Home Products

Private texts, public contexts

When I published my novel Home Products, back in 2007 in India, my desire was to share with readers in my homeland a work of art that didn’t seem to have pasted on its cover the label “For Export Only.” I wanted a shuddha desi romance. The title had come to me by chance when I was reading a piece of writing by Mark Twain, and I borrowed the passage for one of the book’s epigraphs:

I had met and interviewed the actor Manoj Bajpayee (both in the US and in India) and decided to tell the story of Bihari lives—a story of provincial ambition, crime, desire—by surrounding the figure of an actor with other characters. In writing the novel I felt very strongly that we had moved far away from the debates that had marked (marred) my younger years in Patna and Delhi, debates about Indians writing in English. Instead, we could do whatever we wanted with the language at hand. This is what artistic independence meant. I took unabashed delight in inserting a Bhojpuri song, or essays on trains, or a discussion about Virender Sehwag, also Lalu Yadav, reportage about Bihari security staff and Bihari sex workers in Mumbai, and a film director who resembled Mahesh Bhatt. A friend who read the novel said that it read as if it had been written in Hindi (I thought that was a lovely compliment) and then I was pleased when the book was published in Hindi translation by Raj Kamal Prakashan.

I’m telling you all this because there are specific contexts from which books arise and one of the contexts through which my latest book My Beloved Life emerged was that of Subaltern Studies. I discuss this history on the History Workshop Podcast which aired recently. Last evening, I heard the podcast and, even if I say so myself, I enjoyed the discussion very much. I had put on headphones and while listening to the podcast I sipped lemon tea (sweetened with a dash of honey) and leafed through a book on contemporary Indian painting. An example of what I saw was this glorious work by Akbar Padamsee:

P.S. I have put many of the magazines I had written about in my last SubStack at the Vassar College gym. Take a copy if you are here on campus! See the photo below to get a sense of what awaits you. However, be forewarned that you will find certain pieces missing from three or four of the issues. For instance, this piece by Yiyun Li from the August, 2022 issue of Harper’s: