The Agony and Ecstasy of BA Honours English

September is usually my favourite month of the year. Summer is gone and past, the leaves are a beautiful golden yellow and there is the festive winters to look forward to. Life assumes a relaxed, languid pace. The ever rotating, fast spinning world seems to just pause a moment, smile and asks you, the weary human, to take it easy. 

Except this year, I hate September. I hate it because instead of reveling in the autumn-tinted evenings, I am forced to face an uncertain twilight. Instead of the sense of security and happiness that I experience usually, I am confused, angry and more than a little bewildered. I am, as you may have guessed, in the last year of college. But that's not the problem. The problem is I am in the last year of college with an English degree in hand. 

Over the course of three years, I have been asked time and again about why I am studying English literature. Some are curious ('So what exactly do you study?'), some are hilarious, (Yaar, tu books padhti hai? Bas?) and some are mildly offensive ('English? But you used to be a good student? No?) And I have been fine with these variety of questions. Amused, more often than not, but I have never really taken them seriously.These stories make for great conversation with your fellow English-mates and in moments of despondence, a sobering insight into reality that does not value Shakespeare as much as it does Accounts. (Though, in my view it should but more on that later.) Point being, I have never seriously questioned my decision to spend three years studying English. 

Why?

 Because I love it. Call me dramatic, gushing, superfluous, whatever you want, but the real reason I am studying English is because I love it. I love reading the syllabus sheet and exclaiming in joy to find that I will be studying Pride and Prejudice, Tagore and Amitav Ghosh. I love reading the text, trying to understand it from the writer's perspective and trying to puzzle out why he wrote what he wrote. I love the wondrous feeling you get when you stumble upon a breathtaking line that succinctly conveys centuries ago what you feel now in the poetry of Blake, Wordsworth or Chaucer. I love the drama of Shakespeare and how he invents delightful words and even more delightful ('badass' as my friend often says) characters. I love the underlying complexities that one uncovers when one is studying post-colonialism.I love the feeling of satisfaction after a wonderful, engaging class.  And I love the arguments and the disagreements that we have in and outside class, about that one line, that one character and that one universally hated poet. 

But you know what I love the most? The hair-pulling, frustrating moment when I throw up my hands and exclaim, Why the hell am I studying this poem/text/poet/period?  That moment when you just cannot for the life of you, understand why are you doing this? Why am I studying *insert hated poet/author*? I love these moments (and there are plenty such) because it is in these moments you realise that you are 'in too deep' with literature. You care too much about what you are studying. It has taken over your life, your conversations, your Facebook wall in such myriad and subtle ways that you cannot reconcile yourself to that one bad poem by Wordsworth because it just means too goddamn much. That one poem? You will hate it, you will obsess over it, but you shall always remember it. 

Loving what you study is great. Letting it take over your mindspace (as mostly happens when you love what you study), not so much. I discovered this when I gave my European Realism exam at the end of second year. As anyone who has ever read 'Madame Bovary' will attest, you can never just study Gutsave Flaubert. (For those who haven't, http://www.planetpdf.com/planetpdf/pdfs/free_ebooks/Madame_Bovary_NT.pdf) The despair that Emma feels, her inability to ever transcend the reality that she was living in, her dreams, everything seemed so real and so essential that after I gave the exam, there was this feeling of emptiness. That something was lost. And it wasn't just me. Most of my classmates too felt what was termed 'Bovary withdrawal symptoms.' The whole point of this long drawn, fairly melodramatic anecdote being that you just can't give up English as 'just' your undergraduate degree. You can't.

Then what do you do? Do you study it further? Do you  go on to do a (and I can hear the accumulated parents-family-society gasp in horror) a Masters in English literature? Well, why not?, the child asks. 'Because it is an irrelevant, ancient career path! And what will you be? A. Professor?! (cue horrified gasp again)

Irrelevant. This is my major problem with the perception that people have of literature. I can handle all the 'grammar' questions. (No, we don't study grammar.) I am fine with all the 'What a snobby bunch!' notion. (Which is not true, because it's not like we are guaranteed 12 lakh a year jobs for our degree. We are not here for money, because no one is willing to give us that kind of money. Not because we are snobbish) But the assertion that just because we are studying Shakespeare, we are living in the 18th century and are just some kind of dreamy, ancient fools really gets my blood boiling. Because it is not true. 

