Land of Lime

There is much to write, for the Land of Lime but also to complete (too) many other ‘long overdue’ writing obligations: book manuscript(s), introductions to edited volumes and most importantly, a paper for the Ron Inden conference. Having spent much of the last two weeks being a ‘weary traveler’, I haven’t met any of my (own) deadlines and need at least, two full days in Regenstein library to do some much needed reference work.

Sepoy gently suggested this afternoon that Salman Khan’s ‘civilizational crime’ ( as TOI so eloquently put it) and the ‘just desserts’ he received deserve Land of Lime’s attention. Salman’s civilizational crimes go beyond shooting a black buck in a sacred forest and listing or commenting on them here wouldn’t be appropriate for an academic blog. Churumuri on the other hand has some entries, which need to be commented upon. In fact, I am seriously thinking about a weekly Churumuri review posting, as a way of engaging Mysore and being part of a virtual katte.

Then there is so much going on in the world, which I could begin to describe with the word finally:
Finally, Bush’s lies finally catching up with his reality.
Finally, the battle over immigration shows signs of some stirring and life over something (anything) in America.
Finally, Bangladesh kicks some butt in test cricket, even if my adopted cricket team ‘Aussies’ are the target.
And finally sex and cricket are being separated. An English league cricket club had to forego its sponsorship deal with a sex shop, and remove the Nice’n'Naughty logo from the shirts. What’s shirts got to do with scoring runs, me wonder with Sepoy, who shared the story with me.

I also have stories of my own, including San Francisco notes to share. Especially, memorabel was a visit to Socialist Action Book Center on Valencia and 14th where Mark, the storekeeper/committed Marxist and Leena, a student/Chavez admirer were involved in a fascinating, heated discussion (with erotic overtones) on Chavez, social change and those nine utopian months in 1917. That transcript would be a great blog posting.

Walked around the the city a little and made some new friends whom I really liked.

But I want to set all my notes aside along with my AAS ‘lowlights’, which can only be shared at the risk of committing professional suicide. Perhaps, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing, given the depressing state of Conferences and in general, of the intellectual market place. Read Sepoy on the dangers of remaining silent or even writing anonymously.

Actually, I want to write about Samsa, the Kannada playwright, whose plays on Mysore history have been among my favorites for over twenty years. But for two weeks now, I have been consumed by his tragic life and have been re-reading all his plays as well as all the published works that I could find in Regenstein library. In particular, I loved my friend Ki Ram Nagaraj’s wonderful play ‘Nigikonda Samsa’, which is a meditation on Samsa’s life and works. Ki Ram weaves the historical (particularly the themes and characters of Samsa’s plays) into Samsa’s life superbly. Sorry, I don’t have a good translation of the title; the phrase is a play on Samsa’s suicide and is suggestive of many meanings, which I will explain in a longer entry. But I liked the play so much, I translated it into English in the last few days, as I waited for planes and trains in many cities. And then on planes and trains. It will probably take me a few more weeks and a lot more work to create a readable version that would be accessible to a non-Kannadiga audience. I do want to keep Ki Ram’s original framework and rewrite some parts of it, and I am hoping Ki Ram would permit me to do some violence to his play. Actually, I am hoping he would work with me to create an English play.

Working on this play has been really fun and has kept me sane. Expect an entry on Samsa within the next couple of days.