Haider : Mainstreaming the Marginal Narrative Nirupam Hazra ‘What is chutzpa ?’ A person kills his parents and then asks for sympathy in the court, because he is an orphan now. It was one of the defining scenes in Vishal Bharadwaj’s latest movie Haider, based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet and set in Kashmir of mid-1990s. Haider has earned lots of critical acclamation and popular attention not only because it is based on one of the most difficult tragedies of Shakespeare’s oeuvre, but for the backdrop Bharadwaj chose to set his story. Kashmir has been a favourite locale for Bollywood movies as its scenic beauty often added extra charm in the songs or extra romance between hero-heroine. But hardly any mainstream Bollywood movie with popular actors dared to tell the story of Kashmir. Telling the story of Kashmir has always been a tricky and tough task. It is not because Kashmir and its troubled history have many truths to share based on subjective experiences and individual perspectives, but for the added sensitivity and convoluted …show more content…
In simple terms, Haider is a family saga, a son’s search for his missing father, but what makes it one of the most sophisticated political narratives on the celluloid, is the setting. Kashmir is not merely the backdrop or a prop, it is the central character. It is the tragedy of Kashmir that is depicted in Haider. Haider’s search for his ‘disappeared’ father, is also the story of hundreds of other Kashmiris, of scores of half-widows and half-orphans. In Kashmir people disappear into uncertainty and lives hang in limbo between death and life. For more than two decades people spent their life under shadows of gun, with curfew, with AFSPA (Armed Force Special Power Act), with unimaginable pain and trauma. But this reality is often veiled under pretentious ignorance or deliberate
Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth is comprised of eight short stories about different Indian families’ struggles in America, many of them going through the immigrant experience. The conflicts are with friends and family, and also with themselves, as each of them attempt to find their own identity along with fitting in with the rest of society. One of the causes of these struggles that because the families in the stories are mixed in terms of generation. Many of the adults in the stories were first generation immigrants from India, while many of the children were raised in the United States, which is the second generation. This led to blending of culture and at the same time, clashes between the immigrant mentality of living and the American mentality of living. In Unaccustomed Earth, Lahiri demonstrates to the reader the important influence of environment, specifically culture and how it impacts parental teachings, on the personality and development of an individuals’ identity, and how the actions and development of characters can affect one’s family and friends; the impact of environment and culture is shown especially by the characters and stories “Hell-Heaven” and “Hema and Kaushik”.
The British Raj, or the British rule over India, has long since passed; however, the remnants of the pro-colonization have lingered around and are seemingly even making a comeback. Salman Rushdie in his essay, Outside the Whale, notices this romanticisation of Britain’s colonial past in the resurgence of Raj fiction and films. Rushdie, in his criticisms, embraces theories from Edward Said, and hints at theories from Frantz Fanon. By emphasizing the influential language of Raj films and texts, analyzing Orwell’s theory institutional denial, and finally calling for a systematic upheaval of oppressive thinking, Salman Rushdie’s essay and criticism mirrors John McLeod’s theories and definitions of colonial discourse and recognizes that with the comeback of Raj fiction comes a resurgence of the pro-colonization colonial discourse that it originated with.
He is an award winning historian and travel writer. His area of interest includes the history of India, Pakistan, Afganisthan, the Middle East, Mughal rule, the Muslim World, Hinduism, Buddhism and Jains. Most of his books have won literary prizes. His books are travel and historical accounts. His books have been translated into 30 languages. He is a regular contributor to ‘The New York’, ‘Review of Books’, The Guardian, ‘The New Statesman’, and The New Yorker’. He has also written many articles for Time Magazine. He wrote an essay ‘Business as usual for the India Charges Ahead’. It was a special issue commemorating 60 years of Indian Independence. To bring accuracy to his writings, he juxtaposed the literary and non-literary sources and to provide meticulous material with no single error, he reached to the places that were referred in the sources. He enquired the people of that area and provided direct word and eye witness. One of the books that analyze and interpret the present society is ‘The Age of
The dominant idiom of Indian writing today is firmly entrenched in pain, anxiety of displacement, nostalgia, yearning to belong to roots, and so on. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss are two such novels that explore the tragedy of man on several levels using different perspectives. Both the novels are about averted culture-clash tragedies, homogeneity vs. heterogeneity, and about Indian sensibilities.
Kim gives a vivid picture of the complexities in India under British rule. It shows the life of the bazaar mystics, of the natives, of the British military. There is a great deal of action and movement, for Kipling's vast canvas painted in full detail. The dialogue in the novel makes use of Indian phrases translated by the author, they give the flavor of native speech in India. They are also touches of the native behavior and shrewdness.
In Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and Tatiana de Rosnay’s Sarah’s Key, two historical novels, Amir and Julia Jarmond emerge as strong individuals whose beliefs significantly contrast with those of their societies. Unlike Afghani society in both Afghanistan and the United States, Amir knows Hazaras deserve unalienable rights they have been deprived of. When Amir returns to Afghanistan to rescue Sohrab, Hassan’s orphaned son, he endures physical and emotional pain, risking his own safety so save Sohrab from Assef’s unjust hands. After Amir has successfully brought Sohrab to America, his wife’s family questions his desire to provide for a Hazara. Amir defiantly responds with, “‘And one more thing General Sahib... You will never again refer
This battle between the likable, progressive character of Koly and her difficult, traditional mother- in-law causes unfair associations with India. The young women is so westernized as to become unfamiliar in her own land and Stewart assesses that “Koly seems to be the exception rather than the rule” (100). Stewart remains apprehensive about Whelan’s account of Koly and India because the author of Homeless Bird seems to prescribe to western attitudes that ultimately “establishes a platform for situating the other, the ones not like us” that effectively illustrates them as “abject and marginalized” (97). This is manifested in Stewart suggestion that Whelan succeeds in villainizing an entire country’s way of life that is (inaccurately) embodied in the unlikable mother-in-law, essentially becoming the contemptuous other (100).
