Amitava kumar biography
Amitava Kumar on Finding Solace in the Words of Others
When my kids were little, I was always afraid that they would die, but that was mostly nervous ignorance on my part, knowing nothing about the resilience of little bodies. I used to worry how an infant would be able to tell me what was wrong. But the real worry was about my parents. They had language—and still they would die.
My mother died in early 2014. During the years that followed, I understood that now it was my father’s turn. He was healthy and active, at least till the pandemic arrived, but I wasn’t taking chances. I read and took note of anything that writers wrote about the death of their fathers.
For example, in a poem by Nick Laird: “I have been writing elegies for you all my life, Father…” I read those words and recognized my own reality. Then, exactly two years after Laird’s dad had died, it was my own father’s turn to be in the ICU.
From many years ago, I was haunted by a memory of another writer’s words. In Letters Between a Father and Son (2011), there was the stark fact of the son, V.S. Naipaul, unable to return home from Oxford where he was a student. He had sent a telegram instead.
= NAIPAUL 26 NEPAUL STREET PORT OF SPAIN TRINIDAD
= HE WAS THE BEST MAN I KNEW STOP EVERYTHING I OWE TO HIM BE BRAVE MY LOVES TRUST ME = VIDO
(In a later memoir-piece, published in the New Yorker magazine in 2019, Naipaul described getting a telegram from a “branch of the family” settled in London: BAD NEWS COME NOW. It was brutal, this communication, but “some instinct for drama, some wish to serve death in a correct way, had made them send a telegram.” In old Hindi films, the postman as the harbinger of death, arriving often on a bicycle, sending a chill down the spine of the audience with that single word, “Telegram.”)
The real worry was about my parents. They had language—and still they would die.The days for
Amitava Kumar
He is the author of Nobody Does the Right Thing; A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb; Husband of a Fanatic: A Personal Journey through India, Pakistan, Love, and Hate, a New York Times “Editors’ Choice” selection; Bombay—London—New York, a New Statesman (UK) “Book of the Year” selection; and Passport Photos. He is the editor of several books, including Away: The Indian Writer as an Expatriate, The Humour and the Pity: Essays on V. S. Naipaul, and World Bank Literature. He is also an editor of the online journal Politics and Culture and the screenwriter and narrator of the prize-winning documentary film Pure Chutney.
Kumar’s writing has appeared in The Nation, Harper’s, Vanity Fair, The American Prospect, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Hindu, and other publications in North America and India.
Amitava Kumar
Indian writer and journalist (born 1963)
Amitava Kumar (born 17 March 1963) is an Indian writer and journalist who is Professor of English, holding the Helen D. Lockwood Chair at Vassar College.
Personal Life
Kumar was born in the city of Arrah in the Indian state of Bihar on 17 March 1963. He grew up close to his birthplace in Patna, also in Bihar. His Father, Ishwar Chandra was a Senior Bihar Bureaucrat from Jadopur, East Champaran Bihar He attended St Michael's High School. In India, Kumar earned a bachelor's degree in political science from Hindu College, Delhi University in 1984. He holds two master's degrees in Linguistics and Literature from Delhi University (1986) and Syracuse University (1988) respectively. In 1993, he received his doctoral degree from the Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota. His wife Mona Ali is an economics professor at SUNY New Paltz. Kumar lives with his family in Poughkeepsie, New York.
As a professor at Vassar College, Kumar has made significant connections in the writing and journalism world. Kumar served as a mentor to journalist Kelly Stout and Alanna Okun, a senior editor at Vox, while they were students at Vassar.
The death of Kumar's parents had a significant effect on the content of his writing. He reminisced on his father and ancestors in a 2022 article for the wire. In a 2024 article for Lit Hub, he compared experiencing the death of his father to various literary accounts of death, like in Blake Morrison's memoir When Did You Last See Your Father?.
Work
Overview
Kumar is the author of Husband of a Fanatic (The New Press, 2005 and Penguin-India, 2004), Bombay-London-New York (Routledge and Penguin-India, 2002), Passport Photos (University of California Press and Penguin-India, 2000), the book of poems No Tears for the N.R.I. (Writers Wor
Amitava Kumar
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