Category: Review

Review

Knife by Salman Rushdie

Book Review by Somdatta Mandal

Title: Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

Author: Salman Rushdie

Publisher: Penguin Random House

More than thirty years ago, a fatwa had been declared by Ayatollah Khomeini on the famous writer Salman Rushdie. The charge of blasphemy was labelled after the publication of The Satanic Verses, and since then the author has been living in asylum at different places because he was not safe in his own country. When it was assumed that the incident had died its natural death, the simmering vendetta and violence upsurged suddenly on 12^th of August 2022, when Rushdie had gone to participate in a week of events at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York titled “More Than Shelter: Redefining the American Home”, and an unidentified man attempted to murder him on stage with a knife.

This horrific act of violence shook the entire world. No one hoped that they would ever be able to read a single line written by the author once again. He was a totally lost case. Now, one-and-a-half years after the incident, and in unforgettable detail, Rushdie writes this first-person memoir Knife where he relives the traumatic events of that day and its aftermath, as well as his journey towards physical recovery. His healing was made possible by the love and support of his present African American wife Eliza, his family, his army of doctors and physical therapists, and his readers worldwide.

Dedicating the book to the men and women who saved his life, the text is neatly divided into two parts, each containing four sections. The first half of the book titled “The Angel of Death” primarily revolves around ‘despair’, whereas the second part, “The Angel of Life,” narrates a vision of ‘hope’ and optimism and Rushdie’s attempt to return to normalcy once again with his indomitable spirit to fight on against all odds.

The opening chapter called ‘Knife’ begins with the description of a beautiful August morning in detail and how the apparent tranquility was shattered when suddenly violence appeared in the form of an unidentified man who rushed at him on the open stage and stabbed him indiscriminately. Totally flabbergasted, Rushdie obviously didn’t know what to do. So, he narrates the rest of the incidents in the form of a collage, with bits of memory pieced together with other eyewitness and news reports and tells us how that morning he “experienced both the worst and the best of human nature, almost simultaneously.” Though the incident of his attempted murder dragged “that” novel back into the narrative of scandal, Rushdie declares that till date he still felt proud of having written The Satanic Verses.

Apart from the day-by-day narration of how things shaped up after the stabbing incident, three things stand out very clearly in this memoir. First is of course the detailed description of his entire eighteen-day long stay initially at the extreme-trauma ward of the hospital and later at the rehab centre titled ‘Hamot’. Though in extreme pain we are told how doing a few simple everyday things for himself lifted his spirits greatly. So, apart from the rehab of the body, there was also the rehab of the mind and spirit. Spending more than six weeks in two hospitals, he could return to the world and so slowly he started feeling optimistic again.

The chapter called ‘Homecoming’ begins with his leaving the hospital at 3 A.M. as quietly as possible and going back home at that unearthly hour to evade any watching eyes.

Emotionally moved, even though he had lost one eye permanently, he felt “100 percent better and healthier immediately. I was home.”

The incident of homecoming is once again closely related to the second important issue during his convalescence –the love, care and bonding with his present wife Eliza. Dedicating a total chapter titled “Eliza”, Rushdie gives us details of how he met the African American poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths entirely unknown to him, through the eminent American writer, Norman Mailer, and how his friendship grew stronger day by day, leading to a secret marriage based on the realisation that it was a relationship not of competitiveness but of total mutual support. They showed that even in this attention-addicted time, it was still possible for two people to lead, pretty openly, a happily private life till the knife incident changed everything. He tells us how the poetical sensibilities of his wife lent extra support to him in such trying times.

The third most significant aspect of this memoir is the way Rushdie devotes an entire chapter addressed to his assassin –“The A”. And it is really at its imaginative best. In it he has recorded a detailed conversation that never actually occurred between himself and “a man I met for only twenty-seven seconds of my life”. After bringing in several intertextual references about other writers and situations, about other murders being committed in the lives of different personalities, in the fourth and final session of his imaginative conversation, Rushdie states, “You don’t know me. You’ll never know me.” After the imagined conversation is over, he no longer has the energy to imagine the assassin, just as he never had the ability to imagine him. He feels that the purgation is complete, and this chapter of his life is closed once and for all.

Interestingly after half a year of nothingness, Rushdie realises that his writing juices had indeed started to flow again. During his sleepless nights at the rehab, he often thought a lot about The Knife as an idea. Talking about different occasions and purposes when the knife is used, he realized that the knife is basically a tool and acquires meaning from the use we make of it. It is morally neutral, and it is the misuse of knives that is immoral. Then he states that language too was a knife for him, and he would use it to fight back. Here he made a resolution that instead of remaining as a mere victim, he would answer violence with art – “Hello, world, we were saying. We’re back, and after our encounter with hatred, we’re celebrating the survival of love. After the angel of death, the angel of life.” But it was hard for him to write about post-traumatic stress disorder at any time especially when his hand felt like it was “inside a glove” and “the eye… is an absence with an immensely powerful presence.” Returning to New York after a ten-day visit to London, he therefore decided to spend the second chance of his life on just love and work. Since several Muslim entities were still celebrating his pitiable condition, he thought to make it clear to his readers that his worldview about God had not changed a bit and so he declares — “My godlessness remains intact. That isn’t going to change in this second-chance life.”

In the final section ‘Closure?’ Rushdie writes that his own anger faded, and it felt trivial when set beside the anger of the planet. He understood that three things had happened that had helped him on his journey towards coming to terms with what had happened – namely — the passage of time, the therapy, and ultimately the writing of this book. Moving along with time, he felt he was no longer certain that he wanted, or needed, to confront and address his assassin in open court and that the “Samuel Beckett moment” no longer seemed significant at all. This is where art and love overcame all barriers. He has successfully moved on and there was no need to look backwards once again.

Written a few years ago, Rushdie’s Joseph Anton: A Memoir narrated the story of how he was living a disturbed life under the pseudonym of Joseph Anton. But that memoir did not create much impact upon the readers, whereas Knife has brought back the powerful and erudite Rushdie as he has risen phoenix-like from the ashes and revealed his erudition without being parochial. Ordinary readers often shy away from his work as it is full of intertextuality and cross-references. But even those who find his writing to be too high-brow will have no problem in understanding the ‘free-associative way’ in which the mind of this writer works even today. The book is a page-turner no doubt and has brought back the popularity of Salman Rushdie once again. The simplistic yet very appealing cover of the book is an added attraction too.

