Contemporary urban articulations: a study in writings and literature

Much more than the speech-act, to write is to express a lack or a need for which sympathy and/or empathy external to oneself or ones notions of oneself is sought. Such a lack, of course, is not always direct in the sense of craving immediate fulfilment and is often a need projected as lack(s) in wider socio-economic contexts. The contours of writing vis-a-vis wish fulfilment are, therefore, necessarily more nuanced than what might be conceptualised in singular terms of writing as catharsis and in thinking of contemporary urban articulations we must keep this dynamism of form, content and intent in mind.

Accordingly, this project aims to comment upon changing contours of literary (non)fiction and the novelistic form in twenty-first century urbanities. It will locate contemporary urban contexts, specifically urban Indian contexts, as being singular in lacking that commonality of experience and emotion which lent quintessential character or spirit to urban spaces and cities till about a few decades back i.e., before the normalising influence of globalisation came into its own. In doing so, it will attempt to particularise literary articulations originating from these contexts as corollaries of the fragmented, ruptured ethos of being and mobility which have now come to characterise much of our contemporary (subcontinental) urbanities.

It will focus specifically on Delhi and present its urban tradition as a history of continuities in ruptures, a legacy of fragmentation which contributes in many ways to the fluid, ambiguous sense of citizenship and belonging that many today find characteristic of it. As a model for the

fluid yet ossified urban spaces of contemporaneity, of spaces enmeshed within networks of moneyed interest and bourgeois respectability, imbued with a keen sense of social mobility and witness to fiercely contested struggles for ownership, Delhi will be taken as an adequate illustration of the sorts of urban consciousnesses which, for literature, are increasingly making notions of beginnings, middles and ends superfluous and, so, more or less permanently altering the ways in which realities are conceived and realised . This motif will then be examined through in-depth studies of contemporary writings on the city, including, amongst others, works such as Delhi Noir, Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity, Delhi Calm, City Improbable: Writings on Delhi and Delhi Belly. These analyses will form the basis for a comprehensive comment on the meaning and nature of writing in our times and hope to widen the scope of literature to include alongside a radically changing novelistic form the short story, the graphic novel, the comic and, last but not the least, the blogpost as more effectively expressive articulators of our different urbanities.