My book Kashmir’s Necropolis; Literary, Cultural and Visual Texts was reviewed at South Asian Review journal yesterday. So very grateful for a careful and meticulous review.
Indian couple I met at a grocery store—
They: Nice to meet you. We are new around. My husband has an IT job at X and I am a realtor.
I: I am a prof n teach at the Univ.
They: What subject?
Me: English, literature and cultural studies.
They: oh, why?
(With a dismal look)
Fakirchand Bookstore in Khan Market, Delhi India. Met the grand son of the owner who founded the store in Peshawar (Pakistan) in 1931 and then reestablished it in postPartioned india, in Delhi 1951. Bought a collection of narratives on Partition that narrates that story!
Of all the subversive Diwali and Kali puja images, this is my fav. Goddess Kali's feet squashing a tube of "Fair and Lovely" popular Indian skin lightening cream and exclaiming "Boye geche" in Bangla which I reckon has more bite than "Who cares". Loving it!
#kalipuja2022
Teaching a course on Horror and Hauntings in South Asia and perhaps it is only fitting that I am getting papers that have my name written as Prof. Ghost 🤷🏽♀️
This has been an un-normative journey, but dreams come true. I will be joining Univ of Central Florida as Asst Professor for South Asian lit in the English Department in Fall 2022. Thank you for an incredible solidarity from colleagues and friends that I am eternally grateful for
Kareena Kapoor Khan introduces herself as KKK on a radio show she has recently started in India. Has history taken a farcical plunge and died along the way for an ilk of Indian celebrities? Shudder. Understatement.
My book is out soon. I am extremely indebted to scholars I learned from and for the support of people in this journey. For the people of Kashmir. LexingtonBooks, Rowman & Littlefield.
Call for papers: "Rethinking South Asia: Postcoloniality & Decolonial Frames and Praxis" Annual South Asian Conference Jan 18-19, 2025 which I am excited to co-organize with my dear colleagues
@ArnabDuttaRoy1
and
@dasrajorshi
. Deadline is September 1st.
Whatever happens here,
@GhoshAmitav
once liked my post and due to
@Twitter
amplifications and solidarity my parents got oxygen in India and survived the Delta variant in 2021.
My parents sent me Alana Hunt’s Cups of Nun Chai in a package from India. The courier co called frm the airport to say it is banned to send this book out!!! And they have taken the book from with other things that the package contains. The state will tell me what I should read?!
So very excited to teach this new course first time this summer, and a longer slightly more theoretical one in fall on horror and postcolonial South Asia. We would be studying some fascinating writers/filmmakers
from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh
I wrote this essay as a tribute to people who came together and saved my parents from dying of the Delta variant. The everyday was far more horrific and extraordinary than what I could depict. Do read. via
@thepunchmag
"While Hindi and English are called “Indian languages” in the country, Tamil is referred to as a “regional language”, that denotes an inferior status." Indian novel about caste becomes first Tamil work longlisted for International Booker prize
I sent an email saying,
@My
area of research is postcolonial tiramisu” (autocorrect somehow turned Literature to that). Please tell me I will still get accepted to the conference 😳
I have to say it’s quite the shocker to be back in Sweden in a full blown pandemic, after 4 million dead worldwide and I almost lost my parents to it. Sitting in train, only 1 masked; nervous as some1 coughing and sneezing and no one in mask or bothered. I fail to understand...
Orlando friends, close to UCF, can anyone help me find a shared room for a friend who arrived from Pakistan to do a PhD but lost everything in the Hurricane floods? Her apt is waist deep in water and she has lost everything. Please can anyone help find leads 🙏🏽
@christiwhittem
:) thanks for asking: I said, I am going to be teacherly here and ask the need for that "why". Let us question where that why comes from-- and I laughed.
I don’t know who wants to hear this but: if you live and work in a country that is not your “own”, you may love the place AND retain a voice and NOT agree with everything and all things happening that reek of othering, xenophobia or scientific lunacy.
“Chule mein dalo shaadi, independent bano!” 🔥🔥🔥
Ismat Chughtai (1915-1991)
Epic Urdu feminist writer.
Footage from the Prasar Bharati Archives. Thanks to thesingingsingh for sharing this on Instagram. 🙌🏾
“Reflecting on Said’s life, in short, is not only a chance to celebrate groundbreaking achievements. It is also an invitation to recognize, soberly, some of our era’s heartbreaking misfortunes.”
