Have you read any Indian literature /lit/?
If you haven't, I'll give you recs if you describe what type you want.

>>24459018 (OP)
I've read The White Tiger by Arvind Adiga. One of the best books I've read with delicious dark humour. But forens won't get it. You really have to live here to feel the insanity

>>24459018 (OP)
>Salman Rushdie
He was stabbed for us, so we will read for him!!
God bless you fatwa angel, paying the price for the freedom of expression, unless an indian author has pissed off iran at the cost of their life, they have no balls, no bowels worth even considering.

>>24459021
Yeah it was good. But it still didn't feel completely 'Indian', more like a NRI's view of India like the Oscar bait movies set in India.
R.K Narayan is probably my favourite of Indian authors.

>>24459018 (OP)
Recommend me some hard sf like Liu Cixin but indian

>>24459068
The Gollancz collection is supposed to be great. I've bought but I've yet to start reading it.
Acts of God is pretty fun but it's not hard SciFi.

>>24459050
I mean yeah the writing has an undercurrent where it feels it's a description from an outsider instead of someone who actually believes in the Indian life. But imo that's why it's good. Because the things he writes about and the characters are accurate to a T

>>24459123
Yeah it no doubt captures some of the spirit but I would still read an actual Bihari's diary translated over this. You can't spend a lot of time in the West and still think like an average Bihari.

>>24459018 (OP)
Give me the James Joyce of India (there is only one correct answer).

George Orwell was born in Bihar, India so technically...

>>24459811
Premchand? Tagore? RKN? Ruskin Bond?

>>24460404
based

>>24459018 (OP)
No thanks.

Indians can’t write or really even reason. They are a natural slave people, that have been dysgenically bred by their lords to have a 99.9% inbred slave caste. This breeding practice is unfortunately why this group of 1b people, with such a long history, has failed to produce any meaningful works of art or literature.

I imagine it’s quite a shame for any indian to know their most popular and high praised work was written by Herman Hesse, a European.

>>24459018 (OP)
i just began the long painful journey of learning sanskrit. tell me why i'm bothering to do so when I haven't even finished the Iliad in Greek

>>24459018 (OP)
>>24459021
>>24459045
>>24459050
>>24459097
>>24460419
Can you please go to like poopoo ranjeesh forums or something and stop shitting up the literature board? Thanks.

>>24460431
Learn German instead. Sanskrit is an offshoot of protocol Aryan Germanic but for brown people

>>24460431
Learn German instead. Sanskrit is an offshoot of proto Aryan Germanic but for brown people

Q&A/Slumdog Millionaire is pretty good. Read it when I was like 16. I've also read The Satanic Verses but I was 17 and most of it went over my head.

>>24460437
The German textbooks Ive found aren't autistic enough for me. Coming from a classics background, I like my grammar obsessively detailed. It is on the list though.

>>24460419
I'm thinking Rushdie

>>24460437
Because it's pretty cool

>>24459018 (OP)
Out of the potential 1.5 billion people in India, you'll only ever see anything produced by the 50-ish million Brahmins (the 1%). The caste system cripples the countries potential for innovation by essentially ignoring anyone who isn't in the aristocracy; the rest are left to farm and join scam call centers. Compare this to small European countries like Norway or Ireland where everyone is given an equal chance at birth and where their talent output per capita is huge.

>>24460500
Name one literary work of note by any of these alleged 50 million elites?

>>24460504
I was going to say Rabindranath Tagore but I just googled him and found out he's actually from Bangladesh lmao.

>>24460507
I’m asking for someone like Goethe or Homer or Milton or anyone worth a damn from that diseased subcontinent?

>>24460510
Siddhartha Gautama

>>24460507
Tagore is from West Bengal in India, not Bangladesh

>>24460513
That sounds like a made up name like Ching Chong or Abdul Mohamed Ahmed. How come none of his works are of any note?

>>24460500
India has Affirmative Action to account for historical socioeconomic differences between castes

>>24460521
>How come none of his works are of any note
idk

>>24459045
Do Iranians still hate Rushdie?

>>24460526
Wait do you mean the Buddha? But Buddhism is not Indian though

>>24460530
The Buddha achieved entlightment in India and had his ministry on the Gangetic Plain. Did you think Buddhism was East Asian?

>>24460530
He lived in north India. Nepal was not a country 2500 years ago.

>>24460525
Doesn't explain why I only ever see high caste Indians as immigrants in my country (NZ)

>>24459018 (OP)
something like this, please

>>24460542
How can you even tell their caste? Most Indians in the West are middle caste traders and land-owning farmers like Patels

>>24460500
Idk how the same retards can justify racial purity and superiority and take offence to the caste system in India. Take a single position faggots.

>>24460550
I only ever see Singhs

>>24460542
This >>24460550 and also the higher and middle castes have generational wealth so it's likely you'll see them.

