Sumana Roy @SumanaSiliguri Twitter profile

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

5 years

Looking at the Teesta, my seven-year-old nephew asks -- 'Why is there a reflection of the sky on the river, but not of the river on the sky?'' The little boy discovers one-sided love.

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

2 years

I wanted to share the sound of this forest with you today:

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

3 years

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

2 years

A 6-min film about the changing milk economy in Haryana by Amit Kumar in On Eating. Amit is still a student, and this is possibly his first film. I do not know how many times I've watched it -- it's that kind of film, moving, in a language of the heart.

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

1 year

I wrote about Bengali plant thinkers who imagined a forest state - what might India have been had we chosen to model ourselves on a forest state ¬ a nation state? In the Fall issue of @ArnoldiaMag a magazine on plant life published by Harvard University

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

1 month

PLANT THINKERS OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BENGAL This book, contracted nearly 6yrs ago, will be published by Oxford University Press next month. It is a record of philosophical botany that I've discovered in writers, scientists, artists &the collective anonymous

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

1 year

I wrote an essay about what I call the IIC and JLF schools of Indian English for the @LAReviewofBooks I've increasingly had the sense that any writer who does not belong to either of these schools is ignored or bullied by indifference.

The IIC School Versus the JLF School of Indian English | Los Angeles Review of Books

Sumana Roy on how the vernacularization of the English language has affected Indian political and cultural life.

lareviewofbooks.org

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

3 years

I've begun to notice that the most interesting writing in class comes not from those who want to 'become writers' but by those who write without the thought/desire to get published. Being free of this ambition, they experiment unconsciously& write about the most unexpected things

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

5 months

Phool, Pushpa, Suryamukhi ... Why is Laapata Ladies scattered with the names of flowers? I wrote an essay about this and Mahasweta Debi's story "Seed" for the @IndianExpress today.

Laapataa Ladies: A fantasy by those who have never lived in a village

In the film, handbook feminism defeats patriarchy with a cinematic ease that would be hard to imagine in rural India.

indianexpress.com

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

3 years

I am excited to share with you news about something very close to me. It is the inauguration of the Indian Plant Humanities project at @AshokaUniv

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

1 year

PROVINCIALS, a book I seem to have been writing for what feels like my entire life, will be published by @yalepress and @AlephBookCo in 2024. I woke up to find that my editor @jenniferabanks , who has allowed me to be an earthworm, had shared this last night, when I was sleeping

Jennifer Banks

@jenniferabanks

1 year

This extraordinary next book by @SumanaSiliguri offers an unprecedented account of provincial life and an alternative portrait of the modern world. Out from @yalepress in March

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

2 months

I wrote about Guru Dutt visiting my classroom when I was teaching Plato, how 'Yeh duniya agar mil bhi jaaye toh kya ho' illustrates the Greek philosopher's Allegory of the Cave, for @IndianExpress

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

3 years

The sounds of a Bengali childhood ...

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

1 year

Archita took this photo yesterday (without my awareness) when she came to see me in my office. It was the last teaching day of the semester. Our lives with our students are so short, now measured in semesters -- yet one has the feeling of having known them for longer, much longer

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

3 years

Today is the publication day of my book How I Became a Tree (published by @yalepress ) in North America. The Paris Review @parisreview has carried an excerpt from the book. I am grateful, and I'm nervous. Thank you, again, @jenniferabanks

Tree Time - The Paris Review

“A tree was a daily wage laborer, its life of work bound to the cycle of sunlight,” writes Sumana Roy.

www.theparisreview.org

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

22 days

I wrote an essay about the AGREEMENTATIVE INDIAN for the @IndianExpress

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

5 years

Animalia Indica (Aleph) -- an anthology of stories about animals written by Indians in the last one hundred years. A book I have edited - I wanted to see how the modern Indian saw animals, and whether we continue to be related to the storytellers of the Panchatantra, for instance

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

4 years

I'm very happy to share with you that How I Became a Tree will be published by Yale University Press @yalepress I'm very grateful for the opportunity to work with a remarkable person like @jenniferabanks

Jennifer Banks

@jenniferabanks

4 years

As a holiday gift to myself & the world: I’ve just signed for @yalepress & @YaleBooks Sumana Roy’s ( @SumanaSiliguri ) love song of a book HOW I BECAME A TREE, first published so beautifully in India by @AlephBookCo . More info coming soon; I can’t wait to share this with you all.

