THE CERAMICIST
For Hong-Ling Wee (arr. 1992)
On a NASA scholarship to map the world,
she walked into a workshop on a whim
to throw a lump of clay on a wheel and feel
a foggy, quiet, pink, revolving world
evolve into an object of the mind
under the body’s pressure, slight and sure,
and, afterwards, surrender to the fire,
not that of fire, but that of accident,
for a ceramic rocket fallen back
to earth. And this she did, for many years,
living on little, explaining less, until
she was surrounded by the fuselage.
When the towers gashed vermilion and buckled,
she was alone at home in Union Square.
The noise expanded as it dribbled off
to meet its echo, second detonation
worse than the first report, in summoning
half-buried images of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. In a foreign mood,
she heard the phone ring and a female voice,
acclimatised but recognisable
as Singaporean, asked for Wee Hong Ling.
She never tires of telling this story, how
the Consulate located her and every
Singaporean within an hour of disaster,
when a black hole opened but was avoided
because a star had called, a star called home.
She never tires of telling this story, which
I now tell you in my own fanciful way,
each iteration also explanation,
the how developing into the why,
why her pitchers, bowls, vases levitate.
(First published in the Quarterly Literary Review of Singapore and collected in Sample and Loop: A Simple History of Singaporeans in America, Bench Press, 2023)
Jee Leong Koh is a Singaporean writer, editor, and publisher living in New York City. His hybrid work Snow at 5 PM: Translations of an insignificant Japanese poet won the 2022 Singapore Literature Prize in English fiction. His book of poems Steep Tea (Carcanet) was named a Best Book of the Year by the Financial Times in the UK and a Finalist by Lambda Literary in the US. Other honours include being shortlisted twice for the Singapore Literature Prize in English poetry for The Pillow Book and Connor & Seal.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Portrait of an Old Man by Johannes Vermeer(1632-1635)
YOU AND YOU
I know exactly how to touch you,
how to slide my finger
down your forehead and moist nose,
then tickle you under your chin
with four of my fingers;
I glide down your back
navigating the abacus of your spine
as you turn over
and lie back in unabridged bliss, woofing.
I tickle your nipples
and softly caress your furry belly.
I know exactly how to touch you,
how to shelter your clawed hands in mine,
I dab concealer onto your eyebags
with my second finger
then, using my whole hand like a spider,
massage your grey scalp
until you murmur wordlessly.
I slap my hand on your back
during one of your coughing fits
and give you my arm to hold on
as I become your walking stick.
TRANSGRESSION
It wasn't the shock of him saying it.
It was the shock of my reaction -
" I just do it to kill time."
KILL TIME?
AT OUR AGE?
Killing time is for twentysomethings
with long hair and journals
and daisychain dreams,
or for the terminally ill,
drinking regret on the rocks.
I felt an electric numbness --
he had taken time in vain.
When the hourglass sand
begins to look bottom-heavy,
then a year begins to feel like a month.
Like a crack addict,
all you want is more.
I wanted to shake him,
screech some sense into him,
but it was his time to lose,
not mine.
GIOVANNI
I can’t write a poem about you. It would be like flashing an emotional boob. We sit every week, talking, and I look at the curls in your beard dashed with grey. They seem to be a different formation every time, a different highlight, a different sign. It’s like interacting with a dynamic ancient Greek statue. The Vermeer light haloes in through the window to your right even when there is no sun, and the pink-brown skin of your face shimmers with optimism and comfort. Our conversation is sprinkled with ancient languages, modern dilemmas, and each other’s violent Netflix recommendations. We could have a timeless friendship except I signed a contract that we can’t be friends. It is so easy to read too much into cultural commonalities and humorous asides. So I do. We are both very Latin and very English at the same time, with veins of sarcasm pulsating at the temples. Maybe we are modern day explorers destined to meet like Livingstone and Stanley in Africa. I don’t love you. I don’t think you’re perfect. You leak grumpiness as you listen. Your feminism is mild. But. And we haven’t even met.
Caroline Am Bergris is a half-Colombian, half-Pakistani poet living in London. Her poems have been published, online and in print, in Europe and America.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.
The year was 1881. The city — Kolkata. Its people, caught in the throes of a social and spiritual awakening the like of which they had never seen before, were sharply divided. Spinning between two worlds—one dying; one struggling to be born–they were all protagonists, all engaged in battle. Some to keep alive and perpetuate the old; others to hasten its death and bring about the birth of the new. But there were also those who felt the pull of both. Old and new. Traditional and modern. Science and faith. One such was Narendranath Datta, eldest son of Advocate Bishwanath Datta of Shimle.
Eighteen-year-old Naren was a fine figure of a man already. Tall and muscular, with broad shoulders and a heavy frame, his large, dark eyes flashed with spirit and intelligence from a strong, handsome face. He was a brilliant student and an even better sportsman. He could fence and wrestle and was an excellent boxer. Only last year he had won the Silver Butterfly at a college contest. With all this he was a fine singer and could play the pakhawaj and esraj[1].
PakhwajEsraj
That afternoon, he was pacing up restlessly up and down Hedo Lake Park under a sullen monsoon sky. Classes were over for the day, but he didn’t want to go home.
Naren: “What shall I do? Where shall I go? Home? Na! Na! Ma has filled the house with matchmakers. But I… I can’t even think of marriage just now. Life is short. Life is precious. I must discover the truth of it first. The worth of it.
“Shall I walk down to the Brahmo Mandir? I’ve gone there often with Dipendra. I like the prayers and sermons. I even join in singing the hymns. But…the experience remains on that level. Once, unable to control the curiosity that burns continually in my breast, I was guilty of a grave impertinence. ‘Have you seen God?’ I asked the Maharshi. But he had evaded the question. ‘You have the eyes of an ascetic,’ he had replied. ‘Abandon all enquiry and give yourself over to Him. With prayer and meditation, you will experience Him some day.’ The answer told me nothing.
“I’ve read the works of Western philosophers–Descartes, Hume and Herbert Spencer and have tried to make Logic and Reason my watchwords. I’ve tried to dismiss religion as the prop of the blind and weak. But…but certain religious customs have entrenched themselves in our culture from time immemorial! Can we wipe them out in an instant. And, even if we could, wouldn’t that create a terrible void?”
He laughed self-consciously. Was this a consequence of my meeting with Ramakrishna? Na Na. Not that. Never …
A few days ago, his uncle Ramchandra Datta had asked him to accompany him to Dakshineswar. And Naren, eager to escape the matchmakers, had agreed. He had been charmed with the place. The wide flight of steps rising from the river! The immense chataal[2]dotted with temples! The river itself — vast and unending as the sea! And, then, he had been led to a tiny room in the north west corner where, on a simple wooden chowki[3], sat a little dark man with a gap between his teeth and tiny, twinkling eyes. His hair and beard were unkempt and his coarse, half-soiled dhuti[4]rose to his knees. But the sacred thread that lay across his bare torso was thick and shining white. “Thakur,” Ramchandra Datta led the boy forward, “This is my nephew Naren. He sings well.” The man smiled and nodded encouragingly. And Naren, who enjoyed singing, dropped to the floor and sitting cross legged, a hand at one ear, commenced in a rich baritone…Mono Cholo Nijo Niketane…mind go to your own abode …
Ramakrishna in a trance
Ramkrishna went into a trance. He returned to consciousness and rushed up to Naren.
Ramakrishna: “I know you, my Lord! You are my Narayan! Why did you take so long in coming to me?”
Naren: (to himself) “The man is mad. Stark, raving mad! What do I do now? (Aloud) Let go of me. Please let go…”
Ramakrishna: “I will. If you promise to come again.”
Naren: (sternly) “I promise but I want to ask you a question first. Have you seen God? Tell me the truth.”
Ramakrishna: “Yes. I have seen God. As clearly as I see you standing before me.”
Naren had promised Ramakrishna that he would go to him again. But he had no intention of keeping his word. His reasoning told him that the man was a liar and a lunatic. But why was his heart saying something else? Why was it urging him to redeem his promise? He made a fresh resolve. He would go to Dakshineswar one last time and tell Ramakrishna, politely but firmly, that their worlds lay apart and he had other things to do.
A few days later Naren and his friends were enjoying a meal in an English hotel when he suddenly rose to his feet and walked out leaving everyone gaping in astonishment. Walking all the way to Dakshineswar, he barged into Ramakrishna’s room.
Naren: “I have just eaten what Hindus call forbidden meat. (His eyes challenged the priest) Now do what you need to do with me!”
Ramakrishna: “O re! Do you think My Mother will peep into your stomach to see what you hide in there? Beef and pork? Or vegetables and greens? She looks only into the heart. And yours is as pure as gangajal[5].” He put his arm around Naren’s shoulders. “See. I have touched you. Am I changed in any way?”
Naren: (aggressively) “How do you know where Your Mother looks or does not look? You claim you see Ma Kali and talk to Her. But I say your claim is false. I believe, like the Brahmos, that God is an abstraction–neither seen nor heard.”
Ramakrishna: (murmurs) “God? …. God is akin to a vast sea; an unending stretch of water. But when true faith is breathed upon it the water congeals and turns into ice—solid, tangible. And only then one sees God. Don’t I see you, one of the seven rishis, standing before me?”
Naren came home and thought long and hard. What did it all mean? Why had Ramakrishna called him one of the seven rishis[6]? Was the man mad? Or did he truly believe what he was saying? And, as the boy groped, his heart beat out the answer — dim and muffled but consistent. He, Naren, had assumed that faith and logic were polar opposites, and one could survive only by denying the other. But what if the two were one and the same? Ramakrishna saw faith as empathy in any relationship — human or divine. He saw Naren as that part of himself he considered his Godhead. Which was why his faith in him was unassailable. What a wonderful concept that was! Could he, Naren, ever establish that kind of empathy with anyone? Man or God? Wouldn’t his spirit deepen; grow richer if he could?
And now Naren understood one thing clearly. He was special because Ramakrishna thought him so. And he would have to carry the burden of love and faith placed on him, throughout his life, and make himself worthy of it…
A few months later Naren’s life changed dramatically. His father died and, as the eldest son, the responsibility for the family fell on him. Bishwanath Datta had been a prosperous advocate but, having always lived beyond his means, had died a pauper. What was worse he had left a trail of debts. Death had come to him so swiftly and suddenly — his wife and children reeled under the blow.
Vivekananda or Naren’s ancestral home in modern day Kolkata
With the creditors baying like a pack of wolves outside the door, Naren was forced to look for employment. He had no idea it would be so difficult. The streets were flooded with job seekers. Naren ran from pillar to post then, weak and exhausted with starvation and fatigue and crushed under a sense of defeat, he decided to run away from it all; to become a sadhu[7] and wander among the mountains. People would blame him for evading his responsibilities. They would call him an escapist. But he didn’t care…
Dakshineswar
Somehow, he didn’t know how, Ramakrishna got wind of his resolution and sent for him. Naren didn’t want to go. The man aroused all sorts of strange sensations in him. His body vibrated violently to Ramakrishna’s touch; his head swam, and his limbs felt weightless. Waves of rapture passed over his soul. Then, suddenly, he became his old, tormented, doubting, questioning self. He couldn’t bear these contradictions and decided to keep away. But Ramakrishna drew him like a magnet. Naren struggled against a current he didn’t understand for days, then succumbing, went to Dakshineswar. Ramakrishna took the boy’s hands in his and burst into tears. Something like a giant wave of light passed from those gripping hands and washed over Naren’s soul. His body trembled with ecstasy, and, in an instant, the truth lay bare before him. This little priest of Kali knew everything; saw everything. He sensed Naren’s suffering and suffered with him. The fire went out of the headstrong, stubborn boy. Loud sobs racked his chest and he clung to Ramakrishna’s hands as if they were his only hope.
Ramakrishna: “Naren re! It’s been so long since I’ve seen you. S-o-o long!”
Naren: (blubbering like a child) “You say you talk to Ma Kali. Why don’t you ask her to give us some food? I’ve heard you call her the Goddess of Mercy; the succour of the poor and wretched. Am I not poor and wretched? Why doesn’t she cast her eyes on me? My mother and brothers are starving…”
Ramakrishna with Naren
Ramakrishna: “Why don’t you ask her yourself?”
Naren: “How can I do that? I don’t know her.”
Ramakrishna: “You don’t know her because you don’t care to know her. I have an idea. Today is Tuesday. Go to her quietly when she’s alone and tell her what you want from her. She’ll give it to you.”
Late that night, when everyone was asleep, Ramakrishna sent Naren, practically by force, to the temple of Kali. The torch of knowledge trembled as enlightened India took her first cautious steps into an unknown realm. A vision, dim and shadowy, of something beyond the tangible world was driving out judgment and debate. Reason was about to surrender to faith, logic to intuition, as Naren stepped into the womb of the temple where Ma Kali stood. An earthen lamp, flickering in a corner, cast a soft glow over the naked form, black as night and of breath-taking beauty. A pair of glittering eyes gazed intently into Naren’s as he walked on unsteady feet and sank to his knees before Her…
Suddenly, a tremor passed through his limbs, making the blood leap up in his veins. He had seen — yes, he was sure he had seen the exquisitely chiseled lips part in a smile. He shut his eyes and opened them again. Yes — there it was. A smile of love and tenderness. And was it, could it, be… triumph? He thought he saw the image sway gently. But the room was full of shadows. Perhaps he was imagining it all! In his desperation he tried to revive all his old arguments; to summon up the logic and reason that had sustained him all these years. But he felt them slipping away. His eyes were glazed. Strange currents were running in his blood — sweeping him away. In the poorly lit room, swaying between patches of light and shadow, the image of the smiling goddess was trembling into life.
Naren: “Ma…Ma… Ma go![8]” Naren called again and again; stopped and looked around as though puzzled. “Why am I calling out to her? What do I want from her? Ah! Yes. I want food for myself and my family.” He shook his head vehemently. “Na Na. She’s the Mother of the three worlds! And she has smiled on me. How can I ask her for mundane things like food and clothes?” Naren knocked his head on the floor and cried out wildly. “Give me knowledge! Give me faith! Give me light! And above all these give me strength. Strength to suffer and endure! Strength to renounce!”
