Ending Birds ?

Ending Birds ?

In "Ending Birds" all of the characters are in need of love, belonging, or fear abandonment. You'll notice that each bird attack helps the characters bond and brings them closer and closer together.  The wild birds represent nature's decomposers / life cycle, - natural forces indifferent to human life.  These forces can be unpredictable and threatening to all.  Melanie brings the caged love birds to the island.  Love (the love birds) is a purpose of life that people give to one another, against the wild threat of nature and the abyss of eternity.   It starts in the pet shop with Melanie and Mitch discussing the caged love birds, as nature's wild birds circle/swarm outside.  Melanie finds her love in Mitch and vice versa. Nature (wild birds) strips away Melanie's exterior so that Lydia doesn't see her as a threat, and looks at her maternally with accepting care. Melanie is receiving a mother's love.  The love birds initiate a bond between Melanie and Cathy as they were a wanted and appreciated gift.  In the end as they leave as a bonded, caring unit against nature's threatening indifference to their existence, they take the love birds (both alive and unharmed).  The love birds represent their love/caring for each other that each character has found. The love/bond each has found is the only thing left/worth taking with them as they move on. Emphasizing that in the end that's all there really is. A possible resolution and denouement would be that once Mitch leaves his hometown with his family and Marion, the birds' attacks heighten in violence and they end up exterminating one another.  This could be backed up by the "lemmings over-the-cliff" idea that they "autodestruct" due to overpopulation. It would be nature's way of regaining balance and control. Another option would be that once Mitch evacuates the village with his family, Marion, and the turtle doves, the aggressive birds mysteriously disappear, as if the very presence of these caged birds had incited the whole thing. I think this ending is more enigmatic and "sticks" better to the rest of the story. If you want to get really creepy, you could have a couple of bird "escapees" showing up again on a tree outside wherever Mitch, his family and the turtle doves are relocated. To make the nightmare continue in a truly "Hitchcockian" way. As for symbolism, these attacks which seem against nature could symbolise another "act against nature," Mitch's overattachment and perhaps even Oedipal attraction to his mother. At least in the early film version, at first one is not sure whether she is Mitch's wife or mother. But the good relationship between the two women seems to refute this hypothesis, and it seems that Hitchcock was taking a certain poetic licence in presenting the film in such a way

Salt as a metaphor for the process of exploitation?

Salt as a metaphor for the process of exploitation?

Mahasweta Devi was raised in Bengal, India, where her mother and father settled their family after the 1947 Partition of Muslim Pakistan from Hindu India. Her father was a poet and her mother was a writer while both were activists in the fight against analphabetism, which is the inability to read and write. Mahasweta Devi's short story "Salt" is printed in her collection Imaginary Maps, which was translated to English by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Salt holds a special symbolic place in India literary and cultural traditions. The ancient saying, "Love like salt," is said to have originated in India. The meaning is that love that is like salt--the flavoring that makes all food palatable and that has been universally highly valued from ancient times--makes life palatable and beautiful while it adds incalculable value to living. The parable is told of an exiled daughter who teaches her king father the true value of her rejected love by secretly preparing him a feast of unsalted food; she appears to him without her disguise when he calls out for salt for his food. When this symbolism is applied to Devi's stories about the outcasts and the oppressed of the indigenous tribes of India (dalits, adivassis, denotified ones), her stories speak of the love that these rejected ones deserve that should be demonstrated through equitable political, social and economic advantages.

Salt also holds a special metaphoric place in modern Indian culture. Salt is a metaphor for British oppression and the process of exploitation during the British colonial period. Indians had always produced their own salt. Yet the British colonizers forbid the making of salt and forced Indians to purchase imported salt, which had a tax on it (like a sales tax on salt) and which cost a good deal more for Indians than salt they made themselves. In 1923, the salt tax was doubled raising even further the cost of salt. In 1930, Mahatma Gandhi and his followers protested the salt tax by gathering salt encrustations from Dandi Beach in Gujarat. The salt tax, the law forbidding the making of salt by Indians and the hastening of rebellions agitating for India's independence all form the metaphor that links salt with process of exploitation. 

How would you view Tamas as a partition novel?

