As for the issue of educated women and emotional mess, I would have to agree with Maryanne that this is a rather universal pre-feminism construct. What might make the Indian instance slightly more taboo, especially in the case of divorced women, is a society where the single female is rarely ‘safe’ (physically and socially) without a man.

***

Perhaps it is so that all languages are, finally, foreign languages, alien to our animal being. But in a way that is, precisely, inarticulate, inarticulable, English does not feel to me like a resting place, a home. It just happens to be a language over whose resources I have achieved some mastery.

My case can certainly not be unique. Among middle-class Indians, for example, there must be many who have done their schooling in English, who routinely speak English in the workplace and at home (throwing in the odd local locution for colouring), who command other languages only imperfectly, yet who, as they listen to themselves speak or as they read what they have written, have the uneasy feeling that there is something false going on. (p 157)

***

Like C. says, I don’t think this is an uncommon experience, or unique to middle-class Indians; today’s world’s full of migrants who have to operate in second languages. I don’t see where these judgments about Indians writing in English are coming from. It sounds so mid-20th century… are people still saying these things? Being conscious about your English usage as an Indian (for example) is more a subjective feeling, isn’t it, of alienation? Maybe it’s embedded in bureaucracy though – e.g. IELTS tests, discriminatory immigration policies & workplace practices?

I think a separate issue to Indians and English is the label “difficult daughter”, which does sound oppressive, and like a man’s (a father’s) judgment – sexist, basically.

I agree with you that people should be able to use language any way they like. (Even if I can’t stand Americanisms like ‘go figure’ or Internet Americanisms like ‘ftw’ – I put that down to my linguistic snobbery, not a flaw in their language usage)…

By what standard are we judging ‘English’? Each time I travel to S Asia (Pakistan) I am struck by the language still current there that has disappeared from say, Australian English. I find S Asian English to be far richer than most other versions of English (and I was stunned to find my nephew actually parsing sentences in high school.)

MK mentions that current Indian English authors are now using local idiom. Yes of course, because Indian English is their language and they may use it as they see fit! As it best suits their experience of their world.

Which draws me to the thing I saw underlying this whole discussion that perhaps rests with an old remnant of lingering colonialism (English as Other) and pre-feminism which entertains the idea that educated women are also ‘Other’ and therefore prone to being ‘emotionally messed up’.

Educated Indian women writing in English are writing in their own speech and they’re no more messed up than any woman in any part of the world who is educated and being compared to men. In calling the book ‘Difficult Daughters’, you have hit on the fact that from the point of view of men (and women dependent on them in a traditional family hierarchy) girls who think for themselves are ‘difficult.’ I know, I’m a difficult daughter.

P.S.

Anita Desai deserved the Man Booker for ‘Clear Light of Day.’ And Arundhati Roy gave us one of the most beautiful books ever – not least for having created a character who chooses to remain mute. So many women have been mute for so long. Let them speak now.

As for Kiran Desai, I didn’t enjoy “The Inheritance of Loss” as much as I do her mother Anita Desai’s work. Highly recommend ‘Fasting, Feasting’.

I particularly enjoyed your introductory reflections on the I/P Partition and your linking it to partitions within families, around the so called “difficult daughters”. I wanted MK to say more after this – “I wanted to explore why it is with educated women that their emotional lives are so messed up” – which seems a huge and general observation to let hanging, but I guess the elaboration of that’s in her novel?

By the way would you recommend Kiran Desai’s “The Inheritance of Loss”? I gave it as a birthday present a few months ago, without having read it. Maybe I should ask for it back…