Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Mar '13, 2.2)

COLDNOON: TRAVEL POETICS (INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING) (ONLINE ISSN 2278-9650 | PRINT ISSN 2278-9642)

NO. 6 | MAR ‘13 | 2.2

ED. ARUP K CHATTERJEE

COLDNOON: TRAVEL POETICS (INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING)

COLDNOON: TRAVEL POETICS (INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING) | POETRY – RESEARCH PAPERS – NONFICTION |

ISSUE VI | MAR ‘13 | 2.2

ED. ARUP K CHATTERJEE

COLDNOON: TRAVEL POETICS (INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING) | POETRY – RESEARCH PAPERS – NONFICTION |

Coldnoon envisions travel not as flux but instead as gaps in travelling itself. Coldnoon means a shadowed instant in time when the inertia of motion of images, thoughts and spectacles, comes to rest upon a still and cold moment. Our travels are not of trade and imagining communities; they are towards the reporting of purposeless and unselfconscious narratives the human mind experiences when left in a vacuum between terminals of travel.

First published in New Delhi India in 2013 Online ISSN 2278-9650 | Print ISSN 2278-9650 Cover Photograph, Arup K Chatterjee Cover Design, Arup K Chatterjee Typeset in Arno Pro & Trajan Pro Editor, Arup K Chatterjee Assistant Editor, Amrita Ajay Contributing Editors: Sebastien Doubinsky, Lisa Thatcher, G.J.V. Prasad, Sudeep Sen, K. Satchidanandan Copyright © Coldnoon 2013. Individual Works © Authors 2013.

No part of the publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or copied for commercial use, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent acquirer. All rights belong to the individual authors, and photographer.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Mar ‘13, 2.2) by Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi 110067 India www.coldnoon.com

Contents

Editorial

1

Poetry December 2012 – Shoshannah Ganz Four Poems – Kelly Ann Jacobson Four Poems – Jean L. Kreiling Three Poems – Fahredin Shehu Five Poems – Mohan Rana Three Poems – Ronojoy Sircar Three Poems – Manash Bhattacharjee Four Poems – Jenny Morse

7 8 13 18 23 27 33 41 59

Nonfiction “This is my home”: Reading Migration in Anjan Dutt’s Bow Barracks Forever – Mitali Gangopadhyay A Twice-Born Canon and its Reifiction: The Indian Hill Writings of Emily Eden, Fanny Parkes, Frank Smythe and Eric Shipton – Arup K Chatterjee Travel Without Moving: Ireland as An-Other England in G.B Shaw’s John Bull’s Other Island – Osmond Chien-ming Chang Studying Alternative Protest in Cyber Space: Through the Prism of the Pink Chaddi Campaign – Sapna Dudeja

55

Contributors

97

Editorial Board

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67 77 86

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics EDITORIAL

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Editorial

Chatterjee, Arup K. “Editorial.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 2.2 (2012): 1-6. Web.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics EDITORIAL

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Editorial

Dear Reader, No institution of art codifies travel as paradigmatically as architecture. While the persona of the traveller encodes its experiences in architecture, the traveller’s being both conceives and perceives it. Architecture, to the travelling architect, is a seeing before seeing. This dual-act of seeing – seeing something exterior to oneself as a manifestation of the interior, and the self as a reflection of it – is evidenced in Le Corbusier’s diary notation in his Le voyage d’Orient, wherein he finds himself doubting the authorship of his own conception: “Is it I who dreams, or is it my narrator carried away by his imagination?”. Given that Corbusier’s doubt is part of his travel narrative while sojourning in Istanbul, the extant landscape of the city could not have originated in the author’s dream. However, in his expressions on the architecture, in question, the architect-author undergoes a duality between his being and his becoming within which the moment of the architectural encounter is contained. The shaping of his dream and the becoming of the dreamer are at two terminals of the quiescent architectural form that inspires this division. Further, the architectural codification by the travelling persona is not in priority or in sequence to the being of the architecture. The codification precedes or succeeds merely an epistemological amendment in the architecture.

Architecture always is; it only becomes. In other words, whether with the bricks and lime, the design and the scaffolding, or without, the atmosphere in which architecture is to become always prevails. The traveller manifests his experienced phenomena in the architecture he codifies, and the atmosphere he inflicts it upon. In codifying his travel – in the hermeneutics of his conception or perception – he brings it to solidification; travel comes to a rest in architecture. The nomad, inebriated by the phenomena of his own travels, pursues a migration into the realm his architecture. Nomadism gives in to

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics EDITORIAL

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migration; any effort by the traveller to reconcile these two states – of the nomad and the migrant – is an incentive to cultural imperialism. The memory of the superiority of his nomadic state over the sedentary class brings the aspiration of migration to relapse into a sedentary nomadism, or a nomadism of the architecture. Henceforth, the architect rests with the powerful movement of the nomad, calling forth nomadic intelligence of his homeland – a state he had in the past deterritorialized from – or his several states of departure. A reterritorialization of the travelling architect in this site of migration is also a reterritorialization to the site from which he has emigrated.

The agency to move nomadically, in situ, comes from his architecture in which the emigrated and the migrated sites are reconciled. Consequently, the native atmosphere, if such an indigenous space were historically possible, is deterritorialized, with the new epistemological order of architecture.

Architecture is solidified nomadism; it does not itself move; it moves the seer.

Architecture has a language; language has architecture. In talking the language of travel, Coldnoon has been trying to construct an architecture of travel. It is a new way of looking at architecture, not to mention, a new way of looking at travel. To complicate the matter, and to add another, perhaps, would-be-useful term to the dictionary of literary theory, the Coldnooner dwells in the architexture of travel. The texture of language, the aesthetic appeal of its syntax, and so forth, gives in to an immediate prejudice about its becoming, about that which is to unfold from within its confines. It could be a prejudice regarding the syntax used (archaic or modern, semi-archaic or postmodern), the accent, the writing or the font, the ink or the colour, the size of the alphabet, or, as definitely the case in this editorial, the deficiency of extant language in the language user necessitating the coinage of new language.

Language, thus, is indivertible from its architecture. In fact, the latter precedes language.

Language always undergoes inflexion; it is constantly moving, and moving its users and recipients. The arch-texture of language is never too sanctimonious. It has its necessities and vicissitudes of interpretation. To delve into this morass and exhume the architexture of travel is the job of the traveltheorist, or the architext, to who belongs the ordering the hermeneutics of language into that of a travel text. It is at once a resting phase upon a Coldnoon, and simultaneously a congress of many journeys in language. Take

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics EDITORIAL

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these three tenses, for instance – “I was”, “I am”, “I will be”. It is a brief exemplification of the English tense. There is a pretense to every tense used in the above; there is the possibility of a specification, and further specifications in every tense. A tense can be further tensed – contracted – to occupy less space. It only needs more language, and an inflation of the virtual space, that is, the space of the mind or the space of the blueprint of this architecture which is the sheet of paper or the computer screen, or the recorded time inside which the tense is codified. To pretend is to move before moving. There is always an extension, a stretching of the mover, in this state of tense. Consider the following: “I was at…”, “I was at ease before…”, “I was at ease before disease…”, “I was at ease before disease came to our town…”, “I was at ease before disease came to our town to blemish our joy…”, and so on. What is the logic of the series? One can be. One can be at ease. One can be at ease before disease; conversely, one can be at disease before ease. Ease and disease are states of being, nay they are the very locations where the language user resides during the event of his becoming – eased or diseased – a becoming that is specified to have occurred in a town. This town presumably has joy, which has its own colour or non-colour. Any blemish upon it comes with this presumption. And, the series can continue endlessly. It can draw architecture on architecture. In the example that I have charted, being – in a state or territory – becomes a function of language. And, the very language becomes a function of the architecture of that state. To be is to be in nature, to imitate nature. Being is counterpoising against nature. So, architecture is the blueprint of the stylistics of a territory and the aesthetic ordering of itself against the natural space it is imposed against. Also, it is that into which the natural space has been imposed. To say that the travelling architect may follow his architecture – in his aesthetic perception – as noted above, is to gainsay the solidity and objectivity of architecture. Its form, therefore, is permeable. Or, any re-interpretation of architecture is preconditioned by travel. So, it is the traveller alone who marks and re-marks the body of architecture seeking a formal subjective negotiation in the meaning of his amorphous travels. In the end architecture becomes the site of negotiation between the travelling personae of two or more worlds.

With that complex array of dogmas, let us as always, enter traveller.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics EDITORIAL

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Happy Coldnoon, Arup K Chatterjee March, 2013 New Delhi

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics EDITORIAL

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Reference Le Corbusier. Journey to the East. Ed. and trans. I. Žaknić. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987; originally published as Le voyage d’Orient. Paris: Editions Forces Vives, 1966.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics POETRY

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Poetry

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics SHOSHANNAH GANZ | December 2012

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December 2012 (In India on a Train from Mumbai to Pune)

by Shoshannah Ganz

Ganz, Shoshannah. “December 2012 (In India on a Train from Mumbai to Pune).”

Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 2.2 (2012): 8-12. Web.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics SHOSHANNAH GANZ | December 2012

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December 2012 (In India on a Train from Mumbai to Pune)

by Shoshannah Ganz

I. Eternal student shoe shine boy Guatemala gasoline eyes unfocussed on the future stumbling steps shoe shine man Mumbai eyes moving gracefully across ancient Hindi text Yogic wisdom posture legs crossed I gaze back Guatemala I angry eyes down teva brand sandals stumbling I smile now eternal student of dirty streets the page turns

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics SHOSHANNAH GANZ | December 2012

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Mumbai minute passes by

II. Pilgrims Funeral? Pilgrimage?

All in white.

A shrine?

A body?

Was the man face down on the platform by the train dead?

Birds migrating?

Pilgrims flocking?

Women hover bend over prostrate body.

III. Clean Water The sky begins to blue again out of Mumbai smog brown tilled earth beside railroad ties green gardens cows flowering bushes garbage so much plastic now. eternal. in nature poems. memorial to progress.

Mel, the Canadian

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics SHOSHANNAH GANZ | December 2012

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private pilot tells us the biggest change in 20 years is bottled water.

IV. By the Railroad Tin roofs held down with big rocks and tents made of plastic bags.

It reminds me of camping and I wonder about falling in love by the railroad tracks.

V. Iconic India They seem to be hanging out the train doors in iconic India pose not because of crowding but just because that is what men in India have always done.

I want a picture because it seems as familiar to me as McDonalds and Starbucks.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics SHOSHANNAH GANZ | December 2012

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Here where curry is comfort food.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics KELLY ANN JACOBSON | Four Poems

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Four Poems

by Kelly Ann Jacobson

Jacobson, Kelly Ann. “Four Poems.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 2.2 (2012): 13-17. Web.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics KELLY ANN JACOBSON | Four Poems

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Four Poems

by Kelly Ann Jacobson

London I want to preserve the city in amber, though the streets are tangled webs.

There is a suited man in the park, two lost travellers, and we walk the claustrophobic aisles to the Eye. He wants to pay, but I’m learning.

The pod rises like a blown bubble, and the whole world is before me.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics KELLY ANN JACOBSON | Four Poems

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Trastevere I arrive first: student on leave, suitcase full of ripped-cover classics.

My sister, a worldly stranger, kisses my cheek and says Ciao!

Within a day: my first disco, a dark room near Santa Maria where bodies melt like silver.

Rome burns, and I am aflame.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics KELLY ANN JACOBSON | Four Poems

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On the Arno My father leaves us by the river to hunt for images. My sister, almost naked, lounges in the sun.

We drink boxed wine with straws and confess sins; at the verdict she wears movie star glasses, and I cannot recognize her eyes behind the tinted gaze.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics KELLY ANN JACOBSON | Four Poems

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Piazzale Michelangelo We look down on our shared city like farmers, tree green and towers too tall for travelled legs to climb.

Father’s finger clicks, and I stare at the part of town where last night our waiter, singing English in my ear, led me outside and kissed me.

I told no one, not even myself.

We buy salted peanuts and sip mango nectar, and my father preserves me in a bed of Irises.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics JEAN L. KREILING | Four Poems

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Four Poems

by Jean L. Kreiling

Kreiling, Jean L. “Four Poems.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 2.2 (2012): 18-22. Web.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics JEAN L. KREILING | Four Poems

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Four Poems

by Jean L. Kreiling

Southern Comfort (Charleston, South Carolina) Not far from the Monument to the Confederate Defenders, the pastel façades of Rainbow Row defend elegance.