Ramakrishna was ill. He had been suffering from a bad throat and violent fits of coughing for some months now. His disciples had moved him from Dakshineswar, where the river air was cold and clammy, to a house in Baranagar. They had also sent for several doctors who diagnosed his ailment as Clergyman’s Sore Throat. But their treatment wasn’t working. Ramakrishna’s health was deteriorating day by day. His tongue was bloated to twice its size and was covered with sores. And to drink even a drop of water was agony.
At length Dr. Mahendralal Sarkar was called in. He was the most reputed doctor of Kolkata. He was also the harshest and most unpredictable. Yet, looking at the slight figure lying on the wooden chowki, he asked with a rare gentleness, ‘Where does it hurt?’
‘I feel a swelling in my throat the size of a rose apple.’
‘Open your mouth. Let me take a look.’
Ramakrishna obeyed, his eyes fixed fearfully on the stern face above his. Looking down at the torn, bleeding, ravaged organ the doctor’s eyes softened and he shook his head thoughtfully. “What is the diagnosis doctor?” Naren whispered, drawing him aside.
“Karkat Rog.” A shadow passed over Mahendralal’s face. “The sahebs call it cancer.” But within seconds he was his usual cut and dried self. Turning to the patient he said roughly, “I’m leaving some medicines. Take them regularly. And talk as little as possible. The world can do without your eloquence…”
Naren’s face reddened. “He’s our guru,” he said angrily, “Our link with God. He merits your respect.”
“Hunh!” The doctor gave a snort of contempt. “Why can’t man leave God alone and do his work on earth as best as he can? Why…”
“His work is the discovery of God,” Naren interrupted, his face flaming, “Just as yours is the spread of Science.”
Mahendralal laughed. “Has any man obsessed with God, be he Jesus, Chaitanya or Buddha, been content to make it a personal quest? No. He has to scream his lungs out and pull crowds along with him. Anyway– they were not my patients so what they did is none of my business. But this man is.” Fixing his large, fiery eyes on Ramakrishna he said sternly, “Remember what I said. No sermons and homilies. Give your voice a rest — for the present at least.”
Two days later Ramakrishna vomited blood — great globs splattering on his clothes, bed and all over the floor. Groaning with pain he beckoned Naren to his side, and holding his hands, looked deep into his eyes. “I give you all I have,” he said in a hoarse whisper, “From this moment I’m a pauper. I have nothing left. Nothing.” Then, his glance falling on his wife, Saradamoni, as she stood weeping in a corner, he said, “I leave her in your care.” Fixing his eyes on his wife’s pale, drawn face he said, “Do not weep. Naren will be to you the son you never bore.”
At these words something stirred in Naren’s brain. An image rose before his eyes — of a bleeding, battered body hanging from a cross; a pale emaciated brow crowned with thorns; a dying voice murmuring… “Mother…Behold thy son.” Sharp, scalding tears rose to Naren’s eyes and he wept like a child.
Ramakrishna died after midnight, two days later. His disciples thought he was in bhav samadhi[9]. For his eyes were open and his fingers twirled in the air. A thin whirring sound, like that of a clock work toy, was coming from his half open mouth. They moved around him chanting mantras and singing kirtans[10] — all except Naren, who jumped to his feet and ran all the way to Mahendralal Sarkar’s house. But the doctor, when he came, didn’t even touch the patient. “Start making arrangements for the cremation,” he said quietly, “He’s gone.”
One of the disciples, fearful of a sharp rebuke, murmured nervously, “He’s in bhav samadhi Daktar Babu.”
The doctor’s eyes were somber and his voice gentle as he answered, “I’m an ordinary physician who was given the privilege of ministering to a great soul. But I recognise the end when I see it. He is not in a state of bhav samadhi this time. It is maha samadhi[11].”
Swami Vivekananda and other disciples at the Mahasamadhi of Ramakrishna on Sunday, August 15, 1886.
There were a few distinctive features about the funeral procession that wended its way to Neemtala. One of the mourners held a Hindu trident, another a Buddhist spud. A third had a Christian cross in his hands and a fourth a replica of the crescent moon and single star– symbol of Islam. Ramakrishna had preached the concept of jata mat tata path (there are as many paths to God as there are faiths) and, even in their hour of desolation, his disciples hadn’t forgotten it.
Not many people had heard of Ramakrishna. Consequently. the number of mourners was pitifully small. The funeral processions of some other sadhus of the city had contained thousands. Ramakrishna’s numbered a little over a hundred. But one of them …was equal to a million.
Exactly four hundred years ago, to the day, a Italian sailor named Christopher Columbus had set sail on a discovery of India and landed, instead, on the shores of America. To mark that epoch making event a great festival was being organised in the city of Chicago of which an important feature was the coming together of spiritual leaders from all parts of the world. Invitations had been sent to Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Confucians, Taos, Shintos and Zoroastrians along with representatives from the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Protestant Churches. Even Brahmos and Theosophists had been invited. The only religion left out was Hinduism. And that was because Americans knew nothing about it. From what they had heard, it was a savage, primitive cult whose members worshipped monkeys, elephants and rivers. The speakers sat in rows on either side of Cardinal Gibbons –Head of the Catholic Church of America. There was a young man among them; a youth in his twenties with strong, handsome features and dark, flashing eyes. He wore a loose robe of orange silk and a turban of the same material. There was something riveting about his appearance and many eyes turned to look at him.
“Who’s he?” Someone whispered from the audience.
“A Hindoo.” Another whispered back, “From India. His name is …let me see…S-o-a-m-i…very difficult to pronounce…S-o-a-m-i Viv…Viveka…Ananda.”
Naren’s metamorphosis from a whimsical lad to a representative of Hinduism at the Parliament of Religions was owing not so much to his own efforts as to a sequence of events that had carried him on its wings. After Ramakrishna’s death he took serious stock of his situation. ‘Who am I?’ he asked himself, “And what should I do with my life?” The answer came to him readily. He was an ascetic. And the true ascetic was rootless and free like a river that needed to flow to keep its waters pure and clear. He took a decision. He wouldn’t stagnate in this little Bengal. He would explore every inch of this huge country and see what it was like.
And thus, Naren’s travels began. He went from place to place without aim or direction. If anyone gave him food, he ate it. If not, he went hungry equally cheerfully. Sometimes someone bought him a railway ticket. But, more often than not, he had only his legs and lathi to take him forward. Everywhere he went he impressed everyone with his knowledge, dignified bearing and fluent English. Gradually his fame spread. More and more people were talking of the scholarly young man who was steeped in the wisdom of the East yet as liberated in thought and spirit as any European. He started receiving invitations from the royals of India. From Hyderabad, Alwar, Kota and Khetri.
While staying in the palace of Raja Ajit Singh of Khetri, Naren had an experience he would never forget. One evening, on entering the Durbar Hall, he was surprised to see a woman sitting on a carpet facing the Raja who lay sprawled on satin cushions surrounded by his courtiers. She was beautiful, though somewhat past her youth, and dressed in rich silks and jewels. She was singing a love song with smiles and provocative gestures. Naren’s back stiffened and his nostrils dilated in distaste. The choleric temperament and intolerance he had taken such pains to subdue flared up in him and he turned to leave the room. Suddenly the woman rose to her feet. Abandoning the song, she was singing she started on another. The song was a bhajan[12], Prabhu avagun chitta na dharo — Lord, hold not my sins against me.
Naren stood at the door, his feet rooted to the ground. His heart thudded painfully and a voice within him whispered, “You call yourself a sadhu! Yet you judge this woman!” Suddenly Ramkrishna’s eyes swam into his vision. Soft and sad. Holding oceans of mercy! And, in a flash, he saw the woman — not as she stood before him, wanton and voluptuous — but as a human being who carried within her a spark of that same godhead that irradiated his own soul. His eyes softened. He entered the room and took his place with the others.
Naren wove back and forth like a shuttle over the vast tapestry that was India. And, wherever he went he saw illiteracy and superstition, poverty and abuse of power. The caste system was like an insidious web trapping and choking the life breath out of the people. “To hell with Hinduism!” he muttered bitterly. “What is the worth of a religion which humiliates and rejects its own followers? True morality lies in feeding the hungry, nursing the sick and comforting the comfortless.”
Kanyakumari with the Vivekananda rock Memorial, where Naren attained enlightenment
It took Naren four years to tour the whole country. Then, one day, he came to the end of his journey. Reaching Kanya Kumari, he sat on a rock jutting out of the sea. A vast expanse of blue green water stretched, as far as the eye could see, on three sides. Behind him was India. Sick, starving, suffering India! Burying his face in his hands he wept; deep harsh sobs racking his starved, fatigued body. But his mind was clear. He had to find food for his countrymen. He could think of their souls and his own afterwards. But how was that to be done? Science was the answer. Scientific knowledge and modern equipment had to be imported from the West and used to grow more food for the masses. But no one gave anything for nothing. What could his country give in return?
He thought for hours and, slowly, the answer came to him. Weak and enfeebled though she was, India had something the West had lost. Christianity was under severe stress, reeling under a weight of doubt and speculation. Despair was setting in. But India had a spiritualism that went back thousands of years. It had survived the shocks and traumas of innumerable invasions and still stood firm. Give us food and we will give you a philosophy. That could be India’s slogan. He would take this message to the West. But how? Suddenly an idea struck him the enormity of which made him spring up, trembling, to his feet. He would go to Chicago and speak at the Parliament of Religions.
Implementing the decision was easy. Funds were raised by his admirers –the largest donation coming from Raja Ajit Singh of Khetri. And it was the latter who designed the costume he would wear at the Conference and gave him his new name. And thus, Narendranath Datta became Swami Vivekananda[13].
Swami Vivekananda at the Chicago Parliament of religions (1893)
And now the hour, for which he had undertaken a long and hazardous journey, was at hand. Naren walked towards the rostrum his heart thudding violently, his mind blank. Looking with glazed eyes at the sea of faces before him he tried to think of his guru Ramkrishna, tried to recall Ma Kali’s face as he had seen it on the night of his first spiritual experience. But, strangely, another face swam before his eyes — the face of Saraswati, the Goddess of Learning. “Have mercy on me Ma!” he prayed, “Unlock my tongue and give me speech.”
Taking a deep breath he began: “Sisters and Brothers of America.” As an opening sentence, this was an unusual one. People started clapping, a few at first, then more and more joined in. Naren was puzzled. Western audiences were generous with their applause. He knew that. But this was something more than ordinary applause; something he couldn’t fathom. Stirred by an emotion he had never experienced before, his fears fell away. His voice rose sonorous and strong:
“I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance… As different streams, having their sources in different places, all mingle their water in the sea, so Oh Lord, the different paths that men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, all lead to thee…”
The applause rose to a crescendo. Like a mighty storm it washed over the vast hall, in wave after deafening wave. People rose from their chairs and ran towards the rostrum. The other speakers stared at one another. What had the young man said that they hadn’t? Everyone had, at some point or the other, advocated tolerance of other religions. What they didn’t realise was that their discourses had been academic exercises. Naren had spoken from the heart and, in doing so, had won over the hearts of the Americans.
Swami Vivekananda was in a fix. As soon as it became evident that the young ascetic had the power to draw crowds the go-getting Americans lost no time in making a few dollars out of it. A Chicago firm, The Sleighton Lysium Bureau, offered to organise tours in various towns and cities of the United States for the dissemination of his message. Vivekananda signed the three-year contract with alacrity but regretted his decision within a few months. His managers drove him relentlessly from forum to forum and what began as a joyous interaction soon became a painful drudgery. He also found himself out of sync with the average American mindset. They attended his meetings in thousands but most of them looked at him as though he were a rare and exotic animal and asked absurd questions.
“Hey Mr Kanand!” A man addressed him once. “Is it true that in your country mothers throw their babies into a holy river to be eaten by crocodiles?”
“Well,” Vivekananda smiled, “If my mother had done so would I be standing here before you?”
“Boys are not thrown,” another voice was heard. “Only girls…”
“Is that so?” Vivekananda’s lips twitched. “But if all girls are eaten by crocodiles, I wonder how males are born. Perhaps one of you can enlighten me.”
“Even if you deny female infanticide,” an angry voice boomed, “Can you deny suttee?”
“No. But sati has been punishable by law for many years. Now, may I ask you a question? Have you heard of Joan of Arc of France? Or of the thousands of women who were branded as witches and burned at the stake in all parts of Europe? You haven’t? That’s what I thought. The West has conveniently forgotten its own history. You will never question a Frenchman about Joan of Arc. But the moment you see an Indian you’ll make it a point to ask him about sati.”
However, not all Americans were this insensitive. Some came in a genuine spirit of enquiry and listened to him with interest. One of them was a wealthy widow named Ole Bull. Another was a charming, vivacious woman in her thirties. Josephine Macleod, for that was her name, attended all his lectures and, over the years, became a good friend and an ardent admirer.
But, in faraway England, another young woman was waiting for the call. A woman whose destiny would become synonymous with Vivekananda’s, who would, in time to come, make India her home, imbibe her spirit and culture and work for her people as though they were her own…
Margaret Noble was thirty years old–the daughter of an Irish clergyman and a spinster. Love had come to her drab, lonely existence twice but she had been robbed of them both times. Once by death and once — desertion. This last blow was harder to bear than the first and it was in this frame of mind that she first saw Vivekananda. Listening to him, she felt herself transported to another world. She saw herself standing by a well beside a banyan tree under which an ascetic, bathed in the hues of sunset, was murmuring verses in a strange, exotic tongue. The spell broke in a few seconds, and she went home. But, for days afterwards, his face swam before her eyes– a bright golden face with large dark eyes burning with power and passion. She tried to shake it off, but it kept coming back.
After this she started attending Vivekananda’s lectures regularly — though in a spirit of non-acceptance. Her education had given her rational views and she was atheistic by temperament. But though she rejected the Hindu yogi’s doctrines, she couldn’t stay away from him. Vivekananda was amused. Perhaps he heard in the young woman’s vehement denials, an echo of his own. He had ranted against Ramakrishna but gone to him again and again. Margaret, he knew, was going through a similar experience.
