Jhumpa Lahiri: uncertainty

Transcript context

…If I think of Indian economists, two of the best known would be Amartya Sen and Abhijit Banerjee, and they’re both Bengali, of course. Why does it seem that so much of the Indian intelligentsia comes from Kolkata or Bengal? What is in the water, so to speak? I don’t know. I hate to make these kind of sweeping generalized comments. I don’t believe in them. But it’s a city that believes in its poets, that believes in its politics, believes in humanity in some sense. And life is so extreme there, in so many ways. People are put to the test, and you see life being put to the test constantly around you. There’s nothing you can really accept easily or take for granted about yourself or about the universe if you’ve been there. It’s a jolt to your consciousness, but a fundamental one, an essential one, to shake us out of this, whatever takes over, if you protect yourself. If I were to take a superficial reading of Indian history, earlier Kolkata is the central capital for the British Empire in India. You could argue that, as the British left India since World War II, Kolkata has become significantly less central in some ways. Delhi and Mumbai seem to become more important. (a) Do you think that’s true? And (b) if it is true, do you think that, in part, accounts for why Kolkata has stayed so interesting? That loss of centrality or existing on the margins? You even have a nice Italian word for this.…

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