How would you view Tamas as a partition novel?

Ans : Tamas novel is based on Indian partition. Tamas or ‘darkness’ at another level is also a critique of the growing communal forces in the country in 1970s and 80s. It is constructed on the dichotomy of communalism on the one hand and secularism on the other. Director Govind Nihalani reiterated Sahni’s introductory words by saying “the communal elements who created the (Partition) holocaust are still active today and the patterns too remain the same… The Partition provided a good historical backdrop.” (qtd in Sarkar: 2009) Hence, Tamas was, in fact, intended to be a social commentary of the day seen through the lens of Partition. The autocratic rule of 1975, the rise of Hindu fundamentalism, the Sikh carnage of 1984 and the other communal riots rising in different parts of the country beckoned the need to create a compelling story of the evils of sectarian ideologies and the xenophobic tendencies in the society. For Sahni and Nihalani, the forces which led to the Partition were still discernible even after four decades of that poignant page of history, and Tamas thus came to signify the turbulent contemporary socio-political scenario. Many critics have identified both the author and the Director with ‘leftist cultural politics.’[iv] One instance of the politics of memory working in the miniseries erases the name of Thekedar, i.e., Murad Ali, a name which can identify him as a Muslim, which according to me would have served the purpose of the serial better. To quote Mankekar, “in constructing a secular nationalist portrayal of the communalconflicts leading to Partition, his aim was to warn his viewers to be vigilant about the potentially harmful consequences of Hindu nationalism for the integrity of the nation.”

Like many narratives on Partition, Tamas also creates the two contrasting worlds of ‘ordinary’ people and the elite, ruling class in the society. Nathu, his wife Karmo; the old Sikh couple Harman Singh and Banto; Akran, the Muslim woman who saves the Sikh couple; the woman with a sword to save the neighbor; all these marginalized people in their essential humanity come in contrast to the elites like scheming Thekedar, the Congress and Muslim League workers, the D.C., the wealthy merchant, etc. They display exemplary courage and humanity at the face of all the violence that was meted out to them. Their attempts to save themselves are not devoid of their concern to protect their neighbours. They merely are mute spectators amidst the violence that was set ablaze around. The reverberations of one such communal conflict during the Shah Bano  ase verdict in 1986 were even felt in a distanced land like Mysore[v] where amidst the wide curfew, my parents were assured protection from a Muslim family in a predominantly Muslim area. An old neighbor seemed to have warned my father to park the vehicle at some other place as he expressed his possible inability to prevent the young men from setting it ablaze. Tamas is a significant contribution to society as it broke the silence that was long pervading the Partition experience in the country. With its ‘progressive optic’ it generated a lot of debate, controversy, public litigation, etc. in the 1980s. While we have analyzed the contribution of Tamas in recreating the traumatic period of violence and loss, it is also important to dwell on the ‘problem of representation’ which it is an example of. The question to be asked here, in Pandey’s words is, if Tamas is ‘an unacceptable history?’ Does it, by conforming to the existing nationalist historiography, also veils some factors that are crucial in understanding the nuances of human atrocities across space and time? Here is an attempt to trace some such problems[vii] drawing from scholars like Purnima Mankekar, Bhaskar Sarkar, and a critique of nationalist historiography by Gyanendra Pandey

Discuss the character of Praneshacharya ?

Discuss the character of Praneshacharya ?

