Some Notes on Linguistics and Literary Pedagogy

Why is Linguistics such a big deal for so many of us? What is it that makes it such a struggle for so many of us, a subject we all love to hate? It’s not as if it’s difficult in itself; or, at least, that which we in this university are taught at this level – simple and to the point, it’s easy to master if the effort’s put into it.

If the effort’s put into it. If. That’s operative: if. Come to think of it, almost everything and anything can be mastered if the effort’s put into it. What prevents, happily perhaps, all of us from turning into uomo universale is precisely that, if. Indeed, for whether effort is put into something or not depends on what that effort should be and who has to put it. Linguistics per se is not difficult, but given the evidence it seems to be for many literature students in this university. Of course, it’s primarily because a lot of people don’t feel like doing it, but the why of that don’t can’t just be good old laziness – for if it were, that would extend in a semblance of measure to other subjects, and that it does not. There has to be another reason.

Or reasons? One wonders. Can it have anything to do with the ways in which literature is taught, literary criticism conceived and literature and literary criticism received, i.e. the roles they are seen to occupy in the larger, so-called social context? One wonders...

What does it mean to be a student of literature today – and particularly this university, Delhi University? First of all, and without a doubt, it means to be somewhere near the rarefied heights of a given hierarchy of disciplines, to share with the other chosen few the status and privileges natural to the topmost in the pecking order. Yet, assuming the rationale of this order, literature is perhaps the only within this cosmos to be at the top and yet strangely sans the basis to be so, this self same basis being little more than the historical incidence of it being the coloniser’s favourite subject. Other luminaries – Economics, Political Science, Commerce, History – have all reasons which more or less make sense within the overarching logic of social relevance, factuality and marketability that informs this rationale while Literature, or English as the misnomer goes here, has little to put it where it seems to be.

Yet, it firmly remains there, gaining, as admission trends both in this university and others show, only more and more popularity with a cross-section of the so-called youth, so much so that whole new institutes are opened and seats increased to somehow absorb the rapidly growing percentage of aspirants. For a discipline which has little actual reasons to be a discipline, this is surprising to say the least.

But why do I say it has little actual reason to be so? Here’s why.

First, going back to that rationale, social relevance. How is Literature, English Literature as its structured and taught at all levels in this university, relevant to – again, so-called – society? The easiest, and the one common to all literary disciplines, is that it makes one a better human being, that by providing insights into human nature and behaviour in a variety of situations and circumstances, literature gives one the opportunity to develop sensibilities keener and more humane than the rest of ordinary humanity. This, in spite of being clichéd and exaggerated, is somewhat true; yet, even as it is, it is only for itself, only as much as it amounts to reading and not, not in any way, the discipline: after all, one may read and improve the mind, but one may do so without being a student of literature. Being within the profession gives one more time than others to do so – it is, no matter how much we hate it when others supposedly simplify it so, mostly about reading the novel – and in that facile, incidental sense one may argue for the ethico-moral superiority of literature in inculcating a humanness and liberality which other disciplines per se do not, but it will remain just that: facile and incidental, without any sound reason which would make this moralising and bettering process exclusively the domain of literature as a discipline.

Moving on, and still within the ambit of social relevance, the more theoretical – and by reigning idiom more professional – of us insist than instead of being about being better humans in some grand, bardic way, literature today is more about being incisive and inclusive critics and commentators. This, again, is true, but, yet again, incidental, if not a bit facile. By the virtue of increasingly being a discipline that self-consciously and actively orients itself to inclusive criticism and commentary, the literary academia does contribute towards making it a better world for all, but in spite of this and its contributions, it is but one of the many disciplines today engaged in and oriented to this same goal of equity and inclusivity and so, no matter what many amateurs feel, has no exclusive rights on the bettering mission.

Social relevance, then, goes out of the box, for in whatever indirect way it is so, it still does not compare to other disciplines that are so. To teach and study literature as a discipline solely on the basis that it makes the world a better place is, effectively, to assert values without having the prerequisite value-system in place for doing so.

