A writer and a muse
I am fascinated by the medium of the short story - how it compresses so much within the space of a few pages. Characters grow, plots advance and new ideas are revealed. Short stories are what I love to read as well as write. Of late, I’ve also been trying to broaden my horizons by reading in Indian languages rather than English alone. (Some might say that English has also become an Indian language, but you know what I mean). I fear that with more and more of us using English as our first language, our beautiful languages will get wiped out. Or have their status diminished to a very basic level - where we use them for buying bhindi at the bazaar but do our ‘real’ thinking in English. It is already happening.
So, dear readers, I was thrilled to find recently, Pratilipi, a monthly magazine for Hindi as well as English writing from India. The layout is beautiful, easy to navigate and there is a lot of interesting writing, from writers new to me. Here, a beautiful short story by Sangeeta Gundecha, ‘Kathaakaar’/'The Writer’. (in Hindi.)
Hi,
Thanks for the e-mail informing me of the change in your web address. Have finally updated it on my blog!
Wanted to respond to this:
” I fear that with more and more of us using English as our first language, our beautiful languages will get wiped out. Or have their status diminished to a very basic level - where we use them for buying bhindi at the bazaar but do our ‘real’ thinking in English. It is already happening.”
I think this is marketing and globalization at work. English is really a minority language in India. Less than 20% of the population can claim to use it with any degree of fluency. However, this less-than-20% happens to be the most vocal and “visible”; our English writers, whether published onlne or offline, are better known internationally. Those who “think in English” but use their mother tongue to buy bhindi are actually a minority. To speak of English wiping out Indian languages is to covertly ascribe to the view that English is somehow superior to these languages.
Agree with you about the short story genre. The brevity of its form allows for variation in style and theme. And one of the good things that English has done for us is making available, through translation, short stories from Indian languages that we would not otherwise be able to read. Penguin has an excellent collection of modern Indian short stories translated into English.
Apu: Welcome back! My worry is that even if only 20% of us currently use English that way, the visibility of that 20% is too tempting! I don’t hold that English is superior in any way - but after all, everything is a market. If English writing is where the money is, why will more and more writers not be tempted to go that way? Of course I fully understand the irony of me writing this in English! Translation is necessary not only from our languages to English, but also from one Indian language into another…