driven push” for massive anthologies of world literature in translation. That’s because she feels that, relying exclusively on translations can flatten the cultural and historical specificities of texts, making them easily consumable while ignoring the power dynamics of that language she warns.

Spivak believes that the importance of comparative literature lies in its potential to foster ethical cross-cultural encounters without committing “interpretative violence”.

And this requires the ‘death’ of the discipline of comparative literature as we have long known it thus far, and the ‘birth’ of a “new comparative literature,” in which the discipline is reborn - one that is not appropriated and determined by the market!

Also, Spivak argues that the discipline must move beyond its Eurocentric origins and resist being commodified by market-driven “world literature” anthologies.

In this regard, she introduces the concept of “transnational literacy” - the ability to read and understand the world in all its complex differences without imposing uniform Western frameworks or capitalist norms!

And for this, the comparativist must necessarily “unlearn their privilege”, says Spivak. Which means, instead of imposing Western theoretical models onto Third World texts or relying on “native informants,” the comparativist scholar must engage in deep “languaging” - the rigorous and consistent effort of learning vernaculars to engage with marginalised voices on their own terms.

Finally, Spivak highlights on the importance of the study of literature. To her, the real study of literature is deeply tied to one’s ethical and political responsibility. By engaging with marginalised voices and reading texts from the Global South on a “level playing field” with European classics, the academy can prevent the voices of the oppressed from being silenced or misrepresented.

On this note, we shall now engage with marginalised voices and reading texts from the Global South on a “level playing field” with European classics by doing a quick comparative reading of Ben Jonson and Athol Fugard!

Both were playwrights born on this particular day, 11th June, 360 years apart – one is an European classic, while the other is from the Global South!

Ben Jonson was born on 11th June 1572, while Athol Fugard was born exactly 360 years later on 11th June 1932.

Jonson is a towering figure in English Renaissance theatre while Fugard is a towering figure in South African theatre, famous for his powerful, anti-apartheid works.

Both Ben and Athol used the stage for providing their audience with a biting social commentary of their time. And what’s more? Both acted in their own plays as well.

Both playwrights used the stage as a surgical tool to satirise and to dissect the vices and the immoralities of their respective eras.

As much water has flown under the bridge on Ben Jonson, me thought of highlighting a few salients on Athol Fugard for us all from Gale’s Encyclopedia of World Literature.

Here goes –

Fugard credits his mother with teaching him to view South African society with a critical eye.

By the 1930s, legal and social discrimination was firmly in place against South Africans of non-European ancestry. After slavery ended there in 1833, blacks were required to carry identification cards, and in the early twentieth century, the Native Land Acts of 1913 and 1936 prohibited blacks from owning land in areas of white residence.

Only 13 percent of the land in South Africa was put aside for blacks, though they formed 70 percent of the population.

By the 1930s, Afrikaners - the more uncompromising supporters of segregation than English-speaking whites - began using the term apartheid to refer to their ideas of racial separation.

As a white child growing up in a segregated society, Fugard resisted the racist upbringing offered him, but could not escape apartheid’s influence. He insisted that the family’s black servants call him Master Harold, and one day, he spat in the face of Sam Semela, a waiter in the Fugard boarding house, who was the best friend he had as a child.

Fugard moved to England in 1959 to write, but his work received little attention there, and he realised he needed to work in the context of his home country.

South African apartheid policies were firmly in place, and blacks, coloureds, and Asians (a racial category added to apartheid laws in the 1950s) were fully, legally segregated from whites.

When he returned home, he completed his first and only novel. Tsotsi (1980) concerns a young black hoodlum who accidentally kidnaps a baby and is compelled to face the consequences of his actions. Fugard tried to destroy the manuscript, but a copy survived and was published in 1980.

While finishing Tsotsi, Fugard wrote his break through play, The Blood Knot (1961). The idea came to him in 1960 after the Sharpeville massacre, when police killed blacks protesting the apartheid pass laws - a turning point for all South Africans.

The Blood Knot portrays the oscillating sense of conflict and harmony between two brothers born to the same mother. Morris has light skin and can pass for white. He confronts the truth about his identity when he returns home to live with his dark-skinned brother, Zach.

Fugard played the role of Morris himself. The play was first presented in 1961 to an invited audience. At that time, blacks and whites were banned from appearing on the same stage or sitting in the same audience.

The Blood Knot struck South Africa’s segregated culture like a bombshell. In 1962, Fugard supported a boycott against legally segregated theatre audiences.

Fugard is highly regarded by literary and theatre critics. Some have called him the greatest playwright of his era. He commands respect for his unfailing opposition to apartheid and for his sophisticated explorations of its subtly destructive effects. Critics have also appreciated his ability to elicit emotion without declining into melo drama.

Most South African drama, especially the nation’s lively alternative theatre, bears the stamp of Fugard’s work. His acclaim is greater outside his home country. In the United States, he is one of the most frequently performed living playwrights,

records Gale.