There was one thing, though, that had a profound impact on her. Vivekananda never once touched on the negative aspects of the human race. The word ‘Sin’ was missing from his vocabulary. He always appealed to the highest and noblest instincts of humans. “The world needs men and women,” he said once, “who can find the courage to…abandon their own small families and seek out a larger one…” These words fell like blows on Margaret’s heart. She had sought love; a husband and children–a family of her own. But they had eluded her. She didn’t desire them anymore. She would answer Swamiji’s call. She would walk in his footsteps and seek out a larger world.
Vivekananda returned to India after four years — a conquering hero! A special Reception Committee, set up by the Maharaja of Dwarbhanga, met him at Khidirpur dock and escorted him all the way to Sealdah. As the train chugged its way into the station, the air rang with a tremendous cry and the platform shook under the feet of thousands of people pushing, jostling and treading on each other’s toes to catch a glimpse of the man who had left the country as obscure, penniless Naren Datta and returned as the universally acclaimed Swami Vivekananda. Not that everyone came in a spirit of respect. Many were mere onlookers. Some others came to carp and criticise. “The man is no longer a Hindu,” they whispered to one another. “He has eaten forbidden meat and slept with mlecchha[14] women. Besides, what call has a Kayastha to don a sadhu’s robe? What is our great religion coming to! Chhi! Chhi! Chhi!”[15]
Vivekananda was unfazed–touched neither by adulation nor censure. He had his work cut out. The first thing to do was to go to Alambazar and seek the help of his co-disciples in opening a mission in Ramakrishna’s name.
“A mission in Thakur’s[16]name!” the inmates exclaimed, “Like the Christians?”
“Yes.” Squatting on the floor and taking deep puffs from a hookah, Vivekananda said, “I intend to put together a band of committed workers who will go from village to village, providing succour to the poor and needy and educating the masses especially the women of the land. And by education, I don’t mean literacy. That too. But the need of the hour is the inculcation of self-respect and self-worth in our people. India must awake from her stupor.”
From that day onwards Vivekananda turned all his energies into establishing the Mission of his dreams. It couldn’t have come at a better time for plague had broken out in the city and a severe famine was raging in many parts of Bengal. The disciples formed groups and moved from slum to slum and village to village, distributing rations, nursing the sick, burning the dead and teaching the unafflicted how to protect themselves from the dread disease. As for Vivekananda–he drove himself relentlessly though the strain was unbearable. After four years of living in a temperate climate, his body had lost its ability to cope with the heat and humidity of Bengal. He suffered from bouts of fever and dysentery but wouldn’t let up for a second.
He had his misgivings though. Funds were being organised by Ole Bull and Josephine Macleod. But how would he organise a band of women? Women, in this conservative society, refused to interact with males. He wondered what to do. Should he send for Margaret Noble?
The first glimpse of grey was paling the inky darkness of a winter night when a great ship inched its way into the estuary. Margaret Noble stood on the deck shivering, not so much with cold as with apprehension. She had severed all her links with England and come out to India. But would her new country accept her?
After Swamiji’s return, he had written to her a couple of times. Short, dry missives informing her that the Ramkrishna Mission had been established and that Ole Bull and Josephine Macleod were already there supervising the work. Not a word about her joining them. Then, six months later, the letter she had longed for and awaited, had come. A letter that had set her pulses racing despite the formal courtesy of its tone:
“Dear Miss Noble,
“I am now convinced that you have a great future in the work for India. India cannot yet produce great women, she must borrow them from other nations. Yet the difficulties are many. You cannot form any idea of the misery, the superstition, the shunning of the white skin. Then the climate is fearfully hot, not one European comfort is to be had in places out of the cities. You must think well before you plunge in. If you fail or get disgusted, on my part I promise you, I’ll stand by you unto death–whether you work for India or not.”
I will stand by you unto death…– a tremor of ecstasy passed over Margaret’s frame every time she thought of the words. Now, with doubt and fear gnawing at her heart, she repeated them over and over again like a mantra.
Belur Mathh
On alighting she sought his face eagerly in the crowd. Suddenly, a deep musical voice came from behind her. “Margot!” She spun around and got a shock. It was Vivekananda but how he had changed! He was only 34 but he looked close to 50! She didn’t know that he had been extremely ill. Diagnosed with diabetes he had been advised to make substantial changes in his diet, take a lot of rest and keep his mind calm and free. But he had shrugged off the doctor’s counsel particularly the latter part. The mathh[17]in Alambazar had been gutted by a fire and another one was coming up in Belur. Tension and anxiety had become part of his life. There was nothing he could do about it.
Sister Nivedita (1867-1911)
One evening, as they sat together looking out at the river in Belur, Vivekananda fixed his large dark eyes on Margaret’s clear blue ones and said softly, “I’m giving you a new name Margot. A new identity. From henceforth you shall be known as Nivedita. Do you know what that means? It means One who has dedicated herself.”
Fortunately for Vivekananda, the pestilence disappeared from the city as suddenly as it had come. But the grinding work and sleepless nights had taken their toll. He became very weak and had difficulty in breathing. The doctors were alarmed and ordered him to leave the dust and fumes of the city and go to the hills where he could imbibe some pure, clean air. Vivekananda had wanted to go on a pilgrimage to Amarnath for many years and he decided to do so now. Nivedita insisted on accompanying him. He was reluctant at first. It was an arduous, dangerous climb over steep jagged rocks and ice-covered terrain. The weather was wild and inclement, while the most basic amenities were missing. But Nivedita stood firm. She hadn’t come to India to enjoy a holiday, she pointed out. She had abandoned her own country and was trying to put down roots in this soil. She wanted to gain all the experience she could; to merge with the people and become one with them. Why couldn’t she do what he; what so many others were doing? Hadn’t she given herself to this country? Was not her name Nivedita?
On a dark cloudy day at dawn, a party of about three thousand pilgrims set off for Amarnath. Vivekananda and Nivedita walked side by side for a while. Then, suddenly, he left her and strode off to a ledge where a group of ascetics were flailing their arms and crying, “Hara! Hara! Bom! Bom![18]” Nivedita craned her neck to catch a glimpse of her guru. But she couldn’t see him. A throng of pilgrims had swallowed him up.
And thus, it was throughout the journey. He avoided her most of the time. Occasionally he would appear to make a gentle enquiry about her well-being or to bark out a command to the porter to secure her tent against the wind and rain and put a hot water bottle in her bed. Then he would be gone again. Nivedita walked in a crowd but alone. Footsore and weary; limbs aching with exhaustion; heart heavy as lead.
Along the mountain path the pilgrims walked, the line winding and unwinding like a giant snake. And now the path wound upwards, dramatically, over slippery snow-covered rocks for about two thousand feet. This was the last lap and the most dangerous part of the journey. Nivedita’s heart beat fast. Would she be able to negotiate it without him by her side? What if she failed? So many pilgrims lost their footing and fell down the treacherous precipices to lie there forever — buried under drifts of snow. What if she too…? Even as the thought came to her a voice, rich and resonant as a roll of thunder, called out her name. Startled she looked up to see Vivekananda leaning against a boulder smiling down at her. “Look Margot,” he said, “Look ahead of you.”
Following his pointing forefinger, she saw a stretch of level ground covered with a blanket of freshly driven snow which glimmered like a ghostly sea of silver in the light of the fading moon. At the same time, a shout of jubilation came to her ears. Singing and ululating, the frenzied pilgrims ran forward, slipping, falling, helping each other up. The perils of the journey lay behind them. Amarnath was less than a mile away.
Nivedita wanted to wait for Vivekananda. But the crowd engulfed her carrying her along on its waves. On and on she went propelled by the force of faith behind her, feet flying, arms outstretched; deafened by cries of “Hara! Hara! Bom! Bom!” Was this the merging she had envisaged and yearned for? Then why did she feel so restless? So empty?
Amarnath Temple with its shining pillar of ice
Nivedita entered the cave. In front of her was the shining pillar of ice that was the phallus of Shiva. But all she felt was a sense of anticlimax. Was this all there was to see at the end of this seemingly endless, nightmarish journey fraught with so much pain and peril? Water dripping from a crack in the roof of a cave and solidifying into a column of ice?
Vivekananda came in after a while. He had bathed in the river and his dripping body was naked except for a flimsy bit of saffron that covered his genitals. His eyes were stark and staring and his feet unsteady as he ran towards the linga[19] and flinging himself, face downwards, knocked his head on the ground. Then, rising, he stood eyes closed, head bowed over his hands, lips moving in a silent chant. Nivedita noticed that his body was swaying from side to side. As though he would lose his balance, any moment, and fall to the ground. But Vivekananda did not fall. He turned and, fixing his large bloodshot eyes on hers, cried out in a wondering voice.
Naren: “I saw Him Margot. He revealed himself before me. He who is the first in the pantheon! Deb Adideb Mahadeb[20] stood before me in a cloud of blinding light…. And you…you Margot?”
Nivedita: (shamefacedly) “To tell you the truth, I saw nothing and … and felt nothing. Nothing at all. The famed linga thousands come to see is nothing but a natural phenomenon. I’m sure there are dozens of such ice pillars in Europe.”
Vivekananda: “The eyes of your mind are shut like a newborn child’s and your soul sleeps within you. You understand nothing. Yet the great pilgrimage you undertook will not go waste. You’ll receive its fruits when you awaken–older and wiser.”
Returning to Kolkata Vivekananda flung himself into all his self-appointed tasks. But the old energy was gone. He looked and felt like a ghost of his former self. The doctors told him that his heart was severely damaged. It had gone into a shock and stopped the moment he had plunged his body, steaming and quivering with the rigours of the strenuous climb, into the icy waters of the river at Amarnath. He could have dropped down dead that very minute. But, since all organs have a way of recovering themselves, his heart had started beating again on its own. However, the muscles had slackened and it was, now, hanging an inch longer than it should. It was a dangerous condition and his condition could not improve. It could only deteriorate.
Vivekananda had lost touch with his family for many years now. But these days he found himself thinking of them often. He yearned particularly for his mother and went to see her one day. The old lady was shocked to see her son looking so sick and frail and insisted that he rest, excusing himself from his excruciating schedule. Extracting a promise from him to take her on a pilgrimage to Langalbandha, on the banks of the Brahmaputra, where Parasuram had been absolved of the sin of matricide, she cooked a meal for him and fed him with her own hands as though he was a child.
On his way back from Langalbandha, at Dhaka, Vivekananda had an unforgettable experience. It was a hot humid evening and, exhausted from meeting streams of people, he was standing on the balcony in the hope of catching some cool air when he noticed a phaeton at the gate surrounded by people clamouring in agitated voices.
A few minutes later, two women entered the room. One was stout and elderly; her face coarse and darkened with the ravages of her profession. The other was young and a ravishing beauty. “Sadhu Maharaj,” The older woman knocked her head on the ground at Vivekananda’s feet. “This is my daughter. No one would guess, looking at her, that she is very sick. She suffers from asthmatic attacks so severe–she screams with agony. We’ve come to you from very far with a lot of hope.”
“But I’m not a doctor,” Vivekananda smiled. “I try to cure the ills of the mind. And even in that I’m not very successful. I know nothing about the body.”
“Everyone says you are the greatest sadhu living. Read a mantra over my child’s head and release her from her suffering.”
“If I knew such a mantra, I would read it over myself. I’m an asthma patient, too, and suffer excruciating pain at times.”
“You’re testing me my lord!” The woman burst out weeping –harsh, racking sobs rasping out of a chest congealed with years of repressed grief. “I’m a lowly woman led astray in my youth…”
“I’m not testing you Ma,” Vivekananda shook his head sorrowfully. “Sadhus are human like the rest of mankind. If they had the power of bestowing life and health would they not be immortal themselves?”
The woman continued to weep and plead. “Touch my daughter and give her your blessing,” she begged. “That will be mantra enough for her.”
Suddenly the girl rose to her feet and pulled her mother up by the hand. Hate and anger flashed into her beautiful surma-lined[21] eyes. “You’re wasting your time Ma,” she said. “We’re fallen women–despised by everyone. He won’t touch me.”
Vivekananda smiled. Stretching out his hand he placed it on the girl’s head. “If by blessing you I can soothe your pain away I do so with all my heart. Now you must do something for me. If you find a doctor or a sadhu or anybody who can cure your asthma be sure to let me know. I suffer such terrible agony at times– I would be grateful for some relief.”
Nivedita was on a tour of Europe and America to collect donations for the Ramakrishna Mission. Away from the country she gained a clearer perspective. She saw India’s poverty, ignorance and subservience under an alien rule. She felt her pain and humiliation as she had never felt before. She told herself that the first task before anyone who loved India was to rid her of the foreign yoke.
While in America she heard of the great Japanese philosopher, Count Okakura, and his dream of creating a vast Asian race that could overpower the European. Okakura was in India, already, meeting people and pledging support on behalf of his own and several other countries of the east — not moral support alone but military and financial as well. An overjoyed Nivedita decided to abandon what she was doing and throw herself into Okakura’s movement. Swami Vivekananda heard about Nivedita’s return and felt disturbed and angry.
Nivedita: “Count Okakura is launching a movement for the independence of India. He wants me to accompany him to Mayawati. I’ve come to take your permission.”
Vivekananda: “Independence. Hmph! Is it a piece of candy you can snatch away from the British? Who doesn’t know or admit that living under a foreign rule is humiliating? But backwardness, ignorance and superstition are deep rooted social evils which have to be removed first. Freedom will follow. You’re chasing a mirage, Margot.”
Nivedita: “Why do you say that? Count Okakura…”
Vivekananda: “The most important task before you is to educate the women of the land. And that is what you should be doing.”
Nivedita: “I’m not a simple school teacher. I’m a daughter of India. You have dedicated me to her service. That is why I am Nivedita.”
Vivekananda: “No. I haven’t dedicated you to the service of any country. You’re a disciple of my guru Ramakrishna Paramhansa. I brought you here to serve humanity.”
Nivedita: “I haven’t strayed from the path of service. Is not freeing the enslaved service to humanity?”
Vivekananda: “We are ascetics. Politics is not for us. You have two options before you. To stay with the order and obey its rules or sever your connections with the math and follow your own inclinations. I cannot allow the Mission to be threatened.”
