A dialogue between Indian and Danish writers in Copenhagen

Three Indian writers met and dialogued with three Danish writers last Monday, Sept. 24, in Copenhagen, in a program titled "The contemporary role of literature in India and Denmark."

Mridula Garg, Githa Hariharan and Manu Joseph were in Denmark to participate in the literary events series "India: Literature Now - Writers' Exchange" organized by the University of Copenhagen, Aarhus University and Gyldendal Publishers. The writers Carsten Jensen, Astrid Saalbach and Kirsten Thorup are all based in Denmark.

Hariharan and Joseph write in English, Garg in Hindi, though her work has been translated into English. Jensen, Saalbach and Thorup write in Danish.

The panel discussion, chaired by Vera Alexander of the University of Copenhagen, grouped the writers into pairs, each pair asked to respond to a series of questions. Eventually, the discussion became more freewheeling -- commonalities discovered, disparate views aired, and some of the deep-seated tensions that attend a writer's position relative to ethics, to colleagues and to the market, vaulting up as well.

The experience of having these six different individuals responding to one another at that very moment and in that same space, is something that will not happen again, so I’m sharing it with readers of this blog, and hopefully it will find an audience in those interested in literature as a whole. As many brilliant things were said, my coverage of that afternoon will as much as possible be in the writers' own words, as per my transcription, and will be in the three posts that follow this one. - L. Sitoy
 

From left: Manu Joseph, Carsten Jensen, Mridula Garg, Kirsten Thorup, Astrid Saalbach, Githa Hariharan. 

 Johannes Riis, director of Gyldendal (top)

and Peter Andersen of the Center of Global South-Asian Studies, University of Copenhagen

 

 

 

 

 

  ***

To come:

*Githa Hariharan and Astrid Saalback

* Mridula Garg and Kirsten Thorup
* Manu Joseph and Carsten Jensen
* Free discussion and open forum
* ALOA sponsored program: Mridula Garg, Githa Hariharan and Manu Joseph talk about their work at Trankebar bookshop in Copenhagen
* Author biodata

 

 

 

 

 

A study process description (Cultural Encounters at Roskilde University)

At Roskilde University, students enrolled in the Cultural Encounters M.A. program are required to send in what is known as a studieforløbsbeskrivelse (study process description) at the end of each semester. There's no set format for the study process description, nor does the language have to be particularly academic, but it does have to indicate what you read over the semester, and what you learned relative to the five governing angles of the program. In addition, it must be approved by the supervisor of whatever project you undertook during the term; in the final term, that will be the supervisor of your thesis.

At RUC's Cultural Encounters, an MA student must show that she has effectively worked with all five of these governing angles by the end of her studies, so an important aspect of the study process description is the choice of which angle/s to apply for in a semester. The student must then provide enough material to support that application.

Through the study process description, the student reflects on what she has learned so far, and fits it into the larger pattern of her studies, including work she did for her bachelor's degree, and even her life. It's also a great way of keeping track of what one has read (or needs to re-read, or hasn't read, or is supposed to have read). And the very act of summing it up and committing it to writing imprints it on the brain, so that (hopefully) one need never stand slack-jawed at a cocktail party when asked, "Sooooo, what did they teach you at university?"

Here's how I answered that question in the last study process description I sent in, albeit with considerably more time than one gets at a cocktail party:

M.A. in English and Cultural Encounters from Roskilde University

We came back from a trip to find a beautiful sheaf of papers in the mail.

There was a letter of congratulations signed by the rector Ib Poulsen, my diploma, my transcript, a profile of my competencies (general for all RUC students, and specific to my two areas of study), and a supplement that serves as guide to the Danish university system.

So now it's official. I have an M.A. in Engelsk og Kultur- og sprogmødestudier (English and Cultural Encounters) from Roskilde University, Denmark. And I have the proof!

These are images of the list of competencies attending both areas of study in the M.A. program.

Demonstration in front of U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen

As the Unitarisk Kirke's service ended earlier today, we became aware of a voice over a megaphone farther down the street. The Unitarian Church is a few buildings down from the American embassy; across the street the protesters were massed. At issue was the film critical of Islam that has sparked demonstrations and violence around the world.

