Gentle Readers,
I am sorry, but I have been drowning in writing deadlines, some of which will trickle into consciousness here over the next year or so and I will delightfully point to this period of non-activity (seeming). In the meantime, some announcements:
A. I AM GOING TO CAIRO!!!. I will be there from Dec 4 thru Dec 16th – hanging out at the AUC – giving a public talk on Monday, the 14th at the Oriental Hall (!!). Everyone I know in Cairo must meet up. Use the comments below or email me etc.
1. Historian Vinay Lal (am a big fan!) has a book coming out this month that I really want (HINT to my Indian conspirators!), Deewaar: The Footpath, the City and the Angry Young Man. He has linked to it, and given us a taste of it, here.
2. Vinay Lal was recently in Berlin for a conference called “What’s Next: Postcolonialism?” or “Who got Next? Postcolonialism” or “Postcolonialism: What’s next?”. I am not entirely sure how that peach was sliced. The good news is that it has prompted Lal to embark on a (already) substantial engagement with postcolonial thought in a series, The Politics of Culture and Knowledge after Postcolonialism: Nine Theses (and a Prologue). You can read Thesis One and Two. Please await the remaindering or start the discussion now! Preferably the now!
3. There are some guest posts in the pipeline – they will come next week.
4. As Aaron puts it, “the internet decid[ed] to stage woodstock at my blog“. Go read. Seriously.
SJN December 2, 2010 at 8:06 am
Thanks for the Deewaar book heads-up! Fave Hindi film of all time, and by far the best news of 2010 (which is also my comment on 2010).
I look forward to the new extreme form of live-tweeting that you will pioneer whilst contemplating topics philological. Will there be video/podcast of your Dec.14 public talk? Please let us know.
C M Naim December 2, 2010 at 9:54 am
Vinay Lal’s book, judging from the excerpt, should be an excellent read. I wonder if he was able to watch two much earlier films by Zia Sarhadi: Hum Log and Footpath. The first had a hugely cynical Balraj Sahni, and introduced a teenage Nutan, while the other had Dilip Kumar as the first angry man of the Bombay footpath. Neither, of course, was as ‘red hot’ as the latter Angry films. But the first’s dialogs were very popular at one time, and both had excellent music.
Are these films available now in any form? I’d love to see them again. Zia Sarhadi, I think, moved to Pakistan, but didn’t do much work there. He certainly deserves a long article.
sepoy December 2, 2010 at 10:02 am
Naim Sahib: Yes! Footpath has one of my favorite songs: Sham-e Gham ki Kasam, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccxlh1hkc5M
On Zia Sarhady, there is a column by Khalid Hasan that tells the usually sad story of that first (red) generation of Pakistanis: http://www.khalidhasan.net/2008/09/26/remembering-zia-sarhady/
sepoy December 2, 2010 at 10:32 am
Also, the movie Zia Sarhady wrote on the Partition in 1967 is available on Youtube in parts:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12Ngi7lj8wY
Qalandar December 2, 2010 at 2:50 pm
whoa, thanks for the head’s up on the Vinay Lal book!