Dear Editor,
Regarding your publication of my letter on January 24, 2012 (‘A completely different take on Bhattachary’s book’), I am aware that SN cannot publish in full all the brutal language that Rahul Bhattacharya reports in his book The Sly Company of People who Care. However, I am still miffed especially since SN’s reviewers Dave Martins and Brendan De Caires were given so many pages of the newspaper to tell us all how absolutely and gloriously Bhattacharya captures our speech and, indeed, our entire culture.
All of this only to find that SN cannot publish parts of all that “wonderful” speech because they are filth? SN’s readers should know that Bhattacharya does not use any coy, fig-leaf dashes to cover up any of the vile language that he finds here.
Did Martins and de Caires not wince or flinch or feel uncomfortable about any of it, about the language itself, and the content that included casual commentary about the raping of women? Did they not ask themselves why Bhattacharya reports the filth, and so baldly? Did they not ever consider that he was making a point about our crudeness and sordidness?
Bhattacharya kept his wonderful prose for the rain and rivers, for the forest and waterfalls. And, in between all this beauty, we enter and befoul the landscape.
Yours faithfully,
Ryhaan Shah