Khaled Hosseini, the author of the novel “The Kite Runner,” illustrates a story of a young Afghan boy who struggles to win his father’s approval, but also struggles internally to do what is morally right and what the society around him has deemed right. This novel combines works of fiction and as well as historical events to tell the story of how a young boy matures into a man and his journey for forgiveness and redemption to clear his conscious of the mistakes he made long ago. The author also includes an abundance of accurate culture aspects that explain the reasoning the behind the characters actions as well as the themes of the novel to the audience for a more clear understanding. If the audience studies the aspects of Afghan culture mentioned
Jhumpa Lahiri’s second story “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine” presents the relationship between an Indian family and their friend Mr. Pirzada, a Bangladeshi migrant. The narrator of the story is a ten year old girl Lilia who is not aware of the history of the Indian subcontinent related to freedom struggle, civil war of East Pakistani etc. We see that Mr. Pirzada, Lilia’s father and mother take dinner with one another while at the same time they listen to the evening news. Though they are now in America but they want to know what is going on in their native places. It shows their longings for their respective countries though they are
An event that has relation to war today is the tension in the northern region of India, Punjab, where the Sikh holy book was ripped up and thrown. Many Sikhs gathered in a peaceful protest, trying to bring to justice the people who were responsible, but the police ended up shooting and killing two peaceful protestors. Simran Jeet Singh, is one of the authors, who writes on this topic. He takes up this topic, because it represents part of the unjust that happened to Sikhs in 1984 where they were killed and murdered in the thousands by the Indian government. Singh says, “I was born in the United States in the summer of 1984, during the height of the anti- Sikh violence in Punjab” (Singh 1). He goes on to say how he feels the pain of his Sikh brothers and sisters who were killed in the year 1984, for their religious beliefs. Background about Singh shows us the importance of mediated narratives, as they show that Singh is trying to raise awareness about the issues going on in Punjab in an attempt to try to avoid the destruction that happened in 1984. Another one of these authors is Nirmala Ganapathy, who is part of The Straits Times. She takes up the same interest as Singh, as she works to raise awareness on the issues affecting her homeland of India. She writes about why Sikhs have been blocking major roads in India and the influence this has. Her curiosity is what has
World War II is ongoing. With the Axis Powers occupying more countries, citizens of India are worrying for when the battle comes to India, but they're already fighting another war. People are trying to fight Britain's rule over India, but even helping a protestor could result in suffering the consequences. Fifteen-year-old Vidya's appa (father) did. Trying to save a woman who was trying to save her freedom resulted in him not being able to remember his own family. This causes great distress to Vidya, who believes her father's injury is her fault. Her extended family members, who she had to move in with due to her father not being able to work anymore, call her father an idiot, not just because of his brain damage but because he even dared to
In this conversation, Lilia is admonished for her naiveté towards issues concerning her parent’s mother country and for her lack of worldly exposure at school. As time passes, and Mr. Pirzada’s visits become routine, Lilia begins paying attention to the evening news that he and Lilia’s parents watch. At one point, her mother points out, “See, children your age, what they do to survive”(31), which makes the situation directly relevant to Lilia and forces her to reflect on how fortunate she is compared to those like her in Bangladesh. Suddenly curious to learn more, Lilia finds herself at the library checking out a book titled “Pakistan: A Land and its People”(42). Mr. Pirzada’s presence acts to bring Lilia closer to her Indian culture by getting her to take an interest in the partition of India and Pakistan and by giving her a more relevant context to view the situation.
Setting: This book took place in the town Herat, and a small village called Gul Daman, which was on the outskirts, and then shifted to Kabul, a big city in Afghanistan which is now the capital. A small part also took place in Pakistan, the neighboring country. It took place during the recent wars that took place in Afghanistan, spanning across about the last forty years of their history. Due to all the wars going on in the country and the heaving topics the book talked about, the atmosphere of the book was very serious and tense, filled with death and despair, although towards the end it got more
During the 20th century, after India’s history with civil war, the novel, “Nectar in a Sieve” by Kamala Markandaya, exposes India’s state of affairs while struggling with an impoverished population. Markandaya’s tale describes a southern village in India and a family’s struggle to survive. An old women, Rukmani examines her experience with Nathan, and her other children after having embarked their journey to persist in a corrupt society. Without legitimized direction within the country, Rukman’s family must endure the result of subsequent political complications and ethnic
Dharker emphasizes the message of freedom by stating the goal of schoolgirls is gaining “the right to be ordinary” (15). The “ordinary” dream reveals that the girls want to be treated equally. They want to be able to “go to school” and have the right to chace beauty (18). By using “ordinary”, Dharker demonstrates how little rights girls in Pakistan have (15). As young girls, they are supposed to be free to think, talk, and do what they want. However, due to the war, oppressive rules of government happen in life, and they have to give up freedom in order to live. Dharker expresses the desire of being free and determination of perseverance by stating the goal of being “ordinary” (15). She uses another word, “swarm,” to represent the intense of war: “A murmur, a swarm. Behind her,/ one by one, the schoolgirls are standing up” (23-24). Swarm demonstrates that there are a large number of schoolgirls who are defending freedom. The word “Swarm” illustrates the fierce war by describing the numerous soldiers (23). It creates a tense tone and indicates the difficulty of holding perseverance. Dharker uses the device of diction to describe both schoolgirls and the enemy to show that perseverance results in