So using my Patton Oswalt patented bullshit techniques, I managed to swing an invite to the British Council’s book launch for William Dalrymple’s
Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India.
So I’ve only ever read the
White Mughals, liked it in a very historical-fiction way and this was a pretty big shindig, Susheela Raman was going to perform, fancy pants drink were going to be made (Note: New Bondian drink – Double Absoluts, splash of lime cordial, topped by tonic water and mint) and beautiful, smart people were going to talking about beautiful smart things.
So I’m there for 5 mins before the local MSNBC affiliate asks me for a pull-quote on “The state of Literature (capital L) in India and its representation abroad” (Can you guess how I was dressed dear reader?).
But I enjoy my drink(s), my fancy snacks and listen to the reading and it takes me almost 20 minutes to focus on what Dalrymple’s reading and realize that I am maybe one of 20 Indians in an event where there are 200 people.
There’s a reason I never majored in Post-Colonial theory when I was in grad school – I was never smart enough to wrap my head around all PoCo-PoMo formulations and perhaps, more importantly, I felt it would hypocritical for me to do so. Sure, my undergrad thesis was a long love letter to Salman Rushdie but towards the end of my undergrad, I realized my struggles with PoCo are because my own locus of identity was never geographically rooted – I am privileged and come from a place of privilege.* For me to talk about the voiceless subaltern would be bullshit because what do I know about the voiceless subaltern? I grew up speaking English, watching star wars, playing Mario and ‘enjoying’ euro-centric pornography. As any of you can attest (I’m looking at you Denis, Jordan, Diane) I’m as far removed from the subaltern as possible.
So I focused on what I thought was the big picture – The radical postmodern, the overlap of socio-economic fixtures through technology i.e. I played video games and wrote a blog.
So that it took me as long as it did to realize there was only a few Indians at this gig (and while I didn’t avoid them, I didn’t actively seek them out either) is a big deal. And when faced with a hurdle I don’t know how to navigate, I did what I always do, I drank. Lots.
My undergrad education was almost militant in its application. I was in Women’s Studies and those people don’t fuck around. Armed with liquid courage, I decide to face off against the William Dalrymple. He’s a sweet guy, I liked one of his books, but he’s made a name for himself writing about India. And this new book (In Search of the Sacred in Modern India, really?) reeked of a kind of exploitive PoCo mapping, where once again, only the White Guy can understand, assimilate and feed me my own bildungsroman. The two pieces he read out where so exoticising that I winced. But when I got to him, he was visibly drunk and had his 5 year old next him, holding his scotch. So I sat down, told him he could be the next Orhan Pamuk if he wasn’t white and drank with him.
I didn’t sellout, I tell myself, I bought in.
And at some point, inbetween signings and well-wishers (he got my name wrong while signing my book *sigh*), we talked about traveling, and the lack of a Scottish film identity (
Shallow Grave and
Breaking the Waves but they’re by Danny Boyle and Lars von Trier, so that doesn’t count). If I’ve given you the impression that I was being witty and charming and oh so suave, that was not my intention – I was my usual, loud obnoxious self, punctuation every statement with a reference to Batman or Darkseid’s Omega beams.
But when I left, it was an odd experience, because I felt more relaxed and comfortable than I have in several months. The correlation I see is troubling. Most days, I feel like a casual observer, today that hit especially close.
* While writing this, a cup of tea was prepared and served to me simply because I was up.
I promise, the next post will be about how much I love Ladies’ bosoms!
