Post-millennial Indian (genre) fiction in English – Part Two | E. Dawson Varughese

• Part One
• IV. ‘Style in World Englishes Literature: Battle for Bittora (2010) by Anuja Chauhan’
• V. Post-millennial mythology-inspired fiction in English
• VI. Modes of Visuality in India

From the Introduction:

[. . . ] E. Dawson Varughese’s approach to post-millennial Indian genre fiction in English is usually one that foregrounds stylistic analysis, focussing on the language-literature interface. She often employs this lens of enquiry in order to explore and examine post-millennial ‘ideas of Indianness’. This fourth text is an excerpt from The Bloomsbury Companion to Stylistics, edited by Violeta Sotirova and published in 2016 by Bloomsbury. Here, E. Dawson Varughese considers ‘style’ in Battle for Bittora (2010) by Anuja Chauhan, focussing on how the language-literature interface expresses ideas of changing India, gendered Indianness and ‘Young India’.

In 2016, Genre Fiction of New India: Post-millennial receptions of “weird” narratives was published by Routledge with a simultaneous Indian edition distributed by Manohar. In this book, E. Dawson Varughese explored the rise of mythology-inspired fiction in English from India within the Indian, domestic literary scene, in the new millennium. The book examined how reader reception is key in appreciating how this burgeoning canon is read, received and how (and where) it circulates. This book laid the foundations for the chapter that appears here as text five. Published as ‘Post-millennial “mythology-inspired fiction”: the market, the genre and the (global) reader’ in B. Chattopadhyay, A. Maity and A. Mandhwani (eds), Indian Genre Fiction: pasts and future histories by Chicago University Press in 2018, the chapter presents a distinct approach to this growing body of writing in English. Here, E. Dawson Varughese proposes that the body of post-millennial, mythology-inspired fiction in English to date is characterised by four distinct approaches of telling, which, in turn, find themselves on a spectrum of sorts; at one end lies a sentiment of ‘retelling’ while at the other end lies a sentiment of ‘re-imagining.’ Using examples from a range of mythology-inspired fiction texts in English from India, the chapter aims to elucidate the features of the ‘retelling’ through to the ‘reimagining’ texts.

Finally, the sixth text is an excerpt from her 2018 Palgrave book, Visuality and Identity in post-millennial Indian graphic narratives. This is taken from Chapter 2 in the book, which is entitled ‘Modes of Visuality in India’ and it presents the thesis of ‘(in)auspicious’ seeing in relation to post-millennial Indian graphic narratives. Although a short excerpt, this final text gives an overall introduction to the book, its concerns and overarching argument.

IV. ‘Style in World Englishes Literature: Battle for Bittora (2010) by Anuja Chauhan’

From The Bloomsbury Companion to Stylistics, pp.697-698

[. . .] Amma’s use of Hindi terms here could be taken as examples of ‘cultural marking’ according to Rockwell (2003), as the employment of these terms is not code-switching, which usually presents as ‘the appearance of blocks of speech in two or more languages’ (Kachru and Nelson 2006: 333).

Although in this example ‘blocks of speech’ in this sense are not present, the insertion of the Hindi terms into Amma’s speech can be considered an example of code-switching, given Jenkins ’ (2006) description of the features of Indian English: The Indianisation of English essentially involves on the one hand adaptations of existing features of British English and on the other, the use of transferred mother-tongue items where British English lacks the scope to express a particular concept – or, to put it another way, where British English is ‘deficient ’. (133) What is particularly interesting in the Chauhan extract above (2003: 152), is the use of code-switching to create dichotomy between the secular and the religious. The religious ‘identifier’ terms – ‘Muslim, Hindu, Sikh’ – we might assume, are spoken in Hindi. The transliteration into English of these Hindi terms and the actual spelling (as in the pronunciation) of these terms in English are the same, and so it is difficult to know for sure that Amma speaks these terms in Hindi, but this assumption does however, correspond to the characterization of Amma. Given the context in which the novel is set, we can assume that Amma chooses to speak these particular terms in Hindi (‘achhoot, bhangi, chamaar’) because English is ‘deficient’ (Jenkins 2003: 133). We might also assume that Amma chooses to say ‘Muslim, Hindu, Sikh’ in Hindi so as to accentuate the difference between a ‘true’ India versus an imported idea of India as ‘secular’, a word she pronounces in English. That is not to say that Hindi is ‘deficient’ (Jenkins 2003: 133) in its provision for the term ‘secular ’, as Amma could choose to use the Hindi term laukik (which translates as ‘of the people’). Amma chooses to code switch here not due to ‘deficiency’ but rather to carefully position herself politically, ideologically and ethnically. Amma extends the connotation of ‘dirt’ invoked by her references to lower castes when, in the following sentence, using the metaphor of ‘car parking’, she says that Zaffar had been parking his car in ‘dirty’ garages. Garages are rarely clean places and dirty work takes place in them, and thus Amma’s metaphor works on various levels. The metaphor of ‘parking’ also suggests temporality with the freedom of travel or journey in-between the various garage stops, and this connects to the idea that Zaffar has ‘travelled widely’, evidenced by the presence of ‘ kanji-kanji ’ eyes in the locality. This idea of temporality and journey is underscored by Amma’s use of syntactic reduplication: ‘where-where’ and ‘which-which’. The repetition of ‘where’ as an adverbial place clause and the relative pronoun ‘which’ produces a sense of the haphazard and the random. In turn, this idea connects with the nature of Zaffar’s ‘garage stops ’, that is, how his sexual encounters with various women are equally unplanned and casual in their nature. Amma’s opinion of Zaffar’s nawab family is sustained throughout the novel until her death, which serves as a turning point in the novel as Jinni is pushed to the fore of the Pragati Party, pitted against Zain. As part of his election campaign and appeal to the young people of India, Zain appears on an MTV-style chat show, lounging in a deck chair beside a pool talking to Nauzer Nulwallah, the interviewer, about politics and above all, secularism. Nauzer opens the conversation:

