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EDITORIAL

Much has happened, especially with respect to the Indian landscape, since I greeted our esteemed readers with the March 2025 edition of Re-Markings. Reflecting on the modern world, amid the disillusionment arising from the ruins of World War I, T. S. Eliot had stated, at the very beginning of his magnum opus The Waste Land, “April is the cruellest month.” Eliot’s utterance (made in 1922) with a eclectic mix of “memory and desire” came to haunt our nation and, in turn, the world through a gory event that took place on 22 April 2025 at Baisaran near Pahalgam in South Kashmir’s Anantnag district. It is ironical that the tragedy was orchestrated in the land that had always attracted tourists and visitors from every nook and corner of the world resonating the efficacy of the Farsi couplet, “Agar firdaus bar roo-e zameen ast,/ Hameen ast-o hameen ast-o hameen ast” (If there is a paradise on earth,/ It is this, it is this, it is this.” While the tourists were engaged in breathing in the beauty, and getting a true feel of the designated ‘paradise’ on the fateful day, the sound of gun shots shattered the peace and tranquillity of the place as a handful of terrorists cut short the lives of 26 people with unimaginable cruelty and barbarism.   
 

Again, the portentous significance of the month of April can be seen with regard to the decision of the apex court on 3 April 2025 wherein it upheld the 22 April 2024 order of the Calcutta High Court invalidating the appointments of nearly 25000 school teachers recruited by the West Bengal government way back in 2016. Consequently, the lives, hopes and dreams of these teachers along with that of their kith and kin lay shattered beyond reprieve. Those who have great expectations from the blindfolded deity of justice may wonder what punishment was or will be meted out to the actual conspirators, executors and beneficiaries responsible for the “egregious violations and illegalities” in the conduct of the appointment process. Perhaps, the guilty will continue to roam scot-free and enjoy their lives as the Lords of the World like the terrorists at Pahalgam. Ironically, such instances of unmitigated suffering and misery inflicted by the perpetrators of organised crime and injustice are common in most countries of the planet we inhabit.
 

Another disturbing and distressing event that I cannot help mentioning here concerns the crash of the Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner at Sardar Vallabh-bhai Patel International Airport, Ahmedabad. The said flight bound for London Gatwick crashed within 38 seconds after the take-off and was reduced to a huge ball of fire killing all but one of the 241 on board and 19 others at the B. J. Medical College (crash site) in Ahmedabad. Incidentally, the date was 12 June 2025 (not April) and time 1:39 P.M. IST. Made one recall the title of Arthur Koestler’s novel Darkness at Noon. The tragic event that extinguished so many lives in less than a minute leads us to introspect into the realm of what we call Destiny or God’s Will and also makes us speculate on the time span that separates life and death. We are left to wonder if we are like “flies to wanton boys” in the Lear(an) sense or the “sport” of the “President of the Immortals” as visualized by Thomas Hardy in Tess of the d'Urbervilles.
 

It is evident that with the passage of time we are bound to erase from the canvas of our individual and collective memories calamitous events and their impact. People will and should move forward and accept how paradise too is fraught with the mischievous and mysterious presence of evil in various forms. This may sound like an exhortation of sorts but we must accept that amnesia, like change, is an inherent law of nature. However, for the souls that are sensitive and concerned about the fate and predicament of human beings at large will find a space in the memory chip of their fertile brain where such events and their ramifications thereof will crystallize into thoughts and ideas that will desperately yearn to find expression in one form or the other.
 

In this context it becomes imperative to transform our anguish and pain, anxiety and fear, negation and despair, into, what P. B. Shelley refers to in his poem “To a Skylark”: “Singing hymns unbidden,/ Till the world is wrought/ To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not.” This is the power of literature that inspires us to engage ourselves in speaking truth to power and authority through our writings and action rather than turning our heads away and pretending that all is well within and around.
 

We are celebrating this year the centenary of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. It is not just following a traditional ritual. If we only care to look at only the opening and closing lines of the novel, it will tell us what wisdom we can get from a writer. The passages, narrated by Nick Carraway, are as follows:
 

“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. ‘Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.’” (opening line)

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . .(closing line)
 

It is heartening indeed that the current issue of Re-Markings, like each of its 51 earlier editions, offers an amazing variety of valuable critical and creative discourses, contributed by globally acclaimed writers as well as young teachers and scholars, that provide convincing evidence of our committed engagement to examine and explore contentious issues of gender, colour, race, caste, class, religion, war, violence etc., worldwide. I believe it must be very gratifying to continue to strive for the creation of a better world where the fear of darkness can be dispelled by the shining glory of light. Good luck and fare forward!
 

Nibir K. Ghosh

Chief Editor

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CONTENTS

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Viewpoints From California - Jonah Raskin  

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby at 100 / 7, Memories of Vietnam / 12, Mrs. Dalloway (1925): Virginia Woolf’s Modernist Masterpiece of Imperial Decline / 16

 

The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: A Conversation with Professor Peniel E. Joseph

Robin Lindley / 22           
  

A Willful Amnesia - E. Ethelbert Miller / 30
 

The Ecstasy and Agony of ‘American Prometheus’:

Christopher Nolan’s Film Oppenheimer

Deena Padayachee / 33
 

Paradigms of Evolution in Francophone African Women Writings:

Léonora Miano’s Twilight of Torment

Nibir K. Ghosh / 38
 

Poetry of David Herbert Lawrence: The Modern Georgian?

Deepa Chaturvedi / 50
 

Fractured Futures: Reading Critical Feminist Dystopia

Palak Singla & Tanya Mander / 58
 

W. Ross Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety and Stanley Fish’s Reader-Response Theory: Exploring Cybernetics and

Literature Interface

Bani Dayal Dhir / 69
 

Pangs of Partition in Contemporary Indian and

Bangladeshi Literature

Manas Bakshi / 77
 

The Politics of Gendered Identities: Reassessing

Hegemonic Masculinity

Narinder K. Sharma & Niharika / 82
 

Disability Literature and Culture:

Representations and Cultural Shifts

Baljeet Kaur / 90
 

Body as a Site of Violence and Resistance:

Reading Mahasweta Devi’s “Draupadi”

Richa / 99

 

Resilience-building Among Youth: A Psychoanalytical Study of 

Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun

Bismita Manjari Biswal & Afreen Ali / 105
 

Reviving Roots: Folklore Conservation in the

Plays of Girish Karnad

Nishant Sharma & Manjusha Kaushik / 110
 

Women Archetype in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s 

The Forest of Enchantments

Arati Kumari Thakur / 117
 

Indian Culture, Traditional Glories, and Idealistic Philosophy in the Poetry of Henry Derozio, Toru Dutt, and Sarojini Naidu

Emily Pandey / 125
 

Sukumar Ray’s Nonsense Literature: A Critique of British Colonial Hypocrisy, Corruption and Oppression in Bengal

Aradhana Bose / 131
 

Reading Sharan Kumar Limbale’s Dalit Autobiography

The Outcaste as a Rebel Narrative

Adiba Faiyaz / 141
 

Poetry

Three Poems - Walter W. Hoelbling

the shame of the world / 151, let us remember / 152,

Halloween / 153
 

Four Poems - Tuncay Gary

From the ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀs Mosque / 153, Today I was born / 154, Today Jesus will come / 155, Trumpeting and Musking / 155

 

Death of Humanity

Diya Singh / 156
 

Book Review
 

Shanta Acharya’s Dear Life

Claire Cox / 158