An Area of Darkness - Sir V.S. Naipaul

thamrong

An Area of Darkness by Sir V.S. Naipaul


AnArea of Darkness is a book authored by V.S.Naipaul in 1964.It is a travelogue penned during the author's sojourn in his ancestral land

mbhcsf

Oh he is the Nobel Laureate in Literature....hmm.

what are the bare essentials ?

thamrong

Page 189 " The England of India was totally different. It remained an incongruous imposition.Fort St. George, grey and massive and of an eighteenth-century English taste known from day trips, could not be related to the Madras landscape; in Calcutta the wide-fronted, pellared house, pointed out as Clive's, on th echoked road to Dum Dum airport, appeared to required a less exotic setting. And because it was incongruous, its age, which was less than the age of the empire in the West Indies......this was one aspect of Indian England; it belonged to the history of India; it was dead."
How true the discription is. India cannot erase her colonial past but left it to ruin hoping time  will take care of it. Instead streets of Chennai is pepperd with new monuments of  Indian nationalist. Competing against the old one.Very Indian in its design and finishing. Its like taking two steps backward. The shops remind me the old British era, nothing has changed except occasional new glass cladding shops ( probably selling consumer electrical goods or computers) stuck out in the middle of nowhere.

mbhcsf

one thing that crossed my mind when reading the phrase u have written up there - "the England India" -  is a novel written by EM FOSTER - A passage to India and i have yet to read the novel only managed to  watch the miniseries. Interesting actually.

oh yes another recallings of the so called "British India" are the  two miniseries like  " Queenie" and the Far Pavillion. I was 14  back then.

Did the writer mention one important thing? i .e the language as far as i know english has been the primary medium at that time....


what does the book say about the profiles of the citizens the society at that time?

it is nice to get the feel of how the ociety works  during thos colonial times..

Cares to fill  me in.

Merci.

[ Last edited by  mbhcsf at 19-5-2008 12:28 AM ]

thamrong

I will be very happy to dig up my inventory on British Raj..I remember 3 books written about British Raj. Perhaps you will give me more time..Library is in a mess like a scrap yard. I am very passionate about British India ...the maharajah, Nawab principalities, the Babus, Mem Shahib, Kipling etc. etc..
After visiting Chennai twice lately the craving and yearning of the old pasts keep haunting me..
Try the 'Freedom by Midnight' by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins.

L'histoire ressemble

thamrong

My first glimpsed of India was like a concussion.  Anna International Airport arrival hall was hectic, its more like  rebellion  then a polite orderly reception. Has India been like this way? I asked a local mate. People ( cab drivers and family members  alike) competing for the arriving passengers. The guy said ' Wait till you see the Central Station.." I was left dumbfounded.

The British left a good legacy in India, the English language. No mistake about it. The morning English paper delivered to my room never failed to amuse me. Indian journalism, I must confess, are far more superior then ours.

Talking about language Naipul wrote " Language is part of the confusion. Every other conqueror bequeathed a language in India. English remains a foreign language. It is the greatest incongruity of British rule.  Language is like a sense; and the psychological damage caused by the continued official use of English, which can never  be more then an second language, is immense.............Hindi has  been decreed the national language. It is understood by half the country; it can take you from Srinagar to Goa and from Bombay to Calcutta. but many in the North pretend not to understand it. And in the South the nationalist zeal for Hindi has altogether died ( the Dravidian South said Hindi gives the North an advantage). It is better for the North and South to remain illiterate and inefficient, but equal in English"
This is an Indian weird argument.

mbhcsf

AAh .U mentioned about this guy..Kippling guy Rudyard Kippling ..tell me more about Kipilng and India? how significant was his influence over Indian Politics...



and Tham..syyhh the Darjeeling Tea...how come? we have forgotten



as u know my cup of "tea"  would be Science and Other stuffs..and discussing literature of a Nobel Laureate

is  err a bidan terjun  - plunging midwife lah dear ..but i will do it The Syida's way ..I ASK

mbhcsf

Originally posted by thamrong at 18-5-2008 02:44 PM
My first glimpsed of India was like a concussion.  Anna International Airport arrival hall was hectic, its more like  rebellion  then a polite orderly reception. Has India been like this way? I a ...

