Ramaswamy - Terrestrial lessons: the conquest of the world as globe

Sumathi Ramaswamy

The University of Chicago Press

Chicago and London

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

2017 by The University of Chicago

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637.

Published 2017

Printed in the United States of America

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ISBN-13: 978-0-226-47657-5 (cloth)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-47674-2 (e-book)

DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226476742.001.0001

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Ramaswamy, Sumathi, author.

Title: Terrestrial lessons : the conquest of the world as globe / Sumathi Ramaswamy.

Description: Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016057345 | ISBN 9780226476575 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780226476742 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Earth (Planet)Study and teachingIndiaHistory. | GeographyStudy and teachingIndiaHistory. | GlobesIndiaHistory.

Classification: LCC G76.5.I5 R36 2017 | DDC 910/.020954dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016057345

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI / NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

For

Rich

The Earth, the Heavensare fraught with Instruction.

CALEB BINGHAM , 1796

And the world is like an apple

whirling silently in space

like the circles that you find

in the windmills of your mind.

ALAN BERGMAN AND MARILYN BERGMAN , 1968

This is an unconventional history of a commonplace object we moderns have likely encountered at some point of time in our lives, especially as school-going children. I introduce you to it by way of a fleeting but luminous appearance it makes in Kiran Desais The Inheritance of Loss, when its teenage heroine, Sai, mails off a coupon to a distant American address in Omaha, Nebraska, from Kalimpong, a small town in the Himalayan foothills of northeastern India. The coupon is for a free National Geographic inflatable globe:

When so much time passed that they had forgotten about it, it arrived along with a certificate congratulating them for being adventure-loving members pushing the frontiers of human knowledge and daring for almost a full century. Sai and the cook had inflated the globe, attached it to the axis with the provided screws. Rarely was there something unexpected in the mail and never anything beautiful. They looked at the deserts, the mountains, the

This is a moment from the very beginning of Desais award-winning novel, set in the 1980s against the backdrop of a fiery separatist movement. Desais story concludes with another fleeting but telling appearance of my books chief protagonist:

Sai stood thereShe thought of her father and the space program. She thought of all the National Geographics and the books she had read. Of the judges journey, of the cooks journey, of Bijus. Of the globe twirling on its axis.

And she felt a glimmer of strength. Of resolve. She [too] must leave.

Terrestrial Lessons, as well, is about arrivals, encounters, and departures, about bonds established with one another and between the self and the world, and about the wonder and reverie that flow from such acts of forging but also the unease and uncertainty that may follow. Mostly, though, this book is about relationships forged with and around a singular artifact that was once laden with the circumstances of history but now appears self-evident and banal, even in places like contemporary India, notwithstanding Sai and the cooks joyous response to it in Desais fictional narrative.