Desi Dark Academia

Exactly what it says on the tin

[desidarkacademia]

The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen

Okay, so this one isn't desi, it's Vietnamese. It is also not a novel, but a comic book. But by goodness, it is lovely.

The text touches upon a lot of the themes the dark academia aesthetic is intertwined with, namely history, literature, classism and the power of controlling a narrative.

The postcolonial iconography and metaphors are also powerful. For all that it is billed as a children's/middle grade novel, adults (both young and old) will find much to analyze, examine, and discuss within these beautifully illustrated pages.

I read it a few months ago and it made me cry. The illustrations are so eloquent, and the details are imbued with so much heritage and history. I strongly recommend it.

Also, the disparagement of comics/graphics as storytelling mediums is elitist and needs to be done away with. If anyone wants more comic or poetry recs, let me know.

RATING: 10/10

[classicslesbianopinions]

Classicists have fortified Eurocentrism by presenting (in our course titles and descriptions, promotional materials, book jackets, etc) Greece and Rome as “foundational” or “pioneering,” thus erasing the continuities between those cultures and those of the broader ancient Mediterranean, in particular those that are not understood to be “European” or to fall into the category of “Western Civilization.” The traditional disciplinary limits of Classics should be understood as part of this erasure: many disciplines limit themselves with geographical, linguistic, or temporal boundaries but Classics may be unique in imposing all three on itself in ways that give arbitrary priority to some ancient places, languages, and time periods over others. Greek and Latin are given precedence over other ancient languages; areas under Roman domination are studied more than unconquered regions; so-called golden ages marked by violent expansion are given more attention than periods of greater cultural blending or decline.

Report: White Supremacy and the Past and Future of Classics Roundtable - Pharos, 2020

i'm posting quotes but please read the full article as well! reading cherrypicked paragraphs isn't really a substitute

[desidarkacademia]

Movie Recs

Manichitrathazhu (1993) An incisive commentary about the history of women’s oppression, mental illness and family secrets.

Adhey Kangal (1967) A well-done, old-fashioned mystery that’s worth watching for the historicity and cinematography. It’s one of my favorite old movies.

Mahanati (2018) A biopic about a famous actress whose life is one long sordid mess. Themes of lost innocence, etc. The Man Who Knew Infinity (2015) They kind of polished over some of the eccentricities and drama of Ramanujan’s life, but it’s still a good watch.

Thuparivaalan (2017) An Indian take on Sherlock Holmes. Super cheesy, and with some masala elements, but overall amusing. Mysskin cannot write women to save his life, but what can you do?

Deiva Thirumagal (2011) The story of a man with cognitive disabilities and his efforts to provide for his daughter and her education.

I recently received a message inquiring if I have any movie recommendations. These are the ones I came up with off the top of my head. If you have any you want me to add, feel free to message me. I don’t watch a lot of Hindi movies, so...

[desidarkacademia]

Voices of Dissent by Romila Thapar

Not a novel, but still a very good read. It is a clear, wonderfully structured interrogation into the concept of “Hinduism” as it is widely understood today. While Thapar has had her share of controversies, I appreciate this book as both a well-researched academic text and a cleverly written piece that asks readers to question the simplistic, reductive perceptions of homogenization that can result when a diversity of human experiences is shunted under a singular label by outsider who are too lazy too ethnocentric to properly investigate and record the nuances of other cultures.

It is a reminder that what we understand as “Hinduism” today originated as a melange of multiple local faiths and folk traditions with little ties or similarity to each other, which afforded different weights to different texts (with many completely disregarding now-emblematic texts like the Upanishads and Vedas), and which sometimes existed in outright controversy with each other.

A small book (well, more like an extended essay, really) that is by no means exhaustive, it is definitely worth reading if you want to think a bit more critically about what it means to be Hindu, and what it means to be Indian in today’s fraught times.

RATING: 8/10

[desidarkacademia]

Hangwoman by R. K. Meera

You can buy this one on Flipkart or Amazon India. It is only available domestically, unfortunately. But if you can, try and get a copy through inter library loan. I promise you it will be worth it.

This is feminist literature as art. It is a sweeping epic that weaves together strands from contemporary urban India, (pre)colonial history, and mythic stories to question how fantasy blurs into fact and back again. It explores the rich heritage of India, eviscerating both tropes and the less scrupulous elements in news media with lush, poetic language that will pull you through all 400-odd pages in one sitting.

