Life-en-treats

In 2017, I was a panelist at a day-long symposium on Comparative Literature in the 21st century at Jain University in Bangalore . I was glad to share space with Ipshita Chanda and E V Ramakrishnan, both scholars I had met in different conferences over the course of the decade I spent as an academic in India. Chanda is now at EFLU, the place where I did my Masters. And EVR is a star in the field of Comparative Literature. These scholars, along with the illustrious and industrious Mythili Rao made for wonderful intellectual company. My own presentation was on Digital Humanities. The question-answer session was quite charged and one of the questions I fielded was on Rupi Kaur. I had not read her at that point of time but had read the plagiarism controversy she had gotten herself into. One of the students asked us about how we viewed Rupi Kaur who writes beautifully but was accused of plagiarism. My answer was 1) that in the west, things are very straightforward and unlike in India, the...

In June, this year, I had the wonderful opportunity to speak at the Women's Studies Department, Bangalore University, thanks to my friend, Sudeshna Mukherjee. Sudeshna has been there for many years now, is a seasoned scholar, and steers the department beautifully. I spoke about my own research and how I had made some unconventional choices, quite fearlessly, stated what my worries were, and what prices I had paid and so on. I encouraged the students to list these even as they were doing their MA or PhDs. To know what is at stake before taking important decisions about one's work is definitively empowering. It was an interesting afternoon session, with students hailing from LSE to nearby villages. They had interesting questions for me on ideology, interpretation and feminism. I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Sudeshna--her insights into classroom dynamics, recruitment issues nowadays that plagues the Social Sciences and Humanities, and the surprises teaching Women...

California is a car country. Remember that Kannada film song, "Car car car car, elnodi car." (Car everywhere!). One cannot step out to fetch milk from a store without a car! So I have my car and its an absolute necessity. But just that other day, the headlight stopped working and I had to take an UBER. My first in the 6 and half years that I have been in the US. My fellow pooler was shocked that this was my first ride; he chuckled, said wow and really and hmm. My two drivers to and fro were so so so cool. It was like they were competing in a kindness project. 1.  I had to get somewhere by 9 am so I was wrong in choosing a Pool ride, but I somehow got confused and had chosen it. The driver didn't pick another ride just so I could get to my destination in time. 2. Back home, driver asks me if I need chilled water (it was a super hot day) and chips that are in the back. Makes pleasant conversation. Hoo! Bowled over.  

In the spate of buying a new home in the US, and renovating and decorating it,  I have heard one phrase all too often, consistently, without fail, over the course of the last five years. No, its not to do with HGTV, Magnolia Homes and flipping or flopping! Do not take your guess in that direction at all! Wherever we went as a couple and asked questions about a certain a product or plan, we were given detailed descriptions and instructions, which would all finally end in the expert saying: "let your wife choose." "Go for what she likes." "She is the better half." "She knows all." "Happy wife, happy life!" I would giggle or chuckle, my husband would laugh big and we would leave, only to meet another person concluding their enlightening remarks on home construction, decor, kitchen design, bathroom vanities and the like with, well, you know what. I would giggle so as to not wholly embarrass the person who thought he was cracking a joke...

Anthropology Review Database is not up on the web anymore. It was a free and open website hosted by the University of Buffalo with thousands of reviews in the field of Anthropology and related disciplines. It does not look like a maintenance issue and could be a funding issue. And that is not good at all! Well, this has been the general trend in the Social Sciences and Humanities for quite some time now. I do hope it gets back online! I wrote two book reviews and three film reviews for ARD and felt kind of attached to that space. It was a place I would go to when I had run out of things to write about academically.    

My last post on the blog was in 2015. And hey, that's not so long ago! Yes, but I was only re-posting writing published elsewhere. So, I suppose, it does not count. Here is a quick update on what I have been doing since then and a bit before. I moved to the USA in 2012 and since then have written journal articles and book chapters, which is a change from my earlier stints at freelance writing, book reviews and editing. I attended conferences and edited a couple of books and also translated some fiction. I also wrote some encyclopedia articles, opinion pieces, features and started translating Akka Mahadevi's Yoganaga Trividhi . Some vachana translations were also published in Indian Literature . I now want to do more freelance writing and take it really seriously. A small change in direction? Well, kind of. But I am still an academic essentially! Here are some links: http://www.womensweb.in/2017/08/wives-on-h4-visa-deal-with-depression-dependency-causes/ http://jagger...

In 2013, I translated Kannada writer, L C Sumithra's short story, Kanivemane.com. We sent it to the Sahitya Akademi journal, Indian Literature and forgot about it, for the most part. Indian Literature had published an earlier story I had translated by Sumithra, "U-Cut," so somehow we got placid, I suppose. Once a year, I would think of the story, its pending status and ask about it when wishing Sumithra: Happy New Year! Then I woke up again earlier this year and thought: enough waiting now. I realized there was  Out of Print , a magazine I knew about since I first wrote a story on Lekhana, a literary festival in Bangalore that launched in 2012. Out of Print is run by the charming writer, Indira Chandrasekhar who received the story, wrote super-prompt replies and finally chose to publish it! So yay, the story is published. I was thoroughly impressed by Chandrasekhar's keen eye and was happy to work with her. Out of Print is dedicated to the short story form an...