Less than a block from the marker commemorating the Ordinance of Secession, the Circular Church commemorates unity.

At the City Market, lowcountry craftsmen weave and sell sweetgrass baskets, while other vendors sell knickknacks made in China.

Each wrought-iron railing and horse-drawn carriage invokes a complex history and insists on the dignity of those who remember.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics JEAN L. KREILING | Four Poems

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The English and Their Queen (State Opening of Parliament, London, November 2009) The Coldstream Guards play Elgar; golden braids adorn the coats of horsemen on a route that once bore kings whose rule was absolute, and now this Queen for more than five decades.

Though powerless, the jeweled crown never fades: its legend lives, sufficient to recruit these regiments of riders, every boot and buckle shining in precise parades.

The tourists gather, though a gray sky spits, and locals, too, seem wide-eyed, just as ready to see, through veils of rain, a regal glow.

Do they remember courage in the blitz?

Do they admire her posture, straight and steady despite her age? Why do they love her so?

It hardly matters why they love her so.

One Englishman explains that they respect her diligence, her promise to protect their heritage. As P.M.’s come and go, she stays, her subjects proud to rank below her gray-haired eminence, so often decked in someone else’s jewels. You can’t elect your living history, star of this show.

Well, yes, but this is more than civic pride or national nostalgia. Pageantry makes public a more visceral emotion: pale faces light up, and it seems I’ve spied on private depths, bared inadvertently: a rainless realm of reasonless devotion.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics JEAN L. KREILING | Four Poems

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The Sand at Horseshoe Bay (Bermuda) Pink as babies’ ears, paler than the first moment of a virgin’s blush, the sand cushions our flesh in tiny coral skeletons.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics JEAN L. KREILING | Four Poems

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Gaudy (Route 301, Central Florida) Like gawkers at a train wreck, mesmerized and yet appalled, we read the exclamations on gaudy billboards: fireworks advertised each mile or so, followed by exhortations against abortion (bible-bolstered pleas) and offers of free o.j. (where they think we’ll overspend on fruit or tasteless tees) – we really ought to buy, or pray, or drink.

For fearlessly bizarre variety it would be hard to beat this tacky trail: one hand-made sign hawks “GUNS & JEWELRY,” another hollers “MOUNTED BIRDS FOR SALE.” Not far from Starke, a few miles south of Lawtey, around the fourteenth or fifteenth red light, two signs tout fudge; another warns the naughty of speed traps – oddly, laudably forthright.

We cringe as roadside clutter blares and glares, but candor probably beats coy restraint in highway marketing: selling your wares to drivers may require this Day-Glo paint.

And as the local color, unrefined but functional, implores us to consume, a kindred icon, expertly designed, appears ahead: the golden arches loom.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics FAHREDIN SHEHU | Three Poems

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Three Poems

by Fahredin Shehu

Shehu, Fahredin. “Three Poems.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 2.2 (2012): 23-26. Web.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics FAHREDIN SHEHU | Three Poems

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Three Poems

by Fahredin Shehu

The Womb of Art It appears that I’m back, several centuries; to realize why Farsi poets had such a passion.

It seems I’m here to once again taste that flavor; where mundane and divine are delicately spreading; the nuances as in Isfahan carpets.

It looks like the tune is sending me as time machine back to the birth of secret of nightingale to a rose; manifests at the blast of the moment It tells that I must come again, to pass the bridge 33; the resemblance of Kinvad.

It seems I have word no more, to compare “Here” and “There”, and finally got muttered.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics FAHREDIN SHEHU | Three Poems

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Under the Shade of Huge Oleander (Isfahan, Iran) Crossing the border again and again Going beyond the heavy clouds Even there the silence is zooming Somebody awaits; a polite host A noble who knows The life’s tunnels where I see light Are long and curved; the path I lead Shall give model for the seeker Being a plant sometimes; is a feeling that Is only understood by a Nightingale As the story unfurls, as a rainbow carpet, It seeks the ear so it may nestle in the heart While I seek a morsel of light And a leaving of traces of fragrance So the rest may follow and perhaps Conjoin…

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics FAHREDIN SHEHU | Three Poems

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The Rain in Beirut Last night and today Blessings of the Lord Bless-Rain To wash off the sin of the sinner; I Walking on the shore; listen to the palm leaves And the waves that brings the chopped Wings of the Algae If I would have the silken voice of Fairuz I would sing Beirut, Beirut too And if I would have the Soul of Gibran I would write “your Lebanon and my Lebanon” While I reckon the loneliness of the Lighthouse Well; I’m just a mere traveler; descrying The Miracle of the Orient For so many times I observe The demanding eyes of the Host; as he wants To realize how Beirut looks From the eyes of the Guest He is unable to do this; just as I’m able Even to describe it

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics MOHAN RANA | Five Poems

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Five Poems

by Mohan Rana

Rana, Mohan. “Five Poems.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 2.2 (2012): 27-32. Web.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics MOHAN RANA | Five Poems

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Five Poems

by Mohan Rana

A Country of My Own There they had memorized forgetting alone There was no country of my own; I was uncalled for, Neither some promise to wait upon, The wind rambles daily by the hours Banging its head against doors and windows, I rinse the drawers, all its contents; as if nothing was there Objects in this room; as if I also were an object Not finding my own wishes, save an endless quest Holding my pulse, I search my country on the maps Gathering directions from the shadows of sun And all I got was a fistful of doubts

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics MOHAN RANA | Five Poems

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Chameleon Changed so many names, colours per terrain Changed appearances per dialect per mannerisms And often took my proverbs to the barber Learned some curses, yet while tossing on bed those words of misery abound Toss the coin, this trick never fails Bell the cat with a paper chime; I advise myself in dreams Hailing revolution, misleading the wind wheel Toppling over the slopes of spring, I am the autumnal descent Will I remember in the changing colours and tribes This borrowed time that lives my life in my sighs Even while reciting I often forget how to speak the truth

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics MOHAN RANA | Five Poems

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The Incoming Past Future, whose deferral, Is in the knowledge of being Life bursts forth across the door As the mind flounders in speculation Without or within This way or the other Bolted or ajar!

Who has been waiting for me there Who have I been waiting for I am yet to reach the answer station A step towards the door Is the loss of a step behind Frankly, my truth is not the key Frankly, it is neither a lock

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics MOHAN RANA | Five Poems

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Delhi Reconnaissance I have been running; the distances grow I just fell short by a distance of 6900 kilometres I keep running to find someplace near The window seems too far for my Delhi Reconnaissance And my destination is ever lagging behind Visions of yesterday have blurred by now As I truss myself in a new bedrock Untying my laces, for naked feet to run

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics MOHAN RANA | Five Poems

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Snowman Their curious wandering eyes staring at the white skies Suddenly startled as they fell on the park slopes On a suspicious figure Between the trees I recoiled Seeing them As though They Were reborn as aquatic beings Was it my fear turning them into icy sentinels?

They must wonder That behind the lens Of this camera, a Snowman marks their move!

Fear is ignorance Truth is fear And ignorance, truth

All poems of Mohan Rana have been translated by Arup K Chatterjee

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics RONOJOY SIRCAR | Three Poems

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Three Poems

by Ronojoy Sircar

Sircar, Ronojoy. “Three Poems.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 2.2 (2012): 33-40. Web.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics RONOJOY SIRCAR | Three Poems

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Three Poems

by Ronojoy Sircar

All I Can See are Your Eyes in Rear-View Mirrors In between a space of hundred(s) lies(,) a page of absent regret(s) (as I rummage through your trash broken reels, cigarette smoke, bottle caps and ash) And the I, right here, waits for your eyes, (turning towards your past) to look through the rear-view mirror towards the me in the backseat, half asleep in someone else’s car speeding past yours as you turn left on route 7

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics RONOJOY SIRCAR | Three Poems

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missing me speeding past you in the time it takes to say goodbye Goodbye (For Prabuddha & Shahid)

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics RONOJOY SIRCAR | Three Poems

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Impatience Sometimes, it's just trying to avoid walking into yourself changing, into someone else.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics RONOJOY SIRCAR | Three Poems

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Parentheses “Because we separate It ripples our reflections Because we separate It ripples our reflections” (The thumb was lost forever As he clasped his fist A r o (it) u n d Closing the half-open door to his dreams While she gave him Her Hand To hold And a leather belt, she found on the ground To chew on As she flipped the switch And the television came on With laughter dispersed with white noise) Blinking helped (I think) (It helped clear and fog the vision at once demystifying the mystery that was his own reflection on the television screen) Mirrors speak the truth when no one is looking (for truth) Blinking helped (I think) The door, coming loose of its hinges, Swung out wildly, dropping the weight of their memories [ON TOP OF THEM]

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics RONOJOY SIRCAR | Three Poems

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She was singing a song He couldn’t possibly understand Although he tried to picture that inky blue night she sang the same song once before and the tears stopped forever, Lost, perhaps, Somewhere between the crystal sharp memory of stars dying all around them as the cigarettes burnt themselves out into the ground, Trailing smoke Near her lips gently parted Breathing out syllables of lost houses and silent winking windows, Images catching their own form(lessness) in smoke reflected in her eyes, Caught in their own perversions, Their own subversions, The politics of their looks Silently sinking into the night sky, as his third eyelash Cutting across her images got caught Between his left eye and the bridge of his breath Out in the open For everyone to look at and wonder what her eyes, looking up at him and the stars at that moment (memories, both, fading) were saying?

Focused on that one damned lash Which she would be forced to remember by the sheer power of the depth of its invisibility To him

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics RONOJOY SIRCAR | Three Poems

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Her fingers Crept closer To the point where his vision would begin to blur The very fabric of intimacy, and flicked Darkness away, and all that was left was Smoke and incomplete images left to fill the blank noise with inky blue skies of dying stars and parted lips Within him.

Blinking helped (I think) As he came around To a room with a glass sheet stretched across a steel frame Half frosted From the outside With people walking past it Stepping in and out of outlines They thought they had left at home Walking around like murder scenes; Lines being drawn out, and worn out each time by the visibility of recognition In eyes, equally worn out by Windows Half open Letting in the cold hard wind of December evenings.

Blinking helped (I think)

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics RONOJOY SIRCAR | Three Poems

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For the very next moment she walked back in Emerging from within cigarette smoke and ineffable melodies of blurred fingers, dying stars, parted lips and an inky blue night you wouldn’t have believed and never left again.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics MANASH BHATTACHARJEE | Three Poems

ISSN 2278-9650 ISSUE VI | MAR ‘13

Three Poems

by Manash Bhattacharjee

Bhattacharjee, Manash. “Three Poems.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 2.2 (2012): 41-8.

Web.

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"Three Poems" (by Manash Bhattacharjee) by Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.coldnoon.com.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics MANASH BHATTACHARJEE | Three Poems

ISSN 2278-9650 ISSUE VI | MAR ‘13

Three Poems

by Manash Bhattacharjee

Reading Sebald World, take a backseat.

Do not disturb.

I am reading Sebald.

Hush.

Trees with eyes flit by My blind face.

I hurriedly drink Evanescence.

Sebald slows me down.

I am a caterpillar Of existence. I crawl in Green fear Towards the blade’s edge.

I think of the dead.

Some graze my mind.

Others run amuck.

The dead haven’t died.

Yet. I read Sebald. The sun turns Into a snowball.

Time holds up a crystal Of half-lies.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics MANASH BHATTACHARJEE | Three Poems

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I keep turning the pages.

Night, the ghost, descends On horseback.

I follow echoes of hooves Drowning in the sea.

Writing is not the speaking But the hearing Through steel against steel.

And life is an inverse Journey by train Where the wheels of memory Run over you.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics MANASH BHATTACHARJEE | Three Poems

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Wedding in Muvattupuzha It wasn’t the road which took us To Muvattupuzha.

It was the avalanche of trees Improbably lined.

You wondered if a god did it Secretly overnight or a band of Mad gardeners toiling Against sloth and poverty.

The trees did not point towards Any address. They Gestured towards an unknown Fairy tale.

Our ride ended At the foot of a house. It was More dream than body, more wings Than pillars.

The gate’s reckless heart was open Wide as we walked in Rousing cobblestones from sleep.

Menfolk like cheerful coconuts welcomed Everyone at the door. We exchanged names In hurried gestures of forgetting.

