How Good is the Indian Muse? Where to look for the soul of India in print, or now in digital mode? Is it in the writings of those for whom the muse is their mother tongue or those who happen to muse in the alien English? Where to savour the flavour of Indian life in fictional form? Is it in that ‘stronger and more important body of work of Indian writers working in English’ as trumpeted by Salman Rushdie or in the supposedly ‘true to life’ depictions (not the same thing as the examination of the human condition) on the variegate canvas of regional languages penned by the vernacular writers? And certainly it is an over kill on the part of the bhasha writers to suggest, as was done, that ‘any Tamil writer would have put more life into his novels than Narayan did’. An Achilles-like abuse of Hector’s body and literally it’s like saying; “I would have written your novel better had you given me the plot and all, soul included.” Well, what it takes to be a writer an...
