Postscript 2018

The English Literary Society St. Stephen's College

Postscript 2018

Postscript I am delighted to introduce to you all, the 2018 edition of the English Literary Society’s journal, Postscript. As the year draws to a close, it seems just right to take a moment, and look back.

FOREWORD

We began the new session with a Blackout Poetry Workshop in collaboration with the Poetry Society. The verses that were gleaned from the workshop were put up as an exhibition in college. And over the course of the odd semester we hosted talks by noted authors and an inter-college literary quiz.

In February, after months of arduous preparations, we were able to successfully organize our annual literary festival, Logos. The theme for this year was, The City in Literature. With Logos, as always, we have strived for an inter-disciplinary dialogue, by ensuring participation from across disciplines.

Postscript is the culmination of another year of society activities. My sincere thanks to all the authors whose works have been featured in here and to our guest speakers, who were gracious enough to spare some time for the interviews. This year’s Postscript has been our first step towards archiving memories from over the year, because after all, society journals are imprints left behind by its members. Having said that, I for one, am impressed by the care and cleverness with which this journal has been named.

The journal is sponsored by the English Literary Society and the Centre for Gender, Culture and Social Processes. We thank Dr. Karen Gabriel for her help and support.

And finally, I want to congratulate the editorial board, for braving all the editing, formatting and designing, and bringing out this journal.

You can rest now, for a while that is.

For me it is the end of my tryst with the English Literary Society which for the past two years has mostly been running around for permissions and writing frantic emails. But underneath this debris of logistical work that has, and will always be a part of any society, Litsoc has also been a space which has unfailingly reminded me of what literature means to me.

And now, I invite you to read Postscript 2018, and hope that you enjoy the same.

Elizabeth James President

Postscript

EDITORIAL

Perhaps what we did as editors this year is best summarized in an angst-ridden message sent at midnight by one co-editor to the other: "Aren't we merely erudite nail-cutters?" Maybe we are. We are the comma shifting, em-dash inserting, indent introducing brigade. We pore over words for hours, trying to figure out how to make them better. And we care– very, very much– about syntax. This is not some poignant ode to all the work that has been put into these sixtysomething odd pages. We made mistakes, we fixed them, and then we found more mistakes that needed to be fixed.

This journal has taken a year of work. Its size is deceptive, but it has been hard going. Perhaps we aren’t as good at this as we should be but bear with us. We have had numerous meetings discussing page size, scoured the treacherous streets of Nayi Sarak looking for paper, worried relentlessly about finances and made numerous posters for submissions. We aimed big, because our advisor told us to, and here we are. Sixty or so beautiful pages of art, poetry, fiction, interviews and academic writing. Not only is the journal an eclectic mix of all of these, it is also a testament to the year gone by.

More than anything, this has been a yearlong collaborative effort.

Postscript would not have materialized if not for the people who took an active interest in it. Thank you for your submissions, authors. It was a delight going through your work. As for the editorial team, we think this is a job well done, although we do say it ourselves. After far too many nights spent searching for typos, several tries at formatting and several re-edits, we are done. We are ready to hand this over to our readers. We hope you enjoy perusing it as much as we did creating it.

Over and out, Editorial Board, 2018.

Postscript GRAPHIC ART Untitled Daiyairi Muivah Confessions of the Momo Murderer

Jessica Jakoinao & Lisathung Patton

POETRY Comfort Medhavi Dhyani Blur and Bleed Mehuli Das The Red Brick Box Hanna Elsa

CONTENTS

Muffled Call When the Boatman arrives

2 5 16

Kannita Biswas

16

Sayan Nag

23

FICTION & PROSE On a Bright Autumn Day Oorja Michel Gupta Vieux Jeans Bleu Kshitij Anand Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN. – Hip-Hop and reflections on Violence Dalit Literature: Rejection and Revival

1 59

3 6

David Mathew

11

Ajay R Raj

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CONVERSATIONS Writing Baaz: Anuja Chauhan on Her New Book, and The Art of Writing Aanchal Malhotra on Archiving Material Memory Maya Jasanoff on Joseph Conrad in a Globalized World THE CITY IN LITERATURE Ruins that Resist Ansila Mariam Thomas Silence and The City Tanvi Chowdhary Reading the City Through the B. Geetha Kaleidoscope of Desire

9 17 24 27 37 51

The lines on our skin are testament to the time that stands between us.

Seasons that passed chipped away your being until all that remained was a lonely back in a distant memory. I resented you but in return you held me tight. I hated you but I loved you. So, before our time is up, know that I loved you more than I hated you.

Daiyairi Muivah BA English (III) St. Stephen’s College

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Comfort Medhavi Dhyani BA English (II) St. Stephen’s College

I have found there is comfort in having a thing or two to steal, spare, save, spend.

I have found there is comfort in having a few extra minutes that I can steal from in between attending a class and worrying about it to stroll aimlessly amidst flowers.

I have found there is comfort in having a tomorrow between today and a deadline, that I can spare to rise and shine at eleven a.m., only to doze off again in the afternoon.

I have found there is comfort in having an extra bite to save for a rainy day when Papa brings home two samosas even though I had asked for only one; one to save.

I have found there is comfort in having some stolen, spared, saved time to spend thinking; to mull over these muddled thoughts before they venture off to find a language and a voice of their own.

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On A Bright Autumn Day Oorja Michel Gupta BA English (III) St. Stephen’s College On a bright autumn day, walking on a lonely road lost in my own world, I chanced upon you. At first, I surely didn’t recognize you. But then we both stopped and I knew it was you. I don’t recall if greetings were exchanged. We stood there facing each other, waiting for someone to initiate the conversation. Fortunately, no one did. ‘You’ve changed so much’, I thought to myself. I wanted to look into your eyes and learn the truth. But you looked away, maybe with a tear in them.

‘We are still quiet’, I think. I wait for you to look up. While you fight your dilemma off, I observe you. Every ounce of you. I notice the way there is no yellow, orange or red on you. They were, once upon a time, ‘Your’ colours. That fancy and peculiar foot wear had now changed into relaxed sneakers. From that tall and powerful presence of the past, you now stood in front of me with drooping shoulders. For all that I remember of you I recall a person so bold, bright and confident that seasons and situations failed to bring you down. That your speech was no speech at all, it was music. Like melodies mixed in the air. Something that will not only calm your nerves but would make you believe in yourself. Music that would lend a new life to every single cell in your body. Music that would entice people, mesmerize them.

Something you’ll never get bored with, surprising you even at the most unlikely times.

Now you stand in-front of me- weak and frail. I wonder what went wrong. And with all those hundred thousand questions running in my mind, I choose to stay quiet.

And it was then, that you look back at me. From awkward and unwanted silence, it shifts to a comfortable one. We let the stillness take over and resort to an agreeable tranquillity. It is more secure this way.

And I face you. When I look into your eyes I find them unnervingly calm. In them I saw the stillness and depth of the ocean; I saw both darkness and light. There, order and chaos co-existed. They were quiet yet anxious.

Lulled with dissent. Serene with defiance. It appeared to me as your unspoken contract with pain. It has embraced you so tightly that now it is your only means of solace.

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And at once I missed the balloons of your giggles that’d light up your eyes like the stars on a no-moon night. You stand there almost expressionless with those dark brown eyes staring right back at me. I don’t remember blinking. It was eternity.

Then I look a little up. I am taken aback by the absence of your curly hair. You had one beautiful strand right at the right side of your forehead.

Remember? I personally loved that it troubled you a lot. It’d constantly fall over your eyes and even with your hands full you’d make a failed attempt at putting it back into place.

Then those fine lines make their way onto your forehead. I recall hating them. They are more prominent now. One line that I loved on your face seems to be missing. I miss the way your lips would curl up at the edges.

The way that cute little dimple would make its way out at every word spoken.

And that pretty pink that never fails to draw attention toward your cheeks.

And you look down again. With that, I succumb to comforting you.

I step forward. Touch your hand. It’s cold. I am suddenly taken back to reality.

Dear Mirror. Will I ever be able to comfort you? Love You.

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Blur and Bleed Mehuli Das BA English (I) St. Stephen’s College I thought you and I had a thing.

Nothing major.

Just a thing.

I thought when you looked at me across all those people and places, I thought maybe, just maybe we did have a thing.

When you asked me to stay with you. When you asked me to colour your skies blue.

When you asked me to sing lullabies.

When you asked me to ask you to love me again.

I thought we had a thing.

Until I saw you.

And I saw her.

And I saw you and her, together.

And I blazed.

Like the colour of your eyes, blue and cold.

I thought you and I had a thing

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Vieux Jeans Bleu Kshitij Anand BA English (II) St. Stephen’s College Once upon a time in 1635, in one of the many quaint little villages dotting the charmingly pastoral landscape of Normandy, where the French would surrender to the Germans like 300 years later1, there lived a mother and her daughter. The mother, who was the village blacksmith, was named Helvetica.2The daughter was wholly unremarkable, except for her habit of wearing the same old pair of jeans3 day in and day out with no regard for her surroundings, the weather, or personal hygiene. The villagers took to calling her Vieux Jeans Bleu or Jean for short, because they were French. This was a fortunate coincidence4, because her name was Jean. The villagers did not call her often though, except in medical emergencies where a shock to the senses, particularly the olfactory processes, was needed. She saved them a fortune in smelling salts, with the only downside being the occasional homicide investigation prompted by the protestations of the occasional visitor to the village, who upon sampling the first aromatic notes of the much-maligned but infrequently-laundered pantaloons5, invariably suspected foul play. They also acquired a distinctly greenish pallor and a dogged urge to forcibly regurgitate their previous meal all over the charmingly pastoral landscape.

One day, word arrived from Jean’s Grandmama. She had been taken ill, and wanted her loved ones around her, because she feared the worst.

Grandmama’s doctor had told her that she had nothing to worry about, but 1kek 2In

case the fact that there’s a female character that is gainfully self-employed in 17th century France of all places wasn’t enough of a giveaway, this isn’t an entirely true story.

3Or pantaloons, if one is anally-retentive enough to care for things such as the presence of relatively inconsequential anachronisms in a narrative or, heavens forbid a student of literature.

4The collective unconsciousness of the villagers was constantly irked by how suspiciously convenient this was. Unfortunately, this feeling never found expression and so it was passed down from each slightly uncomfortable generation to the next until the present day, where it currently manifests as an abiding distaste for primetime television programming.

5 To the tune of Sphincters Untightening by Lil’ Versace Tube.

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he thought that putting leeches on his patients was a cure-all, so what did he know.6 Jean and her mother set out for Grandmama’s. Instead of taking a 'safe' path through a forest, our heroines wound their way through settled areas, because to go through the woods would have been stupid.7 The forest teemed with pointedly carnivorous life, the most interesting of which was a variety of critically-endangered, sentient wolves. The wolves had been hunted to near extinction because of their mostly harmless tendency to restrain old women and then impersonate them in an attempt to devour their grandchildren, preferably with a nice little hollandaise sauce. 8 A complex species, to be sure.

When Helvetica and her daughter arrived at chez Grandmama, which was a small hut she had rented from the local landlord and thus signified that she was landless and therefore could not expect fair treatment from the legal system, they were greeted by the sight of the frail old woman in shackles, escorted by a pair of gendarmes. "Sacre bleu!" exclaimed Jean because she was surprised, but also because she was French. It was almost noon, and so the gendarmes sat down to lunch with some wine and cheese, while Grandmama recounted the events which had led to this sorry state of affairs.

As she told it, Grandmama had been wakened in the wee hours of the morning by a rustling outside her bedroom door. Retrieving the crossbow, which had been an eightieth birthday present from Helvetica, from under her bed, she checked the catch on the spring-loaded bolt and then crept out of bed to ascertain the cause of the disturbance. The crossbow was a sweet piece of weaponry. As she opened the door, her eyes came to rest upon a rooster.

Its eyes had a hunted look, and its feathers were in disarray, almost bushy.

Perhaps it had wandered into the forest following the 'safe' path and was newly The doctor eventually found his true calling as a butcher, undoubtedly due to the unceasing efforts of his patients who brought their livestock to him in large numbers due to a healthy respect for his skill with the knife alongside a stubborn desire for its application in a decidedly non-medical direction.

7 Of course, this also meant that they lost the metaphor of the forest as representative of the wilds of human sexuality. Unfortunately, the selfish bastards preferred their continued existence over the opportunity to establish a neat rhetorical parallel.

8 Since the wolves lacked an understanding of complex human activities such as cuisine or commerce (which to their simple minds seemed a hopelessly pointless exchange of items of actual utility in return for shiny dirt), it remains unclear how an entire species acquired a taste for this possibly anachronistic condiment.

