Ahead of It's Time.

After reading the book, I found myself with mixed feelings.  Unfortunately, I am not really into romantic love triangle stories and so I disliked the fact that Bimala's emotions were the center of the actual storyline.  That is my opinion, but I do respect how different and groundbreaking it must have been when this story was first published.  In that sense it was ahead of it's time because it presented a woman with an opportunity to expand into the world for the first time in her life which was pretty much unheard of back then.

Additionally, I found it very interesting that Tagore had such an open mind about the whole Swadeshi Movement.  As evidenced by the arguments between Nikhil and Sandip throughout the novel, it would appear that at the time a person picked a side and maintained a closed mind about it.  As the two characters had political debates, not once did one actually hear out what the other was saying.  As a reader I could understand that they were both right for different reasons and were frustrated that they were so unable to see it that way.  The fact that the author was able to write from both perspectives must've meant that he considered both perspectives.  

Today it is debated whether or not the Swadeshi Movement was productive or damaging to India as a whole, seeing that the Muslims and the Hindus were divided into two nations.  It seemed as if Tagore was writing about this occurrence decades before it took place.  Whether or not I enjoyed the story, the man was brilliant.  

English Sex and Cigarettes

Sandip and Bimala are caught up in the Swadeshi movement and anxious to end trade with England, but they continue to willingly intertwine English culture into their daily lives. I am somewhat confused by this contradiction. After first hearing Sandip speak about the movement, Bimala tells her husband that she wants to burn all of her English clothes in a bonfire, which is a pretty extreme statement of desired disassociation with England. They both preach that they want nothing to do with England. However, they each show one small sign in the novel that they are not completely willing to rid of English culture. I feel that the author included these individual incidents to prove how unrealistic the ideas of the movement were, or at least the extremity to which the two characters wanted to follow through with it. Sandip particularly seems to have a 'go big or go home' attitude, yet he can not even follow through with the framework of his own Nationalistic movement. The two incidents that I refer to are Sandip reading an English book and Bimala using an English pattern for her embroidery. I feel that the two characters are not even conscious of the contradictions they are making. Bimala was in the middle of making her embroidery when Sandip came to visit, and as soon as she heard of his arrival she "flung aside the embroidery" (70). She obviously likes some English style, but literally throws aside these feelings for her dedication to the Swadeshi movement. There is a constant back-and-forth movement with Bimala between the English culture which has seeped into her lifestyle and the Nationalistic ideals. Sandip, who seems to outwardly detest all things that aren't Indian, reads an English book on sex to better understand human nature. Not only does he read this book, but he uses it as inspiration for the movement. This contradiction is pretty obvious and self-explanatory. Maybe I am misunderstanding the Swadeshi movement and exaggerating the distaste that the people involved in the movement had for the English. However, I do feel like these contradictions were strategically placed in the book to highlight the problems with the movement and its unrealistically extreme framework.

In the movie-version of the novel, the director really exagerated the use of English goods. The camera would zoom in on different English products that Sandip and Bimala were using. After Sandip had finished drinking his tea, the camera focussed in on the English tea cup he had been using. When Bimala picked up an English-made vase with a picture of an angel on it, the camera focused on the vase. These goods may not have caught my attention if the camera hadn't singled them out, but because of the way the movie was filmed these products became very obvious. It seemed like Bimala and Sandip were not thinking that the products they were using and touching were English made, like they were so accustomed to seeing the products around that it didn't phase them. I feel that this was the director picking up on the author's opinion that the English goods were too far integrated into the Indian culture to be completely removed by Swadeshi.
However, there was one specific situation in the move where Sandip was fully aware that he was using an English product and did not have a problem with it. He smoked English cigarettes throughout the movie, saying that he preferred them over Swadeshi cigarettes and it was something he would not compromise on. One of his fellow Swadeshi leaders even asked to borrow one of the cigarettes. This made the statement that Sandip and other Swadeshi members were not willing to sacrifice certain goods for their own pleasure. At the same time, they were forcing poor merchants to burn English goods and lose their livelihoods for Swadeshi. The director was really clever to use the cigarettes to show the hypocracy of Sandip and his partners, and also to point out the flaws in Sandip's character.