This rally was organized by Hizb ut-Tahrir, a group known in Denmark for its extremism.

 

 

 

I couldn't understand what was being said over the megaphone (the language wasn't Danish by the way), but one of those placards held aloft says, in English: "Freedom of expression is a means of repression." What the pictures don't show is the movement of the crowd ... men, women and children of all ages and diverse dress calming walking over and ducking under the striped tape to join the rally; none of them "ethnic Danes," however. The crowd grew to 1,000 in the course of the hour, radio reports said later. Those men in hazard vests are part of the organizing group, not police. 

That's the embassy in the picture below, with the police cars neatly lined up at an angle in front of it. There was no visible riot gear, no shields, no obvious display of firearms, just the police standing in their sky-blue shirt sleeves next to their vehicles, while the crowd chanted and a man called out a long harangue over the sound system.  

Over the Carpathian Mountains

Over the Carpathian Mountains, flying from Cluj to Bucharest in a Tarom propeller plane.

 

Here's a street crossing at the southern end of Bucharest.

2007 Interview published in People Magazine (Philippine edition)

Blast from the past. Here's an interview I did by email with Samantha Echavez, which appeared in the February 2007 issue of People Magazine (Philippine edition). That's Dayanara Torres on the cover. - Lakambini Sitoy

Navigating in Seoul: Manila Times column for 14 Oct 2010

Navigating in Seoul

LETTERS FROM THE OUTLANDS
BY LAKAMBINI A. SITOY


On a long, cramped car ride out of Seoul, I began to have a strange relationship with the GPS.

I had not been long in Korea at all, but noted that every vehicle I had ridden in had been equipped with a global positioning system. They seemed less a novelty than a necessity. And this one could talk. There were seven of us in the car—our driver, four Danes (an illustrator, a writer, a publisher and a graphic designer), myself (the eternal learner) and our guide. The eighth entity was the GPS—a cool yet urgent female voice delivering what seemed to be the same set of syllables every few seconds, as we negotiated the twists and turns from Seoul’s city center to the highway north. In a little while, this invisible woman was driving us crazy.

We were bound for Nami Island, a 4.6 square kilometer resort in a tributary of the Han River. It is hard to define Nami Island in one word: a resort with hotels and lodges, yes, but also a nature park organized around the idea of creativity. Nami recently opened a year-long children’s book festival and the Danes, all playing roles in the creation and publishing books for young readers, were among the guests.

Au pairs in Denmark are now mostly Filipina

Published in The Manila Times, Opinion section, September 30, 2010

http://www.manilatimes.net/index.php/opinion/27618-au-pairs-in-denmark-are-now-mostly-filipina-

LETTERS FROM THE OUTLANDS
BY LAKAMBINI A. SITOY


Nowadays when “Filipina” is mentioned in the Danish news, it is often in connection with “au pair.” The newspaper Politiken noted last week that 2773 persons received permission to work as au pairs in Denmark in 2009. Of this number, 78 percent came from the Philippines. You see her more and more in Copenhagen and its suburbs: the small Asian woman and her charges. With steady determination and downcast eyes, she maneuvers a huge pram down the pavement and into a bus: inside is a tow-headed child, sometimes two.

Her apparent alone-ness, the paradox of her nurturing role and yet the obvious non-blood connection between her and her charges, cannot escape notice.

Plurality or assimilation (2nd Manila Times column: Sept 16 2010)

LETTERS FROM THE OUTLANDS
The Manila Times Opinion page column for Sept 16, 2010

Plurality or assimilation

BY LAKAMBINI A. SITOY

THERE was a lady, Rukhsana Khan, who came to speak at the world congress of the International Board of Books for Young People in Copenhagen the other year. Her family migrated from Pakistan to Canada when she was three. Now in her 40s she is a well-known author of young adult literature: writing in a relaxed, idiomatic English she writes books that have, in her words, Muslim and international themes. “When we first arrived in Canada,” Khan said, “it was 1965 and it was automatically assumed that immigrants would assimilate. There was no choice in the matter. The message was, 'Shut up and be grateful for being allowed into this western country club and the way you show that gratitude is by adopting our values . . . If you don’t like it, go back to where you came from.'”

