Postcolonialism Et Al...

Its raining today. Pouring. But...my old man ain't snoring.

Actually a perfect morning for 'garam naashta' but I had my usual 'firang naashta' - know this sounds like really sad, considering the whole issue of colonisation, decolonisation, mimic men etc, but I doubt if I can ever give up my morning coffee followed by toast and eggs/tomatoes for parathas!! Parathas for lunch I dig, but breakfast spells toast, coffee eggs, tomatoes, maybe an occassional pancake or sausages. 'Garam naashta' is sunday breakfast! OK - I've got a screwed up logic...and I'm totally an 'angrez ki dum' - which is certified by the fact that I'm doing my Masters in English Lit, read Lit written in Eng, speak in Eng, think in Eng and well..let's just say that I'm one of those hybrid products of the post-colonial world.

Speaking of postcolonialism, we are doing postcolonial theory for our New Lit paper. And it is awesome. Ofcourse that's not to say other theories arent... but I find this extremely engrossing. I never really gave this much thought earlier, but since last year Dr.Bharucha and Dr.Veveina have brought to my attention this entirely new arena of theories and discourse. It's a vast field, and highly challenging. We've been doing the theorists for the past 3 weeks -Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Frantz Fanon etc. Groovy stuff, if I may say so!! Infact I've volunteered to do a presentation this Tuesday on Frantz Fanon's "Wretched of the Earth" - Fanon was a Martinique born, psychiatrist who practiced in France. An activist in the Algerian war for Independance, he had Marxist leanings. His books are more of case studies, coming out of his 'real' experiences with the Blacks in France and Algeria and the colonial/postcolonial experiences of the colonised Blacks. Much easier to read than the meta-theorist Bhabha, who gave me a headache, and also profoundly moving and with a poetic quality.

Enough said on the subject...