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Interview Review

A Backpacker’s Diary by Jessica Mudditt

A brief overview of Once Around the Sun : From Cambodia to Tibet (Hembury Books) by Jessica Mudditt and a conversation with the author

Jessica Mudditt

Jessica Mudditt’s Once Around the Sun: From Cambodia to Tibet is not just a backpacker’s diary but also her need to relate to humanity, to find friendships and even love, as she does with Kris, a photographer named after Krishna, the Hindu god, because his parents while visiting India fell in love with the divinity!

The Burmese translation of Our Home in Myanmar was published recently.

Hurtling through Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Tibet, young Mudditt concludes her narrative just at the brink of exploring Nepal, India and Pakistan in her next book… leaving the reader looking forward to her next adventure. For this memoir is an adventure that explores humanity at different levels. Before this, Mudditt had authored Our Home in Myanmar – Four years in Yangon, a narrative that led up to the Myanmar attack on Rohingyas and takeover by the military junta. Once Around the Sun: From Cambodia to Tibet is the first part of a prequel to her earlier book, Our Home in Myanmar, both published by her own publishing firm, Hembury Books.

What makes her narrative unique is her candid descriptions of life on a daily basis — that could include drunken revelry or bouts of diarrhoea — while weaving in bits of history and her very humane responses. Her trip to Angkor Wat yields observations which brings into perspective the disparities that exist in our world:

“I was gazing out at an empire that was once the most powerful and sophisticated in the world. In 1400, when London had a middling population of 50,000, the kingdom of Angkor had more than a million inhabitants and a territory that stretched from Vietnam to Brunei. It had flourished for six hundred years, from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries.

“But somehow Cambodia had become one of the world’s poorest countries, and surely the most traumatised too, following a recent war and genocide. I knew that when we came back down to the ground, there would be a collection of ragtag street kids and downtrodden beggars desperately hoping for our spare change. It was difficult to reconcile the grandeur of Cambodia’s past with its heart-breaking present in the twenty-first century. How did a country’s fortunes change so dramatically? Could the situation ever be turned around?”

How indeed?

Then, she writes of Vientaine in Vietnam:

“I was struck by the fact that sex work seemed to be the consequence for countless young women living in poverty. It made me angry, but mostly sad.”

In these countries broken into fragments by intrusions from superpowers in the last century, judged by the standards of the “developed countries” and declared “underdeveloped”, an iron rice bowl becomes more important to survive than adventure, discovering other parts of the world or backpacking to self-discovery. Travel really is the privilege of that part of the world which draws sustenance from those who cannot afford to travel.

Jessica showcases mindsets from that part of the Western world and from the mini-expat world in Hong Kong, which continue alienated from the local cultures that they profess to have set out to explore or help develop. One of the things that never ceases to surprise is that while the ‘developed’ continue to judge the ‘third world’, these countries destroyed by imposed boundaries, foreign values, continue to justify themselves to those who oppress them and also judge themselves by the standards of the oppressors.

Some of these ‘developing’ countries continue to pander to needs of tourism and tourists for the wealth they bring in, as Jessica shows in her narrative. She brings out the sharp differences between the locals from Asia and the budgeted backpackers, who look for cheap alternatives to experience more of the cultures they don’t understand by indulging in explorations that can involve intoxicants and sex, their confidence backed by the assurance that they can return to an abled world.

Backpackers from affluent countries always have their families to fall back on — opulent, abled and reliable. Mudditt with her candid narrative explores that aspect too as she talks of her mother’s response to her being sick and budgeting herself. Her mother urges her to cut short her trip. But she continues, despite the ‘adversities’, with an open mind. That she has a home where she can return if she is in any kind of trouble begs a question — what kind of ‘civilisation’ do we as humans have that she from an abled background has a safe retreat where there are those for whom the reality of their existence is pegged to what she is urged to leave behind for her own well-being? And why — as part of the same species — do we accept this divide that creates ravines and borders too deep to fathom?

Mudditt with her narrative does create a bridge between those who have plenty and those who still look for and need an iron rice bowl. She mingles with people from all walks and writes about her experiences. Hers is a narrative about all of us –- common humanity. Her style is free flowing and easy to read — quite journalistic for she spent ten years working as one in London, Bangladesh and Myanmar, before returning to her home in Australia in 2016. Her articles have been published by Forbes, BBC, GQ and Marie Claire, among others. This conversation takes us to the stories around and beyond her book.

What led you to embark on your backpacking adventure? Was it just wanderlust or were you running away from something?

It was primarily from wanderlust, but I also didn’t know what I was going to do with the rest of my life. After six years at university, I was still yet to have any particular calling. However, I was also glad I didn’t know. It meant that I was free to go and explore the world, because I wasn’t putting my career on hold. I had no career.

I also had a broken heart when I set off for Cambodia – but the trip was planned before that relationship had even begun. But again, part of me was glad that my boyfriend had called it quits, because my plan was to be away for a very long time (and it ended being a decade away).

What made you think of putting down your adventures in writing? As you say, this is a prequel to your first book.

It was the pandemic that made me realise that backpacking was really special. There was a period in 2020 when it looked like travel may never be so unrestricted again, so it motivated me to document my year of complete freedom. It was also before social media was even a thing. When I was lost, I was really lost, and I had to use my problem-solving skills.

Prior to the pandemic, I sort of thought that backpacking itself was too fun to write about. I hadn’t actually lived in any of the countries I visited – I was just passing through. But that is also a valid experience, and one that many people can fondly relate to. There were also some really confronting and difficult moments.

You have written of people you met. How have they responded to your candid portrayals? Or did you change their names and descriptions to convey the essence but kept your characters incognito?

While I was writing the book, I got back in touch with the people I travelled with – I can thank Facebook for still being in touch with most people mentioned. They helped me to remember past anecdotes and I got some of the back story of their own trips. I have only used first names to protect their privacy, although there are some photos in the book too. Thankfully the world is so big that the odds are small that anyone would recognise, say, an Irish guy from Adam in Vietnam in 2006! Clem from Shanghai has just sent me a photo of her with my book, and Romi from Vietnam actually came to my book launch, which was awesome.

What was your favourite episode in this book — as a backpacker and as a writer? Tell us about it.

I think it was crossing into China and meeting ‘the man.’ I felt so alive with every step I took into China after crossing over on foot from Vietnam. To be chaperoned in the way I was – without being able to communicate a single word – was unusual. His kindness left me speechless, so the anecdote has a nice story arc.

In your travels through China, you faced a language handicap and yet found people kind and helpful. Can you tell us a bit about it?

I foolishly underestimated the language barrier. It was profound. In Southeast Asia, there was always at least a sprinkling of English, and I sort of just assumed that I’d be fine. I entered China from Vietnam, so my first port of call was Nanning, where there is not even really an expat population. I couldn’t do the most basic things, from finding the toilet or an internet cafe or something to eat! I used sign language and memorised the Chinese character for ‘female’ to make sure I went into the right toilet! In a restaurant, I just pointed at whatever someone else was eating in the hope that they would bring me a bowl of whatever it was. There were times when I was seriously lost and lonely, but I ended up staying in China for two months and saw the comedic side. I was bumbling around like Mr Bean (who is hugely popular in China).

I met a lot of people who were really kind to me, and I was just so grateful to them. I didn’t have Wi-Fi on my phone back then, so getting lost in a massive city in China was a bit scary. I met a student called Mei-Xing who ‘adopted’ me for a few days in Guilin. We had a really nice time together and it was so great to hang out with a local.

What is/are the biggest takeaway/s you had from your backpacking in this part of the world? Tell us about it.

I think it’s something quite simple: the world can be a very beautiful place, and a very polluted place. Tourism can do a great deal of damage when there are too many people clambering over one area. There is also an incredible level of disparity in a material sense on our planet. Some humans are travelling into space on rockets. Others are pulling rickshaws, as though they are draught horses. It is profoundly inequitable.

Having travelled to large tracts of Asia, what would you think would be the biggest challenge to creating a more equitable world, a more accepting world? Do you think an exposure to culture and history could resolve some of the issues?

I think that democracy is key. It slows us down and forces us to act in the interest of the majority, not the top-level cronies. That is definitely also something I witnessed in Myanmar. When a few people hold all the power, the population is deprived of things that ought to be a human right.

I think that travel definitely alters your perspective and broadens your mind, and it is something I’d recommend to anyone. Realising that the way that things are done in your home country is not the only way of doing things is a valuable thing to learn.

Mostly, you met people off the street. In which country did you find the warmest reception? Why and how?

In Pakistan. The hospitality and friendliness was unparalleled. I think it was in part due to not having many tourists there. Nothing felt transactional. I met some fascinating people in Pakistan who would have a profound impact on my own life. I am still in touch with several people I met there.

At a point you wondered if the poverty you saw could be reversed back to affluence in the context of the Angkor kingdom. Do you have any suggestions on actually restoring the lost glory?

I believe that it is beginning to be restored. Pundits have called this the “Asian Century.” I am convinced that the United States and the UK are in decline, and this process will only speed up. India, to me, holds the most promise as the next superpower, because it is a democracy (albeit flawed – like all of them), English- speaking, enormous, beautiful, fascinating and its soft power is unmatched. China is facing headwinds. I blame that on making people sad by removing their agency.

How long were you backpacking in this part of the world? Was it longer than you had intended? What made you extend your stay and why?

My trip was exactly 365 days long. I planned it that way from the beginning. I wanted to travel for no less than a year (more than a year and I might stay feeling guilty for being so indulgent!). That is also why the book is called Once Around the Sun – my time backpacking was the equivalent of one rotation of the Earth. I set off on 1 June 2006 – the first day of winter in Australia – and I arrived on 1 June 2007 in London, on the first day of the British summer. I love the sunshine.

After having travelled around the large tracts of Asia and in more parts of the world, could you call the whole world your home or is it still Australia? Is your sense of wellbeing defined by political boundaries or by something else?

Home for me is Sydney. I absolutely love it. I get to feel as though I am still travelling, because my home city is Melbourne. I go down a new road every other day and I love that feeling. The harbour is beautiful, and the sun is shining most days. It’s very multicultural too.

My kids are three and five, so I haven’t travelled overseas for years. My plan is to travel with them as much as possible when they are a bit older. I hope they love it as much as me. I cannot wait to return to Asia one day. I am also desperate to visit New York City.

What are your future plans for both your books and your publishing venture?

The second part of Once Around the Sun will come out in 2025. It’s called Kathmandu to the Khyber Pass, and it covers the seven months I spent Nepal, India and Pakistan.

My goal is to complete my fourth memoir by 2027. It will be called My Home in Bangladesh (it will be the prequel to Our Home in Myanmar!).

My fifth book will be about how to write a book. I am a book coach and in a few years I will have identified the most common challenges people face when writing a book, and finding their voice.

In the next twelve months, there will be at least 12 books coming out with Hembury Books, which is my hybrid publishing company. I love being a book coach and publisher and I hope to help as many people as possible to become authors.

Please visit the website and set up a discovery call with me if you plan on writing a nonfiction book, or have gotten stuck midway: https://hemburybooks.com.au/.

Photographs from Once Round the Sun, provided by Jessica Mudditt

(The online interview has been conducted through emails and the review written by Mitali Chakravarty.)

Click here to read an excerpt from Once Around the Sun

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL. 

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon Internation

 

Categories
Interview Review

In Discussion with Rajat Chaudhuri: Spellcasters and Solarpunk

A brief overview of Rajat Chaudhuri’s Spellcasters, published by Niyogi Books, and a conversation with the author.

Spellcasters by Rajat Chaudhuri is a spellbinding fast paced adventure in a phantasmagorical world against the backdrop of climate change and environmental disasters. Chaudhuri, a proponent of solarpunk[1],  has nine books under his belt, including the Butterfly Effect (2018) a few fellowships (like Charles Wallace), and a sense of fun as the characters hurtle through the book gripping the readers with their intensity.

In this novel, Chaudhuri’s universe is run by a council, based on Akbar’s Navratnas[2]. They seem to be people in charge of running a chaotic world. This group — though not drawn from Akbar’s court but from various parts of the world — are known as the ‘Nine Unknown Men’. They are said to host great people from the past in another dimension. As they “fold the dimensions and transform matter from one form to another”, manipulating and yet healing characters like Chanchal Mitra, his protagonist, putting the world to ‘rights’ by destroying villainous capitalists who sport shrunken heads of their enemies and indulge in creating drugs that can lead to annihilation of humankind, there is a fine vein of coherence which gives credibility to Chaudhuri’s imagined world.

The locales are all fictitious but highlight real world problems of climate change, unethical scientific research and uncontrolled economic growth that only pamper the pockets of the rich craving power. He weaves in episodes that had made headlines in Indian media, like Ganesha drinking milk, and Himalayan disasters, a result of interferences by human constructs like dam building and ‘development’. A sensuous mysterious woman with curly hair, Sujata, who sets Mitra back on track and is as good as a Marvel heroine when accosted with villains, adds to the appeal of the book.

He describes a barefoot tribe which seems more idyllic than real. But given that it is a phantasmagorical fantastical novel, one would just accept that as a part of the Spellcasters’ world. However, the import of the message the tribal leader conveys to the characters on the run is astute. “We take little from this land and try to return what it gives us. So did our forefathers and all those who walk this country with the animals. But the settlers in villages and cities never tire of drawing out the last drop of earth’s riches…” A similar take on nomadism and settler communities can be found in nonfiction in Anthony Sattin’s Nomads: The Wanderers Who Shaped our World, who talks of the spirit of brotherhood, or asabiyya, that bound the nomads together, a concept borne in the fourteenth century in the Middle East. One wonders if the Nine Unknown Men who cast spells are also bound by some such law as at the end the ‘Perfect Lovers’ disappear into another adventure in time… perhaps, to resurface in Chaudhuri’s next book?

Chaudhuri is poetic with words. He writes stunning descriptions of storms and climate events: “The rivers are boisterous and overflowing, the skies are being torn apart by forests of lightning. The great snow-capped peaks from where these rivers emerge have vanished behind walls of water tumbling down from the skies.”

The thing that makes his book truly unique is the way his characters seem to internalise or grow out of the miasma that encapsulates the world below the mountains. They seem like an extension of the chaotic external environment with strange happenings. Even in the council meeting held by the Nine Unknown Men, some of the crowd seem to be wisps of mists. Chanchal Mitra has to go above the hovering fog to start healing back to normal. The novel starts in a seemingly dystopian setting. The ending is more of a fantasy. There is a strain of Bengaliness in his wry humour, in small factual details, like we find Jagadish Chandra Bose seated in the council hall, though  LJ drawn from RL Stevensons’ fictional pirate from Treasure Island (1883), Long John Silver, and Caligari from The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920), have larger and more crucial roles in the novel. Spellcasters is a thriller that entices with words, a gripping plot and suspense — set against a backdrop of strange climate events that are becoming a reality in today’s world, though the characters are more interesting than those drawn from real life.

The novel is written by an author who is compelled by perhaps more than a need to record his times. He has a vision… though not clearly laid out as a didactic message. But it hovers in the fog that is part of the book. One of the things that came across[3] was to create utopia, we need the chaos of dystopian existence…a theme that rebel poet Nazrul addresses in his poem, ‘Proloyullash’ (The Frenzy of destruction): “Why fear destruction? It’s the gateway to creation!”

