Talk:Vikram Seth

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I accept the change by Catamorphism (Rewrite "Gay themes" section to be slightly less equivocal)with a certain measure of reluctance. Seth has been, as I originally put it, discreet though not secretive about his personal life. When asked outright during an online chat with Indian readers (see http://www.rediff.com/chat/vikchat.htm) about the significance of Philippe Honore in his life and about the poem ("stray or great?") he declined to answer on the basis that this was not something he should feel any obligation to discuss with strangers. One would have thought that the object of this article was to provide such background as Seth himself is willing to have in the wider public domain, but not to intrude on his privacy: presumably he considered that the permission he granted to his mother to mention his "gay choices" in her memoir would not give the matter a very wide currency -- certainly not as wide as his own readership.

Anonymous editor, my interpretation of that online chat is that Seth refused to answer the questions about Honoré and the poem because they were poorly phrased, not because he thought it would be a violation of his privacy. After all, thinking that one's sexual orientation should be kept private requires thinking that being queer is a shameful thing, and I see no reason to think that Seth thinks so. If you're out of the closet, you're out of the closet. Catamorphism 01:10, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

It is a pity that the editors of Wikipedia felt it necessary to remove for copyright reasons the photograph which an earlier draughtsperson inserted. I wonder if anyone better equipped than I both to find and insert a non-copyright photo might now do so.

In San Francisco and New York (and Sydney, Toronto and London) to be sure. Not necessarily in Delhi which is in some ways more like, say, Wyoming. Clearly he doesn't think there's anything shameful; perhaps dangerous though. For some anyway. And he is prudent about where he and how acknowledges these things. (I'm not deliberately being anonymous; I just hadn't figured out how to attribute my observations in this forum to myself.) Masalai 02:17, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm...someone has switched around what happens to Seth at Doon and what happens to Amit's younger brother. But Amit's younger brother does suffer sexual abuse...well, being "felt up," anyway. Does this anonymous editor know something about Seth's career as a Doon student? Masalai 04:37, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Maybe we could be consistent in our punctuation, following Fowler's English Usage with double quotation marks and the full stops and commas inside them. Or, since some British publishers prefer single quotes and full stops and commas outside, that's OK too, but not both in the one article. Masalai 04:53, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Also, is it the Bata Shoe Company [sic]? When its international head office was in Canada it would probably have been Bata Shoes Limited; now that it has returned its international head office to Bratislava it is obviously unlikely that that's the name; of course it's the Indian subsidiary we are interested in. But the capitalisation is significant. Perhaps no capital S or capital C? Masalai 05:52, 13 December 2005 (UTC) It's Bata India Limited.Masalai 16:06, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Saw VS interviewed on German TV recently. His German was very bad. He had to be helped with the simplest words. Perhaps his polymathy means he is spread too thinly intellectually. Pliny 23:55, 3 July 2006 (UTC)