CLRI CONTEMPORARY LITERARY REVIEW INDIA – journal that brings articulate writings for articulate readers.
CLRI Print Edition ISSN 2250-3366
May 2013
CLRI May 2013 issue brings to you a fine collection of POEMS by Bharat Trivedi, Divya Das, Kalpit Tandon, Kyle Hemmings, Raad Abd-Aun, Dr. Sandeep Kumar, Tahera Mannan, Vinita Agrawal; STORIES by Chandrashekhar Sastry, Joao Cerqueira, Kim Farleigh, Neha Kirpal, Sanchit Gupta; CRITICISM by Jayashankar R, Anupama Chowdhury, Dr. Shiv Govind Puri; BOOK REVIEWS by Dr. Khetarpal's Fathoming Infinity; and BOOK RELEASES from a variety of publishers and writers.
Editor-in-Chief: Khurshid Alam
Rs.30.00 / $2.0
May 2013
contents Poetry ...................................................................................... 4 1. BHARAT TRIVEDI ........................................................................................................................... 5 Night of Mortality .............................................................................................................................. 5 2. DIVYA DAS ...................................................................................................................................... 6 Life.................................................................................................................................................... 6 3. KALPIT TANDON............................................................................................................................. 7 Drink Darkness ................................................................................................................................. 7 4. KYLE HEMMINGS ........................................................................................................................... 8 Four Poems ...................................................................................................................................... 8 5. RAAD ABD-AUN ............................................................................................................................ 10 Two Poems .................................................................................................................................... 10 6. DR. SANDEEP KUMAR ................................................................................................................. 14 We Poets Are Farmers Still ............................................................................................................ 14 7. TAHERA MANNAN ........................................................................................................................ 15 The Tamrind's Call ......................................................................................................................... 15 8. VINITA AGRAWAL......................................................................................................................... 16 Two Poems .................................................................................................................................... 16
Story ...................................................................................... 18 9. CHANDRASHEKHAR SASTRY .................................................................................................... 19 The Magic Bullet ............................................................................................................................ 19 10. JOAO CERQUEIRA ....................................................................................................................... 23 The Second Coming of Christ to Earth .......................................................................................... 23 11. KIM FARLEIGH .............................................................................................................................. 29 The Way of the World .................................................................................................................... 29 12. NEHA KIRPAL ............................................................................................................................... 32 Random Encounter ........................................................................................................................ 32 13. SANCHIT GUPTA .......................................................................................................................... 35 The Golden Sedan ......................................................................................................................... 35
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Criticism................................................................................ 39 14. JAYASHANKAR R ......................................................................................................................... 40 The Death of Insularity: The Case of Mr. Stow’s Fiction and Postcolonial Cultural Contestation . 40 15. ANUPAMA CHOWDHURY ............................................................................................................ 52 Voicing the De-voiced: A Quest for Identity in Shashi Deshpande’s That Long Silence ............... 52 16. DR. SHIV GOVIND PURI ............................................................................................................... 59 Race and Culture in Bapsi Sidhwa’s The Pakistani Bride ............................................................. 59
Book Reviews....................................................................... 65 17. DR. KHETARPAL'S FATHOMING INFINITY ................................................................................. 66 Book Review by Dr. G Iyyengar ..................................................................................................... 66
Book Releases ..................................................................... 71 18. BOOK RELEASES ......................................................................................................................... 72
Subscribe to Contemporary Literary Review India — journal that brings articulate writings for articulate readers.
CLRI is published online per month, in digital versions occasionally, and in print edition (planned to be quarterly), its print edition has ISSN 2250-3366. Subscribe to our CLRI online edition. Our subscribers receive CLRI digital copies directly into their Inbox, get print copies free of cost whenever they come out during the subscription period, and are waived off any reading fee towards our print editions. You can become our subscribers any time you prefer. To become a subscriber, visit: Subscriber to CLRI
May 2013
editorial
Digital medium is not simply a medium, it is a space to our life. All its shortcomings stand tiny before its advantages. It is the best alternative to saving paper, thus to saving plants and forests. It is the fastest means of communication, you can fly your documents and files across the globe in no time and at no costs. You can share your heart and mind to the world without coming under any hammer. – Khurshid Alam, Editor-in-Chief, Contemporary Literary Review India
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Editorial CLRI Kick Starts for Lit Awards! Contemporary Literary Review India Kick Starts for Lit Awards! Contemporary Literary Review India (CLRI) is gearing up to nominate its writers published during last year to some literary awards and prizes. We will start with nominating our writers published with CLRI during July 1, 2012 and June 30, 2013 to the Best of the Net run by the Sundress Publications, USA. Next we’ll move to Pushcart Award. Our nomination process will be as follows: 1. A panel of readers: We’ll create a panel of readers who will read the pieces and rate them. So we invite writers who want to participate as readers in the panel. We’ll credit them as readers in our issues. Please come forwards in as large number as possible to make our efforts a great success. Send us your brief bio, if you participated in such activities earlier, why you want to join us. 2. Writers popularize their own works: The writers who have been published with us during the last year are requested to popularize their writings on their own basis through various ways like Facebook, Google Circle or other ways. They can share to as many people and readers as possible on their own basis and then share with us the following details: • • •
Source they used for popularizing their writings How many people read them? What is their rating and review comments?
The concept behind this is that no writers feel that their writing deserved to be nominated but they were not given a chance. So they should work for themselves. Charity begins at home. 3. Judges: Judges will go through the rating sent by writers on their own writings, rating by the panels of readers, and give their own rating and comments to shortlist the pieces. The short listed pieces will be read to select the final list.
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Khurshid Alam Editor-in-Chief Contemporary Literary Review India
Get Your Book Reviewed by Contemporary Literary Review India — journal that brings articulate writings for articulate readers.
CLRI prides itself to have a good number of review writers. We have different review writers for books of different genres. Our reviews are gaining recognition among the publishers, journals and academia for fair and high quality reviews.
Subscribe to Contemporary Literary Review India — journal that brings articulate writings for articulate readers.
CLRI is published online per month, in digital versions occasionally, and in print edition (planned to be quarterly), its print edition has ISSN 2250-3366. Subscribe to our CLRI online edition. Our subscribers receive CLRI digital copies directly into their Inbox, get print copies free of cost whenever they come out during the subscription period, and are waived off any reading fee towards our print editions. You can become our subscribers any time you prefer. To become a subscriber, visit: Subscriber to CLRI
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May 2013
At one time poetry was a large part of mainstream readership. The public seemed to lose interest with the advent of gaming and the Internet, and now the Internet can be the avenue of restoration of this important genre of entertainment and enlightenment. – Jack Huber, Poet & Author, http://www.jackhuber.com
Poetry
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1.
BHARAT TRIVEDI Night of Mortality
Cover Letter: Sea of the sky etched on the shades of my suffocating sadness and mirage of mortal memories melted in my mind’s morgue. Confetti of words sleep in smothering smoke. Nymphomaniac night reeks in fornication In forbidden forests, While my reflection in the glass-eyed window shatters the seven-years fallacy of bad luck. North star shines like a white nugget In the desert of desires while my love boat sinks in your body’s scent. Spotlight of stars have been lit. When heart hurts, pleasure pains, scars smile, dreams dissect and wounds weep. Kohl of night streaks down the moist, glistening cheeks, Then radiant rainbows glow upon the palatial bed and The sketches outlined by moonlight have erased and pearls of tears glide down as beads of melancholy.
Born and brought-up in Bombay (Mumbai), Bharat Trivedi, a commerce graduate from Bombay University, currently lives with his family in Bahrain (M. East) working as a Financial Accountant with a leading import firm in the Gulf. He’s been writing poems since college days, but became serious about them, almost seven years ago, when his friends encouraged him to enter in ‘International World Poetry Contest’ and one of his poems made it to the final!
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DIVYA DAS Life
Dark never understands me, it never answers me, it never pities me, it never showers care on me, it never peeps into my crying heart, so, my soul yells I’m simply in the dark forest finally I turn towards the bright world.
Divya Das works as an assistant professor at Govt. College, Chitradurga, Karnataka.
Subscribe to Contemporary Literary Review India — journal that brings articulate writings for articulate readers.
CLRI is published online per month, in digital versions occasionally, and in print edition (planned to be quarterly), its print edition has ISSN 2250-3366. Subscribe to our CLRI online edition. Our subscribers receive CLRI digital copies directly into their Inbox, get print copies free of cost whenever they come out during the subscription period, and are waived off any reading fee towards our print editions. You can become our subscribers any time you prefer. To become a subscriber, visit: Subscriber to CLRI
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3.
KALPIT TANDON Drink Darkness
Wisps of charred mirror draped the wall, These grey, cracked threads drafted my tragic fall. Sinking to my urge, I stare at the wrecked glass, Shattered remnants spiral out to embrace my mutilated carcass. These abhorred shards of mine waits to be ignited, In this realm, this hellhole of loneliness, they crave to be forever united. A river of human touch I crave to drive away desolation, If draught conquers, let me caress myself to kill this seclusion.
Detested by one, Despised by all, In this desert of anguish I ceaselessly crawl. An oasis of human bonding is what I ache for, If sand triumphs, let me embrace a mirage before the dreaded nightfall. Torn and frayed, Creeping on the outlines of nihilism, I plead the holy waters to wash away this anarchism. Ultimately being mislaid in this wildernesses of emptiness, I besought light to redeem my soul from this darkness.
Kalpit Tandon, is pursuing Mechanical Engineering from Sir Padampat Singhania University, Udaipur. Currently, he works as a freelance blogger with www.udaipurtimes.com, a daily online newspaper from Udaipur. He’s keenly interested in writing poetry and spiritual articles. His works have been published in the journals such as Taj Mahal Review and www.indianruminations.com and paper.li etc.
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4.
KYLE HEMMINGS Four Poems
Kalifornia It’s 1960 and some of us believe Dick Nixon has a better grasp of the Cold War. And who doesn’t love Checkers? We’re driving south from Mount St. Helena, headed to stay with my wife’s family in Sonoma. Her niece, a polio victim, but spunky as a Shirley Temple with a movie set all to herself, is having a birthday. I hate birthdays, and when forced to attend, I'm a clam. I'm a camera. I never tell who was kissing who. Like a wine from the Campernos Ava, I do not label myself this or that, happy or unhappy. There are correct road signs and detours. Sometimes you envy the cycles of earthworms and buckeye kernels. Sometimes you want to be a small raging animal, loved only for its skin. Interview with Blue Boy He spoke in subdued tones of gray mixed with cool. I had nothing sweet to offer him. He kept staring at a bowl of plastic fruit. Not real, I finally offered. He shook his head politely. Unable to resist my own leanings, I paraphrased Hamlet's Existential question-- to live or to be still? In the silence, I thought about all the places or items I associated him with: cocktail coasters, N.Y. Times fashion advertisements, scaled down copies adorning an abandoned room in a house. I remembered how his image stopped one show as the tableaux vivant back in'86. His eyes now focused downward, as if trapping some thought in their blue-tunnel gaze. I thought about patches of sea-green melancholy. A background mist. A young girl named Pinkie. There was something about him that was so intrinsically lonely. Moe Tucker She's a little girl again. Her father's arms, one shorter than the other, hook her at the waist and his deadpan eyes are still petty thieves of love. They are dancing in circles in the middle of a frozen Ohio lake. She says she hears fish singing. No, he says, it's really him. He abruptly spins her. She laughs like her cousin from Eastern Europe: staccato sharp, full-belly-into-it, tense, stopped in mid-flight. She imagines another voice coming from the bottom of the lake--mama's. "You got your meat. You got your vegetables, now pretend you got your Pink Lady parfait." Leaning her head against her father's old wool jacket, red and black plaid, she believes that this is some version of Providence, even if mama drowned in this very spot 17 years ago. They won't feel the mammoth stillness that has engulfed them since she learned that no one ever says Good-bye when they leave for good this paradise of yesterday's leftovers.
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Tales of Manhattan: Odd Balls Even In her sleep, she fudges payroll time sheets or completes cross-word puzzles with her own neologisms. She wakes up with cotton mouth. The tenant next door is an aging exrock star who everyday re-invents himself on some form of plastic. After three attempts at borrowing sugar (failed/Tenant B only takes honey), five at returning yesterday's eggs (partial success/two broke in Tenant's A clenched hand) & one long talk at Tenant B's table with shaky legs, they decide in sequence to start a relationship. The affair progresses in three-chord structure: what I want, what you want, what we never get. They consider having sex on a rooftop or in the mysterious city rain. He likes his listening to Morphine Flush, a thrash metal band from the late 90s. She likes hers without a trace. They argue, they gulp, they squeal, they flinch, they prop open their tongue-tied lives, they scorn undercooked Peking Duck, they chafe at the elbow, they sex-whine while his dog barks, they fall away during post-grunge anti-climax. At a cafe along 7th Ave. South, they confess how each of them has shredded ghosts, has buried at least one musically inept lover. To please him over her, she gets a tattoo on her right breast that reads: Morphine Drip. He says It's not the sex, not her, not the shared crumbs in each bed-it's one of the ghosts--it keeps calling. He decides to leave, to make a comeback, music has always been his natural mother, his incestuous twin. She says she understands & hopes to catch him on MTV. She doesn't say good-bye or stay in touch. At night, with the new chill, she turns on a kerosene heater, which is illegal, which is death-wish, slowed & warmed. The noisy heater fails to give heat. She pulls the covers to her chin and listens to her own music, eyes closing to twin time signatures.
Kyle Hemmings is the author of several chapbooks of poetry and prose: Avenue C, Cat People, and Anime Junkie (Scars Publications), and Tokyo Girls in Science Fiction (NAP). His latest e-books are You Never Die in Wholes from Good Story Press and The Truth about Onions from Good Samaritan. His latest collection of prose/poetry is Void & Sky from Outskirt Press.
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5.
RAAD ABD-AUN Two Poems
Life in Cities People coming from abroad, friends, acquaintances, strangers one meets in bus stations talk about how everything there is organized duties are carried out to the letter education health services are almost perfect even nature is “user friendly”, so to speak unlike here here it is total chaos politics/politicians are corrupt law unrules people are murdered for no reason (few days ago a university professor was killed by one of his students in a lecture room with a silenced pistol) medical services are bad a hospital in my hometown is called by the local populace the hospital of death critically sick people going there leave dead and the weather … it is June 5th and the heat is 115F – very “user friendly”! nous sommes le damne de la terre1 whispers a voice in my ear they have made us so and we …
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but here I have family friends mosques rituals and the safety of home the conviction that my children will be raised on the same ethics I was raised upon but as I see it things are far from getting better here so what should I do? Forsake my home, my land, and go to the Other’s land and live there trying to hold fast to my roots and risk my children losing them? Or stay here and live the nightmare of leaving them when I go in a nightmare of a place? risk making them the damned of the earth holding to ethics all see outdated global culture sick culture of drinks sex money culture of leave your family at 17 do whatever you like regardless of God mosque church or temple culture of becoming father at 13 mother at 152 wag culture culture of noculture inassimilable culture Hollywood culture3 Global Culture as a madman shakes a dead geranium4 the spider will not suspend its operations the weevil will not delay Tenants of the house Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season5. Hints: 1. 2.
While reading Frantz Fanonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s The Wretched of the Earth. I wrote this. The Sun < http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2233878.ece>.
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4. 5.
An American professor told one of the professors who taught me at a TESOL convention in Baghdad said that America is not like what we see on TV. I am interested here in the image of America as depicted in its popular culture. T S Eliot’s “Rhapsody on a Windy Night”. T S Eliot’s “Gerontion”.
Life in Countryside I remember When my mother used to take me and my little sister To visit family in the country side I remember their clay houses The cow shed The sheep Their orchards The orchards were a special treat Full of figs grapes oranges apricots pomegranates We would eat until we drop down Mouths parched with sourness of unripe fruit Then came 1991 We went to the countryside but this time not for seeing family We fled the town because the Iraqi army was marching To “liberate” Iraqi towns from Iraqi members of the uprising Black rain came down The Kuwait oil wells were burning as Iraqi cities The US had given green light for Hussein to use helicopters Fearing the uprising would lead to the rise of unwanted people to power Americans working in Iraq after 2003 told me that they should have finished their job Left unfinished in the second gulf war they came in 2003 to finish it Neither leaving Iraqi to finish their uprising and topple the dictator which they almost did Nor removing him The UN had an honourable role to play They imposed sanction on a dictator who saw the whole country as his private property And the people as his slaves The UN had in mind putting the people out of their misery
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The Iraqi economy crashed in 1994 We used to celebrate having potatoes for a meal when we were students in a shabby dormitory in a district famous for prostitution in Baghdad The poor became poorer rich richer The dictator more dictatorial The state decided to support agriculture and raised grain prices More land meant more grain more grain meant more money A new class of people was born the rice kings muluk al-shilib As they came to be known mockingly they had the money but not the appropriate culture The relatives in the countryside Were I used to feel free running a child of five towards the horizon struggling to reach it Decided to clear off the derelict clay houses they left after the built new brick ones And the orchards to grow barley wheat and corn Now if you go there you will see stretches of bare land Made salty with lack of rain and water â&#x20AC;&#x153;controlledâ&#x20AC;? by Turkey And Syria who wants to change the Tigris flow path A waste land I rarely go there now That part of the country Has changed, changed utterly No beauty was born
Raad Abd-Aun, born in Babylon, Iraq, in 1976, holds a PhD in English Literature. He writes poetry since 1995 and considers it, second to his family, the food of his spirit. Some of his poems were published in print and electronic journals. He currently works at the University of Babylon dividing his time between teaching English Literature, academic, and creative writing.
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6.
DR. SANDEEP KUMAR We Poets Are Farmers Still
We poets are farmers still, ploughing our mind in the invisible field, whenever the mind makes the pen wield. Sowing the seeds of emotion, in the field of melancholy, we reap the expression of joy with our hearts happy and merry. Gardeners we are to our core, as we are happy to see our words bloom amidst the reverberation of â&#x20AC;&#x153;Encoresâ&#x20AC;?. Idioms, our fertilizers, simile and metaphors, the growth enhancers. The monsoon, the joy of spring, when in the winds of expression , our joy swings. Words bearing a new look, publicity reaping the best out of our joyous moods. Our alert mind, the scare crow, driving the birds of plagiarism away, helps the expression to bloom and grow. Again we wait for the next showers, hoping this time, the day will be ours. We then sow the time awaited seeds of expression, with the waves of time, the blooming showers. Their timed sprout is now, when you lovers of art, read it aloud and feel it in your heart.