Ans : The writer has described the character of Praneshacharya beautifully that, his activities are divided into domestic and religious.  He begins a day by doing his regular duty of helping his wife in getting bathed.  It is understood from the first line, “He bathed Bhagirathi’s body…”, that she is almost a vegetable.  It is he who bathes her, dresses her up, feeds her with the essential food and administers with regular medicine.After completing his domestic duties, he then crosses a stream to worship at Maruti temple and comes back home for his recitation of holy legends.  The Brahmins of the agrahara (the place a Brahmin community lives) regularly assembles in front of his house to listen to his recitation, both in the morning and in the evening.  He is a scholar and his recitations are new every day. Praneschacharya sacrifices his life for the sake of his wife and she understands his pain and the marital bliss that he lacks.  Therefore she asks him to marry again and bring forth children, to make his house a home.  Nevertheless, Praneschacharya refuses to marry, believing in Lord Krishna’s will, that one should not expect reward for his/her toil.  Moreover everyday when they eat, both of them request the other to eat first.  These instances show the mutual love and concern they have for each other. One day before eating his meal, he places fodder in front of his cow, Gowri and is about to get into his house.  At that time, he hears the sound of Chandri behind him calling ‘Acharya’.  Chandri is a dalit.  If Praneshacharya talks to her, he would be polluted and should take bath before eating his meal.  Nevertheless, he listens to her and she informs that Naranappa is dead after having fever for four days. There is a belief that it is wrong to eat food before doing the funeral rites for the dead.  So, Praneshacharya runs to Garudacharya’s house to stop him from eating his meal and then both of them inform others in the agrahara.  Everyone in the agrahara thinks, “Alive, Naranappa was an enemy; dead a preventer of meals; as a corpse, a problem, a nuisance.” The men and their wives assemble in front of Praneshacharya’s house to hear his directions to solve the problem of Naranappa’s rites.  The women are with fear that their husbands should not accept to do the funeral rites.  Praneshacharya informs the people that there are two problems to be solved.  The first problem is doing funeral rites for Naranappa and second is deciding the person for doing the rites, since Naranappa doesn’t have children.  Garudacharya, Dasacharya – a poor Brahmin of the agrahara, and Lakshmanacharya acknowledge to the words of Praneshacharya.

What according to you are the important issues in literary translation?

What according to you are the important issues in literary translation?

Ans : literary translation implies the translation of all genres of literature, which include prose, drama and poetry. Johnson (1999:1) describes literature as 'an apparently nebulous body of knowledge in oral or written form, an imitation of life, which reflects civilization and culture, and which covers every angle of human activities-culture, tradition, entertainment, information among others.' It is one of the great creative and universal means of communicating the emotional, spiritual and intellectual concerns of humankind. Literary translation has to do with translating texts written in a literary language, which abounds in ambiguities, homonyms and arbitrariness, as distinct from the language of science or that of administration. Literary language is highly connotative and subjective because each literary author is lexically and stylistically idiosyncratic and through his power of imagination, he uses certain literary techniques such as figures of speech, proverbs and homonyms through which he weaves literary forms. The literary translator is therefore the person who concerns himself with translation of literary texts. A literary translator, according to Peter Newmark (1988:1) generally respects good writing by taking into account the language, structures, and content, whatever the nature of the text. The literary translator participates in the author's creative activity and then recreates structures and signs by adapting the target language text to the source language text as closely as intelligibility allows. He needs to assess not only the literary quality of the text but also its acceptability to the target reader, and this should be done by having a deep knowledge of the cultural and literary history of both the Source and the Target Languages.Literary translation may be said to have the greatest number of peculiar problems. Problems in literary translation largely depend on who is translating and what he knows. The problems of literary translation include cultural, linguistic, psychological, deceptive cognates, equivalence, and style. Language and culture are closely related and one is indispensable to the other. In fact, language acquires its meaning from the country's culture. A single language may cross several culture borders. For instance, English and French are Indo-European languages but belong to different cultures. There are generally problems in the translation of cultural words in a literary text unless there is a cultural overlap between the source language and the target language. It is not enough for a translator to know what words are used in the target language; he must also make the reader understand the sense as it is understood by the reader of the original. For instance, in a text where there is a cultural focus, there can be translation problems due to the cultural gap between the source and the target languages.

Give a title to the passage.

1e Give a title to the passage.
Answer : Journey Through Inspiration

What is the message that Prof. Kalam’s gives to the youth?

What is the message that Prof. Kalam’s gives to the youth?

Answer : I do not think the abundance and spirituality are mutually exclusive or that it is wrong to desire material things. For instance, while I personally cherish a life with minimum of possessions, I admire abundance, for it brings along with it security and confidence, and these eventually help preserve our freedom. Nature too does not do anything by half measures, you will see if you look around you. Go to a garden. In season, there is a profusion of flowers. Or look up. The universe stretches into infinitude, vast beyond belief.