Ah… you’ve made me nostalgic now. I remember reading that thing. I was young and naive at that time. I had the silly misconception that when people write something, it is because they want the whole thing to make sense and not just make individual sentences sound nice. Reading this essay made me lose my innocence. I still haven’t recovered.

Ravi, I am sorry for stirring up ghosts from the past - it just had to be done ;)

Don’t you feel better now that I have even drafted you for the Blog Mela?

slightly OT:

I’ve been reading your site regularly for over two years now and have gottent to ‘know’ the regulars like Sameer and Madman, etc from their comments. What is interesting is that I would not have been able to pick out their politics in the way you have displayed them. Which shows, I think, that either I am a complete idiot (now, now, calm down commenters, it’s not nice to make fun of the simple) or that people are complicated and don’t fit neatly into right/left stereotypes. Sometimes to know what someone thinks, you have to actually ask them instead of assuming that you know.

Ok, back on topic - did anyone actually like that God of Small Things book? I keep meaning to buy and read it but everyone I know didn’t care for it and the first few paragraphs just don’t do anything for me so I just keep putting the book back on the shelf. And also, I just couldn’t give a dam* what she thinks. The point of view of one slightly pretty writer (and would she have as much attention is she wasn’t attractive?) means absolutely nothing to me. Who cares?

MD, I agree with you about people not fitting stereotypes. Sameer and I especially have had many pretty heated arguments about the Iraq war and you can see Yaz and I didn’t exactly agree over it either. There are a lot of things most of us agree on and a lot more we all disagree on. I still feel enriched for knowing them because they have actually offered up original arguments and logic in debate instead of flowery prose. I have genuinely felt an exchange of ideas instead each person just waiting for the other to shut up so they can start talking. I have felt the same way with you and a lot of others, which is why I keep my comments open :)

cant agree more abt stereotypes and people.. and the generally sound principle of staying away from people who want the world and everybody in it to conform to their ideas and stereotypes.

Having said that, what about people in more public positions like say, journalists or “public intellectuals”, like say AR ? At one level, they are human and have all the richness of character that comes with it. So AR may be a mother, a lover and so on. On the other hand, they lead fairly public lives, and forming an opinion about them from their public remarks/articles/activism seems reasonable. That appears to be the only relevant aspect of their personalities.

I am not sure which one is correct, but feel very biased towards the latter pov.

Did you read Jagdish Bhagwati’s commentary on Arundhati Roy? It’s on my blog as well.

I loved it when he says this her conclusions are far more obvious than her arguments and that makes it impossible to function I.e. her arguments are worthless. She makes her conclusions and then tries to string together whatever she gets to justify those conclusions.

Reminds me of Sherlock Holmes’s famous advice to Dr. Watson: If the facts disagree with your theory, discard the theory, not the facts.

What makes it hard at times is when her conclusions match mine. For example, I too am against the Narmada dam, for a completely different reason. I don’t think the govt. has the right to steal land for whatever purpose. The height of the dam, etc does not matter.

And yes, it is tiresome to keep on repeating the same stuff to AR’s legion of fans who drool over her every word. Hats off Shanti for your diligence!

As for me, I think a far better method would be to write the novel on India, win a Booker and then go on worldwide TV screens slamming AR. What say you?

And it just struck me that Arundhati Roy shares the same initials as one of my all time favourite authors, Ayn Rand.

I don’t think Ayn aunty or I will ever be able to live that down! :mad:

Hi there: First off, thanks for the link! :-)

I just noticed the Arundhati Roy discussion and couldn’t help giving in my two cents. Quite honestly, I cannot fathom why people would want to read what she writes. She does not even argue rationally, and just makes her choices and justifies them in ways she sees fit. I’ve seen highschool kids with better debating capabilities.

And secondly, the folks who argue for all the tree-hugging stuff are quite amusing - they sit in the comfort of their homes and protest about the construction of a dam in some part of the world, which would actually bring in resources and result in some serious development for the people living there. I wonder if Arundhati Roy would be ready to live wearing sheepskins and in an African jungle without any urban amenities whatsoever. Oh wait, didn’t Arundhati Roy and her husband live illegally in a house built on land reserved for forests? So much for her protests and values.

I’m all for taking care of nature, but is it fair for you to defend nature at the cost of potential progress to thousands of people? Especially when you’re being quite hypocritical about the whole thing? Building a dam in a place could bring in power, jobs, better livelihood and create a new way of life for those people. Tomorrow, that may generate enough money for those very people to take better care of their natural environments. It would create more opportunities and they would have better education, which is a far better way of helping those people. Rather than do that, you’re sentencing them to living a life which you think is right just because you want to impose your values on them, for whatever reason.

And yet, people like her get accolades and have a fan-following who fawn upon her as if she’s the next coming of Christ.

And I must add this — that write-up was published by Guardian, an absolutely pro-left liberal publication which saw racism in Tolkien’s works, of all things. Is it so surprising? With the left being as ridiculous as it is today, people still wonder why Bush won this election :)

uspeed, your aforementioned public personalities seem to get pretty predictable after a while so you can actually see their responses to events coming from miles away.

Yaz, I have a feeling the lady picks out the most fashionable causes of the day - chooses what could play well with her crowd and then runs with it without wondering for a minute why she is saying whatever she is saying. I think it is enough for her that it gets enough accolades and cheers among her crowd.

Karthik, you will note that her land-grabbing saga has already been pointed out in one of the comments but her supporters as usual ignored that bit and moved on to other points.

What really bothered me about the previous thread was that all the so-called supporters of Iraqi resistance couldn’t muster one vague “whoever did this to Margaret Hassan was a horrible person” while ostensibly shedding tears for humanity itself.

Karthik, as long as people immerse themselves in the Guardian(far-left) culture and emerge only to educate us ignorants occasionally, I am afraid they are lost to the world and they have lost the world.

Don’t brand me as a democrat :( I like some policies of both parties, but not everything about it. So you can say I am a confused voter - also known as independent.

Fixed it, JK :)

Admit it, Shanti. You keep returning to this Roy thing for the same reason that magazines like Outlook peddle softporn: it sells. It works wonders for your hit count. Right? Be honest.
:tongue3:

LOL, RR - I wish it did! My actual excuse is that it is so easy to expose this woman’s phoniness, I do it when I am too lazy to blog about real stuff ;)

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