6

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returned from communion with its sylvan denizens. Whatever the reasons for its dishevelled aspect, the appearance of Grandmama on the scene was clearly the last straw. The disgruntled cock flew at her in a fit of unrestrained fury, whereupon Grandmama promptly shot it in the face. Critical hit! It's super effective! Grandmama dealt 1000 points of damage 9, and the avian intruder passed painlessly from this earthly realm.

Unfortunately, the cock had belonged to the local woodcutter, who learned of its demise when he delivered unto Grandmama her daily load of wood. Blinded by loss and a desire for vengeance, he reported the matter to the local constabulary, who acted in a timely manner to secure the arrest of such an obviously homicidal public menace.

When her account was finished, Grandmama was led away to gaol, while our heroines prepared to formulate her defence for the trial in the local prĂŠvĂ´tĂŠ, forgetting that this was 17th century France and that justice was hon hon baguette.

The tale does not end happily. Grandmama died in prison.

Perhaps10 due to the low levels of blood in her body resulting from the leech treatment her doctor had administered the previous day.

Kanto get enough of this.

The author wishes to avoid litigation being initiated against his person by any descendants of said doctor on the grounds of libel.

9

10

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Writing Baaz: Anuja Chauhan on her new book, and The Art of Writing In conversation with Megha Mukherjee and Ishita Blest Having been part of the advertising industry, are there skill sets you picked up there which have transferred to the act of writing?

You learn how not to bore people. Nobody gives a damn about you. You are waiting for a TV show to start, and you’re basically interrupting, so you better be damn fun or damn informative or damn insightful, and if it's not so, I will change the channel. There are 3 ‘R’s of advertising: Rapidity, Resilience, and Repertoire.

What is your research methodology while dealing with the stories you ground in history?

My research was pretty lazy. I tend to write about what I know. So, you know The Zoya Factor was all about advertising and cricket, and at that time my life was submerged in advertising, and cricket. And while writing Battle for Bittora, I was busy campaigning with my mother-in-law and that was in Karnataka, but I knew about Uttar Pradesh, so I picked that up and put it in UP because my Nani and Mum were from UP, so it's not really about being lazy, but it's good to write with authority, and you write with authority, when you are naturally close to something rather than coming in and trying to research officially, which always seems a little forced. For Baaz my research was very much about getting in touch with old fighters, retired old men, starting with my mama, (he was an Air Force fighter in 1962, 1965- 71) so I talked to him, and he put me on to a bunch of his friends and I also met a lot of current fighters to get a sense of their world, their thinking, a lot of alcohol was drunk, lot of discussions and tall tales - this was the lighter side of research.

The harder side was, I read a lot of military non-fiction, specific books: India’s War: A Military History and Eagles of Bangladesh, which is about the IAF’s role, and that’s how it went.

With Baaz, would you say you’re trying to fight the chic-lit label?

No, I don’t have enough energy to fight labels. I write what I want to write, and I love writing. And I think I know what I like to write about-a lot of

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exciting characters. For me it becomes boring unless I put in those people. So, in Baaz, his friends were his family, so there are a bunch of fighters, and then I do need more people to get things going. And I like writing about Indian hypocrisies.

Baaz is a dedication to the men in uniform, at the same time, you make your readers question ideas of nationalism and patriotism. How have you achieved the truce between the two?

It is not my job to solve a conflict, and I can’t solve a conflict with a book.

I’m just putting down every one’s points of view, and I think men come with very pure intentions to serve in the forces and its horrible what is done to the soldiers, and everyone thinks they’re just there for the popularity and the little rush they get. I think our nation is full of arm-chair nationalists who just don’t give a damn about these young men being sent out, you know? It pisses me off, and I feel that the people joining the forces are self-inspired.

So, you identify yourself as a popular commercial author. What kind of pressure does that put on you to constantly churn out fiction…. you have to sell big, so how would you say that affects your writing?

One good thing is, thank god for Bollywood, so it's not much pressure. People want to make movies and you get your money from there. I try to write one book every two years because I think that’s a good rhythm that works for me.

You tend to use a lot of Hinglish neologisms, which are mostly accessible to only North Indian audiences.

I don't think I use too much Hindi. 90% of my jokes are accessible to most people but some I chip in because they’re too funny to do away with. Some will get it, some won’t. But they catch on.

(Anuja Chauhan is the author of four bestselling novels (The Zoya Factor, Battle for Bittora, Those Pricey Thakur Girls, The House That BJ Built), two of which have been optioned by major Bollywood studios and one of which has been made into a prime-time daily Hindi serial on &TV. Her latest novel, Baaz, was published in 2017.)

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Kendrick Lamar’s ‘DAMN.’ – Hip-Hop and Reflections on Violence David Mathew BA Programme (I) St. Stephen’s College It is difficult to get lovers of art to pay attention to hip-hop. And it’s fairly easy to see why. The music is mechanical, booming and often without melody. The lyrics are often uninspired and dangerously materialistic, pairing a debauched sense of opulence with rampant misogyny. With the exception of a few underground artists who stay miles away from the commercial music industry and a handful who managed to create music about things other than cars, women and themselves, rap was declared, even by the luminaries of its golden age in the eighties and nineties, to be dead. Until the Kendrick Lamar epoch.

Kendrick Lamar Duckworth began his career with a couple of mixtapes released under his stage name K. Dot. He then released his first solo album Section.80 independently and his next two albums good kid, m.A.A.d city and To Pimp a Butterfly through Top Dawg Entertainment, both of which were considered not only the greatest hip-hop projects of the fledgling century but also cultural milestones the likes of which the community hadn’t seen since the time of Public Enemy or even Maya Angelou. His next album, DAMN., was considered by most critics to be a regression or denigration into the sort of rap everyone else was doing. Gone were the story-based audio-dramas of good kid and the jazz instrumentation of To Pimp a Butterfly. They were replaced with drum machines, blaring decadent synthesizers, chipmunk-vocals and the same sort of narcissism that characterizes mainstream commercial rap. All of which would’ve been perfectly valid objects of criticism had it not been for the leitmotifs, conceptual elements and the abstract opening and closing tracks the album leaves us with. There is obviously more to DAMN. than what that first wave of critics said about it and indeed what it immediately says about itself. And in those layers of under-the-surface meanings lies what is a masterpiece not just of rap in particular and music in general but art as a whole.

DAMN. just might be an essential part of this generation’s artistic and cultural legacy. All of which, of course, sounds like the ravings of a hip-hop fanatic who’s a little in over his head. But here, I try to put together how Lamar makes use of not just poetry and metre (which is essentially what rap is) but also

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production, collaborations and identities and personas to craft a work of unquestionable genius.

The Background There were three distinct moments around which the frenzy surrounding Lamar’s public position within and outside the black community after To Pimp a Butterfly solidified. The first was during his now famous performance at the 58th BET awards where he performed his single Alright from on top of a prop of a police car while an American flag swirled behind him. It was another case of Lamar fine-tuning every aspect of a work of performance art, from the vocal delivery to the props to the pyrotechnics to push forward a unified, concise message.

However, the second moment happened quite outside of Lamar’s creative control. When an officer used pepper spray on a crowd of protestors against police harassment at Cleveland State University, the crowd broke into chants of “We ‘gone be alright”, the hook from Lamar’s Alright. As protest slogans go, it was a peculiar one in that it did little to address the aggressors or threaten vengeance. It instead sought solace and comfort from within and hope for the future. And that was, boiled down to its essence, the theme of To Pimp a Butterfly.

The album rarely took the dips into autobiography (and selfaggrandizement) the industry is known for. The only pair of songs that deal entirely with Lamar himself are u, a tearfully croaked poem berating his own failure and lack of loyalty to his hometown and then i, a powerful anthem of self-love that connected his identity with his community.

The third moment was also outside Lamar’s control but unlike the Cleveland incident, directed at him. In response to the aforementioned BET Awards performance, Geraldo Rivera of Fox News had this to say: "This is why I say that hip-hop has done more damage to young African-Americans than racism in recent years. This is exactly the wrong message." He took specific fault with a repeated verse from the song: "And we hate po-po/ Wanna kill us dead in the street, fosho."

The Work DAMN. could be considered a response to Rivera and Fox News.

Lamar samples Rivera’s voice in one of the first tracks of the album, DNA. He later goes on to accuse Fox News of ‘using my name for percentage’ in YAH. But it’s difficult to see exactly what point he’s making in response. While To Pimp a Butterfly seemed to transcend rap’s usual obsession with the self to

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address the importance of unity and communal pride, DAMN. seems to have all the characteristics of the worst sort of hip-hop, down to the production level.

To Pimp a Butterfly made use of warm and loose jazz backgrounds and slinky saxophones to evoke a cultural history extending beyond the emergence of hip-hop in the 60s and 70s. DAMN. is a rap album through and through. The beats are tight and mechanical. The sounds are synthetic and a lot of the vocal melodies surrounding the rap have been passed through digital filters and tinkered with.

In terms of lyricism, Lamar leaves behind the hopeful poetry of his previous album for something terser, darker and much more desolate. That is, when he addresses the larger community at all. Because surprisingly, a large part of DAMN. is about Lamar himself. It features a new persona for K. Dot: Kung-Fu Kenny. He emphasizes this in a number of songs and has since cemented it by constructing the music video for DNA. around it and performing a few of his stage shows in a black judogi. References to his ‘undisputed’ position as the greatest rapper, his work ethic and the money he’s earned, all staples of twenty-first century commercial hip-hop, abound.

DAMN. is also surprisingly vocal about violence and Lamar’s willingness to inflict and take it. Kung-Fu Kenny is almost self-explanatory by the end of the album.

It almost seems as if in response to Rivera, Lamar created exactly the sort of hip-hop he was berating. And the way critics initially responded to it, it would seem that was all there was to it.

The Message Lamar doesn’t hide the meaning too deep beneath the surface. The obvious cues to try and interpret what he means in any of his work are the leitmotifs. Lamar usually repeats odd, disconnected phrases between his songs to tie them together and bring out a larger narrative. In DAMN. though, the songs seem more disconnected than ever before and the leitmotifs are strange and cryptic. Kung-Fu Kenny, Lamar’s new moniker, is the most common among them, appearing in DNA., LOYALTY., ELEMENT. and a number of other songs and emphasizing this constant undercurrent of violence.

The other two are more peculiar: “ain’t nobody praying for me,” and “whatever happens on earth stays on earth.” The first is explained to some extent by the song it appears most in, FEEL. It is a response not just to the popular opinion against hip-hop but against those within the community who place

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him on a pedestal or turn him into some sort of poet-messiah. The song explains in a relatively simple verse structure how Lamar feels about his insecurities and inadequacies, his money, his power and his guilt and it then loops back into a dejected chorus: ain’t nobody praying for me. It is one of the few times the façade of self-glorification falls and is almost humble in its misery.

He doesn’t want the burden of having to answer for the music he grew up in to people who don’t understand it. It is almost a ‘take this cup from me.’ It provides a new vantage point from which to view the self-proclaimed greatest rapper: an artist with an additional burden he never asked for.

The second is perhaps even more ambiguous. ‘Whatever Happens on Earth Stays on Earth’ was going to be the name of this album before it was replaced with DAMN., perhaps a pithier way of evoking the same feeling. It appears a number of times through the album: in FEAR., a list of things Lamar has been afraid of throughout his life and in DUCKWORTH., the final track of the album. It could mean two things. It could be the closest thing this album, drenched in despair, has to a ray of hope. Or it could be a verdict sentencing a community to continual cycles of damnation. In other words, it could mean that there is another place beyond this earth where these things don’t happen. Or it could mean ‘we’re stuck down here with this’. The title of the album seems to point to the latter.

All three leitmotifs come together in ELEMENT., a song which would perhaps be the thesis statement of the whole project. The verses reflect the furious violence Lamar is willing to inflict and withstand and the chorus is as smooth and catchy as it is disturbing: “If I gotta slap a p***y-ass n***a, I’ma make it look sexy/If I gotta go hard on a b***h, I’ma make it look sexy.”

Geraldo Rivera would kill for content like that. But it isn’t quite the glorification of violence one would assume it is at face value. The ‘making it sexy’ part is beyond Lamar’s control. As he’s emphasized a number of times, he is the greatest rapper. Anything he raps about will sound sexy. The interesting part here is ‘gotta’. The message is simple but staggeringly powerful.

The environment is such that he’s forced to be party to acts of violence and he can only rap about what he knows. It is emphasized again in XXX., where U2’s Bono croons between verses about the hypocrisy inherent in an America which emphasizes its collective national values while it turns a blind eye to its minorities: “It’s not a place/ this country is to me a sound of drum ‘n bass.”

