Nostalgia

Old Age and Nostalgia in Nirmal Verma’s Fictions

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Akhil Puthiyadath Veetil

Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities, Manipal University. Email: akhil.veetil@gmail.com

Volume IX, Number 3, 2017 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v9n3.22

Received August 10, 2017; Revised September 13, 2017; Accepted September 15, 2017; Published September 20,  2017.

Abstract

This article explores the theme of old age and attempts to understand whether nostalgia can be understood without reducing it to revivalism. Using Nirmal Verma’s novel Antim Aranya and his short story “Pichli Garmiyon Mein”, the article shows that Verma uses several literary techniques in order to suspend time and evoke contemplation albeit without providing any prescriptive conclusions. Furthermore, contemplation along with nostalgia is never presented by Verma as an attempt to recreate the past. On the contrary, nostalgia presented through old age acts as a critique of modernity and its interpretation of progress. Therefore, Verma’s writings can be seen as an ethical stance against a future and goal-oriented framework, which alienates individuals from all generations.

Keywords: nostalgia, memory, Nirmal Verma, Hindi Literature

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Appropriating Postmodernism: Narrative Play in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris

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Rupsha Mukherjee
Presidency University, Kolkata, India

Volume 7, Number 3, 2015 I Full Text PDF

Abstract

The idea that has been explored in the article is what makes a film postmodern and if there is an inevitable gap between form and content, between postmodern techniques and the narrative structure in the same. The article addresses how Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, which has been touted by certain critics as postmodern, adopts postmodern multiplicity of time and spaces and Allen almost plays with theses ideas but does not entirely succumb to them. Michel Foucault’s idea of heterotopia has been employed in studying the other space depicted in the film . The other space showcases Paris in the 1920s and Allen through his protagonist Gil highlights this as a celebratory digression and a moment’s liberation. The narrative is plugged into modernist attitudes, including a narrative closure, which does not allow it to be regarded as a postmodern film in its entirety.

Keywords : Allen, Midnight in Paris, Space, Nostalgia, Postmodern, Belle Epoque, Golden Age, theoretical, cultural, heterotopia, Gil Keep Reading

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“I was not certain where I belonged”: Integration and Alienation in Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist

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Avirup Ghosh, Bhairab Ganguly College, Kolkata

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 Abstract

The article will focus on the contrary impulses of alienation and integration in Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist that the central character and narrator Changez goes through in America while working as an employee at Underwood Samson, a “valuation” firm and his subsequent return to his native Pakistan where he assumes what appears to be an ultra-nationalistic political stance. This is to argue that Changez’s desperate attempt at assuming this stance has its roots not only in the cultural alienation and racism that he is subjected to in America, especially in a post-9/11 America, but also in his futile effort to naturally integrate with a Pakistani way of life.  By uncovering certain ambiguities in Changez’s ideological rhetoric, the paper tries show how Changez’s critique of American corporate fundamentalism stems from his lack of a sense of belonging and from a feeling of problematized identity. Keep Reading

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