Nivedita’s face turned a deathly white. Stooping she touched Vivekananda’s feet and walked out of his presence. Two days later she left for Mayawati with Okakura.
Vivekananda was stunned on hearing the news. But strangely, what he felt most was neither outrage nor a sense of betrayal. He was overwhelmed by a feeling of loss. Nivedita had left him. Not because she had wanted to but because he had compelled her. Had he been too harsh? Too intolerant? He wanted to go to her and soothe her with a few kind words. But every time he thought of crossing the river his spirit quailed. He felt acutely exhausted and breathless these days and the slightest strain brought on severe palpitations. Yet, one day, he went. Dropping into a chair he said with a desperate urgency in his voice. “Come to the mathh Margot. Come as soon as you can.”
Vivekananda meditating
Nivedita went, early one morning, a few days later. She looked very beautiful in a flowing dress of white silk and a string of rudraksha[22] beads around her neck.
Vivekananda: “You came because I asked you. Not because you wanted to.”
Nivedita: “I wanted to with all my heart,” She murmured with tear-filled eyes.
Vivekananda: “You must be hungry. I’ll cook you some breakfast.” He went out and returned with a thala[23].
She ate. He washed her hands and wiped them tenderly finger by finger.
Nivedita: “What are you doing Swamiji? It is I who should be serving you.”
Vivekananda: “Jesus washed the feet of his apostles…” he murmured so low that it sounded like he was almost speaking to himself, “on the last day… “
Nivedita: (shocked) “Why do you say that? There are many years before you. You have so much more to give…”
Vivekananda: “No Margot. I’ve given everything I had. I’ve nothing left.”
Nivedita: (bursting into tears) “Who else but you? Who else but you?”
Vivekananda: “Sometimes it becomes necessary to cut down a large tree to enable the smaller ones to grow. I must make room for you.”
Vivekananda woke up, the next morning, feeling as though he had never been ill in his life. Rising he walked to the balcony without any pain or breathlessness. And, strangest of all, it seemed to him that his vision had improved. Was the sky really as blue as it looked today? The grass and leaves as green? Then a sensation, long forgotten, stirred in his belly. He was hungry. Prodigiously hungry. He yearned for ilish –thick wedges of the delicate fish — some fried crisp in its own fat, some nestling in a rich spicy mustard curry and some in a sweet and tart sauce. He fell hungrily on the food as soon as it was served. Pouring the fried fish along with its oil on a mound of smoking rice he crushed some sharp green chillies into it and ate big handfuls with noises of relish. When the last course, the sweet and sour fish, came he cleaned the thala with his fingers and licked them, “Yesterday’s fast has left me very hungry,” he said, “I’ve never enjoyed a meal so much.”
He spent the whole afternoon talking to some visitors, who had come to the mathh, without betraying a trace of uneasiness or fatigue. But the moment he retired to his room for a rest he exclaimed, “Why is it so hot in here? And so dark? Is there a storm brewing outside?”
His face was streaming with sweat and he was breathing in loud painful gasps. Throwing himself on the bed, he commanded his young disciple Brajen, “Open all the windows, Byaja, and fan me.” Despite the strong breeze that blew in from the open window and Brajen’s frenzied fanning, he cried over and over again, “I’m sizzling all over. This heat is killing me.” Suddenly his head slid from the pillow and fell over the edge of the bed. Brajen leaned over his guru and shrieked in fear. And now, before his amazed eyes, Vivekananda straightened his head slowly and lay on his back. A deep sigh escaped him…then all was still.
In a few minutes the room was full of people. The doctor was sent for. But no one thought of informing Nivedita…
The news reached her the following morning. Snatching up a shawl she ran out of the house, just as she was, and came to Belur. Swamiji’s room was crammed with people, weeping, chanting Ramakrishna’s name and talking in agitated whispers. They made way for her as she walked in softly, on bare feet, and knelt by the bed. He looked exactly as he had yesterday except that his eyes were as red as hibiscus and runnels of blood had congealed around his nose. Asking for some damp cotton wool she wiped the blood tenderly away.
Around two o clock in the afternoon someone said to her. “You must rise now. It is time.” Nivedita moved away without a word. Fingers of ice clutched at her heart as she watched the disciples bathe the body in gangajal and dress it in new saffron robes. Then they carried their guru to a sandalwood pyre set up under a huge bel tree in front of the mathh. Nivedita looked on as the sanyasis[25] chanted mantras and placed his belongings, one by one, on the pyre. Among them was the shawl he had worn the day he had come to see her. “Can I have that?” Nivedita asked the senior most disciple, Saradananda, timidly. “As a keepsake?” Saradananda hesitated a little. “Everything a sanyasi had used in his earthly life is supposed to burn with him. But if you are very keen…”
“No, no,” she said hastily. “There’s no need to break the rule.”
The pyre was lit, and the flames rose to the sky. Nivedita noticed that no one was talking to her. No one had offered her any consolation. She was an outsider already.
Hours went by. The sun changed from a white-hot blur to a ball of fire that resembled the dancing flames on which Nivedita’s eyes were fixed. Suddenly she felt a warmth, a melting in her ice locked heart. Startled, she looked down. A piece of the shawl she had wanted as a keepsake had come flying from the pyre, grazed her breast, and fallen into her lap.
Aruna Chakravartihas been the principal of a prestigious women’s college of Delhi University for ten years. She is also a well-known academic, creative writer and translator with fourteen published books on record. Her novels Jorasanko, Daughters of Jorasanko, The Inheritors, Suralakshmi Villa have sold widely and received rave reviews. The Mendicant Prince and her short story collection, Through a Looking Glass, are her most recent books. She has also received awards such as the Vaitalik Award, Sahitya Akademi Award and Sarat Puraskar for her translations.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
QUANTUM
It was a miniature hemisphere
of chocolate ice cream,
in a silver chalice,
with a gleaming spoon.
When is enough, enough?
Having just one scruple?
The first four notes of Beethoven's fifth?
Taking four hundred pills like sprinkles?
I skimmed the dome with my spoon,
and licked off the coating.
Then I picked out the dark chips
and crunched down on them.
Finally, I anointed my mouth
with the frozen chrism itself,
That one scoop could have been six,
or ten, or a hundred.
NOCTURNE
I opened the blind to reveal the riches of the night…
Red of the roads
Orange of the tree bark
Yellow of the moon
Green of the cat’s eyes
Blue of the grass
Indigo of the sky
Violet of the clouds
Run from the high chroma of the day!
Roam in this rainbow instead.
Caroline Am Bergris is a half-Colombian, half-Pakistani poet living in London. Her poems have been published, online and in print, in Europe and America.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.
I can still remember the address of my childhood home – the house number on North Shore Road in Spring Lake, Michigan, and the five digit zip code. Short, but sweet. Here in Japan, where I’ve lived for the past twenty three years, I’ve had four different addresses, each seemingly longer than the last. I can hardly remember how to write the location of my current domicile, let alone the complicated addresses of apartments past.
Given the chance to win a bag of rice or a free trip at my local supermarket lottery, I would rather pass than take up a pen. My hand starts to cramp as soon as I see a form to fill out. At the bank, in a doctor’s office, or when having to write in the corner of an envelope, I tend to recoil. It takes such a long time to jot down my address.
Written in the Japanese style, which dates back to the Meiji Period, my address starts out with the name of the prefecture, in this case, Tokushima, followed by the county name, the name of my town, the district, and eventually narrows down to a house number. The house numbers, however, are not in sequential order, but from oldest to newest. Our street, like most in Japan, doesn’t have a name.
Postal workers seem to be the only ones to whom addresses here have any meaning, and, to their credit, they generally get mail to the right place. When I first came to this country, however, I hardly ever got letters from my friends and relatives in America. My grandma, one of my most reliable correspondents, refused to write to me unless I sent her address labels. My address was simply too long for her to write. An editor once informed me that I had the most complicated address she’d ever seen in her life.
Cab drivers, on the other hand, can never find my house. I usually advise guests coming by taxi to get dropped off at the neighbourhood grocery store, and I go to meet them on foot. Not even satellites seem to be much help. Although most every year we are required to draw a detailed map from our children’s schools to our house to enable teachers to find us for the annual home visit, one teacher tried to find his way using his car navigation system. I watched for his car from the window as rain poured down outside. Finally, the phone rang. He was lost. He was near a shrine, he said. Could I come and get him? I dashed out with my umbrella and found him a few streets away.
For convenience, I had name cards printed up a few years ago. Now, when someone asks for my address, I simply hand over a card or, more often than not, my email address. It’s easy to remember and I can write it in six seconds.
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Suzanne Kamatawas born and raised in Grand Haven, Michigan. She now lives in Japan with her husband and two children. Her short stories, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in over 100 publications. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, and received a Special Mention in 2006. She is also a two-time winner of the All Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest, winner of the Paris Book Festival, and winner of a SCBWI Magazine Merit Award.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Humans are in a perpetual state of motion — be it intercity, interstate, or inter-country — and the relentless quest to assimilate commences. Embracing a new culture, blending seamlessly with the locals, and adopting regional slangs and accents become daily endeavours. In this race without a finish line, a persistent anxiety takes hold. “What if I don’t quite fit in?” “Will people forever perceive me as an outsider?” “Could I lose touch with my roots?” Trust me, this apprehension intensifies when one immigrates to a foreign land.
The inner conflict of belonging experienced in transcultural migrations casts light on the concept of cultural dysphoria. When I first encountered this term, it piqued my interest in how individuals navigate their daily lives while carrying this weight. Cultural dysphoria, a recent term, is an extension of the concept of dysphoria. EverydayFeminism defines cultural dysphoria as: “…the dissonance between the societal expectations for an individual’s broad cultural performance or identity and their desired embodiment of that culture, or uncertainty about where they fit into cultural categories.”
In simpler terms, someone experiencing cultural dysphoria feels like an alien in a new culture. They grapple with the space between two distinct cultures. While their mind urges them to embrace the tenets of the new cultural paradigm, their heart insists on preserving their native cultural heritage.
It was only recently that I comprehended how the concept of cultural dysphoria applied to both me and my family. This understanding took nearly two decades to crystallise, but as the adage goes, “better late than never.” Such realisation would not have dawned upon me without the pursuit of my Ph.D. thesis. Over time, I delved into novels penned by first-generation South Asian American writers such as Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Amulya Malladi, Naomi Munaveera, and Bapsi Sidhwa. These authors were born in South Asian countries and subsequently migrated to America. Their literary works often delve into the challenges faced by immigrant families in a foreign land. Reading allows us to explore the world, but essays and books also furnish a window through which we can empathise with someone’s narrative. Nevertheless, one’s own story offers a distinct and nuanced perspective. Indeed, first-hand experiences yield unique vantage points.
I was a mere eight-years-old when my father obtained Canada’s Permanent Residency Card, and our journey towards establishing roots in a foreign land began. As a second grader, comprehending that you’re about to traverse over 7,000 miles is no small feat. At times, the gravity of such a situation eluded me. On other occasions, I found excitement in the impending turbulence. It was exhilarating, even though questions like ‘why are we relocating?’ and ‘why must I leave my school?’ continually lingered in my mind, spanning the distance from Delhi to our future home in Calgary.
This is the nature of belongingness – it doesn’t instantaneously manifest if you’ve have never before contemplated the possibility of residing in a country far removed from your homeland. The initial step in transcultural migration involves recognition, transcendence, and integration. One must acknowledge the reality of transcending boundaries, leaving behind their original cultural heritage, and stepping foot in a foreign land with its own distinct cultural tapestry. I refer to this stage as ‘Acceptance’, as it encompasses a multitude of thoughts regarding one’s capacity to accept and be accepted within this new environment.
For my family, the journey of assimilation began the moment we exited YYC Calgary International Airport in November 2006. A friend of my maternal uncle’s son welcomed us—a network woven through connections—a common phenomenon in Indian culture. Connecting with familiar faces, who then introduce you to others, and this chain keeps expanding, is deeply ingrained in our cultural fabric. From being surrounded by individuals of a different ethnicity to grappling with the nuances of time zones, my family sought to adapt to our new Canadian milieu. Isn’t it peculiar how one day you’re in the tranquility of your home, and the very next day, you soaring through the skies, crossing international borders?
Recalling the sequence of events surrounding our immigration, nearly two decades later, is no simple task. Much has evolved, particularly my perspective on life. What once seemed normal has shifted, no longer aligning with my current perceptions. This is the natural progression of personal growth – forgetting, reminiscing, comprehending, and de-constructing. Each emotion makes sense in hindsight, guided by wisdom acquired over time.
At times, we relegate certain emotions to the shadows of our heart. We normalise the experience of residing in the in-between and the accompanying sense of non-belongingness, presuming it to be an idiosyncrasy. However, South Asian diaspora members share these particular sentiments of the in-between. We accept our role as outsiders among the locals, convinced that this is the way it should be, right?
Navigating the new environment while endeavouring to retain a strong connection to one’s roots becomes paramount when relocating to a foreign country. A part of me yearned to return to India to celebrate the Festival of Lights with those left behind, while another part was eager to explore innovative ways of preserving our culture and traditions amidst the bustling streets of a land predominantly inhabited by individuals of a different ethnicity.
During those years, Canada had not yet become the Mecca for Indian students pursuing higher education, as it is today. The immigrant community consisted mainly of those who had relocated in the ’70s or ’80s in pursuit of a brighter future for their children. Consequently, the Indian community was relatively smaller.
The question of belongingness emerged from as early as my first day at school. Where does one truly belong in a classroom of over twenty students with varied ethnicity? Among these students, four were of Indian descent, two hailed from Pakistan, one each from Australia and France, while the remainder were Canadian natives. Yet none of these students were unequivocally ‘Indian.’