Lamar is explaining here the way he, as a musical artist, sees the world around him. It is a sound and that too, a percussive violent sound. He makes the music he sees. The violence of the music is the violence of the place.

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The album concludes on a peculiar note, not with the violence and misery that characterizes it but with a slow, poetic story about a coincidence that happened some forty years ago when Anthony Tiffith met Kenny Duckworth. Tiffith was a gang member and Duckworth worked at a friend chicken store. Tiffith could have killed Duckworth when he came to rob the store Duckworth worked at. Duckworth would usually give Tiffith a couple of extra biscuits to get on his good side and so, he was spared. Tiffith, years later, went on to form Top Dawg Entertainment, the record-label that steered Lamar to success. Kenny Duckworth is Kendrick Lamar Duckworth’s father.

DAMN.’s message is not really addressed to his critics but to his admirers. He isn’t a poet messiah because if a couple of variables were switched around, he wouldn’t even have been born. The ‘greatest rapper’ was born because Kenny Duckworth’s act of love, with motivations of selfpreservation of course, but an act of love nonetheless, spared his life and therefore his son’s life. The violence is bleak, dark and pervasive. It is all the greatest rapper has to write about. But the way out, at least as long as we’re on this earth is to love wherever we can and hope for the best. And whatever happens on earth stays on earth.

And if that isn’t magnificent art, I don’t know what is.

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The Red Brick Box Hanna Elsa BSc Physics (II) St. Stephen’s College Plunged in thoughts, curtailed from reality, Enclosed I stood, in a red-brick box.

A box of old, of stories said and sold, Or rather a chest, of jewels unworn.

On each brick, sun-kissed, smeared red, were carved dialogues, songs, stories and poems, Of those who won and those who fell short, Of friendship, of love or of life as a whole.

Still I wonder, and keep wondering after all, Will my story be written, read or be erased as a whole.

Muffled Call Kannita Biswas BA English (I) St. Stephen’s College Life is the mournful tune of an ancient harp.

The shrivelled love of a romantic heart.

The early sunrise on a foggy winter morn.

The shadowy image on broken glass.

The rapid pace of the midnight rail.

The monochromatic rays of an Ozian state.

The shimmering grasslands of the highland.

The snowy flakes on a winter dawn.

The shrill cry of a silent howl.

The dying wish of a hoary soul.

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Aanchal Malhotra on Archiving Material Memory In conversation with Anushka Maheswary, Kshitij Anand, and Ishita Blest Often, personal oral narratives pose a challenge to official narratives in that the former diverge from the latter. How do you deal with situations where the accounts that you receive do not match with official ones?

A culturally propagated bias is not a historical fact but, then I don’t feel what I recorded and other people have recorded differs from what is recorded in terms of academic history. Maybe the details are different, or the ways of telling the history are different, perhaps they have glossed over the numbers, some have put themselves in a better light from the ‘other’, but that is a cultural nuance that they have chosen. The creation of the borderline is an account that nobody knows about, and I would say that one place if you could go to is the British Library, to know about the correspondence that happened with Sir Radcliffe. What he did in the name of the Crown, and for the Crown as his duty is very different from how history has understood this man.

While working with memory and oral history, one can expect a certain amount of fiction to enter the kind of narratives that you deal with. As a writer, you have a certain responsibility towards representing your subjects faithfully, and also towards the accuracy of facts. How do you resolve conflicts between the two obligations?

There is no other way but to put it together. Somebody I interviewed said that when they were migrating from Karachi, (many Sindhis came from Karachi post-Partition, from November to February 1948) their bags were checked.

There is a book that says that sometimes people would carry belongings like jewellery, pottery, property documents, and the national guards would search them. Then, a correspondent in a news piece said “19,000 Hindu-Sikhs from Karachi smuggling on a large scale”. This is a way in which facts are merged into story telling. You must present the facts for they are important. When someone reads an account like mine, I aim to gain both empirical and emotional knowledge.

Tell us about your research methodology. How did your pick your interviewees?

When you start an archive on object memory from seventy years ago, you don’t have the luxury of choosing people. I started with what I could find,

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started with word of mouth, speakers of Punjabi, then across the border to Pakistan. It was a big decision for me, knowing that without the journey, the archive would be incomplete. Then I interacted with speakers of Hindi, Punjabi, Multani, Pahari, Kashmiri, Bengali. In the beginning, it all starts with the things you know.

As an artist, you are foraying into a historian’s realm. How does this vantage point make your work different?

It reflects in the style of writing. It is incredibly visceral, sensorial, it has colour and smell, it has texture. A lot of things that artists look for when making a piece. It helps to make people identify with the stories, and they can potentially be transported into the narratives.

How have people represented their experience of the Partition through visual media? And how have their methods and narratives changed over time?

A few artists like Parashar, the camp commander who drew extensively, Amrita Shergill, Pragjot Kaur, Satish Gujral, Kishan Khanna’s paintings have undertaken literary renditions of Partition. But for our times, there is no tangible way to imagine what a person might have gone through, unless we use an oral historian’s approach. Film continues to be a popular way to look back at the traumata. Manto made a film in 1948 and screened in Lahore a cinemas, which was then burned down. A recent film is Gurinder Chadha’s India’s Partition: A Forgotten Story.

Do you think that their versions are accurate? Would you say that as compared to the old days, the facts and their accuracy have been compromised?

I would say Mrs. Chadha’s film is not so accurate. It looks at Partition from the colonial perspective, that of Mountbatten’s, which is distanced from the immediate pain of Partition. Some films made back then, like Earth by Deepa Mehta, (based on Ice Candy Man) were accurate representations of the time.

After these years, the representation has become a little dramatic and magnified, because we have access to so much information. How many but few would spare some time to undertake a project about archiving history? It is difficult. If you start a project for society’s good, it must productively serve it too. We are just a very small catalyst in the process of how information reaches other people.

What is the impact your work has made on society, as you tell it?

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It has started a cross-border dialogue between individuals at a personal level.

Indians and Pakistanis are talking, because of an object as mundane as a kadhai. I once posted something about patthod: a delicacy, of steamed and fried cabbage rolls (it does not taste good, but it is an old sweet my grandmother makes). About fifty people responded to it saying, for instance, “I am from Kerala, this is called this here, I am from Gujarat, and this is called this”, and so on [sic]. Nothing happens overnight but the fact that people are engaging with one another is encouraging.

How do you plan to take this up further?

When I was doing my research, several people wrote to me from different places: Ranchi, Raipur, Pune etc. They wanted me to visit, but I couldn’t. I felt it was important to tell people that they should be the keepers of their history.

A friend and I have started a Digital Museum where people can send stories of their objects. Thus, all things, mundane or precious can gain their place in history through the people they came along with. It is important that in a few years’ time, we have an ethnographic archive of objects to reflect on what it meant to be from an area in the subcontinent, to know what people used, how people lived, with their stories and memories.

(Aanchal Malhotra is an artist and oral historian working with memory and material culture. She is the co-founder of the ‘Museum of Material Memory’, a digital repository of material culture from the Indian subcontinent, tracing family histories and social ethnography through heirlooms, collectibles and objects of antiquity. Her debut book, 'Remnants of a Separation: A History of the Partition through Material Memory' was published in 2017)

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Dalit Literature: Rejection and Revival Ajay R Raj BA English (I) St. Stephen’s College A serious debate is going on now whether Dalit literature should be included in the syllabus of various universities or not. Meanwhile, some of the universities have already included Dalit literature in their syllabus.

Emerging in the pre-independence period, Dalit literature rose into prominence in the post-independence context. But the development and consequent transition of Dalit literature from a mere literary tradition to a vital strand in the Indian literary tradition has to be analysed with great attention.

Dalit literature is the perfect example of the inter-relation between social context and literature. The emergence of Dalit literature was associated with the simultaneous degradation and rejection of Dalits in Indian society.

When a close analysis of the history of Dalit literature is made, one can find its aspirations and objectives tantamount to those of the Bhakti tradition. In the Bhakti tradition, there were many works that were critical of the Varna system in the Indian tradition. They also clearly stated that the understanding of God can only be achieved without bringing in the frame of caste. In such a scenario, what makes the field of Dalit literature distinct is that it completely rejects the Brahmanical approach to Hinduism. It has become their mouthpiece to speak of the agonies that they suffer.

As mentioned earlier, similar to the experience of Dalits, their literature has also faced a history of rejection by Nationalist literature and Marxist literature. Nationalist literature, which began in the early 20th century and flourished through the freedom struggle period, tried to absorb Dalit writing into its fold. Being controlled by the middle-class educated writers, it aimed to bring out social issues. But when they portrayed the life and struggles of Dalits as something that deserved the sympathy of the society, Dalits turned against them. This situation must be discussed, keeping in mind the recent debates over what constitutes Dalit literature. The most controversial question is that when someone from an upper caste writes about the suffering of Dalits, can it be considered a part of Dalit literature? On this, most scholars agree that it must be called sympathetic literature instead of it being made a part of Dalit literature. What makes Dalit literature unique is that it is the literary manifestation of a section of people who have been isolated, marginalized and subjugated over centuries. There can be no one else who can portray it better

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than Dalits themselves. The tactical inclusion of Dalit suffering into the framework of the nationalist literature must be looked at through the lens of political motives and agendas. It was clear that for the unification of the Indian society against the British, the Dalits were to be considered, especially when the Dalits were concerned more about the oppressive caste system than the British rule.

One of the main drawbacks of Nationalist literature was that it was led by the upper caste/middle class intellectuals. Instead of giving an identity to the Dalit community, their literature portrayed the Dalit plight to garner sympathy for their cause. This was in a way identical to the 19th century social reformers who addressed the issues of the upper caste.

The Marxist literature which followed the Nationalist literature, imbued with class consciousness totally refused to acknowledge the divisions and subdivisions within the class structure. Even Ambedkar felt that Dalit literature wasn’t given any place within the class fold of Marxist literature.

It was in the post-independence period that Dalit literature emerged as a branch of literature. The movement began through works in regional languages like Marathi, Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam. The initial Dalit writers were the first generation of educated Dalits. The common feature of Dalit literature was the denial of the fifth category of Panjama. It was an attempt to interpret the Vedas from a Dalit perspective. In this journey, the strategy used was the retelling of myths. For instance, Uma Chakraborty in Caste and Gender, introduced this trend in Dalit literature of the retelling of myths. In the aforementioned article, she introduces three ways of retelling. The myth of Ekalavya is retold in the following way. First, he is portrayed as the deceiver of his own people. Then, he refuses to give them his finger. The retold story of Matangi and the Dalit use of Matangi’s children is quite popular in the Dalit literary world. This kind of retelling of myths is very common in Dalit literature. Another expression is the emphasis on counter-narration of myths that differ from the Brahmanical understanding as in the story of Mahabali, who was an Asura king, and in whose memory the harvest festival Onam is celebrated.

The Dalit writers chose to keep away from the upper caste words of narration. They used their own language and style to express their view against the caste system. They call Dalit Literature the literature of production and criticize Brahmanical literature as unproductive as it always concealed the productivity of the Dalits. Many of these writings came out in the form of autobiographies. In Hindi, famous works like Joothan by Om Prakash and in Tamil, Karupu by Bhama were some of the autobiographies which portrayed

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the subjugation of Dalits in the Indian society. Since the theme of Dalit literature is the literal expression of their caste experience, the best form of expressing it is in the form of autobiographies. At the same time, other forms of Dalit literature also gained prominence. In the 21st century, there are several Dalit poems getting published, mostly written by Dalit women.

One of the key factors which caused the fillip of Dalit literature was the emergence of Dalit Panthers. Dalit Panthers as a movement in itself made multiple ripples within the Dalit community. Dalit poet Namdheo Bhasal was in the forefront of the formation of Dalit Panthers. It is important to note that in the beginning, Dalit Panthers took the form of an intellectual movement, although it later turned violent. The impact that Ambedkar left in Dalit literature was also very significant. In the 1960s and 1970s, a series of Dalit literature which portrayed Ambedkar as the champion of Dalits were published. The part and parcel of Dalit literature was nothing but the Ambedkarite principle.

In the beginning, Dalit literature appeared in vernacular languages like Telugu, Marathi, Tamil and Malayalam. In the subsequent period, it expanded its horizons through the introduction of writings in English. This facilitated in setting up a diverse audience of which the majority was upper caste. This gave a dual identity to Dalit literature, both at the vernacular and national level.

