This summer seems far away now that winter is truly upon us here in Berlin. Christmas looks like a quiet affair but I was glad that one is still possible to be able to hold on to some sounds of summer. Like this podcast episode that I worked on, speaking to Zoran Terzić, about memes, the internet, Kafka, and other marvellous beings.
The only other thing out there on the horizon is a visit to the Deutsches Literaturachiv, based at Marbach am Neckar. With the numbers at an all time high, I am mostly wondering what an archival visit can mean at this point of time, both as an exercise in research work and personally as an accessibility concern (politically and generally).
In the meantime, one waits for the week to being some answers.
Writing is difficult these days. Not just because we are living in a world that is increasingly unpredictable. Part of it is the very fabric of the unknowability of a future that seems to make any utterance devoid of meaning. That is what is true for all of us, I suppose. This website has been fairly dormant for a while. While I wanted to document my research over a year, it became clear to me that projecting such expectations is not really the healthy thing to do. So, what have I been up to?
I am attending a bunch of fun courses this summer semester. The Canons and Revisions course at Freie Universität by Florian Sedlmeier, for instance. I find the course and its reading rewarding for the many ways it opens up canons to questions.
I have been writing a chapter on canons and the politics of canon for my own thesis. This chapter has been quite a long way from finishing but it is still being shaped by questions of the formation of the subject called Indology (via Aamir R. Mufti) and the idea of the pedagogical via some Bhabha. I am still reading up on the idea of gestures, which I think will be a good addition to this conversation.
On a more organisational level, I have never been busier. We are putting together a postgraduate conference for GAPS’s Postgrad Forum called Postcolonial Narrations.
Sometimes work is all one has in the face of uncertainty. This is definitely one of the times that it has kept me sane.
Recommendations
WatchCollege Behind Bars on Netflix. Truly inspirational.
Listen to Passenger Listwhich is honestly the greatest podcast ever.
I have long been a follower of Vivek Narayanan. One afternoon in Delhi, the poet Michael Creighton introduced me to the poetry of Narayanan and there has been no stopping since.
Narayanan’s work interests me not just because of the intense craftsmanship that he has about his work. It is also how he manages to use form in his poetry that has fascinated me. The Life and Times of Mr. S, his book of poems, deserves a much longer post that I hope to get around to, finally. For now, here is an interview from the Center for Writing and Communication with Souradeep Roy and Uday Kanungo.
It is 01:00 am. The GAPS conference has been cancelled. Things seem bleak in a way that is soul-sucking. The last few days have been difficult for precisely two reasons:
it is so hard to stay focussed on anything with a pandemic going on
it is so hard to stay focussed. Period.
We all have our ways of calming down, I am certain. It is just that with the-end-of-the-world kind of panic coming to us through our screens, it is simply hard to have anything else on your mind. This is where my partner—wonderful as he is—told me to get away from my phone. It is really hard; I know because I tried. But this also about not neglecting mental health in the time of corona. I know that Love in the Time of Corona is precisely the kind of literary pun that people would expect from nerds like us anyway, so yes, it is about ~
LOVE IN THE TIME OF CORONA
If anything, it is about controlling the ever expanding news-feed. Since I was supposed to fly to India, I was hooked on the news-feeds from Europe and India; all the while quite unsure which part of the world would ban the other first. Now it seems unnecessary to stay hooked. This is, dear reader, the time to get rid of your news-feed. Love your mental health, and not your news-feeds. So much of it contributes to your day getting a little more anxious that one would be better off without it. Use time for something else. Here is my plan to have more control of all the data I am consuming right now:
1. Call your parents. Call your friends. Maybe write a few letters. Communication is important; panicking does not help. Since my folks live a few hours ahead of CET, it is always nice to be able to get a hold of them and talk to them before they go to sleep.
2. Switch off your phone. Or set it to the most non-intrusive mode. Android phones do have the Do Not Disturb mode that I have found myself using a lot over the last days.
3. Consume things in a way where you are actually there. At the risk of sounding like an esoteric monster, here is the spiel: do things where you are doing something more than consuming things because it on the auto-play list of your streaming app. If you are watching a movie, do it. If you are staring at your half-finished proposal, do that. Just try to be there. Otherwise more information would simply exhaust you when you are getting out of the internet rabbit-hole on days like these.
Dear reader, step away from the phone. And the screen. Things will get better but for now, take care of yourself. Wash your hands, do things, read a nice book, listen to a nice podcast. Here’s Roman Mars describing things as they are.