The logical assumption might be that I belonged with the group of four Indian-origin students. However, this was not the case because, fundamentally, I was Indian. A subtle distinction lies between being Indian and being of Indian origin. It wasn’t a matter of passports; it ran deeper. I was too Indian to seamlessly integrate with non-Indians and just slightly more Indian than those of Indian origin. I existed as an ‘other’ amidst the ‘others,’ with the four Indian-origin students occasionally amused by my Indian accent. Emerging from a decent background, having received education in a convent school, initiating casual conversations with a simple ‘hey, what’s up?’ was effortless. Yet, adopting a foreign accent was not within my purview. My peers of the same age knew precisely when and how to employ phrases like ‘screw it,’ ‘for God’s sake’, I’m not interested,’ and ‘nahhhh…’ The only phrase that came to mind whenever I wished to express my lack of interest was ‘it doesn’t matter’. As a non-native English speaker, it was the most apt phrase I could muster. Apparently, seamless alignment in terms of accent, language, and communication is pivotal to establishing friendships in a foreign land. Failure to do so results in being cast aside as an outsider.
The nagging thought that permeated my family’s collective consciousness during those early days in Canada was this: Do we belong here among people who do not perceive us as one of themselves? We had successfully traversed the initial stage of transcultural migration. Consequently, the second stage — which I’ve labelled ‘Non-belongingness’ — became a pivotal moment, shedding light on our lack of alignment with both people of Indian origin and non-Indians. Our cultural identity remained a poignant question mark, casting a shadow over our Canadian experience.
For my father, commuting to work entailed a daily two-hour journey to and from his workplace. Occasional weekend outings, mostly for groceries, marked the extent of our excursions. Indian suits were my mother’s customary attire, but how long would that persist? After a few months, she transitioned to wearing jeans and long shirts. While Indian suits exude grace and elegance, she lamented the difficulty of blending in. “Passing by a row of foreigners while wearing a salwar kameez is a daunting task; one becomes the subject of unwarranted stares,” she confided. Her eyes betrayed a longing for the life she left behind in India, where she could choose her favourite salwar kameez and embellish it with the most exquisite dupatta in her wardrobe without attracting undue attention. I sensed her yearning for India, particularly when my maternal grandfather — whom I affectionately called Nanu — phoned. Each call filled her with joy, and her countenance radiated even more than usual. Perhaps Nanu sensed her yearning to return, which manifested as glistening tears on my mother’s cheeks.
Life in Canada was a far cry from what it used to be in India. As Diwali approached, I eagerly anticipated the deluge of sweets and gifts that would typically inundate our home in India. However, that year, those customary tokens of celebration were conspicuously absent, a stark reminder that we had yet to establish a substantial social network in Canada. Everything had changed. People in Canada appeared disinterested in the Festival of Lights. It was just another day for them. Some were engrossed in preparations for Christmas, while others seemed oblivious to the existence of Diwali, India’s most eagerly awaited festival. With no candles adorning our home, no gifts to fuel our excitement, and nothing resembling the grandeur of an Indian Diwali, our spirits plummeted upon realising that we had yet to sever our emotional ties to our culture. It was a perplexing sensation. While I yearned to embrace the festivities of Christmas, the absence of enthusiasm for Diwali contrasted starkly with my Canadian expectations. I believe my parents experienced a similar sentiment because on that day, an uncharacteristic sombreness shrouded our smiles. We smiled for each other, but the glint in our eyes bespoke our longing for our true home, India.
In this narrative, where did we truly belong? Some may argue that we belonged where we resided at that moment, while others might reflect on their immigrant experiences and ponder their sense of belonging. This is where the bitter realisation of cultural dysphoria takes root. The inability to fully integrate into a foreign land, the feeling of being an outsider, and the disconnect between cultural expectations and reality culminate in a dysphoric sensation, marking the onset of the third stage in an individual’s transcultural migration journey. At this juncture, it becomes imperative to recognise that while certain aspects of one’s former culture must be relinquished, others must be preserved. I refer to this third stage as the ‘In-Between.’
The third stage of the transcultural migration experience delineates the unique space an individual occupies, betwixt and between two cultures. As immigrants, we embraced certain facets of the new culture while shedding some of our own, and vice versa, to carve out a niche that could accommodate and harmonise both cultures. Within this ‘In-Between,’ a new persona emerged. We remained too Indian for the world outside, yet our hearts affirmed it was for the best.
That year in Canada unfolded with a plethora of surprises. And then, we returned to India. But that’s a story for another essay!
The feeling of cultural dysphoria is far from uncommon. A majority of migrants grapple with the turmoil of cultural conflicts when transitioning to a new country. While this narrative offers a glimpse into how transcultural migrations can affect an individual, there exist countless other stories waiting to be shared with the world. In the area of transcultural migration, each thread tells a unique story, and my narrative is but one strand in this rich fabric of human experience. As my family and I navigated the in-between of two cultures, I am reminded that our journey is a testament to resilience, adaptability, and the enduring power of cultural identity. While the road may be fraught with challenges, the experience has imbued us with a profound appreciation for new cultures. Cultural dysphoria may cast its shadow, but it also offers a canvas for personal growth and understanding. It is my hope that by sharing our story, we illuminate the path for others embarking on similar journeys and foster a deeper understanding of the intricate web of the transcultural in-between.
Disha Dahiya is a PhD Research Scholar in English Literature. She has a keen interest in exploring the South Asian narrative across borders and boundaries while focusing on the cultural aspect of transcultural migrations.
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Title: South to South: Writing South Asia in the American South
Editor: Khem K. Aryal
Publisher: Texas Review Press
Taken together, the stories and essays in the new anthology edited by Khem K. Aryal South to South, Writing South Asia in the American South, offer an intimate, richly articulated expression of what it means to live in the American South as a South Asian immigrant. Several stories construct the enduring feeling of loss, both for new immigrants and old. Sixteen authors have been featured. Some have dealt with the issue through fiction and some, through non-fiction.
In “The Immigrant”, a short story by Chaitali Sen, a young immigrant man Dhruv tries to compose a letter to his parents describing his new life in America but fails to find the language. While dining next to the hotel where he is staying during a work trip, Dhruv is upset by the disappearance of a small boy and the fruitless search of the distraught parents, which reminds him of his own state in America, where he seems to have lost his way. In “Pine” by Hasantika Sirisena, a young Sri Lankan mother of two small children tries to hold on to her customs from home. Her husband walks out on her in a bid to make a new, successful life in America, unburdened by the trappings of culture and religion. She seems in danger of losing her two children also, who are more interested in Christmas trees than the rituals she wants to share with them. In a startling turn of events, she comes to terms with her own uprooting with touching courage.
Several stories remind us of the remarkable flexibility of South Asian immigrants, who transform themselves and become new people after putting down roots in a new place. One such story is Aruni Kashyap’s “Nafisa Ali’s Life, Love, and Friendships Before and After the Travel Ban”, about a young married woman from the war-torn region of Assam, whose mother and husband in India constantly worry about her safety. Nafisa lives next door to a couple as different from her as possible; they do not work, they drink and they have public sex – yet, Nafisa feels drawn to them as she embraces her new relationships and identity in America to escape her traumatic past. In “Nature Exchange”, Sindhya Bhanoo tells the story of a South Asian woman married to a white man whose relationship with her husband comes to an end when their son dies in an all too typical American phenomenon, a school shooting.
Repeatedly, we see immigrant women in a state of extreme desolation and isolation, left to their own devices to find meaning afresh in a foreign land. Whether they feel their children moving away from them or they literally lose a child, children seem to act as an anchor for the immigrant mother, but in each story, this most intimate of relationships only proves transitory. There are also contradictions. Whereas Sirisena’s story shows a man more willing to assimilate and adapt to America, in Kashyap’s story, the husband, sitting in India, draws easy conclusions about America (denouncing drinking, dancing, and their anti-immigration status), whereas the wife in America, tired of the stresses of living in a war-torn country, finds respite from her homeland’s history of trauma by partying with her office mates and Southern neighbors.
Parallel themes run through the entries. Both stories and essays articulate the craving for tea, one aspect of their identity that South Asians have carried overseas. Also poignant are tales of the early days of migration and the transformation people undergo over the years. Jaya Wagle writes of having an arranged marriage and making the long journey by plane with the man she marries to another country. The whole experience of her new marriage seems as unknown, fragmented, and mysterious as the new country to which they have come. The essay is poignant for the specificity of haunting details, and the transformation of an immigrant evident over the years.
But what makes these South Asian immigrant experiences uniquely southern? One pattern apparent through all the stories is the lack of public transport and public space. The new immigrants in these essays and stories are in cars and Ubers, tucked away in suburban houses or secluded apartments in small towns, the lack of public community accentuating their isolation. Added to this physical landscape is the South Asian immigrant’s alienation from the politics of the region.
The essays, compared to the stories, seem more concerned about identity and more strident about equating immigrant identity with patriotism and allegiance to the Democratic Party. In “Gettysburg”, Kirtan Nautiyal writes about playing the game Sid Meier’s Gettysburg based on the battle of Gettysburg, admiring Union army heroes, imbibing American history in school, and watching the film Gettysburg, wanting to prove himself an American. Throughout the essay, he seems to correlate being an immigrant with proving one’s patriotism towards his adopted country. He stretches it to a point where he would be willing die in a battle – a price, it seems, immigrants must be willing to pay to show their love for America. The essay, predictably, ends with the story of Captain Humayun Khan, who was killed in the Iraq war, told at the 2016 Democratic Convention. Anjali Erenjati writes about taking a fun car trip with her new immigrant friends who do not share her trauma of growing up in the deep South, where she faced a racist incident as a young teenager.
Essays, also, seem more directly to address the question of identity, specifically, being questioned about one’s identity. In Tarfia Faizullah’s humorous essay “Necessary Failure”, she is asked repeatedly where she is from, as her answer, “I grew up in Midland, Texas,” fails to satisfy her co-worker in a theater festival box office in Alabama. On Jaya Wagle’s first night in America, two policemen accost her husband in Texan English when she mistakenly calls 911. Later, the old women she meets at her library writing workshop ask her how long it took her to learn English, a language she has spoken all her life.
The editor Khem K. Aryal is an associate professor of English at Arkansas State University. He is a writer, editor, and translator from Nepal. His short-story collection, The In-Betweeners, is forthcoming from Braddock Avenue Books.
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Gemini Wahhaj is the author of the forthcoming novel The Children of This Madness (7.13 Books, December 2023) and the forthcoming short-story collection Katy Family (Jackleg Press, Spring 2025). Her fiction is in or forthcoming in Granta, Third Coast, Chicago Quarterly Review, and other magazines.
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In childhood I recall getting my coveted membership to Save Our Seas. I loved the sea and marine animals, and this seemed a meaningful way of helping from a child’s perspective. I recall reading Rachael Carsons famous books Silent Spring and The Sea Around Us at the same age and wondering how a book written in the sixties could be so prescient and why the subject was still under debate? If a ten-year-old can understand the message Carson had, of indiscriminate application of agricultural chemicals, pesticides, and other modern chemicals polluting waterways, damaging wildlife populations and causing health problems for humans, then why not adults?
It’s easy for a child’s mind to think those simple questions, not understanding the intricacies of what’s at play. Not least; politics, big business and money. These more than anything has dictated international policy, and it’s not science that sways policy, it’s influence. Vandana Shiva, an Indian environmentalist, is another such example of a prescient activist whose truth has been stifled in the march toward profit. Shiva, both physicist and social activist, founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Natural Resource Policy devoted to developing sustainable methods of agriculture. Shiva is contended; “Justice and sustainability both demand that we do not use more resources than we need. Uniformity is not nature’s way; diversity is nature’s way. We are either going to have a future where women lead the way to make peace with the Earth or we are not going to have a human future at all.”
Sadly, Shiva’s work is less known than companies like Monsanto who are responsible for mass destruction due to putting profits before conscience in the selling of GMO[1] seeds that caused widespread bankruptcy, suicides and irreversible environmental damage. In 1995, the United States Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, listed Monsanto among the top 5 lethal corporations dumping toxic waste, as it was recorded dumping nearly 37 million tons of toxic waste, through air, water, and land. . It is unfathomable why such blatant atrocities should be permitted but our global history is littered with them.
Scientists have warned since the 1800s, where experiments suggesting that human-produced carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gases were able to collect in the atmosphere and insulate Earth (or its reverse) were met with more curiosity than concern. By the late 1950s, CO2 readings would offer some of the first data to corroborate the global warming theory. That it’s not if, but when, climate change will alter the way humans experience life on this planet, let alone wildlife and nature.
At one extreme we have the eco warrior who has valiantly tried to campaign and actively fight against human encroachment; in the middle, we have the skeptic who points to fluctuating weather patterns going back millennia and at the other extreme, there are the climate deniers who despite having children seem not to be concerned about the earth those children will inherit. There is proof that “Dating back to the ancient Greeks, many people had proposed that humans could change temperatures and influence rainfall by chopping down trees, plowing fields or irrigating a desert.”
If I sound biased it is because it’s a generally accepted fact that the earth isn’t just heating up, it is changing. The only issue under debate now is who or what is responsible, if anyone is, and how long do we have before things get really bad. Twenty years ago, people still mulled over whether climate change was happening, many believing it was just cyclical and sometimes it was, but there have been enough giant seismic changes in the last 40 years to put that doubt to rest. “Scientists have pieced together a record of the earth’s climate by analysing a number of indirect measures of climate, such as ice cores, tree rings, glacier lengths, pollen remains, and ocean sediments, and by studying changes in the earth’s orbit around the sun. This record shows that the climate varies naturally over a wide range of time scales, but this variability does not explain the observed warming since the 1950s. Rather, it is extremely likely (> 95%) that human activities have been the dominant cause of that warming.”
Now if you turn on the TV, the nightly news is as much about weather as it is other things. Weather dominates our lives more than ever. Perhaps it’s ironic that ancient man would live or die by weather and we are now doing the same. The heyday of calm weather may have been slightly exaggerated but most people over 50 can attest that things weren’t quite as dramatic all the time, every year, as they appear to be now.
The harbinger of our behaviour in terms of polluting the environment has speeded up, something that may have been inevitable but could possibly have been avoided. The hardest part being that ‘developed’ countries such as America and Europe asked ‘developing’ countries to reduce their carbon and other emissions without really reflecting that they were as if not more guilty, relatively speaking, before they ‘saw the light’. To ask developing countries to leapfrog ahead in their development for the sake of the environment is coming from a position of privilege, having already polluted the world themselves first.