Nearly a decade ago, sitting in a cosy little apartment in France, I started this blog. I am now in San Diego, USA, another part of the world, far from India, where I was born and raised, and finally, I reviving this blog! What a journey it has been from 2006 to 2018! I first started the blog to get myself into the writing habit; I was then doing my PhD. I didn't share it with anyone and it was meant for just me. Blogs are generally an anathema for academics. I am not sure any of my peers have one. So the idea of a blog is something that is still new to me. And then, in the last decade, I got busy writing for PhD, finishing it, getting married, moving continents, buying a home and having a little one and the blog fell to ruins. Occasional posts on Facebook replaced my blog posts! But here I am and hoping to stay on and make Life-en-treats public! P.S. No idea why I called the blog Life Entreats anymore. Hah! Happens guys, I am preempting midlife. But yes, life has been ent...

The women in my life are a strange lot. They are particularly detached towards everything. A question like "What do you like?" never begets answers. An avid aversion to TV and Movies. Always saying: kanraavi, ayyo namma kathene enu nododu. Oh such a limited notion of art! Or no time for it rather! Practitioners of supreme indifference, they seem to have touched the logical limit of ethicality, oppression or self-reliance. And yet they are caring enough to pluck flowers with fingers so as to not hurt them... not nails as I would. (Call them pre-modern or less-fashionable). ...but they have got some things right. They harbour no illusions about life...no bollywood movie can make them see life differently from the closeness and accuracy with which they perceive it, nay know it! Like the Goddess Vac who said, from me is all, the women in my life sustain their families in a huge huge way. "Sometimes I think women are born for just that"...said my friend recently...

A few weekends ago we went to attend a lecture by a Swami of the Chinmayananda Mission in San Diego. In the interesting part of his lecture he gave some tips to a disciplined life. It was quite nice and I wrote them down. Here they are for another day when I might need to feel inspired again. Remember, J for Jokes! A-Turn attention inward B-Breathing C-Concentrate D-Diet E-Exercise F-Flexibility G-Goal H-Healing I-Inspiration J-Jokes K-Knowledge (Spiritual) L-Love selflessly M-Meditation N-Nature watching O-Observation thoughts & Feelings P-Prayer Q-Quietude R-? S-? T-Time-management U-Understanding V-Values (Read Scriptures) W-Watchful walking X-Devalue the causes of stress Y-Yoga Z-Zestful living Among some other things, we were told that the word for dictionary in Sanskrit, shabdakosha, literally means "repository of sounds." It is not a repository of words as we tend to think. That means a lot to the researcher of Hinduism in me.     ...

With the buzz for anti-ageing products, have  Indian women   succumbed to the pressure of looking young? Is embracing your age out of fashion? By Sushumna Kannan The reach and influence of the anti-aging research-industry is enormous. It extends to preoccupations with immortality and an end to aging altogether. Promises range from “turn back the clock,” “look upto 10 years younger” to “youthful skin in 5 minutes” or “30 seconds” even. Websites that explain their technology accompanied by “it changed my life” testimonials are now on the rise. We are bombarded with products to use from our teen years itself and the side-effects debate seems to have been overpowered.  A common view is that using anti-aging products is a woman’s preference. For instance, Sarada Balaji, Fulbright scholar and Professor of English at Tirupati says, “ Women use anti-aging stuff since they are themselves inclined to look young. Moreover, they are easily influenced when they see other women ...

A small interview/profile appeared in the New Indian Express (August 6th 2013). In the middle, a large photo of me! The piece has some bad editing that I wish wasn't there! Anyway... Link to article  

EPW, Vol - XLVIII No. 32, August 10, 2013  Empire, Media and the Autonomous Woman:A Feminist Critique of Postcolonial Thought by Esha Niyogi De (New Delhi: Oxford University Press), 2011; pp xxvii + 246, Rs 745. Sushumna Kannan ( sushumnaa@gmail.com ) is affiliated to the San Diego State University, US and Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, India. A host of popular as well as scholarly discourses today endorse some or the other version of liberalism. Even as most of us are caught quite unescapably in the spectrum of tradition and modernity, judging and being judged, what we are primarily debating it seems, is simply,  our  version of liberalism. And it would not be wrong to say that liberalism in numerous discourses today is seen as a kind of autonomy. It is in this context that the book under review draws our attention to indigenous works (literature) located in the colonial period and cultural works (dance-drama, films) produced by activist-thinkers in ...

Love has many faces is a refreshing set of poems fit to be read on a Sunday afternoon in your cane swing. If you are wondering what love and marriage could be like or want to fall back in love with your spouse, then you need to read the book you are holding in your hands. Or, if you happen to be a person with a penchant for following up on relationship-talk from everywhere, then too Love has many faces will engage and enchant you. The 50 and odd poems in this collection are mostly about relationships, the everyday and a woman’s experience of these two. The poems on relationships are sweetly romantic and filial in nature. And the light-heartedness of all the poems makes one wonder if the age of irony in literary writing is indeed over. There is a sense of freedom sought out even within circumstances that are neither adventurous nor outdoors. The walls of the house, doors and windows open up and alert us to the many nuances of experience we may have missed in our mundane moods. Th...