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

1 year

I've been selected as an ORA (Omega Resilience Awards) fellow in India. Yes, I'm happy -- I feel supported. This is from their website:

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

4 years

A CV is such a limiting document. My greatest accomplishment was yesterday: I managed to put my 20-month-old niece to sleep in less than 5 mins. Nothing has brought me greater joy -- no publication can match that deep delight of the infant's trusting little head on my shoulder.

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

3 years

I wrote an essay on the kind imagination for @Openthemag . It was hard to write - it is the first time I'm writing about online attacks that have affected my health. It won't be the last time I will speak about the importance of a pedagogy of kindness.

The Pedagogy of Kindness - Open The Magazine

KINDNESS IS THE highest form of intelligence,” I tell my six-year-old nephew when he asks me why Batul the Great, a superhero in the Bangla comic book he’s reading, is exposing himself to such...

openthemagazine.com

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

1 year

My essay about a man I have come to love - in @Orion_Magazine I've been reading recent research about how plants cry or how they can be anaesthetised. Jagadish Bose said all this more than 100 years ago, but he was mocked; his research is still not cited

The Man Who Listened to Plants - Orion Magazine

Reading Jagadish Chandra Bose’s botanical language

orionmagazine.org

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

4 years

I remember my grandmother in her village, sprinkling water outside the gate. Evening. The dust would be calmed. Perhaps because I'm unable to cope with this life under emergency anymore, I wished for her to sprinkle some water on my head, for its dust to be calmed.

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

3 years

I miss honesty. Everywhere -- but perhaps most in the book review pages.

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

2 years

A panchayat of dogs Sonipat

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

2 years

VIP: Very Important Plant, my collection of poems, has just been published by Shearsman Books, UK. For friends in the UK and Europe, if you're interested, here is the link:

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

3 years

On Eating: A Multilingual Journal of Food and Eating @IamKunalRay & I bring to you this monthly journal about eating cultures in India. The first essay by Manoranjan Byapari is about his life as a cook, being beaten by an upper caste groom, and ...

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

3 years

'Genius. Tell me the name of the first person who comes to your mind' Every time I've done this exercise the names have been of white men. I've had to point it out to them: no women, Asian, African etc Today 80% of a class of 17 year olds said 'Mom'. I'll remember this moment.

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

2 years

The Language of Trees, a really beautiful anthology of writing on plant life edited by @katieholten , will be out in spring. Looking at the cast of writers on the back cover, I continue to be cheered and surprised that my name is in the same space as writers I've read & admired

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

3 years

This is utterly silly of me to share, I know. But the childish thrill of discovering that Publishers Weekly (familiarly known in the book world as 'the bible of the book business', it was founded in 1872) has put my book in its 'Holiday Gift' recommendations ...

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

3 years

Tuki turns 3 today. Quiet & abhimani, everything she calls 'baby' - the world is an infant she wants to care for. Here she is with a stethoscope, trying to listen to the plant's heartbeat. I look at her like only an aunt can & pray that she finds a heart & its beat in everything

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

3 years

How to remain sane, how to sleep, how to not cry, how to not feel fear for those we love, how to not miss those gone, how, please?

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

11 months

I suppose everything -- every being -- wants to leave a mark. I picked up these neelkantha flowers and put them in a breath of water. A little later I saw this -- they had shared their colour with water.

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

3 years

Kalapini Komkali writes about her father Kumar Gandharva & their kitchen in Bhanukul in the small town of Dewas in this essay for On Eating: A Multilingual Journal of Food & Eating. Her essay, written in Hindi, has been translated into English& Marathi

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

3 years

I'll be taking up a (virtual) residency at the Plant Humanities Lab at Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard University My interest in taking up this fellowship is to find ways to incorporate the plant humanities in the curriculum. If you have any suggestions I'll be grateful to hear from you

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

3 years

I've often been asked about 'how' I teach poetry. When Monique Rooney, the editor of Australian Humanities Review, asked me to write about how I teach creative writing, I decided to write about how a few poets have written water.

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

4 years

Mirabai and Shakespeare were almost contemporaries, she composing in the first half of the 16th c, he in the second half, until his death in 1616. There's nothing else to say. Because there's so much to say.

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

4 years

I will be giving a talk at New York University on 9th April. I know that it's still a month away, but the reason for sharing it today is the poster. The talk is organised by Rajeswari Sunder Rajan and Saronik Basu, both at NYU English. @SaronikB painted this tree!

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

15 days

My essay on HAWA BADAL, the changing air in the Indian provinces, about how the history of my country's air is perhaps the real history of 21st c India, in @the_point_mag , one of my favourite reading places.