Now, dear reader, shall we now attempt a Spivakian Comparativist Reading choosing just one aspect of their works? 😊

According to Spivak, a comparativist scholar, must necessarily engage with the specific vernaculars and power dynamics of the languages used by the respective authors.

Taking this point into consideration, we find that, both playwrights were masters of the vernacular. However, they ‘used’ their respective ‘vernaculars’ for serving their own “political realities” of their era.

Jonson captured the slang, jargon, and street dialects of Jacobean London (especially of the puritans, thieves, merchants) to expose the hypocrisy and greed of a rapidly commercialising society, while Fugard captured the complex linguistic vernacular of South Africa - mixing South African English, Afrikaans, and the rhythms of indigenous languages.

By doing ‘deep languaging’, we can analyse these specific dialects carefully, and understand who holds power in these dialogues!

As such, we step aside from the vainglorious, cliched comparative approach of exalting them both as “clever English playwrights”.

And that’s the very essence of a Comparativist scholar, claims Spivak.

To sum up in the words of eminent critic Scupin Richards,

Trueblue ethical reading begins the moment we ‘step aside’, ‘unlearn our privilege’, and start listening to the voices of the vernacular in all its aura!

Transforming Tihar | How Empathy and Literature Forge Legendary IPS Officers ❤️

From Literature to Leadership

Kiran Bedi and the Power of the ‘English & IPS’ Combo

#onherbirthdaytoday

9th June 2026

Today, happens to be the birthday of the legendary Kiran Bedi – a woman who made history by becoming the very first woman to join the IPS – The Indian Police Service. In fact, she happened to be the only woman (in a batch of 80 men) to subsequently undergo rigorous police training, thereby shattering a massive glass ceiling in a heavily male-dominated profession!

Interestingly, Kiran Bedi holds a BA in English from Government College from Women, Amritsar, an MA in Political Science, Bachelors in Law from the University of Delhi, and a PhD in Social Sciences from IIT Delhi (focusing on drug abuse and domestic violence in society).

I personally loved the vibrant positivity in the title of her 1998 book titled, It’s Always Possible: Transforming One of the Largest Prisons in the World. The book documents the sweeping reforms that Kiran Bedi made during her tenure as Inspector General of Tihar Jail.

Well, as we all know, Tihar jail is one of the largest in the world spanning 200 acres, housing over 9,700 inmates - men, women, adolescents and children, including both Indians and foreigners. The inmates include unconvicted alleged offenders, convicts and remandees as well.

When Bedi arrived on the scene, the prison was a completely “rotten system” characterised by corruption on all sides, drug abuse, gang extortion, and pathetic living conditions for its inmates (including unhygienic food with insects and metallic residues).

How she transformed the prison system through her nuanced and humane approach to the inmates, forms the crux of the book.

In the initial chapter Kiran alludes to the initial situation within Tihar -

What I saw inside Tihar was captured with human concern integral to my duty. I was there to correct and not to accuse. The magnitude of the problem was enormous. It took me months. Institutions take their time to reveal, despite individual impatience. Tihar Jail tested my patience to the maximum, and ultimately did cave in for the inhabitants to call the same monument ‘Tihar Ashram’.

I took charge as Inspector General (Prisons) on World Labour Day (May 1) 1993, not really being able to fathom the magnitude of labour that would be required of me to negotiate the problems waiting behind the bars.

I had heard of the gory practices that continued unexposed beneath those searchlights. A whole world seemed to have been exiled behind those high walls with rusted frames.

It always seemed another world, banished behind those dead walls. I had heard about the gang wars, prisoners running extortion centres from within the prison, and tales of rampant corruption, violence and heart-rending tragedies.

But I was a soldier, duty-bound to take charge of this hell-hole,

says Kiran Bedi.

She strategically made a bold shift of perspective, from “accusation mode” to “correction mode”. And this shift from “accusation” to “correction” mode required actionable initiatives like education programmes, vocational training, and introducing daily prayers and yoga to combat laziness and despair among the inmates.

Kiran shows her readers the power of community involvement and community engagement by inviting the community inside Tihar. As a result, for the first time in 35 years, voluntary groups, including international health organisations and NGOs were brought in to provide counselling, medical aid, legal support, and entertainment to the inmates.

Moreover, Kiran promoted a vibrant internal community within the walls of Tihar by encouraging educated prisoners to teach literacy classes and actively involved inmates in improving their environment, such as participating in large-scale tree-planting and social forestry projects.

Also, Bedi was fully aware of the fact that, physical confinement without mental and spiritual rehabilitation breeds further criminality. With this in mind, she advocated the importance of structured mental health interventions for the inmates.

Finally, Kiran focuses on the vulnerable sections among the inmates, including women and children.

The book emphasises on the need for targeted welfare programs for these groups by initiating health and hygiene monitoring for children living in the prison with their mothers, starting educational creches, and fighting roadblocks to get bank accounts opened for working women inmates.

Just an excerpt on that note, from the book –

I moved to the women’s ward as if by instinct. I knew that the women would have been waiting for me. As I entered, all the women present in the courtyard rushed towards me, uninhibited and happy, cheering my visit.

Was this a homecoming?

