Categories
Interview

On Raising a Humanist

  • Dr. Manisha Pathak-Shelat
  • Kiran Vinod Bhatia

Two communication scholars, Dr. Manisha Pathak-Shelat and Kiran Vinod Bhatia, from a management institute in Ahmedabad, India got together to write a book, Raising a Humanist; Conscious Parenting in an Increasingly Fragmented World. How relevant is that in the current world where people are crumbling not just under the pandemic but also under the burdens of a changing, turbulent era where nothing seems as it was earlier! The impact on children cannot be undervalued. In a time when masks and social media seem to be the only way to survive, how would we bring up our youngsters to be considerate good human beings? How do parents need to respond to their children’s needs to prepare them for a challenging future? In this exclusive, the two scholars answer questions on how to address issues we face bringing up children. Kiran Vinod Bhatia moved to University of Wisconsin- Madison midway to complete her PhD. They completed the book together and answered these questions to give us a glimpse into their book and their ideas.

How did the idea for this book come about? How difficult was it to coordinate across the ocean and get it out?

The book is one of the outcomes of our several years of collaborative work. So, it was kind of a natural progression from writing purely academic papers- which we have several by now and an academic book- and then wanting to share the insights with a larger audience. My meeting with Manisha Mathews from Sage was a catalyst because she immediately saw the merit in the idea in our first meeting at MICA (Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India) and kept pushing us till we delivered the book.

Our collaboration started way back in 2017 in India soon after Kiran joined the FPM (Fellow Programme in Management) at MICA so Kiran moving across the ocean hasn’t made a huge difference in our capacity to work together. Technology of course helps but we do miss the face-to-face conversations over tea or lunch.

You have spoken extensively of the role of family, school and media in child rearing. Can you reflect briefly on these three issues? Especially media?

These three, family, school and media surround a child constantly and there are many informal, sub-conscious lessons learnt ever day. We still look at media such as cartoon shows, mainstream movies, lyrics of the pop songs, and mythological stories as benign entertainment but they heavily influence the discourse on class, gender, caste, religion and so on. They make systemic discrimination acceptable. Of course, they also have the power to bring positive change in the hands of sensitive and thoughtful people.

You have spoken of the process of unlearning. Why do you see it as a necessary tool in parenting? How important is openness and transparency in parenting? 

Openness and transparency are the backbones of conscious parenting. Gone are the days when children will mutely accept everything you say. They have a vast number of alternate sources of information, they would want to know the reason, the rationale backing your claims. At times they are much more progressive than you are and you have much to learn from them. Encouraging your children to question things and critically introspect can be very beneficial to parent’s worldview too!

What would happen if we stopped bothering about what others say? You have emphasised that it is not good to bother about other’s opinions — what others will say to be precise. Would you have people disregard and openly rebuff each other’s views?

There is a difference between being genuinely concerned about other people’s feelings, rights, and lives and pandering to their opinion to keep appearances even if you strongly believe in the justice of your action. You must have noticed that in our book we constantly emphasise dialogue, respect, and tact in interpersonal interactions. We encourage critical thinking where you do consider all opinions. We argue that you have a right to stand by your values if they do not harm others. Ultimately, when you recognise discrimination and unjust behaviour you have to be brave to do what feels right to you.

One of the things I have sensed is a hatred between the genders in India. Women have a sense of resentment towards the patriarchal norms imposed on them and men feel that marriage is unnecessary (I have read articles) if women do not role-play. How do you bridge this gap and make parenting work? What would be the impact of such an issue on children?

This is a very complex issue and both parents normally bring their own baggage to marriage and parenting. Open communication, a genuine concern for each other’s well-being, openness to new ideas and to questioning harmful serotypes, and treating marriage and family as a collaborative undertaking and not a role-playing game to serve one’s self-interest are the practices that would keep family dynamics healthy.

Many ‘successful’ women no longer want children in India. Some think marriage as an institution has failed. Do you think it is alright to feel this way?

We are nobody to pass a judgment if someone feels this way. Personally, I have found marriage and motherhood fulfilling but there is no way I can impose this experience on others who do not see them this way.

How are children impacted if parents believe in caste or class and impose it on them? If parents employ domestic help and shout at them, what would be the impact on children?

There could be several different outcomes. Some children would internalise these values unquestioningly and turn into similar insensitive and entitled adults. Some would get exposed to other ways of thinking and behaving and would question their parents. This might result in conflicts, at least initially, until the parents see merit in their children’s questions. Some might just decide to focus on their own practice and behaviour become sensitive, humane adults.

How do we give our children a safe home, even technologically? Is a peaceful life necessary for children to thrive, focus and grow as human beings? Why is tolerance and compassion important in child rearing?

It is too utopian to expect that life will always be peaceful. To be resilient and realistic children do need to be exposed to conflict and risk but not in a way that numbs them into insensitivity or harms them irrevocably. They should be brought up to value peace, harmony, justice, and compassion but with the realisation that the reality out there is grey. If we can help them see the darkness in the world and at the same time feel hopeful enough that in their small ways, they do have the power to shape their own and other lives in a positive way it would be an important contribution.

How important is learning to forgive the perpetrator of an abuse towards yourself in parenting? Is it not right that justice be meted out to the perpetrator? Is tolerance and forgiveness of patriarchal mindset acceptable when it comes to parenting?

As they say, forgive but don’t accept. Keep striving to bring the change. Forgiveness does not mean encouraging the same abusive behaviour again and again.

What is the impact on children of news on rape, lynching, communal violence on TV and social on a young child in the age range of 1 to 10? How do we explain this to the child?

We have published another book- Bhatia, Kiran & Pathak-Shelat, Manisha (2019). Challenging discriminatory practices of religious socialisation among adolescents- Critical media literacy and pedagogies in practice. Springer Nature-Palgrave UK.