>>24460552
>Idk how the same retards can justify racial purity
I don't though... I can understand why you'd think so on this website but I'm not a /pol/cel

>>24460554
Do you mean Sikhs? They come from a number of different castes but the men often adopt the last name Singh and women adopt the last name Kaur

>>24460559
Yes, they wear Turbans and don't shave their beards

>>24460561
Those are Sikhs, you can't tell their caste just by looking at them. I doubt the young ones even know their own caste

>>24460563
If they can afford to move here and pay for the university tuition (which is insane if you convert it into rupees) then they must come from *some* type of old money.

>>24460558
Thank God for that. To answer your question then, it's getting better actually caste-wise. People are slowly accepting intercaste marriages. The caste system doubled down during the poverty stricken British Raj era so it makes sense it will get eroded as India develops.
I don't know what the non-pol view of India is but I'm pretty optimistic about the future. Maybe not this century even but we'll get there.

>>24460533
Uh, yes? Indian tribal customs fused with Buddhist metaphysics to give birth to Hinduism. It’s a well known fact that indian metaphysics are all stolen from the orient and then slapped together like street food sloppa with random tribal witch doctor ramblings in dalit villages and now we have abominations like om

>>24460566
Not really. The upper and (especially) middle castes have large swathes of valuable farming land. They can sell it to find their migration.

>>24460570
Bad bait. You know China became Buddhist after missionaries from India spread it, right?

>>24460567
>>24460571
Well, I'm glad things are improving. I just wanted to give my personal theory as to why the largest country in the world has produced less artistic/athletic/scientific value than would be expected. And didn't want to jump to "because they are brown."

>>24460576
Buddhists don’t practice evangelism, so this some perverted brown sect I’m guessing you’re referring to?

>>24460566
Caste doesn't correspond to socioeconomic success. Many, if not most middle caste traders are wealthier than Brahmins by virtue of the latter primarily occupying teaching jobs or working as priests.

>>24460426
This, Indians are the Americans of the East

>>24460578
They don't practice it anymore to nearly the same extent, but early Buddhist adherents absolutely had missions to teach Buddha Dharma outside the subcontinent

>>24460570
>Siddhartha Gautama was East Asian
Is /lit/ really this dumb now?

>>24460570
>Buddhist metaphysics to give birth to Hinduism
Hinduism... came AFTER Buddhism? You sure?

The caste system is a joke in modern India now.

>>24460590
It's bait

>>24460592
Impossible to tell if he's a real Evola-tier we wuz-er

>>24459811
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamal_Kumar_Majumdar

Unironically this Bengali writer comes close to James joyce or Proust. Wrote in extremely hard and classical bengali, invented a new syntax for his novels. Wrote a novel without using periods, just long-ass sentences. He is infamous for being hard and intelligeble in bengali literary circle. Only downside you jave to learn bengali(very fluent) to read, cause no translation is available.

>>24460614
why are bengalis so /lit/?

>>24460577
It's because 1700-1900 were the worst years of our history, not just due to colonisation, but especially due to massive famines, social upheaval, climate change, flooding, and droughts, followed by modernisation and rapid population boom... you're only just seeing us emerge out of our absolute worst era in a rich history of three thousand years.

I'm tired of all the narrow-mindedness on /lit/ about Indians. I don't know how you can convince yourself such a race of people is worthless after cramming your head with the thoughts of philosophers who dared to look beyond the obvious.
Look at the bustle of millions and billions of Indians thronging the streets, hanging precariously out of trains and buses, squashed into tiny claustrophobic houses and slums, ever watchful of opportunities, haggling, jostling, cheating, flattering, outmanoeuvering and killing, all just to get ahead of all the other rats scurrying neck to neck with them; not caring how they look or smell, where they sleep, where they shit, what anybody thinks of them, all just to ensure they can bequeath to their progeny something more than what they began with, to ensure their descendents converge upon the position of power that they think has always been ordained for them - how can you look at all this, and missing the Faustian spirit grinning out at you, call this race 'depleted'?

>>24460689
/lit/ has willfully culturally stupid people who are uninterested about other races but will be the first to make negative comments about them. I'm sure you do this too with other races that you consider beneath you, after all isn't where people come to brag about how much smarter or more refined they are than the rest of the internet? Just start with the greeks and you'll be smarter than everyone else, nothing else matters.

>>24460689
/lit/ has willfully culturally stupid people who are uninterested in other races but will be the first to make negative comments about them. I'm sure you do this too with other races that you consider beneath you, after all isn't this where people come to brag about how much smarter or more refined they are than the rest of the internet? Just start with the greeks and you'll be smarter than everyone else, nothing else matters.