The ward was a total contrast to that of the men. The women promptly sat around me, wanting to interact and hear what I had to say. They had taken it for granted that I would visit them. Looking at their faces, I felt they were my children and I had indeed come home for them. 

Each one, I sensed, needed a hand on her shoulder to help her cry out her grief and relieve herself of the agony within. Yet, all of them were putting up a cheerful appearance for my sake.

I asked them: “Do you read and write here?”

They said: “No.”

I said: “Would you like to?”

They said: “Yes.”

“Very good, we will study here, and before you leave, you shall be literate.”

They applauded in excitement.

My prayer with the men gave me the joy of seeing hope and acceptance; with the women, something pulled me from within. I had been ‘imprisoned’ - Tihar was going to be my destiny,

she writes. 

I’d personally suggest that you read the entire book, which I personally feel is a real leadership guide telling us that, even the most “condemned” institutions can be revitalised, through collective community action.

Added, I personally feel that, the English Literature & IPS Combo is in fact, one of the best combos for the Administrative Services.

That’s because literature is the world’s largest archive of human psychology in all its glory! In fact it is a living library of human character. By reading extensively through poetry, drama, and fiction, a student of literature has already encountered every facet of human emotions – including ambition, betrayal, grief, and desperation.

Hence, when an officer encounters a crime of passion, or a criminal fraud, they are essentially watching literature at work!

There are quite a lot of such English Literature & IPS combos in India. I would love to mention just a few notable ones here.

Shri K. Vijay Kumar, IPS, who is best known for heading the Special Task Force (STF) that successfully neutralised the notorious sandalwood smuggler Veerappan, did his BA & MA in English Literature in MCC.

Former IPS officer and CRPF chief K. Vijay Kumar
being conferred with the Padma Shri by the President of India

Shri K. Muthukaruppan, IPS, the former Director General of Police (DGP) and former Commissioner of Police for Chennai, did his BA & MA in English Literature in MCC.

Smt Manjari Jaruhar, IPS, Bihar’s first female IPS officer completed her BA in English Literature at Patna Women’s College, before clearing the Civil Services Exam.

Smt Meeran Chadha Borwankar, IPS, who served as Mumbai’s Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) and Maharashtra’s Inspector General of Prisons, holds an MA in English Literature from DAV College, Jalandhar.

Smt Jija Madhavan Harisingh, IPS, was the first female IPS officer from South India. She completed both her BA and MA in English Literature at the University of Kerala and went on to hold various prestigious positions, retiring as Director General of Police (DGP) in Karnataka

Smt R. Sreelekha, IPS, was the first-ever female IPS officer in Kerala and the state’s first female DGP. Before joining the police force, she graduated with a BA in English Literature from the Government College for Women, Thiruvananthapuram, and completed her Masters in English at the Institute of English, University of Kerala.

And now for the ‘literary’ takeaway for today - 

Well, all these remarkable IPS officers (with special reference to Kiran Bedi IPS on her birthday today) 😊 have proved that when the profound empathy that they have learnt from literature is applied to their administrative responsibilities, the result is, as we all have witnessed - genuine, lasting human transformation!

And akin to Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, they become a literary ‘Daniel come to judgment!’ 😊

Why Did George Lamming "Break" the Bildungsroman? 💜

When ‘Progress’ Means Alienation | Beyond Bourgeois Individualism

#onhisbirthdaytoday

8th June 2026

One quintessentially postcolonialesque feature that we find in postcolonial novels is the subversion of the traditional ‘Western’ conceptualisation of the bildungsroman!

Btw, dear reader, I’ve kinda attempted coining this new phrase - quintessentially postcolonialesque - slightly rephrasing it from Bernard Shaw’s 1891 essay, “The Quintessence of Ibsenism”. 😊

So why does Lamming subvert the traditional ‘Western’ bildungsroman?

That’s because the traditional bildungsroman (like in Jane Eyre, or Huckleberry Finn) is basically individual-driven, tracking that individual’s moral and psychological growth, and finally culminating in their harmonious assimilation into the social order. However, for Lamming, this ‘individual-centric’ social order is a strategic colonial hierarchy designed meant to subjugate the colonised, and hence he makes the Barbadian village of Creighton as the real protagonist in his 1953 novel, In the Castle of My Skin.

Although the novel tracks the coming-of-age of a boy named G., Lamming skillfully makes the village of Creighton as the real protagonist, as Lamming feels that, the individual’s psychological awakening is intertwined with the collective socio-political awakening of the entire peasant class!

Well, this then takes us to the concept of “bourgeois individualism”.

So what is bourgeois individualism?

It is a concept rooted in Marxist and critical theory that highlights a particular model of human identity that emerged alongside the rise of capitalism and the middle class - the bourgeoisie.

Bourgeois individualism presents the human being as an individualistic, isolated, self-contained, and fundamentally self-interested actor, where the said individual views the society not as an organic community, but merely as a marketplace to maximise their own profits.

Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe could be cited as a towering archetype to this credo!