Hawa Badal | The Point Magazine

When they told us that we had no history, we told them that we had hawa.

thepointmag.com

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

2 years

The most nourishing food isn't Instagram-pretty. (Most of Indian cuisine isn't, I think.) Like the most nourishing moments in relationships, with oneself, with others, with the world; like the most nourishing literature. Mulor shaak.

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

3 months

My essay in the @IndianExpress about the necessity of the sound of water -- and rains -- to human life: (When @Paromita_Ch asked me to write this, she might have been hoping for rain ... I hope it rains where it is necessary now.)

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

2 years

My essay on the useless in the poetic, on how the useless lubricates everyday language to keep it alive, and how my writing is informed by this and my life in Bangla, in @lithub (Also, how a crow flies through my classroom every semester.) Link:

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

3 years

My short essay on the means we have devised to become famous by using the DIY Fame toolkit, in the @IndianExpress Link:

Understanding our DIY fame culture

🔴 Sumana Roy writes: Once upon a time, one could be just a noun: ‘Professor’. That isn’t enough anymore and the adjectives must be worn like the medals on an army man

indianexpress.com

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

10 months

For a book that was rejected by publishers, whose six-year-old life owes primarily to kind word-of-mouth recommendations by its readers, this does mean a lot to me -- a review in @CriticalInquiry @yalepress @YaleBooks @AlephBookCo -- thank you.

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

2 years

Today I rang the doorbell of my flat knowing that there would be no one to open the door. (I live alone here.) A few minutes later, I put the key into the keyhole. I heard a sound -- as if they were greeting each other. And I wished for the intimacy of the key and the lock.

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

1 year

The @IndianExpress asked me to write about the changed classroom. I wrote about how I nag my students.

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

1 month

I have an essay about Maya mashi, a woman who chose to speak in Bangla idioms and proverbs about plant life in @Himalistan . (It forms a section in my forthcoming book Plant Thinkers of Twentieth-Century Bengal.) Very grateful for @romangautam 's editing

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

7 months

I wrote a short essay on the history of women that can be found in an expression such as 'Sunte ho' ... for the @IndianExpress

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

4 years

I overheard students from Assam, Bengal, Bihar, Kerala, Sikkim take a PhD test online. I've never heard the word 'Literature' being pronounced in so many ways. It moved me to tears -- Literature, the different ways of pronouncing a word which they had all now made their own.

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

3 years

Every culture has its own mourning period for the death of a person. But how long does one have to continue to grieve the loss of a way of life, of relationships, of a country, of dreams, of sleep, how long, how long before it stops bleeding inside us?

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

4 years

The sound of the conch shell, ululation on Thursday, the pressure cooker whistling, dogs barking, the mewling of an infant...These would've never entered a classroom had it not been for online classes. I hope they change the nature and form of pedagogy and bring it closer to life

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

3 years

At some moment, unknown to ourselves, we turned from people to projects. All that was unnecessary to the project - of professional success, of fame, of a halo - was gradually weeded out. We have all become less interesting.

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

3 years

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

2 years

Looking for the Anon in the Canon, I wrote about the missing women essayists in The Book of Indian Essays for @Openthemag 's Women's issue I share this with slight trepidation, but ... I wrote this for many of you who should have been in this anthology.

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

4 years

I'm reading R K Narayan's The English Teacher: 'We were now passing before Bombay Ananda Bhavan, a restaurant. "Shall we go in?" she asked... A number of persons were sitting in the dark hall' My immediate response was-- Are they wearing masks? This is the new literary criticism

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

3 years

I have an essay on aloneness (that I see as al-1-ness) and its numerical vocabulary in @lithub (I smiled to see 'Kishore Kumar' as a tag in an American magazine -- yes, I write about one of his songs here)

On the Moral and Metaphysical Significance of Aloneness

At first I come to it like an outsider. I look at a solitary tree on a field or mountain top. I am struck by its beauty, but the moment soon dissolves into secondhand sadness. I want to feel sad fo…

lithub.com

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

1 month

Me: Aam meetha hain? Fruit seller: Chini hain chini ... Me: Sach? Fruit seller: Itna meetha hain ki heart attack ho jayega ... Me: Oh Fruit seller: Phir bhi aap aam khatey rahengey ... (This is why I live in this country. This is why I don't like shopping in malls.)

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

2 years

The Italian translation of How I Became a Tree (trans by Gioia Guerzoni) is out this week. The Italian writer Matteo Trevisani @matteotrevisani shared a photo of the Italian edition on Instagram. I've stolen this photo from him -- my copy hasn't reached me yet.