The Lost Worlds of Edward Said Follow
@newrepublic
Reunited with parents today, 3 years after the pandemic; almost lost them in 2021 during Delta Covid's relentless phase in India. Shocked to see them so frail, father 30 pounds less, weak with long covid. Ma enduring in courage. Just grateful to have them around me today.
Re reading Tagore’s Gora for class and damn, some of the lines are remarkably prescient about the present time: extreme Hinduism, caste divisions, society reform and gender politics! How far ahead of his times was the man.
Oh hello: folks retweeting my Calcutta house pic and saying I’m engaging in poverty porn, just FYI: it’s my home I took a photo of. Representation is always important, and I find my home beautiful. 😺
Several years ago I made this book cover painting. Announcing to twitterverse, if any of you are interested in book covers do tell me. I would love to do some cover art during summer months. (I don't ask for money for the covers, just credit!)
The GhostPeppers are back. English prof band, we sing fusion in Bengali, Hindi, Urdu and Tagore songs. Many things lined up in the coming months, including an original and video release.
“Not only do these publishers not pay us for our work; they then sell access to these journals to the very same universities and institutions that fund the research and editorial labour in the first place.”
In 2018, Toba Tek Singh was made into a short film starring Pankaj Kapur. Does anyone have any info on where to see this (in a legit way?) Any info on the film version of this would be very useful! Thanks
My family reminded me I used to write letters in Bengali. This is how I wrote Bangla, in that delightful, cursive font. To those who sacrificed their lives for their mother tongue, In solidarity.
#InternationalMotherLanguageDay
Important to remember that the Bangladeshi students are not protesting against the reservations for the minorities and other indigenous people in the system.
what reactionary and casteist indians are intentionally missing out on is that Bangladeshi students are protesting for the removal of quotas for kins of freedom fighters (great-grandchildren), NOT the affirmative action already in place for ethnic minorities and disabled people.
The excruciating heat, the tourist traps, the dizzy humidity all was worth it in front of this spectacular and ethereal vision. Was 8 years old the first time I visited with parents and then today. I’ll remember this sight unfolding in front of me.
So very honored to have presented a talk for the 1st time in Calcutta on a new project I am working on: Chitmahals, borderlands and Bengali literature. ILSR Institute of Language Studies and Research, Govt of Education, W. Bengal. The welcome n dialogue were just unbelievable .
@christiwhittem
hahaha, it didn't go on much after that. I was asked where I lived around, which to me was a question trying to discern class, context, status et al. So I gave a vague answer saying very close and said polite goodbyes.
Goodbye India, leaving today with a heavy heart. I am humbled with the incredible scholarship that is happening, met new scholars, connected with some unexpected people and excited for new pathways to come. So long… till I see you again, soon! ♥️
Had the honor of singing Tagore song, “Purano Shei diner kotha” at the Bangladesh
#InternationalMotherLanguageDay
celebration at UCF campus. Met with an incredibly talented group of Bangladeshi students and diaspora artists. Thanks to UCF for this wonderful and important event.
People in india suffering from Covid, who are making it during this time, it is *only* because of the colossal effort people have generated here and the kindness and generosity of people coming together. Speechless with people’s selflessness during this time.
As I go to class to teach postcolonial theory to students, I was reminded of this interview with
@GKBhambra
from my postdoc years in Sweden. On Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies: An Interview with Gurminder K Bhambra — by Amrita Ghosh via
@InverseJournal
Does it take a bit too much of sensitivity from person at a lamp store to treat me in the same way, as the Swedish person with me? Glum faced, no thanks, not a word spoken to hello, thanks so much, hejdå instantly to the next in turn Swedish customer. The difference was stark.
Hivemind, if you had to choose some anti colonial novels and short stories from South Asia, what would be your pick? Looking for less obvious texts. Have Tagore, Ahmed Ali in mind.
Thank you, Radical Books Collective
@WARSCAPES
This is one book I have been waiting to read by Abul Bashar, translated from the Bengali- a rich and complex collection on precarious lives of Muslim communities, and how mythologies and the land get absorbed into daily lives.