When Defoe’s protagonist Crusoe is stranded on an island, he quickly sets about commodifying the environment around him and thereby domesticates nature, by building enclosures around him!

Lamming seeks to deconstruct this concept of bourgeois individualism in his novel, In the Castle of My Skin.

Take for example, the concept of education that he foregrounds in the novel. In general, education is seen as a vehicle of empowerment meant to empower the individual and integrate them into the society, thereby empowering the society that they dwell in.

However, Lamming subverts this by presenting colonial education as an apparatus of alienation. As G. progresses through the high school system, he does not become more integrated into his community! Instead, he becomes estranged from his peers, his mother, and his cultural roots. That’s because his education forces an internalisation of British values, leaving him isolated within the “castle of his skin.”

“Progress” in the colonial context, then equates to a forced sense of alienation rather than cultivating a true sense of belonging!

That’s hence Lamming denies closure in the novel.

While the western bildungsroman ends with the protagonist finding their proverbial place in the world, Lamming concludes his novel with G. preparing to leave for Trinidad, totally isolated and alienated from his village and deeply uncertain about his future. By doing so, Lamming presents us with an impactful takeaway – that, true harmony requires confronting the historical trauma of race and class that has subjugated and enslaved the colonised natives.

Now, for a few lines highlighting the USP of the legend on his birthday today, from The Gale & The Guardian –

The Guardian has given a fitting tribute to the legend on his passing away, four years ago! And I quote –

The six novels and the collections of essays by George Lamming, who has died aged 94, did much to shape Caribbean literary culture. He also contributed to it as an educator and activist intellectual, mentoring a host of young writers and scholars in the Caribbean and beyond.

Intensely aware of the impact of colonialism on individual lives and the evolutionary process of social, political and economic reconstruction in the region, Lamming was inspired by the idea of a unified Caribbean.

Now from The Gale –

George Lamming is a novelist and essayist born in Barbados, who led a Caribbean renaissance in England. Ngugi wa Thiong’o has singled out three works as having impressed and influenced him in particular: Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958), George Lamming’s In the Castle of My Skin (1953), and Peter Abrahams’s Tell Freedom (1954). Informally, Ngugi’s political thinking was revolutionised by his exposure to works by Karl Marx and Franz Fanon and by socialist academics.

Happy birthday to the visionary who showed us that the true protagonist of history is never the individual, but the people!

As eminent critic Scupin Richards puts it,

In a highly materialistic world that continues to be greatly obsessed with the illusion of the self-made individual, Lamming’s writing and his legacy remind us that true progress is never about rising above your community, but rising with it.

How true!

Literary Cartographers | How Gwendolyn Brooks and Orhan Pamuk “Mapped the Soul” of the City 💜

Of Kitchenettes and Gecekondus | When Writers Turn Cities into Living Texts

Gwendolyn Brooks

& Orhan Pamuk

#onherbirthdaytoday

#onhisbirthdaytoday

7th June 2026

Before I begin this post, I have a confession to make.

Yes, today happens to be the birthday of yet another famous writer - Nikki Giovanni! But I couldn’t tag her under this blogpost because of the fact that, I couldn’t perceive a lot of connects amongst these three writers, (Pamuk, Nikki and Brooks) when taken together. 

Hence, I’ve discussed her in a separate post. Yes, Nikki is HERE, btw. 😊

However, quite interestingly, Gwendolyn Brooks and Orhan Pamuk who share their birthdays today, seem to share quite a lot of similarities as well.

Both writers seem to anchor their entire bodies of work in the geography of a single city.

In other words, the city becomes a text that they seem to have “read” extensively, and then charted it out for their readers.

Pamuk foregrounds the post-imperial Istanbul, while Brooks anchors her work in mid-century Black Chicago (specifically Bronzeville)!

And while Pamuk deals with the melancholic weight of a fallen empire and the clash between East and West, Brooks documents the localised, systemic confinement of Black Americans during and after the Great Migration.

It is quite fascinating to note that, both authors treat the city not just as a backdrop, but as an active, force that shapes the psychology, class struggles, and ultimate destinies of its residents.

Brooks’ Kitchenettes and Pamuk’s Gecekondus are examples to this credo.

For example, in her poem titled, “Kitchenette Building,” Brooks examines how the overcrowded apartments of Bronzeville - a direct result of racist redlining and predatory housing practices – serve to suffocate the spirit.

Similarly, in Pamuk’s novel titled, A Strangeness in My Mind, Pamuk tracks the rise of Istanbul’s gecekondus - shantytowns built overnight by rural migrants.

By elevating the subaltern figures of the street, Pamuk and Brooks not only act as urban archivists but also serve to produce a counter-discursive framework against the grand, official narratives of their respective nations.

In one of his interviews that he gave in November 2009, he talks about the concept of Turkish melancholy that pervades his writing. He contrasts it with the western concept of melancholy, saying that, while Turkish melancholy is communal and collective, Western sense of melancholy is individualistic!

For example, in his autobiographical memoir titled, Istanbul: Memories and the City, he dissects the concept of Turkish melancholy while “reading” the city.