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

2 years

I share this with you today:

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

9 months

I wrote an essay about a phenomenon that I've called the Helicoptering Author for @Openthemag 's New Year issue. I hope my fellow writers will not be angry with me, and that my husband won't read this (he usually doesn't, so I might just be safe) :)

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

1 year

My niece believes that everything in the world is Roy -- too little to know what a surname means, she thinks it's a word that must be used for everyone. Dadu Roy, Phone Roy, Egg Roy, Socks Roy ... That is how this tiny plastic ghost, with a tiny little paunch, became Bhutu Roy.

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

4 years

'A band of robbers must be moral in order to hold together as a band; they may rob the whole world but not each other.' Sadhana, Rabindranath Tagore

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

2 years

In case you're interested, my talk at St Stephen's College on 5th April: Breaking, Bending, Branching: Shapes of Trees and Hidden Knowledge Systems

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

4 years

I have a new essay, The Provincial Reader, in Los Angeles Review of Books. Confused and irritated by the language of academia being used around me, I've tried to understand the changed life of what I have called the provincial reader via @LAReviewofBooks

The Provincial Reader | Los Angeles Review of Books

Sumana Roy reflects on the loss — or the proliferation — of the provincial reader.

lareviewofbooks.org

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

6 months

I'm very grateful for your responses to the first review of PROVINCIALS in the Wall Street Journal. Many of you have asked about the Indian edition. PROVINCIALS will be published in India by @AlephBookCo and will be out on the 1st of May. Here is the cover. Thank you, again.

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

4 years

What is the unit of exhaustion?

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

2 years

Six years ago, this little boy was discovering the sound of dried leaves, asking why every dried leaf makes a sound different from the other. Now he asks about the AQI in Sonipat.

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

4 years

My desire for -- and return to -- the forest has perhaps been for this: a necessary exile from words, from social language. Today, for a moment, I wondered how calming it might be if social media were like a forest -- as accepting of difference and as accommodative.

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

1 year

Why do we take pride in our hardships but not in the joy and ananda that kept us alive? Koto koshto korechhi, I had to endure so much, I heard someone say with pride just now. I've not heard anyone say Koto ananda korechhi, I had such a lot of fun, with any sense of achievement

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

3 years

My Hindu Business Line column this month is about the murdered trees of Delhi, those killed by the government for the Central vista.

Trees of Delhi: Falling to the vista

The virus might have spared plant life, but India’s central government hasn’t

www.thehindubusinessline.com

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

1 month

A review of my book PROVINCIALS ( @AlephBookCo ; @yalepress ) in The Telegraph. Even if it hadn't been a review of my book, I'd have enjoyed reading it as an essay. It's so well-written.

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

9 months

Slightly weary and distracted, I opened this book, this book which has no page numbers and which can, therefore, be read from wherever one wants to begin. It opened to this page -- I'll take it as a sign. Charlie Mackesy, The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

2 years

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

5 years

I have an essay about being raised by New Critics in a small Indian town in the @LAReviewofBooks . It is also about a culture of reading and writing that no longer exists, that has almost rendered many of us anachronistic ~

On Being Raised by New Critics in a Small Indian Town | Los Angeles Review of Books

What literary studies lost when the New Critics were dethroned.

lareviewofbooks.org

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

1 year

Chintamani auntie, who's from Bihar's Muzaffarpur district but now lives in Sonipat, calls me 'Sumanwa'. This is my favourite pronunciation of my name so far. I like it even more than 'Cinema'.

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

4 years

I feel cheered and encouraged by @MargaretAtwood 's tweet of my essay Guilt Lit in @LAReviewofBooks (The essay was misunderstood by a few, and this tweet -- and other responses -- made me feel that I must do what I like to do.)

Guilt Lit | Los Angeles Review of Books

lareviewofbooks.org

Margaret E Atwood

@MargaretAtwood

4 years

Guilt Lit - Los Angeles Review of Books - Guilt Lit

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

1 month

Beginning next week, I'll be in the US, where my first talk, at the WHITNEY HUMANITIES CENTRE, YALE UNIVERSITY, will be on my new work -- THE QUEST FOR THE PLANT SCRIPT.

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

1 year

I'm teaching a course called FLIGHT, FLOCK, FORM: THE BIRD AND THE ESSAY this semester Bikram Grewal will be giving a talk on the bird -- and other animals -- in Indian art & literature on 3rd October at Ashoka University If you're interested, do come for the talk, samosa & tea

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

2 years

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

3 years

An interview about 'creative writing', courses one can take, 'advice' to writers, and a few more things in The Telegraph today. Link:

'Never stop writing, never stop submitting': Author Sumana Roy

www.telegraphindia.com

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

1 year

The Language of Trees -- a book so overwhelmingly beautiful that it's hard to say anything about it. I've been staring at its pages. I'm extremely grateful to be in @katieholten 's book that collects thinkers on plant life of the last 2000 years.