Somdatta Mandal, critic and translator, is a former Professor of English from Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, India.

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Tags American, India, Joseph Anton: A Memoir, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, Muslim, New York, Penguin Random House, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Salman Rushdie, Samuel Beckett, Santiniketan, Somdatta Mandal, The Satanic Verses, Visva-Bharati

Interview Review

A Backpacker’s Diary by Jessica Mudditt

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date June 14, 2024
2 Comments on 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’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

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Review

The Dilemma of an Indian Liberal

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date June 14, 2024
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Book Review by Bhaskar Parichha

Title: The Dilemma of an Indian Liberal

Author: Gurcharan Das

Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books

One predicament faced by a liberal individual from India is the challenge of navigating a society deeply rooted in traditional values and conservative ideologies. India, with its diverse cultural and religious landscape, often presents a clash between progressive ideas and age-old customs.

In The Dilemma of an Indian Liberal, the author, Gurcharan Das, recounts his own professional and intellectual journey: how and why he became a liberal. While telling his story, he also narrates the story of a nation struggling—still— to become a successful liberal democracy—the late promise and its seeming betrayal, but also the possibility of course correction.

Das has dedicated his entire life to advocating for economic and political freedom. In his writings, he emphasises that liberal democracies and free markets have become the most logical and effective way to organise public life over the past two centuries. Having witnessed India’s transition from a stifling “license raj” to a liberal order in the 1990s, Das celebrated the country’s progress as market reforms and a maturing democratic process brought prosperity and dignity to millions who had been deprived of both for many years. He documented this remarkable transformation in his renowned book, India Unbound (2012) However, after three decades, it appears that the once bright light of progress is dimming.

The foremost pickle for liberals is the resistance and backlash they face while advocating for social change. Traditional norms and beliefs, deeply ingrained in Indian society, can be resistant to progressive ideas such as gender equality, LGBTQ+ rights, and freedom of expression. Liberals often battle continuously to challenge these norms and push for a more inclusive and tolerant society.

Another quandary faced by open-minded individuals in India is the threat to their personal safety and freedom of expression. Speaking out against societal injustices, criticising the government, or advocating for marginalised communities can often lead to harassment, threats, or even violence. The rise of online trolling and hate speech further exacerbates this predicament, making it difficult for liberals to express their opinions without fear of reprisal.

Furthermore, it is a challenge to find like-minded communities and support networks. In a society where conservative ideologies dominate, liberals can find themselves isolated when looking for shared values and beliefs. This lack of support can make it challenging to sustain their activism and maintain their motivation in the face of adversity.

Then there is the dilemma of balancing their personal beliefs with the need to respect and understand the cultural and religious diversity of the country. While advocating for progressive ideas, they must also navigate the delicate balance of not offending or disrespecting deeply held beliefs and traditions. This predicament requires a nuanced approach to ensure that their advocacy is effective without alienating the very communities they seek to empower.

In recent years, liberalism in India has been experiencing a decline, reflecting a broader global trend. The society has become increasingly polarised, with different factions holding divergent views on various social, economic, and political issues. This growing division has created fertile ground for the rise of populism, which has gained significant momentum in the country. One of the key debates that currently dominates the Indian discourse revolves around the perceived conflict between economic freedom and political freedom.

There are differing opinions on the matter, with some asserting that giving priority to economic freedom, such as advocating for free markets and deregulation, is crucial for a nation’s growth and success. They maintain that a thriving economy will ultimately result in political stability and individual liberties. Conversely, advocates for political freedom argue that without strong democratic institutions and safeguards, economic advancement can be superficial and unfair. They stress the significance of safeguarding civil rights, promoting social justice, and empowering marginalized groups. They firmly believe that political freedom is a fundamental requirement for a fair and inclusive society.

In the current polarised climate, the liberal perspective is often marginalised or dismissed as being indecisive or weak. Liberal individuals may find it difficult to navigate the political landscape, as they strive to uphold their principles while also engaging with the diverse viewpoints prevalent in society.

This book covers it all from resistance to personal safety concerns, finding support networks, navigating cultural sensitivities and also navigating a complex landscape to bring about the desired transformation from within the cultural milieu. Addressing urgent needs, this enlightening narrative is written with strong conviction, deep insight, and scholarly expertise, all presented with remarkable clarity. It is a must-read for every person who is concerned about the future of democracy.

Bhaskar Parichha is a journalist and author of Unbiased, No Strings Attached: Writings on Odisha and Biju Patnaik – A Political Biography. He lives in Bhubaneswar and writes bilingually. Besides writing for newspapers, he also reviews books on various media platforms.

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

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Tags Bhaskar Parichha, Biju Patnaik – A Political Biography, Democarcy, Gurcharan Das, India Unbound, license raj, Speaking Tiger Books, The Dilemma of an Indian Liberal

Review

An Immersive Translation

Book Review by Rakhi Dalal

Title: Boy, Unloved

Author: Damodar Mauzo

Translated by: Jerry Pinto

Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books

The Jnanpith and Sahitya Akademi Award winning Konkani novelist Domodar Mauzo’s Jeev Divum Kai Chya Marum is translated into English as Boy, Unloved by the acclaimed writer, Jerry Pinto. The translation succeeds in offering an immersive experience to the reader, especially of the life, sights and cuisine redolent of a Goan village in the backdrop. Although a reader, in the absence of knowledge of Konkani and hence the original work, may not be able to gather the nuances often difficult to translate.

This novel is a bildungsroman which follows the life of its protagonist, Vipin Parob, born into a loveless marriage in a serene village in Goa. It navigates his lonely formative years and explores his friendships in teenage years. While the exploration of his growing up years as a kid wrenches the heart of a reader, those of his later pre-adult years leaves one with an unsettling feeling. And that makes a reader wonder at what went amiss…

At the outset, the harrowing circumstances within the family of five-year-old Vipin are revealed. His house, with its closed windows and doors, restricts his body and mind. He becomes lonesome, finds solace in books and has difficulty making friends at school. In an environment which stifles him both physically and emotionally, he adheres to reclusiveness to cope with his ruthless father and careless mother. An unloved child of a bitter and broken wedlock, Vipin’s plight, as stunningly portrayed by the author, wrings the reader’s core. Mauzo’s incisive insight into the complexities around childhood trauma emerges in his portrayal of Vipin’s manners. His submissiveness in front of his parents, because of the treatment meted out to him perhaps, indicates how distress during childhood years may affect a person’s sense of self-worth. In fact, when his brilliance in academics makes his father’s relation with him transactional, where he is favoured because his father believes he can become a doctor, Vipin lets go off his own desire to study the subject he likes.