On the other hand, developing countries may struggle to reduce emissions because they are gaining traction in terms of improving quality of life for most of their population but are not there yet in terms of having the luxury to reduce emissions. It takes a lot of money, effort, commitment and determination to do this and for a country that is trying to improve its lot for its citizens this isn’t always their first priority, not to mention the patronising tone of developed countries demanding this be done. It is important to see this relationally which means understanding the difference in countries development and that some of those countries were abused and depleted of resources and kept ‘poor’ by conquering overlords who reaped the benefits and left them poor as a result. Those counties will struggle to climb out of the post-colonial model and that should be considered when judging them.
But we don’t have time. Despite know this beforehand, we did not do enough. In the late 1800’s, Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius [1859-1927] wondered if decreasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere might cool Earth. To explain earth’s ice ages, he considered if decreased volcanic activity could lower CO2 levels globally. Those calculations evidenced that if CO2 levels were halved, global temperatures may decrease by about 9 degrees Fahrenheit. From this, Arrhenius investigated if the reverse were also true; investigating what would occur if CO2 levels doubled. His results suggested global temperatures would increase by the same amount.
By the 1980s global temperatures were going rapidly higher. So, climate-based experts use 1988 as a critical turning point when events placed global warming in the spotlight with extreme weather and increased public interest. Scientists, the UN and many others warned we were heading to a point of no return.
Turn on the news today and we seem to be there.
Even if we did everything right as a planet from now on, it would still be too late to repair the biggest climate change consequences. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try but it’s alarming to imagine we’ve let it become too late, though not surprising when you consider the apathy of world leaders to come together and make this happen.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ remarks to the General Assembly in March 2022 illustrates this: “Just last week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued an alarming report that showed climate impacts are already devastating every region of the world, but particularly developing countries and small island States. The session considered the irreversible impacts of the climate crisis, which could render some parts of the earth uninhabitable.” What does it mean for us? For the future generations if there are to be any? It means things we took for granted will change. Just as more animals are going extinct than ever before we also must look to history to give us an idea of what we might face in the near future.
Look how many times there have been huge seismic shifts in the earth? One example in particular is quite interesting. The Storegga Slide happened in approximately (600-BCE) and was the largest Paleo tsunami to hit Europe in the (Paleo) era. It altered the geography of Europe massively, causing England to break off from continental Europe from where Scotland was attached to Scandinavia. This was lost beneath the sea as a huge part of Scandinavia broke off and caused giant waves that poured over this fertile land and swallowed it whole.
Climate deniers use these types of stories to explain away climate change as being a natural phenomenon but that’s inaccurate. Whilst significant and damaging things have occurred throughout history and will continue to, as scientists warned, it’s the number of disasters and changes occurring that count, not that they happen but that they happen with such regularity and severity. It’s been this hot before, but has it been this hot consistently and throughout the world for as long before? I was born in a year where there was freak heatwave but that’s just it, it was a freak heatwave.
Such things are natural in nature but not if its progressive or things keep happening one after the other. People assume if there is a cold winter then climate change can’t be real but that’s the funny thing, it’s the extremes of weather as much as heat, that are indicative of climate change. For every extraordinarily hot summer and burning Hawaii, there are extreme weather events in winter too as the planet falls out of a healthy cycle and is slowly losing its ability to nurture life like it used to.
Does it mean we will become extinct? Or just that life will become harder and less places habitable? And hasn’t that happened before? Well, it has, in so much as once Africa was a grassland without drought and Europe was covered in ice. But when a planet first forms it’s likely to have extreme weather. As long as humans have been churning out chemicals that pollute the seas and mining the earth for its ore, we’ve accelerated and exacerbated those disasters. And just as it is believed a meteor killed off the dinosaurs and a virus might have killed off the Neanderthals it’s possible our actions will hasten our demise and at very least make life more unbearable.
How? Along with viruses being more omnipresent than previously and antibiotic resistance, UV exposure and higher radiation have increased. The average human has more chemicals and formaldehyde and plastics in their body than at any other point in history. It affects our health, our reproduction and our longevity. Cancers hit the young more than ever before. We’re either over medicated or not able to afford medication. If global temperatures rose by 11 or 12 degrees, more than half the world’s population, as distributed today, would die of direct heat. The disparity between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ have exaggerated like in the feudal past. The idea we’re all middle class is a myth borne on ownership for technology rather than quality of life, which for many working two or three jobs to sustain their lifestyle, is hardly enviable.
The world is heading for a collision, and we are propagating this by a lifestyle we don’t seem capable of changing. If we label those who care about the environment as eco terrorists and pay football players millions whilst leaving nurses and teachers underfunded? Our priorities must be reflected in these things to have a trickledown effect in the future. If we can’t educate our children to understand that saving the planet isn’t just a day every year or a whim but must be a full-time effort, then what hope does the future possess?
ActNow is the United Nations campaign to inspire people to act for the Sustainable Development Goals and many other organisations like it fight against misinformation and seek to actuate these goals, but they’re often drowned out by lobbyists for special interests, such as the car industry, gas industry, fossil fuel industry, nuclear industry etc.
Just like in the fight against cancer, we need science to lead the way, that science which is not the influenced by special interest groups, like in the case of cancer, big-pharma and big-business. We need to take profit out of research and make it objective rather than tied to business, so it can be unimpeded to do what’s necessary. With cancer research, profit has stymied progress and stalled any meaningful change, instead people believe cancer is being cured by pharmaceutical promises, whilst more people than ever are getting cancer. Contrast this to climate change and if we don’t do the research into sustainable alternatives and ways to live into the future, there may be no future worth living for.
All hope is not completely lost of course. We always find ways, maybe one of them will be to go off world whilst another would be to live in Antarctica when it melts, provided the sea doesn’t swallow it. But what of the towns and cities by the coasts? What will that look like in 50 years? Maybe less. I think in my life time it is predicted that many of these places will be unliveable, beneath water, and whilst this has happened before it hasn’t happened to this degree. Yes, Venice has always been sinking and maybe NYC wasn’t built on the best land but everywhere else? And what will the displaced do? And how is space travel possible without a healthy earth?
Those old enough can attest that the world seems to be burning and statistically with more people than ever on an already burgeoning planet in terms of resources. We seem to be wasting more food, yet more people are hungry in certain pockets of the world. We are growing hotter in some parts, colder in others, heatwaves represent an increasing threat to cities in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres. And it’s shifting agricultural production. Heatwaves are affecting colder countries too. A study states: “As illustrated by the example of Quebec, rising temperatures and heatwaves are an increasing hazard in countries of comparably cold climate as well as in warmer climates. According to a report published by UN Climate Change, higher temperatures due to climate change cause heatwaves which affect human health. For example, in Germany alone, the heatwave of 2003 resulted in nearly 7,000 deaths and many heat-related illnesses due to heat stroke, dehydration, and cardiovascular disease.”
Realistically many places in the planet are harder to live in, firstly because prices are pushed artificially high by unrelenting inflation but slower wage increases, people are often underemployed or expected to work longer hours for less pay if you consider the cost of living 50 years ago to now and relate that to increase in wages. On another level, people’s standards of living seem to improve in some areas, but again this is hard to gauge when you consider the divide between the very wealthy elite and the rest.
In America at least, displaced people’s flood through the borders and are hopefully given shelter and housing and opportunities but are they really better off than from the places they have fled? In some circumstances invariably, but for others, they may earn more but that money is swallowed by the higher cost of living; so, they’re not really better off. It’s an illusion to consider America as the land of the free or the American Dream, with so many living below the poverty line or just above it, which is negligible when you consider you may have slightly more money but you are thus not eligible for social assistance so you end up being as poor or poorer than those who do qualify for social assistance. This all relates to climate change because what incentive do people who are struggling to survive have, to help save the environment? Can you blame them? Shouldn’t we blame if we are to allocate blame, those who perpetuate poverty and turn a blind eye to its outcomes? Like former colonial countries who once having raped the land, decry its poverty, even as it’s the direct result of such pillage? Haiti being a great example of that.
Meanwhile the war machine grinds on and we pour money into that, to the detriment of climate change. Climate change is left for summits about but little changes. Countries make pledges but few are actuated and that’s without considering the lies that abound, or the cover ups of environmental disasters that are hushed up but have caused immeasurable harm. In 2017, the US Air Force used USD$4.9 billion worth of fuel; also, that year, the US military was responsible for 59 million tons of CO2 which is the same as total emissions of some industrialised countries like Switzerland or Sweden.
If we don’t even get the actual truth, how can we know the true extent of damage and our real part in it? Think of the nuclear disasters? That said, it’s understandable countries seeking to free themselves from fossil fuels would consider nuclear power, but how tenable is that when it depends upon people to function, what if those people were lost? Would the sites go critical and kill all survivors? Where do we safely store radioactive nuclear waste when it takes thousands of years to degrade even slightly? Just like those toxic super-dumping sites dotted throughout the planet, filling the seas with plastic and debris, we don’t think about the consequence of such dumping, only the immediacy of needing air conditioners.
Eventually fossil fuels will run out, but we haven’t found a tangible replacement. Electric car batteries don’t do well in heat, they also aren’t as durable in distance driving, cost a lot in using electricity which is still using resources, are prohibitively expensive and likewise with solar energy and wind energy. It seems there are downsides to all we’ve come up with so far, and whilst some progress is made with desalination of water to ensure clean drinking water and terraforming of previously uninhabitable land, is it enough to ward off the inevitable or does it mean those who already are rich, will be somewhat protected from the first consequences of planet earths deteriorating climate, whilst those without, will be the first to pay the price?
We’ve had so many canaries in the coal mine warnings from long before now, that none of this is news but people still en mass prefer not to think of it. When polled, voters in America usually do not put climate change in the top five concerns they have. The last few years this has changed, and that might signal a positive shift to taking climate change seriously, but it’s a bit late. Things can be done to shore up some of the fragile resources, but it will take a sustained commitment. How can that happen if majority of politicians’ are more focused on power and money than true change, renewable energy that works and a consensus that if we do nothing, we only have ourselves to blame? We have to change politics, policies and education if we hope to have a meaningful impact long term.
If we replace jobs with AI and technology as we are doing, how will people afford to improve their lives and make significant change? Everything is interconnected, it all matters, but we have to care, and being distracted by technology and super stars isn’t the answer. Why can’t an eco-warrior be a hero as much as a basketball player? We must keep trying. As Dr. Vandana Shiva is quoted as saying; “I do not allow myself to be overcome by hopelessness, no matter how tough the situation. I believe that if you just do your little bit without thinking of the bigness of what you stand against, if you turn to the enlargement of your own capacities, just that itself creates new potential.”
Candice Louisa Daquin is a Psychotherapist and Editor, having worked in Europe, Canada and the USA. Daquins own work is also published widely, she has written five books of poetry, the last published by Finishing Line Press called Pinch the Lock. Her website is www thefeatheredsleep.com
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G Venkatesh writes about a book from 1946. What is interesting is no women writers are featured in it despite their being a phrase which he quotes in his essay, ‘a stepdaughter of the Muses’…
Photo graph by G Venkatesh
There is this book published in 1946 in New York, that I picked up at a Red Cross charity shop in Karlstad (Sweden) of late. A compilation of micro-biographies (make that ‘nano’ if you will) of 20 novelists (fiction-writers in other words) from Italy, Spain, France, England, Scotland, the USA, Russia and Ireland, who graced the world of literature in flesh between the mid-14th and the mid-20th centuries, and will continue to do so, in spirit, forever.
Pillars of fertile imagination, seeded from the idea-realm Visual by G Venkatesh
I venture in this article to present some gleanings from this little gem of a book, to enlighten, motivate, inspire, educate and rekindle interest in the classics of yore. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that all writing happens by the grace of God. We witness that in the lives of the twenty writers profiled in the book. Some had an inborn urge to write, some developed the penchant to do so as if the idea floated in from the idea-realm beyond the astral, and some others were blessed by the Divine to transmute their pain and suffering to the written word that has stood the test of time, and will continue to do so, into the distant future. Condemnation paved the way to commendation for some, while rejections emboldened others to transcend the limits of human judgement and rejoice in the sunshine of hard-earned glory.
At its perigee, the ‘novel’, as observed by Henry and Dana Lee Thomas, is an epitome of philosophy as applied to life. The Thomases ask readers to consider the life of every novelist profiled to be a magnum opus in itself – each adorned with facts stranger than fiction.
Boccaccio, Rabelais, Cervantes
This is an Italian-French-Spanish trio (encompassing the 14th to the early 17th century), and perhaps most of the readers may be familiar only with the third-named. Giovanni Boccaccio was a contemporary of Alighieri Dante (whose biography he wrote). A ‘friendly sinner’, he was a devotee of the here and now, while also being profoundly interested in the hereafter.’ Novelists, well and truly, leave behind accounts of their times, couched in fiction (and that, read alongwith factual history, helps us readers to visualise and understand better how things were in the past). The ‘poets’ in them, simultaneously dwell on and dream about how things can, must and will be in the future. Many of them refrain from including a semi-autobiographical element to their novels, and the Thomases have identified Francois Rabelais as being one such. To the Frenchman, all life was an anecdote with a bitter ending, a truth he based his limited fictional creations on.
Miguel de Cervantes, the Spaniard, is presented as a disappointed, shattered and disgusted man, who was chiefly motivated by his own trials, travails and tribulations to pen the famous Don Quixote. This knight who fought windmills, was perhaps what Cervantes thought himself to be – blessed with the good fortune to live in folly and die in wisdom.
Defoe, Swift, Sterne
From the simple Quixote and the clumsy Sancho Panza to the resourceful Robinson Crusoe and his helpful Man Friday, characters created by Daniel Defoe in a novel eponymous with the protagonist. Defoe was a paradox of moral integrity and material ambition (if you can visualise one such blend), who by virtue of the fact that he donned the mantles of businessman, pedlar, politician, pamphleteer and spy (not necessarily in that order) in his life, could interpret mankind expertly in his fiction. A kind of ‘been-there, seen-that, done-that, can-write-about-all-with-authority’. Jonathan Swift, of Gulliver’s Travels fame, was gifted with a supreme intellect and a spiritual-religious leaning, but encumbered by physical weakness. God gives but also deprives at the same time, a mystery which humankind has not been able to solve. Fatherless when barely half-a-year old, he was verily a titan (like the character Gulliver he created) among pygmies (like the Lilliputians). He abhorred injustice and thought and prayed forever for the felicity of humankind. He lived to be 78, but contended on the basis of his experiences that the gift of a long life is bought at a very high price.