Dr. Sandeep Kumar Kar, M.D, an Anesthesiologist and critical care specialist from Kolkata, has written and published about 60 poems in many journals and poetry reviews. Recently one of his poems was published in the prestigious American journal of anesthesiology titled Cardiac Anesthesiologist: The friend of the heart.
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7.
TAHERA MANNAN The Tamrind's Call
In the quiet luminous morning I heard the tamarind call Touching the rough bark so ageing Felt it s heart rise and fall A drop of dew sizzled on the leaf Majestically rising in the sun light Tasting the silence so brief Shining like little emeralds bright Beneath the coolest shadows sleep Even the ants silence keep Peeping from his bark hollow The mongoose in a line follow The liquid colourful light That the tamarind passed to me Filled my heart with delight As it flew to eternity
Tahera Mannan, M.A. (English Literature), has over nine years of experience of teaching at various positions with many schools and colleges. Currently she is an assistant Professor of English at Anjuman College of Engineering and Technology, Nagpur (Maharashtra).
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8.
VINITA AGRAWAL Two Poems
New House Relocated from Delhi to Mumbai, tonight is the first night in this new house. At midnight, the full moon glides into my vision from the un-curtained French windows. It peers at the half-opened cartons, the askew furniture, the scattered suitcases and then at me. Wide awake, I stare back. Who can sleep amidst new walls and old heartbeats? The moon slides itself under my lids; a cushion of cool familiar comfort amidst strange landscapes. We take our worlds wherever we go. Our tears, our pains cling to the walls of our hearts not houses. And the moon, like a silken orb of continuity in a heap of fragmented beginnings and severed endings, knows just where to find old friends and make the first night in a strange house seem alright.
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Love Like His The lover moved in when she already had a husband living in the house. The husband went about his work every morning as though nothing had happened. Ploughed his fields, furrowed the earth, caressed the stalks of wheat as it grew and turned golden, He spoke nothing, said not a word. Not even to the crops. Though they would have listened to a love like his. Better love a soft beret than a poisonous cordite whittling corpses out of people. Love, like childhood, doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t suit everybody.
Vinita Agrawal is a Mumbai based writer and poet. Her poems have been published in Asiancha, Constellations, The Fox Chase Review, Spark, The Taj Mahal Review, CLRI Nimba, SAARC Anthologies, Kritya.org, Touch- The Journal of healing, Muse India, Everydaypoets.com, Mahmag World Literature, The Criterion, The Brown Critique, Contemporary Literary Review of India, Twenty20journal.com, Sketchbook, Poetry 24 etc. One of her poems nominated for the Best of the Net Awards 2011 by CLRI. Another poem received a prize from Muse India in 2010.
Get Your Book Reviewed by Contemporary Literary Review India â&#x20AC;&#x201D; journal that brings articulate writings for articulate readers.
CLRI prides itself to have a good number of review writers. We have different review writers for books of different genres. Our reviews are gaining recognition among the publishers, journals and academia for fair and high quality reviews.
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It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their
own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.
â&#x20AC;&#x2022; Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind
Story
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9.
CHANDRASHEKHAR SASTRY The Magic Bullet
(A drug or therapy or preventive that cures or prevents a disease) It was a remote area and it would be easy to disappear from here. The ice capped peaks against the blue sky, the silvery stream in the valley below and the little village with green fields around. It was Paradise. Alpine but there was no Edelweiss as he said in his picture postcard. The trekkers had halted here on the night before the kidnapping. With the help of an interpreter she had asked, at lodging houses in the hamlet below, of her husband. The photograph was instantly recognized and many told her they had seen him. But they could not tell her any more. ‘Ask the bearded Mentor in the WANTED poster.’ It was displayed at all teahouses and lodges. ‘He has now been taken. He can tell.’ She met him across the bars of a well-lit cell in the high security prison of the Capital. The sun was streaming in and although his fair face was in shadow she could see that it was serene. The high cheeks and the strong Greek nose gave him the tranquillity of a sage. Only the intense eyes under bushy eyebrows and the unruly beard hinted at his calling. She pleaded with him for some news of her husband. Where is he held captive? Can I go meet him? If he is no more tell me where he is buried so I can take his remains home. The man turned his face away and did not answer her questions. Tell me something about him she demanded loudly bringing the guard alongside her. She waved the guard away and held the bars with clenched fists. ‘Tell me’, she repeated. The man in the cell smiled. It was a melancholic smile and he followed it with a despondent, ‘What of our mothers who have lost their sons, our sisters who have lost their husbands? All without a trace.’ ‘Please,’ she pleaded, ‘I beg of you, just tell me where he died and where you have buried him.’ ‘The agony of one white woman is nothing beside the torment of my people,’ and with that he turned his back on her in dismissal. She left after that pronouncement and returned to the Capital flinching every time she saw a woman in mourning. And there were so many. She learnt much by talking to them. Their kind was new. They wanted to destroy government not defeat it and win. They took their war to neutral zones by kidnapping aliens. It made them dangerous and sometimes made them successful. They told her of his charismatic arousal of youth. He always travelled in shadow and the lights were put out before he entered the stage. After his compelling injunctions to youth to wield arms, his passionate rally to subscribe generously for buying munitions and his colourful prophesies of ultimate victory, the lights were again put out before he left the stage. ‘It is only through staking one’s life that freedom is won’ was his constant refrain. Bitterly, they called him 19
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the instigator, the Pied Piper, who led so many boys to their death, who produced so many women in mourning. Our sons, nourished by our breasts, have now been fed a poison that warps their minds, they said. These crusaders drew the attention of the world by taking to arms. They believed they had to pass the count of 5000 deaths before international intervention. Civilian deaths by reprisal and extra-judicial killings were inevitable but these were played upon to galvanise their boys to even more violent and suicidal acts. So it escalated in a vicious spiral. They knew how to handle international media beautifully. Publicity of any sort renewed their vigour and meant victory and recognition. The mindless viciousness of their methods was forgotten in the noise and din of their demands for splitting away from the state. They had seen what they could get by the power of the gun and they would not settle for anything less. When the Mentor was arrested his close disciples planned and executed a daring hijack of VIP’s forcing the state to release him very soon in exchange. Clips of the exchange were broadcast the world over and she watched it on the BBC in horror. What a failure of justice? What needless heroism by the soldiers who died while capturing him? All wasted and thrown away for an exchange of rich merchants and venal politicians. But Very Important Persons. He was sent overseas, to the land of the BBC, to conjure up funds, to procure arms and most importantly to raise suicide squads from amongst expatriates. This was his newest device towards cost-effective measures. No one else could rouse the passion of youth like he did. He knew the risks he was taking, but he had lived with risks all his life. He always journeyed incognito and his supporters provided him safe houses and cover. He had taken off the hair on his face and trimmed short the hair on his head. After he entered the stage in Birmingham the spotlight came on. He made his powerful call to youth to take to arms, described in vivid detail the oppression they should fight and demanded that they contribute well. ‘It is only through staking one’s life that freedom is won,’ he concluded, then raising his voice, ‘One who equips our heaven-blessed crusaders is like the one who directly participates in the just struggle,’ and the baskets being carried around the audience grew heavy with money. No wonder they called him God’s gift to the crusaders. It happened as the car was crossing the bridge across the river. He was thrown out before the vehicle was hurtled into the freezing water and all those trapped inside were drowned. He was picked up by the truck, which had hit them, unconscious with multiple injuries and fractures. They drove out a good distance before depositing him on the road near a wayside hotel and speeding away. Fortunately, a doctor in a passing car gave him first aid and took him along to the Metropolis. The first hospital was only nine kilometres away. She was Nurse-on-Duty the night he was brought in. The operation theatre was readied for emergency operations and the Surgeon had been summoned from his home. She was told that the sole survivor in a road crash was being operated on. Nurses were rushing hither thither and she was to get a bed ready in the postoperative ward. The operation took four hours, then he was brought in. Carefully they lifted him and laid him on the bed. The drip bottle was hung on. When
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she turned to look at him she saw his head was swathed in bandage; only his brow, closed eyes and nose were visible. Something about them disturbed her. The bushy eyebrows, the luxuriant lashes, the Greek nose and the olive complexion marked him out as a foreigner. The police came, photographed him and took an inventory of what was found on him. They found no clue to his identity. His clothes were readymade, bought in the Metropolis. When he opened his eyes they found that his jaw injuries did not let him speak and they could not quiz him. They left with strict instructions to the hospital staff. He saw her when she entered the Ward. The clipboard fell from her hands as she met his eyes but she concealed her surprise, bent down, and picked it up. Long training had made her compassionate to the suffering of patients. As she left his bed she turned once again and saw the fear in his eyes. She knew that he knew and that he was afraid. All day it kept buzzing in her mind as she went about her tasks. The Matron pulled her up once for being absent-minded. That night she sat alone in her room thinking. Her first duty to the patient was to afford him help and succour. When he recovered he would go back to his old ways and perhaps cause a lot more suffering for many innocent people. She could, of course, inform the police; they would extradite him for trial in his country, which had the slowest mechanisms of justice and the most arcane of laws. He may even escape custody again from there. No, she must invoke the old Semitic laws of a life for a life. But how could she place herself in judgement. He looked so boy like with his wild eyes and so full of promise as a young man. Someone must show him better ways. Would it be possible to tutor the Mentor? Suddenly she remembered something she had read from Sartre. The criminal does not make beauty; he himself is the authentic beauty.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; That was the fascination youth found in him. He made senseless and indiscriminate killings appear holy. He injected the seminal poison. Yes, he had the fatal and attractive beauty of the serpent. She had seen a resplendent one in their country swaying to the pipe of a charmer. When asked, she had confidently extended her hand to be wrapped by the snake. She knew it had been defanged. It was not cold-blooded at all and was warm and sensual to touch. No one would know it had been made to happen. Early next day she picked up a pale injectable from the pharmacy of the Hospital. He was awake as she entered the Ward. Consulting a chart she smiled at him, and shot a measured 1.5 ml into the plastic pouch of IV fluid. The pale streak diffusing into the clear fluid seemed beautiful. The excellent facilities of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital would ensure that he survived but the injectable she had used would paralyse his vocal cords and he would never articulate a word again.
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Chandrashekhar Sastry is a widely travelled engineer-scientist now retired and living in Bangalore. He has studied in Bombay, Germany and in the UK and worked in Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata and Bangalore. His first book The Non-Resident Indian (Panther Publishers 1991) was a pioneering work with an unorthodox treatment of a complex subject. He has been contributing to the Times of India, The Deccan Herald, The Statesman, Muse India, The Little Magazine and Reading Hour. Chandrashekhar Sastry prefers short fiction and always chooses contemporary themes. Many of his stories have been anthologized and some have also won awards like a first prize from Pan American Airlines for his travel writings and a first prize at the contest conducted by the British Council in conjunction with Unisun Publications Pvt Ltd.
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10.
JOAO CERQUEIRA The Second Coming of Christ to Earth
Suddenly Christ was back walking on earth. Broad strides, graceful movements, his shoulders back, hair waving in the wind and a sparkle in his eye. His clothing, appropriate for a man of the people, made him unrecognisable. He found himself somewhere in the countryside, in a field planted with oak, chestnut and olive trees, crossed by a stream at which animals were drinking. In a slow separation, the sun bid farewell to the earth, making up for leaving it with a wash of golden light in the treetops. Prudishly looking on, the sky’s blue cheeks blushed orange. Inebriated by the sunset hues, the birds floated up on high. Christ stopped for a moment to admire the delights of nature, breathing in its aroma – his feeling of wellbeing knew no bounds. Then he bent his knees, caressed the ground with both hands and kissed it. In this caressing of the earth he experienced the warmth of the reunion with an ancient passion, as if he had never stopped loving. He was unable to contain his emotion and let fall a tear. In that moment, he was no more than a man. How different it was to look down on the earth from up there, so far away, so cold, to feeling it down here, savoured with every sense. Men yearn for paradise but they rarely see it when they pass it, lost in fanciful daydreams about an Eden made of fantasy. The heavenly garden from which he had come was nothing in comparison to this stunning nature that he found again unchanged. Maybe the beings from there didn’t need to kill to survive or to die so that others lived. Maybe eternal security had no price. It was certain that the people from here were condemned to the laws of survival, fear a constant companion of their existence, but, how could you compare the sterile home of some with the splendid place of others? He suddenly understood the pantheists, worshipers of a physical world as a divine manifestation. His father had done an amazing job, only within the reach of a God. He might have done it in seven days, but he must have taken millennia to think it up. Nothing this beautiful would ever exist in the universe. The water, the earth, the light, the fascination of permanent change, so many different living beings, the excrement of a cow nourishing a flower. He almost dared to think that the only species that wasn’t needed was the human. This blasphemous idea, especially for him as he had been human, and had even had two fathers, had now haunted him more than once. Everything was fine, a wondrous work achieved, so why did his father have to pick up his brush and add two more characters to the painting? It seemed to him that the painting had been ruined. The idea of creating beings in his image and likeness was good and original. But, as the Progenitor himself would have admitted, the result fell well short of expectations. It began badly from the outset when he decided to place the two nudes (at least some underwear for God’s sake) 23
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in a garden with apple trees and snakes, decreeing that this fruit cannot be eaten. He knew that this could only lead to nonsense. Of course it was only a matter of time before they would be biting on that apple. And don’t go saying that it was the snake’s fault because these were two grownups, who knew right from wrong. Snakes are innocent and good remedies can be made from their venom, expensive handbags and shoes from their skin. Adam and Eve were chased away by muscular angels, as who knows what other temptations such weak and sinful flesh would succumb to. We all know the disaster that ensued. Once they were expelled from paradise they multiplied, committed crimes in the family, organised armies and went out to enter into warfare, over water, over wheat, over gold, over diamonds, over oil, any pretext served them to massacre each other. And to put an end to this unending tragedy, the war between JFK and Fidel Castro. Fortunately these two consellors had a guardian angel watching over them and who was well connected in heaven. So here he was again, with different experience, back with his blundering brothers to try and reconcile them. This was the place he had arranged to meet Fátima, but she didn’t turn up. He searched and searched, ’’Yoohoo, Fátima,’’ but there was no sign of her. Maybe she was on the other side of the stream. Of course, she’d never lift her skirt or get her shoes wet to cross it. He would have to cross it himself. Without realising that this wasn’t normal practice, he walked on the water, a wooden pathway for his feet. Having reached the other side he realised what he had done. He had promised his father that he wouldn’t resort to magic power, or perform miracles for no good reason, and he feared he might be caught. But neither Fátima nor anyone else was there to see him. What on earth could she be? Fátima knew that she was running late but couldn’t resist the last episode of the Mexican soap opera Besame Mucho. How could she ever sleep without knowing whether Rosita would marry Paco, if the rogue Roberto would be punished for his actions, and who would take care of little Joselito? Of course this was something very serious, but Christ, this example of patience and tolerance, would certainly understand her reasons. She left to meet the Saviour, galloping on her donkey and relieved as the soap, and no one could have predicted it, has ended well. Rosita and Paco in the church, Joselito the ring bearer, and Roberto, the sly rogue, in jail. Taking a shortcut, she headed down a track pocked with potholes, causing her back pain. As she approached her destination, the analysis of the soap opera gave way to examining the motives behind her being on a donkey at that time of day at such speed. If war had broken out since men settled on the earth and created wealth, if throughout history no civilization had been able to deny it, there had always been beings who have opposed violence, sometimes managing, when not taken prisoner or beheaded, to return good sense to the barbarians and avoid tragedies. Their fearless action had saved the lives of millions of human beings and had shown to the rest of humanity how absurd war can be. Now it was her turn. The huge responsibility of stopping JFK and Fidel Castro from bringing a new disaster to earth lay in her hands. The task was titanic. Both were stubborn and pigheaded, and war means good 24
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business. She felt like Atlas, carrying the world on her shoulders, a column with an entablature on her head. What left her distraught was the burden imposed by having to produce the eclipse. She had made this suggestion in the heat of the telephone conversation, but she now feared she had acted rashly. All things considered, she knew nothing about eclipses, astronomy or astrology, nor had she until then produced a miracle, however simple. She was great at cooking, and ironed like no one, but this wasn’t enough. Suddenly she saw a rosy light with the sun penetrating a cloud and it seemed like a good omen. After all, if Rosita had married Paco why couldn’t they bury the hatchet? In the meantime, Christ had sat down under a tree, closed his eyes and begun to think about how he should proceed, the right words to use, the tone of the voice, the appropriate gestures. Nevertheless, he prepared himself for the worst case scenarios. What if, as happened last time, the majority of them, or even all of them didn’t recognise him? What if, after introducing himself, ’’Dearest brethren, I am Christ and I have come to put an end to this war,’’ he was received with the response .’’This guy is a nutter,’’ or worse, assaulted and arrested? What would he do? As he couldn’t perform any miracles, he would have to resort to his powers of reasoning to dissuade them from violence, as he had done in the past with those who wanted stone Maria Magdalena. The phrase “Make love, not war.” then jumped into his head. A great phrase, he thought, as the word love was understood in its full meaning, that of brotherhood and tolerance among men, marriage for life and of peaceful coexistence with the in-laws. Ninety percent mind and the rest for the flesh. All the same, what if they decided to interpret the phrase in the modern way and this led to a new sexual revolution, with orgies on every corner? No, this idea of ’’making love.’’ was too dangerous. In fact, the concept of love between human beings was an extremely complicated thing and the matter of ongoing contention. For some, those considered virtuous, it was the highest form of union between a man and a woman, but they understood the need for a religious matrimony. For others, those labelled as sinners, monogamy was out of the question. For others still, being the most complicated of all, true love could only happen with someone of the same sex. It was obvious that there was no single norm. Banning things was of little use and, to make matters worse, many of those who preached morals weren’t exactly the best examples. Could he, countering centuries of tradition, liberalise love using a term very in fashion at this time? These reflections were interrupted by the distant sound of Fátima’s donkey’s hooves and Christ saw a woman riding his way. The meeting between the Saviour and his most loyal disciple began very respectfully. Fátima curtseyed and Christ proceeded in the same manner. Then, before moving onto the topic in hand, they discussed trivial matters. They enquired as to each other’s health and Fátima praised his resistance to ageing. As the night was fast approaching, with star lighting up in the sky, Fátima suggested that they set off to her house, the reception venue tacitly agreed upon during telephone negotiations. The 25
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animal was exhausted, so they both walked on foot to save the quadruped a cruel effort that would certainly be denounced by any animal welfare association. Just as they prepared to start discussing the right strategy for intervening in the conflict, they passed some peasants riding in an oxcart and heard the following comment. ’’Look at those two. They have a donkey and walk on foot.’’ followed by the coarse laughter of those who did not recognise the Saviour. Christ and Fátima acknowledged the rural provocation and looked at each other without knowing what to do. Finally Fátima suggested that he should ride on the animal. Christ looked at the beast to check whether it would be able to take his weight, seriously doubting this, but, not wanting to offend his hostess, he did as she said. As the donkey did not protest, after all it’s not every day that you get to carry the son of God, he forgot the incident and started the conversation again, asking Fátima if she knew of the probable sites for the two armies to meet. Fátima replied that rumours had it that JFK was on a hill close to her village on which he was preparing a trap for Fidel Castro. Accustomed to traps, Christ asked if there was a traitor in the Castro ranks, someone who would tell Fidel to go to a place on his own, a garden for example, where the enemy forces would be waiting to capture him, with the help of ear-cutting friends of no use at all. Fátima admitted that she knew of no stratagem that JFK was planning to use, adding only that there was talk of digging holes. Christ immediately understood the ruse, but he saw no need in explaining how it worked. However, he couldn’t help but imagine falling into a pit of sharpened stakes, an image that brought unpleasant memories to mind, causing him to think that men were really cruel. His father had been right; something had gone wrong with these unpredictable creatures. At this time, entering the outskirts of her village, they passed by a house where an elderly woman and a cat were sat at the window. Seeing them, she was unable to contain her feminist thoughts. ’’Good God, that lazy good-for-nothing rides a donkey while the poor lady has to walk!’’ Once again a feeling of embarrassment crept up between them. This time, Christ felt that he should take an attitude that would silence once and for all these people so given to voicing their opinion on things that didn’t concern them. So he climbed off the donkey and invited Fátima to take his place. Their dialogue resumed with Christ now asking her about how she was going to create the eclipse. Not knowing what to reply, Fátima ducked the question implying that it was going to be a surprise, adding that the eclipse was only for creating the ideal scenario for the new apparition of the Saviour, with the true solution to avoiding the war lying in his wise words. This flattering line of argument did not leave Christ indifferent, but did not remove his doubts as to the ability of his disciple to perform the astronomic phenomenon. Even so, he didn’t persist, feeling increasingly confident that he alone would be able to solve any problem. By this time they were already in the village, arousing the attention of all the villagers. In the meantime, the warm twilight had invited squadrons of mosquitoes to set out from their bases, intent on stinging attacks. Nevertheless, whether through superior interference or through some strange instinct stopping them from sucking the divine blood of Christ, they only bit Fátima and the donkey.