Which is what brings us to point two, factuality. I take factuality as implying a certain adherence to the verities of daily existence, a certain connection to the needs and demands of life as it’s lived by people in all walks of life. First, literature has nothing to do with any bodily function, nor with any of those activities with which we fulfil these needs and functions. Second, even if we were to argue that it does, that it does in that cathartic and company in woe and joy sense that’s usually associated with it, that too applies to literature per se, to reading as an activity that has nothing to do with a critical understanding of the text being read, an understanding which, again, is not necessarily concomitant upon literary training as a discipline. Further, the very matter of English, the misnomer of a subject that concerns us here, is that which affects but peripherally, only in the inner realm of emotion and subjectivity, all that goes outside the classroom. A Masters in Commerce will make one a better manager, financier and businessperson; a Masters in English provide, amongst other such like matter, greater knowledge about the sundry ways the heart is lost and betrayed.

Still, it rises. English remains one of the most sought after courses in the University of Delhi, carrying the charm and status more of the language than the literature in it. Many take it because of that, as a stepping stone to other status symbols, the civil services for example; many others take it to learn how to write, become writers; yet others take it to learn how to speak. A large number opt for it as a secondary option; I myself took it because I could not be an environmental engineer and preferred next to that a discipline in which I would at least get to read without any sense of wasting time in doing so. Very, very few who take up English at the undergraduate level really understand the course is about criticism and not creative writing, research and not reading. People take it and come to rue it, but year after year the demand only goes up. If nothing else, literature, as a discipline, sells.

Which, ultimately, is my larger point here: in spite of everything, in spite of no sound reason for it selling, literature does sell, is marketable and commercially viable as a discipline. Founded on a plenitude of myths and fuelled by a healthy dosage of delusions, English literature as a discipline easily manages to be one of the most elite courses that any non-professional university can offer. This, putting aside for now the dialectic of professional and non-professional, is what makes literature unique and its position well nigh unassailable: in being popularly sought after for the wrong reasons and incorrectly attributed with general powers, literature is one of the few remaining academic centres of irrationality.

To me, that is the most charming thing about the discipline. It makes no sense its being so, yet it thrives and supports all sorts, the only place where contraries of all kinds – ambition and sloth, brilliance and dullness, creativity and criticism, and so on – can find refuge simultaneously and contemporaneously. Of course, the discipline has its own professional codes of conduct and behaviour, codes created more as justification to oneself and others for its relevance and seriousness within the overall global competitive atmosphere of teaching and training than in response to any inherent need itself, but neither do these take away from its appeal and nor do they affect the general conception of it as a quaintly rarefied domain of high inner knowledge, grand, reformative passions and creativity. Which, simply put, is that literature, in spite of the way it is being structured as a professional discipline, is still the only subject in which one can be whatever one wants to be, be as eclectic and eccentric as one can and still manage to score and get along. In spite of internal competition and the overall global thrust to make it keener, more professional in the way aim-driven, professional subjects like medicine, law and engineering are, literature remains the only discipline where ambition and competition can be bypassed.

Is it this, then, that makes Linguistics difficult for so many students of literature? Not singly the fact that literature as a discipline allows for some mediocrity, nor that the way it’s taught, combined with the inclinations of most who take it, inculcates a certain disrespect for objective, empirical, inviolate truths but both of these together, both as one making Linguistics the holy cow it is. Indeed, for Linguistics is self-confessedly infinitely more the science than the art and no matter how hard critics try to make literary training and criticism resemble that, the irrational, eccentric and interrogative core of the discipline makes any association with a discipline that is based on givens slightly – and I quote a favourite here – problematic, problematic in the sense of being both a cause for concern, an insight into the redundancy of institutionalised literary studies as a discipline as well as a matter for celebration, a reflection of the power which allows the discipline to be, with certain inevitable, if somewhat unfortunate, modifications in pedagogy, the only one that can still afford to exist without a reason, to just be and exult in the simple joy of being so without necessarily needing to bother with justifications. It’s not an ideal situation, least of all one which resolves most concerns satisfactorily; yet, it continues and thrives and informs much of the charm and beauty which, for many adherents, makes literature more engaging than anything else imaginable.

On Being Made a Mama

It’s oddly exciting being made a mama. My sister recently did me the honour. I am now a mama.

Actually, it’s oddly preposterous as well. I mean, me a mama? Of course, I knew it was in the offing these past nine months or so and I was looking forward to it as well, to the prospect of having after a long time a babe in the house, but the morn the news came, the morning the news was suddenly broken upon my unsuspecting, groggy self, it hit me like a tonne of happy bricks. It was expected, of course, but more, I suppose, as a distant possibility, as something that would happen but not so soon, not at least take you unawares and knock the innocence out of you in one fell stroke – or cut, as it was in her case.