Till we met the father who hid Grapes in his mouth and wore a face Older than his tongue.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics MANASH BHATTACHARJEE | Three Poems

ISSN 2278-9650 ISSUE VI | MAR ‘13

He was a fable who could charm A tavern full of strangers.

A beehive of womenfolk were Making haste to ensure the food pacified The appetite of gods.

Aroma from the kitchen seized Our attention as the mother of fish and Spices gently greeted us.

The artist who sketched the house Peered from a photograph like An oak tree. Invisible drawings flowed In his beard.

An avalanche of relics caused a Giddiness impossible to hold without A glass of spirits.

We climbed the stairs with liquid Expectations and discovered the smallest Bedroom in the world.

The bar on the terrace overlooked An ancestral tree. Its trunk was more Drunk than I could be that Wet afternoon.

I was young Basho on the bar stool Watching the rain pour over a monotonously Beautiful landscape.

The sun beat the clouds just Before oblivion. We climbed the church

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics MANASH BHATTACHARJEE | Three Poems

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Stairs and witnessed a wedding Under the rainbow.

Old hymns of youth rang Solemnly in the man’s memory As oaths encircled him.

The town arrived half wet For the grand feast. They drowned In the toast of blessings.

The men drank endlessly As the rain. The Ancestral tree shed its leaves.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics MANASH BHATTACHARJEE | Three Poems

ISSN 2278-9650 ISSUE VI | MAR ‘13

A Visit to Ballimaran No longer that alleyway of unending pastimes, no longer that couplet stalling a game of dice, no longer that foot’s pause driving a thought home, no longer that inspiration turning words into kites.

Ballimaran is a busy stream of shoes hung for sale.

No sound of hooves or sight of palanquins reigns over subjects.

The colour of footwear automobile horns mark the citizen’s health.

I ask a man, “Which way to Ghalib’s home?”

His eyebrows arch, “Why didn’t you ask him the address? A name is not enough.”

I go my way, telling Ghalib’s ghost, “Your name has lost its address, your address its neighbourhood. Is that how one gains the world?”

The guard in blue uniform is wearier than stone. He ushers

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics MANASH BHATTACHARJEE | Three Poems

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me inside the ancient courtyard made up to date.

I stare at forgeries on stage set to befool children. It isn’t easy to veil someone’s neglected absence.

The telephone booth is an offstage parody of callers in prosaic hurry. No one carves like old times a turn of phrase to perfection.

I ponder. No one anymore counts blessings with wine. No one disobeys god with irony. No one braids the night with couplets.

As light sinks a girl drifts in to read the dilemmas of Ghalib’s heart. The azan distracts her glued eyes. She leaves folding a secret in her dupatta.

It is time to go home. Time to leave what is left of Ghalib in Qasim Jaan. To leave what is left of Qasim Jaan in Ballimaran.

Names that belong to a different time when the air breathed verses. And a couplet weighed heavier than a pair of shoes.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics JENNY MORSE | Four Poems

ISSN 2278-9650 ISSUE VI | MAR ‘13

Four Poems

by Jenny Morse

Morse, Jenny. “Four Poems.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 2.2 (2012): 49-54. Web.

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"Four Poems" (by Jenny Morse) by Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.coldnoon.com.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics JENNY MORSE | Four Poems

ISSN 2278-9650 ISSUE VI | MAR ‘13

Four Poems

by Jenny Morse

Six Miles of Chiloe I remember leeches sucking on toes like they hadn’t just fed on fat cows in this paradise; how you called us cowpie-walking champions. I remember wind or water, the boat trip, the abandonment, the barbed wire that threw us off course. The one-armed boatman who returned us to civilization, maneuvered us along the river, climbing back into its mouth like he’d stolen us from the Pacific and knew that government might hold us in custody a few more sunsets. A white whale waved as we sat on the beach, enjoying the spray, wondering how long we could live on bread and cheese.

I remember the cows visited our dry sand the third day, careful not to moo us out of our tent as if they knew how much sleep meant; the salt air and the sun. We might have been the only people left in the world while we waited to see someone who might tell us how to get out of here and watched the baby crabs playing hopscotch in our footsteps.

I remember the fishermen who ransacked our sunken ship like they knew where we’d hidden the treasure, how I spied on them as they bathed and pulled a rope out of the red hull like the ship was just docking and once the passengers boarded, it would unbeach itself and set out like an ordinary freighter. We looked for a place to pitch camp and found the dunes. We wondered where to get fresh water, then found the stream.

I remember hiking down the beach and discovering a dismantled shelter complete with broken air-conditioning unit, wondering how whoever had lived there had gotten electricity. Some boys hiked on ahead of us, right into the cliff’s edge, but we found their home on the ridge through binoculars.

We stared into the sun for long minutes knowing that no one had ever seen the beach in quite this light; no one would again. The broken u-shape in the cliff

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics JENNY MORSE | Four Poems

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was a carved imperfection. The waves threw themselves against the rocks, hoping the fragments would find new life in the orange sun.

I remember the dead seal that both fascinated and disgusted us, and the kelp that covered the shame of its purple decomposition. Sleep had never been so easy and I’d never understood the world until that moment, a boat and a bus and a bridge and a cord of wood away.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics JENNY MORSE | Four Poems

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Departure A train approached in the distance with its horn and its wheels and the cushions of glass in the windows.

I felt it first in the vibration like bass drums on my shinbones, like little earthquakes in my knees.

I wrote this poem with you in mind and your feet approaching the train.

I wrote this poem here in the waiting room corridor where the floor shakes when the load boards and the train rolls downhill and away.

Now, I’m putting on your favourite shoes, measuring my toes against the instep, but you’ll be near sea level when you discover your shoes are no longer on board.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics JENNY MORSE | Four Poems

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All I Know of Cusco I dream of a blue door or of a blue door’s dream of me, and from the steep rise of Cuesta San Blas we can see La Catedral.

La Virgen passes on raised planks above the chants of gloria, gracias a dios, gracias a la madre de nosotros.

I am lost and distant from the blue door or the blue door is lost and distant from me.

A man arrives to walk me home. We never speak, but when we shake hands, I pass him a coin and a key.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics JENNY MORSE | Four Poems

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Terminal It was a Wednesday at the end of the world, though the world didn’t end there then. It ends now as I reflect in blue water, numbered distance, a chronology located in essentialism and debt. If I asked you how long I stared at the ocean, would you have a reckoning, would the question linger like your scent after a shower, would you suspend me in your mind like a hung photograph and then open a door to hide me.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics NONFICTION

ISSN 2278-9650 ISSUE VI | MAR ‘13

Nonfiction

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics MITALI GANGOPADHYAY | Reading Migration

ISSN 2278-9650 ISSUE VI | MAR ‘13

“This is my home”: Reading Migration in Anjan Dutt’s Bow Barracks Forever

by Mitali Gangopadhyay

Gangopadhyay, Mitali. ““This is my home”: Reading Migration in Anjan Dutt’s Bow Barracks Forever.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 2.2 (2012): 56-66. Web.

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"This is my home”: Reading Migration in Anjan Dutt’s Bow Barracks Forever" (by Mitali Gangopadhyay) by Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.coldnoon.com.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics MITALI GANGOPADHYAY | Reading Migration

ISSN 2278-9650 ISSUE VI | MAR ‘13

“This is my home”: Reading Migration in Anjan Dutt’s Bow Barracks Forever

by Mitali Gangopadhyay

Theories on migration have been largely debated over the years from social, political and economic perspectives. From the developmentalist optimism of migration theories in the 1950s and 60s, to the structuralist and neo-Marxist pessimism and scepticism over the 1970s and 80s, from the new economics of labour migration approaches of the 1990s, to the transnational immigration policies involving the diaspora in the twenty-first century, migration studies have undergone paradigmatic shifts in dealing with the heterogeneous nature of global migration (Haas, 8). Against this extensive panorama of migration theory, the growing trend of the Anglo-Indian emigration from postindependence India offers an interesting case study of what Caplan (2007) describes as “culture of emigration”. On studying the nature of migration in the Anglo-Indian community, Caplan identifies the role of “culture factors”, like beliefs, understandings and practices which help the Anglo-Indians to evolve a “local lifestyle and an outlook which is out-focused and which insists, as one Anglo-Indian woman put it, that ‘life is only abroad, not here’” (43).

Inseparably connected with the culture of migration is the issue of selfdefinition, or identity, which revolves around the ambivalence concerning home and nation. Home, for the Anglo-Indian, remains a confused, bifurcated space, torn between his “original” home, which is the land inherited from his ancestors, and his “adopted” home, the land acquired by the historical event of the European colonization of India. The fissure between the “original” and the “adopted” homes creates a loss of identity, and further complicates his sense of belonging in the postcolonial environment. While the “original” home dominates over the psyche of an Anglo-Indian in the form of an imaginative space, the cartographic reality of his “adopted” home often assumes the proportion of an exile. These dichotomies of home/exile and belonging/nonbelonging breed complex feelings of rootlessness, insecurity, nostalgia, and

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often instigate the Anglo-Indian to cross the boundaries of his “adopted” home, in search of a new home. However, this search may not always culminate in a successful migration to an alternative place of choice. Migration might just dominate over the psyche as a forceful desire or desperation to cross geographical borders, while failing ultimately to translate that desire into a physical transfer of lands. In this context, the desire to migrate or imaginative migration overpowers the actual, physical act of migration. While migration theories may be useful to explain migratory causes and patterns in the AngloIndian community, imaginative migration has scarcely been critically studied.

As the title suggests, this essay will examine the issue of migration from different perspectives and its impact on the identity of the Anglo-Indian community in Anjan Dutt’s, Bow Barracks Forever (2004). The film critically explores the emerging trend of migration that leads to the rapid decline of the Anglo-Indian population in India. Dutt’s approach to the Anglo-Indian act of migration, I argue, has two distinct angles – first, migration as a physical journey conditioned by a lucrative socio-economic choice and, second, migration as a metaphorical or an imaginative journey, a journey that is navigated in the mind. In Dutt, physical migration is either transnational or internal, and involves crossing of geographical boundaries. On the contrary, imaginative migration involves a craving for the “original” or an alternative home, which is made possible through psychological displacement. My study intends to show how Dutt focuses more on the desire for migration than on the physical act of migration itself. The actual geographical displacement, which constitutes the very basis of migration, is challenged in Bow Barracks Forever as Dutt discovers an alternative mode of migration, that is, imaginative migration. Dutt explores the terrain of the mind and shows how imagination can become a powerful medium through which the act of migration is carried out. However, imaginative migration is virtual, and hence, transient. Dutt’s intention, as my essay unfolds, is to show how the desire for migration in an Anglo-Indian is replaced by an overpowering acceptance of India, as the “only” home. The film traces the internal journey of an Anglo-Indian female, a voyage that she undertakes, through personal conflicts and social obstacles, to reach a point of reconciliation with her “adopted” home.

Constructed in British India to house American troops, Bow Barracks, one of the oldest buildings in Central Kolkata, is occupied by a mixed

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population of Anglo-Indian, Chinese, Muslim and Hindu families. Though a considerable percentage of the Anglo-Indians have already migrated to other countries, they are still the dominant group occupying one of the oldest building blocks of the city as residents. Anjan Dutt gives reel life to the joys and pathos of these Anglo-Indian families leading a neglected and unnoticed existence in one of the centrally located areas of the city. A medley of AngloIndian characters appears against the silhouette of Bow Barracks. Anjan Dutt focuses on three families, that of Emily Lobo and her younger son Bradley, Tom and his wife, Anne, and Melville and his wife, Rosa. Peter, the cheater, is a drunkard, who shuttles between the families, trying to alleviate their worries, sometimes by offering liquor, at other times, by playing the trumpet. The plot is spun around the controversy regarding the dilapidated condition of the Barracks and the possible means available to restore it. There is constant mention of the Calcutta Improvement Trust (CIT), which has declared the Barracks unfit for residential purposes and therefore orders an evacuation of the place for governmental control. The building is also a lucrative property for the promoter, Mr. Mukherjee, who instils a culture of threat and fear through a set of hooligans, under the leadership of Kesto. A third option comes in the figure of Manish, a young architect, who stresses on the heritage of the Barracks and wants to renovate it. Manish’s inspiring words to the Barrack residents, “As a citizen of the city, don’t you have some responsibility?” seem to have a philanthropic mission, but unfortunately lead to his murder. It is against this social and political insecurity of the Barracks that Anjan Dutt shows a few representative Anglo-Indian families caught between the possibility of migration and the unfulfilled desire for it.