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The sufferers were defending themselves from the vampire fury of the insects when a group of drunkards commented, ’’You can see who wears the trousers in that household..’’ As Christ was above any provocation, sticks and stones could break his bones, but words would never hurt him, he ignored the insult without needing to turn the other cheek. However, Fátima, fearing that she was the cause of a grave affront to the Saviour, immediately got down from her mount and the two ended their journey walking alongside the donkey. Fátima lived in a modest little house made of local stone, topped with a straw roof. The donkey’s stall stood to the side, together with a chicken coop and a vegetable garden. And it was thus, in this modest rural property, that Christ found shelter for his second coming to earth. Once through the wooden gate that she never locked, Fátima took the animal, truly deserving of rest, to its stall, asking Christ to wait a moment. As he waited he was moved to be met with such a pure and welcoming place, the antithesis of ancient and modern Babylonias, safe from the invasion of mass culture, and from the cultureless masses, in which men lived in harmony with nature and where time and money never mixed. Amazed, he couldn’t help but reflect once again on the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise, daring to speculate that if they had lived in a place like this, no matter how many snakes and apple trees there were in the backyard, even naked and willing to experience new things, it would all have been so different, the path of humanity another, war would never have existed and Fidel Castro and JFK would have been the best of friends. Fátima then returned, opened the front door, lit an oil lamp and invited him to enter the house. She didn’t say ’’make yourself at home,’’ nor did she say ’’make yourself comfortable, take off your shoes,’’ but proceeded in a similar manner, the words of courtesy replaced by the joyous expression on her face and the graceful gesture she made to show him the sofa. Comfortably seated, while his hostess checked the pans left on the stove, Christ returned his thoughts to original sin. Adam and Eve sharing domestic chores, him scrubbing the floor and she, the prime rib, peeling potatoes and plucking a chicken. Later, the pair sat the table, savouring the produce of the earth. ’’You cook so well my dear,’’ ’’only to please you my love.’’ Then sat hand in hand on the sofa, so in love, they would be happy their whole lives long and have plenty of children without the trace of a thought of sinning so feeblemindedly. While Christ was thinking about the story of Adam and Eve, Fátima placed two steaming bowls of vegetable soup onto the table and offered him a seat at the head. He sat down for his first supper since the last. This time he felt relaxed as he didn’t need to share the meal with twelve other guests, nor proffer revelations on treachery committed by someone present. It was only when he placed a spoonful in his mouth and felt the delicious cabbage dissolve on his palate that he realised he was ravenous. He then asked permission and cut himself a large chunk of cornbread, and settled down to his soup without another word. To follow, accompanied by wine, Fátima served a black pudding risotto, the blood-soaked appearance of which, at first, left Christ suspicious. His gastronomic misgivings were short-lived
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though, unable to contain a ’’mmmm, delicious.’’ with the first taste of sausage, much to the delight of the cook, who proudly confided the origin of her grandmother’s old recipe to him. And once again he returned to the controversy of the expulsion from paradise, hypothesizing that if the forbidden fruit had been black pudding risotto instead of the apple, then surely nobody would have been able to resist it. In this light you could even understand their inability to remove the temptation from their minds. He himself would have to call on all his strength not to eat it. But give into apples? Apple sauce, maybe, but otherwise it was difficult for him to understand. Obviously, these ramblings went completely unnoticed by Fátima, who, if we were to believe her, was able to create an eclipse, but unable to guess the thoughts of others. Coffee and brandy were taken on the sofa after Fátima had cleared the table, ignoring Christ’s offers to help. ’’Guests do not work in my house.’’ They were both sat, at either end of the sofa when the hostess got up, exclaiming ’’Now it’s time for your surprise!’’ From below a broken floorboard she pulled out a wooden box. Then, smiling enigmatically, she opened it and held it out to Christ as if it were a gift of incense or myrrh. ’’Try one, they’re incredible.’’ Surprised, Christ could smell the warm aroma of the plump cylinders and took one, eyeing it curiously. The red band read Cohiba Siglo XXI. A true connoisseur, Fátima explained that they were cigars from Fidel’s country that you could buy at good prices at fairs authorized by JFK. ’’They’re at war, and still trade goods?’’ Christ asked her, perplexed. Fátima took a cigar, removed the band, cut off the tip with a knife and lit it. After two puffs of smoke savoured in sinful lust she found the most appropriate answer. “Is it the cigars’ fault?”
Joao Cerqueira, a Ph D in History of Art from the University of Oporto, has published a number of books in his home country of Portugal. These include scholarly works on history and art – Art and Literature in the Spanish Civil War (published in Portugal and Brazil), a biography of the Portuguese queen, Maria Pia of Savoy, and three satirical novels: A Culpa é Destes Liberdades (Blame it on to much Freedom, 2007); A Tragédia de Fidel Castro (Saída de Emergência Edições, 2008) and Reflexões do Diabo (Devil's Observations, 2010). The second of these, translated here as The Tragedy of Fidel Castro, was voted book of the month and book of the year in 2009 by the literary magazine Os Meus Livros and an excerpt was published in the Toad Suck Review #2.
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11.
KIM FARLEIGH The Way of the World
Black-and-gold street lights separated palm trees from a mansion whose red driveway was lined by nineteen-century Ham Baker lamps, Indians labouring beside the house. A photographer was looking through black, iron fence bars, bars, with leaf-like spades, like medieval lances. They met on the driveway, equidistant red implying equality. “That street light is rare,” the photographer said. “The others were sold as scrap to the Japs. The council wanted to donate it to the museum. It’s the only one of its type left in Malaysia.” The Malay’s steel-blue trousers, azure, Italian shirt and blue Verlaine shoes suited his chocolate skin. “The government,” he said, “is eradicating our British heritage; I don’t agree with it.” Sweating, bending Indian labourers were toiling behind him in the sun as they had done under the British. “There’s only one other like that street light left in Penang,” he continued. “It’s more elegant than this one; but both together would add class.” “Can you get it?” “From the local council.” His bone teeth matched his Jaguar’s hue, the Indians dark against the car. The street light: Right official, right price. “Can I take some photos?” the photographer asked. “No problem.” The Malay glided back between the carport’s Palladian headstones, toiling Indians ahead, a contrast caught by the photographer who walked back between black-and-gold, cast-iron gates. An Indian pulled up on a motorbike, a woman on the back. “You’ve been here for a week, haven’t you?” the Indian asked. “Two,” the photographer replied. “Are you Australian?” “Yes.”
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“I was there for four years. They claimed I had twelve kilos on me when I landed. Do you know the Bunbury Rehab Centre?” “It became home?” “Three years.” “No point in me buying anything here,” the Australian said. “I’ll be in Europe tomorrow.” “I agree. The penalty’s the same here for heroin and dope – death.” The woman’s round face was lacquered with smiling alertness. “I left India in the late sixties,” the Indian added. “I drove to Germany in a truck full of hash.” “Would’ve paid for a few chickens kormas,” the Australian observed. “I got to see Europe. How many Indians do that?” “Only the chiefs do that.” “He’s a chief, too. How does a politician have a house like that?” “Charity.” The Indian’s wife’s teeth were Jaguar white, her hips circular above conical chrome. “The Chinese have to pay bribes,” the Indian said, “to get things like telephones installed for their businesses. The Malays have tried birth-control programs to stop the Chinese from breeding.” “What do Malays think about this?” “Privilege is their right because we’ve been introduced. Yet we’re all Malaysians.” “And Amnesty International?” “Get caught for passing over information and guess what happens?” “I can imagine.” “Do you want to know what I do?” “I thought you’d ask.” “Tell your bank you’ve lost your traveller’s cheques. The refund takes two weeks. I pay for the cheques. You win both ways.” The politician’s house was distorted in the Indian’s sunglasses. “My money,” the Australian said, “is in French and Swiss banks.” “Oh, well.” “So you’re still into fringe activities,” the Australian smiled, “after all these years.” “Look at who the real criminals are,” the Indian replied. “How can a politician have a house like 30
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that?” “If you had power,” the Australian asked, “would you help the Chinese?” The woman’s lips expanded like a tide. Trunk-climbing, female plants gamble on which trees will puncture the canopy, not interested in extending privileges to other runners. “The difference,” the Australian smiled, “between you and him is that you got caught.” Calcium ignited between the woman’s lips. She’s a greater reward, the Australian thought, than anything the politician might have. “We’re never satisfied, are we?” the Indian remarked. “You’re making the poor politician jealous,” the Australian replied. “Have fun,” the Indian said. “You will,” the Australian replied. The politician, observing the woman through binoculars, thought: What a babe! “Privileges” were keeping such beauty from his world.
Kim Farleigh has worked for aid agencies in three conflicts: Kosovo, Iraq and Palestine. He takes risks to get the experience required for writing. He likes fine wine, art, photography and bullfighting, which probably explains why this Australian lives in Madrid. 68 of his stories have been accepted by 64 different magazines.
Get Your Book Reviewed by Contemporary Literary Review India — journal that brings articulate writings for articulate readers.
CLRI prides itself to have a good number of review writers. We have different review writers for books of different genres. Our reviews are gaining recognition among the publishers, journals and academia for fair and high quality reviews.
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12.
NEHA KIRPAL Random Encounter
I had gone to watch Aamir Raza Husain’s play, “The Urge” at the Maurya Sheraton on a recent Sunday evening. So I’m wearing this sexy electric blue dress and sitting and waiting in the lobby for someone who’s arranging a pass for me to arrive. Just then, a huge, hulk-of-a-guy, twice my height and weight, the variety with a puffed chest due to too much time spent in the gym, comes and plonks on the sofa right next to mine. I feel his gaze uncomfortable on my bare legs. “Hello,” he says, looking cockily in my direction, sleaze written all over his face. “Hello,” I answer, wondering what’s coming next. “Myself, Harry,” he adds immediately, and I realize that there’s going to be a conversation. “Neha,” I reply reluctantly, wondering if I should have made up some fake name. “So how are you?” he asks smiling with an irritating familiarity, as though we’ve known each other forever. Wow, is this man for real? I’d seen countless stereotypes of the “macho man” in movies or TV shows, but those are all exaggerated versions, right? But one look at Harry, and I realized those guys actually did exist out there. And it seems like I just might be about to delve into the mind of one of their kind. I look around shiftily wondering what to say or do. “Nice dress,” he says on cue, perhaps sensing my discomfort. “Thanks,” I answer, all the more uncomfortable. “So you’re from Delhi?” He attempts more conversation. “Yes,” I say. “You don’t look … You look like from the south – from your features,” he observes. Okay, now that’s a first. I haven’t got that from anybody before. “So what do you do, Neha ji?” He decides on a quick change of subject. Gosh, this guy is persistent, isn’t he? “Umm ...,” I choose not to divulge any intimate details to a total stranger. “I’m a writer.” There, ambiguous and harmless enough. “What do you do?” I turn the tables around swiftly. “I’m a contractor.” He trails off into a very convoluted description of the kind of ‘deals’ he makes to get some supposedly important work done for his clients. I don’t bother getting into the
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details, but I gather he’s some sort of middleman, who probably doubles up as a bouncer in a club in his free time. “I see …” I try to stifle a yawn. “So you’re waiting for someone here?” he asks. “Uh yeah, kind of. You?” I answer. He smiles broadly as if we’re two peas in a pod who are destined to meet. “Me too,” he says with a twinkle in his eye. I’m looking at my watch and wonder how long it will be before my pass arrives and all this will be over, when he suggests, “So why don’t we have coffee in the restaurant while we’re waiting?” Excuse me? Okay now. This is a bit much. “No thanks, really. I think I’ll just wait here. Why don’t you go ahead and get yourself a coffee if you want?” I offer generously and look away. He seems disappointed. Just then a bellboy appears with a bag. Phew! To the rescue … “Sir, your bag,” he hands it over to macho man. “Oh, thank you,” he looks up. His phone rings – a catchy Bollywood tune from a recent Akshay Kumar flick. He picks it up. “Sat sri akal ji,” and breaks into a tirade of fluent Punjabi. Finally, he stands up – imposing frame and all. I realize how oddly comical we both must look – like a mouse and an elephant seated together. “Okay Neha ji, it was very nice meeting you,” he holds out his hand to me. I shake it. “All the best with your writing,” he adds. “Thanks, you too,” I add, “with your er … contracting.” *** P.S. So here’s my sister’s reaction when I told her about ‘Myself Harry’: “You should have got to know him! Maybe he had some interesting friends!!” Gosh.
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Neha Kirpal is the author of ‘Wanderlust for the Soul,’ a collection of short stories based on travel in different parts of the world. An economics graduate from St. Stephen’s College (New Delhi), she is a trained broadcast journalist from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication. She loves to follow her several passions from travel to books, music, and to films. Neha wakes up every morning in the hope of meeting interesting people and going to exciting new places.
Get Your Book Reviewed by Contemporary Literary Review India — journal that brings articulate writings for articulate readers.
CLRI prides itself to have a good number of review writers. We have different review writers for books of different genres. Our reviews are gaining recognition among the publishers, journals and academia for fair and high quality reviews.
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13.
SANCHIT GUPTA The Golden Sedan
He was a man in his fifties. They say, never ask a woman her age, but a man? I wonder! Do we have the decree of morality to do so? I didn’t know the answer, but I didn’t bother my curiosity either. Maybe I was too ashamed of, or I’d rather say didn’t want to. None of my business you know, a man from the street after all! I could still guesstimate; nothing wrong in that is it? From his visage and gait I could tell, true, definitely somewhere in the fifties. Or was I being naïve, oblivious to the vicissitudes of nature? White hair those which adorn his unkempt nostrils or balding temples, undulating cheeks with spots of black and white bedside to the crumbling skin that encircled the eyes. The eyes, I could not escape. Like a tempest that had ravaged the earth once and now stood still; or an inferno cascaded with time into a willful equanimity, those eyes stood fixated on me. Searching, scorching, as if scanning my soul. And if I now sway my eyes away from his gaze, an emaciated body, like paddy fields parched off a failed monsoon, obtruding ribs out of the skin I thought had burnt itself out in the barbarous sun. A small piece of chequered cloth sufficient to cover the essentials, and a pair of tattered slippers preventing ulcers off his soles which I felt had been discerned by those exploring eyes within the three-piece I adorned off my soul. And another cheque of black and white, like my shirt, sixteen hundred and ninety nine I must say and a very fine one, on his torso this time, metastasized throughout. He sat there every day, smoking beedi; near a supermarket I would visit to fill a basket for homefruits, juices, milk, chocolates, pastries and buns. And he, with his blacks and whites would sit just outside the entrance beside the pavement, obstructing my way as I walk out. The bags would be heavy and hence rightly so, I didn’t appreciate the store’s callousness in realizing customer satisfaction, for how could I walk to my car parked a few feet away without him exhaling the rings of black air that would (I presumed they would), enter my nostrils and ruin the lungs I had so well-manicured by drinking those juices and milk I had just bought? During the day when the sun came out, he would walk off the sidewalks meandering gaily besides the traffic, for it was a busy area I know, a traffic signal with cars and buses and bikes (one of those being an Accent, seven and a half lakh I must say and a very fine one), and I from within the fine one would look out of the windshield while waiting for the reds to be greens and watch him stroll, day after day. And one of those days I especially remember, when he came across my car meandering gaily as he used to, for now I feared a tap on the glass and a mucky hand protruding in, palm open heaven facing that, with the face concocted such so as to dissimulate his salubrious state. For now I know it was my turn to wear that mask of pretense, for how could I afford looking at him and then facing that heaven facing hand, when the reds would soon turn greens and I had to conk forward while the one behind me did the same.