Rajat Chaudhuri

In a past life, Chaudhuri had been a consumer rights activist, an economic and political affairs officer with a Japanese Mission and a climate change advocate at the United Nations, New York. Working in such capacities could have generated his vision, his worldview. Let us find out more about it by asking him directly:

What made you turn to writing from being an activist and climate change advocate? How long have you been writing fiction? What made you turn to fiction?

I am still involved with activism through my work with NGOs and my writing for popular media and other venues.  However, I have gradually shifted my energies to creative fiction through which, nowadays, I try to engage with climate change and other planetary crises.

I have been writing fiction for nearly two decades now, my first novel, Amber Dusk was published seventeen years ago.  As a full-time activist I have had the opportunity to interact and work with people from various strata of society right from the villages of India to international fora like the United Nations, where I have often noticed a tug-of-war of ideas between big business, sections of civil society, governments and other major groups like women, indigenous people and so on. While watching and participating in these, I had begun to realise how stories can open another flank in our efforts to communicate our ideas.  

Today, you see, storytelling is everywhere. Stories are being recruited for issues big or small, important or completely worthless, even dangerous! In my case, I realised that stories can be an important vehicle for communicating issues surrounding planetary crises to my audience. Stories tend to be sticky — they remain with us for a long time and studies are now showing that well told stories can trigger changes in perceptions, beliefs and ideas. But it took me a long time to transform this realisation into book projects. Before that I had written other books – contemporary fiction, urban fantasy and so on.  

 What made you conceive Spellcasters? How long did it take you to write?

There are two or three strands that came together in the writing of Spellcasters. Most important among these is my interest in psychology and mental disorders and specifically in the fact that the ideas that dominate the world today, you can call them spells too, make us behave like we are affected by some kind of mental illness. Ideas and practices like limitless growth, conspicuous consumption and so on, make us behave as if we have lost our minds as we go on plundering the planet for energy and resources despite the fact that `nature’ is striking back at us with ever-increasing fury. So, our mental illness is causing planetary illness and at the centre of all this are these powerful, mesmerising, false beliefs, which right from the time of the Club of Rome have been known to be dangerous.

So, when I began to plan this novel, all these thoughts were in my mind partly driven by my activism. And at the same time, I had been reading Sudhir Kakar’s works about magic and mysticism in India and the parallels between Indian and western psychology so all of that came together. It took me about five years to complete Spellcasters not at one go, there was other stuff I have worked on in between.  

What kind of research went into making the book?

To create the main character, the journalist Chanchal Mitra, I worked closely with my psychoanalyst friend Anurag Mishra who happens to be a student of Sudhir Kakar. And that research was really intense. We had long face-to-face and online sessions and I read a lot about the varieties and specificities of mental disorder.

Then there is of course that background layer of interest which oftenseeds ideas in your mind. This usually comes from your reading, and I had been interested in reading about the occult traditions of the East and the West for many years. Characters like Mme Alexandra David-Neel[4], the magic healers among indigenous peoples, the power of entheogenic substances like mushrooms have always fascinated me, and some of that came back while researching this book. Writing the climate layer of the story was comparatively easier because of my first-hand activist experience. 

Do you have a vision or a message that you tried to address in this novel? I felt it moved from a dystopian setting to that of a fantasy — though not to utopia. Do you think a dystopian vision is necessary to evolve utopia?

The message is simple, and we all know it: Ideas of limitless growth have affected us mentally and so we behave and act in ways (resource extraction, carbon emission) that are making the planet sick. We are passing on our illness to the planet.  The belief in limitless growth is a zoonotic disease that our species has transferred to the living planet. Still, we do not act because we are under the effect of these powerful ideas, these powerful spells, that’s where the novel gets its name. The message, if we can call it one, is to be aware of this and try to break out of these spells.

The path to utopia is not necessarily through dystopia. We can start hoping and acting today before things get really bad. Which is the locus of the whole solarpunk movement with which I am closely associated as an editor and creator. But `darkness’ can be redeeming too. Jem Bendell writes about this in detail. Grief and sorrow can indeed make us stronger; author Liz Jensen navigates grief and encounters hope in Your Wild and Precious Life, which is a must read for everyone asking these questions. But coming back to Spellcasters it is really neither dystopia or utopia if we are talking about the climate layer of the story, it’s very much set in the present. What might look dystopian are the gothic and magical elements and settings which serve as a counterpoint to the cold logic of the scientist character, Vincent.  

Your novel has broken various barriers by mingling different constructs. So, tell us, how do you combine realism with fantasy, science with literature and create your own world?

It’s not difficult actually. Fantasy, magic and `unreason’ are woven around the borders of the familiar. We see them often without noticing it. Leaping a little higher or using a prescription eye-cleanser can do the trick!

To answer the other part of your question, science and literature or nature and culture were never apart in the first place. They were sundered because of the partitioning project of modernity which goes back to the work of Hobbes and Boyle and has its own history and protagonists. Science fiction as you know does not care much for this division. Climate fiction because of its scaffolding of science and reason needs to bring the two together. As a climate fiction writer, I try to keep the scientific complexities in the background, but they remain as building blocks of the story. In this book however we have a full chapter which is out of a scientist’s journal, and I did that for a change in flavour and in the spirit of experimentation. 

 Are your imaginary locales based on real cities? Please elaborate.

Often so. In Spellcasters the cities of Anantanagar and Aukatabadare modelled on Calcutta and Delhi respectively. A close reader can easily pick out the similarities but then I also enjoy changing some details especially when I am writing mixed-genre work like this one. So, there is no Chinese joint (like the one Chanchal hangs out at) in Calcutta where you can openly smoke weed but there are places quite similar to the one I described and there is indeed a real person with an eye of glass who used to hang out in one of these.

You have spoken of storms on the hills. Do you also see this as an impact of climate change? Do you think building roads, tunnels or hydel power stations on the hills can, over a period of time, have adverse effects on climate or humanity? Can you suggest an alternative to such ‘development’?

The avalanches, the unseasonal rains, especially the cloudbursts are all closely connected to climate change. Having said that, we also have to be careful to avoid climate reductionism. Often it is a concatenation of factors (including carbon emissions and climate change) and processes, their effects amplified by feedback loops, that precipitate disasters. This is very true if we study migration, for which climate change can be one of the driving forces but there could be other factors like economic opportunities, cultural patterns etc implicated in such flows. 

Mindless development which does not take into account the fragility of nature and the interconnections between all beings big and small, microscopic or enormous, animate or inanimate, will set into motion processes that will precipitate crises like climate change. Yes, big dams are definitely a problem and small hydro is always a better option. We often hear that nature is self-healing or that there have been many previous extinctions, and that the planet has made and remade itself, but that’s like telling ourselves, please prepare for suicide while the super-rich and the cults of preppers, especially in the advanced industrialised nations, can escape to their doomsday bunkers.

The alternatives to the current development model is to be found in the ideas of Gandhi, of Schumacher, in solarpunk literature, in Vandana Shiva’s works among plenty of other places. The basic idea is to live in harmony with the planet, cut down on emissions, reduce resource extraction, try community based participatory solutions to problems instead of relying on economic, high-tech or market-based instruments, step back, go slow and let nature cloth and feed us so that we can live with dignity while forsaking greed.   

 In Spellcasters, you show climate change as an accepted way of life at the end. Do you think that can be a reality? Do you think climate change can be reversed?

A novel often presents itself as a bouquet of ideas without the author demonstrating any clear bias for one over the others. But as an activist-writer I usually drop clear hints as to what is more desirable without making it too obvious. There is always this ongoing duel between politics and aesthetics in a novel and the best among us balance the two quite well.

Climate change can of course be engaged with, controlled and reversed, if we can stick to the ambitious targets of the Paris climate agreement with the rich nations facilitating the process with more funds to poorer nations. Both producers and consumers have a role to play here, and we need serious lifestyle changes in the advanced industrial nations (or rather the global North) and a serious focus on climate justice for any meaningful change to occur. Only planting trees and carbon-trading won’t do.

Your language is very poetic. Do you have any intention of trying poetry as a genre?

Thank you. I haven’t ever thought of writing poetry because I am not gifted with the art of brevity which I think is essential there. But I have enjoyed translating poetry from Bengali to English, which was published as a book. I plan to do more of that.

What can we next expect from your pen?

I have been trying to finish a work of non-fiction about climate change and I hope to do this by the end of the year.

Let me also take this opportunity to thank you Mitali and your team at Borderless Journal for your service to literature. You are doing important work here and I am really grateful for your interest in my novel.

Thank you so much for giving us your time and sharing your wonderful book.

.

[1]Solarpunk is a sci-fi subgenre and social movement that emerged in 2008. It visualizes collectivist, ecological utopias where nature and technology grow in harmony. Read more by clicking her

[2]Navratnas or the nine gems were a bunch of very gifted men in his court, like Birbal and Tansen.

[3]The author does not agree to this reading in the interview. He sees his novel evolve out of the solarpunk movement.

[4]Alexandra David-Néel (1868-1969) https://openheartproject.com/the-path-post/alexandra-david-neel/

CLICK HERE TO READ AN EXCERPT FROM SPELLCASTERS

(The online interview has been conducted through emails and the review written by Mitali Chakravarty.)

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL. 

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International

Categories
Interview Review

The Subliminal World of Radha Chakravarty’s Poetry

In conversation with Radha Chakravarty about her debut poetry collection, Subliminal, published by Hawakal Publishers

Radha Chakravarty

Words cross porous walls
In the house of translation—
Leaf cells breathe new air.

We all know of her as a translator par excellence. But did you know that Radha Chakravarty has another aspect to her creative self? She writes poetry. Chakravarty’s poetry delves into the minute, the small objects of life and integrates them into a larger whole for she writes introspectively. She writes of the kantha — a coverlet made for a baby out of soft old sarees, of her grandmother’s saree, a box to store betel leaves… Her poetry translates the culture with which she grew up to weave in the smaller things into the larger framework of life:

Fleet fingers, fashioning
silent fables, designed to swaddle 
innocent infant dreams, shielding
silk-soft folds of newborn skin
from reality’s needle-pricks, 
abrasive touch of life in the raw.

--'Designs in Kantha’

She has poignant poems about what she observes her in daily life:

At the traffic light she appears 
holding jasmine garlands
selling at your car window for the price 
of bare survival, the promise 
of a love she never had, her eyes 
emptied of the fragrance
of a spring that, for her, never came.

--‘Flower Seller’

Some of her strongest poems focus on women from Indian mythology. She invokes the persona of Sita and Ahalya — and even the ancient legendary Bengali woman astrologer and poet, Khona. It is a collection which while exploring the poet’s own inner being, the subliminal mind, takes us into a traditional Bengali household to create a feeling of Bengaliness in English. At no point should one assume this Bengaliness is provincial — it is the same flavour that explores Bosphorus and Mount Everest from a universal perspective and comments independently on the riots that reft Delhi in 2020… where she concludes on the aftermath— “after love left us    and hate filled the air.”

The poems talk to each other to create a loose structure that gives a glimpse into the mind of the poetic persona — all the thoughts that populate the unseen crevices of her being.

In Subliminal, her debut poetry book, Radha Chakravarty has brought to us glimpses of her times and travels from her own perspective where the deep set tones of heritage weave a nostalgic beam of poetic cadences. Chakravarty’s poems also appear in numerous journals and anthologies. She has published over 20 books, including translations of major Bengali writers such as Rabindranath Tagore, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Mahasweta Devi and Kazi Nazrul Islam, anthologies of South Asian writing, and several critical monographs. She has co-edited The Essential Tagore (Harvard and Visva-Bharati), named ‘Book of the Year’ 2011 by Martha Nussbaum.

In this conversation, Radha Chakravarty delves deeper into her poetry and her debut poetry book, Subliminal.

Your titular poem ‘Subliminal’ is around advertisements on TV. Tell us why you opted to name your collection after this poem.

Most of the poems in Subliminal are independent compositions, not planned for a pre-conceived anthology. But when I drew them together for this book, the title of the poem about TV advertisements appeared just right for the whole collection, because my poetry actually delves beneath surfaces to tease out the hidden stories and submerged realities that drive our lives. And very often, those concealed truths are startlingly different from outward appearances. I think much of my poetry derives its energy from the tensions between our illusory outer lives and the realities that lurk within. In ‘Memories of Loss’, for example, I speak of beautiful things that conceal painful stories:

In a seashell held to the ear
the murmur of a distant ocean

In the veins of a fallen leaf
the hint of a lost green spring

In the hiss of logs in the fire,
the sighing of wind in vanished trees

In the butterfly’s bold, bright wings,
The trace of silken cocoon dreams

So, when and why did you start writing poetry?

I can’t remember when I started. I think I was always scribbling lines and fragments of verse, without taking them seriously. Poetry for me was the mode for saying the unsayable, expressing what one was not officially expected to put down in words. In a way, I was talking to myself, or to an invisible audience. Years later, going public with my poems demanded an act of courage. The confidence to actually publish my poems came at the urging of friends who were poets. Somehow, they assumed, or seemed to know from reading my published work in other forms, that I wrote poetry too.

Did being a translator of great writers have an impact on your poetry? How?

Yes, definitely. In particular, translating Tagore’s Shesher Kabita (as Farewell Song), his verses for children, the lush, lyrical prose of Bankimchandra Chatterjee (Kapalkundala) and the stylistic experiments of contemporary Bengali writers from India and Bangladesh (in my books Crossings: Stories from India and Bangladesh, Writing Feminism: South Asian Voices, Writing Freedom: South Asian Voices and Vermillion Clouds) sensitised me to the way poetic language works, and how the idiom, rhythm and resonances change when you translate from one language to another. Translating poetry has its challenges, but it also refined my own work as a poet. Let me share a few lines of poetry from Farewell Song, my translation of Tagore’s novel Shesher Kabita:

Sometime, when you are at ease, 
When from the shores of the past, 
      The night-wind sighs, in the spring breeze, 
	The sky steeped in tears of fallen bakul flowers,
Seek me then, in the corners of your heart, 
    For traces left behind. In the twilight of forgetting,
	Perhaps a glimmer of light will be seen,
The nameless image of a dream.
	And yet it is no dream,
For my love, to me, is the truest thing …

What writers, artists or musicians have impacted your poetry?

For me, writing is closely associated with the love for reading. Intimacy with beloved texts, and interactions with poets from diverse cultures during my extensive travels, has proved inspirational.

Poetry is also about the art of listening. As a child I loved the sound, rhythm and vivacity of Bengali children’s rhymes in the voice of my great-grandmother Renuka Chakrabarti. She has always been a figure of inspiration for me, a literary foremother who dared to aspire to the world of words at a time when women of her circle were not allowed to read and write. A child bride married into a family of erudite men, and consumed by curiosity about the forbidden act of reading, she took to hiding under her father-in-law’s four-poster bed and trying to decipher the alphabet from newspapers. One day he caught her in the act. Terrified, she crept out from her hiding place, and confessed to the ‘crime’ of trying to read. Things could have gone badly for her, but her father-in-law was an enlightened individual. He understood her craving to learn, and promised that he would teach her to read and write. Under his tutelage, and through her own passion for learning, she became an erudite woman, equally proficient in English and Bengali, an accomplished but unpublished poet whose legacy I feel I have inherited. Subliminal is dedicated to her.

