{"id":2196,"date":"2015-02-19T11:53:26","date_gmt":"2015-02-19T06:53:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/?p=2196"},"modified":"2015-02-19T11:53:26","modified_gmt":"2015-02-19T06:53:26","slug":"you-know-youre-in-a-desi-novel-when","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/2015\/02\/you-know-youre-in-a-desi-novel-when\/","title":{"rendered":"You know you&#8217;re in a desi novel when&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In honor of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lahorelitfest.com\/llf-2014\/program-2014-2\/\">Lahore Literary Festival<\/a> this weekend, we decided to round up all the signs that you are reading a South-Asian novel. So grab that steaming mug of golden liquid and some crumbly, buttery bakery biscuits punctuated with a globule of red and oh wait, you might just be reading a desi novel&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>You know you&#8217;re in a desi novel when:<\/p>\n<p>1. You suffer from post 9\/11 ennui because you are abroad and brown in this white world and you just can&#8217;t even anymore.<\/p>\n<p>2. Everything is dripping, gleaming or has a patina of oil. The corn is always roasted and italicised words tell you that is <em>makkai<\/em> to make it as authentic as possible.<\/p>\n<p>3. The city is an all-consuming entity. The city breathes life and sucks it out of you. The city is a concept, ever-evolving, eternal. You know this because there are detailed descriptions of the traffic, the building and the life that drums within it all.<\/p>\n<p>4. The women are exotic and you want to sleep with them. She is beautiful, broken and tragic and you have an affair.<\/p>\n<p>5. The electricity goes out often and the light from your candle catches the smoke from your cigarette as it spirals while deep thoughts about living in a city that is so all-consuming churn within you.<\/p>\n<p>6. You imagine life from your domestic servant&#8217;s point of view and always envy him\/her.<\/p>\n<p>7. The humidity is directly proportional to graphic descriptions of your sweat stains.<\/p>\n<p>8. The sound of the Azaan is always rich, robust and other-worldly but of course, no one is religious.<\/p>\n<p>9. But on the other hand you always fall down in prayer and the words always come to you easily.<\/p>\n<p>10. Everything can be traced back to the moment of partition i.e 14\/15 August 1947.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In honor of the Lahore Literary Festival this weekend, we decided to round up all the signs that you are reading a South-Asian novel. So grab that steaming mug of golden liquid and some crumbly, buttery bakery biscuits punctuated with a globule of red and oh wait, you might just be reading a desi novel&#8230; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":2174,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[365],"tags":[533,15,535,534],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2196"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2196"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2198,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2196\/revisions\/2198"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}