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Luckily so, the tap hadn’t come that day while he ambled along, smoking beedi as usual, along the sidewalks. “These are the ones we need to upgrade,” I said to her, my wife that is, “the country is getting richer you see, and even this year’s budget is all about the glorified poor, while they corner us and squeeze the last penny out of this blood. The blood sucking parasites this government I tell you, for it showers our hard earned money on these slothful dorks with free wheat and rice and what not.” “The poor dear!” said the pitiful wife, and what affection she has in her voice, “the hapless ones born in indignation! Where do they go to if not the ones blessed by the Lord? Poverty is a vicious cycle dear, look at him in an impoverished state, no food to eat or garbs to wear.” Impoverished, haa! That’s a façade my love, to wheedle money out of pockets, yours and mine; by beggary during the day and when the sun goes off, robbery during the night. It was Mr. Taneja’s yesterday, and who knows, tomorrow could be yours! These are the ones I say who don’t get noticed, for their lacerated pieces of costume and the adjunct make-up. Have you ever seen him do anything worthwhile, go to work maybe? Just loitering around all day, puffing off that beedi! He is the one who needs to upgrade.” Upgrade, I meant, to the filter cigarettes I sold. And before you make an opinion, I had told my wife, a better product dear, that’s all what I say, am thinking of his welfare only. The tax on beedi is so less, and the consumption so high. When people like him desert this ignoble paper wrapped poor quality pernicious peace of shit, to the scientifically made roll-ons I talk of, not only I mean well for his state of health but also the coffers of our angelic government that shall, my dear, have more money to spend on him, even though I believe that’s a travesty of justice. I agree my love that you disagree with what I say I believe in, but beliefs are irrelevant in front of facts, aren’t they? A better way of life dear, that’s all what I say! It was the summer I remember, the thirtieth since my advent on earth. The sun more barbaric than usual, the loo most cruel. The air conditioned cabin my multinational ensconced me in prevented the cauldron from piercing beneath my three-piece. While the Accent I would now walk into? Well you know how fine that is, so I needn’t mention again. After a hard day at work selling roll-ons that were supposed to exhale purer rings of black air (the R&D couldn’t be doubted), I was on my way back to home. Fruits, juices, milk, chocolates, pastries and bun; and this time ice-cream too for my love, for I must say it’s really barbaric this sun. And there he is still, the chequered flag of black and white, whose chicanery cannot get past me, still polluting my well-manicured lungs with that ignoble piece of sordid shit. And now I try to remember, aghast I am walking towards my car, as the pictures are getting hazy. There it is, parked in all glory, golden color, wooden dashboard, it was my wife’s choice after all, pure luxury sedan, as lovely as she is, and what a powerhouse as well, 1.5 liter- 90 bhp, 0-60 in 5 secs, an engineering marvel truly ! I must be quick for she would be waiting; the home lit up with those candles I had brought, diffusing their palliating aroma with her mellifluous voice to placate my tired senses. And the ice-cream, yes, before it melts, I must reach home.
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Reds and greens, blues and yellows. They are all moving around. Dancing a hue my senses witness, which one is it, a salsa, a jazz or a hip-hop. I am sorry I can’t tell for I was never good in it. But they continue to dance, and now some black comes in, and white as well, indigos, oranges and violets, they are all joining in, the rainbow is it? And there is music, which band is playing (I was good in it I must say, and so I must know). Beetles, my favorite, Hey Jude! Aaah, you made the world tap! And there is my wife, she is sitting in a corner, talking to a man robed in whites, diamonds down her cheeks, sweet dimples though not as undulated as I had once mentioned before, talking, but listening more, she is nodding her head, her hand on her mouth. I think the ice-cream might have been too cold, for her teeth go numb when it is. And now I am flying, through alleys and streets crowded with people, some standing, some flying, just as I do now. Reds and greens, blues and yellows. Beetles playing Hey Jude! And then, I am again trying hard to remember, the show has stopped it seems, for the rainbow begins to fade and the Beetles go home… I know this beatific sensation; I have known it for six years now, the touch of my wife’s hand. “O Thank God!” she is crying, diamonds down her dimpled cheeks, “the merciful God! I thought I had lost you. O my dear, my love, I am so glad!” and she is crying, so profusely I had never seen her cry before, “You had bled so much, O-, from where would I have got? A miracle my love!” she is kissing my hand, crying, her eyes haven’t slept they tell me. “And I wouldn’t have even known, you were lying on the street I was told, bleeding, unconscious!! A car hit you, some Accent they said, golden. Police case people were saying, for the driver had fled without even looking back. Those inhuman scoundrels! And those store people? They wouldn’t even touch you my love; and you were bleeding!!” diamonds and more diamonds, “On the street... That man, you remember, you remember right? He brought you here, on his back, running all the whole while. And what luck, what destiny God had devised, an O- my dear, out of all people, would you believe it?” “Can I see him please doctor, the old man?” I can remember very clearly now, I was asking the man in white robes. “I had told your wife last night Sir. He was in a dilapidated state when he came here, freckled, nearly anemic. Two liters of blood Sir, I told him it would be dangerous. Your wife requested, I told him it’s your choice, there was no other option Sir. I…I am really sorry Sir, he passed away this morning.”
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Sanchit Gupta is a sales and marketing professional having associated with leading corporate houses like Mahindra & Mahindra and ITCLTD. His rich professional experience in working with Indian brands gives him a deep rooted understanding of Indian consumerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s insights, cultures and ethos both across rural and urban landscapes, reflecting distinctly as a unique feature in his writing. An MBA, equipped with an engineering degree, he has lived in many places across India. His creative pursuits have drawn him towards freelance copywriting where he has worked with some leading agencies and corporate including Unilever, Marico and Pfizer. His range of literary works varies from poetry to prose fiction to short stories to drama. His short stories have featured in several online publications (Indian Ruminations and Empty-tv.com) while two short movies scripted by him are currently under production by Creative Roots India, a leading production house in Mumbai. Possessing a pronounced baritone, he loves dabbling in Radio and has performed with All India Radio for one year as a Talk Show host. He is a regular feature on recitals at Caferati@Prithvi and many others.
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Criticism
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14.
JAYASHANKAR R The Death of Insularity: The Case of Mr. Stow’s Fiction and Postcolonial Cultural Contestation And nightlong, lifelong, through all the dreams shifting landscapes we clove together , childlike, and yet, like warriors, grave till an instant before the dawn. And then I wept, and reached out, knowing such grief as a child bereft knows forever, watching my only lover, my own self, walking away. — Randolph Stow, “Him,” Overland
I Randolph Stow’s first novel, A Haunted Land (1956), is about the failure of Andrew Maguire’s dream of founding a dynasty on alien Australian soil. Maguire, a European settler dreams of the day when his desire to establish the comfort and security that will provide a ‘home’ in the midst of harsh adversarial conditions of the Australian landscape will realize itself. Maguire’s dream, however, is doomed to failure because of a state of alienation from both surrounding landscape and mainstream colonial life. As Anthony J. Hassall writes about the protagonists of Stow’s early novels: The novels portray the settlement of the harsh, alien yet haunting land of the Geraldton district in Western Australia by psychically displaced Europeans, who are tortured, restless, and bitter. Their ambition is to found new dynasties in this oldest, newest of lands, but they are doomed to failure by the self-destructive impulses, and by the black Celtic melancholy which isolates them from the mainstream of colonial life and leaves them lonely outsiders (Hassall Strange Country 7). The theme of alienation and self- destruction continues well into Stow’s writing career. Besides the two early novels, A Haunted Land (1956) and The Bystander (1957), the theme is explored in To the Islands (1958), Tourmaline (1963), The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea (1966) and Visitants (1979) before the contrapuntal theme of recuperation and recovery is brought in The Girl Green as Elderflower (1980). A sure sense of identity is not what is characteristic of Stow’s protagonists. This is why identity is such a dominant problematic in his works. In Stow’s case, the question of identity poses itself in the face of the author’s life as well.
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If an attempt were to be made to look for an identity for the works of Stow (as indeed his early critics did, and did so well!), it would seem that they are not thoroughly Australian in the sense Henry Handel Richardson or Katherine Susannah Pritchard or even Patrick White might be (even because Stow shares perspectives with White that he does not with earlier two, differences between Stow and White, which will be discussed later on in the study, notwithstanding). In fact, the safest way of fixing an identity for Stow and his works would be by invoking the term ‘postcolonial’. The problem of identity, in Stow’s case, inevitably poses the problem of nationness. After Stow, the question that lingers is: in what sense is Stow Australian? If alienation is a theme that allows Stow to probe into questions of identity, it also presents the reader with Stow’s perspective of what the imperatives might be for the problem of identity in the general Australian cultural context. The earliest critics of Stow were, inevitably, given the nature and scope of Stow’s works, confronted with the issue of identity in relation to him and his work. David Martin has this to say about Stow not quite being Australian in the ‘real’ sense: Indeed, we bitterly need out own Australian moralities, stories that make the tragedy of man in Australia the tragedy of man in the world… But in what sense is the tragedy of Voss or Heriot Australian? In what sense are they Australians? It is no accident, surely, that Voss is a German and both he and Heriot die among the Aborigines (Martin 56). Martin’s critique, even as it exemplifies the poverty of Australian criticism of the fifties when it comes to reading a writer like Stow, also shows that Stow’s issue with the critics was Patrick White’s as well. Paul Sharrad has in a significant essay (significant, as it reads Stow fairly), points out the characteristics shared by the novels of Stow and White, and the resemblance they bear to the works of Christopher Koch. Sharrad’s criticism is valuable as it is able to see the reasons for the early unfavorable treatment meted out to Stow, White and Koch. In his view, initial hostility towards these writers was from “those who saw the ‘new wave’ of novelists as betraying the regionalist nationalism of a young country” (Sharrad 210). Sharrad further outlines the contours of the Australian cultural context in which a writer like Stow is forced into the status of being an outsider: The lingering ideas of the “Legend of the nineties” (mateship, the bush) plus an economic reality that continued into postwar reconstruction (Australia rides on the sheep’s back) along with a nationalist desire for realist fiction to promote a unique self-image for Australians combined to promote a lasting awareness of landscape and outback life as keys to identity… Even a satirical poem such as A.D. Hope’s famous Australia ends by seeming to confirm the validity of the motif of the prophet going into the desert to find answers. The writer who did not fit into local nationalist or metropolitan colonialist expectations based on this set of images could anticipate trouble (Sharrad 211). Sharrad’s analysis of the crisis of identity that has surrounded early criticism of Stow is then clinching: the “tyranny of drab fifties realism” (Sharrad 208) was least equipped to handle writers of the order of Stow, White and Koch. The works of these writers suggested a new way of developing an Australian identity, and was therefore considered un-Australian. A writer like 41
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Stow, however, has predominantly made use of Australian setting and subject-matter; it is only that the setting has been used and subject-matter constituted in ways that are radically different from modes that prevailed hitherto. A different use of setting, treatment of subject-matter and delineation of characters is, then, what the reader who is familiar with Australian literary tradition is struck by, in the novels of Stow. And the role of difference is ushered in the right in Stow’s first novel. The Australia of Andrew Maguire is not one in which the Dream is realized, but one in which the Dream eventually leads to alienation and self-destruction. The life in the bush, the outback, far from being the “key to identity,” proves to be the territory where the limits of the self and the trauma of Being are drawn and staged respectively. It is not mateship that exemplifies Stow’s characters, but the condition of alienation. Far from narrating or institutionalizing the narrative of the “Australian Story,” the Stow novel borders on self-parody. Self-parody is very significant in Stow’s treatment of the identity question. While an early critic like David Martin criticized the element of self-parody in Stow’s and Patrick White’s writings – “They are already becoming their own parodists” (see David Martin, “Among the Bones,” Meanjin 18 (1959) 52-58 – a good account of the element of self – parody in Stow is available in Elizabeth Perkins, “Randolph Stow and the Dimdims,” Quadrant 26.7 (July 1982) 28-33. In fact, Perkins points out that Stow parodies the ‘quest’ motif in Australian writing and is in this way different from Patrick White.) In short, it is not the triumph of the Australian self that figures in Stow, but its failure, even destruction. It is not without a purpose, however, that Stow writes so forcefully about the destruction of the Australian self and the consequent crisis of identity. It is the intention of this essay to show that Stow’s preoccupation with failure and self-destruction is of great relevance to the identity issue in the Australian cultural situation. This essay will demonstrate that Stow’s handling of the question of identity reflects a keen sense of awareness of the imperatives that have to be faced in the Australian context. And the sense of identity that Stow goes on to develop for Australia is a desirable one. The Spirit of Place approach to identity is not a totally new one toward developing a sense of self. In an essay entitled The Spirit of Place in his Studies in Classic American Literature, D.H. Lawrence makes this comment on the essential difference that place makes to identity: Every continent has its own great spirit of place. Every people is polarized in some particular locality, which is home, the homeland. Different places on the face of the earth have different vital effluence, different vibration, different chemical exhalation, different polarity with different stars: call it what you like But the spirit o place is a great reality. The Nile valley produced not only the corn, but the terrific religion of Egypt. China produces the Chinese, and will go on doing so. The Chinese in San Francesco will in time cease to be Chinese, for America is a great melting pot (Lawrence 12). It is the same spirit of place, articulated more stridently, that informs nationalist formulations of Australian identity, as in P. R. Stephensen and Rex Ingamells. In response to an English professor’s view that there never was and never would be an Australian literature because 42
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Australia lacked ruins and ‘past glories’, Stephensen’s “Foundations of Culture in Australia” (1935) argues that although Australian culture may, in some sense, have its roots in Britain, “a gum tree is not a branch of an oak.” Stephensen further goes on to suggest that the inspiration behind the new Australian culture will be the land, as “race and place” are the “two permanent elements in a culture, and place… is even more important than race in giving that culture its direction” (Stephensen 205-6). As a matter of fact, so overwhelming has the idea of place been in the Australian experience that a critic like H. P. Heseltine has written that: …the finding of a true relation to the land, the very earth, has been the particular concern of every Australian poet from Charles Harpur to David Campbell. Not the bush itself has been their one true subject (Heseltine 37). Furthermore, it could also be observed, as Heseltine has been quick to point out, that most other preoccupations in Australian life – “mateship, egalitarian democracy, nationalism, realistic toughness” (39) – go hand in hand with an identity the essence of which emerges from the Land. It is in this context that Andrew Maguire’s (A Haunted Land) failure to establish a home his dream strikes a disturbingly discordant note. The landscape-identity relationship that forms the single most important concern to the Australian experience holds a different meaning altogether in Stow’s rendering of Australia. II A Haunted Land begins with the engaging preoccupation with the land, an almost routine motif in Australian Literature. The book opens with Jessie, Martin Maguire’s wife returning to the Maguire homestead almost fifty years after the main action of the novel. She arrives at a time when, as a critic has put it, “the people – almost all of them – have gone, but the land remains” (Hassall, Strange Country 10). Even as Jessie travels through the country, the silent overwhelming presence of the landscape is only too palpable: And suddenly she saw the great red cliff of Malin Pool rise up in front of her, the wide water and white gums, and this was true changelessness… The shade of the gum trees was cool there and the rushes moved gently in the hot breeze. Somewhere a mullet jumped; a wild duck flapped low across the water. — (Stow, A Haunted Land 10) Even as the main action is narrated – the relationship between Elizabeth Maguire and Andrew Maguire that excludes the children, the death of Elizabeth, Elizabeth’s memory possessing Andrew like a visitant from outside, Andrew’s vision of a home as perfect as his dead wife, and the children being forced to becoming victims of the oppressive father’s fictions – one element in the narrative stands foregrounded: the ‘other’ that Andrew’s affinity for fictionalizing has to contend with. Here it is the landscape and all that goes along with it that Andrew wishes to control, including the Aborigine Charlie who is denied entry into Andrew’s world and is subsequently killed by Patrick as Andrew would have desired. But in the process of establishing a home that he can rule, Andrew (the elder ‘offspring’) loses all that belongs to him – Martin and 43