As a child I absorbed both Bengali and English poetry through my pores because in our home, poetry, and music were all around me. I was inspired by Tagore and Nazrul, but also by modern Bengali poets such as Jibanananda Das, Sankho Ghosh and Shamsur Rahman. In my college days, as a student of English Literature, I loved the poetry of Shakespeare, Donne, Yeats, T. S. Eliot and the Romantics.

Later, I discovered the power of women’s poetry: Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich, to name a few. I am fascinated by the figure of Chandrabati, the medieval Bengali woman poet who composed her own powerful version of the Ramayana. Art and music provide a wellspring of inspiration too, for poetry can have strong visual and aural dimensions.

You translate from Bengali into English. How is the process of writing poetry different from the process of translation, especially as some of your poetry is steeped in Bengaliness, almost as if you are translating your experiences for all of us?

Translation involves interpreting and communicating another author’s words for readers in another language. Writing poetry is about communicating my own thoughts, emotions and intuitions in my own words. Translation requires adherence to a pre-existing source text. When writing poetry, there is no prior text to respond to, only the text that emerges from one’s own act of imagination. That brings greater freedom, but also a different kind of challenge. Both literary translation and the composition of poetry are creative processes, though. Mere linguistic proficiency is not enough to bring a literary work or a translated text to life.

English is not our mother tongue. And yet you write in it. Can you explain why?

Having grown up outside Bengal, I have no formal training in Bengali. I was taught advanced Bengali at home by my grandfather and acquired my deep love for the language through my wide exposure to books, music, and performances in Bengali, from a very early age. I was educated in an English medium school. At University too, I studied English Literature. Hence, like many others who have grown up in Indian cities, I am habituated to writing in English. I translate from Bengali, but write and publish in English, the language of my education and professional experience. Bengali belongs more to my personal, more intimate domain, less to my field of public interactions.

Both Bengali and English are integral to my consciousness, and I guess this bilingual sensibility often surfaces in my poetry. In many poems, such as ‘The Casket of Secret Stories,’ ‘The Homecoming’ or ‘In Search of Shantiniketan’, Bengali words come in naturally because of the cultural matrix in which such poems are embedded. ‘The Casket of Secret Stories’ is inspired by vivid childhood memories of my great-grandmother’s  daily ritual of rolling paan, betel leaves stuffed with fragrant spices, and arranging them in the metal box, her paaner bata[1]. When she took her afternoon nap, my cousins and I would steal and eat the forbidden paan from the box, and pretend innocence when she woke up and found all her paan gone. Of course, from our red-stained teeth and lips, she understood very well who the culprits were. But she never let on that she knew. It was only later, after I grew up, that I realised what the paan ritual signified for the housebound women of her time:

In the delicious telling,
bright red juice trickling
from the mouth, staining
tongue and teeth, savouring
the covert knowledge
of what life felt like in dark corners 
of the home’s secluded inner quarters, 
what the world on the outside looked like 
from behind veils, screens, 
barred windows and closed courtyards
where women’s days began and ended,
leaving for posterity
this precious closed kaansha* casket,
redolent with the aroma of lost stories

*Bronze

But I don’t agree that all my poetry is steeped in Bengali. In fact, in most of my poems, Bengali expressions don’t feature at all, because the subjects have a much wider range of reference. As a globe trotter, I have written about different places and journeys between places.

Take ‘Still’, which is about Mount Everest seen from Nagarkot in Nepal. Or ‘Continental Drift’, about the Bosphorus ferry that connects Asia with Europe. Such poems reflect a global sensibility. My poems on the Pandemic are not coloured by specific Bengali experiences. They have a universal resonance. I contributed to Pandemic: A Worldwide Community Poem (Muse Pie Press, USA), a collaborative effort to which poets from many different countries contributed their lines. It was a unique composition that connected my personal experience of the Pandemic with the diverse experiences of poets from other parts of the world. The poem was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. I guess my poems explore the tensions between rootedness and a global consciousness.

What are the themes and issues that move you?

I tend to write about things that carry a strong personal charge, but also connect with general human experience. My poems are driven by basic human emotions, memory, desire, associations, relationships, and also by social themes and issues. Specific events, private or public, often trigger poems that widen out to ask bigger questions arising from the immediate situation.

Sometimes, poetry can also become for me what T. S. Eliot calls an “escape from personality,” where one adopts a voice that is not one’s own and assume a different identity. ‘The Wishing Tree’ and the sequence titled ‘Seductions’ work as “mask” poems, using voices other than my own. This offers immense creative potential, similar to creating imaginary characters in works of fiction.

There are a lot of women-centred poems in Subliminal. Consider, for example, ‘Designs in Kantha’, ‘Alien’, ‘River/Woman’, ‘That Girl’, ‘The Severed Tongue’ and ‘Walking Through the Flames’. These poems deal with questions of voice and freedom, the body and desire, and the legacy of our foremothers. Some of them are drawn from myth and legend, highlighting the way women tend to be represented in patriarchal discourses.

The natural world and our endangered planet form another thematic strand. I am fascinated by the hidden layers of the psyche, and the unexpected things we discover when we probe beneath the surface veneer of our exterior selves. My poems are also driven by a longing for greater connectivity across the borders that separate us, distress at the growing hatred and violence in our world, and an awareness of the powerful role that words can play in the way we relate to the universe. ‘Peace Process’, ‘After the Riot’ and ‘Borderlines’ express this angst.

How do you use the craft of poetry to address these themes?

Poetry is the art of compression, of saying a lot in very few words. Central to poetry is the image. A single image can carry a welter of associations and resonances, creating layers of meaning that would require many words of explanation in prose. Poems are not about elaborations and explanations. They compel the reader to participate actively in the process of constructing meaning. Reading poetry can become a creative activity too. Poems are also about sound, rhythm and form. I often write “in form” because the challenge of working within the contours of a poetic genre or form actually stretches one’s creative resources. In Subliminal, I have experimented with some difficult short forms, such as the Fibonacci poem, the Skinny, and the sonnet. Take, for instance, the Skinny poem called ‘Jasmine’:

Remember the scent of jasmine in the breeze?
                   Awakening
                    tender
                   memories
                  bittersweet,
                   awakening
                    buried
                    dormant 
                    desires,
                   awakening,
in the breeze, the forgotten promise of first love. Remember?

The last two lines of the poem use the same words as the beginning, but to tell a different story. The form demands great economy.

I pay attention to the sound, and even when writing free verse, I care about the rhythm.  Endings are important. Many of my poems carry a twist in the final lines. I mix languages. Bengali words keep cropping up in my English poems.

Are your poems spontaneous or pre-meditated?

The first attempt is usually spontaneous, but then comes the process of rewriting and polishing, which can be very demanding. Some poems come fully formed and require no revision, but generally, I tend to let the first draft hibernate for some time, before looking at it afresh with a critical eye. Often, the final product is unrecognisable.

Which is your favourite poem in this collection and why? Tell us the story around it.

It is hard to choose just one poem. But let us consider ‘Designs in Kantha’, one of my favourites. Maybe the poem is important to me because of the old, old associations of the embroidered kantha with childhood memories of the affection of all the motherly women who enveloped us with their loving care and tenderness. Then came the gradual realisation, as I grew into a woman, of all the intense emotions, the hidden lives that lay concealed between those seemingly innocent layers of fabric. The kantha is a traditional cultural object, but it can also be considered a fabrication, a product of the creative imagination, a story that hides the real, untold story of women’s lives in those times. Behind the dainty stitches lie the secret tales of these women from a bygone era. My poem tries to bring those buried emotions to life.

As a critic, how would you rate your own work?

I think I must be my own harshest critic. Given my academic training, it is very hard to silence that little voice in your head that is constantly analysing your creative work even as you write. To publish one’s poetry is an act of courage. For once your words enter the public domain, they are out of your hands. The final verdict rests with the readers.

Are you planning to bring out more books of poems/ translations? What can we expect from you next?

More poems, I guess. And more translations. Perhaps some poems in translation. My journey has taken so many unpredictable twists and turns, I can never be quite sure of what lies ahead. That is the fascinating thing about writing.

Thank you for giving us your time.

[1] Container for holding Betel leaves or paan

(The online interview has been conducted through emails and the review written by Mitali Chakravarty.)

Click here to read poems from Subliminal.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL. 

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International

Categories
Interview

Checklist Anomaly: A Wiccan’s Journey of Exploration

Jagari Mukherjee in conversation with Rajorshi Patranabis

Rajorshi Patranabis

It was an exquisite late spring morning when the poet, Rajorshi Patranabis, and I met up for this interview at 8th Day Cafe and Bakery in Salt Lake. Over two pots of dark golden Earl Grey tea, Rajorshi answered my questions in his charmingly candid fashion, elaborating on our favourite subject, poetry; in particular, his book published by Hawakal in September 2023. We read aloud from the book, Checklist Anomaly, in between our conversation, and altogether spend a delightful hour-and-a-half figuratively floating on the gossamer wings of poesy.

Jagari: Congratulations, Rajorshi, for bringing out the first-ever individual collection of gogyoshi 1 in India. Checklist Anomaly, like your previous book, The Last Drop of Your Tears, is a seminal volume replete with love poems. Can you tell us a bit about the form and why you chose to express yourself in it?

Rajorshi: Last Drop of Your Tears was my first foray into five-line poetry, but I had previously done Japanese poetic forms like haiku and haibun. Gogyohka2 gave me some more lines to express myself albeit with some conditions of phrase and metaphor in every line. Gogyoshi was a natural transition from gogyohka wherein it is the freest form of five-line Japanese poetry. Gogyoshi should have a title and every line starts with a capital letter. When I started writing these forms, I had no idea that both Tears and Checklist Anomaly would be seminal collections. I’m personally extremely grateful to Hawakal Publishers for having the gumption to publish something to which they didn’t have any past reference points.

Jagari: Going through Checklist Anomaly, I was struck by your depiction of the beloved in your love poems. For instance, on page 16, I found the following poem:

She embraced to feel
Doused to drown
She kissed deep
Bitten lips strip
She seduced to engulf

Unlike the western courtly poetry tradition, your beloved is not a passive figure perceived through male gaze, but a powerful woman who defies the virgin/whore dichotomy. Could you tell me how did you create such an empowered feminine figure?

Rajorshi: A very few people know that I’m a Wiccan by philosophy and practice and Wicca is perhaps the first ever feminist movement. We look up to strong women like Luciana and Joan of Arc, amongst others for inspiration. Having been taught Wicca by my teacher in India, the reference to the 64 yoginis of Hirapur cannot be avoided. Yoginis are nothing but witches and the epitome of ‘Shakti (strength)’. As a direct consequence, love poems from my pen cannot possibly have a beloved who leans upon me for support. The other way round is the truth and it is time that poets realise that a beloved actually is the Shakti and love is the force.

Jagari: Your poems are lacquered with colours. I know that for a certainty that you are diagnosed as colour-blind. So, how does a colour-blind poet perceive hues and tints?

Rajorshi: Oh no, not again! Being colour-blind doesn’t mean I don’t decipher colours at all. I understand all the primary colours. Colours for me are emotions. In the poem ‘Lone Red Venom’ from Checklist Anomaly, I say, “Night of the flipped moon/I sit on your lone red venom.” Here, red is a metaphor—a colour normally not associated with poison. Here, it is more of an emotion. I leave it to the reader to decipher it through their own perspective, through their own eyes.

Jagari: Your answer brings to my mind another gogyoshi, titled ‘Incomplete Refrain’ on page 110.

My night shrouded in violet
Your dawn smelling in springtime lavender
Your flight took you to life
My fall broke my splinters of roving greed
Twilight murmurs about our incomplete refrain

Tell me, does the ‘fall’ in this poem refer to a post-lapsasarian world? Would you say that religion/spirituality is deeply infused into your poetry?

Rajorshi: First things first. The version of Wicca that I’ve been initiated into by my teacher (Wiccan High Priestess Ipsita Roy Chakraverti), encompasses every faith, every culture and every philosophy. So, you won’t actually find anything overtly or covertly pointing at any particular religion whatsoever. By the way, this ‘fall’ is actually autumnal fall for me; having said that, I’m happy that you have perceived it differently. This is perhaps where poetry wins.

Jagari: So, what’s next on the creative cards, Rajorshi?

Rajorshi: Something on the lines from the diary of Osiris which are Wiccan prose poems and I am also working on my second collection of gogyohka.

Jagari: That’s wonderful! We will wait for you to contribute new gems and ornaments to the poetic world.

  1. Gogyoshi is a form of Japanese poetry. It is the simplest as it has just five lines. ↩︎
  2. Gogyokha five line form of Japanese poetry but different from gogyoshi. Gogyoshi is considered the freest of Japanese poetic forms, as the poems do not have syllabic restrictions, specific line breaks, or a rhyme scheme. However, the style differs from other five-line forms, such as tanka and gogyohka, by the titling of its poems. ↩︎

Jagari Mukherjee is the Editor-in-chief of Narrow Road Literary Journal and the Chief Executive Editor of EKL Review. She is the winner of Women Empowered Gifted Poet Award, the Reuel International Prize For Poetry, the Bharat Award for Short Story, and the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize for Book Review. Jagari has three full-length poetry collections and two chapbooks and a bestselling ebook to her credit.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Amazon International

Categories
Interview Review

I Kick and I Fly: Ratnottama Sengupta Converses with Ruchira Gupta

Ratnottama Sengupta has known Ruchira Gupta for more than 40 years. But reading I Kick and I Fly has made her see in a new light the young journalist who has become a force of change in the global fight against human trafficking.

Ruchira Gupta

Kiddy. Ruchi. Journalist. Documentary filmmaker. Emmy Award winner. Founder President, Apne Aap[1]Women Worldwide. Social activist. Agent of changes to international laws. Sera Bangali[2]. Ekta[3] Award winner. Professor, NYU. Cancer survivor. Essayist. Exhibited artist. Published novelist…

“What next?” I could have asked Ruchira Gupta. And without waiting for her to reply I could add, “Member of Rajya Sabha? The first step to even higher offices on the world stage.” Because? This kid born to Rajni and Vidya Sagar Gupta has dedicated her life-breath to ensure that not a single child is either sold or bought for sexual gratification in exchange of a few rupees.

Hardly surprising that when she picked up her pen while recovering from Covid in her family home in Forbesganj, she penned a novel like I Kick and I Fly. “A book that is a MUST READ for one and all who are interested in fighting, tackling, and – not or – ending sex trafficking,” as Anjani Kumar Singh, Director, Bihar Museum said at the launch in Patna. Because? It is a story of optimism as Heera the protagonist, overcomes unimaginable obstacles to emerge a path breaker in the Nat community who believed it was the fate of its girls to sell their body at puberty, or even earlier, for the welfare of their family.

Inspirational. And in the most absorbing way. Read this excerpt from the novel to understand how a message becomes engrossing read.

"My name is Heera. I am from a town named Forbesganj, in a state called Bihar, in northern India, very close to Nepal,” I begin. My voice is shaking along with the rest of me. But I go on. “My brother and I are the first people in our family to ever go to school, and I have grown up believing that being sold for prostitution is my Destiny. That there are few doors open to me as a child of an oppressed-caste family. Our people used to be wrestlers and performers. But overnight we were told we could not do those things anymore, that our entire way of life was illegal.”