Bow Barracks Forever begins with the motif of physical migration. The Dawson family is moving off to Bombay, and from there to Sidney, Australia.

Their furniture is being shifted, down the stairs of Bow Barracks, and piled up on a tempo. Mr. and Mrs. Dawson’s little son, Philip, hides under the bed of Emily Lobo, another resident of the Barracks, reluctant to leave the city, his home, and above all, his friend, Anwar. Mr. Dawson, however, has made up his mind to migrate because the “city is going from bad to worse. Everywhere you go you have got to give ghoosh (bribe)”. The Dawsons migrating to Australia may be explained in terms of the Neoclassical economics theory, which determines a migrant’s choice of home on a cost-benefit calculation. In this

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case, the migrants are viewed as rational actors whose primary considerations are economic, although other factors, like health and re-unification with family also prevail. However, the apprehensions of stepping into an unknown country, a new home underlie the Dawsons’ apparent expression of relief in their rejection of India, or more specifically, Calcutta.

Two other physical migrations which Dutt dramatizes in the film are that of Sally’s and Abdul Chacha’s family, both of which are instances of internal migrations, or migrations within the nation. Sally, a teenage AngloIndian girl, realizes that her desire to marry Bradley and migrate to England will remain a dream, since Bradley is not interested in her, but in Anne. She, therefore, grabs the next possible opportunity and runs off with one of the “para chokras” (local boys) to settle in Bombay to begin her new career as a singer. Abdul Chacha is also forced to leave the Barracks because he is an illegal tenant and the target of Kesto, the promoter’s hired goon. Unlike Sally, Abdul and his wife put up a strong resistance against migration, yet circumstances compel them to move out of the Barracks. Dutt, however, only dramatizes their departure from the Barracks, their home, but there is no mention of their destination.

While the act of physical migration is restrictively featured in two or three shots, the film-text devotes itself largely to the exploration of the imaginative migration through the principal female character, Mrs. Emily Lobo. Emily is an Anglo-Indian woman, caught between the two worlds of London and Calcutta, between her British past and Indian present. Her elder son, Kenny, is characterized throughout the film by his absence. It is through a series of phone-call sequences to Kenny in London, where only Emily’s voice is audible, that Kenny comes alive. From the little boy, Philip, to the old, drunkard, Peter, Emily’s desire for migration to London is known to all. There is an outward confidence in her gesture each time she mentions that she would push off to London with her younger son, Bradley, as soon as Kenny shifts to a bigger house. Whether she is in the middle of a meeting regarding the uncertain future of the Barracks, or talking to a guest, Emily breaks off suddenly and rushes to a local, roadside P.C.O. to call up Kenny. These international calls are strategically placed in the plot at regular intervals to externalize Emily’s intense desire for migration. Though the cacophony of the surrounding streets threatens to shatter her dream, Emily intimately engages

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herself in an imaginative journey of the mind. None of her calls are received by Kenny; it is after the mechanical “record your message” beep that Emily immediately embarks on a lone, private journey towards London. She has a folded sheet of paper in her hand, with her lines to Kenny jotted down, so as not to waste any precious second of the long-distance I.S.D. calls. The city recedes to a shadowy background as Emily cocoons herself in a private space, expressing to Kenny her desperation to reach London: I have been trying to talk to you for the past months, son. I left so many messages also…I just want to know whether you got your confirmation and when you will shift to a bigger house…So just tell Mummy when you are ready, darling. Will it be Christmas time?

It is this imaginative migration that keeps Emily occupied throughout the film.

To the little Philip, migrating to Sidney, she says: “You are going to be a pukka (complete) gentleman. I am going to London to live with Kenny dada. I am going to see the Big Ben, River Thames and all.” With Sally, she shares her plans of migration, how she would sell off the expensive gold necklace, inherited from her husband’s family, to buy air tickets, once Kenny changes his apartment. In fact, she assures Sally that she would take her to London once they move out. To the other tenants of the Barracks who have gathered on the terrace to meet the architect, Manish, she boldly declares, “I don’t want to stay here for the rest of my life. I am not staying here for long”. This imaginative migration works like an obsession in Emily and is a pointer to her psychological displacement, a journey from India, her “adopted” home, to England, her “original” home.

Kandel and Massey in “The Culture of Mexican Migration: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis” (2002) show how the aspiration to migrate is transmitted across generations through social networks. Anjan Dutt shows how this aspiration works in Emily as well. She wants her son, Bradley, to believe in her dream, to participate in it, and finally, fulfil it. She rebukes Bradley, “You should be calling your brother, not me”. However, Bradley is firmly rooted in reality and instead of indulging in his mother’s imagination, he turns the mirror to his mother:

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And take this one thing clear in your thick head once and for all.

Ken has not called and he will never ever call. He has not been calling you for the last four years. He is not calling you back because he is not bothered. So you are stuck here with me in this stinking city forever. I am nothing. I am a failure like Daddy because that’s the best I can do. I can’t do anything better than that. I will end up as a waiter in Park Street because that is the best I can do, because I am too God damn silly, stupid, weak.

Emily is thunderstruck. The harsh reality which she has carefully evaded so long stares into her face. As tears roll down her cheeks, Emily sits on the bed, immobile and lifeless. The flow of her imagination is at once arrested and she is left in a vacuum.

The final blow comes to Emily in the next scene. When Tom hits his wife, Anne, in a fit of rage, Bradley makes a valiant protest and is shot by Tom on the leg. While Tom is arrested, Bradley struggles in the hospital. The protective mother, who had always tried to keep away her son from the corrupting influences of Calcutta and had planned a career for him in London, now sits emotionally wrecked, on a bench outside the hospital, accompanied

by Anne. She looks at Anne, tortured and physically bruised, yet brave enough to love her son and accept the ruthless challenges as part of life. It is at this crucial point that Emily has an epiphany and she confesses: “And what a strong woman she (Ann) is, Peter. After all that beating-sheating (the Anglo-Indian coinage) she did not leave because of my little boy, because of my little boy”.

Dutt’s use of the epiphany transforms Emily’s perception of home and identity. The imaginative migration to England had so long dissociated her from India, her “adopted” home. But once her fantasies of migrating to her elder son in London are broken, Emily perceives herself and her younger son, Bradley, in a new light. She feels integrated with the life at Barracks and reconciles to her Indian identity. Life in the Barracks may be difficult, but like Anne, she will learn to face it. She now passes on her treasured necklace, the symbol of her liberty and freedom from Bow Barracks, to Anne, her prospective daughter-in-law. Finally, she writes to Kenny:

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Do you remember the necklace that your grandmother gave me? I have been saving it to buy our passage off to London. But I don’t care about all that now, son. Because I have to give the best thing to the bravest woman I know. If she can take so much shit and stick on, so can I.

Anne has not escaped, nor will Emily. In Anne’s possession, the necklace takes on a different symbol. Anne decides to sell it and use the money for repairing the Barracks. From Emily’s personal dreams of migration, the necklace now transcends the microcosmic Lobo family to embrace the future of the entire Anglo-Indian community and their life in Bow Barracks. To Kenny, therefore, Emily can now write with a new faith: Kenny dear, I never felt this way before, but I suddenly feel that I don’t want to leave this house…This is my house. We have decided to stay here. Calcutta is getting lousy, no doubt, but this is my home…So if you ever feel lost and lonely and need to come back home, just remember, we are always there for you.

The dream of migration, which Emily not only cherished so long, but also enacted imaginatively in her mind, is replaced by a stronger faith in her Indianness, and thus she effortlessly surrenders herself to Bow Barracks. India, or in this context, Calcutta, with all its limitations, emerges as the “only” home for the Anglo-Indians. The film-maker’s message is explicit. It is this very awareness that India is their home that can prevent the Anglo-Indians from migrating abroad.

In her own way, Rosa, too, expresses her desperation to migrate from India. However, she does not have any preferred destination country. She indulges in a sexual affair with the Bengali insurance agent, Bipin, and pleads him to release her from the Barracks: “Why don’t you take me away from here, Bipin? I can’t, I can’t take it anymore. Even the Dawsons have left from here.

Nothing. There’s nothing here”. Rosa does escape, but returns after some time to her husband, Melville. With repentant tears and a sincere plea to Melville, “I don’t know where to go. Please let me stay here”, Rosa reconciles to her home at Bow Barracks.

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Anjan Dutt’s much controversial cinematic representation of the AngloIndians in Bow Barracks stands out not only in its exploration of the motif of migration, but also in suggesting how the Anglo-Indian community might be integrated to their “adopted” home, India. In his discussion on the reasons behind the mass exodus of the Anglo-Indians from India, Robyn Andrews (2007) states that it is a “combined effect of a well-established culture of migration…sense of alienation from India and the reassurance and encouragement from their contemporaries and kin who reside abroad” that motivate the Anglo-Indians “to quit India, than to stay” (49). This rising impetus of the culture of migration is countered by Dutt in celluloid, which projects how the Anglo-Indians living in the Barracks rise above the push and pull factors of migration to integrate themselves with India, their “only” home.

Identification with India, Dutt seems to suggest, is not possible by any imposition of law; it is a condition of the mind which is achieved by conquering over the desires for migration to attain an overwhelming faith in one’s Indian identity. Bow Barracks Forever, therefore, remains Anjan Dutt’s emphatic statement on the need for integrating the fast declining Anglo-Indian community with India.

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References Haas de, Hein. Migration and Development: A Theoretical Perspective. COMCAD, Bielefeld, 2007.

Caplan, L. “‘Life is Only Abroad, Not Here’: The Culture of Emigration among AngloIndians in Madras”, Immigrants and Minorities, 14 (1): 26-46, 1995.

Kandel, W. and D. S. Massey. “The Culture of Mexican Migration: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis”, Social Forces, 80 (3): 981-1004, 2002.

Andrews, Robyn. “Quiting India: The Anglo-Indian Culture of Migration”, A Journal of Sociological Anthropology and Culture Studies, 4 (3): 32-56, 2007.

Gaikwad, V. R. The Anglo-Indians: A Study in the Problems and Processes Involved in Emotional and Cultural Integration. New Delhi: Asia Publishing House, 1967.

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A Twice-Born Canon and its Reifiction: The Indian Hill Writings of Emily Eden, Fanny Parkes, Frank Smythe and Eric Shipton

by Arup K Chatterjee

Chatterjee, Arup K. “A Twice-Born Canon and its Reifiction: The Indian Hill Writings of Emily Eden, Fanny Parkes, Frank Smythe and Eric Shipton.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 2.2 (2012): 67-76. Web.

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"A Twice-Born Canon and its Reifiction: The Indian Hill Writings of Emily Eden, Fanny Parkes, Frank Smythe and Eric Shipton" (by Arup K Chatterjee) by Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercialNoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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A Twice-Born Canon and its Reifiction: The Indian Hill Writings of Emily Eden, Fanny Parkes, Frank Smythe and Eric Shipton

by Arup K Chatterjee

The concept of the archive shelters in itself, of course, this memory of the name arkhe. But it also shelters itself from this memory which it shelters: which comes down to saying also that it forgets it.

(Derrida, 9)

The design, and the order of texts, in a literary canon, is its architecture. To prevent abusing the specificity of the discipline I will call it architexture. It is the selection and systemization of texts into a canonical hermeneutics. What precedes this architexture is an archiving of texts, by the architects, or what Derrida calls, the “archons”, who are “first of all the documents’ guardians… (and) accorded the hermeneutic right and competence…they recall the law and call on or impose the law.” (10) I If Indian English, in pedagogy and curricula, has generally begun after the Indian nation state, it does not mean that it has glossed over the English that came before the moment of independence. On the contrary, the canon of Indian English has begun with the works of Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand, R.K, Narayan, Rabindranath Tagore, H.L.V Derozio, Sarojini Naidu, among many others who wrote before India, insofar as, even Rudyard Kipling and E.M. Forster are, or must be, now considered Indian English writers. A recent addition to the Delhi University English syllabus is “Anglo-American writing from 1930” featuring work by Salman Rushdie, who for most part has been the toast of Indian English. We are, therefore, prepared enough to naturalize authors into hybrid nationalities, while teaching their works. Despite such

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flexibility, there has been continual academic blindness towards Indian English travel literature written before independence. Of this literature, not much can be theorized in terms of present nation building or anti-nation criticism, purely owing to the stamps of leisure and commission with which travel literature is couriered to its readers. We have better to teach about hybrid nationalities and many Indias, in literature of the past and recent greats. Meanwhile, a colonization of literary ideas has begun through the gateway of a marginal canon, which I will call “Hill Literature”.