>>24460743
Not that anon, but /lit/ is generally far more open minded than most boards. Look at /tv/ or /int/, could you see anything even tangentially related to India not becoming a hate thread? Meanwhile /lit/ actually makes an effort to engage with other cultures
>race
I'm not racist, there are certain cultures I dislike, but I don't see people as better or worse because of something they have no control over like race

>>24460747
Even the open mindedness is laced by indifference. /li/t's problem as i've stated is an obsession with a single culture, if a book isn't about that culture then it might as well be trash.

>>24460689
And they were set back 200 years due to external factors. They didn't go the way of Rome. Even with Britain's industrialized textile manufacturing, it took internal disruption to really destroy handmade Indian textile trade, and for Britain to gain monopoly. The generational damage is immense. Peasants birth peasants, but the priveleged cannot relate to it so their pain doesn't have the same urgency and value.

>>24460577
India was a cultural and artistic hotspot until the tail end of Mughals. That would be 1700s. Let's be real, how many truly great English authors can you name pre-1700s without resorting to the Shakespeares, Miltons, Thomas Brownes etc. And that is when Britain has had cultural hegemony for centuries before ceding it to America, which would give English literature massive PR push from the get go. Things are not nearly as simple as you are reducing them to.

>>24460681
Possibly because britishers colonized that region first and established english language based education system. Thus exposed them to foreign lit, many of the early bengali writers knew three or more foreign languages.

For bonus.
>picrel
This person lived in utter poverty and only got recognition after his death cause he wrote in modernist style. His writing style is similar to Yeats.

>>24460792
>Here is one of his poem translated in English.

Now, did the morgue fulfill your heart?
In the morgue, on the dampened bed,
Like a bludgeoned rat’s bloody head.

And yet, hearken:
This morbid tale was not broken
By the love of woman’s folly;
Matrimonial gay and jolly
Has not eaten away this fine story,
Through a rapid span of tide
There arose the beautiful bride,
And she was like the sweetest thought
Who for him this knowledge had brought;
From the bitterest misery of starvation
This life did never shiver;
That is why, really
He lies on the bench, forever.

Yet I know it—oh! I know
Neither heart nor love’s secure glow;
Wealth—triumph—solvency
Can never be the whole fancy;
A wonder on the edge of extinction
Does play within our blood’s inner reflection;
This doeos drain us
Oh! So utterly drains us!
In the morgue, though,
Lurks no wearing foe.
And the man, thus
Lies now on the morgue bench narrow.

And still, in darkness, when extinguishes light,
I look, and, oh! I see it every single night,
The ancient owl with no eyes,
Asks about the moon's early demise:
'What about the moon now decaying grey?
Did the flood really wash it away?
So it is nice!
Let us capture now a few mice.'

>>24460792
>one of his poem

>Banalatā Sen by Jibanananda Das (translated into English)

For a thousand years I traversed on earth’s trail;
The Sinhalan ocean, thence Malayan shores I have seen
In the dark; from Ašoka’s grey Vimbisāra I set sail
To Vidarbha—into farther darkness I have been;
A weary soul I am, while life’s ocean foams to the shore,
With a moment’s peace blessed me Banalatā Sen of Natore.

Her hair as dark as a Vidišā night,
Her face the masonry of Šrāvasti grand;
As the sailor, shipwrecked, catches the sight
In deep waters of the first green island,
That was how in darkness had I her seen;
Lifting nest-like eyes she asked: “Where have you been?”

At the end of the day like the sound of dew creeps in shade;
From their wings kites wipe off the smell of sunny skies;
Manuscripts get ready when all the world’s colours fade
For stories glimmered by fireflies;
All birds—all rivers come home, life ceases all exchange; then
Remains darkness only, face-to-face Banalatā Sen.

>>24460681
where is this from?

>>24460790
>India was a cultural and artistic hotspot until the tail end of Mughals
I can't think of anything outside the religious texts like The Dhammapada and the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads, etc. China has this same problem; I can barely think of anything outside Confucius and Lao Zi.

The population difference between them and small euro countries was just as big then, too. I'm talking per capita.

>Let's be real, how many truly great English authors
Who says I'm limiting myself to English? Italy only had 10 million people during the time of Dante Alighieri (1300s) vs Indias 150 million. Chaucer also created his epic during this time when England had only 2-4 million people.

>Things are not nearly as simple as you are reducing them to.
I agree, though.

>>24460745
> I'm sure you do this too with other races that you consider beneath you
Well I have called /lit/izens dumb niggers on occasion but I've also made efforts to read African lit and understand where they come from. Being racist for lols is all good, this is a site for adults after all, but it's getting to point where threads about Upanishads and Nagarjuna are devolving into 'pajeet so won't read' stuff.

>>24460747
No doubt, /lit/ is still the best board here. I just want to retain it's seriousness along with all the shitposts.

>>24460796
>>24460798
Amazing, especially the one you deleted lol. I have to look this guy up.