My voice is shaking less now and I manage to look at people in front of me. “How do people survive when they are not allowed to do the work they know and love? For my family of nomads, it meant asking people for a place to live, and then doing just about any job they told us we could do. One of these jobs was having sex with people for money.

“These children and women had no choice but to sell their bodies in exchange for a place to live. For food to eat. And for their husbands to be given work. And though people say that times have changed, they must not have changed everywhere, because I have been told since I was a little girl that selling my body was what I had to do to support myself and my family. And I believed it. Many in my family believed it too.

“Finally early this year it was my turn to be put up for sale. My family was in a tight spot, in debt to the wrong man. I grew up in a red-light area, so I knew what it involved. There are no secrets kept from kids where I come from. So, I said No, and we tried to get around it.

“My mother paid back our loan, but the traffickers came for me anyhow. The first time I got away. The second time they got me, but I was rescued by my brother and teacher.

“When I was stuck in a tiny room with my traffickers outside the door, I asked myself why had they kept coming for me even when they had no claim, no right? And that’s when I fully realized that they believed my body belonged to them, and I knew for certain it did not. It was kung fu that helped me understand this. Because it is through kung fu that I learnt, my body would do what I told it to. That my body listened to me – and only me.”

I take a breath. “There is power in my body. My body connects me to my cousin, my aunt, my grandmother who were all sold for prostitution. But kung fu also connects my body to my ancestors, who were champion wrestlers. If both these things lived within me, could I choose which course I wanted to take?”

I look up now, realizing that I have memorized the final words on the page. “For most of my life, the answer to that was NO. But suddenly I felt that maybe there was another possibility. I didn't do it on my own: I needed my family to stand with me, and most importantly, a cheerleader who made me believe that safety could be mine. Rini Di taught me kung fu and opened the doors of the world to me. And that is how I have come to stand before you now.”

Heera stands before her teachers and her friends, other survivors of trafficking as an example who not only fights, successfully, the might of traffickers but who actually saves another trafficked girl.  Who, even more importantly, instils faith, and courage, and dream… In her brother, her mother, and her father. Her brother Salman who always stood by her even as he studied for a better future. Her Mai who broke stones for a livelihood and gathered enough courage to take a loan to put in place a roof over their head. Her Baba who stands as a loser but accepts change and even starts to nurse a dream — for his daughter as much as for his son.

And so, when the Martial Arts Foundation awards Heera and her co-fighter friend, Connie, a scholarship to train for one full year in New York, along with admission to a local school, Heera too starts dreaming. Of a future, perhaps only twelve months down, when her family would be dwelling in a pink-bricked three roomed house. When Salman would study in a residential school in Siliguri. When Mai would have a betel shop. When Baba would be a porter at the railway platform. When her cousin Mira Di would be a seamstress with a tailoring shop of her own in the very backroom where she was forced to service men. When the corrupt policeman, Suraj Sharma, and the trafficker, Ravi Lala, would be in jail, no longer on the prowl in Girls Bazaar.

“It’s not a dream,” says Ruchira , reiterating the clinching line of I Kick and I Fly. “I have seen this transformation actually take place in Forbesganj. “There were 72 home-based brothels in the lane when Apne Aap started. Today there are two. Girls no longer sit outside waiting for customers. The two sisters who were locked up in the hut have finished school. One is a chef, the other is a teacher. The girl who was kidnapped is a karate trainer. Someone like Mai really has a betel paan leaf shop and someone like Mira Di is a seamstress. The cattle fair is no longer allowed to bring dance or orchestra groups.”

This was the perfect time to strike a conversation with Ruchira Gupta, I reckoned. And so I decided to shoot…

Me: How – rather, why – did you start writing I Kick and I Fly?

Ruchi: I started writing this story when a fourteen-year-old girl just like Heera won a gold medal in a karate championship in Forbesganj. She was being groomed for prostitution with other girls in her lane. A lane just like Girls Bazaar.

Her journey was not easy, it was heroic. I saw how she and her friends overcame hunger, fought off their fear and stood up to traffickers with grace and gusto. An annual cattle fair used to claim girls from that lane every year. When my NGO, Apne Aap, opened a community centre and a hostel there, we were constantly attacked by men like Gainul and Ravi Lala. They would stalk the mothers, the daughters, and me. They hurled abuses, threw stones, stole from our office and even kidnapped girls. We built higher walls around the hostel to prevent traffickers from jumping over. I posted guards outside my home, hired lawyers, filed police complaints and cases in court. Just like Mai, some mothers in the lane disobeyed their husbands even though they were beaten up. Their daughters were the first batch of girls in our hostel.

Me: Are all the characters real? Is the hope real? Do people in real life change the way Baba does?

Ruchi: Most of the events in the book are inspired by real people, places, events. To give you one example: A trafficking survivor from Indonesia told me how she was locked up and how she escaped from a brothel in Queens, New York, by disguising herself in a burqa. She is now a global leader in the struggle against trafficking. In my novel, Heera uses the same device to rescue Rosy.

Baba, Heera’s father, is also based on real-life fathers in the Nat community of Forbesganj. They would actually auction off their daughters to the highest bidder when the mela came to town! But as I began working in the red-light area I saw that they were not black and white criminals but human beings desensitised through decades and generations of oppression. Of course, there was no excuse that they did not try to fight back. I did see some fathers change when they saw their daughters succeed. Until then the possibility of a different future had not even occurred to them.

When hope unfurls in a downtrodden human being, it is like a tendril. I saw it in the eyes and actions of some fathers in the red-light area of Forbesganj when their daughters won gold medals in karate.

Me: You have not learnt kung fu. Why did you project Rini Di – clearly your alter ego – as a kung fu teacher? It is a physical art of self-defence. How precisely does that connect with, or help, girls who are in the river of flesh?

Ruchi: I still remember, it was early morning when a boy came to my home with his mother to seek help. His sister and cousin were locked up by traffickers to stop them from coming to the hostel. We had to mobilise the police to get them out. I noticed then that the girls were badly bruised while the traffickers were unscathed. I wished that the girls were able to fight back.

Our Apne Aap women’s group met that afternoon at the centre. Everyone was afraid that we would be beaten in retaliation for the police raid. That’s when I suggested martial arts classes. The women loved the idea. I used to see a couple teach karate teacher near the rice fields to boys in a private school. We hired them and the classes began. Soon the bullying in schools stopped.

As the girls started to win competitions, something changed. The very townspeople who had agitated to urge the principal to expel our red light children began to respect them. And the fathers in the community began to see value in their daughters. The biggest change was in the girls themselves. They began to own their bodies and value themselves. As they gained self-esteem, they began to do better in class. Soon more mothers began to stand up to the traffickers and even to their husbands in the lane, saying they would send their daughters to school.

Me: How did Apne Aap help change the picture at the ground level?

Ruchi: Today Apne Aap has educated more than 3,000 girls from red-light areas through school and college and is still continuing to do so. They are in jobs as animation artists, teachers, doctors, lawyers, chefs, managers of pizza parlours and of gas stations too.

Our NGO’s community has become a safe space to hold meetings, share stories, get food, do homework, and plot against traffickers. Women, very much like Mai and Mira Di, meet regularly in the centre to solve their problems. They fill out forms with the help of Apne Aap workers to access government entitlements like low cost housing, ration and loans. They go collectively to talk to the authorities when there are delays.

The Apne Aap legal team helps victims to file police complaints, testify in court and get traffickers convicted. The real Gainul and the real Ravi Lala are in jail. In 2013, Apne Aap survivor leaders and I testified in Parliament for the passage of section 370 IPC, a law that punishes traffickers and allocates budgets for services to the prostituted and the vulnerable.

Before these could happen, I had shown my documentary and testified to the UN and to the US senate for laws that would decriminalise the victims; increase choices for vulnerable and trafficked girls and women; and punish the traffickers and sex buyers. I can proudly say that my testimony and inputs contributed in the passage of the UN Protocol to end Trafficking in Persons and the UN Trafficking Fund for survivors as well as the passage of US Trafficking Victim Protection Act.

Me: Ruchi you come from an established, politically aware, well connected and much respected family. You grew up in the metros and now live an international life, mostly abroad. You won a coveted award for The Selling of Innocents. You helped in the making of Love, Sonia. Why did you not continue to make films? In short, what compelled you to start Apne Aap Women Worldwide?

Ruchi: As you know, I started as a journalist right after graduation. I learnt to ask questions, and I listened. The question that changed my life was: Where are the girls?

I was researching a story in the hills of Nepal when I came across rows of villages with missing girls. I had asked this to the men playing cards in the villages in Nepal. I followed the trail and found that a smooth supply chain existed from these remote hamlets to the brothels of India. Little girls, perhaps only twelve, were locked up in cages in Kolkata, Delhi and Mumbai for years and sold for a few cents night after night.

All the girls were from poor farming families. Many, like Heera, were from nomadic indigenous communities or marginalised castes. Like her, they were either not sent to school, or bullied until they dropped out, or pulled out by their fathers and sold into prostitution.

I was sad, then angry, and finally determined to do something about it. That’s how I ended up exposing the horror in my documentary. When I was on the stage in Broadway receiving the Emmy in 2013, all I could see beyond the glittering lights were the eyes of the mothers who had broken their silence to save their daughters. I decided in that instant to use my Emmy not to build a career in journalism but to make a difference.

I did two things. I dubbed it in six languages and I travelled across the world with it. I screened it in villages to show parents what the brothels were like. I showed it to the UN and the US Senate when I testified against the crime that is human trafficking. It contributed to a global push by activists that led to a new UN protocol to end trafficking and the first US anti-trafficking law, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA).

Me: What was your magic wand?

Ruchi: I had no magic wand. I didn’t even have experience to stop the kidnapping of girls, or knowledge about how to put traffickers in jail. I was an English literature student from Kolkata’s Loreto College who joined The Telegraph while pursuing my honours degree graduation. But as a journalist, I saw the reality and invented ways to move forward.

Something had happened while I was filming the documentary. A pimp had stuck a knife to my throat. I was in a small room. There was nowhere to run. Suddenly, I was encircled by the 22 women I was interviewing. They told the pimp that he would have to kill them first. He knew it would be too much trouble to kill so many women, so he slunk away. I was saved. That moment changed my life.

The Emmy award money helped me start Apne Aap Women Worldwide with the women who had bravely spoken up in my film. I listened to the women who said they had four dreams: Education for their children; a room of their own; an office job; and punishment for those who bought and sold them. That became my NGO’s business plan.

I learnt that the best solutions came from those who experience the problem. The idea of the hostel, the idea of food in the community centre, and even the idea of karate came when we sat in a circle in the mud hut that is our community centre. It evolved into a grassroots approach which we call asset-based community development – ABCD or the 10 Asset model. Every woman or girl who becomes an Apne Aap member gains ten assets – both tangible and intangible. These are: a safe space, education, self-confidence, the ability to speak to authorities, government IDs and documents, low-cost food and housing, savings and loans, livelihood linkages, legal knowledge and support, and a circle of at least nine friends.

Each of these assets is a building block in an unfolding story of personal and community change. I wrote this novel to share with you that change is possible.

Me: Ruchi you had come up with the art-documentation, The Place Where I Live is Called Red Light Area. You got the girls to make a series of videos about different aspects of their life. You supported a documentary on the scheduled tribes. What inspired you to shun Art For Art’s Sake and pursue Art as Activism?

Ruchi: I learned in a very practical way the power of women’s collective action and the importance of sticking by one another. I promised myself I would never give up on those women’s dream. As a result, today thousands of girls have exited the prostitution systems from brothels across the country. There is more awareness about sex trafficking globally. And there are better laws and services for victims like Mira Di in over 160 countries.

Me: But we still have miles to go before we sleep…? 

Ruchi: Yes, because the truth is that there isn’t one but many, many more Heeras. Girls Bazaar still exists in many parts of the world, including the USA. The brothel in Queens is real. The International Labour Organisation estimates there are more than 40 million victims of human trafficking globally with hundreds of thousands of victims in the US alone. Human trafficking is the second largest organised crime in the world, involving billions of dollars, according to the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Me: So, what more actions would you suggest to tackle the issue? Through IKAIF, an upbeat tale of an underdog’s rise to victory, you have shown that ‘lost girls’ earmarked for ‘the oldest profession’ can erase their ‘destiny’ through education, and reliance on their own inner strength. What other positive actions would you suggest?

Ruchi: Heera’s is a story of hope in spite of great odds. It’s about our bodies — who they belong to, the command they can give us. It is about friends who make changes you want in your life. It is about a community that resolves to make change contagious, and succeeds.

You too can ‘Join The Movement’ to create a world in which no child is bought or sold. You can do that in so many ways. You can 1) Sign the freedom pledge on my website Ruchiragupta.com. 

2) Learn more about the issue by reading I Kick and I Fly, and by watching The Selling of Innocents on my website.

3) Create further awareness by sharing the book, the movie and the pledge on your social media handles.

4) Volunteer and intern with Apne Aap or a local NGO in your town.

And you can Sponsor a girl like Heera on apneaap.org!

.

[1] Oneself

[2] The Best Bengali – An award given by the Ananda Bazaar Patrika group

[3] Unity: The Ekta Award is a National Award from India

Ratnottama Sengupta, formerly Arts Editor of The Times of India, teaches mass communication and film appreciation, curates film festivals and art exhibitions, and translates and write books. She has been a member of CBFC, served on the National Film Awards jury and has herself won a National Award. 

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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Amazon International

Categories
Interview Review

In Conversation with a People’s Doctor

An introduction to Ratna Magotra’s Whispers of the Heart: Not Just a Surgeon (Konark Publishers) and a conversation with the doctor who took cardiac care to the underprivileged.

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy?”— Tagore, Whispers of the Heart: Not Just a Surgeon by Ratna Magotra

“There are at least five estimates of the number of poor people in India, which put the number of poor in India between 34 million (equivalent to the population to Kerala) to 373 million (more than four times the population of West Bengal). This puts the number of the poor between 2.5% of the population to 29.5%, based on different estimates between 2014 and 2022.”

— Scroll India, 5/5/2023, Nushaiba Iqbal, IndiaSpend.com

How are the healthcare needs of the poverty stricken met in a country with a vast number who are unable to foot their daily food, housing, and potable water needs? This has been a question that confronts every doctor in cities where labourers who build housing for the middle class are themselves homeless just like the street side immigrants who beg. Even dwellers of shanties that spring up around colonies of the well-to-do to provide informal labour to the affluent are hardly any better off. Few in the medical profession move towards finding solutions to bridge this gap.

Dr Ratna Magotra, who moved from Jammu to find a career in healthcare in Mumbai, is one such person. Recently, she wrote an autobiography which has consolidated the work being done by cardiologists to bridge this gap. In her book, Whispers of the Heart: Not Just a Surgeon, while identifying this divide, she writes: “Poverty, inequality, deficient primary healthcare, unequal access, and the escalating commercialisation of medical care were causing an angst that I found difficult to make peace with. As medical practitioners, our expertise lies in providing treatment, but we often overlook the broader social factors underlying ill health. It might escape the attention of a surgeon performing intricate heart surgery that a child who survived a complex heart surgery could succumb to diarrhoea due to the lack of access to clean drinking water. Issues like malnutrition, skin infections, superstitious beliefs, and poverty may be the harsh realities in the patient’s actual living conditions beyond the confines of sanitised medical environment. /Medical training, regrettably, seldom includes the connection between poverty and disease.”