In this book we talk about many pedagogic strategies to help young people become media and information literate.

Do you think that exposure to these can affect children?

Yes. Absolutely.

How authoritative does a parent need to be? Are laying out rules not necessary to a child’s disciplined growth?

Rules are necessary but at an appropriate age they can be co-created and with a reason. All adults and children must be then expected to obey them, not just children.

How important is it to communicate with your child to raise a humanist? How do you communicate with your child, given that he has no time after school, friends and social media and your own career and social needs? Especially for adolescents.

Communication is the key to a healthy parent-child relationship. At least keep some no-distraction one-on-one time with each other and these times don’t have to be preachy — have fun together and have unstructured but deep and meaningful conversations; get them interested in your own career, get genuinely interested (not snooping around) in their friends, the games they love, their technology interests; have a practice of doing chores together…earlier all this begins in the family the easier it is. Have family movie nights or cookouts. Seek their opinion on important family matters when they are old enough.

This is an online interview conducted by Mitali Chakravarty.

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Click here to read the review of the book.

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Categories
Interview

Samyukta & Sonya

Sonya J Nair

Sonya J Nair and Samyukta Poetry were suddenly making waves in social media with a festival of poetry called Anantha. An academic and writer, Nair spoke to Borderless Journal about their venture and their work and a bit about her own writing which flickers to life every now and then with a searing brilliance, much like the short intrusions she made during the Anantha sessions — are well-informed and apt rising to the situation. As Samyukta Poetry seems to be associated with the name of the two decades old Samyukta Journal of Gender and Culture, is it only for academics or is it for all of us? Venture into this interview to uncover the intricate workings of the Samyukta Research Foundation, its various associations, new projects that will evolve under its banner and Samyukta Poetry, which homes many poets.

Tell us how Samyukta Poetry came about. It started in April, 2020, during the pandemic lockdown. So, what made you start this venture?

Samyukta Poetry was the result of a thought that came barrelling across a long time ago. I always had the idea of starting a vlog that featured the latest in fiction. But like with everything else, I was taking my own time and in the interim, Samyukta Research Foundation, of which I am the Director of Research, asked me if I would look at poetry instead. As I do write poetry myself, the offer was too good to pass-up. And thus, was born samyuktapoetry.com. Interestingly, we started off with a laptop and a friend whose brother who handled all the initial tech matters. And now the whole enterprise has grown, there have been a lot of people who have come in on a voluntary basis, on the basis of goodwill and lent us their creative and technical know-how and made subtle-yet-strong differences in the way we look and come across today.

What is the link between you and the Samyukta Journal of Gender and Culture, which is a peer reviewed journal?

The Samyukta Journal of Gender and Culture, founded in 2001 by Prof. G. S Jayasree, is a journal that comes with quarter of a century worth of legacy behind it. In fact, Samyukta Poetry draws on a lot of goodwill thanks to the journal. There has been some cutting-edge research on Women’s Studies that the journal has presented over the years. And there have been some great collaborations with names such as Dr. Malashri Lal, Ritu Menon, Leela Gulati, Sanjukta Dasgupta, Uma Chakravarti, Sneja Gunew and Margot Badran.

You will soon be launching another off shoot of the journal. What will this one be? When will it be launched?

The Samyukta Research Foundation is the organisation that has the overall responsibility of the academic, creative and publishing wings. There are a lot of journals that are in the offing in the coming years. As of now, there is a journal of Film Studies and another one on Sexuality studies that are being readied for launch in the current year. There is a very good team in place at the Samyukta Research Foundation that helms these initiatives, and it is their vision that drives us forward. In the coming years, there are going to be serious endeavours to place before people, quality research that is rooted in integrity. Which is the benchmark of the Foundation. The publishing wing, Samyukta India Press, is a very vital agency in helping us realise these aims.

What are the kind of writers you hope to attract at Samyukta Poetry?

Samyukta Poetry does not work with a clear mandate regarding the people we want to feature. The only ground rule is that it must be honest poetry that speaks fearlessly. We look for the human…for that primordial connection that comes through and forms extraordinary narratives of everydays, of the everywhere in the nowhere…of places that are real in the imagined and vice-versa. For us, the story of the poem, where it comes from– the histories it contains is as important as the art, the craft and the technique.

Our readership is for everyone who loves poetry, who loves the intricate mesh of narratives that govern our lives. Its for everyone who would like to understand the majesty of the universe. It is not a grandiose statement that I make here. If you read our features, you will understand that we draw the poet from the many circumstances that they may not have visited, but are ever-present in. We are all about discovering the joys of that relatability of these experiences.

You just hosted a huge online festival, Anantha, to commemorate your first anniversary. Was that for Samyukta Poetry solely or for the journal. How did that go? Tell us a bit about it.

Anantha was initially conceptualised to mark the first anniversary of Samyukta Poetry. But looking at the response we got in terms of participation and the conversations that we had going on; it was decided mid-stream that we would make it an annual affair. We had tremendous goodwill and cooperation from all the people we approached when we were planning the festival. There was a lot of thought that had been put into the panels of poetry readings — my idea was to mix it up, have seemingly dissonant voices in some panels, have poets with vastly different styles and approaches in some other panels, focus groups in certain slots… it was a very trying initial time, curating the names in terms of who went where…but it worked. The poets connected, their voices rang out, there was tremendous energy, and the viewers loved the vibe.

The book launches were another thing we were particular about, we had six books released at Anantha and each of them was unique in terms of their subject and treatment. We went all out to ensure that it was an event to remember for the poets.