>>24460800
The excerpt I posted btw is from the blog of a Bengali, a Chatterjee, though a brit born and raised, that goes by 'argumentativeoldgit'. He's an older fellow who writes mostly on Shakespeare, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Dickens, Henry James. He's quite based and you might enjoy the /lit/erary pleasure of his takes if those writers are your thing.

I've got a copy of the Ramayana but didn't realize it was abridged until after I got it home, I'd love to get started on it but want the full translated text. You know if it was some Jap shit that guys here would trip over each other jerking it off.

>>24460804
>I can't think of anything outside the religious texts like The Dhammapada and the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads, etc. China has this same problem; I can barely think of anything outside Confucius and Lao Zi.
That's hardly an indictment of the literature itself. There are probably Chinese and Indian works in vernacular languages that no European has set his eyes upon. You'd probably be saying the opposite if China or India had conquered Europe and you had been forced to engage with their culture on their terms.

>>24460807
the translation was not that good but here you go if you like that one...

>One Day Eight Years Ago

https://allpoetry.com/poem/14330565-One-Day-Eight-Years-Ago-by-Jibanananda-Das

>>24459018 (OP)
Why no one is talking about Ruskin Bond ? He is literally one of the best Indian writer of all time.

This fellows are similar to the Beat Generation of America, wrote in avant-garde style, completely broke away with Rabindranath or Jibanananda

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_generation

>for more modernist bengali writings
https://www.parabaas.com/jd/articles/seely_scent_eightyears.shtml

>>24459146
>You can't spend a lot of time in the West and still think like an average Bihari.
Yeah that would be a different kind of content in its own right. The things that are explicit in his work because of his status as an outsider looking in would become the subtext if this was an actual Bihari's autobiography. There is barely any subtext in the white tiger since the protagonist is super aware of his situation. That kind of makes since narratively since he is writing this after he had achieved success and become one of the predators instead of prey

>>24460830
>*That kind of makes sense

>>24460824
He is good but not the best, there are far superior writers in India, a list of them as an example.
>Rabindranath, Classical Writing style, Bengali
>Premchand, Classical Writing style, Hindi and Urdu
>U. R. Ananthamurthy, He was one of the finalists of Man Booker International Prize for the year 2013, Kannada
>Manto, Indian born but went to pakistan after partition, Urdu writer, wrote genuinely chilling and extremely good short stories

There are thousands unrecognized in different languages

>Arundhati Roy
>Indian Feminist Writer
have written some magic realism, such as "The God of Small Things", hated by the conservative and far-right hindu groups and the government.

This is Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

>Spivak rose to prominence with her translation of Derrida's De la grammatologie, which included a translator's introduction that has been described as "setting a new standard for self-reflexivity in prefaces".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gayatri_Chakravorty_Spivak#Work

>>24460798
Looks great, will look him up. I feel like I will learn Bengali one of these days to get at all that beautiful lit.

>>24460842
Hate her and rightfully so. Her stories are just western stories with Rajesh instead of John and caste and religion instead of colour and race.

Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, the most popular Hindi poet, had written an essay on Eliot immediately after his death; which I have translated (though rather hastily) here.Thought you anons might be interested in.

After Mallarmé and Rimbaud in French, German and English languages there began a movement of modernity and purity in poetry, poets in order to make real their imaginings of a ‘Pure Verse’ underwent a severe self-analysis of their inner lives, the result of which, were two poets whose heights of greatness are visible from each and every corner of this world. One of them was the German poet Rilke, who died in 1927, and the second was the English poet Eliot, who passed away just last year.

Immediately after Eliot emerged on the scene, English Poetry’s pictorialist revolution ended, as if the place where poetry wished to reach, it found that selfsame place in Eliot himself. Yet, is Eliot a ‘Pure’ poet? That is, is he a poet who is free from the contagion of ideas, who pens only those feelings which have no relation with deeds? And are his poems free from messages, cut off from life, obscured away from reality and in whom there’s no message for humanity?
In my opinion, Eliot is a modern poet, yet he is not ‘Pure’ in the same sense that the modernist poets dreamt up of ‘Purity’. In French, German, and English languages the movements which went by the names of Symbolism, Expressionism and Pictorialism— Eliot understood them properly, attained a mastery over them, and with this power pursued that ideal, which is the ideal of all great poets. Whichever Art that hesitates from assimilating the affectations of the human condition in it, whichever Art that shies away from the human conscience, the Art that refuses to adhere to the human-perspective, is for now raw, is immature, is still blurry in its discretion. If a poem continues to run away from the influence of human-life, remains untouched by the human conscience, however eloquent then such a poem may be, it will be forgotten, and be buried by the sands of time.