During his time in junior college, Vipin comes across people he befriends. Martin Sir, his English teacher from school, is the first person who understands and mentors him. Subsequently, although reluctantly at first, he manages to forge meaningful connections with Chitra and Fatima from his college. Krishna (initially a house help), and Amanda (the nurse caring for his mother later) also become people he can relate to. However, a narrative inconsistency appears in the depiction of the dynamics among teenagers, Vipin, Chitra and Fatima who despite becoming very close to each other, grapple with unnecessary confusions. Where Vipin’s character appears reliable, the characters of both Chitra and Fatima come off as unreliable. Perhaps because they are not fully explored and much appears unsaid in terms of their backgrounds and their mannerisms.

Regardless of the lack of love and care in his familial relationships, when it falls upon Vipin to take care of his ailing parents during their respective illnesses, he does it with a sense of responsibility and concern, if not love. It is something that also comes forth in his relationships with others, whether it is helping Krishna to study further, helping him financially or protecting Amanda from his cousin.

Mauzo, very strikingly captures the quagmire which makes a vulnerable, unloved child grow up to become a young adult who fiercely feels protective towards people close to him. However, Vipin’s journey of exploration of his self and subsequently of his aim in life, wrestle with disparities thrown at him by circumstances. The loneliness of his heart swells to consume the ties he forged in hope of love, leaving an emptiness he finds difficult to conquer. For the invested reader, it renders a disconcerting mark.

Rakhi Dalal is an educator by profession. When not working, she can usually be found reading books or writing about reading them. She writes at https://rakhidalal.blogspot.com/ .

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

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Tags Boy Unloved, Damodar Mauzo, Goan, Jeev Divum Kai Chya Marum, Jerry Pinto, Jnanpith, Konkani, Rakhi Dalal, Sahitya Akademi, Speaking Tiger Books

Review

Nineteenth-century Bengal and Tales of Early Magic Realism

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date June 14, 2024
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Book Review by Basudhara Roy

Title: Tales of Early Magic Realism in Bengali

Author: Trailokyanath Mukhopadhyay

Translator: Sucheta Dasgupta

Publisher: Niyogi Books

A good translation is a sorcery of desire, determination, and language. It opens a portal into not just another culture, reminding us of the texts, subtexts, contexts and conned texts richly underlying words but involves an admission into a whole new world that the reader would have missed altogether had it not been for the sincere striving of a visionary translator.

For, indeed, all translation is built around a vision that extends beyond that of giving life to a work in another language. There has to be a rationale as to why this reincarnation should, at all, be necessary or worthwhile, a logic as to how this can be effectively worked out in the asymmetrical arena of languages, and a dream as to what can be accomplished through this.

In Sucheta Dasgupta’s case, the translation of Trailokyanath Mukhopadhyay’s Tales of Early Magic Realism in Bengali stems from a desire to introduce readers of English to the wide, vibrant, unusual and remarkably fabulist world of the author as a pioneering attempt in the field of global speculative fiction.

Speculative fiction as a genre, is an umbrella term that stands for all modes of writing that depart from realism. It includes myth, fable, fantasy, surrealism, supernaturalism, magical realism, science fiction, and more. Being a speculative fiction writer herself, Dasgupta finds in Trailokyanath’s world an interesting attempt at “creating these genres and bending them in Bengali, in nineteenth-century United Bengal” which, to her, was a revelation of sorts.

Her intention to bring Trailokyanath Mukhopadhyay to the attention of a wider international audience has helped to add to our understanding of the rich and diverse society of nineteenth-century Bengal and its conflicting intellectual inheritance. This translation, in vital ways, also does service to Bengali literature in which Trailokyanath’s reputation has remained eclipsed and which, following Tagore’s estimation, has mostly looked upon him as a children’s writer.

A mere glance, however, at the six interesting translations in Tales of Early Magic Realism in Bengali will clarify that they are far from yarns meant for children. Driven by a clear vision to make sense of their times by negotiating between two distinct epistemologies – the native and the colonial, these are essentially narratives of ideas that speak to the confused public conscience of the age.

The tales, in question, are ‘Lullu’, ‘Treks of Kankabaty’, ‘Rostam and Bhanumati’, ‘The Alchemist’, ‘The Legend of Raikou’ and ‘When Vidyadhari Lost Her Appetite’. These are, properly speaking, ‘tales’ that stem from and echo a fecund oral tradition of storytelling and answer to no formal conceptions of the short story genre. They are indiscriminate with regards to length, plausibility, fineness, and intention and except for the last story which exemplifies a certain tightness of plot and effect, these tales are characterised by a clumsy looseness which marks oral forms.

Rich in description and sensory detail, each of these stories has its own distinct style and flavour. While ‘Lullu’ and ‘Treks of Kankabaty’ are pure fantasy, ‘Rostam and Bhanumati’ and ‘The Legend of Raikou’ weld elements from myth and folklore. ‘The Alchemist’ attempts to combine moral treatise and scientific history together while ‘When Vidyadhari Lost Her Appetite’ sticks to realism, emerging as the most well-told tale in the collection terms of both craft and cultural representation.

How far it is justified to call these six narratives ‘tales of early magic realism’ remains a question well-raised in the ‘Foreword’ to the book by Anil Menon where he points out that the bringing together of realism and fantasy sans the socio-political context of the twentieth century seems inadequate. “What we can say is that there is a magic realist reading of such-and-such work. The classification refers to the relationship between the reader and text, and not to some essence in the text itself.”

Trailokyanath’s world, whether realist or fabulist, is the world of a robust, liberal, discerning intellectual who is well aware of the various currents and counter-currents of native and colonial reflection of his times, all of which he adroitly conjures in his fiction to offer readers sumptuous food for thought. While these tales might want in artistry and unity of effect, they revel in ideas and the multiplicity of points of view which offer readers today a very faithful portrait of nineteenth-century Bengal and the intellectual debates that actively ranged on issues such as religion, widowhood, sati, women’s education, fashion, the codes of marriage and remarriage, caste, family, and economy.

