![]() What the hell did that mean, we complained over our aperitivos? Dusty villages facing drought? Mangoes? The City in New India? Caught between the ancient and the modern? Wrestling with economic change? Else, were we forever relegated to writing about (shudder) the Immigrant Experience? The splitting of our lives between the East and the West. He’d been rejected by an Italian publisher because his novella - featuring an expat Indian living in Rome, rootlessly, irreverently wandering its ancient streets - did not deal with ‘Indian’ themes. ![]() Over the summer, a friend I was visiting all the way in Italy, was facing a similar problem. And, annoyed as I might have been, for them to denounce style, character, plot, it was far worse to catch the underlying implication that Seahorse was not quite an ‘Indian novel’. As the rejection letters trickled in (yes, such is life), I noticed a few recurring concerns. I know the author is claimed dead, and interpretive authority now lies squarely in the hands of the readers, but this kind of interpretation, I think, is symptom of a deeper malaise. “About placing the search for beauty at the centre of human existence.” “But this is a novel about the fluidity of time and gender and memory,” I muttered feebly. Even the mere mention of Alexander’s impact on Indian/Buddhist art and its subsequent hybridity was viewed as a provocative postcolonial move. In (rather mystifyingly) the location of the “other” in members of the opposite sex. It’s apparent, he stated, in the reclaimed British memorial in North Delhi. He begins: “Its engagement with Indian postcolonialism is apparent throughout.” “No,” I shouted out loud, but he continued regardless for an extended paragraph. One of the first rejection letters I received, for foreign rights for my novel Seahorse, was from a kindly British publisher who, before explaining why the novel was not for him, took the trouble to describe why he thought it was an ambitious work. Or am being directly censored in any way. Which doesn’t mean I’m not free to write what I wish to. ![]() “Do you want to write movie scripts like him?” my friend asked tentatively. For visual patterns and bursts of colour. Mostly people claim they love the filmmaker’s cinematic style - playful, vintage, beautifully quirky - or intrepid subject matter. “I wish,” I declared, at the end of it all, “I could write like Wes Anderson.”Īdmittedly, it wasn't quite the reaction my friend was expecting. Beginning with Rushmore (1998) and moving on to The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), The Life Aquatic (2004), The Darjeeling Limited (2007), Moonrise Kingdom (2012 my favourite) and eventually, his most recent, The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). Not long ago, a friend and I indulged in a weekend movie marathon. ![]()
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