Our panels were moderated by some of the best-known names in Indian poetry. Menka Shivdasani, Gayatri Majumdar, Ra Sh, Jaydeep Sarangi, Ashwani Kumar, Amit Shankar Saha, Kashiana Singh, Sanket Mhatre responded brilliantly to our requests to moderate our panels and to bring in their voices to weigh and contemplate.  To have more than seventy poets zooming in and out of our portals at various times of the day for seven days was both exhilarating and at the same time nerve wracking — the electricity, connectivity and the looming miasma of the second wave of the pandemic making it a very trying time- emotionally and otherwise.

Anantha was a festival with a clear vision, to discuss the majesty of poetry with all its polyphony and to understand the beauty of the creative process. Our panels on translating Kashmir, Tagore, Multilingual poetry, Bhasha poetry were all eagerly anticipated and well received.

The In Conversation sessions with Priya Sarukkai Chabria, Arjun Rajendran, K. Satchidanandan, Anju Makhija, Anupama Raju, K. Srilata, Ranjit Hoskote and Arundhathi Subramaniam crossed frontiers in terms of the ways the poets spoke about how they see writing and the architectonics of their writings.

Now, your own journey. Since when have you been writing poetry?

Ah well, I have been writing poetry since childhood…the usual, initial rhyming ones about flowers and cats gave way to non-rhyming ones about angst and then love and then life.

Do you think publishing poetry/ prose gives the same fulfilment as the process of writing? You are planning a book. What is your forthcoming collection about?

Those are very deep questions. I think each of these processes gives a special sort of joy. Different, albeit special.

When I write, I am very happy because I always think the previous poem might have been my last. I am very aware of the mortality of my poetry. The idea that I may never write again. So each poem, is a personal testimony of being able to be moved, to be inspired, to want to feel alive and accountable.

Seeing your name in print is a very different sort of experience. It is a sort of permanent praise. An engraving of the acknowledgement that someone out there thinks you have something worth listening to and feels that others ought to hear it too. At that point, a part of you crosses over to immortality. A little part. But still.

I am in the middle of writing a biography of a transperson from Kerala. A truly inspirational figure ad it will be a book with a very different narratorial voice and very different things to say.

And yes, I am also putting together a collection of my poems. It’s an exploration of the many ways we can view the world. There are flatbed trucks, there are polaroids strung along roads, there are the places I grew up in and the people I fell in love with. It is also about people, places, trains, tunnels and the vast unknown that is the Mind.

And there is a plan evolving for an anthology of poems by Samyukta Poetry. So chaotic times ahead!

You are an academic. How do you shuffle the multiple tasks of writing, running a journal and teaching?

By not thinking about it. Honestly! I keep these worlds apart — or atleast, I think I do and trust my instincts and ensure I’m not crowded out. Also, I believe in the elasticity of Time. So, I stretch it. Thankfully, it all works out in the end. It is not for nothing that Lucky Jim is one my all-time favourite works. That’s who I identify with.

What is the future you see for yourself as a writer, an academic and for Samyukta Poetry?

My future as a writer is only as good as my next poem or prose piece. That and whatever the readers allow me. I like that edgy feel.

The academic in me and the Samyukta Journal of Sexuality Studies are going to live symbiotically. We have a fantastic network of scholars across the world who are working in tandem. So great things are expected.

Samyukta Poetry is branching into reviews and taking on a more vocal role in promoting different, organic voices and building a community of people who realise that though they are hungry, there is enough space under the sun for everyone. That graciousness is what Samyukta Poetry wants to stand for. The recognition that there is no I without a WE.

(This was an online interview conducted by Mitali Chakravarty on behalf of Borderless Journal.)

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Categories
Musings

Why I write?

By Basudhara Roy

Lest the title should endeavour to, and not illegitimately so, inspire grandiose expectations of an Orwellian figure articulating a significant thesis intended to shed historical light on a momentous body of work, its humble writer hastens, at the very outset, to clarify that the observations that follow amount to no pretentious authorial manifesto, constituting rather, humdrum, colloquial reflections on her overwhelming predilection for the written word.

Why I write, is a question I have often asked myself. And here, I refer to writing not merely in its grander and more serious manifestation as profession, passion or avocation but also in its immediate semantic sense of being exactly what it is, written communication. I would rather text, mail, or write in longhand to people depending, of course, on my level of familiarity with them and the kind of communication that is intended, rather than personally meet or call them. Neither voice nor physical presence succeeds in offering to me the warmth that a few written lines are able to evoke. Given that I can speak fluently, confidently, effectively, affectively, even attractively on a subject for that matter, why is it that I tend to gravitate towards writing, that universally acknowledged formal mode of expression?

To begin with, the choice, most inevitably, has to do with my fallacy that writing, somehow, is more personal than speech and, thereby, more articulate, more sincere, and more meaningful. It matters to me that written sentences are structured with more concern, written words carefully weighed and chosen, the act of writing itself more considered, less spontaneous, and requiring a degree of attention and premeditation that casual oral communication seems, sadly, to want. If speech is intended for quick communication, writing, I believe, makes way for more nuanced, more thoughtful and more pleasurable exchanges of meaning. Its texture ensures that empathy or irony or humour is not lost and that it is always rediscovered in every reading.

This brings me, secondly, to my faith in the relative endurance of the written word or at least the possibility of it, over its oral counterpart. While spoken words are obedient ghosts that, bidden, disappear into thin air, our written words are the unruly phantoms that inhere and haunt us as long as they please. This is not to say that writing, in its physical or virtual right, is immune to disasters. Note-carrying pigeons may fall exhausted in their journeys and fail to arrive; confessions may, Tess-like, be swept underneath carpets not to be found till it’s too late; poems may be lost to the winds; cards may be smudged and their greetings obliterated by spilled tea; letters may be delivered into wrong hands; newspapers may be used to line racks or dispose soiled diapers; and to top them all is the eternal threat by fire.