It was a pre-US Civil Rights movement response to the question of plurality within a nation’s borders: the effort to extinguish differences between groups in favour of an amalgamated culture. This is the melting pot model of integration, and in the face of increasing immigration and globalization it seems the most obvious, most immediate line of action. It falls to the newcomers to make adjustments. They must learn to blend in.

Immigrants experience the pressures of living at the far end of a hierarchical yardstick, with the goal being to advance by becoming as much like the dominant group as possible, in terms of “values,” and mores of speech, dress and behaviour. Explicitly or tacitly is the idea, stemming from 19th century Darwinian theory, that all societies in the world are at various stages of evolution, with European society being the most advanced, and the “others” being half-formed, uncultivated, in need of improvement.

The problem is that the dominant culture imposes different standards of assimilation upon the newly arrived. Lucky the immigrant to Denmark who comes from Western Europe, North America, Britain or Australia, for he or she comes with unquestionable credentials and the presumption that any cultural differences there may be are negligible. Or at any rate charming. Ways worth imitating perhaps.

The new arrival from Asia, Latin American or Africa lacks the benefit of this respect. We are, on the whole, I think, judged not so much lacking in native intelligence as in education and exposure, in sophistication. We come to Denmark to fulfil ourselves. Denmark completes us, whether in terms of philosophies or musical tastes or learning to work the microwave oven. We come from countries, of course, that, in this era of globalization, offer Western education and churn out the world’s garments, mobile phones and microwave ovens. But so the myth goes.

There is the additional impediment of race: that difference in physical appearance that is hard to ignore. I attended Danish language classes a total of two years. At the start, every foreigner grappled with the embarrassment of new vowel sounds and missing consonants, but by the fourth level it seemed to me the students from Eastern Europe were more fluent and confident than those from China, Turkey or Peru who had spent the same amount of time in the country. Yet they did not have the benefit of having a Germanic language (like English or Dutch) as their native tongue. I conjectured at the time that people from Eastern Europe enjoy a tacit acceptance, because in the country of the blond they are non-exotic.

By contrast, I felt, a darker complexioned immigrant is never really allowed to forget her strangeness. In social situations she is called upon to relate (or embellish) what is unusual about her country. She is teased or made the butt of jokes to ease the strain of difference. Or, conversely, she is judged irrelevant and then ignored.

Race “is” a factor, not necessarily in how well one takes to a (Scandinavian) language, but because it seems the most obvious and plausible explanation for one’s difficulties. But the matter is really not that simple, and I hope to discuss it further in the future.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have some set cultural points to rally round, as has been the case with Khan, whose career direction, habits of dress (headscarf and long dresses) and the milieu in which she raised her daughters (all three eventually and independently made the decision to wear the burqa), reflect an early and long-running resistance to assimilation into the mainstream. Today she enjoys the benefits of living in a Canada that leans towards a different approach to plurality, that recognizes the individuality of groups and accords them legal rights based on their conditions.

“Following the American Civil Rights movement,” she said, “Canada would be multicultural. We would celebrate everyone’s culture. Nobody had to assimilate . . . as long as they followed the laws and paid their taxes they were free to live as they pleased.”

But in this new land I find it difficult to locate what is specifically Filipino myself, much less hook up with other people who agree on those cultural points and would be loath to abandon them. How should a Filipino dress, talk, worship? Should I, a Protestant, get in with the Catholics because they are the majority? Are we traitors because none of us wear the national costume, the long dress with butterfly sleeves so associated with Imelda Marcos? And must we gripe because our choices landed us in reticent Denmark, instead of the sprawling, freewheeling nation on the other side of the Atlantic?

I'm back as an opinion columnist for The Manila Times!

