Volume 13 No 4 2021 - Page 5

Writing and Space: Writing the City by Stuti Khanna

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Orient Blackswan. 2020. pp.114, Rs. 750 (Paperback). ISBN: 9789352879229

Urvashi Kaushal

Assistant Professor, SVNIT, Surat, Gujarat. ORCID ID: 0000-0002-6774-6849. Email: k.urvashi@amhd.svnit.ac.in

Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.23

Writing the City, a collection of essays edited by Stuti Khanna is a noteworthy publication as it includes 13 engaging essays by critically acclaimed contemporary mostly Indian writer. The book has an attractive cover with an infographic map of cities — the theme around which Khanna assembles this collection. This book with only 114 pages can be a treasure trove for researchers of the contemporary Indian writing as “it explores the symbiotic relationship between form and content” (Khanna, 2020, p. xi) as each of these 13 writers present in their introspective mood, “the relationship of their writing to place and space” (Khanna, 2020, p.xi) of their upbringing. Hence, the apt title, Writing the City. The book validates Tim Creswell and other Humanist Geographer’s reverberations that: “Place is the raw material for the creative production for identity” (Cresswell, 2004, p.39). Full-Text PDF>>

New Perspectives on Translation: Translating Odisha by Paul St-Pierre

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Dhauli Books. 2019. Rs. 995.00 (Paperback), ISBN: 978-9389382129

Tyagraj Thakur

Senior Assistant Professor, Silicon Institute of Technology, Sambalpur. Email: tyagraj@silicon.ac.in

Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.22

Translating Odisha (2019) by Prof. Paul St-Pierre fetches a wide range of new perspectives on translation and the act of translating with specific reference to translations from and to Odia. Being a Professor of Linguistics and Translation Studies, and at the same time a prolific translator, St-Pierre produces a rare combination of theory and application. He invokes and applies translation theories even as he theorises the experience of translating. Through three decades of association with Odia literature and its historiography and through translations with collaborators, St-Pierre has become an authority on translation studies in Odisha. His recent book is mostly a compilation of the articles that he has published in different journals of international repute, papers that he has presented in conferences and seminars, and a few short occasional pieces. Full-Text PDF>>

An Introduction to Indian Aesthetics: History, Theory, and Theoreticians by Mini Chandran and Sreenath V. S.

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Bloomsbury India. 2021. pp. 2308, £76.50 / ISBN: 9789389165135

Prabha Shankar Dwivedi

Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Tirupati. Email: prabhas.dwivedi@iittp.ac.in

Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.21

This book can be seen as a response to a severe demand in the field of Indian poetics for an introductory book that provides an overview of all the seminal schools of Indian poetical thoughts, keeping in view both the theories and the theoreticians. This book, in the words of authors, is meant to be “An introduction to the world of Sanskrit poetics, explaining its major concepts lucidly for even those who do not know Sanskrit. It offers a comprehensive historical and conceptual overview of all the major schools in Sanskrit poetics…. It is meant to be a beginners’ guide to the awe-inspiring immensity of Sanskrit literature and literary thought, the first step in a journey that should ideally lead to the profundities of ancient thought.” (Chandran et al 2021, p. xii). The discussion in the book progresses with varied theoretical perspectives on Indian aesthetics in a well laid historico-conceptual order. Though the book briefly talks about Tamil poetics putting it parallel to Sanskrit poetics by comparing Tolk?ppiyam with N??ya??stra in the preface, it primarily serves to be an introductory handbook of Sanskrit poetics for the non-Sanskrit University students at various levels. This book succeeds in providing clearer idea of Indian poetical thoughts to its readers. Full-Text PDF>>

The (Un)governable City: Productive Failure in the Making of Colonial Delhi, 1858-1911 by Raghav Kishore

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Orient Blackswan. pp. 276, Rs. 895.00 (Hardbound), 2020. ISBN: 9789390122981.

Dr. Nilanjana Mukherjee

Assistant Professor, Department of English, Shaheed Bhagat Singh College, University of Delhi. Email: nilanjana.mukherjee@gmail.com

Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.20

Delhi has always been a crucible of political disquiet, and the seat of manifold state and aesthetic desires to order, control and design the city. Even at this moment, we find ourselves before a ubiquitous impulse to change the appearance of the city through the Central Vista Project which proposes to cater to needs of increase in government office space. There are layers to the city and obvious enough, it is not monolithic. The vestiges and architectural remnants of subsequent ages narrate the relentless saga of power, domination and settlement. A historical analysis of the spatial structures reflects the reasons behind its physical organization. To talk about colonial designs within this very broad spectrum is but, only a brief moment in a longue duree of human settlement in this region. Yet, it is necessary to understand the spatial synchrony, for much of it is what we have inherited today and this is what shapes our experiences of this city even at present. Raghav Kishore’s The (Un)governable City (2020), makes an intervention in this corpus of historical analysis with his impeccable research and endless forays into the archives. This is a welcome addition to studies in the field of urban development of Delhi, with Pilar Maria Guerrieri’s Maps of Delhi (2017) being one precursor, which painstakingly curates maps of Delhi from the precolonial times, to the modern municipal Master Plans to contemporary digital mappings. Kishore unearths curious details from local sources and twines those with debates among colonial policy makers and personnel to highlight issues of political ideology, statecraft and governmentality. This volume juxtaposes notions of policing, control and accessibility with debates and discussions on sanitation, traffic, communication, railways and the building of military cantonments, which are significant if we think of the British rule in India as a garrison state, heavily dependent on the easy mobility of its military forces. The success of the control was conditional on the ability to gather up huge military forces to curb parallel sporadic outbursts at their very onset. The broadening of roads, regulation of quarters and delimiting encroachments and concerns over connectivity, were carefully thought out strategisations towards the goal of containment and territorialisation. Full-Text PDF>>