Dasgupta makes sincere efforts to offer as honest a translation as possible, (“I fully intend my work to be the ‘same text in a different language’ and not a transcreation”, she points out in her ‘Translator’s Note’.) retaining native words where there are not acceptable substitutes and offering a well-researched and nuanced glossary at the end of each tale to point out Bengali meanings and usages. The prose style of the book, following the original, tends to be ornate at places but the humour and satire that gives sinewy form to these tales is unmissable.

In ‘Lullu’, for instance, Aameer insists that the only qualification for an editor of a newspaper is the ability to curse and his purpose in choosing to appoint a ghost as editor was that “…all the curse words known to man have been spent or gone stale from overuse. From now on, I will serve ghostly abuse to the masses of this country. I will make a lot of money, I am sure of it.” In our own times, the experience of sensational headlines and of fake news, and the sight of bickering spokespersons and screaming anchors in newsrooms makes us smile at Trailokyanath’s foresight.

In ‘Treks of Kankabaty’ which attempts to be a Bengali adaptation of Lewis Caroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), a mosquito informs the protagonist that the true purpose for which humans have been created is so that mosquitoes “can take a drink of their blood”. “All mosquitoes,” states Raktabaty “know that humans have brains, but no intelligence. The foolish amongst us are called humans in the pejorative sense.”

A comic geographic, cosmic and karmic purpose for the traditional religious prohibition on travel for Indians emerges in this tale:

“India is surrounded by the black waters on three sides while on the other, there are gargantuan mountain ranges. Just as animals are kept inside a paddock, so, too, we had kept Indians enclosed by the means of these natural fences. By staying in India, Indians so far had remained at our service and humbly donated their blood for the purpose of our nourishment. Not so any longer. Today, some of them are waging attempts to cross the high seas and conquer the mountains. That if they behave thus and deprive us of their blood, they commit a great sin is common knowledge.”

Again, on hearing that “the British have banned the custom of sahamaran[1]”, the monster Nakeshwari says:

“Well, the British did ban the custom, but do you know what the young and educated Bengali men believe today? They believe in restarting old customs in the name of Indian pride. They have gone stir-crazy in the name of throwing their grief-stricken mothers and sisters into the burning fire. And we, monsters, heartily support them in their mission.”

In ‘When Vidyadhari Lost Her Appetite’, humour aligns with stark realism in this argument between two maids:

“One day, Rosy addressed Vidyadhari, ‘Have you lost your judgement? Just this morning, you went to the confectioner’s shop and bought Sandesh for the master. Before serving it to him, you let the brahmin lick at it twice and then you, yourself, gave it ten good licks. When did you say to me, “Rosy, why don’t you, too, give it a couple of licks?” If one attains something, one’s duty is to share it with others.”

Common to all these tales is the empowering of the marginalised, a challenge to status quo, and a sustained intention to speak the truth for empowerment. In that sense, these narratives are all anti-authoritarian and disrupt various forms of hegemony to establish a vision of life that is swift, changing, capable of responding to oppression with wit, and where the spoken word has sacral value. That is why in ‘Lullu’, Aamir’s thoughtless remark ‘Le Lullu’ to frighten his wife actually summons a ghost called Lullu who spirits her away. Similarly, in ‘Treks of Kankabaty’, the moment Kankabaty’s father says, “…if a tiger appears in this very moment and asks for Kankabaty’s hand, I shall give it to him”, a roar is heard and a tiger appears seeking her hand in marriage.

Language, in its diverse potential, becomes an important thematic link in these tales and in this immensely polyphonic text that unleashes a host of voices, human and non-human, to capture a reality that operates on multiple axes and can be best appreciated through the third eye of the imagination.

[1] Dying together — A wife(or Sati) was burnt in the funeral pyre of her husband. This custom was banned in India by the British in 1829 and continues banned.

Basudhara Roy teaches English at Karim City College affiliated to Kolhan University, Chaibasa. Author of three collections of poems, her latest work has been featured in EPW, The Pine Cone Review, Live Wire, Lucy Writers Platform, Setu and The Aleph Review among others.

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

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Tags Alice in Wonderland, Basudhara Roy, Bengal, Bengali, Kolhan University, Lewis Carroll, Niyogi Books, Sati, Speculative fiction, Sucheta Dasgupta, Tales of Early Magic Realism in Bengali, Trailokyanath Mukhopadhyay

Review

Maya Nagari: Stories of Bombay-Mumbai

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date June 14, 2024
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Book Review by Somdatta Mandal

Title: Maya Nagari: Bombay-Mumbai A City in Stories

Editors: Shanta Gokhale, Jerry Pinto

Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books

The very mention of the name Mumbai (or Bombay) brings to our minds a great city in India where the thriving metropolis grows at a rapid speed because people not only flock here from different parts of the country to make quick bucks and survive against all odds, but also because the film industry of Bollywood has also established it as a city of dreams, one that never sleeps and instead creates a mirage-of-sorts — an illusion, rightly labelled by the editors of this anthology as ‘Maya Nagari’. Edited by Shanta Gokhale and Jerry Pinto, this book, comprising twenty-one short stories about Mumbai takes the road less taken to create a non-uniform image of the metropolis. In tune with its multicultural and multilingual nature, we have stories about the city that is a sea of people and speaks at least a dozen languages. There are stories translated from Marathi, Urdu, Gujarati, Tamil, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, and stories written originally in English. Among the writers are legends and new voices—Baburao Bagul, Ismat Chughtai, Pu La Deshpande, Ambai,Urmila Pawar, Mohan Rakesh, Saadat Hasan Manto, Ambai, Jayant Kaikini, Bhupen Khakhar, Shripad Narayan Pendse, Manasi, Krishan Chander, Udayan Thakker, Cyrus Mistry, Vilas Sarang, Jayant Pawar, Tejaswini Apte-Rahm and Anuradha Kumar.

As Jerry Pinto clearly states in the introduction, the stories can be read as we like, we can begin with the first story or the last, or any story in between. The observant reader might notice that he and the other editor Shanta Gokhale have deliberately chosen not to organise the material according to chronology, or geography. This is partly because they believe that the city lives in several time zones and spaces at once, as does India, but also because there is something essentially chaotic about its nature. So, he says, “the stories echo and bounce off each other, they do not collide, but there is a Brownian motion to these patterns” and he hopes to let the readers find it. Here, Mumbai is stripped of its twinkle; it is deglamourised to reveal how it’s the quotidian that lends the city its character—warmth and hostility alike and as inhabitants of the city the editors call ‘home,’ they hope a narrative will emerge.