Now for the literary takeaways – as usual -

The literary tradition of the “city as a text” or the “city as a character” have for long been great sources of inspiration for writers across the ages. Hence, when a writer maps a city, they simultaneously document milieu of that particular era as well.

I am tempted to give away a few more prominent writers who used the town or the city as a text/character in their writing.

James Joyce’s Dublin foregrounds the hyper-local literary geography of the topos (place). He so beautifully captured the streets, the pubs, the dialects and the social cultural landscape of Dublin such that, he himself once claimed that, if Dublin were destroyed, it could be rebuilt brick by brick using his novel as a blueprint.

Charles Dickens through his reimagining of Victorian London captures a city rapidly transforming under the weight of the Industrial Revolution. Be it the fog-choked alleyways of Bleak House or the bureaucracies and debtor’s prisons of Little Dorrit, Dickens used London’s topography to critique profound class stratification prevalent at that time. (It was the best of times/ It was the worst of times).

Zadie Smith gives us a multicultural slice of North West London, thereby mapping the complex intersections of race, class, and identity in the process.

Fyodor Dostoevsky foregrounds St. Petersburg as a character in his writing. Interestingly, St. Petersburg was an artificially constructed city, built by Peter the Great as Russia’s “window to the West.” Dostoevsky used its brutal, cramped tenements to mirror the psychological fever and alienation of his characters. In works like Crime and Punishment and The Double, the city’s yellow fog, muddy canals, and claustrophobic taverns actively drive his protagonists toward madness and existential crisis.

Whether it’s Brooks’s Bronzeville, Pamuk’s Istanbul, or Joyce’s Dublin, these authors prove that the greatest cities are indeed living, breathing texts!

And it’s a truth universally acknowledged, that, while bureaucrats map the body of the city, it is the writer who maps its soul!

Literary cartographers, we call them! 😊

PS: You may want to read Dr. Benet’s soulful review of Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul: Memories and the City, on our past post, dated 17 October 2020, HERE on our blog. 

You may also want to read our past blogpost on the Painting of the Cityscapes, featuring great writers who “painted” Cityscapes in their writing (that includes Pamuk) on our past post, dated 21 March 2019, HERE on our blog. 

Street Syntax and Civic Engagement | the Art of Reading Silences 💜

“Reading” Silences | How Nikki Successfully Bridged the “Missing Gaps”

Nikki Giovanni

#onherbirthdaytoday

7th June 2026

As professors, something that we very often tell our students, is to “read” the silences in the page, and “identify” the gap, which is the crucial starting point of success!

Well, we emphasise quite often on reading the silences, and identifying the gaps, because of the simple reason that, the human brain is by default wired to naturally focus on what is already in front of us. Therefore, identifying a gap requires us to look at a “seemingly” complete picture and imagine “What’s missing here?”

In short, finding the missing gap requires reading the silences. When deconstructing a text, a structure, a value system, or a societal norm, the most profound ‘eureka moments’ come not from what is explicitly stated, but from what is left unsaid, silenced or marginalised.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, takes an active, creative and vibrant imagination to look at a canonical oops established narrative and ask, "Whose voice is missing here?"

Nikki Giovanni, the renowned Poet of the Black Revolution, did just that!

She started reading the silences, and began asking herself, “What’s missing here?”

And how-o-how did she do that?

First and foremost, she felt that the language that she spoke thus far wasn’t hers in the first place. Hence, instead of adhering to standard academic English, she started to actively deconstruct it.

To this end, Nikki began infusing her verse with street vernacular, colloquial syntax, and the syncopated, call-and-response rhythms of jazz and blues. By decentering such white literary standards, she helped establish a distinct “Black aesthetic” that validated the lived experiences, language, and oral traditions of African Americans as legitimate, high art.

Secondly, Nikki also felt that, the broader Black Arts Movement was often dominated by male figures like Amiri Baraka.

Hence, she stepped in to carve out a space for Black women in the movement. In fact, she dedicated herself to uplifting female writers - who might otherwise have been sidelined - by editing and publishing Night Comes Softly (1970) – an anthology that stands tall as one of the earliest and most vital anthologies composed entirely of poetry by Black women.

By doing so, she was able to give a space for the marginalised women’s voices.

Thirdly, Nikki also observed that, it was very difficult for marginalised voices to be heard and accepted by mainstream media and publishing houses. She was fully aware that her militant poetry would be rejected by the so-called mainstream publishers who weren’t interested in the voice of a radical Black woman. 

Hence, without waiting for traditional validation, Nikki decided on ways to take her work directly to her audience. With this in mind, she formed her own publishing company, NikTom Ltd, and self-published her first volume, Black Feeling Black Talk (1968). She sold the book out of the trunk of her car and launched her second book at the Birdland jazz club in New York. This hands-on approach propelled her to become one of the few poets to ever author multiple New York Times bestsellers.

Fourthly and finally, as University Distinguished Professor with the Department of English at Virginia Tech, where she spent over three decades, Nikki felt that, chasing academic scores and grades only promoted passivity amongst students. And hence, she boldly encouraged her students to express themselves creatively, and acquire for themselves life skills, instead of just chasing the grades.

