drive with pompous
Fridays is the day to travel to the other end of this city. A day for paintings, films, u specials, sexy professors with gravelly voices, sitting in class with boys and a spic macay café.
Friday was a long day. Long classes, new faces and a documentary on Vermeer later, all I wanted to do was go home and sleep. I decided to hitch a ride with a classmate whom I had met a few times before during conferences and recalled that he stayed in South Delhi too. ‘Pomposh’ as I shall call him henceforth was nice enough about it and said that we had to take the metro till central secretariat as that’s where his car was parked. Maya and I had no clue as to how far the station was, so we took pompy’s word that it was walking distance. We started, with P running in front of us, n breathless maya n I trying to keep up with him. Twenty minutes and a very angry maaya later we reached, and were told by a gleeful pomp that we took a much longer and circuitous route. I had a flitting vision of pompy as a child, lighting crackers tied to the tails of little puppies and grinning while the poor thing jumped about yelping.
On the metro he kept listening to his ‘classical’ music on his ipod nano. Chopin, Beethoven, Mozart; and I thought about my mp3 player with its assorted collection of soft rock, Sufi and down right popular music. While I was musing on my plebian tastes we reached our stop, and before he could introduce an ignorant me to the magic of Chopin, we had to get off. Once in the car the conversation became more general and as we crossed Khan market I told him about this café that I really liked. Not many people knew about it, and so it was mostly empty, situated as it was in an innocuous corner. He mused and said- “—arcadia …wasn’t that the story that spoke about this idea of exclusivety.”
I didn’t have a clue. “O Henry!” he said. I didn’t miss the supercilious note in his voice but usually late to take offence I ignored it. The only O henry I had read were The Last Leaf and The Gift of the Magi. “that’s children’s stuff.”he said. Then he went on to compare him to Saki, and how his style was not quite so great as ‘Mopasha’s’. Mopasha??? After being dismissed once already as being under read, I did not want to sound like a fool by asking him who the hell was mopasha. Assuming that maybe he was a bangoli writer or some such thing, I kept my peace. He went on about how he read Camus when he was 10 and all the while I kept looking at him speechless while feeling extremely stupid.
Then I thought about the book in my bag on faiz’s poetry. Assuming someone so erudite would be interested in one of my favourite poets, asked if he had read any of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s works. Looking down on me as an impertinent thing, he declared that he had no interest what so ever in Indian literature.
Not even Pakistani? I ventured to ask, but the humour was completely lost on him.
Indian literature is something I feel quite strongly about so I persevered. “Agreed that a lot is lost in translation, but don’t you sometimes feel that Indian writing is closer to our immediate context and the connection is less mediated through secondary reading, and more through direct experience?”
Pompy brooded and said-“well I do read some Bengali literature, but I cant stand translations”
Fair enough. But what then of Indian writing in English? I had just finished reading Tharoor’s The Great Indian Novel, and hadn’t been able to stop raving about it. It is so amazing to read a satirical allegory and understand almost all the references without footnotes. The only referencing was nagging older people for explanations of names like ‘priyaduryodhani’. A book that is based on a very popular literary piece- the Mahabharat, but discusses the nitty-gritty of the independence movement and the political situation in India was quite an experience.
After my impassioned speech about Indian literature, all pompy could do was smile at me. He gave me the most condescending look ever and snorted a short laugh.
All this while I was wondering as to what good is so much learning if the other person has a closed mind, and so insecure about his achievements that he would denigrate a whole country’s literature or 'literatures', because he doesn’t know anything about it.
Short ride, he dropped me at Nehru place, I took an auto home. Well, at least he knows about Bengali literature, that’s something, and maybe I shouldn’t be so judgmental. Maybe I’ll go home and Google who mopasha is. Wait a minute! ‘mopasha’, short story writer?! Could he have possibly meant Maupassant ?
Breaking into a smile I mused, that maybe after all I wasn’t that ignorant. And even though there was this person trying to break free from all things Indian his pronunciation was still as desi as it got.
--‘oh, gulab jamun,’ she said, imitating Biswas Babu, ‘and the chumchum! And mishti doi. Oh- the bhery mhemory makesh my shallybhery juishes to phlow.’
-Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy
Friday was a long day. Long classes, new faces and a documentary on Vermeer later, all I wanted to do was go home and sleep. I decided to hitch a ride with a classmate whom I had met a few times before during conferences and recalled that he stayed in South Delhi too. ‘Pomposh’ as I shall call him henceforth was nice enough about it and said that we had to take the metro till central secretariat as that’s where his car was parked. Maya and I had no clue as to how far the station was, so we took pompy’s word that it was walking distance. We started, with P running in front of us, n breathless maya n I trying to keep up with him. Twenty minutes and a very angry maaya later we reached, and were told by a gleeful pomp that we took a much longer and circuitous route. I had a flitting vision of pompy as a child, lighting crackers tied to the tails of little puppies and grinning while the poor thing jumped about yelping.
On the metro he kept listening to his ‘classical’ music on his ipod nano. Chopin, Beethoven, Mozart; and I thought about my mp3 player with its assorted collection of soft rock, Sufi and down right popular music. While I was musing on my plebian tastes we reached our stop, and before he could introduce an ignorant me to the magic of Chopin, we had to get off. Once in the car the conversation became more general and as we crossed Khan market I told him about this café that I really liked. Not many people knew about it, and so it was mostly empty, situated as it was in an innocuous corner. He mused and said- “—arcadia …wasn’t that the story that spoke about this idea of exclusivety.”
I didn’t have a clue. “O Henry!” he said. I didn’t miss the supercilious note in his voice but usually late to take offence I ignored it. The only O henry I had read were The Last Leaf and The Gift of the Magi. “that’s children’s stuff.”he said. Then he went on to compare him to Saki, and how his style was not quite so great as ‘Mopasha’s’. Mopasha??? After being dismissed once already as being under read, I did not want to sound like a fool by asking him who the hell was mopasha. Assuming that maybe he was a bangoli writer or some such thing, I kept my peace. He went on about how he read Camus when he was 10 and all the while I kept looking at him speechless while feeling extremely stupid.
Then I thought about the book in my bag on faiz’s poetry. Assuming someone so erudite would be interested in one of my favourite poets, asked if he had read any of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s works. Looking down on me as an impertinent thing, he declared that he had no interest what so ever in Indian literature.
Not even Pakistani? I ventured to ask, but the humour was completely lost on him.
Indian literature is something I feel quite strongly about so I persevered. “Agreed that a lot is lost in translation, but don’t you sometimes feel that Indian writing is closer to our immediate context and the connection is less mediated through secondary reading, and more through direct experience?”
Pompy brooded and said-“well I do read some Bengali literature, but I cant stand translations”
Fair enough. But what then of Indian writing in English? I had just finished reading Tharoor’s The Great Indian Novel, and hadn’t been able to stop raving about it. It is so amazing to read a satirical allegory and understand almost all the references without footnotes. The only referencing was nagging older people for explanations of names like ‘priyaduryodhani’. A book that is based on a very popular literary piece- the Mahabharat, but discusses the nitty-gritty of the independence movement and the political situation in India was quite an experience.
After my impassioned speech about Indian literature, all pompy could do was smile at me. He gave me the most condescending look ever and snorted a short laugh.
All this while I was wondering as to what good is so much learning if the other person has a closed mind, and so insecure about his achievements that he would denigrate a whole country’s literature or 'literatures', because he doesn’t know anything about it.
Short ride, he dropped me at Nehru place, I took an auto home. Well, at least he knows about Bengali literature, that’s something, and maybe I shouldn’t be so judgmental. Maybe I’ll go home and Google who mopasha is. Wait a minute! ‘mopasha’, short story writer?! Could he have possibly meant Maupassant ?
Breaking into a smile I mused, that maybe after all I wasn’t that ignorant. And even though there was this person trying to break free from all things Indian his pronunciation was still as desi as it got.
--‘oh, gulab jamun,’ she said, imitating Biswas Babu, ‘and the chumchum! And mishti doi. Oh- the bhery mhemory makesh my shallybhery juishes to phlow.’
-Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy
posted by ugly duckling at 5:46 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home