English literature is the most relevant form of academic discipline ever. And anyone who thinks other wise really needs to take a good, long look at the world. 

You are sitting at home and your mom is watching one of the many inane serials on TV. There is a loud bang  implying that there is a plot twist and it suddenly hits you that the serial makers are rehashing 'The Taming of of the Shrew.' The same plot, the same issue, just a different century. Just a different era. Apart from telling your mom where the plot is going and becoming a hero in her eyes, you also realise a fundamental fact. 

That literature is everywhere. 

In the Machiavellian shades of NaMo's rise. In the TV debate about caste where Premchand's Godaan and Panch Parmeshwar come into sharp focus. In sports, where you see Faustian elements in Lance Armstrong and Tiger Woods. In every statement of any politician, where the classroom discussion on 'hubris' suddenly acquire new significance. In the Dante-like set up of Bigg Boss 7, with circles of hell, heaven and the Ceaser like baldness of Salman Khan. When you read about Nina Dalvuri and racism, you think about what Gordimer writes in her novels and wonder at how much the definitions have changed but not the context. In the arrogant declaration of Obama to bypass the Congress and declare war on Syria, you detect resonances of Edward Said and suddenly all those Orientalism classes acquire a new meaning, a more sinister significance. It reminds you that what you are studying is not just confined to the classroom, it is out there. In newer forms, in manifestations that you cannot imagine, but out there. Newer literature is being formed, newer discourses are coming up, stereotypes are being made and unmade. Language, for instance. When we speak, we are forming a literature of sort. In our words, resides a history that is centuries old and that has many lessons that we will do good to learn. 

The examples are countless and endless. Is there any other academic discipline that is as relevant, as contemporary as literature? That is as necessary, as urgent?

No. Literature is not irrelevant. It never was. Not in the time that Johnson published his 'London'. Not in the time that Pope published his 'Rape of the Lock' and shook the literary world. Not in the time of Eliot. And not now. 

What literature is, though is impractical. Yes. It is not an irrelevant course to study. It is an impractical one. And I concede that with some sadness. It is not practical in the sense we understand it. I realised this as I looked upon scores of University websites and found myself at a loss because I didn't have the requisite social science background. Or because what I wanted to do was at divergence with English. I realised  this as my cursor involuntary passed over the Faculty of English website to more practical, specific, job oriented courses. I realised this as someone told me, 'Oh, now you must be serious. English kar liya, theek hai. Ab kya karoge life mein?' 

Yes, you can do a Masters and then a PhD and teach in an university (which is a perfectly fine career, I think) but you probably won't be earning as much as your Commerce or Economics friends. You probably won't even start earning as soon as them. And having said everything, you do need a job, a well paying career and as everyone keeps telling you, you do have to get married. No? Not that I am saying that my English professors aren't married, happy and earning. But just that when you are a 20 year old facing an uncertain world filled with exorbitant college fees, scholarships and childhood dreams, you don't know whether being a professor is meant for you.

 In his article on 'The Ideal English Major', Mark Edmundson says, (which can be read here, http://chronicle.com/article/The-Ideal-English-Major/140553/)

 'He (the ideal English Major) doesn't give up his view easily, but it's nonetheless always up for debate and open for change. He's an unfinished guy, she's an unfinished woman. Which can be embarrassing and discomfiting from time to time, when he's with the knowing ones, the certain ones: those who are, often in all too many ways, finished.

And it is in these moments that you long to be like the 'finished ones.' Your engineer, economist, architect friends. You long for that certainty that in whose absence you had been reveling. Because it hits you, that those three years in a classroom were a sheltered cocoon and that life is a tad more practical, a little more street smart than you always thought it was. 

So what to do? 

Well, I don't know. I don't have the answer to the question.

What I do have the answer to is something that my friend and general bundle of awesomeness, PGC, told me while were sipping iced tea in D-School. (Delhi School of Economics, for the uninitiated.) We were talking about life after college (surprise, surprise!) and I was on a rant quite similar to this. She nodded and listened, oohed and aahed at all the right places and then said, 'I am not giving literature up.' 