Over the course of time, Dalit literature made progress by empowering Dalit women to write about their experiences. It is interesting to note that women contributed more than men to Dalit Literature. Being suppressed by the three layers of patriarchy, and even within the community, their writing managed to acquire a superior significance. In general, it is because of these reasons that Dalit women writing centres around the themes of caste discrimination and patriarchy. The degradation of Dalit women’s bodies, both by the caste system and patriarchy, is widely discussed in their writing.

Dalit literature has a key role to play in the present political scenario.

When Dalits are being attacked increasingly as in Una and Koregaon and Dalit politics finding a new face in its young leaders like Jignesh Mevani, Dalit literature must regain the significance it claimed in the past. The discussion and deliberation on Dalit literature will be able to strengthen and spearhead Dalit movement in the country.

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When the Boatman Arrives Sayan Nag BA English (II) St. Stephen’s College The walls are closing in on me

With every passing year

Every dawn is a reminder of the frailty of life

Like time was abundant, without dearth;

Should I but fall to my knees

If only I could hear, that the boatman was near.

When the boatman arrives.

Fear garnishes every morn When I think of that parley Where he asks with scorn, How much of peace did I slay.

Should I try to defy With eyes feigning fire, And for the last time lie, That circumstances were dire.

Where have I erred When my innards were cold, That only for me the gates are barred;

Choices are numbered, Hence, accepting the time as right, Perhaps I should embrace the slumber That is what soothes and not the fight.

But I have questions to pose That shall make him shiver, Why the thorns with the rose?

Why the floods in the river?

There’s no noise to be made, The cycle is all naïve

Since inception morality was sold.

If the last farewell has been made,

I shall guard the damned soul

I shall depart, when the boatman arrives.

Like bees around a hive, As every sin takes a toll He reminds, he’ll arrive.

Foolishness to cherish my birth,

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Maya Jasanoff on Conrad in a Globalized World In conversation with Megha Mukherjee and Ishita Blest How relevant is the term ‘postcolonial’ to literature students, and do we want to be called ‘postcolonial’ anymore?

The problem with the term ‘postcolonial’ is that if you look at it semantically it implies that the colonial is behind us. Manifestly, it is, but it implies a false dichotomy between the dynamics that we are interested in studying with colonialism. Such as, power roles between the center and periphery, hierarchies in race and religion, or the way gender fits into that. That I think we can still detect as important to the world today and ought to be investigated in the world today. They are not limited to that period particularly. So, in that regard, the postcolonial is still relevant.

You have taken a postcolonial text and tried to re-contextualize it in present times. How much weight does the term postcolonial carry in an increasingly globalized world?

It was an important period, one in which critics were coming to texts like The Heart of Darkness. Achebe is the best example when he said look, you guys on this side of the metropole were reading it this way and I on the other side, was reading it in a completely different way. That intervention was vital and we should never let go of that. So, I think there's a temporally false dichotomy that is set up, that this was the past, this is the present, the past was colonial and the present is without these forces. But I think there's a spatial importance that remains significant. 'Post' is itself a temporal term, so maybe we need to have a different word for that but I mean, spatially, those texts are received by audiences in different ways, which is vital for us to recall. But I suppose spatially the way that power maps onto place is different in a globalized world.

In history, we can see a staggered movement towards greater human interconnection, and a not-so staggered increase in population. One result of that is the kind of difference between urban vs. rural spaces, the elite of today's world can just as well be found in an urban center of a 'developing nation', as well as in a Western, Northern country. Similarly, the subalterns of the world can be found equally in the rural parts of the United State as much as the global South.

How does your book stand vis-a-vis neocolonialism?

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I use the word globalization very openly in the book. I say it is obviously an anachronistic term with regard to Conrad, but it's an accurate one for what's happening at his time. And I do very much want to make a connection between his time and now. The other's a methodological point about history.

There's a debate amongst historians regarding presentism. Critics often interpret it to mean that you are imposing the present on the past, but I use presentism in a different sense. When I ask questions about the past they are invited by the present in which I live, the person I am, the place I live, the materials I have access to. I'm very interested in how the world which I inhabit got to be the way it is. I think that's what my book seeks to do. It is a very microscopic study, about one person and a clutch of novels; it doesn't purport to be a big sweeping story about how the world became global or modern or any of that. On the other hand, you can see within that life and that moment, things that explain how we got to be the way we are, and more particularly, I want readers to think about their own positions in the globalized world.

How would you react to both the criticism and the appreciation of the travelogue you wrote?

I think my travelogue was misread as me holding up stereotypes, but I'd say two things about it. One, I'm very aware of what those stereotypes are and I certainly didn't set out to reinforce them in any way. But on the other hand, I think that if you look at the Congo, or India or rural America, or parts of the world that have been neglected in various ways, in which the supposed rewards of 'modern progress' have not materialised, in which there are literally billions of people who do not have access to clean drinking water. This, in the 21st century. And, simply, head-for-head, there are more people who don't have access to these things now than there were a century ago. And by the same token, in the 19th. century for example, antibiotics didn't exist, access to domestic electricity was very unusual, the supposed benefits of the modern world had not materialised in the forms in which we know the best today. It didn't matter if you were in England, or Africa or Brazil- none of those things existed. Today, they do. They just exist really selectively. And what it means is that if you're not given access to different kinds of healthcare or infrastructure, then you are that much further disadvantaged in relation to the people who have it, than was the case a century ago. What I like to put the stress on is the way in which globalization has enhanced inequality. So, to respond to my critics, I'd say that, in our face, which is often justified, that independent nation states and democratic states represent visible progress over a world of empires - progress in terms of access to resources and of course democratic representation, we are nonetheless faced in the 21st. century with some

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problems which are very hard to explain away by listing off the dangers of imperialism. Which is basically, we still have to explain why it is that in this world with all of these democracies etc., we still have billions of people without these things, where we have bigger inequalities than we used to. The Congo has enormous natural resources for the people there to thrive on, and instead, they are one of the poorest countries in the world, in terms of the living conditions of the average person. That is part of the problem that the Empire brought on. But to deny that it’s there, because Congo is an independent nation, does not help deal with the problem that the people who have been deprived, face.

You use fiction as an entry point into history. When you are dealing with history, you have to be very careful about the facts. You even took the trip down the Congo, the same one that Conrad had taken so many years ago. What challenges did you face trying to put all that into a nonfiction book?

It's hard to think what a challenge wasn’t. I think that one very overarching structural challenge that I faced was that I had two Conrads that I was writing about. I had the young Conrad, who was as it were, a historical character, and then I had the Conrad as an author and in the middle of it, I had Conrad's fictional characters. And so, what I had to realise was that I had those three groups. It was important for me to detach the two Conrads for structural purposes. In my book, I write about Conrad the historical character as Konrad with a K, because of who he was before he anglicised his name and became an author, at which point he became Conrad with a C. And it was on the voyage that he undertook, and its aftermath, that those two characters cross, and he stops being a sailor and starts being a writer and signs his name with a C. It was on that journey that he brought with him the manuscript of his first novel, so we can see him making that move. So, once I realised I had to separate those out, it became much easier for me to figure out the chronology of the book.

(Maya Jasanoff is the Coolidge Professor of History at Harvard University. She is the author of the multiple award-winning books Edge of Empire: Lives, Culture, and Conquest in the East, 1750-1850 (2005) and Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World (2011). Her new book, The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World has been hailed as “one of the most important books on colonialism to be written in our time.” A frequent contributor to publications including The New York Times and The Guardian, Jasanoff has been named a winner of the 2017 WindhamCampbell Prize in Literature for her non-fiction writing.)

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Ruins That Resist: When Ruins Give Cities Their Character Ansila Mariam Thomas MA English (II) St. Stephen’s College The concept of the modern city has often stood as a metonymy for the entire nation.

Today, multiculturalism and global capitalism have brought the idea of a unique city identity under consideration. On the one hand the diversity of people and cultures found makes it problematic to homogenise the city, while on the other the ubiquitous nature of global brands makes the quest for authenticity a vain goal. It is into this gap that the cultural capital of a city steps in. Cities strive hard to present their historical narratives with due glory not merely for the tourist but also for the resident. It is a program that becomes increasingly important when States wish to create a binary with the Other. Thus, there is a very definite purpose to the fanfare accompanying events like the Met Gala dinner conducted by the Metropolitan Museum in New York City or the Louvre, Abu Dhabi’s purchase of Da Vinci’s Salvatore Mundi. Ruins within the city can be broadly categorised into those that are institutionally recognized, i.e. those that are found in the museum or recognized as heritage sites, and

those that are not, which involve abandoned buildings. This paper intends to look at ruins of the cityscape to study how identities are gleaned from them and depict how their physical presence pushes for the creation of alternative cultures with the help of visual texts and architecture.

The eighteenth century saw a rise in interest for ancient ruins in Europe in what Rose Macaulay terms as “ruin lust”. It was a fascination with the structures that were left in the wake of fallen cities where these ruins stood as spaces outside of clock time and reminded all of the hubris with which these structures were built to outlast time.

The rise of Romantic literature and landscape painting in the eighteenth century is intricately associated with the ruin. Below we have two styles of landscape painting (the campagna and a capriccio) that were popular at the time. Both styles incorporated representations of contemporary buildings, ruins and characters from myth. The effort was to present an ‘ideal landscape’ i.e. to present nature as it ought to be

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and not as it was. It is interesting to note that in the definition of the ‘ideal’ for these artists, the ruin

escapes modification while the rest of the landscape had to be tampered with before making the final frame.

Claude Lorrain, 1634: “Coast scene with Europa and the Bull” featuring a Roman campagna

Giovanni Paolo Panini, 1737: “View with the Pantheon”. An example of capriccio Cities are mental and political spaces as much as they are physical spaces.

A compartmentalising criterion that often segregates society is the ‘ease of access’.

Habermas locates the ‘very generation of the “public” as such’

within the spaces of art and art criticism. Discussion became the medium through which people appropriated art. The public’s assumption of critical authority paved the way for the appearance of a ‘bourgeois public sphere’ and

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hence the rise of an educated middle class with the ability to question (Peacock 4). An illustration of this point occurred in 1793 when the Louvre museum first opened its doors to the public. The act was symbolic and it became a representation of the political unconscious of a changing France.

As Ann Bermingham put it, it “was a step from a cultural republic of shared taste to a political republic of shared power” (Peacock 5). This act stood in contrast to the British National museum which was still careful about who it granted the rights of admission to. Peacock writes that “Because the British constitutional monarchy needed to demonstrate its superiority to French republicanism, the Louvre’s

opening prompted aristocrats to open their personal collections to the public and the state to increase museum activity” (Peacock 6). What is to be noted in this rivalry was that it was not simply limited to the question of which collection was superior but that the institution of the museum set up a frame for comparing and questioning governing systems themselves.

As interest in ruins matured, art began to take angles far more interesting than the painting of ruins in an idealised landscape. There began an affair with the idea of presenting contemporary centres of power as ruins. To make an illustration,

1872, Gustave Doré’s etching “The New Zealander” showed a future tourist (who resembles a young English noble on his grand tour as part of his education) gazing at the ruins of London, just as people in his day gazed at the ruins of Rome.

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Both images presented above are by Hubert Robert, an artist known for his fascination with ruins.

On the left we have a painting by him of the Grande Gallerie of the Louvre and on the right, we have the very same Grande Gallerie, except this time it is in ruins.

In the 1820s following the massive reconstruction of the Bank of England by John Soane, Joseph Gandy was commissioned by the architect himself to paint a view of the bank in ruins. Around the crumbling ruin, London appears as an overgrown wilderness like Rome

or Babylon. The painting was intended as a compliment to its architect: he had created something to last forever through its ruins.

We see the focus of the artist changing from a mere fascination with ruins to a more critical approach to understanding what it is that the ruin represents and why the depiction of ruins continues to shock the beholder. The initial astonishment leads the viewer to contemplation and this great power it possesses has been utilised (and rejected) in the architectural methods that followed.

Joseph Gandy: “Ruins of the Bank of England�

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Brian Dillon, curator of the Tate museum notes that “the "ruin lust" that gripped European art and literature in the 18th century, reached its height in the romantic period, and had apparently declined in the first half of the 20th century in the face of wreckage that could not be turned to aesthetic or nostalgic advantage.