LETTERS FROM THE OUTLANDS

BY LAKAMBINI A. SITOY

So, after a lapse of four years, I find myself writing a column again for The Manila Times. I’m greatly excited to be once more part of the life of this newspaper, with its long history and storied past, for which I anonymously wrote editorials for a span of time, and where my columnist colleagues and I sought to test the limits of free speech in certain ways, back in 2000 to 2001.

I am more cautious today, not just because I am older, but because greater responsibility is required in the internet age. These days, anything can be flashed around the world a second after it is completed: by the writer and, potentially, an army of supporters and detractors. (Though in reality, these would be one’s friends and un-friends with an internet connection and little to do on a weekday morning, half of whom the writer has never personally met). One does not really write commentaries nowadays. In place of “write” are a few new verbs: one links, forwards, “likes”, tweets.

In the past, we wrote to earn the kudos of our friends and relations. It was all we could hope for. Now the potential audience is limitless, a situation that demands greater precision in terms of language, and responsibility in the matter of content. An off-hand jab some columnist might have made in the 90s at some foreign nationality or socio-economic group might today be considered racist and unconscionable, cause for a host of letters demanding his/her removal.

When I started freelancing 15 years ago, I would have to make a run down to the magazine stand to buy as many copies as I could afford before they got sold out. Once an issue was sold, it was gone, just like the movies that came to town, played for three days at the local cinema, and were lost forever. Now nothing you ever write is lost. It stays in a corner of a hard drive somewhere, waiting to be dug up and released years later, for all the world to pick apart.

That is, if anyone cares enough for your humble little opinion. Because cyberspace offers everyone the opportunity of democratic expression, few people care all that much what you think, how you said it, and whether you said it first. Most everyone, it seems, are too concerned with how to present their own thoughts in as clever a way as they can. So there can be a paradoxical safety in today’s ocean of words.

Other things have changed. Due to the immediacy of today’s news, “scoops” are a thing of the past. Moreover, with columns immediately replicated on Facebook, in blogs, in other online newspapers—replicated and derived from—one has to rethink what is meant by ownership of ideas.

However, there has been an upside to this convivial intercourse of thoughts. The arrogance that marked the first voices coming out of the desktop-publishing 90s has largely vanished. As the neutral “link to” and “forward” have come to be the main methods of exposition, so have “rants” and “dissing” become pointless, obscure. Or so I hope.

So now one writes without the cozy sense of self-importance that marked many a journalist in my formative years: the notion that you could be welcomed anywhere as long as you flashed your press card, the knowledge that, in a gathering of strangers, at least one person would have seen your face in the paper and rejoice at having met such a distinguished writerly personage. Bloggers of all persuasions have shown that regular people can be as razor-sharp, witty and filled with inspiration as those who have been vetted by the editorial board of an ink-and-newsprint publication.

As one among the Times’ pool of writers I thought of myself as a faithful workhorse, endeavoring to produce an editorial in time for a deadline and, a day or so later, a column that would be printed beside the blandly smiling photograph that gave no hint of the ordeal of composing it. Thus I strove to put out uniformly high quality stuff not just for the sake of the newspaper but also for my own reputation—to build up a fanbase, so to speak. That goal is tough to reach nowadays. There is so much frenetic commentary out there, not all of it responsible—and in consequence, much of it rather exciting. How can anyone compete?

So here I find myself, essaying a task that in the span of little more than a decade has already become traditional. But I have been invited, and now feel motivated. I bring to my writing some of the insights (or baggage, if you like), acquired from living and studying in northern Europe: an awareness that I cannot really speak for all; a hesitance to judge; a desire to empathize; a habit of self-contradiction; and a dislike of rabble-rousing language. I try, self-consciously, to be broadminded, aware that in the worst case scenario, this could lead to paralysis. I’ll do my best, nonetheless.

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Lakambini Sitoy is an award-winning Filipino author who currently lives in Denmark.

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This column originally appeared in The Manila Times, print and internet editions, 14 September 2010.
http://www.manilatimes.net/index.php/opinion/25837-beginnings

Blast from the past

 

Grade school graduation 1981