The land reforms laws that followed post-Partition[1] led to her family losing their wealth. But Magotra bears no ill-will or scars that have crippled her ability to contribute to a world that needs to heal — of taking healthcare to those who can’t afford it. She starts her biography with vignettes from her childhood: “I recall that the agricultural land we owned in our village in Jammu was considered very fertile with the best Basmati rice grown there. Though I was very young, I have faint memories of the house amidst lush paddy fields and a small stream that we had to cross to enter the village. It was very close to the international border between India and Pakistan. The way my mother was respected reflected the high esteem that villagers had for my father. Though their tenant status had changed to that of being landowners, the villagers visited the house as they did before and received generous gifts from her. /They would indulge us children with home-made sweets made of peanuts, jaggery and spices. Rolling in heaps of post-harvest grains piled up in open fields was great fun.”

She lost all that and her father. But with supportive family and friends, drawn to healthcare, she became a doctor in times when women doctors were rare. If they at all specialised, it was mainly in gynaecology. She chose cardiac surgery trained in UK and US. She made friends where she went and with a singular dedication, found solutions to access the underprivileged. She elaborates: “The quantum leap in India’s healthcare sector occurred during the 1990s following the economic reforms and the liberalisation of the economy. The end of the licence raj system facilitated the imports of advanced technology and medical equipment. Specialists, who had long settled abroad, began contemplating a return to India.”

While she attended an International Course in Cardiac Surgery at Sicily to update her skills, she tells us: “During our interactions, some German surgeons raised questions about the rationale behind a developing country like India engaging in an expensive speciality like cardiac surgery. I realised how biased opinions can be formed and spread, though rooted in ignorance. /By this point, however, I had grown accustomed to explaining the paradox — why it was essential for India to advance in specialised care alongside its priorities in basic healthcare and poverty alleviation.”

She cites multiple instances of cases that she dealt with from the needy rural population, for who to pay prohibitive costs would mean an end to their family’s meals. Magotra writes, “I had seen numerous poor heart patients who suffered not only from the ailment itself but also from financial burden of the treatment. The medical expenses incurred for a single family member affected the well-being of entire household, depleting their limited resources and savings. Unfortunately, medical education does not include health economics as a subject. As a result, doctors, especially specialists, trained in a reductionist approach to diseases tend to move away from a holistic perspective. They readily embrace new technological advances, often neglecting proven and cost-effective treatment options. This, in turn, drives up healthcare costs and makes it unaffordable for the common man.”

Living through a series of historical upheavals, she brings to light some interesting observations. She came in contact with Jinnah’s personal physician while looking for a placement in Mumbai. There she mentions that many wondered if the Partition of India could have been averted if this doctor had shared the information that Jinnah had limited life expectancy as he had advanced tuberculosis. She has lived through floods in Mumbai and riots and wondered: “I was staring at the blood on my clothes, which had come from multiple patients. In that quiet moment, I couldn’t help but wonder if there was a ‘test’ to distinguish between a Hindu blood and a Muslim blood.” She joined the anti-corruption movement started by Anna Hazare and fasted! She has travelled and watched and collected her stories and she jotted these down during the pandemic to share her world and her concerns with all of us. In the process, recording changes in health care systems over the years… the historic passing of an era that documents the undocumented people’s needs.

Dr Ratna Magotra

An award-winning doctor for the efforts she has made to connect with people across all borders and use her experience, she talks to us in this interview about her journey and beliefs.

What made you write this book? Who were the readers you wanted to reach out to?

I had asked myself the same questions before I started and even while I was writing:  Why and for whom?

Some younger friends and family members would find the anecdotes and stories, I would relate to them from time to time, interesting. They would often prod me to write about these. People, situations, my travels to places — not the usual popular tourist destinations, invoked further curiosity in them to know more about my life. As such I like to write my thoughts (usually for myself) and have been contributing small articles to newspapers, magazines, and Bhavan’s Journal for their special Issues. The pandemic provided me an opportunity to contemplate further when I seriously considered about writing an autobiographical narrative.

As I progressed with my account, I envisaged a wider readership outside the medical community as multiple facets emerged about places, people and events of varying interests. 

What were the hurdles you faced while training as a doctor — in terms of gender and attitudes of others?

Fortunately, I can’t recall any specific hurdle or adverse experience because of my being a woman. Studying for MBBS degree at Lady Hardinge Medical College (LHMC), made it a normal affair as LHMC was an all-women medical college.

The struggle that I faced in getting PG admission in Bombay also had nothing to do with gender. The problem was being an outsider in Bombay when number of seats were limited. Students from local medical colleges and rest of Maharashtra had first preference for selection to PG courses. Anyone in my place would have had to go through a similar grind as I did.

Once PG admission was secured, it was smooth sailing through training and working alongside male colleagues! I asked for no concessions being a woman and worked as hard as they did or may be little more. We had a very close and harmonious working relationship with healthy mutual respect leading to lasting friendships.

What made you choose cardiac surgery over other areas of specialisation?

The decision to become a doctor and a surgeon was firmed very early in life. Interest in Cardiac surgery was acquired much later when I started working with Dr Dastur in Bombay. Seeing and touching a beating heart was fascinating and at the same time very challenging at that time. I was tempted to take it up for further specialisation. And yes, it was a very glamorous specialty at that time with names like Denton Cooley[2] and Christiaan Barnard [3]making waves in mainstream conversations!

Cardiac surgery was perceived by some as the forte of the rich, but you have shown how many villagers also had the need for the same specialised care. So, what was it that made you realise that? What could be seen as the incident that made you move towards closing social gaps in your horizon?

Heart disease affects the rich as also the poor. In fact, in earlier times when lifestyle diseases were not as common, it was the poor who suffered more from many afflictions including heart disease. Rheumatic heart disease was the bane of the underprivileged, living in overcrowded spaces with repeated streptococcal throat infections that eventually ravaged their heart valves. Congenital heart disease was common though not diagnosed as often. While the rich and affluent could afford to travel abroad to get treatment, in turn costing precious foreign exchange to the nation, others had to make do with whatever was available. Indian surgeons stretched their resources, skills and imagination to fill the gaps in the infrastructure.

Working in teaching hospitals, I saw the suffering and helplessness of the poor from very close.  Inadequacies in healthcare stared at us every day. Moreover, those days cardiac surgery was being performed only in 4-5 teaching hospitals in the country.

I tried looking beyond the patient, connecting their illness with the social and economic environment they came from.  Their personal courage, resilience and faith in overcoming difficult moments of life stirred something inside me. One such incidence involved a patient, Ahir Rao, from interiors of Maharashtra. His surgery at KEM and my subsequent visit to his home opens the chapter on ‘Reaching the Unreached’ in my book.  

Ironically flip side of development and changing economic status, is that lifestyle diseases like hypertension, diabetes and heart disease are affecting less affluent even more. Lack of awareness about diet, and rapidly adopting urban fads have changed the rural-urban spectrum of heart disease.

The prejudices and biases of the developed countries influenced many in the country also to question a developing country like India from investing in super-specialty like cardiac surgery instead of focussing on providing basic amenities to the people.

It was amusing to see the BBC presenters asking the chronic questions as recently as the landing of Chandrayaan on moon in August 2023 — whether India should have space missions? Persistence of same mind set exposed their ignorance about the benefits the technology and the science bring to common man as also reluctance to accept the progress India has made!

How did your travels to other countries impact your own work and perspectives?

Traveling is a great education to broaden one’s horizon. My travels in India and to different countries contributed towards my personal growth by helping me connect to the geography, nature as also the people belonging to different cultures and sensibilities.  Different foods, attires or attitudes but with one common underlying bond of humanity with similar aspirations. 

Professionally, going to advanced centres exposed me to a work culture that was very different from ‘chalta hai’ [4] attitude back home.  Staying ahead with the best research, better working conditions, new technology were just the stimulants I needed in doing better for our patients.

There were many people you have mentioned who impacted you and your work. Who would you see as the persons/organisations who most inspired and led you to realise your goals?

I owe so much to so many people, whom I met at different stages of my life and who influenced my thinking, values and my work. It is difficult to pick one or two, however, if asked to narrow down to three or four most important individuals, these would be my mother and Prof Rameshwar in early years, and Dr K. N Dastur in my professional choice and career. However, biggest influence in my later life has been my Guru, Swami Ranganathananda — who imparted the wisdom of practical vedanta giving ultimate message of oneness and freedom of thought and action for universal good as propagated by Swami Vivekananda.  

Why did you join Anna Hazare and his organisation? How did it impact you? What were your conclusions about such trysts?

I had heard of Anna Hazare as an anti-corruption crusader and had met him once at his village while accompanying Dr Antia. It was very admirable the way he had motivated the village people to participate voluntarily in the economic and social development making Ralegaon Siddhi a model village. This simple rustic person could stand up to the high and mighty and often made news in local newspapers; the politicians took his protests seriously at least in Maharashtra. When India Against Corruption (IAC) came into existence in 2011, I didn’t think twice before joining the unique coming together of civil society to fight corruption in the highest corridors of power. I was personally convinced that corruption had eroded and marred the dream of India keeping the common people poor and backward even as the corrupt flourished. As an individual, one could not do much beyond complaining and paying a price for a principled life. It required the civil society to stand up collectively to oppose the corrupt who were (are) actually very powerful!

There was nothing personal to gain by joining the protest but only lend my voice to the common objective of checking, if not eradicating, the menace of corruption.

The experience, highs and lows of the movement form a chapter in my book. The movement becoming political and losing the momentum of a countrywide movement was a big disappointment.

What would be the best way of closing the divides in healthcare?

There has been some forward movement in healthcare at grass root levels in last two decades or so. These gains need to be streamlined as at present we have islands of excellence with vast areas of dismal healthcare — the imbalance needs correction.  

Increased spending by the State for healthcare, forward looking national health policy keeping in mind the diverse needs of such a vast country, rural urban realities are the way forward. Investment in medical and nursing education, primary health care, paramedics, rational use of appropriate technologies — all these need to be considered in totality and not in isolation. 

Lot of the healthcare work is bridged by NGOS as per your book. Do you think a governmental intervention is necessary to bring healthcare to all its citizens?

My narrative belongs to the eighties and nineties when NGOs were vital in taking basic medical services to remote places where none existed. These organisations did a herculean task and several continue to be a significant provider even as the governments, both at the Centre and State level, have initiated many schemes that include healthcare besides general rural development.  I personally think that the NGOs too need to retune their earlier approach of being stand-alone providers seeking funding from government and foreign donors to remain relevant.  NGOs, though a vital link between the governments and the communities, have traditionally taken adversarial position to the governments. While keeping their independence of work, maybe they should strive to avoid duplication of services; provide authentic data, and create awareness. These along with constructive criticism and cooperation would benefit the communities and the stakeholders alike. Health education, women empowerment, strengthening the delivery of healthcare integrated with holistic rural development are best done by NGOs working at ground level.

What reform from the government would most help bridge these gaps and can these reforms be made a reality?

The question has been partially answered as above. Increase in budgetary allocation and intent are the prime requirement with focus on nutrition, clean drinking water, sanitation (end of open defecation, provision of toilets, is a major reform) and clean cooking fuel impact public health at grassroots substantially, especially that of women and children. These alone should reduce the load of common diseases and prevent 70 to 80 percent of maladies in a community. This is similar to what Dr Antia used to advocate — “People’s health in People’s hands”. No medical specialists are required, and community health workers would be fully capable of taking care of routine illness. The gains would need to be evaluated periodically to see the impact by way of reduced infant mortality, maternal health, reduction in school dropouts and increase in rural household incomes. Use of technology is an important tool to connect the masses with healthcare centres for more advanced care.

More thought is necessary for specialist oriented medical care. I am aware that we have some very wise and thinking people at the top deciding on national medical policy that should actually map the number of specialised centres and the doctors in each specialty and super specialities (SS) required over say next 10 years. The number of training programmes should be tailored accordingly.  It is saddening to know that so many seats for post-doctoral training continue to remain vacant. It is specially so in surgical SS like cardiovascular, pediatric, and neurosurgery that are seeing less demand with interventional treatment making roads in treatment.

The change in the attitudes of administration as also the medical community is important. The benefits should be harvested with honest appraisals for course correction where needed for better planning in consultations with doctors, civil society, and the NGOs working in the rural areas. 

Another idea close to my heart has been to motivate or even incentivise the senior medical practitioners to serve the rural areas for 2-3 years prior to their retirement from active service. They would carry experience and wisdom to manage medical needs even with limited resources as compared to enforced bonds for fresh graduates who are short of practical experience, anxious about their future and that of the families. Seniors on the other hand have fulfilled their responsibilities and may be really looking forward to satisfaction of giving back to the society.  Having secured their future and relatively in good health, can be very useful human resource for the governments and the communities. This should be entirely out of volition and not under any pressure from the authorities.

Now that you have retired, what are your future plans?

Life is unpredictable at my age. I would, however, wish to remain in reasonable health to be able to be a useful citizen. I have no firm plans and will go where the life takes me like I have done so far.

 I am aware that the age would no longer allow me to continue with specialised and highly technical profession I am trained for. Modern communication has narrowed the distances and made it possible to stay connected.  I should be satisfied if I can provide any meaningful inputs, retain the attitude of service and remain contended in my personal being.

[1]JAMMU AND KASHMIR AGRARIAN REFORMS ACT 1976

https://law.uok.edu.in/Files/5ce6c765-c013-446c-b6ac-b9de496f8751/Custom/local%20laws%20(4%20files%20merged).pdf. With the end of Dogra rule in 1947, a historical legislation called the Jammu and Kashmir Big Landed Estate Abolition Act was passed in 1950. The Act abolished the large, landed estates by fixing the ceiling area.

[2] American cardiothoracic surgeon (1920-2016)

[3] South African thoracic surgeon (1922-2001)

[4] Casual attitude that anything works

CLICK HERE TO READ AN EXCERPT FROM WHISPERS OF THE HEART

(The online interview has been conducted through emails and the review written by Mitali Chakravarty.)

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL. 

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International

Categories
Interview Review

How Gajra Kottary Blossoms with ‘Short Tales’

A conversation with Gajra Kottary, focusing on her new short-story collection, Autumn Blossoms, published by Om Books International.

Gajra Kottary is an eminent screenplay writer on Indian television. She has had many awards and accolades for teleplays that ran into a few thousand episodes, including the very popular Astitva Ek Prem Kahani (Existence: A Love Story, 2002-2006). Trained as a journalist, she turned into a screenplay writer, and now, she opts to go back to writing books.

Her collection of fifty stories in Autumn Blossoms bloom through five hundred pages with an epigraphic verse at the start of each story summing up the intent of the narrative. The focus group of the content is mainly upper middle-class women in India—people who have studied in privileged schools and colleges, though there is a story about a tribal woman who “evolves” to be a leader. The language flows capturing the nuances of her characters, replete with their values, biases, and attitudes. The stories, like her tele series, bring to light not only societal issues but also the interactions between different economic and social strata within the country. They give a glimpse of the world she inhabits. 

Forwarded by Anupam Kher, a well-known actor, director and producer, the narratives despite being women-centric are not feminist in intent. There is a story about a girl who while opposing the patriarchy of her married home, runs away to that of her guru only to discover he lives by even more stringent rules and has an extremely gifted wife who practically gave up her life to look after the needs and career of her husband. The turn of events is such that the protagonist returns home, changed in her outlook. The story in a way upends the current norms towards concepts like patriarchy and yet, it dwells on the strength that can be found among common women, women who are housewives and ostensibly live in the shadows of men. The character of the guru’s wife brings to mind Scarlett O Hara’s mother in Margaret Mitchell’s original novel, Gone with the Wind (1936).

The plots of the stories are involved. And each story takes you through a different world. It’s like you have lived the lives of umpteen women within the social constructs of India. You live through murders, weddings, divorces, parties, terrorist kidnappings and even revolutions! In the centre of it all, are the stories of all humanity with their varied moods and flavours, their loves, compassion, happiness, grief, disappointments, and achievements.

In her ‘Afterthought’ — what in common parlance would be afterword — Kottary tells us the name, Autumn Blossoms, is the “generic descriptions of the stories” in the collection. She contends she is “a firm believer in the fact that women, and for that matter men too, bloom and discover strength in the autumn of their lives. As do many protagonists in these stories, where autumn stands as much for the vagaries of age as for what they are experiencing in life which gives them a new perspective.”

There is a story behind the book told in the afterword… how all the stories were curated into this collection. Some of the stories from her earlier collections were redone by the writer to suite her current needs. As there were many stories, she tells us the editor, Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri, “suggested that we categorise them into three sections”. She further elucidates: “The first would be the section about women’s relationships with men. The second section would be women’s relationships with other women. The third would be about women’s relationships with themselves, by far the most complex of them all. Of course, there are bound to be overlaps – these categories have permeable boundaries, so that it is possible for one story in one category to resonate in another. That too provides a sort of unity to the entire collection – apart from the overarching commonality of women being at the centre of each narrative.”

We invite you here to read what the queen of screenplay has to share with us about her journey as a writer and also on her current book, Autumn Blossoms.

Since when have you been writing? Tell us about your writerly journey.

I have been writing ever since I learned to write – quite literally. Ironically as a kid, like many silly things kids do, it was about trying to connect thoughts and make them rhyme in poems. I went to a convent school but more than my English poetry, it was my Hindi writing that got noted. I edited the Hindi section of our school magazine and I always knew I would end up with some sort of career in writing. Then in college, I tried my hand at writing middles and short journalistic pieces for The Times of India, Hindustan Times and some evening papers and women’s magazines. I was emboldened when they got published. So I did the next best thing for those times. I enrolled for a journalism diploma at the Indian Institute of Mass Communications. The course was great, but when I got down to brass tacks, I didn’t enjoy myself at all – reporting and subbing were not my scene at all. I did it for a while, but then took a motherhood break since I had married by then. My break and the quietude it brought helped me to analyse where I was going, helped me find my true calling within writing … which was fiction.

Short stories, published in 2003
Novel , published in 2014

Starting with two short-story collections, I soon moved to writing for film and television and it consumed me completely for more than a decade. Until I realised that I also needed to write purely for myself too. I wrote my first novel in 2011 and have written three more after that, simultaneously with my TV work. The former has no deadlines beyond the self-imposed, while TV is all about deadlines so it’s a great mix. 

What gets your muse going?

Random thoughts triggered by happenings around … whether it’s in the news or through people’s conversations around. Basically the ‘what ifs’ part of any incident or happening is what triggers the chain of a story in my mind. There is a lovely term in Hindi called ‘udhed-boon’. By now my mind is attuned to churning the thoughts around the ‘what ifs’ to design it into a tale. One has learnt to also decide to design the idea around as a story for a TV show or a short story or a novel. For most of the time, the idea itself speaks in a manner that can be easily identified or slotted. For example, when I read about the phenomena of bride buying in Haryana, I knew I could write a whole TV show around it – so Molkki was born. Similarly the concept of age difference in marriages … it’s thematic and therefore lends itself to exploration of its myriad aspects and nuances through a long-format series like Astitva and Na Umr Ki Seema Ho did. Similarly, most of the short stories in Autumn Blossoms are short tales that can’t be stretched very long, or else they would lose their punch. 

A soap that focussed on the hunt for a woman’s identity (2002-2006)
A TV series centred around exploring Molkki, an Indian tradition that involves marrying off poor girls to a wealthy man in exchange for money (2020-2022)

Tell us briefly what made you opt towards moving back towards books when you are a well-known screenplay writer?

That’s my favourite question to answer. When you write for the screen you train to be collaborative. To cooperate, convince and compromise. Since the ownership of the final product is going to be shared, democracy is the need of the medium.

Published in 2011

But it is important for a writer to be in touch with their solo voice to know what it sounds like, apart from coping with the cacophony of many voices involved in screenwriting. In fact I don’t really understand why more scriptwriters don’t feel this urge to have their individual voices heard and write for print too. It is a most empowering and self-affirming thing to do, but maybe scriptwriting is so tiring that inertia creeps in.

As far as I am concerned, I desperately needed to hear my own voice after more than a decade of collaborative writing, although I started writing short fiction way before scriptwriting. So, I finally wrote my first novel in 2011. I really loved the process though it was an edgy and confusing one all through. Once I had written Broken Melodies and gauged for myself what it added to my skill set, I made a habit of periodically hearing my own voice, along with participating in the chorus of the songs of scriptwriting.  

How is writing a book different from writing a screenplay?

I am not a ‘go with the flow’ writer and need to have my goal or destination in sight before I embark on writing a new story. In that sense the process is the same for me in both kinds of writing. But after having done that basic planning for structure, while writing a book, spontaneity takes over. While writing a screenplay one has to be so much more conscious of the craft and style, the judicious part of what ideas to keep and what to discard. In a book one looks at editing much later. Although every good story should have the three-act structure working quietly in the head of the writer, I find that a book or writing for television has most of its texture in the mid portion. The first and third acts are the bookends, the former is a diving board and the latter is a climb to the crescendo. If one can get the middle right, one is sorted. Writing a book is like taking a walk in the park or the open … there’s unpredictability, adventure, mystery, open skies, fresh air to breathe and sights to savour on the way. Scriptwriting is much like walking on a treadmill – you get the required exercise and benefit but it’s not like an entire life experience.

By what I gathered from your ‘Afterthought’, these are stories that have been written over a period of time. How old is the first story and how recent the latest story? What made you think of bringing them out as a collection now?

Yes, these are virtually all the stories in the category of short fiction that I have ever written, including audiobooks. My last published collection of short stories came out in 1996, which is therefore nearly thirty years ago. The audiobooks are fairly recent. Many were written more than a decade ago when I was in between full-time writing for TV. And the last two were written a few weeks before the book went to press, so that we could reach the magical number of 50!

About the reason of bringing them out as a collection. Well it’s every writer’s dream to have a lifetime collection out, I wasn’t actively working towards it.

This book has happened solely because of its editor Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri. He is also a columnist and was writing a piece on my writing journey. As part of his research I shared with him my published, slim volumes of short stories. After he had read them – at record speed at that – he asked if I had written any more that were as yet unpublished. One thing led to another and now we have this door stopper of a volume titled Autumn Blossoms. Both Shantanu and I believe in short fiction, which frankly is challenging to sell. But the challenge is what has driven us both to bring an entire compendium out. Frankly, logically there is no real reason why short fiction shouldn’t be selling even more than novels, in these days of shorter attention span.

Why did you feel the need to have epigraphic verses at the beginning of each story? Are these epigraphs your first attempt at writing poetry … you mention in your ‘Afterthought’ they got you in touch with the ‘closet poet’ in yourself?

The idea to have epigraphic verses at the beginning of the stories was again an innovative suggestion that came from Shantanu after he read some lyrics that I had written in Hindi, and a few in English. They had all been commissioned lyrics, for music albums and the odd theme song for my own shows on TV. Shantanu is quite a poet, having published his poetry too. For me, it was like going back to my early days as a writer who had tried out all genres before I settled for quintessential storytelling. Writing these quatrains was some work and a lot of fun too and discovering the closet poet in myself gave me something to look forward to doing as an option for the coming years. A retirement activity when I perhaps won’t get story ideas anymore. It also gave me a kind of perspective of the essence of each story that I might not have made the effort to analyse otherwise.

Is your writing impacted by any writer, art or music?

My father was a classical musician, though I never pursued music. I love to listen to his music, as well as soulful Hindi film music, and for me the lyrics are as important as the melody. I love Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s films and their music and my regret over the last few years is that I have not been reading as much as I should or would have liked to. I used to love Roald Dahl, Manto, Jane Austen, and most of all Tagore. In recent times I was bowled over by Elif Shafaq’s Forty Rules of Love. I suppose when one admires an art form or artiste, influences do seep in, in terms of both style and content, so all these people’s works have impacted my writing. And also, the aspiration to be as impactful as they have been, since they have been influential across art forms.

You are writing a novel too. Tell us a bit about the novel. Would they too have something to do with these short stories?

Published in 2017

I am almost ready with two novels. Both have male protagonists at the centre which is unusual for me. They are both very different stories from each other. One is a slice-of-life story that is light-hearted in its telling – quite a challenge for me actually – and is tentatively titled Sibling Revelry. The other is a thriller, also a social commentary. It’s tentatively titled Bonds and Bondage. Both the stories, like my earlier novel Girls Don’t Cry have their roots in stories from Autumn Blossoms, that tugged away at me to develop them more, which I eventually did. My forthcoming novels are broader versions of the stories titled ‘Hello, Goodbye’ and ‘Sugar and Spice and All Things…’ respectively.

I don’t know whether this happens with other writers, but this crossover writing does happen with me at times, as I write across media and genre. By now I have come to enjoy the process of finding more and more layers to my own story as I develop some of them from one medium to another.

There are yet some more stories in Autumn Blossoms that I didn’t see as possible novels when I wrote them. But in the process of revisiting them for the collection, I feel they merit a longer format … ‘Friends Indeed’ is a case in point.

What is your favourite genre as a writer?

Honestly, there is no favourite genre. They are all flavours of the season, and I don’t mean that in a disparaging way. Currently it is the short-fiction genre, but I know that it will be my new TV show next and when that hopefully settles, my novels will draw me to them. I guess this makes my imagination more agile, though when there is an unplanned overlap of projects, I get very tired and these days, I get anxious too as energy levels are not as high as they were a few years ago.

What can we expect from you in the near future – more books or serials or both?  

God willing, there should be both, but I need to calibrate my involvement in both spheres. I am going to distance myself from the very tiring process of everyday series writing. Though of course, I will still be involved as I am experienced and can bring some wisdom to the table. I dream of writing books at a more leisurely pace; quite literally blossoming in the autumn of my life.

Thank you for the wonderful answers and your writings across the screen and in books

(The online interview has been conducted through emails and the review written by Mitali Chakravarty.)

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL. 

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International

Categories
Interview Review

Hyderabad’s History Retold by Common People

A brief introduction to Remaking History:1948 Police Action and the Muslims of Hyderabad, published by Cambridge University Press, and a conversation with the author, Afsar Mohammed

Afsar Mohammad

In a world given to wars and fanning differences, an in-depth study of history only reflects how we can find it repeating itself. In Remaking History:1948 Police Action and the Muslims of Hyderabad, academic and writer, Afsar Mohammad, takes us back to the last century to help us fathom a part of history that has remained hoary to many of us.

On 15thAugust, 1947, when India and Pakistan ‘awoke’ to a freedom amidst the darkness of hatred and bloody trains and rivers, there was a part of the subcontinent which remained independent and continued under the rule of a Nizam, Mir Osman Ali Khan, Asaf Jah VII. This was Hyderabad. Later, in post-Jinnah times, when India decided to integrate the independent kingdom, which had even found a name for its independent existence — ‘Osmanistan’ — what broke out was an episode called Police Action, code name Operation Polo. Mohammad’s book is an exhaustive relook at the integration of a people into the mainstream nation of India, using the voices of common people.

There were strands of communists in the Telangana movement and the mercenaries we know of as Razakars. His own family was involved in the events, and he had an uncle arrested for the performance of Burra Katha, a form of theatre used by Left to educate the audience, somewhat like a musical street theatre. Mohammad has interviewed survivors extensively and knitted into his narrative findings which make us wonder if religion or nationalism were used as a subtext of power play and greed. For, we have the local cultural lore where the people despite differences in faith had a tehzeeb or a way of life, where Hindu writers wrote in Urdu for the love of it and Muslims used Telugu.

Afsar Mohammad interviewing an activist from a basti in Old Hyderabad. Photo Credits: Sajaya Kakarla

Hyderabad was perceived by some as a sanctuary, like writer Jaini Mallaya Gupta. He contends: “Like me, many leftist writers and activists had migrated to the city at that point and they became popular by using pseudonyms. Hyderabad was like a sanctuary as it could hide us in its remote neighborhoods where we were supported by local Muslim community too. But we all became really closer to each other and more connected to the Urdu literary culture that indeed provided a model for our activities.”

But did things stay that way post Operation Polo? Razia, a witness to the police action, states: “It was a phase of unfortunate turns—everything so unexpected! Not about the Razakars or the Nizam, but most of the ordinary Muslims (ām Musalmān) whom I know fully well since my childhood had a hard time. Particularly young Muslim men and women … all suddenly became suspects and many of them from their homes leaving everything. They just wanted to live somewhere rather than dying in the bloody hands of the Razakars and Hindu fundamentalists.”

That cultural hegemony has a tendency of typecasting languages based on political needs is shown as a myth by Mohammad as both Hindu and Muslims used Urdu and Telugu in Hyderabad. His book revives Hyderabadi tehzeeb as the ultimate glue for defining a Hyderabadi. This is somewhat similar to what Bengal faced which had been divided along religious lines in 1947. Professor Fakrul Alam, a well-known academic, essayist and translator, tells us in his essay on the birth of Bangladesh in 1971, “The key issue here was language and the catalyst was the insistence by the central government of Pakistan that Urdu should be the lingua franca of the country…” Bangladesh emerged as a protest against linguistic and cultural hegemony. Eminent writer, Aruna Chakravarti, goes further back in history in her historical novel, Daughters of Jorasanko (2016), and shows how Tagore was involved in preventing the division of Bengal proposed by Lord Curzon in 1905. However, despite these historic precedents, we are seeing the world suffer wars from such divides and common people continue to be affected by the violence and bloodshed, losing their homes, livelihoods and often, their lives. What happened in the last century continues to reiterate itself more virulently in the current world. In times such as these, Remaking History surfaces as a book that has much to offer, perhaps if humanity is willing to learn lessons from history.

Your book is focussed on a small group of people, the common people of Hyderabad who suffered during the integration into a nation. Why would this be important in a larger context? How would it assimilate into stories of the world? By stories, I would mean plight of Rohingyas, Muslims, Jews … more or less plight of minority groups of people. Do you see any emerging patterns in all these stories?

In this work, I’ve consistently used the category of ordinary people as related to Hyderabad and Deccan. I needed this term to speak about both Hindus and Muslims as I was constantly reminded of the divisive politics persistent in this region and throughout South Asia. Despite the focus on the Muslims of Hyderabad, this work emphasises the inseparability of Hindus and Muslims when it comes to the violence and trauma of the Police Action of 1948. According to many interlocutors, the violence had inflicted the entire community — mostly the ordinary people of the Deccan.