In the twenty-one stories of this collection, there is the city that labours in the mills and streets, and the city that sips and nibbles in five-star lounges, the city of Ganapati, Haji Malang and the Virgin Mary. What binds the stories together is ‘human muscle’ – the desperate attempts of men and women of all classes and castes to survive in this heartless city amid all odds.

The stories are of different lengths and written in different narrative styles. Of the five or six stories translated by Shanta Gokhale herself from Marathi, one is struck by the excessive length of the so called ‘short’ stories. The very first one “Oh! The Joy of Devotion” by Jayant Pawar, forty-five pages in length, narrates in detail about the Ganapati festival and how it is related to the fate of the local people. Pu La Deshpande’s story “A Cultural Moment is Born”, set in the 1940s, tells stories of people living in chawls [slums] and how they spend their cultural days. Another very long story translated by Gokhale called “The Ramsharan Story” tells us about the rise and fall of a bus conductor by the name of Ramsharan who turns out to become a union leader. Baburao Bagul’s “Woman of the Street”, written originally in Marathi and translated by Gokhale again, tells the story of Girija, a sex-worker trying to collect money to cure her son in the village. The story ends on a disturbing note, as it reaffirms the relativity of success.

Once again, Krishan Chander’s story “The Children of Dadar Bridge” translated from Hindustani by Jerry Pinto is so long that it qualifies to be called a sort of novella. In this powerful story God comes to earth to a chawl and offers food to the first-person narrator. Then, impersonating as a small and innocent child, and along with the child narrator, he moves around different places in the city to witness its activities firsthand — we get to know about behind the scene affairs that take place in the film studios, about satta[1] dens, about bribery, local dons who arm-twist every new hawker to carry on their business after receiving their weekly cut money and more. In “Civic Duty and Physics Practicals”, Malayalam writer Manasi reveals the different experiences one comes across living in a society defined by power equations. Issues of hooliganism, superstition, illegal colonies, corruption, intimidation and violence are explored in a single story where the narrator is struggling, for days, with blaring speakers at a wedding nearby, even as her son tries hard to prepare for his upcoming exams. The story soon takes a dark turn where power trumps over consideration for fellow human beings.

A very powerful story written by Ambai in Tamil called “Kala Ghora Chowk” deals with issues of Marxist ideology, trade unions and the fate of a raped woman called Rosa. Anuradha Kumar’s “Neera Joshi’s Unfinished Book” tells us the life story of one woman who “made the city” and the perennial problems of displaced mill workers when the closed mills give way to high-rise buildings. Some of the stories are of course written in a lighter vein, though they also depict different problems related to city life. As the title of Vilas Sarang’s story “An Afternoon Among the Rocks” suggests, it narrates the plight of a couple trying to make love in the deserted seashore and how they get hijacked by a smuggler! In “The Flat on the Fifth Floor”, Mohan Rakesh writes about two sisters who meet the narrator after one failed love affair. A moving picture of the closing down of cinema halls in Mumbai comes out very beautifully in the Kannada story “Opera House” by Jayant Kaikini, especially narrating the plight of one of the sweepers working there when the declaration of permanent closure is pasted everywhere. Tejaswini Apte-Rahm’s “Mili” tells the story of a man who meets his ex-girlfriend after five years.

Though it is not possible to give the details of each and every story included in this anthology in this review, one must mention some of the stories that were originally written in English. Cyrus Mistry’s “Percy” about a young and lonely Parsi boy is so compelling that it was even made into a Gujarati motion-picture. “House Cleaning” by Jerry Pinto tells the story of a woman cleaner and his son, who talks about the reality of street dwellers. Eunice de Souza’s “Rina of Queen’s Diamonds” is not a straightforward narration at all but offers a collage of different vignettes of life in Bombay.

Though most of the stories portray the seamier side of life and in some ways de-glamourise Mumbai, at the same time they also portray how human resilience can combat all sorts of odds, and the city can be revealed only through shared experiences. Thus, each of the twenty-one stories in this collection tells a different tale of Mumbai, Bombay, Momoi, Bambai, Manbai and many others. As the editors have rightly pointed out at the beginning of their introduction, “You cannot catch a city in words. You cannot catch a city at all.” They felt that “it is not meant to be caught…this city resists even more because it was not designed at all; it just happened and it keeps on happening.” Thus, the four-hundred plus pages of this anthology Maya-Nagari remains a book to be treasured and read now at leisure and also at any time in the future.

[1] Betting or gambling dens

Somdatta Mandal, critic and translator, is a former Professor of English at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, India.

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Interview Review

In Discussion with Rajat Chaudhuri: Spellcasters and Solarpunk

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date May 14, 2024
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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!”

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

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Review

Nazrul and His World View

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date May 14, 2024
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Book Review by Somdatta Mandal

Title: Selected Essays: Kazi Nazrul Islam

Author: Kazi Nazrul Islam

Translator: Radha Chakravarty

Publisher: Penguin Random House

The Bengali poet, Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976), is widely remembered as the fiery iconoclast who fought against the structures of oppression and orthodoxy. The iconic bidrohi or ‘rebel poet’ of Bengal, Nazrul continues to be loved for his songs and poetry that were aimed at arousing the rebellious spirit of both Hindus and Muslims alike. But what of his prose, his journalism, and his politics? Selected Essays reveals to us the extraordinary versatility of Nazrul as a writer, thinker, and activist. Addressing subjects as diverse as social reform, politics, communal harmony, environmental concerns, education, aesthetics, ethics, and philosophy, this rich collection showcases Nazrul’s dynamic vision and unique use of language as an instrument of change. The essays chart his evolving consciousness as a thinker, writer, and activist, offering vivid glimpses of the ethos of his times, his relationships with leading figures such as Tagore and Gandhi, and his active engagement with social, political, and cultural processes.

Of the forty-one essays selected here, (three undated), the first thirteen are all written in different places all in the year 1920. That was the year Nazrul returned to Bengal after serving in Karachi during World War I as a member of the Bengal regiment of the colonial British army. Reacting to the Jallianwallah Bagh massacre he writes, “May the Dyer monument never allow us to forget Dyer’s memory” because on that occasion Hindus and Muslims embraced each other and wept together as brothers. They shared the same agony as children of the same womb. In ‘Strike’, he praises the social awareness that has swept among the ranks of the labouring class and believes that the “protest is not just a rebellion, but the death-bite of the suffering, moribund class”. When some migrants were fired upon after a clash with the armed police at a place called Kanchagarhi, he asked in ‘Who is Responsible for the Killing of Migrants?’, whether anyone can ever tolerate such injustice towards humanity, conscience, self-respect and independence and states that they are no longer going to passively accept such assaults. ‘Awakening Our Neglected Power’ contends that democracy or people’s power cannot be established in our country because of the oppression inflicted by the Bhadra[1] community.