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

3 years

How I Became a Tree ( @YaleBooks ) in a tiny free library in California. 'Reviews' come in many forms. When a friend sent me a screenshot of this image from Instagram, I felt happy. P. S. Notice the bottle of sanitiser ...

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

2 years

I suppose I'll always be the small-town girl who can't get over her disbelief about sharing space with Anne Carson&Lydia Davis, writers I've admired, writers I teach in my courses. My essay on Jagadish Chandra Bose is in the Spring issue of @Orion_Magazine

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

4 years

My essay on guilt tax and the postcolonial syllabus, published in @the_point_mag a few days ago, has been syndicated by @chronicle of Higher Education . I'm grateful for their support to the essay.

Opinion | The Problem With the Postcolonial Syllabus

A professor in India notes a peculiarly Western allergy to the pleasure of the text.

www.chronicle.com

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

4 years

From the books we write it would seem that writers&academics would reject power. There's no field where the gap between theory&practice is so large.We teach critiques of power but rush to exercise it at the slightest opportunity. What good is all our words if we're such bullies

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

2 years

Any broken branch we meet, on the street or in the trash, we carry home. We slip it into anything we can find. Usually they grow, sometimes as if against their will, and they become family. How much easier it is to do this with broken branches than with broken people.

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

3 years

I'll be giving a talk titled USELESS at IIT, Gandhinagar, on 25th January, next Tuesday, at 11 am IST. Link, in case you're interested: Meeting ID: 983 2597 6096 No passcode

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

2 years

The word उदास (udāsa) comes from √उद् (ud, “upon, upwards”) and आस (āsa, “seat”). Perhaps that explains why certain moments bring udasi -- the evening sky, with light about to leave its seat; rain, unseated from clouds; or someone's leaving, whether leaving home or the heart.

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

3 years

I won't blame my eyes for reading 'End of Season Sale' as 'End of Reason Sale'.

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

2 years

The quiet poet Robin Ngangom 's book of poems is out. I'm not sure whether he's posted about it or whether he will at all. I found this image on Twitter.

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

3 years

My Hindu Business Line column this month is about exhaustion, the unrelenting demand for productivity, and the request to be a piece of land that doesn't grow anything for humans ~

Earth in rest

To be that unassuming patch in the backyard that is under no pressure to produce anything ‘useful’

www.thehindubusinessline.com

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

3 years

Yesterday I got to know that the essay for which I was trolled so viciously was @the_point_mag 's second most-read essay of the year. I'm grateful to all of you who have written to me, and to all the academics who have included it in their syllabus.

Top Ten of 2021 | The Point Magazine

As 2021 comes to a close, we’re proud to present our top-ten most-read essays of the year, listed below in reverse order. If you enjoy […]

thepointmag.com

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

6 years

Out of Syllabus ( @speakingtiger14 ), my first collection of poems, is out this month ~ (The cover photograph is by Bhaskar Kundu, my friend from Siliguri.)

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

3 years

Doing the ABCD routine with my niece, I notice this in her book: E for egg; F for Fish; G for Goat; H for Hen. And I think to myself -- that's a Bengali's diet sorted.

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

3 years

I have a new poem about being an outsider in the city special issue of @CafeDissensus . ('Bahiragata' is outsider in Bangla.)

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

4 years

The tendency to categorise poets as 'senior poet', 'junior poet', 'veteran poet', makes me wonder whether literary culture has been 'inspired' by academia. The junior poet must be the Assistant Professor, the senior poet a Professor, and the veteran poet? Professor Emeritus?

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

5 years

Among all the languages I've lived in, the word for love is most beautiful in Nepali: Maya. To move the emphasis to the effect of love from the act of loving, to what love creates: Maya.

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

4 months

My essay on the work epidemic and the disappearance of khela from our lives, in the @IndianExpress today:

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

2 years

Why did the Bengal government decide to rename Durga Puja bishorjon as carnival? How can the immersion of the idol of the goddess & the metaphorical leaving of her parental home be a carnival? Must we turn to the English language to make everything sound commercially attractive?

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Sumana Roy

@SumanaSiliguri

3 years

Childhood. And the same words every single time: 'Tor jeeb dyakha', Show me your tongue.

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