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Nick (the younger children) end up becoming drunkards (as Andrew liked them to be, to keep them with him, depriving them of contact with the outside world) and leave home; Patrick dies, his love for Jane Leighton foiled by his father; Anne, after allowing the Aborigine Charlie to make love to her withdraws into herself and gets alienated from the rest of the family. At the end, Adelaide is the only one who survives. But her survival also implies a certain participation and approval of Andrew’s oppressive fictions; she is finally willing to play the role of the consoling daughter assuring Andrew that the destruction that has come upon the family is not his doing. In Andrew Maguire’s failure and the destruction of the Maguire family lies the message that A Haunted Land offers: a tyrannical world of the kind Andrew dreamt was bound to fail as it was one man’s fiction imposed on surrounding reality. In forcing his children to live in tune with his wishes, Andrew was attempting to impose a pattern that is irrelevant to existing reality. In demanding from his children that they take little notice of the world outside, he was guilty of committing the error of ignoring the actual presence of the ‘other’ – the world outside, the landscape, all the “them” he did not want to be engaged with. In fact, Maguire’s mistake was that his was a monologue all along even while the enterprise he was engaged in succeeding in involved the “other,” however unacceptable it was to him. If A Haunted Land depicts the inevitable outcome of the tyranny of monologue, it also provides a picture of the early phase of Australian cultural history (the settler phase) in which alienation was predominant as an experience. In fact, the story of Andrew Maguire could be read as one in which alienation and the tyranny of monologue formed part of a vicious circle that claimed its victims – Martin, Nick, Patrick, Anne. And the Maguire story thus introduces the theme of insularity right away as a concern Stow would be seeking to address for a long time to come. In response to the tyranny of insularity (of the Andrew Maguire variety), A Haunted Land also signals a solution that Stow would go on to suggest in his later novels (Tourmaline and The Merry – Go – Round in the Sea) – an insularity of a second kind, of the Taoist variety, which moots silent endurance as a way of countering oppressive fictions. Anne, in A Haunted Land is an example of Stow’s early Taoist characters. Anne who is more inclined towards keeping to herself retreats into her private world, telling Adelaide a fairytale she invented as a child, which dramatizes the death of her mother and her own impending death. She also explains why she has never written down any of her own stories: Because I won’t destroy them, she was thinking, because there’s too great a gap between the imagination and the word and I won’t destroy what takes me away from me and makes me greater, as love should do when love is large enough. No, I’ll keep my child dreams in my mind, where they are whole, and sink down in them as I dreamed of sinking down in the sea, watching the sun grow pale and small above me, and no one else can and no one will know what it is to be me as I drown in that private world (Stow, A Haunted Land 193). It is with Anne, then, that what A.J. Hassall calls “the silent country of the soul” (Hassall 16) becomes evident in Stow’s fiction. If Anne gives the impression that the strong silence of her private world is a fiction she takes pleasure in, a private discourse, the stance gets clearer in its implication in Stow’s next novel The Bystander in which Keithy, the first Taoist character in 44
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Stow’s novels as some critics would have it, demonstrates an ability to draw his strength from the land: That afternoon he went walking, far away from his house, in a lonely gulley that all his life had been a favorite haunt when he was in trouble…he came at last to the rock pool where the creek received its tributary and lay down on the grass to rest his legs from walking, his brain from thought…He did not know what he was thinking. he lay on his back and stared at the sky…He rolled on his sky and shut out the universe (Stow, The Bystander 194-95). Between Maguires’s destructive assertion of will, as in A Haunted Land, and the silent strength of Anne and Keithy, there is a third alternative that is suggested both in A Haunted Land and The Bystander: that of love. In A Haunted Land, however, the possibility of love is stunted from the very beginning because of Maguire’s demanding presence, and as the stray relationship between Patrick and Jane Leighton proves, it is a highly improbable possibility. The conception of Patrick Leighton brings in hope of new life for the coming generation. Interesting is the fact that Patrick Leighton is conceived at Old Malin, a former childhood playground, which is “shared” and not a “private” retreat. The alternative that Stow goes on to suggest till his fifth novel, The Merry-GoRound in the Sea, was written, which contains a trace of activism, is Taoist silence. Later on in his career, however, Stow did go on to admit, in 1973, that Taoist silence in which he believed earlier on was not a pragmatic attitude to adopt given that his main concerns were power, tyranny and oppression: I did it at that age believe that innocence was a virtue and that non- involvement was also a virtue. I also believed, in an uncomplicated way, in the doctrines of Taoism (that the fool is the wise man, the weak is the strong) and belonged to the notoriously apathetic generation of the ‘50s, which stayed out of politics. I doubt that I would write in the same way now, at least not with the same security (Rutherford and Boelsmand 17). Taoist silence then seems to be a phase in Stow’s literary career mid-way between an awareness of the horror and tyranny of monologue, and the positive value he goes on to seek in dialogue. The tragic consequences of one man’s fiction come up again after the Maguire story in Stow’s third novel, To the Islands. Here, Stow’s depicts the tragedy of Heriot who, in his attempt to run the Mission as he willed, only loses self-control and is almost on the verge of insanity. Heriot’s story begins with his life at the mission which, he initially sets out believing, is an occasion to heal the wounds inflicted on the natives by the colonial enterprise. Very soon Heriot realizes that his attitude is one of hatred masquerading as altruism; the incident in which Heriot hurls the near-fatal stone at Rex triggers off his slow but steady loss of self-control. He is caught between the faint awareness that his control over himself and his surroundings is rapidly diminishing and an adamant refusal to accept the truth of it. Even as Heriot’s self crumbles, it is the landscape that overwhelms the narrative itself, resisting Heriot’s attempts to exercise control over his surroundings. Dixon’s experience with landscape is one of the high points of the novel: Walking behind the native he [Dixon] felt, suddenly, regret at his own awkwardness, for Stephen moved over the rocks with the sureness of a bird, but he stumbled and slipped, 45
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having always to plan his next step, to tread carefully. He saw himself for the first time as a stranger, cast without preparation into a landscape of prehistory, foreign to the earth. Only the brown man belonged in this wild and towering world (Stow, To the Islands 58). There are moments in the text where the landscape dominates the proceedings, as the sovereign object, “seducing” the subject; Heriot’s utterance, “This earth seduces me,” leads on to another high point in the narrative where Heriot loses himself in a ineffable experience: This sun was blinded with the spray of them, time died, there was nothing but the light and the agony of waiting. Now I become nothing, whispered Heriot, now and forever, for ever and ever, I am no more. (Stow, To the Islands 78) All the crumbling self-control finally leads to Heriot’s realization that his “soul is a strange country,” unfamiliar to himself. To the Islands vividly demonstrates the unreality of the monologue, the adamantly essentialist point of view, and in turn, the reality of the “other” that the monologist self refuses to grant reality to. If in A Haunted Land, Andrew Maguire’s monologist fiction invites the destruction of the Maguire family, To the Islands demonstrates the decentering of Heriot’s tyrannical self. After A Haunted Land and To the Islands, Tourmaline goes a step ahead in addressing the problem of power that follows from the question of the tyranny of the monologist self. In Tourmaline, the status of the “diviner” is foisted Random who eventually fails to live up to the expectations the folk of Tourmaline have of him. After Random, the whole drama is enacted again with Kestrel taking charge. As Anthony Hassall puts it, “Random is the victim of Tourmaline’s enthusiasm, of its need for a prophet” (Strange Country 67). If Stow’s earlier novels show how the tendency to impose fictions on the “other” (other selves, the world outside, and so on) has a destructive effect on the self, Tourmaline is concerned with the other side of the issue as it were – the tendency of individual selves to be fictionalized and the subsequent need for the Christ figure to show the way out. Random first, and the Kestrel, fail to realize the error involved in seeking complete control over things. In the entire narrative of Tourmaline, Tom Spring’s is the voice that rings out in wisdom; on Kestrel return after Random’s departure Tom is confronted by him: And he turned lifting his head to the door. “Kes,” said Tom, still intent on the whirling dust. “what?” “Honor the single soul” “I think in thousands,” Kestrel said, “and tens of thousands” (Stow, Tourmaline 173).
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In 1979, Paul D. Higginbotham wrote about Stow’s works, with special reference to Tourmaline, that, “these themes, the futility of force and honoring the single soul, are, I believe, the keys to an understanding of Randolph Stow and his fiction” (Higginbotham 392). In his next novel, The Merry – Go – Round in the Sea, Stow goes on to explore the implications of the single-soul idea for the Australian nation. Within the space of four of his early novels, Randolph Stow had come full circle in his enquiry into the issue of tyrannical fictions that constituted early attempts to ‘home’ a continent like Australia. The problem stands in all its complex clarity at the end of Stow’s fourth novel Tourmaline: tyrannical fictions are sterile and exclude love and other such real relationships (as in A Haunted Land ); they are bound to lead to a decentering of the fictionalizing self as fictions come face to face with the “other” that is sought to be fictionalized (as in To the Islands); and that one possible way out of the unending cycle of fictionalizing reality is to go Taoist and draw inspiration from the strength of the land. As A. J. Hassall writes: “it is … the land which exemplifies the Taoist wisdom of yielding, accepting, enduring, and which stands in mute challenge to the frenzy of self-destruction at Malin” (Hassall, Strange Country 17). It is only Stow’s fifth novel, The Merry–Go –Round in the Sea, that poses a radical challenge to identity based on fictions, and goes on to reject nation-ness based on fictions. But the transition from an insular silence to an activism has undoubtedly involved some substantial transforming. If Stow’s stand against narratives that demands to force identities oppressively is to be understood in its spirit, his own fiction (the novels) has to be seen in the light of the debate in the sixties in Australian literary circles about the “realism” that he and his compatriots were expected to subscribe to. In his preface to the revised edition of To the Islands, Stow has replied to his critics thus: that To the Islands was “aimed at the most precise description I could achieve of things I have experienced with my own senses. Except in the choice of subject – matter, I have always been a fanatical realist.” Stow’s fanaticism in realism can be better understood if his attempts to account for realities that resist fictionalizing are well understood. And so at the end of Tourmaline, and before The Merry–Go–Round in the Sea, Stow faces a culde-sac — a state in which the insularity of tyranny has only lead to the insularity of silent endurance. In The Merry–Go–Round in the Sea Stow there dawns the realization that there are two types of insularity that obtain in the Australian cultural context, and that the later type is no solution to the former. III Seduction is fatal. It is the effect of a sovereign object which re-creates within us the original disturbance and seeks to surprise us. — (Jean Baudarillard, Toward a Priciple of Evil)
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Talking and listening are significant tropes in Randolph Stow’s To the Islands, as the following encounter between Heriot and Justin demonstrates with metonymic effect on the discourse of text: “White man always talking and never listening.” “That’s true,” Heriot admitted. “Very true.” “Whatever you say to white man, he always got something else to say. Always got to be the last one.” “We call it conversation,” Heriot said and bit his lip as soon as the words were out (Stow, To the Islands 97). This is a crucial point tucked away in the narrative, in that the point of view of the protagonist (to whatever extent it obtains in the narrative, because critical opinion is right when it claims that Stow’s characters do not reveal themselves directly, but do so only under the author’s perspective (Hassall Strange Country 9) closes upon itself, revealing a truth about itself, that it is only able to ‘talk’, betraying a tendency to suppress the capacity to listen. Not listening entails an unwillingness to acknowledge the other. Such talking sans listening leads to the narrative being overwhelmed in turn by the object narrated. Narrative stumbles even as the focalizing subject (the protagonist of the ‘story’) is counter-focalized, counter-written, split and pulverized, as this passage shows: In the dimness of the cave, days ran together and lost themselves, so that Heriot sleeping, eating, or disjointedly thinking, felt time confounded, a twilight with divisions, and himself a plant of the sea’s floor, waving and dying (Stow, To the Islands 123). What is happening here is that even as Heriot’s monologist self is impinged upon by the other, it, in turn, shows a inclination towards stoic silence. Bewilderment at the hands of the sovereign object (landscape, Rex, everything around Heriot that he seeks to control) leads to an alienation which does not reflect a progress over insular tyranny. One insularity leading to another. At the end of To the Islands, the equation that forms the crux of Stow’s concern becomes clear: the polarity between the narrating (or focalizing, to be more precise, in Stow’s narratives) and the resisting object that is sought to be narrated is what runs through the novels till Tourmaline. In his Culture and Imperialism, Edward Said has pointed out the implication of the ‘power’ of narration on the battles implicated in the imperial enterprise: Stories are at the heart of what explorers and novelists say about the strange regions of the world; they also become the method colonized people use to assert their own identity and the existence of their own history. The main battle in imperialism is over land, of course, but when it came to who owned the land, who had the right to settle and work on it, who kept it going, who won it back, and who plans its future – these issues were reflected, contested, and even for a time decided in narrative. As one critic has suggested, nations themselves are narrations. The power to narrate, or to block other narratives from
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forming and emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism and constitutes one of the main connections between them (Said XIII). The significance of what Said is trying to point out to Stow’s own concern is thus quite clear: if the tyrannical point of view, the story narrated from a single point of view, the imposed fiction of one omniscient man (as in A Haunted Land) soon arrives at its limits and the contest with the narrated object(s) soon gets under way, there is a certain process of resistance going on as To the Islands demonstrates. In Stow’s own grappling with this issue, what emerges is an alienation on the part of the narrating/focalizing subject as a result of resistance on the part of the object. A clear enactment of just how this resistance is staged can be seen in To the Islands. The opening page of To the Islands contains a significant trope – that of the clock – that evidently has an implication for the story event as well. Heriot is up from bed with a delay full of activity awaiting him: Outside, the crows had begun their restless crying over the settlement, tearing at his nerves. The women were coming up to the kitchen. He could hear their voices, their rick beautiful voices. Already the heat was pressing down on him, the sheet under him clung to the skin of his back, and it is not yet six o’clock and a long day. — (Stow, To the Islands 1) The subtle yet pointed reference to time On the clock is soon contrasted two paragraphs later with a description of the landscape surrounding the settlement: Deep in fading grass the country stretched away from the hut, between the rocky range and the far blue ridges, dotted with white gums, yellow flowering green – trees, baobabs still clinging to their foliage; and from the grass, which harbored also goats, creepers and all rustling reptiles, rose the Mission, the ramshackle hamlet of huts and houses, iron and mud – brick and thatch, quiet below the sky.(Stow, To the Islands 1) The two excerpts quoted above provide a good contrast between the two categories of time and space which gain more significance as the narrative proceeds. The first focuses on Heriot, invokes the notion of chronological time and draws a connection between the two: it is another one of those days for Heriot, all set to be dictated by the clock. Conversely, the world outside shows little concern for the ‘clock’ as it were, as the second excerpt shows: the only factor that seems to share a sense of commonality with the Mission and the landscape is the sky :the sky itself evoking a sense of timelessness. This time, space disjunction becomes crucial to the argument of the text as the narrative unfolds itself.
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I 1.
Stow, Randolph. A Haunted Land. London: Macdonald, 1956. Print — The Bystander. London: Macdonald, 1957. Print — To the Islands. London: Minerva, 1984. Print — Tourmaline. London: Minerva, 1984. Print — Merry-Go-Round in the Sea. Melbourne: Penguin, 1968. Print — Visitants. London: Seeker & Warburg, 1979. Print — The Girl Green as Elderflower. London: Seeker and Warburg, 1980. Print
II 1.
Hassall, Anthony J. Strange Country: A Study of Randolph Stow. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1986. Print.
2.
Heseltine, H.F". "Australian Image: (1) The Literary Heritage" Meanjin 21 (1962): 35-49. Print.
3.
Higginbotham, Paul D. " ‘Honour the Single Soul': Randolph Stow and his Novels". Southerly 39 (1979): 378-92. Print.
4.
Ingamells, Rex. "Conditional Culture." The Writer in Australia. Ed. John Barnes. London: Oxford University Press, 1969. 204- 44. Print.
5.
Lawrence, D.H. Studies in Classic American Literature. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971. Print.
6.
Martin, David. "Among the Bones: What are our Novelists looking for?” Meanjin 18 (1959): 52-58. Print.
7.
Perkins, Elizabeth. "Randolph Stow and the Dimdims." Quadrant 26.7 (July 1982): 28-33. Print.
8.
Pons, Xavier and Neil Keeble. "A Colonist with Words: An Intel— view with Randolph Stow." Commonwealth: Essays and Studies Melanges 2 (1976): 70-80. Print.
9.
Rutherford, Anna and Andreas Boelsmand. "Interview with Randolph Stow." Commonwealth Literature 5 (December 1973): 17-20. Print.
10. Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism. London: Vintage, 1994. Print. 11. Sharrad, Paul. "Pour Mieux Sauter: Christopher Koch's Novels in Relation to White, Stow and the Quest for a Post-colonial Fiction." World Literature Written in English 23.1 (1984); 208-23. Print. 12. Stephensen, P.R. "The Foundations of Culture in Australia." The Writer in Australia. Ed. John Barnes. London: Oxford University Press, 1969. 245-65. Print.
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Jayashankar R (1970) born in Ernakulam district of Kerala and brought up in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. He pursued his education leading up to a first research degree (MPhil) in English Literature at the University of Hyderabad. He has worked and taught in Delhi and Bodh Gaya, Bihar, where he also studied and, subsequently, taught Mahayana Buddhism. He has travelled across India and the world, and currently teaches in Coimbatore, his home town. He has published a book on Henry David Thoreau.
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15.