Describing the Past

As I was reading Rushdie's recollection of Bombay, I was intrigued by the images he used to re-create his homeland in his mind. He remembers his Bombay as "the vividness of the red tiles, the yellow-edged green of cactus leaves, the brilliance of bougainvillea creeper" (9). The reason I say his Bombay is because this was the authors own perception of his homeland. These are the details he remembers and uses to reconstruct Bombay in his mind. Although tiles and plants may seem insignificant to others who are not from his homeland, to him they hold a significantly deeper meaning.

As a reader, the objects that Rushdie listed did not stir any emotions. This is because they do not describe my own past. I am from a different time and place, and I will never understand the connection that Rushdie feels towards Bombay. I will never have the same memories or images engrained in my mind. However, I was tempted to pause and reflect on images from my own past. I was surprised to find that my memories were of specific foods, clothes, and toys. Although these items hold significance in my mind, to someone from a different past they would be meaningless. Therefor, as a reader I can use images of my own past to understand the connection between Rushdie and the objects of his past.

In the very beginning of Home and the World, Bimala says to her deceased mother, "today there comes back to mind the vermillion mark at the parting of your hair, the sari which you used to wear, with its wide red boarder, and those wonderful eyes of yours, full of depth and peace" (17). She remembers her mother by small, fragmented details. These details do nothing to evoke memories of my own mother, much like Rushdie's description of his homeland did not remind me of my own homeland. However, when I think of the images that do remind me of my mother, I can better understand the emotion that Bimala is feeling. Rushdie and Bimala both use imagery to recall moments of their past. As a reader, I feel the same emotions in my own life, I just use different images to re-live these emotions. I can't help but wonder, why is it that we associate such strong emotions with small details of our lives?

A Woman Who Was Angry at the Mirror

I began reading "The Home and the World" before the in-class lecture. Now that I've gained more knowledge concerning the partition, the role of the British, and the Nationalist movement, Tagore's words have acquired a new significance that is more meaningful than the love triangle at the surface of his novel. I understand now why Bimala would feel the urge to light fire to her foreign clothes as a pledge to the Swadeshi storm that surges in her blood and why Sandip's speech was so moving.

I am curious about Tagore's structural decision to make Bimala's story a frame narrative. The novel begins as Bimala introduces herself as her mother's daughter, a dark-faced young woman who is angry with the mirror. She speaks of cautiously, silently rising in the morning to "take the dust of [her]  husband's feet without waking him" (18). She worships him. But, this description is all told in the past tense. At the entrance of the novel she has already  been educated and exited the Purdah. She admits, "these words that I write seem to blush with shame in their prose setting" (19). Is her narrative voice unreliable, tainted by nostalgia and her new-found intelligence? And what is the purpose of having a revolving perspective when Bimala seems to be the heart of the novel?

Also, I noticed Bimala's ability to be both veiled and worshiped. As Sandip gives his speech, Bimala sees his eyes flash over her in the crowd and imagines herself transformed as "the sole representative of Bengal's womanhood"..."for we women are not only the deities of the household fire, but the flame of the soul itself" (31). Later, Sandip expresses that "it is our women who will save the country" (39). Tagore is fiddling with a world that restricts Bimala to the domestic sphere and places her behind a screen. Instead, men prompt her in conversation. Her husband pushes her to enter the universe beyond the home. This seems unconventional, impossible, exciting.

The Mind, the Memory and the Foreign

Despite having been born in America and having parents who are both successful in their occupations and largely fluent in English, my family remains, at heart, Chinese and perpetually at a distance from the true American experience. My mother in particular has a strong attraction to foreign films, usually ones that raise questions about being American, being a foreigner, coming into one's own and discovering one's true identity. Non-Caucasian immigrants to America appear to struggle much more with coming to terms with their newfound identity as "_____-American" than Europeans, probably since they do not fit into the common assumption of Americans as whites. Because I'm more Americanized than most of my Asian friends (I'm not required or obligated to speak Mandarin Chinese at home--not being fluent in it--and I have little Chinese music in my media library) and was born here in America, for me there is less of a struggle to really come to terms with my American and Chinese identity, especially since I've never known a purely Chinese identity to begin with. Because of this, I am not able to completely identify with what Salman Rushdie is saying about capturing the reality--his reality--that was his past in his mother country. However, having come from an immigrant family, there still remains for me the challenge to be at peace with myself, knowing that I'm not white and that therefore I will never be part of the group many people consider "American."

