Dear Sir,
Following your blog for quite sometime & read the recent entry on SM (Day 292(i)) with great interest. Being a TOI freak for almost 15 years, I've already read the piece that has been displayed here the very same day of its appearence in the esteemed national daily, but couldn't resist myself from commenting upon it here.
Though, I haven't seen the movie (SM) yet, but have already read a lot about it in media. I didn't see it till now for two reasons, precisely. One, I can't tolerate any shit being thrown at/shown to us by anyone (especially the West) for screwing us at international arena, even in fiction/film. Two, I first wanted to read the novel Q & A (which I am reading these days) to understand what Vikas Swarup, an IFS Officer has written actually, and how Danny Boyle & Simon Beaufoy have adapted it in their story/screenplay to show it on the screen. Here, it seems right in poiting out that in the celluloid version of Q&A, VS's original story has been concocted, distorted, mutilated & has been fabricated by Boyle-Beaufoy duo to a large extent to show the world about the "reality" of India's progress. Infact, SM is India's story in the eyes of West.
Now coming to the more vital point, if Danny Boyle & Simon Beaufoy are "guilty" of showcasing India in SM as a country of shanties, accidentally barged into the the royal premises of the West, Vikas Swarup is no less responsible for portraying his own country as a "sick nation" in his fiction "Q & A". Being an Indian Foreign Service Officer, he's expected to work as India's real ambassador to the outside world rather than busy writing fictions for reel about the filth, crime, abject poverty, gangwars, paedophiles & all kind of shits. Another classic example of this intellectual bankruptcy is Aravind Adiga of "The White Tiger" fame, who has been awarded with Manbooker's Prize, the highest literary award of Britain. (Sir, you may have got it for "Baghwaan" in the reel but one would be living in fool's paradise, if he expects it for such kind of story in real...ha!) "The White Tiger" too is a hyper-tale of sorry state of affairs in India. Written with abysmally dismal & utterly pessimistic view of the country, Adiga went on to admire China as a freedom loving nation, suitably forgetting the "Thienmann Square" massacre of students demonstrating for the very "freedom" and a whole set of records that wreaks of gross human right violations behind 'bamboo curtains'.
"What a fucking joke !"
This is nothing but the height of hypocrisy on the part of writers like Swarup & Adiga (the Indian poster boys of West) to feed such adrenaline-pumping stories to the Western audience, tired & bored of sex & all kind of perversion, & getting a Dollar-Pound laced pat on the back. If India & Indians have anything to make a hue & cry about, it's not SM but these kinds of Indian writers who should face the music first.
It's no wonder that foreign authors like Dominique Lappierre, Larry Collins, William Dalrymple, A.L. Basham & John Key have written (well-researched & impeccably ordered) so much & so beautifully about India and so has been done by Richard Attenborough in "Gandhi" but in modern India, we have a generation of Swarup, Adiga, Arundhati & likes who are busy in using their "talent" and energy in showing the "real" India to the world, especially West.
"What a fucking joke !"
Sir, besides this, I'd also like to share with you the joy of being at the last point of our beloved country, the Kanniyakumari, where one can not only have an eye-feast of watching the confluence of three oceans - Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean & Bay of Bengal but can also see the two great sages of modern India from East & South, Swami Vivekanand & Saint Thiruvalluwar standing side by side with majestic 'Samudra-Sangam' touching their feet and feel the radiance of Swami Vivekanand's sheer power of 'dhyana' he did at the rock where his memorial stands aloft today. I've visited this place in 2002 en route to my South sojourn and still reminisce those beautiful moments of my life. Enjoy your stay there!
With love n regards,
Rish
Following your blog for quite sometime & read the recent entry on SM (Day 292(i)) with great interest. Being a TOI freak for almost 15 years, I've already read the piece that has been displayed here the very same day of its appearence in the esteemed national daily, but couldn't resist myself from commenting upon it here.
Though, I haven't seen the movie (SM) yet, but have already read a lot about it in media. I didn't see it till now for two reasons, precisely. One, I can't tolerate any shit being thrown at/shown to us by anyone (especially the West) for screwing us at international arena, even in fiction/film. Two, I first wanted to read the novel Q & A (which I am reading these days) to understand what Vikas Swarup, an IFS Officer has written actually, and how Danny Boyle & Simon Beaufoy have adapted it in their story/screenplay to show it on the screen. Here, it seems right in poiting out that in the celluloid version of Q&A, VS's original story has been concocted, distorted, mutilated & has been fabricated by Boyle-Beaufoy duo to a large extent to show the world about the "reality" of India's progress. Infact, SM is India's story in the eyes of West.
Now coming to the more vital point, if Danny Boyle & Simon Beaufoy are "guilty" of showcasing India in SM as a country of shanties, accidentally barged into the the royal premises of the West, Vikas Swarup is no less responsible for portraying his own country as a "sick nation" in his fiction "Q & A". Being an Indian Foreign Service Officer, he's expected to work as India's real ambassador to the outside world rather than busy writing fictions for reel about the filth, crime, abject poverty, gangwars, paedophiles & all kind of shits. Another classic example of this intellectual bankruptcy is Aravind Adiga of "The White Tiger" fame, who has been awarded with Manbooker's Prize, the highest literary award of Britain. (Sir, you may have got it for "Baghwaan" in the reel but one would be living in fool's paradise, if he expects it for such kind of story in real...ha!) "The White Tiger" too is a hyper-tale of sorry state of affairs in India. Written with abysmally dismal & utterly pessimistic view of the country, Adiga went on to admire China as a freedom loving nation, suitably forgetting the "Thienmann Square" massacre of students demonstrating for the very "freedom" and a whole set of records that wreaks of gross human right violations behind 'bamboo curtains'.
"What a fucking joke !"
This is nothing but the height of hypocrisy on the part of writers like Swarup & Adiga (the Indian poster boys of West) to feed such adrenaline-pumping stories to the Western audience, tired & bored of sex & all kind of perversion, & getting a Dollar-Pound laced pat on the back. If India & Indians have anything to make a hue & cry about, it's not SM but these kinds of Indian writers who should face the music first.
It's no wonder that foreign authors like Dominique Lappierre, Larry Collins, William Dalrymple, A.L. Basham & John Key have written (well-researched & impeccably ordered) so much & so beautifully about India and so has been done by Richard Attenborough in "Gandhi" but in modern India, we have a generation of Swarup, Adiga, Arundhati & likes who are busy in using their "talent" and energy in showing the "real" India to the world, especially West.
"What a fucking joke !"
Sir, besides this, I'd also like to share with you the joy of being at the last point of our beloved country, the Kanniyakumari, where one can not only have an eye-feast of watching the confluence of three oceans - Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean & Bay of Bengal but can also see the two great sages of modern India from East & South, Swami Vivekanand & Saint Thiruvalluwar standing side by side with majestic 'Samudra-Sangam' touching their feet and feel the radiance of Swami Vivekanand's sheer power of 'dhyana' he did at the rock where his memorial stands aloft today. I've visited this place in 2002 en route to my South sojourn and still reminisce those beautiful moments of my life. Enjoy your stay there!
With love n regards,
Rish
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