I started writing this book with a primary idea that this lens of ordinariness helps us to not just this 1948 violence in Deccan, but many other religious conflicts now rampant through the globe. The examples you just mentioned above are not an exception. Since we’re blind to an ordinary person’s approach or emotional life, we totally failed to capture many dimensions of these violent events. Most patterns, either subjective or objective, that emerge out of this violence and trauma have their origins in this search for ordinariness.

Along with a few interviews, you have brought up the issues through writings of great Telugu and Urdu writers of that time. Can you tell us if literature actually translates to real life situations?

To be honest, being a writer and poet by myself, I’ve always believed that literature is half-truth which is filtered by multi-dimensional subjectivity of a writer. Specifically, when there’s a political situation, literary writings also tend to project a partial reality. However, these gaps could be filled by empirical evidence that we gather from the stories of ordinary people who not only witnessed the violence, but also suffered many setbacks caused by such violence. Yet, we require a balanced perspective to level these oral narratives and written materials. In this way, rather than relying fully on a singular story, we can explore the possibilities of multiple stories of a singular event.

Your family and you profess Leftist leanings. And yet, you write of religious minorities. Historically, the Left professes to be above traditional religions, like Hinduism and Islam. How do you integrate religion into communist ideology? Would you agree with Harari that Left is a religion unto itself?

One of the major critiques in this work is to contest the left-centric approach to 1948 and even the Telangana armed rebellion of 1946-1951. As I argued in this book, leftist writers, poets and ideologues completely failed to capture the reality of the day. I’ve presented evidence for this argument from various writings and witness narratives too. Since their high emphasis on economic determinism, many key social and religious dimensions remained their blind spots. Various religious and caste developments during the periods of the 1930s and 40s were determining factors of modern Indian history. Yes, of course, I still believe in the Leftist ideology, but never worship it though! To put it simply, I’m a critical Leftist and critical Muslim!

‘Popular understanding is largely shaped by what exists in circulation. This is what we see in the form of how people understand the Police Action across India as well as folklore, including the reconstructed folk narratives such as Adluri Ayodhya Rama Kavi’s burra katha. Such popular representations further reinforce the larger narrative peddled by the state.’ What exactly is burra katha? And what was your family involvement in it?

Burra katha was a popular storytelling and music genre in Telugu utilised by the leftist organisations to circulate their idea of resistance against the status quo in Telangana and elsewhere. Shaik Nazar was an icon of this radical narrative tradition and he also trained hundreds of disciples in this genre. Most artists and writers from the leftist camp were busy producing stories based on the Telangana armed rebellion and other resistance movements to gather the people in the public meetings between 1946 and 1952. My family also had some role in the production and circulation of this genre. However, it’s a story beyond my family’s history and had numerous political and performative implications that I’ve discussed in my book. I already have a detailed narrative of these personal and professional connections in my book and I encourage my readers to access them directly from the book. Just a brief note, many performers were arrested and put in prisons for months and months during this armed rebellion and they also suffered heavily due to the oppression of the Nehru’s government.

A burra katha performance

Do you see a parallel between what was happening then to such performers and protest writers in more recent times? Do you find still that popular opinion is being shaped by stuff circulating in media?

I see many parallels between the past and the present conditions of performers and writers who speak out against the hierarchies and status quo. Recent times, we see more strategic ways of silencing such protest and performance genres. Various apparatuses of the state have become extremely powerful and most writers/performers are being cleverly trapped into a governmental system. Nevertheless, there’re always exceptions. This book captures such intense moments that stubbornly contested the government-led media or privileges. We need more such strong voices to change the current state of things.

Were Razakars the Nizam’s army? I had been under the impression that they were mercenaries — irrespective of religion. But you say they were volunteers. Can you explain who were the Razakars exactly?

During the earliest phase of the Razakar activism, this was not Nizam’s army. It was supposed to be a group of young Muslims who volunteered to initiate radical changes in the Hyderabadi-Deccan Muslim community.  In that sense, Razakar was a “volunteer,” the actual literal meaning of the term. Later, when Kasim Razvi became the president of this group, it took on a totally different manifestation. Razvi promoted a version of the Razakar activism that eventually served the military needs of the Nizam. I actually tried to show these different faces/phases of Razakar activism by collecting evidence from various writings and oral histories.

Before the Indian government ‘integrated’ the state of Hyderabad, there seems to have been a simmering of resentment against the Nawabi lifestyle and the common people, irrespective of their religious beliefs as you have shown. Do you find in the world context such reactions against wars or cultural hegemony currently?

Before, during and after the integration of the state into the Indian national government, it was an extremely complicated situation which we could name it as a “transition” period. It was similar to many states in India, but Hyderabad state had a peculiar situation due to its local politics and Deccani identity. Of course, there was a resistance to the Nawabi lifestyle as the new generation Muslims were engaging with many facets of modernity and embracing a reformist version of Islam. Nevertheless, these changes were not merely the products of local Muslim life. As I argued in the book, local Islam and Muslim sense of belonging was in constant dialogue with the larger networks of Islam and Muslim politics. I see similar thread continuing in contemporary Muslim discourse since 1992 when Hindu nationalism became a defining factor for many identities.

Did and do common people resent the “integration” as they did the Nawab? What would be the cause of that? Was it religion or economic and social discontent that becomes the focal point of riots then and as of now?

Whereas the Nawab’s resistance had his own political and private reasons, as I noticed from the evidence, the resistance from ordinary people had more to do with the common good and also, there was a protest against the way the entire military invasion was initiated and promulgated. People were concerned about the atrocities of the military which were aimed at wiping out the leftist movement on the first hand. At the end of the day, the Nawab and the Nehru government remained safe and friendly, while thousands of people were killed for this power sharing. Despite several different viewpoints, most of the public opinion was against this military invasion and the killings.  

Why is evolving a Muslim, or for that matter any religious identity, important in today’s world? Will these not lead to conflict as we are experiencing in the post-pandemic twenty first century?

It’s not about a specific religious identity: now it’s high time for any identity to be discussed and disseminated. I see this more as a conflict resolution so that we become aware of our differences and learn the limits of our discourses. We’ve bigger issues that the pandemic. We’ve caste, religion, gender and regional issues that we need to sort out gradually. Many conflicts around us are due to our failure to acknowledge these identities and their role in the making of our community.

“The nationalist/textbook version of history is determined by the nation-state as is seen in how a nascent India emphasized and celebrated the ‘integration’ with an utter disregard for native opinion or the costs people paid associated with the bloody event.” Is this true not just in the Indian context but in context of the battles we see happening in the world?

Yes! Absolutely! The desire for “integration” is a product of hegemonic politics and turning into global phenomenon and we’re all plagued by the idea of nationalism and we’re forced to declare a singular nation, culture and language in many instances. We’ve too many examples right now to prove this and I don’t have to rehearse everything here.

Can you suggest a solution to finding and enforcing, peace, love, kindness and forgiving?

At first, we need to realise our mutual desire for such love and compassion. Our sheer dependence on political parties and making their goals as our own goals is a self-defeat by all means. I see community as a larger concept and we need to acknowledge its real sources of being and belongingness.

Thanks for your time and the comprehensive book.

.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL. 

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International

Categories
Interview Review

The Gendered Body

In conversation with Meenakshi Malhotra and a brief introduction to The Gendered Body: Negotiation, Resistance, Struggle (Scopus Index), edited by Meenakshi Malhotra, Krishna Menon and Rachana Johri, published by Routledge

Dr Meenakshi Malhotra

Why would one half of the world population be seen as evolved from the rib of the first man, soulless or as merely subservient to fulfil the needs of the other half? This is a question that has throbbed for centuries in the hearts of that half that suffers indignities to this date, women. While feminism became a formalised idea only in the 18th-19th century and things started improving for certain groups of women around the world, in some regions, like Afghanistan, the situation has deteriorated in recent years. Their government, recognised by world leadership, has ensured that women do not have schooling, cannot work in senior positions, have to be accompanied by men if they go out and remain covered as the feminine body could tempt bringing shame, strangely, to the female but not to the man who has the right to be tempted and hence to violence and violate her body and her mind.

Given this ambience, any literature voicing protest for patriarchal mindsets that accept situations like in current day Afghanistan passively, should be celebrated as an attempt to shard the silence of suffering by one half of the world population. The Gendered Body: Negotiation, Resistance, Struggle, edited by three academics, Meenakshi Malhotra, Krishna Menon and Rachana Johri, does just that. At the start, we are told: “This book situates the discourse on the gendered body within the rapidly transitioning South Asian socio-economic and cultural landscape.  It critically analyzes gender politics from different disciplinary perspectives…”

Featuring 22 writers, the narratives take up a range of issues faced by women in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Srilanka. The Pakistani implementation of Islamic law, under the Hudood ordinances, has been addressed in a powerful essay by Aysha Baqir, subsequently by Anu Aneja, in her discourse on Urdu poetry. It was interesting to read how the ghazal form started as a male-only art form where women were depicted as mysterious houris or pining with sadness. Birangona — a phrase that was given to rape victims of the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War — has been explored by Sohana Manzoor through a classic, Rizia Rahman’s novel, Rokter Okshor[1](1978), written about such women driven to prostitution. Women’s voices in the Sri Lankan LTTE have been explored by Simran Chaddha. Nayema Nasir has taken up decadent customs in the progressive Bohra community in Mumbai and shown how things are moving towards a change. Colonial and Dalit voices have found a hearing in Malhotra’s essay on Mahasweta Devi’s short story, ‘Draupadi’, set against the Naxalite movement of 1970s.

Dotted with women’s responses to a variety of current issues, including the Anti-CAA-NRC uprisings (Tamanna Basu), Shaheen Bagh (Meenakshi Gopinath, Krishna Menon, Rukmini Sen and Niharika Banerjea), and the pandemic (Krishna Menon, Deepti Sachdev and Rukmini Sen), there is even a case study by Shalini Masih dealing with psychiatric trauma where both the psychiatrist and the patient, who might have evolved into a stalker or a rapist without the therapy, heal. A certain sense of hope echoes through some of these narratives, a hope to heal from wounds that have sweltered over eons.

The flow of words is smooth and the ideas should be able to rise against the tide of erudition to touch our lives with lived realities. There are responses that transcend the heaviness of academic writing for instance the impassioned start made by Giti Chandra in her narrative: “A woman’s body is a story that men tell each other. When it is full-hipped, it is a tale of their healthy children; when it is fair, it speaks of their wealth; when it is narrow, it proclaims their access to gyms; and when it is tanned, it flaunts their ability to vacation on sunny isles. If its feet are not small enough to convey a leisure that does not require walking, they are bound and made smaller and more childishly submissive; if its legs are not long enough befitting its trophy status, bone-crippling heels are added to them. When it is raped it is an assertion of power, a chest-thumping; when it is raped it is an aggression over its owner; when it is raped its womb is stolen from the enemy…” Chandra points out some things that make one think, like quoting Rahila Gupta, she suggests victims is not the word we should use for women, but we should refer to the sufferers as survivors.

This collection of essays questions social norms and niceties to realise what early woman’s rights activist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, drafted, that “all men and women [had been] created equal” in July 1848. While the struggle continues through centuries and the discourse of these narratives, the last essay by a man, Brijesh Rana, attempts to give a broader and more inclusive outlook to the whole human body. The book comes across as a tryst — of academic and feminist voices — to speak up for mankind to equalise.

To further understand the intent and scope of this book, we have in conversation one of the editors— Meenakshi Malhotra, who teaches gender studies and literature, has to her credit two Charles Wallace fellowships and a number of books. She reflects on the bridge that is being attempted between scholarship and activism.

How and when did you conceive this book? Tell us a bit about your journey from the conception to the publication of the book.

This book was originally conceived due to the positive response my co-editors and I received after presenting a panel at an American Association of Asian studies (AAS) conference back in 2017. We were approached by an international publisher who encouraged us to take forward the work with a focus on South Asia. We were unable to take it forward at that time, however we revived the project a few months into the lockdown in late 2020 when we felt we had a little more time. Also, along the way, we were able to reach out to fellow travellers, working in and on Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Three of you have collaborated to compile and edit this book. Collaborations to bring out books are not easy. Tell us about this collaboration.

As we three had presented on the same panel, the collaboration was a natural corollary since we had a sense of being fellow travellers and sister academics/scholars. That worked well for us because each of us were engaged in research and research guidance and wanted to showcase the recent work in this area. Both the co-editors, Krishna working on gender and its intersections with politics and Rachna on gender and psychology are very well-established scholars in the field of gender. I work on gender and literature, had my own network and I must mention that in the course of writing for Borderless Journal, I was able to access the work of others on that platform.

Explain to us the significance of the title of your book.

I think we arrived at the title through two processes-one was the immediate situation of Covid which left us in a state of precarity. However, we felt that even within the context of the contagion, women — and other genders — were endangered in specific ways. Second is the understanding that the body is always already produced by multiple matrices of gender, race, caste etc. The human body is also always a gendered body.

We had initially suggested that we call it ‘The Gendered Body and its Fragments’ to connote the bundling of several discursive strands on gendered bodies, but the idea was vetoed (by the initial reviewer) since “fragments” had   resonances and nuances which we did not have space (or expertise) to go into, at that point.

You have a variety of contributors, some of who are non- academic. What did you look for when you chose your content?

Variety as you point out, is the key term. We were looking for something new, something interesting, flagging the variegated cultures of South Asian societies. The book comprises a mix of experienced researchers and some researchers whose essays are their preliminary forays into publishing.

Your book is divided into different sections ‘Negotiation’, ‘Struggle’, ‘Resistance’, ‘Protest’, ‘Critique’, ‘Representations and New Directions’. Can you tell us the need to compartmentalise the essays into this structural frame?

Just to give it a structure, organisation and coherence. Having said that, there are also frequent overlaps.

Would you call this book feminist? Feminism is as such a human construct. Why would this construct be essential for treating people equally? What is the need for feminism?

It is feminist in its orientation to the research areas as well as its methodologies. The key concept here is collaboration and therefore we have two conversation as an expression of feminist epistemology or knowledge-making.

Feminism, like other modes of affirmative action — like reservations, quotas — are an attempt to create a level playing field for historically disprivileged groups  and oppressed minorities.

Having said that, I/we would like to point out that feminism has become inclusive and an umbrella term that also includes the work on masculinities and trans-identities since the 1990s.

Isn’t feminism the forte of only women?

Not at all and that is why we have the term feminisms. We hope to do more work subsequently on masculinities, on trans bodies in the future.

You have 21 women writers who write of women’s issues. Yet the last is an essay by a man — not on feminist issues— but more to create a sense of inclusivity, if I am not wrong. Why did you feel the need for this essay?

It is not so much about women’s issues as much as about gendered bodies in contemporary South Asia, about identities, subjectivities, bodies in motion gearing up for political action(the conversation and the essay on campus movements are instances).

Also, the last essay which articulates a post-humanist perspective, I felt, would take us beyond the materialities of gendered bodies and flag the way recent research/scholarship has looked at the Anthropocene. It was attempting to give a meta perspective, to bring in a way of seeing, which probably will have an impact on how we understand and conceptualise human bodies.