The architecture of the 20th century however saw a new focus on ruins with approaches swinging between the extremes of integration and obliteration. An important practitioner of the former was Albert Speer who was a favoured architect of the Third Reich. Speer’s theory of architecture called ruinenwertor “ruin value”, argued that the architecture of the Third Reich should be constructed so the process of natural decay, even after hundreds or thousands of years later, would allow the monument to “communicate the heroic inspirations of the Third Reich just as the ruins of antiquity do in Greece and Rome”. According to Speer, Hitler “liked to say that the purpose of his building was to transmit his time and its spirit to posterity. Ultimately, all that remained to remind men of the great epochs of history was their monumental architecture.” (40) And, as the Roman ruins did for Mussolini, so too should the ruins of the Third Reich “speak to the conscience of future generations of Germans.” (41)

A famous example of the latter (i.e. obliteration of the ruin from public spaces) would be Swiss architect Le Corbusier’s vision of his urban master plan, “Ville Radieuse” (Radiant City), first proposed in 1924.

“In accordance with a modernist ideal of progress the Radiant City was to emerge from tabula rasa: it was to be built on nothing less than the grounds of demolished vernacular European cities. The city was to be arranged in a Cartesian grid, with a focus on maximum efficiency so that the city could function as a ‘living machine’ (Merin).

A sketch of Ville Radieuse However, cities such as Brasilia and Chandigarh modelled on this plan have been harshly criticized for ignoring residents' habits or desires and for not providing public spaces for urban encounters. Here, the ruins and older sections of the city represented the “organic” city for the people. Its architecture was developed over years to suit the particular needs of that city and

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contained landmarks that gave identity to the people themselves. In contrast Le Corbusier’s plan was to impose a homogenized system that was to work for all cities of the world, without consultation with local cultures. His urban utopia had few takers and was rejected by totalitarian governments like Mussolini’s and the Vichy regime, despite a similarity in doctrine that believed in inflicting policies upon the populace without due consultation.

Ultimately the ideological implications of being the same as thy neighbour, and the loss of the past was politically, too costly.

If ancient ruins are appropriated to build a common narrative for a society, contemporary ruins i.e. spaces that have been abandoned, interestingly do the exact opposite because they are often a benchmark of a failure far more recent. A view of these structures is bound to bring up questions of ‘what went wrong here’ and ‘when’, which is only a step away from asking ‘how much of public resources were wasted on these structures’ or ‘how come the government could not save these structures’.

1.

2.

3.

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1. Here we have the near forgotten railroad La Petite Ceinture, Paris.

Dating from the nineteenth century, its original commercial transportation uses were abandoned, and an underground culture took its place (Bow-Bertrand).

The government retains ownership of the land and as a result, the remaining sections are off-limits to the public.

(Photo Credit: Caroline Peyronel) 2. Ruins of Ozyorsk- A “secret city” from the former USSR. It was built to contain state secrets. A nuclear accident poisoned the water forcing its citizens to abandon the city and until very recently the city could not even be found on maps.

(Photo Credit: Danila Tkachenko) 3. In the 1960s an economic phenomenon known as the ‘decline of Detroit’ occurred in which a vast majority of the residents of Detroit left, owing to an economic

slowdown. Many parts of the city today resemble a ghost town. Above we see the abandoned Michigan Central Station. (Photo credit: Marchand and Meffre).

What unifies these abandoned structures is the fact that the public has restricted access to them. In all of the cases the photographers have had trespassed to obtain these photographs.

Artistically this restriction led to a rise in pre-empting ruin. The fascination with these spaces is the playing out of the process of ruin at an accelerated pace that allows for human study. Such an approach is immortalized within the works of Eugene Atget, a French flaneur noted for his determination to document all of the architecture and street scenes of Paris before their disappearance to modernization.

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Atget is regarded as one of the first street photographers and his style is noted for the lack of popular landmarks in his repertoire. In Atgetwe see, that unlike the 19th century approach of representing grand structures as ruins to undercut a hubris, the rise of photography and modernism allows for the documentation of a side of the city

that would never have been allowed to remain as a ruin unto posterity.

A rag collector- Atget

A prostitute in Paris - Atget

Cities are careful to curate this because quite often it is these areas/ cultures that begin to define a city to the world. Mumbai is characterized as much by the Dharavi as the Gateway of India or the Taj Mahal Hotel; New York City is characterized by the subculture of Harlem as much as by the glamour of Manhattan. Atget’s choice to photograph less prominent streets

and faces that document the everyday “ruin” of the city is then a bold statement against a single narrative of the city.

What this leads us to is the invisibilized city. The area of an urban space that is considered to be in ruins because of the people who live there, the violence that exists or economic backwardness.

So, while the museum strives to shape itself as a reflection of the nation’s intellectual heritage, the abandoned city-spaces become openings for alternative culture (graffiti art) and alternative

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intellectual thought to flourish. Ann Bermigham pointed out that the role of a museum was often comforting to the ruling classes, in that it ‘uni(fied)’ the wider public into a self-disciplined cohort of cooperative viewers. It is this selfsurveillance that these sites of abandoned ruins break away from.

Many fictional and actual revolts often had their initial meetings in abandoned locations because they are often “spaces” (which translates into ideologies, voices and alternative histories) that the public/government has chosen not to venerate thus making them symbolic of the need for a mutiny.

While certain memories are suppressed with a vengeance by those in power in an effort to streamline public memory, as we saw

in the destruction of ruins of Palmyra in Syria by ISIS with the intent of wiping away traces of a preIslamic past, others are incorporated into the present and given new meaning.

Thus, we see Nazi structures like Tempelhof airport in Berlin now housing Syrian refugees. What we are left with is the ruin becoming a physical manifestation of a right to question, a right to deviate and a right to re-invent. It acts as a benchmark that measures how physically accommodating a cityspace can be and allows us to thus infer the mental and political cooperation one can expect from the space. After all, one man’s ruin is another man’s treasure.

Works Cited Atget, Eugene. Monovisions: Black and White Photography Magazine. 24 Feb 2015, http://monovisions.com/eugene-atget/ Dillon, Brian. “Ruin Lust: Our affair with decaying buildings”. The Guardian.

Fri 17 Feb 2012. Web. Donadia, Rachel. “Le Corbusier’s Architecture and His Politics are Revisited”.

The New York Times. July 12, 2015. Web. Habermas, Jurgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1989. Print.

Marchand, Yves and Romain Meffre. Michigan Central Station “The Ruins of Detroit”. Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre Photography, no. 2, 2005-10, http://www.marchandmeffre.com/detroit/2

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Merin, Gili. “AD Classics: Ville Radieuse/ Le Corbusier”. Archdaily. 11 August, 2013. Web. O’Donnell, Meghan. “Dangerous Undercurrent: Death, Sacrifice and Ruin in Third Reich Germany”. International Journal of Humanities & Social Science; May 2012, Vol. 2 Issue 9, p231.

Peacock, Emma. Romanticism and the Museum. Introduction. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Print. P.5-8.

Peyronel, Caroline. “Graffiti in La Petite Ceinture”. The Culture Trip. Anastasia Bow- Bertrand, Culture Trip, 13 Nov 2017. https://theculturetrip.com/europe/france/paris/articles/la-petite-ceinturean-abandoned-railroad-in-the-heart-of-paris/ Scobie, Alex. Hitler’s State Architecture: The Impact of Classical Antiquity (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990), pg. 93.

Speer, Albert. Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs. Trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 1970), pg. 56.

Tkachenko, Danila. “Toxic History”. BBC, Fiona Macdonald, 19 Aug 2015. http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150819-restricted-areas-eerierelics-of-a-forgotten-russia Westerbeck, Colin and Joel Meyerowitz. Bystander: A History of Street Photography. London: Laurence King Publishing, 1994. Print.

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Silence and The City: Aural Spaces in Boy’s Discography Tanvi Chowdhary BA English (III) Lady Sri Ram College The relationship between sound and space is a familiar one: music is used to establish identity, history, culture, memory. The interaction of music with the spaces that surround it make the world that it occupies – we associate certain instruments with certain areas, specific beats with specific memories, and musical tempos with our own activities.

Constructing space through music plays with multiple elements of transgression: any and all spaces are invaded by the politics of identity.

Spaces belong to those who have control over their history and language: the power to define the space is for those who have access to the language that makes it. Music plays between these demarcations – since music works between language.

The indefinability of music is what allows it to transgress the preexisting ideas of spaces, constructing the space in a new and different way: “songs could be, however, both forms of social control – reflecting the ethos of a particular culture, in terms of values, sanctions and problems – and a means of challenging norms, through the expression of feelings that could not be spoken in other contexts. Music

and song were more flexible than other elements of social structure.”

(Connell and Gibson, Music and Place: 'Fixing Authenticity' 24) This becomes even more definite when one looks at the concept of the city. The city has long been the landscape for musical movements which transgress, for an interaction between different communities, for a recreation of society and the self. However, the city has also been the location of oppression and historical subjugation: According to this historical perspective, the possibility of ‘thinking the city’ was determined by the distribution of power in the colonial system and was closely linked with the ‘ownership’ of letters.

In contrast to these early modern imaginings of the city later imaginary cities that emerged in the context of state motivated repression (Rath 222).

This complex mingling of identity and space is what BOY attempts to explore in their music.

The image of the city is prominent throughout the discography of BOY: their first album, Mutual Friends is a

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prolonged contemplation on the different roles of the city. Through music, the outsider entering the new city attempts to have a conversation with the space around them. The city becomes the subject which is at once a new love, new friends, new jobs, and new homes. The space of the city is mapped through music; the drums, the vocals, guitar and the banjo blend together to construct the city. The opposing identities of the lover and the loved, the musician and the subject, the friend and the enemy embody it.

‘Hi’s and ‘Hello’s: Meeting the City Locating the world that BOY operates in requires an understanding of the city: the notion of what makes a city is both industry and society working together. For people who lived in bustling cityscapes, “the town defined their place in society, defended them from outsiders, and enabled them to pursue their livelihood,” (Frug 29).

The city has long represented as opportunity, a redefining of culture, a sense of modernity, and a world that changes rapidly and constantly.

The mysteries of the city are not new areas of literary exploration: the flaneur11 figure that dominates

11

The Flaneur figure is one that looks upon the city in an effort to discover all its secrets. This figure is dominant in late nineteenth and early twentieth

modern writing places himself against the city, attempting to capture it – to conquer her secrets, and to be the sole holder of her stories. “The panoramic eye which maps the city in this way invariably offers the viewer mastery of its spaces through sight.” (Mort 310) However, the flaneur figure is traditionally male. For two female singers that have stylised themselves as BOY, negotiating the city becomes far more complicated. The city as constructed by them is not one which is being watched – one that has secrets which need to be decodified – rather, their city is one which is silent, refusing to reveal itself to the girls, and more importantly one that is explored through experience rather than unveiling.

BOY employs various musical techniques to express the sense of discomfort that it has with the city.

The language of music is the foundation on which BOY attempts transgression. Describing the city through instruments traditionally associated with the country allows a sense of displacement to take place within the music itself. Mutual Friends features multiple such tracks which blend the “folky road music,” (Ferla) century writing, the most notable example of which would be the numerous characters that litter The Human Comedie by Honore de Balzac.

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with the soundscape of the city. At the same time, musical language is used to express the discomfort within the singers who are engaging with a place that does not belong to them. The beginning of Mutual Friends is through a track aptly named ‘This Is the Beginning,’ (BOY). The use of the banjos and the drums give a very countrified feeling – yet the essence of the message is in going somewhere new – in this case, a city: Open the boxes, unpack what you own Hang up some posters and make this a home [. . .]

This is the beginning, of anything you want. (BOY)

The city, then, is a construction of a listener who is fundamentally an outsider. The fact that the opening track begins by addressing an invisible audience makes us question the nature of the speaker’s assertion over the city. Is the city speaking to the newcomer, or is it the other way around? What remains essential is not the unanswered question, but the unresponsive listener: if the listener maintains silence, does he lose control of the city, and thus, can no longer become “anything”?

Similarly, ‘Drive Darling’ contrasts ‘This is the Beginning’ by singing of goodbye. ‘Drive Darling,’ in particular, attempts to construct the country in an effort to say goodbye. The silent other in this song is someone who maintains

ambiguity by being undefined. The singer addresses the unspeaking listener over and over again, with the increasing tempo of the song, imploring them to “drive.” The instruments map a countryside that we see being left behind. The “silent conversation” (BOY) between the listener and the speaker is indicative of a larger unresponsiveness from the country – the speaker projects her memory on the landscape they leave behind – reminding us of tapes, records, and music, that has constructed her experience here. At the same time, the country and the listener remain silent, objects for the speaker to decode unsuccessfully.

There is an unsaid feeling left at the back of this music, behind the instruments – one of both trauma and light-hearted insistence to be heard, that “reflect[s] the difficulties involved in the process of anamnesis, in the exhumation of the past, be it private or public, and in any attempt to reveal, expose or explore the realm of the intimate and the traumatic,” (Guignery 3). For BOY the process of mapping the city is not sufficient. The ideological ownership of land is directly connected to the method of surveillance and conquership: The British Surveys asserted an authoritative, scientific description of space that “discredited” local conceptualizations (Mukherjee 429).