And for the past few days, looking at all my 'options', I am coming to the same conclusion. A little sadly, a little reluctantly, a little joyously.

 I don't think I can ever get literature up. It might sound funny. Like literature or English is my prized possession, a tempestuous lover, a drug I am addicted to or someone that I have deeply, inexplicably fallen in love with and can't imagine my life without. 

And you know what? That's exactly what it has always been. 

And that's exactly what it will always be.  

Whose History Is It Anyway?

‘But as history has shown us..’ is a common way in which arguments are begun and usually won. Right from our childhood, we have been told that history is a corpus of infallible, unquestionable facts, events and narratives. As we struggled through numerous pages describing the struggle of Independence, we took the information that was presented to us, as the ‘truth.’ The freedom struggle was a nothing but a series of chronological events with the Quit India Movement and Dandi March being landmark moments. Gandhi was a ‘Mahatma’ because of his non-violent beliefs and Jinnah was a manipulative, opportunist politician who wanted a separate state. That’s what the history books told us. And since we believed history to be the ultimate truth, these stereotypes and ideas were quietly absorbed and internalised.

But as we made the transition from school to college and vast vistas of knowledge opened up to us, our understanding of what constitutes ‘history’ underwent a sea change. As we read accounts of Muslim leaders encountering the same events as described in ‘canonical’ terms, we were unsettled to discover that history is not as one-dimensional as we thought. The events may be the same, but suddenly the author of those NCERT textbooks became important too. History was no longer a reserve of events, facts and people that we could assuredly look back upon. It was a culmination of multiple narratives wherein that which is creating that narrative was as important as the content of the narrative. Whose history are we talking about, we asked?

History as a branch of social sciences has always been a fairly controversial one. Political parties claim ownership over it, its relevance is regularly questioned, most people don’t want to believe in it and most people are unsure what it is. But therein lies the beauty and the inherent ambiguity of the discipline. You can never completely ‘know’ history, because there is no one history. There are narratives, stemming from different individuals that are shaped by different socio-cultural contexts. These narratives talk about their encounter with certain events that occurred in the past. The events are a certainty, but in the retelling of those events to those that are unfamiliar with them, certain narratives take precedence. Those narratives form what we know as ‘canonical’ history. But just because these other narratives are not given precedence, does not mean they don’t exist. For every Mahatama Gandhi, there is a V D Savarkar. For every historical ‘fact’, there is an alternative that we are not taking into account.

But then why cannot history focus on only events? So what if there are multiple versions of history? Why not focus on those that are common to most experiences? In his seminal work, ‘Orientalism’, Edward Said quotes Arthur James Balfour, a British MP and his address to the House of Commons on June 13, 1910. Balfour is justifying the British occupation of Egypt and the larger project of British colonialism to sceptics who are unsure about the profitability of such an enterprise. He uses a variety of manoeuvres, but in a particularly interesting argument, he uses the glory of Egyptian civilisation and history to justify British rule. For Balfour, the fact that the ‘greatness’ of Egyptian civilisation was now in the past, and Egyptians had to depend on the West to rescue them from barbarism, was an infallible argument. This argument he had gleaned from Egypt’s history, and from a Westerner’s perspective, it was justification enough to assume a paternalistic attitude. History was not only being capitalised, it was also being appropriated for material objectives. As Said later asks in the text, whose history was Balfour talking about?

The inherent danger in letting certain narratives dominate in our understanding of history is that these narratives can be adopted and used by certain interests for their own motives as Balfour does. But another more dangerous reason is that by acknowledging these narratives as dominant, the underlying, ‘alternative’ narratives may never get heard. The line between dominant narratives and truth may blur to such an extent that what we are taught in history textbooks or encounter in traditional historical accounts may acquire the status of truth. In her landmark book, A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf charts an alternative history with Shakespeare’s fictional sister as the protagonist. The book apart from being an insightful critique of traditional male literary traditions makes an important point about the underlying ‘histories’ that never come to fore in traditional scholarship. The absence of women centric narratives on history shelves and the paucity of information on the everyday life of women in the Elizabethan period are pertinent questions that Woolf raises. Why do we not know as much about the Elizabethan woman as about the Elizabethan man? Why do dominant narratives operate in a certain framework? Why don’t we question them? What about ‘her’story? The importance of everyday narratives are also being emphasised lately. Why do only kings, emperors and politicians feature in traditional history? What about everyday histories? Indian Memory Project, a project started to document memories and stories of everyday people to trace the trajectory of India as a community is one such project. It shifts the focus of history from popular figures to everyday heroes. In doing so, it not only questions established notions about history but also redefines and remoulds the ‘canon’.