Her bold attempt to read the silences, and analyse “What is missing?” made her a champion of the voiceless. Her influence thus extended well beyond the page, bridging the gap between literary theory and civic engagement!

May her tribe increase!

So what pray, is the takeaway?

Well, the next time you ‘read’ a text, watch out for ‘what’s missing’, and try ‘reading’ the silences!

That way, you are not only engaging with the text, but also engaging in shaping society for the better!

PS: You may want to read our past post on How to Identify Research Gaps, HERE on our blog. 

Outsiders by Default | The Superfluous and the Alienated in Pushkin & Mann ❤️

Pushkin’s Superfluous Man

and

Mann’s Alienated Artist!

#onhisbirthdaytoday

6 June 2026

What if you come across a character who is brilliant, over-educated, aristocratic, with immense potential but is paralysed by a profound lack of purpose in life?

Again,

What if you come across a character who steps outside of life, in order to observe, analyse, and represent life, and thereby sacrifices the blessed joys of being a joyful and involved participant in the dance of life?

Well, these are two archetypes that we find in Pushkin’s and Mann’s writings, respectively.

The first one is called the “superfluous man” archetype, whereas the second hypo is the archetype of the “alienated artist”.

The “superfluous man” archetype was in fact brewing piping hot in all of Russian literature for decades.

It was the famous Ivan Turgenev who had officially coined the phrase “superfluous man” in his 1850 novella titled, The Diary of a Superfluous Man, to describe this socio-cultural crisis in the Russia of the past.

So who pray, is the “superfluous man”?

The “superfluous man” refers to a highly privileged, highly educated aristocratic individual whose talents, intellect, and potential are entirely wasted because he has no meaningful function in his society.

Interestingly, however, even a quarter-century earlier, Alexander Pushkin had codified this archetype of the “superfluous man” in his verse novel Eugene Onegin.

In fact it was Pushkin who had come up with the first ever blueprint of the “superfluous man” archetype, in his verse novel Eugene Onegin, when the term wasn’t even coined as yet.

So what makes Onegin special?

Well, Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin is famous across the world for any many reasons.

It is a masterpiece in all of Russian literature, pioneering the novel-in-verse format.

Pushkin invented a unique 14-line poetic structure (famously called the Onegin stanza) that defined Russian fiction for the next century.

His character Onegin is afflicted by an unrelenting, crushing boredom - an existential fatigue! Having exhausted the superficial pleasures of St. Petersburg high society, he finds himself incapable of finding meaning in anything else - not in managing his estate, not in reading, and not in love!

Yes! Pushkin had invented an entirely new verse form specifically for this verse-novel!

The entire novel is written in 389 fourteen-line stanzas of iambic tetrameter.

The rhyme scheme is rigidly fixed as aBaBccDDeFFeG.

Lowercase letters represent feminine rhymes (stress on the second-to-last syllable).

Uppercase letters represent masculine rhymes (stress on the final syllable).

The tragedy of the superfluous man lies in the sad fact that, his intelligence doesn’t result in any action. Although he is acutely aware of the evils and the hollowness of his society, yet he lacks the will, or the passion to rebel against it or change it.

Well, today happens to be the birthday of Alexander Pushkin - the pioneering architect of the Modern Russian Language.

Like Oliver Goldsmith, “he touched nothing which he did not adorn”.

Indeed, Pushkin was adept at writing in a variety of genres, namely, the Verse Novel, the Historical Novel, the Realist Short Story, the Historical Drama, the Narrative Epic, etc.

If Pushkin could be called the pioneering architect of the superfluous man archetype, then Mann is the Man of the Alienated Artist archetype!

That takes us to Thomas Mann - Nobel Laureate in Literature for 1929! 

So who is the Alienated Artist?

To Thomas Mann, the alienated artist is an exile – an epistemological exile - someone who is alienated from the warmth and normalcy of human existence by the very nature of their calling!

In order to observe, analyse, and represent life, the artist must step outside of it. One cannot simultaneously be an involved, joyful participant in the dance of life and at the same time document the choreography too! In other words, you cannot have your cake and eat it too, says Mann, Thomas Mann.

In short, the artist literally looks through a glass window at his childhood friends dancing, knowing fully well that his calling forever prevents him from joining them.

That’s hence Mann’s alienated artist is sadly, a tragic figure, because of the fact that, they are not only burdened with the task of giving meaning to life and culture, but also pay the price of that task – as they are forbidden from truly living that life for themselves in the process. His novella Felix Krull, Death in Venice, Doctor Faustus etc., are a few examples to this credo.

In short, both writers, although from different and differing social milieus, write about individuals and their unique archetypes to critique a society that has no productive space for its most sensitive or intellectually-liberated people!

Rewriting Our Earth | Connecting the Climate Crisis to Cultural Studies 💚💚💚

Reading the Rain | A Literary Response to Climate Anxiety

#newspaperinlearning

Why-o-Why is it getting delayed?