(1/4)

(2/4)

Eliot, in the truest sense of the word, was a poet of Life itself. His expressions originate from society, and his vision remains on the hollowness of it. Spengler had prophesied that the end of western civilization was nigh. In Europe, few writers and poets paid heed to the grave seriousness of this prophecy, amongst them, Eliot was the most attuned to it. Eliot wrote the poetry of this selfsame dying civilization, and obliquely has given humanity the message, that if it wishes to not fall unto destruction, then it must not follow in the footsteps of science, that whatever cheap pleasures this modern civilization offers to it— it must abstain from them, and it should accept only those principles and values which are enshrined in religion. In this aspect, Eliot was different from the Romantics, that despite claiming to be with the Age, in reality they never were with it. Not of the Age, they were worshippers of Beauty; not of the Intellect, but were lovers of Emotion, and not towards Moderation, but were aligned towards Passion. The 20th century’s real depiction emerged in Eliot, because Eliot had drunk from the century’s fount and had come out the other side like a veritable tree. His temperament was composed, and his demeanor thoughtful. His imagery, thought and rhythm were synergetic and over this synergy he had a quaint command, due to which Eliot, with only a few words, said a lot. Clamor, cries, lamentations, and eruptions find no place in Eliot’s poetry. His greatest speciality was his rigorous honesty towards words, emotions, thoughts and moods. This selfsame honesty makes his style succinct and convincing, and due to this brevity one feels that whatever it is that we take from his poetry, far more meaning from them remains to be gleaned. Eliot is not such a poet, who becomes despondent and unbridled after perceiving that no stable values remain in society anymore, and thus proclaims that irresponsibility itself should become Art’s greatest virtue. He is a responsible and serious poet, who believes that if the wise, the intellectual, the mystics, the poets of society stop caring and thinking about it, then such a society will disintegrate and fall into disarray. He seeks to find beauty in ugliness, and aims to achieve truth from within hypocrisy itself.
Many people even claim that when Eliot died, he was no longer modern. Such people believe that modernism began from Picasso. In their perspective, Eliot was the poet with whose death the old era also died. In reality, the fact that modernism’s beginning should be marked from Picasso and not Eliot— all of this talk, is drivel. Eliot was a poet of the modern age, and all the qualities of the experiments undertaken in this time are under his command. Yet he did not come to literature to display a feu d’artifice. Through some serious work he wished to again endow poetry with the prestige and dignity it once possessed. He was against the Romantic style.

(3/4)

He said that in life romanticism may still find some importance, but in Art romanticism has no place anymore. Due to him being honest, he also understood that the ease with which the critic divides emotion from thoughts and ideas, the same ease of division cannot be professed by the poet. That is why, he used to say that in poetry one does not pen down thoughts, rather the emotional side of thoughts is what’s written. On the conflict between style and emotion, one finds an epigram by Eliot : “The beauty of a poem lies in its style, but its seriousness can be judged by the intensity of its feelings.” And he has also said that when he speaks of great verse, then he does not intend to refer to ‘Pure Verse’; that is a ‘pure’ poem, however pure it may be, it does not become great just by the virtue of its purity. Great verse can be ‘pure’, yet it can also be such a verse which contains ideas and also a message for society.
The movement of ‘Pure Poetry’ has not continued without facing challenges along the way. The modernist poets, however fine a demarcation they continued to draw between ideas and emotions, the very same ideal they attempted to reach continued to become more blurry and formless, and the more literature veered towards ‘absurdity’, that is, ridiculous impossibilities. This demarcation has come at a great cost for poetry. The more poetry lost its respect in society, the more the rage inside poets grew, and they became anxious to leave this style and veer back towards tradition, and they initiated such movements that wished to make poetry corporeal from incorporeal again.
Due to this same dissatisfaction the movement of Futurism began in poetry. This movement first began in France and then spread to Russia. The Italian poet Marinetti whilst writing the manifesto of this movement in 1909 said “We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt; the multi-colored and polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capital; the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals and the workshops beneath their violent electric moons”. A similar movement with the same name began in Russia in the year 1912.
Ideas have a natural place in poetry, yet poets and philosophers use them for different motives. Philosophers have an interest in the truth of Ideas, the poet only in their expression. Philosophers invite us to believe in Ideas, yet poets pen them down to make us happy, to move us, to agitate us.
In Eliot one does find Ideas, yet in the imaginings of the poet they melt down to become emotions, yet his style was delphic. His poems ask of its readers an intense knowledge. In society by the year 1930 the greatness of Eliot was thoroughly established. Yet at the very same time a new pack of poets appeared on the block, and they raged another movement against that of ‘Pure Poetry’. The leader of this pack was Auden.