So excited to be a part of Mennello Museum Orlando Speaker Series and talk about Partition's Visual cultures and looking back at 75 years. Aug 25th, 6 pm. Orlando
@MennelloMuseum
#75yearsPartition
I am excited to join Brooklyn Institute of Social Research
@BklynInstitute
as Associate Faculty and teach a course in September (this is NY time, but EU and South Asia time zones and dates possible)
For the first time in my life I made Diwali sweets by myself and my transatlantic family is not there to share. Here’s some coconut laddu and pistachio barfis. Sharing with my neighbor. Happy Diwali folks. 🪔
My teenage son texted me this morning about Audre Lorde and her definition of self care and asked a question about resistance. He is presenting in class today on the self care movement gone wrong, and citing
@bhakti_shringa
‘s edited series-
#DecolonizeSelfCare
! So exciting!
What a joke this has been for last 3 years in Sweden! More death ratio than most countries, people with long covid, children not vaccinated, masking is a hoax, and it’s Corona nationalism time! “We followed science”
Happiest day that I must mention beyond all the social media shake ups. Submitted book order for fall course: South Asian literature--Colonialism and Conflict Zones. So very excited!! Everything I ever wanted to teach is happening. so grateful.
Contributing first time to the
#InternationalPoetryCircle
organized by the wonderful
@TaraSkurtu
. One of my fav poems by Mary Oliver, In BlackWater Woods. This is dedicated to Marx.
Writing a chapter on race and Bollywood and just mindboggled with the disturbing trajectory of anti blackness in post-independent Indian Hindi film industry from the 50s to the present time. Colonial legacies form only 1 part of the systemic structures of inclusion and exclusion.
Seeing posts and messages for saving Bengal, specifying ONE bengal, all of it, beyond divides. Tugged at my heart. My grandfather who died at 103 still nostalgic for East Bengal, would have been happy today despite the crisis.
#SaveBengal
I hope no one will stop me from teaching in a mask in a classroom of thirty students during a pandemic even if the state has decided the pandemic is over!
3 weeks ago, 4 of us did a
@sasnet
panel on doing some inner work on racism in the indian diaspora and Indian cultural industries.
@fdu_press
has sent us a contract today for a polemic book on Imagining Imperial Formations: India’s Culture Industries, by us. Coming soon in 2021
“I don’t think we can afford the luxury of pessimism... when I saw those young people out in the streets in the pandemic, with their masks on, spaced apart, announcing to the world that racism is a bad thing, it was inspiring and uplifting”
@TBlackford3
I am deeply sad after your posts. I have a son and I cannot even understand what to say. Please know we are thinking of you. You are an amazingly strong person
This is important for all of us, to read, to reflect and to envision what kind of a nation we want for us. Indian Muslims are silent over Tabrez Ansari because of Muhammad Ali Jinnah | ThePrint via
@ThePrintIndia
What freedom of expression rights is this that allows burning of Quran in Sweden? I really don’t get it. At the cost of being trolled again and be told “leave if you don’t like it” I will say it: this is no freedom of expression! It’s hatred.
“Because of their grudging inclusion in professional and academic spaces, Adivasis and Dalits face silent social exclusion. Since the present atmosphere breeds politics of hate, an overt articulation of caste-based discrimination has become rampant.”
"Kolkata is the birthplace of Indian Chinese food, which traces back to Hakka Chinese traders who settled in the city in the late 1700s, when it was the capital of the British empire in India."
I am getting trolled for critiquing the maskless policy of Sweden, so I have been blocking people and for the time being protecting my tweets. This is outrageous but also goes to show the lunacy around Covid “scientific truths”
@drmousumi
‘s family in Calcutta sent this video of the cyclone. Calcutta has lost electricity in many parts of the city and I cannot even imagine where the people in not so sheltered places have taken cover during a pandemic. 2020 need some respite.
#AmphanSuperCyclone
I'm reminded of something funny that I need to share. Few years ago I tried surprising my parents by turning at the door after flying internationally on a long flight. I rang the bell, mom opened the door n I expected crying. She uttered: "Hello, you look like my daughter"! 🙃
The book cover is here!! So excited to see this in our hands soon. The cover sketch was done by British born artist with roots in Nigeria and India, Soniya Amrit Patel
A grad student new to postcolonial theory wrote to me: “this week’s readings and your lecture really shed light on many things for me. It has literally impacted how I view myself and the world. For the first time I have a lens through which I see things”