Unwild Rumpus

"He was right there next to me all the time. I just didn't see him that way. Now, he's my soul mate" she says holding his hands and looking straight into the camera. "We started off as enemies, then became best friends. Now, we are lovers" another couple gushes on the "Humans of" instagram page. I roll my eyes before switching channels or just scrolling down. Love stories bore me. But I am a hypocrite because I have my own. My very own sappy story. A love-hate relationship. An affair that I'm deeply embroiled in. One that I can't get over no matter how difficult it gets. I get thwarted and yet I crawl back every single time, with my tail between my legs. "I don't understand this unreasonable attachment" I've been told countless times. I don't either. I work harder at this than I've worked for any other relationship and I still am out of my depth. I am a lover spurned. I am a woman obsessed. I am a raging addict...

When I first finished reading Samskara, I thought I had it all figured out. A book about the personal transformation of a priest set against the backdrop of an orthodox brahmin community, is what I thought. Seemed simple enough. But I knew I was off the mark when I couldn’t tie it all together with that being the central theme. A few probing questions and I was fumbling, mumbling, and completely out of my comfort zone. What makes an English professor pick up his pen and write his ground breaking, controversial novel in his native tongue? His intended audience, of course. Not the readers from the western world attempting to get a peep into small town life in a remote South Indian village, but his own people. The community he grew up with up and lived in. URA, in an interview mentions, "My text does not exist in free space that some Westener can read and understand; it exists in my context. I am a critical insider". And I realized where I went wrong when I understood wh...