Indian Travel English is so vast that even mining its minor facets is certainly welcomed with popularity. A part of it is Hill Literature made of early authors such as Emily Eden, Fanny Parkes, John Lang, and numerous others, including present ones like Ruskin Bond, Stephen Alter, Bill Aitken. Many of the older authors have come to public notice only in the last fifteen years or so.

However, the agency of the architexture has been undergoing a regular domiciliation, on one hand, and colonization on the other. There has been no embargo on research related to Hill Literature by any patriarch, whatever.

Consequently, when William Dalrymple re-published Fanny Parkes’s Wanderings of a Pilgrim (1850) as Begums, Thugs & Englishmen, The Journals of Fanny Parkes (2003), he was free to quote entirely out of context, the subjectauthor of his finds, in order to justify the non-colonial attitude of his “patriarchic function” (see Derrida, 10). The urgency behind this, as Dalrymple makes obvious, was the “orthodoxy” of Edward Said’s Orientalism – phenomena. So, in order to use Parkes as his tool of defiance he unreasonably schedules her into the binary of the colonial and the non-colonial. An excerpt from his Introduction to the book, which also informs an article in the Guardian, reads: Parkes is an important writer because she acts as a witness to a forgotten moment of British-Indian hybridity, and shows that colonial travel writing need not be an aggressive act of orientalist appropriation - not "gathering colonial knowledge", as Edward Said and his followers would have us believe, but instead an act of understanding… it is ridiculously simplistic to see all attempts at studying, observing and empathising with another culture necessarily "as an act of domination - rather than of respect or even catharsis.

(2007)

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In the chapter “Ascent to Landowr” Parkes finds the Paharis “most exceedingly dirty” (Vol. II, 227) after having just finished calling them “animals to stare at” (ibid) resembling Tartars. Dalrymple points out that she found “Indian men ‘remarkably handsome’” (2003, x). It is not “men” that Parkes talks about but native servants. The exact passage that Dalrymple paraphrases from is: Some of the natives are remarkably handsome, but appear far from being strong men. It is impossible to do with a few servants, you must have many; their customs and prejudices are inviolable…They are great plagues; much more troublesome than English servants. (Vol. I, 26)

“Remarkably handsome” is as uninsightful and average in Victorian English expressions as Dalrymple tries to celebrate it. The only other human subjects Parkes finds “remarkably handsome” in her entire narrative are the interracial children of Mr Gardner and Mulka, and a certain bridegroom called Unjun Sheko. Apart from this the phrase is used for cows, bulls, an Arab pony, camel’s clothing, and so on.

Dalrymple, also adds that for Parkes “The evenings are cool and refreshing ... The foliage of the trees, so luxuriously beautiful and so novel…”

(2003, x). Those are Parkes’s words immediately after she has pronounced the climate “oppressive” with “hot winds”. “I can”, she writes, “compare it to nothing but the hot blast you would receive in your face were you suddenly to open the door of an oven.” (Vol. I, 25). Within two paragraphs of the above climatic appreciation, she will call the weather “very uncertain”.

Finally, in a glaring counterfeiture, Dalrymple quotes Parkes, with a clear intention of sanitizing her persona. This is what Parkes wrote according to him: “Oh the pleasure…of vagabondising (sic) in India” (2007)

What Parkes wrote instead was “Oh! the pleasure of vagabondizing over India (Vol. II, 192, italics mine). The shift from “over” to “in” is strategic for Dalrymple who intends to project Parkes as a “patriarchic function” of the class that is not “over” but within the object of rule. In the section of this

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vagabondizing Parkes can be seen “cantering away” on her Arab pony, a sight which speaks more of her individual and sexual prowess than her undoubted general love for India and its peoples. The very passages that Dalrymple quotes from contradict his representation of Parkes. Given this state of his revisionist and non-contextual references from Parkes, it is clear how little his work has been scrutinized by the editorial commissioners of both Guardian and Penguin.

Jacques Derrida analyses in Archive Fever the economy of Sigmund’s Freud’s rhetoric of self-archiving under the guise of self-criticism, wherein the psychoanalyst is struggling to find a “mutation” or a cleavage within his own institution. Freud, is here, matched by Dalrymple in his re-texturing of the existing architexture. This architexture has come under severe attack from the Saidian school wherefore it is incumbent upon the archon, now, to highlight the cleavages, which come in the forms of the Eden sisters, sisters of India Governor-General, Lord Auckland. He calls Emily Eden “waspish and conceited” which is entirely justified, and equally dangerous when done so in comparison with Parkes who as even Dalrymple acknowledges was “eccentric”. In fact, she was as eccentric as inconsistent, as free as fearless to express her mercurial responses. There is no vindication of Eden’s highhandedness as there is none of Parkes’s capriciousness. This is to say, casting Parkes as the symbol of Indian English hybridity is theoretically flawed due to Parkes individual hybrid constitution. Dalrymple categorically informs of Eden’s literary popularity, as opposed to Parkes’s whose Wanderings “never had another edition.” Eden’s Up the Country is, hence, analogous with coloniality, which must be disavowed, and simultaneously re-avowed in terms of claiming guardianship over that which is the secret. In Derridean terms, in the process of clearing the memory of the arkhe or the arch texturer, he has used itself as his ploy, and shelter.

As Derrida explains, the transformation of Freud’s house into a museum, although marks a passage from the private to the public, but does not do so from “the secret to the non-secret” (10). The hermeneutics of the architexture is left to the “archontic” signatory of a treaty of settlement, or domiciliation – practically a “house arrest”, as Derrida calls it – and in this atmosphere the archon archives. He uninterruptedly assumes patriarchy over the “secret”, marks his exergue before the hermeneutics of the architexture. In

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other words, he cites before the beginning and lawfully orders the beginning and its course. Dalrymple, in this respect, resembles Lang, the 1850s’ Australian Indian English writer, well known for his contempt of British officialdom. In his “Himalaya Club” serialized in Charles Dickens’s Household Words, Lang writes effervescently of English snobbery, from his solipsistic refuge is Mussoorie. From here, he leaves us an inventory of English manners, stingy pensioners, and trivial scandals which have become a source of nostalgic imitation in most of present day Hill Literature. Incidentally, both have written most of their works based on or around Delhi, both went to Trinity College in Cambridge, and both are of Scottish descent. Needless to say, both have been signatories to an archontic domiciliation.

II Bill Aitken, a Hill Writer from Scotland (now Indian), archives a new canon of architexts in “An Introduction to the Literature on Nanda Devi”. Unlike Dalrymple, he does not try to posit the canon – or pose canonical differences – within colonial and non-colonial binaries. He seeks religio-spiritual, instead of ideological, grounds of difference, between his predecessors. Of the long list of authors on the patron-Goddess – as he treats the Nanda Devi – three stand out, persistently. They are judged on their degrees of reverence for the heathen deity. Both historically, and in Aitken’s study, Frank Smythe comes between Eric Shipton and H.W. Tilman. Aitken chooses, however, elaborate first on Smythe, and leaves “for the last, the best and most literary offerings to the goddess”, which is Shipton’s Nanda Devi (1936). Aitken’s archival essay succeeds in polarising Smythe and Tilman as spiritual antagonists, with Smythe as the believer and Tilman as the “workmanlike non-believer, and both being finally surpassed by Shipton’s offerings. (Aitken, 2006) The book by Smythe that Aitken refers to is Valley of Flowers, a choice that is as beautiful as strategic. Aiken does not choose, for instance, Smythe’s Kamet Conquered or The Spirit of the Hills, in either of which Smythe is the mountaineer struggling against the invincibility of the hills, the rugged weather that scares away Darjeeling sherpas, of the very indomitable spirit that is the object of ascent. Nowhere is Smythe even partially irreverent of the Himalayas,

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or acts “frustrated” as more recent day mountaineers like John Roskelley.

Instead, in Kamet Conquered he warns: The Himalaya must be approached humbly…Other mountains forgive mistakes, but not the Himalaya. (8)

Yet, the atmosphere of unrivalled peace and cosmological sovereignty that Smythe witnesses in his sojourn in The Valley of Flowers could not be paralleled during a treacherous climb: There is a power of which we know little in the west but which is a basic of abstract thought in the east. It is allowing the mind to receive rather than to seek impressions, and it is gained by expurgating extraneous thought. It is then that the Eternal speaks; that the mutations of the universe are apparent: the very atmosphere is filled with life and song; the hills are resolved from mere masses of snow, ice and rock into something living. When this happens the human mind escapes from the bondage of its own feeble imaginings and becomes as one with its Creator. (64) Smythe is spiritually drawn to the pristine hills that had seen neither Europeans nor the commercialism that besotted the Swiss Hills, neither railroads nor vistas, but remained content in “the kindly peasant folk (that) graze their flocks in the summer months” (1936, 17).

The Valley of Flowers is located at about 12500 feet, which is at just half the height of Nanda Devi (over 25000 ft.) The latter is where Aitken places Shipton, while Tilman is left as “almost a caricature of the emotionally repressed Englishman” whose “appearance on top of Nanda Devi has a Chaplinesque dimension”: [He] crave[s] her indulgence in breaching protocol by not removing [his] boots on her sacred summit. (Aitken, 2006) The peak, however, remains for Shipton, for whom it is the “Inviolate Sanctuary of the “Blessed Goddess”” (also the name of Shipton’s book). The mountain peak and the mountaineer “seem made for each other” (ibid), each sharing the other’s philosophical prowess. While Tilman’s Ascent to Nanda Devi is fraught with rashness and Judaic mindset (he “leapt at the opportunity”

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(ibid), when Shipton refused), Shipton’s reward lies in his “Sanctuary” at the base of the Nanda Devi. What separates Smythe and Shipton is that the former is shown singing the praise of the goddess’s feet like a “gardener”, while the latter consorts with her respectfully near her bosom. Smythe can be seen in The Valley of Flowers as a self-taught gardener “above jealousy and suspicion”, without the ambition to exceed his arboreal garden. Shipton, on the other hand, is brought to the brink of extreme height and fame, whereat he refuses to cross the sanctuary of Nanda Devi, and de-sanctify it. All three mountaineers are domiliciliated by Aitken to respective positions, in which Tilman’s domicile is delegitimized, Smythe’s legitimated, and Shipton’s sanctified. In archiving this hierarchy of archons, Aitken himself assumes the patriarchic function.

Thesis The word “fiction” has its roots in the Latin fictio which means “to feign” or “to fashion”. Dalrymple and Aitken, both perform the archontic role of naturalizing a canonical hermeneutics; both do so by the reification of their corresponding patriarchic functions, through a defense of deferential responses to the Indian hills, ideologically or spiritually. Dalrymple’s reification is based on a feigned revisionism of ideology in Parkes’s representation of India where probably none existed, or an ideology that was overpowered by her unbounded spirit. It is part of his own quest for domiciliation. Aitken’s reification tries to fashion away from the current trend of the technological ascent and altitudinal devaluation of the Himalayas, thereby re-inscribing his own domicile. While Dalrymple looks back in anger and gropes for the spoils of war, Aitken lives in historical and spiritual continuity with the holy ghosts of Uttarakhand. To call one as more or less archivally upright is not the requisite gesture. In either case, it is an act of reifiction, which is far from being critically questioned. It is a fiction that designs and defines a new architexture, that of Hill Literature.

Indian Hill Literature is a marginal canon, yet to be canonized by our academic institutions. Its study is crucial to our English, and it therefore requires a systematic, rather than a reifictional hermeneutics. What I have here called Hill Literature has been a twice-rejected literature, both at the hands of

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the English, and the Indian English. In the last decade there has been increasing complexity of academic interest in Hill Literature, although not from Indian universities. In the shelter of a criticism of colonization, or in a criticism of the same critique, the memory of the present literary colonization of Hills Literature is waning unnoticeably. Quite readily the hoax and sombreness of Hill reifictions is turning into a twice born canon, unnoticed at birth, and re-engendered at the turn of the Third World academization. If the architexture of Indian hills is at the freedom of the archon it is imperative to determine the authority that has commissioned this archiving process. What gets archived within is always for benefit of the without. The domicialiation of the archivist is not self-determined, and neither is the house arrest a selfincarceration. The nation and the consignation are not in the same domicile.