NN: (waving his arms about dramatically): He’s muscular! He’s popular! He’s spectacular! And … he’s secular! [Turning to Zain] Speaking of which, dude, aren’t you in the wrong party? (Chauhan 2010: 141)

Nauzer’s opening lines are appropriated from a popular Bollywood soundtrack ‘Pappu can’t dance’ from the film Jaane tu ya jaane na; here, Nauzer adapts the lyrics to accommodate the phrase ‘ And … secular! ’ This is the selling point of Zain’s revised Indian Janata Party. He states: ‘Today it ’ s [IJP] the only place for someone young and unconnected like me’ (Chauhan 2010: 141). The interviewer presses Zain on his idea of India today:

NN: What upsets you the most about politics today?

ZAK: (simply) I don’t like the way my community is being treated.

NN: Speaking of which, the Christian, the serd and the lady in the burqa went to rent which DVD at the rental store?

ZAK: That is such an old one. The Minority Report . (Chauhan 2010: 143)

Zain ’s identity is manifestly connected to the contemporary and the popular. The take on the Bollywood song in the first extract above positions Zain as a celebrity-like figure and as part of young India. The joke that features in the second extract above also makes reference to contemporary culture and to an India of satellite and film viewing outside of the Bollywood industry, a phenomenon that has exploded since the late 1990s in line with the satellite revolution.

VI. Modes of Visuality in India

From Visuality and Identity in post-millennial Indian graphic narratives, pp. 16-17

[ … ] This book is interested in the kind of seeing that takes place when reading-seeing Indian graphic narratives. If, as Bhatti and Pinney suggest above, seeing in Indian cultures is a mode of knowing, then how might the reader-gazer of the Indian graphic narrative come to engage with visual and textual material that represents the inauspicious? Overall, I am keen to explore the usurping of traditional modes and representations of Indianness (upon which one may gaze in an auspicious manner) for the post-millennial Indian graphic narratives that invite the gaze onto inauspicious, unfavourable and challenging depictions of Indianness. Tension within the production of post-millennial Indian graphic narratives has been alluded to in Chap. 1 of this book. I suggest that a to and fro negotiation of Indian artists/authors with global (western) publishing houses is a hallmark of recently published graphic novels specifically, and HarperCollins India is testament to this. A further tension exists in the reception and the ‘reading’ of Indian graphic narratives since much of this work depicts, narrates and portrays problematic ideas of Indianness. I propose that collectively, Indian graphic narratives since the millennium have embarked upon problematising erstwhile, safe, settled ideas and projections of Indian society, history and identity, namely through Banerjee’s re-visioning of history, Patil’s portrayal of sexuality in Kari, Appupen’s critique of celebrity culture in Legends of Halahala, Studio Kokaachi’s silent graphic narrative rape (HUSH), Ghosh’s ‘Emergency’ in Delhi Calm, the re-telling of the life of B. R. Ambedkar in Bhimayana or Jotiba Phule’s life in A Gardener in the Wasteland (2011), to portrayals of the conflict in Kashmir (Kashmir Pending), Banerjee’s critique of urban, ‘modern’ society (The Harappa Files, All Quiet in Vikaspuri) and representations of gender violence in Zubaan’s edited collection Drawing the Line. All these works engage variously in the narration of problematic, difficult and yet timely issues.

[…]

I suggest that post-millennial Indian graphic narratives story both in content and form the inauspicious. They contravene the established idea of visually depicting Indianness in favourable and celebratory styles achieved artistically through bright colourways, clear, strong lines and intricate often patterned detail. In the deployment of sketch-like images, stark line drawings, muted colours, blurred and indistinct characters, monochrome colourways, multimedia and collage-like approaches to storying, the narrative and characters invoke a visual inauspiciousness. Indeed, through the invocation of the inauspicious, Indian graphic narratives suggest an ominous and portentous future. They point forward in a way that draws on the erstwhile or the current moment and, in doing so, offer a cautionary message both visually and textually.

Sections of this essay have appeared as:

1. Dawson Varughese, E. “Style in World Englishes Literature: Battle for Bittora (2010) by Anuja Chauhan.” The Bloomsbury Companion to Stylistics, Bloomsbury, 2016, pp.697-698.

2. Dawson Varughese, E. “Post-Millenial ‘Mythology-Inspired Fiction’ in English: The market, the genre, and the (global) reader.” Indian Genre Fiction: pasts and future histories, Chicago University Press, 2018. pp. 141-158.

3. Dawson Varughese, E. “Modes of Visuality in India.” Visuality and Identity in post-millennial Indian graphic narratives, Palgrave, 2018. pp. 16-17