Your book blurb says: “Topical and comprehensive, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of gender studies, sociology, political sociology, social anthropology, cultural studies, post-colonial studies and South Asian studies.” Why would you limit the scope of your book when you have some essays that should be read by many and are like eye openers, like the ones on Hudood, Birangonas, Bohras, even your own on ‘Draupadi’ and more?

I think Routledge as an academic publisher, probably does this routinely, to highlight the academic terrain any new book covers.

Having said that, we would definitely want the book to be of general interest. Some of the essays discussed issues which were possibly eye-openers for us as well.

What is the difference between academic writing and non-academic writing? You do both, I know.

Academic writing has often a thesis and an argument underpinning it, which is not to say that non-academic writing — especially the essay — cannot have them.

Also, many of the essays were based on student papers/MPhil and even PhD dissertations. The panel we were a part of was an academic conference on South Asian studies.

Would this book be classified as women’s writing as majority of the writers are women and have written on women’s issues… and yet there is a man? Is it necessary to have such classifications? Would it rule out male readers?

Not at all to every question. It just happens that many of our contributors are women, but I would like to dispel the idea that “gender” is about women only. It is about boxes, stereotypes and role-based expectations, which are to be questioned. 

Thanks for giving us a powerful book and your time.

[1] Words of Blood

(The online interview has been conducted through emails and the review written by Mitali Chakravarty.)

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL. 

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International

Categories
Interview Review

The Chronicler of Untold Banjara Stories

In Conversation with Ramesh Karthik Nayak, author of Chakmak, with an afterword on Banjaras by Surya Dhananjay and art by Ramavath Sreenivas Nayak, published by Red River.

They always wish they wander
into black clouds like Banjara Tribes: 
the people with no address on the earth, 
gypsies in the tales of time.

Here are stories of a people who have never voiced their lores in English. The Banjaras had oral folk lore as old as the hills. They relocated to various places in the world. One group wandered down to the South, where some learnt to write their spoken language — Gor Boli — in Telugu. To this group belongs young Ramesh Karthik Nayak who has given us a wonderful book of poems describing the life of Banjaras as well as concern that in the process of integration, they seem to be losing parts of their heritage. Called Chakmak[1], the book leaves a lingering aftertaste not just with words but also with the vibrant artwork by Ramavath Sreenivas Nayak and an informative essay on Banjaras by Surya Dhananjay.

Banjara art in Chakmak by Ramavath Sreenivas Nayak

You travel with the book to a place of wonder and yet it’s not all smooth sailing as the poems introduce notes of accord and discord into the conversation. Reality and discontent creep in.The poetry is layered with images, simple and yet of a definitive flavour. There is poignancy in the poet’s lines when he says:

The ippa flowers grieve
releasing inebriety
listening to the story of our tanda*.

*tanda: settlement

And:

No ghunghtos*  were left in the tanda, 
all have disappeared
along with the people
who were born
and grew
within the ghunghtos.

*ghungtos: veils

And yet the culture seems to have had an innate wisdom as the tribe harmonised with nature:

The thunders devour our huts and us.
So, to threaten thunder, we howled.
We should raise our voices whenever we need to. 
Or else we die.

In the titular poem ‘Chakmak’, Nayak tells us about his life as a Banjara and then reflects:

The world is trying to heap the chakmak together, 
ransack our tribe for stones
and change the tanda into a haat* 
of banjara tribes.

The chakmak in the haat were ready to burst 
with chronicles untold.
You gather the people.
The flute disappears.
I try fabricating the remaining tale.

*haat: market at a fair

Nayak for all his flavour and wisdom experiences a severe disconnect and finds himself in almost perhaps, an immigrant’s world, where it is hard to adjust to the reality of the ethos that connects him to the larger world and he feels an outsider in the world that he was born into. Torn between these two, the young writer is fascinated by death. He tells us –

Since my childhood
I saw death as an untouchable

In this candid conversation, Ramesh Karthik Nayakn– a young lecturer, presenter on Doordarshan[2] and an upcoming voice for a people who have remained voiceless over centuries following oral traditions — talks of this strange position he finds himself in. He tells us more about his people, his perceptions and his poetry.

Ramesh Karthik Nayak

Congratulations on being the first Banjara writer to have done a full book in English. Reading your book, one gets a whiff of Banjara life as it was in the past. Can you tell us about their life and beliefs? The creation myth seems unique… maybe you can tell us a bit about the colours you have reflected in your poetry?

Thank you. There is a vacuum in indigenous literature. Not enough indigenous literature has been produced till now. This vacuum won’t be filled until we the insiders turn outsiders. After some time, when we question our identity, we start seeking our own history and go back into the past. In this process, we practise a few things (writing, singing, painting, dancing or sculpting) which slowly turn us into an insider.

Each and every colour has a significance in our lives. All colours will be seen in our attire. If there are any colours missing, they will be reflected in the mirrors embroidered into our garments while we travel.  

There are many beliefs and occupations seen among us.

If, the calf’s ceremony (Bhessi Puchre). When a buffalo gives birth to a calf, based on the calf’s gender, after 5 or 7 days, we conduct a ceremony with seven triangle-shaped stones (Shaathi Bhavani [3] :Manthrali, Kankali, Hinglaj, Mariamma, Thulja, Sheetla, and Dhavalagar) by offering lapsi (rice boiled in milk and cooked in jaggery). The Saathi Bhavani look after their children (who share their arts and crafts with nature for free) and their cattle safely and provide them with natural resources abundantly. Only after this ceremony, the milk from the lactating cow can be shared with others. Until then, no single drop could be shared outside the home. If the milk was shared with others before the ceremony, the calf’s life would be in danger. Thus, we respect animal needs too.

Another very distinctive ritual is a death ritual of a young married person. Friends or family members of the deceased pierce pins under the dead person’s feet so that the corpse is hindered from walking back without pain. They believe that the young person will have a yearning for their hamlet and children. So, the ghost might want to haunt their homes. Also, while taking the body to its final destination, the deceased’s friends throw mustard seeds along the way. While coming back home, they pluck off the pins off the feet and pick up each grain. They keep picking the grains the whole day. The cycle keeps repeating.

Did Banjaras — who at the end you call gypsies — ever grow roots and become farmers? You have a poem about a farmer. Did your ancestors give up their nomadic lifestyle to opt for farming?

Our ancestors used to sell salt by wandering from place to place. They used to thatch roofs and transport stuff from place to place. They sang songs handed down orally and embossed traditional tattoos. They would stitch clothes with infinite designs, etc. Now everything has turned upside down. Now, we are growing up eating many types of leafy and root vegetables, rice, corn and sorghum instead of our traditional foods.

In Telangana, wherever you travel by the highway, you will see Banjaras on both sides of the roads selling fruits and vegetables. Other common occupations among us are farming, driving auto rickshaws, selling crafts, making bricks in kilns, etc.

Your dialect/ language Gor Boli had no written script and I read in the afterword that the traditions were oral. So, did you learn about your culture purely from oral traditions? Are your two books written in Gor Boli written in Telugu or in just plain Telugu? Which language are you most comfortable in? Which language did you grow up speaking?

I have learnt many things by seeing and listening. Whenever I ask my parents about something they simply smiled instead of giving an answer. They did not want to share any cultural things about our community. They always asked me to concentrate on my studies. That might be one of the reasons that I always keep thinking of my people and their history. 

I grew up with the Telugu language. In 1999/ 2000, I was sent to a private school for my education. From then onwards, I thought I was a Telugu. Later, I realised I’m a Gor (Banjara/ Lambadi). Now I am a hybrid Gor. I want to localise myself from hybridity. I have published two books in Telugu. One is in English. These three books are just an introduction to an existing community. To write down the sensibilities and other things, I think this life won’t be enough. There is only one book which I haven’t been able to publish yet, written in Gor Boli with Telugu script. I’m comfortable with Telugu. People tell me that I stammer when I speak Gor Boli. They also say my way of speaking is like that of a child. Nowadays, I believe I’m comfortable with Telugu, Banjara (Gor Boli) and English. 

In your poem, ‘Who am I?’, you mention eviction. Did you or your tribe face displacement? Tell us your story.

Yes, it happened with my grandparents. Before that, they used to stay in abandoned lands. They would stay in one area for two to five years and then migrate to a different place to get enough grass for the cattle or herd they had. Earlier, my grandparents were settled near a hilly place, where there was a pond. Then, in 1970s, the then-state government relocated my grandparents to Jakranpally Thanda, also called VV Nagar Tanda, near to the highway road NH44 and a village Jakranpally (now known as Mandal) near to our tanda.

 Still, in our state, some nomadic communities face eviction. 

The Banjaras depicted in the art in your book seem to be a musical lot. Does music impact your poetry?

Yes indeed. Women are trained to sing their plights in a song, which we call Dhavlo. This was the name of my short story collections in Telugu. The event could be happy or sad, but everything would be sung in a song. Some of the lyrics can be so heartrending that listeners could start to cry. Our people cannot survive without singing. Some people also misunderstand our Dhavlo as Rudali’s [4]song. Each and every moment is made into a song for self or for children or just to survive. I hope the flow of my blood has music, then automatically my words would atleast carry a little bit of music with it. So that could turn into a poem that you read.

You seem to be steeped in lores from the past, and yet you bring it all to us in English. How did you develop your fascination for words? Tell us how from a tanda you moved into school textbooks?

It started when I was admitted into private school. I stopped talking to others. I would stare at our school ground, where there were some other nomadic families sheltered in the tarpaulin tents. I felt like going to them. They were not Banjaras, but they had donkeys and horses. I still remember the scene. In the summer, near our school, a canal was being dug. Accidentally, a boy fell under a heavy vehicle and died. His mother picked him and kept him in her lap and wept.

I was fascinated. I thought of killing myself. And in this way, death always put herself first in my words.

Later, as I changed many schools, I grew lonelier and started drawing landscapes. I started writing to create captions for my drawings. Thus, my drawing drove me into writing. Writing turned into a habit; later it became a compulsion. When I came across Toni Morrison’s quote, “If you find a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it”, I could connect and also to the stories of Mahasweta Devi. Because of my writing, I have developed my skill in Telugu and English — at least I can express the way I feel. Later, after getting published, with the help of my friends, Aparna Thota and Chaitanya Pingali, the Balder Bandi (Bullock Cart) attracted readers and an autonomous college prescribed a poem in the under-graduate curriculum and the book was prescribed in the post-graduate curriculum.

Why did you name your book Chakmak, a flintstone. Is the poem named as such at the centre of the story you want to share with the readers?

In our community, we bow down to the earth in front of a rock or stone to offer ourselves. We also use the rocks for other things like I have mentioned in the poem. So, in our community, things which are regarded as sacred should also be useful in other ways. They should not sit idle or be untouchable. In our daily lives, we do see many stone and pebbles, but we don’t even take a look at them, instead we kick them off. I wanted to highlight that even rocks have history.

Also, many rock were getting blasted in our areas. We are just losing our natural resources. We are losing the peacock and fox cries that echo from the top of rocks.

I sensed a sense of regret in your poems for the loss of a way of life. Do you feel that it is better to stay indigenously and not integrate with the mainstream? Do you think it helps integrate with the mainstream?

I’m afraid for my people. They are losing their sensibilities. Their fascination for modern lifestyle is making them disregard their identity as Banjaras. Sometimes, I even feel like I should go to each and every one and explain to them why we should choose ourselves as we have been. Being segregated from the mainstream is also part of our identity. So, I hope for now there will not be any integration with the mainstream population. Of course, you may be wondering that Ramesh Karthik Nayak is now living with mainstream society and telling this. Yes, I’m living with this society, where I feel suffocated with the artificial lifestyle. I know I will be just a guest to my land, where I keep cheating my people, writing their lives on paper. Mainstream society once had pity on indigenous communities, but now it has turned envious, because our people are getting benefits like reservation from the government.

In ‘A Day in the Rainy Season’, you have spoken of a rain ritual where people howl: in ‘Roseland’ you have written of how roses is not what Banjaras grow and in ‘On the Forest’, you reaffirm that the Banjaras are in harmony with the green. Given the need for a greener world, would you say that Banjaras lived in harmony with nature? If so, how?

Nomadic or Adivasi people always believed in nature. And they still insist that they are an extension of the greenery, which is a quarter part of this cosmos. And the harmony that the reader experiences in my poems cannot be explained except as part of our traditions. But I want to make a point. In tribal communities, love and hatred are two different things that resonate at different wavelengths. Their way of living reflects love always to the outsiders. Without beliefs and rituals offered to the trivial things, you cannot even imagine a single day in the life of tribals. It will be incomplete.

You have mentioned untouchability. Have you or yours ever faced it in the present day or is it something from the past? In ‘Death’, you equate death with untouchability.

I have had my education in distance mode. So, I don’t know about the discrimination that happens in schools and colleges. But I heard many things related to discrimination from friends. Now, I regularly hear that these nomads (Banjaras) migrated from somewhere and they even have reservations now. They don’t belong to this land, they say.

To support my studies, I used to distribute leaflets in bus stops. I used to work in a photocopy shop operating machines, sold books at events, did catering, and helped as an air-conditioning mechanic. While working, few people did not want me to work for them because I was a Banjara. 

In the past, our people were herders. They were not allowed to touch the water that the owners’ animals drank. And they were always accused of stealing. They were always treated as thieves and murderers (Criminal Tribes Act, 1871) in some areas. In some areas of course, Banjaras were treated with due respect because of their hard work. However, there have been times when they would not be allowed to get into the bus to sit with others, especially when they were in Banjara attire.

In 2016, I visited a tanda near Medchal. On my third visit, a group of women told me their plight about selling fruits and vegetables, how people bargained with them because of their indigenous identity or because of their broken Telugu, how some people took credit and never paid. Later, an older woman, Kokhli, talked about the well. Whenever these Banjaras want to fetch water from the well, which belonged to a landlord near their tanda, the farm workers used to excrete into the water so that the Banjaras could not quench their thirst. But unfortunately, they had no other choice. So, they had to draw from the same well for drinking. The same thing also happened recently in Tamil Nadu. I’m trying to record all these in my stories and poems.

Since my childhood, I have had a great love towards death. I even dreamed of dying many times. That’s how death came and repeated more in my poems. 

What are your future plans? Any other book in the offing?

In our Telugu states, we have 35 tribal communities, which includes Girijanas — nomads dwell near to the hills or abandoned lands, and Adivasis — people dwell within the forest (Gond, Koya, Nayak Pod, Gutthi Koya, Pardhan, Banjara, Matura Lambadi, etc). I want to write more about all the tribes in Telugu and in English languages. It might be in any genre. Sometimes a single topic can be expressed in multiple formats like in a poem, short story or essay. 

Presently, I am co-editing (with Prof Surya Dhananjya) a compilation of Telangana Banjara stories in Telugu. I am also working on my second short story collection Banjara Hills in Telugu along with English poems (which I am rewriting from Telugu).

Thanks for giving us your time and for a brush with your people through the book.

From Chakmak, art by Ramavath Sreenivas Nayak

[1] Flintstone

[2] National TV network in India

[3] Seven Goddesses

[4] Mourner’s songs in Hindi

(The online interview has been conducted through emails and the review written by Mitali Chakravarty.)

Click here to access the book excerpt

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