Our task is then to re-order the exterior source where the consignation belongs, and re-define the architexture of the hills.

There is no archive without a place of consignation, without a technique of repetition, and without a certain exteriority. No archive without outside. (Derrida, 14)

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References Aitken, Bill. “An Introduction to the Literature on Nanda Devi”. <http://www.himalayanclub.org/journal/an-introduction-to-the-literature-onnanda-devi/>, 2006.

Dalrymple, William. Begums, Thugs and Englishmen: The Journals of Fanny Parkes. New Delhi: Penguin, 2003 _____ “Lady of the Raj”. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/jun/09/featuresreviews.guardianreview35 >, 2007 Derrida, Jacques. “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression” Diacritics, 25 (2): 9-63, John Hopkins University, 1995. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/465144> Lang, John. “Himalaya Club”, in Household Words, Vol. XV, ed. Charles Dickens.

London: Ward, Lock, and Tyler, 1857.

Smythe, Frank. Kamet Conquered. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1932. _____ The Valley of Flowers. London: Hodder, 1936.

Parkes, Fanny. Wanderings of a Pilgrim, in Search of the Picturesque, During Four-andTwenty Years in the East; With Revelations of Life in the Zenana, Vol.s I & II. London: Pelham Richardson, 1850.

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Travel Without Moving: Ireland as An-Other England in G.B Shaw’s John Bull’s Other Island

by Osmond Chien-ming Chang

Osmond, Chien-ming Chang. “Travel Without Moving: Ireland as An-Other England in G.B Shaw’s John Bull’s Other Island.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 2.2 (2012): 77-85.

Web.

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"Travel Without Moving: Ireland as An-Other England in G.B Shaw’s John Bull’s Other Island" (by Osmond Chien-ming Chang) by Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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Travel Without Moving: Ireland as An-Other England in G.B Shaw’s John Bull’s Other Island

by Osmond Chien-ming Chang

Ever since its publication in 1904, G. B. Shaw’s John Bull’s Other Island, though written for the Dublin Abbey Theatre on W. B. Yeats’s invitation, has fuelled a lot of controversy over its nationalist ideology. Unlike previous topoi in Irish literature, John Bull not merely expresses Shaw’s firm belief in the experiment of the iconoclastic, but also leads readers to examine Ireland both as an Edenic paradise and a country of dirt and poverty through two travellers, the Anglicized Irishman, Larry Doyle, and the Glastonized Englishman, Thomas Broadbent. While the controversial attention is often accorded to political and religious oppression, national identity, and the Gaelic Revival movement (Irish Literary Renaissance), this satirical comedy is seldom considered and read as a travelogue.

In his introduction “Bernard Shaw and the Irish literary tradition” Peter Gahan observes that Shaw’s plays, John Bull in particular, are “pertinent to the social, political, and economic context of Ireland” (22). In the same vein, Heniz Kosok notes that the play “mirrors in various ways the specific social and cultural situation of Ireland at the time when it was written and performed” (175). Like most of the contemporary Irish playwrights, Shaw continues with the fundamental ideas of nationalism in John Bull in which the story background is intricately set between the downfall of Parnell (1890) and the third Home Rule Bill (1912). While John Bull reflects, in a general way, the situation of Ireland at a particular moment in history, it can be also said that the play expresses Shaw’s thoughts about his homeland revealing his concerns about the possibility of Irish self-government and separation from Britain’s influence. Shaw puts the idea in his “Preface for Politicians” that Ireland in his views “is the only spot on earth which still produces the ideal Englishman of history” (qtd. in Kosok, 178). It is not hard to realize that critics draw much

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attention to political and social issues embodied in this play. Especially, in tracking the development of cultural nationalism in the Irish Literary Revival, David Pierce has already commented that “[i]n point of fact, as John Bull’s Other Island (1904) repeatedly demonstrates, Shaw himself was better than Yeats at distinguishing English from Irish, not least in showing how the terms were subject to comic reversal” (4).

The play is introduced to us as a satire on the ridiculous Irishman stock in the figure of Tim Haffigan and his two friends, or business partners, Tom Broadbent and Larry Doyle, who travel to a small town Ross Cullen in Ireland.

Perhaps, owing to his white man’s burden, Broadbent not only travels to Ireland for business, but develops passionate love for everything there, including Nora Reilly, Doyle’s old lover. Unlike Broadbent, however, Doyle has no interest in returning to Ireland even after eighteen years; rather, he would like to stay in London and become an Englishman instead of remaining Irish. Because of his double-identity struggling between two nations, Doyle is the one often viewed through the lenses of diasporic and postcolonial theories.

The present paper proposes to investigate sedentary travel (or rigid travel) in a cross-cultural movement of John Bull which is very little examined in the field of Shavian studies since 1995. This paper attempts to establish two things via the Guattari-Deleuzian doctrine of travel. Firstly, it focuses on the stock of the Anglicanizing Irish gentry as a symbolic reterritorialization within a superior order of imperialism to highlight a representation of difference between the self and the other. Secondly, it explores a utopian movement towards the other, with the application of a Shavian romantic and realistic imagination. The above discussion seeks to present an overview of the travel narrative in Shaw’s John Bull.

In order to situate John Bull within the context of the travel narrative, a division of nomadic and sedentary travel is imperative. In bringing to light the illusory presence of travel, Deleuze and Guattari, in A Thousand Plateaus, argue that “even though the nomadic trajectory may follow trails or customary routes, it does not fulfil the function of the sedentary road, which is to parcel out a closed space to people” (380). In one way or the other, the nomad, like the migrant, has a certain territory and customary paths from one point to another, but the nomad in Guattari and Deleuze’s view is the one whose travel can be said to cling to the smooth space. Unlike sedentary space, the smooth space is

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not limited “by walls, enclosures, and roads between enclosures,” so that it has no points and paths within a certain territory or the center. In the light of this argument, the movement of the nomad, as well as the smooth space, is deterritorialized without being reterritorialized. Guattari and Deleuze write: If the nomad can be called the Deterritorialized par excellence, it is precisely because there is no reterritorialization afterward as with the migrant, or upon something else as with sedentary (the sedentary’s relation with the earth is mediatized by something else, a property regime, a State apparatus). With the nomad, on the contrary, it is deterritorialization that constitutes the relation to the earth…(381)

Syed Manzurul Islam, along with Guattari and Deleuze’s, not just simply argues that the nomad is the one “who moves without moving,” but also links this movement with the ethic of travel (10). Here Islam’s concept of travel without moving does not mean that nomadic travel is the one without motion or toward the centre (inside) but, it denotes a decentred and deterritorialized scheme of travel. Because of deterritorialization, the nomad does not locate itself in a striated regime, but, in contrast, lives in a smooth space not enclosed by any rigid line. In other words, nomadic travel is, in fact, not around a fixed location but in a boundless space, because it performs without reterritorialization. As such, it can be said that, home for a nomadic traveller is anywhere and at the same time everywhere.

Examining the case of John Bull it is not hard to find that Broadbent is the one who never leaves England like Adela Quested in E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India, even though both of them set off from London and arrive in another country. With a set of sensational ideas or prejudices about Ireland drawn from the Music Hall, Broadbent goes there driven by the white man’s burden, with the desire to see nations outside the center (Britain). As to the Stage Irish, it is not limited to a misrepresentation of Tim Haffigan, a man born in Glasgow, Scotland, as authentic, but this ridiculous arch-image of Irishman, as pointed out by Doyle, has already been built in the theatre for a long time: [Broadbent] But he spoke – he behaved just like an Irishman.

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[Doyle] Like an Irishman!! Is it possible that you don’t know that all this top-o-the-morning and broth-o-a-boy and more-power-toyour-elbow business is as peculiar to England as the Albert Hall concerts of Irish music are? No Irishman ever talks like that in Ireland, or ever did, or ever will…He [Haffigan] picks them at the theatre or the music hall. Haffigan learnt the rudiments from his father, who came from my part of Ireland…(13, italics mine)

As a result, Broadbent’s ignorance and misunderstanding about the Irish is predictable, especially for his misrecognition of Haffigan as the real Irishman.

Being a non-native, Broadbent, cannot, or even has no ability to, tell a Scottish’s imitation of the Irish accent and behaviour. Just as Islam writes, “the truth of binary difference…cannot subsist without an epistemological plane and a representational frame” (52), what Tom Broadbent knows about an Irishman is in fact based upon what he thinks a real Irishman should be. Partly because of this misunderstanding and partly due to fantasizing the other island outside of England, Ireland, to an extent, becomes a country or a place for Broadbent’s business to develop. Like Mrs Moore in Forster’s A Passage, Broadbent is the one with a hungry heart to touch and sense the atmosphere of a foreign country but, definitely unlike her, he is not a visitor to Ireland for his sincere desire to learn about a new culture, but in the capacity of a businessman looking for development, and providing his English guidance to the Irish.

In the following passage, Broadbent behaves no different from a colonizer: Broadbent. (quite reassured). Of course I am. Our guidance is the important thing. We English must place our capacity for government without stint at the service of nations who are less fortunately endowed in that respect; so as to allow them to develop in perfect freedom to the English level of self-government, you [Doyle] know. You understand me? (16-17)

Broadbent attempts to distinguish and make a division between England and Ireland, or even, between England and other countries. In this sense, even after crossing the threshold of the sea between Ireland and England, Broadbent

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never at all passages himself to a foreign nation. Even in Ireland he still adheres to Britain; he never deterritorializes. Despite the fact that Broadbent shows his mobility along the smooth surface to Ireland, he does not erase the boundary between the inside and the outside. On the contrary, with the white man’s burden to Ireland, he is not merely rigid to think of the position of the Irish, but also to forget “the memories of the inside” that has him “re-claimed by the rigid boundary and folded back into the inside” (Islam 53). By this fact, he is, as this study suggests, the one who travels to Ireland without moving, in the context of reterritorialization, and fits in Islam’s concept of the sedentary travel or the Hegelian – “the same re-turns to the same” (53).

Further, turning to the case of Ireland and trying to answer Broadbent’s question for Doyle, the words above, in Broadbent’s mind, reveal an attitude of colonialism. To the Irish, England, according to Stanley Weintraub, “meant colonial rule from Dublin Castle” (434), and, among other characters in John Bull, Broadbent is the one who “wants to turn the region – exploit it might be another view – into a tourist hotel with golf course and villagers of commercial quaintness” (433). In addition to this, Broadbent, as Keegan observes, “spends his life inefficiently admiring the thoughts of great men, and efficiently serving the cupidity of base money hunters” (95). Certainly, Broadbent’s optimistic and sentimental approach towards Ireland as the other island of England and his pragmatic-materialist attitude makes Ireland an Edenic paradise. Ireland being on the fringes of the empire, and yet within the premises of capitalism, a nomadic movement is somehow hard to be achieved. Thus, Broadbent’s travel to Ireland can be said to be a sedentary travel within the dominant modes of polis-ing.

However, Ireland in Doyle’s view is a country full of dirt and poverty that makes him reluctant to return to Ross Cullen. Especially at the moment when Broadbent asks him to go with him, Doyle replies that he has “an instinct against going back to Ireland: an instinct so strong that I’d rather go with you to the South Pole than to Ross Cullen.” Here, he explains the main reason for not going back: Doyle. Never mind my heart…How many of all those millions that have left Ireland have ever come back or wanted to come back? But what’s the use of talking to you? Three verse of twaddle about the

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Irish emigrant “sitting on the stile, Mary,” or three hours of Irish patriotism in Bermondsey or the Scotland Division of Liverpool, go further with you than all the facts that stare you in the face. (14, italics mine)

Recapitulating Guattari and Deleuze’s division between the nomad and the migrant, Doyle satisfies the fundamental requirements of travel, above all, traveling from one point to another and then returning back to the original place; he cannot be a nomadic traveller in this sense. Instead, he is a sedentary traveller like Broadbent. When Doyle refuses to go home, it at least contains two meanings here: one is his reluctance of returning back, and another is his intention to locate himself in the dominant modes of the polis, referring to England. And it is this very fact of Doyle clinging to the negativity of nomadology that features the foundation of his sedentary culture. Despite that Doyle’s travel fits the ethic of travel, that is, a movement of departure and arrival, he is the one “along with the route of power,” that never leaves or escapes from the centre (Islam 43). With regard to Doyle’s travel, it cannot be called travel because “it can only either be a ‘travelling incarnation’ or the sedentary movement of power on the adventure of conquest, knowledge and commerce”, viewed in the light of Islam. As such, both Broadbent and Doyle’s travel, as we’ve already seen, for its remarking walls, or reterritorializing territory as a barrier between the inside and the outside, or a refusal of encountering the other, reveals symptoms of sedentary travel culture in John Bull. Even though they cross the threshold of the sea between two countries, they never reach the smooth space because their travel not only moves without moving but in the end returns to the rigid boundary acknowledged and allowed by the law/force of the inside.