The British could enforce this graphic redefinition through their

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imperial bureaucracy in India of courts and banks, etc. (Luria 149).

However, BOY’s music sheds the “myths of mobility” (Ganser) that are associated with a history of white, masculine ownership of land: these are subverted through experiencing the city. The imagery of war, typically associated with conquering land is, instead, linked to the idea of friendship: They stand taller than giants They outshine all the stars They are the love above the love They’re my army of fortune And they win every war (Army)

‘Army’ directly links the more traditional image of war with the experience of friendship, in an effort to map the city. However, the friends that ‘Army’ speaks of remain silent throughout the conversation. The figure of admiration is unresponsive.

We have the speaker’s word for their own brilliance. The drums, the melody, and the guitar blend together to create a sense of love and nostalgia. The clapping, again, is a form of communal existence – a conversation with the body, which is being used in this song. Yet, at the same time, the distance between the speaker and the one being spoken of is deliberate – the speaker is 12

One measure is the time between one beat and the next. Measures can typically be broken down into four or two pauses. Tripling, on the other

constructing the identity of a friend for the listener, without the person in question being allowed to speak.

The city does not speak to them, and is, instead, spoken of. BOY attempts to grapple with this silence by recreating the city multiple times through their album. The city takes different forms: becoming an absentee lover in ‘Little Numbers,’ (BOY) the new job in ‘Waitress’ (BOY) and the isolation in ‘Skin.’

You can feel like part of something if you’re part of a scene [. . .]

Well you can get out of this party dress But you can’t get out of this skin.

(Skin)

‘Skin’ is, lyrically and musically the complete opposite of ‘Army.’

‘Skin’ for one, is attempting to construct a very different part of the cityscape: the far more social aspect of city living, which is the dance clubs – yet, despite this, ‘Skin’ talks about loneliness. The track uses a slower beat, with tripling verses instead of the standard measure of two or four12. The effect this has is manifold: it constructs an isolation of slowness, thanks to the beats, while simultaneously creating a sense of speed due to the tempo of the verses. This musical arrangement is hand, uses a measure of five: the beat, three pauses, and the beat again. A slower beat can accommodate this kind of speed, which is why they are used for rap music.

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usually used in rap, a form closely associated with underground social gatherings and secret spaces: Cities consequently could be places of hope, of new social and economic lives, of racism and unemployment, or simply anonymity. Martha and the Vandellas offered ‘Dancing in the Street’ and the Loving Spoonful transformed the humid streets of ‘Summer in the City’ into a nighttime party world. […] The city was a promise of things illegal and forbidden else- where, of drugs and deals and strange liaisons, a place of excitement and danger, of decay and difference, but not a place of boredom and tranquillity. It offered a walk on the wildside. (Connell and Gibson, The place of lyrics)

‘Skin’ features the watcher on the wall: someone is always watching this girl/boy, yet no one in this song is speaking. The loneliness of friendlessness in the city is what is emphasised. The slower beat almost highlights this silence – the mesh of instruments in the faster verses are undercut with what is left unsaid.

What we have to ask is who is being addressed? There is a speaker, a listener, and a “presumed third listener, one beyond the addressee, or second listener, to whom the utterance is immediately addressed,” (Farmer 21). The third listener in this conversation could be the city, the audience, or even the one being watched. The “they” that is created through this, however “The public

domain is always, inherently, a phantom sphere,” (Donald 52).

Music becomes a method for BOY to speak to the city, yet never have it respond. The conversation is one sided and seems to imply that on some level – the city does not belong to them.

We Don’t Belong Here: Divisions in the City Space The spaces of the city are contested territory. While the city has often been a space to reimagine and redefine the boundaries of society, it has also been built on a history of economic subjugation.

Assuming a city identity forgets the fact that “notions of community assume a homogeneity of population and can entail an idea of purification where those designated as outside become the site of prejudice and segregation,” (Bridge and Watson 8).

For two women in an unknown environment, the space can be unwelcoming and even hostile: In cities we see the spatial imprint of women’s differential position within structures of exploitations within a segregated division of labour. And it is also in cities that the complex interplay of power relations, and the array of social institutions, which lie behind a given form of gender relations are most graphically manifest. (Bondi and Christie 293)

This is best illustrated in the songs ‘Oh Boy,’ ‘Boris,’ and ‘Waitress.’ The three songs are

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spoken of either from the perspective of the masculine, or through the unknown watcher.

‘Waitress,’ for instance, begins with drums and clapping – insisting on a harmony of coexistence. This harmony, however, is one which the Waitress herself is excluded from: They walk in and sit down With their mood of the day They read books over tea They give tips when they pay [. . .]

She takes notes She makes no mistake (BOY)

There is a “they” being referred to consistently in this track. This “they” is separate and other from the Waitress – yet theirs are the habits that are examined. The public is both distant, yet essential to the conversation. The Waitress, herself, remains silent throughout this exchange. The counting that forms the background of the music builds a sense of anticipation, an expectation of moreness – one which the Waitress is denied. She is defined by her waiting: waiting for others, waiting for someone to speak to her.

The crescendo of the music is preceded by lyrical emptiness, as if the inexpressible aspects of the Waitress’ conversation can only be conveyed through the subtlety of music. She cannot, thus, be part of the “they” that attempt to make her, and through it, she is excluded from the city.

Denying the agency of speech to the woman is another way for the

city to deny her belonging. She is prevented from having a conversation with the space. ‘Little Numbers,’ as the antithesis to ‘Oh Boy’ emphasises this further: where ‘Oh Boy’ attempts to construct a woman through the eyes of a watcher, ‘Little Numbers,’ is constructed through the eyes of a woman wishing for her lover. The lover, in this song as well, is absent – yet, at the same time, he is never an object to create. Interestingly, ‘Little Numbers,’ while waiting for the absentee lover, creates a city: the singer reorganises her spaces, watches cars, notes the progress of spring, and asks the missing lover of what they could be. Where ‘Oh Boy’ prevents the woman from speaking in her own creation, ‘Little Numbers’ shows how the woman does not have access to the language to construct her lover – hence, she instead maps her environment and surroundings. The surroundings remain alien to her, distant from her: she does not belong to them.

In a similar way, ‘Boris’ is named after the woman in the song, yet, she speaks exactly once throughout the track. On the other hand, we hear the perspective of the sexual harasser almost immediately: Baby, come up to my office You sang at my party I owe you some money You owe me your lips I’m gonna give tips

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And I hear your boyfriend is out of town (Boris)

There is an infantilization of a woman who is not speaking, and one who is, more importantly, not being given the agency to speak. There is a negation of the job of the woman, of the kind of clothes she is wearing – and when the innuendo about her clothing begins, there is a very distinct sound of an office door closing. The ambiguity of this sound is deliberate: we, as the watchers of the scene are unsure about whether the woman left the office, whether the harasser succeeded, or whether she was coerced. The “clattering drums and a cleverly-used string section recreate the ominous, claustrophobic man-cave of the sexual harasser.” (Ferla) The music swells very briefly and then breaks immediately – the heaviness of the silence in this moment is emphasised by the lyrics that follow it. There is a single pause, and then one high hat, followed by the only time in the song when the “I” is heard and the woman speaks.

The lyrics proclaim, “I said, ‘yes,’” (BOY). Lyrically, we are not told what the woman said yes to. Whether it is to the question asked by the harasser about her boyfriend, whether it is a yes that agrees to sexual intimacy, or whether it is a yes that declares her independence remains a mystery. The guitar builds again, becoming more complex and melding with the keyboard. The lines

of the harasser repeat itself again and again, in painful insistence of what the sexual assaulter is demanding of her. The repetition of the first stanza in the end is lyrical genius: it is almost as if the song and the experience are going to repeat themselves. “Context determines what a passage ultimately is, and this on-the-one-hand obvious but on-the-other-hand surprising fact makes repetition a powerful example of the difference between surface content and meaning,” (Margulis 30) and that is what makes the innocuous repetition by the sexual harasser of, “isn’t your boyfriend out of town,” sinister.

The music of ‘Boris’ manages to indicate the lack of control the woman has over the city landscape.

She is not allowed the power to define herself, to define her workspace, or to define her sexual relations. However, she imagines the city, it remains consistently silent and unavailable to her – a warzone of sexual and gendered politics.

The final songs of the album are an exercise in truly becoming part of the city. ‘Silver Streets’ (BOY) features an inordinate amount of war imagery: from the cry of “No guts, no glory,” to the singer declaring that she would wear the city, “like a crown.” We see war, kingship and armies used in an attempt to experience the city instead of conquer it. However, these overt acts of possessing the city do not ultimately manage to lay claim to it. ‘July,’ in

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contrast to ‘Silver Streets’ blends images of everyday exhaustion in the city with the concept of the wounded soldier. ‘July’ also becomes the song where the wounds of city living are spoken of.

‘July’s complexity comes from the nature of its beats. The song begins with the fast-paced strum of the guitar, which is half a step before the down beat13. The beat of the song is extraordinarily slow – the syncopated14 strum of the guitar creates the illusion that the tempo is faster. This is visible almost immediately when the down beat begins, but before that the impression is of hearing something of a secret. This becomes the sound of unsaid words, unsaid musical meshes – these are things that cannot be expressed. After track after track of consistent silence, this is the first one that becomes comfortable in the unsaid. This is the first one that uses syncopation to create this “musical illusion” (Caswell, The secret rhythm behind Radiohead's Videotape). It’s almost as if the city is speaking back to the speaker, almost as if the secret beat is what the city is saying to the tired 13

The downbeat is used, typically, to establish the rhythm of the song.

14 Syncopation is a method by which an instrument plays half a step before the beat of the song, emphasising the space between two beats. Normally, syncopation is used to make a song fast

soldier. The briefcase becomes a “weapon,” in this song, a symbol of the unending “struggle” (BOY) to become part of the city. The fact that the roof becomes “a blanket,” that protects you by keeping you “inside the silence” shows a thematic shift in how the cityscape needs to be interacted with.

Conclusion: Inside the Silence Mutual Friends becomes an exploration into the silence of the city – through the lyrics, BOY attempts to chart the silent city that watches. The struggle lies between what the city could be and the loneliness of silent spaces. However, in We Were Here the subject changes: the focus shifts from the city to the liminal spaces of hotel rooms, abstract spaces such as fear and dreams, and silent spaces – these spaces, however, are no longer ones to combat in an effort to drive away loneliness. They now become comfortable, allowing the singer to become part of the space. The “echoes resonate” as the city becomes the space for the singer to imprint sound into. The emptiness of the city space, despite being a busy and loose – a “rhythmic surprise,” (Caswell, the secret rhythm behind Radiohead's Videotape) that allows us to notice what happens between the notes. However, in this case, the syncopation is carefully layered – to make it unrecognizable.

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metropolis stops becoming a loneliness to fight, rather – it becomes the singer.

The opening track, ‘We Were Here’ (BOY) begins with the keyboard playing in the background.

The lack of other instruments in the soundscape is fascinating: it’s almost as if the transition from the speaker to the silence has been made. The city is now the one that is dreaming of the speaker(s). There remains an ambiguity in who is speaking, but it is an invisible “we” instead of an “I,” or a singular and unsaid watcher.

There is a sense that a collective identity has been formed through becoming part of the city in its completeness.

The montage of things that represent this hidden “we” are abstract in their existence. Their faces are now “in the wind,” (BOY).

The solidity of their existence now becomes immaterial: they no longer need “photographs,” the singer proclaims. The permanence of their existence is through the smallest of evidence: footmarks, fingerprints.

‘We Were Here’ attempts to imprint identity on the city, and it does so in places that will go largely unnoticed: “engraved into waves,” or as “invisible ink on the walls.” (BOY) What becomes interesting is when the speaker compares these traces to monuments.

A monument implies a source of history – a history that is silent, but

very much part of the conversation of the current. Despite the speed of the city, within liminal spaces, silence exists. The singer and their collective declare that their “echoes resonate,” implying that they are now depending on a reply from the emptiness of silence. This time, however, they are also part of the silence that has made this city.

The heaviness of the trumpets increases during the crescendo of the song, reminiscent of ‘July.’ This time, however, the music does not appeal to a sense of comfort. “In ‘We Were Here’ brass becomes as golden as the great lion Aslan in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The trumpets do not roar, but instead hold steady as the majesty of the duo use their words and their silences to epitomize the grandeur of location,” (Ragucos).

Multiple songs from this album seem to occupy these liminal spaces.