There are several essays in which Nazrul speaks about the state of National Education, he envisages ‘A National University’, and in a very powerful piece that he wrote from Presidency Jail in Kolkata on 7 January 1923, titled ‘Deposition of a Political Prisoner’ he reveals his self-confidence:

“If anything has struck me as unjust, I have described it as injustice, described oppression as oppression, named falsehoods as falsehood. …For that endless mockery, insults, humiliation and assaults have been rained on me, from within my home and beyond. But nothing whatsoever has intimidated me into dishonouring my own truth or my own Lord. No temptation has overpowered me enough to compromise my integrity or to diminish the immense self-satisfaction gleaned through my own endeavours…. I repeat, I have no fear, no sorrow. I am the child of the elixir of immortality.”

Nazrul grew up in a traditional religious environment, yet in his writings he drew upon both Hindu and Islamic sources, and expressed a faith that transcended the limits of any single religion. In several essays, he harps on the problems of Hindu-Muslim amity and enmity and warns us about “this hideous business of purity of touch and untouchability”. He wants only humans to live in India as brothers and wants everyone to be wary of the terrible deceptions created by both the religions.

In the essay ‘Temple and Mosque‘, he states that both parties have the same leader, and his real name is Shaitan, the Devil. Written in response to the communal riots that broke out in Kolkata on 2 April 1926, he feels that those very same places of worship that ought to have been bridges between heaven and earth are instead causing harm to humanity today, and so those temples and mosques should be broken down. In another essay titled ‘Hindu-Muslim’, penned the same year, Nazrul talks about the question of an internal tail in human beings. He says, “There’s no telling what animal excitement lured the human mind to discover a substitute for tails in the beard or tiki[2]!” He further elaborates:

“Both Hindu and Muslim ways of life can be tolerated, but their faith in tikitwa and daritwa, the orthodox ways of tiki and beard, is not to be borne, for both instigate violence and killing. Tikitwa is not Hindutwa, it is perhaps punditwa, the way of the pundit! Likewise, the beard, too, is not Islamic, it is mullatwa, the way of the mullah. These two types of hair tufts, marked with religious dogma, are precisely the reason for all the conflict and hair-splitting we witness today!”

Though it is not possible to discuss all the different editorials, book reviews, and political pieces that are included in this collection, one must mention at least two essays that speak about literary issues as well. In 1932, Nazrul wrote for Patrika (subsequently reprinted in Bulbul the following year), an interesting piece titled ‘World Literature Today’. In it he states that there are two kinds of writers present in the world today and their different tendencies have assumed immense proportions.

“Ranged on both sides are great war heroes, champion charioteers of the battlefield. On one side are the dreamers, such as Noguchi, Yeats and Rabindranath, and on the other, Gorky, Johan Bojer, Bernard Shaw, Benavente and their ilk.”

But Nazrul’s ire in being ostracized comes out clearly in ‘A Great Man’s Love Is a Sandbank’ (1927), where he criticises the high-handedness of Rabindranath Tagore. He begins by telling us how he was a prisoner of state at the Alipore Central Jail when he was informed by the assistant jailor that Tagore had recognised Nazrul’s talent and dedicated his play Basanta to him. The other political prisoners present there had laughed at him not in joy but in incredulity. For him, the blessing turned into a curse. His very close friends and state prisoners also turned away from him. He realised what massive internal damage this outward gain had caused him. Busy with his political agenda, he didn’t have the time to sit and meditate as advised several times by Tagore. So Nazrul writes, “I find that the brighter my countenance shines in this glory, the darker some other famous poets’ faces seem to appear.” He mentions that he had grown accustomed to police torture but when literary personages begin to torment one, their brutality knows no bounds. “Alas, O youthful new literature!” His crime was that young people celebrated his work. He laments further,

“That Kabiguru[3], revered by both parties like the grandsire Bhisma, should assent to this plot of killing Abhimanyu, is the greatest sorrow of our times. …As for me, I have discarded that topi–pyjama—sherwani–beard look[4], only out of fear of being mocked as a ‘Mia Saheb’. But still there is no respite for me…. Now we get the feeling that the Rabindranath of today is not the same Rabindranath we have always known.”

That the trajectories and beliefs of Tagore and Nazrul went in the opposite direction is well- known. In the essay, Nazrul then further continues his complaints against Tagore. He questions whether they have been considered as his enemies, simply because they didn’t go to him frequently. Also, since the goddess of wealth blessed him, Kabiguru did not know what dire poverty the new writers had to struggle against, languishing in conditions of starvation or semi-starvation. So, he humbly requests Kabiguru not to sprinkle salt on their wounds by mocking the impoverishment that is their singular affliction, for that is one form of heartlessness that they cannot tolerate.

Of the last three essays written in 1960, namely, ‘The Science of Life’(where men “are surrounded by all sorts of travails and sufferings, and many of them cannot be alleviated”), ‘A Point to Ponder’(where the nation faces an immense problem regarding the dispute about the instructions and procedure for the worship of the mother, the Bharatmata, our Mother India) and in ‘What We Need Today’, Nazrul speaks of the necessity of a “vast tumult in India”. Making his readers aware of the vast duplicity and trickery in the name of religion, he warns that unless one avoids the baseness of being subjugated by an external power, there is no prospect of heaven for us, only the grotesqueness of hell. He wants the kalboishakhi, the wild summer storm, to “approach in all its fury, rearing his head like a hooded serpent swimming in the unchecked torrents of an ocean of blood” and sweep everything away.