Although Shaw, as Shavian critics have pointed out, attempts to write John Bull for specific political purposes, I have sought to explicate not so much the relationship between two countries (England and Ireland) in the present study, but rather placed it under the lens of the travel narrative and explored sedentary movement in the play. Whether or not Shaw had ever thought to create his characters to represent nationalism or a diasporic nostalgia, or otherwise, what I have tried to show in this study is that John Bull play is not

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limited to just a political reading but opens itself to our investigation of possible issues and trends of travel in it.

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References Deleuze, Gilles and Félix. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.

University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1987.

Islam, Syed Manzurul. The Ethics of Travel: From Marco Polo to Kafka. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996.

Kosok, Heinz. “John Bull’s Other Eden.” Shaw: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies, 30: 175-90, 2010.

Pierce, David. “Culture Nationalism and the Irish Literary Revival.” International Journal of English Studies, 2(2): 1-22, 2012.

Shaw, George Bernard. John Bull’s Other Island. The Pennsylvania State University, 2003. <http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/gbshaw/JBsOtherIsland.pdf>.

Weintraub, Stanley. “Bernard Shaw’s Other Irelands: 1915-1919.” English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, 42(4): 433-42, 1999.

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Studying Alternative Protest in Cyber Space: Through the Prism of the Pink Chaddi Campaign

by Sapna Dudeja

Dudeja, Sapna. “Studying Alternative Protest in Cyber Space: Through the Prism of the Pink Chaddi Campaign.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 2.2 (2012): 86-96. Web.

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Studying Alternative Protest in Cyber Space: Through the Prism of the Pink Chaddi Campaign

by Sapna Dudeja

Though social networking sites and the internet have often been used to garner support within the socio-politico-cultural domain, something unprecedented happened in India recently that gave a new dimension to such sites within the Indian context. On January 24, 2009, and later, members belonging to the right wing extremist organization Sri Ram Sena attacked women in Mangalore pubs. Incidents of violence supported by similar right wing units were reported from across the nation in subsequent days. To protest against such organized violence perpetrated against women, ‘A Consortium of Pub-Going, Loose and Forward Women’, a group on Facebook1, organized a campaign which they called ‘the pink chaddi campaign’ (henceforth referred to as the PCC). The group was formed on February 5, 2009, with a modest membership. It grew exponentially, touching a remarkable 58,703 mark as on March 30, 2009. Later, a similar group by the

1

Facebook is a social networking website owned by Facebook Inc. The founder of Facebook is Mark Zuckerberg, a student at Harvard. Facebook came up from Harvard University’s version of Hot or Not Facemash. Facemash juxtaposed photos drawn from the online facebooks of nine houses and asked users to choose the “hotter” person. Facebook began by offering membership only to Harvard students.

Later, Zuckerberg included Eduardo Saverin (business aspects), Dustin Moskovitz (programmer), Andrew McCollum (graphic artist), and Chris Hughes in his team and it spread to other Universities like Yale and Stanford. Starting with an investment of 500,000 US$ from PayPal and 12.7 million US$ from Accel Partners, Facebook saw a huge loss of around 3 million US$ in the beginning. Companies like Yahoo, Microsoft and Google tried to buy some stakes in Facebook but only Microsoft was successful in buying 1.6% shares of Facebook for 240 million US$ and the value of Facebook rose to 15 Billion US$.

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name of the campaign itself was formed on Orkut2 as well. Nisha Susan, the founding member, urged people to send ‘pink chaddis’ to Pramod Muthalik, the chief of Sri Ram Sena. Hundreds and thousands of ‘chaddis’ were sent to the chief’s office and the campaign was hailed as extremely successful when the chief called off the plan to disrupt Valentine’s Day celebrations across the nation and was willing to talk across the table.

The campaign also triggered off similar campaigns like ‘the pub bharo andolan’, initiated by Renuka Choudhary, Minister of State for Women and Child Development; ‘the free hug campaign’; ‘take the night’, organized by a group called Fearless Karnataka or Nirbhaya Karnataka; ‘blank noise picnic’, organized by a group of the same name on Facebook; ‘the pink condom campaign’, organized by a group on Facebook called ‘The Selfrespecting Hindus’ Initiative for Equality and Liberty with Dignity or The SHIELD3, to protest against the “sickular (sic) Pink Chaddi walas”. The first four were supportively aligned with the PCC and aimed at challenging Muthalik and Sri Ram Sena by having a mass Valentine’s Day celebration.

‘The pink condom campaign’, on the other hand was launched as a counter 2

Orkut, as most people would know, is a website for social networking named after the creator Orkut Büyükkökten, a Turkish software engineer. The website was launched on 22nd January 2003 and is managed and operated by Google. By the end of 2006, Orkut became the most visited website in Brazil and was therefore fully managed and operated by Google, Brazil. In the beginning, membership was through invitation only but as the number of users kept increasing, the website became open to all. The features of the website were basically blogging, messaging, scrapping (leaving friends a message), adding and viewing pictures, videos, blogs and comments. Earlier, everyone could view images, information and personal data of other members but now users can set their own levels of privacy.

3

This group, on Facebook, states that it has three main missions: first, “to speak up against malicious vilification of Hinduism and Hindu culture, and to expose the coordinated attempts by sickulars (trinity of Evangelists, Jihadis and Communists) to project Hinduism as the root cause of all evils in the Indian society.” Second, “to act as a pressure group on saffron organizations (mostly referred as Sangh Parivar by the mainstream Indian media) who sometimes unfortunately indulge in disagreeable deeds and acts in the name of Hindu religion and culture.” Third, “to actively work towards betterment of the Hindu society in particular and Indian society in general, by fighting vices like casteism, crime and corruption and lending a helping hand in humanitarian operations.”

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campaign. The group behind the campaign describes itself as The SHIELD or alternatively as ‘Consortium of Assertive and Proud Hindus who are Sick of Indian Sickulars Conspiring to Attribute Every Vice in the Society to Hinduism’. This group is critical of both Sri Ram Sena’s indulgence in disagreeable acts in the name of Hinduism and the PCC as a “sickular” (sick + secular) response to the same.

Though the ramifications of these campaigns have been numerous, one path-breaking accomplishment of these campaigns is that they foreground the idea of cyber space as the new public sphere. Jurgen Habermas is one of the key theoreticians to have talked about the public sphere. According to him, modernity was ushered in when the bourgeois came to power through the public sphere: In its clash with the arcane and bureaucratic practices of the absolutist state, the emergent bourgeoisie gradually replaced a public sphere in which the ruler’s power was merely represented before the people with a sphere in which state authority was publicly monitored through informed and critical discourse by the people.4

But once they came to power, they began to regulate and thereby close forums of public interaction so that they could remain in power. And that is why the dream of emancipation of modernity failed. Rationality got splintered as there was no communication between the different spheres through which emancipatory politics could be worked out. So according to him, the task of post modernity is to achieve “communicative rationality” and consensus through the public sphere. While Habermas primarily talks about the public sphere as a space where consent or “public opinion” can be generated, I have used it to imply a space where protest can be launched. Through these campaigns, the cyber space emerged as an alternative space where protest could be launched and online social networking could be used to mobilize people and resources towards a cause. These campaigns initiated an online 4

Jürgen Habermas. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. (German, 1962, English Translation, 1989); The MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, pp. 305.

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forum where people from different walks of life could articulate and discuss the burning questions of the day and more importantly, could bring about a change. Especially the PCC was successful in making a ‘real’ difference and showing the potential of the cyber world as a domain where real problems can not only be articulated but also solved (the extent to which they get solved is of course debatable and could form the focus of another paper). Since it is a new domain (especially in India, it is a recent phenomenon), one needs to analyze it further to explore its potential as a tool of resistance.

When one talks of cyber space and feminism, the category one is looking at is called cyber feminism – when new scientific developments and technology are used towards liberating women.5 Cyber feminism, says Sadie Plant, director of the Centre for Research into Cybernetic Culture at Warwick University in England, is “an alliance between women, machinery, and new technology. There is a long-standing relationship between information technology and women’s liberation.”6 Donna Haraway’s essay “A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s” is generally accepted as marking the beginning of cyber feminism. According to Haraway, “A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction.”(83) In the essay, she presents an argument for “pleasure in the confusion of boundaries” (83) and the utopian ideal of “imagining a world without gender” (84). A majority of western cyber feminists have been preoccupied with the analysis of Haraway’s concept of the cyborg – either advocating it as enabling or condemning it as disabling in terms of the feminist project. In India, the fusion of feminist concerns and the cyber space gave birth to the PCC. The PCC can be seen as inaugurating a new kind of cyber feminism, opening a new avenue that cyber feminists around the world can explore further. It is a new kind of 5

While Sadie Plant defines cyber feminism in terms of women’s empowerment and technology (in general), there are others who define it specifically in relation to cyber space. However, the concept remains fluid and a strict definition cannot be provided.

6

As quoted in Hari Kunzru’s “You Are Cyborg”. Issue 5.02 (Feb 1997), Wired News. <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.02/ffharaway.html> Date of access: 29 March 2009.

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protest, unthought-of till now, having far reaching effect on the real world. The Indian variety of cyber feminism, it seems, has something significant to contribute to the debates within the domain of cyber feminism in general.

While one can be hopeful of its potential, the success of just one campaign does not give us enough reasons not to be cautious against the same.

Thanks to the success of the PCC, technophorics would be one up over technophobics, especially theoreticians like Howard Rheingold who, in his book The Virtual Community: Finding Connection in a Computerized World (1994)7, states that through the cyber space we have “access to a tool that could bring conviviality and understanding into our lives and might help revitalize the public sphere.” (14) Further, he opines: Virtual communities are social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on [electronically mediated] public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyber space…When the automobile centric, suburban, fast food, shopping mall way of life eliminated many of these ‘third places’ from traditional towns and cities around the world, the social fabric of existing communities started shredding… [computer mediated communication is driven by] the hunger for community that grows in the breasts of people around the world as more and more informal public spaces disappear from our real lives. (5-6)

Clearly, according to Rheingold, cyber space is that utopian space where we shall be able to recover the meaning and the experience of community, recapture the sense of a “shared consciousness” (245), make up for the loss of a sense of social belonging, rebuild a sort of small-town public sphere – a world where every citizen is networked to every other citizen and every member (who wishes to participate in the discussion) has a voice. It can become “one of the informal public places where people rebuild the aspects of community that were lost when the malt shop became the mall.” (25-26) Through this 7

Since this book is not easily available, all the references are as quoted in Kevin Robin’s essay “Cyberspace and the World We Live In” in The Cybercultures Reader, edited by David Bell and Barbara M.Kennedy.

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medium, it is claimed, we shall be able to construct new sorts of community, linked by commonality of interest and affinity rather than by accidents of location, carry on the project of social revitalization and renewal, “revitalize citizen-based democracy” (14), transcend national frontiers and build a “global civil society” (56), form “not only community but true spiritual communion” (115) in “communitarian places on-line” (56). The successful PCC seems like the real manifestation of Rheingold’s vision. But what is problematic is that he seems to suggest that formation of a community and hence a public space will alone ensure deliverance. He does not really stress on how this will or should lead to action. For instance - what kind of community is formed, who are the people who form it, who can access and afford to be a part of such a community (the question of class is extremely pertinent here, especially in the Indian context, where not many people have access to the internet)8, what is their agenda and plan of action, what kind of an intervention do they seek in the real world (if they seek any), how effective are their strategies, what is the extent of the gap between their conception and execution - are some of the questions that one needs to engage with in order to explore the connection between community formation, public sphere, consent generation or subversion.