The River as Passant: A Review of Jaydeep Sarangi’s From Dulung to Beas: Flow of the Soul

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Authorspress, 2020. ISBN (Paperback) 978-81-7273-646-0. Pp 83 | Price  295

Basudhara Roy

Assistant Professor of English, Karim City College, affiliated to Kolhan University, Chaibasa. Email: basudhara.roy@gmail.com

Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.19

“Poetry,” writes bell hooks (2012, p. 7), “is a useful place for lamentation…poems are a place where we can cry out.” Few observations, indeed, could be closer to the truth. What, however, repeatedly claims my attention in hook’s statement, is the phrase constituting her first four words here, ‘Poetry is a useful place’. As the world comes rather alarmingly together, thanks to networking and the pandemic, leading to a radical reconceptualization of both spatiality and temporality, and as the ethics and norms of distancing annihilate distinctions between the local and the global, much to the chagrin of the local, I find my realization and awareness of poetry as place increasingly heightened. The more one ponders over it, one realizes that poetry is not simply search, journey or exploration but also, equally and significantly, anchorage. It is a place from which one looks at the world, negotiates and relates, but simply and most overwhelmingly, poetry is a place to be. As I read again and again through Jaydeep Sarangi’s ninth collection of poems From Dulung to Beas: Flow of the Soul, the conviction of poetry as place becomes unassailable. Full-Text PDF>>

Dharma in America: A Short History of Hindu-Jain Diaspora by Pankaj Jain

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Routledge. 2020. ISBN: 9781138565456.

Dr Jyoti Tyagi

Deputy Director, Migration and Diaspora Institute, Delhi. Email: jyotijnu@gmail.com

Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.18

As a scholar of diaspora studies and having read a fair share of literature on diaspora, there is one question that I always ask before starting to read a book on diaspora: why is it important to know about diaspora? A related question is, important to whom? Why do we need to tell stories of those who have left? I determine the eminence of the book based on how far the author has been able to answer the above questions and Dharma in America doesn’t disappoint me.

Although every immigrant story is amazing, the Journey of Indians in America is distinctive on many fronts including education, income and entrepreneurship. Once “lost actors” are now “national assets” for both the host country and the homeland. Immigration to the United States from India started in the early 19th century when Indian immigrants began settling in communities along the West Coast. Although they originally arrived in small numbers, new opportunities arose in the middle of the 20th century, and the population grew larger in the following decades. As of 2019, about 2.7 million Indian immigrants resided in the United States (Hanna & Batlova, 2020). Today, Indian immigrants account for approximately 6 per cent of the U.S. foreign-born population, making them the second-largest immigrant group in the country, after Mexicans (Ibid).

The book by Prof Pankaj Jain, Dharma in America: A Short History Hindu-Jain Diaspora is an attempt to explore the role of Hindu and Jain Americans in education and civic engagements, medicine and healthcare and music with insights into role and challenges faced by the community. The book is arranged into seven chapters, including the Introduction and the Conclusion. The preface of the book starts with an interesting journey of Prof Jain of realising his ‘American dream’ and his experience of growing up in a Jain family. The preface instantly connects the reader with the journey of the author. Full-Text PDF>>

Comic Memes and Sexist Humor in India: Tools for Reinforcement of Female Body-Image Stereotypes

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Deepali Mallya M1 & Riya Dennis2

1Assistant Professor (Department of English and Cultural Studies), Christ (Deemed to be) University, Bengaluru, Karnataka, INDIA. ORCID ID 0000-0002-7760-3593. Email: deepali.mallya@christuniversity.in

2Teacher, Oasis International School, Bengaluru, Karnataka, INDIA. Email: riya.dennis@eng.christuniversity.in

 Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.15

Abstract

Memes have been described as communicative and aesthetic practices that serve cultural, social, political purposes on a digital platform. Several studies, in the last decade, have attempted to study this digital aesthetic knowledge production as a powerful tool for political, racial, and gender-related discourses. Most often this knowledge is produced through comic multi-media texts. Many theorists believe that, digital media reinforces inequality, marginalization and such other social issues through the audio-visual-textual medium as much as it establishes the counter-discourses for equality, body activism, racial activism and the like. Speed and lack of censorship can be the cardinal reasons for the popularity of these memes. Among the mass-influencing gender-related memes are those encouraging fat-talk and body-image stereotypes. In the Indian context, ‘Tag a Friend’ memes is one such widely circulated meme which communicates body-shaming messages through sexist humor. It mainly targets the fat/colored/transgender women. The current study examines these memes using multimodal discourse analysis methodology. The paper attempts to investigate the revival/reproduction potential of color-shaming and body-shaming stereotypes via comic memes through Shiffman’s memetic dimensions. The analysis establishes that memes can be a prominent site for the re-production of the problematic ideology of body/color shaming even in the 21st century.