ANUPAMA CHOWDHURY Voicing the De-voiced: A Quest for Identity in Shashi Deshpande’s
That Long Silence
Shashi Deshpande, the much acclaimed Indian English Writer, has authored ten novels till date, addressing the social issues through them vis-à-vis historical and traditional contexts because she believes that “all good writing is socially committed” and “comes out of a concern for the human predicament” (“Of Concerns, Of Anxieties”, 106). Deshpande’s novels create a space, a site for contestation of ideologies from where various voices find utterance breaking the long silence of ages. She has repeatedly emphasized that a lifetime of introspection went into the making of That Long Silence, the Sahitya Akademi Award winning novel for 1990. It is perhaps the most autobiographical of all writings, though not in personal details but in thoughts and ideas. Her writing is strongly gendered in the sense that her novels could have been written only by a woman- “As writing is born out of personal experience, the fact that I am a woman is bound to surface. Besides only a woman could write my books- they are written from the inside, as it were” (“On the Writing of a Novel”, 8), she says. In her narrative, she raises a number of issues and interrogates that which has been blindly accepted till date making the text open-ended, viable for multiple interpretations which reject the traditional meanings. That Long Silence is the autobiographical narrative of the protagonist, Jaya. Her husband, Mohan, involved in a case of corruption at work, is hiding out with her in a small suburban flat in Bombay. This limbo of waiting and anxiety gives Jaya the time and opportunity to reflect on her life and particularly upon her roles as a woman- daughter, sister, wife, and mother. Woman’s image has always been constructed upon man’s imagination. This entrapment has limited her pitiably. Binding her with the concepts of softness, sympathy, beauty and sacrifice, it obliterates her own identity. As Beauvoir rightly suggests in her introduction to The Second Sex, this social construct of the ‘eternal feminine’ has confined women to a socially, culturally and economically inferior status. Men always establish norms and women are defined as the “other” with reference to these norms- “He is the subject, he is the Absolute- she is the Other.” (14). Hence, we cannot but agree with Beauvoir’s contention that it is not by increasing her worth as human being that a woman will gain value in man’s eyes but rather by modelling herself on his dreams. As long as Jaya obliterates her own self she gains value in Mohan’s eyes no doubt, but she suffers from identity crisis and alienation. Ultimately she recovers her fragmented self and realizes a vital truth- “Self-revelation is a cruel process. The real picture, the real ‘you’ never emerges” (1). Through this painful process of self introspection she finally regains her lost identity. A proper analysis of the novel reveals that it “seeks to expose patriarchal practices” (Sexual/ Textual Politics, xiv) and is perhaps concerned with the “articulation of women’s experience” (A Literature of Their Own, 4). Our society projects marriage as the vital essence of a woman’s life without which her life becomes meaningless. “Marriage is the destiny traditionally offered to 52
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women by society” (445), affirms Beauvoir. This idea is so deep-rooted in the Indian psyche that marriage-ties have always been considered as sacred and eternal. Hence, for centuries women have been forced to bear physical and mental torture, indifference and non-communication to continue this bond. Jaya’s dreams of having a happy home prove to be a fiasco when her husband is caught in a case of bribery. The corrupt practices of Mohan in his office and his indifference to her create a rift between them. But she never voices her dissent and remains silent amidst all emotional turmoil. In the Indian set-up where “Marriages never end, they cannot… they are a state of being” and where husband is considered to be a “sheltering tree” (32), Jaya muses- “A pair of bullocks yoked together… that was how I saw the two of us”(7). Marriage becomes almost an institution enslaving women to a lifetime of male dominion- “marriages never end, they cannot they are a state of being” (127). In an interesting collection of essays entitled Separate Worlds: Studies of Purdah in South Asia, Hanna Papanek and Gail Minault argue that to “a girl straining toward marriage, to a woman after she has gained that paradisiacal state, marriage works effectively as purdah… preventing her from achieving selfhood and individuality" (79). The girl child is consciously inculcated into the idea that marriage is her ultimate goal and thus she is enveloped in a kind of mental purdah from her early childhood. The process of schooling herself to play the role of the “other” begins with the marriage negotiations. It will be perhaps worth quoting Beauvoir’s comment in this context: In such circumstances the girl seems absolutely passive; she is married, given in marriage by her parents. Boys get married, they take a wife” (448). Jaya also faces the same situations-“the truth is that he had decided to marry me, I had only to acquiesce” (94), she reminisces. With marriage comes a re-moulding of personality in many ways. Jaya’s renaming as “Suhasini” is a symbolic obliteration of her past identity and submission to that of her husband. The first lesson on the necessity of annihilating her “self” identity had come the first time she had lost her temper and seen the reaction on Mohan’s face. She recalls: “He had looked at me as if my emotions had made me ugly, as if I’d got bloated into it. Later, when I knew him better, I realized that to him anger made me ‘unwomanly.’” (83). In her thought provoking essay “Of Concerns, Of Anxieties” mentioned earlier, Deshpande writes that her writing originated from her suppressed feelings about what it is to be a woman in our society, her experience of the difficulty of playing the different roles enjoined on her by the society. The novel reconstructs aspects of woman’s experience and attempts to give voice to ‘muted’ ideologies, registering resistance. Silence implies the traditional expectation that the women will silently fall into the role strait-jacketed for them. It thus becomes the metaphor for submission and loss of identity. Deshpande strongly opposes these specifications of roles and writes in her article “Why I am a Feminist” …I believe that women are neither inferior not subordinate human beings…I believe that women (and men as well) should not be straitjacketed into roles that wrap their personalities, but should have options available to them. (Writing from the Margin, 83) In That Long Silence, Deshpande uses her narrative to raise such important issues as a woman’s right to her body. Body has always been an important site for feminist discourse. Female body is most often rendered ‘docile’ under the domination of patriarchy. It becomes primarily a source of social control in an androcentric social order. Cowering under patriarchal dominion and subjugation, it is never free. The body thus becomes the “practical, direct locus of social control” 53
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(The Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body, 2362). Silence becomes the ultimate reality when the bodies are subjugated and self-dignity is wounded. Until and unless women gain their bodily rights, the male-female equation is bound to be tilted and lop-sided. Luce Irigaray rightly claims that: “It is important for us to guard and keep our own bodies and at the same time make them emerge from the silence and subjugation” (421). Perhaps, what Deshpande is seeking in her novel is a response to the female body, that grants it the right to its own truth, its right to self-possession. The body is the room for the ‘self’. Female emancipation will only be fully realized when the rights to the room are given to women. The experiences of women under patriarchal domination and those of the colonized subjects are, in many ways, similar. Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin in their seminal volume, The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, rightly point out. In many different societies, women, like colonized subjects, have been relegated to the position of ‘Other’, ‘colonized’ by various forms of patriarchal domination. They thus share with colonized races and cultures an intimate experience of the politics of oppression and repression. (“Feminisms”, 233). All the female characters suffer either directly or indirectly because of this male dominance. This common suffering creates a strong bond between them irrespective of class, caste, social status and generation-gap and helps the readers to understand this mosaic of suffering and compliance. Ajji, Jaya, Mukta, Vimala, Jeeja, Nayana are all victims of an endemic imbalance between male power and female powerlessness within marriage. In their common heritage of oppression and voicelessness they all are in a way the “gendered subalterns”. Spivak rightly contests that “the ideological construction of gender keeps the male dominant” (287), making the females “subalterns”. Thus, Deshpande’s perceptions of both women’s autonomy and acquiescence are deeply entrenched in the Indian woman’s situatedness within the socio-cultural and economic milieu of the country. In this novel she makes strong statements on the status of contemporary Indian women in their resistances and submissions to the dictates of phallocentrism. Mohan’s mother has been the traditional longsuffering Indian wife; uncomplainingly bearing the burden of her husband’s harshly imposed authority over his household. The father has been a merciless tyrant, demanding that fresh food be served to him whatever time he decided to return home failing which, she was tortured mercilessly. She had gone to the mid-wife to get herself aborted, thus dying in a futile attempt to stop the chain of unwanted pregnancies forced on her body. While Mohan saw strength in the woman sitting silently in front of the fire, Jaya confesses “I saw despair. I saw a despair so great that it would not voice itself. I saw a struggle so bitter that silence was the only weapon.” (31) Deshpande’s attempt to voice the muted gendered subalterns constitutes part of the decolonizing feminist project. Jaya’s maidservant Jeeja’s uncomplainingly support to an unemployed drunkard husband and her patient acceptance of his second marriage as perfectly justified, the sounds of a woman being beaten by her husband in a neighbouring flat at Dadar- the woman’s soft moaning, ‘mother, mother, mother,’” (57) ruthlessly exposes the patriarchal injustice. Deshpande gets to the root of existence and gives vent to a kind of female subjectivity which refuses to reconcile and identify herself with a male dominated society. The female self, in order to emerge in its own right, has first to validate her existence on her own terms, without male protection and support. A woman does not necessarily or automatically grow into a Self. Obliterating her real self Jaya had tried to be only “Mohan’s wife”. As long as she “had cut off 54
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the bits of me [her] that had refused to be Mohan’s wife” (191) she could never make proper choices. Jaya longs for communion rather than a mere physical union, but never has the courage to make demands, for that would necessitate releasing herself from psychological fetters regarding feminine behaviour. So drilled is she in denying her own sexuality, that she walks out on Kamat, the man who had reached out to her physically and emotionally, afraid to face the truth of her own sexual arousal by a man who is not her husband. The existentialists hold the view that most of the decisions, problems or questions in the life of an individual are not accessible to reason and the freedom to choose is central to human existence. Even the refusal to choose is a choice because an individual may thus identify and assert his unique mode of expression as well as of existence. An Action is always to be chosen: otherwise it cannot be action proper. To quote Kierkegaard: “The real action is not an external act, but an internal decision in which the individual puts an end to the mere possibility and identifies himself with the content of his thought in order to exist in it” (302). That Long Silence reveals Jaya’s progress from a state of split personality to that of unified sensibility. Deshpande explores the root-cause of the fragmentation of her heroine and reveals what happens in her psyche in the process of individuation. The protagonist realizes that she must exercise her choice and give up using Prakrit, the language of the subalterns. Life now holds no terror for Jaya- “I have always thought – there’s only one life, no chance of a reprieve, no second chances. But in this life itself there are so many crossroads, so many choices. “Yathechasi thatha kuru” (191-92), she concludes She recovers her Self and relates to the society in a more compassionate way. The wifely role no longer holds her in bondage and her sense of self provides her with fresh choices within the old framework and she now returns to the reconstructed realities. She finally resolves to break her silence and asserts- “I will have to erase the silence between us” (192). Through Jaya, Deshpande also scrutinizes a dilemma facing many women writers even today— their inability to let their imagination free play, without being restricted either by the distractions of domestic life or the code of the society. In an interview with Romita Choudhury , the novelist said- “ The struggle not to reveal oneself in one’s writing as in That Long Silence is partly autobiographical” (19). Mohan sets the parameters for the kind of writing his male ego and the norms of the male dominated society permit Jaya to write. But Jaya finally decides to leave the soapy “Sita columns” and to write her own story. In her book Feminism: Theory, Criticism, Analysis, Sushila Singh writes- “Once women begin to write, they can reasonably represent their experience, including the thematics of their long muted femininity (68). Jaya, too, through her “herstory” voices her long muted feminity. The novelist attempts to break the long silence of Indian women in her writing by transforming a predominantly androcentric symbolic order to a feminine narration. The image of “multicoloured patchwork quilt” aptly sums up the narrative pattern. The narration is an introspection in the stream of consciousness mode reminding the readers of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. In a recent interview to B K Das (published in The Indian Journal of English Studies, 2009), Deshpande stated: “Whether you are a man or a woman, you are getting into the mind of another person. Imagination, knowledge and sympathy are needed as well as writing skill” (323). In Indian languages there is so much difference between men’s language and women’s language. Susheila Nasta in her discussion of the intersections of feminism, gender and postcoloniality 55
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observes- “Language is both a source and womb of creativity… of telling the stories of women that have previously been silenced, it can also become a major site of contest, a revolutionary struggle” (Motherlands: Black Women’s Writing from Africa, The Caribbean and South Africa, xiii). In this novel Deshpande takes up an “other” mode of discourse, to authentically depict the working of the psyche of the central protagonist. This reminds us of Helen Cixous’ contention that writing is of the body and that a woman does not write like a man because she speaks with the body. The sentence structures are broken down and the limitations of punctuations are removed in an attempt to convey female experience and the way a woman’s mind works. The texts contain instances of continuous narrative where thought and action are seamlessly represented. Deshpande expresses meaning in both modes that Kristeva discusses – Symbolically, i.e., through the use of logical terms; and Semiotically, through a breathless flow of words that are more emotive than logical. The focus combines the sexual with the symbolic in order to “discover first the specificity of the feminine and then the specificity of each woman” (Kristeva, 210). Deshpande’s writing thus becomes the literature of silence in two ways: First, its meaning lies hidden and camouflaged. Second, it is also the literature of silence for it seeks to express what has been submerged and concealed. The author has confessed that “I must have been more than halfway through this novel when I realized that it was about women’s silences” (Writing from the Margin and Other Essays, 19). Through Jaya the novelist re-invents the emerging Indian woman with a shift in the perceptions of relationships, aspirations and motherhood. In letting her heroine experience the silence within she lets her get a glimpse of their inner being and empowers her. Jaya ultimately learns how to move on, how to make the most of one's life. Through her protagonist, the novelist depicts the fact that one must understand the meaning of life and learn how to face it. In her afterword to Shakti, Deshpande pointed out: “What women need is the …power to take their own decisions, without being constrained by traditional ideas of honour or sacrifice, an ability to see beyond these ideas, to see things with their own eyes, with their own minds” (319). The novel ends abruptly with a sense of open-endedness. The post-modern stance makes multiple layers of meaning and interpretation possible. Perhaps the worth of the novel lies in this refusal to adopt a simplistic, reductive approach; herein lies its richness. It will be perhaps worth quoting at some length B K Das’s significant comment in this context: That Long Silence depicts the plight of an educated Indian woman of our time. The significance of the novel depends on how far the reader is able to realize the situation and go along with the author in finding out the meaning… The reader is free to interpret the heroine as a woman who failed her husband or otherwise. Alternatively he may also take her as a representative woman of the contemporary society who is all set to revolt against the husband. Jaya is both an individual and a type, and the reader is free to take her in any manner he likes. (131)
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Deshpande creates Jaya anew by making her conscious of this possibility of power. Recovering the “self” from the roles of a dutiful wife, submissive wife and caring mother, the protagonist gets a new lease of life that empowers her and helps her to reconstruct her identity once again. To conclude, I may say that masculinity and femininity are both social ideals developed within the matrix of heterosexuality. Once this matrix is challenged, identities become unstable and malleable and can be re-imagined. The novel has wide-ranging dimensions and raises questions about the process of self- revelation, the search for meaning of a dull and drab life and our relationships and responsibilities. In my subsequent readings, this multi-layered text reminded me of the classical ‘onion peel’ image – the more we peel, the more layers are revealed. The ingredients used in literary creations are mostly the writer’s experiences, either direct or indirect. We may say, a la Lawrence, that the novel is the “book of life” and this reminds us of Margaret Atwood’s assertion that “although a novel is not a political tract, a how-to book, a sociology textbook or a pattern of correct morality, it is also not merely a piece of Art for Art’s sake, divorced from real life” (3). That Long Silence, too, becomes a book of life by breaking the long silence of women. Herein lies its magical charm. Works Cited 1.
Ashcroft, Bill, et. al. “Feminisms”. The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. Bill Ashcroft, et. al, ed. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2006. Print.
2.
Atwood, Margaret. “Spotty-Handed Villainesses: Problems of Female Bad Behaviour in the Creation of Literature.”1996. <http://www.web.net/owtoad/vlness.html>
3.
Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Ed and trans. H. M. Parshley. 1953. Vintage: London, 1997. Print.
4.
Bordo, Susan. From The Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body. Rpt. Norton Anthology of Criticism and Theory. New York and London: Norton & Co., 2001. Print.
5.
Cixous, Helene. “The Laugh of the Medusa”. New French Feminisms. Ed. Elaine Marks and Isabella de Courtivron. New York: Schoken Books, 1981. Print.
6.
Das, Bijay Kumar. Aspects of Commonwealth Literature. New Delhi: Creative Books, 1995. Print.
7.
Deshpande, Shashi. “On the Writing of a Novel.” Indian Women Novelists, Vol. V. Ed. R. K.
8.
Dhawan. New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1991. Print.
— Interview with Romita Choudhury. World Literature Written in English 1025, 34.2, (1995):19.Print. — “Of Concerns, Of Anxieties”. Indian Literature 9.5 (1996):103-10. Print. — That Long Silence. New Delhi: Penguin, 1989. Print. — Writing from the Margin and Other Essays. New Delhi: Penguin, 2003. Print. — Afterword. Ranjana Harish, and Bharathi Harishanhar, eds. Shakti: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Women’s Empowerment in India. New Delhi: Rawat, 2003. Print.
— Interview with B K Das. The Indian Journal of English Studies XLVI (2009): 321-26. Print.
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Irigary, Luce. “The Bodily Encounter With the Mother.” David Lodge and Nigel Wood, ed. Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader. Delhi: Pearson Education, 2004. Print.
10. Jain, Jasbir, ed. Women in Patriarchy: Cross-Cultural Readings. Jaipur: Rawat, 2005. Print. 11. Kierkegaard, Søren. Concluding Unscientific Postcript. Trans. David F Swenson. Princeton: Princeton Universiy Press, 1960. Print. 12. Kuortti, Joel, ed. Tense Past, Tense Present: Women Writing in English. Kolkata: Stree, 2003. Print. 13. Minh-ha, Trinh T. “Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism”. The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. 14. Bill Ashcroft, et. al, ed. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2006. Print. 15. Moi, Toril. Sexual/ Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory. London: Methuen, 1985. Print. 16. Nasta Susheila. Motherlands: Black Women’s Writing from Africa, The Caribbean and South Africa. London: The Women’s Press, 1991. Print. 17. Papanek Hanna, and Gail Minault , ed. Separate Worlds: Studies of Purdah in South Asia. New Delhi: Chanakya, 1982. Print. 18. Showalter, Elaine. A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to 19. Lessing. New Rev. Ed. London: Virago, 1984. Print. 20. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. Routledge: New York & London, 1998. Print.
Dr Anupama Chowdhury is Assistant Professor of English, MUC Women's College, Burdwan, West Bengal. She has published several scholarly articles in journals of national and international repute. Her areas of interests are Postcolonial Literatures, SAARC Literatures in English & Gender Studies. She is currently engaged in Post-Doctoral research on New Literatures in English.
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16.
