Nostalgia in Amitava Kumar's BombayLondonNew York Essay

Nostalgia in Amitava Kumars BombayLondonNew York - Essay ExampleSaid emerges not just as an intellectual giant, but also a deeply loving man.The requirement f leaving ones place f orign and move from the periphery towards the centre, combined with the compulsion to look back and travel homewards n a bid to understand ones history, is the force that drives much f recent Indian writing n English. The name Kumar has selected for his book signifies the journey that both he and his accomplice writers make made, the distances they have traversed and the literary signposts they have passed.It happens often that compositions f exemplary character and intuition do not receive the desired attention from their creators. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote private investigator Holmes mysteries on a lark but tired f his detective, had him killed n a story, only to refresh him agan after a public outrage. A uniform overlooking f ones own talents occurs n this Kumars entertaining book. While the title may be reminiscent f a travel brochure, the book is an unadulterated thorough survey f Indian authors writing n English, living n both India and abroad. But, sifting through the literary ore, we find charming nuggets f Kumars own life, gleaming like gold. Kumars personal musings cover perhaps a fourth f his book but have an impact far beyond their length. The slender volume f his personal odyssey has enough pathos to overcome his intermittently interesting but mostly descriptive treatise on the Indian donation to English literature.Similar to his an earlier excellent piece f writing, Passport Photos, this one is a multi-genre celebration f the fascinating literary journey that Kumar has undertaken as a reader and critic f Indian fiction. His own fiction and poetry, along with personal accounts, make this an imaginative exercise that explores many f the impulses that have helped create contemporary Indian fiction n English.The world literature has slowly awakened to the realizatio n that Salman Rushdie, V.S. Naipaul and Arundhati Roy be not restricted to the ethnic tender anymore they are internationally renowned writers with considerable influence n the world f ideas. It is therefore particularly apt that there be a reassessment f Indian-English contribution to English literature and Kumar does this admirably through the prism f his own understanding.n Bombay-London-New York, Kumar highlights at the very beginning that his pages are to be read merely as marginal entries n a book written by others. He quotes generously from novels and short stories, newspaper articles, reviews and interviews, and uses photographs to learn a sense f contemporary India and the Indian writers experience.Kumars canvas is as enormous ahis reading practice which he claims to have recorded for the purpose f this book. The issues he deals with are, likewise, numerous. Kumar does not incarcerate his survey to immigrant writing. We are taken to Pankaj Mishras Butter chicken n Ludhia na Travels n Small Town India , where an Indian born American kid asks a perplexed hotel manager May I have a boddle f Bisleri Wadder. He ruminates on the nuclear bomb with Arundhati Roy (The End f Imagination), relives Londons Bloomsbury circle with Mulk Raj Anand ( Conversations n Bloomsbury), revels n the celebration f Hanif Kureishis sexually charged writing (My Beautiful Launderette, Sammie and Rosie Get Laid) and discusses Akhil Sharmas An Obedient