Innocence, ay! For though I may not be particularly innocent as I am now, in form at least I could claim some amount of it as a young scion of the generation. I am, after all, one of the younger ones and in any case more in the past than any of us. Memories of that childhood are far from dead and in moments of ponderous solitude the mind’s eye wanders over many a scene of knickered and board game-ed joy. More than that, being young, being, as it were, one of the last in line, one feels a certain license to youth, to the abandon and mindlessness that are the undeniable preserves of youth and the youngest.

No more, no more! In one fell stroke – cut – all gone, all transferred to a wrinkly, animated blob of flesh and bones. At this tender age of fun and games, all the heavy weight of relations and responsibilities, all the onerous burden of acting up for a generation upon me, an uncle!

How, how does one act an uncle? What does it mean to be a mama? Is one supposed to alter one’s attitude to life, one’s behaviour, one’s self because there is now a generation beneath one for whom one is required to set worthy examples? How, too, to behave with the kid when it grows up? Should one be stern and noble and inspire a la Chesterfield visions of an austere and fulfilling life? Or should one open vistas for greater fun and debauchery, be the mama a niece would look up to when in mood for sin? One can’t treat a niece like younger, baby siblings – or can one? After all, like the rest, it is an animated blob of flesh and bones and just because it makes my greys look whiter still doesn’t make it any different per se.

An animated blob of flesh and bones. Not very charitable, I suppose. But it’s nameless as of now. What is one supposed to call it? Her? The Kid? Ku Di’s kid? Without a name, without the jimble-jamble of identities that a name affixes on one, is not one just an animated blob of flesh and bones? Language makes the niece? Or the niece makes language? A quaint baby too: post-colonially post-modern, yet destined to grow up a structuralist enmeshed in deep structures of kinship and good old bourgeois morality. Would a name really matter then? The future’s already laid out, a mish-mash of identities already bestowed: girl child, first born, baniya, Indian, bourgeois, woman...except for the calling, does a name really matter much then? Yet, one can’t but hope it’s something nice, something that would be good to consider and call, for though from the moment the fatal cut was made and thing extracted it has been getting normalised, being made a subject from an object, her from it, a name is a name: a marker, an identity.

An identity that cannot be denied. Oh, a mama – too soon, too soon! The sister can never really be forgiven for this, though hers being arranged the blame falls more on the jija for unmindful haste. Seriously, not even a year and one on the block already! What’s the hurry, one wonders, what in the world! To each their own, of course, but one does wonder why one wouldn’t want to be conjugal and kid free for a while...being as it is, the deed being done and consummated so soon, one would imagine there was some sort of need to prove virility in this off-hand, childish manner. Besides, it does seem too much of a patriarchal conspiracy of sorts, have the woman pregnant and burdened with kids as soon as she’s married and so effectively shut off means for self-determination for the next two decades or so.

Not, of course, that one thinks ‘twas effectively planned so, no – but one can’t but think. A sister pregnant and a generation thrust beneath one, all by a man more or less unknown. One wishes one had a bit more say in these matters. As if the cornucopia of relations and relationships wasn’t enough, to have this, to have you made older and responsible in form without as much as your consent! It is the last straw really, the last nail in the coffin of a childhood already dead and gone, an official confirmation if you will: arise, no longer child, by these wrinkly, sleepy blob, by the freshly cut womb of a sister, by the haste of a jija, a new-made mama!

*

(some time later) The importance of stating that everything that's written is not implied seriously being vehemently pointed, it is thus done so.

On Matters Dental and Oral

To Pu Di,

for whose woe this was meant solace.

*

Having a dental problem can be such a gas!

I got it all of a sudden. It was alright at first, nothing more than an itchy throat. Something you get every now and then, you know, just another passing spell of dry, itchy throat trouble. Of course, eating and drinking became difficult and the phone was given a break, but it was alright more or less. Just the usual throat trouble. Nothing to worry about.

That was when my gums started inflating.

Inflating, yes, inflating – that’s pretty much the word. Today they’re alright and I go to sleep a human; the next morning I wake up a primate of some sort with gums all over my teeth. Everything before that had been child’s play. That was when my troubles really started.