Technology has, thankfully, worked hard to ease one’s fears here but the threat to the written word still looms large. Recalcitrant CDs refuse to be read by unfamiliar drives; storage devices go corrupt; messages are absentmindedly deleted; mails may lie unopened for days at a time; and worse, network issues may inhibit the process of communication altogether. All this, notwithstanding, the fact remains that the spoken word, unless eminently memorable, is eminently forgettable. What is written is capable of being read as many times as one pleases and in tandem with its greater effect is its freedom to be paused at will and to be picked up, to no disadvantage, when one has regained the time or the appetite for it.

Thirdly, what excites me about the written word is that for it, the act of interpretation never ceases. Speech is lost eggresively with the breath and cannot be recalled or revisited for meaning in exactly the same context whatever one might do. Besides, intonation constitutes an important semantic factor in it so that words, often, are dressed in meanings not strictly their own. In contrast to this, the written word remains forever genuine, forever open, inviting one in the same way to linger, ponder, consider and re-consider.

But most of all, it seems to me, that my obsession with writing stems from the intimacy that is built into the verb, the intimacy of putting thought to word, pen to paper, or finger to keyboard. It matters to me that the word ‘writing’ etymologically traces its roots to verbs like ‘carving’ and ‘drawing’ and involves, thereby, a labour of love that seems absent in speech. To write is to pay attention; to carve a message thoughtfully in words that have been summoned exclusively for the act is to be personal. Again, writing is an act of survival in a bewildering world. It is an anchor to one’s sanity, an agent of existential signification, a promise of cathartic salvation. To write is to attempt to surface from the sea of anonymity and resignation. It is to protest against time’s transience, against life’s tyranny. It a world that losing all, one would rather win; a mirror in which one sees oneself as one is; a gift one bestows upon all those one chooses to write for.

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Basudhara Roy is Assistant Professor of English at Karim City College affiliated to Kolhan University, Chaibasa. She is the author of a monograph, Migrations of Hope: A Study of the Short Fiction of Three Indian American Writers (New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers, 2019) and two collections of poems, Moon in my Teacup (Kolkata: Writer’s Workshop, 2019) and Stitching a Home (New Delhi: Red River, 2021). She writes and reviews from Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, India.

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Categories
Poetry

Ruminations

By Anasuya Bhar


Camille Monet on a Garden Bench by Monet, 1873
Courtesy Creative Commons
Pollination 

From one thought to another 
My mind slips 
Like the insect who shifts
From one flower to another 
Trying out new flavours, new fragrances – 
My mind flits from one thought 
One task, one poem, one book
To another, in some never-ending game
Of restlessness, unease and disillusion,
Looking for some kind of satiety
Some fulfilment, some happiness. 
My mind waits to be held back 
With one thought, one look, maybe
One love of gratuitous pain - 
My mind rests from moving thought 
To thought, in the happy resignation 
Of paper to pen. 
 
Ruminations   

Silences lay pregnant 
Expectant, between them 
On that solitary bench 
Where, much could have been said, 
Much could have changed, 
But there was a ‘nothing’ between them.
Moments that flowed like lines parallel
From each heart, each soul,
But moments that hung 
Heavy with possibilities
Of somethings, happy or sad. 
In that time and mood,
Were they only two
Separated from the rest, the sundry?
In those silences, each lived 
For the other, even in non-acknowledgement,
In disdain or in pain.
There was prescient quietness where million 
Words could have stood – 
Silence lay pregnant between them 
In that bench, on that day.

Dr. Anasuya Bhar is Associate Professor of English and the Dean of Postgraduate Studies in St. Paul’s Cathedral Mission College Kolkata. Dr. Bhar is the sole Editor of the literary Journal Symposium http://www.spcmc.ac.in/departmental-magazine/symposium/, published by her Department. She has various academic publications to her credit. She is also keen on travel writing and poetry writing. She has her own blog https://anascornernet.wordpress.com/.

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Categories
Essay

My Experiments with Identity

By Tejas Yadav

“Who are you?” Rarely do people vocalize this question, but you know they’re thinking it — from the very moment you meet them. To answer that question, you have to deal with another, internal one first. Who amI?

For a long time, I believed in a rigid identity, a fixed innate truth. Identity was a monolith, immutable and inherited. Down the river of years and landscapes, I have docked at numerous destinations, calling at each port with a distinct call. Heraclitus said you cannot step into the same river twice: the river moves on and so do you. If everything is in flux, how could I be, forever and everywhere I went, only one of the many things I could be?

In an interview, author Jhumpa Lahiri contended a singular, unchanging identity no longer interested her. Instead, she was seeking out different facets of her being and pushing the limits of how she defines herself. Lahiri grew up in an immigrant Indian family in the US but now lives in Rome, having learned and published in her adoptive language. She wonders if she is a Bengali, an American, an Italian, a woman, a writer, a wife or all of the above? Reading Lahiri’s words was liberating. Here was someone who had immersed herself into the Heracletian river, instead of skimming its superficial curves and bends.

I find this detachment from an unchanging, stereotypical identity appealing as I grow older. The more I turn around the sun, the more I want to shed cloaks of nationality, race, religion, sexuality and career. I want to be who I am, only I get to decide which emotional, political and social avatar I wish to place uppermost given the context. The richness of a pluralistic life means different hues take precedence depending on space and time. Back in the Renaissance period, polymaths were celebrated for being cultural chameleons and intellectual infidels. Utilitarianism has turned us into reductionists and prejudice into bigots. We want quick, short, predictable, comfortable answers to “Who are you?”. “Save the transgressive, subversive ambiguity of your Being,” they seem to say. “We need a label to comprehend your humanity. So, hurry up, what’s yours?”