The cyber world has definitely emerged as the new public space but the formation of a new public sphere and the launching of debates in the same do not necessarily ensure its use for a political purpose. So many online communities do not have a political agenda at all. Even when they do have an agenda and launch a movement, they cannot ensure its success. Since the cyber community is an open community, once launched, protests gain a life of their own. A close study of the language used by bloggers/ members of the PCC is extremely revealing. Besides exposing their subject positions and ideologies, it shows how, in the public sphere, through and with the use of language, an issue that started off more as a cultural debate concerning pub 8

In his essay, “ALT.CIVILIZATIONS.FAQ: Cyberspace as the darker side of the west”, Ziauddin Sardar points out; “Internet access is an expensive luxury… One can feed a family of four in Bangladesh for a whole year for that sort of money…In the Third World…only the reasonably well-off can afford access to the Internet. That leaves most of humanity at the mercy of real reality…So most of the people on the Internet are white, upper-and middle-class Americans and Europeans; and most of them, are men…less than one per cent of the people on-line are women.” (739-40)

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culture, Indian culture and the relationship between the two and as a gender issue attains different dimensions. It became a religious (Christian/West versus Hindu/non-West) issue with religious fanatics linking ‘chaddi’ as a cheap form of protest with pub culture, western influence, Christianity and loose behavior. For instance, let us consider three different entries: User 1: If you don’t like to send them chaddis, send them idol of Lord Rama and ask them to follow Him rather than beating up women for whatever reasons.

User 2: Now chaddis has (sic) to be divided into hindu christian and muslims!!! we have to think on seperating (sic) based on relegion (sic)!!

User 3: Initiated by Nisha Susan, a Christian, this is a Christian conspiracy to lower moral standards of Indian women. Obviously, the Pink Chaddi Campaign is financed by some Baptist group. The Campaign is vulgar since gifting the panties is an after-act token of appreciation of good performance, in the West. That the Christian initiative dares not send Chaddies to Moslem clerics shows their true agenda.9

Clearly, the verbal attacks, climate of abuse, linguistic warfare triggered of by members as well as non-members in the online forums generate dialogue and add new angles to the issue at hand.

According to Habermas, the cyber domain is already controlled by capital, and therefore cannot be used for subversive ends.

Use of the Internet has both broadened and fragmented the contexts of communication…But at the same time, the less formal, horizontal cross-linking of communication channels weakens the achievements of traditional media. This focuses the attention of an anonymous and dispersed public on select topics and information, allowing citizens to concentrate on the same critically filtered issues and journalistic pieces at any given time. The price we pay 9

From the official website of Mutiny Media Private Limited, 2007. Entries can be found in the discussion forum of the pink chaddi campaign. User 1 and 2 – Februray 14, 2009. User 3- February 20, 2009.

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for the growth in egalitarianism offered by the Internet is the decentralised access to unedited stories. In this medium, contributions by intellectuals lose their power to create a focus.10

However, through the example of the PCC, in this paper, I have argued that the potential of using cyber space for subversive ends cannot be denied. But again, by stating that cyber space has the potential to be appropriated for formulating a politics of enablement, I do not mean that it is a benign or utopian space which can solve all real problems. In fact, no technology is totally benign or totally evil. It is a double-edged sword. It is open to both use and abuse. As a matter of fact, cybernetics is more often abused than used. To realize that, one only needs to study the increase in the rate of cyber-crime in today’s world and the havoc caused by hackers. In his essay, “ALT.CIVILIZATIONS.FAQ: Cyberspace as the darker side of the west”, Ziauddin Sardar states that, Cybercrime is going to be the crime of the future. Organized crime is a $ 750 – billion – a – year enterprise, the drug trafficking generates revenues of $ 400 billion to $ 500 billion; much of this money finds its way into cyber space, where it is totally out of governments’ control, where it can lose itself in split-second deals, and where it is legitimized by the international movement of more than $ 1 trillion a day. (738)

Further, he adds, “On-line terrorism is not too far away and most of the early proponents of this sick art are hackers.” (739) Also, “half of cyberspace which is not commercial is largely ‘toilet wall’.” (741) In the context of virtual communities, Sardar states that, A cyberspace community is self-selecting, exactly what a real community is not; it is contingent and transient, depending on a shared interest of those with the attention span of a thirty second soundbite…In a cyberspace community you can shut people off at 10

As quoted in <http://maximiliansenges.blogspot.com/2008/04/socialmedia-in-cyberspace-public.html> Date of access: 29 March 2009.

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the click of a mouse and go elsewhere. One has therefore no responsibility of any kind…Thus the totalizing on-line character of cyberspace ensures that the marginalized stay marginalized…[C]yberspace is to community as Rubber Rita is to woman. (744)

In my opinion, virtual space has meaning only in relation to real space.

When virtual space/ identity/ protest/ culture/ life aims to replace or substitute real space/ identity/ protest/ culture/ life, it can become dangerous.

For instance, if desire for a virtual protest/ community has the impact of weakening the desire for a real one, then it can no longer be considered efficacious; if one’s virtual identity is the only proof of one’s real existence, one is in danger of extinction at the click of a button. One should be able to locate the virtual within the real. When new technologies are used to respond to regressive and solipsistic desires only, it is time to check them and make them morally and politically responsible.

I would conclude by stating that in this paper I have highlighted an incident of the formulation of an enabling politics within cyberspace – not to say that it is homogenously good but to show that although it is abused, it can be appropriated for a good cause, to make a difference in the real world - and that is the way forward. One has to think of new, creative ways of resistance.

Since in the cyber age one cannot ignore the interface between the cyber space and real world, one should try to make use of this new domain to empower oneself for a socially beneficial cause. Sending a pink ‘chaddi’ to Muthalik, to my mind, was a very creative, novel, Gandhian and effective way of protesting, making a real point through the use of virtual means. The pink ‘chaddis’ that became a tool of non-violent resistance against moral policing succeeded in achieving the desired effects. The Sri Ram Sena was so unsettled with receiving so many ‘chaddis’ that its members could not even decide what to do with them. First, the party decided to send them to an orphanage, then to publically auction them, then to send saris as return ‘gifts’, then to return them to the parents of girls who had sent them and finally to publically burn them. The underwear, I suppose, has never before played such a significant role in the history of protest movements in India.

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References Castells, Manuel. The Rise of the Network Society. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000.

Habermas, Jurgen. “Modernity versus Postmodernity”. A PostmodernReader. Ed.s.

Joseph Natoli and Linda Hutcheon. Albany, State University of New York Press, 1993: 91-104 Haraway, Donna. “A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s”. Socialist Review, No. 80. 1985. Also pub. in The Postmodern Turn: New Perspectives on Social Theory. Ed. Steven Seidman. New York, Cambridge University Press, 1994: 82-115 Kunzru, Hari. “You Are Cyborg”. Wired News. 5(02): 1997. <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.02/ffharaway.html> Robins, Kevin. “Cyberspace and the World We Live In”. The Cybercultures Reader.

Eds. David Bell and Barbara M.Kennedy. London: Routledge, 2000: 77-95.

Sardar, Ziauddin. “ALT.CIVILIZATIONS.FAQ: Cyberspace as the darker side of the west”. The Cybercultures Reader. Eds. David Bell and Barbara M. Kennedy.

London: Routledge, 2000: 732-52.

Internet sources: Orkut.com. http://www.orkut.com/ 7 March 2009 Facebook.com. <http://www.facebook.com/> 30 March 2009 Mutiny Media Private Limited. <http://mutiny.in/2009/02/09/pinkchaddi-campaign/> 7 March 2009 Blog-a-loreans: Brand of Bangalore Bloggers. <http://blogaloreans.in/2009/02/hug-karo-and-pub-bharo-andolan-inbangalore-to-dare-the-ram-sene/> 8 March 2009. <http://thepinkchaddicampaign.blogspot.com/> 8 March 2009. <http://blog.blanknoise.org/> 8 March 2009. <http://thepinkcondomcampaign.blogspot.com/> 9 March 2009. <http://hindushield.blogspot.com/> 9 March 2009. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberfeminism> 29 March 2009. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_sphere> 29 March 2009. <http://maximiliansenges.blogspot.com/2008/04/social-media-incyberspace-public.html> 29 March 2009.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics CONTRIBUTORS

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Contributors

Shoshannah Ganz is an Assistant Professor of English at Grenfell Campus, Memorial University, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. Her interests are Canadian literature, religious influence on Canadian writing, travel writing, and women’s writing. Ganz has published on a number of Canadian authors and co-edited The Ivory Thought: Essays on Al Purdy, pub. by University of Ottawa Press. Her monograph on Canadian Literary Pilgrimage is under peer review with Wilfred Laurier University Press. Shoshannah’s current book project examines the influence of Eastern thought on Canadian women travellers writing about South East Asia from 1850-1940.

Kelly Ann Jacobson is a student of M.A. in Fiction at the Johns Hopkins University. She is the Poetry Editor for Outside In Literary & Travel Magazine.

Jacobson’s poetry has been published in Wooden Teeth magazine and Outside In Literary & Travel Magazine. Her work can be found at www.kellyannjacobson.com.

Jean L. Kreiling’s poetry appears frequently in print and online journals and in anthologies. She is a winner of the Able Muse Write Prize, and has been a finalist for the Frost Farm Prize, the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, and the Richard Wilbur Poetry Award. She lives in Massachusetts, USA. Fahredin Shehu graduated from Prishtina University, Oriental Studies. His published volumes include Nun, Invisible Pulrality, Nektarina, Elemental 99, Dismantle of Hate, Plemroma’s Dew, and Mulberies. His work has been translated into French, Italian, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Macedonian, Roma, Swedish, Turkish, Arabic, Romanian, Persian, An ambassador of Poets to Albania by Poetas del Mundo, Santiago de Chile, Shehu is a member of World Poets Association, Greece and the Kosovo Pen Center.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics CONTRIBUTORS

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Mohan Rana, finished his undergraduate studies from the University of Delhi.

Originally from New Delhi, he lives in Bath, Somerset, United Kingdom. He is a very prolific Hindi poet and has so far published seven volumes of poetry â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Jagah (Dwelling), Jaise Janam Koi Darwaza (As If Life Were a Door), Subah ki Dak (Morning's Post), Is Chhor Par (On This Shore), Pathar Ho Jayegi Nadi (Stone-River), Dhoop Ke Andhere (In the Darkness of the Sun), and Ret ka Pul (Sand-Bridge).

Ronojoy Sircar is writing a dissertation for M.Phil in English Literature at Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi. His poetry has been published in Nether and Full of Crow.

Manash Bhattacharjee wrote his dissertation for Ph.D at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His is a frequent writer for The Hindu and Outlook. He is an independent research scholar and poet living in New Delhi.

Jenny Morse is currently writing a dissertation for Ph.D the University of Illinois, Chicago, USA. She an instructor at Colorado State University. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Notre Dame Review, Wilderness House, Quiddity, and Terrain. Her critical work has appeared in or is forthcoming in Seismopolite, The Montreal Review, The Ofi Press, and the Journal of Contemporary Thought.

Mitali Gangopadhyay, Assisatnt Professor in English, teaches in M.D.M. College, West Bengal State University, Kolkata. She has published in India, and outside, on a wide range of topics, from Shakespeare to contemporary Indian English literature. Ganguly has written a monograph on Ruskin Bond and worked on a research project on the Anglo-Indians in Kolkata. Her areas of interest are Cinema and Literature, Postcolonial writings and 1857 Mutiny.

Arup K Chatterjee is writing a dissertation for Ph.D at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His work has been published in Indian and International journals and anthologies.

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Osmond Chien-ming Chang is writing a dissertation for Ph.D in English Literature at National Chengchi University, Taiwan, R.O.C. His research interests are travelogues, English Romanticism, diaspora, fantasy literature, and trauma studies.

Sapna Dudeja is presently writing a dissertation for Ph.D in English Literature at Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi. She teaches English at the University of Delhi.

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics EDITORIAL BOARD

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Editorial Board

EDITOR Arup K Chatterjee Poet, Critic and Researcher Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi, India

ASSISTANT EDITOR Amrita Ajay Researcher, and Teacher of English University of Delhi, India

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS K Satchidanandan Poet, and Former Professor of English, University of Calicut Former Editor of Indian Literature, the Journal of Sahitya Akademi New Delhi, India Lisa Thatcher Writer Sydney, Australia

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Sudeep Sen Poet, and Editor of Atlas Magazine Editorial Director of Aark Arts Publishers New Delhi, India, London UK GJV Prasad Poet, Novelist, and Critic Professor of English, Jawaharlal Nehru University Vice Chair, Indian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies Editor of Journal of the School of Languages New Delhi, India Sebastien Doubinsky Poet, Novelist, and Critic Researcher, and Lecturer, Aesthetics and Communication Editor of Le Zaporogue Journal (pub. In French & English) Aarhus University, Denmark

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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics EDITORIAL BOARD

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