Seriously, you can’t eat, you can’t drink, you can’t do anything at all, just wallow about in silent misery. Every drop of water, each and every morsel of food, the smallest, simplest word, all of these became herculean as the throat dried up and the gums swelled to the size of raisins, effectively rendering eating, drinking and speaking, tasks essential to human survival and society, impossible. You can’t but think of old Coleridge in spots like this, so much to eat, so much to drink and ever so much to speak, but absolutely naught to be done. Quite absurdly existential if you know what I mean, so much to do yet nothing to be had, nothing to be done...

Except bleed. Oh yes, didn’t I say there was blood involved? There was.

Lots. The slightest pressure and the gums would start leaking like a sponge. This meant that every bite of food, every drop of drink was laced for days on end with blood – and not just healthy, clean blood, but stale, sickly blood. In mornings, I would wake up to find my mouth full of blood, my teeth stained with infected fluid that had leaked during the night. I’d brush and in no time toothpaste would turn a ghastly yellow-red. At times the dams would burst just while talking so that slowly my lips would turn red and the onlookers balk at the sight. Vampiric? More like having periods rather, in this case up in the mouth.

Of course there was medication. And, of course, there was the dentist.

That wasn’t too bad though. The experience, still, was something. We waited, the mater and I, as Tendulkar missed his century by the proverbial whisker. It was my first serious visit to the dentist and my head was full of countless stories and anecdotes of the masked torture that’s extracted behind the genteel veneer of a respectable dental establishment. The man came in after a while, extracted from his own chair at home by the call to duty. I was ushered into the chair and as the mater took charge and put some chips on the block, I took a look at the habitat. Clean, yes, and what with the zillion models of jaws and teeth of all sorts somewhat grotesque too. The chair itself was an assortment of countless this and that, a basin here, a lamp there and all sorts of shiny, pointy things tucked away neatly on and in handy slots and trays. It was just as soon as I was done taking it all in that he prodded me back on the chair and, asking me to open my mouth wide, took one of these little devils and put it in before I could resist.

Bang it went, straight on to my poor gums with a vengeance. Burst they went, leaking blood in a free fall.

Not too bad, I agree. I’d expected worse and I got off easy, but it was something. The dentist’s trade is like that, I suppose: a profession where the unexpected is to be expected but never really is, there being such a range of horrors to expect. You expect a clean-up, you get a root canal. That’s how dentistry works, I suppose. I had expected all sorts of horrors, all sorts of unimaginable manoeuvres in my oral cavity; I got off with a minor shock and some blood loss. Not too bad, not too bad...

Except that the next time I went there he warned my gums would have to be cut.

Needless to say I never went back. Such is the will of man, he’ll nurse himself out of all ill health and sickness and be fighting fit in due course of time. Of course, supposedly I’m on a sensitive toothbrush routine for life now, but all said and done the gum is out of the gums and all is back to normal.

On Caste

I don’t think caste is such a bad thing. Of course, it’s problematic to say so, not the least because the very idiom in which we talk of caste and caste based discrimination is replete with connotations of derogation and extremism, but still, fact remains that caste based discrimination, both as a concept and as a social reality, is nuanced way beyond the narrow confines of the general understanding of the matter.

How? Well, first of all, discrimination in itself: what is so bad, so hugely taboo about discrimination? Like all others, the word means many things, some of them all at once at the same time. To argue that discriminate connotes discretion is, of course, not to argue in favour of caste based discrimination as we generally understand it to be, but it is still to add a spectrum of possibilities to the word, the process – and these not necessarily adverse to any particular person or persons’ welfare and well being. After all, discrimination, with all its paraphernalia of functionality and utility, with the implied sense of order and structure, is the foundational premise of nature and of humanity; not just this, discrimination is also the premise of equality, not just the cause which makes it desirable but also the basis on which it is conceived and organised – for, again, what is equality without an order, a structure, and how may these be had sans discrimination?

To argue that discrimination per se is bad, to talk thus in black and white, is then to be naively in the mould of the post-enlightenment, rationalised and so-called progressive realm of social aspiration, a discourse which has provided millions much food for thought and which continues, hypothetically at least, as the end of much of human activity today. Within this discourse equality and equity stand strong as the operative concepts which, though consistently interpreted differently, have yet inspired much idealism and fervour over the last two hundred or so years and still continue to be the stuff dreams of countless well-meaning, make-it-a-better-world people’s dreams are made of. Discrimination, being one of those things one likes to associate with feudalism and all that was, is and could be bad with humanity, naturally finds no place in the overall schemata of these dreams.

