First of all, I want to thank you all for the tremendous response to the year’s first blogpost “Best Platforms for Finding Submission Calls in 2025” that linked to 500+ open submission calls. I hope you found some great opportunities to send your work to. The post, I believe, found the traction that it did because, of all the opportunities that it listed, almost 90% were free to submit. Without doubt, it’s increasingly difficult to find fee-free venues for writers like us who must calculate the cost in our local currency for every sub-call that charges fee. I think we’ll all agree it all piles up. In my five plus years on the circuit, I have seen scores of venues turning fee-based from being fee-free earlier. I feel this is where the above quote rings so true for us PoC writers. Especially for those of us who live outside of the traditional publishing hubs. Yet, you’ll feel a bit odd when you learn who said this. I felt a bit triggered, to be honest. I wrote a heartfelt column in trampset about my thoughts, which is reproduced below. Before I sign off, couple of things: One, I recently upgraded my website. I’d like to hear your opinion about it–good or bad. Two, as you may know, I periodically post guest articles on my website. Finding Inspiration in the Everyday by Jenny Wong and Five Ingredients for Writing Meaningful Memoir are two of those. I am inviting guest posts to be posted throughout the year. They can be on any topic you feel strongly about and want to share. If you’d like to contribute, do please write to me with your ideas.
Here’s the column. Comment, share and subscribe if you find this column thought-provoking. Thank you so much.
In my life in English, so to speak, there’s a sense that if I don’t hit a certain benchmark, I’ve failed. That’s the judgment I’ve felt from American culture from the start — the expectation to assimilate, and then, when I became a writer, to “represent” the Indian American experience, the immigrant experience. Then there’s the eternal, original judgment — of my mother, my parents, their immigrant community, their many friends with advanced degrees. Theirs was a language of comparison and competition, everyone striving to establish themselves and get ahead. And there’s the overhanging judgment, of the world my parents left behind in Kolkata. All of which I internalized.
— Jhumpa Lahiri in a recent interview to The Paris Review
Once upon a time, there was a generation of Indians who left India. Indians who migrated “West” in the 60s. Indians who were highly educated in Nehruvian colleges and universities. Indians who went abroad and earned a better living than they’d ever do in India. Indians who eventually took oath of allegiance and desperately wanted to “belong” in their chosen land.
Once upon a time, there was a generation. Of children born of those immigrants in the late 60s and early 70s. Children who were born in the West. Children who were born in New York, or Paris, or London. Children who enrolled in highly equipped schools and excelled in academics like their parents. Children who witnessed their parents work hard to make a difference, give them a life of comfort that they did not have. Children who did not know India. Children who were either indifferent to India or despised the association. Children who hated the annual journeys back to see their grandparents in the towns and villages where their parents were born. Children who stopped those annual homecomings altogether. Children who felt like “misfits” in their white colleges. Children whom circumstances forced to become judgmental. Children who thought that if they didn’t “hit a certain benchmark,” they had failed. Children who “internalized” everything.
In the version I know, the older generation of Indians has “passed.” Literally passed, or are known to have passed on the Indian identity acquiring the nationality of their chosen country. One day, they want to go home. Home, as in, they want to see their Indian home. The children don’t bother. They pass into history.
The children, who thought they weren’t Indian enough but who did not quite “belong” to the place where they were born and where they grew up, married into white or black or Indian.
In this version, the children, now known as Indian-American, or German of Indian descent, or UK national, bring children into the world for whom they, in turn, work harder — so that, one day, this third generation can truly “belong.”
Once upon a time, there was a generation of Indians who were well-educated and yet did not migrate west. That was the 70s. They looked at their brothers and sisters who lived abroad with some awe, but did not definitely wish to swap places. Their children saw the children who came down from the West on annual visits with a lot of awe, and being so young and naïve, they also wanted to swap places. Everything about the U.S. or Europe was exceedingly “cool.”
One day, a day in the 90s, this generation of Indians born in India to parents who did not migrate and who did not think that they had missed out on something because they had not been to the West, witnessed the economic boom in India as grown-ups. They shopped at Levi’s, wrote with Reynold’s, and ate at McDonald’s. They received further affirmation of what they thought as children — that everything about the U.S. or Europe was exceedingly “cool.”
From every single household, at least one person left for the States. Or Europe. They sent money home. Settled in, they had kids but those kids no longer saw themselves as misfits because there were already several Indian communities in those places. In New York, and Canada, and London. And markets. And religious places. They did not need to internalize.
One day, also a day in the 90s, also this generation of Indians born in India who witnessed the economic boom in India found themselves not ready to migrate and leave India. They stayed on. In Delhi, and Lucknow and Madras and elsewhere. They worked in India like their parents. Whether it was a choice or destiny, nobody remembered. They did not envy their brothers and sisters born abroad or recently immigrated. They thought it was childish of them to earlier think that everything about the U.S. or Europe was exceedingly “cool.” Their lives were, surprisingly, not something to be in awe of, something that they’d want to swap places with.
One day, in the current times, this generation of Indians born in India, who witnessed the economic boom but did not leave India, read about the immigrant experience with pity, or sympathy, or respect. They read the interview in full of this writer of Indian origin, who identifies as British American. “The goal isn’t to be happy with my voice. What I want is simply to have one.” They wondered why she should worry about not having a voice. If she, as privileged and educated as she is, and where she’s based abroad, should not have a voice, then what hope does this generation of Indians born in India who witnessed the economic boom but did not leave India have?
In the version I know, this generation of Indians, living in the current times, have no hope, yes. They see their country falling apart. They understand nobody cares for whether they have a voice or not. It is just not fashionable enough for the global community to care about the voice of this Indian generation who did not leave India in search of something.
In that version, it is also just not fashionable enough for the Indian publishing community to care about the voice of this Indian generation who did not leave India in search of something. One Geetanjali Shree bursts into worldwide recognition once in a decade or so. Geetanjali Shree truly is based in India and her writing (in Hindi) is about the country falling about — which is why hers is truly an achievement. I quote her here:
The Booker, in choosing me, has caught not just me in the light it is shining down, but the literature around me too. It is a vast literature of rich antecedents and contemporary vibrancy, and it is little known outside its own language circles. The new attention it has got should make translators, publishers and readers all desirous to explore this world, making them proactive, resourceful and willing to support the exploration in all ways possible. It brings to mind the example of South-American literature and its discovery by the larger world, so to speak. When Gabriel García Márquez won the Nobel Prize in Literature, 1982, hardly anyone outside of South America knew of the riches there. But his discovery led to the discovery of the literature around him and soon South-American literature was a genre by itself.
— Geetanjali Shree in a 2023 interview to The White Review
One can perceive the undertone of hurt in these words. She was not adequately recognized in her own country. In the same interview, she says:
The Booker jury has of course engaged with the book seriously and I am delighted and humbled by their response, but I cannot think of many others. People are reading the book, that is for sure, and translators and publishers across the world are interested, but that comes with the Booker. Back home the response is more wild and varied! Obviously the Hindi-world and the non-English-language world are elated. The so-called ‘vernacular’ press has covered it widely.
What she, of course, avoids saying is that neither the government nor the traditional press publishing English language works (Tombs of Sand, her book, is the translation of Ret Samadhi, the original Hindi version) showed any interest, despite the interest in her “voice” through global recognition.
Just a final odd bit: Hindi and English are the official languages of India as per Article 343 of the Indian Constitution. India’s total English-speaking population is second only to that of the U.S., with roughly 129 million people speaking English across the country. The question is where is that voice?