Keywords: Body-shaming, comic-meme, female-body, ideology, interpellation, Tag a Friend.

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Binge Watching to Binge Serving in India: Revolution, Regulations and Restrictions of Over-the-Top (OTT) Platforms

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Dr. Biranchi Narayan P. Panda1, Dr. Swayampabha Satpathy2 & Isha Sharma3

1Assistant Professor (Law), Xavier Law School, XIM University. Email: biranchi@xim.edu.in

2Associate Professor (English), Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, ITER, SOA. Email: swayamsatpathy@soa.ac.in

3Ph.D. Scholar (English), Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, ITER, SOA. Email: Ishaasharma25@gmail.com

 Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.14

Abstract:

Information technology has changed the living style of people in the last few decades by its evolution and revolution. So, ‘digitalisation’ is considered as very imperative in human history especially after the ‘industrial revolution’. With the changing paradigm, digitalisation has provided enormous space for the entertainment of Individuals through the Over-the-Top (OTT) video platforms on their demand. In India, the significant growths of OTT platforms have been noticed during the last decade with an increasingly growing number of consumers. With such huge demand, a surge of consumers in India, the OTT became a commodity rather than a luxury. Further, the demands of consumers & internationalisation open up its OTT market for domestic as well as international players. The OTT players like Hotstar and Jio Cinema has expanded a stouter position, whereas global players like Netflix and Amazon Prime have also extended progressively their market share in India. According to one report, the Video on Demand (VoD) industry is still at its emerging stage but the entry of 40 VoD companies in a span of just three years indicates the popularity and demand of such industry. This huge demand has exposed the concept of ‘Binge Watching’ in India as this platform provides on-demand, anywhere access, without a commercial break and unlimited access. However, these growing OTT players and online content have faced many controversies and fought legal battles in India due to the lack of regulatory mechanisms. This paper explores the emergence & growth of OTT platforms with their recent trends in India. Further, the paper specifically focuses on the regulatory regime of OTT platforms since the beginning and its current scenario.

Keywords: Over-the-top (OTT), Binge Watching, Digitalization, Video on Demand (VoD), Regulations & Legislations.

Traces of Scheherazade in Margaret Drabble’s The Red Queen: A Transcultural Intertextual Reading

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Dr Bushra Juhi Jani

Al-Nahrain University, Baghdad. Email: bushrajani@nahrainuniv.edu.iq. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8981-7003.

 Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.12

Abstract

This paper examines the transcultural intertextual influence of Scheherazade, the legendary queen and the storyteller of The Thousand and One Nights, on Drabble’s The Red Queen (2004), which has a subtitle, “A Transcultural Tragicomedy.” It discusses how an appropriation of Scheherazade was utilized by Margaret Drabble in writing, The Red Queen. “But appropriation is what novelists do,” Drabble writes in the “Prologue” of her novel, adding, “whatever we write is, knowingly or unknowingly, a borrowing. Nothing comes from nowhere.” This paper is a syncretic reading of The Red Queen to show the universality of womanhood and cross-cultural parallels. In this novel, which is based on the memoirs of an eighteenth-century Korean crown princess known as Lady Hong or Lady Hyegy?ng, the protagonist comes from the history of the East, just like Scheherazade, “to retell [her] story.” Also like Scheherazade who narrates stories in order to live, the Korean Princess uses storytelling as a strategy for survival. Moreover, the intentions of the novel can be seen in a feminist tradition of historiographic metafictional re-workings of the Orient and the Arabian Nights.

Keywords: Margaret Drabble, The Red Queen, The Thousand and One Nights, Scheherazade, intertextuality, transculturality, historiographic metafiction

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Reading Tradition in Food: An Interdisciplinary Study of Bengali Food Writing

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Nilanjana Debnath

Assistant Professor of English, Koneru Lakshmaiah Education Foundation.

Email: njd.nilanjana1@gmail.com

 Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.11

Abstract

Food Studies has been a prominent part of Interdisciplinary Studies in the West from the 1980s and it is catching up in India as well. A close study of recipes and other forms of food writing can offer insights into the everyday culinary negotiations and the constitution of a cultural ‘tradition’ of taste. These insights of gastropolitics may help us better understand the functioning of subliminal hegemonic technologies and everyday resistance to the same. In our era of postcolonial globalization, where domination and subjugation happen through micro-politics of power, our readings of food writing may open new doors of reading and theorizing heritage and history.

Keywords: Food writing, recipes, cookbooks, Bengal, tradition, everyday, embodiment, taste.

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