The writing is so good, I cannot stress what an excellent job the translator did. Meera herself is a prolific Malayali journalist, and if you are going to read one translated Indian book in your life, make it this one.

Let me put it somewhat reductively - it’s like White Tiger but so much deeper and broader and better written. It is Bildungsroman and revenge fantasy and historical revisionism and so much more. It is a love letter to a historic city, to a nation that’s as uneven and multitudinous as a cobblestone street, a bunch of disparate pieces coming together to make something that, though seemingly separated, really forms one cohesive, poignant whole that takes you to interesting (sometime familiar, sometimes not), places.

I cannot recommend it highly enough. So I’m giving it a rare....

Rating: 10/10

[papenathys]

"Why should we feel we have to whitewash our heroines? Every human being is a mix of strength and weakness. We must accept and admire our women protagonists just the way they are and not place an unfair burden of perfection on them."

- Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

[desidarkacademia]

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara.

This is such a evocatively written book, one that manages to capture class, religious and gender tensions through the POV of a handful of children. Our main narrator is a nine year old with aspirations of being the next Byomkesh Bakshi. It goes about as well as you imagine.

Anappara has a background in journalism, and it shows in the way she writes her character’s relationships, and her descriptions of the settings. There is a humanity in the text, a sympathetic portrayal of each character, their fears and fixations, dreams and desires.

There is a running motif of magic throughout the novel, with a succession of ghost stories and fictive folklore interspersing the main narrative. I loved reading them, the insight they provide into the solace stories can give people who have little else.

Really, the whole story is about the power of stories, including the ones we tell ourselves about other people.

Rating: 8/10

Side note: it falls into the same trap some media by North Indians do where the only South Indian character in the text is vilified. It is not hard to maybe throw a few other South Indian names into the mix, y’know? So that maybe the only one you got isn’t a kidnapper or potentially something worse?

(This is not a spoiler, I assure you. All my reviews are spoiler free)

[desidarkacademia]

So I’m going to start doing a series of small book reviews spotlighting some of my favorite desi fiction that is not by Jhumpa Lahiri or Arundhati Roy or people who are deceased.

[mindblowingscience]

World’s oldest painting of animals discovered in an Indonesian cave

A painting showing three pigs has been discovered in an Indonesian cave. At more than 45,000 years old, it is the oldest known painting of animals anywhere in the world

Stunning cave paintings discovered in Indonesia include what might be the oldest known depictions of animals on the planet, dating back at least 45,000 years.

The paintings of three pigs, alongside several hand stencils, were discovered in the limestone cave of Leang Tedongnge on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Even local people were unaware of the cave sites’ existence until their discovery in 2017 by Adam Brumm at Griffith University, Australia, and his team.

“I was struck dumb,” says Brumm. “It’s one of the most spectacular and well-preserved figurative animal paintings known from the whole region and it just immediately blew me away.”

Continue Reading.

[geritsel]

Hiroshi Yoshida - Color woodblock prints from the series United States of America.

[arjuna-vallabha]

Lakshmi, Narayan Temple, Pulsar, Nepal, unfortunately stolen into the art market this week, like many works of art and deities in Nepal.

[accras]

Mango season

[nprbooks]

This year’s National Book Awards ceremony was an evening with a message: We can do better.  

The online-only event included a montage of Black winners past — narrated by LeVar Burton — with an admission: From 1936 to 1999, only 13 writers of color won a National Book Award. But this year’s event went some ways towards improving that situation; almost every honor went to a writer of color. 

Check out our coverage of the evening – and links to coverage of some of the winning authors – here. And congratulations to winners Kacen Callender, Yu Miri and translator Morgan Giles, Don Mee Choi, Tamara Payne and Charles Yu!

– Petra

[fencingthings]

There’s happiness and then there’s realizing that the last ten pages of a scientific paper are just the bibliography.

[kamala-laxman]

The more you know yourself, the more clarity there is. Self-knowledge has no end - you don’t come to an achievement, you don’t come to a conclusion. It is an endless river.” ― Jiddu Krishnamurti

(via kamala-laxman)

[artfoli]

Group of Three Girls, 1935, Amrita Sher-Gil (1913-1941)

[desidarkacademia]