History has always been about multifaceted narratives, multiple truths and various perspectives. Ownership to such a fluid concept is not only problematic, it is inherently difficult. The fluidity of what constitutes canonical history becomes even more intense as we enter into a realm where the focus is now shifting from ‘histories’ to ‘stories’. Narratives and memories about everyday encounters. The alternative is slowly becoming the mainstream as the confused student at the back of the classroom looks beyond the words in the textbook to understand what may have been. 

Dreams and Mirrors

On July 7^th 2013, in front of a packed crowd at Centre Court and with the eyes of a million people on her, Marion Bartoli was living her dream. After battling injuries and suffering first round defeats in the months leading up to the Wimbledon, the 28 year old bounced back by winning what is largely acknowledged as the most prestigious tennis tournament in the world. Yet, the focus of the world was not on her remarkable victory. Instead, the attention of everyone that follows tennis, and even those that don’t, was riveted by a fierce debate about a mundane aspect of her personality – her looks.

BBC commentator John Inverdale said ‘Do you think Bartoli's dad told her when she was little: 'You're never going to be a looker, you'll never be a Sharapova, so you have to be scrappy and fight'? In that one moment, Inverdale succeeded in doing two things. One, he brought to fore what many tennis fans were discussing in the privacy of their homes  – the fact that Bartoli cannot be an archetypal Wimbledon champion because she is not conventionally pretty. And two, he effectively reminded us that however successful a woman may be in her chosen field, her success will always be undermined if she does not have the looks to go with it.

Women’s tennis over the years has increasingly come to be defined by a certain ‘glamourisation’ of the sport. The players are expected to look their best and expected to introduce new fashion trends on court. The media coverage of most women’s tournaments is invariable always accompanied by glamorous shots of tennis players in various poses. The WTA is itself implicated in this stereotyping of women tennis players. The ‘Strong is Beautiful’ campaign features women tennis players showcasing their ‘strength’ not by representing how well they play tennis, but instead by wearing glamorous dresses. In such a scenario, to blame Inverdale for his insensitivity is largely missing the point. Inverdale is not a one off case, but a manifestation of a larger mindset that is trained to evaluate the talent of a woman on the basis of her looks. Bartoli cannot be a Wimbledon champion because she is not tall, blonde or slim. She is ‘fat and ugly’, as the Twitter trolls termed her, and so what does it matter how well she plays?

 But there is a larger question that needs to be probed here that goes beyond Bartoli’s looks and Inverdale’s prejudices. And that is the question of the overwhelming role that ‘looks’ play in our lives – whether as a student, a working professional or a Wimbledon champion. Why are notions of beauty and looks so central to our notions of success? Why do I need to conform to a certain beauty type to be considered good at what I do, even if it is something unrelated to like writing or playing tennis? Jhumpa Lahiri, the celebrated writer, has time and again ‘topped’ lists that proclaim her to be a ‘thinking man’s sex symbol.’ But why does she need to be reduced to a sex symbol for us to appreciate her ethereal writing? She is a brilliant writer and effectively articulates the complex issues of dislocation and identity in non-resident Indians, but to a generation of people she would be introduced as the ‘intelligent sex symbol.’ Why don’t we declare Khaled Hosseini to be a sex symbol and reduce his achievements to just the fact that he looks good? Why Andy Murray’s inspiration to excel isn’t attributed to the fact that he is not much of a ‘looker’?