Laurence Sterne, the preacher-poet Yorkshireman, left behind several nuggets of wisdom in his novels and a couple of them can be cited hereunder:
“I laugh till I cry, and I cry till I laugh” (reminding one of the Yin and the Yang which feed into each other)
“Give me all the blessings of wisdom and religion if you will, but above all, let me be a man.”
Scott, Balzac, Dumas
Sir Walter Scott, while being a prodigy like Swift, also had to contend with physical disabilities like him. He tided over them marvellously, prudently, gallantly and tirelessly, en route to a knighthood and immortality in the realm of English literature. Dreamy Honoré de Balzac, obdurate and uncompromising, believed that man’s destiny and purpose in life was to “rise from action through abstraction to sight” – a deed-word-thought ascent in other words. “Life lies within us (spiritual), and not without us (material)”, he averred. He never got the glory he deserved when he was alive, and his soul perhaps got the peace it richly merited when fame showed up posthumously.
Athos, Porthos, Aramis and D’Artagnan – characters from The Three Musketeers, a novel by Alexandre Dumas which presents the facts of 19th century France through the medium of fiction – were known to school-goers in the 1970s and 1980s, like yours sincerely. Dumas, as the Thomases have noted, met praise with a shrug and insults with a smile – stoically in other words. However, he had a penchant for sarcasm and trenchant wit which were unleashed whenever required. “I do not know how I produce my poems. Ask a plum tree how it produces plums,” is verily a testimony to his transatlantic contemporary Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “All writing happens by the grace of God.”
Hugo, Flaubert, Hawthorne
Two Frenchman and a New-Englander American comprise this trio. Viktor Marie Hugo, of Les Misérables fame, was born in the same year as Dumas, and was regarded widely as the ‘Head’ of the 19th century to Abraham Lincoln’s ‘Heart’. His crests of hard-won success coincided with the troughs of ill-deserved sorrow (he had to contend with the deaths of his wife and children). The Divine Will strengthened his mind, soul and fingers to move quill on paper, enabling the much-bereaved Frenchman to cope and conquer. “Sorrow,” he wrote, “is but a prelude to joy.” A stoic would however add, “and vice versa”. Quite like Sterne’s “I laugh till I cry, and I cry till I laugh”. Despite all that he had to endure; Hugo always believed in God and the purposes he lays out for human beings in their lives.
Hugo’s friend Gustave Flaubert considered the written word to be a living entity, with a voice, perfume, personality and soul. A concoction of realism and romanticism, if ever there was one, Flaubert was also a peculiar amalgamation of poet-cynic, artist-scientist and humankind’s comforter-despiser. He ardently believed that though the soul is trapped within a mortal corpus on the terrestrial realm, it (which is the actual identity of a human being) lives in the idea-realm, and finds its rewards therein.
Hawthorne, on the other side of the ocean, was charmed by the sea and surf and sand in his childhood and youth, having spent a lot of time along the New England coast in north-western America. That led him to dwell on the mysteries of the human soul (which continue to be mysteries at the time of writing), while rebelling against the Puritanic influences that had engulfed the region. He was on an eternal quest, an intellectual and moral pathfinder in his own right, and a pioneering rebel with the pen and quill in his arsenal.
Thackeray, Dickens, Dostoyevsky
William Makepeace Thackeray, readers will be interested to know, was born in Calcutta (now, Kolkata). A sentimental cynic who glimpsed the stupidity of life through the fog of sorrow, he believed that foolishness of the past is a pre-requisite to wisdom in the present and the future – in other words, simply put, we learn from our errors as we move on. ‘Gifted with a bright wit and an attractive humour’, in the words of Charlotte Bronte, he contended that literature was more a misfortune and less a profession. His cynicism helped him to grasp reality, and feel empowered in the process –“How very weak the very wise; how very small the truly great are.” Kind and wise humans often lack the power to change things for the better, while the powerful ones lack the conscience, will and goodness to want to do so.
Thackeray rivalled with Charles Dickens for fame and glory. Dickens, similar to Scott and Swift, had to contend with physical discomfort in his childhood and adolescence, in addition to a father who was not responsible with the money he earned. These experiences would later feed into the stories he churned out prolifically; semi-autobiographical some of them, while informing readers at the same time about the times that prevailed – “the best of times and the worst of times” (A Tale of Two Cities). His humble beginnings made him burn the midnight oil later in life, fuelled by the ambition to succeed, which he sustained all along. Quite like it was Hugo across the Channel, the troughs of torment annulled the acmes of accomplishment. Yet, he remained grateful to God and fellow-humans for the life he lived, and bade one and all a ‘respectful and affectionate farewell’, before ascending to the astral realm.
Reclusive Feodor Dostoyevsky, like Hawthorne in America, struggled to shake off a Puritan upbringing and sought fodder for his literature among the common man – the suffering proletariat who visited liquor shops to drown their sorrows in alcohol. Man, he believed, was responsible for his own salvation…and not God. He however did believe at times that God saved those whom men punished. But then, he also contradicted himself or seemed to do so, when he said that man is saved only because the Devil exists. But perhaps that was not a contradiction after all – God saves man from what he has to be saved from! The meaning of life, according to Dostoyevsky, was the brute-to-angel and the sinner-to-saint transformation of man; quite on the lines of Balzac’s action-abstraction-sight prescription.
Novelist
Lifespan
Selected works
Giovanni Boccaccio
1313-1375
Filocolo, Filostrato, Teseide, Fiammetta, Amorosa Visione, Ameto, Decameron, Life of Dante
Francois Rabelais
1495 – 1553
Pantagruel, Gargantua
Miguel de Cervantes
1547 – 1616
Galatea, Don Quixote, Novelas Exemplares, Persiles y Sigismunda
Daniel Defoe
1661-1731
The True-Born Englishman, The Apparition of Mrs Veal, Robinson Crusoe, The Dumb Philosopher, Serious Reflections, Moll Flanders
Jonathan Swift
1667 – 1745
The Battle of the Books, The Tale of a Tub, Gulliver’s Travels Children of the Poor, Directions to Servants, Polite Conversation
Laurence Sterne
1713-1768
A political romance, Tristram Shandy, Sermons by Yorick, The Sentimental Journey
Sir Walter Scott
1771 – 1832
The Lady of the Last Minstrel, Ivanhoe, Kenilworth, The Lady of the Lake, Waverley, The Monastery
Honoré de Balzac
1799 – 1850
The Country Doctor, Eugenie Grandet, Jesus in Flanders, Droll Stories, Louis Lambert, Seraphita, A Daughter of Eve, The Peasants
Alexandre Dumas
1802 – 1870
The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Black Tulip, The Prussian Terror, The Forty-Five, Chicot the Jester, The Queen Margot
Victor Hugo
1802 – 1885
Les Misérables, The Toilers of the Sea, The History of a Crime, Legend of the Centuries, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Supreme Pity
Gustave Flaubert
1821 – 1880
Madame Bovary, The Sentimental Education, The Temptation of St Anthony, Bouvard and Pécuchet, Salambbô
Nathaniel Hawthorne
1804 – 1864
Twice Told Tales, The Blithedale Romance, The Scarlet Letter, Mosses from an Old Manse, The Marble Faun, Tanglewood Tales, The Snow Image
William Thackeray
1811 – 1863
The Great Hoggarty Diamond, Vanity Fair, The Book of Snobs, Henry Esmond, The Virginian, Lovel the Widower, The Newcomes
Charles Dickens
1812 – 1870
Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, Barnaby Rudge, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations
Feodor Dostoyevsky
1821 – 1881
Crime and Punishment, Poor Folk, The Double, The Landlady, The Family Friend, The House of Death, The Gambler, The Idiot,
Leo Tolstoy
1828 – 1910
War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Childhood, The Cossacks, Two Hussars, Three Deaths, A Confession, Master and Man, Resurrection, What is Art
Guy de Maupassant
1850 – 1893
Une Vie, The Ball of Fat, Mademoiselle Fifi, The Necklace, Yvette, Our Heart, Bel-Ami, Pierre and Jean, A Piece of String
Emile Zola
1840 – 1902
Doctor Pascal, Therese Raquin, The Dram Shop, Nana, Germinal, The Earth. The Dream, Rome, Paris, Fertility, Work, Truth, Justice
Mark Twain
1835 – 1910
Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Joan of Arc, A Connecticut Yankee, What is Man, The Prince and the Pauper
Thomas Hardy
1840 – 1928
A Pair of Blue Eyes, Under the Greenwood Tree, Far from the Madding Crowd, The Trumpet-Major, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Jude the Obscure, Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Table: The novelists profiled, and a list of their selected works
Tolstoy, Maupassant, Zola
Leo Tolstoy, also a Russian like Dostoyevsky, unlike Dickens, was not guided onward and forward by ambition. He believed in stooping to conquer and was motivated in his life’s journey by compassion. Orphaned when not yet a teenager, haunted by an inferiority complex pertaining to his ‘unprepossessing appearance’, and disgusted with organised religion (the Orthodoxy which prevailed in Russia), he discovered his purpose in Rousseau’s philosophy and in ridding the human heart of evil and helping it to live in peace, in communion with Nature. His dissent, rebellion and dissatisfaction with extravagance (of the nobility), bigotry (of the clergy) and tyranny (of the royalty), were the seeds, water and fertiliser for his contributions to Russian literature. Readers know that Mahatma Gandhi was inspired by the philosopher-prophet-penman Leo Tolstoy to set up the Tolstoy Farm in South Africa. Some nuggets which will serve as parts of vade mecums for readers:
“Death, blessed brother death, you are the final deliverance.”
“There are millions of human beings on earth who are suffering. Why do you think only of me?”
Guy de Maupassant was one of those millions who suffered a lot. Reading about the tragic short life led by him, with constant physical and psychological afflictions which led to autoscopy in his 42nd year, and death in the 43rd, makes one sad. It also makes readers turn to his short stories – of which he is known to be a master – more eagerly. Flaubert and de Maupassant knew each other well, the former being a ‘guru’ guiding the latter on from time to time, along his literary journey.
Another Frenchman – Emile Zola – a contemporary of de Maupassant and Flaubert and a good friend of the painter Paul Cezanne, progressed through pitfalls and serendipitous godsends to profile the poor people of France, and ironically rise to richness thereby. A man who defended justice and spoke up against all forms of unfairness, Zola is known for standing up for the French army captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew who was wrongly (and knowingly so) accused of treason in 1894, and playing a key role in clearing the Jew’s name in 1906 (four years after Zola passed away). His last written words –“…to remake through truth a higher and happier humanity.”
Twain and Hardy
The man most readers know as Mark Twain, was born Samuel Clemens in America. Though it would not be right to compare and contrast the travails endured by the novelists profiled by Henry and Dana in this book, it can at least be said that a peep into Twain’s life tugs at your heartstrings and the vibrations linger on for a long time. Indeed, as a natural consequence, respect and admiration well up in the heart, for this novelist. He suffered an awful lot, but also learnt to laugh at his own agony as an ‘onlooker’ – the soul observing the pain of the body and the trauma of the mind it enlivens, from a distance, without being affected in any way. Like Hugo on the other side of the ocean, he endured what can be considered as possibly the greatest sorrow a man can face – burying/cremating his own children, one after another. Twain always supported the underdogs while voicing his disgust at the pompousness of the rich and powerful, in his own unique brand of sarcasm. The following words of his may sound cynical, but they are open to interpretation:
“Nothing exists but you. And you are but a homeless, vagrant, useless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty centuries.”
Without letting these words deter you, link them with the other sufferer Viktor Hugo’s “Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come”, and soldier on.
The last of the twenty, Thomas Hardy, is yours sincerely’s favourite (I happen to read all his important works in my twenties, if I remember right). Hardy like his fellow-Britons Swift and Scott was born with a “frail body, strong mind and compassionate soul”. He was compassionate towards and appreciative of the forces and elements of Mother Nature – winds, clouds, bees, butterflies, squirrels, sheep etc., as pointed out by the Thomases. The manner in which he moulded his protagonists in his novels was catalysed by this compassion. Most of them are compassionate themselves, and evoke compassion in the hearts of readers, quite easily. Hardy wanted to teach his fellow-humans how to “breast the misery they were born to”, by using his fictional protagonists as instruments. His life was an exercise in “subduing the hardest fate” and “persistence through repeated discomfitures”. As it often happens with true geniuses, he was much ahead of his times, and the glory that illumined his soul in heaven posthumously, more than compensated for the disappointments which had to be endured when it was encased in his mortal corpus.
Not the last word by any means
Serendipity, it must have been, which made me stride into the Red Cross charity shop in Karlstad in June, wherefrom I purchased this 280-page treasure. To quote Longfellow (who incidentally was a college-mate of Hawthorne’s),
“Lives of great men all remind us/We can make our lives sublime/And departing leave behind us/Footprints on the sands of time.”
The 20 authors profiled in this book represent a huge family of writers who converted fiction from ‘a stepdaughter of the Muses’ to an ‘epitome of the philosophy of life’, except that there were no ‘daughters or stepdaughters of men’ listed among the novelists in this volume.
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G Venkatesh (50) is a Chennai-born, Mumbai-bred ‘global citizen’ who currently serves as Associate Professor at Karlstad University in Sweden. He has published 4 volumes of poetry and 4 e-textbooks, inter alia.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
I saw her again. She was wearing dark slacks and a loose top she was blowing leaves off her lawn and into a corner with a blower. I had been seeing her daily for almost six months now, mostly in her front yard or her porch, or sometimes slowly driving to or from her house. She also seemed to be of Indian descent, as I could make out from her features, and as was confirmed when once her Amazon package that was wrongly delivered to our house. When I had gone to return it, she had been pleasantly surprised, telling me that it was an expensive coffee maker she had ordered, and not everyone would have sought out the rightful owner.