The narrator shifts from the unknown “I” that participates in an empty conversation to a collective “we.” The themes and experiences, as well, become more abstract: ‘Fear’ (BOY) features a fast-paced beat, but one which causes tension due to the discomfort it causes due to “the frustration of being unable to alleviate a lover's anxiety,” (Doig).

The ambiguity of the address permits us to ask the question: who is the song speaking to?

Your fear came from a place unknown

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Sat down, made itself at home It called your name the whole night through Until it got the best of you It's wide awake and never rests Follows each one of your steps And it hits you hard with ruthless fists Can I kill it with a kiss? (BOY)

In the previous album, a majority of the tracks are addressed to someone who is distant – someone who is being watched, and at best, someone who remains silent throughout the conversation. Now, the speaker wants a conversation to be started almost – or rather, feels comfortable with the lack of one.

Assumptions are lesser, silence becomes a comfort. Words, in fact, said by the unknown monster are what become a source of discomfort.

emotions connected to experience.

In ‘Flames,’ the colours and the fire become the background for the failure of dreams to fade. The abstract and indirect spaces of dreams are described through the lost moments of existence. In ‘No Sleep for the Dreamer,’ the lover is no longer absent. Unlike Mutual Friends, the songs of We Were Here do not attempt to construct the one who does not speak. Instead, they attempt to construct the self through these “mechanisms involved in the purification and the contamination of silence,” that are expressed through the musical equivalents of “ellipses and reluctance in narration and dialogue” and “typographical blanks which literally inscribe silence on the page,” (Guignery 1-2).

‘Hit My Heart’ (BOY) illustrates the essence of the shift from concrete experiences and relationships into a more abstract enjoyment. The liminal language of being “covered in exclamation marks” is amplified by the narrative, “we.” It is no longer simply the speakers speaking to the city, but the singers becoming the we and through it, becoming the city.

‘Hotel’ (BOY) for instance, is a rendition of loneliness very reminiscent to ‘Skin.’ The difference is once again in the engagement with the experience – where ‘Skin’ spoke of the moments of loneliness, ‘Hotel’ speaks of loneliness in abstraction.

The guitar picks up to make a melody of loss, creating nostalgia which is undercut by the fact that this is “just a temporary place, for nameless neighbours in the dark.”

‘Flames’ (BOY) and ‘No Sleep for the Dreamer’ (BOY) are also songs of experience. They differ from the songs of experience in Mutual Friends – instead of focussing on the solidity of experience, they move into the abstraction of

“Hotel” douses keys with a bitter concoction, making the chorus flow like honey-coated poison.

When the lyrics “Short stories on every floor” are uttered, it becomes clear that the duo believe in a wilderness to every hotel

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room. The acoustics and keyboard highlight that greatly. (Ragucos)

The final three songs of the album are the ones that truly attempt to blend different identities together.

With the transition into the city space being complete, the singers now feel comfortable allowing the country to shift into the city. As such, ‘Into the Wild,’ and ‘Rivers and Oceans’ (BOY) use images from the country to depict the troubles of the city effectively and beautifully. ‘New York,’ on the other hand, is a melding of spaces. The speaker and the listener are clearly not in the city, yet that space becomes part of their identity, and they carry it with them wherever they go: And the truth is I was wrong when I said I was bored Any street that I’m walking on with you Anywhere with you could be New York (BOY)

The image of the city is superimposed by the images of the country: these natural, non-city images begin to infiltrate the landscape of mental mapping. It’s almost as if the identity of the city has begun to shift from simply experience to being the city – to making the city anything you want.

‘Into the Wild’ and ‘Rivers or Oceans’ use the same method of the ‘fade in’ to move from one song

seamlessly into the other, expressing a plaintive love for their companions and lovers in separation. The final verse of the last song, ‘Into the Wild,’ is a question – a question to the city, the audience, the silence, and the people that have formed the experience: My head’s asking questions My heart’s a determined dancer So when the music is over Will I finally get my answer? (BOY)

Unlike previously, the question is posed to the audience – implicating the listener into the silence of exclusion. The song, however, does not seem uncomfortable with the lack of an answer, choosing to make the silence a part of its own empowerment. For BOY, becoming part of the city is not a function of dominating it.

“Where Mutual Friends was the group dancing awkward footsteps toward what could be their sound, We Were Here, this Hamburg-based indie band’s second album, feels more reserved, like a precocious wallflower delicately making sure that no foot is stepped on in their dance,” (Ragucos). They do not uncover the secrets of the city, instead, choosing to become them.

By slipping through the gaps of language and literature, music allows them to become the silence, and through it, become the city.

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Works Cited Bondi, Liz and Hazel Christie. "Working Out the Urban: Gender Relations and the City." A Companion to the City. Ed. Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson. Padtsow: Blackwell Publishers Limited, 2000. 292-307.

BOY. "Army." Mutual Friends. By Valeska Steiner and Sonja Glass. Prod.

Philipp Steinke. Gronland Records, 2011.

BOY. "Boris." Mutual Friends. By Valeska Steiner and Sonja Glass. Prod.

Philipp Steinke. Gronland Records, 2011.

BOY. "Drive Darling." Mutual Friends. By Valeska Steiner and Sonja Glass.

Prod. Philipp Steinke. Gronland Records, 2011.

BOY. "Fear." We Were Here. By Valeska Steiner and Sonja Glass. Prod.

Philipp Steinke. Gronland Records, 2015.

BOY. "Flames." We Were Here. By Valeska Steiner and Sonja Glass. Prod.

Philipp Steinke. Gronland Records, 2015.

BOY. "Hit My Heart." We Were Here. By Valeska Steiner and Sonja Glass.

Prod. Philipp Steinke. Gronland Records, 2015.

BOY. "Hotel." We Were Here. By Valeska Steiner and Sonja Glass. Prod.

Philipp Steinke. Gronland Records, 2015.

BOY. "Into the Wild." We Were Here. By Valeska Steiner and Sonja Glass.

Prod. Philipp Steinke. Gronland Records, 2015.

BOY. "July." Mutual Friends. By Valeska Steiner and Sonja Glass. Prod.

Philipp Steinke. Gronland Records, 2011.

BOY. "Little Numbers." Mutual Friends. By Valeska Steiner and Sonja Glass.

Prod. Philipp Steinke. Gronland Records, 2011.

BOY. "New York." We Were Here. By Valeska Steiner and Sonja Glass. Prod.

Philipp Steinke. Gronland Records, 2015.

BOY. "No Sleep for the Dreamer." We Were Here. By Valeska Steiner and Sonja Glass. Prod. Philipp Steinke. Gronland Records, 2015.

BOY. "Oh Boy." Mutual Friends. By Valeska Steiner and Sonja Glass. Prod.

Philipp Steinke. Gronland Records, 2011.

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BOY. "Railway." Mutual Friends. By Valeska Steiner and Sonja Glass. Prod.

Philipp Steinke. Gronland Records, 2011.

BOY. "Rivers and Oceans." We Were Here. By Valeska Steiner and Sonja Glass. Prod. Philipp Steinke. Gronland Records, 2015.

BOY. "Silver Streets." Mutual Friends. By Valeska Steiner and Sonja Glass.

Prod. Philipp Steinke. Gronland Records, 2011.

BOY. "Skin." Mutual Friends. By Valeska Steiner and Sonja Glass. Prod.

Philipp Steinke. Gronland Records, 2011.

BOY. "This Is the Beginning." Mutual Friends. By Valeska Steiner and Sonja Glass. Prod. Philipp Steinke. Gronland Records, 2011.

BOY. "Waitress." Mutual Friends. By Valeska Steiner and Sonja Glass. Prod.

Philipp Steinke. Gronland Records, 2011.

BOY. "We Were Here." We Were Here. By Valeska Steiner and Sonja Glass.

Prod. Philipp Steinke. Gronland Records, 2015.

Bridge, Gary and Sophie Watson. "City Imaginaries." A Companion to the City. Ed. Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson. Padstow: Blackwell Publishers Limited, 200. 7-18.

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Connel, John and Chris Gibson. Soundtracks: Popular Music, Identity, Place. London: Routledge, n.d. 19-45.

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Reading the City Through the Kaleidoscope of Desire B. Geetha MA English (II) Jamia Millia Islamia The city is an oeuvre of human imagination where simultaneous constructions of meanings take place. As an arena of conflict, it is conceived and perceived with different approaches for prismatic significations. Ravish Kumar’s Ishq Mein Shahar Hona presents Delhi as a city scribbled with the graffiti of urbane desire and weapons of defence. The quick pulsating beat of the city, tremendously responsive to its inhabitants acquires a language of its own as the lovers in the novel try to decipher its meaning through several readings.

Such experimentation offers both emotive and cognitive nourishment to the complexity of experiential knowledge. Even while recognizing the city’s functionality, they play with its meaning by creating intersections and interventions, and spill numerous interpretations. City as a spatial location becomes a dynamic space for movement, communication, and cultural exchange. The topographic city as a living metaphor fructifies as its contours are illuminated by the openness of human existence and exposure. Through this paper, I

intend to show how the city as a sprawling network of social interaction diffuses with the intimate romantic narratives of urban life in the text.

In an interview with The Quint, Ravish Kumar points out that when it comes to articulation and expression of romance in public spaces, Indian society is not ‘favourable’ to the idea of deviant performativity of desire. The docile body as an entity embedded in time and space becomes a site of control and subjugation, trained, and regulated to follow conventional codes through scrutiny and examination. Thus, the body is coerced not just through physical violence, but also through internalization of the fact that it is constantly being watched: “Shahar ka har ujaala camera mein kaid hai”.

Hence, the operating power permeates into the consciousness of the individual so much so that it changes the way he/she wants to act by moulding him/her according to the principles of normalization, and silences what is ‘unnatural’ and ‘aberrant’. Michel Foucault would perhaps term it as a ‘panopticon’, an

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institutional penitentiary where the inmates are subjected to an invisible gaze. In Kumar’s representation of Delhi as a space of surveillance, he treats it not as a diagrammatic form of architecture having welldemarcated boundaries with an enclosed setup, but as an extendible incarceration spread throughout the society, where power functions automatically through subtle ways and individuals discipline themselves accordingly. This is evident when the couple in the story travels in the bus: The boy is so mindful of his surroundings that he hesitates to hold his partner’s hand as he says, “veh toh bas uski taraf aati har nigaah se takrane mein bhida raha.” Once the girl reaches her destination, she aptly points out, “tum meri kam duniya ki fikr zyada karte ho, kam se kam baig ke neeche mera haath toh thaame reh sakte the.” The fear of being in the close angle shot of CCTV cameras is presented when she says, “chalo out of focus ho jaate hain.” However, Kumar does not present to us a bleak monochromatic city marked by misery and oppression, but with nuanced complexity points to the blank haunting eyes of the city piercing through individuals to record their activities. For instance, while taking an auto-ride, the narrator cleverly describes the posters of Hindi-film heroines throwing a look at the couple: “yeh Karishma aunty aur tumhari taraf mother Aishwarya, jaane kise dekhrahe hain.

Hum sab taraf se dekhe jaa rahe hain.” At

the surface level, what seems like a humorous remark is in fact referencing the unwarranted interference in the couple’s relationship and arrogation of their basic privacy in a democratic country.

The lovers constantly struggle to search for secluded places where they are not targeted by hundreds of eyes fixed on them: “mushkil se ek kona dhoondha magar nigaho ne use chauraha bana diya.” It is only in abandoned and anonymous spaces do they feel free from the ‘panopticism’ of power. The anonymity and namelessness of those little corners or dense wilderness allows these clandestine spaces to escape an accorded identity and hence function without the constrictions of the norm, or in other words, exist in “excess” to the normative spaces of the city.

According to Oxford English Dictionary, the definition of excess is “an amount of something that is more than necessary, permitted or desirable”. Since this ‘excess’ transcends societal permissibility, the disruption and suspension of imaginary conventional constructs is inevitable. Hence, this residue which fails to fit into a well-tailored rigid structure becomes the space of transgression since it does not fall within the range of power. Such protected spaces become the site of resistance to authority through sensual privileging of the body and

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its ‘unacceptable’ concupiscent behaviour, breaking out in a carnivalesque play of subversion and sacrilege. One such space that the narrator describes is the darkness of a cinema hall, when the lights go off and the film begins to roll. As mentioned earlier, since ‘shahar ka har ujaala’ is trapped in the radar of surveillance, we can answer the rhetorical question posed by the girl to her partner: “Tum mujhe hamesha andhere mein kyun khojte ho?” The physical material body of the couple engages in a free limitless escapade of reckless extravagance and abundance, assigning polysemic meanings and possibilities to the city in the performative acts of signification. These possibilities allow us to move beyond perceiving the city as a mere geographical location planned by cartographers and urban planners, or the city described in dominant historiography in tangible terms, to a city laden with ‘hidden’ abstractions which often go unnoticed.