Like Gandhi who wrote My Experiments with Truth, I too am Indian but unlike him, I am also the person who has lived most of his adult life away from India. I am gay, part of the identity politics of the LGBTQ+ minority and in the same breath I am also a cisgender able-bodied male with unspoken privileges. I am a scientist, but I am also a writer, poet. Sometimes I am a ‘person of colour’ and sometimes my emotional reactions against the racial battle fatigue, make me wish I could simply blend into the seawater of majority White.

Today, I have a paid job, but I am also someone who carries inside the memory of being unemployed. At times the immigrant in me surges to the forefront, on other occasions the anti-capitalist. I can be lucid and peaceful, but I know too the chasms between depression and vitality, the ones that are never fully bridged. Although this schizoid state recalls split personalities, a multi-layered identity is far from an incoherent, fragmented sense of self. All of these planes of existence make me who I am and, nevertheless, none of them are sufficient to define me. Only a paradox remains when I think of the whole of me. Identity then is an oxymoron, in evolution.

Undeniably, in a world that likes stock labels and neat boundaries it can feel chaotic to juggle different identities. Heterogeneity strikes many as a threat. Dissonance, variance, deviance constitute a trident charged against the constant, the power-wielding majority. The allure of sameness is strong in mobs, groups, entitled circles. They proclaim cohesiveness is the same as compassion. All outliers are dangerous. This primitive insularity reeks of exclusivity, of othering.

Invariability strikes those with unquestioned identities as the paragon of assimilation. But assimilation asks a great deal out of me and nothing out of you. How is that fair? Perhaps it is fair in the same way that ignorance and intolerance prosper while justice langours in the darkness. Assimilation has one objective: constancy. I’ve lived in four countries, speak five languages, straddle Science and Art. I stand at the crossroads of the developing East and developed West. I know the taste of racism deep in my skin (like spit full of hateful fear), I’ve walked down shiny corridors of privilege (Oxford, New York, Paris). I know the eyes that ask “Who are you?” and answer before I can, denying me the dignity of equality. In their gaze, my identity is a foregone, implicit bias. To them I say, constant is a dead word to me.

I live in the rough, mean, fleeting edges, the boundaries that no one sees because intersections are tough places. They are also thriving, lush, transcendent niches for the invisible and ignored. At intersections, we become so much greater than the sum total of our experiences. The goal of self-determination is not to figure out the right identity label and hold on to it dearly and protect it vehemently when attacked. Instead, fluidity serves natural order better. Amorphous like the primordial sizzling soup we come from, full of protean charm. Complex and dazzling like precious stones under a stolid terra firma. I wish to carry myself with my multitudinous, contradictory truths.  If someone is not prepared to engage in meaningful exchange with my nebulous vibrant ‘otherness’, they will receive a unidimensional, disengaged version of me. Or better, none at all.

Rumi allegedly said “You are the universe in ecstatic motion.” As I write these words, I’m starting to see what he meant. My experiments with difference continue, ironically because the word identity comes from the Latin one, idem, which means the same. How much of me is lost if the river stops flowing? Congruity always tries to boss over irregularity. In the end, the truth of one’s identity stems from uniqueness, not uniformity. Manifold and bewildering is the flow of an ecstatic river that refuses to be forded by narrow constraints imposed by mankind.

Tejas Yadav is an Indian scientist and writer. Currently, he lives in Paris. Themes of immigration, race and mental health inspire him. You can read more of his published work here:https://ytejas.medium.com/my-published-work-7cc06b99a443

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Categories
Poetry

Universal Language

Composed by Ihlwha Choi from South Korea, while visiting a mango grove in Santiniketan, where Tagore started his unique experiment with learning.

Mango Grove in Santiniketan Courtesy: Creative Commons

In the mango groves* where children were playing,

I was reading of Jesus’ first miracle.

At that moment, two fledgling-like men came to me.

Hesitating and smiling an affable smile, mixed with playfulness and delinquency,

Gabbling about one hundred rupees and one thousand rupees in an unfamiliar language.

The only words I understood were one hundred rupees and one thousand rupees.

One hundred maybe meant he had no money for lunch.

One thousand maybe he knew nice girls somewhere.

Their fingers told me something about that. 

I thought Santiniketan, city of the great poet, was a holy city,

Though there were also some crimes, irrationality and evils.

The two appeared to me like the devil approaching the Son of Man, promising wealth, rank and splendours.

Finding the circumstances strange,

I escaped slowly from the spot and looked around after a few minutes.

They were looking at me like dogs having missed chasing the chickens.

The two, wearing rags, seemed starved for food.

Only for the reason of hunger,

Perhaps they might have thought of me as a traveller from a rich country.

So, they approached me for help.

That was maybe the last expression they could show — hospitality.

Maybe they approached me with the only universal language they knew.

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Ihlwha Choi is a South Korean poet. He has published multiple poetry collections, such as Until the Time When Our Love will Flourish, The Color of Time, His Song and The Last Rehearsal.

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Categories
Poetry

Then Came the King’s Men

By Himadri Lahiri

Rabindranath Tagore by Sudhir Khastgir.
Courtesy: Creative Commons
Then Came the King’s Men

There he sat, a hermit under a chhatim tree
deep in meditation under the sun
that scorched the face of the earth with burning sores.
Brigands roamed about the territory at night
when it came alive with sounds of thousand crickets and glow worms.
There, there were born young saplings that grew up into dense foliage –
refuge of birds, insects and hundreds of other species.
There, there he founded a casteless ashram community
that reposed faith in God and man.