4th June 2026

Just this morning I happened to read a news article in today’s The Times of India, that Chennai’s southern suburbs were the hottest in the state yesterday. But respite from the harsh summer heat may be round the corner. Meteorologists said the southwest monsoon, expected to set in over Kerala around 4th June, though unlikely to bring direct rainfall to the city, may bring cloud cover and steady southwesterly winds that could reduce daytime temperatures.

When the monsoon is active over Kerala, Chennai is unlikely to experience harsh summer heat,” said V R Durai, director, Area Cyclone Warning Centre, RMC Chennai. “There is also a possibility of widespread rainfall across the state on Thursday”, says the article.

IMD’s initial forecast was for 26th May. Then it was postponed to 1st June, and now it’s said to hit Kerala on 4th June.

Why this delay? Why this extraordinary heat in India this year?

IMD attributes it to the weak moisture-laden winds blowing in from the Arabian Sea and hence they didn't extend deep enough into the atmosphere to meet the IMD's strict scientific thresholds.

What is the reason for this disruption of the Winds?

The delay in these winds and the subsequent weakness of these winds, is caused by competing weather systems.

Firstly, competing cyclones pulled significant moisture away from the Arabian Sea, disrupting the wind flow that the monsoon heavily relies on to push inland.

Secondly, and most importantly, the emerging El Niño has been a major reason.

What is El Nino?

Simply put, El Nino is an abnormal warming or an unusual warming!

And how is it caused?

The world’s oceans are nature’s huge and blessed sponges that absorb about 90% of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases. However, during an El Niño event, the ocean essentially exhales, releasing a massive amount of that stored heat into the atmosphere.

As a result, the weather disruptions caused by El Niño have become harsher on the land and its people.

So how is it connected with global warming?

Global warming is the unusually rapid increase in Earth’s average surface temperature over the past century primarily due to the greenhouse gases released as a result of burning fossil fuels.

For example, burning coal, oil, and natural gas for electricity, transportation, and industrial processes is the single largest contributor to the increase in atmospheric Carbon Dioxide.

Trees naturally absorb Carbon Dioxide. However, sadly at that, when forests are destroyed, and reforestation doesn’t happen at all, that carbon is released back into the atmosphere, and the planet loses its natural mechanism for sequestering carbon.

In short, if El Nino is the spark, global warming is the extra fuel that makes the resulting fire burn much hotter!

So how do we, as practitioners of literature, tackle this crisis through a literary and cultural studies framework?

An article in today’s The Hindu by Soma Basu, provides a part-literary solution to tackle this crisis of alarming proportions.

The article titled, “Reading for a warming world: books that rethink nature, development and survival”, foregrounds literature as a way to rethink our relationship with nature, by an analysis of book reviews to process the concept of “climate anxiety.”

As heatwaves intensify and climate anxiety grows, a new set of books critiques the belief in technological fixes, highlights projects that risk ecological damage, and reimagines forests as spaces shaped by power, conflict and care, urging readers to rethink their relationship with nature and development.

The severe heatwave this year has pushed temperatures beyond normal highs across some regions. The warming caused by human activity is not surprising as scientists have warned about it for decades.

What is more concerning is the lack of adequate collective action to address this crisis.

Some powerful books deepen our understanding of sustainability. Ghosts on Peepal Trees: My Journey From Folk Tales to Forests (Ebury Press, to be released on June 5) is the memoir of environmentalist Peepal Baba alias Swami Prem Parivartan.

The book evokes memories of shade and green spaces, clean rivers, forests and natural resources, singing birds, and fertile soil. It shows how these landscapes teach coexistence and help us understand the architecture of forests, the politics of ecosystem management, the economics of the environment, and even ecotheology. It urges us “to listen to the Earth and believe in our ability to care about the natural world.”

It is a fact that every city today is a story of concretisation, forgotten rivers, and vanished greens. In his latest book, Island on Edge: The Great Nicobar Crisis (2026, Westland), Pankaj Sekhsaria lifts the veil off the ₹82,000 crore mega infrastructure development project planned for the Great Nicobar Island cautioning how it will irreversibly damage not only the fragile biodiversity of the region, but also the culture of indigenous communities and their languages.

The project, which includes the clearing of 130 sq. km of pristine tropical evergreen forest, is one of the many continued betrayals of the island. That is why, the author says, he has compiled this collection of research-based, data-driven articles to help readers understand the legal, ethical, and on-ground realities of Great Nicobar.

Echoing Peepal Baba’s concerns about the “strange arrogance attached to development projects”, Sekhsaria critiques the pitfalls of building an airport, transshipment terminal, power plant, and new township on the island. Both authors point to actions detrimental to the environment and to culture. Instead of aligning with climate sensitivity, such development initiatives heavily deplete nature’s ecological balance.

India’s Forests: Revisiting Nature and History (Vintage Books, 2026), co-edited by Mahesh Rangarajan and Arupjyoti Saikia, is a reappraisal of forests as living contested spaces across the country. The authors refer to forests shaped by power, culture, and society, and redefined through conflict, negotiation, and care, and why they mean different things to different people.