These murky and tenebrous spaces in the city strain the wellestablished foundations which seem to dictate principles of morality and propriety. The acts of display of affection in these sequestered areas, also referred to as ‘khopchas’ gives the couple access to those proscribed pleasures which the society refuses to acknowledge. It can also be referred to as the designed demeanour of defiance produced

from the temporary aberrations of the exhausted mind, burdened by codification of rules and stratification of society. However, as the narrator writes, “Dilli mein mehfooz jagah ki talash do hi log karte hain-jinhe prem karna hai aur jinhe prem karte hue logo ko dekhna hai”. This escapist space is not pristine, and the thrill of trespass is only temporary as there is always a threat of intervention by police or any coercive agents. This is evident when he says, “yeh kaisa shahar hai? Har waqt shareer ka peecha karta rehta hai.” The narrator also tells us about Khaps: Community organizations in villages which harass couples with their regressive orthodox beliefs and customs and pronounce horrendous punishments to women in the name of honour.

The statements in the text tend to question and deconstruct the politics of abuse of power which is illegitimate, outrageous and unjustifiable: “peepal ke neeche kab tak chhipte rahenge hum? Jamun bhi girta hai toh lagta hai kisi khaap ki goli lag rahi hai.”

The lovers in the text find their ontological and epistemological core in Delhi, as their romance becomes entwined in the labyrinth of the big modern city in all its absorbing attentiveness. The lovers and their conception of romance is closely entwined with Ambedkar’s conception of democracy and casteless society; Kumar adroitly conflates the mundane and the

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monumental, that is, the restructuring ideals of the revolutionary leader fuses with the prosaic reality of the couple to strengthen and stabilize their relationship. This love mired in quotidian details is woven with the city to such an extent that the commemorative statue figure of Ambedkar ceases to be a non-living presence, but rather becomes achingly human: “bechain hoti sansein jaati viheen samaaj banaaneki Ambedkar ki baton se guzarne lagin-dekh naye hi kitaab hume humesha ke liye mila degi.”

As T.S. Eliot writes in ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons" integrating the tangible object with an abstract existential category, similarly, Kumar brings together a ‘tactile tiffin box’ with ‘incandescent love’: “…Is tiffin box mein hum mohabbat ki do rotiyaan rakha karenge.”Another notable instance of amalgamating disparate elements is when the narrator expresses his desire to turn ‘Jan Lokpal’, the anticorruption bill, to ‘Jaan Lovepal’; political upheavals tailored to relationship requirements. The semantic analysis of the word changes drastically from political to personal. Thus, it raises a pertinent question: Is personal concern also political? Is the personal act of showing love prone to the dangers of being politicized by barriers of caste, class and religion and other aspects of segregation? Both questions can be answered with an emphatic ‘yes’.

Furthermore, during the heightened cries of protest in support of Anna Hazare, they will confess their love loud and clear: “Jab shor badhta chala jaayega toh hum I love you, I love you chillayenge.” “Anshan todne ke elaan ke sath jab bheed chhantne lagi, toh dono ka ekaant bhi khatm hogaya. Kaash Anshan ek hafta aur khinch jaata”: Amidst the cacophonic blaring of hoots, cackles and wails, they find their solace to spend time with each other, when the attention of people is drawn towards a larger issue at hand.

Hence, the darkness of the crowd (“bheed ke andhere…”) allows them to breathe deeply, let go off their worries and build their life in enclosed congested corners: “kaash is shahar ka daaman hota…hum uske daaman mein apna kamra bana lete.”

The metaphors of the city offer definition to repair the couple’s vulnerability of being in love as they constantly engage in reformulating the cityscape to suit their vocabulary.

Ravish Kumar’s Ishq Mein Shahar Hona constructs Delhi as the proscenium stage on which the ephemeral yet perpetual experience of love relationships is enacted. The city offers them the freedom to choose, but they are also made aware that they are not free from the consequence of their choice. The consequences include becoming prey to the predatory, vituperative threats of rigid tendencies (“pehra hai…meri nigaah mein toh ho tum, lekin diwaron ki nigaah se bachke nahi”), fear of aspersion, calumny and character

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assassination, and condemnation by totalized fixities and essentialist ideas; for the anatomy of society, conventionality is a desideratum, and deviation, a disease. Kumar’s text draws our attention to the pervasive and claustrophobic omnipresence of power which puts individuals under surveillance and threatens to take away their sense of security. State apparatuses constantly keep an eye over happenings in every person’s life, operating the strings of the society like a third person narrator, by snatching fundamental freedom through intrusion and encroachment. This systematically works to cultivate the fear of penalization and disciplinary chastisement for anomalous actions.

Roland Barthes in his essay ‘Semiology and the Urban’ writes, “The city is a discourse and this discourse is truly a language: the city speaks to his inhabitants, we speak our city, the city where we are, simply by living it, by wandering through it, by looking at it.” As the preface of Ishq Mein Shahar Hona states, “hum sirf khud ko hi nahi sheher ko bhi paribhaashit kar rahe hote hain”, Delhi as a representational space is constantly re-defined, appropriated, and re-structured beyond tangible crystallization to suit the corporeal presence of lovers sauntering in the city. For instance, the city is personified as a lover in its brooding silence and solitude: “[Shahar] apni tanhaai yuhin haath se jaane nah ideta.”

When Eliot inquisitively questions in The Waste Land, “Who is the third who always walks beside you?”, one could perhaps argue that it is the brooding city which attains anthropomorphic proportions as the individuals engage in a dialogic communication with it: “Dilli bhi saath chalti thi.” Therefore, the city becomes a site of creative schizophrenia which performs the double action inherent in any communication, connotation, and denotation. We understand the symbiotic relationship between the city and the individuals in a state of dialogue, conflict, and synthesis; the city, hence, becomes a space of protean elasticity with its heterogeneous dimensions without falling into the trap of ossification.

‘Bhatakana’ or wandering is an operative word in the text, as moving around to explore the city feels like a kind of performance, in opposition to a fixed and stationary position.

The act of strolling (Flanerie) allows the flâneur or the “passionate spectator” [Baudelaire 9] to understand the rich variety of urban experience like a mobile daguerreotype capturing the city as “an immense reservoir of electrical energy” [9]. As is evident in the text, the mystique of love serves to ‘defamiliarize’ the city and bathe it in new colours as the lovers revel in the chiaroscuro of their atmosphere: “Aap tabhi ek shahar ko naye sire se khojte hain, jab prem mein hote hain.”

Voluntarily walking into the

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unknown, taking the path of foggy subtleties is motivated by this amorous entanglement: “jaanpehchaan ki jagah se anjaan jagaho mein jaana hi ishq mein shahar hona hai.”

Craving for spaces which are not your home allows the individual to understand those unfamiliar parts of the city and the experience completely depends on where the person is, what he/she looks at, the way he/she comprehends the puzzle that the city is. This intricate pattern of the city offers nourishment to the gluttonous mind in the ongoing reciprocal action between the two. In ‘The Painter of Modern Life’, Charles Baudelaire likens the flâneur to a “a kaleidoscope gifted with consciousness, responding to each one of its movements and reproducing the multiplicity of life and the flickering grace…” [9] For instance, in the preface, Kumar shares his experience of having seen men making and manufacturing brassieres in Bhajanpura; denotatively, it could be seen as one of the many thriving businesses in the city, whereas connotatively, it critiques the taboo associated with the autonomous female body.

Therefore, we read the author describing the following lines: “Sabko bra bante dekhna chahiye. Kishor umar ke bohat log kapde mein jism dekha karte the. Kapde ko kapda samajhne ke liye uska bante dekhna zaroori hai.”

Similarly, the author’s encounter with undecaying monuments and

historical sites along with debates/arguments with his partner on the significance of the same adds an intellectual dimension to love; Therefore, it would perhaps be a grave error to analyse desire as a fraudulent category which deserves to be condemned, but rather as Kumar says, “Ishq mein padhna bhi padhta hai”, that is, being in love, unequivocally, is also about intellectual stimulation, growth of intelligence and sensibility. The common thread in both the instances is the encapsulating presence of the city which evokes complex emotional response and aesthetic appreciation in the lovers and in the process is re-arranged by human imagination and curiosity.

These individuals read the pictures and vignettes with a heightened sense of perception by getting immersed in the fullness of the city, going “incognito” [9] in the flux of present reality. The kinaesthetic movement of the lovers anonymously travelling in ‘twisted directions’ represents a re-coding of spatial signification where urban space becomes the locus of play.

When Ravish Kumar describes the busy intersectional roads of AIIMS, the awareness of that surrounding impressed in memory leaps up, as you associate it with a sound or sight.

Hence, the senses blend to form a condition of synaesthesia, that is, the stimulation of one sense (hearing the discordant sound of traffic) automatically, involuntarily, and

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simultaneously triggers another sense (sight/ visualization of traffic).

In ‘The Aesthetics of City Strolling’, Heinz Paetzold writes, “one of the delights of city strolling consists in the activity of poeticizing what we come across…it is not just a practice of walking and watching but also theorizing and writing…a cultural activity.”

Since, there are autobiographical elements incorporated in the book, Kumar has precisely, through his piece, narrativized his old memories of adventure as a young man in Delhi“bhatakne ki is aadat ne mujhe shahar ka hona banana shuru kiya.”

As the preface suggests, the physical remoteness of a ‘Shahar’ or the city clearly fascinated this young man from a small town and rendered it as a space of discovery. In ‘The Idea of Bombay’, Gyan Prakash writes, “Everything in (the) city was self-made, the product of an entirely autonomous will and sensibility, of wit and guile, and of industriousness and imagination…as a place of clashing ambitions and social strife, but also a place of order - of reasoned judgment and enlightened

consciousness.” Similarly, the scent of Delhi with its energetic modern spirit was distinct from the soiled earthiness of home: “Gaon mein ghar nahi khota hai, lekin shahar mein kho sakta hai.” Hindi cinema and its construction of the city has largely come to dominate the consciousness of the individual with representation of eclectic identities, fragmentation, fugitive living and volatile conditions: “Filmon mein dekha tha ki kaise Dilip Kumar Mumbai ki sadak ke beecho-beech ghir jaate hain.” Like an insignificant pedestrian on the streets, he interacts silently with people embedded in the city’s spatial vibrancy, observing the question mark written all over the city.

Similarly, the lovers hypnotized in their intimate hummings attempt to read the kaleidoscopic dimensions of the city through their lived experiential reality.

Delhi’s ‘enunciative’ function in Kumar’s literary composition serves as a breathing space of seclusion and surveillance, freedom and abandonment, questing and fascination, familiarity and foreignness, and spillage and slippage of residual meanings.

Works Cited Barthes, Roland. "Semiology and the Urban." WordPress. Web. 27 Jan. 2018.

Baudelaire, Charles. "The Painter of Modern Life." Trans. Jonathan Mayne.

The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays. Phaidon Press.

Blogs.commons.georgetown.edu. Web. 3 Feb. 2018.

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Eliot, Thomas Sterne. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Poetry Foundation. Web. 5 Feb. 2018.

Eliot, Thomas Sterne. The Wasteland." Poetry Foundation. Web. 5 Feb. 2018.

Hindi Diwas: Ravish Kumar’s Short Stories on Love, CCTV Cameras. Perf. Ravish Kumar. YouTube. The Quint, 13 Sept. 2013. Web. 4 Feb. 2018.

Kumar, Ravish. Ishq Mein Shahar Hona. New Delhi: Rajkamal, 2015. Print.

Paetzold, Heinz. "The Aesthetics of City Strolling." Contemporary Aesthetics.18 Mar. 2013. Web. 28 Jan. 2018.

Prakash, Gyan. “The Idea of Bombay: Bollywood Epitomized Modernity for a Boy in a Distant Province. As an Adult, He Sees a Troubled City.” The American Scholar, vol. 75, no. 2, 2006, pp. 88–99. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41222581.

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Executive Council 2017-18 President Vice President Logos Convener Academic Co-ordinator Treasurer

| | | | |

Elizabeth James Joan Sony Cherian Rachel John Ishita Chowdhury Benjamin Harry Clarance

Joint-Secretaries Medhavi Dhyani Kshitij Anand Kajal Goyal

Editorial Board 2017-18 Co-editors Megha Mukherjee Ishita Blest Editorial Team Elizabeth James Anushka Maheshwary Kshitij Anand Prerna Barooah Akhil Sanil Semanti Debray