My impression of Arundhati Roy’s Azadi - so far I am only through with the introduction and half of the first essay - my impression is that it is pretty left leaning definitely very interesting. It makes you think. It’s somewhat set in a panicky time after and during covid and I see some of that panic there. Some of which is exaggerated in hindsight but it’s very interesting. Besides the political monologue, there also a lot of interesting tidbits about language especially in the first essay which is about language.
- Urdu does not have a word for vagina the closest is the Arabic furj which is archaic and obsolete. There are other you from them that main things like hidden part, breathing hole, vent and path to the uterus. The most commonly used is aurat ki sharmgah which means a woman’s place of shame.
- The Danish phrase for the same means lips of shame
- The Latin pudenda means that where of one should feel shame
- There were Welsh missionaries in India and in the north east in Assam and Meghalaya. One language spoken there by the khasi tribe is an austroasiatic
- Austro is probably Latin for southern and so austroasiatic means relating to south Asia
- The Welsh missionaries did a lot of work to convert these oral languages into written once so that they can print a Bible in that language after translating. I do not approve of the intentions but the side effect was really cool which is that oral languages were now also written and you could translate in and out of those languages
- The language spoken by tea workers is given the umbrella name baganiya which literally mean garden language
- Sir Henry Lawrence was a British hero who died during the siege of Lucknow in the 1857 revolt. He also authored the legal code in Punjab that for bed first labour infanticide and the practice of sati
Starting to think about democracy and socialism and different kinds of other governments I mean things and the question I would pose is in a certain context let’s see let’s say it the Israel Palestine war would it be any different like good Israel actions have been any different if it was a socialist country if everyone let’s say hypothetically got to vote on the decision of the actions that are taken in the war, would the war have been any different? I don’t know maybe not. Maybe the problem is not about the kind of government at all but it something else something that’s like that has to do with the people themselves.