Gypsynan

I was reading this today, while in a hospital waiting room, and still gave up after 50 odd pages and stared instead at an about to pop button on the shirt that not quite held in the girth of a dozing, probably homeless guy, reeking of last nights' beer - sitting opposite me on the waiting benches. Her book is worse than my prose - ain't that sump'n?

Read it and you know that this was written by a woman who read a lot as a girl, and all of what she read was written before the 1950s. And she has absrbed the Victorians in an osmotic process that defies the 21st century - despite all the politically correct posturing and positioning as a book of and about the diaspora and immigration and identity and familial bonds in a global worl and all that shit...

All this bullshit in Angrezi gets me mad. Not that she can not write what she pleases - go freedom of expression, but that people take this shit seriously. There is a whole generation of genteel, upper class Indian women, who read a lot of yellowing 18th century novels . Their sterile imaginations are backed by aunties who say "beta kitaab kyo nahin likhti", "write a book darling, everyone is doing it and you always topped in english, na?".

So having nothing to say really, having never lived at all or felt a strong emotion, other than smug self satisfaction, they troll for concepts hoping to strike on something big, globalisation, traditional woman in foreign land and such shit and write a book around it - case in point Jhumpa Lahiri, whose utterly boring story about her parents was much improved in the movie. Writing skills honed to win essay contests and never to truly express themselves - so gogol is a citizen of the flat earth - ma and baba are almost but not quite real - because those are not her stories. let Jhumpa write an honest, real, story about growing up in a foreign land and I will say she can write. And the whole "gogol" Russian angle is nothing but a sad attempt to impart more meaning and significance to a story, that really has very little. Say in high pitched tone " Hmmmm I wrote a book about the boring lives of my ma and baba - hows that gonna go down, I know, let me add some russian flair!!! woo hoo, now I can associate myself with the Russian pantheon"

And speaking of Namesake - the movie, it was lovely but when Tabu recites Wordsworth, I wanted to die. This is ridiculous, our tastelessness can be revealed in a more honest way - singing is a much in demand talent among Bong brides to be - I can see her singing a robidro shongit, but reciting wordsworth !! - its beyond pathetic, crass and I hate Mira Nair for this humiliation of still precious to me Bengali culture.

I cringe I die
Lonely in the crowd
of those appreciative of
false or no emotions
and alone can hear the hollow sounds
as I stumble on empty tins with peeling labels reading "intellectual"
I puke

Hahahahahaha - who reads my shit?

So what I am railing against is not really these pretentious poseurs as much as those who provide them with encouragement. Why, But why?

mmmuaah!