The book is an interesting critique and also a tribute to Ramachandra Guha’s 1989 study of colonial and post-colonial forestry, The Unquiet Woods, that establishes the centrality of forests in our lives.

The ten essays cover a wide range of forest-related issues, tracing the history of forest management from the past to the present while looking ahead to more just and sustainable uses of natural resources.

The more forests belong to communities, the greater their protection will be. Afforestation is no longer a luxury or merely a government policy; it is a matter of survival and a way of making amends with nature. The future can be secured only if everyone participates in healing the soil and, in turn, the climate.

The article teaches us the important fact that the urgent need of the hour is to have a re-look at our curricula, to include books that rethink our relationship with nature, development and the environment, which can thereby help us to rewire and rewrite our relationship with the earth.

A Literary Tribute to Beautiful Avian Love ❤️

The Romance of the Ashy Woodswallows

What if Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, Eliot, Rushdie and Arundhati Roy had come along with me in the boat to watch and to admire the Ashy Woodswallows? 😊

#intothewildwithrufus #birding

I’ve always admired birds in love. Yes! Ever since my childhood days, we’ve had pets galore at home – that included jumbo – our lovely labrador, our cute cockatiels known for their lovely mimicry skills, a lovely rolly-polly parakeet (aptly named Polly) that sang along with me, 😊African love birds, and what not. Back then as kids, after school hours, we would rush back home as quick as possible, and after our evening cuppa, first thing we did was to huddle up towards our blessed feathered friends, and what’s more… we used to take our turns playing with them and feeding them with their favourite fruits and nuts in the process. 

And in all these avian encounters with our feathered friends, one thing I’ve quite admired in the bird kingdom is their capacity for genuine, constant and spotless love for each other.

We literary beings call it the language of love amongst our avian beings!

So it was, that, I chanced upon this lovely pair of Ashy Woodswallows whilst on our boat ride on the Bhadra river.

First, I spotted a lone Ashy Woodswallow, sitting all alone. Then, its mate came and sat quietly near it. No noise. No clinking. No jingling. No clatter. No chatter.

How beautifully has Tagore penned it in his Gitanjali (Song No. 7)

“Their jingling would drown thy whispers”

Tagore here so beautifully makes use of the “jingling of the ornament” as a metaphor for one’s ego, material wealth, and worldly distractions, and hence, he says that, if a person (in love) wears these worldly “jewellery” pieces, (ego) the noise and jingling they make will overpower and drown out the quiet, gentle whispers of pure unalloyed love between them.

As eminent critic Scupin Richard says –

When Love is in, Ego is out!

When Ego is in, Love is out!

Says Tagore -

My song has put off her adornments.

She has no pride of dress and decoration.

Ornaments would mar our union; they would come between thee and me;

their jingling would drown thy whispers.

My poet's vanity dies in shame before thy sight.

Indeed, I could sense a similar unspoken poetry in the way these birds expressed their emotion, nay devotion towards each other unmindful of anyone around them.

These shared rhythms of love gently remind us that, it’s not about falling in love, but rising in love that really matters! 😊

This blissful scene prompted me to make a wild hypothetical guesswork on ‘what if’ great sages of literature down the ages – they are some of my favourites too - had travelled along with me in the boat to River Tern Island, and witnessed this celestial sight and written some spontaneous evocative impressions on the lovely scene?

First, let’s take Shakespeare - 😊

Well, probably Shakespeare would have seen their silent courtship as a towering lighthouse built on a marriage of true minds!

Milton? 😊

Probably Milton would have seen in their union a ‘paradise unrefined’, a blissful, raw Eden on the Euphrates oops Bhadra river.

John Keats? 

John Keats would have sensed a ‘Grecian Urn’ish sensibility to his perspective and called it a quiet sonnet… oops a silent sanctuary built entirely of love and love only! 😊

Eliot?

Probably Eliot woulda probably observed them through the lens of time and the chaotic everyday life of the modern world and felt their love as the still point of the turning world. 😊

Salman Rushdie? 

Well, Rushdie woulda looked upon them through the lens of migration, as two migrating souls who chose to have that blessed stillness over chaos!

Chinua Achebe? 

Well, as we all know, Chinua Achebe was well-known for invoking his tribe’s ancestors quite a lot in his proverbs to explain profound human truths. So I guess he woulda gone on philosophical mode and said,

They simply sat together in the solemn dignity of the ancestors in the obi of a shared silence! 😊

Finally, to Arundhati Roy? 

Arundhati woulda probably viewed the Ashy Woodswallows through a lens of profound, heartbreaking fragility, and said,

They both were the ultimate Gods of Small Things, belonging only, and entirely, to each other!

I guess the legendary Tagore was right to a tee in his observations on stripping away the noisy jingling of the modern world! (which Pico Iyer would call, “the clangor of the world”).

And the moment one strip out the noise, what remains is the pure unalloyed eloquent and ecstatic silence of love!

PS: You may want to read more on Pico Iyer’s essay on ‘The Eloquent Sounds of Silence’ on our past post from 12 years ago, HERE, on our blog.