Before concluding one should also make a few comments on the translation. As a veteran translator, Radha Chakravarty, has successfully managed to transcreate some very difficult Bengali idioms, cultural nuances and analogies that Nazrul used in some of his essays. As she admitted in the Introduction, “[T]ranslating Nazrul’s prose proved to be a challenge, as demanding as it was exhilarating. …The endeavour demanded experiment and creativity rather than mechanical lexical ability and involved some difficult choices…Literal translation has been avoided, with greater focus on the sense, emotion, intellectual import, rhetorical features and stylistic particularities of the Bengali source texts.” She further adds that the present translations stemmed from a desire to bring Nazrul’s essays to a contemporary audience in South Asia and the rest of the world, to draw attention to his literary achievement as well as his significance as a writer, thinker, activist, and visionary. Though a lot of research and translation projects on Nazrul has been going on in Bangladesh for quite some time (where he holds the status of National Poet), in India, especially in West Bengal, the response is still rather lukewarm. Hence this volume is strongly recommended as a collector’s item.

[1] Literally decent but here indicates the bourgeoisie.

[2] A tuft of hair at the back of a tonsured head

[3] Tagore

[4] Cap-pyajama-longcoat – these with a beard were associated with the genteel muslim look – the look of the Mia Saheb

CLICK HERE TO READ THE EXCERPT

Somdatta Mandal, critic and translator, is a former Professor of English at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, India.

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Review

Contemporary Everest Industry as seen by an Explorer

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date May 14, 2024
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Book review by Bhaskar Parichha

Title: Everest, Inc.The Renegades and Rogues who Built an Industry at the Top of the World

Author: Will Cockrell

Publisher: Gallery Books/ Simon & Schuster India

This book delves into a unique topic with a unique approach. Will Cockrell’s Everest Inc. The Renegades and Rogues who Built an Industry at the Top of the World explores the intersection of democratisation and commercialisation in the realm of high adventure. Through meticulous research, Cockrell presents a dynamic narrative of the evolution of guided climbing on Mount Everest. The narrative captures the shift of the mountain from a challenging climb to a lucrative business venture. From the pioneering expedition of Hillary and Norgay in 1953, Cockrell traces the journey of various individuals who played a role in making the summit more accessible and profitable.

Cockrell, an award-winning writer and journalist, skillfully delves into the captivating world of mountain climbing. With meticulous research and interviews with guides, sherpas, amateur climbers, and even Hollywood figures, he unveils the fascinating story that led to the rise of this industry. These entrepreneurial adventurers, who once catered to affluent clients, have now become an indispensable part of the lucrative adventure economy, revolutionising our perception of mountain climbing and the majestic peaks themselves. Despite the unfortunate tragedies and the excessive commercialisation that have plagued the mountain in recent years, Cockrell’s narrative remains an inspiring and uplifting tale.

This comprehensive adventure history delves into the world of guided climbing on Mount Everest, featuring exclusive interviews with renowned mountain guides and climbers such as Jimmy Chin and Conrad Anker. It serves as a cautionary tale about the risks of overexposure while also celebrating the enduring allure of this ultimate terrestrial adventure.

Says the blurb: “Anyone who has read Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air or has seen a recent photo of climbers standing in line to get to the top of Everest may think they have the mountain pretty well figured out. It’s an extreme landscape where bad weather and incredible altitude can occasionally kill, but more so an overcrowded, trashed-out recreation destination where rich clients pad their egos—and social media feeds—while exploiting local Sherpas.”

“There’s some truth to these clichés, but they’re a sliver of the story. Unlike any book to date, Everest, Inc. gets to the heart of the mountain through the definitive story of its greatest invention: the Himalayan guiding industry. It all began in the 1980s with a few boot-strapping entrepreneurs who paired raw courage and naked ambition with a new style of expedition planning. Many of them are still living and climbing today, and as a result of their astonishing success, ninety percent of the people now on Everest are clients or employees of guided expeditions.”

The book glances at the lives of early guides, victories and setbacks experienced during the industry’s growth, and diverse opinions on the evolution of the guiding industry on Everest. Cockrell interviews prominent figures in the Everest guiding community — ranging from Conrad Anker to the late David Breashears, as well as climbing legends like filmmaker, Jimmy Chin, and outdoor industry leader, Yvonne Chouinard.

Filled with firsthand accounts from over a hundred western and sherpas, clients, writers, filmmakers, and even a Hollywood actor, Everest, Inc. places emphasis on the perspectives of those who have shaped the mountain’s current state. While it delves into the gripping tales of triumph and tragedy spanning the past four decades, it goes beyond clichés and presents an inspiring alternate narrative about the dedicated individuals who have fulfilled the aspirations of others, as well as the Nepalis who are propelling the industry forward.

Despite the constant media exposure on Mount Everest, there has been a lack of comprehensive documentation regarding its recent turbulent existence. Will Cockrell discusses this gap exhaustively with research and interviews to by present a multifaceted perspective that pays tribute to various viewpoints, particularly those of the sherpas who consider the Himalayas their homeland.

Everest, Inc. is essential read for anyone considering attempting the world’s highest peak or for those interested in understanding the intricate workings of the contemporary Everest industry.

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Tags Bhaskar Parichha, Bhubaneswar, Biju Patnaik – A Political Biography, Conrad Anker, David Breashears, Everest Inc. The Renegades and Rogues Who Built an Industry at the Top of the World, Gallery Books/ Simon & Schuster India, Hillary, Himalayas, Hollywood, Into Thin Air, Jimmy Chin, Jon Krakauer, Mount Everest, Nepalis, Norgay, Will Cockerell, Yvonne Chouinard

Review

Thus Flow the Verses…

Book Review by Malashri Lal

Title: Nadistuti: Poems

Author: Lakshmi Kannan

Publisher: Author Press

The title plunges us into the sacrality of resonant words, the Nadistuti sukta being a hymn in the Rigveda in praise of rivers. Poet, novelist and translator Lakshmi-Kaaveri equates the flow of the waters with ‘the flow of poetry’, the quiet mingling of streams of remembrance and phrases that shape into lines of verse. Her book is dedicated to Jayanta Mahapatra ‘who lives on’ and an exordium titled ‘Naman’ offers gentle tribute to H.K. Kaul, who was among the founders of the Poetry Society of India and passed away during the recent pandemic. Nadistuti is a brilliant and thought-provoking collection of poems that charts the timeless continuums while being aware of the fragility of human existence.