DR. SHIV GOVIND PURI Race and Culture in Bapsi Sidhwaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s The Pakistani Bride
The great writers like Bapsi Sidhwa have many a things to feel through symbols, metaphors and many other inherent and implicit techniques. In The Pakistani Bride she has taken feminism like that in many other novels, to highlight the cult of multi-racialism. The novel itself has to speak "Women, the world over, through the ages, asked to be murdered, raped, exploited, enslaved, to get importunately impregnated, beaten up, bullied, disinherited. It was an immutable law of nature. What had the tribal girl done to deserve such grotesque retribution? Had she fallen in love with the wrong man? Or was she simply the victim of a vendetta?" (The Pakistani Bride, 226) As women are the repositories of national culture, their moral and sexual regulation is arguably coextensive with state formation. However, in countries like Pakistan, this process cannot be understood as based on some inherent 'Muslimeness': rather, Islamization itself is a contested terrain and not the only source of meaning, with tribal traditions and complex class alignments equally at play. In The Pakistani Bride, Bapsi Sidhwa confronts a number of issues faced by the common people of Pakistan during and since the partition of 1947 with a particular interest in the condition of women, positioned at different levels in a class structure. Sidhwa's novel, The Pakistani Bride, provides an alternative perspective to the predominant narrative of Pakistani literature. This alternative voice is successful in recreating women from a fresh perspective. The Pakistani Bride gives an inclusive look onto the treatment of women. It is the most conflictmonging of Sidhwa's novels. It is the most critical towards unjust traditions that undermine the structure of the community. The novel relates how Zaitoon, the protagonist of the novel, trained as an obedient Muslim girl, is captivated by the fantasies of the visions of her protector father. The vision was of the lost mountain paradise. Married eventually to a tribal man in the northwest regions of Pakistan, Zaitoon's reality is harsh. She finds it a region where men were heroic, proud and incorruptible, ruled by a code of honour that banned all injustice and evil.... that women beautiful as houris and their bright rosy-cheeked children, lived besides crystal torrents of melted snow" (90). Zaitoon's escape from this rigid, traditional tribal community is considered by Fawzia Afzal-Khan as a spirit of defiance which "endorses a challenger to the structure of patriarchy." (2) Bapsi Sidhwa's, The Pakistani Bride, is about a young punjabi girl, Zaitoon, who is adopted by Qasim when her parents are killed during the partition of the country. Qasim, a hill tribal, belongs to a society, where truly speaking there is no strict Purdah, but the isolated hills, the rigid code of honour, the strong sense of kinship, act like a Purdah. It is the men, who lay down the law, who barter their womenfolk and control their life and death. The story of Zaitoon's 59
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childhood, her marriage and later escape is enclosed within the bounds of this tribal society. Zaitoon's entry into this tribal world is not indicative of a cultural clash, but of the deprivation of women irrespective of their location. There are four women who are portrayed at some length – Qasim's wife, who is older to him by five years and has been given away in marriage by her father to end an old enmity, and whose aroused sexual desires, her ten year old husband is incapable of satisfying on her wedding night. She keeps awaiting for his lifting of the 'voluminous red veil'. Afshan is this young bride who finds a maternal role thrust upon her when she has to caress and comfort the weeping boyhusband. Later Afshan's death and the death of their three children renders Qasim both homeless and womanless. Travelling to the plains, again uprooted by the partition, his life crosses the life of Nikka and Miriam. Miriam, is the second woman in the novel, who though childless finds herself in the role of a surrogate mother to Zaitoon. The emotional relationship between Zaitoon and Miriam is paralleled by the money transactions between the two men. Miriam prepares the young Zaitoon for the onset of menstruation and tells her "we all bleed. It is to do with having babies and being a woman ... of course you won't have babies – not till you are married – but you are growing up... 'Zaitoon was too distracted by her garbled talk to understand anything (54). Purdah in the sense of restrictions is associated with growing up, with puberty and the process of becoming a woman. Zaitoon is advised not to tell about her menstruation to anyone. Miriam also tells her that, "you are now a woman. don’t play with boys – and don't allow any man to touch you. This is why i wear a burqa...” (55). Zaitoon's schooling is stopped and she is taken under Miriam's wing and enters a dominantly female society; she accompanies Miriam on her visits to her neighbours and "entering their dwellings was like stepping into gigantic wombs, the fecund, fetid world of mothers and babies." (55) The third woman in the novel is Zaitoon herself, whose destiny is controlled by men. It becomes the universal plight of women in different cultures. Zaitoon's blossoming into womanhood is in itself a fact of sufficient importance to support his masculine impulse to take control of her life. The tribal sense of honour blinds him and deafens him to all else. Zaitoon is escorted to the hills, and much against her will, is married to Sakhi and left behind, not protected and happy but to adjust the best she can to this new life. All her efforts to adjust are thwarted by Sakhi's possessive male Jealousy. Infact the extent of her obedience, her enclosure into herself and withdrawal from all openness, becomes the test of her husband's manliness. Zaitoon is brutally tamed into accepting his total control. Sakhi not only beats her, but takes his frustration out on others also – not even sparing his mother, Hamida, It all started when sakhi started to beat his ox: 'Get up,' roared Sakhi, swearing as he struck a blow. The ox stretched its neck on the grit, resting obstinately. Sakhi shouted and fell on the animal, beating it with his heavy stick, which fell pitilessly on a sore on its spine.The beast grunted, lifting its neck in pain. Sakhi's eyes dilated, and a venomous satisfaction shuddered through him. He hit the ox again and again, until the flesh gaped open.' (172)
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After hearing such noise, Sakhi's mother come out to see what is happening and seeing that her son is beating the poor animal mercilessly, when tries to stop him, he beats his mother also, 'let it be, you Will kill him,' she screamed. Sakhi pushed the old woman aside. Again she flung herself at him, wedging her body between the wan and the ox. Sakhi glowered in insane fury. That teaches you, he hissed, 'I'll teach you meddling women. You think you can make a fool of me? Do you? Sakhi's mother and Zaitoon, both victims of male anger, come together in their helplessness. It makes a multiracial analogy become the Zaitoon's docility, the anxiety and obsequiousness expressed by her eyes (174), do not in actuality destroy her need to be human. In this confinement, she struggles to find a way and in the end decides to run away, seeing this as her only alternative. The terrain is unfamiliar and difficult, and getting caught would be sure death, but rather death than this constrained life. Zaitoon is exposing herself to every kind of risk when she decides to escape, it is a decision deeply rooted in her helplessness, in the sense of having been totally abandoned to the brutality of her life with Sakhi. Sexual desire, which very often, helps women to accept their lives, or timidity which compels them to do so, are in Zaitoon's case, not adequate enough to stop her from this desperate act. Another woman, Carol the Californian young woman, is married to Farukh. She fell in love with Farukh when they first met in America. She is the only woman amongst the army officers in the Cantonment, and is, at this point of the narrative, caught up in an adulterous relationship with Mushtaq, her husband's senior officer. This triangular situation is, in some way, of Farukh's own creation. His excessive jealousy drives her to this defiance. Submission to his jealous control destroys her sense of freedom. She hates what Farukh's jealousy has done to her: It had corroded her innocence, stripped her, layer by layer... of civilized niceties. She was frightened to see a part of herself change into a hideously vulgar person ... and the atmosphere of repressed sexuality in Pakistan had not helped. Slowly carol had begun to realise that even among her friends, where the wives didn't wear burkha or live in special women's quarter, the general separation of the sexes bred an atmosphere of sensuality. (111) It is during one of her outings with Mushtaq that three tribesmen stare at her, considering her as outside their own womenfolk and thus outside the tribal code of honour. On this, Carol feels uncomfortable and asks Mushtaq, "Haven't they ever seen a woman before?" (113) This male gaze makes her both furious and self-conscious, somehow reducing herself image and sense of self-respect. Mushtaq explains to her the tribal behaviour and the strict control they have over their moral behaviour; in these settlements. "A man may talk only with an unmarriageable woman â&#x20AC;&#x201C; his mother, his sisters, aunts and grandmothers - a tribesman's covetous look at the wrong clanswoman provokes a murderous feud. They instinctively lower their eyes, it's a mark of respect" (113). But an outsider is not given this same respect. These tribesmen's bold gaze at her, their hard stare is a "humiliating slap of pure terror for Carol, the obscene stare stripped her of her identity. She was a cow, a female monkey, a gender opposed to that of the man 61
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charmless, faceless and exploitable" (120). Although, Mushtaq explains that it is the segregation of the sexes that causes the men to stare at her in that insolent manner. Carol's second encounter with this kind of Purdah culture is through Zaitoon's coyness. Zaitoon's proposed entry into an alien culture is a reflection of the Carol-Farukh relationship at one level. Both the women have moved from relatively open cultures into closed cultures and into marriages which require them to change. Women, placed as these two are, often surrender to sexual fantasies of male conquest and social fantasies of conquering the new territory of their husband's world. Both Carol and Zaitoon indulge in them in different ways and it is the failure of these fantasies which pushes Carol, like Zaitoon, to decide to escape. It is a very pertinent example of multi-racial ethos. The Pakistani Bride has three different inbuilt structures, one of the tribal world, the other located in Lahore, the third the foreign world of Carol which is more through inference. All these three world are defined by men. Male worm is very evident. Qasim and Nikka define the world in Lahore, Farukh and Mushtaq defines Carol's world, and Sakhi and his brother define, the tribal world. The women are forced into situations where they are rendered rootless, coming upward in multi-racial perspectives and finally selfless. Women need to discard their past while men travel from hills to the plains and the vice-versa with their cultural code intact. Women are transformed, their names are changed, their bodies hide their identities and their sexuality both repressed and questioned. The Purdah, which enables them to look at the outer male world through a filtered gaze, aquires a monstrous proportion and stifles their compelling them to depersonify themselves, to look at their ownselves as objects of the male gaze, of male control and ownership. It is this which makes virginity and chastity the values of measuring female status and reduces the concept of selfhood to a mere physical condition. It isolates them from their surroundings. The Pakistani Bride gives a detailed glimpse into a society where the segregation of the sexes gives rise to spatial divisions, inculcates certain attitudes to modesty, and formulates a particular code of honour. While The Pakistani Bride has much to say about a patriarchal culture where women have little control over their fates, it does so without forsaking the demands of effective storytelling. Sidhwa has succeeded in embedding ideas within a novel that is breath taking in its action, engaging in its characterization, and exotic it its rendering of place. The simple title of this novel lies heavy with irony. To be 'the bride' in a patriarchal society is like demeaning women because it translates womanhood into bondage, sometimes subtle, other times total. The Pakistani Bride, is truly a feminist novel which puts forwards multi-racial hues but in an interview, Bapsi Sidhwa insisted that she was not writing "overtly feminist literature" in The Pakistani Bride', she went on to explain that she wanted the ideas to be embedded in the novel itself and added that she has little use for "didactic fiction."
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Certainly, in this novel she succeeds in avoiding didacticism and integrating theme with the essential ingredients of plot, character, and setting. The novel is constructed with admirable economy as unfolds a complex story, introduces and develops numerous characters, and creates settings both exotic and realistic. Her protagonists are mainly women, who have refused to accept the narrow and constricting roles assigned to them under vague terms such as "honour", "shame", "modesty" among others. These levels assume different interpretations under different circumstances, all these explications are Most often than not, in the hands of patriarchial figures who ruthlessly exploit their advantage over the women. The Pakistani Bride is the damning indictment of the Kohistani community in particular and the Pakistani society in general with regard to its brutal treatment of women. The women are marginalized and have, in a number of cases, no say in decision making processes or actions which may ultimately seal their fate. Through Zaitoon's fight and escape from the inhospitable environment and Kohistani men, Sidhwa seems to make a statement with regard to womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s plight in a country like Pakistan. The path to freedom, in this case of a personal nature, can come about only after a partition. And as with the partition of India, those in power would use whatever means they have in their disposal to prevent the person or a nation of attaining selfhood. Sidhwa articulates that women, though jealously coveted by their man from outsiders are more at risk from the very people who are supposed to guard and value them. The Pakistani nation's internal weaknesses, which can ultimately pit the society against itself, are laid bare by the way the patriarchy treats its women. And so the imagined homeland where a woman can be safe still retains the elusiveness of an often dreamt fantasy, as the dislocated and partitioned relationships of Nikka and Mariam, Sakhi and Zaitoon and Carol and Farukh dominate the domestic scene in the novel. Despite some of these apparent weaknesses, Sidhwa is able to formulate a poignant tale of a woman's struggle to fight and survive in the contemporary society, The Pakistani Bride, not only offers the struggle and courage of a woman but a condemnatory view of the practices of the patriarchal society of Pakistan. Sidhwa explicates the dangers posed to the development and stability of the country's community, not by the outside forces but by those within. Zaitoon's eventual freedom from her pursuers indicates Sidhwa's critical attitude towards women, a sense, should fight the oppression by any means necessary, it is only mere a determined struggle that the true freedom is achieved. It has, therefore, created a miniature multi-racial pattern i.e. the microcosm of world order. Works Cited 1.
Sidhwa, Bapsi. The Pakistani Bride. New York: St. Martinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Press, 1983.
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Dr Shiv Govind Puri is an associate Professor with Dept of English and Mel, University of Lucknow (UP). He has published more than twenty papers in different national journals and presented more than thirty research papers at different conferences and seminars across the country to his credit. He is currently working on a major UGC research project titled “Other Voices: A Study Of English Fiction By Contemporary Indian Women Writers” since July 2012.
Subscribe to Contemporary Literary Review India — journal that brings articulate writings for articulate readers.
CLRI is published online per month, in digital versions occasionally, and in print edition (planned to be quarterly), its print edition has ISSN 2250-3366. Subscribe to our CLRI online edition. Our subscribers receive CLRI digital copies directly into their Inbox, get print copies free of cost whenever they come out during the subscription period, and are waived off any reading fee towards our print editions. You can become our subscribers any time you prefer. To become a subscriber, visit: Subscriber to CLRI
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The artist doesn’t
have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don’t have the time to read reviews. – William Faulkner
Book Reviews
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17.
DR. KHETARPAL'S FATHOMING INFINITY Book Review by Dr. G Iyyengar The collection of poem entitled Fathoming Infinity by Dr. Khetarpal is a deep, insightful and intellectual representation of the human psyche in verse. Contemporary in its style and form, the poems included in the collection delineate the individual with all his inherent complexities, dilemmas, ailments, and a social milieu that generates such fragmentation and dichotomies tearing apart the inner and outer fabric of his life and thoughts. The book is comprehensive and perceptive of the myriad aspects of man, society and life, often argumentative and contradicting itself.
The poet for instance proclaims that “Religions are cast” in the first poem of his collection and calls for a balanced approach to beliefs and non-beliefs: “Ideally speaking/ Balance between/ Belief and disbelief/ Must be struck”, but then again he muses on the unrealistic wish for balance as it exists only in the imagination. Poems on Individuality, Conflicts, and Visions reflect the persona of the modern man: a victim of dualities, contradictions and denial: “Torn between flesh and spirit”, the human life is depicted by the poet as oscillating between the contraries: “With its inherent dichotomy/ Between flesh and spirit.”; “Belief and disbelief”. Revealing a strong existential undertone, the poems give a voice to a multitude of problems troubling man: confusion, alienation, loss of faith, etc. Even faith in the Almighty is questioned: When nothing is conclusive No one can ever know The final truth of even The inscrutable Supreme Being (Fathoming Infinity, p 31)
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In another poem “A Dialogue with Pitiable God”, the poet questions God, thus reflecting the jabs of doubt, insecurity and frustration with the world at large. A distinctive existential cry it questions existence and the futility of life or creation itself. If presumed that This creation Is your excellent expertise I must dare say With due apologies…..
Dr. Dalip Khetarpal
That You have miserably blundered For the world is smeared Is flooded with tears, Reducing also the Omnipotent You To tears. (Ibid, p 141) Man himself being fragmented, even his vision seems to be “mutilated” according to the poet Khetarpal; only partially aware of the truth. The vision is conditioned and tutored, “… overfed / With diverse views and news”. A broader point view is presented by the poet exposing the inherent violence within man’s psyche which finds expression in the exhilaration of louder fireworks; in the deafening noise of diwali or the “rootlessness” imparted by a culture that refuses to evolve and transform. “Times and Tense” delineates the slipperiness of time that dissolves on the edges of a moment being lived in, a moment that had been lived by and a moment one will live for. The contradiction of fantasy and reality is presented through the images of “Utopia-Dystopia”, while the darker truth of pretences and realities in the vulnerability of a woman and masculinity of a man is revealed through their hidden insecurities and mutual dependency. Some of the poems are highly philosophical and ponders on issues that have held a place of importance in the psyche of man from ancient times. If life is a complicated labyrinth of doubts and uncertainties, then death holds an even greater challenge for the intellect of man. Mysterious and enigmatic, this inevitable fact of life has always intrigued man with awe. Dr. Khetarpal has very sensitively portrayed the dilemma of birth and death in his poem “Consciousness Silhouetted against Life And Death”. As we gain some sense The consciousness of birth 67
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Overtakes us But as consciousness grows The phantom of death Raises its ugly head. Life and death — The two strangest events Are twin sides of life. (Ibid, p 170) Anxieties, fears, dichotomies, yearnings and resilience integral to the human spirit comes through in this medley of poems that converge and diverge onto several aspects and elements of life, character and truth. The collection is truly a genuine effort on the part of the poet to render meaning to an otherwise incoherent and obscure life and thoughts: it is an honest endeavour to attain the glimpse of that ultimate truth that remains veiled behind apparent appearances and intricacies of sense. The theme of the collection is man and life. Existential in its concerns, the collection is a study in psychoanalysis, written in a confessional mode of self appraisal. The poems reveal the sharp insight of the poet into the very core of ‘being’, as they lay bare the paradox of life, ideologies, emotions and one’s own psyche. The poems are replete with terms and terminologies from psychology and can be taken as an interdisciplinary study in the realms of the mind and imagination. The descriptions are lucid and apt, wide ranging and thoughtful. The use of notes at the end of the poem helps in the comprehension of the poem as a whole. The diction and choice of language displays the poet’s proficiency and expertise in the handling of the language. Figurative language has been used excellently that ranges from conventional epithets employed like the “milk of human kindness” to newer creations like “money-starved owner”. Allusion to other literary works like Macbeth hints towards the presence of intertextuality. Interrogative, often skeptical and contemplative the poems are an intellectual enterprise of the writer into the inner beings of life, society and thoughts. Prying within the inner workings of an individual’s mind, affiliations, beliefs and conventions, as well as openly challenging the conventions, paradoxes of life and thought , the poet has drawn an entire kaleidoscopic image of life. The subject though pessimistic in tone sometimes, is genuine in its depiction of the anxieties and dilemmas of living. The contraries prevalent in life are given a voice through the poems. “Beliefs and Faiths” are put to question with an inherent “delusional” influence in the first poem “Beliefs and Faiths” while three different kinds of conflicts afflicting man are addressed in another poem. Fallacies, conflict, fear, anxieties, fantasies, contradictions; every chaotic detail that is a part of man’s life and thoughts inspires a creative expression that 68
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encompasses the entirety of man, mind and matter. Religion being crucial to an individual’s identity and thought often finds an expression in many poems. The poet depicts an incredulous picture of religion; more a convention than a conviction. In his poem “Stygiophobia”, the poet equates religion with fear and contemplates a resolution. Phobias ail us All abnormal fears Generate Restlessness and anxiety But Stygiophobia — fear of hell Moralizes us …………………… If religion creates this phobia Is it not morally and religiously bound To cure This ailment? (Ibid, p 58) Comprehensive in its range of themes and subject, the poems included in the collection of poems by Dr. Khetarpal deals with the truth of man-woman relationships, religion, society, reality and fantasy, idealization, as well as the declining nature of research. Contemporary and novel in approach, the collection of poems harbinger a new genre of verse, indicative of the life and times we inhabit. Every thought is rich in intellectual insight, presented with a subtlety of tone and expression. The blend of psychology and literature is not a new phenomenon but the mode of representation in the present collection certainly is innovative and credits merit. The poetry though appearing objective on the surface has a unique combination of the poet’s sensibility, suggesting a personal approach to some of today’s most plaguing problems and dilemmas. Title: Fathoming Infinity Author: Dr. Dalip Khetarpal Publisher: NA Year: NA ISBN: NA Price: NA Author’s Bio: Dr Dalip Khetarpal launched into teaching career way back in 1983 by working as Lecturer in English at Manchanda Delhi Public College, Delhi. Then he joined Technical Education Department of Haryana, and worked in various capacities, as Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and H .O. D ( English ) in different Institutes of Haryana. He also worked at the Directorate of Technical Education, Haryana, Chandigarh, where he worked as Dy. Registrar and then as Joint Director. Thereafter, he
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May 2013 was posted as Training & Placement Officer. Presently, he is working as Director Principal with Jat Group of Colleges, Kaithal. Dr Dalip has also started a new genre in the field of poetry which he would like to call ‘psychopsychic flints’. His poems are flints because they emit spark when they hit the readers’ mind. All these flints can be vividly seen in this book. He has won laurels for pioneering this new genre in poetry writing. His criticism and poems are often reflected both in national and international magazines and journals. Reviewers Bio: Dr. G Iyyengar Dr. G.A. Ghanshyam is a Fiction & Criticism Editor with CLRI. Dr. Ghanshyam, M.A., Ph.D. is Head of the Dept. of English, Govt. M. L. Shukla College (Guru Ghasidas Vishwavidyalaya, Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh). He takes great interest in contributing to literature and literary activities. He is associated with many organizations of national and international repute such as F.R.A.S., Royal Asiatic Society (Great Britain & Ireland) among others, and serves as an editor to many other journals. He writes as a reviewer for CLRI also.