However, I do agree with many of his points, especially those about art as a way to counter others (like politicians, as Rushdie suggests) who would rather have silence and writing as one's way to interact with, confront and understand the past while pushing towards a vision of reality. I believe that writing is one of the few and most effective ways that one can revisit the past and hopefully understand it, and also one of the best ways to manipulate reality if one wishes.

Imaginary Homelands and Diaspora in Chinese Literature

The ideas discussed in Salman Rushdie's "Imaginary Homelands" line up perfectly with some of the books I've been reading for my Diaspora in Chinese Literature class. We just finished reading America is in the Heart by Carlos Bulosan. Carlos leaves his native Philippines in search of a better life in America. In "Imaginary Homelands," Rushdie writes:

"Meaning is a shaky edifice we build out of scraps, dogmas, childhood injuries, newspaper articles, chance remarks, old films, small victories, people hated, people loved; perhaps it is because our sense of what is the case is constructed from such inadaquate materials that we defend so fiercely, even to the death."

I felt like this passage lined up almost perfectly with a passage from Bulosan's book. He writes:

"It came to me that no man--no one at all--could destroy my faith in America again. It was something that had grown out of my defeats and successes, something shaped by my struggles for a place in this vast land, digging my hands into the rich soil here and there, catching a freight to the north and south, seeking free meals in dingy gambling houses, reading a book that opened up worlds of heroic thoughts. It was something that grew out of sacrifices and loneliness of my friends, of my brothers in America and my family in the Philippines..."

While Rushdie is talking about looking back at the things he struggles to recover from his homeland, Bulosan talks about the things which have shaped the journey he has undergone in America. The comparison makes me wonder just how similar the two processes are.

Pork and Guavas

The portion of Salman Rushdie's "Imaginary Homelands" that resonated the most with me was the assertion on the final page that "displaced" writers shouldn't try to conform to a cultural stereotype or cater to a specific audience. They "have access to a second tradition, quite apart from their own racial history. It is the culture and political history of the phenomenon of migration, displacement, life in a minority group" (20). They have a unique voice bred from physical alienation and distorted memories. They can embrace their heritage as "translated men" (17). 

This notion reminded me of Esmeralda Santiago's When I Was Puerto Rican, which is written from the perspective of a young girl who grows up in Puerto Rico and moves to Brooklyn. After years of adjusting to urban life, learning English, and pushing past degrading expectations in school because of her heritage to become a successful Ivy League student, she stands in a supermarket pressing a guava to her nose and feeling conflicted. She is a product of Puerto Rico and her mother's traditional upbringing. She is also a product of her mother's decision to transport seven children to New York and the education and culture that transforms her. Just as Salman Rushdie speaks of a haunting, partial memory of Bombay and a hybrid identity, Esmeralda cooks frijoles in a cramped Brooklyn kitchen and picks guavas from a supermarket bin instead of from a tree. "We are Hindus who have crossed the black water; we are Muslims who eat pork" (15). This fusion, this ambivalence creates a fresh, exciting voice.

Did "Imaginary Homelands" remind anyone else of other texts they've read?

Reaction to Rushdie

I have not before been familiarized with Salman Rushdie, however, I found "Imaginary Homelands" to be quite intriguing in its philosophical approach to age old questions concerning heritage, homeland, and literature. In my opinion, one of the most interesting points Rushdie makes in the essay is the existing relation between writers and politicians. Since the past and collective memory can often be manipulated by the State, writers are often useful to society in order to challenge the politician's version of the truth. A varied interpretation of the world can be useful to society since, "redescribing a world is the necessary first step towards changing it"(14). Moreover, Rushdie is a valued writer due to his interesting life perspective as he emigrated from India at a young age. Although the homeland he remembered as a boy is strictly imaginary now, his peculiar position between two cultures "is not an infertile territory for a writer to occupy" (15). In some ways Rushdie owes his successful writing career to the atypical circumstances of his heritage as they provided "new angles at which to enter reality"(15).