(4/4)

These poets claimed that poetry exists for the use of society, and that we do not have enough time to find pleasure in the delphian, to remain alienated from the world at large whilst being lost in oneself, or for the sake of fashion continue to conduct ever new experimentations. Yet the movements from which Eliot took tutelage, from the very same movements Auden and his compatriots also took a few lessons and began to write poetry connected to tradition in new ways and techniques. In and around the year 1940 the experimentalist movement of English poets came to a close and wearing the veneer of modernism the traditional style returned to literature. The empty air castles finally really did begin to look empty to the people, and ideas started to be rewritten under the name of emotions.
Auden’s speciality is that he is less emotional and more intellectual, and under his influence of his stream, the dissatisfied poets started to veer again towards emotions. This was the time of the second world war, and the soul stricken by the world began to long for a long, blurry flight away from it all. It seems as if Dylan Thomas was born to quench this very thirst of the readers. Dylan Thomas is considered a surrealist, yet in his poems there’s no absence of meaning. Yet the poets who overwhelmed by his popularity, claimed him as one of their own, most of such poets did not have a real bone in their bodies. Such poets only knew that whichever person who looks new to the eye, is modern. On the dint of emulation did they write new poems, yet they had left verse, now, with no meaning in it.

The only decent post modern Indian book ever written is life of pi and it's not written by an indian.
Most of the post modern Indian books revolves around :
>muh caste
>muh colonialism
>muh dharma
>it's ok to commit a crime if you are le poor
>muh religion ,muh culture difference
They are not different compared to the ME Mudslim people.

>>24460922
>>24460925
>>24460927
>>24460930
Your own translation of his work anon? Great stuff!
I always have this idea of vernacular poets and writers as being closed off from the rest of the world. It is really something to know the extent of their knowledge.
Is it you who posted the other stuff about the others too? The modernist Bengali writings and all? Do you have (or know) a blog with more such recs?

>>24460971
Yeah don't look at the English stuff. Try Hindi/Bengali/Marathi/Tamil stuff for the more genuinely 'Indian' stories

>>24460922
Will you recommend some modernist writer(poets, novelist) of hindi and urdu language? I know some like premchand, harishankar, manto, chugtai, dhumil but want to read some real good modernist /lit/erary work

>>24461046
No, it was me but yeah the translation is fine, I have a website in process

https://sentence.neocities.org/

If you want checkit out, but it is work in progress I am busy prep in for exam and job

>>24461046
>>24461089
Honestly if you don't know the language, it is tough cause translations are scarce and majority of it belongs to Rabindranath Tagore's work, not so much love towards the lesser knowns(modernist/avant-gardes)

Start with watching Satyajit Ray, famous filmmaker, his movies were famous, so they have subs, get on with the language; if you don't then no worries look towards hindi and urdu language books their books have been translated more in numbers but still the lesser known writers remain in the dark

>>24461046
Hey, thank you.
And yeah, even I was quite fascinated to find this essay. Dinkar was the guy for his time, knew Sanskrit, Hindi, English, Urdu, Bengali, French (he translated Baudelaire) was also good friends and sometime advisor to the first prime minister of the country.

He makes one apt remark though in his essay collection, that by the time modernism rolled around, people were only just becoming decently acquainted with the modernists. And by the time post-modernism was in swing people were only then familiarizing themselves with modernist works.

>>24461084
I think the two that come to mind are Upendranath Ashk's Falling Walls 5 (6 if you count the unfinished stuff) volume series.

From a blurb "A young man from Jalandhar longs to become a writer but fails at every turn. Upendranath Ashk's 1947 novel explores in great detail the trials and tribulations of Chetan. From the back galis of Lahore and Jalandhar to Shimla's Scandal Point, Falling Walls offers a rich and intimate portrait of lower-middle-class life in the 1930s and the hurdles an aspiring writer must overcome to fulfil his ambitions.
"
I haven't had the chance to read it myself yet, but I've looked at some excerpts, page long sentences lol, found it to be in that vein of self-analytical yet almost laissez faire approach to writing, endearing portraitures of the lived experiences of living in that period of India haunted by dreams of independence.

The granddaughter of Norman Rockwell of all people, Daisy Rockwell, has been translating his entire oeuvre relatively quickly, all things considered. Her translations' page is also worth a glance on wikipedia.

And second, The Sun's Seventh Horse, 1952 novella, with that story-within-a-story framework like Panchantantra, Kathasaritsagara, Miquel Palol, Saragossa Manuscript et al. Almost DFW-esque characters (think Good Old Neon, Trillaphon etc.) talking about and experiencing their failed loves, hopeless attempts at a better life etc.

It was also made into a cult-classic film (not the Bollywood slop, but by Shyam Benegal the kind-of heir to the place Satyajit Ray held in Indian cinema).

Translations for both are published by Penguin Classics, and Oxford, so I'm sure you can find copies relatively easily. Though they are available digitally too on libgen or what have you.

The recent Booker prize winners have also been good I feel, Tomb of Sand, and Heart's Lamp.

But suffers from being more politically inclined. I mean that's the whole deal with quite a bit of Indian literature to some degree, in a socialist country it is difficult for "Art for Art's sake" to naturally come up and become popular. Almost all the Indians writing in English troupe are just borderline commies. I am not one to be too /pol/-brained, but in their works its clear that it is not being written from a genuine place of craft, or passion.