Get Your Book Reviewed by Contemporary Literary Review India — journal that brings articulate writings for articulate readers.
CLRI prides itself to have a good number of review writers. We have different review writers for books of different genres. Our reviews are gaining recognition among the publishers, journals and academia for fair and high quality reviews.
Subscribe to Contemporary Literary Review India — journal that brings articulate writings for articulate readers.
CLRI is published online per month, in digital versions occasionally, and in print edition (planned to be quarterly), its print edition has ISSN 2250-3366. Subscribe to our CLRI online edition. Our subscribers receive CLRI digital copies directly into their Inbox, get print copies free of cost whenever they come out during the subscription period, and are waived off any reading fee towards our print editions. You can become our subscribers any time you prefer. To become a subscriber, visit: Subscriber to CLRI
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Book Releases
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18.
BOOK RELEASES
A series of books from Vitasta Publishing Pvt. Ltd. Anuj Dhar - "India's biggest cover-up" is on a roll on Flipkart Latest reviews... 1. Rajashree Bhanja: There are many books around on the Subhas Bose mystery, but Anuj Dhar's "India's Biggest Cover-up" stands out from the rest, . The book is a chronicle of different events in the mystery organised meaningfully into different chapters. Generally, such a work based on the past can be dreary but this one makes the reading as easy and engaging as it can be. Past and present day events Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Biggest are skilfully ran up together as in a thriller. Cover-Up by Anuj http://www.flipkart.com/reviews/RVQ1H64J1F9JI0AU4 2. Dhar
S. Sen: It is an extremely well researched book, and it draws upon several documents and files, which hitherto did not reach the common people of India. The chapters on the mystery saint of Faizabad, Gumnami Baba read like a thriller, and the photograph on the last page of the book simply takes your breath away! ...It is high time that all files pertaining to Netaji were de-classified, as it is imperative to study history as it unfolded, however unpalatable it may be! Kudos are due to Mr.Dhar for enlightening us with a version of the truth which was unknown to us till date. ...All in all, it is an extremely interesting book that every patriotic Indian must read! http://www.flipkart.com/reviews/RVINNNGQT2Y9OQD2S 3. Prabir Goswamee: This book by Anuj Dhar truly must be read by everyone. Not simple because it attempts to unravel the story behind the disappearance of perhaps the most charismatic of our leaders - Our Netaji, but also something that sheds light of the workings of the rulers that we have had since Independence. The one thing that this book does is raises a lot of questions. Questions that on the concocted history that has been taught to us, and more importantly history that has been hidden from us. Questions that must be answered. However the most unique aspect for me were the chapters on Gumnami Baba or Bhagbanji. The feeling that we may have shared timelines with the Great Netaji, if the Fizabad Bhagbanji angle turns out to be true is really thrilling. And from the evidence that are presented in the book this seems to be a strong possibility. A very good book indeed. http://www.flipkart.com/reviews/RVR9NS6EIGIJIO3D8 4. Smruti Panda: I expected the book to give details on lots of little known aspects of Netaji's death which it did. Lots of accusations and revelations which brings in us a lot of anguish over govt's handling of the issue. But what surprised me is the quality of writing.
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‘Here is a book that rips through the falsehoods and false noise that has deepened the silence about Kashmir. It shows moral courage and intellectual integrity. Here, finally, Kashmiris tell their own stories, analyze their own situation and dream their own dreams. And they do it bravely and beautifully.’—Arundhati Roy ‘Bludgeoned into isolation, while the world looked away, and then shrouded by deliberate misinformation, Kashmir has struggled to make itself heard; the very human aspirations of Kashmiris for dignity and strength and their great pain and anguish have been consistently misrepresented. No more: this book marks the pivotal moment when, using carefully chosen words as well as choreographed mass politics, a brave and resourceful new generation of Kashmiris is finally shattering the Valley’s long solitude.’ — Pankaj Mishra
Until My Freedom Has Come: The New Intifada in Kashmir by Sanjay Kak
'This book represents a clarion call for peace, freedom and stability in a region brutalized by mindless violence and killing; highly recommended reading for politicians, policy makers, academics, journalists and lay-people alike.' —Muhammad Khan THE PIECES in this volume voice the rage and helplessness sweeping through the Kashmir Valley, while also offering rare insights into the lives of those caught in the crossfire. With contributions from journalists, academics and artists, this book is a timely collection of some of the most exciting writing that has recently emerged from within Kashmir, and about it. SANJAY KAK is an independent documentary filmmaker whose recent work reflects his interests in ecology, alternatives and resistance politics. His films 'Jashn-e-Azadi' (How we celebrate freedom) about the struggle for Azadi-freedom-in Kashmir, and 'Words on Water' about the struggle against large dams in the Narmada valley in central India, have been widely screened both in India and abroad. 'Words on Water' (2003) won Best Long Film prize at the International Festival of Environmental Film & Video, Brazil. 'In the forest hangs a bridge' (1999) received the "Golden Lotus" for Best Documentary Film at the 1999 National Film Awards in India and the "Asian Gaze" Award at the Pusan Short Film Festival, Korea. He is based in New Delhi. About The Book: Three people, sifted by life into different countries, share a city and its struggles. Dubai becomes their commonality. Nakudushambey is a missionary of mercy with a self-chosen moniker. The grand old uncle of the courthouse came to being in Dubai. Leaving judgement to the higher lord, he helps, unmindful of the borders that are impressed upon every righteous mind. The pervert, the prey and the prostitute are served without discrimination or expectation. His spirit rallies on his being immune to depravity and despair. What then makes 73
May 2013 Beyond the Dunes by Veena
him want to flee? Zoe Gonsalves is a single mother of three who opts to leave her country and her children to scour for Dirham dreams.
But her fight for better yields only difficulties. Indulged by self-pity, what becomes of her ambitions and their rewards? Brought to existence in Dubai, Rayla Nizar has traded more than her name for the man she loves. She makes it her home. Blending her innate Western sensibility with cultivated Eastern sensitivity, she carves out space for women who are raped, bruised and abanonded, robbed of their will to survive. It only earns her controversy. Can she do anything for the young girl whose body is bearing the leftovers from repeated violation? Veena was twenty-five when she wrote this book, inspired heavily by her short stint as a journalist. Before that, following her degree in communication from the University of Westminster, London, she worked as an editorial assistant for an even shorter duration. At the time of writing this book, Veena was a firm believer of brevity. Author: Y Bhargava Krishna Price:245 Pages:252 About The Book - "In 1753, Ruckus Thawhorne, a British revenue officer, comes at midnight to the house of Ramabrahmam in Gandharva Kota. It is no ordinary counsel or favour that the officer seeks. In secret, the Brahmin journeys with him that night to destroy an unnatural 'evil'. On his death bed, five years later, he makes a sinister prediction to his son Madhavachary, that the evil may return, although its perpetrator — a British soldier James Hil — was deported to England. In 1792, Madhachary's days go by, as did his father's, in rituals, family affairs and offering counsel to the villagers. He lives with his two sons, a widowed daughter and the youngest daughter.
Fatal Fires - Dark Before The Dawn By Y Bhargava Krishna
Suddenly the forty year old events invade his life; his fears dead and buried return. He turns to his father's papers stashed in a casket. Madhavchary discovers an unnatural tale of evil and a mysterious discovery that led to its destruction — but — was it destroyed?" About the Author: Y Bhargava Krishna - Bhargava Krishna lives in Bangalore with his wife. He works for an e-commerce firm that sells books. Passionately fond of literature, he also enjoys movies and music. The Dark Before The Dawn is his first attempt at fiction writing. He has plans and plots for other books.
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Author: MAINAK DHAR ISBN: 978-93-80828-47-3, Pages- 296, Price: 295 About the Book: Dilli, 1857. The Mughal Empire is gearing up to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of its victory over the British. The Empire is thrown into sudden chaos when the Emperor is assassinated in a bloody coup Three unlikely companions find themselves thrown together by fate. Ranveer, a young officer in the elite Mughal cavalry, Hindustaan what if who is now hunted by the Empire he served; Theo, an English traveller the British never with a mysterious past; and Maya, a beautiful Princess they rescue. conquered India? Together, they embark on a journey that takes them from bloody. by Mainak Dhar skirmishes with Afghan raiders, rescue missions in remote forts, joining a coalition of rulers who band together against the new despotic regime to protect their independence, and then back into the heart of Dilli for adramatic final mission which will determine not just their fate, but that of all of Hindustaan. About the Author: MAINAK DHAR is a cubicle dweller by day and author by night. After graduating from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, he has spent more than fifteen years in the corporate world. At the same time, he has been a prolific writer with ten books to his credit including the novel Line of Control, also published by Vitasta Publishing
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;From other publishers Sri Aurobindo could be a remarkable dramatist and fiction writer too apart from being a poet but he was either engaged as a secret revolutionary leader or a political leader in the open field; either professor, journalist, social thinker or a philosopher, doing yoga and meditating for hours. Busy with many other things, his original works of imagination largely remained incomplete and inconclusive. In a stormy life, shifting from place to place, he often lost track of his own works. Some of them were in police or government custody, recovered by chance after he passed away. It is little known that Sri Aurobindo was a The World of Sri fiction writer. Scholars only know him as a dramatist. Even as a poet he Aurobindoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s has not been accorded the altitude that he deserves in the minds of the Creative Literature critics and common people though he was one of the greatest mystic by Aju poets. His Savitri is unique in its own place, unparalleled in world Mukhopadhyay literature. Even before the birth of the Indian English as a potential genre of literature he was one of the pioneers of Indian English Literature without his knowing it. A revolutionary, a poet and a writer, Sri Aurobindo, beginning with his journalistic days to the last of his poetic era, wrote large number of essays; political, socialistic, analytical and 75
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interpretative of scriptures besides translations of classics from different languages. Compared to his non-fiction and other works the volume of his original creative literature is quite lesser. But he remained a poet from his student days to the last, writing 50,000 (approx) lines of poetry. Savitri, the spiritual epic, his lifetime work, is one of the largest in world literature and the largest in English language. He wrote good number of dramas (five complete and five incomplete plus some fragments and translation) and four short stories. In this volume an attempt has been made by Aju Mukhopadhyay, a well known writer on Sri Aurobindo and the Mother besides other works, to present the whole of Sri Aurobindo’s creative literature within the covers of a single book, reproducing portions of his work written in English, as nearer to the original as it is available in his birth centenary library edition volumes, with appropriate discussions on them. Title: The World of Sri Aurobindo’s Creative Literature Author: Aju Mukhopadhyay Publisher: Authorspress, New Delhi. ISBN: 978-0-9831041-8-6 Pages: 161 Price: Rs 600 (Hard Cover) Publication Year: Nov, 2012
Aju Mukhopadhyay, the poet and author, has written Mother’s biography in English and Bangla, translated her stories and some other works, written on her thoughts on education besides writing on different aspects of her life and literature in large numbers of magazines, newspapers and ezines. This book is an attempt to present the Mother, the founder of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, in all aspects of her life and activities; her thoughts and ideas, her teachings and literature. Above all, what is extraordinary is her lifelong effort and success to a great extent, in transforming matter with spiritual light and consciousness; transmuting the cells of her body, building a Gnostic Mother of All Beings body apart from her own material body, as shelter after withdrawing by Aju her earthly body as a strategic need, reaching towards the goal of Mukhopadhyay supramental transformation of her being as she promised to Sri Aurobindo; to live to continue his lifelong work after his departure, as his spiritual collaborator, as the Divine Mother. Title: Mother of All Beings Author: Aju Mukhopadhyay Publisher: Srishti Publishers & Distributors ISBN: 8187075864 ISBN-13: 9788187075868 Pages: 180 Price Rs.195 (Hard Bound)
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May 2013 Publishing Date: July, 2002 Based in Pondicherry, Aju Mukhopadhyay, an award winning bilingual poet author and critic, writes fiction too. He has authored 30 books and has received several honours from India and abroad. Critiques on his poetry have been published in many periodicals and books. Many of his works have been translated in other languages and anthologised. About 25 scholarly books contain his works on Indian English Literature; quite more are in the press. He is in the editorial boards of some distinguished literary magazines and a member of the Research Board of Advisors of the American Biographical Institute. Writer on animals and wildlife; conservation of Nature and Environment is the watch word of his life.
Červená Barva Press is pleased to announce the publication of Following Tommy a novel by Bob Hartley. Following Tommy tells the story of the O’Days, two young brothers living in an Irish American, working class neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side in the 1960’s. As thieves they are the bane of the neighborhood until the arrival of the first African American family.
Following Tommy by Bob Hartley
Hopefully this novel will evolve into a movie. I'll be on a front row seat eating popcorn without any anticipation of the end. This is a must read. – Irene Koronas, Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene
In Hartley’s novel, set in the heartland of America, we dive deeply into disturbing pathos of intriguing and relatable characters... I urge you to read this remarkable debut, “Following Tommy.” – Robert Vaughan, editor of Flash Fiction Fridays “Following Tommy,” is a powerful, mesmerizing debut novel... These characters pack-apunch to the gut: tough, perceptive and shrewd. An unforgettable read. – Meg Tuite, author of Domestic Apparition Bob Hartley was raised on the West Side of Chicago. He holds an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Pittsburgh. He has been, among other things, a writer, actor, singer, teacher, bartender, mail room clerk, and soap mold washer. He currently makes his living as a respiratory therapist and lives in Pittsburgh with his wife and two children. Following Tommy is his first novel. Title: Following Tommy Author: Bob Hartley Publisher: Gloria Mindock, Editor & Publisher ISBN: 978-0-9831041-8-6
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May 2013 Pages: 104 Price: $17.00 Publication Year: July, 2012
Sammie Miller is a young naïve teenage girl from a broken home. She gets screwed over by men and all she ever wanted was to be loved. Life takes a turn when she discovers she has magical powers to change people’s lives. Does Sammie change people’s lives for the better or the worse? Unlock the magical, social dysfunctional world of Sammie Miller. The author was born in Jamaica and moved to London in 2001 and was educated at Westwood Language College for girls in Upper Norwood where she obtained 13 GCSE’s. Whilst at Westwood, at the age of 13 she entered the Young Writers competition and had her first poem published. Four years later she attended St Francis Xavier where she Sammie Miller studied Performing Arts, Media Studies, Maths and English Literature by Sonya Dunkley ‘A’ levels. Further education was at London South Bank University where she studied Writing For Media Arts (BA Hons). In addition to writing scripts and novels, Sonya also writes song, poetry and verses for greeting cards. Title: Sammie Miller Author: Sonya Dunkley Publisher: Melrose Books ISBN: 978-1-908645-23-4 Price: £9.99 Publication Year: January 2013
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Contemporary Literary Review India (CLRI) receives huge submission each month from writers belonging to a wide range of professions from around the world. Review Writing: The best way to promote your books is to get them reviewed by a publication. When you write a book it is very important that the concept of your subject and book is brought to the people with all its values. But to tell you the truth the scope of getting a book reviewed is too bleak. CLRI provides book review writing service so that all writers have their turn and their valuable works are evaluated in all respects. Manuscript Editing: Publishers and printers do not read your entire manuscript. They read just a few first chapters and decide whether your manuscript is print-ready. If you go for selfpublishing, readers will value you little which in turn, down rates your market value as a potential writer if your manuscript is not well edited. CLRI provides professional editing services to enhance the chances of your manuscript getting selected with the publishers. We have professional editors with vast experience in editing who prepare your manuscripts to suit the publishersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; requirements. Digital Formatting: Given the fact that technology has permeated to all walks of life, traditional publishers are fast moving to digital publication. Many publishers have created their separate department for converting their already published books to digital formats to make them compatible with different kinds of technology-based devices. So that the techno-savvy people can also buy the books and read them on the devices such as ebook readers, tablets, slides, laptops, computers, smartphones, and other gadgets. CLRI helps you prepare your manuscripts for digital publishing. We convert manuscripts before the writers go for digital version either because they opt for self-publishing or get a publisher for digital version. Writersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Promotion: Getting your books published is just the first step. As an author you need to promote your writing and concept. CLRI runs a column on Featured Author where we post a flyer along with a slug line about the book and a link to the book store. This helps you enhance the possibility of gaining popularity as well as sell your books. For details, please visit: CLRI Services.
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