Writing About Two Different Pasts

As we discussed in class, Salman Rushdie’s Imaginary Homelands has a lot to do with the past and how it is viewed.  Rushdie starts off telling his story and how he moved from India when he was young and although he did not live there for most of his life, he still sees it as home.  His early years were chaotic as India and Pakistan separated and he had to leave his childhood home behind.  The past becomes a wonderful and mysterious place for him as he remembers parts of it and refers to a few photographs for the rest.  However the past did occur in one way and one way only and as Rushdie states later on, there are millions of versions of India and “his” version is only in his mind.  When he returns to his childhood home everything he dreamed and imagined is suddenly gone, as he is faced with reality and the “true” version of his past.  This does not ruin his memories but the image he had built up in his mind is now replaced by what he has seen.  It seems like such a strange experience to go through but at the same time, Rushdie has another home, and although the past is not what he thought it was, I think that gives him inspiration with two different homes and two upbringings to draw from.  I found this clip which has Rushdie talking about being a writer from two different areas which was interesting to hear, let me know what you think of it.

My reaction to Ghazal readings

Despite, my love for literature, I do not like poetry that much, therefore, I knew that this packet was going to be a personal challenge. The Ghazals though very difficult to easily read and understand are quite interesting. the imagery that it paints of mostly  North Indian culture,surroundings and the general exaggerated notions about love and life makes it fun. I would have to say that  the general explanations sections are the best part to read because I am learning more about the background of the authors which makes the themes of their poetry more understanding. Although, I would not come out say that I am now a fan of poetry, Ghazals offer their own dynamics.I really like the format that it is written in especially the using of the author's name as a sign off. I  hope with continuous reading my understanding will prove and maybe by the end, like poetry a bit more.

Ghazals and Other Western Forms

As I said in class, the main reason I enrolled in LIT 232 was to become more exposed to worldly literature and poetry outside of North America and Europe. In many ways, it is serendipitous that the Ghazal is the first topic of discussion in class since this is the most foreign type of expressive writing I have seen yet. However, after becoming acquainted with the sylistic and structural aspects of the Ghazal I was able to put it into contexts with other types of poetry I have been familiarized with. Last semester I took a class in creative writing and we spent several weeks discussing the sonnet. The sonnet (especially the Shakespearean sonnet) is similar to the Ghazal in several ways. Both the Ghazal and the Shakespearean sonnet are formulaic in their construction. The two poetic forms must be consistent with certain rhyme schemes to stay true to tradition. Where the Ghazal has verbal restrictions such as radifs and a particular rhyme scheme, Shakespearean sonnets follow iambic pentameter and a single rhyme scheme. Where Ghazals open with a makta, or rhyming couplet, Shakespearean sonnets always end with a rhyming couplet. Furthermore, Ghazals are known to encounter differing themes and emotions with each passing couplet, creating diverse and often perplexing themes. The Shakespearean sonnet also contains a key thematic change in its structure called a volta. Usually occurring after the second quatrain, the volta also diverstifies the emotions of the poem, often turning a love sonnet into a song of lament and remorse, or vice versa. Lastly, Ghazals and Sonnets are both similar in their common thematic expressions of love.
Thus, I found it interesting to see that the Ghazal, though very different from western forms, is not completely foreign as it shares some distinct commonalities with Shakespeare's influential form of sonnet.

Imaginary Homelands

Salman Rushdie is an author that has intrigued me for quite some time. Sadly, I have not read any of his novels, though I do own a copy of Midnight's Children. Needless to say, I think that Rushdie is the perfect person to write about so called "imaginary homelands," since he has had several homelands over the course of his life. What I find most intriguing about Rushdie's essay is his claim that, "redescribing a world is the necessary first step towards changing it" (14). My 499 this semester, The Asian-American Diaspora, makes an argument for the very same idea and the more I read for that class, the more I understand this to be true. I feel that Rushdie does not believe that to have imaginary homelands is erroneous but rather, that the writer is able to cross these perceived borders without consequence or censure from the government. While he focuses on Indian writers living in England, there is an underlying universality to his argument. Nowhere does he make this clearer than with his final plea to his readers: "'For God's sake, open the universe a little more!'" Here he is urging everyone to forget about their preconceived national boundaries and begin living as a united people, instead of continuing to be defined by what "country" we live in.