well there is The national language and the OFFICIAL language, and once my sociolinguistic Lecturer  has once said..in India the history of choosing teh official language is interesting and that is why i brought up the topic...kekhkeh..

mbhcsf

Oh did i mention? my parents have visited India - the Northen part the Kashmir and Accra...yep

mbhcsf

Originally posted by thamrong at 18-5-2008 10:28 AM
Page 189 " The England of India was totally different. It remained an incongruous imposition.Fort St. George, grey and massive and of an eighteenth-century English taste known from day trips, cou ...

i would say  "taking two steps backwards" is a bit too strong to the native, perhaps? I mean would u want to see it under different light? may be the natives want certain kind of architectures / monuments tha truly resemble their identity , may be the England of India does not accurately potraying the true aspirations of the nation...


well how would the native Indian citizen view his books? i could sense his being a little bit critical...

[ Last edited by  mbhcsf at 18-5-2008 07:42 PM ]

thamrong

Ah well...taking two steps backward is quite appropriate as the Indian says. They erect statues at critical junctions where the traffics already a nightmare. For political reason. The design looks somewhat grotesque. The British erects  majestic  bronze statue but the Indian brick and mortar littered with garlands...simplistic.

hamizao

Tham, some people think the guy is a bit hidung tinggi about himself comparing with those still stuck in his motherland. Got any take on this?

mbhcsf

i a sense yes, he is  a bit too critical of India.....

how about those nice sandy beaches of Kerala? [ digging up bits and pieces of my friend Pooja Harijan , now she is a doctor ...her parents are from Kerala]

mbhcsf

the author is knighted on what grounds> OBE ...?

thamrong

Being Anglophile and Queen's lluminary perhaps.

mbhcsf

why? u looked a bit sad???


okay how about the author's POV regarding the native culture of his origin? i am sure he must have written loads  on that too....

mbhcsf

which bit that he found a bit " funny" about this  land ?

mbhcsf

So all  in all?
what is the product of his "synthesis" on his ancestoral mother land?

mbhcsf

how about the  food / cuisine?

thamrong

I don't need to provide any endearmentfor Naipaul. Most writers died a broken man....void of fulfillments.See what happened to Pramoedya Ananta Teor a simple burial attendedby close friends without stately honor.
V.S. Naipaul has his fairshare of abuses as an Indian or Indian from West Indies.His sojournto his native land India in the 60s was a very unhappy one andwhatever written about post-independent India was an honestperceptions of an Indian diaspora.

"V. S. Naipaul was born in a small town in Trinidad into afamily of Indian Brahmin origin. His father, Seepersad Naipaul, was acorrespondent for the Trinidad Guardian. He also published shortstories. When Naipaul was six the family moved to Port of Spain, thecapital. Seepersad Naipaul died of a heart attack in 1953 withoutwitnessing the success of his son as a writer. He had encouragedNaipaul in his writing aspirations, telling him in a letter: "Don'tbe scared of being an artist. D. H. Lawrence was an artist throughand through; and, for the time being at any rate, you should think asLawrence. Remember what he used to say, 'Art for my sake.'" Atthe age of 18 he had written his first novel which was rejected bythe publisher.
Naipaul was educated at Queen's Royal College, Port of Spain, andin 1950 he won a scholarship to Oxford. In 1949, after having somepictures of himself taken for his application to the university,Naipaul wrote to his elder sister: "I never knew my face wasfat. The picture said so. I looked at the Asiatic on the paper andthought that an Indian from India could look no more Indian than Idid... I had hoped to send up a striking intellectual pose to theUniversity people, but look what they have got." After a nervousbreakdown he tried to commit suicide, but luckily the gas meter ranout. While at Oxford he met Patricia Hale; they married in 1955. Shedied in 1996 from cancer and Naipaul married Nadira Khannum Alvi, adivorced Pakistani journalist."
Naipaul's writings dealt with thecultural confusion of the Third World and the problem of an outsider,a feature of his own experience as an Indian in the West Indies, aWest Indian in England, and a nomadic intellectual in a post-colonialworld. Naipaul has also arisen much controversy because of hispolitically incorrect views of the "half-made societies."He has constantly refused to avoid unwelcome topics, characterizinghis role as a writer "to look and to look again, to re-look andrethink."