indian authors

I remember getting hold of the first Indian English writing that I read, it was in the calcutta book fair…a copy of Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies in a dusty Oxford stall. What followed was a highly enjoyable reading experience , a glimpse into the world of the NRI’s and yet connecting with the emotional universe explored in that limited glimpse. People have many complaints against this wonderful body of work that is Indian authors writing in english,according to some who have religiously fed on the classics its “neither here nor there” (comment made by a friend) then some who feel it is limited in scope etc . Firstly it is true that they are limited but not in scope ,only in the section of society they choose to portray but I feel the author deserves more credit if he or she can unfold a variety of emotional experiences in that limited picture ,for instance Jhumpa Lahiri or if we look back then R.K.Narayan who chose a section of people to write about but presented a beautiful earthy concoction of subtle universal emotions. There are people who have read “The Post Master” by Rabindranath Tagore in Bengali as well as in English and who complain its not the “same” thing ,well being a Bengali I can accept that ,but then if any native from Brazil said that reading Coelho in English was not the “same” thing, would we stop reading the translation or would we start learning the original language in which it was written? Sometimes it’s not about the language but the expressions. When I read Amit Chaudhuri’s work (a new world) for the first time I felt strangely connected with the story ,may be a little though not entirely because every time he mentioned “gariahat” or “golpark” I could conjure up a picture in my mind but I am sure anyone not living in Calcutta would also be able to identify ,if not with the place at least with the emotions in the book. If these authors are in their own way taking India to the world they deserve the credit they get ,I mean how many outside India would actually learn Bengali to read a Satyajit Ray or a Sharat Chandra novel ? They would grab the nearest translation at hand, we as Bengalis may feel they are losing out on something but then that’s exactly how a Russian might feel when we read Dostoyevsky in English !! So lets be a little more rational and logical while we comment about the next book we read that is by an Indian author .