The bearded bard took the baton forward
turned the place into a nest where wise birds from distant places flocked.
They hummed different tunes in perfect unison – 
songs of diverse languages, cultures and knowledge.
With the end of the season many did not go back.
The village grew into a warm world.
The trees kept company when the young learnt 
the way chicks pick up small pieces of knowledge.
Fear was banished, freedom whispered to the innocents,
asked them of their playmates, pet dogs or birdlore
while the bard sang on.

As time moved on, the other freedom came.
With it slowly came sloth, self and salary.
The green faded into the walled universe
the size of a wooden ball.

Then came the king’s men 
manacles tied to their girdles, glistening. 
Wrapped in vanity and arrogance
with claws sharper than the wolf’s
threw a net around the greying green,
fragmented the universe into narrow walls.
Devices with strange names sprouted
with eyes on all things mortal,
turned men against men.
Wild messages ran riot
rotting the fabric of the place.
Closeted in a cold room in front of a bright screen,
the boss boasted,
“Mission accomplished, 
let us raise a toast to our great, newly bearded guru.”

Himadri Lahiri taught English at the University of Burdwan. He is now associated with Netaji Subhas Open University. His poems were earlier published in Borderless Journal, Rupkatha, Café Dissensus and in many more forums.

Categories
Review

The Chronicler of the Hooghly and Other Stories

Book Review by Gracy Samjetsabam

Book: The Chronicler of the Hooghly and Other Stories

Author: Shakti Ghosal

Publisher: Half Baked Beans, 2020

The Chronicler of the Hooghly and Other Stories by Shakti Ghosal is a collection of four compelling stories that hover around people in different times and places around the majestic Hooghly in Kolkata. As the river flows, the narratives flow with the current as long as there are storytellers and listeners.

Shakti Ghosal, an MBA from IIM, Bangalore, is a seasoned corporate personnel with more than four decades of experience both in India and abroad. The globetrotting Ghosal and his passion to explore new places and cultures are vividly imbued in his writing. The Chronicler of the Hooghly and Other Stories,  is a well-researched debut book entrenched in history.

His stories help us make sense of our realities. Ghosal admits that intense and traumatic events in life have contributed to the creation of these stories. Part-memoir, part-historical, Ghosal paints the stories with strokes of personal experiences and from chapters of India’s long history, selecting those that converse about Kolkata. This tapestry makes the readers more aware of the nuances of history and vividly recreates these scenes in the imagined reality. Ghosal impressively weaves history and imagination to blend fiction and reality, thereby providing a voice of the unrecorded, the myths and legends around what happened on the other side of known history during the colonial period in pre-independent India or at present.  

‘Ashtami’, the first story starts with a nightmare, a dream Lord Curzon had since his childhood days setting the tone of the story. The story opens in 1912 with Sujit, a Junior Clerk in the British administration and his wife Bina as they are all set to relocate to Delhi. Weaving the story in close quarters with the time of Ashtami during the Durga Puja festival of Bengal, Ghosal raises the idea of birth and death, beginning and ending in the personal lives of the characters along with the history of the nation, thus proposing life coming in full circle with fragments of joys and sorrows. Change is the only constant that is destined in the uncertain future.

From 1912 to 1947 and after, Sujit and Bina witness progress in life through their journey from Kolkata to Delhi with their children, the double irony of the life of the youngest child Shanti is a touching twist. A human error of a delivery gone wrong, makes Shanti a differently-abled child. As a result, he is mistreated, ignored, and judged by siblings and society but at heart, he is a sensitive soul. Shanti’s home schooling, errands, plea for help as his brother is murdered in an unjustifiable situation during the communal violence of the Great Kolkata Killings, an aging mother’s concern for a differently-abled child and the death of his mother leaving him helplessly alone, makes him and, subsequently, the reader, wiser on life and life’s little ironies. The lighter notes on the Howrah, Lal Qila, horse drawn tonga rides at Civil Lines, interstate train journeys, Burra Bazaar to Chandi Chowk, typical dust storms in Delhi, Durga Puja, food and communication through postcards make the story flavourful.             

‘Pandemic’ moves through different time zones within a century, dealing with similar situations in history. Dipen in 1919 is caught in the mahamari at Khidderpore docks where he is a labour supervisor. Indranil from Gurgaon in 2020 is caught in the pandemic situation in the middle of a safari trip with his wife in the Dooars forest region of West Bengal. Although a hundred year apart, the stories highlight similarities and differences in the human condition. Amidst the pandemic, Dipen is caught in all that happens between his home and the dockyard. Ghosal touches upon health issues both physical and mental, quarantine, human emotions, personal secrets, sacrifice, and life choices. Ghosal also beautifully brings out the gender readings as he sheds light on life as a widow or a widower, childlessness and society, and of perceptions on ill-luck and how ironically, the characters deemed as unlucky or  how just what is deemed as bad luck convert to beacons of hope and goodwill. Through Indranil, Ghosal discusses lockdown and cytokines, the science and signs of the disease along with the issues of present-day work and marriage and brings to light different aspects of youth, the working class, newer trends that govern passions, aspirations, families and priorities.         

In ‘Fault Lines’, a deadly gas explosion changes Anjan’s life forever. The accident broke the artificial shell that Anjan and Jaya made their home in and the realities that lay hidden in his subconscious haunts him in disguise of Savio, Anjan’s friend. Set in the idyllic Middle-East, and shuttling back and forth in time and between places, Anjan finds enlightenment through lessons on karma. Jaya closes the story with the understanding that nothing good can be built on the foundations of deceit and hurt.