Yet, dreams too require a certain amount of discrimination; or, to put it otherwise, the stuff such equity-equality utopian dreams are made of too involves discrimination at some level. That level, indeed, may be such that causes the least possible discomfort or inconvenience to the least number of people, but the fact would remain that at the semantic level, it would be discrimination still.

Which, in short, is my point about caste based discrimination: when I say it’s not too bad, instead of referring to the active prejudice and handicap which it imposes and in a way necessitates, I think of its import, of what it means and has meant as a concept and as a way of life to all of us who are Hindu or of Hindu origin. I think of caste as a cultural artefact that has been the marker of so many of our Hindustani people’s identity.

This is where it gets tricky and, of course, subjective. I can say caste is not so bad because my baggage is not a bit as heavy as of those who’ve been at the receiving end. Of course, that it’s not and that I can think of caste without my blood boiling at the oppression enforced upon zillions has got something to do with both my placement in the hierarchy and my own inclinations, but that still doesn’t take away from the fact that my subjective opinion on and experience of the matter, presented so and not in any way claimed otherwise, is of note. Not, indeed, as of those who wish to end oppression and who in acting tangibly and working for the so-called greater good needs must couch their subjectivity on the matter in the objective idiom of the post-enlightenment and blah-blah society, as of one who, given a certain origin and placement, can afford to be against such discrimination as curtails the making available of equal opportunities to all and still not dismiss caste and caste based discrimination, having in doing so a certain nostalgia for those nuances of caste which make up one’s identity as both an individual and a community.

Yes, a certain nostalgia for caste.

Why not? The experiences of those who’ve suffered apparently and tangibly, though infinitely more worthy of comment when empowering the marginalised and considering programmes for social justice, cannot totally make redundant the experiences of those who have not to the same degree and manner. Which is why if I feel caste in the Hindu and Hindu origin context has a certain cultural capital and that the memories we have of ourselves as castes are endangered by discourses which completely seek to do away with it, then I have as much of a right to feel so as someone who, like me, is against caste based discrimination and who, unlike me, feels caste as a basis for social organisation, as a concept, as a memory, should be erased from our cultural consciousness for good. Indeed, I will perhaps be more justified in saying that. For starters, the ills of the past cannot be wished away and then, even if we were to somehow forget them, we cannot forget that evil for one is not evil for all. Not evil for all, yes, but also not evil in the way that makes evil subjective in a typical oppressor-oppressed relationship.

Which, ultimately, is my point on caste and caste based discrimination. It’s an evil and by far not a necessary evil; yet it is part of those forces which make so many of us what we are and being so, it constitutes an undeniably important part of our identities. Besides this, and which is a bit more important to me here, it provides the basis for so many of our cultural artefacts, particularly intangible artefacts which, as stories, anecdotes and proverbs, are threatened by the zealous condemnation of all those in favour of a caste free cultural consciousness. To condemn and work against active discrimination is all very right and proper; to negate the centrality of the cultural background of such discrimination too is important. But to totally deny and to wish to fully erase the memory of all is, in the final analysis, not just redundant – after all, if we don’t remember what our equality has been achieved against, then the achievement won’t seem worth half the effort – but also dangerously unfair to the rights of those who think otherwise.\

Which is why I say caste is not such a bad thing at all.

Zapak!

The hunt is not for everyone. Patience, grit, perseverance...the hunt exacts a heavy toll, a price that must be paid, paid in blood.


The hunt is not for everyone. It curdles the blood, turns the heart to stone. Life and death in the balance, existence a matter of poise, of accuracy and skill: hit, and so ends life in a flash of smoke and putrid blood; miss, and pay the price of blood.


The hunt is not for everyone. Patience becomes pain, eyes strained for the slightest movement, ears geared for the tiniest buzz. The sands of time flow by, time itself ceases to exist, but not the hunter: ever aware, ever alive, poised between life and death, the hunt goes on till the lust be satiated, the lust for blood.


The hunt is not for everyone. Bait, bait becomes blood. Blood turns blood, blood flows, flows from being to being, hunt to hunt, till hunter and hunted are as one, are one...the bait, the baited: blood.


The hunt is not for everyone. Through the dark, dense deep, each step wary of the next, each shadow a lurking danger, softly on to danger, death, blood.

The hunt is not for everyone...zaak! zrr! puff...psss...zapak!