>>24461046
To conclude what I was saying to the first anon, there are no good writers anymore. I mean in the USA amongst the living who can you even think of, Blake Butler, George Saunders, Franzen? even with those 3 it's stretching the definition of the term 'good', same deal in India. And I could safely presume almost everywhere else. C'est la vie.

[Captcha is no joke VYAAS fucking lmao. Vyaas is the mythical poet of the Mahabharata, one of the two major epics of the country. The Indian Iliad. Ramayana being the Indian Odyssey (Ramayana literally means the (home)coming of Rama and is about his return from 14 years of exile to his kingdom]

>>24461089
>>24461103
Yeah thanks for the blog. Will learn Bengali one of these days.
Already saw the Apu trilogy and it was fantastic. Will see more of his work.

>>24461151
>But suffers from being more politically inclined. I mean that's the whole deal with quite a bit of Indian literature to some degree, in a socialist country it is difficult for "Art for Art's sake" to naturally come up and become popular. Almost all the Indians writing in English troupe are just borderline commies. I am not one to be too /pol/-brained, but in their works its clear that it is not being written from a genuine place of craft, or passion.
Couldn't have said it better. These 'Indian' authors are western trained and look at India from their condescending perspective.That's why I feel like learning Indian languages. Feels like that will give me much more liberty to explore real Indian perspectives.
I've heard good things about Vinod Kumar Shukla? Is he really that good?

>>24461151
>The Sun's Seventh Horse
Suraj ka satwa ghora, yes i have heard about it, never watched the movie because of low-quality.

Any other recommendation? Or any list, blogpost or youtuber I can follow!

>>24460510
Aśvaghoṣa

>>24460510
>>24461376
And also Kalidasa

Are there any Indian horror recommendations? Please no meme replies. Song of Kali by Dan Simmons was okay but pretty dull for the most part.

>>24459811
Kushwant Singh

>>24460578
Illiterate retard, the entire reason why Buddhism blew up so much in Asia is because of Indian kings like Ashoka sending missionaries to the entire world. And Hindu gods like Vishnu, Shiva, Shakti, Ganesha all predate Buddha, who himself talks about them in his sermons.

>>24460507
There was no "Bangladesh" before 1947, retard. It was just Bengal, a part of India. Just because the British partitioned Bengal later doesn't automatically make it something different.

This is probably the hardest book in all of indian literature. Even the greatest sages and wise man can barely grasp it's meaning. The great masses of india aren't even aware of it's existence and their greatest minds struggle to even grasp a fraction of it's content.

>>24461447
Taranath Tantrik anthology

>>24461470
There was no "India" before 1947, retard. It was just India, a part of the British Raj. Just because the British partitioned it into two states later doesn't automatically make it something different.

>>24461470
There was no "India" before 1947, retard. It was just a collection of princely states acting on behalf of the crown, a part of the British Raj. Just because the British consolidated it into two states later doesn't automatically make it something different.

>>24461463
Had it been that,east asian would look like poo too.
I believe people in old times at Nepal looked like chinese who ended up migrating east to not get invaded by western barbarians.

>>24460590
That's unironically correct. The vedic religion and some of the Upanishads are pre-buddhist, but "Hinduism" is not.

>>24461520
A bengali audio story connoisseur I assume?

Any recommendations for Tamil lit/poetry?

>>24460507
He isn't from Bangladesh really. Maybe the place he was born in falls in the geographical area called Bangladesh but the man was born in undivided India. India was partitioned and that created two nations and effectively. three geographical regions, the union of India, East Pakistan and West Pakistan. India won the war against Pakistan in 1971 and this victory gave birth to the nation of Bangladesh. The geographical region which was earlier called West Pakistan.

>>24461641
>let me tell you about your country
Read a book you fucking retard.

>>24461827
Start with the Sangam lit.

>>24462175
even in history it's noted that indian subcontinent was divided into different tribes and independent princely states who fought and killed each other to claim the whole territory until the mughals arrived and turned your ancestors into slaves and whores.

>>24462426
You fucking retard, just because they were divided into different kingdoms doesn't change the fact that they identified as people from a single civilization. Morons like you with no real culture or history can't seem to grasp that fact. All those kingdoms weren't waging war on each other randomly. They did it to become a Chakravartin, the supreme emperor of India.

>>24462440
they literally didn't dumbfuck until the brits unified you

>>24459018 (OP)
>Ponniyin Selvan

>Historical fiction epic written in the 50s. This work chronicles the early years of Chola Prince Arunmozhivarnam before he became the famous sea faring emperor Rajaraja I .

Any Tamil bros on /lit/ know a good English translation of this?