That’s how we got talking. After that, I would always wave to her — when I saw her doing her yard work, on my evening walks or when either of us drove by, on our way to get groceries. In the spring she would plant colourful flower beds, and could often be seen cleaning and watering them. On sunny days, she would be mowing her lawn or talking to the college kids who sometimes came to do her yard work. In autumn, I saw her raking out leaves, putting the garden waste into large brown disposal bags and decorating her porch with colourful wreaths of maple leaves and berries. Winter saw her blowing fresh snow off her porch and lawn and clearing and salting her driveway, so that the garage pathway would be clear for her to take out her car. She would often be seen driving to and from the local grocery stores, where I met her at times. Gradually, as we got friendlier, she invited me over for tea and then later for potluck lunches and sometimes just for sharing something special she had made that day, or a new recipe she had tried.
I had a hectic schedule, with frequent out of town work trips. She would often tell me, “Tara, you eat very less! You should take care of yourself; you should put on a little weight.” and more along the same lines. My usual replies were, “Mrs. Sen, I can’t cook yummy food like yours!” or “I don’t usually have time to cook!” accompanied by an indulgent smile. Of course, these reasons were true, but there was also the fact that I really did not enjoy cooking. I would much rather spend my time reading a good book or indulging my leisure time activity of writing poetry, than slaving over a hot oven or cooktop! She, on the other hand, was an excellent cook and baker, having picked up various tips and tricks for making the most mouth-watering dishes out of almost the most basic ingredients. She shared these with her book club members in their weekly meetups as well as with some lucky neighbours, me being one of them.
One day, as we sat talking on her porch, surrounded by the sweet smells of the lush lavender growing in one of a flower beds, she shared, “I came to Canada with my husband, after my marriage in 1988. Two years later, my brother and my uncle shifted here to, along with their families. Those early years were beautiful. Although we didn’t have much back then, we were happy, happy to have each other in a new land. Many of us were not fluent in English, coming from rural Indian backgrounds. We practised with each other, to gain confidence in social interactions as gradually we enlarged our social circles. Once everyone started on their respective jobs, they also shifted to other places. One of my sons is now in California, the older one. The younger one is in Vancouver.”
We were interrupted by the barking of her tiny wire-haired terrier who was fiercely protective of her. Mostly, he was almost like a therapy dog, sitting on her lap, or somewhere near her, where she could reach out and pet him often. Right now, he had seen a delivery guy approaching the house. She took a parcel from him, offered it to Mickey, her tiny self-appointed protector, to sniff and judge okay, for that was her practice, which she said made him feel included in all her day-to-day activities and interactions.
Placing it aside, she thanked the delivery guy with a smile. Sitting down on one of the two cherry red Adirondack chairs on her porch, she told me, “Nowadays I prefer having as much delivered as I can: it’s easier, particularly for the stuff not readily available at Costco or Home Depot.” I could only imagine how difficult it must be for a lady of advanced years living by herself.
“I go to Toronto almost once a week and also to one of the farmer’s markets nearby. If you want, you could come along if you have some work or want to buy something from there. I could even bring it for you if you so wish.”
Although it was not my intention to cause her any kind of pain, what I had said had seemingly touched her, for as she looked up at me, she had tears shining in her eyes. “Thank you, my dear, I can’t tell you how much it means to me. It has been more than five years that I have been by myself now. Usually it’s okay, but some days are just harder. When Sudhakar passed away I lost my best and oldest friend. He used to tell me – Maya, you should make more friends; you should have your own life too.”
I do have friends here, my book club people too, plus some relatives living in Toronto and some other nearby places, but it’s not the same.”
“I understand”, I could only pat her hand helplessly, wishing I could do more. Going with the change of mood, we picked up the tea things as the breeze turned colder and went inside. It was nearly autumn again and the October evenings were getting quite chilly. The red, orange and yellow autumn foliage had its own grace and beauty, but I would miss the long summer evenings, when I could just sit out on the patio or enjoy working in the backyard garden or water the front lawn barefoot. Not to mention, the beautiful flowers summer brought. Mrs. Sen, or rather, Maya, as she had instructed me to call her, had beautiful gardens, both at the front and back of her house. These she tended meticulously, taking care of her perennials through the change of seasons and making sure to plant various varieties of seasonal flowers and shrubs. She had two gorgeous Japanese maples in her front yard, and had a beautiful weeping willow in her back yard that fascinated me. The flowerbeds were populated with multiple herbs like lavender, thyme, sage and rosemary, as well as flowers like peonies, roses, pansies, violets, lilies, hydrangea etc. She also had some beautiful shrubs and flowering trees like lilacs and magnolias. It was a veritable dream for the most discerning of botanists, at the very least!
As we entered the house, I realised that this was the first time I had been inside her home. Somehow, most of our conversations till date had been outside, on our patios or in one of our backyards, while one of us worked in the garden. She had successfully transmitted her enthusiasm for flora to me too. This was a first for us. As I placed the tray of biscuits and cookies on the kitchen counter, I noticed the wall next to it filled with lots of pictures — pictures of Tara with her family and of her visits back to India and their travels to various places. I could see pictures in front of the Taj Mahal, the Notre Dame, the Sydney Harbour and more.
“Oh, these are so beautiful! It seems you travelled quite a bit!”
“Oh yes, when the children were young, we travelled during the winter and summer breaks. Mostly to India, sometimes to America and Mexico, sometimes to more exotic places like Egypt, Bulgaria etc. It was only when the children started their own careers and moved away that we stopped our frequent travels.”
She went quiet for a bit, looking off into the distance, reliving the past perhaps. Maybe a past that brought back bittersweet memories. I felt a little guilty for having asked her about the pictures. Some moments later, I took her leave, wishing her well and promising to meet her soon after having mastered the new biscuit recipe she had shared.
As fall turned to winter and I returned from some work-related travel, I thought of her as soon as I had settled back into my regular routines. I decided to meet her in the evening, but being severely jet-lagged, had to postpone it a little.
I finally went after three days. I noticed that her driveway was freshly shovelled and salted. As I rang the bell, I admired the beautiful wreath on her door, with her trademark red winter berries and green ribbons. I knew that nearer to Christmas, she would add some striped candy canes to it.
I heard some shuffling steps and she came to the door.
“Oh hello Tara! It’s been quite a while! Were you out of town?”, came her cheerful greeting.
She did seem a little frailer to me, and I noticed her favouring one leg more than the other.
“Hello! Yes, I came back from a ten-day work trip three days ago. Sorry I couldn’t visit earlier. How have you been? Is anything the matter with your leg?”
“Yes, I fell down and hurt myself. There was a patch of black ice in the driveway. Although I had cleared and salted it, there were more flurries that day, followed by some rainfall. When I came back from visiting a friend, who dropped me back to my place, she had to hurry back as she had received a phone call, and I got down from the car and had barely taken a step when I slipped and fell. I hurt my leg and my back. Worse was that after the fall, the ice was so slippery that I couldn’t get back up. I walked like a four-legged animal for a few steps till some neighbours who had seen me fall rushed out and helped me back up and took me inside the house. This was two days ago. Since then I have been resting. Yesterday I got groceries delivered here, once the snow stopped.”
Feeling bad that I had not been there for her at such a time, I escorted her inside and shut the door. I gave her a little Reiki healing and made her a little tea after the session. We sat and chatted for a little while, and then I came back.
As I was on the way back her word echoed in my head, “No one knows what life might bring. I had never thought I’d be alone at this age. Back in India, people say that a lady who has sons is very fortunate. Well, I have two sons. When I called them, they said that they were sorry to hear about my fall, but they would not be able to come till the weekend. For the first two days, during which it snowed heavily, the neighbours who had seen me fall were kind enough to bring food over, two times a day. I am fortunate to have good people around me.”
I reflected on my own situation. I was separated, with no chances or desire of a reconciliation. Having decided that I did not need anyone in my life who had the power to hurt me, I had walled myself off, interacting briefly with people and that too, only to the extent needed. Very rarely did I venture out of my comfort zone; letting people within my walls was a risk which I could not bear to take. Maya was the first person in the last three years that I had spoken to with such an open heart. Maybe it was because I felt such comfort in her presence and understood subconsciously that she would never hurt me.
When I thought about her, I remembered all her acts of kindness – the food drives for the homeless, the collection drives for clothes for refugees she ran, offering to collect all the donated clothes at her house and later on sort through them for distribution, her gardening and plantation drives etc. This year, on Canada Day, she had gifted many trees and plants to her neighbours, as per their choice and need. I had received a beautiful Japanese maple, a sapling from her one of her own trees. She had said that the trees were saplings created from the tree that she had planted in her first home in Canada. The sapling she gave me looked very promising and would definitely turn out to be a beautiful and healthy tree, vibrant with its deep red leaves. Whenever I looked at it, I was reminded of Mrs Sen’s spirit and her welcoming smile.
Through the next few days, I kept a regular check on Mrs. Sen. She recovered quite well and was soon back to her usual tasks.
One day as I came to her place to meet her before going away on another work trip, she opened the door with a big smile. I smiled and asked her, “Wow! You are really glowing today! What’s up?”
“I am going to visit my son in California. He is coming over the next week for some work to Canada. After that, I plan to take him to see our beautiful Niagara-on-the-Lake, then I’ll accompany him back to California. I plan to stay there for almost a month.”
“That’s great news! You haven’t meet him for such a long time!”
“Yes! I’m so excited I will get to meet the grandchildren again!”
The rest of my visit passed in discussions of her upcoming trip. I promised to take care of her mail and plants while she was away, then left.
When I came back from my office trip, she had already left for California. I dutifully collected her mail, laying it aside on my hall table to give to her once she was back. I took special care of her two red maples, knowing that she was especially fond of them. They stood to either side of her driveway, forming a delicate arch over her garage door.
The season changed again and spring blossomed, bringing with it fresh leaves on all the plants. The Japanese maples sprang fresh with vibrant leaves. I liked overseeing her yard work, paying the college students who came to clean it every week from the fund she had left with me when she met the last time.
Sitting there on her porch, reading a book while waiting for the boys to finish, I often looked at the trees, which seemed like two sentient sentinels. Now lush, they merrily waved their branches with their cherry-red leaves in the spring breeze.
“How happy Maya would be when she comes back and looks at them again!” She had shared some photos of her son’s house in California; it was a condo — no garden or even house plants; ‘they didn’t have the time for frivolities’, as her son had said.
“That is the one thing I’m really going to miss when I’m there — my garden. These plans that I choose every year with care and the perennials are like my children too. I love them all — the daisies, the sunflowers, the weeping willow at the other end of my lawn, the many seasonal flowers I like to keep in my window planters, all of them! I’m really going to miss them all!
“Don’t worry, you’re coming back before spring will have passed. You’ll still have your lilacs in bloom when you come back, and your begonias, petunias and lilies would all be in full bloom too.”
She smiled but seemed a little unconvinced.
That day, she was supposed to return. She had been in the habit of brining me warm meals the days I returned from one of my trips, so that I would not have to cook immediately after having journeyed, and also to ensure that I ate well. Taking a leaf out of her book, I thought I would return the favour and cooked a hearty soup, along with some homemade pasta. Balancing the bag with the food, I rang her bell but receiving no reply, thought maybe she was sleeping and came back, thinking that I would try again a little later, or maybe the next day.
The same thing happened the next day and the next; no reply to the doorbell. I had tried calling her cell phone, but it always went to voicemail. The three messages I had sent were delivered but not answered. Now I was truly worried, but there was little I could do except wait. Maybe she had extended her stay, because she certainly didn’t seem to be in the house. Although the lights turned on and off, I knew it was the automated system I had helped her install before leaving, so that the house would not seem empty.
I continued the upkeep of her garden in the meantime, hoping that she would show up any day and sit blissfully once again, in her lovingly created garden. I missed her more than I thought I would. She had taught me a lot, even without my knowing.
Feeling a little bit like a stalker, I went to her Facebook profile and also the profile on the neighbourhood app, and found her sons’ profiles and dropped them both messages related to the wellbeing of Mrs. Sen. After a week, I still hadn’t received any replies. Almost a month passed. One day, I saw a ‘For Sale’ sign put up in her garden, right in front of one of the maples. Shocked, I called the agent’s number written on the board and was told that her son had made the decision to sell the house. All her stuff would be going to Goodwill as both her sons had no intention of coming back there to live.
I was broken-hearted that they cared so little for the place hey had grown up in, and which was so loved by their mother. She would never again get to see her garden. The flowers were all there; the garden still bloomed, but its creator had gone.
Two days later, I got a letter from her in my mailbox. It was dated a month and a half ago, so as per my calculations, must have been written mere days before she passed away. In it, she had thanked me for taking such good care of her garden in her absence. Showering me with love and blessings, entreating me to take good care of myself, she ended her letter with something that surprised me. She mentioned that there was a key enclosed; indeed, there was a small but intricate key in one corner of the envelope, that must have slipped back when I pulled out the letter. She had written that it was the key to a post office box in her name. She had said, “If I do not return, please collect whatsoever is there and distribute it to all our neighbours. It is nothing that my sons would value, as I have set aside all else for them, except this mail box and its contents, that I will to my neighbours, who have loved and supported me through my last years.”
With tears in my eyes, I clutched the key to my heart and remembered her love for all her neighbours, sent across the border, across the bounds of life itself.
The next day, I went to the post office to collect the gifts. To my surprise, they were heirloom seeds, along with carefully collected and preserved flower bulbs, both of which she had painstakingly collected over the years. I remembered her getting some from as far as Vancouver and Montreal; some were tulip bulbs from Holland. Coming back home with the precious living gifts, I framed a message to post on the neighbourhood app. Hitting send, I looked out of my window. My beautiful Japanese maple was dancing in the breeze; her blessings and legacy would live on, spreading to the four winds.
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Shivani Shrivastav is a Reiki Master and Osho sannyasin. By profession she’s a UK CGI Chartered Secretary and a Governance Professional/CS. She loves meditation, photography, writing and French jazz.
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