The titular story, the last one in the book, ‘The Chronicler of the Hooghly’, has the protagonist, Samir, reacting to his dying mother who utters a panic-stricken whisper, “mukto malar abhishap” or the curse of the pearl necklace. Here Ghosal intricately and imaginatively spins history and myth to take us into a string of narratives strewn in their pathway by the fabled curse of the necklace. The ‘Chronicler’, or narrator, mystically and mysteriously asks, “What could be behind you taking this trip today and me telling you this tale?” He narrates the stories to Samir in the breath-taking boat ride on the Hooghly with a feeling both of nostalgia and curiosity, swaying between past and present to highlight the bigger picture. He touches upon England and Calcutta (1842-1846), Murshidabad palace of Siraj ud Daula in June 1756, Chandernagore (1757), Plassey (1757), and Calcutta (1846-55), along with the present day beautifully guiding the reader to the climax of the story.   

What is most fascinating is the telling of the stories in an alternative voice making the readers experience history with a fictitious veneer that magically brings into sight the hitherto unknown facets. Despite being set in a different time frames and in different situational events of history, the timeless elements in Ghosal’s stories are priceless.

The elements in the stories such as the anxieties of moving to a new place, the concerns of leaving behind old parents, the generational gap on how one looks at traditions, reflections on crisis and resilience on issues ranging from the Partition to communal violence to casteism to the pandemic and more, changing belief systems over time and experience, old age, diseases, mental health, loss and grief of a child or a partner, a parent’s concerns for their children, on the importance of empathy and decision-making,  on acknowledging uncertainties, on karma and enlightenment, finding home or solitude, or coming to terms with oneself – Ghosal sprinkles confetti of his coaching in life skills into the storytelling to create a set of modern-day tales that are easily relatable and palatable. The style and the settings are like fresh air that enlightens as it entertains. The stories are vibrant and close to current realities, making them a worthy read.

These are stories of changing times and a reminder that life is short, and that time will not wait for us. But we need to be positive, hopeful and be aware of the best we can do for ourselves and for others.     

 

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Gracy Samjetsabam teaches English Literature and Communication Skills at Manipal Institute of Technology, MAHE, Manipal. She is also a freelance writer and copy editor. Her interest is in Indian English Writings, Comparative Literature, Gender Studies, Culture Studies, and World Literature. 

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Categories
Poetry

Mystical reconnections: Reading Tagore

By Sunil Sharma

I know not what playmate of mine in the sky sends them down
the air to race with my boats!
When night comes I bury my face in my arms and dream that my
paper boats float on and on under the midnight stars.

— Rabindranath Tagore

Trapped inside the cage, I look up at the sky 
and am, somehow, by cultural memory
reminded of the above lines of the
Immortal Bard who guides me on
in this astral voyage of recovery of
the  self and  the dim
pathways, out there, now visible again,
modes, perceptions leading directly
to the realities of the heavens and 
the heavenly songs, in our midst.
Gurudev! Pronam!
You restore -- in the post-modern,
post-industrial, consuming unit,
recipient -- a sense of the lost
grandeur, wonder, joy;
a promise of an
uplifting presence around
and, of the missing
 bliss that flows from
ordinary moments of the
enraptured
gazing at the stars from
a locked-down home’s
barred windows, thereby, 
that very moment, feeling
reassured of that
playmate for me, us, in
a single instant of reading,
viewing, experiencing
mystical reconnections
with an original vision,
heritage,
roots,
idiom of the lived lives,
profound
civilizational truths
in these cynical times!

Sunil Sharma is an Indian academic and writer with 22 books published—some solo and joint. Edits the online monthly journal Setu. Currently based in MMR (Mumbai Metropolitan Region).

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Categories
Essay

Rabindranath and the Etchings of His Mind

Anasuya Bhar explores the various lives given to a publication through the different edited versions, translations and films, using Tagore as a case study and the work done to provide these online .

Rabindranath’s first efforts at writing poetry, what he refers to as padya or rhymes, were made when he was merely a boy of seven or eight years. This is what he has to say about his maiden experience, the magic and the awe with which it surprised him –

“I had, until then, only witnessed rhymes in printed books. Without any scratches, mistakes, nor any signs of thought even – there seemed to be no sign of any of the earthy weaknesses either. I dared not imagine that these rhymes could be produced by one’s own efforts. … But when the skilful mixing of a few words gave rise to the rhythm of the ‘payar’, the magic of making rhymes remained no longer an illusion. “(My translation from Jibansmriti ‘The Poetry Beginnings’, VB, 27)

The above excerpt from Jibansmriti is significant in many ways. The memoir was written when Rabindranath was in his fiftieth year, in 1911. A careful study reveals that there are three manuscript versions to the text of Jibansmriti and the one available on print (and published by Visva Bharati), is the third and the latest version. Jibansmriti (My Reminiscences) is a piece of Rabindranath’s own life writing, along with two other pieces in book form: Chelebela (My Boyhood Days, 1940) and Atmaparichay (The Self Revealed, 1943).  

Rabindranath was a reluctant biographer of himself. Perhaps his first conscious efforts at autobiography is to be found in an essay called Atmaparichay that was first published in 1904, wherein he had consistently defended his wishes to not fuss over his life. In fact, he had wanted to keep separate his jiban and brittanto, that is the biological nitty-gritty of his life and the descriptive and analytical of his creative life. He believed that a poet’s life inheres in his poetry; that there is no need to separately concern oneself about his life details. This was re-iterated in more than one places. Nevertheless, although Rabindranath was reluctant of a conscious autobiography, he has revealed much of himself in his letters, and other non-fiction and travel essays. He was a self-conscious writer with a great emphasis put towards self-expression as well as expression of the self.  To know about him one needs to scour through these writings.