>>24462550
nta, but they obviously did

>>24462130
I would say it's fair and correct to call him *bengali*, but not bangladeshi

>>24461724
kek no but a Bengali friend rec'd

I always find it strange how eastern elites have this love-hate relationship with the west. They simultaneously loathe euros because of course you are obligated to as brown intelligentsia, yet it is always them who try the hardest to become ersatz europeans in their own societies. Usually you either loathe something or want to become like something, but never both at the same time.

>>24463339
Not really. The 'elite' love western ideals and society. The rich ones almost definitely have citizenship in a western country. The poorer ones try to imagine they live in a western country by immersing themselves completely in western culture - speaking in English, listening to American songs, eating western food, etc.
The people who hate Euros and Mutts go the complete opposite way. They try to 'decolonize' everything including clothes, culture, some even architecture.
So there's very little overlap between the two.

written by an indian but not about india. ive heard some of his other books are good and are about india but that theyre absolute tomes in prose and i've been on an epic poem/verse novel kick right now. either way i highly recommend it, the verse gets close to pushkin-level and the characters are all great both in themselves and as representations of sf yuppie culture.

None, because I don't respect a people that literally bathes in cow shit.

>>24464858
paki sulloid inbred, go fuck your sister

>>24462625
Unfortunately, the English translations fall short of the story in its original tongue and the pacing is somewhat off in the book versions because Kalki originally published these stories weekly.

https://www.projectmadurai.org/pm_etexts/pdf/pm0278_01.pdf

I think Indian English literature is a scene that's completely been dominated by leftoids for the entirety of its existence. Most good Indian literature is found in its regional languages, like Kalki or Bhyrappa etc, which isn't really for foreign readership.

I think RK Narayan was quite good, but again, foreign audiences just won't understand him.

The best Indian-origin writer is probably VS Naipaul.

>>24464889
Again, more of an Indian thing.

>>24464889
Stop responding to bait retard

>>24464927
He can't help responding to bait and being retarded. Three guesses why.

And Pakistan won't have to worry about the Indian Army any time soon.

>>24464901
Is it as good as it's hyped to be? I saw the movies and thought they were meandering with no real point.

>>24465005
yes, my friend who is not tamil read the english translation he obtained from his uni library and said he couldn't put it down.

i tried getting into indian literature but the prose were too simplistic for me. ive since tried other regional literature like chinese and have been in love ever since. they also have a much longer history of writing.

holy shit. Too many eets in this thread. No wonder this board has been dead for a year. I'm calling ICE.

>>24465178
JEETS*

>>24465101
What books did you read?
Picrel is a good book to start with if you can get it.

>>24464858
>descends from people who created masterpieces like 'two girls one cup'

>>24459018 (OP)
I liked RK Narayan's short stories.

>>24463339
>yet it is always them who try the hardest to become ersatz europeans in their own societies.
Or maybe intellectual elites have always been like that in all societies and you just have a confirmation bias because only the west was heartless enough to spill foreign blood and stand atop stolen land for their own greed and selfishness? Just saying.

Look at the elites from Ancient India and China, they had broadly similar mannerisms to European aristocracy despite predating western European civilization by at least 1000 years.

>>24465838
>because only the west was heartless enough to spill foreign blood
what did he mean by that?
You are implying if your shitskin ancestors didn't build a dominating hegemony like the west ,you wouldn't invade any foreign nations for profit??
even before the west invaded china and india ,your ancestors were killing each other. There isnt a single pacifist empire that survived in history. you either kill or be killed. Geneva convention wasn't a thing like 200 years.
muh heartless ,muh peaceful sovereign society.
I think the Colonialism was the right thing for you people. Atleast your people became literate cuz of this.
https://youtu.be/H1y_0NfhF9c

>>24465878
>typical incel screeching
Not even reading all that bs. No one from China or India ever even thought of going half way around the world and stealing land, genociding natives like cumskin filth did. The only reason your satanic asses are even rich today is because your subhuman ancestors were more evil than any other empire known to civilized world
>"ackshually everyone killed so it's okay if europeans did it on an even bigger scale"

>muh literacy
Lol. China and India had fully developed philosophies and writing sysyems before cumskins knew anything more than mudhuts. All ancient European history outside of Greece and Italy is swamp dwellers larping as Ancient Greeks lol. Spare me your grade school history lesson.

>>24465878
>unironically saving this on his computer

>>24465878
India and China had civilization well before western Europe knew what that word meant. Where was their ploy for world domination in all those years of their history? The Persians and Greeks were the first ones who really showed any ambition for world domination and Alexander is what alt right incels think Imperial Europe was. He was far more considerate and generous than any of his latter day pretenders.

In any case, no one can argue in good faith that any successful civilization was pacifist but Imperial Europe was comfortably the worst offender. Europe didn't need to do a 5th of what they did for them to be called a successful civilization, but they did it nevertheless. If you weren't so utterly blinded by your whiteness, you'd call that supreme evil as well.