The book begins with a prayer to the River Narmada (meaning ‘the giver of pleasure’), which divides the north from the south of India. Yet the rippling waters have no boundary—a philosophical observation that I find marks much of this remarkable volume. Remembering Ganga, Yamuna, Godavari, Saraswati, Narmada, Sindhu, Kaaveri, devotees recite the shloka[1] at their morning bath seeking the blessings of the rivers. Though such rituals are mostly forgotten in modern times, the climate crisis should remind us of the consequences of such amnesia. The invisible Saraswati is possibly a metaphor for such “forgetting” simply because of her partial invisibility. Lakshmi Kannan’s vibrant lines recall the disappearance of the river as also of Saraswati’s appearance in another form as a revered Goddess invoked by “students, writers, musicians, dancers, painters”. From the Nadistuti I learned the word— ‘potomologist’—the study of rivers, but the book is far greater than an academic enquiry—it’s a recognition of the civilisational bloodline that is linked to the ancient rivers which were the earliest cradles of humankind.

Some extraordinary and innovative aspects Lakshmi’s book deserve special mention. First, the remarkable prose- poem called ‘Ponni Looks Back’ which stretches the boundaries of imagination in a charming manner. Ponni is the name of the river Kaaveri in classical Tamil Literature. It flows through Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and is always perceived as a woman. Lakshmi tracks Ponni’s autobiography as though writing a Bildungsroman, the education and growing up of an innocent girl and her experiences along the way. Therefore, Ponni is born as a small unobtrusive stream on the Mysore-Coorg border. Then she becomes prominent and significant, and a vital witness to history—the Hoysala kingdom, the classical arts of Belur, Halibid, Somnathpur, then carrying on further to wrap around the islands of Srirangapatnam and Srirangam and so on. I enjoyed the autobiographical voice of Ponni reveling in her centuries of testimony to all the changes she has observed and imbibed—till we come to the new politics that is destroying rivers and society today. Ponni says, “One day I heard different voices floating over my waters…they sit around tables, shout at each other and refer to me dryly as the Kaaveri dispute, wrenching my waters apart”. Like yet another goddess, Sita, she chooses to end her journey. Ponni merges with her mother, the Bay of Bengal —her love and amity having completed what tasks she could undertake towards humanitarian goals. The world of manmade disasters is a chapter River Kaaveri would rather not participate in.

My question here is: “Do poetry and politics merge?… Can poets continue to be as Shelley called them ‘the unacknowledged legislators of the world’?” This brings me to another significant aspect of Nadistuti: Lakshmi’s brand of subtle feminism. Predictably, I am drawn to the poems that argue against son-preference, challenge gender stereotypes, and poke gentle barbs at unenlightened men.

Second, I cite a longish poem called “Snake Woman” from the section titled Chamundi, because it combines rituals, dream imagery, gender prejudice and the paradox of son preference. The ritual is called Nagapuja and has strict rules of abstinence from certain foods like snake gourd, and it entails hours of prayer—the chant being:

Please grant me a male child
Oh, King of Cobras
I will name him Nagaraja
In your honour.

Something strange started happening that the pregnant woman could never dare reveal to the world. She dreamt every night of a female baby cobra wearing jhumkies (long earrings) and a jeweled girdle and sporting a red dot on her forehead. Well, the baby born was female—and the happy mother, though a little fearful, called her Nagalakshmi. The mother-in-law showed acute displeasure: “She can have any name. Who cares!”

Another pregnancy, again the rituals of Nagapuja—more stringent than before. No dreams this time. And an eagerly welcomed boy-child is born, enthusiastically named Nagaraja. And guess what? As he grows up, he ‘hissed at is mother’, ‘bared his fangs at his father’ and ‘spewed venom on his sister’. These are poet Lakshmi Kannan’s vivid vocabulary for the revered son! And the snake woman sister, what happened to her? She sloughed off her skin seasonally, grew strong, capable and emerged as a “lustrous one”.

I selected this poem for more than just Lakshmi’s clever reversal of gender prejudice. Snakes have a central place in the folktales and folklore of India. The word used, “theriomorphic”, denotes situations, where animals and human beings interchange bodies and identities. Snakes are not evil—they are often the progenitors of good deeds and the shapeshifting happens for many commendable reasons. The figuration of the snake as exclusively evil does not derive from Indian mythology. Lakshmi’s poem, this one and several others, tread this beautiful territory of humans and non-humans sharing a common abode, the Earth, and there is an implied lament that we have ignored this vital connectivity.

And finally, I am delving into the emotive, personal poems that end the collection. Called ‘Fireside’, it invites memories of WB Yeats’ classic lines:

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book…

Lakshmi addresses many members of her family; they are named, thanked and remembered for their acts of love and compassion. Because Lakshmi believes in history and continuities, as we have seen in ‘Ponni Looks Back’, and the Nagalakshmi reference, these too are poems about lineage, heritage, respect and love—the attributes that make life worthwhile. Lakshmi’s mother (addressed in the poems as Amma) was Sharada Devi, an acclaimed painter in Mysore and Bangalore whom the daughter remembers with her easel-mounted canvas gently acquiring colours, the landscapes emerging from the contours of her imagination. Today, Lakshmi Kannan, the poet of Nadistuti, looks at a blank sheet of paper and compares that to her Amma’s canvas—the words will surely incarnate. Another poem has a redolent title ‘In Search of Father’s Gardens’, upturning African American writer Alice Walker’s book In Search Of Our Mothers’ Gardens, but for me it’s a tale reminiscent of Lakshmi’s early novel Going Home that I had reviewed decades ago. It was a book about ancestral homes and families breaking up. In the reconfigurations over time, Nadistuti’s final section presents poems to members of Lakshmi’s immediate family, named, but not too personalised, making this an exemplary template for those who hesitate to present the private in public poetry. With beauty, grace, gratitude, humour, irony—each person emerges as a tributary in the flow of the poet and writer we know and love as Lakshmi- Kaaveri. The last poem ‘If You Want to Visit’ is deeply poignant. It’s not a farewell poem—instead it’s an invitation to an eternal companionship:

Come
Visit me now 
I’ll not have a word of complaint
I’ll gather all of these and leave with you.

Here is the confluence of all that Nadistuti says: the day’s prayer in the morning, the Ponni River encapsulating history, the rituals that pass through many generations, and the legacy of a poet’s words embedded in the annals of time. An exquisite and meaningful collection of poems, Lakshmi has introduced concepts of poetic writing that are evocative of the ancient Rigveda and equally provide the guiding lamps for modern choices.

[1] Holy chants

Malashri Lal, Former Professor in the English Department, University of Delhi, has published twenty one books of which Mandalas of Time: Poems, and Treasures of Lakshmi: The Goddess Who Gives are the most recent. Lal has received several research and writing fellowships. She is currently Convener, English Advisory Board of the Sahitya Akademi.

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