My intention in this essay, however, lies not in the history of Rabindranath’s life writing. I would, instead, like to dwell on those scratchings, mistakes and etchings of the poet’s mind that made Rabindranath ponder about the final version of any of his manuscripts. He was a relentless revisionist of his own writings. My interest lies in that branch of study, quite recent in academic scholarship, which tries to examine the various changes that each text suffers before being available for the final print. The changes might take place in the manuscript or during the correction of proofs. The successive texts, the manuscripts, the proofs, and finally the printed text all seem to have their own dynamics and seem to possess an autonomy and character of their own. This seems true of all texts of all writers and those of Rabindranath are no exception. Between the ideas and their writing, between the manuscript and the print, between the printed text and its translation into other language(s), a particular text seems to have many distinct lives. Until a short time ago, these fell within the purview of textual criticism and editorial scholarship of a text. Now, they may be considered under the rubric of ‘alternative readings of a single text’. Walter Benjamin (1892 – 1940), the German Jewish philosopher, talks about the ‘afterlife’ of a text in his essay ‘The Task of the Translator’ when it is translated, that is to say, a text assumes a different and separate life, with its own dynamics and dimensions when it is translated, from the original. The lives of a text then, multiply when multiple translations take place.

If one studies the three manuscripts of Jibansmriti, one notices three separate beginnings: the first two distinctly pointing to his life proper and his unwillingness to share details of it, while the third and the printed version has a more abstract vision of a painter-like selection of memorable incidents from his life.  The text as it exists in Bangla now, begins in medias res, as it were, with the recollections of his early childhood, as becomes permissibly natural for the memory of a fifty-year-old person. What is interesting are the insights that time and aesthetic distance have provided. Editorial and textual scholarship of Jibansmriti as revealed in Rabindra Rachanabali (Volume 17, Visva Bharati), ‘Grantha parichay’ (introducing the text) cites the minute changes and differences in the three versions of the text. I enclose photographs of all the three versions of the text:

The first manuscript of Jibansmriti. Source: Bichitra

The second manuscript of Jibansmriti. Source: Bichitra

The third and final manuscript of Jibansmriti. Source: Bichitra

The different variations and all the manuscripts of not only ‘Jibansmriti’, but the entire Rabindranath Thakur corpus, including his plays, fiction, non-fiction, drama and poetry in English as well as in Bangla, are now available in the Online Tagore Variorum, Bichitra, which was inaugurated by the then President of India, (Late) Shri Pranab Mukhopadhyay, as a part of the Sesquicentenary (150 years) celebrations of Rabindranath Thakur’s birth, in the year 2011. The programme of the digital archives for Rabindranath was co-ordinated by Sukanta Chaudhuri, Professor Emeritus of English, Jadavpur University, and prepared by the School of Cultural Texts and Records, Jadavpur University. The digital archives bring together all the available versions of all his works and makes provision for their collation, thus allowing the researcher or anyone interested in the world-poet to look through the vast stretch and range of his works. Hence the aptness of its name ‘Bichitra’, meaning ‘various’. It is a unique venture of literary scholarship as well as of software engineering and has been put together by young members all below the age of 35, and academic degree holders mostly from Jadavpur University. It is a rare and pioneering achievement in the field of Digital Humanities in this part of the world.

Any given text may have three or four kinds of an ‘afterlife’. They may be interpretative or of the hermeneutic kind, for instance, those spelt by Rabindranath’s manuscript versions. Another may be achieved through translation, as mentioned earlier. The next may be when a text is being performed. The performance text, the play text, or even the screen play of any text, are effectively different texts in the new scheme of textual afterlives. Each of Rabindranath’s texts then, automatically have different autonomous afterlives as practically all of them have been translated and have several versions as well. Along with these familiar afterlives, the hypertext now, also adds a yet newer dimension. The study of afterlives of a text gains in an all-new dimension when a new text is created based on an older text, by retaining its title or its literary essence. For instance, Aparna Sen’s film Ghare Baire Aaj (2019), is not only an afterlife of Rabindranath’s text of the novel Ghare Baire (The Home and the World, 1916), but also one on Satyajit Ray’s 1984 film Ghare Baire. The study of the afterlives of a text is a never ending and rich treasure trove and affords endless intellectual curiosity and study. The English Gitanjali (1912), too, is a unique example of a text with many afterlives, even after a hundred years of its literary history. I have written about its complicated trajectory, elsewhere.*  

Sukanta Chaudhuri’s book The Metaphysics of Text (Cambridge University Press, 2010) provides significant and perhaps, pioneering insights on this newest aspect of textual scholarship.  Among other aspects of a text, Chaudhuri dedicates one whole chapter on Rabindranath’s ‘katakuti’ (pen scratches and crossings) which invariably were shaped into diagrammatical forms, which Chaudhuri identifies by the name of ‘doodles’. The printed texts do not showcase these pictorial designs or doodles.

A description of Rabindranath’s doodles in one of his manuscripts. Source: Bichitra

The visual aspect of these manuscript pages afford yet another dimension to the working of the poet’s mind while he was working on a poem or a song. They are creative outputs of a different kind, which remain hidden from the printed version of the text, thus disallowing the reader the privilege to dwell with the thoughts of the poet, his seemly and unseemly corrections, as it were. The digital archive Bichitra make all these easily available to us. Understanding, teaching and enjoying Rabindranath’s works become a more gratuitous experience for all of us. If translation is one way of making Rabindranath easily available to most corners of the world, this is yet another move to make his works and all his manuscripts available in every home of all corners of the world. A hundred and sixty years have passed and the magic of Rabindranath or his works remain undiminished and ever contemporary.

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*Bhar, Anasuya. ‘The Many Lives of Gitanjali’ in Evolving Horizons, Volume 5, November 2016, pp. 20-27, ISSN 2319-6521

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Dr. Anasuya Bhar is Associate Professor of English and Dean of Postgraduate Studies, at St. Paul’s Cathedral Mission College Kolkata, India. She has many publications, both academic and creative, to her credit.

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