But reversing the looking glass is not the solution, if we can talk about solutions. To look at men through similar notions of beauty and subject those to the female gaze will only seek to reinforce the ideology that drove Inverdale to compare Bartoli to Maria Sharapova. We need to attempt as a society to reevaluate the way we look at individuals and relook at the inherently internalized notions of beauty that is present in our culture. The question is not why Bartoli was criticized for her looks. The question is why wasn’t she celebrated for her astounding victory?  As Bartoli retorted with an impish grin in the press conference after the final, ‘It doesn't matter, honestly. I am not blonde, yes. Have I dreamt about having a model contract? No. I'm sorry. But have I dreamed about winning Wimbledon? Absolutely, yes.’ Maybe it is time to discard the looking glass through which we have judged so many people through so many years. Maybe we need to look at people for who they are, and look at victories for what they are – a happy smile and a completion of a long lost dream. 

The Politics of Rape

A city’s consciousness is like a fluid and a fragile animal. It’s a paradox because on one hand it is defined by a certain sensitivity that is aware of the minor changes taking place within its diverse milieu. Yet it’s also simultaneously a thick skinned animal that is seldom roused to change and question the existing definitions.  But like all animals, it’s also forced to evolve. To question what it thought was ‘normal’. And to challenge what it perceived to be ‘established.’

The horrific incident of six men brutalizing and raping a young 23 year old woman on a private bus in the heart of the city proved to be that loud knell that rouses a sleeping animal. The city was engulfed in protests from all sections of the society. The young, and the not so young, the rich and the poor, everyone came out on the streets to demand a safer city, not only for themselves but also for their children. People were angry and their anger was everywhere. But this time around, unlike other protests that have defined the landscape of Delhi for some years, something was different. The anger was accompanied by discussion, by arguments, by a relentless and undeterred questioning of the norms.

Rape, a taboo word in the homes of middle class India, was freely discussed and talked about. The definition and the contours of rape were argued out and attempts were made to understand the mindset that gives birth to such a concept. Attempts are still being made and a complete understanding has not yet been reached. What is rape? Where does it come from? Who are these rapists?

Rape as defined by the Oxford Dictionary is ‘the crime, typically committed by a man, of forcing another person to have sexual intercourse with the offender against their will’. The key in this definition is not ‘sexual intercourse’ as rape is not a sexual act to satisfy one’s lust.  The key words here are ‘forcing another person…. against their will.’ The element of force and control inherent in the act of rape is what defines the contours of rape and consequently, also the rapist. As has been proven historically time and again, rape has been used as an instrument of power in conflicts to establish one’s control and supremacy. You turn the pages of any history book describing a war and you realize that the raping of women of the enemy camp was not only a fringe activity in the battle for control, but something that defined the very battle.

But is this attempt for control something that is inherent in our culture? That very same culture that we protect from corrupting ‘foreign influences’? Is ‘Rape Culture’ a part of our reality? Yes and no. It is a part of our reality in that as a subtle, underlying ideology, it is prevalent everywhere. Whether we look at our language wherein most of the insults are defined with respect to the women or our movies where a Kareena Kapoor dances to lyrics that compare her to a ‘tandoori chicken’ to be gulped with alcohol, the objectification of a woman as a property of the man exists everywhere. But scarier than this objectification of a woman as a sexual object that tempts the man, is the thinking that understands and defines the woman as the victim and the perpetrator of the sexual crime.

Why do newspaper reports describing a rape incident always extol or in some case defile the virtues of the victim? Why are the words ‘she was a virtuous woman and she still got raped’ used to justify the anger surrounding the incident? Why do supposedly eminent and educated political leaders release statements blaming the victim’s skirt for the rape? Why does a matrimonial advertisement praise the woman’s virtuousness, her purity as if those qualities make her a more ‘marketable’ good?  

The thinking that a woman is asking for rape, that somehow it is her fault, that in a scenario where there is danger of being assaulted, it is the woman’s responsibility to protect herself is so deeply ingrained in the way we live, talk and think that we often don’t stop to think about it. We just assume that it is the ‘normal’ thing to blame a girl if she is crossing her ‘limits’ or if she is behaving in an ‘inappropriate’ manner. We are unable to question what defines normal, or who sets these limits.

But maybe we are questioning these things now. Maybe we are finding it within ourselves to isolate what we thought was a part of our culture and to slowly remove it from our consciousness. Maybe we are awakening. Maybe the sleeping giant has finally been roused.